Ella May Does It Her Way by Mick Jackson

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This young children's picture book was just wacky enough to appeal to my sense of the strangely amusing. Like me, she finds herself wondering from time to time why things happen in a certain way or why things are done this way instead of that way, and one day she decides to change it up by doing things backwards or opposite. It's not just a case of Ella May, but Ella does!

This comes to a head when she begins walking everywhere backwards, and her mother decides to join her, and soon the whole town is doing it. But does Ella May stop there? Nope! A well-written, colorful, and very entertaining exploration of one child's take on life. If your child is in a reading rut, this will get them out of it!

The Tea Dragon Festival by Katie O'Neill

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I happily reviewed Katie O'Neill's The Tea Dragon Festival back in August of 2017, and while I felt this one did not quite match up to the high standard that one set (I really enjoyed that one!), I still think this is a worthy read. It expands on the original story and adds new folklore, and has some interesting new characters.

The author's artwork is of the same high standard as before, but the story felt to me a little bit more meandering. I should say up front that I'm not a fan of series because they tend to be little more than a retreading of the original story. Like retreaded tires, they're not worth the money, and are typically boring to me. This was not one of those sequels I was happy to see. It did have some more story to tell that was new and different.

As I said before, the tea dragon story book is everything that the overly-commercialized 'My Little Pony' garbage ought to have been, but failed so dismally to get there. The tea dragon stories do get there, and by a different and far more interesting route. The little dragons are renowned for the tea they produce through leaves which grow on their horns and antlers. Those leaves contain memories which the drinker can share, but they cannot grow without a true bond between the Tea Dragon and its care-giver. And no, you cannot buy that tea commercially!

Rinn, the protagonist here, grew up with tea dragons and is used to their being around and their habits and foibles, but in this outing she runs into a real dragon named Aedhan, who has been sleeping for a very long time. This enchanted sleep is a mystery that begs to be solved, and Rinn is up to the job! I commend this story as a fun and worthy read.

Confuchsia: An Early Bird's Tale by Alan J Paul

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I couldn't get with this book at all and for a number of reasons. It's not accurate at all, and doesn't even try to be. Yes, it's aimed at young children, and no, it's not a science text book, nor should it be, but science education and understanding in the USA frankly sucks. It's consistently shown itself to be appalling and has fallen lately to where the combined math, science and reading scores in the US are way behind China, for example with whom a trade war is, as of this writing, in full swing, and even behind other places not renowned for their prowess, such as Estonia, Vietnam, Slovenia, Macau, and the Czech Republic, for example. Books like this are not to blame for those poor scores, but they sure don't lift a finger to help, and so are a part of the problem.

You can argue all you want that this is a children's book, not a science book, and it shouldn't be expected to teach children what they're obviously failing to learn in our underfunded schools, but the bare fact remains that it is just as easy to get facts right as to get them wrong, and you never hurt a child by telling the truth. On top of that, there was a strong religious element in this book which I didn't appreciate what with talk of a supreme being - which contributed nothing at all to the story and had no place in it, and with naming the characters after Confucius and Buddha! Why?!

The basic story is an old one of the 'ugly duckling' variety where a baby is born (in this case hatched) and doesn't fit in with the rest of the family - and so it's kicked out? This was the wrong approach to begin with. I hope no adopted child reads this. The child, Confuchsia, has to make her own way in the world very briefly, until she's rescued by a guy! Way to make a woman feel invalid until some guys saves her. The book buys right into the 'women are helpless playthings or property of men' garbage that women are still fighting, even in the west.

Confuchsia is obviously based on the fossil Confuciusornis, which contrary to this author's belief was not a bird and could not fly. Confuciusornis lived about 120 million years ago, and so would never have encountered a Brachiosaurus which lived thirty million years earlier, nor T rex, which lived sixty million years later, nor any velociraptor which also lived much later.

Obviously you don't want to spell out all these things in a children's book, or lecture them, but a modicum of research would have turned up a primitive bird such as Apsaravis which did live at the time of the velociraptors and T rex, and which could fly, along with Chiayusaurus which could have readily stood in for the brachiosaur. Also Confuciusornis was far from brightly-colored. It was a rather drab gray and brown color as far as science can determine. It took me five minutes to dig-up this information!

I'm sorry but this book could have done a lot better both in the factual parts of it and in how the story was told. As it was, it was passing on misinformation when it would have been just as easy to get it right and without even changing the arc of the story! I can't commend a book that so badly misinforms children and really doesn't tell that great of a story anyway.

Hide and Seek, Little Chameleon by Anita Bijsterbosch

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a fun children's book which is short and colorful with simple images for the young. In most images, a chameleon hides and you and your kid have to figure out where it is. The book also talks colors and offers counting opportunities, so it's quite educational too.

Some of the chameleon finds were not so obvious, so this is good training. My one fear was that if a child had some sort of color deficiency in their vision, they might not see the chameleon at all, but when I took a little screenshot of some pages (the part of the book where the chameleon was hiding) and tinkered with them to change the colors, removing red, or green, or blue, and when I desaturated the image turning it to grayscale, the chameleon was still discernible, so I guess it's good to go! The only one where it pretty much disappeared altogether, was where it was hiding on a page featuring a lion, so I can't blame it for that! LOL! Besides, you could still see the eye even on that page. I'm happy to call this a worthy read for young children and a fun exercise in hide and seek!

Stage Dreams by Melanie Gillman

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was an awesome LGBTQIA graphic novel about a cross-dressing southern boy (or maybe a girl) who goes by the name of Grace, and actually has some, and a lesbian stage-coach robber who goes by Flor. I was not sure of her heritage. She's described as Latinx by some, but to me, she had an American Indian look to her from what I saw, so maybe she was a mix of both? Not that it's that important in the big picture of the story, which consists of Flor kidnapping Grace during her robbery of a stagecoach, and eventually entering into an alliance with the latter, to steal from a function being organized by some southern gentlemen of military mein.

