Danny Dragonbreath is your typical youngster.  He puts up with his father’s good-natured lectures.  He goofs off instead of doing school work, waiting until the last minute to eek out something off the top of his head.  He dreams of being a pirate.  And he’s not very good at breathing fire.  Unfortunately, since Danny is an actual dragon, that last one poses a bit of a problem.  He practices every day, but he can’t seem to figure out the internal mechanics to make it work, no matter how much he thinks “hot” like his father says.

Danny and his best friend Wendell, an iguana, take a trip to the sea shore to visit Danny’s cousin Edward, a sea serpent.  Danny needs to write a report on the ocean to make up for the abysmal, last minute fiction he tuned in on ocean-dwelling bats.  Instead of going to the library, like Wendell urges, Danny wants to experience the ocean first hand, and enlists his kindly cousin for the project.

Danny and Wendell get to see a coral reef up close, they get chased by a shark, find a sunken ship, and nearly get eaten by a giant squid.  All in all, it was a grand adventure.  Danny laughs off each near death experience, and seems to actual learn a thing or too, despite his best efforts to just have fun.  Wendell is rather terrified most of the time, but discovers that he actually knows more about the ocean than he had realized, and even finds just how tough he can actually be and manages to stand up to the school bully the next day.

This is a charming story of learning how to make learning fun.  It is about facing one’s fears, and seeing that you are stronger than you could have ever imagined.  Danny Dragonbreath is a wonderful character, and the mix of comic-like illustrations every 3 or 4 pages makes the story a joy to read.

Volume 1 of "The Rectifier" series can't seem to get it's timing right

 Glenn A. Jones gives us a Borne-like hero in Frank Jackson, the Rectifier.  With no memory of his past, Frank is thrust back into his life by his handlers after only 6 weeks of physical therapy to recover from injuries he doesn’t know how he received.  During those 6 weeks, Frank is told nothing about his former life, nor does he seem to ask, as we don’t receive any of that time in print, not even as exposition.  We are propelled straight from Frank being taken to the mansion that had been his home (or base of operation more like) to him being cleared to return to active duty.  He doesn’t seem concerned that, in the intervening time, no one has bothered to tell him who he is or what he’s doing there.  He doesn’t even question why his physical training seems to focus so much on building his muscle mass back up to above the average fit physique.

Once Frank is given the rundown on his job, he is given his first assignment – kill a drug cartel hit man.  At first, Frank seems hesitant to believe that this could be his job.  He dislikes the idea of killing a stranger and potentially hurting innocent people who are connected to the target (such as friends and family).  However, he is quickly (a little too quickly) won over by a list of horrible atrocities the target has done, and the assurance that he is not married and has no children.  Frank quickly justifies to himself that this man deserves to die and no one will miss him when he’s gone, and that’s all he needs to know in order to do the job.  Of course, he doesn’t bother confirming any of the information.  He takes the word of his handler and runs off to do as he is told.

If we are to believe that Frank has a bit of a conscience, then it is hard to believe he would be so quick to overlook it.  Unless we are to believe that Frank only wishes he had a conscience, and is actually not bothered by what he’s doing, just under the impression from society that murder is generally a bad thing.  Either way, it’s difficult to sympathize with him.  On the one hand, his emotions flip too easily, and on the other, he borders as a sociopath.

Perhaps if the story was more drawn out it would be easier to get a sense of who Frank really is.  Of course, since he has amnesia, he would like to know who that is as well.  We could go on the journey together.  However, these short vignettes are too packed with action and not enough plot to make it worth toughing it out, just to see what Frank is really all about.

"Firetale" Finale Review.

 Things begin to happen a little too quickly in the final chapters.  Greg dies, is resurrected by Martha, whose body is killed while her consciousness is in Greg's body, and then we find out she's actually a goddess, all in two short chapters.  Too, too much all at once.  Plus, it is difficult to understand why the Judge would bother killing Martha at all.  She obviously hadn't broken the pactum, and he wasn't even sure she was a demionis.  She hadn't done anything that could have warranted an execution, and yet he killed her when she was defenseless.  Sure, we'd seen enough of Judge Ciaus to know that he was a bastard who would kill indiscriminately, but this still seemed beyond him.

The end is abrupt (a pseudo cliffhanger meant to make you want to read the next book, but doesn't).  Though it sets up the whole goddess story line to be the potential focus for the next book, the fact that we knew nothing about the goddess until the very end of the first book doesn't create a strong emotional connection to that potential plot.  The Astorath story line was completely ignored in the last few chapters, and we don't know where Zaches ran off to.  The story we were following for the first book is left unfinished, and a new one is shoved in its place at the eleventh hour, and it feels wrong.  In fact, the last few chapters of "Firetale" almost feel like they were written by a different person.  The voices of the characters feel different.  The descriptions of events feel like they flow differently.  Maybe this part of the story was written at a different time than much of the opening chapters, but there is definitely a disconnect that is unpleasantly jolting in the final quarter of the book.

We're also still seeing chapters from other points in time that have no relation to the current story.  Maybe they'll come into play in the next few books, or maybe they're not meant to be anything more than mental breaks, or to stretch out the number of pages.  Whatever their intended purpose, they feel unwelcome.

