"Stella has been keeping an earth-shattering secret from her 14-year-old daughter, Georgie." Earth shattering? Really? Can you spell hyperbole, Ali? But don't worry The Earth shatters into precise national delineations where there are no more international wars nor any terrorism, so life is sweet. Except for the USA where cultural intolerance, racism, homphobia, and politcal dvides cause it to fracture into a million autonomous mini-states which float all in disparate directions, never to meet again.
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by LC Rosen
"A sex-positive and thoughtful romp with humor and heart" - that's how the Kirkus circus unsurprisingly describes this. "When out-and-proud teen advice columnist Jack starts to receive strange letters that soon take a threatening turn, can his best friends help him unmask the writer's identity?" 'Jack' is evidently short for jackass, if this moron doesn't take this to the police. Yet another reason why I avoid like the plague any novel with a main character named 'Jack' - the most overused cliché name on the fictional planet.
No Ordinary Star by MC Frank
"In 2525," if man can stay alive, if woman can survive...a fugitive girl struggles to survive an icy wasteland as a soldier sets out for the North Pole with an impossible task" Yeah. The impossible task is figuring out how the world became an icy wasteland when presently it's heating up by the minute. If this story were set in a barren desert, then I might get with it, but as it is? Meh.
Rain Boy by Dylan Glynn
The adventures of rain man when he was a boy! No wonder Kirkus called it "captivating." Captivating. Captivating. Oh! Fart! Wherever he goes, Rain Boy brings a downpour - but when things turn stormy at Sun Kidd's birthday party, can his new friend help him embrace who he is?" My guess is yes, but why ask? Is it because the writer of the book description thinks all the potential readers of this book are idiots? Nothing new here.
Fanny Bower Puts Herself Out There by Julia Ariss
"After a lifetime of sitting on the sidelines, Fanny Bower decides to cast aside her fears and make her presence known. But plunging headfirst into social settings is harder than it looks - and between small talk, spilled wine, and embarrassing gaffes, she's in for a wild ride!" This tells me Fanny is a moron who never considered taking things in stages so she could avoid all the big problems. I don't understand why so many female authors are so intent upon writing about moronic women, but I sure have no desire to read anything about such people. I wonder if the author knows that fanny is a euphemism - in the US for ass, and in the UK for pussy? And bower, as in bower bird, is a display to attract a mate. Is fanny Bower putting her ass out there to attract a mate?
Cruel Winter by Sheila Connolly
"In a small Irish village, Maura Donovan and her pub patrons are snowed in - and there's a killer in their midst" No problem. Everyone stay together, stay awake or rotate three or more people awake at once, and problem is solved. Why this gets to be called " A clever cozy mystery" is the only real mystery here, but why a "New York Times bestselling author" needs to unload her work at a discount is another mystery. And 'village'? Like they wanted this Irish story to be even more cute and stereotyped than ever?
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Bunker by Jay J Falconer
"When a coordinated electromagnetic attack wipes out power across the country, it’s up to former combat engineer Jack Bunker" Stop right there. Another got to character named Jack? Fuck off. And couple that with 'Bunker'? Seriously? What's his dad's name? Archie? "to transform the ordinary citizens of a small Colorado town into hardened warriors — and lead them into a deadly battle for survival." Of course it's book one, because why the hell wouldn't a dumbass story like this be a series of dumbass stories? Why does he have to train the citizens of Colorado? I'm guessing it's because the already-trained military and cops are all robots and were all disabled by the EMP? Except Jack of course. This story is jacked up.
JET - Ops Files by Russell Blake
This is the sort of story that ought to have appealed to me (despite really disliking the title), but I could not take it seriously. The first problem is that it jumped around so much from one place to another, and from one set of characters to an unrelated set with great flourishes of self-importance. Obviously in the long run these parts of the story are going to be related, but it was such hodge-podge that it annoyed me; every time I felt I was getting into the main character's the story, I was whisked away again and forced into something else that really wasn't interesting to me. I wanted to read about the main character, not a series of seemingly random people involved in random events.
I was going with it though, because I always enjoy the idea at least, of a strong female character as the protagonist, but my assumption going into a novel is that this main character isn't stupid, or at least if she starts out that way, she soon wises-up, but about 20% in I discovered this not to be the case.
