Project Superhero by E Paul Zehr

Title: Project Superhero
Author: E Paul Zehr
Publisher: Entertainment Culture Writing
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Kris Pearn

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

How can you not love a novel which has the good taste to mention Emma Peel, the fictional but powerful female character in the now rather antique British TV series The Avengers (which has nothing to do with the Marvel comic book characters). The movie taken from the TV show really did a disservice to Diana Rigg's outstanding character. I love Uma Thurman, especially in Kill Bill, but she failed to capture the quintessential Emma Peel, I'm sorry to say.

Reading this was an odd experience. I don't know what it was about the design but it took literally thirty seconds to move to the next page in Adobe Reader. At first I thought that this was because the pages were actually images rather than print (graphic novel ebooks tend to take a few seconds to turn the page, but not thirty!). It turned out that they're evidently not, since it's possible to do a text search. After I read this novel, I read a non-fiction ebook which was extensively populated with color images, and this book turned pages instantly, so clearly there's something seriously adrift with the design of this particular novel.

I solved the page-turning issue by getting into the habit of clicking for the next page as soon as the new page appeared. In that way, by the time (give or take a bit!) I'd finished reading the current page, it flipped to the next one with little or no delay, but it was really annoying. Chalk this one up to the 'print books are better' side of the comparison chart!

What was very irritating was that if the page flipped too early and I'd caught something in the last paragraph which attracted my attention, I couldn't simply flip the page back and check it out, then move on. It was an exercise in frustration, involving several minutes just to turn the page back and forth. So I skipped a lot of things I would have had no problem taking care of in a more user-friendly environment. Yes, it was really annoying, but fortunately the novel itself overcame this and really won me over.

The text is sparsely-printed on each page, so despite the 250-some pages, this novel is a very fast read. Apart from the wait for the page to turn, that is. Turning 250 pages at thirty seconds per turn is actually a straight two hours doing nothing but turn pages! Eek!

The novel also seemed fast in the way in which it was written - like the story was being told by a breathless and excited teen, which didn't thrill me, but which may appeal to the right age group. It's written in diary form, which also didn't charm me because it's such an artificial medium. No one actually writes a diary in the way a diary is written when it's written as a novel; however it wasn't bad overall, except that I did find myself wondering why, given that she was so up for being a journalist, the girl hadn't started keeping a journal long before this.

The diary's author is fourteen-year-old Jesse (which can also be a guy's name, so this seemed strange to me in a female-empowerment novel!), who is excited at school one day when her teacher announces that there will be a super hero project. Each student is to choose a super hero and discuss and debate their chosen subject in a series of presentations in the form of a knock-out competition, but with no literal knock-outs! This is why she starts the diary, in an effort to marshal her thoughts on her chosen subject, which is Batgirl.

Personally I think Spider-Woman could take Batgirl, but just in conjuring up those names, it occurs to me that one thing Jesse didn't explore in all her research was why it's Superman but Supergirl, why it's Batman, but Batgirl. What's with this diminution of women here? Male super heroes can be men, but female super heroes have to be girls?! I wish that Jesse had wondered why we've had so very many movies from comics which feature superhero men, but virtually none which feature superhero women.

Off topic here, but it occurs to me that DC's way out of their largely disastrous efforts to take their comics into the movies is to focus on their female heroes (which even Marvel, for all its success, has sadly failed to do) and start bringing those to the big screen; then I could get with Batgirl (begrudgingly)!

Since Jesse is a comic-book fan, she's thrilled about this school project, as is her best friend Audrey, also a comic book fan, and her other friend, Cade. The teacher wants to broaden their idea of a hero, too, so she invites a retired NYPD officer to talk about his experiences on 9/11. This part, I have to say, dragged a bit, and I don't really know why. Perhaps it was because a 14-year-old's excited voice is hardly the best one to deliver the gravity, tragedy, and import which that day represents.

From there, the novel enters refreshing and interesting territory. The young superhero researcher starts writing to various lesser-known, but no-less-accomplished celebrities (see list below) asking them about their superhero favorites and their experiences in their chosen activities. These are real people who really responded as though they had been asked these questions by a young girl. Kudos to all of them. There's also some life, health, and exercise advice imparted, too, which is a really sneaky way to do it, but one which hopefully will leave a lasting impression on young readers.

So here are the celebrities:
Mike Bruen NYPD (retired)
Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble)
Clara Hughes (Canadian Winter and Summer Olympic medalist)
Brian Miller (writer Batgirl and Smallville)
Christie Nicholson (contributing editor, Scientific American)

Yuriko Romer (film-maker Be strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful))
Nicole Stott (Engineer and US Astronaut)
Jessica Watson (sailed solo around the world at the age of 16)
Hayley Wickenheiser (ice-hockey player and Olympic gold medalist)

That's an impressive selection, although it does seem to be rather biased towards the physical and hardly at all towards the cerebral (per se), or to the engineering or scientific fields. I would have liked the idea of being a hero to include a broader base, but I do think this novel did a great job of bringing a lot of lesser known but worth-knowing people to the fore.

So, overall, this novel is a very worthy read despite some minor quibbles I had. I recommend it for girls and boys, women and men!

Bird & Squirrel On Ice by James Burks

Title: Bird & Squirrel On Ice
Author: James Burks
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by James Burks

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

Bird and Squirrel are out on a jaunt one day when they fly into a mountain and land in front of a penguin who quickly informs bird that since he (or she) fell out of the sky and can fly, then according to prophecy, Bird is The Chosen One who will defeat the great whale and save the penguin village from the whale's bullying and parasitical hold over them. Bird steps up!

This seems rather like the plot from A Bug's Life, but that and and the colorful and lively color illustrations will undoubtedly draw children in. I have to say that while Bird very bravely (if arrogantly) does bring the 'A' game, Squirrel is a chronic whiner. OTOH, Squirrel certainly appears to have a more realistic grasp of things than does Bird, who doesn't seem to get that there's an unseen agenda in play here! Fortunately, their young penguin friend Sakari (cool name!) proves to be a really strong female character, and she takes charge. Kudos for that.

This was an amazing story. It's full of action, adventure, friendship, and bravery, and in the end, the bully is defeated not through finding or becoming a bigger bully, but through smarts and cool thinking. I recommend this novel.

Pride and Prejudice (manga) by Jane Austen

Rating: WORTHY!

Edited by Stacy King
Illustrated by Po Tse

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

erratum:
p232 "...so what's the different?" should be "...so what's the difference?"
p369 'devaintArt' should be 'DeviantArt'

Since I adore Pride and Prejudice, this is really just a review of this manga presentation of it, not of the novel itself (which I also reviewed on this blog), and as far as that went, it went very far.

