Fiction - John Grisham - The Testament (1999)

I've never really endeavored to read what I call a "beach book"--that is, a book that comes out usually around summer and is a bestseller because it is a lot of action and little thought, meant to be read on airplanes and on shores by vacationers. I haven't read Dan Brown, and I never read John Grisham until now.

Technically, this book is Bryan's. He bought it for his Modern Literature class. I guess the teacher had him underline a line in the first chapter: "The money is the root of my misery."

This has little to do with the book, but I'm going to dig into this subject anyway. Bryan's ModLit teacher was a dumbass. For one thing, this book came out in '99 and we graduated in '04. There is no fucking way that this book could be called modern literature. At the very best, it would be contemporary literature, and the use of the L word would be shaky at best. Modern is from about 1850ish to about 1950ish. Everything else after is contemporary. My ModLit teacher had a giant girl boner for the Harlem Renaissance, and we never really got much farther than that. For the next thing, Grisham is not literature. It's a beach book. Sold in airports and convenience stores in coastal towns. That sentence is not a theme for the book at all, and not just because this book doesn't have a theme, other than things always work out for everyone. It's fiction, sure. Lawyer fiction, absolutely. Action? Well, there's a plane and boat crash, so I might be able to grant you that. Literature? Fuck no.

So why did I read it? I hate the fact that there is a book in my collection that I won't read, even if I know going into it that it's not going to be the deepest of stories. And it really isn't.

Some old rich guy makes a handwritten will that cuts all of his legitimate children off and hands his billions to an illegitimate daughter in Brazil who is a missionary and couldn't care less. Then he kills himself. Enter the law firm that fixed up all his other wills. They have to uphold it, even though the legitimate children are swooping in to say that the guy was not in his right mind, he didn't know what he was doing, give me some goddamned money motherfucker. They have to find the girl, so they send someone in their firm that's yanked out of rehab for alcoholism and send him to Brazil to find her.

In On Writing by Stephen King, he mentions that many books that people read on planes or whatever are for people who don't read. They have the book because otherwise they would be reading a magazine or sleeping. But when someone makes a mention of them reading a novel, they feel shame and say, "Yeah, but I'm learning so much about Subject X from this book." Because apparently reading is shameful in today's society.

The bulk of The Testament is a foray down the rivers and swamps of southeastern Brazil, and a huge exploration of the culture, climate, and geography there. The chapters are studded with Portuguese words for things we have our own words for, and explorations into how the residents live day to day and feel about Americans and their own Indians. In any other context, I might have been interested by it, but it was clear to me that Grisham was putting it in to teach the reader something, so they could point to the book and say what they learned from it, rather than how it resonated with them. Because it doesn't.

I didn't like this, if you couldn't tell. The whole thing was one predictable development after another, and at no point does it make the reader have to accept anything hard. Nothing particularly difficult happens, and the conflict itself is asinine. Not to mention that a super rich old guy bitching about having too much money sounds like whining on the part of the author.

If you don't like your wads of cash from your mediocre books, hand it over to me. I'm sure I could make a home for it.

3.5/10

Horror - Various Authors - The Living Dead (2008)

The reason it has been over two weeks since the last post has nothing to do with the quality of this book. What it does have to do with is that I had a job interview, a trip to Seattle (for PAX, which was AMAZING), and now I'm sick. Somewhere in there I was reading through this tome, which boasts just under 500 pages of short story zombie goodness.

I've mentioned before how I feel about zombie literature in my review of World War Z, but this book has 34 short stories in it, by both people I know of and love, those I know of and am okay with, and those I didn't know about before. With such a wide selection, there is ample opportunity for slips of "ugh" and "WTF", but overall the experience was positive, and made flying 2.5 hours and fighting a head cold more pleasant than it could have been.

Please note that Blogger won't let me tag every author involved. I'll include the author names and the associated story on each brief rundown.

"This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons is, thankfully, one of the few "zombies are coming OMG" stories in this bad boy, and features a former teacher who wrangles together some of her former students who are now zombies to teach them, as if nothing happened. The automation of the ending is what solidified it for me. Also having a moat around the school made of gasoline was so awesome.

"Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link roots itself deeply into WTF Terrace. Here, the zombies are not walking around and eating human flesh. They are among a myriad of other worries a guy has. I can't even tell you what goes on in this story. Some guy who stole some art went to jail, but then got out, and now is at some party, and he's also talking to himself about stuff, and then he kidnaps the hostess's little brother? What?

"Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey started off fucking great, but then kind of devolved into some bullshit having to do with accidental shootings of kids. Why the fuck should I care about that when there are zombies coming up from the dead and all voting for the guy against guns?

"Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alexie is another one in WTF Nation. A detective guy goes into a fugue state and sees all this shit happen, and it has something to do with the Battle of Little Big Horn. Though this story did teach me about Lysol sandwiches.

"Blossom" by David J. Schow was the very first story that I wanted to share. Zombie sex. Naked woman eating flowers. A man's penis bit off by a rigor mortis vagina. What's not to love?

"The Third Dead Body" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman was the first, I think, to reference voodoo curses in the anthology. In this, a woman is killed by a serial killer and buried in his favorite spot. But because her grandmother put a curse on her for snitching on her pedophile grandfather, she wakes up with a raging girl boner for the guy who killed her, and is able to bring him to justice.

"The Dead" by Michael Swansick probably would have worked better if it had been placed in the book before "Blossom". It's just not shocking to see a woman fucking a corpse after a dead vagina has ripped a penis off.

"The Dead Kid" by Darrell Schweitzer is another one of those zombie stories that doesn't paint them to be shambling monsters, which I like. Instead, it's more like a hurt animal some bully kids find and then torture because they are cruel. Also, they piss on him.

"Malthusian's Zombie" by Jeffrey Ford is very Lovecraftian, to me, or maybe even Shelley-like. A family lives next to this weird little man who tells the guy about this experiment he conducted on something he called a zombie. Then the little man dies, and things get weird.

"Beautiful Stuff" by Susan Palwick is amazing. Simply amazing. A perfect show of how we don't appreciate what we have. Buy this fucking book, if only for this one short story.

"Sex, Death and Starshine" by Clive Barker is actually pretty terrible. It's based entirely around a Shakespearean play being put on starring a subpar soap opera actress. And then there are zombie guys and attacks. I've never read Clive Barker before, but this was a terrible introduction. It just took too long to get anywhere where I am supposed to care. Everyone is just a fucknut.

"Stockholm Syndrome" by David Tallerman is another good one. Surprising, since it's the hungry horde flavor of undead. But there is a guy that has shut himself up in a house, and watches a smart zombie break into the house across the street without doing anything, knowing full well a family is holed up there.

"Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" by Joe Hill has no real zombies. It's a love story that takes place on the set of Dawn of the Dead between a couple of extras dolled up like zombies, and the girl's son with her husband. It's sweet, from someone who doesn't really like romance.

"Those Who Seek Forgiveness" by Laurell K. Hamilton is the Anita Blake story I know you saw in the tags and was wondering about. According to the description, this short story was the first thing Hamilton wrote having to do with Anita Blake at all, and let me tell you, this was the first of her Anita Blake stuff I've read. If the rest of the series is anything like this story, which granted, had a lot of plot holes, but was entertaining, I might consider getting into it.

"In Beauty, Like the Night" by Norman Patridge is one that, I am ashamed to say, I don't quite remember. I know that it's about a guy like Hugh Hefner retreating to his private island with his favorite models, only the models die in an accident and stalk him on his paradise. Don't remember much else.

"Prairie" by Brian Evenson I only remember because it was riddled with words I didn't know. Like fumid. Also, it's super short.

"Everything Is Better With Zombies" by Hannah Wolf Bowen is more of a coming-of-age story than a zombie one. It's a little ambiguous if zombies are even existent in the world of the story, but it mostly surrounds two youths that recently graduated.

"Home Delivery" by Stephen King. I know you saw that name on the cover up there. It reads like traditional King fare, with a large thing happening with many people, and it affecting someone in a more scaled-down way. In this case, a pregnant woman having to give birth during the zombie uprising where all the men are out defending their town from the creatures.

"Less Than Zombie" by Douglas E. Winter is about some crazy kids and their late night antics. These aren't nice antics, though. They are dark, gritty antics. That results in them killing one of their friends for laughs. Don't do drugs, kids.

"Sparks Fly Upward" by Lisa Morton could have been SO much better. Your story is about abortion and it's in a zombie anthology? Sign me the fuck up for aborted fetus zombies. Oh, that's your proof that they aren't really human? Oh. That's, uh... less entertaining. Sigh.

"Meathouse Man" by George R.R. Martin is perfect. Fucking amazing. I know, you may think that I'm just gushing because it's GRRM, but this is so deliciously sci-fi and emotional and YES. So great. Don't buy this book for "Beautiful Stuff". Buy it for "Meathouse Man". Please. PLEASE.

"Deadman's Road" by Joe R. Lansdale is why I didn't finish reading this until today. I had been reading this before to avoid packing for PAX. Upon starting to read this, however, I didn't want to any more. It may be a personal thing, but the dialect in this western zombie story (and now you know why I hate it) was so spot-on (which may be considered a good thing to others) that I started speaking in my southern accent again, against my will. And I worked hard to get rid of that shit. That, and the story isn't very compelling. So poop.

"The Skull-Faced Boy" by David Barr Kirtley I read on the plane. Maybe it was the experience of being on a plane for two and a half hours, but the idea of selling out the girl you like to a zombie general does not seem like a great way to get to see her again.

"The Age of Sorrow" by Nancy Kilpatrick is a much better depiction, I think, of how a middle-aged woman would survive being the "last man" in the zombie apocalypse than that of "This Year's Class Picture". It made me feel good as a woman, even though I know full well I couldn't do the same.

"Bitter Grounds" by Neil Gaiman is the most WTF story in this whole book. A guy abandons his life, tries to be a Good Samaritan, gets lost, and then assumes the other guy's identity. Also Haitian coffee girl zombies. What? Huh? Gaiman, I love you and all, but what the fucking shit?

"She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave" by Catherine Cheek has the best title ever, forever. But if you've seen Death Becomes Her, you know all you need to know about this story.

"Dead Like Me" by Adam-Troy Castro is another good one. Not "Meathouse Man" good, but still good. Remember in World War Z how they talked about people who would act like the undead in order to go undetected by them? This story is about two people who do the same, and don't even know each others' names.

"Zora and the Zombie" by Andy Duncan is a weird one. Not "Bitter Grounds" weird. Not by a long shot. But it's always weird when a real person is a character in a fictional story. In this case, it is Zora Neale Hurston. But there is a voodoo witch doctor or whatever they like to be called. So it harks back to the origin of zombies.

"Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Z. Brite is another odd one, but because it takes so much from Indian culture, which I am less than versed in. Is Poppy Z. Brite heavy on the mythology in her other stuff? This is the first I've ever read.

"Followed" by Will McIntosh is another good one, but this is one that I would love to see expanded into a full novel. There just isn't enough meat here. The idea is that when a zombie is raised, it is drawn to someone who either caused or had a hand in its death, I think. It's not clearly laid out. But this guy is like a nice guy all around. He can't figure out why this Southeast Asian girl zombie is following him, and he can't convince anyone anymore that he doesn't deserve it. It's good, but needs more.

"The Song the Zombie Sang" by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg is one I tried reading yesterday, while sick, and fell asleep during. I don't know if that really has something to say about the quality. It does seem to sink into Metaphor Marsh without much care for the quality of the story itself. I personally think it was trying too hard.

"Passion Play" by Nancy Holder is interesting, if only for the truth melded into it about the play about Jesus. Also, the aspect of how old religion would be able to stand during the zombie apocalypse is interesting as well.

"Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man" by Scott Edelman is blech. I know that it's meant to sound disjointed because it's about a writer trying to make sense of living through the undead rising, but does it have to be steeped in cliche? I didn't like it at all.

"How the Day Runs Down" by John Langan is unique to this book, and though it is built like a play, it does such a great job of segmenting the zombie apocalypse into slices of life, as well as that story about the mom and her kids... It's great. The twist at the end is interesting, but not unexpected. I still like it, though.

Again, buy this book, if only for "Meathouse Man". You will find several other jewels here.

9.0/10

Urban Fantasy - Cat Adams - Blood Song (2010)

The short version of this review is that I really didn't like this.

You're staying for the long version? That's a lot of mettle.

Let us begin with the author. There is no person named Cat Adams that wrote this book. The name is an amalgamation of the two authors' names, C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Now, I understand collaborations. I understand using pen names. I understand simplifying it to one name. What I don't understand is why you would have a pen name when you just use your real names and your separate identities in your acknowledgements and author's note? I'm not talking about the copyright page. That's fine. But making it extremely clear that two of you wrote it without putting it on the cover of your book? Go to jail.

Next up, let's discuss the main character. Her name is Celia Graves. Graves. As in, where your coffin goes. And this is an urban fantasy involving a person being turned into a half-vampire abomination (that's even the technical term they use). Also, and I've only ever seen Charles de Lint avoid this trap, why are all urban fantasy heroines gun-toting, sarcastic, and slutty? It's like if the girl isn't feisty and has an arsenal under her coat, she's not interesting. In this case, the main character is a bodyguard against paranormal beings like vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and demons. Big fucking surprise. And she's haunted, a fact she doesn't mention until between a third and a half way in. I'll get back to this bitch.

The reason I didn't like it had nothing to do with vampires, okay? It's no secret that I loathe Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series. But that doesn't mean that all vampires suck (see what I did there?). Fat White Vampire Blues was great. But far too often does it fall into this trap of vampires are evil, vampires are sexy, vampires are awesome. And this book is no exception.

My main problem with the book is that it felt like it was written by two people, and that new ideas were added in haphazardly without a thought to changing the prior writing. This process is otherwise known as rewriting. The whole thing read like a first draft. Every time a new character or setting was introduced, the story would come to a full stop so that the main character could describe it in excruciating detail. I don't have a problem with description. This was badly handled. Intersperse your details in the action, and broad brush your initial description sections. Don't say a character has blue eyes. Say that they narrowed their blue eyes.

During the first half of the book, Celia is supposed to be chasing down her vampire "sire", and destroy him before he comes back to finish the job with her. At halfway through, the problem just goes away deus ex machina style, when a background character produces the guy's head in a bag. Then, it became this thing with another vampire completely, and it's still not mentioned why anyone should care.

After the climax of the book, Celia's grandmother pulls her aside and tell her that she is one-fourth siren, a creature that, up until now, we had no idea existed in this world. During the resolution, they are having a funeral for Celia's best friend. Some bitch comes in during eulogies and interrupts the whole thing by singing. When Celia calls her on it, she proclaims that she's some kind of siren princess, and that Celia was the one being rude.

So much effort is put into making Celia some kind of victim too. Sure, she's a bodyguard and all, but her sister is dead! She was kidnapped when she was little! She was half-turned into a vampire! She can't eat solid food! She upset some supernatural royalty and now has to have a fight to the death with her! It sounds more like these two authors were trying to shoehorn every idea they ever had into one book, and it just looks schizophrenic.

This would have all been solved if they had just done a little world-building. Holy symbols, water, and ground are harmful to most of these predatory creatures, but somehow not a lot of people go to church? Why not? And if the existence of these creatures is well known, why aren't more precautions beyond "hire a guy" taken?

All in all, it was terrible. Would not suggest you buy it, let alone read it.

2.0/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Dragon Forge (2009)

I did say that I had started reading the next book in this series already. I finished it yesterday, but since I've recently posted here about the book before this one, there isn't too much to be said. Much of what I said before is still true.

That being said, there was a few more parts I didn't like and a few more parts that I did. For one thing, it turns out that the changeling is a member of the Royal Eyes. That makes him a lot less interesting now, because the Royal Eyes commonly use changelings as spies. But the fact that he didn't spend as much time doing spy work made up for it. Instead, he befriended a bunch of misfit warriors and traveled into the Demon Wastes, which I though was cool. The Labyrinth stuff was awesome, and Vor was the greatest character they had in the stable. An orc paladin that used to guard the Wastes and who let a pregnant human go because she was carrying his child? More of that, please! And of course he had to kill him off. Because nobody can really be interesting.

Something I didn't like was the whole marital issues between Gaven and Rienne. I am not reading your parts about going to Argonnessen because I want to hear about how Rienne thinks Gaven is self-absorbed. I don't give two fucks. Get to the being slaughtered by dragons, please. And this book in particular tries to hard to make Gaven special. Sure, he's the Storm Dragon, but I don't see what that had to do with their abomination machine.

Though, to be fair, I didn't understand how their abomination machine was supposed to work. In attempts to keep the whole thing cloaked in mysticism, Wyatt leaves the reader in the dark about the thing the damn book was named after. I still couldn't tell you what it was supposed to do.

I do appreciate, for reals though, the budding romance between Cart and Ashara. A warforged and a member of the house that built the warforged? That's the kind of shit that I crave. But watch, the next book will start with Ashara contracting a fast-acting disease called spear-to-the-face, just like everyone else with any interesting qualities.

Finally, these people don't know what dragonborn and eladrin are? What? Have they never been to Q'barra? What about hearing about the feyspires? These are kind of a big deal. If you know what a tiefling is, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't recognize a dragonborn or eladrin when you see them, you guys. I thought you were all well-traveled and shit. :P

4.5/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Storm Dragon (2007)

I mentioned in the last post that I was ass-deep in D&D stuff. While I did not purchase this book then, I did start reading it in that time period. We've just started playing last night, and I actually finished reading this a couple days ago. I started it a while ago. I wasn't keeping super on top of anything, let alone my reading regimen, so again, I apologize.

I honestly don't read a lot of franchise fiction. We do have a few though; that teen novel from the last post, the City of Heroes novels, and the first two books of this series. I don't usually read franchise fiction because I don't believe that a story should depend on an existing IP to sell. I bought this and the second book because of that little word in the top right corner of the cover: Eberron.

When I bought this book, I was still working on my first adventure and devouring lore for Eberron, our campaign setting of choice. I liked that it wasn't high fantasy, good-versus-evil gameplay, so I wanted to dig in. In particular, I wanted to figure out the feel of the world beyond steampunk, technology-runs-on-magic fantasy. And in the end, I'm still more inclined to point my own campaign towards my preconceptions than that of the story provided.

If it was standing alone as a story, I probably would be giving it a lower score than I am. The story itself is fairly basic: there is a prophecy detailing the events leading to the rise of the Storm Dragon, and there are a group of fugitives orchestrating these events. The main character is a member of the dragonmarked House of Storm, and knows all of the prophecy regarding the Storm Dragon. Is it any surprise, then, when (Spoiler!) he becomes the Storm Dragon in question?

The story itself is rather high fantasy. However, the only thing I can compare it to is the story of Final Fantasy 12. They go and collect people and artifacts to make certain things happen, even if the characters themselves are at odds with each other. In this book, those items are information and artifacts from various places in the world, and collecting them all to one spot to force an event to take place, one that was supposed to send one of the more unsavory characters to godhood.

Again, as a story, it was subpar. The main character quickly and easily forgives and changes his mind about people and events. He feels little to no remorse, taking an "ends justify the means" attitude. And since he does end up being the legendary Storm Dragon, he becoming even more of an unbelievable character. If he was too naive or kind to appreciate the destructive power he has been gifted with, or even if he descended even more into the delicious madness the beginning of the book hinted at, then I would have been enthralled. Instead, he just comes off as a douchebag.

The fact that his biggest conflict is that he wants to choose his own destiny also just makes me want to gag.

However, the fact of the matter is, for all of this book's flaws, it actually gave me ideas and techniques to use in my future adventures. I know now how I'm going to end the campaign. I know how to work with some of the more contradictory dragonmarked houses now. And I know how to use the Draconic Prophecy in my campaign, which was the primary reason I wanted to read these books in the first place. It had been so confusing to me before. Now I get it, and I may even employ some of it.

The best thing I got out of it though is the use of changelings. One of the side characters that grows into a main character is a changeling. At first I just though it was cool that Wyatt was including that side of Eberron in his story. But the use of the changeling was so polished. That character felt like a real guy with a stable of faces and personalities in his head. And the way he molded himself based on personality and name was just awesome. If I got nothing else out of this, I got that, and that was good enough for me to start reading the second book already.

