Girl Blue by Alan Nayes

Title: Girl Blue
Author: Alan Nayes
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Rating: WARTY!

This was a prime example of where a book blurb led me to expect one thing from a novel which delivered something completely different, and not in a pleasant Monty Python sort of a way! The blurb suggests that the dead witch is coming back to life - that this is a warped Pygmalion, and that we will have standing before us, at some point, a witch of stone made flesh - at least that was what I was expecting and looking forward to. It's not like that at all. The story is really a tale of a delusional man with a brain tumor, who's seeing things which are not there. I was disappointed to say the least. I felt cheated with this bait and switch.

Jeremy Copper is a skilled and successful sculptor. He has a Glioblastoma Multiforme, and is about to embark - when his headaches will let him - upon what he believes is his last work of art before the tumor takes his life. He has a massive block of azul pegaso granite in his studio and is starting to work on sketches and models, trying to see what’s inside the rock.

Be warned that Girl Blue is a long novel and that it moved at a very leisurely pace. Normally I don't like novels that take too long to get where I want them to go(!), but in this case, this wasn't too bad to begin with. It became more and more tedious as I read further and further into the novel for me. What kept me going was a pay-off I was expecting which never arrived.

I had a problem with this when trying to read it in the Kindle, which was the random line spacing. You can see in the image here that there are gaps (marked with a red rectangle here) between lines that should not be there. I don't know what it is, but Kindle seems to get short shrift quite often when it comes to book releases. This line spacing isn't the only problem I've seen. Amazon needs to get this quality control problem under control!

One thing which did annoy me was the constant focus on the female form, especially where it was associated with sexuality. It came perilously close to pure objectification, but then what is the sculpting of, and the drawing and painting of nude females if not the ultimate in objectification? As I said, since this was a novel very much about art (notwithstanding the other factors), I did make allowances for this, and tried not to let it divert my attention from the main story, but Jeremy's refusal to see women as anything more than flesh to ogle and sexual gratification to be had was seriously off-putting. I did not like Jeremy, nor any of the females with whom he interacted.

The thing which bothered me the most was Jeremy's profligacy with regard to affairs with women. There was no indication whatsoever that any disease precautions were taken in any of his encounters, neither by Jeremy nor by the women with whom he had sex - and there were three such encounters which were described here (and many more which were hinted at). Yes, there are people like that in real life, so the problem isn't so much that a story depicts characters behaving in this selfish and clueless fashion, but that there's neither censure nor penalty.

From a very callous PoV I could see how Jeremy might not care - he believed he was dying, so why would he worry about contracting a venereal disease? But for him to behave that way and not spare a single thought for the sexual health of the women with whom he dove into physical relations with such abandon, was completely irresponsible and did not endear him to me at all. I found myself wondering quite often if his just desserts were coming to him at some point down the road! I am sure many guys fantasize about having unprotected sex with a bevy of beautiful women (however they conceive 'beautiful' to be), but that's not the real world. Neither is this of course: it’s fiction, but it is supposed to be a representation of some sort of real world, and if brain tumors can exist, what is it which prevents bacterial and viral infections also existing? I had to wonder if there might have been some authorial wish fulfillment going on here, but then all fiction probably represents some variety of that, doesn't it?!

Though the novel was technically well written (I came across only one error, where "sharp's" had been used when it should have been "sharps"), the story was in the end disappointing. It dissolved in the end into incoherence form which I could only conclude that Jeremy had imaged all that had come before, and that there was no witch and no supernatural activity going on; that everything was nothing more than a result of the brain tumor which was slowly eating away at his cognitive faculties. This isn't what I expected, and for me it did not make for a satisfying story. On the contrary, I felt let down and cheated. I can't recommend this.

Adamant by Emma L Adams

Title: Adamant
Author: Emma L Adams
Publisher: <Emma L Adams
Rating: WORTHY!

This is book one of the ‘Alliance’ series. Maybe I’m just more finicky than most, but in my experience, series tend not to be that great. I see them as one really long novel, of which the first volume is the prologue (and I don’t do prologues!) and the rest of them very long and unfortunately rather repetitive chapters. It not only strikes me as tedious, but also as lazy in a way because rather than invent something new, the writer simply reuses the previous volume as a template for the next.

Of course, there are exceptions! There are some series which are wonderful, so it really depends on how the writer writes it. Having said that I further have to report that this is a first person PoV novel – my least favorite voice. I detest it 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. On top of that it’s become a complete and utter cliché in YA novels – particularly those featuring a female main protagonist.

I know that authors think that 1PoV gives the story immediacy, but if a writer is 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!

Having said all that, I have to report that this author impressed me on both counts. She wrote the first volume in a series and had not one, but two first person PoVs and I actually liked it! It's quite a feat for an author to get away with that in my reading experience! As a writer myself, I love words and what they can be made to do, and it's for this reason that I derived what’s probably a disproportionately large amount of amusement from an author named Adams who titles her novel Adamant. But that’s probably just me!

Down to details! This is a universe where a system of tunnels or passages connects multiple worlds. An Alliance has sprung up to police these worlds and prevent illegal transition between them, but there’s a rebel faction which smuggles people between worlds, and one of the two main characters is a part of that,having been smuggled herself a long time ago. The work is dangerous because in addition to being caught by the Alliance, there’s also the risk of running into strange alien “monsters” in the passages, as this girl does. She goes by the storied first name of Ada and the mutinous last name of Fletcher! I love an author who can put great names to their characters, and I think those two particular names were chosen wisely in Ada's case.

The chapters alternate between Ada and Kay Walker, on opposite sides of the legal fence. Ada is helping illegals to come to Earth to escape problems on their home world whereas Kay is a new graduate working for the alliance. Their first encounter is a very fleeting one as Kay sees Ada running fast from a storage area, from which Ada’s just lifted some bags of bloodstone – an alien substance useful for disguising illegals. And for other purposes as you shall discover if you read this!

Since this is a blog about writing, I love to bring up writing issues. Here’s a really good one. On page 6 Ada employs the phrase, “…ensure nobody but them…”. Now technically that should be “…ensure nobody but they…”, but since this is a first person PoV story, can we arguably ascribe this to the character’s personal vernacular? I think it depends upon what else the character’s been saying. This is only the second page of the story (it begins on page five for some reason), and the very top of the page as well, so we don’t have much to go on. While the main character’s speech patterns up until that point don’t suggest that she’d employ this particular phrase, it is a common form of speech, so it didn't jump out at me as being wrong - just as being interesting from a writer's PoV and worth keeping an eye on if you're writing yourself.

