The Salbine Sisters by Sarah Ettritch

Title: The Salbine Sisters
Author: Sarah Ettritch
Publisher: Norn
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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!

I loved this story from the off, and I recommend it.

Is Sarah Ettritch a cool name or what? She has some interesting titles showing on her web site, but this is the first of hers I've read. I may try to track down some others if I like this one. I don't know what nationality Ettritch is, but she writes like someone who grew up in Australia or perhaps England, and I love her phraseology especially when she gets very slightly potty-mouthed in her dismissive phrases. There's something rib-tickling about "nuns" using some bad language, even if only mildly.

The name 'Salbine' made me think of Sabines and Roman times. I find myself wondering if the author (authoress? Already linguistic genderism strikes!) chose it to reflect that, but there's no indication as to where this story takes place, or when, or even if it's on Earth. (I'm not saying this is a bad thing). It was only later that I discovered that Ettritch is pronouncing 'Salbine' as 'Salbin'!

The Salbine sisters is exclusively a female religious order which worships the god Salbine (yes, it's a goddess, but why are we putting ourselves into a position where we must distinguish between them? I mentioned this gender specific terminology in another review, and it's the same argument here: if we bring female deities under the banner of 'god', then do we insult them or equalize them? Maybe we should quit using 'god' and use the gender neutral 'deity' instead?

I found myself counting the number of times Ettritch uses the main two character's names on the very first page, because it seemed such a lot! It was in the twenties for each, but it's hard to see how that could be changed significantly given what she was conveying. Maybe it's just me being weird. The main protagonists are Lillian and Maddy, with an emphasis on the latter. Lillian is a woman in her early forties, who is - I was going to say 'a master', but that's wrong, as indeed is 'a mistress'! so let me say - 'an adept' at the magical arts, which in this case means control over the four so-called elements.

I have to say I found this latter cliché somewhat tiresome. Can we not get away from magic fantasy stories which are mired in the trope of air, earth, fire, and water? From the scientific PoV, none of those is actually an element. I know it's not meant in that way literally in these fables, and some hundred eighteen real elements are a bit much to handle, but even that large number can be simplified into as few as ~10 groups, as the periodic table demonstrates. I'd have a lot of respect for a fantasy story which tried using that in place of what we typically get. Indeed, wouldn't it be a refreshingly different story if we started out with the trope, but the story was about how a young and gifted new mage actually discovers that there is much more to these four 'elements' than meets the wand?

In the same way that real scientists discovered that the atom (something which the 5^{th<\sup> century Greeks named as such because it was the smallest thing of which they could conceive) was itself discovered to be comprised from smaller component parts, so, too, could the four elements. What could be more magical than the discovery that water, something which typically douses fires, could be split into two elements that cause fires to rage, thereby impressively linking fire and water? Anyway, having whined about that, I'm committed to reading this story because I really liked it, so this is one amongst a set of pet peeves we readers may be required to hang up at the door as we enter!}

Lillian, in her early forties, has been a the monastery for a long time. Long before the story begins, she had a relationship with another woman, Caroline, who left her in the lurch. Now she has begun, very nervously, a new relationship with Maddy, a brand new initiate who may or may not have Lillian's best interests at heart. But Maddy, in her early twenties, is a whole thicket of issues herself. In this world, young women sometimes receive the mark of Salbine (a tree pattern on their hand). Once this happens, the woman can choose to take up the call or to ignore it. If they come to this (or another) monastery, they're initiated into the order, and are shown how to harness those four elements. It seems that Salbine is the only god there is. If there are others, they're not mentioned - not this far, anyway! And Salbine is definitely an absentee landlord!

Maddy is having some serious problems with picking up the elemental practice. She can't raise fire except in the most, er, elementary way (sorry, I couldn't resist that!), and one day while trying, she feels like her entire body is on fire and she collapses. From this event she learns from the Abbess that she is 'malflowed'. This isn't the first time this has ever happened to anyone, but what it means for Maddy is that she cannot continue in the magical studies because she could cause great harm to herself or to others.

This is so devastating to her that she feels crippled, rejected, second-hand, malformed. She fears that she will lose Lillian or have to leave the monastery, but she is not rejected by her sisters (although she is abused somewhat by another initiate). She begins, at the abbess's advice, to study other malflowed initiates, to learn more about what she is, and what became of others who were in these same circumstances. She's repeatedly told that this is not the end of her life with the order, that she was chosen for a reason, but this is little consolation to Maddy, who, despite her severe disappointment at her status, resolves to pursue a means by which to handle it. This involves her leaving Lillian for a while, and I have to say that Maddy, the younger of the two, is the more mature in this development. And this parting does precipitate the revelation of a secret which Lillian has been withholding from Maddy.

To reveal more details than the many I've now given would be to tell Ettritch's story for her which is not my goal in my blog, so I'll wind this up with general observations, and leave you to read the novel. This novel seems obviously to have been written from a lesbian PoV, and so one observation I have now is that the novel left me feeling that there is a latent prejudice against heterosexuals underlying its philosophy! Let me explain that. The monastery is for women only. They have men to 'guard' them, especially when they go on journeys. I have some issues with this on several fronts!

As I've intimated, this is, overall, in general terms, a strong novel and it drew me in quickly and held my attention. There were some minor quibbles (such as, for example, a tavern having glasses. Given that this novel appears to be set in medieval times, I seriously doubt your typical roadside inn would have glassware! And there was a bit of telegraphy in play regarding the fortune of one character, but I can forgive all that because the story is otherwise so good. In fact, that one character proved to be as charming, enjoyable, and entertaining as the two main characters.

Here's a pet peeve of mine regarding witches, magicians, mages and wizards - why are they so useless?! These stories (and this isn't aimed at this novel in particular, which I enjoyed very much, but at magical stories in general) always extol the power of magic and/or the particular mage/witch/wizard in question, but when it gets right down to the nitty gritty, these powerful magical people are useless. Take the Harry Potter series as a case in point. Dumbledore was praised as the most powerful wizard there was, yet he was essentially helpless against the rise to power of Voldemort, and it was down to Potter, not through any magical skill, but through luck and pluck to save the day.

The same was true of The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf was supposedly this magnificent wizard, yet he could do nothing to transport the ring to the volcano! All of his skill and power, and his magic was useless. He couldn’t protect Frodo from harm, he couldn’t give him magic to see through the wiles of Gollum, he couldn’t make him invisible, or speed his legs! So what good was his magic, honestly? Why even include magic in a story if you're not going to go anywhere with it? In the end, it was all on Frodo, and Gandalf couldn’t even summon up one of his giant eagles to give him a ride there! This is also true of gods. The Bible talks of the most powerful being in the universe - indeed, the creator of the universe - yet the bottom line was that this creator could do nothing, and it was down to the Israelites to savagely take the land they were supposedly promised! How pathetic is that?!

So how does this relate to The Salbine Sisters? In the same vein as the problems I addressed above, what I don’t get about this novel, given that they have this supposedly strong and pervasive control of the 'elements' at their fingertips (quite literally!), is why is it that they have to resort to sending letters by messenger to communicate with another monastery? They can't use magic to communicate? If not, then why? This isn't explained and I think it needs to be, otherwise the story is letting the reader down. We're being asked to take something on faith and given no reason for it, and I think this reflects badly on an author. I don’t do well on faith alone!

Why, for example, does Maddy have to physically travel to the other monastery to read their documents? Yes, I know there has to be this separation to move Maddy and Lillian's story along, but the question of why their magic is so unhelpful in this regard is unaddressed. For me, it's now sitting there, the bull elephant in the room, reminding me that this is just a story, and I shouldn’t take it too seriously or become too engrossed in it, because this separation seems awfully artificial now - like it didn’t arise truly organically from the story, but was tossed in randomly just because. The problem which Ettritch has caused here is that I want to get engrossed in this story! It’s all her fault! She made me love these characters, but I feel she's cheated me out of a piece of their world.

They can't use their magic to copy and send these documents? If not, then of what use is the magic? What do they actually do with it? This is important given the awful events which befall Maddy on her journey, but it's something which the novel hasn’t covered. Magic plays very little part in the story. I don't get why it's there, because precisely the same story could have been told without any magical element to it at all.

