Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Monday, February 12, 2024

Diabolic Machine - MTG 4E

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Enemy of the State (Mitch Rapp #16) 3Stars

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Title: Enemy of the State
Series: Mitch Rapp #16
Author: Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 331
Words: 103K

The US President is tired of the Saudi’s continuing to fund terrorism while taking our money to supposedly fight it themselves. So he sends Mitch Rapp on a mission to start killing the Saudi Royalty as a way to show they can no longer be safe as terrorist proxies. Things go south and Rapp becomes disavowed by the US government. One of his old enemies is co-opted by a corrupt Saudi working for ISIS to hunt Rapp down. And just in case that isn’t enough, Rapp’s new girl wants to start working the logistics side of supporting him in the field.

Kennedy, the Director of the CIA and Rapp’s boss, is barely in this story. I don’t think Mills knows how to truly utilize her and so he just has pushed her to the background. He’s also turned Mitch Rapp into the crazy killing machine everyone thought he was (but wasn’t) when the original author Vince Flynn was writing him. Mills has a much heavier hand and there’s no nuance or suggestion. It’s not a terrible change but it makes Rapp a much less interesting character and limits the scope of what he is capable of.

The action/adventure side of things is definitely all there. It was good. It is what is keeping this series from descending into mediocre territory since Mills just can’t seem to handle Mitch Rapp as a character. I’m going to continue to read these book, I’m going to continue to enjoy them but I am definitely going to continue to complain about Mills’ handling of the characters.

After writing that, I thought about it for a bit. I realized that it isn’t so much that Mills doesn’t “get” Rapp, but that he doesn’t have the same sense of the political that Flynn did. It feels like Mills is colorblind in this regards while Flynn had an eye for various shades of the same color, thus able to subtly bring out aspects you’d never expect. Mills simply can’t do that because of his limitations. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t pick on the poor gimpo, but he is the one who chose to pick up the brush of the master and try to continue his work. I am never going to compare Mills to other books by Mills because I have zero interest in his other works. I will always be comparing him to Flynn, because Flynn started this and created a masterful canvas to work on. Mills just isn’t as good an author as Flynn was. In his defense, he never whines or complains in the forwards or afterwards. He has a cash cow and he’s thankful for every squeezing it gives him.

I just wish he’d make some of that wonderful caramalized onion cheddar instead of the straight up sharp cheddar.

★★★☆☆

From Kylemills.com/books/enemy-of-the-state/

Click to Open

In the #1 New York Times bestselling series’ latest installment, Mitch Rapp finds himself alone and targeted by a country that is supposed to be one of America’s closest allies.

After 9/11, the US made one of the most secretive and dangerous deals in its history—the evidence against the powerful Saudis who coordinated the attack would be buried. In return, King Faisal would promise to keep the oil flowing and deal with the conspirators in his midst.

When the king’s own nephew is discovered funding ISIS, the president suspects that the Saudis never intended to live up to their agreement. He decides that the royalty needs to be sent a message and that Mitch Rapp is just the man to deliver it. The catch? America can’t be seen moving against an ally. Rapp will be on his own.

Forced to make a decision that will change his life forever, Rapp quits the CIA and assembles a group of independent contractors to help him complete the mission.

They’ve barely begun unraveling the connections between the Saudi government and ISIS when the brilliant new head of the intelligence directorate discovers their efforts. With Rapp getting too close, he threatens to go public with the details of the post-9/11 agreement between the two countries.

Facing an international incident that could end his political career, the President orders America’s intelligence agencies to join the Saudis’ effort to hunt the former CIA man down.

Rapp, supported only by a team of mercenaries with dubious allegiances, finds himself at the center of the most elaborate manhunt in history. It’s only a matter of time before he’s caught or killed. Will it be enough to turn the tables on the Saudis and clear his name?

All My “Mitch Rapp” Reviews

Saturday, February 10, 2024

[Art] A Valentine Wolf

As Valentines Day is coming up in just a few days, I wanted to showcase art directly related and not just a happy drawing like last week’s Lover’s First Date.

Even Beasts have hearts that beat with love for another. Whether handsome and debonair, or ill-visaged and rough, the same heart beats within both. Remember that Love is no respecter of persons. It strikes when and where it will.

