The Royal Companion by Tanya Bird

Rating: WARTY!

"When Aldara is forced to become the royal companion of reluctant Prince Tyron, they develop an unexpected connection that becomes something more" Barf. Just barf. Done a thousand times before. Give this one the Bird. And 'Aldara'? Really? And 'Tyron'?

Death Dealers by Mason Sabre and Rachel Morton

"Harper Matthews carefully suppresses her magic - but bounty hunter Ethan Stone knows what will happen if she refuses to accept her destiny as a Death Dealer" Another trope, unoriginal, uninventive pile of clichés about a woman who needs a man to validate her. That it takes two people to write this when it's nothing but a cookie-cutter clone of all the other urban fantasy stories is the real crime here. Harper, and Ethan Stone? Barf. I guess his name does match the super hard-bitten title that could cut a diamond, but it's exactly the sort of title that turns me off. And is "Mason Sabre" really the author's name? Seriously?

Murder in Nice by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

Rating: WARTY!

"When an old friend is murdered on the French Riviera, Maggie must abandon her quiet village life to track down the killer." Why? Are the French police thoroughly incompetent? Another meddling civilian gets in the way. Barf.

Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Rating: WARTY!

"Humanity’s survivors inhabit decrepit ships orbiting the planet. Hell Divers collect life-saving equipment from the surface - but at a terrible risk." Yet another dumb-ass space opera where robots and AI were never inveted. Yawn.

Go the Distance by Jen Calonita

Rating: WARTY!

"After Hercules regains his godship, mortal Meg must embark on a mysterious quest to earn her spot on Mt Olympus alongside him" Um, Herakles, not Hercules, never was a god, numbnuts. Why not actually take the time to learn the mythology before you rip it off? Barf.

My Fairy Godmother Is a Drag Queen by David Clawson

Rating: WARTY!

"When Chris falls for his stepsister’s new boyfriend, he’ll need the help of the fiercest fairy godmother ever known!" Another YA clone in first person voice. barf. Another Cinderella retelling. Double-half-decaf-barf with a twist. No wonder Monty Python's Flying Kirkus thought this was "a fast-paced, riotous, laugh-out-loud yet insightful story of secret love" That's enough on its own to make me avoid this.

Anne of Manhattan by Brina Starler / Scooper and Dumper by Lindsay Ward

Rating: WARTY!

"Anne’s ready for a fresh start and grad school in Manhattan is the perfect opportunity — until her rival and secret crush, Gilbert, walks into the classroom." Barf. In short, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Anne of Green Gables and is instead another cookie-cutter cloned YA story. Yawn.

AND

In the same rip-off vein: Scooper and Dumper by Lindsay Ward

"When a snowstorm comes to the big city, front loader Scooper and snowplow Dumper brave the harsh weather to clear the roads and keep everyone safe!" This is nothing if not a direct rip-off of the 'Bob the Builder' TV show. Yawn.

Double Agent by Gretchen Archer

Rating: WARTY!

The fact that Janet Evanovich idiotically said this novel "Rocked me like a hurricane" tells me everything I need to know about her as an author. "When murder and grand theft come to the Bellissimo Resort and Casino, undercover agent Davis must find the culprit - all while a massive storm approaches." And the storm is relevant how? This just sounds stupid and unimaginative from the off. Just like Evanovich's comment.

Raising Backyard Chickens by Emma Nora

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I'm no more planning on raising chickens in my yard than I was pigs, but just as with that book, I read this one out of curiosity, and I was not disappointed. It's a fun book, full of useful and even unexpected information for anyone planning on producing their own eggs. Of course, you will need a chicken for that; God knows I've tried without one and I've never got it to work!

Don't be put off by the cartoon cover: this is a serious book and contains lots of useful information, along with tips and nested hints, and you won't have to shell out a lot to buy it..... Unfortunately it seems to be available only on Amazon, a corporation I refuse to have anything to do with for a variety of reasons, so I guess the yolk's on me as they say.

The chapters are as follows:

1. The Basics of Raising Backyard Chickens
2. The Science of Raising Chickens
3. Training Your Chickens
4. All About Eggs
5. Special mention - Chicks!
6. Learning to Source the Best Eggs
7. Maintaining the Pecking Order
8. Grooming

It oughtn't to be necessary to remind readers that chickens are living and sensitive animals which will require frequent attention along with attendant watering, feeding, and cleaning. They require safe and comfortable housing and close observation for potential health issues. It is not a part time job or to be approached with an amateurish state of mind. It's essential anyone planning on engaging in this pursuit should read a good book on the topic, and preferably more than one, and be prepared to put in the hard work. If you don't, you will have egg on your face....

There are issues you may not have considered if you've been idly thinking about getting a few chickens for the back yard: such as considering local bye-laws and your neighbors, and there are concerns that even were you cocksure about this, you may not have had these make it through the chicken mesh of your mind, such as bullying among chickens, as well as potential problems introducing new birds to an established flock, and so on. If you plan on selling the eggs, or you plan on exhibiting your chickens, there are tips to help you make those plans fly, too. It even teaches you how to pick up chicks - although that might not be exactly what you had in mind....

I personally have no experience raising chickens, so I can give only my opinion, but I'm no dumb cluck, and it seemed to me that this book was competent, serious, appropriate and a great place to start. It felt like it would get a person well on the right path to having success with this project and so I commend it as a worthy read.

Elves on the Fifth Floor by Francesca Cavallo, Verena Wugeditsch

Rating: WORTHY!

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

It's a little early for a Christmas story, but I liked everything about this short picture novel from the intriguing title to the entertaining and cute tale, to the playful text by Cavallo, and the charming illustrations by Wugeditsch. It was original, quirky in a good way, and amusing. The only problem with the ebook was that Amazon did its usual job of mangling of the format in the Kindle edition - turning it into the kindling it's well known for in my experience. This is one of many reasons why I will have nothing to do with Amazon. For example, the page numbers appeared in the midst of the story including on one amusing occasion where I read the following:

The young man had pulled out his cell phone and was dialing a number.
74
Who...

It made it look like the number he was dialing was 74! The Net Galley viewer presented it much better and was beautifully laid out, but it was in double page format that doesn't work on my phone, which is where I typically read my books. I don't know if this is going to be available in a Kindle edition, but if it is, I recommend strongly against buying that version. The lines were chopped unequally, so some parts of the text would cover the left half of the screen whereas other lines would go the full width of the screen. Drop caps do not work and were messed up. Pictures and text were poorly adjoined. The formatting was, as usual in Kindle when it's anything other than plain vanilla text, messed up to put it politely.

