Girl Jacked by Christopher Greyson

Title: Girl Jacked
Author: Christopher Greyson
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

This is yet another tedious trope novel with a main character named Jack. Yep, I know I swore off these rather vehemently, but I still have some relics in my collection which I need to read - which explains why I'm trying to get this one off the list asap. On the bright side, the way it began, this novel did make me feel quite strongly that it probably wouldn't be long before I was DNF-ing this F-ing cliché.

So what's the problem with "Jack"? Well, only that it's the single most gut-wrenchingly and nauseatingly over-fricking-used cliché character name ever where the purported hero is supposed to be some sort of an adventurer or a scalawag. Seriously - are authors so blinkered and entrenched in deep muddy ruts that they can't get their heads out of their boxed-in asses and come up with something fresh, new, different? Evidently this one can't, and Jack isn't his only problem.

Jack is a cop and we meet him as he's called to a bar around midnight in response to a 10-10, which is generally taken to mean that a fight is in progress. There is no fight, but clichéd men described as 'lumberjacks' are getting rowdy and refusing to leave unless they get a drink. Jack quickly sorts them out. As they're leaving the parking lot, a colleague arrives as back-up. She's your clichéd buddy female cop named Kendra, and her only qualities are evidently that she's athletic and beautiful - despite a scar! Nothing else matters. No one cares if she's good at her job, loyal, has integrity, is smart, is tough, can handle herself, always has your back, is sweet, is crazy, is a softy, or what the hell else. No, she's a woman so the only important thing we ever need know about her is whether she's beautiful. Not cute. Not pretty. Not average. Not good-looking, but beautiful. Got that? Embrace it and internalize it. I'm already really down on this novel at this point, but it gets worse.

Jack arrives back at his apartment - where he's having your standard trope clichéd problems, to find a young naked chick there who is the (foster) sister of his requisite dead black Iraq military BFF. Trope trope trope. And trope. This "kid" as he condescendingly refers to her, is here to report the disappearance of Jack's other BFF, Michelle, who went off to college on a scholarship, and then promptly disappeared.

When we hit chapter four and the action was suspended for a reminisce back to Iraq, I ditched this. I've never read a novel before where the boredom was interrupted to provide something even more boring! I simply wasn't interested in reading any more at that point and I have absolutely no desire to read a series about a tedious character like this in a tedious world like this. It was past time to move on a find something which can hold my interest and entertain me. I can't rate this novel as a worthy read.

Evolution by Kelly Carrero

Title: Evolution
Author: Kelly Carrero
Publisher: Kelly Carrero
Rating: WARTY!

This novel is one of a series of at least five, every one of which has pretty much the same cover. It's about a teen named Jade who is one of the most helpless, clueless, self-centered, unmotivated, blinkered, useless, and weak female characters I've ever encountered (and that's saying something in YA literature!). We meet her when she's leaving the hospital after a car accident the day before. She had received a gash on her head, but this morning it's completely healed leaving no scar. She knows something is wrong, or weird, or whatever. She doesn’t know what it is.

The novel is technically competent - there are no major grammatical gaffs that I noticed, or spelling screw-ups. The author knows the difference between the verbs to lie, and to lay, and uses the latter correctly (as far as I can tell!), which is always a good sign. I did encounter problems, however. One annoyance arose chapter 2, right before things start going off the rails somewhat for Jade. It's where she's talking with new BFF Chelsea (stay tuned for a bizarre snippet about her old BFF) about finding a suitable guy, and the guy in question is Ben. Jade "boosts" his appeal by saying that he's filled out, got rid of his braces, and started wearing contacts. She says nothing about the kind of person he is.

I find it just as obnoxious when guys are objectified as I do when girls are. But this is worse. Even from Jade's shamefully juvenile and blinkered perspective, she's insulting. Is he ugly in eye glasses? Is he ugly with braces? Is he ugly because he's on the slender side? More importantly, is there nothing appealing about Ben other than what’s skin deep? Not in this author's lexicon evidently.

