Wild Cats Volume One by Rebecca Merry Murdoch and Isabelle Iglesias

Title: Wild Cats Volume One (no web outlet found)
Author: Rebecca Merry Murdoch and Isabelle Iglesias (no websites found)
Publisher: Bark and Howl Press Ltd
Rating: WORTHY!

Artist: Muhammad Tauhidul Iqbal Sampad

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!

Not to be confused with Wild Cats Volume 1 by Jen Weston (which I haven't read), this is a children's book designed to heighten awareness of the plight of threatened species on Earth namely (in this case and in the case of this planned eight-volume series), the wild cats. In the series, Suki and Finch will travel around the Globe. They're two young teens who have been lucky enough to be selected to study and catalog threatened wild cat species across the world. Yes, it's a bit unlikely given that they have no training and are doing this alone, but it's a kids book for goodness sakes! Anything can happen!

They set off for the north-west USA and eventually head into Canada and the great white north! On the journey they pick up a couple of associates in the form of Tip the lynx and Screech the falcon, both of whom, despite their smart-mouthing each other, decide to accompany the pair on their travels.

The journey isn't an easy one. It takes a long time and they have issues - issues you wouldn't expect in a children's book of this nature. For example, they're chased out of a cabin by a very aggressive man who owns the place and has no time, evidently, for children, not even ones on such a noble mission. Finch has a night-time sleep issue with which many younger children might be familiar - and I'm not talking about nightmares. This causes a fight between him and Suki.

Both the kids look like they're borderline under-nourished (a condition which held before they embarked on this trip!). I think this appearance was rather uncalled for, but that aside, and keeping in mind the surrealism of their adventure (they break the fourth wall more than once!), the story was fun, fascinating and engrossing. The humor was great, and the kids' dedication to their mission, despite problems and a bout of home-sickness, is commendable.

I recommend this book. There are so many problems with planet Earth that it's hard to know where to start, and it's worse to not start because of such paralysis. In the end, the problems we have created are going to have to be solved by our children and their, because let's face it, we adults are doing diddly right now. I think this book is a great start in addressing one of those problems - species decimation caused by we greedy, blind, and careless humans.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Title: Uprooted
Author: Naomi Novik
Publisher: Random House
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 author has a string of novels with titles reminiscent of those employed by George Martin, but I haven’t read anything of hers before this one. It’s a first person PoV novel which I detest because it’s very rarely done well and it spoils the story for me. It limits what can be told, because everything has to be filtered through the mouth of the main character, for one thing.

I know that authors think it gives the story immediacy, but if they’re forced to tell it in first person merely to achieve that, then they’re doing it wrong. Besides, it actually loses immediacy because we know from the start that nothing truly bad can happen to the character because the character is telling the story. They’re obviously going to survive, and none of their pain and peril can have been very traumatic otherwise how could they recall all those details?! In fact, how do they recall them anyway?! There goes all hope for drama and peril. There goes immediacy! There goes credibility!

This one is a YA fantasy – a bit of a retelling of Beauty and the Beast - which has the narrator, Agnieszka, living in a land where every decade, the region’s ruling dragon (he’s called a dragon but he’s actually a man and a sorcerer) takes a seventeen-year-old female and keeps her for ten years before sending her on her way, with fine manners and clothing -and a handsome dowry. Why? My guess was that the dragon wasn’t interested in the females as such, but was looking for a specific female and I was right about that. We don’t have any idea why he wait until they’re almost adults before he selects them. That would seem to me to defeat his very purpose. Of course then, there could be no farcical attempt at a romance.

We do know that the selection takes place on the morrow, and that our narrator is eligible this year. There goes every element of surprise, because this means we also know that the very eligible villager known as Kasia isn’t the one going to be chosen, it’s going to be the narrator. There goes any element of surprise, but at least the author doesn’t make the eligibility based solely upon her beauty.

Predictably the narrator, who predictably is a homely bookworm, thinks that her friend Kasia will be the chosen, and puts herself last in the list because she’s a complete tomboy. How many times have novels traveled this road most traveled? (Hint: the answer is contained within the question).

The dragon is over a century old, so if this is to be a romance between the narrator and the dragon (as it is), then we have an immediate problem. It’s the same problem we have with nonsensical novels like Twilight foolishly purveying the ridiculous and absurd conceit that a decades-old vampire would not only be interested in wooing a teenager, but has the mentality of one himself. This isn’t only sick, it makes zero sense.

There is another issue here in that the dragon (so-called) has the manners of a hyena. He treats Agnieszka like dirt and she’s more than willing to put up with it. By chapter four – only some 50 pages in, I was regretting reading this. It was tedious listening to Agnieszka self-pity party page after page, paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence. I almost felt like taking the visiting Prince’s side after the incident she has with him. Almost. Even on a whiney wench like Agnieszka, I still couldn’t condone his behavior, but she’s obnoxious and so is he. There’s nothing to like in either of them. She’s sullen and self-obsessed. He’s arrogant and cruel. She has a chance to learn magic and resents it. He has no clue how to teach. She has no appealing qualities. Neither does he. I did not like her. I did not like him. She comes across as spoiled and stupid. I did not empathize with her, not even when she became somewhat smarter in her behaviors. She’d already lost me by then.

Agnieszka’s left alone when the dragon has to go off to fight a reported Chimæra, and she whines about that. She also observes that the dragon, who can evidently teleport, chooses to ride a horse to the distant place where there is something that’s quite obviously a red herring (and I don’t mean a real live fish!). She speculates that he can only teleport in his own land, but this makes no sense. If each region has its own wizard, then why is he going to deal with a problem in some other wizard’s region? If it’s his own region (his own land) then why wouldn’t he teleport? Maybe he can’t, but for Agnieszka to state it like that make it only more painfully obvious how truly clueless she is.

I made it to roughly half way through this novel and then we hit a part that was truly a god-awful attempt at “romance” – call it nomance because it’s not romance. It’s was pathetically passes for romance in bad YA novels. I couldn’t face reading any more at that point. There were some good ideas here, which could have made a good story, but it was so badly done that I not only couldn’t stand to pursue this unentertaining story any further. I honestly didn’t care what happened to any of the characters – save maybe Kasia. That’s my cross to bear – I tend to find the side-licks in YA novels far more appealing and entertaining than ever I find the main character. It’s a refreshingly rare novel indeed where the main character has what it takes to be the main one, but I do keep looking, because those rare finds are treasures.. Maybe your mileage will differ from mine with this one, but I can’t recommend this.

Trust by Jodi Baker

Title: Trust (Could not find this novel on B&N or Amazon)
Author: Jodi Baker
Publisher: Between Lions Press (website not found)
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 book one of the 'Between the Lions' series. I have to say up front that this is a first person PoV novel, a voice I detest because so few writers can carry it off, and it ends up being arrogant, self-absorbed and self-obsessed. In this case it wasn't too bad, but it was rather annoying. Why is it that young adult authors in particular seem utterly incapable of writing in third person?

One of the biggest problems with 1PoV is that it doesn’t work suspense-wise, because you know the story gets finished – so there's zero drama over whether the narrator will survive! For example when main character (and narrator) Anna gets imprisoned somewhere during this novel, it doesn't make for a chapter-ending cliff-hanger because there is no question of the outcome. We know she's going to escape and in this case the manner of her escape was so convenient that it was really rather sad.

Another problem with 1PoV is, of course, that you're stuck with you! The narrator can't relate anything that they don't experience personally, or the reader ends up with long info-dumps, or boring conversations where the reader has to sit and wait while someone relays what happened elsewhere. It's completely unnatural. Maybe some readers (and far too many writers, particularly those of the YA persuasion as I mentioned!) feel it brings more immediacy, but to me it brings irritation and annoyance. I routinely put books back on the shelf at the library or the book-store as soon as I discover that they're 1PoV, but it's a lot harder to do that with ebooks - and no book blurb ever gives you the PoV!

That aside, I was pleasantly impressed with this novel for the most part - the most part being the first 75% or so of it. After that it went somewhat downhill, but it still managed to stay this side of readable. It was a new and fresh story with some good ideas, and best of all, the main female character wasn't a complete loser who needed a guy to validate her which is another typically ailing of YA stories, so kudos to the author for that. There was a really nice (and slightly creepy) surprise in chapter two, which was most welcome.

Anna lives with an abusive mom - mentally abusive that is - who home-schools her and keeps her from the spotlight, drilling her mercilessly on the need to keep not so much a low profile, as a no-profile. It's obvious that Anna's being shielded for some reason, but she's never told why. This annoyed me somewhat because it's yet another example of the trope of a teen having special powers (of one kind or another) and being kept in the dark, and having no family, or one parent, or being raised by relatives, etc.

Frankly that was irritating, but the way it was done here as fresh enough that I got through it without developing hives. Unfortunately, this business of 'keep the orphan teen in the dark' was rather overdone, I'm sorry to say. Parts of it were good, but I really did become annoyed with it when it went on and on and on.

There were other minor issues. The author is one of those YA authors who thinks it's "bicep" and not "biceps" (Page 19). She disses nurses on page 48 by describing one running out of a hospital room "like a terrified kitten". I've worked in hospitals and it doesn't describe any nurse I've ever met. I know there must be some like that, they're only human after all, but when it comes to children in their care, nurses are as fierce and protective as a parent is, so I felt that slur was uncalled for.

There's also the sorry description that I've read in more than one YA novel: 'skin so black it was almost blue' (Page 135). I've read this in The Walled City by Ryan Graudin and the awful Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. In The Midnight Dress, Karen Foxlee takes in in the opposite direction: "…so blue it was almost black...".

This phrase makes absolutely no sense. The author is conflating hue, chroma, and brightness, which isn't a smart thing for a writer to do. There are very subtle ways like this in which we, as writers, can educate readers and bring them up with us instead of talking down to them. Cat Winters knows how to write this in In the Shadow of Blackbirds: "...navy blue so dark it was almost black.".

Anna finds she has a long, long family history (to a wonderful place as it happens - something which I loved and approved of), but her mom has sought to protect her from this history - foolishly as it always turns out in these novels. Now Anna's mom has disappeared, and she feels threatened, and suddenly a grandmother whom she thought had died turns out to be alive, and Anna is meeting strange people with curiously mythological names. And is she hearing voices?

So the story is for the most part quite gripping, and those quibbles I mentioned aside (and despite a bit of a falling-off of quality in the last quarter of the novel), I was impressed enough with this debut that I'm rating it as a worthy read.

All books to me are either worthy or unworthy of reading. It's a binary thing, not a one, two, three, four, or five star thing! Having said that I'm not a series fan, so I doubt I will pursue this series. It has to be a series of truly octopodally gripping power to get me to follow it! Otherwise it's just a prologue to a series of really long and repetitive chapters, and I don't do prologues! It's hard to see where this can actually go in a series and maintain my interest, but this one volume is worth a read and maybe you'll become addicted where I wasn't.

Madame Frankenstein by Jamie S Rich

Title: Madame Frankenstein
Author: Jamie S Rich
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Megan Levens.

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'm not sure what this has to do with the name 'Frankenstein' as such, since there's no one in this novel who goes by that name, but it is another retelling of the Frankenstein story. Set in 1932, it tells of Vincent Krall, mentally abused by the alpha male in his adoptive family, and run out of his college, sets out to prove his worth as a physician. His inspiration comes when the love of his life - a woman who really cares very little for him - is killed in a fiery motoring accident.

He takes her corpse and reanimates it, filling in the most badly damaged bits with spare body parts - the sources of which he has no qualms over. I mean, if someone's at death's door, you may as well hurry them through, right, if someone needs their organs?

His new woman looks very much like his old love, and he teaches her everything she needs to know about passing for human and being a woman, but for some reason, she's never quite enough for him. You know what they say about a woman scorned, right? On that same score, Vincent's "step-brother" is also onto him. He despises Vincent and knows he's up to something, but this simply makes him one more task which Vincent has to take care of, doesn't it?

Vincent fails to grasp just how much Henry knows and exactly who he's told about it, but that's the least of his troubles. What's he going to do when the woman in his life and starts getting it together? Is something going to start falling apart?

I highly recommend this one. Jamie Rich's story is credible and sensible (if a little crazy around the edges!). The artwork by Megan Levens is outstanding - clean, sharp line drawings, beautifully done and remarkably expressive. The whole comes together to make a great story with an ending which is, I have to say in the particular, even better than the sum of its parts....

Skewed by Anne McAneny

Title: Skewed
Author: Anne McAneny
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!

Erratum:
Page 212 "...either approving of either..." - too many eithers!

This novel could have been a classic example of how you can get away with murder with me and still get a positive review. All you have to do is tell a good story and have interesting characters and I'm willing to forgive a lot, but in the end, there was too much to forgive here.

Also, I have to say up front that this is a first person PoV novel, a voice I detest because so few writers can carry it off, and it ends up being arrogant, self-absorbed and self-obsessed. In this case it wasn't so bad - and the author knows the difference between stanch and staunch, so kudos there. but the problem remains that there are several serious problems with 1PoV even for authors who can get away with it.

The first and foremost of these is that it doesn’t work suspense-wise, because you know the story gets finished – so there's zero drama over whether the narrator will survive! For example when main character (and narrator) Jane gets trapped somewhere during this novel, it doesn't make for a chapter-ending cliff-hanger because there is no question of the outcome.

Another problem, which became apparent in the way that this novel was written, is the extreme limitation of being a first person narrator: you're stuck with you! The narrator can't relate anything that they don't experience personally, or the reader ends up with long info-dumps, or boring conversations where the reader has to sit and wait while someone relays what happened elsewhere. It's completely unnatural.

