"After bookworm Emmy is attacked by demons, she learns she’s far from the normal girl she thought she was! A team of angels is assigned to protect her - and their leader is stubborn, gorgeous Marcus." Oh puleeze! For fuck's sake get a new shtick. Get an original idea. Quit wasting people's time with this cookie-cutter clone crap.
Friday, September 17, 2021
Thursday, September 16, 2021
The Song Machine by John Seabrook
Read nicely by Dion Graham - although I could have done without his singing and his attempts to portray a woman speaking - this audiobook looks at how hit songs are made. It covers a wide variety of topics and a lot of the history of hit-making, but its focus is largely on the last few years, and I have to say there seems to be a strong bias toward recent solo female artists, for some reason, and I mean bias in coverage, not in praise.
One problem with the coverage is that it's very tabloid - we get sketches with some detail here and there, but never anything in any real depth. The author writes for a magazine and for all I know these chapters are merely a collection of articles he wrote which have simply been shuffled together for this book, but the result - however it came about - is like a bubblegum song version of the music industry - light, shallow, frothy, without too much musical depth.
For all that, I was entertained and informed by it, but there were times I wanted better, less shallow, and less one-sided coverage than I got. It felt like he was trying to keep the hit-makers happy and cared little for the singers. On the other hand, I must confess I have little regard for those who can only sing. I much prefer an artist who can write and play, as well as belt out the finished song, but those people get scarce coverage here.
It's bothering that an older white guy who seems very retro in his social attitudes, is so up in the business of female artists of color, often denigrating them in the process, while seemingly fawning over the record producers - the ones with the real power these days, who are also all guys, often white guys from Sweden. Apparently this system works because we read that 77% of the profits in the music business go to 1% of the artists. This explains a lot of very rich artists these days, but whether that's what the world wants or needs is another matter. It's disturbing that far less than 1% of the songs that are out there in any given year are the ones that bring in nearly all the revenue.
The book also covers the changing landscape of hit-making from when a talented artist wrote, played and sang their own material to the modern era where hits have become as much science as art, and where as many as half-a-dozen or more exerts are brought in to craft various portions - even tiny ones - of what's essentially a scientifically-designed song. The bulk of the book is about that latter part, and there's heavy coverage of white producer "Doctor Luke," who admittedly has generated a lot of hits.
Of course not all hits are made that way and I wish this book had covered a wider variety of songs, producers, and artists than it does, but it was nevertheless an interesting story as far as it went, and certainly an educational one for me. That said, coverage of the topic is in many ways almost random and quite spotty, and it's largely of the reporting kind - there's no real analysis of the material going on here, and as is often the case in works of fiction produced in the US, this non-fiction book produced in the US is pretty much all USA all the time. It really doesn't recognize that there are other places in the world - except in process of mentioning the Swedish producers who have influenced US music. That said, the US music business is a huge portion of those billions I mentioned earlier.
From the nineties to the twenty-teens, world-wide revenue from the music business plummeted from almost thirty billion dollars to about half that. This book examines the reasons for that slide, not least of which is of course Napster and subsequently its business replacement, Spotify. Apple's iTunes did the same thing back then to music, that Amazon has since done to fiction, which is crashing the price of a work down to 99 cents. So was it Napster which did the damage, or Apple's rock-bottom prices, or both, along with other causes? Probably a mix.
Of course the problem with putting out an audiobook of this nature is that it begs to have the songs - or at least snippets of them included for listening, especially if it's a song you may never have heard, even if you've heard of the song. Why that wasn't done I do not know, but in a sort of a 'review' book like this, I doubt it was a copyright issue. You don't need to include all of the song, and fair use certainly should permit a snatch of some music when you're actually writing about how it came to be.
But then this book is what it says it is: it's about the hit-makers, not the hits, so I guess you take it or leave it, but with these caveats, I commend it as a worthy listen. If you have access to Netflix, there's a very short series on there titled 'This is Pop' which has nothing to do with this book, but which covers some contingent topics and which makes a great companion listen, broadening your scope a lot.
