A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Rating: WORTHY!

Gemma Doyle is a girl in her mid-teens who is rather less than thrilled with her lot with life with her mother in India. She dreams of going back to her native England where her father resides, and taking up the society life to which she believes she's entitled.

Gemma should be careful what she wishes for, because when her wish comes true, it’s at the cost of the tragic death of her mother. One day, out in the hot and dusty market place in Mumbai, Gemma's mother is approached by a man accompanied by a boy who is conveniently Gemma's age. The man relates a cryptic message to Gemma's mother, and her mum then demands that Gemma return home immediately. Gemma becomes so frustrated with her mother's secrecy that she runs away, and gets herself lost. She's visited by a horrible vision of her mother committing suicide, and when she finally makes her way to where her mother is, she discovers that her vision was true: her mother is dead, and subsequently Gemma is being hastily packed off to England, to be sequestered at the elite Spence Academy.

Gemma starts out by being the lonely newbie because of her derided Indian background, but when she discovers the snottiest girl in school, Felicity, in a compromising situation, Gemma finds herself elevated to the top notch of clique-dom. Finally, she's where she wanted to be. She begins to form a close relationship with Felicity and her two friends, Pippa and Ann. Gemma also learns that Kartik, the boy she saw with the man in Mumbai, is now in England! He warns her that she is in danger, and must close herself off to what happened to her mother if she wishes to remain safe.

Gemma increasingly has visions and one of these leads her to a cave in the school grounds, where she finds a 25-year-old diary written by Mary Dowd, a girl of Gemma's age, who also was a student at Spence. Gemma identifies with Mary because May also had visions which she shared with her friend Sarah Rees-Toome.

Gemma reads the diary and discovers that Mary was associated with a society known as the Order, initiates of which were able to open a portal to other realms. They could use this power to ease the passage of souls, and the power gave them prophetic insight and the power to create illusions. The four new friends create their own "Order", meeting in the cave.

As they read more of the diary and investigate the history of Spence, they discover that the two girls from a quarter century ago died in a fire at Spence along with the principal of the school.

Finally Gemma & Co travel to the realms which are weird, beautiful and wonderful. They do not travel there bodily but spiritually, leaving their bodies behind in the real world. Gemma is able to meet with her mother there, but predictably her mother is unnecessarily mysterious. She does, however, warn Gemma not to take magic from the realms into the everyday world because it would let them fall foul of Circe, who seeks this power and wishes to take over the realms. The magic of the realms allows them to have a wish granted. Ann, who is plain, requests beauty. Felicity, who feels abused, asks for power. Gemma wants insights into her self, and finally, Pippa seeks true love.

The girls begin a routine of secret night-time meetings in the cave when they visit the realms. Gemma discovers that her mother was Mary Dowd, who obviously she did not die in the fire but escaped and changed her name. She also learns that Sarah is Circe.

Gemma is the only one who can control the portal, and during one visit, Pippa is separated from them and is left behind as the others flee an evil power seeking them in the realms. Back in the real world, Pippa is now having a seizure. Gemma returns to the realms to retrieve Pippa, but Pippa has met her true Love there and refuses to return to real life and the arranged marriage which awaits her there. When Gemma returns to her own world, Pippa is dead.

I've also listened to the audio book version of this, narrated by Jo Wyatt, and I recommend that version, too. She does a thoroughly amazing job of narration and voices. I've had good success with Libba Bray, and although this is a series (a trilogy specifically) which I usually detest, this one turned out to be eminently engaging. I recommend it.

Arriving at Ellis Island by Dale Anderson

Rating: WORTHY!

At a time when we have a president who seems dedicated to destroying all that the US stands for (apart from rampant capitalism, that is), I think it's important to remember the things it used to stand for: huddled masses yearning to be free, being an important one of them.

This children's book is part of a series titled 'Landmark Events in American History', and it discusses the history of Ellis island, the arrival point of many immigrants to the USA over the years. It was nice to read a book which covers all the bases and is written in an unflinching, yet child-friendly manner. This is an illustrated, but text-based book for older children, and there is a lot to be learned from it. It mentions American Indians (as the first immigrants) and African Americans (as involuntary immigrants during the shameful slavery era), and it does not hide from teaching about the abuses that immigrants underwent, and the struggle and fight they had to endure to finally get free and start a new life. I recommend this book.

King Hugo's Huge Ego by Chris van Dusen

Rating: WORTHY!

In a world where everyone is pushed to outdo everyone else and to inflate themselves to celebrity status in the most showy way imaginable, and in a student world where so many awards are given out for 'achievements' that the awards are in fact, meaningless, we need books like this.

Humility is not a negative quality, but you would never know it in a world where this popular TV show is centered around who can best run roughshod over everyone else in order to avoid hearing "You're fired!" and that TV show is all about beauty, like it's a character trait rather than a genetic trait. In a world where our president has the most over-inflated of them all, we definitely need books like this.

This is a large-format and fun picture ebook for children with some rhyming text about Hugo, who is so self-obsessed that he cares for nothing but puffing himself up with his own achievements and qualities. One day in his blinkered ignorance, he makes the mistake of insulting a witch, who casts a spell on him that makes his head actually swell in proportion to how much his head is swollen from his own self-aggrandizement. The book is beautifully illustrated with fun images of Hugo's sad decline and then wondrous recovery from his personal(ity) problem. That witch isn't done with him yet, and he's not done with her! I recommend this for a fun and easy read for young children - and for the useful lesson to be learned from it.

Touched by Cyn Balog

Rating: WARTY!

This is the last Cyn Balog I'm ever going to read because it was sad - not a sad story, but because it was badly written and as I've lately come to expect from this author, predictable throughout. I knew on page 124 exactly how this three-hundred page novel would end, so what was the point of reading any further when the novel consisted, very much like the author's Starstruck story, of nothing more than a first person character constantly whining, whining, whining. It was nauseating.

It wouldn't have been so bad, had it been written in third person, although it would still have been obnoxious, but evidently this author cannot write in any other voice, either that or she's operating under the same absurd delusion that the majority of female YA write under: that it's illegal to write a YA novel in third person.