I couldn't read the Net Galley version on my iPad since Net Galley snottily refuses to make its app compatible with older devices, but I was able to try it on Blue Fire Reader and in Adobe Digital Editions, and it was perfectly fine in both of those. So there, Net Galley! Take that! LOL!

The story was wonderful. It was a family of two parents and three kids, who were moving to a new town because of the resentment about their family and marital choices in the place they used to live (which I'd hazard a guess was Texas, especially the way things are going down here lately). They have a small apartment on the fifth floor and make the most of it. One parent, Isabella heads out the next day to begin her new job as a mail carrier at the town's post office. The other, Dominique, stays home with the kids.

When the kids write a letter to Santa about changing plans for a Christmas present, they wonder if it will get there in time, so they're surprised to get a speedy reply in the form of a magical letter from Santa himself! It enquires if it might be possible for some elves work from their home on Christmas Eve, in order to make sure all the presents get distributed in time. Naturally they accept, and this is how elves come to be on the fifth floor, but in a place like this where adults are not known to be overly friendly, the arrival of new people, and the activities on the fifth floor become problematical!

However it all works out in the end. That's not a spoiler! You knew it would! I liked this for its off-kilter take on the world, and for its enthusiastic story-telling and I commend it fully as a worthy read.

The Cutting Edge by Jeffery Deaver

Rating: WARTY!

"In this pulse-pounding New York Times bestseller, detective Lincoln Rhyme" Stop right there! No! Just no!

The Marriage Lie by Ali Mercer

Rating: WARTY!

"Stella has been keeping an earth-shattering secret from her 14-year-old daughter, Georgie." Earth shattering? Really? Can you spell hyperbole, Ali? But don't worry The Earth shatters into precise national delineations where there are no more international wars nor any terrorism, so life is sweet. Except for the USA where cultural intolerance, racism, homphobia, and politcal dvides cause it to fracture into a million autonomous mini-states which float all in disparate directions, never to meet again.

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by LC Rosen

Rating: WARTY!

"A sex-positive and thoughtful romp with humor and heart" - that's how the Kirkus circus unsurprisingly describes this. "When out-and-proud teen advice columnist Jack starts to receive strange letters that soon take a threatening turn, can his best friends help him unmask the writer's identity?" 'Jack' is evidently short for jackass, if this moron doesn't take this to the police. Yet another reason why I avoid like the plague any novel with a main character named 'Jack' - the most overused cliché name on the fictional planet.

No Ordinary Star by MC Frank

Rating: WARTY!

"In 2525," if man can stay alive, if woman can survive...a fugitive girl struggles to survive an icy wasteland as a soldier sets out for the North Pole with an impossible task" Yeah. The impossible task is figuring out how the world became an icy wasteland when presently it's heating up by the minute. If this story were set in a barren desert, then I might get with it, but as it is? Meh.

Rain Boy by Dylan Glynn

Rating: WARTY!

The adventures of rain man when he was a boy! No wonder Kirkus called it "captivating." Captivating. Captivating. Oh! Fart! Wherever he goes, Rain Boy brings a downpour - but when things turn stormy at Sun Kidd's birthday party, can his new friend help him embrace who he is?" My guess is yes, but why ask? Is it because the writer of the book description thinks all the potential readers of this book are idiots? Nothing new here.

Fanny Bower Puts Herself Out There by Julia Ariss

Rating: WARTY!

"After a lifetime of sitting on the sidelines, Fanny Bower decides to cast aside her fears and make her presence known. But plunging headfirst into social settings is harder than it looks - and between small talk, spilled wine, and embarrassing gaffes, she's in for a wild ride!" This tells me Fanny is a moron who never considered taking things in stages so she could avoid all the big problems. I don't understand why so many female authors are so intent upon writing about moronic women, but I sure have no desire to read anything about such people. I wonder if the author knows that fanny is a euphemism - in the US for ass, and in the UK for pussy? And bower, as in bower bird, is a display to attract a mate. Is fanny Bower putting her ass out there to attract a mate?

Cruel Winter by Sheila Connolly

Rating: WARTY!

"In a small Irish village, Maura Donovan and her pub patrons are snowed in - and there's a killer in their midst" No problem. Everyone stay together, stay awake or rotate three or more people awake at once, and problem is solved. Why this gets to be called " A clever cozy mystery" is the only real mystery here, but why a "New York Times bestselling author" needs to unload her work at a discount is another mystery. And 'village'? Like they wanted this Irish story to be even more cute and stereotyped than ever?

Bunker by Jay J Falconer

Rating: WARTY!

"When a coordinated electromagnetic attack wipes out power across the country, it’s up to former combat engineer Jack Bunker" Stop right there. Another got to character named Jack? Fuck off. And couple that with 'Bunker'? Seriously? What's his dad's name? Archie? "to transform the ordinary citizens of a small Colorado town into hardened warriors — and lead them into a deadly battle for survival." Of course it's book one, because why the hell wouldn't a dumbass story like this be a series of dumbass stories? Why does he have to train the citizens of Colorado? I'm guessing it's because the already-trained military and cops are all robots and were all disabled by the EMP? Except Jack of course. This story is jacked up.

JET - Ops Files by Russell Blake

Rating: WARTY!

This is the sort of story that ought to have appealed to me (despite really disliking the title), but I could not take it seriously. The first problem is that it jumped around so much from one place to another, and from one set of characters to an unrelated set with great flourishes of self-importance. Obviously in the long run these parts of the story are going to be related, but it was such hodge-podge that it annoyed me; every time I felt I was getting into the main character's the story, I was whisked away again and forced into something else that really wasn't interesting to me. I wanted to read about the main character, not a series of seemingly random people involved in random events.

I was going with it though, because I always enjoy the idea at least, of a strong female character as the protagonist, but my assumption going into a novel is that this main character isn't stupid, or at least if she starts out that way, she soon wises-up, but about 20% in I discovered this not to be the case.

Maya is in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force or in Israeli, Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisrael, or The Army of Defense for Israel), and her squad is involved in guarding a security checkpoint in Ramallah, vetting vehicles coming through. This one early morning, right at shift change, when the night-shift guard was at its lowest ebb, a vehicle came through which was loaded with terrorists, there was a gun-battle and the terrorists got away, and Maya's best friend, the only other woman in the guard squad, was killed.

This didn't make any sense at all to me, because rather than come in guns blazing, the vehicle stopped and waited, and only opened fire when it was suspected by the guards to be inauthentic. I didn't get the point of that approach. If they had been trying to get through the checkpoint to cause trouble elsewhere, then their approach made sense, but that's not what the writing suggested. If all they had planned on doing was shooting up the checkpoint, which is how it seemed, then it made zero sense to come in like a lamb and wait to be discovered.