I know it’s not any particular author's job to change the cultural brain-washing we undergo at the behest of corporate interests behind the fashion and media megabucks industries, but is it not a collective responsibility for writers to move away from trope and cliché and try to serve our readers better? Must we persist in wallowing in the cultural mires of yesteryear, adding to the foul stench of mediocrity every time we write a novel? Does no one want to take the road less traveled? I think readers deserve better, especially young adult readers.

Jade discovers (in a tedious drawn-out and frustratingly obtuse chapter three) that she's immortal. This incidence of people humming and hawing, and dancing around a topic 'til the cows come home, never giving a straight answer, is rife in this novel and it’s irritating as hell. Her boyfriend already knew, but said not a word to her until she caught fire in school (exactly how this happened went unexplained) and yet remained completely unharmed from it. Rather than let the school deal with it, Aiden essentially kidnaps her from school and takes her home with him.

This is so insane, inappropriate, and ridiculous that it defies polite commentary, yet we keep seeing these wildly inauthentic behaviors from Jade and Aiden (Jaiden) with zero consequences. No one ever calls them on it. They're never required to explain their behavior, and there is never any sanction or punishment for it.

Instead of telling jade what she needs to know on the way out of the school, or during the drive to his house, or immediately when they get there, Aiden (how misnamed is he? He offers no aid!) says nothing until she's showered and changed at his house; then he drags out the most brain-dead and fumbled attempt at an explanation ever!

Its not until his mom gets home - a mom who looks impossibly young to be his mom - that Jade begins to learn anything, but that's when she freaks out, and becomes a weepy, girl having an attack of the wilts and the vapors, and is desperately in need Aiden's tender mercies, without which she cannot even stand up on her own - sometimes literally!

That's how stupid and weak she is. Maybe she does use only one eighth of her brain, unlike the rest of us! Aiden's sole idea of calming her is to repeatedly tell her how beautiful and perfect she is. Forget about what's in her brain - let's just stop at skin depth because nothing else matters, does it? She only uses one eighth of her brain anyway so why would it be important at all? She's so shallow that this actually works on her.

The "explanation" she's given is even more ridiculous and it once more trots out that OUTRIGHT LIE that we use only one tenth of our brain - which in this case is enlarged slightly to one eighth - in short, what we get here is the same explanation as appears in the Luc Besson movie Lucy. But it's all bullshit! You use all of your brain - not every neuron every single minute of every day, but all of it routinely.

Different parts of it do different things, so unless you're majorly multi-tasking, there isn't any need for your brain to run at top speed across its breadth and width all the time. It's extremely expensive for it to do so in terms of energy use! Look at it this way: do you wear all your clothes all the time? Unless you're homeless, I doubt it. So what if someone came to you and said, look, you're only ever wearing one-eighth of your wardrobe at one time, so let's give the rest to charity, would you think that a brilliant idea (not a selfless and perhaps morally praise-worthy idea, but a really intelligent idea)? You might, until your clothes are dirty and you find your wardrobe is seriously malfunctioning in that it’s bare!

Just because you don’t wear all your clothes all the time doesn't mean you don’t need some extra ones to change into. Just because you don’t drive your car all the time doesn't mean you have no use for it. Just because the bus you ride to school or work doesn't have all the seats filled all the time doesn't mean they’re not needed or ever used. Just because the classrooms are empty between periods and overnight doesn't mean the school is unnecessary!

Kelly Carrero seems to be yet another person who needs a good education on the important topic of biological evolution, too, especially if she's going to employ that very term for a novel title. Evolution isn’t a god. It doesn't plan. It doesn't have goals. Evolution can’t honestly be personified, but if it were to be, it would be classed as an opportunist. It’s a sneak thief. It will wait for an opportunity, and then run with it. Biologists will tell you that it’s the intersection between random mutation and non-random selection resulting from environmental influences and opportunities, but even the mutation isn’t random in the sense that most people view randomness. It’s not a case where anything can happen. There are tight constraints on this 'random', held in place by the laws of chemistry.

