Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds by Darren Shan

Rating: WARTY!

I found the idea of this novel interesting because it was similar to an idea I'd had for a novel of my own and I was curious as to whether I'd have to ditch my own idea or whether I could still go ahead with it down the road. You can't copyright an idea of course, only a finished work, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to publish a novel that turned out to be quite similar to one someone else had already published. I wish the writers of YA trilogies would learn that lesson instead of endlessly trying to clone books like The Hunger Games, but I'm not that lucky!

Anyway, I decided to read this and see what's what. I didn't get very far. It's first person to begin with which is so unrealistic that it turned me off this novel, and the writing in general was not to my taste. It seemed rather amateur and Darren Shan, actually an Irish author by the name of Darren O'Shaughnessy, uses a lot of British expressions which may not be well understood by American readers. Plus the main character's age is difficult to guess. The book description claims he's young, but he seems to think and behave well beyond his years - more like, say, an author in this late forties?!

One day this "kid" is ditching school because he's depressed about his dead bother, and he sees a girl disappear into some paving stones on a bridge over the Thames in London. He finds that he can magically use the same escape route, so he ditches not only school, but his life and follows her down the rabbit hole so to speak. Archibald in Wonderland. Up until this point it had been quite interesting, if a little simplistic and maudlin, but from that time onward, it went downhill. Rather than find a magical or engrossing world, we found only boring tunnels and eventually an angry girl, who pulls a knife on the kid. His non-reaction to that is ridiculously not credible given what he's done so far. It's like we're dealing with a different boy altogether.

The author writes at this point, "I don't yelp or flinch, but I fall perfectly still," - given that the two people are elevated from the ground at this point, the choice to use 'fall' in place of 'become' or something like that, is a poor one! It's also silly given that this is in first person, and it makes no sense given that this is after this "kid" has voluntarily chosen to follow the girl down into the tunnels, has kept going into complete darkness despite not knowing if he'll ever get out, or if the tunnel will narrow down and trap or even strangle him. He's eventually tracked her down, and now he's terrified into paralysis? It made no sense, whatsoever. It was absurd given it was first person voice, and this is where I decided to ditch it at somewhat under 20% in. I can't commend this as a worthy read. Mine will be a better story! Trust me!

The Dragon Lady by Angelique S Anderson

Rating: WARTY!

This is supposedly a steampunk story, but quite literally the only steampunk element in it was goggles, and there was no reason whatsoever for main character Wylie to even wear them, let alone own them, since she did nothing with her life but muck-out stables for Lord Adrian.

He has zero appreciation for her as a person at all, despite purportedly being in love with her, and he supposedly harbors this love despite his knowing nothing about her or even spending any significant time with her - and despite being engaged to be married very soon to Lady Judith, Wylie's purported best friend. This tells me he's a spineless little weasel. Root for him and Wylie I cannot.

This for me was the biggest problem with this story. Even the ordinary affairs of life - like friendship and love, were of the most flimsy and shallow variety - the worst I've read in a long time. These are typical hallmarks of most YA stories, but they seemed a lot worse than usual in this case.

Another problem for me was that I suspected the author was not British because she used Americanisms where British cuss words or phrases ought to have appeared, and so I read a little about her and discovered I was right. At one point she writes, "Dad blammit it all, Wylie" which is not an English phrase. It's actually not even correct - there's an 'M' too many. Another one was "I'll be gol' darned" which again isn't an English phrase. Perhaps US readers will not notice this or not care, but it stands out like a sore thumb to English readers and spoils the authenticity.

On that score, the main two relationships were inauthentic too. Lady Judith is supposedly Wylie's best friend, but there's nothing shown to support this or to indicate how it even happened, and the two don't behave like best friends. Lady Judith is spoiled rotten and Wylie is living in a near-slum in poverty. Wouldn't Lady Judith have done something about this if she were friends - not even best friends, but just friendly with Wylie? Lord Adrian supposedly loves Wylie, but he does nothing about it either. Wylie has to walk miles to visit his stables each day to muck-out his horses and he's apparently fine with this. That's hardly the approach of someone who loves her.

The story is of Wyle learning that she's a special snowflake, inheriting the 'good dragon' device, which allows her to transmute into a white dragon and fly around doing good deeds. She will have to battle the evil dragon, because of course there always has to be a balance! Who the hell came up with that trope? I know it goes way back in religious fiction, but that doesn't mean we have to perpetuate it in modern fiction. But this novel follows it faithfully. My guess is that Lady Judith is the evil dragon, but I have no idea since I quit this novel at 60% in. It's a very short novel at 160 pages, but not short enough for me to want to read on. It is undoubtedly the start of a series, which I shall not follow.

The author says she hired a book editor on her first novel but was displeased and went into self-publishing. Good for her. Self-publishing brings its own trials and tribulations though, and some of them I list here. I read at one point, "Afar off, the lowing of cattle as they milled about frantically, afraid for their lives." That was the whole sentence, but it's not well formed, is it? And cattle lowing suggests calm. If they were panicked, something ought to have indicated it - like 'panicked lowing' or something to differentiate it from their ordinary noises.

There were other examples of sentences that seemed to have been changed from the original wording, but not quite changed enough, such as this one: "Judith tried her best comforted her when Nicolas Petford passed away." Another read: "Wylie stopped flying mid-hair" I think that should be mid-air, but I have to ask, where else would one stop flying?!

There was one issue regarding the passage of time which was not well thought out. I read, "The sun was once more beginning to set, just as Wylie was arriving." So she gets to the stable, and she spends some time bringing in the horse's feed, distributing it, and brushing one of them down, and then we read: "The day was rapidly turning to night." I have to say that this is one hell of a long sunset!

Of themselves, these were not story-killers for me. If the story had been entertaining enough I could easily have overlooked a few errors like that. These didn't help, but the real problem was that the story seemed so juvenile to me. Maybe there's an audience for this sort of story. For the author's sake I hope there is, but that audience doesn't include me, especially not for a series. I couldn't get with the shallow romance, or the likewise friendship, or the simplicity of the story-telling. I needed more, so while I wish this author all the best in her career, I will not be following it. I can't commend this one as a worthy read.

Dream of Me by Quinn Loftis

Rating: WARTY!

There were serious problems with this book. Naturally it's YA, and so naturally it has problems - like this is a: hot young special snowflake of a girl whose parents are not in the picture, but a much older less than savory guy is in the picture kind of a YA story.

Most YA books have problems - though thankfully not all. The biggest problem with this one was the antique Sandman, called Brudair in this novel, or Dair for short, and the eighteen-year-old he stalks, who is named Serenity. And yes, the author can joke about it and call it what she likes, but he is a stalker who spies on her in her bedroom, lusts after her, goes into shallow raptures over her beauty, talks to himself about 'making her his', and he is literally centuries old. It makes zero sense that he would be attracted to a teenager for anything other than pure carnal lust, because he really doesn't know her at all. It makes as much sense as a forty-year-old guy falling for a toddler.

His job is supposed to be bringing life-changing and guiding dreams to people on behalf of 'the creator' so yes, this is religious fiction, but it makes little sense the way it's told. It's like Serenity has no choice in how she lives her life. She wants to get out of this Podunk town and live a real life somewhere else, "But destiny has other plans, and it's the Sandman's job to make sure those plans are fulfilled."

