Justice Calling by Annie Bellet

Rating: WARTY!

I've read and reviewed five previous books from this author and liked them all, but this one? No. I do judge a book by its cover because I've seen so many where the cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the story it conceals. I can't say a lot about this cover model because I don't know for sure, but it looks once again like the cover illustrator maybe got the ethnicity wrong. Maybe. What I can say is that while the cover of this particular volume isn't bad, the covers for this series - from the ones I've seen - are downright exploitative, slutty, and insulting and I refuse to read any further on that basis alone.

The main character is supposed to be an American Crow Indian, so of course she's named Jade Crow like somehow we won't get it otherwise. There are two other American Indians also in the story but they don't get to be called Nez-Perce! Go figure. For some reason they have a Jewish-sounding names. This is the second character named Jade in the first six of these stories, which means there's a problem, and it's not just because of that. It's from the fact that six 'different' stories from six different authors have all somehow ended up sounding largely the same. This is what's known in literary circles as 'a very bad thing'.

So this is number 6 out of an introductory volume of seven stories by various authors. It felt more like number two. It's a shape-shifter story which is far from my favorite genre. The thing began going rapidly downhill from page three when the main male character showed up and was described as what I can only imagine had to be a pre-menstrual fantasy man: "...a Hollywood version of a Norse God. About six foot six with shaggy white-blond hair, features that a romance novel would call chiseled, and more lean muscle than a CrossFit junkie." No. It's you, Ms Author, who described him like this, not some romance author, so why are you describing him like a bad romance author would? I am so tired of this being the standard go-to description. Most guys don't look like this and it's insulting to guys to describe this appearance so consistently, like it's the only guy worth knowing. It's just as insulting as authors decribing women in equivalent shallow fashion.

Despite this and the severe misgivings it induced, I read on, only to have my worst fears confirmed about where this story was going, which was nowhere fast. It turns out this guy is a 'Justice of the Council of Nine'. What's that? The shifter supreme court? These sorts of novels always have councils. It's so tedious. Who gets to be on the council? Is there a shifter election? Or do they savagely fight it out and the alphas get to rule the weak? And why is there one single guy who gets to be "judge, jury, and executioner"? It's nonsensical. Especially given how whack this guy is. He blunders in, accusing Jade of being a murderer based on a vision. Seriously? Is this how he operates? Snap judgments without so much as an investigation? The guy is a dumbass, period. He's the male equivalent of the insulting and stereotypical blonde ditz.

I reached chapter three and read this: "My whole body, all my senses, was aware of the huge, handsome man only inches away from me." Seriously? This is after he unjusifiably accused her of being a murderer, and they'd gone next door to the Leprechaun's junk shop and found a stuffed fox which actually turned out to be the mom to one of Jade's friends. That was freaking hilarious to me, which I'm sure wasn't what the author intended. But after all this, all she has on her shallow mind is this huge handsome man? Fuck that shit. I ditched the novel right there and moved on to the next one in this increasingly sad collection. This particular story is garbage. Period.

Feyland the Dark Realm by Anthea Sharp

Rating: WARTY!

This is the fourth in a collection of seven introductory stopries to urban fantasy topics - and this is mostly shape shifters unfortunately. I guess urban fantasy has a limited meaning to these authors. Note that I skipped numnber 3 because I already (negatively) reviewed it some time ago, having read it - or as much of it as I could stomach, anyway - separately.

This is supposed to be some sort of crossover - not only soft fantasy with hard computer, but also a game with reality. I wasn't impressed. I'm neither a fantasy fan (especially not when the author doesn't have the guts to call them fairies!) nor a computer gaming story adherent, but I was intrigued by this mashup or the two. Unfortunately, I did not like the style in which this was written, nor the tone of voice, nor the endless clichés the story was falling into.

Jennet Carter is fifteen and of course the new kid in school, and of course she hooks up with the bad boy. Barf. That turned me off right there. She needs him to get her going in this new computer game because for reasons unexplained, she needs to re-enter the dark realm and confront the 'faerie' queen. Sorry, but no. Two stories in a row in this 7 story volume and both are about maidens in distress needing a shining knight to save them? Barf. I should have steered clear of this story just because it uses the word 'realm' but I did not and I blame only myself for getting into it when I really knew better. Fortunately I did not waste much time on this.

There appears to be a lot of backstory here that wasn't told. Whether that comes out in pages I did not read, I can't say, but there seemed to be a ton of it and I sure would not be remotely be interested in wading through that in the form of infodumps, flashbacks, and so on. Maybe the author was aiming to bring it all out during extensive and tedious monologuing by the villain later, but that would have been far worse. Based on my experience of this, I cannot commend it.

Dark Angel by Christine Pope

Rating: WARTY!

This is the second of the series of intro books in a collection of seven of them that I've been reading lately, and for me this marks three strikes against this author.

This is a supernatural, urban fantasy, paranormal, whatever kind of a story, which is not something I'm that into, but once in a while I like to stretch and see what’s what in genres I donlt normally habituate. I'm always looking for a good, absorbing story, so while I held out little hope for this one, based on long and sad experience, I was open to something engaging me.

It wasn't this story that woudl do it! It turned me off from the start. First of all it’s worst person voice, and a sad and whiney first person this Angela character comes off to be, too. It made for a dreary and boring read, and I started skimming the pages almost right away. Nothing showed any sign of improving, so after about ten pages of this I gave up on it, and moved on to story three.

The set-up here is that Angela is part of a coven, and she's in her twenty-first year, which is when she's supposed to bond with a 'consort' to set her up for her future as head of the clan. Why a consort rather than a partner or a husband or whatever, goes unaddressed. Why a witch even needs a man at all is left unanswered, apart form vague hand-waving at the idea that this will ensure she comes into her full powers. What - a witch is uselsess without a man to trigger her? Shades of Grace Slick's Across the Board!

Why the 21st year is the magical one also goes wanting an explanation. So Angela is supposed to be this eventual coven leader, and she's a witch, but apparently it’s never crossed her mind, nor one single mind of the generations of witches that came and went prior to her that maybe, being a witch, she can find some spell to point her to her prospect? Apparently despite their witch powers, all of these morons just sit around all day singing "Some day my prince will come" or something like that. I guess. I'm sorry, but that is truly pathetic and I am not interested. Why are female authors so often the worst possible enemy to their female charcters? Wait is that enemy or enema? Does it even matter?

In Angela's case it’s all exacerbated because she's a special snowflake who has this recurring dream in which her man shows up, but she has no idea who he is. He's predictably tall and handsome - in this case also dark - with broad shoulders and all the other studly traits women apparently fantasize about bedding when approaching ovulation. The book description actually says that 'the clock is ticking,' which is even more pathetic. The opening pages were exactly what I’d expect from an author who wants to drag out an average story to wasteful serial lengths: slow, unimaginative, humdrum and boring. I cannot commend this one based on what I skimmed of it, unless you want a non-pharmaceutical means of putting yourself to sleep for the night.

Bloodfire by Helen Harper

Rating: WARTY!

I should say up front that I am not a fan of werewolf or vampire stories, or any of that kind of thing. I've read a few and I've been almost consistently disappointed in them because they're so tedious and so conformal. I know many readers enjoy predictable by-rote stories that retread familiar territory, but I've never been one of those; hence my aversion to series. I quickly tire of reading the same thing over and over again. I prefer authors who do not take the road most traveled.

Initially that's what appealed to me about this story because the author seemed like maybe she was going my way. Yes, she still had the ludricous idea of a pack and an alpha male and all that shit, but this pack had a human member, and although she was a little weird, she was not a shifter. This created problems when trouble arose and the "Lord Alpha" came to visit the local pack. It sounded interesting.

