Don't Call Me Baby by Gwendolyn Heasley

Title: Don't Call Me Baby
Author: Gwendolyn Heasley
Publisher: Harper
Rating: WARTY!

I didn't get very far in this novel. The blurb made it sound interesting, but that just means that the blurb did its job. The real test is whether the book actually is interesting, and this one was certainly not. It should have been titled "Don't Call me Brainy".

The conceit here is that for over fifteen years (I may be wrong but I seriously doubt that cover model is fifteen! And why show her legs?), the rather pretentiously-named Imogene has been blogged by her mom - who is making money from the blog. The blog is Imogene's life, starting from when she was in the womb. In fifteen years and some, poor Imogene's mom has yet to get a clue how to raise her daughter, and has not the first concept that a kid entering her teens - let alone well into them - needs independence and privacy. She needs her own life.

That might have made for an interesting story, but get this: the book is written in first person by Imogene herself (so we're supposed to believe). Now this is a girl who is bitching and whining and moaning that her mother gives her no privacy because she's blogging her whole life, and yet here is that same whiny-assed kid writing this story, blabbing all of her personal details to everyone even as she complains that her mother is blabbing all her personal details to everyone. Take a minute or two to think about the incestuous irony of that.

I don't like first person PoV novels. They're the most absurd, pretentious, and unrealistic of all voices, and they normally irritate the heck out of me. Once in a while a writer can carry it and for those, I am grateful, but I sure have to wade through a lot of boneheaded novels to find the few, the happy few, the band of books, which are worth it. I've actually reached the point where even if a book does sound interesting I will, more often than not, put it back on the shelf if it's first person. This one, I made the mistake of not putting back. More fool me.

Apart from the uninteresting writing, one thing which really ticked me off was the gratuitous abuse hurled at vegetarians and vegans in this book. What an easy target. Kick them why not? That turned me right off, and it was at that point, the opening paragraphs of chapter four, where this juvenile insulting was at its most egregious, that I decided I wasn't going to waste any more time on this sad sack of an excuse for a story.

I'll let Sunder Lal Bahuguna make my case for me:

If you use one acre of land to grow meat...then you will get only 100 kg of beef in a year. If you grow cereals, you'll get 1 to 1.5 tonnes. Apples you get 7 tonnes. Walnuts 10-15 tonnes.

So think about it - in a world of starving people, who has the moral high ground: the carnivores or the vegetarian/vegan community? I can't recommend this pathetic trash.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Title: Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
Author: Kirstin Cronn-Mills
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
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. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

This novel, one of several which plays the world 'ugly' against the word 'beautiful' in its title, is very much like The Best Boy Ever Made by Rachel Eliason, which I favorably reviewed last September. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children preceded that one by two years; however, unlike Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Rachel Eliason is actually a transgendered person - and also a bisexual - just to prove that sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity!

Kirstin Cronn-Mills, OTOH does seem to have made a career out of writing about transgender issues, as her website will testify. On balance, though, I have to declare that the later novel is the better novel. There was a lot to like in this novel, but in the end it wasn't enough, and it was spoiled by the frittered-away ending.

Just like in the more recent novel, the main character here, Elizabeth Mary Williams does not in any way identify as female even though he technically is one for all standard societal purposes. Instead, he identifies as Gabriel Joseph Williams, although that's not his legal name. He does insist that everyone call him Gabe, although some people have a much harder time with that than others, including his parents. For eighteen years, he's been Elizabeth and Liz. It's a hard habit to break.

Like in the other novel, he's been best friends with a girl since kindergarten. In this case, her name is Paige, and she's completely on-board and comfortable with his gender change. As in the other novel, Gabe really does feel a major attraction to his BFF. Sometimes she appears to feel the same for him, but he's not sure. What he is sure of is that he's terrified that it will screw-up their friendship if he makes overtures and they're not welcome, or if they are welcome, but things fall apart later.

This feeling of gender error isn't a rarity in nature as Joan Roughgarden reveals in her book Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People, which I highly recommend. But onto the story. Gabe is about to graduate high school - and once he picks up that graduation certificate, it will be, he vows, the last time he will answer to Elizabeth. The problem is that there are problems. The biggest problem turned out to be Gabe himself.

One really annoying thing about this novel was that each chapter had a chapter header and every one of these was in the form: "X is the new Elvis because Y" and after the first one, they were nothing but pointless and irrelevant irritations. And whilst I'm on the topic of irritations, I concluded that the cover was one of the ugly children! Unfortunately, writers have absolutely no control over the cover they're saddled with by their publisher.

I admit that it's possible, but I also I contend that it's highly unlikely in 2012 (when this novel was published) that someone of Gabe's age, especially someone who identifies a male, would be that completely obsessed with Elvis Presley. I submit that it's far more likely that a middle-aged author would have such an obsession and project it onto her character! Thus was further amplifed by the absurd if not outright schizophrenic 'A' side and 'B' side nonsense. Gabe was playing CDs - an already outdated technology. There is no 'A' side and 'B' side. Yes, the old vinyls which John owned had those, but how many radio listeners would even know about that, let alone care about it? if this novel had been set in the sixties or seventies, it would have made more sense.

This, it seemed to me, was how we arrived at Gabe's entire musical make-up, and it really didn't work. There seemed to be no consistency whatsoever to his musical choices, and no explanation for why he made them or even how he got his musical tastes, unless he had simply been brainwashed by John, his aged mentor. A lot of his choices were bog-standard and not the out-of-the-ordinary and off-the-beaten-track selections that we had a right to expect given what we're told in the story, and given that our main character is hardly Mr Everyman.

Gabe's close friend John was, long ago, a DJ who played Elvis Presley's first single on the air before any other DJ (so we're told). Now John is old, he nonetheless finds a mutual interest with Gabe in all kinds of music - from any era. John has a midnight show on public access radio, and Gabe has just begun working with him, starting to run the show and make it his own as the story begins.

He starts to develop a minor following, and a Facebook page is opened, and as Gabe rambles about his thoughts, emotions, and the reasons he's playing a given set of disks (each of his shows has a theme), the group grows and begins responding with public displays. For example, one night they set up a bunch of garden ornaments as though they're heading into the local supermarket for a shopping trip.

Gabe has one fan, Mara, who calls in to his show with requests. Eventually she asks Gabe on a date, but she soon realizes that Gabe is - or was - Elizabeth and is living a lie - so Mara declares, and in some ways she's right. Gabe is a complete wet blanket on this date. He never once tells Mara - not before the date or during it, that he's a transitioning female to male, which seemed thoroughly disingenuous to me. It didn't surprise me that he ran into trouble because he can't seem to own his transition, or to be open and honest about it.

This is actually where the story went seriously downhill for me because it became completely unrealistic. The reaction caused by Mara's outing of Gabe was way in excess of what would have been likely given the story framework which the writer had created to this point. Again I admit it's possible (let's face it anything is possible in fiction!), but two people in particular react in a ridiculously extreme and caricatured fashion and for me, this debased the story and robbed it of all of its appeal because it was too much, and it became completely ludicrous.

Let me note here that violence against the LGBTQ community isn't fiction. It's real and it needs to stop now, but that issue isn't helped by portraying it in a novel in the ridiculously over-the-top fashion which is shown here. Curiously enough, that wasn't even the worst aspect of this novel's fall from grace!

The biggest problem for me was the main character, Gabe. He was cheapened by being presented as the most completely lackluster, uninspired, uninspiring, unmotivated, passive person imaginable, and this never changes. Despite this, I had taken something of a liking to Gabe and felt some empathy with him, but at this point in the story I lost it all because his behavior here was so clueless and static that I actually began to despise him for his paralytic inertia and lack of intelligent thought processes. His two closest friends, Paige and John also seemed equally paralyzed, which didn't speak well of them either, and the story never recovered for me, especially given its completely useless non-ending.

I'm quite sure that the author didn't actually want me to develop negative feelings like that (quite the contrary, I should imagine), but that's how it was! I can't like or commend a person who is as clueless to reality as Gabe was here, nor can I react positively to a story which has at this point dispensed with all grey areas (as well as grey matter!), and given over to a stark and flat black-and-white, and thoroughly amateur view of the world. This isn't a Saturday morning cartoon - at least it wasn't until this point.

I should have guessed this would be such a ham-fisted story when I realized it had won an award! Stories which have won awards are rarely interesting. This particular award was named "Stonewall" and it was a highly appropriate title given that Gabe stonewalled all opportunities to change his life, or to move his lethargic self in the direction he claimed he wanted to go.

Paige was a weird character, and she really wasn't a very good BFF. She seemed far less like a good friend than a stooge, or like the Herald in Shakespeare's Henry V wandering in and out, or like a withering voice of doom calling from off-stage in some Renaissance play.

I'm not sure if I explained that properly, but she felt like she wasn't really a part of the story. She was more like a fan at a concert who keeps throwing herself onto the stage, whom the security guys kick back off, and a bit later she scrambles on again. It was like that: in and out, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing, as Shakespeare's"Scottish Play" would have it. Incidental music was all Paige really was, which is sad, because in another context, with some work, I think she could have been the most interesting character in her own novel.

Gabe was, in the end, just as insignificant. He wasn't honestly or seriously making any moves at all to transition his self to a man or to man-up if I can put it in a rather genderist way. Instead, it seemed that he was simply playing at being a guy, dabbling in it, idolizing it, but not really serious about it. He never - not even at the end - seemed like he was going to own it and take it in both hands.

The biggest issue vis-à-vis Paige was Gabe's inability to come to grips with his feelings for her. This torpor he experiences was a serious problem which he embraces throughout the entire novel and it made him unlikeable in the end. He's also a 'real teen guy', but not in a good way, when it comes to his focus on relationships. On the one hand he's idolizing Paige, convinced that she's the only girl for him, but on the other, he's lusting after and/or going on dates with other girls, meeting Mara and stringing Heather along, but making no moves to try and pursue Paige. He's an idiot at best and a complete jerk at worst!

He was, throughout the story, consistently letting things happen to him instead of making things happen. He wasted his time, wasted his chances, showed no interest in getting serious about his gender change, and in the end, Gabe was no different and no better than he was at the start. I'm not one of those people who insists that a character change. Indeed, some of the best stories feature a character who is unshakable, but in this particular case, where the very essence of the story is change and none happens, it stands out rather starkly. The ending capped it all because it honestly felt like the author ran out of ideas and simply said, "Stick a mango in it, I'm done."

I honestly cannot recommend this novel at all. Read, instead, Rachel Eliason's novel, or better yet, read the real thing: Bumbling into Body Hair: A Transsexual's Memoir by Everett Maroon, which I favorably reviewed last October. This tells the true story of a female to male transsexual in his own words.

Model Undercover: New York by Carina Axelsson

Title: Model Undercover: New York
Author: Carina Axelsson
Publisher: Sourcebooks
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 book is often reward aplenty!

I have to say up front that I'm not a fan of fashion stories or modeling stories because I detest the fashion and modeling world. Never has there been - not even including Hollywood and TV, a more self-centered, self-obsessed, pretentious and shallow enterprise as these. I despise those who spend thousands upon clothes and accessories when there are sick and starving children throughout the world, but fiction is not the same as the real world, and once in a while I've found a story that's interesting, and which doesn't take itself too seriously. It's those rare few which keep me cautiously coming back looking for another one! This novel turned out to be such a one.

The premise here is that Axelle, a sixteen-year-old girl, is both a model and a "sleuth" - but primarily (so she keeps limply protesting) the latter. Why anyone thinks grown-ups will respond positively - or even politely - to a relentlessly inquisitive sixteen-year-old goes completely unexplained, but let's let that slide right on by: this is fiction, after all!

Having solved a puzzle in Paris (presumably in an earlier volume which I have not read), Axelle now believes she's a brilliant detective and can solve anything, which is why she's just arrived in New York City. An extremely valuable black diamond has been stolen during a modeling shoot, and she's supposed to discover who took it. Carbonado diamonds are rare, and are thought to be formed - unlike other diamonds - in stellar explosions, so they are really intriguing - to me at least.

In amongst slurs aimed at London (referenced constantly in a rather snobbish way, but paradoxically run-down in comparisons with NYC) and at vegan cuisine, we discover that Carbonado (black) diamonds (which do actually exist)are supposedly almost impossible to cut without incurring serious damage. They are harder than other diamonds, but this doesn't necessarily mean they will shatter if you cut them. Since this particular one - the Black Amelia (named after one of its owners, who was Amelia - not black!) - is so very distinctive, the thief is going to have a hard time getting rid of it, so perhaps the theft wasn't because of the value per se of the diamond, but because the thief had a grudge against the owner, or was intent upon blackmail.

There were no security guards at the shoot (idiots!) because the owner is a friend of the editor of the fashion magazine, and the editor is evidently too stupid to hire her own security. The shoot was closed and limited to only a handful of people, all of whom were really successful in their fields, so the motive looks a lot less like petty theft, as it were, and a lot more like revenge or blackmail. Cassandra, aka Cazzie, the British editor of Chic fashion magazine, idiotically fails to notify the police (they don't want bad publicity!) and she's the only one who knows that Axelle is here primarily as a detective, not as a model.

So the author seems to have everything locked-up to explain these oddball circumstances, but there's one problem: Cassandra, aka Cazzie, is receiving texts from someone who appears to have the diamond. So why all the cogitating on Axelle's part about motive? Clearly this is the motive - to taunt and embarrass Cazzie for some reason. What makes less sense right here is that they now have someone the police could conceivably track down yet not once do they consider bringing them in. This made no sense to me. It's also weird that the texts don't start rolling in until Axelle is on the scene, isn't it?

The text-taunter tells Cazzie that there will be three riddles which she must solve or she won't see the diamond again. Interestingly, Cazzie is able to respond this time - she wasn't before - and the taunter tells her that she's pissed him/her off, so the first riddle will be delayed. The taunter never used the word 'diamond' to begin with, instead talking about 'treasure', so I began to suspect that it was entirely possible that this was unconnected with the theft of the diamond. That would have been a nice red-herring, but no - the text-taunter uses it later - after Cazzie has used it. It was at that point that I wondered: is Cazzie doing this all by herself?

Axelle gets an email which she thinks is from the same source as the texting - this warns her to butt out. I suspected that this came from Sebastian, an insufferably over-protective out-of-favor boyfriend of Axelle's, but that was just a wild guess, and it was wrong. Sebastian is a jerk and I didn't like him, even given that Axelle is flying-off-the-handle over him. The fact that she's cluelessly wrong about him is another irony. The detective - clueless?!

I have to say I find all foreign characters annoying when they're depicted as speaking perfect English yet nonetheless are reduced to interspersing it with words or phrases from their native tongue. Thus we get Miriam the maid peppering her dialog with French, which is not only pretentious, it was really annoying. If you can't depict a foreign character without being forced to make them spew a brew of Franglish or whatever language combo, then make your character English. Otherwise find a way to depict their foreign nature by doing work on the character-building instead of taking the lazy way out. Please? Just a thought.

The weird thing is that while Axelle wisely tries to get Cazzie to stir-up the text-taunter in an effort to have him/her to give themselves away, when this is going on, Axelle fails completely to station herself next to one of the suspects to see if they're texting when the taunter responds. That's just plainly stupid. If she thinks it's one of a small group, then all she has to do is be close to each one in turn during one of these exchanges. In this manner, she could at least eliminate some - those who were not texting - even if she can't necessarily zero in on the actual perp right away. This doesn't speak strongly to her smarts, but then Axelle is only sixteen and not the most worldly of people despite all her claims to being widely traveled.

Without wanting to give anything away, I chose two people as the prime suspects quite early on in this story, and one of them soon seemed unlikely. The other one, it turned out, actually was the thief! If I can get it right when I'm typically lousy at that kind of thing, I suspect the villain was way too obvious!

Aside from that, the writing in general was not bad. There were one or two exceptions, such as where I read, "...the studio was shaped like an L. A curtain..." which was misleading, because it initially read - to me - like "LA curtain - as in Los Angeles curtain! It took me a second to realize what it actually was. It would have been nice had the author put the 'L' in single quotes, like I did just then, to clarify this.

The novel moved at a decent pace and was - refreshingly - very light on fashion and make-up, which I really appreciated! It was also pretty decently plotted (in general) with a nice twist here and there. It had rather shallow, but otherwise reasonably realistic characters, so despite some early misgivings about this I was, by the end, convinced that it was a worthy read. I can't pretend that I'm waiting breathlessly for a sequel, but you might be after you've read this one!

It Falls to Us by Tim Nolen

Title: It Falls to Us
Author: Tim Nolen
Publisher: Tim Nolen
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. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

Erratum:
P13 "Yeah, we'll you'll need…" should be "Yeah, well you'll need…"

I don’t do covers because this blog is about writing and writers have little or nothing to do with the cover (unless they self-publish). Covers are all about misdirection, fluff, and advertising and generally have nothing to do with the story. In this case, the only reason I found the cover interesting was that the design of the silhouetted superhero's chest looks like a face - the two white roundels on the upper pectorals look like eyes, the straight vertical line dividing the pecs looks like a nose, the rounded lower portions of the pecs look like cheeks or jowls, and the cape billowing away to the right (as we look at the image) looks like long, flowing hair! Fluff.

This novel is 47 chapters in 114 pages which means really short chapters, especially since the text is pretty much double-spaced. It's a very short novel - perhaps even a novella (I don’t know the word count) - but then it’s part of the inevitable series, the whole point of which is to keep spinning the story out as long as possible. I should say up front that I don’t do series unless they're exceptional, and few are. I am not planning on following this one.

The novel doesn’t have a prologue - which I never read anyway. Instead, the author wisely put the prologue - where the old guard superheroes meet their come-uppance - into chapter one. See? It can be done, folks! Tim Nolen proved it!

This first chapter is trope and clichéd superhero stuff, which I was willing to put up with in the hope that the new generation in the following chapters would have something different and original to offer. They didn’t. It was just more of the same. I ran into a small problem on page three where I read, "…rabbit punched her in the face…" A 'rabbit punch' is a blow to the neck - so it’s impossible by definition to rabbit punch someone in the face! Oh well….

In the very next paragraph the author confuses smoke with darkness - either that or the properties of a typical night vision image intensifier with the properties of a thermal imaging camera, by having someone with "night vision goggles" able to see through smoke, but let's let that slide by in its sentence fragment, because, in general, the writing wasn't too bad. There were however some real clunkers such as that on page 11, where I found this odd phrase describing part of a fight between younger generation hero 'Defiant' and super-villain 'The Wrecking Crew': "…sending Defiant sailing down the block, taking an enclosed bus stop with him. Defiant landed out into an intersection..." 'landed out into'? Fortunately most of it was good English.

One of the major problems with this for me was that it’s not a graphic novel, but it read like one. I didn’t see that as a point in its favor. Had it been accompanied by panels of images on each page, then it would have felt like it was much more in its element. It just felt wrong for a text novel because there's no real attempt at descriptive or detail writing here, nor is there any attempt at creating atmosphere. It’s all straight-forward depiction of fights between heroes and villains, conversations, and preparations for the next fight. There's no world-building going on here - no deeper context.

After Defiant comes up with a smart decision on how to take down Wrecking Crew, he carts him off to jail, where we learn that the jail has a nullifier device which cancels the villains' powers. I was immediately thinking: if this is the case, how come the cops don't simply use one out in the field to nullify the villains' powers and arrest them? Why do we need superheroes? How come the villains don’t have one to use against the superheroes? Apparently the reason for this is that there is only the one and it’s huge - buried in the ground under the six cells it powers.

There was one incident which I felt was rather racist, which is where some thugs threaten a character named Veronica, and Defiant comes to her rescue. This is yet another instance of a girl needing rescue by a guy, but that wasn't even the worst part of it. The thugs were given dialog that sounded like a white person's ill-considered attempt at 'Ebonics' - thereby identifying the thugs as black. I don't know if this was the intention or not, but the implied association of 'black' with 'thug' wasn't appreciated. I can't speak to whether the entire cast of this story (apart from aforementioned thugs) was white, because there really was very little description of anything.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the major villain's name was Blackheart! He is the one who negates the four main superheroes at the start, but he reminded me of Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers movies! He just didn’t seem like a real villain - more like a caricature. I made it to fifty percent of the way through this book before I ditched it. It just wasn't interesting enough to keep pushing on, not when there are so many other books out there which I know will pull me in and hold my attention. I can’t rate this as a worthy read.

The Siren and the Sword by Cecilia Tan

Title: The Siren and the Sword
Author: Cecilia Tan
Publisher: Riverdale Avenue Books
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 book is often reward aplenty!

Erratum:
p47 "…then la down…" should be "…then lay down.."

This novel is a huge rip-off of the Harry Potter stories (and the author admits it - kinda!). It's book one of the Magic University series, because one novel is never enough any more in the YA world. There was a prologue which I skipped as I always do. If the writer doesn’t consider it important enough to put into chapter one or later, then it’s not important enough for me to waste my time reading it. I've followed this philosophy consistently and I've never come across a novel (including this one) where I've had to go back and read the prologue because I felt I missed something. QED.

The novel is about main character Kyle's integration into magic college, his making of friends, and his resolving the issue of who is the siren who haunts the college library, but I use the word "story" very loosely because there really isn't one. What there is, is really thin and not nourishing at all. There's nothing new, original, or even interesting here, unless all you want is a cheap non-romance and some raunchy sex (Celia Tan is primarily a writer of erotica). That isn't enough for me.

There are no interesting characters here: no one who stands out, or who registers as engaging or fun, or admirable. There's no villain as such, and there's really no attempt whatsoever at world-building, so we're treated to a tale that's essentially just a series of sketches or vignettes rather than a real story.

The best thing about his novel is that it’s not told in first person PoV - the most self-centered, pretentious, and inauthentic of writing styles. I commend the author for that, but the rest is pretty much boiler-plate Harry Potter. Kyle Wadsworth is in the trope position of starting his first day at a new and surprisingly unexpected school. He's an orphan boy who isn’t wanted at home, who suddenly finds out that he's magical, and sees 'new school' as synonymous with 'new home'.

The only real difference is that Kyle is eighteen and starting college instead of just launching into a middle and high school education. You might want to make a note that there's a strong and very prevalent sexual content in this novel - which definitely wasn't in Harry Potter and which is much more graphic than you usually find in YA stories. That didn't bother me, and in some ways it was quite well done, but I never trusted it for some reason, and given how the story turned out in the end, it made everything that went before seem farcical and inauthentic.

We're quickly introduced to Jess, who's a stand-in for Ginny Weasley (after a fashion), but who has nowhere near the power which Ginny had. Next we meet Alex, who is pretty much Ron Weasley, and we meet Lindy, who is a clone of Hermione Granger, right down to her being born of non-magical parents and having wild hair. Not only is Kyle magical, but he's a special magical person - just like Harry Potter - and there's a prophecy about him. And just like Hogwarts, there are four school houses which follow the four suits of (tarot) cards:

• Camella (Latin for a bowl or a cup
• Gladius (Latin for a short sword - the primary fighting instrument of the Roman legions)
• Nummus (the Latin term for copper coins)
• Scipionis means that which belongs to Scipio (who was a Roman general), but it also means a rod or a staff

Just like Harry, Kyle is placed into one of these houses by magical means. Unlike Harry, he gets Gladius, which isn't the one he wanted. Like Harry, his dorm room is way up in the top of a tower above the common room. Oh! And there's even an underground chamber. This one isn't hidden, although it probably contains secrets.

Unlike Harry, Kyle has no problem whatsoever completely swallowing everything he's told - including, of course, the revelation that there are magical and non-magical people. None of this freaks him out, or even imbues him with a modicum of skepticism. He immediately and completely believes it all. I didn't like Kyle.

