Showing posts with label dystopian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dystopian. Show all posts

Monday, August 17, 2015

Young Terrorists Volume 1: Pierce The Veil by Matt Pizzolo


Rating: WARTY!

The story in this graphic novel (of which I read an advance review copy) was rather different from what the blurb had made it appear to me, which annoyed me. In very broad, general terms, the two were similar, but this particular novel gave me the impression of being a prologue. I don't do prologues! I did read this all the way through, however, and I found nothing about it which pleased or thrilled me.

The premise is a tired one: youth fights the mega-corporations of the future. Animal testing is thrown in to try to garner some sympathy, but it's hard to have any sympathy at all for people who think that throwing bombs is the best solution to something which displeases you. There was no justification offered for it other than "rebel youth" which is pretty sad.

Both writing and artwork were average, and the story overall was dissipated and disjointed, making it irritating at best, and very forgettable at worst. I am writing this just a couple of days after reading the story and I can barely remember it. I think that pretty much says it all. I can't recommend this one, and I have no desire to pursue this series.


Sunday, July 5, 2015

King #1 by Joshua Hail Fialkov


Rating: WARTY!
Art: Bernard Chang
Colors: Marcelo Maiolo

This is a dystopian romp featuring the supposed last human on Earth. Despite this, he actually works for a living – his job being to try and head-off alien incursions onto Earth, which is absurd, because Earth is not entirely populated by aliens or mutants, or mythological beasts and gods.

The story (if it can be called a story at all) was very short, which was a blessing, because it really wasn’t very interesting. It was really nothing more than a testosterone-infused blend of conflict and fighting, smarth-mouthing, and bitching about stuff throughout. It didn’t make for an appealing story at all.

The monsters he took on were uninspired and not entertaining. Karate robot bear? Seriously? I couldn’t find anything to like here and I can’t recommend it.


Sunday, June 28, 2015

Edge of Tomorrow by Hiroshi Sakurazaka


Title: Edge of Tomorrow aka All You Need is Kill
Author: Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

Read poorly by Mike Martindale.


Not to be confused with Isaac Asimov's The Edge of Tomorrow or a score of other novels employing this tired title, this Edge of Tomorrow was originally released as All You Need Is Kill accompanied by illustrations from Yoshitoshi Abe. This was not a manga, but there was a later manga adaptation released.

The novel was re-released under the new title to tie it in with the movie of the same name which was based on the novel. I listened to the audio version of the novel read by Mike Martindale. I have to say that the reading was poor, and the story wasn't very good, which might account for a tough reading. What, Simon and Schuster couldn't get an Asian guy to read this? Shame on them. Way to go big Publishing&Trade;.

The plain fact is that the movie writers got it right. I had a chance to see a sneak preview of the movie and was completely won over by it. This novel (or short story more like), on the other hand was less than thrilling because the author had striven so hard to make it sound so hard-bitten and tough that it was almost a parody of a war novel. Everything was exaggerated and bitter and it was such a laughably stereotypical military conflict story, that I sincerely believed I would not be able to listen to it all. It did improve as the story progressed, but nowhere near enough to make me consider this a worthy read.

The movie depicts the main character as an American, Major William Cage (named after the original character's nickname), who has no training beyond basic and who is frankly cowardly and happy to be the PR voice of the military. He's unceremoniously tossed into the front lines against his will. In the novel he's Keiji Kiriya, a lowly soldier in the United Defense Force, Japanese contingent who has basic training and is in an infantry unit. In both cases, on his first battle, the soldier somehow gains the ability to reset time every time he dies, and so after he's killed, he always wakes up on the day before the battle where he died.

Sergeant Rita Vrataski in the movie is Sergeant-Major Rita Vrataski in the novel, and is a US special forces soldier, but is otherwise the same person (except that she's British in the movie, not American), and the one highlight of this novel is how she is described and referenced throughout it. The novel doesn't have Kiriya linking up with Vrataski for the longest time, and even when they do, their story is different. He's a much more independent operator, although he quickly decides that she has the right idea, and manages to work out, over several lifetimes, that he needs to arm himself with the same battle-ax which she uses since the bullets in his little standard issue gun don't do diddly against the Mimic carapace.

The ending is different, too, and that's all the spoiler you're going to get. Had I read this before the movie came out, I would have had no intention of seeing the movie - until of course, I saw the movie preview and realized it was much better. I can't recommend the novel. I do recommend the movie which I also review on this blog.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Y The Last Man Unmanned by Brian K Vaughan


Title: Y The Last Man Unmanned
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

This was an unexpected treasure! I went to the half price bookstore to see if I could find Wayward Pines by Blake Crouch (Barty's other son, no doubt). Failing to get that, I checked out the graphic novel section and found every single one of the books I recently checked out of the library - and only those! Weird. There was however, one more tucked away deeper back on the shelf and when I tugged it out, it turned out to be the very first issue in this series! How fortuitous was that? So here, completely out of order (which is my middle name), is how it all began.

It's the amulet! Yorick's un-proposed-to fiancée seems to be having cold feet (she fell in love with a kangaroo) and Yorick is covered in Monkey sheet monkey doo-doo. Meanwhile, 355 shows up - with the amulet! The Republican desperate housewives try to run the government out of town, and Yorick's sister Hero puts in an all-too-brief appearance.

So 355 rescues Yorick from the psycho Amazons and just about everyone learns that he's, why, the last man of course! But 355 has a plan. Glad that someone does. She takes Yorick to Dr Allison Mann who is utterly astounded - to discover that a male Capuchin survived.

So this was a bit choppy for my taste - running between one group pf people and another, and then have flashbacks and flash forwards, so it was very uneven and a bit hard to follow at times. However, it was a great start and I recommend it.


Y The Last Man Girl On Girl by Brian K Vaughan


Title: Y The Last Man Girl on Girl
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

This is one of my favorite volumes. Agent 355, Dr Mann, and Yorick are on a boat heading for Japan. The problem is that Yorick is in a crate in the boat's cargo hold. He's an escape artist so he's supposed to be able to escape, but the escape was predicated on the crate being stowed the right way up with nothing on top, so Yorick is trapped. When the crate is broken, the ship's crew discovers that there is a man left alive on Earth.

The crew seems friendly, but in end are revealed to be drug runners. The Royal Australian Navy is in hot pursuit in a rickety old submarine. One of its crew, Aussie Rose Copen, is already aboard the boat, with her distinctive eye-patch, spying on the drug runners. She relays information about their location to the sub. Meanwhile, Dr Mann and 355 get it on - or at least they try to before they're rudely interrupted by Yorick.

