📚A Collection Of Flash-Fiction. Jenni Reviews Fast Fiction: 101 Stories, 101 Words Each by @ScottyCornfield for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Fast Fiction: 101 Stories, 101 Words Each by Scotty Cornfield.

The title of Scotty Cornfield’s first collection, Fast Fiction: 101 Stories, 101 Words Each, really says it all. This is a collection of 101 microfictions, each purportedly exactly 101 words long (even I’m not diligent enough to check all of them, but Cornfield says they are and he seems like an honest lad), and all traversing the vast sea of topics that can be covered in that small span of letters and lines.

Mircofiction, flash fiction, the shortest of short stories, can be among the punchiest fiction out there, and yet it can be difficult to find printed collections like this. Most publishers want some thematic cohesion, a through line, in the short story collections they put out, whereas flash fiction, by nature of the beast and volume of the stories that have to be produced to put enough pages together for a meaty collection, is not going to have that cohesion. It is form that thrives on web forums and in writing workshops, not necessarily one that you see frequently in print, and yet here Cornfield is, obviously in love with the genre and, apparently, planning at least one more volume of stories, given the fact that this Fast Fiction has “Volume One” stamped at the top of the cover in red.

It is heartening to see. For those of us who appreciate brevity, and the ability to grind in to the absolute yolk of a story, a scene, a moment in time, flash fiction is an artform worth celebrating. And Cornfield does celebrate it, with stories of joy and heartbreak and mystery, stories of random happenstance and brutal miscalculation, with all that is and can be weird and wonderful in writing.

I must admit, as an editor, that there are places where I wonder if Cornfield is a little too confined by his 101-word edict. Places where the story would be served by cutting a phrase here, a line there, and thus become a 95-word story, and just the little bit tighter for it, but that is nitpicking at its finest. Overall, Cornfield’s work is sound, punchy, and fun in all the ways you want flash fiction to be. Look for particular standouts “I’m a Good Neighbor”, “He Made Work a Four-Letter Word”, and “Lessons from a Grim Reaper” for some of this reviewer’s particular favorites.

4 stars.

Book description

In FAST FICTION, you’ll enter a cafe where the menu is loaded with nothing but literary appetizers, designed to be quickly consumed and easily digested. You’ll meet people with secrets and others who wished they knew how to keep them; characters looking to exact revenge and others getting their just desserts when karma calls. Fans of the combo platter will see it all here, from the dark to the darkly comical; the laugh-out-loud funny to the thought-provoking; offering more twists and turns than a pretzel—more ups and downs than a soufflé.
 
Like the world of improv, each tale has been inspired by a prompt (a single word or a phrase) provided by readers. From those simple suggestions, the stories evolve. You’ll meet people from all walks of life, but they’ll all have at least one thing in common: Your brief encounter with them will be over in less than a minute. Welcome to FAST FICTION,where you’ll find 101 stories of exactly 101 words each. How’s that for symmetry?

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

📚’Dive headfirst into the world of competitive flying cart racing.’ Jenni reviews #SciFi Beyond The Speed Limit by @AntonEine, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Beyond The Speed Limit by Anton Eine.

Step into a world where magic and technology meld and twist with Anton Eine’s Beyond the Speed Limit. While prefaced by the prologue novella, Behind the Firewall, Beyond the Speed Limit is our first true look at Eine’s Programagic series and the expansive world contained therein. A world where elemental magic is fueled by equations, magisters spend decades honing their particular fusion of technology and power, and where the creation of a fully autonomous artificial intelligence, or ‘soul’ is one of the highest taboos imaginable. 

Enter Magister Sajar Randhar, an only mildly disgraced programage specializing in all sorts of dangerous spells and the gadgets that contain them, and the artificial soul, Spirit, his greatest creation and closest companion. The prologue novella Behind the Firewall introduces Sajar and Spirit beautifully, giving readers solid understanding as to why Sajar is on the outs with many of the powers that be, and why Spirit’s existence is such a dangerous secret to keep, but reading the novella is not totally necessary to understanding the characters, the world, or the circumstances of Beyond the Speed Limit. Eine has a deft touch when it comes to delivering backstory and the novel is a complete story enhanced by its prequel, rather than a narrative that relies wholly on the shorter text. Readers should read both, they’re excellent!, but will not be lost if they read one story without the other.

