Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
There are seasons to life. We grow, we evolve, we change. We see loved ones grow older, decrease in health, and eventually pass away. But some things remain: lasting memories, influences, and impacts. And, sometimes, something sentimental and special like a car, a painting, a necklace, or a house. The Old Rose Villa is a beautiful children's book that explores the flow and seasons of life. It reflects on how, despite how much things might change, some things will always last and remain the same. The book follows Mihir. As a young boy, Mihir saw how hard his parents worked and struggled just to make ends meet. His dad, a bricklayer, often had sore hands and gradually developed a hunched back. Due to how much Mihir's parents worked, it seems as though Mihir spent a lot of time by himself studying and occasionally roaming. During one of these roaming times, while crossing a bridge, he seems to have an existential moment: If I fall, will anyone notice? But he's soon reminded how hard his parents are working to put him through school and allow his freedom. In time, Mihir graduates from engineering school and becomes rather wealthy (or, at least, well to do). He pays it forward to his parents and purchases an old rose villa for them to live in. He even hires servants for them, Satvant and Satuya, who come with their son, Barak. Over the time, the house becomes a home—and more. It becomes a symbol of the memories and time these loving people get/got to spend together. It becomes a gathering place, a place where Mihir and the others can retreat to and find sanctuary/comfort when they're tired and weary. The villa also represents having made it and having lived the dream of providing a home and a good life for the parents who gave their all to give you yours. Gradually, time takes its course. Love ones age and pass away in the house. And a lingering question keeps returning: what should Mihir do with the house? Should he sell it? Keep it? We have a suspicion that this book may be based on real events and real people. And just like real events and real people, they don't necessarily take a linear or expected course. Yes, there are patterns, but a lot of this book seems to skip around. It can feel a little unmoored and unfocused, especially when the servants are introduced. They become characters unto themselves, becoming difficult to follow for a little while. However, that doesn't detract from the positive things we felt about this book. If anything, this book really made us feel a sense of appreciation. It made us think about our parents and what they went through to keep us afloat. It made us value being able to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. For that, this book deserves a lot of credit. Check it out on Amazon!
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 Score: 95/100 (9.5 out 10)
Where the Mountains Whisper is a spirited, fierce, highly-inspired fictional memoir by Jenny Cafaro! The book follows Flora Richardson, a Carolina nurse and mother who drives back into the Kentucky hills to secure her ex-husband Lewis’s signature, which is required by her publisher (so she can release a memoir about her Appalachian childhood and her sister, Vera). That deadline forces Flora to reopen old rooms and old wounds: poverty, abuse, addiction, and the suffocating hush of a church community that turns its back when she speaks the truth. Along the way, a steady friend, Scott, offers patient, non-controlling care as Flora fights to reclaim her voice and put her story and Vera’s into the world. The book braids present-day chapters with vivid, sense-rich flashbacks of “Coon Ridge,” building toward revelations, a long-sought signature, and a hard-won measure of peace. We'll say this: we read this book as if it were non-fiction—as if these were real events, as if these characters were real people who actually existed. And we wouldn't be surprised if, in one way or another, they did. It's a skill to bring a work of fiction to life like this, in a way that truly suspends disbelief and gets readers to really buy into what's going on. We were gripped and riveted by this book! There are a variety of reasons we found this book so compelling. First of all, it is beautifully and eloquently written. Furthermore, this book really has a character, a personality, and a voice. We read hundreds of book every year, and many of them either sound like something we've read dozens of times before or—conversely—go so overboard in being unconventional and experimental that they fall into the style-over-substance trap. This book strikes a fine balance. Yes, there's a unique and special style to this book, but it enhances the story and its characters rather than distracting and detracting from them. The style is rich, authentic, and genuine, bringing the Appalachian speech—that unmistakable Appalachian twang—to life. And the book somehow accomplishes this without becoming difficult to read. Instead of characters saying "I remember..." they say "I reckon..." Rather than “I am not running from anything” we get “I ain’t runnin from nothin’” Instead of “we scarfed down the last of the beans with bread” they say “we sopped them up with cornbread.” "Valley" becomes "holler." "Grandma" becomes "Granny." "Pants" become "britches." "You guys" becomes "y'all." It's never too complicated or hard to understand, but it really breathes life into the book that already feels so lived in. Even ignoring the plot for a moment, just reading these characters talk like this gives you a sense of how rugged and gritty these people are. They ain't no porcelain dolls with spoons their mouths. They work, scrape, pray, and keep going. Another thing we loved about this book is how, despite it often being about relatively mundane everyday things like making biscuits, folding warm laundry, checking on a neighbor down the holler, patching a soft tire in the driveway, or sitting quiet at the kitchen table after church, the pages still hum. Small chores carry quiet stakes. A supper scene reveals loyalty. A church foyer exposes pressure. A quick grocery run reopens an old hurt. The writing turns ordinary moments into windows on love, memory, and resolve, so you keep turning pages without needing fireworks. We read so many sci-fi & fantasy books with all this spectacle, all these stakes, all this glitz and glamor. But there's something raw and real about a book like this. There aren't big explosions, magic, or superpowers. Yet, there's still an epicness to it. One of the best things about this book, as we alluded to before, is how eloquent and powerful the writing is. Just read the pure tension and heart-pounding drama in this: "Now, standin' beside the wrecked car, I gathered what strength I had left. My legs sank into the cold dust, but I stayed upright. I leaned on the hood and peered down the hill. Yes. I could make it. The forest was dense—branches knotted overhead, filterin' the snow. I'd have to reach the brook, cross the wetland, and climb the far side to reach the cabin. Doable. I snapped a cedar branch and stripped the dead needles. Sap oozed across my hand. I dabbed it over the cuts on my forehead. It stung, but it worked. The branch made a fine cane. My legs shook, but I made it to the passenger door, pulled out my backpack, and slung it over my shoulder. I searched under the seat and across the floorboards. No phone. Panic cinched in my chest. No light. No signal. No way to call for help. I stood there for a moment, listenin' to the wind rattle the trees, the cold crawlin' into my bones." Or how about: "Some ghosts don’t haunt houses. They live in people. In silence. In him. Lewis." And: "They didn’t want truth—they wanted peace. Even if it came at the cost of my voice. They called it “divisive.” I call it sacred. They didn’t just remove me from a group. They tried to write me out of my own life. But here I am. Bleeding ink across the pages. Because this story ain’t just mine. It’s Vera’s. It’s Mama’s. It’s every woman who sat small in the third pew, afraid to raise her voice, and got swallowed by the hush. So I wrote it louder. Let my pew stay empty, I’ll preach it from the page." Or: "Outside, the wind screamed through the ridge like it had lost its mind, I sat still, the smell ok burned rubber and oil seeping into my nose, My hands wouldn’t let go ok the wheel, I was afraid to move, Afraid to breathe, Somewhere out there in the trees, I swear I heard that cry again, Mommy always said black panthers roamed these hills, silent as ghosts, fast as lightning" Or what about: "This ain’t a clean ending. There’s no ribbon neat enough for a life like mine. But there is a bow—tied with grief and grace, stitched with memory and hope. And there’s a thread runnin’ through every chapter, every loss, every miracle." Even a short little passage like "No pressure. No question. Just presence." hits like a bag of bricks. The author also does a great job using similes, metaphors, and personification like: “She chased scent like it was stitched in her soul.” “Branches stretched high like they were clawing at heaven.” “Vera lit a cigarette, the smoke curling upward like a foggy river.” “The mountains standing still, watching our misfortune unfold.” We also appreciated how the author appealed to the senses, especially smell. For example: “the wind shifted, carryin’ that old blend of scorched coffee and coal smoke—sharp, dark, familiar.” “And when December rolled in, with the smell of bacon drifting from Granny Whitman’s farmhouse, and frost clinging to the glass, even the coldfelt a little like magic. “Cheap soap and cold mountain air—that smell told us it was bedtime.” One final thing we'll talk about is how great the chemistry is between the characters. The chemistry and rapport between Flora and Vera is arguably the heart and soul of the book, but it's also worth mentioning how deeply we felt the bond between Flora and Tazz (who made her "feel seen" and "feel heard") and later with Scott. Flora also describes a particular bond she had with a goat named Butters, which is particularly touching. Speaking of the goat, that brings us full-circle to who we think is the actual center of this book: Flora and Vera's dad. Their dad transformed from a loving father into a frightening person after a mining accident. Flora describes how she had "two daddies"--one before and one after the accident. "Daddy was no hero. Not anymore. Every good deed he had done was null and void in my mind. He was a stranger with a monster’s voice. A storm we couldn’t outrun. And the worst part? He was still my daddy" It's heartbreaking and heartwrenching to read those lines. And a lot of this book seems to center on redemption and preserving the good memories that Flora shared with her family. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)
