667 Ways to F*ck Up My Life by Lucy Woodhull

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. Note also that this novel shouldn't be confused with EM Moon's 667. This one trolls a similar ocean in many ways, which seems peculiarly fitting for an author named Woodhull!

When I sat down and began writing this review, I was thinking it would be positive, because I'd enjoyed a lot of the novel, but I had also seen a lot of issues with it and what really changed my perspective was when I began to consider everything in total, and especially the ending. When it came down to it, I honestly could not, in good conscience recommend it, not when I've rated other novels unworthy for less. I may well be in the minority in this view, but all that matters is that I can honestly live with the views I express here.

The title was the first problem, because despite what it claims, the novel fails to actually itemize 667 ways in which main character Dagmar screwed-up her life. More on this anon. As for the wording of the title, I couldn't help but wonder why we put that asterisk in there in place of the vowel. As soon as someone sees "f*ck" they know it means "fuck" and it's that word, not 'f*ck' that pops up in their brain whether they're prone to expressing themselves in that way or not, so you still generated a four-letter word in their mind!

Maybe we like to make people swear even if they find it offensive, but it's not the word which really does the trick, is it? It's we who've secretly agreed to brand a perfectly good and venerable English word 'offensive'. Some of us agree that if we use it, we intend to sound offensive, and others agree that if they hear it, they'll be offended. It's a foolish game we play. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever from a rational PoV, but since when is language rational, especially in an election year? The truth is that it's all about shock value!

In deference to those who are sensitive though, I shall refer to this in the same way that one of the characters does: as "screw-up". I think it would have been more amusing had each letter been substituted, such as "$*@&-up" but that's just me. Be warned, though, that this is very much a highly questionable behavior and bad language novel, so if my previous use offended your sense and sensibility (for which I apologize), it might take a lot of persuasion to get you to read the actual book. As for me, I don't care about bad language in books in principle since it’s the way people talk and/or think in real life, so it’s not inappropriate per se.

As for the plot, it holds no mystery at all, so there can be no spoilers in this review. This story has been drive too many times to not need new tires and brakes before it's read-worthy: the decent, innocent, straight-shooting (or some such combination) girl gets fired by her caricature of a misogynist boss, and dumped by her jerk of a boyfriend on the same day.

How a woman with her potential ever got played into that position in this day and age remains largely unexplored (and I was glad of it!), but, but evidently smarts and self-respect got no casting-call. Anyway, she decides to change her life and predictably and magically, this leads to a better life and to the man of her dreams (Yash); however, she's been lying about things (in this case, her job and her name inter alia) when she first meets the guy, and finds herself inexplicably unable to avoid her lingering lies when the relationship deepens and then inevitably fails. Predictably, they then get together "romantically" and all's swell by the end bell.

To me, this play-acting wasn't Dag's major screw-up. The screw-up was that she failed to come clean with him as soon as she realized these feelings and this relationship were the one genuine thing amidst all the lies; worse than this, the author fails to justify her behavior. The major problem with this story then, is that Dag had absolutely no reason whatsoever to continue the lie, and this is where the novel began to fail for me because it became clear that the author wasn't letting the story happen naturally. She was like a show jumper who had a fine and spirited horse, but she wouldn't give it its head and trust it to jump, so fences were coming down all over the course!

Like a piano player who's been drilled too rigidly and never allowed to breathe the music or have any fun with it, she played the notes almost exactly as they'd been played by countless other artists before her, and never dared to set the melody free or improvise. That's why it felt so disappointing and unnatural to me. We got the predictable break-up and the equally predictable reunion for no other reason than a rigid adherence to a clichéd paradigm for this genre of novel.

That's when I lost the very faith in the author that she'd patiently built earlier. She made me hope for something out of the ordinary, and then deliberately stomped on that hope and killed it. Even as I feared this would most assuredly happen, I also entertained the fantasy that that maybe it wouldn't so at least in that regard, I went through the same thing that Dag did in her break-up. I doubt this is what the author had intended!

One of the things I had to try to overlook was that the title is rather fraudulent, as I mentioned earlier. There is no tally of 667 screw-ups here. This enumerated epistle which is added-to periodically throughout the novel (and which in some instances appears in place of the novel), is much more like a reminder list, or a list of observations or one of regrets, or of cute/inane comments/non-comments (items 541 through 547 I'm looking at you!) than ever it is an exclusive itemization of ways to screw-up.

For example #331 says, "My life had a forty-two percent rotten rating at rottentomatoes.com" which is actually getting on for fifty percent better than the Suicide Squad movie had, but it isn’t a screw-up in itself! It was funny, I admit. Some of them were, and I don’t doubt that such a huge list of ways to screw-up is do-able, but would it be entertaining? Hence the wimp-out list, which sometimes succeeded admirably. Other times it was simply intrusive, annoying, and trite.

There were many instances where several successive line items said pretty much the same thing if in slightly different ways, or which amplified an original thought:

320. Maybe I could write a literary erotic novel
321. The hero threw the hussy onto the couch and grrfflsh ajdjdhdhha unnffffff-ed her

and this:

323. It was the hormones released from such good kissing
324. Such sexy, nasty, sweet kissing
325. The kind of kissing that kills everyone in a Shakespearean tragedy

These are no more screw-ups than they are unique entries in the list, and the hormones motif was overdone, especially when it appeared in the form of "it's hormones, nothing more." If a male character said the same thing of a woman he wouldn't be allowed to get away with it unless the idea is to portray him as a complete dick, so how is it any better if Dag says it? That felt gratuitously insulting to me, and out of place in the novel that this aimed to be.

Items 367 to 384 (excluding item 383) consist solely of the sentence "I was in love". Item 418 was "Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!" - hardly a screw-up unless it took place at a funeral or when being threatened by a gang member, and neither applied in this case. "474. He didn't even owe me bird shit" would have been funnier if it had read, "Unless it was bird shit". So yes, this title is dishonest, but it does have the benefit of standing out. This is an important consideration, since "One Way to F*ck Up" would never be as appealing a title despite being more accurate! But enough said on this score.

I have to confess I was concerned about Dag's drinking problem. At one point, she actually recognizes that she has a drinking problem, which is admirable, but she resolves only to give up daytime drinking and then promptly breaks that vow. She made no vows whatsoever related giving-up becoming the falling-down, vomiting, passed-out drunk (fortunately in that order), of which she was guilty. This is exactly why her drinking is a problem bordering on, if not embracing alcoholism since it's made repeatedly clear that it's alcohol, not friends, not exercise, not books (there goes literary!), not music, not crafts, not movies, not even food, but alcohol, which is her life-jacket when ineffectually opposing a sea of troubles. She actually abuses her best friend Mel, who sounded far more interesting to me than Dag became, although I was disappointed that Mel had nothing to say about Dag's drinking.

The story definitely took a serious downturn when she started stalking her ex and obsessing over him even more than she had before. That's when it was no longer romantic or a comedy for me. Had the genders been reversed and a guy was doing this, he would have been called on it by the readers if not by another character, so how is it any better that a woman is doing this to a man? It's not. It's neither entertaining nor is it funny.

Yes, Yash is being a bit of a jerk, so maybe this co-dependent couple really did deserve each other in the end, but at least he has cause for his behavior. She has no excuse whatsoever and worse, she doesn't even get that he needs to be left alone so she's compounding her main course of liar thermidor by adding a side dish of ass stalks. It made me really dislike her and negated any good feelings I'd entertained towards her from earlier.

But enough about meme; let’s talk about eupathy. The milieu of the story was a comfortably predictable one. It seems like whenever an author or screen-writer is aiming for a 'literary' story, they have their main character, who is typically a female, somehow involved with books. In this case, Dag is employed as an editor at a publishing company, but she doesn’t work on novels. No fear! She works in non-fiction - and there are no environmental dilemmas for Dag; it’s all about print, as though involvement with ebooks is slumming it.

More than this, the guy she falls for is a writer, and she predictably turns her web log into charmingly printable woodcuts. None of this is spoilers. All of it is inevitable from the premises. So well-traveled is the route that it's a rout, and more of a sow's ear than ever it was a silk road. The problem appears to be that if such stories were not so predictable, they likely wouldn’t garner for themselves such a predictable readership. Too few authors have the courage to take the road less traveled, even in an era when they do not have to beg Big Publishing™ to lend them that sow's ear.

This novel was too much an attempt at an edgy version of a Meg Ryan movie or more accurately, it felt like a remake of the Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I know I've read other novels which have run in a similar rut, but none of those were impressive enough for me to recall a title off-hand.

