Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan

Rating: WARTY!

In 1859, the year another Charles published On the Origin of Species... Charles Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in installments. Funny how the wheel turns full circle, isn't it?! Now we have series.... Darwin's book began, "It was the best of species, the worst of species..." - no, wait, that doesn't sound right...! But it does end, "It is a far, far better mutation that I get, than I have ever known; it is a far, far better species that I go to than I have ever become." No, that doesn't sound right either. Never mind....

This story is a retelling of that one (Dickens's not Darwin's!), but set in a parallel world where there is light and dark magic, and that's the problem - it makes no sense at all since magic plays no part in the story except as a faint background image - like a watermark in paper. It's sad, because I liked the way the magic worked here and how it was split into light and dark, and what each meant. That was what both attracted me to, and drew me into the story to begin with, but the magic itself really plays no part other than to demarcate the haves (the light, of course) from the have-nots.

The sheer lack of sense in this supposedly magical world was disturbing. Of course a magical world is inherently senseless, but usually an author has something going on to set out some ground rules. Here there was really nothing. I mean, why did no one ever use magic to do anything other than parlor tricks? It made no sense! How could a rag-tag bunch of people with swords defeat powerful magicians? It made no sense. Why did people fight with swords in a thoroughly modern world (trains, automobiles, cell phones, TV, etc). It made no sense.

There really was no magic (read into that what you will!). It was practically never used, which begs the question as to what purpose it served, and by that, I mean not what it served in the novel itself (where it did nothing), but what it served in the plot other than the purpose I mentioned. Why introduce it at all if it's going nowhere? It becomes merely a bait and switch, and I was really disappointed to be tricked into thinking that this great set-up had to portend great magic to come, only to discover that in the end, it delivered no magic, and nothing depended upon it.

The story could equally have been set in a sci-fi world where there are humans and aliens, one of which species (see I was right!) is the underdog. Or during the US civil war, or in any "society' where there is a sharp division of some sort. I'm tired of novels about magicians where the magicians are essentially powerless and constrained and confined. It's ridiculous. It also makes no sense that there would be a council of magicians. Why would anyone who could literally perform magic ever allow themselves to be subject to a council?! Now there, in that conflict, would be a story.

So what story did I get? I got Lucie Manette, a light magician from the dark magician's city, alternately being strong or weak, seemingly on a whim, which grew quickly annoying. Lucie, you got some 'splainin' to do! In the end she came off as short-sighted and stupid and worse, she never improved. I don't want to read stories about dumb, unmotivated, thoughtless women - or men for that matter. I don't mind if they start out that way and wise-up, but to see a person going through life never getting anywhere and never trying, and failing and never learning from it, and making dumb decisions, and willingly allowing herself to be trapped by a cruel and abusive Sidney Carton clone and accepting it meekly, is depressing. The Carton clone made even less sense. He threw Lucie over a hundred feet down into the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge the first chance he got, and we're supposed to see this evil, abusive brute turn into a hero? It doesn't work - not in the way it's told here.

The only time Lucie comes through is by means of passive aggression. It's hardly hardly heroic! Despite my issue with the swords, given that we had them, I did want to see her cut loose with one, but she never did. Why then give her a sword, make her grab a sword like it's a safety blanket during an escape, and tell us clearly that she's a great sword fighter if she's never going to fight? It's exactly the same problem with the magic: why have it if it's never going to get used? That was another problem: why tell so much if it's a no show?

If you're magician and you want to rescue someone, you do it with magic, not by starting a protest! Unless of course your story is set in India during the revolution. Which this was not. But it would have made more sense. Why recreate a story which was originally set in England and France, and move it bodily to the USA? Because everyone else does? Because Big Publishing™ doesn't care about your story if it's not set in the USA? Because US teens won't read stories that are not set in the USA? Screw them. For goodness sakes, write the story that needs writing, not the one you think the US publishing industry is most likely to offer you a contract for.

Since this was clearly a clone of Dickens's novel, I went into it already knowing the ending, so clearly the suspenseful part of the story could only come from how we got there and perhaps from wondering if the ending would get a twist. I've never read A Tale of Two Cities, but I do know how it begins and how it ends. The problem is that all we got was a vacillating Lucie who we're supposed to view as heroic, yet who quite clearly had no backbone whatsoever. There was more than one point, but one point in particular, where she could easily have turned this around and saved lives and saved the world from falling into chaos, and she shrunk from it every time. We're told she is an expert sword fighter, and by that means she could have saved the life of a woman whom she liked, who was a moderate, but she hid instead and watched the woman die.

By simply owning the truth, Lucie could have changed the world, but she hid and shrank away, and turned away, and ran, and buckled under repeatedly, and she made people die and she made me sick. I did not like her, nor any other character in the story, and her limp and retarded behavior was nauseating to watch when it was repeated time after time, day after day. I can understand an author liking an historical novel so well that she wants to pay homage to it in a rewrite, but I think the problem here is that the author was too close to her source and didn't want to let any of it go (which is no doubt why we had swords!). I think if she'd let it go and written the story based on her own outline and didn't worry about what the Dickens would happen, it might have been better for it. While I was grateful for a chance to read an advance review copy of this novel, I cannot in good faith recommend this as a worthy read.

