À la Recherche Du Temps Perdu par Marcel Proust

Title: Remembrance Of Things Past
Author: Marcel Proust
Publisher:
Rating: WARTY!

Adapted and illustrated by Stéphane Heuet
Coloring by Véronique Dorey

Remembrance Of Things Past (French: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu) begins wiht a guy who can't even remember where he is when he wakes up in his own bed. What's his problem? He's obviously been complete mesmerized by the magic lantern showing of the opéra Geneviève de Brabant is an bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach whose last name is "Beforeyouexpecthimtobe".

Alas, the little whiny-assed brat's problem is that he's a little whiney-assed brat and his parents are deadbeats. À la recherche du temps perdu technically means "seeking lost time" but is typically rendered as "a remembrance of things past", but having read this, a better rendition, it seems to me, is "a remembrance of things passed" - from the bowels. And there was evidently an obstructive mass of it, because the original ran to seven volumes and over three thousand pages.

This was written over a century ago, and I promise you if the same thing had been written today it would be rightfully trashed, but since it's old, and French, it's now looked upon as romantic and classical. The author seems to have had a very resentful memory of his childhood which he allows to flood his adult thoughts tainting them with the smell of a swamp. His past is the only present he will gift himself with for the future.

One really odd thing about this graphic novel is that many of the image panels were fully occupied by text such that it was only barely possible even to see what the image was. Some entire pages consisted almost entirely if text and the art work was of the most simplistic kind, so sparse it promises to start a post-minimalist movement evidently to be named scarcism.

Leonardo da Vinci 14 Classic Images in 3-D

Title: Leonardo da Vinci 14 Classic Images in 3-D
Author:
Publisher:
Rating: WORTHY!

• A skull from Anatomical Manuscipt B
• A rib cage from Anatomical Studies of the Human Skeleton
• Arm musculature form Studies of the Arm
• Vitruvian Man
• Sketches for detail from an altar piece for the Florentine Church
• Portait of Lisa del Giacondo
• The Last Supper
• The Virgin and Child with St Anne
• Cecilia Gallerani (Lady With an Ermine)
• Treadwheel with Four Crossbows
• Vertically Standing Bird's Winged Flying Machine
• Giant Crossbow and War Machine
• Studies for a Building on a Centralized Plan
• Archimedes Screw and Water Wheel

Y The Last Man Unmanned by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Y The Last Man Unmanned
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

This was an unexpected treasure! I went to the half price bookstore to see if I could find Wayward Pines by Blake Crouch (Barty's other son, no doubt). Failing to get that, I checked out the graphic novel section and found every single one of the books I recently checked out of the library - and only those! Weird. There was however, one more tucked away deeper back on the shelf and when I tugged it out, it turned out to be the very first issue in this series! How fortuitous was that? So here, completely out of order (which is my middle name), is how it all began.

It's the amulet! Yorick's un-proposed-to fiancée seems to be having cold feet (she fell in love with a kangaroo) and Yorick is covered in Monkey sheet monkey doo-doo. Meanwhile, 355 shows up - with the amulet! The Republican desperate housewives try to run the government out of town, and Yorick's sister Hero puts in an all-too-brief appearance.

So 355 rescues Yorick from the psycho Amazons and just about everyone learns that he's, why, the last man of course! But 355 has a plan. Glad that someone does. She takes Yorick to Dr Allison Mann who is utterly astounded - to discover that a male Capuchin survived.

So this was a bit choppy for my taste - running between one group pf people and another, and then have flashbacks and flash forwards, so it was very uneven and a bit hard to follow at times. However, it was a great start and I recommend it.

Y The Last Man Girl On Girl by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Y The Last Man Girl on Girl
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

This is one of my favorite volumes. Agent 355, Dr Mann, and Yorick are on a boat heading for Japan. The problem is that Yorick is in a crate in the boat's cargo hold. He's an escape artist so he's supposed to be able to escape, but the escape was predicated on the crate being stowed the right way up with nothing on top, so Yorick is trapped. When the crate is broken, the ship's crew discovers that there is a man left alive on Earth.

The crew seems friendly, but in end are revealed to be drug runners. The Royal Australian Navy is in hot pursuit in a rickety old submarine. One of its crew, Aussie Rose Copen, is already aboard the boat, with her distinctive eye-patch, spying on the drug runners. She relays information about their location to the sub. Meanwhile, Dr Mann and 355 get it on - or at least they try to before they're rudely interrupted by Yorick.

Rose ends up in the brig and slowly, Yorick and 355 change their minds about her - and about the crew, but the captain, Kilina, sweet talks Yorick and makes herself sound less of a villain than a woman acting out of desperation. They almost get it on, but are interrupted by the arrival of the sub.

There's a brief exchange of weapons fire, but the sub wins, sinking the boat. Captain Kilina evidently went down with her ship, but most of the crew were saved. Rose asks to come with 355, Mann, and Yorick. She seems to have far more of an interest in Mann than she does in man.

Here's a writing issue from this story. The sub's captain at one point says, "That's because less accidents happen...". This is grammatically incorrect. It should be "fewer accidents", but this is someone's speech and no one speaks with perfect grammar unless they're insufferably pretentious, so in this case, bad grammar is good writing!

I recommend this volume. The writing is excellent, the plotting wonderful, and the art work great. One thing I really liked about this one was that I finally got to meet Beth, Yorick's fiancée, who turns out to be an interesting character in her own right. I don't know why the focus has been so much on Yorick and so little on her. Yes, I get that it's about the last man, not the last man's fiancée, but still, I think she's been done a disservice. I hope I'll see more of her as I read more volumes.

One thing which has bothered about this series (apart from my not being able to read it in order from start to finish!) is that not only are there pretty much only women left alive, but very nearly every one of those women is drawn in male fantasy mode: young, curvaceous, long-haired and lax morals. Why is that? I think it's because this novel was written by a guy, and he has no interest in depicting women who do not figure in his fantasies. That's something that's just not right and is the one real blemish on this entire series, for me.

