August 2022 Reading Round Up

August was an interesting month, in terms of what I read. A couple of big fat fantasies, a couple of darker novels, and I started a new space opera / military science fiction audio book series. I’ll only really mention the two big fat fantasies I read in August since the other two books are review books for SFFWorld.

August started in a big way with Into the Narrowdark the penultimate volume in Tad Williams Last King of Osten Ard series. This series is sequel to his landmark Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy. I reviewed The Empire of Grass (The Last King of Osten Ard #2) and The Witchwood Crown (The Last King of Osten Ard #1) as well as A Brief Retrospective of Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn over at SFFWorld, so I’m a big fan of everything Tad Williams has written and it may be easy to surmise that Into the Narrowdark was quite high on my anticipated reads list for 2022. 

As it turns out, this is just the first half of what is the final volume of The Last King of Osten Ard. Tad has a tendency of publishing four-book trilogies. 

The premise of the series is that about three decades have passed since the end of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn with Simon and Miriamele ruling. Their son has passed away and their heir, Morgan, has not turned out to be the prince they’d hoped. In this novel, Tad deftly balances multiple points of view as the world is on the precipice of another momentous change. He does a fantastic job of balancing the weigh of each character’s storylines and weaving in plot threads dangling from 30 years ago. As it turns out, there’s been about 30 years since Memory, Sorrow and Thorn concluded and that’s about the same time that has elapsed in Osten Ard. Those older mysterious and revelations to the characters make for some great moments. 

I like what Tad has done with the character of Morgan over the course of these books as the young man matured and is coming into his own. He’s paired up with Nezeru, a harsh sacrifice who acts as his guide through the wilds while he guides her to a life that could be better than what she knew. 

Simon, I have to admit, was a little too wrapped up in his grief, but a switch went off with him in the later part of the novel and Miriamele continues to shine in every scene that features her. The Hayholt, the castle that serves as the home and seat of rule, continues to be a mysterious and often creepy place to navigate, as Simon’s granddaughter finds out. 

The conclusion/finale of this novel…just…damn you Tad! It was so well executed and is as much of a cliff-hanger ending as you’d want but also hate to read. I can’t wait for The Navigator’s Children. 

My only real slight on the book – and this is no fault of Tad Williams – is that DAW books decided to drastically change the look/cover art of the book. The legendary, iconic Michael Whelan painted all the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn covers and the two earlier volumes in this series (as well as many of the covers for Tad’s novels). That is not the case with this book. The cover is fine and eye-catching, but a small bit of magic is missing from the overall physical element of the book. A big, fat, Tad Williams tome just doesn’t seem right without a Michael Whelan cover. 

The other big Epic Fantasy novel I read in August was Lamentation, the first installment of Ken Scholes’s Psalms of Isaak five-book saga. This book was published a little over a dozen years ago (2009) and was Ken’s debut novel. 

Set in a world that has survived a few apocalyptic events, magic and science coexist, though not always quite comfortably. The inciting incident – the city of Windwir being destroyed, particularly its legendary library – was because a robot cast a spell. From there, the novel winds through a wonderful path of alliances, manipulation, romance, politics, and redemption. Religion is quite powerful in the novel as the philosophy of the long dead P’Andro Whym drives the Androfrancines who are led by a Pope, but that is where the large similarities end. 

The main players are Rudolfo, the heroic Lord of Ninefold Forest; the duplicitous Sethbert Overseer of the Entrolusian City States; Jin Li Tam, the prominent daughter of the house of Tam, whose father does a lot of plotting; Neb, the seemingly lone survivor of Windwir; and the old man Petronus who takes Neb under his wing. Scholes does a great job of jumping between these characters to keep the pace of the plot moving very briskly. 

The novel is more concerned with how these players react to the destruction of Windwir than anything else, so there isn’t too much world-building on display but the hints (robots and magic coexisting, essentially) are quite intriguing. There are also hints of a deep history to the world, so I'm hoping subsequent volumes will reveal more.

The series was completed a few years ago (in 2017 with Hymn) and I’ve got books 2, 4, and 5 on Mount ToBeRead waiting. I’m quite excited to see where this series goes over the course of those next four novels.

On the audio front, I started Glynn Stewart's The Terran Privateer, the first book in his Duchy of Terra Space Opera/Military SF saga. More on that next month once I finish it since I was only about half-way through when September began.

July 2022 Reading Round Up

July was another great month for reading, I read a couple of authors for the first time as did many people recently, they were debut novels. Three of the books I read in July were review books for SFFWorld (one of which will post in August so I'll note that next month), but the review of a book I read in June was posted in July. The short of that sentence - I posted 3 reviews to SFFWorld in July: 

Kagen the Damned by Jonathan Maberry: Horror and Epic Fantasy tend to intermingle, just read some of the passages of Tad Williams’s The Dragonbone Chair and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re reading a horror novel. More recently; however, some big chonker Epic Fantasy novels don’t just have horror passages, or dashes of horror, they can be considered Epic Horror novels outright – Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire and Christopher Buehlman’s Blacktongue Thief immediately come to mind. Of course, this novel could be considered Grimdark – and it will definitely appeal to Grimdark readers – but the horror DNA of Kagen the Damned is pretty potent. 

A Mirror Mended by Alix Harrow: Powerful prose, modern sensibilities, and a great sense of fun make A Mirror Mended a great follow-up to A Spindle Splintered. There are many other fables/fairy tales Harrow can explore with her fine-tuned pen and sensibilities, I for one would welcome more stories in this vein with these characters. 