Maya is in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force or in Israeli, Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisrael, or The Army of Defense for Israel), and her squad is involved in guarding a security checkpoint in Ramallah, vetting vehicles coming through. This one early morning, right at shift change, when the night-shift guard was at its lowest ebb, a vehicle came through which was loaded with terrorists, there was a gun-battle and the terrorists got away, and Maya's best friend, the only other woman in the guard squad, was killed.
This didn't make any sense at all to me, because rather than come in guns blazing, the vehicle stopped and waited, and only opened fire when it was suspected by the guards to be inauthentic. I didn't get the point of that approach. If they had been trying to get through the checkpoint to cause trouble elsewhere, then their approach made sense, but that's not what the writing suggested. If all they had planned on doing was shooting up the checkpoint, which is how it seemed, then it made zero sense to come in like a lamb and wait to be discovered.
Regardless, Maya takes this shooting personally, and she begins sneaking out of the barracks disguised as an Arab woman (she speaks fluent Arabic), and scouring city for the people who did it; Eventually she locates the residence where these terrorists hang out, and she hears them discussing making a bomb. She does consider reporting this, but she's already in trouble with a vindictive sergeant and if he finds out she's been moonlighting as a spy when she's supposed to be in the barracks, then she'll be in trouble, even if she does have good intel on a threat. So she decides she has to handle this herself. It's bullshit, though.
Another option would have been for her to make up a story that an informant told her this information at the checkpoint (she could claim, for example, that this happened when no one else was paying attention because she was talking to a kid). That might sound like bullshit, but at least the intel would have been passed on. A solid writer would have gone this route - or via something similar - and then perhaps had the information discredited, thereby letting Maya have free reign to take it into her own hands. This author didn't do that, and instead, he made Maya a dumbass by having her go rogue - which is what gets her into trouble and gets her eventually recruited into the Mossad - with far too little motive. I just thought it was bad writing.
Right after Maya's big discovery, she was heading back to barracks and was accosted by three louts who figured they could take advantage of a lone Arab woman. She beat them up of course, but her attack started with a roundhouse kick that left her feeling "the toe of her combat boot [connecting] with his jaw." If shed been dressed modestly, as the text states, she would have been wearing a long dress and there's no way in hell you can roundhouse kick in one of those. The text doesn't actually specify what she was wearing other than a hijab (a headscarf), but modesty suggests a long dark dress. Arab women in Palestine do wear a variety of different clothing styles, including jeans and pants, and shorter dresses, but specifying modesty is what would seem to trap Maya. It just felt like more bad writing. That's when I quit reading the novel - at about 20% in - because as they say in the action movies, "I have a bad feeling about this."!
The blurb tells us that "JET- Ops Files is a breakneck adrenaline rush that will leave action thriller fans gasping." No, it's not. It's slow and sprawling, and it's irritatingly pedantic and constantly shifting focus. In what sounds like desperation, the blurb says, "If you love Bourne, Reacher, Mitch Rapp, or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, JET will keep you turning pages late into the night." But it really doesn't seem like this has a heck of a lot in common with Jason Bourne or Lisbeth Salander. I can't speak for Jack Reach-around for whom I have zero time, since Jack is the most over-used dumb-ass go-to name for an action guy ever. I've never heard of Mitch Rapp and I'm not impressed with his name either. I can't commend this based on what I read. It's too much like a guy with tits sort of a story.
A Killer's Daughter by Jenna Kernan
I will not read novels with this form of title - one which makes the female character anonymous and an appendage of someone or something else, so I don't care that "After a young woman's corpse is found in Sarasota Bay, agent Nadine Finch is horrified to spot a mark identical to the MO of her own serial killer mother." Who cares, really?
Murder on Millionaires' Row by Erin Lindsey
"In Gilded Age New York, housemaid Rose Gallagher investigates her wealthy employer's mysterious disappearance" Why? To be yet another interfering busybody? The NYPD has been in existence since 1845, yet dipshit Rose thinks they can't help? Barf.
A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy/Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron
These two are in the same review because really? They're the same book.
A River of Royal Blood "16-year-old Princess Eva must defeat her sister in a deadly battle for the throne - or else forfeit her own life." Isn't that what deadly means? Hello?
Coupled with:
Cinderella Is Dead (How I wish she were but it ain't gonna happen, not when Disney (barf) and Amazon (double barf) are milking it for all they're worthless. "When 16-year-old Sophia befriends Cinderella's last living descendant, can they join forces to overthrow the king?" Sixteen year olds fighting for the throne. How are these two stories any different? Oh, I guess it's because this one is an "empowering fantasy adventure 'that will forever change how readers perceive fairy tales' " according to Booklist. Shows why they're not to be trusted eh?! No wonder they're listing.
Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella
"With nearly 30,000 five-star ratings on Goodreads" this author is still trying to milk this for all it's worth. ♩It's all about the Benjamins!♬ We follow "budget-challenged Becky Bloomwood to the big city - where her high jinks could cost her everything" and so while children starve in Ethiopia (and in the USA), this jerk is spend, spend, spend on clothes. Way to go.
The Judas Strain by James Rollins
"When an extinction-level virus threatens humanity, it's up to Sigma Force commander Gray Pierce to stop the catastrophe in its tracks - and the key to the cure lies in the legendary travels of Marco Polo" Absolutely! That commander is going to throw everything he has at the virus. Tanks, AA missiles, rockets, grenades. He's going to surround it and bomb it back to the stone age, and wipe it from the face of the Earth. Meanwhile the medical people will cower in terror. Any novel with a ridiculous title like this (ripping off Michael Crichton to boot) should be avoided like the plague.
Hooky by MÃriam Bonastre Tur
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This was a comic book for younger readers written and illustrated by talented Spanish artist Tur. It's rooted in a 'webcomic' from 'webtoon' with which I am not familiar, but which seems to have been a success.
This version evidently has new material, but without knowing the original I can't speak to that. While I thought the artwork was bright, colorful, and well done, for me the story failed to live up to the illustrations. It was choppy and made no sense, and while I realize that I am not the intended audience, and that a less critical audience might well go for this, I can only review it from my own perspective and for me it failed for a variety of reasons. I will say that one wonderful thing about it is that this story did not have JK Rowling's sexist distinction that boys were glorious wizards, but girls were 'only' witches with all the negative baggage that appellation entails. No, these guys were both witches!
I have a problem with magic stories where the actual magic takes a back seat and the story ends up being just a regular story with a patina of magic dusted over it for flair, and that's what seems to have happened here. There were so many places where magic would have been useful, but obviously if you're in a world where you can 'magic' anything, you really need to work on the story to make it entertaining. It's a fine line the author walks between going full throttle magical, which risks making everything too easy for the protagonists, and being a magical miser, which to me makes the magical elements worthless by failing to use them when they make logical sense.
The author seems to attempt to get around this by having these kids be so poorly-educated (magically speaking) that they swing right into that 'magical miser' territory and for me this spoils the story. It seems to me that the kids ought to have had at least a basic grounding in magic from their parents or from their elementary magic school, but none of this is even discussed, much less explored, so there's this huge plot hole whereby the kids are rank amateurs, but we're offered no reason why.
The story here is that witch twins Dani and Dorian miss the school bus that would deliver them to their magical academy. Instead of telling their parents of this, or taking out their brooms and flying, they give up completely and end up wandering aimlessly around, quite lost as to what to do. Through a series of accidental events they end up with an advanced professor of magic, and somehow irresponsibly fail to tell their parents of their change of plans.
The story deteriorates after this as they fall in with a random group of misfits - a princess and a trouble-maker - and just have a chaotic series of adventures seemingly unconnected to anything. Meanwhile we're getting hints of a magical conspiracy, but that seems like a separate and entirely unconnected story. I was pretty much lost by this time because I had no clear idea of what the author was trying to do, or where this story was going, if anywhere. It just seemed to meander at the author's fleeting whim without having a purpose or a plan, and I DNF'd it because it was not entertaining me at all. I was looking for a coherent story, and there wasn't one to be had here. It felt more like a disconnected series of Sunday newspaper cartoons, which is what, I'm guessing, the web series was. So while I loved the art, I can't commend it based on the story - or lack thereof.
Pigology by Daisy Bird, Camilla Pintonato
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
You eat like a pig. Your place is a pigsty. You're hogging all the limelight. Pigs equal insults in many a mind. This book hopes to set a few records straight and give you a basic grounding in how to choose, own, raise and care for your pig, regardless of what your intentions are. I'm an almost lifelong vegetarian so I would never eat a pig, but I do like the animals. Ignorantly associated with squalor, pigs are not dirty animals - unless they're forced into being so by their human predators. They're also smart - more than dogs even - and among the most intelligent animals in the world.
