Write To Die Charles Rosenberg

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with several other novels which have this same title! Let this be a warning to writers! Make it unique!

I have to confess I had some really mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand the 470-some pages flew by, which is a good thing and overall, the writing in general was quite good. The story-telling also made me want to keep turning pages. On the downside, however, I had some real problems with some parts of the plot which lacked credibility, and with some of the writing which essentially reduced women to skin-depth, strongly implying that a woman who isn't beautiful, pretty much doesn't merit consideration.

I can't tolerate that kind of writing and I'm starting to think I need to give an automatic fail to any novel which takes that approach regardless of how good it is otherwise. Plus this is episode one of a series, and I typically have no time for series. I was not informed of this when I requested this advance review copy! While I do appreciate the opportunity to read and review this novel, it would be much more preferable to have known more about what's going on with it up front.

I want to say a few words about this beauty issue to make it crystal-clear what I mean here. If this had been a novel about the modeling industry, for example, where anorexic women routinely present themselves as a disturbingly perverse norm, quite literally offering themselves as nothing more than "pretty" clothes-hangers, then I can seen how beauty would be a factor in the writing, even if it's still wrong-headed. If the novel had been about competition between actors for a movie role, then looks (wrong as it still is), might a valid topic for the author's pen. I have to add that it would be a more valid topic if the issue of looks was an internal conflict in one or more of the actors or a story based on how unjust the move business is in this regard.

If the novel were in first person and the narrator was commenting on people's attractiveness I wouldn't like that. It would be valid however, because people do see others that way, but I would downgrade such a novel for being first person - and for being about a shallow character! If the novel is third person (for which I would commend it) and had various characters make comments about looks, that would be valid because people are like that even if we don't like them. And finally, to have two people who are in love comment about how beautiful they find each other (regardless of how third-parties view them) is not a problem either, because love does foster the discovery or uncovering of beauty in people.

But to have a third person novel, as this commendably was, yet have the author write the narration and repeatedly make it about looks, is not acceptable to me. It's not acceptable to foster this ridiculous view we have today that you have to be thin as a rake and have Hollywood looks ("beautiful" if you're female, and "buff" - or whatever word you like - if you're male) or to have an hourglass figure to be attractive. It's dangerous and damaging. I don't think it serves society and I don't think authors should contribute to it; quite the contrary: they're in a very powerful position to counter it.

It saddens me when I see so many novels, particularly in the young-adult world, facilitating this evil fiction that beauty is everything and women who don't (according to the author's lights) have it need not apply. It's even sadder that all-too-many female authors aid and abet this nonsense. Countering this isn't the same as saying we should have all our female characters described as 'ugly' or 'homely', or our male characters described as 'skinny weaklings'. That isn't accurate either. To me, countering this is not to swing the pendulum the opposite way, but to stop it dead in the middle by writing stories which do not address looks at all. Leave that to your reader. Offer a vague description if necessary, but make it neutral. There are better ways to convey real beauty than by rendering character as caricature.

It would be rather hard to put out a police description in your novel without mentioning eye and hair color of course, but for the most part, if looks are not actually relevant to what's happening or necessary (for whatever reason) to further your story or make a specific point about a character, why mention them at all? I feel you should offer a vague sketch if you must, but trust your reader fill in the details as they see fit. Focus your description on other qualities to emphasize that real people are much more than looks. If you sketch your character by their (non-physical) attributes, their skills, and their personality, then you reader will have no trouble picturing them. Trust me on this. Better yet, trust your readers on this. 'Show, don't tell' isn't restricted merely to dissuading info-dumping!

Although this novel is indeed about the movie industry in a way, it's also about a law firm and two lawsuits, and looks have nothing whatsoever to do with anything which takes place in this novel, yet when major character Sarah Gold is described, the description cannot help but launch into a rapture about about how "beautiful" she is! Here's how we first meet her:

When Rory entered his office, a young woman was standing there...She wasn’t just pretty but beautiful—high cheekbones, lovely nose, alabaster skin and the figure of a model back when models were allowed to have hips and breasts. Her eyes were green and wide, without a trace of makeup around them, and the thick hair cascading to the middle of her back was the color of spun gold.

Spun gold? Not just pretty but beautiful? Figure of a model? She'a a law-firm associate. Why does she even need this description? I don't doubt that there are such law associates, but must every one we read about in fiction be those few? Are we that addicted to trope and cliché?

The author would no doubt argue that she has other qualities that we learn of, and I agree, but we learn of those as secondary qualities over the course of the story. The very first, and evidently the most important thing we learn about her is right there up front: it's her beauty that's clearly the most defining characteristic of this woman. And it's completely unnecessary. Had her beauty (or even her looks) not been mentioned in any way shape or form in this novel, she would still have been the same character, so please don't ask quo vadis ask, quid pulchra?

If that description had been Rory's view, that would be one thing, but it wasn't. It was given as an objective view. We know this because later, we read, "Maybe he was attracted to her and didn’t know it." If it had been just that one instance, that would have been bad enough, but this view is repeated, and not just about Sarah. Here's another line from the novel:
"He was naked and there was a naked female leg draped across his. It wasn’t exactly a movie-star-quality leg, but it was a very nice leg nonetheless." How generous of him. She's not movie star quality but she'll do?

This is not about Sarah Gold, but about a different woman with whom Rory has sex and it was disgusting. About which encounter, I read in a depiction of the next morning: She giggled. “Which reminds me. Did you use protection last night?" Seriously? She has to ask? The funny thing is that Dana completely disappears from the novel never to be heard from again at about the halfway or two-thirds stage. Disposable women! How beautifully convenient!

Other occasions I read things like, "An attractive woman in her midthirties." Why is this relevant? Age or looks? Here's the second worst one: "Sarah walked into Rory’s office, still beautiful..." Thank the Hollywood Stars for that! I was afraid she'd got ugly in the intervening period since Rory last saw her! That would have ruined the story! Aphrodite forbid that we have a character who is less than beautiful! What possible use would she be in a novel?

There were few other writing issues I'm happy to report, but they were interesting ones. One of them was this weird one:

I hope you can see my point about Dana Barbour.”
“It’s Barbour...."

There's a whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. I can see what the author had in mind, but since he uses the same spelling in both sentences, it's completely meaningless. I assume it's the English versus the French pronunciation, perhaps something like Barber v. Barbour, but by using the same spelling twice he makes it unintelligible to the reader no matter how clear it might have been in his own mind when he wrote it. Given how many people are credited with helping out here, I'm surprised something like this slipped through, but we've all been there, I know!

Another plot problem was that the author confuses two consecutive weeks, the first as the novel begins, with the second week. Very early in the novel we learn of a script which has just been discovered, and which has the potential to lose Rory his previous cut-and-dried case. A week later, we're told the same thing: the script was discovered a couple of days ago, which is why he hasn't been supplied a copy of it. It cannot have been 'just discovered' on two different Mondays! Again it's an easy mistake to make, but it needs to be fixed.

This same script causes problems later when we learn that Sarah electronically compares two scripts. The problem is that they didn't have an electronic copy of the script they'd just been handed, so how did she compare it? If she was comparing two other electronic scripts (and not the printed copy they had literally just been given), then what was the point? It told them nothing about the new script. If the script they compared was with an e-copy they already had, then why had they not run the comparison before? What we needed to have been told was that the e-copy they already had possession of (by other means) was the same as the printed one they'd just been given. That would have validated the comparison.

Aside from that, it was pretty decent - if confusing at times! Its like the author occasionally lost track of what he was writing, and we've all been there, too! This sentence, for example, could have used improvement: "It didn’t pass Sarah by that Gladys had just referred to Sylvie in the past tense, but she let it pass." There's too much pass, past, pass! In another case, I read, “I’m going to go see Quentin Zavallo and get debriefed." No, Zavallo is going to get debriefed. Rory is going to get briefed! Legal terms, not military! In another instance, Rory was pacing around a table, then he sat, and evidently the author forgot, because Sarah says, "You're not sitting. You’re walking around the conference table, remember?” No, Sarah, he was sitting right there!

There were other issues I had which, when looked at overall, were what contributed to my rating this as a less-than-worthy read. Looking back on the story, I find that I really didn't like either of the two main characters, Rory, and Sarah. What kept me reading was the story in general, but in retrospect, I would have liked it a lot better had those two characters been switched out for more savory and entertaining ones. I certainly wouldn't want to read a series about these two people. Rory came across as a sleaze and a bully, and Sarah was simply annoying, like some kid sister from a middle-grade novel might be deemed by her older brother. She was insubordinate and undisciplined, and either outright broke the law or skirted with breaking it on several occasions. She went off on tangents without keeping her boss in the loop. This was passed off (or attempted anyway) as some sort of psychological disorder, but I found that patronizing and insulting. There was also an association made regarding Sarah as part of a governmental organization at one point which was then never mentioned again - like it had been added as a plot point and then forgotten about! It made no sense.

The ending was messy and all-too-convenient with a guy showing up to rescue a girl, which completely betrayed her self-sufficiency, so yes, in the end, she was nothing more than the maiden in distress, which was frankly pathetic. The rescue was highly improbable, and a supposed assassin who was "on his way" completely disappeared from the narrative. So the ending was entirely unsatisfying, which for me was the last straw.

The book blurb (which I know is not on an author unless they self-publish) didn't help! It tells us that "Hollywood’s latest blockbuster is all set to premiere", yet the plot for this movie isn't the kind of plot that makes for a blockbuster. People can, of course, disagree on something like this which isn't well-defined, but although such a movie might be critically acclaimed, and make some money, but it simply wasn't credible to me that this movie (the plot of which we do learn) would even make the hundred-million dollars that's predicted for it and even if it did, it's not really a blockbuster - not by box office receipts these days. A movie like that could just as likely be deemed a failure depending on production and advertising costs.

There's one more thing I should (belatedly!) add to this, and it's something I've been paying more attention to lately, which is how much paper a novel would use were it to go to a print run as opposed to being distributed as an ebook, and therefore how many trees would have to die for you. This novel ran to 477 pages, but the line spacing was about 1.5. Note that this was in the iPad Bluefire Reader version, which is, I believe, how it would look in print (in the Kindle version, where formatting all too often sucks, it appeared to be single-space lines). This author seemed to be rather proud of how the "great-looking and feeling" print version, but in my opinion, it could have been improved in an area that's far too often overlooked.

If the spacing had been 1 in the print version as opposed to 1.5, then this novel could have been slimmed down to some 320 pages. We can round that up to 350 in case I errored in this calculation. In addition to this, every one of the chapters had a blank page preceding it. It had 62 chapters, which meant sixty two blank pages, or 31 blank sheets in total. If these had also been eliminated, the entire book could have shrunk to little more than 300 pages from this alone, regardless of typeface or font. Even if we couldn't get below 350 pages, this would still be 25% fewer trees killed to produce a print run. It's worth thinking about this unless your novel is only going to be issued as an ebook, because even if you employ recycled paper, it still uses energy to produce.

Even if your novel is an ebook, the larger it is, the more energy it requires to move across the Internet, and it's a lot harder to recycle ebooks (in terms or passing them on to other people or turning them over to Goodwill or a used book store) than it is print books, which require no energy at all once they're produced - no reading device (except maybe a light from time to time!). No batteries. No electricity. No electronic storage space which requires power to retrieve from. Personally I think this is is all worth consideration if you're a writer, and especially if you self publish. Admittedly, if you go with Big Publishing, you really don't have any say in how they turn out your novel, so that's worth considering too, but you can determine how wordy it will be. Just a thought!

So overall, given the machismo and genderism on display and the problems with the plot and the ending, and while I appreciate the chance to read this from the publisher, and wish the author all the best in his future endeavors, I can't in good faith recommend this as a worthy read.

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

Rating: WARTY!

One Lame Tome.

Quite frankly I'm not sure why I picked this up at the library. I can only assume it was in haste. When I look at the blurb now, it sounds like it might be an interesting plot, but I honestly cannot remember my thought processes when I checked this out! I should have considered it more deeply. It turns out this is yet another Newbery award novel and I've already sworn off those because they've been almost one hundred per cent garbage in my experience. This one was no different.

Set in 1871, a young girl named Georgie Burkhardt is evidently responsible for her older sibling Agatha running away. Later a body is found wearing Agatha's ball gown (why she ran away in a ball gown is anyone's guess), and everyone is content to believe that Agatha is dead - except of course Georgie, who starts off on a quest: will the real Agatha Burkhardt please show up!

The biggest problem with this story is that it's way too damned 'down home' for my taste. If there is one thing which gets me irritated out of all proportion in novels, it's down-home country folk in stories of historical America spewing their catch-phrases and their home-spun wisdom. Yuk! I cannot stand them, and this is not only one of those stories; the reader of this audiobook, Tara Sands, reads it in the most nails-on-a-chalk-board voice imaginable. I literally could not stand to listen to it, and I doubt that even if I got the print book, I would want to actually read it. First of all it's a Newbery, and second of what's left, the writing is far too self-satisfied. The arrogance of that home-grown "country learnin'" is nauseating and just obnoxious. Y'all don't cuhm back nah!

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 6 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WARTY!

This final part - certainly the final part I plan on reading - continues to have Maika and the monster explore her consciousness (or unconsciousness if you like) while she's imprisoned in the sarcophagus. The monster looks more like a one-eyed mummy here and less like the evil tarry, sticky creature we've hitherto seen. Maika continues to pine for Tuya, who evidently doesn't feel the same way about her!

The artwork is once again remarkable, but this is supposed to be a story, not a coffee table picture book, and the story has become far too bogged-down to be interesting to me. There's a reason that Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 - he's quite literally an action figure, and while he is rather trite and simplistic compared with this story under review, he does move (faster than a speeding bullet!). This story doesn't - or more accurately, it doesn't feel like it moves; it feels mired and stagnant, and this made me lose all interest in it which is sad in consideration of how appealing it was in the early parts of this volume. I can't recommend this one and do not feel inclined to pursue this story any further.

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 5 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WARTY!

This one went further downhill for me and I really can't recommend it at this point.

We meet the almost insanely cruel Ilsa, then move to the half-faced "angel" who offers Maika, Kippa, and Ren the two-tailed cat safe harbor, but in the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!" Maika becomes confined to a sarcophagus, where she retreats into her memories followed, unexpectedly, by the monster she harbors. The monster tries to convince her to give him control, whereupon he will, he claims, free them.

I can't recommend this because although the art work remains good, the story itself seems to be circling the drain rather than going anywhere interesting, and where it is going is taking forever to happen. Reading this has become too much work for the reward.

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 4 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WORTHY!

While the art work continues to be remarkable (which is why this gets a 'worthy read' appellation), the story has begun to fall off somewhat. Initially it was full of mystery and promise and adventure, and while some of the mystery is being exposed, the story has begun to develop a meandering quality like it doesn't quite no where to go. I'm committed to finishing these six parts of volume one, but I am not enjoying this as much as I had hoped and expected to based on the early parts.

It has become difficult for me to figure out who is who and what they're after, and while sometimes that's not a bad thing, I think as this point, the lay of the land ought to have had a lot more clarification in this case. We keep meeting people and they're not often introduced properly for my taste, so I feel left in the dark rather more than I ought to feel by this place in the story.

This is a problem with writing - you may have the plot all mapped out and be intimately familiar with the characters, but your readers are never automatically so well-informed. Without some help they're never going to get to know them like you, the writer, does. Naturally this doesn't mean larding up an elegant story with a massive info-dump, but this graphic novel is quite wordy, so it's not like the writer is shy about telling the story. I just wish it was more informative.

What it looks like to me is that grown-up versions of our main characters (Maika and Kippa) are hunting for them. At first I thought we had leaped forward in time and these characters actually were the grown-up versions of the young ones we first met, but it soon became clear they're not. We meet a bunch of new characters, including a monkey guy and more multi-tailed cats, and we see Maika once again wrestle with her monster, but the story itself hasn't really moved in a couple of parts now. Maika is still int eh dark about what's going on, as is the reader, and it's becoming annoying. I'm recommending this one only because of the art and the fact that it's necessary to read this to get to the next part! For the art, it's a worthy read. The art really is wonderful.