In other words, she's screwed. She has no free will. She's being controlled by a much older guy - the "tall muscular Sandman." - like he isn't already threatening enough, dressed in black as he is and "wrapped in shadows." The unanswered question is, if the Sandman was "never meant to have a mate" how come he has such lusts? And for someone so young? How come he didn't plant these ambitions in Serenity when she was much younger? Because then it would be an even sicker story than it already is

The writing is a bit limp, not awfully bad, but hardly great. I read at one point, "Serenity had not come to the decision to leave easily," which really ought to be "Serenity had not come easily to the decision to leave," but things like this are quibbles that are easily ignored if the story is worth reading. This one isn't and I ditched it at maybe 10% in, and moved on to something much more worthy of my time. I can't commend this kind of writing as a worthy read.

One Summer Up North by John Owens

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a short and text-free story of the author's trip into the wilderness of the Boundary Waters area on the US-Canada border in Minnesota on the US side. Maybe now isn't the best time to release this given the Coronavirus lockdowns, but better early than never, right?

This review was embargoed until August 15th, and this is a day early, but since there have been reviews published on that execrable Goodreads indie-killer review aggregating site - the one owned by Amazon - since May this year I don't feel guilty cheating by 24 hours, especially since I'm going to be busy tomorrow. The story is very simple and tells in pure pictures about the arrival, the canoeing, the camping, and so on.

I have to say up front that this kind of thing isn't my cup of tea, so while I thought it might be interesting, what I was really looking for here was the artwork and how appealing the story made this trip appear. I know that for the author, it had to have been special, and wonderful and entrancing, otherwise why write a book about it? The problem is that for me, it never came across as that. I never felt any desire to go there, not during reading, nor after I'd read this.

When I sat and thought about it afterwards, it occurred to me that there were two reasons for that. The first was that nature was missing! I mean, yeah, it was there, but only in part. It seemed like a painted backdrop to the author's story rather than the author's story, and there were undoubtedly things that were missing, such black flies, mosquitos, ticks, horseflies, deer flies...and bears. Oh my! The wildlife shown was the cute and cuddly kind, nothing else. You know full-well there are biting flies up there unless you go very early (before May, when the weather might be the problem) or late in the season (again, weather!), but according to this telling, there were none. I don't buy it!

Obviously there's more to a vacation than the problems - there are also the joys, but this seemed dishonestly all joy and no penalty. That would be nice - thinking you could lie there and contemplate your navel, or the sky, or the babbling brook or rustling trees, or whatever, without any irritations - meditating pleasantly on the natural world, but it's not really like that, especially not if you have to keep packing up your camp site to move to the next one, and setting up and starting fires and maintaining fires and putting out fires and on and on. I guess it depends upon what trips your trigger - or in this case triggers your trips, but for me the appeal was missing.

The second problem I had was the artwork itself. It really didn't do anything for the location. It was flat and bland and for the longest time I could not figure out what the water lilies were. At first I thought they were maybe logs - that some logging was going on and these were the logs floating down the river, but that seemed a bit off. It took me a couple of pages and then a backtrack to realize they were water lilies! The perspective seemed all wrong in that first picture. The rest of the art was equally uninspiring.

I wish the author all the best in his career, but based on my reaction to this as it stands, I can't commend it as a worthy read.

vN by Madeline Ashby

Rating: WARTY!

Subtitled "The First Machine Dynasty" this book proved to be part of a series, which I didn't fully realize to begin with since there's nothing on the cover saying "WARNING: This is the first book in a series!" BEWARE!" The 'vN' is from (John) von Neumann, a Hungarian mathematician, and relates to the self-replicating robots which are the main characters in the novel. The two most important of these are Amy and Javier, both of whom are on the run. Javier is pregnant, which begs the unanswered question as to why there are genders with the robots and given that there are, why the males are having the babies. Apparently both genders can have babies, but no females do - at least in what I read, which was about fourth-fifths of this, before I gave up out of lack of interest and frustration with the story not making a whole lot of sense.

The robots are much more organic than we typically envision them, being able to consume plastics and use the materials to grow and when they have an abundance of this 'food' they can create a new, but smaller version of themselves in a sort of parthenogenesis. Amy is infamous for eating her own grandmother, but rather than make her pregnant, all this did was to incorporate her grandmother into Amy's psyche and not to any positive effect, so Amy effectively becomes schizophrenic. How this worked was never explained. Neither was it explained why she didnlt become pregnant from it.

A lot of stuff isn't explained, Amy has a human father but exactly how he was her father isn't gone into. There are areas like this just as there are areas in the text which lack a little something. At one point Javier is tickling Amy and she asks, "Can you try the back of my knee? My dad is ticklish there." But just a couple of lines later Javier is saying, "I can't really get the bottom of your feet if you're standing on 'em, can I?" - it's like the author forgot which part of her he was supposed to be tickling. Later I read "...Is she" followed on the next line by "No it's not that." which means there was zero punctuation at the end of that first time. I don't know of it was meant as an interruption - in which case there ought to have been ellipsis or a dash or something - or if the author simply forgot to add a question mark.

Those were very minor issues, but they didn't help when I was already disliking the novel for its rambling and disjointed approach to story-telling, and its lack of any explanations for how things worked or why they worked that way. It was like the author simply wanted to gloss over this stuff, and have us buy into this world without even offering a pretence of it making any sense, and it rendered the world incomplete and lacking authenticity as well as leaving problematic holes everywhere. I can't commend a book that's had so little attention given to its anatomy as this one has.

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Rating: WARTY!

In which my sorry attempt to embrace the classics continues rather unsuccessfully.

This was published in 1851 and was based in small part on a real house of seven gables where lived Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll. The story supposedly has some supernatural and witchery elements to it, but I never made it that far. The novel has its moments and offers some sweet turns of phrase here and there (or should I say hither and thither?), but for the most part it was tediously rambling and just when I thought it might get interesting, when a new broom in the form of the main character's younger cousin showed up, it almost immediately went back to rambling on and on, and it bored the pants off me. I never did find out what happened to those pants.

A somewhat old maid, Hepzibah Pyncheon lives in the house and decides to open a little store in one part of the building, but she really has no idea how to go about it. Her cousin Phoebe shows up unexpectedly from out of town, and starts turning things around in the store while falling for another cousin named Clifford. The rather sleazy Judge Pyncheon sticks his nose in where it's unwanted, and that's about it for the first portion of the book. It wasn't holding my attention at all, and so based on what I read I cannot commend it.

The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first of a series all of which I've read. Anyone who follows this blog (and I know there's one of you!) will know that I am down on series as opposed to down with series. They're almost universally disappointing, unimaginative, and downright boring, but once in a while one comes along that is different and has originality, and engages me throughout. This was one of those rarities. There are problems with it, but I enjoyed it despite those because it does have some interesting stories to tell and Michael Scott, for the most part, tells them well.

Sadly, he doesn't know what an archaeologist is, which is a problem since he likes to remind us that that the parents of the main two Characters, Sophie and Josh Newman, are archaeologists, when in fact they are paleontologists. Archaeologist don't go digging up fossils, which is what the parents do (so we're told in this novel). Paleontologists do that (among other things!).

The subtitle of the novel is "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel," which has led some people to believe this novel is about him, but it's not. He's in it, but as the subtitle makes quite clear, it's about his secrets, not so much about him. So if you first learned of his name in Harry Potter, first of all, shame on you, and secondly, no, Michael Scott isn't Jo Rowling and this isn't Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Don't expect it and you won't be disappointed. Besides, you're older now, and you should be demanding something more sophisticated! This book goes beyond that, into gods and goddesses from across the world, and as well as famous characters form history such as Flamel and Shakespeare, nearly all of whom seem to come from the same sort of historical era for some reason! There are osme form other time periods and not all of them make much sense, but this is fiction, remember?!

