Category: Uncategorized

New Book Review 12: Dreamscape

The twelfth book I’m reviewing here is Jenna Whittaker’s standalone novel Dreamscape. It’s a work of fantasy, though it doesn’t quite fit into any fantasy sub-genre that I’m familiar with. I almost want to say that Whittaker has established an entirely new fantasy sub-genre with it, but I’ll need to see if there are many similar books before jumping to that conclusion.

In the story, god-like beings vie for power in an alternate dimension called the Dreamscape. The mortal world suffers for the struggles between the gods, with the god Watcher and his allies The Sisters serving on the side of good and the cyborg-goddess Machina opposing them. To check Machina’s power, the gods execute a plan to have one of their number, the god Keeper, born in the form of a human named Khalos. As a human, he has no memory of his divinity or his power, and the main narrative follows him as he tries to work out who he is and why he’s in his position. I find the premise absolutely fascinating. It alludes to a variety of mythic and religious figures going back for thousands of years (Jesus, Krishna, every demigod-figure) and leads the reader to imagine the confusion and pain that would come with such a role.

The world of the Dreamscape has fantasy elements both familiar and unique. The gods manifest their power in different forms there, magic is carried out through singing, and mighty black gryphons travel between the world of the gods and the world of humans as the need dictates. The world of the humans in the novel seemed for the most part to be medieval-ish, but really that wasn’t clear to me. There seemed to be some modern conventions in it, so it’s hard to say.

One reason it’s hard to say the precise nature of the world is the author’s particular style of writing. The story is slow. There’s not a ton of concrete description, instead we spent most of the story inside of Khalos’s head and experiencing the world through his confused thoughts as he processes the mysteries that he encounters. The two adjectives that best describe the slow style, in my opinion, are ‘contemplative’ and ‘dreamlike’. Fans of fast-paced action and razor-sharp dialogue probably won’t enjoy this style. Personally, I loved it. It was different, but it was never boring. It’s a stretch, but it brought to my mind some aspects of the style of W. Somerset Maugham.

One problem does arise from this style though, and it served as a detractor at certain points. When the story does call for action, its impact is lost. This is especially prominent near the end of the story. There is fighting and warfare, but the dreamlike style softens it a little too much.

Overall, the book is both strong and unique, and I enjoyed every minute I spent reading it. It’s unique to the point that I can’t say exactly who the best target audience would be, but patient and thoughtful readers who enjoy fantasy and mythology should take pleasure in it.

And now as always, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

 

New Book Review 11: Obsidian Son

The next book I’m reviewing is Obsidian Son, the first book of the ‘Nate Temple’ series by Shayne Silvers. The books is billed as a supernatural thriller, but it was more of a modern/urban fantasy thriller with some overtones of detective drama and comedy. There were aspects of the book that I really loved, and some other aspects that I really hated.

But first, the premise. The protagonist, Nate Temple, is a tough, wisecracking, handsome bookstore owner whose parents owned a multi-billion-dollar tech company. He also happens to be a wizard. In this world there are wizards, werewolves, living gargoyles, the monsters and gods of Greek mythology (albeit quite a ways past their prime), and all kinds of magical shtuff. The story takes off shortly after Nate’s parents die under mysterious circumstances. Soon Nate’s bookstore is being attacked by strange incendiary women, Nate’s magical powers start going haywire, and everybody in town is in search of an ancient book about dragons. Nate’s investigations lead him into the thick of a plot by scheming, shape-shifting dragons to establish the Obsidian Son, a kind of dragon übermensch who will usher in an age of dragon world domination.

It’s a fun concept, made even more fun by the comedy delivered by the book. There’s great banter among characters and great wisecracks from our hero, but even apart from that the situations and scenarios in many cases are genuinely hilarious. Saying too much about them now would spoil the jokes for potential readers, but the jokes are definitely a strength. The action is written as it should be in a thriller. It’s fast, it’s vivid, the details are all there, it’s all working great. There’s only one thing about the action that doesn’t work so well: Nate Temple is so powerful that he never seems to be in any real danger. The reader never has to wonder if he’ll survive a fight. With his plot armor securely in place, the fights have a somewhat cartoonish quality to them. His absolute wealth also allows many problems to be resolved simply by throwing money at them. That’s not so bad though. It’s entertaining anyway. It bothered me a little that there really wasn’t really any character development in the book, but it’s a thriller. It’s entertainment. I can accept that.