Y The Last Man Kimono Dragons by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Y The Last Man Kimono Dragons
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

I love the titles of some of these volumes. Kimono Dragons! Perfect! We start out here with Yorick, alas, looking like a reject from a remake of A Clockwork Orange. They're finally in Japan, and he and 355 are trying to track down Yorick's pet monkey (that's not a sexual as it might sound to some). Dr Mann is trying to track down her mom, but someone burned down her mom's lab - not her dog, her laboratory. Mann is with Rose and Rose is definitely with Mann.

The Yakuza is now being run by a Canadian cross between Madonna and Miley Cyrus, and it is she who has this Capuchin monkey, famous for its coffee. Or maybe not. The question is, will You who is now a purveyor of android pleasures by way of being a wakaresaseya and before that a member of the Ginza-Yonchome Koban police, actually help them retrieve & (figure it out) from the Takuza, or will she betray them?

355 has a bit of a breakdown after she realized that in order to further the mission, she was getting ready to blow the head off a young girl. Unfortunately, she hesitated and was lost. Meanwhile, both Rose and Dr Mann feel stabbing pains - and from the same Ninja katana, too.

Can the Israeli army drive their tanks to their destination in time and if so, where are they going, and what the hell are they going to do with them when they get there? Capture the twins? It takes two to tank-le! And is Dr Mann going to bleed her secret - all over the floor, as Rose once again lies - on a bed, injured? Still loving this series!

Y The Last Man Motherland by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Y The Last Man Motherland
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

The motherland volume proceeds very much in the same mode as the earlier ones, but the characters change somewhat and the locations too, and new things are coming to light all the time - including some dark and dirty secrets, so my interest was very much maintained here.

The one-eyed Australian spy turns around and resigns from her commission out of love for the part-Chinese character, although agent 355 doesn't trust her, especially when she gets sick and starts bleeding. But then agent 355 doesn't trust anyone, and makes short work of a ninja girl who is rather full of herself.

We get to meet the Israeli navy, such as it is - or rather, I guess, a rogue portion of it. The commander of the boat claims she stole a battleship, but the boat looks more like a cruiser or a patrol boat than ever it does a battleship.

The art work is simple but very functional and very well done. Even the animals get a fair shake, as attention focuses in this issue upon Yorick's pet Capuchin monkey, which the group is trying to get mated to a suitable female without much success. Since I was reading these out of sequence I wasn't sure what the point of this was. Yorick was certainly deeply interested in the monkey's welfare, however! Another volume that's a worthy read.

Y The Last Man Paper Dolls by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Y The Last Man Paper Dolls
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

Paper Dolls is another in a rather random sampling I made of this series perforce, since the library didn't have the whole set! Having read a few volumes, though, I do want to read the whole set now. It was in Paper Dolls where I first met the crew of the submarine which has abducted poor Yorick, alas, and is transporting him around the world. We get to know Yorick's pet monkey and stage assistant, named & (figure it out!). The monkey is the key to what's going on here. We also get an origin story for the secretive but highly-effective Agent 355. Yorick continues his forlorn quest to find out whence his fiancée Beth has disappeared (Hint: she;'s somewhere in Australia, supposedly.

This is where his naked picture is published in a tabloid newspaper, supposedly proving that there's at least one guy still alive on Earth - although who will believe it? It also introduces us to the pregnant one and to a weird-ass religious order (one of several we'll meet in this series.

The writer's and artists' willingness to show a full-frontal nude male is refreshing. Usually in these kinds of comics, they show the female in all her glory while hiding the naughty bits of the male. In this series, they seem quite unwilling to show females, yet unabashedly show Yorick's particulars. Go figure.

I liked this comic because it keeps unveiling the story. It's like one of those giant theater curtains which keeps on drawing back, and drawing back, and you start to wonder if and when it will ever stop! I recommend this one.

Y The Last Man Ring Of Truth by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Y The Last Man Ring Of Truth
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

This is a series I stumbled onto at the local library (yeay libraries!) which unfortunately did not have issue one to hand, so having perused a volume and decided I liked it, I decided to take the plunge with the series "in progress" as it were, and I wasn't disappointed in the first volume I read, which was Paper Dolls. Yeah, it sounds like a novel by John Green, but this novel makes John green with envy, and having read it, I think I can say that you don't absolutely need to have read previous volumes to enjoy it, but it helps for background! Having read this one I did want to start the series over, it was that good and that engrossing.

For a series written by a guy about the one lone remaining guy in the world after a plague wipes out all (or as we later discover, very nearly all) human males, it's not what you might think. While the context is adult in nature, it's not x-rated by any means, although there are adult situations and some violence, which is relatively mild by comic book standards. The published graphic novels in the series are these:

• Unmanned
• Cycles
• One Small Step
• Safeword
• Ring of Truth
• Girl on Girl
• Paper Dolls
• Kimono Dragons
• Motherland
• Whys and Wherefores

I started from volume five and read through volume ten.

Why it took a guy to write this I don't know. Why some female graphic novel artist/ author (and there are a lot of you, I know, despite popular perceptions!) couldn't man up is a good question. Yes, I'm kidding with the man up comment, but I'm very serious about why a guy wrote this. Is there a female writer who wants to write the one about the only female left on the planet? It needs to be done! I'd be happy to write it with you if you're interested.

So Yorick, alas, is one of the insignificant, yet highly significant few men remaining alive, and all he wants to do is get back to his fiancé, Beth, who is somewhere e=doing walkabout in Australia. Unfortunately, when he finally talks the crew of the submarine in which he's traveling almost like a prisoner, into letting his look for her, it turns out, so he learns, that she's gone to Paris to find him!

Here's a writing issue that I see frequently in books and movies, and on TV, and which also appears here: "My name is Sister Lucia Ober..." (p88) - no, that's her title and her name! Unless she was actually named "Sister" by her parents, then her name is Lucia Ober, her title is "Sister". OK, pet peeve off.

