#published: 2005

[ashs-reviews]

Picture book speedrun

(for context I read these to my little siblings at night)

Bluey Little Library: Rating all four books (Bandit, Bingo, Bluey, Chili) as one because the opinion is the same to each. My dad bought it for them at Walmart. Published in 2021. They absolutely love Bluey (the cartoon) so ofc they loved each of the books included in the set. 3/5

Five Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth: I got it for them at Dollar General. Published in 2005. A classic, and I like books with a rhythm, so it's fun. 4/5

Time For Bed, Little Chick by Mary Packard: I got it for them at Dollar General. Published in 2013. Very silly and has nice art. 3/5

[ashs-reviews]

Half Book Review: Without Mercy by Jack Higgins

Half because I didn't finish it. First time read because the neighbor gifted it to me after I told her I like books. The part that I did read took me like two and a half weeks to read. It was published in 2005 and the genre is mystery thriller.

A lot of the book (or what I read of it) is the main character's guilt over a former member of his team(?)'s death. It's very much presented in a "I got this poor little woman killed now I have to feel bad about it forever!!" way, with lines from other character's thrown in about how much she erm actually loved her job. Presumably Hannah was in previous books but in this one the mentions of her leave out any personality she may have had and only serve to make you feel bad for Dillon.

Every single time an African country is mentioned, the characters immediately mock it as gross and desolate. They're used as places to hide without any consideration or even mention of the people who actually live there.

Every woman character is sexualized and made out to be dumb and helpless. All women characters that aren't main antagonists (and even then they're on thin ice) are completely disposable.

It really is just boring overall. The plot is flat. Every character is bland. The antagonists have the same exact personality (or lack thereof) as the protagonists, and with the amount of times things like "the [protagonist] of the bunch" are said about them, I think it's intentional. No variety here.

It's part of a series aparently? Which explains why it was a little hard to follow. I really don't know how you could squeeze more than one book out of this though.

It was genuinely difficult to read just half of it. I have a rule with myself that I can't decide not to finish a book until I've read around half of it, and with this one I was telling myself it's almost over it's almost over the last dozen pages I had to read. Most of the time spent reading this is days where I literally couldn't make myself read it at all.

The only character confirmed to be Black (in the first half at least) is introduced as "very big and very Black", is pretty much only there to serve the president drinks, and barely speaks for the three seconds of page time he gets. First time reading anything from this author but I don't think I like you Mr. Higgins.

1/10. Here's the Storygraph for it.

[ashs-reviews]

Comic review: Death Jr. #1 by Gary Whitta

First time read, because I saw it on my older brother's shelf and then borrowed it from him. It took me like half an hour to read. The genre is paranormal. It was published in 2005.

Main characters in most to least favorite: Pandora, D.J.

I have a thing about boxes.

- I really like the art style. That's the whole reason my brother bought it, and I can see why.

- I was kinda expecting Pandora to be Death Jr. when I saw the cover but Pandora (as in Pandora's box) is cool, too.

- Seems ableist. The first scene with the Grim Reaper is blatantly fatphobic (reaping a fat guy with high cholesterol caused by eating too much) and The Seep is presented as a caricature of disability.

- There are literally no people of color in it at all.

Didn't do very good on these tests. Bechdel test: fail. Advanced Bechdel: N/A. Ali Nahdee test: N/A. Deggans test: fail. Kumbalangi test: pass. Sexy lamp test: pass. Shukla test: N/A. Sick dog test: pass. Vito Russo test: N/A.

5/10, here's the Goodreads for it.

[typist-trope]

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Vintage Books, 2005)

Synopsis From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. (Goodreads)

+ Didion is very articulate. If I were in the similar situation and felt the same things, I don't think I could have placed all my emotions down as articulately and heartfelt as did. I would probably be writing all my emotions in caps-lock and flowery descriptions.

- I got lost in some chapters of the book. There would be a train of thought, then it would tangent in a lengthly piece then jump back in again to the original though.

Memoirs are very personal. The reader cannot discount the author's experience because they are theirs and theirs alone. I thought it was a good book overall. I think I would have benefitted more from this if I read it in one sitting. It's hard to shift back to the emotional state Didion is revealing to you if you keep on shifting in and out of the selection.

Rating 3 stars

[secondhand-reviews]

White Thunder

Quick Summary: When a young FBI officer goes missing on the Navajo Reservation near Four Corners, it’s up to Ella Clah to track him down... preferably before the entire FBI comes stomping across the reservation.

First Impressions: I like Ella Clah. Her establishing character moment is yoinking the keys from a dumb young burglar’s car to keep him from speeding off into the desert when he realizes that there’s a cop on the property. I also really like detective stories that deal with culture clash, and the disappearance of an outsider on a Navajo reservation near four corners is going to deliver that in spades. This is the kind of story that would not have worked if Ella had been an average joe white FBI officer: because she is Navajo and grew up on the reservation, she understands the area and is invested in solving the case before it becomes an excuse for the FBI to come stomping around.

Review: As a mystery, it works very well. There are two main problems: where is Agent Thomas, and why is he missing? Since it becomes obvious early on that he isn’t collapsed in the desert within a reasonable distance from the last place he was seen, Ella is forced to put together his latest investigation in order to figure out what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into.

There were a few rough patches: in particular, Justine and Ella went over a few character development angles unrelated to the mystery multiple times, presumably to check that they were told as well as shown. Some of them - like Ella wishing she could spend some more time with her daughter - made sense as recurring themes, but Bruce Little’s crush on Ella was beaten to death with a shovel. A lot of necessary “as you know” sections, wherein Ella or Justine would bring up plot points from previous books, relevant police procedure that the audience shouldn’t be expected to know, or cultural side-notes (like their love of Navajo breakfast burritos, which was sort of endearing in and of itself) were clunky and broke the rhythm, and would have been better handled in the internal monologue, since the Thurlos just couldn’t swing it with the dialogue. (Their asides to the audience explaining specific words or items are slightly better, if only because it’s not dialogue.) The crime that Agent Thomas was investigating was quite interesting - it was dependent on an understanding of a particular aspect of Navajo culture and funeral practices, which the Thurlos made quite certain that the audience understood early on. The red herrings were also dependent on understanding the interplay of cultures on and around the reservation, but explained enough that the reader could extrapolate as well as follow along. It doesn’t quite qualify as a Fair Play Whodunnit, because we meet one of the culprits fairly late in the book and their guilt is almost immediately confirmed: the rest of the book involves arranging things so that they can both rescue Agent Thomas and catch the culprits at the same time. As a special note: I was full-on convinced for the first few chapters that Agent Thomas was deader than a doormouse, so congratulations to him - he lived! Also, thank you Thurlos, since I get tired of all murders all the time.

That said, the best part of this book is watching Ella navigate the intersection between culture and crime, and the huge variety of sympathetic Navajo characters’ various relationships to their traditions and the pressures of being more or less integrated to mainstream US society.

Rating: 4.5/5 I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite several clunky dialogue and explanation choices. Ella and her colleagues are complex, sympathetic, and competent, and I’d read another Ella Clah novel.

[secondhand-reviews]

Engines of Destiny by Gene DeWeese

Engines of Destiny

Alternate title: Don't touch the Negative Space Wedgie!

Quick Summary: Scotty should never be allowed to touch space-time anomalies, even when he is one. Or maybe Guinan is the space-time anomaly. I’m not sure.

First Impressions:The author really wants to rush us through to something, but I don’t know what. The beginning is a series of disconnected scenes that spend a lot of time info-dumping, finding a way for Scotty to sign onto a ship where he will eventually be preserved as a pattern in a transporter buffer for the Next Gen crew to find. This would be terribly interesting, except this is all told as a summary after it has happened.

Guinan chapters are scarcely any better – they certainly have more action and emotion, but to preserve the time-travel duplication suspense, they’re couched in the vaguest of possible terms, so all I knew the first five or six chapters was that Guinan was pissed at the Borg, which I assume is the natural state of anyone who encounters them.

Review: Needs more Geordi and Data. Actually, it needs more character from its characters, and less summarization of their emotions and actions. It definitely needs to stop introducing secondary characters and taking them through "the timeline thus far" infodumps, especially during last chapter where we learned all about the life and times of the Borg Queen far too late for it to matter. Like many crossovers, it suffers because its scope is larger than its container, and there isn’t much for canon secondary characters to do. (It’s even worse than most Next Gen episodes at giving Troi and Dr. Crusher something to do, and that’s a terrible waste since they have a whole book rather than 45 minutes of screentime.)

My other great and terrible disappointment was that in the course of the Enterprise’s time-juggling shenanigans, we’ve found a universe where Spock does not exist. (Largely because Earth no longer exists, so Sarek logically cannot ever have met or married Amanda Grayson.) No wonder, Borg aside, that Kirk does not belong in this reality! I liked Sarek’s role in this story, however; it was an interesting take on Vulcan’s political role in a universe that is not dominated by Earth.

Another problem that this book suffers from is time shenanigans. As far as I can deduct from the extremely wobbly explanations given, the timeline goes thus:

Canon Universe Prime: Captain Kirk gets swallowed by an energy ribbon called the Nexus in the movie that most TOS fans deny ever happened.

EoD Universe Prime:Prior to/during Generations, the Borg Queen discovers technology allowing her to return to the past several centuries.

Canon Universe Prime: Borg Queen destroyed by Picard, time travel loop no longer relevant to this timeline.

Secondary Universe: Borg Queen does go back in time, begins aggressive campaign against earth due to… something she knows from the prime universe that is not very well specified. Campaign is successful.

EoD Universe Prime: Scotty 1) signs onto another ship, which crashes disastrously, 2) gets stuck in the transporter, 3)is fished out of the pattern buffer by an understandably curious Next Gen crew, 4) finds a conveniently located Klingon Warbird and a plot artifact species, 5) concocts a hare-brained scheme to get Kirk back and defeat his survivor’s guilt.

EoD Universe Prime/Secondary Universe/some wiggly wobbly time loop:Scotty slingshots around a star to go back and snatch Kirk from the hungry jaws of the Nexus, splitting the timeline, as far as I can tell, into thirds: The prime universe, the secondary universe where the Borg Queen has already (!?) conquered Earth, and a brief unstable fracture of the prime universe where Scotty does grab Kirk and everything goes swimmingly for about five minutes. This is almost as confusing as the continuity issues in the Alternate Original Series movies.

Secondary Universe: The entire rest of the book’s action.

I would have less of an issue with this if it appeared as confusing to the cast, but… they’re not consistent. There’s some angst about how Scotty created this universe because somehow grabbing Kirk stopped Picard from stopping the Borg Queen in the Canon!Future, (due to him following them, I guess?) which makes little to no sense because none of the cast besides maybe Guinan should know a thing about that, and then it’s forgotten about. And that’s before Kirk transporters himself back into the Nexus and the whole book dissolves in a giant, plot-ending mash of the reset button. It's like someone took City on the Edge of Forever and Yesterday's Enterprise, put them in a blender, and left the top off so they could splatter the walls with it.

Like a lot of time travel plots, it was fun while it lasted but doesn’t bear close inspection or the application of logic. (No wonder Spock wasn’t present… Sarek was having a hard enough time with the lack of logic in this universe.)

Rating: 3/5 I didn’t have anything in particular I disliked about this book, the treatment of the characters, or the concept, it just wasn’t presented in as engaging of a manner as it needed to be. It suffered from having far more ambition than pages, and from making the reader play fill-in-the-gaps with regards to how the timestream actually did work and the canonical events. Especially confusing was why Kirk’s rescue necessarily catapulted himself, Scotty, and the Next Gen cast into an alternate reality where the Borg had taken over earth – I know Kirk gets retrieved from the Nexus by Picard to fight… somebody (not the Borg: I looked it up) in one of the movies, but there was never a pseudo-scientific reason for him being the lynchpin of that reality. For one thing, the Borg Queen’s time travel was strongly implied to be independent of Kirk’s rescue, and the echoes she heard of the prime timeline had no reason to exist other than “the author said so.” A lot of the secondary characters’ interactions only served to help the author shoehorn more canon into the book, and there was a lot of buildup for very little payoff.

Also, the author missed a very valuable opportunity to have Enterprise cross-generational team building: one of the most annoying parts of this plot was that every time I expected Geordi, Crusher, Troi, Worf, or Data to interact with Picard, Riker, Scotty, or Kirk… they were ignored. I know Next Gen has an unfortunate tendency to become the Picard and Riker show, and that Kirk munches the scenery wherever he goes, but with Guinan nominally acting as the deuteragonist of this book, more actual interactions with the rest of the bridge crew should have been there, especially when they might have had some relevant expertise to share. The secondary characters aren’t decorative, DeWeese.