Thursday, February 08, 2024

The Doctor and The Kid (Weird West Tales #2) 2.5Stars

Title: The Doctor and The Kid
Series: Weird West Tales #2
Author: Mike Resnick
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Steampunk
Pages: 235
Words: 77K

Another lacklustre series by Resnick. This was Book #2 in the Weird West Tales series and you might wonder why I read and reviewed this instead of the first book, The Buntline Special. I would recommend you sit down. If you have a weak heart or are given to vapors, please, stop reading now. I didn’t read the first book BECAUSE, da da dum, it wouldn’t open on my kindle oasis.

Shock

Gasp

Wince

Vapors!

I know, I know. It shocked me to the core as well. I even reconverted the azw3 file with calibre and it still wouldn’t open. Since I had stopped caring about Resnick since his pathetic outing on the John Justin Mallory series, I pre-emptively didn’t care about book 1 of this series either. So on to book 2 it was.

Sadly, I made the right choice in pre-emptively not caring.

Doc Holliday is a bastard, pushing away everyone near to him. At one point he deliberately says some really nasty things about his best friend’s wife just because he’s feeling ornery. And Holliday even likes the poor lady. He’s just the worst that humanity has on tap.

Resnick does his patented “He said, He did” style of writing and what could have been a real interesting idea (Geronimo and other Indian shamans have kept the US bottled at the Mississippi River and the US Government has hired Thomas Edison and Ned Buntline to try to find a way to break their magic using technology coupled with Doc Holliday taking down Billy the Kid) turned into a drunken, consumptive asshole killing some people and telling everyone he meets he can’t wait to die.

Inspiring stuff! I was thrilled beyond belief.

It wasn’t terrible. It just wasn’t any good. But I have given Resnick enough passes and so I am done with him as an author.

Next!

★★✬☆☆

From the Publisher

Click to Open

Welcome to a West like you’ve never seen before! With the O. K. Corral and the battle with the thing that used to be Johnny Ringo behind him, the consumptive Doc Holliday makes his way to Deadwood, Colorado. But when a gambling loss drains his bankroll, Doc aims for quick cash as a bounty hunter. The biggest reward? Young, 20-year-old desperado known as Billy the Kid. With a steampunk twist on these classic characters, nothing can be as simple as it seems.

All of My “Mike Resnick” Reviews

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

Bar the Doors 3Stars

Title: Bar the Doors
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 198
Words: 59K

The subtitle for this book is “13 Great Tales of Terror by Masters of the Macabre”. This collection uses a lot of short stories that didn’t appear in Hitchcock’s own mystery magazine and it shows. Not that they are in any way bad, but they don’t have that “curated by Hitchcock” feel that I get from other collections.

Also, while I have kept this in the “crime fiction” fiction, the tales of terror subtitle is much more accurate. Not all are supernatural. Some are blatantly physical, such as The Storm, in which a woman comes home a week early only to find her husband is out. And she finds a woman’s body in a moving trunk with a distinctive ring on it’s finger. The story ends with her being gaslit by her husband and seeing that same ring on his finger. It was just plain creepy but nothing supernatural. Then you have Pollock and the Porroh Man which is ALL about the supernatural. A man takes a voodoo man’s woman and then tries to kill the voodoo man and in the process gets cursed. He then kills the voodoo man, so there is no way to lift the curse. The head of the voodoo man follows him back to England and haunts him until he goes insane and he kills himself. Lovely, eh?

I was particularly interested in this collection because of the inclusion of two authors, Ambrose Bierce and Augustus Derleth. Both were small time contributors to the King in Yellow and Cthulhu mythologies and I was hoping that these stories would give me a taste of what they were like. I was not impressed. Derleth’s story, The Metronome, was a simple ghost story about a murdered boy murdering the step-mother who had killed him. I actually had to go and read the story again before writing this because I had completely forgotten what it was about a mere week after reading it. It wasn’t bad but there wasn’t a single memorable thing about it. Bierce’s The Damned Thing, was about an invisible monster that killed a man in front of his friend the story is the friend relating it all at the inquest. The inquest ends with the jury deciding the man who was killed was killed by a mountain lion. While nothing spectacular, it did have that fatalistic feel of “nothing I say or does matters” which I’ve come to associate very strongly with Cosmic Horror.

I did have a bad scan of this, as it was quite apparent that someone had simply scanned the pages from the original paperback and sent it out into the wild without cleaning it up at all. So there would be random “Authors Name Page X” or “Story Name Page X” scattered throughout the text. That detracted from the flow of reading through this smoothly. Kind of like hitting a nail in tree while chopping it down using a chainsaw. If you’ve ever had that experience, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Finally, the cover. The version I had originally came with some lame picture of Hitchcock in a rain coat in the rain at a doorway about to enter. It was blasé. I chose this cover because it’s very creepy looking and is actually semi-related to the story “The Kill”.

