Tales of Brer Rabbit

Rating: WARTY!

I found a set of audio disks at the local library which are produced by a publisher called Rabbit Ears. At first I thought they were all stories about rabbits, but they're not. They're a bunch of old folk tales and fairy tales which are read by celebrities, but there are only two stories per disk and a lot of music which you may or may not like, so you get little for your outlay, which is why the library is so wonderful!

The first story is Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and the other one is Brer Rabbit and Boss Lion, both of which are read by Danny Glover. Both stories are about twenty minutes listening time, but would have been a lot shorter with no music! I'm guessing that's why the music was added. I'm not a huge fan of Danny Glover, but I liked him well enough in the Lethal Weapon movie series and the second of the Predator movies. Unfortunately, in this, he's acting more like a stereotypical actor from one of the seventies Blaxploitation movies, and for me this was not remotely entertaining.

He was significantly less animated in the second story, but it still did not entertain me. Obviously these days, stories about Brother Rabbit are not aimed at people my age, but historically, these stories including, believe it or not, the Tar Baby story, have a long tradition. Some commentators tie the stories to slavery, but there are traditions of such stories among American Indians and other peoples. Note that 'tar baby' is considered to be a racial slur.

If you really like these two stories, or you really, really like Danny Glover, and you're desperate for something for your children to listen to, then this might work, but I can't recommend it for as short as it is or as poor as it's told.

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens

Rating: WARTY!

This audio book was about Vanessa 'Michael' Munroe, a young and tomboyish investigator, who is called an informationist because it sounds much more cool even though it's nonsensical. Some reviewers have drawn a parallel between this characters and Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, but Munroe is no Salander, despite the penchant for both to ride a motorbike. Salander would never bring harm on the downtrodden.

To me, Munroe is more like James Bond than ever she is like Salander. She has guys fawning over her as women fawn over Bond. She travels the world as Bond does, and has very convenient contacts wherever she goes. She's always potentially in danger but can fist-fight with the best of them. In contrast to Bond, however, Munroe's story moves at the pace of an arthritic snail (if that wasn't a contradiction in terms), and she isn't an agent of any government. What she does is dig up information on developing countries allowing capitalists to exploit them. While she doesn't do this exploitation herself, it can be argued that she facilitates it, and is therefore not a very nice person since she evidently has no qualms at all about what will happen to the people of those countries once western big money starts pouring in.

But then Munroe is very much a capitalist herself. Recruited by a rich Houston oil baron to find his missing adopted daughter, Munroe is offered two point five million, but demands that it be doubled before she will dirty her hands looking for the lost 18 year old. So she gets five million and a year to search and she keeps the money even if she uncovers nothing which has not already been uncovered by other investigators, official and otherwise. This is not even her field of endeavor, but she doesn't mind raking it in, exploiting a grieving father.

My feeling in beginning was that this story of Emily's disappearance would end up tied to the fact that she's adopted, or it would have to do with so-called white slavery, or perhaps to do with some secret related to her adoptive father's oil business interests in Africa. Taylor Stevens is evidently an escapee from a religious cult, for which I heartily congratulate her (for the escape, not the membership!). She anchors Munroe in Texas because that's where the author lives, so maybe there's some wish fulfilment going on here. Apparently Stevens began writing because her children bored her? I don't know how anyone can find children boring, but that's what I read. Maybe the interviewer misunderstood her? Anyway, Munroe zooms off to Africa to begin her investigation with your usual hottie ex-special forces guy by her side - someone assigned to her against her will be her employer. She has no respect for him and crudely rufies him one day after they arrive in Africa so she can go off on her own and do her job without him tagging along that day. Like I said, she's not a nice person and I neither liked nor admired her.

The wonderful thing about audio books is that you can listen to them while driving and get through a lot of books if you have any sort of commute worth the name. The downside of them is that you have to put up with whatever reader is doing the job. Hillary Hoben was the reader here, and her voice was so mind-numbingly monotonous that I was ready to buy Amway products form her. In short, I really disliked it after an hour or so. There is no inflection in her reading and while she makes passable attempts to modulate her voice to the characters, it's still flat as a pancake. Worse than this, the story stubbornly refused to move. It was less of an action adventure than a no-action misadventure. It went along at a leisurely pace when I was wanting it to get going already. It was at this point that I realized Vanessa and I were destined to part ways. I can't recommend this novel based on the portion (about 30% ) to which I listened, which discounted for skimming, was quite substantial.

Easter is Cancelled by Sally Huss

Rating: WORTHY!

How about that title? Easter is cancelled by Sally Huss? Sally Huss cancelled Easter? Yikes! This is just a thought to be careful how you title your novel, otherwise anything could happen! And don't we writers all hope it will?!

I've reviewed almost a dozen books for young children, written in doggerel verse (and illustrated by) Sally Huss, and I liked very nearly all of them. Everybody Loves Valentines got a worth rating back in January 2016. Everything Has a Heart did similarly that same month. The Big Witch's Big Night scored in November of 2015 - although a bit late for Halloween, I confess, but What's For Thanksgiving Dinner? was on time that month! Mr Getaway and the Christmas Elves was another success in December that year. Princess Charlotte and the Pea was reviewed favorably in September 2015. What's Pete's Secret? failed to score in August of that year, but the month prior to that, Plain Jane was a worthy read. One Hundred Eggs For Henrietta did well in March 2015, but Who Took My Banana? fell completely flat a month later.

But the author rebounds! Here comes a timely and positive review for an Easter offering from this same author. It's getting close to Easter, and all the animals are busy making decorations and candy, but the Easter Bunny has gone on strike and cancelled the whole event! How the owl got to be considered wise, I don't know. They have no dentition, so we know it's not from wisdom teeth! Anyway, when he's asked, rather than come to the rescue he (why it's always a male I don't know either) pretty much cops out and tells them to get a kid to talk to the bunny. Talk to the bunny; the owl's not listening! Will it work? I can't give out spoilers like that!

Ending on a very positive note (oops, I gave it away!), this story book is perky and colorful, with fun verse and amusing pictures. I recommend this one. It was nice to see that there was no sappy religious mythology here. Easter is a pagan festival which the early Christians purloined, but it's really a celebration of spring and fertility - hence the eggs and the rabbits. There used to be a month named after the god Ēastre before the Romans stole that and renamed it after their god of war, but that's Romans for you - get a celebration of rebirth and they name it for war! This book is very much faithful to the original unspoiled tradition, not to latecomers and usurpers and I was happy about that!

The Language of Hoofbeats by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Rating: WARTY!

I got this novel from the library because it sounded interesting, but in the end it was far too caricatured and too deeply gouged into the page in stark black and white crayon to take seriously. I guess I should have known it was not for me when I couldn't remember the title properly. I kept thinking it was called "The Sound of Hoofbeats" but that actually makes little sense. Maybe I should have re-read The Sound of Thunder instead? Or was that "The Language of Thunder"?! LOL!

The novel is told in dual first person PoV, which is twice as bad as single 1PoV because it's two times as unrealistic. The two narrators were the most antagonistic of all the characters of course, but this dynamic simply didn't work because it was too extreme and there were no gray areas. It resulted in a very amateurish game of writing ping-pong which was laughably combative. The premise is that a lesbian couple with three children, one adopted the other two fostered, arrive in a small town where Paula is to become the new vet. They have a series of run-ins with their neighbor, Clementine, an older woman who is haunted by the suicide of her daughter.

