The Good, The Bad, and...Uh, That’s It
** I’ve been writing book reviews for pay for nearly two years, so there are far FAR too many books in both categories - especially if I count all the ones I’ve ever read for fun - so I’ll pick both books from the last 24 months, and post excerpts of the reviews I did for them... **
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MY AUTHOR IS DEAD:
What if our characters knew they were characters? What if they were held to a bunch of “Rules”, hoping to be “good characters” who would one day get to meet their Author? What if one of them rebelled, declaring there is no Author? Michael Bruneau explores just these questions in his delightful tale, My Author is Dead.
My Author is Dead is the story of a boy living in a “village of morons” inhabited by Authorists, who are held to a strict set of silly Rules. One day, while hiding out from a Perfectionist named Cassandra, he meets a little girl and is quickly taken with her. Unbeknownst to him, June is actually a Kafkaist, and therefore a member of a group who are mortal enemies to Authorists. This meeting is the first domino in a series of events which soon see Adam facing legal charges, which could result in his erasure.
I absolutely loved this book and couldn’t put it down. It appealed to my love of the unusual and gives meaning to the phrase “outside the box”, as it takes many rules of storytelling and throws them right out of the box. While the story doesn’t completely break the fourth wall, the tale does have ample talk of the Author (always capitalized), erasure, being of good character, and other literary terms. The story is also full of cynicism, inside jokes, and tongue-in-cheek humor, which add to the fun. One outrageous example of the latter is “Fornication Under Consent of the Kritikillar” (hint: look at the first letter of each word). The chapter titles were cleverly named, as well.
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PROFESSOR CURIOUS AND HIS MIRACLE MACHINE:
There are many scientists, including “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and Beakman, who have narrated children’s shows, and now we have “Professor Curious” (Randall Lechner), the author of Professor Curious and His Miracle Machine: The Mystery of the Glowing Rock.
Even though the title of this book is Professor Curious and His Miracle Machine, the tale focuses mainly on his four young friends, John, Julie, Jack, and Jill, who find themselves “not in Kansas anymore” when they’re accidentally sent to another era in the professor’s time machine (the “Miracle Machine”). It takes the children a while to figure it out, but they have actually arrived in Jerusalem on Good Friday, the day that Yeshua - “Jesus” in Hebrew - is crucified. After witnessing the events that transpire through and including Sunday, when Yeshua rises, they realize that they still have to get home. Rather than finishing the tale, the author invites his young readers to send in essays that they’ve written on how to get the quartet home, with the winner becoming a character in the next book.
When I first saw the title and read the plot for this book, I became quite curious. Well, you know what they say: “Curiosity killed the cat.” This book was a mess from the beginning. In addition to groaning at the book’s flat jokes, I also had a major problem with the way the children spoke, as it was very unrealistic. When one character said, “Guys, gaze at this,” I actually threw my tablet down and contemplated reading no more. Additionally, the characters were all boring...Worst of all, the actual writing was atrocious; as early as the Acknowledgements, it seemed like there had been no professional editing done. It was as if the author had just thrown his story together and published it. Yet, I was somehow unable to look away, much like people watching a train wreck.The most egregious errors were the author’s tendency to change verb tenses, often two or more times in the same sentence, and his failure to stick to one point of view. One minute, the story would be written in first person, then it would suddenly switch to third person and then back. I also often wondered how Jack, the main narrator, knew what the others were doing and thinking, as if he was omnipotent. It was strange how he knew characters’ names without them being introduced as well. All of these writing faux pas greatly took away from the story, and I had trouble seeing the forest for the trees.
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If you’re curious - I promise it won’t kill you! - the rest of my reviews can be found at: