Celebromancy by Michael R Underwood

Title: Celebromancy
Author: Michael R Underwood
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration 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!

Errata in galley ebook:
P42 "Pprofessional' should be "professional" or "Professional"
P106 "…roast.Her…" should be "…roast. Her…"
"I know what I don’t know what I'm getting into." should be perhaps "I know when I don’t know what I'm getting into."?
P219 "firs-floor" should be "first-floor"
P242 "She hustled home assembled some war tools…" would better read with a comma: "She hustled home, assembled some war tools…"
P271 "I'msupposed" should be "I'm supposed"
P340 "Ree hrmed internally…" ???
P348 "She'd heard a few cinemancers swear that they magical buck went way further with Blu-Ray…"
P374 "He slipped a hand from the strugle…" should be "He slipped a hand from the struggle…" (or maybe strudle?!)

Here's a choice quotation: "Around midnight, Ree got a call on her phone." On what else would she get a call?! Just asking!

Celebromancy is book 2 in the Geekomancy series. I didn't realize this, so please note that I haven't read book 1 (although that's in progress!). I advise you to do this if you're just starting on this series, because it seems to me that it will clarify a few things. At least I hope it will since I already bought the ebook for Geekomancy (it's very reasonably priced, and cheaper at Amazon than at Barnes & Noble as of this writing).

This title initially appealed to me from simply reading the title! Obviously, I wasn't going to fall for it just based on a title any more than I would if based just on a cover, but after I read the author's (publisher's?) description I decided it had to be worth a try. Like a new apartment, I felt good about this location, but the apartment itself can sometimes be a disappointment if the place you're moving into turns out to be a real dump. This one didn't - at least as far as I read initially! It was well-furnished and comfortable, and I felt at home quickly. First hurdle cleared! Unfortunately, the other hurdles became increasingly higher and higher.

The premise for the story is that of magic, but not in the traditional sense. You know that feeling you get when you read a really good novel, or watch a great TV show or see an inspiring movie? Well Underwood has taken that emotional magic and formalized it into a real magical power which you can derive from watching a video (and from other sources - more anon). If you enjoy a movie, it empowers you, and with whatever it is you were watching, and you can then draw on that store of magic and use it yourself. If you want to solve a mystery, you watch a Sherlock Holmes video. If you want to climb buildings, watch Spider-Man! How I wish this premise were true! I’d be one of the most powerful and talented people on the planet with my love of novels, movies and TV - that's what this blog is all about! So yes, initially, I felt quite at home here; it was another 'why didn’t I think of this first' moment, a big swallow and off it flies.

Having not read the first book in the series when I started this one, I first took the female protagonist to be a Celebromancer, but she's a Geekomancer. The difference will become clear shortly. What bothered me about this is that when Underwood introduces a new character, he follows their name with their stats, as though they're a player in a card game or a role-playing game! This was both annoying, confusing, and apparently misleading. For example, when the main character, Ree is introduced, she appears thus: Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes (Strength 10, Dexterity 14, Stamina 12, Will 18, IQ 16, Charisma 15, Geek 7, Barista 3, Screenwriter 2, Gamer Girl 2, Geekomancer 2), but none of this means anything! She's supposed to be a Geekomancer, yet her Geekomancy score is pathetic, even after the first novel!

Aside from those minor irritations, the novel impressed me to begin with. It was believable within its framework, it was initially realistically told, and it was entertaining. I liked the main character at the start, too. My problem with the stats suffix to the name was never resolved. I still have no idea what they really mean having finished this novel. I mean, on what scale are these scores issued? If the maximum is twenty, a score of 18 on your 'Will' is really good, but if the maximum is a hundred, then you're pretty much a complete pawn! Perhaps hardened gamers will instantly clue in what these are supposed to convey, but for the rest of us, we're left in the cold, and that's not a good way to treat your guests if you want to sell novels. I'm neither a game card player nor an online gamer, so I ignored the stats, and it cost me nothing. So here's my point - if the info conveys nothing and the reader can safely ignore it, then what's the point of it?

So how does this magic work? Well, Rhiannon - aka Ree - can watch a scene from (for example) Castle and absorb skills from the experience, which she can then turn around and re-employ to aid her in her endeavors, but the skills wear off rather quickly. Frankly, I can think of far more empowering shows than Castle, but each to her own! I started out liking that show, but it quickly became so formulaic and tedious that I couldn’t stand to watch it any more, especially with the dysfunctional relationship between Castle and Beckett which was taken way too far, and the unresolved and boring quest to find Beckett's mom's murderer. Find something new already!

This show evidently has quite the opposite effect on Ree however, and she uses this to her benefit. She has succeeded in getting her spec script accepted by Jane Konrad, who was once a big star. Jane was Ree's idol during her teens, when Konrad was a teen herself, but she's fallen onto slim times of late. Her DUI's and other drunken behavior have not helped. Lindsay Lohan's checkered history was more than likely an inspiration for this character.

Ree not only has a helping of hero-worship going on here for Jane, but there's also a real physical attraction, and when Jane invites Ree out to dinner and offers her a choice of clothes to wear from her own wardrobe, Ree realizes this could be a hellishly slippery slope she just stepped onto. Not only is this new show which Ree has created going to be Jane Konrad's last big chance at resurrecting her career (her production company is poised to go bust if this fails), if she and Ree become an item and then suddenly they're not, what will that do to Ree's career, to say nothing of her mental state, even if Jane's takes off?

Although Underwood was smart enough to start this novel out with no prologue, which is always a big plus with me, there are chapter quotes which are just as annoying. What I call a chapter quote is some quotation which may be a real one or not (in this case they're faked), which appears at the start of a chapter. I routinely skip these with the same disdain I employ in skipping prologues, but in this case it was harder to do because the quote was pretty much in line with the text and had no quote marks or special font to make it stand out very much from the regular text. This font problem occurred elsewhere, too: the description on the back of Ree's personal chair on the movie set had a font which was bizarrely small. Instead of it appearing in-line with the text and looking normal, the tiny block capitals really jumped out and not in a good way. It almost looked like he had super-scripted the phrase REE REYES WRITER. But maybe that's me! Maybe the actual novel will be different from the galley.

So I found it peculiar that the author included quotations at the start of the chapters, which contribute zero IMO, but then gives us nothing at all regarding what these character evaluations/scores mean in the big picture! Given the excessive name-dropping (TV shows, bands, songs, games, movies, etc.) throughout this novel, it seems that the reader is expected to understand all of this or die trying! This novel appealed to me originally, and I'm not exactly an adept in the gaming world, so I have to ask: why not open it up more, and let a wider audience participate by offering a tid-bit of explanation here and there? Otherwise geekdom is simply turned into snobbery.

Anyway, Ree has a lot of fun with Jane at the club, but she notices weirdness pervading the air. She does light battle with one creature (with a light saber - another example of the magic. Her toy light saber, in her hands, becomes real. A game card, torn in two, can give her the power which the card would have given to a card-playing gamer). Even that battle, however, doesn’t prepare Ree for being woken up that night next to Jane who is screaming in the throws of a nightmare. Nor does it prepare her for discovering that whatever Jane is fighting off is real, it's in this world, yet it's invisible and tough as nails.

It turns out that another actress, Rachel McKenzie, has apparently put some sort of curse on Jane. Jane is a Celebromancer: she can draw real power from her fans, and this power makes her even more appealing, drawing yet more power, but Rachel's curse, born of jealousy, distorts Jane's power and warps it back on her with these nightmarish attacks. Jane never was a drunk. She was being assaulted by animal-like chimeric demons. Now it’s up to Ree to track down the source and fix this.

Ree impersonates a news reporter to try and learn something directly from Rachel, but it's a complete waste of time, and I have to wonder why this scene was even written - unless it was to convince me that Rachel is a red-herring. Jane, meanwhile, is not doing well. She calls Ree to come over that night to stay with her - not for anything intimate, but just for company, and Ree accepts this offer, but you and I know where that resolve's going don't we?!

And that's plenty of detail to whet your appetite! The rest of this review will be generic observations and commentary, the first of which is that writers might want to actually read what they write and spare some thought to IAN (Inadvertent Absurdity Nuance). Here’s one that particularly struck me on p299:

The small woman turned in place, letting Drake through before she left.

"Drake, right?" Cole said, extending a hand.

Turned, left, right?! That's a bit much to read in two consecutive sentences with a straight face - unless the author intended to be giving inane direction with his writing! Another example of this confusion occurred on p322, where we learn that first, the attacking supernatural gorillas were in "snicker-snack" range; then they were "out of measure"? What does "out of measure" actually mean in this context (or even snicker-snack for that matter!)? Is this just another way for him to say 'out of range' without actually repeating those words? They were either in range or they were not. And repeating himself inanely is not something Underwood avoids like the plague, as this example on p323 shows: "That left only one gorilla left." So please, a bit better writing and a lot better editing would be appreciated.

On a different note, Drake's lingo is not only grammatically stupid, it's really annoying. I don’t know what Underwood was trying to do with him. Whatever it was, for me he failed - and now he's nudging Drake and Ree together. I don’t want to read about the two of them as an item, I really don't. These are relatively minor concerns when taken individually, but when you're reading for enjoyment, and you're hit with one thing of this nature after another, it seriously detracts from the quality of the reading experience.