In the British Isles, at least as far as the mainland is concerned, Cornwall is about as far south as you can get, but for me, this is when the story itself started going south. It didn't help that the author seems clueless that Cornwall does indeed get Earthquakes - about one every other year or so. But with regard to the story, I hear you objecting that these are wolves. Wolves live in packs! There's an alpha male. Why is this wrong? Well, it actually is wrong!

Among real wolves, there is not a lone alpha male; there's an alpha couple. This couple does all or most of the breeding, so pretty much all of the pack is related. Despite this, everyone else, while a part of the pack and deriving certain benefits from that, is pretty much out for his or herself, trying to rise up the hierarchy, and packs are not set in stone. Nor are they all best friends all the time. They wil band together to protect their turf, but within the pack, which can number from two to thirty or so wolves, levels of aggression can rise and fall, and pack members can leave and start their own pack.

But there is no Lord Alpha Male (LAM for short! LOL!). Now werewolves are supposed to be different, but for some reason this pack identifty has taken over the mythology and everyone has bought into it. I have no idea why. And the leader is called 'Lord'? Seriously? What is this? Star Wars? It's the same with vampire stories and it turns me right off them.

This story had the makings of an engaging one, but the more I read, the more humdrum and the less compelling of a read it became. Mackenzie, the main character, was first person voice and this is usually a mistake. I managed to read it, but every time she said "I blah blah blah...", and "Hey lookit me!" and "It's all about me!" and "Check out what I did next!" it reminded me this was a story, and I couldn't get lost in it. "Listen to me" is a great Buddy Holly song. It makes for a sucky narration voice.

Anyway, the pack took her in as a child and no one told her why, but because she's been there so long, she's considered by most to be a pack member, even though she doesn't behave like one herself: she's constantly off following hunches without asking permission or sharing what she knows. So much for the pack! Naturally there's the "school bully" which again turned me off. Of course, she has a special snowflake power which is at the root of the story, but when we finally got around to addressing that, the ending was really rather flat and unsatisfying to me, and predictably, she goes rogue. No surprises there.

The introduction of Lord Corrigan, the national alpha male turned me right off yet again, because he's clearly this macho studly teasing flirtatious dominant male. Even as he curses Mackenzie for insolence, he inexplicably lets her get away with anything she wants to do, and he's simultaneously so weak, useless, and stupid, that he cannot even tell shes not a shifter much less a werewolf. So much for his vaunted powers.

At least the author doesn't call them lycans, I guess, so there's that. Calling werewovles 'lycans' just to try and sound special is as pathetic as calling fairies 'fae'. It's chickenshit and authors should be ashamed of it. But, anyway, if he's the capo dei capi, that doesn't automatically make him the capo di tutti i capi, because presumably there are other packs in other nations.

That's one problem with this story - the world-building just isn't there. Naturally no one - least of all me - wants a story bogged-down with backstory, but it doesn't hurt to toss in a line here and there filling in some detail during the course of telling the story. Instead, we get a vague hand-wave about this local pack, considered by the human residents to be a cult, and yet no one finds this odd? MI5, which is the Brit equivalent of the FBI, has no interest at all in this nationwide network of cults? Really? Had this been set in 1820, fine, but in 2020 with terrorism embedded in the landscape it doesn't work.

There's a central authority pack in London, we learn. Why London? If these wolves despise humans as much as they clearly do according to this novel, then why emulate us at all? For that matter, if they're so superior, or think they are, why even tolerate us? Why not wipe us out? Why even use human names and descriptions for themselves? Like I said, 'lycan' is blessedly avoided, but werewolf is still used. It makes no sense to me, yet it's one of those things readers are expected to just let slide.

We're told nothing about how the wolves make a living or pay for food - or even what food they eat, apart from vague allusions to someone's bad cooking. But why do they even cook their food? I'll tell you why. It's because the author wasn't writing about werewolves any more than one-trick pony author Stephenie Meyer was writing about vampires. They're both writing about humans with a gossamer-thin patina of urban fantasy sprinkled over it.

Does this sound like a litany of nitpicking? Too bad! For me a story either works or it doesn't. When a female author perpetuates this nonsense: "much in the same way that women’s periods aligned themselves if they lived together in close quarters for a long time," it's more than nit-picking, because that menses alignment? It doesn't happen! Like werewolves, it's a myth. Real nitpicking would be to mention that when using the app in night mode, the chapters are so pale against the background that it's hard to read them, or pointing out that when the author writes, "you tended to become somewhat inure to nature’s most reliable outcome" she really should have used 'inured'.

Real problems with writing are what turn me off a book. If it's entertaining enough and delivers a good story I can put up with a lot of issues, but if you, as a reader, are constantly pulled out of it by poor writing choices and shoddy or inconsistent world-building, and disappointed by a flat ending, it's not worth reading the story at all, and this one makes me wish I could have the time back so I could have read something else instead.

Andersen's Fairy Tales volume 2 by Hans Christian Anderson

Rating: WORTHY!

Note these are not your childhood fairy-tales. Some are more like horror stories. The Little Mermaid isn't Disney's mermaid, which for me was a good thing because these stories as told by Anderson, have far more originality, heart and substance than anything Disney has ever animated.

The stories are as listed below in order. They're easily looked-up online so I will not detail any of them. For me the most interesting were The Wild Swans, The Little Mermaid, The Pen and the Inkstand, The real princess, aka The Princess and the Pea, but not in a favorable way. Note that chidren's author Sally Huss has a good take on that in her Princess Charlotte and the Pea which I reviewed favorably in September, 2015.

For me the most amusing one was The Portuguese Duck and that was partly because of the story itself, and partly because of the hilarious take on it by the narrator, Eve Watkinson, who read many of these tales (along with another narrator, Christopher Casson). I don't know what accent she was doing, because she used the same one, pretty much, in the very next story set in Scandinavia, but in The Portuguese Duck she had me laughing out loud.

Anyway, here's the list:

• The Flax
• The Daisy
• The Pea Blossom
• The Storks
• The Wild Swans
• The Last Dream of the Old Oak
• The Portuguese Duck
• The Snow Man
• The Farmyard Cock and the Weathercock
• The Red Shoes
• The Little Mermaid
• Buckwheat
• What Happened to the Thistle
• The Pen and the Inkstand
• The Teapot
• Soup From A Sausage Skewer
• What the Goodman Does Is Always Right
• The Old Street Lamp
• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep
• The Drop of Water
• The Swineherd
• The Metal Pig
• The Flying Trunk
• The Butterfly
• The Goblin and the Huckster
• Everything in its Right Place
• The Real Princess
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• Great Claus and Little Claus

I commend this as a worthy listen.

Night Night Norman by Marie Dimitrova, Romi Caron

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is a hard-bound, large-format print book, with thirty pages of full-color, full-page illustrations by accomplished artist Romi Caron, and which is written amusingly by author Marie Dimitrova. The story is of Norman, a large chesnut horse who is cared for by Ellie. She lavishes attention and food on him in the evening and then disappears for the night.

Norman decides that he has to know where she goes, but he doesn't whinny about it. instead, one evening, he sneaks out and follows her - she looking adorable in her dungarees and galoshes, he sneaking around trying to discover where she went. And of course, havoc ensues. Apparently not having much horse sense, Norman gets into places where he shouldn't be - and can barely fit. Is he a whickered person? No, but he is a bit naughty, and he messes with stuff he doesn't really understand. With no one around telling him to "Hoof it," he leaves a mess - and no, not that kind of a mess. Let's just hazard a guess that Norman's middle name is probably 'Disorder'! Once he's back in his stall, he's a bit more stable and reins in his impulses, but is he about to cease these nighttime 'for hays'? In a word: neigh!

Obviously this book isn't written for a guy like me, but I was happy to get saddled with it because it was good for a few horse laughs, and the artwork is beautiful. I happily commend it as a worthy read for children - because of course, it takes the right tack....