The basis of the novel is founded upon two things: a dangerous codex (note that it has to be a codex or a scroll - 'book' just doesn't have the oomph!) and twins with secret powers. Yes, Sophie and Josh are fraternal twins - why fraternal and not sororal? Pure genderism! But their twin-ness means they are important to the powers that be.

The main antagonist is John Dee, a charlatan and a scholar from the English Elizabethan era. This is a tired trope, but it's not too bad here. On Josh and Sophie's side is Nicholas Flamel, a seven hundred-year old Frenchman. He has charge of the codex, which can be used to end the world. Why he has not completely destroyed this book goes entirely unexplained. This kind of thing constitutes a huge weakness in this sort of a story. It's like Dr Strange hanging on to the time stone and claiming it's critical, but quite literally doing nothing with it (not after the first movie), and refusing to destroy it despite it being the thing which allows Thanos to destroy half the universe's living things (a flawed plan but let's not get into that). Of course, if this codex were destroyed, then the series would never have got off the ground, so that's really a poor position for a writer to put himself in.

Some might argue that Flamel needs the codex because he uses it to make gold from base metals, and to create a potion for himself and his wife Perenelle, which is what grants them immortality, but then you're arguing that after seven hundred years, he still hasn't memorized these 'recipes' - things he does once a month? For seven hundred years? You're arguing that he has never once thought of simply tearing out just those two pages, or copying them, and destroying the rest of the book?? This tells me that Flamel is a moron and every bit as evil as Dee is supposed to be.

The story begins with Sophie and Josh working for the summer in San Francisco, staying with their antiquated aunt, and working summer jobs down town while their "archaeologist" parents are off on a dig. Sophie works at a coffee shop which happens to be directly across the street from where her brother works - in a book store. Everything is fine until one day John Dee turns up with a couple of golems in tow, having finally tracked Flamel down (his mistake was to keep opening bookstores and using names like Nick Fleming!). Now Dee is demanding the codex. He gets his wish, but as Nick, Sophie, and Josh escape, Josh realizes that he has the last two pages of the codex, without which Dee cannot complete his sorcery. Really? But the chase is on!

Dee manages to capture Perenelle, and the other three resort to a friend of Nick's named Scathaich, a warrior woman who teaches martial arts. She's kick-ass, but she's in the story - and the series - far too little for my taste. The story pursues Dee and the codex and is very entertaining if you don't take it too seriously. I commend it.

The Magician by Michael Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

This is volume two of the series. In volume one, the two young heroes of the story, twins Josh and Sophie, traveled to France and met the aged Nicholas Flamel and his wife Perenelle (who was imprisoned by the bad guys in volume one and spends this entire volume on Alcatraz). This volume continues from there and in it, delving quite deeply into Norse mythology. Sophie begins to learn the use of fire magic, and Josh seems to have no magical powers at all, which affects her character throughout the volume.

Why the one has power - and that particular power - and the other none isn't really explained - not that I recall, but it's been a while since I read this so my recollection may be faulty. Josh does get a nifty stone sword later -which has its own power - and the gift of military knowledge. You can call 'sexism' on the girl getting the magic and the boy the martial gifts if you like, and you can certainly call out Josh for being a little whiny bitch in this volume. There are ways to make him consider going over to the other side without making him quite so obnoxious, but I guess the author didn't know that.

There's a lot more action in this volume since all the set-up has been completed in volume 1, and a lot of new characters show up including some Valkyries who have a grudge against Scathaich. I commend this as a worthy read.

The Sorceress by Michael Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

The title refers to Nicholas Flamel's wife Perenelle, who really comes into her own in this volume, which takes place largely in England, except the bits dealing with her escape - finally! - from Alcatraz, which seems not to be a tourist destination in this world. Josh loses his sword, Clarent, which Dee gets and unites it with his own sword, Excalibur, to create a new all-powerful weapon. Flamel and the twins meanwhile hook up with a Saracen named Palamedes which provides some military might.

More new characters are introduced, such as Gilgamesh of Epic fame, and meanwhile Niccolò Machiavelli teams up with Billy the kid of all people. That seems to be a serious mismatch. However, this story was also entertaining, so I commend it.

The Necromancer by Michael Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

Volume four brings Nicholas Flamel, his wife Perenelle, and the twins Sophie, and Josh back to San Francisco where the story of this world of gods and immortals began. It starts off in high spirits as we learn that Josh and Sophie aren't the only twins. Scathaich has one known as Aoife, who kidnaps Sophie, who goes with her mistakenly thinking it's Scathaich. Meanwhile Dee is fleeing the Dark Elders who balme hi for his failure to get the codex in its entirety.

Joan of Arc and Scathaich meanwhile are still stuck in the shadow lands and end up alongside the Comte de Saint-Germain, Palamedes and Shakespeare. The swordless Josh gets his chance at fire magic form the master of it: Prometheus of course. The problem is that he's still somewhat disaffected and falls under the spell of Dee. Again, another adventure-filled and entertaining volume.

The Warlock by Michael Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

This volume brings more characters into the story, most notably from Egyptian mythology, such as Anubis, Aten, Isis, and Osiris, but also Hel, Odin's daughter shows up and is nothing like the character from the Marvel movie.

Josh and Sophie and reunited and a terrible hoard of beasts is unleashed by Dee. Sophie gets yet more magical tuition, and learns the Magic of Earth, and also that all magic is really one thing - there are no branches or divisions. Duhh! Even I knew that! She learns all this from her aunt Agnes, who has been suspiciously quiet about her own magical skills. This felt a bit like a betrayal on the part of the author. I mean, really?!

But once again an entertaining and inventive read which I commend.

The Enchantress by Michael Scott

Rating: WORTHY!

The final book in the series takes off right at the end of volume five, and twins, Sophie and Josh Newman travel back in time to a fabled city of the past where they meet their real parents - so they're told - Isis and Osiris, but you should know by this point that nothing is what it seems in this series. It's a bit like an episode of Mission Impossible where people keep pulling their masks off to reveal that they're really someone else.

Sophie heads off to destroy the ancient city which is required in order for civilization to flourish, and Josh sits on a pyramid, which sounds painful - but which might explain his pissy attitude - and discovers that Clarent and Excalibur are actually part of a quartet, which includes Durendal and Joyeuse. Who knew? There are lots of battles, double-crosses, feints and reveals, and so much talk of silver and gold that I expected Burl Ives to show up singing his Christmas song, but he doesn't.

Overall I consider this entire series to be a worthy read.

Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus

While this was cute and fun it wasn't something an adult can really derive much from except vicariously by reading it to a kid and seeing how they like it. Since it is aimed at kids, then on that basis, I consider it a worthy read. For me as a grown-up, not so much!

This audiobook is of the original story, first published in 1958, and it features Basil the mouse, who lives in the basement of 221B Baker Street where he learned his detecting craft from listening to Sherlock Holmes solve his cases. Starting out as what appears to be a simple case of missing children, things turn all around when an unruly mob trio threaten all resident mice in the Baker Street basement 'village'. Basil takes exception and resolves to cut the case off at the knees before the villains can make good their threat. He and his assistant Dawson don disguises and head north to run down the villains in their lair. They could of course have simply let the villains move in, then called the mouse police on them, but this seems never to have occurred to Basil.

Like I indicated, the story is simple and innocent, and at times amusing, and should delight young children. I consider it a worthy read for them.

Black No More by George S Schuyler

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an audiobook from a novel first published in 1931 by the author, whose name is pronounced 'Skyler'. The novel is sci-fi and has the odd premise that some guy (who is black) invents a process by which people of color can be made to look white. Due to the ill-treatment of such people. There's a flock of them wanting this process, which in turn causes all kinds of unexpected issues down the road.

