Braden's Story by Mason Dodd

Title: Braden's Story
Author: Mason Dodd
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Braden is thirteen and being hit with the growing realization that he's gay. His family, highly religious and very fundamentalist, isn't going to like this one bit. This story details how Braden comes to terms with his true nature and his feelings, and how he copes or fails to do so, with the reactions of others. I started out liking the story, but quickly grew tired of the writing style and the endless grammatical and spelling errors, some of which I list on my blog. No matter how much I might want to support books like this one, I cannot in good faith recommend this particular story.

The errors, in what is a story badly in need of an editor, were numerous. In addition, there were other issues, such as the fact that these are very religious folk, yet the language the younger ones employ seems highly unlikely at best, and their disrespect for adults isn't believable given their background. Just be warned that if you're tempted to pick this up thinking it's a religious or spiritual book, it's really not!

Some of these problems with this book could have been caught with a good spell-checker while others, such as the use of 'alter' in place of 'altar', and 'apart' in place of 'a part', can only be caught by a good editor or better beta readers.

Errata:
"...But is there someone your are interested in, or...?
"...felt that I was apart of something important" should be "...felt that I was a part of something important"
"... wedding alter..." should be "... wedding altar..." or preferably just "altar".
"... get those handless stuck on..." should be "... get those handles stuck on..."
"But is there someone your are interested in, or." Should be " But is there someone you are interested in, or.". I didn't get the hanging 'or' at the end, but after reading this form of speech used frequently, I decided that this was simply a figure of speech.
"Okay, you weren't listing in Mr. Miller's class at all." should be "Okay, you weren't listening in Mr. Miller's class at all."
"...to discuss the situation with Tom and is acceptance of gays..."
"...Mum was cooking in the kitchen when I got home..." Unintentionally humorous - Braden's family are cannibals - and incestuous ones, too!
"...how does that fit inline with..." should be "...how does that fit in line with..." (the lack of a space in "inline" changes the meaning)

Here's one example of the inconsistent use of bad language:

His goddamn smile, it was so cute and had this effect on me. I know, I know, it was only a goshdang smile...

This was a thought expressed by the narrator, who has been raised in a highly religious family, so it's hardly likely he would say "goddamn" and just plain weird that he says that and immediately follows it with "goshdang" so it didn't sound authentic to me at all. I know that even religious people cuss, and this isn't confined to adults, but the language felt unnatural for the context, and it was way overdone, as though the author was using it purely for its shock value rather than because it was the natural argot of these characters.

I don't care if people cuss in stories, because they cuss in real life, so in general terms it's inauthentic not to have them use bad language from time to time, but it needs to be authentic to the situation in which it's used, or to the people into whose mouths these words are placed.

There really are people who come down hard on gays and gay marriage, acting under the religious delusion that being gay is a sinful choice which calls for a cure. They're morons. Throughout history, human attempts at "curing" nature have been consistently disastrous, and this one will be too. People who delight in having anal sex with their wife or girlfriend irrationally think there is something wrong with two guys enjoying the same thing with each other. People who preach 'love thy neighbor' out of one side of their mouth have no problem stirring up resentment and hatred against people who only want to be allowed to love and marry one another. It's not only hypocritical, it's sick.

The problem for the big three monotheistic religions in accommodating this however, lies in the ignorant words of old men who specifically prohibited homosexual relations in the Old (men) Testament - only between men, however! The OT has nothing to say about lesbianism! People mistakenly think that Queen Victoria did not believe that lesbianism existed, which is why it never was made illegal in England, but this belief is a myth. It was never mentioned in Victorian statutes for the same reason it was never mentioned in the OT. Old white men couldn't have cared tuppence about women's sexuality. It wasn't even considered that they had any. Only male homosexuality threatened these geezers, and why on Earth would women be attracted to each other when there were so many manly men around?!

So the problem for those who adhere to these religions is that the Bible does expressly prohibit it. This means they either have to dispense with the blind edicts of ignorant old men, or they have to dispense with homosexuals, and they're far too cowardly and insecure to do the former, so it's gays who suffer.

Some of the other things which these young teens were depicted as saying were bizarre too. At one point for example, Mia, who is Braden's best friend, says to him "Gimme a break, Bray Bray" which sounded so babyish that it brought me right out of suspension of disbelief. These teens are also using bad language in church when they're sitting close-by grown-ups, which struck me as stupid and unrealistic.

I didn't have a problem with the religious people cussing, but for kids to use such bad language within earshot of their parents and family friends struck me as very unrealistic and spoke poorly of the kids' judgment. This was a bad impression to give because it fuels an argument that Braden's sexuality was also an example of poor judgment rather than his nature, which is nonsensical, but it's a serious mistake to write in a way which puts ammunition into the hands of your detractors, even if that ammo is a pile of duds.

There was a lot of texting described, too which felt way overdone to me. Invariably, depicting texts fails in YA stories. It seems like the writer is trying far too hard to be hip and 'authentically teen', and it just makes me want to skip it, especially since the bulk of it really conveys nothing of value and does little to move the story. A simple brief sentence describing the text is far more effective than a whole paragraph of text-onics.

There was a certain naiveté to this story. It felt a bit like reading fan fiction, or reading a first draft by a young author, and usually this will turn me off a story. In the case, the simplistic tone actually tended to lend it some authenticity. First person PoV stories are usually appallingly unrealistic. I am not remotely a first person fan. Far from rendering the story more immediate and accessible, it typically makes it seem irritatingly false and self-centered to me. This one wasn't, but the value of this was lost amidst all the other issues.

The novel was pretty much completely lacking in any really descriptive prose. It was mostly about movement between one place and another, and the conversations which took place between the teens - chats which were in serious danger of losing the reader because very few of the speeches were ascribed to a specific speaker. It was mostly a list of spoken text with insufficient attribution to give the reader a decent idea of who was saying what. There was almost nothing to set atmosphere or to describe the surroundings, not even sketchily. It made the story seem rootless in many ways, like it wasn't actually happening in real life but in some ghostly existence divorced from the real world, which is also a mistake for a novel of this type, which really begs to be solidly grounded in reality.

In the final analysis, I can't recommend this, but if you happen to like it, there is a companion novel titled Aaron's story. I can't say if these two are tied together in any way.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Title: A Wrinkle in Time
Author: Madeleine L'Engle
Publisher: Macmillan
Rating: WARTY!

'
You know when you visit an author's website and the website advertises itself with a novel which was published over a half century ago: Madeleine L'Engle's Website - Author of A Wrinkle in Time, that something's rotten in the state of Uriel. If that's not enough to warn you off, there's always the Newbery medal sticker, there to dissuade would-be readers like a health warning on a pack of cigarettes. That's the experience I had with this 'classic'.

The main character, Meg Murray is a thirteen-year-old with some issues. She's part of a highly improbable family where the father is absent and the children are all precocious and advanced beyond their years. The mother's only characteristic seems to be that she's "beautiful' although why that's important or even relevant is never explained. She's also a scientist, but this evidently is less of a feature than her skin. Meg has a younger brother named Charles who is way smarter than he should be for his age. She has two younger twin brothers as well, Sandy and Dennys.

This novel actually starts with the classic line from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford published in 1830: "It was a dark and stormy night." Meg is a nervous Nellie when it comes to storms, and also given to romanticizing poorly understood events out of all rational proportion. This neighbor Mrs Whatsit becomes a thieving dangerous "tramp" (tramp used here in the sense of 'hobo', not 'loose woman')

Meg's mom seems to have no problem whatsoever when her kids, Meg, and the five-year-old, wander the house in the middle of the night making themselves cups of cocoa or drinking milk. In fact, she joins them, and the hell with school in the morning. Isn't that beautiful? It’s at this time that Meg learns of the tesseract, but mom, who reacted strongly to its mention, refuses to explain what it is, because now she's all concerned about Meg getting to school after her sleepless night.

Making up intelligent names doesn’t seem to be L'Engle's strong point; thus, another character is named Mrs Who, and another, Mrs Which. It is these three who offer to help Meg find her father, although why they offer this to Meg and not to Meg's mom is a mystery.

The only humor in the novel is the poor writing, which evidently isn't bad enough to make old Newbery turn in his grave such as this ambiguous phrase: "Meg made her bed and hurried after it." I wasn't sure if she took so long to make the bed that she had to rush through everything else because she was out of time, or if the bed had left the building Elvis-style, and Meg was hastily following. I suppose it could have been that she hurried out after the cat which had left the room earlier, but that's just a wild guess!

When reached the part about magical centaurs, I simply put the novel down and walked away. I couldn't stand to read any more of this tedious and poorly written drivel.

The Superyogi Scenario by James Conner

Title: The Superyogi Scenario
Author: James Conner
Publisher: Sky Grove
Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"...Captain Davis' wiry main mechanic..." should be "...Captain Davis's wiry main mechanic..." (similarly used on pps 52, 53, & 94). Davis is singular, so adding the letter 's' after the apostrophe is appropriate.
"That pulled more g forces of the most aggressive roller coaster" (p118) makes no sense as it's written. Try 'than' instead of 'of', and 'g force' (singular)?
"...entitled Dangerous Yogis..." should be "...titled Dangerous Yogis..." (p13) but so many authors conflate these two words that this point it's pretty much a waste of time objecting with a language as dynamical as English.
"I'm not saying there is any eminent danger of this mountain collapsing..." (p239) should be "I'm not saying there is any imminent danger of this mountain collapsing..." The author uses it correctly on p275.
"...I put the dresses in your closest personally" (p245) should be "...I put the dresses in your closet personally"

So, this was yet another Adobe Digital Editions book that started on page minus five. Way to give a negative impression! I don't know what does this. It isn't the author's fault. Something evidently got lost in translation between the typescript and the ADE. It's not an insurmountable problem - just annoying, but I never saw this problem until recently, and now I've seen it three times in three different books. Authors and publishers beware!

There were too many flaws in this story. On the one hand, this made it very little worse than your average super hero story, all of which are flawed in some way - notably how the hero got their powers and how those powers work. The biggest flaw was that there were pictures - in a book that's supposed to be about denying self - demonstrating how good-looking and hot these cool super-heroes were. In the ADE edition, the very first picture, of Physique, the villain, was cut off. Only the top portion of the image was visible (in the iPad edition it was all visible), so we didn't even see her face (see image on my blog). I was sorry it wasn't showing only the bottom, with the top cut off. At least then I could have maybe garnered some hits for my blog by telling everyone she appeared topless! LOL!

This story at least had the advantage of taking the road less traveled and for the most part, it's well-written apart from some rather glaring gaffs listed on my blog. I liked the way we're told that it's "A novel" on the cover - like we might mistake it for fact! In the end though, for me, it collapsed under its own weight. At times it read far more like a yoga training manual than an exciting novel, which was tedious at best, but this wasn't even the worst problem. I go into detail on my blog.

The grotesque sexual objectification of the female characters was what killed it for me. There are no everyday real females here and it was - even for a super hero story - completely unrealistic. I had initially thought that going with the yoga scenario would either be a joke or refreshingly different. The latter possibility was what made me look forward to reading it, but in the end it was just another trope super-hero story with nothing essentially different at all except for the yoga lectures.

I didn't like the genderism one bit, and adding brainy after beautiful, and mentioning (as opposed to showing) it just the once, does nothing to redress what is clearly and blatantly objectification. When we meet Agent Rollins, a guy, all we get is that he's tall, wiry, skin as black as midnight (which actually isn't very black when you're in times Square). No mention of handsome - or ugly for that matter, but this author cannot introduce a single female character (and they're all single) without larding her up with buxom, beautiful, voluptuous, or otherwise waxing gratuitously as to how thoroughly all-around hawt she is.

First we meet Physique, aka Tina Hinsdale - the villain. She seems to be the only one who doesn't come swaddled in a super-costume of sexist superlatives, although even she is described as "athletic". After that, though, all restraint fails:

• "...Surat Banal, the beautiful and brainy assistant..." (pc)
• "...instantly found her attractive..." (pc)
• "...no woman so attractive had ever..." (pc)
• "To Detective Brennan - an attractive but hardened woman..." (pc)
• "...blonde and buxom..." (p78)
• "...an attractive woman in an olive green flight suit..." (p83)
• "Samantha simply enjoyed being the beautiful translator..." (p137)
• "...accenting her voluptuous chest..." (p137)
• "...if she's going to become a beautiful slugger..." (p186)
• "Samantha looked at her beautiful, glowing body..." (p189)
• "...on the dramatic cover, a buxom brunette..." (p198)
• "...she was glowing and attractive..." - attractive to moths maybe? (201)
• "...her voluptuous figure..." (p204)
• "...a beautiful blonde woman..." (p235)
• "...their sponsor's attractive niece seemed..." (p239)
• "...spirits looked like beautiful angels..." (p261)
And my personal favorite:
• Arial Davis, "...a beautiful woman who smelled like roses..." (p112)
Seriously, roses? Roses don't actually smell of much any more - not like they did in Shakespeare's time. These days, they're all about looks, just like these descriptions.

So for example, when we meet female Surat Banal, the very first thing after her name is "the beautiful" with a side order of "and brainy" as a sop to try and weaken the fact that the most important thing about her is her looks. We get no indication of what Rollins is wearing, but a complete description of Banal's attire down to her pearl necklace, lustrous hair, and Bollywood smile. I am so tired of this, and was pretty much ready to ditch this novel at that point, only five pages in. I had hoped for better, but reading on and on, I quickly learned it wasn't coming. This novel doesn't take the less traveled path after all.

I know this is traditional in super-hero stories, but does that mean it's required? Does that mean we can never try a different kind of super-hero story and break this mold? The truly, truly hypocritical thing here is that Diamond Mind, aka Eric the super yogi, is constantly banging on about how important it is to shed the 'me' and broaden our 'self' to become selfless, and yet every single page, near enough, is larded with how firmly attached to the me and to the material these people truly are.