Beast by Christine Pope

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum: "that field of expertise was much more nuanced and difficuLieutenant Yes, miracles were still possible, but in order to rebuild, there had to be something left to build upon." Note that the previous sentence is an exact copy of the text from the novella. The word 'difficult' is truncated and mashed into the word 'Lieutenant' and some text is obviously missing here.

This was a really short story, barely a novella. Even so, I made it only about two-thirds the way through, because it was so unrealistic and so poorly-written. It's supposed to be volume zero of some series which I definitely have zero intention of reading after this nonsense.

When I say it lacks realism, I'm not talking about when the female main character Nora Whitaker "retraced her steps, went through the clean room and back out into the main hallway" because that's not how a clean room works. You don’t go through a clean room in your 'street' clothes. You gown, mask, and wear bootees to enter!

This so-called 'clean' room is located in a lab on Neptune's moon Triton. I don't even know why they were on Triton. It made no sense unless the doctor, Raymond Killian, was hoping to escape the 'Copehagen Protocols' by doing his work some three billion miles from Copenhagen, but the author herself tripped up that idea by having Nora raise the matter, implying that the protocols still applied even out there around the most distant planet in our solar system (not counting the several dwarf planets).

Killian was disfigured in an accident and wears extensive prosthetics, including a mask. Whittaker is thrilled to work with him because he's so brilliant, supposedly. She's able to solve a problem for him, but despite months quickly passing by, with the two working together, the author fails to do any work to show that they're becoming closer emotionally. She expects us to take it on faith while the whole time when this happens is essentially skipped-over, which for me was a fail when it comes to making a connection between them. It betrays the events the author goes on to describe later. That was a big part of the inauthenticity problem for me.

At first I thought Killian was actually a robot or a mechanical avatar controlled by Killian while his real body was hidden away behind the locked door to the private part of his lab where Nora never gets to go, but my idea was wrong. Honestly I wish I had been right because it might have made for a better story. At least I have some ideas of my own for a sci-fi novel based on Beauty and the Beast now, right?! LOL!

The lab was a bad venue for any romance because it was so sterile, by which I do not mean clinically (we know it was not, based on Killian's totally inadequate 'clean room' protocols!), I mean it lacked any other people, which rendered it a bit of a stretch that one guy had accomplished all he had with no assistants or assistance. Adding the idiot Trumpian Lieutenant just made things worse, because it rendered Whittaker the helpless maiden in distress and Killian her rescuer, which never goes down well for me, and is insulting to women in general. And why were those people military guys and not just security?

What the author ought to have done is have a couple of lab assistants, including a rival female instead of the lieutenant. That would have made for a better story. Consider this: given that Killian was severly disfigured, where were the people who designed and applied the prosthetics he wore? They already knew everything about his condition; why were one or two of them not working for him at the lab?

It made Whittaker look shallow and clueless that she didn't consider this and wonder about it, and it would have been easy for the author to make up excuses for why others were not there if she truly had wanted this complex lab to unrealistically have only Killian working in it: "Oh the doctor wanted to remain on Earth so he could continue his work in advanced prosthetics." "Oh my previous lab assistants didn't want to move to Triton," and so on. If the author didn't want any humans there, why not mention that he used robots for the work? That would have given Whittaker an opening to deepen the story by having her wonder if Killian himself was a robot.

So in short this is a big fail, an unworthy read and I cannot commend it. Please read on if you don't mind a big spoiler.

One of the biggest problems for me, was when Killian invited Whittaker to dinner in his private quarters with the teasing promise that he had something to show her. The something he wanted to share was a new body, which he had somehow created - built, grown, whatever (the author's a bit vague about it, at least as far as I read this story). Apparently it's a sort of cyborg - rather like the original terminator character from the first of the James Cameron movies. It's not actually a clone of him, so why is there a problem with the Copenhagen protocols (whatever those are supposed to be)?!

His plan is to transfer his consciousness into this new body. Rather than be thrilled for him, and marvel at his brilliance and at this opportunity to help countless others who have a disfigurement or otherwise problematic bodies. All Whittaker does is whine about the Copenhagen protocol and about how he's just fine the way he is - when he clearly isn't. Obviously the author is just doing this so she can maintain the 'beauty and the beast' fiction, but the writing is so poorly done that I just didn't buy it.

There's no problem with someone falling for a person with a handicap or a disfigurement by any means; the problem is that this author didn't do the work to get us there, and when Whittaker, out of the blue, just kisses his crispy lips it felt icky rather than romantic precisely because it felt more like she was doing it for the kick of seeing what it was like, rather than because she had genuine and strong feelings for him. This says nothing of the inappropriate relationship which Whittaker never once questions. Killian is her boss, so it's ethically wrong for him to be involved with her, he being the authority figure and her employer. To have neither Whittaker nor Killian even - at least fleetingly - mention this was bad writing, especially when Whittaker had baulked so strongly at his new body, because it contrevened some vague cloning protcol in her mind.

What did get mentioned was what a scandal it would be if anyone found out they were invovled. Not if they found out about his new body. Oh no - but if they thought she and he were having an affair! Seriously? The lab is sealed - no one gets in or out except Whittaker and Killian, and they always work long hours so why would anyone think there was anything going on - or conversely why would there not be an assumption that something was going on? It made no sense to suddenly, at that moment begin to doubt and quesiton. Again, badly-written, Ms Pope.

Plus it made no sense! If he could grow flesh like this, when why not grow it directly over his existing body? Maybe his body was badly damaged, but clearly it still functioned perfectly underneath the scarring, so it woudl seem that the scarring was, despite being very bad, superficial in important regards. You would think he could have added this new flesh, slowly replacing the scarred portions. We're already doing face transplants. I think it would have made for a better story too - especially if the replacement had gone wrong and this was why he was a 'beast'. But as I said, I didn't buy this. The writing felt lazy and ill-considered, and even as a work of fiction, it felt unreal and ridiculous and I cannot commend it for those reasons.

The Making of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith by JW Rinzler

Rating: WARTY!

This was less-than-thrilling, I'm sorry to report. Let me say up front that I am not a Star Wars fan. I used to be. I thought the fourth and fifth episodes weren't bad at all. The sixth was execrable, but despite this, I watched all three prequels, and I liked the third of those. The first was marred by the little Anakin road-racing garbage and such, but it wasn't awful. The timing was off laughably such that there was a disconnect between the first three and the last three, but I was willing to let it slide.

Then came Rogue One which was forgettable, but okay. The final straw though was episode seven which was quite literally a remake of episode four. I quit watching all things Star Wars at that sorry point. By then Disney had been coming up with zero that was new. They were - and are - simply remaking their old stuff - all their tedious racist and sexist animations as live action, and all their Star Wars as clones of previous releases. It's pathetic and disgraceful. I was so disgusted with Disney's endless raking over its own ancient coals that I have given-up watching all Disney stuff altogether - with the sole exception of Marvel which to me continues to entertain and to bring new things to the screen. I recently saw and enjoyed The New Mutants for example - and in the movie theater yet!

My interest in this book then was not Star Wars, but movie-making itself: the process. How do these guys get this from concept to script to shooting script to action on the set, to creating the models costumes and CGI, and to finishing up with a movie to release? There was some of that in here, but essentially what this was, was a diary - a diary-a in fact since it was so rambling, and I quickly lost interest in the Lucas worship and how he essentially had everything laid out for him.

He's the monarch and he flicks a finger or says and word and "it shall be so!" Great. But I don't care about how lordly he was or how much power he had. That wasn't my interest. So, I skipped and skimmed and read a bit here and there, but mostly I skipped because it was tedious to read. It offered very little of what I wanted to learn - of what I'd hoped for. If you want a rambling diary, then this is for you. It wasn't for me, and I can't commend it.