Underwood channels Charlaine Harris pretty well, too. I mean, do we really need to know the precise ingredients that went into the pizza they ate? I don't. I call pretentious bullshit on that one. I have no time for snotty novels which insist upon conveying the minutiae of every outfit the characters don, and every meal in which they partake, every vintage bottle of wine they consume. Ian Fleming was the master of this kind of trash chic and it turns me off. I really don’t care what they're wearing or what they eat unless it's critical to the plot. I do care what they think about in relation to what’s going on, and how they react to it. Why some people feel a need to emulate Fleming's snobbery is a mystery.

Then there's the lack of credibility in the magic! At one point in the novel, after an assault by some guerrilla gorillas, a dragon attacks Ree, and it’s twenty feet up in the air so she concludes that she can’t take it on with the light saber - but she's supposed to be channeling a Jedi isn’t she? Jedi can can jump spectacularly and throw a light saber to good effect. Is she not geek enough to know this? Even if she's not a full-on Jedi, she can throw, can’t she? This lack of anything approaching a schematic for how and when this magic works, really let the story down for me. A little more rationale (within the framework of the story) would have been much appreciated, but Underwood's random use of magical powers which have no inherent logic with regard to when it works or doesn’t, or how powerful it might be, or even what the internal rule-book is, does not help at all to endear the novel to me.

On this same note, Ree starts powering up for her ritual with Jane, and she says she has three to five hours to do this, but we've learned that the power she gleans from DVDs, etc., lasts only for about three hours before it fades to nothing, so what’s the point of powering up five hours before she'll need the power? She can’t usefully watch videos more than one at a time! And this was also where the mistyped sentence from my errata derived: "She'd heard a few Cinemancers swear that they [sic] magical buck went way further with Blu-Ray…". Why? Why does Blu-Ray go further? Again, no explanation let alone a rationale. And why video and not audio? Why can’t they use music to "magic up"? And why not literature, if they can use comic books?

So to wind this up, I was rather disappointed in it, for the reasons given. This was merely a galley ebook, but it wasn't in great shape - it gave me the impression it had been rushed out for no good reason. That alone obviously isn't enough to condemn the novel, but it seems indicative to me of the author's approach to the story overall: sloppy and uninvolved. I started reading this enthusiastically, enjoying it despite some reservations, but it went downhill too far for my taste, and it wasn't that great of a story or that great of a set of characters to persuade me to hang in there for the ride. I ended-up up-ended, skimming a lot of pages towards the end just because they were boring. I really didn’t care about two Hollywood stars who each thought that they were better than the other. I mean, how petty is that? I can’t take that seriously, and I can’t bring myself to side with either one of them, much less empathize or feel sorry for them. I really can’t.

The ending was entirely nonsensical. The local production in which Jane and Ree are involved somehow fails because of all the supernatural pressure put on it (especially from the big finale), but there's no real explanation given as to why it can’t pick itself, dust itself off, and start all over again, as the song would have it. Here's a dance clip from that same movie! I once saw a bumper sticker which said, "Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in heels". I've never forgotten that!

Ree and Jane are talking like they have to start over from rock bottom scratch, and it’s gonna be tough. For goodness sakes, this is the age of the Internet and Indie films. Jane is so clueless that she never heard of webisodes? I can’t get with that at all especially in a novel of this nature! The fact is that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever stopping them from going ahead and making a web series, yet they both sit around moping about how it’s all over!

You’d think they couldn't top that, but Ree manages it! Twice! To begin with, she has the chance to go to Hollywood and pursue her career as a screen writer there, and she turns it down flat. My guess is that in book three, which I don’t intend to read, she'll still be griping about how her career isn't getting off the ground. I'm sorry, but I don’t want to read any more of her self-pitying comments on that score! Her other problem was that she's still pining for Eastwood. Now I haven't finished reading Geekomancy as I write this, so I can't offer personal testimony yet, but from what I've read of his conduct in Geekomancy I don't see that anyone in their right mind would want anything to do with Eastwood. much less pine for him. The fact that Ree does means I don't want anything to do with her.

I finished reading this on a Monday and it was a real Monday, so I have no doubt that my irritation from other sources played into my assessment somewhat, but this alone tells me that it’s not a worthy novel, because if it had been really good, it would have pulled me out of the minor irritation I had brewing, and taken me somewhere else. It failed. For that alone, I'd have to rate this as a warty, although I'd never claim that there couldn't be varieties of deep geek who might like bits of this novel. I even liked bits myself. Just not enough bits.

Worldshaker by Richard Harland

Title: Worldshaker
Author: Richard Harland
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WORTHY!

Worldshaker is a steam-punk novel, part of a dilogy about the education of Colbert Porpentine, grandson of the master of Worldshaker, Sir Marmus Porpentine. Worldshaker is a massive ship, two and a half miles long, three-quarters of a mile wide, well over a thousand feet high, home to ten thousand people, and two thousand "filthies" - people who live below decks and unaccountably have within their control the power plant of this the city on rollers (when it's on the ground) or city of the air.

Col wakes up one night because of a ruckus in the hallway outside his room. One of the Filthies, who was brought up top to be turned into a Menial (a servant of the ruling classes), has escaped and is now running loose on the upper decks! The guards visit him and then depart and it's only after this that Col realizes that it wasn't the ruckus which disturbed him, it was something before that. He looks under his bed and there's a filthy hiding there. When she comes out, she turns out to be disturbingly attractive despite the dirt, and she can even speak, something which quite astounds Col. Her name is Riff and when he calls out to the guards in surprise, she runs and hides in his closet!

But Col doesn't betray Riff. The guards do not arrive, so he locks her in his closet. The next morning, his sister Gillabeth bursts into his room complaining that he needs to get ready - there's an important breakfast with his grandfather. She immediately goes to his closet and his heart almost stops as she wrenches it open, but Riff is no longer there!

The great announcement which grandpa makes that morning is that Col is to be his successor; he will be groomed to take charge of the ship. He is to go to school. Col's mom takes him on a shopping trip to gather school supplies. She's so worn out by this effort that she has to repair to Col's room to sit out an attack of the wilts and the vapors. It's while she's sitting on his bed that Col realizes the filthy is back! Riff is under his bed at that very moment. He hastily bundles his recovering mother out of the room and confronts Riff. She looks clean. It's a new Riff in many respects, and Col is finding it harder and harder to dismiss her from his thoughts or to see her as a filthy. She tries to smuggle out one of his books - on volcanoes (I wonder why?!) - as she leaves, and she tells him she'll be back.

Col is just about having a fit over her. Everything in his life was looking up, except that she's now in it. However, he sees a solution. All Riff wants, is to return to the below world with her fellow filthies. On his tour of the ship with his grandfather, Col learns that food is sent to the filthies via a chute, and so the next time Riff shows up, he escorts her to the nearest food chute (which is a long way from his room) and sends her down it. Now everything is coming up roses. So he thinks.

Col is a good hero. He is not very wise to the ways of the world - especially given that he's been sheltered from it and lied to all his life - but he isn’t dumb, and he's not afraid to question things and to take risks when he deems it important. He's not all powerful, and he has no magical or super-human powers. All he has going for him (aside from his privileged birth) is his smarts, his willingness to put himself into the position of others, and his good nature and sense of morality. Unfortunately, for all this, he does seem to have an ability to dig himself deeper.

When he first arrives at school, he allies himself with Trant, without realizing that Trant is of a much lower social status than he. Col is soon corrected by the upper status kids, who draw him into their circle. Given that these elite kids detest Col and wish for their families to usurp his family's eminent position, it’s hard to understand why they're so accommodating, unless they're working from the 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' principle, but they don’t seem that smart!

Harland excels himself when describing the school master, Gibber. His name pretty much says it all. Gibber is a gibbering idiot. He has the most hilariously warped ideas imaginable about academic subjects. In geometry, he detests obtuse angles because they’re so open. He much prefers acute angles because they're so sharp, but even they pale against the insurmountable rectitude of a right angle. Gibber makes his class draw right-angles for the rest of the period! Geography fares no better: it turns out that concave coastlines are an abomination. He can scarcely bring himself to even talk about the Great Australian Bight, for example. The coastline of Great Britain, contrarily, is magnificent because it has so many proud promontories! This is inspired and hilarious. Harland had me laughing out loud.

Col would have had it made were it not for Riff showing up in his life and his inability to jettison all thought of her once he'd fed her back down the chute to "the underworld". He makes the mistake, when he's in a good mood, of wrapping up the book which Riff had tried to steal, and sending it down the chute to her as a gift. The elite kids tail him down there, sad to say, and discover him. He gets into a fight with the bruiser of the group (indeed he was only in the group because he was a bruiser) and Col ends up being dropped down the chute himself. He almost comes to grief down there, but is rescued by none other than riff, who is a leader down below. She quite literally rescues him, because the filthies are about to drop him into the bilge and let him die for no reason other than he's from "up there". Riff has to fight a bigger guy to assert her authority, which she does without raising a sweat. She is fast and deadly. And she's secretly thrilled that Col sent her the gift, but she says he has to go before the council - the senior "filthies" - most of whom are no older than Riff.

Col's "sentence" is to aid a filthy to go topside as a spy, and the one who is chosen is, of course, Riff. Col is to return by having the officers upstairs lift him out by means of a grasping hook - the same way they capture the filthies they wish to turn into menials. But his return from the underworld isn’t greeted with great joy. He's now despised almost as much as the filthies are, because he's been contaminated by being amongst them. He's shunned and his family finds its elevated and privileged status being undermined by Sir Marmus's rivals. Seeing an advantage now, the elite boys at school reject him, and even Gibber increasingly disses him. Col ignores them all until he discovers they're planning on beating him up before the school term is over.