But they are exploited hugely. Whether your plan is to do that or to have one as a pet, this book will set you up with the basic information you will need to make smart choices and to care for your animal competently. It's laid out according to the following section headings (although there's an introductory section, which for once I did read, that's not included in the content listing for some reason):
- Bon Appetiti
- Food All year Round
- The International Pig
- Sausageology
- Everything But the Squeal
- Pigs and Humans
- The Mythological Pig
- Chinese Zodiac
- Wit and Wisdom
- Fame!
- Worth Their Weight in Gold
- The Perfect Pigsty
- pigs as Pets
- A rainbow of Breeds
- A rainbow of Breeds
- Vietnamese Potbellied Pig, Odssabaw Island Hog
- Danish Protest Pig, Meishan
- Gloucester Old Spot, Large White
- Black Iberian, Mulefoot
The book is amusing and colorful, with entertaining illustrations and enough information to set you on the right track without being a PhD dissertation. I commend this as a worthy read for anyone wanting to pig out and go hog wild!
Lore of Rainbow by Vera Nazarian
This is a prequel to the author's Lords of Rainbow which I shall never read because this effort completely turned me off. The language was way-the-hell too florid and rambling and I had no idea what this was about, much less what the succeeding story will be about, because after reading a third of this very short 'prologue' I was clueless as where it was going or what point it was trying to make. Worse, I had by then lost all interest in finding out. This is why I do not read prologues. They're utterly worthless, as is this.
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
"Searching for a new purpose, failed academic Frank moves to a small, sleepy Georgia town to chart the history of his family’s estate." Because that's sure going to change the world for the better. Yawn.
She's So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott
"After her wealthy family falls from grace, Ally Ryan is reluctant to return to her ritzy hometown" Oh boo-hoo! Who gives a flying shit about the lifestyes of the spoiled rotten? Really?
Pieces of Our Past by James Hunt
The first thing that should warn you away from this is the title. "When a child disappears in the dead of night, Seattle missing persons detectives Jim North and Kerry Martin investigate — but this case will put their partnership to the test." North goes South. I preferred James Hunt the Formula One driver.
A Daring Journey by Jeanne St James
There's nothing remotely daring about this. "On her flight home, Mac finds her heart racing after meeting pilot Damon. When Trevor, a man from Damon’s past, shows up, the trio’s chemistry ignites." Seriously? That didn't work so well for the Rockton Chemtool plant....
The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross, Mark A Altman
I'm not at all surprised that Kirkus reviews champions this. That makes perfect sense. I don't think it's happenstance that their name is almost the same as 'Circus'. But the last thing this world needs is more William Shatner. That's not even the worst thing. The title suggests there will be at least one more volume. The Original Series has shat its load and needs to be TOSsed along with the entire mentalprise. It's as tedious as Star Bores. Barf.
Sword of the Seven Sins by Emily Colin
"From a New York Times bestselling author" and yet she's forced to unload her oeuvre for ninety-nine cents on Amazon! "Eva is horrified when she’s chosen to serve the Commonwealth as an executioner. In a society governed by the code of the Seven Sins, love is forbidden." How would that even happen? This is nothing more than a cut-rate handmaid's tale and even that was dumb. The whole idea is bullshit from the off. Nope.
Excess Baggage by Judy Astley
"Single mom Lucy is in desperate need of a vacation — so she agrees to join her dysfunctional parents and siblings on a Caribbean getaway." Ri-ight - because that would be the perfect relaxing vacation. If a novel begins with a dumb-ass plot like that, it can only get worse! No thanks.
Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton
"When 40-year-old Emma Porter sets out to tour the gardens of England," Why is her age important? "Aunt Dimity’s ghostly intervention leads her to a Gothic mansion - and an extraordinary mystery!" Why doesn't the meddling Aunt Dimwitted solve the frigging mystery herself? Another hard pass. Well, it wasn't that hard! LOL!
The Atlantis Bloodline by CA Gray
"As a member of a covert organization, Kaison has been tasked with tracking down Ada the last survivor of a magical bloodline" Kaison? A caisson is a chest or wagon for hauling ammunition. Seriously? And why is he tasked with finding her? Why not a private detective? If there's magic, why not use magic to find her? None of this makes any sense! "If he succeeds, Kaison can earn his sister’s freedom… but what happens when he starts to fall in love with Ada?" I can answer that: we get another dumb-ass so-called romance which is why I will not be reading this crap.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)