Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
Brace yourself for an absolute gut punch! His Eyes is a heartfelt, emotionally sincere, faith-affirming novel about grief, guilt, and the desperate need to believe that tragedy is not the end of the story. This is a Christian grief novel about Michael Judson, a sixteen-year-old boy looking back on the accidental shooting death of his twelve-year-old brother, Jacob, in 1997. It also concerns how multiple people who knew and loved Jacob dealt with his loss in different ways—healthy and unhealthy ways. The story opens with the central tragedy: Michael, Jacob, their mother Susan, their neighbor Mr. Charlie, and Michael’s friend Lucas are outside when Susan spots a large rat snake climbing toward a bird nest. Michael runs inside, gets his mother’s hidden .22 Magnum revolver, and gives it to her. What a way to start a novel! This is one of the best openings we've ever read. It does more than just create suspense and tension. It actually establishes a lot: the characters, the setting, and the relationships in this tight-knit rural community. Susan shoots the snake, but when Jacob panics because the snake is still moving, he grabs for the gun. Susan, Jacob, and Michael all struggle over it. The gun fires. Jacob is shot in the chest and later dies at the hospital. No one can say for certain who pulled the trigger, and the authorities rule it an accident. The majority of the book follows Michael in the aftermath of this tragedy, occasionally cutting away to letters/diary entries by Susan (the grieving mother). What really stands out to us about this book is its unique farmland, outdoorsy feel and setting. These people live in the boonies with snakes and wild animals. They have law enforcement, a sheriff, neighbors, and a church (or churches) in the area, but the setting still feels small and intimate, which really fits the mood of this book. Speaking of mood... This whole thing is actually a bit disarming. A lot of this book is surprisingly fun, adventurous, and exciting. There are sections about Lucas's cute, funny-looking Chinese chickens, and the later shenanigans that the boys go through in the woods with Strike, the homeless man. This is in stark contrast to the shocking tragedy that reverberates through the center of the narrative. It's like a hole in a still-beating heart. The core of this book is really how the different characters deal with this tragic loss. This book handles it magnificently. Michael's coping feels incredibly believable because he is caught between childhood and adulthood. He is still a kid who wants to play baseball, explore the woods, and joke around with Lucas, but he is also suddenly carrying adult-sized guilt. He keeps asking himself impossible questions: Why did he get the gun? Who actually fired the shot? Could he have stopped it? Could anyone have stopped it? He also expresses missing the less savory things about his brother like his nagging. That is what makes Michael such a compelling protagonist. He is not just grieving Jacob. He is grieving the version of himself who existed before the accident. Susan, meanwhile, represents a much darker and more dangerous form of grief. Her journal entries are devastating. She writes to Jacob as if he might still answer her, and those passages are some of the rawest parts of the book. You can feel her mind circling the same unbearable truths again and again: her child is gone, the gun was hers, she cannot undo it, and she cannot make the house feel normal again. She becomes addicted to medications and gradually increases the dosages. This gravely concerns Michael, especially since this visibly seems to be damaging his mother's already fragile health. The book also does a strong job showing how grief isolates people. Michael and Susan live in the same house, suffer from the same tragedy, and love the same lost boy, but they often feel miles apart. Michael wants his mother back. Susan wants Jacob back. Neither one can give the other what they need. We also appreciated how the book handles the father. Michael's dad is not written as a mustache-twirling villain, but he is frustrating in a very believable way. His anger, pride, and need to assign blame make everything worse. He seems more interested in control than comfort. In a story already overflowing with pain, his presence adds another layer of emotional pressure. Michael's dad could arguably be considered the antagonist of the novel. He copes with loss by trying to find someone to blame and take vengeance upon. He pressures the state police and sheriff's department to reopen the case, drawing suspicion on Susan even after the death was already ruled an accident. So, just when Michael and Susan thought it couldn't get any worse, the dad (of all people) makes it worse. Thankfully, the book gives Michael several sources of grace. Mr. Charlie is one of the best characters in the novel (a possible nominee for Best Supporting Chracter). He is gentle, patient, and quietly faithful without feeling fake. His relationship with Michael develops beautifully through small things: baseball, conversation, presence, consistency. He does not magically fix Michael's grief. He simply stays. Sometimes that is the most powerful thing a person can do. Mr. Charlie can deeply relate to Michael and Susan because he's going through his wife's tragic and turbulent battle with cancer. He is actually able to empathize with them when an insensitive woman brings up the subject of Jacob's death at a restaurant. The woman thinks she's being compassionate, but she comes across as rubbing salt into the wound, saying something along the lines of, "heaven needed another angel." Susan, understandably, thinks in her head something like, "Why does heaven need Jacob? I need Jacob!" Lucas is also a great supporting character. He brings humor, awkwardness, loyalty, and a grounded sense of boyhood to the story. His family farm, his chickens, the attic, the old train set, and the boys' goofy adventures all help make the world feel lived-in. These scenes matter because they remind us what Michael lost with Jacob: not just a brother, but a childhood. He's that friend who always seems to know what you need when you need it. There are even times when he knows that Michael just needs space. And then there is Strike. Strike is one of the strangest, liveliest, and most memorable parts of the book. He gives the story a sudden jolt of wild energy. He is funny, theatrical, unpredictable, and clearly damaged. At times, he almost feels like a character who wandered in from a different genre: part comic relief, part street prophet, part cautionary tale, part wounded soul. Admittedly, the Strike section may confuse some readers. The book makes him feel mysterious and possibly criminal, but the reality is more complicated. He is not really a villain. He is a homeless man with fear, pride, trauma, and a deep distrust of authority. His "crime" is less about some major offense and more about running, hiding, and pulling Michael and Lucas into unsafe situations. Still, he adds color, danger, and unpredictability to the second half of the novel. Sister Sarah is another standout. She brings warmth, food, wisdom, faith, and a sense of practical compassion. We loved how she is not just "nice." She is strong. She sees people clearly. She understands brokenness without romanticizing it. Her presence helps bridge the novel's themes of grief, community, and divine care. Michael learns that God is always there for him, sometimes in subtle ways. There's a scene in which Michael narrowly escapes a knife-wielding maniac because of a random dog and Strike intervening. The Christian elements are very prominent. This is not a subtle faith novel. It wears its message openly: God is present in suffering, we are never truly alone, and even unbearable grief can be met with grace. For readers who enjoy Christian fiction, this will likely be one of the book's biggest strengths. For readers who prefer spiritual themes to be more understated, some of the dialogue may feel a little direct or sermon-like. That is probably our main critique. Every now and then, the book explains its themes a bit too plainly. There are moments when characters say exactly what the story means, rather than letting the moment fully speak for itself. The sincerity is always there, but a lighter touch in a few scenes might have made the emotional impact even stronger. Another critique we had about this book is how the middle portion somewhat drags in more ways than one. First of all, it feels long and drawn out, especially when characters are repeatedly expressing their grief (or the book is describing it). Second of all, it really drags down your mood. It's almost impossible not to feel like crap following the tragedy. But after a while, it does kinda drone on. Thankfully, we get this whole side-adventure/escapade that Michael, Lucas, and eventually Strike go on. The writing in this book is above average. We loved lines like "We sat together and mourned the emptiness. Moments passed without a word. So many of his things exactly where he left them, a cathedral of memories." There's also this funny line: "The three of us hustled to the truck, desperate for something to quench the cornbread desert in our mouths." (This describes when the characters ate cornbread and it made them thirsty). This book is such an impressive mix of grimness, humor, darkness, light, despair, and hope. When this book hits, it really hits. Check it out on Amazon!