Some of it rang rather hollow or odd, such as where I read, "sew destruction upon Taylor." I honestly couldn't figure out if that was simply a case of bad spelling (that no spellchecker would catch!), or if it was actually intended as a pun - you know, sew...Taylor, but since I hadn't really seen any devotion to puns in this story, I think maybe "sow" was intended? And we're back to the pig's ear pun! Just kidding! But don't you love the English language?

Dag's approach to agents and publishing houses to sell her blog made little sense (especially when it was loudly telegraphed beforehand who would get the nod), and it made less sense given what a huge following her blog had garnered. She didn't need any help at that point, and why would she even consider it given that her plan supposedly was to screw-up? It felt like both a sell-out and a continuation of the endless Mary-Sue moments she was improbably accruing without any effort whatsoever.

The fact that this option isn’t even discussed made me realize that it must have been voted down by this 'literary' paradigm into which the author had locked herself like the clichéd emotional bride in the toilet at the wedding. Traditional publishing dominates, and the small prints dons the crown! E-books don't get a look-in! At this point the novel had become a fairy-tale lacking only Prince Chakra, and we knew for a fact that he wasn't far behind, so there was no suspense here at all.

But the bottom line for me is whether the novel is worth reading or not. It's one way or the other. I can’t tell you that two-fifths of a novel is worth reading and the other three not. It’s either worth my time or it isn’t and in the end, this one wasn't. So while I did find parts to be an entertaining read, overall it was disappointingly unoriginal. I think changing the paradigm would have made for a much better read.

A problem with stories like this is when to end them. It's always better to end sooner, even if it's too soon, than to let write be dumb. That's a territory this one danced with perilously, in tandem with me dancing with changing my mind. My mind is a lousy dance partner though: it keeps stepping on my prose. I think the story should have ended, given that it must head in this tired direction, right at the point where he texted her, and that should have been the first contact of any kind he made.

End it right there and you're doing better than you are with an ending which keeps on going right on into an epilogue. I don't read prologues or epilogues, so I never did learn what the last couple of itemized non-screw-ups were and it doesn't bother me at all. I wish the author all the best with her career, and I believe she definitely has a voice, I can't recommend this expression of it.

RE*PRO*DUCT Vol 1 by Austin Wilson

Rating: WARTY!

Note: I got this advance review copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

From the blurb, this sounded like a good idea for a story, but the execution of it was less than satisfactory for me. It's set in a future world where robots, we're told, have been legally granted the right to life. I have no idea what the author intended that to mean, worded as it is. I mean, is it possibly they could have been illegally granted the right to life?! I took it as meaning simply that they'd been accepted as people. The problem is with defining what 'person' and 'right to life' mean in reference to a mechanical being. Does it mean for example, that they're immortal, always being able to get upgrades and new parts? Does it mean we can make any robot and regard it as a person with no regulation or control? How do the robots come into being in the first place? How did they break out from servitude (or even slavery) into a world of equality? Who instigated it?

There are real issues here which humanity may well end-up facing within the next half century, but they were not explored at all. There is nothing behind that curtain, and instead of anything deep, we got a novel where "the best approximation of a personality" seems to be directly equated with juvenile frat-boy mentality. As such, the story offers nothing which isn't found in those dumb cartoon fathers such as the moronic Homer Simpson and that dickhead from Family Guy, neither of which I can stand.

This isn't the only thing which was confusing in the blurb. The blurb also tells us that "Their intelligence is not artificial, and it may not be the best approximation of a personality." Intelligence and personality are not the same thing, which is why we have a different word for each of them. Phrased the way it is, though, I have no good idea what that means, and it isn't explained in the story. How is it not artificial? Do they use human brains or are we to understand that their artificial intelligence evolved independently of human efforts to develop it? Do they reproduce somehow? None of this is explained which is a bit of a gap given that this is volume one of a series. It felt like those shows which take a human world, and install a non-human character, yet make no allowances for it. A good example of this is Sponge Bob Squarepants, where despite living under the ocean, life is exactly like it is on land in an atmosphere of air, so we get ridiculous events like Sponge Bob taking a shower or working at a grill with flames licking up in the saltwater, which is completely insane, of course. People accept this inanity because it can be funny when it's not maudlin (and if you turn off parts of your brain!), but I expected better from a graphic novel like this.

The art work was so-so, consisting of line drawings with a monochromatic palette which changed hue from one section to another of the book. I have no idea what the colors signified - if anything. The stories were uninspired and uninspiring, and this was mainly because I failed to see how, if frat boys had been substituted for these robots, the story would have been any different. In short, the novel contained nothing I'd hoped for in a sci-fi story, and nothing I'd been half-way led to expect given the blurb, so I cannot recommend this at all.

Agenda 21 by Harriet Parke

Rating: WARTY!

Glenn Beck is probably glad he's not the author of this novel. Harriet Parke wrote this, and this audiobook was like listening to bad fan fiction. Seriously. It's set in a ridiculously biased future which is presented to us without any attempt whatsoever being made to justify or rationalize it. It's based on UN resolution known as Agenda 21 (they definitely should have been smarter in how they named it!). The '21' means 21st century, BTW. In mid 1992, 178 governments embraced the philosophy behind it. That was a quarter century ago, and have you seen anything change? I sure haven't. So those morons and imbeciles who are touting this as some sort of totalitarian takeover agenda are quite simply liars, as dishonest as the book cover loudly yelling that this is a work by Glenn Beck, and that's all there is to it.

The US is a very selfish nation in many ways, and I couldn't see any way in which this fictional future could actually happen in this country. No one would be willing to give up their home and their land - or their guns. I couldn't see how everyone even could be herded around as they were depicted here, or for what purpose it was being done, and that was the fundamental problem with this novel. It was a farce.

But the US's main problem is ignorance. No One knows what the heck this policy is aimed at, or at least they didn't in 2012, when a poll of 1,300 US voters found that 9% supported it, 6% opposed it, and 85% didn't have enough information on which to arrive at an opinion. So this novel isn't a fictional account of a dystopian future, it's a political agenda based on radically alarmist lies about guidelines set out by the UN, which are designed to actually help the environment. This is all too typical of the tsunami of propaganda put out by an increasingly radicalized and fundamentalist right wing who seem to have no agenda of their own other than pandering to panic. it;s interesting to note that Agenda 21, the novel, was published that same year, so the author could actually claim ignorance, too: ignorance of reality.

The story makes zero sense, has no world-building, and essentially abandons all of the technological advances we've made in terms of recycling and renewable energy since 1992. For example, electricity has evidently gone, including solar power, in this world, and people physically work to haul other people around in carts or ride energy-creating bicycles or walk treadmills to generate power. Why all this power is needed went unexplained in the small portion of this I could stand to listen to.

The biggest issue with the story other than how profoundly stupid it is, is that it's so poorly written that it's almost a parody of itself, and it's bone-numbingly boring. Instead of inventiveness and foresight, we got asinine nineteen-fifties sci-fi garbage phrases like "nutrition cube" instead of food, and "living space" instead of home. The entire first half-dozen chapters of the novel was one long, biased, brain-dead info-dump which made for truly tedious listening. The author describes someone riding an "energy bicycle" and does a really lousy writing job of it. No one would call it that in the future, they'd simply call it a bike, or call it by whatever abbreviated name it was most popularly known as. The author had no clue how to write, and I have no intention of listening to anything else by this author or by Glenn Beck.

You can see for yourself what Agenda 21 says here, and decide for yourself if it's a sound environmental hope and Glenn beck is inexcusably ignorant and alarmist. Here's the same thing at MIT. Here's wikipedia's article on it.

Little Tails in the Jungle by Frédéric Brrémaud, Federico Bertolucci

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Yes, you read that right - it's tails, not tales! I liked that! I've been largely a fan of the Brrémaud/Bertolucci graphic novel series titled 'Love', a text-free set of stories about life in the wild. I was disappointed with volume three, but I really liked the first two volumes. It makes me happy, therefore, to report another win for them with this volume aimed at educating children about life on various continents.

Chipper and Squizzo are two little animal characters who take trips in their cardboard box airplane (something young children can readily emulate with any old cardboard box you have lying around). This part of the story is line drawings with a splash of monochrome color; it's refreshingly simple and will probably appeal to young readers, especially when its contrasted against the gorgeous full color images of the various animals they encounter.

As usual with this kind of children's book, I'm sorry to report that the animals featured are biased toward mammals, and largely situated on land (we humans are a very class conscious society aren't we, even when it comes down to biological classes!), but I'm happy to report we don't see exclusively those things. There does appear the occasional gastropod, arachnid, and other classes such as fish, bird, and reptile are represented. They writers even get the piranhas situated on the right continent this time - something I complained about in my review of the first volume of Love! Here I'd argue that the 'parrot' Chipper and Squizzo saw was actually a macaw, but that's just me being picky!

