Tag Archives: Book Reviews

June 19, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Anatomy of a Violin

Title: Anatomy of a Violin Book cover for Anatomy of a Violin by J.M. Taylor. Image on cover shows a drawing of someone - possibly the Statue of Liberty? - wearing a blindfold and a long, loose garment. They are standing in front of a yellow background and leaning back as they play the violin. The person looks like they are made of metal and painted with a shimmery metallic paint that looks blue, green, purple, and red depending on which portion of the body you’re looking at.

Author: J.M. Taylor

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: May 8, 2025

Genres: Horror, LGBTQ+, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 37 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

A musician finds the ultimate prize in Prague – an instrument that can make anyone sound like a virtuoso. But his obsession with the violin threatens not only his relationship but his sanity.

Content Warning: Murder.

Review:

Everything  can be fixed with a little elbow grease and patience.

The unnamed protagonist was a complex and fascinating man. I liked the fact that his flaws weren’t superficial but instead had real effects on both his life and the plot. That was exactly the right choice for this piece, and I commend the author for being willing to take the risk that readers might not like this character. This is something I wish happened more often in fiction as it really adds depth to a character, especially in cases like this one when the reader is supposed to be weirded out by what is happening.

I would have liked to see a little more world building in this piece. Specifically, I’m thinking about the origins of the violin and how it was passed around among various owners over the centuries. The explanation for how this all happened made sense, but having more details would have helped those scene come alive in my imagination as I read. There was so much more that could have been done with them to accelerate the horror elements of the plot, and I would have gone for a full five star rating if that had happened. This is something I’m saying as someone who otherwise loved this tale.

Honestly, it was easy to see where the plot was headed early on, but this wasn’t the sort of tale that needs to surprise a reader in order to entertain them. What made it so interesting was taking note of what the protagonist had and hadn’t figured out about his incredible new violin. He was so enamoured with the workmanship and beauty of it that nothing else could grab his attention. I’ll leave it up to other readers to discover what he was missing in those moments as they ponder whether they, too, might have made the same choices he did.

Anatomy of a Violin was delightfully scary.

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June 12, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Their Other Selves

Book cover for Their Other Selves by Benjamin Parsons. Image on cover is a black and white drawing of a river running through a city. The city is so dense that you can’t see any trees in it, just skyscraper after skyscraper right next to each other. Oddly enough, the water in the river is bright yellow. Title: Their Other Selves

Author: Benjamin Parsons

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 28, 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Historical

Length: 24 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 stars

Blurb:

Caletha isn’t ready to settle down until she meets someone who loves her as much as she loves herself. It’s a joke, but she half-believes it. Then one evening she and her father take a walk along the riverbank and meet themselves— their exact doubles coming towards them. Sudden tragedies follow this ominous encounter, which drive Caletha to doubt everything she used to believe. Are the misfortunes merely coincidental, or caused by the supernatural? And who was the mysterious figure lurking in the shadows behind the uncanny doppelgängers? Evenking, or Their Other Selves is a short folktale-inspired story, part of the collection Blaquoby: Country Town Tales.

Content Warning: Grief and death.

Review:

The mind is a powerful weapon.

Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that explored Caletha’s guilt and grief. She was an ordinarily bubbly and cheerful young woman who didn’t always put deep thought into how other people saw the world. While it was never done out of malice, she did have a blind spot when it came to how her actions affected others, and I believe she would have happily tried to change those interactions if given a second chance. I appreciate it when authors create characters who are likeable but whose flaws are issues that genuinely make life more difficult for them sometimes. In this particular case, that was precisely what the plot needed to move forward.

I found the doppelgänger storyline confusing, especially given the folklore surrounding why someone might have this experience and what they may have done to bring it on. Caletha was not a perfect person by any means, and she had made a hurtful decision early on in the storyline that I agree should not have happened. Still, the explanation of why she saw her double didn’t quite match up with what I learned about her as a person. If the decisions she made earlier were enough to trigger it, I’d argue that everyone deserves that same fate because none of us get through life without occasionally doing things, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that we later come to regret.

With that being said, I did enjoy the fairy tale qualities of this piece. It felt like the sort of story people might have told to their children generations ago in order to explain why it’s important to keep promises and what sad fates might await those who break them too easily. There was nothing at all gory or gross here, but there were themes that included stricter rules for etiquette and interpersonal relationships than many modern people are held to today. This gave the plot a timeless feeling in the sense that it could have occurred 80 years ago or 800 years ago with few if any changes to the fates of the characters.