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 Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10)
Egg Hunter is a cute, quirky, handmade indie interactive novel / point-and-click adventure about magical rabbits, missing Eggies, fairy-glen economics, ingredient collecting, suspicious warehouses, egg vans, transformation unguents, elixirs, carrots as currency, and a glen that desperately needs saving. Yes, you read that correctly. This is not some slick, big-budget fantasy RPG with cinematic voice acting, orchestral boss music, and a brooding protagonist staring into the rain while questioning the moral cost of destiny for 47 hours. Nope. This is a small, whimsical, obviously personal Ren’Py game where a winged rabbit named Gwenni needs help restoring fairy magic after her Eggies are stolen by Procyon, and the player must clean up the glen, gather ingredients, purchase eggs, barter with oddball rabbit merchants, and learn how to create new collector Eggies. And honestly? There is something charming about that. The game opens with a colorful title screen featuring two anthropomorphic rabbits in a forest glen. One is a pink-winged, wand-wielding fairy rabbit, while the other looks like a bunny scientist or exterminator equipped with a net and potion bottle. The title screen asks, “Can you find what was lost and save the glen?” That question pretty much establishes the game’s mission. Something has gone wrong. The glen is in danger. Gwenni needs help. And the player (who we named "Stannis" and "Tywin Lannister" in different playthroughs) becomes the unlikely assistant in this very strange little rescue operation. By the way, despite typing our name as "Tywin Lannister," it shortened it to "Tywin Lann" the whole rest of the playthrough, which was a slight bummer At first, Egg Hunter seems extremely simple. Gwenni explains that all her lovely Eggies are gone and that the glen is a mess. The first task is straightforward: click six items in the glen that can be used as ingredients. There are weeds, sarracenia, crab grass, cattails, flowers, honeycombs, mushrooms, butterflies, blueberries, and other collectible objects scattered across painterly outdoor scenes. The player clicks around, collects ingredients, and earns items that can later be sold, traded, or used. But the more the game opens up, the more obvious it becomes that Egg Hunter has more going on than its modest presentation might initially suggest. The tone of this game is both interesting and strange. It's slightly dark, even in the absence of death and destruction. It gave us Watership Down vibes with the rabbits and things like the smuggler and the unscrupulous scientist with the sketchy lab. Speaking of the lab, it's full of cockroaches and slightly unsettling news headlines. Well, there's one about Godzilla, which is kinda funny, so it's not all gloomy. The music isn't usually magical and cheerful, like you'd expect from a game about rabbits. It's not unpleasant. Instead, it's more like elevator music. It has this really waiting-room-sound to it, not enough to demand attention and not enough to distract. There is a map. There are multiple locations. There is Shorty’s Warehouse, Jason’s Van, Gwenni’s Boutique, the Glen Public Library (we had trouble clicking on the books or whatever we were supposed to be clicking on there), Mooki’s Lab, and the Clean Glen. There are ingredients with assigned value. There are carrots functioning as currency. There are eggs that can be purchased or traded. There are elixirs, rose water, blue burpee, pink fairy elixir, blue pixie elixir, and an Unguent of Transformation. There are different egg types, including chicken eggs, turkey eggs, and apparently more exotic possibilities. There are choices. There are many possible endings. That last part matters. Gwenni directly tells the player that the game has “many possible endings,” and that gives Egg Hunter a stronger sense of replay value than expected. For a small indie game, that is a real strength. The structure encourages experimentation: gather different ingredients, make different purchases, try different eggs, and see where the player’s decisions lead. One of the game’s best surprises is its bizarre little economy. Carrots are not just a cute snack joke. They are the primary currency of the fairy glen. Shorty wants to charge the player five carrots for a tour. Charlie at Shorty’s Warehouse says Shorty sells “quality merchandise, priced to move,” then casually admits that they buy Gwenni ingredients and resell them on the black market. Jason operates a van labeled “Jason’s Van Ultimate Egg Emporium,” which is as ridiculous as it is memorable. Willow works at Gwenni’s Boutique and offers chipper customer service. Mooki runs a lab and can concoct elixirs for a price. This gives the game a very odd sense of rabbit capitalism, and we mean that affectionately. The humor is not polished sitcom humor. It is stranger than that. It is homemade, eccentric, and occasionally unexpectedly funny. Gwenni calling Shorty “such a mercenary” after he asks how much she is paying her helper is genuinely amusing because it feels like such an adult complaint in a world of magical rabbits and missing collector eggs. Jason being asked for “Phoenix eggs” or “bald eagle eggs” adds another silly layer. Willow snorting and calling someone a smuggler gives the dialogue a tiny bit of bite. Even Gwenni yelling, “You’re a big, blue meany!!!” has a goofy storybook charm. What's kinda funny is that even if you tell Gwenni you're not helping her with her problem, she'll call you a meanie and make you do it anyway, then go about as if things are perfectly normal. It kinda makes your choices seem inconsequential in a sense, but at least you get to make them. The game’s writing is simple, but it often works because the world is so specific. We liked the little details about sarracenia, crab grass, ingredients, fairy magic, elixirs, and egg-making requirements. To create a simple Eggie, Gwenni explains that the player needs three components: the Unguent of Transformation, an egg elixir, and an egg. Different Eggies require different eggs, and the first requires a chicken egg. That kind of structure helps the game feel more like an actual adventure than just a sequence of cute rabbit conversations. The character designs are also memorable. Gwenni, with her pink wings, wand, and soft expression, is immediately likable. Shorty looks like a rabbit entrepreneur, scientist, exterminator, and questionable businessman all rolled into one. Jason, Willow, Charlie, Cricket, and Mooki each bring a different tone to the world, whether through a van, boutique, warehouse, library, or lab. The game clearly wants the glen to feel like a small community with its own rules, businesses, personalities, and problems. That said, Egg Hunter is very rough around the edges and seemingly unfinished. It crashed on us a few times. The art style has heart, but it is uneven. Some character sprites are cute and expressive, especially Gwenni and Shorty. Some locations, like Mooki’s Lab and Gwenni’s Boutique, are visually distinct and memorable. However, many scenes also look collage-like, with objects that do not always match in style, scale, lighting, or sharpness. Shorty’s Warehouse, which we talked about briefly before, is probably the clearest example. It is packed with gold barrels, newspapers, ingredient icons, chemical products, posters, and merchandise, which makes it fun to look at, but it also feels visually crowded and inconsistent. It doesn't help that the characters, while cute in isolation, often stare into blank space and don't express any range of emotions no matter what's going on. A character will call you a "meanie!" or say something sharp like "don't waste my time!" but not show it on their face at all. Oh, and there's a dragon and some bees later on, which is cool! And it's really cute too. A really interesting mix of cuteness and darkness. The backgrounds have a painterly, handmade quality, but the UI does not always blend well with them. The bright pink bottom menu is functional and easy to see, but it can be distracting, especially when layered over busy environments. The map is useful, but visually crude. Some choice menus appear awkwardly placed or visually harsh. This is one of those games where the creative intent is obvious, but the visual polish is not always there. The bigger concern is technical stability. During the playthrough, the game hit a Ren’Py exception screen with a KeyError in the game code. That is a serious issue. In a visual novel / point-and-click adventure where players are encouraged to explore routes, visit different locations, collect ingredients, and pursue multiple endings, a crash is not just an inconvenience. It damages trust. Players need to feel like they can experiment without breaking the game. That is especially important here because Egg Hunter seems to rely on branching paths and item-based progression. If players are supposed to try different combinations, buy different items, and uncover different endings, then stability is essential. A hard crash interrupts the charm and reminds the player that the game still needs debugging. By the way, we lost progress a bunch of times by accidentally going back. Weird things happened like we'd click on Shorty and get Gwenni's dialogue instead. Still, we do not want to be too harsh because Egg Hunter also does quite a few things right. It has a clear identity. It has a sweet premise. It has a strange but memorable cast. It has more interactivity than expected. It gives the player things to collect, purchase, trade, and create. It has a map, locations, inventory icons, dialogue choices, and a sense of progression. It is not just a static visual novel. It is trying to be a little adventure game inside a fairy-tale rabbit world. And that ambition counts. Egg Hunter feels like the kind of project made by people who genuinely wanted to build their own odd little world. It is not sleek. It is not seamless. It is not going to compete visually with the best indie adventure games on the market. But it has a sincerity that is hard to fake. There is love here. There is effort here. There is personality here. This is the kind of game where we can say, “Yes, it needs work,” while still appreciating that it exists. The best parts of Egg Hunter are its charming premise, its weird little carrot-based economy, its multiple-location structure, its item collection, and its willingness to be unapologetically strange. The weakest parts are its inconsistent visuals, distracting UI, uneven polish, and the technical crash we encountered. This is a sweet, eccentric, homemade-feeling indie adventure with enough charm and oddball creativity to make it memorable, even if its rough presentation and technical issues keep it from fully hatching into something great. It's a cute, strange, sincere fairy-glen adventure full of magical rabbits, missing Eggies, questionable business practices, and carrot-based commerce. It needs more polish and debugging, but it also has heart, humor, and a surprisingly involved little world. Check it out on Steam!  Score: 80/100 (8.0 out of 10)
