Barry vs the Apocalypse by Ross Cavins

Title: Barry vs the Apocalypse
Author: Ross Cavins
Publisher: RCG Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
Kazakhstan not Kazikstan p54
"I decided to take another tactic." should be "I decided to take another tack." p160
"There's nothing like a sunset over a mountain lake, is it?" makes no sense - unless Barry is Welsh.

Since I'm on a superhero kick lately, here's a third one for consideration. It's very much in the mold of the other two I've been reading in that it takes the road far less traveled. One of the other super hero stories was a novel like this one (Normalized), and the other was a graphic novel (Jupiter's legacy). I very much liked all three of them. It was really nice to get three in a row. It's a rare delight and one which makes it worth plowing through the bad stuff to get really enjoyable ones like these. I think the reason I liked them was that they all of them eschewed trope like it was a bad cliché. Oh, wait, it is!

So this one is about Barry Glick, a super hero who keeps claiming he's retired, but who still uses his powers from time to time for his own purposes (he's not above 'x-ray' scanning the lottery scratch-off tickets for a winner he can buy or for a glimpse at a woman sans clothing), and on occasion for the public good, as in when he foils a liquor store hold up - but only because he happens to be in the store at the time buying beer.

Barry is pretty much an alcoholic, and even when completely sober he has very few social graces, and no illusions about himself. He eats bad food and sports a lot of red-neck traits, the least of which is his mullet. He's a regular down-to-Earth guy except for his super powers, and therein lay a problem. The author simultaneously is telling us that he got his super powers with puberty, but he also got them at fifteen, which is really late for puberty to begin - but not out of the question. I felt that this could have been written a bit more clearly. The question of how and from where these powers came is unexplored to begin with, building something of a mystery which later necessitates a rapprochement with his estranged and abusive father and another relative he didn't even know he had, to resolve.

Barry did his public duty - and not always in an exemplary fashion - until two decades ago, but he got into so much trouble doing it (he's a bit like Hancock) that he thinks he's earned a rest now he;s ion his forties and sporting a growing beer-belly. Super heroes are never paid, recall. They only exist by having a regular job under the guise of an alter-ego, or by being a billionaire. Barry lives alone and makes his living from lottery tickets. He's and is going to seed, his sole hobbies being drinking beer and watching crass TV shows every evening.

On that topic, here's a writing issue for you: is it correct to say "...he's always drank, as the author does on page 229, or "...he's always drunk"? Note that we're talking about the act of drinking, not the state of having drunk too much alcohol. I think the author got it right, but I confess that I had to really think about it and consult a couple of on-line sources before I made up my mind, and even now I'm not sure. I mean, is it correct to say "he's always ran"? or should it be "he's always run"?! I think I'd reword it; then I don't have to risk a headache making a painful and possibly wrong decision! The author gets it right again (I think!) on page 282 where he writes "I laid there for a few minutes." Lay and Lie really are a pain for writers.

Barry thinks he's one of a kind, and he's honest enough (sometimes) to realize that's not necessarily a positive thing, but he's about to get an awakening. His life takes a turn for the interesting when his friend Gordon Moser and Gordon's sister Kimberly show up. Kimmy is an analyst for Homeland Security, but she's always (amusingly in my opinion) impersonating an FBI agent, and she begins wailing on Barry to help find her partner, who's gone missing. How she has a partner when she actually isn't a field agent is a bit of a mystery, but there it is. Andrew unfortunately hasn't been missing long enough for HS to feel that there's a need to start looking for him, but Kimmy has a gut instinct, which is gut enough for Barry, who also has a gut, and a lot of instinct for self-preservation.

This novel is told in first person PoV which I normally detest, but some writers can make it work, and this is one good example of that. Barry is about as politically as incorrect as you can get, and still remain outside of jail and retain a friend, so it's not unusual to hear lines from him like the following one, but this one was also unintentionally amusing. At the start of chapter 20 we read: "She declined my offer to walk around in her underwear eating ice cream." I know what the writer meant, but this makes it sound like Barry is offering to walk around wearing Kimmy's underwear! Just a warning to be careful what you write and how you write it!

Barry is by turns endearing and gross-out nasty, so the author was walking a fine line with me between turning me off this character and making me want to follow his antics. There was a time or two when he ran over the line but he always veered back towards the straight and narrow just in time to keep me reading. Having said that I have to add that chapter thirty six was a disaster. This is where we get a visit from someone in the know and we get Barry's back-story and learn who his mom really was. I'm sorry but I can't take any of that seriously. I felt it was unnecessary, and it really bogged the story down without contributing anything useful to it.

I suppose it was intended to soften us up for a rapprochement between Barry and his dad, but it failed for me - I couldn't realistically see that happening given what we'd been told already. And why was this even deemed necessary? Does every story like this have to end with a kid getting all lovey-dovey with their estranged parent(s) again? Barf. But whatever.

This isn't a graphic novel but there are some pictures in it - at the end of every chapter. They look like first draft pencil sketches of characters, but they have nothing to do with what's been going on in the chapter or with what happens in the next chapter. A significant number of them feature a woman holding a camera, and it's not always the same camera. There's a newspaper reporter in the story but she's never described as holding a camera although she does come armed with pictures the first time she accosts Barry. I was wondering at one point if there was more to her than met the eye, but there really wasn't. The sketches were good but felt weirdly out of place.

I liked that Barry has a beard (after a fashion). That's something you never see on super heroes (except in Mark Millar's Jupiter's Legacy! which I reviewed yesterday). I mean come on - Superman cannot shave - he can't find a razor that won't break on contact, yet he's always as clean and smooth as a baby's patoot? I call super-bullshit on that one! I rather suspect, though, that Barry was perhaps modeled on the author in some respects! They do say write what you know - although in my opinion that's bullshit too. It's termed 'fiction' for good reason!

So, final analysis, and although it did come close a couple of times to failing for me, I recommend this one as a worthy read, with the caveats I've mentioned about Barry and his non-pc attitude and behavior. If you've read Normalized which I'm also reviewing today, you will more than likely enjoy this one and vice-versa.

Normalized by David Bussell

Title: Normalized
Author: David Bussell
Publisher: David Bussell
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
Footnote 28 on page 67 has "... who' d returned come back to life...". It can be 'returned' or 'come back', but it can't be both!
Page 77 "I guess it was the third wall he knocked me through that I realized something was off." Isn't quite right. Maybe, "I guess it was the third wall he knocked me through that made me realize something was off."?