Creationists will say that most mutations are harmful, but this is a lie. Most mutations do nothing because they occur in the massive wasteland of junk DNA, which has no effect on an organism, unless the mutation happens to fall into a dead gene and reactivate it. Those mutations which occur in a gene can be harmful, but only if they damage the gene, or turn it off - or on - inappropriately, but the genetic make-up has built-in redundancy, so even a harmful mutation to a given gene might not adversely affect the organism if a back-up gene is working fine.

Now what does any of this have to do with this novel? Nothing! We’re simply told it’s evolution at work - the next step - like evolution is a butler awaiting the master's return so the house can be locked up, and clothes put away. It’s not. The implication here is that the brain is waiting for a mutation to turn it on so we can use it all, but evolution would not support an organ as expensive as the brain if it were not being used fully already. There is no slack to be taken up, and no genetic mutation can suddenly turn it on and open the floodgates. It’s far more complex than that.

Even if such a thing could occur, how does opening up the "unused seven eighths" promote rapid healing? How does it promote a person's ability to move at super-human speed or read minds? It doesn’t. It can’t. So this is all patent nonsense. Now I have no problem with a story which posits that there are people with special powers, On the contrary, I rather enjoy them - but only if they're well-written and don’t try to come up with juvenile and nonsensical non-explanations for these magical powers. Just wave your hand at something vague and I'm good to go. Please don’t try to rationalize it scientifically, because it cannot be done and it makes the author look lazy, or stupid, or completely unimaginative!

But no author could look as bad as Jade. Or get away with what she gets away with. At school, Jade angrily punches her old BFF (I said I’d get back to her) in the face, in the cafeteria in full view of everyone, literally knocking her into the next table where Chrissy falls unconscious. Instead of taking responsibility for it, or trying to see if her friend is really okay, Jaiden flees the school and goes home - again with no consequences and with zero remorse or guilt.

Jade then takes her Rottweiler out for a walk, and when it wants to chase a cat, she literally lets it go, and she goes right on into the house without a thought for where the dog will go, whether it will run into traffic, get killed, cause an accident, whether it will happen upon young kids and scare the crap out of them. She's that irresponsible. I took a strong disliking to her rather quickly.

Jade is really worthless which is why I cannot recommend this story. I don’t want to read about weak women unless the point of the story is to witness their empowerment and triumph. I don’t want to read about yet another YA main character who is nothing more than a male appendage. I don't want to read another superficial YA novel which is all about perfection and beauty with nothing underneath, and with entirely unrealistic and wildly inappropriate behavior in crisis situations.

Jade was far too hopeless and limp for me to even remotely like her, and she doesn’t show any sign of improvement over the entire course of the novel. She shows neither backbone nor smarts, nor any sign of independence and self-motivation. It’s obvious to everyone but Jade that the kidnapper didn’t want Chelsea. He wanted Jade. Even when Jade discovers where Chelsea is and has a chance to talk to her, she doesn’t even think for a second about asking Chelsea how she got to be taken, and how long they traveled, to try and figure out where she is. She makes no move to free Chelsea so that there will be two of them free to fight-off the kidnapper if he returns.

The novel is quite simply not realistic on so many levels - and I'm not even talking about super powers here. Despite being held prisoner without food or water for several days, Chelsea has no problem being lively and perky, and making jokes. There's no sign of weariness, weakness, or fear. There is no smell from any bodily functions she must have experienced in three days strapped to a chair in a cage. Another character in this novel has vital information about the kidnapping, but fails to reveal it, and no reason whatsoever is given to either explain or justify her behavior.

Aiden the moron keeps butting in on Jade's thoughts at the most inappropriate of times, making her look even more of an air-head than she already is when she tunes out the rest of the world to focus solely on what he's telling her to do. She can't multi-task! Aiden's behavior in that regard came across to me as nothing but a form of rape. The ironic thing is that he neglects to tell her the things she really needs to know when he butts in like this, so she's constantly in a state of ignorance.

The novel ends in a huge cliffhanger which makes no sense. Of course, it makes sense if your only purpose is to milk a novel for every penny you can squeeze from it instead of doing the work of creating something new and different. From the perspective of telling a good story though, if Jade gets a series of visions when there is a threat to Chelsea, her best friend, how come she gets zero visions when there's a threat to her own mom - a threat which is neither justified nor explained?

I'm sorry but this novel was far too vacuous and unrealistic for me to like it. It was poorly thought-out and badly written in terms of world-building and filling-in background. It felt like the second novel in a series when it was actually the first, and I have no interest in following a series that's as lacking in entertainment value and promises as little as this one did.

The Silence of Six by EC Myers

Title: The Silence of Six
Author: EC Myers
Publisher: Adaptive 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!

I was really impressed with this novel from the start and found myself quickly drawn-in and really wanting to swipe the screens. It’s an object lesson in how to write a story which pulls people in and keeps 'em hooked. It has some ups and downs, but overall, I rate it a very worthy read.

Maxwell is a high-school student who attends a presidential debate which is being held at his school. As it's winding up, at the end of question-time, someone hacks into the screen being used on stage; a young person wearing a mask appears, and asks the two presidential candidates, "What is the silence of six and what are you going to do about it?" before shooting himself. Max is acutely disturbed as he sees that this is his hacker friend Evan. Max has been out of hacking for a year or so, but Evan never left, and he has some secrets of which Max is unaware. As the students are filing out of the auditorium, their laptops, pads and phones are confiscated 'for reasons of national security'.

Max suddenly realizes that there's more going on here than simply a joke hack or a suicide. He returns to his hacker roots, logging into a secret forum which he hasn’t accessed for a year. The names he sees are familiar, but they're suspicious of him. One of them - Doublethink - opens a private side-channel and requests a meeting in person. Max decides it’s time for a face-to-face, but already there are dark SUVs following him, so he decides to go on the run.

This novel is really well-written. It has intrigue and danger, it has smart computer talk, and it sounds realistic from the off. Doublethink is particularly intriguing, but I can't tell you any more without ruining the surprises the author has in store. Max has some narrow escapes, makes new friends, meets fascinating and dangerous characters, all the while circling around the clues and hints that Evan has evidently left for him. And also Max carries the guilty burden of the fact that Evan had reached out to him several times recently and Max had been too busy, preoccupied or otherwise distracted to connect with him again.

There were some weaknesses in the story. The main one is one we always find in this kind of story: there are points where Max has enough information at his disposal that he could have gone online with it, thereby at least taking some of the pressure off himself. There's no good reason offered to explain why he doesn’t do this. Later an explanation is offered, but I'm not convinced that it was a good one! Also at one point Max says "…looking for whomever was using the computer…" No one speaks like that. Writers write like that, and it’s like an itch when you don’t use the correct grammatical form, but it’s entirely wrong to have people speak like that when almost no-one - especially not kids - actually does.

So, not perfect, but a short, fast, and very entertaining read which I recommend.

Broken Symmetry by Dan Rix

Title: Broken Symmetry
Author: Dan Rix
Publisher: Lavabrook Publishing Group
Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
P93 "…unlocked the dead bold…" should be "…unlocked the dead bolt…"

Well, it';s December 2nd, so it must be time for a novel starting with the letter 'B' - and today it's Broken Symmetry. You might be surprised at how many books are out there with that title, or something similar! I started out really liking this because it's sci-fi with an interesting premise (at least one which interests me: it takes the concept of 'mirror worlds' quite literally).