If there's a limit to the magic, it ought to be depicted, spelled-out, shown, or hinted at, to explain the even more pervasive need for the mundane in a magical story, otherwise it just looks like the idea hasn’t been thought through properly. I know that in order for this to be a really good novel, it can’t be just about the magic, with the people being merely props. There has to be a people factor, of course, but the other side of that coin is that it can't be just about the people, either, not if you're going to bring magic into it! And of course I mean the magic of fantasy, not the magic which comes as part and parcel of a really cool relationship, which is actually what we also have here.

If the magic is in, then it has to be an intelligent and integral part of who they are, and of the world in which they live, otherwise why have it? If it’s not integral, then it’s just a patch on an otherwise perfect pair of pants and it stands out as such. If this fails, then the novel becomes loose and disjointed and the author is left relying on telling just a people story, hoping the holes in the magic don’t turn off the reader. Fortunately for Ettritch, she had me at "Maddy ran her hand up Lillian's arm…" and she hasn’t turned me off this story, but she has imbued me with the vague feeling that something's rotten in the state of Denmark, as Marcellus would phrase it.

Okay, pet peeve off! Moving along. I found this story hard to put aside, but put aside I had to from time to time and I missed it when I did. That's a really good sign! It's probably also a good thing, otherwise I would have finished it must more quickly and then have found myself pining for more. That's the sign of a really engrossing novel, and that's what Ettritch has charmed me with. I definitely want to read more of this author.

So in conclusion, the story did go where I thought it would, and where I hoped it would, and my eyes were moist at the end! There, I said it! I loved this story and would definitely be interested in a sequel, or failing that, in reading other materials from Sarah Ettritch.

Così Fan Tutti by Michael Dibdin

Title: Così Fan Tutti
Author: Michael Dibdin
Publisher: Vintage Books / Black Lizard/
Rating: warty

Set in Napoli (Naples) in Italy, this novel is one of a series, but it isn't the first in this series, and I haven't read any of the others, so that may or may not affect my take on this. I've actually been to Napoli, but the visit was so brief and it was so long ago that I barely recall it. It seems that everyone who writes detective series has to have a character they groom for their stories, and I confess that sometimes seems weird to me, but it’s undoubtedly a very commercial approach. In Dibdin's case, the character is Aurelio Zen. Dibdin was English by birth and spent only five years in Italy, so I'm not sure what his motivation was for setting his series there. Maybe it was nostalgia or a desire to set his series apart from those of other writers. Maybe it was something else.

Così Fan Tutte is the name of the opera by Mozart; it's taken to mean: 'women are like that'. So there's a slight difference between it and the title of the novel. Maybe the changed title means men are like that (or perhaps everyone is like that)?! The book is supposedly published by Black Lizard but the lizard on the cover is pink! Hmm!

I don’t really get novels which are set in another country and the language is English using English idiom, but (as in this particular case) unmarried women are referred to as Signora, rather than Miss or Ms. If it were in French, it would be Mademoiselle, if German, it would be Fraulein. From a writing perspective I have to ask why? What does this achieve? To me it’s an annoyance, reminding me that I'm reading a novel. It’s the same problem when the writer mentions some local meal they ate. Unless I happen to know what it is (which was only about fifty percent of the time so far in this novel!), what does it convey to me to say they ate sucho-and-sucho? Nothing. Doe sit have meaning beyond the mere word, though - to evoke a feeling or a reaction? maybe. My reaction is Oy Veh!

I didn’t like the opening, which set up the requisite murder (more accurately, the first of the requisite murders). I do like that the contents shows chapter headings in English, but the headings for each actual chapter are in Italian. I don’t know why, but it’s a quirk which somehow appealed to me - and this almost completely contradicts what I said above, doesn't it?! But not quite - at least we get a translation! In that way you can learn a little Italian if you wish. The chapter headings are actually from the original libretto for Mozart's opus. After the opening chapter, the story was much more readable, and I easily got into it, enjoying the sly humor and everyone's attempts to work the Italian system to their own advantage. Unfortunately, this didn't last too long!

Aurelio Zen starts out having apparently been demoted (but he proactively set it up so that he could chose the venue of his 'punishment'). This evidently is a result of something he did (or failed to do!) in a previous volume of this series. Frankly I was suspicious that this itself is a set-up and he's actually investigating something - perhaps corruption - under the guise of the demotion, but if my guess is right (which it usually isn’t!) then he sure doesn't seem to be doing much in that regard. Perhaps he really was demoted.

His first act is talking to two young women, doing a favor for their mother - a very rich woman, the widow of a mobster, whose two daughters are dating street thugs. Their mother wants the relationships terminated. She and Zen plan to achieve this end by sending the girls to London for two weeks under the guise of studying in England. Zen than hires two prostitutes to lead the thugs astray to show the daughters how fickle they are. In return for this, Zen gets to rent, at advantageous terms, a nice apartment which is owned by the woman. Zen does notice that these guys have absolutely no police file whatsoever, which only makes him more suspicious of them.

There's also the case of a stabbing in the dock area (a locale for which Zen is responsible). It took place after a fracas (an appropriate word since it comes from an Italian root!) between some American sailors and some Greek sailors. The guy they have in custody isn't talking. He claims he understands only English, but he says that in the thick local accent! When Zen sings snatches of some English pop songs he knows, the guy doesn’t even remotely react like he understands it.

Okay, so here's what happened with this, seriously. I was going along and I just was not getting into it. I thought I was going to finish it and give it a reserved worthy, but today I actually had a choice to read this or to listen to Charlaine Harris, and despite the fact that I am starting to despise book 4 of that sucky series, I still found it easier to listen to that than to plow through more of this one, so honestly, what did that not so much as tell me, but scream at me? It's warty! It's a DNF.

But it's also post-mortem time. Why could I not get interested in this? I think one reason was Dubdin's increasing use of Italian terms when everything else was in English, That doesn't impress me and was, in fact, annoying. On top of that there was one character after another paraded across the pages and not one of them made an impression on me. I could neither identify with any of them, nor develop any interest in them. So I decided to call this one and move onto something I would really like to read. Contrast this with The Salbine Sisters which really grabbed me from very early on and wouldn't let me go. Life's too short.

Sour Lake: Or, the Beast by Bruce McCandless

Title: Sour Lake: Or, the Beast
Author: Bruce McCandless
Publisher: Ninth Planet
Rating: worthy!

Disclosure: This novel came to me in paperback as a gift via my wife who is a colleague of the wife of the author. As I always do, I'll give it my usual review: if I don't like it I won't hesitate to say so, and I'll tell you why.

So when I started this one I thought, "Oh dear, I am not going to be able to finish this," but as I plowed on, the plowing got easier, so I'm about half-way through it as I start this review, and I am enjoying it! Phew! No un-neighborly feuds in the offing - yet!

So why did I have such a hard time getting started on this? Well McCandless writes a bit like Stephen King, and I don't mean that in a complementary manner! My problem with Stephen King is that he has a character flaw, to whit: he can't introduce a character without giving that character's entire life history back through several generations! I find that abysmally self-indulgent and boring in the extreme. If it doesn't have any real bearing on where your novel is going, I do not care how well you've thought your character through. I really don't. McCandless isn't anywhere near as bad as King, but he does appear anxious to show some of his research even where it isn't relevant to what's going on. Fortunately, this lapses into disuse after a few chapters and the story really kicks into high gear (and he doesn't have a prologue so props for that too!).

Unfortunately (to finish this line of thought!), that's what you get (in King's case) from success: you get people who don't know how to honestly self-edit and you get editors who are too spineless to say no. If anyone but King had turned in some of his door-stop novels, they would have been kicked out on their ear or they would have been literally ordered by the publisher to strip the novel down; you know the old "Don't use two words where one will do". In King's case, it's "Don't use two words where a novelette will do. It was for this reason that I ditched King after The Shining, which was brilliant. I tried to pick him up again with the 'Dark Tower' trilogy - remember that? the trilogy that turned into a hexalogy or a heptalogy or whatever the hell it currently resides at? I think I made it through three volumes of that before I become seriously ill from it.

But I digress - or do I? This is a writing blog as well as a reviewing blog, so it's appropriate to digress, I guess! Anyway, this story begins in 1911 in Texas. I thought it would come through to the present, but it remains in 1911. It begins with some people disappearing, and being found with their throats torn and their corpse mutilated and their body drained of blood! Yes, it's a vampire! Or is it? It's certainly a more realistic take than Charlaine Harris has! But it;s way more than you might think.