There’s one big thing that did bother me about the book: the majority of female characters in the book served the primary purpose of being (to use Nate Temple’s term) “eye candy”. Every single female character has supermodel looks wear skintight clothing, when they wear clothes at all. The dragons vying for domination consist of a kingpin-like figure and his “harem” of females, all of whom appear as usually-naked supermodels when they are in human form. Nate Temple’s love interest (whom he doesn’t mind forgetting about when he’s ogling the other female characters) does literally nothing in the entire book except be sexy and serve as the love interest. The story could follow its exact same plot without her ever appearing. As far as I remember, the only exception to the every-woman-is-a-sex-deity rule was one elderly Christian secretary who was just in the story for one comedic scene in which she reprimands Nate for being too sinful. Now, I’m not about to try and be the moral arbiter of the genre. And, there’s nothing wrong with a character being attractive. But with the exception of the elderly Bible-thumper, every woman in the story has sexiness as their first and most defining characteristic. Their value to Nate starts with their sex appeal. It bothers me. As I said, the book is just entertainment. It’s not going for anything profound. Still, it bothers me, and I can certainly see it bothering other readers.

So, I can recommend this for fans of action and thriller novels, and for fans of modern fantasy, and for readers who live in the common ground between the two. The writing is not at all bad and I had a lot of fun reading it. I’d like to hope that if I read any of the author’s other books, I won’t find in them the same issues that I found in this one.

And now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 10: Incanta|Soul-Catcher

The tenth book I’m reviewing is Incanta |Soul-Catcher, the first book in the Lost Souls series by Avie Adams.  The genre is dark fantasy, which tends to mean fantasy with strong elements of horror. Now, for this particular book I was almost too skeptical to start it. I’m afraid that I judged it by its cover, which in my digital edition depicts a teenage girl with white skin, black hair, and red lips in front of a background of mountains and fog. It looked too much like YA goth supernatural romance, something like Twilight (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my taste). But, once I started reading this book, I quickly found that it wasn’t like that at all. It was more serious, more ominous, and far more engaging.

The book’s world is utterly alien, and adjusting to it takes some time. The protagonist, a teenage girl named Cytriah, lives on an island where the buildings are molded from obsidian. She is an Incanta, a low-level acolyte in a religious order that specializes in something similar-to-but-never-outright-named necromancy. The society is ruled over by (get ready for the moral panic!) snake-like and spider-like Daemons. Within the context of the society, everybody thinks this is normal. Cytriah has a hard life, but it’s the life she knows. Intimidation by Daemons is a common threat, the cruelties of her superiors are a common threat, and it’s a fact of this world that if she fails in her role she will be condemned as a ‘Promise-bearer’, an imprisoned bearer of children. That’s her world. Cytriah’s world falls apart when she obtains new knowledge about the way it works, and why it works the way it does. That’s where the plot gets moving and the threats against her become more tangible.

The level of detail in the story is great. The world, the magical processes in it, even the gritty and foul aspects of the necromancy, are described credibly and with powerful texture. Besides this Cytriah and the secondary characters have complexity which manifests in various ways throughout the story. The only contention I really have is that in a few crucial points in the plot, there were some logical stretches. Characters took actions which were crucial to the development of the plot, which I didn’t see clear motives for. There were only two points in the story where I saw this, and it’s not a huge problem. Many stories have done this far worse.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I was worried that this would turn out to be a poorly-written supernatural romance story. There was a romance aspect to it that didn’t manifest in the plot until quite a ways through the book, but it wasn’t anything like the helpless-infatuation romance stories you expect of the genre. The romance in this story is dangerous, with consequences as ugly as all other consequences in this hideous world.

To wrap this up, I do recommend this book, though with discretion. Fans of horror may like it. Readers with qualms about blood and violence and that sort of thing will certainly not. I enjoyed it.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 9: Letháo: The Secret King

The ninth book I am reviewing is Letháo: The Secret King, an excellent science fiction novel by Dawn Chapman. It’s a space opera, within the same genre as books, films, and television shows like Star Trek, the Star Wars saga, Dune, and Battlestar Galactica. In some of the Amazon reviews for the book I saw claims that The Secret King follows a plot very similar to Battlestar Galactica. I’ve never seen the show so I couldn’t say. The Secret King was originally conceived as a thirteen-episode TV series (doing some research on it, I get the impression that a show might be coming in the future), and this comes across in the writing. Chapters feel episodic, so the book contains multiple small situations of conflict and resolution within the framework of a large conflict.