This is the fifth book in a series that does not need to be read in any particular order.

Their Other Selves was thought provoking.

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June 5, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Mob Lodge

Book cover for Mob Lodge by Krrish Anand. Image on cover is a black and white drawing of various characters from Minecraft like the protagonist, a skeleton, an enderman, and an iron golem. They are all standing together but walking in different directions. Title: Mob Lodge

Author: Krrish Anand

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 15, 2025

Genres: Fantasy, LGBTQ+, Contemporary

Length: 160 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb: 

The world has ended, but people still have to survive. Enter Grim – an unapologetically nihilist, asexual, transmasc z-ennial with the mouth of a sailor and the visual acuity of a naked mole rat – and his adolescent naturalist grandson, Bug. When survival is just too damn boring, Grim recalls life from before the nukes dropped; which, he asserts, was much, much harder back then.

Content Warning:  Murder and death.

Review: 

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

I adored the character development in this piece, but I can’t go into much detail about it without giving away some fantastic plot twists. Honestly, this was one of the biggest reasons why I chose a five star rating. There was plenty of space left for nuance, and characters who behaved one way in the game were often presented quite differently in this novel which gave this reader the chance to see that boxy, flat world from perspectives I hadn’t spent much time pondering in the past as well as helped to explain why they behaved the way they did once the heavier action elements of the storyline kicked in. The various layers of meaning in their behaviour kept my attention levels high from beginning to end and made me want to go start a new world and build a house in it again. If only I could bring some of these characters with me into my world!

Death in the Minecraft universe isn’t handled the same way as it would be in our world. This was a nice Easter egg for fans of the game who have already had their character die in it, but I don’t want to provide too many spoilers for anyone who isn’t already familiar with this feature. What I can say is that this feature provided plenty of opportunities for the characters to grow and change as individuals on their quest. I smiled and nodded along as they faced insurmountable odds and did everything they could to help each other along the way.

The plot twists were exciting and numerous. Just like while playing the game, I would think I knew what would happen next only to be surprised by something I didn’t see coming.  This is the kind of writing style that makes me want to come back for more, especially for a genre like fantasy that I’ve read so extensively. It’s not always easy to find fresh spins to put on common tropes, but the author did a good job here of both meeting this reader’s expectations of how the storyline would go and delighting me with creative applications of the sorts of conflicts, characters, and settings I knew I was almost certainly going to read about.

I’d strongly recommend playing Minecraft before reading this book as the narrator assumes their audience already knows all about the lore of this world.

Mob Lodge was wildly imaginative and made me want to play Minecraft again!

 

 

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May 29, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of More Money Than Brains

Book cover for More Money than Brains by Rudolph Kohn. Image on cover shows a lifelike drawing of the inside of a spaceship. Thick undles of wires have been tied together against the wall next to some large metal pipes. At first I thought they were some sort of bug-like alien crawling the wall because of how many wires were sticking out of the bundle in various directions. This is an unsettling image that makes me wonder if the electrician knew what he or she was doing as it doesn’t appear to be all that neatly arranged. Title: More Money Than Brains

Author: Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 11, 2024

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 13 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Aric and the Misevelin Salvage crew find themselves in a dangerous situation when they try to rescue a captain with way too much money and not enough brains or common sense. The ship’s abysmal condition is almost entirely due to the captain’s neglect, and his bad habits get everyone into a much more dangerous situation!

A short, free introduction to the Derelict Project universe, a far-future hard science fiction setting that focuses on derelict ships and the people who find and investigate them. “More Money than Brains” is a humorous short story that provides a taste of one of the Derelict Project’s main groups of characters: Aric Misevelin, Verene “Bill” Resteford, and Lewes Otracht.

Content Warning:

Review:

Nothing can be neglected forever.

There’s nothing like walking into a disaster at work that could have been easily prevented if small issues had been taken note of and looked after immediately. No matter what type of job you may have, the frustration of people who must deal with the repercussions of others who refused to pay attention to detail and keep up with basic maintenance and cleanliness is universal. I nodded along as this crew realized the long lists of problems they needed to solve to prevent this ship from destroying itself and tried to prioritize the most urgent needs first while continuing to find even more issues along the way. It made me wish I had their specialized knowledge and could help them get things sorted out faster!

