Review: Crystal

In this, her eighteenth novel, Katie Price tells the harrowing story of crippled young orphan girl Jo Arden and her dreams of becoming a famous writer. Suffering from a rare childhood medical condition which causes one breast to grow larger than the other, Jo Arden is forced to wear a ‘blocker bra’ to school and is subjected to merciless bullying by the other pupils. After one such incident, where she is marked for life by being daubed in indelible orange paint and has cutting remarks made about the practicality of wearing high-heels to play netball, young Jo seeks refuge in the girls’ toilets. Here she is discovered by kindly English teacher Prof. Saville, who is carrying out a routine check.

Saville puts a comforting arm around Jo’s shoulder and leads her away to the refuge of his secret Stationery Cupboard Zoo, where he calms the girl down by allowing her to milk a cow in the dark. He also speaks kindly to Jo, praising her beauty and assuring her that she is a good girl and a pretty one –with his voice all going up at the end. Inspired by the kindly old gent’s actions and words of encouragement, Jo Arden drys her eyes, wipes her hands clean and resolves to turn her life around.

What follows is an uplifting tale of the power of love and the indomitability of the human spirit. Prof. Saville becomes more than an English teacher and develops into somewhat of a father figure to the lonely young girl. He encourages her to enter writing competitions and also to compose poetry. In return she helps him regularly in his Stationery Cupboard Zoo, milking for all she is worth in the comforting darkness.

At first, success is elusive but, after several disappointments,  young Jo wins a ‘composition’ prize, organised by the local church. A feat which, for the first time, wins her the grudging respect of her schoolmates. In addition, the regular clandestine milkings and constant prose writing are strengthening and transforming her crippled young body; her withered breast begins to swell and swell until soon it rivals its brassiere-mate in girth and defiance of gravity. Now, suddenly and much to the dismay of Prof. Saville, all the boys want to help carry her books at break-time –in particular swarthy milk monitor Pierre Andre.

I won’t give away too much more of the rest of the plot, for fear it will spoil your enjoyment of the book. However I highly recommend this title. Katie Price has shown us once again the power she can command with mere words and her box of crayons and the world of literature is the richer for it. I unreservedly recommend this book.

RATING: 

Review: Crystal

From the moment this towering novel opens with a colossal intergalactic space battle, taking place at the heart of the Orion Nebula between the TH’uurg and the Grandals, two advanced and totally ruthless alien races, you just know you’re going to be in for a lightspeed ride — and Katie Price doesn’t disappoint. Crystal, her forty-third novel and seventh venture into science fiction, is her best yet.

The tale sees the welcome return of Price’s semi-autobiographical heroine Colonel Jor-Den Tangerine, international super-model, singer, fashion designer, NASA test pilot and secret agent.

Colonel Tangerine is initially irritated to be summonsed away from a vital presentation on shoes she is giving before a gathering of the United Nations in New York. However, when her shadowy controllers at NASA’s Earth Defence League reveal the threat posed to our planet by the ever-expanding war between the TH’uurg and Grandals she leaps into the fray with a vengeance. In spite of the potentially suicidal nature of such a mission, Colonel Jor-Den volunteers to fly out to the Orion Nebula and attempt to appease the warring factions, even though this means risking the life not only of herself but of the giant deformed grape-headed spacker baby she leaves behind. She blasts off from a secret airbase in the Nevada desert in an as yet untested experimental craft, controlled purely by nipple impulses. As US President Pedro Andre tells her “Only your unfeasibly large and veiny orange breasts can fly this ship and save the Earth for democracy!”

I won’t give away too much more of the rest of the plot lest I spoil it for you but needless to say Ms. Price’s heroine does not find her intergalactic rescue mission plain sailing. Thrills and spills abound as she struggles to control her wayward craft on its perilous journey to Orion. Skidding dangerously round black holes, throttling between binary star systems with inches to spare and at one stage almost clipping the rings of Saturn —her NASA training and mammary dexterity are tested to the limits. Likewise, neither the TH’uurg nor the Grandal battle fleets exactly welcome Colonel Tangerine’s arrival in the midst of their conflict and the brave test-pilot finds herself involved in dogfight after dogfight as she battles to impose her brand of intergalactic justice upon the warring factions.

This is a rip-roaring belter of a novel which bears testament to the fact that Katie Price is currently at the height of her literary powers. I wholeheartedly recommend it both to fans of epic science fiction and vacuuous shoe-related conversationalists alike.

RATING: