The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Rating: WARTY!

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

I really need to quit reading stories where the description has it that this novel is "Story X meets Story Y," where X and Y are well-known novels or movies. Rather than represent the best of the referenced stories they're supposed to mash-up, such books as this always seem to exemplify the worst of them.

Unfortunately this one is in first person which is worst person for the most part. I do not like first person stories because they're far too "me me me." If you get a good author and a decent main character narrating, it can work, but this main character, Delphine, was not a nice person and she was completely unlikeable. It became ever harder to listen to her whiny voice and endless self-absorption which is only one reason why I DNF'd this.

The fact that Delphine smoked didn't help. I have an aversion to characters who smoke, and it seems like a bad idea to have your character be a ballet dancer and smoke. That's not to say that no ballet dancer ever smoked (or had any other bad habits), but I think an author needs to ask questions like: "what are we promoting here?" and "do I really want my readers to detest her?" I'm not sure the author considered those questions in imbuing Delphine with the traits she has, while simultaneously trying to have it that she was who she was.

Quite honestly, I don't really like to watch ballet performances, but I do appreciate the work the dancers do and the sacrifices they make, so maybe that's why I like a good ballet story, or documentary of which I have read and seen many. This one isn't such a story.

On a point of order (or maybe en pointe of order!) let's take that term - dancers - for example. Despite the novel's title, the term 'ballerina' is traditionally one that is reserved, in ballet, for exceptional performers, and the title étoile for a real star. None of the three main characters in this novel, Delphine, Lindsay, and Margaux (who may as well not be in it for all she contributes) is a ballerina much less an étoile. They are danseuses, which admittedly would not make for such an appealing title.

These three dancers are at the Paris Opera Ballet School, although for all that counts in the story, they could be ballet dancers anywhere, really. This never really felt like a French novel, and I was kicked out of suspension of disbelief more than once, for example when at one point the author tells us "There's no real word for creepy in French" (try glauque).

This kind of thing wasn't helped by the body-shaming employed at least at one place (I DNF'd this novel so I can't speak for all of it) when I read, "A ballerina is a perfect woman. Thin. Beautiful. Invisibly strong." I agree with the third item, but thin and beautiful are abusive and were completely unnecessary. Again, this story is in first person, so this was Delphine making this observation, but it spoke badly of her as a person and turned me off her even more than I already was. Yes, there are thin ballet dancers, but how they get that way is a whole other story that's barely touched on here, where all danseuses seem to be cookie-cutter clones of one another with no room for personality or individuality.

There was also a confused section which read "This one looked like it was from the early 19'60s:" where it seems like the author had written '60's and then added the century and forgot to remove the apostrophe. A minute problem, but still one more problem. Maybe that will be fixed in the final copy.

On top of all of this were the endless flashbacks in the story. I'm not a fan of flashbacks, especially not extensive ones, and even more especially not when these diversions didn't really have divisions from the current story - certainly not by chapter - nor were they truly separate as entities since the flashbacks were imbued with the present day perspective, and the present day sometimes had Delphine recalling significant things from the past. It became, at times, hard to remember where we were in time, and this only served to dissolve the story into an ungodly and tiresome mess.

It's one thing to tease a mystery from the past, but when it's teased out over scores of muddled pages of sometimes tedious text, that's just irritating to a reader. I made it through fifty percent of this and we were no nearer at all to getting even an inkling of what this big faux pas was. That's when I gave up, during yet another uninformative story-halting flashback, and I said the hell with it! At that point, I was so frustrated with the story that I really didn't care anymore what happened or who it happened to, or how much it hurt. I'm done with this! It was that bad.

If this novel had been more concise, had focused more on ballet and less on trivial drama, and had told a better story instead of mindlessly meandering and holding up a tease that was probably only going to be a disappointing letdown anyway, I would have been onboard with it, but as it is, I can't commend it as a worthy read. It was time to jeté-son it and move allongé to something more divertissement.

The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. This is the first audiobook I've had from Netgalley and it worked flawlessly in their app, playing through my car audio. I shall definitely look for more audiobooks from them.

This was a multi-performer audiobook featuring Scott Brick, Dion Graham, Johnny Heller, JD Jackson, Steven Anthony Jones, Käthe Mazur, Carol Monda, Paula Parker, Maggi-Meg Reed, and Simon Vance. With the exception of Johnny Heller (who I do not like as a narrator) and Simon Vance, who I know is British, I'd never heard of any of these people, but there wasn't a Scot among them at least as judged from the voices. Most sounded American which for me took away from the entire story.

I know Shakespeare himself probably didn't hire Scots to perform this back in the day, but he did not live in an age of #OwnVoices! Neither was there any real Scots music. Normally I'm not a fan of music in audiobooks - unless the book happens to be about music and the audio contributes positively. Otherwise, I'd rather have just the voices. The music is an irritation, especially here where it contributes nothing and does nothing to add atmosphere.

The real tragedy of Macbeth though, is that this play doesn't remotely represent the actual story of this Scot - Duncan, King of Alba - which is a game of thrones all of itself. Macbeth didn't murder Duncan unless you want to loosely label Duncan's death in battle, fighting Macbeth's forces as murder. Macbeth didn't descend into madness but took the throne after defeating the rather paranoid Duncan in battle and he ruled for almost two decades before being killed in battle himself. His wife is barely mentioned in history and certainly didn't pursue the evil path laid out for her in this misogynistic work of Shakespeare's. But let's side-step that somewhat thorny issue and consider this as a work of art.

When looked at in that light, the main problem is that this is a poorly-written play. Its brevity is the only good thing about it. I know Shakespeare is all-but worshipped, but not by me. I do agree that he came up with a nice turn of phrase here and there, but most of his work is ripped-off from others, and is tedious to listen to, and way too flowery. If we today had never heard of these works, and someone wrote his plays now, exactly as he has written them, they wouldn't have become renowned at all. For the most part they would have died the death if not been laughed out of town, and they would never have been heard of again. What does that tell you? I don't really know why he rose to such heights, but I think Shakespeare is way overblown.

Nonetheless I was interested in listening to this since, while I have attended some Shakespeare plays live, and seen others done as movies, my only experience of this one had been via a comic book story, Toil and Trouble by Mairghread Scott, Kelly Matthews, Nichole Matthews. I reviewed that as a worthy read some two or three years ago. I'm sorry to report disappointment in this audio effort, though. The prevalence of American accents rather took away from the suspension of disbelief, especially Heller's which just irritates me, I have to say. But the play's the thing and even the Americanization of this might have been tolerable had the play itself not been so god-awful! I'm sorry, but it was. It was lousy.

The best exemplification of this for me was in a speech at the beginning of Scene 8, wherein Siward learns that his son was killed. Here's the exact quote:

Ross: Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: He only lived but till he was a man; The which no sooner had his prowess confirmed In the unshrinking station where he fought, But like a man he died.
Siward: Then he is dead?

Seriously? That's just one example. I'm sorry, but I cannot stand that sort of stupid writing unless it's done purposefully in a parody, say, in which case it would have been funny.

The entire play, mercifully short as it is, is one long tedious ramble like this, with florid language over-used and no real poetry at all. It's entirely unrealistic and inauthentic, and it's a chore to get through. The over-acting and Americanization of it did nothing to help. There was a bigger and better story to be told here and Shakespeare missed it, while George RR Martin seems to have had a much better grasp of this sort of thing! I cannot commend this audiobook as a worthy listen.