Sister Lucia is delusional, and I'm not talking about her belief in a god, although that's one problem. She thinks that the Catholic Church pulled people out of the dark ages when it actually dragged people down into the dark ages - and is still trying to hold them there today!

There's unintentional humor, too. A tone point one character says, "There's a reason the best rock climber sin he world are all women" - well in a world where there's only one or two men left, I imagine the best rock climbers are all women!

I found it odd, and not a little affected that the speeches for people in the flashbacks were all in parenthesis. It was annoying, but not a killer, and the rest of the novel was great: nice writing, good humor, cool action, lots of interesting characters, and really good art work, so I recommend this volume.

Ex Machina Volume 3 by Brian K. Vaughan

Title: Ex Machina Volume 3
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: WARTY!

Pencils and covers by Tony Harris
Inks by Tom Feister
Colors by JD Mettler.

Well, I had a good run with Ex Machina - two whole volumes I enjoyed, but the third, well, the third fell flat for me and I just didn't feel like reading any more after that. Time to move on to something more engaging. The art work was fine, but I don't read the comics for the art work - that's like frosting on the cake for me, but the cake's the thing, otherwise it's just meaningless - if pretty - pictures. I read them for a good story, and if that isn't there, then there really isn't much left.

This series started out great, but volume three was like entering a different universe. It wasn't as witty, as engaging, as devil-may-care, as irreverent or as funny as the previous two volumes. I don't know what went wrong. it's like the writer lost track of what he was doing or where he was going. The artifact, which had figured large in the previous volumes was essentially irrelevant here. Why?

In addition to that, the previous outing was a mad rush through assassination attempts and all kinds of other entertaining issues, and now this is like Mitchell finally made it to some cover and feels so scared to venture out that the spends the entire volume cowering down and staring blankly at the wallpaper!

The best plot idea that can be scared-up for this volume was that Mitchell has to do jury duty. Hello, he's the mayor! And you know it's bad when the only other thing going on is flashbacks to parent issues. It was truly sad, and I can't bring myself to read any more of this series at this point.

.

Ex Machina Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

Title: Ex Machina Volume 2 Tag
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Pencils and covers by Tony Harris
Inks by Tom Feister
Colors by JD Mettler.

Volume two of this entertaining and colorful (in many different ways!) graphic novel starts out with a distractingly dead disemboweled dog deep in the dark domain of the subway. Soon denizens of the city begin disporting themselves dressed-out in the same demented demeanor. In addition to this, the weird glyph that's tied to the source of The Great Machine's power starts appearing as graffiti in the subway, turns into anime, and infects a traveler on the subway, causing her to stick a pen in her eye, Orphan Black style!

The featured governmental problem in this edition is Hundred's desire to marry off his close advisor's gay brother which will be a bold challenge to state statute. That goes off, of course, with a hitch - duhh! - but not before we get all kinds of grief about it from all kinds of people including one guy who sneaks a bow and a quiver of arrows into the crowd and attempts to shoot Hundred. He has a freaking bow - why would he not simply get up onto a building roof and shoot from there? This makes no sense! It makes even less sense how he ever got in there! We're told the bow is folding, Hawkeye-style, but the quiver full of arrows sure as hell isn't.

The villain here was a little bit predictable - it's a trope in fiction that when they don't find the body, the 'victim' is still alive. Were it that way in real life, but it's not - it happens pretty much only in fiction. Other than that the story was amusing and inventive, and quite engrossing.

The art work has always been rather simple in this series, which is fine because it does its job, but I have to say there are inconsistencies in character depiction. For example, on around page twenty (the pages are not numbered), Hundred's assistant, named Journal, is depicted as a voluptuous woman reminiscent of Lily Corazon Kwamboka or Josie Goldberg, whereas just 14 or so pages later, she's as willowy as she originally was. I have no idea what's going on there any more than I did with the curiously variable cup size of the reporter, Suzanne's bosom..

Overall, it was a worthy read, once again full of life, humor and the pursuit of weirdos, and I recommend it.

Ex Machina Volume 1 by Brian K Vaughan

Title: Ex Machina Volume 1 The First Hundred Days
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Pencils and covers by Tony Harris
Inks by Tom Feister
Colors by JD Mettler.

This began as a pretty cool comic but by volume three it had become rather tedious. I can recommend volumes one and two, however, which are funny, original, and entertaining. I doubt I will continue it now though, especially since it runs to some fifty issues! Be warned that this novel has adult situations and language. It's not for young kids or for people who are easily offended.

The premise here is that Mitchell Hundred, a New York City engineer, was somehow changed or infected, or whatever, by an artifact found in the river. He adopted a persona known as The Great Machine, after something Thomas Jefferson said (either that or it's right out of Babylon 5) about the great machine of government or of society depending on which of his quotes you refer to. The dick-head was obsessed with great machines in an era where great machines were virtually non-existent - go figure!.

After saving a handful of lives as the World Trade Center collapsed on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Hundred ran for mayor and won. Not a single cop or fire-fighter was elected to mayor. Only plushly-padded businessmen and super heroes. Being merely heroic just isn't enough, I guess. So the title of this graphic novel is therefore a play both on his name and his first one hundred days in office which is somehow deemed by the popular press to be significant.

As a result of his enhancement or however you like to refer to it, Hundred can communicate with machines. No one knows or explains how this is supposed to work, but by issuing spoken commands (in a weird green font, yet), he can tell a machine to turn on or off, he can make hidden listening devices generate white noise, and he can tell a gun to jam, and so on. This, together with his rocket pack is what makes him the world's first and only super hero. This 'rocket man' idea is pretty much purloined from the Rocketeer comic book of 1982, which itself stole heavily from older sci-fi movies such as 1954's King Of The Rocket Men.

