Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

Title: Shadow Kiss
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

In which Richelle Mead does 50 Shades of Grey!

I panned volume three in this series so why, oh why, did I start in on volume 4? I cannot understand this behavior in others, and typically, I do not indulge in it myself. A bad review is the end of a series for me. I don't go looking for the next volume in the hope that it might get better. Life's too short to waste on bad writing; however, in this case, I plead mitigating circumstances.

One of my biggest beefs with the first three volumes was Rose's relationship with Dimitri. I didn't care about the difference in their ages which so many reviewers made so much of, because from a sexual PoV, Rose was legally an adult in Montana so: no issue, get your heads out of your asses clueless reviewers.

That said, the real problem was two-fold. First there was the very serious issue that Dimitri was the authority figure in Rose's life. He was her teacher, which is what made their relationship completely inappropriate. Dimitri should have been fired for his misconduct. The second problem was that the relationship simply did not work. There was absolutely no basis for it whatsoever, so to continue this patent fiction that there was this irresistible bond between them was ridiculous in the extreme, and I was thrilled to see it busted.

Herein we have the reason why I came back: Dimitri was gone (as a potential partner at least), and I thought perhaps things would improve, and I'd like the stories better now that he was out of the picture. Unfortunately, Rose still couldn't let him go. She had this completely stupid 'moral obligation' to stake him and 'rescue' him from that 'life'.

This, in itself, is also unmitigated bullshit, given what we've been told about strigoi. He was effectively dead and gone. He knew nothing of his life before. He was little more than a rabid animal at this point, and there was nothing Rose could ever do which would change that or be appreciated by him. So make no mistake, Rose did not perform any heroic act here. She did not do a single thing for Dimitri. There was no Dimitri any more. As was made clear at the end of Shadow Kiss everything she did in this volume was purely for selfish reasons which had nothing to do with him or her juvenile infatuation with him.

What Rose did do here was to selfishly and completely forsake and abandon her best friend - the one she had so often sworn she would die to protect. So once again the biggest problem with this volume is Rose, as usual. We've spent the previous three volumes being reminded countless times by the narrator - Rose herself - how desperately she wants to be not just a guardian, but Lissa's guardian. Nothing else matters, we were told time and time again, yet she forsakes Lissa at the drop of a bat, and hares off to slay Dimitri, thinking she's somehow rescuing her lover from his fate as a strigoi. Yeah, right. What Rose did here was to betray every principle of guardianship that she had ever been taught, and for purely selfish reasons.

The most inexplicable thing about this volume - at least to begin with - was that it had a prologue! It's volume four in a series for god's sake WHY THE HELL DOES IT NEED A PROLOGUE? And why does Mead need to use the phrase 'kind of' three times in the first two pages? These first two pages aren't pages 1 & 2, BTW, they're pages 17 & 18. Chapter one doesn't begin on page one, so this isn't actually a 503 page novel. Just so we're all on the same page...!

It began rather interestingly, but way too verbosely. Mead could have trimmed this down by probably two hundred pages without losing anything vital if she had self-edited instead of running off at the mouth with way too many details - particularly fashion details. Would anyone in Rose's position even remotely think about what the hell fashion someone else was wearing and how good or bad they looked? And it sucked how often she felt the need to describe how "beautiful" someone was, as though there is absolutely nothing in the universe more important than how skin-deep pretty people are. Jeeze!

And what's with going to Russia? Yeah, Dimitri went to Russia, but there is no explanation offered as to why. He's not a thinking being any more (so we're supposed to believe). He has no human impulses. He's a mindless vampire who is driven solely by blood lust - and he decides to vacation in Russia? I call bullshit on that one. The only reason this took place in Russia was not because of some critical plot element but because Mead simply wanted it to, and she wasn't a good enough writer to put together a decent plot to justify it.

That said, and apart from the wordiness of this volume, there was some decent action buried in all the silly descriptive prose. In Russia, Rose is easily kicking strigoi ass (how she manages this is a bit of a mystery, but let's let that one go) while trying to get a lead on where Dimitri went, by locating his home town in Siberia. How the hell he even managed to even travel there is a mystery which goes unsolved. Oh, and Rose meets an Alchemist!

This is a brand new feature which has had zero mention for three volumes but which now turns out to be an integral part of the lore - conveniently only revealed to guardians upon graduation! Alchemists are magical chemists who can, for example, create cloud potions which completely erase strigoi bodies - conveniently for serial slayer Rose. Equally conveniently, Sydney - the alchemist - is assigned by a higher power to accompany Rose to Siberia where equally conveniently, after taking out two strigoi and collapsing, Rose magically ends up in the home of Dimitri's family.

This is one of endless examples of really bad writing. There are way-the-frick-and-frack too many coincidences in this novel, even by YA standards. I mean how convenient is it that everyone in Russia, no matter how back-woods and out-of-the-way they are, speaks perfect English? When Rose trips back to Lissa's mind, it's inevitably and without exception when some crucial event is taking place. It's never, ever, ever when when she's sitting on the can, or reading a fashion magazine (inexplicably enough), sitting bored out of her gourd in class, sleepily watching TV, or humping Christian.,/p>

Indeed, so convenient is this insta-contact that we get a detailed history of the arrival and installation, and the drama surrounding the new headmaster, who has a disaffected daughter, Avery who will be a TA (no, that's not tits and ass although it might as well be), and a younger son who is going to attend the academy as a student.

At one point Rose is given a healing charm - she puts it in her pocket for a rainy day. How come the magic doesn't wear off as soon as it's close to her? But that's not what important. What's important is that when Dimitri inevitably encounters her, instead of killing her as strigoi do - as we've been told repeatedly that strigoi do - he takes her prisoner and abuses her as a sex slave, a la Fifty Shades of Grey! Then when she stakes him at the end, he falls off a balcony and she never checks on him, dumb-ass guardian that she is, and to top all of that, he sends her a note when she's back in the US assuring her that they will meet again. In short, he behaves completely out of character for a strigoi based on what Mead has been telling us for the three entire volumes prior to this one. Seriously?

This novel was by far the worst and most badly written of the entire series and I am now done with this ridiculous series completely.

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

Title: Shadow Kiss
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

This is the third one in the Vampire Academy series. I liked the first two, but I've had a harder time with this one. It's funny because a lot of reviews I read for this series say that while the first is not so good, it gets better with the second, or while the second isn't great, it gets better with the third, but I've experienced just the opposite. I guess I'm, not in sync with any of this; I mean while the vampire Academy movie was a complete flop, I really loved it! The experience has been similar with the novels, too. The first one, I thought was most enjoyable, the second okay, and the third proved less than impressive and downright dumb in parts. It read like bad fan-fiction in far too many places, as I shall point out in this review.

Instead of growing as a character, Rose isn't changing, and if anything, is deteriorating as both a character and as a guardian. She seems incapable of learning, and is far too self-centered. As if that isn't bad enough, she's undisciplined and is given to tantrums and jealousy fits. The bottom line is that, based on her sorry showing here, she's simply not fit to be a guardian. Indeed, she's barely making it as a human being at this point.

There's a 'reason' for this, but whether it's valid is a matter of opinion. Lissa, for inexplicable reasons, has been allowed to go off drugs and begin using her "Spirit" power. You may recall that she was banned from doing this because it drives people insane. Nothing has changed on that score, so why the restriction on her using it was lifted is completely arbitrary bullshit - and she really doesn't do a whole heck of a lot with it anyway. The problem for Rose is that she's getting some sort of feedback from Lissa's new-found freedom, and it's affecting her mood, but the effects seem very patchy and inconsistent.

Mead's writing doesn't help. She begins this novel with a really cheap shot. It's a dream scene, wherein it initially looks like Rose is about to indulge herself in some hot sex, but in the end it turns out to be that she's simply tapping into Lissa's activities with Christian. She can evidently keep these at bay whilst awake, but fails dismally when asleep. It was neither impressive writing, nor a good writing technique.

Rather than turn over and go back to sleep, idiot Rose once again breaks the academy rules and sneaks outdoors. Once again her combat tutor Dimitri turns up. Either he is a really creepy stalker, or there's far-the-hell too much convenient coincidence going on here. Unlike Rose's mental link with Lissa, there is no such link at all with Dimitri, and therefore no excuse whatever for him to be always, tediously. ridiculously, irritatingly there. Again, it's really poor writing.

This external excursion serves two purposes. The first is to clue Rose in on the fact that neither she nor Lissa will be testifying in the case against Victor, which pisses Rose off. The second is that on her way back into the dorms, she sees the faint ghost of Mason - her dead friend from the previous volume. He appears to be pointing to something across campus, but never once does it occur to dumb-as-a-brick Rose to go see what he's pointing at.

