The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

Rating: WARTY!

I don't normally review covers, because they have zero to do with the author (unless they self-publish), and my blog is all about writing, not pretty wrapping and pretension. The problem with this cover though, was glaring. There is a white woman on the front (actually, half a woman) and a half a white man on the back, yet the indication from the text, in the case of the "aliens" is completely unambiguous: they're brown. It was less obvious with the woman, whose only description (in the portion of this I could stand to read) was that she had brown eyes, but given the author, I took a leap here and guessed that the woman was also brown, yet the cover depicts her as white.

A review I read (the only one I saw which actually mentioned skin color) indicated that the text later confirms that she isn't white, so this is yet another in a huge and depressing list of books where the cover artist didn't even bother to read the novel. How pathetic is this? This is why I refuse to run with Big Publishing™. They're so profligate, and if that means I never have a publishing career, then so be it. It's a price I'm perfectly prepared to pay. This cover is racist, period. In some ways I wanted to ditch the novel right there, but then again, as I said, the author has nothing to do with the cover.

This author's debut novel won some literary award or other and that should have warned me off this book, but I didn't know that until I already had it home from the library! The blurb had made it sound like it might be interesting, which means only that the blurb did the job it was supposed to do, and lured me in. Congratulations to the blurb writer. You fooled me again. You should have won the award!

The problem is that this kind of writing is a bit suspect for something so prestigious as a literary award in my amateur opinion.
It's a sci-fi novel about a threatened culture, and it's told (unfortunately in first person, the weakest voice in all of literature) by character Grace Delarua, who is a liaison with a guy from the culture that's at risk of becoming extinct. The author admits how weak her voice is when she finds herself forced into third person at one or more points elsewhere in the story beyond the twenty-five percent that I read. For goodness sake find the courage to admit to how pretentious and useless first person is, and have the good sense to write in third person! Enough with this I² crap!

I could not tell from the writing if these threatened people were actual aliens, as in space aliens, or merely a distant branch of the human tree; that's how bad the writing was, and for someone who seems to have the aim of integration, the author sure spends a heck of a lot of time talking about how divided everyone is. The blurb describes them as aliens and if that's the case, then the 'romance" is doomed from the off because there's no way in hell they could even reproduce - which is Grace's purpose, as she's frequently reminded. This author may garner literary awards but she'd never earn a common-sense science award; however, to be fair, she's not alone among sci-fi writers in that regard. On the other hand if the term 'alien' is being used merely to mean estranged humans, then reproduction is a possibility.

The next problem was that this novel was really a romance novel with a gossamer-thin veneer of sci-fi sprayed on it. It's not really a sci-fi novel at all. Exactly same tale could have been told of two travelers in the American West right around the time that the natives were starting to become forcibly extinct. Even were we to grant that it might conceivably be allowed under the wire as a sci-fi story, the sci-fi is of such generic trope quality that it really doesn't count. There's nothing new or inventive here.

Where, exactly, did this cliché of calling people from Earth "Terrans" arise? It's never used in our language today so where would it evolve from? I know it ultimately comes from Latin, but no one uses it except in the form of terra firma, so I don't get the rationale for its appearance in so many sci-fi novels. It's like everyone blindly signed on for it without a second thought. I think I'd rather read about Earthlings than Terrans which sounds like some species of aquatic reptile! 'Earthlings' is of course as awful as it is antiquated. I don't know who conjured that one up, either. Earthites isn't any better, although perhaps technically more accurate, and Earthens sounds like some sort of pottery. I don't get why sci-fi writers don't simply use the word Human to describe people from Earth. It's not exactly rocket science.

A second trope is absurd spellings and pronunciation for alien names. This problem also extends into fantasy stories. Unless the aliens use the same alphabet we English speakers do, then what's with the spelling of the alien's name: Dllenahkh? We're told it has a Zulu 'dl' to start with and a throaty, hacking 'ch' at the end, but since I don't speak Zulu, I have no idea what a Zulu 'dl' sounds like! Maybe 'tl'? If that's the case, then spell the fricking name starting with a 'Tl'! Seriously. Could we not simply have a phonetic spelling with a bit of plain English tosse din to help with the sound?

The trope aliens are called Sadiri, but they're really Vulcans from Star Trek under a different name, so this was simply sad. The tyranny of trope and cliché continues, but not here. I cannot recommend this novel based on what I read of it. It was boring, plainly and simply. Which means it's probably due for a literary award of some sort.

Go To Sleep Mom by Mary Eakin

Rating: WARTY!

I don't negatively review many children's books because I tend to pick them carefully than others, and I use a little more, shall I say, relaxed criteria for them than I do more mature reading material, for an assortment of reasons. In this case I can't recommend this because it just didn't seem to get the job done.

The premise here is that the kid is put to bed, but gets up and discovers a list of chores his mom has to do before she goes to bed. he decides to "help." The first oddity is that he's woken by his mom running the vacuum cleaner around, which seems like an odd thing to do when you've just put your young kid to bed. Seriously? No! You run that in the morning to help wake them up for school or daycare or whatever! Or you get a Roomba to do it while you're out.

So the kid reads the list of chores: Vacuum, pack lunches, wash dishes, do laundry, bathe babies, wash dog. The list seemed a bit much. Who does lunches the night before? Who washes the dog and does laundry on a weeknight? I get that the idea here is to convey to kids a list of things mom does, and to educate children, but this list seemed more contrived to educate us to see how dumb mom is than anything else. She doesn't make a fresh lunch in the morning? She doesn't put a load of laundry in before she starts vacuuming so she's multi-tasking? She doesn't do another load before she bathes the babies, and another before she bathes the dog? These things have to be done sequentially all on one night? Every night?! Mom is so forgetful that she needs a list with check-boxes? It didn't seem realistic and it sure didn't seem intelligent.

I know kids are far less picky about things than I am, but kids are typically a lot sharper than too many people are willing to credit them, and I'm sure some will see this list as bizarre. Besides, the point here is to educate kids about all the things that mom (and dad - who I note is highly conspicuous by his absence here) does, and it seems to me there are much better ways to do it than the one this book explores.

The kid isn't represented as being too sharp either, because he's assuming that mom has never done any parental chores before this night, and that she can't handle her "mom job." That's neither smart nor kind. And he simply makes her job ten times harder. The artwork is pretty decent, but there's more to a good children's book than pretty pictures - or at least there should be. For me there ought to be a strong educational component, and I was sorry to see what was potentially a good idea go waste via poor execution. I wish the author all the best with her young children's books, but I cannot in good faith recommend this one. But at least I can check it off my reading list!

Girl Band: A Lesbian Adventure by Rory Hitch

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb reads: "Meet cute Holly, curvy Penny, passionate Roxy, cool Anna and teen Jade. Five beautiful girls, making music and making love. When young lovers Holly and Penny decide to form a band it's the beginning of a lesbian adventure full of fun flirtation, sexy seductions and erotic encounters!" Wrong! There is no love, no eroticism, no flirtation, and no seduction here. And certainly no safe sex! Not in the part I read, but note that this is a short (which I could not finish, it was so bad) introduction to a full-length novel. Maybe it gets better, but I can't believe it ever will. It does give a classic expository example of why I never read introductions...forewords...author's notes...prefaces...et al.

This is the second of two "lesbian" stories I read recently. They were both awful and for the same reason: they read like they were written by an inept male author, and the sad thing is that only one of them actually was. It's all juvenile, crude sex here. Eroticism plays no part, and neither does seduction, love or romance. Neither does music for that matter, not based on what I read. You'll be better off reading my novel about a girl band, which I was hoping to have out this year, but since there are two novels lined up before that, only one of which I'm near to completing at this point, I think a more realistic estimate is around Valentine's day next year! This one here though, I cannot recommend based on what I read. It just doesn't get it done.

One Night In Venice by Bella Donnis

Rating: WARTY!

This begins a pair of (very negative) reviews of short, appallingly badly-written "lesbian" stories!

