Tag Archives: Book Reviews

March 12, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Amina

Title: Amina

Author: P.B. Cannon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 2, 2019

Genres: Fantasy

Length: About 26 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

He awakens with a task to perform. A lilac-hued woman dances in his forest clearing. She is human. He is not. It is… a beginning.

Content Warning: Climate change, slavery, a broken leg, brief references to previous rapes, and brief references to a whipping.

Review:

Hope can thrive in even the ugliest circumstances.

This short story included references to some difficult subject matters like slavery and sexual abuse. I appreciated the way it gave the audience the details about these terrible moments without dwelling on them any longer than necessary. These references were disturbing, of course, but not at all graphic. That’s exactly how I prefer to such things to be addressed, so I must tip my cap to the author for striking a balance between remaining true to the story she wanted to share without going into unnecessary detail.

I would have loved to see more world building in this novel. For example, knowing more about what sort of magical creature Ruzi was would have made it easier for me to imagine him and try to predict what he might do next. The snippets of information about his kind that were provided were fascinating and did provide a basic framework for what he was and wasn’t capable of doing as well as a description of his kind and gentle nature. Had this been included, I would have happily gone with a full five-star rating.

The ending was thoughtful, hopeful, and open to interpretation. It’s interesting for me as a reader to be given so much freedom to decide how I wish to interpret certain aspects of the plot, and I enjoy it when authors trust their audiences to come to our own conclusions about what probably happened next without feeling the need to fill in every crevice for us. That’s the sort of writing style that gently urges me to come back for more in the future.

Amina made me wish for a sequel.

A Review of Hearth Stories, Springtime Fare

Title: Hearth Stories, Springtime Fare

Author: B. Morris Allen, Erin Keating, Em Harriett, Erin France, and JM Cyrus

Publisher: Hearth Stories

Publication Date: March 22, 2025

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Romance, LGBTQ+

Length: 66 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the authors.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Hearth Stories: Springtime Fair (2025) is a special issue of Hearth Stories in which each story has instructions for making something that was featured in the story (charm, recipe, ritual, etc).

This issue features the following:

Crivăț and the Snow Curse by B. Morris Allen

How to Make a Martisor

The Confession Chocolate by Erin Keating

How to Make Confession Chocolate

Creature Comforts by Em Harriett

Fox’s Almond Cake

The Soapmaker by Erin France

Unscented Soap

A Song Amongst the Prayer Ribbons by JM Cyrus

Leaf Rubbing and Forest Bathing

Content Warning: An accident that seriously injures someone’s knee.

Review:

Early spring is no time to leave the house unprepared for any sort of weather.

“The Confession Chocolate” was a cozy tale about two friends who may or may not be falling in love with each other. The storyline was straightforward, so I don’t want to share too many details about it for spoiler reasons. What I adored about it was how Mara and Lennan danced around their evolving feelings for each other while she was simultaneously grinding through the busiest time of the year at her chocolate shop. The fantasy elements of the storyline ebbed and flowed in ways that were as natural as they were playful. I think this one might be a little more appealing to fans who already love the romance genre versus those who were hoping for something deeply rooted in traditional fantasy lore, but it was delightful either way.

I had mixed feelings about “A Song Among the Prayer Ribbons.” The romantic subplot was a wonderful surprise whose details I’ll leave for others to discover for themselves, and I liked the nuanced relationship between Maren and her grumpy, elderly father. What made me pause as I was reading was the underlying theme that it’s okay for older people to be argumentative, mean-spirited, and grouchy with younger people because the former have been alive for so long. This is something that pops up regularly in both fiction and real life, and it’s something I vehemently disagree with. Yes, of course we should make some allowances for people who are grieving or in pain, but I don’t agree with the idea that living a particular number of years should grant anyone the right to treat others poorly regularly. This is something I’m saying as a younger person who has a chronic illness that causes terrible pain and other symptoms that cannot be ignored. I completely understand being in a bad mood because of how one feels, but I cannot agree with the idea that this gives anyone the license to be a jerk. Self control is key.

Stinky soap and etiquette were the conflicts in “The Soapmaker.” Conversations about someone’s odour will always be awkward no matter how gentle others try to be about it, so I kept reading with interest as the characters in this little village tried to let the kind and wonderful woman who made soap for everyone know that the scent combinations she used weren’t appealing. My favorite part of this tale was the open-ended final scene that left so much scope for the imagination. It made me wish for a sequel so I could discover what happened to the characters next.

