Neon Sands on Preorder

It's finally happening! Neon Sands is on preorder until next Friday. Been a while coming, but book 2 and 3 won't be too far behind. Hanging around on Kindle Scout seemed like forever!

Kindle: http://amzn.to/2FX3tNT
Paperback: http://amzn.to/2ubcGwq

Also in Kindle Unlimited when out!

Book Review: My Hungry Friend by Daniel Barnett

My Hungry Friend by Daniel Barnett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Hungry Friend is a tightly written story that deals with the horrors of Alzheimer's, both literal and metaphorical. Mike Roberts commits an atrocious act in the opening pages which doesn't exactly endear him to the reader (who kicks a homeless person's cup of change?!) but we soon learn the mindset behind what he was feeling that day, and why he felt the need to 'kick out'. Having previously read Daniel's Longreave, one of his strengths is creating multifaceted characters, and as the story evolves, so do the layers within Mike.

Trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, Mike struggles to look after his mother who suffers from Alzheimers. The concept of cracks opening in her mind, through which she becomes more and more lost, translate to Mike through his fears of hereditary Alzheimer's, but then those fears also become real as the homeless woman enacts her revenge on him. This reflection is well done, and even leads to some slight ambiguity towards the end with regards to Mike's lover.

If this was a straight literary book, there could have been more exploration of this; his mother wasn't used as I thought she might have been used, in fact it was all kept very real. But as a horror, it was sufficient: bring on the spiders!

Arachnophobes, beware! Spiders, spiders everywhere. Daniel's writing style ramps up the tension as the darkness begins to unveil itself, and as things not of this Earth begin to creep across Mike's skin. There are also a few moments of cringe-horror taken from reality, the kind of thing that must happen every day but we don't like to think about. And as horrific as some of these moments are, there are also some sweet moments; Mike's love for his mother and Cassie, (she leaves the room and suddenly the room returns to existence).

Longreave was a high bar, and more of an epic (having multiple POV) so My Hungry Friend feels smaller compared to that. Almost like an extended short story. But still, a very enjoyable read, and if Goodreads would allow another half-star it would get it from me.

View all my reviews

Neon Sands KindleScout & reading update

I'm not reading half as much as I wish I was! Something about writing a book that is all consuming... hmm, I wonder what that could be.

However, I am currently taking a break with Daniel Barnett's 'My Hungry Friend' (which you can find on Goodreads here). His book, Longreave, is my favourite indie book to date, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck in.










It's also the final week of Neon Sands' Kindle Scout campaign. It started really well but then began to flounder in the pool of words and titles on offer. I barely marketed it when it was 'Hot & Trending' and when it fell out of that category, it was a killer. Went from 400-500 pagereads a day to single and double figures. If you want to put your book on Kindle Scout, never let up on the marketing!

Still, you never know, it could be picking up the nominations in the background without the numbers of pagereads (that's not a stat you're allowed to see). Either way, it's good publicity, and has taught me a lesson in case I try the same approach again.

If you haven't checked Neon Sands out yet, you can do so from here. It's book one in the first trilogy of three trilogies, with mysteries to discover, strange technologies, and sand to clean from eyes and otherwise clean cracks. It gets everywhere.

Read the Ends Meat short story introduction.

BOOK review: Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides

My favourite author is such and such, this guy or that gal. We list them off like old friends, knowing we share a private stash of memories; even if someone else was present their experience of the same moments will have been different. The list becomes commonplace, and we become complacent in our recitation of it. It’s easy to remember that we may like something, but more difficult to remember why we liked that something in the first place. And when that something is a Jeffrey Eugenides book, with countless yawning years between each release, the remembered joy of the pages remain while the words that caused it may fade.

So, good to see you old friend. I have a fresh complaint – that you don’t visit more often! There wasn’t one story in this collection I didn’t enjoy. They’re all vignettes of sometimes poignant and sometimes mundane moments in life. There’s life and death and tragedy, apathy and sex and emotional dysentery. Each story is best experienced spoiler free, so what I’m going to do is just take a favourite line from each for you to enjoy.

Book Review: The Dead Silence by Jane B

The Dead Silence by Jane B.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a weird one; extra stars given here for the subject matter itself and not the story or characters or way it is told. This is a book about the various psychoses surrounding motherhood, and in particular, the negative ones; it does a great job of detailing these and opening your eyes to postpartum depression, and a whole host of other disorders, but it does so at the expense of everything else. The exploration is sometimes essay-like, and always through conversation, the problem being that you could interchange who was speaking and it wouldn't matter. There's even one moment where Anna, suffering from a disorder and in a counselling session with Dr Sam Haley, who up until now has spoken in barely legible broken sentences, suddenly opens up and has a deep, philosophical revelation, all to get a point across it seems.