The 'enlightened one' himself tosses his hair out of his eyes with metronomic regularity. Can he not get it cut so it isn't a constant distraction to him? Do his super yogic powers not extend to holding his hair in place? This endless parade of references to physical appearance completely betrayed and obliterated everything the author was saying about higher consciousness, detachment, and all that drivel!

But on to the story. The idea here is that there are super-powered yogis. They have such control over their bodies that they can overcome the laws of physics (yeah, good luck with that!) and as we learn in the very first chapter, change their body density and crash an airplane, this we need good super yogis to beat them at their own game.

One major problem for me is that the novel had almost no humor except that which was supplied unintentionally, such as when Physique observes at one point, "One side of a mountain moved six feet, sixty years ago...this isn't earth-shattering stuff". Actually, it is! Here's another: the author describes Physique and Agnite clinging to the rail of a boat out on the ocean, fearful that if they fell into the water, no one would ever find them out there, but Physique can float and in the air, too! Why would she be scared? It makes no sense. The only intentionally amusing highlight I noticed was the use of the term "un-dynamic duo" to describe agents Rollins and Kirby investigating this truck that physique damaged. That was it for humor.

While I think it's great that an author has come up with something new to bring to the super hero story genre, taking this particular tack also brings problems along with it. The most obvious one is of course, why set it in the USA? There are shamefully obvious reasons for that of course, but it would have made a lot more sense if this had been set in a place where yoga has been practiced for centuries. The USA is hardly known for its spiritual enlightenment! But if it's super-hero, it has to be USA, right?! And USDA - certified pure beef, too!

Whole chapters of the novel are devoted to teaching yoga, which I routinely skipped because they were boring new age woo. Other readers may find this appealing, but I have no interest at all in reading a bunch of unsubstantiated religious claptrap, especially in a work of fiction. If I did, I'd get a book about the topic and read that. And no, I'm not interested in hearing arguments to the effect that the brain waves of meditating people have been measured and the brain structure of these people has been studied, and I'll tell you why.

Such claims are meaningless without controls. We don't know if those brain changes were there long before the path to meditation began. Neither have there been control studies testing other people doing other things for comparison, such as measuring the brain waves of an athlete when they're in the zone, or of a concert pianist or violinist performing, for example, or of a video-gamer, or of a fighter-jet pilot doing maneuvers.

Without a real honest-to-goodness scientific study, claims are meaningless and out of place in a work of fiction which certainly doesn't require minutiae to be highlighted, and detailed explanations provided for every little thing! Besides, even if all of this were proven, it still provides no evidence for other claims, such as yogis having super powers, or that there is any such thing as reincarnation. These things are fine for fiction. They're fun to play with, and can make for a really good story if handled well, but I can do without the lectures and training manuals in a novel.

A belief in past lives and migrating souls is nonsensical. Consider this: at a point in the not-so-distant past, there were only maybe 2,000 humans living on Earth. We almost became extinct. Now there are billions. Where did all those extra souls come from? If they already existed, what were they doing in the literal billions upon billions of years before Earth formed and life began, and finally, within the last few million years, humans appeared on the stage? Reincarnation ignores the facts of life and this is why it's nonsensical.

The author seems to know that it's the Medal of Honor and not the Congressional Medal of honor (perhaps people confuse it with the Congressional Gold Medal) on one page, but later he refers to it as Congressional Medal of Honor. He's wrong in claiming it was issued to one civilian. It's not issued to civilians per se, but it has been issued to at least seven civilians who were in the employ of the US military at the time it was earned.

"He's gonna have to learn how to lighten up. Having a sense of humor is a big part in making any spiritual progress" - this from Eric the yogi who has been telling these two women that they need to let go of the "me" and focus on others, and now they're being kitted out for super hero costumes by comic book artists - who evidently don't use pencil, ink, or paint any more but all use $2,000 Wacom graphics tablets! Neither Arial (now "Airspeed") nor Samantha (now "Samsa") raise a single objection to their being objectified. This is the point I quit feeling positive about this novel. After that I just completed it for the sake of it since I was so close to the end and hadn't yet finished counting the incidence of "beautiful," but I knew i could not rate it positively.

In a humorous book, calling in comic book artists to design the superheroes' wardrobes would have been a hilarious touch, but this was not that kind of story and it sounded completely ridiculous here. Why not get he movie costume designers? They're the real exerts, and they have been there and done that!

The genderism worked negatively in two ways with the costuming, too. The guys get full-body covering. In fact, the one who actually is impervious to bullets gets a full body suit of Kevlar. The two "girls" (as they're now referred to), are not only forced into the ignominy of wearing what is, let's face it, skimpy swim suits and thoroughly ridiculous mini-skirts, they're also the ones who have no protection against bullets, being forced to expose acres of vulnerable skin. Where is their protection?

The worst part is that neither of these women has sufficient integrity, professionalism or self-respect to raise any objections. Instead they're portrayed as lapping it up, and this wasn't the only dumb in play here. I was especially disappointed in Arial Davis, as a military officer, going along with this. It seemed completely out of character for her, but then the military isn't portrayed in a very positive light here.

At one point, after discussing a new threat from Physique, the commander of the Marine Corps supposedly says, "Then madam, it's time to deploy the Marines with some heavy weapons to defend the Capital," but the Posse Comitatus Act prevents just this kind of deployment, as a Marine commander ought to know. That's what the police forces and the National Guard are for.

So no, I cannot in good faith recommend this novel. All of this leaves only one unanswered question: If there was a naked Yogi living in Yosemite National Park - would that be a Yogi Bare? I'll let you know when I visit.

Ernie the Elephant and the Teddy Bear by Leela Hope

Title: Ernie the Elephant and the Teddy Bear
Author: Leela Hope (no website found)
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

This book is a real charmer. Ernie the Elephant is not only drawn and colored beautifully, but he's a smart little guy who doesn't panic, and who is willing to take advice. This is what I mean about a young children's novel that has educational value.

Ernie has lost his best friend The Purple Bear. Isn't this the same bear that Prince (or whoever he was formerly known as) sang about? Purple bear, purple bear, only want to see you tucked up with your purple bear.... Yeah that's the one.

Ernie sets off immediately on a search of the house, but no matter where he looks, the bear ain't there! The Jumbo fumbles! But there's a house mouse who is quite willing to help Ernie find his friend. despite the tow of them searching high (or as high as they can reach, anyway) and low (that's where the mouse comes in), they can see neither hide nor hair of the bear!

But Ernie does not give up. Persistence is his middle name,. Ernie Persistence Elephant. Yeah. Like that. So he asks for help from his parents. His dad's a bit of a grump, which is no news to Ernie, but his mom gives some good news: retrace your steps. I think she read that in Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. The thing is that Ernie is smart: he's not too proud to ask for help, and he's certainly not too dumb to follow it. Working methodically, he and the mouse find his long-lost friend. Actually, he's a short lost friend in more than one sense, but since he's exchanging his blues for the purple, Ernie doubtlessly can grin and bear it. So: be like the elephant and don't forget! I recommend this story.

