Cursor's Fury by Jim Butcher

Rating: WORTHY!

So in volume three of Jim Butcher's Excellent Adventures of the Warrior Goddess Kitai, we find Tavi with the First Lord, who seems to be taking an unseemly interest in Tavi's sex life. Not that he has a complete one from what he reveals. The First Lord proves that despite his awesome fury-crafting powers, he's even more clueless than is Tavi with regard to how deep this bond is with Kitai. He dispenses pretty much the same advice that Norman Osborn offers his son Harry with regard to Mary Jane in the original Spider-Man: "A word to the not-so-wise about your little girlfriend. Do what you need to with her, then broom her fast."

Tavi is almost panicked at the thought of spending significant time away from Kitai, and to give him his due, he does honestly worry that she might suffer, because of their bond, if she's forcibly kept from him for long periods of time, but in this same concern, he's actually disrespecting her strength and independence, so even though he's beginning to recognize their bond, he's still essentially clueless about her. This will come back to haunt him humorously, as it happens, in the final novel of the hexalogy.

Fortunately he doesn't need to worry. When he arrives at the legion camp and settles in, he gets into the habit of visiting the public baths, run by Cymnea, the brothel keeper. He tosses a coin to a blind beggar girl on his way in, and sitting in the bath later, he thinks, "Crows" and runs outside to discover that, as he's just begun to imagine, the beggar girl is actually Kitai spying on camp activities to learn all she can about what's really going on. She does this routinely throughout the novels from this point on, delivering invaluable information to Tavi because of her excellence in this pursuit. She chides him about taking so long to recognize her.

Before he gets to the camp, however, Tavi is sent to meet a crafting master to try and get his non-existent skills kick-started. There's a reason his skills have shriveled on the vine, but we don't learn of this until later in the series. He's dragged from his crafting lessons by Max, rather like Luke Skywalker is forced to abandon Yoda's teachings to address a problem. Hmm! Come to think of it, there's rather a lot in common between Tavi and Luke, isn't there?!

We learn a bit of Max's past here, because his stepmother who hates him with a vengeance and has tried to kill him, and his step brother who will inherit if Max dies, has also joined the new First Aleran. What happened to the original First Aleran isn't specified!

Tavi is now supposed to be a fully-fledged cursor, but given that he has no windcrafting - or crafting of any kind for that matter - he's pretty much useless as a cursor. In the legion, they call the newbies 'fish', so this novel really ought to have been called 'Fish's Fury'. Tavi goes under a false name: the bizarre name of Rufus Scipio, which no doubt was all the rage in the real Roman era, but strikes me as one of the most hilarious names I've ever seen. Perhaps that's why Butcher chose it?

Lord Kalare, is the bad guy in this instalment. Because of a letter the First Lord sent, written in a deliberately provocative manner because he knew it would be intercepted by Kalare's spies, the wannabe First Lord has launched a war upon what he considers is the real, but weak First lord. Kalare wants to be First Lord himself. He has kidnapped more than one person in order to hold them hostage and thereby prevent people from doing things he does not want done.

One of these kidnappees is a cursor friend of Tavi's - or rather her child, so that she then had to become a spy for him. Another is the wife of one of the other lords of Alera. It is Count Bernard, his wife, the cursor Lady Amara, and the problematic Lady Aquitaine, who are tasked with rescuing her. Lady Aquitaine holds the allegiance of Isana, Bernard's brother. Isana isn't involved since she's spending way the hell too much time trying to revive Fade, her slave (who is way more than that we discover) and who has been poisoned. So focused on him is she that she neglects to help the wounded in the battle.

Tavi is supposed to be garnering military experience for himself as the sub-tribune in the First Aleran. He discovers that things aren't working the way a well-organized military should be: supplies, for example, are disappearing, so he brings in Cymnea to take charge!

Lord Kalare has made an alliance with the Canim. They are to help him become First Lord in return for his granting them a portion of Alera upon which to live. The reason they need Alera rather than their own land is something to be explored in vol 4 of this series, but in this volume, Tavi is the only thing standing in the way of the Canim running riot. He establishes a front line in a fortified town, and holds the line. Kitai helps immeasurably by riding the land as a spy, at times taking Tavi to show him curious and vital secrets.

One of these secrets is that the Canim have a warrior leader and a spiritual leader, Sarl, and the spiritual leader has a magic of his own. He uses this magic to turn the sky red, and he plans to use it to strike down Tavi when he meets with the warrior leader, but his plan fails, because Tavi has possession of Lady Antillus's Bloodstone which prevents the Canim magic from destroying him. At the start of the novel, Tavi was playing chess with the warrior Cane who is now leading the Canim. During a truce, he's invited to play a game again with this Cane, and he does so, listening carefully as the Cane, who is not at all a friend of Sarl's, passes important information to him in a coded way, which helps him to understand why the Canim came here.

Tavi, of course, holds the line and repels the invaders, and kills Sarl after discrediting him to show the Canim that he, Tavi, was far stronger than their best magician, even though he really isn't. The novel ends with Kitai suggesting that Tavi let her bring in some Marat horsewomen to act as spies and scouts. She, of course, would lead them. She already has her hair shorn with a crest, in the tyle of the horse tribe of the Marat, and she has been at Tavi's side the whole time, so his army is used to seeing a Marat helping them.

Tavi considers this, and reacts by pushing her against the wall in his quarters and kissing her passionately. He forces himself to stop, complaining that the fury-crafted light in there is a signal to his officers that they can come in any time with issues and concerns. He needs to have Max put out the light, but as he says the words, the light goes out, and he discovers that he can command it to turn on and off at will. Kitai is not impressed with this, and at the very end of the last chapter, she tells the light to go out, and it does! A great read!

Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher

Rating: WORTHY!

This takes place two years on from what's come to be known as 'the Night of the Red Stars' which was seen during the great battle at the Elinarch bridge. Tavi has been fending-off attacks from the Canim throughout this time. At the instigation of Lady Invidia Aquitaine, Senator Arnos arrives to take over command. Lady Aquitaine's ultimate plan is to have Tavi removed from his command, so Tavi helps that along immensely by meeting with Nasaug, the Canim leader. Due to his spying activities, Tavi knows that Nasaug is trying to build ships so the Canim can return to their homeland, and he arranges with the Canim leader to help him by returning the Canim Ambassador Varg, who is currently imprisoned.

Tavi is arrested for conspiring with the enemy, but he escapes and boards a ship to Alkera Imperia, the capital. traveling with him are Isana, Kitai, Ehren, and Araris. They're pursued by Arnos’s men, but they use fury-crafting to kill the 'witchmen' whose sole value is keeping the violently intolerant leviathans unaware of their presence on the ocean. Once the witchmen are dead, the leviathans trash their pursuer's ship.

It's at this point that Tavi's aunt Isana comes back into the story with full force. She finds that her water-crafting has grown immensely. More importantly to her, she has been trying to tell Tavi who he really is. In the end, it was left to Fade, now know as Araris, to tell him that Isana is not his aunt - she's his mother. His father is the son of Lord Gaius, the First Lord and therefore, Tavi is next in line to the throne of Alera!

Meanwhile the First Lord himself enters the battle big time, and he arranges for Count Bernard and Lady Amara to travel with him, in total secrecy, to Kalare's lands. Until he gets to where he needs to be - a place where he can quiet the massive fury which Kalare has awoken, and which must be quieted before it kills thousands - he must not use his powers, so everything is on Bernard and Amara to take care of him, including the blister he gets on his feet.

When they arrive, the First Lord does the opposite of what he said - instead of quieting the fury, he awakens it, causing a massive volcanic eruption, which destroys the Kalarean capital and kills thousands. Amara is so pissed off with him that she throws his coin - the one which empowers her to be his cursor - in his face and quits on him on the spot.

Tavi frees Varg and returns him to his people. He choses that moment to declare that he is Gaius Octavian. grandson of the First Lord, and he challenges Senator Arnos to a 'Juris Macto' - a duel of honor. Unfortunately for Tavi, Arnos choses a representative to fight in his stead: Pharygiar Navaris, the deadliest man in Alera.

Fidelias, now known as Marcus, the man who betrayed Amara in vol one of this series, is tasked by the Lady Aquitaine to kill Tavi in the unlikely event that he wins. He does win, but Fidelius now betrays her. He fires the balest - a huge cross-bow like bolt, into Arnos and Aquitaine at once, as they are standing one behind the other. It looks like a Canim assasination, since this is their weapon of choice. Lady Aquitaine survives the wound, but since the bolt has been poisoned, she does not have long to live. Or does she?

Tavi manages to talk the First Lord into allowing the Canim safe passage back to their own land. They build ice ships to travel in, and Tavi and his usual crew go with them. Another worthy read!

Princeps' Fury by Jim Butcher

Rating: WORTHY!

Butcher mistakenly titles this with an apostrophe as though Princeps s a plural. It is not! If he were titling it correctly, it should be Princeps's Fury.

Princeps's Fury takes off right after the previous volume. Tavi crosses the ocean on the ice ships and learns of the tragedy which has unfolded in the Canim homeland. Cursor Ehren, Tavi's friend, and the First Lord of Alera take the battle to the Vord, which is now revealed to be the biggest threat to Alera, beyond anything else they've ever faced. On this same front, the Lady Amara and her husband Count Bernard, Tavi's uncle, must try to discover how it is that the Vord can now use fury-crafting! As if they were not an evil enough foe to begin with. Finally, Isana, who is Tavi's mom, is dispatched to the north, where an entire Aleran army is effectively trapped because they must ward off the ice giants from even further north.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in this novel (apart from the always enthralling Kitai, whose humor, devotion to Tavi and skills as a horsewoman, spy, and warrior just keep on growing and growing) is Isana issuing a Juris Macto of her own! She wins, and forges a truce with the Ice People, which frees up the entire army there to battle the Vord, who are now seriously threatening to overrun Alera as they did the Canim homeland.

We learn that the reason that the Vord have fury-crafting skills is that they've taken the Lady Aquitaine on board. She is effectively one of them and they now have access to her skills. In return, she gets not to die from the poisoned balest with which Fidelius shot her. The Vord queen also has learned skills from Kalarus Brencis, who died at the First lord's hand in Captain's Fury so that she can now turn anyone into a Vord zombie.

The First Lord comes out big time here. He is dying we learn, because of his age, his stressful life, and the fact that his second wife was slowly poisoning him, so when he makes the ultimate sacrifice, and massively degrades the Vord at the same time, it's not surprising. What is surprising is that he has contact with a power which no other Lord of Alera has: he has tapped into Alera herself - the fury of the entire nation. He asks that Alera devote herself to Tavi now - that whatever allegiance she had to the First Lord be transferred to his grandson.

Tavi travels with Kitai (and other Alerans) to the homeland of the Canem (which is not next door to Panem!). He's transporting the Canem home, but upon arrival they discover that Canea has been overrun by Vord. For a while, Tavi and his small traveling team, separated by design from their main party, are held captive (across country from the coast where they arrived) by the leader of last outpost of the Canem, which is on the verge of being wiped out. When he's finally asked for help by the local Cane leader, Tavi is granted access to the battle reports from all the Canem tribes, one of which held out much longer than the rest.

Tavi slowly comes to the realization that the Vord not only operate through direct instructions from a queen, but also that the queen does not operate alone. Each time she moves to a new location, the queen spawns two daughters. This triad then wages war on the local populace until victory is won. Each of the three queens then moves to a new area and re-spawns, making a new triad. Thus the geometric progression of the assault.

The cane leader who held out longest had apparently discerned this pattern and changed his battle plan to address it head on. Instead of standing still and steadfastly trying to repel wave after wave of almost overwhelming Vord attacks, he went after the queen each time they managed to pinpoint the location of one of them, stemming the tide and forcing the Vord to regroup. But even this plan was doomed to failure because he did not have enough troops to overcome the massive attrition rate and he did not know how to overcome the Vord queens' ability to sense and control the thoughts of those enemy who were within a certain close range. He tried to win by sheer force of large numbers applied surgically, but even this was a doomed strategy in the end.

Tavi hatches a plan to overcome the Vord queens' mind-reading abilities, and also convinces his followers and the Cane alike to follow the lead of the successful Cane strategy, modified with his new twists. If you have seen the movie Push, you will recognize Tavi's contribution to the plan, but Princeps Fury was released in December 2008, before the release of Push in 2009. Is it odd that two separate writers both came up with the same idea around the same time?!

Meanwhile, back in Alera, the Vord are also mounting a full scale assault, and slowly beating back the Aleran armies towards their capital, despite a massive battle led and fought by Alera's finest lords and citizens. After Gaius's overwhelmingly massive blast of the Vord ground forces, the defenders suddenly discover that they've been had by the Vord. The local queen never intended the ground forces to succeed, but instead sacrificed them in order to wear down the Alerans and give away the location of Alera's best defensive personnel before unleashing her hitherto unencountered and certainly unexpected airborne force to wipe them out.

Meanwhile, Isana is dispatched by Gaius north to the massive wall designed to hold back the fearsome Ice People. She is to make peace with them (even though after 300 years of war, no peace has ever been struck). She makes far more progress in two meetings than anyone else has made. She discovers that they have fury-crafting skills and because of these, the natural (and unconscious) reaction of Aleran soldiers to their proximity was fear and loathing on the campaign trail. This irrational reaction is why no peace could ever be struck. Unfortunately, just as she's making progress, Lord Antillus launches a sneak attack upon the senior Ice People leadership, and all but destroys Isana's hard work and the value of her astute insights. Through sheer force of will and expert use of her now more powerful grasp of fury-crafting, Isana defeats Antillus's plan and saves the lives of the Ice leaders.

Amara and Bernard act as spies in this volume, also picking up useful knowledge of Vord practices, but this couple is the least interesting to me of all the various people we follow in this series. I don’t know what it is, but maybe it’s that they are far too sickly sweet, sappy, and intense for my taste, although I respect Amara's skills.

My two heroes, Kitai and the Vord queen aren't that interesting in this volume, either. Kitai is always worth reading about but she has no stand-outs here. The Vord queen becomes really fascinating only in volume six, where she's a treat. This is still a worthy read though.

First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher

Rating: WORTHY!

This final volume sees the retreat from the continent of Canea which has been overrun by the Vord. Gaius Octavian ("Tavi") along with the illustrious Kitai and the Canim leader Varg only to discover that Alera has been largely overrun as well. Having made landfall in the north, the group must strike east to link up with the remaining Aleran resistance in Riva.

The Vord queen, now an accomplished water crafter offers a surrender to any and every Aleran. They will be allowed to live out the remainder of their life in peace provided they vow to have no children. Tavi uses the same method to announce his return and his defiance of the Vord. In response, the Queen kidnaps Tavi's mom, Isana, as well as Fade, aka Araris Valerian, Isana's boyfriend.

With the help of the now friendly Ice People of the north, and a strong wind provided by Alera herself, Tavi sails over the ice, but Riva falls to the Vord, and led by acting First Lord Aquitainus the survivors retreat, of course, to the Calderon valley, much in the way the final showdown in the Potter stories was in Hogwarts. Tavi's uncle Bernard and his wife Amara meanwhile have been fortifying the Calderon. Aquitainus dies trying to beat the joined forces of his wife and the Vord queen.

Tavi launches an assault on Riva when he arrives there, bringing down the city walls like Joshua purportedly did, and his fire crafters torch all Vord food supplies. He then moves on to the Calderon where he hopes to pin the Vord between his forces and the rest who occupy the valley's defenders. The Vord queen raids Tavi's camp and wounds him.

It's at this point that Invidia switches sides again and betrays the troop positions of the Vord, but her betrayal was predicted by the Vord queen, so when all of the Aleran high nobles use their various crafting to attack the queen she slaughters many of the attackers. Invidia once again tries to switch sides, but Amara kills her. When the Vord queen retreats, she leaves behind Isana and Araris who are now free.

Tavi and Kitai pursue the escaping queen in an attempt to stop her from calling on the wild and powerful mountain furies. At the same time, the Vord launch an attack in the Calderon and begin to slowly overwhelm the defenders, but Tavi and Kitai actually beat the Vord queen and kill her. Since she is the hive leader, this results in the rest of the Vord becoming directionless and uncoordinated. In effect, they're beaten.

With Aquitainus conveniently out of the way now, Tavi rightfully becomes the First Lord and he and Kitai finally marry. Despite the possibility of a sequel, with other, though lesser Vord queens still at large on the Canea continent, Butcher never did revisit this series. I didn't expect him to, but for me these books would make a wonderful film series. For reasons which escape me, no one has ever seemed interested in making them. Maybe Netflix will try it? They did The Witcher, and this is in many ways a similar sort of fantasy. We can hope! Meanwhile I declare this a worthy read and commend the whole series - one of the very few series I've been able to stand to read.

Eve by Patti Larsen

Rating: WARTY!

This was your standard uninteresting, first person voice, dumb, disaffected girl saved by a boy novel. Nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing worth reading. I was very disappointed, although I kind of half-expected that going into it, but nonetheless, I was hoping for something better. I was disappointed, but unsurprised. For the most part, YA authors are so homogenous that 'bland' is far too vivid a word to cover what they do. How this author can write so badly and yet be "a multiple award-winning author" (her own words), is a complete mystery to me. This is why I have zero trust in awards and would flatly refuse any I was offered rather than be tainted by them.

The fact that this novel was written so badly really intrigues me because I read here: https://medium.com/intellogo/award-winning-writer-patti-larsen-shares-her-experiences-using-intellogos-author-tools-c93fea28338 that the author had used some sort of software at both draft and final stage to assess her work. I'd never heard of "Intellogo" before, but it seems that it's supposed to advise an author as to whether they're hitting the standard test marks for a YA novel. How robotic is that? Seriously? The article about this was badly written too. I read at one point, "how present women are in a central role are" and later, "Was the book moving at a fast enough clip to maintain the intensity for a face-paced page turner." Yes, in this era of Facebook control of your life, you definitely need a face-paced page turner.

But this article also tells us that the author “has a degree in journalism, a background in English, history, and screen writing, and offers courses on story writing and outlining. Patti’s strengths lie not only in her mad writing process but also in her tireless work in self promotion." If she put as much effort into writing as she apparently does into self-promotion, and ditched the artificial intelligence, she might have a book that feels far less artificial and actually intelligent - and focused on telling original, imaginative, and inventive stories instead of writing by numbers and copying what everyone else is doing, which is quite clearly what this novel is.

And that tireless self-promotion really turned me off her. I am not a self-promoter which probably means I will never have a book take off, but I don't care. I'm not going to try to force myself on people. If they want to read me, they will choose to find me and do so. It’s their choice, not mine.

This story sounded like it might be interesting which is why I was foolish enough to pick it up to read, and it probably could have been engaging in more capable hands, but all this author proves is that journalists are not necessarily great novel writers. The blurb informs us that 16-year-old Eve (she should have been named Heave, she's so sickening to read about) is the unholy offspring of Death and Life, and

Her unique parentage ensures Eve isn’t like her angel siblings. She brings Death at the beginning of Life and Life to those meant to die. Her continuing failures create constant disaster for her parents and the mortals she tries so hard to serve. But when Eve accidentally interferes with the Loom of Creation, she sets off a chain of events that leads her to finally understand who she really is.

Yes, she's a special snowflake just like every other YA character in nearly every one of these dull, predictable, boring, unimaginative YA garbage novels. How special is that?! The description had one of those little clickers where you could select more of the blurb or less, but it was less of books like this which I would have truly appreciated. There is no clicker for that unfortunately. No click, only colic.

The writing was average to poor from the off. It was, as I mentioned, worst-person voice, which is the most tedious voice of all for me to read. I am so sick of it that I recently went through my shelf of unread print books and deliberately ditched every last one of them that was in first person, so sick am I of reading this tedious and nauseating voice. Now those books are in the local library, so someone else will have to suffer them, not me! Am I evil or what? Mwah-ha-ha!

Anyway, after Eve screws up yet again, by reviving an old man who was at death's door, she goes into this maudlin introspection. Eve whines that everyone hates her, and her life isn't worth living until of course she's rescued by this guy. I ditched the book right there. I am so sick of reading YA novels about some wretched girl who has to be validated and rescued by a boy. For fuck's sake YA authors, stop it with this shit already! Find something better to do with your life - something that doesn’t involve running your own gender into the ground. This book is shit and that's it.

Sovay by Celia Rees

Rating: WORTHY!

I enjoyed Celia Rees's Witch Child which was one of the earliest novels I blogged since I first began blogging reviews. I'm happy to report I enjoyed this one, as well.

It's set in renaissance Italy, and Sovay is the bastard daughter of a well-to-do Italian, who had an affair with a seamstress. He loved his daughter and left her a dowry, which her evil stepmother uses to buy not a husband, but a berth in a convent for her detested stepdaughter.

Sovay has other plans, however, and consults an astrologer who informs her she will find her true love despite events. As extra insurance, she buys a charm which is supposed to heat up(!) when her true love shows up. I have to say I felt that the charm was a bit of a waste of time. I admit a curiosity as to why the author put it in there, because for me, it really contributed nothing to the story which would have worked better without it.

