When Havok publishes an anthology, my son and I read them, approximately one a night, and then compare notes. We give a 1 to 10 rating after finishing each tale. We finished Havok’s latest, Sensational, where the usual blend of mystery, science fiction/fantasy, humor, and thriller offerings are centered on […]
Mystery and thriller often go hand-in-hand, but some stories are excellent mysteries but not solid thrillers and vice-versa. And then there’s Ruth Ware’s One By One: a mystery, a thriller, and a great book. Snoop, a company built on a music app, decides to hold its business retreat in the […]
Continuing the world started in Reformed, H. L. Burke offers this sequel in her superhero series. In the BCU (Burke’s Connected Universe), superheroes (called sables) are organized as law enforcers with all of the advantages and disadvantages bureaucracy brings with it. Some of these sables have a rehabilitation goal. What […]
Don’t Marry The Cursed is a sequel to Don’t Date the Haunted, a wonderful series by C. Rae D’Arc. In the Haunted Romance series, the world is divided into regions of literary genres and subgenres. Lands exist for Horror, Fantasy, Romance (both contemporary and regency), Mystery, etc. Cursed is primarily […]
The second books in trilogies must serve the function of advancing the story without the benefit of starting or finishing it. The Raventree Society Season Two bears this burden. Season 1 introduced the winning idea of a five-story novel of faux ghost hunters looking for a lost member of their […]
One of the most unique titles for a book in a superhero series has to be Toga. By its name alone, a reader may assume this work is historical non-fiction, historical fiction, or possibly a fantasy about Roman gods ala Rick Riordan. The last guess is partially correct as it’s […]
Many books, movies, and even songs have twist endings, but a few have the unique ability to be almost a completely different experience upon going through it a second time through. In the publication of my short story “Evicted” in June 2021, I tried to write a story which is […]
When Your Beauty IS the Beast is an anthology by Ye Olde Dragon Books and the first in their fairytale series. Instead of “give us retellings of Beauty and the Beast,” the editors have cleverly asked for stories where the beauty is the beast. How to interpret that directive—looks, personality, […]
Every horror reader knows the basics: “Don’t go into the basement (or attic)”, “Don’t stare at your reflection in the lake for too long”, “Don’t play some creepy old game you found in a trunk (unless it’s Jumanji),” etc. Pansy Finster lives her life by these rules, and they have […]
C. J. Redwine’s The Wish Granter is the second novel in her Ravenspire series in which a popular fairy tale is reimagined into a more realistic (yet still fantasy) setting with serious consequences for the main characters. In this novel, she highlights the town of Sundraille where the royal family […]