There's not only sci-fi here, but also magic. It's not supposed to work on Earth, but Ada finds that in certain circumstances, she can employ it. It's especially workable in the tunnels. Not that it's of much use against the magical creatures, which is why Ada is always well-armed. She and Kay start out as enemies, but they soon learn that in order to solve unexpected problems, they must work together. All the pieces of this story work together, believe it or not. I liked the originality, the strange new worlds, and the description of the deployment of magic. There's a heck of a lot to explore here and I'm sure the author plans on doing just that in the coming volumes.

But that's enough spoilers - except to ease you by advising you not to take anything at face value in this novel! I recommend it because it had interesting, intelligent, feisty, and motivated characters, because it did NOT have a silly love-triangle, because the relationship between the two main characters was handled responsibly and intelligently, and because it was interesting, original, and had an engrossing plot. The very minor quibbles I had were ones which other readers might well not even remark upon, such as one sentence which read: “A creeping feeling crawled up my spine…” which sounded odd and redundant to me. But those were very rare, and overall, this is a great adventure. I look forward to the next one in the series.

Test of Magnitude by Andy Kasch

Title: Test of Magnitude
Author: Andy Kasch
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
Towards the end of chapter one "ReserachLab 71" should be "Research Lab 71"

This novel (complete with a rather ambiguous title!) begins with a human being abducted by aliens. We do not immediately learn what happens to him, but instead are taken to a distant star system where a minion is showing a VIP around a space station. Because of his exemplary conduct, the minion is assigned to a project to revive the humans - some 370 of them - who have been abducted over a 45 year period from Earth for study by the aliens.

There doesn't appear to have been much studying going on, however, since the humans are all in cryo-storage. The only tests which have been done are simply assessments of the physiology and testing for disease vectors. The aliens want to revive the humans because it's felt that humans will have good strategies for fighting or better yet, avoiding an interstellar war which is threatening to erupt.

After a turf war with the scientists, it's resolved that initially only two humans would be revived, the very first to be 'frozen' and the very last in order to see how each fares. I guessed that one of these would be our man from the opening pages, and the other would be a woman and the two would fall in love, but I had to read on to find out.

I had some issues when starting this novel. Indeed, when I started reading the first few pages and learned that all the aliens had names appended with a number, like Mip7 and Arkan9, his colleague on the revival experiment, and they had hover cars and swore in obscure non-words, I honestly felt I wasn't going to like it, but it grew on me.

Another problem is one not related solely to this novel but to all novels of interstellar war. It makes no sense, and I have yet to read a novel which justifies why an alien race would be dead-set upon conquering a new world. Even in movies like Independence Day which attempt to justify it by depicting the aliens as nomadic planet plunderers, it still makes no sense. Space is almost unimaginably massive and the costs of traveling it would be exorbitant - nowhere near enough to be offset by the "profit" which could be hoped for from plundering a planet's resources- not when there are closer planets with the same resources.

People who balk at walking ten blocks to the store (like most Americans, for example!) can't be expected to conceived of how far it truly is to another solar system, much less how far it would be to one which might have life on it. The distances between stars are all but insurmountable, and even if those were not, the distances between stars where civilizations exist would be even more prohibitive.

And for what purpose would this invasion be? What is it that an alien civilization could glean from Earth that they couldn't get from elsewhere? Fuel or energy? There's nothing on Earth that can be used as fuel that can't be found on most planets. Food? Life can prey upon other life on Earth because all of us share a similar biology - deep down where cells make energy. We all grew up together, but it's highly debatable whether a species from an entirely different planet would even be able to digest food that has evolved elsewhere.

Any civilization capable of developing advanced interstellar travel would have technology galore. They wouldn't be in need of resources. They could tap the barren plants in their own system or in nearby systems if they needed more. If they were as aggressive as they're depicted in your typical alien invasion story or movie, the chances are that they'd have self-destructed before ever they found Earth!

Having said that, who doesn't love a good alien invasion story? So we put all those objections aside - assuming we've even considered them - and sit back and enjoy, and try not to be too critical! That was my strategy here.

Unfortunately, the more I read, the less I liked. The story was boring, and I completely lost interest in it and abandoned it, not caring about the aliens or the humans or what happened to any of them. I can't recommend this.

Death, Disability, and the Superhero by José Alaniz

Title: Death, Disability, and the Superhero
Author: José Alaniz
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
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!

Erratum:
Page 79 the text describes the comic panels switching from square to rectangular in parallel to the Daredevil’s change from Matt Murdock to superhero, but in fact the panels are the opposite – switching from rectangular (the first four) to square (the last one) in the image sample shown on page 78.

The author is the program director of the Disabilities Study Program at the University of Washington (which begs the question as to why this was published by University Press of Mississippi, but let's not stir up and inter-varsity rivalry!

I initially requested this cluelessly thinking it was a graphic novel – and a potentially amusing one at that. It is not. It was (and misleadingly so, where I was concerned!) in the Net Galley graphic novels section, but it’s actually a text book with images. It’s not what I would describe as a graphic novel by any means, although I guess it was in the right place. it just wasn't the fast lunch-time read I was expecting! There are many interesting samples and pages included from graphic novels however, which admirably illustrate the text and the points the author is making.

That said (or whined, or however you wish to view it!), the book turned out to be engaging, and I learned things, which is never a waste of my time. This isn't fiction at all, but an exhaustive study of the super hero genre as it deals with death and disability. The disability section I found fascinating, especially so when you consider that comic books, particularly those from the Marvel stable, ‘outed’ disabilities in the sixties, by introducing actual characters with them – not merely superheroes who were temporarily disabled, as, say, Superman is when exposed to kryptonite, or like the original Thor, who was “crippled” by his father Odin (it was later revealed) and banished to Earth so he could learn what it was like to be weak and in pain. The original hero was able to use Mjolnir to transform himself into the god-like Thor, but he never realized, not to begin with, that he actually was Thor!

Marvel took this a step further and imbued some of their heroes with real disabilities, such Daredevil, who is blind. They reversed this approach, too, by introducing heroes who were fine when in their regular everyday human form, but who acquired disability - along with the attendant superpower - when they transformed, such as when Bruce Banner becomes The Hulk, and when Ben Grimm became The Thing.

The cover for this book is taken from a 2002 work by French artist Gilles Barbier titled 'L'Hospice', which shows superheroes at approximately the age they would have been had they aged normally since their ‘birth’ – defined for this purpose a the first time they appeared in a comic book. It's cropped for the book cover, but you can see the whole image here (or you could at the time I made the link).