A Texas ranger is called in who has his own agenda, and a local doctor is part of the team together with his son, his friend from Harvard medical school (a rare black doctor), and a huge black guy whom the local town people suspect of being responsible for these atrocities. They narrow down their area of search to a local mine, but when they go out there's a posse, they're repelled by gunfire. The plot thickens, just like coagulating blood! But you know they;re not going to leave it at that.

So I've finished this novel and I recommend it. It's really well written, and while you need your tongue firmly in your cheek for the 'true story' aspects of it, particularly parts of the epilogue, I can't take anything way from McCandless. He's done a damned fine job. Do be aware that he doesn't hold anything back in the way of describing gore. If you can handle that, you're in for a treat.

Postscriptum: I actually got to meet Bruce McCandless today and he's a charming guy. I enjoyed meeting him and his family very much, and I was glad I gave him a decent review so that he didn't have to pummel me into the ground (just kidding!). On a serious note, he did pummel me at basketball and dodgeball, but them I'm lousy at both, so maybe that wasn't such a big deal. But he's a great guy and I'm glad I got a chance to talk with him. Go buy his novel! Now!

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Title: Club Dead
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: WARTY!

Welcome to the Sookie Stackhouse Self-Pity Party! Yes, I'm back with another Charlaine Harris extravaganza of sucky tedium on audio!

You know, there's something I don't get when I read other's reviews of say, volume one of a trilogy and they rake it over the coals and then conclude with the revelation that they're looking forward to volume two to find out what happens! Why? Why would you put yourself through that if you didn't like volume one? So what's my excuse? Well, I have it on good authority (I hope) that book four is really good, but in order to get there, I have to get through book three (do I really? honestly?). You know how they say "Three's a shame"? No, they don’t! But three is a shame, because I have to confess I was so ready to ditch this novel after three chapters because it is so god-awfully whiny and tedious.

Those first three chapters consisted almost literally of nothing save Sookie (Suck-ee from here-on out; the reader is the sucker...) whining about how much she misses her boyfriend vampire Bill who typically treats her like dirt, yet she's utterly devoted to him. So devoted is she in fact, that she only gets horny for every supernatural guy who comes in her orbit (to coin a phrase), and no one else! This woman is sick. Seriously. Suck-ee needs therapy. Sookie Stackhouse is also a complete moron for whom I have absolutely no respect. Contrast that with the TV version whom I really like. What does that tell you? When she's not whining nauseatingly about Bill (which isn't often), she's describing what everyone is wearing down to the most tedious detail imaginable, or she's describing what she's doing down to the most tedious detail imaginable

And Harris is so repetitive: she keeps trotting out things she's already explained more than once in volume one and all over again in volume two like your average reader is a moron. Perhaps that's true for people who are helplessly addicted to this series. I really find it hard to believe that book four can be that great, quite honestly, but that volume will have to be outstandingly incredible to make me go anywhere beyond book four, rest assured. At least by then Ally Carter won’t have the dubious distinction of being the only writer for whom I've reviewed four titles and given largely bad reviews!

The tediousness in Club Dead is mesmerizingly brutal. Harris seems like she can't keep herself from describing every excruciating detail no matter how mundane; when Sookie is packing to go on a trip, for example, we read: "I got out my suitcase and opened it" like we don't get that, in order to pack, you need to actually open the suitcase first! Later we're treated to a detailed description of how to clean a frying pan. I am not kidding. Is Harris deranged? Or is it just her devotees, and she knows only too well what drivel she's writing? At one point, Suck-ee actually has this thought: Somehow, it had never crossed my mind - I guess since I'm an American - that the vampires who had snatched Bill might be resorting to evil means to get him to talk. You know what, Suck-ee? You don't have a friggin' mind to cross.

So what of the so-called story here? Well, Bill mysteriously disappears, telling Suck-ee that he's going on a mission for Eric, when he isn't. Suck-ee has a snit, claiming to the reader that she's usually been an integral part of the investigative team, which is an outright lie. They've had only one assignment, which was in book two! 'Usual' isn’t on this bus! When Suck-ee discovers that Eric is sending vampires to guard her, she also learns that Bill has lied: he isn't on any mission for Eric or for anyone but himself and he's looking up an old vampire flame (his maker?)! Naturally Sookie is chosen to go find him because there isn’t a damned vampire on the planet who can find a missing vampire, as we learned in volume 2. And while we’re on that topic, Club Dead is exactly the same plot as book two: Vampire disappears, other vampires useless, Suck-ee to the rescue, dresses erotically, visits nightclub, visits hostile lair, gets seriously injured, engineers rescue of abducted vampire. That's it.

The vampire whom Bill visits is named Lorena (no word on if her last name is Bobbit!). Suck-ee requests that Eric 'take her out' (that is, kill Lorena - lest there be any misunderstanding!) if she doesn't come back from this mission on which he's sending her, and Eric agrees. Like I said, Sookie Stackhouse is seriously deranged. This is the kid her charming Old South grandmother raised? The genderism in Club Dead is even more disturbing than in previous volumes. Suck-ee relaxes by folding laundry, she's "self-educated from genre books"(!), she's ostensibly a nun, but dresses like a pro, she cooks and cleans for everyone, and entirely unsurprisingly, she pronounces milieu as 'mil-you', not 'meal-yuh', and fracas as fray-kass, and not fra-cah. At least, Parker does in the narration, let's say.

So what's with this 'vampire organization'? I honestly don’t get this. In Club Dead, it's rigidly organized, and Harris explains it (in too much detail as usual). Each state has a monarch, and under the monarch is a number of areas, each of which has a sheriff. Given that, why are they called 'areas' and not 'shires'? And why on Earth would vampires even care where state lines are? This, to me, is purest bullshit. Given what we're told about vampires in this novel (and in other vampire novels) vampires buck authority at every turn, yet the novels would have us believe they exist in nests with a king or a queen and a hierarchy? That, to me, is so pedantic that it's laughable. Why write a vampire novel and then belittle your topic like that? I can see that in a comedy: Terry Jones's Brasil meets Bram Stoker's Dracula. But to be taken seriously? Fuggedabowdit

And what's with vampires being obsessed with and sexually attracted to humans? Honestly? That's like saying humans are sexually attracted to chickens - and yes, some are, but those people are considered deviant. Why would vampires, whom we're told repeatedly have nothing but disdain for their food, be even remotely interested in us as sexual objects? It's farcical, yet we get it in most every vampire story there is. Can no author break out of this pathetic mold? Well, Maybe Bruce MccCandless can. His story is well off the beaten vampire track!

While we're on the subject of things I don’t get in the southern vampire so-called mysteries series, why is Harris so tickled pink by her Elvis Presley vampire? She never calls him that; he's always referred to as Bubba, but if she's scared of being sued by his estate, then calling him Bubba isn’t going to help her one bit given that she's already positively ID'd him by writing all around who he is.

Let's get back to the purported plot. Despite constant whining about how much she misses the completely bland and uninteresting Vampire Bill, Suck-ee has no problem at all in powerfully lusting, with very other thought, after her escort in this novel. He's a werewolf called Alcide, but I shall hereinafter refer to him as Rancid. He's a real man who drives a man's truck and eats man's food and talks with a man's voice. He probably makes manfarts and takes mandumps, too, and no doubt Suck-ee will get around to giving us the low-down in due 'coarse'. But now Harris has me wondering what Bill is. Or Eric. I mean if Rancid is such a manly man's man, and very manful too, where does that leave the previous men in her life? Oh man!

Rancid is working for Eric (who is the only character in this entire novel who makes for remotely acceptable reading); Rancid is in Eric's debt for his father's gambling and that's why he's escorting Suck-ee to Jack-off, Mississippi, where (exactly like the previous novel) she has to dress up like a wolf's dinner to go to a night club and listen in on the thoughts of others. Of course, she's 100% spectacularly successful in all cases because there is always one of the bad guys guaranteed to be running off at the mind on the very subject she wants to learn about. Rancid's old boyfriend, over whom he's really hurting, just happens to be having her engagement party there, and she trots over to diss him and his 'girlfriend'. I was dearly hoping that Suck-ee would have some tart one-liners for her, but intelligent and/or amusing repartee is was evidently well outside of Harris's reach.

Tera is also there (why?!) and she and Suck-ee do a raunchy dance to the thrill of everyone there. Then she wonders why the 'Weres' hit on her! This leads to her becoming injured and she's rescued by Russell Edgington, the vampire king of the state, who insists she come back the next night. When she does, she saves the life of Russell's number two (not to be confused with Rancid's mandump), but gets staked herself instead. Of course, Eric is there to rescue her. Eric also gets to lick her tears. I am not kidding you. Suck-ee has zero problem with this, yet bitches and whines endlessly about Vampire Bill's possible unfaithfulness.

