Book Review: The Grimoire of Kings: Tales of Bramoria: Book 1

Today I finished The Grimoire of Kings, book one of the Tales of Bramoria, and started the 2nd book in the trilogy.

The 2nd book is already easier to read than the first book. I say that because in the 1st book, the protagonist isn't exactly fun to be around, and the thing is, in a book we spend a lot of time with them, and I genuinely didn't want to.

Three friends are snatched from our world and dropped into a fantasy world where magic works, and they react differently to that happening to them.

Now I get it, we want a lot of growth in a main character, and the further they're going to go, the further back they need to be for the run-up to where we want them to be, right? If it's a long story, they can't start out great and just stay great the whole time. That's no fun to read at all is it? Where's the story arc? Where's the personal growth? 

So, I get it. He started out as a prat because we get to watch him become NOT a prat and then we'll root for him, yeah? I totally get it. But still, dear Lord. Give us a glimpse of something worth sticking around for, would ya? 

I started the series twice and finished the first book the second time by just pounding my face into it over and over again until I came through the other side. 

When I started the second book in the first few chapters, it was already worth it to push through. If you're considering it do it. Just keep going. 

It's an epic story, and as such it has a long introduction, and the first book is mostly establishing where we were, what we need to do, the call to adventure, and the hero refusing the call. I don't know if it's going to keep it up on the Hero's Journey or not, but the first part was pretty firmly in that pattern, which means the book isn't going to follow it three times with three arcs that continue ever upward in a sort of leapfrog thing like I'd thought of it doing. It appears to be just one giant honking leap. 

Buy it as a trilogy and read it as a trilogy. Don't think of it as three distinct books. You'll be, as I was, put off. Think of it as a single epic story, not three books.

What I'm saying it, read the book; read the series. The world-building is good, and I'm enjoying the story. I like the fish out of water part of it, the neighboring worlds part of it, and the magic system that I've seen so far. I'm liking the relationships between the characters, even the character that got on my very last nerve. His relationships were well-realized and were distinct. Each character had their own voice and their own motivations, wants, and goals, and they weren't carbon copies of each other at all.

Go get the series. I'm super happy with book two, The Sage and the Phoenix.

Book Review: A Prince of a Man (The London Boys Book 1)

 

A Prince of a Man by Carter Christensen is the first in a series of four books called, "The London Boys." I've never read any of Christensen's books before, but have read an alarming amount of mm erotica, male/male erotica. Think romance, with men and men and the steamy kind of romance that they talk about in health class being thrown in there. 

Firstly: When I say "steamy bits" I want to be perfectly clear here, I'm saying steamy bits, but what I mean is man-on-man sex. Don't go off and buy it then be surprised. It's not hinted at or off-camera. It's right there, on the page. 

10,000 foot view of it? I enjoyed it. I liked the characters and the setting. I liked it in the way that if you removed the steamy bits and replaced them with "yada yada yada" I'd still have enjoyed it. The book's more than just sexy bits connected by a gossamer thread of story. 

I said I liked the characters, and I did, I do. The thing is, I read it in bits, 10 minutes here or there on work breaks, etc. And sometimes I lost track of who was who. This may be my fault or it may be that they weren't quite distinct enough from each other on the page.  There's no way for me to know. It wasn't problematic. Yes, I know the chapter headings would start with the character's name. I'd forget which one Harry was though. Some of that was it jumped around a lot, from England to America & Australia picking up a character, dropping one, and back to England with years between the bits... It wasn't confusing I think if I'd read it in bigger chunks. But when I put the book down and there were two people in the US and two people in Australia, then pick it up the day later, turn the page, and everybody's back in England and time has passed. I was... again, probably just me.

I had a thought while I was thinking about it today on the way to the post office. One of the characters I felt was well developed and talked about, sort of. I mean, they were fleshed-out supporting characters, but they were fleshed out well in two dimensions. They weren't as important as the mains, obviously, but they were more important than other supporting characters, and then they just vanished. I described them not as characters, but as cars, vehicles to get the main character from where he was to where he needed to be then the supporting character broke down, wait, now, mixed metaphor. The car broke down, the supporting character noped out of there and was just gone. We got invested, then POOF. Gone.

I said the the person in the car with me, "Either, he wrote himself into a corner and didn't know how to get out of it with them or they're going to show up again, but there's not enough book for them to show up again so maybe they're in the other books?"

I looked today before writing this, at the descriptions of the subsequent books and they are indeed the mains in the next books. Now it doesn't feel quite so weirdly ham-handed but still feels a little... jarring I think. If they'd faded into the background or we'd been a part of their leaving, or I dunno. It just felt super abrupt. One minute they're important and the next minute they're just gone.

Listen, if that's all I have to quibble about is the way a supporting character leaves the stage, then it's pretty good. I'm quite happy with the main characters and how they're written. I'm happy with the dialogue. I'm happy with the level of angst. I'm happy that SO far there hasn't been the trope of if they'd just TALK to each other they'd know instead of mind-reading and getting it wrong. Those angsty books bug me after a while. Sure, once in a while is fine, but we're the most connected we've ever been in the history of ever. The only reason someone doesn't know how someone feels or what they think is because they don't want to. It's so easy to just ASK now. You'd be amazed (maybe you wouldn't) how often the hand-wringing and "oh I just don't know what he thinks/wants/feels" turns up as the main driving force of a book. Lazy writing. So far I haven't seen it in here.

Would I suggest A Prince of a Man (The London Boys Book 1)? Definitely. I would also suggest reading it in bigger chunks than ten minutes at a time during breaks at work. It's not a one-room cozy mystery. The writer doesn't limit himself. He's got the whole world to draw on and he uses it. That's going to require we, the readers, not be lazy in our reading. We need to pay attention. 

Book Review: The Black Wolves of Boston

I don't remember who suggested The Black Wolves of Boston to me or where I heard about it. When I got it and started it I was under the impression it was a young adult urban fantasy with werewolves, vampires, and witches.