Villainessly Blonde by Sophia DeSensi is like The Boys meets The Bachelor! It combines the mutant powers and pariah-treatment of something like X-Men with the reality-TV spectacle and drama of something like The Jersey Shore. Add some type-1 diabetes into the mix, and you have an exotic recipe for what seems to be a pretty interesting premise. But what about the execution? Were we entertained and/or engaged by this book? Well, the answer is mixed and nuanced. This is one of those books in which we see the potential and we think we know where the author was trying to go. We're just not sure if it quite jived with us, but we commend the effort. This book follows Charlie Green, a social-media creator and influencer in Nautville who happens to be a “Glitch” (comparable to a mutant in X-Men) with a subtle mind-influence ability. Charlie is trying to keep her life steady and honest while the crowd keeps asking for a show. A chance encounter draws her into the orbit of Will, a decent and quietly funny Glitch who fronts a glossy dating series that treats superpowered people like a ratings hook. Hey, that's pretty neat, honestly. We just weren't braced or prepared for it considering that the opening note made us think that this was going to be some kind of medical drama centered around a patient or characters with type-1 diabetes. Anyway, around Charlie, Will, and the others spins a bright carousel of producers, a smiling host who solves problems when the cameras love it, and a public that flips from adoring to hateful or suspicious in a heartbeat (as the public tends to do). They read into things, they jump to conclusions, and they turn on people/characters. If you've watched reality shows or have been on social media for a minute or two, you know how that goes. This book actually does a decent job at showing how our feelings toward people and events in the media are manipulated and outright manufactured by the higher-ups and the powers-that-be. Naturally, every episode of the show is calibrated and controlled (to an extent), all with the intention to stir drama and controversy to get higher ratings (and, ultimately, money). It's really not fair to the people who are demonized and vilified in the process. Charlie, as the title suggests, is the victim of this throughout the book. She is portrayed throughout the reality show as a heelish figure, despite readers knowing she's actually good and decent. The reality show's edit highlights her sharpest reactions, trims away context, and stitches in ominous music and cutaways to make neutral moments look calculating. Confessionals are framed so that her boundaries read as attitude, and producer prompts bait her into lines that can be clipped into a “problem contestant” arc. When she practices routine type one diabetes care on screen (which we'll talk more about later), the show treats it like an interruption to the fun, which subtly codes her as difficult rather than responsible. On social media, the same beat gets spun as vanity or attention seeking, then echoed by commenters who never saw the full scene. The result is a textbook villain edit. A charity executive’s public spin keeps suspicion simmering, the host only “fixes” situations that boost the episode, and the audience is primed to assume intent from reaction shots and cuts. The book is sharp about how easy it is to manufacture a "bad" or "problematic" girl and how hard it is to claw back nuance once the narrative hardens. To its credit, it also gives Charlie small, sincere wins that puncture the caricature, reminding us that real people live under the edits and that choosing honesty over optics is its own kind of heroism. Charlie reads as image conscious yet resilient, someone who wants to be seen for who she is rather than for what her power or her follower count can provide. Will works as a steady counterweight who learns to push back when the script stops matching what matters. The tension comes from the gap between sincere connection and the narrative the show wants to sell, and the book keeps asking who gets to tell the story. If you enjoy character driven superhero romance with reality TV sparkle, this delivers warmth and momentum, even if its tilt toward spectacle will land better for some readers than others. Like we alluded to, this book has a lot of promise and a lot to offer. You really have to open your mind and put aside your preconceived notions of what you think this book is going to be like. Comic/superhero fans come into fiction expecting fights and action. Fans of medical dramas expect, well... medical drama. Fans of reality shows expect, well... real (or real-seeming) drama they can sink their teeth into. This seems to be more of a romantic-comedy than anything else, but even the comedy and romance gets a bit lost at times. For example, there's a random bit about gummy bears that just didn't hit for us. Also, it doesn't quite feel as romantic when there are like 20-something women vying for Will's attention and everyone is manipulating the narrative. It's strange how this book, by trying to fit into all of these genres at once, doesn't seem to satisfy either one adequately. It feels clunky, awkward, and stretched thin like a medieval army that decided to invest into too many horses, crossbows, and trebuchets while only having 200 infantry. There are aspects of this book that just seem mundane and dull. Like, there's this whole glitchball/futuristic baseball arc/scene that we're guessing was supposed to build camaraderie between the characters. And, yeah, reality shows do things like that to try to leave room for drama to happen, but it just didn't excite us. Speaking of other characters... Beyond Charlie and Will, the supporting cast adds a little more color and adds a little more spice. Dude Dixon, the ever-smiling host, greases the wheels when it makes great television and nudges scenes toward maximum sizzle. Margery, the charity executive, weaponizes PR to keep suspicion alive. Conrad, the model ex, sparks the initial humiliation and later offers a flimsy mea culpa. The producers act as unseen hands that shape confessionals and conflicts. The wider field of vigilantes and contestants, including flashy figures like Poison Menace and Steelita, provides contrast that highlights how different powered people chase clout, safety, or change. Together they form the ecosystem that frames Charlie as a problem to manage. That is why her small, honest wins feel a bit more earned than they would've been otherwise. But if you're expecting this to be a superhero novel in which a band of superpowered good guys fight the baddies... there's some of that here, but it's rather sparse, mostly via Will and the Nitro-Force group with The Agency policing them (which is why we compared it to The Boys). None of the fights are really that epic or spectacular, unfortunately, which we found disappointing. Something else you have to keep in mind is that, despite the big opening message about this being about type-1 diabetes and how the author wanted to be sensitive and accurate in portraying the disease, this book is barely about type-1 diabetes. Despite the big note, we don't even know why that's in here. It seems tacked-on and unnecessary. The counterargument you could justifiably make is: 1. It's humanizing (for the protagonist) 2. It provides representation for people living with type-1 diabetes Well, one or more of us has diabetes and just found its inclusion to be like garnishment or window dressing. It really didn't need to be in here. We're tempted to say that this book really started to lose and bore us after a while. We can't quite put our fingers on it, but it wasn't clicking with and engaging us the way we wanted it to. Humorously, the random little scene that woke us back up was when some of the characters say "I'm a Glitch!" and someone shouts, "We know. Shut up." The reason this random scene resonated with us is because the whole "I'm a Glitch" thing, and other aspects of this book, just seemed really tedious and distracting along with the "I have diabetes" angle. It seems really tacked on, and it was really becoming annoying and frustrating to keep reading about these things when they really seemed detached from the core romantic plot. The best way we can describe it is like we want these two people to finally sleep together, but they're wearing inflatable T-Rex bodysuits over pirate costumes (figuratively). It just seems like there's so much unnecessary fluff and padding in the way. Sophia DeSensi is a very imaginative and capable writer. She's actually a previous OCA winner for the short story "Tiny Hearts" in Dragons of a Different Tail, one of the best stories in that collection. So, she's more than capable of producing compelling stories. In the end, Villainessly Blonde is a glossy, good-hearted mashup that shines in quiet character beats and winks at the spectacle machine, but it rarely commits long enough to any one lane to feel fully satisfying. Readers who enjoy character driven romance with caped flair and reality TV satire will find warmth, momentum, and a few memorable set pieces. Readers who want sustained superhero combat or a medical drama centered on type one diabetes will likely feel under served. It includes a promising concept, likable leads, and sharp observations about manufactured narratives, undercut by a scattered genre focus and light action. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)
The Cryonauts marks A.C. Kabukuru's huge return to the Outstanding Creator Awards after four years, back when Kabukuru became the first sci-fi author to enter and win an OCA contest! Before we go any deeper, we'll preface this by saying that this book is very thought-provoking and compelling. It tackles issues with real-world implications for the near-future. If you thought radio, cars, planes, smartphones, nukes, A.I., the Internet, and social media snuck up on us and rewrote the playbook on life, could you imagine what cheating death via cryogenics could do? The Cryonauts is the sequel to THAW, Kabukuru's previous book. Similar to the previous book, Cryonauts's strength is its world-building and thought-provoking questions, particularly in regard to the ethics and moral dilemmas of transhumanist cryonics and other such technologies that are almost certain to emerge in human society (if they haven't started to emerge already). This really gets at the core of what it means to be human. That's somewhat ironic because our biggest complaint about the book isn't the somewhat-meandering/wandering plot, the world-building, or anything like that. What really struck us is how inhuman and almost robotic a lot of the characters seemed to us. It's hard to explain or describe, but there are things they say and do that really seem alien, foreign, or unnatural to most of us living in the 21st century. For example, Dr. Gwen Quinn argues that reanimating a cryogenically frozen serial-killer named Iron Connor Linktree may not be that bad of an idea because death and NDEs (near-death experiences) like those that led to these people being frozen can cause people to change... or something like that. Saying that Linktree is a "serial-killer" is an oversimplification and doesn't do this argument justice. He isn't just a serial-killer, her is an outright monster. He was convicted in 2125 after participating in a robbery that escalated into the murder of Hans Davis followed by the kidnapping and killing of two witnesses who had been hiding and cowering behind a fruit stand: a 45-year-old woman and her 19-year-old daughter. And it's not like he just walked up to these two women and shot them in the back of the head. He held them captive for two hellish days in a restroom, probably without food or water, before doing so. These aren't the actions of a redeemable person. They are the actions of someone who deserves to go to hell. Yet, Gwen, one of the main characters and someone we're supposed to get behind, decides that reanimating this irredeemable, dangerous monster is fine. Kelley joins in with another alien-sounding response: “Look, the guy was sentenced to life in prison, and he spent his life in prison. He paid his debt. He should be given another chance.” When Owens tells them that Linktree may still be dangerous, Gwen tells him: "If. We don’t know what he’s going to do. Studies show people with near-death experiences demonstrate a complete change of attitude and outlook in the best possible way. I think there may be evidence to suggest this extends to those who go through actual death experiences and come back.” We'd love to ask what planet these people are on and how they can be so monumentally stupid, but... this is the future of Earth after all. Humanity is already becoming stupid. To us, these statements by Gwen and Kelley doesn't read as hopeful or enlightened. They read as disturbingly detached. It's like the book’s characters are stripped of the natural gut-level reactions that make us human. Instead of recoiling at horror, they theorize, rationalize, and intellectualize it. Sure, that creates a tension in the reading experience: the book is asking profound questions about life, death, and second chances. However, it sometimes does so at the cost of what we in the 21st century would classify as authentic and believable human emotion. Seriously, reading how these characters think and act is almost like observing an alien species. And perhaps that's intentional. The world, society, humanity, and the way that people think, act, and feel will surely change dramatically over the course of 150+ years. Everything seems disturbingly foreign, wrong, and backwards. For example, it's revealed that male children who are unfrozen are partially-starved (by having their food rations restricted) for the first four years, supposedly to prevent cardiovascular disease. George, who is more like us in this situation, finds this to be barbaric. Yet... it's scary how this kind of makes sense. If cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death, particularly in males, then wouldn't you want to do something to prevent it? What's extra terrifying is how apathetic Astra and Figure are about it, saying things like, "You can eat all you want at thirteen." Alpo outright says, "Life's not fair." Geez Luiz, are these supposed to be protagonists or are they members of the Panem Capital from The Hunger Games? It really gives you those apocalyptic, dystopian vibes. By the way, George was our favorite character from the previous book. He's more likable than some of the other characters in this book for sure, but he still kind of bothered us. His whole relationship with Priya is bizarre. Talk about foreign and alien... that relationship is like watching a Xenomorph and Predator perform a mating ritual. Priya is one of the most complex and conflicted characters in the book. She’s not just George’s partner, she’s also a linchpin inside Cryonicor, caught between loyalty, guilt, and personal choices that haunt her. Now we're just gonna come out and say it: what Priya did is F'd up and wrong. Essentially, she did what the crazy lady from Gone Girl did to herself. Like, come on, girl! Come on! What is wrong with you?! And what's wrong with Gwen, Kelley, and some of the other people in this book? They're out of their minds! You know what... maybe this book is trying to say something cautionary about science and technological advancement. Look at the Resident Evil series and how a pharmaceutical company (Umbrella Corp) went from making medicines for people to outright making bio-weapons and other monstrosities. It's kind of the same thing. Let's talk a little bit about some of the other odd things about the universe of this book: - Handshakes are out of fashion as a side-effect of pandemics - Breakfasts are out of fashion and everyone intermittent fasts (congratulations Ori Hofmekler, Martin Berkhan, and Brad Pilon... it worked) - Male kids have major food restrictions (as mentioned before) - They eat weird stuff like lab-grown fish, red corn (that somehow tastes like Flamin' Hot Cheetos), and rose water - There's a 10-year marriage contract, which we remembered from the previous book - Pregnancy is a luxury - There's a lot of virtual reality stuff - Cloning exists but is illegal - Reanimating happens (perpetrated by the main characters) but is technically illegal Oh, and there's still a U.S. Department of Basic Income, which we think was also in the previous book. How hilarious is that. The U.S. government going out of its way to make sure the little guy has enough to not be destitute and homeless. How thoughtful. We are tempted to almost say that this book doesn't have a plot in the traditional sense, but that's wouldn't be entirely accurate. Eventually, there are some big reveals and tension near the end, but a lot of this book is just reanimating different people and seeing what happens. You know what it reminded us of? Those hospital dramas like Grey’s Anatomy or ER where every week a new patient comes in with some strange condition, and the doctors, nurses, and staff not only treat the medical issue but also wrestle with the ethical, emotional, and relational fallout. The Cryonauts works in much the same way. Each revival is essentially a “case of the week” that forces the characters (and us as readers) to confront fresh questions about identity, grief, fairness, and what it really means to have a second chance. It's interesting to see how different characters respond to being reanimated. Do they feel lost? Do they feel kidnapped? Do they attempt suicide to escape the renewed experience of being human? Anyway, one of the great things about this book are the huge questions it forces us to chew on. Should a murderer be given another life? Is a person still the same after dying and coming back? What responsibilities does society have toward people who were preserved decades or centuries ago? And maybe the biggest one: if you could get a second chance, would you actually be ready to live it, or would you just be bringing your old baggage into a new world? Perhaps the passage that sums of the book is this one which explores the passage of time, which is ironically spoken to Linktree: "It's not about knowing who wins the super bowl or who becomes president. It's about winning that war with yourself earlier. Would you be able to tame your more destructive compulsions, balance adventure with stability, stay away from a certain element, lean in with all you have to the better parts of you? Let go of the wrong girl and hold on to the right one? It's a fantasy—a thought experiment with no answer, right? A way to flagellate ourselves with the whip of bitter regrets. Until now. Only we’re not going back—we’re going forward. A different kind of do-over.” Kayla is an interesting character. Kayla's situation is especially thought-provoking and compelling because she was frozen by her parents when she was brain dead with the hope that someday she could be revived and restored to full health. Ironically, her parents are already long dead and gone, meaning that she outlived them despite her terminal state. Strangely enough, this is something that someone actually thought about doing. Australian actor Clare McCann launched a public fundraiser to cryogenically preserve the body of her 13-year-old son, Atreyu, who had tragically passed away by suicide. She was asking for around $200,000–$300,000 to proceed with the preservation. Can you imagine that turning out good? Like, seriously. Think about it. Imagine if you froze a cancer patient, then unfroze them when a cure was found? That's truly trippy! The writing in this book is hit and miss at times. Sometimes, we get eloquent passages like the one that Mylo Goodstein gave to Linktree above. There's another great passage in which George reacts to Krystal not knowing what Netflix is because they're from different times: "Truthfully he felt sorry for himself too. What becomes of individual identity when shared culture is totally eroded? Still, it was nice being out with someone in his situation, even if they were from different times. He considered the wisdom in the old adage: birds of a feather flock together." At other times, you get these really awkward and unintentionally funny passages like: "'These people are, in fact, formerly living citizens who entered cryonic preservation upon death—and now walk among us.' He paused for dramatic effect. 'That is all.'” Wait, why would he pause for dramatic effect, then say "That is all." Wouldn't you pause for dramatic effect earlier in the speech? Or wouldn't you say something more afterward? Think about it. That's like putting a period after a period. Framed like this, it just reads like the guy ran out of things to say. Anyway, we enjoyed the world-building and the big questions this book raised. This book has not yet been released. Stay tuned... Review of "Blood Relations: A New World" (Audiobook) by Glenn Stevens, Narrated by Danielle LaRauf10/25/2025  Score: 89+/100 (8.9+ out of 10)