And what a story it is! Hackers, backers, and expansive underground double dealings abound when Sajar and Spirit dive headfirst into the world of competitive flying cart racing. An old friend of Sajar’s has died under strange circumstances and his widow wants the answers that only our two protagonists can find. Together they will navigate tempers, temptations, and a whole lot of subterfuge, with plenty of quips about age, youth, and good whiskey along the way.

Paced for adrenaline junkies and written by someone looking to break the mold on genre fiction, Eine really has something special with these first two entries to his Programagic series. This reader is very much looking forward to see what mischief Sajar and Spirit find themselves in next time.

5/5

Book description

Welcome to an alternative world of wonder, where magic and technology are inseparably entwined. A place where sorcerer programmers code spells and weave them into items and artefacts to imbue them with special and specific properties.

Magister Sajar Randhar, a seasoned expert in magic security, investigates crimes together with his greatest and most ingenious creation – Spirit, the world’s first and only artificial spirit. Magister keeps her existence a secret to protect her from the dangers posed by the magical world’s politicians, secret services, criminals and corporations. Or perhaps, to protect the magical world from her?

Programagic, a detective techno-fantasy series by Anton Eine is an explosive mix of science fiction, fantasy and magical realism, seasoned with a healthy pinch of exotic dark humor.

This collection includes the first two stories of the series – a short novella Behind the Fire Wall and a full-length novel Beyond the Speed Limit.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

📚’A promising start’ @deBieJennifer reviews #Horror Rise Of The Zombies (Co-Exist #1) by @CyraKingAuthor for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni

Read more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Rise Of The Zombies by Cyra King

Rise Of The Zombies by Cyra King

Halloween will have long since come and gone by the time this review posts, but Cyra King’s gory debut, Rise of the Zombies, should not be viewed as merely a seasonal treat. Follow nurse Megan Cole as she trudges through the last day of normalcy on earth, and then leap a year forward to the rest of her un-life as she and her lover, Mike, struggle to survive the desecrated landscape, and steady decay of their own bodies, in post-Z Salt Lake City.

Yes, Megan and Mike as zombies, “zegans” actually, conscious and hungry, and trying desperately to resist their more cannibalistic urges. But all is not love and rotting raccoons in Mike and Megan’s world, the Z Council, which governs every sentient zombie in Salt Lake City, is helmed by a madman bent only on expanding his own power, and on drawing Mike and Megan into his twisted machinations.

On the other side of the safety cordon, a team of human scientists is working on a cure, or maybe something much, much darker. Something the Z Council, the remnants of the American military, and every, slowly rotting zombie in the world, would kill to get their hands on. Something that Mike and Megan will be thrown in the middle of when the Z Council calls and a guinea pig is needed.

Loyalties, love, and willpower are going to be tested, people will die, desperation will make many strange bedfellows, and the consistency of a human eyeball will be contemplated, all before Rise of the Zombies reaches its dramatic conclusion….

Or maybe… maybe, this is only the beginning.

Vivid, disgusting, depraved, and delicious, from a woman who obviously relishes her gore and likes to make it cerebral, King is off to a promising start, and I for one, cannot wait where her series lurches, shambles, and feasts its way to next.

5/5

Book description

Double shifts and burnout are all in a day’s work for Nurse Megan Cole. No one’s going to die on her watch. Then a viral apocalypse kills all her patients and turns her into a sentient zombie, forcing her to re-evaluate both her life goals and dietary habits.

Fast-forward a year, the city is ruled by the ruthless Salt Lake Z Council. But with her boyfriend Mike by her side, things are okay—until the Council sends Mike to infiltrate the army. When Megan discovers a mangled corpse days later, her world—and the illusions around it—shatter.

