Among Wolves

 Rating:

About the Author:
(Taken from Amazon)

R.A. Hakok grew up in Ireland but lives in London. Viable, a medical thriller, was his first novel. It was recently followed by Among Wolves, a chilling tale about a small group of schoolchildren who find themselves living inside a mountain after the world outside ends. The second book in the Children of the Mountain series, The Devil You Know, will be available shortly. For further details please visit www.rahakok.com.

Blurb:

There's only one place left that’s safe.

It’s the last place you should be.

Gabriel remembers the Last Day. He and Mags had been on a tour of the White House with the rest of Miss Kimble’s first-graders when it happened. They fled with the President to a long-abandoned bunker, even as the first of the bombs began to fall.

Ten years have passed, and now Gabriel is almost grown. He still lives deep inside the mountain, waiting for the world to thaw. But outside the storms continue to rage, and supplies are running low. The President says it will be okay, because they are the Chosen Ones. But Gabriel isn’t so sure. Gabriel’s their scavenger, and he’s seen what it’s like out there.

Then one day Gabriel finds a bloodstained map. The blood’s not a problem, nor are the frozen remains of the person it once belonged to. Gabriel’s used to seeing dead bodies. There's far worse to be found in any Walmart or Piggly Wiggly you care to wander into.

Except this one he recognizes, and it shouldn’t be all the way out here. Now all Gabriel can think is how he's going to make it back to the bunker and let the President know what he's found.

But Gabriel's troubles are only just beginning. For things are not as they seem inside the mountain, and soon he will face a much larger problem: how to get Mags and the others out.

Review:

Very, very well-written, post-apocalyptic tale of teenagers who've grown up in a mountain since the world has been thrust into a nuclear winter.

The main character, Gabe, is one of only two people who is trusted to go out into the cold, harsh world in search of anything that the group can use.  His narrating voice is smooth and almost calming as he carries the audience through what the world is now like.

I have to admit that there were four major issues that almost brought this down one more star.

1.  I am a lover of character development and imagery, but there were pages and pages of narrative meticulously laying out what the characters are doing, but very little of it leads anywhere. 

For instance, the first day they go out, the audience can fully visualize the world and how it's changed.  The audience can see how dangerous the weather is (snow so deep they have to wear snowshoes or risk getting frost-bite, so it's more than just a little cold weather), and I loved being immersed in the world, but for the other times that they go out, the audience gets more of the same, laying out how they search houses and what they find and what Gabe stashes for other people. 

The audience doesn't have to follow to see everything they find.  This is one instance in which "show vs. tell" is overrated.  As with everything in life, there is a balance.  Show is absolutely needed in some situations, and I loved being immersed in the beginning, but summing up subsequent trips out would have kept the book from feeling too long.  Show the audience only what they need to see!


2.  It may sound petty, but I'm not a huge fan of en medias res openings.  It feels like a cheap shot to me; a quick sneak peek to grab the audiences attention before thrusting them backwards in time where they can easily figure out what will happen to lead to where the story began.  I want to be very clear; the writing in this story is so phenomenal that this type of opening is not needed.  I started reading this book and was finished in one day, the prose being so smooth.


3. Much of the dialogue was glossed over.  Having dialogue in a novel is something that helps me become that much more immersed.  I have to imagine facial expressions, infliction in voice, hands that punctuate!


4.  Too many concurrent stories being told.  There's the post-apocalyptic tale that's the main focus, and interwoven is a 3rd person narrative of what started the apocalypse, and also interwoven is the apocalyptic story of how these teens came to survive long enough to get to the mountain.  It was all interesting, and it's not lost on me that these woven tales do help the audience see how the main villain was so successful with his plan, but the pre-apocalyptic tale really doesn't matter in this novel.  We're there to watch how Gabe grows into a man and a leader, the pre-apocalyptic tale should have been a short story prequel for those who might want to read it.  Ultimately, we didn't need to know how the villain did it, just that he did.  The facts of how could have been flat-out told, or saved for a moment of clarity in a later book.


Okay, that may have come across as ranting, and I apologize if it did.  The fact of the matter is that despite these four issues (which are all subjective, anyway), I absolutely adored the experience with Gabe and Mags.  I read this book in one setting, unable to pull myself from the smooth prose and immersive detail.