"...pronto like tonto..." Tonto is a name - it needs to be capitalized - something Cap Might ought to know! (page 198)
Daphne from Frasier Benny Hill (which is true) p141, p221 (repetition).
"...Men's Warehouse..." should be " Men's Wearhouse" p259. Same letters, different order.
"...which would of course by quite small)..." should be "...which would of course be quite small)..."p266.
"...part of the Heroes Code..." is missing an apostrophe: "... part of the Heroes' Code..." p314.
"...klieg lights..." should be "Klieg lights" since the Kleig part (actually Kleigl) is someone's name. p350.
"Now there was a plan I could hang my coat off." Hang my coat off?! p357.
"... into Miss Transit, kiping her teleportation power" is nonsensical (kiping isn't a word. Should it be 'keeping'? 'crippling'? p396

This is the second of three super hero novels I'm reviewing one after another. The review of the other novel, Barry Vs The Apocalypse is here. Note that unlike yesterday's Jupiter's legacy this is not a graphic novel.

I really liked this story but it took some getting used to! Note that the version I read of this combined all four original parts into one story. It's written in first person PoV, which is far from my favorite voice, but here it works. Also note that this is not a story for the faint-hearted, and I say that not because it's scary or anything, but because it's a very adult story where both strong language and graphic sexual imagery as well as a plethora of gross-out comments are gainfully employed, but there's an odd fastidiousness to the bad language.

The narrator, Captain Might, has no problem with typing "goddamned" but refuses to type "shit" or "fuck" without replacing the vowel with a symbol - a skull and crossbones for the 'i' and a lightning bolt for the 'u'. I didn't get the logic there; the author seems at times to be quite religious (although I may have that wrong!), but if that's the case, why baulk at the F and the S words, but write 'goddamned' without hesitation? I don't know! I didn't get the mentality there, but in the end, it's not that important.

I used the word "typing" back there because that's exactly what the font looks like: thirteen point Courier with a ragged right edge, too, like this was actually typed on a typewriter, which I also didn't get. It wasn't an appealing font, and that can make a difference to a reader. Plus it was large - The conceit is that the super hero is typing this out himself, which (given how he spends his time fantasizing about fighting super villains) doesn't seem to fit - why would he waste time typing? Why not dictate or have a ghost writer? Who knows?

That said, my last comment about the presentation also extends to the extensive footnotes: they felt out of place in the type-written scenario which had been created here, especially since they were in a different font. They were often funny, but I wasn't keen on the one which ran to a second page, where it was the only thing on page 34 and occupied only two lines at the bottom of it. This happened several times.

Those gripes aside, I did like the tone and voice despite it being the detested first person, but I did find myself hoping, knowing from the author what was coming, that this pugnacious braggart would find some humility. Here's one example of a Captain Might sarcastic comment:

I watched Mimix through the interview room's one-way mirror (and it is one-way, guys, a two-way mirror would be glass).

That puncturing of misguided convention definitely hit my funny bone. One of the most amusing things in the early pages is the plethora of ridiculous super-hero names (and let's face it, other than the true comic book addicts, who really can take super-hero names seriously?).

Here we're treated to hilarious ones (at least they seemed hilarious to me) such as The Caped Crouton, Executie, Hot Flash: America's Only Menopausal Superhero, Mother Load, Nocturnal Emission, Polterguy: The World's Strongest Ghost, and Vaginamite among others. One of the funniest parts was where the narrator, flying overhead, points out five superheroes at a donut shop, lined up so their chest logos spelled "DICKS". These heroes had perfectly ordinary super-hero style names, which is why it was funny: Dynamo, Impervious, Cascade, Kilowatt and Switchback. And that's not to mention an LGBT team named Homo Superior....

So yes, loved the humor. Not too keen on the hero to begin with, but despite his obnoxiousness, he did kind of grow on me the more I read. He was an arrogant braggart, very full of himself and dismissive towards others. He reminded me of the guy in this one poem I wrote which I published in Poem y Granite.

So let's cut to the chase: Captain Might squares off against Professor D'eath, his nemesis, and the Professor has some serious new tricks up his sleeve, one of which is the ability to strip Captain Might of his super powers. What's he gonna do without them, and more importantly, what will happen to his ego?

Note in passing that Abe Lincoln never said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe" - not according to a search of the complete works of Lincoln here. I think it's simply a folk tale as are many of the things attributed to Lincoln in the hope that people will much more readily take to heart something which Lincoln reputedly said than anything the author who "quotes" Lincoln is saying. This is a huge problem with hero worship. It's delusional! Besides, I seriously doubt that someone as able as Abe was with his hands, would take four hours to sharpen an ax.

Of course, this story is being told in first person, so the author can get away with mis-quotes and bad quotes, and even non-existent quotes - depending on how said author wants his character to appear. If he wants him well-read and smart, then he'll get his quotes right, otherwise, the character will get them wrong and look dumb, arrogant ill-educated, or up to something! This is important to keep in mind when writing in first person. Your character is only as educated as your writing and research!

Describing the Mandroids' armament as Gatling guns makes them seem a bit out-dated. Maybe that was intended. But the Gatling gun was a hand-cranked rapid fire gun. If the gun is something that's automated, it really needs to be a Maxim gun, or more modernly, a Vulcan or a minigun. Again minor matter of taste and of course, of the writer's intended aim - especially if it's a gun we're dealing with!

I cheered when I read this footnote, however: "...That said, I do believe there are some people who deserve to be rounded up and caged off from the rest of us, namely Creationists, people who use the word 'methinks', and whoever it is watching 2 Broke Girls...". Methinks I agree with only one of the three for sure, since I've never seen 2 Broke Girls, but if it's anything remotely like your typical American sitcom, it probably sucks like a starving fly on the Inevitable Bulk's last will and excrement.

So yes, super and heroic this story was, and I recommend it for readers with a strong stomach!

Jupiter’s Legacy by Mark Millar

Title: Jupiter’s Legacy
Author: Mark Millar
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!
Art: Frank Quitely
Colors / Letters: Peter Doherty

This is an amazing story by the creator of Kick-Ass and marks three reviews in a row I will do, starting with this one, of novels about super heroes. Funnily enough, this is the only one which is a graphic novel! It takes as its premise a question that really isn’t explored in comic books – not in any I’ve read anyway. The best known comic books tend to be about super heroes and super villains. They’re really never about family since the heroes tend not to have family. Batman lost his parents. Superman lost his. Spider-Man lost his parents and his uncle. Iron man thought only of himself – to begin with. Super heroes aren’t generally known for family life or family ties – or indeed for any real altruism when you get right down to it. Nor are they known for growing old.