A particularly interesting section discusses the genderism (sexism is too loaded a word for my taste!) inspired by the transformation of Ms Marvel into “the She-Thing” in a Fantastic Four comic which came out in February 1988. Ben Grimm had been working with Ms Marvel in space, and when they were returning to Earth, the space shuttle lost power (how that works is a mystery because the space shuttle’s return from orbit was not a powered flight – it was designed to land as a glider!). The shuttle crashed and somehow Ms. Marvel was transformed into a 'Thing' just like Ben.

Her reaction is completely negative. She felt unfeminine and ugly, and people also viewed her that way – not just people in the comic, but comic fans. Apparently it’s fine to have a male thing, but not a female thing. And girls, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right?! A female thing is very threatening. That was bad enough, but what really bothered me about his section was that the author never explored the very obvious fact that the genderism problem was already in play long before Ms Marvel ever transformed!

You can see what I mean by this if you compare an image of Ms. Marvel with her male counter-part, Captain Marvel. He gets to be a Captain and to wear a regular “super hero costume” just like, for example, Superman, with tight-fitting spandex and a cape, whereas Ms Marvel not only has no rank, she’s also forced to disport herself in what amounts to little more than a bikini. Is that not a gender issue?! (And yeah, I know her lack of rank was rather tardily rectified). Who actually confers the rank on these guys? I know Captain America actually was a Captain, but Captain Marvel? What was he, the captain of a cheer-leading squad?!

There’s a fascinating comparison of Caulder and Xavier, two wheelchair-bound men who lead teams of misfits – the former in the doomed Doom Patrol, and the latter in the wildly successful X-Men, both of which series debuted almost at the same time, with Marvel’s series trailing DC’s by about three months.

As the author advises, Caulder was typically depicted as a man of action, his wheelchair merely a prosthetic, whereas Xavier is often depicted in a static mode in his wheelchair, when he isn’t robbed of the chair and lying on the floor, relying on his mental powers to save the day. For me, it never ceased to amaze me how Xavier could invent fantastic devices for his X-men to use, but never came up with a cure or at least a fix for his legs? Of course, that would rob him of the symbolism, but it’s still unrealistic! I mean, we're on the verge of exo-skeleton medical technology now, and we don't even have Xavier's brain helping!

In conclusion, any comic fan or fan of comic history should appreciate this immensely. The discussions actually reminded me of the rather of the odd analysis of Superman which was doled out by David Carradine's character in Kill Bill part 2. It's nice to get those kinds of insights (at least it is for me!) and this book is replete with them. I recommend it - although I have to warn you, the price is really steep!

Holy War by Mike Bond

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Title: Holy War
Author: Mike Bond
Publisher: Mandevilla Press
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!

Frankly, this novel is a mess. It begins not on page one, but on page nineteen, the first eighteen pages being filled mostly with advertising. The actual novel itself is 365 pages long, one for every day of the year and judged by how much it's padded with extraneous detail, aimless rambling and flashbacks, it could probably be at least a hundred pages lighter and healthier for it.

It never hurts to lose some excess weight! Whether this is how the print book will look or whether this padded bra of commercial material up front is confined to the ARC version, I don't know. I wish that publishers and writers would have more respect for trees though.

The author has actually been a journalist in Beirut, so he knows the deal there, but that doesn't mean he can write an engrossing fictional story about it. This one was too splintered and fractured to be coherent. The book was really hard to get going on, because it was bouncing around all over the place, jumping from one set of characters to another, from one scenario to the next so quickly that I couldn't get comfortable with the characters, nor was I left with a feeling that I was going anywhere.

The author gets the lyrics wrong to the Chicago song If You leave me Now. It's not "If you leave me now, you'll take away the very best part of me", it's "If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me" which, when you think about it, sounds like impotence, doesn't it? I don't know if that's the way Peter Cetera intended it when he wrote it, but it is a beautifully embedded double meaning - if you get the lyric right! I guess the dope-smoking sabotaged Neill's brain cells and prevented them from nailing down the lyrics....

So Neill is the main character. He's an American journalist, but he's been recruited by MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA) to go (as a journalist) to Beirut, his mission is to try to contact a terrorist named (highly originally) Mohammed, who is linked to Hezbollah. Mohammed can apparently stop the slaughter, although how that works is anyone's guess. Mohammed is also evidently married to an ex of Neill's, named Layla (another original name).

To try and add a little zest to the recipe, the author has also thrown in André, who is a commando in the French armed forces, and who wants to murder Mohammed to avenge the death of his brother, who died in the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in 1983. Additionally, there's a female terrorist named Rosa (the choice of names in this novel frankly sucks) who is as deadly as she's dedicated. No doubt both of these characters will conspire to thwart Neill's aim.

While the timing is obviously 1983 or later, the actual dating of the events in the novel isn't clear - at least not in the portion I read. I noted that one reviewer considered it contemporary, but I don't see how it can be given that it appears to follow hot on the tail of events which took place a generation ago.

The pacing is excruciatingly slow and constantly - I mean constantly - interrupted with flashbacks which completely destroyed the story, the atmosphere and any sense of immediacy for me. It takes forever to actually get to any real and current events (current within the story's framework, that is), and those are irritatingly fragmented.

Instead of getting to the action, the story wallows endlessly (and mindlessly) in flashbacks, dalliances and memories, multiplied by two (one set for Neill, the other for André). Rosa seems to be the only one who is actually getting anything done! No wonder terrorist keep on blind-siding us! For example, Neill spends an inordinate amount of time in Holland doing nothing more than sitting around and smoking dope. André appears to be wandering aimlessly around Paris.

If you like gory detail, there's plenty to be had here. For me, describing how a bullet goes through a supine victim's head and then bounces back off the cement floor and returns through that same head is, if you'll forgive the pun, overkill. I already got that Rosa was coldly obsessed. I don't need to have her putting one bullet after another into her victim from several different angles and read about how he's still spastically moving even then. This added nothing to the story or to her character portrait, so I don't see the value other than gratuitous violence for the sake of it.

In the end I could not get past the first third of this novel. It really was not for me. It was far too jumbled and disjointed, which spoiled the story and made me quickly lose interest. I can't recommend this. This is the second Mike Bond novel I've reviewed. The first was Tibetan Cross and I didn't like that one either, so I guess I'm done with this author, too.