The Tiniest Tumbleweed by Kathy Peach

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a delight. It's a well-written story, charmingly illustrated by Alex Lopez, about a tiny tumbleweed and a tiny sparrow who learn that they don't have to be 'all that' to be everything they really need to be.

Growing up on the diminutive side of the family tree, Tiny Tumbleweed isn't sure she'll ever grow big, and baby sparrow is sure he won't, but they don't give up, they give all and work hard, and soon they're growing and feeling useful. They'll never be as big as their brothers and sisters, but they will be big and they will be useful. The tumbleweed shelters the sparrows, the sparrows distribute the seeds, and it all works for both of them.

This little book was very readable on my phone, and so will undoubtedly work well on a tablet computer or in a print version. The illustrations are fun and compliment the text well, and the colors are bright and appealing. There are several pages of useful text at the end aimed at educational use. These pages don't reveal the scientific names of the species, which is FYI, Passer domesticus for the house sparrow.

There are many species of tumbleweed, including invasive species, and they really don't depend on sparrows to distribute the seeds - hence the 'tumble weed' part of their life cycle - the tumbling is a form of wind dispersal in a way, because the weed is blown by the wind, and the seeds (or propagules) drop off as it rolls. Sparrows really have very little to do with it, but it makes for a nice story, so I'm not going to discredit if for that because birds do play a roll in seed dispersal with many other plants. As it is, this is a great children's story and I recommend it.

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Rating: WARTY!

This is book one of the 'Sky Chasers' series (sky chasers? Seriously? Could you be any more pretentious?!), and it's one I will definitely not be following. It's not just because of the reading by Ilyana Kadushin and Matthew Brown, it's the story itself which was far too juvenile and trope for my taste. Admittedly it was not aimed at me, but I can't imagine my kids finding this entertaining either, and they're within its age range.

The first sickening problem is that there's a love triangle of the most clichéd kind: one girl, two guys, one of whom is an old, trusted friend, the other of whom is a bad boy. How utterly pathetic this is. Seriously. Any girl who ditches a trusted love for an unknown jerk without having an extremely good reason is a moron, and I have no interest in reading about her in even one volume, let alone the trope three volume deal for which I blame others as much as I blame money-grubbing Big Publishing™. We're explicitly told that Kieran is everything Waverly could ever want in a husband. Yet we're evidently lied to about that.

Worse than this, though, is that this is all that's on the girl's mind. It's like she cannot entertain a single thought without it being about her man. I have no interest in any female character who has no interest in anything but male characters. They're shallow and boring. The female in question is 15-year-old Waverly, who is traveling on a generation ship along with a sister ship to colonize a new planet. No explanation is given for the journey - not in the portion to which I listened, which was about 25%. What is wrong with Earth? Why is this solution considered better than, say, terraforming and colonizing Mars or Venus? Who knows. It just is.

I'd grant the author the smarts to see that this is the only kind of deep space journey that makes sense - sending two ships - but the only reason she has two ships featured in the story apparently, is to have one go rogue. On one of the ships, the 'generation' part of 'generation ship'; evidently fails - meaning that for some reason, the sister ship, The New Horizon, has been unable to conceive any children, and they are now demanding females from the Empyrean so they can breed new crew to continue the journey. There's no reason given as to why they feel this needs to be done immediately as opposed to the Empyrean, say, sending over a few young adults to help out. Instead it evidently leads to civil war. The story was pathetic and made no sense, and I couldn't stand to listen to any more of it, so I quit. Life is too short to waste it on bad novels!

Spooky Tales Vol 1 by Bill Wood, Vicky Town

Rating: WARTY!

This was a library audio book I picked-up when I was going through my audio fairy tales binge recently, and it was awful. Bill Wood and Vicky Town takes turns telling moderately scary stories, but they were really not that great, and the voices they used for reading were just tedious. Kids might be less discriminating, but I don't want my kids to be less discriminating when it comes to good stories. I cannot recommend these.

Counting to Ten and Sharing My Easter Eggs by David Chuka

Rating: WORTHY!

Okay, so I lied! Here's another book about Easter. The print version evidently comes with a free coloring book, which is always great whether you're a kid or not. Come on, don't tell me you've never colored a page in a kids book somewhere or other. It's been a while since I did one, so I'll get right on that as soon as I'm done here. Unfortunately there is nothing extra with the ebook, not even an Easter egg.

This is the third of David Chuka's books for kids that I've reviewed. I didn't like I Love my Dog which I reviewed in decmeber of 2015, but I did like I Love Baby Animals which I reviewed in August of that year, so now he's batting a .666, which is an interesting number with Easter on the horizon!

This book is refreshingly diverse, although there are so many people of color that you can scarcely see any pale faces in there, which is overdoing it a bit. The way to set things straight isn't to swing the pendulum way over to the other side, but to stop it in the middle and leave it there, otherwise it's only going to swing right back and hit you in the face! That said, this book was a delight.

Mom has, perhaps unwisely, given this little girl a basket of Easter eggs to share with her friends, but bless her little cotton Easter bunny, she does indeed share them, and counts them out as she goes. There is a math formula for adding sequential numbers:

Sum from 1 to n =	n(n + 1)
	2

but this may be a bit advanced for this audience! Substituting 10 for n above though, gives us 55. FIFTY FIVE EGGS?!!! I want some!

