Dawn's Promise by AW Exley

Rating: WORTHY!

This novel is about Dawn Uxbridge who, it turns out, is an elemental and a protector of the environment. Yes, Dawn cleans up! Who knew?! She doesn't know this of course, having been raised in isolation because of her poor health. When her parents die in, she's told, an accident, she's required for the first time in her life to fend for herself. Her only skill is with plants in the small garden she tended at home, but now that she's losing the home because of her father's debts, she has to find employment elsewhere. In a desperate last bid, she applies for the post of gardener at the estate of Lord Jasper Seton. She gets the job. As the story grows like a well-tended garden, Dawn and Jasper slowly grow closer, and in a twist, Dawn also grows closer to the woman who's vile history is at the heart of the estate's problems.

The estate is in bad shape and seems to have a growth of poisonous vine enveloping much of it, but Dawn sets herself to revitalizing the garden as she learns much more about her nature and also the nature of Jasper. Yes, he's the inevitable muscular love interest, but in this case, despite his broad chest and strong arms, it wasn't actually so bad. This novel surprised me because I have tried twice and failed to find any redeeming values in Exley's writing. I normally would not have picked up a third work of hers, but the book description intrigued me, and this novel was actually very different from her other work that I've read, and much better-written, so maybe the third time really is a charm. The book drew me in from the start and occupied my attention, providing entertainment and fascination to the end. It was not without problems, though!

There were some issues with the writing. For an employer who has Dawn as his employee, Jasper takes far too many liberties with her, especially given the period the novel is set in, which is the late nineteenth century. Their behavior is at times scandalous for the era, but that's offset somewhat by the nature of their relationship, and who they are as elementals. One thing which jumped out at me though, was that shortly after Jasper has inappropriately kissed Dawn the following exchange takes place. He says, "It would appear we have much to discuss. Over dinner if you will join me. I will have the maids draw you a bath, and if I may be so bold, I will lay out a dress for you to wear." If I may be so bold?!! Really? That felt a bit much after he'd already kissed her without even asking.

A little later, Dawn was served what was described initially as 'broth' but was shortly after revealed to have meat and veg in it and was described as 'soup'. It was unnecessarily confusing. Broth typically means the liquid remnant after having boiled something solid, whereas soup is the whole thing. There was the usual YA-style ignorance over anatomy as this author used the term 'bicep' to describe the biceps brachii on the upper arm: "Her exploring hand continued up over a bicep" and later, "She revelled in the shape of muscles under skin and ran her nails along a bicep." Technically there is a 'bicep', but it's not the bulge in the arm that this author means. It's one of two attachments of that muscle to the bone on the shoulder end of the biceps. I doubt that's what Dawn was fondling. Later I read, "His teethed nipped her skin." This is definitely a case where two 'ed's are not better than one. Note the word 'reveled' above is the English spelling, and so is correct.

Those were relatively minor issues. The big problem is - and here's a spoiler - that at one point Jasper is raped by the villainess, and this isn't the first time. She does it on this specific occasion for Dawn to witness it and thereby try to break them up, and it almost works because for some reason, Dawn goes off on Jasper, victim blaming! Why she does this I do not know because she saw the whole thing and it makes zero sense that she would mistake his being deliberately snared and rendered helpless, and taken advantage of, for his participating willingly. This could have been much better written - like having Dawn encounter these two at the end of the rape when, if written properly, Dawn might have mistaken it for the conclusion of a consensual liaison.

When Dawn and Jasper finally consummate their relationship, Dawn behaves so unrealistically that it spoils the whole thing. Anyone who knows me or has read any of my work knows that I'm far from being any sort of a fan of shy, retiring females, but for me, for this particular character in these circumstances, this was written badly. She's nowhere near the reserved type she's been consistently portrayed as, and it reads like a betrayal of the character and cheapens her. Exley should perhaps avoid writing sex scenes and overly long romantic interludes, but aside from that, I enjoyed the story overall, and I'm not willing to condemn it for some mistakes like this. Maybe other readers will not find them as bad as I did, but overall, I thought the story was good, and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Silence Between Us by Alison Gervais

Rating: WARTY!

NPR declared this book to be "eminently un-put-down-able," but that's garbage. I hate to write negatively of such a well-intentioned idea, but I read only four chapters of this before I put it down as eminently unreadable.

The first problem for me is that it's first person, which is a voice I detest. It's rarely a good way to tell a story, and for me it did not bring any immediacy or intimacy with the main character, Maya. Instead it made it even more clear what a bratty and belligerent person this 17-year-old was. It didn't bring me closer to her. Instead it drove me away from her. Had it been written in third person, it would have been less 'me-me-me' and might have made me more empathic toward her.

On the topic of voice, this is being pushed as an 'own voices' novel, although that's slightly misleading. The main character, Maya, is deaf, whereas the author is hard of hearing so it's not in the strictest sense an own voice although there are commonalities, of course. It seems like the author understands this and tries too hard to make the case for the deaf voice, as it were, and in doing so, she tends to caricature the character rather than make her a sympathetic one.

While I'm fully onboard with the own voices movement in the sense that everyone should have a voice, it bothers me that the implication of 'own voices' tends to be that no one but person 'X' can tell a story about community 'Y'. I think that's nonsense because it claims that this community, whatever it is: ethnic, nationality, disability-related, profession-related, LGBTQIA, religious, or whatever, is completely divorced from society and no one knows the least bit about it or has any interaction with it, or anything useful to say about it, which is bullshit.

Taken to its "logical" conclusion that means no one but a detective can write a crime novel, no one but a nurse or a doctor can write a medical novel, no one but a gay guy can have anything to say about a gay relationship, no one but a Chinese person can ever write a story with anything about China in it, and so on. I don't buy that. It's fiction! You can write it in any way you want. You can portray things any way you like. That doesn't mean you can't learn more from an own voices novel than you can from an outsider novel, but it also doesn't mean that no-one has anything to say about it, but the insiders. We need all perspectives. All Voices.

The biggest problem for me though, was that Maya makes no sense at all. She was not deaf from birth. She has been deaf only for three or four years because of an illness, so most of her life has been a hearing one, not hard-of-hearing or deaf. She is in a sense part of that community, but in another sense, she's not, depending on how you define it. This makes her behavior illogical at best and downright idiotic at worst, and her revulsion toward devices that can help her regain some hearing is not an intelligent or logical one. It's like she has some sort of psychological deficit - akin to people who feel their limbs are alien and want to cut them off, yet nowhere is any psychology 'own voice' brought to bear on this topic! That was a mistake.

The book description, as usual in books put out by Big Publishing™ seems like it was written by someone who has zero clue about the content of the book. It says, for example, "Deaf teen Maya moves across the country and must attend a hearing school for the first time. As if that wasn't hard enough, she also has to adjust to the hearing culture, which she finds frustrating." How can she find a culture frustrating when she was part of it just a couple of years before? A culture she has spent the bulk of her life being a part of? It's like she's forgotten her roots, or more disturbingly, is rejecting them. How can she be attending a hearing school for the first time when she grew up in hearing schools? It's a flagrant lie and the jerk who wrote that blurb is an asshole, period.

The book reads like being deaf is a cult for Maya - a fad or a thrill for her instead of what it is: a deficit as compared with what she had spent most of her life enjoying, whether she likes to think of it that way or not. We're naturally intended to hear. That's why we have the genetic mechanisms for hearing. Like I said: intelligent, consenting adults can make their own choices, but to pretend there's something wrong with being able to hear is nonsensical. Either way, it's not a one-size fits all deal. To claim otherwise is not helpful to anyone.