The overall story is this: the population of the planet Letháo must evacuate their world. These refugees are led by Kendro and his wife Mika, the king and queen of their world. The monarchs are supported by the captains of the ships and by Kendro’s trusted second-in-command or Ainoren, Octav. These people, a race called the Aonise, are mostly humanoid but have limited abilities involving telepathy and a physical mechanism called ‘croex’. This is a soul-like energy which can allow one Aonise to share strength or the burden of intense pain with other Aonise, among other functions. Some Aonise also have visions of the future. As the refugees seek a new safe haven, they are plagued by attacks from aliens called the Zefron, schemes and power plays from the captains, and human drama around relationships between crew members. Each of these conflicts influences the other conflicts and leads to shifts within the power dynamics of the ship. With the book’s primary focus on the personal interactions rather than the spectacle of the alien attacks, I can certainly see this book working as a character-driven TV series.

The writing was very good. At spots the sentences were rather choppy and there were spots where I noticed misplaced punctuation marks or sentence fragments, but none of it was enough to pull me out of the story. None of it was enough to cringe over. And I promise, I have read books with errors that made me cringe. I don’t like cringing while reading, especially not when the author didn’t mean for the reader to cringe. Not once did I cringe over Dawn Chapman’s work, instead I spent a lot of time genuinely marveling over the quality of the dialogue, setting, and pacing. If she is reading this, then I say to her, nicely done. Very nicely done.

For all its good qualities, there were also a few points of contention I had with it. The timing of events was difficult to follow, because there weren’t many indicators of how many days or weeks passed between events. There were also some events that really strained credibility, particularly regarding the way visions operated in the story. I won’t go too much into that though, as I’d prefer order to avoid spoilers. The way the book ended, it seems that there will certainly be a sequel, so the questions of credibility may be answered in the future. If there is a sequel forthcoming , I look forward to it.

So, to wrap this up, I highly recommend this book for sci-fi and space opera fans. It’s a strong addition to the genre, and I’m really excited to see where else the story may lead.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 8: Demorn: Blade of Exile

The eighth book I am reviewing is Demorn: Blade of Destiny, the first book of the Asanti series by David Finn. This cross-dimensional dark modern fantasy adventure has the distinction of being both ridiculously fun and outrageously confusing. I read it all the way through, and to be perfectly honest I cannot recount the story’s plot trajectory at all. The only other story I’ve read that I can say that about it William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, which is outrageously confusing for other reasons.

Here’s what I can say with certainty about the story. The protagonist is a young woman named Demorn, a master swordfighter endowed with biting wit and a sarcastic fatalism born from the fact that she has traveled through both the past and the future of the universe and has consequently seen how it all ends. She’s also a lesbian, but that’s not so crucial the plot. Although, I would say it served to avoid some of the clichés we’ve too often seen about female protagonists. Throughout the story we see different facets of Demorn’s identity as she appears as a bounty hunter, a devotee to an ancient religious order, an exiled princess, a time traveler, a loyal sister, and a queen. Demorn finds these identities as hard to keep track of as the reader does, because she seems to have some condition along the lines of amnesia. She doesn’t know exactly where and when she’s been (time travel, remember?) or what exactly she’s done in the places and times she’s been. As far as I could understand, this disorientation is never fully resolved.

Demorn’s confusion about herself is conveyed in the storytelling in that the scenes did not seem to be in a specific order. Perhaps if I reread the book I’ll find patterns, but on a first reading the order of the scenes seemed nearly random. Using such confusion to convey disorientation and amnesia is a rare but useful trope I’ve only seen once before, in the Christopher Nolan thriller Memento. If you have the patience to push through a narrative without always understanding what’s going on, the effect is actually quite engaging.

One aspect of the writing that really stood out in this was the texture of the story. That’s the most accurate adjective I can use. Throughout the book are ice and bullets and lasers and electric shocks and soil and water and a thousand other sensations, and the writing is of such a quality that the reader feels every single one of them. More than anything else the texture kept me interested in the story when the plot was too much to handle. This texture, however, is a double-edged sword (or in the case of this book, a two-edged burning-with-purple-flames katana). The level of detail was so engaging, but at the same time the level of worldbuilding was near impossible to keep track of. A glossary to the book would have helped, as Demorn’s path is impacted by a bewildering variety of spells, magical objects, aliens, monsters, historical events, deities, and characters who alternatively serve as either allies or enemies.

To keep this review from running too long, I’m content to stop here with saying that I enjoyed this book quite a lot, but I wish I understood it better. Fans of fantasy, science fiction (soft sci-fi, probably not hard sci-fi), sword-and-sorcery, and fast-paced action stories will take pleasure from this book.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

 

List of free and 99 cent books

Featured here is a list of fantasy books currently on a free or 99 cent promo. I’ll certainly be snatching up some of them.

A J Chaudhury's avatarfree fantasy books

Most of the following books are free or 99 cents for only three days. So you better grab them as fast as you can!

CLICK HERE to Join my mailing list tobe notified when the next list of free and 99 cent books comes in July (plus get ‘The Drabird’ for free!)

Share these books on FACEBOOKTWITTER

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picSMASHWORDS

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picUSUK

picSMASHWORDS

picSMASHWORDS

picSMASHWORDS

CLICK HERE to Join my mailing list to be notified when the next list of free/99 cent books comes and also get “The Drabird” (worth $ 10 on amazon) for FREE!

pic

”Lameey Brox is the pilot of the Flyer, better know to the masses as the Drabird. Barely more than a kid, Lameey needs to keep the royal lot airborn…

View original post 18 more words

New Book Review 7: GrimNoir

The seventh book I’m reviewing is GrimNoir, a collection of seven short stories by Kevin Wright. Each of these stories is different, and while the genres of fantasy, epistolary,  detective, and steampunk were all present, the genre appearing in each story was horror. These are primarily horror stories.

Writing a review for this book without going into the strengths and weaknesses of each individual story is difficult, especially since there was so much diversity to this book. The characters of each story have different personalities and different values, the themes are wildly different, even the style of writing is wildly different. I do not know Kevin Wright personally, but I assume that the stories he put into this book were written at different times, perhaps at different stages of his growth as a writer. Some of the stories had a more mature feeling to them than others, but I am speculating. The nature of the horror varied from story to story. In some of them it was supernatural horror, the work of spiritual forces left deliberately mysterious. In others, the horror was in the bitter realities of human behavior, consequences of the vicious selfishness humans will resort to when struggling to survive. This was very well done.

One other unifying factor to these stories was, as the book’s title suggests, they are grim. They are unrelentingly grim. Through the first four stories, I was wishing for some comic relief, something to give contrast to all of the blood and fear and vindictiveness of the book. The fifth story, in which a poor boy in a medieval setting must go through with a duel against a noble whom he insulted while drunk, gave that comic relief. This story is quite grim in its conclusion as well, and it was the only story with comedy in it. There’s nothing wrong with the book being unrelentingly grim, but readers who are turned off by those kinds of stories will not enjoy this book. They are not the book’s target audience. The book’s target audience, I think, will love it.

The style and quality of the writing vary from story to story. In the first two, I was impressed with how tight and clean the prose was, but I was also put off a little by the frequent use of repeated two-word sentences for dramatic effect. This device was abandoned in after the second story, and following that the writing was for the most part excellent. The final story, ‘The Brazil Business’, is written as a series of letters between brothers in Massachusetts and Brazil during the 1930s, and the writing of those letters was very nearly flawless.

‘The Brazil Business’ was in my opinion the best story in the book, and it read almost like a pastiche of H.P. Lovecraft (of whom I have read ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ and a long anthology titled The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Tales). This is, for the most part, a good thing. The horror was well-executed, the descriptions were perfect, and the characters were quite believable. The only potential trouble I saw with the story was that the Lovecraftian characters and Lovecraftian setting also carried the racial ideas that permeate Lovecraft’s work. I wasn’t overly bothered by this, but I recognized that it was there, and I recognize that other readers might be bothered by it.

Overall, GrimNoir excelled as a horror anthology. I would recommend it to anybody who likes horror fiction.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

As a final note, my book of fantasy novellas, Tales of Cynings Volume I, will be available for just 99 cents on Kindle from June 12 to June 18. I am of course biased, but I recommend it to readers who like fantasy.

New Book Review 6: No Dogs in Philly

The sixth book I’m reviewing is No Dogs in Philly, the first book of the ‘Special Sin’ series by Andy Futuro. It’s written as a mix of genres, with cyberpunk, dystopian, Lovecraftian horror, and crime noir all represented in the story.  This is definitely one of the best indie books I’ve read, and I’d definitely recommend it to other readers.