This was a fast-paced, plot-centred work that didn’t require much introspection from the characters in order to get its point across. Still, I did enjoy the little moments that showed how Aric, Bill, and Lewes reacted to the nonsense they were dealing with. The combination of their obvious breadth of knowledge on the topic of ship repair and their humorous responses to everything going to hell in a hand basket was delightful and rang true to the repair people in my own life who have had similar reactions to things they wish had been done properly and maintained steadfastly the first time around.

I also loved the ending of this piece which brought the hard science fiction elements of the storyline even further into the spotlight and made me wonder what might happen next. This is something other readers should discover in detail for themselves, but I liked the way it explored both the technical nature of the work as well as all-too human responses to machines as well as other humans that don’t always do what the experts wish they’d do. Bravo for a job well done, Mr. Kohn!

This is a standalone tale from a series.

More Money Than Brains was perfect.

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May 22, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Desert Soul

Book cover for Desert Soul by Alejandra Cue. Image on cover is a photograph of a desert filled with red sant. There are no signs of life anywhere, but there are a few small mountains on the horizon. Title: Desert Soul – Old Tales of the Traveler 

Author: Alejandra Cue

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 3, 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal

Length: 20 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

When the desert of ashes decides your fate, there’s no escaping it. When death crawls in the blackness, struggling is pointless.

Or is it?

This is the story of a boy with one such fate, a boy who lost and found hope in the desolate land, hope that came in the form of a mysterious traveler. But does this newcomer have the power to invalidate the desert’s will, or will they struggle in vain? And even if they succeed, so what? How will they escape the nothingness of ash and sand and death?

Prepare for the tale of a boy and a traveler, who at the time no one knew would become the Traveler.

Content Warning: Death.

Review:

Let the punishment fit the crime.

I was impressed with how Ms. Cue balanced the plot and character development of this short story with her world building for this series as a whole. As someone who has never read anything set in this universe before, I immediately felt at home in it. Yes, there were questions I had about how everything worked that were left for later development, but those mysteries in no way impeded me from enjoying the conflicts here as the traveller tried to save the life of a child whose life was endangered by the heat and intense thirst he felt in the desert. Kudos to the author for pulling this off as it was such an intriguing introduction to her work. 

The conflicts kept me heavily invested in this tale. Not only was the child in dire need of water and medical treatment from the time he’d spent alone in the desert, the traveller who assisted him faced multiple obstacles in his attempts to help the boy. Along with figuring out how the kid had ended up in this predicament, I wanted to know if he was going to be okay and if anyone could help them. This is an excellent example of how a short story can provide all of the necessary details to pull a reader into their world and make us care about the people we find there. Not everything needs hundreds of pages to be effective. Sometimes brevity is the best option!

As excited as I already was by this story, the twist at the end only amped up my interest. Obviously, I can’t share spoilers there other than to say that it made me look at certain characters in a new light and wonder what other secrets they might be hiding up their sleeves. There is definitely something to be said for revealing information only as it’s needed and trusting the audience to figure out the rest with the sufficient number of clues we are provided.

This is part of a series, but it works perfectly nicely as a standalone tale.

Desert Soul has piqued my interest and made me want to learn more about this world.

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May 15, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Jade Cargo

Book cover for Jade Cargo by Rudolph Kohn. Image on cover shows blue, green, and yellow Northern Lights dancing in the sky at dusk. Title: Jade Cargo

Author: Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 18, 2024

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror

Length: 14 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

A security officer on a routine patrol finds a small lone ship floating in the middle of nowhere. The ship’s systems tell him that it’s dead–a derelict, fated to float aimlessly until it is pulled into the gravity well of some heavenly body. However, the officer’s investigation turns up strange facts one after another, until he discovers the one fact that explains it all–perhaps too well.

Content Warning: Death.

Review:

Anything can happen in space.

I loved the foreshadowing in this short story. It struck the perfect balance between hinting at what was to come without giving the reader too many clues about why this ship is floating alone in the middle of nowhere. I had a rough idea formed in my mind of what might be going on, but even there I had plenty of  opportunities for surprise as the unnamed narrator continued to search the abandoned vessel for possible treasure.

This is one of those cases when readers don’t need to know much about the protagonist in order to empathize with them. Their sex, race, age, and other identifying characteristics were never mentioned because their expertise in this field was what made their observations so valuable. Readers from any demographic group could imagine themselves in this character…and they just might be right! The protagonist knew something was wrong but didn’t have any concrete proof to back up their gut feeling. I both understood why they wanted to gather more information and kept hoping they’d listen to their urge to run away and never come back.

