Review of Havok Vice and Virtue

Havok publishes an anthology two times a year with a variety of genres (fantasy, science fiction, thriller, comedy, mystery) and theme (vice and virtue). Anthology series are hard to review unless a system is in place. For Vice and Virtue, I returned to my system where I rate each offering […]

Review of Bearly Free

The Emerald Realm Series continues with Bearly Free by Abigail Manning. A minor character in the first novel of the series, Aurelia Lockly takes center stage in this novel about a young woman whose parents arrange her marriage without informing her of her upcoming nuptials until the day she meets […]

Review of Haven

In Haven, author Ashley Nicole establishes a future that could well have been our own. The Mors Certa Virus, or MCV20, has infected a large segment of the population of Earth. This disease is so dangerous that those without the virus, called the Pure, have erected walls around cities, keeping […]

The Curse of the Fourth

The Phantom Menace. Halloween 4. Alien: Resurrection. Jaws 4: The Revenge. Why do we make fourths in a series? As the titles above prove, they rarely measure up to the first, or the first three. Is the fourth in a series cursed? Money is behind a lot of fourths in […]

Interview with Felicia Change

A husband demands his wife uses a special meat to cook their dinners, but what animal does it come from? A couple go on an illegal night safari to view unique creatures. A bizarre candy shop offers sweet-yet-morbid-themed delicacies to the general public…just don’t visit it after dark. A woman […]

Review of The First Time I Knocked

The First Time I Knocked, fourth in the Garnett McGee series, is a suspense/mystery about a psychologist with extra-sensory abilities who investigates crimes with her chief of police boyfriend. In this offering, Garnett and her boyfriend Ryan fly down from Vermont to New Orleans to help out her boyfriend’s ex-wife […]

Review of Idriel’s Children

Idriel’s Children by Hayley Reese Chow is the second in a series of novels set in the fantasy world of Okarria. I don’t remember the events that led to picking up the first in the series, Odriel’s Heirs, but I was glad that I had. A richly visualized fantasy world, […]

Review of The Uncanny and the Dead

The Uncanny and the Dead is a horror anthology of bizarre and oftentimes lethal transformations. Many of the stories the collection presents have a Lovecraftian vibe with regular people encountering the weird or cosmic. Each eerie entry unfolds in a startling yet creative way. Eight stories comprise the anthology of […]

The Cement City

I enjoy story prompts. Havok, a flash fiction site, provides just the sort of prompts to inspire me. Every six months, they present a theme to authors with sub-themes each month. The subjects may be color, music, or vices/virtues. For January through June of 2023, the theme was the continents […]