Sub-Human by David Simpson

Rating: WARTY!

This is a classic example of why I don't like series. The first book can only ever be a prologue and I don't do prologues, but sometimes a book description makes it sound interesting enough that I bite and taste the sour when I was expecting sweet. I have to confess to my own part in this inexcusable crime because even the description had warnings in it that I chose not to heed.

The story is about Craig Emilson who is "a young doctor" why his age is important to the blurb-writer I have no idea, but it goes on to say that he's "sucked into military service at the outbreak of World War III" when in fact he volunteers. He enlisting to become a "Special Forces suborbital paratrooper", but why a doctor would do that is completely glossed over.

He's "selected to take part in the most important mission in American military history-a sortie into enemy territory to eliminate the world's first strong Artificial Intelligence." Why him again is glossed over. Why not drop a bomb on it? Why send a doctor when one isn't needed? Why make your main character a doctor instead of a computer scientist? The feeling I got, the further I read into this, was that it was very much fan fiction, and not well thought through - the author going for melodrama instead of realism. That's never a good thing in my book.

My first inkling that this was not for me was right at the beginning where the doctor is being injected with some sort of nano-bobs. Those are like thingumabobs, but they infest sci-fi stories. These are supposed to help maintain his respiratory system when there's no oxygen. Why this was necessary goes unexplained so obviously it was to get the main character and this nubile doctor together. Telegraph much? That wasn't the problem though. The problem was the inappropriate behavior of the young (naturally), attractive (of course) female doctor who hits on him. I'm like "What?!" Here's the exchange:

"You're married, huh?" the doctor asked, apparently rhetorically. Craig nodded anyway. "That's a shame. You're way too handsome to be married. Handsome young doctors like you should be single. Then single doctors like me could marry you instead."

From that point it was obvious that those two would end-up together, so his present wife needed to be dealt with, and that conveniently happens when she thinks he's dead after the mission (or at least brain-dead, which she got right), and so she happily married a sixty-year-old guy (ie twice her age) with whom she's been working and of whom she denies having any sort of relationship when her husband got jealous in an earlier chapter!

That phone call was a joke. At one point she warbles sickeningly, "I never miss a call when we schedule it, baby, and I never will," and then very shortly afterwards says, "Don't 'baby' me, Craig! I'm not a child!" Excuse me? Isn't that precisely the same thing that you just did to him? Like I said, the writing is amateurish and thoughtless.

Another example came in that same section. He says, "I'm not brilliant like you." And she responds, "Not brilliant? Craig, you're a doctor!" I'm sorry but that doesn't necessarily follow. There are doctors who are brilliant, but there are also doctors who are idiots. On top of that he uses stock phrases like "In this brave new world of ours..." which about made me barf, and there's a robot which is named Robbie. And not after Margot, I'm sure.

In short, this was pathetic and a waste of my time. I couldn't stand to read more than about five chapters, let alone a whole series, because it was so sickening to read. I can't commend it. It was pathetic.

The Taker by Alma Katsu

Rating: WARTY!

This had sounded good from the description, but it sounded less good when I realized it was merely a prologue to a trilogy, and worse, it was written in mixed voice, with short, third-person interludes that segued into lengthy first-person flashbacks. This is not my kind of a novel. It's a tired, unimaginative, and clunky format. In short it's exactly what I'd expect from an author who boasts a BA in literature and writing, and an MA in Fiction, and especially from someone who apparently studied with novelist John Irving. I read about fifty pages of it, and it was so lethargic that I gave up on it out of tedium.

The story made no intelligent sense from what little bit I did read. I don't get how someone with supposed academic qualifications needs three novels to drag out a single-novel story. But I understand that kind of rip-off does pay well for both publishers and author, and let's face it: it's pretty much all she wrote.

This doctor, in a small New England town, goes to work on the night shift and is delivered a police detainee who is suspected in a murder - to which she confessed when found by a police officer. She wore a blood-soaked shirt, and was walking without a coat on a freezing night. The police brought her to the hospital for evaluation, and the doctor could find nothing wrong with her physically, but she started telling him a story of herself and her partner - a man she killed at his own request. They were she claimed, extraordinarily long-lived people. She kept urging the doctor to let her escape, but if she'd really wanted that, why not do it when she was free instead of wandering down a highway to be picked up by the police?!

Like I said, it made no sense, the first person voice was ridiculous - as it typically is. There's no way she had that kind of photo-perfect and audio-perfect recollection after all those years, so it lost all credibility for me. The idiot doctor was buying into everything she said without a shred of professional interest in her mental condition, or any sliver of disbelief, so he wasn't remotely believable as a medical practitioner. A case like this screamed for psychiatric evaluation, but nowhere was that discussed.

Even granted all that, her story needed to be nowhere near as detailed as it was. It felt like an amateur attempt at telling a story where no thought had been put into how it would all sound. The author seemed overly-enamored of the framing technique as befit her academic mind-washing: distressed beauty tells story to handsome rescuer, and they fall in love. Barf. No. Just no.

Please don't tell My Parents I'm a Super Villain! by Richard Roberts

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not much for series, but once in a while one comes along that makes me want to follow it, and if this series (this is book one of three as of this writing) is as good as its opener, then it will definitely be one I follow. Note that this novel is in no way representative of the real world and to judge it by real world standards is wrong. It's an off-kilter fantasy world, and it's in that context that I review it here since it's neither wilder nor more sensible than your average super hero graphic novel!

In the version of LA where she lives, Penelope Akk lives in a superhero world and has superhero parents. Mom was once a super villain, and dad is a tech genius, so it's hardly surprising their daughter turns out to be a mad scientist. Penny's skills start coming in far more aggressively than most do, but they also come spasmodically. That's nothing unusual, but the nature of Penny's skills deceive her parents, who pay her nowhere near the attention she deserves because they're supers themselves and always too busy. They may regret that.

Penny's real problem though, is that she creates things that typically work weirdly, and she has no idea how they work, and often no memory of the actual creative process at all. In the back of her mind they make sense, but she's never able to grasp that and pull it up front into the light. She invents some cool gadgets though, and what better way to test them out than with some good, old-fashioned villainy? I really liked Penny because she's a smart, strong young woman who never gives up and is always learning.

Teaming up with her friend Claire, and her other friend Ray, the trio becomes "The Inscrutable Machine" - talented and super-coordinated villains, whose success goes way beyond what their age would suggest they were capable of, and once Penny - now known as Bad Penny - has invented a few cool gadgets for her friends as well as a serum that brings on their powers too, they really take off. Claire becomes the extra-charming 'e-Claire' and Ray becomes the super-strong, super-fast 'Reviled'.

Their capers, beginning quite accidentally, become almost legendary, and bring them to the attention of Spider, the biggest villain of all, who is apparently an actual spider (although I had my doubts). It becomes ever more difficult for them to withdraw from their super villain life (it was so much fun!) and retreat to a life of super-heroing which is what Penny really wants. Or is it?

When Spider blackmails them into pulling a couple of jobs, Penny finds herself having to come down firmly on one side or the other. But how can she do that, save the city, beat Spider, and preserve her anonymity? Because the last thing she wants is for her parents to learn that she's a super villain! Yes, sometimes their thinking can be whack, and their motives a bit obscure, but they're so engaging that you can't stop wanting to know what scrape they'll get themselves into next - or how they'll get out of it. This is where Penny's unmatched, but totally not understood genius comes into play. Some of her inventions have a mind of their own - literally.

This book is one of the best I've ever read, despite it being aimed seemingly at a middle-grade audience. It's inventive and funny, and completely believable even as the fantastical world the author creates is outrageous - and beautifully put together with a cast of amazing and creative characters. There are some classic super heroes (my favorite is Marvelous) and super villains (my favorite is Lucy Farr). Note that these names are taken from an audiobook so the spellings may be off! I thought this was a fun world and a great book, and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a quite long, and a heavily-referenced and indexed book about the intelligence of birds, how it works, how it evolved, what it's used for, how it expresses itself, and why some birds seem to have a lot more of it than others - and what this means going into an uncertain and climate-changing future. The book is full of stories and studies, as well as anecdotes, and is well-written and fully-engaging. It's packed with fascinating insights and fun facts, and covers a truly wide range of birds - and not just in North American but across the world. I found it enthralling and highly educational.

If I have a couple of complaints it would be that there were no pictures here. It's possible, of course to go look up online the birds that are mentioned, but it's a nuisance. It would have been nice had each bird discussed had a color picture to go with it. There are some line drawings, but these are used to separate the sections of the book, not to illustrate the text.

The only other complain is that while a lot of studies are discussed in the book, there is no information on what happened to the poor birds? Did the studies involve euthanizing them or where they merely captured, tested, and released? Some evidently were from what I gathered from the text, but in the case of others, their fate went unrevealed, and the studies didn't seem like they were non-invasive. It's all well and good to discuss the intelligence of birds, but if scientists are raping and pillaging nature to get this information on these birds which in some cases are threatened, then it seems to me I'd rather be ignorant about their intelligence than kill them off just to satisfy human curiosity! Maybe that's just me....

It wasn't the author who was doing this of course! She was merely reporting, but for a good reporter, especially one who seems to be so invested in her subject, you would think she'd have a care for the welfare of the subject. That aside, I did enjoy reading the book. It was well-written and it was a worthy read, so I commend it.

The Bees by DC Swain, Anna Bonita

Rating: WORTHY!

Written poetically by Swain and illustrated charmingly by Bonita, this is a somewhat fanciful and quite short story of a bee's day, from waking up to heading out to play and then getting down to work of gathering pollen, but first the hive must be defended from an overly inquisitive dog!

The story is playful and entertaining, and colorful. Before this, the author was batting a .66 with me, but he's now edged up to a .75, because I liked this book and commend it as a worthy read.

Witch Hunt by Shirley Damsgaard

Rating: WARTY!

This is a 300 page novel in first person voice which is typically too much for me. This is why I ditched all my unread print books a while back, that were in first person. I guess I missed this one so I decided to give it a go and it didn't surprise me when it didn't work. It's also part of a series which doesn't help. It's one of those series where the author tries to get the one word incorporate din every title in the series. Usually it's a dumb-ass main character name. in this one, it was the word 'witch'. I'm not a fan of that peccadillo.

The problem that killed this for me though wasn't so much the first person, although that's typically hard to take. It was the idea that there's unremitting and unpunished bullying going on in school. I know there's some, but when it's conducted by girls, it tends to be a lot more subtle and devastating than the uncontrolled (and ridiculous) classroom version depicted here. I don't know where this author got her ideas from - bad YA stories I guess, but that was the end of reading this for me. . On top of that, what's the point in making your detective a witch if she refuses to employ witchcraft to solve the crime? Admittedly your story would be short-lived if it were only a matter of casting a spell or two, to solve the crime every time, but an inventive writer would find ways around this.

It wasn't just that predictable crap, though. The story was all over the place, and it kept meandering off into uninteresting diversions. I know you have to let your character grow, but if the growth pains are that bad, I'd rather have an undeveloped character and a decent story than this. I grew bored and irritated, and that classroom bullying thing was just the last straw. The bottom line is that it was just bad and lazy writing, and I can't commend this based on the small portion I managed to get through

The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
On one page I read, "She treaded water" - the past tense of 'to tread' is 'trod' (and also 'trodden'). It's not 'treaded' - not unless she put a tire tread on the water, which I guess is entirely possible if you can do magic....
Later I read, "But it's not like I can just look up in a phone book..." In context, this should have read, 'look her up in a phone book', or depending on what precisely the author meant, 'look in a phone book'. Either way something was wrong here!
Past tenses seemed to be a problem for Shannon Hale because later I also read, "Apple reached out and pet the dragon's tail...." This should have read 'petted'. While language is dynamic and changes over time, perhaps now faster than ever in history, some authors don't seem to get that there's actually a difference between reported speech and narration. Reported speech can be completely informal. Narration and description need to give at least a nod to grammar and correct tense!

Quite frankly, this book was an embarrassment to me and has been kept hidden away on my shelf like some sort of family black sheep. Finally I decided to take it out and read it and damn the torpedoes, and it has turned out to be highly entertaining, inventive, amusing, and fully-engaging. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Note that it's the Storybook of Legends, not leg ends, which would be quite effete....

I should not have been surprised, I guess, because I've had a positive history with its author Shannon Hale. This is, I think, the fourth or fifth thing of hers I've read and liked, but strictly speaking, it's not wholly original with her. The story has its roots in Mattel's monster dolls line. From that they created a fairy-tale doll line, and from that came a web series, a movie, and these books. Shannon Hale was, I guess, commissioned to write this one, and she did an amazing job with it. This was definitely my kind of novel even though it's not my kind of age range!

I can't promise to follow the whole series (I'm not a series sort of a guy), and especially since other volumes are written by other authors, but it was a highly enjoyable read, surprisingly. I came to admire the author both for her inventiveness and her winning sense of humor.

It's a sort of middle-grade fairy-tale fantasy in a series, no less! The series is called 'Ever After High', and it's about these children of famous fairy-tale characters returning to school after the holidays. Raven Queen is the daughter of the Evil Queen from "Snow White". Apple White is the daughter of Snow White. Cedar Wood is the daughter of Pinocchio, and Madeleine Hatter is the daughter of the Mad Hatter. Cerise Hood is the troubled daughter of red Riding Hood.

I think Maddie is my favorite character because she is so unapologetically nuts, and at several points actually has exchanges with the narrator of the novel, which I loved. Raven runs a close second as my favorite, and is an outstandingly intelligent and strong young woman. She's balking at being an evil queen like her mother was. She's supposed to feed the poisoned apple to Apple, but she doesn't want to be evil, and this makes people nervous because they think if she doesn't fulfill her role, then others' stories might fail and the whole of fairyland might collapse, so the plot is engaging, too.

The book ain't cheap! It was priced at fifteen dollars, but I recall picking it up at bargain discount at Costco several years ago. It intrigued me, but it seemed so juvenile that I hid it away until now. It's a hardcover which was printed in all these pastel shades, with the edges of the paper colored, and the pages having a colored border. After several years of looking at it and turning away, I decided to take the plunge and it proved so entertaining that I wished I had not let it sit for so long! It was a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it for its irreverence and endless diversion - never boring, always...entrancing! I commend it fully.

Go On Girl by Hilary Grossman

Rating: WARTY!

I thought this might be interesting, but the main female character was so pathetic that I couldn't stand to read more than the first few chapters. It occurred to me that the title had a space too many, and should instead have been "Goon Girl"....

Sydney Clayton (and I can't for the life of me decide if that's supposed to hark back somehow to Sidney Carton of A Tale of Two Cities) is supposed to be a big and powerful executive in a corporation, but her character shows none of this, and she allows herself to be manipulated and used by the elitist women who live in the neighborhood as she tries to navigate her business life, her lackadaisical, cardboard-thin, and apparently useless husband, and her young child's schooling.

This book could have been a great story about how a caring and loving mother taught her daughter to be a strong and independent woman, but instead it takes the road most traveled and depicts her as allowing herself to be blackmailed into doing what these people want - otherwise her daughter will be punished with ostracism at school. Sydney was shamefully spineless, and completely betrayed her daughter. This was entirely out of character! How did a purportedly strong businesswoman get manipulated like this? It made no sense, was boring and poorly-written.

For example, I read at one point: "Last week, I was in the supermarket, and the woman in front of me at the deli counter had the same melody on her phone I used to." My first question immediately after reading that was "Used to...do what?" I had to read it twice more before it made sense and even than it was poorly written, and I'm not talking about ending a sentence with a preposition. I don't care about that. I'm talking about it being unclear and read one way it could be understood that this woman now owns the phone the speaker owned, or maybe should it have ended with 'too' instead of 'to'?! Oh no, I ended a sentence with 'to'! Seriously, it could have been written better and was emblematic of much of this book (at least the bit I read).

The clueless (as usual) blurb rambles, "As Sydney focuses on what is best for her daughter...." but she never does. How a female author can betray her gender like this, not only in how she depicts the mother, but in how she talks about the daughter (who really isn't allowed a voice), I can't understand. And the book assumes these children are mere robots, sent out into the world by their moms, and programmed to do whatever their moms want, like they have no independent thought or even minds at all. I can't commend this garbage.

Live to See Tomorrow by Iris Johansen

Rating: WARTY!

I was quickly done with this sad little thing. Iris Johansen was 76 when she wrote this in 2014 and I'm thinking she's either out of touch or perhaps becoming too long in the tooth to be writing stories of this nature. No one should write a story like this one. 2014 was three years before #MeToo became a viral movement, but she seems to have learned nothing from similar issues and movements, and consequently this book champions a codependent relationship in which no apparently means yes, in a minute.

The main character is abused from the outset when another controlling guy forces her out of her visit to her son in Hong Kong, and into an investigation of a dangerous killer because she happens to be in the right part of the world and there is a single policing agency anywhere near which can take care of it! Yeah! Right!

The writing is stilted and predictable and the story hopped around annoyingly without showing any interest in going anywhere interesting. I skimmed and skipped in the faint hope that it might improve, but it never did, which honestly didn't surprise me, and I dropped it. I can't commend it because of the appallingly poor writing to say nothing of the clueless relationships depicted here. I'm done with this author.

The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde

Rating: WORTHY!

This is perhaps my favorite play. The definitive movie version is that starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O'Connor, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Anna Massey, and unfortunately, Reese Witherspoon, who I used to like until she played the "Do you know who I am?" card in 2013, when she was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

This audiobook version is a fine work, and made me laugh out loud frequently. Unlike the movie, it's very true to the play, which is generally considered to be one of the best English comedies. Unfortunately the audiobook version I had did not list a single cast member so I can't list them here. I even went to the publisher's website (Highbridge Audio - this is part of the Highbridge Classics series) in search of a cast, and they offered nothing, which I feel was rather mean of them.

Wilde is unleashed full force through his various characters here, cutting a swathe through social convention and societal habit with great relish. Two friends, Jack and Algernon, have invented fictitious family or friends to give them each an excuse to get away from their regular life and duties, and escape into a fantasy world of complete irresponsibility. Jack's bother is called Earnest, and Earnest is actually jack, but in his Earnest guise, he pays no bills, misbehaves in general and has a great time. Algernon's invention is a sick friend named Bunbury, and Algernon often goes 'Bunburying' when he wants to get away, under the guise of visiting and taking care of his ailing friend.

Jack has an eighteen-year-old ward named Cecily Cardew, as well he should be having inherited her father's fortune. Jack is an adoptee with no family history, having been discovered by accident in a bag left at the baggage claim at Victoria Station in London. Jack is so in love with Algernon's cousin Gwendolen Fairfax that he actually proposes to her despite the disapproval of the formidable Lady Bracknell, who insists upon interviewing Jack regarding his suitability to press his suit. When Algernon learns of Jack's ward, he decides to press a suit of his own and goes down to Jack's country home, posing as Jack's fictional brother Earnest. The confusion and self-induced foot-shooting only increase from there.

The joy of this is listening to Wilde's take on life, and hearing it expressed as a holistic philosophy from these two reprobates. I highly commend this, or the movie, or going to see the play performed if you can, or simply reading the play for yourself. It's available free from Project Gutenberg in ebook form.

The Genesis Code by John Case aka Jim Hougan, Carolyn Hougan

Rating: WARTY!

I guess you can call this a case study given the author's name, and it ended up in the john. Of course the name on the book isn't the author's real name. Normally I detest authors who, for want of a more circumspect term, outright lie about their identity, but I can see why these authors did it, because certainly, they wouldn't want this one on their record of publishing non-fiction books. This is a case of a professional trying to write fiction, and somehow feeling he or she has to lecture we poor readers about their professional business. No thanks. They remind me of Clive Cussler, the late unlamented author who essentially put himself into his novels, not even thinly-disguised.

These appear to be using the same tactic and so it's both the first and last book of theirs that I'll ever tried to read. I wasn't impressed. The book was all over the place and I found myself starting to skim after only a few pages asking, fruitlessly as it happened - or more accurately failed to happen - is anything actually going to happen?

It's one of those books that jumps around like a nervous and finicky flea, never quite knowing where to take a stand and get down to it, so we're all over the place with different people doing different things. One assumes this will all come together in the end, but I do not like this style of writing and quickly tired of it.

The other big problem is that of the author making dramatic claims about world-shocking revelations, and then moving right on to the next unrelated chapter without offering a word as to what this revelation is, when it's patently obvious from the blurb what's going on. Why be so ridiculously coy? It's just annoying. In the real world - which be warned this novel is patently not set, no secret like this would ever escape the attention of the press. It would be all over the place. The novel is over two decades old, so social media was not then what it is now, but certainly it would have been in social media too, even back them, such as it was back then.

The author's stand-in is named 'Joe Lassiter' in this novel. I can only assume that Joe is the middle name and the unmentioned first name is "Average." We learn that his sister and her son were killed and their home set on fire and when he learns of another such murder, he goes on to uncover a "truth that will shock him - and the world - to the very bone." Yeah, someone is trying to clone Jesus. What a bunch of horseshit!

For that to happen, there would have actually have to have been a Jesus to clone. There wasn't - not a son of god Jesus, anyway. Jesus was such a common name back then how would they even be sure they had the right one?! And what the hell difference would it have made? Is the author saying that this purported divine being can be recreated by cloning his physical body which was nothing more than the union of genetic material from his ordinary human parents? The whole idea is patently ridiculous from the outset.

The dramatic claims about this book, contained in the blurb are grotesquely overdone. This sort of a book always claims that the story is so shocking it won't be believed - well, that one I buy, because I don't believe the claim! The thing is that we've had these "shocking" claims out in public for years - for example, that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, in Dan Brown's rip-off of Michael Meehan's, Richard Leigh's, and Henry Lincoln's 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and none of that has made even the minutest impression on the church.

Why would it? Believers are those who believe not in the face of lacking evidence, but in spite of the overwhelmingly negative evidence, so nothing is going to shock them or change their mind; that's a given. Be wary of any book that makes any such claim. There's nothing new under the sun.

Also be wary of eye-disturbing book covers! Fortunately for authors, the last thing I judge a book by is the cover, because if I did, this particular one - with the glaring red background and baby-shit brown punched tape over it making the title and author's fake name almost impossible to read - would have failed while it still sat on the bookstore shelf. I can't imagine why any publisher would let a book out of its doors with a cover like this one. I guess the take home lesson here is that you should never have your book cover designed by Red Ruth Ross.