Whether that idea - that a foster parent can up and move to an entirely new area while still retaining the children they're fostering is something with which I'm not familiar, but it seemed unlikely to me. I don't know, though. I've never fostered children, and maybe allowing this freedom to move is the done thing in a society as mobile as the USA. It was commendable that a gay couple were considered suitable, though, so I sincerely hope this part is true at least.

What I didn't get was why this author threw in everything but the kitchen sink: gay couple, small town, adopted kid, fostered kids, lots of pets, troubled children, cantankerous naysaying neighbor, cantankerous neighing horse.... Maybe she should just have written a story about the conflict in Afghanistan?! It just seemed odd that the conflict was so stark while the potential conflicts were so rich. The one thing which wasn't added was any issue with a couple consisting of two moms - at least not in the portion I read. That's how it needs to be, but it's not always how it is. Maybe that reared its ugly head later, or maybe not. I didn't read that far.

The only weird thing about the couple for me was that the children referred to their parents as J-mom and P-mom. This was for Jackie and Paula. I don't know how the author chose the names for the parents, but I found it interesting that they were both names which have a ready masculine counterpart: Jack and Paul. As a writer I think naming characters suitably for the particular story can make an important contribution, and even tell a small story in the name itself, so I couldn't help but wonder how much thought the author had put into these names. Maybe it was none. I don't know. Was it intended to send some sort of a message or just happenstance? These components of novels interest to me and can be important if they send the wrong message to a reader.

But I digress. Again. The bane of writing! I can see how J-mom and P-mom (I think I'd rather be J-mom!) would work when they were referring to a parent who was not present, but to directly address them as J-mom and P-mom sounded stupid to me. Why not just call them mom? Maybe it was such an ingrained habit they couldn't help themselves, but that would really depend upon how long these kids had been a part of the family, so for me it was something I felt could have been handled better. This was a minor point compared with the bigger issue of the conflict, however.

Clementine, the neighbor, cannot bear to go into the barn where her daughter died. The horse is neglected, but Clementine can't bear to sell it because it's the last link with her daughter. Naturally, the disaffected trope teen with the bizarre name of Star (the horse is called Comet, of course) bonds with the horse and Clementine bans her from the property, but Star doesn't listen. We all know how this is going to end, so the only mystery in this novel is how the author brings it to that foregone conclusion, and the only answer I could see looming was using trope and cliché, painted on in ham-fisted, broad black and white strokes. It was not entertaining to read.

Some of it made no sense at all, and this was due to poor writing. We're told early in the story that Star crossed the road to stand outside the fence which corrals Comet, yet Clementine accuses her of trespassing. I didn't get how that worked. If the fence is right by the road and Star is standing on the road-side of the fence, then she's not trespassing! If she had, for example, crossed the neighbor's lawn or yard, and then reached the corral, yes she'd be trespassing, but this isn't how the arrangement is described by the author - either that or she does a poor job of explaining the layout of the property.

This is a relatively minor point in itself, but what it told me (along with other instances of lax writing) was that not enough thought had been put into this story, and this weighted it down, making it a drag for me by about a quarter of the way through, which is when I gave up. Little things do matter - if there are enough of them and the overall story itself isn't very well done. I can't recommend this one.

The Witch With The Glitch by Adam Maxwell

Rating: WORTHY!

Note, this is not to be confused with Glitch of a Witch by Pat Hatt, or The Witch Hits a Glitch by Elizabeth Schram, or Witch Glitch by Robyn Peterman, or Witch Glitch by Leslie Goldman! Yes, the title is way overused already.

Illustrated here and there by Dale Maloney, this novel aimed at middle-graders is highly amusing and very entertaining. It's decidedly British, so there may be a reference here and there that you won't get unless you're familiar with Brit slang, but for the most part it's very accessible no matter where you're from, as long as you're an English speaker, of course!

This story is part of the "Lost Bookshop Adventure" series. I read the first one (The Search for the Sheriff's Star) back in September last year and reviewed it favorably. In this adventure, the two girls and the boy travel through the dusty closet into fairy tale land, inhabited by a green witch. Abraham van Helsing is there too, but the problem is that each of our adventurers is adversely affected by an errant spell tossed out by the irritated witch.

One of them ends up as a ghost, another as a vampire, and the poor boy as a werewolf. They have only until midnight to resolve the witches problem and become transformed back to their usual selves, or stay that way forever! I loved the unruly but clueless mob who set out carry not pitchforks, but cushions and so on! Did you know, also, that owls and bats do not really get along? I was very entertained by the continually changing story and the predicaments these three kids got themselves into - but they never gave up. I recommend this one.

Evo by Jurian Moller

Rating: WARTY!

Evo is one continuous page, concertina folded, depicting the path of life from the earliest wiggling notochord through to modern humans. It's very expensive and teaches nothing, but if you like dramatic works of art, then this one is for you, I guess! You can get a sneak peek at http://evoboek.nl/en/. I can't recommend this unless you have to have everything to do with evolution or unless you really like expensive coffee table books!

Bee-Witched by Julia Dweck

Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated gorgeously by Aida Sofia Barba, this young children's story tells of Beetrice, who was a young expert on bees, styling her hair with beeswax and wearing antenna-like deely bobbers on her hair band. She eats B vitamins and enjoys honey on her waffles (not pancakes as Aida illustrates! Or did Julia change the story after Aida had gone off to do her work? Hmm! Something bee not write here!).

Full disclosure! I am a big fan of Julia Dweck's amazing name and also of her writing. I favorably reviewed Eville USA back in August of 2015, and Furmaid a year before that. She does a good job. And no, I don't know her and she doesn't pay me to write nice reviews! I am a bit biased towards an author though who has provided me with consistently entertaining reading. I'd bee a fool not to be!

But I digress! Beetrice does reasonably well in school, doesn't let the school bully bother her. She enjoys Halloween with her friend Dewy, who unfortunately doesn't think that Apoidea are the bee all and end all of life. It's almost enough to make him break out in hives.... But Beetrice realizes the difference between bees and wasps, letting the useful, honey-gathering, pollinating bee out of the window rather than trying to kill it. She fantasizes about joining them - or maybe magically does join them!

These little insects are so bee-deviled these days, and we're so dependent upon them that it's foolish not to treat them as Bee FFs - while giving them a healthy dose of respect, of course. The truth is that bees aren't out to get you. They have no agenda other than gathering pollen and making more bees. I've watched them in my yard at close quarters very many times, while they pollinate my flowers, and never once have I bothered them or they me. Note, though, that these are regular honey bees, not the 'Africanized' variety, which I definitely wouldn't mess with, rest assured!

There were a couple of small issues I had with this, otherwise it was perfect. The author had a problem differentiating plural from singular when talking about the bee's life cycle - it's larva and pupa. Larvae and pupae are the plurals. The other problem is that bees are not wasps. They do not sting and live to fight another day. They're suicide bombers and they will die, because their sting is torn out of their body, remaining in your skin to pump in more venom with a little muscle that isn't that much different from a heart when you get right down to it, while the disemboweled bee buzzes off to die. This is why it's important to remove the sting ASAP, and not by pinching it between your thumb and forefinger, which will simply squeeze more venom into your body, but by pulling it out with carefully-applied tweezers if they're readily available, or by scraping it away from the wound with a small stick or even the edge of a credit card or something. Anything which prevent the little venom sac being squeezed any more than it is already.

That said, I loved this book and I recommend it as a worthy read. Bee there or be square!

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

Rating: WORTHY!