If you are a fan of the works of E.L. James (50 Shades of Gray, The Mister, etc.), you might find something you like in Ancilla by Sera Maddox Drake. Ancilla is not a conventional steamy romance, erotic novel, or occult fiction book. It is really all three at once. The novel follows an unnamed bisexual protagonist, usually referred to as “Ancilla” (Latin for a female servant or maid) whose life begins in privilege but also loneliness, rigidity, and deep emotional isolation. The early sections frame her childhood as intellectually rich but socially alienating, with a father who teaches her chivalry, discipline, and ideals that later become both foundation and burden. From there, the book moves into her strict sedevacantist Catholic upbringing and drifts into New Age and esoteric experimentation, which--as you'd expect--clash with one another. It's like mixing oil and water. Eventually she enters the orbit of “Magister,” a mentor, dominant, lover, and spiritual guide whose worldview is shaped by Thelema, Golden Dawn occultism, and ritual practice. Their relationship becomes the center of the novel: erotic, intellectual, devotional, risky, and transformative all at once. The book makes clear that this is a consensual BDSM relationship, but also an edge-heavy one that pushes into dangerous territory emotionally and physically. There is one particular scene that we'd consider "borderline." And we'll just say it: it's the piercing scene, particularly after Ancilla reveals having a phobia of it. This upset us a lot. We found this to be an example of Magister trampling on Ancilla's boundaries because it brought him pleasure. You could argue that it's exposure therapy, but we didn't experience it that way. This might be one of those book reviews in which the less we say the better. Let's just get this out of the way: we didn't particular enjoy the majority of this book. That doesn't necessarily mean that you won't enjoy this book. It wasn't our cup of tea. With that said, it was still something we got through. It was still something we found ourselves engaged with (occasionally). It got some strong reactions from us. We got angry, frustrated, annoyed. We cringed at times. We felt sickened at other times. We personally found that this book explains itself and insists on itself too much. It comes across as incredibly pretentious and obnoxious. It begins and ends with these long sections explaining things like BDSM, Kabbalah, mythology, etc.--things which the story itself should be explaining. We shouldn't have to be told or lectured. These things should be self-evident (per the concept of the death of the author, in which readers are free to interpret the text for themselves). Other things bothered us, like the fact that this series calls itself the Magnum Opus, yet is really not much different from numerous other books about a person breaking free from a strict religious upbringing/background and finding liberation after meeting a special partner with strange proclivities. We read numerous books every year with this exact same story/character arc. We don't find it all that special in this regard. With that said, at least this book provides some redemption and changes in power dynamics for both characters. Roles reverse and they try different things eventually. If you like these types of erotic stories, you can check it out on Amazon  Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)
Monsters Arise! is a viciously imaginative, blood-soaked, yet surprisingly tender horror fantasy by John DeGuire. It is the third installment in DeGuire's Holiday Spirit series, which we've frankly had a love-hate relationship with over the course this week. There are things that this series does well including breathing new life into classic characters like Dracula, Van Helsing, Frankenstein's monster, Jekyll & Hyde, Erik (the Phantom of the Opera), Dorian Gray, the witch from Hansel & Gretel, the Invisible Man, the creature from the Black Lagoon, sasquatch, Quasimodo, and even King Kong (to name a few). It does this in a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-sorta way: imaginging what would happen if all of these odd balls with interesting backgrounds, abilities, and proclivities had to either coexist or clash. This series tosses all these icons into the same sandbox, but with a lot less restraint. This series really has a everything and the kitchen sink approach, as we mentioned in our review of Destroy All Monsters, which can be a double-edged sword. This book and series can be a bit... much. We haven't even mentioned the returning human kid characters yet. This book now introduces Sherlock Holmes and Watson into the series. And, naturally, with them comes the evil genius and Holmes' arch nemesis, Professor Moriarty (cause, of course), and Dr. Moreau from another H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau. Wow, the author must really love H.G. Wells (with the Invisible Man and all)! Well, there's a lot to love. Moreau is one of the more evil and disturbing characters in the series, on the level of the depravity of Bridgett Bishop in the first book or perhaps even exceeding it (at least Bridgett had a somewhat sympathetic motivation to want to eat people). In fact, as a character, Moreau effectively acts as the Bridgett Bishop of this book: creating and pushing forth the beast folk (grotesque, animal-like hybrids). His labs are full of in-between horrors, half made and half broken, and he treats them like disposable prototypes rather than patients. The pig orderlies, the hyena nurse, the stitched together bodies that only exist to be torn apart again, all reinforce that theme. Where other villains want power, Moreau seems to want pure control over flesh itself, and the book never really lets him off the hook with a sob story or a sad past. He is simply monstrous. Moriarty, by contrast, often feels more like the boardroom version of evil. He is the quiet partner at the top of the food chain, the one whose initial appears on the amulets and whose money and influence run through governments, militaries, and corporations. Together, Moriarty and Moreau form what we might call the M and M axis of this series, one that reaches from palace basements to Arctic vaults to black sites in Vermont. They are not just villains in a cape and a lab coat. They are the embodiment of systems that see everything, including Dracula and his children, as assets and leverage. Holmes and Watson are interesting additions to this mess. Bringing them into a story that already features Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, and company is a very risky move. At first, they seem like reassuring familiar faces and potential allies for the Killington kids. Holmes is brilliant and unflappable, Watson is loyal and grounded, and there is a nice little thrill in seeing them step into this crossover universe. The longer the book goes on, though, the more you realize that Holmes in particular is not the comforting detective that popular culture has trained us to expect. His proximity to Moriarty, the cryptic way he handles information, the trail of clues Emma eventually starts piecing together, all point to a man whose moral compass does not line up neatly with the kids or the monsters. Without spoiling every beat, his arc ends up being one of the bleaker and more uncomfortable aspects of the book, and we are still deciding if we like that choice or simply respect it. What really saves all of this from collapsing under its own weight is the monstrous little family at the center. Dracula with his new human heart, Aoife with her fierce maternal instincts, their twins Bleddyn and Asra, and Ralph acting as the invisible uncle, they give this book an emotional spine. Dracula is not invincible any more. He gets tired, he has chest pain, he has to worry about whether his heart is going to give out at the worst possible moment. Aoife is constantly torn between nurturing and slaughter, between the soft glow of feeding her child and the feral rage of tearing through the people who took her kids. Bleddyn and Asra are both adorable and frightening, children who climb and cuddle and watch cartoons, yet who also show a chilling capacity for predation when pushed. Ralph and Hope, with their fragile, awkward romance, add yet another layer of humanity to a book full of nonhuman characters. DeGuire also continues to impress with his set pieces. The open heart surgery on Dracula reads like a medical textbook from a nightmare. Dracula riding a vampiric woolly mammoth toward a frozen cathedral guarded by Yetis feels like something that should be airbrushed on the side of a van. The Devil’s Bunghole sequence with its shrieking undead infants is as grotesque and uncomfortable as it sounds, and it is topped off by Frankenstein punting the little horrors like footballs. Emma’s rampage with the stolen Humvee through the wind farm is destructive, chaotic, and somehow still feels like a teenager making an impossibly hard choice. Aoife’s raid on the N.I.C.E. facility is probably the most brutal sequence in the entire series, and it leads to the surreal image of two hybrid toddlers watching Scooby Doo reruns while their mother fights and kills for them in the next room. Of course, all of that spectacle comes at a cost. This book is graphic. There is blood, surgery, bodily violation, and creative cruelty on almost every other page. We literally have Saul punting undead zombie babies and being wowed by his hang time. If the first two Holiday Spirit books already tested your limits, this one will probably push you over them. The tonal shifts can be jarring as well. One moment you are in a tender scene about disability and being seen, the next you are in a gross out gag with zombie babies or a jokey aside about hang time. Sometimes those shifts feel clever and