I was enjoying it and liked the characters and then noticed it had a lot of um... There was sexual tension, and at one point an implied hand job between a 300 year old vampire and a just before college teen... I was confused. What sort of urban fantasy was I reading?

Oops. It's a romance urban fantasy and not a YA urban fantasy. That's not what I'd wanted or what I normally read even. But, it was well written, the characters were well developed and likable and the world was interesting and well developed so I kept reading.

I'm glad I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't want to give away too much but the newly made werewolf is a straight boy who is also a bisexual wolf which makes for interesting situations.

I recommended it. I'm not sure if I'll get others in the series or not. I don't know if I want to be a guy that reads romantic fantasy.

Writing in color & S.A. Hunt

I've been rolling this post around in my head for days because I'm not sure how to say it properly. I've decided to just say it because I think it needs saying.

I'm reading Malus Domestica by S.A. Hunt and really enjoying it. According to my kindle I'm exactly halfway through it. It's a horror novel, it says so right on the cover. It's reminiscent of early Stephen King to me... along the lines of say, Pet Semetary. It's not the same kind of scary, yet. But it's building nicely. I'm really enjoying it.

While I'd always assumed that Malus Domestica meant something along the lines of Ordinary Evil or Evil in the Home or something like that I was quite wrong... humorously wrong in fact. In fact it means Orchard Apple. I'm not even kidding. The Mal in Malus isn't bad at all! Apples are about as pure and wholesome as... well... as apple pie! What could be wrong with an apple? Nothing! (Please don't ask Snow White how she feels about apples. Her opinion is biased by the lone interaction with a witch and an apple. How often could that POSSIBLY come up?)

I'm not here to talk about apples though. I'm here to talk about reading. I've been reading for years, over 40 years and I read several different ways. I read for entertainment. I read to learn new things. I read as a writer to see what I like and don't like in a story. That's part of what I'm going to talk about here. First some background about me.

See that? That's me according to my DNA. What do those places have in common? White. I'm incredibly white. If I'm not careful on a sunny day you can see straight through my skin to the muscles underneath.

Why does this matter? Because I read a lot of books. I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, and adventure fiction, a LOT. Those books are primarily written by white guys for white guys and tend to be populated, oddly enough, by more white guys. Even fantasy settings. Elves? Check. Dwarves? Check. Owl headed monsters leaping from closets? Well, sometimes. White people? Oh hell yeah! They're like EVERYWHERE! Just relax gentle reader. As foreign as these fantasy and science fiction worlds may be you may rest assured you will always feel at home as a 99% white guy because everywhere you look will be tons of other people JUST LIKE YOU!

As a white reader I don't even notice. Honestly. I don't. I don't pay any attention. The default for me is "white guy protagonist." I'm not saying it to be proud of it or anything I'm just saying that's my reading world and I am mostly not even aware of it. It just happens.

So, when I pick up a book and it has a person of color in it I notice. I don't object or recoil and throw the book down but I notice. That's a recent thing and it's because I've started writing. Want to read my book? Cool. Go get it and read it. I'll wait here. But about people of color in books. Sometimes they're there to die as in the "black guy dies first" trope. Sometimes they're the "magic negro." Sometimes they're sort of a side character we don't really get to know but the author wanted to be inclusive and diverse so (s)he made sure to have a non-white person in there. A lot of times diversity for the sake of diversity, in books, doesn't work. Either the writer doesn't know what they're doing, or they're trying too hard, or sometimes it's just a weird sort of "I don't know anybody who is from India so I'll make them like Raj from Big Bang Theory" kind of thing going on. It's jarring.

Which is what made me nervous when I saw that S.A. Hunt had included multiple races and was using not just a token person from each race he wanted to include, but actually had a black father & son as main characters. There's a "Juan" whose country of origin I don't know so won't guess, but i'm pretty sure I know. There's women all over the place, well written ones too. That's another thing, sometimes men write women badly.

I'm happy to say S. A. Hunt writes both really well. I was afraid he was going to botch it or get preachy with things or go too far but he didn't. He's hit exactly the right tone. Now, I'm saying this as white guy. You've seen my DNA so you know. But my point is. Here, here's an example. The point of view character here is a young black boy. Something S.A. Hunt is not, according to his author profile on amazon at least. But he handles the casual day-to-day racism that I KNOW really exists because I see it. And he doesn't go into what's going on in the boy's head as a result. He doesn't try to guess is he hurt, resentful, angry, what? He puts it there and moves on. Because that's what life is like on the daily for people of color.

Racism is bad. We can all agree on that. And when someone says "racist" or "racism" I think lynch mobs. I think throwing people out of a diner or off a bus. But that's not all there is to it. There's this here. There's the ignoring them unless forced not to. That's a big deal. It's a daily, constant, "You don't matter" that they deal with and it never goes away. How would that feel to be treated like that day after day after day? What would that do? Here's a thought experiment. Ignore your kid for say, a week. Like unless they demand your attention don't pay them any at all... you're already thinking, "WTF is wrong with you Rich?" Exactly. That's exactly my point and it's exactly what happens and it's insidious.

In another place in the book there's a group of white people discussing the new neighbors and one of them casually drops the N-word. Nobody blinks they just go on as if he'd said "cabbages are green." Why? Because it was just them. Nobody was hurt by it... It happens all the time. It's casual. It's made okay because nobody else heard it. It's there. I see both of these things constantly in real life.

S.A. Hunt has written a really enjoyable book that is a supernatural horror thriller that has characters in it I really enjoy and like. I didn't mention the handicapped man who doesn't define himself by his handicap... mainly because I strongly suspect he'd take his leg off and beat me with it then put it back on and walk off. I didn't mention him because it's not WHO he is. He's not a HANDICAPPED man. The other characters aren't a BLACK family. They are not defined by their adjective as so many authors do. There's a man who has a prosthetic leg. There's a family that is also black.

So, what I'm saying is if you're writing, include some "other" in there. Something besides white men or white folks. And if you're wondering how? Do it like S.A. Hunt does because he does it really well, and does the interactions between them really well. I can't say enough good things about it.