Rose ends up in the brig and slowly, Yorick and 355 change their minds about her - and about the crew, but the captain, Kilina, sweet talks Yorick and makes herself sound less of a villain than a woman acting out of desperation. They almost get it on, but are interrupted by the arrival of the sub.

There's a brief exchange of weapons fire, but the sub wins, sinking the boat. Captain Kilina evidently went down with her ship, but most of the crew were saved. Rose asks to come with 355, Mann, and Yorick. She seems to have far more of an interest in Mann than she does in man.

Here's a writing issue from this story. The sub's captain at one point says, "That's because less accidents happen...". This is grammatically incorrect. It should be "fewer accidents", but this is someone's speech and no one speaks with perfect grammar unless they're insufferably pretentious, so in this case, bad grammar is good writing!

I recommend this volume. The writing is excellent, the plotting wonderful, and the art work great. One thing I really liked about this one was that I finally got to meet Beth, Yorick's fiancée, who turns out to be an interesting character in her own right. I don't know why the focus has been so much on Yorick and so little on her. Yes, I get that it's about the last man, not the last man's fiancée, but still, I think she's been done a disservice. I hope I'll see more of her as I read more volumes.

One thing which has bothered about this series (apart from my not being able to read it in order from start to finish!) is that not only are there pretty much only women left alive, but very nearly every one of those women is drawn in male fantasy mode: young, curvaceous, long-haired and lax morals. Why is that? I think it's because this novel was written by a guy, and he has no interest in depicting women who do not figure in his fantasies. That's something that's just not right and is the one real blemish on this entire series, for me.


Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Y The Last Man Kimono Dragons by Brian K Vaughan


Title: Y The Last Man Kimono Dragons
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

I love the titles of some of these volumes. Kimono Dragons! Perfect! We start out here with Yorick, alas, looking like a reject from a remake of A Clockwork Orange. They're finally in Japan, and he and 355 are trying to track down Yorick's pet monkey (that's not a sexual as it might sound to some). Dr Mann is trying to track down her mom, but someone burned down her mom's lab - not her dog, her laboratory. Mann is with Rose and Rose is definitely with Mann.

The Yakuza is now being run by a Canadian cross between Madonna and Miley Cyrus, and it is she who has this Capuchin monkey, famous for its coffee. Or maybe not. The question is, will You who is now a purveyor of android pleasures by way of being a wakaresaseya and before that a member of the Ginza-Yonchome Koban police, actually help them retrieve & (figure it out) from the Takuza, or will she betray them?

355 has a bit of a breakdown after she realized that in order to further the mission, she was getting ready to blow the head off a young girl. Unfortunately, she hesitated and was lost. Meanwhile, both Rose and Dr Mann feel stabbing pains - and from the same Ninja katana, too.

Can the Israeli army drive their tanks to their destination in time and if so, where are they going, and what the hell are they going to do with them when they get there? Capture the twins? It takes two to tank-le! And is Dr Mann going to bleed her secret - all over the floor, as Rose once again lies - on a bed, injured? Still loving this series!


Y The Last Man Motherland by Brian K Vaughan


Title: Y The Last Man Motherland
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

The motherland volume proceeds very much in the same mode as the earlier ones, but the characters change somewhat and the locations too, and new things are coming to light all the time - including some dark and dirty secrets, so my interest was very much maintained here.

The one-eyed Australian spy turns around and resigns from her commission out of love for the part-Chinese character, although agent 355 doesn't trust her, especially when she gets sick and starts bleeding. But then agent 355 doesn't trust anyone, and makes short work of a ninja girl who is rather full of herself.

We get to meet the Israeli navy, such as it is - or rather, I guess, a rogue portion of it. The commander of the boat claims she stole a battleship, but the boat looks more like a cruiser or a patrol boat than ever it does a battleship.

The art work is simple but very functional and very well done. Even the animals get a fair shake, as attention focuses in this issue upon Yorick's pet Capuchin monkey, which the group is trying to get mated to a suitable female without much success. Since I was reading these out of sequence I wasn't sure what the point of this was. Yorick was certainly deeply interested in the monkey's welfare, however! Another volume that's a worthy read.


Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Y The Last Man Paper Dolls by Brian K Vaughan


Title: Y The Last Man Paper Dolls
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

Paper Dolls is another in a rather random sampling I made of this series perforce, since the library didn't have the whole set! Having read a few volumes, though, I do want to read the whole set now. It was in Paper Dolls where I first met the crew of the submarine which has abducted poor Yorick, alas, and is transporting him around the world. We get to know Yorick's pet monkey and stage assistant, named & (figure it out!). The monkey is the key to what's going on here. We also get an origin story for the secretive but highly-effective Agent 355. Yorick continues his forlorn quest to find out whence his fiancée Beth has disappeared (Hint: she;'s somewhere in Australia, supposedly.

This is where his naked picture is published in a tabloid newspaper, supposedly proving that there's at least one guy still alive on Earth - although who will believe it? It also introduces us to the pregnant one and to a weird-ass religious order (one of several we'll meet in this series.

The writer's and artists' willingness to show a full-frontal nude male is refreshing. Usually in these kinds of comics, they show the female in all her glory while hiding the naughty bits of the male. In this series, they seem quite unwilling to show females, yet unabashedly show Yorick's particulars. Go figure.

I liked this comic because it keeps unveiling the story. It's like one of those giant theater curtains which keeps on drawing back, and drawing back, and you start to wonder if and when it will ever stop! I recommend this one.


Y The Last Man Ring Of Truth by Brian K Vaughan


Title: Y The Last Man Ring Of Truth
Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Penciler: Pia Guerra
Penciler: Goran Sudžuka
Inker: José Marzán Jr
Colorist: Zylonol Studios

This is a series I stumbled onto at the local library (yeay libraries!) which unfortunately did not have issue one to hand, so having perused a volume and decided I liked it, I decided to take the plunge with the series "in progress" as it were, and I wasn't disappointed in the first volume I read, which was Paper Dolls. Yeah, it sounds like a novel by John Green, but this novel makes John green with envy, and having read it, I think I can say that you don't absolutely need to have read previous volumes to enjoy it, but it helps for background! Having read this one I did want to start the series over, it was that good and that engrossing.

For a series written by a guy about the one lone remaining guy in the world after a plague wipes out all (or as we later discover, very nearly all) human males, it's not what you might think. While the context is adult in nature, it's not x-rated by any means, although there are adult situations and some violence, which is relatively mild by comic book standards. The published graphic novels in the series are these:

  • Unmanned
  • Cycles
  • One Small Step
  • Safeword
  • Ring of Truth
  • Girl on Girl
  • Paper Dolls
  • Kimono Dragons
  • Motherland
  • Whys and Wherefores

I started from volume five and read through volume ten.