★★★☆☆

Table of Contents:

SPEAKING OF TERROR Alfred Hitchcock
POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN H. G. Wells
THE STORM McKnight Malmar
MOONLIGHT SONATA Alexander Woollcott
THE HALF-PINT FLASK DuBose Heyward
THE KILL Peter Fleming
THE UPPER BERTH F. Marion Crawford
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS Alfred Noyes
THE DAMNED THING Ambrose Bierce
THE METRONOME August Derleth
THE PIPE-SMOKER Martin Armstrong
THE CORPSE AT THE TABLE Samuel Hopkins Adams
THE WOMAN AT SEVEN BROTHERS Wilbur Daniel Steele
THE BOOK Margaret Irwin

All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

Three Witnesses (Nero Wolfe #26) 4Stars

Title: Three Witnesses
Series: Nero Wolfe #26
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 176
Words: 66K

Knowing this was going to be a collection of short stories, I deliberately set out to enjoy myself and to focus on the positives instead of whining about what wasn’t there. And it worked. I enjoyed the daylights of these stories.

Having three shorter stories really fit my mood this time around. I enjoyed the brisk pace of it all. Instead of meandering along while Archie casually pinches the police’s snozz, he does a quick snatch and grab and dashes off again to slap some hysterical broad.

Wolfe doesn’t get as much time to complain either. It’s like getting concentrated Wolfe in pill form.

I wouldn’t click the synopsis open if I were you. It’s close to 2000 words long.

★★★★☆

From Wikipedia:

Click to Open

The Next Witness

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are in court, having been subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution in a murder trial. Leonard Ashe has been accused of trying to hire Bagby Answers, Inc., a telephone answering service, to eavesdrop on his wife’s calls, and of killing employee Marie Willis when she refused to cooperate. The prosecutor intends to call Wolfe and Archie to testify that Wolfe turned down Ashe’s attempt to hire them to spy on his wife, actress Robina Keane.

Clyde Bagby, owner of the business, testifies that Marie had complained to him about Ashe’s request and was planning to tell Robina. Bagby tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Marie; later that same night, he learned from the police that she had been strangled to death at her switchboard. Wolfe abruptly exits the courtroom, followed by Archie, who reminds him that they are under subpoena and will almost certainly be charged with contempt of court for leaving. Wolfe, however, is convinced of Ashe’s innocence and wants to have no part in convicting him.

They visit the premises of Bagby Answers, finding the business to be located in an apartment with a bedroom for each operator due to employment regulations. Wolfe makes himself as obnoxious as possible in order to see how much incivility the employees will tolerate, and the detectives take notice of an original Van Gogh painting on a wall and a stack of racing forms on a table while questioning operators Bella Velardi and Alice Hart. From them, Wolfe and Archie learn that Helen Weltz, another operator, is spending the afternoon at a cottage in Westchester that she has rented for the summer.

Arriving at the cottage, they find a new Jaguar parked in front. Helen is accompanied by Guy Unger, an acquaintance of several of Bagby’s employees. Unger describes himself as a broker, but gives only a vague description of the business he transacts. Helen privately admits to Archie that she wants to get out of an uncomfortable situation, but is too frightened of Unger to give details. Archie persuades her to call Wolfe’s office that evening, then learns from Wolfe that Unger tried to pay him to drop the investigation into Marie’s murder.

Wolfe and Archie return to the city, but cannot go to the brownstone because a warrant has been issued for their arrest. They take shelter at Saul Panzer’s apartment for the night, and Wolfe meets with Robina to persuade her to visit Ashe and take him with her. She agrees, promising not to tell Ashe’s attorney. Archie gets a call from Helen, relayed to him by Fritz Brenner, and picks her up from Grand Central Station in order to interview her out of Unger’s presence. Wolfe and Robina meet with Ashe shortly before the trial resumes the following morning.

