The Immortal Crown by Richelle Mead

Title: The Immortal Crown
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: worthy

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Errata
p31 "…dropping and rolling to the ground…" should be "…dropping, and rolling on the ground…"

p98 Mead uses the word 'frequented' when she really appears to mean 'visited'.
p101 "Mae shook her head wonderingly"? Better: "Mae shook her head in wonder"
p193 "When he'd stopping their escalations before..." should be "When he'd stopped their escalation before..."

This is book 2 in Richelle Mead's Age of X series. I reviewed book one, Gameboard of the Gods a while ago, and despite finding well over a dozen errors in the advance review copy, I really enjoyed it, so I've been looking forward to reading the next installment.

I have to say that while I definitely don't think anyone will ever laud Richelle Mead of being a great literary writer (she could use a crash course in the difference between 'less' and 'fewer' for example), she does a pretty decent job in general; however, there are some fingernails-on-chalkboard moments in her writing, where she employs bastard 'words' such as, for example: 'politician-y' and 'orangey-red'. Any writer can do better than that. Note that these things appear not in a character's speech, which would have been perfectly fine because people do speak like that, but in her own narrative, which is a bit too much, since she's not telling this in first person as though she's a character herself.

This novel continues the story of Mae Koskinen, a soldier in the so-called 'Praetorian' guard - some sort of super-soldier outfit in Canada/the USA (known as the RUNA - the Republic of United North America). Mae is Finnish by descent, and a genetically healthy woman in a world where a plague has struck down much of humanity and disfigured many of the survivors. Mae is assigned as bodyguard to Justin March, a religious investigator for the RUNA government. The RUNA doesn't like religion, because in this world, there really are gods vying for a following amongst the humans, and in this volume, they appear to be gearing up for a war.

After receiving a vision via a special knife which was an anonymous gift which Mae received, she comes to believe that her niece, an eight-year-old who was lost to her family and whom Mae has long sought, is being held in Arcadia, a nation not known for it's generosity of spirit towards the female half of the population. Coincidentally, Mae has the chance to go there on official business.

This story, I should forewarn you, is over 400 pages long and it moves with a proportionately sluggish pace, which I found annoying. In addition to a decidedly more lively narrative, something else I would like to see in this series is the termination of this non-existent relationship between Mae and Justin. Not only does it not exist, it doesn't work. There's no basis for it and it's neither appealing nor realistic, so at the risk of giving away spoilers, I was rather thrilled with the ending of this volume, although I am sure it's not any kind of an ending in the long run. Going there, would take a writer with some real guts!

Perhaps I should explain. Volume one featured a quickie between these two characters before Mae knew that he was the guy she was supposed to be body-guarding (he knew who she was, but he never let on). Justin, who is being sought as a devotee by the god Odin, had a revelation that if he started getting it on with Mae, he would simultaneously be selling-out to Odin, and becoming the god's priest (read: pawn). He doesn't want that, so he rejected Mae in a rather callous way. She does not know his motivation, and simply accepts that he's that kind of a guy, but unrealistically, this does not prevent her from obsessing over him unhealthily. This causes me to seriously question Mae's smarts!

So, end of story, right? Naw! For reasons beyond human understanding (which is sadly all I'm equipped with), the two are still attracted to one another. I can see why he would be still hot for Mae - he's a lech and a womanizer and she's attractive (not that that's a requirement given the premises), but there's no reason why she should be, especially not after his behavior towards her. The problem with this relationship is not only that it doesn't exist in any romantic sense, it's that even in a romantic sense, it's non-existent.

It didn't work in volume one, but there was enough going on to render that a minor matter. Now that the pace is reduced to a limp in volume two, the interaction between the two really stands out as a pairing which needs paring. There is no chemistry; there's no tension, sexual or otherwise, and there's no reason at all why the two should be so focused upon one another in any way other than purely professional.

The first mistake Mead makes I think, in this novel (other than including the first hundred pages, that is) is after there's a attack on Tessa, Justin's young, female ward. Because of the assault, which was actually aimed (so we're told) at Justin, Mae and some of her friends at the Praetorian volunteer to watch the house. Mae also hires a dedicated, retired soldier named Rufus as a more permanent guard, and here's where the problem lies.

We're given to understand that both Justin and Mae are really shaken-up by what happened to Tessa, yet Mae hires this guy, a stranger, at his first interview, and with zero background checks! This is a guy whom she quite literally just met. That struck me as gullible at best, and stupid at worst, neither of which traits Mae has exhibited before. Just saying! It felt like bad writing to me, and I never trusted Rufus.

It was only when we got past page 100 (that is, some 25% the way in) that the story got to where I felt I could become honestly interested in it. That first 100 pages could be completely skipped and the story would not suffer for it. Also, the sections in which Tessa appears could be skipped. I liked her in the first novel. She contributes nothing in this one. If this had been a first time novel by a newbie, any competent editor would have advocated this, but once you're established, it seems that no one dare say boo to you. Go figure!

In chapter nine, they've finally arrived in Arcadia (read Alabama) and their military escort is deprived of its weaponry, yet not a single one of them raises any sort of protest. This struck me as being really dumb and unrealistic. Why did they even take their weapons with them if they were going to be robbed of them anyway? It made no sense. To me, this was poorly written. Think about it in a modern context. If the President was going to Iran, and the Iranians wanted the Secret Service guards to be robbed of their weapons, would this be acceptable? No! Then why is it here?

Worse than this was the the way the females in the party were treated. They were forced to be silent, to cover up, and to undertake menial household chores! Seriously? Could you see that happening in the real USA? No one would stand for it, least of all the women. This was entirely unrealistic and it really degraded the quality of the novel for me. Fortunately, it was right after this that things improved dramatically and turned it around for me, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to rate this novel favorably, which would have saddened me, being a fan of Mead's (at least of her Vampire Academy series!).

Mead also missed a great opportunity with Mae's magic knife. It's discovered in her possession, but instead of having her say that it's a religious artifact and daring this highly religious nation to confiscate it as such, Justin steps in and says it's his, and he's allowed to keep it. I found that completely irrational given that they'd just confiscated weapons from the military for goodness sakes! It made no sense and could have been written much better. I've seen several reviews on this novel which compliment Mead for her writing, but I don't see it as anything special. Her writing isn't outright bad per se, and she delivers on so great ideas, but there are some serious flaws in it as I've pointed out in the errata and throughout this review.

The reason I mentioned Iran above is that some reviewers also commented on the Islamophobic aspect of this depiction of the Arcadian nation - that Arcadia is nothing more than a surrogate for a slam at Islam, but while Islam does merit being pilloried for its appalling devaluation and marginalization of women, such reviewers appear to be blind to the problems of religion in general. It's not only the Muslim religion which is abusive of women: each of big three monotheistic religions, all of which share the same root - Judaism - are misogynistic and the root cause of that lies in the story of Adam and Eve.

People dishonestly pretend that Christianity is not as bad, but it is, and some sects of Christianity such as Mormonism and the bizarre Amish-style cults are worse. The more orthodox Judaist sects also repress women. Religion in general is very bad for women, so this isn't what those reviewers think it is; it's much broader than that narrow view and I appreciated Mead's tackling of this important topic.

Having said that, I also have to register some disappointment with Mead's own writing about women. It seems that all she can talk about as the women are introduced to Arcadia is how "beautiful" or ugly they are. She tries to hide this by depicting it as Justin's thoughts, but this actually makes it worse because from her PoV of developing him as a character, it makes Justin nothing but a shallow jerk, and yet we're somehow expected to root for him as Mae's beau? I don't think so! I for one am not on-board with him!

It's like even Mead thinks that women have no (or at best, limited) value unless they're beautiful, the hell with how their minds are, the hell with whether they're strong, emotionally stable, good providers, hard workers, reliable, have integrity, and so on. There are scores of criteria by which to appreciate them, yet Mead's sole criterion for which women are to be valued is skin deep, and that's it. I find it hard to believe that Mead writes like this, but let's face it, she does foreshadow this in her Vampire Academy series which is the only other series of hers that I've read, and which I actually - for the most part - like. Let me just say that I am very disappointed in her at this point in reading around page 114...!

