Swing by Miasha

Title: Swing
Author: Miasha
Publisher: Infamous (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

You know when a novel's first line begins "The way his shaft was rubbing against my clitoris" and it's all in block caps, that this story is going to be raunchy as all get out, but that's not what bothered me. The problem was that this novel is only raunchy! It had nothing else to offer - at least not in the first third of it, which was all I could stand to read. It really takes some skill to make a novel about sexual encounters boring!

The story details the exploits of four couples: Tori and Kevin, Danielle and Stewart, Juju and Ferrari, Lyssa and Jacob, but their exploits consist solely of performing sex, thinking about sex, arranging sexual encounters, and talking about sex. There is nothing else going on here at all - not in their world, and not in their minds. There is no descriptive writing here, no atmosphere, no idea of where these people live, what their surroundings look like, what kind of people they are or what kind of life they lead - other than sexually. It's all boring all the time and not even in a good way!

In short, there's no story here. It consists solely of the author checking-off her list of euphemisms for "penis", "vagina". and "Vulva" to make sure she uses them all and never uses the same one twice. Any hope of a decent plot (or even an indecent one) was forlorn. The only "plot" was that, hey, Tori and Ferrari have the hots for each other - and they're not a couple. I care.

I can't recommend this one at all. It's completely flaccid.

In The Garden With Van Gogh by Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober

Title: In The Garden With Van Gogh
Author: Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober
Publisher: Roundtable Press
Rating: WORTHY!

This is an amazing book for young children telling a story based around paintings by Vincent Van Gogh.

It features a whole series of the pictures and the story is woven, using them to illustrate the tale:

Sunflowers (1888)

Irises (1889)

Olive Grove (1889) Women Picking Olives (1889) The Sower (1888) The Reaper (1889) The Siesta (actually, 'Noon Rest From Work') (1890) First Steps (1890) The Starry Night (1889)

The paintings featured are nearly all from his Arles period which ended December 23, 1888 when he had himself committed after cutting off his own ear (not illustrated here!). The asylum was where he painted The Starry Night. The paintings are are listed in the back of the book, but they appear to have missed Van Gogh's Haystacks in Provence (1888) between The Reaper and The Siesta. That latter picture and First Steps were painted in 1890, the year Van Gogh appears to have committed suicide (although the gun was never found!).

I recommend this. There's also a companion volume titled A Magical Day With Matisse, which I haven't seen, but which I imagine would be quite as charming as this one was. I also noted when postign this that there are several others in the series: Cassatt, Degas, Gaugin, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat

I Bring the Fire by C Gockel

Title: I Bring the Fire
Author: Gockel
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
p106 "…dark and black at the point." I think the latter automatically implies the former!

This is an odd little novel, but it was short (only 136 pages). I can much more easily read a short bad novel all the way through than ever I can force myself to read four hundred pages of bad, but this actually was not bad at all. It was really good, although it was odd in a way, in that it was formatted unusually. There was no cover, and pretty much all of your typical front pages (title page, acknowledgements, dedication, contents, etc) were mashed together onto one page. I wondered if this was caused somehow by the transition from a word processor document to a PDF format which didn’t propagate too well? Or maybe the author hates wasting paper as much as I do?!

This is part one of what promises to be quite a series, each volume of which is now available:

• Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II
• Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III
• In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5
• Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV
• The Slip: An I Bring the Fire Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir's Point of Smell
• Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V

Love those titles!

I know that some professionals whine about how a book has to be laid out in a certain way - Library of Congress rules and all that bullshit - but you know what? Screw them. This isn’t the age of lead characters painstakingly laid out in a metal tray. It’s not the age of primly formatted, hard-bound, printed books. This is the age of e, and Congress and Big Publishing™ no longer get to dictate to writers what we can and cannot do, what we can write, how we format it, and what gets published. Those days are long gone and good riddance to them, so kudos to C Gockel for flouting tradition.

I warmed-up to this novel quickly. It begins in a delightfully unusual way, and I started to like the main character, Amy Lewis, at once. Amy is in vet school and is on break, driving from Stillwater, Oklahoma to Chicago where she stays with her grandmother, and finds work to help pay her way through college. Unfortunately, she runs her car off the road nearly falling asleep from the long day, and the first person to arrive on the scene is a serial killer.

Fortunately, the second person to arrive on the scene is Loki, and this is a different Loki from the one you think you know. He turns out to be the good guy (after a fashion!), and rescues Amy, thus beginning their acquaintanceship; but just like there's more to Loki than you expect, there is more to Amy, too.

There were some parts of the book that I took to skipping. Periodically we’re treated to a flashback in italics, of Loki's childhood. I read the first of these and found it uninteresting, so I jumped over all of the italicized portions after that. The rest of the novel, however, was well-written and really entertaining. There was a really nice line of humor threaded through it, and it sported plausible characters with natural behaviors, and interesting events. The story kept flowing easily, and it readily and easily pulled me along with it, so no complaints at all there.

The concept of a domesticated Loki was hilarious. I was starting to love this author by the end of the novel/novella/novelette, whatever this was (I don't know the actual word count)! I recommend it.

Suffrajitsu Mrs Pankhurst's Amazons Volume One by Tony Wolf

Title:
Author: Tony Wolf (no website found)
Publisher: Amazon
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Emmeline Pankhurst was a radical political agitator for women's suffrage and women's rights. She founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which actually established a jujutsu-trained all-female squad of bodyguards to protect her from police assaults. This graphic novel, for one price but in three parts, takes that and runs with it.<.p>

Drawn very much in the old-style of the golden era of comic books, the illustrations are evocative, well-done and rather nostalgic which makes them engagingly appropriate for the subject matter. Emmeline Pankhurst was a wild and crazy girl, and this captures that and the spirit she represented very much.

The comic is very short, only 24 pages total, which makes for a fast read, but of course for those who buy the story, there are two more episodes to come included in the original purchase price (as I understand it). One issue I took with it is that it suggests that the bodyguards were trained in Bartitsu, but this was not the case since that very personal art, invented by Edward William Barton-Wright (who is, as far as I can see, is depicted as the trainer and who was very nearly the same age as Pankhurst), largely went out of style in 1902. This is the art featured in a Sherlock Holmes story and named (or misnamed) 'Baritsu'. Suggesting it this way is actually an insult to the real trainer of the WSPU bodyguards, which was a woman named Edith Margaret Garrud. Why she was snubbed in favor of a guy in what is otherwise a strongly feminist novel, I don't know other than that the author is a proponent of Bartitsu!