Don Meier, the nation’s top surviving scientist, is close to finding an antidote. However, the final test run is a disaster. The Council gets wind of the ‘cure’ and imposes their sinister agenda under the guise of salvation.

Smack in the middle of mayhem are Megan and her new found friends—a motley crew of conscientious Zegans. While they try to prevent the Council from destroying their only hope, Don risks his wife and son’s safety to unravel a military conspiracy.

It’s a tight race for Megan and Don to rescue humanity before there’s nobody left to save.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

📚This Author ‘Dares To Be Different’. @deBieJennifer reviews dark #UrbanFantasy Legacy Witches by @CassKayWrites for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about her here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Legacy Of Witches by Cass Kay.

Legacy Witches by Cass Kay

When Vienna Roots returns home to Salem for her mother’s funeral after a decade away, she expects a short trip. Bury the old witch, sell the family home, try not to let the ghosts of her ancestors or the demon haunting its walls get in the way of the sale, and get back to her life in Boston. No, she does not want to get involved in the tangled, occult politics of her hometown. No, she has no intention of taking over her mother’s place, or practicing her family’s particular brand of brutal magic. No, she doesn’t want to get the police involved. But when Vienna finds a hand in a drawer, and an unexpected specter haunting one of the upstairs bathrooms, she knows this quick trip home isn’t going to be nearly as fast or as simple as she’d hoped.

The market on urban fantasy and witchy protagonists is arguably glutted at the moment. Witches are cutesy, they’re sexy, they’re demon huntresses and vampire lovers and all sorts of fun combinations of back-cover blurb buzzwords, but something that truly sets Cass Kay’s Legacy Witches above the rest for me is that her witches are dark.

Vienna Roots’ ancestors and peers deal in moldering corpses, gruesome deaths, and necromantic rites as a matter of course, and while Vienna herself shies away from the murder edges of magic, Kay seems to revel in the gory details. As something of a connoisseur of gory details, I appreciate the unflinching approach to maggots and skeletons and what a pain in the butt it is to rob a grave on a rainy night.

I appreciate that Kay doesn’t try to redeem the terrible things that the Roots witches have done in the past, and the lengths they will go to to protect their own.

A story of generations, and rewriting the scripts of eras come and gone, Legacy Witches is more than just one more urban fantasy with a witchy protagonist. This is a novel with heart, a story about growth, and acceptance, and magic far darker than most authors in the genre dare dabble in from a writer who obviously knows her craft. In a market that has long been saturated by the cozy, the sexy, and the action-y, and the overly romantic, Legacy Witches dares to be something different, and as a reader, I appreciate that too.

5/5

Book description

Coming from a long line of murderous witches hasn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows for Vianna Roots. When she inherits the family’s haunted house after her mother dies, she decides flipping the rundown dump is her smartest move—but the ghosts that haunt her have a different plan.

When Vianna finds the ghost of her childhood friend Nancy, she’s drawn into the mystery surrounding her friend’s death. Her meddling attracts the attention of the oldest coven in Salem. In order to get her out of town, they make an offer on the house, but Vianna hesitates. She’s no longer sure she wants to abandon the demon familiar who possesses her home, the transgender outcast witch—who may just be the best friend she never knew she needed—and her high school crush, who now wants her in his life.