The comic, which also has a slight tinge of steam punk to it, but is mostly rooted in fifties sci-fi, is rife with flashbacks, most of which are actually interesting until we reach volume three, but the most entertaining parts are the contemporary scenes where Hundred tries to get the work of government done while all the time having to deal with ghosts from his past and attempts on his life, as well as with a coterie of fascinating support characters (which includes some sassy women), all of whom seem to be as combative as they are supportive.

In volume one, his major problems are a person who seems to be dedicatedly assassinating snow-plow drivers, and a work of art (so-called) which consists of a large portrait of Abraham Lincoln with the word 'nigger' painted across it which is causing problems because it's being exhibited in a show in a publicly-funded museum - but mostly because people take art way-the-hell too seriously.

I recommend this comic for its wacky humor, and its interesting situations and and events. If TV sit-coms were this well done I'd actually watch them! One of the best parts about this for those interested in how comic books are put together, is the section in back which demonstrates just this in this case, using real people to pose for the scenes, and then translating those real life scenes into finished art-work, thereby getting positioning and perspective just right. I recommend this volume.

I Want a Dog by Darcy Pattison

Title: I Want a Dog
Author: Darcy Pattison
Publisher: Mims House
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Ewa O'Neill.

This is a charming, entertaining, cutely illustrated, and educational book for young children to help them understand the importance of some real thought if you want a pet dog. Both the main character, who remains nameless (his essay has no name or date yet he still gets an A!), and his cousin Mellie want a pet dog, and they have to write an opinion essay - researched carefully - on what kind of dog they want. Note that the text was a little hard to read on a smart phone - even one with a large screen - so you'd want to get this in print form or read it on a larger format ebook reader.

Do they want a big one or a little one? Do they want it energetic or more sedate? Do they want want which needs a lot or a little exercise? Lots of play or not so much? Do they have other pets which might be a consideration if there's a dog running around the house? One question which isn't asked, and it's an important omission: Are there babies or very young children in the household? Some breeds are not good with toddlers and babies.

Do they want a dog which is easy to train? Do they want a guard dog? One which needs lots of grooming? There were a lot of good questions asked, but also some important ones were missed as I've noted above and want to discuss here, too. No consideration is given to how the dog will be housed. Do you live in a large house with a yard, where a large dog would be fine, or does your family rent an apartment where a large dog might not be welcomed by the owner?

Another consideration which was missed was whether the dog is expensive to feed and take care of, or inexpensive? All dogs need shots and visits to the vet for annual check-ups, but smaller dogs eat a lot less than large ones. Will it need to be spayed or neutered? The answer, if you're in any doubt, is yes! Is there a secure place in the home where the puppy can be left when the family is out for a short time - so it doesn't get into things and chew your shoes up? Who will take care of the dog when the family goes on vacation? Is a barking dog going to be a problem in your neck of the woods? What kind of treatments will it need to prevent fleas?

I would have liked to have seen more covered, but the most important thing which was not covered was safety. Is this a breed which has a track record of aggression? In the illustrations of "10 popular dog breeds" I saw a Bulldog and a Rottweiler. Both of these breeds can be unpredictably aggressive.

Bulldogs are part of a larger group of dogs collectively known as pit bulls. And while not all such dogs are bad, these and Rottweilers are responsible for three-quarters of the recorded attacks upon people, and most of their victims are the very young and also the elderly. Pit bulls kill an American about every three weeks on average. Fifty percent of the time, it's the aggressive dog's owner or a member of the owner's family who is the victim.

Everyone can offer anecdotal stories of a truly family-friendly dog who is a member of these groups, but the hard statistics show that anecdote isn't the same as having the facts before you, so be sure to thoroughly research the breed you plan on adopting. And know that it is an adoption. This is a real family member, not a toy or a show-piece or a short-term fad.

That said, this is a great start for wising kids up to some very important aspects of pet ownership, which if taken to heart can bring a dear companion into your life which you will also take into heart. I recommend this book as a starting point for making that journey into the bigger world of caring and responsibility. And don't forget, pets tend to have a lot shorter lifespan than humans, so it's a good idea to educate children to that, too. Love them dearly while they're there with you, and it's a lot easier to bear their departure. Trust me. And good luck!

Tin Men by Christopher Golden

Title: Tin Men
Author: Christopher Golden
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Rating: WORTHY!

Not to be confused with the movie of the same name or with a score of novels of the same name, this story with a rather unoriginal and un-inventive title is about a soldier named Danny Kelso who is at the end of his tether with the relationship he's in with Nora, but he can't think about that right now because he has to get to work. Work in Danny's case is driving a robot soldier.

Set in the near future, Danny lives in Germany, but is fighting in Syria. When an EMP hits his robot, he finds himself trapped inside it. How this works - how it was even allowed to work is never explained, and that, in a tin shell, is the biggest problem with this novel. It requires far too much faith and trust without giving a thing in return. It requires your disbelief to be suspended so high and for so long that it chokes the life out of it.

The novel started out okay, but it seems a little odd that Danny was concerned about being late. He clocks in on time, and then has breakfast - something the soldiers are allowed to do - but his sergeant is immediately on his case for being late? This made no sense to me. Other than that, the story moved speedily towards the action.

This underlying idea borrows heavily from the movie Avatar and from the movie The Matrix, and from the movie Surrogates, and from the movie Robocop, but it makes none of the contextual sense that those movies make. These soldiers are not 'dressed up as robots' to look like the local natives, who are human. They're not in their cocoons so some machine race can suck up their emitted energy. They're not so attired out of vanity or playfulness or because of a money-grubbing corporation.

Instead they're merely remote soldiers, enhanced by the strength, speed and power of robotics, and the only reason offered for this is to save soldiers' lives, yet even that is a flawed premise as we shall see. These soldiers are not remotely piloting the robots - so at least that flaw is bypassed, but their consciousness is downloaded into the robot. This makes zero sense, casebook it means that their real bodies, in Germany, are now essentially vegetables, and if anything goes wrong, a soldiers' consciousness is trapped inside the robot and when it dies, they die. How is this an improvement over what they had?!