Sing Along Construction Song by Louise Lintvelt

Title: Sing Along Construction Song
Author: Louise Lintvelt
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

Illustrated by Julie Sneedon.

I tried searching for this on Barnes and Noble and all it turned up was turned was The Night Before Christmas. What in Merry hell the one has to do with the other, only B&N knows. This is why corporate mega-giant Amazon is kicking their sorry behind in the on-line retailing business on its speedy way to becoming a monopoly.

I was really disappointed in this. It could have offered so much more than it did. The whole experience was funny because when I ran this through the spell-checker to catch anything I'd missed, the checker idiotically checked the URL to the cover image, found some random letters, and suggested 'brainpower'! I agree that was what was missing here! The construction song was poorly thought-out (and the tune wasn't even original. Yes, it would have been hard to convey an original tune in a print book unless the reader can read music; however, that said, my smart phone, the Kindle, and the iPad all can play tunes!

The biggest problem with this was that it felt all-around really poorly made. It needed to look at least like someone cared about how this book appeared, and I didn't get that impression at all. The words to the song were perfunctory at best, and the art work was dismal. I'm sorry but it was. I know kids don't expect masterpieces, but that doesn't mean we're forced to give them less-than average materials.

By the time I reached "This is the way I dump my load" I honestly felt that's what had been done here. I know many kids will be happy with just a sing-song, but that doesn't mean we don't owe them more than that if we can deliver it. This was a golden opportunity not only to offer a fun sing-along, but to take another step and teach young children a bit about building firm foundations, both metaphorically and practically, maybe helping them with building blocks to learn how things go together and why things all fall down. Kids are not born dumb. We adults make them that way by depriving them of rich learning environments. They yearn to learn even at a very young age and this could have been a fun play and teaching experience, but instead we get this lackluster which I can't in good conscience recommend.

What Does Super Jonny Do When Mommy Gets Sick by Simone Colwill

Title: What Does Super Jonny Do When Mommy Gets Sick?
Author: Simone Colwill
Publisher: Books For Caring Kids (no website found)
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Jasmine Ting.

This story is sweetly illustrated by Jasmine Ting, and well-written by Simone Colwill, who suffers from Crohn's disease, which is an inflammatory disease of the digestive tract, which is to say it's unpleasant at best and painful at worst. She wrote this book to help children who may have a sick guardian, parent, or relative to understand how they can help. She's also, unfortunately, not in favor of same-gender couples being allowed to adopt children.

I found that to be an awful position to take regardless of what personal parenting issues a person might have experienced as a child. It was a lamentably genderist approach to take, too, trying to suggest that "Mothers respond to the needs of the child and show concern for their emotional and physical safety. A father's play takes a more rough-and-tumble approach." That has nothing to do with this book, however, and it was not a factor in my decision on how to rate it - nor should it be because this is a review of the book, not the writer, and this blog is about writing, not authors.

So the book tells us that Jonathan has been a super hero since birth. With his side-kick, bear, he wears cool clothes and carries cool gadgets, and saves the world. When his mom gets sick and is hospitalized, Jonny has to ponder what a super hero can do to help. The thing I liked about this is that it wasn't all doctors all the time, which is the mistake all too many movies, TV shows, and books make. The author quite obviously has personal experience of this and has listed many or the people who work in a hospital, not forgetting the house-keeping staff, which is commendable.

One issue I had with this parade of aid is that nurses appeared fifth in the list when they actually ought to have appeared first given that they are the ones who have most frequent and direct contact with the patient! If you're admitted to a hospital you will see one or more doctors and you will see nurses routinely. You may or may not see any of the others depending on the reason for your admission.

That said, the book does a good job in showing Jonny being helpful (not always wisely, but he's a kid!), and in the end, he does learn which super power is most useful of all in circumstances like these. This is why I rate this book a worthy read.

Kevin and the Seven Lions by Martin Tiller

Rating: WARTY!

Illustrated well by Carla Tracy, this young children's story is about eighth grade student Kevin, who is prone to some extensive daydreaming. He actually reminds me of Calvin, of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, or of James Thurber's Walter Mitty. Sadly, Kevin's parents seem completely oblivious to his condition until it's stuffed into their faces, but his teacher is not. Her response to this has been the subject of some thought on my part. I read this twice and in the end I can't see how the "solution" really benefits anyone. Viewed in the stark light of that realization, I can't rate this as a worthy read because the overall effect of this book is that it feels like it meanders off into daydreaming itself!

It's really hard for someone like me to argue against a book which advises putting a pencil in the hand of a kid and telling them to use their imagination and write! I think that what bothered me is not that at all, but the issue of misdirection we see in play here. On the one hand, daydreaming is actually a fun and useful tool, but on the other, a decent education is a much more useful tool, at least for children of Kevin's age. The misdirection comes in the form of Kevin being advised by his teacher to write down his daydreams, without any effort being made to understand what is behind the daydreaming. Indeed, there's no follow-up at all by the teacher. She exits the story at that point.

Obviously no one wants to write a book for young children which takes them on a detailed tour of child psychology, so there has to be something to engage the kid and bring them into the story, but which kid today honestly daydreams about being a lion tamer? I think this was a misstep on the part of the author. It's different, yes, and maybe it's what the author dreamed about when he was in school, but is it really going to grab the attention of potential readers today, who exist in a world of first person shooter games, super hero movies, fantastic CGI, and personal smart phones which can be used to get instant news about any topic, and which can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world? Talking of daydreaming, just writing this has given me the idea for a story!

Even if this topic does grab a kid's attention, what are we offering them: the idea that it's perfectly okay to miss school and write instead? This is, in effect, what Kevin is doing when he's daydreaming and then taking time to write down his dreams, while the teacher, presumably, is continuing to teach the rest of the kids. How are the other kids going to feel about this privileged kid who gets a bye instead of discipline, while they have to study? And I don't mean discipline in a punitive sense here.

This obviously isn't a novel written for teachers struggling to engage their kids. It's aimed at kids like Kevin, but the daydreaming can be seen as a symptom of poor teaching technique or boring material, and none of this is addressed. It can also be seen as a problem with Kevin himself - or his home life, yet this isn't pursued either. It's like the teacher gave in, and indulged the child instead of trying to work through the problem with him. Asking him to write down his daydreams can of course be seen as a method of working through the problem, but it felt more like an indulgence, especially since it was not the teacher, but his parents who got to discover what he wrote down. This is a topic worth investigating and teaching children about, but I felt that rather than getting to grips with it in a useful and productive way, the author essentially ducked the issue and this is not a practical teaching technique. I can't recommend this.

Conduct Unbecoming by Randy Shilts

Title: Conduct Unbecoming
Author: Randy Shilts
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Rating: WORTHY!

This, another success from the author of And the Band Played On is not a very original title. B&N lists over thirty books with this same title, but this is undoubtedly thee fattest of them all, weighing in at 969 pages in Bluefire Reader on the iPad. Ninety of these are notes, references, and so on, because this book is researched with the precision of the crease in Marine dress uniform pants, and like those pants, it stands out sharply despite being over twenty years old. The fear and retribution depicted in this book still goes on today, although not necessarily in the same places it went on in these stories.

