The New Book Review

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Cheryl Malandrinos Reviews Karina Fabian's Fantasy

Title: Magic, Mensa and Mayhem

Author: Karina Fabian

Category: Fantasy, Humor

ISBN:978-1-934041-78-9

Reviewed by Cheryl Malandrinos originally for Fantasy Novels

Humor, mystery, and fantasy combine to create an outstanding story in “Magic, Mensa and Mayhem” by Karina L. Fabian.

This was not going to be one of those STUC (Save-the-Universe Cases). Just an all-expense paid trip to Florida to chaperone a group of Magicals at a Mensa convention for Vern the dragon detective and his partner, the mage Sister Grace.
Well, someone forgot to tell the pixies. They start pulling their pranks. Then the Brownies start cleaning and organizing things they aren’t supposed to and a hyped up elf who is behind the times might declare war on Florida. And as if that’s not bad enough, there’s a Native American Trickster who can change forms and a Valkyrie heroine of legend who has turned her attention to bodybuilding and fashion design, both of whom create a little chaos of their own.
So much for that cushy job!

If you are looking for a deep fantasy novel, this isn’t it. “Magic, Mensa and Mayhem” is, however, one of the most uproariously funny books you’ll ever read. Honestly, I laughed so hard that my husband thought I had found my decades-long missing sense of humor.

Fabian proves once again that she is a master storyteller. Who else could combine a dragon detective, a magical nun, a host of other bizarre characters and Oprah, and make it work so well?

Now, keeping in mind that I am not a huge fan of the fantasy genre, this book hooked me from the very first sentence. Actually, the Acknowledgements section caught my eye first, and I rarely read those. Fabian shares how the book came about, the origin of Vern, how she entered into a relationship with publisher Dindy Robinson of Swimming Kangaroo Books and talks about where you can find Vern online.

Included at the end are two appendices. The first is “Uncle Vern’s Glossary of Faerie and Mundane Terms” and the second contains the “Pronunciation of Elvish Names” found in the book and includes brief comments about each elf. Both appendices are as devilishly funny as the rest of the book.

“Magic, Mensa and Mayhem” is a must read for anyone who enjoys a funny, offbeat story.

I leave you with a Vern quote that is also included at the back of the book:
“…Wisdom of the Ages, Knowledge of Eternity, and I end up a babysitter at the Smart Humans’ Convention.”

Author bio:

Karina Fabian writes award-winning science fiction and fantasy that twist clichés and combines the heavy with the lighthearted. Find all her books at http://fabianspace.com

-----
The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Friday, February 3, 2012

TALES2INSPIRE

TALES2INSPIRE

Read Author Tales

Reviews of Author Tales

Lois W. Stern has begun a new contest and service for authors called Tales2Inspire. The tales that she features will be reviewed on this blog, probably on Fridays. We hope readers find some new, short reading to inspire them in these busy times and that the autors who frequent this blog will support the Tales2Inspire program.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Dark YA Comedy Given Five-Stars

Title: Going Bovine

Author: Libba Bray

Author's Website: www.libbabray.com

Genre/Category: Young Adult, Surreal Dark Comedy, Speculative Fiction

ISBN-10: 0385733984

ISBN-13: 978-0385733984

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Going-Bovine-Libba-Bray/dp/0385733984

Reviewed by Airiz Casta

Reviewer's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Take a modern day Holden Caulfield diagnosed with the human equivalent of mad cow disease. Throw him in a mission to find his cure (and save the world!) with a hypochondriac dwarf and a Viking god cursed as a lawn gnome. Add a punk angel with a penchant for spray-painting misspelled messages on her wings, a cluster of fire demons, an enigmatic Wizard, and a wormhole that will bring the dreaded apocalypse. Stir well—and voila! You just prepared Libba Bray’s surreal dark comedy, Going Bovine.

There are many authors who attempted to concoct an effective formula that can render their stories both fall-off-the-chair funny and heartbreaking at the same time, but I believe only a handful of those who declared “Eureka!” got a positive response from the reading world. Libba Bray is one of them.

Speaking through the (vulgar) mouth of teenage lazybones Cameron John Smith,Going Bovine is a story of death, choices, friendship, and of course, life. Bray’s spot-on sense of humor is reminiscent of Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; her writing style is addictive and convincing. The characterization is astonishingly brilliant, and it proves to be more than enough in persuading the readers to root for the unlikable, unreliable narrator.