The biggest problem (apart from the fact that the cover has nothing to do with the novel - as usual!) was that it was a YA first person PoV novel, and typically, they suck. At best they're rather irritating because it’s all ME! All the time. I'm not a fan of the self-obsessed, or the arrogant. Nor do I find it credible that someone can tell a story about themselves and remember events in mega-detail or conversations verbatim. I know that writers think that this 1poV approach brings immediacy to the reader and makes them identify, but if you have to employee 1PoV to achieve that, then there’s something wrong with your writing skills in my opinion.

In the final analysis, none of this works with me because it’s quite simply not realistic and unless it’s very well done, which is rare, it’s a constant distraction from the actual story. I keep wanting to say "My-oh-my! Aren't you just special?" or saying, "Sucks to be you, doesn't it?"

What makes one of these kinds of stories even worse is if it’s told by a young female and she's a moron, which is glaringly the case here. Blaire Adams, the main character in this novel, goes above and beyond that call of duty and proves herself to be a professional moron, and proudly so: she's clueless, inept, idiotic, and weak. As if that's not bad enough, she falls for the bad boy, Damian, for no other reason than that it’s constitutional law in the USA that you cannot have a first person PoV YA girl fall in love with an ordinary or decent guy. It has to be a bad boy with hair falling into eyes which have gold flecks in them. IT'S TEDIOUS to keep reading this in novel after novel. Show some originality PLEASE!

Here’s an example of how fundamentally dumb Blaire is: She tries to break into a police station! As if that's not bad enough, she takes up an internship in the company which employed her father. She's so air-headed that she forget that this is where her father worked, despite her obsession with trying to discover what happened to him. She's determined to discover how it was that he went missing for almost a year and then died from some obscure injuries when he finally showed up, and it’s this which prompts her to take up the internship.

One of the tasks assigned to her is to clean up the shards of a broken mirror. There's a chute in the floor where the broken glass goes. Her boss has told her that they test mirrors to breaking point in this room - and she believed him. The room is quite dark and Blaire is too stupid to ask for the light to be turned on, or to turn it on herself. She asks for neither gloves nor a brush. She doesn’t even think to sweep the shards into the chute with her feet, which at least have the protection of her shoes. Instead she picks up the shards in her hands in the dark and then runs her bare hands over the floor to check if she missed anything. She's a moron. But of course this allows her to get a cut which the bad boy can then tenderly and lovingly tend to, even as he's dissing her and ignoring her questions. Seriously? This was god-awful writing.

There's a big red button on the wall in the 'mirror room', and her boss tells her not to touch it, so of course Brain-dead Blaire presses it and breaks the new mirror she just installed. Despite having some sort of vision of Damian murdering her next door neighbor and burning his house down, she's immediately and powerfully attracted to him. You know they're going to be an item as soon as she says she hates him. It’s that painfully obvious. This is so clichéd as to be farcical.

The guy is a jerk. He has poor hygiene and treats her like dirt, and she falls for him. Is this really what we want to be telling young women? It would have made a better story if she'd ditched dickhead Damian, and fallen for Amy! But that wouldn't work because this is YA and the author would be arrested on capital crime charges he didn’t pair a girl with a boy. You know that.

It’s quite obvious even if you haven't read the blurb what’s going on here, but Blaire is also evidently blind as well as premeditatedly stupid. Not literally blind, just mentally. She can’t figure out what’s going on, no matter how many clues she gets. Bad Boy treats her so badly that she gets no clues from him, and eventually her new boss has to spell it out for her.

Charles and Damian do a piss-poor job of educating Blaire about what’s happening here. It would help if they had the first clue about physics and the difference between physics and chemistry. When Charles is obfuscating, Blaire observes, "I took chemistry last year", but what he's trying to explain has nothing to do with chemistry and this makes her look ever more dumb.

We're biological beings, but biology is based on organic chemistry which is a sub-set of chemistry. Chemistry itself is a subset of physics, and physics is a subset of math. What Charles is trying to tell her is that sub-atomic studies are not only applicable at the macro level (the level of the human body as opposed to sub-atomic level), but controllable there, too. This isn't actually true because the trillions upon trillions of statistical probabilities at the sub-atomic level are 'ironed out' at the macro level, which gives us our concept of a good, solid reality.