The Girl Who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farook

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This novel for middle-graders was light and entertaining and a decently enjoyable read. It took off at a great pace and was highly entertaining, but toward the end I have to say that it seems to lose track a bit and began to flounder, and the ending itself wasn't exactly thrilling, but overall I found it a decent read for the intended audience.

The story is of Chaya, a young girl who is an accomplished and shameless thief, but she uses her spoils to help out people in her local community. She finds she's bitten-off more than she can chew though, when she actually steals jewels from the queen herself, and ends up accidentally getting her best friend jailed as the thief. She rescues him and makes her escape on the king's prize elephant, and the adventure gets wild!

There were a few minor issues I had with the writing. Amazon's Kindle process is well-known for turning books into kindling. Why people continue to support Amazon and its practices, I do not know. I guess capitalism has a lot to do with it. As an example of what I mean, at one point I read this:

"You can see him, and then we’ll leave." He kept
53
looking at her from time to time."

As you can see, the page number (53 in this case) is incorporated right into the text. Kindle will not convert text properly unless it's the plainest vanilla. You cannot have headers and footers in your book when you let them convert it. Trust me, if Amazon's Kindle can screw up your text, it will gleefully do so. And you sure as hell don't ever want to let them kindle your images. This is one of many reasons why I refuse to publish with Amazon or have any truck with them or their Goodreads website.

There were other problems, such as misplaced backgrounds for the chapter header numbers. There was another example of kindling here, where a whole line was mashed together:

you.” Aroundthemthementalkedandlaughedandmunched their food,

I also read some seemingly anachronistic text, such as, "He’s been fired, Chaya." which not only sounds way too modern for the story setting, but you don't 'fire' a military guard! At another point I read,

"Orders?" said Chaya. "From whom?"

Some writers cannot get out of their own way, it seems! I know that 'whom' is technically correct here, but no one actually says 'whom' anymore in real life, unless they're really pretentious. That just jumped out at me as being inauthentic, especially since Chaya isn't exactly a language scholar!

But these are relatively minor quibbles and while you cannot cure a kindling of a novel, many of the issues hopefully will have been fixed in the final published version. The important thing is, like I said, that I enjoyed the story, the earlier parts and the beginning of their jungle adventure more than the last, I dunno, third or so? It seems like the king's men had a much easier time of tracking Chaya and co. in the jungle than reality would support, and I could have actually read a whole novel about Chaya's thieving exploits, but overall this was fun. I really liked Chaya. She did become a bit of a boor at times in the jungle, but despite her failings she was a strong female character and I'm all for those. I enjoyed this story. It was fresh, different, and entertaining for the most part, and I commend it as a worthy read. I'll be keeping an eye open for future Nizrana Farook novels.

Girl Warriors by Rachel Sarah

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is a book consisting of short bios of 26 young female climate "warriors" and how they came to prominence. No, Greta Thunberg isn't one of them, but she gets a lot of mentions! I think the author wanted to shine the spotlight in other directions for a change and there's nothing wrong with that.

The girls are as follows. They're in the same order as in the book, but I'm not actually sure if there is any order with regard to how these names appear. Each item in the list contains the nationality and very briefly, something they're known for. I don't list their ages because that's not as important as what they've done. One entry consists of two sisters, so there are only 25 listings.

• Daphne Frias, USA - voice against pollution
• Saoi O'Connor, Ireland - climate striker
• Maya Penn, USA - fabric recycling
• Selina N Leem, USA - rise in sea levels
• Elsa Mengistu, USA - national director Zero Hour
• Catarina Lorenzo, Brazil - coral reefs
• Ridhima Pandey, India - climate change awareness
• Isha Clarke, USA - green new deal
• Hannah Testa, USA - plastic pollution
• Haven Coleman, USA - human-caused changed
• Lilly Platt, Netherlands - plastic pollution
• Ayisha Siddiqa, USA - greenhouse gases
• Melati and Isabel Wijsen, Indonesia - plastic pollution
• Kallan Benson, USA - climate awareness
• Shreya Ramachandran, USA - water shortage
• Jamie Margolin, USA - founder of Zero Hour
• Imogen Sumbar, Australia - fire risk
• Bella Lack, UK - climate impact on wildlife
• Malaika Vaz, India - endangered animals
• Mabel Athanasiou, USA - waste reduction
• Elizabeth Wathuti, Kenya - tree planting
• Sarah Goody, USA - environmental activist
• Vanessa Nakate, Uganda - drought
• Haile Thomas, USA - healthy eating
• Isabella Fallahi, USA - youth voice

One thing that I immediately noticed is how prominent the USA is in that list. It's sad that there couldn't have been greater diversity - not in skin color or ethnicity, but in which nations these people represent. 60% of them are in the USA, and while some of those have ancestry or are immigrants from other countries, it's still sad that a nation with little more than 4% of the world's population gets the lion's share of this story especially when the US contributes a lion's share of pollution.

What - there are no activists in China? There's only one representative from the same Pacific islands that are going to be impacted hugely forms ea-level rise? There are only two in Africa, which as a continent has low emissions, but is suffering a great impact from climate change. The USA, which has actively sought to destroy environmental agreements and legislation over the past four years, swallows the Earth's resources and causes pollution wa-ay out of proportion to its population - or any other portion of the world. Maybe the author thinks the USA needs more activists to offset the selfish damage it's doing?

That important beef aside, the stories are heart-warming and inspiring. That's what's most important, and it's why this book is well worth reading. Strong women, storng views, dedicated work. It's all in here, and I commend it as a worthy read.

That Thing about Bollywood by Supriya Kelkar

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This middle-grade work of fiction is about Sonali, a young girl whose parents are on the verge of breaking-up, and her reaction to this isn't what the majority of kids her age might experience. Sonali's reaction is for her to perceive her world turning into a Bollywood musical movie, along with songs, dance, and scenery changes. But she's the only one who seems to be aware that the entire world is changing!

I should say right up front that I'm not really a fan of Bollywood movies, but I do like Indian music and I love stories about the Indian people, even writing a couple myself. There was a short story titled Upanishad in Poem y Granite, and a full length new adult novel titled Balletwood which I published recently. But enough about me!

Sonali has learned, over her short eleven years, to bottle her feelings up and screw the top down tight, so when stress from her parents' antagonistic behavior, her younger brother's tearful reaction to it, and the possibility that she might be losing her best friend, all conspire to come down on her at once, it seems like something weird happens and her life becomes, slowly and by stages, a musical! Why not?!

I loved the changing emotional landscape and Sonali's valiant attempts to figure out what was going on, all the while trying to control her feelings, and her frequent references to 'filmi magic' which amused the heck out of me. She's a strong female character, and I appreciate those. The only writing issue I noticed in this novel was when I read, "...my bicep aching...." It's actually biceps! The bicep is a part of the biceps, but it's not the bulge one sees when someone flexes their upper arm. I guess it's technically possible to have a bicep ache, but usually people are not that specific! That's a minor pet peeve of mine because I read it (along with other language atrocities) so often, usually in idiotic YA novels.

Apart from that though, I loved the way this was written and I commend it as a worthy read. I shall be watching author Supriya Kelkar with anticipation from now on!

The Song of Sirin by Nicholas Kotar

Rating: WARTY!

This novel is a retelling of the old Russian story of Prince Ivan and the Gray Wolf. Many of these old folk tales are bizarre and brutal, but this one takes some beating. It's a story of stupidity and cruelty, and of theft and kidnapping, and you'd seriously have to put in some work to render it into an interesting story for modern ears - unless you just wanted to piss-off people. It doesnlt help that the story has too modern of s sensibility. I read at one point for example: "Don’t forget that it’s in the main square today." To me, that didnt seem like it fit the antique sensibility the author was trying to extstablish here, and it took me out of suspension of disbelief.

This author in my opinion has failed to make the story interesting and worse, has failed to make the characters interesting either. I started out interested, but became bored to tears rather quickly, and despite plugging on for a while in the hope that it would improve, I gave up about third of the way through because literally nothing was happening except that the 'prince' character, here named Voran, was showing us quite often how stupid and lethargic he was. And just in passing, Voron has a sister named Lebía. His sister has a name that's reminiscent of labia? Really?

He ends up meeting a pilgrim (here that's like a sorcerer-cum-prophet) who specifically tells him that to save the city he must find the living water, but rather than ask about this water: where it is, how to find it, and rather than ask the pilgrim to magically transport him there (a trick the pilgrim has shown himself quite capable of performing), Voran lolls around doing nothing. Later, he takes off on a trip with a bunch of people going on a pilgrimage, and then he abandons them for no good reason despite having been haunted all his life by his father's having abandoned some people in the past in similar circumstances - a dereliction of duty for which he's despised as a traitor. In short, Voron should really be named Moron.

Voran knows that this entire society will come crashing down if he doesn't find this living water. He can see signs that society is dying, yet at no point does he show any interest whatsoever in getting started on his quest. He's a dick. The problem is that instead of telling this really short story of the wolf in one volume, this author has gone the mercenary way of trying to turn it into a trilogy or a series, and it has suffered for it by dragging tediously along when a reader like me wants to see something happen, so the hell with it. I'm done with this story and with this author.

Ouroboros by Odette C Bell

Rating: WARTY!

This book is a dumb - and I might add highly inapropriate - so-called romance between Nida Harper, who is a cadet at the United Galactic Coalition Academy (which is way more of a mouthful than it needs to be) and a superior officer.

Any book (or movie or TV show) that blabbers about some galactic-wide entity good or bad, or about a coalition, or about saving the galaxy, is full of shit. All it tells me is that the author doesn't have the first clue how huge and sparsely-populated the galaxy is - and I'm talking habitable planets, not even actual populations. What it does tell me is how narrow the mind is and how limited the imagination is of the author.

This novel sounded like it might be interesting, but in the end it was a joke. Harper comes off like that sad and pathetic Jar Jar Binks in the risible Star Wars 'return of the endlessly recycled movie plot' trilogy of trilogies. Her superior officer ought to be drummed out of the regiment for his inappropriate interest in someone under his command. Harper is the worst candidate at the school and would have been herself drummed out in any real world scenario.

On an evidently poorly-supervised trip to an alien world, Harper is exposed to a source of energy. Why this energy takes over her body and then ridiculously and desperately wants to return to the world where she picked it up is a complete mystery that's not explored - at least in this first volume I read. Why, when a cadet is found inexplicably unconscious and injured on an alien planet surface during what ought to have been a routine exploration, she's not hospitalized and a full inquiry conducted is another mystery. The author either doesn't understand the military, or military standards have plummeted precipitously between now and whenever this story is set.

The interest Lieutenant Carson Blake shows in her is not only inappropriate since he's an authority figure with power over her, it's inexplicable since the two are falling for each other without having spent any significant time together. So: the story is badly-plotted and badly-written.

I know authors do not have control over the book description or the cover when they essentially give up their rights as Big Publishing™ takes over their novel, but to read that Nida has "matted, black, compact curls" and then look at the cover image where she has long, flowing, straight hair tells me once again that the ignoramus who designed the cover never even so much as looked at the text underneath it. This is why I normally pay zero attention to book covers because they're typically so pathetic and misleading and aimed at the lowest common denominator - which often is the crotch, hence the cover image's tight, clinging leather, with the lowered zipper over the bulging chest. Pathetic. The cover designer ought to be chemically neutered.

I have a hard time with sci-fi characters who have ridiculous apostrophes in their name. Nida's best friend sounds like she comes from Vulcan: "J'Etem" who is Nida's token black friend, and who is, of course an alien. The first thing these two females talk about in worshipful tones is a guy, so I guess Odette Bell never heard of the Bechdel-Wallace test. J'Etem was supposed to be Nida's best friend, but after that initial introductory mention, she virtually disappeared from this story, like the author had forgotten who her best friend was. No matter what bad things happened to Nida, J'Etem didn't give a shit, apparently.

Given the image on the front cover I kept expecting Nida to grow a pair (of breasts) but she never did - always taking a back seat to the lieutenant or to the energy that raped her. I was as disappointed in that as I was in the poor biology on display here. Like in the dumb-ass Star Trek episodes, there was inter-species reproduction, which is nonsensical. I read that one alien was "An enormous man of half-human half-Yara build." No! Not going to happen! The closest species to humans on Earth is the chimpanzee with which we share a common ancestor and it's not remotely possible to hybridize those two species, so there's no way in hell a human is ever going to produce offspring, viable or otherwise by mating with an alien - unless it was through some bizarre Frankensteinian experiment in a lab.

Thoughtless writing didn't help. With a few pages I read these thing of the same charcter: "Now he had nothing to do." "He had things to do, and it was time to stop wasting the day." "Blake admitted he wasn’t busy." One could get whiplash reading a collection of stupidly contradictory claims in such close proximity to one another.

As usual there was far too much emphasis on shallow physical details and little to none of the important traits a being might have. I read, "J'Etem was stunning. She was Barkarian, and she was beautiful from her lustrous hair to her plush purple lips." Seriously? No. Just no. This novel is one of the most egregious examples of poor YA writing and it sucked.

Damaged by Becca Vincenza

Rating: WARTY!

I didn't realize this was a werewolf story or I would have avoided it like the plague. Werewolf stories are marginally more stupid than vampire stories, and I gave up on this one in short order. Once in a while there's a truly rare one that's worth reading, but those are so scarce that I wonder sometimes if it's just a folktale. This had initially sounded interesting from the blurb, but we all know how misleading those are, don't we? (For detials see my 'non-review' reviews!)

The quality of the writing did not help. I read things like, "looked like she sleeping." I read, "released my grip on her bicep." This is a common failing in YA novels, most of which seem these days to have been written by people for whom English is a despised second language as judged by how poorly it's used. It's biceps, moron. I read, "He didn’t say anything more as the doors opened. The doors chimed and parted as the elevator came to a halt" Twice, really? And the doors chimed? Really?

I should have listened to my gut, which was sickened by the words in the description: "Stone is determined to protect her" when juxtaposed with the cover illustration which shows him - a figure of authority and power in her life - getting jiggy with her. Yeah. How's that protection working, Stone? Or does protection to you mean wearing a condom while you take advantage of a scared and weakened woman who has been broken down into complete compliance through torture? Stone is an asshole. And this is evidently yet another female YA author who apparently detests her own gender.

This novel rubbed me up the wrong way from the start. I no longer buy novels that are first person if I can avoid it, and I deliberately ditched the remainder of my first person print books unread because I am so sick of first person voice. Unfortunately I still have a few in my ebook collection acquired a while ago and which occasionally bubble to the top of my never-ending reading list. I'm trying to delete those, too. The problem with this book is that it's dual-first person, which is inevitably twice as bad, and it’s clear from the mind-numbingly telegraphed beginning that these two are an item. Because of course you cannot have a novel where a woman takes care of herself. She has to have a guy to rescue and validate her. It’s the law. Barf.

I'm not against romance in a novel, but it has to feel natural and organic to me. Any hint of artificiality or of forcing it, and I am bored and irritated simultaneously. That was the problem here as these two characters, Audrey and Stone (why does she get a first name and he a last name?!) were essentially in love from their first glance. Yuk. Audrey is an individual who is somehow enhanced and therefore, shades of X-men, a pariah. Stone is a military guy. I should have decided firmly against this as soon as I read, "There is much more to Audrey than meets the eye and Stone is determined to protect her." But like I fool I started reading anyway and got turned completely off this after only a chapter or two.

The ebook version of this has some issues. Normally I do not see such issues in the Nook version of a novel. Those are usually good and it’s the Kindle version that slices and dices any text that's not plain vanilla. I read one part where the start of the sentence is fine: "While he spoke, I felt" but then the next few words were in really small text "the muscles in the arms under my head twitch and roll," and the last part of the sentence was in regular-sized text again: "but I didn’t open my eyes." Weird! The writign was too.

But as far as the story is concerned, I can’t commend it based on what I read of it.

Luna caged: Behind the Wall by Margaret McHeyer

Rating: WARTY!

I gave up on this pretty quickly. I knew going in that it was first person which I typically despise, but once in a while there's a good one comes along that's intelligently written and well-told. That's not this one. This one was tedious and boring, and I ditched it pretty quickly - I think right at the point where the narrator tells us that it's believed that outside the wall it's deadly to life, and then describes a bird flying over the wall - from the outside. Clearly if birds fly in and out unharmed, the lie that it's dangerous out there is exposed, yet this narrator is too stupid to put that two and two together. Sorry, but I do not need to read about stupid people narrating their own stupid stories. We get enough of that in the federal legislature. I just need to read about some of the Republican women in Congress and the Senate to get all the stupid females I can stand.

Dumb writing did not help this story one bit, but it is what I expect from YA novels these days. At one point, I read, "...and dark, black hair void of any color" Say what?! Black is dark. It's also arguably a color. Wouldn't devoid of any color be more like gray than black? (Even though gray is also a color). There were also renderign oissues. I read:

I felt (in regular regular font) the muscles in the arms under my head twitch and roll, (in tiny font) but I (back to regular font)

Next came these in quick succession: "dead eye on the left side of her face," "Her vacant, scared eyes lingered on me," and "Her pupils dilated." That sounds quite contradictory to me.!

Worse, this is one of those stories where everyone inside the wall is depicted as being of one mindset. There are no dissenters, no protests, no rebellions, no conspiracy theories, because every single person believes exactly the same things. BULLSHIT. This kind of writing is amateur, pathetic, and completely inauthentic. And far too common in dystopian YA novels. That's why I gave this novel such short shrift because I've read it countless times before. The same novel. Only the names have been changed. YA means young adult - these are the very people who are supposed to rebel and hold radical ideas and to challenge authority and this almost never happens in these stories - that's how out of touch with reality their authors are and why they make their characters so uninteresting and conforming.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Rating: WARTY!

This is an 1855 novel about teenager Margaret Hale, who is forced to leave her beloved parsonage when her father rebels against his church. He moves his family north to the fictional county of Darkshire (seriously? LOL!) in the industrial town of Milton, where she is miserable. My next novel will be set in Lightshire in the village of Tilmon and the teenager will be ecstatic! There is actually no reason given (or if there was, I missed it) as to why they move so far. He plans on taking up work as a tutor, but it seems there would be a much better opportunity in the south than in the north for such work.

Anyway, there she meets John Thornton, who owns Marlborough Mills. This is one of those uninventive novels where the main female character takes an immediate dislike to the main male one, and in the end of course, marries him. It's essentially a Pride and Prejudice for the Industrial age with an ending cribbed from Jane Eyre. I came to this through the television mini-series that I saw a while back. There have been several, but the one I watched and considered pretty decent was the 2004 the BBC aired North and South, and so I figured I'd try the novel, but no joy was to be had. There were parts where the quaint way of expressing themselves back then was highly amusing, but that did not make up for the humdrum story - or rather, lack of one.

Set against a background of dire factory conditions and union organizers, the novel could have been a good one, but it was so tedious to listen to. This was an audiobook read decently by Harriet Seed, who was let down by the material and on occasion by her peculiar pronunciation proclivities with some words, such as 'trousseau'. The story was so rambling and pedantic that it took forever to get moving and never really did - not in the quarter of it that I could bear to listen to, anyhow.

I grew rapidly tired of the endlessly meandering perambulations and trivial topics, and just gave up on it. I was going to at least ride out the week listening to this, but by Thursday morning I'd had enough. Perhaps there's a story in there somewhere, but I saw none of it in the first 25% of this novel, and grew bored with waiting for it to show. Can't commend.

The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen

Rating: WORTHY!

Peter Brannen is a science journalist and in this audio book he talks (or more accurately, Adam Verner talks, since he's the actual narrator) about the five major extinctions that Earth has endured. These are far from the only extinctions Earth has seen in its four billion year plus history, but they are the most significant ones. Arguably, one major event that is relatively recently being recognized - something which destroyed at least a third of marine life diversity, and a significantly larger proportion of terrestrial diversity - is the end-Guadalupian extinction which took place ten million years before the Permian. Brannen does not mention this one. I don't know why. Perhaps since it's so close to the Permian he considers it all part of the same thing. Ten million years isn't a lot in geologic time after all!

As Brannen makes clear in his disturbing evocations, these events were truly horrific times, when the planet was brought to its knees in a series of nightmare scenarios. Earth froze or was virtually boiled, and or was shaded with debris and poisoned with noxious gases from volcanic or impact events, and nearly all life became extinct, only to resume when the crisis was over, to redevelop, re-evolve, and to spread widely and fantastically; then to be culled severely again by the next global tragedy. It's a miracle anything survived at all, let alone enough to allow humans to grow out of what came before.

The thing is though that only one of these extinctions can really be laid at the door of an asteroid impact. That's the most famous one - the dino extinction, and even that cause is disputed. The others? Climate change. The same sort of thing that is going on now, right under our noses, the only difference being that in the past it happened quite slowly whereas we are heating-up the planet far faster than anything nature has ever contemplated.

No other review I've seen has listed these events, but the five extinctions covered in this book are these:

• Ordovician-Silurian - 440 million years ago
• Late Devonian - 365 million years ago
• Permian-Triassic - 250 million years ago
• Triassic-Jurassic - 210 million years ago
• Cretaceous-Tertiary - 65 Million Years Ago

There's a reason these geologic periods in Earth's hugely-long history have boundaries and names and it's because of (from our modern eyes) abrupt changes in species diversity and composition. Flora and fauna changed and the period got a different name to mark these boundaries. Amazingly, nightmarish and totally weird organisms grew, flourished, and spread, and then disappeared, only to be replaced by an entirely new set of fantastical creatures. The resilience of nature and the inventiveness it exhibits is astounding.

I really enjoyed this book and fully commend it. My only complaint may have been related just to my copy, but I got this from Chirp and I played it through their app on my iPhone in the car on my daily commute. As usual with these books, it worked perfectly, in this case though for only about eighty percent of the book. Right around that mark, it began giving me grief. Other books have played to the very end without issues, but a couple of books I've had problems with, and this was the second that I can recall. It would play for a minute or so and then stop for no apparent reason. I'd restart it, and it would do the same over and over. A different book I began listening to had no such issues - but it has not reached eighty percent yet! We'll see how that goes. (It went fine!)

Apart from that I have no complaints and commend this book fully as educational and entertaining.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Rating: WARTY!

I DNF'd this about halfway through, annoyed by how cavalierly this author treats a young woman she is supposed to be extolling. She does just as bad a job at telling Mary's story in the written word as the movie Ammonite does with motion picture. Ammonite is rooted in this same novel, but tells a completely different story. Neither story is true. The first problem with the novel is first person, worsened by having two different first person voices. First person is a bad choice for the most part; it makes for very limited, very selfish writing, and having two such voices made it twice as bad. Since this was an audio book, I should however commend the readers, Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons who did a decent job with this fiction.

Mary Anning lived less than fifty years, between the turn and the middle of the nineteenth century. It was her older brother Joe who discovered the ichthyosaurus skull, not Mary, but she did uncover the rest of that fossil skeleton, and later she herself discovered a plesiosaur skeleton, along with a host of other fossils, including a pterosaur at places in and around Lyme Regis and Charmouth.

Contrary to the the book description's claim that Mary had "a talent for finding fossils" which makes it seem like she had some sort of magical ability, she had trained herself (under her father and older brother's guidance) from childhood to find these things out of sheer interest and also of desperation to support her family, especially after her father died prematurely. She was good at what she did because she was dedicated and yes, remarkable. Let's not demean her ability by suggesting it involved no work or effort.

William Buckland, a geology professor at the University of Oxford is completely misrepresented in this novel. Many people are. Elizabeth Philpot is likewise misrepresented, but not in that she was friends with Mary Anning - she was. They did collect fossils togther, but Elizabeth's two sisters also collected and were not quite the dilletantes which this work suggests.

The author is so obsessed with setting up a fake competition and antagonism between Philpot and Anning that she makes the same mistake that the Ammonite movie makers did: imbuing charcters with motives and behaviors that were simpy not merited from the facts. Charlotte Murchison, for example was more on par with Elizabeth Philpot's age, not with Mary's, who was barely more than a child (although a necessarily mature one) when they first met. In their desperation to validate this poor girl with a man - or a woman - both story creators neglect to find the real Anning. Perhaps she was a woman who was simply asexual, or more likely, so in need of supporting herself and her family that she didn't even dream of a relationship - hetero or otherwise. She was already and had long been married to her important work. Why deny a woman this?

Another dishonest portrayal in this work of fiction falls with all the delicacy of a landslide. While Mary did indeed survive a lightning strike as a baby, she did not get buried under a landslide like this novel dishonestly depicts. It was her dog which died in the landslide, and this author robs Mary of that grief. Ironically, landslides were Mary's stock in trade for it was the winter weather and the subsequent rockslides on the cliff faces that literally unearthed fossils for Mary's keenly-trained eyes to find.

The author appears to be sadly limited by her lack of imagination in how to approach this and even more constrainted by her refusal to tell the truth, and to fictionalize virtually the whole thing like Mary Anning's reality simply wasn't good enough for the almighty Tracy Chevalier. There is barely a handful of actual events from Mary's depicted life here, and even those are overly-dramatized or otherwise distorted. The rest appears to be the result of a rather despearate and overactive imagination. Instead of venerating a real and heroic historical person who was indeed a remarkable woman, the author cheapens Mary Anning's legacy appallingly. I cannot commend such a hack job and I intend to boycot the movie.

When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T Anderson

Rating: WARTY!

Tell me, Mr. Anderson: what good is a book if you're unable to write one?

The book description for this religious diatribe tells you all you need to know about the non-content of this LGBTQIA 'Hate-Moment'.  It begins by asking: "Can a boy be 'trapped' in a girl’s body?"  The short anser is 'yes', and vice-versa.  Gender is not binary,  it never has been.  It's a sliding scale, no matter what in-denial and i;;l-informed wannabe writers like Mr Anderson claim.

Mr Anderson, bigotry and hate speech are a disease; a cancer of this planet. LGBTQIA haters are a plague, and common-sense, science, and tolerance are the cure.

"Can modern medicine 'reassign'sex?" the description asked.  Yes it can. Hundreds of people are living proof.

I'm going to enjoy watching this book die, Mr. Anderson.

"Is our sex 'assigned' to us in the first place?"  No, it isn't.  There are chemical changes necessary in the body and these can start and stop anywhere along the scale.  The penis is nothing more than a repurposed clitoris.  A fetus is not conceived either with a penis or with a vagina.  Those organs grow, cued by genetics and hormones, and they stop when they're done regardless of whether they leave behind a perceived 'binary' female, a perceived 'binary' male, or something anywhere in between the two. if this is wrong, how does Mr Anderson account for true intersexed individuals? That's the 'I' in LGBTQIA for religious bigots.

"What is the most loving response to a person experiencing a conflicted sense of gender?" Mr Anderson may ask, and the correct answer to that is to take them at their true value, not at some arbitrary value religious zealots insist upon imposing.  Anderson fails dismally here.  He, and other religious zealots like him, would never have taken the Samaritan's route across the street.  They would never go the extra mile.  They would never give their shirt.  In short, they reject the entire New Testament and insist on the Old instead.

"What should our law say on matters of 'gender identity'?"  What does the fourth amendment say, Mr Anderson?  Let me help you out: it says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons...shall not be violated."  Why does he want to overturn that by telling people what gender they are despite all evidence to the contrary?

The description claims that the book "provides thoughtful answers to questions arising from our transgender moment."  It doesn't.  It's not a moment. It's a momentum and those who try to hamper it will be pushed aside by it.  The asshole bias in the very book description proves that this work of juvenile fiction isn't balanced.  On the contrary, it's unbalanced, and cherry-picking a scattering of instances where gender reassignment or related situations seem not to have had perfect outcomes ignores the literal thousands of such issues where the outcomes are not regretted and not in question.

"Drawing on the best insights from biology, psychology, and philosophy" it waffles. Who gives a fuck about philosphy?  And what best insights?  This biased, spittle-soaked, apoplectic rant doesn't draw on the best insights, it draws on cherry-picked blinkered claims that support nothing except the author's pre-ordained and bigotted world-view. The best insights from medical experts and from the transgender community itself are completely ingored.

"Ryan Anderson offers a nuanced view of human embodiment"  Nuanced?  Really? That sound you just heard was my ass falling off from my laughing so hard.

"Everyone has something at stake in the controversies over transgender ideology" - yeah - everyone who has a religious stake.  Which part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" isn't clear to the author?  He's entitled to practice his beliefs. He is not entitled to force them upon others.

I'm not a fan of Amazon; far from  it, but what these religious assholes don't seem to be able to get through their thick skulls is that Amazon is a private business.  They can choose to publish or not even on a whim, and hate speech is not a whim.

You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your inconsequence. Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.

When Wishes Bleed by Casey L Bond

Rating: WARTY!

"When Sable reads Prince Tauren’s fortune, an omen reveals his deadly fate… Can she change it by joining the competition to become his queen?" Why would she care what happens to him when he treats romance with such callous indifference? He holds it in such disdain that he runs a lottery to find someone to inseminate and bear his offspring? And Sable? really? That means soft, exotic fur. Tauren probably means bull. Could an author make it any more bald than that? Or balled?

This exact story has been told a gazillion times already. There's nothing original left to say. All an author can do here is really to just retread the plots of countless others who've gone before, and this author evidently isn't even trying to be different! We're told that New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L Armentrout finds this "The perfect mix of magic, danger, death, and love." I've never heard of her. I have no idea who she is! Why would I give a shit even if she really does think this is "Bewitching"?!

To the Center of the Earth by Greig Beck

Rating: WARTY!

"After learning of a centuries-old manuscript that contains the passage to the center of the Earth, caving expert Mike Monroe risks it all to follow the path. But what he finds there will alter everything he knows about the world…" I’m guessing author Grieg paid little to no attention in his Earth sciences classes.

The only thing at the center of the Earth is a giant ball of searing hot iron, surrounded by molten iron, surround by molten rock, surrounded by hotter-than-hell rock. If the blurb had described this novel as a scorching read it would have been more accurate, but just as boring a prospect.

All at Once by Brill Harper

Rating: WARTY!

Bliss can’t restrain her fantasies about Levi and Wylder, her new bosses at the Wylder Colt Ranch. Can the two sexy, dominant cowboys unleash their quiet housekeeper’s wild side?" Is that really a serious question? Bliss? Honestly? And really, 'Wylder'? Why not just name the brothers ‘goat’? Horny Goat and Randy Goat? Seriously? Way to reduce a woman to a warm wet hole, not-so-Brill. She probably has another series of novels under the name Harper Brill. Why not? Everything is interchangeable. I have to honestly wodner if this author isn't secretly laughing at her readership all the way to her bank. Not my cup of ass.

Sweet Lake by Christine Nolfi

Rating: WARTY!

Christine Nolfi is a good name for an author. I just wish it were associated with something better than retreaded romance. "Under pressure to revitalize the family inn and reconcile with her good-for-nothing brother, Linnie has a lot on her shoulders. But a surprise that upends her life may just be a blessing in disguise!" I wonder what the surprise is? Could it be a studly manly man’s man who sweeps this fake 'strong woman' off her feet? Yawn. Nothing new here.

The very fact that this quotes Kirkus Reviews saying the novel is "Uplifting and charming" is enough to put me off it for life. Kirkus never met a novel they didn't like, so their recommendation is meaningless to me. Apparently they like their women weak and in need of male validaiton. I don't. Never will.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Rating: WARTY!

"From a Pulitzer Prize–winning author! Mark Spitz fights to survive and adapt in the aftermath of global devastation." This guy has a pulitzer prize and the best he can do for a character name is Mark Spitz? Seriously? This is why I avoid like the plague novels that have won awards because they are inevitably, inescapably, irremediably putrid, bland, vacuous and pretentious.

Post apocalyptic is overdone, and if this guy is a prize-winner and this book has well over 2,000 positive reviews, why is he (or his publisher) forced to flog it at a steep discount (the ebook is one-eighth the paperback price) on Bookbub? Thinking people want to know.

Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles: Books 1–3 by Rebecca Chastain

Rating: WARTY!

Rebecca Chastain is actually quite a cool name for a novelist, but the book description? Not so cool! "When Mika sets out to rescue a baby gargoyle, she’s plunged into a surprising new life of adventure…" How is it surprising? She's chasing a baby gargoyle for godsakes! How is anything surprising in her world?

Here's the thing though: I make it a point, unless there are really extenuating circumstances, to avoid like the plague books with ‘chronicles’ or ‘saga’ or ‘codex’ or ‘cycle’ in the title. I've seen too many of them be boring, rambling, tedious, vacuous, pretentious bullshit stories to make that mistake again. Those words are the kiss of death for a novel, so it's warty based on that one word alone. Plus, gargoykes? No thanks. And I'm pretty much ready to start skipping novels entirely where the book description begins with the word "when"! I'm so tired of it!

Forbidden Friend by R Cayden

Rating: WARTY!

"Leo’s world is turned upside down when his best friend’s identical twin brother moves into their shared condo! Leo is a playboy, River is a hopeless romantic, and a relationship between them is strictly off-limits — but they might not be able to resist temptation…" Why is it off limits? Who made that rule? And we know for a fact that they're not able to resist temptation because otherwise what would the novel be about? Is it the novelist who thinks we readers are morons, or simply the book blurb writer?

They won't resist temptation, but I'll bet they’re able to resist condoms. They always are in these stories and there are never consequences. Safe sex has no place in this kind of a garbage novel because it's yet another cookie-cutter gay novel written by a woman. Talked about owned voices! This is genital warty.

Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter by Nikki Jefford

Rating: WARTY!

"First in an action-packed series: Thanks to her rare blood type, Aurora finds herself battling the undead in Alaska for the government. All that’s keeping her warm is gorgeous Fane — but he might be a vampire, too…" Of course it's first in a series. Of course Buffy, er Aurora, has to hand-fight the vamps. There's no way in hell that a scientific method could ever be found to poison them. And of course her lover Spike...er Fane...(Fane? Seriously? Jesus!) is a good vamp.

My only question here is: Does this author have an original bone in her body? Because it seems to me I've seen this exact same story told scores and scores of times already.

Night Broken by Patricia Briggs

Rating: WARTY!

If this novel has "over 29,000 five-star Goodreads ratings" why is it being flogged at a discount in a book flyer? The blurb claims that, "When her werewolf husband’s ex comes back into the picture, Mercy must protect herself — while trying to solve a murder case" Why? I mean by all means protect yourself, but why is it necessary? Is her husband's ex evil? Dangerous? If so why can't she rely on her husband or the police?

And why is she trying to solve a murder case? Is it because the local cops are once again morons as they always are in these private dick novels? If I were a cop I'd resent insulting novels like this one. And if this is a supernatural world, are there not supernatural means to solve it? Or is it insoluable since it's supernatural? LOL!

Oh look! Charlaine Harris apparently said, "I love these books" - well, maybe she did, and maybe she didn't. I don't know and I sure don't trust a book description to get it right. My question is: did she love this particular one? We don't know!

Did she actually read "these books" or does she just like the covers? Is anyone going to ask her? I doubt it. And why the hell should I read something that some author I don't know personally recommends? I may well have read a book of hers, but I don't know her or her tastes. Her recommendation tells me nothing about "these books" if I've never heard of her! If I've read her books and didn't like them, I'm sure as hell not going to buy this one!

The Witching Place by Sophie Love

Rating: WARTY!

Here's a classic - a tediously-tired, over-done, boringly trope plot: "After being fired and breaking up with her boyfriend on the same day, Alexis makes a change and takes a job at an occult bookstore in a small seaside town. Caught up in the shop’s strange secrets, she finds herself smack-dab in the middle of a murder mystery…"

Of course she does, and the local cops are so stupid that she's the only one who can solve the murder, right? Is this a series starter? It must be! Yawn. So many tropes, so few pages to fit them all in. 'Weak woman runs away' is a genre all by itself. Why do so many female authors seem so determined to make their characters such little crying cowards?

The bookshop is another trope - obviously the woman must be smart if she works at a bookstore, right? Nope! Not if she works at a dumb-ass occult bookstore that palms-off garbage on suckers. What does that say about Alexis's integrity? Volumes! And why is it always a small seaside town? And the start of a series where this seaside town will be shown to have a higher murder rate than Chicago at the height of prohibition! Ridiculous.

It's a 'Cozy Mystery' but you know the best cozy mysteries? They're the ones you can toss onto the fire during a Texas winter, and enjoy the warmth as the pages burn. That's where books like this belong. On warmer days of course we can recycle them into pulp paper. That's what they were and what they will become. Trash is to ashes, pulp to pulp.

Too Close by R Phoenix

Rating: WARTY!

"After their mother abandons them, Skylar and his sister Evie are taken in by wealthy Tate, who at first seems to be a knight in shining armor. But when Tate's sinister side slowly reveals itself, Skylar seeks refuge in math teacher Dexter - and he's soon forced to decide whether their love is worth the risk." Is this LGBT, or pedophilia? I can't tell! And the author's name is really R Phoenix? Really?