This is pretty special - a novel about Hercule Poirot (not to be confused with poi rot!) in which Hercule Poirot almost doesn't appear and in which the motive is uncovered by a young schoolgirl rather than Poirot himself! Don't confuse this one with the score of novels by other authors with this same now way over-used title.

This is the fifth of Christie's novels I've reviewed, nearly all of them Poirot stories, and all (including this one) save one I have rated as worthy reads. The one I did not like was Death on the Nile. The others that I considered to be worthy were: Murder on the Orient Express, The Unexpected Guest (which was taken from a play Christie wrote rather than an actual novel, and was not about Poirot), and Lord Edgeware Dies more commonly known as Thirteen at Dinner.

This story actually flirted with receiving a 'warty' rating (hey, in the middle of warty, there's still art!), but what saved it was the female politics, and in particular the amazingly entertaining schoolgirls Jennifer Sutcliffe and Julia Upjohn. These two were even more entertaining in the televised version starring David Suchet, which departed from the novel rather a lot, especially in bringing in Poirot at the beginning. In the novel, he is entirely absent for the first two thirds of this story, which takes place at Meadowbank School for Girls, fictional, but the most prestigious preparatory school for girls in the entire country.

Christie is known to have grown to detest her character, Poirot, yet she continued to serve up stories featuring him because she felt some sort of duty to her readers. I can't help but wonder if this is perhaps why he is so conspicuous by his absence from this one. Perhaps when she wrote it, she was really having a bad time finding anything to like about him, and decided to see how far she could take the story before she had to draft him in. In this instance, it was by a rather unusual means that he came onto the scene.

The start of a new term brings the usual minor issues, and one larger one. The principal, known as the headmistress, is Miss Bulstrode, and she's ready to retire if she can find a replacement who is worthy of overseeing Meadowbank. She has two fellow teachers in mind: Miss Vansittart, who is a veteran at the school and her prime choice, but newcomer Miss Rich is a serious contender.

Things seem to be fine until the gym mistress, a bit of a busybody, is discovered murdered in the new pavilion. In the TV series, she's impaled by a javelin, but is merely shot in the novel. How uninventive! As more murders occur, and the reputation of the school starts rapidly downhill, other questions arise. Why as Princess Shaista kidnapped? What is so important about the new pavilion which continues to draw some evil perp there? And why isn't the tea being served already?!

I enjoyed this novel and recommend it.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Rating: WARTY!

This audiobook, read decently by Will Wheaton, has a really cool title, but it also has far too many pop-culture geek references which not only seriously pigeon-hole (if not date) it, and it thereby misses the chance to be as good as it could have been. The author seems to take a conceited pride in how many references to obscure antique video games or movies or magazines he can make, but these are references which no one really cares about any more unless they're unhealthily addicted to the past.

I started out liking the story, which is set in 2044, and is about geek teenager Wade Watts aka Parsival, an addict of OASIS, who embarks upon a virtual quest, but I soon grew tired of these endless references which contributed nothing to moving the story. I think this serves potential writers well as a warning though: just because you're an addict of a given topic doesn't mean your readers will welcome being hammered with endless harping on it when there's (we hope!) a story to tell.

This book would also have been a lot tighter and moved better had the author not bloated it with ridiculous juvenile arguments between people about Ewoks and Ladyhawke and on and on. Seriously. A reference here and there is fine, but let's not write paragraphs of exposition about these things. It bogs down the story, turns a large number of potential readers off, and delivers you nothing but shallow street cred from a handful of fellow geeks.

The story itself promised to be good. A multi-billionaire game developer dies and leaves a video will offering his riches and a controlling interest in his game business to whoever can discover the 'Easter egg' he had left in his highly popular MMPORG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). He offers one clue in the video, and the rest you have to find in the game.

Naturally this sparks huge interest, but little progress as the months and then years go by. Instead of having the opportunity to go into the game and follow clues, the first portion of the novel is taken up with pointless and meandering narration in first person. 1PoV isn't my favorite voice by any means. Here it's not too bad to begin with, but over time it starts to grate, as nothing happens and the disingenuous narrator, while claiming on the one hand to be an Über-Geek devotee of the game developer, seems to spend all his time in juvenile chat rooms dissing other people and indulging in bromance instead of playing the game in search of the Easter egg.

We learn of his passion for a female blogger, Artemis, who is also engaged in the hunt and has a three somewhere in her maim which is completely lost on the audio listener, and we read about her purportedly witty and entertaining blogs, but we never get to read one. In short, it's all tell and no show, the no-show being entertainment value, and it gets tiresome in short order. I can't recommend it.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Rating: WARTY!

I came to this by way of the movie, which despite some large plot holes, I really enjoyed for a dumb action movie. The novel I liked less and less the more I listened to the audio book version which has not one, but two narrators one for the female 1PoV and one for the male. First person is bad enough when only one person is doing it, but you multiply the mistake when you admit to its weakness and have to add a second, third, fourth, whatever, PoV. I do not know why authors are so addicted to it. I can only ascribe it to chronic laziness and lack of imagination.

Here's the major flaw: 16-year-old Cassiopeia Marie Sullivan is shot in the thigh by a sniper. She's bleeding out and lying under a car trying to stanch (not staunch, but stanch, authors please note) the blood flow with a tourniquet (if you apply a tourniquet BTW, please realize that you are acknowledging the loss of the limb on the distal side of it). Despite her panic, her loss of blood, and her fear, this youngster calmly observes and analyzes every single thing in detail. No, I'm sorry, but you just kissed off realism, credibility, and my faith in your ability as a writer. We're told to write what we know, but that's bullshit. No one really does, nor should they - or us.

Personally I don't require that an author be shot in the thigh in order to write about it, but I do require that they use some thought and imagination. There was none in evidence here. This was YA at its dumbest, and this is where I started thinking I did not want to listen to any more of this. What convinced me was reading some reviews from people I follow, and their take on what was coming next is what persuaded me to say-onara...! Apparently this is really just a rip-off of Stephenie Meyer's The Host, and I have zero desire to read anything Stephenie Meyer ever writes, even if it's written by Rick Yancey instead.

The main character is known as Cassie. How many times has this name been over-used for a main female character? I'm starting to feel as nauseated by it as I am by 'Jack'. I refuse to read any novel which has a main character named Jack precisely because it is so prevalent and as to be in need of the urgent attention of epidemiologists. The story is the usual 'aliens are inevitably evil and despite there being literally billions of planets in this galaxy alone, Earth is the only one worth stealing'. These aliens are as retarded as you can get. They have been surveilling us for six thousand years, yet only now, when in all of those six thousand years we are best able to defend ourselves, do they decide to start a war with us?

For reasons unknown, instead of starting with the third wave and severely depleting our numbers with a deadly plague, they start out with an EMP even though such a thing is not guaranteed to completely disrupt society and even though critical military targets and matériel are EMP defended - which they ought to have known after 6K yrs of watching! I guess they're not so smart after all, but it's easy to see why a 16 year old American, raised on a diet of dumb-ass YA romance novels, would not have the intellectual wherewithal to understand this much.

So the EMP purportedly destroys all things electrical and electronic. The second wave is purportedly perpetrated by dropping metal rods, twice as heavy as the Empire State building on cities. Such a weight has fallen on Earth many times. Not in modern times, but the Barringer crater - the mile-wide one in Arizona, USA - was made by such a weight hitting the Earth. A metal rod would burn-up significantly, and break up in the atmosphere - something Yancey apparently forgets, and a metal rod dropped form the ionosphere carries nowhere near the kinetic energy as a meteor coming in from deep space.

