Squawk of the Were-Chicken by Richard J, Kendrick

I wanted to love this book. I tried so hard to love this book.

I mean “werechicken”? I was in right there. That’s such an awesome parody with so much potential for utter hilarity. Bring on the werechicken! Let it be ridiculous! Let is be terrible! Let it be hilarious! Fear it’s BA-GAWK!

And some of it is awesome. I got half way through this book and nearly put it down so many times - but each time I was about to put it down there was a lovely little moment of awesome. This lovely little apparently medieval kingdom with its distinctly agrarian feel is full of highly erudite people. I love that the teachers of this rural school turn goldilocks into an analysis of forensic investigation and encouraging small children to read fairy tales and “question the socio-political hegemony those stories are meant to perpetuate!”. Or the farmer and his love of philosophy reminding us that absence of evidence is not itself evidence of absence.

It’s hilarious, it’s really well done and it brings both a wonderful challenge to preconceptions, some nice thinking points and just this almost sublimely ridiculous feel. Every time I’m about to drop the book another moment happens and I think I can keep going

There’s also some nicely interesting themes - like Deirdre rejecting the idea of becoming an apprentice because adults have to specialise and can’t learn ALL THE THINGS instead just get to learn one thing. And there’s Deidre’s inventing which could also be fun…

Except… this would have been reinforced more if Deidre had actually shown a diverse interest in different topics rather than just inventions. Or even if her inventions meant more by the stage I finished

There’s also Fyfe - for reasons I didn’t reach (and don’t matter) Fyfe for some reason has a lot of modern 21st century cultural references pouring into his head causing everyone to consider him pretty weird. And it could be another element of funny, patently ridiculous silliness. And at times it is, it really is. And it’s definitely trying…

...

But it doesn’t succeed. And I hate to say it because it has all the ingredients of being really really good and zany. And I need some zany… but it’s just not consistently funny. We have brief moments but so much of it is a slog and not funny

Salem's Curse (Soul-Shifter Chronicles #1) by Sydney Bristow

I stopped reading this book because I was wondering when it was actually going to start and when we’d get past the painful, introduction exposition and a whole lot of really clumsy dialogue then realised I was 40% in.

When you think a book hasn’t started and you’re 40% in, that’s a problem. Everything about this book was so terribly infodumped in such horrendous detail. We were warned – we started this book with Celestina begging her evil granny to restore a week of her memories that were stolen from her several years ago. This exchange goes on for pages and pages. Honestly by the end I didn’t care what those memories were, I was so done with this argument

It doesn’t help that this whole argument was designed to tell me that granny is evil but it didn’t quite work: granny made you attend debate club and martial arts training? Extra-curriculars are hardly abusive.

There’s a laughable moment where Celestina has a mental rant about how long it took her Aunt Serena to open the door – it’s necessary because she and Justin have just spent 8 pages on the doorstep having a discussion, infodumping Justin’s powers, his history and a whole lot of random information on the doorstep. As you do. Serena has to take 20 minutes to open the door because if she didn’t Celestina would never have had chance to ramble along and Justin wouldn’t have had chance to talk about not feeling anything to a complete stranger

After which they’re allowed in to which we have 31 pages of everyone talking at each other. 31 pages. 31- and that’s when I stopped so it could have kept going and going and going like an especially dreary Duracell bunny.  It’s also so convoluted and/or repetitive as well – we literally have people stand up and describe their powers. We have a long diversion where Serena’s demon boyfriend angsts about how he has to suck lifeforce and rob people of their life – which, yes, is totally a reason to be sad but why are you having this argument in front of 2 strangers or near strangers who have literally come from where Zephora, she of the big badness, is rallying an army. This. Is. Not. The. Time. We again talk about Justin not having his memory. And we talk about trust

For pages on pages on pages Serena and Celestina talk about trusting each other – completely brushing over the whole fact Celestina has only known Selena for a week – and that was years ago – and that was then stolen from Celestina’s memory. But Serena & co act like if they keep hectoring her she will start trusting them. She also doesn’t really explain what she wants from her as a gesture of trust – she just wants… trust. And is willing to argue over and over about it. And her boyfriend powers. And Justin. And whether he can be trusted. And round we go again.

The Beast Within by Julie Evans

This book is a struggle for me – because when I write a DNF review I normally have a minimum read requirement. I try to read at least a decent percentage of the book before I put it down and say “no, I can’t do this. I won’t do this. I don’t deserve this!”

This book is a little over 100 pages long, so reading a decent chunk wouldn’t be so hard… I tried to convince myself.

No… this was horrendous. I could not endure my way to half way, reaching a quarter is out of the question

I am trying not to be excessively cruel about this. I mean I didn’t drop this book because it was offensive, insulting or outrageous. I dropped it because it has, quite simply, some of the worst writing I have ever read. Quite possibly the worst. I actually spent a decent chunk of the last week grabbing random friends and demanding they read 5 pages to check to see if I were hallucinating.

I was not. I even had to resist the urge to email the publisher back and ask if they were serious, was it April Fools, were they trolling me and/or if they realised they had an editor who was being bribed by the competition?

Here is an excerpt of text:

So when Em came around this morning with the groceries I asked her to get me, she said that I was going out with her tonight, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer. When I went to protest she held her arms up in the air, and said“Stop there before you say another word, you are coming out with me and that’s that so don’t argue, I know it was awful what happened but it was nearly four months ago, and you need to start getting out of the flat and back in the land of the living, so you are coming out with me tonight, to the new club that hasn’t been opened all that long, up in town: Crimson Moon. So I’ll pick you up about 9 o’clock, so be ready.”
“Okay but I’m not staying out too late, just for a few hours.”
“Great, that’s fine. I’ll see you later Kat, and make sure you’re ready.”
“Fine, see you later.” With that, she was gone.

Fatal Infatuation (Almost Human #1) by Melanie Nowak

I’m afraid this book review is a DNF – did not finish

Not because it was grossly offensive, not because it was completely awful, not because it enraged me or offended me or left me outraged. No, it’s a DNF because I was bored, because I saw little that engaged me or drew me in and I was just bored by the time I made it half way through the book.