The novel is set in 1914 and this too, is problematic because the WSPU ceased operations during World War One for the sake of national unity against the German threat to sovereignty and freedom. The war began in late July 1914, so the events depicted here could have taken place in the earlier part of that year, I suppose!

A charming variety of characters are included, some fictional, others not. Persephone Wright is a fictional woman of ill-repute, a “fallen woman”. Flossie Le Mar is an homage to Florence LeMar, who actually was a practitioner of jujutsu. Katharina Brumbach really was a wrestler and strong-woman. Toupie Lowther was also a real person, an avid motorist, and a practitioner of jujutsu. Judith Lee appears to be an invention of writer Richard Marsh. Kitty Marshall, a fictional quick-witted teenager and a Miss Sanderson a violent fictional character. It's doubtful this group (fictional or otherwise!) ever met.

That aside, I really liked this novel and I recommend it. Issue one features the Amazons’ conflicts with the London and Glasgow police and is out as of the date of this review. Issue two follows a month later and covers "a daring rescue mission in the Austrian Alps" (over which Toupie Lowther actually rode on a motorcycle). issue three comes out a month after that and depicts the Amazons trying to prevent a terrorist attack. Is it this that will precipitate World War One?! A ripping good yarn - and somewhat educational too!

Hades by Candice Fox

Title: Hades
Author: Candice Fox
Publisher: Kensington Books
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

I have to say I wasn't too thrilled with the Kindle advance review copy of this novel. It wasn't even remotely correctly formatted for the Kindle. The page headers - such as the author's name and the novel title - appeared in the middle of the text because they weren't removed when the text was converted for the Kindle. In addition to that, there were random gaps and new lines in the text, mid-word and mid-sentence. The Adobe Digital Editions and the iPad versions seemed fine.

I know this was an ARC, and so not everything can be perfect, but frankly in this age of e-publishing, there really isn't any excuse for formatting issues of this nature. Hopefully this will not be the status of this novel in the final version. There were also one or two grammatical and similar issues which were a bit more understandable if regrettable, such as at location 547 (sorry, no page numbers in the Kindle - I don't know how much use a location number actually is (especially if you're not reading the ebook!), but the phrase was "cold, calculated businessman" and it really should have been something like "coldly calculating businessman" to make any sense. Unless, of course, they were talking about the corpse of a businessman which they'd designed, in which case it could well have been cold and calculated...!

This novel is really Dexter does Australia (it pretty much says so right on the cover). It's a first person PoV novel, which I normally rail against, but which in this case was one of the rare few which was not nauseating for that reason. It was told in an interesting way, because the narrator is not the main character. He's a cop who is telling the story, and it’s mostly about his interactions with an observations of his new partner, a seasoned cop by the name of Eden. She's a respected, tough and experienced cop who works on the force with her brother, Eric, but with whom she's never partnered for various reasons.

Frank, the narrator, is teamed with her after his own partner kills himself. Eden's partner was killed in the line of duty, we're told. Eden's brother Eric doesn’t take to Frank, looking through his personal stuff and generally irritating him as well as blabbing Frank's secrets (his drug use, his one-time punching of his ex wife, his DWI on his way to work. Despite all these violations, Frank is inexplicably still on the force. He and Eden get along, although she's made it clear she's not interested in becoming bosom buddies with him.

The two are thrown into a serial murder investigation immediately, with a score of bodies having been found after they had been dumped into the ocean in metal boxes. The most outstanding thing about he bodies is that various assorted organs have been surgically removed, so it looks like someone is harvesting the organs for wealthy (and none too picky) clients. The curious thing about this book is that, interspersed with these chapters, is an italicized insert here and there, talking about a character called Hades, who finds two lost and injured children whom he raises as his own despite not legally being entitled to do so. How that fits into the story isn't immediately clear, but when we learn that the children are named Eden and Eric, things start becoming more clear - or do they?

I have to interject a complaint here, and if you follow my reviews you knew this was coming! It concerns wasted trees. In an ebook, which is what I read in this case, this isn't a problem (although a larger file size does mean more energy is required to transmit and maintain it), but if a book goes to a print run, then the more white space you have on your page, the more trees are going to die in order to feed your book. It’s not a smart move to be contributing to bringing down trees en masse in an era of all-but-runaway climate change.

I'm not suggesting that writers and publishers cram every square millimeter of white space with text by any means, but as you can see from the sample image on my blog, the chapter title page is about 85% white space and the regular pages are not much better. At first I thought this was an issue only when viewed as an ebook or in Adobe Digital Editions, but when I took advantage of the "look inside" feature on-line, it appeared to be exactly the same, so I have no reason to believe the print book will be any different. I understand that there are aesthetic, practical, and artistic considerations in play here, I do. All I ask is that writers and publishers not forget the big picture. Every one of us can make a difference.

That said, I started out linking this book, but soon found that the shifting perspectives became irritating at first and then outright annoying before very long. This is the problem with limiting yourself by employing first person PoV. It’s not a voice that you should use unless you really know what you want to do with it, and it failed sadly in this instance. The severe handicap of 1PoV is that you can't show anything that's not directly witnessed by the narrator, which is an awful limitation to impose upon your story telling unless you really have a first class, iron-clad reason for it - and most authors do not.

If you've stuck yourself with this limitation and then discover that you haven't planned too-well and need to add a larger perspective, you're stuck with a clunky info-dump from a third party, or you have to go the even more clunky route of adding third person narration. This latter is what happened here, and it didn’t work. We kept having third person flashbacks to Eric and Eden's childhood, which proved to be a major spoiler, and then this was interleaved with the main narrator's first person, and with third person from the perspective of more than one other character! This made the novel seem badly organized and cluttered, and it really detracted from the story for me.

On top of that, the story was too dissipated, with focus being repeatedly dragged away from the case to the first person narrator's stalker-ish obsession with his new partner which was sick at best. The narrator wasn't a nice person which made me suspicious of his veracity to begin with, which in turn certainly did not help me to either like or trust this story. I can see why the author did it (can you say sequels?!), but the problem was that this was telegraphed, and this meant that there really was no mystery or intrigue here.

The narrator, and his interaction with Eden made the narrator seem like a lowlife to me, and he wasn't too smart, either. I had neither empathy for, nor interest in, him. I didn’t like Eric because he was just scum from the start: a caricature with villain garishly painted all over him, and I didn’t like Eden because although she was rather intriguing at first, she never grew and was never developed. She was more like a symbol, and not even a sex symbol, so what was she? What’s to keep me interested in a story where neither of the two main characters is remotely appealing?!