A single such rod would, though, still make a significant impact, and destroy a city, but it would not wipe out the planet. A host of them hitting every major city begs two questions: where are they getting all this metal, and why are they taking an action which would effectively destroy not just humanity, but the entire planet if enough of these were dropped, making it entirely uninhabitable? And why go to the trouble of manufacturing neat two-thousand foot long metal bars rather than simply attach mass drivers to asteroids and direct those at Earth? None of this makes sense. But they are alien, Maybe they're imbeciles? Maybe they're merely teenage hooligan aliens out having a joyride? Whatever they are, they're in no way smart.

This is Yancey's biggest failure. What is the end-game here? Do they simply want to destroy a planet? Why? Do they merely want to wipe out humans? Why? And if so, why not do it with disease, leaving the infrastructure intact and the planet still habitable? If they hate us so badly, why let us develop for six thousand years before starting in on us? None of this makes any sense whatsoever. This is the start of a series - one more YA series I will not be following, but if they're such advanced engineers and technologists, why not bio-engineer Venus or Mars, both of which would be more habitable than Earth after they're done spreading disease and dropping steel dowels on us!

After the Pointless EMP and the tsunamis induced by the dread 'turds of rebar', we get the disease, which doesn't even get a scientific name. It's the bird poop disease! LOL! Yes, this is what the author wants us to believe: Ebola, engineered to be airborne, and delivered via bird poop, ravages the entire population, killing 97% of us. No, even Ebola isn't that efficient, especially not delivered in bird poop. Why not simply aerosolize it and spray the planet from orbit? None of this makes any sense. Either that or the aliens are, once again, morons.

Next, the aliens inhabit humans! If they can do this, why did they not simply do it from the beginning before they rendered the planet uninhabitable by disrupting nature, and causing a firestorm and dust cloud which would have brought on a "nuclear" winter and killed off pretty much everything that lives? So we have:

1. EMPeeing
2. Rebar none
3. turds of birds
4. alientrusion (aka silence is the new human)

What was that fifth wave again?

Watch the movie instead. It's still dumb in places, but it's a lot tighter and better written. You can tell it's a decent movie because critics almost universally panned it. That's how I know it's worth a look - movie critics are elitist morons! Ringer/Marika is the best character in the movie. The book is a waste of trees. Maybe it was written by evil aliens....

The Perfect Shade of Green by Brian Barlics

Rating: WORTHY!

From the same team which brought us Brady Needs a Nightlight, which I favorably reviewed in January 2016, this young childrens poetry/picture book is another charmer.

Illustrated charmingly and very colorfully by Gregory Burgess Jones, this is a poetic story about a chameleon who refuses to change her spots – or…well, you know what I mean – is a delight. Cami is so at ease in her own skin, she feels no need to change to match her surroundings. In real life this would be a disaster, but for a children’s story, this is a fun lesson in how to be yourself and not let others tell you who you are. I wish more teenagers would learn that lesson! Unfortunately for them, this is aimed at a much younger audience.

There are some dangers in trying to write the write children’s story to match your teaching aim. For example, this one risks being identified solely as a story about race or specifically about skin color, but it’s about much more than that: it’s about the whole person, regardless of race or color. Cami strolls around at her own pace and is proud of her green glow, so she doesn’t try to hide it, not by dark or by light, not by day or by night, not by flower or by tree, not by bird or by bee! She had very little respect for the chameleon which tries to match the colors of the rainbow, but she had no problem sporting a pink tutu on her travels. That’s her individual choice, too.

I’m not sure that Cami fully realizes that it’s her individuality that shines out far more than her green skin does, but I don’t doubt she’ll realize it as she grows up, strong as she is. I liked this story and the gentle, easy poetry and I recommend it as a worthy read.

The Monster That Ate Our Keys by AJ Cosmo

Rating: WARTY!

I'd been enjoying 100% success with children's novels by AJ Cosmo, until this one, which fell completely flat. The Monster That Ate My Socks, I Don't Want to Go To School, and There's a Monster in the Dark were very entertaining reads, especially for their intended age group, but this one didn't get there at all. I'm wondering if there are only so many variations on the "There's a Monster..." theme which you can exploit in children's books?

This monster does precisely what it's billed for: it eats dad's car keys, and the boy and his father have to chase it as try to trap it or bribe it to get them back, but there really isn't much going on that's entertaining. It doesn't go anywhere other than around the house, unfortunately. The story really isn't as inventive as I felt the previous ones were. I can't recommend it.

Kings of Infinite Space by James Hynes

Rating: WARTY!

Read in a mediocre fashion by Adam Grupper, this audio book failed to launch and I DNF'd it in short order. The blurb advises us that "Paul Trilby is having a bad day," but it's nowhere near as bad a day as it is for those who have to read of his tediously pedantic non-adventures. Paul is in a downward spiral. Dismissed from academia for reasons which were unclear from the portion to which I could stand to listen, he eventually winds up in a temp job as a typist. His perky and ambitious news anchor wife has left him, as have three girlfriends, and how he's stuck in the general services division of the Texas Department of General Services, where he's informed that there are things living in the false ceiling. I never did find out what these were, because I lost interest in the endless rambling prologue which is the first half of the novel. I suspect that what lives in the ceiling is the people who have been 'let go' from their jobs during a humongous lay-off at some point prior to Paul's arrival, but I really don't care.

The writing is awful. Every little thing he does isn't magic, but it is detailed monotonously, and there's no humor to leaven it. I certainly have no intention of allowing an author to keep on hitting me over the head with it every other paragraph. If this is supposed to exemplify his life, I got it in the first few sentences which are very reminiscent of the opening scene from Mike Judge's movie Office Space. I'd recommend seeing that instead. I cannot recommend this. It's infinitely boring.

The Girl in the Well is Me by Karen Rivers

Rating: WARTY!

Note: not to be confused with the Grimm brothers' The Goose Girl at the Well, or with Rin Chupeco's The Girl from the Well and certainly not with Zehra Hicks's Girl Who Loved Wellies!

How can you not want to read a book about a girl who is fearful of drowning, when it's written by an author named Rivers?! The blurb made this novel sound interesting, but in the end it was not. I realize this is aimed at middle grade, and I am not that audience by any means, but to me the novel was so thoroughly unrealistic as to fail in its purpose. Additionally, the main character was not sympathetic. She was sadly lacking in intellect, and worse, she was boring, despite her sad circumstances. I am not a fan of novels that depict women as stupid and passive unless they merely begin that way and then grow - through the course of the story - to be otherwise. I think it's a very poor role model to present to that age group.

This was an advance review copy which I did not finish. Life is too short to spend it on reading materials which do not move me, so I have to allow that things might have changed for the better, but it certainly did not look to me like they were likely to move in a positive direction, which is why I gave up on this: every page was more of the same. Worse than this, it felt completely unrealistic to me. I could not believe that an eleven-year-old trapped in a well (which was so ridiculously narrow that it would barely admit a bucket to draw water), would be blithely reminiscing about her life given that she's slipping further and further down, the well is growing ever more narrow, and her breathing is growing ever more difficult.

The reason she was in the well was because of a dare issued by three mean and spoiled girls with whom Kammie (the victim, and very much a victim unfortunately) wanted to be friends. She was required to cut her hair short and stand on the top of the well, which was boarded over. Kammie stupidly complied with their every edict without even a second thought. This is what saddened me: for all her soul searching, she never once second guesses herself. Of course, when the rotten boards break, down she goes. The fact that the three girls were not even remotely concerned for her was another factor in this novel's lacking credibility. Every character was a caricature, and none of them were interesting.