Nevertheless, Sovay, something of an artist, attends the convent and starts learning the rules. There are mean rich girls there who bully her - again that's a trope that could have been omitted, but once Sovay's art is discovered, she's taken out of normal convent life and assigned as an initiate into the art department - which is run by a renowned female artist, inventor of the prized and secret 'Passion Blue' pigment, and who helps fill the convent coffers with commissions for her art. Sovay begins learning much, but is not willing to give up her pursuit of true love, and forms an attachment to a boy who is working on restoring a mural at the convent.

Needless to say, things do not pan out the way Sovay was hoping for or expecting, but they do pan out and the story reaches a satisfying conclusion. I enjoyed it very much and will probably seek other work by this author since she continues to bat a thousand with me. I commend this as a worthy read.

Gate of Air by Resa Nelson

Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"...and her faith never waived." I think she meant 'wavered'.
"Like all Northlanders (other than Frayka), men and women alike had long blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes." Not really.
"No sense in getting all sentimental." That last word didn't exist in Viking times. It comes from Latin sentire - to feel, but the Vikings didn't know it as a word. I get that you can't write a novel like this in the original language, but you can try, as an author, to make it sound somewhat like it's from another era, and not middle-America mall-speak!
Another example is the old guy who said things like: "Njall ain't hating you." And "It be you and Njall!" Seriously?! This is an abject lesson in how to write Northlanders and make them sound American! LOL!
Again with the Aryan cult: "Although he had the height and pale features of all other Northlanders" The truth is that Vikings were no taller than other peoples, and shorter than today's average, women being about 5 feet, men about 5.5 feet. In today's world, the Danes are 4th in line in terms of average height, and Icelanders are 10th so...still not towering.

This novel irked me pretty much from the start and it soon became too nauseating to read. It didn't sound remotely authentic, and much of it was misleading, ill-conceived, or far too American to sound remotely like an ancient people from Scandinavia! One of the early sentences revolved around the fact that main character Frayka (really? Frayka?!), who had just returned from an extended voyage, wasn't wearing her Sunday best or pristine and clean. As if.

I read: "Didn't you hear me ask if she'd ever laundered them? Think of how long she's been wearing them!" Laundered? The Norse peoples were hygienic, but it's highly unlikely someone welcoming back people who had been on a long voyage would make a comment like this! This was nothing more than high-school bullying! It felt so inauthentic and was the first big problem with this novel - the young adult outside who becomes the heroic femme. It's been done to death. Please! Get a new shtick already!

The writing was so clunky and amateurish that I gave up on it quickly and ditched the novel. I can't commend it based on what I read.

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinney

Rating: WARTY!

Me and this novel did not get along. Despite misgivings (see below) I did start to read it but it did not draw me in, and I felt like I shouldn't have started it anyway for reasonsI discuss next.

This novel in print form uses less than sixty percent of the page for text, and only some forty percent on new chapter pages. Naturally no one wants a book that is so print heavy it's like reading in the dark, but publishers could very easily use much more of the page than they do, thereby reducing paper waste and saving trees, which are the only organized institution actually doing anything concrete to seriously fight climate change. They need all the help they can get.

Since this was a recycled read, I don't feel so bad about that, but I have to say that it's not acceptable to sell or buy new books that so foolishly waste trees. That said, the story itself wasn't worth all this waste of trees though, either! No story is. It was boring, slow-moving, uninteresting and tedious, and I started skimming quite quickly trying to find interesting parts, and failed. I gave up less than 25% in.

Doomed by Tracy Deebs

Rating: WARTY!

This was another tired novel in first person. I think I'm going to systematically survey all of my books and give away or delete every last one of them that's in first person because I'am so tired of that worthless voice that it almost makes me ill when I see it in a book. Also, if I'd known that this author was a 'professor of writing' at a college, I would never have picked this one up on the first place. Such people are usually the very worst people at writing novels in my experience, but I've had it on my shelf for some considerable time, so maybe I was less picky when I picked this up!

The story launches into tropes form the outset - the disaffected teen who is parentless, the two guys, one a 'bad boy' and one a good guy for the inevitable YA lust triangle, and the ditz of a female main character who is so useless she can't possibly choose between them and leads both of them on like a cruel mistress for the entire trilogy. Get a tomb! Apparently this professor of writing teaches that it's best to rip-off every story that's ever gone before instead of writing something new and fresh. Either that or she teaches writing originally, and then hypocritically does just the opposite when it comes to her own projects. Either way this is not a person i want to learn anything from.

Main character Pandora wakes up on her birthday. Despite knowing better, she searches desperately for an email from her mom, but there is none. Yes, she's not an orphan per se, but her mother works for Big Fossil, aka Big Oil, and is often gone, and her father has been long gone, yet he's the one who sends her an email. How mom comes to leave Pandora all alone at home with no-one to keep an eye on her is a mystery. It's not like she couldn't afford a live-in caretaker for her daughter, but this lazy writer doesn't even bother to address that.

Pandora is quite obviously, it quickly comes to light, not the brightest silverware in the drawer. When she sees an email from her father, and despite being warned by her mother to delete on sight any emails he might send, she opens the lone one he does send and then clicks on the website it links to. This act unleashes something take instantly takes over the entire internet. Yes, everything, worldwide! No one is better than this hacker. No security is equal to it, so everything goes down. Then Pandora's computer lights up and she's offered the chance to play a game and save the world. Also, her two male consorts are let in on the game. How her father would even known she was hanging out with these two guys these days is one of endless questions left unanswered.