Inside Dickens London by Michael Paterson

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a print book I picked up some time ago and finally got around to reading. Normally I don't keep these books after reading - instead I donate them to the local community library for others to enjoy, but this is a rare case where this one will go back on my shelf for use as a reference book. Not that I plan on writing anything Dickensian in the forseeable future, but you never know! The title was wrong grammatically in that it needed another 's' after the apostrophe, but I'll let that slide!

The book was well-researched, and packed with information on the era, but note that while it was full of interesting trivia, it was focused on London as the title indicates, where Dickens resided from the age of ten, not on Portsmouth where Dickens was born, nor on any other corner of England. Dickens lived from 1812 - 1870 and there's a lot of interesting stuff to pick up that you might not even have guessed at had you not got this information to hand. I never knew, for example, that it was illegal to get married in the afternoon during Dickens's lifetime! How about that? Weddings were required to be held in the forenoon. Unfortunately, the book doesn't go into why this was.

The information is packed into nine useful categories:

• The Place
• The People
• Shops and Shopping
• City and Clerk
• Transport and Travel
• Entertainment
• The Poor
• Crime and Punishment
• The Respectable

Each of these made for an engrossing (if sometimes disturbing) read and was solid with information, including many lengthy quotes not just from Dickens, but from others who lived in this time and wrote their observations down, so there are non-English perspectives as well as one or two observations from women. I found it interesting and potentially useful as a writer' resource. I commend it.

Best Friends by Ruby Jean Jensen

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I should say up front that I'm not a fan of horror stories and so this was a bit of an experiment, but I'm always interested in reading authors I haven't encountered before, especially if they have anything interesting or new to share, and this book offered something that was first published back in 1985 and was a little bit different from the stuff we tend to see today. It was a quick read, and although I had some issues with it, they were not enough overall to turn me off it.

I appreciated that there were only one or two writing and publishing issues. For example, at one point at the end of a descriptive sentence, there's a closing quote which is wrong, because the sentence was neither speech nor a quote: ...when, Shannon suspected, he was disturbed about something." The ending quote should not be there, but we've all been there, I'm sure! No big deal.

At another point, there was a paragraph describing their first trip to a supermarket, and it began and ended with a contradiction: "They each took baskets" as they entered the store, but then they left it was "With three grocery carts loaded with food supplies..." Disconnect! If they took baskets they should leave with baskets (or bags), otherwise the author ought to have had them take carts at the start! Unfortunately Ruby Jean Jensen died in 2010, so she can no longer fix that. We'll let it live as a memorial to her.

The final one I noticed was a bit of a writing wash: "And the tabletop had beneath it a shadow that seemed, when Shannon glanced away from it, darker than it should have been, as if there were something more beneath it adding its own shadow." It's possible to have a variation in shadow depth, but in this circumstance it stood out to me as being awkward in the circumstances. There was only one light source and the table top shadow could not have been deepened by anything underneath it when there was no other light shining. It's a minor quibble, but one which jumped out at me. Rather like the thing that was hiding! Not that the hiding made any sense, but I let that go. I know what she was trying to say; I just don't think she said it well.

For me, one of the biggest problems with horror stories or hauntings, poltergeists, that kind of thing is that writers always approach them in a terrified way - in that they tend to have the ghosts or evil spirits, or whatever, start out with minor ambigious events where the victims are always talking themselves into believing that nothing really happened, or that there's a rational explanation for what they think they experienced, but to me that makes zero sense. It especially made little sense in this particular novel.

I don't believe in an afterlife, or ghosts or evil spirits, but they make for good stories, and while I can understand how a writer would feel a need to slowly ramp-up the tension and the horror, it's all been done exactly like this so tediously many times before. The thing is that if you dive into that world and pretend for the sake of fiction that it's real, why would demons, ghosts, or spirits actually do that?

Maybe ghosts would behave like the humans they once were and ease into it if they were having fun - like the dead couple in Beetlejuice, for example, because they're supposed to be the spirits of people, but demons? Other monstrous creations? Why would they follow any rules or ramp up anything, when they can go full throttle from the off? Why would they behave remotely like humans?

The premise in this story is that a woman who has lost a young child is offered the opportunity to babysit three young children, the youngest of which is the age of the child she lost. They go to the family retreat in the mountains. The kids lost their mom, and dad can only visit on weekends, so it's just they, the housekeeper, and the evil friends of young Barry, who went through bad experiences in his previous setting where he was abused. Now he's withdrawn. No one knows he was abused by a woman who practiced demon worship.

The whole motivation of young Barry's supernatural 'friends' therefore, is to keep him to themselves and get rid of all competition, which includes Shannon the babysitter, as well as his sister Becky, his brother David, the housekeeper Edna, and even his Aunt and her two kids who come to stay for a while. Why in particular the demons want to rid the house of these other people isn't actually made clear. There's no explicatory backstory at all. The other people in the house are no competition. They're not even aware of the demons to begin with, and the demons are perfectly free to do whatever they want. To me this made no sense.

There was a epilogue which I did not read. I don't do prologues, epilogues, prefaces, introductions, forewords or any of that antique and tedious crap. Chapter one is where I start. I've never regretted it or felt like I missed anything by skipping those - which proves my point! It's possible there was something offered in the epilogue, but rather doubt it.

Barry spends time with the demons playing with, and talking to them. His family just think he's withdrawn and talking to imaginary friends. Barry has some control over the demons, but not much, and they have their own agenda, so when they decide they want the family gone, my question was: why do they not simply suffocate each one in their beds one night? Why the slow burn and the overly-elaborate deaths? Obviously it's because the writer is trying to entertain the reader and slowly jack-up the tension, but to me it made little sense and kept knocking me out of suspension of disbelief as I questioned why they were so lackadaisical in their demonic behavior! It reminded me of the villain in a thriller monologuing until the hero can find a way to defeat him. It's silly and inauthentic.

I let that slide though for the sake of enjoying an older story by someone who writes decently well, and it turned out to be entertaining. It wasn't something that made me want to run out and buy more Ruby Jean Jensen books to read. I may read another of hers down the line somewhere, but I wasn't overly impressed with this. It was however a worthy read overall.

I liked the way the family was put together and the way the author wrote the female characters, especially Becky and Shannon. I enjoyed the evil characters. They were new and different, and believable in many ways.. I liked Barry, although I thought he was a bit limp at times. On the other hand, he was very young, so maybe he was written realistically. I thought the ending was a bit lacking, but it wasn't awful and it lent Barry some weight that seemed to be missing from his character earlier, so all of these things brought the story around for me. Therefore I commend it.

Bunheads by Misty Copeland, Setor Fiadzigbey

Rating: WORTHY!

Misty Copeland is the first African American woman to become a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. She won the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Arts, which acknowledges outstanding talent in young artists. She has written several books, but this is only the second one aimed at younger children to my knowledge, the first being titled Firebird. The book is nicely illustrated by Fiadzigbey.

The book tells the apparently autobiographical story of a danseuse who yearns to be in the ballet Coppélia which draws on Pinocchio, in that it relates the story of a dollmaker who wishes to vivify his greatest creation. The dancer discovers the plot (not as benign as the one in Pinocchio, and tricks the toymaker by pretending to be the doll that comes to life. Misty really wants that role - that of Swanilda, but she's so new to ballet that she doubts she'll get it. This doesn't keep her from dancing her heart out and sure enough, she wins the confidence of their tutor and gets the role!

There could be rivalry and bitterness here, but it doesn't pan out that way. Instead, Misty makes friends and learns and helps teach in turn. I really enjoyed this story which I thought was educational, useful, and informative as well as artistic and pleasurable to read and to look at. I commend it.