Cameron is perhaps one of the most irksome antiheroes in Young Adult literature. The ennui he builds around himself is perpetually backed up by his I’m-the-world’s-most-apathetic-jerk-and-I-know-it-and-you-can’t-do-anything-about-it attitude. Considering himself a ‘social paramecium’, he wants to survive high school (and life in general) just by, well, having mass and occupying space. Nothing more. The word ‘effort’ is nonexistent in his lexicon. Bray makes it so that Cameron comes off as a sardonic quipster that can give you the urge to punch him just for being who he is. That is until he finds out he acquired a fatal illness, the Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant BSE. Suddenly, he is forced to grow out of his shell of indifference; he is forced tocare. He has to face many questions, the most important being: have I lived a meaningful life? Have I ever lived at all?

Clearly, the answer is no. Cameron wasted a majority of his life existing, not living. With only a few time left before shifting off the mortal coil, he learns it is too late for him to taste the essence of life. He begins to despise everyone who will outlive him. But as in Pandora’s box, after all the bad news emerges hope: the angel Dulcie gives him a chance to live. He grabs this opportunity and sets off in an adventure like no other, to search for his supposed cure.

Most of the poignant moments occur while Cameron and his new found friends are on the road. Why is it only when Death is reaching out to you with open arms that you are finally noticing the things in life worth hanging on to? Cameron belongs to a dysfunctional family, and though he does not admit to hating any member, his attitude toward them is the usual “I don’t give a damn.” Everything changes when his impending death is confirmed. When Cameron talks with his father on the phone, you could almost hear his croaking “I love you.” He has a couple of touching moments with his mom too, but my favorite is the subtlest, when he dines at Konstant Kettle and misses his mom’s Grammar Nazi-sh pet peeve. He decides to call her:

There’s a pay phone in the way back next to the men’s bathroom. I drop in all the change I’ve got and make the call. It rings four times and goes to voicemail. I hear my mom’s familiar message.

“Hi, this is Mary Smith. I can’t come to the phone right now because I’ve probably been carried away by griffins. But if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you just as quickly as Hermes would.” There’s a pause, and then she says to me, “Cameron, did I do that right? Oh! We’re still recording! Oh my goodness…,” and her laugh is cut off. That message used to annoy the crap out of me, my mom being all spacey and mom-ish. But right now, hearing her voice is the best thing in the world, like waking up and realizing there’s no school. There’s a beep, and my stomach tightens.

“Um, hi, Mom. It’s me. Cameron. Well, you probably ﬁgured that part out,” I say, sounding like the biggest dork. “Anyway, I’m okay. I want you to know that ﬁrst. And, you know what? Keep grading those moronic English Comp 101 papers, because otherwise, we’re all gonna be getting our gas at the K-W-I-K S-E-R-V and drinking our E-X-P-R-E-S-S-Os at the Konstant Kettle, two K’s. Seriously, the world needs you. You matter. A lot. Okay, I gotta go, ’cause the grifﬁns are here and you know how much they hate to wait. Love you,” I add quickly, and hang up.

Halfway through the novel, Cameron is becoming a more pleasant person. He is still a potty-mouthed smartass, but he cares a lot now. He even loves. I enjoyed reading about their “stops” and how Cameron picks up a couple of lessons from them that he hasn’t learned in the past sixteen years of his life. However, it easily became clear to me that the story will take a Lewis Carroll-esque turn. I’m not certain if it’s because of the plethora of clues strewn across each chapter or the extreme surrealism of events, but either way it did not deter me from liking the whole thing.

Aside from carrying significant messages that will send you pondering, what makesGoing Bovine stand out from today’s flurry of cookie-cutter Alice in Wonderland tales is that it makes you question what really happened. That said, I absolutely love the concept of parallel worlds/alternate realities. In the readers’ perspective, everything is just a Don Quixote journey…but what is real, anyway? Bray poses that rhetorical question from the very start. Like Schrödinger’s Cat experiment, who’s to say only one reality exists? Can two realities not happen at the same time? Perhaps it’s only my inner kid’s happy-ever-after alarm going off, but I took comfort in the fact that this recurring element may also apply to the storyline itself.

There’s one thing I did not see coming: the identity of the Wizard of the Reckoning. I was shocked in a good way, and that’s plus points in my book. The final pages were amazingly bittersweet and thought-provoking. I was sobbing quietly, but a sense of eternal hope is also lingering there, making me smile (therefore making me look like a first class idiot, haha).

Going Bovine is officially taking its place in the bookshelf of my favorite novels. 4.5 stars out of 5 for an unforgettable read!

~Reviewer Airiz Casta blogs at

www.cinderellaincombatboots.blogspot.com

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Cozy Winter Reading Recs from Mindy Lawrence

Mindy Phillips Lawrence helps me edit my Sharing with Writers newsletter and writes a regular "Itty Bitty" column for it. Last issue she shared some of her recommendations for winter reading. See below. And if you'd like to receive the newsletter for great articles and tips on all things writing send a SUBSCRIBE message to HoJoNews@aol.com.

Mindy's Recommendation for Cozy Winter Reading

By Mindy Phillips Lawrence

One of the best activities to participate in when the wind and snow are blowing is reading. We have such a wealth of ways to read these days: Kindle’s, Nooks, other e-readers and actual books with pages to turn and covers to cuddle.

I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction lately and thought I’d share both that and other works that I’ve finally gotten around to.

Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, Brian Kellow

Kindle and hardcover editions

Viking Adult

ISBN-13: 978-0670023127

Kael was the long-running film critic at New Yorker magazine who liked what she liked and disliked what she didn’t like—and didn’t mince words about it. I remember seeing her on TV when I was younger. I didn’t always agree with her but I loved the way she wrote. This is an interesting book on her slow but steady trip up the writing ladder.

THE SHIPPING NEWS, A NOVEL, Annie Proulx

Kindle and paperback editions

Scribner

ISBN-13: 978-0684857916

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, this story is about a third-rate newspaper hack that loses his wife and must deal with his two emotionally disturbed daughters.

THE BREATHE OF GOD, Jeffrey Small

Kindle and paperback editions

West Hill Press

ISBN-13: 978-1933512860

Based on actual historical evidence, The Breath of God is the fictional adventure of the search for ancient documents that could link the world’s great religious faiths.

AND SO IT GOES: KURT VONNEGUT, A LIFE, Charles Shields

Kindle and hardcover

Henry Holt

ISBN-13: 978-0805086935

Beginning with a letter sent to Vonnegut in 2006 asking permission to write a biography on him, Shields wrote the book based on 1500 letters to or from Vonnegut discovered after his death.

Many interesting books are coming out that make great winter reads. Whether you read fiction or nonfiction, Kindle or hardbound, let me know what YOU are reading on these chilly nights!

~ Mindy Phillips Lawrence, www.freewebs.com/mplcreative, is the author of the poetry collections One Blue Star and Above and Below. She is co-author of The Complete Writer, an editor and a publicist. She is in the process of putting together an e-book and paperback based on her Itty-Bitty Column for Sharing with Writers. Blogging at: http://mplcreative.blogspot.com/. She is also working on a book for the Military Writers Society of America on war correspondents. Her specialty is helping writers with their media releases. Reach her at mplcreative1@aol.com.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Reviewer Lenz Takes on Translation of Marcel Pronovost Work

Title: Hearth and Home:The tumultuous life of Mathieu Rouillard and Jeanne
Guillet
Author: Marcel Pronovost.
Translated from the French by Eileen Reardon.
ISBN 978-1-926945-37-8
Baico Publishing Inc., 2011
Publisher's Web site: www.baico.ca
$25.00, 349 pages.
Genre: historical fiction

Reviewed by lenz, original for lenz.hubpages.com.

When Marcel Pronovost’s ancestor, Mathieu Rouillard, arrived in New
France in 1661 after a three-month Atlantic crossing, he did not see the
gold he had been told would be lying about on the ground, but he knew it
could be made by those with strength, intelligence, a will to work hard
and ambition. Mathieu had all of these qualities in abundance but he was
up against two mighty foes: the unforgiving North American wilderness
and the rapacious French colonial government with its systems of trade
and feudal seigneurial land grants.

Mathieu and his wife Jeanne were two among a large number of Mr.
Pronovost’s Trois Rivières, Quebec ancestors, whose lives and times he
has spent many years researching. Intending at first to write a brief
history to be distributed among his own family members, he found the
huge catalogue of historical data he had collected made that project
untenable and so decided to make it a novel in which he could condense
the subject of his family’s habitant ancestors into a dramatic tale of
one couple whose experience encompassed the best and worst that the new
world had to offer. Hearth and Home: The tumultuous life of Mathieu
Rouillard and Jeanne Guillet is the result and a lively, fact-filled,
fast-paced account it is.