Also, in the quote above, what's that about Maya moving across the country? This alone made no sense since the rarified atmosphere of Colorado is not a great locale for Maya's kid brother who has cystic fibrosis. Like I said, I did not read very far into this novel because it severely turned me off, but let's suppose the family moved to Colorado for better treatment for her brother; isn't this hypocritical in a way? I mean Maya has chosen to embrace her condition, but the kid desperately needs treatment for his? I know that sounds cruel, but looked at dispassionately, isn't this what Maya is saying? She wants to become a respiratory therapist to help people like her brother, yet she rejects help for people like herself? Like I said, it made no sense and sends conflicting messages.

For someone who grew-up hearing and has had this loss of hearing experience not even for a handful of years, Maya is really bitchy, judgmental, and hyper-critical of everyone around her, and she behaves like she's a scared seven-year old rather than a supposedly maturing seventeen-year-old. This did not endear me to her and this hits the reader right from the start. She's whiny, clingy, and displays not an ounce of backbone, in complete contrast to what the idiotic book blurb claims, a blurb that seems to conflate blind obstinacy with integrity. This suggests that rather than having attend any sort of a realistic school, or even one of hard knocks, she's been positively coddled for the last two or three years. In itself, it doesn't speak highly of the school she left prior to attending this one. To me, it sounds insulting to that previous school.

So overall I was not impressed with the voice, own or not, in this novel and the writing was illogical and not appealing, which is why I didn't want to read on. I can't commend this based on what I did read of it. This is what I get for thinking a novel with a ridiculously pretentious "John Green" style title might be worth reading! It never is!

Nineteen Seventy by Sarah Cradit

Rating: WARTY!

This is another series DNF for me. The story was so obscure, so disconnected and so intent upon going nowhere except to show us some really dumb-ass people doing stupid things that I lost all interest in it after only a few chapters. It was awful. I sure as hell was not about to read even one volume of this let alone seven! The idea is that there are seven siblings and seven volumes, and the books run from 1970 through 1980 with the year 1971 missing, as well as the seventies after 1976.

The youngest sibling is a prophet we're told, and she reveals that one of the main Deschanel siblings will not leave 1970 alive. This, the author thinks, will lure you into reading all this crap to find out who dies. I didn't care, but I'll bet the publisher is salivating over the promise of profits form this prophet if they can sucker people into reading all seven volumes. After reading a part of the first I could see the future too: all seven volumes will be as boring as this: rambling endlessly and going nowhere. The early chapters read like a bad Jackie Collins novel - and yes, I know that's a tautology.

At the risk of repeating myself, it didn't help that the writing was not so great, either. I read at one point that one of the male siblings, "drew the same girl he'd just finished on into a deep kiss, all tongue, hoping to transfer some of her juices back to her and avoid terrible breath later." WHAT?!!! This is a woman writing about a guy who had just gone down on a girl, and was now kissing her thinking that his mouth wouldn't stink if she licked it clean of her vaginal secretions? Seriously? I think that actually may have been the last straw - or certainly close to it. I forget exactly where and what it was that decided me that I'd had enough of this crap.

Why do female authors do this to their fellow females - even fictional ones? I cannot understand it, but Cradit gets no credit for this garbage.

Elsewhere I read, "wrapped her arms around her father's shoulders, because already at eight she understood all men, even one as confident and assuming as August Deschanel, needed validation. Even when you had to be dishonest in the offering." So at least the author isn't gender-biased: she insults both men and women equally - near enough. Another instance was "The drama in your life is going to kill you," Irish Colleen harped," No, Irish Collen isn't Irish, her name is actually 'Irish Colleen" - and no, she doesn't play the harp despite the harping reference. She is harpy enough without it.

This was awful; the story-telling poor, and the charcters completely unappealing. I actively dis-commend it.

The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an audiobook which I enjoyed immensely. It's a spoken version of a 1983 novel. I first came to this, as I imagine many people did, via the excellent Netflix series starring Anya Taylor-Joy, and it's like they took the TV show directly from the book with very few changes, often lifting dialog directly. Subsequently reading the book - or rather listening to it read beautifully by Amy Landon - was never boring though, because it was so well-written and it has its own vibe. It's also really is amusing at times.

If I have only one criticism, it's that there's rather too much chess in it for my taste. I can play chess, but I'm not a chess player per se, so I wasn't remotely able to follow the games described in the novel. The TV show had the benefit of showing the players moving pieces on boards, but it never focused on the board for long, so it wasn't possible to really follow the moves or the game there either. Maybe a seasoned chess player could, but I couldn't. In the novel it was considerably less clear, and so I felt the chess was somewhat overdone, but it wasn't deathly to listen to, so it wasn't bad. Apart from that, I really enjoyed the novel.

The story is a fictional one, of a character named Beth (Elizabeth) Harmon, who is abandoned by her father and later loses her mother and ends up in an orphanage where she discovers an interest in chess through encounters with the janitor. She discovers she has an innate skill at the game. Beth is unexpectedly adopted by the Wheatley family and is again abandoned by the father figure, but develops a close relationship with her new mother, who has no interest in chess, but who encourages Beth to play in tournaments once she realizes that money is to be made. Mrs Wheatley isn't mercenary though, and she and Beth develop a sweet and very functional working relationship when it comes to chess play. It was a joy to watch - and then listen to - how their relationship grew and how they navigated sometimes thorny days.

Beth has set-backs, but grows and learns, and excels at chess, rising through the ranks of players to become a US champion - and then has to face the Russians, whom she fears - one in particular. I loved this novel and I wonder, sometimes, if that's because in many ways if mirrors my own novel, Seasoning which is not about chess but about soccer. Anyway, I commend The Queen's Gambit as highly entertaining, beautifully-written, and very readable - or listenable. Or watchable!

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a YA novel in ebook format. Unfortunately it's the start of a trilogy. I'm not a series fan because the first volume is necessarily a prologue and I'm not a fan of prologues especially if they have a cliffhanger ending. Worse even than this, is that this novel was also a first person voice one. Again, not a fan at all. First person is the weakest voice to me. It's the most unrealistic and the most selfish - "Hey lookit me! Listen to me. I can remember whole.

This novel started out pretty well and the first person wasn't nauseating. Some authors can carry it off, and evidently this one can do it, so it started really well and drew me in. I htought maybe this woudl be one of the rare exceptions that engaged me, but once the aliens started showing up, I began to feel like I was reading a children's book rather than a YA novel. It seemed to be pitched a little low when it came to reading level.

It's about this young girl, Tina, who believes - because of what her mother has told her - that she's an alien baby disguised with human DNA - a reincarnation of an earlier alien who died saving her crew. At some point, Tina is going to be picked up by these aliens to save the day she believes, but at that same time, her life will be endangered by the enemies of those aliens.

In that regard it's a bit like Harry Potter! "Yer an alien, Harry!" LOL! So we have a special child, hidden with a parent who is not their own (or in this case only partly their own). It makes for an attractive premise if it's done well, and this one initially was. If what her mom told her is true, it should make for a weird and interesting story, but if her mother has fed her some fiction, it's a cruel thing to do. This intrigued me.