All I will say about that is 'the best laid schemes o' mice an' men...' and you know how it goes (or you ought to! It involves gang, aft, and agley). This was a sweet, fun story, easy on the eye and the ear, and I commend it whole-heartedly. The rather sepia artwork gave an antique glow to the novel, and it was a fun romp all the way through. You can find Melanie Gillman at pigeonbits on tumblr and elsewhere online no doubt. Her artwork has a habit of getting around!

The Okay Witch by Emma Steinkellner

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This middle grade graphic novel is about a witch of color, with the curious and charming name of Moth Hush, of Founder's Bluff, Massachusetts, who is about to discover that her love of witchery isn't just a fad of hers! Eighth-grade bullies are what triggers her powers coming to the fore, and there's no looking back.

Yes, it's a bit trope-y that this takes place in Massachusetts. I'm a little tired of that, but I decided to let that slide since this novel had more going for it than your usual tedious trope 'Salem witches' rip-offs, which personally I find offensive on behalf of the innocent women who died because of blind religious hatred.

It turns out that Moth's home town has a history of witch-related activity, including a family of witch-hunters. Plus there is, as the blurb advises, a talking cat which some readers may find familiar (that was a joke - a little chortle in the cauldron!). There is also an enchanted diary, and a hidden realm - because you have to call these things a realm, right? Anything less simply will not do. But there is also conflict, a sort of tug-of-war between old and new, and Moth isn't the sort of person to back down and give up.

I liked the story and the art, although the character's noses seemed a bit weird, but I didn't worry about that. I enjoyed the story and the main character (I'm a complete softy for a strong female lead), and I commend it as a worthy read.

Don't Let the Beasties Escape This Book! by Julie Berry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a fun children's book which takes its inspiration from the fantastical creatures people believed existed back in the dark ages and earlier: unicorns, basilisks, griffins and the like, and pretends they really do exist in mischievous (but harmless!) forms that can come out and really disrupt your daily chores if you're not careful. They might even help in a purely accidental way! The drawings are amazing and detailed, and the colors wonderful. The book was a delight. I commend it as a worthy read for children - and even adults too. Why not?

The Only Woman in the Room by Beate Sirota Gordon

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a memoir written by a woman (Beate Sirota as she then was) who, through her extensive knowledge of Japan, having grown up there despite being born in Austria, and because she spoke several languages, including English, German, and Japanese, was part of the American delegation which went to Japan after World War Two, and helped draft the constitution, in her case, specifically a section on women's rights (which was largely gutted by the old white men unfortunately) before the final draft was presented to the Japanese so everyone could pretend the Japanese came up with this instead of the Americans.

The story is short and to the point, which I appreciated, but it contains enough detail to paint a vivid picture. It tells of her growing up on Japan, of her time in the USA during the war, working on translating intercepted Japanese military messages, of bigotry, bias, and racism, and of her return to Japan, not knowing if her parents, who were there during the war, were even still alive. Happily they were (and not even interned!), and the story of her involvement in post war planning and then moving back to the USA where she became heavily involved in trying to encourage cultural exchanges between the USA and Asian countries, was both moving and educational, as well as entertaining.

The author writes well and gives the right details without getting bogged-down in material that contributed nothing to both enjoying and learning from the story. I'm not a big fan of memoirs, but i commend this as a worthy read.

4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie

Rating: WARTY!

This is a short audiobook that I thought I would give a try. I am not much of a fan of Christie's writing, but I did enjoy the Hercule Poirot series on TV to the point where I even wrote a parody of Murder on the Orient Express. I have to really like something or really hate something to do a parody of it, and I'm not thinking of doing a Miss Marple parody, but I know nothing of those particular stories, so I decided to give this try since I found it on audiobook. My bad!

It's read by Joan Hickson, a Brit actor with whom I'm familiar (no, not that familiar!). She played the role of Miss Marple in a TV series of the same name (Marple, not Hickson!). There were twelve shows, and one of them was based on this particular novel. I may try to see that if I can get my hands on it, just out of curiosity, but this particular novel I found far too plodding and filled with too much extraneous detail to be entertaining. I think Hickson was the wrong choice too, because her voice, sorry to say, sounds a bit too mouth-filled-with-marbles for enjoyment. It reminded me of the voices the Monty Python crew used when they were impersonating women. I can see why the publisher hired her, but going the 'obvious' path isn't typically the best option and for me it didn't work well here.

Christie is the world's all-time best-selling author, even as of today, having sold some three billion books (that's not the same as saying almost half the planet's population have read her!), which ranks her behind only the Bible and Shakespeare, but I have to ask, if Christie had never lived, and some unknown writer today wrote her books and offered them for sale, would a publisher actually buy them or would that poor writer end up having to self-publish if they wanted to get anything out there?

Would these books sell even if they were picked up by a mainstream publisher? Would a publisher even pick up a typescript to read if its title was "4:40 from Paddington"?! I may be wrong of course, find it hard to believe that they would. Certainly not as well as they historically did. But guess what? Her books are now starting to come into the public domain, so who knows what new writers will do with them?

Anyway, this one, first published in 1957, has the interesting plot of a woman traveling on a train which happens to run in parallel for a short time, with another train traveling in the same direction. Through the windows, before the trains part company, the woman witnesses a man strangling a woman on the other train, and when she reports this to the train authorities (why them and not the police I have no idea) they dismiss her story, thinking she has dreamed it after reading a magazine story about someone who was strangled.

The woman is a friend of Miss Marple of course. I have a theory about this. People like this Marple and this Poirot (and far too many others) always seem to be around when murders are committed! It seems only logical to conclude that they somehow cause the murders. How else can you account for them being in such proximity to so many of them?

Anyway, when the woman reports this murder to Marple, she's believed, and the two of them then go to the police, where Maple knows the desk sergeant. They're taken more seriously, but when inquiries come up blank, Miss Marple recruits a small army of advisors to figure out where the body most likely was tossed from the train. She's working on the theory that this was a planned murder, the murderer throwing the body out at a convenient, but secluded location, and then afterwards coming back by car and picking it up to dispose of it.

The basic problem here is: why would he plan it on a train? If he could lure the victim onto a train ride with him, he could evidently lure her anywhere. The limp excuse given is that someone might see him with his victim and remember it if he tried the murder somewhere else, but this completely ignores the fact that everyone and their uncle would see him and this poor woman going onto the train together! So, not so well thought out.

What got to me though was the excessive detail which had nothing to do with the murder or the investigation: eating all the food at the table, clearing away the dishes, washing the dishes. Sorry, but no! There was too much of this, and the story felt perfunctory even with these details, like Christie wrote this as detailed notes, but never bothered to flesh them out before it was published. While the plot was a good starting point, the story itself felt poorly-written and was consequently unentertaining, and I gave up on it. Besides, everyone knows the Butler did it, right? Or the doctor.

The Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stephenson

Rating: WARTY!

This was a very short story rooted no doubt in the true events of William Burke and William Hare, notorious for their not only laying their hands on dead bodies which they sold on for medical research, but also laying hands on a few of the living and changing their status so they could sell those bodies on too. Hare turned on Burke for immunity, and Burke was hanged. His skeleton lives on today in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School.

In this story, a man named Fettes, who works in a facility where bodies are made available to medical students for research, recognizes a body they have just bought as a woman he saw alive and well only the previous day. Naturally he becomes suspicious as to how this happened, but he's such a wuss that he does nothing about it, simply falling in line with his superiors regarding not asking questions as to where these corpses come from. This is actually realistic. People tend to be sheep-like rather than rock the boat even when skullduggery is involved.

The problem as that the story was very rigid and uninteresting. This isn't surprising given that it was written long ago, and in a way you have to expect this, but you also hope that the story will be interesting enough that it makes up for the antiquated story-telling style. In this case it did not, so no commendation from me for this one, only condemnation.

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Rating: WARTY!

Time to look at some more audiobooks!

Emezi was born in Nigeria which is wealthy in oil, yet despite this, over 50 per cent of young people cannot find work and many cannot find food. Out of this came this author, and this is her debut novel which fortunately for me was read in English, not in Igbo, and it's read by the author, something of which I approve for an author who can do it. No one can give better voice to their words than the one who wrote them. Unfortunately, while getting off to a strong start, the novel went into a downward spiral in the second half and I ended up not able to commend it as a worthy read despite it being a really pleasant experience listening to the author's voice.

This novel is about Ada (the author pronounces it almost like the word 'adder' but with very little of the R on the end, and she's referred to most often as The Ada, because the story is narrated by the spirits which occupy this girl and have done so since before she was born in pretty much the same region of Nigeria as the author herself was. The blurb claims that Ada "becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief", but there really is very little of this. She seems perfectly ordinary for the most part, although far from normal.

The blurb does get it right when it says that "a traumatic event crystallizes the selves into something more powerful." Ada has long known that whatever is in her is satiated by a blood sacrifice, which is why she occasionally cuts herself, but after she experiences something which is all too common and which sees little justice in the coed world of American higher education - a topic I touched on in my own novel, Bass Metal - one of the spirits takes over Ada's body and the original Ada fades into the background much more, although she isn't lost altogether.

What I found poor about this story was how human the gods were. In some parts of it the author goes out of her way to point out how unimportant human life is to them and how trivial it seems, yet the parts narrated by the god reveal them to be very human and petty and to focus on human needs and wants. There is nothing godly about them, and in Ada's case their interest revolves almost entirely around sexual gratification which I found rather pathetic. So while this started out interestingly, it quickly became repetitive and boring for me.

A conflict arises when Ada - the real Ada - falls for this guy that the female god Asughara does not approve of. She's not the only one onboard, although the others are really non-entities as far as the story is concerned. The only other one to really appear is Saint Vincent, but he's a bit player and not worht the writing in the end. So there's a conflict, but the god is really uninterested in doing anything about it and when things go badly simply says "I told you so" and that's pretty much that. The story rather fizzles out after that and I gave up on it. I can't commend it, although I'd be willing to listen to another story by this same author as long as she reads it!

The Mermaid Upstairs by Jami Lilo

Rating: WARTY!

A Lilo when I was younger, was the brand name of an inflatable raft for floating around in a swimming pool or at the beach - a cheap plastic thing full of air that inevitably disintegrated before summer was over. That's why this author's name seemed so à propos to me since this novel seemed to be of the same construction.

The weak premise is that this girl's mom suddenly decides, apparently out of the blue, that she's a mermaid and bemoans her missing tail, etc. rather than get her the medical attention and meds she needs, daughter and husband sit home with her bewailing their fate and her fate and their inability to fix the problem, like a sorry bunch of professional mourners at a cheap funeral.

I couldn't stand to read any further than the first couple of chapters. If it had seemed like it had some life in it or some humor, or had seemed like it was going somewhere, I might have given it a better chance to impress me, but it just floated there full of nothing, not even sound and fury, trying to look inviting and shiny, but the air was escaping and the water was cold and it really wasn't remotely appealing at all.

Sector 7 Adventures - The Battle at Half Dome

Rating: WARTY!

This was a dumb-ass comic book that came with the Blu-Ray of the movie Bumblebee. I've always had mixed feelings about the Transformers so this was a good way to get into a discussion of the whole genre under the guise of reviewing a graphic novel - of more like a graphic pamphlet in this case. I used to review movies on this website as well as TV shows, but I ditched all of that to focus on books when it became more work than I had time to do.

The first Transformer movie that came out back in 2007 was, I thought, really good - amusing, realistic (for the genre) and entertaining. The military battles seemed quite authentic to me (but what do I know?!) - certainly better than in too many military action movies I've seen. After that though, the movies began to go downhill, and for me they have never recovered, not even with two reboots (2014's Age of Extinction and its sequel which fared badly, 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight which I never bothered seeing, and the aforesaid series 'reboot' Bumblebee movie of 2018).

My biggest problem is that I can't take the premise seriously which means I have a hard time taking the movies seriously. They're flawed from the start, and admittedly they began as a kid's franchise - toys and then cartoons, but when they moved into adult/young adult movies, they became fair game, I think for some serious reviewing. The biggest problem is the colonialist attitude of American writers and film-makers in that everything is always about the USA. In one regard, it's understandable because these things originated in the US, but this fiction that all of this presents - that everything and anything of importance must take place here is provincialism at best and bigotry and isolationism at worst, and since the US is taking that path right now politically, I just think it's a bad time to be championing such a thing in fiction - like there's ever a good time!

So this leads to a race of robots that speaks American English and which comes to Earth for no reason. Let's face it, they're robots! They may need resources, but they do not need a planet which can support carbon-based life and which has an oxygen atmosphere, so why come to Earth? The Autobots (why do they already have an English name?) are supposed to be benign, yet they brought their troubles here and now Earth is suffering. That's not the act of a benign race! The Decepticons (again and English word meaning, essentially, evil!) follow them. Admittedly there was a reason for this in the first place, but once that was gone, then why the hell would they care where the Autobots go or what they do once they've left the home world? Why would the earlier Transformers come here at all in Earth's past?

Why are the transformers exactly like humans emotionally, behaviorally, and socially? They display the same facial expressions, the same emotions, the same need to talk rather than simply transmit by radio or some other means? Why are all of them built to resemble machines or animals you find on Earth? Even their home planet, Cybertron, has an Earth name! None of this makes any sense at all. Why would they have eyebrows and eyelids, and lips? Yes, obviously it's to humanize them, but none of this makes any sense subjectively.

Why do their weapons do so little damage to each other? The transformers are made from precisely the same finite set of known elements that the rest of the universe is, so how is it they can sustain so much damage? Why are there no EMP weapons in their world? Why didn't the damage done to Megatron in the first movie actually finish him off for good? And why does every Transformer have an Earth name?! Clearly the flaws are endless and while I was willing to overlook his for the first movie, the more they tried to add to the mythology in subsequent outings, the more laughable it became to me and the less interested I was in watching further editions of what is essentially just anthropomorphized robots fighting each other and causing horrific destruction wherever they go.

The presumption that the American military could go into a Muslim country on a whim in the second movie was shameful. I can't believe there wasn't more outrage over it, because it's this colonialist attitude that we can go wherever we want and do whatever we want, and permission, treaties, agreements and accommodations be damned which pisses off people and makes them want to hit back with terrorist strikes.

As far as this particular graphic novel is concerned, it's a microcosm of the larger problems. It's meant to be a prequel to the Bumblebee movie. Bumblee, one of the least capable Autobots, is sent to Earth for no reason at all, and of course is discovered by Blitzwing, but rather than utterly destroy Bumblee, all Blitzwing does is disable him. Why? Because Bumblebee has to survive, not because it makes any logical sense!

So in short, no. I saw Bumblebee in the theater because I didn't have to pay for the ticket, otherwise I would have skipped it, and I really wouldn't have missed much, because now Transformers have come full circle, going from toys to movie icons and now Bumblebee had brought them right back to where they're nothing but toys again. I'm done with Transformers.

Betty and the Silver Spider by Craig Luebben, Jeremy Collins

Rating: WORTHY!

Amusingly, but carefully written by mountain guide Luebben and illustrated ably by artist Jeremy Collins, this graphic novel teaches important safety and technique for both new and expert climbers. Although the initials of the title spell BATSS, there's nothing bats about the story, as near-expert climber Betty attempts the top-level Silver Spider climb on the indoor 'rock face', and her partner, Moe is literally learning the ropes and when not to let go of them.

The book discusses equipment and technique, offering hints and tips for safer, better climbing, including belaying, bouldering, gym etiquette, leading, top-roping (you'll get it when you see it!), tying knots, and everything else you will need to know to have a fun, educational, and above all safe climb in your nearest rock climbing gym. I am not a climber, nor am I planning on becoming one, but even so I enjoyed it and learned a lot - who knows, maybe I'll write a novel about a climber one day, and if I do, I'll know just where to go to get the low-down on the high up. I commend this as a worthy read especially if you're into climbing.

Jackie Chan Adventures by Duane Capizzi, David Slack, Tomás Montalvo-Lagos

Rating: WARTY!

This was a small format graphic novel featuring two stories, "The Mask of El Toro Fuerte" by Capizzi, and "Enter...The Viper" by Slack. The artist in both cases was Tomás Montalvo-Lagos. The artwork wasn't bad, but the stories were really not particularly inventive or interesting, and worse, featured clichéd villains and uninteresting story lines. Why they're Jackie Chan adventures I have no idea because there's no kung-fu involved at all, not even vicariously. They were more like Indiana Jones adventures, but I guess Harrison Ford wasn't interested - either that or they couldn't afford to pay for the use of his name?

I dunno. The adventures were not the great. The first was about a magical lucha libre mask which gave extra strength to the wearer, and the other about some female thief which seems to have borrowed from a Doctor Who episode if I recall, but I really am trying not to! Admittedly these were written for a much younger audience than me, but even so they were pretty limp and despite being a fan of Jackie Chan, I can't commend this as a worthy read.

The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse

Rating: WARTY!

I think I'm done with Kate Mosse at this point! I liked the first one I read by her, but the next one and now this one, I did not like. I am not a fan of novels which have their title in the form: 'The ______'s Daughter' or ' The ______'s Wife' because it reduces the main character to an appendage of a man. I think that's an awful way to start a novel or to describe a person especially if she's female.

