The author has taken a big chance in setting out this book, and for the most part, it has paid off. The conflict is shown from the points of view of both sides in the battle. Thus people are not assumed to be good guys because they are on the right side. There is no […]
“The Prodigal Vampire” by M. J. Todd
This novel is a perfect example of a very specific cultural phenomenon: British off-the-wall completely ridiculous humour. It involves a dead vampire who somehow escapes from the netherworld and returns to his old hometown somewhere in England intending to live there. But there is a whole town full of eccentrics whose lives get in his […]
“Danger in the Rain” by Douglas Boatman
I enjoyed this novel. It’s a standard private detective serial with deeper touches of setting and character that really bring the reader into the story. However, it was a little too much of a good thing. A story like this one, full of action and description with a complicated plotline, can go in two directions. […]
“Hinterland” by L M Brown
This is a psychological novel giving an in-depth presentation of what goes on in the minds and emotions of injured people. The main conflict is about the mental illness, but most of the action takes place in the lives of the mostly-sane people affected. Usually in books of this sort we find out from the […]
“The Curious Touch of Cupid’s Son” by Dave Diotalevi
A comedy novel consists of two elements: comedy and story. The most important thing for the writer to get right is the balance between the two. (With an erotic comedy there are three elements: more on that later.) What sounds witty and fresh in the first page starts to pall after a whole chapter. The […]
“Ramone’s Long Sleep” by Mickey Kulp
I don’t usually review children’s books, but I have edited one series, and I spend a lot of time reading to my grandchildren, so that gives me an idea what a good Kids’ Lit book looks like. And here’s the first piece of advice that I would like to put out there for everyone who […]
“Lingering” by Melissa Simonson
REVIEW This is a story about grief. Everyone experiences the loss of a loved one differently, but we all go through grief in the same stages. Except Ben. He takes the rape and murder of his fiancée badly, unable to let her go. And then, one day as he sits by her grave, a woman […]
“Scavenged” by Scott Arbuckle
REVIEW This is top-notch Science Fiction. More-than-human characters stride across well-conceived and artfully described post-apocalyptic landscape: former humans enhanced and augmented in various ways by enigmatic aliens who are mankind’s saviours or destroyers; it’s uncertain which. There is conflict on internal, interpersonal, external, environmental and galactic levels, all tied together by two main characters whose love has a lot […]
“Smash and Grab” by Joe Albanese
Joe Albanese and his characters specialize in a cynical sort of irony. They know their lives are crappy and they never expect anything to turn out well. Which is a good thing, because several of them turn out dead. The problem with cynical irony as a cornerstone for a novel is that there isn’t a […]
“The Reader of Acheron” by Walter Rhein
This is Dystopian Action Fantasy with a thread of philosophy running through it. Not enough to slow the action down, just enough to give the plot deeper meaning and intensify the conflict. The characters are interesting, but not exceptionally so. Quillion, the soldier-philosopher, is likeable but not lovable. The freed slave, Kikkan, is the most interesting […]