A Girl Called Al by Constance C Greene

Title: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/girl-called-al-constance-green/1006032668">A Girl Called Al
Author: Constance C Greene
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
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 very short book from Open Road Integrated Media with whom I've a great reading relationship, so it's nice to be able to review this one positively! It starts on page five and ends on page 72. I wish it were longer because it really is quite enthralling. However, there's no need to despair. It's the first of six: A Girl Called Al, I Know You, Al, Your Old Pal, Al, Al(exandra) the Great, Just Plain Al, and Al’s Blind Date. Normally I can't stand first person PoV, but some authors can use it appropriately and nail it completely and this author is one of them. It would not have worked as well had it been told in third person.

I think the reason it does work so well is that it's not about the narrator per se. Obviously she's involved, but the story is really more about things going on around her, about other people, rather than about herself and I think this is why it's so palatable. This self-effacement is further enhanced by the author's stubborn refusal to give a name to the narrator.

It's both set and was written in a bygone era - although not too bygone (it was published originally in 1969), and it gives a very different - and I have to say thoroughly refreshing - take on school. There is no love triangle here, no excessive emphasis on sports or jocks, no school bully, no bitchy girls, and no guys at all, if you discount the apartment building caretaker. It's all girls, girls who have no need of guys, but who are not immune to them, and it works perfectly.

Al is a year older than the narrator, but she dropped back a year when she moved to town, so they're both in seventh grade. Al lives just down the hall in their apartment block and soon the two are fast friends and all but inseparable. I love the matter-of-fact way in which the narrator relates the story, and I admired her trenchant observations and commentary on life around her.

There's nothing going on here - no fantasy, no paranormal events, no great adventure, no melodrama, which would seem to make the story boring to modern youth, but that's the very point of it - not the boredom, but that life can be an adventure even when it isn't obvious that one is happening, and that adventure doesn't necessarily mean drawing a sword and leaping into a kraken's maw. The delight of this story is that we become friends with these girls as we see their own friendship blossom and mature. We enjoy their company and look forward to meeting them again.

Alexandra hates her name and advises the narrator upon their first acquaintance that, "You can call me Al" which was very nearly a laugh-out-loud moment for me. Al is a self-declared non-conformist. She wears pigtails and is pretty much the only girl who does. She's somewhat overweight which the narrator, with refreshing honesty, declares might be an impediment to their friendship, but which isn't.

Al is rather worldly compared with the narrator, having traveled quite a bit. The narrator doesn't know where Ellay is until Al explains that it's the initials for Los Angeles. Al is also an ERA advocate in her own way. She wants to learn what she determines to be 'useful things' at school, so she wants to do "shop" instead of sewing and cooking. She wants to learn how to make bookshelves just like the boys are doing, but she's denied this opportunity. It's frankly a disgrace how primitive and backward the USA was in race and gender relations even as recently as the sixties and seventies. We should all of us be as ashamed as we are ever mindful of how badly things can deteriorate when people are not treated as equally as the constitution plainly requires.

The girls are friendly with Mr Richards, the aging ex-bartender who is the apartment caretaker, and when he learns of their problem with shop, he offers to teach them how to make bookshelves, which they do. Al is (unwillingly) alienated from her father, and Mr Richards is alienated from his daughter and grandchildren, so they become his default grandchildren and the relationship is wonderful. The stories of his spotlessly gleaming kitchen floor are hilarious.

With this novel being a generation old, it has had several covers, and the one I illustrate on my blog (of the girl's face), is perfect. There's another cover which I've seen floating around and which shows a blonde girl shellacking a bookshelf. This girl bears absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the character Al. My advice, for what it's worth, is to boycott that version and buy this one!

World After by Susan Ee

Title: World After
Author: Susan Ee
Publisher: Amazon - Skyscape
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:
On page 90 there’s an editorial note at the top of the page: “JARRING TEXT OF DIFFERENT SIZES]~~Ok as set - I'm guessing this shouldn't be there!

This is book two in the ‘Penryn & The End of Days’ series. I’m not a fan of series unless they’re done especially well, but I liked the first book, Angelfall which I reviewed in June, 2014, so I was quite pleased to have an opportunity to review the second. Unfortunately this sequel volume wasn't anywhere near as appealing. It felt like it was written by a different author. I could make it only half way through before I had to give up, having run out of Promethazine.

A big part of my nausea was caused by the first person PoV voice. It's far too self-important and self-obsessed unless it's done really well, and it was not done well here, not with this character, Penryn. You should read A Girl Called Al for an exemplary story in which this voice is used. Why authors - particularly YA authors - are so irremediably addicted to it is a complete and utter mystery to me, but I sincerely wish they would grow out of it.

The biggest problem with this novel is that it was boring. It went nowhere and offered nothing new - quite the contrary in fact since we were treated to a host of flashbacks via Penryn's magical video record and playback sword. I am not kidding you. Her angelic sword is a camcorder. It was bizarre, and I took to skipping entire sections which were nothing more than a rehash of book one, but told from the angel, Raffe's PoV. I care. Another filler employed here was 'Penryn dream world'. There was chapter after chapter offering nothing more than a simple recounting of Penryn's dreams, which were tedious. I took to skipping those, also. If these two things had been omitted the novel would probably have been only seventy-five percent the size it is.

Even when we weren't watching Sword Armchair Theater re-runs, or How Dream is My Valley, there was nothing of interest happening here, not for page after page after bleak page. The first seventy pages could have been half that long and still conveyed as much while saving precious trees. Penryn has literally come back from the dead courtesy of her friendly neighborhood angel Raffe, but life goes on as usual! Huh?

She now carries an angel sword, which only she can lift, but which she has no idea how to employ as a weapon. She’s been reunited with her slightly loopy mother and her kid sister Paige, but Paige is now some sort of zombie, having been experimented upon by the angels. She’s diminutive, yet very dangerous and threatening – like an attack dog, with her razor sharp teeth. Paige used to be a vegetarian, but now she’s hungry for meat, the raw and bloody kind, yet her sister sees nothing wrong with her, being devoted – so we’re told, not shown – to her mom and sister. Keep this in mind.

If you examine this story too closely, you'll realize it makes no sense, and in that it's not alone amongst angel stories. The reason for this is that most writers of angel stories have never actually read the Bible – or they've conveniently forgotten it or chosen to remember only tiny portions of it. They know neither what it is that angels do, nor what they’re actually there for. Essentially angels are errand boys. In naval terms, they would be an XO – an executive officer, carrying out the commands of the ship’s captain.