Why it took a guy to write this I don't know. Why some female graphic novel artist/ author (and there are a lot of you, I know, despite popular perceptions!) couldn't man up is a good question. Yes, I'm kidding with the man up comment, but I'm very serious about why a guy wrote this. Is there a female writer who wants to write the one about the only female left on the planet? It needs to be done! I'd be happy to write it with you if you're interested.

So Yorick, alas, is one of the insignificant, yet highly significant few men remaining alive, and all he wants to do is get back to his fiancé, Beth, who is somewhere e=doing walkabout in Australia. Unfortunately, when he finally talks the crew of the submarine in which he's traveling almost like a prisoner, into letting his look for her, it turns out, so he learns, that she's gone to Paris to find him!

Here's a writing issue that I see frequently in books and movies, and on TV, and which also appears here: "My name is Sister Lucia Ober..." (p88) - no, that's her title and her name! Unless she was actually named "Sister" by her parents, then her name is Lucia Ober, her title is "Sister". OK, pet peeve off.

Sister Lucia is delusional, and I'm not talking about her belief in a god, although that's one problem. She thinks that the Catholic Church pulled people out of the dark ages when it actually dragged people down into the dark ages - and is still trying to hold them there today!

There's unintentional humor, too. A tone point one character says, "There's a reason the best rock climber sin he world are all women" - well in a world where there's only one or two men left, I imagine the best rock climbers are all women!

I found it odd, and not a little affected that the speeches for people in the flashbacks were all in parenthesis. It was annoying, but not a killer, and the rest of the novel was great: nice writing, good humor, cool action, lots of interesting characters, and really good art work, so I recommend this volume.


Thursday, March 26, 2015

East of West Volume Three by Jonathan Hickman

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Title: East of West Volume Three
Author: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!

Art work: Nick Dragotta.
Colors: Frank Martin.
Letters: Rus Wooton.

I reviewed the very first comic in this series back in September of 2013. After that I never saw or heard of the comic until I found volumes two and three in the local library (bless that library!), so I thought I’d take it up again, and see what’s what. This series apparently has now run to fourteen volumes, but after reading these two, I'm not going to be reading any more.

Volume three continues in the same disjointed and violent way in which two proceeded. Fior me there was way too much violence and gore with very little payback for it in terms of the story moving along or in terms of the quality of the story being told. I understand that these are treacherous and violent times, but I also expected better than this absed on the first volume that I read.

It felt to me like the writer had lost track of what he was doing, or that he didn't have a clear sense of where he wanted to go, and so we were left meandering in the wilderness for much of this story, which begins with a meeting of heads of state which turns into something of a blood bath.

We're introduced to some of the factions, and they all of them seemed far too stereotypical to me. There was a Republic of Texas "nation" which was tedious. Can we not be a bit more inventive than this? Given this, I was rather surprised that there was no a redneck state! The representatives of the republic were all ZZ Top impersonators. Really? I live in Texas and I've actually never seen anyone who looks like that. Even ZZ Top doesn't really look like that.

There was a black nation, whose representatives were all clones - clones who didn't get along. On the way to the meeting, one of them punched another in the face so hard that his nose was literally squashed flat, yet when we see him at the meeting not long after, his nose is perfectly fine, and all he has on it is a tiny Band-Aid. There's no bruising, no disfigurement. That was as laughable as the tired stereotypes.

Once again this is a comic book where the text was too small. In the print book it was legible, but I'd hate to try and read this in ebook form unless I had a pad with a really big screen. The text was also oddly variable. For example, during the heads of state meeting, the text oddly changed size in several speech balloons. Then it really was too small to read comfortably.

The rip-offs from other comics/movies continued in this volume. We had, for example, giant dead animal bones lying in a desert looking like they came straight from the movie Heavy Metal. We had a head sticking out of a chest, like it was from the original Total Recall movie.

In conclusion, I cannot recommend this. It really had nothing to offer and was rather tedious to read. It felt like I was reading volume two over again. There's no point in reading a comic or any other kind of book which offers nothing more than warmed-up left-overs.


East of West Volume Two by Jonathan Hickman


Title: East of West Volume Two
Author: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!

Art work: Nick Dragotta.
Colors: Frank Martin.
Letters: Rus Wooton.

Errata:
Page numbers are absent – in part 6, fifth page, bottom left panel “…say their peace…” should be “…say their piece…”.
Four pages into where John Freeman visits his father, first panel, “…against all harm your people…” should be “…against all who harm your people…”.

I reviewed the very first comic in this series back in September of 2013. After that I never saw or heard of the comic until I found volumes two and three in the local library (bless that library!), so I thought I’d take it up again, and see what’s what. This series apparently has now run to fourteen volumes, but after reading these two, I'm not going to be reading any more.

This compendium starts out borrowing a lot from movies like Star Wars (for the council, the exotic council building, and the floating chair in the courtroom). It borrows from Star Trek (for the testing of the child, towards the end of this volume – compare with the testing of Spock). It borrows from the movie Wanted when it comes to an assassin (which is what the Texas Rangers are turned into here) taking a ridiculously long rifle shot to take out one of the main characters (or does he? You have to read the next volume to find out). It also borrows from the movie Red Planet, for the predatory quadruped with a light on its head, and from the movie Judge Dread for the law-enforcement/judge/jury/executioner after the courtroom scene.

The comic has lines like “When the time comes, I’ll kill you last” which really makes no sense, and there are errors in the text, such as when the judge says “…say their peace…” which should be “…say their piece…”. Another one I noticed was “…against all harm your people…” which should have been “…against all who harm your people…”. That aside, it was written well and it was drawn and colored well, too – to the same standard as volume one was, but the story simply wasn't anywhere near as interesting or as appealing.

There is, however, what felt like a bit of a disconnect between this volume and volume one. In saying that, understand that it’s been a long time since I read this! In the first volume, we had the story of the four horsemen, and the end of the world, told from the perspective of splintered USA consisting of 7 republics, and a rather inexplicable wild west skin laid over it notwithstanding the advanced technology. One of the four horsemen, Death, had an agenda which you might not have expected, and he was accompanied by two witches, a guy and a gal who were both built much more like the stereotypical comic book heroes, and relying heavily on native American stereotyping.

