The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

Rating: WORTHY!

I really like this novel, and I loved the ending, sad as it was in many ways, but it did take a while to get through. I think some editing would have improved things, but that said, I consider this to be a worthy read as is. It had a really strong central female character which is always a winner with me. She had her moments of weakness, and she won through in the end, but I am not convinced she really learned anything, which was a bit of a downer for me.

I have to say that one thing I am not fond of in books is chapter quotes - where the author begins a chapter or a section with some quote from some bygone writer, typically some poet I never heard of. I really don't care who it is or what it is because it's so predictably boring and meaningless. I know these things must mean something to the author (at least I would hope they do otherwise it's just pretension, isn't it?), but it's an imposition to assume they will resonate with a reader who has picked up the book to read the author's work, not random quotes from a bunch of other authors!

I skip these with the same diligence which I bring to skipping prologues, introductions, prefaces, and epilogues. The silliness of these quotes was highlighted for me by the attribution to one, which read, 'WILFRED OWEN (1893–1918), “1914” (published 1920)' All those numbers! I laughed out loud at the sheer absurdity of it and I still didn't read the quote, but I sure appreciated the laugh! As it happened, this novel did have an epilogue, and I skipped it. If it's worth saying, it's worth putting into a chapter. If you think it's worth no more than tacking it to the end like Post-it® note, then I'm certainly not going to imagine it's worth reading.

Fortunately for my rating, and despite all this silliness, the novel turned out to be very engaging and well-written (finally I find an author who knows the difference between staunch and stanch - but unfortunately not the difference between a Union Jack and a Union flag!). There was also an instance of "to watch the cortège pass" appearing twice in succession.

he main character, Beatrice Nash is trying to make her own way in the world after the death of her scholarly father, but she's being hampered by the severe constraints put upon women in 1914, and by the fact that an aunt is in charge of her money. This seemed to me to be a bit of a contradiction: that on the one hand, we're to believe that Beatrice has no say in her financial affairs because she's a woman, but her money is controlled by a woman who has every say in those affairs? Why her father did this to her is never explained.

Author Helen Simonsen is an ex-pat Brit (and I'd almost - almost - be willing to bet she still has her charming Sussex accent) who evidently has been out of the country a bit too long to remember all her British-isms (such as how to spell 'manoeuvrings'!), but for the most part she did a great job imbuing this with True Brit™. It felt very English, except for the odd bit here and there where I read, for example, "I am as dizzy as if the champagne was already flowing.” instead of "I am as dizzy as if the champagne were already flowing" which is what an educated Brit would have said back then. In fact the real war here was the rigid class system, not what was going on in Europe. In that regard, the title is misleading because this novel is about The Summer Before the War and the first winter of the war almost through to the following spring. But using that for a title would have been absurd!

I was a little bit slow getting into it, but very quickly it caught my imagination like a fresh wind in the sails of a yacht, and soon I was racing along. As the title indicates, it begins in the summer before the start of World War One, the so-called "Great War" and otherwise known as "the war to end all wars." Sha, right!

Beatrice made a real impression that stayed with me even after the novel was over. Hampered by the severe constraints put upon women in Edwardian times, and more acutely by the fact that an aunt who disapproves of her refusal to marry is in charge of her money, Beatrice nevertheless managed to secure for herself a job teaching Latin at a school in Rye, Sussex, yet she still she feels the pinch of her circumstances. Of course she's a lot better off than many others, enjoying the somewhat privileged station she does. It bothered me that she never seems to fully appreciate how lucky she was despite her life being put quickly into perspective as refugees from Belgium, which has been invaded by Germans, are brought into town to be housed, and the town, along with the rest of Britain, begins gearing up for a war they've never seen the like of before.

Navigating extreme genderism (by our standards - normal for those times), local politics, petty rivalries, and men who would seek by turns, to take advantage of her and relegate her to a position little better than the servants in the employ of the wealthy local families she encounters, Beatrice tries to stay mindful of those who are less privileged, particularly the Roma kid, Snout, whom she tries to help despite the opposition to him being even greater than it is to her, and her 'ward' Celeste, a refugee of whom she seems a bit neglectful at times, quite frankly. She never really gets there in the wising-up stakes, and ends up with an easy out.

It was not easy to like anyone in this story! I managed it with Beatrice, Celeste, and Hugh, but that was about it. The rest I pretty much wanted to slap the nobility off their privileged faces. Their conduct was disgusting to the point of laughable, but there is no doubt that it was how these people behaved and how all too many of them still behave. I have no time for royalty or for so-called nobility.

I did like the way the characters were moved around by the author, and the petty rivalries being disclosed like a body parts in a fan dance. I was a bit sad there was not more about Celeste. I think she merits a novel to herself, but she does have her moments and I enjoyed them. I think she was my favorite character although I didn't quite get how the tide turned as easily for her as it had originally against her. That seemed a bit too convenient, but I'll take that ending for Celeste! Beatrice never stopped trying to make her way with dignity and to empathize with others, and this steadfast approach to her life is what kept me on her side, despite her failings. Overall I liked the novel and even got a bit choked by the ending, so I consider this a winner and I recommend it.

The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff

Rating: WARTY!

This is an old (1980's) novel, but it tells what could have been an interesting story. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is on the school reading list this year, but some parents are objecting to the way it characterizes African Americans, and has a subtext of homosexuality (so they argue) if not pedophilia.

It's been so long since I read this book that I honestly can't even remember what it was about except in very general terms. I can say it left very little impression on me and I'd probably rate it 'warty' if I were to read and review it now. Quite frankly, I've never understood this American obsession with teaching the so-called classics when there are much better and far more engaging and relevant modern novels which can be brought into classrooms.

I did like that the author gave good arguments in favor of requesting the book removed, but it's not like the deck was loaded all on one side, which made for intelligent reading, which is a good thing in a novel aimed at middle-graders and young adults. The story is in many ways laid out like a court case - both sides give their evidence, and it's up to you, the jury to bring in a fair verdict, although there is a verdict returned in the story, too.

One thing I found very curious is that the author seems to insist upon using the full name - first and last - of all of the adult characters very nearly every single time he mentions them, at least in the first few chapters. This was very irritating. But I got even with him by playing with his name. I love names and I love playing with them. 'Nat' is short for Nathaniel, or Nathan, and this author's last name begins with Hen, so if you run the name together, you can get Nathen Toff out of it. I'm just weird that way!

My problem with this book was that there were some really good arguments which never got laid out, and the story itself felt rather antiquated. I think the author could have done a much better job and done it using a better example. That was really the problem. It was all black and white with no real grey areas. I can't recommend this novel and did not like the rather misleading title.

There is some interesting information online if you want to read more about real - and modern - censorship issues in schools:
American Library Association page on school censorship issues. Here's some recent news on censorship of a John Green novel which is fine by me - not for censoring it as inappropriate reading material for school kids, but for being a mind-numbing bunch of drivel! LOL! Here's another link to the National Association Against Censorship. There are lots more you can find online.

Tovi the Penguin Goes to the Seaside by Janina Rossiter

Rating: WORTHY!

I think the only Tovi adventure I haven't read is one where he goes into space, so quite clearly I'm into Rossiter (and if you can name the 1952 sci-fi novel that play on words comes from you get penguin points). I thought it hilarious that penguins would want to go to sunning themselves on the beach, so this one was a must-read for me. The penguins settle in the shade of a shady hummock and fall asleep, only to find themselves surrounded by saltwater from the the incoming tide! Oops!