transgressive. Sometimes they feel like the book is undercutting its own emotional power. The size of the cast and the number of plot threads can also make this feel overstuffed. You have Dracula and Frankenstein in the Arctic, Aoife and the twins in hiding, Ralph and Hope’s slow burn romance, the Killington kids, Holmes and Watson, Moreau and Moriarty, and the entire apparatus of N.I.C.E. and the beast folk. Readers who love maximalist world building and the feeling that anything can show up on the next page will be delighted. Readers who prefer a tighter, more focused narrative might occasionally feel lost or fatigued. We know we've complained a lot in these past three reviews, but it's at least nice to see continuity. Saul Frankenstein, for example continues to be a lady's man and one of the emotional hearts of the series (because he does carry a lot). We also got a lot of comedy and humor. For example, the Yeti/Saul's wife is referred to as "his hairy wife." That was an interesting and funny choice of phrasing. There's even seems to be a reference to "Lose Yourself" by Eminem ("his arms were sweaty"), which made us chuckle. There is an extended action sequence in which the kids hijack a Humvee and Emma drives it like a Grand Theft Auto level into a wind turbine tower, toppling a whole row of turbines like metallic dominoes in order to disrupt the enemy’s operation. It's actually nice, by the way, to see the kids that Bridgett victimized in the first book, especially Annie (one of the series' highlights) be featured in a positive, proactive way. In the end, though, Monsters Arise! won us over more than it frustrated us. The emotional beats hit hard enough, and the imaginative horror set pieces are wild enough, that the rough edges feel like part of the package rather than simple mistakes. This is not a neat or polite book. It is messy, gory, and trying to do a lot at once, sometimes too much. Yet when it zeroes in on Dracula’s faltering heart, Aoife’s furious love, Ralph and Hope learning to see each other, or the Killington kids making impossible choices, it becomes something oddly beautiful in spite of itself. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10)
Elements of Growth by Keynin Carl Battle is the energetic, over-the-top, imagination-stuffed sequel to Elements of Change, a previous OCA-winning novel. And when we say “over-the-top,” we mean that with both affection and a raised eyebrow. This is not a quiet fantasy novel. This is far from a super duper serious grimdark epic where everyone speaks in riddles, broods under a blood-red moon, and questions the moral burden of kingship for 600 pages. Nope. This is a magical adventure where Keith Cottam can fly, bake with fire magic, chill banana pudding with ice magic, ride a rare white dragon, summon a shadow wolf, save kingdoms, earn noble titles, impress royalty, and somehow still find time to make pizza for everyone. Honestly? Good for him. Elements of Growth picks up with Keith continuing his journey through a magical fantasy world filled with elves, vampires, goblins, lizard folk, trolls, demons, fairies, dragons, rulers, nobles, villains, magical artifacts, and enough dramatic entrances to make a professional wrestling promoter proud. Keith and his friends travel across different kingdoms, learning about each culture while facing new dangers connected to the Dark Undead and the looming threat of Lord Valac. The best thing about this book is also the thing that makes it so ridiculous: it is pure wish fulfillment. Keith is basically living every fantasy-loving kid’s dream. He has powerful magic. He has loyal friends. He has a cool familiar named Ash. He gets a majestic dragon named Sora. He has noble girls, princesses, demons, vampires, fairies, and classmates constantly admiring him. He is praised by kings and queens. He is trusted with major missions. He makes food from his world and everyone loves it. He plays songs on his MP3 player and suddenly the whole fantasy world becomes a jukebox musical with dragons. It is absurd. It is also kind of delightful. This book understands something very simple about fantasy: sometimes readers just want to escape. Sometimes readers want to imagine a world where kindness is rewarded, bullies are humbled, friends stay loyal, food brings people together, villains are obvious, and the hero actually gets to feel special. Elements of Growth leans into that completely. It is not embarrassed by its sincerity, and that gives the book a strange, scrappy charm. Keith remains the emotional center of the story. Everything orbits around him. Catherine, Lulu, Violet, Olivia, Ellie, Shayla, Sora, Ash, the student council, several rulers, and eventually entire nations seem to treat him as the main character of existence. Which, to be fair, he is. But this does create one of the book’s biggest problems: dramatic tension takes a serious hit. Keith is so powerful, so admired, and so frequently rewarded that it can be hard to believe he is ever in real danger. The book does try to address this a little more than before. Keith suffers from magic depletion, he gets pushed to his limits, and there are moments where the supporting cast has to step up and fight. That helps. It shows growth. It shows an attempt to make the world feel bigger than Keith. However, the story still has a major Gary Stu problem. Keith can do almost anything the plot needs him to do. Need a rescue? Keith can handle it. Need food? Keith can cook it. Need magic? Keith has it. Need courage? Keith gives the speech. Need someone to impress a princess, tame a dragon, lead classmates, save captives, inspire warriors, and get promoted to Viscount? Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith, and Keith. Again, this is fun. But it also means the book often feels less like a suspenseful fantasy adventure and more like a magical victory parade. The supporting characters are likable, though many of them still exist largely in relation to Keith. Catherine’s affection, Lulu’s bubbly energy, Violet’s loyalty, Olivia’s sisterly attachment, Ellie’s softness, Shayla’s royal drama, and Sora’s devotion all add warmth to the story. We especially appreciated the sense of found family surrounding Keith, Olivia, Violet, Ash, and Sora. There is a genuine sweetness there. The scenes involving food, home, music, and family memories give the book its heart. Keith’s MP3 player remains one of the more amusing and noticeable recurring details. It is tied to his great-grandma, which gives it sentimental value, but it also makes the story feel very reminiscent of Guardians of the Galaxy at times. When Keith starts using pop songs like “Life is a Highway,” “Wannabe,” and “September” in this magical world, the result is bizarre, funny, and occasionally charming. It is also very, very random. The villains remain less successful. Lord Valac and his generals have a theatrical Saturday-morning-cartoon quality that makes them hard to take seriously. When Valac starts introducing his entourage of evil companions, it feels like Skeletor assembling a fantasy boy band. That can be entertaining, but it does not exactly make him terrifying. The book is at its best when it focuses on movement, friendship, spectacle, and cultural exploration. Keith and company visiting different kingdoms gives the story a fun, episodic adventure structure. The goblin kingdom, lizard folk village, troll kingdom, vampire kingdom, fairy kingdom, and dwarf kingdom each add something colorful to the world. Battle clearly enjoys building this fantasy setting, and that enthusiasm comes through. The lizard folk storyline with Zosk has a nice emotional core. The white dragon sequence with Sora is one of the more memorable parts of the book. The vampire dance, fairy kingdom material, dwarf kingdom conflict, and final heroic recognition ceremony all add to the sense that Keith’s world is expanding. That said, the writing itself remains rough around the edges. The prose is straightforward, sometimes too straightforward. Emotional beats often happen quickly. Dialogue can feel stiff. Action scenes sometimes read like turn-based video game combat: one character attacks, another blocks, someone uses a spell, someone counters, then someone launches another spell. It is clear what is happening, but the rhythm can become mechanical. There are also moments of unintentionally funny phrasing, abrupt transitions, and scenes that could use more polish. Battle has a big imagination, but the execution still needs refinement. The book would benefit from deeper internal conflict, more varied sentence structure, more organic dialogue, and villains who feel like a genuine threat rather than obstacles waiting to be defeated. Still, we have to give credit where credit is due: this book has personality. A lot of books are technically cleaner but much colder. This one is messy, sincere, colorful, goofy, heartfelt, and completely committed to its own fantasy playground. It has dragons. It has food magic. It has friendship speeches. It has magical races. It has nobles, dances, villains, chosen-hero energy, emotional family memories, and a shadow wolf familiar. It is doing a lot, sometimes too much, but it is never boring. Ultimately, Elements of Growth is not a polished masterpiece of fantasy craft. It is not subtle. It is not especially tense. It is not always graceful. But it is fun, earnest, imaginative, and full of heart. This is wish-fulfillment fantasy with dragon wings, pizza ovens, pop music, and a hero everyone loves. And honestly? There is absolutely an audience for that. This is a flawed but charming sequel that delivers exactly what its fans are likely looking for: friendship, magic, dragons, heroic victories, and a whole lot of Keith Cottam being Keith Cottam. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
Talk about a CHILLING coming-of-age story! (And we mean that literally and figuratively) On Fractured Ice: Survival in the High Arctic by Karin Jensen is an immersive, heartfelt, educational, and surprisingly tense middle-grade/young YA survival novel set in a tiny Inughuit village in northern Greenland. It follows fourteen-year-old twins Nanook and Anusha as their family and community face hunger, changing ice, dangerous hunts, outside “modernization,” old traditions, new technology, and the difficult question of what survival really means when the world itself is shifting beneath your feet. At the center of the book is Nanook, a boy desperate to become a hunter worthy of his father. He wants to provide. He wants to be trusted. He wants to prove he belongs among the men who read the ice, track seals, hunt caribou, and keep the village fed. But the Arctic is not a video game, and this book never lets him forget it. One mistake can strand you. One crack can swallow you. One moment of pride can nearly cost a life. Nanook’s arc is one of the book’s strongest elements. He begins as impulsive, anxious, and painfully aware of everyone watching him. His early failures feel believable because they are not just failures of skill. They are failures of patience, fear management, ego, and emotional control. He misses a seal. He takes an ATV alone. He gets lost. He nearly freezes. He keeps trying to become “the hunter” before fully understanding that hunting is not about bravado. It is about listening. Waiting. Respecting the land. Respecting the animal. Respecting limits. That is good stuff. We also loved the unusual detail that Nanook sees emotions in color. This could have been gimmicky, but it mostly works beautifully. The green of fear, blue of panic, purple of relief, amber of warmth, and gold of pride give his chapters a distinctive sensory flavor. It is almost like the Arctic itself is being translated through his nervous system. For a survival story, that is a smart narrative choice because it makes fear feel visual and immediate. Then there is Anusha, and honestly, she may be the more complicated character. Anusha is a storyteller. She sees the world through tales, language, imagination, and performance. She wants to matter in a community that clearly praises hunters more openly than girls who tell stories or mend nets. Her jealousy of Nanook is understandable. Her desire to be seen is painfully human. But the book is also honest enough to show how storytelling can become dangerous when it slips from meaning-making into rumor-making. Her lies about Tuktu, the trader, are one of the best moral conflicts in the book. They start small, almost playful. Then they spread. Then they mutate. Then they start damaging trust, business, supplies, and the unity of a village that cannot afford division. That is one of Jensen’s sharpest insights: in a small community, words are not harmless. They are tools. They are tracks. They are warning markers. They can guide people home, or they can send them walking toward thin ice. The book is at its best when it shows Nanook and Anusha as parallel hunters. Nanook hunts animals to feed bodies. Anusha eventually learns to “hunt” truth, stories, reconciliation, and the words that feed a community’s spirit. That payoff is genuinely moving, especially when Nanook gives her the whalebone pendant and tells her she is as much a hunter as he is, just in a different way. That scene works. Really works. We also greatly appreciated the book’s handling of tradition and modernization. This is not a simplistic “old ways good, new ways bad” story. Nor is it a “modern technology saves everyone” story. It is more thoughtful than that. The community depends on ancient knowledge, hunting rituals, oral traditions, animal respect, and shared survival. But it also uses ATVs, radios, supply ships, generators, and eventually solar panels. The book understands that culture is not preserved by freezing it in time. Culture survives by adapting without forgetting who it is. That theme is everywhere: rotten ice, unstable hunting routes, dwindling food, malfunctioning machines, solar panels, Danish officials, community councils, rumors, apologies, repaired nets, repaired harpoons, repaired trust. The title is not just about cracked ice. It is about a fractured community, fractured family expectations, fractured identities, and fractured assumptions about what courage looks like. The best action sequences are genuinely gripping. Nanook’s first failed seal hunt is tense. His ATV disaster is scary. The caribou hunt and ice crossing are excellent. The narwhal hunt near the end is probably the book’s most cinematic sequence, with the whales, the boats, the harpoons, the dangerous sea, and the orcas arriving afterward like nature saying, “Oh, you thought the hard part was over?” That whole section has real momentum. We also admired the book’s educational value. Jensen clearly wants readers to learn about Greenland, Inughuit life, language, hunting practices, food, climate change, energy challenges, oral storytelling, community responsibility, and Arctic survival. The glossary, cultural terms, recipes, and “Points to Ponder” material reinforce that this is not just a story, but a bridge-book. It wants young readers to enter a place most will never visit and come away with curiosity, respect, and humility. Now, for the honest critique. At times, the educational intent is a little visible. Some passages feel like they are teaching the reader very directly rather than letting the story breathe on its own. That is not a fatal flaw, especially given the target audience and the series’ apparent mission, but older readers may occasionally feel the lesson coming before the characters arrive at it. To be honest, there were times when this book really lost our interest and became a bit muddled. The book also occasionally stacks a lot of conflicts at once: hunger, Nanook’s initiation, Ataata’s illness, Anusha’s rumor scandal, Tuktu’s trading post, the Danish visitor, solar panels, community division, Siku’s resistance, festival preparations, climate change, spiritual signs, and major hunting sequences. Most of it connects thematically, but the final third becomes very busy. It can be slightly crowded. We also think some of the dialogue leans a touch polished for young teenagers. Nanook and Anusha are both compelling, but there are moments when they sound like they already understand the moral of the chapter while they are still living through it. Again, this fits middle-grade storytelling, but it slightly softens the realism in places. However, those critiques do not sink the book. Far from it. What makes On Fractured Ice special is its heart. This is a book about survival, but not just survival against cold, hunger, wolves, or unstable ice. It is about surviving shame. Surviving change. Surviving the disappointment of adults. Surviving the moment you realize you were wrong. Surviving the pressure to become someone before you are ready. Surviving the dangerous belief that courage means never being afraid. Nanook learns that courage is patience. Anusha learns that storytelling requires truth. Their community learns that tradition and change do not have to be enemies. And the reader learns that the Arctic is not an empty frozen backdrop. It is alive, dangerous, spiritual, beautiful, and demanding. By the end, when the tide fills Nanook and Anusha’s carvings in the sand without fully washing them away, the image feels like the whole book in miniature. The old marks remain, but the water changes them. That is the point. Survival is not staying untouched. Survival is being changed without being erased. On Fractured Ice is a thoughtful, atmospheric, culturally rich, and emotionally sincere Arctic survival novel with strong educational value and a big, beating heart. It may be slightly didactic in places, and it occasionally carries more plot threads than it can gracefully balance, but its characters, setting, themes, and final emotional payoff make it a memorable and meaningful read. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
The Thirteenth Cagebreaker is an atmospheric, character-driven academy/magical-school fantasy novel by Melissa Jean Vallejos. The novel centers on Sparrow “Roe” Kettler, a dock girl from Lower Cantara who has grown up in poverty, salt air, and the practical, survival-oriented culture of the harbor. She is not academy-bred, not polished, and not trained in the formal magical systems that wealthy students take for granted. Her mother, Lark, disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances, and Roe has been raised by her father, who loves her fiercely and fears Cantara Academy even more fiercely. When the academy offers Roe a scholarship, her father tries to stop her from going. He tells her the truth as he understands it: Lark once attended Cantara, was marked by rare amethyst magic, returned home traumatized and changed, and later vanished for good. He believes the academy tried to contain her and now wants Roe for the same reason. Roe goes anyway, partly because the scholarship is life-changing, but mostly because she cannot live with the question of what happened to her mother. That decision sets the tone for the whole book. Roe is not entering school to master magic in the usual fantasy-academy sense. She is entering enemy territory. Cantara is dazzling from the outside, all marble, spires, prestige, and carefully curated beauty, but the novel immediately makes clear that this beauty sits on top of rot. The place is a hierarchy disguised as an institution. Students are sorted not only by talent but by status, bloodline, usefulness, and how manageable they are. Roe arrives carrying her class background on her skin and in her speech, and everyone around her seems to understand, almost instantly, that she is not supposed to belong there. She does not enter the academy alone, though. Very early, she meets Minna Thorne, a sharp, funny, theatrical second-year student who becomes her first real friend and one of the emotional anchors of the novel. Minna immediately understands the academy’s power structure and its cruelty. She is witty, observant, rebellious, and loyal in the particular way that matters in a book like this. She does not just offer Roe companionship. She helps Roe interpret the world she has stepped into. Cantara’s designation ceremony is the book’s first major shockwave. Students are sorted into houses through contact with a magical stone. For most people, the stone behaves predictably. For Roe, it does not. The instant she touches it, the stone erupts with power, shatters windows, sends the room into panic, and brands her palm with a rune-like mark that has never appeared on anyone else before. Then it settles on amethyst, identifying Roe as the thirteenth amethyst designation in academy history. That matters because amethyst is not just rare. It is feared. Roe soon learns that her mother was one of only twelve before her, and that those designations have historically ended badly. The branding is even more terrifying. The stone has never marked anyone before. In other words, the academy is not just witnessing a rare student. It is witnessing an anomaly, maybe even a threat. This is also where Roe meets Blaise Arcement in a meaningful way. Blaise is the son of the sponsor family funding Roe’s education, wealthy, highly intelligent, politically important, and tied by blood to the very system Roe has reason to distrust. At first glance, he seems like he should be a polished antagonist or a cold golden-boy type. Instead, the book makes him more complicated. He notices what Roe is before most people do, and more importantly, he is disturbed and fascinated by the implications. He becomes her assigned mentor, which means he is both a guide and a representative of the family Roe has every reason to fear. His first function in the story is not romance. It is interpretation. He explains that Roe’s rune is Eihwaz, tied to transformation through destruction, and he begins to realize that Roe’s magic may challenge the academy’s entire theoretical framework. Even before the relationship turns romantic, the book positions Blaise as someone whose intellect will eventually lead him into moral conflict with his own legacy. The first stretch of the novel is about institutional violence, and Vallejos handles that violence in a way that is not always spectacular. Much of it is subtle, administrative, and cultural. Roe is academically behind because other students had years of formal magical training she never had. Professor Caldwell immediately humiliates her in class. Professor Zheng, though kinder, confirms that Roe’s magic does not behave according to established rules. Professor Haverhill openly treats Roe’s manifestations as alarming. Professor Delcroy, in voice specialization, tells Roe that the dock songs she learned from home are “crude” and insists she must be retrained from the ground up. That matters enormously because Roe’s power is tied to identity. On the docks, singing is not decorative. It is survival, labor, comfort, memory, and community. The academy wants to separate power from feeling and make it technical, measurable, controllable. Roe cannot fully do that, because her magic is not merely something she wields. It is an extension of self. So every class becomes not just a lesson but a pressure campaign. She is repeatedly taught that what she is naturally is dangerous, embarrassing, or inferior unless it is translated into elite-approved form. At the same time, the social atmosphere grows uglier. Celeste Ashford-Morrington emerges as Roe’s main social rival and one of the faces of upper-class academy cruelty. Celeste is rich, politically connected, elegant, and accustomed to being the center of institutional gravity. She looks down on Roe as both socially beneath her and romantically threatening. She also represents something bigger than personal jealousy. She embodies the sponsor-family worldview, where students like Roe are cases, projects, or investments, not fully equal human beings. Roe is not completely isolated, though. Her found family begins to take shape through Minna and the other Lower Cantara students around her: Kove, Lira, and Tamsin. Together they provide the loyalty, humor, emotional steadiness, and practical help Roe will need. Their friendship is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. They do not exist just to cheer from the sidelines. Each of them matters to the resistance that gradually forms around Roe. The relationship between Roe and Blaise develops through private practice sessions that are both intellectual and emotionally charged. Blaise begins by trying to help Roe survive the academy. He knows the system from inside, understands how the Board thinks, and realizes that Roe will be caged if she cannot demonstrate control. But his training does something more radical than teach her how to obey. It helps both of them understand that her magic is fundamentally different from the academy’s assumptions. Blaise discovers that Roe’s power is intrinsic, not external. The academy teaches that magic is something drawn from the world and shaped through technique. Roe’s magic behaves more like identity than tool. It is in her voice, blood, breath, feeling, and memory. When she sings, she is not simply summoning power. She is letting something already alive in her take form. That realization is academically explosive. If magic can be intrinsic in this way, then the academy’s categories are not merely incomplete. They are wrong. Roe’s existence becomes heresy. From this comes one of the novel’s key conceptual ideas: code-switching. Blaise teaches Roe how to present her magic in a form the academy can tolerate without losing what is true about it. On one level, this is about survival. She learns to layer “academy” form over “dock” truth, to control her output without erasing herself. On a deeper level, it becomes a metaphor for class mobility, assimilation, and the psychic violence of translation. Roe is being taught how to survive in a place that rewards performance, but the book never pretends this performance is morally neutral. As they train, attraction turns into connection and connection into love. Blaise gives her the nickname “Songbird.” He is repeatedly shaken by what her magic does to the world and by what Roe herself does to him. Importantly, his arc is not just about falling for a girl his family would disapprove of. It is about realizing that everything he has been raised to preserve is built on lies. Loving Roe becomes inseparable from betraying the legacy that shaped him. One of the most important turning points comes when Roe and Minna break into the Sealed Archives. There, Roe finds the proof she has been hunting. The academy kept records on the amethyst designations. There were twelve before her. Containment was recommended for all of them. Her own name had already been added, anticipated long before she ever touched the designation stone. This means the academy was waiting for her. It was not reacting to who she became. It had already built a place for her in its machinery. More devastating still, Roe finds a hidden message from her mother. Lark explains that the academy built cages specifically for amethyst voices. She names the place beneath Cantara as the Vault. She explains that the cages are tied to old transformation magic and that amethyst power itself is the key to breaking them. She warns Roe about the Arcements, but also adds a crucial caveat: not all of them are the same. Roe should judge people by their choices, not their names. If one proves himself worthy by choosing truth over legacy, she should trust him. That line obviously points toward Blaise, but it also deepens Lark’s own story. She was not merely a victim. She was fighting something huge and left a trail for her daughter to follow. This archive scene does several things at once. It confirms that Cantara is systematically imprisoning students. It reframes Roe’s mother as someone who understood the system and actively resisted it. It gives the rebellion a name, Cagebreaker. And it shifts the novel from suspicion into documented conspiracy. At this point, the academy is no longer just oppressive. It is criminal. We'll leave the rest for readers to discover. This book has a lot going for it overall, particularly in the way it blends emotional intimacy with institutional menace. Roe is easy to root for because she is not just powerful, she is vulnerable, angry, proud, scared, and constantly being forced to defend the very parts of herself that make her magic possible. Vallejos also does a strong job with atmosphere. Cantara feels gorgeous in the way a blade can look gorgeous, all polished surfaces hiding something cruel underneath. The found-family dynamic gives the novel heart, Blaise brings both tension and tenderness, and the central mystery surrounding Lark, the Vault, and the academy’s true purpose gives the story real momentum. Even when some of the rich-versus-poor politics or academy power structures feel familiar in a broad fantasy sense, the book keeps them emotionally grounded enough that they still land. More importantly, it knows what it wants to say about control, identity, class, and the violence of forcing people to become more "acceptable" versions of themselves, and that conviction gives the novel a pulse that is hard to ignore. We will say that it does get a bit tedious with the constant "code switching" talk, especially once the novel starts circling that concept again and again in similar ways. It is an important idea, absolutely, and one of the smarter thematic threads in the book, but there are stretches where it feels a little over-explained rather than simply lived through Roe’s scenes, choices, and emotional reactions. In other words, we got it. The metaphor works. It is strong. But the book occasionally keeps underlining it in thick amethyst marker when a lighter touch would have trusted the reader more. There is a part of us that's a bit worn out and tired of these kinds of stories. The main protagonist is a essentially a "divergent" (to use a Veronica Roth term) because... of course she is. She's special. She's different from everyone else. She's feared and treated unfairly because...of course she is. That feeling also extends to the whole academy/magical-school setup. We've been there and done that. Hogwarts was like 30 years ago. We just read Blood of the Raej a few months ago and essentially had the same thought: again? With all that said, this book does enough right and offers enough oomph to garner a 94/100. One reason for that is the writing. The writing is actually above average! There are some beautiful, eloquent descriptions and amazing uses of alliteration, similes, and metaphors in here. Vallejos has a real eye for imagery, and that strength carries through the book. We get moments like Blaise’s nickname for Roe landing “like a stone in still water,” which is a lovely, quietly intimate way to show the emotional weight of that exchange. We also get Roe humming “soft as a secret,” a phrase that beautifully captures the tenderness, defiance, and private ache tied to her voice and her mother’s songs. We get Blaise “slipping into shadows like he was born to them,” and Roe reflecting on one of his key lines as sounding “like confession and apology,” which is a compact but effective way of loading romance, guilt, and tension into a single beat. The prose also becomes especially vivid with the butterfly imagery, as they rise in motes of light “like sparks, like wishes,” and the final one lands in Roe’s palm “light as breath.” There is a poetic quality to these scenes that helps the book maintain its emotional intensity, especially when it leans into longing, revelation, and release. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