The story really didn’t appear to be going anywhere much, and wherever it was going, it sure wasn’t in much of a hurry to get there. It seems like the authors had suddenly become obsessed with dragging out the pain and torture, which in some regard can be said to fit the overall plot, but to read panel after panel of this stuff is asking too much without having some sort of solid pay-off for the effort.


Wednesday, March 11, 2015

World After by Susan Ee


Title: World After
Author: Susan Ee
Publisher: Amazon - Skyscape
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
On page 90 there’s an editorial note at the top of the page: “JARRING TEXT OF DIFFERENT SIZES]~~Ok as set - I'm guessing this shouldn't be there!

This is book two in the ‘Penryn & The End of Days’ series. I’m not a fan of series unless they’re done especially well, but I liked the first book, Angelfall which I reviewed in June, 2014, so I was quite pleased to have an opportunity to review the second. Unfortunately this sequel volume wasn't anywhere near as appealing. It felt like it was written by a different author. I could make it only half way through before I had to give up, having run out of Promethazine.

A big part of my nausea was caused by the first person PoV voice. It's far too self-important and self-obsessed unless it's done really well, and it was not done well here, not with this character, Penryn. You should read A Girl Called Al for an exemplary story in which this voice is used. Why authors - particularly YA authors - are so irremediably addicted to it is a complete and utter mystery to me, but I sincerely wish they would grow out of it.

The biggest problem with this novel is that it was boring. It went nowhere and offered nothing new - quite the contrary in fact since we were treated to a host of flashbacks via Penryn's magical video record and playback sword. I am not kidding you. Her angelic sword is a camcorder. It was bizarre, and I took to skipping entire sections which were nothing more than a rehash of book one, but told from the angel, Raffe's PoV. I care. Another filler employed here was 'Penryn dream world'. There was chapter after chapter offering nothing more than a simple recounting of Penryn's dreams, which were tedious. I took to skipping those, also. If these two things had been omitted the novel would probably have been only seventy-five percent the size it is.

Even when we weren't watching Sword Armchair Theater re-runs, or How Dream is My Valley, there was nothing of interest happening here, not for page after page after bleak page. The first seventy pages could have been half that long and still conveyed as much while saving precious trees. Penryn has literally come back from the dead courtesy of her friendly neighborhood angel Raffe, but life goes on as usual! Huh?

She now carries an angel sword, which only she can lift, but which she has no idea how to employ as a weapon. She’s been reunited with her slightly loopy mother and her kid sister Paige, but Paige is now some sort of zombie, having been experimented upon by the angels. She’s diminutive, yet very dangerous and threatening – like an attack dog, with her razor sharp teeth. Paige used to be a vegetarian, but now she’s hungry for meat, the raw and bloody kind, yet her sister sees nothing wrong with her, being devoted – so we’re told, not shown – to her mom and sister. Keep this in mind.

If you examine this story too closely, you'll realize it makes no sense, and in that it's not alone amongst angel stories. The reason for this is that most writers of angel stories have never actually read the Bible – or they've conveniently forgotten it or chosen to remember only tiny portions of it. They know neither what it is that angels do, nor what they’re actually there for. Essentially angels are errand boys. In naval terms, they would be an XO – an executive officer, carrying out the commands of the ship’s captain.

The problem with angel stories is that these characters are consistently depicted as soldiers fighting evil, a thing which they never were. They’re also uniformly endowed with wings. Typically these are white wings like swans have, but this is also a pure invention. They’re never described as having wings in the Bible. The winged ones are cherubim (the plural of cherub), but none of these YA writers ever talk about that! Cherub just doesn't quite carry the weight does it?

Now you recall where I told you that the author tells us how devoted Penryn is to her family? Well at one point, about eighty pages in, the community she’s with is attacked by the mutant scorpion creatures, first seen at the end of the previous volume. Flying mutant scorpion creatures which evidently buzz like bees. And have shaggy hair and lion’s teeth. And which drool and growl. Is there anything else with which we can lard them? No, I guess that’s all. Why these creatures are even needed is never revealed - at least not in the portion of this book I read. Maybe it was mentioned at the end of volume one, and I forgot.

Penryn’s young sister Paige – the one who is actually best equipped to fight enemies and to protect her family - runs off into the nearby forest. Her mom chases after Paige. Penryn, instead of automatically following them actually stands and debates whether she should stay with her family – the one to which she’s supposedly devoted - or run to the safety of the community and hide there. She chooses the latter. That was pretty much it for me. Penryn is not an heroic figure, not even mildly so. Please tell me, then, why I should care about her or root for her? I can't think of a single reason.

There’s a really oddball incident around page ninety after a scorpion attack where Penryn is trying to tell a doctor that these people who have been stung might not be dead. The Doctor is assuring her that if they don’t have a pulse they’re dead. This is in a world which has been devastated by an angelic insurgency, which has demons running around, and after an attack by mutant scorpion people, and this doctor thinks the old rules still apply? This is either bad writing, or this doctor is the biggest dick-head in history. As the comedian said (I forget this name, but it was probably Steven Wright): somewhere in the world is the world’s worst doctor. And you might have an appointment with him (or her!) tomorrow! I think we just met him.

The final straw, for me, came on page 142 where I read: “…three unarmed women surrounded by monsters…”. Why does it matter that they’re women? I have a real problem with what I can only view as misogyny, especially when it;s penned by a female writer. Is this really what we want to teach our young women - that if you're a woman you're somehow more threatened by these monsters than you would be if you were a guy? Because this is no different from telling girls that women are weak, that they're helpless, that they're prey in need of a guardian angel. It's pathetic, particularly from a female author, and I refuse to subscribe to abuses like that. I will not recommend this novel.


Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos


Title: Material Girls
Author: Elaine Dimopoulos
Publisher: Houghton Miflin Harcourt
Rating: WORTHY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Normally I rail against, indeed, refuse to read, novels which are little more than a shopping list of the author’s favorite fashion items. Such snotty books deserve contempt, as does the fashion industry itself. What could be more arrogant and flatulent than an industry devoted to dictating to you that you must change your clothing styles with great frequency, or there’s something wrong with you? What could be more unjust than an industry which effectively tells you that if you’re rich, you’re fashionable and if you’re poor you’re tasteless? And what could be more appalling than an industry built upon the backs of slavishly laboring Asian women and children?

This novel is exceptional, in more ways than one. In the do or Dior world in this story, youth rules comprehensively. At thirteen, children are “tapped” for the success spotlight. If they have spent their school year doing the right thing on their websites, they could become the next pop sensation, the next fashion icon, or the next box-office dream. If they fail, they’re doomed to a life as “adequates” – in short, they’re just like you and me, but in this story, adequate is really understood to mean failure.