Regardless, Maya takes this shooting personally, and she begins sneaking out of the barracks disguised as an Arab woman (she speaks fluent Arabic), and scouring city for the people who did it; Eventually she locates the residence where these terrorists hang out, and she hears them discussing making a bomb. She does consider reporting this, but she's already in trouble with a vindictive sergeant and if he finds out she's been moonlighting as a spy when she's supposed to be in the barracks, then she'll be in trouble, even if she does have good intel on a threat. So she decides she has to handle this herself. It's bullshit, though.

Another option would have been for her to make up a story that an informant told her this information at the checkpoint (she could claim, for example, that this happened when no one else was paying attention because she was talking to a kid). That might sound like bullshit, but at least the intel would have been passed on. A solid writer would have gone this route - or via something similar - and then perhaps had the information discredited, thereby letting Maya have free reign to take it into her own hands. This author didn't do that, and instead, he made Maya a dumbass by having her go rogue - which is what gets her into trouble and gets her eventually recruited into the Mossad - with far too little motive. I just thought it was bad writing.

Right after Maya's big discovery, she was heading back to barracks and was accosted by three louts who figured they could take advantage of a lone Arab woman. She beat them up of course, but her attack started with a roundhouse kick that left her feeling "the toe of her combat boot [connecting] with his jaw." If shed been dressed modestly, as the text states, she would have been wearing a long dress and there's no way in hell you can roundhouse kick in one of those. The text doesn't actually specify what she was wearing other than a hijab (a headscarf), but modesty suggests a long dark dress. Arab women in Palestine do wear a variety of different clothing styles, including jeans and pants, and shorter dresses, but specifying modesty is what would seem to trap Maya. It just felt like more bad writing. That's when I quit reading the novel - at about 20% in - because as they say in the action movies, "I have a bad feeling about this."!

The blurb tells us that "JET- Ops Files is a breakneck adrenaline rush that will leave action thriller fans gasping." No, it's not. It's slow and sprawling, and it's irritatingly pedantic and constantly shifting focus. In what sounds like desperation, the blurb says, "If you love Bourne, Reacher, Mitch Rapp, or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, JET will keep you turning pages late into the night." But it really doesn't seem like this has a heck of a lot in common with Jason Bourne or Lisbeth Salander. I can't speak for Jack Reach-around for whom I have zero time, since Jack is the most over-used dumb-ass go-to name for an action guy ever. I've never heard of Mitch Rapp and I'm not impressed with his name either. I can't commend this based on what I read. It's too much like a guy with tits sort of a story.

A Killer's Daughter by Jenna Kernan

Rating: WARTY!

I will not read novels with this form of title - one which makes the female character anonymous and an appendage of someone or something else, so I don't care that "After a young woman's corpse is found in Sarasota Bay, agent Nadine Finch is horrified to spot a mark identical to the MO of her own serial killer mother." Who cares, really?

Murder on Millionaires' Row by Erin Lindsey

Rating: WARTY!

"In Gilded Age New York, housemaid Rose Gallagher investigates her wealthy employer's mysterious disappearance" Why? To be yet another interfering busybody? The NYPD has been in existence since 1845, yet dipshit Rose thinks they can't help? Barf.

A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy/Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Rating: WARTY!

These two are in the same review because really? They're the same book.

A River of Royal Blood "16-year-old Princess Eva must defeat her sister in a deadly battle for the throne - or else forfeit her own life." Isn't that what deadly means? Hello?

Coupled with:

Cinderella Is Dead (How I wish she were but it ain't gonna happen, not when Disney (barf) and Amazon (double barf) are milking it for all they're worthless. "When 16-year-old Sophia befriends Cinderella's last living descendant, can they join forces to overthrow the king?" Sixteen year olds fighting for the throne. How are these two stories any different? Oh, I guess it's because this one is an "empowering fantasy adventure 'that will forever change how readers perceive fairy tales' " according to Booklist. Shows why they're not to be trusted eh?! No wonder they're listing.

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella

Rating: WARTY!

"With nearly 30,000 five-star ratings on Goodreads" this author is still trying to milk this for all it's worth. ♩It's all about the Benjamins!♬ We follow "budget-challenged Becky Bloomwood to the big city - where her high jinks could cost her everything" and so while children starve in Ethiopia (and in the USA), this jerk is spend, spend, spend on clothes. Way to go.

The Judas Strain by James Rollins

Rating: WARTY!

"When an extinction-level virus threatens humanity, it's up to Sigma Force commander Gray Pierce to stop the catastrophe in its tracks - and the key to the cure lies in the legendary travels of Marco Polo" Absolutely! That commander is going to throw everything he has at the virus. Tanks, AA missiles, rockets, grenades. He's going to surround it and bomb it back to the stone age, and wipe it from the face of the Earth. Meanwhile the medical people will cower in terror. Any novel with a ridiculous title like this (ripping off Michael Crichton to boot) should be avoided like the plague.

Hooky by Míriam Bonastre Tur

Rating: WARTY!

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

This was a comic book for younger readers written and illustrated by talented Spanish artist Tur. It's rooted in a 'webcomic' from 'webtoon' with which I am not familiar, but which seems to have been a success.

This version evidently has new material, but without knowing the original I can't speak to that. While I thought the artwork was bright, colorful, and well done, for me the story failed to live up to the illustrations. It was choppy and made no sense, and while I realize that I am not the intended audience, and that a less critical audience might well go for this, I can only review it from my own perspective and for me it failed for a variety of reasons. I will say that one wonderful thing about it is that this story did not have JK Rowling's sexist distinction that boys were glorious wizards, but girls were 'only' witches with all the negative baggage that appellation entails. No, these guys were both witches!

I have a problem with magic stories where the actual magic takes a back seat and the story ends up being just a regular story with a patina of magic dusted over it for flair, and that's what seems to have happened here. There were so many places where magic would have been useful, but obviously if you're in a world where you can 'magic' anything, you really need to work on the story to make it entertaining. It's a fine line the author walks between going full throttle magical, which risks making everything too easy for the protagonists, and being a magical miser, which to me makes the magical elements worthless by failing to use them when they make logical sense.

The author seems to attempt to get around this by having these kids be so poorly-educated (magically speaking) that they swing right into that 'magical miser' territory and for me this spoils the story. It seems to me that the kids ought to have had at least a basic grounding in magic from their parents or from their elementary magic school, but none of this is even discussed, much less explored, so there's this huge plot hole whereby the kids are rank amateurs, but we're offered no reason why.

The story here is that witch twins Dani and Dorian miss the school bus that would deliver them to their magical academy. Instead of telling their parents of this, or taking out their brooms and flying, they give up completely and end up wandering aimlessly around, quite lost as to what to do. Through a series of accidental events they end up with an advanced professor of magic, and somehow irresponsibly fail to tell their parents of their change of plans.