The protagonist is a woman named Saru, a detective working in a future version of Philadelphia. In this world, most people have brain implants that allow them to have continuous internet access inside their brains (side-affects include getting your entire perception of reality taken over by hackers). The highest level of society is the Gaespora, alien-ish beings who are more or less benevolent but whose motives deliberately unclear. Somebody in Philadelphia is murdering girls with blue eyes, and the Gaespora put Saru on a case to protect one particular girl, Ria, a young woman who goes through her life protected by a dog-like entity who only she can see. As the story goes on, we learn of divine-ish forces controlling the all of the events, a concept fitting with the Lovecraftian horror concept of the story (the works of early 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft featured god-like otherworldly beings who are either indifferent or antagonistic to our world).

It’s a pretty wild premise. The world of the story is dark and gritty as any noir story, with the addition of monstrous otherworldly threats lurking in the landscape. All of these different genres could clash with one another in really ugly ways, but in fact I was thoroughly impressed with how well the author blended them. In the world that he’s made, everything fits in. Every hallucination, every death-cult, every drinking binge from the protagonist, not one of these elements feels out of place.

The story does jump around some between points of view, and certain aspects of the story were deliberately mysterious for so long that I never really felt that I fully grasped everything that was going on. This may be a book that benefits from being read at least twice, as there were times when I felt really lost. This was not a matter of sloppy craftsmanship though. The pieces were all there. They were just difficult to understand in the first read.

Apart from the excellent crafting of the world, the story’s writing was superb. The sentences were clean and professional. The editing was for the most part flawless. I say “for the most part” because there were a handful of word choices which I found unusual. The author had a strange fondness for the word “tits” which never really made sense to me. It was very distracting. The rest of the writing was good enough that I’m willing to overlook the overuse of that word.

As I said before, I would definitely recommend this book. There is violence and profanity and horror themes, so readers who are sensitive to those things probably wouldn’t enjoy it, but I think fans of science fiction, horror, and crime fiction would enjoy it quite a lot. I certainly did. Andy Futuro published a sequel earlier this year, Cloud Country, which I will probably buy and review later.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 5: Rise of an Orphan

The fifth book I’m reviewing is Rise of an Orphan, the first book in the ‘Sky City’ series by R.D. Hale. The book defines itself as a biopunk epic (now there’s a genre you don’t hear about every day) and has overtones of science fiction, fantasy, and dystopian fiction. It was also voted winner of the Wattpad Award in 2014, so it’s had some publicity and popularity in the past.

The book is set in a future version of a parallel reality in which religious fanatics of the San Teria cult (I don’t practice Santeria, I ain’t got no crystal ball…) have taken over a Blade Runner-esque society and implemented a strict social order in which elites live in grand aerial cities while the poor scavenge for existence in disease-ridden slums. The hero, Arturo Basilides, is a teenager from the slums who gets caught up in a revolution against the San Teria government after he meets Dynah, a ‘transhuman’ girl whose body has been turned into a kind of supernatural weapon by government experimentation.

Robots! Superheroes! Ghosts! Cavemen! Sasquatches! Mutant monsters! Dystopian religious fanatics! Drugs ‘n’ sex ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll! This book shoves together the most diverse and random of tropes and tries to make them work together in a world that has echoes of various other fictional worlds but stands alone in its originality. There are old tropes in the book, certainly. Dynah, the lab-created superhuman, is much like the cast of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series or any number of characters from the literary tradition of comic books (she has a lot in common with Dark Phoenix of the X-Men comics, I noticed). Some descriptions of the divisions between the upper and lower stratums of the book’s society were very close to similar divisions in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series, and the mutant monsters which populate the book’s landscape could have been lifted from any number of sci-fi sources. This is not to say that these tropes are bad. They were used pretty effectively here. But, they are familiar tropes and they were used in familiar ways.

The story tries to do a lot and fit a lot together. Its storyline includes attempted revolution, failed romance, prison break, car racing, plague epidemics, and other elements. It’s undeniably fun, but the lack of cohesion does get to be an annoyance after a while, especially considering how long the book is (I read the ebook, but the print length is 439 pages). The book has a central plot, but along the way that plot is constantly delayed by the numerous side-plots. Some of the delays are great, but some of them completely stop the plot for long stretches (in one part Arturo and his sort-of girlfriend Myla go on a mission to Sky City and spend all of their time, and several dozen pages, exploring local entertainment and shopping).

Despite its lack of cohesion, the characters are engaging, the plot is interesting, the dialogue is witty, the action is entertaining, and the fictional world is quite spectacular. Fans of dystopian fiction, action fiction, and soft sci-fi/fantasy will enjoy it. Of the five books I’ve so far reviewed on this blog, The Rise of an Orphan is so far the best one.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.