I was having a little bit of trouble deciding on a good ebook to get into, which is sad, given how many are available to me! In fact, it's downright pathetic. We're spoiled rotten these days with the riptide of ebooks out there. But the plenitude is also the penury given how sorry some of these books are. Yet despite the rising tide of ebooks promising a bounty to anyone who casts a wide enough net, I still managed to haul in two really awful (or is that offal?) ones. This was the first.

This one, fortunately given how things turned out, was free on Amazon (and available on B&N which is where I got it - I always check alternates before I buy from Amazon). So I opened it to find it was only twenty eight pages! This was actually its best feature, but truth be told, I couldn't even finish that much, it was so bad! It felt more like it was one of those book teasers, which isn't a bad idea and which is eminently suited to ebooks. You know, one of those shorties that lures you in and persuades you to buy the full length version? I don't do that, but you can't blame an author for that when competition is so tough. This though, it turns out, is the whole thing - not an intro, but the entire "novel" (as far as I could tell).

It's about this woman whose boyfriend dumps her via a text message when she's in Venice, waiting for him to come out to join her. It was this idea - that she finds herself cruelly ditched and somehow falls into a relationship with a woman - which intrigued me and persuaded me to take a look. The trip was supposed to be a foursome; now it's a three's-a-crowd situation. She only became acquainted with this couple through her AWOL ex, so the other woman is someone she hardly knows, but she's kind to her, even though the guy - a friend of her ex - is ham-fistedly cruel.

The problem is that the writing is so clunky and the interpersonal dynamics so lacking in credibility that I quickly became convinced that I would not even be able to make it through twenty-eight pages of this. I was right! I quit on page twenty because it was awful. 'Subtle' and 'leisurely' are two words which have quite obviously been struck from this author's lexicon (always assuming they were ever present in the first place).

The unsuspecting reader is smashed brutally and repeatedly over the head with a hyper-sexed woman who seems to harbor absolutely zero grief for the demise of her relationship, and who is ogling the other girl like a dog in heat. I'm surprised there wasn't a description of her tongue lolling out dripping saliva. She's all-but humping her friend's leg. If a guy behaved like this it would be sen as entirely inappropriate and the guy would be rightfully termed a dick. So what does that make this woman? A clit? Somehow that doesn't seem to carry the same deprecative weight. Why is that? Because guys can be dicks but women can't be clits?! If that's not sexist, what is?!

Abandon hope (and seek hops!) all ye who enter here looking for romance! There is none to be found in these pages. Yes, we're seeing the friend be kind to the main character, but what she gets in return is pure, adulterated lust. It's all about how beautiful she is, how hot she is, how perfect her "tits" are, how sexy she is, how great her hair is. There's not a single solitary word about what's beneath that depth of skin. We really hear nothing of the kind of friend she is or might be, about whether she's reliable or trustworthy, or whether she has integrity, and would make a decent companion. Nope, it's all sex and only sex, which is nowhere near enough for me to want to read a novel, or even a short story such as this.

The blurb says, "Warning: This lesbian erotic romance story contains extreme graphic and sexual content, specifically lesbian sex and should not be read by those under the age of 18." Seriously? Lesbian sex is extreme? LOL! Like no young adult has ever has such thoughts - and even activities?! Besides, if it's aimed at adults, then why is it written at the level of young adult or even middle-grade in parts? And I take exception to the word "erotic"! There's no eroticism here; it's all crude, juvenile sexcapades and that's all there is. If that's your cup of tea, then by all means quaff deeply, but with lines like "I scrutinised her firm buttocks," it sure as hell ain't mine.

The real problem with this when you get right down to it, is that it's not a novel. It most closely resembles an old telegram, because everything is telegraphed. Everything is so glaringly obvious. There is no subtlety here. Obvious, that is, to everyone but the main character, who is so profoundly stupid that despite her leering, salivating, Shylock-like obsession with pounding the flesh of the only other female character in the entire book, she completely fails to realize that she's bisexual. I'm not a fan of novel in which the author goes out of her way to demonstrate how stupid her main character is. And yes, there's a difference between lesbian and bisexual which this author doesn't seem to get. However, since sexuality it not a binary scale but a sliding one, I'll let that...slide!

This stupidity and crudity is what turned me off the novel completely. What had attracted me was that this was a Brit language novel, which may cause some readers a headache or two unless they are British or at least an Anglophile, but that was nowhere near enough to offset the shabby writing. The panting, tongue-lolling dog into which the main character morphed was more reminiscent of a lame rip-off of Kafka than ever it was of Austen. There was nothing romantic, sensual or subtle here at all. I cannot recommend this. It read like a "lesbian" novel written by an inept male author, and I'm truly sorry if that's insulting, but I gotta call it like I read it!

The Waiting Booth by Brinda Berry

Rating: WARTY!

It's always problematic trying to write a review for a book which isn’t aimed at me - because I'm older or the wrong gender, or something. I can’t tell people what to read nor would I wish to. All I can do is give my opinion and if you tend to find yourself in agreement with those opinions (or I tend to find myself in agreement with yours!), then this might be of use to one or both of us, or it might not!

I started reading this one because I'd enjoyed this author's short story about mermaids, but I have to report that this effort at a middle-grade story was a failure for me. I get that it wasn't written for my age range, but it wasn't written well for any age group it seems to me, and a lot of it made very little sense. There were writing issues, and I felt that it also sent the wrong message about how young girls should behave when confronted with strange men who are less than equitable and considerate in regard to interpersonal relationships.

The basic story is that Middle-Grade Mia, in process of conducting a science project which involves motion-triggered photography, discovers two strange guys wandering around her father's property. Rather than alert an adult, she gets involved with them herself. This tells me she's profoundly stupid. If you're going to force a child to take on something like this, then please for the love of writing give me a reason other than that she's a moron! Her name is also hilarious given that it's an acronym for Missing in Action, which her brother has been for two years and her brain is all the time it would seem. Names are important. Please don't get caught putting so little thought into your character's name!

On that same score, these guys are inexplicably young to be police. Again, give me a reason. I can understand a potential need to induct young people into a system to get them properly trained, but that offers no explanation in this case as to why they need to start young, and it sure as hell doesn't offer a reason for sending young people out in an enforcement role. I know this is aimed at the young, but please give me a reason why children are doing potentially dangerous jobs that adults normally do! It's not rocket science! It's writing!

Their concern about viral contamination of this Earth from a nearby one is flimsy. Viruses evolve with their host organism(s). That doesn't mean they never can infect something outside their preferred circle, but the chances of a virus being able to magically leap into an alien species it's never encountered before and become a threat are slim because it has not evolved to attack the genetic code of that alien species. There should be no need to spell out that sci-fi involves a little science in the fiction!

Another serious writing issue I encountered is one I've seen many times in assorted novels I've read. The problem arises from an author seeing their work only on the printed page instead of seeing it in 3D as it were: as real events out there in a real world. This is why it helps to read your story out loud at least once, picturing the events in a 3D world, and hearing the actual words spoken in conversation. In that way some of the problems with it will be highlighted for you in a new way. Poorly written or ill-considered conversational exchanges will stand out (hopefully! You’re in trouble if they don’t!).

The worst mistake is thinking of your story only as words on a page. In that way you see it merely as something that's being read, not as events that are actually happening. That's not as good perspective to hold. Take this quote from the book as an example:

“Regulus thinks I was wrong to grab you last night, but I am a little impulsive sometimes.” The guy with the blond hair was still smiling.
“Listen, I told your partner, Rejules—”
“Regulus…like Regulator,” the blond said.

You can see from this that the author is seeing the character's name, Regulus, not as a spoken name, but as writing on a page. It’s obvious from the main character's rejoinder, when she pronounces it with a 'J': Rejules. You can only see it that way if you're reading it. If someone has just said Regulus, with a hard G, which is what happens here, there's no way you can get a soft G from it even if you don’t get the whole name. That's where the second problem here comes in.

Regulus is the name of a star, which I grant not that many people would know, but it was also the name of Sirius Black's brother in the Harry Potter series, where the whole Black family seem to have been named after stars: Sirius, Regulus, Andromeda, Bellatrix, and a big deal was made out of discovering who this person was. A host of children now know the name Regulus very well. It seemed likely that the character in this novel would have also heard of it. And Yes, there is a galaxy, the closest one to our own, and into which we are going to crash in about four billion tears, named Andromeda; there's also a constellation of stars in our own galaxy, and an annual meteor shower named after it, but all of these take their name from the stars in the constellation.