The story deteriorates after this as they fall in with a random group of misfits - a princess and a trouble-maker - and just have a chaotic series of adventures seemingly unconnected to anything. Meanwhile we're getting hints of a magical conspiracy, but that seems like a separate and entirely unconnected story. I was pretty much lost by this time because I had no clear idea of what the author was trying to do, or where this story was going, if anywhere. It just seemed to meander at the author's fleeting whim without having a purpose or a plan, and I DNF'd it because it was not entertaining me at all. I was looking for a coherent story, and there wasn't one to be had here. It felt more like a disconnected series of Sunday newspaper cartoons, which is what, I'm guessing, the web series was. So while I loved the art, I can't commend it based on the story - or lack thereof.

Pigology by Daisy Bird, Camilla Pintonato

Rating: WORTHY!

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

You eat like a pig. Your place is a pigsty. You're hogging all the limelight. Pigs equal insults in many a mind. This book hopes to set a few records straight and give you a basic grounding in how to choose, own, raise and care for your pig, regardless of what your intentions are. I'm an almost lifelong vegetarian so I would never eat a pig, but I do like the animals. Ignorantly associated with squalor, pigs are not dirty animals - unless they're forced into being so by their human predators. They're also smart - more than dogs even - and among the most intelligent animals in the world.

But they are exploited hugely. Whether your plan is to do that or to have one as a pet, this book will set you up with the basic information you will need to make smart choices and to care for your animal competently. It's laid out according to the following section headings (although there's an introductory section, which for once I did read, that's not included in the content listing for some reason):

• Bon Appetiti
• Food All year Round
• The International Pig
• Sausageology
• Everything But the Squeal
• Pigs and Humans
• The Mythological Pig
• Chinese Zodiac
• Wit and Wisdom
• Fame!
• Worth Their Weight in Gold
• The Perfect Pigsty
• pigs as Pets
• A rainbow of Breeds
• A rainbow of Breeds
• Vietnamese Potbellied Pig, Odssabaw Island Hog
• Danish Protest Pig, Meishan
• Gloucester Old Spot, Large White
• Black Iberian, Mulefoot

The book is amusing and colorful, with entertaining illustrations and enough information to set you on the right track without being a PhD dissertation. I commend this as a worthy read for anyone wanting to pig out and go hog wild!

Lore of Rainbow by Vera Nazarian

Rating: WARTY!

This is a prequel to the author's Lords of Rainbow which I shall never read because this effort completely turned me off. The language was way-the-hell too florid and rambling and I had no idea what this was about, much less what the succeeding story will be about, because after reading a third of this very short 'prologue' I was clueless as where it was going or what point it was trying to make. Worse, I had by then lost all interest in finding out. This is why I do not read prologues. They're utterly worthless, as is this.

Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman

Rating: WARTY!

"Searching for a new purpose, failed academic Frank moves to a small, sleepy Georgia town to chart the history of his family’s estate." Because that's sure going to change the world for the better. Yawn.

She's So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott

Rating: WARTY!

"After her wealthy family falls from grace, Ally Ryan is reluctant to return to her ritzy hometown" Oh boo-hoo! Who gives a flying shit about the lifestyes of the spoiled rotten? Really?

Pieces of Our Past by James Hunt

Rating: WARTY!

The first thing that should warn you away from this is the title. "When a child disappears in the dead of night, Seattle missing persons detectives Jim North and Kerry Martin investigate — but this case will put their partnership to the test." North goes South. I preferred James Hunt the Formula One driver.

A Daring Journey by Jeanne St James

Rating: WARTY!

There's nothing remotely daring about this. "On her flight home, Mac finds her heart racing after meeting pilot Damon. When Trevor, a man from Damon’s past, shows up, the trio’s chemistry ignites." Seriously? That didn't work so well for the Rockton Chemtool plant....

The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross, Mark A Altman

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not at all surprised that Kirkus reviews champions this. That makes perfect sense. I don't think it's happenstance that their name is almost the same as 'Circus'. But the last thing this world needs is more William Shatner. That's not even the worst thing. The title suggests there will be at least one more volume. The Original Series has shat its load and needs to be TOSsed along with the entire mentalprise. It's as tedious as Star Bores. Barf.

Sword of the Seven Sins by Emily Colin

Rating: WARTY!

"From a New York Times bestselling author" and yet she's forced to unload her oeuvre for ninety-nine cents on Amazon! "Eva is horrified when she’s chosen to serve the Commonwealth as an executioner. In a society governed by the code of the Seven Sins, love is forbidden." How would that even happen? This is nothing more than a cut-rate handmaid's tale and even that was dumb. The whole idea is bullshit from the off. Nope.

Excess Baggage by Judy Astley

Rating: WARTY!

"Single mom Lucy is in desperate need of a vacation — so she agrees to join her dysfunctional parents and siblings on a Caribbean getaway." Ri-ight - because that would be the perfect relaxing vacation. If a novel begins with a dumb-ass plot like that, it can only get worse! No thanks.

Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton

Rating: WARTY!

"When 40-year-old Emma Porter sets out to tour the gardens of England," Why is her age important? "Aunt Dimity’s ghostly intervention leads her to a Gothic mansion - and an extraordinary mystery!" Why doesn't the meddling Aunt Dimwitted solve the frigging mystery herself? Another hard pass. Well, it wasn't that hard! LOL!

The Atlantis Bloodline by CA Gray

Rating: WARTY!

"As a member of a covert organization, Kaison has been tasked with tracking down Ada the last survivor of a magical bloodline" Kaison? A caisson is a chest or wagon for hauling ammunition. Seriously? And why is he tasked with finding her? Why not a private detective? If there's magic, why not use magic to find her? None of this makes any sense! "If he succeeds, Kaison can earn his sister’s freedom… but what happens when he starts to fall in love with Ada?" I can answer that: we get another dumb-ass so-called romance which is why I will not be reading this crap.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Rating: WARTY!

This is yet another diversion into the classics. I find the author's name amusing for some reason. In conjunction with reading this, I also watched the Disney movie John Carter which was loosely derived from the novel and was a huge loss for the studio, despite making some 300 million. That's bad business right there: your movie makes THREE HUNDRED MILLION and you still lose money on it? I am not a fan of Disney, but despite the movie being mildly entertaining and the novel being mildly readable, I have no intention of pursuing this series.

I don't know if George Lucas, in creating his Star Wars empire ever acknowledged how much he borrowed from Burroughs, but in my opinion he took a lot. Special snowflake super-powered savior guy and a princess to win? Telepathy? A desert planet? Sword fighting? Multiple alien species? Epic battles on land and in the air? Strange alien animals? Weird flying craft? It's all there. The leaders in the story are known as Jeds and Jeddaks. Is it a coincidence how close this is to Jedi?

I understand that this novel was written in a different era, and long before we knew a lot about Mars, but the story itself doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense even within its own fictional framework, and the hero of it, John Carter (it's convenient that his initials are JC, for a white savior, huh?!), really ought to have been named Mary Sue for all the luck he has going his way and the lack of effort he puts in to get the consistently sterling results he obrains. It's like everything he does, he becomes expert at, and everything that happens to him quickly facilitates his meeting whatever goal it was he had been hoping to reach.

As was the wont back then, this work was serialized in early 1912 before appearing as a 66,000 word novel. For this reason it has all of the prevailing white male privilege of that era, including all of the viewpoints that you'd expect. There is no enlightenment here, so you have to take it as you find it, or avoid it. Carter is a veteran of the US civil war (on the side of the South of course!) and shortly after that ended, he took to prospecting in the southwest USA. He gets to Mars accidentally through a portal hidden in a cave he happens upon. There is no explanation offered for the presence of this portal on Earth, much less its specific location.

Burroughs buys into the antique notion of Martian canals, born of a misunderstanding. Astronomer Schiaparelli described features (that were very likely optical artifacts) as 'channels' which in his native Italian was 'canali'. This was misunderstood as 'canals' - an artificial construction by intelligent beings on a planet that was drying-out, aimed at channeling water from the icy poles to support the rest of the planet. Burroughs uses this idea, just as did HG Wells, and Ray Bradbury. Burroughs also invents a huge river - no doubt based on the River Styx, along which people at the end of their lives were borne.

Mars is known to the natives as 'Barsoom', and it's been suggested that this is based on numbering the known heavenly bodies, starting with the sun and including the moons, 'bar' being the Martian word for eight. This makes no sense within the story, but I guess it could have been Burroughs 'rationale'. The five named planets are these: Rasoom (Mercury), Cosoom (Venus), Jasoom (Earth), Barsoom (Mars), and Sasoom (Jupiter), but since the word for 'one' in Barsoomian is 'ay' and not 'ra', this numbering theory would seem to be a non-starter!

People seem to praise Burroughs for such inventive world-building, but it really isn't. In fact, it's extremely derivative, and scientifically makes little to no sense. It's just a jumble of random ideas that apparently caught his imagination. Martians are green and with six arms? The equivalent of a dog has ten legs and is super-fast? There are wonderful flying machines in one part of the planet, and wagon trains in another? Mars is dry? None of this is really very imaginative. Some of it's plain dumb.

Anyway, Carter discovers, due to the weaker gravity on Mars, that he is very strong and can leap to great heights because his bones and muscles developed under Earth's gravity. The thing is that there are humans (or very like humans) on Mars - called red humans because of their tan - and any one of them ought to have been able to develop Carter's ability if they had only worked-out, yet in thousands of years, no one ever did? There's also a race of green Martians who are fifteen feet tall and have six limbs, but Carter can easily vanquish them because of his superior strength and agility. There are other races, but none that we meet in this volume.

Carter takes up with the green Martians who hatch from eggs after a five year 'gestation' period. He rapidly rises to a position of power despite being a curiosity, a non-native, and something of a prisoner. He learns their language quickly, but here's the weird thing: we're told that they say very few words aloud, and have only the simplest of spoken languages; they communicate a lot by telepathy, so he develops his telepathic skills just like that. Yet repeatedly throughout the story, these simple people, lacking a significant language, physically speak great volumes of complex words and sentences to him and there's never any more mention of communicating telepathically! So Burroughs is inconsistent at best.

The lack of air on Mars is overcome as the author reveals that there is (one!) atmospheric generation facility to keep the oxygen levels renewed, but this is part of the problem (especially at the end of the story), since the technology levels on Mars are wildly variable, particularly between the greens and the reds, although no reason is given for this.

Development of hand weapons seem to have halted at a late medieval level with simple guns and swords, yet the red society's power is derived from nuclear sources! The divide is, admittedly, largely between the greens and the reds, but the greens pilfer hugely from red airships that they shoot down with their long range rifles, so why their technology is so backward I have no idea.

The rifles are a problem. We're told that they can theoretically hit a target three hundred miles away, and reliably nail one that's two hundred miles away, but on Mars, the horizon is only two miles away, so how that weapon is supposed to work at a hundred times that distance, I have no idea! There's a vague allusion to wireless guidance technology, but this is completely out of line with the greens technology level, so none of this made any sense. His misuse of 'staunch' perhaps did back then: "I endeavored to staunch the flow of blood" This is really supposed to be 'stanch'.

The red humans have flying machines which employ an 'eighth ray' for propulsion, which is bullshit and nonsense, but hey, this is fiction! There are supposedly nine 'rays' and the eighth and ninth are talked about in this volume, but none of the others are discussed, so I have no idea what those are supposed to be.

The problem with this is that at one point, when JC is being suitably heroic once more and Mary-Sue-ing his way into yet another plum position, he encounters another human with a flying machine that has been downed due to a mechanical problem. Again this is highly convenient because we later learn that the stranded guy is a relative of a high-level official and thus provides yet another easy access point for Carter - which he promptly wastes.

We're informed that JC can't rescue this guy on his own flyer because they're fragile, but earlier we were told the eighth ray is so powerful that it accidentally launched an unsuspecting airship crew into orbit. How is this fragile? Did Burroughs mean that the ship's construction is fragile? There was no suggestion of that earlier, and these 'single occupant' airships are sixteen feet long so there seemed to be no reason why it could not have lifted two people if they sat on it carefully. I'm just saying!

Naturally, Carter meets a princess of the red humans and they almost immediately fall in love. They always use both names, so she's always Dejah Thoris and he's always John Carter, never John or Carter, and the both speak of themselves in third person at times. It's annoying. Everyone is quite warlike - whether that's because Mars is the god of war or the author just chose to make his story that way for dramatic purposes, I don't know, but despite this belligerence, no one invented a machine gun. Go figure! Even the red humans can't get along because there's a war between different factions of those, and the princess is supposed to marry her enemy against her will in order to secure peace, but you know that ain't happening.

So Carter gets into a position of palace guard at his enemy's stronghold, giving him freedom to roam the palace and search for the princess who is conveniently being held there. He is always - I mean always - hiding in the right place at the right time to discover key pieces of information. At one point he deserts his guard post to go look for the princess, and becomes hopelessly lost. He rests his back against a wall for a minute to catch his breath since he's apparently exhausted from roaming the hallways in search of her, and this wall just happens to be the one to the princess's quarters!

Instead of biding his time and making a plan, he bursts in there and slaughters the four guards who are berthed inside her room(!) She informs him that she has to go through with this wedding and that he cannot kill her intended because it is forbidden for her to marry the murderer of her intended. Dejah Thoris isn't actually a person, she's a tool, a lure, a trophy, a possession, a MacGuffin who is constantly in need of rescue, a bargaining chip. She's never an agent of her own, and is nothing if not a perennially half-naked eye-candy prize to be bartered and won.

Carter is equally lucky in fleeing the palace. Despite there being an uproar over the four guards he slaughtered, he manages to accidentally find his way to a truly convenient escape point from the palace. Unable to jump out of a high window in daylight (people apparently look up on Mars) he chooses to hide inside an elaborate lighting fixture, which happens to be hanging above the precise point where a group of people gather to explain everything that's going on.

Again with the luck: I read later of another of his adventures, "The building was an enormous one, rearing its lofty head fully a thousand feet into the air...The fact that Barsoomian architecture is extremely ornate made...a perfect ladder for me all the way to the eaves of the building" A thousand feet up! This is the guy who is so out of shape that he gets breathless searching the palace and yet he climbs a thousand feet with no trouble?

This kind of thing happens again and again, tediously so. For example, at one point, Carter is flying one of the little aircraft to Helium, a major Martian city which is a thousand miles away (I guess fuel running out is never a problem on Mars). Now this is the single most distinctive city on Mars, but he can't find it because his speedometer and compass are damaged, and he gets lost. Despite flying over several cities where he could have stopped and asked for directions, the idiot doesn't stop until he espies a massive battle going on between green Martians. Despite knowing how deadly a shot these people are, instead of avoiding the battle, he flies right over it like a moron, and gets shot down.

Why these fighting Martians even care about shooting him down when amidst a massive battle, is left unexplained, but he happens to land, in a field of ten thousands fighting Martians, precisely at the point where his friend is engaged in combat, and ends up saving his friend's life! This results in his becoming even more highly elevated in their society. Note that since Mars has no magnetic field to speak of, a compass would be useless there, but Burroughs could not have known that.

When Carter is trying to find an associate in the dark dungeons, I read, "Fortunately among the first I examined I found his jailer, and soon we had Kantos Kan with us in the throne room." Yep, he goes right to the jailer who has the very keys he needs to free the guy. He rallies a force of a hundred thousand green Martians who come with him to attack the enemy red Martian city and this takes no effort at all to talk them into joining his personal crusade. Despite needing three days to gather all the help he requires, he arrives at the enemy city right at the precise moment his precious princess is about to be wed, just in time to stop the proceedings!

There's an air battle which I imagine would have been rather thrilling to readers in 1912 when air travel was in its infancy, but the author utterly fails to think through the fight. He has the airships drawn up (like David Weber does in more modern sci-fi battles) as though the space in which they fight is two dimensional, so they're organized like ships of the line, static, and firing cannon at one another in broadsides! Eventually some ships' captains think it through and manage to rise above the others and drop bombs on them, but when it comes to taking on the million man enemy army, instead of flying over and dropping bombs on them, these idiots quit the ships and deposit their 100,000 men on the ground and fight it out with the million man enemy army - and they still win!

Carter is the most lucky klutz ever to blunder into a situation where he can't lose. So like I said, it's interesting enough to read purely from a historical perspective to see how people viewed both themselves and Mars (and non-whites and women) back in Burroughs's day. It's not something I was remotely interested in continuing on into other volumes. It is a free read - you can find it online, at places like Project Gutenberg, There might even be an audiobook version of it there - I dunno. For me though, like Carter's bride, it laid an egg.

Solatium by GS Jennsen

Rating: WARTY!

This seems to have been my month for reading novels which have a title starting with 'S'! This was your standard short teaser introduction to a series which left me unmoved and unimpressed.

The book description for this is dishonest. It says, "Though humanity conquered the very stars, it remained unable to conquer the darkness within." So we’re conquering stars, but "He’d intercepted her as she pilfered a stack of disks from a merchant kiosk" we’re still using disks?

That struck a sour note right there, but I read on because it was so short, and discovered that the next bit of the description, "a young woman who's lost everything but her soul fights to reclaim her life from a violent, sadistic criminal despot" is bullshit too. She does nothing. She's a maiden in distress rescued by a couple of white knights who want to take down her cruel overlord for their own purposes! All she does, essentially, is to get out of their way! They ostensibly use her to get the layout of the building for their assault, but what, they're conquering stars and yet they have no miniature spy drones they can send in there? The telegraphing of the relationship between the girl and one of her saviors is pathetic and I lost all interest in having anything to do with such an unimaginative and predictable series in short order.

Sleepwalking by Cara Malone

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb describes this as a novella, but at only 15,000 words, it's actually a novelette. For me, I'd call it a prologue and had I known that's all it was I would never have embarked upon it. I don't do prologues. It was only some sixty screens on my phone where I do most of my ebook reading, so it's a fast read, but that's usually not a good recommendation for me!

The problem with a story like this is that you know exactly how it's going to end, so what the author has to offer you is an interesting way to get there, and this author seemed like she was dedicatedly pursuing the most predictably plodding route she could map. On top of that, there were multiple grammatical and other problems. If the story had been enthralling, I would have not paid so much attention to them, but in so short a story, it bothered me that there were so many silly errors.

I read, for example, what's turning out to be an increasingly common goof in YA stories. One character had a "geometric deer skull tattooed on her bicep." Nope! It's biceps, unless the vperson seeing this has weird x-ray vision and could see through the skin to an actual bicep, which is one of two attachments that the biceps muscle has to the scapula. Each bicep joins to form the biceps which is the bulge we see when the arm is flexed.

Later I read, "Okay, fine. If that's your criteria." Criteria is a plural. In this case what was needed was the singular: 'criterion'. These two main characters are a senior college student and a college graduate, and both are English majors, so this ineptitude in employing the English language is not only inexcusable, it's laughable. Unfortunately, standards are definitely falling.

In another variety of problem, I read, "Morgan righted the coffee table and set the empty glass down..." This is the same empty glass that Morgan had already placed in the sink a few paragraphs before. Another such issue was when I read, "That's when the term 'bipolar' first came into their lives." Nope! Morgan mentions that term twice before, so it had already been in their lives prior to this!

Right after the bipolar, there was about three paragraphs where Morgan begins by taking out her phone and doing a search for something, and ends by closing her laptop! I want a phone that morphs effortlessly into a laptop! Again, really sloppy writing. This author takes no pride in her craft.