So no, this book was badly-written, and I never actually got into it far enough to see if the plot was even remotely reasonable which was why I'd decided to try reading it in the first place. So: fail! Can't commend.

Waking Up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a biographical print book that I picked up because it sounded interesting and in the end, by and large, it really was quite engaging. In that respect it did go downhill a little toward the end, but in Hawaii, it's all downhill right? I mean they are volcanic islands after all! There was a bit more personal stuff in here than I cared for, and I certainly didn't need to know about the author's fling with a surfer dude, but aside from that thankfully very brief inter-lewd, the monologue about Hawaii, its history, traditions, exploration, and its flora and fauna were really quiet charming and well-written.

The author was a journalist, but decided to give up that life and move to Hawaii to take on the job of a fund-raiser for a botanical garden which aimed to preserve something of old Hawaii, and to exhibit it for the public. She spent many years there becoming pleasantly habituated to the life (after some initial hiccups), and stayed in the job until her immediate boss died from a heart-attack and her new boss seemed, she writes, more intent upon slashing budgets than pursuing his predecessor's goals.

Frankly I felt the author could have done more in terms of detailing Hawaii's wildlife, plants and animals and how they interlock. She does go into some detail about how tragical has been the human occupation of the islands, and how it has resulted in a massive extinction because of human predation and human-introduced invasive species, such as rats for example, along with feral cows, mongooses (yes, you heard that right), pigs and feral cats and dogs. Hawaii is the shameful world-leader in modern extinctions of plant species for example, where an estimated two plant species go extinct every year which is five hundred times faster than any purely natural rate. This is why some conservationists call Hawaii 'the extinction capital of the world'.

The mongoose was a seriously misguided error. It was introduced because the capitalistic sugar cane producers wanted the rats controlled, but the damage mongooses have done has more than outweighed the few rats they ate, since they prey on whatever takes their fancy and this includes Hawaiian species that have suffered far more greatly than rats ever will. This is what happens when people who are clueless about science are put in charge. Of pretty much anything.

It would have been nice to have more of that kind of overview in place of the unprotected sex on a first date chapter that we got, but that opportunity has gone now. That said though, I did enjoy this book for the most part and consider it a worthy read.

Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle by JM Evenson

Rating: WARTY!

This is aimed at middle-grade readers and so is not for me. Despite not warming to it myself, I tried to see how it might appeal to a younger reader, but even then it felt like it wasn't up to snuff.

For me it felt confused and cluttered, and the main character went from being put in peril here, to being put in a different peril there, and then yet another one everywhere. It felt like it was far too much, with barely time to take a breather. I know that when you want to entertain young children, there has to be danger, but this felt like it was all danger all the time with no respite, no downtime, and little humor to buoy-up the main participants.

Dalya is of Turkish ancestry and when she gets a chance to travel there with her father (mom is predictably out of the picture), she jumps at the chance to 'reconnect' with him, but he proves just as unreachable there as he is at home. They stay at a largely derelict and old family mansion in Istanbul, which is badly-neglected and unsafe in many regards. Naturally, Dalya disobeys her father's strict instructions to remain on the first floor of the house because upstairs is unsafe, and in chasing a cat she espies, she discovers a bottle of magic ink hidden under a floorboard.

The ink is supplied by a djin, and grants only one wish to each user. Dalya wishes to go home, but instead ends up being sent back in time and turned into a cat - the very cat she was chasing upstairs in the first place. How this happened was never explained, given that her explicitly stated wish was to return home. The cat she becomes is apparently a magical cat, although throughout the story the cat never actually does any magic, which struck me as very curious, and a waste of a good cat to boot. Why give it all the appearance of being magical if it serves no purpose?

In order to return to her human self, and to return to her own time, Dalya must embark upon an adventure through the mythology of Istanbul in quest of the djin who owns the bottle, in order to have her wish revoked. This is all well and good, but these folk tales and animal stories don't resonate well with people who have never heard them before, and it felt like the author was trying to toss in everything but the kitchen sink (although that also appeared in the story, I believe).

I can understand that these things might well appeal to the author and be very meaningful to her, but to me they really felt like a jumble of unrelated ideas that didn't really gel together, and which left me unsatisfied and a bit lost at times, too. I felt it could have been done better. The ending was too predictable. For the intended audience, maybe that's not such a bad thing; indeed, they may well get much more out of this that I did, but I've read many middle-grade stories and really enjoyed a lot of them. This one didn't get there for me and I can't commend it as a worthy read.

Bellamy and the Brute by Alicia Michaels

Rating: WARTY!

This is - quite obviously from the title, a take on the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, and it's not my usual fare, but since I'm working - on and off, and nroe off than on lately! - on my own redux of a fairytale, sometimes I take stock of what other authors are doing. I don't consider them my competition because I don't write quite like other authors, but it never hurts to look up from that keyboard once in a while and see what's going on around you. This to explain why I embarked on this, a first person voice YA novel which I normally flee from. While it wasn't completely awful, it had multiple, predictable issues, and I certainly wasn't much impressed considering this was supposed to be professionally published.

The novel is larded with YA trope and additionally, there are some curious writing peccadillos in it. Aside from the ritualistic first person PoV which I typically detest because it's tired, annoying, and derivative, but which fortunately wasn't overly nauseating in this particular story, there's the trope of the jerk of a school jock who's after this girl Bellamy. She of course has no interest in this brute because she's saving herself for a different brute!

Also, there's the predictable alienation and school bullying which is the hallmark of ninety percent of YA high-school stories. People make fun of this girl because her dad thinks he can see ghosts. How everyone else knows about this was not explained at least up to the point where I quit reading which was a little under halfway through. I'd thought about quitting before then, more than once, but I kept on going. Foolishly, it's now clear.

There is of course the single-parent family trope, but I can't really call it on that because that's part of the original story. One thing I didn't get was the choice of the name Bellamy for the main character. It know a lot of parents think it's cool to use some family's last name as their daughter's first name (Mackenzie, Madison, Reilly, etc), but while Bellamy (bel ami) is of French origin (it means good friend or nice friend), it has no direct correlation to the name Beauty; however, I was willing to let that go.

Another strange occurrence was when Bellamy visited her mother's grave late at night for no apparent reason (except of course for her to encounter a shadowy hooded figure this one night - and we all know who that is - Tate the stalker!). But in the real world, why not stop by the cemetery right after school? There's no reason to go late at night. The thing is though that the text said "I located her headstone with very little effort," and I had to wonder why was it any effort at all to find her mother's headstone if she'd been in the habit of doing this for two years? It made no sense.

Sometimes, the text itself would make no sense, as when I read, "I had my dad, which was more than most people could claim to have." What the hell does that mean? That most people have no father? Their father is dead or a deadbeat dad? That they can't connect with their father? This is patent nonsense! I have no idea what she meant by that, but clearly, whatever it was she was trying to say, it's ridiculous.

There was another part which was equally meaningless. I read the following:

"I never see her," he murmured just before I could leave.
I paused, my hand on the doorknob. "Never see who?"

This would have been perfectly fine except that it appeared very shortly after several maudlin paragraphs about it being 2 years to the day since her mom's death, so how could she not get what her father was referring to? This kind of writing makes your main character look stupid. As if that wasn't odd enough, her dad's habit of continuing to call his 17-year-old daughter 'munchkin' was truly an irritation.

It wasn't as much an irritation though as the author's fetish with starting every other sentence with a present participle, making her sound like a tiresomely passive person. Okay, so it wasn't literally every other paragraph, but even I was surprised by how common it was when it reached a point where it had become not just noticeable, but actually irritating, and I went back and checked to see if it was occurring as often as it felt like it was. I found in the first few screens the following:

• "Making my way to the front room, I..."
• "Noticing a stack of boxes near the door, I..."
• "Pointing to the paper laid on the counter, he..."
• "Standing on tiptoe, I..."
• "Pushing those depressing thoughts aside, I..."
  "Flipping it to the employment section, I..."
  "Spotting an ad requesting a summertime babysitter for two young kids, I..."
  (these were all on the same screen in three successive paragraphs)
• "Hanging up the phone, I..."
• "Edging slowly down the hall, I..."
• "Retreating to the kitchen, I.."
• "Pausing with the fork halfway to his mouth, he..."
• "Frowning, I..."
• "Hesitating for a moment, I..."
• "Raising his eyebrows, he..."

Seriously? This screams lazy author and even worse, bad editor.

I pressed on and followed the story to the point where Bellamy and Tate (the 'brute' of the title) were about to start on investigating why two ghosts haunted the Baldwin mansion where Tate lived and Bellamy was babysitting his two younger siblings for the summer. Why Tate himself, who is permanently housebound (living in the Tate Gallery! LOL!), cannot do this is left unexplained.

These ghosts were terrifying, and Bellamy first encountered Tate fleeing from them after she'd predictably gone to the forbidden third floor. I guess it's supposed to be obvious that the brutishness of Tate is a curse for the evil his family has perpetrated (and some that he himself did), but the novel makes the serious mistake of letting slide Tate's real brutishness, Tate which is that he is a manic and cruel.

He mistreats Bellamy repeatedly and she always finds an excuse for his unacceptable behavior. Just when it seems like he might be about to reform, he gets into an unnecessary fight with this tediously trope school bully who's been trying to get into Bellamy's pants for a while. She's had no problem fending him off, but Tate treats Bellamy like she's a helpless a child who can't protect herself and needs managing! He takes over control of her life at that point by going after this bully. He gets into a physical fight with him and beats him savagely, and Bellamy sees no problem with his behavior. The beaten bully leaves with the clichéd threat, "This isn't over!"

It was for me. I could not stand to read any more about this from that point and had lost all interest in learning what the deal was with these two ghosts. The ridiculous thing about that was that right when Bellamy and Tate finally decide to confront the ghosts and discover what it is that causing them to haunt the Baldwin mansion, neither Tate or Bellamy ever thinks to ask who the ghosts are or what happened to them. This proves both of these guys are morons.

This trope of the ghosts showing up and only bit by bit revealing their story is so tired, and so clichéd. The ghosts appear unable to speak, but they can write. They evidently cannot manipulate air to voice words, but they can manipulate physical objects and wreck Tate's room one evening like a pair of deranged poltergeists. It was pathetic and illogical.

So I'm done with this story and with this author. I can't commend it. It was indeed brutish and awful in the end and kept getting worse the more I read of it.

Skinwalker by Faith Hunter

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb for one of the books in this series caught my attention, and even though I'm series-averse and will never write one myself, I was curious about this one, so I got the one I was interested in, plus an earlier one in the series to read as an intro. Please be informed that my curiosity didn't long survive my beginning reading of this trope-filled novel.

Jane Yellowrock looks like she's Asian on the cover, especially with that stereotype of a cue, but she's apparently American Indian. I just got through a short and sassy discussion of book covers with a long time email friend and it was her opinion that covers are all important. It's my opinion that they're shallow and misleading depictions of the content of the book created all-too-often by someone who appears to have no clue what the book is about, let alone actually read it themselves.

These covers are a case in point. I know that IRL, people do go by book covers, but I think it's stupid and shallow for anyone to judge a book by its cover. Quite obviously, it's the content that matters. I'd far rather read a good book with a shitty cover than a lousy one with an artwork for a cover (although I might buy a used copy of the artwork one for display if not to read!)

A major character in a novel I'm working on as I write this review is an American Indian, so I sure have no problem with reading about one, but to lead a reader to believe it's about an Asian main character from the cover illustration, and then have someone of different ethnicity actually be in the novel is a piss-off at best. This is my beef about misleading book covers in a nutshell.

Add to that a bunch of info-dumping in the book, some of which seems to me to stereotype the main character, and I'm going to lose interest pretty fast, I promise you. This is the same kind of problem American Dirt has from what I've read about it. Blurbs can be misleading too, but I don't think they're quite as misleading as the wrong cover no matter how many squees that cover gets at the 'unveiling' party! Seriously? I mean how freaking shallow and pompous can we get?

The next problem was the first person voice, which is unrealistic at best, and which I detest unless it's really done well. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it isn't. This book features Jane traveling to New Orleans. She's recovered from a devastating fight with vampires (so we're told) and is looking to get back into her business of bringing down the rogues, in this Trublood rip-off of a fantasy world where vampires and other paranormals are out and accepted at least in principle.

So this story's been done (to death) before, but I thought this author might bring something new based on the book blurbs. Unfortunately, those can be as misleading (or as dishonest, however you view it) as the cover can, and I felt misled by this one. I know the author typically doesn't write the blurb or illustrate the cover unless they self-publish - and perhaps not even then - but you'd think someone who's running a purportedly successful series would be able to police the appearance of her books a bit better. On the other hand, why offer discounted books if you're selling them handsomely already? Maybe the series is in trouble. I dunno.

Anyway, Yellowrock arrives in town and meets with the trope vampire monarch - in this case a queen. Before she even gets there some sleazy stalker jerk on a motorbike is already slavering and panting after Yellowrock like a dog in heat. While bugs (the spying kind, not the insect kind) on the premises of the house she's going to be staying in piss-off Yellowrock, this dick of a guy stalking her didn't bother her at all! This turned me off the whole book, so I ditched it about thirty pages in. It was too sickening to read.

I refuse to commend a book like this and I'm done with this author.

The Tethering by Megan O'Russell

Rating: WARTY!

This novel aimed at middle-graders, read like a direct and unimaginative rip-off of Harry Potter. If that's what you want, then this is for you, but be warned that there's literally nothing new here.

There's the almost statutory impoverished orphan boy who has no idea he's a magician, and who accidentally exhibits magical powers. Here he's named Jacob, not Harry, and he learns that he's a wizard, so of course, he's spirited away to a special academy for witches and wizards, where there's a supercilious bully by the name of Malfoy - no, wait, in this version, it's Dexter. He's probably secretly a serial-killer-killer who darkly dreams.

There's the trope magic wand, except here it's called a talisman, and it doesn't have to be a wand. That's about the only real difference I noticed. Jacob has a special relationship with a tree(!) - in this case not a Whomping Willow, but a tree he heals and which then dispenses a twig to him that he uses as a wand. There's a group called the Magi (read Ministry of Magic), and there's a group called the Dragons (read: Death Eaters). Actually I got the impression that Jacob would probably end up joining them - either that or Hermione would - sorry, not Hermione! Here she's named Emilia and she is no doubt the finest witch of her age.

The novel is pretty sad: uninventive, unimaginative, offering nothing new. In it, magic affects electronic devices badly, just like in Harry Potter, but unlike in the Harry Potter stories, nobody seems intent on actually teaching Jacob to do magic. He's pretty much left to self-study, which seems to me to completely undermine the idea of an academy.

Maybe Potter-by-rote was the author's intention, but reading poor clones of existing books does nothing for me. especially since after two days at the academy no one has taught him a damned thing about how to do any magic. Despite this faux air of desperation that's created (that he must learn!), no-one seems interested in actually teaching him. He's sent off by himself to study a book containing magic spells, which are of course actuated by saying words in Latin. Seriously?

I never liked this garbage in the Potter novels. A lot of Rowling's writing made little sense if you began to analyze it, but at least she held it together and told a decently engaging story. This thing with the Latin though, was nonsensical throughout because it essentially said that there could have been no witches or wizards before Latin was invented as a language, even as we're supposed to believe that magic was ancient. Latin is certainly not world's earliest language, so how did witches and wizards (yes, this book insists on the same gender discrimination that Rowling did - but then Rowling thinks there are only two genders). Before Latin there was Etruscan and Greek. Before that was Phoenician. Before that was Egyptian, and before that Sumerian.

Although the terms 'witch', 'wizard' (both of which may derive from the same root) and 'sorcerer' are relatively new, dating back perhaps to the middle ages, the idea of wizardry dates back millennia - to ancient Egypt and beyond. The thing is: how did they ever cast their spells back then without access to the magic of speaking Latin? LOL! And if ordinary Latin words could cast spells even without a wand, how come the ancient Romans weren't known for their magical prowess? None of that makes any freaking sense.

This is why I can't commend this book as a worthy read. Middle-graders deserve better.

Sophie Washington the Snitch by Tonya Duncan Ellis

Rating: WARTY!

This is a really short book (seventy screens on my phone) and even then I could not finish it. I read only the first chapter. It was in first person which I can't usually stand, and worse than that, it was about bullying and the lack of a response to it. That's where the snitch comes in - apparently no one wants to be tarred by that brush, so when the school bully, a girl named Lanie, robs school-friends Sophie and Chloe of their money right after they arrive at school, nothing gets done.

Now you can argue "well isn't that the point of the story?" - revealing how something will change and something will get done? But I don't buy that, because this story has been done so many times before and this one offers nothing new, nothing different. A better story would have been to have a school where snitching isn't a crime - because it should not be. You report crimes. You report bullying. You report robbery. It's bad to have children feel they should not, and it doesn't matter if the story eventually gets there. The problem is that it's not there to begin with. A better story-teller would have started from that point and found some other issue to address, or some other way to tell her story instead of stamping a 'wrong' firmly onto the brains of juvenile and impressionable readers right from the off.

Because this story was going nowhere new and started from very tired trope, I can't commend it as a worthy read. I couldn't stand to read it. Maybe the readers it's aimed at might find it more readable, but that still wouldn't make it right.

Sanyare the Last Descendant by Megan Haskell

Rating: WARTY!

This was supposedly an "IAN Book of the Year Finalist" but it's not this Ian, rest assured! The last thing I'd want is a book prize named after me! I should say right up front that typically, I am not entertained by fantasy stories, but there are occasions when I see one that looks like it might be different and better than the usual unappealing cloned crowds of such books. This was one such novel, but while it started out interestingly enough, it soon sunk into a mire of trope that is the very thing which turns me off these stories in the first place.

The story begins with Rie, a messenger working for the government (the 'high Court' - this is mired in trope, as I said, so there are kings and courts and so on - nothing new or original). Rie's delivering a message to a Fairy lord. They're called 'fae' here, employing the archaic spelling because the author is apparently too much of a wuss to call them fairies, like the 'fae' spelling somehow makes them more mature, or more worthy of being taken seriously. Seriously?! But anyway, she's attacked by what the author repeatedly refers to as 'blood sidhe' - read vampires, even though sidhe - also known, and pronounced, believe it or not, as 'sith', never were vampires. They were simply fairies or muses in Gaelic - not garlic! - folklore.

So when she's sent undercover to the 'dark realm' (it's always frigging' realms in these stories isn't it?!) she immediately teams up with a handsome muscular blood sidhe despite him twice trying to take advantage of her. It was at this point that I quit reading this nonsense. I can only drink so much trope because I become thoroughly nauseated and this story was so larded with it, that it was in danger of self-induced coronary right there.

I can't commend it based on the portion I read. When is a fantasy writer going to come along and give us something truly imaginative, different, and fulfilling? Please make it soon! The blurb warns us that "war is looming in the nine faerie realms." The nine realms? Shades of Thor! Or should I say 'Sidhes of Thor'?! One can only hope that this war will arrive soon, because what is it good for? Well, it might wipe these tired nine realms out completely and clear the decks for a clean start with some new and original fantasy stories! One can hope.

London 2012 What If? by Ian CP Irvine

Rating: WARTY!

This is a time-travel story, so we're told ("A Romantic Time Travel Thriller"), but in fact it's really not. It's a parallel universe story. There's no time travel involved. I'm drawn to time-travel stories, so I thought this might be interesting, but I was quickly disappointed. This was so poorly-written that I couldn't get into it. The main character is in a mid-life crisis, bored with life and doubting everything, so predictably, one morning, he does a George bailey, and ends up in a parallel world. All the station names seem wrong, and the place he was going to doesn't exist despite his having visited it many times.

There comes a point at which your disorientation at something like this happening, has to give way to a practical approach - or at least to a realization that something is profoundly off, and you need to stop and take stock, but all too often, people in these stories seem to be so determinedly stupid that they take forever to adjust to the fact that everything has changed. This guy reacts by vomiting repeatedly, which was nauseating to read about. Worse than this, though, was that he could never get it through his thick skull that things had switched around dramatically. He keeps thinking, notwithstanding how compellingly different are the things he's already experienced, that other things will be exactly the same - like that he will be married to the same person and live at the same address.

It was this tedious drunken pirouette the author insisted on taking us through repeatedly that turned me off the story. No one can be that stupid and have made it to adulthood. One of the big things discussed in the text is how the phone service companies are different - some he was familiar have not yet started up or never did start up, while there are others he's never heard of, but conveniently, his phone works perfectly when he needs it to, and fails him dismally when the author wants to inject a hiccup into his story. It was unrealistic, and after a very short time I gave up trying to follow the story and moved onto something I hoped would be more entertaining.

I have better things to do with my time and could not stand to waste any more of it on this haphazard and poorly-constructed story.

Fall to Earth by Ken Britz

Rating: WARTY!

This was the start of a series (Pillars of Fire and Light) and again it exemplifies why I typically do not find series either compelling or fulfilling. I made it only 10% of the way into this - a 450-some pages tome - before I became completely bored. In the final analysis, volume one of a series is nothing more than a prolog. Thankfully this volume doesn't have an actual prologue. I don't do prologues. It does have an epilogue. I don't do those either.

The story begins with Indiana Beckham who, we're told, has had her lifelong goal tripped up when her entire team was banned from Olympic fencing because of one member's doping problem. But guess what, there are other competitions, and another Olympics four years hence. This woman, as she reminds us, is the best in the world, so I don't know what her problem is. If she hasn't won the Olympics, how is it she's considered the best? If she has, then she already won it once, and missing this year's isn't a life-ending issue!

But that's probably easier to get your mind around than why she's recruited for a clandestine super-soldier program, and even worse, why she accepts it, given that only one in 30 actually makes it unscathed through the genetic changes to the brain. It made no sense that anyone other than a complete psycho would go into this program, much less someone like her, who had so much to lose, and she had no motivation whatsoever to join these people from the part that I read. There went any suspension of disbelief for me.