Almost worse than that, we'd get a bit of a cliff-hanger in the murder investigation at the end of a chapter, but then have to wait a chapter or two while the narrative wandered off to someone else's viewpoint before we could get back to the story which I was interested in! I found myself becoming more and more annoyed, and then skipping the dead zones, which in turn meant I wasn't always getting the whole story (although frankly I wasn't evidently missing much). By this time I already knew where this was going and had done for a while, so there really were no surprises in store and at about 90%, I just gave up on it. I'd lost all interest in it and really didn’t care exactly how it ended. I have no interest in being made to work this hard to get a good story out of a novel!

I can’t honestly recommend this one. The idea isn't exactly fresh, and the execution left a lot to be desired. Also, I really like trees and hate to see them so badly used! I think this author has a future, but not with this novel.

One Among Us by Paige Dearth

Title: One Among Us
Author: Paige Dearth
Publisher: Amazon
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is my second review of a Paige Dearth novel today. I wish I had better news to report because she writes about important topics, but I can't recommend this one either, and for many of the same reasons that I couldn't recommend her debut novel, I'm sorry to report. This is her third novel, and it looked to me like there was no change in her writing style between the first and this one.

This novel is even longer than the first one. I wasn't able to make myself read 400 pages of the first one after reading the first seventy or so because of the dry, matter-of-fact writing, and since this one was much the same tone, I wasn't going to make any attempt to read even seventy pages in a novel which runs to almost six hundred pages of dire straits, gratuitous abuse, and bad language when there was not a thing to lighten the load. It's far, far too much.

The writing is this was, as I said, like the first - more like a police report than a novel. The men were universally lowlife mean-as-a-junkyard-dog rapists without a nuance to share between them, which I find personally insulting. Yes, there are men like that - and there are boys like that - too many, in fact, but not every single man and boy is like that and I think the author does her stories a serious disservice by adopting this approach in her writing. I can read a novel where character X is a rapist or an abuser, but when the novel is effectively telling me that I'm a rapist or an abuser by dint of my gender, I draw the line!

The dialog didn't feel realistic to me, and main character Maggie was just a shade too good to be true or even realistic, and the characters weren't much better. All of them seemed more like cardboard cut-outs than real people.

I mentioned in my other review that a more seasoned author would have leavened the mix with a pinch of beauty or an ounce of hope. It's quite simply depressing to read and to try to keep reading a novel, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how important the topic, which is nothing but one horrible thing after another with nothing to offer any kind of hope. Though this is rooted in real life, it's still fiction, and therefore does not need to detail a real life down to the nth degree of depression. Consequently, the writing here kept on reminding me with almost metronomic frequency that this was fiction, and I wasn't allowed to forget it and become completely immersed in this story. I couldn't get beyond page fifty and I can't recommend this novel.

Believe Like a Child by Paige Dearth

Title: Believe Like a Child
Author: Paige Dearth
Publisher: Amazon
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Today is Paige Dearth Day on my blog - I'm reviewing two books by this author and I wish I had better news to deliver than I do.

This novel, in some ways, is autobiographical. According to her bio in the book, the author was raped by a live-in uncle when she was very young, and this is an exploration of how that might have panned-out had things gone differently from how they did unfold in the author's own life. As far as that goes, it's admirable. There is nothing worse than violating a child's trust and confidence, especially in such an abhorrent manner, but this novel was so front-loaded with abuse, and pain and torment that it was for me, unreadable. I made it to page 74 and I knew I didn't want to being regaled with a non-stop story of endless and unremitting pain for another 360 or so pages.

The problem for me was that it didn't read like a novel. It read like a police report, and it was consequently unappealing. The text was dry as a bone and did nothing to draw me in or make me feel like I could empathize with the main character Alessa, who herself wasn't exactly the smartest Smarty in the Smarty box.

On top of that I had issues with Alessa's inability to report this abuse and the poor advice she was given by someone in whom she confided. I know people who are abused typically have problems in revealing what's happened to them either through shame or through fear, or because they don't even realize that what's happening to them isn't appropriate, but the way it was written here wasn't convincing.

Instead to going with her to the police, Zoe, the mom of Alessa's best friend, set up Alessa with sufficient money to run away, where she got ripped off by a seedy landlady for a piece-of-trash apartment in a lousy part of town. I knew exactly what was going to happen next, because it was telegraphed way in advance. All the mystery was removed and I was left looking at yet more abuse piled onto what had already happened. Zoe in effect, became just another abuser.

One major problem is that there were no shades of gray here. In some ways it's understandable since this is a debut novel, but it doesn't make it a better read. For example, in the portion that I read, men were presented universally as rapists waiting to happen, which is bullshit and insulting.

A more seasoned author would have found a way to leaven writing of this horrific nature with something lighter. They would have put a dash of hope in there instead of repeatedly dashing hope. They would have found a way to add a sprinkle of beauty somewhere, somehow, to bring something better into this world of unrelenting awfulness, but this author did nothing of the sort. It became, therefore, a dire litany of abuse, bad decisions, and poor advice, and it wasn't entertaining or engrossing to read, it was just depressing and despite the fact that these things actually do happen to children, the writing paradoxically made this novel feel unrealistic. I couldn't get beyond chapter nine and I can't recommend this novel.

I know it was lousy what the author went through, and I admire her attempt to put this into fictional form and get the word out to people, but she failed to convince me that this was the best-advised way to do that.

The Hero Chronicles: Secrets by Tim Mettey

Title: The Hero Chronicles: Secrets
Author: Tim Mettey
Publisher: Tim Mettey
Rating: WARTY!

This novel I've had in my reader for a while, putting it off for items more urgent, but it’s time to get this read. Another reason for putting it off is that this novel violates several of my conditions for reading a novel (most of which materialized after I'd added this one to my list!). First of all the title incorporates not only the word "chronicles", but also the word "hero", both of which I've sworn-off in novel titles (along with 'cycle' and 'saga'!). Secondly it’s first person PoV, which is a big no-no for me since it’s all "Me!" all the time: "Hey lookit me!" "Hey forget that, pay attention to what I'M doing!" and "No one is more important than Meeeee!"

It’s so self-indulgent and irritating, and it’s a rarity in my experience to find such a novel that's written well enough to be worth expending my time on - not when there are so many other novels and life is short! I'd much rather read something easy on the mind than something which requires fortitude and gritted teeth just to scan the text!

This novel also has sound effects incorporated into the text. Even for a middle to upper grade novel it’s a no-no. The school bell doesn’t ring, it goes "DING!DING!DING!DING!" without any spaces in between. How annoying! The the main character is equally annoying. When the bell rings for recess, he doesn’t take his turn, but hurries to the front of the line. And this is just on the second page of this thing. The school apparently experiences an earthquake, and suddenly it’s five years later and we’re in chapter two. Kudos to the author for actually putting the prologue into the body of the novel. It’s the only way you'll get me to read a prologue! I'm guessing some super villain or other comes out of the earthquake, but I haven’t read that far, so it’s only a guess.

