Tag: indie author

Playback Effect, by Karen A. Wyle: A Review

In Playback Effect, Karen Wyle has created a not-very-distant future in which technology has taken virtual reality down a different path, allowing users to experience emotion – whether exhilaration, fear, pleasure or loss – recorded during actual events, through a special helmet. Protagonist Wynne Cantrell, a lucid dreamer, creates and records dreams for this market, allowing customers to experience her emotions and reactions from her purposeful dreams.

When Wynne is a victim of a bomb, planted in a fountain designed by her husband, Hal Wakeman, suspicion falls on Hal and quickly translates to conviction. The punishment in this future world is simple: the criminal is forced to experience, through helmet technology, the suffering of his or her victims, recorded at the crime scene by special technicians. Hal begins his punishment by experiencing Wynne’s emotions, only to be reprieved by the governor.

Hal works to clear his name, reluctantly working with a detective who is not-so-secretly in love with Wynne. But as he does so, he notices his own world-view and reactions changing – or is it just him? Is there an unrevealed side effect to experiencing another’s emotions?

All of could have been the premise for a nuanced and considered examination of how and what we can ever hope to understand with regard to another human being, and what being privy to the true reactions and emotions of another could – for good or bad – mean for human relationships and self-knowledge. While competently written for the most part, I found Playback Effect basically bland. Characters seemed not to have any real difficulties, even in what should have been tense and emotion-ridden situations; too often I felt I was being told what Wynne or Hal – or other characters – were thinking or experiencing, rather than being shown.

After the resolution of the major conflict of the story, the novel becomes a bit disjointed as it attempts to clear up loose ends and create a happy and hopeful ending; the story may have benefited from more time explaining Wynne’s new dream work and its uses. I would classify Playback Effect as a romance novel, using a technological twist and some legal wrangling as the catalysts forcing a reaction in Wynne and Hal’s relationship, not a science fiction novel. Fans of Nicholas Sparks (I am not among that group) are likely to find Playback Effect satisfying. Three stars.

The author provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Devil’s Breath, by Jon P. Wells: A Review

 

Private security consultant Ian MacRae agrees to do a favour for a friend, meeting a low-level informant in Baghdad, a meeting that propels him into a complex and terrifying search for the truth of what happened at Chernobyl in 1986…and a frantic race to stop world annihilation.

Devil’s Breath is an enjoyable thriller, the pace rapid and the writing competent and well-tailored to the genre. Author Jon P. Wells brings together the thirty years’ past events at Chernobyl and modern-day headlines, weaving them together to create a plausible story. Like many of its genre, the plot is a bit dependent on some coincidences and connections, but no more so than most thrillers, and there are sufficient twists and turns to keep the reader guessing.

The main character is attractive: the protagonist, Ian MacRae, specializes in security analysis for non-governmental organizations working in remote and dangerous areas. Other characters are a bit two-dimensional, but again, in a way typical for the genre.  An occasional minor inaccuracy in facts – Dreamliners have two engines, not four, as one example –  could detract from the verisimilitude for some readers.  Devil’s Breath is easily as good as many thrillers available as airport paperbacks, and certainly better than some, and would translate well onto the screen. Four stars.

The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Parallel Realities, by J.C.: a (short) review

This amusing short collection of stories came my way a few months ago, and I should have reviewed it much earlier. But you’ve likely all read why I’m so behind…so I won’t reiterate the reasons here.

Stories in Parallel Realities are brief, and all centred around The Village. The key to the stories is in the subtitle: The Mundane Reimagined. Looking at the lives of office workers through a satirical lens, author JC translates the everyday happenings of an office into something a bit wilder, a bit darker. This satirical voice is maintained consistently throughout the collection, although some stories are a bit more predictable than others.

A perfect book to have stashed in the loo (as the author suggests in the Amazon description), my only caveat about Parallel Realities is this: don’t read it through from cover to cover in one go, or the comedy may wear a bit thin. I’d also suggest the collection is perfect for reading a story at a time while hanging on to the overhead strap with one hand and fending off the crush of commuting bodies in the train car with one’s knee: the tone fits that reality perfectly.

Four stars to an amusing look at modern office and city life. Reading it made me very glad I took early retirement!

Child of the Light, by D.M. Wiltshire: A Review

Child of the LightChild of the Light is the first book by indie author D.M. Wiltshire. Falling squarely into the fantasy genre, Child of the Light is set in a well-realized world, Gaitan, where north and south have been at war for generations. Cael, the prince of the north, is suffering from an agonizing illness that is beyond the knowledge of the Master Healer, Caldor. The answer may lie in the medical knowledge of the province of Morza, but in one searing moment on the night of the 200 Year Moon, Morza – and all her people – are destroyed by a flash of light: a judgment from the gods, or a celebration gone horribly wrong?

When Caldor and his friend Foe go to investigate, they find two things: the healer Naygu’s book, hidden, safe, and written in a language Caldor can’t read, and the footsteps of a child, leaving the devastated city. Could this only survivor hold the key to the book and the healing of Cael?

Child of the Light is competently plotted and written. The author has woven together familiar constructs from fantasy, but in a way that presents them, not as stereotypes, but as valid and necessary aspects of Gaitan. None of the fantasy aspects felt imposed: there are dragons, not because a fantasy series needs dragons, but because they are simply part of Morza’s culture. The pace is slower than many current fantasy books, but as a reviewer I prefer this to rushed and incompletely realized stories where action takes precedence over character development and world-building. I was still left with many questions about Gaitan and its history and culture, but not in a frustrating way: I am confident these questions will be answered in future volumes. The main characters, Caldor and Foe, and the child Liora, are well-rounded, characters who develop over the story.

This is the first of a planned series, and so while most conflicts and challenges specific to the central characters are brought to a conclusion, other threads of the story are not, and the book ends with a tantalizing hint of future developments.

Niggles? Not many. There are the occasional awkward (to me) sentence or paragraph transition, and a couple of times I thought chapter structures, in terms of how the action developed in that chapter, had some misplaced scenes. A production error in the paperback version I read had one chapter single-spaced where the rest are more widely spaced. Fairly minor issues that didn’t detract from the overall story.

I’m giving Child of the Light four stars. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes true fantasy, or is looking for a change from dystopian futures. The sequel, Children of Sirphan, is in process, and I look forward to following the series.

 

The author provided me with a copy of this book as part of a contest prize.  This is an honest and unbiased review.

Canadian indie writers – join me in supporting Fort McMurray fundraising!

All proceeds from the sale of my two e-books, Empire’s Daughter and Spinnings,in the month of May, will be donated to the Red Cross to aid Fort McMurray residents.  Canadian indie authors, join me in raising funds!

Fort McMurray

By DarrenRD – File:Landscape view of wildfire near Highway 63 in south Fort McMurray.jpg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48561288

Through the Psyche of Ambrosia, Books I & II, by Byron Fortin: a Review

 “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Churchill’s famous description of Russia during World War II also applies to Byron Fortin’s duo of books A Nexus of Numen and A Swain’s Affray under the umbrella title Through the Psyche of Ambrosia. I’m going to be honest and say for a long time I didn’t know what to make of the books; as I worked my way through them – and it was work – at first what I saw was a story of a young man, Ambrosia, raised in a remote location by four women he calls the Mothers, who is suddenly catapulted into a modern world.

Over-detailed and overlong description, of places, of people, of what Ambrosia is thinking, make up a large part of the books, as suggested by the umbrella title. But about two-thirds of the way through the first book, the narrative suddenly changes from Ambrosia’s inner thoughts and reactions to a section that is mostly dialogue. This part read very differently, and it was at this point I began to wonder if there was more to the books than I thought. At about the same time, I began to notice that some of the descriptive sentences actually made very little sense – some read as if they had been translated from another language, some as if they were simply a string of words that almost made sense, but on closer examination didn’t: “Those indigo locks, they trailed the touch of porcelain silk shoulders as the skin she was in absorbed the surrounding world as freckles on the face of her ever abounding glory.” (from Book II, A Swain’s Affray). I began to notice character’s names were frequently those of constellations or stars. I analyzed the words Ambrosia hears calling to him – Natarehs La Mihtrasem – which are – planned by the author or not – anagrams of the names of two Middle Eastern settlements. Hmmm….

There are other examples I won’t give, as too many become spoilers. The question remains: do the books tell an intricate, coded story that is not what it appears, but rather a narrative as complex as the symbolism in a medieval painting, or are all the ‘hints’ of that simply coincidence? I remain on the fence, and in the end not interested enough in wading through the prose to pursue the former interpretation. But it remains a possibility, one that may spark curiosity in other readers with more interest in the arcane, and could certainly form the basis for an interesting book club discussion. Two stars.

The author provided me with copies of the books in exchange for an honest review.

Over the Dragonwall, by H.C. Strom & Dennis Montoya: A Review

At the borders of the land called Delvingdeep lies the Dragonwall, and what lies beyond the Dragonwall is the stuff of legend. When the young monk Oberon (Obi) confesses to his Sovereign that he dreams of crossing that wall, not for gold or riches but to see a dragon, to add to the body of knowledge his order maintains, he is sent to do exactly that.

Obi and a band of friends and new acquaintances, including a half-elven brother and sister, decide to take a short-cut, and – well, this is fantasy, and we all know what happens when short-cuts are taken in fantasy. Suffice it to say that the results of that short-cut, and the ensuing adventures across the Dragonwall, make up the rest of the story.

What came to mind as I finished the book was the quote attributed to Mother Theresa  “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” It sums up this book perfectly. It’s not a great book: the authors’ influences, from gaming to classic fantasy, are obvious – in some ways it’s a bit like fan fiction. The story is not complex. There are a number of production errors in the paperback copy I read. But it has clearly been written with great love, especially for the protagonist Obi.

I’d recommend Over the Dragonwall for young readers of fantasy whose interest will be in the plot and characters, and not in the literary quality of the writing. My review rubric gives Over the Dragonwall 2 1/2 stars, which is 3 stars on Amazon and Goodreads, and for what I believe is its target audience, I think that’s fair. Obi’s adventures will continue in a sequel, and I look forward to it; Obi has rather charmed himself into my heart.

The author provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

Spinnings is out today!

 

 

ED & S

With all pre-publication reviews on Goodreads rating Spinnings: Brief Fantasies in Prose and Verse at 5 stars, don’t miss its publication date offer:  buy it for the lowest price Amazon lets me offer (other than free) and download Book 1 of the Empire’s Legacy series, Empire’s Daughter, for free between March 25th and March 30th!

Links are here:

Spinnings

Amazon.com      Amazon.ca       Amazon.co.uk

Empire’s Daughter

Amazon.com     Amazon.ca     Amazon.co.uk