Max Disher's advances are rejected on New Year's Eve by a racist white woman named Helen. The thing is that Max is racist too - he only wants to date white women, so these two are made for each other. Rather than dismiss her and look for a more friendly prospect, he obsesses on her and when he learns of this 'Black No More' process, he's front of the line volunteering as a test subject, and so he ends up white. He changes his name to Matthew Fisher and moves to Atlanta, where this woman lives. He discovers she's the daughter of a white supremacist who goes by Reverend Harry Givens, head of The Knights of Nordica.

Matthew passes himself off as an anthropologist who supports the reverend's aims and soon is an integral part of the organization, turning it around into a powerful and money-making society. He becomes rich as a result, and marries the unsuspecting Helen. Problems arise when she becomes pregnant though, because although for all intents and purposes Matthew is now white, his offspring will not be. Fortunately for him, Helen miscarries, but shortly becomes pregnant again and his problems begin multiplying.

Matthew quickly discovers his life does not become a bed of roses from being white, although he has the girl of his dreams and is now wealthy. He's even on track for setting-up the next president of the USA, but society around him is falling apart. Black businesses are suffering because most blacks are now turning white and adopting an upscale lifestyle. Neighborhoods are going to hell, and society itself is in trouble.

This book was hilarious, and Schuyler proves himself to be a funny and perceptive writer who really had a surprisingly modern take on things and a good handle on how society works - or fails. I fully commend this book - which is quite short - as an amazing, entertaining, and worthy read.

Love Under Fire by Ellie Spark

Rating: WARTY!

I guess this is the first and last novel by this author I'll be reading. With a name like the author's, I expected much more, rightly or wrongly, but Ell if it Sparked with me. It just was not authentic, and nothing burns me more than reading highly-improbable stuff in a novel that's not even pretending to be a comedy or a satire. This is unapologetic lesbian chick-lit and while that in itself isn't a disaster, I'm honestly not sure who the audience is for this style of writing. I assume there is one, because I've seen a lot of books like this on offer. The few I've read seem to be poorly done for the most part, though.

The book is mercifully short (129pps), but even then I failed to make it to the halfway point. In this world there are no venereal diseases and no one talks about safe sex - and it's all about sex, not about forming a relationship. At least three couples, two lesbians and one hetero are getting it on without knowing shit about their partner's history. Two of them leap into bed the first night they meet and the main characters are not far behind them. Both main characters are whiny about previously failed relationships, yet they still make the same mistakes all over again in this one, failing utterly to pace themselves, take it slowly vet the potential partner with a few dates before foolishly rushing-in where STI-free people dare not to tread. That tells me they're dumb, and short-sighted.

In one case the lesbian couple are so clueless that they desert the dessert in the middle of a cooking class, and sneak off to make out in an adjoining room in a public building. I can't get with that kind of irresponsible and inauthentic writing. These are not teenagers. They're supposed to be mature professional women and that in itself is one of the problems with this kind of a novel...novella...whatever. Have you noticed these books are never about working class people? It's always about well-off, even spoiled individuals who drink wine and buy clothes even when they really don't need to, and eat out a lot? They're always at restaurants; never in pubs.

About the sex! I get that no one wants to read a romance novel wherein people are filling out questionnaires about sexual health prior to getting it on! The thing is though, that there are ways of writing intelligently about such things - assuming you're not a lousy writer - to make these things a natural part of the progression of the relationship.

It does no good to try and argue that these are lesbians, so there are no problematic diseased penises involved because that's not how STIs work, and in any case, a lesbian could be in a relationship with someone who is bi, or who themselves have had a relationship with someone who's bi! It's not about the current relationship; it's about the history and I sure wouldn't trust someone who'd jump into bed on a first date. It makes one wonder how many other people they've been so casual with and what their sexual histories are. Maybe that's just me, but somehow I doubt that. OTOH, maybe this isn't chick lit, but pure fantasy? Either way it fails.

According to a study on the National Institutes of Health website, "Viral STD rates were significantly higher among bisexual women" (than in the lesbian community itself) and lesbians can transmit STIs just as easily as hetero couples. Like I said, no one wants to a romance to be larded with that, but how romantic is HPV or syphilis pray tell? Tossing in a mention here and there of safe practices isn't going to harm, and it lends verisimilitude to relationships. The author has them ask, "Is this okay" even when simply holding hands and later when kissing, but no questions at all are asked when having sex? That's just plain weird.

The writing in general was pretty much boilerplate, so there was nothing truly bad, but neither was there anything inspiring or engaging. Perfunctory I believe is the word. The only actual error I caught was where I read, “She wondered what Kristin was doing?" There's no question mark required in that sentence, but that's not a story killer. We all goof-up here and there. Writing which doesn't feel real and which in some cases makes the characters look stupid or clueless is, however, a killer, and it killed this story for me.

There's one point where an altercation leads to one of the characters getting in trouble with her employer. One of the other main characters has recorded some of the exchange on her phone, but no one thinks about this until several days later. That just tells me the main characters are stupid. I don't want to read books about stupid women - not unless the story is that she starts out dumb, but quickly wises up. Or maybe where she actually is stupid, but the guys are more stupid and she triumphs! This didn't appear to be such a story hence my abandoning it. Life's too short for stories that don't enthrall. I can't commend this as a worthy read.

Lix and Basta by Brian Rathbone, Mark A Gilchrist

Rating: WARTY!

This was another ill-fated excursion into this author's work. It was illustrated by Mark, a Gilchrist, and is a young children's book written by Rathbone in rhyme. The story is about two dragons in a world where dragon cooperation isn't a thing. One kind likes to hoard stones which contain crystals, the other likes to hoard cows. There's a tradition of raiding each other's stocks and stealing, because if a dragon can't get access to what they need, eventually they'll lose their color and turn gray (gray evidently isn't a color in this world). When they turn gray they turn to stone and that's all she smoked.

The two young eponymous dragons collide while out on a stealing expedition and are whisked away to another word - and that's where this teaser ends. This rendered it an annoying read which didn't seem to be going anywhere interesting. Maybe kids will like it, but for me it was as drab as the color that the failed dragons turn, and while the artwork wasn't bad per se, it wasn't all that either, so I can't commend it, and I guess after two fails in a row, I'm done with this author.

Red Tooth by Brian Rathbone

Rating: WARTY!

This is a short story that I didn't like. It was too ridiculous for my taste.

Bob Hanks is a traditionalist, who hates to get rid of a piece of technology if it works and does the job he needs it to do. That much I can get with, but Bob overdoes it - fixing up his antique Bluetooth device with duct tape rather than get a new one. He's had it for so long that it's been replaced by 'greentooth'. I'm not sure the author quite gets what Bluetooth stands for, but maybe he does and doesn't care. Bob's wife has a greentooth and thinks her husband is crazy for not upgrading. She informs him as she leaves the house that morning, that they need to go shopping.

To pre-empt his wife and show her he's not as out of touch as she thinks he is, he resolves to go buy himself some stuff as soon as she's gone, and for inexplicable reasons, he heads for the pawn shop where he's on really good terms with the owner. But the owner isn't there. Instead some other guy is behind the counter and he destroys Bob's Bluetooth and insists he try the latest - redtooth, which bites into Bob's ear and uses his blood to power itself. He insists that it be removed at once, but is informed that's impossible since it's an explosive device that will take off his head if he tries to remove it.