Fortunately the tide is already going out when they wake, and the penguins keep their head. They discover a warning sign that fell down. Responsible little Sphenisciformes that they are, they replace the sign and make sure it stays up this time. I was all in favor of them taking the beach authority to court over this (I'm kidding!). I do have to say though, that I was rather disappointed that this didn't do more to educate young children of the dangers of the ocean and too much sun. It's never too early to educate children and bring them up to speed on safety as long as you don't scare them into immobility with dire warnings.

That gripe aside, the story was, as usual, charming and colorful, and actually eminently readable on my smart phone, so it's very portable! I recommend it.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a delightful story, well told, and very engrossing, of Victoria Darling, and her fight for independence from her overbearing father, and it takes place alongside the suffragette movement in London, in Edwardian 1909. We meet Victoria as she's about to be sent down from her French finishing school for posing nude for her extra curricular artist's group. It was an unplanned exhibition on her part, but it gets her sent home in disgrace. Her parents are outraged, including her mother, who was also a budding artist in her own youth, but Victoria isn't about to give up so easily.

A marriage, which, it is hoped, will encourage her to grow up and settle down, is arranged for her to the son of another nouveau riche family, but Victoria, through her growing ties with the suffragettes, has become involved - or however you care to characterize it - with a police officer named Will. As her wedding draws ever closer, she also draws closer to Will.

I grew to like Victoria, although sometimes she wasn't so smart. Will was a bit of a generic YA male portrait, with little going for him other than his picturesque value, and it's entirely predictable what will happen in the end. I had hoped for more in that department because the ending was a bit too convenient and sappy, but overall, Victoria's story more than made-up for the encroaching trope, and I grew increasingly to like her as I read ever more about her.

One issue I had was that Victoria didn't sound very high class! Yes, her father was a self-made man having built-up his own toilet business (he was flush with money! LOL!), but his daughter had been to the best schools, including the one in France. Her use of language didn't seem to quite reflect her upbringing.

Part of the problem was from Katharine McEwan's reading. For the most part she did a good job, but her American accent sounds Irish, and Victoria's voice sounded a bit too 'riff-raff' for someone of her breeding! her French pronunciation needs work too! She cannot say Étienne, making it sound more like ATM than ever it does a French name! Those were minor problems though, and I overlooked them because I enjoyed Victoria's story so much. I recommend this one.

Meantime Girl by Sindhu S

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"Anjali blinked, allowing a sigh wander past her sneer" should read "...allowing a sigh to wander past..."
"The entire blame will to be on you" should lose the 'to' and read, "The entire blame will be on you"
The 'to' from the previous example belongs here between 'gotten' and 'her'!"The arrogance of Siddharth’s editor had gotten her"
"got along famously well with her son’s wife, and kids, than with her own daughter." should read "...better than she did with her own daughter."
"Her fingers, creased from the bath, slipped grandma in her musings."? "...reminded her of grandma's fingers..." maybe?
There's an odd speech quote at the end of stifling unease.” which should not be there.
There's an entire paragraph repeated. It begins, "When the first bell sounded minutes later, Anjali stood in the orientation hall..."
"Lunch chocked her" should be "Lunch choked her".

This is a novella which started life as a novel. Where the rest of it went, I don't know, but I think the author was smart to précis it. It would have been a bit of a trial to read a full-length novel in this style. Written in 2012, this novel by an Indian author and set in India, tells the story of a doomed love affair between the young, rather impetuous Anjali and the older, married Sidharth, who is frankly not worthy of her. It takes her a long time to realize it. The novel is very widely spaced between paragraphs, so it's actually even shorter than you might think from the page count.

The story read more like a poem than a prose novel and it was charming. English isn't the author's first language, and it shows in the way this is phrased, making for writing that is by turns endearing and confusing! The more I read though, the more I got into the rhyme and reason of it, and I found it to be quite exhilarating and really warmed to it, especially after I'd read the ending. I don't know if I really liked either of the main characters. Sidharth definitely not, but at least Anjali wised-up and took charge, and began to take serious responsibility for the way her life had gone, and that made it worth while for me.

In addition to the sometimes amusing phraseology, there were some intentional moments of real fun, such as this part:

"What can I do? God’s will,” the maid said picking up the laundry basket.
“Did you hear that, Anju? She just called a prick God.”

I laughed out loud at that one.

Overall I think this was a worthy read and I ended up liking the story. I have a soft spot for India though, so your mileage might well differ!

Princess Knight Vol 1 by Osamu Tezuka

Rating: WARTY!

This is the second of two different "Princess Knight" graphic novels I checked out of the library. I had never encountered this particular sub-genre before so it was odd I picked two out on the same trip. Sadly, neither of them was very impressive, so I guess I'm done with Princess Knight stories!

This one is actually titled Princess Knight and is the one, I believe, which gave rise to the genre, although the original Japanese title said no such thing. Ribbon no Kishi means 'Knight of Ribbons'. That title made less sense, however, since no ribbons were involved in this story! It's a gender-bending story which I typically love, but this one irritated me from the off. The story here wasn't very good and was larded-up with everything (I believe I may even have seen a kitchen sink in there somewhere).

The premise is that angels add a heart to genderless kids right before they're born, determining their gender, which immediately disrespects everyone who isn't bog-standard binary. That was cruel. I thought they might be using this 'gender assignment' as a target to take down, but that wasn't what happened. Note that while this particular candidate (referred to consistently as Princess Sapphire) was issued both a male and a female heart at birth by a mischievous "angel" unoriginally named "Tink" (Tinku), yet despite this, genderism was rife throughout this novel, with the princess side of Sapphire constantly being put in its place. At one point near the end, Sapphire is engaged in a sword fight when the 'boy' heart is ripped out, and immediately the remaining 'she' feels weak and useless, and cannot fight the dastardly villain. That was the last straw for me.

Note that this was written in the mid 1950's, so it was in some ways ground-breaking for its time, but it was still a traditional view. It wasn't like the rest of the story was that great either, and even after 350 pages, it was nowhere near resolution. The reader was invited to the conclusion in volume two! No thanks! I'd already read far too much to want to read another volume of this. I began liking it because the artwork - black and white line drawings - was charming and elegant, and the writing was fun for the most part, but it just dragged on and on without going anywhere and without doing anything with this great premise. Despite having both hearts, Sapphire was feminine no matter what guise he/she was in, and it was absurd to pretend that there was this big doubt about whether sapphire was male or female.

The prince who falls in love with her is categorically unable to recognize her when he sees her without a blonde wig. So much for the depth of his love! For me the story betrayed males, females, and everyone in between and beyond. That's not the only thing which is confused: despite the setting being medieval Europe, the currency is dollars! Another one of many annoyances. So overall, I can't recommend this. While I loved the artwork, the genderism - the very thing I had imagined a novel like this would completely negate - was nauseating.

The History Major by Michael Phillip Cash

Rating: WARTY!

This is another short novel I got from Net Galley, but unlike the previous one I blogged, this was not a 100 page excerpt from a four hundred page novel, this was the entire novella, and it was less than ninety pages. It contained two pages of self-promotional, positive reviews which I found to be weird. I already had the ebook, so what is the point of two pages of reviews when I'd already picked it to read? Leave 'em out and save a tree! The reviews were mostly from Foreword and Kirkus. I have zero respect for Kirkus, who never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are utterly useless, and I always skip forewords(!), so these two pages were wasted on me.

The story itself is hard to critique without giving away major spoilers. Let me just confine myself to saying that it's never a good sign when the author has to include a note at the end explaining what they just wrote! It was obvious what the author was trying to do. We've all been there, but stories of the type where it turns out it was all a dream in the end, or something along those similarly twisted lines, are typically more of a let-down that an uplift. The main problem with this one for me, was that it was so flighty and disjointed that it was just one long aggravation. I think this would have worked better as a short story than anything longer.