Grumpy Monkey Up All Night by Suzanne Lang, Max Lang

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by the female half of this team and illustrated by the male half, this sequel tells the amusing story of Jim Panzee which made me laugh just from that name. Jim has brother name Tim Panzee. They attend an all-night party where they play games, tell scary stories, and drink punch. A gorilla acquaintance goes along with them. One by one they fall asleep. This is all-but guaranteed to encourage your little ones to follow suit. I was a bit misled by the title, not having read the first in this series. I thought it would be about a grumpy monkey who couldn't sleep and who prevented others from sleeping too. It was pretty much just the opposite. It was amusingly written, amusingly illustrated, and actually told a story. I liked it.

Over the Moon by Colin Hosten, Yujia Wang, Sia Dey

Rating: WARTY!

Written by Hosten and Dey, and illustrated nicely by Wang, this book unfortunately did not really impress me. It's based on the Netflix original animated movie of the same name and it tells the story of Fei Fei and Chang'e. Fei Fei wants to pursue her nebulous dream, and she builds a rocket ship that takes her to the Moon where she meets some oddball characters, none of whom seem that interested in helping her, and all of whom seem to be more style than substance. Fei Fei seems persistently unable to complete her rather empty and ill-defined quest.

In the end we're told - rather like the stories that end with 'and it was all a dream' - that she already had love all along. I felt like I was reading the last scene from Wizard of Oz, and the next thing we'd hear would be Fei Fei being told that all she had to do all laong was to click her heels together. I'm sorry but despite the pretty illustrations, this book really did nothing for me and I find it hard to believe it will have much effect on children. It was really more about appearances than substance and never seems like it had any heart. I can't commend it. It was too empty to hold any promise.

The World Is Full of Married Men by Jackie Collins

Rating: WARTY!

I can't close out the dumb-ass romance reviews without including the queen od them: Jackie Collins. She wasn't in that volume of introductory chapters, but I got hold of one of her novels and was not impressed.

This is the author's controversial debut novel, which was published in 1968, and was made into a move a decade later. Unlike Jackie herself and her sister Joan, for that matter, this aged badly. The movie bore little resemblance to the novel. Neither of them was very good, being one-dimensional and very flat, but the novel benefited from being banned in a couple of countries in the southern hemisphere, so there you go. If it were submitted for publication today, no one would be interested in it.

The story is of advertising executive David Cooper, who is tired of his wife Linda, but unwilling to divorce her, so he cheats on her, most recently with a juvenile spoiled-brat Claudia Parker. He's talking crazy about marriage while she's talking of a career in modeling or acting or both. Linda inevitably discovers the affair and sues for divorce. David ends up living with Claudia and predictably realizing what a serious mistake he's made. By then it's too late because Linda is dating Jay Grossman, who is a Hollywood film producer. David ends up impregnating his secretary. That's it! That's the whole story!

Rest assured, I didn't make it that far; I made it as far as chapter four, where a drunk Linda is raped by this random guy Paul that she hooked-up with, and I quit right there. Hollywood was apparently unable to make anything out of it either, so they spiced it up a bit at the same time as they toned it down. In the movie, Linda's affair is with hot young divo (a male diva) with the ridiculous name of Gem Gemini, and her husband ends up shooting him if I recall. Equally predictable and uninspiring. I cannot commend this for anything except being a doorstop. Another author I can strike off my list - permanently.

Out of the storm by Avery Gale

Rating: WARTY!

This author's name sounds equally improbable, but at least the title doesn't suck. My first observation, taken from reading only four sentences is that the main guy, Kyle West, is a complete dumb-ass. He's out driving in a storm and is seeing horizontal rain. If there's a worse sign of a nearby tornado at night than that, I don't know one. Get the hell to shelter NOW, moron! The next sentence tells us the road is so wet that he's in danger of hysroplaning. Then slow down dipshit!

As soon as I learned Kyle is also an ex-Navy SEAL and this is another dom story, then I'm out. Sorry but the ex-Navy SEAL motif in novels is so overdone that it has charred, blackened, solidified, and welded itself to the oven, and the oven has caught fire from it and burned down the neighborhood. Get a new shtick. Please. This author has three stories in here, but one was way-the-hell more than enough to put me off her for life. A veritable gale she is not.

The Reluctant Dom by Tymber Dalton

Rating: WARTY!

I flatly refuse to read this one on account of two things: 1. the ridiculous title and 2. the absurd name of the author. I can't commend it on either of those grounds. The author has four more stories in this volume. Desperate much? I refuse to read those. And yes, I'm being unreasonable, but I'm taking my cue from these dumb-ass stories!

Welcome to E Mayberry by Chris Genovese

Rating: WARTY!

This struck me as dumb from the start. The author wants us to read bold text because we're too stupid to distinguish between when the narrator is talking to the detective, and when she's relating the story she's telling the detective. LOL! Actually given the low intellect these stories require both to write and to read, I guess I should take that at face value. The porn actress telling the story is named, wait for it, Stormy Winters. Sorry but no. Just no. This is another abusive tale and I refuse to read it much less commend it. There was another story in this volume by this author, but no. Enough is more than enough.

Warranted Pleasures by Shannon Nemechek

Rating: WARTY!

This author starts out by telling us that a warrant officer (hence the play-on-words title) was sent by the general of the division to investigate property loss at one of the 'smaller companies'. I don't know what that means. A division is led by a lieutenant general or a major general, but a company is several steps down the heirarchy and is typically lead by a captain, so why is a division CWO being set to investigate property loss? It makes no sense. What - there was no one in that entire chain of command below division who could have investigated this?

A company is normally around four platoons, but a transportation company - which this one is - tends to be larger - maybe twice as large, so what the author means by 'one of the smaller platoons' is a mystery. Anyway the CWO is picked up at the airport by a female - of course - and he immediately begins objectivising her despite being her senior officer. "He wondered how she ended up in Chicago and not down south where women like her were appreciated." That's where I quit reading this trash - on page four. The fact that the author apparently didn't know the difference bwetween a muumuu and a cow lowing twice was a contributory factor. I cannot remotely commend this, which is bad in a Coronavirus environment because I'm sure as hell not going to intimately commend it....

Leather and Lace by Samantha A Cole

Rating: WARTY!

Thankfully this is from the last of the three so-called romance volumes I began exploring last month, so I never have to do this again!

This was another BDSM pile of crap where the woman, despite being (we're told) a successful BDSM novel writer is presented as a know-nothing ingénue, who couldn't satisfy her husband who apparently cheated on her both before and after their marriage which lasted barely a year. This writer is unable to think about sex because she's not very good at it, but she writes about it and desires intimacy. I'm sorry but it doesn't work. This was such a pile of bullshit and garbage that I couldn't get past the first eight pages. I don't know who reads this trash, but whoever it is seriously needs to get a life and the author needs to get a clue.

The Ladies Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a story I normally wouldn't read. The fact that the book description contains the tedious and worn-out phrase 'star-crossed lovers' is nauseating. Just as bad, the cover of a novel once again does not reflect the characters who actually appear in the story - it even has the hair color wrong. Did the photographer not care? Did the author not notice? Or was some random stock cover selected without a second thought because no one really cared? Fortunately the last thing I do is judge a book by its cover.

Anyway, this story is of two women. The first is a wannabe astronmer named Lucy Muchelney, a lesbian at a time (1816) when modern readers believe that such proclivities were, if not exactly banned, denied and frowned upon. I think that's nonsense. No one back then cared enough about women to worry over what they were doing when alone together! Too many people believe that Queen Victoria said lesbianism never happened. Victoria said nothing of the sort and she had nothing to do with the religiously-obsessed British law banning homsexuality (between men) in 1885 - the penalty for which was to be locked-up with a bunch of men. Go figure. The fact is that Victoria was far from Victorian. She loved getting it on with her hubby, and lesbianism probably never crossed her mind.