When he considers how he might be able to fight back, he suddenly realizes there is someone who can help him learn to fight, and it's someone he made a promise to not four days ago. Col remembers his promise to get Riff topside, and so he lowers a rope, as agreed, down the food chute for her to climb up. When she arrives, he's so excited by her arrival that he expects a joyful reunion with hugs and kisses, but she pretty much tells him goodbye and disappears.

Later he's amazed to discover that she's very successfully disguised herself as a menial and now roams Worldshaker with complete impunity! He tells her of his predicament, and she agrees to teach him to fight if he will teach her to read. Of course you all know where this is going. They spend much time together, and she learns to read, and he learns to fight and takes down ten opponents when the Squellinghams try to beat him up at school. What he didn’t expect was that these very villains would tell him that his sister Gillabeth was behind the attack! But things are about to get worse.

In order to salvage the family reputation and position of power, Sir Marmus negotiates a marriage between the Porpentine and the Turbots, namely that of Col to Sephaltina Turbot, which Col blindly goes along with since he feels bad about bringing the family down, and he thinks Riff is partnered with one of the filthies anyway, and even if she were not, she certainly wouldn’t be interested in someone like him. He doesn’t expect her to show up at his wedding, very effectively disguised as a privileged upper deck person, nor does he expect his reaction to her to precipitate a revolution. It all started with the jelly....

Original, brilliantly written, endlessly entertaining, and thoroughly engrossing, this is a novel I cannot help but highly recommend. Even on my second reading it was still as appealing as it was on the first. Now that I'm back up to speed on volume one, I'm very much looking forward to embarking upon the Liberator. Full steam ahead!

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: Worthy!

Note that there's an excellent trivia resource on the Hunger Games wiki.

Once again Collins takes the same story as she used in The Hunger Games and which she respun as Catching Fire, and she twists it once more into Mockingjay. Even so, it’s different and just as engrossing. That takes some skill. As Katniss confirms when she gives voice to the sentiment, this is the 76th Hunger Games, and the arena this time is all of Panem, but in particular it’s the capital.

Mockingjay, clearly a direct reference to Katniss after her interview with Caesar Flickinger in Catching Fire (itself clearly a direct reference to that same incident) begins in ashes - the ashes of District 12, bombed and burned by the Capital in reprisal for Katniss's continuing rebellion. Katniss insists, against the wishes of the leaders of District 13 where she now resides with her family, upon visiting the district to punish herself over the hundreds and hundreds who died there because of her. Mockingjay's chapter 18 seems clearly to have been the underlying influence on the Divergent novel's use of chemicals to stimulate fear.

I can see how President Snow (who had a rose left behind for Katniss in the only part of 12 which was not bombed) would want to punish, but if the Capital is so dependent upon coal, then it makes absolutely no sense to completely and irreversibly destroy the coal district and those who produce this resource. This district was not rebelling. It was incapable of doing so, yet Snow had it destroyed and along with it the miners and along with that all coal production. Collins presents this as a direct punishment to Katniss, but Collins fails to address this particular issue. This vindictive destruction becomes even more incomprehensible in light of what ensues, and I have to wonder two things: is President Snow completely deranged, and was the capital was lying about its coal dependence? Were they merely making the miners go through the motions, just working pointlessly for the sake of it? If they were not, then how are they replacing that evidently-needed coal?

The only thing Katniss recovers from District 12 (Diss 12 now?!) are a few personal effects from her victors' home, including Buttercup, Prim's cat, before she has to return to Diss 13 and to her growing nightmares, the largest of which is knowing that Peeta is a prisoner of President Snow, but this issue is resolved very speedily - another remarkable example of how well Collins has constructed this trilogy. Once Katniss is back in the strictly disciplined and organized Diss 13, it seems in many ways a microcosm of everything which was wrong with the previous regimen, what with strict rules, and having your daily schedule tattooed on your wrist each morning to be washed off only at night.

Let me say a quick word about Collins's use of 'Capitol' to describe the capital of Panem, because I found it unnecessarily confusing, an I have to wonder if Collins herself understands the difference between capital and capitol, since both words derive from the same Latin root, meaning 'head'. I think capitol is a very American word. I don't hear any nation use this outside of the Americas. Capitol refers strictly to a building where the state legislature meets, and perhaps the judicial branch, too (so much for separation!). It doesn't mean the same thing as 'capital', which is the principle city of a nation, the one which is typically the seat government for that nation. In order not to perpetuate the potential confusion and misinformation Collins may have launched by this lax choice of words, I intend to use 'capital' to refer to the principle city of Panem, and only use 'Capitol' when I need to, or when I'm quoting directly from her novels. But I don't want to make this a capital offense, or derive any capital from it, okay? Capital!

Katniss is shocked when called to witness a capital broadcast which features Peeta - a very healthy and well-looking Peeta, quite contrary to the one she saw in her nightmares, one who was bloody and punished. Peeta calls for a cease-fire, claiming that both he and Katniss were unwitting victims of rebel manipulation in the 75th games. This is supposed to affect Katniss, turning her into putty in their hands, but it has the opposite effect. Before, she had resisted becoming a symbol of the resistance - becoming the Mockingjay - but after seeing this broadcast, she now resolves to be precisely what Diss 13 has asked her to be - the symbolic leader of the resistance. She reasons that any other action will plunge them back into the horrific subjugation which has haunted everyone's life through 75 years and infinite tears.

Prior to making this decision, Katniss had fled the broadcast and hidden in one of several locations where she has gone to ground during those times when she is unable to deal with her misery and stress. Gale finds her there and they sit and talk. He and she have begun to resume their previous relationship: close friends, each someone to whom the other can talk about anything. This is where Katniss makes her decision, but the most important thing either of them says doesn't come from Katniss's mouth but from Gale's: "If I could hit a button and kill every living soul working for the Capitol, I would do it. Without hesitation."

The importance of what Gale says here in terms of defining the inevitable result of the star-cross'd triangle which is ongoing between Gale, Katniss and Peeta cannot be over-stressed. Those few words circumscribe what must become of the three of them. Again Collins has done this masterfully: she slips this understandable assertion of Gale's so sweetly into his outburst, ostensibly innocuous, but portending completely how this story must play out from here onwards. Beautifully done!

Collins continues to please the further we progress into this story. Fulvia Cardew, one of the refugees from the Capital wants to get Katniss all dolled-up in dramatic make-up with fake injuries and a knightly outfit that looks like it came right out of a manga version of the story of Jeanne d'Arc. This doesn't work for Katniss, but it's Haymitch who calls "Bullshit!" on it and eventually they cave and allow her to be herself. She's flown to Diss 8 to visit a hospital, but what her minders don't know is that the capital is about to bomb the hospital. Katniss fights back with her super bow (a tur-bow?!) - which is straight out of Hawkeye's weaponry in The Avengers - and brings down some Capital ships (lol!). Now they have all the "propo" (propaganda) they want and they derive a bunch of video from this one incident, of Katniss being heroic and defiant.

It's right after these start going out that Katniss learns what the Capital has truly done to Peeta. She sees another of their propos and Peeta looks sleepless and in pain. They have clearly been torturing him. Clearly the initial video was taken some time before to trick Katniss into thinking he was being well taken care off. When she didn't swallow that, they hit her with the truth - as they want her to see it - and this video has exactly the effect that the Capital has sought all along: it makes Katniss fall apart. She saw the video with Finnick, who advised her not to mention it to anyone lest they think she will lose it if she hears of Peeta's torture. But she notices that no one mentions it to her, either, not even Gale, who she thought she could trust.

Here's where we find another choice sentence from Collins. The leader of Diss 13 is Alma Coin, who is hardly better than President Snow, and Katniss is giving Gale a hard time for not telling her about the Peeta video. She yells at him: "They were right. It did. But not quite as sick as you lying to me for coin." I love that sentence (even though it is grammatically a horror story) because of the double-entendre. Is he lying to her for Coin (Alma Coin, the president of Diss 23) or is he lying to her for coin (because he's bought into / in the pay of the rebel propaganda? You cannot beat a good double meaning like that. It's in the best tradition of George Orwell's 1984. Whether Collins intended it that way is another matter!

Well, I have to say that Collins, notwithstanding her prowess with selling us this trilogy, is yet another writer who doesn't understand the difference between 'titled' and 'entitled'. Having said that, of course, there is the fact that language is not words in a dictionary, but what's in use every day in the work places, and play places, amongst the military and the civilians, in classrooms and in nightclubs, and it's changing all the time.

I think this is yet another example of words becoming inextricably entangled. We saw it with 'inflammable' and 'flammable'. We saw it with the rise of 'irregardless', and we're seeing it now as more and more writers confuse 'titled' and 'entitled', and stanch and staunch. It's the same contradictory language that allows us to describe a person we really like by describing them as both hot and cool. It's the same sick language which allows us to reassure someone by telling them we're fine, but doesn't allow us to tell them we're not fine by describing ourselves as coarse! It's the same paradoxical language that allows us to describe a person as phat and not be even remotely insulting. And yeah, it's the same obscure language that allows us to insult, but not to sult, or even to outsult! O-kay serif serrated....