This novel asks what super hero life would be like if those family ties were firmly in place, and if those families had issues just like everyday families, and it does a pretty darned good job of it, too. Some time ago, The Utopian and several of his friends gained super powers from a little trip to an island. How or why this happened isn’t explained in volume one. Now time has passed and the heroes have grown old – gray haired, a bit tired – and they have families. Some of them are not very happy with how things are, and their kids are even more disenchanted than their parents are.

Set in the USA (that hasn’t changed) during the recent economic downturn (and at other times) this story asks another question that super hero stories tend to fail at: why don’t the super heroes do more than simply punch out the villains and luxuriate in the subsequent acclaim? For example, with the genius that Batman and Superman have between them, they could revolutionize crime-fighting by helping law enforcement organizations with technology and advice, but they never stoop that low, do they? They selfishly keep all that finery for themselves.

The Utopian’s brother does ask these questions, and he’s thoroughly unsatisfied by the answers he gets. He’s even more incensed by The Utopian’s domineering attitude and old-fashioned view of the way things should be, but he can’t usurp his brother’s throne on his own. He does know that the hero’s own son is thoroughly disaffected and resentful of his father’s treatment, however. Maybe the two of them together might effect some change in leadership – of both the super heroes and the US government?

I highly recommend this graphic novel. It’s beautifully put together, richly worded, smartly conceived, and gorgeously illustrated and colored.

Chiro by Hyekyung Baek

Title: Chiro
Author: Hyekyung Baek (no website found)
Publisher: NETCOMICS
Rating: WARTY!

This is one of the most boring graphic novels I've ever read. It;s done in that really annoying Japanese manga style, but I was willing to put up with it for a good story. Unfortunately, that never came. Instead I got mindless school girl antics which consisted exclusively of an obsession with clothes and boys. The main character is the vacuous Eun-Yo Song whose sole traits are beauty and popularity, because you know girls have nothing else to offer, right? Excuse me, I need to change my barf bag.

Evidently every boy in creation loves her except one, and of course that's the one she wants. What a startlingly original plot! I must remember to steal it for my next novel because it's never been done before. So what's her plan to get Chan-Gyeong? Does she plan on getting to know him, finding out his interests and seeing if they have anything in common? Nope. This genius's plan is to emulate rock star Nan Lee, who Eun-Yo purports to hate, and by this means win the boy who hitherto has shown zero interest in a girl whose sole claim to fame is her claim to fame. Brilliant! How can it fail?

While the art work wasn't bad, except that it was Japanese manga-style with giant eyes, and pointy noses and chins which I detest, the writing was of a level that suggested to me that it had been thrown together by a thirteen-year-old who had never been out of the house except to go to school, who had never seen any movie other than chick-click romance movies, who had read nothing other than romance books and fashion magazines. In other words, she's not interesting at all and neither is what she writes.

And neither was this. I couldn't even read it after the first couple of dozen pages when I saw where it was going and I realized that it never was coming back. I can't recommend this at all. Ah, that's the pharmacy calling with my renewed promethezine script. I'll be right back after these dosages.

Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Good Luck by Ellen Potter

Title: Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Luck
Author: Ellen Potter
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Qin Leng.

This is volume two in a series of short novels aimed at seven to nine year olds. The chapters are few and short, and there are engaging line-drawings by Qin Leng. The main character is Piper Green, a feisty and self-possessed young girl who isn't as they say, backward about coming forward. It's so nice to read a novel about a girl who isn't afraid to step up and take action even though her actions tend to be misguided and in need some subsequent correctional activity!

Piper lives on Peek-a-Boo island off the coast of Maine, and in this story Piper learns that the classroom pet rabbit had to be sent home with a teacher because a new girl is coming to join the class and she has a dander allergy. Piper isn't on board with this at all, and when she meets the new girl the next morning on the lobster boat in which they have to travel to the nearest island which sports a school, she hits up the poor girl with the story that their teacher is really a witch.

Piper's fiction is aided immensely, if indirectly, by the fact that the new girl hails from new Jersey. Their teacher's use of teaching aids relevant to New Jersey is what triggers panic in the new girl and big trouble for Piper.

Once her parents learn of Piper's behavior, they insist she go with them to the new girl's house - which turns out to be the island's lighthouse - to apologize. It's during this meeting that Piper discovers the secret value in the one earring which she had dug out from the fairy exchange hole which resides in the big old fairy tree that grows in Piper's front yard.

Once again Ellen Potter has written a highly enjoyable and quickly-moving tale that sounds realistic and tells a cool story about Piper and her antics. I loved the story and I recommend it.

Piper Green and the Fairy Tree by Ellen Potter

Title: Piper Green and the Fairy Tree
Author: Ellen Potter
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Qin Leng.

This is volume one in a series of short, but nicely-paced stories for seven to nine year olds. The chapters are few and short, and there are cute illustrations by Qin Leng which are simple but very effective. The main character is Piper Green, a young firecracker of a girl who is very much a go-getter and highly self-motivated.

Piper lives on a tiny island named Peek-a-Boo, which is off the coast of Maine on the North Atlantic seaboard of the US. The island is so small that there's no school and a handful of kids, pretty much all sons and daughters of lobster trappers, have to travel by lobster boat to nearby Mink island where they attend school.

Piper is fine with this, but her problem is that her favorite brother Eric has left the island to attend boarding school elsewhere, and she misses him something chronic. She has a pair of his old ear muffs and she refuses to take them off, even when she sleeps. This inevitably causes a clash with her new teacher at school.

Piper is a feisty and stubborn girl who can't avoid problems of her own making. This series looks at Piper's problems and how she addresses them, and how she then goes on to fix the mistakes she made when she first 'dealt' with the problem. This one focuses on her struggle with the new teacher who even Piper thinks looks like a fairy princess.

It also brings into play the fairy tree - a large tree in Piper's yard. One day, having run away from the boat that morning, refusing to go to school, Piper is hiding out in the branches and she hears weird noises which appear to be coming from within the tree itself. Her neighbor hears them too, and promptly gets a saw and cuts of the branch on which Piper had previously been sitting.

In place of the branch now, there's a hole and a hollow inside the tree. Piper's neighbor assures Piper that it's a fairy exchange hole, and if Piper leaves something in there, she will get something of value back. Piper likes this idea and immediate starts an exchange program!