At one point, when Mia feels threatened, she manages to wangle a trip to the bathroom with her cell phone, but instead of immediately calling the police, which was her intention, she completely forgets about it and fails to make the call at all. Please, give us a reason why she didn't, and not simply that she forgot such a crucial thing when she feels threatened and has the phone right there! All she proves here is that she's a moron. I don't want to read about morons - not unless you have a really good or funny (and preferably both) story to tell me! Almost worse than this, when her captors retrieve the phone from the bathroom after this idiot Mia leaves it there, they fail to check if she called the police or anyone else! In short, they're morons, too! And they're supposed to be some sort of policing organization?

The excuse given here is that there's a chance to find out what happened to her brother, but never once is she suspicious about the motives of these two guys. Never once does she consider, even for a second or two, that they might be outright lying to her. In other words, she's a moron. Again. Her brother has been gone for two years. Obviously that;s not something you forget or put behind you, but neither is it something you carry like an overbearing weight two years on - not unless you're also under psychiatric care. That this was so raw and held such an overpowering hold on her didn't jibe with the two-year gap. Had it been three months, or something like that, it would have made more sense. Time does heal - if you give it a chance.

Here’s another problem quote: "Anybody would be blinded by the good looks of these two. Arizona seemed so harmless. Any girl my age would fall victim to his easygoing manner" - this is hardly what a young girl her age would actually think. It is what an older writer would write if they weren't putting themselves into the shoes of the character about whom they were writing. This is a problem with first person voice. If it had been written in third person, that would have been fine because the narrator would have been expressing that thought, instead of a thirteen-year-old. You just can’t write things like that in first person and have them sound authentic. It doesn't work. This is one of many reasons why I detest first person voice. It's almost never realistic.

There were inconsistencies, too. Because the main character's brother had gone missing, Mia's dad won't let her go to comic con, yet he routinely leaves her home alone when he goes on overnight business trips? This made no zero sense. He's either overly protective, in which case he would not let her go to comic con or be home alone, or he's not so protective in which case, if he feels fine trusting her safety in being home alone overnight, then why is it he object to a trip to comic con with two close friends?

At one point, after Mia is already aware of the inter-dimensional portal, and has seen Arizona and Regulus both use it, I read, "I envisioned the two would demonstrate a scientific phenomenon by exiting via dimensional doorway." She's talking like she hasn't already seen this, but she has already seen it, and not that long before. This was about a quarter the way through this novel, and it was also where I quit reading, because it was one faux pas too many. This novel is not well-written, and it was not entertaining me at all. It was just irritating, and life is far too short to keep stubbornly pursuing a novel that doesn’t grab me. This one didn’t. I wish the author well, but I can’t recommend this effort by her. Read the mermaid story instead!

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Rating: WORTHY!
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Erratum
"Sasha though suddenly of his stepmother," 'thought'?

This is a traditional-style fairy tale employing Russian folklore and mythology, and exploring the inevitable clash between religions: the extant traditional natural religion of the Russian hinterland, and the sick encroachment of Christianity into it. I loved the way the story started out, and enjoyed the ever-unfolding pace and power of the story-telling. There was no slack here, no annoying flashbacks or side-tracking and meandering, and it grabbed me from the start, even though I'm not usually a big fan of stories set in Russia.

This author knows her craft, and she did not cheapen the tale by writing it in first person, either. For that alone, I intend to paint an icon in her name! (You have to read the story to get that!). For me it really took off when a couple of new characters showed up, bringing conflict to what had been a rather idyllic existence for our main character. The fun thing was that the story never did play out quite as I might have expected, or even written it myself. There was always a twist, a turn, a quirk, an event to keep me guessing where this would go. I adored it for that.

The very best thing about it is the main character Vasilisa Petrovna, aka Vasya, aka Vasochka. Yes, the endless variations on names was one complaint I had. It was really hard, to begin with, to keep track of who was who since so many name variations, nicknames, and pet names were employed for the same character. I realize this is what Russians do, but this wasn't written in Russky! The author herself explains in an afterword that literal translation is not always a good goal for an author of fiction, and I agree with her very much, so a little more clarity would have been nice, but maybe that's just me.

That aside, Vasya was one of the most engaging and amazing characters I've ever read of. Alert to all Young Adult novel writers! If you want to know how to write a strong female character who is more than merely a male appendage, then you seriously need to read this novel. It's not the only novel which has a strong, independent female character who owns her life, and by 'strong', I mean within herself, not necessarily in her ability to kick someone's ass, but this is a fine example of such a novel. Katherine Arden gets it, period. Vasya was wonderful: a breath of fresh air in a world of lackluster and very forgettable young adult female characters.

The basic story begins with a Russian land baron in a period of history often called The Renaissance. That name didn't seem to fit here. Medieval felt more appropriate, but this was just after that era. In the particular case of this novel, I prefer to think of it as Age of Discovery! The land baron's wife dies giving birth to main character Vasya, a child who grows up rather odd and wild. She is so in need of minding - thinks her father Pyotr - that he travels many weeks to Moskva (curiously written as Moscow in the novel) to find a new wife at court. The ruling monarch is one of a small handful of Ivans to come to power in Russia. The story doesn't make this clear, but I assume it's Ivan the Fourth ("the Terrible"), who ruled from the mid- to late-sixteenth century.

He had three daughters named Anna(!), one of which died before she reached the age of two, and the other two of which were sent to convents. Such was the fate of unmarriageable girls, in Russia or anywhere. And that gives me an idea for a story! I hat eit when that happens! Anyway, Ivan did not like immodest girls, and he accidentally killed his own son during an argument over his daughter-in-law's perceived immodesty. In this story however, one Anna isn't sent to a convent; she escapes such a fate because Ivan adopts a plan to rid himself off this "crazy" girl to Pyotr in exchange for one of Pyotr's daughters marrying his son, and thereby helping secure his dynasty. This story succeeds admirably where Ivan failed so dismally in his quest!

The thing about Anna is what she shares in common with Vasya. The difference between them is the interpretation of what they see, and the subsequent fear or it, or lack of such fear. Anna often sees what she believes are demons around the palace, and she is scared to go into the wild, frozen north. When she arrives, she sees even more demons, and this time the demons see her. Meanwhile there's a strange nobleman (or maybe not so noble) who manipulates Pyotr into giving his youngest daughter a necklace, unless Pyotr wishes to see his oldest son die. But the family nursemaid manages to wangle it so that the daughter doesn't get the gift until she's of age. What will happen then, is anyone's guess!

The writing was evocative and engaging, but occasionally, a part here or there struck me as being 'off'. For example, at one point early in the story the youngest daughter, Vasya, wanders off and gets lost in the forest. She is rescued (fortuitously before a freezing night falls) by her older brother who was out searching for her. She had encountered a strange man in the forest before her brother brings her home. She was terrified, but we read, "Pyotr thrashed his daughter the next day, and she wept, though he was not cruel." Excuse me? He "thrashed" her, for getting lost and scared half to death, and he's not cruel? That struck a sour note for me.

And yes, I get that people, especially people in those climes and times, were a lot more rough and ready, and pursued what might be termed "frontier justice" with a lot more vigor than people do today, but this is cruel by any light. I get that someone like him might thrash his daughter, but to 'qualify' that by adding that her father was not cruel, was poorly done for me. This isn't the last time that Vasya is so disciplined. In fact, the second time it's an even greater injustice, but she's older then, and bears it stoically, especially since it simultaneously rescues her from something she was not looking forward to. It seems that Vasya is fated to live always slightly apart from her own people. This is one of the things which made her such an intriguing character for me.