The next time Peeta broadcasts, it's especially disturbing for Katniss, but not as disturbing for Diss 13 when Peeta warns everyone that a bombing raid is not immanent, but imminent. The entire population, which is living underground anyway, descends to the very bottom level of their subterranean city, which has long been prepared for such a raid. The raid continues for three days, but no one is killed or harmed thanks to Peeta. After this, the powers that be in Diss 13 decide to go rescue Peeta, because without him, Katniss is useless. Some hero, huh? So the raid goes ahead, and as a distraction, Katniss finally pulls herself together long enough to record a brief "I'm alive" kind of message. The real hero this time is Finnick, and why they waited so ridiculously long to employ him is a mystery, because what he has is dynamite.

During his relationship with various people in the Capital, he has sucked up secret after secret about the people there, and now he unveils every last one of them, in particular ones he knows about Snow. Given that not one of these is described in the novel, they're going to have to invent a speech for him when Mockingjay is turned into a movie. These revelations are transmitted right at the time the raid is suppose dot go down in the capital as a distraction, and then there is a horrible wait until Finnick and Katniss get news: Peeta is safe. Gale, who went with the raid, is safe. Annie, Finnick's girlfriend who was held hostage by Snow just like Peeta was (Peeta, honestly?) is safe, and so is Johanna, who, being the only captive who actually knew anything about the rebels' plans, was tortured extensively.

Now, freed from all harm that Snow can conjure up, Katniss needs to deliver as the Mockingjay. Unfortunately, since Peeta has been reprogrammed (using tracker-jacker venom) to hate Katniss, his first response uppon meeting her is to strangle her! So, Mockingjay on hold for few days, Katniss's hatred of Snow ratcheted up another couple of notches (not to be confused with nachos - ratcheting up a few nachos would be a bit weird).

In the first Hunger games in which she took part, Katniss had no choice in going, and she was largely on her own. In the next one, she was part of a team, but she neither knew nor trusted her allies for the most part. In Hunger Games 3.0, as she enters the arena that the capital has now become, she is going in, for the first time, voluntarily; she does know her allies, and she does trust them (all except for Peeta, which is a complete one-eighty from before). This time the price is immensely high because she knows they’re following her, and they're on her side, and she knows they're paying for this with their lives, and unlike in the previous games where most of the deaths took place at least somewhat remotely from her, in this 'games', the deaths are up close and personal, and Snow makes it obvious from the start that he's targeting her directly and very vindictively.

I know that a lot of people gripe about this love triangle between Katniss, and Peeta and Gale, but to me there never was a love triangle, there only ever was Katniss and Peeta. Gale was a non-starter. As I pointed out in my review of The Hunger Games, it was first brought home to me how completely out of the question Gale was by his selfish rejection of joining Katniss in the games. He could have volunteered immediately after she did, but he left her hanging. Katniss had no choice. Both Gale and Peeta did have a choice and both of them chose to reject her. However, once Peeta found himself selected, he directed his every action into saving Katniss. So although he had initially ruled himself out of the running by his failure to volunteer to join her, once he learned that had no choice, he immediately resolved to be Katniss's man all the way, and he never wavered from that resolve.

It took the evil of President Snow to derail Peeta's devotion, but he came back from that, and although he initially failed by not volunteering, Peeta earned the right to be by Katniss's side by his subsequent actions. Gale did not; quite the contrary, in fact. It was Gale who killed the one person Katniss truly did love unreservedly and without question or doubt: Prim. There would never be any coming back from that, but Gale did it anyway in full knowledge of how brutally it would damage Katniss. He did this precisely because he didn’t care about Katniss - or more accurately, because he cared far more about selfish things than ever he cared for her. So the ending for me was absolutely right given everything which preceded it.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WORTHY!

Note that there's an excellent trivia resource on the Hunger Games wiki.

One of my pet peeves about 1st person PoV novels is that it makes the narrator look really whiny if they complain about anything. This really turned me off in the obnoxious Sookie Harris novels (and explains why I much prefer the TV show since it’s not narrated at all and the TV Sookie is far from being a maiden in distress, especially lately!). Catching Fire begins a little bit like that, but Collins wisely has Katniss work through her issues without having to throw herself on some studly guy to help her. She's visited by president Snow, who smells of roses and blood, and he's clearly pissed at her. He tells her she doesn’t have to convince anyone that she's honestly in love with Peeta - anyone but him that is, and if she fails, the consequences will be dire.

This same strategy I think fails somewhat in the sequel, Mockingjay because it becomes too much to read. This is a serious problem with 1st person PoV novels, and one of several reasons I dislike them so much. Mockingjay was a tough sell, despite The Hunger Games being a runaway best seller. The reason for this was Collins' problem of how to tell the same story twice and get away with it. Clearly she succeeded, adding enough twists and unexpected turns to keep it fresh, but the first part of the book was not so successful IMO. It was dragging and slow, but it was necessary because the ground had to be laid for all that comes afterwards. I can't help but wonder how I would have done it had I been trying to sell it, and I doubt I would have brought it off as well as Collins did, so I can't mark her down for that!

Before Katniss has even begun to get settled back into her life (not that she ever can return to what she was, what she had) Katniss and Peeta (seriously? Peeta?) are whisked (yes indeed, whisked they are, and no other word will do) into the traditional Hunger Games winner's district tour. Their first stop is District 11, and Peeta really stirs up trouble (and quite unintentionally) when he pledges one month's victor winnings every year for his lifetime to the families of the two District 11 tributes (Thresh and Rue) who died in the recent games. Katniss feels she has to say something about Rue and Thresh's sacrifice, and this stirs the crowd even more. One old guy raises the three fingered lip touch salute which Katniss showed everyone during the games after Rue died, and soon everyone in that crowd is doing it, and whistling Rue's four-note Mockingjay tune. This act of solidarity turns quickly into a riot in the square and people die including the old guy who started it.

Let me say a quick word about Collins's use of 'Capitol' to describe the capital of Panem, because I found it unnecessarily confusing, an I have to wonder if Collins herself understands the difference between capital and capitol, since both words derive from the same Latin root, meaning 'head'. I think capitol is a very American word. I don't hear any nation use this outside of the Americas. Capitol refers strictly to a building where the state legislature meets, and perhaps the judicial branch, too (so much for separation!). It doesn't mean the same thing as 'capital', which is the principle city of a nation, the one which is typically the seat government for that nation. In order not to perpetuate the potential confusion and misinformation Collins may have launched by this lax choice of words, I intend to use 'capital' to refer to the principle city of Panem, and only use 'Capitol' when I need to, or when I'm quoting directly from her novels.

President Snow is seething with hatred for Katniss as she arrives in the Capital after this tour, even after they've staged a planned "impromptu" proposal of marriage from Peeta (Peeta? What's a 'Peeta', exactly?!) which Katniss accepts. Snow indicates his grievous displeasure to her and it immediately spills into District 12. He fires the existing head "Peacekeeper" and installs a vicious brute with the absurd name of Romulus Thread. Honestly! That's worse than Peeta which was previously my worst name in the trilogy (did you guess?).

Gale is the first victim. He's whipped almost to death when he's caught trying to sell a poached turkey to the head peacekeeper, not knowing that Thread has replaced the previous guy. Katniss's mom saves Gale's life, but Katniss now realizes two things. She's in love with Gale, and she's trapped into a course of action from which she cannot escape. She had been thinking of running, and taking her family with her, but this nastiness brings it home to her with horrific clarity that she cannot abandon the rest of District 12. She starts thinking then in terms of what she can do to foment an uprising like the one which has spontaneously begun in District 8 (which she only learns of by accident). Haymitch is dismissive of her idea, but she will not shed it.

Katniss and Peeta took part in the 74th Hunger Games, but what she has forgotten with all of her self-obsession and everything else that has distracted her is that this year is the Quarter Quell, a very special games held once every twenty-five years. This pattern was supposedly set in stone many years before, after the war. When President Snow reads the news of this year's tournament, taken from a box of numbered envelopes, the news is as outrageous and it is unprecedented. This year, the tributes are to be selected from all the remaining victors from the districts. Katniss believes this was not set in stone at all. She believes that Snow changed envelope number 75 for no other reason than just to get rid of all the victors (it's not called a quell for nothing!), who are symbols of success and perhaps focal points for rebellion.

Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch are hustled onto the train without even being given a chance to say goodbye this year. On the train journey, they watch tapes of the other games. Why tapes? Given the technology in this world, why tapes? I have no idea why Collins would take this backward step unless she was simply not thinking about what she was doing, which is hard to believe given how much planning she put into this trilogy. And how did they even get the tapes? It makes no sense that the capital, which has here instituted the most evil, vindictive, and vicious of games for this year, would offer any assistance at all to the victors, especially given that their aim is no less than the extermination of the victors, yet they have all the tapes they want, and one of them is Haymitch's 50th Quarter Quell games, where double the number of tributes competed, and Haymitch managed to win.

The death toll in the 75th Hunger Games:
1b Gloss - killed by Katniss
1g Cashmere - killed by Johanna
2b Brutus - killed by Peeta
2g Enobaria - captured by capital
3b Beetee - freed by rebels
3g Wiress - killed by Gloss
4b Finnick - freed by rebels
4g Mags - killed by fog
5b Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia by Finnick
5g Unnamed - killed by tidal wave or muttation
6b Unnamed ("male morphling") - Killed at Cornucopia by Brutus
6g Unnamed ("female morphling") - killed by muttation
7b Blight - killed in force field collision
7g Johanna - captured by capital
8b Woof - Killed at Cornucopia
8g Cecilia - Killed at Cornucopia
9b Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia
9g Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia
10b Unnamed - killed by tidal wave or muttation
10g Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia
11b Chaff - killed by Brutus
11g Seeder - Killed at Cornucopia
12b Peeta - captured by capital
12g Katniss - freed by rebels

The minute Katniss arrives at the capital there are behaviors which ought to make her suspicious, but as usual she doesn't grasp any of what's going on. She's told to make alliances and this time she tries, but what's actually going on is something much bigger than the games. While Katniss believes she has made a deal with Haymitch to protect Peeta, Peeta, Haymitch, and even some of the other tributes have made an alliance to protect Katniss - to protect the Mockingjay.

And now brief word about biology! Collins has us believe that while the Jabberjays were genetically created by the capital to spy on the rebels, they were left to go wild afterwards. It was expected that they would die out, but they did not. Instead some of them mated with mockingbirds to create the Mockingjay. This is patent bullshit! Jays are in the crow family Corvidae. The Mockingbirds are from a completely different family, the Mimidae. While both of these are Passeriformes, a huge order of birds, they are so far apart on the evolution bush that there is no way they would be likely to even physically mate, let alone have issue from the mating. Humans would have a better chance of success mating with chimpanzees (which is to say: none!) than would birds of two different families, which begs the question as to why Collins chose the jays to begin with!

If she was going for smarts, then another member of the Corvidae family might have been a better choice, although all of the Corvidae family have better than average smarts among birds. If she was going for mimicking, which is ostensibly what the capital was after, then why not select the Mimidae family to begin with? In that way at least you're trying to have members of the same bird family mate. But that's just me.

So let the games begin. This time the tributes rise to the surface surrounded by salt water, itself surrounded by a beach, with the cornucopia close by, but Katniss cannot run as she did before. Instead, she swims to the Cornucopia, and runs into Finnick Odair, who protects her. She agrees to make an alliance with him even though she doesn't trust him, because Haymitch had advised her to do so, but he had failed to give her sufficient information on which to base trust, so she simply doesn't trust him even though she allies herself with him. She ends up with a quartet, the other two being Peeta and Mags - a much older woman. Both of these tributes are from District 4, and it turns out that Mags was Finnick's mentor, so the two of them have a special bond. Finnick won the games when he was only fourteen.

The environment this time is very hot and humid. Beyond the beach lies a jungle. There is no fresh water. As the games progresses, the death toll is far higher than it was in the previous year's games. Every hour they discover that a new terror is unleashed upon them. There is a massive lightning storm beginning with a strike on a huge tree which was close by. They move on form that only to be attacked by a fog the next morning - a fog which is some sort of nerve gas. Mags is lost to the gas because Katniss cannot carry her fast enough. The next day they encounter Johanna Mason, someone who Katniss dislikes intensely, but Johanna weirdly tells Katniss that she saved Beetee and Wiress for her. Katniss has no idea what that means.

It's from Wiress's odd chanting of "tick tock" that Katniss realizes that the arena, smaller than previously and circular, is arranged like a clock, divided into twelve segments, each of which spawns a horror on the turn of the hour, and the horrors rotate clockwise. With this in mind, and knowing they can tap water from the trees by means of a spile. which Haymitch sent to them, they start to plan on beating the alliance arrayed against them. Beetee is carrying a spool of wire, and his plan is to hook it to the tree that gets struck when the lightning starts, and run the wire down to the ocean which will electrocute their competitors.

The plan fails when Brutus and his allies attack Johanna and Katniss. Katniss is freaked out when Johanna appears to attack her and then removes the tracking device from her arm, before turning to engage the attackers. Soon Finnick comes charging past to enter the fray. Katniss abandons the two of them and charges back up to the arena wall to find Peeta. She realizes that she can uses Beetee's wire to short-out the arena wall by attaching it to an arrow and firing the arrow into a weak spot which she had learned of during training. This done, she finds herself snatched up by a hovercraft, but the craft contains Haymitch and Plutarch (seriously?), this year's games controller who had oddly interacted with Katniss some time before, during the victor's tour of the districts.

Katniss wants them to get Peeta, but they refuse, and she passes out, only to awaken later to discover that she's being taken to District 13 - the supposedly dead district, which is alive and well. Both Peeta and Johanna have been captured by the capital, and District 12 has been bombed out of existence.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WORTHY!

Note that there's an excellent trivia resource on the Hunger Games wiki.

The 2008 novel The Hunger Games is a phenomenon which has spawned a host of imitators from the pale (2013's The Testing) to the execrable (2011's Divergent), but it stands alone as a remarkable achievement in creating a world with motivated and believable characters and engaging (if depressing!) incidents and world-building. It brings two unlikely characters together in a relationship that is as far from the sad YA trope as you can get and it does it well. Imitators can only dream of selling as well as The Hunger Games has sold, and the imitation is sad, because Collins did not achieve her success from imitation, but by coming up with and original idea which was far off the beaten track of other popular YA fiction at the time she published it.

Yes, I know there are those who claim that Collins ripped-off Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, but I don't buy into that any more than I buy into it being a rip-off of Stephen King's The Long Walk.

I haven't read Takami's novel, but I did see the movie and it sucked. It offered nothing even close to what The Hunger Games delivers. I don't know how similar it was to the novel, but if the novel was anything like the movie it must be awful!

The death toll in the 74th Hunger Games:
1b Marvel - killed by Katniss
1g Glimmer - killed by tracker jackers
2b Cato - killed by Katniss
2g Clove - killed by Thresh
3b Unnamed - killed by Cato
3g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
4b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
4g Unnamed - killed by tracker jackers
5b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
5g Unnamed ("Foxface") - nightlock consumption
6b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
6g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
7b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
7g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
8b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
8g Unnamed - killed by Cato (Peeta?)
9b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia by Clove
9g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
10b Unnamed - killed by career group
10g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
11b Thresh - killed by Cato
11g Rue - killed by Marvel

Let me say a quick word here about Collins's use of 'Capitol' to describe the capital of Panem, because I found it unnecessarily confusing, and I have to wonder if Collins herself understands the difference between 'capital' and 'capitol', since both words derive from the same Latin root, meaning 'head'. I think capitol is a very American word. I don't hear any nation use this outside of the Americas. Capitol refers strictly to a building where the state legislature meets, and perhaps the judicial branch, too (so much for separation!). It doesn't mean the same thing as 'capital', which is the principle city of a nation, the one which is the seat government. In order not to perpetuate the potential confusion and misinformation Collins may have launched by this lax choice of words, I intend to use 'capital' to refer to the principle city of Panem, and only use 'Capitol' when I need to, or when I'm quoting directly from her novels.

One thing I missed or forgot from the first time through this novel was just how much Collins packed into her first chapter without it looking like a big fat info-dump. It’s a bit overwhelming, but it doesn’t feel that way when reading it, and there is so much in there! It's different from the movie but in this case, this is mostly because they obviously needed to shorten the novel to get it into a movie format. After that, the novel moves rapidly to the Capital action. We spend very little time in District 12. And what a good choice of district - this places Katniss last in the big events in the capital: the parade, and the TV interview, so it lets her (or rather, Cinna, her stylist) pull out the stops and have a huge impact.

So we make it through the interviews and through Katniss's anger at Peeta's revelation. This is very similar to the novel; then the start of the 74th Hunger Games gears up, and it's a bit sad as we follow Katniss up into the arena, and even sadder as the bloodbath begins. I thought this part was as well done in the movie as it was in the novel.

Katniss spends her first night in a Willow tree. She's awakened by a girl snapping twigs to start a fire not too far away, but that girl is quickly taken out by the coalition of the lower-numbered districts. None of this hunting party, which includes Peeta, sees Katniss in the tree. The next day, when she's just about dying of thirst (which seems improbable frankly, in so short a time!) she's wondering why Haymitch hasn’t sent her water and eventually figures out that it’s because he knows she's very near some. Eventually, crawling, she finds it and rehydrates, but she's flushed out of her respite by a roaring forest fire set by the game controllers.

When she starts to relax, having made good progress in escaping the fire, she's set upon by baseball-sized fireballs (which are depicted as being much larger in the movie). One of these grazes her thigh and sets her jacket on fire. She manages to salvage the jacket, but her hands and thigh are seriously burned, and the hunting party is on her trail. She painfully climbs eighty feet up into a tree to escape them. They're all too heavy to follow her up into the smaller branches, and the girl with the bow is a lousy shot. The party camps at the bottom of the tree, planning on waiting her out.

As Katniss ponders her fate, she notices Rue in a nearby tree, also hiding from the hunters. Rue points up above her head, where she espies a hornet's nest (which Lisbeth Salander has not yet kicked, evidently!). These are genetically-engineered insects called 'tracker jackers' because they will hunt down anyone who disturbs their nest. Their stings are lethal if you get more than a modest few, and they cause painful, pus-filled swellings. They were used in the war some seventy years before, but are now largely ignored. The ones around the capital have been cleaned out, but why such a fierce beastie hasn't spread until it became out of control is a mystery.

Unlike in the movie, Katniss at first saws through only a part of the branch holding the nest, and she does it that night. After she climbs back down to her own nest, she finds waiting for her the gift of salve for her burns, which she applies. The next morning, her wounds are very much on the way to healing, and she climbs back up to the hornet nest and finishes sawing it down. The hornets are subdued at night because of the smoking they got from the fire, but in the morning they're recovering. Katniss finishes sawing the branch and the nest drops, but she gets stung three times, and that's more than enough to hurt and make her woozy. Two of the girls from the hunting party die, but the rest of the party escapes with only a few stings to make them miserable.