Next, Rose discovers that she doesn't get to be Lissa's guardian during a trial period where the guardian wannabe's get to guard their Moroi around campus while existing guardians, pretending to be strigoi, stage no-holds-barred attacks. Rose has to guard Christian, and a guy named Eddie gets to guard Lissa.

Her first failure is to go on a tirade to the teachers about how wrong this is, like she's god almighty and they're pond scum. She behaves like a spoiled brat child. Next she fails in her actual assignment! She freezes when an attack is coming, mesmerized by the sight of Mason's ghost, and does nothing to prevent the attack, yet never once does she consider telling the review committee what happened! Major fail.

This is catastrophe on so many levels that it's really a joke. She simply lies about what happened, and conceals the hallucination by claiming she simply 'froze'. So not only is she being irresponsible about her mental health, she has also here proven that she can be so distracted from her duty that her charge is put at grave risk. Worse than this, though, is that she spends her entire time as a guardian gossiping and chatting with Christian and Lissa, allowing herself to be seriously distracted, and not paying anywhere near enough attention to her surroundings and potential threats. Rose simply doesn't get it - despite all her bravado about being a kick-ass guardian.

Bearing all that in mind, let's now consider the romance with Dimitri. It doesn't work! And it reads like atrocious fan-fiction. Dimitri actually is a kick-ass guardian, so why in the name of all that's holy would he ever pay any attention to a blustering hot air-bag like Rose? I can see why she'd be drawn to him: he's hot and she has the shallowness and mentality of a socially-challenged thirteen-year-old, but why would he be even remotely interested in her? She's a failing guardian who has no discipline and a truly poor attitude, so what is there about her which would attract a skilled and dedicated guardian like Dimitri? NOTHING! There is no basis for this relationship. It does not work, period.

Some reviewers have bitched about him being older and that therefore it's inappropriate for the two of them to become involved, especially as involved as they get in this book, but I will simply reiterate what I said in my review of Vampire Academy, which is that it doesn't matter a damn what you think about their ages since both of them are over the age of sexual consent in Montana. END OF STORY. What matters here is that he is her tutor. He is in an authority position over her and that's what makes his behavior completely inexcusable. That so few young people get this is what's truly disturbing about this relationship. It speaks badly that so few young-adult readers understand how wrong this is.

I found it ridiculous that Mead puts so much effort into telegraphing Rose's big "revelation" at the end: how she now wants it to be about her. It's a joke because this entire series is about her! It's all Rose all the time! It's about her views, her wants, her opinions, her activities, her priorities, her selfishness. Of course it's about her. She's telling the story. It's never been about anyone else but Rose. Jeeze!

I also found it hilarious how many negative reviewers gave this a two star rating, but then professed their desire to read the next volume. Seriously?! Why would you ever want to read more if you felt it was so bad? This is why I initially rejected the star rating system. I only changed my mind and began using either one or five stars (and nothing in between) because I realized that I am rewarding bad novels by not rating them one star (I would use zero stars if it was an option) and I was unfairly downgrading good novels by not giving them any stars. To me a novel is worth reading or it is not, which is why I now give all of my reviews give a one or a five star rating.

But back to the story, fan-fiction that it is: Rose plays a Clueless Sue in this novel, too (apart from not getting what Mason's ghost is trying to tell her). She knows that Moroi are talking about grouping together, learning to fight, and protecting themselves, yet when she sees random Moroi turning up with bruises on their faces, she never once figures out that there's perhaps practice fighting going on amongst themselves. That's not what's happening exactly, but it's close enough that I have to ask: how far does she have to have her head embedded in her own ass to not figure out something in short order?

And why does she need to seek out Victor and get his advice? How does that work when she hates him so much? Yeah - she ends up going to the trial after all, and she goes to see Victor and have a nice, Cozy chat with him despite her supposed hatred of him. On the journey there she sees dark shadows and ghosts on the plane, but she pretends she has a headache! Bad guardian again. After the trial, she and Lissa have their fortunes read. The fortune teller does what all frauds do: she tells them things which are so vague that you can back-fill them with any future events you like and make the 'prophecy' come true, yet this is referred to as 'prediction'! What a joke! No, a prediction has date, time and details. It isn't a ridiculously vague claim that could fit any one of a number of events and be made 'true' by this random coincidence.

In another fan-fiction moment, the cluelessness of the Moroi queen is revealed after the trial, as she warns Rose off from having an affair with Adrian (which isn't happening), yet she doesn't warn-off Adrian himself. Rose speaks to the queen like the latter is some girl in high-school with Rose, yet never once does the queen seem offended by her attitude! Some queen. On the way back from the trial, Rose has a complete breakdown, but despite this, I knew before I read another page that it would in no way affect her still being in the running to be a guardian. Bad writing.

But it gets worse. Rose wakes up in hospital and there's no-one with her save for the doctor and two guardians, Alberta, and, of course, Dimitri, who is never not there. There is no reason for either guardian to be there. There is a reason for someone like Lissa to be there, or the school principal, but none of these people show up, and evidently no one considers calling Rose's mother. This is bordering on the ridiculous.

Rose continues lying to her best friend Lissa, even as she 'fesses up to Alberta and Dmitri that she's been seeing ghosts. Rose once again talks everyone into doing what she wants and she's put back on guardian duty (who says dhampir don't have compulsion?!) - but on a 'half-time' basis. This seems to have been forgotten when Mead depicts her as being worried about curfew and separating from Christian rather than staying in his dorm room as she had been doing. Once again she sees Mason, and this time he can communicate but he can't talk, so all he can do is indicate 'yes' or 'no' with movements of his head. This is truly pathetic and an amateurishly bad way of creating fake suspense.

Oh, and Dimitri dies at the end - but not really. In fact, this will be the pattern in volume 4, as well. This novel sucked and is warty to the max.

His Secret Superheroine by Patricia Eimer

Title: His Secret Superheroine
Author: Patricia Eimer
Publisher: Entangled
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 Entangled Publishing. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. I really appreciate the opportunity to review this novel, so thank you, Entangled!

ErratARC:
p71 "You're kind are what-" should be "Your kind are what-"
p83 "...effect Liza." should be "...affect Liza"

p125 "Flittering..." should be "Flitting..."
p196 "...his bicep..." should be "his biceps..." It's not singular.
p200 "...letting Liza slid out of her seat..." should be "...letting Liza slide out of her seat..."

Patricia Eimer, you had me at "TARDIS". That's an automatic five stars as far as I'm concerned. Just kidding. I'd really love to do that, but I have to rate the book, not her Doctor Who references! Sorry! But I knew then that I'd feel wretched if I didn't like this novel. Fortunately for all concerned, I loved it.

I have to confess right up front that I'm not a fan of sappy romance novels, so it was with some trepidation that I asked to read this one. The problem is that I couldn't not request it once I saw this scenario. How cool a premise is it?! If handled right, a story like this has the potential to be really entertaining and amusing. And in the end I can't begin to tell you how pleasantly surprised and really thrilled I was with this story. Okay, I lied; I can tell you, so here goes!

This is St. Louis Superheroes #1, and the story is about Peyton Pearson née Hughes, a woman who develops super powers after her (now ex-)husband (also a superhero) tampered with her birth-control pills. So she fights crime in St. Louis. When she's evicted from her house (denounced as a super hero sympathizer) through the the machinations of the very powerful 'Safer America Party', Dylan Wilson, a neighbor who lives directly across the street, offers her his spare room to live in while she gets back on her feet.

This offer will help her, and it will also help him because she has a really good relationship with his young daughter Liza, and it will give him some ammunition in his fight against Liza's drunk mother Aria, who is a total jerk and who wants full custody (although I have to confess that I strongly suspected it might not look quite as good as that when presented in some lights as it does in others!).

The problem is that Peyton has the hots for Dylan, but he's a police officer who's dead-set against super heroes getting involved where he doesn't think they belong. Worse, St. Louis is a breeding ground for an anti-superhero movement of which Dylan is a member. She doesn't know that Dylan also has the hots for her, being cursed, as usual, with a poor self-image dumped on her (as it is on every woman) by the abusive fashion and cosmetics industries. No wonder she doesn't trust men!

The author writes remarkably well, with a good eye for dialog and some really amusing asides, so despite my reservations, I was quickly drawn into this story - which also has a really good plot. Finally - a romance story that makes sense! It's told in third person, too, so I was seriously on-board with that.

The chapters alternate somewhat in perspective, some being told from Dylan's viewpoint, others from Peyton's. And the author doesn't shy away from plain English description either. If you're offended by bare-bones references to human anatomy, this might not be for you! In short, this isn't your usual romance novel. Either that or I've read some disturbingly perverse ones in my time....

The characters are intelligent, varied, and interesting, and the story keeps moving. Even relatively minor characters such as Dylan's daughter Liza, his younger sister Laura, and Peyton's friend (and side-kick) Shea stood out as having real personality and presence. I adored the interactions between Peyton and Shea. I also loved the name of Peyton's cat, but despite intense pressure from the Safer America Party I am not going to out this poor cat in public....

If I have a complaint it's that there's too much emphasis on lustful glances and lascivious thoughts on the part of the two main protagonists, and not enough on other qualities which might attract them to each other - such as personality, sense of humor, decency, integrity, empathy, and so on. I would have liked to have seen far more of that, but I guess that's par for the course for a novel in this genre. Fortunately, even this aspect is significantly toned-down as the novel progresses and the tension heightens. So I began enjoying it as I would any decent novel (and to hell with the genre!).

Peyton is no wilting violet. She has a presence and a personality (and a temper!). She has real problems and real feelings about them, and she has no problem in standing-up for her principles, especially against her super hero ex, who is actually stalking her. And there's no sad little love triangle here either, thank goodness.

If I have another complaint it's about the use of the word 'superheroine'. I know reasonable people can disagree, and I am not female, believe it or not, so perhaps my opinion carries less weight in this matter, but it bothers me, in the arena of female equality, that we're still saddling women with the '-ine' and the '-ienne', and the '-ess' (and even the '-ix') suffixes.

Why superheroine, and not simply superhero? I would ask this same question in other areas, too. For example, why actress and not actor? Why comedienne? Does a woman deserve less than a man? Or is there a problem that 'actor' and 'comedian' have been traditionally male, and women don't want to be saddled with that?

If that's the case, then why do we not still have murderesses? We have female murderers, but no murderesses any more! That gender-specific term (along with some others) has already fallen into disuse, and I don't see any movement afoot to resurrect it. Can we not allow - and even encourage - other specifically-female descriptive forms to lapse likewise? It just bothers me that there has to be a separate name if you're female. Okay, maybe 'mistress' and 'dominatrix' might be hard to get rid of, I admit! But waiter seems to me to be significantly better than wait-person...!

On a small point of order - especially since this is a super hero novel, I have to take issue with one of Peyton's epithets: "For Spiderman's sake...." It's actually Spider-Man. For some reason, while DC tends to run the "man" right into the superhero name, Marvel tends to hyphenate; Ant-man, Giant-man, Psycho-Man, Spider-Man, Stilt-Man, X-Men. The exception to this 'rule' seems to be Iron Man for some reason. DC comics goes the opposite way, as in Superman and Batman, although Bat-Man is also used. I'm just saying!

I have to ask about "Klangon" on page 53, the start of chapter six. Is it supposed to be klaxon? Or is it a humorous play on clanging and klaxon? Either way it's funny. The humor is one thing which impressed me repeatedly. I don't know what it is, but the author is on my wavelength (or I on hers), and she just keeps coming out with turns of phrase that tickle my funny bone, such as when she says, on page 57, regarding Peyton's chest showing through her accidentally soaked T-shirt "...both the girls were completely visible." That just got me right in the mammary glands. Yes, I know that situations such as these, apparently requisite in romance novels, are sadly contrived, but there's a readable way to do it and a sickly saccharine way to do it, and Patricia Eimer evidently doesn't do sickly saccharine.

Inevitably in this kind of romance there's a fight, a misunderstanding, a cross-purposes situation. I felt that the one in this novel was weak. Dylan didn't have a leg to stand on so his arguments were forced and empty, but what are you going to do? It was a small price to pay for the quality of the rest of the novel. Overall, this was so well done that it really felt a lot less like a romance-genre novel than it did just a regular novel of some other genre.

So in the end, only one question remains: Patricia Eimer, when is the next novel in this series coming out, and can I be a beta reader?! I guess that's two questions. Okay, I'm going to go off quietly by myself and look for other novels by this same author....

So B. It by Sarah Weeks

Title: So B. It
Author: Sarah Weeks
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

Audio book beautifully read by Cherry Jones.

This was an audio book version of a story about Heidi Demuth's desire to learn the truth of her own origins - an origin which isn't so mysterious because it rapidly becomes obvious from whence she hails once she starts to dig into it. What's not so obvious is the reason for the secrecy and the reason she was kept from that knowledge, and it's a sad truth that she learns. It all begins with her mom's uttering of the nonsense word "Soof". Mom doesn't have a very large vocab. Heidi knows all of the words and what they mean; however, Soof is unique and necessitates an investigation.

The story is beautifully told and beautifully read. Heidi is 12 and lives with her mentally disabled mother. She and her mom are helped in her day-to-day life by her next door neighbor, Bernadette, who Heidi calls Bernie. Bernie can only help because she can get into their apartment through on old and previously disused connecting door. If she tries to go out into the hallway in their apartment block to walk next door that way, she freezes up and collapses, becoming all-but catatonic. Heidi thinks this problem is named angora phobia which causes her some confusion...!

One day, playing a memory card game, Bernie discovers that Heidi is astoundingly lucky. She can match every pair in the face-down cards, first time, every time. She can also win money on the slot machines, which is how she purchases the ticket to travel from Reno, in Nevada, where she lives, to Liberty, in New York state, where she believes her mother was once resident in the Hilltop Home for the mentally challenged.

Using her luck, Heidi is able to casually 'partner' herself up with various people on the three-day trip so that she always looked like she was traveling with someone, such as Georgia Sweet or Alice Willinsky. When she arrives at hilltop, she meets a guy named Elliot, who says to her, "Soof". It's not long before Heidi discovers her true relationship to Thurman Hill, the irascible and unhelpful proprietor of the Hilltop home, and to Elliot himself.

This quite short story, and though very sad in some ways, is charming, and warmly told, especially in audio book format. I recommend it. And no, the cover has zero to do with the story. It's just another example of Big Publishing™ being completely clueless when it comes to dealing decently with authors.

Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk

Title: Invisible Monsters Remix
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Norton
Rating: WARTY!

Chuck Palahniuk evidently has a high opinion of himself. He seems to be laboring under the delusion that he's the only person ever to grasp that fashion magazines are a far more insidious abuse of women than ever the porn industry dreams of being. I guess this explains why he wrote a truly ugly novel as a commentary on the 'physical beauty pandemic' which afflicts modern society, at least in the western world - and in those nations which foolishly seek to emulate us.

This is the second novel the author wrote. It was intended to be the first published, but it was rejected by the publisher "for being too disturbing" according to wikipedia. I agree with that assessment, but probably not for the same reasons. The original version came out in 1999, but it was not, apparently, the version the author wanted, hence his remix, released in 2012.

Some reviewers have commented that they've heard of "director's cuts" for movies, but never for novels. Clearly they haven't detected the rise of the self-publishing industry. And clearly they don't grasp that while we have director's cuts of movies, we never get a writer's cut - unless the writer is also the director.

The novel was never intended to be read linearly, apparently, and the remix was published to 'fix' this by adding some more material, and appending an instruction to the end of each chapter advising which chapter should be read next. Not only is his layout unlike that of real fashion magazines (and a host of other magazines which have nothing to do with fashion, I might add - as well as newspapers), it doesn't even address the real problem with fashion magazines whose sole purpose is to berate women for being ugly. 'Beautiful' in this case is defined as whatever the whim of the fashion magazine's editor is, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

So Palahniuk's take on this not only misses the mark, it also misses even the rather clueless mark at which he does take aim. The novel's layout made absolutely no sense. I can see that it would make sense if this were written as a Choose Your Own Adventure style of book, wherein you're offered a variety of options on each page as to which page you should read next, dependent upon what kind of outcome you favor, but when there's only one choice, why not simply make that the next chapter? Why dictate that people must learn by rote what they already know (assuming they possess even a modest amount of gray matter) by imposing a forced march through his novel - literally going back and forth like a ping-pong ball, and ending in the middle? It's so farcical and pretentious that it forces us beyond ludicrous and into plaid.

And in the name of all that's holy, which moron came up with the idea of doing this for the audio-book version? And the Kindle? I'm not about to start disk-diving in a moving vehicle when I'm driving on a 65mph highway! I don't know of anyone other that the acutely perverse among us who would be seriously interested in jumping up and down to change out disks and seek tracks even if they were at home listening to this. Screw that for a self-tapping screw.

It only goes to prove that Big Publishing™ - the very evil against which Palahniuk supposedly rails - has its head only as far up its ass as Palahniuk does if he thinks he's making a statement here. Palahniuk has a dot net address yet does nothing with it. If he really wanted to make a statement in this manner, why not distribute his cobbled-together bits and pieces across the Internet and let people surf it? Now that would be an experience. Evidently Palahniuk would rather let his readers do the work as long as he can enjoy establishment benefits.

Believe it or not, that actually wasn't the first problem I had with this novel. I wasn't impressed - even before I reached the point of the author telling me exactly where to go - by the writing itself, or by the audio narration (which the author does himself along with a couple of other people). Jump this, Flash that simply was not entertaining. It was actually nothing but irritating, and it most certainly wasn't linear, even within each section, because the story started in the middle of something, and with no preamble and jumped every which way but loose from there on out. Maybe I should have started on the last track first, if this isn't linear? I must admit I was curious (for about the length of that thought) to see how it would read (listen!) if I loaded this onto an iPod shuffle and had it play randomly, but why would Palahniuk think of doing something like that when he can simply not?

I thought the author completely nailed the fatuous pretension of magazines like Vogue, insofar as he wrote a couple of paragraphs about it, but that doesn't take any deep insight. My own dislike of such magazines began right there on the cover, where the magazine title routinely obscures the model's forehead as if to assure us that's what behind there is completely unimportant, and instead we must focus solely on her pore-less skin. Although I admit that magazines seem to have learned their lesson from somewhere (not from me, I'm sure! I'm not that important!), since they appear to do this far less than they used to, it still happens.

Other than that I found nothing to like on disk one, but since I was doing this at the urging of a friend and at the time, had no other audio books to listen to, I intended to press on for at least two more disks. I'm such an addict! In the end I skipped the last part of disk one, hoping for disk two to be an improvement, but I became so quickly irritated with that, that I quit listening right there and returned the disk set to the library in short order. Let someone else suffer through it!

Normally I hold on to a disk set until the library has the next one available, even if I don't quite like it. It's a testimony to how much I disliked this, that I would rather go without than keep listening to it until a replacement arrived. Part of this wasn't just the text itself but the chalk on a blackboard reading voice of Anna Fields. It was awful! So, all-in-all, I cannot even remotely recommend this novel.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Title: Rant
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
Rating: WARTY!

This might sound crazy or even hypocritical from someone who wrote a whack-ass novel like Baker Street, but I just could not get into Rant at all. I didn't find it entertaining, and that format typically doesn't work for me - the "snippet" format, where there are bits and pieces cobbled together. I much prefer a traditional story. I loved the movie Carrie, but I didn't like the book it was taken from, written by Stephen King, because it was in that same kind of format - diary entries, newspaper clippings, and so on.

This is supposed to be an oral history of the titular serial killer, and even the snippet format would have worked had it offered some entertainment value, but there was none. It consisted of nothing more than people I don't know and have no reason to respect or care for making what they thought were deep and smart-ass remarks, all of which fell flat for me, and none of which really had anything to do with the purported topic anyway. The only thing I really read here was Chuck Palahniuk dictating to us how 'hip' and 'kewl' he must be whilst preening himself with a fountain pen. Or was that a vomiting pen?

I couldn't even finish listening to the first disk in the audio book, and the female voice was nothing but irritating, which made the text that much more grating on the ear. It would also help if the audio book people could agree on how to pronounce the author's name! I got two different pronunciations in two different audio books. I cannot recommend this based on what I heard.

Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker

Title: Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror
Author: Mike Tucker
Publisher: Crown Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

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

Errata:
p27 "Her and her Doctor..." should really be "She and her Doctor..."
p66 "...that your were some of them..." should be "...that you were some of them..."
p69 "...that the Germans..." should be "...than the Germans..."

I never got into the habit of reading Doctor Who novels because the medium is such a visual one so closely tied to TV that it feels wrong, somehow, to read the stories, but I'm excited about the impending new season with a new doctor, and I did actually review a novel some time ago titled Shada. I made an exception for that one because it was written by Douglas Adams, and because it was canonical - based on an un-transmitted TV show script written by Adams himself. Some of that script was even filmed, but it was never finished. Part of it (well, two brief scenes) was shown as an integral part of the 20th anniversary special titled, The Five Doctors transmitted in November 1983.

When I saw two novels available for review with the new doctor on the cover, I decided to take a chance - and hope the novels were not older ones which had simply had a new cover slapped on them. When you think about it, it ultimately doesn't matter given the history of the show, with its ever-mutable doctor, but The Doctor, when it comes to novels, is really defined by his companion, so if Clara is in it, for example, you know that The Doctor can only be the Matt Smith or the Peter Capaldi Incarnation (so far) so until I read it, I feared that this novel could be about either one despite the cover. However, and blessedly, Mike Tucker removes all speculation in chapter one, revealing this novel to indeed be about the newest doctor.

There's a prologue to this novel. I do not read prologues and I never miss them. In my opinion, it's an amateur conceit. To me, if it's worth relating, it's worth putting right there in chapter one. On the positive side, this novel isn't told in first person PoV, which was a pleasant discovery. I find that 1PoV rarely works well and is uncomfortably restricting to the author. It fails dismally in Doctor Who novels because it destroys the immediacy which the viewers demand, and which the show delivers so generously.

This novel, I'm happy to report, begins exactly like a TV episode - The Doctor and Clara appearing out of the TARDIS who has delivered them, in her infinite wisdom, to yet another hot-spot. This time it's in the Wiltshire countryside in England, where inexplicably large insects and arthropods reminiscent (somewhat!) of those which actually lived on Earth during the Carboniferous period, have begun appearing in the little, and aptly-named village of Ringstone.

I have a theory that the reason Steven Moffat picked an older actor to replace Matt Smith is his love for the entire series, not just the modern reinvention, and that Capaldi, in some ways, harks back to the time of the first Doctor, William Hartnell (it also seems to have something in common with the incarnation of the sixth doctor). I may be wrong about that, but I think one of the reasons I liked this novel was because it also, in a small way, harks back to that time, in particular the episode titled The Web Planet.

It's not long before a dead body shows up wrapped in a cocoon of spider silk, and the police and even the army, become involved - not that that seems to help much! It all seems to lead back to an experimental science lab which has opened for business in the area....

I have to say that I had some practical issues with the enlarged invertebrates. You can't simply enlarge an invertebrate without paying the hefty price which physics demands. The laws of nature are not like the pirate code (which is more like guidelines, really). The laws of physics are much more akin to solid prison walls which effectively trap convicts in cells. Organisms were able to grow so large in the Carboniferous because there was extra oxygen in the air, and even so, they did not grow to ridiculous proportions. Most of them maxed-out at a couple of feet or less. There was a centipede which grew to seven feet, but that was restricted to the ground and had a very flat body which didn't pose problems for oxygenation.

If you're going to propose a beetle the size of a small delivery van, you run into all sorts of difficulties. First it's really hard to passively oxygenate something that massive with internal passages so far removed from the surface, and secondly, there's the problem of supporting that massive weight on such spindly legs. It doesn't work, not even with a spider's hydraulic legs. There's a real limit on how large invertebrates can grow and still be able to breathe and move. That said, these organisms were artificially created, so we can allow some leeway for that, but even so, they were still highly-improbably sized in my amateur opinion!

One thing which bothers me about stories like this is the laser-like focus of the mutant beast upon hunting humans! Humans are not the natural prey of invertebrates. Yes, we get stung by wasps and bitten by spiders, but they're not hunting us when they do that. They're defending something. Yes, mosquitoes do hunt us, but aside from that, invertebrates, even giant ones, wouldn't zero in on humans and ignore their natural prey - especially if that prey was the same size as them.

The Primeval TV series that came out of Britain did this, too. Every week, almost without fail, some voracious antique animal came after the investigators and it got a bit tedious. As it happens, vertebrates are largely unaware of humans and don't think of us as prey. Indeed, they really don't think in any real sense at all. They're more like robots, or a computer program that, rather like the hologram of Dr Alfred Lanning in the movie I, Robot which has fixed responses to an assortment of inputs. They don't become 'enraged' or 'frustrated'!

Again, since the ones in this novel are genetically engineered, we can allow some leeway, but there's a limit to how much anthropomorphization of insects a person can accept, especially when they shriek!! And contrary to popular opinion, the bombardier beetle doesn't shoot acid from its butt. Nor does it shoot the components: hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones. These two are mixed prior to eruption, and the hydrogen peroxide breaks down, providing the oxygen which heats up the fluid, resulting in a literally boiling, irritating liquid. It's definitely something you wouldn't want in your eyes, but while the fluid would be acrid, it's not a highly corrosive acid and it wouldn't burn through a helicopter (although it might short-out electrics).

Again, do we allow leeway for the fact that these invertebrates are artificially engineered? You can, but there comes a point along this leeway after which you must ask yourself, how much more of this am I going to permit before I give up in disgust?" I guess that point is right after you stop having fun?!

But those concerns aside, I did enjoy this novel. It felt like an episode of the show. It was inventive, and interesting, with realistic characters doing realistic things. There was a mad scientist, and there were Nazi schemes, and dangerous insects, and time travel, and aliens. In the final analysis, what's not to like about a story with all that?! I recommend this novel. The Doctor orders it to be taken with a pinch of salt, but nonetheless to be taken!

Doctor Who: The Blood Cell by James Goss

Title: Doctor Who: The Blood Cell
Author: James Goss
Publisher: Crown Publishing
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 for this review.

I never got into the habit of reading Doctor Who novels because the medium is such a visual one so closely tied to TV that it feels wrong, somehow, to read the stories, but I'm excited about the impending new season with a new doctor, and I did actually review a novel some time ago titled Shada. I made an exception for that one because it was written by Douglas Adams, and because it was canonical - based on an un-transmitted TV show script written by Adams himself. Some of that script was even filmed, but it was never finished. Part of it (well, two brief scenes) was shown as an integral part of the 20th anniversary special titled, The Five Doctors transmitted in November 1983.

When I saw two novels available for review with the new doctor on the cover, I decided to take a chance - and hope the novels were not older ones which had simply had a new cover slapped on them. Yes, I'm an addict, and I admit it. I couldn't wait for my august fix in August! When you think about it, it ultimately doesn't matter given the history of the show, with its ever-mutable doctor, yet when it comes to novels, The Doctor is really defined by his companion, so if Clara is in it, for example, you know that The Doctor can only be the Matt Smith or the Peter Capaldi Incarnation (so far). This story could be about either one notwithstanding the cover.

In this particular novel, we find The Doctor in prison on an asteroid, apparently incarcerated for nefarious crimes which are unspecified. Clara is initially nowhere in sight. The story is, disturbingly, told from first person PoV by the warden of the prison. It's a curious thing, because it does, in a small way, evoke the viewer's experience when watching the show, but a moment's more thought will show that it's just not right.

The problem is that when we're actually watching a show, we're directly seeing what The Doctor and his companions are up to, but putting the warden between us and The Doctor forces us to cut that immediate connection. Instead of watching The Doctor, we're constrained here to watch the warden watch The Doctor and it makes the story awfully third-hand and depressingly dreary. We're no longer part of the action, but confined to listening placidly to a story told by a boring narrator - and the story isn't that interesting to begin with.

The energy of the TV show comes from The Doctor or his companion(s) doing their thing, and being threatened, and overcoming obstacles. You can't tell it passively. This was rather like when Ian Fleming wrote The Spy Who Loved me and it worked just as badly.

The Doctor is initially referred to as Prisoner 428, but it's obvious who it is. Clara shows up briefly, in short scenes where she's a visitor trying to get in to see The Doctor, and trying to get the governor to let him go before bad things happen. (Perhaps either I or The Doctor might have worded that better!).

The Doctor doesn't actually seem in much need of being freed, since he can evidently, and despite having all his belongings confiscated, escape from his cell at will. Getting off the asteroid is a larger problem, but he doesn't want to - not immediately. He tries to warn the governor of the danger, although in true Doctor Who fashion, he's too vague. The problem is that there's something running loose on the asteroid - something which is preying on the prisoners, you see....

I have to confess that I wasn't impressed by this novel. It struck me as being very derivative of the season six episode The God Complex, wherein Matt Smith's Doctor, along with Amy and Rory, find themselves trapped in a "hotel" with something stalking they and others, who are trapped there with them. The only real difference is that in that episode, the prisoners ("guests") were running around outside the cells (rooms), and the dangers were in the rooms, but there was also a 'monster' stalking them.

I wasn't a huge fan of that episode either, although I did find myself dearly wishing that Amara Karan, who played Rita, would become a companion. She was smart, amusing, resourceful, strong, and interesting, as well as being a positive replacement for the usual white Anglo-Saxon companion of which we see all too many in the show. Unfortunately, Toby Whithouse killed her off, and Steven Moffat didn't stop him!

I cannot recommend this novel because it really was not very interesting. The 'settings' were constrictive and monotonous, without much excitement in them. Clara, who has been a powerful companion rivaling Amy, and who is a delight as such, was completely marginalized here, and for all practical purposes portrayed as a bit of a ditz, which was not appreciated. There was nothing exciting or inventive happening, and I couldn't even finish reading it. I reached page 81, which is roughly 60% of the way through, and couldn't generate sufficient enthusiasm to read any further.

Reckless by Cornelia Funke

Rating: WARTY!

The second volume in this series is reviewed elsewhere on my blog.

I seem to have a finely-honed skill for picking up a novel that looks interesting and getting it home only to discover that it's part of a series, and it's also not the first in the series. This seems to happen almost routinely with audio books - which are not, in my experience, known for being very forthcoming in this regard (or in any useful regard for that matter).

Anyway, that's what happened here. Fearless is volume 2 in a series referred to as 'Mirrorworld", and which begins with Reckless and ends with Heartless - which is a terribly foreboding title given the subject of volume two! The problem here is that telling me that a volume is a "Mirrorworld novel" is not the same thing as telling me that it's 'Mirrorworld #2'! Big Publishing™ doesn't seem to get simple niceties like that. As Kristen cashore showed admirably with her Graceling and Fire, and Bitterblue series, you can have three novels in the same world, none of which is necessarily or critically dependent upon the others for enjoyment. They're in the same world, and are sequential in a sense, but they're not three episodes of the same story.

All this to explain why the only reason I picked up this novel after reading its sequel, Fearless, unintentionally out of order (and disliking it), was that I very much liked the character of Fox. I wanted to learn of her origins, and of how she and Jacob got together, but after starting the second novel feeling not so much like I was stepping into the middle of things, I started the first novel feeling like this was at least the second in a series and I'd missed the previous volumes! How weird is that? And it told me squat about Fox. Thanks for wasting my precious life, mother Funke.

So yes, the biggest problem I ha with this volume was that I was really disappointed to discover that the entire Fox encounter had been completely bypassed! The first few pages deal with Jacob and Will when they were kids and Jacob first discovered the mirror through which he could pass into an alternate fairy-tale reality. Right after that, a dozen years pass in nothing more than a chapter header, and all the fun stuff has gone by. Instead of finding Jacob and Will exploring the Mirrorworld together and carrying us along with them, Will is already vicariously cursed by Bad Fairy via a Goyl, and is in process of turning into stone, and Jacob is a grown man, already partnered with Fox and searching for a cure. In short, this novel is exactly like the second one, no Wills, very little Fox, and Jacob running around like a headless chicken. I have to say I was truly disappointed.

Both novels make a big deal about Jacob entering this mirror world to track down his father, but at no point in either novel is he ever actually engaged in this pursuit! We get a plethora of references to fun fairy-tale things which Jacob has discovered in his forays, and nary a mention of his forlorn pursuit of dad. That was just dumb. For that matter, we're never treated to any stories of Jacob actually recovering any of these fun fairy-tale items we're repeatedly told he's collected. That's where Funke screws this up.

This novel was really precisely like it's successor (or that precisely like this) in that the only thing Jacob is engaged upon in both volumes is pursuit of a cure. In this volume, the cure is for his brother, and in the next volume the cure is for himself since he screwed up curing his brother and ended up being cursed himself. How many volumes of Jacob the screw-up can one person be expected to read? Well, I exceeded my limit at one and then foolishly went back for another hoping that it would entertain me and allow me to meet a really cool character. But once again I was disappointed. I'm done Funke-ing around with this author.

Fearless by Cornelia Funke

Rating: WARTY!

Audio book Read by Elliot Hill. I review volume one in this trilogy elsewhere on my blog.

You know when I see a novel on the shelf and it says "A Mirrorworld story" that doesn't automatically convey to me that it's part of a sequential series for which you'd be well-advised to track-down volume one before you embark upon any others - and especially not if that same cover doesn't say "Mirrorworld #2" or something along those lines.

What such a note implies to me is that it's set in the same world as other volumes. It implies something like Kristin Cashore's Graceling and Fire, and Bitterblue, where the stories take place in the same world, but you can read them in any order and it makes no difference to your enjoyment. That's a world. If you're going to make them sequential then you really need to put something on your cover to indicate that!