Those problems aside, the interest for me definitely ramped-up as Mae was turned loose (figuratively speaking, that is - she was in fact extremely restricted) amongst the Arcadians. She didn't, unfortunately, "go all kamikaze on their asses" as one reviewer amusingly had hoped, but she did cut loose at one point and I appreciated that.

You can see that here, she proved herself to be strong, independent, aggressive when necessary, effective, capable, and resourceful, yet never is she appreciated for any of that - only for how beautiful she is. It's sad. Hopefully, from the way this novel ended, we'll see much more of that side of her and much less of the limp, uninteresting and let's face it for all intents and purposes other than as a love interest for Mae, completely pointless Justin in volume three.

Prior to this point, I had seriously been wondering if I wanted to finish this novel, let alone go on to read another in this series, but from that point onwards, it really turned around and became very readable. If Mead had started this novel chapter nine, and had excluded all the chapters where Tessa was involved, and excluded the pointless scenes of flirtation between Mae and Justin, this novel would have been perfect. As it was, it seemed to take forever to get through this, which isn't a good sign! However, it was worth reading in my opinion, but it's certainly not my favorite novel of Mead's.

Whiteout by Greg Rucka

Title: Whiteout
Author: Greg Rucka
Publisher: Oni Press
Rating: WARTY!
Illustrated and lettered by Steve Lieber"

This is the second of three reviews of work by Greg Rucka. Whiteout is written by Rucka who has an article on strong female characters. Whiteout is also yet another really uninspired title as B&N's website shows - there is a over dozen stories with this title on their first page of results alone.

This is volume one of a graphic novel series. It was also made into a sorry excuse for a movie of the same name in 2009 starring Kate Beckinsale. Other than its title and the name of the lead character, the movie has nothing whatsoever to do with the graphic novel. That they even pretend it does by using the same title and main character's name is, in my opinion, nothing but a huge fraud. The novel is actually better than the movie, which is poor and is why I don't carry it in my movie review section, but that really doesn't say a whole heck of a lot about the novel.

The graphic novel is executed as really cheesy line-drawings, which were not that well done. It's like reading a comic strip in a newspaper - except one that's 164 pages long. I had a real problem in that the villain and one of the good guys looked the same to me. I was over 60% of the way into this before I realized that the two were different people - and they were not even of the same gender!

The action takes place in Antarctica, where a US marshal, exiled for some issue with her superior, is trying to track down a murderer. The story is readable; I didn't have any problem following it or finishing it, but it just wasn't any good.

Greg Rucka is a guy who has somehow become known for writing strong female characters, but I've now read two of his stories and I don't see anything special about either of them. In this novel, the main character is Carrie Stetko, the US marshal, who is later assisted by a female British agent (who doesn't even appear in the movie!). There seems to be a strong undercurrent of lesbian attraction going on between these two, which never goes anywhere. Maybe volume 2 pursues that, but I have no interest in reading another volume of this to find out.

Carrie isn't a bad character per se, but she's nothing special, memorable, endearing, or engaging. On a couple of occasions she's shown to be "tough" as exemplified by her being able to throw guys around, but that's not what people mean when they talk about strong female characters! Yes, it can include that, but there's much more to it than that. Other than that cheap-ass attempt at making her "strong", there was nothing about Carrie to recommend her. She wasn't particularly smart or inventive in her investigation, and she wasn't a brilliant cop by any means. The action scenes were pretty tired and lacking in interest.

There are some things which Rucka gets completely wrong. For example, he writes "Pome" when he means "Pommie" (an antiquated term to describe someone from Britain). There's an incident near the end when one of the good guys is being threatened with a gun, but the gun fails to fire because it's so cold that it froze the trigger, which in turn shattered rather than triggering anything. That struck me as too dumb for words. I mean, if it was cold enough to render steel that brittle, then it's sure as hell far too cold for people to be outside without full face protection (or even at all for that matter) as they were depicted here!

In short, I cannot recommend this novel, unless your taste in novels runs to the insipid, tame, pedestrian, and uninspired.

Alpha by Greg Rucka

Title: Alpha
Author: Greg Rucka
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: WARTY!

Alpha is written by Greg Rucka who has an article on strong female characters, but you won't find any strong female characters here. All the females are appendages to the men, because this is a macho military man kind of a novel. After I read this, I decided that I probably had to visit the improbable characters populating his comic books to find out what he thinks a strong female character should be, and I wasn't impressed there, either.

This novel reads like a rip-off of a movie I saw some time ago about the take-over of a theme park by thieves or terrorists, but I cannot for the life of me recall its name. I guess it wasn't that great, huh?! I've searched on Amazon, on Netflix, and on the Internet, including IMDB, but I've failed to dig up the name of the movie I saw, and IMDB doesn't identify Rucka as the writer of such a movie or as a movie based on anything he wrote.

In this take, a terrorist threat aimed at the fictional Wilsonville theme park a thinly disguised Disney knock off, comes to the attention of government agencies, so Jad Bell, a master sergeant in some special forces outfit or other, is recruited as deputy safety director. Another of his team is working as a security employee. There is a third person, a CIA operative, also working there, but the park's management has no idea that it's a target, nor that there are undercover operatives implanted at the park.

When the terror does strike, it's in the form of a couple of dozen guys who set up a dirty bomb. It turns out they were hired by a US government politician who wanted to literally scare-up funds for defense, but the terrorists take that and run with it, and then demand that this same guy pay them over again what he already paid, otherwise they really will detonate this bomb. It's up to Bell and his team to rescue the hostages, take out the terrorists and defuse the bomb. In short, your standard macho bullshit.

The complication is that Bell's wife is in the park with his deaf daughter, taking a tour which magically happened to be on this self-same day, of course. The daughter, Anthea, does seem to be a strong woman, but she's marginalized, Bell's ex wife (it's always the ex in these stories, isn't it?) is a complete moron. In the first part of the novel, Bell pretty much outright begs her not to visit the park, but he can't tell her exactly why, and so this dip-shit chooses to completely ignore the advice of her terrorist-expert husband. Later in the story, she bitches him out about getting her into this and putting her daughter at risk! What a frickin' numb-skull!

Generally this novel is well-written and I certainly had no trouble maintaining interest in it, but once in a while there was a "Wait, what?" moment. At one point, Rucka writes, "...judders to a sudden, sharp stop." I'm not sure that makes sense. Judders is a word, although it's not one I like. The problem as I see it is that "judders" implies at least a small amount of time for said juddering to happen, which seems to be at odds with the "sudden, sharp stop" portion of the sentence. Maybe it's just me, but I would never have written that. It just sounds too weird to me.

I have no idea, even having read this novel, what the 'Alpha' title is all about, unless it describes the guy on the cover holding his gun like it's a loaded automatic metal dick....

So overall this was not quite a disaster, but neither was it anything memorable, new, inventive, or original and, as I said, it's strongly reminiscent, if not a rip-off, of that movie. So in short, I can't rate this as a worthy read. Others have done far more with less.

Naja by JD Morvan

Title: Naja
Author: JD Morvan
Publisher: Magnetic press
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated by Bengal

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

I liked this graphic novel. The art was very simplistic, but it still looked good, and the use of color was wonderful. This novel owes a huge amount to the Kill Bill movie duo. It also owes a lot to Luc Besson's work, such as Nikita, or Columbiana or even The Fifth Element wherein he creates a strong and mysterious female character who has issues to say the least. And it also owes a little to the Kick Ass movie character Hit Girl, if only for her wig!

The eponymous main character named herself after a snake (Naja is the biological genus for the cobra snakes and also, as 'naga', the name of a group of Hindu snake deities. It also happens to be the name of a founding member of the band, Massive Attack...). Six out of the first seven novels on BN were titled simply "Naja" when I looked this up! Maybe some thought should have been given to naming it after a different genus of snake?!

The character, Naja, is cold rather like a snake, having no emotions. She feels nothing, not even pain. We never learn her real name; it's always, and quite literally, beeped out, which frankly was overdone and became annoying after a while. We never learn the real name of her best friend from her abusive childhood, either: a guy whom she rescues from prison at one point in this story.