Black Tide by K.C. Jones: I also like how Jones injects humorous passages into the otherwise dark and horrific tale. The best horror novels, and movies, have a laugh here or there to balance out the tension and the same can be said for Black Tide. That humor and balanced approach…i.e. not every chapter/passage being a conflict with an alien monster…helps to keep the pages and story moving at a great pace. 

In books I read that weren't reviewed at SFFWorld, I continued with Marshall Ryan Maresca’s Maradaine super series with Lady Henterman’s Wardrobe, the second in the Streets of Maradaine sub-sequence. This trilogy within the big series has a heist-like/caper feel and focuses on The Holver Alley Crew. The crew is still trying to get some kind of revenge or recompense for their homes and base of operations being burnt down. The street-wise group needs to infiltrate a high-society party to learn who was pulling the strings lead to a surprise. I’ll admit, a book with a title about a woman’s closet may be peculiar, but the book was lots of fun and was a great “episode” of the overall Maradaine saga. 

Paul Tremblay is one of the more impressive horror writers to emerge into the genre the last decade or so. A Head Full of Ghosts is one of the most perfect horror novels I ever read. Slowly, I’ve made my way through his books and this past month, landed on Survivor Song which is set during a pandemic as a new, deadly strain of rabies emerges. Although published in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tremblay wrote it before. Timing can be interesting. Anyway, this was a pretty gripping novel focusing on the plight of Natalie, a pregnant woman who was bitten and asked her friend, a Doctor, to help her. The novel follows their journey across a small region of Massachusetts over the course of a few hour. An intense, emotional and unsettling novel. 

As the month came to a close, I cracked open Into the Narrowdark the third book in Tad Willams’s latest 4-book trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard. Hard to say too much at this point, but I eased right back into the world and these characters. Small print at 500+ pages means I’ll be occupied with this book for a while. That is NOT a complaint. 

For my audiobook readings, all of July was consumed by Lord of Chaos, the sixth installment of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. I’m enjoying it as a very comforting return to friends and familiarity, but I’m beginning to see hints of the dreaded “Slog.” Some fantastic character moments in the novel, more perspective from the Forsaken and dark side. 

Only one book didn’t work for me in July, Ruthanna Emrys’s A Half-Built Garden. I found the pacing to be rather slow. I didn’t’ connect with the characters and was simply not feeling the book.

June 2022 Reading Round Up

Another month, another batch of books read and shelved. Let’s start with the lone book I reviewed for SFFWorld, In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan 

 

In the Shadow of Lightning is an enormously entertaining, inventive, and smart novel. As a series starter, it does everything perfectly…lays the ground for the world and the people, invites speculation about where the plot can go, provides some closure, but leaves the door open for the inevitable second novel. I was a fan of Brian’s Powder Mage Trilogy and this book reminded my why I like his writing and storytelling so much…it is FUN! I could feel how much Brian enjoyed crafting this magic system and have his characters play in it, the feeling was infectious. That’s something he has always infused his work with and reminds me I need to catch up with the sequel trilogy to Powder Mage Trilogy. 

I’ve slowly been making my way through Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series and I tore through the fourth book, Thunderbird early in the month in about a day or two. With each book I read from Chuck Wendig, he climbs my top 10 list of favorite writers. This series is a horror/mystery/noirish hybrid that focuses on title character Miriam Black who can tell you when you die. In this fourth novel, Miriam is even more broken. This installment finds Miriam hoping to get rid of her ability to see people’s deaths, which she considers a curse. Of course, it isn’t that easy for Miriam because she gets caught up with drug dealers in the Southwest and bad things happen. I’ve got two more books in the series and I’m vacillating between consuming them quickly because they are so damned good and stretching out that consumption because well, then they won’t be new to me any longer. DAMN YOU WENDIG!

After bouncing off of Ava Reid’s newest novel, Juniper & Thorn, I dove into S.P. Miskowski’s The Worst is Yet to Come. This one is a few years old (2019), but I’ve been seeing it mentioned with some frequency in some of the horror social media circles I’ve been following. None of that prepared me for what was in store in this dark, sort-of-coming-of-age story. Tasha is a 14 year-old girl who befriends Briar, a new girl in town, much to the chagrin of her mother. Miskowski brilliantly tells this story from multiple points of view and each layer of dread that unfolds reveals a new layer of dread. Miskowski has more stories set in this town of Skillute and I think I need to get my hands on them. Also, that cover is just hauntingly gorgeous.

After a couple of dark tales, I jumped into a book I’ve had sitting on Mount Toberead since late 2017 – Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft, the first novel in his Books of Babel. This book was a self-published sensation when Orbit republished it and the second book, Arm of the Sphinx, in 2018. What makes this novel so enchanting is how it is everything an Epic Fantasy novel should be, but has similarities to so very few Epic Fantasy novels I’ve read. The closest two novels that come to mind for me are Alastair Reynolds’s Terminal World and Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge. Those comparisons really don’t do justice to the magic of what Josiah Bancroft has done with this novel and world. Bancroft sets his story in a world that has many similarities to our own, but is clearly just echoing that familiarity, the story has a fable-like feel too it, as well.

Title character Thomas Senlin takes his wife Marya to the Tower of Babel for their honeymoon. The tower is an enormous, continuously growing structure with each vast level, or "ringdom," essentially a world unto itself.  Thomas and Marya are separated almost immediately and he spends the bulk of the novel searching for her. Bancroft’s prose is elegant, it lulls you in like a comforting blanket, but the stories it reveals over the course of Senlin’s journeys through four of the forty "ringdoms" are harrowing, enchanting, and often dark. The fourth and final novel published November 2021, so I may have to binge the three remaining books I’ve yet to read.

 

If there’s one author I’ve “discovered” in the sense that I hadn’t read them before the last year or so who has jumped up my must buy list it is Jonathan Janz. The third book I’ve read by him over the last year, The Raven is a post-apocalyptic/horror/adventure hybrid. Prior to the events depicted in the novel, in order to avert what was thought to be a guaranteed nuclear holocaust a group of rogue scientists played with human genes that triggered monsters of legend, like werewolves, zombies, cannibals, and vampires, to reemerge from our “junk DNA” in the world. They were always real in the world of The Raven, but mankind all but erased them from memory. The titular character, The Raven, is Dez, a man trying to survive in this broken world and find the woman he loves. Dez is guilt-ridden for the lives he couldn’t save, which drives him to find and hopefully save her. This one is a blast and Janz is releasing a second book (hopefully of many) later in the year.

Audio Books

I mentioned last month I was in the home stretch for Lindsay Buroker’s fantastic Star Kingdom saga and I finished the last book in the series, Layers of Force about halfway through the month. I can’t recommend this series highly enough, fun, light-hearted, and optimistic with some interesting SF tropes on display. The narration by Fred Berman is awesome.  After that, I tried a new series from a trusted author: Seanan McGuire’s Discount Armaeddon, the first novel in her InCryptid series. If the first book in the series is any indication, I’m going to enjoy these books. They focus Verity Price a ballroom dancer and part of a family of Cryptozoologists, who were once monster hunters. Verity's family realized a couple of hundred years ago that hunting and killing innocent monsters might not be such a good thing. There are some similarities with Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International series, but those are mostly superficial. McGuire’s series, at least based on this first book, is far less militaristic and a little more upbeat and flavored with more romance. Enormously fun in every way.

I went back to The Wheel of Time with book six, Lord of Chaos. I’ve only just begun, but I think this is one where the bloat starts to creep into the series. I’m enjoying it on what is either my third or fourth re-read. The audiobook is 40 hours so I may not finish it in July!

May 2022 Reading Round Up

This is getting to be a regular thing, it seems – I read some books, I post about them. Sure, I’ve been doing that at SFFWorld for years, but with far less frequency here.

I’ll briefly mention the reviews I posted to SFFWorld during the month of May before doing an overview of the goodies I read not for review for SFFWorld, i.e. books I bought or were gifted, but not sent for review from the publisher. Over the last month at SFFWorld, you’ll find my review of The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas, which I posted last week. This was a haunting, excellent horror debut novel. Last month, I hinted at a book I read in April whose review would be going live May 3, that was Holly Black’s Book of Night. A review of a book I read back in March went live in May, too. An outstanding Horror Anthology edited by John F.D. Taff, Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Terror. There’s one book officially publishing in June which I’ll post to SFFWorld on the book’s publication date. I started it late last week, but will hopefully finish it in the next week or so. Here’s the rundown of what I read outside of the review books I received for SFFWorld. 

May started out strong with the audiobook of Take Your Turn, Teddy, by Hayley Newlin. This is a book I’ve seen good things about on the various horror blogs and instagrammers I follow. This book starts out as a sad tale of a young boy named Teddy whose father is extremely abusive to his mother and becomes a horror novel mixed with a serial killer police procedural. Some creepy scenes, nice character development with the cast of characters, and nods to the Stephen King. It works extremely well and the narration by Thomas Gloom helped to enhance the story. Haley also reviews for Cemetery Dance magazine online. 

Clown in a Cornfield is a book whose title alone would strike a chord of creepiness in most reader’s imagination. Adam Cesare tells the story of a middle American town, but it can be seen as a microcosm of some of the issues in everyday America. Our main character, Quinn Maybrook, moves to Kettle Springs, a town whose divide between the adults and teens traces back to the recent shutting down of the syrup factory, which was a great source of the town’s economy and livelihood. Added to the chaos is “Frendo the Clown,” the mascot of the syrup factory, who begins killing people. Quinn is caught up in the mess as a new kid torn between the popular crew and the not so popular crew. 

Cesare did a fantastic job of immersing me in the story, building empathy for his characters, and keeping the tension and scares a very appreciable level. I read the book in only a couple of days because it was both relatively short and very difficult to set aside. As this post goes live, the sequel, Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives is on the horizon. 

A break in the horror with Sarah Chorn’s second novel in her Songs of Sefate series, Glass Rhapsody. I was a big fan of the first book (Of Honey and Wildfires reviewed @SFFWorld) and was eager to see where she took this fantastical frontier world. Her prose remains top notch and beautiful. Building on the momentous events at the conclusion of the first book, Sarah manages to maintain the same emotional pull that drove Of Honey and Wildfires while also examining new ways for her characters to deal with grief and tribulation. Sarah self-publishes her novels, but her storytelling ability is stronger than many traditionally published writers whose work I’ve sampled.

Back to Horror with The Troop by Nick Cutter. This book, as well as Cutter’s other books, seem to make every recommendation list I see for “recent horror” novels. After finally diving into the book, I now understand why. A scout troop goes to a local uninhabited island, Falstaff Island, to experience the wilderness as part of their annual trip. This island is essentially cut off from civilization, which is the point of the trip, especially in a world that is uber-connected. The boys and Scoutmaster arrive and are shortly joined by an unexpected visitor. That unexpected visitor brings some unexpected visitors of his own. The hype is pretty genuine with this book, it is horrific and creepy, at turns reminding me of the films Alien and The Thing, and of course the easy novel comparison, The Lord of the Flies. Some gruesome scenes, but not really gory for gore’s sake. Any of the squelchy scenes serve the story as a whole and a couple of characters are equally monstrous. Cutter openly admits the use of “real” updates like blogs, court records, and psychological transcripts interspersed in the text was inspired by Stephen King’s Carrie. It is an extremely effective method for building tension in the story. I’m looking forward to reading more of Nick Cutter’s novels in the future.

I took a break from my audiobook re-read of The Wheel of Time to finish out Lindsay Buroker’s Star Kingdom space opera series over the past month with book 7 Home Front and I started, book 8 Layers of Force at the end of the month, and will finish early June. This is a fun, character driven space epic set thousands of years in the future and unlikely hero Casmir Dabrowski who finds himself at the center of events of galactic conflict. The series features genetically modified humans, robots with AI, royalty, romance, space pirates, ancient technology and is enormously fun. In many ways, protagonist Casmir Dabrowski and his hopeful outlook in the face of tyranny reminds me of Julius from Rachel Aaron’s equally fun Fantasy/Apocalypse hybrid, Hearstrikers. I reviewed the first two books of that series for SFFWorld: Nice Dragons Finish Last and One Good Dragon Deserves Another.

On to another month of books!

April 2022 Reading Round Up

Books, I read books. I read lots of books. 

I read a few books in April, one of which is a May release. I’ll be posting my review to SFFWorld on May 3, the day of publication. I also posted a couple of book reviews in April, books I read in March: The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne, the spectacular second entry in his Norse-inspired Bloodsworn saga. Bottom line: this is shaping up to be a stellar fantasy saga. The other book review was T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone a modern take on the tried and true fairy tale about the princess who wants to marry the prince. In the case of this delightful novel, a princess wants to kill the prince. I highly recommend this one, too. 

On the audiobook front, the entire month was consumed joyfully with book four of The Wheel of Time, The Fires of Heaven wonderfully narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. I continued with my descent into the Horror genre with two gems from small presses. 

John F.D. Taff’s The Fearing, which was originally published in serialized format as short novels/novellas, much like Stephen King’s The Green Mile. Grey Matter Press released a “Definitive Edition”/omnibus slightly re-worked by Taff to be more of a novel. Boy-howdy did I enjoy this book. In it, all the fears of the world have been unleashed and it is up to a handful of characters to figure out how to navigate this world in the midst of transforming. Seemingly at the head of this release of fears is a man named Adam. Taff follows Adam’s journey across America and his affect on the people he encounters along with a few groups of characters who manage to survive the catastrophies and monsters unleashed in the world. 

Have I said I loved this book? Well, Robert R. McCammon’s Swan Song, Stephen King’s The Stand, and Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers now have another book joining them on my proverbial top shelf of Epic, Apocalyptic Horror. Love the cover on this one, too. 

Gwendolyn Kiste’s  The Rust Maidens received the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel and it has been appearing on several lists when I'm looking for a good creepy read. 

Set in 1980, Kiste paints a very bleak picture of a Cleveland manufacturing town in the process of dying. The factory which employs the majority of men in town may be closing or cutting back. Phoebe is our protagonist who is returning to town when her mother is about to move from the family home and the area is even more rundown in 2008 than it was in the 1980. Phoebe is powerfully devoted to her friends, even when they exhibit strange maladies like leaking water, glass fingernails, and showing metal bones. Kiste does a fantastic job with character and place in this novel. I could have used a little bit more of an explanation of why these girls were transformed, but sometimes in life, things happen without explanation. I’ll be reading more from Gwendolyn Kiste in the future. 

Unfortunately, one book did not work for me and it is from an author whose work I typically adore. Seanan McGuire’s Season Fears is the “companion” novel to her masterpiece, Middlegame. I found the book to be an overwrought world-building exercise, with one of the main characters taking far too long to actually believe what was happening. The plot momentum was extremely sluggish and everything was bogged down with dense, complicated, and confusing world building.

...and that's a wrap for my April Readings

Book Review: The Return (Audio Book) by Rachel Harrison / Women in Horror Month

Title: The Return

Author: Rachel Harrison

Publisher: Audible/Berkeley

Page Count: 304 Pages / 9 Hours, 34 Minutes

Publication Date/Year: 2020

Narrator: Sara Scott

Genre: Horror

Rachel Harrison’s debut novel, The Return, has been on my radar, probably since it published a couple of years ago. Three friends are surprised when their friend, Julie, disappears. Julie went hiking and never returned. Many people think she’s dead, but not Elise. Elise assumes Julie will return. She goes through the motions of attending the funeral (which happens a year after Julie disappears), but she also loses touch with Mae and Molly. Until Julie does return exactly two years after she vanished, Julie’s friends, Elise, Molly, and Mae, organize a weekend getaway at the Red Honey Inn, an exclusive, new, themed hotel in upstate New York. Julie is the last to arrive and this weekend is her friends to see her. Julie is much thinner, she looks sickly, a pale imitation of her former self. Julie is also acting strangely, for example, she now eats meat. Before she disappeared, she was a vegetarian. There are only occasional flashes of Julie’s former self.