What Charles is trying to explain is that reality isn’t what it appears to be, and the bottom line is that with training, and because of her 47th chromosome, Blaire can walk through a mirror and be in in a parallel reality. That a mirror can play a role in this is one of the conceits of this novel. It makes no sense, but you have to let that slide to enjoy the story. This is where the BS comes in (BS is for breaking symmetry and for a well-known dismissive expletive, too!). The author's 'explanation' of the double-slit experiment is nonsensical. You can get a better one here in wikipedia.

This novel is rather confused. At one point, for example, Charles says that parallel worlds have been proved, which actually isn't true, and then just a couple of paragraphs later, Damian is telling Blaire that these worlds are not real. Perhaps he means something other than what I think he means by that, but it isn’t very clear. They're either real or they're not.

The problem is that it gets worse. Damian starts babbling inane philosophical ideas - like that old saw: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? Well of course it does! Basic physics will tell you that, and I guarantee you that if it fell on a deaf person the person would make an horrific sound! What this has to do with the symmetry he was discussing earlier, I have no idea, because all the previous rambling on about sub-atomic particles and quantum states is summarily tossed out the window at this point and we change the whole scenario to simple mirror symmetry as Blaire and Damian prepare to go through.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with quantum states. Instead, we're now told that everything is reversed once you go through the mirror, and that you can only return through the mirror by which you left, otherwise you won't come back to the source point, but instead go into yet another symmetrical world. Despite having this technology and ability, they're reduced to marking the mirror with painter's masking tape - red to indicate the outgoing side of the source mirror, and blue to mark that mirror on the reverse side so they can be sure they come back through the same mirror. Never mind that painter's tape is specifically designed to come away from surfaces very easily.

Here the whole story becomes hilarious because Damian constantly declares his conviction that Blaire doesn't know what she's doing, that she isn't safe, that this is dangerous, yet no one in this whole enterprise insists upon more training for her! Anyone who actually cared about Blaire would have insisted she not go until she was properly prepared. Damian doesn’t. Quite the contrary. Instead, he indulges himself in a kind of rape - as a joke, yet - when he tells Blaire that she must take off her clothes to travel through. He waits until she's down to her underwear before he tells her he was joking. Way to go, Damian, you lowlife jerk-off. What an hilarious joke. Yeah, right at the point where you're going to indulge in a life-threatening activity (for no good reason! Read on for more on this) with a girl who is woefully under-prepared, go ahead and trick her into undressing for you. Damian is a lowlife jack-ass and that's all there is to him.

Worse than this (imagine that if you can!), even Blaire knows she's under-prepared. She's told she must destroy the mirror when she returns and she fails to remember that she already broke a mirror by hitting the red button. She's a moron. She's not ready. I guess she and Damian actually do deserve each other.

Despite all of this, I could understand it if there was some urgent or life-saving reason why they simply had to go through despite the risks, but there isn’t. Neither Damian nor Charles has articulated one single reason why there needs to be travel through the mirrors. Not one. Blaire is too dumb to ask, Damian is too much of a moron to care for her, yet here they are going through. Damian hints repeatedly that if Blaire wants the truth she must go through, yet he's offered her no truth! On the contrary, he's specifically told her that none of these worlds are real. What possible truth could lie there?

The story just went from bad to worse (if that's even possible at this point) when Blaire - completely uneducated, completely unprepared, and worse, none too smart (she's too dumb to put on a seat-belt in a get-away car without being told) - steps through the looking glass into Wonderland. We still have absolutely no reason whatsoever which would compel someone like Blaire to do any of this. When she begins, we still have no explanation whatsoever as to what is supposed to be accomplished by taking these life-threatening risks. Yet she blindly goes right ahead and does it.