Naja works for an anonymous person named 'Zero', who runs a team of assassins. Naja is number three, but her ranking doesn't bother her one bit. At a point early in the story, a strange guy shows up in her room and bests her in a struggle. This is a remarkable feat in itself, but after he ties her up (which she enjoys way more than any balanced person would), he reveals to her that number one wants her dead because he thinks she wants him dead.

The problem is that the more she pursues this - going off the books and planning her own assignment, which is something she's never done before - the more questions arise as to what is really going on here, whether anyone really wants her dead, who this stranger is, and what his motives are. The story eventually draws in all three assassins, and as they realize they're in a trap, they also realize they're mixed-up in someone's plot - but whose plot remains to be seen - and the answer might surprise you!

This story wasn't perfect. I had some issues with it. I mean, Naja is supposed to be emotionless, yet we're told often that she hates the denizens of whatever particular country it is that she's entering at the time, which seemed illogical at best. The narration - almost of the "dear reader" type, became truly annoying here and there, and the constant dislocation of the timeline was irritating (this was the bulk of the Kill Bill influence).

In addition to this, I lost the thread somewhere in the last part of the story (maybe the last fifty pages or so) and really had no idea what was going on for a while, which reduced the reading experience for me a bit. Also I would have liked to have had more back-story for Naja, of which we're deprived. Yes, we get her childhood in a big expository section and several minor flashbacks, but we get nothing of how she became the number three assassin in the world.

Those relatively minor considerations aside, I highly recommend this story. It was warm, engaging, interesting, easy to read and to follow (except for the last part, and despite the flashbacks!). In addition to this, it was not afraid to get out of the USA! There are too many stories obsessed with the US, like it's the only place of any value or interest in the world, but this novel said the hell with that, and took us all over the place: Britain, Columbia, India, and elsewhere, so all-in-all it was a very worthy read to me.

Secrets in the Fairy Chimneys by Linda Maria Frank

Title: Secrets in the Fairy Chimneys
Author: Linda Maria Frank
Publisher: Archway
Rating: warty

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This is one of a series featuring the same female protagonist. I've read none of the others, having gone into this without realizing it was a sequel. That there were other outings was made annoyingly obvious to me every few pages, unfortunately, but with a few exceptions, it was possible to read this without having to know details from previous volumes.

There's a seven page prologue - which bizarrely takes place after chapter one!!! I skipped this as usual. Prologues either need to be chapter one, or they need to be eliminated completely. Other than that, the novel started out really well. It was too long with a bit too much detail, but other than that and the prologue, the author evidently knows how to get a story off to a great start. The one real downer for me was first person PoV again, which I detest, but at least in the early pages it wasn't awful (an issue I had is noted later in this review).

We begin with Anne Tillery arriving in Istanbul, Turkey, to participate in an archaeological dig near Nevşehir, which the author spells as Nevshehir throughout for pronounce-ability. Before the plane lands, she receives a slightly unnerving text message on her cell phone warning her away from the dig. I found this peculiar in light of what we’re told very shortly afterwards: that her cell phone doesn’t work in Turkey; then if it doesn’t work, how can she send and receive texts? This made no sense to me. The fact is that different people have had different results with their cell phones in Turkey - sometimes they work fine, sometimes they work and then stop working, other times they don't work. You can fix the problem by using a Turkish simm card or by using a temporary phone while there, so this isn't a killer, but it can be expensive!

The immediate problem with this (not the Turkish cell phone issues, but the warnings that Annie gets) is that they were completely baseless! Never at any point in the novel that I saw, was this apparent need to keep her away from the dig justified. I got the feeling this was "fake danger" added into the novel merely to try and spice things up, rather than as an organic outcome of the plot. The artificiality of this wasn't appreciated.

Annie is expecting to be picked up by boyfriend Ty Egan, so the first problem on the ground is that someone else tries to pick her up, and not in a flirtatious way - by deceptively pretending to be a driver for the dig. She's really suspicious of this guy, which is just as well, but later, when she receives what’s quite obviously a death threat, she handles the photograph, getting her fingerprints all over it. No one calls the police. I think after a threatening text, an attempt at kidnapping, and a threatening photograph, I’d be dialing whatever the Turkish equivalent of 911 is. Not Annie. Instead she pops on a cocktail dress and goes to a party. This passive attitude goes against the grain of what we’ve been told about her being cautious earlier, and about her having had some experience with danger in her previous adventures. It’s really hard to reconcile the two.

Now, about Annie and Ty's kissing in public places, I don’t know! I've never been to Turkey, but I do know there is a slowly rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism there (as everywhere in those parts, it seems), so personally I’d be wary of kissing in public places, but Annie and Ty apparently think this is fine. Okay. If they say so. What I don’t get about them is that Annie is put up in a hotel where she stays by herself - Ty is nowhere around. I don't see how this works! Are they really so sweet and innocent, this couple who kiss in the streets?

This goes to another problem I had with this novel which is the disconnect between Annie's "circumstantial age", and her overt behavior. Is she thirteen? Sixteen? Eighteen? I don't know from the writing. Circumstantially, judged in general by the story, she appears to be seventeen or eighteen if not older (note: the author says on her website that Annie is 17 in the first novel in the series). Judged by other criteria - her behavior and this chaste relationship, she appears to be really juvenile. Clearly if she's at the young end of the YA spectrum, then this behavior is appropriate. If not, then what's up with that?! It doesn't matter what her age is if it's consistent with her behavior (or if there's a good reason given why it isn't), but the real problem here is that this novel seems all over the place in terms of the age group the author is writing for.

Both Annie and Ty tell the other that they love them, although Tyler states it as "I love you little Annie" - way to demean your girlfriend, Ty! But why are they not sharing a room? Again there's an age thing going on here. As I read this I did not know Annie's age nor could I guess it from the writing! It’s not like they're early teens (although they do behave like that), and this made little sense to me given their interactions to that point. It’s like the author wasn't quite sure how old they were, and so neither was I!

At the cocktail party (this is what finally made me believe Annie was older) she meets other members of the archaeological team. Doctor Sasha Borodin is so steely-cut that I became, rightly or wrongly, convinced that she was more of a victim than a villain. Yuseff Sultan was so oily that I couldn't believe his clothes didn't simply slide off him. He had no sense of propriety or boundaries, yet Annie made no attempt to set her own boundaries right up front, which is always a big mistake, and something which suggested that she's a lot younger than 17! Cedric Zeeks was so friendly and cool that he seemed like he had to be the (or a) villain here - if not Ty himself.

Why suspect Ty? Well, he's obvious to begin with(!), but at the party, instead of including Annie in his conversation with the leader of the dig, Doctor Atsut, about the threats she's received so far, he hustled her away to the food table and took Atsut off for a private conversation. This struck me as decidedly odd, especially since Ty made no mention of what was discussed when he returned and sat with Annie at a table. Neither did Annie ask what had transpired. Later this came out, but this lack of curiosity for a character who's being promoted as a mystery-solver struck a sour note for me.

Atsut talked about the dig at Çatalhöyük (Turkish for Fork Mound), which is a Neolithic settlement that existed about 8,000 years ago, and lasted for almost 2,000 years. It was discovered half a century ago. Atsut reveals that there have been thefts from the site, and if the perps aren't apprehended, the Turkish government will be shutting down the dig. This ancient town was weird by our standards because all of the buildings were joined - like a gigantic one-storey apartment block. The homes had only one entrance - in the ceiling! - and no windows. The "streets" were the rooftops of these dwellings! None of this came out in the text which made me wonder why. It's so interesting and odd that I expected at least a mention of it, but we really got no feel for it at all. Instead all we heard about are caves - endless caves!

It takes until the end of chapter six before they finally arrive at the dig, and Ty suddenly takes off running without a word to Annie. When she catches him up he tells her that there has been a cave-in and that everyone must help to dig-out those who are trapped. So my question was: why did he not tell her this before he took off? That made no sense to me, but I took comfort from the fact that the author understands that it’s 'triceps' and not 'tricep'! I've seen that mistake (or it's companion, 'bicep' instead of 'biceps') in way too many novels of late. No wonder US science and math education is doing so poorly!

It's hard to believe that the clean-up of the cave-in would be undertaken by anyone other than trained archaeologists, yet it is. This made no sense to me either! How are a fresh volunteer and a physical plant specialist going to be able to tell if something is important enough that it warrants careful handling and preservation, or is just rubble? That was just wrong!

Annie meets Yelda and Ahmet, Doctor Atsut's two children, who are fraternal twins, but for as young as they are, their English is better than good; it’s actually spectacular, which stretched credibility a little too far for my taste. They play a significant part in the story, but were a bit annoying for me, as was Atsut's poor parenting! This was one of several issues I had, some of which I've mentioned here. Another one was where Annie's dad "pulled out his government-issued revolver". Really? A revolver? I found it hard to believe the US government is issuing revolvers to State Department employees and they're able to travel across borders with them, but maybe they are. It just seemed to lack authenticity to me and after I'd run into so many issues, it became so much harder to swallow other things.

This story, while very engrossing, had too many serious editorial and plotting issues. For example, at one point, Annie, in pursuit of a potential smuggler, heads towards a flash she spots in the distance. She gives herself away by the dust cloud she raises as she walks through the fine sand. Ty and Cedric, only a mile away, suddenly have second thoughts about leaving her alone, so they head back, yet they cannot find her - not even from the trail of dust - which is apparently non-existent now! That was just bad continuity. At one point, Annie is hit on the head and is later cleared by the doctor as having no concussion, but Ty decides he will sleep in her tent - because she has a concussion. Again, poor continuity. And one more: the entire novel is in first person past PoV until Annie gets knocked-out; then suddenly we get a chapter out of the blue in third person. The shrieked.

So, much as Id like to commend this novel for an entertaining story and writing that's not bad at all from a purely technical PoV, there were far too many issues with it to make it an enjoyable read for me. It was like getting on a sled and setting off down a snow-covered hill only to find that there are bare patches of Earth every few yards along the track that keep on bringing the sled to a jarring halt, so in short, I cannot recommend this novel, and I feel no compulsion to read any more in this series.

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

Title: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

This guy Faulks makes a game attempt to replicate Ian Fleming's writing, but the problem is that he goes too far - to the point of essentially cutting and pasting directly from Fleming's originals. We have a villain with a deformity; one of his hands has the appearance of an ape's, with hair and claws. Why a billionaire would not get this fixed (since we're told that it bothers him so much) is left unexplored.

He has an assistant who is a complete rip-off of Oddjob from Goldfinger, and who can feel no pain, like the villain Renard in the Bond movie The World is Not Enough, and all the Bond tropes are there, which is sad. The novel was intended as a continuation from The Man With the Golden Gun and as such is set in 1967, but Faulks could have done so much more. Fortunately, he's declared that he will write no more Bond novels. I have to ask why he wrote even this one.

"Devil May Care" is a chronically over-used title. You'd think the author or the publisher would check this stuff out to find a title that's a bit more original and distinctive. BN lists over 20 novels with this title on the first page, although some of those are other editions of Faulks's effort. It's not like the title has anything whatsoever to do with the novel's subject matter. It actually should have been called Doctor No, Not Again....

The villain, Dr Julius Gorner (named after Julius No, from the Fleming novel Dr. No, isn’t really a villain - he's just a drug lord when you get right down to it, who harbors the asinine delusion that he can bring the British empire (what empire?!) to its knees by flooding Britain with drugs! Why is Bond even needed? As if Faulks realizes how badly he's under-calculated the magnitude of his villain's villainy, he lards up the plot with two greasy dobs of villainous fat. On the one hand he depicts Gorner as having a plan to make it look like Britain has bombed the Soviet Union, like anyone - even the Soviets themselves - would swallow that. On the other hand, he also expects us to believe that the US is so pissed-off that Britain didn't go into Viet-Nam with it, that it's effectively complicit in this plan because it would finally get the Brits off their "arses". Really? This whole "plot" is a joke.

In this novel, released to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, most of the action centers on Persia - Iran before it became a fundamentalist nightmare. Gorner has factories which produce legitimate pharmaceuticals, but he also produces and sells heroin in large quantities on the black market. During the course of his snooping, Bond discovers Gorner's smuggling transport: a Soviet-made ekranoplan, supposedly some 300 feet long (the Soviets actually built a functioning test version which was over 200 feet long). The problem with this is that Bond has a golden opportunity right there and then to destroy it, but he runs away!

The Bond babe in this edition is Scarlett Papava who has a twin, Poppy (not to be confused with the opium poppy…), so we’re told, but it turns out that Papava is actually agent 004. The non-existent Poppy is supposedly being held captive by Gorner, hence Scarlett's involvement, so she tells Bond. How Papava can be a double-0 agent, and yet so useless is nothing short of a farce. How her Majesty's Secret Service would even put her into the field without informing Bond is even more ridiculous. Why Bond suspects nothing when this woman was quite obviously stalking him brings us completely into the absurd.

Faulks also includes the disposable assistant, in the form of an Iranian by the name of Darius (seriously?) Alizadeh, and he also hauls in both Mathis and Leiter, Bond's opposite numbers from France and the US. I’d always read that latter name as 'lighter', but the audio book reads it as 'liter'. I have no idea which is correct, not that it really matters. The audio book reader does a fairly decent job, and has the right voice for a Bond story, but I wasn't overly thrilled with him.

The biggest problem for me was that I really didn’t buy any of this story. It just wasn't Bond, despite Faulks' freely plagiarizing the canonical Fleming stories. There were also some writing issues. Faulks is supposedly a highly-regarded writer (I've read nothing else by him so I can't comment there), but when he writes that the Bond cannot control the plane he's flying, and then has Bond take that same plane up to sufficient a height to parachute out without any difficulty, I have to ask how good of a writer he is. In another instance, Faulks has Papava and Bond all-but-naked in a hotel room about to have sex (before they’re 'forced' into coitus interruptus!); later he has her turn her head modestly when Bond is changing into different clothes? Really? That struck me as so false it was inane. On the other side of that coin, I'm pretty sure that Faulks didn’t write the word 'new-cue-ler' so why the audio book reader pronounced nuclear like that is as much of a mystery as it is an annoyance.

In short this novel is warty! I've now read, I think, four 'post-Fleming' Bond novels over the last few years (the most recent one before this is reviewed here) and I've found none of them up to snuff, although I have to say that Kingsley Amis at least got close with his title! I think Colonel Sun was a cracking good title - one which Fleming might have come up with himself. That novel, unfortunately, sucked. So, I have to announce that I'm now done trying to find new novels that effectively capture Fleming's spirit! Time to move on to something different.

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver

Title: Carte Blanche
Author: Jeffery Deaver
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

I'm a James Bond purist, I admit it. If it isn't Fleming, it isn’t cannon, and it’s second-rate no matter who the author is! Not that Fleming was a brilliant writer or anything, but he did have a certain style, and more than that, he had a history in intelligence which lent a certain authenticity to his novels even as he invented the most outrageous fiction with which to clothe it. I've read a few non-Fleming Bonds, and I've been singularly disappointed with them all, so I gave up. All this is to say that I went into this one with more than a bit of trepidation. I've already reviewed Diva's The Bone Collector, and while I wasn't completely thrilled by that, I was curious to read other material by him. This one's a start, and the novel was on close-out so I figured I had little to lose even if I didn’t like it!

We know that book blurbs nearly always lie. The sparse one on the back cover claims that Jeffery Deaver brings James Bond into the modern age. And it’s a lie! Yes, it does depict him in the 21st century, but it retains all of Fleming's 1950's era snobbery, which was one of the things I found most obnoxious about the original novels. I honestly don’t care if he wears Sea Island cotton shirts or sports a Rolex Oyster Perpetual. I'd been hoping that Deaver might do something more along the lines of what Eon Productions did in 2006 when they brought in Daniel Craig to star, Martin Campbell to direct, and Haggis, Purvis, and Wade to write. He didn’t.

Deaver knows his stuff (and commendably gets his "British-isms" right!), but it’s far too larded with brand-names and details. It’s like he took copious notes when he researched, and then couldn’t bear to leave any of them out of his text. It’s like he really didn’t want to overhaul Bond, and so couldn't leave any of the trademarked Fleming snobbery behind. So yes, this Bond is updated, but no, he's still an anachronism, and worse, he's not appealing. This Bond is a 1950's throwback without the 1950's milieu in which to live and breathe. He's way-the-hell too upper class for his lower-class origin to make any sense at all. None of this snobbery fits with his trope modern military history (although how that's even supposed to work given that he's still a Royal Navy commander is a complete mystery - there's not a lot of ocean in Afghanistan).

I always did love that Bond was a 'commander': there's something about that particular title which outranks everything else for me, but I’d have been happy to see that go if it meant we could get the panache and élan of Fleming's Bond, but set in modern times. Deaver's problem, it seems, is that he was so obsessed with holding on to everything with which Fleming had adorned the original Bond that realism was ejected from his too-tightly-squeezed fist. He features Felix Leiter, Rene Mathis, Mary Goodnight, May (his devoted housekeeper), and his Bentley - although it's a Continental GT now, not the growling, late 1920's Bentley Blower of the Fleming era. Talking of lighters, the new Bond doesn’t smoke, but that's the only real difference I noticed from Fleming's original. And let’s not even ask how Bond can afford a car priced at an eighth of a million pounds….

Bond is now in the Operations Branch of the Overseas Development Group, but he works for Miles Messervy, so we’re essentially back in 1953 when Casino Royale was first published. We meet him in Serbia, preventing the derailing of a train, which would not have done much damage anyway, so the question in Bond's mind is why Niall Dunne, someone who seems to be very much like James Bond in his skill set (and who is the object of Bond's attention as we begin), would waste his time on it.

Pursuing scant leads, Bond runs into the main Bond villain with the inevitable attendant psychopathy. Severan Hydt is of Dutch ancestry, and is a distinctly warped individual who takes an unnatural interest not so much in the killing of people, as in the dead bodies which the psychopathy leaves in its, er, wake! Hydt appears to be pursuing some sort of disaster which is estimated to take down about 100 people. This is only a practice run for something much larger, it would seem.

Unlike in the Fleming era, Bond evidently has no authority to investigate in the UK, only abroad, so he's stuck with being classed as an observer under the authority of someone who can investigate, and we're hammered over the head with how irritating and incompetent this man is. He wants to shut down everything as soon as the perp is ID'd, whereas Bond wants to let it play out until they discover who’s ultimately behind it all, lest shutting it down alerts the real power behind the throne, allowing them to escape to fight another day. From England the action moves to Dubai where the practice 'event' is supposed to take place.

Felix Leiter is white in this outing, just like he was in the original. Carte Blanche is not only a seriously over-used novel title! We're told he's Texan, but his name is Felix? Okay. His cover is that he's a freelance journalist blogging music: blues, R&B, and Afro-Caribbean. And he's in Dubai, because you know there's a whole heck of a lot of that music generated there! So he and Bond follow Hydt, trying to figure out what this 'practice run' is supposed to be, and they end-up watching Hydt as he confers with an Arab colleague whose business is developing industrial machinery, hence his tie to Hydt. Deaver has Hydt and his friend go into a closed office for no evident reason other than to introduce another character, because as soon as they're in there, they turn right around and come back out. That struck me as weird, especially since that character is bumped-off very shortly afterwards.

Genderism rears its ugly head on page 148, Deaver describes Bond and Leiter spying on Hydt as he visits this business colleague: "Observing Hydt, the Irishman, and an attractive dark-haired woman…" Yes, I agree we already met Hydt and Dunne, so no description is necessary there, but what's also unnecessary is the word 'attractive'. Is this seriously the only adjective Deaver can think of when he looks at a woman? Is she either attractive or she's a waste of time? I encounter this attitude repeatedly. I recall reading a science blog site written by a well-known and published American author, who described a scientist as pretty or some word to that same effect in one of his blogs. I posted a comment on that particular blog asking if he would have described a male scientist as 'handsome'! I know he wouldn't because he never has. I no longer read that blog, and I no longer comment on it because my comments seemed mysteriously to never get published after that particular one!

Note that I don’t have a problem with a character in a novel being genderist or referring to a woman as attractive for no good reason. Characters can be depicted however you like, but when the author is gratuitously pigeon-holing women as 'attractive' and 'other', that's a different matter, but then Deaver does have some odd writing habits. One example is on p184 where he uses the phrase "ratcheting the shackles". One doesn’t normally think of shackles as something one can ratchet. Handcuffs are a different matter. In another example, the words 'land mine' appear unhyphenated and separated, whereas the words 'mid-fifties' appear as one word: 'midfifties' in Deaver's hands. If midfifties, then why not landmine or land-mine? I just thought that was an interesting foible. Another example is Deaver's habit of having Bond is always waking from nightmares which he can’t remember. It's tedious.

Genderism appears again on p229 when we're told that there are two "attractive young women" working at the door of the function which Bond attends. One of them is 'blonde and voluptuous", but that's quite obviously nowhere near enough, so she's wearing a "tight-fitting" dress"! The other woman could be her twin: she's "equally built and clad." Later Bond and Hydt take champagne refills from "an attractive young Afrikaner woman." They key words here are obviously 'attractive' and 'young'. What else matters? This is in the same novel in which Deaver has Bond bristle at someone's use of the word "coloreds" to describe a certain group of people. Disconnect much, Diva?

As if that alone isn't bad enough, Bond, undercover, has an encounter with Jessica Barnes, an older woman who is kept around by Hydt so he can observe her aging. Yes, he's that warped. Bond drives her home one time and she breaks down over Hydt's treatment of her, and Bond commiserates with her, but as soon as he drops her off, he puts her completely out of his mind - because she's old and irrelevant. In short, he treats her no better than Hydt does!

Deaver has a peculiar view of what’s attractive, too boot. Ophelia Maidenstone is a "passive beauty", but Felicity Willing is an "assertive, forceful beauty". How, exactly, does that work?! Funnily enough, that's where Deaver actually comes closest to emulating Fleming, who also had peculiar ideas about the world - like his view expressed in one novel that the mountain Turks are trustworthy, but the plains Turks are not (or was it the other way around?). I think that was in From Russia With Love.

I skipped chapter 39 completely. It begins with Bond finally discovering what operation 'Steel Cartridge' is. It turns out that it was the targeted assassination of undercover British agents, so why Bond wouldn’t already know all about that is something of a mystery, but rather than do anything with this new knowledge, Bond instead drifts off into a two or three page reminiscence of his childhood and parents! Seriously? Fleming would never have written that, so how is Deaver writing in the style of Fleming?

Bond learns that Dunne (whose work is never finished because he's always Nealy Dunne...) is going to firebomb the home of a man who saw something at Hydt's Green Way recycling business which he shouldn’t have (actually it turns out that the man is loyal to Hydt and saw nothing!), so clearly the best way to solve that problem is to draw attention to it by fire-bombing his entire family. Bond knows of this well in advance, but he does nothing to take out the two men (including Dunne) who carry out this attack. Instead, he sneaks the family out of the shack through the back door (a shanty-town shack has a back door?!), while he lets Dunne get away with tossing two grenades and burning the shack down.

The Official Bed-able Bond Beauty shows up in the form of Felicity Willing who is undoubtedly young and attractive, but unlike all the young attractive wusses we've met so far, she's feisty and self-possessed - plus, she wears no make-up to speak of. She's supposedly a strong advocate of feeding-the-children, but she obviously has no problem dressing herself up like a dog's dinner, and dining high on the hog with Bond. Indeed, she has no problem (this is after the acronym "AIDS" came up in a discussion during the function earlier) with having unprotected sex with a man she just met. So she may be Willing, but she sure as hell ain't able.

Deaver's Bond isn't, it turns out, one who has been brought successfully into the modern age. Instead, he's one who's been castrated and sanitized, domesticated and trained to perform tricks, and taught not to take a dump in the house. It’s not Fleming's Bond, not by a long shot. It just goes to prove that when an author is given leave to do what he wants, we end up not so much with carte blanche as with carte seconde-main. This novel is warty.