But I'm not going to let that get in the way of praising this as a charming and educational book. There's a couple (I'd have liked more) of pages at the end that give some detailed information about some of the animals featured - again heavily biased toward mammals, but it's better than nothing. Overall I recommend this as a worthy read for children.

Wynonna Earp Vol 1 Homecoming by Beau Smith

Rating: WARTY!

This sounded like it might be interesting, or it might be a disaster, and it pains me to report that it was the second of these two options. I counted twenty-seven panels containing blood in the first thirty-two pages. That's almost one per page, which is way too many for a story which makes little sense, appears to be going nowhere, and doesn't even have decent dialog or some humor to leaven it. Essentially it's just another Walking Dead style story with nothing new to offer. Even the art was pretty much Walking Dead. The only "improvement" it had was that it was in color. Don't let the misrepresentative front cover image fool you. the art is nothing like that quality inside.

The main Character, Wynonna Earp is, we're told, descended from Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, presumably with his second wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, but the couple had no children, and neither did Wyatt with his first wife. I was prepared to overlook that if the story had turned out to be good, but it didn't.

The basis of it is that the United States Marshals Service 'Black Badge' division was set up to fight paranormal creatures. The only ones we see here - at least in the part I read - were 'chupacabra' critters, aka goat eaters. Why, in these stories, the goat eaters never eat goats but always humans is a complete mystery, but the only reason to avoid Wynonna Earp at all cost is that she's boring. I can't recommend this based on the the portion of it that I read, which is more than enough for my taste.

You know, it makes no difference in stories like this if the para-abnormals are zombies, or vampires, or were-wolves, or whatever, the story is always the same. I like my characters and my stories to have something more going for them than endless skulls split with bullets or cleavers, and this failed dismally. It's long past time that writers of this genre came up with something new to say.

Oh Joy Sex Toy Vol 3 by Erika Moen, Matthew Nolan

Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
p60 "aught" means nothing! The word required is "ought" as in 'feel compelled to'!

Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan seem like a fun couple who have made an industry out of graphic - and I mean graphic! - adventures with sex toys. This is an adult publication, be warned, with no holds barred - or anything else for that matter. It's also a whopping three hundred pages, so there's a heck of a lot here.

The discussions are frank, open, amusing, and detailed, and they cover topics which are important and far too often badly served in a fundamentalist and conservative nation like the USA: sexual health (both disease-wise and exercise-wise), sex education (inlcuding book reviews), and physical/mechanical sex aids. I've never been a fan of toys myself, but this is evidently a fifteen billion dollar industry, so clearly many people are, and it was climbing out of the closet and into the mainstream, so get used to it!

I don't know anything about Matthew Nolan,but I'm vaguely familiar (in an innocent way) with Erika Moen's work. She's an artist who's been involved in comic books and other art endeavors. She's also a member of Periscope studios which has had a hand in some Wonder Woman comics, so it's good to know that super hero is in highly capable hands if that team is anything like Erika, who reminds me of one or other of the two goal keepers in my Seasoning novel. It's good to know that goal mouth is in capable hands, too!

On a point of order, I have to disagree with her assertion on page 53 that the particular item under review will open up her "world of wanking opportunities". I contend that female cannot truly 'wank' unless she is unusually well-endowed clitorally-speaking. It's just not physically possible although I don't doubt it's fun to try! Masturbate yes! Wank? Not really! LOL! However in the interests of the Equal Right-On! Amendment, women are most welcome to go for it!

I have to say that a lot of what's in here (I'm talking about sex advice and discussion of sexual disease and medical conditions, not the product reviews) is common sense and common knowledge - at least it ought to be common knowledge, but that's just the problem. Because sex has been treated as such a tabu subject, nowhere near enough people are educated on these topics. This is why knowledgeable and responsible publications like this are so important.

This kind of graphic novel isn't for me, and some parts of it felt incredibly naive and gullible (notably the two sections on porn films, where in the one they believed it wasn't staged, and in the other they seemed to be polishing the whole porn industry with a huge shine based on one particular filming session they'd witnessed).

This is aimed at sex positivity, and I can understand that, so I didn't expect anything truly negative from it, but it seems to me they're under-serving their readers if they don't look at the downside of things as well as the upside. They do review a book which touches on some of those stories but it's aimed not at how the porn business works, but at how some performers coped with balancing their professional life with their private life.

The last third of it is guest comic strips, and they cover a variety of topics all related to sex. I didn't find these as amusing as the first two hundred pages, except for Donut's Cream For You which I thought was hilarious. My biggest concern over these though, was that they were heavily biased towards trim Caucasian couples and where women were involved they seemed to be almost exclusively slim and comic-book curvy. While that's common in comic books (and on TV and in the movies and in literature), it's not right, and in a graphic novel like this, which is all about inclusivity, they seemed inappropriate in a way which had nothing to do with their subject matter!

I haven't read the previous two volumes in this series, so perhaps they have a slightly different take on things, but the feeling I have is that they would be very much like this one in tone and approach. That said, I don't doubt that these volumes will be useful and helpful to many people so I have no problem recommending this one. We don't need less of this, we need more! But we also need balance, so keep that in mind, and enjoy!

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

Rating: WARTY!

This was an awful novel, badly written and in the audiobook format, badly read. I've been forced to conclude that not only is Isaac Asimov irrelevant, he is antique and I need read nothing further by him. His prose is pedantic and far too absorbed with irrelevant details, and his characters were anachronistic even for Asimov's own time. I don't believe any ever exclaimed "Jehoshaphat" not even when Asimov was alive. It's tedious.

On that score, it seems like everyone but the robots in his world are named after Biblical characters (the leading non-robotic character is Elijah, and his son is Benjamin, for goodness sakes! Why this novel written by an atheist, and set in the future is so obsessed with an antique work of poor history and copious fiction would make for a more interesting book. Supposedly set a thousand years from now, the novel evinces nothing significantly different from Asimov's own time despite the passage of a millennium. People still smoke pipes for goodness sakes! There is nothing inventive here, and the robot is more tedious and brain-dead than Commander Data in the Star Trek Universe. I expected better. Now I know better.

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Storm Surge by Chuck Dixon, Rik Hoskin, Andres Ponce

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this is an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This graphic novel, which is confused at best, attracted me because the Frankenstein idea is a compelling one even though I haven't had the best relationship with novels on this topic. The problem with this one is that it misrepresents itself. It really had far less to do with Frankenstein than it did with a zombie apocalypse, and if I'd known that's all it was, I would never have asked to read it in the first place.

Written by Dixon and Hoskins, and illustrated by Ponce, this has nothing to do with the original Frankenstein novel which I reviewed back in January of 2014. It's based on Dean Koontz's series of a purportedly reinvented Frankenstein, which failed to live when electrified in its TV incarnation. In it, the "monster" is the hero and Frankie-ducks is the villain (but wasn't that the original story?! LOL!). Note that there never was a 'monster' in Shelley's creation - it was a "creature" - but there isn't a lot of creation going on here. Because American authors are, based on available evidence, largely incapable of writing stories set anywhere other than the USA, this all takes place in New Orleans, during Katrina. That felt highly inappropriate and disrespectful to me

This Victor Frankenstein keeps creating females named Erika. I'm not making this up - Dean Koontz evidently is! In this volume, which is the only one I've read, we're not told why he's doing this, nor why he created a portal to another universe. Instead we learn that he has a whole bunch of naked Erikas bottled (literally) downstairs, which he can activate whenever he wants. The current living one is number five, and she is quite evidently there only as eye-candy, sporting herself in flimsy, clinging, split-sided dresses and intent solely on escape. It's not an attractive proposition and would likely have shocked Mary Shelley, no matter how liberal and progressive she may have been for her time.

The story is largely incoherent, featuring multiple parallel worlds, one of which is undergoing a festering outbreak of zombies. Of all the parallel worlds in all the galaxies in all the universe, I had to be thrown into this one! Why Frankie-ducks feels compelled to take off after Erika 5 when he has a couple of dozen more in his basement is unexplained. Why there are zombies running amok in a flooded New Orleans is unexplained, but it has something to do with electricity, which ironically is something this novel fails to elicit.

It's only a hundred and thirty-some pages, but I couldn't finish it. It was boring, and the art work nondescript. The exploitation of women particularly in the form of Erika, a leading female once again in need of a muscular man to both validate and rescue her, was rife and obnoxious, which I admit seems inevitable in comic books, but it doesn't have to be that way if we chose not to let it, and I sure don't have to support this kind of thing. I cannot recommend this, nor anything like this.