Later, I read, "Leah took her outstretched hand and it was like electricity was firing between their palms" Ri-ght.... Seriously? This sounded far too ridiculous even as a figure of speech. Further on, I read, "What was so special about Leah that it could make Morgan cast aside six years of happiness for an illicit kiss in a coffee shop?" Nope. Morgan had already said it had been some three years of relative bliss before things had begun to go downhill, so there was no such six years, and that certainly applies to their recent history. In fact, it's Morgan's miserable relationship that triggered her interest in Leah. It was like the author had repeated instances where she couldn't remember what she'd written just a short time before - either that or she simply didn't care about what she was writing, and if she doesn't, why the hell should I?

Anyone can make a goof-up or even several, but when there are so many in such a short space in a story that's already dropping below being so-so, it's too many for me. But let's look at the quality of the story itself rather than the actual text it was written in. The first of the two main characters is college senior Leah McAllister, who is apparently pursuing an English degree, but has no clue what she will do with it once she graduates. This doesn't make her look too smart.

I mean, she's had three years of college already, yet not once in those years has she really had any inspiration about what she'll do after her senior year or, given she has no idea, why she's still doggedly pursuing this English major instead of trying something new and of more utility to her. This doesn't make her at all appealing to me as someone I want to read about unless something truly weird and wonderful is going to happen, and I don't include falling in lust in such a list. This is also a problem with this story - as so often happens in these 'romance' tales. The author badly confuses lust with love and it makes the story shallow, stupid, and unappealing.

Further rendering Leah stupid is her ridiculous and persistent denial that she's at least bisexual and more likely, an out-and-not-out lesbian. If she were in high-school, this confusion over her sexual leaning might be understandable, and even as a college freshman you can probably get away with it, but as a senior after three years or more of college? No. I don't buy it this at all, especially when virtually the first thing she does in this story is have a totally random hookup with a female named Christy, who is pretty much a complete stranger, in an alley behind a bar. I mean, seriously?

Leah allows Christy to digitally bring her to an orgasm - apparently the most powerful she's ever had - and afterwards the two part and never see each other again (not in this prolog anyway), and Leah is still having doubts? She's a frigging moron, period! And worse, she exhibits zero capacity to learn and no smarts about delving into a potential partner's sexual history before engaging in sex with them. Christy doesn't even wash her hands before taking her out into the alley and fingering her for fuck's sake!

Morgan, the other main character is in her mid-twenties and has been in a relationship for six years with this girl Ali, with whom she lives. Ali is undiagnosed bipolar sufferer - as far as Morgan can tell from scrolling on her morphing phone. Apparently she's tried to talk Ali into getting medical help but Ali reacts badly to that, yet not once has Morgan thrown down the gauntlet and said let's get help before we break up this relationship for good, nor has she suggested couples therapy so she shares that burden with Ali.

It's like Ali's sole purpose in this story is to be an albatross around Morgan's neck; an artificial impediment to her getting it on with Leah right from the off. Or getting off with Leah right from the on! LOL! Despite Morgan supposedly caring for Ali, she doesn't authentically behave at all like she cares. She never tries to sit and talk with Ali or to discuss this situation to maybe figure out what changed or how - like did something in their environment cause this change? Was it something in her diet?? Is it age related or tied to some past viral infection? She considers none of this. Her entire effort seems to be repeatedly looking up the online definition of bipolar and then closing her laptop that used to be a phone. It's pathetic. She never has even considered going to her own doctor or to a support group to ask her how she can best approach dealing with Ali.

The worst thing about this relationship is that Ali had been (with Morgan's knowledge and cooperation) trying to get pregnant through implants. This despite that the last three years (as far as I can tell - the text is vague) not exactly being a bed of roses, and despite Morgan having this bipolar suspicion - which is especially relevant to any attempt to get pregnant and ought to have been raised with the implant doctor, but evidently wasn't. So Morgan is a moron too.

In short there were far too many issues, too little authenticity and a plethora of poor writing techniques and choices. I cannot commend this at all.

Witch Rising by Amber Argyle

Rating: WARTY!

I should have known to avoid this novel as soon as I read the title, but I did not. More fool me! The book blurb describes this as a fast read, but what it actually means is that it's not a novel - it's a short story with a cliffhanger ending. It's essentially a prologue to a series which I shall not read and for good reason. For example: you'd think in a short work like this, the author would recall what she wrote, but apparently not. At one point toward the end, I read, "It had been eight years - eight years of forcing herself to forget - but she had remembered one song." Nope! The author apparently forgot that she'd had the witch sing up a wind to try and save her stepfather's life. Now a handful of screens later, she's trying to recall what the song was? It wasn't eight years it was a couple of days! That's bad writing, right there.

Lilette is your usual trope special snowflake who is a witch as her mother is, but mom and dad are killed. Lilette believes it was her fault. Put to sea in a barrel(!), she eventually ends up on an island where the chief is a jerk. Lilette is protected by a kindly man until he dies and she, now fully grown, is left at the mercy of Bian, the tribal chief who wants her for his own. She tries to escape but her escape is thwarted. End of story - or rather, end of prologue. Now you have to buy the series to find out what happens next, but guess what? Lilette was such a boring damp rag of a character that I honestly don't care what happens to her. And this is why I don't read prologues. They're a waste of time as was this.

The book blurb makes this claim of Lilette: That she's the "most powerful witch ever born" Lie! She's a wuss who (as is typical in this type of story) hardly ever uses her magic and least of all when she actually needs it, as is evidenced by her being unable to magic her way out of that barrel, by her using a knife instead of magic to free herself from her initial capture, by failing to use the magic to stop people overtaking her sailboat as she tries to escape, and by failing again to use it to stop them retaking her prisoner. In short, she's the worst witch ever and her magic is quite evidently useless.

Another claim: "when her secret is revealed, the only thing that can save her is her song." Lie. It never saves her - not in this short story. Another claim: "It's time to rise up and become what she was always meant to be." Lie! She never does. Not in this short story. There's also the claim that this short story "will keep you bewitched long after you finish it." Lie! I did not like it and will forget it quickly. This novel was garbage and as is so often the case, the blurb lied like a dog.

Steamborn by Eric Asher

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "Jacob didn't think he'd never forget the cheers of the crowd that broke the calm." Double neg. "You keep your eyes away from it when stretch the tensioner." Should be 'when you stretch' or 'when stretching'. "...and he figured something with a name like catacomb had to be small." This is the place he’d already been told had trains running through it at one time! Small?!