This might not be our area of interest or our cup of tea, but we HAVE to give credit where credit is due: this is a phenomenal resource book for what it is! So much thought, time, research, and effort must've gone into putting this together. And that's not even mentioning the marvelously detailed black-and-white illustrations by Jack Ahasteen and Jason Chee! Gosh, if you sat us down and told us, "Today, you're gonna read a book about plants," we would've told you, "Do we have to?!" But this book doesn't feel like that. It's actually quite interesting! Nanise’: A Navajo Herbal is a reference-style ethnobotanical book, originally published by Navajo Community College Press in 1989 and republished by Book Street Press/Story Monsters LLC in the 2023 edition. Our friends over at Story Monsters LLC always put their weight behind great, extraordinary works like this! As we alluded to before, this isn't really a “sit down and follow the plot” kind of book. It is more like a cultural field guide, botanical archive, and respectful educational doorway into Navajo plant knowledge. And, quite frankly, that knowledge is invaluable when you consider the cultural impact of preserving it. The book covers 100 plants from the Navajo Reservation, an area described as roughly 25,209 square miles across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Each entry typically gives the plant’s common name, scientific name, Navajo name, physical description, where it grows, traditional uses, and references. What makes it special is that the book does not treat plants as random “ingredients.” It frames them as part of a living cultural, spiritual, practical, and ecological system. The introduction emphasizes that Navajo plant use is connected to food, medicine, religion, creation stories, ceremony, prayer, and respect for all living things. The preface is especially important. The authors explain that the book was created through the Navajo Ethnobotany Project to gather previously published ethnobotanical information and make it more accessible, especially to Navajo readers and students. They also clearly state that no new sacred knowledge was collected, out of respect for those who believe Navajo plant knowledge should not be made public. The book specifically says it should be read as a testament to Navajo knowledge, not as a pharmacopoeia. The plant entries show a huge range of uses: dyes, food, ceremonial items, incense, medicines, household tools, games, fibers, soaps, shampoos, chewing gum, basketry materials, and animal treatments. For example, beeplant is presented as a food, seasoning, deodorant, dye source, fire-starting material, and ceremonial plant. Yucca is tied to creation stories, practical use, ceremonial use, food, fiber, and shampoo. The book also stresses that plants are not gathered wastefully. They are picked only as needed, often with prayer and offerings. One of the coolest things about this book is how often a single plant serves multiple roles. Alder, for example, is not just “a tree.” Its wood was used for spear shafts, bows, and basketry, while its bark could be used to make red, tan, and brown dyes for wool, buckskin, leather, and basketry. That is the kind of detail that makes this book come alive. You start realizing that every branch, root, bark, flower, and leaf might have a story attached to it. We were also fascinated by alkali pink, also known as scarlet false-mallow. Its Navajo name is tied to the sticky, gummy mixture created when the roots and leaves are pounded and soaked in water. That mixture was used on sores, skin disease, and bleeding. The book also notes that the dried powdered plant was used as dusting powder. Again, this is where the book becomes more than botany. It becomes a window into practical survival, observation, and passed-down wisdom. We also loved learning about beard tongue, or scarlet penstemon, which the book identifies by a Navajo name meaning “hummingbird food.” First of all, what a beautiful name! Second, it was reportedly used for everything from swellings and wounds to stomachaches, coughs, burns, and even animal injuries, especially broken bones in sheep. And, just to make it even more charming, it was once boiled to make a sweet drink. It is hard not to smile at that. A plant can be medicine, animal care, beauty, and refreshment all at once. Some entries are surprising in a different way. Bellflower, for instance, is associated with the Blessing Way and, according to the book, was eaten by pregnant Navajo women who wanted a daughter. Bitterweed is another memorable one. Its root bark was used as chewing gum because the plant contains a milky sap with latex or rubber, but the book also warns that it is toxic to animals, especially sheep. That contrast is fascinating: useful, but dangerous. Helpful, but not harmless. And then there are the plants tied to everyday objects and games. Birch was used in the hoop and pole game, while yucca leaves were used as counters in the Moccasin Game. The book even explains that offerings were made to the yucca plant before and after the game. That is the kind of cultural detail that gives Nanise’ its quiet power. These plants are not just sitting in the background of Navajo life. They are woven into games, ceremonies, foodways, medicine, clothing, tools, art, and prayer. The more you read, the more the book trains you to see plants differently. A cottonwood branch is not just shade. It can become a fire starter, a tool, a ceremonial figure, or part of a household structure. A cherry tree is not just fruit. It can provide sacred wood for ceremonial items, food, dye, and medicine. A cliffrose is not just pretty desert scenery. It can be tied to wind, song, arrows, mattresses, dye, and cradleboards. That is the magic of Nanise’. It takes things many of us would walk past without a second thought and reveals an entire world of usefulness, meaning, and reverence. It is not exactly a page-turner in the traditional sense, but it is absolutely a mind-opener. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)
Well, here's something near and dear to our hearts! A workbook intended to help those who struggle with dyslexia, a very real and very misunderstood learning challenge that can make reading feel like trying to run through wet cement. And here is the thing: when a child (or adult) struggles to read, it is not because they are lazy. It is not because they are not trying. It is not because they do not care. In many cases, they are trying harder than everyone else in the room. They are just fighting a battle other people cannot always see--a struggle that even fewer understand. That is why resources like Apricot Tree Academy Dyslexia Intervention Workbook, Level 1 matter. This workbook, created by Sandra Dallon and Apricot Tree Academy, is aimed at young learners ages 5-10 and serves as part of a dyslexia intervention curriculum. It is designed as a student workbook for Level 1, Lessons 1-4, with activities that align with the corresponding teacher materials And we have to say: this is a thoughtfully constructed, visually warm, and genuinely useful early literacy workbook. Now, is this the kind of book you curl up with next to a fireplace and read for the plot twists? No. Nobody is sitting there going, “Oh my gosh, I cannot believe the tan cat is mad at the fat rat!” Although... honestly... the tan cat/fat rat drama does have some serious emotional stakes. But that is not the point. The point is structure. Repetition. Confidence. Pattern recognition. Sound awareness. Small wins. One decoded word at a time. One sentence at a time. One “I can do this” moment at a time. And on that level, this workbook succeeds. The book starts with simple short a words like mat, map, sat, hat, bad, can, tan, fan, ham, and jam. It also includes nonsense words, which is a great sign from an instructional standpoint. Nonsense words may look silly to an adult, but they are extremely useful because they show whether a child is truly decoding sounds rather than simply memorizing familiar words. That is important. A child who can read cat because they have seen it a hundred times may still struggle when they encounter a new word with the same pattern. But if they can sound out nonsense words like dat, gat, lat, or vap, that means they are developing transferable decoding skills. That is where the magic starts to happen. The workbook then gives students short decodable sentences such as “Pam is at the mat,” “Sam ran on the pad,” and “Tap the map.” Are these sentences literary masterpieces? Of course not. But they are controlled, intentional, and accessible. For struggling readers, that accessibility is everything. One of our favorite things about this workbook is that it does not rush. So many reading materials accidentally overwhelm children by introducing too much too quickly. This workbook is more patient. It lingers on sound patterns. It gives students repeated practice. It reinforces through word lists, sentence reading, handwriting, syllable counting, matching games, and short decodable stories. That kind of repetition may seem simple, but it is powerful. The short stories are probably the most charming part of the workbook. “The Tan Cat and Fat Rat,” “The Fat Rat’s Hat,” “The Band,” “The Slop Pot,” “A Jog in the Bog,” and “Fran at the Shop” all use controlled vocabulary while giving students something that resembles a little narrative. That matters because children do not just want to drill words forever. They want to feel like they are reading something. And even when the stories are extremely simple, they provide that feeling. “The Fat Rat’s Hat,” for example, is basically a tiny saga of fashion disaster and recovery. The rat has a hat. The rat sits on the hat. The hat is flat. The cat is sad. The cat gets the rat a cap. That is not exactly War and Peace, but for a beginning reader? That is a complete little reading journey. There is a character. There is a problem. There is a resolution. And most importantly, the child can actually read it. That is huge. We also appreciated how the workbook introduces the idea of closed syllables in Lesson 2. It explains the concept in a clear and kid-friendly way: one vowel, followed by one or more consonants, with the vowel making a short sound. That is the kind of foundational phonics concept that can