Why anyone would design a system like this is a complete mystery, but this trope is the same one we saw in The Matrix and many other such stories and it's fatally flawed because no rationale whatsoever is given for why your mind is gone from your body or even how it's gone. You know, even if you delete something from your computer hard drive, it's actually still there. You have to physically overwrite that section of the drive with something else before it's erased. So why would copying your mind to a robot erase your mind?

When you have photos in your cloud and you send one to a friend or family member, the original photo isn't erased. It remains in the cloud, What you send is a copy and it doesn't matter if you send one or you send one to every one of the seven billion people on Earth, you still have that original. So where is the precedent for voiding the mind of a human being? There is none. It makes no sense.

Quite the contrary, it would make far more sense to copy the mind and have the same person inhabiting a whole platoon of these robots, working in perfect coordination and for a fraction of the cost of hiring and training a whole bunch of soldiers. Naturally you want a variety of soldiers so people think out of the box, but you don't need the million person army the US currently has (counting the National guard and the reserve). You just need a core of excellent soldiers and a host of mechanics and fabricators. The problem then, though, is that without this old trope, an author is screwed for the drama, so this is why we're so frequently asked to just leap right over this huge pothole and hope we land in irises and daffodils, and not the muddy depths of another pothole.

When I checked some of the reviews for this novel I noticed that one reviewer had downgraded it purely for the bad language on the first page, but there really wasn't any bad language on the first page! There was one four-letter word, and not even the worst four-letter word, and that was it. The deal here, though, is that this is a novel about the military in combat. You don't get military in combat with no bad language! If you get a story like that, with soldiers saying things like "Rats!" and "Curses" then you know this story is not at all realistic! Although it would be hilarious!

If I might digress for a minute and talk about language, a crucial part of writing, I have to say that this whole thing about bad language is amusing to me because it's patently ridiculous from the ground up. Think about it. As a society, we English speakers have chosen to designate some words as "Very Naughty Indeed" (VNI). Speakers of other languages have made similar rules and regulations, but their rules are nonsensical to us because their designated words, which are appalling in their own language, are meaningless to us.

This hasn't stopped us, however! We have all of us agreed that they're "Very Naughty Indeed", and none of us really ought to be saying any of these VNI words. They're not just cuss words either. We've agreed to include some racist words and even words that insult relatives, such as "Yo' mama". We mustn't say these words, we've agreed, and we must pretend to be shocked when people use them. In fact, we've become so adept at this pretense that many people don't even need to pretend - they're genuinely shocked at hearing them.

Curiously, most of these words are related to sex organs or sexual functions, and to be good and upright citizens we mustn't ever say them and we must appear appalled when we hear them. We all agreed on this! How crazy is that? How ridiculous are we that we make up these conventions? How crazy is it that some words, even amongst the shocking ones, are more shocking than others, and some people will take offense at one and not at another?"

Oh I'm going to be hurt by that racist word, because I have a prior agreement with you, the person who is abusing me, that if you use a little six letter word to try and hurt me, I promise to you in return that I will be genuinely hurt. This is the pact made between a racist and their intended victim: that the one will say the word and the other agrees to be wounded by it!

The truly weird thing here is that these apparent antagonists are really on the same team. They're working together in this. They're playing from the same play-book. These enemies are partners! How utterly absurd is that? The only rational response to the use of such words isn't hatred or outrage or cowardice. It's to laugh - a good belly laugh at this patently ridiculous convention to which we all subscribe, whereby I agree completely to let you hurt me by using a VNI word.

Parts of this novel bothered me. The idea that only the US can save the rest of the world and that when global warming somehow turned the world into an apocalyptic wasteland, the US was the only nation willing and able to step up - the US which is the one doing a lion's share of the polluting, guzzling a lion's share of the resources, burning oil like it will never run out.

Another thing was the genderism. Even while writing a story presenting women as equals including, commendably, a handicapped woman, we still got this: "Early twenties, black, lovely in the awkward never-going-to-realize-I'm beautiful sort of way that some women had." Change 'beautiful' to 'handsome' and 'women' to 'men' and read it again. Does it sound weird? It shouldn't, but it probably does, because you never see writers write like that about men. Even female authors write like that about women though. I was rather expecting some jingo-ism, military bravado, and genderism in a story like this, I'm sorry to say, but even so it's still off-putting to read, in 2015, that a woman really isn't of any value unless she's beautiful. Otherwise why mention it? And what difference does it make that she's black?

When Kelso 'downloads' into his bot, he discovers that one of the others from the previous shift has painted a target on his chest. It seems that discipline is seriously lacking here. The bots pair off and start patrolling Damascus. Why the US is there at all is a mystery given the trouble Syria has had and the US stayed clear - at least in terms of ground deployment, but here we are. Nor do I get what resource is in Syria that needs protecting. People, yes, but the US has never been as big on protecting lives as it has on protecting non-human resources. What happened to the Syrian government such as it was? What happened to the Syrian army that the US now has free reign in this nation? None of this is explained.

It's actually when the pilots got into the bots that we started seeing some inconsistencies. First we're told that the bots have no identification markings (other than what jokers have painted on them), to insure that no enemy can identify the leaders. This makes sound military sense. Then they have Kate, one of the pilots or drivers, saluting the sergeant, thereby identifying him as the leader. This makes no sense. No one in their right mind salutes in deployment conditions for precisely that reason - so the enemy doesn't know who is in charge and are not presented an easy and perhaps critical target. But the readily identifiable markings on each robot clearly define who is who.

There's very little information given about how the download works. In a scene pretty much taken directly from the remake of Robocop, when the drivers 'wake up' inside the bots, they're evidently standing in the street where anyone who knew the shift change could have simply destroyed them before they got their new pilots! Not smart. Robots patroling a Middle East nation is how the movie began.