The information in the book is important, but as a novel, could have been handled better. We follow Sam Haley around as he talks to mothers, holds counselling sessions and explores what he wants to do with his life. But he, like many of the characters, are often vessels for the message being told. He's a good man, but he's one-dimensional. The most interesting moments, and the most depressing, are when we are seeing through the eyes of Anna, or her mother, Maria, in a plot that explores more directly this interaction. There's also a plot involving Sam's secretary, but I'm not entirely sure what this adds to the story. Perhaps a sense of foreboding, which if true is actually displayed with a good sense of understatement, sometimes missing in indie work I have read recently.

One question that always arises with indie work is the writing and editing: here, while it does need another edit to clear up some grammar issues which are just errors, an edit couldn't really help the writing style which is perfectly readable, but does sometimes read as though English was a second language for the writer. This works well for the Anna sequences, but not so well for the doctor sequences. One more slight quibble is that if there is more than one character in a scene, the POV will move freely between them, which is slightly jarring.

Overall, worth reading for the message it has to tell.

View all my reviews

Horror Book Review: My Dead World by Jacqueline Druga

My Dead World by Jacqueline Druga
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just finished and jumping straight into the review with my thoughts still fresh - just like the many wounds that are gashed or slashed or mutilated in My Dead World.

It gets an extra star for the gore and its brazen attitude towards a world taken over by a zombie virus (the Z-word that must not be mentioned. It's interesting to me who choose to call the walking dead 'zombies', and who make up other words for them. Guilty of it myself. In the real world, for sake of ease of description when chatting to other people you'd end up just calling them zombies, right?)

While I did enjoy the read for the horror and gore, it also had me shaking my head in disbelief over some choices the characters made, and it became apparent that there were outside forces at play who didn't want everyone to live til the end of the book, despite having prepared so well and having so much info about the virus beforehand. Ergo complacency.

Nila and her family are forewarned by her CDC brother to start preparing an apocalypse shelter, using the cabin they own in the mountains. This thing is stocked, fenced, and everything. Yet shit still continued to hit the fan. Complacent little things that the characters, or, more prominently Nila, kept doing to endanger them kept pulling me out of the story whenever it was hotting up.

I guess it highlights the reality of the layman, that whenever I wanted Nila to turn it around and step up, she couldn't, letting emotion lead the way, leaving space for mistakes. Maybe that's what the majority of people would be like, but you'd like to think they'd catch on quicker. (Just a little too much indecision and second-guessing going on perhaps.)

And then all the death made for a bit of a sombre read in the end.

Fast-paced, lots of action, could do with another round of editing as a few errors, but a pretty accurate portrayal of a world falling apart from a ravaging virus.

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Indie Book Review: The Mask of Sanity by Jacob M Appel

The Mask of Sanity by Jacob M. Appel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jeremy Balint:; hospital division chief, husband, father, would-be serial killer.

After one of those freakish sort of life coincidences that sends you tumbling down an alternate path, Jeremy sets his heart on the perfect murder. Only, to murder one person, he should really murder some others too so it looks random.

This is the kind of cold calculation you can expect from Jeremy's narrative, told from his POV. The story is solid, though (view spoiler)[perhaps lacks a bit of tension, as I rarely felt any doubt that Jeremy would complete his mission. (hide spoiler)] It was an entertaining read but felt restricted by (view spoiler)[it being from Jeremy's POV. While something like American Psycho goes the literary and raucously crazy route, if you took the gore and ambiguity out of that, you'd be left with a relatively straight tale of 80s excess, murder, and incompetent police work, which is kind of the feeling I was left with here, everything a little too tightly controlled. Except there was little chance for the police to be incompetent, because the murders were clean, albeit lucky sometimes (especially with respect to Jeremy's car not being registered at the various scenes). The murders were also matter-of-fact - anti-climactic almost. Again though, this is Jeremy's POV so the general tone is consistent with his character and can't be faulted. My one fault perhaps, and which could have been included with consistency, is Jeremy's insistence of the importance of his daughters, though there is relatively little interaction there. Maybe this too is a ploy, a case of himself pulling the wool over his own eyes. If not, a couple of fleshed out scenes with his daughters would have given him a little more warmth.

I did also think at the beginning that his sudden fall was 'too sudden' - that if he was capable of this he would have known earlier in his adult life, even his child life. We are glimpsed a moment in his childhood which goes some way to explain this, but even then Jeremy seems almost surprised by his own capabilities. (hide spoiler)] It's certainly fascinating to try and unravel the thought processes going on.

The cold moments in the narrative are lifted every now and then by Jeremy's wit - often in the form of mickey-taking, especially when he is in discussions with the rabbi who co-opts him into running some free clinics, which is a nice change of pace, while also revealing Jeremy's sociopathy. And as I said, the writing is solid and mostly unflourished, giving us an accurate insight into the working mind of a serial killer.

View all my reviews

Rarity from the Hollow review & reading update

Straight from Goodreads:

Rarity from the Hollow 3/5

by Robert Eggleton

This was an odd read that fluctuated throughout trying to find its own identity but never settling. It gets an extra star from me because it was interestingly written, often witty and dry and punchy, riding quite heavily on dialogue, but there was a lot that didn't really work.

Lacy Dawn is a preteen in an abusive family; physical from the father and neglect from the mother. They live in a rundown home in the hollow, a mildly undefined space at the edge of town. She chants roundabend, roundabend, roundabend and floats into the woods (where the trees talk to her) to see her alien-android friend, DotCom. At first you're not sure what's real and what's made up, and though a lot of things are made concrete there's so many elements in this book it's a feeling that never quite goes away.

The Neon Series trilogy of trilogies announcement and cover!

Shout out to Blue Skin Design for my newest cover. It's fair to say I love it! Fellow writers out there, I'm sure you're way more ahead of the game than I have been, but after recently joining the Facebook group 20booksto50k, something you need to do if you have not already; and after reading about the success stories, some achieved in only a few months, my mojo is back. My mojo and enthusiasm. I've read a lot of Indie books lately which has also helped hone what's possible, and opened my eyes to the competition. But, from this, and from others' success stories, a few things are key:

• A good cover
• Good editing
• Serialisation

And...

• Bookbub

Previously, I was relatively sure you needed a lot of luck to break through with consistent sales in this ebook market, but looking at Bookbub, and reading what others have read, I see now you can buy yourself that luck. Of course, the key is getting yourself a Bookbub deal, but when my trilogy is out, that will become the over-arching goal. The returns look practically guaranteed, with knock on effects continuing into following months. The key there being a reliable writer who has regular new books. So that's why I love my new cover so much: I've had lots of positive feedback and I am so confident that if it appeared in the Bookbub advertising people would snap it up.

 

Neon Sands will be book one in the Neon Sands trilogy. Following this will be Neon Driver and its trilogy, and then an as-yet-unknown third trilogy, all set within the same universe. I am excited to write this and excited for others to read it. answers.com reliably informs me this trilogy of trilogies would be an ennealogy, but I'll have to roll Neon Ennealogy off my tongue a few more times before committing to calling it that!

Book reviews and regular updates and flash fiction may become less frequent as I unpick this story from my brain and get it into semi-readable sentences. However, if you like the look of the cover and would like to know when it's available, and grab a copy of an ARC for review, sign up here: https://strangerwritings.com/the-neon-series.

Dystopian Indie book review - Indigo By DL Young 4/5

"I grind my teeth, try not to react. He wants me to break down, to beg him to stop. He wants me to know this is only a taste of what he’ll do to me if I don’t play along."

Texas has finally seceded from the United States, and while it was prosperous for a while, it wasn’t long before it disintegrated into self-interested factions willing to do whatever it took to hold on to power, or push for more.

Within this world is Indigo, the narrator; a successful trader keeping her head low and out of trouble inside her own turf, managing a fleet of other traders and ‘greenies’ (traders-in-training). Until the crap hits the fan and she is taken prisoner by religious fundamentalists for a purpose she slowly begins to piece together.

Full review: https://culturedvultures.com/indigo-by-dl-young-review/

Updated reading list - A Life Removed is *removed* (finished) - Under the Amoral bridge next!

A Life Removed was one of those crime thrillers that got better as the characters developed - starting a little cliched but then turning about on their heels, until you weren't sure who you could trust. A the bad guy was a *good* bad guy, which is always important. You can check out the review here: https://culturedvultures.com/life-removed-jason-parent-book-review/.

The blog is now more widely shared so getting more requests than I can keep up with. I need a holiday to catch up on some reading! I've even started being a bit picky, focusing more on the authors who really need reviews (and whose books sound promising!) But I guess that's good for both readers and writers! Hopefully readers will stumble onto something they may not have considered, and writers will get that one extra sale!

Under the Amoral Bridge is currently lighting up my Kobo. So far, so excellent. Set in the future, where it appears every street corner could be 'the underground' - it's a well-written cyberpunk novel with teeth.

Currently reading

Under the Amoral Bridge by Gary Ballard

Artemis Bridge is the know-who, go-to guy, the amoral fixer in 2028 Los Angeles with the connection for any illicit desire no matter how depraved. You need it, he can get it without questions or judgment. He prides himself on staying detached from the depravity, untouched by the filth, untouchable by the law. When a young hacker is assassinated before his eyes, he is burdened with a scandalous video of the mayor on the eve of the city's most important election of the century. With digital assassins and murderous thugs dogging his every step, he has only days before the corrupt mayor is re-elected, handing the Chronosoft Corporation complete control of the city. Unable to sell the video, he is forced further into a complex conspiracy.

Reading list

Indigo by DL Young

For over twenty years, Indigo Cruz has worked the markets of the Texas wastelands, hustling wares, cutting deals, and earning a hard-won reputation as a tough, shrewd trader. In a dangerous, brutal world, she's managed to carve out a comfortable, safe existence...

...until the day the Fundamentalist Church of Divine Wrath shows up on her turf, throwing her world into chaos.
Forced by the violent cult's leader to serve as a guide for a mysterious mission, Indigo finds herself trapped between factions warring for control of the Republic. But when she crosses paths with the runaway mind-reader Soledad Paz, will their chance meeting be the key to Indigo's survival or the final nail in her coffin?




The Method by Duncan Ralston

How hard would you fight for the one you love?

Frank and Linda's marriage is falling apart. When old friends tell them about an "unconventional therapy retreat" called The Method, they jump at the chance to attend.

Dr. Kaspar's Lone Loon Lodge is a secluded resort deep in the Montana wilds. The staff is friendly. The other couple joining them is intense. But when a death occurs events quickly spiral out of control, leaving Linda and Frank unable to trust anyone but each other.

Nothing is what it seems, and only one thing is certain: Love Is Pain.

Humanity's Hope by Pembroke Sinclair

Caleb, a 17-year-old boy, survived the zombie uprising, but he didn’t come out of the ordeal unscathed. He’s been scarred—both mentally and physically. The rest of humanity is trying to rebuild, to make the world normal again. Caleb is trying to return to a normal life also, but after all he’s seen, after the loss of his family and friends, the transition is difficult. The darkness that led him down a path of self-doubt and self-harm keeps trying to creep back into his mind.
Things only become worse when he discovers he’s immune to whatever makes a zombie a zombie. Fighting zombies was predictable. He knew what to expect. Fighting humans is volatile. They are malicious and treacherous. They won’t stop to get what they want, and Caleb has to figure out exactly what that is.

Rarity from the Hollow by Robert Eggleton

Lacy Dawn's father relives the Gulf War, her mother's teeth are rotting out, and her best friend is murdered by the meanest daddy on Earth. Life in the hollow is hard. But she has one advantage -- an android was inserted into her life and is working with her to cure her parents. But, he wants something in exchange. It's up to her to save the Universe. Lacy Dawn doesn't mind saving the universe, but her family and friends come first. Rarity from the Hollow is adult literary science fiction filled with tragedy, comedy and satire.





The Mask of Sanity by Jacob M Appel


On the outside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a pillar of the community: the youngest division chief at his hospital, a model son to his elderly parents, fiercely devoted to his wife and two young daughters. On the inside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a high-functioning sociopath--a man who truly believes himself to stand above the ethical norms of society. As long as life treats him well, Balint has no cause to harm others. When life treats him poorly, he reveals the depths of his cold-blooded depravity.

My Dead World by Jacqueline Druga

Since childhood, Nila Carter is made to spend every weekend at the family cabin. In her teenage years she believes it to be a prison, as an adult it becomes her sanctuary and means to survive. When a mysterious outbreak occurs in India, Nila’s brother, Bobby, a virologist with the CDC, places the family on a precautionary alert to be ready to bug out. Unlike anything he’s ever seen, the rabies like virus is not just deadly, it causes extreme violent behavior in those infected. Following her brother’s advice, Nila begins to stockpile. After months of preparing, just as it seems the virus is over, everything implodes and Bobby informs his family to leave the city. With her family, Nila heads to the mountains and to her father’s isolated land.