Without being a screed or preachy manifesto it's made me think and that's what good fiction does. This is really good fiction.

Book Review: Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson

Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson was... you know, I don't know HOW I found it. I suspect it was on promo or something in some mailing list of discounted books or something. I'd never heard of Daniel Arenson before which is odd because he's written a LOT of books, and they're the kind I like. But somehow I kept not reading him.

Until now.

Earth Alone is the first in a series, maybe a trilogy. I should have looked before reviewing I guess but I just finished reading it and was excited to come tell you about it. Oops. I just broke the fourth wall. Please excuse me. I'm excited.

Earth Alone is military science-fiction if you had to shelve it that's where you'd put it. You'd be limiting the readership too much though. Listen. I know all about military sci-fi. It often starts with, here's the arc:

1) Meet the protagonist & see him in normal environment/home. Nice guy. Likable. Maybe a bit artistic/sensitive.
2) MILITARY!!!
3) Bootcamp is hard, a series of examples of how hard it is and how overwhelming and "I just wanna go home, I miss... stuff."
4) Things start coming together, the company/platoon/whatever starts gelling and getting less haggard feeling.
5) Death. Someone dies. Not an important character but one that's been added in there, perhaps after the story was written because all boot camp stories need this person to die. You can literally remove them from the story and it doesn't change in any way. It just serves the purpose Coulton's Death did in The Avengers and brings the team even closer together. "We're doing this for DEAD GUY!!!"
6) Graduation. Everything's golden.
7) Off to war. OMG - it's horrible. I hate this. Thank Glob for all that training! this is what we trained for people! Our protagonist turns out to be a great leader of men but denies it and says he was just doing what had to be done.
8) Much death but remains of the troop go on to bigger things.

That happens in ALL boot camp stories. It's THE story arc and I felt like this book was doing the same thing. Hitting all the same beats as Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card - read the book, ignore the movie) Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein - read the book, ignore the movie), and countless others that've gone before.

You know why it happens this way? Because it works. The death scene that is always there and that I always see coming even if I don't know who it's going to be... it's there and it is the *click*. It's the moment the hero goes from the person he was when we met him to the person he is going to be in the end. It's a transformative death, the chrysalis moment where he changes and the death is a punctuation mark, an exclamation point when done correctly, and a comma when done incorrectly (I'm looking at you Madonna's baseball movie A League of Their Own... nobody even knew who that character WAS! You knew the beat, but you did it wrong.)

This book hit all those beats, and you know it's going to. It's that kind of book. And it did it exceptionally well. To the point where I finished the last of the book (Beats 6-8 above) in Taco Johns eating their super nachos and drinking a giant tea and crying. Literally wiping my eyes with a napkin and sniffling crying as I read it. I cried from happiness and joy and sadness and pride. It was outstanding. I cried unashamedly and kept reading right there in public with a napkin in one hand as I blotted my eyes with it one at a time so I didn't have to stop reading. At one point I thought I was going to choke on my churro as I tried to swallow it and found that being "choked up with emotion" is more than a figure of speech. My throat rebelled against the idea of swallowing at that moment.

The characters are good. I liked them. There's one, a tiny girl, who has a story she tells about two times too often but, it's there to make a point so Arenson beats us over the head with it, the characters too. I get it. I went to boot camp and the mouthiness these characters had... and the punishments they were given... that part was unrealistic to me. They had quite a few more smart-assed remarks than I thought they should have. That bugged me some. But it didn't take away from how much I liked the characters, the story, or the book itself.

Listen, it's not A Tale of Two Cities, or The Stand (seriously, one of the best books ever written) but it's really really good. I read it on my kindle and on the last page when it offered to sell me the next in the series I clicked BUY NOW without a moment's hesitation. I won't read it next though. I'm wrung out. I need something lighter.

Book Review: Crooks & Straights by Masha du Toit

Crooks and Straights by Masha du Toit is set in South Africa and is the story of an adopted big sister trying to protect her "special" little brother. I use the quotation marks here on purpose because he's special for a reason and that'll come clear.

The setting is one I don't see often enough. I really enjoyed the feel of the novel for being set in Cape Town, I think it was Cape Town, suddenly I think that's where the author is from lol. It doesn't matter because it's not our world or our town. Magic works and there are magical creatures, and djinn you can summon in a cup of tea, a magical mafia-esque underground, and hints of a totalitarian regime of purists (non-magical folk, AKA muggles in the Potterverse) growing in power. I suspect we'll get more into them in the second book.

Which brings me to my only real complaint, it ended too soon. I realized I was already 98% of the way through the book and there wasn't any resolution happening. It never DID happen. In a story arc type thing we closed the book because it was over around the time where Luke gets on the Millenium Falcon for the first time to leave Tatooine. Yeah, not kidding. WAY too soon. All set up, beautiful set up, interesting set up, great world building set up but then YOINK! The waiter takes the salad plates and presents the bill with no meal or dessert.

That being said, do I recommend Crooks and Straights? I don't know. I do like the setting and the characters, except the Dad. I thought he was a little hollow and underwhelming. He mostly got bossed around by the women and did whatever they told him to do whether it's his wife, the hired help, old woman down the road, or the daughter. He was there, but only barely. I don't remember his name even... Kesel maybe?

Yes. Get the book. I liked the story so far. I liked the setting. I want Masha du Toit to write more stuff and I'm a supporter of indie authors and it's worth the money. But get it knowing you'll want to get the next one because you're not really buying Book 1 so much as Part 1.

Book Review: Demon Invasion by Ryan Toxopeus

I've read +Ryan Toxopeus  before and enjoyed his A Noble's Quest which I also recommend.

Demon Invasion is high fantasy with magic very much present. It almost had to be with demons as the main characters. Set in the world of his novels this novella serves as back story and world building for the main books but is on itself a good tale and interesting read.

In the 90s and 00s I played a lot of DnD (2nd edition s the best!) and read a lot of Forgotten Realms novels and Ryan's stories evoke that same feeling of escapism and wonder. I like the way he tells a story and I enjoy his characters.

If I had one quibble it isn't about the story which is absolutely fine, it's the cover. It doesn't look consistent with the others in the series and if I weren't familiar with his writing already i wouldn't have gotten it. This is a case where the cover doesn't do justice to the story inside. The cover looks kind of stock and amateurish but the writing isn't at all.

If you want a quick summer read and enjoyed Forgotten Realms type fantasy back in the day I recommend the whole series. (The last book isn't out yet.)

Start reading Demon Invasion by Ryan Toxopeus for free with the kindle app.

Book Review: Far Beyond the Pale by Daren Dean

I got a review copy of +Daren Dean's new novel, Far Beyond the Pale and was pleasantly surprised. I've been given review copies before and I've wondered if the people who are giving them to me have read my other reviews before asking. I don't think I'm an overly generous reviewer. I want people to trust me if I recommend something. Enough about me. How's the book?

In this darkly comic novel Nathan "Honey Boy" Kimbrough narrates a boy's search for a father and his mother's search for a "good man" in the mid-1970s. (from Amazon.)

Far Beyond the Pale had a real Tales of a Texas Boy (by +Marva Dasef ) feel to it, which is probably a book you've never heard of but that I heartily recommend as well. Tales is available on audiobook through audible and it's worth the listen even if it's short, only a bit over two hours I think. Daren Dean's novel was in my sweet spot for nostalgia. I grew up in the seventies in the South and while this takes place in Missouri instead of Alabama (where I grew up until I was 11) it has a real Southern novel feel to it that I particularly liked and felt right at home with. 

The language is what really stands out in this book. Daren Dean's command of colloquial Southern at the time was almost lyrical to read.

Here are some of my favorite quotes. Remembering that this book is narrated from the point of view of a thirteen year old in Missouri in the seventies:

• Aunt Oleta had always been the type that if you throwed her in the river she’d float upstream 

• Vaughn knew when to disappear. He had a sixth sense about cops, and a scanner. 

• “I’ll tell you what . . .” Roy chewed on his peanuts with his front teeth. “If she gets to heaven she’ll ask to see the upstairs.” 

• Mrs. Trapp always went around with hair piled up Pentecostal style.

I loved reading it. I liked the people in it and I liked the kid's real struggle to be good in spite of not always doing good.

The cast of characters is varied and they're fleshed out enough to feel like real people. There were times when I caught myself wanting to go to the crappy little town and visit it, stop at the gas station and get some of that Doctor Prune Juice and shoot the breeze with the gas station owner... forty years since the book was supposed to have taken place and the part where it's fiction make such a trip unlikely barring my finding a TARDIS.

I've been reading a lot of books lately where the people in them are all bigger than life, great at everything with no flaws. Space Opera type Übermensch as the good guys and incredibly hollow bad guys... I haven't reviewed those. Mom said if I couldn't say something nice about someone I shouldn't say anything... the characters in this book are flawed and human. They seem to be trying with what they've got doing what they can to get by. Some with the church, and some by trying to find safety and security for themselves and their son in the arms of a man... I know people like these people in this book. Nobody's an Übermensch and nobody's perfect, but they're all trying. I like that... to be fair, Vaughn isn't trying in any kind of way anybody else likes, but he's playing the hand he was dealt and doing the only way he knows how... it's not a good way and probably won't end well for him.

If you're looking for a good summer-time read I recommend Far Beyond the Pale. 

* Interesting note: he used the word "dork" in the book and I thought that seemed like an anachronism until I looked up the etymology and saw that it was coming into common usage in the Midwest in the mid-to-late sixties and originally mean well, penis and came to mean someone who looked uncool which is exactly how it's used in the book. 

** I had a review copy (digital) and there were some editing issues that I suspect have been cleared up by now. 

Book Review: Inquisitor by R J Blain

I have no idea why I didn't read Inquisitor by R J Blain sooner. I've had it on my kindle forever and just never started it.

Once I did start it I had problems putting it down and that's a good problem to have. I really liked the characters and the story. I didn't know what was going to happen next. I didn't feel like it was reusing all the standard urban fantasy tropes and I genuinely enjoyed myself reading it.

I suspect I was paranoid about a female protagonist written by a female author. I was really burned by Twilight when those three came together, urban fantasy, female protag, female author and I was really really really hesitant to do it again but HOLY CRAP what a mistake!

If you're being stupid like I was and being afraid to read it because of that stop now. This doesn't have a pining wimpy female protagonist wandering aimlessly from hunky male secondary character to hunky male secondary character all while pining for her primary love interest who is in fact just a friend or some crap. No love triangle. No pining. All that junk from the "other" one I mentioned, completely absent here.

This is a tightly told story in an interestingly invented world that is different enough from ours to be fantastic (as in fantasy) but still recognizably our own. The world building happens throughout the book and I don't remember any huge info dumps where she got so in love with sharing her world with us that she forgets to engage us with good story, that's another thing that sometimes happens. Didn't happen. The story was faster paced and more tightly written than this review.

Don't back burner this book. It's a mistake to do so. Go get it now: Inquisitor by R J Blain.

Over on goodreads I gave this book 4 stars. I haven't given very many books 5 stars so 4 stars is pretty good. I give a LOT of books 3 stars. That means I liked it. 4 stars is significantly better than liked it and five stars... well, that means I don't think it can be done any better at all by anyone. Don't be hating that I don't just throw out five star reviews. I know that's the norm any more but I don't do it. If you've read my book and not yet reviewed it feel free to do so now. :) I'd really appreciate it and I'd take a four star review as a HUGE compliment and would be very happy with a three star even.

Book Review: The Kid Dies by Haji Outlaw

The Kid Dies by Haji Outlaw was free for the kindle edition and I grabbed it. The book's description looked interesting, from amazon, "This superb work of dark fiction, in the vein of Chuck Palahniuk and Cormac McCarthy, finds a female assassin with five kills remaining in order to exit her life of murder." Wooo... I liked Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. It's one of my top five favorite movies of all time. I even bought an autographed copy of the book because I loved it. And while I didn't LOVE The Road by Cormac McCarthy he's got a name like a Scottish barbarian so he's probably better than I think... his book's just too depressing though. If I want bleak I'll look out the window. Iowa winter's aren't known for their unbleakness (which is, evidently, not a real word).