Harrison frames her story through the voice of Elise, who as I suggested above, was the least concerned of her three “living” friends about Julie’s fate largely because she was closer to Julie than her other friends. Elise is a loner, somewhat self-imposed, compared to Mae and Molly. It was pretty easy to identify with Elise for me, Harrison did a nice job of making her situation grounded. For example, I thought it was a very nice touch that Elise expressed concern over the weekend getaway. First she thought it might be too much too soon, but second, and what gave the story that much more of a genuine feel is that Elise was concerned with the cost of going away to a fancy hotel. A seemingly small detail like that goes a long way to allowing the reader to “buy in” to what is happening in the story. Of course, with Elise as the narrator of the story, we only get her opinions on her friends and the situation.

Elise’s trepidation is a hint of the unsettling nature of the story that will unfold. A sense of dread slowly creeps into the story. The hotel is eerie, for starters. While it isn’t as haunted as say, the Overlook, it does give off a vibe of not quite being normal. The mountain setting doesn’t help, either. The limited number of staff, as Elise relays to us, come across as almost too perky. Each of the four characters is in their own themed room, each room feels like it could be in a Tim Burton movie.

As I said, the three friends realize Julie is very different. There’s an odor about her, Julie’s teeth are falling out, and she only seems to have an appetite for raw meat and alcohol. Elise soon thinks she’s seeing shadows moving, adding to her unease and an overall sense of being haunted. Julie’s presence continues to unnerve the three friends, with Mae and Molly urging Elise confront Julie about her memories and her appearance.

I don’t want to go too much further with plot details, but suffice it to say, Harrison does a fantastic job with an unsettling narrative. The creep factor increases as the novel heads to its inevitable conclusion, with some of the elements being explained, others not so much.

At times, Elise explained things that didn’t require explaining. But in the little moments, the intricacies of the friendship of these four women, Harrison excels. As I said, sometimes the smaller “devil in the detail” elements can pay it forward for the larger narrative. Overall, Harrison manages to infuse her narrative with a very strong pull that was difficult to deny.

An impressive horror debut. I’ve seen this novel labeled as a feminist horror and I suppose with the majority of characters being women (Tristan, Julie’s husband is the lone significant male character) I suppose that could be true. What The Return wound up being for me was a gripping, horror novel that was told with well-measured reveals. I guess I’d say folks who enjoyed the film The Descent would likely find a lot to like in this novel.

Highly Recommended

Book Review: The Bird Eater by Ania Ahlborn / Women in Horror Month

Title: The Bird Eater

Author: Ania Ahlborn

Publisher: 47 North

Page Count: 267 Pages

Publication Date/Year: 2014

Genre: Horror

Over the past few years, I’ve come to be a fan of Ania Ahlborn’s horror novels. Some are flat out horror stories featuring ghosts and demonic children, others feature serial killer families. The latest novel I’ve read by Ania Ahlborn, The Bird Eater, is a novel about a haunting; a haunted place and a haunted person. It also features something that could be classified as an evil presence.

Aaron has had what some may call a challenging life; he didn’t know his mother and the aunt who raised him (and who he thought of as a mother) died when he was young. The opening chapter is from the point of view of Aaron’s aunt/mother figure. She provides minimal details about his mother except that she was unstable and killed herself (which she doesn’t tell Aaron) shortly after Aaron was born. Despite that, Ahlborn paints a fairly nice picture of Aaron’s life growing up in this unique family. That is until his Aunt is killed at the end of that first chapter. Fast forward twenty years, Aaron is fighting addiction and separated from his wife after their son Ryder died in an automobile accident. In other, Aaron is a haunted individual. His therapist suggests he return to the home in Arkansas where his aunt raised him and renovate the house, Holbrook House, which has laid abandoned since he left when he was a teenage twenty years ago.

Aaron re-connects with some of his old high school friends, including his old high school sweetheart Cheri. His departure was rather sudden when he was a teenager, a couple of the friends (Cheri included) thought he was dead. In those twenty years, Holbrook House has become a local legend, thought to be haunted. His old friends have a tough time understanding why Aaron would want to stay there given the house’s history and his history with it.

Aaron isn’t prone to believing in the supernatural. So when a young boy seems to be stalking him, Aaron thinks it is just an annoying teenager. When dead birds continue to pile up on the ramshackle house, Aaron has a tough time explaining that to his friends. The creepy kid gets closer, taunts Aaron, and even vandalizes Aaron’s vehicle.

Aaron’s sanity begins to slip as he sees the boy more often, he descends into despair over his ruined marriage and dead sone. He questions what is real, self-medicates, and consumes more alcohol. His friends worry about him, but he has a tough time breaking from his cycle of self-destruction. After relatively slow build, and that great foundational first chapter, The Bird Eater draws to a heightened and potent conclusion.

So, let’s get this out of the way, shall we? Anytime a story features a house with a Proper Name, chances are that house is haunted. Those chances go up to 100% when the Named House is central to the Horror story. Holbrook House is no exception, rather, it proves the rule. Looking at Aaron, he is very much an unreliable narrator, especially as he relays his harrowing experiences with the creepy kid and Holbrook House to his friends. His personal demons and haunted presence mirror the haunted nature of Holbrook House Ahlborn walked the line of reality and supernatural quite finely, especially as she pulled Aaron to the conclusion of the novel.

