Dracula by John Green and Bram Stoker

Title: Dracula
Author: John Green (and Bram Stoker!)
Publisher: Dover Publications
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. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

I reviewed the original Dracula back in January, and not favorably. It just wasn't up to scratch, and the audio book version was read appallingly badly, which never helps, of course. However, this is such a storied story that when I got a chance to review a graphic novel version, I flew at it like a bat out of Castle Dracula, and I'm happy to report that I wasn't disappointed this time.

John Green (not that sad-ass John Green fortunately, but a talented and artistic one, wrote this, otherwise I would never have asked to review it!) took the venerable tale and ran with it and did a bloody good job! The illustrations are so finely drawn that the artist may have used incisor teeth as pens....

The story features crisp line drawings that do a really polished job of illustrating the text, which itself is sparse and cuts to the chase - sometimes literally! How the heck he managed to parse that tome down into this essence, or even quintessence, is as mysterious as it is impressive, but it’s all there, and I much prefer this decimated version to the unexpurgated.

The author also has a charming turn of phrase here and there, too. One which particularly stood out for me was where he wrote, "..dark side of twilight…". I thought that was beautifully said. The original Dracula had some notable phrases of this nature, too, but the only one I recall from it was where Van Helsing and his team were about to enter the tomb and slay Lucy Westenra, and one of them courteously offered another the opportunity to go first. The writing said, "There was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion," (Dracula p313) and it was so memorable that I can quote it verbatim to this day.

The only complaint I had about this is one I've had about several graphic novels: the use of the white space on the page. In an ebook, it doesn't matter, but in a print book, we're talking about dead trees here, and how many of them we're going to kill to make a print run, since this isn't going to be printed on recycled paper as far as I can tell. There is a large amount of white space around the margins, which means this graphic novel could have had smaller dimensions and maybe saved a few trees? Maybe there are good reasons for this, but my hope is that writers and graphic novelists will appreciate how important trees are and make best use of the space upon which they purvey their art. OK, pet peeve off!

This graphic novel is really well done, well illustrated, beautifully written, and well worth the reading. Now I have to wonder if John Green (not the sad-sack John Green who trashes indie authors, but the artistic one) is going to grace us with other classics or if this is just a one-off?

Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

Title: Shadow Kiss
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

In which Richelle Mead does 50 Shades of Grey!

I panned volume three in this series so why, oh why, did I start in on volume 4? I cannot understand this behavior in others, and typically, I do not indulge in it myself. A bad review is the end of a series for me. I don't go looking for the next volume in the hope that it might get better. Life's too short to waste on bad writing; however, in this case, I plead mitigating circumstances.

One of my biggest beefs with the first three volumes was Rose's relationship with Dimitri. I didn't care about the difference in their ages which so many reviewers made so much of, because from a sexual PoV, Rose was legally an adult in Montana so: no issue, get your heads out of your asses clueless reviewers.

That said, the real problem was two-fold. First there was the very serious issue that Dimitri was the authority figure in Rose's life. He was her teacher, which is what made their relationship completely inappropriate. Dimitri should have been fired for his misconduct. The second problem was that the relationship simply did not work. There was absolutely no basis for it whatsoever, so to continue this patent fiction that there was this irresistible bond between them was ridiculous in the extreme, and I was thrilled to see it busted.

Herein we have the reason why I came back: Dimitri was gone (as a potential partner at least), and I thought perhaps things would improve, and I'd like the stories better now that he was out of the picture. Unfortunately, Rose still couldn't let him go. She had this completely stupid 'moral obligation' to stake him and 'rescue' him from that 'life'.

This, in itself, is also unmitigated bullshit, given what we've been told about strigoi. He was effectively dead and gone. He knew nothing of his life before. He was little more than a rabid animal at this point, and there was nothing Rose could ever do which would change that or be appreciated by him. So make no mistake, Rose did not perform any heroic act here. She did not do a single thing for Dimitri. There was no Dimitri any more. As was made clear at the end of Shadow Kiss everything she did in this volume was purely for selfish reasons which had nothing to do with him or her juvenile infatuation with him.

What Rose did do here was to selfishly and completely forsake and abandon her best friend - the one she had so often sworn she would die to protect. So once again the biggest problem with this volume is Rose, as usual. We've spent the previous three volumes being reminded countless times by the narrator - Rose herself - how desperately she wants to be not just a guardian, but Lissa's guardian. Nothing else matters, we were told time and time again, yet she forsakes Lissa at the drop of a bat, and hares off to slay Dimitri, thinking she's somehow rescuing her lover from his fate as a strigoi. Yeah, right. What Rose did here was to betray every principle of guardianship that she had ever been taught, and for purely selfish reasons.

The most inexplicable thing about this volume - at least to begin with - was that it had a prologue! It's volume four in a series for god's sake WHY THE HELL DOES IT NEED A PROLOGUE? And why does Mead need to use the phrase 'kind of' three times in the first two pages? These first two pages aren't pages 1 & 2, BTW, they're pages 17 & 18. Chapter one doesn't begin on page one, so this isn't actually a 503 page novel. Just so we're all on the same page...!

It began rather interestingly, but way too verbosely. Mead could have trimmed this down by probably two hundred pages without losing anything vital if she had self-edited instead of running off at the mouth with way too many details - particularly fashion details. Would anyone in Rose's position even remotely think about what the hell fashion someone else was wearing and how good or bad they looked? And it sucked how often she felt the need to describe how "beautiful" someone was, as though there is absolutely nothing in the universe more important than how skin-deep pretty people are. Jeeze!

And what's with going to Russia? Yeah, Dimitri went to Russia, but there is no explanation offered as to why. He's not a thinking being any more (so we're supposed to believe). He has no human impulses. He's a mindless vampire who is driven solely by blood lust - and he decides to vacation in Russia? I call bullshit on that one. The only reason this took place in Russia was not because of some critical plot element but because Mead simply wanted it to, and she wasn't a good enough writer to put together a decent plot to justify it.

That said, and apart from the wordiness of this volume, there was some decent action buried in all the silly descriptive prose. In Russia, Rose is easily kicking strigoi ass (how she manages this is a bit of a mystery, but let's let that one go) while trying to get a lead on where Dimitri went, by locating his home town in Siberia. How the hell he even managed to even travel there is a mystery which goes unsolved. Oh, and Rose meets an Alchemist!

This is a brand new feature which has had zero mention for three volumes but which now turns out to be an integral part of the lore - conveniently only revealed to guardians upon graduation! Alchemists are magical chemists who can, for example, create cloud potions which completely erase strigoi bodies - conveniently for serial slayer Rose. Equally conveniently, Sydney - the alchemist - is assigned by a higher power to accompany Rose to Siberia where equally conveniently, after taking out two strigoi and collapsing, Rose magically ends up in the home of Dimitri's family.

This is one of endless examples of really bad writing. There are way-the-frick-and-frack too many coincidences in this novel, even by YA standards. I mean how convenient is it that everyone in Russia, no matter how back-woods and out-of-the-way they are, speaks perfect English? When Rose trips back to Lissa's mind, it's inevitably and without exception when some crucial event is taking place. It's never, ever, ever when when she's sitting on the can, or reading a fashion magazine (inexplicably enough), sitting bored out of her gourd in class, sleepily watching TV, or humping Christian.,/p>

Indeed, so convenient is this insta-contact that we get a detailed history of the arrival and installation, and the drama surrounding the new headmaster, who has a disaffected daughter, Avery who will be a TA (no, that's not tits and ass although it might as well be), and a younger son who is going to attend the academy as a student.

At one point Rose is given a healing charm - she puts it in her pocket for a rainy day. How come the magic doesn't wear off as soon as it's close to her? But that's not what important. What's important is that when Dimitri inevitably encounters her, instead of killing her as strigoi do - as we've been told repeatedly that strigoi do - he takes her prisoner and abuses her as a sex slave, a la Fifty Shades of Grey! Then when she stakes him at the end, he falls off a balcony and she never checks on him, dumb-ass guardian that she is, and to top all of that, he sends her a note when she's back in the US assuring her that they will meet again. In short, he behaves completely out of character for a strigoi based on what Mead has been telling us for the three entire volumes prior to this one. Seriously?

This novel was by far the worst and most badly written of the entire series and I am now done with this ridiculous series completely.