Maybe some readers (and far too many writers, particularly those of the YA persuasion!) feel it brings more immediacy, but to me it brings irritation and annoyance. I routinely put books back on the shelf at the library or the book-store as soon as I discover that they're 1PoV, but it's a lot harder to do that with ebooks - and no book blurb ever gives you the PoV!

The interesting thing about this is that the author here evidently agrees with me: in this story, we periodically reverted to 3PoV because of these limitations, and for me it failed because it kept halting the story at the interesting parts while we went back in time, and I'm asking myself: "So now who's telling the story?" and I'm losing faith in the reliability of what I'm being told. Is the narrator reliable? Is the third party reliable? Who is the third party? We don't know. More on how I dealt with this anon.

As I said, the main character is Jane Elizabeth Perkins, the narrator, who's a police crime scene photographer. That is to say, she's a police employee who photographs crime scenes (not necessarily only ones where police have committed crimes...).

She doesn't sound like she's very good at her job, but she does sound like she has a ferociously nauseating case of YA romantic interest in one of the detectives. We get bitch-slapped with this on page eight (this is only five pages in, since the novel unaccountably starts on page three). Indeed Jane's obsession with Wexler is pathetic and worthy of a trashy YA nomance, not a serious adult novel. It seriously mitigates against Jane being a likable female character. She pulled her chestnuts out of the fire with sufficient dexterity for me to let this slide by, but it was still annoying.

Jane and John (who-is-tediously-and-inevitably-called-Jack) Perkins are inexplicably famous as 'The Haiku Twins'. Fortunately Jack was a minor character or I would have ditched this novel on principle. I don't read novels any more which have main characters named 'Jack' because that name has gone wa-ay beyond cliché, past ludicrous, and well into plaid by now.

But I digress. Jane and John's mom was in her seventh month of the pregnancy with them when she was accidentally shot by Grady McLemore when he was attacked by a third party - someone who got away Scot-free since the police thought Grady had shot Bridget Perkins deliberately. Now Jane's getting anonymously-sent photos of the crime scene - photos which seem to prove that there was indeed a third party present at the scene - namely the guy who took the pictures.

John Perkins doesn't have any interest in solving his mother's murder. He's more interested in his run for DA. Indeed, he sounds like a complete jack-ass, so maybe he was named appropriately. There are two things which bothered me at this point. The first is that the author expects us to believe that some three decades after their birth, everyone still refers to John and Jane as haiku twins, and everyone recognizes them on sight. Frankly, that took far too much to believe. The second problem is that Grady McLemore is still alive. How this works in a nation which has pretty much Universal death penalty - and has been that way for decades - is the real unsolved mystery here! Virginia has been aggressively pro-death penalty, so how did McLemore escape the electric chair in 1985? No explanation!

I had thought that chapter one, which takes place 30 years (and zero hours!) before the present was the prologue, and praised the author for incorporating it into the body of the novel (I don't do prologues), but then I reached chapter five and now we're 30 years (and eleven hours) into the past again. This I did not like because now we're not reading a story, we're riding a switch-back and are risking whiplash!

I'm not really very fond of stories that continually interrupt the flow of the narrative and the action for a flashback. I really don't care for a blow-by-blow account of what happened thirty years ago. I care about what's happening now, and the author is denying me that knowledge. So do I skip the flashback chapters? After reading chapter five - a second flashback chapter - and discovering how utterly irrelevant and boring it was, I decided I was indeed going to skip any and all future flashback chapters (there was a bunch of them). Rest assured that I did not miss them.

Those problems solved, I was able to get on with what turned out to be really a rather good novel (previous complaints aside). So Jane takes these photos she received, and accompanied by Wexler and Nicholls - another detective - delivers them to Sophie Andricola, supposedly some sort of Sherlock Holmes consulting detective type, who evidently doesn't grasp that you can buy decaf coffee pretty much everywhere, even in Virginia. Jane wants her to look at the photos and see if Sophie (name means wisdom, you know!) can provide any further clues. Frankly, I'm not sure I understood the point of this part of the novel. Ultimately Sophie's contribution was irrelevant.

Some parts of this story didn't ring true. For instance, Jane's grandfather is ill and when she visits him in the hospital, he re-writes her mother's last words telling Jane something slightly different from what he's previously told her. This is also rather irrelevant, but anxious to know if he's rambling, Jane asks an "orderly" what medications he's on - trying to decide if he's likely to be coherent.

An orderly? Seriously? Is this the fifties and the military? No, if you want to know what meds he's on, you ask the doctor, or more likely the nurse, who is the one who actually administers the meds, yet despite the author being female, we get a male doctor, a male orderly, and no nurse, male or female. I didn't like that and I find it hard to understand why female authors so routinely marginalize females in their work. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong authors?

The author does do a good job of writing a mystery, and of dangling red herrings misleading throughout, and the romance wasn't as god-awful as it had threatened to be with annoying hints being dropped loudly and routinely, but by this time it was too late. I read about 90% of this novel and then gave up because it was dragging on way too long and it was becoming ever more boring. I got to the point where I really didn't care how it ended and I gave up on it. Life is too short, and there are far too many books out there calling. Every one of them (although doubtlessly many are lying!) promises to be more gripping. I can't recommend this book, but this author does have a future, I think.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Title: The Maltese Falcon
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Publisher: Books on Tape
Rating: WARTY!

Audio book read stiltedly by Michael Prichard.

Need I get into the blatant objectification employed in this cover? I hope not.

First published in 1930 and turned into what is now considered a film noir classic in 1941, The Maltese Falcon is what would, were it published now, be considered a stereotypical hard-bitten private dick story. This is where Sam Spade was born. He's hired by a Miss Wonderly to try and get her younger sister to return home.

Wonderly has no idea where her sister is (nor does the reader!), but she claims she's hanging out with a man whom Wonderly considers dangerous: a married Englishman with the unlikely name of Floyd - unlikely because no Brit would ever name their child 'Floyd', but Dashiell (How-About-That-Hair?) Hammett obviously didn't know this or didn't care. Wonderly requests that either Spade or Archer do this and she pays handsomely for the consideration. Spade's assistant, Miles Archer, is assigned to tail Floyd Thursby. Luckily for Spade.

That night Spade is awakened by a phone call notifying him of Miles Archer's death. Why they would call Spade rather than Archer's wife is a complete mystery, but Spade goes to the murder site and sees that Archer was shot before falling over a safety rail and rolling down an embankment. Spade undertakes (I use that word advisedly) to notify Archer's wife.

Even later that night (I guess Spade goes to bed rather early!), two police detectives, Polhaus and Dundy, visit Spade and take an interest in whether he has access to a gun. It turns out that Thursby has also been murdered and Spade is now a suspect! The fact that he was having an affair with Archer's wife doesn't help his case.

And so it goes. This story really wasn't very good at all. Maybe back in the day it was new, and fresh and different, but now it's really rather pathetic. I can neither recommend this nor the movie they made from it.

Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos

Title: Material Girls
Author: Elaine Dimopoulos
Publisher: Houghton Miflin Harcourt
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!

