New Book Review 36: Demorn: Soul Fighter

demorn 3 The next indie book review I’m doing is for David Finn’s sci-fi fantasy space opera all-around actionfest, Demorn: Soul Fighter. This is the third book of the Demorn series, and I reviewed the first and second of them last year. Those reviews can be found here and here.

As a quick refresher on the premise, Demorn, the Wandering Princess of Swords, is a witty (and sometimes nihilistic) young woman who has time-travelled, space-travelled, and dimension-travelled throughout a multiverse that’s crumbling under the weight of imminent cosmic calamity. She is an extraordinary fighter, making use of guns, fists, a supernatural flaming katana, and a variety of magical objects gifted to her by gods and other entities in her wide and varied travels. She has been a priestess, arena fighter, and presently a mercenary. She also really loves comic books, and is good friends with Frank Sinatra, who happens to be a leader in a resistance against cosmic baddies.

Each of the Demorn books has had a common difficulty. In their freneticism and dimension-jumping and panache, they are confusing as hell. They’re all packed with action which is so well-written and so detailed that it’s a beauty to read, but keeping track of the plot is always challenging. In Soul Fighter, a catastrophe called the Fracture Event has torn apart the multiverse, erasing past timelines and sending beings from one dimension into another, wreaking all kinds of havoc. Members of a cultish organization called the Triton Corporation initiated the Fracture Event for diabolical purposes involving wicked cosmic gods (fans of H.P. Lovecraft will recognize the concept). Demorn starts in a Las Vegas-like metropolis called Bay City, where she competes in Soul Fight tournaments. Each fighter carries several mystical skulls which contain a soul, enabling them to fight and die multiple times. The loser of a fight has their soul-skulls taken away by a Death Banker, shadowing persons with their own motives and allegiances. From this setting, Demorn turns from gladiator to assassin to hunt down one Death Banker who means to release a cross-dimensional plague on the city. This sets her on a path to encounter an old friend and sometimes enemy, Iverson, an operative and detective-like character with whom she embarks on a quest to find the Reset Pyramid, which will enable them to reset time and avert the Fracture Event. Along the way they encounter former friends and rivals and lovers (Demorn, I nearly forgot to mention, is a lesbian), including Demorn’s brother Smile, her former co-priestess Toxis, her former lover Winter, the powerful warriors Wolf and Wrecking Ball, and the white-collar foes within the Triton Corporation. This book also has a brief appendix to help keep track of all the characters, factions, and magical items in the series.

I can’t stress enough that despite how confusing these books are, I love them. Each of them has been an incredibly fun read, and I’d highly recommend them for fans of sci-fi and fantasy. Reflecting on the way the stories work, I see a lot of influence from comic books especially. With the variety of worlds and scenarios and the vivid descriptions, I’ve wondered if the books might be enriched if they were in fact graphic novels instead of prose novels. If the author ever does make a graphic novel of the series, I would be excited to read it, and I certainly look forward to the release of the fourth book in the series, titled Demorn: Ultimate Fate.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. 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 35: Across the Realm: Life Always Finds A Way

Across the realm 1 Again, I’ve gotten off track with these reviews, but again I’m trying to keep at it. This time, I’m reviewing Isobel Mitton’s novel Across the Realm: Life Always Finds A Way. This is the first of the space opera series ‘Across the Realm’, which includes a sequel titled Across the Realm: When Two Tribes Go to War.

When I was asked to read and review this book, I must admit to the cardinal sin of judging a book by its cover. The cover of the first edition looks unfortunately amateurish, and on the basis of that I assumed that I’d read the first twenty percent of this book and conclude that it wasn’t worth my time, as I’ve done for several other indie books. But, this book surprised me. The prose had some rocky points but overall was pretty good, there were relatively few editing errors, and the premise, while certainly out-there, caught and kept my interest. It’s also noteworthy that more recent edition have a new and more professional cover, which I am including in this post.

The book is set in the year 2699. A cultural and physical divide has split the Earth into a northern “realm” and a southern “realm”, which have been at war for centuries. In the north humans live under strict racial segregation. Apart from space travel, they haven’t had a great many scientific breakthroughs since the 21^st century, and their understanding of science, specifically biology, is distorted by their racial ideals. In the south, humans have radically altered into cybernetically enhanced telepathic superhumans who breathe argon and whose bodies are in some way composed of mystic energy. They are racially integrated and mixed, they live for centuries because disease has been eradicated, they have eliminated reproduction by growing embryos in tanks, and they worship their ancestors and Mother Earth, the source of their energy. Water is absolutely poisonous to them. A force field separates the north from the south and both sides seek to break through the force field and conquer the other side of it.