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

Title: Shadow Kiss
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

This is the third one in the Vampire Academy series. I liked the first two, but I've had a harder time with this one. It's funny because a lot of reviews I read for this series say that while the first is not so good, it gets better with the second, or while the second isn't great, it gets better with the third, but I've experienced just the opposite. I guess I'm, not in sync with any of this; I mean while the vampire Academy movie was a complete flop, I really loved it! The experience has been similar with the novels, too. The first one, I thought was most enjoyable, the second okay, and the third proved less than impressive and downright dumb in parts. It read like bad fan-fiction in far too many places, as I shall point out in this review.

Instead of growing as a character, Rose isn't changing, and if anything, is deteriorating as both a character and as a guardian. She seems incapable of learning, and is far too self-centered. As if that isn't bad enough, she's undisciplined and is given to tantrums and jealousy fits. The bottom line is that, based on her sorry showing here, she's simply not fit to be a guardian. Indeed, she's barely making it as a human being at this point.

There's a 'reason' for this, but whether it's valid is a matter of opinion. Lissa, for inexplicable reasons, has been allowed to go off drugs and begin using her "Spirit" power. You may recall that she was banned from doing this because it drives people insane. Nothing has changed on that score, so why the restriction on her using it was lifted is completely arbitrary bullshit - and she really doesn't do a whole heck of a lot with it anyway. The problem for Rose is that she's getting some sort of feedback from Lissa's new-found freedom, and it's affecting her mood, but the effects seem very patchy and inconsistent.

Mead's writing doesn't help. She begins this novel with a really cheap shot. It's a dream scene, wherein it initially looks like Rose is about to indulge herself in some hot sex, but in the end it turns out to be that she's simply tapping into Lissa's activities with Christian. She can evidently keep these at bay whilst awake, but fails dismally when asleep. It was neither impressive writing, nor a good writing technique.

Rather than turn over and go back to sleep, idiot Rose once again breaks the academy rules and sneaks outdoors. Once again her combat tutor Dimitri turns up. Either he is a really creepy stalker, or there's far-the-hell too much convenient coincidence going on here. Unlike Rose's mental link with Lissa, there is no such link at all with Dimitri, and therefore no excuse whatever for him to be always, tediously. ridiculously, irritatingly there. Again, it's really poor writing.

This external excursion serves two purposes. The first is to clue Rose in on the fact that neither she nor Lissa will be testifying in the case against Victor, which pisses Rose off. The second is that on her way back into the dorms, she sees the faint ghost of Mason - her dead friend from the previous volume. He appears to be pointing to something across campus, but never once does it occur to dumb-as-a-brick Rose to go see what he's pointing at.

Next, Rose discovers that she doesn't get to be Lissa's guardian during a trial period where the guardian wannabe's get to guard their Moroi around campus while existing guardians, pretending to be strigoi, stage no-holds-barred attacks. Rose has to guard Christian, and a guy named Eddie gets to guard Lissa.

Her first failure is to go on a tirade to the teachers about how wrong this is, like she's god almighty and they're pond scum. She behaves like a spoiled brat child. Next she fails in her actual assignment! She freezes when an attack is coming, mesmerized by the sight of Mason's ghost, and does nothing to prevent the attack, yet never once does she consider telling the review committee what happened! Major fail.

This is catastrophe on so many levels that it's really a joke. She simply lies about what happened, and conceals the hallucination by claiming she simply 'froze'. So not only is she being irresponsible about her mental health, she has also here proven that she can be so distracted from her duty that her charge is put at grave risk. Worse than this, though, is that she spends her entire time as a guardian gossiping and chatting with Christian and Lissa, allowing herself to be seriously distracted, and not paying anywhere near enough attention to her surroundings and potential threats. Rose simply doesn't get it - despite all her bravado about being a kick-ass guardian.

Bearing all that in mind, let's now consider the romance with Dimitri. It doesn't work! And it reads like atrocious fan-fiction. Dimitri actually is a kick-ass guardian, so why in the name of all that's holy would he ever pay any attention to a blustering hot air-bag like Rose? I can see why she'd be drawn to him: he's hot and she has the shallowness and mentality of a socially-challenged thirteen-year-old, but why would he be even remotely interested in her? She's a failing guardian who has no discipline and a truly poor attitude, so what is there about her which would attract a skilled and dedicated guardian like Dimitri? NOTHING! There is no basis for this relationship. It does not work, period.

Some reviewers have bitched about him being older and that therefore it's inappropriate for the two of them to become involved, especially as involved as they get in this book, but I will simply reiterate what I said in my review of Vampire Academy, which is that it doesn't matter a damn what you think about their ages since both of them are over the age of sexual consent in Montana. END OF STORY. What matters here is that he is her tutor. He is in an authority position over her and that's what makes his behavior completely inexcusable. That so few young people get this is what's truly disturbing about this relationship. It speaks badly that so few young-adult readers understand how wrong this is.

I found it ridiculous that Mead puts so much effort into telegraphing Rose's big "revelation" at the end: how she now wants it to be about her. It's a joke because this entire series is about her! It's all Rose all the time! It's about her views, her wants, her opinions, her activities, her priorities, her selfishness. Of course it's about her. She's telling the story. It's never been about anyone else but Rose. Jeeze!

I also found it hilarious how many negative reviewers gave this a two star rating, but then professed their desire to read the next volume. Seriously?! Why would you ever want to read more if you felt it was so bad? This is why I initially rejected the star rating system. I only changed my mind and began using either one or five stars (and nothing in between) because I realized that I am rewarding bad novels by not rating them one star (I would use zero stars if it was an option) and I was unfairly downgrading good novels by not giving them any stars. To me a novel is worth reading or it is not, which is why I now give all of my reviews give a one or a five star rating.

But back to the story, fan-fiction that it is: Rose plays a Clueless Sue in this novel, too (apart from not getting what Mason's ghost is trying to tell her). She knows that Moroi are talking about grouping together, learning to fight, and protecting themselves, yet when she sees random Moroi turning up with bruises on their faces, she never once figures out that there's perhaps practice fighting going on amongst themselves. That's not what's happening exactly, but it's close enough that I have to ask: how far does she have to have her head embedded in her own ass to not figure out something in short order?

And why does she need to seek out Victor and get his advice? How does that work when she hates him so much? Yeah - she ends up going to the trial after all, and she goes to see Victor and have a nice, Cozy chat with him despite her supposed hatred of him. On the journey there she sees dark shadows and ghosts on the plane, but she pretends she has a headache! Bad guardian again. After the trial, she and Lissa have their fortunes read. The fortune teller does what all frauds do: she tells them things which are so vague that you can back-fill them with any future events you like and make the 'prophecy' come true, yet this is referred to as 'prediction'! What a joke! No, a prediction has date, time and details. It isn't a ridiculously vague claim that could fit any one of a number of events and be made 'true' by this random coincidence.

In another fan-fiction moment, the cluelessness of the Moroi queen is revealed after the trial, as she warns Rose off from having an affair with Adrian (which isn't happening), yet she doesn't warn-off Adrian himself. Rose speaks to the queen like the latter is some girl in high-school with Rose, yet never once does the queen seem offended by her attitude! Some queen. On the way back from the trial, Rose has a complete breakdown, but despite this, I knew before I read another page that it would in no way affect her still being in the running to be a guardian. Bad writing.

But it gets worse. Rose wakes up in hospital and there's no-one with her save for the doctor and two guardians, Alberta, and, of course, Dimitri, who is never not there. There is no reason for either guardian to be there. There is a reason for someone like Lissa to be there, or the school principal, but none of these people show up, and evidently no one considers calling Rose's mother. This is bordering on the ridiculous.

Rose continues lying to her best friend Lissa, even as she 'fesses up to Alberta and Dmitri that she's been seeing ghosts. Rose once again talks everyone into doing what she wants and she's put back on guardian duty (who says dhampir don't have compulsion?!) - but on a 'half-time' basis. This seems to have been forgotten when Mead depicts her as being worried about curfew and separating from Christian rather than staying in his dorm room as she had been doing. Once again she sees Mason, and this time he can communicate but he can't talk, so all he can do is indicate 'yes' or 'no' with movements of his head. This is truly pathetic and an amateurishly bad way of creating fake suspense.

Oh, and Dimitri dies at the end - but not really. In fact, this will be the pattern in volume 4, as well. This novel sucked and is warty to the max.