Nick the hero is now living with his aunt Cora. Cora's only defining qualities are that she's slim and beautiful, because who wants a smart woman who might be overweight? Let’s not ever tell young children that smarts are more important than looks. And while we’re at it, who wants a woman with integrity and good humor? No one. Don’t ever tell young kids that. The hell with integrity, industry and accomplishments! Let’s not have kids growing up thinking those things are of value. Nope! Keep it superficial!

This author evidently thinks that all young kids need to know is that women should be slim and beautiful - like a magazine model - because no other woman is worth anything, let's face it. That's what all-too-many writers want us to believe, sadly enough, and that's evidently what this writer apparently wants young kids to grow-up learning. Personally, I don’t buy it, but that's the way it is. Maybe I should start keeping a tally, as I read, of how many strikes this novel garners for itself? Naw! I never read that far.

Cora and nephew are moving to a new home. I like the way Cora specifies that they'll be leaving at 5am sharp in the morning, so that he doesn’t get any ideas that they'll be moving out at 5am sharp in the afternoon…. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that he's a superhero and this could well be why they're moving so frequently. The how and why of this isn't immediately explained, but he at least has super speed, so here comes the next trip-up.

Alex and Nick decorate an older guy's car with bologna, because that's unquestionably the best way to have a really fun night, and when the older guy starts looking for the culprits, Alex proves that he can run faster than a Mustang - which in the end crashes injuring the guys. How christian is that?! He runs right into the kid he's rescuing - at speed - and takes him along so they won't be caught, but the writer is in dire need of a lesson in physics and biology, because he simply doesn’t get it (that's what too much religion will do for you!). Don’t worry, the writers in The Flash TV show don't get it either.

It doesn't matter how much of a super hero you are, the laws of physics still apply, and ordinary people still have the same biology. If you run at sixty miles an hour and pick-up a by-stander in order to rescue them, then their body is going to go from zero to sixty instantly, and you're going to break their neck or give them some serious whiplash and compression injuries at least. That's not much of a rescue.

This novel started out middle grade and moved to young adult, but the tone never changed from middle-grade. Worse than this, instead of telling us a story about the super hero powers, we got a story of the main character playing football - in tedious detail. What happened to the super hero? I guess football is more important. This story felt far more like author wish-fulfillment than ever it did a real story, and I cannot in good faith recommend it.

From Chaos Born by Michael R Hicks

Title: From Chaos Born
Author: Michael R Hicks
Publisher: Imperial Guard Publishing (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

This novel has drunk so deeply from the fountain of fantasy that it’s almost a parody. Every single place name has an apostrophe in it which serves no evident purpose. Every character name has a hyphen. The opening pages are as dense an info-dump as you will find anywhere. Every time we’re given a name for something that is neither a character nor a place, we're immediately given a translation afterwards. Why, then, give us the original name? Why not simply say it’s 'X' instead of telling us it’s 'Y" which means 'X' in English? And why say 'Cycles' instead of years? What’s the point other than pure pretension?

If we’re getting this for objects, then why not for people and places? Every word means something, so why not translate everything? Even as it was, it was tedious to have to read this, so perhaps this was a blessing. The reading process wasn't helped by the font which looked like it was typewritten and was densely packed on the page, with virtually no margin.

I know I always argue that for the sake of trees, it’s incumbent upon us to make best use of the paper for the sake of the print edition, but believe it or not, there are limits even to my fanaticism! In addition to that, every apostrophe 's', such as in "T'ier-Kunai's" had a space after the apostrophes, so it looked like "T' ier-Kunai' s". I don’t know why this was (maybe someone had done a search and replace because they wanted the apostrophe followed by a space for the place names?), but it sure didn’t make for a comfortable read.

Chapter one begins on page eleven, and by page eighteen I was already worn out by this story, having no real interest in reading another two hundred pages of info-dump. I felt like one of the steeds these characters were riding! The main character, Kunan-Lohr, has literally ridden several animals to death on his urgent charge back from the battle-front to the city, yet he hypocritically orders the stable hands to "Tend them well!" when he finally arrives!

I gave this up on page 32 because I simply could not stand to read it. Your mileage may differ.

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

Title: The Salt Roads
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: Open Road Media
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This novel made no sense at all to me. I was interested in reading it because it was about slavery in the Caribbean (so I thought), but the real story of that horror was demeaned by the author's amateur attempts at trying to imbue her novel with "kewl", and by her bringing "magic" into it.

I know that superstition was (and is) a part of primitive people's lives, and that Victorians believed in spirits, but having characters conjure up a vision from a chamber pot full of urine and menstrual fluid seemed to me to be not only gross, but to cheapen the story being told about the conditions under which slaves were forced to live, and turning the whole thing into a gaudy circus. And that bit wasn't even in the Caribbean, it was in Paris!

I have no idea what that had to do with anything because I quit reading this novel at this point. I couldn't continue because I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at how sorry it truly was. Somehow I'm thinking that this isn't the effect you want to have on your reader when writing about a grotesque topic like slavery.

The misguided cuteness really swung into play between pages 38 and 50, and it was so ridiculous as to be a parody. After a chapter about a stillborn baby and its burial, we immediately get a page (39) containing only the world BREAK/ in bold block caps, followed by page which contains only two paragraphs describing some obscure, anonymous event which has played no part in the story so far, the next page contains only BEAT!, the next another three obscure paragraphs, the page bears only ONE-, the next only one paragraph, again obscure and anonymous, disconnected from the main story, the next has three dots, a down arrow, and the word DROP, the next more anonymous paragraphs, the next BLUES, and finally we get to another unnumbered chapter on page 49. I can't tell you what a thrill that was to read. I can't tell you because I was mourning, by that time, not for the dead child, but for tragically wasted trees.

If I’d wanted to read a humorous novel about slavery, which I don’t, I could no doubt have found one. If I’d wanted to read a parody, I could have written one. I've done it before! I actually wanted neither of these. I wanted an intelligent and serious story about slavery, not amateur experimental fiction designed with no other purpose, it seemed to me, than to gross out the reader with this day-late and dollar-short effort to be avant garde and ultra hip. I cannot recommend this novel based on what I read, and I certainly have no interest in reading more of this nor anything else by this author for that matter.