I confess that I was rather surprised that I got this opportunity to review another volume from UDON Entertainment after I didn't like their classic manga Les Misérables earlier this month, but I'm glad they took a chance on me again so I can offer the other side of the coin in this case. Hopefully this will serve as a thank you! And kudos to UDON!

Perhaps this is my shameless bias showing through, but I loved this one from the start (or the end - yes, I still have issues with reading backwards in an English language graphic novel!). The text was very well written, expertly précis'd down from Austen's original, but not losing an iota of meaning or import. Stacy King did a magnificent job with that, and Po Tse was every bit her equal in conveying the images to compliment and augment the text.

The novel had a light, airy feel to it, yet it didn't fail to tell the story with power and gravity (and some laughs). I particularly enjoyed the scene where Elizabeth refuses Darcy's proposal.

Of course, in my terribly biased book, nothing can supersede the performances of Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth in the BBC's 1995 TV series, but this manga I would rank second only to that - it's that good.

Bird Cat Dog by Lee Nordling

Title: Bird Cat Dog
Author: Lee Nordling
Publisher: Lerner
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Meritxell Bosch

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

This is part of the Three Story series, and it delighted me with the play on words and the organization as a three-tiered story, each of which is told in parallel. The story is related both vertically, and horizontally and simultaneously, so you can either read the entire story of one character by reading each page, but only across the top, middle, or bottom, or you can read it down each page in the more conventional fashion and follow all three stories as they unfold. Since each tale is so intimately connected with the other two, I chose to follow the story conventionally.

I think kids will love this. I know I would have been fascinated by it at that age. Okay, I admit, I still am enamored of the way it's told. The artwork is excellent - simple enough to make the right point, yet artfully drawn and colored nonetheless, and it's full of motion and action. In some ways it reminds me of the old film strips I was very much engaged by as a young kid.

The bird gets the strip across the top of the page, the cat gets the middle, and the dog the bottom, which I guess makes it the underdog.... I don't know if this was organized alphabetically, or by relative agility or what, but that's how it is! The bird is in the catbird seat as the main protagonist, getting loose and letting loose, and out the window it flies into the yard, then to the nearby woods, stirring things up and antagonizing the cat which in turn brings in the dog. Each of these three has not only to contend with each other, but with other animals in the neighborhood, such as another cat, another dog, a predatory bird and a squirrel.

Having said that, there's no 'Tom and Jerry' violence here, just playing and chasing, the way kids themselves love to do. The whole thing quickly dissolves into a rather slapstick chase in and out of everywhere, reminiscent of the old silent movie chases, and of the Marx Brothers. And just like with Harpo Marx, there isn't a word spoken (well animals don't speak, y'know?!). It's all done in images and I loved it. Your kids will too.

Here's an afterthought. One thing which this novel puts out there as a concept is that everyone is the hero of their own story, and for children I think this is a good and self-empowering concept, but as an older skeptic and even a cynic, I have to say that this reminds me rather of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog wherein Captain Hammer sings "Everyone's a hero in their own way". As an adult I’d buy this better if it maintained that everyone was the hero, or the anti-hero, or the villain of their own story, or more generically: if everyone was merely the subject of their own story! Just a thought!

Money Hungry by Sharon G Flake

Title: Money Hungry
Author: Sharon G Flake
Publisher: Disney
Rating: WARTY!

This book cover has the Coretta Scott King Award logo on the cover even though this novel never won any such an award (and deservedly not). Flake's 1999 novel The Skin I'm In won that award and it looks like four years on from that she's still riding it. Either that or Big Publishing™ is. I've enjoyed and favorably-rated two of Sharon Flake's novels, the first just mentioned, and the other being Pinned, but this particular one turned me right off.

Money Hungry is a novella (less than 40,000 words, more than 17,500). I estimated very roughly that it was about 30,000 words - printed in a large font to make the book look fatter (way to go Big Publishing™!). It consists of absolutely nothing but girls being bitchy to one another, and of course, Raspberry Hill's obsession and infatuation with money. Her love is understandable in some ways. She comes from the projects and prior to that from the streets, but she's pretty clueless and doesn't seem capable of overcoming her cluelessness, so she's not endearing in the least bit.

She tried to make money by buying cheap pencils in lots and then selling them for 25 cents each. She tried selling old Valentine's candy, but it just made people ill. Never once did she concern herself about their illness, only about how it was cutting into her bottom line when she has to make refunds. Raspberry Hill isn't at all a nice person. Eventually she hits on cleaning people's houses with a couple of friends to make money, but this doesn't work out well due to aforesaid bitchiness.

Neither is her mother a nice person. One day she quite literally tosses a hundred dollars or more of Raspberry's money out of the window because she's convinced that Raspberry stole it, and she's too dumb and self-obsessed to listen to her own daughter. Her mother has a well-off doctor who is in love with her and with whom she enjoys spending time, but she will not marry him, and thereby condemns herself and her young daughter to these horrible living circumstances.

I grew up in impoverished circumstances. It wasn't as bad as Raspberry's by any means, but even so I found nothing to identify with her, nothing to like, nothing to admire, nothing to hope for. Not one of the characters was interesting or intriguing. The entire novel turned out to be a boring exercise in tedium which gives nothing in return for the reading of it. Afterwards, I felt like one of Raspberry's customers, who had bought that tainted candy.

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

Title: Weetzie Bat
Author: Francesca Lia Block
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

This is a novelette (a novel is typically considered to be 40,000 words or more, a novella runs from 17,500 to 40,000 words, a novelette 7,500 to 17,500, and a short story is under 7,500 words according to wikipedia) set in a parallel world version of Los Angeles which is here sometimes idealized as Shangri-LA (as opposed to Hell-A, its alter-ego!). It revolves around Weetzie Bat who is apparently very young but who has the lifestyle of an older teenager with the addition of substance abuse and some very inadvisable sex thrown in.

Weetzie's dad, Charlie Bat, and her mom, Brandy-Lynn, are still in the picture, but separated. Her dad lives in New York, because he despises the shallow movies of LA and wants to write serious plays in NYC. Her mom is still in LA, a retired actress, who plays very little part in Weetzie's life.

Weetzie's best friend is Dirk, who is gay. His grandmother Fifi gives Weetzie an old lamp, which contains a genie as it happens. Weetzie doesn't realize this until she rubs the lamp one day and said genie appears, ready to grant his last set of three wishes before he heads off into retirement. When she fails to get world peace and an infinite number of wishes, neither of which he's allowed to give, Weetzie wishes for true love for herself and for Dirk, and also a for a lovely house for them all to live in. She gets all of this, but these wishes are not granted without some issues attached.

The house comes by way of the aged and sick Fifi dying and leaving her house to them. Dirk soon encounters a surfer dude who is gay and is as attracted to Dirk as the letter is to Duck (which curiously is the surfer dude's name - although amusingly, the surfer dude's description sounds almost exactly like Weetzie's, except for their gender!)

Weetzie's wish (for a boyfriend whom she terms "My Secret Agent Lover Man" aka Max) takes a little longer to materialize, and comes in the form of a guy who is a movie producer. He continues to make movies starring Weetzie and her friends, but her wish to have children seems to be thwarted by My Secret Agent Lover Man, because he doesn't want children, so Weetzie and the boys, Dirk and Duck, cook-up a scheme to all sleep together and no one will know whose child it is, but it will be all of theirs

They end-up with a beautiful girl whom they name Cherokee, and My Secret Agent Lover Man leaves Weetzie in a fit of jealousy over her means of getting this child, but eventually returns to visit her in the hospital after the delivery (no it isn't via stork!). When all is forgiven they return home together, but shortly afterwards, a Lanka Witch (a really tall, slim woman) named Vixanne, who is part of the Jayne Mansfield appreciation society (which is merely a cover for a witch coven) shows-up right around the time My Secret Agent Lover Man gets sick. It turns out that he had an affair with the Lanka Witch, who delivers her own child - right to their doorstep, thereby completing their family.

This new addition is named Lily, but ends-up being referred to as Witch Baby. By now their family has grown rather large, with their two dogs, Slinkster Dog, and his bitch Go-Go Girl, and their pups Pee Wee, Wee Wee, Teenie Wee, Tiki Tee, and Tee Pee, along with other friends: a Rastafarian named Valentine Jah-Love, his love: Ping Chong, and their child: Raphael Chong Jah-Love

Yes, it's that kind of a novel, and I didn't feel any great urge to continue on with this series (yes, it's a series!), but I did like the goofiness of this novel. I found it an entertaining and a worthy read.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Title: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Author: Ransom Riggs
Publisher: Quirk
Rating: WARTY!

If I had known that John Greene recommended this novel, I would have steered well clear of it! His writing sucks, so why would I read anything he recommends?! That does, however, explain why this is a rather tedious novel. The story on CD wasn't helped at all by the inappropriate voice of the reader, who just did not sound listenable, and who apparently has no idea whatsoever what he's doing. He grossly welshes on the Welsh.

The big deal about his novel is that it is supposed to be told around a series of antique photographs. Again, this I didn't know, so my question here is: if it's so dependent upon the photographs, then why in the name of all that's holy was it ever put into audio format? Note to Big Publishing$trade; morons: THERE ARE NO PHOTOGRAPHS IN AUDIO!!!

You can find some of these online, of course, but there's no way to know where they fit into the novel. Other reviewers haven't had anything good to say about the photographs - except Kirkus of course which has never published a negative review in its life, which means all of its reviews are completely meaningless and therefore useless. The fact that Big Publishing™ uses these on book covers serves to prove only what a brain-dead and antiquated system to which it is that they're so desperately clinging.

The story follows the spoiled-brat life of Jacob Portman, a rich 16-year-old whose rather loosely-wrapped grandfather dies and puts a bee in Jake's bonnet about a school in Wales where the grandfather was brought-up as a refugee. The timing doesn't quite work, but worse than that, I found it bizarre that this grandfather was raised in Wales as a young kid, yet still speaks in stereotypical and demeaning eastern European-speak with 'zese' and 'ze' and 'zose' for 'these', 'the', and 'those'. It's a bit condescending if not insulting, and it's not at all logical.

Jake isn't X-Acto the sharpest knife in the drawer either. He's slow to recognize things which have been telegraphed way ahead of time to the rest of us, so I can't respect him as a character. I found myself skipping track after track on the CDs because it simply wasn't interesting. Indeed, you can skip the first CD entirely and not miss anything.

So no! Just no. The story was boring, pointless and meaningless. In audio it’s useless because there are no photographs to support the text (not that they do anyway, from what I’ve read in reviews written by others. I can’t recommend this and indeed I highly dis-recommend it.

Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story by Peter Bagge

Title: Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story
Author: Peter Bagge
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Rating: WORTHY!

This amazing graphic novel relates the true story of Margaret Sanger, who has to be, by anyone's definition, a strong female character - and one who happens to be real. She wasn't a saint by any means, but she did devote a long and successful life to women's issues and brought real changes. And BTW - that image on the cover isn't an invention....

The graphic novel follows her life pretty closely, beginning with her youth - the sixth of eleven children born of a mom who had been pregnant no less than eighteen times, and who was slowly dying from tuberculosis, a pernicious disease which claimed many victims, some of whom were famous, such as pretty much the entire Brontë family, Erwin Schrödinger, John "Doc" Holliday, Anton Chekhov, Frédéric Chopin, Dmitri Mendeleev, Ho Chi Minh, Simón Bolívar, Desmond Tutu, Voltaire, and so on. Not everyone who contracted it died from it. Both Tom Jones and Ringo Starr had TB as children, for example, but they, like Sanger, have lived to a ripe old age.

Margaret Sanger was born om the same year as the Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879) as Margaret Louise Higgins. Her mother died when Margaret was still a child. She was put through school by her older sisters. She married at 23, but her new home in the suburbs burned down and she and her husband moved to New York City where she joined the New York Socialist Party, and began training as a nurse. Her experiences brought her face to face with what can only be described as the horror of being a woman in a large city in the Edwardian era.

Thus began her fight to establish birth control - something which was an uphill battle for years, because the men who held the reins were insensitive morons. She began writing columns for a magazine named "New York Call" discussing sex education under the banners: "What Every Girl Should Know", and "What Every Mother Should Know". With these she ran into trouble with the US post office which considered sex education to be an obscenity, and would seize anything that was put into the mail on this topic! Can you believe this crap?

Disgusted and outraged by the plight of women and the intransigence of the powers-that-be, Sanger started her own monthly newsletter called "The Woman Rebel", which used the controversial catch-phrase: "No Gods, No Masters", and presenting birth control as a free-speech issue. Indicted in 1914 for violating obscenity laws for mailing this newsletter, Sanger went on the run for a year, fleeing to Canada and then to England where she met Havelock Ellis. Meanwhile her husband was convicted of handing out obscene material in an entrapment, and he spent thirty days in jail!

Traveling in Europe, Sanger learned about diaphragms from the Dutch back in the US, she opened a opened a family planning and birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 for which she was arrested. The following year, she was convicted, the judge ruling that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception."! Seriously? What a dimwit. This did not stop her from launching a new monthly magazine titled "Birth Control Review" that year.

Note that Sanger was not in favor of abortion. She was only in favor of preventing the circumstances arising in which a woman might be forced to consider such a thing - something which the modern church seems to find problematical for reasons which can only be described as one of the mysteries of religion. Sanger also had some things in common with the eugenicists, although she wasn't a complete radical. She believed in preventing birth of those who might be considered "unfit", which in some cases would include compulsory sterilization. Again, Sanger was a woman, but that doesn't mean she was a saint!

Sanger was full of contradictions. Even as she was took the lead in opening a birth control clinic in Harlem staffed by black doctors, she was also known for her observation that aboriginal Australians were "just a step higher than the chimpanzee". So: far from perfect.

Even so, the good that she did far outweighed her misguided views, and her legacy has been a lasting one. Peter Bagge has done a huge service in producing this graphic novel, which is brilliantly illustrated by him, amusingly narrated by him, and true to life. I urge you to read it, and thereby to never forget this battle which had to be won to help get women to where they are today: high on the foothills of a peak which still has to be climbed.

Playing With Matches by Suri Rosen

Title: Playing With Matches
Author: Suri Rosen
Publisher: ECW Press
Rating: WORTHY!

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

Despite the fact that I had a few issues with this novel, I ended up loving it. It was really well-written for the most part, very imaginative and inventive, and it told a really good story. Surprisingly, it also revealed an admirably strong central female character, and it was this, above all else, which won my heart, because characters like this one are rare in YA literature, to be avidly sought after, and treasured when found (and that's an order!).

This is a first person PoV YA novel about a 17-year-old girl, Raina Resnik who has moved to Toronto and now attends the Toronto Hebrew School for girls instead of the New York Hebrew school for girls. Big move, huh? My first question was why she hadn't stayed in NYC with her older sister, especially since said sibling is about to get married. It bothered me that I never got a really satisfactory answer to this question.

Normally I don't like 1PoV because it's rarely done well, but this one wasn't obnoxious. On the contrary, Raina's voice was quite endearing and highly entertaining. The novel opened with amusing commentary which continued throughout the novel. It's one of the two main reasons why I ended up loving this (the other being Raina's strength, of course), but it was not all plain sailing for me. Initially, the amusement at the narration was undermined somewhat by the confusion I felt.

I have to confess that I began this novel a little ferblunjit; I really didn't get what was going on. It was like I'd begun reading a sequel without having read the first volume. Eventually I grasped that the reason that Raina had to move was because her mom and dad had moved to Hong Kong for business reasons, but I didn't really get a good explanation as to why Raina hadn't gone with them. That is to say that there was a reason given, but it not only seemed inadequate to me, it also seemed out of step with how the rest of the novel was told in terms of how few choices Raina had available to her.

Having failed to travel with her parents, I didn't get why Raina couldn't stay in NYC with her sister Leah, who is seven years older, and getting married two months hence. She could have stayed, helped with the wedding preparations, and finished up her last year at her school with her friends. Why didn't she?

Maybe I missed something, but none of the Toronto move made sense at all, especially since she also had an aunt in NYC with whom she could have stayed. I don't recall reading a real explanation for all of this. Of course, I may have missed it in the confusion, but it seemed to me that the only reason she'd gone to Toronto was that there was another Hebrew school for girls there - and another aunt, but this begs the question as to why such a school was so indispensable. That's something which was never addressed.

Yes, there is some unspecified 'incident' at her New York City school, with Raina evidently having been expelled, but the nature of this isn't revealed until the end of the novel and when it is, it seems really inadequate. Besides that, her school wasn't the only one in NYC. She still could have stayed - so again, confusion. I would have preferred a more solid foundation for the novel to rest upon, but in the end, it really didn't matter because the story took over (more on that phrase later!) and dominated everything so very effectively.

I think part of the problem was that Playing With Matches assumes a reader who is intimately familiar with Jewish customs. Now I've lived in Israel (as a volunteer on the kibbutz system) for some six months. I'm also familiar with some Jewish and Judaic culture from reading various materials (fictional and otherwise), and from watching movies and documentaries. This doesn't, of course, make me an expert, not even close, but I do feel like I'm a little bit in familiar territory, yet even with that background, a lot of the comments and references were completely lost on me. A broader approach aimed at a wider readership would have been better for me.

I really didn't get this issue of Raina having to attend Hebrew schools for girls like there is no other option. There's no indication as to why this was such a requirement, since neither she nor any of her family appeared particularly orthodox Judaists (their only real religion seems to have been baseball!), so at that point, only three chapters in, I was really confused and not feeling very welcome! Feeling uncomfortable and for the wrong reasons is not a great start to a new relationship with an author! Fortunately in the end, Suri Rosen proved to me that she had what it took to win me over to her side very much in the same manner in which her character Raina proved the same thing in her own story. Amusing coincidence, huh?

I have to say that there was something of a claustrophobic feeling here, too. The novel was entirely about Jewish people and Jewish lifestyles and Jewish relationships. None of the characters appeared to know anyone or to have any friends who were not themselves Jewish. They appeared to exist and interact only within their own isolated community. I found that to be rather offensive, especially in a climate where we have major issues blowing up between Israelis and the Palestinians even as I write this review. Maybe this is how some people are, but it's not how novelists are compelled to write about people. Maybe there are 'enclaves' like this in Toronto and other cities, but it seemed a bit much to cook-up all of this without adding - if I can put it this way - some leavening from a wider perspective.

But that's just me! Now back to the story in progress. When Leah shows up at the bus station in Toronto, Raina discovers that the wedding is off. Raina, who's supposedly so close to her, has to learn this almost second-hand when her sister arrives sans wedding gown and sans engagement! Worse, Leah is evidently blaming Raina for the break-up because the latter never did trust Ben, the ex. Oy gevalt! So yes, this provided a nice thrust of conflict into the novel, but it was accompanied by some unfortunate confusion once more!

I didn't get why, if they were supposedly so close, Leah had not mentioned to Raina this failure to engage as it were, before she arrived in person. Yes, she apparently (and for no good reason), blamed her sister for being 'Raina on her parade' so to speak, but if they were so close, why was it not even touched upon? Or are we to understand that Raina is lying about how close they were or that she was clueless as to the deteriorating state of their relationship? If so, how can we trust anything else which this narrator tells us? This bothered me because it reflected badly on Raina (and unfairly as it turned out). I don't like anyone messing with Raina like that!

I don't want to give much more away. That would ruin the story, and this is such a good story that it deserves the benefit of any doubts. I really did enjoy it immensely despite all my kvetching. I liked Raina very much as a character - Leah not so much - and I loved the way the story kept opening up more levels, like a matryoshka doll. Let me confine myself to saying that Raina ends up becoming a bit of a shadken (she calls herself "Matchmaven" - hence the novel's title) purely by accident (if you can imagine that!), to which her own sister ends up 'subscribing'. So the engine of the novel becomes the question of whether Raina can find her sister a match and get back into her good graces while striving for good grades? Good grief! Or is Raina simply playing with matches? Will she be kosher or toast?