This novel is completely charming. It's realistic, well-written, interesting, funny, and endearing. Piper comes out of the pages as a real person and she very much captures and holds the attention. I recommend this even if you're not seven to nine! Read it between seven and nine in the evening and no one will be able to say a thing about it!

Shadow Show 2 by various authors

Title: Shadow Show 2
Author: Various
Publisher: Idea & Design Works, LLC
Rating: WORTHY!

Shadow Show is purportedly a tribute to Ray Bradbury in the form of a collection of short graphic stories riffing off Bradbury's own stories or related to him and his life in some other way, but I can't vouch for where the profits are going. There is a host of writers, artists, colorers, inkers, letterers and so on who worked on this, but it seems some of the work is adapted from other stories which may or may not have initially had anything to do with Bradbury. Most names I didn't know, but two of the writers were Neil Gaiman and Audrey Niffeneggar. You may have heard of them!

Ray Bradbury died in 2012 after a long and successful career writing novels, short stories, plays, and TV scripts. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My first encounter with him was in The Golden Apples of the Sun which I really liked. I never did get into his Martian Chronicles, though.

The first story, By The Silver water of Lake Champlain, by Jason Ciaramella based on a short story by Joe Hill is derived from Bradbury's The Fog Horn which I first read in The Golden Apples of the Sun if I recall correctly. This story was good and faithful in spirit to Bradbury's own original. This is followed by Nail Gaiman's The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury which is little more than a list of Bradbury's story titles. This is followed by Niffeneggar's Backwards in Seville, which is a very short and rather disturbing story as it happens, and which wasn't bad. It's hardly more than an idea, though, not really a story!

Live Forever, adapted by Sam Weller, fell a bit flat for me, but I suppose in many ways it's more true-to-life (Bradbury's fictional life, that is!) than most of the other stories. Harlan Ellison's Weariness was uninteresting to me, and not even a graphic story. Dave Eggars's Who Knocks? is just plain weird. Earth, a Gift Shop by Charles Yu is horrible. Altenmoor, Where the Dogs Dance by Mort Castle was nonsensical.

One thing I didn't like was how the stories ran into one another, I don't know if this was intentional, but in a lot of cases, it was impossible to tell that one story had ended and a new one had started until you swiped a couple more pages and discovered the story title, and realized you were already reading it. This was irritating at best. The first story had no title until the very end, however, which was just plain ridiculous. The graphic novel itself had no cover. Note that this is an ARC (advance review copy) which we don't expect to be perfect or final, but in this day and age of ebooks there really isn't any excuse for not having even an ARC is pretty much in perfect and final condition. I sincerely hope this isn't how they plan on actually releasing the book. If so, they have problems!

I can't tell you who wrote the last story or what the title is because there is no title page at all for it. That's sad because this was the best story in the whole collection and is overwhelmingly the main reason why I'm rating this positively. The story is creepy and realistic, the dialog intelligent and engaging, and the art work and coloring wonderful. It makes great use of the white space and the lettering is crisp and readily intelligible. It also defines what it means to be a true friend.

It concerns dear friends Abbey and Cate, young and slightly wild small-town girls who encounter a new guy in town - someone who has a reputation for being a bad boy. Normally I detest love triangles and while this isn't one per se, it sure feels like it's heading down that road until the delightful twist comes. I loved this story and because of it I recommend this graphic novel.

Twisted Dark by Neil Gibson

Title: Twisted Dark
Author: Neil Gibson (multiple illustrators)
Publisher:
Rating: WORTHY!

The first story, Suicide is very short, but it has a sting. The second, Routine is a father's relationship with his son, Koll, which is first abusive, then loving, then revelatory. After this we get a longer story about slavery and power titled A Lighter Note, which features an Indian guy (that's Indian, not Native American), named Rajeev who bemoans his marriage prospects given that he is so poor, and looks to improve his lot by working construction jobs in Dubai. The job isn't what he had hoped for - it's a lot worse, but what's a guy to do about it?

The fourth story, Windowpaynes is about Rodrigo and his new invention: windowpaynes. This is a window right out of sci-fi. One which transmits images and video like a giant monitor or TV. Rodrigo has a rather dangerous secret, though. Talking of images, the comic images don't always match the text in this story! For example, when we're shown the window sporting an image of the pyramids at Giza, the text refers to the Hong Kong skyline. When the text tells us that the screen can display Bondi Beach, the image shows us Venice. These are not views that can be readily confused! Evidently there was some miscommunication between artist and writer here. Either that or they just like messing with the reader.

The fifth story, The Game is set in a psychiatric hospital where at least one patient thinks nearly everyone is faking it and this is all a game. Is he right? I have to say the patients in this hospital seem to have extraordinarily large rooms and crampingly small beds! The sixth story is titled Blame, and is very short, but nicely-worded revenge story.

Next up is a sequel to Rajeev's story. This is titled A Heavenly Note and was frankly a bit of a bust. Following this, Cocaína is a story of drug dealers which held no interest for me. I started reading it but it was so boring that I couldn't stand to finish it.

The Pushman is a story about a guy who works on the Tokyo subway - he literally pushes people into the coach to make them fit and make room for more. I have to credit this graphic novel for being cosmopolitan. It's not confined solely to the US and to American stories, which is a big plus, but the guy in this story, Yoshi Higuchi, looks more Chinese than ever he does Japanese. He wanted to be an architect, but was, he believes, robbed of the opportunity, and now he gets his revenge on society in his own petty way. This story was not that great.

Münchausen's Little Proxy becomes more and more interesting as you read it, and being to realize that this story doesn't stand alone. I have worked in a hospital where a case of this actually showed up. It's one of the most lethal child abuse manifestations and can be hard to even recognize. Named after the fictional Baron Münchausen (who was based on a real life character), Münchausen's by Proxy is when the person in charge of the child fakes (or creates real) symptoms in a child. The basis of this, when done to one's self or to another, is primarily to garner attention of one sort or another.

I do have some complaints about this graphic novel. Once again the text is so small and poorly emphasized that even on a nineteen inch monitor (I read this in the Adobe Digital Editions reader), it was really quite hard to read it at times. Having to stop and squint periodically truly detracted from my enjoyment of the story. Naturally, in a graphic novel, you don't want the text obliterating the images, but there is a happy medium. This comic failed to find it. A graphic novel isn't just images (although it can be!), Usually it's also text, and if the text fails, it's just as bad as the images failing.

Some of the chapters have quotes preceding them, for example from Henry van Dyke, Marilyn Monroe, and Oscar Wilde, but the quotes are not sourced and I think they're more "folk quotes" than actual quotes from the people named. Some I know where accurate, but I was unable to confirm that any of those three people actually said what has been attributed to them.