The robots evidently blink, too. I have no idea why they would make them blink. Also, their eyes light up! Why do they always do this? We no longer believe as the ancient Greeks (or someone) did that your eyes emit rays which allow you to see, yet they always do this with robots! These bots can also arch their eyebrows and narrow their eyes. Seriously? Why? They gave the robots eyebrows? This made no sense at all. It made as little sense as the US having this technology when it's perfectly clear at this point that the leaders in robot technology are the Japanese. What was it which made the US magically leap ahead in only a decade or so? How come no other nation has anything like this?

There's another problem, too. The bots are obviously electronic. We get no information about what protection they have from electrical overloads, yet every one of them is fully functioning after a pulse strong enough to take out satellites! Despite this, each one of them has a fatal weakness - a weak spot between two joins that no one - unaccountably - seems to be able to fix. None of this makes any sense! What, they don't have any spare patches of depleted uranium to weld over the weak spot? They can't slip a Kevlar vest over them to hide it and protect it?

We meet Alexa Day who is the daughter of the US ambassador to Syria. Her father has invited her to join him in Syria. This took me right of the realm of credibility - that is unless her father doesn't care about her and actually wants to get her killed. This is a war zone in a country where people quite literally hate the US - even more so now, we're told, yet dad invites his teen daughter to visit?

The thing which bugged me most about this story however was that these soldiers do not in any way act like soldiers. They take forever to respond to what's obviously a potential threat. When they do, they stand around in the open all in a bunch, none of them taking up defensive positions. When they're attacked by some guy they can see with a rocket launcher, not a one of them fires back. This allows the rocket man to destroy one of the bots. This is sheer incompetence!

When the EMP hits, instead of taking the fight to their enemy, they stand around gabbing about EMP pulses and whether the satellite uplink is out instead of taking out the guy with the rocket launcher. Only belatedly do they think they ought to be engaging the enemy. This is not how a soldier behaves. I don't care if they feel secure inside the bots.

It was completely unrealistic, and their support was non-existent. We have drones of all kinds flying today. Ten years from now there are none? They send bots up in a helicopter to do aerial surveillance? They have no EMP protection plan? The bots survived an EMP pulse powerful enough to knock out satellites in space?! It simply wasn't realistic.

It wasn't realistic either in that it pretty much assumed that no-one had ever heard of EMP much less done any testing of susceptibility to, or reinforcing of systems against, it, and this is simply not true. Solar flares, and even lightning generate EMP, and airplanes fly through lightning and are stuck by it fairly routinely without crashing from the sky. Critical systems, especially military ones, are routinely tested against EMP pulses emitted from a device called a Marx generator, but you would need a large number of very large devices such as these operating from orbit to affect anyone, and they would have to emit a pulse of sufficient magnitude to overcome the weakening effects of inverse-square law. And how would these ever be put into space without the US or other nations noticing?

I read about a third of this before I gave up, unable to keep the growing weight of my disbelief from coming crashing down. Maybe the pulse will knock your socks off. It didn't affect mine, which are evidently Faraday safe!

About a Girl by Sarah McCarry

Title: About a Girl
Author: Sarah McCarry
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WARTY!

This is apparently a companion novel to two others in what is called the Metamorphoses trilogy. The other books are stories about other members of the family, and I cannot ever see myself reading any more of these after my encounter with this one.

To begin with, it's a first person PoV story which is the most obnoxious voice. Some writers can carry it, but not this one, not with this character who is one of the most nauseating, self-obsessed, unappealing, and downright obnoxious Mary-Sues I've ever encountered in fiction.

This novel begins with Tally's endless - and I do mean endless - rambling about how brilliant she is. Some paragraphs occupy a whole page. Where was the editor? The doesn't show us how smart she is, she tells us. Over and over again. When she does one time show us her 'smarts', they ain't much, believe me. She actually does tell us a little about her family - in between showing us how utterly obnoxious she is to customers who come into the bookstore where she works and that was my next problem.

It's like the author sat down before she began to write this and wrote out a comprehensive list of every trope demographic and Nora Ephron button she could think of before cramming them brutally into this story. Work in a bookstore? Check. Transgender or gay person in her life? Check - and check! Quirky relatives and friends? Check. Everyone reads books or is an artist/poet? Check. Life-long super cool friend? Check. Quirky family adores one another? Check. Love interest comes in expectedly from left field? Check! Yep, all here. Let's get started.

First we have Tally's lifelong friend - met in a suitably cute manner. This friend is also transsexual, so we immediately have two categories covered in one fell swoop, yet despite being lifelong friends and intimate in every non-physical way imaginable, neither of them, can talk to each other about anything intimate.

This is how we end up with them being sexually one night and then not knowing how to behave the next day. This trope has been done to death and there's not a single thing that's new being brought to table here in any way.

Tally's essentially an orphan. Her mom is a completely irresponsible loser who left Tally on the doorstep of her sister's apartment and has never been seen since. None knows her whose dad is, not even, most likely, her mom. Tally has been without these non-parents literally her entire life.

Tally lives with an eccentric artist aunt and a poet uncle and his husband. Seriously? She also has a wealthy friend who has everything as defined by endless rare books, all of which are classics. God forbid he should have a first edition best seller. Tally is completely at home here in every single way imaginable,. She is spoiled rotten and has everything, but none of this keeps her from running off to "discover" her father and leaving paradise lost behind her. Evidently (from other reviews I've read, she never actually does discover anything except a girlfriend. I couldn't stand to read that far. I didn't have enough promethazine on hand. I applaud the fortitude of those who could finish it un-medicated.

I had sincerely hoped for much better than this. This is an awful novel. tediously and pretentiously written and in my opinion, not worth reading to the end. I cannot recommend it based on the part I did managed to stomach.