For me that's where I would have ditched this if it were not a short story, but by this point I decided I could finish it without wasting too much time. That was a mistake because it was all downhill into crazy town from there on out. I lost track of who was who and what was what, and the story made no sense, not even within its own idiotic parameters. I thought it was dumb and beyond ridiculous and I rate it warty!

Take us to a better Place Stories by Various Authors

Rating: WARTY!

I think this collection has cured me of ever wanting to read any more short story collections. It's also cured me of ever thinking maybe I should contribute a short story to a collection like this. I know authors see this as a chance to get their work out there, but if your story is toward the back of the collection and the earlier stories just bore the pants off people, then no one is going to continue reading through to your story!

I can say without fear of conniption that never was there a more misnamed collection than this one. Not one of these took me to a better place nor did it seem like anyone in the story had gone to such a place, although to be fair, maybe if I hadn't DNF'd most of them, they might have turned around, had I read to the end. The thing is though, that I just got through DNF-ing this collection and I honestly cannot remember even one of the stories I read. Admittedly I skimmed a few, but even the ones I actually read a substantial portion of, I can't recall. There was one I came close to liking and I can't even remember that one, it made so little impression on me, so I can't pretend this was a worthy read, not by a long shot.

All I can do is list the authors and maybe if you know any of them (I didn't) you might find something of interest here (I didn't!): Madeline Ashby, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Calvin Baker, Frank Bill, Selena Goulding , Yoon Ha Lee, Karen Lord, Mike McClelland, Achy Obejas, David A. Robertson, and Martha Wells. That's all folks! Moving on to something better.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Joy McCullough

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a middle grade novel about two young kids with single parents who happen to be dating and getting serious about each other. I was first attracted by the title, which I thought was amusing, and when I started listening to the audiobook, I was drawn in by the characters. I had some issues with it, but overall I consider it a worthy read for the intended age group.

Sutton is the girl who is intellectual, and interested in science and in particular in programming a little robot to navigate a maze, at which she is experiencing some difficulties. Sutton's mom and dad are separated; her mom is currently in Antarctica studying penguins, and so misses Sutton's tenth birthday.

Luis is biracial and his father is dead. His mom is dating Sutton's dad and the parents are at a point where they decide to bring the kids together for a family-style outing to a museum. Sutton is not impressed. Luis finds her impossible to talk to because she seems uninterested in anything in which he's interested and, resentfully missing her mom, Sutton is uninterested in trying make much conversation. Luis has his own issues to deal with, being allergic to an assortment of items from pollen to peanuts to bee venom, and on and on.

Going on a hike is hardly a charmed idea for their second family get-together then, especially since Luis doesn't seem to have heard of an epipen and neither of them seem to understand that there's a technique to pulling out a bee stinger if you don't want to inject even more venom into the wound.

I think these two kids have been let down by their parents in several ways, but on this hike, it's all on the kids! The two of them decide to follow an alternate route to their parents and end up somewhere out of sight and out of audio range of mom and dad. How exactly that happens is a bit glossed over. Sutton is supposed to be the smart one, Luis the imaginative one who is working on writing his own adventure novel, yet neither one of these kids thinks to retrace their steps to get back to their parents! Instead, they set off on a trek through the woods, which of course bonds them and magically fixes all their issues.

For me this was a bit trite, clichéd and simplistic, but for the intended age group, it will probably do. I felt it could have been better, but for the audience it's aimed at, I consider it a worthy read. I just felt it could have been a lot more educational had the author put in a little effort, but it'll do as is, I guess.

Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle, Jill McElmurry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a nicely illustrated (by McElmurry) little story about helping others. The little blue truck happily travels the dirt roads around the farm saying 'hi!' to the farm animals until one day a big old truck almost runs it off the road in an almighty haste to get somewhere. The problem is that those dirt roads can become swampy after a rainfall, and the big truck gets stuck.

Now it's up to the little truck to help get the big truck moving. The farm animals (even the little frog) can help too. This book was perky and sweet, with rhyming bits here and there, and colorful pictures, and I commend it as a worthy and fun read.

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The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen, Dan Hanna

Rating: WARTY!

This was one of those thick-paged books for very young children and the theme is of the 'turn that frown upside down' variety, which I've never thought was a particularly charmed idea. While forcing yourself to smile does have a positive effect in mood lifting, you can't fix depression by chanting happy rhymes and demanding people cheer up. That's like saying 'find something new' will fix the economy.

This book seemed like it was too ready to claim 'Mission Accomplished' when the mission had barely begun and was ill-conceived to begin with. Plus there was far too much uninvited infringement of personal space so I consider this to be poorly thought-out. It did not help that the fish was being condemned for how it looked. That was a poorly considered idea right there.

The idea is that this fish has a perpetual pout and it's only fixed when the fish has an unfortunate accident and is turned upside down - like this has cured the frowning 'problem'. It just felt wrong from the start and wasn't appropriate in my opinion. I'm not saying that the basic idea was a bad one in itself, but the execution was completely wrong, and I can't commend this as a worthy read - especially not at sixteen bucks for this little thing.

First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg, Judy Love

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a fun book about the first day at school, and it had an amusing twist at the end which I really appreciated. It follows the usual route of not wanting to go, resistance, protest, and eventual acceptance. The illustrations by Love are fun and the writing fine. It's priced about eight bucks. I commend this as a worthy read.

Welcome to Camp Coral by David Lewman, Heather Martinez

Rating: WORTHY!

This is definitely for fans of Spongebob, which I'm really not. I don't dislike the show per se, and I've seen a few episodes, but it's not something I'm interested in. This was well-written by Lewman, and nicely illustrated by Martinez.

This however is the perfect introduction for young fans, casting your mind back to Spongebob's early days when he went to camp and curiously met everyone he would associate with in later life, including Patrick Star, Sandy Cheeks, Plankton, Squidward Tentacles, Mr Krabs and even Gary the Snail. It was a fun tale for youngsters being just like they are: small format and short, and I commend it as a worthy read. It's not even that expensive to buy at about five bucks.

Welcome to the Party by Gabrielle Union, Ashley Evans

Rating: WARTY!

Yes, it's that Gabrielle Union and while I do not dislike her and I do feel bad for what she evidently went through on the America's Got Talent set (a show I do not watch), you would think an experience involving racism like that would sensitize her to exclusionary practices, yet here we have a book that ain't cheap (almost twenty dollars a pop) about welcoming a new child into the world, which could be taken to suggest that white folk don't welcome children of color, since there's not a white person to be found between these covers.

That's just as racist as whatever it was she experienced on AGT. You can't on the one hand complain about racism in Hollywood and then practice it in a book you're responsible for.

You know what's good for the goose is worth taking a gander, and to complain about racist behavior on the one hand and indulge in it with the other isn't something I can support. Union didn't do the drawings; they were done by Evans, an artist of color, so to speak, so the drawings are on her, but I can't believe that Union didn't take a gander at what Evans was drawing; she had to approve these. I don't approve this.

The Serious Goose by Jimmy Kimmel

Rating: WORTHY!

Yes, it's that Jimmy Kimmel. And this isn't too bad of an effort. There's no educational content in it, but I think the book is fun and would be entertaining. The drawings - mostly back and white line drawings with some color - aren't bad at all.

The idea is that this goose is way serious and won't even hint at a smile. After a few pages there's a mirror included on the page for your kid to practice making faces aimed at cracking up the goose. Will it work? I think you know the foregone conclusion, although it's in hardback version and it ain't exactly cheap, but at around $9 as of this review, it's not too bad either. A used version would be cheaper still, and I commend this as an amusing read.