The Oscar Wilde quote doesn't sound like him at all, and it was Darrin Weinberg who said, "It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose." Which is very close to what's quoted as coming from Wilde. You can tell how reliable a quote is by googling it and seeing what kind of web sites repeat it. In the first three pages of Google results for the Monroe quote for example, there wasn't one which stood out as a sterling or reliable source! Far too many purported "quotes" garner currency for themselves by repetition, not by accuracy.

That said, I recommend this graphic novel. While the graphics are pretty basic, they're not bad at all; only line drawings and gray scale, but not bad. The stories are sly in that some of them sneak around behind you and resurface in unexpected ways where you don't expect them. Some are interconnected. It's a worthy read.

Monster Motors by Brian Lynch

Title: Monster Motors
Author: Brian Lynch
Publisher: Idea & Design Works, LLC
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Nick Roche.

There was no front cover on this - the comic opened right at page one! Hopefully that will be fixed in the actual published version. This graphic novel takes the term "Monster Trucks" literally! The story here is that Vic Frankenstein has come to Transylvania because in his opinion, it badly needs a motor mechanic. He has an assistant, IGOR - an acronym for Interactive Garage Operations Robot. Vic bought a garage/junkyard on the Internet. There was only one condition - never take down the "big, scary fence". Uh-huh.

He cleans up the garage and then heads out to drum-up business in town. He doesn't mind the drudge work or starting small. He has a saying "Michelangelo had to paint a few motels before they offered him that chapel." The problem is that as soon as he's fixed-up a few cars, he discovers the very next morning that those same vehicles are trashed. The only clue to the perp is two puncture wounds near the gas tank. Vic decides to lie in wait with IGOR to see what's going on and sure enough, he discovers a vampire car by the name of Cadillacula.

I loved this idea. I was almost willing to give it five stars based on the idea alone, but lots of people have great ideas for stories; the challenge is to deliver, and actually turn that idea into an entertaining novel. We have to see if this can be done, and in my opinion it was. You see, this series not only explores the twin stalwarts of Gothic horror, Dracula and Frankenstein, but also many other characters from the sci-fi and horror genres. I mean, surely you've heard of Minivan Helsing? The Lagoon Buggy? Wheelwolf?

Meanwhile, back at the garage, Vic's problems are taking a turn for the worst. Cadillacula returns and takes a bite out of his custom-made super-truck. Now, not only has he unleashed a monster, he has inadvertently given it super-powers! Naturally the only response to this is to build a Frankenstein monster of a truck from the parts of dead vehicles, but even this has unexpected consequences, as Vic is about to discover.

I really liked this story. It was fun, playful, inventive, beautifully illustrated and moved apace. I do confess I had to wonder initially, why there were so many skimpily-dressed females in Transylvania, but even that rather paled against the question of why there were so many American vehicles in Transylvania. I had thought that perhaps both questions could be answered when we understand that if there is one vehicle that the USA is really good at producing, it's a steamroller that goes by the name of Hollywood. Then later in the story I discovered that this was supposedly Transylvania, Kentucky, which actually no longer exists, just as the European Transylvania no longer exists.

In terms of complaints, I'd have to say there were almost none. One problem I did notice was that the inking was way too light. I liked that this writer doesn't feel the need to randomly bold odd words here and there, like comic book writers do way-the-hell too often, but the penmanship here was very faint-hearted making it a bit difficult to read at times. Other than that, I recommend this whole-heartedly.

A Glance Backward by Pierre Paquet

Title: A Glance Backward
Author: Pierre Paquet (no website found)
Publisher: Magnetic Press
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated on average by Tony Sandoval.

This graphic novel tells the story of an eleven year old boy evidently living in Europe who somehow manages to garner for himself a passage through a time warp into another realm. This is somewhat confusing at the beginning, but it makes rather startling sense at the end when we discover what the author's agenda was. I was quite taken with this, and was very pleasantly surprised and found that I liked it all the more for this revelation.

The bringing of hourglasses into the story for me recalled Sandman from the Spider-Man comics - the kid is even wearing a shirt reminiscent of the one which Sandman wore in the third of the initial Spider-man trilogy.

In this new realm in which the boy finds himself, there seems to be a series of mini-realms: this house has many mansions! The boy considers, since he feels he is inside a wall of his own home, that each realm is one of the bricks. This is how we know for certain that this is taking place in Europe rather than the USA - no one has brick walls in the US! Lol!

The boy discovers that he has super powers, after a fashion. At least, he can bust through what appear to be solid walls either with his head (accidentally!) or his fist (in desperation). Each time he breaks through, he finds a different kind of world. Some are all dark, and in more than one of these, he encounters a man carrying a candle, and wearing a hat and rain coat, rather like a private detective from popular fifties fiction. The man always quickly speeds away from the boy.

Other realms are different again. One is frozen, one contains some unspecified animal which seems to be hostile. Another is a gorgeous garden. Most of the realms are unpopulated, but in some the boys finds others people, but there is usually only one in any one realm. In one, he encounters a pleasant young woman waiting for a train. In another he finds African tribesmen dancing for rain. In another, there's a man reminiscent of Abe Lincoln who is all but bi-polar. None of these people seem able to help him, and some worlds are downright hostile towards him.

The question is, is this real or is the boy merely using his youthful imagination? Or is something else going on here? Or is it maybe a mix of all three possibilities? I recommend this graphic novel highly. It was touching and engaging, although I have to say that the artwork didn't appeal to me!

Jason and the Argonauts by Dan Whitehead

Title: Jason and the Argonauts
Author: Dan Whitehead
Publisher: Kalyani Navyug Media Pvt. Ltd.
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Sanka Banerjee.

Everyone knows the story of Jason, his argonauts, and the quest for the Golden Fleece - or if they don't, they really should! It was the topic of a 1963 movie with animation supplied by none other than Ray Harryhausen. It's very dated now, but it was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. The story was re-told on TV in 2000 in a mini-series, which was a lot closer to the original myth than was the movie.

I was quite excited to see it in a graphic novel which is well-written, colorfully illustrated, and tells a faithful story as far as is possible in this format. Jason recklessly goes to demand his birthright, which is the kingship of Iolcus (but you can call it LOLcus if you like!). Jason's father was deposed and Pelias took over. Pelias was warned that a man with one shoe would show up who would be a real and present danger as they say, and Jason lost one of his sandals when he swam across the river with an old woman in tow. Not that old women ever really are old women in these kinds of stories.