Normally I rail against, indeed, refuse to read, novels which are little more than a shopping list of the author’s favorite fashion items. Such snotty books deserve contempt, as does the fashion industry itself. What could be more arrogant and flatulent than an industry devoted to dictating to you that you must change your clothing styles with great frequency, or there’s something wrong with you? What could be more unjust than an industry which effectively tells you that if you’re rich, you’re fashionable and if you’re poor you’re tasteless? And what could be more appalling than an industry built upon the backs of slavishly laboring Asian women and children?

This novel is exceptional, in more ways than one. In the do or Dior world in this story, youth rules comprehensively. At thirteen, children are “tapped” for the success spotlight. If they have spent their school year doing the right thing on their websites, they could become the next pop sensation, the next fashion icon, or the next box-office dream. If they fail, they’re doomed to a life as “adequates” – in short, they’re just like you and me, but in this story, adequate is really understood to mean failure.

This story concerns two successes. One of these is Marla Klein, who hit the big time in the fashion industry, being quickly promoted to the superior court – a handful of teens who declare what’s fashion and what’s fashi-off for one of the five big design houses, Torro-LeBlanc. Marla’s problem is that she’s been disagreeing with the rest of her court appointees, and before she can say “tummy ill figure”, she’s been jettisoned to the basement, where a hoard of designers deemed not good enough for the fashion courts are desperately trying to come up with fashion ideas which will impress the junior courts and get them a shot at displaying their design before the superior court.

Meanwhile, Evangeline Vassiliotis, now reincarnated as ivy Wilde, the current rebel diva superstar, is seeing her position threatened by an upstart Tap. Worse, she’s forced to wear the newest fashion: torture (which features chains, fake blood, and points on the soles of your shoes – on the inside). Of course, these “fashions” are scarcely any more torturous than those which women have felt compelled to wear for centuries, but they’re new and different, of course, so don’t you dare criticize them. Valenteenhold and Shamel certainly wouldn't! Women have fashion guns with which they can scan their clothing labels. If the light stays green, the trend is still good. If it’s red, you’re dead - fashionably speaking, of course - and it’s time to buy a new wardrobe.

Marla finds herself on the “obsoloser” table in the basement – as debased as it gets, in fact. She’s almost “crustaceous” for goodness sakes, but slowly, she and her cohorts hatch a scheme to subvert this system which considers people antiquated by the time they turn twenty. It all goes horribly wrong, and Marla finds herself under the icy glare of Ivy Wilde’s entourage – with the emphasis on the ‘rage’ part. It’s then that things really begin to change. Quick! Alert the media. I'm sure Vain Infamy, Cosplaypolitan, Fugue, or Helle fashion magazines would be interested!

This author could have read my mind – or snuck a peak at chapter zero of my novel Baker Street, but I doubt it! I honestly doubt that she and I are the only ones who have had thoughts like this about the fashion business. It’s what this author does with this story though, and where she takes it, which is what makes this novel “prime” (in my lingo: worthy!). No, in this novel she runs with it and makes an engrossing story full of interesting characters and even more interesting motivations.

I have to say that in many ways, characters Marla and Ivy are very much alike. There’s not a lot to separate them into individual characters, but this is only to be expected from a system which pre-processes children and manufactures a salable product out of them. But if you think that, then read on. They're not!

This story – speculative, dystopian, both - is set in the future, but it’s not a future that’s so far off it can’t be seen. No, the seeds of that future have been enthusiastically sown by vested interests since the 1950s, especially in the USA. A conspicuous consumer/planned obsolescence machine has been working on hearts and minds for decades. We’re all fashion victims. The question is: Is there a cure?

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

Title: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Canongate
Rating: WARTY!

Having read of the religiously-motivated controversy surrounding Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, when I came across this audio book, I was curious to find out what he had to say. Pullman reads it himself, and it makes for entertaining listening, although I confess I'm not sure what his motivation was in writing it or what he hoped to achieve in doing so.

I'm not religious and I do not believe there ever was a Messianic son of god roaming around what is now Israel some 2,000 years ago. Certainly there never was a "Jesus Christ" - which is all Greek to me! Yes, there were people named Yeshu, or Yeshua or Yehoshua - it was a common name as was Miri (Mary) and Yusef (Joseph). There may even have been one or more rabbis going by the name of Yeshu, one or more of whom may have been crucified. That doesn’t make the contradictory stories in the New Testament true. There's no evidence that any of those poor victims of Roman barbarity ever rose from the dead.

Pullman tells it like it's true, but he puts a spin on it which is unique to my knowledge: that Jesus Christ wasn't one man, but two: Jesus, and Christ, brothers, both of whom could perform miracles, but only one of whom, Jesus, took on the mantle of Messiah. Directed by a creepy anonymous benefactor, Christ remained in the shadows recording and documenting Jesus's words and activities.

Pullman tells the story very much like it’s told in the NT, including some little known tales from New Testament era apocrypha, but on some occasions he puts a slightly different spin on the stories, heightening the interest and drama, while all the time, Jesus is becoming more well-known and popular, and the authorities increasingly taking an interest in his activities.

And so it goes, but in the end I can't recommend this as a worthy read because it really didn't offer anything new or startling - apart from the aforementioned and rather schizophrenic aspect of it. Kudos to Pullman for reading his own stories in the audio versions, but this isn't something I really enjoyed or would want to read again, unlike the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which I adore.

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Title: Matilda
Author: Roald Dahl
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Rating: WARTY!

Expertly read by Kate Winslet.

I listened to the audio book version of this and was very impressed by Kate Winslet's rendering of it. She nailed the voices completely. The problem was that the story was rubbish. I know a lot of people consider this a classic, but let's face facts here: if this had been written by an unknown author, it would never have been published unless the author published it themselves.

Even for a fantasy story it was unrealistic, with every major character other than Matilda herself nothing more than a cardboard caricature. I think was sad that situations which actually can occur in real life were turned into a joke here, such as Matilda's having abusive or neglectful parents, and a head teacher who was nothing short of psychotic.

Matilda is an unappreciated prodigy - almost an adult in a five-year-old body. She's completely self-motivated, she reads and evidently comprehends at adult level, and she's a math wizard. She also, evidently, is wizardly in the magical sense, too, although it takes a while for this aspect of her personality to manifest.

Matilda takes petty revenge upon her father for his disrespectful and domineering attitude by putting super-glue inside his hat and mixing some of her mother's peroxide hair bleach into her father's hair "tonic" rendering his magnificent black mane a wicked shade of gray. She herself is abusive as demonstrated when she stuffs a parrot (in its cage) up the household chimney so that it's voice imitations scare her parents. It stays there overnight. I would have liked her a lot better were she not such a unrepentant brat.