Which self-respecting girl (and one in a supposed love relationship, to boot) would let another guy lick her tears? We're expected to believe that vampires get off on all kinds of human body fluids, but evidently this applies only if they relate to crying and blood. I seriously doubt there will be a volume in this series where we'll see Harris extol the joys of licking sweat, or swallowing semen, chawing ear wax, or gulping down the golden rain.

Needless to say this novel sucked almost exclusively. The only salvageable parts were the ones where Eric showed up. Why Harris can write him as quirky, interesting, and issuing amusing comments while everyone else in the entire novel is boring as a Rancid Mandump is the Southern Vampire mystery.

Elemental: The First by Alexandra May

Title: Elemental: The First
Author: Alexandra May
Publisher: Pauma
Rating: WARTY!

Here's one I snuck in on you! This is the first review of a novel I read on a Kindle. It's not the first I ever read on a Kindle, but that device is such a pain to use that I try not to read on it unless I'm forced. The Kindle interface is really clunky and not user-friendly in any meaningful sense. But this has nothing to do with the review as such, since the interface didn't factor at all into how bad the story was!

This novel was awful! It's one I've had on the list for some time, and I kept putting it off despite the fact that I’d read the first couple of chapters of it. Now I know why I kept putting it off: the novel is a complete mess with no appealing features whatsoever, and I guess I realized this on some level from what I first read. It’s set in England in the county of Wiltshire, home of Stonehenge, another stone circle at Avebury, the White Horse at Cherhill, and the city of Warminster. Warminster was once bizarrely famed for UFO sightings, which was, of course, a bunch of complete and delusional nonsense, but it has faded from those "glory" days, so why May would choose to try and resurrect that hysterical garbage is a bit of a mystery in itself.

But the real problem here is, given the rich heritage of material with which an enterprising novelist can play, how did May manage to turn out such a boring and confused story? The female protagonist of the story, Rose Frost, is sixteen going on twelve. Her parents are off doing secret work, so we're told, and apparently their lives are threatened, so of course they choose to abandon their daughter to her own fate with her grandmother and disappear. Despite knowing that their daughter has powers, they tell her nothing, explain nothing, yet they give to her a bracelet which literally sticks into her skin, and idiotically tell her to keep it a secret! Later we learn that there is more to it than this, but it's still lousy.

Despite claiming to love her granddaughter very much, Grand mom Daisy doesn't tell her anything either. She merely keeps saying that they must talk about important matters, yet they never do. Daisy is tiresome and absurdly mysterious and for all practical purposes may as well not have been in the novel at all. She supposedly has connections way beyond what is reasonable, or even rational, including with the major bad guy in the city, and at one point Rose discovers that the British army is tailing her to keep her safe, apparently on Daisy's "orders"! Yet no one explains from what it is exactly which Rose is supposedly being protected, or why it’s the army rather than the police or MI5 (the Brit version of the FBI) which is charged with her safety! If the bad guy (who we never meet either!) lives in Warminster, then where is the rationale for bringing Rose right into his domain? It's beyond absurd!

Rose is far too much of a Mary Sue to even think of asking why, either! Meanwhile, her older sister (who isn't a part of this story) goes without any protection whatsoever! Apparently no one imagines, not even the bad guys, that kidnapping the sister would be a great way to get to Rose! But no one raises this issue either! I guess the bad guys are Mary Sues too.

Oh yeah, about those bad guys! Rose has an appallingly dim-witted lust-triangle with a blond haired good guy (so we’re expected to believe) - Morgan, and a black haired bad guy (so we’re expected to believe) - Aiden, who is the grandson of the city's ultra bad guy (grandson Aiden, granddaughter Rose - get it?). It seemed painfully likely to me from the start that these two roles were in fact reversed, with Aiden actually being good and Morgan bad, but whether my feeling about that was right or wrong (I'm not telling!), Rose is a complete airhead about both of them. If what she's told about the appalling things that sports-car driving Aiden has supposedly done is true, then she has no excuse for being involved with him at all, and if she is involved, then Rose is nothing but a jerk and a lowlife. But she never asks Aiden for his side of the story! OTOH, if it’s black leather-clad Morgan the biker guy who is the bad guy, then he's a pathological liar, and she has no excuse being involved with him, either - not if she wants to be in my good graces! Who knows? Maybe they're both bad guys. Either way they're both uninteresting and completely lackluster.

Rose is perhaps the most capricious, clueless, pain-in-the-ass flibbertigibbet ever in a YA novel. She blows hot and cold with both these guys, sometimes turning on a five-pence piece (that would be the size of a dime to those in the US!) from being flirtatious to being angrily reactive and rejecting them. Here's one example of what a self-centered loser Rose is: she's told not to go into the cottage on Daisy's property, which is where Little Orphan Morgannie resides. Of course the place isn't locked because Morgan is a complete moron, but Rose also ignores the prohibition and goes into his home uninvited when he is not there, and snoops all around the place. But Morgan has a camera watching the interior, and when he later shows her the recording of her trespassing, merely asking her in a non-accusatory manner what she was looking for, she becomes irrationally and intensely angry that he was "spying" on her! What a clueless jerk she is!

But Morgan is just as bad. One night when Mary Sue Rose has a dream about a magical sorceress (hint, hint!), she wakes to find Morgan in her bed, holding and "comforting" her. She isn't even remotely put-out or freaked-out, or even angered by this behavior! So, just to be clear for all you young adults out there, here's the Missed Manners guide to YA interaction:

• Being asked what you were looking for when snooping in someone's private residence: reason to get very angry. Do not apologize. Do not even feel contrite.
• Waking up to find your neighbor in bed with you uninvited: no reaction at all.

Got it? Good! Let's move on! The weird thing (like that isn't weird enough!) is that the army guy who was standing literally outside her bedroom door to "protect" Rose did nothing to stop Morgan entering, and Morgan himself evidently has no problem simply wandering into the house and into her bedroom uninvited!

I don’t know what May was trying to accomplish here, but whatever it was, she fails epically. It’s like she had this one idea but couldn’t think of a way to make it a strong story or make it interesting, so she kept tossing in other ideas whimsically, like someone making a spaghetti dinner, and spaghetti is exactly what she got. If her hope was that this hodge-podge would resonate and fill out the pages, she was wrong: it doesn’t. This is the only explanation I can think of, though, for why we get a sorry mish-mash of Rose with her healing power, which she rarely uses, but which lets her talk to plants(!), together with stories of ninth century English warlord Alfred's jewels (not those jewels, the ones made from crystallized minerals, silly!), together with mystical visions of some ancient sorceress babe called Halika Dacome, together with flying saucers. Yeah it's that bad.

The story meanders in so many random directions that it's laughable. At one point we have this really clunky introduction between Rose and Aiden, the overture to which is orchestrated by her having a vision of a child burning. The vision appears in the middle of the street; then this event isn't ever mentioned again. Later, after snooping Morgan's private property, Rose talks to plants which leads her to dig up a box which she leaves unopened with Morgan when she has no reason to trust him. The box is never mentioned again!

It’s obvious from the off that Rose is some sort of host vessel or reincarnation of Halika Dacome, a weirdo who is mentioned repeatedly, so why there's this big (non-)reveal at the end like nobody knows this, is beyond pathetic. Hell-like Macramé is an alien who came to Earth with three other aliens 200,000 years ago to prepare Earth for the colonization by the rest of the aliens. She manifests every other generation (grand children, get it?), but these alien fore-runners were not volunteers, they were exiled to Earth as a punishment. No wonder they let Earth go to hell in a hand-basket! Why on Earth (literally) would exiles even lift a finger to help those who exiled them?! The whole plot is asinine. How overseeing the explosion of the human population to seven billion constitutes preparing the planet for the arrival of their fellow aliens is a bit of a mystery - unless these aliens eat humans! All of this comes out pretty much in the last page or two of this fable!

This novel is pathetic and is a definite, no-holds-barred WARTY! rating.