Another issue was that this story was first person PoV which rarely works. The fact that Kammie was telling this story means she survived, unless her ghost is telling it, which still means a happy ending - she survived one way or another). Where's the tension? Obviously, nowhere. You know she's going to get out. On top of this, no one that age in such dire circumstances thinks so eruditely and so clearly. Kids panic and there was not a shred of any such thing in Kammie. It's not credible. Her complete lack of real stress makes this story very nearly a potential invitation to young kids: "Hey, let's go slide down a well! It'll be fun!" I hope none of them are as dumb as Kammie.

I could not take this story seriously. I kept hearing that old song "Three Old Ladies Locked in a Lavatory" going around in my head as I read it. The mean girls were such a caricature that not even one of them had the remotest feeling of discomfort for Kammie, and this is nonsensical. Even the meanest girls have some vestige of a conscious, yet not once - not in the portion I read - did even one of them evince anything approaching concern. I wish the author well, but I cannot in good conscious recommend this as a worthy read, not even for the intended age group.

The Daughters of Palatine Hill by Phyllis T Smith

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
"listened to the laugher" should be, presumably, " listened to the laughter" While the former does make sense, it seemed, in context, to be more the latter that was required.

I began this advance review copy thinking it was about Julius Caesar's family, but in fact it was about the successor to Caesar, Gaius Octavius, popularly known as Octavian, who ruled in Rome's second triumvirate after Caesar was assassinated in 44BC. He defeated the other two legs of the triumvirate when it started breaking apart, and routed Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra 7^th's fleet at the battle of Actium, after which the latter two committed suicide, MA by falling on his sword, and Cleo not by a snake bite as is popularly believed (and to which this author evidently subscribes), but by taking poison. Their story was actually rather Romeo and Juliet-esque in its comedy of error. But this novel isn't about them unfortunately.

Palatine Hill is the center one of the so-called seven hills of Rome. It's close by the Tiber, and has been settled since around 10,000BC. Technically there are only four actual hills of Rome. The other three are really promontories of a larger mass. Palatine, from whence comes our word 'palace', was actually where Livia, wife of Octavian, lived. She is one of the three women which this story follows, the other two being Octavian's daughter, Julia the Elder, and his 'adopted daughter', Cleopatra Selene, aka Cleopatra 8^th who started out as a prisoner of war, her brothers all dead, and went on to a career which outshone her mother's, yet she's nowhere near as well-known. Go figure. History isn't so much written by the victors as it is the romantics! LOL!

These women all feel threatened in one way or another. Julia is set to wed Marcellus, who is a complete dick, but fortunately history shows us she did not have to put up with him for long. She is shallow and juvenile, and I found her uninteresting. Cleo understandably lives in fear of being killed off, since she's a prisoner of war for all practical purposes and risks being murdered if she's seen to pose any threat at all. She turned out to be as shallow as Julia was depicted. Perhaps the most interesting is Livia, Julia's step mom, who immediately shows herself to be a thoughtful and practical woman who knows how to play the political game even though, ultimately, women had very little real say in their lives in this world.

There were some errors in the historical information. For example, at one point, Julia says, "I stood there in my night shift", but Romans did not have a négligé, pajamas or 'night shifts'. They wore their underwear known as a tunica, taken from the Greeks (not literally! LOL!), or they would even wear their entire daytime outfit to bed, even the wealthy ones, so this seemed a bit out of place. Maybe tunica is was what was meant here. Another issue was also tied to Julia - she kept on fretting that her father was in Spain and wouldn't be there to 'give her away' on her wedding day, but this was not a tradition in Roman times.

If anyone could be said to give a bride away, it was a married woman who had not been married more than once, and the groom was supposed to 'wrench' his bride from her in a symbolic ritual representing taking ownership of the young virgin. Roman ceremonies were not like modern western ceremonies. Even the cake was not a cake as we perceive it, with white frosting and so on, but an offering to the gods of a grain 'cake', which was subsequently eaten by the bride and groom. For all we know it was some sort of a granola bar in effect! The bride did wear white (assuming her family could afford anything truly white), but the marriage ceremony was really a transfer of ownership of the bride from her family to the groom, and dad took very little formal part in it. The bride was supposed to travel to the groom's home signifying a break from her family and a joining of the groom's family.

Of course that did not mean that all relations with her family were severed, but in this case there is no divide at all and everything stays the same. Julia hangs around the First Citizen's home, which in this case is somewhat understandable because the groom evidently lived there too (she was his cousin). Given how wealthy Octavian was, it's hard to believe that the newly married couple did not have their own home. Worse than this though, she was invited to important meetings, which seemed highly unlikely given how women were viewed in Rome - pretty much solely as incubators for their husband's male heir.

There are always exceptions of course (as Boudiga all too briefly taught the Romans), but women were not considered to be part of the Roman men's political world any more than they were part of the military one, and while some of them no doubt shared many confidences with their husbands, it's highly unlikely that a fourteen year old girl, even one married to an relatively important man, would be invited to a power-brokering meeting! This is one of many problems with telling a story in first person PoV. If one of the three characters telling this tale in round-robin fashion isn't present, we can't know what happened, so you have to have women going to meetings to which, realistically, they would never have been invited, and there goes suspension of disbelief.

The blurb (which I know typically has nothing to do with the author thank goodness!) tells us: "Always suppressing their own desires for the good of Rome, each must fulfill her role." This is a despicable lie! There is no point at which any of these women suppresses her own desires. The entire story is precisely about them yielding to desire at every opportunity! It would have been truly boring otherwise. I do agree, though, that Livia is "astute." She's definitely my favorite. The other two are too juvenile and self-absorbed to be interesting.

It's thoroughly dishonest though, to claim that Julia has to deny "her craving for love and the pleasures of the flesh" Far from it! She indulges shamelessly, although her purportedly erotic scenes with her husband are really not very interesting. "Can they survive Rome's deadly intrigues?" Of course they can! What a dumb question! Why do blurb writers always write such patently absurd questions? Of course the hero succeeds. Of course the quest is successful! Of course true love wins! Of course the villain is brought to book. Do the blurb writers really think we're on tenterhooks because we don't know exactly how this will pan out ninety-nine times out of a hundred - especially given that this is historical fiction about real people, all of whom we know the fate?!

I ended up getting about 30% into this before I gave up on it because it was simply not interesting. Aside from Livia, the other two girls had nothing going on in their heads but sex and guys, which was ridiculous. Even Livia was really nothing more than an appendage of her husband, with no thoughts going on in her head that were not directly tied to him or how much she missed him. It wasn't credible and it was insulting to women. These women appeared to have no friends, no interaction with other women (not even the female slaves!), and nothing on their minds other than men, which means they failed the Bechdel test dismally!

I remain convinced that the real women who bore these names were a hell of a lot more interesting, had a lot more going on in their minds, and would have made a much more interesting story than these three fictional versions ever could, so I cannot in good faith recommend this as a worthy read unless you honestly enjoy books about shallow and unappealing women.

If You Have a Hat by Gerald Hawksley

Rating: WORTHY!

If You Have a Hat sounds like a Lyle Lovett song title, but it's really a young children's book of fun nonsense. I like children's books to try and offer some educational content if possible, but that doesn't mean there can't be room in your collection for those which are purely crazy, of course. Besides, what is there to do with a smile if you don't put it on your face? It's wasted! Now that's educational!

