This novel is a Fantasy love story, a coming-of-age tale that becomes a character’s life story, concentrating on her youth and old age but reflecting multiple images of different generations of her family and friends. The fractured plotline could be confusing, jumping back and forth between the girl she was and the grandmother she is, […]
“Little Amani” Chaili Trilogy 1 by Warwick Gibson
First: why you might want to pick up this novel. It’s a good Sci-Fi, “rebels against the empire” tale. It has likeable, believable characters, and the creative dodge is having the rebel leaders mostly women, which brings a refreshing change to the tone of their revolution and the story. The Sci-Fi and historical background is […]
“Unfortunately, I Was Available” by Jon Hart
I’m not too sure how to label this book. Perhaps “Autobiographical Vignettes.” It is a series of short tales taken from the author’s work as a film extra. Part of the draw for this sort of work is the possibility of learning something about an area of our society that is closed to us. Hart […]
“An Enemy’s Gift” by Larry Armstrong
This book shows an interesting approach to creating a novella. Instead of laying out the usual story arc with all the details pared down to minimum, the author simply ignores the beginning of the time line and gives us only the action part. The problem is that in the condensing process, the author has taken […]
“The Elysian Hegemony” by Michael J. Byrne
This novel shows an unfortunate example of a writer who attempts far too much, trying to appeal to too many different types of reader, and ends up satisfying none of them. The book starts out as a Military Action-Adventure. The opening involves a great firefight, full of technical jargon, esoteric weapons, and fast-paced fighting. But […]
“Avalon” by David Barrett-Murrer
One technique of good paranormal writing is to create a distinct magical setting with clearly defined rules. Then the author can set up an effective and believable conflict within that context. One disadvantage of the Internet is that authors have access to a great variety of magical environments, and there is a temptation to dabble […]
“The Seventh Circumstance,” by Adam Scribentis
Since the author’s pen name means “writing” in Latin, we can be sure that’s what the book is all about. And therein lies a problem. There is a tiny subgenre of the Fantasy book world that is peopled by scholars and nerds who just love this sort of thing. Unfortunately, most of that same little […]
Hell, Yeah! We’re the Baddies!” by Victor Tango Kilo
Novelists always have an objective in mind: an idea to teach us, called their theme. But nobody listens to a philosophical rant, so writers attract our attention with a striking cover and entertain us with interesting characters, conflict and suspense, all the while demonstrating the theme they want us to learn. Sort of like watching […]
“The Pulse Between Us” by B. K. Brown
This is a Sci-Fi Romance story. As the title leads us to expect, the science part of it revolves around mental interconnection, and this leads to a few passionate scenes. However, they concentrate on the emotions in a tasteful way, a pleasant departure from the anatomically correct orgasm recitals many Romance writers deem essential. The […]
“The Umbra Signal” by David Williams
This novel is about the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. What if there really was a secret cabal controlling the world, but they lost control of the system, and it started controlling its creators? The only chance humans have to hold onto their past is wild-card unpredictable creativity. And the computer is rewriting […]