One final issue, and this isn't just about this novel, but about far to many YA novels penned by female writers. I was distressed by the stark emphasis on beauty and on girls needing guys to be complete. That was a bit much for me and rather demeaning to women. Being a shayner maidel only gets you so far (and not very far at all with me), and I know that too many people only see women skin deep, but that doesn't mean we have to perpetuate stereotypes or demeaning traditions. I sincerely hope that Jewish girls are not defined and confined by overly idealistic concepts beauty and a 'need' to find a guy to make them complete, but given how people are, maybe they are. Why would they be any different from any other girls?

As much as I liked the novel, I did feel that more could have been done here. I think this is a duty of YA authors, especially of female ones, and I think it's also sadly neglected. It's quite simply wrong to perpetuate clichés of 'beauty' when women have so much more to offer and when, in the end, beauty (when defined as skin-deep appearance) means so very little.

I know that authors (for the most part) understand this, but that understanding counts for nothing if it isn't translated into the written word. Can we not include other traits, such as integrity, loyalty, strength of character, smarts, decency, self-sacrifice, kindness, generosity of spirit, and so on? If you must include beauty, can it not be shown to be a result of those character traits rather than the sole product of a millimeter depth of skin? can we not show that a character's beauty (or handsomeness if the character is male) stems from those things - or from those things as well as (if you must), physical appearance. Please?

On the other side of the coin, this story was very engrossing, with Raina increasingly feeling like a shlimazl as her plans subside. She gets into one highly entertaining and unanticipated scrape after another (such as texting back and forth with someone who doesn't know who you are, but who happens, as you discover, to be in the bathroom stall right next to yours...). None of these escapades felt artificial or unrealistic, so kudos to Suri Rosen for her gifted imagination, quirky inventiveness, and her sheer writing skill. Even with the reservations I've mentioned, I was very entertained and I enjoyed this read a great deal. Since this blog is actually all about writing, I very much appreciated a chance to read some of this quality, and I look forward to her next story with great anticipation.

Talking of which, here's an interesting writing issue to leave you with: on page 130, we read, "Matchmaven had overtaken my life." Is this wrong? Discuss! I would have written "Matchmaven had taken over my life" but is that better? Does it mean the same thing? How about "My life had been overtaken by Matchmaven"?

It's not critically important to the story, but it is the kind of thing which my rather warped and disturbed mind latches upon! After all, without words, there are no stories, and without putting those words together just so, there is no literature. It's always worth giving some thought to these things. Is there a there a perfect way of wording your sentence and how much, exactly, does it matter? If you agonize over an issue like this are you hindering completion of your novel or making it that bit more memorable?

Playing With Matches is a particularly appropriate title for this novel, but it does bury it somewhat amongst so many others with that same title. Hopefully this one will stand out above those others. It deserves to since it's such a worthy read, and Suri Rosen is a writer with a future.

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

Title: The Walled City
Author: Ryan Graudin
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: WORTHY!

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

Ryan Graudin is a fellow blogspotter, although I don't personally know her. If I did, I suspect we'd have more than a few debates about religion! But that's neither here nor there. This novel is rooted in the truth of Hong Kong's Kowloon 'walled city' and it tells a fiction-based-in-fact story of how one adventure might have been. The story is sadly sweet and sweetly sad; it has an upbeat ending, but it pulls no punches in getting there. Main character Jin-Ling is yet another addition to my small but growing list of exemplars for all-too-many authors who simply don't get what a strong female character actually and truly is. Graudin does indeed get it. Jin-Ling is a charmer.

This is one of those novels which has chapters named in a rotation as each differing character tells their story in the first person. I'm not a fan of this method of writing because to me it's simply compounding the error of having a single first person narrator. None of it seems natural or organic to me, so I confess that I came into this slightly biased, wondering if the author could win me over, and it seems that she did! The narration wasn't irritating as I'd feared it would be when I began reading it.

The story is set in the Walled City, which used to be a fort, but now is a ghetto at best, and a prison at worst, where might makes right and gangs rule. The first character we meet is Jin-Ling, a girl masquerading as a boy. She's a thief and is, as we meet her, running through the city (which she knows very well), having stolen a pair of fine boots from Kuen, the brutal leader a young street gang.

The next chapter introduces Sun Dai Shing, who is looking to escape the walled city, but he cannot do so until he has achieved his aim. He has a deadline of only eighteen days to do this, but we're not told why, not at first. He coldly decides that Jun-ling is the ideal person to help him further his scheme. The last thing he expects is that in place of the mere tool he thought he was picking up, he was finding, instead, an ally and a friend.

Chapter three introduces yet another character, Mei Yee, who happens to be Jun-Ling's sister. In this city, girls are sex slaves and that's all there is to it (hence Jin-Ling's superficial gender change). This begs the question as to how the city manages to not only continue, but also to be so large if all the young girls are rendered unavailable for marital and procreative activity. Yet there was such a city.

Jin-Ling is not the only one in this city who is there by choice, but she volunteered not because it was a free choice: it became necessary that she do this when her mom died and her piece of trash father sold Mei Yee to the 'reapers' to bring her into the life of prostitution which awaits all girls here. Girls who try to run are simply rendered drug-dependent, and are kept imprisoned that way.

This is another author who uses the nonsensical phrase "it's so black it's almost blue". I've read that kind of phrase in more than one novel (including another one very recently!), and apart from it becoming a cliché, it makes me wonder where our language is going when we get oddball writing like that! Other than that one instance which nipped at me, the writing is very good, the description evocative, the conversations intelligent, the plot smart, and the story really endearing.

Dai's scheme involves him acquiring inside info on Longwai (I am not making these names up - the author is!), and this is why he needs Jin-Ling. Jin is to run drug deliveries for Longwai, while Dai sits as hostage, his life to be forfeited if Jin-Ling fails in any way. He hopes it will garner for him an 'in' into Longwai's operation. I didn't get this bit, I confess. Why would Longwai trust that this pair is going to be loyal to each other? It made little sense to me. Yes, he has a history with Dai, but he knows nothing of Jin and he does not seem to be the kind of person to trust anyone. On the other hand, he obviously has no problem with killing those who irritate him.

While awaiting Jin-Ling's return, Dai discovers that there's a window in the building through which he can contact one of the captive girls. Later, on the outside, he establishes contact and trust with her, asking her to find out things for him in return for giving her information about life away from the brothel - something which she craves, being both a captive and captivated by him. He doesn't know that this is Jin-Ling's sister since she hasn't told him she has one. Jin-Ling, who believes that her sister must be in that building because she's searched everywhere else, doesn't know that Dai is even talking with one of the girls.

Dai and Jin's arrangement seems to be working out quite well, even as both are sucked into Longwai's organization like it's quicksand. But then Jin has yet another run-in with Kuen, and some serious blood is spilled. This isn’t going to be the last which is spilled before this novel is over.

And that's all the teasing you get! I really recommend this as a great read. I kept feeling that it was set in a bygone age, for some reason, but it's very much a modern story. Aside from the names and an occasional mention of food, there seemed to me to be very little Chinese atmosphere here; indeed, the dialog and narration was very westernized, but that didn't bother me because the story itself was so good and it could have been set anywhere, in any time, and still told the same engrossing tale. It's definitely worth your time.