This book had so much promise in the opening chapters.  I was inspired by the number of characters, by how well each voice was written.  Now I'm disappointed.  I think that Dante E. Graves just tried to do too many things in this story and it turned it into a bit of a muddled mess.  Very unfortunate.  I'm not even sure I'll bother with the second book in the series.  I just don't know if I care enough about the characters anymore, and I know that I don't want to suffer through such unnecessary back story and exposition just to finish off the Astorath story line.

I'm done with The Boxcar Children series, after the catastrophe that is #24 "The Mystery of the Hidden Painting"

I’m trying to remember why I used to like these books so much when I was a kid.  I must have checked out a dozen of them each time we went to the library when I was about 7-years-old.  I thought they were funny and a little suspenseful.  I even did a book report on one of their adventures at a dude ranch.  But now…I guess I just grew up, or developed a better literature palette, or something, because these books are just not well written.

The language is forced, awkward, and often pretentious.  No one actually talks like this, and certainly not children.  The writer feels the need to bring up the boxcar, and why the children lived there, every other page.  Sure, not everyone who picks up a Boxcar Children book is going to know the story of why they are called that, but surely they’ll remember being told three pages ago – you don’t need to say it so many times within the same book.

As for the mystery that the children get to solve, it had potential – they want to find the long lost (presumed stolen) necklace of their late grandmother, in time for their grandfather’s birthday.  (By the way, how many kids actually call their grandfather “Grandfather”?)  They see a photo of a woman in the newspaper (how many 12-year-olds read the newspaper) who appears to be wearing the necklace and immediately concoct a scheme to interrogate the woman.  Of course, multiple people in the village try to scare away the children: calling them late at night, following them in a car with tinted windows.  And when the children don’t get the information they want, they latch onto a “clue” on a return address label that happened to come from a town right next to where the necklace had been stolen from.

The overreaction of the townsfolk to the children’s investigation is downright absurd.  It’s not like the police were pounding down doors, it was a couple of kids who just wanted to know what happened to their grandmother’s necklace.  If the people really wanted to keep it a secret, they should have lied politely to the children’s faces instead of acting rude and suspicious.

The mystery ends, like always, with a non-forced confession from the perpetrator and, of course, no involvement from the police.  The culprit gets away with it, and the children and their grandfather even allow for the necklace to stay where it was (in a museum in the middle of nowhere).  The incredibly unrealistic ending is a fit for the incredibly unrealistic plot, and neither are worth the trouble of putting up with that horrid writing style.

I may have loved the Boxcar Children when I was Benny’s age, but I think children today deserve better writing than this series has to offer.

An In-Progress review of "Firetale" by Dante E. Graves, down to the home stretch.

I think my reigning theory at this point is that Martha is actually an Angel sent to spy on the circus by God.  I mean, if the Devil can have human spies in churches, why can't God have a spy in the circus?  It would explain why she is able to calm people with simply her presence, and why she has no memory of who she is or how she came to be there.  It might also explain why she was in a town that the circus happened to pass through so soon before they arrived.  God set her up to be picked up by them.  That is my theory anyway.  I keep expecting to find out that God is trying to see if the demionis can be restrained.  It would explain why Martha is most attracted to the most dangerous - he's the one who needs a little god-like intervention.  But if she doesn't know what she is, if she doesn't know what she's capable of, I'm not sure what all she's supposed to be doing there.

We're allowed a glimpse at the human side of Lazarus, but that's about all we've seen in character development in the last couple of chapters.  Everyone is pretty much doing exactly what they're expected to do.  No one's made any major decisions.  Everything's just puttering along.  But we do get to find out that Lazarus fell in love with a human at one time, but decided to keep his distance from her for the sake of the circus.  Ahh, how predictable.

I'm not sure what to expect from the wrap-up for this story.  As it stands, Greg is injured and in need of medical attention while he is alone in the middle of the woods hiding from the Judge who is stalking the circus.  There are plenty of pages left to work it all out, but not quite enough to introduce anything more dire or captivating as far as obstacles for our protagonists to overcome.  I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out.

American Girl faulters with "Peril at King's Creek."

I had a very hard time getting past how utterly flat the language was with this book.  All descriptions, what little there were of them, were cliché at best.  There was nothing new and exciting that allowed me to feel like I was actually there, experiencing it with the characters.  As for the main character, Felicity Merriman, there was very little individuality or personality noticeable in her thoughts or actions.  Sure, she expressed emotion – but it was all predictable and flat.  She could be “glad” but never “overjoyed” or “delighted.”  Again, it was cliché responses to a predictable plot.

The only response that seemed out of character was when Felicity identifies a spy and decides to go after him herself.  Yes, she does the smart thing and contacts the local Patriot army (or more accurately, she contacts her father who is a member of the Patriots), but she also chases after him on horseback in the wee hours of the morning.  This does not seem to be the natural course of action for a girl who’s spent the entire story having gauged responses to all that she sees around her.

Predictable plot and flat writing make for a throw-away book.  Just don’t bother with this one.

Tyler Whitesides tried with "Janitors" but something didn't hit the mark.