The main character, whose name honestly escapes me, so forgettable was he, has been 'touched' - and not in a Catholic priest way, but in a magical way. He can see the future, but predictably only in dribs and drabs. His mother has the gift (and in true YA novel and Cyn Balog novel fashion, only one parent is extant), and so does he.

In a sad and direct rip-off of the Nicolas Cage movie Next, he says he can only see a couple of minutes ahead unless he 'gets on script' when, if he follows his path to the letter, he can see a bright future far ahead. He can change his future, but if he slips from the predictive script, things can go very badly awry, as they do when the novel begins.

He's a lifeguard and a child drowns, but for some absurd reason he takes all the blame on his self, and for me this is where the novel started seriously going downhill. It was the beginning of a two-hundred page pity party, and one long, boring, endless whine of a story, as as I said, predictable as all hell. I did not like it and I do not recommend it. If this has been written by a new, first time writer, it would have rightly been rejected out of hand, but of course once you get your foot in the door with Big Publishing™ you can shovel out any trash you want it and it gets published. Yes, it's unfair but it's what we have to deal with, so deal! Keep writing, and keep indie publishing. It's the only choice we have!

As for this author, I'm done reading her oeuvre.

Starstruck by Cyn Balog

Rating: WARTY!

This one is my third Cyn Balog novel. I liked the first two, but ran into issues with this one. It's about this overweight girl, Gwendolyn Reilly, who is so limp she allows people (even her family and boyfriend) to call her 'Dough'. Her boyfriend, Philip Wishman idiotically gets to be called 'Wish'. Honestly? Gwen hasn't seen him in three or four years because his family moved away. He's about to return (why now isn't explained), but in the meantime she's put on weight, and he's grown California surfin' good looks. He's also magically a celebrity for no apparent reason because half the school goes to welcome him back at the airport. Why? No explanation. Gwen doesn't go because everyone else does.

Her behavior is inexcusable. She doesn't say a word to him in their emails or on the phone about having put on so much weight - she simply leaves it for him to find out and potentially be shocked by It, which makes her thoroughly dishonest. When he arrives and they finally meet - the next day at school - she won't even look him in the eyes and she mumbles excuses to get away from him. In short, she treats him like dirt. At this point I flatly did not like Gwen at all.

The novel would not have been so bad if it had not been so predictable. It seemed pretty obvious from the moment the oddball new guy (with the questionable past) turned-up to work in the donut shop her family owns, that Gwen would be breaking-up with her wish and falling right into the arms of her savior Christ-ian, because god forbid any woman stand on her own two feet and be without a man to validate her for any length of time. The alternative to that would be that she manages to make a go of things with Wish.

It's inevitably first person voice, which with a few rare exceptions, I hate. This voice serves here only to make Gwen's constant harping on her weight even more obnoxious than it would have been had it been third person. It's not remotely amusing to read, and it made for a trying slog. Girl, if it bothers you that much, then do something about it. Cyn Balog seems to specialize in stories about young women who are thoroughly lacking in self-confidence and motivation.

I decided I'd give this one a little longer to see if it turned around because the other two books I read by this author weren't bad at all. The problem is that this one is so (forgive me the term) larded with cliché as to be pathetic. Gwen is poor, everyone else on the island is rich. There are not overweight rich kids. There are no other "poor" kids. It's sad that the novel is this thin, but Balog's novels tend to be that way. They just not usually as bad as this one in my experience, and the experience here was a bad one. I did not like this book, and I do not recommend it.

Dead River by Cyn Balog

Rating: WORTHY!

This marks the start of three Cyn Balog books I got from the library, but it also marks the end of my interest in her, because the other two sucked. I really liked this author's Fairy Tale; it was quite different from your usual high-school romance novel and I appreciated it for that. This is the same thing - different from what you expect, and I think people will condemn it for that, which is their prerogative. For me, despite it having problems (as negative reviewers have no doubt discussed), I still like the book and consider it a worthy read.

The premise is Kiandra's visit to her cousin's family's log cabin in the woods by the river. Ki hasn't been anywhere near the river in a decade or so. Her over-protective father has kept her well away from it since her mother walked into the river and never was seen again. As soon as she arrives there with her boyfriend, Justin, her cousin, Angela, and this obnoxious guy her cousin invited along for no apparent reason, Ki starts hearing snatches of conversation when no one seems to be around.

This weekend is the weekend of the prom, and Ki really wanted to go, but Ki is about as weak as they come. Even though she's been dating Justin for three years, she couldn't put her foot down, and he's still not even remotely clued-in to the fact that she'd much rather go to the prom than go white-water rafting on Dead River.

You have to wonder what the two of them see in each other, but realistically viewed, this is how people end up. They start dating way too early in high-school before they have a clue what's what, and suddenly they're in a long-term relationship and don't know how to get out of it, or even if they want to because it's become kind of a rut and not one that's entirely unpleasant. Plus Ki has zero motivation as does Justin.

It's cold and wet and muddy out here and Ki is a bit of whiner, but she puts on a brave face and when they go out on the raft the next day she decides she's going to try and have fun, but things go wrong. She falls overboard and despite the best efforts of Justin to pull her back aboard, she's pulled under - quite literally. She comes around on a shore not too far from where they put in that morning. A guy named Trey has rescued her, and apparently healed her injured back. Suddenly she notices that he has a serious injury to his arm, which despite it bleeding out, doesn't seem to bother him. She realizes Trey is a ghost - the ghost of the very kid someone told a story about over the campfire the previous night.

From that point onwards, Ki can't not be interested in the river - or more to the point, she's obsessed with it, and with the east bank, which is where the dead supposedly live. This is nonsensical of course, because pretty much everyone lives on the east bank of some river (though it may be far away!). In Ki's case, Her mother might well be over there, waiting for her. Ki meets Jack - another ghost and he seems to have a quite different approach to death than does Trey. Who should Ki believe?