The ending was what convinced me to give this a perfect five star rating. No, of course I won’t spoil it for anyone reading my review. All I can say is that it tied up the loose ends from earlier beautifully while also making me wish for a sequel so I could see how things played out from that point. The horror themes popped out nicely here without ever needing to describe the visceral details of it in order to show the audience why we should be so scared. Now that’s the kind of horror I like to read when I do indulge in the genre!

Jade Cargo was utterly perfect.

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May 8, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Pain Is So Close To Pleasure

Book cover for Pain Is So Close to Pleasure by Jonathan Antony Strickland. Image on cover shows an orange octopus with all eight tentacles curling around its body. Title: Pain Is So Close to Pleasure

Author: Jonathan Antony Strickland

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 5, 2012

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror

Length: 5 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 stars

Blurb:

This is the story “Pain Is So Close To Pleasure”, a short comedy story I wrote several years ago. The story looks at an alien race who has recently come into contact with our own. To learn more about each other, ourselves and the aliens decide to send an exchange student to the others world to spend time there so each race can learn more about the other.

Content Warning: Swearing and death.

Review:

Cultural misunderstandings don’t even begin to cover what happened here.

Mr. Kolmortis truly felt like an alien to me which is not always something that happens when I read science fiction about creatures from other planets. His thought processes were so different from how a human would interpret the same situation that I understood why he was bewildered by our species. We were not at all what he expected to find when he agreed to this exchange student program on behalf of his school.

With that being said, I struggled to believe that either side would agree to this program without getting to know a lot more about each other first. Just because two species can communicate in some way doesn’t mean that what works for one of them will be a good idea for the other one, too. Yes, I know I’m being vague here, but the twist is something best left up to other readers to be surprised by just like I was. If only the protagonist had given more hints about why this decision was made and why the adults in the situation assumed they had all of the information they needed for such a massive step in interspecies relations.

I did appreciate Mr. Kolmortis’ closing paragraphs in his confused letter to Mr. Francis, the human headmaster who had chosen Peter as the representative of humanity for this cultural exchange. He genuinely wanted to get to the bottom of what had recently happened, and he had no idea how readers were going to react to the information he included that didn’t make sense to him. It’s not always easy to write characters like him, so kudos to Mr. Strickland for diving so deeply into this world and imagining what it might really be like to meet a sentient alien species.

Pain Is So Close to Pleasure was a wild ride.

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May 1, 2025 · 12:00 am

A Review of It Happened One Wednesday

Book cover for It Happened One Wednesday by C M Weller. Image on cover is a black and white photo of a 1950s style diner with a black and white checkerboard linoleum floor, seats up by the kitchen for solo guests, and cute little booths on the side of the room for groups of two or more. Title: It Happened One Wednesday

Author: C M Weller

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 24, 2013

Genres: Science Fiction, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 9 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

For your consideration, an ordinary girl on a hot, summer’s day. But watch out for the door she’s about to enter, for it leads straight to the past… which is, indeed, another country.

Content Warning: Influenza and racism. I will discuss the latter in my review.

Review:

Get ready for a fun time travel paradox!

No, I can’t tell you what it is, of course, but trying to figure out how the various events fit together when they all needed each other in order to happen in the correct order was amusing. This is one of those things I like the most about time travel tales, and I was glad to have enough time to puzzle about how certain events probably fit into the timeline and why Esperanto was determined to return to such a racist and sometimes dangerous chapter of American history.

I would have loved to see more world building in this short story. Yes, it was modelled heavily on The Twilight Zone and therefore some mystery was to be expected, but from a reader’s perspective I felt a little confused by what was going on and how Esperanto managed to travel so far back into time and what on Earth she hoped to accomplish there. If this had been explained a little better, I would have happily gone for a full five-star rating as this was quite the experience for her.

Social mores can change quite a bit from one generation to the next, but they happen so slowly that the people experiencing them may not always notice right away while the generations to come might be shocked by what things that were normal sixty years ago but are now prohibited by law. Yes, this paragraph is about racism and how the protagonist responded to it. I’ll leave the details of that up to other readers to experience for themselves, but it was refreshing for me as a reader to get a glimpse of the past that doesn’t attempt to whitewash the ugliness in it.