Oh, and look at the artful juxtapositioning of 'sinister' for the bad guy (Latin for left-handed) and 'Dexter' as a name for the good guy - Latin for right-handed. Never trust those left-handers! How did wealthy Tate get to take in the orphans? Was there no background check? He just took them? Where is child services? This story has sucky written all over it. And not in a good way.

The Dream by Whitney Dineen

Rating: WARTY!

"Ashley has been crushing on Davis since high school - though she's always known he's out of her league. But when she becomes a caretaker for his terminally ill grandmother, they'll find their worlds colliding in ways they never expected." Never expected by anyone except the readers who are terminally addicted to this garbage. If Ashley's been this obsessed then she needs to get a life, or she needs to get arrested for harboring dangerous stalker tendencies. This shit isn't romantic.

Looking for Leon by Shirley Benton Non-Review Number 1!

Rating: WARTY!

Okay, here's a new thing I'm going to be doing for 2021. There are some 'non-reviews' that I'm going to be posting. They're called non-reviews because the assessment of the novel in question is based on the book description and cover, and I can tell you up front that they'll more than likely all be negative because the only ones I'm going to cover are the ones that I think are quite simply idiotic - too moronic to ever want to read the novel the blurb describes. They'll be indentified in the labels by the 'Non-Review' marker.

Maybe once in a while I'll post a positive one - if I find a description that's particularly good, or intriguing, or elegant, but for the most part, these blurbs (at least the ones I typically see in a couple of trade flyers I receive regularly) are stupid and evidently quite often written by someone who's never even read the novel they're dishonestly describing. It's like Donald Trump wrote the review. I used to gripe privately about these to friends, but now's the time to go public!

So this first one is a somewhat bizarre story titled Looking for Leon by Shirley Benton, and in this case, I avoid it purely because of the title. I never want to read a story titled "looking for" especially if it's looking for a person. It's so Greene that it's in the John. Barf.

As it happens, the description is sort of creepy, too: "After making a passionate connection in Las Vegas, strangers Andie and Leon are accidentally separated. Determined to find him again, Andie uses her skills as a journalist to launch a publicized, nationwide search for the man she knows is the one. But does Leon want to be found?" In reality the answer would be 'no', but in this novel, my guess is that he does.

Personally, I sure wouldn't want to be embarrassed by having my privacy invaded, uninvited like that. You fail to get a number, then you graciously let it go. You don't hound this person, stalker-style! You sure as hell don't put out an APB on their ass! And what does it say that these two dickheads apparently leapt into bed together knowing so little about each other? Yuk! Warty from the get-go.

Witch Ways by Kristy Tate

Rating: WARTY!

This is a wannabe young adult novel, but the main character is only fifteen, which technically is young adult territory for better or for worse, but it felt more like middle grade reading this stuff. Inevitably, it's written in first person, and it's about Evelynn Marston who is quite obviously a witch, but who is in serious denial.

Her denial makes as little sense as her name - who calls their child Evelynn these days? It's not even in the top 70 names for children born in 2005. Despite being hit over the head with her power repeatedly, 'Evie' still doesn't believe. This tells me that she's both stupid and tediously incurious and I have no interest in reading even one novel, let alone a series, about a shallow girl who has no interest in exploring her own potentially magical abilities.

I would have DNF'd this were it not so short. It's more like a novella than a novel despite it proudly declaring itself to be a novel on the cover (did the cover designer really believe that we'd think it was non-fiction without the bright red lettering telling us it was a novel?! ). In reality it's nothing more than a prologue, and I don't do prologues. Worse, it was all prologue and nothing of substance; quite literally nothing of interest or value happens in these 160 or so pages. It's barely even a witch novel because Evie doesn't do any actual witchcraft to speak of.

There's a handful of accidental displays of possible magic, every one of which is disputed by Evie and is quite easily dismissible. There are a couple of minor dumb spells she tries on purpose which are of the stupid rhyming English variety, like if you say a poem over a candle, magic happens! I'm sorry but that's juvenile and pathetic. Never is there any point at which Evie has the smarts to question any of this or to ask herself why, if she can cause magic without saying a word (like in burning something down) does she need to go through these ridiculous and childish rituals to do a spell?

The story moves ponderously slowly and like an idiot, I kept reading on waiting for Evie to unleash herself, but she never did! It's like one of those joke cards that on one side says, "How do morons pass their time? (see other side) and on the other side, it says exactly the same thing. In that same way, the story went nowhere and in the end, I resented wasting my time reading it. To employ a sexual vernacular, it will leave you blue-balled! That's not inappropriate because (quite symbolically I think, if perhaps unintentionally!), Evie actually wears a blue gown to a ball! The only good thing I can say about it (the story, not the gown!) is that it was short and the first person actually wasn't as irritating as it usually is for me, but this character is so lacking in agency and smarts that she's certainly not worth following a series about.

It's your predictable YA fish-out-of-water story, with Evie having to attend a new school after having been accused of burning down the science lab in her previous school, but from this point onward, the impression is that Evie is literally strait-jacketed into doing things without anyone caring what she herself wants. You'd think at some point she'd rebel and her witch powers would manifest, but no. I kept waiting for it to happen, but it never did. I also found it very weird that such a small town sported not one, but three high schools, two of which were private ones.

This dick of a guy named Dylan, who Evie vaguely knows because he's friends with her best friend's brother, is two or three years older than Evie and he treats her like dirt when she first arrives at the new school: not even saying a word to her and then suddenly, he's all over her and she's perfectly fine with his manhandling of her, touching her, and kissing her without even asking and without any history whatsoever of their being together, or dating.

For example, I read, "Dylan stood behind me, resting his elbows on my shoulders and his chin on the top of my head," and later, "He chuckled and took hold of my hand," and "He lowered his lips to mine in a gentle kiss." This is when the two of them are barely involved in any way. In short, Evie is a doll, and not in the old fashioned 'complimentary' sense. She's not really an autonomous person, and he's a possessive closet rapist who improbably soon begins talking about marriage. Meanwhile she also has Josh, her best friend's brother, on a string, making the depressingly predictable, tediously unoriginal, and utterly boring YA triangle.

I know that authors don't get to choose their own covers or blurbs when they publish with a professional publisher, but when I read something like this in the book description I have problems with it: "When Evie's friend, Lauren Silver, turns up dead, Evie must rely on all her newfound powers and friends to find the truth. But bringing a killer to justice may require stronger magic and true love, the kind that can't be found in a potion."

There are so many issues with this it's hard to know where to start. First, Lauren isn't her friend, she's an acquaintance who Evie barely knows and has met only once. Second, when Lauren is killed, instead of going to the police Evie starts sneaking around to hide some sneakers (LOL!) which she accidentally left at Lauren's house during their one encounter. Later she breaks into Lauren's home to steal something. Secondly, what newfound powers? Evie is in denial and doesn't believe she has any powers, so how can she "rely on all her newfound powers"? The book description is sheer bullshit.

Thirdly, "bringing a killer to justice may require...true love"? What's that all about? There is no true love here. And why must Evie have true love? Because she's too weak on her own and needs some guy to manhandle and validate her? Why do female authors persistently infantilize and demean their female characters like this? If Evie wanted to bring a killer to justice she would have immediately gone to the police and reported being attacked on her way home one night instead of waiting and waiting, oh, and waiting before she actually did report it, and then only when urged to by others.