This is where the story got interesting for me, because of the way the world of the dead works in this place (unsurprisingly, given it's a water world, it relies heavily on Greek mythology as to how the dead pass over. Yes, if you look too closely, the world-building falls apart as it does in all of these horror stories, but if you're willing to overlook the fact that the fabric is rather threadbare in places, it's not too bad of a world the author creates here. It's a bit thin in some parts, and a bit repetitive in others, and it's disjointed in others. Some parts of it read like a first draft rather than a polished novel, but despite all of this, I liked the story and the atmosphere.

I think that a part of the problem was Ki's perspective. In true blind, sheep-mentality, YA fashion, it was told in first person by her and she really wasn't a very good narrator. I won't say she's unreliable because that's not the tack the author takes here, but she's very selfish, which accounts for how thinly the rest of the world is veneered when we see it from her perspective. I'm not a fan of first person at all, but in this case it was interesting to see up close her juvenile and sadly-blinkered view of the world. It makes me glad I'm not in high-school anymore dealing with people like that!

The ending reflects how very selfish and self-centered Ki is, too. She ends up with Trey. This isn't a spoiler because it's so obviously coming from the moment we first encounter him. There is no tension and no surprise here except in the fact that the author glosses over the same insurmountable problem that Stephenie Meyer cluelessly failed to address in Twilight: why would a several hundred year old vampire fall for a vacuous juvenile who must have been a baby relative to him?

Yeah, he'd no doubt want to jump her bones, but why would he have any other interest in her? Fall in love? Ain't gonna happen. The same problem arises here since Trey died in 1936, and has been living in ghost world ever since. In short, he's over eighty years old and would have zero interest in a child, yet Balog portrays him as being just like a teen. Nope. That's garbage. Yes, he's portrayed as innocent in the ways of women, but it still doesn't work because that doesn't do anything to un-age him! He'd be courting her mom (or even her grandmother) before he'd ever be interested in hitting on Ki for anything other than sex.

So that was pathetic, but that aside, I liked the way this novel flowed - like a rock-strewn river, heading for a crash down a steep waterfall. I'm not even sure why I liked it. Normally I would trash a novel like this, but something in it spoke to me, so maybe it was very personal, so I recommend it with the above-mentioned caveats.

The Witches' Guide to Cooking With Children by Keith Mcgowan

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a cute and amusing novel aimed at middle graders and younger. It's an easy and fast read, and it's very well-written. It has a layer or two in it, which is unusual for this level of writing, so I was also pleased with that. Rooted loosely in the story of Hansel and Gretel, these two young kids, 11-year-old Solomon, and 8-year-old Constance find themselves suddenly uprooted and moved to a new town for no apparent reason, but the reason does become apparent to them and quite scarily so. Their new next door neighbor is a witch - and not a pleasant one. She's known for eating kids, and their dad, who happens to be a twin, and his new wife, their stepmother, want the money that's supposed to come to the kids.

We're told that Sol is the smart one, and Connie not so much, but she's a sneaky, scheming little devil, and a mischievous one, too. I liked her! Together they decide that they must take on this witch, and when Connie is captured by her, Sol becomes frantic. Fortunately, his science smarts enable him to take a logical approach to discovering where the witch is hiding his sister.

As I said, the book is well-written, but there was one issue I encountered which is worth exploring from a writing PoV. A few days ago I reviewed a book about punctuation, and mentioned at the time that not a few professional writers might make use of it, and I read a part of one sentence in this book which revealed how important smart punctuation is: "Holaderry and Connie, tied up" was what the sentence said in part. Holaderry is the witch. She has Connie tied-up, but the placement of the comma here suggests that both were tied-up! It should have read, "Holaderry, and Connie tied up."

Just nudging that comma over to the left by two words makes a lot of difference. The classic example of how the placement of commas can change a sentence is this: "Smith says Jones is an ass" versus "Smith, says Jones, is an ass." The addition of those two tiny commas gives the whole sentence the opposite meaning! It's worth remembering as a writer.

But that was a minor issue. Overall I consider this novel to be a very worthy read and I recommend it.

Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me by Meredith Zeitlin

Rating: WARTY!

Zona Lowell is fifteen and is halfway through her second year of high-school, which in Canada and the USA is known, sophomorically as the sophomore year. It's derived from a combo of the Greek words for wise and foolish! LOL! That pretty much sums up Zona. Why it has a Greek name and the other three years have regular English names can only be put down to pretension.

I have to ask where this girl's name comes from. Maybe the author thinks it's Greek, but it's not. In Serbian and Spanish, it means 'zone', so why a girl with an American father and a Greek mother would have a name unconnected with either lineage is a mystery. In Hebrew, it's worse: it means whore. That's not a great choice for a girl's name - not when there are so many wonderful Greek names (and of other nationalities, too).

For me it didn't work, and that sentiment pretty much sums up this whole novel. I made it a third of the way through, and it was so predictable that it was tedious to read. The author quite evidently downloaded a plot-point list from Trope (tripe?) Central and stuck to it rigidly. Can YA authors not have original ideas? On the whole they seem quite incapable, but I know for a fact one or two of them do, since I recently read an excellent story set in high-school, and a romance at that, and I loved it - so it's not impossible. I can only conclude these writers are lazy and/or unimaginative.

How shall I trope thee? Let me count the ways:

• ☑ Story is in first person because it's understood by the YA writing community that it's illegal to write a YA novel in third?
• ☑ Mid-teen girl, parentless, or half parentless?
• ☑ Girl has had very close female bestie for several years?
• ☑ Girl has very close male bestie who is gay?
• ☑ Girl has low self-esteem? (She's even named Lowell! LOL!)
• ☑ Girl thinks breasts are too small?
• ☑ Girl thinks she's not that great looking?
• ☑ Author thinks 'pretty' is actually a character trait?
• ☑ Author thinks 'pretty' is the most important character trait?
• ☑ Girl gets to go on trip abroad so it has to be France, Greece, or Italy since there is nowhere else?
• ☑ Story ends on positive note because you can't write a YA novel that has a tragic ending?
• ☑ Story makes frequent comparisons between two nations, and US is made to look trashy, violent, boring, and heartless?
• ☑ Author thinks jazzing-up the text with boring inserts is cool?
• ☑ Author thinks Greece is way south of NYC and therefore significantly warmer?

Lowell's year is smashed in two by her father who drops the bombshell on her that he's going to Greece for six months to write a story and she's coming with him. Mom isn't in the picture having conveniently died shortly after Zona was born. The Greek half of the family washed its hands of Zona and her father since they were not even in favor of the marriage, let alone any births and deaths. Now her dad suddenly wants to reconnect. He's older than most fathers of fifteen year olds, but not at death's door, so the premise was a bit weak, especially when the Greek side had been so overwhelmingly negative, so this premise failed for me.

It failed worse in that Zona is shown to cave to her father's precipitous demands far too quickly. I lost all respect for her at that point, but I'd already lost a lot of respect for the story-telling, so it mattered little by then. One big annoyance was the absurd newspaper clipping inserts. I'm sure the author thought this was cute and inventive, but the news articles - simply reporting everyday events in Zona's life, were monotonous and I started skipping them completely after reading the first two. I didn't miss them.

They were especially poor given that they were often not contained on one page, but overlapped to the second page. The problem with that, is that in order to facilitate reading, the story ran down column one, then down two, as it should, but on the second page, the story reverted to column one again, and finished in column two. They had to do this because of poor planning in fitting the articles onto one page, but the articles were so tedious they should have just omitted them altogether.

So, the story was poor one, with nothing new to offer. Going to Greece? How original! Why not try someplace completely different for a change? Child missing a parent or two? Yawn. Child supposedly unnaturally smart (but in practice really dumb) and has low opinion of herself? Been done a trillion billion times. Token gay best friend? Seriously? I ought to be commended for even getting as far into as I did. Could the kid not have both parents? Could the girl herself not be gay? Could the trip have been to Serbia or Chile or South Africa, or something instead of (yawn) Greece?

Could the girl not have stayed at a friend's home, and we followed her adventures there? Could the girl not have precipitously followed her father and the story been about her journey there rather than the destination? Apparently not when this author is at the helm, because she had a rigid checklist to follow in order to keep her name in good standing at the YA Club, and she was in no way going to deviate from it for anything, not even for the absurd purpose of telling an interesting story which is new and different from the rest of the flock. I am never reading another of her efforts. She has Big Publishing™ behind her, so you know there's no way she's ever going to be original.

Battling Boy by Paul Pope

Rating: WARTY!

I'm back again after taking a couple of weeks off from blogging to pursue illustrations for the print version of Baker Street, the e-version of which is released today.

This graphic novel was a bust for me. The most amusing thing about it was that when I first saw it on the library shelf I thought the title was "Pope Battling Boy" which I thought was hilarious. But no, it's just Battling Boy - the ''Pope part came from the author's pretentious conceit of putting his name at the top and the title below it, like this is supposed to mean something to me.

I'm sorry, but no! I don't borrow - and I certainly don't buy - a book for no other reason than that the author thinks I should because it's by him - or her. I read books based on whether they sound appealing, and I often get that wrong! I don't go by the title or by the pretty cover (yes, insanely melodramatic cover reveal authors, I'm looking at you!) and I really don't care who the author is, or what they've done previously. I'd hate to think people were buying my books just because my name is on them and for no other reason. People who think like that are morons.

I sure learned my lesson here with the confused and chaotic story and the indifferent illustrations I got. The basic story is that the super hero who protects the town in this purely fictional alternate world - but which looks exactly like ours - is killed by super villains whose sole purpose in life (other than dressing like mummies) seems to be abducting children - for reasons which are unexplained. A lot of things go unfortunately unexplained in this book because it's part of a series, which is one reason I thoroughly detest most series I've ever encountered.

The super hero has the absurd name of Haggard West. His replacement is his daughter who, again for reasons unexplained, has a different name from her father. But there's a second replacement. For reasons unexplained, it's a kid whose bar mitzvah is to be dumped into this world from the heavens by his Thor rip-off dad, so he can prove himself. He's given no instructions, no tools, and no training - for reasons unexplained. He's just left there to fight the monsters which invade this city routinely...for reasons unexplained.

For reasons unexplained, he has a set of t-shirts which are imprinted each with a different animal logo - mostly real, but in one case mythical. For reasons unexplained, when he dons a Tee, it doesn't give him the powers of the animal, it makes the animal appear and talk to him offering pretty much useless advice. For reasons which ought to be clear by now, I don't recommend this book.

Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog

Rating: WORTHY!

I was so thrilled to read this book - an example of how to write a really well-done high-school romance. This book was amazing, and other writers of such works would do well to read this and learn from it. It was not perfect, by any means. I had a couple of issues with it, but those aside, the book was deep, well-written, passionate, amusing as hell, and amazing in how well the author controlled it, and brought it to closure.

Morgan Sparks is about to reach her sixteenth year and she gets to celebrate it with her lifelong partner, Cam Browne, who shares her birthday. That's the last great memory she has of the relationship, because almost from day one, things start going south. It turns out - hilariously, I thought - that macho football star Cam is a fairy. He was switched at birth with the Browne's newborn, and now he's about to turn sixteen himself, the fairies want him back. And Morgan isn't about to let that happen, but when he starts losing weight and growing wings out of his back, and Morgan is the only one who can see these changes, she starts to wonder if her dream romance is actually over for real.

A female fairy named Dawn arrives, and starts tutoring Cam in the ways of Fairy World. She's not supposed to be visible to anyone but Cam, yet Morgan can see her, which annoys Dawn. Dawn is, however, deadly. She has fairy magic and a mission not only to bring Cam back but to marry him and unite two fairy dynasties, and she is not about to let anyone get in the way of it, even if it means killing and maiming to accomplish her aim.

Morgan herself is psychic, yet she has a hard time seeing her own future, and has never seen future for herself and Cam. Her assumption has been that it will work out fine and they will always be together, but is it so? Or has she been so blind that she simply invented their future and now is about to find out the cold truth?