Pelias doesn't kill Jason, oddly enough. Instead, he sends him on an impossible quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Colchis, upon delivery of which Pelias will step down in Jason's favor - despite the fact that he has a son and heir, Acastus. Jason accepts this offer. He starts recruiting a sailing crew, and he hires a master ship-builder, Argus, to create the fastest and strongest ship. Pelias evidently pays for all of this. Zeus's long-suffering wife Hera decides to back Jason's gambit and aids him along the way.

Jason manages to engage a host of famous names (at least famous in Greece back then). Not all of these are mentioned in the novel: Atalanta the virgin huntress, Calais and Zetes who are the sons of Boreas - the North Wind - and who are known as the Boreads, and who can fly, Castor and Pollux, who were actually not twins but stepbrothers (they had different fathers) and were known as the Dioskouri, Euphemus, who could walk on water long before anyone from Galilee ever did, Heracles more commonly know as Hercules, Orpheus the legendary musician, Peleus, aka Telemon, and not to be confused with Pelias, who was the son of Aeacus, king of the island of Aegina, where I've actually vacationed, and Philoctetes, the famed archer. We're told in the book that Polydeuces the Olympic champion volunteered, but Polydeuces is just another name for Pollux. What Jason stupidly doesn't know is that Acastus, Pelias's son, is on board with a plan to sabotage the quest every chance he gets.

The crew sets sail for Salmydessus to learn from the blind man Phineaus the route to the fleece, but they run short of food and are forced to find land to refill their bread baskets. They come across an island populated only by women. No, it's not Themyscira, it's Lemnos, where the women (we learn) killed off all the men in an act of savagery born of unfaithfulness on the part of said men. The argonauts quickly fall under the spell of the women and do not want to leave. It's only Herakles who finally kicks butts and stirs them to get away from their enchantment.

Finally, they reach Salmydessus and discover Phineus (in the movie played by Patrick Troughton who you may know better as the second Doctor Who), but he's plagued by Harpies which prevent him from getting a decent meal. After the Harpies are subdued, Phineus feels moved to given the directions, which are not very good since they lead straight through the clashing rocks. Fortunately, a gift from Hipsipyle (of Lemnos infamy), helps them overcome this obstacle, and they eventually make it to Colchis - where yet more obstacles await them.

The story doesn't have a happy ending. It's a Greek myth remember, not a children's fairy tale! But as to exactly how Jason gets his fleece, and what becomes of him and the Argonauts afterwards, I'll leave that for you to discover. Don't think you know what's going to happen if you've only ever seen the 1963 movie! Note also that there are several graphic novels out there which tell this story. I've read only one of them; others may tell if differently and may be better or worse than this one. This one, however, I did read. It's a fast read and I really liked it, but it's a bit gory and rampant, so understand that it's not a tale for young children.

Sharkboy And Lavagirl by Robert Rodriguez And Chris Roberson

Title: Sharkboy And Lavagirl
Author: Robert Rodriguez And Chris Roberson
Publisher: Troublemaker Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Alex Toader.

This illustrated novel began as a movie and later was transformed into a short novel by Rodriguez, who concocted the movie from stories his kids invented, and Chris Roberson - yes, he of iZombie and Cinderella graphic novel fame. The basis of the story is very much a rip-off of the novel The Neverending Story (which was then made into several movies). In that, a savior has to rescue the world of stories before darkness overtakes it. In the novel I review here, three saviors have to rescue a dream world before darkness overtakes it.

The rip-off doesn’t end there. Max, the main human character, long ago dreamed up a robot which he named Tobor ('robot' backwards). Tobor is ripped off from a 1954 movie titled Tobor the Great.

That aside, the novel is very entertaining and inventive with its amusing naming conventions. It’s well written for the most part with no great spelling or grammatical gaffs, except for page 62, where the paragraph which appears in the middle of the page is repeatedly word for word immediately afterwards, at the bottom of the page.

The novel is written for a juvenile audience without any effort made to appeal to more mature readers, but aside from that it’s written quite well. Shark Boy (rendered as one word: Sharkboy in the novel's title, but consistently rendered in the book itself as two words) wakes up on a cold beach not knowing who he is or where he came from. He quickly meets Lava Girl (again rendered as one word: Lavagirl in the novel's title, but as two words in the story) who is suffering the same amnesia. They discover their super powers quickly - she can literally produce lava and he can breathe underwater.

The novel differs from the movie in some ways. For example the movie begins with Max, the boy who dreams, describing how Shark Boy (S) came to be. We get no similar information on Lava Girl (L). This story is, Max assures his classmates, a true story, but Linus, the class bad boy makes fun of him.

In the novel this is omitted completely, and we first meet L & S on the beach where L saves his life by returning him to the sea. Immediately afterwards, a professor shows up who tells them very little but warns them they must save dream land, aka Planet Drool, by finding the dreamer, who is on Earth. He disappears from the story immediately after that, but in response to his advice, they take a rocket to a point where they can interact with the real world, and they contact young Max, a daydreamer in middle school, who can fix the world known as Planet Drool. Meanwhile, Mr Electric, with his cable beasts and electrical powers, is trying to thwart their every effort.

In an afterschool playground incident Linus steals Max's dream book, via which he has inadvertently created Planet Drool and L & S, but this back story isn't so clear in the novel. However, the end result is the same in that Max joins them on Planet Drool, transported there via S's shark rocket, and slowly starts putting things right.

They encounter the same cable beasts, and Mr Electricity, and eventually figure out who has distorted Max's dreams - it's Linus, using Max's own dream book. After almost losing L & S - she once again saves him after Mr Electricity has tossed electric eels into the water where he's swimming. Unfortunately, the water has a very negative effect on L and she's pretty much dead until S runs at super-speed to deliver her to the volcano which can restore her. After this, she realizes that she's a girl of light, and she can restore the light and banish the dark which has beset Planet Drool.

Linus and Max become friends when Linus realizes he should not be killing dreams, and Max realizes he needs to dream with his eyes open. Now he has no evil overlord, Mr Electricity rebels completely and becomes the villain, but he's subdued by Max.

The book carries no mention of the ice princess (in the move she's a classmate of Max's who also appears on Planet Drool) and is rather short, but the illustrations - comic book style line drawings - are very good. I recommend this novel for an age appropriate audience.

Every Day by David Levithan

Rating: WARTY!

Read poorly by Alex McKenna.