Far Gone by Laura Griffin

Title: Far Gone
Author: Laura Griffin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Andrea Finch is a cop who, while in the middle of being dumped by boyfriend named Nick, shoots a guy in a restaurant. The guy had come into the kitchen to threaten his girlfriend with an automatic and Andrea, good cop that she is, got suspicious of his demeanor, and followed him in there. Now she's on leave pending an inquiry into the shooting, but a Senator's daughter, Julia Kirby, has been killed in a university bombing, and it looks like Andrea's going to be pulled back in, one way or another. I started liking this novel almost right away, but it slowly became bogged down by a really bad romance and by too much rambling in the text, unrelated to moving the story along. It went DNR at 63%. Yeah, I know most people call that DNF, but trust me, this wasn't going to be resuscitated.

I ran into two problems in the first twelve pages. They were relatively minor problems, but nonetheless important. The first is that the author, in her evident need to get her weapons chops down on paper asap, has the bomber check his gun right before he gets out of the van and triggers the bomb via his cell phone. I'm not sure why he even needed a gun, but the fact is that the weapon never leaves his pocket, so I'm lost as to how it was that he 'checked his weapon' in any meaningful way. He didn’t take it out to verify that it was loaded and that a round was chambered, so this struck me as the writer merely saying, "Hey, I know lots about this weapon, check out my research" without contributing anything towards moving the story along. It took me out of suspension of disbelief for a minute there.

The other problem, and this is worse in my opinion, was another instance of a female writer reducing a female character to nothing more than youth and beauty, as though nothing else matters. Julia Kirby is described as "beautiful" and "just eighteen years old". I'm sorry but who cares? What difference do her looks and age make? Would her death have been just fine if she'd been forty-five, and plain looking? What if she had been sixty, and gray haired? Would it have been okay then? I simply don't get why the writer chose to put in that particular description. It's demeaning for anyone to write it when it has nothing to do with the story at hand, and it's particularly obnoxious coming from a female author.

I can see the value of specifying that she was a Senator's daughter - not because such a child is more important than, say, the corner mechanic's daughter, but because the Senator might have a role to play in the novel by coming down on the police department to solve this crime. Her age and looks, however, contribute nothing save to tell all women that unless you're young and beautiful, you ain't nuthin'. What’s that song from the 1933 movie Roman Scandals: keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved? To see this coming from a female author's keyboard saddens me greatly.

That aside, I initially warmed to this novel quickly, and I liked the way Finch was depicted until I found out on page 233 that she's actually a complete moron. Until then, the trope romance aside, she was definitely someone I could have warmed to, and about whom I did want to read more to begin with. The problem was that I've traveled this route before only to discover that the woman morphs into a complete wuss of male appendage down the road, and you discover you're not on the highway, but in a cul-de-sac.

I got strong feelings of déjà vu when the unfortunately de rigeur male interest surfaced in the form of Jon North. He's a man whom Finch admits she would "have a hard time refusing", and who inappropriately cups her face and runs his thumb over her cut lip feigning concern before roughly kissing her as though he honestly doesn't give a damn about her lip. Barf.

I'm sorry but this is sickening, and it started going precisely the way I feared: the tough female main character turning to Jell-O® under the dominating gaze of the alpha male. It’s pathetic, and it’s what turned this novel sour when I was sincerely hoping it would grow into something sweet up until that point. It’s not like there was anything on the other side of this equation, either: North thinks of Finch in purely carnal terms, lusting after her hot bod, without giving a damn about what kind of an actual person she might or might not be. Frankly, it’s juvenile.

Whenever North thinks of Finch, it’s about her "lithe body" and "her sensual mouth", and "the way she'd tasted" like she's some kind of a burger, and he's sixteen years old. His reaction to her at one point when she visits him, is "either get her out or get her in bed". These are the only two options he can envisage. What a charmer he is. His behavior is precisely what's missing from Jeffery Deaver's James Bond reboot that I negatively reviewed. It would have been at home there (assuming Deaver was really doing what was claimed: emulating Fleming); it’s definitely not appropriate here because it renders the whole novel into a cheap and nasty florid romance.

On the positive side, there's no ridiculous pseudo-macho main male character name in evidence here. Sadly, that's all North has going for him, but even that's trampled under the repeated trope of sidelong glances and thudding hearts, with North being very quickly depicted as "impressively ripped". Finch was shown as dating a guy (for a month) who had a slight stomach paunch (this is the guy who breaks up with her at the start), yet now she's prematurely hot for a buff bod?

If the author had written this the opposite way around - being dumped by, or better yet, dumping the chiseled guy; then finding a slightly out-of-shape FBI agent appealing for reasons other than his body, it would have been new and fresh, and it would have made for a far better story, but we have to travel trope trail instead. This really disappointed me, because it took me out of the story with the distraction of wondering if there wasn't some wish-fulfillment going on here in the stead of serious story-telling. Quite clearly the non-ripped dude from the opening chapters was nothing more than a cheap throw-away to try and give Finch some undeserved cred., as though we're too dumb to see through a cheap ploy like that. Way to insult your readers!

I mentioned earlier that Finch proves herself to be a moron, so how's that, exactly? Well at the start of this one chapter she effectively breaks into North's home. Yeah, the door is unlatched, so technically it’s not breaking and entering, but she does enter when she's not expected by the host, and she enters without permission. It's in the early morning in the dark, and she blithely walks in without calling out to let North know she's there. Meanwhile, he's fast asleep with a gun by his bed. Seriously? How stupid, exactly, are these people? They don't lock and bolt their doors (the author keeps referring to doors as 'latched' or 'unlatched', like they don’t even have locks or bolts on them anyway!). These people are investigating a terrorist who has murdered people and threatened Finch's life, yet she cluelessly wanders unannounced into North's home where he could have shot her dead.

It was at this point that I decided that Le Stupide was too strong with this one, and I called, "Check please; I'm outta here!" It’s a real shame, too, because this novel had much potential to be really good. It had me hooked for a good fifty percent of the way through despite some issues (notably with the romance), but at this point it became too stupid to live. It had been on the skids since about the half-way point, forcing me to skim a page or two here and there, particularly the rambling chats between the two main protagonists where they had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot and were no more than juvenile flirting and pointless conversation unrelated to moving anything along. So at 63% in, I’d had enough of the stop-start action, and I no longer had any faith at all that the remaining third of this novel would be capable of digging itself out of the hole within which it had become so firmly entrenched.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Title: The Call of the Wild
Author: Jack London
Publisher: Amazon Audio CD (isn't everything?!)
Rating: WARTY!

This audio CD was read appallingly by Frank Muller. Muller begins every sentence in sharp, ringing tones, and then drains away to an incoherent mumble at the end of the sentence. I am not kidding. The novel was bad enough as it was, but Muller's manic reading style rendered it all but unendurable.

This novel does not deserve the reputation it has. So how did it even get that reputation? I have a theory that lousy novels can become 'great' if they meet a need that nothing much more worthy has yet come along to meet. Back in 1903, this need, whatever it was, had not been met, and London was the first writer to even think he could get close, so despite his novel being tedious, unrealistic, and empty, it got its fifteen minutes of fame regardless.

London was known for claiming he wrote this because other writers, in anthropomorphizing animals, had been too sugary. He wanted to write a more realistic one. He failed. His portrayal of the dogs is no different from anyone else's portrayal of dogs or any other animal. He simply turns them into savage humans and that's the extent of his artistry. It would have been just as realistic had he depicted them as chatting to each other as they pulled along the sled.

The main character is Buck, a mix of Saint Bernard and Scotch Collie who is living in California until he's stolen by a guy who evidently has gambling debts. Buck is sold to people who take him to Alaska to be used as a sled dog, because you know those Alaskan sled dog scouts always tour the US during the season, looking for team players amongst doggie athletes. Go Huskies! London inexplicably portrays Buck as turning from a mild-mannered dog (let's call him Bark Kent) into a savage beast in the course of one train trip (let's call him by his alter-ego, Superhound), which then has to be brutally beaten by a man with a club until he turns into mild-mannered Bark Kent again. Really?! I mean seriously, this juvenile portrayal is somehow a classic? London may have lived in Alaska, but he knows nothing about dogs.