I loved this story and will look for more by this author. This story reminded me, a bit, of a story idea I have for a fairy tale, but fortunately this one is very different from what I had in mind, so I don't need to scrap mine! Phew! I did like this one. I liked that it was different, and that the author wasn't afraid to take a path less traveled. How sorry it is that far too many authors of this kind of story fail so dismally precisely because they're aping everyone else's stories? Kudos to Cyn Balog for blazing her own trail.

And kudos again for being unafraid to call it what it is: a fairy story. Nowhere in this book is there 'fae' or 'faerie'! It's 'fairy' all the way, and the author is proud of it; it's right there on the front cover. Good for her. If you're going to write a story like this and then let yourself be too embarrassed to use the word 'fairy' then I don't want to read your book anyway. And kudos to myself or being smart enough to recognize that this one might just be different! LOL!

Jane Austen's England by Roy Adkins, Lesley Adkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Sometimes fortune favors the depraved, so today I have two books to blog which were pure joy to read. The first is this one, written not about Jane Austen's stories, but about her times - not her life, but the time in which she lived, and what life was like back then. It's reasonably-well documented because people were fond of writing letters and keeping journals, and some of Austen's own letters are quoted from here.

Austen was a contemporary (near enough) of Mary Shelley, although to my knowledge, the two never met. Austen was twenty-two and had completed Lady Susan when Shelly was born. She died by the time Shelley was twenty, the year before the latter published Frankenstein, so while Shelley had undoubtedly heard of Austen, the reverse was never the case. Austen as so prim and proper that the two of them probably would not have got along together even had they known each other! The Brontës were all of this era, but they were all born right around the time Austen died, so they never met either, which was probably just as well. By all accounts, Charlotte was no fan of Austen's.

There were other well-known writers alive in this era, too, such as Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, who published anonymously, Donatien Alphonse François, aka the Marquis de Sade, who died three years before Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley's mother, who died as Shelley was born. There was also Sophia Briscoe, and in terms of better known writers, both Charles Dickens and Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot were born around the time Austen died - to within a few years. Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, better known as George Sand, was around treize when Austen died.

Austen was not the only known and read female writer of that time; Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Ann Radcliffe all preceded her very slightly, and she knew of, and liked at least two of these. She disliked Radcliffe. The reason I mention all of these people is that this book surprisingly does not. Despite it being about Jane Austen's England, and despite it quoting many many writers of letters and journals, there are none other of what we might term "professional" writers, even mentioned! We get not a word on their lives or influence during this era. I found that very strange.

That glaring flaw aside, I enjoyed this book every much; it was well written, well-supported by contemporary account, well-referenced, and fascinating in many regards. It was very much another era back then, with different senses and sensibilities, much misplaced pride and prejudice, and a different outlook on life altogether, with death and disease looming at every stage. There was war, off an on, and many injured ex-soldiers had been left on the scrap-heap with little to their name despite their sacrifices. There was a huge gap between rich and poor, as there is now, and very little hope for - or love of - the latter.

This book devotes a chapter to each stage of life, exploring what it was like for rich and for poor, what customs and habits were, and how things fell together. There was an introduction, which I skipped as I do all antiquated prologues, prefaces, forewords and so on; then comes a chapter each devoted to marriage, "breeding", childhood, home, fashion, church, work, leisure, travel, crime, medicine, and death. Some of it is amusing, much disturbing, some very surprising. Nude weddings, for example, were not invented by Star Trek writers!

Aside from the missing writerly references, this is all-in-all a very comprehensive work, and a must-read for anyone who aspires to write a novel as Austen did. I recommend this as a worthy read, although I must confess curiosity as to why Roy gets precedence in the attribution over Lesley. The names are not alphabetical, so was this done because Roy did the most work? Because it was his idea? Or because even in 2013 when this book was published, even in a book dedicated to a woman and her times, the male still takes precedence as he did during Austen's lifetime, and the woman still takes his name?

Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows

Rating: WORTHY!

This book was a true delight from start to finish. The wonderfully feisty and mischievous Bean (short for Bernice - somehow), is a little tyke, which is why she's not interested in making friends with Ivy, the quite evidently boring girl across the street who just moved into the neighborhood.

Fortunately for history (and literature), fate has other plans and the two are thrown together as Bean has to make a hasty escape from her older and rather peeved sister Nancy. Ivy is teaching herself to be a witch, and suddenly Bean is very intrigued. The two set off on an amusing adventure (which never leaves their's and their neighbors back yards, and I loved it.

This may be written for seven years and up, and aimed at readers who are past the beginning reading stage, but not yet on to more strenuous novels, but it kept me entertained quite readily! Sadly, it's a quick read which left me wanting more. It's only a hundred or so pages, with copious and amusing illustrations by Australian artist Sophie Blackall. Does that make them illustralians? I think so. Anyway, I recommend this.

Sophomore Switch by Abby McDonald

Rating: WARTY!

This is the third of three sorry reviews - sorry that I started reading the book in the first place! I read only a few chapters of each and was so disappointed that I DNF'd. Some idiots argue that you can't review a book when you haven't read it all, but they're morons. Yes, you can reject a book if it's garbage and or simply fails to move you anywhere other than irritation.

This one is your typical "let's switch places" story, and those can be fun if done right. This one wasn't. It started out brightly enough, but quickly devolved into serious dumb-assery and trope, and was so bigoted it was obnoxious. I've had quite enough of female authors who seem dedicated to degrading their female characters to maximal extent, and this seems to be de rigeur in far too many YA stories. I'm pretty much at the point where I'm done reading YA, although I have probably more of that genre still sitting on my shelf (real shelf of e-shelf, it doesn't matter!). Who knows, maybe one of those will restore my faith, and that's the whole point of ditching a badly-written and abusive novel like this: so I can move on to something better. I have no loyalty - nor should anyone in their right mind - to authors who are as clueless as this one is.

Emily the Brit and Tash the Yank are students who have switched colleges for a semester. The circumstances of the switch are truly dumb and lacking all credibility, but for the sake of the story, I was willing to overlook that. Emily is studying law (or pre-law, I guess) in Oxford, whereas Tash is studying film as a gut form in California, but now Tash is doing Em's classes, and vice-versa. None of this makes sense, but I was willing to let this fish play out of water for a good story.

The real problem was with the characters. They were boring and cliched stereotypes, and this switch between the two countries separated, as they say, by a common language, rather than being educational and fun, turned out to be a bitch-fest. Given that the author evidently moves between the two countries, it was shameful that she presented such a blinkered view of them.

At one point, Emily actually says to herself "Sam is...far more attractive than any boy I could find back in England." Seriously? How fucked up is that? It doesn't matter that the country named is England. You could put the name of any nation in there in its place and the sentence would still be as blinkered, blind, and brain-dead.

Worse than this it conflates 'attractive' and 'California beach bum' in the most stupid way possible. I lost all respect for this author and her characters at that point and ditched the novel It had been bad enough seeing Emily create bigoted twin stereotypes of Californians as being universally laid-back and the British being universally uptight, but really, why would I care about her opinion? She's clearly a moron.

This is the same hypocrite who just moments before has been perceiving herself as street meat under the ogling of the guys she passed, and who has just declared that she's not the kind of girl to rush into things, and yet now, with a guy she literally just met is "distracted by the heat of his torso," shes letting him have his hands all over her, and is about to let him kiss her. The only thing which prevents it is that she's an 'uptight Brit', apparently!

There's no moral code in play here; no question of impropriety. There are no thoughts of her allowing herself to be the very street meat she recoiled at earlier, and not only perpetuating, but also fostering the 'easy' stereotype. Nope, She should have let him have his way with her! She's too uptight. She needs to get over it and let boys get their hands all over her when she's just met them!

Does this author even read what she writes? Quite clearly she's utterly clueless about how to write a realistic, intelligent and conscientious novel. You know the worst thing about this though? The worst thing is that these two girls who are dishonestly presented here as totally different, are actually exactly the same! That's how pathetic this pile of garbage truly is. Normally when I'm done with a print book I donate it to the local library. That's the best kind of recycling there is, but this one? I'm honestly tempted to burn it in an effort to prevent this pernicious disease from spreading.

Rowan of the Wood by Christine Rose, Ethan Rose

Rating: WARTY!

Today I have three sorry reviews - sorry that I started reading the book in the first place! I read only a few chapters of each and was so disappointed that I DNF'd. Some idiots argue that you can't review a book when you haven't read it all, but they're morons. Yes, you can reject a book if it's garbage and or simply fails to move you anywhere other than irritation.

This is one of a pair of novels I picked up on close-out at a local bookstore. It was written by two fellow Texans, but I don't know the authors and probably would not have much in common with them if I did, they being evidently into to renaissance fairs and fantasy, and me...not so much! The books looked interesting, but when I finally got around to reading the first one, it was so loaded with fantasy trope that it turned me off. Tolkien did it all, so unless you have something really new to bring to the genre, what's the point?

This is my biggest problem with fantasy novels: they are so derivative and in a stagnating rut bordered on one side by the embarrassing lack of imagination prevalent in modern rip-offs, and on the other by a staggering absence of invention. Worse, in the case of this novel, the authors couldn't bring themselves to set the novel in is native Europe. I've seen this repeatedly in books and in so many movies. Gods forbid we should ever create a story set outside the USA. What's the point? There is nowhere else! Right?

So after an antiquated prologue so brief it may as well not exist (which I skipped as usual), we have another prologue in chapter one, which is fine. I advocate putting your prologue, if you must have one, in the first chapter. But then it skipped to the USA! Yes - let's get European fantasy and rather than set it in Europe, let's bring it to the US because really, who cares about anywhere else?>

And this from authors steeped in renaissance? You know there are plenty of third-world countries where people are perforce living lives of the same quality as those renaissance folks 'enjoyed'! Those who want to immerse themselves in that life can always move there if they really want an immersive experience. Yes I know, it's outside the US! Oh god what a quandary! Does even 'a place outside the US' exist in reality?

And do let us forget about the fact that the US has its own fantasy traditions abundant in Native American folklore. No! Those are simply not good enough! They're too primitive. Too childish. No, it must be genuine USDA grade A fantasy imported from Europe to count, but it must be set solidly in the good ole US of A to validate it. Sorry, but no, I don't shop there. The goods are tainted. This is why I quit reading this. There are many other books out there and more than a few of those get it right, I'm not going to waste time on reading any which are so very wrong-headed, and committedly-so right from the second chapter.

The Chimpanzee Complex Vol 2 The Sons of Areas by Richard Marazano, Jean-Michel Ponzio

Rating: WARTY!

Here's a problem with series that single books never have to face: unless you, as a reader, can get your hands on the compendium edition, you have to root out all the individual volumes! Thus, series are in no way written for the reader, but for the lucrative gratification of money-grubbing authors and publishers. This is one major reason why I will never write a series. It's not worth selling out for.

And how dumb does a publisher have to be to favor a series (which you know they do, especially in the YA world) when they have no idea how good it's going to be? All they have is the first volume and a promise of two or more follow-ups. They have no way of knowing how good or bad those will be, yet they would rather commit to that, blinded by cash rewards, than give three single-volume authors a chance because they can only rake in one third the money with one volume? Screw them. That's not a world I want to be a part of.

Thus my issue with this, a graphic novel translated from the original French (Le Complexe du Chimpanzé: les Fils d'Arès), the very medium which tends to be, almost by definition, episodic. The library had volume two on display which was odd, and it looked interesting from a brief skim. The artwork by Jean-Michel Ponzio looked pretty good, but they didn't have volume one. It would have been wiser on the part of the library to have not put this out there without including the first volume.

Anyway, I figured to take a chance (and it failed)! The story made no sense whatsoever, and I suspected that even had I read volume one, and assuming it had impressed me enough (of which I confess I have some serious doubts) that I ever made to to volume two, it would still make no sense. The problem (again definitive of series) is that the story really goes nowhere. In volume two there can be no beginning - that bus left with volume one, and since there is a volume three, there can be no ending here. So all we have is this free-floating story fragment, and I could make neither têtes nor queues of it.