So while that was left hanging out there, we were unceremoniously switched to a seemingly unrelated story of a navy jet fighter pilot who had just learned that she's failed to get into NASA's astronaut program. Instead of thinking maybe she could get into some other country's astronaut program, or even go back to being a kick-ass fighter pilot again, she is all depressed and presumably she gets dragged into this program too, but I had lost my interest in the entire story at that point, so I quit reading to move onto something which would do the job a reader pays a writer for: engrossment!

The story contained a lot of technical gibberish at one point. The author is an engineer, and while I am sure he's pleased with himself, the fact is that he overdid it because none of it made any sense to me, and I work with engineers! On the other hand, I was driving at the time, so maybe I wasn't paying as close attention as I ought, but I don't usually have problems following a story when I drive, so I can't believe I was that distracted! Anyway, it did not bring me in and I didn't like the story-telling, so I can't commend this based on what I read.

The Secret Notebook by DA D’Aurelio

Rating: WORTHY!

This book had some minor issues, but the power of the message overwhelmed those in my opinion. Also it’s aimed at middle grade, so that audience may very well not view it as I did!

It's nice to see a female engineer portrayed in a book aimed at middle-grade students, but I have to confess some issues with having kids do the things this kid was shown doing. Naturally, the best advice is for kids to trust reliable adults and authority figures to resolve issues like these, but writing a story about that would be boring for kids who want to see themselves taking center stage, so of course you have to give them some free rein and put them into some danger.

There are wise ways and foolish ways of doing this, just as there are similar ways of making your main character look smart or dumb, and this book walked a fine line between them. I think on balance it succeeded, but I would liked to have seen a stronger message about wise conduct threaded lightly through the text.

Riley Green is an inventor who has created a lie-detector pen, and is ready to proudly show it off at her school's science fair, hoping it will prove that she belongs there despite being in a lower income group than the rest of the kids. The problem is that the school's privileged troublemaker has stolen her idea, and worse: her favorite teacher has had her office trashed and has disappeared! What is going on? Was the office simply vandalized, or did the intruders expect to find something important there? And who put this ragged old book about birds in Riley's backpack? Or is it about birds? And who is leaving those 'cease and desist' notes for Riley and her teacher?

This isn't just a thriller of a novel, with a strong female character and some fun problem-solving, it’s also a history lesson with some nice back-story concerning Nikola Tesla. Personally I feel Tesla is often elevated to a higher pedestal than he deserves, but there is no denying his contributions to knowledge and his abilities as an engineer. He deserved a lot better than he got out of life and certainly more than the overrated patina that Edison uncritically gets! So on balance I commend this as a worthy read.

Luster by Raven Leilani

Rating: WARTY!

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

Erratum:
“...a totem of a realm where sticker price is incidental data, a realm so theoretical that when I consider what I would have to do enter it...” This sentence appears to be missing ‘to’.

Raven Leilani has to be one of those most charming author names I've ever encountered, but I have to say up front that I wasn't charmed by this novel. It started out well enough, but went downhill for me rather quickly.

Part of my problem with it was the disconnect between what the back-cover blurb says and where the novel actually went. I know that unless they self-publish, authors tend to have little input into the blurb and cover design, but to have a blurb promise me I'll see "a young black woman fall into art" and then read a significant portion of the story and have this woman, Edie, give only the most cursory attention to art was a real disappointment to me.

The real problem though, was that Edie didn't present as an artist to me. She had no eye for color or light, or for nature, people, or architecture - or at least if she did, none of that ever made it into her first person voice, which is yet another reason why first person is almost always the wrong choice for a novel. This story never gave even a hint about her artistic leanings or interests; yes, there were cursory mentions, but it was far too busily focusing on her social commentary which was not as amusing as the blurb-writer liked to pretend it was, and on her obsession with this guy she met online. From what I read, I remained unconvinced that she had any real interest in art because it took a very distant back seat. I didn't believe an artist would have the take on life that Edie did.

So for me, reading those first few chapters, the story wasn't about art at all. It was about a rather sordid sexual obsession, and while the blurb did suggest the sexual component of the story, it didn't hint that that would be all she wrote - so to speak! I mean Edie was literally obsessing over having sex with this guy she 'met' on line and she was doing that the whole time. It failed the Bechdel-Wallace test dismally, and this wasn't even two women talking! It was tedious to read after a short while, and it was a problem because I wasn't given any reason whatsoever as to why Edie became so obsessed with this guy. It didn't feel real to me because the reader wasn't offered anything to support this kind of intensity. If anything, it felt stalker-ish and dangerous, which is, I assume, the very opposite of what the author was intending, if the blurb is to be believed. But maybe it isn't.

Like I said, I didn't read all of this and things may have changed later in the story, bringing it more into conformance with what the blurb writer says is going on, but if that's the case, then there really needed to be more offered up front to render some sort of a reliable promise of a better future. I got nothing, and there are two solid reasons why I quit when I did.

The first, but by no means the most important reason was the severe let-down when a crucial point in the story was reached: the first encounter between Edie, the young black woman who tells this story, and the wife of the man with whom she is having an affair - of sorts. Right when that's about to open wide, the story comes to a screeching halt while we're dragged back over Edie's sexual history! What?!

I'm in no way a fan of flashbacks for this very reason, but this was one of the most irritating I've ever encountered and I had zero interest in her sexual history. I skipped that section completely, but once I finally got back to the wife versus the mistress part, it was a total let-down. Instead of something engaging: a fight, a tearful breakdown, an intelligent grown-up discussion, an unleash of female passion, something interesting and original happening, the story lost its way and meandered into a party. Of all things. I felt seriously let down, and worse than that, the events of this particular party made me serious doubt the main character's intelligence and humanity. That's never a good thing.

What happened immediately after that was worse though. The guy of her obsession drives Edie home. He's angry with her and he hits her and she takes it and almost literally begs for me. That's when I called 'Check please! I'm done here!'. I'm not about to read that. I mean that was bad enough, but let's consider this relationship overall, given the month that I read this in was black history month! I was torn between wondering if his violence was worse, or if his treatment of this young woman in general was worse, or if her mute acceptance of all this was worse.

This is a very one-sided affair wherein the guy gets everything he wants and Edie gets next-to-nothing, putting her into a very needy and subservient position. I was wondering, is this really a story that you'd really want to promote during black history month? A white guy effectively enslaving a young black woman? He makes all the rules; she whimpers and conforms? She effectively becomes a maid to this white privileged family where the guy is ruler and the women are his subjects? Maybe it's a story some people want to read, but not me. Maybe it changed later, but I'd already lost patience with it along with any interest in reading any more.

I can't commend this at all based on what I could manage to read of it. I felt cheated by the book description and even more cheated by the story itself. I lost interest, but worse, I lost faith in it. There was no artistry here - unless we were expected to accept the tortured without the artist.

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by Marion Chesney Gibbons aka MC Beaton

Rating: WARTY!

I bought this book - which is part of a series about a British amateur detective named Agatha Raisin - based on my love of the British TV series derived from it. Normally I would not give a novel like this or a series like this the time of day and I was interested only because the TV show was so enjoyable. Sadly, the book isn't quite the same.

We expect this. You can't translate a book, no matter how loved it is, directly into a screen format without losing things and changing things, and even adding things, but the discrepancy between the delightfully lush grape of a TV detective and the sad Raisin of the book was quite startling. The Agatha of the TV show was, unfortunately, but predictably younger (by a decade) and much more pleasant. The Agatha of the novel is rather obnoxious at times. There's no reason at all why an actor of similar age could not have been hired, but TV and movies favor youth (or the appearance of it) over anything else, it seems.