The characters have completely farcical names. Matilda's family name is Wormwood. The awful head teacher is Agatha Trunchbull, whereas the nice teacher is Jennifer Honey. Seriously? Judged by the testimony given by a student named Hortensia, Trunchbull is almost justified in her attitude towards children. The ending is completely predictable. I cannot recommend this novel, but Kate Winslet's performance (and this was actually a performance, not merely a reading pretentiously described as a performance) was truly a joy to hear.

The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer by Laxmi Hariharan

Title: The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer
Author: Laxmi Hariharan
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!

Errata:
Page 30 "Once upon at time it was amongst set many similar..." should be "Once upon at time it was set amongst many similar..."
Page 36 "...it's both Panky and my choice..." should be "...it's both Panky's and my choice..."
Page 88 "...Vikram is turns around..." should be "...Vikram turns around..."
Page 133 "reincarnate" should be either "incarnate" or "reincarnated"

Ruby Is an Indian woman living in Mumbai (which the author insists upon naming Bombay in this story). Mumbai is the biggest city in India (and eighth in the world) in terms of population, and its average temperature year round, runs between 70 and 90 (21 and 33) degrees. It's hot in many ways, including being a boomtown and business center, as well as having a great deep-water port.

Ruby Iyer is a young professional who lives in a bungalow which she shares with a guy named Pankaj ("Panky"), her best friend. One day when heading in to work, Ruby is knocked off the platform onto the electric train tracks and has 10,000 volts run through her, which she survives with no more than a Lichtenburg tree (an electrical branching pattern, rather like a tattoo) on her shoulder to show for it - at least externally. Inside, it's a different matter. Inside, Ruby feels the power of electricity and anger which she can barely control at times.

Note in passing that people tend to confuse volts with amps. 10,000 volts all by itself means little without knowing the amperage and the resistance. Humans can survive high voltage, but anything above a few milliamps for very long, and you're doomed! But that's by-the-by. Ruby tries to go to work the next day (this is after three days had gone by when she was unconscious in the hospital), and she fails spectacularly.

At the station, waiting on the morning train, standing alongside a guy she shared an autocab with, she sees the same guy who pushed her onto the tracks pushing another young woman in the same way. Ruby saves her life and then not wanting to deal with the publicity (or the police officer heading her way), she runs - stealing someone's motorbike.

She gets an anonymous text message to go to the Sea Link ferry and against her better judgment, finds herself driving down there. She finds a guy high-up off the ground, looking like he's going to jump. Next thing she knows, she's climbing up there trying to talk him down, and then diving into the water after him when he slips and falls. Suddenly she's being pulled from the water by the same guy she shared the cab with. What's going on here?

I admit after some seventy pages of this I was intrigued - drawn in by the oddity of events and by the sheer feistiness of Ruby's character. Now here's a great potential for a strong female protagonist thinks I, but there's also a male interest. Is this going to continue to show her as a strong independent woman, or is it going to go right down hill faster than Ruby plummeted into the ocean? Are we going to see her buried under the protective mantle of a validating guy just as the ocean covered her? I hoped not, but unfortunately soon, there soon came signs of plot failings.

Here's a writing issues to consider; how do you approach pet names when writing a story set in a foreign culture? Can you just employ Americanisms and have it work? Or is that going to rudely throw people out of suspension of disbelief? I ask because this author had Ruby refer to her pal Panky as "Pankster" from time to time. In the US, we understand that, because it's a very American thing to do, but unless she's really saying "Pankster" in her own tongue along with whatever else she's saying, what does Pankster mean? It would sound exactly the same in Bambaiya, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, or whatever language she's speaking, but would it mean the same thing it means in the US?

Is there a local language equivalent, and if so, why didn't the author use that - because we wouldn't understand it? I don't buy that. In the first hundred pages or so, the author does a great job of bringing us into the culture without making it sound like a guidebook or a lecture, so why this? I don't know. English is widely spoken amongst professionals in Mumbai, so maybe they speak English to each other and there's no problem here?

Having said that, there were quite a few technical problems with the text, including instances of two words run together, such as at the bottom of page 91 where it says "Handis" rather than "Hand is". A run-through with a decent spell-checker would catch many of those errors. There are other errors a spell-checker won't catch, such as when an AK-47 is identified on page 108 as a machine gun it's not. It's an assault rifle.

What about those plot failings I mentioned? Well, without wanting to give too much away, the most outrageous one was an incident in a train station where Ruby had the opportunity to take down or even take out the bad guy and she failed to act. I have no idea what that was all about except, of course, that it permitted the bad guy to escape and the story to continue for another 150 pages!

Things went significantly downhill after that for me, though, and I couldn't finish this novel. It became far too cartoonish. Some random guy launches an attack on Ruby in her home, and immediately afterwards, she's invited to visit the bad guy at a nearby hotel. Now maybe the guy with the gun was merely going to escort her to the hotel, maybe not, but either way it made no sense. He never said he only wanted to take her there, and she went anyway. The only thing this accomplished was a bout of blood and gore.

Ruby arms herself with a machete, which she pretty much consistently refers to as a sword, from that point onwards. It made no sense, especially since Vikram the cop said he was going to stay with her so he could get the bad guy, and as soon as his back is turned she runs off alone, no back-up, to try and rescue Panky.

It's at this point that we're expected to believe that simultaneously with the city all-but shutting down from multiple bombings, and with the power out, there's a fashion show going on at the Hyatt??? People are packing into one of the stations which was blown up just a day or two before - to go to work?!! There's this chaos going on and the army isn't called in? There's no curfew imposed? It's like all this is going on, and yet life continues in the city unaffected. It made no sense.

The story was told in first person PoV which usually doesn't work. In this case it wasn't too bad to begin with but it did begin to grate on the nerves after a while, especially since Ruby was hardly a nice person. I wasn't rooting for her. I actually liked the bad guy better.

If Ruby had shown some smarts instead of being a dick who routinely steals other people's property (mostly transportation) and who has no idea how to call for or rely on back-up, and shows no evidence that she even understands what cooperation is, let alone how to engage in it, with the cop who saved her life more than once. She's just not a likable protagonist, and that coupled with the absurd events the further I read into this story, was enough to convince me that I cannot rate this as a worthy read.

It's very depressing, actually, because the author shows signs of a real writing ability, yet she has a character like this in a setting that is, for once, in some place other than the USA, and it just gets wasted and squandered. I felt very sad and disappointed in what seemed to me to be a badly wasted opportunity.

Nick and Tesla's Special Effects Spectacular by Steve Hockensmith

Title: Nick and Tesla's Special Effects Spectacular
Author: Steve Hockensmith
Publisher: Quirk 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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Science advisor: Bob Pflugfelder.

This story wasn't for me, but I'm rating it positively for several reasons, not least of which is that it definitely was for the age group (middle grade) at which it's aimed. In addition to that, it has a strong female character who isn't sidelined or dependent upon a male figure (and from a male writer! Why can't female writers do a better job at this? YA authors, I'm looking at you!). In addition to that it has gadgets you can make (and relatively inexpensively), some of which are not really practical to use (such as the grappling hook), others of which are eminently practical, even ingenious, such as the steadicam device.

If there's one thing we need to encourage in our kids academically, it's math and science, and I am on-board with pretty much every book out there which nudges kids in that direction. Science isn't for nerds, it's for everyone, and it plays an important part in everyday life. It can help you to understand the world around you and live a better life in it, with greater understanding of how everything works.

This is one of a series (the first I've read). You do not have to have read the others to enjoy this one. Fraternal (or sororal, why not?!) twins Nick and Tesla Holt are, to be frank, rather neglected in the regard that their parents are evidently always away on projects across the globe, leaving the kids in the care of their "mad scientist" uncle. I had two problems with this: first that this neglect is effectively presented as a good thing, and second that their uncle Newt is presented as your stereotypical mad scientist, always blowing things up. I think that was a bad choice, and a better choice would have been to have kept the kids at home with their parents, and had mom be the engineer/inventor instead of having a clichéd male scientist character.

However, if you're willing to overlook that, then there is a cool adventure to be had here. There's something afoot in the movie industry, and Nick and Tesla have an 'in' to the studio back-lot through a relative of a friend of theirs. Together, Demarco, Nick, Silas, and Tesla solve the crime, and learn a huge amount about movie-making and special effects. I would have loved a story like this when I was that age. Who is leaking embarrassing paparazzi-style footage onto the Internet? Who is sabotaging filming on the set - and why?

I would have preferred a stronger word or two of caution with regard to having kids running around the studio lot (or any place of work, especially where there's a potential for serious injury) unescorted, but that aside, the kids show smarts and responsibility, and they show inventiveness - two of them are making their own movie: "Bald Eagle: The Legend Takes Flight" featuring their own special effects, with which Tesla and Nick are helping. Thus they have the grappling tool, the robo-arm, a stunt dummy and the steadicam rig.

The only big problem I had with this is one which I've had with several other books. The translation of the book into Kindle format sucks! I mean it seriously sucks. Take a look at the sample screen-shot on my blog. This was one of very many such screens which are screwed-up for several reasons: because the text is ragged - failing to run to the full width of the screen, or it's randomly displayed as gray instead of black, or the text randomly changes size for a few words before reverting to its original size, or page numbers appear in the text. All f those issues can be seen in the image here.

There's absolutely no excuse for this shoddy presentation whatsoever, not even in an advance review copy. The novel isn't due out until May - there was plenty of time to finish up the illustrations and get the presentation right! Hopefully the commercial version of the Kindle version will be error-free! However I am not rating this in the presentation of the ARC, but on the writing and the story, which I rate as a worthy story.

Vicky Finds a Valentine by Emlyn Chand

Title: Vicky Finds a Valentine
Author: Emlyn Chand
Publisher: Evolved Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated Noelle Griffin.

Okay, I am wa-ay late posing this review, but you know, I'm not in the least bit sorry, because when I thought about holding this review until next year, it occurred to me that there's something fundamentally wrong with having only one day each year where you express love or friendship for someone.

Why only one day? What's wrong with the other 364? More to the point: other than pure commercialism, why focus so very intently upon that one day when you should be spending every day focused on the one(s) you love with equal intensity?

So forget the flowers and the Valentine card and the chocolates. Get into the habit of doing a little something every day - even if it's only leaving a love note, or more practically, washing up the dirty dishes, or making sure you didn't forget what you were requested to pick up from the store on the way home. And make sure you don't forget why you're with that person in the first place - if you want to be sure you're with them in the second place! Be there for them. Love them! Be ready when you're needed, and not with excuses. Don't let them down. Let them breathe.

And give a thought to the birds this winter time! After all, don't they make life delightful for us the rest of the year? Young Vicky is a love bird who has a tough time when it comes to Valentine’s Day. Her friend has gone off to school, armed with cards for all of her school pals and her teacher, and Vicky is all alone in her cage. She decides to go on a hunt for a valentine friend of her own. Will it be the doll sitting lonely on the bed? Will it be the people on the TV? Will it be the…cat?

I think you know where it's at. With Noelle Griffin's warm illustrations and Emlyn Chand's (I have no idea how that's pronounced. It's not mentioned on her blog. I assume it's like 'Shand') sensitive writing, this is a Valentine for any time of the year. Taking a page from The Wizard of Oz, if you take a moment to think abut it, you'll realize that you have everything you need right in your own back yard!

Note that the illustrations were way small on my smart phone (which has a large screen for a phone) and not adjustable. They were larger on the iPad, but still not full screen, although they were adjustable. I can't speak for how this might look in the print version or in the Adobe Digital Editions version.

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

Rating: WORTHY!

I first met Phryne Fisher on Netflix where two seasons can be found as of this writing, both of which I've seen. there will be a third series and perhaps more, since this is a real money-spinner for ABC (that's the Australian ABC, not the US ABC!) and deservedly so. I fell in love with Phryne from the first episode. Essie Davis is magical in the title rôle, and the whole show is smart, fast-paced, daring, socially conscious, and majorly fun. Note that the name is pronounced Fry-Knee - which is why the TV series came to be titled "The Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries" - no one wanted to have to teach everyone they spoke to how to pronounce the name!

The problem is that when you're hit like that and become so on-board (with a movie or a show), it's a tough decision as to whether to go to the book, just as it is in moving the other way. Books and movies/shows are very different entities, and the trick when you wish to migrate one to the other is to capture the essence if not the letter. In this case, it worked, because now having read the first in the series of books which kicked-off the shows, I can come down very favorably for both outlets, although be warned, the two are quite different in many respects.

The basic plot is the same. Phryne Fisher is (or rather becomes during this introductory edition) a very feisty, plucky, and successful Lady Detective. She's of independent means, so she never charges for her services, and her cases frequently lean towards supporting the downtrodden. Having successfully and very speedily solved a jewel theft at a soirée she was attending in London, Phryne is asked if she would travel to Australia to uncover who might be poisoning. The TV shows starts with the Honorable Phryne Fisher arriving in Australia and taking up residence in a charming house. The book begins with the jewelery theft and then has Phryne travel to Melbourne, where her roots lie, and where she installs herself at the exclusive Windsor Hotel.

Phryne was originally of exceptionally humble means, and came into money (that story deserves telling, but it hasn't yet been told, to my knowledge), so while she thoroughly appreciates (indeed, luxuriates in) the amenities which money can bring, she has not lost sight of where she came from. Phryne knows Doctor Elizabeth MacMillan, an ex-pat Scot who dresses like a man and is as good as any one of them. She's a physician in a women's hospital and this is how Phryne learns of an abortionist (abortion was sadly illegal back then, even in Australia) known as the Mad Butcher, who like to rape his pregnant victims before he virtually kills them performing his 'surgery'.

Cec and Bert, two Aussie blokes who each have a share in a run-down taxi-cab, find themselves with a girl named Alice, post op and tossed into their cab, bleeding onto the seats. They rush her to the hospital, thereby saving Alice's life - just.