4.0/10

Franchise Fiction - Laura O'Neill - No More "Little Miss Perfect" (1992)

I'm sorry I haven't posted much. I also haven't been reading much, so there you go. Honestly, I was really getting deeply into D&D stuff: I wrote my adventure, I recruited players, I helped them make characters, I was researching tips and tricks and lore... I was really into D&D for like, a month.

I even read this book the same day the last post was new, and didn't have the desire to write a post for it until I was able to surface from the D&D water I was submerged in. In other words, today. So I apologize again, this time for the fact that this may not be the most comprehensive review ever. I mean, I did read it a month ago.

An aside: I never watched this show. Ever. I barely remember it being on. But it ran from 1991 to 1993, according to Wikipedia. I was five to seven then. Why should I care about a teen drama, even if it was on the channel I watched the most? So I don't know anything about the characters and their relations to each other. I don't even really know what they look like.

The premise of this book is that Courtney has a diary that she hides in her school locker to keep it safe. What an idiot. And then, a bitch named Brooke finds it and discovers all these parts about Courtney's best friend Ashley being too nice and too studious. She then shows these parts to Ashley, who gets mad at Courtney, doesn't tell her why, and briefly becomes a biker chick.

Why should I care? I don't see the draw.

The whole thing reads like it should just be an episode of a teen drama, which may have been the goal, but it left zero room for any human reactions. Why didn't Ashley say something to Courtney about what she wrote, or about Brooke violating her privacy? The whole thing is just one misunderstanding after another, and then at the end, everything is status quo. Yuck.

2.0/10

Mystery - Hakan Nesser - Mind's Eye (1993)

Ah, Sweden. So many great things come out of you. Minecraft, Swedish Chef, Stieg Larsson (full disclosure: I've never read one of his books, but I hear they're popular?), Pirate Bay... uh, Minecraft... Listen, there's a lot about Sweden I don't know. But does that mean I can't read a mystery translated from Swedish?

Apparently.

Don't get me wrong. I get that this is supposed to be really good. But because my formative reading years were spent steeped in the lore of R.L. Stine, I can't help but prefer mysteries that I can try to figure out on my own, not waiting for the author to reveal it all with some information he withheld.

And listen, I know that maybe they do mysteries differently abroad. But for about seven-eighths of the book, I had no goddamn idea who the bad guy was supposed to be, and the last eighth was spent explaining how this guy was the bad guy.

Let me paint the picture for you: A guy wakes up super hungover and having blacked out a lot of what happened the night before. He discovers his wife dead in the bathtub. The trial follows and he is convicted of having killed her, primarily because it doesn't seem like anyone else could have. Then he winds up dead in his room at the mental institution, where he had been sent because he couldn't remember whether he had killed her or not.

There were a few things that could have made this better, and I'm taking it on faith that it wasn't just lost in translation. (For the record, this isn't the first translated novel I've ever read. That would be Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. So I do have an idea of what a good translation can do.)

The first thing that would have been nice is if the main character, Inspector Van Veeteren, had been sure all throughout the trial that Janek Mitter had killed his wife. Then, when he turns up dead later, we could have had some development in the form of questioning his resolution and being unsure of his ability to do his job. It would have been nice, at least.

The second thing? Some goddamn proper nouns. For fuck's sake. A lot of chapters, a lot of chapters, begin by talking about "he". Who the fuck is he? You have an almost exclusively male cast. Who the fuck is he?! I had to frequently skim ahead a couple paragraphs and even pages in order to get a single idea of who was being talked about here and there. If Nesser didn't specify in the original text, I would not have been grumpy if the translator had slipped a couple proper nouns at the beginning of those chapters so we as readers wouldn't be sitting there shouting "Huh?".

The third thing I mentioned already. I prefer mysteries that, if I really sat and thought about, I could maybe figure it out. And if I couldn't, it being clear enough that I can go "Ohhh" and complete understand where the author was going. In this case, the author divulges a bunch of unknown information at the end that made no sense in relation to the rest of the book. Incestual affairs? Since when? And it's some character we haven't even had mentioned yet in the story? Go to jail.

It's obviously not the worst book in the world, but I didn't find it super great. I was also irritated with how preoccupied with badminton Inspector Van Veeteren was while trying to do his job. Listen. I don't give a shit. Solve the mystery, dammit.

3.0/10