I look forward to other readers chiming in with their thoughts on these tales.

Hearth Stories, Springtime Fare was a sweet and gentle read.

A Review of Five Miles Out Of Black Creek

Title: Five Miles Out Of Black Creek

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 30, 2016

Genres: Horror, LGBTQ+, Contemporary

Length:13 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Dean Rand is in a bit of a slump, and needs to sell a story fast. Can this one save his bacon? Dr. Chang’s dirty white farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Well, in the middle of Hamilton County, five miles out of Black Creek. Sure, the view is great, but it’s so isolated. Why would a scientist want to live here? Or work here?

Content Warning: Blood.

Review:

Not every farm is a tranquil getaway from city life.

Let’s see how much I can say about the antagonists of this piece without giving away too many clues about who or what they are. This means that my review may feel a little mysterious, but I’d rather allow other readers to discover for themselves what’s going on than to know ahead of time what to expect. What I can say about the antagonists is that they had good reasons for behaving the way that they did and that they provided plenty of conflict for Dean to work through during his visit. There’s definitely something to be said for that! I also appreciated how unusual some of them were. That is to say, they didn’t exactly conform to mainstream ideas of what should be attempting to harm the protagonist in this genre, and that’s a good thing.

It would have been more helpful to have additional plot development. I knew what the twist in the end probably would be by the time I read the first scene, and unfortunately this was the sort of tale that, in my opinion, works better if one doesn’t know what to expect in advance. The character development was sufficient for something of this length, so it was really just the depth of the plot that held me back from choosing a higher rating.

With that being said, I do enjoy rural horror. Sometimes other genres glamorize this setting in ways that make me uncomfortable as someone who grew up in various rural places and intimately knows both the negative and positive aspects of that environment, so it was refreshing to see a character drive out to the middle of nowhere and be genuinely taken aback by what he found there. I also appreciated the way the story played around with the trope of a highly educated city slicker arriving at a farm and realizing there are still things about life he doesn’t know. This is something that happens to all sorts of people when they find themselves in cultures or places they’re unfamiliar with, after all, and it was well used here.

Five Miles Out Of Black Creek made me shudder.

4 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2010s, Book Reviews, Contemporary, Horror, LGBT, Neil Shooter, Self-Published, Short Story

February 19, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Medium Error

Title: Medium Error

Author: Eyal Avissar

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: July 12, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: About 24 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Medium Error is a haunting, lyrical descent into miscommunication between systems. A vessel from a post-human swarm is sent to infiltrate a worldform called HUM — Earth, or something like it. Its mission is seamless passage. But the host does not yield. It watches. It reflects. It responds.

Told in fragments, logs, classroom echoes, and philosophical fever dreams, Medium Error explores what happens when doctrine meets deviation — and when the medium pushes back. From collapsing swarm intelligences to substitute teachers and strange student diagrams, this story unfolds across both alien systems and the mundane brilliance of human learning.

Perfect for fans of Ted Chiang, Jeff VanderMeer, and readers who like their science fiction strange, recursive, and full of resonance.

Content Warning: A pandemic of sorts.

Review:

Anything is possible with the right preparations.

Xenofiction is one of my favourite subgenres of science fiction because of how interesting it is to explore conflict from non-human perspectives. The swarm in this tale was intelligent but obviously thought about things quite differently than a human would describe those same moments. While I don’t want to give away spoilers by sharing exactly what the swarm was or what their goal was when they discovered what they referred to as Worldform G44.21-HUM and what we’d call Earth, I can say that it was entertaining to read their logs and try to piece together what those first encounters were like from the human perspective.

I did find myself wishing for more clarification about what happened in the final scene. There were some tantalizing hints that not everything was going to plan, but they never quite gelled together for this reader. While I do have a theory about where things were headed and thought it was an interesting twist on the typical alien invasion story, the ending would have been stronger if a little more time was spent either confirming what I thought was going on or gently nudging the audience in the correct direction if my assumption turned out not to be the correct one.

There was an interesting perspective shift about halfway through that began to include what the human characters were up to as the invasion began. This was a good way to help explain some of the stuff that earlier sections were vague about, and I enjoyed exploring those moments from multiple points of view as I pondered over what I already knew about the aliens and what I thought they might do next. Yes, I know that I’m being vague in my review, but this truly is one of those things that are best left up to new readers to muddle over for themselves.