The story pursues her distribution of all of those yummy eggs, with colorful pictures and simple rhymes, encouraging children to read it over and count along. If you have some eggs to hand - plastic, hard boiled, or even small toys or Lego's or something, you can distribute then the same way among your kid's plush teddy bears and other cuddly toys. I think this is a charming way to teach counting. But for goodness sake, don't forget to brush afterwards!

The Beauty Volume 1 by Jeremy Haun, Jason A Hurley

Rating: WORTHY!

This volume (an advance review copy for which I am grateful!), collects the first six individual issues and seems like it could have been made for me, someone who rails against the obsession humans have, particularly in this media-soaked age, with physical beauty and who cares what lies beneath - with the emphasis on lies. I wish I had thought of this idea!

Yet another sexual disease gets loose in the world, but in this case, people actively try to get infected, because what it does is confer beauty upon those infected - youthful good looks, taut, fresh healthy skin, lush hair. In short, everything TV, movies, and magazines look for in actors and models. Very soon, this disease is no longer considered a disease. It's called simply 'The Beauty' and it has spread to almost every adult on the planet as this story begins, in a world where there are very few people of color, curiously enough. That was my only problem with this story.

Detectives Vaughn and Foster, one of whom is infected, the other not, are called to an apparent incident of self-immolation on a subway train. The curious thing is that it looks like the passenger burned from the inside out. Soon more and more of these victims are found, and they were all infected with The Beauty. This disease, it seems, has a long-term consequence, and now if a cure is not found, the world is going to burn.

The story is by Jeremy Haun and Jason Hurley, and is tight and paced, moving things along at a very readable clip. The art is by Haun and is excellent, although be warned it is adult in nature, with nudity and graphic violence. I recommend this as an entertainingly worthy read.

The Last Girl by Joe Hart

Rating: WARTY!

It was funny to start reading this one (note there are several novels with this same title; this one is by Joe Hart, and is the start of the inevitable YA dystopian trilogy I'm sorry to report). I was woken up by a massive crack of thunder and a heavy rainstorm with flash flood warnings on my phone, and having had a decently early night, I was no longer sleepy enough to doze off readily, so I started on the next book on my Net Galley list, which was this one, and it began with the lead character waking to a rain shower! I guess I liked the synergy, because I proceeded to blitz through the first 20% in short order. This means it moved and entertained, but I have to confess that a lot of it made little sense to me, and while I was leaning towards favorably rating this for a long time, there were, in the end, too many plot holes and problems. What really let it down for me was the ending.

The basic plot is young adult dystopian (are there any dystopians that are not young adult these days?! LOL!) but at least it's not told in first person. That counted for a lot with me, and it was the only thing which prevented me from DNF'ing this story once it started going downhill. It's set in a near future when a virus has evidently culled the female population dramatically, and the few precious youthful ones that are left are kept under guard in a facility where they're not even allowed pets for fear of disease. All the guards and the administration of the facility are male and they have no problem with institutionalized violence which is bizarre and, I have to add, not credible given how precious these girls are supposed to be. That said, this is a pretty decent microcosm of how women are far too often viewed in this world: they're useless if they're not young and pretty.

There appears to be only one older female in residence, and she's the teacher, but the students have only the one textbook, which is nothing more than a history of the plague and the revolution which followed, and which overthrew the US government. Clearly the author is using this as a very convenient device for info-dumping on the history of these United States of Dystopia, but it's still an info dump and it makes no sense that there would be no other books available, or that they would be simply reading this book over and endlessly over again in class. The reason for the absence of other books, if there is one, is never given, and that's part of the problem - there is far too much in this world which is simply there without rationale or reason, and it really tripped up credibility for me.

There were other issues too: given the total absence of books, where did Zoey get her math education? Given what was ultimately happening to these girls (which was pretty obvious from the start at least in general terms), why did the men bother to give them any kind of education at all? Why not just have them sit around and talk, and do crafts? Clearly education is a good thing and there are far too many places in the world where women are ill-served in that regard, but in this context, it made no sense, especially not given how badly abused these purportedly precious resources are in every other facet of their lives there.

Other things which are more a case of inexplicable presence rather than absence, are not explained either. Not only do we have to explain where the books came from, but more importantly, where is the food coming from and if the world outside the compound has gone to hell, then where is the food being grown? And cigarettes? Who is still making cigarettes for goodness sakes? Where are the batteries coming from? Where is the gasoline and Jet A fuel for the helicopters coming from? Despite info-dumping and, yes, monologuing from the villains at the end, none of this is ever explained. I can see how they might have guns, but where is the ammunition coming from if it was expended in the civil war? And why do they need to carry handguns in the compound given that they have armed guards on the compound walls and the females are outnumbered several to one?! I know women are dangerous, but seriously?!

What really bothered me is that no one inside the compound ever questions any of this. Main character Zoey and her best friend Meeka, who was sadly under-used, were slightly rebellious, but they were nowhere near far enough along that path to accomplish what came later, not to have it spring out of nowhere like it did.

A lot of rationale is missing here, too. When the girls reach twenty-one, they leave the facility, but no one knows where they go or what happens to them, other than that the girls supposedly rejoin their parents and live a happy life. Yet no one seems to question why they needed to be taken from their parents, evidently by force, in the first place, and no explanation for this is offered an no one questions it.