From the author who brought you Spot the Duck and Don't Juggle Bees neither of which I've read, but both of which seem eminently sensible titles, comes this lengthy (for a children's book) collection of colorful drawings and ridiculous rhymes. It begins, "If you have a hat, put it on your head. If you have a bedbug, tuck him up in bed." I'm frankly not entirely convinced of the wisdom of that latter idea, but definitely hats are in order if you live under a sweltering sun. It would have been nice if the bed bug had been gender neutral, as indeed their choice of victim is, but it's a minor issue in a full book of fun - minor as long as you're aware it's an issue.

You can't argue with the good advice to help seeds grow into flowers, and to build towers with bricks. Who doesn't want to build a tower when faced with a pile of Lego bricks? I mean, come on, they're asking for it! We get boats and Band-Aids, cameras and chickadees (okay so maybe it wasn't. Leave my alliteration alone!), music and hippos. This author seems very fond of hippos, by and large. Especially large. But at least they're clean hippos.

No one can argue that music requires dancing. Even if you're laying in bed listening to this story you can dance with your fingertips or try to dance your tongue on the end of your nose, right? But not on someone else's nose. That's stretching things too far! Apple pie and clouds in the sky, airplanes and fun and games and you have yourself a great romp for kids. I enjoyed this immensely, and I recommend it.

Night Owls by Lauren M Roy

Rating: WORTHY!

The vampire bookseller! Yes, that was what lured me in! I picked this up on spec from the local library (bless their little cotton pages!). Books are just like relationships, and if you've been bit as many times as I have by book blurbs, you tend to get book-shy, especially if it's a book in a genre that you're not given to reading. In my case, I am not a fan of vampire stories, but once in a while one comes along which shakes things up enough to keep it interesting. This was such a novel.

This is clearly intended to be the start of a series, and I am not inclined to follow series because they are way too repetitive and uninventive. They're a really lazy way of writing novels, and I have little time for them, with few exceptions, so this will be the only one of this series that I read.

The basic premise is that there are two factions on the side of good. One is Valerie McTeague, the bookseller, and the other is Elly Garret, who has been trained by a member of an order which destroys vampires. To make it really interesting, there are tow kinds of vampire,s and this come right out of Vampire Academy. I liked the first couple of novels, and I loved the movie, but I went off the series pretty quickly because Le Stupide was strong with that one. So Elly is really Rose, but there is no Lissa.

There are strigoi and moroi here, but the bad guys are called 'jackals' or 'creeps' - and at least they have some motivation for their behavior here, although how the two groups a differentiated into each class of vampire is a mystery. They are, and we're expected to accept it on faith. One group is suave, sophisticated and trope vampire, the other is stinky, primitive, savage, and low-life. It's really just class warfare, royalty v. peons. Differentiation between good and bad vampires is nonsensical to me, and represents nothing more than a ridiculous modern trope added to vampire lore for the benefit of undiscriminating teen readers.

Trope runs rife through this story: vampires live in hives and are allergic to holy water, can't cross hallowed ground, can't come out in daylight, are allergic to silver, allergic to holy water, and can be killed with a wooden stake - but it has to be Rowan wood! Why, I have no idea. None of this lore makes any sense to me (and isn't explained here) so any attempts to put vampires on a pseudo-scientific basis by talking of virally-transmitted disease and what-not, is bullshit. Vampires are cold (yet move superfast?!), they have no heartbeat, no blood circulation, so how does their body receive nutrition from the blood they drink? By magic! That's the only "explanation" so as far as I'm concerned, paranormal writers can shove their bullshit science! It makes no sense, so don't insult me by trying to make it make sense. Just tell the freaking story!

This author does bring in one or two new items (at least new to me, maybe these are ripped off from elsewhere, too. I can't say), such as a magical element, whereby "runes" are used as wards against vampire incursion, but they're pretty useless since they really don't hold the vampires back. The driver in this story is that there's a magical book which the bad vamps want, and which has fallen into the possession of the good guys. Why this book is not immediately destroyed is the biggest plot hole in the entire novel. It is of no value in fighting the vamps, so there's absolutely no reason whatsoever for keeping it around, Burn the book and everything that follows, including death and destruction, will never happen. Obviously this is why the book isn't burned (there would have been no novel otherwise!), but it made no sense and was a huge disbelief inducement! If you're going to do this, please find a reason why it cannot be destroyed, don't just let this hang out unquestioned, and unexplained!

That said, I liked many of the characters in the novel, especially Val and Elly, who I thought might become an item, but who did not. I liked that the story moved fast and there wasn't any vampire worship going on. I liked that Val wasn't a thousand years old and absurdly falling for some teen-aged guy. She wasn't and she didn't. There was no dumb-ass romance here, for which I was ludicrously grateful. I liked the two succubi (yeah, it's that kind of kitchen sink story). A novel about them might be worth reading, but this is about this novel, and was it worthy of my time? Overall, and despite the issues, yes to me it was and on that basis I recommend it.

Escape From Witchwood Hollow by Jordan Elizabeth

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"He'd said he if was going to have a sweat suit, he might as well make it lime green." The 'if' and the 'he' at the start are the wrong way around!
"She could have attempted to look more interested, as lease for her boyfriend's sake." At least for her boyfriend's sake, not 'as lease'!
“We are yonder!” - This is like saying, "We are over there" - it doesn't make any sense!
"Drudging memories and heartaches never helped anyone." I think this should be 'dredging' not drudging, which would mean doing menial work.

This was a strange novel, and one which included multiple flashbacks, of which I am not a fan. I confess though, that it grew on me as I read on, and in the end I came to like it and consider it a worthy read despite an issue or two here and there. It reads very much like a first novel, but that's not a bad thing. I found a few errata which are listed on my website.

The story begins in 2001, a month or two after the World Trade Center came down in New York City. Having lost her parents in the disaster, the rather exotically named Honoria has moved from the city to stay with relatives, so she's the trope orphan starting a new school, but refreshingly, the novel doesn't focus on that. Instead, it focuses on Witchwood Hollow, a mysterious area of woodland close to Honoria's new home, where a witch is said to hold sway, trapping people inescapably amongst the trees.

Just as I was really getting into Honoria's story, I was ripped away from it twice, once back to the late nineteenth century, and then again back to the late seventeenth. This annoyed me to begin with, because I wanted to follow Honoria, but eventually the story came back to her. I still hold doubts that this was the best way to tell this story. It was somewhat confusing, switching back and forth, and the past was nowhere near as interesting as the present in this story, but I learned to live with it, and the twisted ending was unexpected and better than the usual ending you might find in a story like this.

The story follows Honoria's increasing interest in Witchwood Hollow and her confusion as to whether the witch legend is real or simply some sort of country-bumpkin ignorance. Honoria was an intriguing character with a little bit too much of an interest in Leon for my taste. I find it sad that young females seem to be doomed to get attached to a guy in these stories. I find it especially irritating when the romance takes over the story!

In this case the romance - while lacking credibility - occupied such a small part of the story that it wasn't a deal breaker for me. I would find it refreshing to read a story where they're just good friends for a change. Not every girl in every story needs to be validated by a man, believe it or not! In Honoria's case, I was willing to Grant this a bye because she did have enough of a load to bear, and it seemed possibly reasonable that she would seek attachments to people, given that she had just suffered her parents dying horribly.