I think it would have been hilarious had JK Rowling ended the Harry Potter heptalogy by having Harry wake-up on the Hogwarts Express as it arrives in the station on that first trip, the entire seven book series having been a dream. Then, the ending would actually have been a real surprise. This was not such a dream novel, but there were no surprises here, only a torturous circular journey that felt more like a Disney ride than an engaging novella. While I wish the author well in his endeavors, I can't recommend this.

Weregirl by CD Bell

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not a fan of werewolf or vampire stories. The first because that genre has never actually interested me, and the second because vampires have become so larded with trope and cliché that they've become nauseatingly bland and ridiculously pathetic. This one was different in that first of all, the blurb writer got my interest, which is almost a miracle in itself, and the secondly, that the author made the story worth reading - as far as it went.

Note that the cover calls this a novel, but all I read was actually a novella (I'm guessing, without knowing the word-count). But you know, if Amazon is going to continue trying to force writers to sell novels at 99 cents a pop, like they involve no more work than a two or three minute song does, I don't blame authors for putting out shorter stories, or for releasing them the way they used to be released in the days of Arthur Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes stories: in episodic form. This one was not such a novel however. It was, as I learned after I had requested it, merely an introductory 100 pages from a four-hundred page novel, so the publishers actually made me DNF this! This review, therefore, is only of those first 100 pages.

The first thing I liked is that this wasn't told in first person. I'm tempted to build a shrine to author CD Bell for that. It would have been very easy to make that mistake and the fact that this author didn't is highly praise-worthy. The second good thing was the two main characters: Nessa and Bree, who were for me completely real and believable.

Nessa Kurland is a high school junior who is very much into cross-country running. She not only loves it, she needs it if she's to get a scholarship for college. While running one evening, she's bitten by a wolf, and over the next month she finds herself changing at first subtly, and then more scarily, until she can't deny that something embarrassingly and frighteningly weird has happened to her. Fortunately, Bree is a true friend and she begins to work with Nessa on handling this.

The story felt too thin. For a short story this would have been understandable, but for a four-hundred page novel, it's inexcusable. By 'thin' I mean there was not a lot of depth to it. It's written it like it's a first draft, getting all the essential elements down without adding any real atmosphere. I would like to have seen it a lot more fleshed-out, and by that I don't mean padding (which it evidently has if it's four hundred pages and is this skimpy), but filling in spare areas with some color and texture. The story also has a prolog which I skipped as I do all prologs. I've never regretted not reading one, nor missed it! If you don't think it's important enough to tell in chapter one or later, then I don't think it's worth reading!

For an example of the failure to flesh out, consider one of Nessa's fellow runners - a girl named Cynthia. Nessa is supposed to train with her one evening, but they miss their connection, and despite Nessa's wolf bite injury, there's nothing from Cynthia: no asking why she had not shown up on time the previous night, or asking after her health. There were several people I suspected of being the werewolf, but my prime suspect was this Cynthia, notwithstanding Nessa's inexplicable conviction that the werewolf was male.

Another such area is where Nessa wins a race but instead of hanging around at the end, she keeps running and disappears completely. There was a good reason for this, but there was no follow up to it. Any real event like that, where the record-breaking winner disappears afterwards, would caused a lot of suspicion! Maybe it wasn't Nessa, but someone else running, fraudulently pretending to be her? I can't go more into detail over this without giving away too many spoilers but this event was simply glossed over, as though there was nothing weird about it. Reality would have brought dire consequences: an investigation at the very least.

This was an advance review copy, and there were some grammatical problems with it, which I assume will be cleaned-up before actual release. There were some cases of a word missing from between two other words such as, for example, "The tooth from the wound" which should have presumably been: "The tooth came from the wound." Another was a case where 'here' was used when 'her' was meant. That's a really hard one to catch with a spellchecker! I normally list the errors I find in ARCs on my blog so an author can make use of the information if they wish, but Bluefire reader, on which I read this and which is otherwise an excellent app, makes it impossible to capture these errors. A final read-through will fix them though.

There were also occasional odd sentences, such as when Nessa walks by a garage and she can see "...a Toyota of some kind..." which sounded really strange. I think the author intended this to mean she recognized the make but not the model, but even if you don't know the model you can identify it as a car or a truck or an SUV or whatever. I think I would have just had it that she saw a Toyota pick-up or whatever it was. Or simply kept it completely neutral and said "...an SUV on a hydraulic lift..." or something along those lines. But that's just me! I also found it odd that it's copyrighted to Chooseco LLC rather than to CD Bell, but whatever!

When Nessa meets the 'shaman', the story lost a little something for me, not least because he was disgustingly racist. Also because he was precisely the trope male which turns me off these stories: chiseled muscles and so on. I thought at this point, "Nessa deserves a better dog kennel than the one that's being built for her here if this is to be her romantic interest!" Why this trope came to be associated with werewolves, which are not larded with bulky muscles (far from it!), is a mystery. It was also odd that Nessa feels, along with other physical improvements in stamina, hearing, and smell, her eyesight becoming acute. Dogs, including wolves (or conversely, wolves including dogs!), do not have great eyesight. They're most likely short-sighted, and are largely color-blind compared with humans. They do see better at night, and the reason they do is connected with their poor color vision.

It makes no sense for Nessa's sight to undergo the improvements it did. It should have become worse, except at night. You can argue that since she was hyperopic beforehand, then becoming more myopic could have corrected her vision, I guess, but that's a bit of a stretch. Wolves have a wider field of view, but poorer binocular vision than humans. So this super-powered vision is a trope which has no honest place in the cannon, although it has actually become cannon for this kind of tale. This random, nonsensical approach to telling werewolf stories is one of the reasons I'm not attracted to the genre. It's far too deus ex machina for someone like me, who thinks it would be nice if a potential writer of werewolf stories actually read-up on real wolves before they began their story instead of soaking their pages in the tainted water which they've blindly hauled-up from the well of trope that's been established by far too many YA authors of late.

So overall, based on one quarter of a novel, I can't recommend this. It started out great and drew me in, but as the story sailed on, particularly when the "shaman' appeared, it began to take on trope like a badly-holed ship takes on water, and this sunk the story for me! I don't any to read four hundred pages of this, and I can't recommend it based on what the publisher allowed me to read of it.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer by Satoshi Mizukami

Rating: WARTY!

I picked this out at the library because it had a delightfully absurd Manga title, and from a brief look at the first few pages, it seemed like it might be a fun read. Be warned: amusing perusing can hasten the crime of wasting time!

The story is your usual trope bland guy picked out by fate (or in this case a talking lizard) to be the hero who saves the world. Why he's picked out is never made clear despite some five hundred pages (I'm guessing since they're not numbered) of comic. I can't even tell you how this ended because the ending was such a confused mess that I'm honestly not sure what happened. Seriously! The first three fifths or so was ok - not great but moderately entertaining. Unfortunately, the last portion was a complete disaster when it came to intelligible story-telling. Finally I can tell you I found a novel that was three-fifths worth reading! Not really, because the ending sucked and robbed those first three-fifths of all value.

Evidently the bad guy was beaten, and the biscuit hammer did not come down on Earth, but what happened to it was unexplained. Neither did the princess, who was the bland guy's next-door neighbor destroy the Earth herself after she helped to save it. Again, why this was so went completely unexplained - or I missed it somehow, but how and when that happened was not at all clear! It wasn't explained why she ever wanted to destroy the Earth, and why - if that was indeed the case - she was helping save it.

If she so desperately wanted to destroy it, why waste all those days fighting the owner of the biscuit hammer (who we never met, unless it was blond super dude, but this wasn't at all clear - not to me, the reader, anyway, but why would an author care about keeping readers happy?!). Instead of wasting all that time fighting it, why not simply destroy it herself first? Or just stand back and by her inaction be the agent of destruction she wished to be.

Yes! None of this made sense but the first part was entertaining - for the most part. The biggest problem I had with it was the author's clear and present - and creepy - obsession with young girls' panties, a pair of which, in situ on the girl, were exposed every few pages. That was perverse at best. At least I didn't pay for this! Except with my valuable time.

White Sand by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, Mercy Thompson, Julius Gopez, Ross Campbell

Rating: WARTY!

The problem with reading an advance review copy of a graphic novel is that you can never be quite sure if what you're looking at on your tablet is what you would see had you bought the comic in print form. In this case, the drawings were poor and the colors muddy and posterized, as if they had been de-rezzed for the ARC. This made for a comic which was more appalling than appealing, but I decided to give this the benefit of the doubt and read on. For me the story is what matters most, even in a comic. Unfortunately the story, which began with a great potential to draw me in, failed to keep stirring my interest as it progressed.

The drawing also lacked good dynamics, as it happens. The character portrayals looked wooden and decidedly odd in many frames, notably the ones where the characters were moving. The frames themselves were deliberately skewed - no square corners anywhere. Sometimes this can work well, but in this case it felt like it had been done not because it suited the presentation for the page, but because the creators of the comic thought it looked super cool or something! That's never a good idea.

The weak presentation was owned-up to on many pages because we had little arrows showing us where to read next instead of being able to determine that from a soundly-designed page. To me, this was just annoying. The skewing and sharp angles worked against the idea of a culture which magically controlled the silky, snaking flow of sand. Some images were purposefully sliced through with a frame border even when it wasn't entirely necessary to split the image. This felt amateur and pretentious to me. On the other side of this coin there was some unintentional humor, such as on the bottom frame of page 139, where an unfortunate juxtaposition of characters made it look like the sand master was feeling-up his friend! LOL!/p>

The story began an a fairly engaging manner despite some grammatical gaffs, such as when one character said, "This council may do as we please" as opposed to "This council may do as it pleases," but on the other hand, this was a character's speech, so perhaps the character just had bad grammar?! Anyway, I was drawn into the story to begin with, but a lot of it made no sense. It's set on a planet called Taldain, which appears not to rotate, since one side appears always to have sunlight, whereas the other, known as "Darkside" evidently has none.

I can't imagine a planet like this being habitable, since the one side would be baked to a crisp and the other frozen. Perhaps an existence might be eked out on the dusk/dawn border between the two extremes, but this wasn't what happened here. There was no logic to the character's skin colors, either. The people who were apparently never exposed to sunlight, coming from the dark side, were inexplicably dark skinned, whereas the pale faces came from the perennially sunlit side. This made no sense!

The pale skinned people we meet first are supposedly "Sand Masters" pretentiously referred to as "mastrells" for reasons I could not fathom. This same pretension was employed by using made-up words for some things, yet not for others. These made-up words necessitated an asterisk and a common English word at the bottom of the frame. This struck me as idiotic. Just call it a water bottle for goodness sakes! The sand masters are supposed to be able to make sand do their bidding, but how this came to be and to what end it was manipulated was entirely unexplained. All I ever saw it used for was as a weapon and as a means to avoid climbing stairs. It had the potential to be something awesome, but it was a fail for me because it seemed so pointlessly squandered.

Note that this is a part of Brandon Sanderson's "Cosmere" universe, with which I am completely unfamiliar. Perhaps if I were, I would have had more out of this story, but given that I am not, a little help from the writers would have been appreciated. It was not forthcoming. I routinely skip prologs and introductions, but I went back this time and read the introduction, and it failed to shed even a photon of useful light, being more of a rambling self-promotion than a candle in the Darkside.

That just goes to prove my case that prologs, prefaces, introductions, and so on are a complete waste of my reading time. Anyway, when the sand masters are all-but wiped-out by some barbaric tribe, this one son of the master mastrell is one of the few survivors. He thinks he can be the new lord because he's the son of the old one (good luck with that!), even though he has had no proper training and history for such a position. He throws his lot in with the Darksiders who are traveling the light side for reasons which were as a muddy as the art work. I can't recommend this comic at all.

The Changelings by Christina Soontornvat

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an advance review copy which I was happy to read. It's aimed at middle grade (eight to twelve-year-olds) so it's not for me, and parts of it were not to my taste, but for the intended age group I think it's absolutely perfect. Isabella and younger sister Henriette have moved to a new home (why goes pretty much unexplained - yes, grandma died and left them her home, but they didn't have to move into it!). Izzy learns that the woman next door, through the woods, is a witch! is she? Maybe! Izzy and Hen go to spy on her and shortly afterwards, Izzy sees Hen disappear into the forest, hypnotized by flute music!

Feisty and capable Izzy chases after her and ends up in fairy-land with three outlaw changelings. What's going on here? Izzy has to find out and pursue her kid sister before the evil queen can...what is she going to do with the little girl? I have to say that these characters were beautifully drawn with words. Both Izzy and Hen were strong female characters, self-motivated, strong at heart, and independent. The thee changelings were fun, interesting, and complex. I was particularly intrigued by Dree. Lug (from the name on down) was a bit of a cliche, but even he wasn't all trope and no substance. The evil queen was delightful and also self-motivated. She was just on the wrong side, unfortunately, but nonetheless very real and believable. And the enigmatic Peter? Did he really deserve the title "Good"?

I loved this story overall, and I recommend it for middle grade readers who like a good adventure, and are too old for paper-thin Disney Princesses. If I had any complaints, they would be about the claim that King Arthur was just a made-up character. He's really not! Yes, the shining knights at the round table are fiction, but there really was a man beneath the legend. One of the characters said this, however, and there's no reason a fictional character could not be just as ill-informed as a real person! The other thing, and this really bothered me, was when one of the characters said "Just don't make me a goblin or a fat lady." It is unnecessarily cruel to put this idea into young children's minds: that overweight people, females in particular, are akin to goblins? Not a good idea. Fortunately that as the only distasteful part of this book. Even authors with awesome names shouldn't be allowed to get away with dissing people because of their weight! And yes, I know a character said this, but that doesn't make it go away. For the rest of it - it was great!

The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Rating: WARTY!

The Demon King is part of some sort of series, but at least it said that squarely on the front cover "A Seven Realms novel". I have no idea if this means it's just set in the same world as other novels, or if it's part of a series, but it read like a stand-alone - at least in the way it began. The impression I get from fellow reviewers though, is that this is nothing more than a five-hundred page prolog for the other books in the series. Yawn. I blame the money grubbers in Big Publishing™ for fostering a culture of series in YA novels, and authors for tamely going along with it like so many sheep about to be shorn.

While I'm not a fan of series, I don't mind stories set in the same world. It would be truly foolish to do so! Unfortunately, this started out larded with trope and cliché, and in the beginning, it managed to avoid pissing me off with that, but it danced so shamelessly with those banes of young adult authors that I harbored serious doubts I would get very far. In the end I made it a little over one-third the way through before it became far too mired for my taste.

The sad thing is that this novel is just over five hundred pages long, and yet in that first third, all it had achieved was to establish a love triangle between the princess, the son of the captain of the guard, and the son of the palace wizard. Yep. That's all it did. The author could have put this into a prolog of a few pages long. I would have skipped it as I always do, and everyone would have been happy! But no, we have to spend a hundred-fifty pages crawling through this overblown set-up. Oh, and yeah, there's some dude whose people are rooted in American Indian culture too. Han Alister is the Luke Skywalker of the story - a powerful person of honorable descent who has spent his young life in ignorance of his power and destiny. Blecch! And yes, there's a Darth Vader (the head wizard), and a Han Solo (the guard captain's son), and a Princess Leia, er Raisa.