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 3 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an advance review copy for which I thank the publishers and creators, and I have to say the quality is maintained with great writing and lush art work (lush in the sense of rich and detailed not in the sense of being created by an artist with a fondness for alcohol! LOL!). One thing I was pleased with was how quickly the pages turned. Sometimes with a publication that is heavy with images, the page turns can be excruciatingly slow, but that is not the case with this series. The only issue I had was that some pages were missing the speech from the speech balloons! I've seen this before in other graphic novels, and I also encountered it in part one of this series. In this particular part, it was pages 14, 16 (where all speech balloons were blank except for one which appropriately read >GASP<! LOL!) and 18.

In this part we again meet Yvette and Destria who are fond of wearing bird-beak-like masks over their faces. Yvette was the one who was brought back to life in part two. Apparently she was forgiven, but not to the point of regaining any sort of normality in appearance. The mask evidently hides her disfigurement, but regardless of their physical appearance, these women are not pleasant people.

One thing I have to ask about is why we get the title of Monstress? Why not Monster? It seems to me that the two words do not convey the same thing, irrespective of whatever gender content they might profess. Monster indicates that the bearer of the title is a monster, whereas Monstress, which invokes 'monstrous' could be construed as the way this character, Maika, actually is - a person who has some sort of control over, or link with a monster or monsters? But I have a better question: if we're going to have Monstress, then why not have Inquisitress? But we don't get Inquisitress, nor do we get inquisitor. We get Inquisitrix, which is no more of a real word than is 'Monstress' or 'Monstrix'.

Of course, it's entirely up the the writer what word she chooses, but to me words are important and convey meaning, and this is especially true in a work of fiction where new concepts and ideas are being promoted, so I can't help but be curious about what's being promoted here. On the one hand we have a powerful story, populated with powerful females who dominate the tale (males are highly conspicuous by their absence), yet on the other, we have word forms which are gender specific and which in other contexts are not typically used with respect towards women. Anything ending in 'trix' is unlikely to be complimentary since the one most commonly used is dominatrix, something which these days has strong sexual and perversion connotations. The only other comparable word is aviatrix, which has fallen into disuse.

Words ending in 'ess' are even worse, the most common one being 'mistress' signifying at best, a possession, and at worst, a women of questionable morals. Words ending in -ess and applied to women typically are used to segregate. Is that what we're seeing here in this matriarchical world? It's questions like this which are part of what interests me. I am curious, inter alia, as to whether these words were chosen deliberately to serve a purpose, or thoughtlessly offering nothing more than cheap novelty? I hope it's not that simple! I shall be very disappointed if it is.

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 2 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WORTHY!

Part two (featuring the disturbingly foxy feminine profile on the cover), takes up right where part one left off, thankfully. Maika has escaped with Kippa and the two-tailed sentient cat, with whom she definitely does not get along, and her captors are being abused mercilessly for their incompetence by a new faction - the bitches who are witches, evidently. One of the dead is brought back to life to account for her incompetence - that's how evil these guys are!

This is a lot shorter volume than the previous one - as are all the rest in this series - at a more standard comic book length of 32 pages. The trio have taken up with a farmer who is traveling to sell her potatoes and such, but Maika's journey is about to be interrupted.

Before writing this review, I watched a show on Netflix about these guys in Britain who built a robot using only prosthetics developed to replace human body parts. The final thing was worth a million dollars in parts alone. It was weird and creepy and ultimately unsatisfying because they appeared to promise a lot more than they delivered, but one of the guys involved in the show sported a prosthetic lower left arm, and when he removed it, his limb looked exactly like Maika's! I mention this, because it's in this volume that we learn what Maika's arm looked like before.

Again the artwork was outstanding, but in terms of moving the story, not a whole lot happened until the last portion of it, which made me feel a bit like asking why the first part wasn't split into two and this actual part two not shortened somewhat? That said, it was still a worthy read and made me look forward to part three. We got some background and some holes filled in, and met some new characters who proved to be as scary as they were interesting.

In part one, I'd noted two pages where, in this advance review copy, the speech balloons were completely blank! I've seen this in other graphic novels, but in this case, part two was fine with no missing speech. Once again thanks to the publisher and creators for the chance to read and comment on this advance review copy.

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 1 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
Two of the pages in this graphic novel had completely empty speech balloons! I've seen this phenomenon before in other graphic novels. There are no page numbers to quote from the graphic novel itself, but on my iPad, Bluefire Reader identifies the page numbers as 52, and 62.

In 1999, the American Library Association found that only 33% of children aged 11-18 read comic books, and when considering girls alone, this was down to 27%. More recently (2014) on Facebook, self-identified comic fans numbered some 24 million in the USA, of which almost half (~47%) were female. These were two different surveys covering different demographics and using different methodologies, but from this it sure looks like women are beginning to feel like they're finally being catered to.

I think that's a very good reason to celebrate by reading this remarkable series which is both written (Marjorie Liu) and illustrated (Sana Takeda) by women. It's also a very good reason to ask why, after over a decade of modern blockbuster comic book-based movies, we have yet to get one which is centered on a female character! I'll leave that question out there!

This is a very richly illustrated series of which I got the first six installments as advance review copies, and for which I thank the comic book creators for this fine work, and the publisher Image Comics, and Diamond Book distributors. The series is comprised of six volumes, all of which are thirty two pages except for the first, which is seventy-two pages long. It is beautifully illustrated in sumptuous detail, and the time and effort which has gone into this is quite staggering to contemplate. But it was worth it! Takenada must really love her work!

The story is well told and begins with teenager Maika, a naked, one-armed female slave, who is part of a collection of 'freaks' being sold to an idle bunch of self-centered and wealthy old white(-haired) men for the purpose of being their property. It's rather reminiscent of a scene from the Australian movie Sleeping Beauty which has nothing whatsoever to do with the fairy-tale, but which is a live-action movie starring the remarkable Emily Browning who at one point finds herself in a similar position, but at least Lucy has a choice in her participation. Maika does not.

This is however, a matriarchal society, and just as the bidding on Maika, who is referred to as an Arcanic, begins, she's quickly snapped-up not by one of the men, but by an influential nun known as Sophia Fekete, who maintains a lab at the Cumaea compound. Maika and her 'companions, a "fox cub, the cyclopean freak, and the stubby one with those useless wings" are transported to the city of Zamora with a sour-faced guardian by the name of Ilsa, who tells them they will be killed. Ilsa tells them that being smart and obedient might keep them alive, but nothing will keep them whole.

For Sophia, the interesting thing about Maika is the symbol tattooed above her breastbone. It has associations with monster worship, and Sophia has never seen a person branded with it before. Most people discount and discredit stories that people can raise the monstra, but Sophia does not. Maika and her 'friends' are incarcerated.

This is not a story for children. The art is beautiful although at times disturbing. The writing is threatening, deadly, and abusive. There are four-letter words and dismemberment, and some weird and crazy characters. But Maika doesn't have that particular tattoo for nothing, and just what it's for? People are going to find out in short order. I recommend this volume one unreservedly.

Panel to the Screen by Drew Morton

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"The majority of the sequence is represented by a blending what McCloud describes as moment to moment panels..." A blending of? (p29)
On page 92, n comparing the comic of 300 with the movie version, the text reads, "Below is a panel", but the panels in question are actually on that same page, above the text! There were several instances of images and text being out of sync to a greater or lesser extent.
"From a stylistic criteria" should read 'criterion' since the singular is required, or drop the indefinite article if a plural is intended. (p101)
Pictures appear on pps 102-104, but the text mentioning them appears p106! Slightly out of sync.
"We're not going to play be all the rules..." should be 'Play BY all the rules' (p141)

I had some mixed feelings about this, but overall came to consider it a worthy read because it held my interest and offered me an ocean of material that I found interesting. On the downside, I have to ask for whom this swell rolls, because it made for very academic and dense reading. I cannot imagine many comic book fans and movie-goers being interested in this as it stands, so perhaps it is aimed at academics.