One of the biggest failings here was that the girls are disturbingly incurious about their lives or future. Although at least main character Zoey, and to an extent her best friend, are skeptics, which I appreciated, the girls seem to be very dull and incurious people overall. Only Zoey has any depth at all to her, and she would have been a much more appealing person had she exercised her mind more. I found myself wishing that Meeka was the main character instead of Zoey, but I often find myself liking the side kick character in YA novels than ever I do the main one. I think a lot of YA authors would serve their readers better if they wrote their first draft as they wished, then when going through the editing process, subtly changed the story sufficiently that their main character became a secondary one, and the best friend became the main one. What a wonderful world of YA that would bring us! But that's not going to happen unfortunately.

There is also bullying, even among the handful of girls here, which I thought was not merely overdone but ridiculous, and yet another subtle undermining of female bonding in YA stories. It's pathetic that there has to be an antagonist/bully, just like there has to be a love interest, although in this case, that particular aspect was dealt with differently. I'd be tempted to say it was handled better than most, but it made absolutely no sense whatsoever in the end, so I was forced to ask myself what the point was of even having it, just as I was forced to ask what the point was of the antagonism.

Obviously the sole purpose of the bullying to get Zoey into trouble so she's thrown into solitary which in turn toughened her up which in turn supposedly gave her the backbone to do what she did next, but it really didn't work. The bullying was such an obvious prop that it failed for me. It would have made more sense to me had Zoey done this alone, and it was written as a natural arc of her development, from curiosity to minor rebel to major rebel. This would have been organic and supported what happened later instead of undermining its credibility.

It seems more natural to me that women would bond in a situation like the one we're presented here, where the brutality is extreme. Women tend to handle social situations better than men do and I don't see them infighting in a situation where men are presented as such starkly caricatured bad guys in harsh black and white line drawings. To offset that tired trope (a bit) there is one handicapped girl named Lily, who seems to have some sort of intellectual deficit, but is treated as all the other girls are, although she needs help. Zoey has rather taken her under her wing, but the bullies predictably despise her. It would have been nice to go against trope and have one of the bullies adopt Lily, but that's not this story. It made no more sense that Lily would be treated as she was than it did that the girls would be harvested a the age of twenty one rather than at, say, eighteen, or sixteen, or even thirteen given what was going on here and how little respect the men had for the women as people.

To me, the revolution made no sense either. According to the info dump, hundreds of thousands rose up against the US government and overthrew it eventually, but there's no explanation for why this revolution took place, and none as to why there was not another group of hundreds of thousands rallying in support of the government. Again, explanations go wanting. I'm not someone who demands every detail be worked out. In fact, seeing how poorly some of these YA stories have been 'worked out', I'd much rather the author simply waved a hand at some (hopefully fairly reasonable) explanation and left it at that without digging into details, but, of course, then you get a travesty of a story like Dire Virgins - excuse me, Divergent, which was so laughably unsophisticated it read like a story written by a child.

I kept hoping that this one would not turn out that way, and while for the most part it was well written technically speaking, and left the absurdly gullible and simplistic Divergent in the dust, it also left too much to be desired. The ending was particularly disappointing for me. Just when I was hoping that Zoey would unleash hell on her captors, the story descended into drawn-out monologuing and interludes and piano-playing, and mindless meandering, and pointless chases, and it really fell apart for me. The ending was far too stretched out and didn't leave me satisfied at all. It needed some serious slash and burn to get it into shape I think this author has a future and I wish him all the best, but I cannot recommend this particular volume as a worthy read.

World Tales Volume 6

Rating: WORTHY!

In earlier reviews of volumes in this series, I've railed against the lack of female readers, so I was happy to find one in the library which featured one, and despite my plan to move on from the series, I had to review this. Susan Sarandon's reading of The Firebird (the Russian for that, Zhar-ptitsa sound remarkable!) was elegant and charming. It is based on the Slavic tale, The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa. It has similarities to Stravinsky's opera, but differs in many ways. Archer Ivan and his trusty companion, The Horse of Power, were traveling in the forest one morning when they find a golden feather of the firebird. Despite a warning from the wise horse, Ivan proceeds with his plan to present it to the Tsar in hopes of receiving a reward for the valuable and rare gift. His reward is to be ordered, on pain of death, to capture the entire firebird alive.

This is the start of a downward spiral for poor Ivan, who demonstrates that the joke 'no good deed goes unpunished' really isn't a joke in his world. After he captures the bird, the Tsar demands he bring him a bride - the Princess of Never - but the princess proves to be every bit as feisty as the Tsar, and so Ivan finds himself on a quest to find her bridal dress which is hidden away somewhere odd. The story has a predictably happy ending, but it takes a twist and a turn, and another twist on the way there. This combined with Sarandon's reading made this story wonderful and I recommend it.

I've been a big fan of Raúl Juliá for some time, particularly in his more comedic roles such as in Street Fighter (where I also fell in love with Ming-Na Wen who is now as enjoyable as ever in Marvel's Agents of Shield), Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, The Addams Family, Moon over Parador (featuring the ever excellent Richard Dreyfuss), and also in The Gumball Rally which is where I first saw him. Juliá reads The Monkey People which is a Columbian story about the laziest people in the world, who live by a lake and one day become curious about the puffs of smoke appearing on the other side of the lake.