Legacy Marines by Jonathan P Brazee
This attempt at a Tom Clancy military manual is doomed. It's a dual PoV - fortunately not first person or I wouldn't be reading it at all more than likely - but almost as annoying. This means of course that every chapter has one of the two main characters names as a chapter title, alternating in tedious tick-tock fashion like a military march. Barf! It’s boring and it results in unintentionally amusing chapter openings such as this one:
Chapter 4 NoahThat's the dumb stupidity of two person POV. There's probably another chapter in there, starting in just the opposite fashion. That, on top of the mil-speak with endless, tedious acronyms, was simply annoying. Some - but not all - of the acronyms have a superscript number attached to them, but this is useless because it’s not link, and even if it were, they often appear so close to the edge of the screen that if you were to try and tap on it to go see the reference, you would instead swipe the screen. Stupid and ill-conceived. The description should be right there in the text unless this is written only for soldiers.
The author makes the David Weber mistake of assuming the military in 3-D space will conduct itself exactly as it does in 2-D surface warfare, and it’s all naval speak. It’s like the author took Horatio Hornblower and just moved him into space with no other changes, and it’s stupid. Also, once again, despite the marines supposedly being international, it’s really all American all the time, because as you know, the rest of the world can go hornblow itself.
One again in a futuristic (co-called) military drama, there are no robots and zero AI. There's a nod and a wink to it, but it’s never used. In fact there's a distinct aversion using it! At one point, we learn that the 'AI chip' in their battle helmets has been updated for their new location, but this idiot one of the 'twins' refuses to use it to find her way because it's perceived as a weakness! That's about the equivalent of a marine facing off on the battlefield with an enemy soldier and refusing to use their firearm, but pulling out a knife instead. Stupid. Is it because the author is a male writer and there's the cliché that men won't ask for directions, and this is being projected onto the female character? Whatever is the reason, it's not a good one.
But it gets worse. Despite having some majorly advanced technology - and apparently FTL travel, since they're located much closer to the center of the galaxy than Earth is, there are zero robots. Everything is done by humans despite the fact that now, in 2021, we have very effective robots galore, including military drones, and quite advanced AIs. It's the Star Trek stupidity all over again. The only thing more stupid than Star Trek is Star Wars which does have robots, but they're appallingly stupid and annoying. But here we have the marines training in 'PICS' which has no explanation that I recall for the acronym, but which I assume is something like Personal Integrated Combat Suit.
I read, with regard to enemy being able to track the suits and zero in on them for targeting, "But the fractured-array made it difficult to focus on an individual PICS, whether from eyesight or sensors. In his father’s day, a fractured-array merely 'bent' the lights waves. Now, not only were the waves distorted, but fifty times a second, the array shifted, which sent spoofing images randomly...." The thing is, once again, the author is focused only on the visual sense. Yes, he mentions 'sensors', but there’s nothing on how the suit supposedly fools those.
The thing is that a mechanical suit will put out a radar reflection, it will put out a heat signature, it will put out electronic frequencies (especially if the soldiers are communicating with one another as they would have to be). And even if it put out none of this at detectable levels, it would not matter to an enemy because they would simply blanket the ground with high explosive rounds and kill every last one of a bunch of marines trundling up on bulky mech suits! This whole thing made no sense; it sounded like the kind of simplistic idea a writer would put into a children's story, and that was another problem with this: the story seemed to be adult, but the writing was aimed much lower down the age range.
The story is of a pair of twins - so called. They're drawn to look identical on the cover; in fact, I’d wager it’s the same drawing with a few tweaks - but twins of different genders are not monozygotic and they would not look like identical twins. They may look completely different. One of them is the go-getter gung-ho female who is given such a 'man-with-tits' aura that she's really a caricature, and of course her brother is the polar opposite. Both were a bit of a joke.
The 'futuristic' weapons were a bit of a laugh, too. I read this at one point when the girl gets her firearm: "The M99 was a dart thrower, firing a hypervelocity 8mm dart that was accelerated with mag rings and capable of reaching 2,010 meters per second past the muzzle. The body of the dart was nowhere near 8mm across, but once it was fired, fins popped out for stability, and it was the fins that stretched 8mm." The thing is that some 2k m/s is almost twice the fastest muzzle velocity of anything available today and even if it was achieved, should anything 'pop' out of the projectile, even fins, it would more than likely ruin the trajectory at such hyper-speeds. It made no sense.