I barely got into this one because it was so filled with rambling and bouncing around between characters that I simply could not get with it at all. I decided to skip to the part where the body is found in the hope that it would pick up there, but it did not. The body is found in a creek, and it's found by the title character, whose actual name is Constantia Gifford, but rather than call for the police, the idiot gets someone to get the body out of the water. He's also an idiot because he doesn't call the police either. He drags the body out thereby destroying any evidence that might be connected with it as it lay in the water - face down and obviously a corpse.

I know that there are idiots out there, but I don't have to read about them! It wouldn't have been so bad had there been some sort of discussion about destroying evidence, and there arose some reason for why they acted as they did - like the body was in danger of being washed away, or despite being advised to leave it where it was for the police, some jackass went in there and fished it out anyway, but there never was any such thing. In short, it's bad writing. I don't do novels about stupid people, especially not about stupid female main characters, and I certainly am not interested in reading poorly-written one which is so larded with exposition you could fry dry bread in it, and no action, so that was it for me. Based on what I read, I cannot commend this and will not be reading anything more by this author - not when there are so many authors out there and so little time to find interesting new ones!

Genius by Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, Afua Richardson

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a graphic novel that took a trip into a reverse perspective after a fashion. Instead of black people being shot by the police, it was the other way around when a neighborhood in Los Angeles sets itself up as a no-go area for police, and fights violently back at any attempted incursions. The police are trying to figure out who is running this show and consider that it has to be a guy with a military background, when in fact it's just a teenage girl named Destiny Ajaye, who happens to have read a lot, including Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I haven't read that book (it is on my ebook reading list!), but I somehow doubt it has much to say about urban guerilla warfare.

However, I let that go because the story itself has much to say and it unpeels like an onion. It was engaging and had some interesting perspectives, although none that have not been raised before. The initial cops who were killed, it turns out were corrupt and into all kinds of shady things, and the girl who leads the insurrection has a bad episode of negative police interaction in her past. As the violence escalates and ever more force is brought to bear by the police, including calling in the National Guard, the reader has to wonder where all this is going to end up. Destiny has, through violent means, united several gangs and turned them into her own personal army, but are they up to taking on what's thrown against then or is this Destiny's Last Stand?

This comic series garnered some praise for itself and some attention having been released coincidentally during the time of the Ferguson, Missouri riots over the shooting death of Michael Brown which was stirred up by a combination of inaccurate reports of how he died and bloody-minded people. I consider it a worthy if disturbing read, but I can't get with it all the way because there was too much convenient happenstance in it for it to be realistic, and too much omitted, such as taking out several Nation Guard tanks by using sticky bombs as depicted in the movie Saving Private Ryan but without access to the anything like the comp B explosive they had.

The LAPD didn't use drones back in 2014, so I didn't expect that technology, but rooftop spotters? Taking out snipers from helicopters? None of this was explored and the police were made to look like complete idiots, which any police can do from time to time without any assistance, but they are not quite the reactive bunch of human 'drones' or ku klux klueless that they were depicted as here, which rather took away from Destiny's value as a master strategist.

That wasn't my biggest beef though. The biggest problem with it was once again the sexualization of female characters by comic book artists. Usually this lands at the feet of male artists, but in this case, we have another female artist who is selling her gender down this flood-stage river and I have no idea why. There was no sex in this story at all, so why is Destiny depicted as a this unnaturally posing, semi-topless Barbie-doll shaped bimbo? I would have complained - maybe even equally - had she been depicted as this bookish eyeglass-wearing nerd cliché too, or even as a Ian Fleming style 'flawed babe' with a scar or a limp or something, but surely there is a happy medium that could have been struck here? Why not simply depict her as a regular person?

Giving her an improbably narrow waist and pneumatic boobs does nothing to aid the story you're telling and in fact detracts from it badly. I live for the day when graphic novel illustrators don't have to be lectured about this and where male writers such as Bernardin and Freeman, and publishers such as Top Cow and Image automatically say no to such illustrations unless there's a really valid reason for using them.

That said, this is an interesting story so I decided to let that slide this time since it was only Destiny who was inexplicably depicted in this way. What this does mean however, is that I don't rate Afua Richardson as a valid comic book artist and I won't be inclined to read any graphic novel that she's had a hand in from this point onward, so no, I won't read the sequel to this: Genius: Cartel, not least of which is that I'm not a fan of retreading stories and selling them on as something new just to make a fast buck. It's bad enough that a $26 billion-earnings conglomerate like Disney is showing these days that all it can do is regurgitate without the rest of us jumping on its sadly derivative bandwagon.

Ironheart by Allan Boroughs

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a dystopian story which I normally avoid like the plague, but his one seemed like it might offer something different, and it did, so I was glad I gave it a chance.

India Bentley lives in what used to be London, on the north bank of the Thames, seeking a sad existence for her family by foraging and trying to avoid the evil people who live on the south bank, and who like to boat across there on occasion and kidnap people. Naturally for this kind of a story, her father went missing and her mother died, leaving her in the clutches of her evil stepmother who seems to be in process of being courted by a sleazy new guy in town who, it turns out, is angling to make young India his bride. So it's a bit of Indiana Jones meets Cinderella meets steampunk (kinda).

It turns out, as India learns during a visit from a female version of Indiana Jones named Verity Brown, who is a tech hunter like her father and who becomes a figure of inspiration fro India, that her dad wasn't prospecting for oil, but for old technology from the time before the fall of civilization. He was seeking the almost mythical Ironheart, a rumored stash of well-preserved old tech which would be worth a fortunate to anyone who found it and which could potentially revolutionize what this society had devolved into.

Verity is escorted by an old tech military android which has the absurd name of Calculus and which serves as her bodyguard. This led to the first example of poor writing I saw in this novel. India meets the android and hears it speak and shortly after she asks, "Can it talk?" What? Yes, you just heard it talk, moron! This evidently came about because the author didn't read back through what he'd written - or more likely added the earlier speech and never read on through to catch the continuity error.

Worse is: "He tensed a thin bicep and invited India to squeeze it." I read this before I decided in a later story that I was very likely going to quit reading novels where the author quite obviously has no clue as to the difference between biceps and bicep. They're not the same thing and while biceps is the plural of bicep, it's not the plural in the way these authors seem to think. I've started to expect this ignorance in YA novels, though, so it wasn't a complete surprise. Just annoying and depressing to think what we're doing to our mother tongue. Another example is: "It is possible," he said eventually, "that you are experiencing some sort of psychic phenomena." Well, it was just the one, so 'phenomenon' was the word required here.

This aside, the story, despite it becoming a bit trope-y and boring in parts, was overall a worthy read with some interesting adventure and action in it, and I enjoyed it, but it was not enjoyable enough to make me want to read any more about any of these characters. As it stands though I commend this one as a worthy read.

Fierce Winds and Fiery Dragons by Nan Sweet

Rating: WARTY!

This was a middle-grade novel and unfortunately part of a series, but I wasn't going to hold that against it until I came across too many tropes in a row: the bullied girl who is granted magical powers; the cute girl who thinks she's ugly, and worst of all, something I expect to read in a bad YA novel, but not in a middle grade one: the character who has gold flecks in her eyes! I am not lidding...er, kidding! You could make a fortune mining all that gold in YA characters' eyes. Anyway, based purely on that in the first few pages of the novel, I quit it and moved on. I cannot commend trope-laden, derivative, unoriginal nonsense as a worthy read, and this was all that and a bag of chips.

Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

Rooted in the Grimm fairy tales, this story borrows a bit from the TV series named Grimm where this cop turns out to be a Grimm - that is not someone who is named Grimm, but someone who is hereditarily required to fight supernatural evil as it arises. Mina Grime is in a similar position. She's the rather nerdy unpopular girl at school, but of course in the way of YA trashy novels, she's gorgeous, yet only attracts the attention of the studLy trope school jock after she saves his life.

Mina has supposedly inherited the unfinished Grimm fairy tales whatever those are. This is so obviously the start of a series, which pretty much lets me out on the ground floor, not being much of a fan of series, in particular not of YA series which are far too often derivative and tedious. Predictably I grew tired of this very quickly, especially when I came across some clunkers in the writing, such as "just not one hypnotized Brody. His movements became slower, and he was transfixed by Claire's every movement" I think the 'one' should be 'on'. That was a relatively minor infraction.

Worse by far was "Mina watched as Claire's hand stroked Brody's bicep" - it's fricking biceps moron! I'm now dedicated to ditching dumb-ass books like this at the first mention of the singular bicep. That's probably what happened here although I really don't recall why exactly I quit this. It was probably because it was too dumb for words and the female supposed hero is really nothing without a guy to validate her as per usual in this kind of tripe.

So no - not a worthy read - a very warty one in fact.

Once Upon a Kiss by Various Authors

Rating: WARTY!

This was billed as seventeen romantic 'Faerie' tales. I detest those words: 'Fae' and 'Faerie', and I ought to take my own advice and refuse to read any more books that use it, since this one was rather less than satisfactory. Even 'Fairy Tales' doesn't technically cover these stories although some of them are.

My first problem with it was the content list. It was colored magenta. On a white background, this isn't a problem, but on a black background which I typically use to save power in my phone, which is where I read ebooks more often than not, it rendered the content list illegible. You could click from the list to go to the story but you could not click back to the content from a story, and if you're not careful, merely swiping to go to the second page of content would take you to a story instead of taking you to the next page, necessitating your having to pull up the slide bar at the bottom of the screen and slide all the way back if you accidentally hit the wrong story (something which is very easily done on a small screen where the list is very compact). So, too dark of a color and far too close together to tap accurately with a finger.

Clearly publishers still have a lot to learn about formatting ebooks. Some of these stories had a prologue, an epilogue, and chapter markers and all of these sub-headings were listed on the content page meaning it ran over three screens! This kind of crap is why I never put a content page in my own novels, but then those typically do not contain a variety of stories from an assortment of authors so I could see the point of one in this case. I just wish it had been better thought through; just a list of the author's names would have been quite sufficient and occupied much less space, meaning each name could have been bigger so it was easier to tap the name and go to the story on a small screen.

Anyway, here's the list below with my comments on each story:

• The Glass Mountain by Alethea Kontis
I didn't like this. It seemed pointless and went on far too long. It was a story of a woman being trapped in a glass mountain and working with a guy who was also trapped there to get out. It was supposed to be a love story but the guy was highly antagonistic and verbally abusive from the start, and the author failed to convince me that this relationship could possibly turn around, so a big no on this story. I have no better idea what it was based on than I do how a female author can write a story like this. Does she think she's Becca Fitzpatrick or something?! (No, that's not a compliment).
• The Bakers Grimm by Hailey Edwards
This was a story about two competing bakeries and the children of the bakers getting together, and it failed to move me at all. I barely even remember it.
• Galatea and Pygmalion by Kate Danley
This was about a sculptor named Galatea, who sculpted a guy named Pygmalion - in short, just the opposite of the myth. That really was the only twist and the story wasn't that good.
• Red by Sarra Cannon
This was about a witch, part of a coven, looking for a cure for her sister and meeting a guy held prisoner in a cottage in the woods, who in turn helps her. The coven isn't everything she thought it was. Again, it failed to move me. At one point I read, "The Order had expressly forbid me to go looking for any kind of cure for my sister." The author evidently doesn't understand the distinction between forbid and forbade.
• Princess Charming by Yasmine Galenorn
An epistolary story with the twist being that the 'Charming' is female. I have no time for tedious epistolary novels, and in my amateur opinion, I already wrote the definitive Princess Charming when I wrote Femarine, so this one fell on deaf ears. I read, "I think they were getting used to being in human form. I have no clue what, now that their gig is over." I have no idea whatsoever what that piece meant!
• Mad About You by Jennifer Blackstream
Based on Alice in Wonderland, this one was about Alice trying to repel the Mad Hatter (who was paying suit to her) by getting a charm from a witch, but then changing her mind (If I recall - which I may not). I wasn't interested in the story.
• The Sea King's Daughter by Anthea Sharp
Based on The Little Mermaid. I have a severe allergy to stories which are titled in this format - making the main female character an appendage of a guy instead of her own person: The So-And-So's Daughter, The So-and-So's Wife. You shouldn't have to tell female writers that words carry heft and weight, and remind them that diminishing women like this only prolongs a detestable historical precedent. I read "They would not provide cover any long, which meant she must seize her opportunity now." It should have read 'Any longer'. It's sad when you can't even grammer- and spell-check a short story properly, but I guess most of us have been there!
• Romeo and Juliet: The Afterlife by Julia Crane
This story carried Shakespeare's original over into the afterlife to see what happened there which is similar to an idea I had myself, but did nothing with. I wasn't impressed by this effort to explore that, os I guess the opportunity is still there if I wanted to pursue it!
• Soot and Stone: A Fae Tale of the Otherworld by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson
Any novel that uses 'fae' and 'faerie' instead of fairy is chickenshit as far as I'm concerned, and I have no time for that kind of cowardice and posy-footing around That's all I have to say about his one.
• The Huntsman's Snow by Mandy M Roth
This was a shifter story and I typically have no time for those, so no.
• RumpelIMPskin by Debra Dunbar
Based on Rumpelstiltskin of course, this was mildly entertaining, but nothing special. I read, "His smug looked changed to one of utter shock when he saw us" and it should have read, 'smug look'.
• The Glass Sky by Alexia Purdy
This was a short story and still it had a prologue and chapters - all of which were listed in the content page! Yuk! As soon as I saw it was first person and the main character's name was Star Rickton, I skipped it. No. Just no.
• Rush by C Gockel
This is a story about someone named Rush who, due to a transgression, is required to find true love in two weeks which is nonsensical, so no. I read, "...several octaves too loud" which is plain dumb. An octave isn't a measure of sonic volume!
• Perchance To Dream by Phaedra Weldon
This was about your usual female underdog in a magical world and it failed to leave an impression. I read, "The two waved as they approached and an matrons woman yelled at them from Rose's left." An matrons woman? Any grammar checker will find that, so this was a truly sloppy error in an unmemorable story. I can't even guess what she was trying to say with that nonsensical phrase.
• The Toad Prince by Nikki Jefford
So, I am tiring of going through each of these, especially when I really don't recall them. I think at some point I not only stopped reading each story before it was over, but I stopped even reading the next story because I honestly don't remember a thing about some of these. In this I read, "Isabel's best features were hidden beneath her bulky wool gown." So here we have a female writer, writing about a female character, and clearly stating that all she's worth is her body. Forget about her mind - forget about any qualities such as smarts, loyalty, integrity, grit, honesty, capability, or whatever. Her body is the only thing of utility. I'm sorry but writers who write like this are assholes, period. There's a difference between a character thinking something like that, and the author stating it in the narrative, and this one is a jerk for for doing so.
• Crafted With a Kiss by Shawntelle Madison
This one wasn't bad, and I do remember it, Pynnelope is a wooden warrior who seems invincible until in her last battle she's taken down by a guy who is more powerful. She's taken prisoner, but there is more to the story. I quite liked it. There was one mistake in it. At one point I read, "Either way, I had until dawn to force Pynnelope to do the unthinkable" and this came just two paragraphs before we're told he has only until midnight. Someone's not reading for continuity!
• A Small magic by Devon Monk
I've read at least one novel by Devon Monk and liked it, so I guess it wasn't surprising that I liked this one, based on Hans Andersen's The Princess and the Pea. It was an amusing and quirky story, but it's sad that there was only one really likable one in this whole collection.

So very little to engage me here, and overall I cannot recommend this as a worthy read, but at least it informed me of over a dozen authors I don't need to bother reading ever again from this point onward!

Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell

Rating: WORTHY!

This is something of a Cinderella story and it was also another of those audiobooks I seem to have been listening to lately which gets off to a great start, falls flat in the middle, but picks up again towards the end, so overall I consider it a worthy listen, but it had an issue or two here and there along the way. It was read by Bianca Amato who did a good job.

Wilhelmina Silver has had an amazing childhood in Zimbabwe, despite losing her mother at an early age. Her father was still around and she was allowed to run wild, learning all she needed to from her daily adventures and from the extensive library her father had in their ranch. But when he dies unexpectedly and his nurse movies in on the family and starts taking over, Wil suddenly finds herself on the outs and is eventually and summarily packed-off alone to an English boarding school while her home is sold.

To Wil, the people in her school are as cold as the weather and her spirits as dampened as the climate. Wil runs away from school and lives on her own on the streets (and in a zoo!) for a while before finally returning to the school and finding a place there. The novel tells a good and interesting story when it finds its pace, but there are times when it rather drags and you're wanting something to happen which doesn't. I'm not a big fan of school bully and cruelty stories, so I disliked that part. It wasn't so bad, but it was a bit overdone and too black and white for my taste. I found it hard to believe that girls of breeding who attended this school would have been so relentlessly, uniformly, and openly cruel as depicted here. It didn't seem realistic to me.

The worst part about this story is that Wil is presented in the early chapters as fearless, feisty, and indomitable, but in England she seems completely the opposite. Yes, she has some grit and some inventiveness, but she seems like a different character from the one we'd been introduced to earlier, and while I get that being torn from a comfortable and happy home and dropped unkindly into a new life for which they're completely unprepared can knock the stuffing out of a person, it felt a bit like a betrayal of Wil that she was so consistently and so interminably presented as weak and lost. It felt wrong and inauthentic, and did the character a disservice.