Idiot Pandora, despite the entire world being offline, decides they can go get pizza. This leads to a truck broadsiding them, and it was when Pandora, in first person, was describing in detail the accident that I decided I wither needed something to prevent severe nausea, or I needed to get the hell away from this piece of garbage. I chose to ditch the book. It's trash. I'm done with this author, too.

The Siren's Call by Jennifer Anne Kogler

Rating: WARTY!

This is book 2 of a series I began reading so long ago that it's not even one I blogged. Also I barely remember it. This is yet another problem with series ! LOL! I did recall it hazily, along with the author's name and the distinctive cover, and with a favorable if vague memory, but unfortunately I was turned off this particular volume right from the off, very nearly.

The story starts out with main character Fern, one of the 'Otherworldlies' having a bad dream while on an airplane flight with her schoolmates to Washington DC. Although she has a couple of friends at school, she is considered weird and is bullied by people who apparently go unchecked and unpunished at this school, as is the case with every high-school novel ever written for the YA crowd. Curious, that, isn't it? I guess YA authors just love to bully their characters for reasons which escape me.

At the airport, the students are divided into groups of four to share a room, and despite this bullying, Fern is assigned to share a room with the two biggest bullies. That's where I quit reading this. I am so tired of this school-bullying crap. I don't doubt that there is unfortunate and even dangerous school-bullying going on in real life, but for authors of these books to use it as their go-to conflict device is tiresome and unimaginative, and I will not reward it with a positive review. These authors need to get a new shtick.

In this case it wasn't even credible that this room assignment would be made especially since, on an occasion prior to this novel starting, these same two girls had duct-taped Fern's head to something while she slept. Who sleeps through getting her head duct-taped? Why are these two jerks still even students at the school after pulling a cruel stunt like that? Or is it one of those idiotic stories where the bullied don't snitch on the bullies? Again, tedious trope rejected. Find something intelligent to write if you want me to read your stories. This one is garbage.

Passion Blue by Victoria Strauss

Rating: WORTHY!

This book was set in 1487, which is the same year that the farcical witch-hunters' manual Malleus Maleficarum was published, and Leonardo da Vinci drew his 'Vitruvian Man'. It tells the story of Giulia Borromeo, the daughter of a Count and a seamstress in his employ.

When the count dies, it turns out that in his will, he has left provision for a dowry for Giulia so that she might marry decently, but her wicked stepmother decides that Giulia needs to be married to Christ, and gives her dowry to a convent, to which Giulia is promptly dispatched. She's not sent so promptly however that she doesn't have time to pay a quick visit to an astrologer who maps out her future with regard to whether or not she will ever meet her romantic match.

If she'd worded it precisely that way, she might have got a clearer answer, but in a desperate attempt to make sure she gets what she wants, she also pays a sorcerer to create an amulet containing a spirit which will guide her to her true love. I'm unconvinced of the value of incorporating this supernatural element into this story, because it seemed like an unnecessary distraction to me, and the story works perfectly well without it, but the amulet played only a small role, so I was willing to let that slide.

That amulet seems to Giulia like it burns when she meets a young man at the monastery who is there to renew a damaged fresco. Of course she's not supposed to be with him alone, but she's a bit of a rebel, and she doesn't want to be at the convent anyway. She has other plans. She's expecting to meet the love of her life and move on.

Later, she meets the same guy on a supervised trip from the convent. This trip came about because Giulia has some talent for drawing, and the convent she was sent to conveniently has a workshop of some renown, where nuns create works of art to adorn churches. It's quite a lucrative business, especially since one of the nuns - the maestra, has created a brilliant shade of blue known as passion blue - not from romantic passion but from the passion of Christ. Once Giulia's skill in art comes to light, she's is adopted by this maestra, and begins training as an artist under her wing. She attends the workshop each day instead of pursuing what the other nun novices are doing.

Despite being thrilled with her opportunities there, Giulia is still intent upon pursuing her romantic inclination, and she secretly arranges to meet her guy in the orchard behind the convent one night, where there's a breech in the wall and he can climb through. These meetings continue, but they don't end up where Giulia was expecting them to!

The book was quite surprisingly entertaining. It felt really nice for a change, to pick up a book like this on spec as it were and to discover that it's as good as you'd hoped it would be. We should all write books like that. I commend this fully as a worthy read.

Princeless Book 2 Get Over Yourself by Jeremy Whitley, Emily Martin, Kelly Lawrence

Rating: WORTHY!

I came across these books purely by accident in my local library and pretty much have started falling in love. The writing (by Whitley) is good and amusing, and M-ART-in takes fine care of the ART. Colors by Lawrence are also excellent. Naturally when you're relying on your local library to get this new stuff (new to me anyway) you can't always be sure you get it in the right order - or read it in that order either, for that matter.

This is book 2, and I should have read it after the other volume I got, so that's on me. What's not on me though is the confusion by the author starting a series within a series. Some of the books are subtitled 'Raven the Pirate Princess', and those are intermingled in the library listing, so it was a real pain to sort out not only in what order these should be read, but also which were of one series and which of another. Life ought to be a lot simpler than this. No wonder people end-up takine automatic weapons into crowds when life is like this - and this sure as hell isn't the most egregious example of life's frustrations; it's just one of many minor ones, but many a mickle maks a muckle dontcha know?