The female main charcater comes off a a complete jerk who thinks nothing of using her father's famous name to get privileges. I read thsi at one point:
"OK, I’m forwarding it now, Mz Lysand—" he started before looking up in surprise. "Esther Lysander? As in Ryck Lysander?"
So obviously, she thinks nothing of fucking with people to get get her own privileged way and it's not a good idea to render one of your main characters - your heroic ones that is - as completely unlikeable right from the off. I certainly did not like her, and her brother was no better, so I saw no reason to get interested in either of them. This was especially true since the author seemed hell-bent upon setting the sotry up to be utterly predictable, having the gung-ho "against type" (not!) female soldier get schooled and the 'sensitive guy' male soldier become heroic. Barf.
I quit reading this because it offered nothing new and nothing interesting to me. I don't think the author knows how to write a realistic female character for a situation like this. The characters felt flat. One of them was too boring and the other too ridiculous. It was as though the author had decided to write the man as the woman and vice-versa - from a traditional PoV, that is - and it really didn't work. The only character that even remotely intrigued me was the one who went by 'Princess Mayhem', but she was barely in the book - in the first 50% anyway. The story was terribly lethargic, too. You could honestly have skipped the entire first thirteen chapters, which were tiresomely like a prologue, and come in when the first mission started, and not have missed anything important, useful, or entertaining. I ditched it at just past 50%, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read.
Monday, September 13, 2021
Bad Intentions by Carmen Falcone
"First in a series" of course it is! "Single mom Nikki is dared to buy a drink for a hot stranger - but she isn't prepared for her scorching connection to sexy Cole! When they realize he's her new boss, the workplace tension only adds fuel to their uncontrollable chemistry." Cole - fuel? Really? I predict that Nickers is going to become very well-acquainted with treatments for venereal diseases. And this addresses nothing about how inappropriate their relationship is given that he's her boss. But who gives a fuck when it's all about sex conflated mistakenly with romance?
Sunday, September 12, 2021
Seduction by ZL Arkadie
"First in a series" Of course it is! Because one rape is never enough. "Penina Ross" Penina? Seriously? Why not just call her Jism? "...refuses to be distracted by her new boss, Dr Jake Sparrow — even though he’s jaw-droppingly hot. But when an accident leads to her living in his apartment, Penina doesn’t know how long she can resist his seductive ways" Yeah, because a woman effectively held captive by an authority figure is not at all in an inferior position. Tell me again why female authors persistently do this to their female charcters?
Return to Magnolia Bloom by Paula Adler
"Paige MacInnes sets out to rediscover herself in the Texas town of Magnolia Bloom." Anything with 'magnolia' anywhere on the cover is a wonderful emetic. Hospitals use it with great success in cases of poisoning.
Rebel Sword by Peter Bostrom
Private Lucas Walker’s dead-end job on a tiny Pluto moon" Why? Are there no robots or AIs that could do this? And WTF is that job exactly? "...is shaken up when a spatial-temporal vortex opens and a deadly army appears." Thank god for that. An army that wasn't deadly would be laughable, wouldn't it? And what's with the sword? Naturally it's "First in a series." Barf.
Pandora by Anne Rice
"When David Talbot meets Pandora, the first vampire ever made by Marius, he convinces her to share the story of her life." Anne Rice is ripping-off herself now! Isn't this the same story she already told in "This is Your Vampire Life" or whatever the fuck that story was?
Storm and Fury by Jennifer L Armentrout
"Trinity, a teen with paranormal gifts, lives in fear of murderous demons." Don't we all? My question is, why did so many of them vote for Donald Trump?
Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee
"Noah, a trans teen, runs a popular blog sharing happy trans love stories — but they’re all made up. When a bully exposes his secret," So wait, when someone tells the truth about someone else's lies, he's a bully, somehow? "... will a fake relationship fix everything" Yeah, because the way to fix a string of lies is to add yet another to them. This guy is a fucking moron. Way to represent trans people as serial liars.
A Happy Catastrophe by Maddie Dawson
"Though Marnie and Patrick are total opposites, they know they’re a perfect pair — so what if Patrick doesn’t want kids?" Then they're not the perfect pair. Next question? "But everything changes when an eight-year-old arrives on their doorstep" Yep. Patrick starts abusing the kid something chronic. It's awful, until the kid violently rebels against his tyranny, then it becomes a remake of If.
Case of the One-Eyed Tiger by JM Poole
When murder and theft turn a peaceful Oregon town upside down, all eyes turn to newcomer Zack Anderson!" Why? Is he the perp? Do they hate the local sheriff? Is he a complete bumbler? "Can Zack find the real culprit with the help of his whip-smart corgi, Sherlock?" Are you fucking kidding me? And relaly, who gives a shit? Corgis, BTW, are not in the top ten smartest dog breeds....
You Can’t Buy Love by Melanie A Smith
"Julianna, an overworked nurse practitioner, is not thrilled about attending a stuffy hospital gala. When she meets handsome stranger Noah, their sparks lead to a hot one-night stand." And Julianna spends her next few months exploring the cornucopia of antibiotics available to in her hospital, in desperate hoeps tha tone fo them will fight the resistant sexual disease this dipshit contracted by having unsafe sex on the first date with a complete stranger. Moron.
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
I refuse to read novels where the main female character is reduced to being an appendage of someone else right from the title. She's not a whole person in herself, she's just someone's daughter! "After his wife gives birth to twins, Dr. David Henry makes a shocking decision that will echo throughout his family’s future." Yep, he conjoins the twins and makes a super baby.
The First Protectors by Victor Godinez
"Navy SEAL vet Ben just wants to live restfully with his dog" How many times, exactly has this 'expert brought out of retirement' bullshit been written? About a hundred too many. Unimaginative, repetitive, clone. Barf.
Crown of Coral and Pearl by Mara Rutherford
No wonder the Kirkus Jerkoffs loved this. Is there any written word they don't like? If you love every book, your reviews are worthless. This dumbass plot has twins and brothers and a love triangle. Here it is. Check your higher brain functions at the front cover: "Nor is chosen to marry prince Ceren after her identical twin is injured." Why? "But she soon falls for his brother, Talin" Of course she does and Ceren is the evil bro. Yeah right. Barf.
Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney
No wonder the dipshits at the Kircus circus loved this. "After Quinn’s journal goes missing, a mysterious blackmailer threatens to leak its contents to her whole school — unless she faces her worst fears." Ri-ight. She's a fuckign highschooler. What secrets can she have exactly? But go ahead and let the blackmailer win instead of running his or her ass in to the police. yawn.
Port Danby Cozy Mystery Series: Books 1–3 by London Lovett
"In a charming seaside town, flower shop owner Lacey Pinkerton uses her exceptional sense of smell to sniff out killers! Follow her sleuthing..." Nope. That word made me feel ill. Besides, if she can literally sniff out killers, why is she in a little seaside town instead of doing some real good in a murder capital like Chicago? Barf. These cozy mystery (so-called) assholes want to treat murder like it's a cute little hobby. It isn't. It's fucking murder.
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Your Way Series: Books 1-3 by Jamey Moody
"Can three best friends - Frankie (Sinharder), Desi (Ornoz), and Stella (Gutter-Groove) - run their own dream business together (clearly from the title it's a Burger King franchise) and find love when they least expect it?" Nope. They all end up murdering each other in the deep fat fryer in volume 3, but until then it's mustard.... Seriously, WTF did you expect? What kind of dumb-ass question is that? Nothing to read here.
In Cold Blood by Jane Bettany
"When DI Isabel Blood is summoned to investigate a body in the back garden of the house where she grew up 40 years earlier, she discovers she cannot escape the secrets of her past." So what do we have here? Yet another series where the main character's asinine name is used tediously in endless permutations in the title and an investigator who has a darkly secret past? So in short, there's not a single thing that's remotely new in this series! Nope. It's precisely the same as all other such series. What other titles can there be? Blood Will Out? Blood Brothers? Bad Blood? Blood and Guts? Blue Blood? Blood Diamonds? Fortunately this is going to be a short series. I do have a soft spot for the name Jane, but yawn!
Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes
I got all excited thinking this was an exposé of Amazon's business practices, but it's actually just a novel. "When Captain Eva Innocente sets out to find a missing scientist, she crisscrosses space with the crew of La Sirena Negra, her estranged mother, and a contingent of psychic cats!" The captain is named Eve the innocent? Seriously? No, the truth here is that the crew are a bunch of pussies and the captain ain't as innocente as she seems! Dumb-assery at its best. Barf.
Charlotte's Search: The Complete Series by Simone Leigh
"In this erotic BDSM box set, Charlotte navigates life with her dominant lovers, James and Michael. Will a wedding bring her the happiness she seeks? An explosive ménage romance!" This title needs to be renamed Ménage to Society. Or Middling Ménage-ment. Barf. And if it's a boxed set I want a goddammned motherfucking box. okay?
A Thin Line by Craig N Hooper
"After being framed for murder by someone he was supposed to have killed, former agent Garrison Chase races to clear his name." Waht agent? Insurance? Travel? And Chase races? Toward the finishing thin line? Barf.
The Inverted Pyramid by AC Fuller
"In the lead-up to a presidential election, Alex Vane's business partner disappears, leaving behind a strange trail that leads right to a recently murdered hacker. Can Alex unravel the case" or will he have the smarts to get the fuck out of the way and leave it up to the experts in the Secret Service? There's no point to the inverted pyramid.
Treason Flight by TR Matson
"As US Navy pilot Jack "Rattler" Owen" Stop right there! Time to tell this author to jack off for using the world's most appallingly meaningless, over-employed, go-to tough guy name ever. Get a new shtick. Please.
The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister by Erle Stanley Gardner
Does anyone really care that Scott "I used to be an attorney" Turow thinks this is a brilliant series? The plot has it that: "When a case of blackmail leads to murder, defense lawyer Perry Mason must untangle a deadly web of secrets and lies." Nope. All he has to do is defend his client. The name 'Perry Mason means 'a bricklayer who dwells by a pear tree', but let's talk about the real culprit here: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that this author never was a gardener; nor is he an earl. So in truth, can we really rely on anything he says? With that last name maybe this should be retitled "The Case of the Green-Tumbed Sister"?
By Wind by T Thorn Coyle
The biggest problem with this story is that the author has actually drunk the Flavor Aid, and she believes everything she writes: the magic, the aroma therapy, the healing power of crystals, and so on. That's all bullshit, and it wouldn't even be so bad if she didn't preach her religion instead of writing a novel.
Worse even than this is that the story is so tediously lethargic that it drags and drags, and drags and goes nowhere. I dropped this at 30% because literally nothing interesting had happened except for endless Cassandra-style wailing about, as John Fogerty put it, a bad moon arising. In short, up to when I quit, there was no story and what there was instead was awful.
I mean, for example, Brenda, the leader of the 'coven' has a closer-than-a-sister best friend whom she's known for years, yet not once has she confided in her over this bad feeling she's been having until she's pretty much forced into an 'intervention' of sorts! How close can they be when Brenda won't even call or drop her best friend a text? It's tell one thing, but show another all the way here.
The plot, such as it is, is that new age garbarge shop owner Brenda, 'has a bad feeling about this' but what 'this' is, she can't say. She supposed to be a witch, but none of her purported magic, nor that of her 'coven' is of any value whatsoever since no one can tell her anything useful. Plus, she's hearing voices. This woman is in dire need of lithium and psychotherapy.
The other metronomc voice in this tediously tick-tock story is of her purported lover-to-be, Caroline, who is, of course a magical crystal saleswoman. The problem is that at 30% these two had barely even said 'hello'. The blurb asked stupidly (as usual) "Who - or what - stalks Caroline?" Well that would be her control-freak husband who Caroline is apparently too stupid to ditch despite all the freedom she has. The blurb boasts, "Brenda and her coven must act swiftly, before the coming storm blows them all away." Given how ineffective those losers are, it ain't gonna happen. This story was truly bad and boring.