Meanwhile Phryne begins to socialize with a view to becoming intimately acquainted with Lydia Andrews, the poisoning victim. As if these two events are not enough, there's also the King of Snow - the cocaine dealer who has taken up residence in Melbourne with a view to making a killing in an untapped market.

Both the show and the novel have all these ingredients, and the end results are largely the same, but the details are different. In the show, Phryne ends up buying Bert and Cec a new cab to replace their cranky aging vehicle - on the understanding that they'll give her priority when she needs them, but she also, in the show, owns the gorgeous Hispano-Suiza that she drives, rather than just leases it for a week. Dot, her maid in the novel becomes a companion in the TV show.

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is a much more important figure in the shows than ever he is in this novel, but perhaps, as the series progresses, his prominence will increase. Constable Hugh Collins is a non-entity in the first book, and Dot, his girl-friend, is unacquainted with him. Also Dot isn't the one who pretends she's looking for an abortion. This rôle is taken in the book, by WPC Jones, a female police officer. This is interesting because in the second series TV show Phryne mentions to jack that there are no female officers on force, a rôle which she fulfills independently!

To cut a great story short, I recommend both this and the TV show! My biggest complaint about these books is that you can't find them in the book store! I did find a couple in the local library and I am sure they're available on-line.

Take the Dog Out Numbers by Lynne Dempsey

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Sweetly illustrated by Mandy Newham-Cobb.

I reviewed the original Take the Dog Out (don't you just love that title?!) earlier this month, and now, once again we’re with the TTDO gang and this time we’re counting. All the way to ten. And back again. Are we going to get there? If we do will we safely make it back? Only your child can tell!

This was a fun and energetic romp through the park, starting with a squirrel. I adore squirrels. Even the name is hilarious. Unfortunately, the squirrel is being chased by a cat, which of course is in turn being chased by that boisterous dog. As more and more people become involved, the numbers climb higher and higher so your child can see that by adding one more, we climb to the next number – and conversely, as people (and animals) become distracted, we start discounting from 10 all the way back to zero. No doubt the bird reported all this on twitter….

Once again there are hidden bones – this time not just to be found. You didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you? Nope, this time they need to be counted. Full disclosure: I skipped this portion of the enterprise, not having a young child by my side with whom to count. You might say I just did a bare bones reading….

Once again comes to the aid of our textual understanding with some sharp, fun, and colorful illustrations (the squirrel was a blast) and the multicultural crowd sported huge smiles. Even the butterfly somehow seems to be laughing (or maybe she’s just winging it…).

I thought this was a great idea and well-executed. The numbers are shown as numbers and also as aggregations of people and animals, reinforcing the lesson all the way through. The turn-around is a little more speedy, rather like the down-slope of a roller-coaster with the declining numbers (that squirrel finally found a tree, and you know a wind-blow hat demands to be chased!), taking their toll on the crowd one-by-one until it’s just the cat – and you know they don’t hang around long when there’s nothing going on!

I recommend this if you’re looking for a counting aid for your child. Make it fun and they’ll learn fast and develop a life-long love of the magic that math can do for us. American children always seem to compare so poorly in math and science with children from other nations, that anything we can do to raise the standard is to be welcomed, and this is certainly a good start.

Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher

Title: Ketchup Clouds
Author: Annabel Pitcher
Publisher: Little Brown
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!

Here's a part of the completely asinine blurb for this novel:

Secrets, romance, murder and lies: Zoe shares a terrible secret in a letter to a stranger on death row in this second novel from the author of the bestselling debut, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece.

Fifteen-year-old Zoe has a secret-a dark and terrible secret that she can't confess to anyone she knows. But then one day she hears of a criminal, Stuart Harris, locked up on death row in Texas. Like Zoe, Stuart is no stranger to secrets. Or lies. Or murder.

This blurb is entirely lies! Yeah, I get that that's what blurbs do for a profession, to get you to buy the book, but usually they have some sort of relationship to reality, no matter how tenuous. This one doesn't - not at all! Not even a little bit.

I listened to the audio book version of this novel, and the only thing which got me through the entire book was the charming accent and intonation of the reader, Julie Maisey, which I wanted to listen to even when I didn't want to hear what was written! I'd love to hear her read something else, or see her in a show or movie, but as it was, the boring content of this novel had made me want to ditch it part way through the first disk. I didn't, because I had chance to listen to the second disk on the return drive, and that was more interesting. Had it been a shorter trip, this book would have been DNF'd, but even as it was, I still can't rate it a worthy read.

The asinine premise here is that Zoe, the main character who narrates this via a series of letters she's writing, has murdered someone, and is writing to Stuart Harris, who is on death row in Texas, having been deemed guilty of stabbing his girlfriend to death. We learn nothing about him, and hear none of his replies, if there ever were any, so he's a complete non-entity, and this really exposed this form of novel writing for the pretentious pile of garbage that it is.

It also, of course, begs the huge question as to why the author chose this format in the first place. First person PoV rarely works well. I typically put a book back on the shelf when I learn it's in this format even if the book had, to that point, sounded interesting, but in the case of audio books and ebooks, you can't stand there in the library or the bookstore and flip a few pages to see if you'd like it. Plus, you can't tell a story by writing letters, not even if you're the laziest SoB on the planet. IT. DOESN'T. WORK. The letters are completely unnatural and sound as fake as hell.

The whole business of a fifteen-year-old girl writing to a death row inmate who had stabbed his girlfriend struck me as ridiculous at best, and outright sick at worse, especially when she's signing off the letter with a kiss. Seriously? But then this novel is an exercise in the abuse of women without consequences, so Harris was the out-lier here. Maybe that's why we learn nothing of this guy, and why we don't hear of any response from him. Unless I missed something (I skipped many tracks, so it's possible), we don't even know if Zoe is actually mailing the letters in the first place.

It's so glaringly obvious from the start that Zoe hasn't murdered anyone, so the story's "big reveal" at the end isn't one at all. It's evidently just a gimmick, like the letter-writing, of which the author ought to be ashamed. If Zoe had literally murdered someone, one presumes there would be consequences beyond what we're given here, but there are none. She's not writing her letters from in prison, but from the garage, or garden shed or something. This story would have been far better had she been behind bars and we later learned that the bars were on the window in her room in a psychiatric institute where Zoe was an inmate.

This entire story lacks oomph, is plodding, is entirely unrealistic, and reeks of Le Stupide. Zoe has to be one of the most tedious and boring narrators ever invented, constantly going off on tangents and rarely focusing on the point. No one writes letters like that, not even in real life. It was really frustrating. She's consistently portrayed as a spineless puppet who vacillates between two brothers, which in the end precipitates the unfortunate showdown at the end.

Why she's even remotely interested in the younger of the two, who is not only a moron, but who has sexually abused her by taking a photograph of her exposed breasts without her consent (or at best with her drunken consent, which is the same thing), is a mystery. He circulated the picture to his high-school friends. This doesn't stop Zoe from rewarding his unacceptable behavior by dating him, nor does it prevent her from sexually frustrating him by sending him mixed signals, which also contributes to the finale. Nor does it prevent her from leading-on his older brother. Nor does she deem it necessary to let either brother know that she's playing them both.