unlock a lot for young readers. The workbook also brings in digraphs like ch, sh, and th, along with short o words such as dog, log, pot, mop, fox, and shop. Later sections appear to build into more complex spelling concepts like the FLOSS rule, welded sounds, plural s sounds, and short e practice. In other words, the curriculum has a real staircase. It is not random. It is not just “Here are some cute worksheets.” It builds. We also need to talk about the visuals. This workbook is surprisingly eye-catching. The teal, orange, cream, and dark navy color palette gives it a polished, branded feel. The illustrations are warm, cozy, and inviting, though it looks like some of them may have been AI generated. In any case, some of the reading scenes, animal illustrations, and story title pages genuinely look like they belong in a children’s picture book. At the same time... you run a risk when creating something this colorful with all these swirly lines and zig-zagging patterns in the background, especially for children with dyslexia. Like, wouldn't that be distracting? Moving on... Children who struggle with reading can sometimes develop anxiety around books and worksheets. A cold, clinical workbook can make that worse. This workbook feels more welcoming. It has personality. It looks like someone cared about making the experience less intimidating. That said, the visuals are also where we have one of our main critiques. Some pages may be a little visually busy for dyslexic learners. The decorative backgrounds, strong color blocks, illustrations, and layered layouts are attractive, but dyslexia-friendly design often benefits from extra simplicity, spacing, and visual calm. There are pages where the design looks wonderful from an aesthetic standpoint but might be slightly overstimulating for a child who already struggles with visual processing or attention. We would not call this a dealbreaker. Not at all. But if the workbook ever receives a revised edition, we would recommend preserving the warmth and charm while giving some pages even more breathing room. Our other critique is that some of the decodable sentences are a little awkward. For example, lines like “The cab had a lap” or “The man sat on a ham” are funny, but they might also make some children pause and think, “Wait... what?” Now, to be fair, this is a common challenge with decodable readers. When you limit yourself to specific sound patterns, you sometimes end up with odd little sentences. That is just part of the territory. And sometimes silly sentences actually help kids stay engaged. Still, a few lines could probably be polished while staying within the phonics constraints. But overall, this is a strong workbook. It understands that dyslexia intervention is not about throwing harder words at kids and hoping they magically catch up. It is about carefully building the foundation that other readers may have absorbed more easily. It is about making sounds visible, patterns predictable, and reading less frightening. And there is something genuinely beautiful about that. A child who struggles to read can start to feel like reading is a locked door. This workbook hands them keys one at a time. Short a words? Key. Closed syllables? Key. Digraphs? Key. Nonsense words? Key. Handwriting practice? Key. Syllable counting? Key. Decodable stories? Key. Matching games? Key. That is the power of a resource like this. It does not just teach reading. It teaches a child that reading is possible. And that may be the most important lesson of all. Apricot Tree Academy Dyslexia Intervention Workbook, Level 1 is a warm, structured, visually engaging, and intelligently scaffolded workbook for young readers who need extra support. It has a few rough edges, especially with occasional awkward sentences and some visually busy pages, but its heart and instructional design are firmly in the right place. For parents, tutors, teachers, and interventionists looking for a gentle but systematic early literacy resource, this is absolutely worth a look. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 91/100 (9.1 out of 10)
What the Hell with the Hat? by Ed Ballou is not a conventional book, yet it exudes an unmistakable passion for literature and storytelling. Ballou is a playwright with nearly five decades of playwrighting experience—some ups and a lot of downs. But you know what they say? Mistakes, failures, and setbacks are the best teachers. He wrote his first script in the 70s on a typewriter. Over the years and decades he progressed to word processors, computers, laptops, and eventually a Macbook Pro. Oh, and by the way, he lost a copy one of his longtime works because one of his laptops broke. Can you relate? We can. Through this book, Ballou serves as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. This book is fascinating in so many ways, mostly because it offers a very rare glimpse into the thought process and everyday struggles of a passionate creator, one who often times seems down on his luck. Yet he never gives up! Decades upon decades of writing dozens of different scripts and plays has calloused him like a barbell and chalk would callous a weightlifter. Ballou offers something that many creators don't: transparency and blunt honesty. Nothing he describes comes across as smooth, natural, or easy. We can't emphasize enough: this book is not a book. It's more like a collection of diary or journal entries. In fact, it sometimes feels more like that recording thing that psychiatrists do after therapy sessions. The author essentially shares notes to himself while he works through the realities of being a playwright: the rewrites, the stalled productions, the moments of hope, the practical headaches, the disappointments, the tiny victories, and the stubborn refusal to quit. That structure will not work for everyone. Some readers will absolutely wish for a cleaner narrative arc or a more conventionally shaped memoir. But for us, that rawness is part of the point. It lets the reader sit inside the grind instead of just hearing about it after the fact. It's in the moment (or shortly thereafter). It's practically unfiltered, talking about unsavory things like being jealous about the success of others. A lot of this book is stream of conscience, and it's super rough and sometimes hard to read. That in-the-moment, unfiltered aspect is simultaneously one of the best and worst things about this book. It's incredibly unpolished, rough, and unrefined. It almost seems thrown together and unfinished. It's like someone just copy & pasted all their tweets, e-mails, notes into a Word document with no editing, formatting, or... anything... then interspersed them with excerpts from their scripts. Some of the ellipses aren't even full ellipses. Some of the em dashes aren't even full em dashes. There are a lot of run-on sentences and fragments. A part of us wants to ask: Why would you submit this to a contest? Another part of us want to say: Thank you for submitting this to our contest. See, the fact that this is so unpolished, rough, and unrefined gives it a really raw, real, genuine, and authentic feel. Ballou doesn't sugarcoat or hide anything. And, really, what he's saying and describing is extremely relatable to authors and creators of every kind. We can personally relate to a lot of his struggles. He talks about how he entered a contest hoping to at least finish in the top ten and be featured, yet neither thing happened. He found himself trying to read the winner's work and not being impressed, admitting that this might've been due to some petty jealousy. We can relate to that! Can't you? One thing that stands out to us about Ballou is that he is constantly reading, researching, and trying to sharpen himself. He talks about Samuel Beckett, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, and more. One of his plays features a bunch of literary legends like the Shelleys. He tries to "learn from the classics." Sometimes, we feel like he distracts himself with all this research and probably overthinks things. Nonetheless, he seems to draw inspiration from these creators. The self-awareness and self-deprecation are also major aspects of this book. He creates a joke review of someone who crawled out of the back window to escape seeing one of his plays. We got a kick out of that. It's hard not to feel for him when he talks about his Indiegogo campaign failing or not being able to have the play he had planned at the venue he already rented due to circumstances with the actor(s). He talks about his creative process, which honestly seems kinda scatterbrained and unfocused to us. Ballou is one of those people who has an overactive mind and imagination. He has no shortage of ideas, yet seems to struggle to put it all together. He also seems to struggle with taking constructive criticism. There's a moment in which he's told to create a one-line hook for each of his scripts, but instead of doing so, he spends about a paragraph talking about reasons to discredit this advice, including the term "logline" being underlined in red on spellcheck. He also seems to have a lot of trouble focusing on any one thing. He talks about how it's normal for him to work on two or three scripts at one time. We're not sure if that's... ideal. He seems like a chronic pantser. He says something like how he just has a bunch of characters and that writing is like trying to open/crack an egg. In other words, it often seems like he has concepts of a plan but no actual plot. It sounds like he writes himself into corners, then writes himself out. It works for some. We get a hunch, though, that a combination of this and his overthinking may have adversely impacted the quality of his writing. He does have some good ideas that come from all his ruminations. For example, while working on Lake Brimstone, Ballou decides that the stairs and thrones in the play should be made of metal because, in his own mythological logic, they were built by Hephaestus, the god of fire, blacksmithing, and metalworking. That is the kind of detail we appreciate in this diary. He is not just throwing weird ideas at the wall. He is trying to make the world of the play feel internally coherent, even down to the material of the set pieces. He also created this really cool concept for a play involving his now-deceased three-legged cat, Toby the Boby, and a bunch of other talking animals. Why not finish that? It sounds adorable and fun. Check it out on Amazon! |
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