I liked Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist which was co-written by this author, although I liked the movie better, but when I began listening to David Levithan's Every Day, I really had to wonder whether I would like it or not. I didn't in the end. It's first person PoV which is bad enough. It's narrated by a girl who sounds so young and clueless, but then the character is apparently sixteen, so I guess it's appropriate, but that doesn't make the voice any less obnoxious. I just didn't like it.

I'm not a fan of first person and this story was bordering precipitously on making me nauseous before it had even really got under way. The reader's voice sounded like everything in life was something of a surprise to her. Her voice had this tone like she couldn't even take herself seriously or that maybe she was joking and hoping you wouldn't figure it out before she reached the punch-line. her voice ended every sentence with a muted back-of-the-throat growl which was nauseating in it's metronomic routine, and made me think of nothing other than a little nasty dog which is still trying to decide if it can get away with biting you.

The premise is that this sixteen year old being (I don't know if it's male or female or even if it's human!) wakes up each morning in a different body, spends one day in it, and then moves on. The being appears to be human as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it's a god or a ghost! On the morning the story begins, she (I'll call it she because of the narrator's voice) wakes up in Justin's body. He is also sixteen years old and in high school. Why everything - gender, skin color, etc, evidently can vary, but age apparently cannot was a bit of a mystery.

The narrator, who was nameless, seemed far too worldly for her age, although she had been around a bit and not in a promiscuous way, but in other ways she seemed absurdly naïve and juvenile. In the early part of the story, she apparently was oblivious to the fact at she was jumping genders. Nothing was mentioned of how she felt about that, or what adventures she had enjoying all these bodies of both genders it was like it was completely immaterial to her and I simply didn't buy that at all. Yes, maybe she became used to it when she was younger, but to offer absolutely no comments, observations, or reminiscences was just poor writing.

At school she (in Justin's body) runs into his girlfriend and takes a liking to her which she deduces Justin didn't really share. He was pretty much just employing Rhiannon as a utility. The narrator started to like her and contrary to her normal behavior - to not get involved - decided to cut class and spend the afternoon at the beach with this somewhat estranged girlfriend, even though it's the tail end of the summer and starting to get chilly.

As I indicated, the story was nauseating as this sixteen-year-old narrator relates things as though she's whatever age David Levithan is, with all these flowery existential and philosophical observations. It felt like reading a John Greene novel, which I've vowed I will never do again. Nor will I read any more David Levithan if they're like this. I am not a fan of writers who blurt out the most mundane pablum as though it's something which one ever conceived before.

It immediately looked like the narrator - whoever or whatever he, or she or it is - would end up with Rhiannon at the closing of the story. That was my wild guess, but it's exactly what happened. This a very short novel, only 7 disks, so I originally decided I could give it a try-out and maybe even finish it, even though it didn't immediately grab me. I failed. It really was tedious to have to listen to this everyday boring nonsense being related like it was a revelation, and it was especially tiresome to have to listen to it in Alex McKenna's grating voice. I cannot recommend this.

From Hell by Alan Moore

Title: From Hell
Author: Alan Moore
Publisher: Top Shelf
Rating: WARTY!

Art work: Eddie Campbell and Pete Mullins

This is the graphic novel from which the Johnny Depp movie of the same title was derived. I'd recommend the movie as an entertaining bit of nonsense, but I cannot recommend this rambling miasma of absurdity and boredom, which is really no more than a graphic realization of a Jack the Ripper Masonic conspiracy pulled directly from the 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution.

The conceit here is that Jack the Ripper was really a doctor to Queen Victoria's royal family, William Gull, who was charged with covering up an indiscretion by an immediate member of the royal family. This is a nonsensical conspiracy theory hasn't a grain of truth to it and is in effect a scandalous libel of Doctor Gull.

The story pretends that Prince Albert Victor one of Victoria's children, secretly married "a commoner" named Annie Crook, with whom he had a child. Annie supposedly had no idea who he really was. When Queen Vic learns of it, she locks up Annie in an institution for the insane, and when she learns that a handful of prostitutes know the truth, she tasks William Gull with covering it up. Gull is supposedly a Mason, and ritually kills the girls for purposes of his own.

The daughter sired by the prince and damned by all is inexplicably not slaughtered, but left with a painter by the name of Walter Sickert (a real person who has also been named as the Ripper by a assortment of writers!).

The story lacks life and luster, and it became so boring when Moore decided to spend page after page after endless page taking us on a tour of London and trying to tie everything into a Massive Masonic Mystery Tour. I felt bad for Eddie Campbell and Pete Mullins having to draw all that crap. I expected Beatles music, which I didn't even get to offset the pictorial disaster. I noticed, also, that Moore is yet another writer who doesn't understand that there's a difference between stanch and staunch (page seven). I can't recommend this one at all.

Royal Babylon by Karl Shaw

Title: Royal Babylon
Author: Karl Shaw (no website found)
Publisher: Crown
Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with Royal Babylon by Heathcote Williams which actually has, believe it or not, a more amusing cover than this one does, this book is a tour of European royalty across the ages (mostly across the ages where there is sufficient documentation to support an informed conclusion). My problem with it, and the main reason I'm rating it negatively is the author's style and tone, which i did not appreciate at all. He writes in a stridently supercilious tone and he seems to relish describing royals in the worst light imaginable regardless of how they actually were. This gives me some cause for doubt as to how accurate his portrayals really are, especially when I caught him in some outright falsifications (or to be more benign, in displaying inexcusable ignorance or laziness in his research.

I doubt he even took the trouble to look at pictures of the people he describes, judged by some of the things he says. I know that portraits were (and are) deliberately painted to be flattering, but in instances where I've checked on his descriptions, they are far in excess of what the portraits indicated. In one case, it was recent enough that there was a photograph, and he was outright lying about that princess's appearance. It's like the author didn't care about veracity if he could get in a sly swipe at some royal person or other. I'm far from a supporter of the nobility, trust me, but I get the impression that Shaw either hates royals or derives a perverse pleasure from gratuitous sniping at those who are dead and cannot therefore defend themselves. Here's what he says about Crown Princess Margaret of Prussia, for example:

...Queen Victoria admitted that the Crown Princess was "not regularly Pretty." In the context of royal doublespeak, it is safe to assume that she was grotesque.
(Page 32)

This is an outright lie as you can see from the images in wikipedia. Did this author never check any image or portrait? As it happens, it was not safe to assume any such thing and the author could have verified this for himself if he had taken the trouble. The fact that he didn't speaks more erudite volumes than the one he has written here. From the photograph in wikipedia, and she looked like any random person you might consider. Now I admit that beauty (and by definition ugliness) is in the eye of the beholder, and she was not what you might describe as outstandingly beautiful or classically beautiful (for what that's worth), but she looked perfectly fine, and it seems to me to be disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst to describe a woman like that as grotesque.