There's a really funny instance of cluelessness from Jess when the two of them 'magically' hook up and go out to eat. Jess claims she had a prophetic dream of meeting a man at a carnavale. That dream has never come true, so why on Earth is she claiming it was prophetic? Just because she remembers it? Lol! This struck me as completely nonsensical. I didn't like Jess.

Suddenly on their way to get pizza, her eyes look like deep pools to Kyle, and now the two of them are no longer hungry but horny! Once again we have a relationship in a YA novel which is all about looks, skin deep, carnality - and nothing to do with actually getting to know and value - or even like - a person. It's sad that this was written by a woman.

The classes Kyle is assigned make no sense. He's assigned a class on poetry! Why? Isn’t he supposed to be training to be some kind of a magician? He's a late starter (how that's so when he's just applying to the college is a complete mystery - students don’t normally apply to start when it's already two weeks after the semester begins) - but if he's late as we're told, and magically clueless, as we're told, then why isn't he being assigned some intensive introductory courses? There's no explanation for this.

At one point, we meet Kyle sitting outside a building with gryphons at the door (gryphon-door get it?!) and our hero is so clueless that he can’t think of a single thing to say about a TS Eliot poem. He's not the sharpest sword in the house is he? Fortunately this is where his magical powers come in, and he breezes the class. Apparent his magical power is understanding poetry.... Excuse me?

Next we're having broomstick races and someone is injured. I wonder where I read that before? Keep an eye on the person who gets injured - he fades from view in the story, and then comes roaring back completely out of the blue (and making no sense whatsoever plot-wise) towards the end.

Once again on page 69 (how appropriate) we get prettiness specified as the most important trait in a woman. Shame on Celia Tan. She also writes a conversation in which a nineteen-year-old uses the word "honey" as an endearment. Really? That struck me as highly unlikely. Which teens use that word any more? The author has Kyle talking about being in love with Jess when they hardly know each other, and when the only thing they evidently have in common is sex. It made me lose respect for Kyle that he "fell in love" with someone as shallow, one-dimensional, and cardboard as Jess.

The author does make an effort to pull it out of the fire in the second half, and things began to get a bit more readable with some unexpected twists and turns, but in the end, this wasn't a good story. It was too flimsy and lacking in any real substance. The characters were readily forgettable. The novel had far too little to offer. it had nothing new, and I can't generate any enthusiasm for reading a whole series like this. I barely managed to talk myself into finishing this and would not have done so were it not so short.

The Sham by Ellen Allen

Title: The Sham
Author: Ellen Allen
Publisher: BookBaby
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
p122 "...Mary Poppins Stylie..." should be "...Mary Poppins Style..."
p172 "-Whose 'they', Jack?" should be "-Who's 'they', Jack?" or better, "-Who're 'they', Jack?"

Nothing is labeled in this novel - no chapter numbering, and so on. It's highly unconventional - which just goes to show that it can be done! I skipped what appeared to be the prologue because I don't ever do prologues, and I began at what appeared to be chapter one, which was titled, 'The argument or how "muzzling a sparrow" can kill a friendship'.

I didn't know this when I chose to read this for review, but the novel is set in Britain, which soon became apparent from certain word choices. Since I was raised in Britain, this was a bonus for me. It was really nice to read a YA story which was not set in the USA. There actually are other nations on this planet and I fear for American youth that some of them, fed a constant diet of US based children's and YA stories, may not actually realize this!

This is a first person PoV novel which I normally detest, but in this case it wasn't written obnoxiously, so the author escaped another one of my traps! Well done! Rebecca Pearce, Becky, Catherine Emms, and Kitty Jelfs are evidently the school bullies, but the twist is that one of them and the main protagonist, Emily Heath, are indirectly related. It's one of the rules in novels that no two characters ever have the same name, so it was nice to see that trope being given the finger here, but I have to say it was slightly confusing in the opening chapter because it was not at all clear to me initially that Becky and Rebecca were not the same person.

Nor was it clear which one was Emily's step-relation. It's explained later. It was obviously not Cath or Kitty, but I honestly got to wondering if Rebecca and Becky actually were the same person, yet perceived as two people by Emily for some reason. It actually also occurred to me that Emily might also be Rebecca and Becky, suffering from a weird personality disorder, but that seemed to be stretching things a bit too far! I later learned that all of them are in fact separate people.

I love the way the author enjoys the English language as exemplified by the dichotomy between the two meanings of 'cleave' which she defines for us (with an end note referencing dictionary.com yet!). This - not the reference, but the delight the author took in the contrary definitions of the same word - was one of several things which initially lent me confidence that here might be a worthy tale for me. I love authors who share the same relish for the language that I do.

The four girls are not only the school bullies, but also the out-of-school bullies, and the story begins with them bullying a ten-year-old boy whom they apparently abducted from a supermarket, and who's scared to death of them. This takes place on Xmas eve, in a children's play area, where Emily happens to be pushing her young sister Lily, on the swings.

It's cold and wet, already a miserable evening, and Emily is scared of these girls, but she finds the guts to at least confront their antics, if not their actual behavior pattern. Someone needs to, because their bullying is vicious and calculated. These girls behave as if they have nothing to lose, but fortunately Jack shows up to save the day. Rebecca and Becky are quite well-drawn; Cath and Kitty not so much. I have to say that it was really creepy the way Rebecca's every statement was phrased as a question, and no one remarked upon it. Actually this is a creepy story, and perfectly titled as you'll see when you reach the end...and all becomes clear.

I was warned by the author and in some reviews I read, that this is a pretty graphic novel for a novel that's actually not a graphic novel, and I phrase it that way purposefully, because although the abuse depicted in this first chapter is nasty and beyond what we normally find in YA books, it was tame compared with what I'd expected after all those warnings I received! Indeed it was tame as compared with what we see in many actual graphic novels.

Make no mistake - it's mean and evil, but it's not as bad as I'd been led to believe it would be. For me, the interesting issue here was why these warnings were even felt necessary. The age range for young adult literature is typically given as 14 - 24, which to me is too big of a range given the changes which occur to children as they mature from one age to the other, and end up as adults, but the upper end of that range should not have to be warned that there's a novel out there which depicts real life! Are our young adults so sheltered and coddled that this is a requirement? That's truly sad.

PG 13 movies typically show activities of the kind depicted here, so I don't really get what the issue is. Do people think YA novels should be fairy-tale like? Because we get way too many of those, and too many of those are awful. Clearly people who had issues with this writing have never seen a movie like To Sir, with Love which actually featured one incident reminiscent of one featured during this episode. I don't know what that movie was rated, but it's an ancient movie and I don't know of any scandal that was associated with it even back then, regarding inappropriateness of subject matter. Young adult readers need to tighten their sphincter.

There were some glitches in the writing (I'll give some examples), but in general this novel is very well written. No huge grammatical faux pas or spelling mistakes (unless you think British spelling is a mistake lol! - but the Brits had it first, remember?!). So here's the first: judgment was spelled as judgement on page 116, but I don't recall if that's acceptable in Britain.

There were one or two instances where I wondered if the wording sounded right, such as, on page 28: "...grabbed my hand. I took it willingly...". If a person grabs your hand, you're not in a position to take their hand, so this sounded odd to me. If it had read "...and I accepted it willingly..." or "...and I let him..." it would have sounded better.

I realize, of course, that these might be purely picky and persnickety personal preferences (great alliteration, huh?), but I would question the use of "sites" versus "sights" on page 42 (and again on page 123 and 126). There was also the use of 'eking it out' (page 151). I would have chosen 'sticking it out' since the phrase which is used just doesn't seem right to me. Another example is "He took the keys out of the engine" (page 159). Unless car design has dramatically changed in Britain since I lived there, the keys aren't in the engine but in the steering column! One last example that struck me: on pages 168-9 we read: "…Piggy wasn't on his way back in, pulling on his sweats." Emily was the one pulling on the sweats, but this made it seem like Piggy might be on his way back in pulling on his sweats!