Not that it really mattered here, to any tragic extent, but the bottom line is that words do matter, and I find it as disheartening as it is mind-boggling that the very people who ought to have the best handle on this - novel writers - are so evidently blind to the power and value of words. OTOH, writers typically have nothing whatsoever to do with their covers unless they self-publish, so I guess it comes right back down to Big Publishing™ being one of the most ass-backward, clueless, restrictive, unimaginative and monumentally screwed-up rats' nests of our time.

I'm not a fan of trilogies. Authors and publishers love them of course because it's the easiest and laziest way to milk money from the public, but I think they're way overdone and merely serve to stretch out a novel which could have been related quite thrillingly (or at least satisfactorily) in one volume, into something that's unwieldy and often frustrating or even boring. Case in point, the volume under scrutiny right here.

I was rather less than impressed with this volume. Clearly there's a history that you miss when entering this without reading volume one, but I really didn't feel like it was a hindrance - like I was missing anything. There was a lot of referencing of vol 1, but there didn't seem to be any understanding of what was going on here which was stymied (yes, stymied!) by my not having been there and done that. This story could be taken as a stand-alone.

The problem I had with it was that it was overly long, and rather dense, tedious, and rambling. I didn't like the main character, Jacob at all. He seemed too preoccupied and self-centered. Yes, he had some reason to be given his condition, but even so! Jacob is obviously a Grimm who isn't called Grimm (though that's precisely what he is: grim), but who is called Reckless for reasons which go unexplained here (and in the previous volume).

Jacob's problem is that he carries a dark fairy curse in the visible form of a moth on his chest - one which is in process of eating his heart out in six bites (one for each letter of the fairy's name), after which it will fly away taking his life with it. I have no idea what this means. Clearly it isn't literally eating his heart because after a couple of bites he would bleed out and die. Nonetheless, the moth sits there looking like a tattoo, garnering for itself a new wing-spot with each slow bite it takes, and engendering ever more pain as it eats. Dark fairies love them some pain, evidently.

My problem is that I didn't care. I initially thought that maybe I would have cared had I read the first volume, but no - I went back and read the first and was just as disappointed and disillusioned with that as I was with this one. This volume is what I have to deal with. Indeed, the only character I enjoyed and cared about was Jacob's companion Celeste, referred to as Fox for most of the story. She's a human who was evidently granted the ability to become a Vixen. Jacob met her in vol 1 when she was hardly more than a child, and he rescued her from a trap when she was in her fox form. Since then they've been companions.

Fox I found really intriguing, but she gets hardly any air-time here. Instead we get all Jacob all the time, pretty much, searching fruitlessly for a solution to his problem, running out of options, and largely ignoring everyone and everything else, including Fox. He doesn't even tell her what his problem is, so how close can they be? Yet Funke expects us to buy that there's a budding romance here.

Being a Grimm, sorry, a Reckless, Jacob has a brother named Will. Will had a curse upon him that Jacob saved him from in vol 1, by speaking the dark fairy's name, hence his own curse. The fact that Will isn't even in this story (I don't count the brief encounter at the beginning), and that his brother is dying, struck me as callous at best and evil at worst on Will's part. He evidently doesn't know about Jacob's curse - I guess he's thinks he was magically saved, but how close can these brothers be if they don't share these things? How dumb is Will exactly that he thinks his salvation cost nothing?

Both novels make a big deal about Jacob entering this mirror world to track down his father, but at no point in either novel is he ever actually engaged in this pursuit! We get a plethora of references to fun fairy-tale things which Jacob has discovered in his forays, and nary a mention of his forlorn pursuit of dad. That was just dumb. For that matter, we're never treated to any stories of Jacob actually recovering any of these fun fairy-tale items we're repeatedly told he's collected. That's where Funke screws this up.

I quickly tired of Jacob's non-stop wandering, poking around, and his endless failures. I could not become enamored of the story, and I have no desire to read volume three. Curiously, however, I was impressed enough by Fox that I decided I wanted to read volume one to learn her story, but while I'm reckless enough to do so, I'm not fearless. I fear that it will not impress me any more than this volume did. Is that heartless? As it happened, volume one tells us nothing of her either, so that was a waste of time, too.

A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer

Title: A Matter of Days
Author: Amber Kizer
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WORTHY!

This is a post-apocalyptic novel by the author of a separate trilogy (Fenestra) which I've read and enjoyed, but which wasn't what I consider really great. I wanted to read this to discover how she fared in a different milieu, and the answer is: not bad; not bad at all.

The set-up here is that of a run-away viral plague. A bio-weapon developed by the Chinese got out of the lab and swept the globe so fast that no vaccine could be created. However, the US military had been working on a generic vaccine to protect the president and important people, and this miraculously worked against this virus, preventing it from duplicating itself in the host's body.

One man managed to get doses of this vaccine to his niece, nephew, and their mother. Moron mom refused to take it until it was too late, thereby orphaning her children. Now Nadia, 16, and "Rabbit" (whose real name is Robert), 11, are alone and embarking upon a road trip to try to reach their uncle, 3,000 miles away. I have to say that 'Rabbit' is a really stupid name for a kid and it irritated me throughout this novel just as much as their having an uncle named Uncle Bean irritated me, but their mom's stupidity irritated me more

Anyway, their father was a military man who conveniently trained these two kids in using weapons, and in survival techniques, advising them to 'be the cockroach' in terms of surviving. Their uncle left them instructions on how to reach him. Why he otherwise abandoned them goes unexplained. I guess he thought their mom wouldn't be such a dumb-ass. I have no time for people who don't get vaccinated, and I especially despise parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids. That's nothing but child abuse, and it's sheer cowardice when they hide behind a sorry-assed and ignorant religion as an excuse.

It was their uncle's team which estimated that the Chinese virus would kill some 98% of the human population, which it appears to have done. Why it seems to have killed only decent people and left a preponderance of villains alive remains a mystery. Why it seems to have completely wiped out all military and emergency services personnel is another mystery. How that estimate was arrived at goes unexplained, as does the question of why any nation would want to create a virus that would effectively wipe out their own population!

We join the siblings as their mother dies and they're setting out on their journey from Seattle, heading to West Virginia at a point where we're 56 days into the viral attack. They're driving a jeep across country, through miles of abandoned towns, abandoned cars, people-less terrain, trying to stay alive, to find food and water, to avoid any hostile humans remaining, and to get to what they believe will be the safety of their uncle. It's going to take them a matter of 44 days to find out if he's still there.

They overnight in the snowy mountains in a luxury hotel which they have to themselves, and leave as soon as the weather eases up. They have an unpleasant encounter at a walled village, the inhabitants of which fire upon them out of panic that they're plague carriers. They're almost taken advantage of by an elderly women set up as a decoy, and almost run into an execution squad composed, it would appear, of the escapees from a nearby maximum security prison, but this is nothing when compared with the gang they run into in a shopping mall - a place where they acquire yet another passenger in the form of a little girl who's been hiding out and surviving in the mall ever since her mother, the mall director, died. She reminded me of 'Newt', the girl from the movie Aliens

Somewhere in the mid-west, they run into Zach, an out-of-work drug dealer from LA who has wandered there from LA to get away from the insanity and to find a place to live which he can learn to make self-sustainable in this new world. After some initial reservations, they settle with him for a couple of weeks and when they move on, he travels with them.

Don't worry - kizer is a smart writer, smart enough that this doesn't turn into a sad-sack of a teen trope romance. She writes it beautifully - not too little, never too much, and that's a good guide to the tone for this whole novel. It's never too much. There's no dramatic "Hey I'm fourteen and I'm destined to save the world". All Nadia has to do is save herself and her brother, and that's enough on anyone's plate.

Having championed Kizer as smart, I do have to qualify that by calling her out on a couple of really dumb things she wrote. She's yet another author who thinks there's such a thing as a "bicep". Nope, it's biceps (and triceps). A professional writer has no excuse for not knowing that.

The other issue I had was with her representing homeopathy as some sort of viable medical treatment. It's not. Homeopathy is outright fraud, and that's all there is to it. It's all bullshit and quackery and that's a scientific fact. And no, I won't entertain any commenters who try to say that they know someone who.... That's not how science works. Medical science works on the demonstrable, the repeatable. It doesn't work on folk tales and anecdote, so if you want to come after me on this, then bring the published mainstream science which supports your claims, otherwise I'll continue to hold to my supported position that homeopathy has no scientific standing and is therefore fraud, period.

That aside, this novel was great. There's no big drama here, although there is plenty of small dramas and some hair-raising encounters. The story is matter-of-fact, but realistic, entertaining, and interesting. Nadia is the kind of character which I'm delighted to find in YA stories, because she's a strong female character in every sense of the word. She's smart, although she's sometimes a bit dumb, she's strong, although sometimes she's weak. She's buoyant, although sometimes she's down. She's interesting and careful, reckless and fun, engaging and powerful, and well-worth reading about. I have no problem in recommending this novel.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Title: Shadow and Bone
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Publisher: Macmillan
Rating: WARTY!

If I'd known that Veronica Roth had endorsed this, I would have skipped it and I would have been smart to do so. This is the first Leigh Bardugo I've ever read. I was intrigued by the title and its similarity to Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I keep trying to think of a similar title for something I might write. Those titles are very evocative, aren't they? Interestingly, Laini Taylor also wrote a rather glowing review (although it did have some back-handed compliments in it) in the NYT, but this only leads me to question her sanity - or at least her impartiality, but Shadow and Bone is no Smoke and Bone; far from it.

The story started out great - set in a parallel universe in what appears to be tsarist Russia, but with magic and fantasy added. The main characters are Alina Starkov - a sort of cartographer in the military, and Mal Oretsev, a tracker in the military who she's known since childhood. Where it went disastrously, tragically wrong for me was in bringing in the sorry-assed, trope, cliché, so-called romance front-and-center and larding it all over the first chapter.

It was nauseating to read repeatedly of Alina's silent and whiny-assed pining for the Mal she can never have - but of course which we know she's destined to have after three drawn-out volumes of this novel that can't be anything but the beginning of the inevitable YA first person female narration trilogy. It was truly pathetic at a vomit-inducing level. It made Alina weak and useless, and rendered her life a complete vacuum when Mal wasn't there to fill it with Sunshine Lollipops And Rainbows for her. I have no respect at all for authors who do this and especially so where it's a female author betraying her own gender in such an air-headed and blinkered fashion.

I mean what use is a woman, Bardugo is quite evidently arguing here, without a man to validate her, especially when it's a man who has muscles, but no heart (not for her anyway) coupled with eyes for any girl but her. It's worse when he's such a major dumb-ass that he's completely blind to her feelings. This blindness and indifference will, of course, be richly rewarded for him as the story meanders toward its predictably sorry-assed ending where and he's able to take full possession of her regardless of his prior sins against her.

Had the novel failed to intrigue me with the story, I would have ditched it right there and then after reading only one chapter, sixteen pages. Why authors, and in the particular female authors, purposefully seek to hobble their main female characters by making them woeful appendages of some manly man continues to fascinate me as much as it depresses me, but this is all that some female authors seem able to achieve. It's truly disappointing, which makes it all the more wonderful to find authors who do get it, and who avoid these pitfalls so effortlessly.

But you know who I really blame for this? The readers. The young women (and not so young) who support authors like Bardugo by buying the trash they spew out. This was a NYT best-seller. Bardugo didn't do that - her undiscriminating readers did. Now that's a thing worth investigating: why do so many young women clamor so vociferously to sell-out their own gender? Why are they so ready and willing to countenance such badly-written trash?

Exhibit one, pure ignorance: I noted on page 30 that Bardugo doesn't quite get that arrows are nocked, not "notched". The nock is the cut at the feathered-end of the arrow. When this is placed on the bow string, the arrow is nocked.

Exhibit two, the naming of characters: I noted that one reviewer, who evidently knows far more Russian than I could ever pretend to, called out Bardugo on several points: Bardugo's character Ana Kuya, for example, is phonetically a reasonable approximation to a really rude exclamation in Russian. Alina Starkov is female fore-name coupled with a male last name, and Ilya Morozova is a male fore-name hitched to a female family name.

Exhibit three, stupid descriptions: "...eyes were so brown that they were almost black..."? Seriously? What the hell does that even mean? If your eyes are so brown, then they're brown, period. If they are almost black, then your eyes are not so brown that they're almost black, but so dark that they're almost black. Did Bardugo even have an editor on this and if so, then what was she smoking?

It's actually not just Bardugo. I've encountered this idiotic phrasing in more than one novel including, believe it or not, one which I concluded reading only this morning. In that case, it was an even more nonsensical case where someone's hair was "so black it's almost blue"! I grieve for the demise of the English language....

The story quickly brings in the army's transit through the nightmarish shadow-world known as The Fold, the haunt of the vicious 'volcra'. This was intriguing and made up for a lot of the sour romance, especially when, right at the point where Alina thought she and Mal were about to die, there was a sudden light as bright as the noon sun which emanated from Alina just as the fire avatars (well, that's what they were!) began running out of oomph in their ability to shoot fire into the sky to highlight the Volcra as targets.

At this point, our not-so-redoubtable Alina passes out, of course, being a Bardugo Babe (aka Lame Leigh Lady). When she recovers, she's under armed guard and is brought before The Darkling (I kid you not), who examines her and determines that she's a sun-summoner, and therefore a privileged Grisha, and therefore needs to be hastened back to the capital under heavily-armed guard, for immediate training. Alina is in denial. Unfortunately, it's right at this point that the Fjerdans attack, and suddenly her future isn't quite so certain.

Rather than become a victim or a hostage, she's saved by The Darkling and eventually arrives at the palace, where everyone is a privileged bitch. Yes, the evidently evil hero guy is named The Darkling, but it's his eyes which fascinate me. At one point Bardugo has Alina describe them as quartz, at another point, as granite, later still as slate-colored. Is this guy stoned or is it just Bardugo? Why even name him The Darkling - why not just call him Rocky?

Oddly enough, Alina's arrival at the palace completely betrays the idea which Bardugo has tried to plant, that the "Grisha" - the magical avatars - are exalted and that she is the most exalted of them all. The servants treat Alina like a serf, showing neither respect nor deference! Go figure.

I have to take a moment to ask, at this point, exactly what kind of a soldier Alina is. She appears to have skipped basic training altogether, because every military situation to which she's subjected, she's a complete disaster, "...like a baby, making noise, don't know what to do." as Neytiri te Tskaha Mo'at'ite would have put it. In her first fight, she runs like a coward. And what's with that long, luscious hair? They don't cut hair when you join the military in Ravka? How do they cope with fleas and lice? Apparently these aren't a problem since Alina never mentions them. All she's concerned with is her physical appearance and why she can't have the guy she wants. Nothing else enters whatever it is she possesses as an excuse for a mind.

On page 170, Bardugo uses the phrase "...a jolt of surety...". I thought she had used this wrongly, but she had not; however, that pause for thought stopped my reading long enough for me to really think about this whole section and to realize that it made no sense. The next thing Alina mentions is a necklace, but she pulls this out of (to be polite) nowhere. The point of slaughtering the stag to get its antlers was to create an 'amplifier' - a kind of amulet which boosts a Grisha's power. Alina had seen several of these worn as bracelets by others, but nowhere was a necklace ever mentioned, so how she makes this bizarre leap is a complete mystery. Aside from the barbarity of wearing powdered antler from a slaughtered majestic animal around her neck, I just thought it represented some really oddball writing. Given that these people also slaughtered animals for furs, I guess it's not really that much out of the ordinary, is it?

I've read a lot of negative reviews for this novel and they're mostly right on the money, but several of them singled out Alina's time at the palace as one of self-indulgence - make-overs, bitchy girls, and lavish life-styles, but I actually didn't see it that way. For me, the novel improved when she arrived at the palace, and I enjoyed reading it far more than I had the earliest portions of it. For me the problems at the palace were a bit different.

The first thing which struck me was how appallingly selfish Alina was. While she did remark upon the differences between this life and her previous life, She never once realistically examined her spoiled-rotten experience there and compared it objectively with her existence before, or concerned herself with how the peasantry and soldiery were living in contrast to the luxury which she was enjoying. Instead she was solely focused on how wonderful it was to try on expensive dresses, and how great the food was. This really turned me off her, because it exposed her for the self-absorbed and shallow woman that she was - someone who I would personally not be at all interested in knowing were she real. I would find her boring at best and thoroughly, repulsively, and irritatingly juvenile at worst.

The other issue I took with this life was in her training. She was already supposed to be a trained soldier, yet when she starts her new training - with a cantankerous old woman named Baghra who teaches her to use her power, and a thug who teaches her to fight (and who speaks of himself in the third person) - it becomes apparent that she isn't a soldier at all. She never was.