Vianna must find a way to solve the case of her murdered friend, stay out of the hands of the most powerful coven in Salem, and face the past she’s so desperately tried to run away from.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS (Due out Oct)

📚’Beautiful, strange, unflinching in the way it portrays a descent into corruption’. Jenni reviews Price’s Price by Chris Maden, for Rosie’s Bookreview Team #RBRT #TuesdayBookBlog

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Price’s Price by Chris Maden

Price’s Price by Chris Maden

There is what I would call a ‘style curve’ to the opening of Chris Maden’s debut novel, Price’s Price. The prose has a drifting, distanced quality, like looking at the world through a softened lens, that can be off-putting to readers as we are introduced to Stanley Price, first as he sits waiting in a bar for a woman from the past, and then are catapulted through a flashback to his childhood as the son of a plantation owner in mid-20^th century Zimbabwe. Childhood in Africa drifts into boyhood spent in British boarding schools, misspent teenage years sampling the delights of London and Europe, a near miss or two with assorted women of varying levels of repute, and a commission in the British Army that takes him around the world, but always there is distance between Price and the world around him. A distance that translates to isolation even from the readers following along with his memories, seeing everything through his eyes.

The drifting style of storytelling never changes, never sharpens once Price lands in Hong Kong in the 1970s, dispatched there by the British Army to police the border and exist as a colonizing presence in a city that has no real use for colonizers, yet the prose fits the man to a T. Slowly Price is absorbed by Hong Kong, its women, its politics, its corruption, never seemingly on purpose, and yet he drifts on from scene to scene, year to year, boom to bust as the markets surge and sink. Through it all the inherent aimlessness of Price’s trajectory is mirrored in the style in which Maden writes him, and somewhere along the way readers stop being bothered by the writing and are absorbed by it instead.

Price’s journey is pungent, redolent with perfume and liquor, sweat and sex, fortunes made and lost all at the whim of the Fates he so frequently looks to, and somewhere in the middle of this Maden has created an incredibly compelling character. Stanley Price, as written, is neither terribly good, nor terribly bad, as a person. He is neither a genius, nor an idiot. He is not always a good friend, but then goes to great lengths for those he cares about. He’s just a man. A man full of flaws and potential and an ability to adapt to the world around him, even as the earth on which he stands shifts with every change in the wind.

Hong Kong is a city in flux, and Maden’s sense of the time, place, and rapidly changing social, political, and economic situation of the 1970s and ‘80s feels tangible to the reader. From seedy bars to exclusive clubs, smuggling scams and factory floors, Maden sends his protagonist wandering through all, and as the reader wanders with him we can’t help but be amazed at the situations Price finds himself in.

And the many scrapes that he must talk himself out of.

Beautiful, strange, unflinching in the way it portrays a descent into corruption and the ways a man must redeem himself by small measures again and again, reading Price’s Price was an experience I find difficult to describe beyond saying simply, it’s good. It’s very, very good.

5/5

Book description

Stanley Price has dreamt since childhood of exploring the world. But, when the army posts him to Hong Kong in the 1960s, this officer, scoundrel and rake falls for the glamour, the girls and the gung-ho attitude. Swept along and seduced by this free-wheeling city, he is sucked into a delightful vortex of beer, women and bribes. His dreams remain ever-present but out of reach. Until, that is, he falls for a young lady who could be his redemption – or his nemesis.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

📚’Radlauer has a deft and clever touch when is comes to Quincy’s inner monologue’. Jenni reviews FAT: The Other F Word by Dan Radlauer for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading FAT: The Other F Word by Dan Radlauer

FAT: The Other F Word by Dan Radlauer

Dan Radlauer’s debut novel, FAT: The Other F Word opens in media res on a casting call for a noodle commercial. Teenager Quincy Collins, our protagonist and narrator, is waiting for his chance to slurp and smile for the camera, just one of many child actors chasing a dream in Hollywood. 

The kicker? 

Quincy is fat.

Not ‘Hollywood fat’, fat-fat, and has built his entire, fledgling career as a comedic actor around his weight and making the fat joke first. Being the ‘fat, funny kid’ has brought Quincy regular work in commercials, and just landed him a starring role in a brand new sitcom alongside Jessica Freeland, one of L.A.’s hottest rising starlets.

Sure Quincy has trouble getting off of overly-plush couches, doesn’t have many friends at school, and hides his midnight snacking from his family, but this is his big break! Nothing can get in his way!