There are quite a few implied connections between characters and elements throughout the story. Clues blatant and subtle that, as a reader, I found enjoyable in the reading experience. In that respect, The Bird Eater was very successful as a conversation between reader and writer. Aaron seems to be the latest (or current) person affected by Holbrook House, there is a deeper history to the house and area that Aaron discovers and hints that Holbrook House isn’t quite done torturing people.

Very creepy with a magnetic narrative that kept me reading, The Bird Eater is another excellent horror tale from the mind of Ania Ahlborn.

Highly Recommended

Book Review: The Winter People (Audio Book) by Jennifer McMahon / Women in Horror Month

Title: The Winter People

Author: Jennifer McMahon

Publisher: Audible

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell & Kathe Mazur

Lenth: 10 hrs and 45 min

Publication Date/Year: 2014

Genre: Horror

Jennifer McMahon is a best-selling writer of suspense novels, some of which easily fall into the horror genre, like this particular novel, The Winter People. I’ve been wanting to give her work a try for a short-while now and have been wavering on which book would be my first from her and decided on this one, the creepy description was intriguing. I’m also a fan of stories told in parallel timelines, which is a feature of this novel.

While both storylines take place in West Hall, Vermont, one timeline is told in 1908, during an uncompromising and difficult winter. Sara Harrison Shea’s* daughter Gertie dies during that winter and unfortunately, Gertie isn’t the first child of Sara and her husband Martin to lose. In denial, Sara puts the full blame for Gertie’s death on her husband Martin. She is driven beyond the bounds of sanity to do anything to see her daughter one more time, she is convinced her daughter hasn’t died.

* I'm always wary of characters with three names like that, who are constantly referred to by their first, middle, and last name. Lots of serial killers go by the three names and characters with three names tend to not be the most...stable?

In the “current timeline” there are additional parallel stories occurring: Ruthie and her kid sister wake up one day and their strict mother Alice has disappeared. Oh, by the way, these folks live in Sara Harrison Shea’s old home. There have been a spate of missing people in the West Hall area, specifically where Ruthie and her family live, and Ruthie is worried her mom might be the latest victim of some cruel and twisted presence. Adding to the creepiness is the dark history surrounding Sara Harrison Shea. She was labeled a witch, and supposedly had a book that could bring the dead back to life. These living dead people have been dubbed, by the local populace, as Winter People.

Adding another layer of parallel story is the arrival of a woman named Katherine, who is mourning the recent loss of her husband as well as the death of her son not so recently. She is drawn to West Hall when she learns her husband made an unannounced visit there just before he died.

McMahon has a great knack for compelling narrative. She switches between the parallel stories in a deliciously powerful manner. What do I mean? We’ve all had that “oh just one more chapter” thought cross our minds when we’re invested in a good book. McMahon is really good at implanting that thought in readers’ heads.

Of course one of the most enjoyable elements of stories told in parallel narratives is trying to figure out how those narratives cease to become parallel and intertwine. McMahon does a great job with this storytelling element as well, and is a complement to that whole “just another chapter” thought.

I felt ingrained in these character’s heads with each switch of viewpoint, Jennifer McMahon built a solid foundation for them that allowed for a great deal of empathy. I will say; however, I found Ruthie’s little sister somewhat annoying, but I suppose that is kind of the purpose of the character.

My issue; however, is with the audiobook edition which has two performers/narrators. The present day narrator is fine, excellent actually. The narrator who performed the story in the past sounded strained as if she were trying to whisper, or whisper shout. I wish audiobook narrators and producers would stop with this trick, which is not dissimilar in annoyance to how darkly streaming shows are shot these days.

In the end, The Winter People was a thrilling, creepy, compulsive read. It’s no wonder Jennifer McMahon is a best-selling writer, she spins a compelling, tale. I'll be seeking out more of her work in the future. This book should appeal to horror readers and thriller fans, as well.

Recommended

Women in Horror Month (2022)!

March is Women in Horror Month, a celebration of women's contributions to the Horror Genre. A few of the bookstagrammers and bloggers I've been following are highlighting works by women in the horror genre during the month of March. This includes the Ladies of Horror Fiction, who is hosting a readathon, which functions as a pretty good "to-read" list. 

Another great way to find some goods books to read in the spirit of this month is to follow the  #WomenInHorrorMonth and #WiHM hashtags on twitter or Instagram. You could als follow Ladies of Horror Fiction on Instagram & Twitter and Mother Horror/Sadie Hartmann on Instagram or Twitter for good recommendations. Hell, those accounts should be followed regardless if you happen to enjoy horror.

For my part, I've got a review posting here on Wednesday (03/09), of an excellent, spooky novel I recently enjoyed as an audiobook. I may have one more audiobook review of a book I just started enjoying recently; a non-audio book review of another recent favorite writer, and perhaps an author profile going live over the course of this month. Life outside the pages (and earbuds for the audiobooks) may dictate what happens 'round here. Could be more, could be less.

All that said, here's a picture of my puppy, Dusty, sitting with me while I read the excellent Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes (a.k.a. Stacey Kade), which I reviewed for SFFWorld.

Book Review: Come Closer by Sara Gran

Title: Come Closer

Author: Sara Gran

Publisher: Soho Press

Page Count: 166 Pages

Publication Date/Year: 2003

Genre: Horror

Possession. One of the more rife subjects explored in horror novels. Sara Gran’s Come Closer takes a powerful approach to examine how easily such a possession can destroy a person.