It felt very paint-by-numbers to me. We have our protagonist, Felicity, going to college in a new town. Which turns out to have vampires in it (a fact she absorbs quickly) including Cain (yes, Cain. Cain.) This is the good vampire, on first meeting he saves her life from the bad vampires and the inevitable crushes begins. We’re quickly railroaded in them heading together with him finding this college student he barely knows as super compelling. We even have the extra lines about how he never ever lets himself get close to other people any more but for some reason Felicity is just too compelling for reasons that are never made clear. Oh wait, later there’s a line that he finds her attractive because she’s a human who knows he’s a vampire and isn’t wary about being all alone with him

Awww… lacking survival instincts is totally sexy guys!

This building romance has speed bumps in the form of misunderstandings, occasional worries and introspection none of which lasts more than a few pages and really doesn’t generate a whole lot of worry or introspection

Which was another irritant – I mentioned that Felicity accepted vampires quickly – well it was pretty ridiculous. It was like “vampires are real!” ok… and she moves on. She doesn’t have a whole lot of questions, she doesn’t take much time to adapt to this, she doesn’t change her behaviour a great deal, she doesn’t make many enquiries, she doesn’t talk to people about this, she doesn’t ask why this town is vampire central or whatever else is out there or whether there is anything stopping the vampires attacking. When she learns Cain is 300 years old she decides to… research the Salem Witch Trials…

…I have no idea why. Not even the slightest clue.

I’m also not entirely convinced by her characterisation – she’s a student going to college and there’s a scene where she is asked if she has Myspace

No, she doesn’t have Myspace. Because it’s the 21^st century. No-one has Myspace.

She also doesn’t have a mobile phone. Doesn’t have a computer. Doesn’t have any social media presence and didn’t even know that social media can be accessed via mobile phone

The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen by R.T. Lowe

Some DNF reviews are the hardest to write. The problem is that there’s an impression that our “DNF” books are the worst we’ve read – after all, what could be worse than a book we couldn’t manage to finish? Well it’s certainly true for some of our DNFs, but most of our absolutely terrible books are so bad that I feel almost compelled to keep reading either to fully describe all their awfulness or in an almost train-wreck like ghoulish inability to look away

This book is not awful. It is not terrible. But, at over 500 pages, it is long – and by the time I got to page 210, I, sadly, lost interest. At this point the only supernatural things we’d had were a nifty prologue and then lots of hints.

The prologue, set in classical times, was promising – we had magic and prophecy and different factions and choices and clear challenges and conflict and lots of nifty well written action. That prologue managed to keep me going for pages.

But after that we focus on Felix, a fairly ordinary teenaged boy who is clearly going to become the protagonist special one with lots of power. And there’s a lot of good things about this character – he has recently lost his parents in a terrible accident (which totally won’t be an accident) and he is an excellent depiction of someone suffering trauma. His guilt, his grief, his pain is all very realistic – it’s really well done and built into his character

What isn’t built into the character is the actual plot. And for 200 pages I’ve been following Felix around waiting for something to happen beyond him pining after a beautiful girl, playing football, drinking coffee and portraying his excellently depicted trauma.

We do get lots of fake outs. Like he’ll apparently be attacked and there’ll be action and a possibility of plot… but it’s a dream (it so wasn’t a dream. No it’s not a dream. Damnation don’t just let this lie as a dream!). And then he’ll see a woman in odd clothes on campus who runs… so he chases her. Who does that? It’s the middle of the night and he sees a strange woman and just decides to chase her?! But anyway he decides she’s a vampire or a ghost (this is NOT a magical incorporated world) and ends up exploring tunnels and crypts and then… going home.

Oh how I seethed.

Gaia's Children by Eric Hutchinson

Ok I have to preface this by the fact that this is a very long book that I did not finish because of issues I will explain. I haven't included a synopsis because the blurb for the book doesn't resemble what I've read - I'm assuming that a lot more happens so I will say if you don't find the beginning 150-200 pages the same kind of road block that I did, there's probably a much meatier story lurking behind it.

But I was forcing myself to read long before I stopped and for the sake of an honest review, it doesn't matter if your book becomes awesome in the last 300 pages, if the first 300 pages are too much of a roadblock to meet it. But if you can get past that road block, you may love it. 

Now - onwards:

Recently we took part in the Book Smuggler’s holiday Smugglivus and one of the points we raised on our Inclusive Ingrid post was:

Sometimes Inclusive Ingrid wrote this book to tell us that racism/homophobia/sexism/ableism et al is bad, guys. Let me tell you how bad it is, because it’s really really bad. Have you not seen how bad it is? Don’t worry, this book makes it very very clear. Example after example, incident after incident all explained in detail. It’s a wonderful lecture on the damage and prevalence of prejudice! Unfortunately what it isn’t, is a story. Inclusive Ingrid has sat herself down and written one long PSA, shoe-horned in some downtrodden vampires and a werewolf who wants to expound on their women’s studies notes, and neglected to actually include a plot. Or characters we don’t want to cheerfully beat to death with their own sociology 101 texts.

That’s pretty much the very definition of this book. It is there to make a point and it does to at length and with great repetition. Some time ago I read the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind which was, basically, a great big love in to Ayn Rand and the joys of libertarianism. This book is Anarchism version – one long polemic on how anarchy, no government etc is such a wonderful thing conveyed through an alien living in a utopian society describing his world and showing us the way to fix our world.

Now, I’ll add another preface by saying I am a very liberal person – I am, in many ways, the commie-pinko-socialist the right wingers love to hate – so many of the points the author was trying to raise definitely resonated with me: environmental destruction, wealth inequality, lack of representation in democracy, the way politicians try to hold power – so, no I’m not putting this book down because it clashes with my political views because in some ways it doesn’t (until the libertarianism raises its ugly head).