The Dead Silence by Jane B

The book explores the complex psychological issues relating to the dark side of motherhood. Its subject is rarely written or discussed even in the protected privacy of a psychiatrist’s care. People prefer to keep it deep inside and don`t dare to speak it aloud.

But there are those who are not able to say a single word even if they wanted to. Those who were deprived not only of childhood, but sometimes their life itself. They are destined to the silent suffering, trying to survive in the chilling embrace of the "dead" mother.




Deadly Reign by Lynn Steigleder

In this, the third book in the Rising Tide Series, Ben, Eve and Pete continue to push through this new Earth as the world sinks deeper into corruption. They gain new allies, including an intellectual animal equipped with the gift of speech. They are forced to battle six aberrations (beasts and riders) deemed nearly indestructible. The environment has manifested into a frigid terrain with the sun lost in the ice filled cloud cover. Swords forged specially for the riders by the riders offer another layer of defense to an already superior force. The humans have deduced that water may possibly be a weapon, but a weapon that even now is freezing at an accelerated rate.

Angels of Islington Kindle Edition by Sam Davey

There are three realms, terrestrial, celestial - and infernal; all engaged in a perpetual struggle between good and evil. For over five hundred years, the bastion of England's protection has been a small and little known agency, based in the Canonbury tower, Islington.

Zach, a justice angel and one of the agency’s most skilled operatives, has just returned from a harrowing mission working with the dead and dying in strife-torn Syria. The last thing he needs is to be sent back into the field.

But two humans on a celestial witness protection programme have just been abducted and Zach, saddled against his better judgement with rookie agent and time shifter Sara, is sent into the Inferno to rescue them.

Indie Book Review: A Subtle Agency by Graeme Rodaughan

Like Underworld on speed, it’s got all the adrenaline and action-packing shots of entertainment you could want, wrapped up in a no-nonsense narrative.

The book is your summer blockbuster movie – the narrative is straight-forward, and the characters are interesting enough to keep you reading. Plot beats flow from one to the next with obvious care and attention, showing some planning beforehand, all which build from one encounter to the next. The plot building is actually one of the book’s strengths – you can see all the pieces coming together, and the action is satisfying when the blood does spill.



Full review: https://culturedvultures.com/book-review-subtle-agency-graeme-rodaughan/

Drunken Review: Longreave by Daniel Barnett

Check out the Indie Book Review Drinking Game Rules here:

https://adamjsmithauthor.blogspot.co.uk/p/drunken-reviews.html

Indie Book Review: Longreave by Daniel Barnett : 9/10

Longreave is about as accomplished and well-rounded a story you could hope for. Set in the fictional town of Manxfield, near Boston, (at least I couldn’t find it on Google), the story focuses on the lives of Mark and Alice Currier as their marriage breaks down, and Alice’s brother Alex. The opening pages were enough to settle any doubts that this was going to be a decent read. Daniel doesn’t tell, he shows. Take the opening line: 

"Mark Currier woke inside a child’s coffin."

The next paragraph went on to describe a room that had been “a guestroom for five years now.” Using metaphor and symbolism, we can surmise that a child, presumably theirs’, is dead, and the breakdown of their marriage has now reached a head, where Mark is being forced to sleep in the guestroom.

Read the full review: https://culturedvultures.com/book-review-longreave-by-daniel-barnett/

#TBR pile update

A quick update on my reading list. Longreave by Daniel Barnett is finished, review coming tomorrow. (Spoiler: it was excellent.) I'm currently digging into A Subtle Agency by Graeme Rodaughan, and I've added Perry Lake's Vampire Wars.

Longreave was a gem, and I hope to uncover more on my indie reading travels! Want to get your book added? Submit here.

Currently reading

A Subtle Agency (The Metaframe War #1) by Graeme Rodaughan

Hunting Anton Slayne? 

Just get in line behind the Boston Police Department, Chinese Triads, the Shadowstone Organization, the Red Empire and the Vampire Dominion. 

Witness to a brutal murder, Anton is inducted into the Order of Thoth by the mysterious Mr Wu. He soon discovers that vicious local gangsters, determined Boston Police Detectives, and relentless Shadowstone operatives pale into insignificance as he is drawn into the machinations of the enigmatic vampire, General Chloe Armitage. 

When mastery over Anton’s soul is at stake, survival is the least of his problems.

Reading list

The Hunters by Demetrius Sherman

Killers are coming. Television hunters are stripped of their weapons by militant animal activists. Defenseless and in the middle of nowhere, the television crew find themselves in a heart-pounding chase.