Yes, nicknames and pet names! Here's one example: "After Sasha and Olga went away, Dunya noticed a change in Vasya." I had to actually parse that sentence before I got out of it exactly who was doing what here! Here's a classic example:

Alyosha was waiting for her. He grinned. "Maybe they will manage to marry you off after all, Vasochka."
"Anna Ivanovna says not," Vasya replied composedly. "Too tall, skinny as weasel, feet and face like a frog." She clasped her hands and raised her eyes. "Alas, only princes in fairy tales take frog-wives. And they can do magic and become beautiful on command. I fear I will have no prince, Lyoshka."

Alyosha is actually her older brother, Aleksei Petrovich, who is one of the few people who actually 'gets' Vasya and supports her. I really liked him, but this endless parade of nicknames was irritating (Google is going nuts underlining all these names in red as I write them! LOL!). Eventually I learned to overlook it and it became less important as the story progressed, but I could have done with a lot less of it. It's not necessary to name a person every time you speak to them or even of them. I think quite a few of these names could have been dispensed with and left the novel a more pleasing demeanor in the doing.

That was my only real complaint about this story. I do have to say that the ending fell a bit flat given that the entire novel had been leading me to it. I was expecting more of Vasya, but overall the story was an engaging and very endearing one, and I fully recommend it. In general it's a tour-de-force of how to write a fable like this, mixing folklore and fairy-tale, and it was a joy to read. I very much look forward to Katherine Arden's next literary outing.

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan, Robert Vendetti, Nate Powell

Rating: WARTY!

This graphic novel is in the Percy Jackson world, but features a different main character named Jason, who wakes up on a school bus on a trip to the Grand Canyon Skywalk, which is as scary as it is awesome. Jason cannot remember who he is, although two friends, Leo and Piper (I'm sorry, but I can't take that name seriously. I just can't. I apologize to all who are named Piper, but I cannot. Honestly). Of course these kids are demigods as they soon discover, and all three are sent on a quest for a missing goddess, because gods are useless, and they're flying on a bronze dragon....

Riordan has carved out a fine empire with his take on Greek mythology, but it has singularly failed to impress me. I rather liked the first movie made from these books, The Lightning Thief, but I didn't like the second one and I didn't liked the book that gave rise to that first movie either! Nor have I liked an adult-oriented detective story of his, so I guess I'm done with this author!

My problem with this was several-fold. While Robert Vendetti's adaptation of the original was passable (and perhaps better than the original since it was shorter!), Nate Powell's art work left a lot to be desired. It felt slapdash and hasty. The biggest problem as usual, though, was the overall story. It felt choppy and staccato, and not a lot of it made sense. I don't know if this mirrors the original novel, or if this came about as part of the translation to graphic. All the evil villains had horrible faces or horrible expressions on the faces, and pointy teeth, so cheap stereotype found lucrative employment here.

Conversely, all the good guys have the looks of runway models. In fact, frequently we're taught in this book that women are only really worth anything if they're beautiful, No other quality comes close: not intelligence, not loyalty, nor diligence, industriousness, reliability, bravery, strength (mental or physical). Nope. The only thing a girl can offer is good looks, otherwise she's pretty much worthless. I resent that. Anyone who actually knows women (and it would seem that Riordan doesn't if he's judged by his writing) knows that their true beauty, just as in men, comes from the inside, not from the shallow depth of their skin.

I also didn't like that Riordan's world is pretty much whites only. Yeah, you can try arguing that it's based on ancient Greece which was a largely white world, but since Riordan abandoned Greece in favor of the USA, I think you can argue that he also abandoned excuses and he lost that high ground. I mean why base a novel rooted in Greek mythology actually in Greece when it can be based in the only country in the world worth writing about: the great US of A? The hell with the Greeks. The hell with native American mythology, let's and for no reason at all, simply migrate Greek mythology wholesale to the US! Steal the mythology, but god forbid any of the stories should ever take place outside the US.

The problem with a world like this - or any paranormal world is that you have to have some sort of intelligent framework behind it, to have it work in a coherent fashion, otherwise literally anything could happen and all smart plotting is out the window. I didn't see any framework here. The one consistent thing we learn here is how utterly useless gods are - of any stripe,. It doesn't matter if the god is Roman, Greek, Egyptian, biblical, Norse, or whatever, not a single one of these gods is worth anything! They're always begging us poor, weak, condemned, sinful, worthless humans to help them out! What's the heck is up with that? Why would any god worthy of the name need anyone's help?

So, to cut a long story short, as indeed did the the guy who adapted this, I can't recommend this graphic novel, It had no substance and really delivered no worthwhile story.

Shimmer by Brinda Berry

Rating: WORTHY!'

This completes my brace of reviews of mermaid stories I decided to...dip into. While I like the idea of a good mermaid story, the execution of such stories has nearly always failed me, so I'm not a fan of the genre. Once in a while a story comes along that sounds like it might be worth reading, but often I'm disappointed which is what happened with the previous novel I reviewed, which was awful. This one is a very short story, and when I began it I had the feeling that I might end up not liking it, but as I read on, it won me over.

It's not brilliant, but it was a worthy read even though, with all the advertising in it, it felt more like it was a flier for Brinda Berry's writing than ever it was an honest attempt at selling a story. There are pages of advertising for books by Berry, so the actual story starts on page seven and ends on page 43 of a sixty-three page book! The actual story isn't even forty pages. The last section of the book is taken up with two chapters from another Brinda Berry novel, which (and not coincidentally!) I'm actually reading next.

The thing which started to turn me off the novel was the main character names, which were so bad and uninventive that it almost made me quit. The guy is named Draven - he's the landlubber. Draven? Seriously? The mermaid is named Coral. She's land-bound due to a family decision from long ago, but she knows of her mermaid heritage from her deceased mother, and she's trying to get back to it. This explains why Draven (Draven? Honestly?) thinks she's drowning herself when he's out on the beach at an ungodly hour in the morning. He "saves" her and they form an uncomfortable friendship. But Coral is determined to revert to her heritage, so the relationship seems doomed.

Like I said, not usually my cup of sea. I like a good paranormal story, even some romances, but they have to be organic and make sense within their own framework and far too many do not. I think you have to have some sort of framework, otherwise anything goes and the story has no substance. This one was short enough and vague enough that I didn't run into any of those problems, and Coral was so practical I couldn't help but like her. She doesn't care that Draven sees her butt-naked, which makes a refreshing change from the panicked modesty we often encounter in scenes where one of the main characters is unexpectedly exposed. It was this grounding and Draven's more mature attitude which won me over. He almost lost me with his over-protectiveness, but in the end I liked the story which is why I moved on to read the book-length Berry novel titled The Waiting Booth

It's for these reasons that I consider this a worthy read, especially since it was free from Barnes & Noble when I picked it up! I'm always looking for new, intelligent authors to get into, and maybe Brinda Berry (which is actually a really cool name!) will be one of them. Although I solemnly promise right here that I will never read any of her novels that have naked male torsos on the covers. Ugh! Talk about genderist! I actively avoid novels like that no matter who had written them. Maybe that should have informed me on the second book I reviewed by this author, which did not fare so well despite having no naked torsos on the cover!!

I don't normally talk about book covers because my blog is about writing, not pretension or glitz, and authors rarely have anything to do with their covers (or their back cover blurbs!) unless they self-publish, but I have to say this one was interesting. The model's face was quite captivating, but what I loved most of all was how the title, Shimmer was in a font where it looked like it might read "Swimmer". I don't know if the artist planned that consciously. If so, it was a master stroke. If not, it was a fortuitous happenstance. I enjoy plays on words, especially in book titles, so this one was a winner there, too! Note that this is not the sad cover shown on Goodreads with the guy, and the mermaid holding a starfish. The one on this edition was so much better!

Teenage Mermaid by Ellen Schreiber

Rating: WARTY!

This is one of those novels where an older writer writes for a younger age group without changing any of her personal preferences or prejudices! Thus she sounds dumb at best and stupid at worst. This is written in worst person voice, which is first person voice, a voice I detest, but it's actually twice as bad here, because we have two alternating stories and the first one, where the guy is rescued by the mermaid, is straight out of the Tom Hanks/Darryl Hannah movie Splash which preceded this novel by some two decades. It was juvenile even for the intended age range, and frankly I expect better from an author whose very name in German, means writer! I managed two chapters of this before I DNF'd this DNR.

