Pantalones, TX: Don't Chicken Out by Yehudi Mercado

Pantalones, TX is really... um. Strange. It's like a Cartoon Network reject, with lots of potty humor, random stuff, and weird comic-booky action sequences. Definitely meant for that age bracket, too.

Basically, it's about this boy named Chico Bustamante who's a Bart Simpson underachiever slash superhero of his Texas town, Pantalones. (Don't ask.)

The sheriff is this mean nasty dude named Cornwallis who is determined to get Chico in trouble, even if it means resorting to framing him. I know, right? An adult breaking the law to bust a kid? It's totally ridic. Get used to it.

Some of the highlights are a Hawaiian surfer rabbi who says, "Shaloha," a giant chicken, a pig boy, and a biofuel car that ends up doubling as a rocket. Oops.

2 to 2.5 stars.

Star Wars: Darth Maul - Death Sentence by Tom Taylor

For a novel under 100 pages, Death Sentence packs a pretty mean punch.

I've always been a trekkie rather than a Star Wars aficionado but this was pretty good. In case the cover and the title weren't enough of a tip-off, this is about Darth Maul. He's evil, by the way (major spoiler, I know). The book opens with him and his brother fighting against the Jedi. Darth Maul has been cut in half by Obi Wan Kenobi, and turned into a cyborg.

In his quest for revenge, Darth Maul goes to a planet that looks like the alien setting of Cats. The cat people have been driven out of their home by invading soldiers who are also evil. If they cannot find sanctuary, they will all burn to ash when the three suns rise. He claims he will help them if they help him.

Ha ha ha... no.

The emotional depth in Death Sentence was impressive. Even Darth Maul is depicted as having some emotion. His distress when his brother is frozen by carbonite reveals that somewhere in that devilish carapace is some kind of shriveled heart, as much as he'd like to deny it.

Other people die, too, and their deaths are quite sad. Especially one at the end.

I was pleasantly surprised by Death Sentence. The art style, the storyline, and the execution were all very well done, and the length was well suited to the story. I'd read more by this author!

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars!

Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey

One of the best things about being friends with writers is that we're on top of all the book drama and book trends. So when my delightfully eccentric and amazingly talented friend Em said, "HAVE YOU READ WOOL? I'M READING THE WHOLE SERIES ON MY KINDLE AND IT IS SO GOOD" I took notice.

Wool is an indie dystopian novel that takes place at an unspecified point in the future. Our world has been rendered completely toxic and unlivable (oh us silly humans, destroying things with science and stupidity--u mad?), and humanity lives in an underground Silo. People only leave for committing treason, sent out to their deaths in the toxic environment with suits that corrode in the air. For some reason, the exiled always clean the sensors before they collapse to their deaths, though nobody knows why.

This omnibus edition, which I received for advance review from netgalley, contains volumes one through five of the series. We are introduced to several characters, some of whom come to good end and some of whom, um, don't. I think my favorite character was Juliette--it's so nice to see a strong female protagonist in an indie novel. Written by a man, no less! She's a mechanic, and she's strong and capable without being a bitch or super-manly or super-promiscuous. I absolutely adored her.

Howey handles all his characters with such care that each chapter positively breathed life. Each narrative was different depending on the character. If I hadn't been told that this was indie, I never would have guessed. There were a few typos ("discrete" instead of "discreet"), but the quality of the writing and the depth of the characterization and world-building was absolutely phenomenal.

I do have a few criticisms. I would have liked to know how the earth's air became so poisonous and corrosive. What happened to cause it? And how was the silo built? Did the government know things were going to shit and built the silo before things got too deadly? That implies that the problem is unfixable, because otherwise wouldn't they spend their resources fixing the planet?

I also had some questions about the sensors. ***SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS AVERT YOUR EYES CHILDREN*** The first character and his wife found some information about the sensors that made them both want to go outside. Was it suicide, or did they believe that they had a chance at survival? I kept waiting for an explanation on that, but remained disappointed (unless it was explained so subtly that I missed it). Why does everyone always clean the sensors? Is it because they thought they were safe? Were those images a fake?

***SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS EVEN MORE SPOILERS SERIOUSLY LOOK AWAY***

My first thought was that the sensors were rigged to show people decaying in the toxic air to hide the fact that the earth was now aired out and non-toxic because the government wanted to keep people inside the silos (that's right, more than one! OMG) to produce goods and stuff. Why were the suits made to degrade so quickly? Were the green grass and the blue sky illusions too?

Great story, innovative ideas, novel world-building. I hope my questions are addressed in the later installments, as I have SO MUCH to ask.

4 out of 5 stars.

Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet

When Save Yourself promised me a storyline as fucked-up as Gillian Flynn (note: not necessarily in those exact words), I was skeptical. Gillian Flynn writes some pretty messed-up shit. But apparently, Kelly Braffet does, too, making her a strong candidate for the Tana French, Gillian Flynn, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon trifecta of fucked-up family fiction. Hooray!

Save Yourself is especially disturbing, though, because it deals with many topics that are taboo and disconcerting even by today's jaded values.

Patrick is the son of a murderer. His father killed a small boy while driving home drunk, hitting him hard enough to leave hair, teeth, and brain matter in his car's grill (*barfs*). Patrick was the one to call the police and his family (what's left of it, anyway) has never forgiven him for it. The parents of the boy are pissed, and have claimed that God told them to sue the family because they don't think Patrick and his brother have suffered enough. They want to take away their house.

But just in case life didn't suck enough, he sleeps with his brother's girlfriend, Caro. And when that starts getting sticky, he gets entangled with a seventeen-year-old girl who's just as messed up as he is. Her name is Layla, and she's the daughter of the man who got Sexual Ed. torn out of the school's curriculum. She has a younger sister named Verna, who everyone calls a whore and a slut even though she's still a virgin, just because they can.

The two of them are involved with a group of teenagers who claim to understand their pain and who offer a tantalizing remedy. But the leader of this group is a few cents short of a dollar, and possesses a sadistic streak to boot. In his case, the treatment might be worse than the disease.

All these different characters clash and collide as tensions between them and the town raise stress levels sky high, and desperation gives way to other, more troubling emotions that have the potential to be deadly. DUN DUN DUN.

Even though it starts out a little slowly, Save Yourself is a quick read. It's disturbing, which says a lot coming from me (HAVE YOU LOOKED AT MY SHELVES?) and there were some plot holes that kind of made me give the book the old side-eye (why not call the police? WHY?), but overall, I really enjoyed it. A must-have for any dark-family-secrets aficionado.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

With an original premise and a title that would be right at home in a John Hughes movie collection, not to mention that gorgeously cinematic book cover, I had high expectations for this book. And why not? Our main character, Alex Woods, was hit by a meteor when he was a young preteen, and the rock damaged his temporal lobes, giving him a flat, almost autistic affect, and a tendency towards seizures. If you've ever read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the narrative if similar to that in terms of style, and the tendency to take things very literally. Is that or is that not the shizz?* With so many books copycatting one another these days, I practically fell over myself pressing the 'request' button on netgalley for this sucker.

*The correct answer, by the way, is: yes, that is the shizz.

The story kicks off with Alex getting arrested by the cops. He's got marijuana in the car, and an urn full of ashes that he refers to as his friend. Needless to say, the police are extremely suspicious, and so are we, the readers, as we wonder what Alex could have possibly done to get the police chasing him like this in the first place, and what the significance of the ashes and the pot is.

At first I was really confused, because from Alex's arrest, we go back in time to the events leading up to it, which happen over a course of about five years. We learn about Alex's mother, who does Tarot card readings and may have inadvertently predicted the calamity set to befall her son. We learn about the effects of Alex's meteorite-induced injuries, the humiliation of wetting yourself in public, and the panic attacks that set in with the constant fear of going into a seizure. Alex has a lot of trouble with bullies in school as well, and his attempts to run away from them one day lead to trespassing on private property, where he makes the acquaintance of Mr. Peterson.

Mr. Peterson seems at first like the quintessential grouchy old man with the heart of gold, and this subplot reminded me a lot of the Pixar movie, Up. I loved watching the friendship between Alex and Mr. Peterson take root. However, it's not an ordinary friendship--at least not in the Hollywood sense. It's a very realistic friendship, however, in the sense that it's fraught with difficulty, individual differences, and an age gap, which can sometimes result in frustration, even anger, but also mean that once you attempt to overcome these difficulties, you can become a better and more empathetic individual because of it. It was a really good message to send, I thought; you don't often see YA novels with such powerful messages.

This especially comes into play when Mr. Peterson starts to die. That section of the book really broke my heart. I was reminded of The Fault in Our Stars; the characters in both books learn to accept that death is a natural part of life, and that part of this acceptance is about learning to cherish the time we have with the people we care about. Both books also go into the selfish aspect of love, that sometimes we're not ready to let go of the people we love--sometimes even at the cost of said individual's own happiness. Sometimes, the most powerful act of love is the most painful.