Wait, there are American Indians (close enough) and a queen? Yes. Believe it or not, there are. Even after a hundred-fifty pages, I still had no idea about this world, so poor as the world-building. It could have been Star Wars! I couldn't tell if it was in the very early days of the wild west, or in steam-punk Victorian times, or more modern even than that. Obviously, it was a fantasy world, so there are no direct ties, but even so, I felt lost. After we had been introduced to the captain's son, who, now back from military school (where warring tribes all train together? What?), is tall and muscular and chiseled, has a square jaw, and has girlish eyelashes and flecks in his eyes! Barf! It was at the point that I went looking for a good dose of Phenergan to stem my nausea, and ditched this novel post haste. Are YA authors medically incapable of originality? It would seem so. It's the precious few who are off the reservation whom I seek out, and they are a rare and treasured breed. This author isn't one of them.

In terms of writing, there were some common errors - common to many YA novels I've read of late, that is. One was where a snake was described as poisonous: "As if he had a large poisonous snake in there" but snakes aren't poisonous, they're venomous. A native would know the difference between venom and poison, especially if they collect herbs and fungi for medicinal purposes and trade, so this one tugged me out of suspension of disbelief briefly.

On the very next page, I read an example of what is evidently fast becoming a change in the English language as yet another author used 'staunch' where 'stanch' was desperately seeking employment. Personally I am a staunch supporter of those who stanch blood flow from open wounds, but I guess this author is not! It's sad to see this from young writers, but the English language is without a doubt extraordinarily fluid and dynamic, and never more so than it has been of late. But this and several other such issues - when added to the tedious love triangle, and a frankly limp and lackluster female main character - were enough to persuade me that this was not worth finishing, much less pursuing into 'seven realms'.

Pop Gun War Vol 1 Gift by Farel Dalrymple

Rating: WARTY!

Frankly this comic book was a complete mess. I read the whole thing through and had no idea what the author was trying to relate! The story began with some young kid picking angel wings out of the trash and discovering he can fly with them, but he does nothing, goes nowhere, learns nothing, and delivers nothing. And I have no idea what the title has to do with the story!

If this is "more about a feeling you, the reader, get from the story", then what I got was disappointed. Very. I'm sure the author knew what he was putting into the page, but it failed to come out on the reader's side for me! The artwork was black and white (99% of it anyway), very heavy on the black, and the story jumped around so much and was so light on text that I was lost most of the time trying to figure out what the heck the story was doing. While I am always glad to have a chance to read cutting edge advance review copies of graphic novels, some of them just are, quite evidently, not for me, no matter how interesting they sound from the blurb. I can't in good faith recommend this one, although I wish the writer/artist good fortunate with their career.

The Crystal Skull by Manda Scott

Rating: WARTY!

Well I guess I'm done with Manda Scott as an author of interest! This is the second I've tried of hers and it was a non-starter - or more accurately, it was a great starter, but rapidly fell apart. Reader Susan Duerden's voice wasn't bad, but neither was it wonderful. It was okay.

Not to be confused with Crystal Skull by Rob Macgregor, this story had a wonderful premise which was sadly squandered, but what lost it for me was when the book started flashing back to Elizabethan times and modern times got boring. I lost all interest. In a print book, and somewhat in an ebook, you can skip parts you don't like and get to the next good bit, but it's really hard to do that in an audio book!

The story was of two young newly-weds, Stella and Kit, whose wedding gift to each other was to explore one of the limestone caves in Yorkshire, England (which is where my parents were born! Not in a cave, silly, in Yorkshire!). They were the first to enter this one particular cavern in over four hundred years (hence the Elizabethiana), and just as this one obscure legend had it, they discovered the heartstone, which appeared to have mystical powers. Either that or Stella seriously needed a brain scan to detect that tumor she certainly has growing in her skull.

Of course it's not that easy. The authorities don't care of course, that someone who values life very little wants to take that stone from them, either to own it or to destroy it, yet instead of turning the stone and the location of the cavern over to appropriate authorities, these two complete dicks start squirreling it away. Stella lies, even to her husband, that she's disposed of it. I stopped liking them both at that point. They are irresponsible jerks and I lost all interest in reading any more about them. If they'd had good reason to do as they did, that would be one thing, but the author gives us no reason other than selfishness and stupidity for them to hold onto the stone and keep the cave secret, and that never makes for a fun story in my experience. The monotonous flashbacks to that delusional charlatan Michele de Notredame and the wa-ay overrated John Dee were trite and laughable, worthy of an amateur writer, not a professional. I can't recommend this based on what I listened to.

Anna The Girl Witch Vol 2 Wandering Witch by Max Candee

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the second I have read of this series, and although I am not a fan of series, and this one is definitely outside of my age range, I found it to be as entertaining as the first, which I rated positively. There were a couple of portions where I became bored, notably when Anna spends so much time with her grandmother, Baba Yaga before she goes on her quest. This wasn't entertaining to me. I am not a fan of Baba Yaga stories at all, which was one reason this bored me. The time spent in this endeavor seemed to really drag and produce very little fruit, and there were, for me, far too many pages expended on Baba. The quest was much more fun, and really kicked the story back into high gear, but then we hit another tedious section where Anna is involved with this really annoying cat, and frankly I skipped most of that because it was even more boring than the time she was with Baba.

Those sections aside, I enjoyed the story very much and consider it a worthy read for the intended age range. Anna continues to be a strong young girl who wants to do good even as she fears that using magic is somehow allowing the same darkness into her heart which has overtaken and possessed her grandmother. It's a bit scary for Anna, who is trying to find where her father is and rescue him. Can Anna rebel against her grandmother - who is seeking to own her as she tried to own her father - without letting either that darkness or her grandmother take her over?

Anna learns a lot more about her family history in this volume and frankly, it was a bit too much for my taste. Maybe others will like the firehose of family history, but I would have preferred the same volume delivered as a trickle over the length of the story. It was interesting in some ways, but it rather deadened the mind when so much of it was unloaded all at once, and it really brought the story-flow to a bit of a halt.

There are moments of good humor, though, which helped to lighten the load, despite the rather oppressive tone of the volume as a whole, such as when I read "...the sound of an enraged tiger in the taiga." which made me laugh out loud. Anna is an impressive character who fears the consequences of her use of magic, but who also wants to do some good with it if she can. Besides there's a father to rescue, and a matching hand for her disembodied helper, Squire, to be found. I recommend this for the age range, but it's not a series I am interested in following for myself, especially when I have so much else to read!

Love Volume 3: The Lion by Frédéric Brrémaud, Federico Bertolucci

Rating: WARTY!

(Note that this was an advance review copy)

I've been following this series since it began, and after the first two volumes (The Tiger and The Fox, I found I didn't like this third one. The art work was poor in comparison with the previous two volumes (although decent by your average run-of-the-mill comic books standards) and the story was nothing but one long run of violent and bloody encounters between lions and their prey, and between lions and other lions.

It was not interesting to me, and there really was very little respite from it, especially given that the art work offered nothign truly appealing to look forward to. This doesn't accurately even reflect the life of a lion, which is actually much more along the lines of lying around all day, day after day, and once in a while going on a hunt, and of course, once in a while mating and defending territory. It's really pretty boring, and why people think lions are majestic and kings of the jungle is a complete mystery to me.

On a technical note, I had a problem with this advance review copy on the iPad in Bluefire reader - it would not open at all and locked-up the app! I was able to open and read it on Adobe Digital Editions on my desktop computer. I think this had the potential to tell a really engaging story, but somewhere the lions lost the scent and meandered off. I can't recommend it.

Black Magick Vol 1 Awakening by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

(Note that this was an advance review copy)

This is one of the most engaging comics I've read in some time. It's black (magic) and white - or more accurately, gray-scale, but this took nothing from it and may actually have been a far better choice of "color". The drawing was excellent!

The story is of Rowan Black, a detective with the Portsmouth Police Department, and someone who is my idea of a strong female character. Not that she goes around beating people up - that's not what I mean. She's strong in that she's self-possessed, confident, can handle her own life, doesn't need a guy to validate her, is loyal to her friends, but not afraid to upset them if police work interferes with her social life. Honestly, I really liked this character. I'd also like to see her in a regular novel. I'd like to see her on the movie screen, too. And I could see Tatiana Maslany playing her!

Her social life? Well apart from a drink after work with her fellow detectives, she's a witch and attends coven meetings - not new age pagan and Celtic throwback stuff, but real witchcraft. Here's how invested I was in this story and this is in the first few pages. I was so focused on what the characters were saying that I went through two or three pages and didn't even notice that they were naked under their skimpy robes! I guess I'm not a "real man" any more! LOL! So yes, be warned that this is an adult novel and the artist doesn't shy from nudity.

As in any homicide detective story, a corpse (or two) show-up, but in this case, the more Rowan and her partner investigate, the more it appears to Rowan that someone is targeting her. How can someone else's death be aimed at her? You'll have to read this one to find out! And those who are after her aren't at all concerned how much collateral damage they cause. I want volume 2, and I want it now, or hexes will be cast!

The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean

Rating: WARTY!

I reviewed this author's The Death Defying Pepper Roux this month and really liked it, so I was curious to see how a second novel by this same writer would turn out, and this was just the opposite. Again I have to offer kudos for setting the story outside her comfort zone (as defined in this case by a British author writing a novel set in China). We see far too little of that, especially in young adult novels, but the problem here, for me, was that the novel really delivered nothing to hold my interest. I kept finding my mind wandering onto other things rather than saying focused on the story (it was an audiobook fyi), and that is never a good sign!

I made it a third the way through, but couldn't sustain interest in some kid who decided that being lofted on a kite was a good career move! What won me over in the previous story was the humor. There was none here, and I really missed it. I can't recommend this based on the portion of it I heard. The reading was okay by a mixed cast, some of whom actually sounded Chinese, but no amount of feeling injected into a novel is going to make it listenable if the story doesn't grab you.

Gotham Academy Vol 2 by Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl, Mingjue Helen Chen, Msassyk

Rating: WARTY!

I had an advance review copy of volume one in this series and wasn't overly impressed with that, so why I went back a second time I don't know! Call it rum spring air, Hamish! LOL! This story was just boring. Maybe younger readers who liked volume one will find this entertaining, but to me it was just a mess - a mishmash of sub-stories (and sub-standard stories) pulling every which way and it was hard to follow. Random characters (Batman put in a very brief appearance, as does someone who might or might not be Robin, as well as some villains such as Manbat and Clayface), but the story was a mess and uninteresting to me. The artwork wasn't bad, but the writing was tedious and the whole thing unappealing overall. I'm definitely done with this series now!

Lumberjanes Vol 2 by Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Brooke Allen, Maarta Laiho

Rating: WARTY!

This is one of two graphic novels I picked up from the library, and neither was very engaging. I've wanted to read The Lumberjanes for a while, so I was pleased with the chance I got courtesy of the local library, but the novel turned out to be a real disappointment. It's volume two, and I missed volume one, so I may be lacking something from not having that read under my belt, but even if I had, I think I would have still found this a disappointment. Stevenson's and Ellis's writing wasn't awful, and the artwork by Allen and Laiho (colors) wasn't bad either, but the story itself was boring to me. It's just a bunch of weird girls at a summer camp in the woods. They're not lumberjacks. They routinely are invaded by fantastical or anachronistic creatures (in this one, for example, dinosaurs and giant fireflies). They beat them off, rinse, and repeat. it was tedious and I can't recommend this. Maybe younger kids might like it, but parents might not approve of the PG-13-rated version of swearing employed by the kids. I DNF'd it about one-half to two-thirds the way through.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

Rating: WORTHY!

Finally I get to post one review out of this set that was a really decent read - or in this case a 'listen' because it was an audio book from my ever praiseworthy local library. The novel is praiseworthy too, in that it's funny (laugh out loud funny at times, although it falls off a lot in the last third, be warned), and it's set in France, which is different at least, even though it's written by an English author. It's nice to read a story not set in the US or the UK for a change! It's also the kind of novel which makes me want to read more by the same author, which is always a good thing. I am particularly interested to see what she did with Peter Pan - she was commissioned to write a sequel to it! Note that McCaughrean is pronounced Muh-Cork-Ran

The story here (or there, since it's set in historical times rather than modern day) is that Pepper Roux thinks he's going to die and runs away from it. Why 'Pepper' rather than the French word for Pepper, which is 'Poivre' is a bit of a mystery. Poivre does appear to get a mention here and there, but with this being an audio book, I cannot be sure. I initially thought the reader was saying 'pauvre', which is French for 'poor' as in 'sorry-assed', and it may well be that he was. I wasn't sure. The reader was Anton Lesser. As far as I know, he's no relation to Kenneth Moore. Or Ronald Biggs. Or the old British comedy team of Little and Large. Given his name, he might be related to Daphne du Maurier, which is French for "More bay tree!" Actually I just made all of that up. I don't know more about Lesser except that the did a really good job reading this novel.

Pepper is told by an aunt that he will die on his fourteenth birthday, so he's at a really loose end. He goes to see his father, who is holed up in un hôtel, drunk, and so Pepper takes his hat and coat, dons them, and boards his father's ship in his dad;s stead, setting sail with the crew as their captain. Yes, the story is ridiculous and improbable, but it's told in such a way that it really seems like this might have happened. What Roux doesn't know is that the crew has been paid to scuttle the ship for insurance money!

This is only the beginning of a series of equally improbably, but highly believable adventures, each as amusing as the next. The story rolled on in this fashion in high style until the last third, and particularly the last sixth, where it became mired in self-justification and exposition. I think it would have been better as a shorter story with no conclusion, but with Pepper simply heading off into the sunset on his next adventure instead of explaining everything. That didn't work for me. But given how much I had enjoyed this story for the first two-thirds, I am very happy to rate it as a very worthy read.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, or Bad Monkey by Curtis Smith, or Superfreak: Bad Monkey by Melanie Kendry, this audio book I got from the library was a plodding bore from the off, so I DNF'd it. Plodding is appropriate since in Britain that's a derogatory name for a cop and this cop story set in the US was insufferably plodding and meanderign into a bunch of tedious crap that had nothing to do with the murder. The reading by Arte Johnson did not help at all. It was like listening to a Public Radio documentary - and not one that was interesting, but one that was so tedious you wonder how it ever got green-lighted to begin with. It was awful.

It did not help that the main character, Yancey, was a jerk, a moron, and a complete dick to begin with. He was one of the most unappealing main characters I have ever encountered: lazy, immoral, clueless, unmotivated, selfish, womanizing, and a slob. I was unable to see anything in him that would make me want to read (or in this case listen to) any more about him. The plot sounded interesting: a severed arm is hauled in by a guy on a fishing trip off the Florida keys. The arm bears a valuable wedding ring but is missing a wristwatch, and which has its middle finger extend from its fist? How can you start with a premise like that and bore the pants off me? Ask Carl Hiaasen. He managed it. I can't recommend this based on what little I could stand to listen to.

Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with William Johnstone's Dreams of Eagles!

I could not get into this book at all, so I don't know how much value this will be - it's not so much a review as an opinion about writing! After I realized I was never going to read this, which was shortly after I began reading it, I went out to look at some reviews of people I follow, and others, and I quickly realized my initial impressions were right. I wasn't going to like this, and since it's almost five hundred pages, I also wasn't going to read this when there is so much else out there which is not only just begging to be read, but which is also willing to offer me a square deal as a reader. I do have an audio book by this author on a different topic, so I will revisit her and see if she can engage me with that.

I was interested in this because it's about Boudicca (change the 'u' to an 'a', and the second 'c' to an 'e' - easily done when writing by hand - and you have 'Boadicea') who has long been of interest to me because I don't think any writer has depicted her as anything other than a gallant 'warrior woman', when really she was nothing more than a terrorist. She may have felt good reason to lay waste to several cities, but the bottom line is that she simply went on a rampage because the Romans pissed her off, and she mercilessly slaughtered literally thousands of men, women, and children for no reason (like there ever is a reason other than insanity for such actions), including thousands of her fellow Britons. She probably wiped out more Britons than ever she did Romans. Se was such a poor warrior that an inferior, but well-organized force of Romans wiped out her hoard of barbarians, and brought peace back to a country which she had thrown into terror and turmoil by her intemperate and precipitate actions.

The name, Boudica, is mentioned only five times in this entire book! She has been known by many names, but the one used here is one I've never encountered before: Breaca? Whence that came I have no idea, but it appears (as Breaca nic Graine) only in this novel to my knowledge, and when I began reading this, I started to think this was not about Boudicca, but about her ancestors, and she wouldn't show up until volume two, until I realized that Breaca was in fact Boudicca. Yes, this is a series, and I am not a fan of series, which was another good reason to abandon this before it gets any worse.

If the first volume is so unappealing, I sure am not interested in reading another three five-hundred page (or whatever) novels after this one! And this volume was so diffuse and wandering and ethereal that it was entirely unappealing to me. Plus it's complete fiction of course, with very little history. Admittedly facts are hard to come by in this case, but we do know of the life these people led, to some extent, and I saw very little of it here, the author preferring to meander off into occultism and dreaming. We could have been reading about American Indians instead of the Iceni people.

I really don't get what it is about historical fiction writers that drives them to produce massive tomes and then sequels to those massive tomes. Of course it's very lucrative, isn't it, if you can suck (or sucker) your readers in and addict them to endless derivative volumes? Publishers love authors who do that. As for me, I prefer authors who write for their readers, and not so much their bank balance, and I think this author would have served her readers better with one volume, cutting out all the extraneous ethereal nonsense and focused on the known facts.

The problem of course with that, is that the facts are few when it comes to Boudicca. Almost nothing is known about her other than her crazed rampage. It's not even known how she died or where her final battle was (although one possible site is quite close to where I grew up, amusingly enough!). There is a rumor that she's buried on platform 9¾! I am not kidding. I wonder if this is why Rowling chose that location for her Potter series, because one rumor has it that Boudicca is buried between platforms nine and ten at what is now King's Cross station in London. This burial is doubtful, though!

We know nothing about her before and after the rampage. Her real name? Boudicca means the same as Victoria - victory. It probably was no more her real name than is Breaca nic Graine! The names of her daughters? Unknown, although there are wild guesses at them. Where she died? Unknown, Where she's buried? Unknown. My guess is that she died at what's known as the Battle of Watling Street, and was left along with the thousands of other corpses to rot. Find the battle site, you'll find her. It's possible that her surviving supporters returned later and buried her, but the chances are that those who knew her died with her and no one else would know her well enough to recognize her body.

So based on what I saw of this novel and the portion I read, I can't recommend it. You'll have to read someone else's review to get a better overview of this one than I can offer though.

Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer

Rating: WORTHY!

I seem to have entered a period of really bad books that fail to gain my attention (apart from the initial discovery, where the blurb made it seem like the book might be really interesting). Fortunately, I happen to have access to a really excellent public library with awesome librarians, so my mistakes cost me very little! I can DNF these experimental reads/listens without impoverishing myself. All Hail Public Libraries!

This is how I came to have yet another trope YA novel in my hands and one which appears, yet again, to be written by a female author who seems to dislike women. I mean, if she didn't, then why would she characterize them like this? Not to be confused with Mary Hartley's The Smart Girl's Guide to Getting What You Want, which this main character could have probably benefited from reading,Smart Girls Get What They Want is your typical YA story of the nerd and the jock, 'forced' together in a ridiculous fashion and falling for each other notwithstanding some heavy-duty reasons why they should not. This much I knew from reading only the first chapter.

The author makes the classic mistake of imbuing her main character with her own qualities, views, musical tastes and perspectives, even though she is old enough to be the main character's mother, if not grandmother. Thus we get references to the Rolling Stones and other anachronisms. That's not to say that no seventeen-year-old girl can quote lyrics from The Rolling Stones - only that it's so highly unlikely that it really kicks a reader out of the suspension of disbelief. What, there were no bands to which a seventeen year old might listen to and quite from? Or is the author simply too lazy to look them up? In this high-tech age, it's not hard to look up the bands to which teens might listen, and find the lyrics to a song or two by them. Or make up your own bands and lyrics. Or simply not have her quote a lyric, and thereby lend her a little more inventiveness and originality if you want your readers to really dig her. And this wasn't the only anachronistic reference.

The story is ostensibly about three friends, but it's really about only the first person narrator, and the friends (so-called) are given short shrift as ever. They're really more tools than friends. Because it's first person this gives the impression that she's all about herself an no one else, which is another problem with first person PoV. Genevieve (aka Gigi, LOL!) is the privileged, spoiled rotten MC, and Bea and Neerja are her 'friends'. They realize that Neerja's older sister was a nobody at school, perhaps because of her position as the smartest person in the class. The three decide they don't want to be that way, but Gigi's plan is derailed when she gets accused of cheating on a chemistry exam. How the teacher managed to grade the tests and discover the similarities before the students even left the classroom is a mystery. I can only assume time passed, but it was written so badly that it looked like as soon as they got up to leave the classroom, the teacher was calling them back with the graded tests already on his desk!

She didn't cheat, but because the jock's answers, including the extra credit question, are so much like hers, both of them were tarred with the same cheating brush, and the jock is such a selfish dick that he turns it all into a joke. Gigi is supposedly this go-getter girl, but she fails dismally to defend herself, and the school "discipline" hearing is such a complete and utter joke that it lacked all credibility for me. The school didn't even contact the parents about this. This is all so unbelievable as to really throw the story out as far as I was concerned, although I did read on for a while to see if it offered any hope of improvement. It just got worse. At this point I not only detested the jock, I detested the main character. This is never a good sign.

It wasn't believable for several reasons, the first of which was that the jock seemed out of place in the AP chemistry class. Not that no jock can be smart by any means, but that this particular one seemed like a complete jerk from the start and the author offered no rationale whatsoever for his even being in this class. Secondly, the ball-buster of a teacher who summarily accused them of cheating on his test was right there in the classroom. Are we supposed to believe that never once did he look up? Never once did he see this pair and notice that the jock was cribbing? Bullshit! It wasn't credible. This is amateur stuff. Thirdly, Gigi had already proven her academic chops and integrity over several years, and it just didn't sound likely she'd automatically be even suspected, let alone accused, found guilty and condemned without a trial. Her guilt is assumed throughout by both this teacher and the principal! This was done so ham-fistedly. They didn't get forced to take a new test to see who was cheating and who wasn't?