And I do have a major thing I loved, too.  The author does a wonderful job with accents.  One of the characters has a very distinct accent, and the author spells it out in an easy way to begin with to give the audience an idea of how the character actually speak.  It's not over done (once in the beginning to introduce the character, and then sporadically throughout the rest of the novel, just a gentle nudge to ensure the audience remains aware of it).

The introduction of this character's speech is:

'... Them boys're just spoiling for a fight.'  Marv's from Hager, where apparently not all consonants have equal rights.  It comes out spawlin' firra faht.



The "equal rights" part led to immediate joy for me!  Wonderful work.

If you have any doubt, don't be bixicated!  Check it out on Amazon and see how smooth the prose reads.

Dreama's Destiny

 Rating: 

About the Authors:
(Taken from Amazon)

Jennifer Hines was born in Missouri, grew up in upstate New York, and currently resides in Texas. She is married and has four children, two boys, along with twin girls. She has been employed with the same company for over thirteen years, which is where she met her best friend and co-writer/editor, Mindy Bigham. She loves spending time with her family, going on road trips whenever she can, and spending every other free moment writing YA fantasy.

Mindy Bigham was born and raised in Texas. She is married and has four children, two daughters and two step-daughters. She loves spending quality time with her family, shopping, and vacationing anywhere there is a beach.

They both have a love for reading and writing fiction. It is this shared interest that made them first decide to write something they could share with the world.


Blurb:

This is the first book in the Strangers of Darkness series.

Dreama had ran from her past since she was fifteen, but it wasn't until after her twenty-third birthday she realized that her escape had been an allowed illusion. When things from her past circle around into her present she is forced with the realization that there was never anywhere she could have gone that would have kept her hidden from the man who had purchased her from her family eight years earlier.

Everyone has their calling. For Dreama it was being a Scale, a witch who kept the balance between light and dark, good and evil. So discovering that Zane, the man who had swept her off her feet after a dared kiss that lit a fire deep within her, being a vampire, was not entirely a shock to her system, but the sudden return of her ex, Jake, was.

Zane was a wealthy businessman and a vampire hybrid. He was content taking blood from unsuspecting strangers and the occasional one night stands. Until one night during a business meeting at a local club he was surprised by the lips of an enchanting woman who captivated his senses with her sweet vanilla taste. After that one kiss he knew he had to have her, to possess her.

***ADVISORY*** Dreama's Destiny (Strangers of Darkness ~ Book One) is a paranormal romance novel with explicit sexual content and adult language.

18+ Recommended.

Review:

Whew!!!  This was one hot and steamy read!  This is more an erotic fantasy with supernatural beings (vampire and witch for this book) than a fantasy book with sexual scenes.  Even still, the world-building kept me interested, and the smooth and easy writing style allowed me to fall into the narrative.

As always, with an honest review, there are some negatives I feel obligated to outline.

The biggest issue for me were the overabundance of grammatical errors.  Yes, the writing style was easy, meaning the rhythm of the sentences they created really allowed for a fairly easy read, but missing commas and homophones throughout pulled me from the narrative from time to time.

Another issue was the alternating POVs (Point of Views).  The story alternated between Dreama and Zane, and there were spaces signaling with the narration switched from one POV to the other, but the formatting of the ebook left some of those spaces unnoticeable, which translated into apparent sudden POV switches, which sometimes pulled me from the story.

Lastly, I had a bit of an issue with the crafting of the characters.  For the most part, I could handle the fact that the main characters felt one-dimensional.  Dreama and Zane are madly in love with one another, and that's pretty much all the audience hears about.  Zane owns his own business, and Dreama is a painter, but aside from the initial introduction to the characters (the first couple of chapters), they are not shown doing anything other than each other (for some strange reason, I was okay with this).