These Feathered Flames by Alexandra Overy

Rating: WORTHY!

This appears to be the first volume of a series (technically a dilogy, as I discovered later), but I did not know this until I'd finished reading it and it ended on a sort of a cliffhanger. With very few exceptions, I'm not a fan of series since the first volume can only ever be a prologue, and I don't read prologues. Additionally, the other volumes are essentially repeating the same story over and over with a few minor variations. They're boring to me. I respect authors more who bring out new single volumes about different people having different adventures.

That said, this one turned out to be not bad at all. It reminded me in some small ways of my own Femarine, and it kept me engaged. Although there were parts of it that left me yawning a little, for the most part it moved and kept me moving with it. There was a hint here and there of romance, but it was not overdone, and I appreciated that. I found the idea of twin sisters, both fated to have different, but critical futures, quite engaging and the fresh take on the legend of the Firebird proved to be a really good one.

Let me deal with the elephant in the room first: Kindle! It's no revelation to anyone who reads my reviews that I am not a fan at all of Amazon and refuse to publish my books on that platform. I don't like them for a variety of reason, not least of which is the fact that they routinely turn their ebooks into Kindling. The Kindle conversion process will slice and dice anything that's not pretty much plain vanilla text, and even then it's sometimes touch and go as to whether a given book will make it through the process unscathed. This one did not, although it got off lightly.

One oddball thing I noticed, which I've seen before in Kindled books, was that everywhere the letters F and L appeared successively in a word, there was a space between them, so I read, for example, "Asya's hands tightened ref_lexively," and I also read, "warped ref_lections, with points where their images converged." The underscore I've added for clarity indicates where there was a space in the text and it occurred frequently throughout the novel in an assortment of words containing 'fl'. Why Kindle does this I do not know, but I've seen this same thing before in more than one ebook prior to this. Other than that, the text was fine except for the occasional intrusion of the page header into the text itself, such as when I read this about halfway down the screen:

An echoing screech that rattled down to Izaveta's bones.
THESE FEATHERED FLAMES 199
She looked up just in time to see the creature

But these intrusions were quite rare. (I did love that title - just not in the middle of my reading!). This is one reason why I never put page headers in my own novels. Another reason is that I see no point to it, but that's just me!

There was the occasional problem with grammar. We've all been there! The few I noticed were these:
"His gaze were unusually focused when he spoke." Which should read, 'his gaze was', or 'his eyes were'. A common one I've seen in YA books is the confusion of stanch with staunch. I read, "digging the fabric of her shirt into the cut to staunch the blood," which is wrong. The word is 'stanch'. Staunch means something else entirely. This issue was curious because this author with the amazing name of Alexandra Overy, uses the past participle of 'tread' perfectly, where other authors often get that wrong, using 'treaded' instead of 'trod'. At another point I read, "Asya gritted her jaw," but you can't grit your jaw. You can grit your teeth. Gritting teeth means to press or clench teeth together. You cannot therefore grit your jaw. Another curious instance was "trying to grasp on to her fracturing facade of confidence." 'Grasp on' felt wrong. 'Hold on' would have been better, or 'cling to'. I think the author was confusing grasp with grab, but grab wouldn't work there either.

Aside from that, the writing was fine and well done, which I appreciated. There was one oddity which I freely admit is a pet peeve of mine, and which use (or misuse!) seems to be coming more and more common. This is where someone uses a title but instead of saying I am 'so-and-so' they say 'my name is 'so-and-so'. For example, I read in this novel, "My name is Ambassador Täusch." But it really isn't, unless his first name does actually happen to be 'Ambassador'! What he ought to have said was "I'm Ambassador Täusch," but that said, people often misspeak, so maybe this squeaks by as an example of that!

The other issue connected with this was people referring to the queen incorrectly. If Täusch was truly an ambassador, then he really should know that you don't address a queen or a princess as "My lady." The correct approach is to address her initially as 'Your Majesty' and then subsequently use 'Ma'am'. This is British protocol, and both I and the author are British-born ex-pats as it happens. This novel is set in a Russian fantasy land, yet even there, 'Your Majesty' was used (or whatever the Russian equivalent was) when there used to be a queen. 'Your highness' is no longer used in Britain, but it was employed in Russia in imperial times. Not that I have any respect for the hereditary privilege of royalty or wealth, but for the sake of a story I'd use it.

In that regard, and purely from the perspective of story-telling, I found it inexcusable how disrespectful people were to the queen in this novel, and how little reaction she had to this. I know she was a teen and new to the throne, but everyone spoke to her not like she was the queen, but like she was this little girl. it was not only the queen who failed to react to this: no one else ever corrected people or took umbrage at this lack of deference! If felt wrong, and often jarred me out of my suspension of disbelief. Even Castelle, my young queen from Femarine who - the story makes clear - is shamefully lax in matters of propriety and protocol, was moved to comment on such laxity on occasion. Like I said, in real life I don't care about that nonsense, but in a novel like this I would expect someone to call out a person who wasn't respectful to a monarch. This was a relatively minor irritant, so I was willing to let it go for the sake of a good story though.

Now about that! I know it's taken a while to get here, but I'm nothing if not thorough in my reviews! So this story is of twins of royal blood in a fantasy world based on historical Russia. One of the twins, by tradition, is destined to become the Firebird - exacting a toll for the use of magic when said magic is enacted without paying a price (and they don't take American Express!); the other twin is destined to become the queen, succeeding their mother.

In Britain there used to be an exam called the 'eleven plus', which determined if a child went to a vocational school or to what used to be called a grammar school which was intended for the more academically-inclined. The system was not fair because it judged children and determined a future for them at far too early an age, so it was scrapped many years ago, but it seems the author has adopted this scheme for the twins, who at around that age - ten, eleven - were judged magically, in a ceremony which determined where they would end-up. It turned out that Asya would be the Firebird, and Izaveta the princess. They were separated and Asya sent to live with the queen's sister, who had become the Firebird a generation or more before.

When the queen dies unexpectedly early from a 'fever' Asya returns to the palace where her sister is in process of becoming queen. The two no longer know how to behave in each other's company because it's been so long, and they have both changed so much, and neither is properly ready to wield the power they have come into. The story is of their relationship, which I found intriguing, and of each's relationship to the queendom and the future. There are threats to their positions, both of them, because they are so young, and they neither of them know fully who they can trust - not even each other. I found the politics to be engrossing and entertaining - if on occasion annoying. There were times when the sisters acted foolishly, but they were also very young and inexperienced, so I was willing to let that side.

There were times when, if they'd only talked to each other and been honest, they could have averted a lot of the issues they faced. This is a common problem in YA stories, but it wasn't so bad here and again, the girls were young, so this could be explained away. Overall I loved how they interacted and grew into their roles, especially the firebird. I felt this was an amazing and inventive take on a myth, and done very well for the most part, and I commend this as a worthy read. That said I don't have any real interest in pursuing this story any further, because like I said, I'm not a fan of series - even if it's only two volumes, and I'm just not intrigued enough to read on. Your mileage may differ. I hope it does. because it's nice to find a series that really grips. I just don't find that very often.

Making Space by Thich Nhat Hanh

Rating: WARTY!

Having listened to - and quite enjoyed Happiness by this same author, I was very disappointed in this book. It's essentially about making some sort of space or setting aside some corner in your home where you can take time out to meditate or contemplate - a quiet zone, a refuge, or whatever. That's really all there is too it but the book is sort of fluffed up with some other stuff, a good portion of which I skipped because it was so boring and repetitive.