This story concerns two successes. One of these is Marla Klein, who hit the big time in the fashion industry, being quickly promoted to the superior court – a handful of teens who declare what’s fashion and what’s fashi-off for one of the five big design houses, Torro-LeBlanc. Marla’s problem is that she’s been disagreeing with the rest of her court appointees, and before she can say “tummy ill figure”, she’s been jettisoned to the basement, where a hoard of designers deemed not good enough for the fashion courts are desperately trying to come up with fashion ideas which will impress the junior courts and get them a shot at displaying their design before the superior court.

Meanwhile, Evangeline Vassiliotis, now reincarnated as ivy Wilde, the current rebel diva superstar, is seeing her position threatened by an upstart Tap. Worse, she’s forced to wear the newest fashion: torture (which features chains, fake blood, and points on the soles of your shoes – on the inside). Of course, these “fashions” are scarcely any more torturous than those which women have felt compelled to wear for centuries, but they’re new and different, of course, so don’t you dare criticize them. Valenteenhold and Shamel certainly wouldn't! Women have fashion guns with which they can scan their clothing labels. If the light stays green, the trend is still good. If it’s red, you’re dead - fashionably speaking, of course - and it’s time to buy a new wardrobe.

Marla finds herself on the “obsoloser” table in the basement – as debased as it gets, in fact. She’s almost “crustaceous” for goodness sakes, but slowly, she and her cohorts hatch a scheme to subvert this system which considers people antiquated by the time they turn twenty. It all goes horribly wrong, and Marla finds herself under the icy glare of Ivy Wilde’s entourage – with the emphasis on the ‘rage’ part. It’s then that things really begin to change. Quick! Alert the media. I'm sure Vain Infamy, Cosplaypolitan, Fugue, or Helle fashion magazines would be interested!

This author could have read my mind – or snuck a peak at chapter zero of my novel Baker Street, but I doubt it! I honestly doubt that she and I are the only ones who have had thoughts like this about the fashion business. It’s what this author does with this story though, and where she takes it, which is what makes this novel “prime” (in my lingo: worthy!). No, in this novel she runs with it and makes an engrossing story full of interesting characters and even more interesting motivations.

I have to say that in many ways, characters Marla and Ivy are very much alike. There’s not a lot to separate them into individual characters, but this is only to be expected from a system which pre-processes children and manufactures a salable product out of them. But if you think that, then read on. They're not!

This story – speculative, dystopian, both - is set in the future, but it’s not a future that’s so far off it can’t be seen. No, the seeds of that future have been enthusiastically sown by vested interests since the 1950s, especially in the USA. A conspicuous consumer/planned obsolescence machine has been working on hearts and minds for decades. We’re all fashion victims. The question is: Is there a cure?


Sunday, November 2, 2014

Global Frequency by Warren Ellis


Title: Global Frequency
Author/Editor: Warren Ellis
Publisher: WildStorm
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by an assortment of artists).

This is a story reminiscent of Thunderbirds and International Rescue, but for grown-ups! The Global Frequency consists of a network of 1001 people, ordinary citizens each with one some special skill or another, who are committed to lending an immediate hand if some huge (and typically sci-fi or dystopian) threat looms. The network is led by the mysterious Miranda Zero, evidently very rich, because she has distributed special satellite phones (which sell at around $1,000 a pop) whereby anyone can summon the GF by means of a special emergency button.

The call is answered by a mohawked girl named Aleph, who seems always to be there waiting for a call even though we see her sleeping in one obligatory and gratuitous chick's ass graphic novel panel (see image on my blog).

Aleph then launches local representatives into action, who always seem ideally suited to the task at hand. The graphic novel I read was a compendium of several stories, and the first of these was a group of cyborgs called in to tackle a cyborg who was nearly all robot and who had run amok.

I loved this story because there were some admirably kick-ass and tough female characters, and because the writer clearly understood that you cannot put a robot arm on a person (a la Steve Austin, 'The Six Million Dollar Man') and have him perform feats worthy of Superman.

The reason for this is that no matter how powerful the robot portion of your body is, it's still attached to the relatively fragile human portion, and if you try lifting a truck for example, then while the robot arm might well manage it, the rest of your body would break and tear under the stress put on it by the robot portion! It's really nice to se a sci-fi writer recognize this and address it.

The other stories were a mixed bag which were, on balance, enjoyable. I particularly liked the back-story about Miranda Zero, and the parkour story featuring a young Indian girl (Indian, not native American). It's nice to see some variety of ethnicity in these stories, unlike the almost exclusively white man's world of Marvel and DC comics. I highly recommend this series. It's very well written, beautifully illustrated (admirable use of white space - no trees wasted here), eminently readable and - within its context - realistic.


Thursday, October 30, 2014

The Book of Ivy by Amy Engel


Title: The Book of Ivy
Author/Editor: Amy Engel
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WORTHY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

I have to say, right up front, that this novel was a real roller-coaster ride, and not in a good way. I had so many issues with it, and I was thinking right up until about the half-way point that I wasn't going to finish it, let alone rate it positively, but I managed to read it all the way through to its inevitable cliff-hanger finale, and in the end I decided it was a worthy read! Weird huh?

Maybe it's my co-dependent relationship with Entangled, or maybe I was bemused by the fact that the author's name, Amy Engel is vaguely like an anagram of Entangled. Maybe it's because I have an adorable niece named Amy, or because my favorite nurse was named Amy. but there it is. And yes, though neither the front cover nor the back-cover blurb will tell you this, it's book one of a series. Judging by current YA trends, I'm guessing it's going to be a trilogy.

Here's the real mystery: why do they publish a "Praise for..." page in an ebook? In a print book I can see some theoretical merit if you lift it off the shelf at the library, or in a bookstore (are there still bookstores?), you can read what people you don't know, have never met, and have no means by which to gage their opinion, thought about this novel. It doesn't work with me, but maybe it works for others. But in an ebook? You already have the book. You already bought it based on the blurb or the recommendation of someone you do know and trust, so pray tell me what exactly is the point of a recommendation for a book you already own? I have no idea.

Here's something else I have no idea about: what's the deal with the cover image? I've now read this book, and still I have no idea what the image on the cover is supposed to represent. There is no knife involved in any way in the plot to murder Bishop Lattimer, so why the knife?! The locale in this story is a small town. There are no skyscrapers. I don't do covers because my blog is all about writing, not strutting and preening, and I understand that writers don't get any real say in their cover (unless they self-publish). Normally I pay little attention to them, but once in a while one comes along and demands a whisky-foxtrot-tango expression of complete disbelief. Such a one is this. Enjoy!