Charmed Deception by Eilis O'Neal

Title: Charmed Deception
Author: Eilis O'Neal
Publisher: Egmont
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

I started this one thinking I wouldn't be able to finish it - it seemed far too larded with trope and cliché to be appealing to a reader like me, but as I read on and despite the presence of rather too much cliché for my taste, I found myself initially warming to the story. Sadly, it was not to last. I was able to stomach only about half of this novel, and I'll tell you why.

The main character is young woman by the highly unlikely name of Sable Wildcross who lives a very pampered existence and sees nothing amiss with it. Her only problem is that in her world (actually in her country), only men are allowed to practice magic. Women used to be killed if they developed the 'resonance' and were caught employing it. As it is, now they're "only" imprisoned for life, but not many women seem to have this resonance - which is what they would feel were they men, and were in close proximity to their favored 'element'.

Yes, this is another novel where compounds and substances are mislabeled 'elements', and of course they're the standard clichéd four: earth, wind, fire, and water, with an added bonus of animals! How animals class as elements is unexplained - or at least it was as far as I read. There is one more resonance, however, and it's no spoiler that this is the one which Sable has. It wouldn't be a YA novel were it otherwise! Her resonance is that she can 'siphon-off' the magic of others and use it for whatever - in other words, if she siphons fire magic, she doesn't have to use it to control fire, she can instead control water with it.

Sable first learns she's special from Never - a girl who appears to her one night in her library and looks like a ghost, but who turns out to be a remote presence projected by a woman of Sable's age who is very much the same as Sable - having magic as her resonance. Sable first contacts her when she accidentally breaks her heart charm - a necklace she's worn for years, which supposedly gives her magic protection for her weak heart.

Given that this necklace was given to her by a magician from one of the lands where magic is freely practiced by both genders, it's no surprise to anyone but Sable that the guy who gave it to her knew of her condition, and supplied her with the necklace purely to protect her and keep her power hidden.

Every chapter ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger here, which is kind of fun, although some of them fall a bit flat. Despite the fact that it's a lengthy book (almost 450 pages) it's a very fast read. Sable has a best friend, Laurel, who doesn't know about her resonance, a nice guy named Mason who is her life-long friend - the resident good guy, and Lord Lockton, the resident bad guy, forming a nice trope triangle.

My immediate feeling - having read this far (~25%) - was that maybe Lockton was a good guy in disguise, and that the ghostly Never was actually a trap set up by the wizards who were supposedly holding her prisoner for a scheme of their own. I suspected that it’s Sable they want, and Never is a fiction used as bait. I'm not going to tell you if I was right about that, only that I'm usually wrong in my wild guesses - but not always!

Lockton didn't assume quite the role of 'bad boy' I'd initially thought. The 'bad boy', it turns out, is Reason Midnight. Yes, the names are profoundly stupid. Sable's dad's first name is "Venerable"! I am not making this up - the author is! The king's name is Dauntless, and no doubt there's a Prince Amity, a Princess Candor, and a Queen Abnegation.... Reason, as it happens, is the third leg of the inevitable YA trope love triangle

We're told that there's a level of excitement in the house at Reason's arrival, but this makes no sense. The character is merely the son of one of the guests at the house, and he's not considered a paragon of anything. He's juvenile, and he has neither accomplishments nor anything to recommend him, so there's no reason at all for anyone to be excited that he's coming.

The fact that the author, and through her, the main character, who is laughably babbling on about him in first person PoV, makes such a huge deal out of his visit tells me the character, if not the author, is way overdoing this visit, and therefore is a completely unreliable narrator, which in turn calls into question everything we've read so far. This is an example of rather short-sighted writing and poor editing.

The author has evidently forgotten that all of this isn't taking place in the Midnight household, but at the Wildcross home! There's no reason at all why that family should celebrate Reason's arrival as though someone of nobility or royalty is coming. If it were in the Midnight household, it would be rather different - although still excessive given how Lady Crescent speaks about him, but to have this non-event supposedly taking control of Sable's home and everyone in it is patently ridiculous and purest bullshit. The novel, which I'd been largely enjoying up to this point, took a serious hit because of this and made me wonder if this was the start of a lamentable downhill slide.

And downward slide it did. It was inevitable, when Sable decided to take a walk by herself rather than take a mid-day nap with everyone else, that she would go out into the grounds to walk, that she would go to the wildest most untamed part of the grounds, that she would run into Reason there, that Reason would be the trope YA male - with a woman's eyes (startlingly blue in this case, but with the clichéd super-thick lashes), a woman's full red lips, and that he would be well-dressed, and muscular.

I'm surprised his name wasn't Androgyne Midnight instead of 'Reason', because there wasn't any reason for him to be the way he was except that this is YA fiction and the author is cynically taking it the road most trampled by the herding instincts of desperate YA writers. I managed to refrain from vomiting only with extreme fortitude, but Sable's heart was less restrained: it began thudding at sad things like the proximity of Reason's magnificent knee. Pathetic.

Next out comes some appalling grammar: "You've air resonance aren't you?" she asks. What does that mean exactly? It means that author screwed up. It should be "You have air resonance, haven't you?" or "You're air resonant, aren't you?", but not a mix of both! Right after they've introduced themselves, part one ends. What this tells me is that this novel isn't about Sable at all, but about a magical super-hero, the manly man Reason Midnight. What a thorough and complete betrayal of the main character - and once again by a female author, too! Now, instead of being a strong woman, a rebel, and someone worth reading about, Sable is nothing more than an irritatingly swooning appendage of a male character, and I've lost all interest in this novel.

Reason turned out to be about as shallow as they come. These people have magic at their disposal, and yet Reason's only interests, in his own words, are: music, art, riding, picnics, the time to visit as many shops and tailors as he wishes, travel, dances, and young ladies. Not a single word about improving the quality of life for anyone. What a complete and total jerk.

Right after that we got the inevitable clichéd horse race between Sable and Reason which took place "scandalously" as the family went riding the next day. Yet no matter what Sable does, no matter how indiscreet, no matter how inappropriate, no matter how shameful in such a society, she's never censured, and she pays no penalty for her behavior no matter what it is! Meanwhile, Reason is snooping around Sable's home at night, but she doesn't have the guts to challenge him and when finally, accidentally, they encounter each other, Reason, and not Sable, takes charge and demands she tell him everything before he utters a word to her. Naturally this wilting violet acquiesces.

This was roughly half-way though this story, and by this time I'd had quite enough nonsense for one novel. I don't normally say anything about the cover of the books I review because this blog is about writing, not about cynically garnering sales, and the author typically has nothing to do with the cover unless they're smart enough to self publish, but in this case the cover was - accidentally, I'm sure - spot on. The novel and the cover are in sync in that they both advise us to pay no attention to this girl's mind - it's not important at all. Pay attention instead, we're obviously being told, only to her body because that's clearly all any woman has to offer.