Clearly, the sole purpose of all this ridiculousness was to artificially throw these two together in a chemistry project, where they could fall in love. Why would Gigi even be remotely attracted to this selfish jerk who got her into all this trouble? I was so disappointed. It's not like this was a self-published first novel from a new writer! If it had been, it would likely have been rejected, but once you have your foot in the door, all the rules cease to apply to you, don't they?! I expected a lot better from someone who supposedly already had some writing chops, and I thought a female writer ought to have served her female character a lot better than she did in the portion of this I could stand to read. This novel was nonsense and trash.

The Black Magic Series Starter by Dennis Wheatley

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a collection of three full-length novels by Dennis Wheatley, who was a phenomenally successful writer in Britain from the 1930s to the 60's. For me, The Devil Rides Out was his best work, but the other two in this collection are also excellent reads if you're interested in the subject matter. I devoured these as a teen. Viewed as historical fiction, they hold up well, but there are some caveats.

The Devil Rides Out

I reviewed The Devil Rides Out back in January 2014 as part of a different Wheatley collection, but this one contains the same story so I will just refer you to that review for details. The basic story, set in the 1930s, consists of a group of close friends who find themselves up against the works of the Devil himself as embodied in his black magician disciple Mocata. Mocata is striving to achieve some devilish ends, and one of the friends, Simon Aaron, has foolishly got himself under the man's sinister influence. The Duc de Richlieu who is the only one of the group who has any magical experience, enters the fight along with Rex Van Ryn, who falls in love with one of the Satanic women who is also a neophyte in the Devil-worshipping group. Friends Richard and Marie-Lou Eaton also join the fray. It's a good old fashioned scary-story smothered in Christian religion mythology. I'm not a believer, but I love a good Satanic magic romp!

Strange Conflict

This is another in the Duc de Richlieu series. In it, the same people from The Devil Rides Out join forces again, to wage a battle, but this time on the astral plane. The story is set in the beginning of World War Two, with the question of how are the Nazis discovering the travel routes of British warships so successfully? Well, a magician is using the astral plane to convey intelligence, and the Duc and his pals array themselves against him. The story is replete with weird and wonderful conflicts in astral form, and also a tour of life in Haiti, with the attendant zombies - not the ridiculous ones of the modern era, but the original zombies - and they are surprising. Be warned that Wheatley is pompous, opinionated, devoutly upper-crust, rather racist, and full of British jingoism made worse by a war mentality, so if you want to enjoy this and his other works, you have to turn a blind eye to those failings. Whether he would have been a more enlightened person today, I do not know. I somehow doubt it.

The Haunting of Toby Jugg

Again set in World War Two, this novel features the improbably-named Toby Jugg, who is about to turn twenty-one and looks towards inheriting his grandfather's business fortune, since his father and mother are both dead and he has no siblings. His only relatives are his uncle, Paul and his aunt, Julia. There is one problem: he seems to be slowly losing his mind. It's not his only problem. Having been shot while flying on an air raid, he's paralyzed from the waist down and needs a nurse to take care of him. That's fine during the day, but it's at night when the nightmares come: visions of horrific creatures slithering and crawling all around him. His new nurse, charmer though she is, doesn't believe him and thinks he's just a spoiled, rich, baby. She doesn't know that his guardian, Helmuth Lisicky, is Satan worshipper who is causing his nightmares.

These stories were entertaining enough for me when I was in my young adult days, I wonder if I might find them so engaging now? If you have never read them, they do contain - aside from the irritating and offending parts, which are not overwhelming - some great occult and black magic story-telling which is untainted by modern custom and trope. It makes for a refreshing read in that regard, at least. I'd recommend these - with the above-mentioned caveats - for a change from modern reading and a different story-telling perspective.

The Toothless Fairy by Timothy Jordan

Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated in nice and colorful detail by Matthew LaFleur (and alternately written by Skeeter Buck according to Goodreads!), this rhyming story for young children was quite entertaining, and I liked it. Note that this was an advance review copy, and there are kinks in it which I hope will be worked out before it goes on sale. For me I was glad to have had a chance to read it.

One problem I often have in trying to read children's books on a phone is that the text is too small to read. Well, don't read them on a phone, you say, but I'm thinking of parents caught with a troublesome child in a waiting room, where the phone might be the only thing to distract them. And to support my case, this book was quite legible on my phone. The problem here was that pretty much every word in every line was run together, making it hard to read because of that. This was significantly irritating! This is one problem with ebooks. When you get a print version, you're getting what the author envisioned. Amazon's Kindle app doesn't necessarily agree with the author and renders its own version for better or for worse!

So take a pad next time, you advise. Well, I looked at this in the Bluefire reader app on my iPad, which is usually a sterling way to read graphic works and there, it was a quite different problem with the text! It was WAY TOO LARGE! It was so large that it was not readable, because aside from literally two or three letters, the entire text was off the page - and it wasn't possible to pinch the page to make it smaller and shrink the text! In short, this ARC version of this book is definitely not ready for prime time as it is! However, I treated this as if it were going to be fixed by publication date and pressed on, and it proved to be a worthy read.

This story might have been written by a dentist - and I mean that in a good way: as in written by someone who cares about your health. Poor dental hygiene can lead to serious ailments well outside the region of your mouth. The toothless fairy knows this, and she doesn't want children to end up like she did - eating too much sugar and ruining her teeth - so she takes action, replacing one child's candy with a musical instrument which is of far more use to the girl. Success! This is what we did with our kids as it happens - trading them cash for candy (while leaving them some, of course!). Lately as they've grown older, we've taken to going to a show or a movie for Halloween, especially one where we can get a square meal as we watch. It's worked out great.

But I digress! I liked the message in this story, and the fact that the fairy wasn't shown to be some impossible paragon of beauty. Quite the opposite in fact. I liked that the story was educational and fun, and very positive. I think it would be a great book to read to your kids in the weeks leading up to Halloween - or at any time when there's likely to be a chance to eat far more sugar than ever is good for a growing body!

Orange Animals on the Planet from Speedy Publishing

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not sure about the idea of an authorless book, since no author is named here, or about a publisher named 'Speedy', but I think this is the second children's book from this publisher I've reviewed and they're not at all bad. This one was quite dramatic: "on the planet"?! But orange animals are often dramatic, although the definition of orange is stretched somewhat here. Flamingos put in an appearance at one point, for example. I guess pink is the new orange! LOL!

That said, the book is very colorful and informative - a bit of information here and there - just enough for growing minds, and some really engaging photographs of the various animals. What was most impressive to me was the unusually wide range that's covered here. Typically a children's animal picture book favors mammals - the cuddly ones, even if cuddly when used there is stretched a bit to include lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It was nice to see a wider world here, with representatives of all five vertebrate classes featured: fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There were also insects and arachnids, so kudos for that. It's important for children to learn how varied life is, and how important it is that we protect that variety.

We get to meet the clownfish (a mated pair here, evidently). What we don't learn is that Pixar's view of Clownfish life was biased in that typically, when the female dies, the male spontaneously goes transgender and becomes the new dominant female! Nemo could never have had his dad chasing him across the ocean after mom died! Not that a parent fish chases its offspring across the ocean! If it had, it's far more likely to have been the mom clownfish, but I digress. We also get to see and learn about the Andean cock-of-the-rock, the tiger, the Julia butterfly, the Baboon spider, orangutans, spider crabs, river hogs, newts, corn snakes and so on. It's a lot of orange. Note also that weights and measures in this book are in metric, not the lone hold-out USA system.

I liked this book. It's bold and straight-forward, varied and colorful, and educational. You can't ask for more in a children's book.