Amanda and her husband Ed live happily in New York City, she’s an architect, he’s a financial guy for a prominent women’s clothing company. Gran gets things moving immediately … Amanda is called into her boss’s office after he reads the proposal she placed on his desk, pages of vicious and vulgar attacks. Amanda can’t explain it, but she knows the words spoke truth to his deviant behavior. At home that night, she and Ed hear strange noises in their home, noises in the wall they attribute to pipes or mice. These noises continue to occur for a few days. Rather innocuous, since they live in an older house. I live in a house built in the 1950s, I hear noises all the time and have come to dismiss them as just normal “house noises.”

Strange things begin to occur… A stray dog she befriended and began training growls and backs away from her. Amanda finds herself arguing with Ed with more frequency, something they didn’t typically do before we met her at the beginning of Come Closer. Things that she previously brushed off, Ed’s late nights, his friends quirks, begin to annoy her even more. Amanda comes across a book, Demon Possession Past and Present with a quiz a person can take to assess whether or not they are possessed. Things like blacking out without having taken drugs or alcohol (Amanda has spaces of time she can’t recall), finding yourself picking up habits (like smoking) you’d given up or never had. Amanda takes the quiz a few times over the course of the story.

Accompanying the aberrant behavior are dreams Amanda has of a woman on a red beach who proclaims her need for Amanda, her love, and who promises to never leave. As her behavior becomes more disturbing to herself, Amanda’s life unravels. There’s a part of her that takes an almost sick glee in the destructive behavior, while another battles for control against the demon she believes to be Naamah.

Gran tells the story in Amanda’s matter-of-fact first person voice. That, for me, might be the most terrifying element of the story, just how “normal” some of the deplorable behavior and events are delivered. I had to re-read some passages with an unspoken “WAIT WHAT?” in my brain.

There’s a small hint that perhaps Amanda is suffering a psychotic break and Gran smartly has Amanda visit both a psychiatrist and a spiritual advisor to help her remedy her problem. This leads to the inevitable question I have about first person stories, is this a reliable narrator? That unreliable narrator element adds another level of dread, especially as Gran brings the novel towards its powerful conclusion.

My wife read Come Closer a few years ago. I vaguely remember her recommending it to me and she thought highly enough about the book that she wanted to keep it. I saw the book being mentioned over the last year on various blogs and books-ta-grammers and decided to finally dive in. I read in essentially one sitting on a gloomy January Sunday and it was a perfect reading experience. 

Powerful, gripping, believable creepy, and utterly unsettling.

Highly Recommended

Book Review: The Siren and the Specter by Jonathan Janz

Title: The Siren and the Specter

Author: Jonathan Janz

Publisher: Flame Tree Press

Page Count: 304 Pages

Publication Date/Year: 2018

Genre: Horror

Jonathan Janz is one of the more prominent horror writers to emerge over the last half decade or so. His name has been floating around social media as a talent to watch and read. Well, about a year ago, I read what I think was his debut novel (or at least an early work), The Darkest Lullaby and some of it stuck with me, he does creepy really well. I decided to take my second tour of his work with The Siren and the Specter, which is the subject of this review.

David Caine is a skeptic, he is a best selling author of books that essentially debunk haunted places. When his old friend Chris suggests he spend some time at Alexander House, allegedly the “Most Haunted House in Virginia” for his next book project, David acquiesces. Dave becomes friendly with his neighbor, Ralph Hooper and much to his chagrin, kids whose parents are absentee parents, all of whom reside on the banks of the Rappahannock River. He also hears and sees things in the house and the area surrounding it. …and like many haunted house stories, David is haunted by his past and brings ghosts of his own when he arrives at Alexander House. 

Alexander House was home to “Governor” Judson Alexandar, a notorious abuser of women and children, murderer and potentially a practitioner of dark rituatls, whose taint has affected the entirety of the region.

What happens when the skeptic is confronted by something he cannot deny? Well, that’s the thrust of the story and Janz charges the entire narrative with a sense of unease and foreboding. Janz does a fantastic job of putting us in David’s head and building up empathy for him. Although his character type (skeptic in a horror novel) is tried and true, David is wholly his own. When confronted about his past and what lead to the death of his former girlfriend Anna, it is difficult, almost impossible to not side with David despite some of the less than level-headed decisions he’s made both in the "present" of the novel and the past. 

Janz also does a nice job of surrounding David with supporting characters who rise above their character types. There’s the down-home neighbor Ralph who befriends David, but soon reveals he knows more than he initially let on to David. Janz did some nice navigating with Ralph’s character. There’s the romantic interest Jessica, whose relationship with David starts off in a very believable and awkward fashion. Lastly, the antagonists…at least the living antagonists, the Shelbys. To say more is to rob you, the reader, of discovering just how awful they are.

The scares and the creeps are intense. There’s enough to set your hair on edge, much of it at the proverbial edge of your vision, which for me is far more effective than in your face horrors. Sure, there’s some in your face stuff, but that is far outweighed by the edge of your senses elements. Janz lays amazing groundwork with the “edge of your senses” stuff, which makes the more “in your face” stuff that much more effective. He doles out the scenes with perfect descriptions that are utterly creepy.

Something I said on twitter while reading the book: A couple of days into reading the book I had a nightmare. I’m not saying reading The Siren and The Specter caused the nightmare, but I’m not saying the book didn’t cause the nightmare. Correlation…the only two books I can say directly gave me nightmares were Stephen King’s The Shining and Dan Simmons Summer of Night and what caused those nightmares were what I previously called the “edge of your senses” creepiness. Janz, in The Siren and the Specter, excels at the “edge of your senses” horror, as I said.