Along those same lines, in the beginning of the novel, it felt like the narrator was painting Dreama as a shy, passive person, but all of Dreama's actions in the book only showed a self-sure, aggressive woman.  Many of these scenes began with a sentence or two speaking about how Dreama was usually passive, but at this moment she was too tired/pissed off/worn out/etc., and so she acted in a more aggressive manner.  Don't get me wrong, I like aggressive Dreama and her character is interesting in some respects, but either she should be shown to be passive in the beginning and then allow the audience to see how/why she started being a bit more aggressive, or she should stay as she is and the narrator shouldn't try so hard to convince the audience that Dreama is passive when never once is she shown to actually be that way.

Even with the negatives, I still had to give this four stars.  After all, I finished it in one read, and never once could I pull myself from the story.

If you'd like to find out more, please visit Amazon.

Ooga Booga



Rating:

About the Author:

(Taken from Amazon)

Gerry Walker is a writer living in Harlem. His debut novel, Pretty People Are Highly Flammable, was called “Fantastically twisted, deliciously get down dirty, gritty and real… seductively addictive and simply amazing,” by USA Today Bestselling Fiction Author Delilah Marvelle.

 

Blurb:

 

OOGA BOOGA by Gerry Walker is one of the first fictional renderings of the #BlackLivesMatter movement told via a speculative, futuristic lens: It has been a few years since the deaths of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tanisha Anderson, Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland. A mysterious condition invades the U.S., erasing the Black individual’s ability to speak any known languages. A bizarre new dialect has surfaced instead. Unable to comprehend their surroundings, they take to the streets and do what they can to survive. This sparks nationwide panic, triggering a government mandate to capture Black people and transport them to isolation camps. Marketing executive Vanessa Landing risks everything to fight for their freedom, not realizing the web of deception awaiting her, nor the liberating love that will transform her from an insecure corporate pawn into the fierce warrior she was meant to be.

 

 

 

 

Review:

 

Ooga Booga is a fascinating speculative fiction, exploring what might happen if African-Americans suddenly developed a change in the way they think and speak.  The author does a wonderful job of examining how American society would react and how it would affect individuals on a personal level.

Along with the fascinating concept, I also really enjoyed the writing style.  It was smooth and incredibly gorgeous at certain moments.  I had no issue reading this novel in a single setting and finishing it in one day.

Some of my favorite lines:

Anti-rhythmic and multi-tones, it was what a modem might sound like if it sang to you.  Like programmer code being performed live beneath your skin.


Without warning, a loud, brilliant sensation of freedom exploded through her cerebral cortex, forcing her fear to compete for space.


She craved more and wanted to open herself up and pour him in like medicine.






While the story is being advertised as a novel illustrating the #BlackLivesMatter movement, I have trouble describing it as that, myself.  For me, it's about a person's struggle to regain control of her life and herself.  The main character, Nessa, has changed her life significantly and moved away from her family, pretending to be something she is not merely because her love ones insisted it was the best thing for her.  She falls into the lie and continues to act and behave certain ways just to gain the approval of those around her she admire.  Once the novel really picks up, Nessa finds her façade stripped away, and she has to finally come to terms with who she truly is.  But, is she now in control of her life, or has she fallen into her old ways, allowing other people to dictate who she should be and how she should behave?  I think at it's heart, this is a story that could speak to so many people on a deep, individual level.



I'm sure the main question is why four stars when I loved this so much!  There were a few aspects that took a star off for me.  The biggest for me is that there were so many scenes skipped and glossed over, and the lack of those scenes affected how much the story resonated with me.

For instance, the main plot of the story is that African-Americans were treated poorly by being locked up in camps.  While on the surface that sounds horrific, I couldn't ignore the fact that the change in how people thought and spoke also came hand in hand with confused cognitive abilities.  Being unable to think clearly or understand what something means can be dangerous not only for the affected individual, but also for passersby.  In otherwords, one wouldn't claim that a person suffering from Alzheimer's is being mistreated simply because they're not allowed to walk around in public alone... and there were thousands of African-Americans suffering from this ailment in the end.

I read through a majority of the books wondering what the big deal was, and what the main character had in mind to keep both the affected individuals and the general public safe once the camps closed.  Throughout the book, characters would state very plainly that the camps were horrible, but the audience is never shown that.

After the main character is released from the camps (and the audience is shown her in a confused mind frame with workers in the camp tending to her), the main character gives a speech about the camps, stating:  "I've personally heard the heartbreaking stories of hundreds of hardworking individuals who've lost their jobs... Stories of people like you who were chained up and banished to live in cold, dim, dirty camps miles away from your home."

While the audience is shown the main character losing her job (and I could get behind and cheer their attempts to create laws and prevent this from happening), I couldn't cheer for their abolishment of the camps because I wasn't shown the heartbreaking stories.  At some points, I wished the author had gone in scene for some of the information provided to the audience.  I wanted to, at the very least, hear the heartbreaking stories and the horrific things some people had to endure in the camps.



All in all, while a very good read, the story could have been twice as long and much more engaging.

And, although I had one major issue with one aspect of the story, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and being taken through all the twists and turns of the main character's journey.  This is a novel for my must-read list.


If this sounds like an interesting story to you, please purchase your copy at Amazon.

Evolution of Angels

 Rating:

About the Author:

(Taken from Amazon)

Nathan Wall is a husband, father, author and wanna-be part-time superhero (because new legislation limits the benefits and tax deductions he can receive as a full-timer) who lives in Texas. He's been creating stories since before he can remember. He says creating stories, and not writing them, because - as a boy - he had a healthy addiction to superhero action figures, and used to stage his own homemade adventures/movies in his room. His love for story telling morphed when he entered high school, as countless spirals of paper knelt before his pen. In college, that love for story telling morphed into other media. In 2010, he was nominated for an Emmy award. Nathan is the author of "Evolution of Angels," a science-fantasy/ action thriller. The ebook version was launched in June of 2014. The subsequent installments are set to be released soon, including a shared-world novella later this year. Other writing credits to his name is the highly praised "Money Ball for Fantasy Baseball," a non-fiction strategy guide series. The 2014 edition was featured by many independent fantasy baseball sites. When he is not busy writing, Nathan can be found interacting with his numerous fans on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Blurb:  

After finding angelic DNA characteristics hidden throughout the population, a secret agency decides to recreate angels of their own. The agency's "Double-Helix project" manipulates the DNA of certain humans, creating soldiers who can wield the armor and weapons of Angels, the Aurascales: a sentient armor that forms a symbiotic relationship with its host. In the pursuit of perfection, and the hopes of helping his wife conceive a child, William Sanderson clones an Angel, making a warrior far superior to anything they've seen before. The only problem is the clone's powers can't be controlled, so his memory is erased and a mental wall is erected to keep what lingers inside from breaking out. One day, to battle a force the likes which have never been encountered, this clone is recruited by the agency and his mental wall is broken.

Review:

Fascinating concepts reside in Evolution of Angels.  Nathan Walls blends mythology together to create an interesting story about a man being recruited to save the world from deadly threats.

The characters are interesting, although they all speak in similar manners.  At times, I found it difficult to keep up with who was talking and at what point.  That being said, I really enjoyed getting to know and following Jarrod!  His sense of humor and personality stuck to me.  I also found it interesting how he first came across like the fun loving side-kick, but by the end he is shown to be the hero.

My other favorite character is Oreios!  He's demented in a pretty fun way.

 

The writing is... efficient.  It wasn't bad and I could imagine the scenes fairly easily, but there was something missing.  This is definitely personal aesthetics, since I tend to enjoy more poetic writing.  A few moments, the type of descriptive writing I enjoy did pop up.

For examples:

"Saliva in his mouth strung together from tooth to tooth like spider webs."

Disgusting, but also vivid.

"... launched him thirty yards, causing him to skip across the ground like a smooth stone on a calm lake."

And my personal favorite:

"Jarrod jumped onto the railing, overlooking the bottom floor like a terrifying gargoyle."

 

There was one other issue that I had with the story, and that was the excessive use of backstory.  Most of it could have been discovered through narration and dialogue, but the reader is taken back to months and years in the past to relive certain moments.  The most frustrating part was with Episode 4.  Right after an amazing battle, an entire section (set up like a chapter, but a little longer) was dedicated to back story, and most of the information would have been perfectly acceptable if a character had sat down and explained one or two points to another character.  It wasn't hard to keep up with the time jumps, they just seemed to come at a time where I wanted resolution on something specific.  Essentially, they delayed satisfaction, which at moments can be very frustrating.

 

So, the reason for three stars is a combination of characters not being distinct enough, prose lacking a bit more flare, and backstory interrupting the much more interesting current story.

Other than those three things, however, I still have to recommend this book.  If you enjoy action-packed novels which explore fascinating ideas, you should enjoy this!

 

Also, extra kudos for this line and knowing the difference between the man and the monster!

 

"I feel like Frankenstein's monster," he joked...

If this title interests you, please check this novel out on Amazon.

A Vanishing Glow

 Rating: 

About the Author:
(Taken from Goodreads)

Alexis Radcliff is an author, gamer, unashamed geek, and history junkie who spent the better part of a decade working in tech before dedicating herself to her first love, literature. A VANISHING GLOW, her debut novel, is the opening book in her MYSTECH ARCANUM series, an exciting blend of steampunk and flintlock fantasy with mature themes.

Alexis lives and works in the Portland area with her adorable (if surly) cat and her equally adorable husband. When not writing, she spends her time reading, running, playing way too many videogames, and thinking too much about everything.

Even more of her writing can be found at her blog, Lexirad.com, and if you don't have enough sources of cat pictures and random fun in your life, you can follow her on Twitter (where she also spends too much time).


Blurb:

When the High Sovereign of the five kingdoms of Ghavarim is murdered by a mysterious assassin, the realm is plunged into chaos. Jason Tern, a noble captain with a tragic past, must battle shadowy assailants and untangle an ever-widening web of lies to discover the true identity of the killer before mounting tensions spark a bloody civil war.

Meanwhile, Nilya Valsu, a talented army engineer with a broken heart, finds herself used as an unwitting pawn in a plot that has deadly consequences. Wracked by guilt, her sole chance for redemption lies with a man who would loathe her – but only if he knew her secret.

As the conflict intensifies between the magic-fueled technology of the West and the disaffected rebels of the East, all must fight for what they hold dear. Who will reign victorious and who will lie bloodied on the ground in the light of a vanishing glow? 

Review:

A Vanishing Glow is a pretty compelling read.  The main, main characters (the two that are followed throughout the majority of the novels) are pretty well-crafted and compelling.

Jason is a soldier who is more comfortable with a weapon than in high society, but when his life-long friend, Nole, request that Jason takes a seat on the council, he decides to do just that.  The relationship between the two was set up really well from the beginning.  I could see Jason's level of comfort lower when with Nole is around.  From the beginning, I could tell that characterization was the strong point of the author.  I don't mean to take away from her writing, because that's strong, too, but her ability to craft characters is beyond good.

The next character I consider to be main is Nilya.  She is a sapper, but desperately wants to become a weapons engineer.  Her introduction has her frantically working on a device that could help make her dreams come true.

With both introductions, I found Nilya's more compelling.  She was working towards a goal, and the audience saw it from the very beginning.  Later on in the book, I found myself a little less interesting in what she was doing and way more fascinated by Jason and his search for a killer.  I think this is the first issue I really had with the story.  The balance was just a bit off with the plot, and there were too many lolls with either one character or the other.

Also, there was a missed opportunity in this volume, I think.  A lot of time was spent setting up the social dynamic between people and constructs, but when a character suddenly finds himself/herself as one, this dynamic is not fully realized.  I'm pretty sure this is going to be further explored in the next book, but it would have been nice to start that thread here.

Overall, there were things I loved and things I didn't, which brought me to a four star.  I'll definitely be reading the next book, if for no other reason than to see how our construct handles his/her new form.

Buy your copy on Amazon.

The Spiral Effect

Rating:

About the Author:

(Taken from Amazon)

James Gilmartin is the author of multiple short stories, three screen-plays (they'll eventually be movies, I promise), two novels, and a children's books. He has more in the works, and once he finds the time, will have them complete and posted on every e-book publishing site he can find. James Gilmartin also likes to create book covers, attempts blogging, has aspirations to start a podcast, and plans to film short video-films and a web series by the end of summer, 2015. ADD has it's perks and limitations. James lives in Muskogee, OK (ouch) with his wife, Christina, and their two children, Addison and Colin.

Blurb:

99% of the Earth’s population exhibits signs of telepathy and telekinesis. 

99% of the Earth’s population is dying from a mysterious new disease. 

The Collector, unaffected by the virus, has taken it upon himself to search for answers. Pushed by the single command: Find the Cause, Find the Source, Find the Beginning, he traverses through other minds, collecting memories in the hopes of finding a single clue that might lead to a cure. 

But it isn't so easy. Confused and frightened mobs attack hospitals. Jumpers steal bodies from the healthy. And some telepaths set dubious, mental traps. How will The Collector respond? What measures will he take to keep people from killing each other, all the while staying true to his goal? And what trouble lurks within his own mind? 

This is only the beginning. Follow The Collector in his search for The Cause, The Source, and The Beginning, continued each quarter with a new novella.

Review:

This is a very short read, but wow is it fascinating.  The novella is experimental in writing, but every time it does slip into unusual narration, it does so for a reason and plays well into the story itself.

The main character is a man searching minds for information to help cure the world of an illness.  Because he does traverse minds, the readers get setting, action, and dialogue, but it all takes place in people's minds.

Overall, I would highly recommend this story, and I'll be following the rest of the novels set in this universe.

Purchase your copy at Amazon.

Fossilized Gods

Rating: 

Author's Website:   http://majra.org/

Blurb:

Being a god isn't easy. Oh sure, you can crash the super-exclusive club at that hot new pyramid, but one little drought and your worshippers are suddenly burying you neck-deep in scorpions. Samantha never expected to wake from her long sleep. When she came to, mortals were riding around inside big metal cows, shooting invisible info-rays across the sky, and doing amazing things with cake frosting. They took cell phones for granted and thought nothing of a university where Physics stood between Inhumanities and Necro. Now, deep in the great museum, other gods have begun to wake—old gods, terrible gods, gods that would drown the world in suffering. If Samantha can just wake the dead, outwit a huge disembodied brain, and evade the Great Hunter who's after her head, maybe she can do something about it!

Rating:

"All right, all right, you can stop chanting my name! ... If I got any more gigantic and golden, you'd burst into flames just beholding my divine beauty!  Oh, all right, just a little more chanting - but take precautions, will you?  Something fire-retardant.  Spit on each other, maybe."

I had to start with a quote from this book, and could not, for the life of me, decide on which one.  I think the above gives an adequate idea of the type of humor in the book.  It is absurdist humor at it's best.

Because one quote just doesn't do this story much justice:

"What did orphans taste like, anyway?  I mean, say what you will about witches, but anyone who builds a candy house - and doesn't immediately eat it - must be pretty certain it'll bring them something even tastier."

Sammy is a long dormant... god of sorts.  She had worshippers and was well-known in her time, but after people stopped believing in her, Sammy went dormant for thousands of years.  Fast-forward to present day, and some strange power has brought her back to life, along with three of her friends.

Overall, I loved this story.  Every page was amusing to some degree, whether it brought me a pleasant smile or a hearty belly laugh.  Because of this, deciding on a rating wasn't easy.

Four stars:

There are typos throughout the piece.  Also, being the visual reader that I am, there were way too many times when I didn't know what to imagine.  There were some scenes that were fuzzy or I had to force an image or I just moved on not knowing what was supposed to be there.  Now, these things didn't leave me confused about the overall plot or characters, but it did make the reading just a little less enjoyable.

Five stars:

The fact that I couldn't put it down in the beginning, and the fact that I did just move on when something wasn't clear showed how enjoyable the overall novel was for me.  Who cares if those few things were problematic for a moment if the overall journey was incredibly loved?

I finally went with four stars because, IMHO, the story did go on just a tad too long.  I did find it lolling in the middle.

Once again, just because it's four stars doesn't mean this isn't a highly recommended book in my opinion!  If the quotes fit your humor, please read this!  You won't regret it!

Okay, okay... one more quote.

A character talking about the formula for writing romance.

"It's all arithmetic.  Mister A, a lordly B from time period C, D-ly kisses humble lady E, a mere F, on the G, while firmly swatting her H with a leather I.  You know.  Romance."

Purchase your copy at Amazon.