Friday, September 10, 2021
Judas Horse by Lynda La Plante
"From an Edgar Award-winning author" who evidently didn't win for original character names. "After a mutilated body is discovered in an English country home, detective Jack Warr" Jack as a main character name is an automatic reject for me. But Jack Warr? Seriously? Barf.
The Devil's Bones by Jefferson Bass
"When a woman's burnt body is found seated inside a burned car" Wait, a burnt body inside a burned car? How in hell did that happen? That just burns my biscuits! Now if it had been written by Sam Bass, I might've been interested! Dumb-ass book description for sure.
Gold Mine Massacre by William W Johnstone, JA Johnstone
I donlt normally pay any attentiont o dumb-ass Westerns. "When two businessmen arrive in the town of Big Rock" Big Rock seriously? "to mine for gold, Smoke Jensen" Smoke? Seriously? "and his daughter, Denny," Tough horny hombres love to eat at Denny's.... barf.
Will Harper Mysteries: Vol. 1-6 by David Crosby
"Reporter turned private investigator Will Harper navigates Florida's waterways in his yacht as he hunts down the state's most slippery criminals." What are they? Porpoises? The police refer to them as poips - it's short for poipetrators. LOL! And Whip(smart) poor Will thought there was something fishy going on! Was he ever wrong! It was mammaly.... Barf.
Calculated Deception by KT Lee
"When professor Ree Ryland is framed for a crime, she joins forces with FBI agent Parker Landon to help pin the real culprit." What? She's going to pin him? Is she going to wear his letter jacket? How romantic! "But the evidence they find points to a diabolical plan" Diabolical? Oh my god! Call the FBI! Oh wait, he's already come! He'll get on it as soon as they get out of bed.... Ree Ryland? Ree-ly? Does the FBI memo about this case have a subject line that reads: Re: Ree? Why not name her Ree Ree Reeurboat? LOL!
The MacTaggart Brothers Trilogy by Anna Durand
"Who can resist a man in a kilt?" Me! I volunteer. This is another condescending look at Scotland by an American author: "When the sexy, Scottish MacTaggart brothers travel to the US, their charming brogues and fiery passion will lead to red-hot connections" and lots of penicillin shots. Barf. Stereotype much?
Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb
"Dragons have returned to Rain Wilds - but they can no longer fly." Oh my fucking god! What a tragedy! How did they get back to Rain Wilds? Uber? Electric scooter? Light rail? Dragon their asses overland? Yawn.
Caulky by KM Neuhold
"Newly single Ren isn't ready for another relationship" Of course he isn't. "...but he can't seem to resist hot contractor Cole," Hot - Cole? Get it? Barf. Is this contractor going to caulk his holes? You bet your ass. Because this is all about sex. Love and a relationship have nothing to do with it, nor will they ever in this ridiculous genre, and every single one of them who isn't ready for a relationship inevitably ends up in one....
Ignite the Sun by Hanna C Howard
"An evil witch queen..." Evil. Withc. Queen. Seriously? "...has shrouded her kingdom in shadow" Why? And how is this causing problems, just out of curiosity? Not that this plot hasn't been done to death. "...but 16-year-old Siria is determined to restore the light. With the help of a motley group of rebels," That's where I'm looking for the exit, right there. Motley? Quirky? Count me out. And Siria? Siriasly? What's her BFF's name? Alexia? Besides, the sun was ignited some four or five buillion years ago wasn't it?! Siria's a bit late to the party.
The Event by Whitney Dineen
"When an embarrassing faux pas cuts her dream career short, Emmie reluctantly returns home to Creek Water, Missouri. Can she survive as the subject of small-town gossip?" I'm guessing yes and she'll meet the heartthrob of her life. Yet another useless female main character running away instead of fighting back. How unexpected! Not! Barf.
Murder in the Paperback Parlor by Ellery Adams
"A clever whodunit"? How is it clever when it's the same as all the others: a murder in a bookstore which the proprietor has to solve, because evidently the police are too stupid? "When a famous writer dies at Storyton Hall's Valentine's Day book retreat, proprietor Jane and her book club must race to catch a heartless killer!" Why? The best thing, clearly, is to avoid bookstores like the plague because they're very dangerous places! 'Buy all your books online if you don't want to be murdered' is the take home message here. This is how Amazon is making a killing....