This is another novel where the very title ought to have warned me off it, but I did not heed my better instincts! It was (purportedly - more anon) a steampunk novel about this guy who lives in a world where improbably large insects and other such critters threaten humans in a walled city. The size of the insects is ridiculous because not only would they be unable to support their own weight were they significantly larger than they were in pre-history (and these are really large), they would also suffocate, because air would not circulate through their breathing tubes.

The largest insect ever to have lived was something that looked like, but wasn't, a dragonfly, and that was almost 300 million years ago. It measured a little under 30 inches across in terms of wingspan, less than eighteen inches long, and weighed maybe a pound. The largest centipede-like creature was only 3 feet long. The inability of insects to breathe adequately at large sizes and to facilitate locomotion when growing so large, is what constrains their size. The author offered no explanation for the ridiculous size of these creatures - at least not in the portion I read. I was willing to let that slide if I got a good story in return, but it didn't happen.

The biggest problem though, was that this novel was all over the place and it moved at a glacial pace. The first 25% had passed before anything noteworthy happened, which was an attack from the insects trying to get in from outside the city and as soon as that was over, it was back to the doldrums, like these giant insects overrunning the city walls happens all the time and isn't any more of a problem than a mild annoyance despite all the deaths. You can quite safely skip that first quarter of this novel and not miss a thing. This is a problem with series. They're bloated with extraneous material.

It felt to me like the author hadn't thoroughly thought-through how traumatized people would have been by such an event as a giant insect attack. There would be all kinds of issues associated with such a sudden and deadly attack, but not a one of those issues got a mention here. It was like the author was dead-set on telling his character's story and he wasn't going to let the reality of his world intrude no matter what.

The guy in the novel is supposed to be an inventor, but never once did he talk about devising weapons to fight-off the insects. He was like, oh well, insect attack, scores injured and dead, but let me make this one artificial hand for this injured kid and then well forget about all of that and go explore the tunnels under the city. It was entirely unrealistic.

By magical coincidence, he and his exploring companion hear two people talking down in the tunnels and it proves to be some critical information, but it was such an improbable coincidence that it felt completely manufactured. Why would the bad guys even be down there in the first place when they could have met anywhere and had a private conversation? Predictably this dipshit klutz gave away that someone was listening, and it seemed obvious to me who was going to pay for his dumb mistake, so by then I'd had more than enough of this. I couldn't be bothered to read any farther, and I ditched it. This was one of those purported steampunk stories that isn't really steampunk. Instead, it has a mention of steam items here and there, but the main story has nothing really to do with that genre at all. I can't commend it based on what I read.

Lust by Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "Not is was putrid." Say what? I have no idea what the author meant by this sentence! 'nor was it putrid' maybe? "Not when Lust pushed beneath the sweaty silk of Mercy's breasts and discovered her breasts." Huh? "Lust cried out with a high, wanting peal as Mercy gave in to her latent nymphomania" Wanting or wanton? Latent nymphomania?

Having enjoyed the first novel by this author that I had ever read, I embarked upon reading several more, but not a one of those others was anywhere near up to the same standard as that one. Even that had some issues, but I was willing to let those slide because the rest of the story was a decent effort. This one however, was a sorry excuse for a story and not even a novel - it's really a short story at best designed as a loss-leader to lure readers in to a series. I typically detest series and this effort only served to reinforce that view.

This is nothing more than a sex romp and has no story to tell. Ostensibly it's about this young woman named Mercy who has come to the end of her tether and right as she's about to throw herself off a bridge, this 'goddess' Acedia shows up to save her. In reality, Acedia never was a god. It was one of the original eight deadly sins along with the more familiar seven: Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath, but it got dropped or lost somehow.

This book has it that Acedia is actually a goddess who has seven incarnations, and this series, which I am not pursuing, the first of these 'avatars' is named Lust of course, and she's unleashed upon Mercy, like all she needs to shed her suicidal thoughts is to get laid good. Barf. I think this was an entirely wrong-headed approach. The series talks like it's performing some sort of a public service in addressing issues, but it's not. You can't 'cure' a suicide by getting them laid. It doesn't work like that, and it's shameful that this author doesn't know better. I cannot commend this; on the contrary, I condemn it. It was more bad writing and I am done with this author now.

Stay Here Tonight by Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "not thinking of the bad things that's happened to her." - this employs an incorrect verb person. It should read, "not thinking of the bad things that have happened..." "director Francis Ferrari, bedecked in a floor-length gown and letting her brown curls fly free" This is maybe not an error, but usually the female from of this name is Frances. "The paparazzi was out in full force" Paparazzi is plural. The singular form is paparazzo, named after a character in a Fellini movie. The feminine form is paparazza "She's biting at the chomp to date me." Chomping at the bit....

This novel is essentially a clone of Billings's novel Hold me which I actually liked. This one is really the same story: a high profile, rich, sexually promiscuous woman who 'won't be tamed' falls for a 'commoner'. It's also one of those ludicrous "let's dishonestly pretend we're a couple" stories that inevitably, predictably, tediously, boringly becomes a real romance. Yeah. Right. Okay.

The story again had endless, dangerously risky sexual behavior without consequence. Again it had a cold fish power woman and a magical lower-level woman who falls for her. Again it mistook hot sex for a loving relationship. I grew tired of it quickly. I think I have one more Billings novel to read on my list, but whether I'll get to it after this is another matter! I certainly can't commend a 'write by numbers' novel like this one at all and the lack of attention to the detail of getting her English right was annoying.

January Embers by Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

This book stopped me dead in my tracks at chapter two when I saw that it was going to be a two-person PoV novel. No thanks. It wasn't even first person - it was third person, but still the author evidently experienced this inexplicable need to split the narrative and even be repetitive. Why? I dunno. I wasn't exactly enamored of it from the first chapter, but I was willing to give it a chance until I encountered that tediously pedantic approach. It contributes nothing to the story and it means every chapter has to have a label to identify whose thoughts we're sharing. Barf. No thanks. This is one of several of this authors books I will review, only one of which i actually liked!

The Fastest Woman on Earth by Francesca Cavallo, Luis san Vicente

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is a remarkable story of a truly strong female character in real life who overcame a childhood inability to use her legs, and abandonment by her birth mother, to grow into being a competitor in the Paralympics and other contests, from sprinting to marathons, and winning scores of medals, including seven Paralympic golds.

Tatyana was abandoned at a home for kids in Russia, and spent many years there, getting around using her hands for legs for her first six years, because the home could not afford a wheelchair for her. This made her arms very strong. Deborah McFadden happened to visit this home as a commissioner of disabilities working with the US Health Department, and ended up adopting Tatyana, who then went on to her successes in school and in pursuing higher education academic studies.

This is a great introductory book not only to this outstanding athlete, but also to the Paralympics and to people with disabilities. I commend it as a worthy read.