106 pages Short Stories At first, this anthology of short stories seems an unconnected collection. As the reading progresses, another story emerges, built with the blocks of the individual tales. It is almost, though not quite, a novel. The encompassing story is that of Paul, the Dark Poet, and tells how he came to be …
Continue reading The Dark Poet, by Kathryn Gossow: #BookReview.
777 pages Children’s Steampunk/Fantasy and Magic for Children As this is a children’s book, I read it to find out how the author dealt with such a readership, having read other works of his written for adults. This is definitely written for a younger readership. There are elements some adults will find difficult to follow; …
Continue reading The Fifth Ascendant, by Joshua Grant: #BookReview.
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.
344 pages Science Fiction/Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic This book was hard to put down, despite pressing calls on my time. Yes, it’s science fiction (which some readers disparage from ignorance). Yes, it’s dystopian and post-apocalyptic, which brings it into line with the current belated surge of interest in climate change, now recognised as an emergency. The story revolves …
Continue reading By the Feet of Men, by Grant Price: #BookReview.
202 pages Science Fiction Anthologies This is a collection of 16 short stories by some very talented writers. I enjoyed every one of these varied tales. There’s humour, horror, dystopia, AI, time travel, romance, aliens, corruption, robotics, love, and the greed inspired by empire here. None of these stories disappointed me. There are variations in style, …
Continue reading The Corona Book of Science Fiction, edited by Max Bantleman: #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.
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Antidote to the Novel
Stuart Aken 