City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
I had high hopes for this story which seemed to promise two strong female leads, but once again, as they so often do, the book blurb failed to give an honest description of the story, so it was more of a lose than a Winn for me. It was slow to start and seemed very repetitive. I was ready to ditch it after chapter one, and I would have, except this was a review book, so I felt I had to give it a chance. It did pick up somewhat in chapter two, but even so, it never got going. It was such a long, repetitive slog that I grew bored with it.
It was a very pedantic 2-Person PoV story tick-tocking tediously like a metronome between the two main female characters' perspectives that it was putting me to sleep. At least it wasn't first person PoV, but the tedium was strong with this one and by 52% I'd had enough of the repetitive antics of supposed hero "Riven" and her hi-tech non-love-interest "Asa" that I could stand to read no more. I cared nothing for either of the characters or for their fate, and their supposed love story was dead in the water from the very start.
Asa Almeida is the 17-year-old heir to a hi-tech empire. Riven Hawthorne - which is a thoroughly stupid name, is a lowlife street crook who talks big, but consistently achieves nothing. She's supposed to be a no-nonsense girl who is a dead-shot with her antique pistols, but despite having two clear-cut chances to kill her arch-rival (in the half that I read) she fails both times and one failure leads to another. Riven is thoroughly incompetent: all talk and no traction, and she has no spine. Asa, who is supposed to be smart, is a complete dumb-ass and she persistently proves it.
The 'winterdark' MacGuffin in the story appeared to be a direct rip-off of William Gibson's 'wintermute' which is an artificial intelligence character in his novel Neuromancer but since in this story it really is just a name without, apparently, anything behind it (not in the part I read anyway), I guess it doesn't matter what it was. The other side of this coin is tha tthe auhtor evidently hasnlt ehard of a farady cage whcih woudl ahve made her little device undetectable at dradiofrwuencies
The writing had issues, too. I read, for example, at one point: "No doubt the rumor mill would love to grate her to a pulp. A mill grinds, it doesn't grate. Unless of course it hasn't been oiled in a while.... At another point I read, "The phoenix ruffled its wings." Nah! I’m guessing it ruffled its feathers! Then again: "Riven willed herself to be impassable," was used when the author needed 'impassive'.
Some of the technology wasn't very well thought-through. For example, Asa has a suit that she can use to make herself invisible, but this author - as do many sci-fi writers, sci-fi movies, and TV shows - conflates invisible with undetectable. Visible light is only one minuscule portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and trapping that doesn't trap everything else, from gamma rays at one end to Am radio at the other. The suit wouldn't have worked, and the author even seems to admit this at one point where one of the guardbots stops and scans her. Clearly it detected something. The author also seems to forget that Asa's body is in motion, and emitting heat. Both of these things can be detected. The suit itself by its very use is emitting electronic frequencies.
A smock was actually developed that used tiny cameras to transmit an image of the scenery to the opposite side, so it made the smock close to invisible, but not quite. The thing is that even something like this is still actually there. If a bright light shone on it, it would cast a shadow of sorts, and any radar pulse aimed at it would bounce back faster and with a different 'feel' to it from her body than, say, the wall in front of which Asa was standing, so there was so much wrong with this that it was laughable. For a young kids' story it would have been fine, but not for grown-ups, not unless you're going to say it has magical powers (like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak) rather than hi-tech powers.
For me, the worst part was that the story quickly became bogged down in Riven's tedious, endless, and leaden-footed non-attempts to escape the absurdly one-dimensional criminal city, where every single thing is rotten to the core, and every single person is evil and amazingly good at finding and defeating Riven. It made this story truly boring. I can't commend this at all.
Murder at an Irish Wedding by Carlene O'Connor
"Siobhán O’Sullivan..." stop right there! I don't need to read any further to know this is yet another condescending Irish story. bring on the leprechauns and start the shillelagh-shallying! Only a quarter of the top twenty Irish names begin with the O'prefix! There's only one O'name in the top five, yet every single Irish story by US authors is uninventively and unimaginatively is larded with them! This author is an American who lives in Chicago, BTW. Yawn.
Strange Little Girl by John Dean
"When he’s called to the scene of a desecrated grave, detective John Blizzard..." stop right there. John Blizzard? Really? I'm out of here just based on the ridiculous name. It tells you everything you need to know about this style of writing, and none of it is good.
Ripple of Doubt by Jenifer Ruff
"When she retreats to a secluded lake house, FBI agent Victoria Heslin is looking for a quiet respite - but upon discovering a woman’s drowned body, she’s pulled into a disturbing murder case where every one of her neighbors is a suspect" Why? It's not her turf. It's the job of the lcoal police. And isn't this just another story where a 'retired' person is pulled back into the job? It's been done so many times now. Yawn.
Obliteration by Darren Wearmouth, James S Murray
"Humanity faces a war for survival when subterranean creatures begin to emerge from the ground." Holy shit! The last place I'd expect subterranean creatures to emerge from is the ground! Hasn't this been done already in Pacific Rim? Close enough? But it took two people to write it, so it has to be twice as good, right? Yawn.
Monday, September 6, 2021
The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman
Subtitled "Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul" this audiobook goes into some detail - often quite nauseating and gruesome, be warned, but at other times highly amusing, and then at others downright depressing to think people were once so ill-educated and poorly informed. It's read admirably well, given the subject matter, by Susie Berneis.
The sad, but in hindsight and with historical distance, amusing thing about the nobility of yesteryear, is that even as they had people to taste their food to catch would-be poisoners, these idiots were in fact slowly poisoning themselves by employing dumb-ass makeup containing lead and arsenic, and adding things to their diet for medicinal purposes, which were also actually poisons.
Herman's well-written book travels through history from ancient times to modern, reporting on various historical personalities, dignitaries, and royalty who had encounters with one poison or another in one way or another, from belladonna to plutonium, some of which survived, others who succumbed slowly or rapidly. This author has done her research, and it shows without being tedious.
The book is fascinating and very educational, especially if you're thinking of writing your own historical novel involving someone's untimely demise! Which I am not, but you might be! I highly commend this book as a worthy read.
The Heap by Sean Adams
NPR considers this "downright fun"? They're pushing it a couple of months after Champlain Towers South collapsed resulting in 99 deaths? "After the 500-story Los Verticalés apartment tower crashes down, radio DJ Bernard continues broadcasting beneath the rubble while his brother, Orville, works to free him from the collapse." What the fuck is Bernard broadcasting about in a basement? This is ill-considered at best.
The Girl in the Moon by Terry Goodkind
The title alone is enough to turn me off this novel. The fact that Goodkind authored it is another warning sign. When it comes to writing, he's more of a bad-kind. "Born with a supernatural ability to recognize killers, reclusive Angela Constantine" Constantine, really? That's the best he can do for a character name? Barf!
The Hocus Pocus Magic Shop by Abigail Drake
"Between her chaotic romantic life and floundering career," and whose fault is that again? "discovering her aunt's spell book is the last thing chemist Grace needs - especially when some of the love potions actually work!" So this jerk has robbed people of self-determination? And it's supposed to be funny? "Will an infuriatingly handsome" Infuriatingly handsome? How many scores of books have that in their blurb? This book is quite obviously shit. "Will an infuriatingly handsome reporter spill her secret before she can clean up the mess?" I hope so because this meddling jackass needs to do some jail time. Hokey poke-ass more like.
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
That title alone is an automatic no. Period.
Enthrall by ZL Arkadie
"Innocent Jada accepts a job as an assistant to reclusive billionaire Spencer - and her role requires her to move to his remote ranch." Of course it does, because why not render her a prisoner, totally dependent on you if you want to rape her? "When they finally meet, can they resist mixing business with pleasure?" Seriously? Does the book description writer think all readers are dumbasses to ask that dumbass question, or is the book description writer just a dumbass? I can't figure which it is. I do know this book is a disaster though.
Magic Shifts by Ilona Andrews
"When mercenary Kate Daniels learns of a friend's disappearance, she'll need to follow a trail of sinister clues to save him" Sinister clues! Oh my god! Sinister! We are so fucked! Barf. Although Ilona Andrews is a really cool name that ought to be attached to better, more original novels.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)