The author is an assistant professor of mass communication at Texas A&M University–Texarkana. He's also the co-founder and co-editor of [in]Transition, a journal devoted to videographic criticism. Personally, I can testify that he's also very fond of the phrase "stylistic remediation," which he uses a bit too often including, in one place, employing it three times in the space of twenty-one words! He is also fond of employing 'entitled' when the technically more accurate 'titled' is required, but these are minor quibbles of mine. Language is a dynamic thing, and I feel as ineffectual as Cnut in holding back the changing tide in this era of texting and trash talking! Like Cnut, I know I'm doomed to failure!

That aside, the book was, with some effort here and there, readable and delivered on some interesting information and premises. While I'm not a big comic book fan, I am a big movie fan, including the spate of comic-to-movie translations we've seen over the last two decades, and notably in the blitz over the last few years successfully spearheaded by Marvel. I was interested in how they get brought to the screen, but please note that while this book does discuss some of that, the main focus is not on the mechanical process, but on the stylistic choices in translation from one medium to another, how they worked, what kind of effort was made to stay true to the comic or to depart from it, and where perhaps this may go in the future. It also looked at the reverse process - how some movies have translated into comic book form.

The book is solid and well-supported, with some twenty pages of end notes, a fifteen-page bibliography, and an index (missing from this advance review copy but intended for the published version). It was interesting to me to read a comment in the conclusion to the effect that comic books are, in some ways becoming a form of R&D for the movie companies, but as this author shows, it is in some ways a crap shoot as to whether something which appears to have done well in the comics will do well on the big screen. The comic book readers and the movie-going public, which having some (and perhaps increasing) cross-over elements, is not at all the same audience.

I found a curious fixation on DC comics. Others, including Marvel and smaller imprints such as Dark Horse, get a mention here and there, but the focus seems repeatedly to return to DC properties (particularly Batman) with very little discussion of the Marvel 'Universe' and the runaway success it has had of late. I have no idea why that should be. For me personally, I would have liked to have had this author discuss how Marvel has fared in translating its properties to the screen, in comparison with the approach DC has taken. There is also little discussion of TV properties, which have been growing dramatically recently, and which have a long history. These other media (including radio and video gaming) get mentions here and there, but really have little 'screen time" of their own.

I was however fascinated to read the material that was here, which is extensive and well-presented. The author knows this world intimately, and I learned a lot from his presentation. I recommend this for anyone who is seriously interested in the migration of one entertainment medium (particularly comic books) to another (particularly the big screen). I consider this a worthy read and I recommend it. I thank the University Press of Mississippi and the author for the opportunity to read an advance review copy!

Kris Longknife: Undaunted by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe

Rating: WARTY!

My attempt to get through all fourteen (or whatever it is) of the Kris Longknife (aka Mary Sue) series this year, continues apace. This here is volume seven of the series, so I'm half way through, but I can pretty much cut & paste my review from previous volumes since they all run along the same lines. Indeed, I routinely copy the title from a previous review, and simply change out the third word, and it seems like the review could follow that same sort of principle since the stories are typically so formulaic. This is one reason I am not a fan of series, but I think even the author was getting bored with himself since this one was rather different in some regards - but depressingly the same in others.

This departure made it interesting to me to begin with, but it went downhill pretty quickly. I don't know if the author couldn't flesh out a plot for his usual "the hapless Kris & crew stumble upon a remote planet which the rival Peterwald family is trying to take over, gets into bombings and firefights, wins over the local down-home populace with her self-deprecating style and comes out victorious," or what, but this one failed disastrously. There seemed to be no intelligence built into it at all. Kris meets the Iteeche. They refuse to talk to anyone but Kris's "Grampa Ray," despite the fact - we learn later - that channels have been kept open with the Iteeche! It all comes down to this impossible 'chance' meeting in remote space between the 'son' of the Iteeche leader and the daughter of the Human leader? It's not remotely credible.

From the point onward, the story meanders pointlessly. The aliens, which the author makes a valiant attempt at rendering them alien initially, turn out to be exactly like humans in everything but physical appearance. They're more like centaurs with beaks and extra arms, yet they're purportedly descended from an aquatic species. And despite this, Kris finds herself physically attracted to the leader? What?!!! The Iteeche young are spawned in shallow saltwater and left to the mercy of predators, until they're later "chosen" by an adult to raise to adulthood. These then become 'family'.

This makes zero sense from a biological and evolutionary perspective. No organism on this planet, least of all the sentient ones (and with an odd exception or two such as the cuckoo), grow and raise young in this manner. It couldn't work for a truly human-like species, notwithstanding the fact that humans have historically adopted children here and there. I'm talking about biological evolution here, not culture.

It's a sad fact that Americans are really poor at science and it's also a fact, in my opinion, that we'd get better sci-fi if we had a better science education, but given that the US reading audience is just as poorly educated about science as far-too-many sci-fi writers are, I guess it doesn't really matter in the final analysis, does it?! Except that we'd get far better and more compelling and engrossing stories if this sorry state of affairs was rectified. There's a quiz at the link. I got 100%, which surprised me, because I thought I might have missed at least one question, but at least now I can say I know what I'm in the top 6% and I know what I'm talking about! LOL!

Back to the novel in progress. Instead of getting Ron directly to King Ray, the perennial Lieutenant Kris meanders through space to visit her "aunt" Trudy because of problems she's been having with her personal computer, Nelly, which are never actually resolved. Far from it. Instead of fixing it, Nelly buys computers for the closest people in Kris's retinue, so the problems of one computer are now exacerbated several-fold. Only then, when Kris has her personal needs taken care of, does she get back to the diplomatic mission and they go visit King Ray, who offers them nothing whatsoever, so off they trot into space. Kris never stays on the ground.

Instead of going off investigating the Iteeche disappearance problem, she calls in at a planet named Texarkana which is based on American (surprise!) interests and which has a city folk v. country folk mentality. Yawn. Kris gets blown up, the bad guys are captured in short order, Kris's millions open a bank and the local problem is solved. Everybody loves Kris-who-can-do-no-wrong. Boring.

This one was different in that the usual bombing/firefight was merely an end-note to the main story which was the discovery of the Iteeche in "no man's land" space between the human and the Iteeche empires. Of course Kris does everything right and befriends them even though the evil Peterwald contingent is trying to shoot the crap out of them. This was interesting to me because in every volume the evil Iteeche are mentioned, yet we learn literally nothing of them. There was a huge war eighty years previously, documented in a previous series by this author. I have no interest in reading that. Here we learn something about them, and it turns out that there's something the Iteeche have discovered with which they need human help. I found this a bit too incredible to believe.

The Iteeche have lost three scout ships in a certain part of remote space they were trying to colonize. It would seem like this story would lead to an investigation, but it doesn't - it's merely a cliff-hanger for a subsequent volume in the series, which means there isn't really a story here. This volume is more of a place holder while the author actually thought up a plot for the next volume. It leads to Kris transporting the Iteeche to Wardhaven so the leader - who is known as Ron - can meet with Kris's grandfather, the elected king (don't even ask; Kris is a princess, but her brother isn't a prince?!) of the United Sentients - named that way so the author, who is as gingoistic an American as ever lived, can name his warships the 'US Whatever'. They did the same thing is Star Trek which despite the fiction that it's an all-inclusive united federation of planets, is really American from root to core to stem to bloom. Despite the fact that the United Sentients are supposed to be descendants of the entire planet Earth's population, we only ever really meet white southern Americans with patriotic values and guns.

Then Kris takes the Iteeche back to her own planet and then back again out into space. Huh? We get the usual 'everyone disses Kris and she doesn't even react any more', yet the same people who diss her are utterly devoted to her safety and welfare. Despite having been in firefights and bombings. Kris routinely tries to slip her marine guard and personal body-guard, Jack (the tediously trope-ishly named jack). This is how she gets blown up. She's a moron here.