I really enjoyed the opening chapters with Tina and her best friend Rachael hanging with each other. They truly came across as being lifelong friends. They had each other's back and they were very close. As is my wont in too many YA novels, I actually began liking the sidekick more than I liked the main character. I don't know why this is, but it happens a lot! That slipped a little about 20% in, unfortunately! Before that, though, was the issue of Rachael being bullied.

I don't doubt there still is bullying in schools, but the way this author had it was that the bullying was rife, open, and completely unchecked. I found it to be a bit too much of a stretch to be expected to believe that not a single person in the entire school - not any other student, nor any teacher or auxiliary staff member even noticed it, let alone was intent upon doing anything about it. It was, as it is in most of these stories where bullying is involved, overdone. Bullying is a serious problem and it needs to be stamped out, but it cheapens the whole problem if it's made into a caricature like it is here.

I am not a fan of info dumps, flashbacks, or intensive backstory and this novel began with little to none. While on the one hand I appreciated that, for me I could have used a little more than the author offered, because in starting to read this, I had questions that were not being answered. I had to wonder how this supposedly semi-alien child was even conceived given the differences in DNA between us and the aliens.

Chimpanzees are as close to humans as DNA gets without actually being human, and it's not possible (nor remotely desirable!) to hybridize a chimpanzee with a human, so how would it work with totally alien DNA? Maybe the aliens have seriously advanced technology, so I let that slide, but that itself raised other questions down the line, and it wasn't the only issue.

The thing is that Tina has been raised from infancy apparently without any doctor at any time discovering that she was a hybrid! I mean she must have had medical exams and the required vaccinations, right? But her partly alien body didn't react? No doctor noticed anything out of the ordinary? And how did mom explain this baby suddenly arriving in her life? I assume, since it has some of her DNA, that the child would identify as hers if tested, but how did she explain its magical appearance after having shown no signs of pregnancy? And if this deceased captain was so very valuable, why not make a score of clones? Why just one?

So while I was certainly interested in the story because it was different, I confess I was a bit skeptical about it as I started in on it. Again I decided to let this slide and go with it. The problem with doing this though, is that while some issues, even quite large ones, can be forgiven for the sake of a good story, the more of these issues that build up, the harder it is to turn a blind eye to them.

That began with the book description, which was replete with the usual hyperbole. I know that this isn't usually on the author unless they self-publish, but it can cause problems for readers. At one point it said, "think Star Wars meets Doctor Who," and while I can get with the Doctor Who (despite Chris Chibnall), I can't stand Star Wars at all, so that was a negative for me. I'm not a fan of books that compare themselves to others, because I think it's unfair to the author, and it can have unintended consequences. Because of the Star Wars reference, I almost did not pick this up, but the premise intrigued me, even though I could not see for the life of me where the Doctor Who part came into it. Still can't!

For me, the base problem with this whole premise was that of reincarnating a "legendary commander." It made no sense that these aliens with advanced technology, and evidently under threat, would choose to wait a whole generation for a hybrid commander to grow from infancy and save them! Did they have no other commanders? Did the legendary commander have no deputies or sub-commanders who knew their tactics? Was the war put on hold until the commander could resume command? Worse than that, there's no logic in believing that even this person, the hybrid with the dead commander's DNA, would be anything remotely like the commander was - or anywhere near as canny, skilled, or gifted.

I mean, did the Beatles' children go on to become a world famous band? No! Did Einstein's children go on to become renowned theoretical physicists? No! Did Dwight Eisenhower's surviving son go on to become a legendary general? No! He did become a general, and probably a fine one, but no one's heard of him. Did Ted Bundy's daughter go on to become a serial killer? Hell no!

If the DNA of those children - 'pure', as it were - didn't lead them to emulate their parents, why would anyone think a hybrid child would do so? You are not your DNA in the sense of it dictating who or what you become. That's on you. And there's no way a person's memories can be transferred to another by hybridizing DNA. DNA isn't memory, so this premise was weak and frankly insulting. For me, this novel didn't make a good case for why this would work, or why anyone even thought it would. Still I was willing to let even that slide.

The first problem was with the aliens - and I mean apart from the clichés. The author seems to have decided to make them as diverse and wacky as possible with no regard to whether or not they're realistic. One of them has one eye, but the eye wraps around its head. I can't for the life of me see how an eye like that could have evolved or even work. The bad guys are of course cliché ugly, and have heads that look like skulls. It's a bit too much, so after having enjoyed the book initially, I began seriously struggling with it when the aliens arrived and the reading level seemed to dip precipitously.

The writing was a bit off at this point too. And I don't mean the use of 'itch' where 'scratch was meant. That was on Tina and people do talk like that, so no problem there. No I mean examples like, where after arriving aboard the mother-ship, Tina expresses a desire to be by herself for a while, but immediately they're taking her to an exam room (where the one-eyed alien awaits) and all thoughts of being alone are lost, and not even mentioned. It would have been nice to have Tina resent her 'me time' being purloined, or have the guy apologize for robbing her of it, but it was dropped like it had never arisen. Another oddity was that the alien spacecraft was called 'HMSS Indomitable' which is frankly ridiculous. What's with the 'HMSS' and why would aliens use a naming convention for their spacecraft that mirrors a usage on Earth for ocean-going vessels?

A really serious problem with the aliens is that they're not really alien. They seem like Americans who just look different from regular humans. It's quite glaring. They speak English and they use American colloquialisms. Now you could argue that they have some sort of universal translator, but the author doesn't specify that, or even have Tina question how they speak English, which makes her look a bit dumb, I'm sorry to report.

No, the biggest damning factor was that the patches on their uniforms have English phrases on them. How that works I do not know. At one point I read "Rachael looks at the winged-snake emblem on their left shoulder, which reads THE ROYAL FLEET on top, and WE GOT YOUR BACK on the bottom." Maybe they have a universal translator that translates speech from alien to English, but does it also translate words on shoulder patches? Does it also render colloquialisms? It was too much. Maybe this was the Doctor Who part?! I just got the feeling that the author hadn't really thought through the aliens, which seemed a bit hypocritical given the attention that was paid to appropriate interactions elsewhere.

Yes, gender-neutral pronoun, I'm looking at you! The fact is that using such pronouns has been shown to reduce mental bias favoring men. It also increases positive attitudes towards women and to the LGBTQIA community, so it's a good thing, but it stood out glaringly here, and made the aliens seem even more American. Every alien that Tina meets introduces themselves and gives their favored pronoun, but no explanation is given as to why aliens - I mean literal aliens from other planets - would have any conventions like the Americans do, let alone this particular one - which they all shared and which is relatively new here on Earth.

For example, the alien would say, "My name is Yatto the Monntha, and my pronoun is they." I respect that the author wants diversity and inclusiveness in this novel. That's all well and good, but what it feels like when it's done here is that instead of respecting it, it's being parodied. Every character introduces themselves like this (Tina doesn't respond in kind - at least not initially), and it quickly became an annoyance because this is not an alien thing, it's largely an American thing (at least so far).

Other people in other nations use it of course, but it's not the norm world-wide. Whether it should be or not is another issue, but that's not the point here. The point is that beneficial or not, not even everyone on Earth is as committed to this as many people in the US are, let alone alien races from distant planets, so it constantly reminded me that I was reading fiction written by an American author, rather than allowing me to immerse myself in this alien world. I couldn't imagine reading a trilogy of this kind of writing. I really couldn't.