On my kindle the book shows how far along I am in the book in percentages. I was late back from break. I was almost late back from lunch. I got an app for my phone so I could read later into the night without it hurting my eyes so I could read this book late. Great book for 96% of the book.

It had two amazing characters who could have whole series' written about them. A smart, talented, capable, attractive female assassin named Freya Simone. I loved her. She's like an anti-James Bond. So, great. Really liked her bits.

In the other story line was an 8 year old um... he's imprisoned in a prison for psychopathic criminals or something along those lines. He's described as completely without empathy, killed his own mother while he was being born; kills a fellow inmate/patient while the staff talks about how bad he is. Evidently he's also got psychic powers and they're really well written, well done. I liked it a lot. I liked HIM a lot as a bad guy though. He's not a bad guy we'd normally expect. 8 year old kid? Not your typical baddie. Cool twist. Sociopathic 8 year old with unstoppable mental powers? Muahahaha... bad news.

Then there was 2% of transition where I was um... not sure where things were going with the book and then the final 2% of the book happened and I realized the author had accidentally ended the wrong book. The whole book had built to something and it happened then there was an epilogue part of the book, a part like in the movie The Piano after the piano is pushed into the lake, stop watching there!!! Or Pay it Forward, you'll know where to end it. Don't keep watching! It's stupid! Well, this is the same way. After the scorpion goes down to the sand to do what scorpions do... STOP READING. Everything that comes after that goes back in time and retroactively wrecked the book for me because the story was retconned and warped and turned into a Bob Newhart "it's all a dream" kind of thing, no, it's not all a dream... it's just the ending was such a complete non-sequitur. Stop at the scorpion doing what scorpions do, seriously. Up to that part it's a GREAT book... after that... well, if you keep going don't blame me... seriously, he ended it weirdly... and it didn't add to the story or the book or the characters. It subtracted from all of those things.

Book Review: Hipstopia

I got Hipstopia for free during a promotion on Amazon. I've read R. A. Desilets before and enjoyed her books. This one looked different to me. Good different, and at free what was I out, right?

Imagine a Dystopian future, now imagine one populate/ruled by a hipster with his hipster followers? Now imagine it's in LA. What you have is the setting but it's not the story. The story is a person discovering who they are against a backdrop that says you are exactly who you want to be... in these 7 choices thankyouverymuch and don't stray, don't be different, be unique like us... exactly like us, or else.

And then boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy meets girl AGAIN and she knocks him out, literally, not figuratively. :) Go read it. It's the fashionable thing to do.

You do want to be fashionable don't you?

Book Review: Eye of God by R.J. Blain

The Eye of God by R.J. Blain is a fantasy story, part one of the Fall of Erelith, involving two protagonists set in a richly realized world with a very strong religious based magic system.

I'm acquainted with R.J. Blain through Google+ and find her interesting and someone I'd enjoy a cup of coffee with if the opportunity ever presented itself.

I really enjoyed her book but that doesn't make it perfect. On amazon I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. If three stars is average it was above average. It wasn't 5 star perfect though.

The blurb on amazon talks almost entirely about one of the protagonists, Blaise, who appears to be some sort of exiled, or fallen angel and the other protagonist, Terrin -- a slave who wears a magical collar that punishes him with pain if he acts or even thinks, against his master's wishes, is mentioned in only the last sentence of the blurb.

That being said the book started with Terrin in a tense situation and opened a lot of questions that made me really want to keep reading the book. That part was perfect. The part that was off-putting for me was that since the book started with him I sort of, as a reader, assumed he'd be the primary focus of the book. Sure, books can have two protagonists, but one is usually the main guy and the other sort of a B-story line and eventually the two merge or intersect. So I was a little confused why Blaise got 90-95% of the blurb but we started with Terrin. I felt off balance because of that.

Terrin, as a slave whose actions are controlled by the collar make him really a passive character. As protagonists go it was a little frustrating to me. I like my protagonists to be people of action. Terrin was a puppet on strings, jerked about by whomever stood in front of him that wasn't wearing a collar. He'd worn the collar for as long as he could remember so freedom wasn't something he was familiar with. He couldn't even realistically rebel against the collar because it a) punished thought and b) had been there so long he was effectively like a broken docile horse. Yes, he did things that were exciting and cool, but it was always at the behest of someone else. Puppets make really boring protagonists.

Blaise, a fallen angel, maybe exiled for something? Maybe he can earn his way back into the good graces of the pantheon's god? Blaise was ridiculously interesting. If you've seen Arrow on The CW you'll get my next comparison if you haven't I'll try and explain it. Blaise's most interesting bits weren't what he was doing at the time of the book. That was interesting (if convoluted -- more later) sure, but his back story that we were given in little doses here and there was fascinating. I loved it. It was like watching Arrow where the scenes from the island, the flashbacks, were awesome and kept my interest. Blaise's past was incredibly interesting to me and not revealed in long swaths of exposition, but parsimoniously doled out over the whole book. It really worked. It built tension. It built suspense. It kept me interested in the Blaise character. I can see why he featured so prominently in the blurb. He was and is a lot more interesting than the puppet on strings that Terrin was in this first book.

Blaise in the here & now of the book was sometimes convoluted, honestly, the whole book was sometimes convoluted in that R.J. Blain tended to not want to over-share and bury us as readers in details or back story. I get that. But sometimes things were a little too sparse and I felt like whole paragraphs had been hacked out in the editing process that would have cleared things up for me. At the end of the book I wasn't lost or confused so the information was there, it was just not put there in a way that made things easy for me as a reader. That's okay I think. Some books are an easy read. The stuff is spoon fed to me in chronological order and there isn't a heck of a lot of work I need to do.