Emily of New Moon by L M Montgomery

Title: Emily of New Moon
Author: L M Montgomery
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

I tried and retried, but I could not get into this novel at all. It was recommended by someone online, but it isn't for me. The story didn't interest me, and I could not generate any interest in the main character. I eventually found myself turning page after page to try and find a section where I could get into it, but in the first five chapters it never came and I could find nothing with which to connect. That's a review and a rating in and of itself!

House of Clay by Naomi Nowak

Title: House of Clay
Author: Naomi Nowak (also illustrator)
Publisher: NBM
Rating: WORTHY!

This is a really short and easy read. I fell in love with it because of the artwork, even though I don't really get the story. I mean superficially it's a woman's struggle to find a better life and to take charge of her destiny, which alone is a great thing, but the story was really loosely wrapped, so I have to keep wondering if I missed something.

This is the story of Josephine who is sent away to a factory called the House of Cotton, where she is to work whilst saving funds to go to nursing school, a project which would appear doomed by the fact that Josephine faints every time she sees blood.

At the house, she meets two people, one of whom is a co-worker and sometime prostitute by the name of Edith, with whom she bonds, and the other is a much older woman who calls her work-place the House of Clay because it's like the underworld, she says.

The older woman has a different take on life due to the fact that as a younger woman, she almost died from an illness. Now she makes the most of every day. Josephine gives her a bit of a turn because she looks so much like the older woman looked in her own youth. Josephine tells the woman that she will come back and visit, but when she does, the woman has died.

This prompts Josephine to take the woman's advice and take charge of her own life. She rejects the work at the House of Clay and departs, having no plans other than to own her life. Edith decides to come along for the trip.

Like I said, I do think I am missing something here, but it's not brain cells! I loved the simplicity and fluidity of the artwork and the story (as I understood it!), so I consider this a worthy read.

Praetorian by Jason M Burns

Title: Praetorian
Author: Jason M Burns
Publisher: Outlaw
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Ramon Espinoza

This was a comic I was handed at a comic con a couple of years ago which I read and put on a shelf and forgot about. I noticed it yesterday while cleaning off that same shelf. I read it again this morning and decided that, despite some minor issues, it was worth blogging positively.

Praetorian tells the story of four Roman guards who were present at the death of Jesus Christ, and who were granted immortality. Why? I have no idea! But you have to start a story somewhere and dumb is as good a place as any as long as you can carry a story with that dead-weight holding you back. Two thousand years later, one of these soldiers it seems, has become a serial killer, severing the head of apparently random victims and leaving the bodies to be found, while the heads disappear.

This is quite decently written except on a page towards the middle where a professor named Julian says, "...alive long enough to of broken bread with..." That's not how a professor would speak! Yes, real (and ignorant) people do substitute 'of' for 'have', but not a college professor. Bad writing!

I have to say I had some very mixed feelings about this comic. I really liked the main character, Rodriguez. She was strong, smart, and interesting. The other characters were just so-so. Rodriguez and her partner are tasked with tracking down this serial killer, but they're stymied by the apparent random choice of victim and the lack of any other evidence. The only thing they have to go on is the bizarre emblem carved on each victim's chest.

One problem I had was with the blind acceptance that there really was a son of a god crucified some 2,000 years ago. I don't buy that because none of it makes any sense, and because the only 'evidence' we have is a handful of 'accounts' all of which have a clear agenda and all of which were written by scientifically ignorant men. None of these accounts was written by a skeptic, none of them are logical or self-consistent, and none of them have any external supportive evidence. That said, I do enjoy a good religious fiction, because all religion is fiction to me.

Another issue I had was that these guards are described as Praetorian. It's become a trope in stories featuring the Romans or stories derivative of that (such as Richelle Mead's Gameboard of the Gods series, to have the Praetorians featured as some sort of antique 'special forces' unit, but they were not. They were just roman soldiers assigned to a cohort which was charged with protecting the emperor (and later to guarding Roman generals). They would never have been present at a minor crucifixion in Palestine, so this part of the story fails miserably.

There's also an unexplained anomaly during one of the assassinations - and here's a big spoiler - the serial killer is killing people of a certain bloodline, but while he kills a mom carrying her baby out to her car, he leaves the baby unharmed. Given his motivation here, it makes no sense that he would not have dispatched the baby, too.

In this case, and apart from those issues, I did enjoy this story, and the artwork was well done if a bit rudimentary. I really grew to like Rodriguez, not so much her partner, and I didn't get her attachment to him - it seemed unrealistic given what we were shown of their relationship. The story moved along at a good pace and was logical and intelligently written (except for one incident when the serial killer showed up in Rodriguez's hotel room intent upon killing her but does not. Given what we're told later, this made absolutely no sense at all).

However, like I said, the story left me with a good feeling, so I recommend it

The Secrets Of Jin-Shei by Alma Alexander

Title: The Secrets Of Jin-Shei
Author: Alma Alexander
Publisher: Harper
Rating: WORTHY!

erratum:
p102 "...they would all sit subside on the ground..." I suspect that either 'sit' or 'subside' is superfluous and didn't get deleted when the other word was substituted.
p337 "...all except Cai's death, with she left..." should be "...all except Cai's death, which she left..."
p345 "...and if you friend is right..." should be "...and if your friend is right..."

In some ways this novel reminds me of Kiyohara Nagiko, aka Sei Shōnagon, Japanese author of the thousand-year-old The Pillow Book (makura no sōshi), and of Lady Murasaki, aka Murasaki Shikibu, author of the equally ancient The Tale of Genji. Not long ago I read The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby, a fictionalized version based on Lady Murasaki's own diary, and it was charming. I put this novel in a class with that one. It has that same 'different era' vibe, and the same idealistic view of life in the Far East. I recommend reading that novel, too, especially because it's based on an actual person and actual events.

Alma Alexander put a heck of a lot of effort into this and it shows. This novel is poetical, easy on the ear, and engrossing, but it is also long and complex. Perhaps too long, but not too complex if you pay attention! She does jump around like a rabbit however (does like a rabbit, bucks like a rabbit? - I use the word advisedly given the behavior of the emperor in this novel!), going from one character to another, with some of them carrying the story for a long time whereas others appear only briefly here and there.

The novel is set, effectively, in ancient China, but Alexander removes it from that reality by naming the nation Syai. She also employs some ancient Chinese realities, such as the secret language, named Nüshu (nü meaning 'woman' and the rest meaning writing). This was employed between women in China until the last speaker of it, Yang Huanyi, died in 2004, although who she talked to in those waning years is not known! In this novel Nüshu is renamed jin-ashu, and the Chinese concept on non-blood sisterhood, named LaoTong ("old sames") is used under the name of jin-shei. Two such sisters would be jin-shei-bao to each other.