Alex starts out as a boy, but by the end of the book, I think it's pretty fair to say that he has become a man--a man who knows and is comfortable with his own sense of right and wrong, and is willing to do the right thing even if it means there is no advantage in it for him.

Also, I thought it was interesting how Mr. Extence cited so many tragicomedies in this book, as The Universe vs. Alex Woods is also a tragicomedy, and the events in many of the works cited are mirrored in the plot, which sort of makes it a meta-tragicomedy. Alex's dry observations of humanity and the way the word works are sometimes cynical and sometimes fatalistic, but carry an edge of innocence that dulls the bitterness of his caustic wit, redolent with hope, and a love of life.

4 out of 5 stars.

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman

Even as a preteen, the sheer thought put into Pullman's world-building, and the way he seamlessly laced history into Lyra's steampunk Oxford, totally amazed and humbled me. Pullman seemed almost like an omniscient god of knowledge, knowing about things like trepanning and aether.

(I will never forgive Hollywood for the atrocities they committed against The Golden Compass.)

When I saw that his collection of fairy tales was on netgalley, I immediately applied for a copy. I love fairy tales! I love Philip Pullman! How could this not work out? When I found out I had been approved, I was thrilled. And yet, the book's considerable length put me off starting and before I knew it, my copy was set to expire with the evil "three weeks" tag looming over it in red.

I finished it in a day.

The format of the book, and Pullman's own engaging style, however, make this a surprisingly short read. I was expecting a full-length novel, but Pullman basically acts as an editor, taking his favorite (or if not his favorite, then the stories he found the strangest) tales from the Brothers Grimm's considerable collection, and expands on them. I really liked the way he combined different versions of the fairy tales from across Europe. I don't normally read afterwords, but I really liked seeing all the similar tales, and some of the fun fairy tale trivia he cited.

This collection features old favorites--like Little Red Riding Hood, Briar Rose, and Snow White--and stories you might be less familiar with, or perhaps never even heard of at all, like Thousandfurs, Bear-skin, and The Golden Bird. If you're a fan of Andrew Lang's colored fairy books, I strongly urge you to pick up Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm. Pullman polishes up the sometimes clunky writing of classic works, and breathes new life into the tales.

I really enjoyed reading these before I went to bed. Some things are timeless. Fairy tales are one of these. Philip Pullman may well be another.

4 to 4.5 stars out of 5.

Drynn by Steve Vera

I tend to like most of the stuff I read by Carina Press. They are a small house publishing firm focusing mostly on erotic fantasy/pnr and BDSM. They seem to be quite discerning. In fact, the only BDSM novel I've read that I didn't hate was published by Carina.

Drynn had a lot of potential. It's an urban fantasy about a bunch of super-sekrit beings with special powers dedicated to keeping an evil god of the underworld imprisoned. Unfortunately, said god has just broken free from his prison and is now wreaking violently gory havoc in the U.S.

The magic knights have another rival, too: a heartless assassin named Donovan, who wants to be the first to kill the god--and anyone who stands in his way.

In terms of writing style, Steve Vera reminded me a lot of Scott Sigler. There was potential, but the execution was not that great. Even though the storytelling was modestly good, the characterization was wooden and the dialogue and narrative were awkward and clunky. For example, one of the characters of color is referred to as an "exotic." There are a lot of petty insults that are supposed to pass for witty repartee. Some of the characters are so stupid, I wanted to get my bitchslap on.

It doesn't help that the story opens with pretty blatant slut-shaming, either.

I suspect that men will like this story more than women because it makes a lot of effort to appeal to men, with all the best characters being male, lots of descriptions of guns, and everyone, even the women, acting super macho and interested in sex. I guess this just wasn't for me.

DNF.

1 star.

Checkmate, My Lord by Tracey Devlyn

I used to think that all historical romance novels were terrible, with heaving corseted bosoms, and men who looked like Tom Jones in breeches. Two of my friends held an intervention and gave me a list of authors who didn't suck. And what do you know? I actually like historical romance now! This is great, because netgalley is riddled with regency novels, and one of them was Checkmate, My Lord.

The title had me really excited because I play chess, and I collect (and write) chess-themed fiction. But alas, despite the tempting title there was no chess symbolism, much to my great disappointment. However, I loved the espionage angle. The male love interest, Sebastian, Lord Somerton, is a spymaster, who may or may not also be evil.

Catherine, our main character, suspects he might be responsible or at least implicated in the death of her husband, due to some troubling letters she received from him shortly before he died. Worse; several men step out of the woodwork to speak ill of Sebastian, claiming that not only could he be responsible for her husband's death, but he could also be a traitor for the country. Eep! Desperate for closure, Catherine decides to forge an acquaintanceship with the earl in order to snoop around his estate to find out his secrets.

She doesn't expect to fall for him, though, obviously, she does. Nor does she expect the sex to be so ridiculously, sinfully hot, though, obviously, it is. (I'm in bed writing this, and I had to fill my sheets with ice cubes in order to keep myself from melting away into a puddle of lust.) But when her daughter's life is threatened, Catherine needs to figure out who she can trust and fast...

Before it's too late.

(Checkmate.)

I'll be completely honest here; I started to get bored around page 200 or so and only continued reading because of how ridiculously sexy Sebastian was. Catherine is such an idiot. She's always marching off into danger, disregarding the advice of the people around her because she thinks she's capable, only to require immediate rescue. When it comes to stealth, she's about as subtle as an ostrich in a chicken coop and every time one of the other characters talked about how she'd be a good spy I snorted.

Her daughter, Sophie, wasn't much better. I liked her more at the end than at the beginning once I got a better feel for her character, but for the most part she was just a prop. Using characters as props is never a good idea because the temptation is to turn them into human deus ex machinas.

Apart from the espionage angle (which was well-done), there isn't much to set this apart from other regency novels--the modestly good ones, that is. Dishrag female protagonist aside, it even ends with a wedding. If you like Lisa Kleypas and Julia Quinn, you will probably enjoy Tracey Devlyn. I'd consider reading more from this author, but I'd like to see her put more effort into her female characterization.

3 out of 5 stars.

Gift by Andrea J. Buchanan

Daisy destroys technology. Because of this, she lives in a trailer park, doesn't own a cell phone, and avoids computers like the plague. She's pretty much the Magneto of electricity.

The book opens with a girl maybe trying to commit suicide in the bathroom. Her name is Vivi. Daisy helps her, only to learn that Vivi also has a secret. She sees dead people--one in particular--who may or may not be dangerous.

I applied for this book in part because it was one of the top-requested books on netgalley and I guess I'm nothing else if not a follower. More than that, though, I've had a lot of positive experiences with the books I've received for review from Open Road, even finding some underrated classics to love.

Gift was the exception to the rule. It's got a subpar/slightly below average rating on Goodreads, and I hate to say it, but it's probably deserved. The characterization is very watery, and even when I was 1/5 of the way through the book I still didn't have a solid grasp on Daisy's character.

Likewise, the writing was not developed and seemed frenetic and disorganized. Daisy and Vivi's stories were not cohesive and would have been better off in two separate stories rather than being smashed into one Heroes/X-Men storyline. I wasn't impressed enough to finish.

DNF.

1 out of 5 stars.

Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match by Amy Webb

I'm trying to figure out how to review Data without sounding mean, because while the concept was really good and quite well-done, I had some pretty major issues with the author, Amy Webb.

Data is a memoir about dating. Webb leads us through some of her worst dates ever, including a lawyer with a propensity towards abundant high-fives and who calls his penis "The Captain", finishing her tale with the man who ended up being her husband.

In a way, reading a new book is like dating someone new. You judge the book by its cover and summary. While you're reading, you try to suss out what the characters and author are all about, and whether that'll jibe with whatever you find entertaining. At first, I could totally relate, and I was like, "Wow! Ms. Webb is just like me! We could be besties! This is so great!"

But the more I read, the more I realized that Webb and I don't really have much in common at all, and that she does in fact embody many traits I absolutely can't stand in an individual. I still enjoyed the book, but that warm glow of simpatico was gone.

Part of my ambivalence is the fact that the author seems to have some personal issues she is unwilling to come to terms with, and rather than deal with the fact that she might need some help, she incorporates it into her advice as something admirable and even desirable.

♥ She takes her laptop with her on dates. If the date is shitty, she contrives to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes and then emails all her friends and family about how awful the date is based on a rubric she devised and also emailed to all her friends and family. She makes an excel spreadsheet based on all her shitty dates, quantifying the number of high fives, the units of alcohol consumed, the number of inappropriate sexual remarks, and the number of misused words/botched phrases.

Charming.

♥ She copy-pastes her resume into her dating profile. Why anyone would think this was a good idea, I don't know, but she did. So her about me is all about her work history. Her hopes and interests section was a list of her specific skill sets and abilities.

♥ When her dating profile is unsurprisingly unsuccessful, she sets about to "game the system." What follows is an elaborate deception, where she creates ten fake male dating profiles, each of whom embody the traits she finds desirable, and scopes out what kind of women approach them to get an idea of her competition. She goes so far as to purchase stock images to use as their profile pictures. Spreadsheets follow, and she quantifies the data of the female profiles.

♥ She brings her binder full of women (and men) to her fifth date with her husband-to-be, like a kid with a macaroni picture, and actually shows him her stalkstravaganza.

♥ Despite her rigid standards, she embodies pretty much none of what she expects from her mate. Now to be fair, we're all a bit like this: we all want the gorgeous sex god, but we aren't willing to take the anger management classes or go to the gym to make ourselves worthy because we're awesome the way we are, dammit! But Webb was very snooty about intelligence and culture, despite misspelling Pocky and using a fairly basic word wrong (explicative instead of expletive).

♥ Despite her claims that correlation does not prove causation, she believes her system works because the first (and only guy) she dated after revising her profile based on her statistical calculations later ended up marrying her. I think she was extraordinarily lucky, and just managed to find someone who was a bit more accepting of other people's foibles (and a little more desperate) than she was. Is this a bad thing? Well, no. But it's not irrefutable scientific evidence, either.

This was funny and gave me some insight into my own dating life, but it's not all that useful as a self-help or inspirational guide if that's what you're hoping for.

P.S. When she talked about deal-breakers, I decided to make a list of my own.

Her list was 72 items long.

How long was mine? 10.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars.

Fiend: A Novel by Peter Stenson

Sometimes I just don't understand the popularity of these so-called "cult classics." I tried reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and absolutely despised it. I tried reading Bret Easton Ellis's work, and was revolted. I tried reading World War Z, and was completely bored out of my skull. Given that, you may be wondering what possessed me to pick up Fiend.

I know the typical troll response to negative reviews is, "if you don't like something, don't read it." What they don't seem to realize is that you can't tell if you're not going to like something until you actually do read it. There have been books I absolutely thought I was going to love that ended up pissing me off. And there are books that I thought I might throw out the window only to realize that I loved them to pieces. It all depends on the subject, the writer, and the way the story is strung together. So really, choosing not to read something on the basis of its premise is a very close-minded approach to books.

Why didn't I like Fiend?

Several reasons, actually.

1. The main character is seriously tripping balls. He is so drugged out of his mind, that when he sees a little girl eating the brains of a dog he's pretty much just like, "Whoa, bad trip."

2. The writing is purposely squicky, with numerous metaphors and analogies involving bodily fluids. It's kind of like listening to a bunch of drunken frat boys talking about last weekend's party.

3. I'm not one of those people who immediately think, "Oh! Zombies! Cool!" Sticking a zombie in a book does nothing for me. If you want to wow me with a zombie book, you have to have good characterization, a good storyline, and something to set your book apart from the thousands of other zombie stories out there.

4. None of the dialogue has quotation marks. Maybe the author is trying to emulate Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." However, the Road is on a completely different level from this book: it has gorgeous writing, fabulous characters, and really good world-building. Considering that this is a debut novel from the author, one would think that he ought to work on making his novel less trendy and trippy and more accessible.

Because that's another problem with cult classics, they only have a small, specific audience. Which is great if you're already an established author with a large following, but if you're just starting out, it's probably best to include as many people in your target demographic as possible. Zombies are already on the wane, and just don't cut it anymore.

5. It's boring. Things happen too slowly or too quickly, or in such a disorganized way that you don't really get a grip on what's going on. I guess that's because these guys are all high, but still. It's about as fun reading from the POV of someone who's high as it is being the only sober person as a party.

DNF.

0 out of 5 stars.

Zebra Forest by Adina Rishe Gewirtz

Annie and Rew both live with their mentally ill grandmother in the middle of a forest filled with black and white-trunked trees that they call the "zebra forest." When they're not lying to keep up appearances that everything is all right to their social worker, and the people in the town, they lie around telling stories.

All they know about their father is that one day a bad man came along and got into a fight with him, and then he was killed. The two of them make up stories about their dad based around their favorite book, Treasure Island, with their father being an explorer, an adventurer, a pirate, and so much more.

But the truth may be worse...

One day there's a prison break. Over forty prisoners manage to break free one stormy night--and one of these prisoners finds Annie's and Rew's house.

Zebra Forest is an interesting character study. However, I didn't like any of the characters, especially Rew. Rew pissed me off, and I wanted to bitch-slap him pretty much every time he opened his mouth to lecture one of the other characters on how bad/dumb they were.

The secret about their father was interesting, but in spite of all that, I feel like there wasn't closure. Like, what made their Gran so crazy? If she was off the grid, how did she get her grandchildren into school? I'm pretty sure you have to have documents in order to be registered as a student.

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars.

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

When I first saw the title, I thought this was going to be another book about the fae. Imagine my surprise when I start reading and find out it's a brilliant dystopian novel set in Brazil.

I know, Brazil.

I wanted to read it based on that fact alone. Well, that and the gorgeous cover. It sparkles! How often do you see a beautiful character with a gorgeous, realistically proportioned woman who isn't white? This was a first for me. Let's take a moment to squeal over that cover. Eeeeeeeeeeeee.

Okay. I'm done.

Luckily, The Summer Prince has more going for it than a lovely cover. For starters, it is set in the fictional city of Palmares Tres, Brazil. Long ago, men ran the city into the ground and the world was decimated by plagues. One of the kings decided to sacrifice himself at the hands of his queen. Why? Because he decided that the dictates of someone at their deathbed would be free from corruption. This was how he would choose a successor.

Now, the security of Palmares Tres is being threatened as traditionalists fight with rebels who want to go against the ban on new technology--and people who don't like the barbaric ritual of killing the Summer King each winter. Plus, the city is wearing down. Their technology is old, and with new advancements banned, there isn't much hope for things improving.

June is a waka, one of the young people in Brazil. Her best friend is named Gil, and the two of them love to dance and explore the wild Brazilian nightlife. On the day where the new Summer King is elected, both June and Gil fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love with the new elect, a beautiful boy from the slums named Enki who seems so much larger than life. Her attraction tears June up inside because he will be dead before the year is up.

But Enki, like her, is an artist, and through carefully-designed pranks that dance the line between art and warfare, her abilities to resist her attraction to the doomed king weaken.

I loved this story. Loved it. The writing was gorgeous, beautifully wrought, and vividly imagined. Reading this was like dreaming; I could picture the ghostly outlines of Palmares Tres in my head, cold steel shimmering under tropical heat, exotic flowers, tanks of moldering algae--

It's been a while since a book managed to wow me with its exquisite world-building, but The Summer Prince succeeded. In many ways, it reminded me of Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen, which was also a dystopia, and also involved ritualistic sacrifice based on the coming of the season.

I have to say that The Summer Prince tore me up inside. The ending wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It was terrible, and unjust, and I cried like a baby because Alaya Johnson ripped out my heart. I was hoping the story wouldn't take that route. I kind of suspected it would, and deep down I wanted it to, because sometimes the harder route is the right one--the more powerful one. So in a way I'm happy that the author is willing to sacrifice a happy ending for a good ending. But I'm still sad.

The Summer Prince is a powerful novel, with fluid sexuality, interracial characters, gorgeous prose, an exotic sending, and a poignant reimagining of the boundaries of art. There's something for everyone in The Summer Prince; just don't be afraid to have your heart broken.

4.5 to 5 out of 5 stars.

Odd Couples: Extraordinary Differences Between the Sexes in the Animal Kingdom by Daphne J. Fairbairn

Humans have a hard enough time not being ethnocentric, let alone not being anthrocentric. I know when I think of sex differences, I tend to think of the males as being larger and more robust than the females, and the females as having larger percentages of body fat and less aggressive natures. But that just goes to show how biased I am, because in all animal species outside of birds and mammals, it's far more common for the female to be the larger aggressive one. I know right? Go fig.

Chromosomes are also totally different across different species. For example, we think of males as being XY, and females as being XX. (And when they come together, it's XXX--lol sorry, bad pun.) However, in some species, heterozygous sex chromosomes mean the animal is female. In this instance ZW would be female, and ZZ would be male. And then some animals' sex is determined by the number of chromosomes X being male, and XX being female. Freaky, huh?

Odd Couples goes across several different species to take the most extreme cases of sexual dimorphism. The animals discussed herein are: elephant seals, great bustards, shell-carrying cichlids, yellow garden spiders, blanket octopuses, great seadevils, tubeworms, and shell-burrowing barnacles. I'd never heard of several of these creatures before, and I thought Ms. Fairbairn did an excellent job showcasing just how bizarre and alien life can seem just in our own backyard.