Jenny Rat by Martin Simons

Title: Jenny Rat
Author: Martin Simons
Publisher: Bookmasters
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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Errata:
P40 "silentl" should be "silent"
At about 17% in: "People call me up went they need me" - "went" should be "when"
At about 35% in: "tris" should be "tries"

This novel in brief, is a cross between Nabokov's Lolita, and Shaw's Pygmalion. I'd actually looked at another of Simons' novels on Netgalley, Cities at Sea and decided against it, but after reading this, I might just reconsider looking at that one.

Michael Ingram, an engineering consultant who lives by himself out in the wilds in Australia, is winding up his weekly tryst with a call-girl (the only 'date' he can get) when he discovers a girl in her early teens, almost dead, lying in the road outside his house during a severe and chill hail storm. He brings her in. She's incontinent, and dirty and wretched, but he calls for an ambulance and bathes her, wrapping her warmly while he waits. The call-girl who is with him reacts almost abusively to the discovery of this girl, calling her a 'rat' repeatedly. I have no idea what the significance of that is, and it isn't explained; it's as though the reader ought to know. Does it have a specific meaning in the context of this novel, or is it a well-known term in Australia for a lowlife teen - or a lowlife teen girl, or a young prostitute? I don’t know, and a very brief search for Australian slang didn't bring any useful results.

The call-girl has never stayed overnight with Michael, but on this one occasion, with the weather being so bad and it being so late by the time the ambulance has been and gone, she stays the night. The next morning she asks Michael to show her around his home, and she's impressed with his modest wealth and independence. She starts talking about arranging for a different girl to start visiting him because she's getting old, but Michael isn’t interested in replacing her. She then reveals that she's thinking of retiring from the game. Is she considering hooking up with Michael permanently? What she doesn’t grasp is how negatively her abusive reaction towards 'the rat' has affected Michael in his opinion of her. Even this doesn’t seem to put him off her, but his life is about to change.

He speaks with the girl's doctor the next day and the doctor advises him to come in and have blood tests - thinking Michael had sex with the girl. Obviously, he didn’t, but he has the tests as a precaution, and he ends up visiting the girl. She's recovering, but only very slowly. She's thin and tired, and she's not eating or talking, but she seems to respond to him when she hasn't done so to anyone else. She can vaguely remember the night he saved her. She won’t tell anyone her name, but she insists that the hospital staff know her, implying that she was there some time before. And she claims she killed her dad....

So Michael continues to visit, irregularly and not frequently, and Jenny continues to improve. She interacts with him when she will with no one else, even telling him her name, which turns out to be Gianetta, but she prefers Jenny. She shows great interest in learning about Michael's work and has serious insights into it. She's also an artist and she ends up earning some money for herself by drawing portraits of her fellow patients. But one thing she draws is horrible, and it represents her fear of ending up in a home and sliding down the slick slope to where she was when Michael found her.

Well I don't want to go into much more detail here otherwise I'll be telling a story when it isn't my place to tell. This story is so rich, however that there's lots more to talk about. There's the discomfort for one thing. My discomfort is not so much what Simons describes, which is pretty graphic (or more to the point, ugly graphic, so be warned), as the fact that I know what he describes isn't just confined to fiction: it's out there in the real world, too. Children, both boys and girls alike, are put through what Jenny goes through in this fictional world, but they face it for real, and it's sickening.

There are other forms of discomfort present, too. Eventually, and it's no big spoiler to pass this on because it's clear from the blurb that this is going to happen, the two share his house together and their relationship is, for me, running down the wrong side of dangerously inappropriate, but Simons writes well and slips in little preparatory passages here and there. He manages to walk that tightrope more or less successfully - dependent, of course upon your own personal position. In that, he's aided by the fact that it's not really a child and an adult here, it's more like two children, given Michael's rather handicapped position in life, and from that perspective, it's a lot easier to see what's going on. For me, I have to say I hope child services doesn't work that way, but this is fiction and I could see (I thought) where he was going with this.

When I finished the novel I was very disappointed in the ending which seemed to me to be a betrayal of everything which went before. I felt misled since the ending seems so completely out of line. But in some regards it did fit, so I won't say more about that! As I said, I thought this was well-written and was inventive and sensitively done. Sometimes it was a but much, and there were times when Jenny's character seemed far too fey given her supposed background. Other parts of it, too, seemed more like wild fantasy than fiction, but overall, and despite the ending, I consider this a worthy novel. It's a good story and while it wasn't necessarily executed in its best light, it is definitely worth a read if only to make you feel a bit uncomfortable in your easy reading chair!

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Title: A Discovery of Witches
Author: Deborah Harkness
Publisher: Viking
Rating: WARTY!

This is volume 1 of the All Souls Trilogy, but after starting this, I was forced to conclude that it ought to be the Ass-hat Trilogy. This is a DNF review because this novel was too tedious to finish. Deborah Harkness is a professor of history at USC, and I'm guessing that she had the idea for this novel when she was researching a scholarly work she had written shortly before she wrote this novel. She starts out with Doctor Diana Bishop, a witch who has rejected her heritage which was passed on to her by her parents, two supposedly powerful witches who should never have procreated, some said. They were right. Her parents died in Africa, but we're given no details; nor are we really informed as to why Bishop has so whole-heartedly rejected witchcraft, but she stubbornly resists it and did not knowingly employ it to get herself into the position she's in; she did that entirely through her own smarts and hard work. She does allow herself an odd spell here and there in an emergency or when she's tired, but she severely restricts herself.

Note that I have no more nor less respect for Wicca than I do for any other religion - they're all nuts as far as I'm concerned, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good supernatural romp. It's all fiction isn't it?!

The novel begins with Diana in an Oxford university library, opening an ancient manuscript written by Elias Ashmole, who died in 1692. There's a problem in that the manuscript's title is in English, which IMO is highly unlikely given that scholarly treatises were routinely written in Latin in that day and age. For example, Isaac Newton was a contemporary of Ashmole, but his classic work wasn't called "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (as such), it was titled Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. OTOH, Harkness is the scholar, not me, so maybe Ashmole did write in English.

The real problem here is with the plotting. Bishop is purportedly a PhD who is something of an expert on ancient manuscripts. So how in hell did she come to request Ashmole 782, which has long been known to be missing - for one hundred and fifty years, so Harkness tells us? Surely someone of Bishop's stature would know it was missing and that it would, therefore, be foolish to request it? This makes no sense whatsoever, and again, it's an example of a writer not thinking about what they're writing.

Bishop is immediately aware that there is magic embedded in the manuscript, but she doesn't allow herself to indulge in it, studying its condition and layout carefully in a purely scholarly manner, and returning it to the desk with undue speed without really reading it! The next day in the library, she meets a vampire, Matthew Clairmont. Yep - it didn’t take long to introduce the studly YA trope guy, even though this isn't a YA novel. He's tall and muscular, and good looking, of course - oh, and he watches her sleep. Clairmont is a professor at Oxford University, which is where Bishop is visiting. Evidently vampires are scientists in this world, and demons are the celebrities and rock stars!

Now here's a thing that I find absolutely hilarious in these vampire stories: every one of them typically has a really old vampire and contrary to human life, the oldest guy is the most powerful, and the trope is that he's tall and muscular, but the problem here is that people historically were short compared with us. This wasn't a universal rule; there were some tall people in history, but in general everyone was short. So how is it that the oldest vampires are universally tall? It's nonsense, and it is one more example of writers simply not thinking before they write. They really don't place the vampire in context. They just invent him out of nothing and never honestly consider the consequences of his origins, which is ironic, because origins is precisely what this novel is all about!

Clairmont knows who Bishop is, claiming to have read several of her works, and he invites her to dinner, She declines. That's when he watches her sleep: he's after the manuscript she had examined the previous day, and for no reason other than that it gave him a chance to watch her sleep, he convinces himself that she had this irreplaceable manuscript with her at home. He stands watching her snoring on her settee, remarking on how unusual it is for a witch to pulsate with light like she does, and he leaves when he realizes the script must be still at the library. But he never breaks into the library to try and find it! Clairmont is a moron.

I had thought I might have trouble with this novel when I began it, since it's far more of a tome than a novel - striking out strongly for six hundred pages of closely-spaced typeface, and although parts of it were interesting and easy reading, it became increasingly tedious, the deeper I went into it. I seriously have to question my unerring ability to select novels narrated in the first person present. I really don't like such volumes, and yet I seem to find myself frequently picking them up because the blurb interests me, only to later discover the tense and person - tensely and in person! It seems that the bulk of this particular tome is to be first person present, but some of it is third person, such as the part which describes Clairmont's visit to Bishop's home (actually "rooms" she's staying in at the college). Evidently vampires in this novel do not need to be invited in.