I must confess to serious misgivings over Emily's treatment of her young sister - who is at one point in a pram (perambulator - a rather elaborate stroller) covered with blankets. So far so good, but it's dark, it's cold, we're told it's "pelting" with rain, yet instead of getting Lily home, Emily is romping around with Jack (yes, I'll get to him in a minute). Fortunately for poor Lily, the rain seems to disturbingly quickly morph to sleet and then snow. We are told at one point that Lily is toasty warm, but I found that hard to credit because we're not told that she has any waterproof cover tacked across the pram to keep the rain out, so we're left to assume that this cold shower is seeping into the blankets and percolating through to the child, yet this doesn't appear to concern Emily.

At one point Emily leaves Lily completely unattended - just for a short time, but nonetheless unattended - on the dark tow path by a river, while she goes off into the bushes with Jack to look at something he's obsessed with: a sign that's been appearing all over town "Igertay" in red letters. This is no excuse to leave a toddler unattended on a dark path in the pouring rain. It's irresponsible behavior for both of them. OTOH, people do behave irresponsibly, especially teenagers, so this isn't a problem with how the character is represented, but it was a serious impediment to me as a reader, actually liking that character. I didn't like Emily.

Now about "Jack". Yes. I have what almost amounts to an allergy over the use of the name 'Jack' for characters in YA stories. It's the most over-used and clichéd name ever, and it's frankly nauseating to read it any more. Can we not have a hero who isn't named Jack? Is every adventurous scallywag forced to have this name? Can we not have a sullen, deep, hair-in-his-eyes bad boy named something other than Jack? Please?

In the interest of full disclosure, I had vowed never to read another YA novel which boasts a main character named jack and I knew, going into this particular novel, that there was such a character. I did warn the author that this was a problem for me, but I promised that I would endeavor to overcome this almost insurmountable set-back.... I will try and deal with these characters, every man-jack of them! The truth is that I relented because I love the author's symmetrical name - with only one vowel difference between the two halves! (Really?!).

Emily lives with her family over a grocery shop that they run. Jack shows up much later that same day at the shop, which is open after midnight on Xmas eve. This seemed highly improbable to me, but not completely impossible, I guess. This is really where the story starts, because shortly after this, bodies start turning up - and they all seem to be part of that fearsome foursome with which Emily tangled on Xmas Eve. The main suspect is Jack!

The ending, I felt, would have been better had it the explanation been organically arrived at by someone, rather than being revealed in the way it was. The revelation scene didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The police did not behave, it seemed to me, as they would have in real life, but then we'd had it made quite clear prior to this, that they were incompetent, so maybe this did work!

Both Emily and Jack needed serious hospital treatment, which both of them seemed to brush off. This wasn't realistic to me. Personally I felt that if each of them had truly cared for the other, then they would have been far more concerned about each other's health and welfare than they were, particularly given Jack's condition.

Anyway, enough rambling and meandering asides. I don't do stars (as I like to make quite clear) because to me a novel is either worth reading or isn't. I can't rate a novel half worth reading, so every novel I read is either a five star or a one star (since zero stars isn't an option!). This one, to me, was a worthy read despite the issues I had, because overall it was inventive, it was original, it was strongly written, it had decent characters (if behaving improbably at times), and it had something intelligent to say and an intelligent way to say it, so I recommend it.

Tell Me My Name by Mary Fan

Title: Tell Me My Name
Author/Editor: Mary Fan
Publisher: Glass House Press
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 book is often reward aplenty!

Tell Me My Name sounds like it ought to be a really original title, but there are several similar titles on B&N, so be sure you pick the right one!

This novella starts out in a really intriguing fashion. A young girl - wonderfully not a trope or cliché girl, but a rather skinny, flat-chested young woman, dressed in a rather skimpy and thin dress which is tied behind her neck and which barely covers her front and not very much of her back, awakes to find herself trapped in a cell of ice walls within which metal bars are buried. There's a tiny window and no door, and she cannot even chip the ice, let alone melt it.

Her only visitors are apparently sorcerers, since they can make an opening in the ice (not in the metal bars) by magic, and one of them provides her with a glowing ball which warms her in her frozen prison. Her only hope is the young apprentice who accompanies them, and who was the reason she got the warming ball. He leaves her his robe and brings her food, and finally, something which triggers memories, evne though he risks punishment for showing her any kindness or even talking to her.

The girl's problem was that she cannot remember anything: not the reason she's there, not where she's from, not even her own name. She doesn’t even know what she looks like - except that she's skinny, and has long very pale hair, and is perhaps young, as judged by the quality of her skin. As the time ticks by and she's tortured with sorcery every time she tries to recall something, some memories do seem to come back to her, but very sparingly. The head sorcerer seems to think she's evil incarnate, but she has no idea why, and he will not tell her. He seems afraid to speak to her.

This is a really short story at only fifty pages or so, but the text is closely spaced, so it felt like a longer read than it actually is. It's the first of a series - and so has a cliff-hanger ending, be warned. As it happens, I was quite intrigued by this. At first I thought it was a fairy story (i.e. a story about fairies), and I'm not a big fan of those, but it's not a fairy story! So because it was well written, and because it left me interested, and even though it was way too short, I am left in a mood to recommend this one.

The Book of Ivy by Amy Engel

Title: The Book of Ivy
Author/Editor: Amy Engel
Publisher: Entangled
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 book is reward aplenty!

I have to say, right up front, that this novel was a real roller-coaster ride, and not in a good way. I had so many issues with it, and I was thinking right up until about the half-way point that I wasn't going to finish it, let alone rate it positively, but I managed to read it all the way through to its inevitable cliff-hanger finale, and in the end I decided it was a worthy read! Weird huh?

Maybe it's my co-dependent relationship with Entangled, or maybe I was bemused by the fact that the author's name, Amy Engel is vaguely like an anagram of Entangled. Maybe it's because I have an adorable niece named Amy, or because my favorite nurse was named Amy. but there it is. And yes, though neither the front cover nor the back-cover blurb will tell you this, it's book one of a series. Judging by current YA trends, I'm guessing it's going to be a trilogy.

Here's the real mystery: why do they publish a "Praise for..." page in an ebook? In a print book I can see some theoretical merit if you lift it off the shelf at the library, or in a bookstore (are there still bookstores?), you can read what people you don't know, have never met, and have no means by which to gage their opinion, thought about this novel. It doesn't work with me, but maybe it works for others. But in an ebook? You already have the book. You already bought it based on the blurb or the recommendation of someone you do know and trust, so pray tell me what exactly is the point of a recommendation for a book you already own? I have no idea.

Here's something else I have no idea about: what's the deal with the cover image? I've now read this book, and still I have no idea what the image on the cover is supposed to represent. There is no knife involved in any way in the plot to murder Bishop Lattimer, so why the knife?! The locale in this story is a small town. There are no skyscrapers. I don't do covers because my blog is all about writing, not strutting and preening, and I understand that writers don't get any real say in their cover (unless they self-publish). Normally I pay little attention to them, but once in a while one comes along and demands a whisky-foxtrot-tango expression of complete disbelief. Such a one is this. Enjoy!

OK, enough rambling. So what's it all about, Amy? The basis of this story is the same one as is employed in employed in Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge, where Nyx has to kill her newly betrothed: a demon who rules the land. She fails to carry it out, too, but she at least tries initially. Ivy doesn't even progress that far.

The Book of Ivy is also really Matched (with which I'm familiar, but haven't read). Ivy Westfall's match is Bishop Lattimer, who is not actually a bishop, but then Ivy isn't actually a plant...! There are two sides (this is of a town, not a nation or a continent: Westfall and Eastglen), but there are two sides: the winners and the losers. The losers have to offer up their daughters to the sons of the winners for brides, and it's Ivy's turn to be offered up, but she has an agenda.

So far so good, but I kept running into minor irritations, which if they are few and far between don't bother me much. It's when there are too many of them that the novel has to really deliver to get me to keep reading it and not give up in sheer frustration. The book of Ivy came very close! I mean there are the usual irritations which I hardly even notice any more: like the use of "bicep" when it's "biceps". I don't think this author "stepped foot" into that one, but she did use "two choices" when it's really one choice between two options. One amusing issue was that the town had a summer camp! This tiny town sent kids to summer camp? Where? Round the corner? In the meadow in the back yard? This made no sense, but it was as amusing as hell.

Those were nowhere near as bad as things which made me stop and think about how "X" managed to exist in Ivy's world where 'X' represents one of a slightly bewildering variety of things. So let's talk about that. In 2022, there was a global nuclear war, where EMPs apparently rendered all electrical devices, including motor vehicles, useless. So in this novel, we're conveniently back in Victorian times, yet Ivy seems to have everything she needs: electricity, clean running water, a shower, soap, and so on. Apparently no one was left alive who could do anything to fix the cars, but they fixed everything else?

After the nuclear war, Ivy's grandfather started a new town in Missouri. Apparently there was nothing there worth bombing and nuclear fallout miraculously didn't reach there! This is the town over which the war with the Lattimer faction was fought. Why the Westfalls didn't simply leave after they lost goes unexplained. What the war was actually fought over goes largely unexplained.

What I don't get is how solar panels are working just fine, but nothing else electrical seems to be! It makes no sense. People wear jeans and t-shirts presumably made from the cotton they grow, but there's no word on who makes them or how. They have candles and meat and milk and butter (and guns), but the population is only supposed to be some 8,000 (as far as I could tell), and the entire town is ringed by a fence, so where are the crops grown, and by whom? Where are they raising the livestock? Who is making all these cool things they still have? Who generates the electricity and how? None of this is explained. The world-building in Ivy's world is awful.

Maybe this will all be explained in one of the sequels, but I didn't really get why this was set in the future instead of back in the nineteenth century. The very same story (with some minor adjustments for technology) could have been told just as well in 1880. Or 1780. It's not consistent, either, as the solar panel issue revealed. Another example of this is that there's talk of testing something for fingerprints. Now fingerprinting has been around a lot longer than modern technology (in fact a lot longer than most people would guess), and it was started down the path to modern formalization back in 1880, but in a town of some 8,000 random survivors, would there really be anyone who could read fingerprints and make comparisons competently enough to identify a perp? It's questionable at best.

It was really quite annoying that every personal color was described in terms of food: "toffee-haired" (ugh!), "brown sugar" freckles, "chocolate eyes and dark chestnut hair", "coffee-brown strands" of hair, "cocoa-colored skin". It became tedious after a while and then actually really amusing.

I also had a problem with how this society randomly married-off people. They were supposed to be "matched", but clearly the system wasn't working. Any society which pursued this bizarre scheme would be doomed to failure, which tells me right up front that these people are lead by morons. In the real world, in the past, the winners typically raped the daughters of the losers, and this isn't any different. Kings did seek to marry the daughters of their vanquished foes to 'cement an alliance', but the marriage was forgotten after a couple of generations, and the alliances died with the memory, leading to another war. It's pointless.

That's the story here, but it's only been going on for a couple of generations, and it makes no sense, because it's not a one-way street. Not only do the males from the winning side marry the females from the losing side, the same thing happens in reverse, so how is this a punishment for the losers and a benefit for the winners? I don't know, but it's what we're expected to believe!

There's no explanation, either, for how this society not only retrogressed technologically, but also socially, so that women now are now viewed, in only two generations, as nothing but baby machines, with no life of their own, nor is it explained how come there are so many sixteen-year-olds available for marrying off this year, given how hard life is and how small the town is.

As I said, Ivy's "mission" is to kill Bishop. Why, we're not immediately told, but at least a part of it is in revenge for his father's murder (so we're told) of her mother. We know that she won't do it, because this is an Entangled romance and they have to fall in love, but it's not at all clear why she doesn't simply go ahead that first night and take him out. It's not until almost page fifty that we learn that there's a three month 'window' during which this mission must be completed. Obviously the real reason for this is solely so that the two of them can fall in love so she won't kill him, but it's never satisfactorily explained why there's this delay, only that irreversible and unspecified steps are now being taken and she cannot fail.

I was thinking it would have made more sense had her mission been to kill the president, Bishop's dad, but no, it's Bishop. Evidently the president will also be 'taken care of'. This initially made even less sense when she thinks there's a problem after she discovers that they're not going to live in the presidential mansion, but in a cozy little home for just the two of them. It's not until, again, around page fifty that we learn that she needs to be in the presidential mansion because there's something there she must find. It would have been nice to have known this a little earlier so the story made more sense and flowed better. I don't like mystery for no other reason than being mysterious.

So Bishop predictably doesn't touch her that first night - he sleeps on the couch offering no explanation for his unexpected and (supposedly) out-of-keeping behavior. This seems to throw a huge wrench in the works for Ivy - again, no reason specified. Bishop is predictably and tediously the trope male lead: tall, muscled, good looking, green-eyed, and white. No problem there, is there? Inevitably there's the "awkward' scene where she espies him half naked and despite the fact that she's supposedly hates him, she's all a-flutter and having hot flashes. It's pathetic how weak Ivy truly is at this point. This was actually about the time where I almost ditched this novel and moved on to something else. Fortunately, it got a lot better after that!

I was curious as to why there was pretty much zero curiosity amongst the people of the town as to what exactly was happening outside the town walls (which are literal walls of steel designed to keep out intruders and beyond which to banish offenders from the town). In this regard, it's very much like Erin Bowman's sad trilogy starting with Taken, but at least Bowman as the townspeople take an interest in the possibility of something going on outside the walls. Nothing like that happens in this novel, which seemed highly unlikely to me. The town's kids alone would have had dares about going outside the walls, and there would be, in two generations, a hoard of people contacting them from outside. None of this is satisfactorily addressed. Again, the world-building is lacking.

I found it really disturbing that Ivy finds Barbie dolls to be the "point of perfection" when they're actually anorexic and plastic in more ways than one. That speaks volumes about how shallow she is and betrays every word she utters and every thought she supposedly harbors with regard to feminist ideals. I guess even in the future, a woman's image of herself is grotesquely annexed and distorted by capitalistic designs on what a woman should be, promulgated largely by men. It doesn't help that the society in this novel has pretty much abolished women's rights - no word on how that ever got put in place, but all of this is strongly indicative of Ivy's lack of spine.

Chapter nine makes no sense at all. Evidently we enter some kind of a time warp. Ivy and Bishop take a walk on Saturday. He's taking her for a picnic. They get up at eight and set off, and have hardly walked anywhere when we learn that the sun is "high in the sky". When they arrive at their destination after walking only for a short time, Ivy is talking about the midday sun. It took them four hours to get there??? Weird! After they jump into the pond a couple of times from a bluff, Ivy reflects that "This has been one of the most carefree afternoons of my life"! Wait, it was midday, they jump into the pond twice, and suddenly the afternoon's gone and she's reflecting upon what a fun time it's been? Where is all this time going?! Weird!

Ivy has a passion for books bestowed upon her by the author in this novel. The book trope is a really lazy method employed by an author to make a character - usually a female - seem smart and deep, but in this novel, Ivy's every action betrays that image. She isn't very smart, and she isn't very wise, and she is shallow. Fortunately, this improves, otherwise I never would have been able to complete this novel. I thoroughly detest weak female main characters if they persist in being weak throughout the story.

So what turned it around for me? Ivy changed. She behaved in a way I did not expect and showed that she had become strong and self-determined. It took way too long to get there, but it did happen! That, I admired, and it's really the sole reason I'm rating this positively despite the numerous issues I had with the story, the plot, and the sad trope YA romance. Even that worked out better than I'd feared when I reached that abysmally clichéd bare, muscled,chest scene!

So, surprisingly, and after all's griped and done, I consider this a worthy read! That doesn't mean I want to read volume two, because I can already tell exactly what's going to happen there!

Young Houdini: The Magician's Fire by Simon Nicholson

Title: Young Houdini: The Magician's Fire
Author/Editor: Simon Nicholson
Publisher: Sourcebooks
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. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

This young-adult novel sounded really appealing until I began reading it, and then the excitement drained away disturbingly quickly. It's clearly modeled heavily on Harry Potter (the name 'Harry" almost literally starts every other chapter), and he has two assistants: Artie, who stands in for Ron Weasley, and Billie, who stands in for Hermione Granger. The problem is that there's no magic here.

This story is very highly fictionalized and bears no relationship whatsoever to the real Harry Houdini. The original was named Erik Weisz, and didn't routinely call himself Harry until he was significantly older than the boy in this story. The closest he came to it was his nickname, 'Ehrie'. He was the son of a Hungarian rabbi, and he migrated from Europe with his family, eventually winding up in New York City. He began his career as a magician, migrating to escape tricks somewhat later.

The depiction at the beginning of this story of him escaping chains in the face of an oncoming train is not only inaccurate, it's an appalling idea to set before young, impressionable children. I sincerely hope no kid reads this book and decides to emulate this dangerous stunt.

The main story features the disappearance of a magician who is also a friend and mentor to "Harry". This is tame and limp stuff, which may or may not thrill the young children for whom this is written, but it was boring to me, so I never finished the novel. It is, however, short, so it has that going for it. I can't recommend this, however.

House of Hollows by Daniel Algara

Title: House of Hollows
Author: Daniel Algara
Publisher: BookBaby
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 the author. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

Errata:
p37 "...gaze upone..." should be "...gaze upon..."
p61 "...it looks like job is yours..." should be "...it looks like the job is yours...' or maybe "...it looks like my job is yours..."
p66 and p126 use of language such as "...goddamn liar..." - what age range is this book aimed at? Bad language might dissuade some from reading it.
p69 use of 'enormous' twice in the same line might not be wise, but I loved "coruscated off the blade" on the same page!
p119 "Him and I..." should be "He and I..."
p110 "...he didn't built it." should be "...he didn't build it."
p122 "...redgaurds..." should be "...redguards..."
P128 "...her and Dannin..." should be "...she and Dannin..."

Let me say up front as a disclaimer, that I'm really picky about my magic and fantasy stories. Unless they're done really well, I tend to find myself disliking them, and worse, picking holes in the stories and finding things to complain about. The way to avoid this with me is to engage me with really good characters, and a series of interesting events. If I'm distracted like that, I tend not to have any 'free time' for finding fault in a story - or I will take the author's side and gloss over the faults because the story is so engrossing. A story does not have to be perfect, or perfectly written, it just has to entertain me! This one fell rather short of that.

William Mundi is a young teenager living with his dad. He's an artist who has been obsessively sheltered by his father for reasons which were never explained to him, so his biggest mistake is to get his face in the paper for winning an art contest. This draws unwanted attention which leads to the death of his father, and his need to flee his home and enter a parallel world. William is an Arant, son of an Arant, which is one of a group of people charged with maintaining the realms - of which Earth is one. Arants can evidently create these realms, but the knowledge of how to do it seems to have been lost.

William had undergone some inadequate and last-minute training from his father before he died and William fled with an old family friend, but he is nowhere near prepared for this adventure, and he is even less prepared for the discovery that he's supposed to be the chosen one who will rule the realms and repair all the ills of the past.

Before long, William is on the run with Sahriya, the temporary council leader, and an assortment of others. The man who killed his father, Vannis, is after them, wanting to get his hands on The Book of the Maker, which William's father has entrusted into William's keeping. Vannis has tricked his way into a position of power, and only this book can solidify his rule. The only recourse William has is to disappear in the realms, and to try and figure out how to wield the power which seems to be his, before Vannis can take that power from him.

I had a few problems with this novel and I'm forced to reluctantly conclude that it's not ready for prime time yet - but it could be with some work. My first problem is that I am not a lover of trope - because it's trope! I understand that there are certain rules to writing any specific genre of fiction, but I'm someone who is appreciative when those rules are broken - which can be done with impunity, but only if it's done smartly.

There is a host of well-known fantasy/hero tropes:

• A youthful teen (main character - mc) is raised in ignorance of his/her power and origin.
• The reason cited for this enforced ignorance is typically poor.
• The reason cited for this enforced ignorance is typically for 'protection' of the mc.
• The mc is usually missing one or both parents and may be raised by an uncle, aunt, or grandparents.
• The mc discovers their own origin/power by accident...
OR
• ...this knowledge is forced upon them by a change in circumstance.
• Before they're ready, the mc is typically thrust into situations they cannot handle.
• The mc initially fails and is dejected.
• The mc lacks confidence, may run away or hide, but eventually regains confidence and triumphs.
• The stakes are usually the welfare of the entire land/planet/humanity
• Triumph is often achieved through the mc winging it or going against rules/convention.
• The evil villain is usually a stereotypical cardboard cut-out.
• The evil villain's plans typically make no sense whatsoever, usually involving anarchy, carnage, and chaos.
• Despite the villain having the mc in his power on one or more occasions, he never kills him, and for no good reason.
• The villain is weirdly respectful to the mc.
• There's usually a love interest which is poorly written.
• The love interest is too-often one-dimensional.
• "Love" blossoms way too fast to be realistic.
• The love interest usually has no initial interest in, or is antagonistic towards, the mc.

This highlights a few of the most common tropes, and The House of Hollows hits many of them. Tropes aren't a guaranteed evil in a story. Many readers love the tropes even though they may voice complaints about them. Some readers may even complain if tropes are not followed. People who enjoy tropes a great deal and want your common-or-garden fantasy will more than likely enjoy this novel.

Personally, I can enjoy tropes if they're done really well, and especially if they have twists, but I enjoy stories more which go against trope, and which eschew cliché. For me, The House of Hollows has too much adherence to trope, and it moves too slowly. There are some admirable action sequences, along with some interesting and fun events, but not enough to retain my abiding attention. There seems to be a lot of pointless wandering around without any of it moving the story forwards.

We know at some point that William is going to come into his own and triumph, but we see precious little of his growth from what he was to what he must become. I'm not someone who insists that every main character in every story must show growth. There are good stories which derive their power from a character who doesn't change, but clearly in this case, there has to be growth and change, and I did not see enough of it.

I think part of the problem is that this novel seems designed to be the start of a series, which to me means that it isn't a book, but an episode, and those are really dissatisfying to me. TV can get away with episodes because there's typically only a week until the next one comes along. It's different with books. Cliff-hanger endings are fine if you come into a series when it's completed or nearly so, and you can read all of the episodes one after another, but to have to wait a year or more for the next volume to come out isn't my favorite idea of how to spend my time, and when the new book comes out, I've pretty much forgotten the minutiae of what happened in the last volume, so starting a new one is problematical.

I liked the character, William, and how he was depicted in the beginning. While I would have preferred to see him slowly garnering insights and finding his feet, my problem with him was that, most of the time, he seems to be bumbling along going nowhere, and this wasn't entertaining for me. Some of the time I really didn't get what was happening in the story or why. It didn't seem to make much sense or to logically progress, but I confess that this may have been more a case of my eyes glazing over somewhat because I wasn't engaged, than it was a technical fault with the novel.

At the beginning of the story when William first enters the core realm, he's warned sternly not to discuss the other realms with anyone on pain of punishment. That is, he cannot discuss his own realm with anyone in the core, nor the core with anyone from any of the other realms, yet he freely discusses it with Sahriya, the one who warned him of this rule, and then nothing is said about it! We're given no real reason why such discussions are banned.

There are a lot of long conversations where nothing happens except character 'A' speaks, then character 'B', then character 'A' again, and so on, with very little in between to break it up. I felt these would have been better had we seen some activity to punctuate such a long exchange. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic, and it certainly shouldn't be anything mindless, put in purely for the sake of breaking-up a long conversation, but I felt several times that something would have helped here.