So, I'll showcase some of the weird facts I learned from each animal species!

Elephant Seals
★ Elephant seals are the most sexually dimorphic animals. The males are twice the size of the females, and spend all their time fighting against other males to protect their female harems. The females are also aggressively territorial, since they have to protect their breeding patches in addition to fighting off the unwanted attentions of "peripheral males."
★ Females lose an addition 35% of their body weight after giving birth and when they head back to sea, they are immediately accosted by large groups of beta-males who then proceed to gang-bang her. Sometimes the females die from this, though usually they just suffer injuries.
★ Being as violent and aggressive as they are, sometimes baby elephant seals are trampled by aggressive males or females and die.

From Wikipedia:

Great Bustard

★ If you're anywhere as dorky as me, your first immediate thought was "Beautiful Bustard"? And in a way, this is actually true. Male bustards (which are birds) are bigger and have more elaborate plumage than their female counterparts. Males put on elaborate displays for females, and the females pick and choose the most 'beautiful bustard' as their mate.

From Wikipedia:

Shell-Carrying Cichlids
★ The chapter about cichlids totally cracked me up, because these are some devious little fish. The males are huge (for the most part--more on that later), but the females are teeny-tiny because they need to be able to crawl inside shells in order to lay their eggs (think of them as fishy hermit crabs).
★ Knowing the preferences of their ladies, the male cichlids collect large piles of shells, which they guard against other males. If the male in question loses, the victor immediately starts to shake the shells, scaring off the female and emptying out the eggs, which he then proceeds to devour.
★ Males advertise their shells to females with obsequiousness that borders on that of a used car salesman. They "mouth" the shell, calling attention to it, and sometimes even "mouth" or nudge the female towards the shell, trying to get her to go inside.
★ Smaller males, called "sneakers" try to ejaculate into the shells while the bigger males are distracted. However, this only works in large populations of fish.
★ Even smaller males, with dwarfism, actually rival the females in terms of teeny-tininess. These males are called "female mimics" and, like "sneakers", they try to dart into shells and ejaculate on unfertilized eggs. Their testes comprise 2% of their body weight. Talk about having balls!

Yellow garden spiders
★ When a male spider has sex with a female spider, his thingy breaks off inside the female's body, taking "cockblocked" to a disturbingly literal level.
★ After this, male spiders have one more insertion to make, after this they always spontaneously die. Not just with females, either. Scientists observed a male spider stick his spider thingy into a worm he was about to eat, only to--yeah, that's right--die. Oops?
★ Spiders play musical sex. While a female spider is molting, all the male spiders wait outside the female's web. The instant she's done, they all rush in to penetrate her at once.

From Wikipedia:

Female

Male

Blanket octopus
★ They have highly developed eyes just like ours!
★ The females grow up to 2m, whereas the males are only 4cm!
★ Blanket octopuses carry pieces of the poisonous man o' war jellyfish, and when attacked or hunting prey, they swing the tentacles at the unfortunate sea creature. Females outgrow this with maturity but males continue to use them as a weapon.
★ Male blanket octopuses have an arm-tentacle that actually looks--and functions--like a penis.
★ As with male garden spiders, when a male octopus inserts his penis arm (not its actual name) into the female, it snaps off. (Ouch!)

Giant seadevils
★ Female anglerfish are blind and gigantic. Males are teeny-tiny, but have large functioning eyes. The female has a lure filled with bioluminescent bacteria, which flash in species-specific patterns. These animals live 1.5 miles beneath the surface, so scientists don't know much about their actual behaviors, but they suspect that males use these light patterns to suss out their wimmin.
★ The males then latch on to the female, just above the anus, and their flesh grows out into each other so that they become a symbiotic entity with a shared circulatory system. Think this sounds unnatural? They seem to need this: neither of them can reach full sexual maturity until they bond.

Tubeworms
★ They live on rotting carcasses, until they deplete their food supply and go extinct.
★ Females are huge tubules. Males live in giant man-harems inside the tubes, living off their own food and excreting sperm periodically.
★ Juvenile tubeworms have no sex and can go either way depending on where they end up.

From a government website:

Shell-burrowing barnacles
★ Barnacles have the hugest penises in proportion to their bodies.
★ Since barnacles are rooted to one place, their mobile penis extends out to explore the barnacle's neighbors. If said neighbor is not interested in sex, it closes its shell. If the barnacle is, in fact, amenable to sex, it opens up and the two barnacles form a bond.
★ I think I remember reading that they mate for life, but I'm not sure about this. Although--
★ I do know that they are hermaphrodites, and capable of self-fertilization although they prefer not to do this if at all possible (taking the phrase "go fuck yourself" to a disturbingly literal level).

I really liked this. It was interesting and factual and informative, and I found myself giggling at some of the author's colorful imagery. Fans of Mary Roach and Oliver Sacks will definitely want to check out Odd Couples.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Just Breathe by Janette Paul

I've never been a huge fan of contemporary romance. I suppose it's because so many of them seem too contrived. With paranormal romance, there's excuses, you know? Soul-mates, magic, bonding, etc. With contemporary romances, there's no magic way of explaining how two people who barely know each other somehow understand that they are destined to be together forever and always.

But then, what do I know? I write darkfics and science-fiction almost exclusively.

One of the things I'm loving best about netgalley is the sheer number of options there are. It's like going to Costco on a day when they're serving a lot of free samples. I run around netgalley grabbing at everything, whether I think I'll like it or not, just because it's free and I'm hungry, dammit!

Just Breathe jumped out at me for several reasons. One, it takes place in Australia, and as we all know, a book that takes place in Australia and is written by an Australian automatically gets +10 coolness points. Two, the cover is so pink and perdy. The girl on the front kind of reminded me of Carrie Underwood, which is a little freaky as I think I was actually listening to a Carrie Underwood song while I first applied for this. And three, I found the premise of a yoga instructor and a millionaire intriguing--particularly since I'm pretty sure one of the Baldwin brothers did just that.

Inspiration? Maybe.

Dee is a down-to-earth yoga instructor who's struggling to make ends meet. She's also a fractured human being, because she was in a terrible car accident several years before: it was so bad that her doctors told her she would never be able to walk again, and her fiance, hearing this, left her saying that he couldn't deal with that. Dee has issues with commitment and being happy, and life seems to pass her by while favoring those around her.

Case in point, her roommate of several years is moving in with his new boyfriend, leaving the apartment conspicuously empty of furniture. Dee's grandmother left her some money in trust, but Dee's mother, Val, refuses to give her the money unless she spends it in a way she approves first--like, say, on a new apartment with all the trimmings.

Life pretty much sucks until she meets Ethan Roxburgh, a businessman with an air for flair and more girlfriends than even the press can keep track of. When she gets involved in his company for a collaborative project, neither of them have any idea that their business relationship is about to become SRS BUSINESS.

I was frustrated with Just Breathe, and I think that made the book seem longer than it actually was (275 pages). There was some sloppy writing, especially in the beginning, and I feel like the set-up dragged on for about fifty pages too long. Plus, this author does not know how to use 'bemused' correctly. She seems to think it means 'amused' (and to be fair, I used to think this too once upon a time), but it actually means bewildered, perplexed, confused, etc. I'm surprised her editor didn't pick up on this, as the mistake was made about five times throughout.

I also didn't like the fact that telling someone that they look as though they are anorexic was portrayed as a 'compliment.' Anorexia and bulimia are serious psychosomatic conditions, affecting both the mind and the body, and they are DEADLY. Reinforcing the stereotypes that bony is better contributes to the problem, and is partially why the "thinspiration" culture is as popular as it is.

With some tightening of the nuts and bolts of the storyline, and some more careful editing this could have been a four-star read. As it was, it scarcely made 3.

2.5 to 3 out of 5 stars.

Hooked by Liz Fichera

Wow. Um, okay. This was so not for me.

Before I went independent, I used to write on Fictionpress, and there were SO MANY stories like this on that site, sports-themed stories with douche-bag male characters and bitchy tomboy female characters who started out hating each other and then gradually fell in love.

I didn't like them when I could read them for free, and I don't like them any better now. Sometimes, it's like, "Am I the only one who sees that all these new adult stories are EXACTLY the same? That there's nothing 'new' about them?"

*sigh*

Ryan is a jerk. Fred is annoying. Their families are filled with awful people who blame them for pretty much everything just because they're teenagers. Lots of parties, barely any school work, everything revolving around sports and popularity and fun and games. For reals?

It's like teenage wish fulfillment fantasy.

No. It IS teenage wish fulfillment fantasy.

DNF.
\
0 out of 5 stars.

The Birth of Canis by Darby Conley

"Get Fuzzy" is a cute comic series with anthropomorphic animals in the style of Garfield, Peanuts, and Dilbert. I feel like I've seen panels from "Get Fuzzy" around the internet before because some of the characters seemed familiar, but I'd never actually read it until now.