I wish the author all the best in future endeavors, because there is some solid stuff here, but I can't get onboard with this particular one. I finally gave up reading at 20% because of something dumb that Rachael did, believe it or not. After Tina had been wringing her hands over Rachel leaving the craft, even though Tina knew it was best and didn't want to see her friend injured or killed, Rachael finally got to stay on the craft (as we all knew she would), but then she comes up with the idea that the aliens should recruit children from Earth to replace the original crew members who have been killed in the line of duty. Children! Because there are child geniuses. And Tina barely shrugs at this.

Believe it or not, there are adult geniuses on Earth: brilliant chemists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers and so on. There are also elite adult trained soldiers. Yet their idea is not to seek help from those mature and experienced people, but to recruit children and put their lives at risk. When we hear of child soldiers in the world, particularly in Africa, in the CAR or the DRC, we're up in arms about it, but here Tina is thinking this is a regrettable but brilliant idea of Rachael's? No. Just no!

I know this is a juvenile book and there are lots of such novels where children are put in harm's way for the sake of a good adventure, but the best written ones of those have some sort of rationale as to why it's the kids and not the adults. That didn't happen here - at least not to the point where I gave up reading. It was children all the way and no adult recruits were even considered, nor were any parental and guardian concerns as their children were contemplated being recruited! It was treated like these children were free for the plucking, more akin to: Yeah, we got brilliant kids, let's press-gang 'em!

I know this is 'only fiction' but I can't get with that kind of thoughtless writing. For all the political correctness shown elsewhere in the novel this seemed like a huge backward step, and I can't commend it as a worthy read. There were too many holes and too many things a reader has to let slide. It could have been a lot better and I was truly sorry it wasn't.

The Influencer by RTW Lipkin

Rating: WARTY!

This was one that was of interest to me because I'm currently working on a middle-grade novel about the evils of social media, but this book which thankfully has nothing to do with anything I'm writing was completely useless as either an inspiration or a caution, and it sadly was not even a form of entertainment, because it was so badly written as I realized when I read, early on, "After a few weeks I got more very used to other things too."

The author uses some nonstandard contractions like "to've" to represent 'to have' and it was just silly, and it felt amateur and and annoying, but that wasn't even the worst part. First person voice, for me, is the most worthless and inauthentic voice you can write in. It rarely works and it's usually annoying. This one was worse because the two characters were so clueless, and unrealistic, and both of them were using their own first person, meaning that the author had to prefix each chapter with the name of the person writing it, which is clunky at best.

I'm like, what, did these two unequal and antagonistic persons collaborate to write this story? How did that ever come to pass? Seriously, I thoroughly detest novels of this type because they are as fake as it's possible to get and when I read, I want to get lost in the author's world, not keep being reminded of how shallow and threadbare it is. I want to buy into it and get lost in it, and this author denies a reader that opportunity.

The story is of Claude, a computer programmer, and Ash, his creation, which is (we're told) an AI designed to pose as an Internet influencer pushing fashion and make-up. What Claude knows about fashion and make-up, and how he knows it is a complete mystery since we're never told (not in the seventy pages I read anyway), but what the author knows about AI's (artificial intelligence) is starkly apparent: very little, if anything.

There were two problems here, the first being, why would the programmer need an AI to do what he wanted to do? He doesm't. He just needs a computer representation of an attractive woman, since he's doing all the controlling and not letting the AI develop on its own. That story was already done in the 2002 movie Simone which was written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol abs starred Al Pacino. Unlike that movie, this story makes no sense and screams that the programmer is an idiot. That diagnosis is further confirmed by Claude being constantly baffled by how his AI manages to learn things. What? Sorry but no, this sucks.

I found myself skimming from very early on because the story, particularly the Claude parts, were so boring and whiny. The Ash parts were hardly better, so it's rather generous for me to claim I 'read' seventy pages, and frankly that was too many. I ditched this DNF and I'm done with this author.

Alabaster Island by MS Kaminsky

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "she was pretty with her long trusses of wavy auburn hair" - I think the author meant 'tresses'! Trusses would be rather weird. He also had post-pone at one point but I don't know if it was written that way with the hyphen, or if it was an artifact of the word processor or the ebook conversion process.

I'm not sure why I began reading this story. It's not very long, but even so, I made it only halfway through before giving up in disgust and in resentment at the time I'd wasted on it. The biggest problem with it was that literally nothing happened in it. I thought that the main character, Marei, would find out she's a mermaid, and maybe she did, but not on the first half of the novel where she found out nothing, did nothing, learned nothing, changed not so much as a millimeter and was one of the most boring characters I've ever read about. Marei isn't very smart and has no imagination, which is hardly surprising since there seems to be zero schooling on the island.

The premise is stupid. Apparently a very limited number of people live on the island and the mayor - a man who lives alone, decides who gets to pair off with who. Why? I don't know. The story is that no one can get pregnant on the island and they have to go off to another tiny island to get pregnant. Why? Who the hell knows? The author isn't telling and no one on the island finds this even remotely strange. The fact is that the reader doesn't know squat about this community because there is zero world-building and not a single person on the island, not even the younger ones, have an iota of curiosity about their life, why they are there, why they have so little freedom, what's elsewhere, off the island, or anything!

At a certain age, they're supposed to note down on a scrap of paper the name of the person they want to 'bind' with, but options are severely limited and the mayor makes the final decision. Everyone is apparently fine with this ridiculous arrangement. Marei encounters a mermaid one day, and isn't even remotely surprised despite mermaids supposedly being extinct. She has no curiosity about this alien being, and the mermaid is one of the most petulant characters worthy of the Tinker Bell Award. There is only the one encounter with this mermaid - at least in what I could stand to read and we learn nothing from it. There are occasional ships that pass the island, but which never interact with it. Why? Who knows. The reader certainly doesn't because the author tells us squat and no one ever questions anything.

The whole story was nonsensical and a waste of my time.

The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason

Rating: WARTY!

This was the last of those seven stories in the Seven Against the Dark introductory first chapter collection I've been reviewing. I ended up not liking a single one of them although the first and the last both captured my imagination for a short time.

The first was about shifters, this last was about vampires. Neither of those are my favorite fictional topics, so it was a long shot anyway, but I really thought this last one might make it until it turned into a pathetic little YA love triangle. This things are so overdone, so tedious, so unimaginative and soooo boring that it almost makes me physically ill when I encounter one of them.

The problem is that all a love triangle like this does is to render the leading female into a spineless and vasillating flibbertigibbet who has no real mind of her own, cares nothing for either guy, in that she's quite happy to keep both of them on a string, or alternately and equally unsavory, she's merely a pawn in the hands of not one, but two men. I can't stand female characters like that and I am no fan of female authors who create such an appaling waste of a female character.

Set in London in the Regency period, which was very roughly the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, the book description has it that "vampires have always lived among them, quietly attacking unsuspecting debutantes and dandified lords as well as hackney drivers and Bond Street milliners. If not for the vampire slayers of the Gardella family, these immortal creatures would have long taken over the world." Really? The world? There are no other vampire slayers on planet Earth, and the secret has been so well-kept that there's not a single person outside of the family and their closest confidants who's aware of the problem, let alone doing something about it? I'm sorry but that is as pathetic as it is irresponsible, and it assumes everybody is stupid.

It's like Trump knowing full-well how dangerous Coronavirus was and doing nothing about it not even when literally hundreds of thousands of people have died. It's also a losing proposition given - from the 60% of this that I read - that vampires are positively rampaging across London. They would need droves of full-time vampire slayers to keep this infestation under control, not one YA chick. None of the premise made any sense.

So anyway, Victoria Gardella Grantworth is the new Buffy. The author freely acknowledges the inspiration, but unfortunately she picks the most idiotic parts of the Buffy story to lay upon her new hero. Although she starts out in fine style and there was even a bit of choice humor (but not enough), the story quickly devolved into every YA cliché imaginable and started going downhill for me. The worst part was when Victoria meets the bad boy, Sebastian Vioget.

This guy is a complete jerk, and a pervert, and yet Victoria lets him get away with pawing her and doing whatever he wants. He has more hypnotic control over her than do the vampires and yet she sees nothing wrong with his constant pawing of her, his demand to see her belly-button, his uninvited touching of her and his stealing one of her gloves. The first time the two encountered each other, I was about ready to ditch this story because I could see exactly where it was going, but foolishly, I decided to give the author a fair chance and I read on only to have my worst fears confirmed.

The second encounter between these two was even mnore ridiculous than the first. This is Victoria, supposedly the champion, and a woman who is raised to interact with the highest of society and behave properly at all times, but who for reason unexplained allows herself to be alone with this stranger, and takes zero offense as this asshole of a letch essentially feels her up? She's a trained vampire slayer who gets an icy chill on her neck when a vampire is close, and has no compunction and very little ineptitude in killiong them, yet she countenances this jerk and his boorish behavior, a man who is the sleazy manager of a club that openly accommodates vampires over which he has no control? It made zero sense.

There was a discrepancy between the freebie version of this book which was offered as part of the 7 volume introductory book that I began reading, and the first volume of this individual novel which I picked up (it's a freebie) when I had thought initially that I might be desatined to enjoy it. In the standalone novel, I read (or more accurately, tried to read!) the following:

"Why do you think it was a vampire attack?" Melly qíììH rniiino hpr pvp<¿ "T nrH Tmsrntt likely got too familiar with Miss Colton"

What it should have read was:

"Why do you think it was a vampire attack?" Melly said, rolling her eyes. "Lord Truscott likely got too familiar with Miss Colton."

The reason I know that is that the compendium version had been corrected whereas the standalone has not.

But I gave up on this in disappointment over the cheesy triangle and the appalling lack of self-respect Victoria has. I thought she was someone I could grow to appreciate as a strong female character, but she is certainly not. She's nothing more than yet another weak and limp YA female produced by yet another female author who should be ashamed of herself for doing this to women. This is garbage, period.

Beast by Christine Pope

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum: "that field of expertise was much more nuanced and difficuLieutenant Yes, miracles were still possible, but in order to rebuild, there had to be something left to build upon." Note that the previous sentence is an exact copy of the text from the novella. The word 'difficult' is truncated and mashed into the word 'Lieutenant' and some text is obviously missing here.

This was a really short story, barely a novella. Even so, I made it only about two-thirds the way through, because it was so unrealistic and so poorly-written. It's supposed to be volume zero of some series which I definitely have zero intention of reading after this nonsense.

When I say it lacks realism, I'm not talking about when the female main character Nora Whitaker "retraced her steps, went through the clean room and back out into the main hallway" because that's not how a clean room works. You don’t go through a clean room in your 'street' clothes. You gown, mask, and wear bootees to enter!

This so-called 'clean' room is located in a lab on Neptune's moon Triton. I don't even know why they were on Triton. It made no sense unless the doctor, Raymond Killian, was hoping to escape the 'Copehagen Protocols' by doing his work some three billion miles from Copenhagen, but the author herself tripped up that idea by having Nora raise the matter, implying that the protocols still applied even out there around the most distant planet in our solar system (not counting the several dwarf planets).

Killian was disfigured in an accident and wears extensive prosthetics, including a mask. Whittaker is thrilled to work with him because he's so brilliant, supposedly. She's able to solve a problem for him, but despite months quickly passing by, with the two working together, the author fails to do any work to show that they're becoming closer emotionally. She expects us to take it on faith while the whole time when this happens is essentially skipped-over, which for me was a fail when it comes to making a connection between them. It betrays the events the author goes on to describe later. That was a big part of the inauthenticity problem for me.

At first I thought Killian was actually a robot or a mechanical avatar controlled by Killian while his real body was hidden away behind the locked door to the private part of his lab where Nora never gets to go, but my idea was wrong. Honestly I wish I had been right because it might have made for a better story. At least I have some ideas of my own for a sci-fi novel based on Beauty and the Beast now, right?! LOL!

The lab was a bad venue for any romance because it was so sterile, by which I do not mean clinically (we know it was not, based on Killian's totally inadequate 'clean room' protocols!), I mean it lacked any other people, which rendered it a bit of a stretch that one guy had accomplished all he had with no assistants or assistance. Adding the idiot Trumpian Lieutenant just made things worse, because it rendered Whittaker the helpless maiden in distress and Killian her rescuer, which never goes down well for me, and is insulting to women in general. And why were those people military guys and not just security?

What the author ought to have done is have a couple of lab assistants, including a rival female instead of the lieutenant. That would have made for a better story. Consider this: given that Killian was severly disfigured, where were the people who designed and applied the prosthetics he wore? They already knew everything about his condition; why were one or two of them not working for him at the lab?

It made Whittaker look shallow and clueless that she didn't consider this and wonder about it, and it would have been easy for the author to make up excuses for why others were not there if she truly had wanted this complex lab to unrealistically have only Killian working in it: "Oh the doctor wanted to remain on Earth so he could continue his work in advanced prosthetics." "Oh my previous lab assistants didn't want to move to Triton," and so on. If the author didn't want any humans there, why not mention that he used robots for the work? That would have given Whittaker an opening to deepen the story by having her wonder if Killian himself was a robot.

So in short this is a big fail, an unworthy read and I cannot commend it. Please read on if you don't mind a big spoiler.

One of the biggest problems for me, was when Killian invited Whittaker to dinner in his private quarters with the teasing promise that he had something to show her. The something he wanted to share was a new body, which he had somehow created - built, grown, whatever (the author's a bit vague about it, at least as far as I read this story). Apparently it's a sort of cyborg - rather like the original terminator character from the first of the James Cameron movies. It's not actually a clone of him, so why is there a problem with the Copenhagen protocols (whatever those are supposed to be)?!

His plan is to transfer his consciousness into this new body. Rather than be thrilled for him, and marvel at his brilliance and at this opportunity to help countless others who have a disfigurement or otherwise problematic bodies. All Whittaker does is whine about the Copenhagen protocol and about how he's just fine the way he is - when he clearly isn't. Obviously the author is just doing this so she can maintain the 'beauty and the beast' fiction, but the writing is so poorly done that I just didn't buy it.

There's no problem with someone falling for a person with a handicap or a disfigurement by any means; the problem is that this author didn't do the work to get us there, and when Whittaker, out of the blue, just kisses his crispy lips it felt icky rather than romantic precisely because it felt more like she was doing it for the kick of seeing what it was like, rather than because she had genuine and strong feelings for him. This says nothing of the inappropriate relationship which Whittaker never once questions. Killian is her boss, so it's ethically wrong for him to be involved with her, he being the authority figure and her employer. To have neither Whittaker nor Killian even - at least fleetingly - mention this was bad writing, especially when Whittaker had baulked so strongly at his new body, because it contrevened some vague cloning protcol in her mind.

