Closer Home by Kerry Anne King

Rating: WARTY!

I got this novel from Net Galley as an ARC, and I was grateful, because it sounded good from the blurb, but this is the problem: many do, few are. This one was not, which saddened me, because it started out really well and had too good of a premise for it to fall apart as it did. One of the main problems, in addition to it being too 'one note' (especially for a story rooted in music!), was that the the two main characters, a woman and her niece, started out as reasonably smart people who unfortunately proceeded to get ever more dumb as the story progressed.

It's hard to explain this without giving away spoilers, which I'd rather not do. I don't mind a story where someone who starts out dumb, or naïve or ignorant - however you want to characterize it - improves over the course of the story. I don't even mind a character who stays dumb throughout the story if they're interesting or amusing, but when it goes the other way, and they just get dumber, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Women already have enough to deal with without being characterized like this, inadvertently or otherwise, in one novel after another.

Let me try and give one example without giving too much away. At one point the women are dealing with a sleazy used-car salesman (talk about cliché), and he recognizes who they are and starts effectively blackmailing (or bullying if you prefer) them in return for what they want. Lise is actually at the point of negotiating to buy a useless wreck of a car from him because they need something that's in the car, rather than simply walk away and then return at night and take it! I hasten to add that it's nothing that anyone would miss the next day - or even notice it was missing - and it has no absolutely zero value to anyone but Ariel.

I wouldn't even characterize this particular thing as stealing at all, and anyone who didn't have a rusted fuel pump for a heart would have let Ariel have it. Yet despite this and despite everything they've actually done so far, it never occurs to a one of them to sneak back that night. This was not only out of character, it was a complete betrayal of the characters, and for me it spoke direly against the competence of this woman who was supposed to be managing Callie's millions. If she can't even manage something like this, of what use is she? That's the point at which I quit reading, because I was so disappointed in these characters for whom I'd had such high hopes as the novel began.

The story here is that Lise is the older sister of Callie, and there is a rift between them which was for good reason and which never healed. Now it's too late because Callie, who became a popular country music star, is dead and Lise is named very nearly a sole beneficiary of Callie's will and also guardian of her niece, Ariel, whom she hasn't even seen for a decade or so.

Right from the start, this whole charade show is a disaster for Lise, because of the ridiculous publicity surrounding Callie's death, the farce of a funeral, and the psychotic money-grubbing by all and sundry. Rather than deal with this, Lise runs away, following Ariel who is desperate to discover who her real father is. The sad thing is that it's pretty obvious almost from the start: both who he is and how this will end, so there's really no suspense here, which brings us to the one note: one town after another, one lowlife high-school boyfriend after another, one paternity test after another, and while there is some variety, there's nowhere near enough to stop this from falling into a rut.

One writing issue I noticed was in the main character balking at hotel coffee, and then I read, "...then I ease out of the room in search of a hotel coffee kiosk, hoping against hope it will be open at this hour...". I wasn't sure what to make of this! First we get the 'cops-in-the-donut-shop' cliché that all hotel coffee is universally bad, but as soon as we learn this, we discover that she's going off in search of a coffee kiosk. What guarantee is there that this will be better? Why not go off in search of a starbucks or some other venue that promises to be better? Why not go to the store and buy your favorite brand if the hotel coffee is so bad? Why not step out of the rut altogether and have the hotel coffee be great? This made little sense to me, and it's not a big issue, but it's one more thing to consider when you're telling a story.

I didn't like any of these characters after the first few chapters, least of all Callie who I never did like. The two main ones began as likable, at least the aunt and niece did, but Lise's constant whiny attitude and litany of complains coupled with and Ariel's endless moodiness and bitchiness wore thin after very little time. Given how alienated both women were from Callie each in their own way, their tidal and maudlin grief had no more foundation than do the sands under rolling breakers, and so I found no authenticity here. It felt like they were simulating grieving rather than actually grieving.

The novel is told in first person, which I dislike because it's rarely done well, it has appalling limitations, and it's downright annoying. The limitation of this method, with which far too many writers are mysteriously obsessed, is demonstrated handsomely here when, every few chapters, we hear the discordant clunk of a third person PoV being dropped. It didn't work. Almost worse than this, there were flashbacks galore, which didn't work for me either, and I took to skipping them in short order. By the time I was fifty percent into this I realized that I wasn't into this at all, and I gave up on it.

Talking of discordance, I think the very saddest thing of all about this novel is that it was about the aftermath of the death of a music star. Her daughter was in her teens and no doubt was very much into music, and her estranged sister was a music teacher, but the story had no music in it - and no soul. There was nothing even related to music save for some sparsely scattered partial lyrics in one or two places. For a novel which was rooted in music, I was expecting much more and it wasn't there. I'm not even a country music fan - which brings me to the next problem: the publicity which Callie's death garnered.

I can see a major country music star making big headlines outside of the country music world, but I didn't get the impression from the novel that Callie was quite that big. She was no Carrie Underwood, Shania Twain, Alison Krauss or whatever - not from the way she was described here. Even if she had been, that doesn't automatically mean that everyone, everywhere in the country, no matter where you go, would recognize her daughter, or her absentee sister who had been far from the limelight for ten years. Country music is popular in the US, but it's not run-away-above-everything-else popular, yet now, suddenly, and everywhere they go, someone not only recognizes these people, none of whom are stars, but manages to take an embarrassing picture which makes headlines. It simply wasn't credible.

So it can be no surprise by now that I didn't consider this a worthy read and cannot recommend it. I'm sorry, because the idea was a good one. It just wasn't done well. I think if this had been told from Ariel's PoV (but in third person, please!) and Lise had been left out of it entirely, it might have been a better story. I think this writer has some great novels in her though, and is worth watching.

On that score, I'd recommend she get in touch with Goodreads! If you type 'Closer Home' into the search window and click, it will not find this author's novel. It will find every novel that has 'close to home' in the title, but forget about 'closer home'! That's simply not good enough in my opinion. You have to type the author's name, Kerry Anne King, to get 'closer home' to show, and even then the title lists after "Twelve Years A Slave"! What the hell is up with that?! Amazon brings it to the top of the list if you search for Closer Home in books, and B&N puts it in the second row, but Goodreads can't find it? Goodreads needs a better search engine.

Cogling by Jordan Elizabeth Mierek

Rating: WARTY!

I was asked by the author if I would review this after I gave a favorable review to a previous novel by this author: Escape From Witchwood Hollow back in February 2016. Well be careful what you ask for! I would have liked to have recommended this one, too, but I cannot. I was very disappointed in Cogling because it was so disturbingly far from what the previous novel had been. This felt like a first draft of a first novel by a new writer, whereas 'Witchwood Hollow', which also felt like a first novel, was a lot better-crafted and a lot more credible in its world than this one was.

This novel had a prologue which I skipped, as I do all prologues without exception. Never once have I missed anything by doing this, which only goes to show how useless prologues are. If it's worth reading, put it in chapter one, or simply omit it! Don't sacrifice any more trees to prologues! That said, this story was not technically bad in terms of spelling, grammar, and so on. Even the overall story was, in very general terms, an interesting idea, but it fell far short in the details, and while it was not an awful read, it was not a satisfying one at all for me.

The issues I had were many and ranged from general to specific. A specific one, for example, would be the use of 'kohl'. At least this author didn't write it as 'coal', which I have seen in a novel, but the phrase used was 'dark kohl' Since kohl is black, that phrase made little sense. To write, 'Kohl darkened her silver eyes' is one thing, but to say "Dark kohl rimmed her silver eyes" is not well-phrased at all. There were many instances of such suspect wording, each of which took me out of the suspension of disbelief and reminded me that I was reading a novel and not immersed in a alternate world.

The story is about Edna, a fifteen year old girl who discovers that her brother has been replaced by a cogling - a clockwork life-like replica, and she embarks upon a quest into the world of hags to rescue him. The hags use the dreams of children to power their machinery. This was my first problem, because it seemed like all that was being done here is that hags stole children to power machines to make more coglings which were used to replace the children being stolen. What was the point? Obviously they were seeking to take over the human world in revenge for a sour past history, but the hags had powerful magical and could control and enchant humans so why were the coglings needed? It made no sense at all to me.

The sad thing is that Edna is not allowed to rescue her brother alone. So much for girl power! Instead, she needs the trope YA studly male to prop her up and give her validation. That was bad enough, but the happenstance that she fell into the sphere of influence of the sole male in the entire country who was best set-up to help her was too much to take seriously, especially given his original story, which would be too much of a spoiler to give away here. The bottom line was that his behavior and living circumstances were simply not credible given his origin, and we were offered nothing to explain why or how he'd ended up where he had.

In this world, there is a history of antagonism between the hags (and their male equivalents, the ogres) on one side, and the humans on the other, and this is a story of the hags' revenge. These were not the only 'magical' creatures; there were others, but none of them were really given any freedom to breathe, and so they were consistently lifeless. It felt like they were simply added as pure MacGuffins or dei ex machina for no other reason than to help out Edna's quest, and then they disappeared completely. Most of them appeared so briefly that it was impossible to get a decent handle on them. I liked the idea of the 'foxkins', but the 'nix' and the 'tomtars' left me unentertained. Sometimes it seemed like these were actually mutated humans, and other times not, and there was so little to go on, that it left me frustrated that they had appeared at all.

I think one serious problem was that the author tried to do too much in one story. There was literally everything in this but the kitchen sink - and there may well have been one of those. In fact, I think there was in one kitchen scene. But there was fantasy, and magic, and steam-punk, and romance, and Oliver Twist (not in person), and a quest, and a hot air balloon which was not steam-punk, but which was called an airship which is often associated with steam-punk, and it felt like lots of little bits rather than one whole. It was the difference between Thanksgiving dinner and the next day's jumbled and assorted leftovers.

This story evidently arose (according to the acknowledgements) at least in part from a 'Victorian' fare in Rome, New York. I think that was the first problem: that Americans tend not to do Renaissance or Victorian well, or to overdo it, and consequently this novel was sadly warped, dragged down by a lack of authenticity. Granted we're not told explicitly where it was set (if we are, I missed it), but it seemed like it was professing to be set in Britain, as steam punk and Victorian dramas typically are, but there were far too many Americanisms for me to take that idea seriously.

For example, there are no klutzes in Britain - or at least there were not in Victorian times. There are clots, which means largely the same thing, but 'klutz' is a very American term which came from Germany via Yiddish, I think. Of course, American influence being what it is in the world, for good or ill, people probably do use that term in Britain now, but they didn't in Victorian times. This was as out of place as the word 'jerky' was. This is very much an Americanism, taken from the South American term char qui. It's not British.

There are very few cities in Britain which actually have the word 'city' in their name. Manchester City, for example, is a football (soccer) club. The city itself is simply named Manchester. The same goes for Birmingham, Exeter, Bristol, Leicester Norwich, and so on. Every single city in this story was named -something- City. The Brits don't have this insecurity which forces them to title a city as -something- City lest it be mistaken - gods forbid! - for a town!

Britain has no venomous snakes except for the adder (and yes, it does come in black!), which no one in Britain takes very seriously (notwithstanding scare stories in newspapers last year), so this Indiana Jones scene where kids are dumped into a pit of snakes wasn't impressive. Why would hags even do this when they have magic and can simply kill the kids outright? The real problem here though, was that the snakes are described as poisonous. No snake, to my knowledge, is poisonous, and by that I mean that you can eat any snake and it won't poison you; however, if you get bitten by one (and you're not in Britain!) then you may well become ill or die from it. Those snakes are venomous, not poisonous, and writers should understand this. Strictly speaking the British adder can do damage, but it's so rare that anyone is bitten, it's not typically an issue.

Edna Mather is supposedly fifteen, yet she behaves much younger. The story read like a middle-grade novel rather than a young-adult one. Several other reviews I've seen mention this and while I agree, I'm not sure I arrived at the conclusion the same way. The thing you have to remember is that this is not set in modern times and you cannot expect a fifteen year old Victorian era girl to have the same outlook as a modern one.

By our standards, she would seem ridiculously naive and sheltered, even though she would (had she any privilege) be far better read (and in better-written literature too!) than most modern fifteen-year-olds. In Edna's case, she was one step away from living on the street, and was largely in charge of running her home and taking care of her kid brother, so she should be expected to have the maturity which inevitably comes with that circumstance, yet she really didn't. She was desperately intent upon rescuing her brother, but this was all she had going for her, and it made her seem more juvenile than he was!

Worse than this though, for me, was the fact that Edna had magic in her - a magic which she thought was evil - a fact of which we're re-apprised to a really annoying degree. The problem for me was not so much that though, as it was that she never employed this magic. I kept waiting for her to go bad-ass and unleash it, but she didn't except in very minor and largely unimportant ways, and even then it wasn't clear if it was her magic or the magic embedded in this enchanted brooch she carried. This was really annoying. Why give her this power if it's not going to be employed in the entire story, even in dire cases where any kid who had magic would have pulled it out regardless of how they felt about it. It made no sense and was a major disappointment for me. It also made her look even more helpless and ineffectual than she already appeared.

I noted the author makes mention in the acknowledgements of a steamy romance between Ike and Edna, but there was no such thing. There was almost no romance, thankfully, and certainly no steam (not even of the steam punk variety except in passing mentions). There was impetus for romance, either. Neither Ike nor Edna were likable, and he was such a jerk to begin with that it's hard to see how she would ever come around to finding him romantic. The 'romance' felt forced and not natural - like the author was putting it in there because she felt this was the way things had to be done, not because there was anything organic or necessary about it. It felt false to me and it didn't so much get in the way of the story, as it was an annoying distraction, like a fly buzzing around when you're trying to fall asleep.

I noticed some reviewers had talked of there being a rape or near rape in this story, but there was nothing of the sort in the version I read. There was a case of highly inappropriate conduct of a doctor threatening to kiss a patient, followed by downright abusive conduct by that same doctor, but there was no sex involved. What bothered me about this scene and the events leading up to it was something I've seen no other reviewer mention, which is the absurd abduction of Lady Rachel.

Note that I do not believe for a second that celebrities and the wealthy should have any privileged treatment by law enforcement, but also note that this novel was set in Victorian times when nobility was highly respected (if perhaps derided in private), yet here we have Lady Rachel being forcibly taken from her aunt's home by two regular police constables, without a shred of respect or deference and based solely on this aunt's say-so. This was simply not credible in Victorian times, and especially not on the say-so of an aunt without any other reason. Never once was there any mention of contacting this woman's actual parents. Lady and Lord Waxman thought their daughter had been kidnapped, and yet instead of informing them she was safe and reuniting them, the cops haul Lady Rachel off for incarceration on her aunt's whim?! This robbed the story of all credibility for me, and frankly, I almost quit reading at that point because it was one straw dog too many.

The real killer was the ending. It's no spoiler to say it was a happily-ever-after one, but only for Edna and her crew. All her ideals and claims and vows to help the poor and downtrodden which she spouted regularly throughout this story were forgotten in the end. She did nothing to help anyone. This selfishness and self-serving attitude was brought into the light earlier, when she and Ike rescue a woman from a cruel psychiatric facility, which in itself is admirable, but they do it by kidnapping a homeless girl and substituting the one for the other in the blind assumption that this psycho doctor will simply toss the girl back out onto the street when he discovers the deception. I'm sorry, but no, heroic people do not do that. Good people do not do that. Jerks and villains do that. I already disliked the two protagonists before this, but after this behavior, I had no time for them at all. Frankly, this made me wonder if this neutered "dark magic' that Edna spent the entire story fretting over, had actually risen up and claimed her after all.

So, overall, this was not a worthy read by my standards. and I cannot in good faith recommend it. Read Jordan Mierek's previous story, escape From Witchwood Hollow instead. It's much better.

It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a kind of coming-of-age story and although I typically don't like those, this was not your stereotypical USA cutely white-washed pretense. Instead, and this was the reason I was attracted to it, it was about an Iranian girl growing-up in the USA during the time of the Iranian Hostage crisis in 1979 - 1980. It's autobiographical, but with a lot of fiction mixed in.

Note that Iranians not actually Arabic. They are Aryan, aka Indo-European. Arabs are a Semitic people, so there is a difference, although to western eyes they are all-too-often "just the same." Iran used to be known as Persia, which sounds far more exotic, doesn't it? The hostage crisis arose out of the overthrow of the US supported (or perhaps more accurately, 'puppeteered') Shah of Persia, and is one more example of the US getting itself into embarrassingly hot water because of poor foreign policy choices and grotesque short-sightedness in demonstrating a complete lack of empathy for what a people need and instead exhibiting a tunnel vision for what the US demands. I was glad to see some of this come through in the story that was told.

The whole process of having the Shah dance to the US's tune because of oil is what has led not only to the hostage crisis which brought down the Carter government (although the Reagan government for all its bluster, continued exactly the same policy!), but also directly to the present troubles which are no more than the just deserts of poor policy choices in the past. Of course, there is no excuse for taking hostages and punishing the innocent, but this punishing took place on both sides, and the Iranians began by punishing their own people after the Ayatollah took over, remember! It began with US policy effectively punishing poor Iranians. Later, Iranian students punished the US embassy people. Subsequent to that, US residents punished innocent Iranians living in the USA, and so the wheel turns. As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye ends up leaving everybody blind. What he didn't say is that if people start out blind to begin with, this exactly what we should expect.