That pet frustration aside, I really enjoyed this volume in which Adrienne and Bedelia take their dragon Sparky on a road-trip (road? Air-trip) in search of Angelica, who ain't so angelic, but who is Adrienne's sister, and who bills herself as fantasy land's most beautiful.

Unfortuantely, it appears that Angelica is in no need of rescue and probably would prefer to be left alone with her swelling crowd of admirers, but that's not the only problem since the King has hired a group of poseurs, aka knights(? Maybe?) to track down and kill the knight he believes is responsible for Adrienne's death. The problem is that the night who "killed" Adrienne is actually Adrienne herself, as part of a dastardly escape plan. The plot quickens. Loved it. Commend it. Haven't had this much fun since Bad Machinery and Rat Queens which is hardly surprising since this appears to be a cross between both those series. Now I'm on my own quest to find more.

Princeless The Pirate Princess Girls Who Fight Boys by Jeremy Whitley, Rosy Higgins, Ted Brandt

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by Whitley, with art by Higgins and Brandt, this began as a Rapunzel rip-off about the rescuing of a purported princess (she'd deny it) from a tower. Her hair, unfortunately, was nowhere near long enough, but the escape was affected anyway, and they were on their merry way. The 'pirate princess' was desperate to take over the nearest pirate ship, especially since it was being run by her brother (although he was not on board). I was sorry one of the trio dropped out and spent the rest of this volume napping, but that's dwarves for you.

Most fun sentence: "We kept company for a few moments before she continued eastward while I ate and watered my horse." I've heard the phrase "I could eat a horse," but the way this was worded, she actually did eat a horse. And then watered it. That takes some doing....

Loved it though. A fun romp. Commend it. Looking for more.

Hellcat Careless Whiskers by Kate Leth, Brittney L Williams, Rachelle Rosenberg

Rating: WARTY!

I have to say of this that I found the title far more entertaining than the content. I'm sorry to have to say that, but there it is. The story didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and there really wasn't much happening. This is the only one about this character that I've read and it isn't the first one in the series, so maybe it loses something for that, but to me it wasn't appealing at all. I liked the Hellcat played by Rachael Taylor in the Netflix series Jessica Jones far more than ever I liked this one, who was rather lacking in substance.

That was the entire problem: it was nothing but a ping-pong game between Hellcat and her rival who was chewing up the scenery and not in any entertaining fashion at that. Hellcat's followers were being subsumed by her rival (whose name I completely forget) and as soon as hellcat would manage to liberate one, another would get sucked in due to some magical ability inherent in her rival's claws. I actually was liking her rival better than the hero quite frankly, but that's a relative liking. Nothing of interest was happening, and overall I didn't like this at all or find it entertaining or engaging. I can't commend it. At least I can say it got a negative OC rating (i.e. there were no open crotch shots in this comic) - but then it was a female vehicle so that didn't surprise me).

Zatanna's Search by arrested-adolescence writers and artists

Rating: WARTY!

Zatanna the female magician starts out right on the front cover in fishnet hose, so though it's technically not an open crotch shot, I didn't need to go any further into this comic book to fail it. The crotch shot is completely obviated by the cover itself. FAIL. Her legs are entirely out of proportion to the rest of her body as well. Just sayin'. Art or porn?

Spider-Gwen Radioactive apparently written by adolescents

Rating: WARTY!

I was impressed by Spider-Gwen in the hugely successful animated move Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which made over four times its budget and will, so I've read, spawn at least two sequels/spin-offs. This comic unfortunately, is a FAIL because the OC rating for this graphic novel was 46. That means that it took only until page 46 for a gratuitous open crotch shot, which admittedly is better than many I've looked at recently, but still unacceptable. The art crew? Unsurprisingly, it was almost entirely male.

Cable and X-Force Onslaught Rising by various adolescents

Rating: WARTY!

This comic gets an OC rating of 19. That's the page number I quit reading at because that's where the first illustration of a female appeared with her legs wide open for no reason at all except that the artists of this trash are quite evidently perennially adolescents. Open Crotch on page 19 says it all.

Almost as bad was the artwork in general, which was so scratchy it made me itch - for less. There was nothing attractive, elegant, or anything about it at all. It had bared, gnashing teeth and fighting on every other page. The only chops it had were drooling, and it's not remotely entertaining at all.

X-Force a Force to be Reckoned With by assorted delayed-adolescence writers and artists

Rating: WARTY!

This has an OC rating of 26 - that is, it took only until page 26 for a female to be portrayed with her legs wide open to the viewer. Hilariously, the one thing the woman is saying in that same panel is "Never!". Any OC (open crotch) rating is a fail for comic book and graphic novels, and the lower the number, the greater the failure. This book is a fail regardless of whetever else it thinks it has to offer.

The entire creative cast for this book was evidently high testosterone, adolescent males so this surprises me not a whit, but the interesting thing is that if this was rated on male open crotch shots instead of female, it would have an even higher rating of 1, meaning the very first page had an open crotch shot of a male. That's the lowest rating you can get nrxt to a zero for such an image on the cover. In 1998, a study at the University of Central Florida of 33 video games found that half of them depicted violence against women or sexually-objectified them. Do we really want comics going down that stinking, testosterone-laced alley? No wonder female comic book buyers are in the minority.