Tai is the daughter of a palace seamstress until a chance meeting with Antian, a member of the royal family, and a consequent chat about art and poetry leads the princess to offer Tai a pact of jin-shei - unbreakable sisterhood - between them. Unfortunately, this tie with Tai is not to last since virtually the entire royal family is killed in an earthquake in their mountain retreat.

Tai survives, and Antian with her dying breath, begs her to take care of her sister. The only sister of which Tai is aware is Liudan, the one who stayed at home and therefore never experienced the earthquake. She is an unwanted third-in-line sister who is resentful that she never had a shot at the throne - until now, but when she steps up, she does so in grand style, refusing to take a husband, and choosing to rule as an unmarried "dragon empress".

In chapter three, Alexander jumps from the story of the very rocky relationship between Tai and Liudan and introduces us to two more girls: Xaforn, in her early teens, is an orphan who is training very hard to be the youngest inductee into the palace guard. Xaforn ends up unexpectedly befriending Qiaan, the daughter of one of the guard captains, who herself has no interest in joining the military.

Continuing these abrupt jumps, we're next introduced to Nhia, who has a 'withered leg', but who is mobile. She spends a lot of her time at the temple wasting her life begging for the non-existent gods to help her, but she actually becomes the author of her own destiny, as all people do, no gods needed. One day in the temple grounds, she's sitting next to an acolyte, and a woman comes asking for advice. While the acolyte is still pondering what to say, Nhia offers a story which brings solace to the woman, and from this humble start, she grows to the point where she is telling stories to children in the temple grounds even though she has no official right to be there.

Nhia is befriended by Khailin, who has her own agenda to get herself an education and who sees Nhia as the vehicle by which to achieve her aim, but the two become friends and jin-shei. This jin-shei spreads amongst these women like wildfire, each of them slowly becoming more and more entangled with the others like elementary particles in some physics experiment. Two more girls show up, in the form of Tammary, and Yuet, the healer's apprentice.

The way Alexander develops this is very natural and organic. There is no falsehood to this story - no "Wait, what?" moments. As I mentioned, it takes longer than I think it ought, but she tells a very engrossing story and tells it beautifully.

Things become complicated in unexpected ways, such as when the mysterious and artistic Tammary shows up, living with the traveler people, and such as when Khailin ends up married to a sorcerer and becomes imprisoned in his literally living house, and such as when Yuet starts noticing the remarkable likeness between Qianna and the young empress Liudan....

One of my pet peeves with this is not with the novel per se, but with the pinyin pronunciation, which was formalized in the late fifties by the Chinese government to facilitate representing Chinese words in Arabic script. God only knows who actually came up with this nonsensical system, but it's completely nuts.

Alexander gives a brief overview of pinyin in the back of the novel, but it should have been in the front, because the names, the way they're written, make zero sense and are in fact completely misleading as compared with the actual pronunciation. Here are the eight characters again, with the pronunciation for each name:
As Written _ _ As Pronounced
Khailin _ _ _ Kay Leen
Liudan _ _ _ _ Lee O'Dan
Nhia _ _ _ _ _ N'ya
Qiaan _ _ _ _ Chiaan
Tai _ _ _ _ _ Tay
Tammary _ _ _ Tammary
Xaforn _ _ _ _ Shaforn
Yuet _ _ _ _ _ Y'et

Nuts, right? As I mentioned in my review of Between Two Worlds which also had pronunciation issues, the only important thing in this is to make the name sound right! Since there's no connection at all between Chinese scripts (or in this case Syai script!) and the Arabic alphabet used in western nations, there's no reason at all to depict the words in any way other than phonetically.

But that's a minor point. I loved this story and I highly recommend it. Alexander is one of the rare YA authors who knows how to write intelligent and engrossing female characters who are strong and memorable and who are not in the least dependent upon men to validate their existence. She also has a trilogy which is really good (yes, from me, who detests trilogies!)

The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby

Title: The Tale of Murasaki
Author: Liza Dalby
Publisher: Doubleday
Rating: WORTHY!

Murasaki Shikibu was a real person, who left us a diary and a novel - the earliest novel ever written of which we still have evidence - titled, The Tale of Genji hence Liza Dalby's own title. This novel (Murasaki's, not Dalby's!) was written almost a thousand years ago in what's now known as the Heian period of Japanese history. We only have it today because it was so popular in her own time that many copies were made and passed around. In modern terms, she would be a best-selling author even though she made not a single grain of rice off this novel.

Murasaki was not the only woman of that period who is remembered, curiously enough. There were several others, such as Akazome Emonis who was a waka poet, Lady Koshikibu, who was a contributor to a collection of stories titled Tales of the Riverside Middle Counselor, Izumi Shikibu, a poet whose mother (Michitsuna no Haha - her name is not known so this literally means Michitsuna's mom) wrote The Gossamer Diary, and Sei Shōnagon who wrote The Pillow Book. What a stunning group of women these were! Talk about strong females: these women were strong enough to last a thousand years and more!

Murasaki's success was in and of itself is quite remarkable, but she was distinguished in other ways, too. She was all-but unique in the fact that she could read and write Chinese, a prized skill found almost exclusively in men at that time - a time when women were not considered smart enough for "book learning"! This was important, too, because this was a period during which the Japanese were quite sycophantic about Chinese culture and language.

Most of the women mentioned above were not given, at birth, the names by which we now know them. These are nicknames or titles, describing them in terms of other things - such as a relative's occupation) rather than their family names or their given names. According to wikipedia, Shikibu is taken from her father's employment at the Ministry of Ceremonials, and Murasaki may have referred to the color of the wisteria flower. No one knows for sure what her real name was, but it may have been Fujiwara Takako (Fuji also refers to a violet color), which is the name I use here.

Fujiwara grew up pretty much with the same expectation of her that was held for all women of her time: that she would marry and produce male children for her husband. She had other ideas, however, and had a very strong personality and a real interest in and facility for learning. Her older brother was not very good at picking up Chinese, but Fujiwara, who would listen in on his lessons, mastered it. She was widely read and a good conversationalist.

As it happened she did marry, to an older man, and produced a daughter, but shortly afterwards, her husband died, and she wound up entering the royal court as a lady in waiting while someone else raised her daughter. This seems particularly odd to us today, but it was not considered out of the ordinary in her own time.

She spent some significant time at court and her relation of those days in this novel is as charming and engaging as it is revealing of court politics and antics. I loved the completely natural pace of the novel, the connection with the changing seasons, and real insight into Japanese minds from a thousand years ago. The novel is an easy read (not at all like modern historical fiction), and draws heavily upon actual historical sources with some creative fiction tying it together, written by someone who not only actually knows what she's talking about, but understands it completely. I recommend this highly.