That said, she took charge and bounced back and that's where the story improved for me, so while it has its faults, it's not too bad of a story for an age-appropriate audience.

Juana & Lucas by Juana Medina

Rating: WORTHY!

I used to know someone by the last name of Medina with an amusingly rhyming first name! Marriage will sometimes do that to you but you gotta go with your heart, right?! This audiobook was read by someone with the feisty name of Almarie Guerra, and she read it well. It's a very simple and very short story for younger children that's in English, but which teaches some Spanish along the way by inserting the occasional Spanish word in place of an English one. Usually, but not always, you can guess what the word means by the context. I'm a big advocate of that in writing, so I approved of this teaching method. If you're going to use a foreign word, don't pedantically add the English translation right after it because it sounds stupid and it's both tedious to read and listen to. Instead, simply put it wisely in context and your reader should have little trouble if any, in understanding it.

The story simply tells of Juana and her friends during a school day, and the adventures and problems they have, and it was quite charming even for me who is way beyond the age at which this is aimed! I liked it, and I enjoyed the reading of it, so I commend it for age-appropriate audiences.

Frank Einstein and the Space-Time Zipper by John Scieszka

Rating: WARTY!

I have to say up front that this audiobook (read averagely by the author and Brian Biggs), was far too boring for my taste. Younger children might like it, but I am far from convinced. Maybe it'll put 'em to sleep which would be of some utility. There was just something off about the book, and I'm not sure I can really put my finger on it, but it was not a pleasant listen at all. It was just tedious and didn't seem like it had any ambition to go anywhere interesting.

The story is about a bunch of chimps in a primate facility who have apparently taken over the operation and are running it themselves. I have no idea what they story was actually about because I simply could not get into it, let alone follow it, and soon I started skimming. It did not improve or become any more intelligible. Maybe chimpanzees will understand it, but it didn't feel like it was of value to humans, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read.

There's No Place like Hell by Janis Hill

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I read an earlier novel by this author and liked it, so I was asked by the publisher if I would like to read another of her works for review and I accepted. Then I was shamefully lapse in getting to it, so this review is long overdue and I apologize for that, but I literally only just finished reading it. This is why it's first up on my June reviews.

The good news is that I commend the book as a worthy read! The bad news is that this is volume two of a series and I was not invited to read volume one, so I came into this blind. There are a lot of references to an earlier life in this novel, which made me think, even before I knew this was volume two, that there was a previous novel, but it wasn't necessary (at least not from my perspective) to have read that one in order to enjoy this one. It would have been nice had the cover at least mentioned it was part of a series though. Publishers seem almost abusively negligent of advising readers about that, and I have to say I resent it.

Overall, the novel was too long for my taste. I like 'em more pithy and I felt it could have been shortened and tightened, and would have made for a better read. There were also some grammatical errors which presumably will be removed next time the author gets to do a makeover of it. I list the ones I can remember below. Other than that, I enjoyed most of it. There were bits where it dragged, and I failed to see the point of resurrecting this character from the previous volume. For me he contributed nothing, but at least he wasn't a love interest, and I really appreciated that.

The main character, Stephanie Anders, is very much her own woman and not dependent upon some guy validating her, so I fully approve of a writer taking that approach. It's not that I object to a main female character having a love interest, or that I think it necessarily weakens the character to have one, but all-too-often this is what writers do to their women, especially in Young Adult novels. This author avoided that and I commend her for it. If the love interest is there solely to be the love interest, then lose him - or her. It spoils the novel for me; and if your main female character has a male character who smothers her, dominates her or otherwise detracts from her story, then I won't read your novel. I can't stand stories like that, so I'm glad this wasn't such a one.

In some ways this novel reminded me of Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston, not because the two novels are the same - they're very different - but because they share the same playful attitude and irreverence, and I like that, so even though this novel was first person - a voice I typically detest, it was very readable.

Stephanie works for the Egyptian deity Isis, helping protect souls from the dark side. Yes, this is one of those novels that insists there is and must be a balance between light and dark and also one in which humans have to do the work of gods and angels because apparently gods and angel aren't up to it. I never have understood why there had to be a balance (or why evil would agree to any such balance!), or why gods are so paradoxically weak and reliant on humans to do their dirty work, but in this case, again, the story was original enough and amusing enough that I was willing to let my loathing of this genre slide. So kudos to the author for drawing me in.

The main story here is that the man who instigated the split between Stephanie and her husband - something which still smarts - is now begging for her help after drunkenly selling his soul. It's a credit to Stephanie that she takes on this job rather than letting him slide into hell - and she seriously takes it on. Being the Protector of Souls she really can't refuse, but she goes into it full tilt and doesn't give up despite the odds being heavily stacked against her. She is deadly serious about her job.

I loved the humor, the original take on an old premise, and how inventive Stephanie is in doing her job. She's always skirting the edge of rule-breaking without technically going over the line, but being a woman what would she do but skirt? You can't trouser the rules! They're already trousered. This behavior naturally - or supernaturally - brings her grief and praise, but it also makes the reader a little nervous that maybe this time she's gone too far. I loved that - that she had a fine mind and it never stopped ticking, so this story was definitely a worthy read.

This book could have used a bit more proof-reading. Here are the errors I found:

"He is my weapon's instructor" - unless the guy was instructing the weapon rather than Stephanie, then he was her 'weapons' instructor - no apostrophe necessary!

"without the aid of Isis' Light I may add." Isis is a name, not a plural, so it needs an apostrophe s, not just the apostrophe: Isis's.

"who'd obviously heared all that stuff I'd not said out loud." 'Heard' has only one 'e'.

Demons do not breed to begat demons!" This was the wrong verb tense. It needs to read 'beget', not begat and don't you forgat it!.

But those didn't detract from enjoying the book at all, and I enjoyed it overall.