There had been the makings of a great story here, but it was amateurishly, if not downright foolishly, frittered away on trashy YA clichés. I can't in all decency and honesty recommend this novel.

Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon

Title: Romantic Outlaws
Author: Charlotte Gordon
Publisher: Random House
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is a true story (if a bit overly dramatized here and there!) of two Marys: mother and daughter, the elder of whom, Mary Wollstonecraft, pretty much single-handedly founded feminism, and the younger of whom, best known as Mary Shelley, became famous for her novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, written when she was eighteen (and which was almost universally panned upon its initial publication).

The title of this book is oddly ironic since there's nothing either romantic or outlaw-ish about either of these two women unless you think of outlaw as the opposite of in-law and consider Mary the younger's circumstances once she eloped with Percy Shelley, the pretentious poet. Outlandish Scofflaws might have been a better title!

What this history is, above and beyond all else, is a shocking account of abuse, cruelty, and injustice heaped upon women by the very men they loved and counted on: Imlay, Godwin, Shelley, and Byron. Mary Wollstonecraft, before she ever met Mary Shelley's father, was doing a great job of being the very thing she stood for - a strong and independent woman, until she met a complete jerk by the name of George Imlay, whom she allowed to take advantage of her before he then abandoned her for someone younger.

She fell apart at this point, betraying her feminist principles, going into a funk, and twice trying to commit suicide, selfishly sparing not a thought for her young daughter, Imlay's daughter and Mary Shelley's sister-in-law, Fanny, who herself committed suicide later in her own life. This is the same woman who competed with men on equal terms as a writer, who lived in and lived through the French revolution, becoming perhaps the world's first foreign correspondent, working for a news and social commentary magazine.

In turn, Mary Shelley, who never knew her mother, spent her whole life missing her, and took off with Percy Shelley in what was superficially a romantic elopement, but which proved to be nothing for than delusional juvenile folly which turned into a dire marriage sabotaged by Shelley's selfish and self-absorbed inability to love, and exacerbated by Mary's crushing loss of her first two children. Mary was partly to blame for the death of her second child, William, since she knew that Rome was subject to the fever (malaria) in the summer but selfishly refused to move away from the city. She never forgave herself for that poor decision.

The contrast between these two women's lives is as stark as the similarities. Mary Wollstonecraft had to fight for everything she admirably gained only to lose it willingly as she allowed herself to become a slave to her ironic dependency upon Gilbert Imlay. Mary Shelley was spoiled rotten except for her perennial longing for her father's affection, which never came. She got everything she wanted, although it came with the pain of being in dire financial straits and with social ostracism for her running away with a married noble man who turned out to be about as ignoble as they come.

Percy Shelley seduced his wife-to-be, Harriet, blinded by some asinine "romantic" notion that he was saving her - a notion which came to him again when he met Mary Godwin, and yet again when he met an Italian noble woman while still married to Mary. As soon as Harriet, and then Mary became pregnant, Shelley pretty much lost interest in them since they were no longer romantic, and he evidently had no idea how to be anything other than a distant lover. He preferred to go off by himself writing grandiose, but ultimately shallow poetry than to sit with his bereaved and grieving wife and hold her hand. Mary's cold withdrawal after the death of William didn’t help. No romance there.

Mary and Percy's relationship was lived in the pale shadow of Mary's other half sister, Claire, who traveled with them everywhere, adding to the scandal under which they lived, making Mary look (and in some ways feel) like one of two female concubines to the poet. This pressure came to a head more than once in fights between Mary and Claire.

Lord Byron was no better. He joined them on their extended vacation, seducing Claire and then abandoning her when she had his child. This so-called god of the romantic poem was himself nothing but a lowlife and a complete jerk around women. Why he's held in such high regard today is a mysterious as it is scandalous. He was present that dark and stormy night when the four (Byron, Shelley, his doctor John Polidori, and Mary) all agreed to write a ghost story. Mary and John were the only two who actually did, and neither one of them actually wrote a ghost story. Mary came up with Frankenstein, which was disturbingly autobiographical in many (metaphorical) ways and John wrote a vampire story which in turn inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. Polidori killed himself only a few years later.

Mary's father, Godwin, had no idea how to show affection to a child, and Mary felt the loss of her mother and her father's icy demeanor throughout her life. Godwin, supposedly a free-thinker and an advocate of free love, ostracized Mary after her elopement, even as he hypocritically harangued Shelley for loans to pay off his own debts! He did not come around until Shelley's wife, Harriet, killed herself, and Mary and Shelley finally married against their own "principles". Shelley then hypocritically tried to gain control of the two children which he had until then quite effectively rejected!

Later in life, Godwin appallingly withheld Mary's novel Mathilda, from publication, refusing to submit it and refusing to return her own manuscript to her. It wasn't published until 150 years after her death! In short, this is the story of two women who were remarkable, each in her own way, but who fell afoul of bad men and ended-up on bad relationships, yet who seemed unable to stick to their principles and extricate themselves.

To be fair, society and the law were harshly stacked against women in those times, even more so than they are now. It’s remarkable that these two Marys achieved what they did, and in the long term, both did prove to be strong. After her two suicide bids, Mary Wollstonecraft came back to life, restoring her career, meeting and became involved with Godwin, and finally giving birth to Mary, but dying shortly afterwards - the fate of all too many women back then.

Mary, having lost her step-sister fanny, lost her first two children, and been sorely used by Shelley, wrote many novels, survived the death, tragedy and suicides around her, survived Shelley's sad death in a boating mishap, and lived to fairly ripe old age, becoming revered and an institution in her own lifetime.

This is a long, long book - almost six hundred pages (of which about ten percent is chapter notes) - packed with detail, anecdotes, and pictures. It’s remarkable history of the lives and times of two remarkable and very memorable women. I recommend it.

The Owl: Scarlet Serenade by Bob Woodward

Title: The Owl: Scarlet Serenade
Author: Bob Forward
Publisher: Brash Books
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

I've head a good relationship with Brash Books. I like the idea of it and the people who work there, and I admire what they're trying to do, but personally I've had little success finding books from their roster which appeal to me. Maybe I'm just too picky! This one I thought would be a winner, but it wasn't, I'm sorry to say. It's book two in a dilogy.