Buck ends up in the ownership of a pair of French-Canadian delivery boys and is trained to pull a sled along with a team of huskies and other, mixed-breed, dogs. Buck meets his mortal enemy in the form of Spitz, the team lead dog. Spitz is the Quaritch of the sled-dog world, and has the scars to prove it. After several savage encounters, and more beatings o' the club of course, Buck takes down Spitz, who is set upon by the rest of the pack and killed. Buck thereby maintains his heroic status and becomes pack leader.

After a brutal trip to deliver mail (yes, brutal is the key word here - this novel was probably far more of an inspiration for Divergent than ever The Hunger Games was!), Buck and his team are exhausted, and he's sold off to three clowns who are clueless about traveling in the Great White North. How these people even survived thus far is unexplained. Now London would have us believe that despite the just-completed brutal journey over the bitterly frozen wasteland, it’s suddenly spring and the ice is melting, making travel dangerous! This, he would have us swallow, adequately accounts for how the three clowns all drown when the river ice breaks under their sled, taking the entire dog team with them. Fortunately for Superhound, he's been stolen away from the clowns by an heroic guy who bullies them into giving Buck to him, upon pain of death. That's how nice this guy is.

This savage, wild dog then suddenly becomes mild-mannered Bark Kent again, all fluffy and loving because Thornton (or whatever his name was) saved his life. Honestly? I'm about barfing by this time in the novel, to say nothing of barking mad. But unfortunately, it doesn’t end there - no, London pushes on with dogged determination, no doubt grinning wolfishly. Thornton is slaughtered by the local natives, and Buck goes on a revenge trip, savaging them in return. Really? Finally, he heeds 'the call of the wild' and joins a pack of wolves?

Call of the wild? London would have us think that all dogs are really wolves under a dangerously thin veneer of domestication. Forget ten thousand years of evolution! Deep down these wild beasts have ancestral memory of those early, sylvan times when dogs would skip and play in the sweet outdoors, and they all, to a dog, long to return to the wild. I have two words for london: the first refers to a popular species of the genus Equus, and the second relates to what comes out of its rear-end after a large meal.

If London had written a fictional account of his own interesting adventures in Alaska, that might have been a good novel (assuming it wasn't narrated by Muller), but this novel? This novel is warty!

Not Dead Yet by Peter James

Title: Not Dead Yet
Author: Peter James
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WARTY!
Erratum
p78 "...unlit cigarette gripped louchely.." should be "...unlit cigarette gripped loosely..." There is a word 'louche' but it’s not applicable in the context where it’s employed here!

This is yet another novel where the title competes with a dozen others. I ran into an amusing example of this kind of thing on Net Galley. Here are two novels, both released in November 2013, within ten days of one another, both Sci-Fi/Fantasy, both written for adults, both with precisely the same title:

It's not as though the title is a rare one; on the contrary, it's a cliché, and there are two of them right next door to each other and that's just on Net Galley. How many more are already out there in the market? If someone says, "Hey, I read a great sci-fi novel. It's called Into the Fire!" then how in hell are you going to track it down? Common sense should have told these authors not to go with that, but to pick something that isn't a cliché or a trope. The very title dissuaded me from even thinking about asking to read one of these. Just another warning for those of us in the self-publishing business!

This is also the first time I've read a Peter James so, new author, new novel; what can go wrong?!! This novel begins with an attempt on the life of celebrity rock star Gaia Lafayette who of course, wants to be an actress. She's won the rôle of Maria Fitzherbert in an historical drama about British King George 4th and the love of his life. The stalker hates her for this because he wants his struggling actress girlfriend Dana to get that part. Not only does she not get it, the stalker doesn't "get it" because he's a moron and a wack-job, but he's dedicated. Unfortunately, he mistakes Gaia's assistant for Gaia, and shoots her instead. Next we're transported to a chicken farm in southern England....

James has a whole series of Roy Grace novels, of which this is the eighth. All of these novels tediously and predictably have 'dead' in the title. Really? I hope no one confuses him with the "Dead in the Water" Charlaine Harris. He's written novels in other genres, too. One of those also has 'dead' in the title. I wonder if anyone bought that, thinking that it was part of the King Grace series?!

This novel started out interestingly, but as soon as Grace came on the scene, it became far less graceful! It started spinning lines in all directions and completely lost its focus for me. There's far too much going on, and far too many threads, and it detracts from the very thing which the cover blurb trumpets as the focus of the novel! The blurb is all about Gaia and the problem she represents from a policing perspective. That's why I picked up this novel. To start reading it and find out that she represents nothing more than a drab and tiny thread in the rich tapestry of Roy Grace's problematic life panorama was a real downer for me. Hey guess what? I don’t frickin' care about King Grace's epic life! I do care about what the book blurb evidently lied to me was the plot! Yeah, I agree, I'm a moron to actually believe a publisher, so it’s my bad. I can’t help but wonder though: how long do publishers hope to stay in business in this day and age, by lying to the very people who keep them in business?

So here's Grace's baggage: his wife, Sandy, disappeared without warning, and without a trace many years before. He now has a new girlfriend, Cloe, who is pregnant, yet despite claims on both sides of being deeply in love, they're neither married nor talking about it. Cloe discovers one day that her car has been trashed, and a threat to her baby scrawled on the hood (or is that the bonnet?!), yet neither she nor Grace makes an official police report on the vandalism and threat. Grace is put in charge of Gaia's security as she moves to Brighton to begin filming. This is the same Grace who was just put in charge of a major murder investigation (and he wasn't exactly unemployed even prior to that).

I call bullshit on that one. I know that police can multitask, because they have to, but having the same guy who's literally just begun a serious and difficult murder investigation centered around a dismembered torso, also put in charge of a completely different topic and area - music diva security - sounds like purest bullshit to me. I don’t know - I'm far from an expert on British police procedure, and I haven't lived there in years, but I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t find someone with an uncluttered schedule to be in charge of a high profile star. If they fail to protect her, not only does she die, which is awful enough all by itself, but her child is left an orphan, and the police are going to look like shit in the eyes of the world. I sincerely hope the Brits aren't this incompetent and short-sighted.

I actually wanted to pursue that story (Gaia), not the story of Roy Grace's cluttered life! I don’t care that he's yet another tired, walking cliché spawned from the detective genre. I despise such novels almost as much as I despise first person PoV novels. I realize that James probably had nothing whatsoever to do with his cover, more fool him, but he does have control over what’s between the covers (more or less - he did sell out to "Big Publishing" after all), and that's the problem with character novels, isn’t it? In a series where the story becomes about a character rather than about a plot, how can the story not go downhill? I know authors love them because they require no effort to create, and readers love them because they require no effort to read, but once the character takes over, the plot goes to hell because it’s no longer of any importance; the novel becomes all about that character, and plot be hanged - around the character instead of around something original and intriguing.

Anna Galicia, Gaia's sick "#1 fan" is a really sad joke. Perhaps there are characters like this in real life, but she's written way too extremely to be taken seriously in this fiction. If James was offering this as his first novel, I'd bet that it would be rejected wholesale by publishers as being too amateurish, but because he has a series, he can evidently get away with anything. Well, so can independents! Lol! But that doesn’t mean it's always a good thing. OTOH, I would honestly love to know where Galicia gets her funds from to buy all of her ridiculous Gaia paraphernalia. I can imagine just how many books I could buy with that kind of cash - and new, too, not used - and it makes me sad to see it wasted on what is, in the end, not fandom, but a medical condition! Then maybe my love of books is, too?

Did I mention that Grace is a superintendent? So why then is he going on a visit to a tailor to try and identify a piece of fabric found with the dismembered body? He doesn’t have detectives to whom to delegate such chores?! I know the pathetic cliché is that the detectives are always, without exception, as overworked as your typical Star Trek captain, but if he's so short-handed that he has to make door to door enquiries in person, then how in hell is he going to find time to properly organize and supervise the protection detail for Gaia? And if they're so overworked, why are two of them making this visit instead of just one? This novel doesn't exactly strike me as well thought-out. It seems that James was so obsessed with rendering Grace as a tireless and industrious hero and champion, that he's forsaken all attempts at writing realistic fiction and blown straight through parody and comedy into pure fantasy. Grace doubtlessly has magical powers, and a sword hidden away somewhere with which he has, no doubt, slain dragons.