The problem with angel stories is that these characters are consistently depicted as soldiers fighting evil, a thing which they never were. They’re also uniformly endowed with wings. Typically these are white wings like swans have, but this is also a pure invention. They’re never described as having wings in the Bible. The winged ones are cherubim (the plural of cherub), but none of these YA writers ever talk about that! Cherub just doesn't quite carry the weight does it?

Now you recall where I told you that the author tells us how devoted Penryn is to her family? Well at one point, about eighty pages in, the community she’s with is attacked by the mutant scorpion creatures, first seen at the end of the previous volume. Flying mutant scorpion creatures which evidently buzz like bees. And have shaggy hair and lion’s teeth. And which drool and growl. Is there anything else with which we can lard them? No, I guess that’s all. Why these creatures are even needed is never revealed - at least not in the portion of this book I read. Maybe it was mentioned at the end of volume one, and I forgot.

Penryn’s young sister Paige – the one who is actually best equipped to fight enemies and to protect her family - runs off into the nearby forest. Her mom chases after Paige. Penryn, instead of automatically following them actually stands and debates whether she should stay with her family – the one to which she’s supposedly devoted - or run to the safety of the community and hide there. She chooses the latter. That was pretty much it for me. Penryn is not an heroic figure, not even mildly so. Please tell me, then, why I should care about her or root for her? I can't think of a single reason.

There’s a really oddball incident around page ninety after a scorpion attack where Penryn is trying to tell a doctor that these people who have been stung might not be dead. The Doctor is assuring her that if they don’t have a pulse they’re dead. This is in a world which has been devastated by an angelic insurgency, which has demons running around, and after an attack by mutant scorpion people, and this doctor thinks the old rules still apply? This is either bad writing, or this doctor is the biggest dick-head in history. As the comedian said (I forget this name, but it was probably Steven Wright): somewhere in the world is the world’s worst doctor. And you might have an appointment with him (or her!) tomorrow! I think we just met him.

The final straw, for me, came on page 142 where I read: “…three unarmed women surrounded by monsters…”. Why does it matter that they’re women? I have a real problem with what I can only view as misogyny, especially when it;s penned by a female writer. Is this really what we want to teach our young women - that if you're a woman you're somehow more threatened by these monsters than you would be if you were a guy? Because this is no different from telling girls that women are weak, that they're helpless, that they're prey in need of a guardian angel. It's pathetic, particularly from a female author, and I refuse to subscribe to abuses like that. I will not recommend this novel.

Copperhead Volume 2 by Jay Faerber

Title: Copperhead Volume 2
Author: Jay Faerber
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Scott Godlewski.
Colors by Ron Riley.
Latters by Thomas Mauer.

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 slightly longer than volume 1, at 77 pages, and it gets right into the action immediately. There's no introductory stuff at all (not even a front cover in my ARC!), so I was perforce working under an assumption that the creation team as the same as for volume one (which later proved to be the case when I dug up a cover for volume two). The series runs to at least seven volumes - probably more by now!

In this volume I began to really get into the characters and the story, and they were morphing before my very eyes. The hero, Clara Bronson turns out to be rather prejudiced and her deputy, Budroxofinicus, turns out to be a bit of a softy. Bronson's behavior surprised more than once, although I don't think she reamed-out her son anywhere near enough for his wandering off. That kind of behavior can get a kid killed even on Earth let alone on an alien planet with deadly indigenous life.

I loved the way the tension slowly built and festered in this volume, and once again, Jay Faerber's text and Scott Godlewski's artwork, suitably buffed-up by Ron Riley's coloring, created a great atmospheric story. I had a two or three problems, all tied to reading this on the iPad. First of all the entire page was rendered rather smaller than a standard 6.5" x 10" paper comic book. I have a new iPad Air (full size, not mini), and the iPad image on it is 5" x 7.75". Believe it or not, that's a 40% reduction in surface area.

Yes, you can increase the image size readily on the iPad of course, but then you're stuck with reading the top of the page then the bottom, then flipping the page, and so on. It's annoying. The problem is that if you didn't increase the page size, you had a really hard time reading some of the lettering. I can readily read books and watch TV without needing my eyeglasses, but I had to slap them on to read this.

Another annoyance in the iPad is how slow it is to turn the pages. If you're moving through it at a relatively modest pace, the pages swipe by pretty readily, except that sometimes the iPad ignores your tap or swipe and you have to swat the thing multiple times like you're dusting ants off it or something!

I think this problem is exacerbated in dry winter air, so we're left with the ironical behavior of licking our thumb to turn the page - just as we might have done with a paper book! I found that hilarious!, but if you want to skim back a couple of pages, then you're stuck waiting while they load, which is truly annoying when you're going back through the comic reviewing it!

So I think graphic novel and comic book writers and artists need to give some thought to how they approach their craft in this electronic era. Do they want to appeal to the traditional crowd or to the e-crowd? It's worth expending a few gray cells on! This is especially true if you design your comic so that the panels, instead of running down the left-hand page and then down the right, instead run across both pages, one row of frames at a time (see the second sample image on my blog).

because you only see one page at a time on something like an iPad, it's not obvious that this is what the writer and artist have done until you turn tot he next page!

Those quibbles aside, I recommend this volume along with volume one for a complete breakfast of comic! My plan, meanwhile is to head out to the Dragon's Lair this weekend to see if I can find this comic in its original printed form!

Copperhead Volume 1 by Jay Faerber

Title: Copperhead Volume 1
Author/Artist: Jay Faerber
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Scott Godlewski.
Colors by Ron Riley.
Latters by Thomas Mauer.

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 had a good relationship with Image comics. I like a lot of their stuff (particularly recently!), but I had to wonder if my run of good luck had come to an end with this one! Since it was only 55 pages, I decided to press on and see, and in the end, it was OK.

It's a western, but it's set in the future, so in some ways it's reminiscent of the Firefly TV series, except in this case, the main protagonist is on the side of the law, not trying to sneak around it.

I don't have a problem with either westerns or sci-fi, but I do worry about a host of potential problems when they're mixed. The problem is often either that there's too much western or there's too much sci-fi, so finding the sweet spot lies in getting a good balance between the two, and when this started out with a train which was supposedly a hover-train yet looked exactly like a stereotypical western train (minus the tracks) I was wondering if there was going to be such a problem.

It appeared to get worse when the sheriff had to visit a ranch over a domestic disturbance call. First of all, the ranch was in the middle of nowhere, so who called? Second the ranch looked exactly like a western ranch except that it was run by six-limbed one-eyed aliens - where was the technology? Therein lay my other problem: the artists had decided to go all Chalmun's on us, populating the scenery with almost every variation on alien they could thing up - most of which were really nothing more than Earth animals promoted to humanoid status - and of course, the bad guys were insectoid. Yawn!