Who Killed Kurt Cobain?: The Story of Boddah by Nicolas Otéro

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this was an advance review copy of a graphic novel for which I thank the publisher.

While I was glad to have the chance to read this, I have to confess up front that I was disappointed. The title makes no sense. We know who killed Cobain. The artwork for the most part was uninspired and even perfunctory, and the story felt too fanciful. Kurt Cobain had an imaginary childhood friend named Boddah, and he wrote a note to this character before he shot himself, leaving the note behind, along with his wife and young daughter.

I'm not someone who thinks that actors and musicians somehow get in touch with the mystical through drug use. I think they're simply juvenile, spoiled, and selfish morons who are often delusional. You can argue that as adults they're in charge of what happens to their bodies, but I don't think you can divorce the adult from the child, not when the child has experiences like Cobain did. He needed a better intervention than the one he got, for sure.

I don't think that Cobain was particularly brilliant or insightful or that his music was revolutionary or particularly special. It was just part of a genre, but in his case, it was magnified and amplified by his life, yet we see none of that here. He may as well not even have been a musician at all for as little reference as we got to his music in this story. I do see how people clambered aboard his bandwagon, because we see this routinely amongst humans. We're very much sheep who are drawn to cults and gangs, and clubs and societies, and to mindlessly jumping aboard bandwagons. Everyone wants to feel special which is paradoxically why we see this herding instinct so routinely.

While I wouldn't go as far as the blurb and claim Cobain is "modern rock's greatest icon" (Google puts him halfway down the first page of images!), it's not at issue that Cobain was talented and had something to say; the only curious thing I find was that evidently he didn't feel this way about himself. That would have been worth exploring, because there's no mystery about his suicide. It was entirely predictable and could have been prevented, but it was inevitable given his circumstances. Preventing it would have required a lot more care, love and real attention than was available to him. Given how hell-bent he was on self-destruction, it may be that no amount could have saved him, but we'll never know.

What I don't understand is the lemming-like rush to label these people heroes and spirit guides to the unknown. They're not. They're sick, troubled children who need help. In his case, heroic would have entailed his giving up drugs, getting treatment for his depression, and taking care of his daughter. The route he took was not heroic; it was cowardly, leaving the child to the single parenting of a woman who has evidenced pretty much as many issues as Cobain did. In many ways she become the hero, sadly fallible as that hero was, yet she gets nowhere near the attention Cobain did. Heroic would have been making a super-human effort to give his daughter a role model of how to cope and make a life, so that she doesn't go down the same drain he did. In that, he failed.

But this is a review of the graphic novel, not the life it depicts, and for me, that also failed. Yes, it told his story from a certain perspective, but it was scrappy and full of gratuitous flourishes. In my opinion, it focused foolishly on the destruction, not on the creation, on a person's weaknesses, not on his strengths - his music. The blurb claims the story is told from the perspective of the imaginary friend, made real here, but that's not the impression I got. Some of the drawings were great, but for the most part, they were so sloppy and indistinct that sometimes it was hard to tell if it was the imaginary friend or Cobain talking, and perhaps that was intentional, because in the end, there was no friend. There was only Cobain alone.

I can't recommend this because I don't see what this gave us that we didn't have before, other than an excessive amount of gratuitous nudity and gore, and none of that is revelatory these days, I'm sorry to observe.

Shalilly by Elizabeth Gracen, Luca di Napoli

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this review is based on an advance review copy for which I thank the author and publisher.

I was so impressed with this novel that I began to think that the author had been through all of my reviews, made notes of the things which tick me off in YA novels, and then strove to avoid all of them in her writing. It was, frankly, a bit creepy! Obviously she didn't actually do that, but I have to say this was a remarkable read, and hit all the high notes for me (that's an inside joke - you'll have to read the novel to discover what it means!

Elizabeth Gracen has had an interesting history in film and print, and this is her debut novel. It's very good and refreshingly different - playful, inventive, humorous, original, and a truly engaging read. Illustrated with welcome insight by means of a few (too few for me!) delightful images from talented artist Luca di Napoli, this is written in an easy-going, quick-moving style if, I have to add, a little stilted on occasion in the conversations. It tells the story of young Filipina, heir not-so-apparent to the oracle Theano, and of Fippa's young friend Ision, a soldier.

It has a prologue which I skipped as I do all prologues (and I never miss them!). Chapter one launches us right into the middle of things, which is where I love to begin a story, with Ision being cast into another realm and Fippa electing to go after him in an effort to prevent the evil Timeus from succeeding in his plans, which rely on keeping them apart. The first thing Fippa does is to get drunk! How many times have you read that in a fairy-tale?! I was hooked.

Technically, Fippa isn't a fairy, but one of the butterfly girls known as Shalilly, and she really didn't intend to get passed-out drunk on the nectar. It was just so good! I mean come on. Tell me you've never drunk so much nectar you haven't passed out. I knew it! This episode does educate her and strengthen her resolve, however. It was honestly refreshing to encounter a young, leading character who quickly learns from her mistakes, and it soon becomes clear that Fippa is dedicated to her mission, and constantly re-evaluating strategies to achieve her aim. She has a lot going on upstairs and it was so nice to read of a female character written by a female author who had more on her mind than how studly her beau was (not that she didn't have that on her mind, too!). See, YA writers? It can be done! Elizabeth Gracen shows you how!

That's not to say Fippa is perfect though. She has a temper and a jealous streak on which she has to strive to keep a tight rein, and these are traits which do not help her circumstances. Fippa's experiences in Paradigm, the fairy-tale world which she volunteered to visit in order to save Ision are very entertaining, but she quickly becomes disempowered, and a prisoner - and a despised one at that. Now her job is all the more difficult, and she has only her wits to save the day, but she proves equal to the task.

In a page (or two!) taken from One Thousand and One Nights , she tells Ision, who is now ignorant of their critical past, a story in the hopes of educating him as gently as she can. I'm not a fan of flashbacks at all, but this was one way of doing this, and which didn't feel false. It didn't even feel like it was interrupting the story because it was an integral part of it. Nicely done! Some might find this section a bit long, and I confess I missed the Shalilly version of Fippa quite honestly, but never was there any point where I wanted to skip this part.

The humor was a delight, yet the story was also serious. I did find some unintentional humor, but more than likely it's just me being weird. One example I remember was at the beginning, where I read, "Ision felt the horse slow its pace as Fippa placed her hand on his." Now it's obvious what is meant here, but the way it's written, if you're as warped about writing as I am, it can be deemed that Pippa put her hand on the horse's hand. Hey, it's a fantasy - it could happen! And we know the horse was maybe fifteen or sixteen hands, so that's a lot of hands to go around! LOL!

Not that I'm going to downgrade a story for that kind of thing, but as a writer, it's worth keeping in mind that it's not only what you write, but also the way you write it. As it was, this novel was warm enough and such a joy to read that I could overlook more serious problems than this (not that there were any here), and that counts too: your readers will forgive you a lot more if you give them good reasons to!

Anyone who reads my reviews will know that I always find something to carp about, but it was really hard to find anything wrong here. Yes, there was the cliché of the heroic dude with the "gold-flecked green eyes" - gold flecks are way over done in YA literature - but it seemed like every time I experienced a growing fear that this story was going down to tropeville, the author took it in another direction and saved it. Hence my feeling that she'd been reading my reviews!

Sometimes the language seemed a bit overly modern for ancient Greece, such as when Ision says, "...chuck it all...", and other times there were questionable turns of phrase, such as when Fippa says, "What if they could care less if I am returned?" What she meant was "What if they couldn't care less..." Normally this wouldn't bother me because people really do speak like that in real life, but this was not modern life where that phrase has entered common use - it was ancient Greece (or a very near approximation to it), so it felt like this ought to have been more accurate.

The last thing I'd mention is that "I am a girl who has barely stepped foot..." is a pet peeve of mine. I don't like 'stepped foot' because to me it sounds odd and clunky. I know authors write this routinely, but in this particular case, I'd like to argue that the more traditional "set foot" would have been a better choice of words for a charming story like this. It's worth thinking about as a writer, but as a reader, none of this was worth down-grading a novel over, by any means, because it would be mean!

I've been to Greece more than once and I've actually been to the Delphi area. It was beautiful, and the writing really brings out the essence of the country and the scenery without going into excessive detail. The author writes it beautifully, and she depicts the ancient Delphi oracle to perfection in my opinion.