Jeanne is the eldest daughter of a prosperous carpenter who at first
welcomes Mathieu, a strong reliable farmhand at the time, to the family
(Mathieu has left his own back in La Rochelle, France), but regrets it
later when he finds that the young suitor has told a small lie about
having property in France and will not provide the financial support for
his daughter he had hoped for. Indeed, Mathieu will never be rich, but
will be in debt to lenders for the rest of his life, his ambitions being
more than even his strong back can bear. The newlyweds love each other
passionately, but even Jeanne will become sad and embittered as the
years go on and she is left alone for months at times to care for
children and harvest crops, while her husband leaves “hearth and home”
to pursue his true vocation.

After clearing a strip of land on the Batiscan River, near Trois
Rivières, and building a small cabin for Jeanne and planting some wheat,
he turns to the business that has captured his imagination since his
arrival. He will be a coureur de bois or voyageur, traveling by canoe on
the rivers that lead to the north and west to trade with the aboriginal
peoples cheap merchandise for valuable beaver pelts. (Pronovost uses the
term “Savages” for the natives, as the colonists did.)

He loves the hard, adventurous life, but learns that the fur trade is
not always profitable -- rarely, in fact. Still, he keeps going on
longer and longer trips while owing more and more to the merchants who
have lent him the goods with which he trades. The payment he receives
for the furs he brings back never seem enough to cover the cost of those
goods.

Between his trading voyages and brief returns to the ever-affectionate
Jeanne, there are battles with the Iroquois and the English. It is the
Iroquois who, at first, are the principle enemy of the French. They are
a constant menace to both French settlers and other aboriginal nations.
Many forts are built and local men are called up to join militias which
are mostly successful at fighting off the raiders, but many lives are
lost on both sides. The English forces to the south only enter this
narrative late in the story when Mathieu and his friends are forced to
smuggle furs to the English forts, where they can get a higher price.
The politics and religion of the day are portrayed in all their greed
and hypocrisy, although we do see how Jesuit priests did their best to
keep the colonists from moral decay. The growing cynicism of the
colonists is also shown as they realise how powerless they are against
the same social forces that existed in the Old France that they left, in
hope of greater freedom.

When Mathieu is in his fifties and feeling his age, his desire to see
places further west takes him to the Mississippi River and a trip south
to warmer temperatures and fertile land, where he dreams of bringing his
wife and children to live more freely and comfortably. Here he sadly
meets his end.

Mathieu Rouillard, 1638-1702, holds the dubious distinction of (perhaps)
being the first white man to have died and been buried in what is now
the State of Louisiana and what was, in 1702, a swampy outpost of the
far reaches of New France. A tragic end to a truly tumultuous life.

This semi-fiction (most of the names are of persons living in that time)
takes us quickly through the years between 1660 and 1702 with energy,
passion and a lively style that engages one completely but raises, to my
mind, more questions than it answers about the lives and times of the
hardy and adventurous people of New France; the role of women, both
colonist and aboriginal, is distinctly missing in the scheme of things.

Illustrations from the National Archives of Canada, maps and lists of
names of aboriginal nations and historical characters are included.
Eileen Reardon provides a translation from the French that matches the
spirit of the original. I recommend this first novel as a charming and
intriguing introduction to the period.

~The reviewer, lenz, contributes occasionally to Hubpages (www.hubpages.com, World Literature Forum
(http://www.worldliteratureforum.com ) and other sites and is a volunteer proofreader at Distributed Proofreaders (www.pgdp.net ) as
xlenz.

-----
The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Monday, January 30, 2012

Book for Writers, Linguists, Anthropolgists and Lovers of Language

Euphemania
Subtitle: Our love affair with euphemisms
By Ralph Keyes
Little Brown and Co.
ISBN: 9780316056564
Nonfiction/ (Writing/Language)
Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson originally for MyShelf.com

If you don’t love language, it’s a good bet you aren’t a writer. But if you’re a writer, reading more about language (linguistics (?)) may not be high on your list of priorities. It’s so integral to the way you think, you believe you don’t need it.

I believe that Euphemania by Ralph Keyes will change your mind. Written with humor (because euphemisms are just naturally funny?) this book will certainly entertain. If you’ve ever wondered about the intricacies of our euphemisms—the origins as an example—this is the book for you. But who would have guessed that it also might be the perfect book to hone the skills of writers of dialogue and humor?