What did get mentioned was what a scandal it would be if anyone found out they were invovled. Not if they found out about his new body. Oh no - but if they thought she and he were having an affair! Seriously? The lab is sealed - no one gets in or out except Whittaker and Killian, and they always work long hours so why would anyone think there was anything going on - or conversely why would there not be an assumption that something was going on? It made no sense to suddenly, at that moment begin to doubt and quesiton. Again, badly-written, Ms Pope.

Plus it made no sense! If he could grow flesh like this, when why not grow it directly over his existing body? Maybe his body was badly damaged, but clearly it still functioned perfectly underneath the scarring, so it woudl seem that the scarring was, despite being very bad, superficial in important regards. You would think he could have added this new flesh, slowly replacing the scarred portions. We're already doing face transplants. I think it would have made for a better story too - especially if the replacement had gone wrong and this was why he was a 'beast'. But as I said, I didn't buy this. The writing felt lazy and ill-considered, and even as a work of fiction, it felt unreal and ridiculous and I cannot commend it for those reasons.

Hook (audiobook) by Melissa Snark

Rating: WARTY!

Back in June I reviewed the ebook of this novel, and I don't usually revisit works (and usually not authors) where I've been disappointed. I judged the ebook warty for an assortment of reasons and those haven't changed in the audiobook - it's the same book! What I was curious about though, is whether I might perceive that same book differently if I heard it, rather than read it myself.

When you read a book it's between you and the author, but an audiobook brings someone else into the picture - so to speak! - and maybe it might sway perception? Since Chirp had the audiobook on sale for 99 cents, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to experiment. Yes, 99 cents! I'm guessing others are finding this book as unappealing as I did the first time around, and so the publisher is trying to move it by any means possible.

So, as I said before, this was yet another attempt to wring some value from the antique and ridiculous Peter Pan story. About the only one I've read so far that was worth reading was Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson which I reviewed several years ago. I'm currently working on a children's parody myself, skewing all the things that are wrong with the book and with Dipsey's antique and sad animation of it. The first problem with the book is that it's first person. For me it makes for an irritating voice to read because it's usually so unrealistic, and that's especially the case in novel like this one.

They hired an American voice actor to fake a British accent for Captain Hook's daughter - Jaden Hook - like anyone in Britain was named Jaden back when this story was written. Seriously? No marks for Mistress Snark! She could use a few though - to buy herself a clue. My problem though, was who is she supposedly telling this tired story to anyway?>/p>

While I like the idea of a female pirate captain, I don't imagine your average pirate was wont to prattle on about anything let alone a private vendetta between Hook and Pan, not even if there's a switch here and Pan is presented as a villain, kidnapping young children, and Hook as the 'good guy' rescuing them. Since I didn't finish either story, I can't even be sure if this Hook is a reliable narrator - maybe she's just as bad as her dad was, and Pan is still the spiteful, self-centered, narcissistic villain I've always perceived him to be.

The story takes forever to get going and in the end (and by end, I mean middle!), it never really does. That's one reason I quit it. The captain seems only half-hearted in her pursuit of Pan and quite lethargic about it. It takes them forever in trying to sneak up on the speedier Ariel ship, in their own lumbering Revenge, and they never do get there. Yawn.

The chapters are filled with Hook's tedious ramblings, and debates with her crew. What pirate captain debated with their crew? Doesn't 'captain' mean one who is in charge and who gives orders? I quit reading the ebook before I learned that Ariel got away, so I was wondering it if it had been a trap, but it evidently wasn't, according to what I heard here, which begged the question as to what the hell was going on? I have no idea, and worse, I didn't care any more the second time than I did the first!

As I'd concluded earlier, the plot which had initially intrigued me never seemed to have any substance to it. I need more than this in a novel, and this author refuses to stand and deliver! Consequently, I can't commend either the ebook or the audiobook.

Sketches by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

Detective Reese Parker is transferred to her childhood home - known as Colony 6 - after her life is threatened in her previous job. She has psychic visions when talking to witnesses and subsequently she feels a serious compulsion to sketch these images on paper. The images lead her to solving her case. At least that's what the prologue novella reveals. I didn't get far enough into this volume to learn what happens. I got only far enough to learn this is not for me because it's too sappy with the heavy-handed romance, and the story held no surprises or even any reason for engagement, for me.

It was obvious that Reese and her closest friends including a guy with the ridiculous name of Jaxon, which to me sound like an oil company - were experimented on and that's why she and Jaxon and apparently the others, have their psychic powers. Better Jaxon than Jacks Off I guess. This is pretty much rammed in our faces like a newspaper headline in block caps. They're looking for missing scientists, get it? They all have powers, get it? They will have to rebel against the very authority they serve to solve this. Yawn. The romance between her and Jaxon is tedious and predictable. The secrets they keep from each other are stupid, and the conspiracy nonsense is nothing original. I found it boring and quit reading in short order.

I can't commend this, and this is another series I will not be following.

Insight by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

This is a prequel to this author's series set in a dystopian future. It's very short, but it really explains nothing about the world in which detective Reese Parker lives. It merely is a prologue explaining how she came to end up back at Colony 6 - the very place she was only too happy to escape from when she left to join the New York Enforcer Division. It's set some 80 years after what's referred to as The Breakdown, which was apparently an economic and nuclear catastrophe, but we learn nothing of that. Nor do we learn why the NYPD is now the NYED. There is no world-building at all.

We do get right into the story wherein Parker, who gets psychic visions when questioning a suspect (and which she shares with no one), feels subsequently that she has to translate into a sketch, otherwise it physically affects her. She's compelled to get it down on paper at the risk of a restless night if she doesn't, and the image - often of a suspect, sometimes of a scene - in turn helps her to track down her quarry. In this case it turns out to be a big time businessman who is using some of his facilities as a base to manufacture a dangerous drug known as Juke which when mixed with another drug becomes deadly.

Parker eventually nails him., but in doing so makes enemies and against her will - supposedly for her own safety - she's transferred to Colony 6. End of this novella, lead in to the series. The problem with the is is that it makes her look rather stupid. The case she's making hinges on her recorded video of the businessman effectively convicting himself, but the vid is tampered with, and useless. There is no mention of any backup, and Parker herself fails to keep one - something you would think she would be sure to do in a case this important.

I managed to read the whole story - it was very short - but it didn't leave any mark on me, and I was by no means thrilled with it. I can't commend it unless you're already into the series and are curious as to how Parker got there. Even then it's barely worth the time. The writing itself isn't bad, per se, it just isn't very interesting.

Bound by Earth by Quinn Loftis

Rating: WARTY!

My only other experience of this author was Dream of Me which I did not like at all, and while this one is better than that, it ultimately suffers from the same problems that one did. I at least made it to page 100 of this 286 page ebook. It was moderately entertaining for a while, but it was very slow-moving and there was that same problem of the main male character demanding ownership of the main female one, who becomes pretty much a wilting violet whenever she's in his presence. I guess his super-power is sucking out women's intellect and replacing it with a 'bitch-in-heat' mentality. I'm sorry, but it's pathetic, and it cheapens the female character inexcusably.