The Belgariad is one of my favorite series ever. It's not, by any stretch, a complicated or challenging book/series. Eye of God is going to require the reader to think and remember things they've read and put them together themselves. It was such a change from what I normally read at first I was put off by it. By the end of the book it wasn't something that I disliked so much as something that was different. I'll definitely read book two but I'll do so knowing that it's going to require thought on my part, work on my part. It won't be a super relaxing beach read. That's not what R.J. is writing and she's doing it on purpose. Does she limit her audience when she does that? Yeah, probably. I'm guessing she wants smart readers. If she revealed a little more, a little earlier, a little... more spoon-feeding would go a long way to broadening her audience. I think.

Having said that I was thinking about things she did in her book that I liked that I'd want to do in mine. Things I'd "fix" in my book that I messed up on. (To be clear I'm not saying she messed up. I believe her choices were deliberate.) But after publishing Jump/Drive I've started noticing things in my book that I'd change if I had it to do over again. I'm going to save that for another post or this one will get too long. Look for it toward the end of the week.

*Links to amazon are affiliate links and if you buy something following those links I'll earn some small amount of money. I thought it'd be underhanded to not mention it. Click & buy. Help a starving artist. :)

Book Review: The Cestus Concern by Mat Nastos

The Cestus Concern, by +Mat Nastos is one really really long fight. It starts with a bang and never lets up, like ever.

I realized, upon reading the end notes, that the idea started out as a pitch to a comic guy and that does nothing to detract from my enjoyment of the book but it does clarify the pacing to me. It's fast... really fast... Dan Brown with liquid metal armed protagonist fighting government agents in black helicopters fast. I'm not giving anything away that isn't on the cover here.

It was a fast read and a fun read. There wasn't an awful lot of character development but that's for later. This is the first book. This one... you know what it felt like? It felt like a buddy cop movie. It had that feel to it. Zuz, the side-kick and the poor car. It really felt like a buddy cop movie with the funny bits where they were and how they were delivered.

For the record, there were two women in the book. They did not talk about their boyfriends with each other and they both were bad axes (you know what I mean... I'm keeping it clean for the kiddies.)
If you like comic book action with buddy cop humor this is the book for you. Me? I really liked it. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Trivia: Not really trivia, just name fun. I like when authors do something smart with the names. Cestus for example, is a real word. It's not Festus messed up. It's a type of glove worn in battle. Very much like what we see here on the cover. One of the women in the book has a name that has a meaning as well, an ancient greek myth reference in the name. It's clever and smart and cool when it's done well. In this book it's done well. Not overdone and not everywhere, but enough to keep the mind thinking in amongst all the fights and explosions. :)

Book Review: Fear of Thought

Originally posted on Amazon.

Some books start with a bang and end with the protagonist walking into the sunset into the "happily ever after" ending we've been given by Hollywood for a long time now.

This is not that kind of book.

In Fear of Thought, the protagonist, Rhikki, has mental abilities, I don't mean she can play chess really well or count toothpicks when they fall onto the floor. I mean she can control other people's thoughts, heal her own brain of damage, and, if you've messed with her, turn your mind inside out as the Doctor who kidnaps her discovers. Solution? Keep her drugged to the gills and study her to find out what makes her different. (She doesn't have gills.)

I don't want to spoil the book but will say the ending was one I loved. It ends where a lot of movies would start and I like that. I liked it a lot. In my mind's eye I could see her opening a door and a world of possibilities opening before her. What happens next isn't happily ever after. It's up to us the reader to wonder, guess, think about the what happens next part of the book and I really like that about it. Stories that make me think are the best stories.

If you like a thought-provoking sci-fi book with a tight cast and good guys & bad guys who are written in a way that leaves them solidly in the gray areas of who's the good guy this is a good one. I've often said that "bad guys" don't see themselves as the bad guys and we see here that the two main characters have an idea that they're not the bad guy. I really like that. Bad guys written well are really good bad guys.

Grab the book. I'm hopeful it's the beginning of a small series. I'm dying to know what happens next. I know that seems to fly in the face of my saying I like wondering what happens next, but something tells me subsequent books would be as free of bows tieing it all up nicely in the end as this one was. I just want to spend more time inside Rhikki's head... but I probably wouldn't want her in mine!

I first discovered the author, Veronica Giguere through the Secret World Chronicle and highly recommend that series as well. I listened to it as a podcast and can't recommend that one enough. If you like comic book type action & story telling style get that one too. Very different story telling styles in the two stories. Both are really well done. Secret World Chronicle, created by Mercedes Lackey, has several authors, not just one.

2013 Finalist...

My book Jump/Drive, a YA adventure that deals with deeper issues relating to sexual abuse in the backdrop of a natural disaster in a small town is a finalist in the 2013 Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Rewards. Now THAT is a long sentence isn't it!

I got off work last night around 11PM and found the notification that I'm a finalist, me and four others, for winner of the Best Indie Book of 2013 by KindleBookReview.net. Obviously any idea of sleep went right out the window, car window as I still had to drive home... singing... and grinning like an idiot.

If you've read my book thank you. If you haven't and want to shoot me an e-mail. I'll bet I have a spare digital copy in kindle format I can share with you if you want. While I'd appreciate a review, an honest review so I can get better in the next book, I can't do more than ask for one. I'm asking. :) I'd love reviews.

October is when my book was released on amazon and in the past year it's been seen by a lot of eyes. I've had good reviews, luke-warm reviews (One guy didn't like that there was swearing in it) and the threat of what sounded like a bad review... that one hasn't materialized yet but I'm curious to see what he didn't like about it... unless it was all of it. That he can keep to himself.

In my sentence synopsis I said it "deals with deeper issues relating to sexual abuse in the backdrop of..." I'm not in love with that preposition. I don't think it's the right one even now. The important part of the book, and one that one of my reviewers on Amazon commented on was that there are two stories here. Just like a movie set in World War Two can be said to be about World War Two but not something you'd find in history books, I attempted to set this book in the setting of something bigger, something visible and interesting. So, while the book is about the natural disaster and what caused it and what happens next there is another story line about friends talking about something serious that happened a long time ago (in their lives it seems like a long time to them) and how they dealt, and deal with it then and now. That story is at least as important as the first one. I have a feeling if the book were made into a movie that story would be cut out.