Isis, Vampires, and Ghosts - Oh My! by Janis Hill

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which i thank the publisher

Errata:
p? "...we can assist you release your sadness..." should be "...we can assist you to release your sadness..."
p11 "...sorry your family has been effected..." should be "...sorry your family has been affected..."
p14 "...I'm taking your torque and cramming it..." should be "...I'm taking your torc and cramming it..."
p17 "...Goddess' Light..." should be "...Goddess's Light..." since we're talking about the property of only one goddess here.
p "...you near silent cynicism...' should be "...your near silent cynicism..."
p29 "...find out how to his crucible..." isn't right! Maybe it should be "...find out how to destroy his crucible..."
p29 "...over power..." should be "...overpower..."
p52 "...Branwyre growled something that was obviously fowl..." should be "...Branwyre growled something that was obviously foul..."
p77 "...effected..." should be "...affected..."
p85 "...regain consciousness too..." should be "...regain consciousness to..."
p86 "...ass' rectum..." should be "...ass's rectum..." since there is only one ass here.
p100 "...the Priestess of Isis were..." should be either "...the Priestesses of Isis were...", or "...the Priestess of Isis was..."
p127 has an extra letter 'o' at the start of a line beginning "o I sat tentatively...".
p133 "..tagging alone." should be "tagging along."
p136 "...under the shops eaves." should be "...under the shop's eaves."
p182 "...Word Domination..." probably should be "...World Domination..."
p187 "...wrecking further havoc..." should be "...wreaking further havoc..."
p199 "...postulate to..." maybe "...pontificate to..."?

This is book one of the "Other World" series and it begins with Stephanie Anders attending the funeral of her loved and hated sister Estella, whose stated wish, evidently, was to have her funeral conducted at the apparently oddball 'church of Isis'. Stephanie is a bit freaked by this, but is willing to put up with it for a couple of hours to get this over with and move on with her life.

Just a word on a small point of order here: 'Isis' is actually the Greek name for an Egyptian god whose name is unknown. The name that the Egyptians gave to her means 'she of the throne', and it's thought to have been pronounced as something like 'Aset', or 'Iset'. Why we're using Isis here goes unexplained.

Stephanie is of the considered opinion that the acolytes in this church are weird from the off, but that's nothing compared with what she's about to learn. She thinks it's more weird when she's escorted down, down, down deep into a cavern beneath the church to view her sister's body and that very body sits up and greets her with, "Hey sis, 'bout time you showed up."

Unwillingly and disbelievingly, Stephanie learns from the sisters of Isis (the Isisters?!) that her sibling is actually dead, even though she appears to be quite alive. She's told that the only thing which is keeping her pinned to her life on Earth, is the fact that her soul is 'stained' with a kind of 'essence of vampire'.

The vampire leader, Branwyre (great name for a vampire, BTW!), has a hold on part of her soul - a hold which is of course weakest in daylight hours and strongest at night. This hold must be broken before the next full moon three weeks hence, so that Estella can pass on to the after-life, otherwise Branwyre will be strong enough to possess Estella which can't be good. This isn't exactly what Stephanie was expecting from this funeral!

There's an element of Harry Potter here, in that Estella will be safest in Stephanie's company because of the blood tie between them - so she can't abandon Estella to the sisters and walk away from this. There's also a bit of ass-backwards folklore of "the night is darkest before the dawn" variety, which is of course, patent nonsense. The night is darkest when there's the least light which, absent a severe storm and a power outage, is at midnight when the sun is at the exact opposite side of Earth from you, but at least it explains why these two have to hang out together.

Stephanie has those three short weeks in which to find the ceremonial crucible belonging to Branwyre and employ it to bind Branwyre and thereby save her sister. During all that time, Branwyre is going to be fighting her tooth and nail to prevent this, and as if that wasn't bad enough, she's actually going to have to live under the same roof as a sister whom she resents intensely and for very good reason.

overall, I liked this novel, but there were some issues with it which I felt left the edges a bit rough. one was the record-breaking 17 spelling and grammatical errors (my previous record was twelve). Janis Hill needs to recruit me as a beta reader!

Another example of sneaky problems occurs at the end of chapter six, where Stephanie finally arrives at a motel and gets a room in which she ties up Estella and surrounds her with ring of salt so that when Branwyre's spirit shows up that night and starts to animate her, Stephanie won't be at risk, and the vampire won't be able to escape in Estella's body.

Now she has him restrained physically as well as magically, he is quite literally bound to answer her questions truthfully, so she asks him where the crucible is being kept, and eventually he spits out an address, but she fails to follow up on that and ask him exactly where at that address the crucible is located. That was probably done to play out the story, and keep Stephanie at risk, but it makes her look at bit dumb that she didn't think to narrow it down. I like Stephanie and don't like to think of her as dumb.

There was also some cheating going on here, too. I had understood that Branwyre, when bound, could be only truthful yet (as we discover) he lied about the crucible's location. This was rather glossed-over in the story-telling. I don't mind cheating characters; people in real life cheat after all, but when a writer cheats a reader, that's a different matter. OTOH, maybe I missed something here. The author does go on a lot about speaking loosely, so maybe it could be put down to her poor wording of the question.

I should also say a word about this novel's cover. I don't normally do covers since the author typically has little or no influence on how they look (unless they self-publish), but I have to question the utility of this particular cover in regard to its appeal (or otherwise) to any given readership demographic.

For me it doesn't make any difference because I don't judge a book by its cover (! I'm all about the writing), but for others who do consider the cover, this one seemed to me to be out of step with the playful and sarcastic tone of the writing. Jade Zivanovic's art is beautiful - don't get me wrong. It's really good, but it just doesn't match the tone of the writing. Is Jade Zivanovic an awesome name or what? She's a fellow blogspotter, although I don't know her.

Both the cover artwork and the tone of the writing seemed out of step with the whimsical title, too. The cover looks like it belongs on a Gothic horror story, not here! The title looks like it belongs with a story aimed at a much younger readership, so there's a sort of demented ménage à trois going on here between title, cover and interior! Or in this instance, I guess more like a mélange à trois! For me, I'd like to have seen something a little more amusing or comical in the cover illustration - not slapstick, but less foreboding than this one is - with a title that's reads a bit more maturely.

I have to say that I began to go off this story somewhat when the ghost showed up, and he uses the word "left" way too often, but even this was turned around, so it became readable again, although even then, the endless insulting (which wasn't really that amusing to begin with) became really annoying after too many repetitions. I didn't get why Roxanna - the Isis sister who is supposed to be guiding Stephanie, was being so completely useless to her. Why, for example, didn't she advise Stephanie to bind the ghost to herself before the night came on?

It became truly annoying that neither Roxanna, the 'priestess', nor Estella were helping Stephanie. I know that people can be obnoxious, either purposefully or ignorantly, but frankly, this was too much to swallow. I know that this was somewhat excused by the fact that this situation was new and different, so no one really knew what was going on, but there was so much, even within those constraints that those two could have done to help out, and which they failed to do.

They were far too passive, leaving literally everything to poor Stephanie, without making any real effort to lift a finger or even trying to go the extra mile for her. She had to squeeze everything out of them like getting blood from a stone, and this felt completely unrealistic to me.

Estella was depicted from the beginning as being, shall I say, socially challenged, so her lack of utility was not a surprise, but the 'priestess' was supposed to be an example of goodness personified, yet she was effectively no better than Estella. No one expects gods to help - they are consistently useless in fiction or out of it - so I wasn't surprised by how pathetic Isis was, but Roxanna could have been a lot more forthcoming, otherwise what exactly is it about her that defines her as 'good'?!

On this topic, you I have to ask why 'priestess'? Why not priest? We really need to work on removing this stealth genderism from our vocab! I keep hoping that female authors (not 'authoresses'!) will take the lead in this and push it in their writing, but so few of them seem willing to step up, and instead simply parrot vocabulary designed by men for men, women need not apply. Writing with a more gender-neutral approach doesn't require stridency or harsh agendas (harsh isn't what strong women do anyway, not in my experience). It can be done with subtle changes to the way we write, like using 'priest' instead of priestess, 'actor' instead of 'actress', mater instead of mattress (that last one might be a joke).

Yes, I know that 'priest' isn't exactly gender neutral, but that's not because it's an inherently masculine word, like 'male', or 'tomcat', or 'bull'. Priest is a gender-neutral word that has been artificially imbued with masculinity by dint of the fact that priests traditionally were only male, women need not apply. There's no reason it cannot be reclaimed. So there! Take that Bembridge Scholars!

I do have a problem with the ultraviolet aspect of this story. We're told that it's the ultraviolet emissions from the sun to which the vampires don't react too well (this trope has been used before in stories, notably in the Underworld series of movies), yet we're also told that moonlight can help to "bind" Branwyre. The problem with this is that Moonlight, which does contain ultraviolet emissions, doesn't contain much (which is why you can't get a tan from Moon-bathing!), so here's the problem: if there's so little coming off the Moon that vampires can wander out on Moonlit nights with no problem, then how does it bind them? If there is enough to bind them, why isn't it a problem for them on such nights?