A Witness Above by Andy Straka

Title: A Witness Above
Author: Andy Straka
Publisher: Brash Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"I'm in a bit of a vice" should be "I'm in a bit of a vise" unless of course he really means that he's conducting himself immorally! (p68)
Change of font in mid-newspaper headline (p72)
"...whole neighbors.." should be "...whole neighborhoods..." (p156)
"About whether I arrest you now or you turn yourself in down to the department." Makes little sense. Maybe "...turn yourself in down at the department"?

"kibosh" should be "kibosh" or "kybosh" from the Gaelic Caip bháis meaning candle snuffer (p38)
Not an erratum as such, but an oddity:
Nicole says of her friend "We were always chums" which sounds really odd and not something which is likely for a teenager, especially an older one, to say.

I've enjoyed a warm relationship with Brash books despite posting some negative reviews, so I'm glad to be able to post a positive one like this one! This novel, despite some issues I had with it, is a worthy read and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in a nice private detective story that unfolds comfortably, always moving forwards, with some really interesting characters.

This is your standard private dick story told, of course in the first person (since it's evidently illegal to tell a PI story in third person, as you know!). First person isn't my favorite voice by a long chalk, but some authors can carry it, and this one does. The PI is Frank Pavlicek (Pav-li-check). His quirk (because they all have to have a quirk right?) is that he's into falconry and goes hunting with a red tailed hawk in time-honored tradition. His baggage (because they all have to have baggage, right?) is that he has a wife who hates him and a rather estranged teen daughter.

I found myself thinking wryly that maybe the daughterly estrangement is due to the fact that he still calls her Nicky and she still calls him 'Daddy' despite the fact that she's old enough to go into bars if not to drink alcohol. This endearment felt a bit confusing given that he tells us at one point shortly afterwards that the last time he thought of his daughter as little was when she was nine, and later again refers to her as though she's just a little girl.

The wifely break-up has no solid explanation. What seemed to be a perfectly good marriage broke down for two putative reasons: he apparently hauled her from their old life to a Podunk town and begin a career as a PI all without talking to her about his plans, apparently. Also she developed a money-grubbing attitude out of nowhere, evidently, along with an inability to work. Frank also has the requisite love interest who is, of course, a wise divorced woman. Nothing new here. The only interesting thing about him to me, was that at the time of the story, he lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I lived for a time. It was nice to read a story for once, set in a place I know!

There's actually nothing in Charlottesville. It's dead, despite being a university town. It's the kind of place you leave if you want to have fun. I've had a lot of fun since I left! It is picturesque, with the mountains a drive away on one side and the beach a really long drive away on the other, but there's really no there, there, as the saying goes, which is why I left and never looked back. It was nice to reminisce here, though.

Of Frank's girlfriend. The first thing we learn is that "She was not the most beautiful woman in the world...". This is the exact opposite of what I usually complain about, but the problem here is that we have a case of what I shall term inverse objectification. The point here is not that she's outstandingly beautiful as way too many women are in your typical novel, but that she's not the most beautiful, and so once again we have a female character who is defined by her looks and for no good reason.

Yes, there are good reasons to have a character defined (I should say primarily defined, because it never is a definition by itself) by her beauty: if the story is, for example, about a woman who was beautiful, and now has to cope for whatever reason with not being so, but in most stories, a woman's good looks or otherwise are no more relevant or pertinent than a man's, and focusing attention on how attractive or unattractive a female character is, merely serves to reduce half the population to skin. Can we not simply describe her as we'd describe a guy, without going into any pseudo poetic declarations or the gratuitous employment of superlatives, or by going into stealth mode and telling us she's not the most attractive woman in the world?

The weird thing here that made me smirk is that even after we're told how not-the-most-beautiful she is, we're still told that she has a photogenic magnetism in her eyes. Because god forbid she would just be a regular girl. No room for regular girls in this world. If they don't meet the Aryan ideal, then they must be extirpated. That sounds so familiar. Where did I hear that? I also found it odd that when Regan discovers it's a boy. it's congratulations all around? What would they do if it had been a girl? Bought wreaths?!

But in this regard, this novel is no better and no worse than any other story out there, and as a PI story, it's better than many in how it treats women. So instead, let's side-step all of this, and look at the story itself. Pavlicek is out hunting with his hawk in his hand and encounters a dead body from which he removes evidence before calling in the police. Already I don't like this guy, but you don't always have to actually like the main character to enjoy a good story, so this is fine. The evidence links his daughter to a drug dealer, so it seems, and he wants to find out what's going on. But have no fear. His daughter will be fine. After all, she's not ordinary either, because she's been endowed "With the same spectacular good looks as her mother...". I know husbands have every right to deem their wife and daughter beautiful, but this constant worship of beauty was tedious to say the least.

Pavlicek's daughter isn't very pleased to see dad until she gets jailed for possession with intent to distribute, then she's calling him. Why isn't clear, since her mom was married to a rich guy and had no problem hiring a lawyer, so this was interesting, especially since mom was behaving rather dismissively if not in a hostile manner towards her own daughter! When when Frank visits Nicole in the jail (and calls her Nickita) he notes that her eyes are brimming with tears, but still is dumb enough to need to ask her how she's doing. Some dads never learn!

The story really takes off from there and in general, it's very well written. I could have done without the falconry interludes which really felt like 'ludes to me, but I skipped those few pages and focused on the story itself, which was a bit predictable but nonetheless well done and engrossing. It was fun for me to read about a place I'd lived, so this lent the story a certain familiarity to me, like meeting an old friend. I ended-up still not liking Pavlicek. He didn't strike me as the smartest PI in the deck, and consequently I don't feel any desire to read more about him, but I actually would have liked to have read more about his daughter and her friend Regan. Those two were quite complex and entertaining characters, but not in the story much. Who knows, maybe a few years down the road we'll meet Nicky and Regan, Private Eyes? Until then, I think this is a worthy read if you're into PI stories.

Post scriptum - here's an oddity from the Adobe Digital Editions reader - there's no page 268 in a 268 page document!:

Those Girls by Lauren Saft

Title: Those Girls
Author: Lauren Saft
Publisher: Hachette
Rating: WARTY!

Those Girls isn't a very original title; there are several others with this title or a variation on it, so make sure you check for authorship before you pick one of those girls to buy. For me, I won't be buying, because it failed to entertain me at all and I can't recommend it. I expected better from a master of fine arts, but what I got was more like something written by a mistress than a master. It was published by Little, Brown Books for young readers (now owned by Hachette), but I in no way would ever recommend a book like this for a young reader - or anyone else.

One good indicator of whether you liked a novel or not is that it stays with you when you've read it - or it fails to. It wasn't very long ago at all that I read this, yet I barely remember it as I write this review. I do recall a lot of words which came to mind as I read it, though: words like "disappointment" and "poor" and "incredible" - that last one unfortunately in a very negative sense. It's never a good sign if a novel is so lacking in distinction that it floats away as soon as you've closed the cover, and this one floated more like the Titanic.

From a purely technical PoV the writing was not bad, and by that I mean that there were no gross spelling or grammatical errors, so if you set your sights low enough you might enjoy this. There were some amusingly mis-worded sentences, however, such as when one of the three main characters is purty-ing herself up in the car as her friend drives, and we read, "She pulled her silky blonde hair into a ponytail, opened her mouth and applied eye-liner in my rear view mirror..."!

There are at least two kinds of wrong here. She's applying eye-liner to her mouth? Interesting! Who knows? Teens do crazy stuff, so maybe she was. It just sounded wrong to me, but then I'm neither teen nor female. I just play one on TV. No, of course I'm kidding! My only other question is did she apply the eye-liner to the rear-view mirror or to her mouth? Or did she actually apply it around her eyes and the sentence was just badly written?

But those faux pas are no big deal. They're amusing, and we've all written something like that and read it back later and wondered what the heck we were thinking! It's what makes writing fun no matter which side of the page you're on.

The problem wasn't with the technical writing, it was with the entire story itself. I can forgive some poor grammar and spelling, and even some poor writing if I get a really good story, but I can't forgive a really poor story. If this author "masterfully conveys what goes on in the mind of a teenage girl," then I'd hate to read one which tosses it on your table without even wiping the Formica first, because that's what this felt like.

I do believe there are some people like those girls, but I cannot honestly believe that sixteen year old girls in general are anything like this. If they are, then I despair for them and for our future.

The story is of three rather clueless and vacuous teens. At first I thought they were seventeen; now I think they were sixteen, but even so, their behavior was juvenile, and all three of them needed to seriously get a life. Even at sixteen you need to be looking at what the heck you're going to do after graduation. Hopefully it's college but if not, you still need a career plan.

Not a single one of these girls had a single thing go through their mind that wasn't either a bitchy thought or an obsessive thought about boys or sex. I am not kidding. Not a one of them had any interests, hobbies, or pastimes - not even relatively frivolous ones like dancing in clubs. I mean they literally had zero interests - they were that shallow. Not a one of them had any occupation - and yes, I know they were spoiled-brat rich kids, but you'd think that one or two of them might like to get some job experience and an independent source of income. The sole exception was Alex's joining a band. More about that anon.

Now I know that too many teenagers are very narrowly-focused for the most part, but no teen worth reading about is as narrowly-focused as these three were. Amy Heckerling made a very amusing and successful movie about a clueless teenage girl, but this novel wasn't that movie by a long script. The novel wasn't funny at all. It was sad, and not in a happy way. I charge the girls with multiple counts of gross cluelessness - about their lives, about their families, about their boyfriends, but worst of all, about each other.

They were tunnel-vision, seeing everything through a telescope turned on themselves blinkered. And it was boring. Not a single one of them showed any sign, throughout the entire novel, of growing up, or of realizing how shallow they were, or of changing for the better, or of even thinking that anything was really wrong. I can't empathize with people like that. I can't like them. I sure don't want to read about them, but I actually read this to the end hoping something good would come out of it. It didn't. It needs to be re-titled Those Clowns.

Why did I pick it up?

I picked it up for the sole reason that the blurb mentioned that Alex was secretly in a band, That's what I was interested in - a sixteen year old girl with something to say and a voice to say it with. I got none of that. The thing with the band was for all practical purposes irrelevant and immaterial to the story. It went nowhere. It played no meaningful part in the story. I felt robbed with this bait-and-switch in the blurb, but this is what happens when you let Big Publishing&Trade; effectively own your work. You get misleading blurbs, and a cover which says - and very loudly too - don't worry what's in this girl's head, just take a look at her hot bod. That's all she's worth. Ironically, it's the perfect cover for this story. We're told of Alex that she's "...secretly in love with the boy next door.." but she's too clueless to know she's in love. That's how dumb she is, and she never wises-up.

None of the girls is smart enough to realize that all they know is a tiny insignificant part of the world, and until they get out there and really explore it, they will remain clueless, ignorant and unadventurous as they are. Alex is clueless, Mollie is ignorant of the fact that she's in a co-dependent relationship, and Veronica, the one who appears most adventurous of all, is held fast in her lifestyle by a cheap and gaudy leash of her own making. They act far more like thirteen than ever they do sixteen, and they have the mentality to match. Spin the bottle? Truth or dare? seriously?

Why I think it should be put down.

All of "those girls" are painfully stupid. The are borderline alcoholics, and they routinely have unprotected sex without a thought for the sexual history of their partner. They have a pedophile teacher in their school which not a one of them even considers reporting to the authorities. All of them smoke heavily and indulge regularly in drugs, like those lifestyles are completely risk-free. And none of their behavior has any real consequences or teaches them a single thing. On addition to this, there's chronic slut-shaming going on throughout the novel even between the three supposed friends. There is nothing appealing about any of these characters and nothing interesting about their loser life story. I cannot recommend this at all.