The humor is like what you see in "Questionable Content" or Gary Larson's "Far Side." Lots of puns and slapstick. Sometimes it was a little stupid, but stupid in that cute way, like when your friend cracks a joke that's not funny but it makes you smile anyway.

The Characters

Robert is a thirty-something single nerd who spends most of his time at home. He has a very dry sense of humor and is frequently frustrated with the behavior of his two pets.

Satchel is a chubby dog who's a little dumb and gullible, but he also has moments of lucidity. He's mostly pretty nice, but he's got an evil streak in him, too. Especially when it comes to Bucky.

Bucky is a crazy Siamese cat. He's conservative, mean, and always coming up with new money-making schemes/inventions that don't work.

Mac is a British tabby, who talks in a Cockney accent. He's mostly the straight man and doesn't appear that often.

Mungo is the ferret from next door. He's Bucky's arch-nemesis, and at one point he starts a reality TV show for ferrets video-taping the crazy antics of Robert, Satchel, and Bucky.

It was nice to have something fun to read while I was sick.

3 to 3.5 stars.

Bubble World by Carol Snow

What if The Truman Show and The Matrix... were peopled by the characters of Gossip Girl?


I'll be honest; for the first fifty pages, I scratched my head and thought, "Is this book for real?"

I was really close to DNF-ing Bubble World because Freesia Summers is the epitome of vapid, shallow teenager. It doesn't help that she lives in a magical island world that reinforces this. Because in Agalinas, everyone is beautiful, you can spend all day shopping if you want, and classes are optional, and cultural appreciation is eating Korean take-out.

If it seems too good to be true, that's because it is. It's creepy how "perfect" everything in Agalinas is, though of course Freesia wouldn't see it that way. Picture Little Miss Teen Stepford, and that's the golden standard for Freesia and her friends.

Lately, however, things have been going wrong in Agalinas. Lots of blackouts, glitches, things not working the way they should.... When there's trouble brewing in paradise, Freesia soon realizes that Agalinas hides a terrible secret that will change her world forever.


Without going into too much spoilerific detail, I really liked the twist. I wanted a good explanation for the nonsense in the beginning and Carol Snow paid up. Successfully. I liked the ending. I was afraid, for a while, that I wasn't going to, that Snow was going to take the easy way out, but she didn't, and I liked that. I liked how Freesia's terrifying revelation changes the way she interacts with her friends and family, and also how she pictures herself. I liked how her family reacts to her.

Bubble World is chilling because it doesn't mean to be chilling. It just goes to show that sometimes things that began with the best of intentions can turn nightmarish and corrupt.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars!

The Fall by Anthony McGowan

Apparently The Fall is from a line of books targeted at reluctant readers--especially those who happen to be dyslexic. This book is only about sixty pages, and the language is painfully simple. Even crude.

I'm not sure what it is about the UK, but there sure seem to be a lot of books about bullying coming from thereabouts. From what I've heard, it's a more serious issue there, I guess. The Fall is no exception. It takes place in a low-income school, a kind of dead-end reformatory where all the kids who get expelled end up.

Our protagonist is named "Mog." He's an asshole, and he's also an idiot. Barely clinging to the social fringe, his meal ticket is a boy named Chris who is just cool enough that they're all safe from the bullies that plague the school. Until Chris befriends a boy named Duffy, who is pretty much poster child for the Geeks and Dorks and Losers of the world. (You have to wonder how he ended up at that expelled school. But alas, that would require plot development.)

Anyway, Mog is jealous of Duffy for stealing his friend Chris. Chris is actually a really nice boy with a strong sense of empathy, and seems intent on taking Duffy under his wing. One of the things Mog and his friends do, apart from shop-lifting, is jumping over the polluted river behind their school. Mog tricks Duffy into jumping, by telling him that the submerged refrigerator is a solid stepping stone when actually it's precariously balanced on garbage. When Duffy jumps, he sinks, and ends up getting covered in filthy lake water.

Basically, for whatever reason, this incident changes Chris and turns him from a good boy into a bad boy. It kind of reminded me of that scene from Scrooged, when Bill Murray sees his love-interest turned from the warm-hearted philanthropist to a cold-hearted miser, just like him, who cares only for surface aesthetics and the perpetuation of her own wealth. Mog continues to hang out with Chris, but things have changed between them for the worse.

And then one day, they play with a cross-bow...

I can't really say anymore without spoiling the book (I've already spoiled quite a bit considering how short this book is), but I have to say that there are a lot of things that really annoyed me about The Fall. I hated the language, that the boys called each other "faggot" as an insult, that there was so much violence scattered about so casually, that they were reckless and stole things and were so cruel to each other, and that there were pretty much no consequences--

What kind of a message is that to send to young boys?

I know this is supposed to be for reluctant readers and that some shock value can be necessary to capture the attentions and interests of jaded youth, but that doesn't mean it has to be a moral void, either. That ending in particular made me very sad, and I couldn't help but wonder what, exactly, the writer was setting out to accomplish when he decided to write this story.

2 out of 5 stars. 

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M. E. Thomas

In philosophy, there is something called "The Liar's Paradox." Basically, it involves a statement that is doomed to be incorrect no matter how you look at it. If a man says, "I am lying," he is either telling the truth, or he is lying. If he is telling the truth, then the statement is false. If he is not telling the truth, then the statement is still false. Paradox, either way, ad infinitum.

While reading Confessions of a Sociopath, the Liar's Paradox kept returning to mind, because sociopaths are by definition manipulative, charming, conscienceless liars by nature. So whenever Ms. Thomas seemed to be making a point to have me warm up to her, either with insecurities or abusive home environments, I could never get past the fact that it was probably a calculated attempt on her part to appear less harmful than she actually was: as if she was consciously thinking, "There, this will show people that sociopaths aren't so bad."

And who knows, maybe she was.

There were parts of this memoir that were engrossing, others that I found utterly repulsive. I was irritated by her attempts to rationalize her behavior through religion and economics. Her repeated claims that the sociopath brain might, in fact, be better than the so-called empath brain had me rolling my eyes. It was quite clear, from her narrative, that she was missing something crucial. As the creepy cover shows all too viscerally, the face looks human but the soul is gone.


While I was posting status updates about this book, I received some interesting comments and took part in some intelligent debate with some people on my friends list about psychopathy and sociopathy. It's a very tricky diagnosis, for the exact reasons that make the sociopath so dangerous: they are adept liars. Therapy doesn't work, because if you send a sociopath off to therapy they tailor their responses to what the therapist wants to hear, and became that much better at faking chagrin or remorse. As of today, there is no successful rehabilitation for sociopaths; quite the contrary: they tend to repeat the same crimes over and over because they have no sense for consequences and learn nothing from punishment.

I feel like this flat, distant way of looking at the world really showed in the narrative. It was chilling, and creepy, and downright unnatural: it was as if I was being followed by one of those portraits with the moving eyes, like in Scooby Doo. The detached curiosity or annoyance by emotional displays, the utter bewilderment by unwritten social codes and mores--it was very alien.

Ironically, while sociopaths may be good at manipulating and faking at being empaths, I think empaths are actually better at projecting themselves into the minds of sociopaths. Because that's the nature of empathy, being able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and see the situation from their perspective. Thomas sees emotions as weaknesses, but then why would so many people have empathy if it was an evolutionary disadvantage?

It's something to think about.

2 out of 5 stars.

The Burning Air by Erin Kelly

Extreme hatred is one of those tricky things, where it's difficult to fully understand or even conceptualize unless you've ever experienced it for yourself at either end. It's like the object of your hate becomes a symbol for all that is wrong in the world--specifically your world. It gets to the point where everything about this person, every gesture, every hobby, even their very appearance, makes you extremely pissed off.

Darcy's hatred of the MacBride family is like that.

The MacBrides are, well, a well-to-do British family of wealth and privilege, who love and protect one another, but at extreme costs that could be seen as extreme cruelty by those outside of the cosseted family loop. Rowan MacBride, proud patriarch, effectively consigns his family to doom when he stiffs the climbing ambition of the Kellaways by denying Darcy Kellaway entry into his prestigious school.

Darcy gets it into his head that the MacBride family is single-handedly responsible for depriving him of his future, due in part to his equally crazy mother, who probably breast-fed him until he was eight (their relationship is really very creepy). He exacts his own vengeance upon the family, which presents itself in GOTCHA!-type plot-twists that present themselves throughout the course of the story, and have shock-wave ripple effects upon the entire family.

There is never any question about Darcy's brilliance. Despite his limitations, his mother and her friend coached and tutored him to the best of their respective abilities. The Cath school probably could have done a lot for Darcy, which makes his rejection sting all the more. The depths to which he went to observe the family, to learn as much as possible in order to hurt as much as possible, reminds me of a James Bond villain quote (from Tomorrow Never Dies): "The difference between genius and insanity is measured only by success." And Darcy comes quite close to being successful--but since he failed, I guess we're going to have to play the insanity card anyway.