But it is mind numbingly naïve and simplistic to a point where I’m not sure whether the author even believes what they’re writing or is trying to parody them

Most of this lecturing is delivered by having an alien, Albert, describe his society to many people, starting with married couple Tom and Samantha. After many many many many lectures (and shenanigans from a Completely Awful Journalist) a television interview happens which is very very very long and this, in turn, leads to a big societal uprising that Tom and Samantha lead

In some ways it was very useful that it was an alien that communicated their world and society because it required a completely alien world and an alien society for me to believe it was workable. The inherent practicality of it that even the book has to acknowledge is backed by a lot of special alien woo-woo to cover any of the inconveniences that putting humans in this system would bring (not least of which are the aliens not needing cooked food, food storage, medicine, sanitation, construction, recorded history, literature, written communication at all, transport, education – so much more). Basically, the alien physiology (and low resource nature of their world) renders any kind of collective undertaking unnecessary. They live as free-thinking individuals without leadership, hierarchy, government or laws because absolutely nothing in their society or world requires collective effort. And even this doesn’t follow through in their depiction – because this society with virtually stone age tool use (and even that is helped by an incredibly convenient ecology that produces easily customisable items) has still managed to produce chemical and biological weapons… somehow.

The Basilisk's Creed Omnibus by Eme Strife

The world is torn by a series of strange and random events. Matt, leader of the Golden Reapers, has been tasked to investigate this – and it may all be linked to the strange woman who visited him and vanished without a trace.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with this book, starting almost from the beginning which didn’t bode well for my finishing it and, alas, I didn’t

We begin with our two main characters – Matt and Eli – being transported randomly and for unexplained reasons to each other in a dream. The following 15% of the book describes how hot they find each other.

That’s pretty much it. We have Eli briefly exploring her new surroundings, then seeing Matt and then DUMP page after page after page of how sexy the other looks/sounds/smells. It just goes on and on and on and on and includes such gems of Matt deciding to call this complete stranger “kitten” and betting he could “make her pussy purr” and saying she has a “pretty collarbone” and how close she was to “making his dick blow”. Apparently by just standing their throwing out sex scent. Dare I say that sounds rather… premature? Throw in him grabbing her and not letting her go even as she said “no”, only thinking better of it when he outright asks her if she’s a virgin; all in all we have a really unpleasant scene. This was continued when they woke up and Eli described how wet she was.

Well, I knew nothing about Eli’s job, what she did or why or where she was or what mattered to her – but I knew she’s just woken up wet and sticky. I have to say, it’s not in my top 10 most favourite introduction to a character.

I nearly stopped there, but I held on and we started into Eli’s life working to make ends meet (interjected with random inserts of Matt’s hotness) and on to Matt who proceeded to have a series of really really clumsy monologues (with random inserts of Eli’s hotness).

The writings style is rambling, confused and reads like a stream of consciousness exercise. I think the book has tried to capture someone’s thoughts without any edit, as if someone just sat and babbled every thought that came into their head – it’s lost, hard to read, full of distracting asides and not very fun. Every now and then the narrative is broken by random expletives (Eli also likes to throw in random “Ugh!” in her narrative) – usually in threes on and separate lines. In fact that happens a lot – something will happen then they’ll curse (or this supernatural general of the Reaper army will invoke the name of Christ when they’ve already rambled on about the “Holy Basilisk” which is just shoddy world building) then next line curse again, then, next line, another rambling expletive.

They both also have a very immature voice which seems odd for their ages – both apparent and in reality. Matt in particular sounds like a petulant and angry teenager, not a commander of a supernatural army. It all draws out the narrative, makes everything clumsy and the characters entirely unbelievable as reasonable, let alone capable, adults.

City of Roses Vol 1 "Wake Up" by Kip Manley

Jo has good friends, she has her tiny apartment and she has her awful job cold calling people. It’s not a great life but she manages – until a night out partying leads to a duel with a fae knight

Which she wins.

She is now responsible for Ysabel. The Bride. Fairy princess and the centre of so much intrigue – and it’s Jo’s job to keep her safe. And fed. And entertained.

This book has an excellent concept – Portland split between 4 very different fae factions, the political manoeuvring between them, the ritual and the scheming and the propriety all maintained. And under that the underlying game of it all, with none of them actually able to cause real damage to each other – until the rules of the game change.

Then there’s the princess, forced by circumstances to live with Jo in her tiny apartment and join her on her dead end job. A faerie princess forced into such low standards – forced to work in a call centre – how can that not be a recipe for hijinks and shenanigans (and interesting class commentary)?

The concept is great. The idea for the story is great. The characters have potential.

The execution is appalling.

Firstly, while I can see why the author wants to write this story, it simply doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why the Chariot entered a duel with Jo, I don’t understand how that was remotely to do with honour (hey, let’s hit a civilian with a sword for HONOUR!), I don’t understand the whole ridiculous “losing” of it.

I don’t understand why Jo played along. I don’t understand why Jo seemed to take the whole existence of the fae as something so minor and easy to get used to. I don’t understand why, if she had chosen to play their games, she didn’t take the Out that was offered her since it would have cost her nothing.

I don’t understand why she allowed the princess to move in with her. I don’t understand why, as a woman of such limited means, she accepted the idea of monetarily supporting the princess.

I don’t understand why Jo has so few questions. She never asks about the fae, the courts, why they are there, how long, what they mean even what a Gallogas is (which is apparently her).

It doesn’t make sense.

The Elements by Zhu Hsia

Kayleigh, spoiled teenager to extremely rich parents, seeks to get away from it all, to start afresh. She finds Draker, an isolated private school and perfect for a fresh start – but the school harbours many secrets she never expected

Well, that was… pretty damn dreadful, I’m afraid. So much so that I just couldn’t finish it, I got to half way and I put it down, refusing to go further. The whole book made so little sense to me – no, the people made so little sense to me. Especially the protagonist

Our protagonist is Kayleigh and we’re introduced to her by her getting out of her ever loving mind drunk and vomiting on people in a swanky party her so-very-important-parents forced her to attend. Her parents are evil, by the way. Except we don’t actually see them do anything evil (though they do object to public vomiting on expensive suits from their school-aged daughter which is just so unfair) and, coupled with Kayleigh’s POV make this seem a lot like an extremely spoiled rich child having temper tantrums. This is not endearing.

Because she is flouncing with her parents she decides to go to a private school. No, really. She looks up a school online based on the fact it’s secluded and doesn’t allow mobile phones. That is her criteria for which school she will attend. No, really.