In related news, we're also told that Stephanie is going to have a really tough time binding Branwyre one night because of the heavy storm clouds hiding the Moon, yet clouds do not stop UV light from reaching the Earth (which is why you can get sunburned on a cloudy day). This is what happens when writer devotes too much time to honoring a god and nowhere near enough time honoring science! We're talking about UV light, but the story is written as though we're talking about visible light. UV light isn't visible to the human eye! The visible light you see from a so-called 'black light' isn't the actual UV, it's just visible light that's emitted with the UV.

But enough griping. I started out liking this novel, got a bit disillusioned with it in the middle where it seemed to miss its stride a bit, and very much liked it again at the end. I think it could have done with being a bit shorter and a bit more briskly-paced, but in the end, the overall story was good and fun, and entertaining, so I have no problem in recommending this.

Pinocchio Vampire Slayer by Van Jensen

Title: Pinocchio Vampire Slayer
Author: Van Jensen
Publisher: Top Shelf Comix
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Dusty Higgins

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.

How can you not love a comic with a title like this? Well, I wondered exactly that as I read the opening sequence - recapping the original story of Pinocchio (with some additions). I wondered, is this necessary, and then I wondered, if it is, does it have to be drawn this scrappily? It looks like it's been Xeroxed twenty times, and it made the text harder to read than it needed to be. I thought, until I enlarged the page - something which I wouldn't have been able to do in a print book! - that they'd misspelled Miranda rights as 'Meranda' rights. They hadn't.

I don't appreciate the wasting of page space, either. There's no reason why these images couldn't have been made brighter and occupied more of the page than the 60% they do occupy (surrounded by funereal black). I saw that they were trying to achieve some sort of ebony wood-grain effect, but it didn't work and only served to highlight the fact that they seem to have sadly missed out on the very real fact that trees are precious. We're privileged to have them, and shouldn't be abusing them by wasting paper so. Also, on a point of order, too, Shrek was an ogre, not a troll!

That said, once the actual story started, the illustrations were dramatically better (although still too wasteful of the page) and the writing was excellent. This is yet another good reason not to read prologues! Just jump right to the main story: it incorporates the whole Pinocchio story, but in ways you might least expect it, as Pinocchio and some allies stalk (or is is stake?) across Europe seeking out vampires, and slaughtering them mercilessly as indeed all vampires, especially ones named Edward, should be slaughtered.

Pinocchio has a love interest, but she's nothing to be ashamed of! Quite the contrary, in fact, which made a very pleasant change for me. I likes me some strong female characters. The story is intelligent and engrossing, and it amused me and made me want to read more of this (but no more of those prologues, please!). I didn't get to read the complete story, but if the rest of it is anything at all like the first half (or whatever portion it was that was included in the volume I read!), then it's going to be good. I'm happy to rate this a worthy read.

Frostbite by Richelle Mead

Title: FrostBite
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

This is the second volume in what is, so far, at least a six-volume series. I can’t promise I'll read that whole series, but as of reading this one, I'm committed to one more at least. That's an odd decision, I know, given my rating, but I explain it in the final paragraph. This volume was sadder than the first, which had issues but which was not bad. Mead needs to get her head out of her ass and write the vampire series she promised, not a cheesy rip-off of Twilight, with love-sick airhead kids running around having sorry bouts of high school angst when there's a far better story screaming to be told.

I started reading this series because I'd read somewhere that some school district had banned the series: that is, they were banning these books before some of them had even been written, which is the height of stupidity, so despite my antagonism towards vampire novels, I picked up the first one on audio CD from the library, but Stephanie Wolf's reading sucked majorly, so I ditched that and bought the paperback. I ended up liking it (with reservations!), hence my progression to volume 2. I was less satisfied with this one, and this was by many accounts supposed to be be better than the first!

One thing which not so much surprised me as intrigued me about volume one was when I was reading the insane negative reviews for it. The religious crowd was reduced to telling outright lies about that volume (which I refute in my review) and about the main character's conduct - that's how sad they are. In general I liked the story, although there were some YA issues with it - of the dumb kind you find in any YA novel. This second volume promised to be no different from my reading of the first hundred pages, but it did also draw me in a bit.

In this volume, Rose hasn’t changed at all, nor does she throughout. She's still dumb, still immature, and still thinks she's god's gift to men, and like Mary Poppins, thinks she's practically perfect in every way. She's also still obsessed with her blood-mate Lissa, for whom she is working her heart out, striving to become a guardian. Early in the novel, Rose is taken for testing by a disinterested guardian who happens to be a legend in their world, but when they arrive at the house to meet with him, they discover that the entire family, including the legendary guardian, has been slaughtered, evidently by a band of strigoi working together in a manner which has no precedent.

Here was a classic example of Rose completely ignoring an express instruction from her teacher, and going unpunished for it. This will not be the last time she does this in this novel. Her instructor should have failed her on her test right there for disobeying him and entering the house against his express order, but once again she gets away with insubordination. I don’t mind a rebel character, but please let’s not indulge this! There have to be consequences otherwise it’s just a fairy tale. There never are consequences for Rose, even when her stupidity gets someone killed.

This initial event does illustrate the problem with the sad addiction of all-too-many female YA authors to telling stories in first person PoV: you thereby restrict yourself to the handicap of being unable to have anything happen unless your character is there to witness it; otherwise it’s nothing but passive voice, with your main character sitting around having to listen to boring, second-hand stories about what happened in order to keep the story alive, which is never a good thing for an action novel. This is why Mead was forced to have Rose disobey and it’s so obvious that it immediately suspends the suspension of disbelief. I want my YA writers to be far more skilled than this. Apparently Mead isn’t.

The next thing she heaps upon us is the appearance of Rose's mom, Janine, who shows up at school to tell a tale of one of her guardian adventures. It seems that Rose's mom is as full of herself as Rose is, but Rose hates her mom, which immediately telegraphs to us that Rose and she will bond, and that mom might well die in this story. Only one of those things actually happened. The same kind of thing happened with character Mason, Rose's toy boy. Her interactions with him telegraphed that she would get jiggy with him and that he might well die in this story. Only one of those things happened.

When tough-guy guardian and Rose-object-of-addiction Dimitri is too tired (from a shopping trip - I am not kidding!) to teach her in his early-morning class, Rose's mom inappropriately steps-in instead. Now this is a parent who is not a teacher at the school, teaching her own child! Worse than this, Rose's mom fails to pick up where Dimitri left off, and instead makes Rose fight her in a boxing match, and ends up punching Rose with an illegal punch, giving her a black eye. Yet there are no consequences whatsoever for Janine's misconduct! Again, there goes suspension of disbelief.

This inappropriate behavior continues as Dimitri returns to teaching, and he and Rose kiss. If he was anything of a teacher, he would recuse himself from teaching her any further, but he is not and he does not, so yet again we have inappropriate behavior with zero consequences. At this point I would normally ditch a novel like this, but beyond all this amateur fanfic-level YA absurdity, there was a story and it started out intriguing me. Sadly, it fell apart and never went anywhere. The ending was truly pathetic.

Lissa is now on meds to prevent her healing power from erupting and affecting her mental health. She's by far the most interesting character in these novels so far, but she has no more than a cameo role in this novel. Subsequent events are within the context of the earlier massacre, which is suggestive that strigoi have changed their behavior: that they're now working together and working with humans to launch attacks upon the moroi royal families, which means Lissa is at risk. Unfortunately, none of this story is followed through. Not in this volume, anyway.

I don’t get this business of the vampires celebrating Xmas! It makes no sense to me, but because of the strigoi attack, they go for a week to a lodge in the mountains for a skiing holiday! Never mind battening-down the hatches and going after the strigoi, let's go on vacation! It made no sense.

It made less sense given that only Rose and her new boyfriend Mason seemed to actually do any skiing. Rose meets Adrian Ivashkov, and starts falling in love with him. He's the bad boy leg of the triangle to Mason's good guy leg, and Rose finds herself dreaming of Ivashkov when she's not mentally masturbating over Dim-itri, the inappropriate instructor who should be fired. Dim-itri is actually supposed to be Lissa's guardian, but he's never found anywhere near Lissa. Instead, he's a full-time Rose stalker.

This dream Rose has of Ivashkov was actually implanted in her mind by Ivashkov himself, although Rose isn't smart enough to figure that out. Mead tries to distract us from this revelation by revealing another strigoi attack. This upsets Lissa, but Rose fails to wake-up in response to Lissa's distressed state! So much for the supposed deepening of their psychic bond!

Eventually Mason, Mia and Eddie leave the ski resort to go to Spokane, Washington which is supposedly nearby, to seek out and kill the strigoi. This tells me that all three of them are morons and their schooling has been wasted, but none of them is as big a moron as Rose. She figures out what they have done, but instead of warning everyone, she takes off after them with Christian, Lissa's boyfriend and they, along with the other three, are captured and held prisoner. Never once does Christian think of using his fire magic against the strigoi and it takes Rose three days (while these guys are all very conveniently kept alive for no reason at all by the ruthless strigoi) to figure it out herself! Yep, it's that bad.

So why am I rating this warty and then thinking of trying volume 3? Well there were sufficient hints in this volume to make me think, rightly or (and more probably) wrongly, that things might turn around in volume 3 and this series could assume the promise if offered in volume 1, so I'm giving it a go and if it's as bad as, or worse than this one, I'm ditching the series. Life is too short, and at fifty percent through it, I think I will have given this more than a fair chance by then.

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Title: Vampire Academy
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WORTHY!

Here's an interesting observation: Magic or Madness (reviewed here) was published in 2005 by Justine Larbalestier. Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead, was published two years later and both authors curiously publish with Razor Bill. It would seem that Mead ripped-off Larbalestier's idea that magic can cause madness, but fortunately, ideas cannot be copyrighted, only a specific written expression of an idea, so it would seem that Mead is safe!

I had no interest in this until I learned that some school (or schools) had taken the unprecedented and rather bizarre step of banning this entire series: not this novel per se, but the entire series, including unwritten future volumes! I thought this was so absurd as to be a joke, but then this is what organized religion does to people - it forces them to behave like morons. As for me, I was curious as to what it was that was in this series which had provoked such an extremist reaction - maybe I could get some tips from it?!

The fact is that there's nothing in it to provoke the fundamentalists. Clearly the ones who are decrying and banning this have never actually read it. Yes, it's definitely for the older half of the young-adult age range, but other than that, there is no reason it shouldn't be in a school library.

Once I decided that I would (short of a major disaster) be reviewing this novel favorably, I went out to read some negative reviews to see if I had missed anything, and I realized from reading them that I had not. I also realized that not only were some reviewers rather rabid about this novel in their negativism, some were outright lying about it. No, there is not an 'f' word in every other paragraph. In fact, there is only two instances of 'fuck' in the entire book (p31, p115), and the word 'hell' is used 21 times. Go to Google books, where you can search for yourself to find out what a liar that particular reviewer was. Organized religion actively forces people to lie; I've personally encountered that many times.

Other reviewers showed their Christian charity by slut-shaming one of the main characters, not only referring to her as a 'slut' but also as a "hoe" [sic]. Rest assured, Rose never once behaved like a gardening tool. I can guarantee you that if the main character had been portrayed in exactly the same way, but had been a guy, he would never have been referred to as a 'slut' - and this is women doing the insulting, not men. Of the two main characters, Rose is a virgin throughout this book and Lissa doesn't have sex until she meets a guy whom she loves. Not that there's anything wrong with responsible and mature teens having safe sex, but this is yet another outright lie in pursuit of a religious agenda. I guess they missed that bit in the Bible about bearing false witness, huh?!

Just in passing, I started listening to this on audio, but the reader, Stephanie Wolf (ha! A wolf reading a vampire story! Too much!) was so bad that I couldn't stand to listen any more; however, I did like the story, so I bought a paperback copy.

This novel reads like it's volume two (or later) of a series when it's actually volume one. By that I mean that it starts in the middle of the story and Mead explains next-to-nothing of what went before except in rather annoyingly sparse and brief references which really relate very little that's of utility. I freely admit that that aspect was annoying!

As I mentioned, the two main characters are Rose and Lissa, although it's Rose who tells the story and hogs the attention. Rose is a dhampir - the offspring of a vampire and a human, but there are two species of vampire - the moroi, who are vampires, but not undead, and who are the good guys (supposedly), and the strigoi, who are traditional "undead" vampires.

Mead doesn't do a very good job of explaining this - again handing-out belated and sparsely distributed information. The dhampirs guard the moroi from the strigoi, and as such, Rose is Lissa's guard - but she's still in training, so she's not official, and she's not as powerful as she might become. So here was a weakness, in that the presentation of this novel was that of an amateur without benefit of a good book editor. Once again this goes to show that Big Publishing™ does not deliver what it claims to promise.

Two years before this novel begins, Rose and Lissa went over the wall from their academy and lived on the run. How they managed this and financed it isn't detailed, nor is why they went on the lam in the first place. They're captured by other guardians, and returned to the academy almost immediately after the story begins. Rose is very nearly expelled, but in the end she gets 'house arrest'. That is, she gets to go to classes and to church, but must remain in her room the rest of the time.

Rose is an atheist, so she has no need to go to church, but she uses this time to hang out with Lissa, to whom she is unnaturally, if not supernaturally devoted. Some people who reviewed this badly also objected to the lack of respect for religion, but guess what: atheists are under no obligation to respect religious delusion!

Both of these girls quickly get back into academic life, with Rose spending extra time training physically to be a guardian. She kicks her dedication up to a higher level when Lissa finds a fox on her bed with its throat slit - something which was apparently done right before she got back to her room. Who did it is unknown at that time.

The psychic bond they share evidently works only one way. Rose can 'tap into' Lissa's emotions, but not the other way around, and Lissa does not transmit messages or speech, only emotion. This bond is not unheard of in vampire lore, but it's viewed pretty much as a legend. The way it works is that Rose picks up on Lissa's emotions, but it seems to be only when they're heightened because she's very upset or scared for example; however, this changes as time passes at the academy.

In time, Rose discovers that she can 'share' Lissa's consciousness: she feels like she's in Lissa's body, seeing and hearing what Lissa experiences as well as feeling what she feels. This power seems to increase when Lissa begins hanging with the campus bad boy, Christian, whose family is disgraced and who therefore is largely ignored, but who has the power to make someone think he (the person, not Christian) is on fire, as we see at one point. Rose eventually discovers that she can force these 'mind melds' to happen, and thereby spy on Lissa. Stalk much?!

Mead isn't exactly the best writer in the world. Most of what she writes is fine, but there were occasions when oddly composed text jumped out at me, such as on p83, where I read: "...I didn't want Lissa to have to deal with any more stress than she had to"?!!! She could have ditched the 'to have' after 'Lissa' and made it flow better. This was optional of course, but on p91 paragraph 2 (at the start of chapter 7) she refers to Lissa without referring to Lissa, using just 'her' out of the blue. That felt a bit amateur if not confusing.

Here are some other such problems:
"He burst in the door" p119 - not good English.
p142 'describrd'! Poor copy editing.
p208 "they cold do..."
p213 start of chapter 16, "The next day. It fully hit me" - what's with the period?!
There's also a problem in continuity between page 211 and 218. On 211, the narrator says it was only two days after the incident with Mrs Karp that she and Lissa fled the academy, but on 218, she says it was a month later.

Lissa's full title and name is Princess Vasilisa Dragomir, and she's the last survivor of the Dragomir clan, and one of the five ruling families. Rosemarie Hathaway is her guardian wannabe. Lissa is moroi and these vampires have magical power over one of the four tired trope elements: air, earth, fire, and water, but we learn that there's a fifth, and Lissa has it.

So the high school jinks continue, and the vampire stuff really takes a back seat, although since the two are tied together, it can't disappear entirely. Another dead animal is found - this time accompanied by a threatening note, yet no one seems smart enough to put a guard, or at least a watch, on Lissa's door. Actually I started suspecting Natalie - Lissa's cousin - or Mason, Rose's bestie! Both of them are simply too sweet to be as they appear.

The biggest problem with Rose is not that she's a slut or a bitch - she really isn't either (although Lissa does call her the latter), she's merely unafraid and assertive (the fact that she detests a classmate who is a bitch doesn't make her a bitch either) and flirtatious; no, her biggest problem is that she seems to have the mentality of a thirteen year old, and she's just as "mature" in her precipitousness - in acting without thinking through to the consequences. Fortunately, the much more mature Lissa steps up and tells Rose she's going to be proactive from now on instead of being so retiring, and she becomes as scary as Rose is reckless.