The Burning Air starts out slowly, but by the second narrative I was hooked. Nothing beats the hatching of a good revenge scheme. I must be a bad person, though, because I felt like the MacBride family did not suffer enough (excluding poor Felix, who I actually liked quite a bit). Most of them pissed me off. Sophie is an overprotective bitch with a whole bundle of sticks shoved up her ass, Tara is two-timing and shallow, Will is a spineless idiot, and Jake--UGH.

And the less we say about Rowan and Lydia, patriarch and matriarch, respectively, the better.

That ending struck me as extremely unsatisfying. Not that I was rooting for the bad guy or anything (okay, so maybe I was), but I did want to see Darcy get...well, SOMETHING. And Sophie needed to suffer, after keeping that secret about Felix a secret for all those years, just between her and Daddy. What a bitch! I felt like the family was absolved of their culpability far too easily, which says some pretty terrible things about the power afforded by wealth and social class. Plus, what a way to teach your child about consequences: "Just shut up, and let Mummy and Daddy deal with this."

THAT'S WHAT GOT YOU INTO THIS SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU FOOLS.

Kerry was a cool character, though.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars.

Etiquette for the End of the World by Jeanne Martinet

I desperately wanted to love this.

I was in love with the concept; I love post-apocalyptics and I loved the idea of an end-of-the-world Bridget Jones.

But Tess is no Bridget.

The fact of the matter is that Tess has no traits to make her stand out from the barrage of other chicklit protagonists out there.

She's thirty-nine.

She has a cat.

She's single.

She's a writer.

She has an eccentric boss.

She has a super girly friend.

She has shopping super-powers!

Ohhh, my, how original.

I'm a little bitter because there wasn't much focus on the actual Etiquette part. Most of what I read consisted of Tess swooning over her sexy-but-possibly-crazy-employer, Peter, and participating in activities so conformist to gender roles that they practically bordered on misogynistic.

How so?

Well, she's rude to a shop-keeper just because he has an accent and a tattoo. She describes her friend as anorexically skinny like it's a good thing. She makes condescending remarks about her boss and the fact that she's a burden to be around with because--gasp!--she's in a wheelchair.

Then I started to remember why I put this book on hold in the first place.

DNF.

1 out of 5 stars.

Me, Him, Them, and It by Caela Carter

While reading this, I kept thinking to myself, "This is like a more realistic, punked-out Saved!"

Evelyn Jones used to be the Good Girl. Then her father cheated on her mother, and they became the Stranger and the Lawyer, respectively, plunging the house into cold, unloving silence.

Then Evelyn decided to punish them, by being a Bad Girl. Or the Catholic school equivalent of one, in any case.

But despite her reputation as a slut, the only boy Evelyn has ever slept with is Todd. And even though she tries to tell herself that she's only using him for sex, she's kind of in love with him.

--and then, she finds out that she's pregnant.

Evelyn was a very frustrating character for me. There were moments where I found myself softening towards her, and there were moments when I just wanted to shake her. She was a very realistic, fully realized character, and I really appreciated that, as that sense of realism really grounded the story.

I think my favorite characters were Nora and Linda, and their two adorable adopted daughters, Cecilia and Tammy. I thought it was incredibly significant and wonderful that the most functional family in this story, with the healthiest relationships and most comfortable socioeconomic status, was one that was built on the foundation of a homosexual marriage.

Overall, I thought this was a very accurate portrayal of teen pregnancy, and the choices that teen mothers are often forced to make behind the scenes. I'll admit, I teared up a little at the end.

3 out of 5 stars.

Medicines That Kill: The Truth about the Hidden Epidemic by James L. Marcum

I did not know what I was getting into with this one.

In retrospect, the lack of blurbs and endorsements on the cover should have alerted me to the fact that all was not right in the land of Scientific Professionalism. But alas... I was seduced by the title, and whispered promises of conspiracy theories.

Well. There is a conspiracy going on here, but not the one I was bargaining for. But I digress.

The first quarter of this book had some interesting examples of people abusing their medication. For example, there was a man with angina who tried to EAT his nitroglycerin patch. There was a woman who thought she was supposed to put her birth control pills "down there." And there were tons of stories about people on 15-20 different kinds of medication, mostly to treat the symptoms caused by their--well--their other medication.

Eek.

Now, I'm not saying that medication is not dangerous. Those warning labels are there for a reason! But I feel like Marcum went about this project in a really bad way. For example, he lists the most dangerous drugs, and puts SSRIs but not MAO-Is. MAO-Inhibitors carry a whole host of dietary restrictions, because the interactions between the MAO-Is and the food could KILL you.

Is there any mention of this? Nope.

He also talks about overmedication, and especially how taking medication--specifically antidepressants--can be deadly for the unborn fetus. But he skates over the overmedication for the child once it's born. He talks about a kid who went psychotic after reacting badly to an SSRI, but says absolutely nothing about how most doctors recommend against prescribing antidepressants to children except in the most extreme cases because of the increased risk of suicidality and psychosis. No, instead, Marcum blames the evil medication, and the evil doctors.

But not himself, of course. We're treated to endless anecdotes and asides about what a good doctor Marcum is, and how he never had any of these unfortunate things happen to him and his patients.

...Uh-huh.

By this point, I began to become suspicions, and my suspicions turned out to be well-founded because the last third of the book pretty much consists of testaments to God, and how God is the best treatment plan anyone could ask for, and how all our stressors today are the work of Satan. He talks about the bible being the best health plan, and apparently he tells his patients this, too.

No.

NO.

There are just so many problems here. First of all, this book was from netgalley and was not tagged as religious & spiritual, so I was not pleased to find out that my SCIENCE book had a RELIGIOUS agenda.

Second of all, do you even realize how offensive your philosophy is to people who are secular, or who participate in a religion that is not Judeo-Christian? Are you saying that they are doomed to inferior medicine because they do not worship your God? Because that's the impression I got.

And third, bullshit like this is precisely why there is also another problem you didn't mention: people who actually NEED medication to function who go OFF their pills because they're convinced that because they're feeling better they no longer need to take them. People who need antibiotics are supposed to take them until they're all gone, or they can create a strain of resistant bacteria. People who have mental illnesses need to take their medication even when they feel fine, because their medication is what KEEPS them feeling fine.

Quitting your meds is not as easy as Dr. Marcum would have you believe, because your body can build up a tolerance to the drug--and stopping the pill train cold turkey can lead to another problem I'm also pretty sure he didn't mention: withdrawal.

0 out of 5 stars.

The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die turned me into The Girl Who Was Supposed to Go to Bed but Didn't Because She Stayed Up All Night Reading This Book.

I really, really enjoyed The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die. When people talk about "high-octane thrillers" this is the kind of book they are referring to. I couldn't put it down for a moment.

The premise is this: a girl wakes up with no memories of who she is, or why she's in a cabin in the middle of the woods. All she knows is that two of her fingernails have been ripped out, and that one of the men in the cabin is supposed to "finish her off."

It occurred to me that this is the second book I've read this week about a main character with amnesia, the first being Being Henry David.

I liked both books, but I feel like the science in The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die was tighter, and more realistic. I loved the chase scenes, and how resourceful the MC was. When she meets Ty at a shopping mall, who helps her out of the kindness of his heart, I quickly came to like him, too.

Think of this as a YA-geared Paycheck, with dashes of Hitchcock and a kick-ass girl MC.

4.5 to 5 out of 5 stars.

Dreamrider by Barry Jonsberg

This book takes the "it was all just a dream" trope and turns it on its head, and I'm trying to decide if that's a good thing. I'm still not sure what to make of Dreamrider as a whole. It's...

Strange.

Dreamrider starts out strong, about a boy named Michael who's overweight, has changed schools about seven times, and has a major problem with bullies. Michael is a lucid dreamer, which means he can take total control over his dreams. The book opens with him brutally murdering two boys from his school in one of his dreams. That darker edge to him, the desire for revenge, grows stronger and more twisted as the book goes on, which makes it hard to summon up any real pity for him.

Most of the time I found myself wanting to slap him. He's an ass. He doesn't have any real depth or personality. He lets people push him around until he gets angry enough to fight back, and then acts dazed when people punish him with consequences. The whole thing is messed up. I hate to blame the victim, but I feel like his endless self-pity, generally distrust, and dour personality didn't really help his situation one bit. He's kind of an asshole. And he's fucking psycho.

His father is a drunk, who has never quite gotten over the death of Michael's mother. His stepmother, Mary, loves him a lot, but she's also an enabler, and her sneaking around behind his father's back tends to get Michael in trouble more often than it saves him from it. She smokes cigarettes, for example, and Michael's dad blames him for it. Mary never corrects him, and Michael is sometimes punished for it, and then she tries to buy him back with food. Um.