But when a surprise, pre-diabetic diagnosis has Quincy’s doctor perscribing a healthier diet and regular exercise, what’s a young man to do? And more importantly, who does the ‘fat, funny kid’ become, if he’s no longer quite so fat? 

Stay tuned to find out!

I joke partially because this is a very funny book, Radlauer has a deft and clever touch when is comes to Quincy’s inner monologue, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that FAT: The Other F Word is all sugar and no substance. Radlauer has worked in show-business for decades, composing for cult classics like 1991’s The Addams Family (a personal favorite) and big-budget action flicks like 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. So, when Radlauer writes about the pressures and politics of Hollywood, the undue burdens placed on young actors to act a certain way both on and off-camera, and the sunburn that can accompany the spotlight, it rings true.

Nor is Quincy’s struggle to get healthy an overnight transformation. Quincy has spent his entire, young life making a joke out of himself and his weight and he’s not totally sure he wants to lose that. The physical struggle to keep to his perscribed routine, and the mental struggle to define who Quincy is to himself and the rest of the world pair and juxtapose nicely as the scenes change and the story progesses.

Rounded out by a fantastic supporting cast, including the previously mentioned Jessica Freeland, and Radlauer has a truly wonderful, heartfelt coming of age story on his hands.

5/5

Book description

In “FAT: The Other ‘F’ Word,” Quincy Collins lives in two vastly different worlds. One where he’s a very heavy and awkward freshman at Beverly Hills High School, the other where he’s a Hollywood character actor in commercials and Indie films playing the comic relief or the despicable bully. Guess which world he likes better?

At the start of this Y.A. novel, Quincy gets his big break with a major role as “The Fat Brother” in a hot new Network Sitcom, only to find that wanting and having are two very different things.

First, “size discrimination activists” challenge the integrity of the character he’s portraying. Then his health struggles begin to undermine both his character on the show, and his self-assigned brand as “The Fat Kid Actor.” His dream gig becomes a nightmare, and he starts to question the role he’s playing on TV, as well as in real life.“FAT: The Other ‘F’ Word” shows a unique person in a unique setting.It explores Hollywood, adolescence,and our culture’s attitudes towards different sized people.Quincy narrates the story with discovery, irony, pain and compassion as he learns that he can’t base his identity on the size of his body.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

🕵🏻‍♂️’A supernatural police procedural that laughs with sharp teeth.’ Jenni reviews #urbanfantasy Eat The Poor by @TomCW99, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Eat The Poor by Tom Williams

Eat The Poor by Tom Williams

Returning to the scene of the crime, and the chief inspectors who will solve it, Tom Williams is having obvious, and bloody, fun in his second entry into the Galbraith & Pole series with Eat the Poor. Odd couple Chief Inspector Galbraith, an only slightly middle-aged mortal, and his counterpart Chief Inspector Pole, a vampire with a few centuries under his belt, are on the trail of something rotten, something hungry, and something neither of them have ever seen before in this novel and I’ve got to say, it works!

There is obvious chemistry and history to these two characters, but Williams has a light touch when it comes to referencing the first novel in this series (Something Wicked, 2021), and readers will not feel lost if this is their first experience with Galbraith and Pole. Exposition is delivered naturalistically, no pages or paragraphs devoted to catching new readers up to speed, because honestly, what do they need to catch up on? Other than the odd line about tango lessons and the inevitable question that every author must confront when they pair up an immortal vampire and a very mortal human, there seems to be little plot carried over from the first novel. Something has started eating people on the streets of London, and the facts of the current case are far more pressing than hashing out the details of the last one.

And the man who is doing all this eating? Well he’s a fun character in and of himself, and a sly satire on the state of affairs in general that I will leave it to the readers to discover for themselves. Needless to say, there are two sides of this story: the hunters and the hunted, and Williams’ tongue was lodged firmly in his cheek when he drew this particular antagonist.

Fun and fast to read, with just the right amount of black in its comedy, Eat the Poor is a supernatural police procedural that laughs with sharp teeth. Williams evidently enjoyed creating these characters, readers will certainly enjoy getting to know them!