I really tried to like this book.  I wanted to like Spencer.  He seemed like a good kid.  He cares about his family (even if he gets frustrated with his mother for being a little absentminded, and frustrated with his siblings for being messy) and he wishes he had the guts to stand up to bullies.  But he just doesn't strike me as the hero-in-waiting kind of character.  There's something missing in the introduction to the character that make all that he chooses to do seem realistic for him.  He just doesn't seem to have it in him to do what is written.


It doesn't help that the story tends to jump from point C to point L, filling in the gaps with half a paragraph of exposition.  I don't want to hear about what happened after the fact - I want to see it happening while it's happening.  The first time this is really noticeable, Spencer and his plucky side-kick, Daisy, are trapped in a bathroom stall of an inescapable bathroom with the school bully on the other side of the door, threatening to do all kinds of harm to them, and the only thing they have with which to defend themselves is a plastic babydoll.  Jump to later that day and find out that they were stuck in the stall for half an hour before they were rescued by the supposed good guys.  We never find out what happened in that half hour, though.  We figure the bully, Dez, never made it into the stall, but we don't know how scared Spencer and Daisy became, or if they were injured at all - if they grew closer as allies or started bickering because of their predicament.  These are important things to see in a story.  You need to know how your heroes act in tense situations early in the story so that you can see them surviving the dangers you know are ahead.


I have to take issue with the main premise of the story - the Toxites feeding on the brain waves of children while they are learning.  Seriously?  That's the evil monster that Spencer and the janitors have to face?  They don't cause physical damage, they just make you sleepy and make it harder to learn.  This does not strike fear into the heart of the reader.  I'm sorry, it just doesn't.  I mean, one of the monsters is referred to as a dust gofer.  How is that supposed to be scary?  It does make sense that it's the kind of monster Spencer would particularly dislike, as he is shown to be a person who prefers a tidy environment.  A monster made out of dust would be something of a menace to a neat-freak like Spencer.  However, it is hardly worth pulling out the big guns for - maybe just a big vacuum (though the weapon of choice of the janitors seems to be mops, not vacuums).


It's also difficult to believe that Spencer was so easily duped by the actual bad guys (who of course portrayed themselves as the good guys when they first met Spencer).  We started the book seeing how Dez would pick on Daisy (known for her gullibility) and yet Spencer just instantly went along with the word of an adult who seemed to want to get rid of the little monsters.  He hardly questioned the story Hadley told him at all, and he never wondered why Hadley was so quick to recruit Spencer into the fight.  Surely the government wouldn't see fit to hire 12-year-olds on a regular basis.  This thought may have given him a moment's pause, but nothing more.  He was quick to jump into the fray - which still feels like it's out of character for him.  Though we've only known Spencer for a few chapters at this point, the impression created in the first couple pages are that he is just not the kind to get his hands dirty and fix things himself.  He stands back and lets the world pass him by, only going so far as to keep his own little bubble clean and orderly.  He doesn't even bother trying to spread that sense of order throughout his own home (which he refuses to think of as his home because the house actually belongs to his aunt, but whatever).  He keeps his personal room tidy and that's it.  He doesn't even seem all that protective of his younger siblings.


I can't help but wonder if the character could have been more believable if written a little differently.  Maybe even the flimsy premise could have been exciting if the right words had been found.  Though there weren't any notable flaws in Tyler Whitesides' particular style, I just don't think he was the right writer for this story.  I might be willing to give the author another chance with a different set of characters, but I would not be interested in continuing the "Janitors" storyline any further.

In progress review of "Firetale," past the half-way point.

Several new characters have been introduced, and vignettes spanning the more than 100 years of the circus make it a little difficult to remember who is who.  A few questions that were raised in the early part of the book are beginning to be answered, however, so that's nice.  We now understand why it is so important to Lucifer to have the circus as a safe place for his demionis.  During the inquisition, demionis were hunted down to near extinction, and the progeny of psychics were trained as Judges (who are really judge, jury, and executioner) who could track down and kill and demionis that showed itself to be dangerous to humans.

A Judge is now on the trail of Greg, our little firestarter.  The demon Astorath pointed the Judge in the direction of the circus.  Though Astorath was one of the first to follow Lucifer from heaven, he now wants to return to his home and thinks that if he shows God that Lucifer can't control his demon spawn, it will put him back into His good graces.  Of course, all this does is piss off his big brother and get him kicked out of Hell as well.  We now have the question, where does an angel live if it cannot live in Heaven, or in Hell?  The character of Astorath seems so sad and miserable that I can't see him surviving double exile all that well.  He's bound to do something stupid in short order.

A number of circus archivists (humans who travel with the circus, listing the various goings on and studying demionis and magic) have told stories from their times with the circus.  Some of the stories help the reader to understand the purpose of the circus, or to better understand the main characters.  Some of the stories, however, seem out of place in the overall arch of this book.  They're like unnecessary add-ons that should be a compilation of short stories to accompany the main novel.  Interspersed as they are with the main story, I wonder if they are more important to the arch than they appear.  Maybe the various demionis they introduce will come back into play later in the book.  However, at this point, they're more of a distraction than anything else.