La Princesse de Clèves by Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne

Title: La Princesse de Clèves
Author: Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne aka Madame de Lafayette
Publisher: Read a Classic
Rating: WORTHY!

I feel like I should write this in French, mais mon français aspire! (See what I mean?) Originally published in March 1678, in France as La Princesse de Clèves, and possibly written by Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, aka Madame de La Fayette, this novel was a huge success in its day. And it had a less nonsensical cover than this modern edition does. Seriously - the title in half English and half French, the accent which should be on 'Clèves' is missing, but the dot over the 'i' in 'Princesse' is warped so much that it looks like an accent? What was the cover designer smoking that day? Old book covers?

The novel's main protagonist is 16-year-old Mademoiselle de Chartres, who is maneuvered by her mom into marriage at the court of Henri 2nd, to La Prince de Clèves. This is her best prospect financially and socially, but it isn't, of course, the one she would choose for herself. Had she that choice, she would have aligned herself with the Duke de Nemours, a dashing young man with whom she falls in love and he, it seems, with she. They do not pursue this affair physically, but instead meet irregularly, when he attends her "salon" - regular social gatherings which she holds in her new position as La Princesse de Clèves.

The duke falls afoul of a scandal for which he is blameless, but for which he assumes responsibility in order to protect another. The princess at first believes him to be guilty, but learns later that he isn't. It's also at this time that her husband, who loves her dearly, realizes that she's actually in love with someone else, and she admits as much to him.

This causes an onset of the wilts and the vapors for the Prince, who takes to his bed and dies, but not before extracting an evil promise from his wife that she will not pursue any relationship with the duke. The latter pursues the princess even more ardently now that she's a widow, but she rejects him and enters a convent.

I like this novel not because it's a great novel. Far from it: it's the worst kind of chick-lit, but it's ancient chick-lit and that's what makes it interesting to me. It enables us to get inside the mind of a woman from well-over three hundred years ago. We're treated to few such insights and that's what makes this fascinating as far as I'm concerned.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Title: Cruel Beauty
Author: Rosamund Hodge
Publisher: Bolinda Audio Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Seductively read by Elizabeth Knowelden

Nyx made the mistake of coming out of the womb ahead of her twin sister, Estrella, for it was because of that, she later learned, that she became betrothed to a demon, in order to extricate her oh-so-loving father from a mess of his own making.

This is the same demon which killed Nyx's mother, so she believes, and now she's his wife, and she's supposed to assassinate him and thereby free herself, her family, and even her homeland from his power. Everyone knows that a virgin knife, wielded by a virgin, can strike a demon dead. Ignifex, the name by which the demon is known (even the demon himself doesn't know his real name), appears to be afraid of her knife, but he's far more afraid of the darkness, which can at the very least make him suffer terribly, if not outright kill him.

So the compelling question here is: why didn't Nyx stab the demon when she first met him and she had a golden opportunity? And when he was apparently dying from the dark shadows that night, why did she return, having initially left him to rot, and save him? Could it be that she actually wants to be his wife? But then what would become of her relationship with the Shade, the only being she's encountered in that castle of a prison of a puzzle, who seems to have her best interests at heart? Or does he?

This is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and Hodge has entwined it inextricably with Greek mythology, so you might want some good reference materials by you as you read this, but take heart: never has there been so intriguing a beast, and never has there been such beauty: a beauty which is Hodge's writing. She writes exquisitely. The beast is the pace of the story, which even entranced as I was, I found to be rather ponderous!

I was entranced only partially by the text, but I was completely captivated by the warm, cultured, English accent and (I have to say it) amazingly sexy voice of Elizabeth Knowelden who embodied Nyx more fully than anyone else could do, I'm sure. I'm in love!

Diving In by Kate Cann

Title: Diving In
Author: Kate Cann
Publisher: Bolinda Audio Books
Rating: WARTY!

Obnoxiously read by Amanda Hulme

Please note that I found Amanda Hulme's reading voice to reside just south of nauseating, so my review of this novel is undoubtedly colored somewhat by that. I will try not to let that get in the way of reviewing that which was perpetrated by Cann as opposed to that which was strangulated by Hulme. And once again I'm forced to observe that book cover illustrators never read the novels for which they illustrate. Either that or they simply don't care, which is why, for a novel titled Diving In we get an illustration of Swimming Away....

I was attracted to this novel by the fact that it's set in Britain. Since I hail from there originally, I like to read a story set there now and then. This one looked, from the blurb, to be engaging, but we all know how badly blurbs lie, don't we now?

This novel is about Colette, yet another first-person narrating, guy-obsessed teen. Why female authors insist on doing this to their own gender, I do not know. I know even less why so many teens obsessively read so much of this trash. The real problem here is that Colette's only motivation in life is this studly guy she sees at the swimming pool.

Maybe her obsession is augmented, if not entirely engendered (so to speak), by the fact that her clueless mother has insisted that Colette go to a girls-only school because (her mother delusionally believes) segregating girls and boys is the best way to teach them how to appreciate the opposite gender in the best light and to learn appropriate respect for one another. Barf. Actually her mother's only motivation is that she's a flaming misandrist.

It doesn't help that Colette sees this guy only at the swimming pool, which means that the both of them are largely naked during their encounters. Her whole life changes when she accidentally bumps into him and he says four words to her. Now she's spoken to him! OMG!

Seriously, and despite (some might argue because of) its British setting, this novel is all wet. Cann it.

Zulu Dog by Anton Ferreira

Title: Zulu Dog
Author: Anton Ferreira
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WORTHY!

Yeah, I know, I should have posted this one earlier when I also reviewed Alpha so I could have had the start and end of the phonetic alphabet all in the same month! Oh well!

This middle-grade novel is really enthralling, well-written, and full of interest. On the micro level, it relates the story of Vusi, a growing Zulu boy who is something of a rebel, and who lives in poverty on a small Kraal in Eastern south Africa. Against his mother's express wishes, Vusi rescues a dog pup which has barely survived a leopard attack, and nurses it back to health, training it as his own hunting dog despite the fact that it's missing one leg.

On an expedition one day to prove his bravery by trespassing on the farm property of a nearby well-to-do white family, Vusi encounters a white girl, Shirley, who is something of a rebel herself. The two bond and start meeting regularly, out in the bush away from disapproving parental eyes, and learning of each other's life and hopes.

The more time they spend together, the more fond they grow of each other, but this isn't a romance at all. No, this is a novel, on a macro-level, about poverty and racism. When Shirley goes missing one day, all hell breaks loose, and it takes young Vusi and his trained dog to discover what has happened to her. The ending is happy, but it's a sorry thing that it had to go through all this just to get people to understand that we're all human, black, white or anything in between, and in the end it's the person you're dealing with, not the color of their skin, which is what counts above all else.

I recommend this novel as a great read.