An example of this is on p183 where some two-thirds of the page is occupied by a conversation with no "punctuation", and by that I mean that there's nothing to indicate who is speaking, or to indicate the speaker's state of mind or what they're doing. A word or two about facial expressions and gestures might have made this easier to follow and assimilate.

For example at one point, Yuri says, "I don't want to come back...". I think it might have been nice to have book-ended that line of speech with something like, maybe: Yuri sneered and said, "I don't want to come back..." His voice dripped with conviction. Or later where he says, "You wouldn't understand what I've become" could maybe read something like: Yuri coughed out a dismissive laugh. "You wouldn't understand what I've become," he said softly. Obviously it's up to the writer to decide how to write their own novel, but it would have engaged me more had the conversations been more animated in this way.

One big issue I had was that I felt like this story was all about people, and not at all about places, because we got a lot of people and their interactions, but very little atmosphere and place - very little world-building, which seemed strange to me because world-building is precisely what this novel is about! I would have loved to have seen more of that - more of what happens and how it happens when a realm is created, and more of the nitty gritty in describing places, but we're rather short-changed there because all we get is a picture, quite literally, representing a realm, and suddenly the realm is there. This seemed like an 'ignore the man behind the curtain' kind of an 'explanation' and it wasn't satisfying to me.

On the technical side, I found that the formatting was slightly odd. There were no margins in the novel, and while I do honestly appreciate authors who don't massacre trees (obviously in ebooks it doesn't matter, but if you're aiming at the print market, some respect for trees is always appreciated), there does needs to be some margin space!

So overall, the story isn't out-and-out bad, it's just not for me. I think it has a lot of potential, and a series based on this is definitely doable, but the writing seems like it could be a lot tighter, and the ending was unsatisfying for me. As I said, this appears to be intended as the start of a series, but without any real resolution at the end of this volume, it felt unfinished and un-enjoyable.

Strangelets by Michelle Gagnon

Title: Strangelets
Author: Michelle Gagnon
Publisher: Soho Press
Rating: WARTY!

Read pathetically by Rebecca Gibel

Normal nuclear matter has two quarks, but a strangelet has three. Strangelets are normally very unstable meaning, in this case, that they're not dangerous because they do not last long enough to become so, but it's been hypothesized that large strangelets could form, and consume significant amounts of matter by converting it to strange matter in a chain reaction.

None of that helps Gagnon's story, and this is a story which needed all the help it could get. Every sentence the reader reads irritated me because each sentence sounded glum or desperate and resigned. It's really annoying to listen to the monotonic and repetitive cadence.

The story is very much reminiscent of the 1997 movie Cube, but boring. The blurb on the back cover is completely misleading. It claims: "...three strangers should have died at the exact same moment..." but the truth is that they didn't die at the exact same moment - they didn't even look like they were going to.

The audio book version of the blurb gives the impression that there are only three of them, but in fact there are six, three boys and three girls, all in their teens. Sophie is the first one we meet, and she is dying of cancer in a hospice in California. Next we meet is Declan in Galway, Ireland, who is in danger of being shot by a thug he's crossed. Anat is in Israel trying to navigate a tunnel between the Gaza strip and Egypt to meet her Arab boyfriend.

All three of them wind-up in a building which has no windows, although it has curtains, and no exit, although it has doors. There they meet each other and three more teens, Zain, Yoshi, and Nico. Each of them is from a different nation and none of them have any idea how they got there. They all come form the same time period.

Despite the fact that these people aren't in a hospital, and it's patently obvious they're not, they keep on behaving as though it is! This was ridiculous. It was at this point that I realized that this story was going to drag majorly, because we went through track after track in which literally nothing happened.

It took forever for the two smallest: Yoshi (whose voice was annoying in the extreme as read by Rebecca Gibel) and Zain (whose voice was almost as annoying as Yoshi's), to get to the pit where they were volunteered to go through the clichéd air vent system and break out. So we have yet another prison in which the air-vents are the obvious escape route to everyone except the people who build and run the prison.

During this trip, Zain disappears, and no one ever goes looking for him. Indeed, for most of the story, no one seems to give a damn about what happened to him or to even wonder about it. They don't miss him. They find their way out of the prison "hospital" and are apparently in New York State, because nothing can happen if it isn't in the USA. The problem is that it takes them almost forever to realize that something is seriously wrong with the world. I am not kidding, these people are hands-down the dumbest clucks that ever clucked a cluck in the whole hen-house.

They're also the most fundamentally uninteresting characters in any story I've read in a long time. I had not the slightest interest in any of them except Zain, and that was only as far as wondering what happened to him. Perhaps his disappearance is explained. I skipped so many tracks I admit I may well have missed it, but I don't honestly feel like I missed anything.

The gist of the story is that they are in the future after disaster has struck, and their way back is to flick a switch. Yep. That's it. A dumb, stupid, pointless waste of time is what this so-called novel was. You know, "novel" also means new and original, but this wasn't either, nor was it interesting or inventive. I mean really, who gives a quark?

Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck

Rating: WORTHY!

Richard Peck attended the same university that one of my older brothers did: the University of Exeter in Britain (the same university which JK Rowling attended), but I'd never heard of him until a review which I read mentioned this novel. I picked it up at the library, breezed through it in a few hours, and now I'm a Richard Peck fan! This saddens me because it makes me only too painfully aware of how many other authors there are out there - authors I would love to read if only I knew who they were - authors I will never read because I will never hear of them. Like I said - life is too short!

This novel shows up how badly written all-too-many YA novels are these days, wherein the girl has to have a male love interest or she can't function, or the story has to be overwrought or overdone, or to have a love triangle. There is, I'm sorry to say, a large number of female YA authors who could learn a huge amount from Richard Peck about how to create great, and strong, female YA characters, and how to build and portray relationships between boys and girls.

The novel is very well written, moves at a decent clip without being too slow or too fast, tells an amusing, slightly creepy, a little bit sad, and ultimately a very rewarding story. It's set in 1913/14, and the main protagonist is Blossom Culp, a self-possessed girl who comes from a dirt-poor background. The story begins with her thwarting a scheme she overheard discussed by local high school ruffians, to overturn all the (outdoor) toilets in the neigborhood. This venture alone is worth reading the book for. It's hilarious and inventive, and is what gets Blossom started on the story path.

Blossom's mother has "second-sight" - she's clairvoyant and has a reputation in town. She's helped the police solve a crime or two, but she's very hard on her daughter. Dad is nowhere in the picture. The most interaction they've had with him in several years is a postcard which he's had to have someone else address for him since he's illiterate, so there never is a message.

Let me say right here that I don't have any belief in the occult. I think it's all nonsense and fraud. There is no valid evidence whatsoever of anyone having any supernatural powers, or of any life after death, but I do love a good story which pretends that there is, and this was a classic example of such a story.

Blossom isn't considered to have her mother's power, but an event with a little child becoming hurt and Blossom seeing it in her mind and alerting the child's mother to the incident, leads to her having increasingly common visions, including the advent of World War One. She has to carry this horrible, horrible knowledge alone because she knows no one will believe her or try to prevent it were she to reveal it. The odd thing, though, is that she also has a vision of a massive ocean liner sinking, and a tragedy attached to it - a tragedy above and beyond the hundreds of frozen corpses which the Titanic strewed across the North Atlantic.

It's this issue which really takes over and propels this story, and it's so well written and so inventive that it keeps you right there all the way through. I've often seen reviewers berate a story because the character shows no growth, or doesn't change, and I frankly don't get that mentality. A story isn't about necessary change or growth. it's about interesting events (if it's a good one!) and interesting people. This is a case in point because while things do change around her, Blossom really doesn't change throughout this story. We learn more about who she is as we go, but there really isn't anything to her at the end - save for experience - that's significantly different from how she appeared at the beginning, yet this story was amazing!

There is another novel set in this same world, featuring a male interest of Blossom's, and Blossom herself, but the story is told from the boy's perspective. I am sure I will be reading more Richard Peck stories. I recommend that you read at least this one, which is one of two Richard Peck novels I've reviewed, both about strong female characters, and both set in the same era.