21 pages Medical advice This is an unusual little book with a fairly simple but important message about illness. It’s much more appropriate in certain ways to readers in America, but has lessons for the world. Here, in UK, we have a free National Health Service, once the envy of the world but currently in …
Continue reading Defy Death Now (Live to Die Another Day), by Dr Joseph S Maresca : #BookReview.
432 pages Science Fiction and Fantasy/Time Travel I read the sample offered by Amazon, as I often do before deciding whether to read a book. In this case, it seemed promising, so I went ahead, having been offered a review copy by the author. Unfortunately, although the premise sounds fascinating and the first couple of …
Continue reading Traveller Inceptio, by Rob Shackleford: #BookReview.
270 Pages Horror/Science Fiction It takes imagination and sound scientific knowledge to invent an entirely new form of monstrous antagonist in a science fiction novel, and Eric Malikyte has both in quantity. This is a book that manages to engage the reader despite the self-imposed social isolation of the main protagonist and narrator. Other characters …
Continue reading Echoes of Olympus Mons, by Eric Malikyte: #BookReview.
220 pages Dystopian Science fiction This is action-packed dystopian scifi populated with great characters. The story moves quickly and most of it is character driven. There’s plenty of tension throughout, and many challenging situations for the protagonists to face. One or two sequences I thought bordered on the incredible, but, as a whole, the book …
Continue reading Kill Code, by Clive Fleury: #BookReview.
400 pages Literary Classics When a book is as well-known as this classic, it’s difficult to know whether anything new can be said about it. But a review is a personal opinion and may help other readers yet to try the work, so here goes. The edition I bought (as part of a package bought …
Continue reading As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner: #BookReview.
Why do people buy books bearing celebrity names? It’s the name that sells, not the book. So, are readers of such books being misled? We, as writers, all know ghost-writing is common; we know very many books sold under the names of the famous or infamous are written by skilled craftspeople paid a relatively small …
Continue reading #Ghost #Writing, Really?
Earlier today I received an email from a visitor to this site, explaining he couldn’t review my Generation Mars series of books because he found the first one, Blood Red Dust, too distressing. His comments prompted a response from me to explain why I’d written the books in the way I did. It occurred to …
Continue reading Why Did I Write Generation Mars This Way?
274 pages Fantasy? This book is promoted as a collection of stories in the fantasy mode. That collection is preceded by a wordy, lengthy, introduction dealing with the nature of fantasy in literature. That’s a tortuous read in itself and, after the first few dry pages, I skipped the rest, since I’d bought the book …
Continue reading 13 After Midnight, by Jaime Martinez Tolentino: #BookReview.
Science Fiction 6,000 words This free short story is a taster for what is currently a four-book series. In that role, it works well, drawing the reader into a world that begs to be explored further. The writing style is tight, with little or no waste of words. The central theme, which appears to be …
Continue reading Independence: Two Democracies: Revolution, by Alasdair Shaw: #BookReview.
I'm taking part in the Smashwords Read an Ebook Week by discounting all my books on the site to make them free! The deal lasts from 3rd to 9th March, so you'll need to visit and download quickly to take advantage. Much better to get them here, legitimately, rather than from some seedy pirate site, …
Continue reading #Free #Ebooks from 3rd to 9th March
Fiction/Transgressional Fiction 97,610 words It appears I downloaded this book, through Smashwords, in 2014 and then completely forgot about it. I discovered it whilst tidying files in my ‘Digital Editions’ folder a few weeks ago. As this is a book about female eroticism, I’ve no idea how I came to it, except that the title …
Continue reading Halfway to the Stars, by Marcy Sheiner: #BookReview.
368 pages Genre Fiction/Holidays Intending to visit Italy, I bought a copy of Lonely Planet’s ‘Italy’. Along with other recommendations resulting from that purchase, Sue Moorcroft’s ‘One Summer in Italy’ came up. I thought it might be fun to read this as I lay sunbathing by the pool at the latter end of our visit. …
Continue reading One Summer in Italy, by Sue Moorcroft: #BookReview.
106 pages Poetry This is a mix of the intensely personal, regarding love and its outcomes; the general as it relates to writers a group; and life in many of its guises. Poetry, and the reader’s response to it, is always personal. So, my review here can reflect only my experience of reading the collection …
Continue reading Cocktails with a Dead Man, by Joe Albanese: #BookReview.
242 Pages Thriller/Mystery I picked up a copy of this book, as I’d enjoyed Lauren B. Grossman’s first in the series, The Golden Peacock. That dealt with a mystery surrounding the holocaust. This book deals with a kidnapping by the Italian Red Brigade. Although this is essentially a thriller, great attention has been given to …
Continue reading The Verona Exchange, by Lauren B. Grossman and Bernard Jaroslow: #BookReview.
304 pages Children’s/Science Fiction and Fantasy It may seem like an odd time of life to be reading children’s literature. In my defence, I bought this book ‘blind’ as one of a number I ordered after being gifted a book token for my 70th birthday. I’d heard of Ursula Le Guin, had her books recommended, …
Continue reading A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin: #BookReview.
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Antidote to the Novel
Stuart Aken 