Katniss has to go back to recover the bow and arrows which one of the dead girls had, and pries them from her stiff fingers. Now well-armed with her knife and her favorite weapon, she re-focuses on her ongoing need for food and water. I think it was a master (mistress?!) stroke on Collins's part to have the arena set up so its every variable is at the whim of the game controllers, but it does create problems in the story overall, not least of which is how the heck do they exert such control, and if they can, then why, exactly, is Panem the way it is?! More on this anon.

So, fully armed now, Katniss pretty much collapses from the stings she received, and there's a lull in the games as the participants all recover from their own painful swellings. Katniss and Rue form an alliance at this point, and share both knowledge and supplies. Katniss zeroes in on their one great strength: the two of them together are by far the best out of the whole group of tributes, at living off the land. If they can destroy the supply cache of the hunters, they will have a huge advantage. Collins obviously put a bit of thought into setting this story up, and this becomes more and more apparent as we progress through her trilogy.

Katniss, having discovered that the area around the hunter's 'supply depot' is literally littered with re-activated land mines, triggers them all by shooting open a bag of apples. This is a bit different from the movie, but the end result is the same, and all hell breaks loose. Without "Foxface"'s contribution, Katniss might have 'come a cropper' as they say, at this juncture. Foxface deserves her own novel! She sure deserved a name (as opposed to an insulting nickname) in this one.

Katniss makes her way back to link up with Rue, only to discover that Rue is trapped in a net. Before Katniss can free her, Rue is savagely struck in the stomach by a spear. This happens the other way around in the movie, with Rue being struck right after she's freed. Katniss instinctively shoots Rue's murderer. Again, this differs slightly from the movie. In the novel, she hits him him in the neck, in the movie, it's in the chest.

Rue dies, thereby conveniently removing the need for Katniss to kill her, which would have been horrible. See what a really solid job Collins has done here, piecing everything neatly together to make a truly satisfying, if gruesome whole? This novel is the work of a seasoned craftsperson, despite a few missteps. Katniss's behavior, respectfully treating Rue as she died, wins her the regard of the District 11 people, who sponsor a loaf of their own bread for her. She thanks them loudly when she figures out where it came from, thus beginning a bond which will serve her well in volume two. The novel also makes the point here of how the gifts become more and more expensive as the games progress - something which goes unmentioned in the movie.

In order to stir things up - as if Katniss hasn't already done so (more like shaken, not stirred!) with her 'funeral ritual' - the game master announces that (apparently for the first time) two tributes can jointly win if they're both from the same district. This means that if Katniss can find Peeta (Peeta, honestly?) then she can team-up with him, revive their 'love thing', and both of them can get home safely. It also means that two of the deadliest remaining tributes can also win, fostering a fierce new competition, which is no doubt what the game controllers desired.

Katniss is forced to wait out the night, but she finds Peeta the next day, half-buried in the mud by a creek, and sick and weak from the wound he sustained at Cato's hands (when Peeta urged Katniss to flee after the tracker-jacker incident, thereby saving her life). She finds Peeta after quite a search, using her smarts and logic as to where he would go, and she takes charge of him, washing the muddy disguise from him, treating his wounds with the remains of her burn salve, and with the plant leaves which Rue had shown her (to suck the poison from the stings). The leg wound is serious, and Katniss realizes that she will need some very expensive capital medicine to fix that for him, but the medication is extraordinarily expensive even under normal circumstances (not that we are given any idea why it's so expensive!). This late in the game, she doubts that anyone could afford to sponsor such a gift.

I have to say a quick word here about capital technology. If they're so very advanced, and they clearly are, then why are they so dependent upon the districts for supplies? And if they're not so dependent, then why do they even bother with the districts? Why not simply ignore them and leave them to fester and rot on their own? I know that Collins based this on ancient Rome, and the decadence and brutality is merely a consequence of that choice, but it really doesn't make a lot of sense if you analyze it. This is why we have to choose not to analyze it too closely if we want to sit back and enjoy it! So while this doesn't affect so very much in volume one of this trilogy, this overwhelming technological advantage becomes increasingly untenable in volumes two and three (particularly in three), given that the capital was able to smash District 12 into a pulp so easily. It begs an explanation as to how the other districts even had a chance, much less find themselves in a position to be putting up such a strong showing of resistance.

Anyway, Haymitch sends Katniss and Peeta some broth (there's no comment along the lines of "Call that a kiss?" to which we were most amusingly treated in the movie). Peeta improves a bit, but he has blood-poisoning. In another bit of inspired writing, Collins tweaks the intrigue yet again. The game controller seizes this opportunity to corral all of the remaining contestants in a confined area again by announcing that there will be a free gift of something each of the tributes needs, but this isn’t strictly true, since there are six people remaining in the arena, and only four gifts - one for each of the Districts represented by those remaining six tributes. Peeta forbids her to go, vowing that he will follow her if she does, but Katniss receives a gift of a knock-out potion from Haymitch, and tricks Peeta into drinking it, so he cannot stop her.

Katniss arrives early and secretes herself in the same hide which Rue had used to spy on the Cornucopia while the tributes were all recovering from their stings. She's not the first there, however, as she discovers when she sees the fox-faced girl (arguably the smartest contestant there) launch herself out of the Cornucopia, where she had been hiding, grab her gift, and hare off safely into the forest. As she gets away successfully, Katniss is annoyed that she didn’t think of that scheme herself, but she also suddenly realizes that she has to go get her gift now, or someone else will take it and she'll be stuck chasing them for it. She reasons that if she takes only her gift and runs, it’s unlikely anyone else will come after her because they will need to get their gift, and with her speed, she believes she can escape, but her logic is flawed. Since there are six contestants and only four gifts, the other district pair can split-up, one chasing her while the other grabs their gift.

As she hauls up her little backpack with the medicine for Peeta in it, she's slammed by Clove, Cato's District partner. Clove laughs as she describes how "they" killed Rue and now Katniss will die, too. Katniss spits blood in her face, but she's pinned helplessly. As Clove is about to cut off Katniss's lips - darkly remarking on her kissing Peeta (Peeta, really?) - Thresh, Rue's District partner, slams into Clove and hammers her in the head in revenge for Rue's death. Clove dies. My question here is how did Clove know that Peeta and Katniss kissed? None in the arena is party to the TV transmissions which everyone outside the arena sees. Again a small weakness in the story, but one which we can let go this time.

Katniss fears that Thresh will kill her next, and she asks only that it be quick, but he tells Katniss that for Rue's sake, he will let her go this one time, then they're even. This seems highly unlikely to me given his personality. He cannot have had any idea what Katniss did for Rue, and he knows that Rue is dead, yet he behaves as though he not only knows exactly what she did, but also as though he's sentimental about it! This was weak (but dramatic!).

So Katniss flees, and later administers the hypo shot to Peeta, who rapidly recovers. The two of them continue to play up to the 'lovers' angle, hoping for more gifts and favorable opinions, but they both seem to realize that it’s not all play; some of their interaction at least, is real. This is followed by a two-day thunderstorm. What’s the point of the rain if it prevents tributes from getting together? I didn’t really understand this bit at all, because it stops the action dead from the perspective of the viewers and controllers (and the reader!). You can argue that this provides time for the controllers to 'grow' the 'muttations' for the finale, but that's not sufficient time to grow a full-sized animal, and if they can generate one that quickly, then they didn’t need the two days anyway. This also goes back to the advanced technology argument I was making above. It does give Peeta (Peeta, really?!) and Katniss a moment together, but that was a bit flat for me. One thing which does happen during the two-day blow is Thresh's death, presumably at the hands of Cato. And then there were four.

Finally we reach the finale! Katniss and Peeta, very refreshed (but with Peeta still weak from his wound) head out to hunt, and this is where "Foxface" meets her demise. She steals berries from their supply, not realizing that Peeta had collected them in ignorance of their lethality. She'd assumed that if Katniss was collecting them, they must be good, and she died for it. Katniss assigns this death to Peeta! This possession of the poisoned berries is important for the ending because they hang onto them, thinking they might induce Cato to poison himself just as "Foxface" did. This is why this section was written, and why Foxface wasn't killed by Cato as Thresh was, "off camera" so to speak. The District Twelve representatives now realize that it’s just them and Cato at the same time as they grasp that they have to confront him. He isn't going to come to them and risk being picked-off at long-range by one of Katniss's arrows. He's going to wait to draw them out, until they step into the open, and then he'll rely on his superior strength to kill them.

The twist here is that, unlike in the movie, it’s not Katniss who's chased by the "muttations", but Cato. She and Peeta are standing around out in the open, near the Cornucopia when Cato hurtles by and scales the structure. He's been chased at length by the mutts (which begs the question as to where he was), and he's the perfect victim at this point, lying helpless on top of the Cornucopia, retching over the side from his exertions, but Katniss fails to kill him, and Peeta fails likewise. Instead, she wastes arrows defending all three of them from the mutts! She didn't even have to kill him directly: she could have simply heaved him over the side! But no. Unlike the movie, this finale is drawn-out a bit too much. Cato recovers and tries to strangle Peeta, but Katniss shoots his hand, and Cato ends up falling over the side. Again, unlike the movie, this is way too drawn out. Cato is wearing some sort of chain mail, and the mutts can't finish him off. This is another weak spot since Cato's head isn't covered: why are the mutts not biting his head off?

We all know how this ends and how it sets the stage for he epic battle between President Snow and resident Katniss in the next two volumes. The boundaries have already been drawn for the next arena - the arena of real life where Katniss and Peeta have defied the game makers and President Snow is pissed off with her, her especially, and determined to destroy her one way or another. This novel is really great entertainment! I rate it worthy!

Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

Title: Scarlett Fever
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: Point
Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not sure quite how to share this with you so I'll just come right out and say it: I'm in Love with Maureen Johnson. It just happened. I didn't plan it. It crept up on me. I read both her 'Scarlett' novels back to back and they stunned me into it. Even when I was thinking "I don't like this a bit", I couldn't shed myself of my overpowering loyalty to her cause. I love these two novels and you should read them right now. I'll be checking on you to make sure that you do.

Now about these new covers.... Gone is the goofy-looking girl on the cover of book one. I guess when the publisher discovered that Johnson had more than one volume in her on this character, they decided to start a series theme cover. Sucks to be them. The original cover of volume one had much more character. Literally! Fortunately the actual novel starts out by being every bit as entertaining as the other one was. Shame it's so let down by the trashy cover. This is one very good reason why I normally treat covers as utterly irrelevant.

In this novel, the summer is winding down, the hotel production of Hamlet is over, the hotel is still largely empty (how do they manage, financially, to keep a five-storey hotel running with no guests?!), and Scarlett is still an appendage of Amy. The good news is that lame YA trope Eric is out of the picture, but the sad news is that he's far from out of Scarlett's mind.

This part I didn't really get. I get that a fifteen-year-old girl who has never had a boyfriend might fall for someone she sees as exotic and new, but I honestly felt her attachment to him in volume one was a betrayal of who Scarlett was supposed to be. In this volume it seems to me to be a further betrayal of who she is that she's so helplessly and hopelessly pining for him when their relationship had nothing going for it, and especially given that it was so short term and so sparsely furnished, and even more especially given that he betrayed her. If they'd been dating and "in love" for a couple of years, then I would have expected even Scarlett to behave the way she does in this novel, but when we're told who she is and what kind of character she is, and she behaves this way after such a reed-thin relationship, it takes a bit more believing than I have available to offer! That was one of those 'I don't like this a bit' bits I mentioned in the overture.

In other news, Scarlett's friends, we're told, have returned from their exciting and exotic summers, but we get only the briefest of glances at them. This seems to be a further false note in this novel, especially given how much we've had it blasted into us that they are so close and such good friends of Scarlett's. That was another of those 'I don't like this a bit' bits previously mentioned.

Having got the bitching and whining out of the way, let's look at what Johnson offers that's new. Here, there's plenty of fresh produce to enjoy on her stall. Amy Amberson has moved out of the hotel and found an apartment. She's opened her own acting agency, and taken on Spencer of course, as her first client. Now she's hunting down more, and one prospect, named Chelsea, who conveniently happens to be Scarlett's age, is in her sights. It's because of this new client that Scarlett ends up meeting Max, Chelsea's older bother, who is something of a social misfit. It seems obvious that something is going to blossom there, but Max is just far enough divorced from trope that he's actually an interesting and welcome character.

After the first third of the novel, Scarlett returns to school, so there was a chance to see that aspect of her character, which I was really looking forward to. Frankly, the hotel scenario was becoming decidedly claustrophobic! So Lola comes out with a huge surprise for the family. Good for her! Marlene is a delight. Spencer is charming and brings more surprises. But the real joy of this novel (apart from the perfect ending), is Scarlett's relationship with Max, and her comments. She's smart, funny, brilliant, inventive, not shy of working, and really moves this novel all over the place. I loved it, even the bits I didn't like, and as I said, the ending left me wanting a volume three, so anyone who can, pester Johnson mercilessly so that she has no choice but to turn this dilogy into a trilogy - or maybe she has?

Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson

Title: Suite Scarlett
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: Point
Rating: WORTHY!

This novel is adorable, which likely as not means I'll end up hating it by the last page, but until then, I can dream! Suite Scarlett was not only not on my radar, it wasn't even in my universe until happenstance led me to it sitting innocently upon a shelf at the library. On a point of order, I think it’s important to clarify that I wasn't sitting on a shelf at the library, and if I were, I can guarantee you that it would certainly not be with any pretense of innocence. I'm not that good of an actor! (Is this a sly comment on the content of this novel or what?). No, it was the book which sat upon the shelf, as books are wont to do, whether they want to or not; it won’t make a difference….

Ebooks have an amazing number of advantages over traditional format books, but browsing along the shelf until you happen upon a book which jumps out at you for whatever reason, is something you'll never be able to do with an ebook. Nor will you ever be able to buy an ebook at a used book store (unless some entrepreneur out there figures out a method, in which case, said entrepreneur will undoubtedly become a millionaire!). The less well-off amongst us view the ominous oncoming demise of cut-price hard-backs with a depressing degree of barely-disguised panic.

Sooooo, the Martin family live in the hotel which they own - an hotel which at one time was the place to stay, but which is now long past its best: slightly shabby and falling into obsolescence. The family has had to slowly let all of their staff go, which means the young children are press-ganged into servitude in their place. Thus was born the tradition which is child labor disguised as a birthday present, whereby on their fifteenth birthday, each Martin child is 'given' a room of which they must, from that point on, take charge. They have to clean and maintain it and take personal charge of any guest who might stay there. From that perspective alone, it's fortunate that guests are rare.

Spencer is the oldest child and the only boy. He wants to be an actor. His parents want him to go to culinary school so he can sell his life down the river in their service as the hotel cook rather than living it for himself. Lola is the next in line in age, and she seems to have no ties to the hotel. She recently started seriously dating Chip, a kid who isn't bad per se, but in the smarts department, he's a voting block short of a takeover and he's supposed to eventually assume the helm of his father's business empire! Lola seems to be spoiled rotten and I had little respect for her to begin with; however, this was tempered by the fact that she loves her siblings, particularly the youngest girl in the family. OTOH, Lola is seriously trying to get her own life on the rails, and I can’t blame her for that! Her story does turn around in this novel, and it was a real heart-warmer to see how it unfolded. Lola is arguably more intriguing than the title character, but I often fall into that trap!

The youngest child is Marlene, also spoiled rotten and a brat. She has the excuse of being a cancer survivor and gets to do all kinds of things with a group of fellow survivors called 'Powerkids' which, when you look at it, is really just another way of saying that if you're a kid and you don’t have cancer, you’re not going to get a decent shake, and you should probably go screw yourself. I don’t really see how a cancer survivor (or any other type of survivor, for that matter), is a child any more deserving of love and attention than is, for example, a street survivor, but we rarely hear of telethons for those children, do we? I wonder why?

Scarlett is fifteen and the main character in this story which mercifully isn't told from the first person PoV. She's very retiring and easily induced to do things which she might rail against doing were she more assertive. Thus she ends up having to stand in for Lola in taking a very resentful Marlene to a Powerkids event (a morning TV cooking show). She later finds herself with a guest in the room she just inherited with her birthday: the lavishly titled 'Empire Suite' which is a bit too down-at-the-heel to quite merit the name, but the engaging Amy ("Mrs Amberson"), a retired actress, doesn’t seem to mind, and moreover seems to really take to Scarlett almost to the point of adopting her. And this is only the start of the magnificent Amberson's calculated intrusion into the lives of the Martin family. She hands Scarlett five hundred dollars without even asking for a receipt, and tells her to hang onto it, because Scarlett will be required to run errands and will need the money. To her credit, Scarlett handles this maturely and doesn't abuse the 'contract'. Amy deserves her own novel, as does Lola, and probably Spencer, too.

The first thing I didn’t like about his novel was when Eric came into the picture. He's an acting acquaintance of Spencer's and is such a trope YA male that it almost made me vomit to read how "muscular" he is and well well his T-shirts fit him. Here's a description of his eyes: "...misty shifting blue marbled with gray, like smoke rising through an early morning sky." Seriously? Why is it that we’re teaching young women than anything less than a Greek god is totally unacceptable as a partner? Why is it that we’re teaching young girls to look no further than the shallow and the physical?

As if that's not bad enough, this is an unfair and unwarranted assault on young men, to boot (with the emphasis on boot and groin). It’s a detestable trend that needs to stop. Having registered my protest, I'm going to let that slide for the sake of reading the rest of the story which, apart from the disgusting trope, really is well written and very entertaining. However, if Johnson insists on endless repetitions of how perfect Eric is in every way, I will have to start calling him Eric Poppins and puke on the pages of this novel to permanently imprint both the stain and the smell. Try doing that with an ebook...!

So anyway, let's pretend I never said that. Ahem! Scarlett spends more and more time with Amy and almost no time with Eric, so that's all right then isn't it? Amy almost gets her arrested for shoplifting when she deposits three cans of tuna into Scarlett's bag without her noticing, but Amy talks their way out of it and thinks it was great fun as they ride home. Scarlett isn't so sure and demands to be let out of the cab before they get back to the hotel, so she can walk and do some thinking. The next thing Scarlett knows, Amy wants the two of them to write Amberson's biography! Of course, this is just a flash in the pan, because Amy next comes up with an idea which engrosses her far more effectively than a biography could ever hope to do, and this is where the novel gets really interesting. I'm not kidding. It takes off and flies at this point and it's quite stunning to see. In order not to spoil this any more, I shall refrain from divulging further details. Mwahh-ha-ha!

In conclusion, this book is excellent! It's very entertaining, extraordinarily well-written, populated with interesting and diverse characters who behave very much like real people. I recommend it and I'm immediately proceeding on to volume two in this series, or duet, or trilogy or whatever it is! You know there is no equivalent of 'trilogy' for two novels? The Greek word for two is dio, but it's pronounced thee-oh, so to use that would create 'theology', which would be really confusing. I'm going to coin dilogy, so there!