Once called to the witness stand, Wolfe tricks the prosecutor into asking a question that both allows him to explain his theory of the crime and forces the judge to dismiss the contempt charge. Based on the operators’ behavior during his visit and the evidence of their lavish spending, he concluded that Bagby and Unger were using the answering service to blackmail clients by having the employees listen in on calls and gather compromising information. Helen had confirmed these facts to Archie the previous night. However, the plan would only succeed if every operator took part; anyone who showed hesitation could potentially expose the scheme. When Marie acted against Bagby’s orders and turned down Ashe’s request to spy on his wife, one of her co-workers strangled her to keep her quiet. Wolfe suspected Bagby of committing the murder and luring Ashe to the office so that he would be found with the body and arrested.

Bagby, Unger, Helen, Bella, and Alice are detained for questioning, Ashe is acquitted, and Bagby is ultimately convicted of Marie’s murder without the need of any further testimony from Wolfe. Archie reflects that Wolfe’s exit from the courtroom may have been motivated less by a desire to see justice done than by the discomfort of having to sit next to a woman wearing too much perfume.

When A Man Murders

Sidney Karnow has returned from the dead. In 1951 he enlisted in the Army and was sent to Korea as a soldier in the infantry. Injured in battle, he was left for dead by retreating American forces, but in fact was only stunned. Karnow was taken prisoner by the enemy, but after a couple of years he escaped to Manchuria and lived there in a village until the truce. Then he made his way to South Korea and was sent home by the Army.

Unusual enough by itself, but Karnow was also a millionaire. He had inherited money from his parents but felt that he should serve in the military. Before enlisting, he had met and married Caroline, who now calls on Wolfe along with her new husband, Paul Aubry. Caroline and Paul are in a terrible spot: Karnow’s return from the dead apparently voids their marriage, and they have spent a large portion of Caroline’s inheritance to set Paul up in business as a car dealer. They have decided to offer what is left of the inheritance, plus the dealership, to Karnow in return for his consent to a divorce.

Paul has gone to Karnow’s hotel room to put the proposition to him, but got cold feet before knocking on the door. He discusses the situation once again with Caroline, and they decide to come to Wolfe for help. Wolfe explains that he is a detective, not a lawyer, but Aubry replies that “We want you to detect a way of getting Karnow to accept our proposition.”

Ignoring Aubry’s diction, Wolfe sends Archie, along with Aubry and Caroline, to the Hotel Churchill to put the proposition to Karnow. Archie leaves the clients in the bar and goes upstairs to Karnow’s room, gets no answer to his knock, tries the doorknob and finds it unlocked. When he enters, he finds Karnow, shot dead, and a gun lying a few feet away. Archie leaves the room as he found it, collects the clients and returns to the brownstone, where Purley Stebbins soon shows up. Archie, Paul and Caroline were seen at the hotel where Karnow’s body was just found.

Stebbins takes Paul and Caroline for questioning (although Wolfe and Archie insist that he do so from the sidewalk: Wolfe will not tolerate a client, even a potential client, being taken into custody inside his house). Archie follows shortly thereafter, and as he is waiting to meet with the DA, he encounters Caroline’s in-laws: Karnow’s Aunt Margaret, cousins Anne and Richard, and Anne’s husband Norman Horne. With them is Jim Beebe, Sidney’s lawyer and executor. Archie learns nothing from them except that Anne Horne has a facetious sense of humor.

Archie has no information for ADA Mandelbaum and Inspector Cramer, and shortly after he returns home Caroline rings the doorbell. She brings the news that the police have arrested Paul for Karnow’s murder, and she wants to hire Wolfe to clear him. Wolfe accepts, but needs to knows more about Karnow’s relatives. They had received bequests in Karnow’s will, stood to lose those bequests when he turned up alive, and therefore had motive. Caroline knows little about them except that they had always depended on Karnow’s support, and have not managed their inheritances prudently. Wolfe sends Archie to bring them to the office.

Archie tries Beebe first but can’t corral him, and has no better luck with Karnow’s Aunt Margaret and his cousin Richard. When he calls on cousin Anne, he gets more of her persiflage. Trying to draw her out, he lets her read his palm – and then her husband Norman returns to their apartment. Anne slows Archie down just enough that Norman, unencumbered, can clip Archie in the jaw. Then Archie decks Norman, and leaves.

Finally Wolfe hears from Saul Panzer, who has been investigating a different side of the problem. Wolfe has Archie phone Inspector Cramer, and gives him the choice of bringing all involved to Wolfe’s office, or declining to cooperate and letting Wolfe work through the DA’s office. Cramer chooses the former option. In the traditional meeting with the suspects in Wolfe’s office, Wolfe makes public what Saul has turned up: an unwitting but crucial witness to the motive for Karnow’s murder.

Die Like A Dog

It’s a rainy day in Manhattan, and Richard Meegan has grabbed the wrong raincoat after getting the brushoff from Nero Wolfe. Meegan came to the brownstone to hire Wolfe, apparently on the sort of marital matter that Wolfe won’t touch. Now Archie Goodwin wants to get his raincoat back: it’s newer than the one Meegan left behind.

As Archie approaches Meegan’s small apartment house on Arbor Street[1] in the Village, he sees police near the front, including Sgt. Purley Stebbins. Opting for discretion, Archie starts back home when he realizes he’s being tailed by a friendly black Labrador. It’s windy enough that Archie’s hat blows off his head and across the street, but the dog risks its life retrieving it. After that, Archie can’t bring himself to shoo the dog, so he takes him back to the brownstone.

And there, in the office, Archie discovers that Wolfe likes dogs. With what passes in Wolfe for fondness, he recalls that he had a mutt in Montenegro, one with a rather narrow skull. This Labrador has a much broader skull – Wolfe asserts that it’s for brain room, and decides that the dog is to be named Jet. Then Fritz reports that Jet has excellent manners in the kitchen. Wolfe has one-upped Archie once again: he would enjoy keeping the dog, but can blame Archie for any problem it causes.

Now Cramer appears at the front door, wanting to know about a dog. A man named Philip Kampf was murdered in the Arbor Street apartment house. Kampf had owned a black Labrador, and a policeman noticed that the dog left with Goodwin. Hence Cramer’s questions: Meegan, who saw Wolfe that morning, lives in the apartment house where Kampf was murdered, and Archie has Kampf’s dog. Wolfe and Archie describe the day’s events for Cramer, who wants more but will wait until the next day.

That evening, looking for a rationale to keep Jet, Wolfe sends Archie for Richard Meegan. But Meegan doesn’t answer the buzzer, and when another man leaves the apartment house, Archie follows him.

Archie catches up, introduces himself, and points out that the man’s being followed by a police detective. Grateful, the man introduces himself as Victor Talento. Archie wants to know where he’s going, and Talento tells him that he’s meeting a young woman. Her name is Jewel Jones, and Talento asks Archie to go in his place, and tell her that Talento couldn’t make it – Talento doesn’t want the police to see them meet.

Archie agrees, meets up with Miss Jones, and since he can’t bring Meegan to Wolfe, brings her instead. When they enter Wolfe’s office, all three get a surprise: Jet, who has been keeping Wolfe company, runs to Miss Jones and stands in front of her, wagging his tail.

So she knows Jet, and therefore Kampf, and Wolfe pries it out of her that she knew him intimately – and in fact lived for almost a year in the Arbor Street apartment house where Kampf was killed. She knows, less well, three of the men who live there: Talento, Jerome Åland, and Ross Chaffee.

Archie interviews Åland, Meegan and Chaffee separately. From Meegan he learns more about his reason for seeing Wolfe: Meegan comes from Pittsburgh, and his wife left him – completely disappeared – about a year earlier. Not long ago Meegan saw a painting of a woman in a Pittsburgh museum, and he’s sure it was his wife. He tracked down the artist, Ross Chaffee, and asked him about the model he used. Chaffee couldn’t remember the model, but Meegan did not believe him and, to stay close by, rented the empty apartment in the Arbor Street building where Chaffee lives.

Archie takes a blind, but successful, stab at finding the painting and learns that it belongs to a Manhattan collector. He calls on the collector, gets a look at the painting, and sees in it a woman who looks a lot like Jewel Jones. Archie brings her to the office. Informed that she sat for the painting, and is therefore Meegan’s missing wife, Wolfe speaks with Chaffee by phone. He threatens to turn Miss Jones over to the police but gives Chaffee the option of bringing the other three tenants with him to Wolfe’s office.

With the Arbor Street residents collected, Wolfe zeros in on the murderer, and along the way explains the dog’s strange behavior, particularly that it followed Archie from the apartment house.

All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Monday, February 05, 2024

Detonate - MTG 4E

Sunday, February 04, 2024

Shotguns V Cthulhu (Cthulhu Anthology #15) 4Stars

Title: Shotguns V Cthulhu
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #15
Editor: Robin Laws
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 242
Words: 94K

This was how my final King in Yellow book should have gone! This had shivers running up my spine. This had my mind revolting. This had me questioning why I enjoyed the twisted stories so much. It was everything I expect in a Cosmic Horror story.