Talking of essence, this novel made me wish I could bottle the essence of how she wrote it so I could unleash it on my own writing! The novel is so good that it almost makes a fellow writer wish for its author to fall on her face in her next outing just so he can feel better about his own efforts! But since I fell in love with the Shalilly (shamelessly and inappropriately so, I confess) I'm going to be bigger than that, and instead congratulate Elizabeth Gracen on a really good novel, and wish her all the best. Grace-n is the perfect name for this author! I recommend this novel highly, and I now I must endure the agonizing (<-Greek roots word!) wait for her next novel! O the Phates! (<-Greek joke word!)

One Green Omelet Please by Sally Huss

Rating: WORTHY!

My first positive review out of my last nine! Eek! Of course it has to be Sally Huss, writer and illustrator of young children's books who never lets me down. Told in rhyme with joyful colored pictures, this tells the story of the family who went out to eat. Jenny orders a green omelette, which frankly sounds disgusting, but it turns out it's not so bad.

The important thing is that Jenny takes a minute to ponder the origin of everything from which the omelette is made. Eggs of course, but also broccoli and spinach, green onions and peas. There's a tomato and some cheese. I'm not sure why Jenny says a prayer of thanks, since it's the farmers who ultimately provide all this stuff, but at least she took the time to be grateful for it all. Another fun and useful book from a writer who seems never to run out of ideas!

Prism by Faye Kellerman, Aliza Kellerman

Rating: WARTY!

This is a case of a new writer being "grandfathered" (or perhaps more accurately in this case, "grandmothered") into the privileged position of publishing because your mom is already in the business, so this had that already against it, and the fact that it was an audiobook, which in my hands tend to garner poorer reviews by dint of the fact that I'm a captive audience driving to and from work. So I'll pretty much listen to anything that's not a ridiculously inane DJ or an even more inane commercial, and especially if it sounds like a remotely interesting story. I know, all that gasoline! Let's make a deal: you guys buy my books, and I'll buy an electric car and kiss off my indentured service to Big Oil™. Now isn't that a worthy cause? In fact, if you buy enough books I can quit driving altogether and work at home into my ever encroaching antiquity! Isn't it worth it to get me off the streets? Think about it!! LOL!

I was pleasantly surprised, then, to discover that this one was actually to my liking - for the first twenty percent. The characters were fresh, funny, entertaining, and different from the usual YA high-school clichéd morons. Yes, so they failed Bechdel–Wallace, but only a bit and it was funny. The story turned around, but not in the way the author intended I'm sure, when there was an overnight school field trip. In the dark, and far from anywhere, the three traveling in this one van, and separated from their partner van, woke up to find they had run off the road and rolled over. They climbed out and ran from the van into the dark, ignoring the fact that their teacher was still trapped inside. A storm came up and they retreated into a nearby cave where they fell into a pothole and woke up in dumb-ass world.

The dumb-assery unfortunately, was not what the author intended. Instead, and from that from that point onward, the characters started behaving exactly like characters in every bad, trope-infested YA novel you ever read. Any relationship not only to intelligent behavior but even to realistic behavior was gone, and so was I! I said, "Check please! I'm outta here!" I'm done with the Kellermans two; next author please, right this way!

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Rating: WARTY!

This officially marks my flat refusal to read another thing written by Meg Cabot! I've read her Ready Or Not and found it a not ready. I read Haunted and found it more ghastly than ghostly, and I read Size 12 and Ready to Rock and found it ready to rot!

Perhaps this novel should have been titled "The Princess Diarrhea", since it both runs to more than ten volumes, and the main character, Mia, runs off at the mouth with an endless bitch and tedious moan about everything. What a nightmare she is. The novel is nothing like the movie, and bland as that is, the movie is far better. The movie has heart. All the novel has is spleen. The novel is as washed out as the Genovian flag, but it did make me want to watch the movie again.

The audio book is read by Anne Hathaway, who played the role of Mia in the movie. Her reading actually isn't too bad, but her voice tends towards mumble here and there. That's all I have to say about it, other than that I ditched it in short order, and I've now sworn off ever again reading anything by Meg Cabot!

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Rating: WARTY!

Is it just me that finds it hilarious that an author whose name is Dashner writes a novel about running? I saw the movie before I read the book and since the movie, despite its problems was watchable, I became curious as to whether the novel might offer more. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. In this case, it didn't. It was overly wordy and a bit tedious. Watch the movie instead. I think I'm about done with Dashner. I wasn't impressed by his Infinity Ring which I negatively reviewed back in December 2015.

I'm not a fan of series, and trilogies are the absolute worst form of series. Young adult trilogies are such tediously commonplace things these days that it's almost starting to seem like it cannot be any other way. Please, help me in fighting this horrific abuse of young children! Trilogies are not the only way. They're not even a "way". They're merely favored by Big Publishing™ because they can milk the same story for three sales instead of one. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the writing or the worth of the material. It has to do solely with making a fast buck and as writers, we do not have to buy into this - or sell out to it. That said, and with Amazon dedicatedly trying to drive novel prices into the dirt, I can't really blame a self-published author for trying to spin one novel out into three sales of ninety nine coins instead of only one, but that's not what I'm about.

Now down to more serious undertakings: the story itself. If you don't know what this is, you haven't been paying anywhere near enough attention to the world of YA "literature"! The most important and predictable thing about this plot is that, as usual for YA trilogies, it makes zero sense. The maze trial is supposed to be about toughening-up kids and selecting the most successful ones for the trial that lies ahead, but what trial?

In Scorch Trials there are no mechanical monsters out there rampaging and needing to be defeated. There's no dirt so there's no way growing crops as a skill has any value. There are people of both genders out there, but these boys never get to interact with any females, so they're socially disadvantaged. Outside, there are people with guns, but the boys are never given guns to practice with. There is no maze in the desert, yet the boys are expected to navigate one? There's no desert in the maze, so the boys never have any experience at surviving in extreme heat conditions. Nor does any of that heat impact upon the glade. How is it kept out? If the scientists have that kind of technology, and can develop automated and deadly mechanical creatures, what can the boys bring to the table that the scientists cannot?

The book does go into more detail than the movie, but barely. The story there is that the purpose of the Glade is to stress out children so their brains reveal information about how to fight the rampant disease, but this is purest bullshit, since there is no real stress in the Glade. It's rather an idyllic environment for adolescents in that there's no school or household chores as such. They do have to work, but other than that, they do pretty much whatever they want.

The only freal stressor is for those who run the maze - so again, why not deposit the kids inside the maze and dispense with the Glade? And what's the point of having the kids killed off? How does this advance their 'science"? Are their bodies reaped so the "creators" can do a post-mortem? They must get precious little data.

They'd be better off having the kids play video games and give them an electrical shock whenever they lose a life or something. That would be callous, but it would get them the data they the story claims they're seeking. Again, it makes no sense, and all this kind of story tells me is that the writer didn't think it through: it suggests that they got so excited about their crazy idea to put kids in peril that they never considered how illogical or unintelligent their story actually is. I mean look at it: they claim they have rules to make life fair and just, and that they're not allowed to harm each other, yet they brutalize every new kid with demeaning names and by withholding information. The kids are, in their own way, just as callous as the "creators"!

In some ways, Caighlin Smith offered more in her Children of Icarus, but ultimately she made the same mistakes as Dashner did, by ignoring the maze and focusing on ridiculous high-school mentality antics. At least she didn't make up asinine words in a farcical attempt to avoid using bad language. I ditched this novel DNF and I cannot recommend it.

Children of Icarus by Caighlan Smith

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb tells us that "Caighlan Smith loved to build and navigate pillowmazes (sic)" and an "adoration of Greek mythology soon followed." In case you wondered, it's pronounced like Kaylan, but one immediate problem I had with this novel wasn't with the pronunciation of the author's name; it was with the disconnect between the blurb and the novel.

I don't hold the author responsible, since authors have little or nothing to do with blurbs and book covers unless they self-publish, which is why I don't usually have a thing to say about book covers - my blog is about writing, not about pretension and posing. It's also a given that blurbs are overly dramatic and misleading, but I found Greek mythology to be conspicuous by its absence in this novel while the lack of any real feel for Greece and the Greek language ran rife. This was only the first of myriad (<- Greek roots word!) problems.

One issue was with the author's complete lack of attention to the language (English or Greek). She had an archer "notch" an arrow when she should have said, "nock", and she referred to a notch as a nook! She had a climber scrambling for a perch when it would have made more sense to have him scrambling for purchase. These might seem like relatively minor issues, but they're important because the more we abuse the language the less we can use it. George Orwell exploited this to great effect in 1984. I'm sorry more people haven't learned from this, but I do expect fellow writers to have considerably more respect for the major tool of their trade, and for their craft, than this.

Yes, the author gave a nod and a knowing wink to the mythology, but it really wasn't there, and for me the novel suffered for that. I've visited Greece more than once and I really like the country, notwithstanding the recent political and economic troubles as exemplified in a scene from the new Jason Bourne movie. Greece has a deep history and none of that was in evidence here. The novel was a contemporary one, and it read like it was set in the USA, not in Greece. Characters were named Clara, Ryan, and Tanner, not Chloe, Rihardos, and Theseus, although to be fair, there was a Theo and a Cassie.

Therein lay a potential problem, because Theo was the good guy and Ryan the bad boy, and it looked like there was a tedious YA triangle forming there with the mc. This is such a tired cliché that it's almost like a Greek tragedy, but with nowhere near the pedigree when it's included in a YA novel! I can't be sure that this was where it was headed, but it certainly had the hallmarks.

The novel was rooted, loosely, in the myth of Daedalus and his Labyrinth, yet throughout we got not Greek, but Latinized names. Ikaros became Icarus, and his followers the Romanized Icarii. Animals and plants were given not Greek names, but ones worthy of Carl von Linné, so the Greek mythology angle felt like a fraudulent veneer.

In the myth, Daedalus built the labyrinth as a prison for the half-breed son of a king, but Daedalus and his son Ikaros were imprisoned in it. Their plan to escape using feather-encrusted wings came to a sticky end when Ikaros got waxed, flying too close to the sun. In this updated version, youngsters aren't sacrificed to the Minotaur, but are sent into the labyrinth as chosen ones of "Icarus", and they expect to become angels and live forever. In truth they're still sacrifices, and are set upon by fantastical beasts as soon as the labyrinth door is closed behind them. Only a few survive, and they're adopted by other survivors, who have formed a clandestine society hidden deep in the labyrinth where they hope they're safe from the beasts, but hard-won resources are slim and a crisis is approaching.

Thus far we have a form of The Maze Runner, and it was different enough to be a good start, but though the beasts are rooted in mythology, they're not readily recognizable as such here. I got the feeling that authentic (<- Greek roots word!) Greek mythological creatures were not good enough for this story, so they had to be amped-up a bit. Perhaps this is why the story quickly abandons both the beasts and the labyrinth in favor of high-school drama and bullying in the survivors hideout? In short, this story becomes less of a clone of The Maze Runner and more of a clone of Divergent and the utterly dumb-ass "Dauntless" faction, which I took delight in parodying in my Dire Virgins novel.

This story is nowhere near as awful as the Divergent trilogy, rest assured, but it was highly reminiscent of it in its brutality and its brain-dead 'survival of the toughest' mentality. That motif has been done to a sorry, but welcome death, and so this novel dropped considerably in my esteem because of its addiction to something which is ancient creak. The novel is also the start of a trilogy, which means this volume is nothing more than a prologue. I have no time for prologues or the "it has to be a trilogy so we can milk it for all it's worth" mentality so rife in the YA publishing industry. I think the problem was that, knowing there was a trilogy coming, there was no incentive at all for the author to make this volume be all it could be.

Some parts were engaging and interesting. Indeed, it was better in some ways, than The Maze Runner (watch that get quoted as "better—than The Maze Runner"! LOL!), but by the time I reached about half-way through, it was clear that the first of the three most severe problems with the story was the main character, and it wasn't with the fact that she is never named. My problem was with the fact the Girl with No Name (GwNM) was consistently weak, ineffective, weepy, and soft throughout the entire first half of the novel.

Maybe she changes later, but if she does, it has to be through magic and not through growth, because that wasn't happening, not even in embryonic (<- Greek roots word!) form, and in this case it was direly needed. Any possible change came far too late for me, especially given that there was no hint of it when I quit reading. Even if she does grow a pair of bulls later, it would have been thoroughly unrealistic to me, given what preceded it or or more accurately, what failed to precede it.

While I'm not a reader who demands that characters necessarily grow and change (I think there are very interesting stories to be had about people who don't change), I am a reader who demands that something happen during the course of a story, or all we have is dehydrating paint. It also helps if the arthritis (<- Greek roots word!) meds kick in before the half-way point, but here, the plot was stagnant when it wasn't staggering. Perhaps in remembrance of the slaughtered maze runners after the beast attack, nothing was moving. The novel, like a corpse set in amber, and not even a pretty shade of amber, simply lay there.

Not only did the story not go anywhere, neither did GwNM, and this was a story where she needed to show some growth if she was ever to become a heroic figure. Hell, even Triscuit™ in Divergent showed some change, but there was no such thing in evidence here, and the victimization of this girl in the form of a near-rape, and later a beating with no justice to be had for either was nauseating as was GwNN's total lack of a measurable response to it.

It made no sense, because she started out all weepy as a survivor of a slaughter, even after she knew she was safe, but now she's brutally attacked - twice, by two different guys - and she shows no response at all: not anger, not upset, not reticence, not fear, not the trembles, not catatonia, not anything? It. Just. Doesn't. Happen. Like. That! And especially not with a young person like the one GwNN has proven herself to be to her core by this point.

If I'd had some sort of a feeling, in fifty percent of the book, that she was on a slow burn, building up to something, that might have lured me into sticking around, but she is such a vapid wallflower that I not only lost all interest in her, I began to despise her as much as Ryan purportedly did (though I never did buy into that sleight of hand!).

The fact that she told a ridiculous and insupportable lie which led to the second attack was another example of her spinelessness, and while it doesn't justify the unwarranted assault by any means, neither does it afford us any sort of explanation as to why she did it or why the consequences of it were so dire. It's simply presented as the way things are done around here, with no foundation in any world that's been built here. I'm sorry, but I'm really tired of female authors rendering female characters into professional victims and making a trilogy out of their suffering.

The girl I wanted to read about was the one who went out with the scavengers, and therein lies another problem. Why was this novel so genderist - in that very nearly all the guys were the hunters and very nearly all the girls were the home-makers? There was only one exception to this that I was made aware of, and she had to be given a masculine name: Andrea! If you understand anything about Greek, then you know that's the feminine form of Andreas, which means manly! Seriously? The only girl who gets to hunt is manly? Not acceptable.

The third big problem was that the story made no sense. Exhibit one: I'd like to present the courtyard with a labyrinth! A labyrinth which had no roof. The people in it could have climbed the walls (and in at least one instance they did), and scouted their routes, but they never seemed to have thought of that. Instead, they were reduced to blundering through the maze and tediously mapping it corridor by corridor! Zeus, these people were dumb! But then they showed no real interest in looking for a way out which was in itself as foul as it was fowl.

While many beasts lived down in the maze, some were capable of flight, and all of the ground-based critters were large and dangerous. How those things survived when being fed only once a year is not so much glossed-over as completely ignored. The really ridiculous part though, is that not a single one of these animals, not even the airborne ones, ever found its way out to stalk the ample food supply in the nearby city whence all their food ultimately comes it would seem! There was no explanation offered for why these critters voluntarily confined themselves to the maze, and no one ever voiced any curiosity about it!

For me, this was just one more example of a story which was poorly thought-out, and where the world-building was as crumbling as the maze in which it was set. That it's the first volume of a trilogy is no excuse to stint on creating a rich novel, but far too many trilogy writers do this with a disturbing consistency. They need to try writing some stand-alone volumes, to learn the craft of creating tight, self-contained fiction, instead of padding out a single volume to make a lucrative trilogy.

I wish the author all the best with her YA trilogy career, but I cannot in good faith recommend a story as thin, weak, and derivative as this one is.

The Woman In the Mirror by Cathryn Grant

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this was an advance review copy from Net Galley, for which I thank the publisher.

I'm not sure I agree with the blurb's premise that "Everyone knows someone who deserves to die." I personally don't, although I would argue that there are asses which need kicking from time to time! I won't hold it against the author, because unless they self-publish, authors have little to do with the blurb or the cover. That's why on my blog I talk very little about covers, and I don't even show them any more in the reviews. It's the plot and the story-telling that's the only important part of a book. Covers are window-dressing at best, and honestly irrelevant unless you're not really a serious reader.

While vigilante "justice" is clearly wrong-headed in reality, it does make for some interesting stories, which is why the last sentence of the blurb intrigued me: "Alexandra Mallory isn't like other women - she gets rid of people who make the world a dangerous place." I was far less curious to know exactly how she dealt with her dangerous people than in how she determined who they were and which ones deserved dispatching. The problem I had was that this novel seemed far more interested in diverting into endless, tedious flashbacks and info-dumping histories than ever it was in propelling the story forward. It lost my interest short-order, and I gave up on this without finishing it, so keep that in mind with regard to this review.

That wasn't the only problem. I shall lightly step-over the fact that this title (girl/woman in mirror) is way over-used, and move on to the voice I most detest in story-telling: first person. Countless authors seem obsessively-compulsively addicted to it even when it harms their story. One of the many major problems with 1PoV is that it severely limits the ability to tell a good story, and this author admits this after the very first chapter by abruptly vaulting from first to third, which would be impressive were this a baseball game; not so much in literature, though. The story bounces back and forth between perspectives, but the second chapter is from the guy's perspective, and for some reason the author deems him unworthy of 1PoV! He merits only third place. Why, I don't know, but it seemed genderist at best. I mention that particular aspect because the guy has a decidedly warped perspective on the worth and valuation of women, and telling it in third person made it even worse than if it had been delivered in first.

His first take on Alexandra, the protagonist, is all about her "beauty" and physical qualities. Clearly if you've just encountered someone, the only knowledge you have of them is how they appear, but Jared's super power is quite evidently sex-ray vision: he can see only skin deep and immediately objectifies Alex without a second thought. I find it obnoxious that so many authors, especially female ones, are so addicted to this approach to describing their female characters. I mean, you can say a guy found a woman attractive without belaboring physical attributes to excess, and risking making other women feel like crap if they don't measure-up, just as you can describe a male character without making guys feel inadequate. Frankly, I wanted to ditch this novel right there, and never pick it up again, it was so shallow, but this was at about 2% in, and I felt compelled, against my better judgment, to press on at least a little further. It wasn't a charmed plan, as I discovered when it became bogged-down in flashbacks.

Alex is thrown together with professional liar Noreen, and "studly" Jared (see? That's how it's done! LOL!), all three living under one roof when Noreen sublets her rather precarious cliff-top house to them. It seemed pretty obvious where this was going, and it was all downhill from the top of the cliff. This was the beginning of yet another series, and I am rarely a fan of series. They tend to be repetitive, lazy, derivative, and unimaginative. I can't get on board with this one, which was far too wordy for my taste when the words conveyed so little and did nothing to move the story along. I wish the author all the best with her series, but I cannot recommend this based on what I read of it, which was more than I honestly wanted to.

Flood: Race Against Time by Aaron Rosenberg

Rating: WARTY!

This was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is the second 'STEM' novel I've reviewed, but unlike the first one, in this case I have to confess I'm very disappointed in it. It purports to be science-based, but in the end it's really sci-fi and I think this does the STEM objective a grave disservice by removing it from reality. Science is fantastic and engaging enough without seeking to 'amp it up' with unrealistic situations and exaggerated fiction.

This chapter book, augmented with a few images, features five kids who have transferred to a new school named after Einstein - as though he's the only scientist worth remembering. It couldn't have been named after a woman? But why would it be in a novel where genderism runs rampant? At one point I read, "or they’re manmade [sic]" Man-made? Why not simply say "manufactured"? Of course, that still contains 'man', but the root of that word is in reference to the hand, not to the gender.

This wasn't the only instance. At one point, I read, "Her dad commented from the head of the table." Dad gets to sit at the head of the table? Was this set in Victorian times? Even if he does, why stress it? Why not simply have him comment without specifying that he sits in the privileged position? At another point I read, "Anthropology is the study of man" No, it's the story of humans, male and female, boy and girl, and everyone in between.

Genderism wasn't the only problem. An improbably intelligent chimpanzee character which could have been ditched without loss was repeatedly referred to as a monkey, and this in a book purportedly aimed at improving science education? It's inexcusable. Also as inexplicable as it was inexcusable was the military teaching assistant. He was a disciplinary moron, had no place in a classroom and sure as hell didn't represent any military I'm familiar with.

Improbability was running high here, though. The children have their parents sign a blanket release form for field trips, then the teacher takes them on an experimental automated school bus - which has no driver? They almost get into an accident, but it's brushed-off as a science lesson! Even a capitalist corporation (or is it a person?) like Google doesn't let its robot vehicles out on the streets with no driver! And for good reason: we're a very long way from automated driving.

As if this wasn't bad enough, the children are taken to a field camp studying flooding, where there are unstable fissures in the ground, and the teacher leads the kids past police barriers warning that it's unsafe. Parents were given no information about the field trip, or about the use of the automated bus! This was not only a poor lesson in safety, it was ridiculous in the extreme. No wonder the author wasn't credited in the copyright (which was to the publisher, not to the author!). I wouldn't want to be credited for this kind of a book!

The point of the trip to the flood site wasn't made (unless it popped up after I quit reading). There seemed to be no point for the kids to be there other than putting them in danger, and indeed no point for the scientists and engineers to be there since there was literally nothing they could do, and no reason for them to be so close to danger, especially since they had by that time failed to take any action before the flood which might have prevented or ameliorated it, yet this tardiness in action was never raised as part of the problem!

There were other such issues, one of which included at least one poor definition, such as specifying that NASA is "the United States government agency responsible for space travel" - yes, it is, inter alia. It's not all that NASA does, hence the 'aeronautics' portion of the name. The definitions themselves were odd, in that they were (I assume) intended as footnotes, and were visible in the really crappy presentation in the Kindle app, but absent from the excellent presentation and formatting in Bluefire reader on the iPad. In the Kindle they were randomly mixed in with the text, rather than at the foot of the screen. I know this was an ARC, but this is really inexcusable in this day and age.

Be warned that the Kindle app is pretty much guaranteed to scramble anything containing images or special formatting like drop-caps, for example. In this case it scrambled that, the images, and the paragraph formatting so that some lines ended in the middle of the screen before continuing on the next line down. Even the Bluefire version, which is normally first class, suffered in that several sections were missing text. I only knew this because of the abrupt starting of sentences which did not follow from the previous sentence, and because the Kindle app had the missing text. This seemed to begin around page seventy. There was a section missing on p71, starting after "much fun and delicious?" And ending right before "103 and then headed down to the lab." Another instance was on p107 running from "engineer with the city" to "seep through". There were other such cases, but I gave up reading this novel at around eighty percent in because it was too stupid to live. I actively dis-recommend this as a STEM fiction book.

The Girl from the Sea by Shalini Boland

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
"Prising my fingers off the edge of the boat" should be "prying"!

This was an advance review copy from Net Galley for which I thank the publisher.

Mia comes to consciousness lying literally in the littoral on the south coast of England, cold, wet with saltwater, and with a woman and a dog peering at her. Soon there are police and an ambulance, and Mia is in hospital. She remembers nothing about herself, not even her name. She doesn't recognize herself in the mirror, nor does she recognize her boyfriend when he comes to pick her up. Later she doesn't recognize her mother or younger sister. She remembers other things, such as how to row (she was passionate about rowing on the river by her house), and she remembers how to drive, how to use a computer, and so on, but anything personal has gone.

It's counter intuitive, I know, but the author gets it right. You'd think you would recall things which were very personal to you or which were lifelong - such as your family and your name - but retrograde amnesia really can do this to a person. Retrograde refers to memory loss of things past - memories which are there, but which you cannot access. Anterograde, in my view the worst kind, refers to new memories - you can't move new memories into long-term memory and so each day begins anew for you, with precisely the same memories you had the day before - rather like Drew Barrymore's character in the movie 50 First Dates

My problem with this novel wasn't with the medical aspects of it, but with the fact that to me, this was another case of a female author doing serious disservice to her main female character. I don't mind stories where the main character starts out weak, and/or stupid, and grows stronger and smarter. Unlike many reviewers I don't even mind stories where the main character doesn't change or grow. There is story-telling to be had there.

What I don't like at all is a story where the main character becomes weaker or more stupid as the story goes on, and this story was one of those. I don't like stories where the character isn't true to herself, and so acts out of character for no reason. This story was one of those. I like even less stories where the main character is female and becomes totally dependent upon a man to validate and save her. I can't understand why so many female writers do this to their characters. What this meant was that while this story started out as an intriguing mystery - what had happened to this woman - it quickly deteriorated into a bog-standard harlequin romance, in which I have zero interest. The only thing missing was the bare-chested man on the cover.

The story quickly deteriorated into a romance, leaving the mystery in the back seat, and Mia began behaving more and more stupidly, and it was out of character. She was supposed to have been a teacher not long before, which is an admirable thing to make your character, but nowhere did we see her teaching skills come to the fore, which begged the question, why make her a teacher if you're not going to use it? She could have been a wait-person, or middle management, or a car mechanic and the story would have remained exactly the same.

The second problem was Mia's stupidity. Her memory wasn't the only thing she lost. She also lost her wallet and her house keys, but despite being in some fear,she never once (not in the 80% of this I read) considered cancelling her credit cards and changing the locks on her house. Stupid. yes, she was undergoing something horrible, but she had every motive to act and she failed. Worse, the police failed to advise her to do this.