It Happened One Wednesday made me want to know what happened next.

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April 24, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Heart of Water and Stone

Book cover for Heart of Water and Stone  by EE Ottoman. Image on cover shows some small white wildflowers growing next to stream that has a rocky bed in it and some stones piled beside it, too. The water is rippling slightly as if it’s a somewhat windy - but not stormy - day. Title: Heart of Water and Stone

Author: EE Ottoman

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 12, 2025

Genres: Fantasy, LGBTQ, Romance, Historical

Length: 68 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Girin is a troll, content with his simple, quiet life in the forest—a life thrown into chaos when he stumbles across an unconscious human on one of the mountain paths. The human is not an ordinary one either, but a witch—tortured, branded, and mere steps from death when Girin finds him. Unable to leave him there to die alone, Girin takes the human home to nurse him back to health. But he quickly learns that keeping one stubborn human alive is a far more difficult task than he first surmised …

Content Warning: Historical references to slavery, torture, and the belief in witchcraft.

Review:

Goodness comes in many forms.

Trolls aren’t common protagonists in fantasy, so I was excited to meet one here. It’s always nice when authors purposefully seek out themes and types of their genres that are not currently in vogue. Yes, it can be a risk in some cases depending on how audiences react, but I’d argue it’s one worth taking. It’s much more interesting to read tales that flip the reader’s expectations around and play around with who we’re supposed to sympathize with than it is to read one that sticks closely to the tropes. (Not that tropes are bad things, of course! There’s simply something to be said for thinking critically about why specific ones are being used).

I would have liked to see more world building in this piece, especially as it was related to Girin’s communication with the mountain during a point of conflict in one of the later scenes. There were so many things I wanted to know about how their relationship worked and what the mountain might be capable of doing to help him. If this had been explained better, I would have happily gone with a higher rating.

The slow-burn romance worked well for the characters and storyline. Both Girin and Ronan had plenty of reasons to be cautious about falling in love, so it made perfect sense for them to build a strong friendship first. This also meant that the romantic elements of the plot were often overshadowed by the fantasy and adventure themes which was a positive thing to this reader. A dash of this sort of content is plenty for my tastes most of the time.

Heart of Water and Stone made me smile.

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April 17, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Darkness in the Cyclone

Book cover for The Darkness in the Cyclone by Barnabas Soon and hyperhop. Image on cover shows an aerial shot of a tornado beginning to form. The clouds are swirling together tightly and menacingly. Title: The Darkness in the Cyclone

Author: Barnabas Soon and hyperhop

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 12, 2025

Genres: Speculative Fiction, (very mild) Horror, Contemporary

Length: 3 pages

Source: The authors gave me a free copy.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

What happens when a natural disaster hits the Gold Coast? As cyclone Alfred hits, a man is trapped in his home without power. What lovecraftian horrors does he imagine as he is cut off from the rest of civilisation and only the howling wind and rain as company?

Content Warning: Natural disaster (cyclones).

Review:

Are you afraid of the dark?

Some of the most interesting scenes in my opinion were the ones that described what it’s like to sit quietly at home during dangerous weather. This experience can be lonely, boring, terrifying, and/or even a little entertaining depending on how violent the weather is, how many supplies one has, and how prepared their home is for the many different things that can go wrong when the wind is raging outside. What is a mild inconvience for one person or place can be much worse under a different set of circumstances, and I appreciated the fact that the author allowed for every possibility before revealing Alfred’s fate.

It would have been helpful for the horror elements of this tale to be given more time to shine. I hesitated to even label this under that genre because of how subtle it was here.  Other readers are free to make up their own minds about how far these hints should be taken and what was really going on, of course, but I personally needed a little more substance and grit in order to feel connected to Alfred’s dilemma.

On a positive note, this is a gentle introduction to the horror genre for people who are easily startled or who don’t generally gravitate in that direction. The scary stuff is confined to Alfred’s thoughts and hobbies as he waits out the storm alone in his house for a few days. Yes, thoughts can be frighting sometimes, but there wasn’t any blood or gore here to amp up the suspense which did help this tale feel more realistic. I mean, who hasn’t occasionally felt afraid during a bad storm or on a particularly dark and gloomy night when the power is off thanks to bad weather? It’s such a common experience that it makes sense to explore it in fiction.

The Darkness in the Cyclone is a thought provoking thing to read during storm season…whenever that season may be where you live.

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