We can't believe it has been over two years since we first read the paperback version of Blood Relations: A New World by Glenn Stevens! Despite our mostly-mixed review of the ebook version, we were still very intrigued by the prospect of what the audiobook version might have in store. Maybe it could pack a bigger punch. Would the voice and performance of the narrator be able to engage us and bring these characters and their emotions to life? Would we feel differently about characters like Eros, Elizabeth, Camillia, Linda, Jessica, Christine, and Laurie? And what about the spicy content? Would it sound awkward and out of place in audiobook format or would it be more meaningful and impactful? The same for the vampirism and extraterrestrial elements... Would the audiobook format allow for a greater suspension of disbelief than words on a page? Well, our experiences and opinions were once again mixed. Does the audiobook have some bright spots? Absolutely. Does the book/audiobook still have a bunch of issues? Yes. We'll get to those. But, first, we'll say this: we have a much greater appreciation for Eros as a character and this story as a whole than we previously did. We especially have more appreciation for the character of Camillia, who just seemed a lot more likable and special this time around. The relationship between Eros and Camillia was substantially more impactful, interesting, and emotionally resonant this time around. In fact, we'd argue that their arc—their part of the story—is the best in the entire book! Seriously, from the time that annoying Elizabeth was removed from the story to Camillia's twilight years in Medieval Romania, this book went from a 8.4 out of 10 to about a 9.2 out of 10—that's a huge difference! It's unfortunate that the book overstayed its welcome, became redundant, and dragged on and on and on and on until it lost most of its momentum by the end. If it hadn't been for the wonky, lower-quality stuff at the beginning, compounded by the really tedious, drawn-out last two quarters, this book would've probably scored much higher. And we're serious about that. If this book were tweaked and refined by a dedicated team with some beta readers and proofreaders, it would be a much higher quality work. With that said, we did notice some substantial improvements in our experiences listening to this audiobook in 2025 compared to reading the ebook in 2023. First and foremost, Eros is a much better character and a much better person than we remember him being. He's actually not the womanizing, brutal, self-serving parasitic monster we remember him being. In fact, he's actually heroic, romantic, kind, and compassionate, at least most of the time. Eros actually cares about people, especially the different women he forms relationships with throughout his long, long life. But his compassion and love also extends to humanity as a whole, especially for the most vulnerable and in need. We appreciated that. ________________________________________ WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD ________________________________________ For example, in one of the most exciting parts of the book, Eros risks his life and everything he has (including his relationship with Camillia) in an attempt to save the king's sick and dying son. But he not only does this to save the prince, he does this to save the doctor and the doctor's wife, Nicoletta, who are both scheduled to be executed/sacrificed by the king's men for their failure to cure the prince. Eros really could've just left all three of them to die and went on his merry way with Camillia, but he didn't. He didn't because doing so would've been cruel, cold, and wrong. Eros actually has a conscience and a moral compass, which is something we appreciated about his character. Are there times he annoyed and frustrated us? Of course. But it was nowhere near as bad as we remember it being the first time we read this. Another thing we liked about this book, particularly this Medieval Romania section, is that it actually demonstrates some literary/storytelling competency. The relationship and feelings between Eros and Nicoletta are perfectly paralleled by the relationship and feelings between Camillia and Prince Albert. In fact, you could even say that Eros-Nicoletta foreshadows Camillia-Albert. The same jealousy that Eros feels about Albert is the same jealousy that Camillia had once felt about Nicoletta. (As an aside: Speaking of foreshadowing, it's interesting to note how it's subtly revealed that Camillia wants to be a queen even before she meets Prince Albert because of precognitions/visions that Camillia and Eros share). There's actually a layer of sophistication to the dynamics between Camillia, Albert, Eros, and Nicoletta. Furthermore, it's another example of Eros learning to feel and experience human feelings and emotions. The first major time we saw this was when Eros learned what death was via Elizabeth's passing. He realizes that humans don't come back to life the same way that his species/vampires do. Now, in perfect honesty, the way that whole scene plays out is painfully awkward. It's clunky, weird, unnatural and pretty difficult to buy into. One moment, Elizabeth is running in saying that the wolves are attacking all the chickens, the next moment she turns against Eros, then the next moment she's dead. Camillia is all mourning initially, somewhat like you'd expect considering that her mom just died, killed by her lover/best friend, but then she awkwardly gets sidetracked noticing that Eros is emotional about her mom's death. She then says a bunch of things that just don't play out well. We may need to paraphrase because, obviously, we can't see the text via audiobook, but it's something like: "Eros, when we die, we don't come back like you do. How do you not know that already?" And, perhaps most painfully awkward of all, Camillia stops her mourning and lamentations in mid-tear to say something to Eros like, "Oh, Eros. This is the first time you've seen death, huh? I've lost my brothers and father and now my mother. But this is your first time experiencing and learning what death is." Gosh, if we have to hear "Oh, Eros" one more time, we're gonna run through a wall. Over and over and over again, characters are saying "Oh, Eros." We understand that the effects of the venom might be impacting the characters' feelings and making their thoughts cloudy and their speech flowery, but it gets really grating after awhile. Oh, and by the way, the characters spend an inordinate amount of time apologizing and saying "I'm so sorry" to Eros. It just seems really unnatural and bizarre. It also has the ill effect of making Eros seem like even more of an insufferable Gary Stu, which becomes even worse as Eros because ultra wealthy later. Anyway, after Elizabeth dies, Camillia then proceeds to coddle and comfort Eros as if HE'S the one whose mom just got mauled and killed. One of the notes by one of our reviewers literally reads "Girl, your mom just died!!! How the hell do you care more about Eros being sad than your mom dying?!" Oh, and by the way, remember that the wolves just attacked like ten minutes ago. Does anyone care or even remember the wolves? Hello, Camillia, Eros... you might want to close the door or not stand out in the open staring at Elizabeth's corpse, there are apparently bloodthirsty wolves out there. Now, we will digress a little and say that the wolves are eventually mentioned again. Camillia uses them as a convenient excuse to give Prince Albert about what happened to her mom. It just seems weird though. Like, one moment the wolves are there raising hell, the next moment it's like they're an afterthought or don't even matter. There are several really awkward, weird, and unnatural-seeming moments like that. For example, after Camillia gets bitten/attacked, and another bout of drama gets stirred up between Elizabeth, Camillia, and Eros, Camillia suddenly starts having visions and says something along the lines of, "Oh, my God! I see your world and your people. Oh, my God! There are these big, scary clawed monsters! Oh, Eros!" And then the three of them go from all this tension, arguing, and fighting to peaceful and calm all of a sudden. And it wouldn't be half bad if we didn't just have a scene in which Eros already bit Camillia and the three of them already had a similar argument. It feels redundant and unnecessary, like the author was trying to buy time to figure out what he wanted to write about next. Things like that happen between Linda, Christine, and Laurie. It's like a repetition of the same drama in a different dress. Same drama, different day. There's a conversation that Eros has with Laurie that is pretty much the same explanation and information we've already been given about a half-dozen times. Like, why? There are a bunch of things like that in this book. Like, for example, what the heck was the point of Eros being an alien and having vampiric alien enemies called Scorpius led by an evil alien brother named Caleb? It doesn't seem to fit or play into the rest of the story at all. And what happened to Dr. Tula and Caroline? They're there, then they're gone. And Caleb? Evil alien brother Caleb? Where is he? We hear briefly about crop circles and some alien stuff, but... If that whole section about the extraterrestrial stuff was omitted or removed, almost nothing would be different about the rest of the book. If the author wanted to have that be Eros's backstory, it would've been better to save that and slowly reveal it later in the book. You know like how we eventually learned that Goku was a Saiyan later in Dragon Ball Z after a load of hints were dropped in Dragon Ball (like his super strength and having a tail)? It would've preserved the mystery aspect of this story. It would've also saved us from the painfully bad and awkward opening chapters, which might scare off readers who would otherwise love the Eros-Camillia arc. We'll talk later about why we disliked the opening chapters so much. Oh, and by the way, Caleb threatens to tear Eros's ship apart piece by piece, then come aboard and take what's left. Think about that for a moment... if you tear a spacecraft apart piece by piece, how are you going to come aboard it? It's a serious lapse in logic. Imagine if someone told you they were going to tear your car apart piece by piece, then carjack it and try to drive it. What sense would that make? Eros also says "we're sitting ducks out here!" despite the fact that they've never been to Earth and would have no idea what ducks are. So much of this book seems really off. So many times we found ourselves asking ourselves: Who would do that? Who talks like that? What sense does that make? And a lot of that can probably be explained by the effects of Eros's venom and plot convenience, but some of it just seems like sloppy or poorly thought out writing. For example, if Eros feels like he weighs 15 or so pounds and his venom gives others (not himself) superstrength and pseudo-magical feelings/benefits, then how does he so easily overpower Prince Albert? He doesn't just overpower Prince Albert, he absolutely dominates the fight and busts open his arm like he's Superman all of a sudden. And keep in mind that Prince Albert should probably be feeling the strength-boost from the venom. What makes this even more awkward is that Camillia seems oblivious throughout the beginning of the fight/beatdown. She still thinks she's engaging in lovemaking with Albert with her eyes closed or something. Like... she doesn't hear the two dudes throwing down and struggling? That doesn't seem to make much sense. Another thing that doesn't make sense are the anachronisms and speech, elements, figures, and events that just don't fit the time periods the book is supposed to be taking place in. Characters in Medieval Romania talk about blood transfusions, which weren't invented yet. There's a very specific reference to the guillotine (to be used on the doctor and Nicoletta), which wasn't invented until the late 1700s. Elizabeth oddly talks like a modern woman a lot of the time, saying thing like, "Can you two, like, not sit so close to each other?" There's a scene in which Linda says (regarding Eros), "I've never seen him so unresponsive before," which is actually a really weird thing for her to say, logically, because she has known him for years and has almost definitely seen him cold, unconscious, sleeping, and hibernating probably dozens of times by now. This statement is probably not true, and, like a lot of this book, just seems to be there to fill space and buy time for other things to happen. And speaking of Linda... when you really think about it, other than maybe Caleb (and the random people who randomly shoot Eros, and the random husband who randomly shoots Jessica), Linda is the main villain of the book. She's like Dr. Doom. She's a mad scientist who becomes possessed by ambition. The author may or may not have intended it, but Linda has very villainous/antagonistic tendencies. She clearly manipulates Eros to advance her research. She tries to force herself on other female characters, albeit under the influence of the venom. You could consider her an anti-hero/anti-villain. Christine is a pleasant character, our vote for "Hottest Character" in the book. She's a gorgeous blonde lesbian who is encouraged by Eros to run for governor of the state of Florida for LGBTQ+ rights by Eros, which is one of the shining moments for Eros's character (acting unselfishly). Eros lavishes her with gifts include a free home (staying at the resort with her girlfriend, Samantha) and all the food and drinks she wants. Laurie could be a pleasant character, sharing a special bond with Eros and appearing to be the reincarnation of Princess Camillia, but her redundant expositional conversation with Eros (as we alluded to earlier) is a low point of this book. And she comes into this book at the point where we were almost clocked out and our attention spans were fried. By the way, this book is WAY TOO LONG. It's like 600 pages long. And so much of it seems fluffy, redundant, or unnecessary. It was really testing our endurance and patience. Oh, and by the way, Jessica gets shot by her husband, and that's a whole thing that happened in the middle of this book for some reason... You could argue it was foreshadowing Laurie's domestic abuse, but... It kinda seemed like more fluff. Anyway, back to Laurie... her conversation with Eros repeats so much information we already knew. For comparison's sake, at least when Eros talked to Christine for the first time, she told him (and the audience) a lot of the science behind why Eros is the way he is and why people (especially women) respond to his venom like they do. There seemed to be a point. It was technical and a bit overly long like the rest of this book, yes, but it had a point. There's something about Laurie that seems so tacked-on-in-a-later-draft. And then we get these whole sections of the book about Christine, Linda, and Laurie's lesbianism/bisexuality. We are almost 60 chapters into this overly-long book and the women are having a hot and heavy lesbian moment over a medium rare steak. This book jumped the shark one too many times. Scratch that, it didn't just jump the shark, it jumped an ocean full of them. And then there's a whole sub-plot about how the venom and the oxytocin in the blood make the women "more lesbian" or more bisexual or something. Like... 58-60 chapters in... shouldn't Eros be fighting Caleb and preventing a Scorpius invasion right now? Instead, the book just keeps droning on and on with no end in sight. The last ten chapters or so is like when your mother-in-law visits "for the day" but decides to move in for the summer. Like, this book desperately needed to wrap up like 100+ pages earlier. It became tedious and cloying. This audiobook narrator, Danielle LaRouf must have the patience of a saint. We commend her for it. She had to read a lot of this for like 30+ hours with a straight face, even when reading lines like, "We're going to tear your ship apart piece by piece, then come aboard and take what's left" and "More oxytocin equals more lesbian, right?" LaRouf definitely deserves some credit for not giving up and sticking with it. Reading aloud for that long is the opposite of easy. We will say that she started this book off sounding really uncomfortable, nervous, and shaky. It's like she was wrestling and getting used to the wonky, bumpy content along with the reader. She definitely improved and picked up her game with time. In fact, when she started doing the accents for different characters like Linda (who has a southern accent), she really shined. She also did a pretty good job voicing Eros, a male character. Now, there were times when Eros sounded different. There were times when he sounded like a gruff middle-aged man, and there were times when he sounded like a boy despite being 10,000+ years old. We think that's more to do with how certain lines and passages in the book are written. One example we can think of is how the book says that a character "screamed" but what follows is a relatively flat "Oh, my God" from the narration. Speaking of screaming, we still had a big laugh about the line: “...the woman screams so loud during orgasm the entire floor claps when it's over.” That line never gets old. Anyway, this book does have a lot of good things we want to highlight. We already talked about how Eros seems to be a better and more caring person this time around. Another thing we really liked about this book is how seemingly bad, toxic, cruel, or villainous characters like Linda, Nicoletta, the King, Prince Albert, and others got opportunities to show their other sides. No one is purely evil nor purely good. They all exist on a spectrum. Linda has the potential to be caring, and a part of her does seem to love/care about Eros. Nicoletta, who initially seemed to be a hated rival to Camillia, turns out to be abused and misunderstood. Her husband, the doctor, who once seemed friendly and benevolent, actually turns out to be abusive and also an adulterer. The King, who once wanted to have the doctor and his wife killed just because they couldn't cure his son, turns out to be a broken-hearted and desperate father who wants the best for his kid. He even saves the day at one point. Prince Albert is a character we grew to appreciate and like. He really started off as a heel. He was very villainous and antagonistic, getting between Camillia and Eros, pressuring Camillia while seemingly trying to get rid of Eros. However, he undergoes this incredible character arc in which he sees Eros as a valued partner. In fact, he tries to keep his promise to Camillia to give Eros resources for his research and later helps Eros on his quest aboard the Opportunity (ship) to find a place with a warmer climate. That's quite special. We really wish the book was just that story arc—the time between annoying Elizabeth dying and discovering Florida aboard the Opportunity. Unfortunately, it started off in the messiest way possible, then dragged on way too long in the second half. ______________________________________ SPOILERS END ______________________________________ If you're open-minded, patient, and love romantic, erotic, edgy vampire stories, this might be the audiobook for you! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
Do you remember the first time you rode a bike without training wheels? The first time you swam without floaties? Or how about when you moved out of the home to go to college or get married? Carried by Wings by Tuula Pere beautifully encapsulates this experience, capturing the fear, anxiety, hope, and excitement of stepping out on your own for the first time. Carried by Wings follows Walter, a baby condor who is afraid of growing up and leaving the nest, especially if it means flying. Walter does everything he can to avoid growing and flying, eating less and choosing to use his feet to venture out on the ground. His fears seemed to be confirmed when his fast-growing brother, Arthur, leaves the nest and is never seen again. Did he fall? Did he fly away successfully? Walter assumes the worst. And he doesn't want to suffer a failure and a fall too. Perhaps you or your children can relate! Life is challenging and scary at times, especially when you've never done something before. Mistakes, errors, and accidents are fairly normal when you're trying something for the first time. Have you had a close call while learning to drive? Did it take more than one attempt to get your license? Well, Walter is going through the same thing. Who can blame him? Now, there was a part of us that considered that Walter's fear of flying and growing up is a little extreme. We considered if he might have agoraphobia or gerascophobia. It's up to the reader to speculate. In any case, we all have fears and phobias, so who's to judge and look down on Walter for having them? Anyway, while Walter can be a bit frustrating, it's hard not to feel for him and root for him. And what's really special about this book is how compassionate, encouraging, and understanding Walter's condor parents are. Yes, they try to get him to fly and progress in life, but they also want the best for him and respect his mental health. There's a particularly touching scene in which Walter's dad, after he pretty much runs away from home, tells him he can stay as long as he needs to until he is ready. And, as you might expect, the ending is inspiring and triumphant. We also appreciated the illustrations by Catty Flores, who has been a frequent winner in our contests alongside Pere! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