Honoria isn't the smartest person in the world, but she isn't the dumbest either, so this was nice. I did find myself cringing at one or two of her ideas though, such as when she saw a part of a coin from yesteryear stuck in the dirt, her thought was: "Someone had worked hard for that sliver; it might have kept them from starving one day." It's hardly likely it kept anyone from starving given that it was evidently never spent, and got lost in the dirt instead! At another juncture, she thought "he might catch pneumonia in the cold water" but no one ever caught pneumonia from cold water. Pneumonia is caught from an assortment of sources, none of which are H₂O. However, people do talk like that in real life, so I can't hold these things against her.

I thought Leon's girlfriend's reaction to Honoria at one point to be far too extreme. There had been nothing in the story to this point to merit her outburst or indicate she had been leading up to it. When she yelled, "You whore! You think it's funny trying to kill Leon?" it took me out of the story because it was so out of place. As I read on through the story I saw no point to that antagonism. I think it should have been skipped. Not every teen story needs to have a bitch!

Other than these relatively trivial complaints, the writing was well done, easy to read, and it was interesting. I enjoyed this story very much and I'd recommend it.

Magical Beasts Jigsaw Book: Four Jigsaws From the Land of Magick

Rating: WORTHY!

There's no author listed for this book. It's a big, heavy, fat, sturdy book which has only four leaves, each of which is very thick and which contains a jigsaw which you can pop out and take your time rebuilding. The puzzles are quite simple, with few (~20 or so), quite large pieces so young children (not too young, mind, the pieces are undoubtedly very tasty!) can have a blast. I would have loved a book like this when I was a kid.

The pieces are brightly colored, and each jigsaw is cut exactly the same way, so that you could even mix up all the pieces and make some wonderfully psychedelic art work. On the back of each jigsaw puzzle page is a bit of a story about magical adventures, so there's reading to be had, too. The new book is rather expensive however, so I'd recommend finding this used somewhere. I recommend it for fun, and let's face it, that's all you really need!

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith aka Joanne Rowling

Rating: WARTY!

I had no interest in reading JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, but when I learned that she was writing private dick stories under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith which happens to be my real name (no, I'm kidding), I decided to see what she was up to. I was a big fan of the Harry Potter series, which were full of plot holes, but very entertaining reading, and while I realized that this novel would be nothing whatsoever like that, I was curious to see how she would tackle a non-fantasy work for grown-ups. All my reading has suggested she has no intention whatsoever of going back into fantasy, so if you want to continue to read Rowling, you have to take this stuff, or go without!. Having attempted to read (or more accurately, listen to) the first of the series, I have decided I'd rather go without. I made it about twenty-five percent in an abandoned it as a lost cause.

This audio book was read badly by Robert Glenister, which didn't help. The main character, saddled with the absurd name of Cormoran Strike, is supposed to be from Cornwall, but Glenister's impersonation of him was literally all over the map, and very little of that meander was in Cornwall. His voicing of the other characters left much to be desired, too. Even looking past this, to the actual writing however, you can see that it's not ready for prime time in the adult world. Rowling's overblown prose, which worked so well in Harry Potter and was charming and amusing to read, is out of place here and bogs the story down. This needed to be a lot tighter and more dynamic.

The author has brought not a thing to the genre that's new. Down at heel investigator? Check. Too-perfect super-efficient assistant? Check. Suicide that's really a murder? Check. This dick is the last option for the grieving relatives? Check. Why would I want to read this un-inventive boilerplate story? It's all been done before.

On top of this, Rowling seems to have a poor opinion of the British police forces. They're a bunch of clueless losers and screw-ups, it would seem. A celebrity falls to her death from her apartment (aka flat in Britain), a man is seen on the street, running from the scene. A neighbor sees a man fleeing the building after an argument, and yet the police rule it a suicide without a second thought? I call a huge steaming pile of bullshit on that one!

I feel bad for Rowling for being in the position of trying to write other stuff after the run-away success she had with Potter. It's an unenviable position to be in, so kudos to her for trying, but what's with the pseudonym? Everyone knows its her, so there's no secret here. I could have seen the benefit of choosing a pseudonym if she moved from children's fantasy to adult-oriented fiction and wanted to segregate her first foray from what went before, but since she already put out very adult-oriented fiction under her own name before this series began, why suddenly take a pseudonym? It made no sense to me. I hereby vow that I, Robert Galbraith, will never adopt a pseudonym. I'm kidding again. I'm not really Robert Galbraith. Really.

Seriously, I can't recommend this novel based on what I heard of it.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Rating: WARTY!

Note to authors - Dark Matter is a title which is way-the-hell over-used. You might want to find something new and original for your own novel rather than jump on this over-laden band wagon.

I became interested in reading something by Blake Crouch after watching the TV show, Wayward Pines. When I saw this one pop up on Net Galley I jumped at the chance of an advance review copy because it gave me just that opportunity. Not that this is connected with Wayward Pines, but it was a golden chance to read something by this author. The problem was that this novel started out at such an achingly slow pace that I simply could not get into it. I became bored waiting for something interesting and new to happen. This story needed to get up and running fast, but it stumbled and dragged, weighed down by too much exposition.

A guy leaves his wife and son one evening to stop briefly at a bar where a friend of his is celebrating, and despite the fact that the guy takes a different route home from his usual one, he is nevertheless stalked and kidnapped by a man with a gun. When he wakes up later, several months of his life are missing. Sounds interesting, right? It wasn't. Maybe it had the opportunity to be interesting, but it moved at such a glacial pace that I ceased caring what had happened to this guy and gave up on finding out. Every time I thought something was going to break loose, out came more exposition, and meandering, and self-examination, and on and on. Really, I cannot honestly recommend this novel.

Infinitas by David N Sebastian

Rating: WARTY!

This advance review copy novel was a DNF for me. It started out promisingly, a fantasy romp and a quest, but there was a truly oddball mixture of modern English and medieval which kept tripping me up, and taking me out of suspension of disbelief. I'm not a fan of stories where the author tries to write them in Chaucerian English, so I don't mind a bit of modern idiom here and there, but when it's a mix of both ancient and too modern, it's really a jolt.

One minute they would be saying, 'tis (but without the apostrophe) and the next they would be saying 'butthole' which made me feel like I was reading a juvenile toilet-humor story for which I have no time. In short order I was reading terms like "All righty then" and "Crack of dawn" along with words like 'Busboy' (in a tavern!). It didn't work. I think the biggest problem was the level at which it was written - it felt to me like middle-grade whereas the characters felt like young adults, so it was mismatched there, too.

When the wood sprites showed up, my interest perked up a bit because I thought the story might be improving, but their humor began to grate, and they were gone pretty quickly. I didn't know whether to feel relieved that none of them joined the quest, so I didn't have to deal with their inane pranks anymore, or saddened because they had brought a spark to a story which badly needed one. It had already begun to set like drying clay.

There were moments of unintended humor like when one character says to another, "You're a Druid Harry" which made me feel like I was reading Harry Potter again, and not in a good way. This was a fantasy, yet there was a heavy coating of Christianity overlaid on it, which struck me as out of place for this particular story, as did a thumbscrew which "goes crackle snap pop." Seriously?

One of the characters but "Coal on her eyes" I doubt it. Kohl maybe, but coal? I had to quit reading this because it just wasn't working. I can't take a story seriously which doesn't even take itself seriously, and I can't recommend this one.

Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Rating: WARTY!

This novel is aimed at middle-grade readers. I requested an advance review copy because it looked interesting and invited me in with this: "As the fifteenth anniversary of September 11th nears, Towers Falling explores the thought-provoking question of how kids born after 2001 can find meaning in events they have no personal memory of, but which still have a monumental impact on their families, educators, and communities." The problem was that by the time I got to fifty percent through this story, the twin towers had been mentioned a sum total of pretty much one time. The rest of the story was about Deja settling in as a new student at school. There was nothing new here, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the twin towers. I failed to see the point of another 'new kid on the block' story which has nothing new to bring to the table.

While technically this was well-written, from the point of view of telling the story it claimed to be telling, it went nowhere - not in the first half of the novel, and by that time I had lost all interest in reading any more about a rather self-centered main character who had nothing new or interesting to say. I can't recommend this novel base don what I read.

Lost in the Garden by Kerry McQuaide

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the second of two Kerry McQuaide young children's books I've read very recently. They were both charming and gorgeously illustrated. I particularly liked the photo-montage in this one, showing how the duo looked from the day they met in the neonatal ward, to their friendship as Midge started walking. They're part of a Midge and Moo series and in this one, the two of them get lost in the garden - duhh! Toddler Midge and her plush toy Moo (refreshingly a cow rather than a teddy bear) are out and about getting some fresh air, but where is Moo? Ulp! As Scully and Mulder (yes, there's a fox in this story!) might say, "The Moo is out there somewhere," and Midge is going to find her or diaper trying.....

The search is on. Is that Moo behind the garden gate, or is it a sneaky nod to Alice in Wonderland? Told in poetry, this book is fun, and you can doubtlessly have more fun with your kid searching for their own toy. I think it's appropriate for Valentine's day that you need tulips to seal the deal! I recommend this as an entertaining book for young children.

Stand Up and Whistle by Phyllis Perry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a very short (less than 90 pages!), well-written and educational story about two young girls who embark upon a quest to save some local wildlife. I had some issues with the story, but overall, I consider it a worthy read for the age group, which is middle grade.

Out to photograph prairie dogs for a school research paper, Jeannie and Mary Joe discover that the place they are photographing is going to be leveled and the prairie dogs (which are of course not dogs, but a form of burrowing ground squirrel related to squirrels and ground hogs) are scheduled to be exterminated. They decide to do something about it. I liked that the author evidently knows what she's talking about when she describes the prairie dogs, so it's very educational in that regard, and also in how to make a an official and grown-up protest about a problem.

This story was realistic in many ways. I would have expected no less given that the author is a resident of Colorado and there was a scandalous business from which this novel is no doubt taken, regarding the wanton slaughtering of prairie dogs, and the building of malls and the shameless, but predictable behavior of degenerate local government officials.

The evidently Nazi-trained City officials of Castle Rock in Colorado aided and abetted the extermination of a large prairie dog colony with poison gas pellets, but it's not only prairie dogs which suffer from this chemical warfare. The annihilation was done in spite of offers to relocate the animals and the city officials lied about it, as though they could not wait to see the animals bleed out.

This story seems to be heavily-based on that real life massacre, but it has a happier ending - although it's not always roses, and so is more realistic than pure fiction in how it plays out. There is also a side story about confidence building in Jeannie's best friend Mary Jo. That came with some baggage as I shall discuss, but I liked that the story showed the girls, particularly Jeannie, the main protagonist, to be thoughtful, smart, capable, and willing to work and research. Jeannie was brave in facing the "bad guys" - the property developers. She was a commendable protagonist.

I think this will be enjoyable for age-appropriate readers, but I have to add as an adult that there were some problems with the story which some kids might pick up on. I know my kids would have. The first is the rather hypocritical stance of the girls, who are not vegetarians (as judged by their consuming sloppy joes!), yet here are fussing and cooing over these cute prairie dogs. it's not just cute mammals which are threatened by humans. I felt the girls were hypocritical in that they give not a thought to the daily and routine slaughter of the cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens and fish that they themselves eat! I'm not going to fuss over this because the story has other virtues, but this kind of thing is worth keeping in mind from a writer's point of view.

Another thing which bothered me was when Jeannie went to protest the poisoning along with some other people, her parents did not accompany her! I felt that was wrong, and implausible. Either that, or it portrayed her parents as callously hands-off. Maybe kids will not notice this, and I know on the one hand it showed that Jeannie was strong and willing to go it alone, which was commendable, but it made her parents look really bad and uncaring, to me. If they'd had some important function they had to attend and could not get away from, then it would have been more realistic than just simply abandoning their daughter to her fate!

One last thing is nothing to do with the author, and everything to do with Big Publishing's longstanding cluelessness when it comes to book covers and illustrations. It's long been my theory that very nearly all book cover designers have no clue what's in the book they are photographing or illustrating for, and this one was a prime example. In the story, it's made quite clear that Mary Jo is overweight, and she's outright described as "fat" at one point. This is commendable, not that she's overweight, but that we're not being fed a trope diet of runway models for characters in a story! So far so good.

There is the trope 'let's ditch the eyeglasses and give you a quick makeover, and you'll be beautiful and popular', which I didn't like at all. I think it's the wrong message to send to young people, and especially to send to young girls, who are already bombarded with those shameless messages from the cosmetic industry. The right message to send is that if you're eating healthily and exercising some, then you're just fine as you are. We should not be sending messages saying you need to be pretty to be worth anything. On this occasion, I was willing to overlook that because it was a minor portion of a story which had other important messages in abundance.

That said, neither the cover nor any of the books interior illustrations gave any indication whatsoever that Mary Jo was even mildly overweight, which was disgraceful. I don't hold this against the author. She had done her job in this story. It was the artists and illustrators who sold out to popular norms. This is why I will never let anyone other than myself publish anything I write!

But that's a personal peeve. Aside from the illustrations, and with a nod to the issues I raised, I think this novel is a worthy read for the readership it's aimed at, and I recommend it.

Grayling's Song by Karen Cushman

Rating: WARTY!

This is a story of young Grayling, daughter of a hedge witch who is called back to the house from her outdoor chores one morning to discover that her home is burning down and her mother is in process of turning into a tree! She has to launch her unwilling self upon a quest to discover the evil being who did this.

Grayling is not a hero and does not want this quest. She has no magical powers as far as she knows, but perhaps the title will give you a clue as to what she can do. Accompanied by people she picks up along the way, mostly cantankerous or weird, and a shape-shifting mouse, Grayling sets off on her quest.

This is a very short novel, hardly more than a hundred pages, but although I started it in good humor enjoying the writing, about halfway through, it began to fall into a boring rut, and though I read on some more, I reached a point where I really could not drum up any more enthusiasm for reading further. One more "belike" or "mayhap" would have put me over the edge! I know we strive for realism in historical fiction, but there is such a thing as too much realism!

So the story, which had been originally quite inventive (the mouse was fun, and somewhat reminiscent of Taggle the cat in Erin Bow's novel Plain Kate which I reviewed on my blog back in June 2014), became bogged down in asides which were uninteresting to me, and which I felt failed to move the story along. Despite the bright beginning, when what I read is considered overall, I cannot recommend this as a worthy read, but I think this author bears watching for future stories.

A Day With Moo by Kerry McQuaide

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first volume I've read of The Adventures of Midge and Moo series. It's very short, but it's very sweet. Midge is adorable (and so is Moo), and it's nice to see a kid hang out with a toy that isn't a teddy bear, for a change. Moo is a plush cow, and is quite obviously Midge's best friend.

The two of them do everything together, but I have to say that Moo does seem to carry more than her fair share of the blame when things go wrong! In other words, Midge milks this cow for all she's worth! Midge isn't all take and no give however, so when they snuggle under the covers at night, everything is peas and quiet...!

I recommend this as a worthy read, especially at this time of year when you want to settle down and cuddle with a fun read and sleepy kid(s).