5/5

Book description

A werewolf is on the loose in London.

Chief Inspector Pole, the vampire from the mysterious Section S, teams up once again with his human counterpart to hunt down the beast before the people of the city realise that they are threatened by creatures they have dismissed as myths.

Time is short as the werewolf kills ever more recklessly. Can Galbraith and Pole stop it before panic spreads through London?

Galbraith and Pole start their search in Pole’s extensive library of the arcane, accompanied by a couple of glasses of his excellent malt whisky. All too soon, though, they will have to take to the streets to hunt the monster by the light of the moon.

But the threat is even greater than they think, for in its human form the werewolf is terrifyingly close to the heart of government.

This is Tom Williams’ second tongue-in-cheek take on traditional creatures of darkness. Like the first Galbraith & Pole book, Something Wicked, this will appeal to fans of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London.

You never know when the forces of darkness may be released and there will be no time for reading then. Buy Eat the Poor before it’s too late.

AmazonUk | AmazonUS

⚓’Doria has an instinct for building tension.’ Jenni reviews #dystopia The Last Families by Carla Doria, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading The Last Families by Carla Doria

The Last Families by Carla Doria

Reviewing Carla Doria’s debut novel, The Last Families, honestly is a case study in the necessity of good editing for this particular reviewer. Because of that, before anything else, I would like to state clearly and for the record that I liked this story. I think that there is some mismanagement in the way its description sells the novel, and there are regrettable technical aspects of the text, but underneath that there is much to enjoy in Doria’s work.

The Last Families opens on four ships as they arrive at a mysterious island after a long and treacherous voyage. Each ship contains the various members of four different, extended families, and in turn each of these families has their own distinctive hair, eye, and skin coloring, as well as a unique, hereditary power: the Ninfire clan flies, the Drontas are strong, the Kaptarish can produce immense heat, and the Verbaren read minds. These gifts have helped preserve the different families for decades and now, when necessity means that the next generation will be forced to seek mates outside their distinct clan, there is tension between the families and old prejudices that must be reexamined.

With that in the background, the families have fled their own, dying land, and come to Gambir, a sun-soaked island where the daily weather fluctuations are deadly, the natives are hostile, and the long-sought refuge the voyagers thought they’d found may be anything but a safe harbor. Unravelling the mystery of Gambir and its inhabitants, and working to save and extract all of the members of these four families from Gambirian clutches is the driving force of the novel. As far as twists, turns, and pacing are concerned, it’s a worthy plot. Doria has an instinct for building tension and delivering foreshadowing, and the situations she throws her characters into illicit genuine worry, anger, and triumph at the dangers, the antagonists, and the small victories her characters experience.

All of that said, the back-cover blurb of The Last Families hints that there are two main characters, and that their budding romance will be a major component of the plot. The two characters in question are indeed leading figures, and there is a budding romance, but this is an ensemble cast far more than a protagonist duet. A quick count comes up with a half dozen primary protagonists, each with multiple chapters told from their point of view, alongside another handful of secondary characters who get their own share of the text’s chapters. In marketing this as a fantasy romance Doria does disservice to the fascinating dynamics that come into play when an author juggles this many characters and their points of view. It is a rare writer who can create a satisfying ensemble novel, and (as with her plot) Doria seems to have good instincts in this department. I wish she would flaunt them a little more.

Finally, there is the editing. I have an educated guess about why there are prevalent grammatical mistakes, particularly the misuse of pronouns and the frequent mix-up of near-homophones (“surround” being used in place of “surrender”, for example), but what it boils down to is a lack of professional editing. Most readers can and will gloss over a scattering of editing slubs over the course of a novel without notice or comment, but the frequency of these easily rectified mistakes muddles Doria’s writing to the point of distraction. Without the grammatical mistakes, The Last Families would have been an easy 4, or even 5 star read for me. However, as the text stands right now, I have to give it a 3.5 for the editing alone.