Obviously what she went through was horrible - and hard to imagine (which I suspect is part of the problem with the writing here). I mean it's easy to say now what I would do in those circumstances, but if I lost my memory, how would I recall what I'd decided I would do?! LOL! That said, Mia could have been presented in a lot better light than a wheedling, tearful and tediously weak character who has impulsive sex a fails to consider whether she might become pregnant from it.

Worse than that, she acts stupidly on many occasions, way beyond what you might expect from someone who had been through what she went through. She acts with the impulsiveness of a child, without forethought, despite living in a certain amount of fear which is very understandable and which you'd think would compel her to act more cautiously and sensibly. She proves herself to be consistently weak and easily-manipulated even as she's purportedly asserting her independence and self control. Clearly what we're shown is at odds with what we're told.

As soon as Mia appears to be growing out of this dreary inertial lethargy, she immediately submerges herself back into it at the mercy of Jack - a complete stranger - someone she barely knew when she had her memories and now literally doesn't know at all. Despite being screwed-over by her boyfriend and by her family, she inexplicably and inexcusably trusts Jack. What this means to the reader is that just as Mia is beginning to find herself, she completely loses herself again! The blurb for this novel asks, "When you don't even know who you are, how do you know who to trust?" yet Mia seems to have no problem falling all over Jack, and he comes to tiresomely dominate her thoughts pretty much to the exclusion of her real troubles.

I detest the name Jack as a character in novels because it's WAY-THE HELL over used as your heroic bad-boy type, and its time authors started to use their imagination and come up with a new name instead of jack-ing off every time. I flatly refuse to read any novel where the main character is named Jack and I'm moving speedily towards avoiding novels which have any character named Jack unless it's a very minor one.

Despite having some seriously harrowing episodes, Mia fails to visit the amiable doctor who saw her in the hospital. She fails to report things to the police until she's pretty much forced to. She fails to see what a complete dick her boyfriend Piers is, until he forces her to see it. When she reviews her financial records, Mia discovers she's fabulously wealthy, yet never once do we see any indication that she gave anything to charity, not even simply for tax purposes. Instead she's evidently squandered the money on clothes. This tells me only how disgustingly shallow and selfish she is, which actually explains a lot about her behavior after her accident. The truth is that Mia never left the sea. She's still metaphorically being buffeted around, just as she was before she beached! It's sad.

In short I came to really dislike and then quickly to detest Mia, and I lost all empathy with, and sympathy for her as her behavior continued to descend into the moronic. I gave up on this at about eighty percent in because I couldn't stand to read any more of this woman careering down the track towards a train wreck. I wish the author all the best with her writing career, but based on this, I cannot in good faith say it's one I want to follow.

Who is AC? by Hope Larson, Tintin Pantoja

Rating: WORTHY!

Normally I avoid like the plague any novel which has been praised by Kirkus for no other reason than that Kirkus pretty much never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are completely worthless and I don't trust 'em! I also liked this novel despite the fact that the author is an I sneer (or is that Eisner?) award winner. Another group of novels I avoid are those which have won awards and especially those which have won Newberys, so I was good there because this one hasn't won such an award - or if it has, I'm unaware of it at this time! Fortunately, this enabled me to read this and I did not regret it.

We know who AC is before she does! AC is a kick-ass, young black female who somehow has super powers transferred to her via her phone while flying to her new home - but the charming thing about her is that she was kick-ass before she ever got her powers. Disgusting and inappropriate as this is given our age difference, I fell in love with Rhea (huge spoiler, that's her real name!!) pretty much from flicking through a few of the pages in the library, and I fell hopelessly in love when I finally got home and read it.

Rhea has a slightly unstable life, but she knows what she wants. She writes fiction and sells it through her friend who owns a small local bookstore. She copies these at a copy shop and binds and pays for them with her own hard-saved cash. Unfortunately, one night she leaves something behind and when she returns to get it, she discovers that the shop is being held up! She plucks up the courage to act, and finds herself transformed into a super hero who would give Hit Girl a run for her money. But this action creates its own problems which AC aka Rhea has to face.

I loved the illustration by Tintin Pantoja, and the writing by Hope Larson was tight and funny, and realistic. I definitely want to read more about this character, and I recommend this as a worthy read.

The Wishing World by Todd Fahnestock

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy from Net Galley, for which I thank the publisher.

This is an amazingly good middle-grade fantasy novel about eleven-year-old Lorelei (or is she really Loremaster?), a young girl who lost her brother and parents, all of whom she loved very much - yes, even her brother - and not only did no one believe her story of what happened, no one was able to find her family. She was considered delusional for merely telling the truth about what happened, and was referred to a rather sinister psychiatrist.

This explains why, as we begin the story, she's climbing up onto the roof of her old home to try to get inside to find the 'comet stone' which she believes will deliver answers. Instead, she discovers that she's somehow called a griffon out of the peculiar world of Veloran, and he refers to her as Doolivanti. Before long, she's inside the fantasy land, and searching for a princess who can help her defeat the Ink King and return her family to her!

I loved how fast those story moved. It was perfect in that regard, but it wasn't all plain sailing. Pip, the toucan was annoying because he insisted upon duplicating every sentence he spoke! Other than that I had no problem with, and took every joy in the writing until the princess showed up. The attempt to make her speak in a pseudo medieval language didn't work. Maybe middle-graders won't notice or be bothered by this, but it felt fake to me, especially when she said "Prithee, to whence have I come?"!

Whence is a 'from' word, and it incorporates 'from', so you can't use it with 'to'. It's used in the form: "Whence this bounty?" if you should happen across an unexpected pile of gold for example, or a table laden with food. "Whence do you hail?" might be used to ask where someone came from. It's one of those antique words like 'wherefore', which doesn't mean 'where'. It means 'why?' When Juliet says, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", she's asking why is he a Montague - the family so at odds with her own Capulet family? If he went by any other name, they would not be enemies. But what's in a name? As I said, the rest of the novel was so good that these things became minor considerations.

Kindle isn't known for being a solid app, and often Amazon's process for converting a novel to Kindle format merely mangles it instead. This one wasn't awful, but the Kindle formatting resulted in random lines being truncated half way across the screen, only to resume on the next line down. Also, and quite frequently, the Kindle version took the last line of a page and encased it in a number one at the beginning and a zero at the end, like this:--1 King in the dark. -0. I think perhaps the Kindle conversion process got confused with what was a page number and what was the last line on the page. Hopefully that will be resolved when the final release is published. On my iPad, in Bluefire Reader, the book looked perfect.

Kindle also loves to mangle images, and it did so with gay abandon in this case. The images are at the start of each chapter, and in the Adobe Digital Editions reader on my desktop, the entire book was formatted perfectly. On my phone though, Amazon sliced and diced, and even Julienned the images. I've seen this in many ebooks, and it was the reason I abandoned all hope of migrating images and special text formatting from my book Poem y Granite. I stripped all of the images out and formatted all of the text with the same font for the Kindle version.

One thing I found my imagination running away with in this novel was how Christmas carols seemed to be woven into the story. I'm reasonably sure the author never planned it that way and this is just my over-active imagination at work, but this is the kind of story, like Neale Osbourne's Lydia's Enchanted Toffee which I praised back in November 2015, that stimulates imagination and is the major reason why I'm rating this one a worthy read.

Humans (and many animals, are predisposed to see patterns in things. It's what keeps us alive if we're paying attention, and is part of what law enforcement and the military call "situational awareness." The downside is that it's the kind of thing which also fuels conspiracy theories and inane beliefs in UFOs, the Loch Ness "monster" and sasquatch. On the other side of that coincidence, if people didn't hold such beliefs, I'd never have been able to get away with Saurus, so I can't complain!

But I digress. I was impressed by the mysterious Silent Knight in this novel, and this got me on the Christmas carol track. Silent Knight? So, were the three characters Lorelei first meets, the three ships that came sailing in, or the three kings of orient (it's always three, isn't it?!). When I started thinking of Lorelei and Ripple, the aqueous-addicted princess of the antique language, as the Holly and the Ivy, I realized my imagination was indeed running away! You can warp anything to fit your "conspiracy" if you're willing to shed rationale and logic and let your imagination run riot!

So, before I let my imagination run away any more, let me say that I loved this novel, despite a minor issue here and there, and I recommend it highly. It's fun, it's fast-paced, it's inventive, it's amusing, and it's well worth reading even if you're not middle-grade! I look forward to Todd Fahnestock's next work with warm anticipation!