That said, I liked the premise. Sheriff Bronson (good choice of name! Charles Bronson made his name in The Magnificent Seven a western movie classic, although it's based on a Japanese movie Seven Samurai). Bronson is a single mom looking to start over after an incident which remains a mystery even by the end of this volume. Apparently her choices are limited and this backwater job is all she can get. So despite the clichéd aspect of this premise, I loved the idea of having a single mom in the 'studly' rôle of town sheriff.

The deputy sheriff - an alien who looks like a giant mutant coypu is resentful of her being promoted over his head, and it doesn't help that the stupid humans are too disrespectful to grasp his full name Budroxofinicus, which although long is hardly forgettable or unpronounceable. It's hardly Raxacoricofallapatorius, but they demean him by calling him "Boo". The Sheriff doesn't even ask his name. It's left up to her son to do the introductions.

Bronson is called into service almost immediately responding to a domestic dispute on a ranch, where later, a mass murder is committed. meanwhile, her idiot son, who was told to stay home and not go out, goes out to help his next door neighbor's kid to look for her lost dog!<.p>

So, in short, I had more than a few issues with this, but overall I decided to rate it a worthy read because I think it has a lot of potential and I'm hoping that I'll grow into it as I move on to read volume 2!

Browned Off and Bloody-Minded by Alan Allport

Title: Browned Off and Bloody-Minded
Author: Alan Allport
Publisher: Yale University Press
Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is non-fiction, yet some of the stories in it rival fiction for how engrossing they are. The author has put together a record of World War Two, told from the perspective of the British army, and he relates this history unflinchingly, warts and all.

Some of the chapter titles might give you an idea of what's involved here: Gentlemen and old Sweats, Strange Defeat, Army of Shopkeepers, Britain Blancoes While Russia Bleeds, Come to Sunny Italy, Fighting Bloody Nature, The Grammar of War, What a Colossal Waste of Time War is.

Unlike fiction, this isn't necessarily the kind of book where you start at the beginning and proceed sequentially to the end. I felt it was more of a dip-in and browse, but even in doing that, I found myself becoming engrossed and reading on and on, past the chapter I'd begun in and onto the next. I have an interest in this war, having grown up next door, and having traveled in Europe, so you might not find this quite as enthralling as I did, but if you have watched any World War Two movies - ones based on actual events - and found them engrossing, then this will more than likely interest you, too.

Some of the stories are downright disturbing. Being a big fan of tanks, there's one which made a lasting impression on me, regarding an encounter between a British Sherman tank and a German Tiger tank, which you can read
here. The book is full of these stories of heroism and incompetence, of life-wasting bad plans and of strokes of genius, of bravery and foolishness, and of victory and disaster. And this is what we ask our young men - and now young women - to put up with. Is it worth it, and if not, then what's a viable alternative to squandering youth on death?

The book doesn't flinch about discussing personal lives and predilections either, such as relating a story about soldier 'Dicky' Buckle, who was not only openly gay (something which was largely accepted during World War Two, and then turned into a crime post-war: Alan Turing I'm thinking of you, and many others), but he was one of the bravest men in his entire battalion. One time he found a wedding dress in amongst German possessions and wore it to the officer's mess that same evening. He was not a rarity, either. no one batted an eyelid at this. Not then.

Women are do not go unnoticed here, although most of the references to them are to those who suffered because hostile nations were fighting over territory which they called home, or who out of sheer necessity found themselves selling their bodies in return for the most basic things they needed just to live from one day to the next. During the war, Britain not only mobilized almost six million men, it also mobilized well over half a million women. A hoard of those who did not enter service in the military did enter it in industry in place of the men who were no longer available. You cannot indulge a nation in those activities on such a massive scale without the consequences, good and bad, permeating every stratum of a society.

This book is really long - some 540 pages, although the last one hundred or so are appendices and exhaustive end notes, but that said, it didn't feel like it was long. It was too interesting. I recommend this for anyone interested in what the conflicts should really be about and how they should be approached.

Ice kissed by Amanda Hocking

Title: Ice kissed
Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: MacMillan
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 11 “As we spoke, Mina pet the rabbit absently.” should be “As we spoke, Mina petted the rabbit absently.” or “As we spoke, Mina would pet the rabbit absently.”
Page 16 “…but we didn’t know where there were…” should be “…but we didn’t know where they were…”
Page 26 “…on the lowers shelves…” should be “…on the lower shelves…”
Page 104 “King Mikko refuses to undo his father changes…” should be “King Mikko refuses to undo his father’s changes…”

It was reading about Amanda Hocking’s experience that first got me into self-publishing. Of course I never for a moment expected (nor did I get!) the same success she has had, but when I began reviewing, I always thought it would be fun to review one of her books. My problem was that I never found one that I actually wanted to read until this one – and it’s in first person PoV! 1PoV is the voice I detest most for a variety of reasons, but it's not possible to find YA novels with a principal female character that isn't 1Pov these days. So anyway, there’s another strike against this novel. Given that the author tends to write romance disguised as fantasy, I was not confident I would even find this one to my liking, but I thought I’d give it a try. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t impressed.

Ice Kissed is book 2 in the Kanin Chronicles, consisting of Frostfire (which has to be one of the most over-used book titles ever!), Ice Kissed (a title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the novel), and Crystal Kingdom. Note that I haven’t read book one in this series since it’s one more into which I came ‘in progress’ without realizing it was an ongoing series.

I think from this point onwards I’m going to simply assume that any YA book in which I may take an interest is part of an ongoing series because quite evidently no one in the entire YA world, it seems, can write a one-off any more. I’m not a fan of series because it’s just a lazy way to milk money from readers by expending no more effort than it takes to regurgitate essentially the same thing over and over (with a twist or two - if we’re lucky - to try to disguise the cookie-cutter marks). Either that or it involves merely padding a novel that should occupy one volume so that it stretches to two or three. I’m not into that.

In a story which seems to have been heavily painted with a Scandinavian brush, complete with snow (because without snow it would be neither complete nor Scandinavian, right?!) Bryn Aven is a “tracker”. I assume that this is explained in book one. I also assume it means just what it says – that she’s some sort of detective. It’s actually rather astounding, I find, how often ‘tracker’ is an actual occupation in fantasy fiction.