Having found said school she manages to enrol, pay the fees and attend not only without her parents’ knowledge or consent – but also managing to get out of the house and to the school before her parents even come home from work. This secluded private school has… astonishingly lax admission standards.

It’s also in a castle. Her parents dream of her going to Harvard, so, along with general word use, I’m assuming she’s American. I have no idea why the school is a castle (with four poster beds as well). It has very few rules though, the chief among them being “don’t go in the forest”. Kayleigh resolves to follow these rules since she’s in a new place.

Which means trying to explore said forbidden forest she is repeatedly told is dangerous twice in her first week. Especially when she hears mysterious and creepy howling coming from it. One of these attempts is in the middle of the night, by moonlight with no torch or other source of artificial lighting. Had she run into a werewolf and it had eaten her, the werewolf would have then howled “DARWIN AWARD!” to the moon.

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

With the death of the Berliner, Jake is the last living werewolf. With the next full moon, he will be hunted and he will be killed.

He’s actually rather looking forward to it. The centuries weigh heavily on him, he has little reason to go on living and even less actual inclination. Unfortunately, there are a number of people who would rather he didn’t go gently into the grave and are determined to keep him alive.

On the first page of this book we have the following quote:

“I sipped, swallowed, glimpsed the peat bog plashing white legs of the kilted clan Macallan as the whisky kindled in my chest. It’s official. You’re the last. I’m sorry. I’d known what he was going to tell me. Now that he had, what? Vague ontological vertigo. Kubrick’s astronaut with the severed umbilicus spinning away all alone into infinity … At a certain point one’s imagination refused. The phrase was: It doesn’t bear thinking about. Manifestly it didn’t.”

Which is excellent, I applaud – I mean, really, the publisher might as well have put a sticker on the front page declaring “Warning: Horrendously Overwritten Pretentious Crap Lurks Within!”

But first, let me cover some positives:

I liked several elements of Harley. He was a non-stereotypical gay man – his life was seedy and dark, but this whole book is seedy and dark. He was interesting and he had genuine affection for Jake who, in turn, genuinely cared for him. Does that affection result in Harley being exploited as we see with many gay friends of straight people in fiction? Yes it does – but surprisingly Jake even acknowledges that:

“Harley, a man who’d devoted his life to my protection, who’d loved me, whose love I’d exploited when it suited and stonewalled when it didn’t…”

Does it make a trope ok that it is acknowledged? No, but it helps a lot, especially when the wrongness of it is recognised. Of course, Harley is also repeatedly victimised in this book and, ultimately, his unpleasant fate is some extra grist for Jake’s eternal angst – but until then he’s a good, humanised character with a real connection.

Secondly, I like how every character is humanised – even the prostitutes that Jake sleeps with (because he is punishing himself never to know love but has the absolutely-mandatory-in-fiction werewolf horniness) have large rambling insights to what makes them people, turning them into more than sex objects. Some of the insight truly opens up a character – like Jake’s ex-wife so full of self-assurance and standing above the slut-shaming she experiences to live life the way she wishes, on her terms.

The same applies to his victims – which brings us to another element I like – the world building and the concepts. The werewolves as monsters is always good to revisit, the blurred morality of this book and the question of whose side we should be on is a new twist and I especially love the idea of werewolves consuming lives, living the experiences of their victims in the utmost detail, humanising every one they eat.

This book also does an excellent job of portraying the ennui of a long life. Of how the centuries of existence blur together, how nothing is new, how there is so little of interest left, how everything is just a new version of an old thing. I have never seen a book that expressed so well the sheer, painful wait of centuries of experience.

Right – all of these are good – but all of these are expressed in the most over written, convoluted style I have ever read. Ever. Literally, this is the most impenetrable prose I’ve ever had to try and mine through.

The author is certainly not without skill – many passages and wonderfully elaborate and elegant in their perfect word choice. It’s nice to find authors who CAN write extremely long winded books and still make it good because they are that good at crafting words. But it feels like this author took that skill and then decided to dial the book to 11. It’s too much.

“I looked out of the window. The snow was coming down with the implacability of an Old Testament plague. In Earl’s Court Road pedestrians tottered and slid and in the cold swirling angelic freshness felt their childhoods still there and the shock like a snapped stem of not being children any more.”

Or, to put it another way, he looked out the window and saw it was snowing.

“Back into the urinous doorway, however, I found myself thinking…. Of the refreshing abruptness with which financial institution – B & B among them – had collapsed in the Crunch. Adds for banks and building societies had continued to run days, sometimes weeks after the going concerns had gone. For many it was impossible to believe watching the green-jacketed lady in the black bowler hat with her smile fusing sexual and financial know-how, that the company she represented no longer existed. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, obviously, the death of certainties. I was in Europe when Nietzsche and Darwin between them got rid of God, and in the United states when Wall Street refused the American Dream to a broken suitcase and a worn-out shoe. The difference with the current crisis is that the world’s downer has coincided with my own…”

This appallingly long winded splurge of verbiage happens after Jake ducks into a door way to avoid gunfire. Yes, he’s in the middle of a fire fight and has time to dwell on this head-ache causing waffle.

Witchell: A Symphony by F. Trantham

Tavin is an exile from his community and his people – the mages. Born with only a scrap of magic and barely considered adult, he is content to remain in the human world, desperately seeking normality and to forget that the Mageplane ever existed

Except soon it might not, which, with the return of his brother, brings Mage politics to his doorstep and the sudden need to protect his friends from the potential fall out of desperate mages seeking anyway to preserve their home

Take an Olympic sized swimming pool

Fill it with thick, dark molasses.

Attach heavy weights to your wrists and ankles.

Now try to swim to the other side. This experience will approach the pacing issues of this book. When I reached the half way point and absolutely nothing of consequence had happened – indeed, most of the cast don’t even leave one house – I was beyond tired of it and stopped reading. I normally can read a 300 page book in less than two days – this is a bit longer than that, but it was 4 days before I hit the half way mark because it was so slow and I found myself finding excuses not to read.