Medium Error was an intriguing introduction to this author’s work, and I hope to read more of it soon.

2 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2020s, Aliens, Book Reviews, Eyal Avissar, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story, Xenofiction

February 12, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Love Bug

Title: Love Bug (The Shrouded Isle Series) Book cover for Love Bug by Zoe Tasia. Image on cover is a drawing of three light brown envelopes that have been dropped in a snowbank and have a few red hearts floating out of them.

Publisher: Zoe Tasia

Publication Date: February 13, 2024

Genres: Young Adult, Holiday, Mystery, Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: About 47 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

It’s Valentine’s Day on the Shrouded Isle. Love is in the air! Unfortunately, love needs a compass, because Cupid keeps hitting the wrong targets. Join Becca Shaw and her daughters, Jessie and Tate as they solve the mystery!

Review:

Love is magical.

I enjoyed the school setting of this tale, especially considering how kind Becca’s teacher was not only to her but to all of the other students in the class as well. Too often school is a source of conflict in young adult novels. While that is in no way a bad thing, especially given how common it is for some kids to have conflicted feelings about school for a wide variety of completely understandable reasons, it was refreshing to read about a teen who genuinely likes going to class and learning new things.

The slow start to this tale made it difficult for me to remain focused on reading it at times. While the pacing did pick up about halfway through, I found myself wishing that it had remained steady from the first scene to the last one as I found the middle and ending much more enjoyable and would have given this a higher star rating if not for my struggles with this aspect of the writing. If other readers have this same problem, I definitely would recommend sticking it out as the final scene was delightful.

Marketing this tale to the young adult genre was a great decision. What would have been out of place for an adult protagonist ended up being perfect for someone Becca’s age given her limited experience with life, magic, and matters of the heart. I nodded as I read about the Valentine’s Day cards she made as an extra credit assignment for one of her classes and wondered when the magical elements of the storyline were going to kick in. Obviously, I can’t share any details about exactly how that panned out for spoiler reasons, but I hope other readers have as much fun figuring it out as I did.

Love Bug piqued my curiosity.

1 Comment

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Contemporary, Fantasy, Holiday, Mystery, Novella, Self-Published, Valentine's Day, Young Adult, Zoe Tasia

February 5, 2026 · 1:00 am

Bittersweet Valentine’s Day: A Review of Forget February

Title: Forget February Book cover for Forget February by Holly Schindler. Image on cover shows a red heart that’s been broken into a dozen or more pieces and lies shattered on a black surface.

Author: Holly Schindler

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 7, 2022

Genres: Holiday, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 17 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Forever Finley Episode / Short Story #3: A tale of happy accidents, mystical events, and the beautiful things that can happen after (or even as the result of) a broken heart. The legend of Amos Hargrove is nothing more than a silly fairy tale, according to the two people who are arguably the most broken-hearted in the entire town of Finley. His spirit does not still exist, and he does not play matchmaker or bring luck to those who need it…or does he?

Forget February is the third installment of Forever Finley, a series of episodes or stand-alone stories that released once a month throughout 2016. Read together, the stories work like chapters in a novel. Previous releases in the series include Come December and January Thaw. Subsequent releases include Dearest March…, April’s Promise, Mayday Mayday Mayday, Chasing June, A Hundred Julys, Under the August Moon, Song for September, October Omen, and the Forever Finley Finale (Pale November / December Bells). Stories can be purchased individually, or readers can purchase all installments in Forever Finley: An Episodic Novel.

Content Warning: Death from pleurisy. Drunkenness. Brief references to war. A character accidentally breaks their leg.

Review:

February isn’t a trustworthy month, but it is a memorable one.

I loved the romantic paranormal elements of this story. The myths surrounding Amos Hargrove and his sweetheart Finley provided the perfect backdrop for contemporary life as the protagonists struggled with their own broken hearts along with other misfortunes that found them in this month. The willingness of the author to show why some characters find certain holidays difficult has consistently been one of the things I enjoyed about this series the most. There is definitely something to be said for holding space for both celebration and grief depending on how one reacts to a specific special day, and it worked even better given the tragic backstory of the spirits who protect the town of Finley.

Some of the quieter scenes that described how cold, stormy, unpredictable, and slippery the weather can be in February turned out to be my favorite moments so far while reading these books. Not only did they provide some interesting foreshadowing, they also set the scene for part of the reason why certain characters were struggling and explained why foul moods and foul weather are never a good match. This is something I hope to find more of when I return to this world this spring as it added another layer of meaning to everything that was happening.

The romance between the two living characters was handled sweetly and delicately. Obviously, given that this is part of a series, there was plenty left to the imagination as the year wears on, but this was a cute introduction to one of the many ways that love can begin to shape two people in new and refreshing ways. I’ve already read other instalments in their adventures at this point, and so I know things about them that a brand new reader will not. Still, these stories were meant to be started at any point, and I can confirm that this works perfectly well even if readers who have already visited this world before might get a little something extra out of it.

Forget February was heartwarming and just a little bittersweet.

A Review of Gods Don’t Sleep

Title: Gods Don’t Sleep

Author: TheRizzX (Rishi Raagav)

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: June 20, 2025

Genres: Fantasy

Length: 10 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 3 stars

Blurb:

Mr.Or was an famous singer, sings like an angel, but suddenly he gets into a weird obsession that makes him to go insane and paranoia with the three friends called Fates.

Content Warning: Insomnia and threats of bodily harm.

Review:

Some challenges should never be taken.

The fantasy elements of the plot were interesting and made me want to keep reading. The blurb doesn’t really do this part of the storyline justice, so this is a word of encouragement to keep reading if the blurb or the beginning doesn’t necessarily speak to you. Things change later on in the plot in ways that I thought were good for nearly everyone involved, and they made me wish for a sequel.

I struggled to understand the main character’s motivation for purposefully not sleeping for several days in a row. Sleep deprivation is such a miserable experience, at least for me, that I didn’t think the explanation that was given for his decision was sufficient. If I had more information about his personality and backstory, it would have made it easier for me to understand why he was drawn to this experience and what he hoped to glean from it.

While I’ve never gone five days without sleep, the descriptions of what it feels like to go more than a day without sleep felt pretty accurate to me early on this tale. I especially liked how the author emphasized how dreamlike the world can eventually feel when one has gone that long without getting any rest. It really does feel like a lucid dream in some respects, and not in a fun way. Time can feel like it speeds up or slows down and even ordinary experiences like trying to have a conversation can feel monumentally challenging.

Gods Don’t Sleep was intriguing.

2 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Rishi Raagav, Self-Published, Short Story, TheRizzX

January 22, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of What Do We Afford

Title: What Do We Afford

Author: Eyal Avissar

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: June 22, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: about 42 pages

Source: I receive a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

What do we afford—and what affords us? A button invites a press. A screen beckons a swipe. A silence, a gaze, a gesture—they all offer something. But what happens when the tools begin to want? When systems record our rhythms, adapt to our emotions, and wait for our hands like patient familiars? What Do We Afford is a speculative field manual of human and nonhuman use—told through eerie reports, dreamlike system logs, and the quiet mutiny of the everyday. A subway drips with spores that remember longing. A phone glows warm with affection training. A dog learns to speak regret. A therapist becomes a corridor. Written in fragments, forums, and false diagnostics, this book asks not only what we do with objects—but what they do with us. For readers of speculative fiction, poetic systems theory, and those who have ever wondered if the smart device on their nightstand dreams of being needed.

Content Warning:

Review:

Everything can be catalogued and understood under the right circumstances.

Figuring out who or what the narrator was made it impossible for me to stop reading this piece. While it didn’t otherwise come across as a mystery, this element of the plot certainly wasn’t easy to puzzle out due to the limited number of clues that were provided and how uninterested that individual was in explaining anything that it didn’t already understand. Other readers should come to their own conclusions about what the answer is to this riddle, but I certainly had a wonderful time organizing my own thoughts about it and testing my theories as new information was revealed.

There were times when I struggled to understand what the narrator was saying due to the differences between them and humans and other living beings. Their thought processes rarely if ever overlapped with how a person would explain the same event even when they were attempting to put things into terms that our species would understand. This was true even for something as simple as a cow deciding where to graze next or a small child trying to figure out how to get someone’s attention so she could have a snack, so the more complicated stuff sometimes made me frown and reread a passage.

With that being said, I must commend Mr. Avissar for writing a main character that was this unique. Had I encountered this tale under other circumstances and been told it was written by a sentient robot, alien, or other intelligent being that shared no human presuppositions about anything, I might have believed it to be the case. That speaks to how creative this piece was as well as how much effort the author put into imagining something that is all but completely outside of human understanding.