So the novel is a fail, but I also have to say that the drawing was poor for my taste. It was too 'scratchy' - like if you load an image into a computer art app and sharpen it up too much? That's what the artwork looked like in this book. I didn't like it. I didn't like the characters, either, especially not cable, and the story was boring. These characters were fighting every other page. What the hell is wrong with these morons who write these books? Do they think endless fighting equals a story? More to the point, what the hell is wrong with the morons who read trash like this? WARTY, period.

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Rating: WORTHY!

Eliz is counting the days until her graduation when she can head off to college and leave her little town behind. She's tired of being the odd one out at school and has no interest in anyone there. What neither the school nor anyone else but her immediate family realizes is that Eliza Mirk is the creator of a web comic called Monstrous Sea, which is highly popular. Why it is, I don't know.

There are a few (and far between) illustrations in the print book along with some text about which I had no particular feelings one way or the other excepting to say that it didn't seem to me the type of thing that would inspire and rabid readership and a thriving paraphernalia store which nets Eliza a comfortable income such that she can already pay her way through college.

This all begins to unravel when a studly guy arrives at her school as a transfer, and immediately he and Eliza start becoming an item. At first it's very awkward, but when they both reveal their shared interest in Monstrous Sea (he as a fan fiction writer, she as a fan fiction artist - so she tells him) they begin hanging out together and eventually really are dating. This is where I began to have problems with this novel because it started feeling too trope to live. The girl who thinks she's unattractive and has no interest in guys. The stud of a guy - a jock, with chiseled features and a buff bod - is attracted to her. Seriously? That is so YA. This could have been about a couple of regular nerds with no special physical qualities and it would ahve read a lot better, so why'd the author go the trad route instead of making her own path? Selling out to Big publishing™ maybe? Far too many YA authors do.

For the longest time it seems as though Eliza was truly going to be different, because the writing suggested she was perhaps overweight and typically dressed way down, but in the end she's the good-looking girl who only needs to take her eyeglasses off to be a runway model. Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but it came close at times. That started to turn me off the novel, but the writing continued to be good, original, and interesting and the relationship didn't suddenly balloon out of nothing. That sure helped. The thing is that it could have been that same way with the nerds. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

I read on anyway, and found myself being drawn into the story and wanting to know what happened next even when, at the end, it became predictable. Eliza had a counterpart who had started a series of books and then when it came to the last volume - never produced one. She left her fans hanging and dropped out of the world. You knew at this point that Eliza would contact her when she ran into the same issues, which in Eliza's case were precipitated by her idiot parents who have zero understanding of Eliza, and who constantly demean and belittle her interests concerning Monstrous Sea; they consider it to be just some passing fad which didn't deserve to be taken seriously. They had no interest in even reading the web comic.

I wondered at times how autobiographical this novel was. I don't know. I hope it wasn't, but it could well be for all I know. She writes like maybe it is, or like maybe she knows someone like this. I can understand it from my own experiences. But loved ones aren't by any means required to love what we love. We can only hope for understanding, and be miserable if we don't get it! Writing can be a very lonely profession, even for an amateur.

The problem other than the trope high-school couple was that the ending was very predictable. You know she's going to be outed before she tells her studly boyfriend her big secret and that he's going to react very negatively, but in the end everything is going to be hunky dory, and she's even going to be reconciled with her family that she's spent the entire novel all-but despising until that last few pages. That was too sickly for me, but despite that, the overall the novel was worth reading. Besides I'm tired of wishing for novels that don't necessarily wrap-up neatly in the end like a pathetic TV sitcom tying off all the loose ends in a half-hour or forty minutes. I got so tired of waiting for such novels to come that I started writing them myself!

I read somewhere that this author is John Greene's new favorite. I wonder what happened to the previous one? How are they faring? Whenever I read one author recommend another like that I wonder how much they were paid to review the book. She's fortunate that I read that commendation after I read her novel, because if I'd read it beforehand I would never have picked this book up! I can't say she's my favorite author, but then I'm not paid for my reviews! I can say I would read something else by her - except maybe not if it was as long as this was.

Nightmare City by Jack Conner

Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"You're 'friend'?" should be "Your 'friend'"
"Kat ducked under it, hurt a splash, and smelled something foul." Heard a splash?

This book had a few typos which is not big deal for me. The ones I noticed are listed above. The story started out great. Set in an alien world (or maybe Earth of the future, but gone real bad!), Kat is a petty thief operating on the edges of major crime boss territories.

One blurb has it that "In the dystopian, steampunkish city of Lavorga, the young and beautiful thief Katya has stumbled upon a plot that may spell the end of the world . . . and only she can stop it." Why beautiful has to be spelled out I do not know. I don't recall reading that when I found this book on offer. If I had, I would have rejected it out of hand. What makes her special if her only qualities are young a beautiful? That's pathetic. When she grows old is she going to be worthless? That is what Hollywood seems to think, so maybe this author - or the blurb writer - has bought that kettle of rotting fish. The young are often beautiful; youth is often the mistaken for beauty. They're two sides of the same coin and tell us nothing.

The thing is I started out liking it, but once the big crime boss she goes on a spying mission for welcomes her back and is uninvitedly manhandling her, and she offers no objection to it, I lost all interest in it and ditched it right there.

The story hadn't been making a lot of sense, but it was engaging, as was the character (but not for her youth and 'beauty'). The problem was that life ran a little too smoothly for her, and I could see exactly where this was going as, returning from her mission, the waifish girl was subsumed by the big muscular man. I had no desire to go there with it. Grab a barf bag if you plan on reading further than I did. You'll need it. I can't commend this based on the sizeable portion I read.