The main male wasn't in it until close to page 100 which explains how I made it that far. Had he shown up earlier with his control freak ways and shitty attitude, I would have ditched this novel correspondingly earlier. What is it with YA authors, especially female ones, in their psychotic implication that the more special a woman is, the more abusive and possessive her 'soul partner' must be? There's something seriously wrong with that kind of thinking. Any self-respecting female character would want to kick someone like him in the balls.

The story is of a girl named Tara who is naturally in her last year of high-school, because why not? Since it's a YA special snowflake novel, obviously the unbreakable rule is that both of Tara's parents are dead. She lives with a foster mom who is essentially non-existent, because that's how it is in these books. Nothing new here. What was somewhat new was Tara's best friend, named Shelley, and I adored this character. It seems to be my fate in all-too-many YA novels to despise the main character and adore her BF. That was the case here. Shelley was a breath of fresh air and a badly-needed antidote to the anal and boring Tara.

It's tempting to say I would have loved a novel about Shelley, but perhaps it would have been too much to have that kind of no-filter intensity being front and center for a whole novel. Clearly Shelley is based on Aubrey Plaza. That said, her think-it-speak-it approach to life was far less annoying than was Tara's endless correction, contradiction, and commentary in relation to Shelley's straight forward habits. This is after they'd known each other for three years so you'd think there'd be some accommodation and adaptation, but no. Shelley has to be the best friend ever to put up with Tara, not the other way round, as the author would have it.

This novel buys into the trope that this YA girl has to have a love triangle because that's so original, so there are two guys, who really ought to simply have been named Nice and Nasty. Barf. It also has it that there are only four elements, and Tara is probably a master of all four since she's so perfect. That's just a guess. The 'good guys' of the earth element have been stalking her for years, spying on her without telling her a single word about who she is, without educating her in the least, or helping her along, or warning her that people will be after her. Jerks. Perhaps because Tara is, for reasons unexplained at the point where I quit, physically invulnerable to injury, they're dumb enough to think she can't be seduced to the dark side. I dunno.

They only make an attempt to recruit her at the school's job fair where this stalker dude Jax is dishonestly posing as a member of a geological exploration group, and he tries to get her interested in working for the company. He gives her no hint of who she is. This is also where we meet Elias Creed. Seriously? Elias Creed? I about barfed at that name and almost quit reading right there. The idiotically-named Elias is an assistant to Jax and he immediately becomes possessive and controlling of Tara. Since this is YA, she sees nothing at all wrong with this, gets no bad vibes about him, and has no fears for a potential future with a control freak of a partner. Quite the contrary. I lost all respect for Tara. Not that there was much to lose by this point.

Now about that sad little cover! It's tempting to think it was designed by a guy, but it was actually done by a woman with the tongue-twisting name of Kelsey Kukal-Keeton who from what I've seen seems to have made a career out of photographically rendering young woman as sex toys. I know authors don't really have a say in the cover, but the one on this novel is appallingly inaccurate and outright stupid. The girl - correction, woman - in it looks to be twice the main character's age, and she's dressed completely unlike how Tara dresses even when Tara dresses up! Appropriately though, this is a cover worthy of a brain-dead romance novel. Unless we're supposed to understand from the cover that this novel actually is merely a sad little romance story merely masquerading as fantasy? The cover was pathetic and both the author and photographer should be ashamed of it.

But page 100 is where I quit because the stupid was getting far too ripe for my sensitivities. I cannot commend an unoriginal and downright abusive novel like this that would have it that women are chattel for controlling guys and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm done with this author.

Arsenal by Jeffery H Haskell

Rating: WARTY!

Amelia Lockheart (Earhart much?) is the Arsenal of the title, but the shorter version, Arse would have worked perfectly. The book is first person present tense which is awful. Even after I gave it a chance and let it play on it failed for me because it wasn't believable It was an audio book and the reader's voice (Emily Beresford) seemed completely wrong for the character and way immature for her age, which is 20 or so.

Amelia has only two claims to fame: she's supposedly an inventor genius, and her legs are paralyzed. She's also supposed to be on a quest to find out what happened to her parents, although she never actually pursues this despite her supposed genius. The thing is that she's a direct rip-off of Ironheart of the Marvel superhero universe with a solid dash of Iron Man. Wears a super-duper alloy mechanical suit that's highly weaponized? Check. She can modify the suit to do anything? Check! Parents not on the scene after car accident? Check (except in Ironheart, only daddy is out of the picture). She carries a nuke into the upper atmosphere to save an American city? Check. Yawn. Move along. There's nothing new to see here.

There is of course a plot against her by super-mega-hyper-corp which is what the author no doubt believes will carry this turkey through several volumes. Count me out. The problems are multiple. First person voice is too ridiculous to read unless it's done really well, and for an action story like this, the idea that the main character is narrating this through all kinds of deathly situations made it feel completely inauthentic to me. It made even less sense to start the story in the middle of a battle without any sort of a lead-in whatsoever. Were it not in first person that might have worked, but you can't have both and have me as an avid reader.

So I was turned off right from the start, but stayed with it for a while and started getting into it a bit, but the main character really wasn't interesting and was a consistent disappointment. The one thing I detested about Tony Stark was how selfish he was. Even on his best day he failed to be all he could be. I mean you heard talk about the 'Stark Foundation' or whatever it was called, but whatever it did, and however much he may have donated to it, still Tony Stark led a selfish, self-indulgent multi-billionnaire life, buying whatever he wanted whenever he wanted and squandering so much money.

That's not a quality I can admire in anyone. He had all this technology but never shared any of it. He never used his genius and technology, for example, to help people who had handicaps. Amelia has the same problem and it;s worse with her because she has one herself and knows directly what it;s like. In the story, she's often told that she could sell her technology and become rich, but with twenty million in the bank she ain't hurting. The thing is that she could have donated at ;east some of her technology to enable others to have the same mobility she enjoyed - and not to fly around bombing and sonic lancing villains, but just to be able to move and walk, and yet it never crosses her mind. How selfish is that? A real hero would have helped.

Worse, we really got nothing about the handicap she had to deal with - it was like it didn't exist except to get a mention in passing, because the suit nullified it and she was so rarely out of the suit. The worst part of this though was when she started swooning over another superhero type named Luke. He was your trope chiselled muscular type which really turned me off because it's such a cliché. Why not go the whole hog and name him Jack?!

There was a female character who got a lot of description about her looks - because as you know looks are the only important thing in the world. The way Amelia kept describing her made it sound like there was going to be a lesbian relationship in the offing and that would have been more palatable than Mr Steely Jaws, but Amelia doesn't lean that way or even question her obsession with Domino's looks, which begs the question as to why she's crushing so badly on this other character. Maybe because the author's male? It woudl be really interesting to see what a female author would have done with this story.

The worst part though was when Luke encounters Amelia out of her chair and immediately assumes she's had an accident and is helpless, which rightly pisses Amelia off, but just a few paragraphs beyond that, Luke has to carry her somewhere and she's all swooning and wilting over how strong he is. I about barfed right there and then and quit listening because it was so pathetic and hypocritical and a complete about-turn from where we;d been just a few words before. Yuk. Way to diminish your main character. I'm done with this story and this author and I will not commend it. This is about as warty as they get.