Are you up for a corporate thriller centered around a chemical plant disaster? Hazardous Lies is a novel full of political intrigue and real-world environmental and human ramifications? Do you remember when the Exxon Valdez blackened Prince William Sound? When Deepwater Horizon burned on live TV? Or when East Palestine, Ohio, endured a hazardous derailment followed by a controversial controlled burn? That is the kind of real-world weight this corporate thriller carries. Author Stephen Wallace has walked the talk, a real-life engineer who has led several investigations at chemical plants, refineries, and laboratories. While this book is fictitious, Wallace still manages to provide a rare, authentic, first-hand glimpse into what it must be like to be involved in one of these investigations, investigations that often seem to be swept under the rug or ignored by the media. There was no one better equipped to pen this story. Speaking of the story... Hazardous Lies opens before dawn with a blast at a Charleston chemical plant, apparently the result of an accident. The proceeding fire spreads into a catastrophe that claims at least three lives. A newly minted federal investigator, Jon Barrett, is sent to sort out “what happened” and discovers the better question is “who benefits.” Executives rehearse talking points. Politicians circle. A reporter won’t let go. And somewhere inside the smoke and paperwork is a missing young man with the wrong last name for this to stay quiet. As Jon pulls threads, the case widens from ruptured steel to ruptured trust--permits, contractors, and decisions that looked efficient on paper and lethal in practice. The science feels lived-in, the politics feel familiar, and the human cost is never decoration. Chapter by chapter, the vice tightens with interviews that become interrogations, conflicting timelines, altered logs, and pressure from above. By the time the truth surfaces, it’s clear the real ignition source isn’t just chemical, it’s institutional. This book ultimately has a lot going for it that keeps it above a 9 out of 10. However, the first 80 or so pages really lost us for a bit. They're really plodding, slow, and mundane, especially for the opening to a thriller that involves such a dramatic incident. Keep in mind: the chemical plant is burning in the background for most of these initial pages, yet characters are sitting and standing around having conversations over morning coffee. The one that stuck out in our minds was: “How’s everything going, Craig?” “Okay.” “Good. You’re pretty close to retiring, as I recall.” The sense of urgency, shock, and horror that should be evident in everyone's voices just isn't there. It really seems like just another day in the office. And perhaps that's the point... Perhaps it's safe to assume that power-hungry, corrupt people who sweep the truth under the rug every day do become desensitized to these things after awhile. One of the best ways we've found to describe this book is that it starts like molasses and proceeds like wine. ------------------------------------------------ WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD ----------------------------------------------- Mr. Alister Cain Quinn, the most powerful man in the Chemtifuge corporation, is such a man. He is someone who is so deeply entrenched in his pursuit of wealth over human life and safety that he seems numb to any pain, suffering, and death it might cause. The book does little to give readers the idea that Quinn is anyone but a terrible and tyrannical corporate big wig. The book also goes out of its way to point out the significance of his first name, alluding to the biblical first murderer. It also doesn't help that he idolizes Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist, who he reveres as "the wickedest man in the world." The surprise in the end does somewhat flesh Quin out and humanize him slightly. For most of the book, Quinn is a ruthless monster who constantly pressures his lawyers and PR people to lie for him and twist the truth. Everyone in the company seems to be afraid of him to the point where even a security guard at the end of the book is rattled by the mention of his name. And he's not above cutting corners and outright getting people killed. Charlie Branch is another interesting character who adds some humanity to this book. He is a bit like a moral and ethical counterweight to Quinn despite being a part of his organization and thus a part of the beast. Charlie is Chemtifuge's HR manager he helps stage press logistics and plays corporate gatekeeper, but he’s also the first to show visible misgivings. When Jon returns to the site, Charlie initially tries to keep Quinn out of it by having security escort Jon off, an attempt to defuse things before Quinn. He's very often the one who invites Quinn to find less vicious and vile alternatives including trying to save Jon's life. He plays the role of the conflicted character within the organization, a bit like Reeve from Final Fantasy VII (Reeve is a member of Shinra Inc's board of directors while also combatting the evil company). He's proof that not everyone at (or near) the top of the company is evil. Some are just scared. Some are just doing their jobs. Some of them are just trying to save their careers. But Charlie has a deeper sense of empathy concerning human costs not just as the HR manager but because his wife is dying of late-stage cancer throughout the book, possibly from exposure to chemicals (we're assuming). He knows the costs because he's actively experiencing them. There's another aspect of this book that we really appreciated: the attention to the victims. Even though the victims of the chemical plant fire aren't named until very late in the book, Jon (and the reader) are encouraged to never forget them. We are told things like: "Three guys lay in graves, and all the local press could do was obsess about some illicit romance and racy emails between politicians." And it's true. How often do victims of crimes and horrific events get overshadowed by the perpetrators, criminals, and other drama? It's enough to die and die horribly, but it's worse to have your memory and story be suppressed and silenced. James, one of the victims, is one such case. It turns out that he's related to one of the biggest red-herrings who is seemingly always lingering in the background of this book. In other words: it's personal. James wasn't just a nameless, faceless victim. James (and the other victims) was a human being with a mother, a brother, a sister, and an aunt who all want answers and justice for him. And Jon is seemingly the only person able to give them answers and justice. Jon is fleshed out and humanized throughout the book as well. One of the most powerful character moments for him is when he calls his ex-wife, Tammy, and tells her: "But Tammy, I feel like I’m alone. Nobody in the agency supports me. I don’t even know if it’s worth it anymore. I mean, who really cares about what happened? It’s not going to bring anybody back. I think I’m the only one who cares about this, and I don’t even know if I do any more. The local press has zero interest. My boss speaks in code at work. If I had somewhere else to go, I would.” You can really feel the storm in Jon's mind, spirit, and soul. And it's hard not to relate with him. He's trying to do the right thing, but no one is supporting him. In fact, it seems like the powers-that-be are actively conspiring and working against him. Imagine being him. Imagine being the person tasked with solving a huge problem, but every time you try to solve it, people do everything they can to make it hard for you. That's frustrating! And it has to be discouraging for Jon. He actually has a pseudo-religious epiphany/arc near the end of the book in which he starts to attend church, trying to remind himself that right is right, justice will prevail, and good will ultimately win. _________________________________ SPOILERS END _________________________________ Another thing we appreciated about this book is how much we learned about chemicals and these chemical plants. Who would've thought! Here's one of our favorite little passages about the chemical industry: "Most everything you do every day is the result of the chemical industry. From your alarm clock to your sheets to your makeup. You flip on the light, electricity comes from utility plants... Even if we go to alternative fuels, industry will still be involved. It takes iron, steel, and paint to make things like wind turbines. Crude oil’s used in everything from pesticides to food coloring, to medicine, to that perfume you’re wearing." You can really tell how passionate and knowledgeable Wallace is about this stuff. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
What happens after all the pain, the loss, and the trauma? How does one return to a sense of normalcy after experiencing a horrific event that is everything but normal? Most books about the Holocaust tend to focus on the time before and during the concentration camps—the attempts to hide, escape, endure, and survive. They tend to linger on the ghettos and the camps themselves. This book is dramatically different as it focuses on the aftermath, the limbo where survival begins all over again. The time in which one struggles to find answers. Set in the uneasy calm right after liberation, the novel follows 14-year-old Daniel in a British-run hospital and later a DP setting as he fights through nightmares, survivor’s guilt, and the fragile work of trusting people again. Dorbian keeps the focus tight and humane: small kindnesses from caregivers, a wary friendship with an older Gentile survivor, and the simple miracle of flowers in a courtyard become lifelines rather than ornaments. The book’s power is how ordinary moments carry extraordinary weight. Instead of sensationalizing trauma, it patiently tracks healing as a sequence of choices, stumbles, and second chances. That restraint makes the breakthroughs land harder, and it turns a historical backdrop into a personal reckoning the reader can feel. We follow Daniel as he forms unlikely friendships, joins a ramshackle theater troupe, and, slowly, rebuilds a family and a self. The author frames this choice of focus as an intentional corrective: for many survivors, the “true test of survival began after the camps.” That’s the lens that makes this story feel fresh and necessary. When we meet Daniel, he’s still recovering physically and psychologically. Under the care of Doctor Edwardson and Nurse Margaret, he’s fragile: dysentery, nightmares, and the jittery vigilance trauma hardwires into the body. In the hospital garden, the fragrance of lilacs and gladiolas triggers a flood of pre-war memory, spring days in Tante Masha’s yard in Libau. That sensory hinge, the lilacs, becomes the novel’s emotional key, beauty that presses through grief. Here Daniel meets Tomas Silka, an older German gentile who survived Neuengamme. Silka’s urbanity, kindness, and mildly theatrical charm (he kisses hands, he flatters) disarm Daniel, complicating any easy binaries of “perpetrator” and “victim.” Their friendship, sometimes close and sometimes distant, becomes one of Daniel’s lifelines. _____________________________________ SPOILERS OMITTED _____________________________________ Our gut feeling about this book was that, compared to the plethora of Holocaust books we've read over the years, this one seemed a little more flat. We originally approached this book as purely a work of fiction with the author having complete and total creative control. That left us a bit bummed that the life-or-death tension we were expecting from a Holocaust novel just didn't seem to be there. However, we had a few realizations that assuaged the way we felt and forced