((((((((((((((((SPOILERS HERE IN THIS PARAGRAPH))))))))))))))))A convoluted Romeo-and-Juliet sort of situation develops between Greg, a man and high-ranking soldier from the north, and Naledi, a woman and elite warrior of the south when the two crash onto a planet together after a space battle. Prior to this Naledi received a vision in which she was instructed by her ancestors to restore the humanity of the South, which had deviated too far from natural humanity. Along with Greg and Naledi’s storyline, there are numerous other characters, fighters and spies and priestesses and scientists and so forth, all influencing the direction of the war. The book ends on a cliffhanger, with an enormous battle between the two sides about to begin.

As I said earlier, the premise is out there. Obviously the world and setting are not realistic. The science presented in the work is all nonsense, which we generally accept and overlook in space operas (midichlorians, anyone?). That being said, the story was so committed to its world and so detailed and specific in what it’s like and how it came to be that way that I couldn’t help but be impressed. Some of the character motivations were murky and strained credibility at times, but the main story arcs where engaging and intriguing, and I’m pleased to say that I quite enjoyed the book.

Fans of sci-fi and space opera and readers looking for something original and unique are likely to also enjoy this book.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. 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 29: SciFan Magazine January 2017

scifan The next book review I’m doing is a little different than the previous ones. I’m reviewing the January 2017 edition of SciFan Magazine, a monthly digital magazine designed to showcase current and upcoming independent authors. The editor is Richard M. Mulder, whose work I hope to review at a later date. There were thirteen stories/excerpts in the magazine, and I will address each of them here.

The first, ‘Octov’s Rise to Ainoren’ by Dawn Chapman, is an excerpt from the novel The Secret King: Lethao, which I reviewed on this blog here. Chapman’s work is excellently written, with strong detail and description and otherworldly characters who are familiar enough for the reader to empathize, yet whose otherworldly attributes and powers create a sense of wonder while reading. This particular excerpt is full of action and intrigue, and I liked it.

The second, ‘Séance on Death Row’ by Douglas Kolacki, is a short horror story in which a group of people, including a murderer, hold a séance to speak with the murderer’s victim. It was an older style of horror, relying heavily on implication and imagination, with dread permeating the story and with the horror stemming from forces beyond the grave which may be seen but not fully understood. It reminded me of Edgar Alan Poe’s work. I liked it.

The third, ‘The Tot of Wonder’ by John Taloni, is a much more lighthearted and goofy tale of a superhero father who lives with his non-super wife and his super-powered toddler son. There’s not a whole lot to it, but I think it’s geared more toward a young audience. It felt a little out of place in this magazine, but as a work for children I suppose it’s fine.

The fourth, ‘Miss Soames’ by Kyle Hemmings, was an odd one. I can’t say much about it without completely spoiling the story, but I didn’t like it very much. The prose was okay, but the plot was kind of nonsensical, a sort of bait-and-switch horror story that was so busy trying to surprise the reader that it forgot to be scary.

The fifth, ‘Orlok’s Song’ by David Castlewitz, was my favorite in the magazine. In this short story, there is a sentient species called the Peet (animal-like beings) who have been driven from their forest homes by human enterprise. Orlok is the father of a family that tries to survive in the new concrete forest of city slums. The writing in it was beautiful, and the story was brief but excellent in its narrative and conclusion. I’d definitely recommend this one.

The sixth, ‘Voices Beneath the Ice’ by Matthew McKiernan, is a sci-fi story with horror elements involving a trio of astronauts who land on Europa (a moon of Jupiter) and begin to find strange reasons to hate each other. I liked the concept a lot, but some of the prose needed work. I think this story has a lot of potential, and could be really great if some more time was given to it.

The seventh in the magazine is an excerpt from the book Secret of the Old Ones by Blaise Corvin. Its genre is given as LitRPG Sci-Fan™, in which the real world and the world of gaming are both important to the narrative. The only issue I have with the excerpt is that the character never seemed to really be in danger, but since it’s just an excerpt of a larger work, I’m sure there will be more conflict and excitement later in the story. I really liked this excerpt, and I’ll probably read the book at some point.