I also came across an interesting writing problem - how do you deal with words which are broken and hyphenated over two lines when the word itself contains a hyphen?! Harkness used the word 'to-dos' (as in 'to do list'), but it was broken between one line and the next, making it look like the word was 'todos' (almost the same as the Spanish for 'all' in the plural) and had merely had the hyphen show up artificially because of the line break. It was actually confusing for a second before I realized what the word was supposed to be - but how to avoid that problem? And is it a problem or am I just being anal about the English language? Hey, this is a writing blog: I’d be delivering less than I promised if I didn’t obsess over these issues, now wouldn't I?!

Bishop goes rowing to relieve stress, but she takes out a single scull which is less than 12 inches wide! It would seem that it's tailored to someone suffering from anorexia, not for a healthy and physically fit young woman. I know those boats are deliberately narrow, but the immediate impression this gave to me (rightly or wrongly, misunderstood or not) was that Bishop was unnaturally thin! This is an area where the writing might have been a little better planned IMO! But maybe it's just me?!

Back to the story! So Bishop claims she knows nothing about vampires, but she actually knows a lot, and was friendly with a vampire scientist in Geneva. She discovers that Clairmont is predictably protecting her. At that point I was reduced to hoping that this novel would not be yet another tale ostensibly about a strong female protagonist, but who in the end turns out to be nothing more than another weak women who desperately needs a powerful man to shelter her. My hopes were forlorn.

Bishop finds herself being stalked by vampires, wizards, witches and demons. Why the men are sometimes described as wizards rather than witches goes unexplained. It’s obviously the genderist Harry Potter factor leaking in. Clairmont tells her that it's because of the manuscript and Bishop's personal power that these people are drawn to her. One day when at lunch, she's visited by an Australian demon called Agatha Wilson, a woman who is supposedly a fashion designer. Then she disappears and we hear nothing from her (at least as far as I read). She bemoans the sad lot demons have to endure - unpredictably born of human parents, who often reject and abandon them. They have no heritage and no status, as witches and vampires do. She begs Bishop to share the content of the manuscript if she ever takes possession of it again, and Bishop agrees.

Clairmont invites her to a yoga class with him, and it's held in a sixteenth century manor out in the country - a manor which Bishop discovers was built by Clairmont, proving that he's at least five hundred years old (he's actually more than a thousand years old). The class is run by an Indian witch named Amira, and is, to Bishop's surprise, attended by vampires, witches and demons - and no humans. It's a pleasant change for her to be surrounded by these people and not feel under pressure or threatened as she has been when bugged by them in the library. What the point was of this is a complete mystery (as least for the first two hundred pages), since this yoga and fellowship never enters into the story.

Harkness unaccountably and repeatedly makes a distinction between "human" and witch/vampire/demon. Given that demons are born of humans, and given that vampires are fully human right up until that fatal bite, and that witches are human, period, I don’t get what she thinks she's distinguishing here. It could have been addressed with more clarity and/or better writing. Later Harkness tries to address this with allusions to mutations and chromosomal differences, but the 'explanations' are confused at best and silly at worst.

I gave Harkness the benefit of the doubt regarding whether Ashmole wrote in English or in Latin, but I guarantee you that Miryam, sister of Moshe (whom you might know as Mary, sister of Moses) did not write poetry in English! Even if we're expected to understand that the poetry was very loosely translated, Miryam did not have a modern concept of hours, and I'm guessing she had no idea what a chain was, so the poem makes no sense. As with so many Biblical characters, the name we know them by today wasn't the name they were originally given in Biblical fiction; neither Miryam nor Moshe were Hebrew names. The whole story is probably of Egyptian origin, not Hebrew. What is interesting is that Matthew has a vampire friend Miriam, who is helping him to bodyguard Bishop. Nothing is said about whether she's the Miryam who supposedly wrote that poem!

That's actually part of the problem: Nothing is said. We learn much about Bishop and Clairmont, but nothing about any other character. It’s like the rest of the cast is merely a sounding board to amplify the voice of the two main characters, which means this is a bit one-dimensional. We’ve met a witch called Gillian who seems furious with Bishop for no good reason. We meet Peter Knox, a very powerful witch who wants to get his hands on the manuscript, like everyone else. He tries to warn bishop off Clairmont.

Harkness would have us believe that Diana Bishop is a descendant of Bridget Bishop, the first so-called witch to be executed during the Salem witch trials, but Bridget was a Playfer before she was a Bishop, and she did not become a Bishop until her third marriage, which took place when she was in her mid-fifties. It was highly unlikely that there were any offspring from that marriage. If Diana is descended from one of her previous marriages (which did bear offspring), then why the fuss about her 'Bishop' name? Again, it's poor writing which makes no sense.

The love between Diana and Matthew grows predictably (no surprises there at all), but the sad thing is that once again we find ourselves in a story written by a woman, yet which revolves around a man subjugating/dominating/protecting a woman. Diana is scared and this is why she's attaching herself to him. She keeps making the claim that she can look after herself, but that claim is betrayed by her every action. And this is yet another novel where two characters need to exchange information - indeed, one of them wishes urgently to do so - yet they put off the exchange again and again! That's sad writing, but occasionally Harkness does offset this clunkiness with unintentional humor, like where she gives an initial impression that the rowing dock house is actually the striped color of the scarf which Matthew is wearing!

At about one-third the way through this novel, it became too tedious, repetitive, and boring. We continued to be treated (not really the right word, but nauseated seems cruel) to Bishop's 'dear diary' which consists of nothing more interesting than monotonous tales of her morning rowing, her pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear (I'm not joking! The number of times this is brought up is laughable). She continues to visit the library where she tries, and fails this time, to get her hands on that manuscript. She's told that it has been missing for a century and a half, but she doesn't have the elementary smarts to have them look up her previous call slip and verify that she was delivered the manuscript! And that's it. Nothing else happens for insipid page after tiresome page after wearisome page, and I have other intriguing books waiting in the wings for this one to actually go somewhere, which it strongly promises not to do.

Matthew is cloyingly close, and other demons and witches show up at the library, vaguely threatening Bishop, and in the case of Knox, overtly so. Once again she betrays her claim to being able to take care of herself when someone leaves a plain brown envelope at the porter's lodge, evidently a joint effort between Knox and Gillian. She picks it up and opens it to find a color photograph of her parent's dead bodies, her mother broken, her father disemboweled, with his head stoved in. I guess they weren't such powerful witches after all.

Despite the fact that this occurred some two decades ago, Bishop is rendered into a jellyfish. I found that unbelievable given what we'd so far been told. It seemed to me to be yet another assault on a woman by a woman! At this point, Clairmont effectively takes Bishop hostage, refusing to take no for an answer, and eventually she lets herself be subjugated to this brute of a control freak, takes his sedative pills and passes out.

So first they decide to go to Africa where her parents were killed, then they decide to go to Paris where Clairmont has an ancient manuscript (why? who knows!); then we're treated to several tedious pages of Clairmont's ancient history extolling his virtues in 1777. Yawn. We also learn that this control maniac is not going to inform Bishop of the results of her DNA test (run to see where she stood in the hierarchy of witches). It was at that point I decided I no longer had any interest whatsoever in this tedious tale, and especially not when it more than likely involves reading another four hundred pages of dreary drivel of this nature. This is a definite warty.

Rainbow Panda and the Firecracker Fiasco by Eileen Wacker

Title: Rainbow Panda and the Firecracker Fiasco
Author: Eileen Wacker
Publisher: Bookmasters
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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Here's the shortest review I will probably ever write! Don't worry, it's a good one. This is not a children's book blog, but it is a book blog and there are some kid's stories, even at my age, which resonate. My kids are too old for this story to entertain them, but I know that when they were younger they would have loved an exotic story like this if they'd had access to it.

Rainbow Panda and the Firecracker Fiasco is part of the Fujimini Island series, and is about a panda who wants to light some firecrackers, and who predictably makes a mess of it. Some of his forest friends (an improbable assortment of multi-hued dragons, hamsters, penguins, dolphins, and rabbits) help out. I have some qualms about anthropomorphizing animals and coloring them unnaturally, but in a book for the age range this is aimed towards, it does no harm. Overall the story is well written, colorfully and beautifully illustrated, charming, and educational in a non-preaching manner.