It’s not that there are no redeeming features of this book – far from it. The world setting is fascinating. The idea of a parallel mage realm with its own culture that is so very archaic and formal and both alien and impressive is really well built. The consequences of it collapsing and dumping all of these magically powerful but culturally inept people into the real world would be an epic thing to explore. The nature of magic is really well described and built with lots of complexities and implications as to how it works, why the Mageplain is dying and what that means for Mage politics and conflicts and how the various powers manifest and interact and truly work. There has been a lot of effort put into make a very comprehensive magic system that is very real and fully fleshed out

But all of this is explained in a serious of truly tedious info-dumps, many of them nothing more than convoluted internal monologues with all this information just randomly splurged onto the page. Much of the rest is explained in a series of painfully awkward lectures from informed characters to the ignorant – without even the excitement of the ignorant being shocked are surprised by the revelation. The fact that magic exists and there are alternate universes out there is taken in stride with about the same level of shaken surprise one would expect from discovering a new and interesting condiment at the dinner table. The book is positively allergic to any kind of drama – any kind of action – that doesn’t involve Tavin’s trainwreck of a love life.

The End by G. Michael Hopf

Gordon is a family man and an ex-marine in an America that is becoming steadily more beleaguered by terrorism. Until the last blow – an EMP airburst shutting down virtually all electronics in the entire country. Already having learned harsh lessons about who deserves his protection, Gordon acts quickly to protect his family before the world falls apart

This book is a DNF.

I had high hopes for it – I love dystopian fiction, I do like me a good apocalypse and I’ve seen previous books and shows take on the idea of all electronics being knocked out and what that means for modern society and was interested to see what this book’s take on it would be.

They say curiosity kills the cat. Alas, it can also give a reviewer a headache, a nasty surprise and the decided urge to empty a brewery.

As with most DNFs, there are many reasons why I don’t like this book, but the first and main one is Gordon. The protagonist, may the road of his life be liberally scattered with legos for ever more.

Gordon is the ultimate Gary Stu. What he believes is true, no matter how dubious, what he does is wise, no matter how silly and his insight is always well received by right-thinking people, even if it’s foolish or even evil. When the power first goes out in San Diego, Gordon knows the whole US has been brought down. Why? Why, when even the military’s own expert says that the scale of the EMP vastly exceeds any models they have ever seen? There is no way he could possibly know that the EMP had not just hit the city – or even just the neighbourhood -  and that help was arriving quickly; but no, Gordon KNOWS. And on the strength of that… he ACTS (including dropping $2k on emergency supplies). And everyone falls in with him, following his instructions and accepting his decisions (like having his whole family turning their garden into a lavatory) with only the most minimal of protests.

Not only does he ACT, but he’s already made plans for this kind of eventuality – like cashing in their pension and keeping the money in his attic. Without telling his wife. Classy guy – and when she finds out there is, again, minimal conflict. I have to say, I think most spouses would have invested in a divorce lawyer or some pruning shears, but she has only mild consternation about her husband screwing their whole future for a paranoid survivalist fantasy without telling her. When he decides to pull a gun on a guy asking for help, again, the people with him make a token protest then get in line.

Gordon is also an arsehole. This is probably apparent above – Gordon makes decisions and everyone else has to get in line (not that they’d ever REALLY disagree with Gary Stu). But Gordon has also decided (after some evil liberal machinations had him kicked out of the military for the piffling crime of shooting an unarmed Iraqi – oh, I mean “Haji” – more on that later) that he’s dedicating his life to looking after his family. His philosophy is basically “screw everyone else” regardless of need. This includes, in the few hours after the pulse, a man who needs to get his heavily bleeding pregnant wife to the hospital. When he asks Gordon’s friend with a working truck to help, Gordon pulls a gun. He needs that truck to haul groceries, damn it, we have no time for your dying wife and child! Yeah… classy guy

The World Below (Chronicles of the Goblin King #1) by Mike Phillips

Mitch is struggling, after an industrial accident left him badly scarred with few resources left. He resorts to busking, beginning to build a new life with new friends – and things are looking up when he finds a woman who likes him and is able to look past the scars. This new life seems to be really beginning.

Except the woman, Elizabeth isn’t entirely human – and she has something that the nefarious and domineering Baron wants – and he’s willing to extort a wizard, Hume to help him get it. Mitch is some easy collateral damage in his schemes.

On the plus side? We have the beginnings of a wide, gritty world with an oppressive dark underworld populated by a myriad of supernatural creatures and quite possibly a dark anti-hero in the making

And I stopped this book at about page 210 out of 290. I thought about pushing those last 80 pages, but I was already bored and skimming and I truly was not interested in continuing for one more page. I was bored, I didn’t care about the characters, I didn’t care about the story and the world was broad but had no depth.

We spent most of the book following Mitch – the young man who became a busker after his terrible industrial accident (with some very unsubtle “rawr, Unions are bad!” rhetoric around it). The young man who has very little, if any real connection to the supernatural. The supernatural kind of happens around him or we’ll start to follow a story about one of the actual supernatural beings – and then it’s back to Mitch and his guitar and his friends and generally a whole lot of minutiae I have been given zero reason to care about. That’s what gets me – it’s 200 pages in and only now is Mitch having the Supernatural reach his storyline in an overt way: and that’s because he fed a cat that turned out not to be a cat. All this time spent on him and I really do not care about his character and find him a massive distraction to the actual story.

And the other characters who are involved in the quest to find the MacGuffin are just not that well developed in comparison – or at all. We have the Baron who is an evil, despotic… thing. No I have no idea what he is or what he can do, it’s never explained. He just is. And he wants his MacGuffin.

There’s Hume, the wizard who could be an interesting character but, alas, we have to spend more time with Mitch badly scarred by the terribad evil unions. Hume has a sister who is Damselled that forces him to work with the Baron to rescue her. He glares and grumbles a lot – and looks for the MacGuffin, again no real character

And then there’s Elizabeth, who has the McGuffin and plays magic pixie dream girl to Mitch. That’s about it – she has the MacGuffin but we don’t know how or why, or even fully what she is or what that means or anything about her other than the fact she’s not put off by Mitch’s scars and is rather whimsical. Manic Pixie Dream girl – I mean elf. Manic Pixie Dream Elf. Or possibly fae.