While I understand that positive thinking can indeed improve your outlook and your health to at least a small extent, and can even improve your performance at tasks, this idea that you can change the world with it isn't so valid in my opinion. While a good attitude toward other people can improve relationships, the act of simply wishing well of everyone and wishing them good health and so on isn't going to change the world! if that were possible, it would have already happened. I read an estimate online that somewhere between 200 million and 500 million people meditate worldwide, including some 20 million in the US. Wasn't it the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who claimed that if 1% of the world meditated it would change the world? That 1% would be just 70 million, so despite having at least three times that many, nothing has changed! In fact, this year it got worse! QED!

It's true to say that meditation can make people feel more compassionate, but it does nothing overall to reduce violence, prejudice, poor social connection, or anything else like that, save maybe giving the practitioners themselves a little peace of mind and perhaps slightly better health. At best it's a selfish pursuit. There's nothing wrong with guarding one's health and adopting a positive outlook, but let's not pretend there's more to it than that.

The same applies to this very short book. If you want a quiet space in your home, then by all means create one. You're in a pretyt poor state if you need a guide to help you do that! Failing the physical space, create one in your own mind where you can isolate yourself at least mentally, and at least for a short while, to center yourself and calm yourself. There's nothing wrong with that and it can offer benefits, but that said, and unlike the other audiobook I read by this author, I do not think this particular book was a worthy read for how little it offered, and so I cannot commend it.

Happiness by Thich Nhat Hanh

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first of two audiobooks by this author I shall be reviewing. I believe in being centered and calm as much as possible, although there are serious times when I'm tried and stressed over things - and you know, no one seems to care about that. When was the last time you went to a doctor and they asked you about stress in your life? Yet I read online that maybe 75 percent of doctor visits are for problems that can be linked to stress, such as accidents, cancer, heart disease, lung and breathing problems, and suicide. That's why I found this interesting and plan on reading it again. It offers simply ways to be centered and mindful, and to calm one's thoughts.

The books starts out simply and takes the listener step by step through the methods and techniques aimed and removing turmoil from one's mind. The central tenet is to try and live in the moment and not let your mind run away with things that may or may not occur in your future. The book asserts that all of Thich Nhat Hanh's key practices are collected in this one volume, which is quite short, but not criminally so. The useful aim here is to incorporate these practices into your everyday life, so you aren't required to sit in the lotus position and deeply mediate. Instead, you can practice some of these techniques while driving to work, while walking across the parking lot to enter your workplace, or the grocery store, even while waiting in line for the restroom at some busy function!

The author not only discusses what to do, but how to approach what you do with the right attitude to enhance its success. In a world like this one has become this year, when everyone is being tried and tested severely every day, it cannot hurt to find ways to ease our minds, remain calm, and don't sweat it! So I commend this book as a worthy read (or listen, since it was an audiobook!).

The Body in the Thames by Susanna Gregory

Rating: WARTY!

Set in the 1664 London of King Charles the second, not long after the British interregnum which came after Charles first who was defeated by Oliver Cromwell's model army, lost his head and Cromwell took over as Britain's Lord Protector. It didn't last. This is the sixth tome in Gregory's Thomas Chaloner series, and I am, with very few exceptions, not a series fan. This is the first Chaloner and the first Gregory book I have read and I do not plan to be back for more having DNF'd this one about a third the way through. The reason? It was boring!

As is entirely predictable with series, nothing gets done. If it did, it would be a novel and not a series. Therefore everything takes forever and the thought of reading any more of Chaloner's bumbling treacle on a frozen mirror pace as he blindly saunters through a murder investigation, really turned my stomach. The book moves with interminably glacial progress, and Chaloner isn't doing anything except stumbling onto clues by pure accident. He's clueless and useless and spends more time whining about people's attitudes and suffering idle threats from fops than ever he does investigating. It's no wonder his boss is so down on him. I kept wanting to kick his ass to get him to move.

The plot, such as it is, is that there are negotiations going on to try and prevent war between the Nederlanders and the British. In the midst of this, a Dutchman is killed - poisoned and thrown into the Thames. It's Thomas's brother-in-law from his previous marriage, and he left a clue for Thomas embroidered into the top of his stockings. Of course, you can't have him say, "Mr X did it" or "My life is in danger because of item Y!" No - he just leaves three cryptic words in Dutch and Thomas is supposed to figure it all out, which he does a piss-poor job of.

Two of the words are New and Gate, and there was a Newgate prison (it was demolished in 1904 after seven hundred years of service!), but by the time I gave up on this, a third of the way in, he still hadn't got his lard ass to the prison to make enquiries. Yawn. I suspect that was a red heeren as ti happens, and new gate referred to something else, but Thomas is too stupid to ask even one Dutch person whether "nieuwe poort" has any special meaning and I reached a point where I could not care less what it meant. The book is tedious and I'm done with it and with its author.

The Graduate by Charles Webb

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook of the novella that gave rise to the 1967 movie of the same name starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. The novella was published in 1963, and it's very much of its time. The USA was still pretty much stuck in the fifties in the early sixties, but even so, there were problems with the writing, for me, and I would have ditched this with a hour still left to listen to if it had not been for the fact that, having seen the movie, I was curious as to how the book ended and what differences there were, so despite knowing I was going to rate this as warty, I listened to the whole thing. The movie followed the book pretty darned closely from start to finish.

The thing is that this could have been a romance or a romantic comedy, but there's too much evil behavior in it to be either. I have a feeling it might well have been rejected by publishers if it had been submitted today. It didn't even do well back when it was originally published, and it only took off at all after the movie came out.

This is the only book I've read by author Charles Webb, and I'm far from convinced he can write female characters. Elaine is so passive and compliant, and doesn't behave like she has any self-respect, so for me she was written poorly and her whole interaction with Ben was so unrealistic. But I'm getting ahead. The story is of Ben who is a college grad fresh home from school, and he's one of the most morose, petulant, moody and angry characters I've read about.

He was really annoying in his childishness and his control-freak behavior. He was letting opportunities to get on with his life slip by - for example in not taking-up this grant he was awarded for grad school. Neither is he looking for a job. At the same time he seeks to control everything around him despite what others, particularly Elaine, might want. he proves time and time again that he really doesn't care what Elaine wants as long as he gets what he wants.

Ben's parents alternately hound him cruelly and spoil him rotten, so I guess it's hardly surprising that he's turned out the way he has. At one point early in the story, Mrs Robinson, the wife of his dad's law partner, corners Ben in an upstairs bedroom and makes it plain that she's available to him sexually if and whenever he wants her. Ben rejects this at first, but soon starts an affair with her. They meet at night in the swanky Taft Hotel and spend the night together, and they do this often. Mrs R leaves early in the morning to go home to make her husband breakfast! How she gets away with this is a mystery until she explains this to Ben when he prods her about having a conversation instead of just sex.

She tells Ben that she and her husband not only do not share the same bed, they don't even share the same bedroom, and he only pays her any physical attention when he gets drunk. So the affair continues until Mrs R's daughter Elaine comes home for Thanksgiving, and Mr R and Ben's parents insist he take her out to dinner. He doesn't want to and Mrs Robinson forbids it on pain of revealing their affair to everyone, so Ben doesn't want to take her on a date, but does so under this pressure, ignoring Mrs R's ultimatum. He doesn't believe she'll carry out her threat, but clearly he doesn't know Mrs Robinson at all.

I'm actually with Mrs Robinson on this because Ben has hardly shown his character to be stellar. He's having some sort of existential crisis and he's moody and isn't remotely interested in going back to school or finding a job. He always seems to have money though, but where he gets that, I don't know. The issue isn't addressed in the story or the movie for that matter, so I can only assume his parents give it to him, but why they would do that is a mystery given how he treats them.