The beautifully written story follows a host of different people, men and women, and the most outstanding thing that they have in common isn't the military or the fact that they are homosexuals, but the the fact that there was nothing short of a witch hunt arrayed against them - a witch hunt which was in many ways more terrifying than anything conducted by the church in the Middle Ages. It was terrifying most of all because this happened within the last forty years.

The Conduct Unbecoming of the title has nothing to do with the fact that there were gays and lesbians in the military. It's the fact of what the military did to these people who served their country and had exemplary records - exemplary that is, so the armed forces would have it, save for the fact that they loved someone of their own gender. The military is a boys' club. Always has been. Even today the stranglehold that MENtality has on it is fighting tunic and nail to maintain its death grip. These men who are trained to bond with other men and to fear nothing actually fear two things and two things only: other men who are not like them, and women, who are completely alien to their way of thinking.

Shilts walks us through a brief history of gays in the military, including dipping into stories from the revolutionary war, although he doesn't seem to have understood that the word 'intercourse' had an entirely different meaning in 1779 than it commonly bore in 1979!

That aside, the way these stories would, if you'll pardon the phrase, drag me in and hold my attention was remarkable. I'd tell myself I would just read a couple of pages before bedtime and an hour later I'd still be reading, wide awake, my eyes opened by what had been going on. I don't doubt that there are terrorists who have received better treatment than the gay and lesbian community in the military got during the seventies and eighties.

If everyone loves a parade, then these stories are a parade of one name after another who first stood up for their country and then were forced to stand up for their rights or have their lives ruined by yet another paranoid military pogrom where full-blown McCarthyism resurrected its ugly head and this time had nothing to do with any communist threat - or any threat at all for that matter. Some reviewers have argued that this book is way too long, but the truth is that it isn't long enough to do justice to these people. However, it will do for now. I recommend it.

The Human Agenda by Joe Wenke

Title: The Human Agenda
Author: Joe Wenke
Publisher: Trans-Über
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"Gchatted" ought really to be rendered "G-chatted" (page 11 Adobe Digital editions page counter - there is no page number on the pages themselves). I had never heard of this and thought it was a simple typo at first. It means to converse using Google chat. A bit of clarification would help to distinguish it from a typo.

Page 35 "Cindy" is rendered with a little box in place of the "i" which means the character never was translated properly from the original.

Joe Wenke's book is sub-titled "Conversations about Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity" so I tried to keep that in mind - conversations, not interviews, but I couldn't help feeling that I wanted to hear more from those he conversed with! I had one or two issues with this book (but then with which book don't I have issues?!); however, the more I read of it the more I was drawn in and in the end I consider it a worthy and educational read.

He interviews a large variety of people, all of whom have their own unique perspective on the topic. The conversation annoyed me a little to begin with, but the more I read through different conversations with different people, the more interesting they became, and the further I got into the book, the more engrossing it was to me, but let me discuss several issues I had so you get the complete picture of my impressions, and decide fro yourself if this is something which intrigues you as much as it did me.

In his first interview, with Kristin Russo, the author observes, "...you call your project 'Everyone is gay' which is a self evident truth. Everybody knows that it's true... what exactly do you mean when you say that 'Everyone is Gay?" I found that an extraordinary thing to say: on the one hand claiming something is universally true and then asking a person what they mean by it. It was especially curious given the comments he makes in this same interview on the use and abuse words which are employed as minority identifiers, both positively and negatively. Besides, if everyone knows it, why do we need to pursue the matter with his last question?! It just struck me as a strange thing to say.

Russo responds that it's about transparency (and in explaining, she actually delivers this transparency!). She states clearly that the name was just a joke for a website. It was never intended to be true (universally or otherwise!), or to offer any deep insight into anything; it was just a joke, which begs the question, what on Earth did the author mean?! maybe he was just carried away with his enthusiasm, but I think someone with a PhD in English ought to be more on top of his use of the language than he appeared to be in this instance - and especially if he wants to win his readers over! But as I said, things improved.

He titled this book The Human Agenda precisely because there is a farcical claim that there's a "homosexual agenda", which itself is nonsensical, unless you define merely asking for fair treatment to be some sort of an agenda. What the author meant is something which isn't explained, but it might make a reader wonder what other agendas might be in play here. Me, I just read on!

Something which is truly self-evident is that this wasn't his first interview for this project because in this one he mentions someone else he's interviewed. Given that reference, it made me wonder why that interview had not been placed before this one instead of seven places after it. He has done this later where Aiden Key's interview follows Andrew Solomon's, which is referenced in Key's interview, so why not here? It gave me a bit of an impression that this was not very well organized, but neither was it completely disorganized either, so it's fine.

With that in mind, however, I decided to read Ian Harvie's interview first (yes, I'm name-prejudiced!) and that was interesting, too. Harvie was born female to all outward appearances, but changed gender to match how he felt inside. Harvie is in his forties, but claims there is no word for what he was. Yes, there was, so I'm guessing he simply didn't know any words for it at that young of an age. Those words have been known for a long time as it happens! Tomboy has been around for half a millennium. Dyke has been around since at least the 1940s, and perhaps even the twenties. The idea of butch and femme lesbians has been around for a century as a concept if not employing those exact words. Transsexual and transgender have been around for half a century. This is nothing new. The shame is that it has taken society so long to acknowledge and accept these facts as a reality.

For me, one of the problems with this book in the early chapters was that more than one person seemed to be making sweeping statements without actually having a good broom with which to sweep! It bothers me because this is an important topic and making statements such as for example, "...every single person in that audience was struggling, on some level with not being enough in relation to their gender..." which is what Harvie says. It felt like a condescending generalization and I found myself hoping for more solid ground as the book progressed.

Fortunately, I found it, but such an all-encompassing statement is not only inaccurate (there's a big difference between saying, "I guess on occasion everyone has issues" and saying "every single person here has issues"), it doesn't help endear people to what you're saying either; it just makes the speaker sound really insecure, and it's exacerbated when the author comes in right behind that statement and makes yet another sweeping statement, again speaking for all of us!

I think my biggest problem with this book was exactly that: the author says confidently that we're all struggling with our identities, as though there is a specific identity which each of us must assume and to which we must adhere. I disagree. I think people don't try to nail themselves to that monolithic cross so rigidly. I think they understand at some level that they are different things to different people. They know, whether they actively acknowledge it or not, that they're not fulfilling the same role as a mom or a dad at home as they are as a boss or an employee at work, or as a fan at a game, or as a role-player in an on-line game, or as a son or daughter, or a grandparent.

I understand that gender roles fly a little more under the radar than these things I've listed, but this doesn't mean everyone is obsessed with them or in trouble with them. I don't doubt that some do struggle. I don't doubt that others give it some thought from time to time, and I don't doubt that others never pay any mind to it, but to suggest that everyone is struggling with it as a routine thing is to misrepresent the situation and worse, maybe marginalize those who don't share this view - or at least make them feel there's maybe something wrong with them if they're not struggling! You can't be expansive and exclusive at the same time when you're talking about he labels we give to people!