In the story, Lucy's father has died and she's looking for an occupation. Her overly-protective brother is a nuisance, and her dearest love Priscilla has opted for respectable marriage, in which there is no room for dalliances with her female interest. Distraught and looking for escape, Lucy wangles her way into the Countess of Moth's patronage to engage herself in translating a French author's respected and voluminous treatise on Astronomy. She has the experience from working regularly with her father, himself a well-regarded astronomer, and her skill at math - and she speaks French well. The countess takes a chance on her, and as Lucy works on this project, and has daily encounters with Lady Moth, an attraction grows between them.

The novel is set in a very fictional milieu. Superficially it's regency England, but none of the people or societies mentioned in the novel really existed - to my knowledge. Some people who did exist and who ought to have merited a mention, do not appear. Newton seems to be the only historical person of any note mentioned for example. A less well-known but also noted scientist who was a woman, Caroline Herschel, goes unheralded. Although her star burned brightest before Lucy was born, you would think someone as erudite and up on the sciences as Lucy is portrayed, would have heard of her.

I guess the author didn't want to deal with all that, or risk maligning someone for no good reason, and this was fine with me in general, but for a novel that's trying to represent women, this seemed like a curious omissiol. I know the novel is ficiton, and generally I do not care if it's somewhat historically-inaccurate unless there are glaring errors. I detected none of those, but the lack of a shout-out for someone as accomplished as Ms Herschel seemed cruel.

I loved this book: the writing, the story, the whole idea of a woman scientist back then, and I loved how science and art were integrated, so I breezed through it - that is until the last few chapters, where apparently the author decided she had to toss a wrench - or in this case a spanner, since this is Britain after all! Or if I might make a play on words and deliver a little spoiler, a wench - into the works. To me this part was poorly-written. The only feeling of problematic writing I'd had prior to this was that at times the novel seemed to drag a little when it ought to have been striding forward, but that was a minor thing for me. Life did flow at a slower pace back then anyway!

This artificial crisis though was very badly-done and for a couple of chapters I was going to turn my view around and not rate this as a worthy read, but the author picked-up her frayed edges and stitched them into a decent seam before the end, so I decided not to cuff her. Yes, I made a pun. So sew me.... I can't let this go though without making a mention of this nonsensical hiccup to their relationship. It felt compeltely fake and so artificial that it seemed like a joke.

I don't know if it was the author's idea to add a 'ruffled feathers' bit, or if the publisher had demanded she toss in a problem so their life together wouldn't be quite so smooth, but for me there was no need for it. If she or the publisher honestly thought there was such a need, it ought to have been much better done: something more organic and not fake like this was. It needed to be tied to their homosexuality, not to some poorly-conceived misunderstanding that for me made the book seem like a poor Harlequin romance.

For me, the way it was done here made the two women look like shallow idiots who had no history together, and it spoiled that part of the story since it blew up from nowhere. It suggested that neither woman had any invesment in the other and was ready to ignore everything that had passed between them prior to this point. It made, as I said, no sense.

But the writing improved after that, and for me it turned the story around quite handsomely, so overall I feel like I can commend this as a worthy read.

The Forgotten Engineer by TS Paul

Rating: WARTY!

My first mistake with this book was not realizing initially that it had the word 'chronicles' in the book description. I have a policy never to read any such books along with any which have the word 'saga' or 'cycle' in a similar vein. Since this is the first book in the Athena Lee Chronicles, the smart move would have been to have skipped it. My bad! The fact that ten sequels appeared to this opener in 2016 alone ought to be informative. But this was a story I picked up to read some time ago, so what the hell.

I started reading it and made it a ways through surprisingly, but it's a very short book - a novella so the author or publisher claims, but it's too short for a novella. I'm not even sure it's a novelette. And there's a hardback version fo it??! So the fact that I made it three-quarters of the way through is not quite the feat it may seem. Unsurprisngly, it failed to hold my interest. This is almost inevitable in a series because the first book is a prologue, and I don't do prologues either. They're tedious and pointless. I think there's been only one time I've ever had to go back and read a prologue in a novel - and that wasn't because I wanted to!

The premise was initially entertaining: that a female engineer, of which there are far too few, is stranded a long way from home and has to 'engineer' her way back was appealing to me, but the poor writing drove the appeal out of it for me. There were multiple problems with the book, the first of which was that it's in first person, the most self-obsessed and tedious voice there is. It was this which largely turned me off the story. It was not believable given the things which happened to her in the first few pages, including a head injury. The second is that it has problems with the plot, the text, and the story, including the guy who shows up early and who is described literally, as 'beefcake'.

Normally a writer who uses initials for a first name is a female, but in this case, the 'beefcake' suggests a male writer and it is. No one uses 'beefcake' any more, expecially not an alien female. So this story is really not believable, and it made me want to avoid the actual series, not read on. The fact that it's billed as a space opera is another turn off for me. The fact that it talks about a 'cabal' trying to somehow take over 'the galaxy' is a serious issue. Clearly the author has no clue how big a galaxy is or how ridiculous and pointless is the notion that one can be owned or controlled. Sorry, but no. I can't commend it based on my experience.

Great Hoaxers Artful Fakers and Cheating Charlatans by Nigel Blundell, Sue Blackhall

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an entertaining print book featuring an assortment of over thirty stories about people from the distant past and modern-day, who ran a variety of scams and for a while at least, got away with it. It begins with Tania Head, who misled people into believing she had been in one of the twin towers on 9/11. It covers people like poet Thomas Chatterton, who moight have had a better career had he let his own light shine instead of faking the lgihts of others, and who kileld himself at the age of only 17.

There's Anna Anderson who wa snot a Romanov. Not even close. There's a deck of cheaters at casinos; Tom Keating, the highly-talented art forger, Harry Houdini, who was really not a forger in the vein of all the others here, although he clearly used tricks to achieve the effects he did with his magic and escape stunts.

There's the fake cowboy, Frank Hopkins, the fake concert pianist, Joyce Hatto, the Count Saint-Germain and the Count Cagliostro neither of which could be counted on for honesty. There's the George Hull 'giant', and the fake Shakesspeares of William Ireland. There's Peter Pan - or rather James Hogue, who lied about his age and kept attending school long beyond normal graduation time. There's the Cottingley Fairies invented by children Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, so poorly made yet so ridiculously convincing to the adults of the time.

There's PT Barnum, scam artist and unsurprisingly nothing like the character in the 2017 Hugh Jackman movie musical. There's 'Princess' Caraboo - who also had a movie made of her life which was argulably more accurate tham the Barnum musical. There's faked ghost photographs, and the faked round-the-world voyage of Donald Crowhurst. There's faker Charles Dawson who was probably responsible for the nonsensical 'Piltdown Man' which has long been dismissed by scientists, but still obsesses creationists.

There's David Hampton - celebrated now for knowing no celebrities, Misha Defonesca, who didn't escape from the Nazis, George Psalmanazar, who never went near Formosa, Charles Ingram and Charles van Doren, the quiz show cheats, Horace de Vere Cole, who fooled the Royal Navy - into thinking they were being visted by the Emperor of Abyssinia no less. There's Heinrich Schliemann who did and didn't discover Troy, Janet Cooke, the reporter who didn't discover Jimmy the street child, and the faked diaries of Adolf Hitler. Alas no partridge in a pear tree nor the kitchen sink, but pretty much everything else you may or may not have heard of.

Obviously the lesson here is beware! Don't believe everything you see, nor everything you're told, especially if it's from a politician! I enjoyed this book and commend it as a worthy read.

Hook (audiobook) by Melissa Snark

Rating: WARTY!

Back in June I reviewed the ebook of this novel, and I don't usually revisit works (and usually not authors) where I've been disappointed. I judged the ebook warty for an assortment of reasons and those haven't changed in the audiobook - it's the same book! What I was curious about though, is whether I might perceive that same book differently if I heard it, rather than read it myself.