I had what I call my 'robot reader' read this ebook to me. It's actually Apple's Voice Over technology, and it does a pretty decent job when you figure out how to use it wisely (the trick is never to turn it on until you are actually in the ebook, and to turn it off before you exit the ebook!), but this thing has no idea of a 'quiche' so it gets egg on its face! Naturally that word was used effusively, since someone died after eating one, but the robot reader pronounces it like it rhymes with swish, and like the word begins with 'kw'. It amused the hell out of me every time I heard it. We take our joys in life where we can, right? Otherwise it would be miserable and we'd probably all end-up being like the Agatha of the book instead of the Agatha of the TV series.

Anyways, Agatha has retired from her job running a PR firm in London, and moved to a small village named Carsley in the English Cotswolds region. Of course it's one of those tiny places where, ridiculously, the murder rate rivals Detroit or some major city. It's absurd, yes, and this is only one reason I'd never follow a series like this.

So the village has a quiche competition. Agatha cheats and buys a quiche at a store out of town and enters it as her own creation. She's miffed when she doesn't win and considers the contest rigged. She tells the organizer she doesn't want her quiche and requests they throw it away, but the organizer of the contest - the guy she doesn't like - takes it home and dies of poisoning after eating a piece. Naturally, she's a suspect and so gets dragged into the investigation.

The story kept going off at irrelevant tangents and was consequently boring, plus I didn't like Agatha at all. I gave up on it before I'd listened to very much and cannot commend it as a worthy read. I'm done with this series, and with this author.

Harriet Tubman Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Ann Petry

Rating: WORTHY!

Adopting the same title as an earlier book: " Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Earl Conrad, this is a middle-grade book about America's first super hero. Forget Captain America. He's fiction. Tubman was the real thing. In many ways, as this book reveals, it's insulting to use the name she's most commonly known by. Harriet Tubman was born in slavery as Araminta Ross, and as a child was known as Minty. She became Harriet Tubman when she married John Tubman, who was a free man, and who had no interest in moving north with Harriet so she could be free as well. When she started talking seriously about running, he threatened to turn her in!

She decided to go anyway, but feeling bad for those she'd left behind, she became 'Moses' as she was known back then - a conductor on an underground railroad - which some had thought was a real railroad, really underground! Today she'd be known as a mule, but that often has negative connotations. There was nothing negative about Harriet, who was both physically and mentally strong, independent, determined, and who became expert in avoiding authorities, hiding out, reading the lie of the land, and successfully ferrying people to freedom.

The pro-slavery crowd thought Moses was a guy, but it was Harriet leading people to the promise land of the free north. She began freeing her family, but when she came for John, he was already shacked-up with another woman and had no interest in Harriet. Despite set-backs like this, she continued to free her family and many others, and over a dozen trips or so, delivered three-score and ten people safely to the north. She worked in winter, when nights were longest, and she would bring them out late on Saturdays, so the newspapers would not be able to print notices of their escape until the following Monday, giving them plenty of time to move.

When the civil war began, she was of course on the Union side, initially working as a cook and a nurse, and later as a scout. She personally guided the raid at Combahee Ferry that freed ten times as many slaves as she herself had conducted north. After the war she was thanked for this in no way at all, and had to eke-out an existence by selling fruit and vegetables she farmed, and from the proceeds of two books which were written about her by a friend who wanted to help her. The union would not pay her a pension, and the only income she had was the pension her new husband - a man by the name of Davis - earned because of his role in the war. This helped to sustain her after he died prematurely of tuberculosis.

Tubman herself died in 1913 having lived to a ripe old age - probably her early nineties. I fully commend this book as a worthy read and a great introduction to a real hero.

Let's Fly a Plane by Chris Ferrie

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Friends, red kangaroos, children, lend me your engineers! Having just seen Fantasy Island at the movie theater, (the plane the plane - yes they did use that phrase and the movie was great!), how could I not want to review this book with such a bold and maybe even a teensy bit reckless title?

This was a short and fun little book about a kangaroo who wants to fly, but who can't seem to get off the ground. She seeks out author Chris Ferrie who has a doctorate in applied mathematics and who is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney. Dr Chris explains the four forces involved in flight (drag, gravity, lift - or was it Uber? - no it was lift!, and thrust), and does so in simple terms. The lift component to flight is the one that's most often misunderstood, even in textbooks, but the explanations here are kept simple and straight-forward.

Red Kangaroo still can't manage to propel herself into the air, but she gets to fly in an airplane! This was a colorful and easy book, useful for introducing young children to a complicated idea without straining young minds. Hopefully a few who read this will become engineers and make some wonderful things because their interest in science was piqued by books like this one, I commend it as a worthy read.

Weird Little Robots by Carolyn Crimi, Corinna Luyken

Rating: WORTHY!

Written delightfully by Crimi, and illustrated by Luyken, this was a middle-grade book that I had access to only in the audiobook format, so I cannot comment on the illustrations. It was quite amusing despite being not aimed at me as an audience. I got interested in it because of the amusing title, so I bought it and listened and it was an easy listen, a fun story, and an empowerment inspiration for young girls. Women are tragically under-represented in many traditional male fields and engineering is one of the most glaring. It was encouraging to find a book aimed at middle-graders and which showed girls interested in sciences and in particular this one girl who made her own little robots out of bits and pieces she put together herself.

The robots could move around, but something happened and they took on a life of their own and began interacting with the other robots and with their creator, Penny Rose, with intelligence and motive. Penny is new in town and has no friends to begin with so the robots are special to her, but soon she makes friends with Lark who, true to her name likes to study birds. Penny gets the chance to join a secret science club, but this invitation, extended only to Penny and not to Lark, causes a rift between her and her new-found friend. Also, what the heck is going on with the robots and will the troublesome Jeremy wreck them with his less than respectful play?

I loved this book and commend it highly.

Little Joe Chickapig by Brian Calhoun, Pat Bradley

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by Calhoun and illustrated by the author and Bradley, this book tells the quest of Little Joe, who is a chickapig: part chick, part pig, who lives on a farm and has ambitious dreams of going on quests, having adventures and even maybe fighting pirates. The pig part seems to be just his nose and ears, but that's not important. It takes a long and winding tale to set him straight about who inspires who to follow their dreams and the tale comes right back home at the end. I thought this was amusingly-illustrated, well-told (in rhyme yet!) and was a wonderful story. I commend it as a worthy read.

What Makes a Hero by Pamela Bobwicz, Eda Kaban

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by Bobwicz and illustrated by Kaban, this was a cute book and a good idea: having female heroes from the Marvel stable advising young children about what makes a real hero - and it isn't a costume and a cape, or super powers. In this era of intolerance, rudeness, name-calling, boorishness, misogyny, homophobia, dishonesty, self-serving power-grabbing, and general disregard for rules and common decency (and we all know where that buck stops), it's important to remember that decent behavior and consideration of others are super powers! I commend this book as a worthy read.

Alice in Virtuality by Norman Turrell

Rating: WARTY!

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

I got turned off this almost from the start, but pressed on because the topic interested me. In some ways it was reminiscent of the 1992 Al Pacino movie Simone, but whereas that was a simulation, Alice is a full AI. The book was still nowhere near as entertaining as the movie though. I skimmed bits and pieces and the more I read, the worse it got. A third of the way in I gave up on it completely.

Instead of focusing on the Alice character, which is what interested me, the author kept going off at tangents, playing virtual poker, playing a D&D type of game, launching an avatar into a virtual chat room, and all of that was tedious to me. The parts in which Alice was featured were more interesting but even those lacked something and felt repetitious at times. In the end I decided I have better things to do with my time than to pursue this when it was so consistently disappointing. I can't commend it based on what I read.