OK, enough rambling. So what's it all about, Amy? The basis of this story is the same one as is employed in employed in Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge, where Nyx has to kill her newly betrothed: a demon who rules the land. She fails to carry it out, too, but she at least tries initially. Ivy doesn't even progress that far.

The Book of Ivy is also really Matched (with which I'm familiar, but haven't read). Ivy Westfall's match is Bishop Lattimer, who is not actually a bishop, but then Ivy isn't actually a plant...! There are two sides (this is of a town, not a nation or a continent: Westfall and Eastglen), but there are two sides: the winners and the losers. The losers have to offer up their daughters to the sons of the winners for brides, and it's Ivy's turn to be offered up, but she has an agenda.

So far so good, but I kept running into minor irritations, which if they are few and far between don't bother me much. It's when there are too many of them that the novel has to really deliver to get me to keep reading it and not give up in sheer frustration. The book of Ivy came very close! I mean there are the usual irritations which I hardly even notice any more: like the use of "bicep" when it's "biceps". I don't think this author "stepped foot" into that one, but she did use "two choices" when it's really one choice between two options. One amusing issue was that the town had a summer camp! This tiny town sent kids to summer camp? Where? Round the corner? In the meadow in the back yard? This made no sense, but it was as amusing as hell.

Those were nowhere near as bad as things which made me stop and think about how "X" managed to exist in Ivy's world where 'X' represents one of a slightly bewildering variety of things. So let's talk about that. In 2022, there was a global nuclear war, where EMPs apparently rendered all electrical devices, including motor vehicles, useless. So in this novel, we're conveniently back in Victorian times, yet Ivy seems to have everything she needs: electricity, clean running water, a shower, soap, and so on. Apparently no one was left alive who could do anything to fix the cars, but they fixed everything else?

After the nuclear war, Ivy's grandfather started a new town in Missouri. Apparently there was nothing there worth bombing and nuclear fallout miraculously didn't reach there! This is the town over which the war with the Lattimer faction was fought. Why the Westfalls didn't simply leave after they lost goes unexplained. What the war was actually fought over goes largely unexplained.

What I don't get is how solar panels are working just fine, but nothing else electrical seems to be! It makes no sense. People wear jeans and t-shirts presumably made from the cotton they grow, but there's no word on who makes them or how. They have candles and meat and milk and butter (and guns), but the population is only supposed to be some 8,000 (as far as I could tell), and the entire town is ringed by a fence, so where are the crops grown, and by whom? Where are they raising the livestock? Who is making all these cool things they still have? Who generates the electricity and how? None of this is explained. The world-building in Ivy's world is awful.

Maybe this will all be explained in one of the sequels, but I didn't really get why this was set in the future instead of back in the nineteenth century. The very same story (with some minor adjustments for technology) could have been told just as well in 1880. Or 1780. It's not consistent, either, as the solar panel issue revealed. Another example of this is that there's talk of testing something for fingerprints. Now fingerprinting has been around a lot longer than modern technology (in fact a lot longer than most people would guess), and it was started down the path to modern formalization back in 1880, but in a town of some 8,000 random survivors, would there really be anyone who could read fingerprints and make comparisons competently enough to identify a perp? It's questionable at best.

It was really quite annoying that every personal color was described in terms of food: "toffee-haired" (ugh!), "brown sugar" freckles, "chocolate eyes and dark chestnut hair", "coffee-brown strands" of hair, "cocoa-colored skin". It became tedious after a while and then actually really amusing.

I also had a problem with how this society randomly married-off people. They were supposed to be "matched", but clearly the system wasn't working. Any society which pursued this bizarre scheme would be doomed to failure, which tells me right up front that these people are lead by morons. In the real world, in the past, the winners typically raped the daughters of the losers, and this isn't any different. Kings did seek to marry the daughters of their vanquished foes to 'cement an alliance', but the marriage was forgotten after a couple of generations, and the alliances died with the memory, leading to another war. It's pointless.

That's the story here, but it's only been going on for a couple of generations, and it makes no sense, because it's not a one-way street. Not only do the males from the winning side marry the females from the losing side, the same thing happens in reverse, so how is this a punishment for the losers and a benefit for the winners? I don't know, but it's what we're expected to believe!

There's no explanation, either, for how this society not only retrogressed technologically, but also socially, so that women now are now viewed, in only two generations, as nothing but baby machines, with no life of their own, nor is it explained how come there are so many sixteen-year-olds available for marrying off this year, given how hard life is and how small the town is.

As I said, Ivy's "mission" is to kill Bishop. Why, we're not immediately told, but at least a part of it is in revenge for his father's murder (so we're told) of her mother. We know that she won't do it, because this is an Entangled romance and they have to fall in love, but it's not at all clear why she doesn't simply go ahead that first night and take him out. It's not until almost page fifty that we learn that there's a three month 'window' during which this mission must be completed. Obviously the real reason for this is solely so that the two of them can fall in love so she won't kill him, but it's never satisfactorily explained why there's this delay, only that irreversible and unspecified steps are now being taken and she cannot fail.

I was thinking it would have made more sense had her mission been to kill the president, Bishop's dad, but no, it's Bishop. Evidently the president will also be 'taken care of'. This initially made even less sense when she thinks there's a problem after she discovers that they're not going to live in the presidential mansion, but in a cozy little home for just the two of them. It's not until, again, around page fifty that we learn that she needs to be in the presidential mansion because there's something there she must find. It would have been nice to have known this a little earlier so the story made more sense and flowed better. I don't like mystery for no other reason than being mysterious.

So Bishop predictably doesn't touch her that first night - he sleeps on the couch offering no explanation for his unexpected and (supposedly) out-of-keeping behavior. This seems to throw a huge wrench in the works for Ivy - again, no reason specified. Bishop is predictably and tediously the trope male lead: tall, muscled, good looking, green-eyed, and white. No problem there, is there? Inevitably there's the "awkward' scene where she espies him half naked and despite the fact that she's supposedly hates him, she's all a-flutter and having hot flashes. It's pathetic how weak Ivy truly is at this point. This was actually about the time where I almost ditched this novel and moved on to something else. Fortunately, it got a lot better after that!

I was curious as to why there was pretty much zero curiosity amongst the people of the town as to what exactly was happening outside the town walls (which are literal walls of steel designed to keep out intruders and beyond which to banish offenders from the town). In this regard, it's very much like Erin Bowman's sad trilogy starting with Taken, but at least Bowman as the townspeople take an interest in the possibility of something going on outside the walls. Nothing like that happens in this novel, which seemed highly unlikely to me. The town's kids alone would have had dares about going outside the walls, and there would be, in two generations, a hoard of people contacting them from outside. None of this is satisfactorily addressed. Again, the world-building is lacking.