Master of Plagues by Dewey B Reynolds

I try not to DNF books. Part of me always feels like I have been defeated by an abominable foe when I do not finish a book. I become driven to continue, to keep reading no matter what – literature will not defeat me!

Alas, sometimes it happens. But usually I fight the good fight for a long time before putting down the book, and this was no exception

The problem was this book came out swinging. Within the first 10 pages the book launched its first assault on my brain and it didn’t stop. Never did I think a book would lay siege to my tolerance for even the worst hacked together writing so early on. I should probably have put the book down right then and written it off as a book I simply could not read. But I wasn’t one to quit the field of battle without at least trying to fight!

By page 25 it was clear I was losing, my meagre defences were falling, I was putting the book down every other page to gape in shock at the atrocities perpetrated on the page. I had so many notes I think I had written more than the author

One page 50 I was well and truly defeated only momentum and a kind of stunned disbelief kept me going

20 pages later, I admitted defeat, I could not read one more page of this book. Raise the white flag, the writing had killed me.

And it was the writing. I have only actually come across one book that had worse writing – and I’m pretty certain that was written by a non-native speaker whose English was very poor.

We open with a group of 8 university students playing a wicked prank on the protagonist. This prank takes 3 chapters of the most painfully long writing imaginable. Every one of the 8 pranksters is described at pointless length. They each discuss the prank, then repeat the discussion, then repeat it again, then again and then yet another time. For some bemusing reason each one decides to tell the other what their phobias are (rats, snakes, bats, hurricanes, bees, ants, tornadoes, sharks).

Here is a sample of the scintillating dialogue:

“This very room gives me the creeps. In case you didn’t know, rats, especially the really big ones, drive me nuts. I just saw one with big glowing eyes.”
“You’re from New York city, Anthony. New Yorkers can’t help by have a big fear of rats. They’ll bite a whole into you the size of the Grand Canyon.”
“You’re right, Prudence. Us New Yorkers know about big rats.”
“I take it that big rats are your biggest fear, like your number one phobia.”
“Yes they are!” Anthony spoke with a tremor.
“Know what my biggest phobia is?”
“Tell me.”
“Bats!” Prudence detested
Anthony ceased from his brief tremor. He couldn’t believe what his ears had absorbed. “Did I hear you say that bats were your biggest phobia?”
“Yes,” Prudence rectified.
“Guess bat and rats can both be creepy”

{skip more damn musings about bats which no-one cares about}

Dana belted out a strong giggle. “You guys, we’ve all got something that we’re in fear of. For example, I’m scared to death of bees. “

After this, Megan tells us she’s afraid of ants. Which she’s already told us, but more repetition is needed, and Anthony sums up with this line

 “Then it’s official, guys. “ Anthony affirmed. “I’m scared as hell of rats, especially the really big ones. Megan is scared as hell of ants. Dana is scared as hell of bees. Prudence is frightened out of her mind of bats.”

Note that this agonising section of dialogue happens AFTER Anthony has already told us he’s scared of rats (twice) and after Dana has explained her fear of bees. But in case you missed it the first 3 times they said it, Anthony’s there nicely summing everything up for us. This dialogue – complete with random word uses like that bemusing use of “rectified” and belting out strong giggles and ears absorbing things rather than hearing them – is typical of the entire book. Everyone talks like this. Everyone. Then they just repeat everything they’ve said all over again.

This is just 4 of the plotters – for some unknown reason 2 of the other plotters, across town in a pet shop, decide to talk about their phobias as well. At great great great length. Then we move to the last 2 plotters – separate from all 6 of the others – and they’re talking about their phobias as well. At incredible length, yet again.

Requiem for Blood by Alexandra Hope

 

Olivia grew up in a cult – a cult lead by her mother, Mar, and is dedicated to becoming vampires. Subsisting nearly entirely on a diet of human blood, they enjoy many advantages, but the final goal of changing and becoming a true vampire still eludes them, they need that one last key.

Olivia and her friend have many doubts about the lifestyle the cult espouses and even more trouble with the daily life and the combat regime until Olivia finally reaches her 17^th birthday and her rite of passage- hunting a human.

Which is when Erika the Kitsune gets involved, Olivia achieves her cult’s goal, bodies start dropping and she’s briefly reunited with her estranged sister and her compelling fiancé. Then more bodies start hitting the ground and it’s a very steep learning curve.

This book has a really unique premise and world setting – which is always refreshing to see and doubly so with any book about vampires. There are so many vampire books out there that someone could write a book with vampire were platypus which cruelly beak their victims to death and it’s probably already been done 3 times.

So to mix up the kitsune and the vampires, to have this unique origin story and this truly odd concept of a human vampire cult, surviving on drinking blood and slowly developing minor vampire like abilities while seeking their end goal of finally finding a way to transform and you have a really unique concept.

This kept me reading the book for a long time because it was so refreshing and so imaginative.

But, in the end, I stopped at 70% and couldn’t go any further. Yes, I was defeated and this book became a DNF. There were several reasons – none of which would probably have defeated me on their own but together it was too much to tolerate

Bloodspell by Amalie Howard

I can’t. It’s no use, I just can’t finish this book. The characters, their contrived, useless conflicts, the intriguing world that is hopelessly undeveloped and, above all, the immense cliché abuse just defeat me, Not only can I not finish this book but, since I was tempted to DNF it after a mere 10%, going any further would be unfair to the other DNF books that I finally gave up on.

Now, saying you’re tempted to give up by 10% is pretty extreme – but this book begins with so many of the classic clichés, tropes and general fails that I was cringing.

Firstly, we have a prologue paragraph telling us there’s a law that forbids vampires and witches from consorting.

Right, folks, who can tell me what the plot is about? If you answered “it’s about a vampire and a witch falling in love” have a cookie. I have no idea why we have this new habit of giving away the plot in the opening prelude, especially when you have damn little plot, but it has to end.