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Title: The Girl Who Played With Fire
Author: Stieg Larsson
Publisher: Books On Tape
Rating: WORTHY!

For a review of the Swedish movie based on this novel, Flickan som lekte med elden, see here

Review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

TGWPWF begins with Lisbeth on an extended vacation in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, Blomkvist at home wondering what the heck happened to her, since she left without a word and refuses to have anything to do with him, and Bjurman, technically her legal guardian, plotting her demise! Staying in Grenada, Lisbeth seduces a teen-aged boy who lives in a shack on the beach, and in between sessions of reading a massive tome on the history of mathematics, which is fascinating to her, ponders what to do, if anything, about an abusive doctor who is staying in her hotel, accompanied by his abused wife. Meanwhile there's a hurricane on the way. How great a start to a novel is that?!

This epic premise is a bit let-down by the execution, unfortunately! The hurricane (if that's what it was) comes and goes. Lisbeth rescues another woman from abuse in the middle of it: the doctor's wife. The doctor is found dead, blown 600 yards down the beach. We follow her back to Stockholm where she goes shopping for an apartment and furniture. This is the most mind-numbingly tedious episode in the entire trilogy so far. It was like reading Charlaine Harris - that's how god-awfully bad it was. I have no idea what Larsson was thinking of when he wrote this section. And actually, I don't really think I want to know!

In counterpoint, we do see Bjurman get really steamed (in a bad way!) about Lisbeth and he starts plotting how he can murder her. He begins by digging into her affairs because he can, being her guardian, and he starts to get a faint whiff of the fire she started - on her dad who was abusing her mother! We also learn that Lisbeth has a twin sister. Two Salanders are quite obviously better than one. Evidently they were separated from their mother when she proved incompetent to take care of them, but they were also separated from each other. This kinda made up for the Ikea shopping list!

We also learn of the affair between Harriet Vanger and Mikael Blomkvist (as does Erica!), but this goes nowhere, and Vanger disappears from the novel at that point, never to reappear. Lisbeth rekindles her relationship with lesbian lover Mimmi, and offers Mimmi her empty apartment to move into, since she has now moved herself considerably upscale. This happens right after Bjurman, in complete ignorance of Lisbeth's newly-won billionaire status and consequent change of address, has indirectly hired a huge blond German who is built like a brick outhouse and can feel no pain (Larsson evidently ripped this off from The World Is Not Enough. The German is supposed to kidnap Lisbeth from the very address Mimmi just moved into! Lisbeth's sixth sense is onto Bjurman even though she doesn't know exactly what he's doing. Oh, and Mimmi studies martial arts, so while this promised to be explosive, it actually wasn't quite written that way, but this definitely helps to clear out the dead wood from the wooden tour of the Ikea store with which Larsson earlier bored (or should it be board?!) us....

The novel picks up pace even more when the person tasked by Nils Bjurman to deal with Lisbeth Salander kills Bjurman and two friends of Mikael's who are working on exposing the Swedish sex-trade. Why Larsson didn't start his novel here is a really interesting question, because this is where the intrigue and the real story begins. Larsson leads us on an intricate and engrossing tour through the life of Lisbeth Salander. It's as disturbing as it is endearing, and as angering as it is heartening. If you started reading this novel at Chapter 7 you really wouldn't miss anything of significance or relevance. If a new author had written this - without having had the success of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor) under their belt, an editor would doubtlessly have told the author to seriously edit this novel. It just goes to show how indulged a successful author is, whereas a new author is abused cruelly on this score. All hail self-publishing!

Salander is now hosed with three murders (her prints are on the murder weapon), and a nationwide police hunt for her begins. But the findings make no sense at all to the police. No matter how they try to piece this jigsaw together, there are problems: the pieces seem to fit, but when you come right down to it, something is noticeably off. The pieces don't fit properly. Something is missing.

Meanwhile Lisbeth has dropped from sight, and she begins her own investigation, as does Blomkvist, as does Armansky! All the time, the puzzle pieces fall into place, one-by-one, but not always where you expect them to appear, and the picture which is emerging is one of unexpected weirdness. In the end, Lisbeth is shot in the head and buried. And that's all you're going to get from me! Ain't I evil?

It's hard to believe that I've read - or at least started on - ten novels since I first started listening to this on audio disk, but finally I finished it in paperback form this morning, and once again we have a worthy read. Yes, it got really boring during that one spell, but it picked up wonderfully after that, especially in the last hundred or so pages. Highly recommended (just skip over the Ikea obsession portion!).

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl By David Barnett

Title: Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl
Author: David Barnett
Publisher: Tor
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!

Erratum in galley ebook
P23 "glitterving" should be "glittering"

The male protagonist of this steam-punk novel is Gideon Smith, a 24-year-old who lives with his father in a small fishing village near Whitby, Yorkshire. Both of my parents hailed from Yorkshire, and I've actually been to Whitby, a seaside town which is featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula, so it’s no surprise that Barnett has Gideon meet Bram Stoker there.

I have to say up front that I'm not a fan of Victorian dramas which seem obligated to drag historical people unnecessarily into the fiction. I find that boring and uninventive, and all-too-often patronizing of, and insulting to the persons so press-ganged. In fact, I made the mistake of reading the prologue to this novel and I found that even more boring and uninventive since it parades out the discredited story that Eddy, the son of Queen Victoria's son Edward (the Edward who gave his name to the Edwardian period of English history) was somehow entangled with the Jack the Ripper murders. This myth was the basis of the Johnny Depp movie From Hell and is patent nonsense. Having said that, Barnett has added a twist to this one which makes his "crime" forgivable, in my book at least!

So, it was not an auspicious start to this novel, but I have to say that Barnett started to win me over with chapter one, where Gideon enters the picture. His father is a struggling trawler captain, and Gideon often helps him on his fishing trips, but the one morning when his father decides to let Gideon sleep in, is the day that the entire crew of the trawler disappears without explanation, and Gideon is left alone in the world, his mother and two brothers having already died some time before.

Well there is an explanation, of course, but that's for you to read, and at that point in the story it was more of a mystery than an explanation (but it clarifies nicely as the novel progresses)! The local fishing community just accepts these disappearances as the sea's dividend for allowing humans to sample its bounty. Gideon is a big fan of Captain Lucian Trigger, a story-book hero who, if not completely fictional, is, I guessed, not remotely like his fictional portrayal. Gideon doesn't quite grasp this, and so he endeavors to contact the man in hopes that he can help with another local mystery that has hold of Gideon's imagination.

It’s in process of pursuing this plan that he encounters Bram Stoker, right before a Russian sailboat runs aground with the all the crew save one, missing. The captain is discovered lashed to the wheel and drained of blood, and a large black dog runs ashore and disappears. The only cargo on the ship is three coffins with soil from Transylvania. Anyone who has read Stoker's Dracula will know where that's headed (but don't be too confident: Barnett has added a twist!). The original Dracula novel is excellently reproduced on film in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 epic, a movie I highly recommend.

Back to this novel! I do like that Barnett has divorced himself from trope with Gideon. He doesn’t have Gideon go haring off into the heart of the mystery like an idiot. He portrays Gideon as a thoughtful, courageous, and smart young man who realizes that he's going to need help to figure out if smugglers might be connected to his father's disappearance and are operating near his village, but when he talks to a friend of his father's, and also to the village constable, he's dismissed and not taken at all seriously. That's when he resorts to calling Captain Trigger and ends up in the company of Bram Stoker. Stoker learned of vampires from his fellow Irish friend Sheridan le Fanu, but he cannot get Gideon interested. Instead, Gideon resolves to set off for London to personally seek Captain Trigger's assistance. That's when he meets the mechanical girl called Maria who. I guessed. is actually modeled after a real person.

But she isn’t just any old clockwork toy. Nope. She has a body made to look as realistic as possible, and although she's clockwork inside her body, inside her head is a different story. Her creator is Hermann Einstein (which coincidentally happens to be the name of Albert Einstein's father...), but he's gone missing. He fitted her empty head with something that he discovered in a most unlikely location. Her head is no longer empty. Far from it.

Gideon learns how abused Maria is by her keeper, a grungy old man with disgusting tastes, who is in charge of the house in Einstein's absence. Gideon invites her to travel to London with him to find her maker, and she agrees, so they take some spare cash which Maria has access to, and borrow another invention of Einstein's: a motorized bike. This prepared, they set off again for London town, home of Queen Victoria.

Meanwhile Bram is poking around Whitby in pursuit of a vampire, and he discovers one of the very last people he might have expected to find - and she is the very antithesis of what he expected a vampire to be! Little does he know that his investigations will bring him right back into contact with Gideon.

And that's all the detail you get for this one! The story continues apace, and continues to be engrossing, as Gideon and his growing ensemble of acquired friends begin pursing seemingly disparate threads that I felt, even before I knew one way or the other, would all lead back to the same source. There are airships (one piloted by a very adventurous woman), there is a trip to a ancient and exotic location where trouble is stirring big time, there's air piracy, there's a threat to the empire over which the sun never sets, and there are truly evil creatures (and that's just those working for the government!). All the threads lead to a fine yarn, and a taut fabric, and though I was less than thrilled with the ending (the novel is evidently the start of a series), the quality of the writing and the plotting merits this story as a worthy read. I recommend it.