I found it really disturbing that Ivy finds Barbie dolls to be the "point of perfection" when they're actually anorexic and plastic in more ways than one. That speaks volumes about how shallow she is and betrays every word she utters and every thought she supposedly harbors with regard to feminist ideals. I guess even in the future, a woman's image of herself is grotesquely annexed and distorted by capitalistic designs on what a woman should be, promulgated largely by men. It doesn't help that the society in this novel has pretty much abolished women's rights - no word on how that ever got put in place, but all of this is strongly indicative of Ivy's lack of spine.

Chapter nine makes no sense at all. Evidently we enter some kind of a time warp. Ivy and Bishop take a walk on Saturday. He's taking her for a picnic. They get up at eight and set off, and have hardly walked anywhere when we learn that the sun is "high in the sky". When they arrive at their destination after walking only for a short time, Ivy is talking about the midday sun. It took them four hours to get there??? Weird! After they jump into the pond a couple of times from a bluff, Ivy reflects that "This has been one of the most carefree afternoons of my life"! Wait, it was midday, they jump into the pond twice, and suddenly the afternoon's gone and she's reflecting upon what a fun time it's been? Where is all this time going?! Weird!

Ivy has a passion for books bestowed upon her by the author in this novel. The book trope is a really lazy method employed by an author to make a character - usually a female - seem smart and deep, but in this novel, Ivy's every action betrays that image. She isn't very smart, and she isn't very wise, and she is shallow. Fortunately, this improves, otherwise I never would have been able to complete this novel. I thoroughly detest weak female main characters if they persist in being weak throughout the story.

So what turned it around for me? Ivy changed. She behaved in a way I did not expect and showed that she had become strong and self-determined. It took way too long to get there, but it did happen! That, I admired, and it's really the sole reason I'm rating this positively despite the numerous issues I had with the story, the plot, and the sad trope YA romance. Even that worked out better than I'd feared when I reached that abysmally clichéd bare, muscled,chest scene!

So, surprisingly, and after all's griped and done, I consider this a worthy read! That doesn't mean I want to read volume two, because I can already tell exactly what's going to happen there!


Saturday, September 20, 2014

Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott


Title: Trouble and Her Friends
Author: Melissa Scott
Publisher: Tom Doherty
Rating: WORTHY!

India Carless, who used to go by the handle of 'Trouble' in her hacking days, is now retired and running the e-network for a group of artists. She's been forcibly retired: the heat became too much with a new law (the Evans-Tindale Act) aimed directly at cyber-crime, and it just wasn't worth the risk to her anymore. The only problem is, someone has begun using her handle and her code on the Nets and it's up to Trouble to uncover who it is before she goes down for the trouble the fake Trouble is creating.

Trouble walked out on her partner and lover, and her entire cyber life, when she retired, without a word to anyone, which has left bad blood between herself and Cerise, who has since become a cyber-cop for big business. Now this new trouble has caused both of them to seek the other out, Trouble to clear her name, Cerise to find who hacked her employer. Once again, they're a team.

Trouble has an illegal 'brain worm' installed in her head which allows her a much more sensual experience of the net. How this works, Scott shrinks from attempting to describe. It's just as well, because the idea is impractical. If the net doesn't support this (which it currently doesn't), then you would need some software installed which would translate signals from the net into sensations, and which would slow the whole thing down - a big no-no for a hacker.

Even in the future, when this novel is set, retrieving and processing data in this way would still be slower than ordinary text input. Trouble isn't a very practical hacker and doesn't behave like real hackers do, unless your idea of a hacker is that depicted in the movie of the same name (which I happened to really like). Scott does anticipate The Matrix with her writing, but no one in their right mind would have a brain worm implanted that could kill its owner if things went wrong, let alone upgrade it as Trouble does by going to her wet-work friend Michelina!

Another impracticality is that Scott turns cyberspace into a shopping mall, where you walk from place to place and meet people, and explore stores, but this, again, and for a hacker in particular is entirely ridiculous. When you "move" from web site A to web site B you don't actually move - you don't "walk" anywhere. It's almost instant - although sometimes it runs very slowly. This would be entirely impractical for a hacker since you would have to actually slow down your data input rate to represent it the way Scott does.

Those impracticalities aside, and forgiving her shameless lifting of some cyber ideas and terms ( such as Intrusion Countermeasures (Electronic) - IC(E) ) from other novels in the genre, I really loved this novel because it's so solid and real and practical overall. Yes, it's very dated now, but I didn't read this for the hi-tech. I read it for the relationships, which Scott does extremely well. She's very prescient and warm in her depictions, and the interaction between Trouble and Cerise was priceless. I love the kind of person India is, and how she and Cerise slide back into a relationship together. I like their joint hacking attempt at the end, despite how impractical (and impossibly slow!) it is.

I liked that fact that Seahaven was both a fictional place on the web, and a real place by the sea, in this novel, a place where hackers and geeks hang out. By having such a place, Scott is able to have Trouble move around in both virtual and real space.

I don't claim that this novel is brilliant. I don't actually require that a novel be brilliant. I don't even care if it has flaws. All I require is that it tells a story which engages me, in a language which speaks to me, and this one did very much. I've read many of Scott's novels, but none of them carried the same power that this one did, so if you like LGBTQ novels which have somewhere to go other than (or at least in addition to) the purely carnal, then this one might just drive your bus as nicely as it did mine.


Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson


Title: Robopocalypse
Author: Daniel H Wilson
Publisher: Books on Tape
Rating: WARTY!

Read sadly by Mike Chamberlin.

I don't know how it's even possible to write any novel about a battle between humans and machines and make it so boring that you want to feed the disks to a machine that will shred them, but Wilson sure achieved it with this one. He supposedly has a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon and it shows in his writing. Carnegie Mellon is an anagram for cage liner lemon after all.

The story is first person PoV, a format which in my experience is only very rarely readable. In this case, the appalling writing and the lackluster reading contrived to make it un-listenable. This is compounded by the fact that with audio books it isn't possible to skip prologues and chapter heading quotes like you can a print or ebook. You have to do it by guesswork or suffer through them.

The story here is that advanced machines began disrupting human life under the control of a master AI, and slowly (once humans even realized what was happening) it became all-out (or even all-in) war, so pretty much a rip-off of the terminator movies crossed with I, Robot, and a lot less engaging.