Academic writers? Use it as a quick-study on how to write a book that will sell to a wide market. The secret? Voice. Humor. Colloquialisms. Yep, and euphemisms. A book does not have to have the lack of moisture content (dry!) of a text book to be a textbook. I know about academic expectations. My daughter is a Ph.D. candidate. She explains it to me all the time. Having said that, if you’d like to actually sell something rather than giving everything away to unappreciative academic journals, try rewriting your brilliant theory for the general public!

Anthropologists and linguists will love this book, too. But mostly, it’s just fun learning why we use asterisks for words like sh*t and the euphemisms like the f-word. It’s also tons of fun to identify phrases we’ve stopped thinking of as euphemisms (love handles, anyone?), just because they are so part of our everyday language.

If I were rating this book for an Amazon review, it would give it a true (not a fake) five-star rating. For usefulness. For fun. For the love of language.

-----

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Friday, January 27, 2012

Five-Star Review for Book Set in New York

Title: Fixer
Author: Ed Brodow
Author Website: http://www.fixerbook.com
Genre: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 978-1432717032

Reviewed by Erika Borsos originally for Amazon
Reviewer's Rating: Five Stars

This book provides a great visual representation of life in New York city at the turn-of-the-century. The author uses his words like an artist uses paint on canvas. This book leaves a great visual and colorful impact on the reader. The story is energetic, fast paced and filled with great human interest, overall a fascinating read. This is an historical era novel about a powerful charismatic politically connected figure who wielded a great deal of influence in New York city during the height of his career. It was a time when various people from Europe and Russia were clashing as they fought to create a new and better life for themselves and their families. They escaped the political forces and prejudices which held them back in the "old world" but faced new and different enemies and circumstances instead. Sometimes, the new circumstances were nearly as daunting as the old but as time marched on, the powerful walls which kept people of different cultures from achieving their potential cracked and broke apart. Times created situations where someone with a powerful personality who had major chutzpah and intelligence could work the system and become highly influential. This book is about such a man, his name is Harry Leonoff, a man of Jewish descent who beat the odds and made himself into a success. He become politically connected and indispensable to the politicians who needed major jobs done around the city. He hung around Tammany Hall with the Irish who got Harry hooked on politics. Harry's reputation grew as he strove to maintain his values and integrity while he got jobs done. Unfortunately, his strong need to maintain his integrity prevented him from backing down from a position once he took a strong stand and this became his undoing after clashing with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia who also possessed a similar ego and style of behavior.

Harry Leonoff's rise to power and his fall from grace makes for a fascinating novel. Harry's early life began on the Lower East Side of New York in Jewish tenement houses and apartments. This milieu provided the foundation for Harry's developing a strong character. His character was tested when he developed polio and underwent rigorous stretching exercises, without benefit of analgesics. Fortunately, he eventually received more humane treatment from Andrew Craig a Scotsman who developed a successful home treatment for polio victims. Harry retained a limp due to this childhood illness. Perhaps this is where Harry learned to care so much about the poor and less fortunate. Harry's fearless reputation got him hired by a local group of Jewish leaders who wanted some anti-Semitic thugs taught a lesson. By age 23, Harry realized he needed education and hung out at a local Democratic Club, where he overheard Big Jim Connolly express that lawyers ran the city. This gave Harry the grand idea to become a law clerk. At the time there were several avenues to entering the legal profession, one was attending law school, another was graduating from college and preparing for the bar exam, and a third for those with little formal education, as was Harry's case, was to become a law clerk. Harry was hired to apprentice for Mr. Levine who had won some rather famous cases. This is where Harry's sense of fair play arose as he noticed not everyone was getting justice under the legal system ...in fact, the rich and powerful seemed to receive most of it. He concluded only those with political influence could correct the deficiencies in the system so Harry attempted to do just that. He returned to Tammany Hall to work for Big Jim Connolly. Harry's success continued as he gained experience and grew to have a reputation for getting the job done.

The author does a superb job of describing the rise and fall of Harry's fame. The stories are realistic and believable, most are serious, others are humorous. The author does a particularly excellent job of drawing the reader into the story from the beginning when Harry's grandson visits at the hospital where Harry resides. The description of the harbor, the weather, the landscape and views and then the inside of the mental hospital are very visually realistic and appealing. The author's description of how Harry's frame of mind flips from current reality into the past is highly accurate of how confused elderly people behave and react. The book was inspired by the life of the author's own grandfather. This book is most highly recommended. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

---

Pages