Then we have a girl, bullied at school with dead parents (mark off two more points on your checklist). She has super special powers she just doesn’t want because she wants to be normal, wooooe! Yes, it’s another teenager with super powers who just wants to be like everyone else – like every teenager never. Mark another cliché off the checklist. Oh and she has a book that may guide her about her specialness but she just can’t bring herself to read it because it’s just too awful

She goes to a new school and meets a vampire (no he’s not labelled as such but after the opening prelude why even pretend this is supposed to be a secret). And ZOMG he’s hot and awesome and hot and sexy and hot and has an amazing voice and he’s hot – this goes on for a few paragraphs.

Then we switch to his POV  - actually, brief interlude for a side rant: the book keeps doing this. There’s no chapter break or anything else, we’re suddenly in Christian’s head rather than Victoria’s – suddenly her thoughts are a mystery and his are an open book. Then we whiplash back again – no rhyme or reason, no necessity, just constantly switching back and forth clumsily to allow more exposition

Trickster (Ustari Cycle #1) by Jeff Somers

 

Lem is a trickster, which means that he uses his own blood to perform magic. This usually amounts to conning the non magical around him. He is always looking for the next big score but when he follows up on a tip, Lem ends up on the magical radar of an archmage, who is far more powerful than him. Suddenly, Lem finds himself in way over his head.  The archmage is planning a massive spell for which much blood must be spilled but Lem's interference, which led to the escape of  Claire, one of the intended victims, has put everything in jeopardy.  Lem must now balance his need to stick to his magical morals and his desire to stay alive.  Will he turn Claire over to save his life?

I am going to admit that I didn't get very far in this book.  After reading one hundred pages, in which women essentially were either whores or dead victims and Lem's sidekick person of colour reduced to a simpleton, I simply could not read another page.  Though it is obvious that Claire's character is meant to evolve into something more, the treatment of the women who had appeared thus far in Trickster, simply didn't give me hope for a good portrayal.  It felt like Claire was being set up to be a heroine that Lem saved. 

Lem said repeatedly that he is different from the other mages because he only uses his own blood. It's clear that this a moral choice but at least as far as I had read in Trickster, no explanation was offered.  We were told repeatedly that Lem's way of life is extremely difficult and it is clear that he is barely surviving and so I could not help but wonder why he remained involved at all?  Would it really have been that bad to get a job? I think that question needs to be answered, especially because Lem outright refused to go any further in his training despite being told he is capable of so much more than the cheap tricks he engages in to survive.

Lem's side kick is Mags - an indigenous person. It's absolutely not original to have a person of colour reduced to a sidekick to a White protagonist.  From Somers description, it's clear that Mags is meant to be viewed as neurologically atypical, yet throughout the book, he is described as a simpleton, who seems to be lucky be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Throughout the novel, Mags is only praised for his strength and is continually attacked for his lack of intelligence. This is absolutely racist, abelist and offensive. In fact, Mags is essentially led around by Lem and seems to do his bidding like a helpless puppy.

This novel has been described as gritty, but from my understanding, all that makes it so, are the dead women and the disgusting treatment of Mags. Lem is drawn as a sort of anti-hero, but there is nothing that about him that is even remotely compelling.  His constant treatment of Mag made him unlikeable. 

I simply could not finish this book.  Between the virulent sexism and ableism, it was simply one fail after another.  If after 100 pages and the author has not given us a significant well drawn female character, there is little hope for change.  I have no interest in seeing women constantly described as victims and whores.  The story itself wasn't strong enough to overlook the social justice failures and in the end, I found myself wanting to do anything but finish reading this book.  Dealing with darker elements in any society does not have to be about bolstering privilege and oppression, but you wouldn't know that from reading Trickster.

The writing itself seemed to move slowly and read like a cheap B movie.  The kind that is so bad you're sorry that you paid money to rent it.  At some point, you just have to accept that you've wasted your time and move on and that is why I have decided to DNF this book.  

Review: Fade by A.K. Morgen

 Some books you sit and read and only stop when you finish or when you have them physically dragged from your hands. Some books take an effort of will to put down. Some books you make time for. Some books you read whenever you have a moment.

This was not one of those books, alas. Early on I was struggling to keep reading. By 30% I had to go back and re-read as I realised I’d started skimming the book rather than reading it. At 40% I kept getting up to get a drink of water, to make coffee, to do any number of random, pointless tasks in order to avoid the book. I tried to force myself to keep on reading – but it was forcing myself.

At 55% I stopped, I wasn’t remotely enjoying myself, I was having to force myself to sit and read, if I didn’t catch myself I was skipping and skimming and, frankly, it wouldn’t be fair to the other books I DNFed to keep reading this book.

The main reason for this was the writing. Even Barney has never seen prose this purple. The book cover should be a deep, shocking magenta to reflect the content. I have never read a book that is so overwrought, long winded, dramatic and just pure purple in its writing. I found it impenetrable, more than a little annoying and it stopped me both enjoying the plot and forming any kind of connection with the characters.

I can’t adequately describe the plot without including an except so – this is what happens when the protagonist, Arionna, sees Dace for the first time across a university quad:

He was dressed casually in jeans and boots, with a light black jacket zipped up his chest and a beanie cap on his need. Nothing out of the ordinary at all, just another guy in the parade that had already passed by, but something… shifted… as soon as my eyes landed on him.

A warm breath brushed across my neck, my stomach fluttered.. I wanted to revel in the buoyant feelings whirling through me, but didn’t get the chance.

Longing swept through me like a river, melting everything I thought I knew about myself, and reordered it. Pieces shifted, pulled apart, and came back together in new ways, unburdened by the little things that had accumulated over the years. The idiosyncrasies, the pet peeves, the ingrained behaviours and thought processes,.. all vanished for a moment. A massive hole opened somewhere inside me, deep down in a place I’d never known existed before.

{……. I’m going to cut a page here because she goes on and on about this hole…}

The guy tensed as though as though he felt my eyes on him and turned in my direction. He stood no less than a hundred feet from me, too far away to see clearly, but every feature of his face swam into focus as if I’d called his appearance from the depths of my memory. He was gorgeous, with messy golden hair, strong cheekbones, and a sharp defined jawline. Even his vivid, emerald eyes and the small scar above his right eyebrow were crystal clear to me.

I told myself to stop staring and look away. That grief had scrambled my brains, and I only imagined things that weren’t there
I didn’t listen to that little voice of reason
The boy lifted his head

Time seemed to slow, stretching before me in ways I couldn’t comprehend
Our eyes met across the distance

I stopped breathing, heat weaving through me in could, burning away the hole I’d just discovered and leaving me wrapped in a soft blanket if warmth. A thousand different sensations whispered through me like a summer’s breeze, freezing me in place. Joy, fear, loss, hope, sorrow…I couldn’t separate one emotion from the other.

Before I even had the chance to try, a current of energy washed through me, pulling a gasp from my lips. Strength and familiarity tripled through the air between us. The powerful sensation swarmed over me like a thousand little teeth nibbling on my skin, and shook me to the core.

I knew him.

I think maybe I’d always known him, and I didn’t know how. But I desperately wanted to know, because for the first time in weeks, being awake didn’t hurt. Grief wasn’t breaking my heart, my eyes weren’t burning with unshed tears, and my head didn’t hurt from lack of sleep.

I felt… peaceful. As if looking at this beautiful boy washed away everything that happened since mom died. I felt right in a way I never had before, not only unburdened and aware, but complete. Like the gaping hole inside me had filled with him.

This goes on for a staggering 4 more pages in my Kindle. And it’s not the only one – whether it’s grief for her mother or returning to think about Dace, we constantly get these extremely long, over descriptive, flowery, dramatic internal monologues. Rather than truly conveying emotion, it’s actually a barrier. I had trouble feeling or empathising with Ariona’s grief over the death of her mother because the writing was so overwrought it felt fake, dramatized. If someone described their grieving process in such an excessive manner it’d come across more as narcissistic attention seeking than genuine grief or pain.

Review of Pulse Beneath the Sanguine Moon by Shannon Francisco

Every once and awhile, despite our best intentions, we come across a book that for various reasons, we simply cannot finish and unfortunately, Pulse falls into this category.  I kept waiting for the book to go somewhere, but it seemed irrevocably lost in the inane.  There was absolutely no sense of pacing, or any indication that it would ever verge away from insipid blather into a real plot.

The characters all presumably had to be at least 21, as they were legally drinking in a bar, but they spoke like they were 14.  I could tell that Francisco was going for edgy and slightly counter culture, but the writing fell flat time and time again. It further didn't help that Francisco introduced us to a plethora of characters, which quickly became hard to follow because there was  little characterization, which made all them all sort of morph into one.  We got tiny details about individual characters but they were nonsensical facts, which told you absolutely nothing about who they really were. Some of the relationships were explained with flashbacks, but the transition was clumsy and poorly written.

The main character, Skylar Roth, is one of the most irritating protagonists that I have come across in a long time. Much of her time seems to be spent either angsting about her ex boyfriend, or her current boyfriend Alekz.  I am going to stop for a second to ask what the point is of taking an ordinary name like Alex and spelling it differently is?  It's still going to be Alex.  Skylar and Alexz of course have their own relationship angst, when she discovers him levitating one day.  She then spends the next twenty-four hours obsessing, calling and texting him. She is extremely insecure about any woman who could possibly find Alexz attractive because other women are the competition. It is absolutely impossible for Skylar to have faith in Alekz's fidelity and she rumbles instead about girls needing to hop off her boyfriend's junk.

Review: Ancient Canada by Clinton Festa (Part of the FMB Blog tour)

Book Description:

“Ancient Canada is a fantasy epic and a story of mythology for an alternate Canada.  Because of her unique ability to see life and death, Lavender is exiled from her home.  With the help of her sister Marigold, she survives in the wild using her gift.  The two encounter various characters and creatures along their journey, not all human and not all friendly.  Each chapter is narrated by one of these characters or creatures, sharing their personal story as well as their encounter of the two sisters.  Together the chapters link to bring Lavender and Marigold’s epic, the mythological story of Ancient Canada.”

This book is fascinating in many ways and the author has an incredible imagination. Set in an ancient land of semi-medieval technology, it resembles fantasy more than anything, while there are shreds of our world there, especially in the names, the world is extremely different from ours.

From Lichen to the feathermen, there is a lot of creativity here. We have a vast array of characters and creatures that largely dodge previous stories and patterns we have seen over and over again in fantasy. Lavender’s gift is also pretty unusual – not least of which because the power creep that is so common was resisted. Yet, despite not expanding her powers to control life and death, we still see a lot of very creative uses for it – from writing their book about poisonous food, to using it as a guide for safety, avoiding those paths where her death is imminent in favour of safer ones. It’s a unique way to give someone the limited ability of a Seer.

This is also a book that analyses a lot of issues (albeit not in a way that I found ideal). We have in depth discussions on the nature of evil, on passive and aggressive personalities, on ways to negotiate a homogenous culture when one is Other, on class, on welfare, on being fat, on sexism, on privatisation vs nationalisation, on mental illness, on freedom, on selfishness and self-perception, on self-worth, on the value of diversity and many more. Every story had at least one intense debate or examination of one of these concepts and more besides. There’s a lot of deep thinking in this book and a lot of urges to think as well – it encourages the reader to explore these concepts and follow the character’s paths.

Marigold and Lavender also work extremely well together. Lavender is overly serious, but Marigold is fun and often hilariously funny, adding a lightness to the book (albeit, also adding considerable, inappropriate distractions as well).

The story is as much a story of the world as much as it is Lavender and Marigold, with many of the chapters focused on the countries and cultures and creatures within it rather than just their story. It was a sight seeing tour in many ways – occasionally creating redundancies and distractions, but serving to show case these lands and the debates that arise from them

The problem is that this book has a writing style I don’t care for. It is over-written, it may be the most over-written book I’ve read – and I’ve read Dickens. The most glaring of this is the descriptions – things are described in incredible, and unnecessary, detail; people talk in extremely over-wordy and stilted fashion, conversations more a series of speeches delivered to each other. Frankly, the book is over 700 pages long and could quite possibly be halved without loss.