The marines are incessantly praised as the ultimate mean, tough, disciplined, incapable of failure fighting force, and the reader is constantly hit in the face with this ad nauseam. The author is completely in love with the phrase 'full battle rattle' to the point where it's a mantra chanted endlessly - again, tedious. The author repeats tired old military phrases and similies like they're fresh and new (such as 'no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy') and like the reader has never heard them before - and in this same series.

In addition to this there's the same nonsensical crap about interstellar trade, which is farcical. Yes, even with jump points that allow ships to bypass light-years of space, it is still not economical to transport trade items unless they're desperately-needed items that cannot be grown or fabricated locally, or very expensive items such that the transportation coasts are more than made up for in sale price. No one is going to be transporting weapons or tractors, unless a planet is freshly being colonized. So, yes, I've let more than one volume in this series slip past as a worthy read, but this one I cannot. It was less than it ever should have been and simply not worth reading. I will contend right here that you can skip this one altogether and move to the next in the series without missing anything of import or utility.

Oliver Twist or The Parish Boy's Progress by Charles Dickens

Rating: WARTY!

This is actually my second attempt at this! I really did no better here than previously. I had much better luck with graphic novels: Fagin the Jew which I positively reviewed in October 2014, and Zombies Christmas carol which I favorably reviewed in December that same year, when I also posted negative results on a previous effort with this material!

A while ago I had an idea for a novel set in Oliver Twist's world, so I decided to go back to the source and listen in. Fortunately my excellent local library had this on audiobook format. The novel is also available for free from The Gutenberg Project as both downloadable text and audio books (but be warned, the audio version sounds like its read by Stephen Hawking. It's not - it just uses the same kind of text-to-speech engine. I think after this I'm just going to watch the movie!

I have to say that while the overall plot was convoluted, it was not awful, but the uninspired reading of Dickens's even more uninspired material was a deal-breaker for me, and I couldn't get past the first third of it. I know it was the style back then, but the incessant flowery speech and rambling diversions were too much. Plus, Dickens was rather preachy about conditions back then. This was commendable, but it was very intrusive, and it became annoying after a while.

Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, this novel was original published in installments which in this case ran monthly for a period of over two years starting in February 1837, so as an enterprise, it had more in common with our modern comic books than our modern novels. All the favorite characters were there of course, from the more commonly known Oliver, The Artful Dodger, and Fagin, to assorted prostitutes such as Bet, Charlotte, and Nancy, to the evil Monks and Sikes, to Mr Bumble, Old Sally, and the oddly-named Toby Crackit, right down to the even more unforgettably-named Master Bates (I kid you not).

Contrary to the story you might expect - of Oliver being a perennial down-and-out, he is actually a boy of extraordinarily good fortune. Ollie's mom died in childbirth and he ended-up at the parish poor house, where he was passively abused until he was of an age where they could get rid of him by pretty much literally selling him to an undertaker (Ol protested against being a sweep's assistant and got away with it!). There he was doing well until he ran afoul of the other boy who worked there, and he ran away. Right as he was heading into the territory of death and starvation, he was taken under the wing of Fagin's crew, but after a blundered robbery, Oliver ended up in jail.

His luck does not desert him however, and he's cleared of charges and semi-adopted by a book-seller where he flourishes (and blots!). For unexplained reasons, Fagin forcibly recruits him for a robbery, but once more it goes wrong, yet Ol's luck still does not desert him. Instead of being arrested, he's adopted by the family he tried to rob, who actually turn out to be related to him! This kid has four-leaf clovers growing out of his ass!

I know some people have down-graded this for racism, and by our standards it does sound a bit racist, but I don't believe we should judge a book written almost two hundred years ago by our standards. By all means comment on the standards in use, but judge them? What would be the point now? Let's consider this racism. From what I listened to, it consists entirely of identifying Fagin as "The Jew" throughout much of the book as opposed to simply naming him Fagin or, perhaps, "The Thief" (or "The Prig"!). The thing is that I got no sense that Dickens was actually using the term "The Jew" in a derogatory sense any more than he would have been had the character been Polish and he'd referred to him as "The Pole," or any more than Agatha Christie is abusing Poirot by referring to him as The Belgian. Yes it's derogatory to use today, but the way Dickens used it was simply a convenient (if inappropriate by our lights) short-hand and I don't think he saw it in any other light. At least I didn't get that impression.

Overall, the writing left a lot to be desired, and there were far too many fortunate coincidences. Plus, Ollie is a bit of a Mary Sue. I can't recommend this based on what I listened to. Hopefully my take on the life and times of this era will be better - assuming I ever do get down to cooking-up a decent plot and writing it!

Transformed: San Francisco by Suzanne Falter, Jack Harvey

Rating: WORTHY!

Well I have posted fifteen reviews today. That's a personal record for me and a warning never to get so far behind again! LOL! This was an amazing story set in the LGBTQIA world of San Francisco, and featuring four main characters, one of whom is a religious nut-job who is planning on unleashing a sarin attack on a gay event to teach all those sinners a lesson. How such a lesson would be internalized by dead people is a bit of a mystery, but religion is not big on logic, and the parallels with the nightclub slaughter down in Florida recently were both chilling and sobering for me.

There's no end of religious nut-jobs, and the hypocrisy of Christians who purportedly preach love, but actually spew hatred is as staggering as it is entirely unsurprising given the brutal content of the Bible and the bloody history of Christianity. if oyu don't believe me, check out this link on CNN's website: "Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" Sacramento, California, pastor Roger Jimenez said from the pulpit the Sunday of the shooting. "No, I think that's great. I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight ... The tragedy is more of 'em didn't die."

The main villain here is named, hilariously, Randy Peter Tytus. I had a hard time taking that seriously, I confess. Ego te absolvo. Thank you father! Randy hails from the loins of a psychotic religious dad who runs a church of hatred which is very possibly modeled on a certain "church" which delights in harassing gays, but Randy's problem is not that he's very likely homosexual; it's that he can't face this truth, and can't deal with his reality. His 'solution' is to poison others with chemicals, mirroring the way his own mind has been poisoned by his father and his religion.

Arrayed against him is a startling trio which consists of Charley, a CIA operative who is temporarily suspended from duty because of some irregularities with taxes and expenses. He's a female to male transgendered person who is rather anguishing over whether to pursue what several reviewers have termed "bottom surgery"! I find this term odd and misleading. He's not, of course contemplating surgery on his ass, but on exchanging his vagina for a penis. Charley meets two females and through this acquaintanceship, a vital trio is formed.

The first member is an ex-navy lesbian police sergeant named Frankie. The second is a pseudo celebrity known as "The Society Dominatrix." Pamela has moved to SF to get away from the publicity on the east coast, but seems hard-pressed to shed it, despite changing her name to Electra. Some reviewers have described her as professional dom, but in fact she was just having fun with the husbands of some of her acquaintances. She doesn't become a professional until she starts to embrace who she really is and become Elektra in more than just name.

I must say I found the character names a bit clichéd! Frankie and Charley? Elektra? That seemed a bit over the top for me, but all four of these main characters are in pain in one way or another. Frankie is mourning her deceased wife, and struggling with corruption in the SFPD, a struggle which has put her in the sights of the corrupt powers-that-be, so she's been benched on trumped-up 'charges'. Charley is struggling with the loss of his job and with his indecision about when or even whether to undergo further surgery. Elektra also suffers loss - her daughter won't speak to her, and she's away from her comfort zone. Randy is simply a dangerous mess. I've seen some reviewers complain that this story needed to be "punched-up" with intrigue and sub-plots and what-have-you, but for me, it was perfectly told exactly the way it is. This is not a movie, and trying to write it like it was a screenplay would have been entirely wrong and would have destroyed it for me.

I'm not averse to a good action-adventure, even one with clichéd slo-mo departures from explosions which always seem to have a disturbing (and polluting) amount of gasoline in them, but this is not that story. This is much better. Watching these people move and interact, and grow and coalesce was wonderful, and poetic in the way it came together. It was a real pleasure to read and I wouldn't change a thing about it, except maybe to have given Frankie more of a role. She really took a back seat to Charley and Elektra, but since this was named Transformed: San Francisco, I wonder if it's to be the start of a series of 'transformed' novels set in different cities.