Just one person's opinion given in passing in an interview isn't a big deal. Everyone has, and is entitled to their own opinion. It's when those opinions are forced on others, either practically by literally requiring others to hold a certain view, or as it is in this case, representing everyone as holding an opinion or having an issue (which certainly has not been demonstrated) is equally objectionable and worthy only of politicians.

I also found Russo's conversation about the use and reclamation of the word "queer" to be odd. She mentioned that she has a friend who rides freight trains for fun, and seems to be suggesting, even that he and his wife are both hetero people, that he could be labeled queer because there's something inherently queer about the way he lives his life. She doesn't mean this in a pejorative sense, but to me this was nonsensical. If you make a word mean anything, then it actually means nothing! Words change all the time, but you cannot force a meaning upon them, not if you want to make intelligent use of them. Words take on whatever meaning society endows them with and accommodate a given usage at a given time. Trying to bend and stretch words beyond what they normally will bear at any one time is nothing but a way of breaking them and rendering them useless!

I really didn't get part of the conversation with Aiden Key, either, where the author says:

Sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct but also very closely bound together, and what's interesting is that both of these issues seem to be threatening to people, what one's gender identity is, particularly if it's nonconforming, or what one's sexual orientation is if one is not heterosexual if one is gay or lesbian or queer or bisexual even in my own case. I'm very attracted to transgender women.

I think he might have found a better word than 'non-conforming'! It's like on the one hand we have this book about gender agendas, and on the other we're trying to come up with labels for the very people who have been stigmatized and marginalized through the use of such labels. Indeed labels are imposed upon groups and cultures for the very purpose of sanctioning abuse against them. I don't get why we feel we must label people here. isn't it more important to accept than to label? And it takes a lot less effort!

I don't see that it matters whether a woman started out as female or as male. If they identify now as female what else is there to be said? The same goes for someone who starts a female and now identifies as a male - or anyone in between. Why would we need to even have a word for a person who likes people who are female? it;s not important how they got that way! That struck me as a strange thing to say. Pigeon holes are for pigeons and mail, not people. We need to be focused on integrating, not disintegrating, and seeking to label and categorize people, especially when the topic is gender identity, people seems counter-productive at best, and abusive at worst.

That said, this book did improve. Maybe it was just me getting up to speed with it, or maybe the early interviews were just not my cup of tea, but it's not a big deal because the later ones were a delight to read and I enjoyed nearly all of them. That in mind, I consider this a worthy read. Oops, there I went and labeled it. Sorry!

iZombie Repossession by Chris Roberson

Title: iZombie Repossession
Author: Chris Roberson
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Michael Allred
Colors by Laura Allred
Guest art by J Bone and Jim Rugg.

The morons at Barnes & Noble have this listed as iZombie Repossessed. Unless they changed the name for the ebook, it's actually 'Repossession'. I try to support B&N because they're one of the few large presences capable of standing up to Amazon, but they need to get their act together or even they will be going the way of the small independent book stores (remember those?). Amazon isn't any better in this case. They have it listed exactly the same way. They're morons, too. Its right there on the cover, guys; you know, the cover you're using to illustrate the book for sale? Maybe you should buy this from your local comic book store? Of course they don't have the ebook, but if the ebook is too small to read, then what's the point?

This one rips off so many things it's almost unreal. The band Ghost Dance is taken from real life band Hawkwind, and Adam Morlock is the novelist is Michael Morcock who had close ties to the band.

Strider is really nothing more than the Silver Surfer as depicted in the Fantastic Four movie Rise of the Silver Surfer. That said, this entire series has been an homage to fifties horror movies, and to golden age comic book culture, so no harm no foul here.

This volume is the fattest of the series and it brings all the story arcs to a conclusion. Again the art work and coloring are top notch. The story just flies (not 'lifes', as my spell-checker thinks my klutzy fingers were trying to type!). Spot meets Gavin, who is Gwen's brother, and the two fall in love, but Gavin is possessed, so there are issues there. the Dead Presidents are working with the corporation, and with whole of Eugene Oregon is under martial law.

Galatea's plan starts coming to fruition on top of a hill outside of town, while Ellie and her zombie/vampire boyfriend find and free Spot who Amon was trying to sacrifice to free the world from Galatea's plan. But what about the brain in the coffee maker and the Russian zombie?

So as Amon's once-a-year liaison with his were-leopard wife is passing before he can avail himself of it, (shades of the 1985 movie Ladyhawke) monsters start appearing all over town, coming from an ever enlarging rift, and Amon teaches Gwen that though her sacrifice, the rift can be healed and everyone saved. Maybe Gwen has her own ideas about that. I thoroughly recommend this series and I also recommend the TV version, which is very different from the series and in my opinion, better.

iZombie Six Feet Under and Rising by Chris Roberson

Title: iZombie Six Feet Under and Rising
Author: Chris Roberson
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez and Michael Allred
Colors by Laura Allred.

Guest artist J Stephens.

I notice that B&N in its klutziness describes Gwen as a detective. No she isn't! She's a grave digger! B&N is referencing the TV show, not the graphic novel with that idea, and even in the TV show she isn't a detective per se. The TV show is great, but please don't confuse the two!

This comic picks up the slack left by volume two, which was less than stellar, but still a worthy read especially as part of this complete series with orange juice, eggs, bacon, toast, marmalade, coffee and that other thing which I always forget.

The vamps, having lost one of their number to Galatea, recruit a new member. Meanwhile, Lewis and Clark - or is it Horatio and Diogenes? - are separated because the latter has to go off somewhere and do something. Gwen starts to get the idea that Amon is up to something that's not exactly going to benefit her, and we meet the Dead Presidents, with names like Nixon, Ford, and Kennedy. Ford died relatively recently of course but Nixon has been dead since 1974.

It's not that these people look anything like their names. The names seem to be random, but these people are not your usual government agents. One of them, Madison, is a were something, who looks cool in both were and human form. Another, Kennedy, is a sentient zombie just like Gwen - which opens up another story arc - and the third is...I have no idea what Nixon is. He has some sort of ghost-being which comes out of his belly when he gets annoyed or feels threatened.

These people do not get along with Diogenes and Horatio or anyone from the private corporation for which they work. Meanwhile Claire, the vamp who is now working for Galatea, and who her old vamp friends think is dead, has fallen for the creature Galatea is creating for use in her own private project, thus opening-up an amusing love triangle with ghost Eleanor, who also likes him. Spot the were terrier gets trapped underground with a zombie hoard, and Dixie from the diner proves her mettle.

Once again the bizarre twists and takes on paranormal tropes in this series are what makes the series so specials. The art work and coloring are wonderful. I recommend this volume and the rest of the series.

iZombie U Vampire by Chris Roberson

Title: iZombie U Vampire
Author: Chris Roberson
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Michael Allred
Colors by Laura Allred.

This story felt a bit flat for me when it began. Scott, the were-terrier gives us a boring back story about his grandfather, who raised him. There was a falling out and then gramps died - your usual crap. The twist here is that gramps's over-soul comes back and ends up inside a chimpanzee, which Scott "liberates" from the zoo and then takes home with him. Gramps isn't appreciative. This particular story was boring and not even funny, but later it did take an interesting turn.