A new addition to the great horror tradition of Steven King and Dean Koontz.

Hallow Mass by JP Mac

Party-loving grad student Mercy O'Connor must set down the mimosas and grab a spell book if she hopes to check the diabolical warlocks of Dunwich, Massachusetts. This tale of magic realism pits the unready, unsteady Mercy against powerful supernatural forces aiming to annihilate all earthly life.

A paranormal thriller inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the story finds Mercy in a race against time, forced to confront her own skepticism, scornful colleagues, and friends who believe the horrors of Dunwich are only quaint folktales. Aided by a country & western-loving Zulu security guard, Mercy must dig deep to discover the confidence, then the skill, and finally the courage to battle her terrifying foes on Halloween night, and stop our planet from being drug into another dimension.

Vampire Wars by Perry Lake

For thousands of years, ancient vampire lords ruled the Night. Their queen, the coldly beautiful, immortal, and all-powerful Lilith, ruled them distantly, ignoring their squabbles over territory and victims. Then came Vlad the Impaler, once history's most bloodthirsty fiend, now reanimated as an undead creature of the Night. Facing the vampire legions of the brutish Vardalekos, the loathsome Viy, the diabolical Jhiang-Shi, the monstrous Mmbyu, the cunning Erlik, and the seductive Nycea, Vlad Dracula seeks out allies, be they undead or lycanthropic or mortal.

You've read Bram Stoker's “Dracula”. Now see how Vlad the Impaler fought and struggled to become Dracula, the King-Vampire. A part of THE LEGEND OF DRACULA trilogy, this book is a collection of twenty short stories about the infamous Count and his undead legions as he strives for the ultimate goal—the throne of the supreme King of the Vampires!

Supporting fellow Indie novelists

I've recently been doing more and more articles for other sites (namely Cultured Vultures), as well as being more proactive on Goodreads and Twitter. I've also recently been able to cut down my reading list due to some car issues and becoming a bus wanker. The novelty soon wore off, but I did manage to finish 3 books.

Thus, I shall be reaching out to indie authors and self-publishers to offer to review their books. Reviews will be posted on Cultured Vultures, with shortened versions on Amazon and Goodreads, and linked through from here, posted on Twitter and Facebook.

If you'd like your book reviewed, drop me an email to aj.smith@writeme.com and let me know the details. PDF is the preferred format until I actually get a Kindle or proper eReader,

BOOK REVIEW: Vessel And Solsvart By Berit Ellingsen

Vessel and Solsvart is the upcoming Snuggly Books release written by Norwegian writer Berit Ellingsen.

Snuggly in name and nature – the book is a quaint 104 pages of narrative poetry no bigger than a pocket notebook. But beware, the content is anything but snuggly. Featuring five short stories that explore the darker side of nature, through sometimes visceral language, and often reading more like a prose poem (assisted by the narrow format of the book’s columns), we are treated to beautifully told tales that dip into sci-fi, horror, mystery and magic.

https://culturedvultures.com/book-review-vessel-solsvart-berit-ellingsen/

Book Review: Metro 2033

Echoing many voices from the other reviews, this book would probably look a lot different and have a lot fewer pages if it were to go through the hands of an industry editor. The typos from the Russian to English translation didn't bother me, but there was a fair amount of gumpf that could've been cut. At least half of the book must be dialogue, which was fine - I quite liked the stories that the many cast told - however, the same points were often repeated, with each next sentence elaborating further and further on the previous one, even though we got it after the first sentence.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane by William Peter Blatty Book Review

The first thing I do when I pick up a book like this is give it a good sniff. If it's from the 60s or 70s you can guarantee that those yellowed pages of sepia-tone nostalgia will greet you with a warm, musty scent, reserved for tightly-packed second-hand bookstores and the forgotten back-rooms of thrift shops. Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane smelled great, and had a cover that reminded me of The Exorcist version that I read years ago, with its simple black background and stark white writing.

Book Review: The Redemption by Exorcist author, W P Blatty

William Peter Blatty’s The Redemption (2010), also known as Dimitar, is essentially an exploration of faith wrapped up in a mystery story. It begins in Albania in the 1970s with the story of a mysterious stranger being held by state security. This stranger, The Prisoner, is questioned under various forms of torture while his story, unveiled by The Interrogator – who turns out to be a high-ranking official named Vlora – is slowly revealed.

I say revealed, but even by the end of the first act there remains a massive shroud of mystery, and it is this mystery that keeps the reader gripped.