When you read a book it's between you and the author, but an audiobook brings someone else into the picture - so to speak! - and maybe it might sway perception? Since Chirp had the audiobook on sale for 99 cents, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to experiment. Yes, 99 cents! I'm guessing others are finding this book as unappealing as I did the first time around, and so the publisher is trying to move it by any means possible.

So, as I said before, this was yet another attempt to wring some value from the antique and ridiculous Peter Pan story. About the only one I've read so far that was worth reading was Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson which I reviewed several years ago. I'm currently working on a children's parody myself, skewing all the things that are wrong with the book and with Dipsey's antique and sad animation of it. The first problem with the book is that it's first person. For me it makes for an irritating voice to read because it's usually so unrealistic, and that's especially the case in novel like this one.

They hired an American voice actor to fake a British accent for Captain Hook's daughter - Jaden Hook - like anyone in Britain was named Jaden back when this story was written. Seriously? No marks for Mistress Snark! She could use a few though - to buy herself a clue. My problem though, was who is she supposedly telling this tired story to anyway?>/p>

While I like the idea of a female pirate captain, I don't imagine your average pirate was wont to prattle on about anything let alone a private vendetta between Hook and Pan, not even if there's a switch here and Pan is presented as a villain, kidnapping young children, and Hook as the 'good guy' rescuing them. Since I didn't finish either story, I can't even be sure if this Hook is a reliable narrator - maybe she's just as bad as her dad was, and Pan is still the spiteful, self-centered, narcissistic villain I've always perceived him to be.

The story takes forever to get going and in the end (and by end, I mean middle!), it never really does. That's one reason I quit it. The captain seems only half-hearted in her pursuit of Pan and quite lethargic about it. It takes them forever in trying to sneak up on the speedier Ariel ship, in their own lumbering Revenge, and they never do get there. Yawn.

The chapters are filled with Hook's tedious ramblings, and debates with her crew. What pirate captain debated with their crew? Doesn't 'captain' mean one who is in charge and who gives orders? I quit reading the ebook before I learned that Ariel got away, so I was wondering it if it had been a trap, but it evidently wasn't, according to what I heard here, which begged the question as to what the hell was going on? I have no idea, and worse, I didn't care any more the second time than I did the first!

As I'd concluded earlier, the plot which had initially intrigued me never seemed to have any substance to it. I need more than this in a novel, and this author refuses to stand and deliver! Consequently, I can't commend either the ebook or the audiobook.

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Rating: WARTY!

Written in the baker's dozen years that came at the end of the fifteenth century, Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's unfinished epic the has long outlived him. Unfinished (it's rumored to have been planned as several tales each form some thirty travelers - but it ended up with only about a third of that before he died), it is widely viewed as his greatest work. If this is the greatest, I fele sorry for the rest of his output, because to me this was boring and tedious nonsense.

The tales are as follows. I made it only to The Miller's tale, and then I skipped to the last one which was the most tedious of all, before giving up on this!

• The Knight's Tale - a chivalric romance ripped off from Giovanni Boccaccio.
• The Miller's Tale - the rape of the Miller's wife.
• The Reeve's Tale - the continued rape of the Miller's wife.
• The Cook's Tale - cooking up another story.
• The Man of Law's Tale - a rip-off of John Gower's Tale of Constance which is anti-Islam propaganda.
• The Wife of Bath's Tale - Another tale of rape.
• The Friar's Tale - More advantage taken of women.
• The Summoner's Tale - a gross tale.
• The Clerk's Tale - The evil bastard Marquis of Saluzzo employs appalling and unforgivable cruelty to his wife.
• The Merchant's Tale - Another tale insisting that women are fundamentally evil.
• The Squire's Tale - a rambling, meaningless story.
• The Franklin's Tale - a woman is once more a possession.
• The Physician's Tale - a rip-off of a story by the Roman historian Livy wherein a girl is a possession again.
• The Pardoner's Tale - age old tale of three men and death.
• The Shipman's Tale - deceitful woman.
• The Prioress's Tale - a racist story about 'Jewes'.
• Sir Thopas' Tale - a story of a man's designs upon a woman.
• The Tale of Melibee - an insane debate on what should be the retribution for two men who broke in and badly beat his wife and daughter.
• The Monk's Tale - a collection of tragic stroies about historical figures. Yawn.
• The Nun's Priest's Tale - more rambling.
• The Second Nun's Tale - rambling about faith.
• The Canon's Yeoman's Tale - whining.
• The Manciple's Tale - untrustorthy women - again.
• The Parson's Tale - painful penitence.

Based on what little I could stand to listen to, I can't commend this as a worthy read at all. It's warty. It's one of the, if not the most disgusting, puerile and ridiculous collections I've ever encoutnered. It's a disgrace and not worh a minute of my time, much less what time I did spend on it.

Sketches by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

Detective Reese Parker is transferred to her childhood home - known as Colony 6 - after her life is threatened in her previous job. She has psychic visions when talking to witnesses and subsequently she feels a serious compulsion to sketch these images on paper. The images lead her to solving her case. At least that's what the prologue novella reveals. I didn't get far enough into this volume to learn what happens. I got only far enough to learn this is not for me because it's too sappy with the heavy-handed romance, and the story held no surprises or even any reason for engagement, for me.

It was obvious that Reese and her closest friends including a guy with the ridiculous name of Jaxon, which to me sound like an oil company - were experimented on and that's why she and Jaxon and apparently the others, have their psychic powers. Better Jaxon than Jacks Off I guess. This is pretty much rammed in our faces like a newspaper headline in block caps. They're looking for missing scientists, get it? They all have powers, get it? They will have to rebel against the very authority they serve to solve this. Yawn. The romance between her and Jaxon is tedious and predictable. The secrets they keep from each other are stupid, and the conspiracy nonsense is nothing original. I found it boring and quit reading in short order.

I can't commend this, and this is another series I will not be following.

Insight by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

This is a prequel to this author's series set in a dystopian future. It's very short, but it really explains nothing about the world in which detective Reese Parker lives. It merely is a prologue explaining how she came to end up back at Colony 6 - the very place she was only too happy to escape from when she left to join the New York Enforcer Division. It's set some 80 years after what's referred to as The Breakdown, which was apparently an economic and nuclear catastrophe, but we learn nothing of that. Nor do we learn why the NYPD is now the NYED. There is no world-building at all.

We do get right into the story wherein Parker, who gets psychic visions when questioning a suspect (and which she shares with no one), feels subsequently that she has to translate into a sketch, otherwise it physically affects her. She's compelled to get it down on paper at the risk of a restless night if she doesn't, and the image - often of a suspect, sometimes of a scene - in turn helps her to track down her quarry. In this case it turns out to be a big time businessman who is using some of his facilities as a base to manufacture a dangerous drug known as Juke which when mixed with another drug becomes deadly.

Parker eventually nails him., but in doing so makes enemies and against her will - supposedly for her own safety - she's transferred to Colony 6. End of this novella, lead in to the series. The problem with the is is that it makes her look rather stupid. The case she's making hinges on her recorded video of the businessman effectively convicting himself, but the vid is tampered with, and useless. There is no mention of any backup, and Parker herself fails to keep one - something you would think she would be sure to do in a case this important.

I managed to read the whole story - it was very short - but it didn't leave any mark on me, and I was by no means thrilled with it. I can't commend it unless you're already into the series and are curious as to how Parker got there. Even then it's barely worth the time. The writing itself isn't bad, per se, it just isn't very interesting.

Peter and Wendy by JM Barrie

Rating: WARTY!

This is a book based on an earlier work and a play by James Matthew Barrie, that debuted in 1904. The book was published in 1911. Naturally it's a product of its time: a different era, a different mentality, but by today's standards it's sexist and racist. Fortunately it's out of copyright so people can write their own updated versions of this - an advantage of not having copyrights being extended forever by corporations like Disney who want to protect a cartoon mouse, and who in 1953 perpetuated the abusive stereotypes established by Barrie in his original work. Believe it or not, they're planning on two live-action sequels. One for Pan, the other for Tinkerbell. I'll pass. The only thing Disney I have any interest in anymore is what comes out of Marvel Studios.