In book one Bryn had gone off searching for a missing queen and returned empty-handed. Why it was her job to find a queen missing from another country, I don't know. During that escapade, she and her tracking companion, Ridley, had become ‘romantically’ involved, so the first thing the writer of a trilogy has to do in book two is tear them apart. Here it’s done quite ham-fistedly by having Bryn keep something to herself – something she revealed only when questioned by the king. This allows Ridley to have a childish hissy-fit and treat Bryn like dirt so that she has to suck up to him like a whipped puppy because that’s Ya lot in life for female characters.

I have to say that my favorite character name is Bent Stum, which sounds like some sort of physical infirmity – and painful, too! Bryn hangs out with two girls named Tilda and Ember, both of whom behave as though they’re fifteen. Tilda has been impregnated by a fellow tracker and they’re planning on marrying. Bryn and Ridley are sleeping together and he’s her superior, which is completely inappropriate, yet neither of them think there’s any problem with this. So much for discipline in the ranks!

I have to say the writing quality left something to be desired – notably a good editor. I found several items of wrong word use or poor grammar, but to be fair, these were sometimes leavened by refreshingly correct constructs such as in the opening two sentences in chapter eighteen, where we read: “…took Kasper and me down…when Ridley and I had been…” But then we get odd sentences like “all kinds of books ranging from items of years to the latest novel…”. I don’t know what “items of years” means! Classics? Old tomes? Crappy looking?

In chapter thirty, we get this totally weird sentence; “The darkness of the water outside my window made it impossible to see if the sun had come up yet.” I have no idea whatsoever what that means; was she sleeping under water? In this novel that might be possible! Even if she meant something simple, like that the water wasn’t reflecting the sun yet, then surely the actual sky would give something away? Even if it was cloudy, the sky is routinely lighter in the daytime than at night (trust me on this), so the sentence was nonsensical. On page 170 we read this oddity: “Ilsa…opened the door with a quick knock…” which is actually intelligible, but awkward at best. Maybe the door wasn’t latched and sprung open when she knocked?!

By the time I was a third of the way through this novel, I had pretty much lost interest in it and began skimming rather than doing over-much detailed reading. The writing really isn’t very good, and by that I mean it’s nothing special: it’s not thrilling, it’s not particularly easy on the ears, and it really doesn’t grab the reader. It’s frankly a bit tedious.

On top of that, not a single one of the characters captured my interest, much less my imagination. There was no attempt at character building. Maybe that all got done in book one? There was nothing going on except for Bryn and some guy (Kasper, Ridley) traveling to one place or another, and back again. Bryn was never allowed out on her own (more on this anon), yet she’s supposed to be a strong female character. Pshaw! More interestingly, there never was another female accompanying her, so there was no female bonding notwithstanding her two friends and their wedding plans.

Bryn discovers Queen Linnea’s location through a psychic message which the queen sends her. They deliver her straight back to the very place from which she’d fled in fear of her safety. This made no sense. Bryn and Kasper are sent to guard her despite the kingdom having its own guards. How insulting is that? Bryn kills a guy who is apparently about to kill the king and the latter is arrested for treason – because he’s apparently plotting all of this himself (and faking the attempt on his life)! This is set in completely modern times in our own world (with SUVs and cell phones), yet the assassin uses a sword? It makes no sense.

Now for a bit more on how female characters are treated here. We’re told that the Queen has no say in her husband’s arrest because the two societies are patriarchal, with the laws applicable equally regardless of rank or position. No queen can rule of her own right, yet in this same society, they have female trackers and female officers How come there’s ‘emancipation’ in the military, but none in the nobility?! ? It makes no sense.

This diminution, if not infantilization, of females in this novel is further highlighted in an incident where Bryn is called to see the king, and Ridley protectively jumps up and tries to argue that he should go instead, since he’s her superior. But the fact is that the king summoned Bryn, no one else. Ridley’s behavior here is not only once again inappropriate (and insulting to the king!), it’s completely demeaning – like Bryn is no better than a weak child who needs protecting.

After the wedding, Bryn tries to talk to Ridley, and finds herself tongue-tied. This is supposedly a militarily trained tracker, supposedly a strong woman, who supposedly can act independently, and she’s completely lost for what to do? I don’t get why female authors, particularly those who write YA, so consistently and effectively neuter their main female characters like this. This is why I don’t read romance (not much anyway) and tend to find it distasteful when I do read it. Once in a while a worthy one comes along (which is why I read it once in a while!), but in general, it’s dreadful. What it says about women in how they're portrayed is unacceptable, but what really bothers me what it says about the readership these novels attract.

So why is Bryn summoned? We’re supposed to believe the Prince Kennet – now “acting king” came all the way from his own kingdom, leaving it at a time of trouble and uncertainty, to flirt with Bryn. Seriously? It was at this point that I really had had more than enough of this novel, but I read on to the end, which was, if you pay any attention at all to how the purported “villain” Konstantin is written about throughout this novel, entirely predictable, so no surprises there.

I cannot in good faith recommend a novel as lifeless and devoid of entertainment as this on is. For the passive misogyny alone I’d have to rate it negatively. I guess there’s a market for it if a publisher feels it can can offer a new author some two million dollars for four books, but no matter how inexplicably lucrative it might be for an author, I couldn’t write this stuff, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

Oddly Normal by Otis Frampton

Title: Oddly Normal
Author: Otis Frampton
Publisher: Image Comics
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!

Oddly Normal is actually her name. She's half witch, her mom hailing from Fignation - a fantasy land - but the family living on contemporary Earth, her dad's home. Oddly is picked on cruelly by people at school for her green hair and her pointed ears. Her parents seems to think she can invite a hundred friends to her birthday party, but she has no friends. In a fit of pique, Oddly wishes her parents would disappear and leave her alone and indeed they do. Now Oddly has to go live with her aunt in Fignation, and if she felt odd on Earth, it's nothing compared with how out-of-place she feels in Fignation.

I have to say that the cruelty to children at school motif is a bit of a cliché these days, but if you can overlook that, and you're receptive to this kind of story, you'll probably enjoy this comic. The characters are interesting and playful (except for the bullies, of course!), and the pages are colorful, warm and very well drawn.

The panels in Fignation are even more colorful and evocative. Fignation is totally bizarre as Oddly discovers when she opens her aunt's door the very first day she's there. of course, in the completely weird world she has to attend school, and despite her optimistic belief, she finds herself just as much of a square peg there as she was in her old school.

I recommend this graphic novel as a fun and unusual story full of quirks and sly humor, and with an interesting and strong female character.