Instead, she's clumsy, lacks stamina, is clueless, inept, and whiny. She constantly compares herself unfavorably to those around her, and she never once takes any pride in being a soldier. How insulting is that? So I have to ask how she ever became a soldier in the first place. Was there no training? Did they simply let anyone into the military, give then a rifle and a uniform, and that's their 'training'? This struck me as particularly bad writing because Bardugo never once referred to Alina's military experience for contrast or to use it to explain why she was so evidently weak now. This novel is Bardugo's insult to soldiers everywhere.

It's at this point at which Alina's power comes out of hiding. It's like it was somehow tied to her life with Mal - that if she'd revealed it she would have been separated from him and she didn't want that. Now that she is separated from him, and her power is out of the shadows anyway, there's no reason for her to try to hide it any more, and it literally shines forth. Again this was one of the better parts of the novel, but her behavior and character are still huge downers, so even this really didn't change my overall view very much, especially since, as soon as Mal showed up at the palace, it all went downhill rather dramatically.

The two of them fought like school-kids, and suddenly Alina is forced to flee the palace because The Darkling's mom - Baghra (who, we now learn, and like the Darkling, is several hundred years old) - tells her that the Darkling only wants Alina's power for himself, and this antler necklace will not amplify her power but force her to be subject to him.

Alina immediately buys into this bizarre story and flees the palace, heading towards The Fold to hide herself. She never questions whether Baghra was full of crap. Of course, expert tracker Mal tracks her down, but that's not the problem here. The problem comes in two parts. The first is that Alina passes soldiers, none of whom recognize her or pay her the slightest attention until a drunk soldier coming out of a bar with a girl on his arm instantly recognizes her and she has to immediately go on the run again! What? How did he even know who she was? He'd never seen her before in his life!

The second problem is that we've hitherto been subject to a daily recounting of Alina's physical training at the palace, which has involved her jogging for miles all over the palace grounds over all types of terrain, yet when she's walking in the woods on her escape route, she develops blisters? Seriously? She's constantly remarking upon, if not complaining of, the cold, yet never once does this moron think to warm herself by using her power? Honestly?

But it gets worse! Not once does she call upon her military training or experience. Instead she's essentially the same as your stereotypical and pathetic little coddled and cosseted princess on the run with all the attendant difficulties that would bring. Where was Bardugo's thinking here? Wherever it was, there obviously wasn't much of it going on. Inevitably, Alina is discovered by Mal and the two go on the run together, but inevitably, they're captured by The Dorkling. This is because they're completely clueless (again insulting their own military training), foolishly exposing themselves at one point and thereby indirectly tipping-off their pursuers as to their location.

The hilarious thing about their travels together is that this pair is utterly incapable of conversing whilst they're in motion! They can only talk when they stop for a break, apparently! The other hilarious thing is that despite our reading more than once about Alina's severe blisters on her feet from all this walking, when they go into a village and she gets her hands on a sweet roll, she has no problem teasing Mal with it by 'dancing away' from him! So much for the blisters. Quite evidently, Bardugo clueless when it comes to writing realistic stories which contain elements of privation.

You don't need to see this novel. This is not the novel you're looking for. Move along.

Girls in Pants by Ann Brashares

Title: Girls in Pants
Author: Ann Brashares
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

This is a classical example of Big Publishing™ hiring a dickhead to design a cover, and the dickhead hasn't a clue what's in the book. It's not Girls in Skimpy Shorts. It's not Girls in Daisy Dukes. It's Girls in Pants and the pants are blue jeans, moron publishing incorporated.

Here's yet another novel I picked up without having any idea that it's not the first in a series I didn't know existed anyway. Do publishers do this deliberately - I mean put out sequential novels without giving potential readers any idea that this novel isn't the first in the series? Why? I did eventually garner for myself the sneaking suspicion that this was the same thing as the movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but I'd already brought the audio book home from the library by then.

Now this is a movie I wouldn't watch in a million years. I love reading novels about women and by women (unless they're unlawfully awful, of course), but any title that has the word 'sisterhood' in it is out, because I know for a fact that it's going to be nothing but cringe-worthy crap posing as "literature" and supplicating for obscure and pretentious awards.

This is to explain how I ended up watching a movie that I wouldn't watch in a million years. Not knowing that this novel was part of a series, the first of which was indeed titled The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (and from which the movie derived) I thought the movie was taken from this novel and the title simply changed because that's what Hollywood does best. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong, wrong wrong! Can you save me...?

Normally in this situation, and assuming I liked the material, I'd do a joint movie-novel review, but you don't get that if you don't visit my blog. Since I only review movies that I like, you don't get that if I don't like the movie, either, so this was never going to happen once I'd watched this movie, which turned out to be precisely what I thought it would be, and re-verified my distance from such movies with one ping only Vasili.

There were some humorous moments in the movie, I admit, but not that many, and I adored the soccer scenes, but really nothing else. The really enjoyable scenes were few and far between. I did think, though, that Blake Lively made a great model for my own character Janine Majeski, in my novel Seasoning, although Janine is British of Polish ancestry as opposed to Lively's character, who's presumably American and of Dutch ancestry based on her name.

Which brings us to the story here. This is the third (as I learned!) in a series about four girlfriends. I haven't read any other volumes, nor do I wish to now! The four girls are: Lena Kaligaris, Carmen Lowell, Tibby Rollins, and Bridget Vreeland. Some time before, having found "magical pants" which fit them all perfectly despite their differing figures, the girls form a sisterhood of the pants and make up oddball rules for it. They promise, despite their being apart for the summer, to wear the pants by turns, and report back on their adventures.

I know this history because of the movie, but it makes no sense. The movie claims that these girls were fated to be friends since their moms all attended the same yoga class whilst pregnant, and the girls were all born within a week of one another, but they're so very different in behaviors, wants, needs and temperament that their friendship makes no sense to begin with.

Neither from the movie nor the novel did I get any idea as to why these girls even tolerated each other, much less wanted to hang out together. They were all chalk and cheese and not even quality chalk - but that hard nasty kind that screeches on the board rather than flows with a powder-lubricated glide. And the cheese wasn't even nice cheese but that overly crumbly, stinky kind that in addition to its natural odor, has gone way past its best.

Given the pure fiction that they did hang out together, their summers apart made zero sense. Why did they not fight to spend their summers together if they were so "inseparable"? - for example, why did they not all go to Greece with Lena or to soccer camp with Bridget? They didn't have to play soccer, they could have just hung out. But that's the movie. Let's look at the novel.

In this third novel, Lena is stuck taking care of her bitch of a grandmother, Valia, who desperately needs Valium. Lena is taking a summer art class, but her bitch of a father, who hates art (particularly nude guys), cuts funding so she cannot attend. I don't get how that works. Was he paying weekly? It doesn't work like that. You pay for the summer class and you're done. How cutting funding would enter into it is a mystery. Was he paying in installments? I want a summer class like that! And if he hates art, why did he even start paying? Bad writing explains all this. Bad writing and poor editing is why.

We're somehow supposed to be edified by Lena's deep insights into her family garnered miraculously from nothing but charcoal and art-grade paper as she tries to put together a portfolio (a starboard folio being completely out of the question of course) for a scholarship, but none of this makes sense unless you're supplicating for obscure and pretentious "literature" awards.

Carmen meets a typical trope teen studly dude with a typical trope teen studly dude name of Win Sawyer. Seriously? Doubtlessly he's in the hospital because his hair keeps falling into his eyes and his muscles are sore from rubbing together across his broad shoulders so much. This relationship renders Carmen a complete moron.

Tibby (seriously, Tibby? Is this girl four years old? And a kitten?) had a moment when she was thinking about Brian (her boyfriend) and the changing nature of their relationship which I enjoyed, but even that was soon swamped by maunder and bullshit over her younger sister's dumb-ass injury and Tibby's dumb-ass cluelessness as to root cause.

Bridget's nonsense is about as artificial as it gets, finding herself not only in the same venue as Eric yet again - the guy she moronically fell for (or which her panties fell for, at least) in volume one - but also that she's actually partnered with him. I may not be recalling this accurately since at this point, coincidence-nausea rendered me as ill as Bridget became when she had her NGRF (non-genitalia-related fever). Here's where Le Stupide maxed out so calamitously that it destroyed my moronometer. Brashares owes me a new one.

pop quiz: What is the correct procedure for taking care of a feverishly sick teen?

1. Call her parents and take her to the nearest ER?
2. Tell no one, but take this underage girl into your own cabin when you are the authority figure in her life, and hope she gets better?
3. Dance a jig, burn incense, and swathe her in herbs hoping for a cure?
4. Pray and do nothing else because gods are magic?

If you answered #2, you are right (according to the Book of Brashares), because number two is what this is.

I'm sorry but this novel is too stupid to live.