Victory Conditions by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the final volume of this five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep on step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

It's taken Kylara three volumes to finally get her defense force up to a decent size where she can take on the pirates. Her first port of call is a shipyard where vessels are being built that the pirates intend to pirate and bring into their own fleet, Kylara meets them head on and denies them the success they expected, but loses her own spacecraft in the process. This defeat though enables her to sneak around while she'd believed dead and in the end, as you know would happen, defeat the pirates.

There were parts of this series that I didn't particularly enjoy: for example, Kylara's love interest did not inspire me at all. There were also some lengthy and tedious boring bits, but overall I consider this series to be a worthy read, and I commend it as such.

Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

This is volume four of a five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep on step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

Kylara Vatta started out as military, fell into disgrace, went limping back to her family's interstellar commerce, was successful, but was gradually forced back into military mode by piracy. This volume was a bit of a pause and a breath before the finale, since not a whole heck of a lot new happens. The villains who have taken down the purported galaxy-wide communications system have acted with speed and decision, and seem to be winning the battle. Everyone else has been wrong-footed and there seems to be little orchestrated effort to take on the pirates or to fix the damage they've done. This is the gap that Kylara is aiming to fill.

This to me is the biggest weakness with these space operas. You can't write about space in the same way you can, for example write about piracy on the high seas, yet far too many blinkered and short-sighted sci-fi writers (David Weber I'm looking at you) think you can translate 2-D Earth issues and events into outer space with very little thought or change. They simply do not get the massive size of space, and the fact that it's 3D. It results in stories which sound stupid and fake.

I for one have never been convinced that there would be a huge traffic in interstellar commerce and nothing I've read in a host of sci-fi stories has convinced me otherwise - not yet. They simply don't get the massive costs involved in interstellar travel even if warp vessels were invented, nor do they seem to appreciate the vast distances involved and the pointlessness of buying items from one planet that could far more easily and cheaply be manufactured on the planet where they're needed.

Yes, maybe a planet has something special that is found nowhere else, but would people truly want to pay the billions involved in having someone go there and bring that particular thing home? Often the thing is some sort of mineral or alloy, but the same elements found on Earth or in asteroids around the solar system exist throughout the universe. There's nothing out there that can't be found or manufactured here. There are no magical undiscovered elements, and any alloys or minerals can be recreated far more cheaply on Earth than the cost of flying interstellar distances to retrieved them. In short, it makes no sense.

That said, Moon tells a decent story and if you're willing to overlook some of the more incredible parts of the novel, an entertaining tale is to be had here.

Engaging The Enemy by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

This is volume three of a five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep on step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

Despite the title, this particular volume has Kylara running more than engaging. She is intent upon taking on the pirates who were partly responsible for her family's woes thus far, but she makes little progress and worse, has a falling out with a cousin who's annoyed that Kylara seems more focused on fighting pirates than ever she is on conducting business, which is an odd change for Kylara, since she was hitherto all about profit and trade; however, they come to an agreement where Stella is to run the business while Kylara is to focus on protecting trade routes. It turns out that Kylara (unsurprising trope!) isn't who she thought she was.

Engaging the enemy is a bit of a misleading title because while she does engage in some mild ways, she really doesn't in the way you might think - as in having a space battle - not until the end, and even then she ends up fleeing and licking wounds. That said, the story was still exciting and engaging, so I enjoyed it and wanted to continue reading the series.

Marque And Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

Also known as Moving Target in some markets, this is volume two of a five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep one step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

In this volume, Kylara has delivered a shipment to a planet and is waiting on a return cargo when she almost becomes the victim of assassins who bomb her spacecraft. She soon learns that she's not the only target: Vatta ships and berths have been attacked elsewhere resulting in many deaths in her family. As Kylara arms herself and her ship she learns of a cranial implant she needs to get which will give her the control codes for, and complete access to, the family business.

She's forced into forming interesting and unlikely alliances and hiring a paramilitary outfit for security as she tracks down the person responsible for the attacks, who turns out to be someone very close to home. Again, another fun and engaging adventure which I commend, although I confess I didn't much like Kylara's love interest who was brought back for an encore appearance in this volume and who is the trope bad boy from a wealthy or important family. Yawn.

Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

Here's another series, this one a part of a five-book set known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal (aka Moving Target), Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, the lone girl in a large family of sons, who is trying to make her way in the world.

She has chosen to join the military rather than go into her family's business. The problem is that she runs into a situation where she's betrayed by a fellow cadet, and it results in her being expelled from the military academy and heading home with her tail between her legs. In that regard (female soldier screwed over by male colleague) it's very much along the lines of David Weber's main character in On Basilisk Station which also kicks off a series, although this is much more of a rebel sort of a story than a ramrod up the ass senseless military procedural like Weber's books are.

Despite this setback, Kylara finds herself with a chance to start back on the road to redemption, as she gets the opportunity to captain a Vatta vessel. It isn't much, but it's better than nothing and she can maybe build on this over time. Her lowly assignment is to pilot an aging ship to the knackers yard, and her father is taking no chances since he crews the vessel with old hands as much to keep a weather eye on his daughter as to make sure nothing goes wrong.

The thing about Kylara is that she may be a girl and she may be lowest on the totem pole at that, but she's a Vatta, and when the lure of 'Trade and Profit' pops up, she sees an opportunity to pick up a shipping contract that's let lapse by another company. She undertakes to meet the challenge, seeing the chance of making some money along the way to dropping off this clunker of a ship at the breakers - unless of course, she can upgrade the ship and maybe make it her own into the bargain. She soon discovers that it's not all plain sailing and Kylara's military instincts and training come into full prominence as a simple delivery of agricultural equipment turns into a chore of becoming a prison ship, and enduring a sort of a mutiny among the prisoners.

I enjoyed this book. Despite it being a part of a series, it held my interest and made me want to read on. It was different, off-beat, entertaining, and featured a strong and smart female character. I commend this and the series.

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Rating: WORTHY!

This volume concludes the trilogy and begins with Mrs Coulter holding Lyra hostage having apparently had a change of heart toward her and now is not intent upon killing her but saving her. The two hide-out in a remote cave. Balthamos and Baruch, the angels, are intent upon conveying Will to Lord Asriel, but he's going nowhere until he's found Lyra.

The Magisterium is after physicist Mary Malone, sending an assassin to track and eventually kill her after she's led him to Lyra. Mary finds her way through a window between worlds and ends up in a weird place where the dominant species are in many ways rather elephantine creatures which use disk-like seed pods for traveling on natural roads, using the tree oil to lubricate these pod wheels. Mary makes her home in this world for a while and studies the people and the trees, discovering that the dust, leaking between worlds, is causing issues. It is she who invents the amber spyglass.

Will meanwhile has persuaded Iorek Byrnison to help him rescue Lyra. After this occurs they have one of the strangest adventures, wherein Will and Lyra and a couple of others have to visit the world of the dead, and this means leaving their dæmons behind, which is exceedingly painful to them, but they succeed in this heroic quest and survive. This changes Lyra's relationship with Pan, and the two of them can now be further apart than ever they were able before, without enduring the intense pain a separation normally causes. They then have to battle the ghost-like Gallivespians, and they do this by luring them into the world where Mary was hanging out, wand where the Gallivespians cannot survive.

Will and Lyra are now in love as evidenced by the cavorting of their dæmons, but it's a love that's destined to be denied, because they neither of them can survive indefinitely outside of their own world, and so are forced to separate for the rest of their lives, unable even to open a window, because of the leaking Dust problem. Despite this sad ending, I still commend this as a worthy read!