The book starts at (or near) the end, with the narrator destroying insect-like bots using a flame-thrower. Here's the dumbest bullshit of all. The bots are attracted to human body heat, and as soon as they come into contact with it, they detonate, which can cause at the very least, severe injury. So which cosmic moron came up with the idea of using heat to kill them? Oh yeah, the PhD from Mellon.

He tries to wriggle out of this numb-nuts idea by claiming that the intense heat of the flamethrower is so high that it spoils the chemicals used to create the explosion, but he seems to be completely clueless that outside of that intense zone of heat, there is a very variable surrounding zone, somewhere, which matches human body temperature perfectly, and which would cause all the bots within that zone to detonate simultaneously. Moronic!

Never once does he think of destroying them with an EMP, never once of blowing them up with electricity or grenades; never once of using radio to disrupt their internal signals. After wading through this crap, then we get a huge info-dump on how we got to this beginning ending. This was tedious in the extreme.

I made it only to disk three of a ten-disk set and gave up. And I was skimming track after track even then. Oh yeah, and the audio is produced by "Books on Tape" - seriously? They never once thought of changing their name to bring them into the 121st century? And no, it's not an old disk set - it's copyrighted 2011. BoT is owned by Random House. Quite evidently this is another cluster-book by Big Publishing™!

This novel sucks like a vacuum. And the blurb writer really needs to discover what the word 'decimates' actually means. And one final thing: once again the image on the cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel's content.


Thursday, September 11, 2014

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld


Cover image was evidently voted by Google Server Lagoon of mid-West (SLOW) to be too ugly to show on my blog
Title: Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Publisher: Audible
Rating: WARTY!

Audio book spouted pathetically by Carine Montbertrand.

Amateur. This is the one word which stood out in my mind as I began listening to this audio book. If juvenile married tedium, their spawn would be this. It didn't help that this young adult novel was so dryly narrated by a woman who sounded like she might be grandmother to one of the characters.

I don't believe a YA novel has to be narrated by a YA person - although in most cases it would probably help. I do believe the person has to sound the part, especially if it's a first person narration. Forget about hiring actors, For gods' sakes just get someone who can read decently and who doesn't sound like they got on the wrong subway train. Please. I'll wait. This narrator was beyond awful, and the voices she used for the characters were so sad as to be laughable. The one she used for character Shay was worse than nails on a chalkboard. It was so sickly that it was more like two-day old vomit on a chalkboard.

But amateur. How amateurish the plot and the writing truly are is what glared at me upon first listen. Yeah, we get that pretty equals big eyes and ugly equals squinty. You don't have to keep on relentlessly smashing us over the head with it every other sentence. Yeah, I get that Scott Westerfeld has mastered 'telling'. I eagerly await any vestige of evidence suggestive that he might, one day, seek to explore 'showing'.

Tally Youngblood (really? young blood? Really?) is an ugly. Of course this claim is rendered nonsensical by the image on the cover which once again goes to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the cover artist never reads the book. Or in this case, even the book title. If Tally is ugly, then how angelic, exactly, are the pretties - and why would they not make anyone who viewed them spontaneously comatose due to excessive sugar content?

Yes, Tally is ugly - so we're expected to swallow. Tally lives in Ugly Town. Ugly town. Her best friend is Peris. Peris is pretty. Peris lives in Pretty Town. Pretty town. And Ugly Town. Must never be mentioned. In the same sentence. They are on OPPOSITE SIDES of the river - get it? Must I paint a sign? Please, pay attention to the massive head-pounding this author is delivering desperately to your noggin. Sheesh. What's wrong with you. You're not...un-pretty are you? Cos that would be just ugly.

Romeo and Juliet much, Scott? The only difference between these two people is three months - in three months, when she's sixteen, Tally, (she's ugly, remember?) who lives in a boarding school for uglies in Ugly Town, will be able to get herself prettified, and move to Pretty Town and again be best friends with Peris (he's pretty, remember?). Seriously? This sad amateur divide is your entire plot?

Who was it that decided the change takes place at 16 and why? Why not at puberty? Why not at birth? Why not at twenty-one? No reason. How did this bizarre system even come to be the standard? No reason. Why would anyone in their right mind put up with this? No reason. How does the economy even function if everyone in Pretty Town is quite literally idling their time away and everyone in Ugliville is too young for employment? No explanation. If all the adults are in Prettiville, then who delivers the ugly babies? How are they even conceived if no one bumps ugly? Who maintains law and order? Who takes care of and supervises the children? Why do the park patrol people not resent the fact that they alone have to work whilst no one else ever does? Do the Pretties even pee and poop? Just curious. Isn't that an ugly thing? Why is it tolerated?

From whence cometh the energy budget in these two towns? Everything is hover. How that works is again unexplained. It's like the author just slammed in every pre-adolescent idea he'd ever had, and went with it. But the energy expenditure must be massive, and there is no explanation for it.

Being prettified means losing brain cells. Apparently they use brain cells to prettify you. How else can we explain that once prettified, people become cavemen-like, dumb-ass, jock frat-boy party animals - and that's all? I actually wrote that before I got to the last disk which contained NOTHING BUT a discussion of brain lesions. Oh, and guess what? Pretties get to sleep late! Yes indeed they do! They. Get. To. Sleep. Late! How pretty of them! Because getting up early is UGLY. Everyone knows that. Sheesh. Did the author write this when he was eight years old and it's just now getting published?

I can't believe that he parlayed this absurd trash into four volumes. If an unknown writer had brought this to a Big Five Publishing Ho, they would've been run out of town on a rail, and rightly so. This just goes to show that it's not what you write, but which door you can wedge your foot into that accounts for who gets published and who doesn't in Big Publishing™ world. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the intrinsic merit or otherwise of the written word. OTOH, if people are truly dumb enough to buy this and come back for more, why not milk them for all that their wallets can bear?

Tally can't wait out those short three months because she's a complete moron. She simply has to sneak over to Pretty Town (as she and Peris used to in the ugly old days) and try to visit with him. This entire trip serves no purpose other than to show how bone-headedly and dedicatedly dumb-ass-to-the-core Tally truly is. Le stupide is strong with this one. I was sure this would explain a lot of what was to be found in the oncoming pages (or in my case, disks) and I was not wrong! 'Tally' is so obviously a referent to how few functional brain cells this chick has.

So no, I can't recommend this. Indeed, I actively dis-recommend it as bone-headedly and dedicatedly stupid to the core. I found myself skipping track after track and then disk after disk because it was badly written and/or badly read, and in the end I gave up. Life is far too short to waste on ugly fiction, and this novel is pretty ugly.