I'm rambling. It's because I'm excited and look forward to seeing how this all turns out in October. To pass the time I'm going to read the other four finalists to see what I'm up against. Why don't you do the same? Check out the full list over on The Kindle Book Review site and grab a couple of them. Maybe mine if you haven't yet & don't want to e-mail me to ask for a copy? (Their links to the books are, I believe, like my first Jump/Drive link in this post, affiliate links. I say that not as a snark or anything, just letting you know. If you click those links you'll be supporting the site that's hosting the link. I appreciate any purchases made on Amazon after clicking one of my affiliate links as it helps me out & costs you no more than if you'd typed in the URL yourself. Times are tough lol. Ever nickel of amazon affiliate money helps keep me in reading material lol.)

Book Review: Assassin's Apprentice

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb is a low fantasy novel, the first in what is called The Farseer Trilogy. It's the story of a prince's bastard son who is dropped at his king's doorstep when he's six years old. He goes on to learn how to fight with a staff, care for animals, behave in polite society, read & write, mix and make various herbal remedies... oh yeah, and how to be an assassin.
Each of the skills he learns is taught seperately and as he gets good at one, just before he's REALLY good at it, something happens to take him elsewhere to learn another skill. The book is tantalizing that way in that as it builds to a crecendo it never actually gets to it. It just builds and builds until the end. Each level of tension however seems to start over at a baseline level of tension. It doesn't build from a 1 to a 5 and then start at 5 and then go to 8 and then start at 8. It seems more like a saw tooth shape. Up to 5 then back down to 1, maybe 2. Over and over again.
I described it as tantalizing but it was a little frustrating too. That's why I'm not in a big hurry to read books 2 & 3. It wasn't so much a roller coaster ride of emotions like some can be as much as it was a see saw ride. UP... DOWN.... over and over again, and it was predictable. You could tell by what the level of tension was and his skill level at whatever skill he was learning how much longer until he trotted off to do another one.
I can't say it was a bad book. I DID read through it pretty quickly and wanted to know how it ended. But I don't care enough to feel a sense of urgency to get the next two. The end of the book, the last chapter or so was very rushed feeling and instead of feeling tension it was spent with the protagonist mostly unconscious and things happening around him being told to him by others or in a dream. It felt like a cheat at the end, which was too bad.

Review: Eerie by Blake & Jordan Crouch

John Ward, whom I follow on Google+ recommended this book on July 2nd. I got it on the 2nd and read it on the 4th.  Here's my review.

I read Eerie in two sittings on the same day. It was a page-turner. (Will we continue to use that phrase as e-readers become more & more the norm? I read it on the kindle.)

The book opens with a car accident and we meet the protagonist of the story when he's 10 years old in the back seat of the car as it is crashed. He and his sister are orphans within five pages. Then we faster forward like 31 years to when he's an adult, a stereotypical borderline alcoholic detective, let me say right here all the characters in the book are pretty cardboard cut-out. There's not a lot of depth to them, but in the words of Stephen King, "the story is the thing." And the story here is gripping. 

It's like an episode of Cheers or Barney Miller (if you're that old) in that it's got one setting for most of the book, all inside the house, and that setting, that small setting, that claustrophobic setting gave this mystery/ghost-story a creepier feeling. It lent an air of trapped to it that was part of why I couldn't put it down.

As I approached the end of the book I tweeted that "It occurs to me as the sun begins to set that reading a book about a haunted house when I'm alone tonight was stupid." And it was that kind of book. I wasn't too keen on going into the basement to get my laundry moved into the dryer. I wasn't at all crazy about sleeping here tonight by myself listening to the house creak after reading this book. It was that kind of creepy/scary. 

I really enjoyed it. I'm not going to give anything away and no spoilers. I recommend you get it and make sure you have a good solid block of time to read it because the story is really good. It's named Eerie, and that's as apt a name as I can think of.

Review: You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One)

I just finished You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins and I liked it.

I didn't love it, which is fine. I don't think it's the kind of book a person loves. On Writing by Stephen King? That one I loved. But I love King.

This is a short book. It's a fast read. The impact isn't in the time it takes to read it but the time it takes to do the things in it. It was more focused on what I'd call technical writing but that's not right. Writing for magazines, websites etc. Me? I mostly write fiction. I used to write management type posts for a management blog and met some fascinating people in the online management community. Rosa Say is someone I met and whose first book I love: Managing With Aloha. If you're in management now, or hope to be in management in the future I recommend this book without reservation. If I ever got to Hawaii I would be star struck if we met. I'd love to, but am afraid of how foolish I'd look.

I'm supposed to be reviewing You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) and am talking about everything but. Here's the problem. I don't DO the kind of writing that he talks about a lot. I don't see myself shopping myself out to write an article for a magazine. I realize I'll have to do that at some point if I want to be published. I'll need to find a magazine that carries the kinds of things I write. I could also try my hand at writing the kinds of things they carry. That's the biggest stumbling block I had with the book's advice come to think of it. Early in the book Jeff Goins suggests, I believe, that I write for myself. And then, not a chapter later, he says to describe my audience, and then later he says to figure out how to write for certain people. Granted all of these things are necessary, but they're also contradictory. If I'm writing for me and people like me I know my audience. It's me and people like me. But if I then want to pitch a story about birds to a bird magazine (Is there such a thing? I'm sure there is.) I'll need to read that magazine, read their submission guidelines and write the article for those readers. At some point I'm not writing for me any more. I'm doing what I'm told and cranking out widgets but widgets made of words. I'm not ready to be that kind of hack yet.