This author does a wonderfully humorous job of depicting other events, as some of the chapter headings make clear:
Sultans of Suntan
Never Owned a Camel
and
Are You There, Allah? It’s Me, Zomorod

The crisis, for me, was rather too intrusive, although it was obviously a critical and tragic event which cast a huge shadow over their lives. That said, it wasn't such a large part of the story that it overwhelmed other things which to me were more interesting because they were less predictable. I loved the humor in contrasting Iranian life with the life she experienced in the USA, but it bothered me that the wider perspective she thought she was bringing was in its own way just as blinkered as the one she sought to supplant, since the impression given here is that an exile can only get a decent life in the USA! There is this strong suggestion that nowhere else in the world can really offer anyone a life except for the US, and while Iran was criticized routinely, this same gimlet eye was never applied to the USA except in the most limited fashion. Frankly, that's nothing but a jingoistic insult to the rest of the world!

Those complaints aside, I did enjoy this story - the humor more than the horror, but both were engaging - and I recommend it as an educational and entertaining story.

Diary of Anna the Girl Witch: Foundling Witch by Max Candee

Rating: WORTHY!

Max Candee is a rather obvious pseudonym used by an author who also uses 'Austin Briggs' for his much more adult titles (that latter is also the name of a comic book illustrator who is no longer with us). This is the first work of his that I've read. This advance review copy, which I was happy to have the chance to enjoy, is aimed at middle-grade, and it was very well done. There were some minor issues with it, but nothing to spoil it, and nothing that would bother the intended age range. Note though that this is somewhat darker and deals with more adult issues than your usual middle grade novel.

I don't usually talk about book covers because they're nothing to do with the author, typically, and all about Big publishing™ but in this case I have to comment that no, the girl witch isn't pregnant, although the cover seems to suggest she is! It's just that she's holding something against her stomach. The illustrations inside the story were not bad - line drawings with one portion colored. Anna is a red haired girl, of course, but the drawings show her hair as straight, whereas the text says it's curly, so another mismatch there, but while I am not sure they really contributed anything, the drawings were not bad at all.

It's very much the trope 'orphan coming of age to find they're really special' kind of a story, but there are some differences. For one, it was a really refreshing change to find this set somewhere other than the USA. Of course, it took a foreign author (at least I assume so. I believe "Max Candee" is Swiss, but I am not sure of it) to realize that there are people and nations and lives outside of the USA, an important fact which far too few USA authors seem to be able to grasp, I'm sorry to say.

This is, be warned, a series, and while there is thankfully no cliff-hanger at the end of volume one, there is a teaser for the next volume in the series, titled, 'Wandering Witch'. Anna, who was evidently found in Russia being raised by bears, and delivered to Geneva by her "uncle" Misha, turns thirteen and comes into an inheritance, which in this case is actually money, but not just money. She is also the recipient of a stone fist, a brief letter from her mother, and a mysteriously animated drawing. It turns out, as she slowly discovers, that Anna is a witch and is being stalked not by your usual villain, which was another delightful twist in this delightfully twisted story.

Anna proves to be strong, determined, and in the end, unstoppable. Of course, those magical powers help, but this story doesn't take itself too seriously - as her mode of witchy transportation proves beyond a doubt, and although she uses her powers for good, and against largely non-magical enemies, there is a real and serious cost to Anna for using them - a cost she has to evaluate and judge wisely each time she employs her magic. This was a refreshing change from being able to shake a stick, chant two Latin words, and cast major magic whilst suffering no cost whatsoever.

Note that Misha is a diminutive of Mikhail, which is a variant of Michael, which is a Hebrew naming meaning "Who is like God". I don't know if this author puts any meaning into his character names like I do, but it's interesting to note that Anna is derived ultimately also from the Hebrew Hannah, who was a New Testament woman who recognized the divinity of Jesus. I don't put any more stock into those myths than I do into any other myth, but it makes me wonder if the author chose these names for a reason, or if they just were names he lit upon simply because he liked them. To me, as a writer, names always mean something, and while minor character names are not that important (unless you have some secret purpose!), I like to imbue my main characters with names that mean something beyond just being a character name! I promise you I will never write a series, but if I were going to, I would definitely put a lot of thought into what the names of the main characters mean! I can't say if this author did the same thing here.

So, that aside, aside, I liked this novel very much. It was about friendship and loyalty, unexpected allies, resilience and resourcefulness, and doing the right thing. It was nice to see the magical protagonist going up against bad people rather than your usual mustache-twirling evil magician. I think this was a fun story appropriate to the age range, and without any of the fluff and flounce too many middle grade stories sprout. I recommend it as a worthy read.

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.