Agent Carter Operation SIN by Kathryn Immonen, Richard Ellis, Ramón Pérez

Rating: WARTY!

So I read through this entire comic book and I couldn't find a story anywhere! Weird. The image on the cover was of Hayley Atwell from the TV series Peggy Carter, but she bore no resemblance whatsoever to the blond in the story, who has no class, no presence, and no appeal. The story was lost in the wilderness of Russia in the fifties. It rambled and meandered and wandered, and went quite literally nowhere. It was nonsensical.

There was an interaction with Vanko père who is mentioned in Iron Man 2 movie, but it went nowhere, either. On top of that there was this weird bearded guy who behaved like a wild bear, and who was essentially a dick, and this pencil dick of a kid who transformed into a bear, which was a huge Whisky Tango Foxtrot moment for me. The art by Richard Ellis for the main story and Ramón Pérez for the nonsensical Captain America story at the end was only so-so. That last little story was a captastrophe and made the titular figure look like an overbearing jerk.

Kathryn Immonen's writing was sub-par. I cannot recommend this series at all. The TV series is far more realistic and entertaining, has action, humor, and smarts. None of that was evident in this comic. In my opinion, you should go watch the TV series and forget about this juvenile effort.

Haunted on Bourbon Street by Deanna Chase

Rating: WARTY!

This novel sucked. It's about Jade Calhoun (I should have quit reading right there!) who is an "empath" in a world where everyone, without question, completely accepts all the new-age mumbo-jumbo. Jade moves into a new apartment in New Orleans for no good reason (she's from out of state), and encounters a ghost which apparently doesn't have a pleasant agenda. She immediately calls in a guy recommended by a friend who uses scientific equipment to try and record and measure the ghost. Why the empath can't do this for herself is a mystery. She's a friggin' empath! What use is she?

I'm guessing the real reason is to make sure she has lots of encounters with Kane (I should have quit reading right there, too!) who runs the strip club under her apartment. From the moment of their first encounter, Jade turns into a bitch in heat whenever Kane is around and it was so tedious, it was pathetic. Get a room already. Oh wait, she has one! But it's haunted! Oh god how will they ever make it through this???? Who the hell cares? And do I want to read more of this crap in a series? "NO!"

The thing is, despite Jade calling for help and being unaccountably terrified of this ghost, the blurb tells us, "...it's up to Jade to use her unique ability to save" her friend Pyper (yeah, I should have quit reading right there, too). I'm really sorry, and I apologize to all women named Piper (or variants thereof), but I simply cannot take that name seriously, not at all. I just can't. But there you have it. If it's up to her, why did she bring in the science boys? Filler? Or fill her?

The blurb stupidly asks, as do all blurbs beginning with 'When' ask, "...she'll need Kane's help to do it...Can she find a way to trust him and herself before Pyper is lost?" I'm guessing the answer to that question is "Yes!" but it ought to be "NO!" and all of these characters ought to die horribly in a ghostly holocaust.

That would have unarguably been the best ending for this, and if it had happened that way, I would have rated this five stars. As it is, it honestly gets no stars. The one I gave it is only for the fact that "no stars" is not an option (Goodreads can't average it!); it just looks like the reviewer forgot to check how many stars it earned, and it doesn't count for squat. That's why I don't do stars as such. Either the novel is worth reading or it's not. It gets five stars or one, and to cut to the (Deanna) Chase, this one is definitely not worth reading.

I did love that if you write out the title and the author's name you get: Haunted on Bourbon Street by Deanna Chase - like it's the author who's doing the haunting. That was the best part about this novel.

Vicky Peterwald Target by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe

Rating: WARTY!

My commitment this year was to read and review all of the eleven Kris Longknife books I had on my shelf, and that has been met. I also had one Vicky Peterwald book, which spun off from the Longknife series after "Daring". I have read half of this and gave up on it. It was was awful! Yes, it was blessedly free of the tedious Longknife crew and their inane smart-mouthing, and it was free of the stuck-in-a-rut plotting of that series, but it was boring as hell! Nothing was happening except a deadeningly tedious and repetitious cascade of assassination attempts on her life - even more than Kris Longknife typically gets.

The most pathetic aspect to all this is that Peterwald knows who is behind this and all she has to do is kill the vicious stepmother who is doing this, yet she does literally nothing. In short, this is not the Vicky Peterwald I started liking from the Longknife books. This is a paradoxically shy and retiring nymphomaniac, but the sex scenes were evidently managed by a prude, and ruthlessly cut short or not featured at all, so even they go nowhere. On top of that, Peterwald makes me dislike her from the start by throwing Kris Longknife under the bus after the battle with the aliens in Daring. This is after the two of them had begun bonding in previous books. It made no sense. Yes, she has to protect herself and explain the loss of her mini-navy in that battle, but the reasons for it were obvious and for her to simply betray someone with whom she was becoming friends made zero sense and made her look like a complete jerk. I no longer like her.

I have to ask then, what is the point of this novel? It offered no adventure as the Lognknife books did. It offered none of the sex it might have been deemed to have promised given Vicky's rather, shall we say, relaxed approach to morality (and as the Longknife books didn't), and it had nothing of any real interest going on. I'm sorry, but what's the point in reading this series? At least, on occasion, the Longknife books had some things of interest here and there even if they were predictable and she had the dullest clique surrounding her that it was possible to conceive. These Peterwald books offer nothing at all if they're all like the first one. I am done with this author. It's long past time for something new and stimulating in the sci-fi department.

Caribbean's Keeper by Brian Boland

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"began to peal the skin back" 'peal' should be 'peel' unless the skin is ringing like a bell!
"from where the helo had come from" - too many 'from's! The last one needs deleting.
"Cole treaded in place and watched it" The past tense of 'tread' is 'trod'. Don't you love English?!
"Cole bid his time and made idle chatter with Tony." The past tense of bide is bided, bit bid (and apparently even Google doesn't know this!).

I was invited by Open Road Media to read this advance review copy, and I was glad I got the chance!

The author was actually in the Coastguard, so he knows what he's talking about, which always helps! I have a brother-in-law who is in the Coastguard and have nothing but respect for the job he does - so yeah, call me biased! This novel felt real, and the descriptions were very evocative. The story unfolded naturally. It was credible. It felt like being there in many ways, which makes for a really nice read! Of course, the plot counts too, more-so than the descriptions for me, but that was also appealing and felt authentic. I haven't been to any of the places the author mentions: Curaçao, Martinique, Nicaragua, Panama, and so on, and my experience in Florida is very limited, but there was nothing here that struck me as implausible or dumb.

The story is of Cole (yeah, I know. Hardly my favorite character name, but at least it wasn't 'Jack', in which case I would have flatly refused to read the novel at all!). Cole is a Coastguard operative who gets kicked out for his rather unruly behavior and his disregard for the rules on occasion. Out of work, he drifts a little in Florida and eventually, to make ends meet, starts working on a tour boat. It's hardly his style, but it pays and he gets to room with one of the guys he works with, someone he likes and gets along with.

Over time he notices that this guy Kevin, has something going on on the side and as the two grow to trust each other, Cole finds himself involved in the smuggling of Cubans into Florida. So far so good, but Cole is not only a functional alcoholic (at least that's how he came off to me) he's also an Adrenalin junkie, and the kick he gets from outrunning and outfoxing his old colleagues in the Coastguard starts to be insufficient for him. Like every addict, Cole wants more. That's how he gets into drug-running, but there's no loyalty in that world. You upset the cartel kingpins and they're going to come gunning for you - literally. This is the story of how Cole survived and who he met along the way.

It was gripping and engaging, and just as importantly, it was realistic. It really felt like any and all of this could have happened. It was like reading a good James Bond thriller, and I kept wanting to turn the next page to find out what happens. The book is not too long, not too short, and makes for really easy reading. The ending felt a little bit abrupt, but it was right, and I'd rather have it come to a halt like that, than have the author just write on and on not knowing quite where to stop. Plus it's a single volume as far as I know, so not being a fan of series, this worked well for me. I recommend it for anyone who wants an adventure with a likable rogue (despite his faults) who is in it for the thrills, only to discover that underneath it all, he actually has a conscience. Great story.

Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch by Kate Cullen

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb tells us that this story involves the titular character, Lily, taking on school bullies. Lily is some three hundred years old. The reason she appears to be twelve is that she is periodically reincarnated, yet she retains all her memories so while she was technically born only twelve years ago, she has the mind of a triple centenarian. Herein lay the first problem with this. Lily not only looks like a twelve-year-old, she thinks, feels, and acts like one. I don't know how middle-grade girls (at which this is aimed) would feel about this, but from my perspective the story was completely nonsensical and wildly inauthentic.

The blurb also says that this novel "touches on the notion of bullying, self-image, standing up for yourself, caring for your friends and being an individual" yet despite that, we have fat-shaming and age-shaming. How is that building anyone's self image or does the author want only willowy girls to read her books? It was disgusting and inexcusable. On top of that we get the 'girls hate math' stereotype.

Anachronism was rife. How come Lily knows the words to a thirty-year-old song by the police? Not because the middle-grade girl does (which is possible but unlikely), but because the author does. So now we have a three-hundred-year-old witch in a twelve-year-old body speaking in a thirty plus year-old/I don't know the author's age voice of Kate Cullen (not to be confused with Scots cyclist Katie Cullen, or with the other Australian Kate Cullen, writer of poetry and fantasy!).

There are many inconsistencies. Lily has psychic skills but she isn't a mind reader?! I know the two are not interchangeable, but if you have psychic skills you are definitely some sort of a mind reader! At another point she says, "I'm a witch not a psychologist," but after almost 300 years of experiencing humanity? You're both!

There are also writing inconsistencies. I read at one point "I think she snobbed me." I don't know if that was intended as a joking play on words or if the author simply put an 'o' instead of a 'u'. Maybe it's something Australians actually say (the author is Australian, so US readers should beware that there might be some minor language difficulties) That is the kind of thing an under-educated middle-grader might write, but it's not what a 300 year old would write. Finally there's the unintentional humor: "I try not to put the words cute and Dan in the same sentence." Um...she just did! Guess she's not trying very hard.

I can't recommend this. Maybe the girls at whom it's aimed will be less discriminating and view it differently from me, but I hope they actually aspire to read better-written novels than this.

Totlandia Vol 1 by Josie Brown

Rating: WORTHY!

Totlandia was an oddball story that I ultimately ended-up loving. I don't quite know why except that it was funny and interesting and unusual. I have to wonder how the author ever came up with this story. Maybe she had some personal experience?

The story is the first of four very short books (100+ pages or so) in a series that covers several years of kindergarten. The 'onesies' is four volumes and there is at least two more volumes for the 'twosies'. While I'm not a fan of series typically, I might be persuaded to read more of this one if they're like the first, but be warned, the first volume ends on a huge cliffhanger, so you might find it very addictive! And there may well be four volumes for each of five years, which is quite a financial commitment to keep up with!

The Pacific Heights Moms and Tots Club is a very exclusive and snotty San Francisco daycare, managed by well-to-do and very elitist moms. You have to compete for one of the annual ten spots get in, and forget about it if you're a single parent or a working mom. You're automatically disqualified.

This novel focuses attention on four candidates, each of whom has a secret, such as one of them (Jillian) is about to undergo a divorce, another (Ally) is supposed to have quit her job a a big-wig in business, but is still secretly on the board - and she's single! A third is a guy who is ashamed of his wife jade, a former stripper and prospective porn actor and is trying to keep her out of things while having sex with one of the existing PHMTC moms to get an in (so to speak). Lorna's child may be a special needs kid, which would disqualify him, so there is lots of dirt to dish, and lots of secrets to be kept hidden.

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I really enjoyed the easy pave, the decent plotting, the good story-telling and the humor, so yes, this one is a worthy read.

The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict

Rating: WARTY!

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

While I applaud the sentiment to write a book about Einstein's first wife, I have to say I was disappointed in the result. When I requested an advance review copy of this novel, I had initially thought it was a biography of her life, and I was very interested to read it, but it turned out to be a novel: a highly-fictionalized account of her life and as such, I think it did the real Mileva Marić a disservice. Note that her name is pronounced like Me-levv-ah Marityu as far as I can tell, but I'm not Serbian so caveat lector!

The first problem for me was first person voice, which is rarely a good voice in which to tell a story. It’s far too self-important, self-indulgent, breathless, and "YA" for my taste. It makes the mistake of imbuing a real person with thoughts, feelings, and opinions that were not hers and in this case, which are in fact alien to her, shaded as they are by modern American thought projected over a century backwards onto Eastern sensibilities. A good example of this appeared very early when I read, "Mama gifted me..."! That took me right out of the turn-of-century Switzerland into modern USA, and it wasn't the only instance of totally modern idiom pervading these pages.

Another problem for me was that first person also says something about the main character's sense of self-importance, and it felt wrong to imply that someone as evidently retiring as Mileva would promote herself with a book like this one. Not that she actually did in real life, but the suggestion is there in the writing: I, Mileva, did this! I, Mileva thought that! I, Mileva, am baring my soul to the world, and it didn't honestly feel like her to me. Not that I'm an exert on her by any means. I know only what I've read, but it felt inauthentic.

I had no choice but to try to overlook that and read on, ever onwards; however, in the end I couldn't make it to the end. I made it only sixty percent of the way through before giving it up as a bad job (which was before Einstein gave up the marriage as a bad job!), so please keep that in mind when reading this review. And please don't assume the arrogance or the impertinence to tell me that I can't review a book when I haven't read it all. Yes, I can, and the proof of the Slivovitz is right here!

Another problem for me was the author's gushing cheerleading for her main character. Mileva Marić was indeed a remarkable woman who beat the adversely-stacked odds of her time. She deserves a book, but she was not a superhero or a goddess, or even a towering intellect, and it does her no favors to pretend that she was! I'm not in the habit of reading introductions, forewords, prefaces or author's notes, but in the case I did skim the preface material and in my opinion, the author exaggerated her abilities to an embarrassing degree.

I read that she was a "brilliant woman" and if that was meant as a metaphor for the light she shone as an achiever in an age where women were pretty much condemned to exist only in the long shadows cast by men then I’d agree, but I rather suspect it was meant in an intellectual sense and I don’t see any evidence for this. Yes, she was smart. Yes, she achieved a lot which most women did not even imagine, let alone dream of back then, but does this equate with true intellectual brilliance? I don’t think it does. At another point I read: "Mileva Marić, who was a brilliant physicist in her own right" and I had to ask: "By what criteria?" On a point of order, she never actually was a physicist, despite her equaling Einstein's grade in physics in at least one exam!

What went wrong academically is hard to say. Mileva seemed to have experienced a roller-coaster ride with her math scores. Prior to the university, she passed final exams in 1894 with the highest grades, including those in math. She was an excellent student, who would no doubt put many modern students to shame, so it’s a bit of a mystery what happened with her diploma efforts. After she quit the academic world because of her pregnancy with the mysteriously vanishing child Liserl, she never really pursued her studies again.

She did not, contrary to popular opinion, contribute intellectually to Einstein's "miracle year" work nor to his later work. She never published any papers. In contrast, Einstein continued his work long after they separated. Correspondence between Mileva and Albert talking of "our work" referred not to work for which Einstein became known and for which he won wide acclaim and awards, but to the work they were doing as students on their diploma dissertations, which happened to be on the same topic.

This is not to demean Mileva Marić at all. She was a very capable and distinguished student by all accounts, and a smart and remarkable woman, but "brilliant"? I think you’d have to carefully define your criteria to make a statement like that because I also think that it demeans her far more to present a misleading view of her life than it does to tell the plain and simple truth about her which is quite remarkable enough.