I don't mean any disrespect when I say hack. I work in management currently in retail. I'm as hackneyed as they come at that job. I never argue politics or religion when a customer is holding forth on either. I nod sagely, collect their money, try and sell them more with add-on sales, and wait for the next person. I GET what it means to do what you've got to do to get along. But I'm naive enough, new enough to writing to think, "I don't want to do that." Translation: I'll probably not make any money at it because there's no money in writing for people who ARE willing to do that.


There were important things in there though. Things I highlighted with my kindle and will share with you now. They're the gems of the book for naive fiction writers like myself, and technical writers who want to write something people will read so they'll be more than just writers, they'll be published authors.

"You’re ready. Ready enough, anyway." (Location 571: Kindle version)

and

"The fear of something is always scarier than the thing itself." (Location 277: Kindle version)

The first quote is one I've said to parents who are talking about their first kid. I say to them when they say, "But we're not ready." That they are ready. They're as ready now as they will be later. Nothing can truly prepare you for the changes that'll happen. You're ready enough. You've got jobs. You've got a home. Now, go make that baby! I think the same could be said of writing. You're ready enough... go write that baby!... then go sell it. I guess that's where it sort of falls apart. Not supposed to sell babies are you? You know what I mean.

The second one is true as well. I wanted to ride a motorcycle. I wanted to know HOW to ride a motorcycle but I had an irrational fear that it'd fall on me, pin me, cook my leg as the muffler sizzles my meaty calf into a low carb snack for the carrion eaters that would find me later. My best friend got me into a motorcycle class for my birthday and at the end was a skills test and voila! I had my license. He helped me face my fears and surprise! The fear was worse than the lessons or the riding. I enjoy riding now. Writing is the same as riding. Don't be afraid. Hop up on that bike and write baby write!

I recommend the book. Even the end which is more about whoring yourself out as a writer, and if you want to be an author you gotta do everything but kiss your johns, just like in Pretty Woman, according to this book, even that part's got good advice in it... even for fiction authors.

Go get it. It's worth your money and your time.

Book Review: Wearing The Cape

I've been on a Super-hero novel kick lately (Not graphic novel -- real book with words and paragraphs and everything!) and found this via amazon's "Readers who bought this also bought..." recommendation I believe. So, I bought Wearing The Cape by Marion G. Harmon and wasn't disappointed.

I'm not sure who the target audience is on this. Fortunately for me I was in the mood for flying capes busting up baddies and chucking cars and saving the day so that scooted me into the target audience camp regardless of what demographic it was aimed at. It didn't feel like it was aimed at a female audience (The protagonist was female.) but it didn't seem aimed at... you know. I don't know if there WAS or HAS to be a target demographic split on gender lines on this type of book. I wanted super-hero novel and it's what I got.

There's no real attempt at explaining the why of hero powers, they just happen, and I'm totally OK with that because it explains it as a whole bunch of people had it "just happen" to them at the same time and these "breakthroughs" became either heroes or villains... I liked the characters but while the main ones were well fleshed out the secondaries seemed almost too two dimensional sometimes. I know every character can't be filled out, especially in a cast as big as this one but I didn't really KNOW any of them except the leads.

The story was well done and one of the commenters commented about the pacing of the book. I don't know if it was pacing or characters, but there were times, toward the middle, where it was easy to put down and read something else (especially dangerous to us Kindle folk who have something else ready-to-hand lol) for a while. I didn't do it because I didn't like Wearing The Cape so much as because my interest in something else that I wasn't reading would rise higher than what I was actually reading... that being said I never stayed away for long.

The last quarter of the book I read at work and I tore through it. It was excellently written. The pacing was good. The story was good. The edge of the seat feeling was good. I'm not going to say what else was good but it was good. Go read it. You'll agree.

Some hay has been made about the age disparity between Atlas an Astra, but it didn't bug me. If it'd been tawdry or a little blue then I'd have had a problem with it, but these are super-heroes. They're noble. They don't do blue. I thought it was well handled and it didn't bug me.

If you're in the mood for super-hero fiction I recommend this one. I think it's a first novel and if I can come out with one as good as this I'll be well pleased.

Book Review: Shadows in Flight

Shadows In Flight is the most recent of the Ender Series by Orson Scott Card.  It is only available in hardcover so far and isn't available in digital format for many months yet as they try and milk the hardcover sales for all they're worth before going digital with it. Too bad really, but that's a topic for another post.


I read the book in one sitting. It's very thin and has lots of space between the lines on a page. It was more of a novella than a novel. That being said, it should probably have been a short story. Maybe a longish short-story. 

I'm a big fan of the Ender series and Orson Scott Card in general but there was nothing to this story for me. 

It was a travelling story where (and I'm going to not spoil anything here so bear with my vagueness) some people are going from point A to points unknown and they squabble, then make up, then squabble some more. Occasionally the wise mentor one will say something pithy and then they go back to doing it some more. A Deus Ex Machina falls out of the sky and lands in their laps and what do you know? It pulls a House M.D. final 10 minutes trick on us and the book ends. 

There wasn't any real tension in the book. There wasn't any sort of real story arc at all in the traditional sense. You know how a lot of Eurpean movies have that feel like you've come in on the middle of something, watched it for a while and then it ends and the credits roll? This book was like that. It's like we got the setup and the end without any real character development, other than long drawn out arguments to show the four differing view points in a wall of dialog that was tired and overdone, and after the set up instead of a dramatic ending, denouement, or climax we just cut that part of the story arc out and went to the resolution of the story. 

It was altogether unsatisfying and I'm glad I borrowed the book and didn't pay for it. If you want to know what happens in it look for a wiki entry or check it out from the library but I can't recommend paying hardcover price for it. It's just not worth it which is too bad because I genuinely love this series, minus this book.)


I feel like OSC pulled a "midi-chloreans" on us with this book ret-conning previous books and, for me, wrecking some of the impact of previous novels in the series. I will choose to ignore this book, and may just stop reading the series all together and let it end on a high-note and not a boat-payment-making franchise-milking tone that this book had. It really left a bad taste in my mouth for the Ender-verse and for OSC as an exciting and original story teller.