The eight is also an excerpt, titled ‘The Stirring’ by Jaren Fleming. It was something like Christian creationist science fiction, about a planet that serves God (here called The Father) at war with gooey alien beings that serve Satan. The whole excerpt was nothing but combat, and the writing was good, but I hope there is character development and more fleshing-out of the story in the larger work. I wasn’t a huge fan of the premise, but I can imagine other people liking it quite a lot.

The ninth was ‘Stormguard: The Invisible War’ by Tom Fallwell. It was another case of Christian-themed action sci-fi. I can’t say much about it without spoiling the whole story, but it starts with a man waking up in a crater with no memory of who he is or where he came from. The writing was okay, but I thought the premise was kind of a cliché. This was an excerpt of a larger work as well, but I probably won’t seek out the larger work.

The tenth, ‘Spacejacking’ by Russell Hemmell, seems like it may be an excerpt from a larger work, but it was unclear to me. It’s a futuristic tale of an alien abduction during space exploration, and the subsequent consequences. Again, I can’t say a lot without giving away the entire story, but I liked this one. It had some interesting and unusual ideas in it, and if it is part of a larger work I’d like to see where the story goes.

The eleventh story, ‘The Brat and the Other Country’ by David Perlmutter, was a real oddball. The premise was similar to the film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’, if that film was a story about superheroes rather than a detective story. In the story, the cartoon characters of Earth actually live on another planet, and the main character is a superhero human who works alongside superhero cartoon characters. I can imagine other people really loving the premise, but it was just a bit too much of a stretch for me.

The twelfth story, ‘In the Hot Mists’ by John A. Frochio, is a steampunk tale about an airship race in which one airship has an unfair advantage because it’s crewed by extraterrestrials. Strange as this premise is, I liked it. The writing was good, it put a new spin on a familiar story, and I think lots of other people would enjoy the story too.

The last story (good job for sticking with me this long!) is ‘The Keystone Islands: Portals of the Grave’ by Lander Allen. It’s the first three chapters of a larger work, a soft sci-fi work set in a universe where Earth is a cultural center resented by the other planets. The tetrapath infection turning its victims into horrific monsters, and the protagonists have come from who-knows-where and are trying to figure out their past in the midst of this plague. It’s well-written and very intriguing, and I’d like to see where the story goes.

So, those are the thirteen stories from the January 2017 edition. I expect to review later editions of the magazine in this blog as well, as it seems like a great way to see at a glance what’s going on in the indie fantasy and sci-fi community.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. 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 27: Atomic Underworld: Part Two

atomic-underworld-2-cover The twenty-seventh book I’m reviewing here is Atomic Underworld: Volume Two, by Jack Conner. This book is the sequel to one I reviewed a few months ago, Atomic Underworld: Part One. That review may be read here. Within the same world this author also has the Atomic Sea series and the books Nightmare City and City of Shadows.

A quick recap of the setting: the story takes place in and around the subterranean city of Muscud, which sits over the highly toxic Atomic Sea. In this alternate world technology has developed in a steampunk-like direction, and humans share the city with various pre-human alien species and with humans afflicted by the mutating effects of the sea. Rival gangs hold the most power in the city, but power also belongs to the cultists who worship various otherworldly gods. In the last book, our hero Tavlin “Two-Bit” Metzler, a gambler and thief and all-around rogue, was captured by cultists and brought to the temple of their god, Magoth. This second part to the story begins with Tavlin’s captivity and brainwashing in their temple. Other characters working with and against Tavlin include his ex-wife Sofia, friend and brutal mob boss Vassas, rival mob boss and cultist Havictus, the cult leader known only as the Lady, and a ghostly woman of ambiguous allegiance named Millicent.

As noted in the review of the previous book, the strongest feature of these books (probably of all Conner’s work) is the detail. The stinking, toxic, moist underworld that he paints feels stinky and toxic and moist. The description is vivid and graphic, and I really appreciated that. The characters are in some ways a little cookie-cutter (Boss Vassas is every cigar-chomping mob boss ever, Tavlin is right out of the Han Solo/Jack Sparrow/Malcolm Reynolds school for likable outlaws, all of the gangsters are noir characters with superficial mutations), but they’re fun anyway. Now, as I said, I read the previous book a few months ago, so I generally remembered who the characters are, good guys and bad guys and whatnot, but I couldn’t really remember which slimy jiggly pre-human alien race was which, and the sequel didn’t really take any time to recap those details. The story goes straight forward where the last book ended, with no recaps at all. For this reason, I wonder why the two books are in separate volumes at all. I’m aware that the author also released an Omnibus Edition with both books included, but why not just have them together as one novel? I can guess, but I prefer not to be cynical and to instead hope that the reason was creative.

For anyone who wishes to read these stories, the genre needs to be well understood. These are pulpy action stories. They take some inspiration from the horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft, but they are not horror. The purpose of these stories is to entertain, and in that capacity they deliver. A small advisory warning: the book contains a lot of graphic violence, some references to rape, and one descriptive sex scene. Some more sensitive readers might be put off by these features, though I personally was not. I found both of these books fully entertaining, and I expect if I read other work by this author I will encounter the same. The conclusion especially, the climactic fight scene that resolved the story, was especially satisfying. Fans of action and crime stories, dark fantasy, and horror/pulp fiction are the recommended audience for these books. As a fan of science fiction and fantasy, I loved them.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. 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.

This post was originally featured on cwbookclub.com.

New Book Review 23: Cthulhu Armageddon

cth The twenty-third book I’m reviewing on this blog is Cthulhu Armageddon by C.T. Phipps. It’s billed as a post-apocalyptic western, but I’d say calling it a western is a stretch. It’s a fantasy action thriller set in a desert wasteland, conceptually closer to a story like Mad Max than a story like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

To really have context for this novel, you need at least a cursory knowledge of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, whose popular stories include The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and my personal favorite The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Lovecraft stories and mythos contain the idea that in the sea, underground, and in the far reaches of space are monstrous alien gods who will someday return to power and destroy humanity. Cthulhu Armageddon is a post-apocalyptic action novel based around the idea that in the future, Lovecraft’s gods and monsters (his specific gods and monsters, here with the same names and aspects that they have in Lovecraft’s works) have risen and wreaked havoc upon the earth. Their ravages have turned the world into a hellish place, where the surviving “civilized” humans fight for survival alongside rabid cultists, mutant monsters, and the terrible gods themselves.

Our protagonist, John Henry Booth, is one of the surviving humans in a group called the Remnant. He is a trained and tenacious soldier who struggles through shaky alliances and bitter enmities with monsters and humans in his quest for revenge against the mad wizard Doctor Alan Ward, a former scientist who believes the only way to survive with the gods is to become as monstrous as them. By his side throughout the story is his mutant friend Richard, cultist and former lover Katryn, his teammate Jessica, a professional torturer named Mercury, and a wide-eyed little girl named Jackie who’s seen entirely too much brutality for her age.

This isn’t the first brutish post-apocalyptic novel I’ve reviewed on this blog, but within that genre I think this is the best one. The premise may sound schlocky, a little too close to fan-fic perhaps (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it does have a poor reputation), but the quality of the writing here is impressive. For the most part it’s smooth, well-paced, and strikingly professional. Especially excellent were the book’s action scenes, of which there were many. These were simply incredible. Some of the characters were a little clichéd, a little stereotyped post-apocalyptic warrior, but the central characters had a lot of depth and wisdom to them, much more than you would expect in an action adventure like this.

There are a few places in the book where a sentence was confusingly structured or where the wrong word was used (‘grizzly’ when the author meant ‘grisly’, for example), but these were rare and the book’s strength far outweigh this small weakness. It is also worth noting that while this book takes ideas and personages from Lovecraft, it is not meant to be modeled on Lovecraft’s work. In Lovecraft, the atmosphere is full of dread and existential horror, carried forward and permeating the narrative through the terror, disgust, or madness of the characters. The characters in Cthulhu Armageddon do have terror and disgust and madness, but they also have humor and love and jealousy and anger. They crack wise while they crack skulls, and frequently they spit in the face of death as opposed to cowering like a Lovecraft character would. This isn’t a horror novel. It’s an action adventure fantasy novel, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one.

For potential readers, it is worth noting that the book has profanity and sex and (if this post hasn’t already made it clear) lots and lots of pulpy violence, so it’s not recommended to sensitive readers. I got a lot of fun out of it, and can definitely recommend it to fans of action, sci-fi, and especially the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

Now as always, my bit of promo. 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–New Book Review 12–New Book Review 13–New Book Review 14–New Book Review 15–New Book Review 16–New Book Review 17—New Book Review 18–New Book Review 19–New Book Review 20–New Book Review 21 -New Book Review 22

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.

This post was originally featured on cwbookclub.com.

New Book Review 18: Cloud Country

cloud-country The eighteenth book I’ll review here is Cloud Country, the second part of the Special Sin series by Andy Futuro. I reviewed the first book, No Dogs in Philly, in a previous blog post that you can read here. The series is a mix of cyberpunk, noir, dark fantasy, and Lovecraftian horror and follows a detective named Saru, a woman who fights crime in a gritty alternative version of Philadelphia. Her world includes brain-implanted internet streams, feuding cults, stray zombie-like creatures called elzi, and most importantly the conflicts between rival alien gods who see humans in a way much like humans see microbial cells. The story starts with her in the center of the devastation wrought by the events of the previous book and takes her through a new series of dangers, exploits, and revelations.

The first book was really fast-paced, and in comparison this second one is pretty slow. It centers on Saru and a Gaesporan (a member of the hive-mind-ish social elite) named John, and a lot of pagetime is spent explaining mysteries that came up in the first book and explaining the rules of this world. In the first book the supernatural implications of the events were initially unknown and Saru uncovered them little by little. Here we receive long detailed explanations of how things are and why they are the way they are. It was a bit heavy on exposition because of this. John knows the answers to all of Saru’s questions, and he explains these answers in long stretches of dialogue. The moments of action were fewer and more spaced out than in the first, but this didn’t bother me. I expect that at least one more book in the series is forthcoming, and it will benefit from having the world laid out more clearly.

One of this work’s main strengths is Saru’s narrative voice. She’s an extreme character, but she is consistent in her extremeness and her voice and attitude fits her personality. Here we see her less as a fighter and detective and more as a lost and fugitive young woman, a facet of her personality which existed in the first book but took a backseat to her hard-boiled-detective shtick. We get to know her better here, we see more of her weaknesses and insecurities. This comes in a large part from her being removed from her comfort zone, that is to say the crime-ridden alt-reality Philadelphia. In this book she spends more time in differing places and trapped inside her own memories, which uproots her and sets her in a more abstract kind of world. Due to this, the crime aspect and the cyberpunk aspect of the first book are largely discarded.

At this time there isn’t a third book in the series, and I haven’t seen any announcements for one yet. Nonetheless, I expect that there will be a third, and I look forward to it. As I said before, I enjoy this series and I’d recommend it to others. Of course, it features mature themes and isn’t for children or especially sensitive readers. It’s horror, after all. If you pick up a book of horror fiction you know what you’re getting into.

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 17: Demorn: City of Innocents

The seventeenth book I’m reviewing here is Demorn: City of Innocents, the second book of David Finn’s Asanti series. Back in June I read the first one, Demorn: Blade of Exile, and I reviewed it on the blog here. The first impressed me enough to continue to the second, and when the third in the series comes out later this year I intend to buy, read, and review it as well. The label I gave the first book seems true of the whole series, a cross-dimensional dark modern fantasy adventure. The first book was both manically entertaining and manically confusing, and this second book toned down the manic quality of the first to create a work that was a little slower-paced but much easier to follow.

To review, Demorn is a powerful fighter who’s been engaged in wild adventures across time and multiple versions of reality for several years. Her paths have crossed with various gods, monsters, aliens, cultists, historical figures (she was all buddy-buddy with Frank Sinatra for as long as that lasted), magical objects, and so forth. She’s seen the end of the universe and witnessed the destruction of her own homeworld, which makes her a bit of a nihilist. As a priestess of the Asanti religious order she is privy to a wide variety of spells and arcane information, and as the royal-blooded Princess of Swords she’s nearly impervious to physical harm. She’s also a huge fan of 1960s music, superhero comic books, and romantic trysts with other dimension-hopping women. Demorn spent a good chunk of the last book trapped in a dimension she calls The Graveyard, and in this book she is trying to put the pieces of her life together after escaping from The Graveyard. There are a wide variety of characters (though not nearly as many as in the first book), but most of the story centers on Demorn and a godlike man she calls the Tyrant, who is alternately her close confidant and her bitter enemy as she works to avert a semi-inevitable cross-dimensional cosmic apocalypse.

The vivid storytelling and highly texture detail of the first book, its strongest points, carried over into the second. Every punch and burn and shock is felt by the character and the reader. With the story slowed down and given a tighter focus, this book was much easier to understand than the first. The complexity of the universe Demorn inhabits was still a little over my head, but it felt less overwhelming than before. The important parts weren’t so hard to follow this time around. It also helped that Demorn didn’t spend nearly as much time jumping around between worlds in this book, so I had more time to get accustomed to her locations.

For its followability, I would say that I liked this one better than the first book and I have very little bad to say about it. There were a handful of typos in the last fifteen percent of the book, which was a little unusual considering that I didn’t spot any at all in the rest of the book, but that’s not so bad. As I said before, fans of fantasy, science fiction, sword-and-sorcery, and fast-paced action stories will most likely take pleasure from this book.

And now once again, 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–New Book Review 12–New Book Review 13–New Book Review 14–New Book Review 15–New Book Review 16

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 16: Atomic Underworld: Part One

The sixteenth book I’m reviewing is Atomic Underworld: Part One by Jack Conner, the first of the ‘Atomic Underworld’ duology, which itself is a prequel to Jack Conner’s ‘Atomic Sea’ series. The book is billed as Lovecraftian steampunk fantasy, which is to say that it takes inspiration from the otherworldly horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft and the speculative alternative history of steampunk sci-fi. In its execution I would also add ‘noir’ or ‘mystery’ to the genre. It’s a good mix, and the various pieces work well together.

The story’s protagonist is Tavlin ‘Two-Bit’ Metzler, a professional gambler and general rouge living in the subterranean city of Muscud, on the banks of the Atomic Sea. This city is one of several underground cities primarily inhabited by mutated humans, but also inhabited by ordinary uninfected humans, mutated animals, and members of various sentient pre-human species (some rather slug-like, some blob-like, and some arthropod-like). These cities are in the sewers of the larger metropolises above ground, and their primary authorities are multiple religious cults and various rival gangs. When Tavlin’s old friend and full-time mob boss Vassas has several members of his gang die under strange circumstances, Tavlin is asked to investigate. His investigations put him in the middle of a dangerous adventure centering on a strange weapon which the cults and sentient pre-humans are all desperate to get their hands (or tentacles) on.

The best thing about this book was its incredible level of description and texture. Muscud and the cities near it are disgusting places. They’re slimy, they stink, everything is damp and crawling and infected, and the descriptions are written with skin-crawling vividness. All of the mutant creatures, all of the alien-like underworld denizens, were described excellently. The quality of the writing was also very good, with few errors. I did feel like the characters drew heavily from crime-drama clichés, but that’s not so terrible. These kinds of characters are used because they’re effective. Maybe we’ve all seen movies with some fedora-wearing cigar-chomping pistol-waving mob boss shouting profanities before, but that doesn’t diminish the character’s entertainment value.

The book was heavy on action, with chases and gunfights familiar to anyone who’s read or watched any kind of mystery or crime dramas. The difference of course is that these fights are here taking place in a slimy underground city, which allows for some different approaches. The fights were well-written as well, however due to the way the story uses them, I would dispute the book’s Lovecraftian label. In a Lovecraft story, there is always a sort of creeping dread pervading the narrative. The characters in a Lovecraft story are victims of hellish otherworldly forces gradually driving them into unspeakable terror and insanity through the influence of eldritch alien gods. In Atomic Underworld, there are (or at least seem to be) eldritch alien gods , and there is dread, but the dread doesn’t pervade the narrative. The book doesn’t feel like a horror story. With a cocky rogue for a protagonist and with mobsters out of a 1940s noir film chasing each other through an urban jungle, the book feels more like action/adventure than it does horror. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is worth noting. It’s also worth noting that this book ends on a complete cliffhanger, which may annoy some readers.

On the whole, I enjoyed it. The detail was impressive and the story was engaging, and the odds are good that I’ll buy and read the second part of it.

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 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.