Hinges by Meredith McClaren

Title: Hinges
Author/Artist: Meredith McClaren
Publisher: Image Comics
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 began as a web comic and is now in print comic format as book one of a series. The story is about a doll named Orio who is being sent out into Clockwork city to start her place in society. Orio is very nervous and we learn nothing of her past history or exactly what's going on here. Indeed, there were times when the sparsely narrated comic disappeared into incomprehensibility, such that I had no idea what was happening, or even what was supposed to be happening. It reminded me of the comics my middle-grade son creates! For all that, I found it oddly haunting and entrancing, so I stayed with it and enjoyed it overall.

As each doll is put into society, it has to take up an occupation, but before it can be integrated into society, it has to select a companion known as an "Odd" - which is odd, because another comic I'm reviewing today is titled Oddly Normal! We're offered nothing to explain what's going on here or why a doll needs an 'Odd'. The one which Orio selects is named Bauble - the one which helped her find a dress. It seems like a natural for her, and so she selects it, but she all-too-soon discovers that Bauble has a mind of his (or her) own, and that mind doesn't necessarily fit into this society.

Orio is led to a series of potential employers, selected by an elaborate system which has, we're told, served society well up to this point, but it seems like it doesn't serve Orio at all. Bauble doesn't help. Heavily prone to wandering, fidgeting, and getting little fingers into everything that little fingers should never touch, all that Bauble succeeds in doing is upset everyone and everything.

As I said, it's difficult to know what's happening at times, and it's difficult to know how this ended. I'm not kidding! I sincerely hope author/artist Meredith McClaren brings a little more clarity to ensuing volumes in this series, but it looked to me like Orio found herself a job which she can do even though it's not pre-approved for her. She's left very much alone, but perhaps in charge of her destiny?

So given the issues, what's to like? For me it was the artwork. It's stunningly and evocatively done, and very endearing. The color palette is very restrained and muted which makes it all the more emotional. I fell in love with the way Orio is drawn, especially her eyes. I just wish I understood what was going on a bit better!

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker

Title: The Fade Out
Author: Ed Brubaker
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Sean Phillips.
Colored by Elizabeth Breitweiser.

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 favorably reviewed Fatale Book 4 by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser a year ago, and so I was pleased to have the chance to review this one, which I also found to be a worthy read. This one is a very different story from that earlier volume. Set in 1948, with World War Two a very fresh memory, and phobia related to the rise of communism turning the powers-that-be completely paranoid, this novel revolves around the people working at with a Hollywood studio. The studio is struggling and is in the middle of making a film with a very bankable female lead, Valeria Sommers, when she's found dead by one of the writers on the movie.

Not wanting to get involved, especially since he was drunk as a skunk and remembers nothing of the night before, the cowardly writer, Charlie Parish, cleans up all evidence of his presence in Valeria's house and sneaks off to the nearby studio as though nothing has happened. Later, he discovers that the studio has "spun" a completely false story around events. Now, instead of being found on the floor strangled to death, there's a picture in the local rag showing that she hung herself!

Conveniently, the actor who lost the role to the dead star, Maya Silver, is still around and ready to take over her dead rival's part in the movie. Curiously enough, she wants to befriend Charlie, who initially found the body. His fleeing a crime scene isn't his only transgression, as it happens, although his other one is much more noble. Because of the communist pogrom, he's actually only taking dictation from the real writer, Gil Mason, who's been blackballed as a communist. Why they never called that "red-balled' I don't know!

Charlie's doing this because he needs the work, and also because he's a good friend of the other writer's wife, Melba. He wants to help her and the children, since the man of the house is pretty much a no-good drunk at this point. The problem is that he happens to let slip that he knows that Valeria's death has been covered up. Gil is infuriated by the cover-up. And that's just the set-up!

I recommend this story - the beginning of a series, because it's so very well done. The writing is high quality - as I've come to expect from Brubaker from my admittedly limited acquaintanceship with his work. Breitweiser's coloring and Phillips's artwork are excellent - again, as I've come to expect. If you like film noir, you'll like this, as indeed you will if you like a comic well done.

Rocco's Wings by Rebecca Merry Murdoch

Title: Rocco's Wings
Author: Rebecca Merry Murdoch (no website found)
Publisher: Bark and Howl Press Ltd
Rating: WARTY!

Illustrations by Kalen Chock.

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 almost selected this from Net Galley, but I changed my mind thinking I wouldn't like it; then I read something else by this author and I really liked that, so I went back and picked this one. I wasn't impressed with it, which surprised me because I really liked the other thing I read: Wild cats Volume One. I lost interest in this one about a third the way in and skimmed the rest just to see if it turned around. It didn't.

Of course, this isn't aimed at me - it's aimed at middle-grade (at least as judged by the writing level), and maybe they will like it, but I have to warn you if you're a parent or guardian, that the story is seriously brutal and gory in places with prolonged pages of bullying. This didn't appeal to me, although the story was one of rebellion by the subjugated against the evil overlords, so there was a kind of justification for it.

The story is about a race of people (who, from the sparse illustrations are evidently humanoid despite their traits, who live in the valleys, overseen by the urvogel people - a race of humanoid flying creatures - kinda like angels, I guess. One of the lowland women mated with one of the urvogels and the offspring was Rocco - an angel with blue wings, who comes in as an outsider and wins the affections of the urvogel youth, who then rebel with him.

This business of interspecies mating made no sense to me, but this is fantasy, so I didn't have any real argument with that. What bothered me more is that the urvogel guy, Rocco's father, must have known, as indeed did his mother, what a horrible life Rocco would have as a "half-breed", yet they still spawned him. This struck me as irresponsible in the context of the story because it put both his and his mother's life at risk. It's not discussed in the portion I paid close attention to, and it's not likely to be at this point, either, due to certain events which would be too big of a spoiler to reveal.

The worst thing of all for me though, was the exclusion of females - and this in a novel by a female author! The main character (and hero) Rocco, is male, and this story is very much aimed at a male audience. There are female characters in it, and the "bad guy" is female, but there really is only one token girl (again, I skimmed a lot of this so I may have missed something) who plays any sort of significant rôle in the story) other than the aforementioned bad guy).

I know this is (evidently) aimed at young males, but even so there's a real need for serious female representation. The author says, in the acknowledgements, that she spent four years on this novel, and I find it unacceptable that this isn't written better and doesn't have more female representation. I don't care if it is aimed at young boys. That's still no excuse for excluding half the population from any kind of reasonable representation. The glass ceiling doesn't just exist in industry, it exists from birth and it needs to be smashed as early as possibly. That's the main reason why I'm rating this negatively.