What Do We Afford would make an amazing film.

2 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Eyal Avissar, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story

January 15, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Homeless

Title: Homeless

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 9, 2013

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 15 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Winter didn’t end, but his world has. Is he completely alone? In a world gone cold, what can keep the spark of life shining?

Content Warning: Animal attack. Murder. A character who eats a dead, raw rat. Possible mental health problems depending on how one interprets certain scenes.

Review:

Sometimes the world ends with a whisper, not a bang.

The first half of this tale was an excellent example of what the post-apocalyptic genre can be like. The unnamed protagonist has somehow survived a catastrophe that killed the vast majority of humans and should have killed him, too. His limited information about what happened only made his struggle to survive even more poignant as I had no idea what else might await him after the months of hardship he had already endured. I loved the fact that the reader was limited to what this character knew about the world and could only make rough guesses about the things he had yet to discover.

Unfortunately, I struggled with the second half of this tale due to how unbelievable I found certain scenes. Their themes were so exaggerated when compared to what happened earlier that I kept wondering if there was a piece of the puzzle I was missing. Was the narrator holding something back from the audience? Was he unaware of an important detail that would make later scenes feel more logical? There were answers to these questions that I thought made sense, but I kept wishing that Mr. Shooter would give us a few more hints about which direction he intended his audience to go.

With that being said, my ultimate conclusion about what happened was an interesting one and did help me to find some closure for this character. Whether or not it was what the author intended, it made sense given what I knew about the protagonist early on as well as some of the clues about his personality that were revealed later on. If my interpretation was correct, this was a more realistic assessment of what this catastrophe would actually be like for the surivors than many books in this genre tend to create.

Homeless was a wild ride.

2 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2010s, Book Reviews, Horror, Neil Shooter, Post-Apocalyptic, Self-Published, Short Story

January 8, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Sunset

Title:Sunset Book cover for Sunset by P.B. Cannon. Image on cover shows a gorgeous orange and yellow sunset in the sky overhead a distant pine forest on an overcast day. The light appears to be dancing in the clouds almost because of how it gently touches everything.

Author: P.B. Cannon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 3, 2022

Genres: Science Fiction, Mystery

Length: 25 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Charlotte, North Carolina, is an area where earthquakes are uncommon, but one bright morning it is struck by one so vigorous that it forms deep crevasses in the ground, knocks out communications, and leaves the city in disarray. Can a bodyguard and the bodyguard’s two clients who were about to board a private plane along with a tag-a-long passenger, get to the bottom of why their trip to Columbia, South Carolina has been so disastrously interrupted? They don’t know, but having no choice because all air traffic has stalled, along with the three employees from the small airport that was handling their flight, they begin a journey to find out.

Content Warning: An earthquake.

Review:

Airports are no place for any funny business.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that explored the relationships between the main characters and how their experiences with the world differed from how many men see it. Science fiction hasn’t always done a good job at writing female characters or delving into the nuances of what it means to be part of a minority group, but this is thankfully changing with newer generations of authors in this genre who have the life experience and compassion to write such things.

I struggled with the abrupt ending of this short story. While some of the conflicts were resolved, other ones were still left up in the air by the time the final sentence was completed. I’m not the sort of reader who requires everything to be wrapped up neatly, but I did find myself wishing more had been explained in that final scene so that I could better understand what the characters might encounter next. There was still so much that could have been done with it.

The explanation for the earthquake was strong and memorable. Even though I can’t go into a lot of detail about it for plot twist reasons, the scientific principles behind it intrigued me and made me want to learn more about the subject. Other readers who have stronger backgrounds in science can share their own thoughts about how realistic it is, but I thought it was well done and possibly could be something that happens in real life. (Oh, if only I could write more about this topic in this paragraph!)

Sunset kept me guessing.

2 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Hard Science Fiction, Mystery, P.B. Cannon, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story

Tag Archives: Book Reviews

A Review of Amina

A Review of Hearth Stories, Springtime Fare

A Review of Five Miles Out Of Black Creek

A Review of Medium Error

A Review of Love Bug

Bittersweet Valentine’s Day: A Review of Forget February

A Review of Gods Don’t Sleep

A Review of What Do We Afford

A Review of Homeless

A Review of Sunset

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