In this light, I have to question the beginning of the novel which represents her erroneously arriving in Zurich as a naïf about to start on her higher academic life, when in fact Mileva was well-traveled before then, and had actually been living in Zurich prior to this. Nor was this her first exposure as a woman in a male institution. She had attended the all-male (until she arrived - albeit as a private student!) Royal Classical High School in Zagreb (a city I've visited myself and loved), and she'd subsequently attended the Girls High School in Zurich. After that, she began studying medicine at the University of Zurich. So no, she was not in any sense new to this "civilized" world, nor to this city, nor to this university!

But back to her physics credentials! She was not studying to be a physicist. She was training to be a teacher which is why she became a student in a teaching diploma course where she shared a class with five other students, all male, one of whom was Einstein. She never taught, having failed to pass the final teaching diploma examinations because of poor performance in math. Twice! So to suggest she brilliant and perhaps some sort of contributing partner in Einstein's work is misleading at best. They no doubt discussed some of his thoughts on those topics, and perhaps she helped him with his studies (as perhaps he helped her) in school and later with research, but to intimate that she was some sort of equal partner in his scientific life is not true. She herself never made any such claims, and there's no correspondence from her or to her indicating any such thing. To suggest otherwise is to detract from what she actually did achieve which was praiseworthy enough in itself

I also read that "Mileva was forced to subsume her academic ambitions and intellect to Albert’s ascent" and again I had to ask, where is the evidence for this? She dropped out to raise a family, but was she forced? Was this Albert's dictum? I don't think you can argue a good case for that. I have to wonder why an author would do this to Mileva. Are we to take home from this the idea that her ambition to raise a family (if that was her ambition) instead of pursuing a career in science was abnormal or beneath her, or that she was pressured and browbeaten into it? That she had no alternative? She took a final while she was pregnant for goodness sakes! She was not being dictated to or subjugated by anyone, and to suggest that she was is an insult to her. It's also an insult to anyone who's raised a decent family, male or female, and especially to women back then, and especially as a single parent - at least in the early months.

Mileva's withdrawal from academic life for anything other than illness was through her first pregnancy. Their daughter was named Liserl. What became of this girl is a mystery, but the best guess is that she died, possibly from scarlet fever when she was still an infant. While pregnant, Mileva failed in her second attempt at passing her diploma and gave up on her PhD ambitions at that point. It would seem clear that she was not forced into anything. It seems from the available evidence that she was not academically up to pursuing what she had initially aimed at, and she gave up that pursuit in favor of pursuing a family, which is an equally worthy endeavor.

So what bothered me most about this novel was the inconsistency, On the one hand we're being told she's brilliant and was somehow prevented from pursuing academics, but on the other we're shown an air-headed girl who can't focus on school-work because of her giddy obsession with Albert, which has her mindlessly blowing money on a trip to be at a village near him and sitting around, too distracted to even read, and doing nothing but wait in the desperate hope he will come visit! I resented this picture of Mileva and I found it demeaning. Brilliant people of course can be giddy, but this isn't math: there is no Commutative Law here. You cannot equally argue that if truly brilliant people are giddy, then giddy people must be smart!

The inconsistency (that serious student was somehow robbed of her career) falls apart when we read, "It didn't help that I kept drifting off into daydreams about the trip to Como..." I found it insulting to Mileva that she purportedly had such an adolescent crush on Albert that it was affecting her schoolwork. Personally I cannot credit that; not with a woman like this one, but even if it were all true, it still flies in the face of what's said elsewhere about her being brilliant and being a strong student. I'd believe those latter two traits long before I'd believe the rather vacuous starry-eyed version of Mileva Marić with whom we're far too frequently presented here. We get too much of this with poor maligned Mileva: "Stomach fluttered" (location 825 on Kindle), "stomach churned" (841), "stomach lurched" (1132), "Stomach fluttered" (1191), "stomach lurching" (1252), knot in my stomach hadn't untangled (1303). Seriously? At the same time we hear nothing of Albert's inner feelings. It felt biased at best, genderist at worst.

I wanted to like this and view it favorably, but I can't in good conscience approve of such a young-adult, even 'Harlequin romance' version of a woman who stood out in her own time as different for a variety of reasons. This was a woman who was strong, self-possessed, competent, and dedicated to her chosen aims, whether academic or family. I think her life is remarkable and it think it should have been much better served than it was here - or at least than it was in the first sixty percent!

Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff

Rating: WARTY!

If I'd wanted to read a John Green novel which I don't, ever, I would have picked one up. I picked this one up mistakenly, but utterly convinced it was not a John Green novel. Was I ever wrong! It was awful. Even the guy reading it sounded exactly like the kind of voice that I've heard in a John Green audiobook when I made the unforgivable mistake of trying one. Gräf is a German word meaning Count, as in Graf Zeppelin, meaning Count Zeppelin who founded the Zeppelin airship company. It doesn't mean 'green', so what the heck was going on here?!

The story is that this young guy killed another young guy by means of accidentally hitting him in the chest with a hockey puck. The victim has a weak heart and dies. Now this guy is all-but irremediably morose, until this girl swoops in and rescues him. Almost inevitably, the girl is named Fallon, because god forbid she would have a given-name name that wasn't someone's surname, or any sort of ordinary name in a John Green, er Lisa Graff novel.

The only thing that Lisa forgot to do was include the girl's name in the title. She should have called it Looking for Fallon, since Lost in the Fallon sounds very odd. I guess it could have been titled Gone Guy. That would have worked, but it's really better if you have the girl's name in the title. That's only going to work though, if the girl has an unusual name, like Alaska. Looking for Myrtle, charming as that sounds, isn't going to cut it despite it having a play on words. But with an exotic, pretentious, or unusual name, you can have Half-Baked Alaska, if Alaska is a bit stupid or crazy, or Alaska is Like, Totally Husky, Dude!, if Alaska is a bit of a dog, or Melting Alaska if she's cold, and which also has the other element which you really: the implication in the title that she's lost or in need of saving. So you might have Performing Open-Heart Surgery on Alaska in the back of a old VW Bug which works because it makes a play on the term 'open-heart'.

Playing on words, especially if you can play on the girl's name, is wonderful. So you can have, for example, The Color of Jade, which is perfect, because then you get an exotic name and a play on words. Or you could have April, Come She Will which has the added advantage of a salacious play on words. So on that theme, maybe Lisa should have titled this, Fallon, Falloff which not only gets the unusual girl's name into the title, but makes a play on words and evokes The Karate Kid. OTOH, why would anyone want to evoke The Karate Kid?" Okay, strike that.

Fallon derives from Gaelic name meaning leadership or supremacy, or something along those lines. I'd hazard a guess that this is something which never crossed the author's mind, and she chose it merely because it struck her fancy, but maybe she did know what she was doing (she's emulating John Green after all, perhaps hoping to get a second wind from his sales/sails), but playing on that theme would give us Following Fallon which has the added advantage of an alliterative appellation. Another such title would be Rise and Fallon. But I think we've explored this motif quite enough for now, so I'll just go with Lost in its Own Pretensions, and leave it at that!

So, in short, the prologue sucked as much as the novel. Neither Fallon nor the main guy, whose name I completely forget, were worth my reading time. In fact, the guy was a vindictive and obnoxious little prick in the part I listened to, so I cared neither about him nor about the girl in shining armor. I don't normally read prologues, but it's hard to avoid them in audiobooks where you have no idea what's coming next, especially if they don't announce it.

The prologue was a truly crappy story about a crappy rip-off which the author calls a 'claw machine' - one of those things which takes your money based on your deluded belief that it's fair and equitable and the claw really is strong enough, if you get it just right, to pull up one of those tightly-packed plush toys. No, it's not, and even if you did get one, the toys are so crappy and cheap that they will fall apart in short order.

It's better to have your kids save the money and actually buy a decent plush toy. The habit of saving and reaping rewards will teach them much more useful tactics in the long run, than any amount of plays on a gambling machine ever will. Of course, then the kids don't get to play with the claw and have some excitement, but there are better ways to let them have fun than this. This prologue was pedantic, and as usual it contributed nothing to the story. Nothing. You can skip it completely and be no worse off. I rest my case against prologues, prefaces, introductions and authors notes. Boycott them with the same ardor you'd boycott one of those fraudulent claw machines! And give this novel a miss, because it's amiss. It will deliver to you the same emptiness that the claw machine does, and it's so John Green it will never ripen.