The story in the book ought to be familiar since the '53 movie follows the text pretty closely for the early part at least. We have Peter losing his shadow and having to return for it. Why he even cares is left unexplained, but in doing so he ends up taking Wendy, John, and Michael with him back to Neverland. Contrary to some stories, Barrie didn't invent the name Wendy. It was in use long before his time, but he was instrumental in popularizing it for about a half century, as a girl's name.

The problem with Wendy is that she's of the 'woman's place is in the home' stable, taken only to provide a mother for the Lost Boys and as someone who can cook and darn clothes. She serves no other purpose and has no other reason for her existence in Barrie's world. He writes: "Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully hard on their knees." So Wendy's 'me time' was really 'them time', spent in doing chores for others, because evidentky she had not been raised to think she could have a life and neither was Peter Pan, nor anyone else interested in educating her otherwise. This sort of thing used to be known as slavery. No one ever did anything for Wendy.

Wendy was also very much a subject and adherent to the patriarchal society: "Secretly Wendy sympathised with them a little, but she was far too loyal a housewife to listen to any complaints against father. 'Father knows best,' she always said, whatever her private opinion must be." And this was as a grown-up. Yes, she does grow up and Peter, who supposedly forgets things easily, somehow remembers her. The problem with Peter though is his age. He's been failing to grow up for many years, so his actual age isn't that of a boy Wendy's age. He's much older than that, yet in the manner of modern pedophile YA vampire stories, despite being antique and someone who would have no need of a mother figure and no interest in anyone as young as Wendy, he appears for all purposes as a spoiled and still-young boy.

This is ridiculous even if you take into account his forgetfulness. He has not forgotten how long he's been around or the skills and tricks he's learned in those years. He forgets only people and the reason for this is that he's the most narcissistic and self-centered person outside of the White House. He's not a hero. He's just the opposite. He's Donald Trump. Everything is always about him and he has no thought or time for others unless those others benefit him somehow. He's supposedly rescued these 'Lost Boys', but he really doesn't care if they're in danger or what happens to them. Wendy at least steps up in that regard.

So much for genderism. The racism comes in as the 'redskins' are introduced. One of them is Tiger Lily - supposedly a princess and maybe based on Pocahontas. Hers is not a Native American name, and though tigers were mentioned as being on the island, lilies were not! While they are native to east and central North America, the American Indians, if they called them anything at all, would not have called them Tiger lilies! The real problem though is how Tiger Lily talks. Barrie seems to completely conflate Native Americans and Asians, and to employ the worst stereotypes of each. Tiger Lily speaks like this: "Me Tiger Lily...Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him." Seriously? Barf.

So no. The story is ridiculous and painfully dated, and there is nothing edifying or redeeming about it. I can't commend it as a worthy read. It's warty all the way through.

Malice by Heather Walter

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Erratum: "Noses grew bumps when hair was supposed to brittle." I suspect the author meant 'bristle', but this was an advance review copy so hopefully that's already been caught, and I detected no more such hairy moments!

This was an engrossing take on the story of Sleeping Beauty, except the beauty isn't sleeping. It's also an engrossing take on Cinderella. Except that Cinders is the one with the power. And she's called Alyce. And she's evil. So she's been brought up to believe.

Working as a 'dark grace' - that is someone with blood power to effect change - Alyce has always understood herself to be evil in her rotten core. While her 'sisters' at the Lavender house effect looks and charm and other such cosmetic facets, Alyce is reduced to undoing those same charming affectations when one rival wishes to do down another, or to removing or minimizing a quality which a rival wishes to see diminished. Alyce has no plans in life, no dream, no hope, except that one day she might accumulate enough coin to leave the land of Briar behind forever and never look back. Then she meets Princess Aurora, and everything changes, but there's many a slip 'twixt Sapphic lips and the 'A' girls are going to experience a few of them before their happy ending can greet them. Assuming there's to be one.

This book seemed far less than some 500 pages. I flew through it, which is unusual for me, especially of late. There's always something to trip-up a good story, but this novel seemed to avoid most of the pitfalls. Maybe the name choices could have been more original for the leading ladies, but the world was totally believable and entirely fresh and alive. There was always something new and intriguing, and I found myself quickly drawn into its reality, and held to the last. In some ways the novel reminded me of my own Femarine, which is another story aimed at turning tired tropes on their head, but Malice was a very different kettle of wishes from my own invention. It's not an exaggeration to call it enchanting.

Were there faults with it? Yes; no one writes the perfect novel, but the faults were few, minor, and perhaps personal and persnickety. Alyce felt just a wee bit whiny, but not so much that it turned me off her. I grew to like her, but her mentioning of green veins, greasy hair, and scaly skin were slightly repetitious. Her picture was painted perfectly the first time! I felt it unnecessary for the extra brushwork. On the other hand (where those green veins and scales are!), someone who suffered these conditions might well dwell on them so perhaps it was in character. I liked Aurora, too; no spoiled brat she. It was a joy to see them get together, and it was done realistically and intelligently. Believe me, I adore authors who can show that kind of restraint in YA literature. Not that there's much YA 'literature' about, but this novel definitely qualities on that score.

One thing that did bother me about Alyce was how long it took her to finally give some consideration to whether her own powers might be employed to help Aurora's fatal condition. Yes, she's a femme fatal! In fact they both are in different ways, which I thought was choice! But that she never for a minute thinks about whether she could use her considerable - and especially her new-found - powers to cure Aurora until the latter virtually has to beg her to help worked to somewhat undermine their growing love. But like I said, these are very minor quibbles in the overwhelming power of the entire novel. No book is fautless, but this one comes close and I commend it. It left me green-veined with envy, and I wish the author all the success in the fantasy world with it.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Rating: WARTY!

First published in a single novel in 1848, I listened to this - yet another of my forlorn attempts at the classics - as an apparently abridged audiobook, although I have to say Chirp did not give any indication that it was so shortened. But it was just as well it was otherwise I would have DNF'd it anyway. Curiously this book seemed quite reminiscent of another so-called classic I listened to recently by the title of The Age of Innocence, although the gender roles are reversed in this, as compered with that one.

The story is of a social climbing young girl, recently graduated from an academy, who goes by the name of Rebecca. She's not a nice person. Why Amelia - a fellow graduate - is friends with her is a mystery. Rebecca aims to find a permanent place in a rich family and sets about it at once, finding work with Sir Pitt Crawley, who is quite wealthy.

Unfortunately, Rebecca can't keep it in her pants and rather than wait for Sir Pitt's wife to expire so she can have the master of the house all to herself, she secretly marries his son Rawdon. This proves to be a tragic mistake because Sir Pitt's wife dies prematurely, and Sir Pitt is then peeved that Rebecca isn't available to him. She's screwed in a second way because Sir Pitt's half-sister, who is also wealthy and who was favoring Rawdon for an inheritance, is put out sufficiently by this ill-favored marriage of his, that she disowns him.

As if that isn't bad enough, Rawdon comes home early one evening and discovers Rebecca in the company of the wealthy Marquis of Steyne, who apparently has been giving her money and jewels. What he got in return isn't specified, but after Rawdon assaults him, the latter finds himself sent to Coventry as they say in Britain, but in this case quite literally: he's unexpectedly appointed governor of Coventry Island - a hell hole of a place that no one wants to visit. Rebecca ends up wandering Europe in a downward spiral before she manages to finagle a decent living of sorts, but it's nothing like the one she'd dreamed of.

If I've made my review sound boring, it merely reflects the work that's reviewed, but at least be happy you were not the one who had to listen to it! I can't commend it.