It wasn't all plain sailing. There were some issues, such as sentences like, "In the meanwhile, the final glory hole of hell he would personally reap upon the blasphemers was nigh." That made no sense whatsoever! Maybe this is what oyu get when ytwo writers are editing the same novel! LOL! I think it would have been better worded: "In the meantime, the final Hell he would personally wreak upon the blasphemers was nigh." I wonder if the authors actually know what a 'glory hole' is - or more to the point, whether Randy knew what one was and would ever use that term, even in his own mind. At another point, I read, "Thy will be done, not mine, he incited." I think the authors meant 'recited', but these are minor considerations and every author trips up with the language now and then, so they didn't bother me.

Overall, this story was excellent, I loved it and read it with appreciation and warmth, and I recommend it.

Don't Bang the Barista by Leigh Matthews

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
We both put down out drinks, serious for a moment.

I loved the title of this novel, which was a LGBTQIA novel full of drinking, smoking, over-caffeination, shallow relationships, and irresponsible sex. I expected better, especially since one of the characters was vegan. Given everything else she was into it made her sound so fake. I certainly hoped for better, but it never came. Kate is a lesbian who is a year out of a five year relationship, and she's not dealing. In fact, given how she is, I strongly felt that she had been like this before the relationship broke up and that's why it broke up, so I was not on her side from the off, pretty much. She has this recent acquaintance named Cass, and it's pretty obvious from the start that this is nothing more than the trope girl-too-stupid-to-know-her-best friend-is-the-love-of-her-life, which has been done to death and this version offers nothing new, not even the LGBTQIAngle. What it does tell us is that Kate isn't really very smart or very deep.

She has this ridiculous idea that it takes a third the time to get over a relationship as you spent in the relationship, so after five years, she considers that the year she's spent alone isn't sufficient. She's a moron. You can't put a time limit on it as though everyone is exactly the same, and reacts in the same way, and has the same circle of friends. Some people have good support groups, others don't. Some people are resilient, others not so much. The bottom line is that it takes whatever time it takes, but you have to make an effort. Kate simply isn't. She's wallowing. How her friends - of whom she has many, put up with her is the real mystery here.

The barista is Hanna, and Kate hooks up with her and has sex without getting to know her, and without even having had a date with her (not to speak of). This whole scene (which is, be advised, quite detailed) felt completely fake and hollow to me, because on the one hand these two have made out and felt each other up on the dance floor without asking, for goodness sakes, yet here in the privacy of Kate's apartment, when they are both essentially mauling each other, Hanna is asking for permission every step of the way - to removing her sweater, her pants, her bra; then she's feeling her up again on the way to the bedroom without asking. It felt like it was written by (w)rote (hah!) instead of by means of the author really thinking this through. I didn't get this asking permission, and then letting a discussion of their sexual history simply slide right on by. Either they're responsible or they're not. They can't be both.

This thing with getting together with Cass completely undermined the "appropriate approach to sex" motif, too. Cass is, quite frankly, a stalker, who has designs on Kate, but for some reason despite her supposedly being open and direct and straight-forward, can't ever bring herself to tell Kate how she feels, or to show her. Instead, she decides she's going to break up Kate and Hanna before they're even an item, warning Kate off her, following Kate to the club when they have their first date, and then forcing herself onto Kate and kissing her in sight of Hanna, and thereby causing a rift between them. Kate needs to ditch Cass at once. This girl is a trouble-making creep and her behavior is unacceptable. And these 'girls' are in their thirties for goodness sakes! They should know better.

The really weird thing (like this wasn't bad enough already) is that this was in a lesbian bar, yet not one of the other women in there comes to Kate's aid (when Cass grabs her) to ask her if she's okay and if this attention from Cass is OK. Instead they laugh at her, like she's some bi-curious hetero who's strayed beyond her comfort zone, or she's a newbie and therefore deserves no better treatment? So much for a sisterhood. This was horrible. I sincerely hope the Vancouver queer scene isn't remotely like it's portrayed here. It would be truly a scary one if it were.

Kate's friends are really no better. Not one of them is really interested in advising Kate about finding a quality relationship. Every time they talk about Hanna, it's along these lines: "you have this hot barista who clearly likes you." I'm sorry but lust ≠ like. With friends like these, who needs enemas? But Kate is the real piece of work here. She is going to a movie with Hanna, then invites her friend Em along, then it becomes obvious Hanna is going to pair up with Em, but Kate is too stupid to see it, yet when she goes to the bathroom and (oh what another coincidence) encounters her ex, Janice in there, the two of them start making out in the bathroom. Seriously? At this point I can't stand Kate and really don't like anyone else in this group at all. "I really never had been the kind of woman to hook up with people in washrooms." Really? Look in the mirror, Kate. that perfidious puss you see looking back at you? It's nothing new and it's you all over, not a lover anyone with an ounce of integrity would want around them.

Kate is evidently not very smart. despite her many winters in Canada, she evidently owns no gloves, so we read, "It was freezing out this morning. I tried to keep my hands in my pockets as much as possible." We get oddball lines like, "Oh, I don't drink. Thanks. I've got some weed though." At one point we read of Kate and her ex, "We'd never used protection when we were together, having been tested and monogamous thereafter." Yet now she;s having potentially unsafe sex with Hanna and considering it with Cass, who herself sleeps around routinely?

The writing really left a lot to be desired. For example I read this: "So you're still shtupping her?" followed quickly by:

"And, what, you're trying to get a little of her inner peace are you?"
I contorted my face into an expression of disgust as Hanna apologised (sic).
"Too far, sorry.

What, asking about 'shtupping her' wasn't already going too far?

I really wanted to like this but I simply couldn't. it was badly written and unpleasant to read. I can't recommend it. I think this author has a good novel or two in her. It's just not this one.

The Miracle Girl by TB Markinson

Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"Have to!" when "Have too!" was required.
“You’re little spy has been busy. Is it Avery?” should have read "Your little spy..."

Not to be confused with The Miracle Girl by Andrew Roe, or Miracle Girl by Keith Scribner, or the Miracle Girls manga series, this novel is an LGBTQIA story about two women working in the dying newspaper business. JJ Cavendish, the woman of the title, is assigned to try and save the ailing newspaper in her home 'town' of Denver. She hasn’t been home in twenty years and has mixed feelings about it, especially when she discovers that her old love is working for the very newspaper she's now in charge of. Claire has evidently become the mother of a young child in the intervening years, as JJ discovers when they reconnect.

It seems pretty obvious that Claire and her 'husband' are separated, yet she doesn’t relay any of this to JJ, and the latter is evidently too dumb to figure it out or to even ask, which begs the question as to why she's in charge of anything, and especially why a news organization! I prefer stories about smarter women than these two, although this novel wasn't atrocious by any means. It does misrepresent itself somewhat in the blurb (but then what professionally published novel doesn’t?!).

Take this, for example: "Mid-afternoon office romps abound in this romantic comedy while also focusing on what it takes for a newspaper to remain relevant in this age of social media." It’s not a romantic comedy. There's no humor and no comedy unless you count a comedy of errors. And it does not remotely "focus" on the newspaper. It’s all about JJ and her physical pining for Claire. And it’s first person, which doesn’t help. As I read it I was constantly skirting along the border between, yeah it’s an okay read, and I detest this endlessly self-absorbed whiner! This should have been a third-person novel as should the majority of novels. This asinine addiction to first person stories is laughable, especially here.

The blurb asks, "Must JJ lose everything in order to gain a life more fully her own?" and I don't even know what that means. What she's risking is losing the woman she wants to be with, but she's managed perfectly fine without her for two decades. She's hardly risking everything. And how is her life to be fully her own if she's so utterly dependent upon Claire? The sentence made zero sense, but is typical of book blurb writers in the world of Big Publishing™.