As the story progresses, Michael notices that his dreams are beginning to bleed into reality, and that what he does in his dreams starts to actually happen. He does some good things with his powers, but also some really terrible things. At the very end of the book, he's comparing himself to God.

I think my problem is that there is no satisfying conclusion. You never really know whether what's happening is real or just madness. Is he crazy? Does he actually have superpowers?

Was it all--dare I say it--just a dream?

I guess I'll never know...and that annoys me.

2 out of 5 stars.

High Witch by Mona Hanna

I'm always wary when writer friends ask me to review their work, as I've developed a reputation for being, um, a tough critic. It's like, "Are you sure you know what you're getting into here?" My one claim to fame is that, as far as I know, I have yet to make anyone cry. I am proud of that! :)

Mona is a friend of mine, and she's a very nice lady, so if you are one of those who wish to support indie authors who are decent human beings, she is definitely a solid candidate.

However, that said, there were quite a few things I, personally, took issue with in High Witch.

To start, I think it's a little short for what she's trying to do here. The copy I received for review was just over fifty pages. This makes everything, from the romance to the plot, seem rushed. The world seemed undeveloped; I couldn't really get a feel for the magic system, which was a pity, because it was fairly unique. What separates a High Witch from a regular witch? Why do so many people in this world seem to hate witches? How does one turn from good magic to dark magic? What are the costs? The benefits?

These sorts of things can add a lot of depth to the world if answered well.

I also didn't like the main character, Brayden, at all. For starters, he smiled and bit his lip far too much, which struck me as a male, needy version of Bella Swan. He has dreams about this woman with beautiful eyes, and when he sees that woman in the inn he works in one day, he immediately falls in love with her. Of course.

However: he uses his knowledge of the fact that she is a high witch, and therefore in danger from his evil relative, Julius, as a pretext to get to know her/have sex with her. I think he is supposed to come across as sweet, naive, and kind, but to me, he seemed incredibly manipulative, priggish, self-centered, and clingy. He doesn't really give the girl, whose name is Ariel, a say in the matter at all. He's just like, "I know everything. I am in love with you. Do what I say and I will help you."

Really, is that any different than what the villain is trying to do? The fact that they are related made me wonder if perhaps Brayden was in league with his uncle, or just as evil as his uncle but in rivalry with him, and if Ariel was simply a prize for the tug-of-war of wills between them. (Now you know how my mind works, haha!) In fact, part of me was secretly hoping that she would end up killing both of them and end up realizing her powers and becoming a good but single witch.

Nope!

Maybe I would have hated Brayden less if the romance was not so rushed, but as it was, it seemed very superficial and sketchy, and I couldn't shake the feeling that his motives were more selfish than perhaps he (and subsequently, the author) let on. For example, she starts out not knowing how to use her powers at all. What does Brayden have her do as a starter spell? FIX HER EYESIGHT SO SHE WON'T HAVE TO WEAR THOSE UGLY GLASSES. Seriously. He has her put a spell on her eyes as her first piece of magic. And she does it! What the actual fuck.

There were several other things he did that bespoke of casual selfishness that underlay his good motives. Like, when they are on the run, he doesn't let her sleep in claiming that they don't have the time--but then, he immediately has sex with her. Oh, so there's time a-plenty for your needs, Brayden, but any mention of hers and you bring up the d-word. There's another moment when he tells her that "this isn't her fault." Well, of course it's not her bloody fault now, is it? It's Julius's, the evil dude. Why would you even put that thought into her head knowing how selfless and sensitive she is? It's downright manipulative, it is. Even when they first have sex he admits to himself that he's moving too fast, but does he stop? No, because he wants it SO BADLY. What about what she wants? He's always grabbing at her, kissing her, forcing himself on her, it really made me sick.

Now that I've gotten (most of) my Brayden-induced rage out of my system, I will say that I liked Ariel's character. She wasn't very developed, mostly because we only saw her through Brayden's lust-blurred lens, but she was intriguing enough that I wanted to know more. It takes a certain kind of woman to run away from a scary fiance that she doesn't love, especially at the risk of the estrangement of her father. I loved the fact that she wore glasses, and that she was so brave. It broke my heart how quickly she succumbed to Brayden, as he didn't seem right for her at all.

Julius's character was also quite good. The flashback towards the beginning, with Lenora, was probably one of the best parts of the book. It really captured his evil side, in a Disney villain sort of way. I kind of got the feeling that Ms. Hanna was going for the Disney fairytale atmosphere. With a bit more development, and less priggishness on the male MC's part and more feistiness on the female's, I think that really could have worked. She has that matter-of-fact way of story-telling that fits in so well with the fairytale narrative, cutting right to the meat of a storyline with spare prose.

This was by no means a bad novel, but it is still a ways from being a good one. I think Mona has a beautiful story waiting inside of her, and I look forward to the day when it finally comes out.

You can do it, Mona!

1.5 to 2 out of 5 stars.

Gum Girl!, Book 1: Chews Your Destiny by Rhode Montijo

This cute little comic is about a girl named Gabby Gomez who is addicted to gum. One day she blows a bubble so big, it hits a powerline and electrifies her, turning her body into gum.

Due to a trick that her mother used at the beginning of the story to get some gum out of her hair, Gabby discovers that she can turn back into her normal self by wiping peanut butter on herself.

She does several heroic things, like rescuing kitties from trees and even holding together the broken wing of an airplane.

I liked the fact that the girl wasn't white but Latina, and that there were some Spanish words rather like Dora the Explorer. For little girls of Latin heritage, I think they will be able relate to Gabby, as she is a very likable protagonist.

This was a little young for me, but cute. I enjoyed it.

3 out of 5 stars.

A Song of the Sidhe by Jeanne Barrack

Let me start by saying that I have no idea what the publishers/author were thinking, going with this cover. The one on netgalley is sort of pretty and looks like it actually does take place in a faerie-ridden Ireland. This looks like...I don't even know...some raunchy hot spring porn that takes place in Japan.

A Song of the Sidhe is only eighty-five pages long, and yet a lot of story is crammed into it--way more than your usual erotica. It's even got a plot, and supporting characters and all that good stuff. Totally unnecessary in most porn-fics. In a way, that makes this book harder to rate because I got the impression that the author was really really trying with this one. It's like you want to give them something even if it's a gold star for effort.

**SPOILERS ABOUND SO READ CAUTIOUSLY**

I had to go back and skim this story a second time because there were so many characters fighting with/lusting after/getting jealous over/out to get one another that I couldn't keep track of them all. I ended up taking notes, jotting down their race and modus operandi just to ensure I stayed in the know.

The story starts out with a man named Donal and a woman named Maire having sex. They're both human. Donal is the handsomest man in the town of Tipperary, and sleeps with pretty much all the attractive maidens there. Maire is a sex-crazed young widow, whose evil old husband couldn't get it up and therefore locked her in the house so she couldn't have sex either, forcing her to pleasure herself with such objects as knife handles or candle sticks (I'm not making this up, I swear).

A sidhe named Etain is jealous of Maire because she wants Donal. She conspires to split the two of them up by having Donal anger Ogma by claiming he's a better lover than a god (and if you know ANYTHING about ANY kind of mythology, saying you're better at something than ANY god is never a good idea). Ogma, despite his name sounding like he belongs in Oz, is not the least bit kid-friendly. He slept with Maire in the past, convincing her that it was a dream, and totally rocked her world. He curses Donal into an ugly hunchback and then starts to get his bone on with Maire.

This pisses off Ogma's wife, Deora, who decides to curse both Maire and Ogma by saying, "Oh, really? So you like being in bed do you? THEN YOU SHALL STAY IN THIS BED FOREVER WHILE IT GROWS RANK WITH MAIRE'S FECES AND ROTTING FLESH." Ogma freaks out and is like, "I'm sorry babe! Please don't make me have icky corpse-sex! You're the only love goddess for me!" Deora relents on the condition that Ogma never sees her again. Ogma begs to kiss her goodbye and tells Maire all her past lovers were imaginary, and Maire then leaves the story.

Flash forward to the sidhe high court. Ceoleen is a gorgeous female sidhe who everyone with a working cock lusts after, including the evil but handsome Lorcan (also a male sidhe). He pisses her off and she's like "Okay, never sleeping with you again, take your last look, kthxbye!" It turns out she's having a competition of song with another sidhe, a member of the lower court named Drimin. All the men vote for Ceoleen's sex-related songs, to the rage of their wives, but Ceoleen fails to take into account that there are more female sidhe than male sidhe, and loses the contest to Drimin's songs of innocence, and familial love, and babies. Ceoleen is pissed, and the sidhe council are like, "You dare question our judgment?" and curse her, so that she is blind, and doomed to sing the same song over and over, "Monday, Tuesday... Monday, Tuesday..." and bound to marry the first man who finishes the song for her and frees her from that part of the curse.

Ceoleen ends up trapped in the woods and makes friends with Disney-like forest creatures who feel sorry for her and bring her food and stuff. Lorcan swings by to get some ass and is annoyed to find her arrogant as always, so he curses her for another two hundred years. I guess this happened in the past, then, because who does she happen upon but old hunchbacked Donal from the beginning of the story? He finishes the song for her with "Wednesday" and totally gets a wicked hard-on seeing her in all her ill-clad fae glory. He regrets deceiving a blind woman, but not to the point where he doesn't bind her hands so she can't feel his hump and screws the daylights out of her.

Is Etain pissed about this? Yup.

Ceoleen doesn't hear his icky hunchback voice because going blind has allowed her to "see" into the hearts of people. So she hears a sexy-sexy-voice instead of the thin screech everyone else hears. She's so enchanted by her new lover that she decides to bring him back to the sidhe court to show off to everyone (especially Lorcan). They are repulsed by the hunchback and still pissed off at Ceoleen and start to kick her out again, but Drimin interferes (remember, she's all about love), and grants the two of them her protection, and really does a lot considering how bitchy Ceoleen is.

Naturally, this eats Lorcan up inside, so he conspires with Neasa, the wife of the sidhe council leader, Ailill, to trick Ceoleen into feeling Donal's hump, knowing that in her disgust she will leave him. Which she does, only to realize, to her chagrin, that Donal truly loved her when she receives the fairyworked gift he commissioned for her with the help of Keardy (the Hephaestus of the fae). Lorcan tries to rape her. She escapes and goes to the woods where she first found Donal. He is good-looking again! Her love broke the spell! They have more sex, but uh-oh, Lorcan is there and plans to kill Donal and rape the everlasting shit out of Ceoleen for all eternity mwahahaha.

Etain is like, "Oh noes! My selfishness is going to get my favorite mortal killed!"

But Donal PUNCHES THAT MOTHERFUCKER IN THE FACE AND BREAKS HIS NOSE OH YEAH. Lorcan is like, "Ow. I am incapacitated even though I am a sidhe!" Donal is like, "THAT'S RIGHT BITCH. NOW I CURSE YOU TO CRAWL! CRAWL LIKE THE MAGGOT YOU ARE!" And Lorcan crawls away. And Donal and Ceoleen continue having sex.

THE END.

1.5 out of 5 stars.

Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom by Ted Naifeh

What if Labyrinth was more like the world in Coraline ... and the girl who went there was more like Wednesday Addams?

...Welcome to the Twilight Kingdom.

So I'm still trying to get over this flu/virus, and even though I finished this book yesterday I decided I'd rather sleep than review because logic and fevers do not work well together.

This is a bit different from what I normally read and I probably wouldn't have applied for it all except for the fact that I recognized the name Ted Naifeh as the man who worked on the manga, Unearthly, which was surprisingly good for an American mangaka (they tend to suck #sadbuttrue).

Anyway, the artwork style in here reminded me a bit of Clive Barker's Abarat. Lots of sharp angles and interesting uses of colors. The storytelling is similar, too. Naifeh, like Barker, understands that children don't mind a bit of creepy as long as its an abstract fantasy sort of creepy with rules and protections.

Courtney Crumrin is that edgy little goth-girl who comes from the school of Ruby Glooms, Wednesday Addamses, Coralines, Mandys, and other not-so-jolly old souls. She's a witch, with parents who sell crappy real estate to unsuspecting tourists. She also goes to a witch school, where the other kids don't really care for her much at all because she's so weird.

Anyway, the other kids do this dark magic ritual led by the oldest of the bunch. Courtney tries to warn them, but they all insult her and tell her to get lost and it's very sad. Unsurprisingly, the spell goes terribly wrong (or terribly right) as dark magic is wont to do. They're forced to come to Courtney for help, who discovers that the only way to reverse the spell is in the fairy kingdom.

The plot, the storytelling, and the dialogue were all wonderful. I enjoyed this quite a bit! It's so nice to see fairy stories that follow the traditional "fairies are effing scary" school of thought.

Plus, that ending was so cute!

4.5 out of 5 stars.

The Convict's Bounty Bride by Lena Dowling

Oh dear. This one was a doozy. Between the piss-poor dialogue and the idiotic main character, I don't think I could have finished this book if it hadn't been only sixty pages.

The Convict's Bounty Bride is about Thea, aspiring feminist, and James, emancipated prisoner from Australia.

(T)hea: I love being a spinster! Being a spinster is so awesome! I'm going to be just like Mary Wallstonecraft!

(J)ames: By God, I'm too manly for one woman, so I'm going to content myself with my whores. I'm sure the wife will understand. Men have needs you know.

T: I'm going to poison everyone at this party by spiking the punch! And let myself get caught! LOL. That'll get me ban-hammered from polite society! No one will ever marry me then! Woo-woo! Spinsterhood! YOLO, bitches!

J: Who is that woman with the amazing knockers? I'm going to say things to her that would likely get me stoned in any realistic semblance of Regency society.

T: Well, I never! What a large bulge that man's got in his tights!

J: So, you want to get banned from polite society, eh?

T: I want to be a spinster!

J: Aren't spinsters supposed to be ugly?

T: Nope.

J: I'd much rather diddle you in the back.

T: HUSH. I AM A VIRGIN. YOU CANNOT TALK TO ME THUS.

J: LOL.

T: Oh no! I cannot stop thinking about his hulking body and large throbbing pe--ctorals. I must not think about him! I cannot marry him! I want to be a spinster!

J: Hey, wanna fuck?

T: Yeah, okay.

[[they screw like rabbits on Viagra]]

T: He had sex with me! That means he loves me! Which means I've got a great personality!

J: Gotta go, LOLBYE. Wanna get married when I get back?

T: No.

J: OK.

T: He left! OMG. I don't want to be a spinster anymore! I want to get married so I can have sex!

J: OH HI. LET'S HAVE SEX ON THIS BOAT GOING TO AUSTRALIA.

[[they screw like rabbits on Viagra]]

1 out of 5 stars.

The Massive by Brian Wood

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a wave.

The Massive is my first Brian Wood graphic-novel. I guess he's got another post-apocalyptic series about zombies? Well, this one focuses on environmental disasters.

Basically, everything that can go wrong with the environment does go wrong. Wind and ocean currents change, massive floods and rogue waves wipe out coastal towns and cities and bury islands under several meters of water. Birds fall dead from the sky and fish wash up dead on the land. Water gets polluted.

Oh, and people fight and become more and more corrupt as they compete for the most elementary resources of our survival: food, fuel, and clean water. Of course.

Judging from the major closeup of what looks like the moon, I'm guessing that this is a lunar affair and that the man in the moon is one pissed-off motherfucker. It's just a theory, but I'm interested to see if I'm right.

Most of the story takes place aboard the Kapital, the sister ship of The Massive which has gone missing for months and months. The three main characters are Mag, Mary, and Cal, though there are four or five other characters who pop in every now and then just to remind us they're there.

This edition contains backstories for Mag, Mary, and Cal that take place before issue #1, so that was cool, getting to see where each of them came from and what they were all about.

I'm picky about graphic-novels, but I did think that Wood took a realistic approach to post-apocalyptic fiction. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

3 out of 5 stars.

Permanent Record by Leslie Stella

Badi is an Iranian-American boy with clinical depression, anger management problems, and who gets bullied at school. One day, he gets kicked out after blowing up a toilet and trying to kill himself to boot.

His father forces him to change his name to "Bud Hess" and makes arrangements for Badi to be sent to a Catholic school. From there on out it becomes an homage to The Chocolate War as Badi refuses to sell the chocolates for the school's fundraiser because the money is only appropriated to the athletes.

Unlike his last school, where he only hung out with a couple other losers who were overly fond of D&D, Badi actually has real friends: there's Nikki, the outcast goth-like girl people think is a lesbian, and there's Reggie, the African American chess master.

The school gets shaken up when someone starts sabotaging the school paper, criticizing the hypocrisy of the school and its students in serialized private letters signed "Anonymous." Worse, it seems like the person might be trying to implicate Badi.

But who? And why?

I loved Badi and his family, and think that the author did a wonderful job portraying what it's like to live as a Middle-Eastern in post-9/11 U.S. Much of the bullying Badi receives his about his race and ethnicity, with people calling him terrible names. She also did a good job with the culture shock, and I felt that her research on Iranian customs and family values was really well done.

Permanent Record is a depressing read, though, and just like Chocolate War, the main character ends up getting fucked over in the end. It made this a hard book to enjoy, even though the writing and characterization were really good.

3 out of 5 stars.