On the Gwendolyn side, Gwen starts dating one of the vampire hunters, which is also, as it happens, boring. The one interesting thread is the arrival of Galatea, from Amon's past! She takes control of the vampire babe she resurrected. Once Amon, the local mummy, discovers she's in town, he starts to get very, very nervous indeed. I liked Galatea. She's rather like the mad scientist here, with her vampire Igor assistant. That part was really quite entertaining.

The one thing which really stands out for me in this series, and which I appreciated very much, was the oddball interactions between the different supernatural characters. I think you can really do well writing if you invent some really cool characters, especially if they're supernatural, give them their own life, back-story and motivations, and then place them randomly together and see how they play off each other. If you do that well enough, you won't need a plot because one will blossom out of these interactions.

It's worth keeping that in mind if you're trying to come up with a plot for your novel. Come up with characters instead, and the hell with a plot. Make the characters real (that is, real within their own context), make them interact in real-life situations (again for their own context), and you'll get your story. Think about it - no one plots life, yet when people from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of personalities get together and beginning playing off each other, life happens and goes to totally unexpected places. Your novel will, too, graphic or otherwise.

Another character I really liked in this volume was Eleanor, the ghost. Ellie had a lot of independence. Before, it seemed like she was almost Gwen's shadow, not even having an existence apart from her zombie friend, but here, she starts to get a life, plus we get some back story from her which is a lot more interesting than Scott's. Although I started this not very much moved by it, I left it really looking forward to reading the next volume.

iZombie Dead to the World by Chris Roberson

Title: iZombie Dead to the World
Author: Chris Roberson
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Michael Allred
Colors by Laura Allred.

This novel is gorgeously illustrated by Michael Allred with awesome coloring by Laura Allred. At the Comic Vine website, Laura is listed as the wife of Michael in the lead-in blurb. Michael isn't listed as the husband of Laura. Shame of comic vine for their genderism in indicating that Laura is really a chattel. I think I am going to have to quit using those guys as a link for writers and artists in graphic novels.

This is the first of four in a series that was pretty awesome. I am not typically a fan of series, but I got into reading this because I first watched the TV show, which is completely awesome. I was initially disappointed in the comic because they changed a heck of a lot for the TV show and I really liked that, but the comic grew on me as I read it and now I am a fan of this, too. Volume two dropped a bit and was not quite up to par for me, but three and four came roaring back so I recommend the whole thing.

There were some issues with it, nevertheless. For example, in this series, Gwen (who is Olivia in the TV show) is not a doctor who conveniently now works the medical examiner's office, but is working on a crew of grave diggers. She doesn't live with a room mate, but in a crypt in the graveyard, and she isn't in touch with her family or her old boyfriend. Nor does she work with a cop pretending to be a psychic to solve murders.

Everyone she knew in her old life thinks she's dead. Her grave is right there in the graveyard. For me the TV scenario was smarter. It's highly unlikely they would have four people working in a cemetery digging graves full time. Don't they have one guy with a little backhoe working part time these days? The expense of having four people would be way too high. OTOH, this is comic book fiction, so I guess we shouldn't expect too much realism.

There are two detectives (after a fashion) in this novel, though. They work for a private corporation, and are pursuing an investigation into certain mysterious events in this city (Eugene, Oregon), and at one crime scene, one of them takes Polaroid pictures. The image shows him waving the picture back and forth to "dry" it, but unless it's a really antique black and white original Polaroid, there's nothing to dry. The newer Polaroid pictures were sealed, so shaking one of those doesn't do anything except maybe risk damaging the developing picture. It certainly won't dry it, but maybe this guy spends so much time sitting on his ass that he got a bad case of Polaroids?

I noted the phrase, "To meet whom?" which is grammatically correct, but once again I have to say I think this form is antique and should be abolished. No one uses it in speech any more unless they're trying to be pretentious, or unless they're an English teacher, and even then I suspect it's rarely used. If it's not part of modern, everyday speech, which this isn't, it's time to let it go in our writing, too. Authors tend to make the mistake of not only writing it in their narrative to show how educated and accomplished they are, but they also put it into the mouths of their characters and make them unrealistic by doing so. BTW, did you know it's The Whom's 50th touring anniversary this year...?

On the good side (and purely in the context of the novel), they had this really interesting explanation for ghosts and other supernatural creatures which was rooted in Egyptian mythology. I don't know if this is true of the ancient Egyptians or not, but the narrator in the story was talking about how they believed in several different kinds of soul. They believed in what he termed an over-soul, which resided in the mind and was more rational and analytical, and an under-soul which resided in the heart, and was much more emotional.

The character said that when the over-soul is freed from the corporeal body, it becomes a ghost, but when the under-soul is so freed, it becomes a poltergeist. When the body dies, but the over-soul remains, it becomes a vampire, and when the same thing happens but the under-soul remains, it becomes a zombie. I thought that was pretty cool.

The character, Amon, goes on to explain that when the over-soul gets into someone else's body, they're deemed to be possessed. If an animal under-soul gets into your body, then you become a werewolf or were-whatever-the-animal-was. If you die but both souls remain in your body, you become a revenant, and he was telling Gwen, that this is what she is, so she's not actually a true zombie. This begs the question as to why Gwen is behaving like a zombie, craving brains, and worrying about losing her memories if she doesn't eat brains routinely.

Like I said, I recommend this novel and the following three.

Rat Queens The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth by Kurtis J Weibe

Title: Rat Queens The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth
Author: Kurtis J Wiebe
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Roc Upchurch and Stjepan Šejić.

Erratum:
"It'd still be in tact..." should be "It'd still be intact..." (page 14 Adobe Digital Edition).

I automatically feel nauseous whenever I read a fantasy story which has random apostrophes appearing in words. The last word in the title of this one sounds like Henry Goth! It's larded with stock fantasy phrases like "the Haruspex Requiem", and "the Glyph of Furlough", and "the abyssal plain". Newsflash: an abyss ain't a plain. But the blurb sounded interesting, so I thought, "Let's run it up the reader and see if it's worth saluting."

The funny thing is that it actually turned out to be the most engaging comic I've read since iZombie. Despite the trope and cliché here and there, it has such a modern feel to it without losing anything of its medieval setting. I am definitely going to buy the graphic novel series for this.

According to the images on page six, the Rat Queen team evidently conduct their work using a broadsword, a Harry Potter style wand dripping lightning, a dead squid, and some interesting looking mushrooms. They also play in a girl band according to one wild image, but I suspected that that was for sheer fun. It did endear me to the artist, however.

So this looks interesting so far, thinks I. The 'drummer", Betty, is a lesbian pixie or halfling, the "lead guitarist", Hannah, is a hetero elf, the singer, Delilah (Dee) is a lonely human witch, and god only knows what the bass-playing red-headed child Violet (Vi) is into. She's a dwarf, but she shaved her beard before it became fashionable to do so. Yes, this is fantasy, but it has a far more modern look to it than most fantasy you'll encounter involving trolls, orcs, and elves, etc.