Rose really isn't a good friend to Lissa. She's loyal and very protective, but she's also weirdly jealous of Lissa's relationships with others - with those who feed her, and with Christian, the designated bad boy. Rose outright lies to him about Lissa, claiming that her friend really despises Christian, but that she's too good-natured to tell him. She effectively orders him to leave Lissa alone. Christian believes Rose rather than Lissa, which makes him stupid in my book. Rose does apologize to Christian later, for lying, but that's only because she needs for him to do her a favor

Because of Rose's personal in-fighting with Mia, the actual school bitch, stories start spreading about Rose's disgusting (in this vamp world) habit of letting Lissa feed from her. It's okay for them to feed from designated human food supply, but for a guardian to allow this is considered a perversion - dirty! Somehow Mia has coerced Jesse and Ralf to lie that Rose allowed them to feed from her during sex. As I mentioned, and contrary to the lies spread by some negative reviewers who evidently have no problem with the Christian injunction not to bear false witness, Rose is not a slut; she's a virgin.

Rose's relationship with her guardian tutor, Dmitri, oversteps a few bounds. It's obvious that they're both attracted to each other. He's 24, and she's seventeen, which some people have depicted as obscene, but this is not a normal high school, so we don't know what the rules are since Mead has never actually iterated them. Both ages are conveniently within the young adult age range (14 - 24), and in Montana, the age of consent is 16, so there's nothing wrong there from a legal PoV. What is wrong is the relationship they have: he's her teacher and therefore an authority figure in her life, so from that perspective alone, this relationship would be unethical were it to go anywhere romantically or lustfully.

Now it's time to address other negative review issues.
There isn't enough action.
I agree with this complaint - representing Rose as Lissa's bodyguard tended to offer us more than it delivered, but it was quickly explained that Rose was not actually her official bodyguard, merely a wannabe who is in training to become a bodyguard. Even so, there were several incidents where Rose's unique bond with Lissa came through and saved her from problems, and potential problems

One problem that was mentioned by more than one reviewer was to the effect that the novel is poorly written. I agree that bits of it are poorly written. A spell-checker would have helped, but in general this novel is as well-written (or as badly-written, dependent upon your perspective) as any other YA novel. YA novels in general tend to be badly written, especially the dystopian variety (not that this is in that category), and of those even more especially those written with a female main protagonist, and this is not improved upon if the author is also female. I expect better, but I rarely find it. It's sad that so many YA authors, especially female authors, have so little respect for their readers that they feel no need to work harder at their craft.

One reviewer complained that the 17 year old main character had her shirt off making out with a boy and her best friend had gone all the way. So?! The age of consent in Montana is 16. Get a life! Rose has been slut-shamed abominably by negative reviewers, but the fact is that she's a virgin at the start of the novel, and she remains so through to the end. Not that virginity is any kind of noble badge, or a particularly special quality or anything, but to outright lie about this is as pathetic as it is laughable.

Yes, Rose has flaws. No, she isn't the best character in fiction nor is she the best friend in the world, but all these traits do is make her more realistic. She's young, confused, stressed, and devoted to Lissa, her best friend since childhood. Oh, and by the way, this is fiction! Even so, there are people like this in real life. Reviewers who have problems reading about real life issues need to quit reading YA fiction, and revert to having their mommy and daddy read them the Disney princess picture books, period. Oh god, I said, "period", Now they'll be offended by that!

Some reviewers have tried to intimate that there's a lesbian relationship here, or that Rose is in the closet, but none of this is true. Whether one might develop in future volumes remains (for me, just starting this series) to be seen, but the explanation for the intensity of this relationship is made quite clear by Mead.

Some have said that Rose isn't only a slut, she's also a hypocrite by being self righteous about the sexual behavior of others. Indeed, I saw one review which shamed Rose for being a slut and then running away and crying when she was accused of the same thing, but this is dishonest. Rose did not get upset because people called her a slut. She didn't care about that. She did care that people were getting too close to the truth of what happened: that when she and Lissa were on the run, Rose, her best friend, was the one from whom Lissa fed. That was why she was so upset, because doing this was considered the lowest and dirtiest, and most shameful thing a dhampir could do amongst her community. It was not the sex, which no one cared about that much, but the feeding.

Clearly some readers were not paying anywhere near enough attention, but the real hypocrisy here is for a reviewer who claims to love 'bookie nookie' to turn around and portray Rose as a "hoe macking on every guy she crosses paths with" which is patently not true. Does this reviewer even know what 'nookie' really means?! And no, this novel isn't written for pre-teens, but aimed at older young-adult age range (16 - 24), so to blurt-out righteously that you wouldn't let a 12-year-old read it is a shameful red herring.

Here's another complaint: Rose makes out with every guy who shows her any attention? Outright lie! She makes out with one guy by choice and quickly realizes he's bad news, and she has nothing to do with him after that. As opposed to another character who sleeps with two guys purely to get them to spread lies about Rose - yet no one even mentions her behavior, not in any negative review that I read. And by making out, I mean that Rose gets her top off (not her bra) - and that's it. Nothing actually really happens beyond some kissing. The only other time she 'makes out' is when she's been deliberately put under a powerful spell for the express purpose of disabling her ability to help Lissa. She cannot control her behavior, but even so, she and her partner overcome the spell and quickly refocus on what they were supposed to be doing!

One complaint is that Lissa cuts herself when stressed! So? Mead isn't prescribing or advocating this as a viable or worthwhile activity. It's dealt with as a problem which needs attention, and it's Rose, through her bond with Lissa, who frequently detects Lissa's problems and sees threats to her, and who acts decisively to stop them. Why would it be a negative thing to depict a psychological problem in a character and depict that problem being appropriately resolved? Should YA writers not write about real world problems? LoL! Get a life, for goodness sakes!

Other complaints One was that the only character that's developed is the main one, but this is a common to nearly all YA novels. Maybe it's a problem, maybe it isn't, but it isn't unique to this novel. Some argued that Lissa had a darker side which is hinted at but never shown, but that's not true. It was shown: she was compelling all kinds of people to do her bidding. This was considered evil (if not downright impossible!) and it was frowned upon in her community.

Can you believe some people complained that the main character is defiant and troubled, and that she relates to no one but her friend? So? Even if this were true it's not a fault of the novel. There are many people like this - should YA writers not write about them? This is actually a common trait of YA novels for better or for worse: main characters in YA novels are often like this. It's not a fault of this novel per se, it's a YA trope, for better or for worse. Should women not be depicted as strong and reckless and forceful and confident and self-motivated? What an appalling thing to intimate!

One of my favorite complaints is that this is just a lame story about a really disturbed, sexually deviated young girl. Sexually deviated? Rose is a virgin. Lissa had sex with one person. Both are over the age of consent. What is sexually deviated about it? Nothing! The deviants are the ones who are slut-shaming (or more technically, non-slut-shaming since Rose isn't even a "slut") and trying to turn this into something that it isn't. In order to achieve their repressed religious agenda, they're forced bear false witness about the story, and this is truly sad.

I agree that the novel to-often goes off the rails and focuses too much on high-school drama instead of staying on the threat to Lissa. This seemed odd to me, but then a lot of the high-school drama was directly related to vampire politics, so it's not like it was so far off the rails that it was irrelevant.

The real issue in this department for me was: how there can be royal families and princesses and queens when none of these families seems ever to have been part of a monarchy! I don't get this with vampire stories (not just this one): this hierarchy of princes and queens and so on. It makes no sense at all to me. What would it even mean to say that a vampire is a princess? What gives them their rank and authority? Why would any other vampire respect it? This is such a strongly established trope, yet none of this is ever explored in these stories to my knowledge. That's the problem here.

Mead seems to be all over the place with her mythology, too. She does create a unique and interesting world, but while the overall setting has a strong Russian flavor, despite it being set in Montana, dhampir (what Rose is: a vampire-human hybrid) is a Balkan term according to wikipedia, not Russian per se. Both moroi and strigoi are Romanian terms. How Mead came to tie these up with Russia is a bit of a mystery.

Having said all of that, I still rate this novel as a worthy read, because it had an interesting story to tell and something new to offer. Whether the rest of the series is worthy remains (for me) to be seen, but I am definitely committed to reading the second volume in this series at least, and I'm not even a series kind of person!