The plot? Well, that's an open question. Other than its dedication to cheapening the achievements of people like Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, what does it offer? Nothing that I can see. In volume one, set in 2035, a space capsule plunges into the Indian Ocean and when it's recovered, it's found to contain Armstrong, and Aldrin - and no Michael Collins apparently! Collins became the most isolated and lonely man in the world (or rather out of it) in 1969 when, having dropped off his two companions on the Moon's surface, he went behind the Moon alone, and was out of touch with the rest of humanity for a period of time! Yet not a word about him!

In this volume, we meet this woman who is going to Mars, leaving behind her daughter. No father is evidently in sight although there is this guy who is supposedly in charge of the young girl, but who he was I have no idea. He wasn't very good at what he was charged with undertaking, for sure. But more to the point, what woman would do that to a young child? Going to the Moon for a week or ten days, I can see, but going on a round trip to Mars for a year? That's child abuse. Her daughter feels it pointedly too, and runs away from home (she seems to be completely unsupervised), yet while I was mildly interested in the daughter's adventure, I had no interest whatsoever in the mother's non-adventure, which while commendable in that she was not your usual pale Caucasian protagonist (she was Asian) was boring.

And who, in 2035, has an encyclopedic knowledge of Russian cosmonauts from 1961 (I love the rotational symmetry of that year!) - such that she knows the middle name and exact dates of Gagarin's life milestones? This is an example of truly bad writing, and frankly, that was the weakest link here - not only did the writing make no sense, it wasn't even inspired. I really disliked this story.

Sword Art Online: Aincrad by Reki Kawahara

Rating: WORTHY!

Sword Art Online: Aincrad, known in Japanese as Sōdo Āto Onrain, which I find hilarious, is a novel which has spawned several sequels and an anime as well as the inevitable video games. I checked out the anime which is available on Netflix (as of this writing) and it wasn't watchable. I can't stand those giant, mournful eyes, and the pointy noses and chins. They look creepy to me, and it's particularly obnoxious when they have physical interactions of an intimate nature because it's like seeing children have sex. No. Just no!

Worse, the thing was subtitled and that's a no for me. Video - as defined by its very name - is a visual art, and you can't focus on that if your eyes are almost one hundred percent glued to the bottom tenth of the image trying to understand what they're saying. Not that there's much action in these minimally animated anime shows. Anime is entirely the wrong name for it; it should be called minime! But if I want to watch it, I don't want to read it at the same time! Duhh! Get a clue movie makers! If I want to read it, I'll get the book, which is what I did in this case.

Dubbed versions are also sometimes laughable because they have these middle-grade kids speaking with gruff adult voices which is beyond ridiculous, and sometimes the female voices are so spastic they make you want to tear your ears off. Suffice to say I don't watch a heck of a lot of anime!

But back to our book in progress: set in 2022, with the trope of new technology available to totally immerse gamers in virtual reality, sixteen-year-old Kazuto Kirigaya, whose game name is "Kirito", is anxious to try out this new game: Sword Art Online, of which he was a beta tester. He, along with ten thousand other players (all in Japan) is shocked to discover that once the game begins, no one cannot log out.

All of the players have been trapped by psycho game developer Akihiko Kayaba, and the sad thing is even by the end of the novel we're never given any real reason (not even a 'reason' as seen by Kayaba) why this is being done. The only way to get out is to fight your way past super monsters to the one hundredth floor. Anyone who tries to exit by means of having someone remove their telemetry head cage, will have their brain zapped by microwaves. One more thing: if you die in the game, you die in real life.

Players find they have no choice. Some hunker down and do nothing, while others form guilds to try and make their way to the top. One groups forms a huge army. Some players, such as Kirito, go it alone. Time passes and the gamers progress floor by floor. Progress isn't achieved by anything like skill or intelligence - except skill in sword-fighting, but this is what the gaming world has reduced us to: conflict and bravado.

Just like the real world, we could render the virtual worlds into anything we want, but the males in power in both these worlds have decided that testosterone rules: the real world, the gaming world, and the comic book world, and all that's important is stealing and racing cars, fighting with swords, or fighting with guns. This is the world macho men have created for us all.

Large chunks of time are bypassed in this book in the space of a sentence as the novel progresses, and suddenly we've been gaming for two years, although who is keeping track of that isn't mentioned. Maybe it's the game itself, but since they're in a virtual reality, that reality could be lying to them with each passing minute! No one considers this.

There are one or two interludes, during which Kirito meets and partners with a guild member named Asuna Yuuki, the first name of which is pretty much 'anus' backwards, unfortunately. That said, the relationship between the two, while a bit on the precipitous side, isn't too badly done, and given the stress they're under, perhaps isn't even too quick. The end was a bit abrupt and unlikely. No one who has been confined to a hospital bed essentially in a coma for two years, not even with the best and most attentive care, which few of these many thousands of gamers will have had, is going to get out of bed and start walking around five minutes after waking up!

But, despite the weaknesses, I liked the story quite a lot. I consider it a worthy read, and I was thinking I might read volume two just out of curiosity, but then I discovered that volume two consists of Kirito going back into the game (a slightly different game) to rescue Asuna, who is trapped in it! What? How is she trapped in a different game? This is my problem with series - they are by definition derivative and unimaginative, and while some authors can make a go of them, most just make a goo of them. Clearly this author can't hack it, because he's simply telling the first story over again! Except that this time it's worse, because Asuna is a maiden in distress. I'm sorry, but no! You don't get to make her a victim like this and have the guy come in and rescue her like St George saving the maiden from the dragon (exactly like that!), so further reading in this series is definitely out for me.

Count Zero by William Gibson

Rating: WARTY!

This was another audiobook. I'd read and enjoyed Neuromancer a long time ago, and Gibson followed-up with this sequel, the second in his so-called 'sprawl trilogy' but even though I also read this one, I could not remember what happened in it! That ought to have warned me right there. This one started out well enough, but after the first ten percent or so, it devolved into the most tedious rambling imaginable, and I couldn't stand to listening to it any more.