Now, I had read a King in Yellow anthology edited by Robin Laws and it wasn’t very good. So I went into this with lowered expectations. Thankfully, I was disappointed in my expectations.

And that’s all I write because I’m tired of writing right now.

★★★★☆

Table of Contents:

Robin D Laws Preface: Save a Barrel for Yourself
Kyla Ward Who Looks Back?
Rob Heinsoo Old Wave
Dennis Detwiller Lithic
Chris Lackey Snack Time
Dan Harms The Host from the Hill
Steve Dempsey Breaking Through
A. Scott Glancy (based on an idea by Bret Kramer) Last Things Last
Chad Fifer One Small, Valuable Thing
Nick Mamatas Wuji
Natania Barron The One in the Swamp
Kenneth Hite Infernal Devices
Dave Gross Walker
Robin D. Laws And I Feel Fine
Larry DiTillio Welcome to Cthulhuville
Ekaterina Sedia End of White

All of My “Cthulhu Anthology” Reviews

Saturday, February 03, 2024

[Art] Lover's First Date

After last’s month’s Pain and Suffering, and in the light of February being Valentines, this particular drawing seemed very appropriate to start the month off.

Happy and in love, that’s what I see here. The excitement of the First Date is wonderful and it only gets better as time goes on. Recently I have come to realize that Love grows into that quiet contentment of being with that special someone. Glorying in their presence, just happy to be around them. Not necessarily Doing Things together, but simply Being Together.

Thursday, February 01, 2024

Witch Week (Chrestomanci #3) 2.5Stars

Title: Witch Week
Series: Chrestomanci #3
Author: Diana Jones
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Middlegrade Fantasy
Pages: 185
Words: 73K

I have heard the question “Why isn’t DWJ as famous as JK Rowlings” punted about over the years. It might seem like a legitimate question, but I think this book answers it quite aptly.

Namely, this was a scary book for kids about bullies, meanness and very unlikeable people. None of the beautiful people are nice, none of the adults (except Chrestomanci, when he shows up for the last 10%) are decent and even the main characters are some really nasty pieces of work. Some of this might be VERY true to life and some kids might be able to identify with it all, but that’s not the goal. It’s not enough to just identify with a character, but to have characters that your readers want to emulate to be better people. This is DWJ’s failure in this book.

Until Chrestomanci shows up and begins setting things aright, I was questioning why DWJ even bothered to write this and why I was continuing to read this. While I know intellectually this so called “Chrestomanci Series” really isn’t, I do wish that that DWJ had made more of an effort to weave him into the overall story instead of making him such a small part. It’s as lame as calling Jubilee from the X-Men a real superhero (she can throw sparkles or something from her hands, whooooo).

I guess I will have to change my expectations for the rest of the series but if I come across any more that are as unlikeable as this, I’ll just stop this series and start in on my next middle grade read, the Westmark trilogy by Lloyd Alexander.

★★✬☆☆

From Wikipedia:

Click to View Synopsis

Witch Week is set in an alternative modern-day Great Britain, identical to our world except for the presence of witchcraft. Despite witches being common, witchcraft is illegal and punishable by death by burning, policed by a modern-day Inquisition.

At Larwood House, a boarding school where many of the children of executed witches are sent, a note claiming “Someone in this class is a witch” is found by a teacher. This launches an internal investigation of the more unpopular students at the school (Nan Pilgrim and Charles Morgan), who are gradually coming to terms with the fact that they are witches. Mayhem gradually ensues as magic is used to make birds appear in the classroom, to rain shoes, to curse a classmate into having his words always be true, and other pranks. When the magic gets totally out of control, one of the students runs away, leaving notes that blame the witch for controlling him. The headmistress of the school calls in an Inquisitor to find the missing student and locate the source of the trouble.

Four more of the students flee the school and two seek help from an “underground railroad” system that is known to save witches by sending them to a world where they are not persecuted. Instead they are given a spell to summon unknown help and all five students converge where they are able to use it, summoning the enchanter Chrestomanci. He and the children conclude that their world diverged from 12B (ours) by a particular historical accident. They work to outwit the local inquisition and to merge their history, thus their world, with ours. It turns out that most of the schoolchildren are witches and all must lose any such powers by revising history in that way.

– All of My “Diana Jones” Reviews