The Cowboy and the Vampire by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall

Title: The Cowboy and the Vampire
Author: Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall
Publisher: Pumpjack Press
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 novel didn’t work for me at all. There were multiple issues with it, which I go into below, and I could only finish it by skimming the last hundred pages or so. This isn’t a YA novel but it's still told in an annoying first person PoV, and what's worse, it's more than one person's PoV, plus there is some third person dumped in there, too, from at least two different perspectives. In short, it’s a mess.

Why authors seem to think that it’s no longer legal to write in the third person is a mystery to me. Worse, why they hobble and hog-tie their own writing by obsessively-compulsively clinging to first person when it doesn’t work, and then find themselves having to perform painful contortions to get to a third person PoV show-horned (or boot-strapped in this case) in, is a source of boundless wonder and merriment to me. In this example, it rendered what could potentially have been an engrossing read into a chore because it kept on unceremoniously dumping me out of any hope of suspension of disbelief.

Rightly or wrongly, I have the impression that Hays wrote the 'Tucker' chapters and McFall wrote the 'Lizzie' chapters. I have no idea if this is true, and I can see how a pair of collaborating authors might think it's cute to write chapters for their own gender character. It’s been done before, but in the end, it’s what you're doing (or failing to do) to and for your readers that really counts, not how clever you think you're being, and this just seemed strained to me to the point where it materially interfered with the credibility and readability of the story.

As I just indicated, the main characters are a 'cowboy' named Tucker, and a journalist called Lizzie, and neither is at all appealing, but to present the cowboy the way he's presented and then try to make me believe the fiction that he could write or narrate his part of the story is stretching credibility too far for me. He doesn't present to me as though he has the motivation to write this, let alone the ability or the smarts, and the 'humor' falls sadly flat. One example of this is that after Tucker has come to the round-about conclusion that he loves Lizzie, he later considers the relationship of his friend Lenny to his wife, and dismissively ascribes her putting-up with Lenny to love, like he doesn’t understand it at all. This cheapens his earlier assessment of his own feelings for Lizzie!

The problem with ebooks is that you can't stroll through the bookstore or the library and peruse, reading a bit from books that catch your eye, so that you can get an idea of the appeal of the voice or the person, and the of opening chapter. With ebooks, you're buying blind and you're stuck with your choice for better or for worse. It’s like an arranged marriage. That's how we end up being glamored by novels that seemed like they were worth taking a chance on, but in the end are not.

This one sounded amusing and appealing from the title, but even the title is rather misleading. I'd thought that this was going to be a bit like Cowboys vs. Aliens, whereas this guy really isn’t a cowboy - not if you think of cowboys as a primarily a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Yes, he's technically a cowboy, and he rides a horse and he actually tends cows, but he's not even very diligent or competent in his work, so he's not much of a cowboy, and he's certainly not the one I thought I was getting. You can blame that on my deluded expectations, but Tucker is a modern 'cowboy' not a traditional one, who drives a truck and lives in a trailer, and he's not even a likable character. He has no motivation until one is forced upon him. He's a borderline (if not all the way over) alcoholic, and he has nothing to recommend him.

The female main character is equally unappealing. We're repeatedly told that she's a nicotine addict, yet we’re expected to believe that her breath smells sweet at one point? No, it doesn’t. They supposedly fall in love, but they've spent nowhere near enough time together to be in love, especially not given the lassitude they both exhibit and the serious doubts they express, so this "love" felt juvenile, and it fell completely flat for me, because it was lust, not love, and that's all it was. I could see how Tucker would go after her when she's abducted by vampires, and while that does speak to his decency and integrity, it has nothing to do with chemistry, or with love. If he had really cared about her, he would have called the cops.

So the basic plot at the beginning is that "Lizzie" is writing an article about vampires, and ends up running into a real one who, in a ritual initiation to which Lizzie's been invited, slits the throats of 20 volunteers; then he dribbles blood from his cut fingers into their throats and fondles their genitals, whereupon they’re supposed to be reborn. What's really born of this event is multiple issues. The first is the trope that vampires are a different species. The problem with this is that if they're converted from humans, as we've been shown here, then they're the same species - until and unless the writer shows us that there's been sufficient genetic change that they can no longer interbreed with humans. Here's where a little scientific knowledge will help even if your story isn’t scientific by its very nature, so this just struck me as confused at best, and it only goes downhill from here.

Trope doesn’t end there, either. Lizzie is evidently a vampire queen, but this vampiric monarchy has never made any sense to me. Queen of what, exactly? And if she is, how come she doesn’t even have an inkling? How are vampires "carrying royal blood"? What does that even mean? No attempt is made to explain any of this. If they're a different species (as we're told), then how can she - an "Adamite woman", be their queen? How could she have been born to a human - a species even less related to humans, so we're supposed to understand, than humans are to cyano-bacteria? Why did the vampires take so long to recognize and/or recruit her? Humans are referred to as "Adamites" by the vampires in this story. I've seen this done before: the intimation is that vampires have long been different, and have roots going back beyond the first humans, but since there never was an Adam, this "Adamite" claim is pure nonsense - unless of course you're laboring under the debilitating delusion that Earth is only 6,000 years old.

There's also this arrogant superiority thing going on: the trope that vampires are superior in every way, and humans merely their prey - yet they fall in love with their food? They need their food to rule over them? It's like having a cow be the queen of the cougars. And you know that whilst cougars can be admired as superior in many ways, you can’t go to the supermarket and get cougar milk, let’s face it. For that you need cows. So this superiority thing is risible.

It would have been truly nice to have had something different, something which makes sense within its own framework, but this novel wasn't it. My question as I learned all of this in the first dozen chapters or so was: why would I want to read a story that's been told so many times before? Just sticking a modern cowboy into the mix and stirring in some creationist mumbo-jumbo does nothing to perk up a tired story. Why would I want to go the road most traveled, when there are other, much more interesting and potentially rewarding roads to follow?

Lizzie does go to the police about the slaughter than she initially witnesses, which is good. The police don’t believe her because there's no evidence (I guess 20 people disappearing at once doesn't count for much in NYC). So far so good, but the problem here is that this initial rebuff is then used as a passé partout to avoid ever calling the cops again, even when Lizzie is forcibly abducted from Wyoming, where she fled after the mass slitting o' the throats. This made zero sense. I don’t have a problem in fiction with people finding themselves forced to act sans law-enforcement, but please give us a good reason why we can’t call in the law, otherwise it’s just bad writing. Tucker could have reported Lizzie's abduction without having to say it was perpetrated by vampires!

I thought it odd that the authors claim the Casull .454 handgun makes the Magnum .44 look like a pop-gun. That struck me as amateur. I'm by no means a handgun expert, but the Casull round is just 0.6 of a millimeter greater in diameter than the magnum round, and even though the muzzle velocity is higher in the Casull, it’s not going to make that much difference to the end result, especially since we don't know exactly what kind of bullet is being fired from either one. To pretend that there's such a huge difference struck me, if I can make a pun here, as a cheap-shot aimed at the heart of ignorant readers which, when you think about it, is insulting to readers, just as referring to a flight attendant as a "stewardess" is insulting to flight attendants. It’s certainly not going to vaporize anything. It’ll leave a noticeable hole at the entry point and take gobs of flesh out at the exit point, but you need a shotgun if you want to pretend you're vaporising stuff.

But you can argue guns all you want; what you can't argue is human physiology! At one point, when trying to fight off the vampire abductors, Tucker gets punched "in the stomach" so hard that he feels ribs crack, and that's all he's worried about from then onwards. The fact is that he was hit in the stomach, not the ribs. If you were hit in the stomach so hard that your ribs crack, then you have far more to worry about than a cracked rib or two: things such as ruptured organs and internal bleeding, yet after this, Tucker is essentially fine. Again, there's no credibility here, but that's not even the worst part. Why would a vampire who has been ordered to kill Tucker, hit him rather than simply bite him? It makes no sense. Yes, we have to have Tucker free to rescue the imperiled maiden from the dragon vampire (gag), but please let’s make his escape credible.

The writing is sometimes wooden and made me go "Duhh!". One classic example was in chapter 15 narrated by Lizzie, where she's waking up after her abduction, and she says that her body felt heavy, "..as if the earth was pulling me towards its center." Well duhh! That's exactly what gravity does! That struck me as unintentionally hilarious. Either that or Lizzie is as dumb as Tucker. The vampires are great chefs though. Lizzie orders a really specific and elaborate meal and it’s served within about five minutes of her ordering it! Credible? Not really. There was another duhh moment when I read: "enshrouded by shadows and barely illuminated" - that struck me as a tautology if not an impossibility. At the very least it could have been worded better.

Things go from bad to worse when Julius, the head vamp, tries to give Lizzie some back-story, much in the manner of a Bond villain monologue-ing before failing to dispatch Bond. Indeed, chapter eighteen is one long chapter of drivel and nonsense. Julius tries to claim that god - that is Yahweh, the god of the three major monotheistic religions - created good and evil, which is nonsensical. Yes, the Bible does actually say that god created evil (Isaiah 45:7), but if you take a step back and ask what it means to make such a claim, you can see that the whole 'god is good' thing collapses under its own weight.

To say that god is good is to also say that he isn’t the definition of good - it's to say that there is some definition of good and evil that exists above and beyond god, otherwise how can he be defined as good? If this is the case, then this god cannot have created good and evil - some power higher than this god did it. If this god did, in fact, create good and evil, then it's patent nonsense to claim that that this god is good, because there;s clearly no differentiation between good and evil for this god. So what we’re given here is this latter sense, where god isn't good, and this god creates good (humanity), and evil (vampires), which in itself makes no sense since humans can be evil, too! To make a long drivel short, I quit reading this chapter, and pretty much skipped both 18 and a subsequent chapter that rambled on in the same manner.

In short, we're told that humans were created to rule the day, and we're expected to believe that vampires are reptilian, and that they were created to rule the night and the shadows? Nonsense! Reptiles love the heat from the sun! They thrive in it, but we’re expected to swallow that vampires were created from serpents? More importantly, this begs the question: how can Julius be Lizzie's father in any meaningful sense since we are explicitly told that humans and vampires are genetically incompatible?

So yes, far too much of this novel makes no sense. For example, the wannabe queen vampire, Elita (cool name, I'll grant you, and for me by far the most interesting character) smokes! Having the vampires smoke makes absolutely no sense. These are supposedly undead creatures. They do not breathe. Their lungs do not function, so whence the impetus to draw tobacco smoke inside their non-existent (or at least non-functional) lungs? In other news, the vampires, including Elita, are cold-blooded. We're told this repeatedly in one way or another, until Elita tries to seduce Tucker, and then suddenly her body is burning with heat? Again, this makes no sense. It's like traits vanish and arise on a whim, pulled out of the author's aspirations at will. There is no vampire lore here. Instead it appears that what we get is a jumbled and random assortment of whatever went through the author's mind at the time they wrote a particular paragraph.

The story really went downhill when Tucker finally arrived in New York City. Not only do we get the other side of the sadly tortured clichés ("city slicker" vs. "country bumpkin"), we have him visit the vampire HQ, and sit down for a cozy little chat with Julius, shaking hands and accepting a glass of whisky from him. Seriously? Whence Tucker's anger? Whence the mayhem this "cowboy" was threatening to unleash? It’s far too civilized and nonsensical. He accepts the vampire's offer of hospitality and takes a room, accepting a meal from them and nodding off to sleep. SERIOUSLY? That was it for me, from that point onwards.

Tucker's trip was wasted because Lizzie isn't even there. Not that she was 'there' when she was there: she had Julius at her mercy and failed to dispatch him. Tucker also fails in this regard. He has the chance to kill both Julius and Elita and he fails to even think about it, let alone take it. Instead, he was willing to let Elita seduce him until his dog intervened! Both of these characters are truly pathetic.

Okay, last spoiler. The central premise operating here is that Julius needs to drink Lizzie's menstrual blood in order to become the greatest vampire ever. Gag. There's no explanation given for why this is necessary. Neither is it explained why this opportunity only comes along every 700 years (or if it is given, I missed it somewhere along the way - maybe when I skimmed and skipped). This begs two questions. The first is: why wasn't Lizzie sought out as soon as she hit puberty? There is neither explanation given, nor reason apparent for why Julius waited another dozen or more years. The second is more critical: if the vampires are reptilian, they aren't mammals, so how on Earth do they ever menstruate? Why does Elita have such perky breasts?! Reptiles do not have breasts! I don't ask why they don’t lay eggs because this novel laid one for them!

So in short, this novel is so messed up that I can’t even remotely recommend it. It makes no sense at all, and is full of holes, and neither of the two main characters is worth reading about.

The Quick by Lauren Owen

Title: The Quick
Author: Lauren Owen
Publisher: Random House
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.

When I first began reading this, I thought that I would not be able to complete the novel. For the first couple of pages it seemed too dense - the text too tightly packed both visually and intelligibly, but after that, I got into it and changed my mind about it completely. Instead of feeling discomfort, I felt charmed by it. The author really seems to have captured the feel of the era, although I confess some surprise at seeing 'surprize' spelled with a 'z', and crêpe spelled with an 'a', as 'crape'. I've never seen crêpe spelled that way before, although it is perfectly permissible; however with regard to the misspelled 'surprise', there is no excuse. It appears about a dozen times, but everywhere else, it’s spelled correctly. I have no idea what the deal is with that!

This novel is set in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Most of the action takes place in 1892 (as judged by the performance of Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan). We're briefly introduced to the childhood years of Charlotte and James Norbury, children raised in the declining sprawl of Aiskew Hall in Yorkshire, from whence my own parents hailed. These two children are largely unsupervised, but they fail to grow as wild as they might have done. On the contrary, both of them tend towards reserve as they mature.

As a young child, James suffers the discomfort of being confined in a faux priest hole at the very moment his father dies. The two children loved to undergo what they termed 'ordeals'. These were just simple, silly, childhood dares and adventures, one of which was to be confined in the tiny and dark hole, from which there was no escape from the inside. They were not even supposed to be playing in the library, much less locking each other away. When James went in the hole, Charlotte was supposed to count to one hundred and then let him out, but she was forced, because of her father's illness, from attending on him and it was some time before she was free to return and release her younger brother. Given that these childhood incidents appear to play no part in the rest of the story, I'm confused as to why they were included.

James was more angry than traumatized by this incarceration, and for some reason withdrew into writing at that point. Later he attended Oxford and moved to London to pursue writing poetry, while his sister remained at Aiskew, now confined to living in the lodge rather than in the increasingly decrepit hall itself. James, who initially lived alone and led a very retiring life, finds himself forced to seek new lodgings and begins rooming with a distant acquaintance from Oxford, the charming and enigmatic Christopher Paige.

The two of them are not alike; whereas James is reserved, slightly shy, and contemplative, Christopher is lively, outgoing, and also a borderline alcoholic, so it would seem that their paring was ill-fated, yet they manage to get along reasonably well, and within the space of a year, they're getting along rather more famously than is considered proper or even legal for the period. The way the author handles these early scenes is remarkable and appreciated.

I ran into problems thrice in continuing to read this: the first of these was when the excellent narrative of James's activities was rudely interrupted by the diary of Augustus Mould. When I first typed that just now, it came out as 'Augustic mould', which pretty much describes how it felt to read. Owen tried to create a "realistic" diary which contained mistakes and crossings out, but the effect - in a galley copy described as an 'uncorrected proof' - was to make me think that the author had screwed up. It took me some little while to figure out that this was intentional. However, even had I not fell into this misunderstanding, I still would have found this diary to be uninteresting, populated as it was with the mundane and the trivial. From that point on I skipped everything associated with his name, and by doing so, I didn't miss anything, it seems.

The second problem was of a similar nature, where once again we departed the main story (which to me is that of James and Charlotte) and side-tracked into some minor character running into problems one deserted night. I found both of these departures to be unappealing, and they slowed down the story and larded it up with unnecessary distraction.

The third issue was when Charlotte hooks up with two people: Adeline, a French girl living in London, and Shadwell, the father of Adeline's fiancé. Here Owen yet again drops into a side-story - of how Adeline got into the Vampire business. This slowed the story down unnecessarily. As it happens, this particular detour was interesting, so it wasn't as bad as the other two, but I would still have liked the novel better without this string of interruptions.

The biggest problem overall was that there were too many parts with little or no interest or relevance to the main story, and the ending was dragged out way beyond what was required. Having said that, there was, as I indicated to begin with, much to like about this novel and the way it was written. Owen is talented and brave; she has, for example, no problem killing off heroes which is commendable because it's daring and unexpected. I do resent that she killed off one of my favorites!

In reading this I wavered between not feeling it was worthy of a recommendation, and feeling that it was, so I'm going to err on the side of generosity and rate this as a worthy read in the hope that with some encouragement, Lauren Owen will turn out increasingly engrossing novels as time goes by. Her talent is too good to be stifled, but she does need some editing! So in short, I rate this a worthy read bearing in mind the caveats as I've mentioned.