In another instance, he describes on page 45, a princess as dying young and a spinster because she was ugly and/or deformed, yet I cannot even track down who this is. He names her as Princess Frederica of Saxe-Coburg, but the only such princess I can find from the period was not a spinster at all. She married, had children, and lived a long life.

With regard to Queen Charlotte, with whom king George was very much in love by all accounts, Shaw goes out of his way to repeat how ugly she supposedly was. Actual portraits, even allowing for the fact that they're typically painted in a flattering light, and also allowing for personal taste, would seem very much to label him a liar. I honestly don't get why he does this so dedicatedly, particularly towards women, whom he describes routinely as at best, "short" and at worst, "squat" or "dwarfish". He seems to fail to understand that diminutive stature was the norm back then. It's only recently that both men and women have become (relatively speaking) the towering giants we're used to today.

There's another really egregious case on page 61 where the author says, "Edward VII and his wife Alexandra raised lackluster children whose general education standard was well below average. The eldest, Prince Eddie, was by any standards a half-wit." This refers to Prince Albert who died at the terribly early age of 28, carried off by the flu. Shaw's claims are not supported in his writing; they're simply stated and left at that. According to wikipedia, which I trust significantly over this author, Prince Albert "Eddie" was nothing like Shaw claims he was.

Shaw has a fairly extensive bibliography at the end of this book, but not a single reference number anywhere in his text to support the calumny he heaps upon any of his victims. I supposed he expects us to take his word for it, or to read the scores of books he lists in the hope we can find what he was talking about. This is shoddy scholarship at best and an outrage at worst. This is not to stay that royalty of yesteryear were paragons, by any means. Some of them were heroic, but an awful lot of them were an awful lot. that doesn't mean it's fine to choose the largest most indiscriminate brush possible and blindly and randomly tar them all with it.

He plays the same kind of game with British Queen Elizabeth 2nd's uncles: Henry, John (who had epilepsy and died of a seizure). Finding what might be glaring errors, or at least questionable information, causes me to doubt his credentials as a reliable reporter. He is accurate in many things he says, but his most derogatory comments seem to be reserved for princesses, so I'm really wondering what this guy's game was in writing this!

I don't mind snark, but it's inappropriate to me when it's aimed at peoples' looks, and especially so when the looks don't even merit the snark in the first place. It's different if, for example, someone with a seriously outrageous appearance (in one way or another) sets themselves up as a standard of 'gorgeous' or 'beautiful' or fashionable when they clearly aren't. Someone like that might arguably deserve snark; however, to routinely and repeatedly take pot-shots at people not based on some eccentric peccadillo, or some absurd or obscene behavior, but purely on their looks is petty and mean, and it's especially so if their looks aren't even remotely as bad as the author claims.

To me there's a big difference in a person's behavior, of which they are largely in control, and in merely their appearance or facial features, of which they're not - not back then, anyway. If they're purposefully doing something bizarre with their looks, it's rather different, but even that must be tempered with reference to the age in which they lived.

Shaw's book purports to be highlighting wacky and outrageous royal behavior, with which I have no problem even if it might be exaggerated somewhat, but he's just as much jumping all over them for purely for how their face appeared or whether they were overweight or had a physical deformity as he is for truly oddball behavior. To me, it's unnecessarily cruel, especially when he has so much real wacky material to play with. Had he turned the same cruel eye upon contemporary people, he would have been rightly censured for it. I don't see that removing his slurs a few hundred years gets him a free pass, and I refuse to recommend this particular and cruel view.

Vampire Strippers From Saturn by Vincenzo Bilof

Title: Vampire Strippers From Saturn
Author: Vincenzo Bilof
Publisher: Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing
Rating: WARTY!

I can't tell you what this novel was about because this was, without any shadow of a question of a doubt, the most incoherent novel I've ever read. I made it about a quarter of the way in and I still had no idea what was going on or why. I mean it made no sense at all. It was not even remotely coherent. It was literally a mess because it had collapsed under the weight of its own pretension.

We all know it's the job of a book blurb to lie, and lie well, so the only way I can review this effectively is to take the blurb apart. Even the blurb is rather incoherent. We're told, "Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke meets Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood meets an episode of HBO’s old, late night series Real Sex meets the movie Death Becomes Her meets Condoleeza Rice’s collection of unflushed tampons." Yeah, that does kind of describe it (if they'd spelled Rice's name correctly), but I don't mean that as a compliment. If you're a Chuck Pahlaniuk fan, I still suspect that you'll find this so far out in left field that you need binoculars and a lot of patience to get a glimpse of it.

The blurb asserts that time is infinite, which I know Einstein would disagree with if he were alive and could be bothered. The publisher's website gets it right: it's imagination that's infinite! I confess I was drawn to this because the title was so outrageous, but the title is all that this novel has going for it. I honestly don't think I'm going to request any more books based on how outrageous the title is, although I do have a print book on my shelf awaiting my attention which can compete with this one! I mean that's a cheap shot to offer something that irresistible up front, and then not deliver between the covers. I've sure lots of us have had dates like that.

I was hoping for funny, but that wasn't available in this color. The blurb tells us that "the beautiful and sultry Rene leads her trio of vampire strippers from (around) Saturn to destroy Earth" I have no idea how they plan on destroying it - strip (mine) it to death? There was certainly no destroying going on in the portion I read - unless you count my brain cells. So many of those suffered that my nervous system set up a charity for them. The feverish attempt by my mind to flush the memory of this completely from my system obviously worked rather well though; just a few days after I read it, I've pretty much forgotten everything I'd read. They say that happens when your mind is traumatized. It's a healthy defensive mechanism.

Even the blurb is incoherent, though. Check this out: "...if the vampire strippers fail to destroy the world now, men will be nearly extinct, and women will be hunted for sport by the surviving males." If they fail to destroy the world, men will be nearly extinct? Does that imply that if they don't destroy the world, men will be completely extinct? Definitely a whisky tango foxtrot moment there. How will men hunt women for sport if the men are in the tiny minority? No earth woman will allow that to happen! It's more likely to be the other way around (religiously oppressed women excepted, of course, but I won't guarantee even that).

I can't in good faith recommend this rambling nonsense. On the contrary, I heartily dis-recommend it, as I am sure my parallel selves are doing at this very moment in all parallel universes.