Damian has done literally nothing to properly prepare her for this trip - nothing at all beyond vague hints at unspecified dangers. He hasn’t warned her that each trip (for no reason at all, evidently) steals a little bit of her. The way they get through the mirror is to press against it (and note that Damian specifies that you can’t press too hard). This of course necessitates his holding her hand! Could we be any more ham-fisted than this in our story-telling?

Immediately they get through, Blaire becomes disoriented and so nauseated that she vomits; then she starts acting like she's drunk - apparently you get a high from crossing over! None of this was properly explained by Damian the dumbass. Neither was the fact that, once they get through, Blaire's job is to "distract the guards" at a military facility while Damian "sneaks up" on them and shoots them in the head.

Seriously? Note that wimp Blaire doesn’t even bat an eyelid at the brutal violence unleashed by Damian. She doesn’t get nauseated. She isn’t grossed out by it. She isn’t shocked by it. She doesn’t change her opinion of Damian because of it. She merely, calmly voices some 'concerns' over it later! That was totally weird given the character to whom we’ve been introduced thus far.

Worse than this are two really bad plotting issues. The first harks back to what Damian told Blaire about not pressing too hard on the mirror. When Blaire asks Damian why they can't use reflections in windows to "break symmetry", he says it’s impossible because it would require pressing too hard! Huh?

Another really dumb issue results from Damian going on another solo mission and getting himself arrested. How Charles knows this, since he hasn’t gone through, nor has he been in touch with Damian, is an unexplained mystery, but now Charles wants Blaire to go through and break Damian out of jail! This is after we’ve been explicitly told that they can only go through together - remember the hand-holding incident? This novel makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

At this point I was ready to ditch is as a classic example of atrocious plotting and poor writing, but I admit I was curious to find out just what the hell it was that made these dangerous trips "necessary", and it seems that the only purpose for this is that the government has found the 47th chromosome! The author writes this like no one has ever been found to have an extra chromosome - or with one short!

In reality, this happens quite frequently and usually results in serious physical problems for the bearer, so unless the Chromosome 47 in this novel is something truly extra-super-special, it’s no big deal! Moreover, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to build a military facility to map it. The military already has genetic mapping devices. It takes very little time to do the work these days. They could have had it done in one of their already restricted facilities instead of drawing attention to themselves by spending millions on building a (not so) secret subterranean facility. Again, nothing in this novel makes sense.

At this point, 40% into the novel, I resolved to go to the half-way point (which should cover Blaire's first solo mission), and if it continued to be just as bad, I would summarily ditch it and move onto something that was:

1. Well written
2. Had an intelligent female character
3. Made sense
4. Had a clue about science

That was the plan! It didn’t proceed well. Blaire's scheme to get Damian sprung from jail is to take the return mirror with her to the jail so they can both simply step through it and escape! Despite hauling a six foot mirror into the jail, she has really no problem in visiting the prisoner, and her plan works. Seriously? Is this a YA novel or a middle-grade story?

Her entire behavior during this part of the story completely betrays what went before. Carrying the mirror around, she was constantly remarking to herself about how this would be a disaster if it broke or cracked, yet when she first went through, Damian had gone out of his way to show her how tough these mirrors were - she couldn’t even put a crack in it by punching or kicking it and neither could Damian. Now she's worried about how fragile it is?!!

Her next mission is to impersonate Jennifer Cupertino - a post-doc who works at this supposedly top secret facility! Seriously? Why would they let anyone in there who didn’t need to be there? And why does no one at this top secret facility have picture IDs? Blaire breaks into Jennifer's apartment and steals her purse and then her car, but Jennifer sees her. Blaire thinks this is fine because she's taking the car and Jennifer can’t get there before she does. Apparently this dumb-ass doesn’t think for a minute that maybe Jennifer could call in to the facility and warn them that someone stole her ID! This is what Jennifer does, but it takes her an hour to do it. Why? No explanation. Meanwhile Blaire escapes a top secret military facility with no effort at all. This is pure bullshit and I can't even remotely recommend this pile of garbage.

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.