3.5/5

Book description

Escaping their land’s destruction, the Kaptarish, Drontas, Verbaren and Ninfires have reached the island of Gambir. The last families with talents like mind-reading, extraordinary force, burning with their hands, and flying, hope to find refuge in this place.

Yarisha, the only mind-reader in the Verbaren family, will fall in love with Malakay, the most arrogant sibling in the Ninfire family. She knows the young man’s mother and the matriarch of the Ninfires, Mandely, will never consent to this relationship since she considers the Verbaren family inferior to them.

None of the members in the families expect to find a land full of secrets where those with the darkest looking-skin have better chances to survive and where the leader, Ian, is planning to take wives by force.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

🧙‍♂️’A yummy little booksnack’. Jenni reviews #Fantasy Short Stories by @rogersonsm, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT🧙‍♂️

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading Fantasy Short Stories by Suzanne Rogerson

Fantasy Short Stories by Suzanne Rogerson

Suzanne Rogerson offers delicious tastes of her two existing fantasy worlds, and a delectable hint of a third, in her recently released collection Fantasy Short Stories. The name may be a little obvious, but don’t let that fool you as these three original prequel shorts offer backstory for characters from Rogerson’s standalone, Visions of Zaura, her series, The Silent Sea Chronicles, and her yet-to-be-released Starlight Prophesies series.

As someone who has never encountered Rogerson’s work before, I was immediately struck by the accessibility of her fantasy worlds to the uninitiated. Yes, these are incredible lands with their own dense histories, cultures, and magic systems, but one does not need to be familiar with the novel or series from whence these tales sprang to grasp something of the characters and the perils they face. A mysterious assassin on the hunt, a prejudiced sect seeking to exile those born with magic, boatloads of foreign raiders invading a land with no clear motive—each a gripping little slice of what promises to be a gripping web of plots, intrigue, and mystic arts for those who venture on to read Rogerson’s full-length works.

Adding to these slices of original work, Rogerson also includes two full chapters from the openings of Visions of Zaura and The Lost Sentinel (The Silent Sea Chronicles #1) respectively, just to give readers a glimpse of how these short stories continue years, even decades, after the prequel concludes.

All in all, this short collection of Rogerson’s is a yummy little booksnack, sure to delight longtime fans of her work, and entice new readers into the fold.

4/5

Book description

A collection of stories featuring favourite characters from Visions of Zarua and ‘Silent Sea Chronicles’, plus a glimpse into the new series, ‘Starlight Prophecy’.

The Guardian
With an assassin picking off wizards one-by-one, Kalesh visits Cassima, a former student, hoping to persuade her to re-join the Royal Wizards and use their protection to keep her family safe.
Kalesh’s newest charge, Paddren, has strange visions which link to a past event known only to a select few. The knowledge hidden in Paddren’s visions is invaluable so Kalesh must guard the boy at any cost.
Can Kalesh keep his students off the assassin’s radar long enough for his order to stop the killer?

Garrick the Protector
Fifteen-year-old Garrick is helping at his uncle’s farm when his cousin’s illegal use of magic threatens the family’s safety.
Mara is in immediate danger from the Assembly who deem all magic as a threat. The only safe place for her is the Turrak Mountains where exiled mystics have found sanctuary alongside the island’s Sentinel.
Can Garrick get Mara to safety before the Assembly catch up with them?

War Wounds
Conscripted to fight off invaders, Calder finds the months of bloody battle unleash a sixth sense buried inside him.
Finally released from duty, he travels home and encounters a mysterious woman who insists his life is destined to serve a higher purpose. Calder rejects her claims, wanting only to return to a simple existence with his wife.
But can Calder pick up his old life when the powers within him have been stirred? And why does he feel such misgivings about his return?
All three stories give readers a tantalising glimpse into the fantasy worlds created by Suzanne Rogerson. 