This novel has so much attitude that it drips off the page. Immediately after we meet them, the girls are already in trouble for an unscheduled penectomy they performed on a large statue outside the town hall. But they're not dressed down for it. In fact, they dress quite well. Instead they're hired to go after some animated mushrooms. Next we're off to meet Lola and Sawyer, who are another trip. They're the local cops or whatever the equivalent was back then, and I love Lola's attitude. She has some of the best come-backs in the whole book.

"Dimensional demons that feed on the energy of displaced reality" sounds suspiciously like the MO of the weeping angels of Doctor Who fame. Except that these beasties aren't statues, they're squid - and squid out of water at that. How does that even work? And don't get me started on their mouths (please!), which look disturbingly like vulvas.

So, in short, I loved this graphic novel. The art work was really good, and the coloring was great. The images make full use of the page, so it's tree-friendly for the print version (as far as print versions can be tree friendly, that is!). I recommend it all the way.

The October Faction Volume 1 by Steve Niles

Title:
Author: Steve Niles
Publisher: IDW
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Damien Worm.

This is another advance review copy of a comic book which arrived without a cover or any material listing the writers, artists, and so on. The first page is the first page of the story. You know I could understand ARC books coming out in the past without a cover if it wasn't ready yet, but there really is no excuse whatsoever in this electronic age for having no cover. Even if the cover art isn't yet done (and I'd have to wonder why, especially for a genre which places great stock in cover art), it's perfectly simple thing to put a blank cover with a note on it explaining the problem.

Normally, I'd also wonder if creators spent less time self-indulgently creating myriad cover variants, they might have one to spare for the actual cover, but in this case, even that doesn't apply since there is no back cover or variant art in the back either! That works for me, but it still doesn't excuse a lack of any sort of cover.

Having said that, the art work was interesting, if tending towards muddy earth tones too much. It used the full page, so no wasted trees here in the print version. It looks almost like it was done in water colors, which was a cool idea - or at least was done in a computerized mimic of water colors. For my taste, though, it was way too dark, and the text, once again, was really hard to read in the iPad in Bluefire Reader.

I think graphic novel creators still think nostalgically in terms of print books and that's a mistake. Reading it in Adobe Digital reader on a 19" monitor, which renders the image roughly the same size as a print comic, still gave some problems but was a lot more legible than the iPad view.

The story felt really hard to get into - and this is volume one! It felt like I came into something in progress, or had started reading volume two by mistake. There was very little given to guide the reader to what was happening or why. The first part of it which started making any sense was page fourteen where "Miss Vivian" comes home from her last day of high school, disgusted with all the frivolous behavior. On that score I can relate to her, and her description of the events as a "selfie apocalypse" was funny to me. She's so disillusioned with school hat she flatly refuses to go to the graduations ceremony.

The large house in which she lives - with a servant yet! - is reputed to be haunted. The dark deep-hued coloring now seemed to work a lot better. I like the way the artist brought reds into it, suggestive of blood, perhaps? Vivian's brother Geoff has finally managed to trap a spirit - in the closet! It's bound magically, so Vivian gets to open the closet door to see it, which was amusing. Shades of Harry Potter in the dark Arts class in Prisoner of Azkaban. They plan on letting it go. I'm not sure I would, given how the spirit looks, but this is just a proof of concept thing for them. They have some deal going for which they need their father's approval, and Geoff now believes they can get it, given his success here.

That part was winning back my favor, but then we abruptly quit the story for a few pages to go off elsewhere and I was lost again, and just beginning to become annoyed when we switched right back to Geoff and Vivian and the arrival of their father. I'm getting whiplash here! The demon which is supposedly trapped attacks their father and the only way they can scare it off is to show it its own reflection in a hand mirror, which causes it to flee, but Geoff and Vivian think their father's behavior is weird, not the fact that they had a pet demon! That was funny.

So, a bunch of mixed feelings about this, especially towards the negative need of the spectrum when I began it, but I grew increasingly favorable towards it as I read through it. This felt like an extended prologue more than anything else and I despise prologue sin regular novels. This one did introduce us to the family, but we learned very little about them and what's going on in their world. Volume two needs to come through with a lot more solid explanation about exactly what this world is and how it works. That said, I feel fine rating this as a worthy read with the caveats I've mentioned borne firmly in mind.

Aster Wood and the Lost Maps of Almara by JB Cantwell

Title: Aster Wood and the Lost Maps of Almara
Author: JB Cantwell
Publisher: JB Cantwell
Rating: WARTY!

How can I not review a novel with part of my own name in the title? Aster Wood is a person, not a little forest. Coming from a long line of trees myself, I can appreciate that. Star Wood? Isn't that like Star Lord?! Not really! This novel is your bog-standard disadvantaged teen gets trained by man in the know, magically acquires magical powers, and goes on a quest over several volumes thereby proving how incompetent he is that he couldn't get it done in one volume.

So this novel is about young Aster, who isn't relishing spending his summer with grandma out at her remote farm. Why her mom parks him there is a bit of a mystery. We get a vague hand-wave at the fact that she's working, but this doesn't necessitate Aster being abandoned in the remote countryside - especially when that countryside has been ravaged, evidently by acid rain.

Yes this is another young adult dystopian story where Earth is on its last legs and some lowly youthful hero manages to find a magical (or perhaps a sci-fi) way to save everyone. In this case, Aster is poking around in his grandma's attic and finds a magic paper which somehow transports him to a different planet where the land is green and productive.

Curiously enough he runs right into an old guy living there who was expecting Aster's grandfather, Brendan to show up, but Brendan died long ago - before Aster was even born. From this guy, Kiron, Aster learns that there are many planets joined together with this wormhole system (or whatever it is), but Earth is a lot further away than the "triad" planets, so he's rather surprised to see Aster show up.

If this is indeed travel by wormhole, why the distance would matter is a mystery, but it was not one which engaged me or made me want to read beyond the first few chapters. There was nothing where - nothing new,nothing really original, no twists on unoriginal material and really nothing to get to grips with. I had no interest in finishing what quickly became a boring and repetitive story, let alone going on to follow this same boredom through multiple repetitive sequels.

The pretentious writing didn't help: "What are the names of these men of whom you speak" Seriously? No one speaks like that. No one ever spoke like that. I don't get this "Almarian" either. The place is called Almara, so why not Almaran? I don't get the Floridian from Florida either, but that's just a pet peeve. In another instance, I read "...looking between the stone and I expectantly" which actually should be "...looking between the stone and me expectantly". Very few people actually speak like that, either, and especially not young people, so it makes it sound weird to write that in a first person PoV novel. It ruins suspension of disbelief to constantly be reminded that you're reading a story instead of feeling completely immersed in it.

Some of the writing was just downright odd too, such as the dog named Crane running on ahead, where we read, "Crane bounded down the path up ahead." Bounding down and up ahead do not make good bedfellows. The real problem here was that this story was nothing but fantasy and I don't mean that in a complimentary manner, either. I can't recommend it.