The Shadow World by Andrew Feinstein

Rating: WARTY!

Here's another non-fiction I didn't like. Again I came to this through a TV documentary and it really highlighted the problems with documentaries versus the problems with books. TV documentaries are way too much fluff. They show the same images over and over and over, and ask hoards of questions, but give very few in-depth or satisfying answers. Often they outright lie, as I discovered when watching the documentary Pump about the inexcusable stranglehold oil has on society in the USA.

The problem with this audiobook is that it had way too much detail, going onto things in far more depth than I was interested in listening to! By the time the guy rather breathlessly finished his details, I had forgotten what the heck he'd been talking about earlier! This went on for page after page (or in this case disk after disk, and there were a lot of disks). In the end I simply gave up on it. Yes, a lot of people have got rich off arms sales, including US corporations and politicians. Yes it's obnoxious, but after listening to this I was almost ready to say, "Good for them!" I didn't, but I can't recommend this.

If you're interested in excruciating detail, much of which is out of date, and you can get the ebook or print book and read it quietly, focusing on it 100%, it might be the book for you, but it's not something you want to try to get anything out of when driving in traffic because it requires too much attention to detail!

Sudden Justice by Chris Woods

Rating: WORTHY!

From a Heath Robinson start with next-to-nothing, the US now has the capability in drones, logistics, and support, to run over sixty simultaneous observation operations with the ability to deliver a deadly payload if required. The old MQ-1 Predator drone could carry two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or equivalent, whereas the MQ-9 Reaper which replaced it can carry fifteen times more ordnance. We're told these things can observe quietly, gather intel, track people and vehicles, and destroy them if it's deemed necessary, with "surgical precision." The problem, as investigators have discovered, is that no one in their right mind would ever want that kind of surgeon performing an operation this ham-fisted on their body.

This detailed - but not overly detailed - account quickly and efficiently gets to the heart of the issues: where the drones came from, how they were brought into use, how badly-organized the effort was to begin with, and how clinically efficient it is now, yet despite these improvements, the money thrown at it, and the massive support organization, this missteps, and the collateral damage caused by this system is scary - and may be doing more harm to efforts to combat terrorism than it is ever doing good.

The problem with the system is a human one, as always! The issues range from getting good intel from sources other than the drones in order to set the drones on the right track in the first place, to correctly identifying targets and tracking them. The drones fly at 18,000 feet (6K meters), and from that height, even with good video, you can't tell if a person is carrying a weapon. You even be sure who that person is. And without expert support and the patience of a saint, you can't be sure if the gathering you're about to blast with a HARM missile is a meeting of terrorists, or some kids sitting around playing and chatting. The reaper can also carry Sidewinder or AMRAAM air-to-air missiles.

Another issue is the pilots/observers. The USAF has been of late training more pilots for these vehicles than for any other system, and these people evidently work twelve-hour shifts. That's twelve hours (with breaks of course) spent in a darkened room, staring at a rather grainy monitor on which very little is happening for very much of the time. Who came up with a dumb-ass scheme like that is a mystery, but it has government and military stenciled all over it. The result is that pilots are falling asleep and are diverted from the monitors by other interests such as reading a book, chatting with others in the room, and playing computer games! The regular games won't work on this system, but games built using the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or clones of it will work quite handily! This is how a virus - fortunately benign it seems - came to be found in some of these systems.

This book gives the goods on all of this and a lot more. I recommend it if you're interested in finding out what these drones are up to and what their shortcomings are.

The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti

Rating: WARTY!

Unfortunately this is what you get when a reporter writes a book and doesn't realize he's writing a book and not a newspaper column. He's so focused on making the subject seem real that he goes way overboard. Did I really want to know that Mr A smokes Benson & Hedges? Seriously, no!

It's true, as the blurb says, that "America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies." How a writer can make that boring is a mystery to me, but this one did.

This book, which I came to via a TV documentary I watched recently, had some really interesting bits, but most of it is now out of date and the bulk of it is boring. Overall it was a tedious listen. I found myself skipping tracks more and more, and then I skipped the entire rest of the book. I can't recommend it.

Year of the Monsoon by Caren J Werlinger

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
"She looked at Leisa with a hunger that make Leisa’s insides tingle." - wrong verb tense.

When I began reading this one, I was truly favorably disposed towards it, but the author very successfully managed to turn me off pretty quickly. I made it to about forty percent and had to give up for a variety of reasons. The first of these was that this was yet another LGBTQIA novel which was claustrophobic in its obsessive lock-down. It felt like it was a queers only zone, with no heteros allowed! That's not strictly true, but it certainly felt like it was the spirit of the thing. I find this reprehensible in and era when hetero stories, both in print and on the screen are opening their arms (for better or for worse at times, I admit) to the queer community, it seems like a huge backward, bigoted and negative step to me to depict this as totally closed-off from hetero community. It's also totally unrealistic, since neither of those groups operates in a vacuum.

That wasn't even the biggest problem. For me the most obnoxious one of all was that the author was obsessed with larding her story with a massive volume of mini-flashbacks woven invisibly into the fabric of the novel. I detest flashbacks at the best of times and rarely find them readable, much less enjoyable. The fact that these were hidden in the text made it often impossible to know I was reading a flashback. The same symbol which was used to indicate a change of scene on the book was the one used to indicate a flashback, so you were in it and trying to figure out whether this was just a change of scene or a flashback and of course, missing the story because of this. It felt ham-fisted to me, and I can't help but believe that a more skilled author would have done a better job.

The story itself was where the other major problem lay. The big theme here was adoption, and rather than focus on one aspect of the theme, the author slammed in three adoption stories intertwined, which was frankly, a huge mess and which dissipated the impact of any one of the stories from the sheer volume. It detracted from the power of the tale, weakening it to the point where it was no longer interesting. It was also a bunch of trope: the adopted girl just has to know her birth mother! At first I thought the author was going to be smart enough to avoid this pitfall and make this more original by not having this character chasing after her bio-mom, but that soon changed and so did my commitment to pursuing the story for this and other reasons.

Talking of realism, my last problem with this is that we're presented with two women, only one of whom is really interesting, but who clearly love each other, yet who seem unable to talk about anything with each other! We're really offered no valid reason why they can't talk or why they're apparently drifting apart. One has a secret which the other discovers through the rather amateur and disturbing ploy of stalking her partner, and which put me off her as a character.

At one point I read, "She had been a beautiful woman." I don't get why female authors do this to their female characters. Yes, if this had been a novel about some female movie star or some fashion model, perhaps one who felt her looks were diminishing with age and consequently her 'career' - shallow as it was - was slipping away, then her looks might have played a part in the story, and a line like that might have had a place, but in this case none of this applied, so why does the ugly idea that once she had been beautiful have to do with anything? Would the attendant sentiment have been completely inapplicable if she had been "ordinary" or "plain" or "ugly"? The shallow mentality involved in writing like this is quite frankly disgusting: that a women's worth is skin-deep only? Screw you. I'm tired of reading crap like that and in particular, women who write like that ought to be especially ashamed of their writing.

I was already off the other one, so my passion for following this relationship was gone at that point. It seemed like whenever one of them was about to launch into a topic with the other, a death popped up in the family and then there was, unbelievably, simply no time at all to broach the topic which had been right on their lips just a moment before. This felt so amateur it was pathetic, but worse, it told me that these women were morons. So grandmother died. It's horrible, but did one of them have to get on a plane within a half hour and set off alone so that the important topic in a troubled relationship couldn't be dealt with? NO! Their behavior made no sense, and it robbed the story of both immediacy or authenticity for me.

Overall the story was less of a coherent narrative than it was a series of vignettes densely punctuated by a staccato blitz of flashbacks which contributed little in the grand scheme of things. The bottom line is 'THE END' - no, I'm just kidding. The bottom line is that it didn't work and was annoying. As I said, I simply gave up on it around forty percent, but this story had given up on entertaining the reader long before that. I can't recommend it.