The smoke is emanating from the pipe of a craftsman who (he claims when they finally meet him) is liberating monkeys from the large leaves of plants by carving them out. These monkeys can do anything a human can, which delights the lake people, who demand the artist gives them all of the monkeys he creates so they can have them do all the work, allowing the people to continue lazing around in their hammocks. This is not a wise decision, as they soon discover!

I recommend both of these stories. Highly entertaining, beautifully read. The music is, as ever, annoying, but not too intrusive.

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Rating: WARTY!

I wonder how many of you realize that it's quite illegal in the USA, on pain of death, to publish a YA novel that's not told in first person? This is only an assumption, mind, but it's the only logical conclusion I can draw from the overwhelming numbers of such cookie-cutter novels I find. I am forced to assume that it's also illegal to publish a dystopian novel which is not part of a trilogy, too, and for the same reason.

This is all driven by Big Publishing who are far more likely to take you on if you can show them that you can bring them a cash cow by making three volumes out of a story that's hardly worth one. I think Amazon bears more than its fair share of blame for this. By forcing book prices down to a standard 99 cents (like a 100,000 word book takes no more effort to produce than a two minute song), it has also forced writers to break a single novel up so instead of one ninety-nine cent volume, the author at least gets a three dollar 'series'. Such is the world we have created for ourselves.

In this trope clichéd effort, Ruby is a 16-year-old girl who is forced into a camp for special kids (in this case, that's kids who have some sort of psychic power). This is all done in a grotesque, and conveniently unexplained fashion. The kids are brutally contained for no reason that's given (not in the portion I listened to which was about one sixth of the novel). Within a few paragraphs (it's hard to judge in an audio book) I had heard more than enough to turn me (and my stomach) against this novel because it was so ridiculous as to be a joke. This trilogy is quite evidently a great parody of something, but I can't figure out what it's parodying. Neither can I recommend a trashy novel like this, so cynically written to take advantage of YA mediocrity and a gullible and undiscerning readership. The narration by Amy McFadden was far too 'Valley Girl' for my taste, which didn't help. This is not a worthy read, and it's cured me of any desire to read or listen to any more novels form this author.

The Fire Chronicle Book Two by John Stephens

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audio book written very much in the vein of the Harry Potter series, and it was read by Jim Dale. This, I think, is where the two-fold problem with it lies. It's too much like Harry Potter. That problem is not improved by having Jim Dale read it! I'm a big fan of Jim Dale and he has a mellifluous voice, but having him read a novel which has such a lot owed to HP made it seem like a rip-off. It's a junior Harry Potter without the better HP qualities, namely that adults could enjoy it as much as kids did.

The first few minutes I was listening to it, I kept having to remind myself that it was not Harry Potter, but that became easier as the story progressed, because this is very much written for middle grade and it was neither entertaining or appealing to me. There was far too much predictability and trope. Just as in HP, Kate, Michael, and Emma (the equivalent of Harry, Ron, and Hermione) are orphans who meet up with an elderly wizard (the equivalent of Dumbledore) and have magical adventures in pursuit of some horcruxes - er magical books.

Despite now starting book two (I haven't read book one, note) and being exposed to all manner of magic and magical creatures in that volume, when these kids meet up with the professor again, and he takes them to another place by traveling through a cupboard, the kids are amazed and surprised that they enter from one location and exit to another place entirely. Which part of "WIZARD" is it they don't get? This told me that these kids are morons, and I had no further wish to read of them. The fact that the professor was an information hog, telling these poor kids next-to-nothing made me detest him as much as I detested the real Dumbledore. This series may interest incurious kids of the eight to ten range, but I can't imagine older kids - who have any kind of imagination at all - finding anything really new or entertaining here. I cannot recommend it.

Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet by HP Wood

Rating: WORTHY!

The novel is copyrighted to Hilary Poole, which I assume is the HP part of the author's name, and of course that’s conjoined with the 'Wood' surname, a classic of fine literature (though I say so myself...!). How could I not want to read this? I was well rewarded for my self-serving gamble.

This novel (which I read in an advance review copy for which I was very grateful!) is evidently set in an alternate timeline, because there was no major outbreak of Bubonic plague on Coney island at the turn of the 20^th century. That particular outbreak took place on the opposite coast, where the idiot governor was in denial and thereby exacerbated the disease outbreak dangerously. Here, the outbreak happens in and around Coney Island and in true human tradition, the "freaks" of the carny are deemed less than human and quarantined for it. It’s easy to see this as a class struggle, but in truth, the poor lived in (slightly) less hygienic conditions than the wealthy, and this is where the rats (and the fleas they carried) congregated, so in one small way it was rational, although it was clearly done for irrational reasons.

The story revolves around two axes which quickly come into alignment. The first of these is a seventeen-year-old girl named Kitty, who is living on the streets in New York despite, just a few days before, being resident at a nice hotel. it takes a while to discover how she came to be in such sorry straits. Another part of the story involves the eponymous curiosity cabinet, which is less of a cabinet (in the way we view it today) and more of a museum. The evil undercurrent of Bubonic plague provides the grease upon which this story slides, creating very much of an 'us against them' mentality, but it’s not quite that black and white, despite there being characters of both hues playing important roles. There are undercurrents all over, none of them in the ocean.

The characters are beautifully defined, and each makes for intriguing, entertaining, and enjoyable reading. There is Zeph, not a midget, but forced to live like one because of an accident. There is Archie, an aging con-man who, despite his complete lack of ethics and empathy, plays an important part. There is Timur, the frightening, dangerous, and reclusive inventor at the heart of Magruder's. There is P-Ray, who only Nazan figures out, and there is Nazan's gentleman friend Spencer, a rich boy who plays his own unexpected role.

The most fascinating characters for me, however, were the females, three of them, all strong, but not in a super-hero, kicking-butt way. They were strong in the way an arch is. Nazan is a frustrated scientist, self-taught and at odds with her family. Kitty is the young girl, cast adrift, but not without a rudder. Another, although lesser character is Mademoiselle Vivi Leveque, leopard trainer extraordinaire. My favorite however, is Rosalind, although not a female - or maybe that depends on which day of the week it is. (S)he definitely has some classic lines to speak. At a party when America's elite, including Theodore Roosevelt - are in attendance, we get two great lines, one of which is Rosalind's. She's interrupted in conversation with Henry Ford (who has no idea she is a he and vice-versa), and resumes it thus:

Rosalind bats his lashes at Ford. "As I was saying, Henry, is there really no other color than black for your cars?”

This is not the only amusing observation she makes. The other line is Spencer's at that same gig:

"Well, Roosevelt, let’s see how rough a rider you truly are."

At one point, Nazan effects an English accent in order to try to find someone, and the hotel guy to whom she's s speaking says,

“I’ll direct you to the laundry,” he says, “if you promise to stop speaking like that.”

which slayed me. An honorable mention must also be bestowed upon Vivi, who emits this fine epithet:

"Vil mécréant! Accapareur de merde d’abeille!”

never have bee droppings been put to finer use!

This story is told well and moves at a solid work-like pace which kept me swiping screens. The threat looming over Magruder's isn’t of the disease vector variety; it's about another disease entirely: the narrow-minded, money-grubbing, dehumanizing one. There's always something new and intriguing (or disturbing) going on. The unexpected should be expected often. The story is a very human one, endearing, warm, disturbing, and deeply engaging. I recommend this novel completely and without reservation (not even as the classy Hotel where Kitty had stayed).

Back To The Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines by Bob Gale, John Barber, Erik Burnham

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a graphic novel, created by Bob Gale, John Barber, Erik Burnham. Gale co-wrote the Back to the Future movie (and the two sequels) with director Robert Zemeckis, and he also produced the movies. Barber is a webcomic writer and artist with whom I am not familiar. Erik Burnham is a writer who's been associated with Ghostbusters and TMNT comic book, including this one that I favorably reviewed back in February 2015, even though I am not a TMNT fan.

This collaboration worked well. The book is filled with issues one through five of the individual comics, offering a handful of short stories linked by a narration from Doc as he modifies the steam engine which he will convert into another time-travel machine. We get to see how Marty and Doc first met, how Doc became involved in the Manhattan Project, how Marty had to deal with yet another school bully in his own school when he was younger, how his parents came very close to breaking up after Marty had gone back to the future, and so on.

The dialog is just like the movie, and Doc Brown and Marty come off exactly like they did in the movie. The artwork is excellent and very colorful. The stories are entertaining, funny and well done, and the overall graphic novel is wonderful. I recommend this one.

Kris Longknife: Audacious by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe

Rating: WORTHY!

Another close-run thing, but hopefully this now will all change from here on out. Princess Lieutenant Kris Longknife continues on her usual trajectory, inexplicably and unexpectedly (believe it or not) getting shot at, fawning over the navy and the marines, and venerating certain old people as though each is some sort of a magical sensei, but it's entertaining and perversely addictive. I guess that's how most series suck people in.

In this episode, for the fourth time, she's sent to the middle of nowhere with no instructions and has an almost impossible conundrum to solve while running for her life. she's dispatched to planet Eden, which has strict gun control laws - purportedly - where she's promptly shot at, and almost blown up by a bomb which wasn't even meant for her. The news outlets are so controlled that they don't even report these things. It's like they never happened. It's 1984 meets the Soviet Union, with Kris Longknife emulating James Bond charging in there to inevitably and successfully sort them all out.

She was told this would be an easy job, in a quiet backwater, which would keep her out of trouble and out of the headlines. Given that this is the fourth time she's been dispatched to a backwater like this, you'd think by now she would not be so naïve. Indeed, you'd think that she would be angry as hell at this point, but inexplicably, she isn't! Not until the entire novel is over. This is more of the same and it was becoming rather tiresome even for me. There were enough differences, however, and I did check my brain at the door as I advise you to do, and this will make it a simple and easy summer read. Not that it's summer yet but it sure feels like it here. Hopefully with the changes Kris demands at the end of this one (she's not too quick on the uptake at times) things will improve in the next volume, which I've read before, but can scarcely remember a thing about. That should tell me something, huh?!

Kris Longknife: Resolute by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe

Rating: WORTHY!

This one just made it under the wire into worthy, but check your brain at the door - it's mindless entertainment. Yet again Kris is shipped off to the butt-end of nowhere where she's dumped into a complete mess, gets no support, is threatened and shot at and/or starts a space battle with interloping rivals, wins it on a shoestring and heads home. I don't know why this series is so addictive, because I find plot holes and problems galore with it, but I still keep reading it. Normally I would never do this, but I guess we all have to have a guilty pleasure hidden away somewhere, and I suppose this particular one, sad as it is, is mine.

Despite having proven herself a capable commander, Kris is still stuck as a lieutenant, yet even so, she's put in command of a space station orbiting an unaligned planet which would just as rather not have the station there as have it. The problem is that the station is shut down, and Kris has to reboot it. The totally odd thing is that she makes no effort whatsoever to report this status to base, and no effort to request personnel to run the station. She simply tries to make do with volunteers from the planet below. No idea why. I guess she's a really poor administrator.

This struck me as utterly absurd, but nowhere near as absurd as a space station which makes no sense. It costs a fortune to run, supply, and to maintain, yet here they are up-keeping it when it serves absolutely no practical purpose at all. There's literally nothing it does that cannot be done by shuttles or robots. In four hundred years, the entire human race seems to have forgotten about drones and robots despite having AIs with human-level intelligence and far faster processing speed. I think the Longknifes have far more to worry about than evil humans. They just don't know it yet! The previous commander got pissed off with the navy and abandoned the station without telling anyone and without waiting for Kris to arrive to hand it over to her. Yet he goes unpunished for this. No wonder Kris loves the Navy - you can get away with anything as she herself has proved on several occasions!

The planet is named Hicksville - not really, but that's how it comes across - and the mayor of course has the hots for Kris. She spreads her money around and makes all kinds of friends, so that when Hank Smythe-Peterwald, sometime beau and now arch-enema, arrives with six cruisers in tow, obviously intent upon taking over yet another planet for his father. Instead of calling immediately for help, Kris takes him on with brown paper and glue, and lollipop sticks, and in a repeat performance of her destruction of the Peterwald Stealth navy attack on War(d)haven, her home planet, kicks Hanks ass predictably.

Hank was becoming boring and the romance with Kris was going nowhere, so the author disposes of him by having him become insane and having some anonymous person sabotage his escape pod, where he suffocates. This is so he can introduced the non-existent Vicki Peterwald (yes, she's female but she's still a Peterwald, not a Petrawald, a Pipkinwald). At least she was non-existent until he realized Hank was going nowhere, so she materializes out of nowhere in the next volume and changes the dynamic. And also provides for the start a side series featuring her rampant exploits.

All in all a blustery light-weight beach read, but not bad if, as I advise, you check your brain at the door. On that basis and that basis alone, I recommend it as a worthy sci-fi read.

Iris and Walter the Sleepover by Elissa Haden Guest

Rating: WARTY!

Elissa is such a sweet name isn't it? Iris and Walter, not so much, not for a story published in 2002, and the story, unfortunately, was as sweet as the chaacters' names. How they managed to call this a performance is a mystery. The story was read, not performed. Let's not get pretentious about this! And why on Earth did it need a director? Honestly? Just to give a job to someone from the audio book readsters union, Loco 0? No wonder audio books cost a fortune (although this one is evidently not so expensive).

Normally a CD from an audio book lasts me the round trip to work and back. This one didn't even last half way to work, which was an unexpected event. It was about a failed attempt at a sleepover with these young kids sleeping out on the porch. I'm thinking, "Are you kidding me? Two young kids out alone on the porch?" If this was a fifties children's story, maybe, but this was published quite recently. Do any parents let very young children sleep out alone on the porch in this day and age? Not wise. Not wise at all.

It was weird too, in that about every thirty seconds, there was a ping on the audio, like the one you might hear in an elevator as it passes each floor. I had no idea what that was all about until a friend clued me in to the fact that these are used as markers to indicate when the page is to be turned if you're following along in the print version of the audio book. Thanks Aimee! It's rather like Pavlov's dog-eared books - when it pings, you start salivating for the next page....

Well, there was no print version and no instructions at the start of the disk telling listeners what those pings meant. Maybe the instructions are in the print book. Which wasn't here! But that wasn't what irritated me. The story was simple and simply read, but it's really not very good. The problem is several-fold. The story is extremely short, and it has very little content for one thing. it doens;t evne have an uplifting moral or educational content.

The story is that Iris gets to sleep over at her best friend Walter's house. I like that this was mixed gender. The problem is that Iris gets homesick, and has to be taken home. Is this supposed to convey to us that girls are weak? I don't buy it (I did borrow it form the library, but I returned it!). Is it supposed to show how children don't need a story about bravery, resilience, and self-reliance, but one about cowardice? Cowardice does work well in nature. Animals that run away live to be eaten another day, but to me, children's stories need to be about building confidence, not undermining it. Could the author not have extended the story to show how Iris overcame her fear and had a fun night or came back and faced her demons another day, and successfully stayed over? Why the mixed message that it's wise to sleep out on the porch unsupervised, but it's dangerous to spend the entire night at your friend's house so you should run off home instead?

I can't recommend this story which really lacks substance even for a young children's story, and sends a poor message to young kids.

World Tales Volume 3

Rating: WORTHY!

This one was another delight despite the music. Again it was one disk, two stories, each a bit under thirty minutes. The reading was excellent, the music not so much. I like UB40, but not when it's mixed in with a story so that you can't focus on either one. Denzel Washington read Anansi, which is a spider who is the owner of all stories. The idea of Kwaku Anansi seems to have arisen in Ghana, but has been well preserved in Jamaica, to which all-too-many Africans were shipped during the hellish slavery years.

I like Anansi, because he's not always guaranteed to win, so you never can be quite sure what will happen. In this double story, he first outwits a snake by means of a sneaky ruse, and simultaneously proves you don't need a carrot and a stick - just a stick! The other part of the story sees Anansi not faring so well as he dishonestly pretends he's fasting after his mother-in-law died.

Neither Denzel Washington nor UB40 hail from Jamaica, and I can't help but wonder why a Jamaican actor and a Jamaican band (if they must have music!) were not employed here. Washington does a fine job of sounding Jamaican, and UB40, a phenomenally successful band named after a British unemployment benefit form, do a fine trade in reggae and have a string of classics behind them, but if they could afford Denzel Washington, surely they could afford Sean Paul or - and here's another issue: why is this all guys doing the reading? - Roxanne Beckford, or Audrey Reid or someone like that? Jamaicans are not a scarce commodity! That said, Washignton has been a favorite of mine since movies like Fallen, Courage Under Fire, and Much Ado About Nothing, and he does a fine job.

Max von Sydow has been a favorite of mine ever since The Exorcist and Three Days of the Condor, and he takes East of the Sun, West of the Moon (not to be confused with the A-ha album!) to grand heights. This is very much a story in the mold of Beauty and the Beast, but it's different enough for children, and it has a charm all of its own. I recommend this brace of fairy-tales.

How To Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks

Rating: WORTHY!

I listened to this audio book some time ago and thought I'd already blogged it. I guess I was so blown away by it that I forgot to blog it! LOL! it was excellent and I recommend it highly. A large part of my enjoyment came from the narration by Mandy Williams which was beyond excellent. She was remarkable and I really enjoyed listening to her, especially to her renditions of the folk songs, which were really heart-rending, the way she sang them, and to her rendition of Birdie's voice, the main female character, which was a joy.

This is a middle-grade book with some dark content, so be warned it might be scary - and the scary parts aren't really anything to do with the bogles. The nasty life these poor children were forced to live back then (and which many endure even today) is the really horrific part. The kind of life that was your everyday lot for people is exemplified in the songs which Birdie sings. They're aren't anything sweet, but are about pirates and young women being hanged: The Female Smuggler, The Highway Robber, Rescued From the Gallows, Bonnie Susie Cleland, and Sovay, Sovay, and Three Black Ribbons.

Ten-year-old orphan Birdie McAdam sings to lure out bogles, monsters which hide in dark places and which feed off children who are unlucky enough to stray too close. They are attracted by tuneful singing, and this is where Birdie's canary-like voice comes in so handily. She stands in the open and lures out the bogle with her folk songs, and Alfred Bunce, her partner, stabs them with a special lance and they turn to dust.

The job is dangerous, but Birdie trusts Alfred and has worked with him quite a bit. She's proud of him in fact, and proud to be his assistant ("Am a Bogler's gel, ah yam!"). Poor as they are, everything is fine for this pair of monster-hunters until children begin disappearing, they're approached by the highly suspect Sarah Pickles, and on the other end of the social scale, a certain Miss Eames starts fearing for Birdie's safety and welfare and starts proposing scientific methods of attracting bogles which would put Birdie out of a living.

The real joy of this story was Mandy Williams's reading of it. Sometimes, an audio book can be fingernails on a chalkboard for one reason or another: poor writing, poor reading, a reader's interpretation of the story interfering with your own, but in this case, I was one hundred percent in love with Williams's interpretation, her vocalization, and above all, her singing. She was not a diva by any means, but she was very good and in this case, her voice, to me, was Birdie all through. I fell in love with the signing and the songs, and even had the story not been so engaging, I would still have rated it a worthy read just for the songs and the vocal performance! Highly recommended, guvna!

World Tales Volume 1

Rating: WORTHY!

This is my second of three forays I am initially making into the audio books for children published by Rabbit Ears. I wasn't thrilled with the first, but the second one was much better. I suspect a large portion of this was because of the narrators, who are several steps above Danny Glover in delivery! Again there were only two stories, the first was Aladdin and the Magic Lamp read by John Hurt, and the second was The Five Chinese Brothers read by John Lone. Both stories are just under thirty minutes each. I've been a huge fan of both of these men for a long time and their delivery was exquisite.

I'm not familiar with the story of the five brothers (well, I am now!), so I can't speak for how well that adheres to the original, but it's a story of Chinese super heroes versus the villainous emperor! Aladdin was very much what I expected and very well told by John Hurt (aka The War Doctor!). John Hurt was born just ten miles from my home town, and I've been a fan of his for a long time, since well before Harry Potter and Alien! In movies such as 10 Rillington Place, Watership Down, Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as TV movie, The Naked Civil Servant, I've enjoyed his performances. His retelling of Aladdin is wonderfully done, and his cadence and intonation a pleasure on the ear.

I've been a big fan of John Lone since The Shadow, and I've enjoyed his work in other movies, too, such as M. Butterfly and Rush Hour 2, both of which I recommend. His easy relation of this story of five brothers, who all look alike, but who have very different, and rather strange supernatural powers, and how they help each other when one of them falls afoul of the god-like emperor, is as engaging as it was soothing to listen to. My kids, who normally don't pay much attention to what I'm listening to in the car, insisted on hearing this one out after we got home and the story will wasn't finished! I recommend this disk highly, but I wish Rabbit Ears would realize that there's no rule which says that only men can read children's stories.

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.