us to adjust. First of all, it was revealed that Daniel and his experiences aren't entirely fictitious and are loosely based on the experiences of the author's father. That actually adds a bit more weight behind what we read. It's a reminder to readers that you can't shoehorn the experiences of all Holocaust survivors into one box. In fact, the experiences of every survivor are unique and different. Each and every one of them has their own version and their own story to tell--joining a haunting symphony of voices who once cried out for the world to hear. And here's their chance to be heard--heard, understood, and recognized in their totality. Their memories, experiences, struggles, and triumphs won't be tucked away and swept under the rug. They'll be remembered from beginning, middle, and end. The author could've gone down the normal route of focusing on the suffering and struggles inside the ghettos and the camps, but they didn't. Instead, the author gave us a fresh take: the life afterward. In a sense, this is commendable. We can now better appreciate the part of the Holocaust that doesn't get explored and talked about as much. The author chose the path less taken, accepting the challenge of writing about the part of the trauma that lingers years and even decades later. And, perhaps just as importantly, it's an inspirational and encouraging story for others who've been through traumatic events. It's a reminder that healing and reconciliation are possible. Ultimately, this book is a powerful reminder for the ignorant and uneducated (the deniers) that the Holocaust was a real event with real victims and survivors, a number of which is getting smaller by the day. These victims and survivors aren't solely defined by these awful things that happened to them and their people. They are brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, shop workers, coffee drinkers, animal lovers, artists, writers, and theater performers. They are human beings. We may have not enjoyed all of this book, but we applaud that message. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95+ to 96/100 (9.5+ to 9.6 out of 10)
Sally Kashner, our Iron Author of Children's Books in this contest, never ceases to amaze us! Cora's Magic Melodies is yet another phenomenal installment in the Cora Can children's book series which has already won two separate OCA contests, making Kashner an Ultimate Champion both times and the only children's book author to achieve a 9.6 score multiple times. Sure, the art by Remesh Ram is bright, vibrant, and colorful again. And, sure, the characters are cute and likable again. But there's something else about Kashner's children's books (beyond the illustrations) that we love... it's finding joy, inspiration, and adventure in the unlikeliest of places and in the unlikeliest of scenarios. When we first met Cora, the titular character, in Cora's Christmas Challenge, she wasn't some spunky, natural-born leader, adventurer, or go-getter, instead she was a bored little girl on a day off from school during the holidays. She had to be challenged to go out and find adventure, hence the name of that book. Then, in the second book, Cora's Garden Rescue, she acted to restore the neighborhood garden not because she was a passionate gardener or botanist, but because she saw how much the garden meant to her grandmother and the community. In this book, Cora's Magic Melodies, Cora discovers the love and magic of music, first through her grandma's old guitar, then through the instruments and singing of other people. She discovers that music can be a harmonizing, unifying force that brings people together and lifts whole communities! And it happens really organically. It's not like Cora picks up a guitar one day and automatically becomes a master at playing it. It's not like she picks up a guitar one day and--per plot convenience--it suddenly becomes her thing. In fact, Cora struggles initially and almost becomes discouraged or put off by the fact that the strumming of the guitar hurts her fingers, something which (as her grandma educates her about ) guitarists eventually get used to. And she doesn't realize initially how much of an impact her playing can have until she starts playing for different people (and groups of people). For example, she plays for Nurse Emily and her patients to make the hospital environment less stressful (as music can be a great stress reliever). And, in one of our favorite scenes, she plays for Mr. Winston, the night watchman. Something we really liked about that scene is how it's implied that Mr. Winston was initally not having a great night. He looked either bored, overwhelmed, or maybe even a little bummed out about his job (or life). However, when Cora starts playing for him, he actually sits down and listens to her, smiling. Cora brings a smile to everyone's faces! Mr. Winston and Nurse Emily appear to make cameos later on in the book, participating in Cora's community concert, which really shows continuity and how these weren't just throw away characters. They were actually so moved by Cora and her music that they actually participated in playing music (or singing) afterward. This book also introduces us to other characters in Cora's life who we weren't so familar with from the other books. For example, we see more of Cora's parents and her little brother. Now, we sort of remember her mother from the first book but don't remember her dad and little brother at all. Grandma also continues to have a positive impact on Cora's life. She's much more cheerful and happy than she was at the beginning of the second book, which again demonstrates continuity. We also get a few new facial expressions from Cora that we hadn't seen before like when she gives a clever and coy smile on page 17 upon drafting some plans. Oh, and the orange tabby cat from book two and the squirrel from book one return for a cameo during the concert. In all honesty, we wish they were in more of this book. The featured animal of this book appears to be a blue bird. He frequents the pages and even has a section at the end dedicated to him (and blue bird facts). It's notable that a lot of this book takes place at night, which leads to some scenes being darker in terms of lighting and color, especially in the background, but that's a plus instead of a negative. It really helps this book to stand out as unique from the other two. The community concert scene with all the characters and animals is one of our favorite scenes ever in an OCA book. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
A Chasm of Night is the climactic final installment of the Shadow Bidder fantasy series by Peter Eliott! What a journey it has been! These three books have had their ups and downs, twists and turns, dark moments and light moments. There have been times when we've hated Vazeer the Lash and times when we loved him. There have been aspects of this series that have bothered and disturbed us—mostly the unfairness, cruelty, and injustice of the society in which the characters live—and aspects that endeared themselves to us like the intense action scenes, life-or-death stakes, and Vazeer's cleverness. A Chasm of Night is a fitting conclusion to a fantastic series. We'd dare say it's the best book in entire trilogy! But what makes it so good? Well, unlike the two previous books, it really feels full, complete, and concluded. There was something a little off about the two other books. There was a lot of meandering. There was a lot of seeming randomness. Furthermore, Vazeer would go on these tangents about seemingly insignificant things like objects and art he owned. But perhaps the worst thing about the previous book was that there were a lot of loose ends and plot-threads sprinkled in there that seemingly went nowhere. Making it more aggravating is the fact that we had major things hanging in the air like the ultimate fates of Nascinthe, who got sent off to God-knows-where, and Flerra Tellian, who was apparently tortured to death. That really, really, really bothered us, especially since it seemed like Vazeer moved on with his life, his art collecting, and his bidding after these terrible, awful things which we really thought should have affected him more. Not only did it seem to leave a lot of holes in the plot, but it also made the main protagonist seem cold and uncaring. Perhaps the scene that bothered us the most in the previous book was when Vazeer seemed calm, controlled, and almost stoic in dealing with the main villain, Ulan Gueritus (AKA "the Raving Blade"), only reacting emotionally when the Raving Blade threatened to take his favorite statute/work of art. The reason this pissed us off so much is that we reflected on all the terrible things that Ulan Gueritus had done to people whom Vazeer supposedly loved and/or cared about, and yet it's an inanimate object that gets a rise out of him? Not a good look for the supposedly-heroic protagonist. Well, we were elated to find that practically everything gets wrapped up in a neat little bundle with a nice little bow in this book. All of that wasn't a waste of time after all. It was building to something. It was building to this. Practically everything comes full-circle in the best possible ways. There are consequences, reasons, explanations, and a point to just about everything that happened in the trilogy. For example, it turns out that the statue the Raving Blade was threatening to take represented much more than just an inanimate, lifeless work of art. It represented the Old Age/Golden Age--a time ruled by strong females like the woman depicted (Queen Giradera) and, perhaps more importantly, when creativity and imagination reigned supreme. The statue represents a renaissance that Vazeer (an idealist and a renaissance man) dreams about and wants to bring back. It's like a beacon of hope to him--a lighthouse in the middle of a dark, dreary, and dreadful sea of cruelty and depravity. Think of it this way: Vazeer is like an enlightened genius living in Medieval times, dreaming of a Renaissance period in the future--a time when people like him can finally be free and feel wanted. It's weird how that never quite clicked with us before. Why? Well, because we didn't have the conversation between Vazeer and the equally-idealistic Count Halsin Tygean that occurs in this third book. This conversation might seem mundane, but it actually explains a lot. Both Vazeer and Count Tygean envision a world that is once again ruled by the thinkers rather than the stinkers. They envision a world with less bloodshed and fighting and more attention given to the arts, discovery, and ingenuity. In a lot of way, Tygean kinda reminded us of Count Filippo di Santa Rosa from The Legend of the Extraordinary Writers by Emiliano Forino Procacci. He's like the older politician who embodies the very ideals and virtues that the protagonist(s) aspires to bring to fruition. ______________________________________________________ WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD ______________________________________________________ And remember when we said that everything comes full-circle? Well, the Swell Driver (storm) from the previous book actually continues to influence and come into play in this book. For example, Droden Sailwain boats and business were severely impacted by it, which somewhat softens him up and gives him more time, patience, and attention for Vazeer. It can be assumed that the boats of Holod Deadskiff and others were impacted by the Swell Driver as well. Don't you love continuity? Don't you love when things pay off? Don't you love when things that happened in previous books aren't forgotten and swept under the rug, or worst yet: conveniently retconned? Speaking of continuity, a lingering character/plot point has haunted us since the first book. And when we say "haunted" we mean it has bothered us so much that it has noticeably hampered our enjoyability of much of the series. And that character/plot point is Flerra Tellian's torture and death. A lot of characters are tortured and killed throughout the series (in fact, this book probably features the most, particularly in the final act), but what bothered us the most about Flerra Tellian's is that she wasn't just any other character, she was one of the closest and dearest people in Vazeer's life, and she trusted him to look after and take care of her like a little sister would trust a big brother. Yes, we know they're "Brood Siblings" but their bond was undeniable. We were so upset that she was removed from this series in such a horrific and unceremonious way, then seemingly never had a role again. Well, thankfully, Flerra Tellian plays a role in this book in numerous ways. And guess what? The Swell Driver has something to do with it. So, more continuity and payoff. But not only does Flerra Tellian play a direct role in this book, she also plays an indirect role in how she affects Vazeer. It turns out that he's haunted by what happened to her as well, but has just been repressing it. After all, the name of the game is survival in Hell's Labyrinth, and how can you survive if you're weighed down by emotions? Well, one of the things that really bothered us about Vazeer was how stoic, robotic, and inhuman he often seemed in previous books. At times, he acted more like some AI museum curator than a human being with actual feelings and emotions. We know that's weird to say, but you'd have to have experienced this series the way that we did. Vazeer started this series off as a pretty cold and unfeeling person. He was a mercenary-for-hire (Shadow Bidder), a murderous bastard, a trained killer desensitized to gore and death. Or so he seemed... The (apparent) death of Flerra Tellian and having to send the love of his life, Nascinthe, away definitely had a profound impact on him. In this book, he's noticeably more... human. He's emotional. He's reflective. He's contemplative. He's regretful. He's self-depracating. And he genuinely seems to love and care about people. This is ironic because, leading up to his long-awaited climactic showdown with the Raving Blade, he repeatedly tells himself and others that he's a monster and that he's inhuman because of the hate and thirst for gory vengeance he feels. The irony is that, in that moment, he is perhaps more human and more compassionate than ever before in his entire life. Why? Well, because he doesn't hate and want to dismember the Raving Blade just because he's a hired killer or because he loves killing, he hates and wants to kill the Raving Blade because of a profound sense of love and care for people and society. He knows all the horrible, terrible, awful things the Raving Blade has done and will continue to do to people he loves and cares about (like Flerra, Nascinthe, and Terza Falconbrow). He knows that the Raving Blade, as the new overlord, would not only spread more death and cruelty, but also spread his corruption over the identity and culture of society, keeping the world in the Dark Ages and further from the Renaissance he has always dreamed about. And, perhaps most critically, he knows that the chances of him surviving are very low. This is a sacrifice. He plans to take the Raving Blade out even if he doesn't come away with his life, and he doesn't want anyone else to be killed or hurt in the process, even calling off his teammates who want him to flee with them. This is true character growth. Vazeer the Lash, who was once a cold, heartless, nigh-robotic killer who seemed to value money and art over human lives, is now a human being who loves and cares so deeply that he's willing to give up his own life if it means protecting and avenging the one's he loves. We saw glimpses of that before. For example, he became a pseudo-father-figure and nurtured the likes of Selene and Cad, a caring and nurturing side that really clashed with his stoic killer side. And (as we see come to play in this book) he spared Shade of Night, the most feared Finisher in the city. And, because of that, Shade of Night, who is probably an even more sadistic and ruthless killer than Vazeer ever was, actually chooses to spare him. In fact, she seems to adore and fall in love with him in a Bond girl sort of way. She's still a scary b**ch though. But she's undeniably hot and actually gives us some of the edgiest scenes in the book. We also need to bring up the fact that Shade is one of the very few people to actually outsmart and get the jump on Vazeer. If it weren't for his charm, good fortune, and plot convenience (i.e. being the main character), he'd likely be dead. Even Coljin Helmgrinder (Wait, wasn't his name "Hellgrinder"?! We might be experiencing a Mendela effect) didn't come as close to killing Vazeer as Shade of Night did. The woman is a force. Speaking of Coljin Helmgrinder/Hellgrinder, he's in here too! Still a mighty and conflicted character chasing after glory and raising his status at the expense of his conscience since the first book. You know what? What really makes this book special is that it feels like a reunion. No, not one of those crappy ones, one of those good ones. It feels like all the characters we knew and loved from the previous book return and play a part in one way or another: Coljin Helmgrinder, Terza Falconbrow, Nascinthe, Flerra Tellian, Droden Sailwain, Holod Deadskiff, Selene, and more. Even some of the previous villains like Dubin the Dicer and that random blonde grunt from the previous book ("Lieutenant Commander") are in here getting their comeuppance alongside the Raving Blade. And you know who else plays a surprisingly big role? Countess Shaeyin Odel, who seems to be the only person who holds leverage over Ulan Gueritus. It's funny... Countess Odel's power play and tense conversation with the Raving Blade is one of the best scenes in the entire book, and it's intercut between two action scenes. That's saying a lot. Even Vazeer is mesmerized by their conversation. And you know what? Countess Odel's motivations are inspired by something that also occurred in a previous book in the series. So, more continuity and more payoff. Even Lethro gets a lot of respect and attention, particularly later in the book. It's so nice to see Lethro finally get his flowers. But going back to the other characters for a bit... it's so nice to read about them working together, even when they're butting heads and seemingly not making progress. It's so nice to see all of their characteristics, personalities, and abilities come into play. By the end, he is not operating alone. It's like the good ole' days in the first book when Vazeer had a team. Vazeer is moving with a patchwork crew where every person matters. Terza brings feral precision and turns tight spaces into traps that work for them. Heshna the Seer reads people and motives and seems to be able to glimpse the future, so the plan stays honest when bravado would get them hurt. Cad shows courage and clever hands, and Benni Bone’s prep means doors open at the exact moment they need them to. Selene is quick and quiet, already moving like a seasoned Contract Eye. Droden’s river skill and his repaired bond with Vazeer keep the mission moving when the canals try to swallow them. What makes this satisfying is how their personalities become tactics. Terza’s drive pushes the action forward. Heshna’s conscience and precog abilities keeps them aligned with the goal. Cad and Selene solve problems on the fly. Droden grounds the team with practical choices. They still butt heads, and progress sometimes feels slow, but the friction throws sparks in the right direction. That is the arc: Vazeer grows from a lone operator into a builder who can lead a team without using people. Now, another thing that we really loved about them working as a group is how frustrating it is to Vazeer, who has somewhat forgotten how to work well with others (he spent most of the second book being a rogue with minor characters like Selene occasionally coming in and out of the picture to remind him he was still a social creature). Vazeer's depracating opinions about his ragtag crew are often hilarious to read. He says that they are a "gaggle of whiners, has-beens, and circus performers. Was this really the best they could do?" When attempting to convince them to let him confront the Raving Blade alone, he says a lot of negative things to them and tells them that they're all a hinderance to him (though it could be argued he was trying to protect them from certain death in that scene). However, the moment that really stood out to us (and made us laugh) was this: "It was just then, I believe, that I decided we were all dead. This flotilla of jackasses was as bad as anything I had commanded as a Grell Runner, on par with bids where I spent the whole night browbeating neophytes. These people weren’t neophytes, but they were something possibly worse—experienced operatives who thought they had seen it all, acted like they knew everything, and had gradually lost touch over the years with how dangerous their line of work could be." Have you ever been surrounded by overqualified morons who can't cooperate and are overconfident about their abilities/knowledge? Well, that's how Vazeer must feel! ___________________________________ SPOILERS END ____________________________________ One final thing we wanted to bring up is how clever, cunning, and competent Vazeer is as a fighter and a tactician. He knows what's best to do if your opponent is larger or smaller. He knows what's best to do if they prefer to fight upright with a sword or when they attempt to take you to the ground. You can really tell why he's so great at what he does. This book is a tremendously satisfying conclusion to a great dark fantasy series! Check it out on Amazon! |
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