Tag: Dark 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 1: Sand and Scrap

I’ve decided to do a series of posts offering my review of recently-published books, with a focus on indie authors. This post is the first of the series. I’m reviewing Sand and Scrap,  the first novel of the dark fantasy series ‘Dregs of the Culver Waste’ by Chris R. Sendrowski. At the time of this post the  book is only available as an e-book.

This author, I think, likes Dune. If the sandworm wasn’t a dead giveaway, the use of the word ‘melange’ in a phrase spoken by a wizard certainly was. Nothing wrong with that; Dune is currently my favorite science fiction novel. In many ways the world in the novel resembles Frank Herbert’s desert world Arrakis, but more prominently it resembles the post-industrial hellscape of George Miller’s ‘Mad Max’ films. Slaves toil in impossible conditions, there is radiation and mutation and the abandoned scraps of a now-dead civilization, but the story finds place for more traditional fantasy aspects as well. There are wizards of sorts, spells and curses, and mystic monsters roaming or hiding in the landscape. The post-industrial aspect gives allows stand-ins for fantasy races as well. A Tolkienesque world would have its men and elves and dwarves and goblins, but this world has humans in stages of mutation depending on their place of origin. It’s a smart way to present an alternative to more typical fantastical races.

The world is hideous and brutal, and very well designed. As far as fantasy goes, I hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. The story within the world is quite good as well. Most of the major characters are memorable, and the situation they are drawn into has suspense and dangers and obstacles to overcome which make for a very interesting adventure.

One trouble with Sand and Scrap, unfortunately, was that it felt terribly unpolished. There were mistakes in the writing, lots of them. The prelude the worst for it. The mistakes get to be less frequent as the reader gets closer to the end of the book (and in the final thirty pages there are almost none), but even so, I cringed every time a word was misused or a punctuation mark misplaced or a paragraph improperly indented. There is a difference between a hyphen and a dash, and there is a difference between “it’s” and “its”, but errors in the use of these are all over the book. These problems could have been resolved by editing, either by the author having an independent editor or by the author putting in the painstaking hours to take care of all the edits himself. It’s a long and frustrating process, but this book needs it badly. I hope I haven’t upset Mr. Sendrowski by saying so, but this is what the book needs. The further books of the ‘Dregs of the Culver Waste’ series need to be more polished. They need to feel complete, as opposed to two drafts short of complete.

The story also contains what could certainly be read as a lot of homophobia. I was uncomfortable with in the same way that I am uncomfortable finding casual racism in books from, say, the Victorian Era. However, I don’t know exactly how the series is going to develop. Homophobia can be an aspect of the hellish wasteland without the series necessarily being homophobic, just as rape and misogyny an aspect of Westeros in George R.R. Martin’s  ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ while the series itself is not misogynistic as a whole. I’d prefer to withhold judgment regarding the prevalence of homophobia in the Culver Waste, but as it stands with just this one book, I have the impression that the book might just be irredeemably anti-gay.

Another problem is the way the point of view works. The reader is jolted back and forth between several different points of view (which is not a problem), in many cases put into the point of view of a new and unknown character who the reader has no reason to be invested in (which is a problem). This happens throughout the book, and the way it’s done is very disorienting.

To summarize, I really enjoyed the setting and I thought the story was fairly good, but the high number of writing errors in the text and the way point of view operates were real problems.

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.