They whine about his going out so much, and so late at night with no explanation, but if it bothers them that much, then why facilitate it by paying for it? They gave him an Italian sports car as a graduation present, so he's spoiled rotten. Maybe they just can't say 'no'. I can't blame Elaine's mom for not wanting someone like Ben associating with her daughter, though. And why would Ben? He had no interest in Elaine before, so why now? It made zero sense that he'd suddenly obsess on her except that maybe he just wants the thing that people are trying hardest to deny him?

There is a mildly interesting idea I read online that Mrs R didn't want Ben and Elaine to get involved because they both have the same father, which indicates that Elaine's father seduced Ben's mother, but there's nothing in the book to suggest that and it would mean - in an indirect way of course - that she's having sex with her own son. She doesn't seem like the kind of person who would do something like that. She's not shown as being particularly motherly either, so maybe she was just a predator, jealously guarding her prey, Ben, from becoming someone else's catch, but since we never see Ben aiming to date a different girl and get Mrs R's reaction to that, it's hard to be sure what her motivation was. Maybe she was just horny and Ben seemed like an easy mark to her.

She apparently cares little for him; it's just about sex for her, so I don't imagine she much cares about someone stealing her prey, just about him not being fit to marry Elaine. I think if that were the case, she would have simply said that's why she objected to it, but she really doesn't want her daughter traveling the same crappy road though life that she had to follow and she can see that coming a mile away with Ben at the wheel. She sees too much of herself in Ben: someone who is going nowhere, who has a drinking problem, and who could well end-up being at best a neglectful and at worse an abusive husband later in life.

Interestingly, she's never given a first name in the movie: she's always referred to - and addressed even by Ben - as Mrs Robinson, like she's someone else's property rather than her own person. We learn that her initials are G. L. but we never find out what those letters stand for. This may be a conscious choice by the author, but even when Ben wants to have that conversation with her in the Taft, rather than just get down to the sex like they typically do, he never asks her what her first name is.

From this, it would seem that he has no real interest in her either, despite his claimed desire for a conversation. For me Mrs Robinson is without question the most interesting and strongest person in the movie. Ben is a spineless ne'er-do-well and it's hard to imagine that someone like Elaine would be attracted to him, especially after the shabby way he treats her, followed by her learning of his affair with her mom. Their relationship makes no sense except in that they're both as bad as one another in their own bumbling and insecure way.

On the date with Elaine, he tries to ruin things by treating her badly and taking her to seedy clubs, one of which features an exotic dancer. She eventually demands he take her home, but he refuses, and instead pressures her into changing her mind, offering a meek apology, and she goes right along with it. He mentions having an affair and is worried she'd think badly of him for that, but he barely addresses the elephant in the room: of how he treated her thus far that evening!

Despite all of this she lets him dominate her and she agrees to go out for a drive with him the next day. When he comes to pick her up, Mrs R confronts him and Elaine figures out that the affair he had was with her mother. She orders Ben to leave, and refuses to speak to him. So now we're expected to believe that he's in love with Elaine and in the big finale, she's somehow persuaded to return his feelings despite neither of them really knowing each other; despite their having had no contact since high school; despite his controlling behavior, and despite his neurotic demeanor and his poor treatment of her. It doesn't work.

Initially, I found this audio-book amusing, if a bit irritating here and there, but I became rather less enamored of it as I listened to more of it, and especially after that 'date'. Webb also has a truly annoying writing habit, at least in this novella. Apparently all of the main characters are hard of hearing because the sheer number of times the word 'what' is used interrogatively in conversations is phenomenally annoying. It's like every other thing any character says, the person they're talking to says, "What?" like they haven't heard, or they can't believe it, or they don't understand what was said even though it's perfectly plain, and the other character constantly has to repeat what they just said. It's really pervasive and really distracting. And thoroughly irritating.

I found myself coming into agreement with an email friend of mine whose early assessment, based on what I'd told her about Ben and Elaine, was that they deserved each other - and not in a good way. After being in another funk for several weeks post-rejection, Ben abruptly declares to his parents that he's going to marry Elaine, despite him never addressing this topic with her and despite his having been angrily barred from her life a few weeks before - and despite the fact that he barely knows her these days!

So he drives up to Berkley where she's doing her senior year and starts stalking her. He sells his car so he'll have some money to live on and starts hanging around the campus looking for her. He planned on going to her dorm, meeting her and inviting her out to dinner, but he chickened out of that. He tried composing a couple of letters, but got drunk, the letters becoming more and more incoherent as he did, and he fell asleep. Eventually he runs into her in the street and she rejects him again, but he won't take no for an answer.

Later she shows up at his rooming house and he tries talking to her, but she won't talk to him because Mrs R has told Elaine that Benjamin got her drunk and raped her. Elaine won't listen to his denials, and he's such a poor communicator that he fails dismally in explaining his side of the story - and this is the guy who was, we're told, head of the debating club in college! It just doesn't work! Elaine tells him to leave Berkley and leave her alone, but later, she shows up in his room late at night. How she even got in there without a key is a mystery. I guess no one locks any doors in Berkley. Suddenly, she's interested in listening to him. He asks her to marry him and she says she might. She is so easily influenced that she really has no personality of her own, simply going with the flow of whoever is dominating her at the time - her boyfriend Carl, her father, or Ben. Always men, and they dictate her life right to the end of the story.

None of this story makes sense, and it doesn't really offer a fulfilling tale, So, overall, I can't commend it. It has its moments, but in general it's poorly and inauthentically written and it really doesn't give us a realistic story. On reflection, I think the story would have been considerably better had it been about Mrs Robinson instead of Ben, but not if Webb wrote it! I can see no future for Ben and Elaine except one of misery as he controls her life, abuses her, maybe even beats her when he's drunk, and she eventually commits suicide. There's no romance here at all.

The Vampyre by John William Polidori

Rating: WARTY!

Here's another classic, and I have to say right up front that the story of how this novella came to be written is far more interesting than the story itself actually is! I'm not a fan of vampire stories. They're tedious for the most part and with few exceptions, but this is a classic and in my ongoing quest, I decided I should read it. In its favor, it's very short!

The legend is well-known to anyone who has any interest in Mary Shelly, Percy Shelly, or George Byron: it was the wintry cold summer of 1816 which was literally overshadowed by the eruption of Mount Tambora the year before. That volcano spewed out so much ash that, though it reduced the temperature of the planet by only a fraction of a degree, it ruined the crops the next year and caused widespread famine. This is what people don't get about climate change - oh it will only heat up by a degree or two, they think, dismissively. They think it isn't worth worrying about, but it's actually highly significant and dangerously destructive.

So that summer, the two Shellys, plus Byron and his doctor, John Polidori, were staying at a villa close by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Mary was only eighteen. After entertaining themselves one night by reading ghost stories to each other, Byron came up with a challenge that they each write their own. None did! Mary began work on a short story that over the next couple of years expanded into a novel, which was published in 1818 as Frankenstein. Percy didn't write a damned thing. Neither did Polidori at first. Byron began a tale about a vampire, which he abandoned, leaving Polidori to complete it. This is that story - a mere thirty pages or so which didn't materialize as a published work until the year after Shelley's novel.

It's tedious to read. The doctor goes on for screens at a time in a single paragraph making it a chore to read, and the story has no drama, no excitement, and no real ending. There's barely even any vampirism in it! I cannot commend it as a decent read.