I found myself phasing it out of my consciousness, and focusing on other things instead. Since I typically only listen to audiobooks when driving, I'm used to focusing on other things, namely traffic, but I always come back to the book - it's always there on the periphery even if I'm focused on some traffic situation, but in this case it disappeared and I didn't miss it! It was minutes later that I recalled I was supposed to be listening to it, which is a sure sign the author has lost me as an audience and it's time to return this to the library and let someone else suffer through it!

The sequel to this, and the closing volume of the trilogy is Mona Lisa Overdrive, which is an awesome name for a novel - as good as Neuromancer, so I will give that a try if the library has it. Again, I've read it before, but I barely remember it, so I'm not optimistic about liking that after this experience.

Gibson's problem is that his books now seem awfully dated. They're set in a high-tech future, but now have the same quaintness that those 'predictive' books of the nineteen-fifties had: so optimistic about technology, but so wrong about how it came to be and how it's been applied. Gibson's future is relentlessly negative, which hasn't come to be and most likely will not, unless climate changed brings us down badly. He thought we'd be getting our news by fax instead of through cell phones! His future hasn't heard of personal communication devices or anything like the world wide web.

He has medical science making huge leaps in body repair and enhancement, which is slowly coming to pass, but while he futuristically has people jacking into 'cyberspace' directly, instead of interfacing through keyboards and monitors, he has them completely unprotected against viruses and worms. This isn't credible. Neither is it credible that anyone would put their brain at risk like that unless they were nuts to begin with. On the other side of the coin, he does see corporate globalization as being troublesome, but I think Melissa Scott does a better job of visualizing the future in her Trouble and Her Friends than Gibson does in anything he's written (that I've read).

The story began interestingly enough with a mercenary by the name of Turner, being blown-up and rebuilt. He's recuperating with a fine girlfriend, but he doesn't realize she's been paid to nursemaid him until Conroy shows up. An old colleague, Conroy wants Turner's help in extracting a member of one global corporation and delivering him to work for a rival company. Meanwhile, the standard Gibson style hacker, Bobby Newmark, the Count Zero of the title, almost dies when trying out some new software. He's saved by the daughter of the man who Turner and Conroy are trying to extract. Her name is Angie Mitchell, and she has the ability to "jack in" to cyberspace without a jack.

As you can see, Gibson's work has heavily influenced what came afterwards, notably, the Matrix trilogy of movies, and the Thirteenth Floor movie which got very little traction, but which is a favorite of mine. The problem with him, for me, is that he's pretty much remained static, with his one-hit wonder, Neuromancer, the only thing to have honestly impressed me of all he's written, and a large part of that was Molly Millions, aka Sally Shears, who makes only the briefest of appearances in this middle volume before playing a larger role in the finale.

I can't recommend this one, though.

Emily The Strange: Rock Issue by Rob Reger, Jessica Gruner, Kitty Remington, Brian Brooks, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not even going to dignify this drivel with a significant review because it's not worth my valuable time, and it was so awful I pretty much skimmed the whole thing. The only rock references are to antique and irrelevant musicians in this modern world and to actual rocks. I am so disappointed in this whole mini-series. It's trite, tedious, and boring beyond hellish. Skip it. Avoid this series altogether, and read instead the four novels and the newer graphic novel about Emily's band: Emily and the Strangers.

Emily The Strange: Let There Be Darkby Rob Reger, Jessica Gruner, Brian Brooks, Kitty Remington, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

This is volume three of a seriously disappointing four-comic series.

After enjoying a previous graphic novel which was my first introduction to Emily, and then all four of the novels written about her, I was really looking forward to these, but they were not at all what I had hoped for. far form it.

The problem was that this set doesn't tell a story like the others do. The title of the volume sets the theme for the content, which is a set of mini-stories which are neither entertaining nor in any way satisfying.

God made Woman in My Own Image The forerunner to Emily's duplication of herself in the Stranger and Stranger novel. Read that instead.
Emily Created Creatures of the Night Totally boring.
Scarytale theater felt staged.
Go to the Dark overshadowed by later work.
Danger in the Dark
What's Darker Than Dark? Unintellidrivel.

That was it - hardly anything and what there was of anything wasn't worth reading.

Emily The Strange: This Cover Got Lost by Jessica Gruner, Rob Reger, Buffy Visick, Brian Brooks, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

This is volume two of a disappointing four comic series I requested from the library and the only thing to distinguish it, apart from the admittedly amusing title, is the delightfully named Buffy Visick joining the writing team (along with Brian Brooks). How four writers can come up with so little in the way of entertainment is the real entertainment here.

After enjoying a previous graphic novel which was my first introduction to Emily, and then all four of the novels written about her, I was really looking forward to these, but they were not at all what I had hoped for, and nothing like the previous material I'd read in terms of quality, inventiveness, or entertainment value. I was sorry to leave this character on such a sour note, but glad I read these last, because if I'd have read these first, I would likely never have read anything else and would have been poorer for it.

For me the problem was that this set doesn't really tell a story like the others do. Instead they consist of mediocre red and black illustrations (which could be called media ocher, I guess! LOL! as long as we're about to talk of bad punning), which tell mini tales all of which seem to often revolve around poor puns which really can't be stretched into a longer story. The title of the volume sets the theme for the content, and I found it amusing on this occasion especially since graphic novel cover artist has such a big (an unwarranted) deal made over it, but a lot of the references are to the pop culture of yesteryear, many of them antiques now, so the appeal is very limited. I recognized most of the names of the rocks stars of yesteryear featured in one story, but only one of the album covers, so that entire two page spread was lost on me. Lost is what I was in this, often, so again the title works if in a way unintended by the creators.

The stories in this volume were:
The Lost Art of was an empty frame.
Lost in Vision - blind pursuit of anything like entertainment value.
Lostco This was genuinely funny and entertaining, but the sad thing is that this is the only article out of all four comics that was worth reading.
Beauty is Lost Ugly.
Lost City Should have been included in the boring first volume.
Lost in Space Too spaced out.
Scarytale Theater Bring down the curtain.
Lost my Mind Agreed. Don't write anything else until you get it back!