The book is 75 pages, but the story is only half of that. The latter half is a useful glossary of some aspects of Asian culture, which is where the Rainbow Panda stories have their roots. It talks briefly about bonsai (not banzai!), and sushi (which my kids love), as well as other foods, and Asian traditions, so it could definitely educate both child and parent. I particularly liked the section on chopsticks, having just seen The Wolverine where chopsticks are mentioned (it's "bad luck" to stick them upright in your food because then they are reminiscent of incense sticks which are burned at funerals!).

This brings me to one issue I did have with this story which is where it mentions performing certain ritualistic acts to bring luck. We all know that's nonsense (at least I hope we do!). I think it would be more useful to teach children that they make their own "luck", and that while some ritual does have disciplinary value, it isn’t a very practical method of living your life to rely on luck or talismans. But that's a very minor qualm when set in the larger context of a really useful, educational, and entertaining children's story.

Having read this story, I have no problem recommending it and looking favorably on this series. Anything we can do to promote smart-thinking and safety amongst children is to be encouraged.

Duty to Investigate by JW Stone

Title: Duty to Investigate
Author: JW Stone
Publisher: Warriors Publishing
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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Errata:
P122 "explosive devise" should read "explosive device"
P133 has an HTML style instruction visible at the top of the page.
P163 "particlaur" instead of "particular"

Here's another disclosure. I'm a bit of a pacifist but I'm realistic enough to know that pacifism cannot hold back naked military aggression. So while I'm against jingoism and saber-rattling, I do also have a respect for and a fascination with the military. I've never been in the military and I don't require that stories be Tom-Clancy-detailed to a tedious and boring level. In fact, within certain broad limits, I wouldn't even know if the author were making it up or was really giving the honest truth, and that doesn't matter to me as long as it's believable within the context of the story.

Duty to Investigate seems like a bit of a clunky title to me, but it’s suitably military! I also have to confess that I was put off by the 'women are sexual objects' attitude prevalent throughout the opening chapters. I know this is a military novel, but that doesn’t mean it has to be chauvinistic - not in my book, anyway! And this genderistic approach isn't through the eyes of the male protagonist: it's embedded in the narration (not first person), so it's not appealing to me at all - but we'll see how that goes. Note that the story is set in 2004 as the military was gearing-up to go into Iraq post 9/11.

Lieutenant Colonel Mike Beck (USMC reserve) is a very successful lawyer of the ambulance-chasing variety, but writ large. He evidently uses women like playthings, and has a secretary who slaves over him adoringly, and for which she's entirely unappreciated. Beck is nudged into a promotion (to 4th Division's Staff Judge Advocate) by a colonel who is a close friend. What Beck doesn't know is that 4th Division is about to head out to Iraq after a bad shoot-out in Fallujah.

Anne Merrill is a news photographer who also works for a TV corporation. She's carrying two jobs in hopes of getting what she wants out of the photography side by giving a bit of a freebie to the TV side, so (again, depending on how this goes), the chauvinism is somewhat ameliorated by this. Perhaps part of the plot here is to show how a man like Beck changes when he meets a woman like Merrill. If that's so, it will be something to look forward to.

So how do these two meet? Well Merrill is like a dog with a bone as she pursues a case where a woman - a veteran's widow - is being turfed out of her house because of underhand shenanigans by a disreputable law firm. After she successfully pursues the investigation, she's granted anything she wants by her boss, and she chooses to be embedded with the Marines in Iraq as a photographer. So along with Beck and Merrill, there goes another guy to Iraq, one who signed up for the Marines after losing his job to the economy. He proves to be an outstanding marksman, and perhaps this is where the root of the problem will lie! But I'm not going to detail any more of this novel - that would spoil it for the writer and give too many spoilers for a new novel.

Well I'm happy to report that Stone pulls this out in the end, and I consider this book a good worthy. Yeah, I had a couple of issues with it, and the insta-love wasn't credible to me; I'd rather have seen that drawn out over a couple of sequels, but it was kept largely subdued, and not gushing. Apart from that, this was a good, solid military tale with some twists and turns and some action written by someone who's been there and done that, so how can I not recommend it?!

Beta by Rachel Cohn

Title: Beta
Author: Rachel Cohn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

Beta is by the same writer who wrote the novel behind the movie Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, the movie of which I reviewed not long ago, vowing to find the book and read it! My hope when starting this was that it would turn out to be as entertaining as that was. This novel is probably what gave some impetus to Karen Sandler's Tankborn because they both share the same kind of premise, but Beta was published four years before the latter.

And what is the premise? The premise is that at some point in the future, and perhaps not even on Earth (yes, it's that vague!), there's an island named Desmesne (Deh-MEZ-nay, believe it or not) where the very rich reside. It's a hedonistic island where the rotten rich are spoiled rotten. One way in which they're spoiled is that they can buy (yes buy) what are referred to as clones to do all kinds of things for them - from housework to massage, to companions. These 'clones' are the creations of Doctor Lusardi, who can make adult 'clones' without any trouble at all, but for some unexplained reason creating children is problematical. The so-called clones (more on this confusion anon) are marked with a fleur-de-lys tattoo on their right temple, and their purpose is defined by some other botanical tattoo on their left. Elysia (El-EE-zee-ya) is a prototype teen 'clone' referred to as a Beta because this technique is not perfected, although it looks like Elysia is perfected since she's fully functional and described as pretty-darned-near perfect in every way.

When a 'clone' is created, the "First" (the person upon whom the clone is based), 'has to die'. This was very poorly explained to begin with and led me to some confusion about exactly what was going on, and what, exactly, 'has to die' meant. At first I thought the "Firsts" were deliberately killed, but then it seemed like the clone was taken from someone who had died from some natural or accidental cause, but there are cases of people voluntarily giving up their life to become a "clone" so their family can be paid a handsome sum in return. None of this made much sense! I had a real problem with terming this cloning, though because of the confused descriptions Cohn hands out so miserly. If it's a true cloning process, then this makes no sense: since something can be cloned from any cell (in theory - Dolly the sheep, for example, was cloned from a mammary cell, hence her name), there is no need for the clone cell donor to die.

Elysia is quite literally standing around in a store awaiting sale when the island governor's wife, Maria Bratton, wanders in to look at clothes. She takes a real shine to Elysia, who becomes an impulse buy. Elysia is thrilled at being bought because it means she's serving her function. This early excitement is completely at odds with her later behavior. As she rides home with her "Mother" she reveals in a flashback some details of her creation. She was cloned as a full sized teen, not grown from a zygote as was the sheep and other clones we have created irl. When Elysia was done "cooking" she had a chip implanted in her head which provided her with a functionality specially tuned to her designated purpose in life, which in Elysia's case is 'companion'. She also has a tracking chip in her arm.

How this 'full grown clone' operation works is conveniently skipped over. although there is a revelation at the end of the novel which is interesting. The human body is quite simple when looked at as something grown from a single cell: we're basically little more than a bony worm after all. The genome is a recipe for a living thing and there's nothing miraculous about how it develops sequentially; however, to create a full-sized human body from scratch without it growing according to its genetic recipe is a task of huge complexity. This isn't what they do in this novel, but it takes an annoyingly long time for Cohn to clarify this, and even then she's so vague about it as to be annoying, still!

Since nothing is explained, I was forced to cast around a lot to try and figure out what was going on, which really detracted from my reading experience. Eventually I came to the understanding that this isn't cloning in any way, shape or form, so why Cohn misleadingly used that terms is a mystery - and an irritating one at that. What seemed to be going on at that point was a variety of Frankensteinian reanimation, with Elysia occupying the original body of her 'First' which has had nothing more than a brain make-over. There is talk of souls, which not a scientific topic (there's no evidence that anyone has an immortal soul) even though Cohn treats it as such. I find that a bit strange and Cohn herself seems to be sadly confused about what she means by 'soul'. Cohn is a Jewish name meaning priest. Now I have no idea what religion, if any, Cohn practices, but I assume with her name that she might know something of her Judaic heritage, and this concept of eternal life is not really an overriding part of Judaism as it is in Christianity.

There really isn't any talk of souls in the Biblical Old Testament, which is essentially all about land-grabbing and massive slaughter. The out-and-out obsession with an afterlife is only developed in the New Testament, but in Beta the soul is a scientific part of life, and exists only in real humans, not in their 'clones' we're told. This means that the body Elysia now inhabits is actually the very same body her 'First' occupied, but her first cannot be brought back to life because her soul has "gone on" apparently. At the end of the novel I learned that I'd been misled even over this! The technology of the novel is up to the task of reanimation, however, which is how Elysia came to be. But there are problems even with this!