This novel is about Alexander L'Hiboux, almost a super-hero figure, but without any super powers. His last name means 'the owl'. He's homeless not because of poor circumstances, but by choice - so his enemies never know where he'll be. He's an unlicensed private detective, and he suffers from insomnia - so he'll never be found sleeping on the job. Or at all. He is known as (and curiously refers to himself as ) The Owl. He operates outside the law with his own brand of justice, and no matter what he does, he never faces any consequences. In short, the story was rather juvenile, but full of adult themes. A curious combination.

There's no valid evidence supporting the author's assertion (via his first person PoV character narration) that the name of the Santa Ana winds ever came from the Mexican word for 'Satan' (which is actually Satanás) nor is there any supporting the more common claim that it's from a Native American phrase meaning 'devil winds'. It's more likely that they're named for the Santa Ana Canyon, although they don't blow solely there. It doesn't preclude a character being misinformed, however, and it does make for a fun legend.

Alexander has Native America in his genes and he apparently has a spirit guide, because when we first meet him, he sees what appears to be a native American who directs his attention to a car with three men inside, idling outside a nearby school. The guide then disappears. Why Alexander hadn't noticed this car without supernatural help goes unexplained. Why his guide hadn't warned him of this attempted kidnapping early enough that he could call the police goes likewise, but this gives Al a chance to perform his spectacular heroics.

He takes down the three guys one after another and then fires a shot from his Colt 45 peacemaker (seriously?!) into the car's gas tank and it explodes. Let's not get into the unlikelihood of this actually causing the tank to explode, and of his gun literally being able to knock someone three feet backwards into the air from its fire power. It's not going to happen. What intrigued me here was that the red-head he saved from the kidnapping, Sarah Scarlotti, chose to chase after him instead of waiting for the cops who were coming fast, judged by the sirens.

This precipitates a relationship between these two characters that presumably lasts the whole novel, haunted by violence and the very real feeling of being hunted. I can't say for sure because I had to quit half-way through. The writing wasn't at all to my taste. If you like simple stories full of improbable action and very little mood-setting or world-building prose, with lots of conversation to fill the pages and some unlikely close shaves, then you'll love this. It's just not my kind of story.

Four More Fantastic Bedtime Stories For Children by Scott Gordon

Title: Four More Fantastic Bedtime Stories For Children
Author: Scott Gordon
Publisher: Scott Gordon
Rating: WORTHY!

Today happens to be Scott Gordon day on my blog. I've favorably reviewed this author's children's books before. Apart from misdientifying a whale as a fish, and some issues of repetition, I liked the previous set of four, which was all about animals. I liked this one, too.

It's another four-pack, but these stories are a little bit more fantastical - well three of them are, anyway. The fourth one is about heart health, which I found commendable.

Two are about dinosaurs and were very well done (and accurate as far as my amateur eye could tell). Of course, we don't really know what color dinos were (with very few exceptions) and in a children's book it doesn't matter, so there were no issues there.

The pictures are excellent and very well drawn; they're very colorful and designed to be especially attractive to the target audience of children ages three to six.

The heart health is full of fact and advice about eating the right kind of diet to help your heart help you. I'm not sure how much of an impression that would make on a three-year old, but you know it's really never too early to start on a good diet. That doesn't mean zero treats and junk food: psychological health is just as important as physical, so we don't want to turn our kids into misfits and pariahs, but keeping an eye on what they eat works wonders as they mature. If your kids go off to college and ruin eighteen previous years of healthy eating, at least the foundation is solidly in place - that's all a parent can do!

What particularly amused me was the ninja robots. I was saddened that it was ninja robot repair men, rather than "ninja repair robots" (or something). It's entirely wrong to suggest that only men can repair things (or that robots have gender!). Men have been in charge of the world - more or less - for centuries and look at what they've done! There's no guarantee that women would have done any better, but if we never give them a chance, how will we ever know?

If it's never too early to start on good diet advice for children, then it's equally never too early to start on erasing gender barriers! Tell your kids that these are really repair women, but because they're ninjas they're disguised, of course! Or point out that they are men, but look at the trouble they cause!

That aside I'm willing to rate this (or more accurately these four) a worthy read.

My Crazy Pet Frog by Scott Gordon

Title: My Crazy Pet Frog
Author: Scott Gordon
Publisher: Scott Gordon
Rating: WORTHY!

Today is Scott Gordon day on my blog, and I have to tell you that the only thing crazier than the frog is Scot Gordon himself. This guy is a fellow blog-spotter, though I don't know him. I do know that he has has a wa-ay out of control imagination! I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with some of his text (he labels a whale as a fish in one of these books for example), but overall, I rate his work a very worthy read. He has a blog (link on my blog) where he talks about indie publishing.

His books are often on sale for free at Amazon, too, (as this one is as of the posting of this blog) so what's to lose? It's better to get a free ebook - even though you can't really hand it to your sticky-fingered kids and let them have at it - than to buy a print book with so much white space that it makes trees cringe! (The sample images in this blog are cropped so they don't look like they waste paper).

That pet peeve aside, this is worth taking the time to enjoy. I don't know how he illustrates these things but the images are remarkable and very appealing - perhaps because of their simplicity, clean lines and, yes, sometimes it's worth it, I admit! - the use of white space!

We start out right off the bat with the frog in the bath, but it can't last! Aye, there's the tub! The frog's gettin' frisky, yo, and soon it's disco - or is he a secret agent rantin' and ravin'? Maybe he's a hero and you start to cheer...Oh! no indeed, he just wants to read!

I liked this story. It's probably his best one yet. It left me with a frog in my throat anyway. I recommend getting off your lily-pad and trying this one!

The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

Title: The Great Zoo of China
Author: Matthew Reilly
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

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

Errata:
page 42: "CJCJ" should be simply "CJ"

"They have a top flying speed of one hundred and sixty miles an hour...-That's one hundred miles an hour for those of not used to the metric system…"
(page 53) - someone's getting miles and kilometers mixed up! Unless "metric miles" are shorter!
"A Chinese woman joined Hu on stage"? They're in China - why specify a 'Chinese' woman?!

The first thing I noticed about this novel was how many trees it was wasting! You can see form the sample page on my blog that only about 40% of the page is used for print - the rest is white space.

This is a chapter start page, so it leaves more white space than usual, and no one on in their right mind would try to suggest that every inch of the page be covered in minute text. Indeed, in ebooks, it's not even relevant, but if a book is going to run to a print version, then it's worth expending some thought - nboth by writers nad publishers in considering how many trees are going to die for this fiction to appear on a bookshelf in this era of catastrophic climate change. Every little helps.

That aside, let's look at the writing.