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Links to:

Visions Of Zarua

The Lost Sentinel (Book #1 of The Silent Sea trilogy)

🎼Lost are the creatures destined never to be understood.🎼Jenni reviews literary saga The Crooked Little Pieces by Sophia Lambton, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Jenni.

Find out more about Jenni here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Jenni has been reading The Crooked Little Pieces by Sophia Lambton

The Crooked Little Pieces by Sophie Lambton

3.5/5

Sophia Lambton’s The Crooked Little Pieces follows Isabel and Anneliese van der Holt from the age of six in 1920s Zurich, into their early twenties in Blitz-struck London. Raised by their neurology professor father, each van der Holt twin is exceptional in her own way, with Isabel holding the promise of being a musical prodigy, and Anneliese following her father’s passion for medical sciences. Together they move countries, attend school, nurture and neglect their talents by turns, suffer many of the expected triumphs and heartaches expected in a coming-of-age story and yet… I never quite cheered for these girls.

Protagonists do not have to be good people, and I have certainly taken my own, private glee in following a story through the eyes of some true monsters, but at the end of the day a reader needs a reason to like the people they’re reading about. I never found Anneliese and Isabel likeable. Isabel decides to pursue marriage because being a wife will mean she doesn’t have to keeping trying with her music, and Anneliese becomes obsessed with her therapist to the point that she steals important documents from her, and then attempts to bring them to the attention of the medical community against said therapist’s wishes and best interests. They are both self-destructive, and dismissive of other people as beneath their attention or care.

Don’t get me wrong, Lambton has fully fleshed out both girls. Their characterization is strong, and with the chapters alternating perspective between the twins and their father (until his death) we get a thorough understanding of how they speak, the ways they act in different situations, and why they are the way they are, but that just make their narcissism more blatant and their actions pettier.

Then there is the is the language of the text itself. Lambton has a dreamlike, drifting approach to the story (hence this novel clocks in at over 400 pages), and an approach to sentence structure that does not always lend itself to readability. Take, for example, this sentence from chapter 8, in which a coworker of the twins’ father is propping her elbows up on a counter:

The kitchen top began to hold her weight as she sustained her elbows on it.

It’s not incomprehensible. You and I, dear reader, know what she means about leaning on a countertop, but there is smoother language out there.

All of that said, I should reiterate that this is a 400+ page novel by a young writer who obviously has a grasp on how to create fully-realized characters. She also certainly set up the potential for some interesting scenarios: the push and pull between a flighty, musical twin and her more grounded, scholarly sister. The dynamic of being raised by a scientist father who has, if not a preference, at least a greater understanding of the scholarly daughter as opposed to the musician. The comatose mother who I have not even touched on in this review. The enigmatic, female psychologist who Anneliese begins seeing, bearing in mind that this would be the 1930s and thus the infancy of clinical psychology as we know it today. The universal tensions that came with being in London after one Great War and before the second kicks off. There’s some really good and interesting material to be plumbed there, and I certainly wish Lambton the best luck with her next installment in this series.

However, sadly, to me The Crooked Little Pieces never quite sang.

Book description

Lost are the creatures destined never to be understood.
1926. Professor Josef van der Holt obtains a post at an all women’s college overseas. Stuffy London suddenly becomes the site for the unseemly exploits of his half-Dutch and half-German daughters Anneliese and Isabel. When tragedy carves out a hollow in their lives, a severed soul sends the sororal twins along a jagged path: while Isabel takes flight in sensual hedonism Anneliese skirts danger in her role as sleuth. Elusive are the sentiments they seek: swift stopovers of fleeting feeling. Lopsided loves and passions scarcely probable veer each away from the predictable.
And when the obvious appears unstoppable the opposite may achingly be true.
Spanning the twentieth century’s five most volatile decades, The Crooked Little Pieces is a series about inextricable entanglements. Perverse relationships pervade a glossary of scenes. Plots criss-cross over a rich tapestry of twists and tension-fuelling characters: some relatable, others opaque and many “crooked”.
It is television drama. Novelised. 

AmazonUK | AmazonUS