JJ is inconsistent as a character. On the one hand she's used to taking charge, and running things, which means knowing how and when to delegate, yet when she wakes up one morning with a painfully stiff neck and back, and can’t reach up to the shelf in a pharmacy for a heating pad, she thinks, "There was no way I would ask a clerk for help. I never liked to ask for help." This again broadcasts how stupid she is. It’s not a good sign, especially when she's the main character and talking to you in first person.

Apart from the whining, the novel was written quite well and I thought I would enjoy it, but it became too much when these two women began behaving like clueless teenagers in each other's company and the whole story about saving the newspaper was effectively put on the back burner if not forgotten as these two pursued each other like rabbit sin high rutting season. The sex scenes were not even interesting or original, and it all became a joke, so I ditched it around forty percent in. No, I do not want to read another story about women who have nothing but sex on what passes for their mind any more than I want to read one about men who are in that same frame of mind. I cannot recommend this one.

Wonder Woman Earth One Vol 1 by Grant Morrison, Yanick Paquette

Rating: WARTY!

With the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, to which I look forward immensely (and depressingly almost a year away as of this review!), and from the fact that Gal Gadot was by far the most impressive character in the rather sad and confused Batman v Superman movie, I decided to take a look at this one, which my awesome public library had sitting right there on the shelf. I was disappointed. Worse than this, it betrayed the original concept dreamed-up by William Moulton Marston and his wife wife Elizabeth.

This is evidently some sort of reboot in the Earth One series, although why a character which has been continuously in print for over three-quarters of a century was felt so lacking in oomph that she needed a reboot is a bit of a mystery. The blurb told me that this was "a wholly unique retelling that still honors her origins" so since I knew squat about the comic book character, I decided this might be a good place to start, but in the end I was not impressed. The art work wasn't bad at all, but some of the images made little sense, and the story itself left a lot to be desired.

We learn here that Princess Diana did not derive from clay brought to life, but as a daughter of Hercules (himself very much a villain here). That's really the only significant difference. We still get Captain Steve Trevor, who is back in this incarnation, and who Wonder Woman delivers to the USA for treatment after his plane crash. The problem is that the story really bogs down at this point, with Wonder Woman made to look like a village idiot with her lack of understanding of the modern world. She's not as much of a moron though, as the army officer who doesn't know the difference between a Humvee and a Jeep. Maybe he'll do better when the Oshkosh L-ATV comes into common use.

Wonder Woman isn't really likable in this story, and especially not when she compares the ineffective soldiers to little girls - like little girls are somehow feeble and useless. This was so far out of left field that it could only have been written by a male writer who turned-off his brain before he wrote this or was so completely out of touch with his subject that he knew no better.

I can't recommend a graphic novel about Wonder Woman in which she's portrayed (and betrayed) so badly and where she is so bizarrely forced into delivering dumb lines insulting to women, and where her entire oeuvre consists of offering nothing more than a few cheap shows of super-strength. Wonder woman was supposed to be so much more than this - a different kind of super hero, and the writer failed dismally to deliver in this retelling. There was nothing unique here, and worse, nothing antique (unless you classify those ineffectual chains wrapped around her on the cover as harking back to the purported 'bondage' themes of the original Woman Woman comics). But when you got right down to it, there was nothing to empower women in this character. Quite the contrary. This was a golden opportunity to deliver so much more, and it failed. Instead of an up-armored Humvee, we got an old jeep.

Stripped Bare by Shannon Baker

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with Stripped Bare by Emma Hart, or with Stripped Bare by Susan MacNichol, or with Stripped Bare by Penny Clark or with Stripped Bare by Lena Matthews, or with Stripped Bare by Rebecca Moon, or with Stripped Bare by Lacey Thorn, or with Stripped Bare by Lowri Turner, or with Stripped Bare by Aurora Rose Lynn, or with Stripped Bare by Nikka Michaels, or with Stripped Bare by Phil Martin (and so on!), this rather unoriginally titled novel was an advance review copy from Net Galley which I got by accident!

Not sure if I wanted to read this without looking at more detail, I tried to log into Net Galley not by clicking on the link in the email they'd sent me, but by logging-on separately and finding the title through an author search, yet this still got the book automatically added to my list! In the words of John Hurt's Olivander, "Yikes!" Having been saddled with it, I did give it the old college try, but it was not for me. There were too many writing issues and I could not stand the main character.

In what is obviously the opener for a series (I'm not a fan of series), this story is about Sheriff's wife Kate Fox who is guardian of her young, troubled relative, Carly. The novel gets into the action right from the off, which is always a good thing, when Carly’s grandfather, Eldon, is shot and killed, and Kate's philandering husband, Grand County Sheriff Ted Conner who is up for re-election, is seriously wounded. Kate's juvenile charge is missing.

It seemed likely from the start who the villain was, but I'm usually bad at guessing these things so I was surprised I was right. I had to go check since I did not read all of this novel, and the reason for this is that I took a disliking to Kate pretty much from the start. She's supposed to love her husband (she doesn't know right at the start that he's having an affair), yet she fails to get into the ambulance with him. This woman named Roxy who curiously happens to be present, goes with him instead? I couldn't get past that because it was so wrong and Kate was so stupid not to see what was happening here. We were told repeatedly how desperate she was to get to her husband and be with him, and then she lets the ambulance take off with Roxy, and she stays behind? It made zero sense, and no rational reason was offered for it.

There were other reasons not to like Kate. She lives with her husband on a cattle ranch, and at one point she processes this thought: "I could tolerate ears and tails frozen off, a common casualty of spring snowstorms..." This callousness on her part - that she could tolerate pain and suffering in the very animals she relies on for her living turned me right off her. I did not like her one bit after this and was rather hoping the villains would get her. I honestly don't care if cattle ranchers really do view their 'livestock' like that or not. It was unacceptable to me if you want me to like your character.

Kate was unlikable in many other ways. Her dangerous driving to get her to where her wounded husband lay resulted in her smacking into a fence post. I read, "The post didn’t break, but it tilted out, drawing barbed wire with it and snapping the line post six feet away." Her response? “Sorry, Elvis.” Is Elvis the owner of the property she's just criminally damaged? Nope. Elvis is what she named her aging pickup truck. Yes she was worried about her husband (the one she couldn't be bothered to get into the ambulance with), but now she's shown me twice how callous and selfish she is. Plus for a rancher, you'd think she'd know the difference between an AutoGate and a cattle guard (aka a vehicle pass, a Texas gate, or a stock gap). You can "sail over" a cattle guard. You cannot sail over an AutoGate unless your car flies. Shades of Harry Potter again!

When she finally takes Elvis to the hospital, she selfishly parks right under the awning at the entrance to the ER instead of finding a parking space! The hell with other people coming in! The hell with ambulances delivering other patients! Once again she proves herself selfish and thoughtless. At this point I couldn't stand her, and I was actively rooting for Ted and Roxy.

Some of the writing was weird. I read, "Because the railroad depot was the first building in Hodgekiss, in 1889, and the main reason for the settlement, the town had grown up along the tracks." How does this work? There was literally nothing there, but they built a railroad depot anyway, and then a town grew up? Where was the need for the depot if there was no one there to begin with? I'm sorry but that's not how these things work!

There were sections where there was far too much info-dumping, such as:

I started off on another trek to Broken Butte. I had to drive over most of Grand County and into Butte County, sliding just a mile or two through Choker County, which ran along Grand’s eastern edge and north to Nebraska’s border with South Dakota. We’re a bunch of square states, and Grand County copies that pattern. Sprawling over six thousand square miles, it’s bigger than Connecticut, Delaware, or Rhode Island, with about as many people living inside its borders as there are square miles.

TMI!

At another point, Ted, who has literally just come out of a coma, is able to update Kate on where everyone is. How he managed that feat would have made a much more interesting story than the one I got! At around this point, I was unable to read any more of this story because it was turning me off on every page. I wish the author the best of luck in putting yet another detective series on the market, but I can't in good faith recommend this one based on what I read of it.

Silent Thunder by Iris and Roy Johansen

Rating: WARTY!

I quit this audiobook about two fifths the way through because it was becoming ever more boring. The essential plot was really nothing more than a modern day pirate treasure hunt, and it took far too long to get going. It began with a woman and her brother who were supposed to be examining a Russian submarine which was about to go on display at a museum. Why they were even involved is a mystery. Purportedly they were ensuring that it was safe, and determining which areas needed to be cordoned off from the public, but none of this explained why they were digging around behind panels and moving consoles on a submarine which hadn't even been cleared for hazardous substances.

Clearly they were only there so the brother could get killed and the sister find some secret codes which she promptly loses. There were less ham-fisted ways to do this. The way it was done made no sense whatsoever, but arguably worse than this was the reader's voice. Jennifer van Dyck has this way of reading which sounded odd to me from the start. At first I couldn't figure out why she sounded so weird, but then I realized she was putting the same stress on every syllable, so everything she read sounded almost like a question. It was hard to listen to for any appreciable length of time to begin with, and it did not become easier.

If the story had been more interesting I might have persevered, but why bother when it's this bad from the off? At least it wasn't in first person otherwise I never would have made it through to twenty percent. Of course it's the start of the inevitable series (yawn), but I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing it.

Gossip Girl (Abridged audio) by Cecily von Ziegesar

Rating: WARTY!

If I’d known that Kirkus said of this: "Deliciously catty and immediately engrossing" I would never have pulled it off the library shelf. Kirkus pretty much never read a book they didn’t gush over, so their reviews are essentially useless, and I actively avoid books they recommend even if they sound interesting from the blurb. I didn't know beforehand that they'd praised this one. If I had, it would have saved me the time listening to it. Or perhaps, in this case, even had I known their take on it, I might still have got it because the big attraction for me was that it was read by Christina Ricci. After having fallen in love with her watching the Netflix Lizzie Borden movie and subsequent miniseries, I was severely disappointed to discover that her reading voice sucks! It’s a drab and monotonous voice which would have made even an exciting novel dreary, but in this case, the material she was reading was as bad as her reading voice proved to be.

Gossip Girl is purportedly about " a wickedly funny and risqué original novel about the provocative lives of New York City's most prestigious private school young adults", but in reality, it's about shallow mid-teens going about their spoiled-rotten but unutterably shallow and uninteresting lives. There is no "Sharp wit," no "intriguing characters," and no "high stakes", but there is oodles of cheap and boring "melodrama."

This audiobook was a waste of petroleum products. The best thing I can say about it is that it was abridged. If it had been abridged to "Chapter One The End" it would have been perfect.

Winter by Marissa Meyer

Rating: WARTY!

This is the last of the Lunar chronicles, and a case in point as to why I no longer read series with 'Chronicles' in the name (or 'Saga' or 'Cycle' or any of those other trope pretentious buzzwords), and certainly an excellent example of why I typically dislike series. I loved the first volume ion the series, Cinder and reviewed it positively. I even reviewed Scarlett positively though I had some major issues with it. By the time I got to Cress it was time to say, "Enough is enough!" I wrote some 45K of reviewing material on these three volumes explaining what I saw in them (or failed to see!).

After Scarlett and particularly Cress, I wasn't as willing to spend so much time on Winter as I had on the previous three. If it failed even after a couple of chapters, I was out of there. And after a couple of chapters I was out of there. There are over ninety chapters and almost 900 pages in this tome, and from what I've gathered from other reviews, and from what I saw myself, all of it is a waste of perfectly good trees and bandwidth. It turns out it was exactly as I feared it would be and exactly why I'm not a fan of series.

The first problem is right there in the blurb: "... despite the scars that mar her face, [Princess Winter's] beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana" How is this a qualification for anything? What does beauty have to do with it? Is she a runway model? No! She's a princess in line for the throne, so what, I ask again, does beauty have to do with anything? She's apparently admired for her " grace and kindness" but nowhere do I see competence, integrity, diligence, advocacy or anything else like that listed here. Grace has nothing to do with it, and kindness is relative in a totalitarian society like the one which she exists, but at least she's in love with " the handsome palace guard," so what else could possibly matter? The beautiful people are together. The hell with everyone else! Excuse me while I barf profusely.

Winter turned out to be the most limp of all four "princesses" in this story (which is, from other reviews I've read, nothing more than a litany of one "princess" or her lover after another being captured and held prisoner. Seriously, that could have been taken care of in a few pages. Well over eight hundred is completely self-indulgent and is what happens when you have some success with earlier volumes that you're allowed to get away with anything in later volumes. Another reason to despise series, the writers who religiously vomit them up, and the publishers who so avariciously beg for them from writers. And why I shall never, ever, ever write a series. And why I refuse to grace this garbage with the kindness of a positive review. It's ugly!

Rhythm & Clues by Sue Anne Jaffarian

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with Rhythm & Clues by Rachel Shane, this is your bog-standard first person PoV detective story, of which I am not a fan. The thing that interested me about this particular one is that the main character was older than you typically find in these stories, and she was a member of a defunct band. The problem was that instead of a detective, the main character and her mother both came off as interfering busybodies.

Actually, there were far too many busybodies: the whole family was this way evidently, as well as the daughter of the man with whom main character Odelia's mom was involved. Odelia Grey and her mom in particular, had no problem getting into an investigation that had nothing whatsoever to do with them, and in which they were in fact interfering with police business, and doing so after they'd been warned in no uncertain terms by police officers, to stay out of the investigation. At one point the mom calls a person who might be a suspect and gives him information which has not yet been made public, before the police even have a chance to talk to him. This is unacceptable and turned me right off the story and the characters.

In addition to this, the writing style was not very good. The writing focused way too closely on minor everyday activities, bulking up the page count without conveying anything of interest, and certainly nothing to do with the investigation. It made for somewhat tedious reading. Some of the writing made no sense whatsoever. For example, at one point, Odelia outright asks her mom if she's having sex with a guy who lives in the same retiree, gated community in which she lives. Seriously? What the hell business is it of hers? Well, she's a busybody. That wasn't even the biggest problem. After Odelia asks this of her mom, and her mom indicates that she is, I read this: "It was difficult enough getting the picture of Mom and Art doing it out of my head" so why the hell did you even ask? It made no sense.

At another point, there was an exchange between Odelia and her lawyer employer who is called in to help. He says, "I had to shave while driving 75 miles per hour," and she "points out" that he drives a stick shift. If he's doing seventy, he's not shifting gears, so how is that even relevant?! Other than that he's a moron if he's shaving and driving at that speed - or even driving at all. This guy is supposedly a lawyer and should know better, but then none of the characters I encountered in this story seemed blessed with an over-abundance of smarts.

Sometimes the writing was simply obscure: "She said she'd just flown in saying she was on a two week vacation from her job." Huh?! There were some intentionally funny bits, though, such as this one: For a minute I wondered if she was going to try to make a run for it. Or more like a shuffle for it, considering her age. That was amusing, but this kind of thing was rare. Mostly it was just annoying as Odelia's mom gets (or at least lets) her grand-niece break into a neighbor's apartment because Odelia's mom is in a fluster about why he's 'disappeared'. Then they call Odelia at 1:30 in the morning because they were both hauled down to the police station. Well deal with it. You broke into someone's house, morons. These people were stupid and insufferable, and I lost all interest in reading about them. I quit this after thirty percent, because I couldn't bear to read any more about them.

The front of the novel has some "praise" including one comment from Kirkus, which is pointless. Kirkus has pretty much never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are utterly worthless! I actively avoid books (when I know beforehand) that Kirkus has praised. The story (at least the thirty percent I read) had nothing to do with music other than that the guy who has disappeared (and without notifying Odelia's mom, with whom he's not really acquainted, of his exact itinerary! The scandal!), was once in a band, so the music angle was a complete let-down for me. This guy could have been on a cycling team or in a group of charity volunteers, and pretty much the same story could have been told about him.

So overall, while I do appreciate the chance to have taken a look at an advance review copy, and while I do wish the author the best of luck with this series, I was not impressed with the story. I have no interest in pursuing a series based on these characters, and I can't recommend this based on the portion I read.