This novel, very much a redux of Jurassic Park (we even have male and female siblings, but in this case they're adults) is a somewhat different take on dragons. It’s set in contemporary times, and begins with a reptile expert, CJ Cameron, and some other people, including her brother, being sent on a visit to a zoo in China - a new zoo wrapped in secrecy. It turns out that the secrecy was because the zoo was set up solely for one type of animal: dragons!

An oddity about his novel is that it's replete with illustrations - not of the dragons, but of the facilities! There's even one illustration of a trace on a computer monitor! The illustrations were reasonably well done, but I'm not sure I got the point of them. It actually seemed rather insulting - that we readers wouldn’t be able to grasp what we were told, so here’s a pretty picture to help? Either that or the author wasn't sure of his ability to write adequate descriptive prose. It was just a little weird.

The worst thing for me however, was that the science was really poor. To begin with, the dragons are impossible even by fantasy standards. They come in three sizes, the smallest of which, we're told, weighs about a ton and the largest of which is the size of an airliner, yet despite these hefty sizes and weights, the dragons seem able to break the laws of physics and become airborne by means of inadequate and rather flimsy wings. The largest flying creatures of which we're aware were some species of the pterosaur order which have long been extinct. The biggest of these was only 150 pounds in weight (~68 kilos), and to get this human adult scale creature airborne, they required a wing-span approaching forty feet (~12 meters).

That's not even the most absurd part of it. These dragons are supposed to be related to dinosaurs, but they’re hexapods (the author got the prefix of the name right at least!): four legs plus two wings. The problem is that there's no precedent for hexapod vertebrates - let alone dinosaurs - on Earth, so the evolutionary history of these creatures is nonsensical at best. Your problem going into this then, is that you have to leave science at the door if you're going to have a hope of enjoying the story. That's not a nice thing to do to a reader, but it’s a requirement here.

We're told on page 87 that crocodiles are the only surviving members of the archosaur line (which includes dinosaurs and pterosaurs), but this is wrong. Even if we assume 'crocodiles' includes alligators, caimans, etc, this still excludes birds, which are also archosaurs. Despite the size of the pterosaurs, the largest creatures on earth have never been flying creatures, and herbivores tend to be large and grounded. What would be the point of their evolving an ability to fly when what they eat is on the ground and they're large enough to avoid being prey animals themselves? It made no sense. Ostriches, for example, are evolved from birds which could fly, but as soon as they grew large, they stopped flying.

The dragons' only "weakness" is saltwater, we're told, yet we’re offered no reason at all why a reptile would be scared of, or vulnerable to brine. It’s especially nonsensical given that we’re expressly told that one species loves water. Other than that, it seems that the dragons are larded-up with one super-duper trait after another to such an extent that the story becomes a pretty much a parody of itself. I fully expected one species to be named 'Mary Suasaurus'. These dragons don’t breath fire, but that's the only thing they don’t have. Had it been an Austin Powers story, they would undoubtedly have had lasers on their heads….

We’re told that they can see in pitch-darkness, which is completely ludicrous, tapetum lucidum or not. No being can see in pitch darkness if they're relying on an organ which processes light, since the definition of pitch-dark is that there's literally no light to process! If we’d been told that they can detect infra-red, or process sound, then that would be a different matter, but we’re specifically told that it's light.

Few people have truly experienced pitch-darkness because we’re such an energy-profligate world that there's always some stray light, spilling out from somewhere. Once, I was in a cave in Virginia and the guide had us hold onto the rail on the walkway as a reference point, and then she turned off all the lights. Now that's pitch darkness! You quite literally could not see your hand in front of your eye. The darkness felt almost like a substance you could actually grasp in your hands. It was downright creepy, and the reason for this is quite simply that we are not at all used to being without any light at all.

When CJ the "scientist" is told that dragons can see magically, she accepts this with a simple nod of her head. At that point I lost all faith in her credentials as a scientist! Neither does she have issues with the dragons having ampullae, which are the electrical organs which sharks, platypuses, and other aquatic creatures have, enabling them to detect living things by their electrical output. This only works in water, yet we’re expected to believe the dragons have them! Author Brad Thor is quoted on the cover describing this author as the king of hardcore action, and while that isn’t the same as science, it did make me seriously disinclined to read anything Brad Thor has written if he thinks this novel worth raving over.

It’s not just the science that's bad, unfortunately. Bad science with a good story might just be readable, but the story has dumb woven deeply into its fabric. One thing CJ does notice is that the dragons are being controlled by some kind of electronic pain-infliction device. We're later told that there's a chip grafted onto their brain which can send a signal directly to the pain center, so if a dragon tries to breach the electromagnetic dome within which they're confined, it gets hurt so badly that it will black out and plummet to the ground. This is supposed to teach them to stay within their confined area, but if you have an animal weighing upwards of a ton, and it blacks out while in flight and ends up plummeting to the ground, it’s not going to learn anything, because it will splat and that's the end of that! How come any of the dragons are still alive?

This is the kind of novel you end-up writing when you're so hell-bent on 'dramatic' that all it gets you is 'drama queen' (which is the ridiculous CJ saving the world single-handedly). Sometimes that can even work, but here it just makes me sad that something like this could get published, and the powers that be cynically expect it to sell because it's hitching a ride on the coat-tails of something much better that came before it.

Of course once you know that this is to be a cross between Jurassic Park and Jaws, you also know exactly what’s going to happen, so all of the mystery goes flying out of the window (as indeed do some of the characters). So what's left? Well the only things to look forward to would be original situations, really great characters, and humor, but none of that was evident in the part of this novel that I read (which was about one third of it).

The biggest problem once the creatures let loose is the same problem shared by all of this kind of predator story: why are the predators suddenly insatiably and perennially hungry, and why do they instantly think humans are prey and pursue them to a brain-dead extent when easier prey is readily available? It made no sense. Despite the animals being very well fed, they attack the humans for no reason and start to feed as though they've been starving for weeks. It makes especially little sense given that, as we’ve been inanely told, these dragons can 'hibernate' for a thousand years in their eggs! So at that point it pretty much fell apart completely for me.

The only thing which kept me reading - at least for a short while, was that we’ve also been told how intelligent these animals are, so I was curious to see if there was some other motive at play here other than the author's desire to simply write a gratuitously graphical blood and gore-fest of the quality of a B-grade slasher flick. It turned out to be the latter, because the writing made no more sense than such a picture does. For example, we’d been told earlier that the emperor dragons - the largest - are largely herbivorous, yet when the escaping group of humans encounters one, they're scared that it will eat them! Worse than this, it becomes very territorial yet it’s defending neither food nor mates!

I made it to page 117 and that was all I could stand to read. This novel was far too cartoonish to take seriously, and that's all there was to it.