It’s smart when you're pushing a character (as opposed to a plot in a series like this), to give that character some personal traits, a flaw, a weakness, a hobby, an interest, whatever, but the one thing you don’t want to imbue them with is stupidity (unless, of course, the series is decidedly about a character who's stupid). In a detective series, it seems to me that it’s never a good idea to make your main character look stupid unless she or he is doing it on purpose to mislead someone. So when Grace picks up Smallbone, the career criminal who just got out of jail and who is his main suspect in the trashing of Cleo's car, it's nothing but stupid to antagonize and piss-off the guy. Grace isn’t the one who is threatened here, it’s Cloe, and his actions are the deranged acts of a bully, not a smart cop, and they put the supposed object of his care under greater, not lesser threat.

If Cloe has been threatened, where are Grace's actions designed to protect her? He could be home with her, but instead he chooses to stalk Smallbone, waiting several hours to pick him up late at night, drive him five miles out of town, threaten him, then dump him and leave this sixty-year old lag to walk back home in the pouring rain. Now he's made an enemy where one effectively didn’t exist before. A more restrained confrontation would have been much smarter. And in doing all this he left Cloe alone and unprotected for several hours. This man is a moron. We're repeatedly told how much he cares about her but we never see this reflected in his behavior. Meanwhile the poor pregnant girl who has already been hurried to hospital after a collapse at work is still working (as a pathologist - hardly a desk job) and still ignoring medical advice. I guess she cares as little for her baby as Grace obviously does for her (as judged each by their actions).

We learn of a journalist who apparently has a spy in the police force since he learns of crimes almost as soon as Grace does. There's a reason for this. The journalist has hacked into Grace's Blackberry and is getting the inside track on Grace's phone calls as soon as he makes or receives one! I can’t believe that a senior police detective hasn’t thought to try detecting how this information is leaked! I can’t believe that it didn’t at least cross his mind that his phone was bugged, especially given how fast the journalist discovered the latest news. Again, it's yet another example of Grace's ineptitude. This is hardly a recommendation to read or to keep reading this series.

Well I stuck this out as long as I could, but James insisted on larding it up with one inane issue after another. Not content with merely tossing in the kitchen sink, he wants to include the disgusting antiquated garbage disposal under the sink. As if there aren't enough misfits in play, Grace's long missing wife shows up next with Grace's kid in tow (about which Grace knows nothing) and starts harboring evil thoughts about him and his intended. Is there no son of a bitch in this novel who isn't harboring evil thoughts about some other son of a bitch? Honestly? This novel is unfinished trash, period.

Inferno by Dan Brown

Title: Inferno
Author: Dan Brown
Publisher: Doubleday
Rating: WARTY!

There is a veritable butt-load of novels titled Inferno or with that word in the title. I feel bad for all those other writers now someone of Dan Brown's attention-grabbing prowess has usurped the title!

I liked Brown's 2000 Angels & Demons, mostly for the beauty and creativity of the artwork on the ambigrams, although the adventure wasn't bad. I bought the hardback because of this - of wanting a lasting quality copy of such an artistic set. Brown's 2003 The Da Vinci Code was especially enjoyable for its fearless slamming of the risible Catholic church, and his 2009 The Lost Symbol was amusing in how seriously it took the bizarre cult of masonry, but otherwise that one was totally unremarkable. Now it's time to welcome you to Dante Brown's Inferno! Unfortunately for me as a reader, this one is his worst yet and it crashed and burned long before the ending

So he's fired up his Inferno, returning to his original setting of Italia (Italy), but this time set in Firenze (Florence), not in Roma (Rome). Why did I employ the seemingly pretentious naming? I ask Dante Brown this same question. Why use the Italian words for Il Duomo, and Il Davide, for example, but persistently use 'Florence' for the name of the city? How provincial and insular are we that we can’t use the names for these places which the locals themselves use - especially a gorgeously evocative name like Firenze? That's so much more in line with the rather clichéd fiery Italian ethos than is the limp 'Florence'! Must we impose English upon the entire world because we can? If Brown is going to use Florence, then why not 'David' instead of Il Davide? Why not 'cathedral' instead of 'Il Duomo'?

That's more than just a writing question, because the name 'Duomo' suggests 'dome' (at least to me to does!) and the only cathedral with a significant dome in all of Italy is the one in Firenze, so perhaps it’s the only cathedral deserving of the title 'Il Duomo'? Note that the Italian word for dome actually is Duomo (when used in the sense of a cupola - which also means dome! lol!). But I digress….

So, this is your standard Robert Langdon pell-mell mystery, with lots of pell-mell and little mystery. To those who started out by thinking that if it was anything like his previous outings, it would be acceptable for getting lost in for a mindless few hours, let me allow Power to answer with a portion of their lyric from Can You Save me? the theme song for the TV show Covert Affairs: "They were wrong. They were wrong. They were wrong. They were wrong. They were wrong, wrong, wrong...".

This outing, Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital with no memory of what's happened for the last couple (or cupola!) of days. A female assassin tries to shoot him in his hospital bed (a painful place to be shot), and he's helped to escape by his doctor - who happens to be a really attractive woman who speaks English - because she is. Neither of them think for a minute of going to the police. That may be because the police never thought of going to them - I mean, Langdon was shot in the head (almost - the bullet grazed his scalp) and yet there isn't a single cop in evidence, either asking for evidence or guarding his room?! Amateur!

Soon the inevitable and frantic Brownian motion begins as Langdon and his standard side-kick chick run through Firenze trying to resolve clues before he's killed by mysterious, unknown and secret-society-belonging entities. So, in short, exactly the same story over again for the fourth time, but now with new, unimproved, plug-ins.

One thing I learned from this novel is that Brown can't count - or if he can, he has a poor way of finding what he seeks. Langdon's first big clue comes from a mixed-up version of The map of the Hell or La mappa dell'Inferno by Sandro Botticelli:

This painting (or rather Langdon's laser image of it) reveals the initials: CATROVACER. These letters represent the ten steps in the funnel down to hell, each initial referring to one of the levels, but Brown says the seventh should be the first. This would give us: ACERCATROV, which is wrong, because he wants it to turn out to be CERCA TROVA, literally meaning seek-find. He says the seventh is the first, but in his illustration, he draws the line beneath the seventh, making it the last. Only by doing the opposite of what he claims, and putting the A last instead of first, can he get his two words correctly!

So begins the highly improbable and immensely luck-bestowed and coincidence-favored chase through Firenze, with Doctor Sienna, the heroic skirt, nudging Langdon all the time, as though she has her own agenda to get him to solve the puzzle for her. I was highly suspicious of her, seriously tempted into thinking that she was a villain, as evidenced by the way she very effectively leads him away from seeking help from the police. In fact, I was also starting to think that she betrayed him back at the borrowed apartment in which she was staying. I thought that she used her absence (seeking clothes for him next door) to call in her own people before the consulate could send help to him. But that was just a wild guess. In counterpoint to her, I rather like the assassin woman, Vayentha! This seems to be my fate: that I like a minor character or a villain better than I like the main protagonist(s) in a novel! That love affair went nowhere because Vayentha turned out to be a complete waste of time.

However, the real problem is that this novel turned out to be unspeakably boring - far more so than The Lost Symbol. Inferno is, in the end, nothing but a truly tedious travel guide to Firenze, rendered in excruciating detail at the daylight-robbery expense of pace. As if that wasn't bad enough to begin with, then it became a truly tedious travel guide to Venezia (Venice). I'm serious. Once Brown started rambling for page after page about the entire history of Venice I called "Check please" and was outta there. I quit the novel unfinished because paying that price of tedium was far to high for me for what I was getting in terms of interesting story and cool mysteries - of which there was really none.

It wasn't as though he simply mentioned some interesting highlights in passing. That would be one thing and would have made a good story that much richer. No. It was that he quite literally halted the story dead and droned on for page after page about the ancient history of the city and it bored the bored the pants off me. It's nowhere near as diverting as his first two Langdon outings, and is even worse than his third. I think after Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, Dante Brown has simply lost his mojo. He has nothing new to offer and can only continue as a writer by retreading previous stories with a few details changed, hoping that we won't notice. Well I did notice. I noticed how truly warty this novel was.