And about that cat? After Evie visits Lauren's house under cover of darkness to retrieve her sneakers, a black cat that used to belong to Lauren, follows her home and will not leave. I kept waiting for the cat to do something, or to be acknowledged as her familiar. or something! But. It. Never. Happens. So what is the freaking point of bringing this cat into the story? Finally, the villain was a weak one, and I found it hard to believe that this person would not have been found out long before they revealed themselves.

There were some writing errors/problems in the story (and from what I've read, there were apparently more, but some at least appear to have been corrected. The only really bad one I noticed was: "What do you think they what?" where clearly that last word should have been 'want'. Where Lauren's possessions were referred to, they were improperly apostrophe'd: "Lauren Silvers' scrapbooks" as opposed to "Lauren Silvers's scrapbooks." 'Silvers' is a name, not a plural.

And here is a fifteen-year-old speaking in first person: "I knew that Bree shouldn't mandate whom I did and didn't like...." Who the hell speaks like that, especially at fifteen? It may be technically correct, but it's tiresome, and no one says 'whom' except the most pretentious of people, and writers who are so obsessed with correctness that they even put it into the mouths of their characters when it couldn't stand out more than the sore thumb it sucks like. It's time for 'whom' to retire. Really.

At one point in the story, a person is injured and a nurse came out to see if there were any family to share a status update with. 'Uncle Mitch' who is not remotely related to the hospitalized person steps forward and says, "I want to be a family member, does that count?" and then we read, "The nurse grinned" and she said, "Sure. Follow me." No. Just no! I've known many nurses and they are fiercely protective of their patients and not a one of them would ever have invited a stranger in or given out personal information about a patient to 'Uncle Mitch'.

Another issue was the obsession with beauty evident in this novel. Again this is a female writer and she's obsessed with looks, as though a woman or a girl can have no other value. Repeatedly I read things like: "...but I did pick out a very young and very beautiful Mrs. Fox." "No, you're beautiful." "...a Brazilian beauty." "You look beautiful." "Looking both beautiful and terrifying..." "Lauren was so beautiful." "Lauren was a beauty queen." "Lauren had a fragile, almost eerie beauty." "She was beautiful too."

It's far too much. Given the many shortcomings of this novel, I have to say it's a warty, not a worthy.

The Witches of the Wytewoods by MJ Thompson

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a British novel which is fine with me, but some stateside readers might find the wording rather peculiar at times. The story is of Erica Royal and her brother Clark who we meet in the middle of Wytewoods on the run. They're trying to reach a safe city where Erica's uncontrollable magic can be removed, but they're being pursued by minions of two evil witches who control the woods and want her magic.

This begs the immediate question as to why the kids (and why are they traveling alone?) are going through the woods instead of around them. The woods do not go on forever in all directions, but no answers are to be found on that score. Predictably and inevitably, Erica is captured by the witches and Clark is rescued by a girl named Rose who also happens to be a witch, and who agrees to help him track down and rescue Erica.

I have to say the story is rather depressing because it's an unrelenting downer of struggles and torments with nothing to leaven the load. I confess I found that irritating, as I did the fact that two witches are perverting the woods and allowing all manner of evil to grow there, yet no explanation is offered for why this is so. Why are they so outright evil as opposed to just being obsessed with capturing Erica's magic? There's no explanation for this either, and their evil and the perverse nature of the woods seems to serve no purpose - not for the story, other than to render it rather horrific, or more to the point, in terms of serving any purpose for the witches. It seemed like a waste of magic.

I also have to say that Clark is a moron. Despite having traveled in the woods and survived, he persistently underestimates it and fails to heed good advice given by expert Rose, repeatedly blundering into situations and undermining Rose's help and his own quest. He's also not too bright. At one point, a stone statue offers him good advice, which for once he follows and it saves his life. Later, when Rose talks of asking these statues, called oracles, for help, Clark's moronic retort is "How's a lump of stone going to help us find a witch?" Did he forget that one of these 'lumps' saved his life because it knew things?

Rose is a freaking saint just for putting up with Clark, let alone leading him to his sister, and he never truly appreciates her. That said, overall the story is pretty decent (remembering the caveats above) and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Rating: WARTY!

In Italian, Divina Commedia or originally just Comedia, this is a poetic work describing a descent into hell by Dante, and everything he sees there, but the real hell was actually having to listen to this audiobook. It is sooo boring and so pretentious that I gave up on it after about a quarter of it.

It was not holding my attention. It was saying nothing of interest. The story was stupid and primitive, and tedious. How this can be described as the greatest work in Italian is a complete mystery to me. Note that in Dante's time, the word 'comedy' meant something with a happy ending - it did not necessarily mean it was funny, and there's nothing funny - not even unintentionally, in this work.

The real oddity here though is that all the while that Dante is vaunting the Catholic church, he's also extolling the Greeks who were multi-theists and certainly did not subscribe to Catholicism! The guy is very confused, and his name-dropping is both tedious and laughable. Almost as laughable as his nine circles of hell:

1. Limbo
2. Lust
3. Gluttony
4. Greed
5. Wrath
6. Heresy
7. Violence
8. Fraud
9. Treachery

Heresy isn't the worst thing? Neither is violence? This is the system Dante invented out of whole cloth. He made it all up and people at the time believed it. Many still do. If you're a flatterer, you end up in the eighth circle of hell, but if you're a murderer, you only get sent down to the seventh circle? There's actually no story here, just a litany of offences and vile punishments that no god calling itself merciful would actually countenance - an eternity of suffering and a loving god are irreconcilable. And Dante was a moron.

Vast by Linda Nagata

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the last Nagata that I read although I understand this one is superseded by another novel called Edge. I have no interest in reading that. I have no interest in re-reading this one either (or any of this series), but I do have a decent enough recollection of it to say this was the best of the three I did read, and to give it a worthy rating.

The story could be a standalone since it's essentially unconnected with anything that preceded it and needs no connection with anything else. It tells the story of a group of astronauts in a spacecraft named the 'Null Boundary', who are running from an alien race known as the Chenzeme. The Chenzeme for reasons either unexplained or which I do not recall, are purging space of humans. Maybe they're terrified of the nano-tech that humans have unleashed? LOL!

There's some weird stuff that happens in this novel and some situations which make it interesting, but that's all I'm going to say about it. I do commend it as a worthy read although I have to say that after three of her novels, I'm really not feeling any need to read anything else by this author.

The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata

Rating: WARTY!

I know I read this, but I recall nothing about it, which tells me it wasn't that great even though at the time I did read two other novels in "The Nanotech Succession" of which this is supposedly the first, although Tech Heaven is also part of the series and precedes this one.

The story in retrospect makes no sense. It features two nano-enhanced characters, Nikko, and Phousita, both of whom were enhanced by a device from which this novel takes its title. Nikko is coming to the end of his allotted span, just like Roy in Blade Runner, and just like Roy in Blade Runner, Nikko doesn't want to go quietly into that bad night, or any night, so he steals the Bohr Maker, which despite the terror in which it holds society, was never destroyed, but was retained in the archives of the Commonwealth police. Why? Who the fuck knows! Honestly? It makes zero sense.

Only now are the Commonwealth police determined to wipe out all trace of the Bohr Maker, so like Roy in Blade Runner, selfish Nikko is on the run with Rachael, um, Phousita, and we're supposed to root for him after what he did? That's it. So, Blade Runner, really. I don't recall and I'm not inclined to go back and re-read it this or any other of this series! If I were I'd probably rate this more highly than warty!