Zoe's family life was actually portrayed realistically, and would have made a decent story had it not been larded with the farcical letter writing, and the ludicrous love triangle. Had those been omitted, and just her family story told, it would have made for something potentially worthy. Her youngest sister Dot is hearing-impaired, so that was a plus. We rarely see people with physical or mental handicaps included in stories unless their condition plays a role in the story. It's like they don't exist in the fictional world, but that inclusion, and the family dynamic were not enough to offset the dumb-assery revolving around Zoe, who was teeth-grindingly annoying, so I can not only not recommend this novel, I actively dis-recommend it.

Cleo by Lucy Coats

Title: Cleo (no online outlet found)
Author: Lucy Coats
Publisher: Hachette
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!

One huge kudos up front: this book uses paper from responsible sources! You go Hachette/Orchard! Maybe all publishers do this these days, and this one's the only one smart enough to trumpet it? I don't know, but credit where it's due!

The title for chapter one is very dramatic : Death comes to Alexandria - but then a brief description tells us we're in Alexandria, four years earlier - earlier than what? I don't know! There was no prologue, for which I am deeply grateful to the author! She puts it in chapter one, where it belongs, so this book got off to a good start for me, but then it rather went downhill I'm afraid.

Cleo's mother is dying. Cleo's father, one of the Ptolemys, has run away to Rome not long before, taking the entire family with him except for Cleo and her mom. Cleo has never felt so alone and was trying her best not to cry - not to show weakness - as she begged the god Isis to spare her mom. Isis, like every god, has a an un-amusing habit of simply not listening.

So yes, it's the story of Cleopatra, told for a middle grade audience. Cleo starts out at twelve years old, then jumps to sixteen, but the story-telling remained middle-grade, which was one of my problems with it. Cleopatra's name means 'father's glory', but this isn't her real glory or story - which was another of my problems with it. Cleopatra's real story is completely twisted around here, so please don't think you're learning any history. I don't understand why writers do this. If you're going to make up literally everything as was done here, then why use a real historical person? if you're going to write about a real person, why make it so fanciful that it bears no relation to her real life?

To be honest, the story is a complete mess. Cleo did have to flee from Alexandria, but it wasn't like Cinderella fleeing from her two evil stepsisters as is portrayed here. She had actually been ruling - at first along with her father, and then with her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, to each of which brothers she was married. When she fled, it was not after her mother's death, but after her father's (Ptolemy XII's) death. Her brother was the evil sibling, refusing to share power with his sister. Both Cleo and her younger sister Arsinoë (named after the mother of the first Ptolemy) - a sister Cleo later had assassinated - fled, and it was Arsinoë who went into a temple, not of Isis but of Artemis.

Arsinoë's story would have actually been more interesting. Tryphaena was not an evil stepsister but was actually Cleopatra's mother (as is thought - no one knows for sure), aka Cleopatra V. There was no Bere -nice or -nasty - not as a sister. There was a Cleopatra Berenice III, who was an aunt or possibly Cleo's mom (the Ptolemy family tree was as incestuous as you can get). In real life, Cleo was never the girl portrayed here!

At one point Cleo describes a scorpion as an insect. It’s not. It’s an arachnid, related to spiders. The ancient Egyptians wouldn’t necessarily make this distinction, but I think it’s misleading and unnecessary – and it makes her look dumb. The real Cleopatra made some bad decisions, but she was anything but dumb. At another point, Cleo refers to the Ptolemy side of her ancestry, which is amusing because there was really only a Ptolemy side to her ancestry! Her entire family was descended from two people and the bothers uncles, etc. intermarried repeatedly. As I mentioned, this was one of the most incestuous lineages ever!

So in a novel like this you have to decide how much you want it to represent history and/or how much you're willing to let it be fanciful. For a good story I could accept either route, so for me, it all comes down to how engrossing and intelligent the story ends up being, and there it failed for me because it was way too young for the intended audience, and apart from it not being accurate, it wasn't very engaging. Cleo wasn't likable. She was far too self-obsessed and self-absorbed. She cared nothing for anyone but herself and her slave-girl who was named Charm even though the actual slave who died with Cleo was named Charmion.

The supernatural elements might have made for an interesting story but were skimped on to the point where I wondered why they had even been included. To cut a (too) long story short, I gave up reading this one at about fifty percent in and I can't recommend it based on what I read.

Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach

Title: Lesbianism Made Easy
Author: Helen Eisenbach (no website found)
Publisher: Open Road Integrate Media
Rating: WORTHY!

If Woody Allen had been a lesbian, he might have written something like this. I'm honestly at something of a loss as to how to review this one usefully except to give you a few quotes and to say that I was laughing out loud on pretty much every other screen.

It's a humorous look at lesbianism, no doubt based on the author's own experiences and stories she's heard, and it's funny as hellions. It does flag a bit here and there (and "fag" a bit in parts, too!), but overall it's exxcellent (yes, that's two X-chromosomes thank you!), well-worth reading if you have any interest at all in sexual preferences and in laughing.

Told with tongue firmly in cheek (or somewhere) this exquisite satire introduces you to lesbianism and how to make (or even mate) the most of it - or at least live with it! Author Eisenbach had me at the opening quiz. Here's one of the multiple choice (and I mean really choice) questions:

When in the presence of Scarlett Johansson, I usually feel:

• a. Warm and/ or tingly
• b. Slightly faint
• c. Hungry
• d. All of the above, not to mention whew!
• e. Other

This is a trick question. Answers (a)—(d) prove nothing except that you’re alive. If you chose (e), you’re not fooling anyone. There are no other answers.

The book is full of off-the-wall commentary and observation:

One of the great rewards of lesbianism, among the many too numerous to elaborate upon, is that it is possible to go to bed with someone and feel more beautiful naked than clothed, more desirable than you had any expectation of feeling after being weaned on a diet of American standards in silicone and femininity.

The observations are not confined solely to women. Gay guys come in for a butt-load of ribbing, and to Eisenbach's comedian, heteros get to play the straight man:

Nature has given men erections to make sure they never forget that nothing lasts.

Nothing is excluded from the humor or escapes attention:

The telephone, to get back to where we started, is an instrument that is frequently misused in interpersonal relationships; indeed, it is sometimes the root of intercouple trauma. Remember, if you can, that the phone should be wielded like a vibrator: 1. Gently, paying particular attention to the responses of the phonee, 2. Only when absolutely necessary, so as not to become too dependent on its usage, and 3. Never as a substitute for the real thing face-to-face. Well, almost never.

One sour word on the formatting side: in the Kindle app on my Smart phone, some of the text that was intended to appear in two separate columns wasn't very well separated as you can see from the image below.

I thoroughly recommend this even if you don't have your dreams swimmin' in women.