Elysia is an interesting character, and her observations are amusing to begin with. Her placid acceptance of her role in life combined with her compulsion to meet her owner's expectations fully is as endearing as it is disturbing. What's also disturbing is that when she joins her siblings (a teen boy and a younger girl) in the governor's swimming pool, Elysia discovers that she's a natural born athlete, but when she immerses herself in the water, she has visions of a guy talking to her and swimming with her: a guy who she thinks she recalls from memories leaking over from her 'First'. She is (or was) in love with this guy, yet she has no problem ditching that supposedly loving and passionate god-like guy for someone else with whom she thinks she's in love, and then in ditching that someone else, too! That's how shallow she is.

This memory leakage is problematical for me. If Elysia had been a true clone, then it could not have been possible to retain memories, because your genome doesn't perform this function. Yes, DNA can be thought of as being a species' memory, but that's not the same as an individual's personal memories, which is merely a conjugation of chemical states in the brain; once that brain ceases to function, those states decay and your memories - you - are gone. This loss includes your soul, since that's nothing more than a chemical state in your mind. So a true clone cannot possibly have memories from the organism which donated the 'starter' genome.

But if Elysia is a reanimated corpse, memory leakage is still not possible, for if the memories had been intact, then the body wouldn't be dead and it would still be the 'First'. If the body had truly been dead, then those memories would be gone and not available to Cohn's plot for leakage purposes! This, of course, revolves around exactly how the corpse is reanimated, and if technology is so good that it can do so, then why did the original mind (soul if you like) become lost? Since Cohn is so vague, she does leave herself some wiggle room: whilst most of the 'First' was gone - that is the chemical states in her brain which made her who she was - it is possible, dependent upon how the heck this process works, that there could conceivably have been some chemical states which were retained, although IMO, these would be so disjointed that any coherent memory would be nonviable, which again defeats Cohn's purpose! Well, I've rambled enough. Back to the tale!

Elysia's household duties are soon quite sharply defined. She exercises with her 'brother' in the mornings. Ivan, for reasons unexplained, is heading for military college. Now I say reasons unexplained, because I don’t consider 'because dad was in the military' to be a reason in the context of this novel. If Desmesne is perfect, then why is there a need for a military? If the military is employed away from the island, then why would anyone on the island care about it or volunteer for it? What exactly is the threat for which the military exists? And if it’s needed, why is it not populated with 'clones'? This is one of many things which go unexplained in Beta.

We're given to understand that the governor is not a legitimate resident of Desmesne, and is only there by reason of his duty as governor, so this is a possible explanation, but it doesn’t seem to me to be a very good one, and we’re pretty much left in the dark on this topic as we are on so many others. Having said that, there is a bomb-blast on Desmesne, which weirdly doesn't freak anyone out anywhere near as much as it ought. No one was killed and it's all soon forgotten! Elysia's acquaintance from the store - the other beta teen, named Becky, who was on sale with her, but who apparently was never bought - is charged with the incident and sent to be dismantled and analyzed. This chills Elysia, because she has seen the "infirmary" with its clone body parts lying around inside, and clones being experimented upon.

When he's not prepping for military college, Ivan is focused completely on video games or on doing drugs. Ataraxia ('raxia) is the drug of choice (technically, ataraxia is merely a state of bliss, and the drug is named after it because it supposedly delivers such bliss). It’s made from an extract from the seeds of a local plant, and Ivan is starting to experiment with producing his own. The indulgence of a large portion of Desmesne's population in 'raxia is interesting given that they're all supposedly already living in the lap of luxury. But all is not well, as the maid Xanthe, at the governor's house reveals. She and Elysia start trading confidences, and Elysia learns about the discontentment amongst the clones, and about "Insurrection" - apparently some fomenting rebellion. She's also hit upon by the governor himself, and rescued by Ivan the not-so-terrible, which makes his behavior later completely out of character - another problem with this novel. When Xanthe is discovered to be a "Defect", she's unceremoniously tossed over the cliff by security personnel at the governor's home. This is a warning to Elysia to clam up about her condition, but she doesn't heed it too well.

When she's not occupied with Ivan, Elysia is required to spend time with Liesel, the young daughter of the governor and his wife, playing games with her, and comforting her if she wakes from one of her nightmares. Elysia is also required to spend the afternoons with her Mother acting as a companion and personal assistant, but she gets free time during which she hangs with Ivan's teen friends. She's sent on drug runs for these people and plays sports with them - sometimes dangerous sports. It's during this time that she meets Tahir, a dark-skinned teen son of the richest family on Desmesne, who has just returned from convalescence occasioned by a serious surfing accident. Tahir is a whole episode to his self.

It turns out (and here's a huge spoiler) that Tahir actually died in the surfing accident, but was resurrected by Doctor Lusardi's 'cloning' technology. He is an illegal clone replacement for their son, sanctioned and created by Lusardi herself. I actually saw this coming, but not until shortly before it was overtly revealed. The signs are there, however, in retrospect. Elysia is falling for Tahir, although there’s no earthly reason given for why she should. When she's sent on loan to his family for a week, they get to know each other very well. She confesses to him and to his enlightened parents that she is a "Defect" - and therefore ought to be given the same treatment as Becky by the laws of Desmesne - but the family accepts her as she is. Her affection for Tahir is cemented one evening with a kiss, but Tahir cannot feel affection for her in return, being a 'clone'. Elysia resolves to teach him how. Good luck with that!

So once again we're back to what, exactly, these clones are. Until Tahir, I had understood that they were not clones, but reanimated corpses; however, Tahir's story seems to make it clear that this isn't the case at all: they are indeed clones, but the process is maddeningly not explained, not even vaguely. This revelation (or clarification, if you like!) brings me right back to a question of believability - as to how Elysia supposedly has retained memories. Tahir has none and is far more of a beta than is Elysia even though he has his own memories in his chip! He did not retain anything like Elysia did and cannot feel emotion as she does. For some reason during this week with him Elysia undergoes a transformation from placid clone to antagonized rebel, and none of this works for me, because we’re given no valid reason why she should suddenly start thoroughly detesting all humans. She discovers nothing, is exposed to nothing, and is given to feel nothing which she had not already discovered and felt beforehand, so why now and why so extreme? Such a magnitude of change is simply not credible given what we’ve been told.

It’s also entirely inexplicable how almost instantaneously devoted she is to Tahir, but as soon as he's forcibly removed from her picture, she gloms on to Alex without so much as a by-your-leave and with equal passion! Tahir is forgotten and she's placidly subjugated herself to Alex! Honestly? So she hated being subjugated as a clone, but being a love slave is fine? And the number of times Alex is described as "muscled" and "chiseled" is truly, honestly, and irritatingly pathetic. You have to wonder what Cohn is doing with her life for her to write this repetitively and obsessively. Reading this, I found it hard to believe that this is the same Cohn who wrote Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Although now I think about it, she didn't write it - not the movie. She co-wrote the novel and Lorene Scafaria wrote the screenplay (yeah, I had to look that up!). So now I'm wondering if I even want to read that novel!

I have to confess that I had some really mixed feelings about this story. Sometimes it was entertaining and amusing, yet other times it was a bit tedious, but what really tossed it into the trasher for me was how much of an airhead Elysia turned out to be! Rather than make her own mind up about things, which is what I mistakenly assumed was the point of this tale, she proves herself to be completely reactive, not proactive, subject completely to whim, tossed around in the tide of whatever is currently going on around her! She's so capricious. She goes from being this placid, easy-going person who fits in and strives to please, and who is treated rather well (for a Clone), to the complete opposite in zero seconds flat with no apparent acceleration or deceleration curve.

It’s like she's one thing one minute and inexplicably the diametric opposite the next without any good motivation offered for this voltafaccia. Yes, she spent time with Tahir and this gave her a wish list which she didn't have before, but it doesn't explain her out-of-control behavior. It doesn’t help that Ivan rapes her, of course, but it helps even less that after that coercion, she's pressured by two people she only just met, to keep the child and she placidly goes along with their demands instead of making up her own mind.

If it were not for one thing which happened at the very end of the novel, which really did put an interesting spin on things for me, I would have been happily ditching the entire series, but now I want to read volume two. This doesn't mean. however, that I'm prepared to rate volume one as a worthy read. I am not! It's warty.