Haunted House stories are staples of the Horror Genre and readers (and viewers of the movies) have certain expectations when starting the story. Janz managed to bring the novel to a rather unexpected and potent conclusion that kept me glued to the pages later into the night than I’m normally reading. He played some great twists with the Haunted House story towards the end of the novel.

The Siren and the Specter is a stunning, powerful horror novel that has me very eager to read more from a writer many have called a modern master.

Highly Recommended

© 2022 Rob H. Bedford

The Blog o' Stuff is Still Alive

Well, I know I’ve made similar announcements in the past about the direction of this blog, so I suppose it can’t hurt to do so again. 2016 was the last time there was anything resembling consistent posting here at the good old o' Stuff. Many of those posts were the books in the mail posts, which felt redundant after so many years and a bit showy off after a while. 

I still post reviews very, very regularly at SFFWorld, with the majority of the books I review being sent to me by publishers specifically to be reviewed. I put on a slightly different hat when I’m reading a book for review purposes vs reading a book without the intention of reviewing. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the majority of those books, but there’s a slightly different sense of commitment. 

Christmas 2021 Book Haul

That leads to what I intend to do here at the Blog o’ Stuff – post book thoughts. What a novel concept for this blog, right? Well, the books I intend to feature here will be books I haven’t received for review: books I’ve purchased on my own or books I’ve received as gifts. I’m not sure how regularly I’ll do this, because I’ve often gone 4 or 5 books in a row that are review books. That said, I have one post ready to go this week, a “review” of a book I recently finished that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

I’ll leave you all with a photo collage of Dusty, the dog my wife and I welcomed into our home this past summer after Sully passed in the Spring. Dusty is a sweet, smart, silly, derpy dog who has her own Instagram, if you believe that: Dusty the Derp. Amazing how she can type with those paws, but she manages to post something about once per week. Dogs are the best.

2021 Reading Year in Review

It has been a few years since I did a reading year in review here at the Blog o’ Stuff, the most recent being 2018, and before that, 2015 so apparently, I update this blog every 3 years. That's a far cry from the multiple posts per week I'd publish in this blog's heyday.  

For completeness sake, here are the other previous years I’ve put up a reading year in review, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006).

As I've done every year for the past decade and a half, I've contributed to SFFWorld's Favorite of the Year lists: Fantasy/Horror, Science Fiction, and Film/TV. Where those book lists are focused only on 2021 releases, here at the dusty old Blog o' Stuff, I don't limit the list to just 2021 releases. I'm still very actively reviewing for both SFFWorld and The Tap Takeover

2021 was a tougher year than 2020 in some ways. We thought normalcy would return, but that did not happen. We are still in a pandemic. The year began for me with surgery on my shoulder (which I scheduled in 2020, but still) and for the better part of the first half of the year, our sweet dog Sully was fighting major health issues, passing away at just over 11 years old on May 4, 2021. My wife and I were heart-broken, but we realized how much joy Sully brought to us over those years. In the summer; however, our spirits were brightened by the arrival of our new puppy, Dusty! She brings a smile to our face constantly and she was and is the perfect dog at the right time, she is exactly what we needed.

Of the nearly 100 books I read in 2021, here are some stats: 

• 30 2021/current year releases 
• 33 reviews posted to SFFWorld
• 40 can be considered Fantasy 
• 32 can be considered Horror 
• 18 can be considered Science Fiction 
• 32 books by authors new to me 
• 47 Books by women 
• 15 total debut 
• 17 audiobooks

I also have to give a huge shout out to a couple of book folks on social media who have re-invigorated my love for the Horror genre. It isn't like I didn't read horror in the past, but it usually made up only about 20% to 25% of the books I read in any given year. In 2021 Horror was 34% of what I read. Fantasy is usually about 50%. Those shout outs: My college pal Dave Aldrich who started up his own booktube channel, Book Blather. Sadie Hartmann, AKA Mother Horror, who runs the Night Worms Book Box subscription service with Ashley Sawyers aka Spookish Mommy, maybe the best cheerleader/advocates for horror fiction I've come across in years as well as Neil McRobert's Talking Scared podcast. All positivity from them and quite a few books and writers I discovered this year are a result of following Sadie on Twitter and Instagram. Also, shout out also to my former SF Signal colleague Derek Austin Johnson (twitter), who has been posting one horror book per day for the whole year on his Instagram. 

So, without further adieu, below are the books I enjoyed reading the most in 2021. There's no order outside of the first two on this post.  If I've reviewed the book, the title will link to the review.

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
(My favorite overall novel of 2021, Favorite Horror)

What can I say about this novel without giving away too much of what makes it tick, from the dark and supernatural point of view? Nothing really, because this book turned into something quite unexpected. What I will say is that Oliver is a wonderful creation, despite the pain he feels from others, he does not crumble or wither. He finds strength in how this ability makes him want to help others. Like Oliver, what Chuck has done in The Book of Accidents is powerfully build up empathy in the characters he’s created in this novel. On the whole, their motivations seem genuine, their actions understandable if not approved, and the characters simply come to life. 

 In my review of Wanderers, I mentioned Chuck Wendig’s affinity for the fiction of Stephen King and parts of this novel (in addition to the elderly, friendly neighbor) definitely evoke the best of King’s work. The genius here; however, is that Chuck Wendig completely owns everything in The Book of Accidents. The result, a modern masterpiece of Dark/Horror Fiction.

 

The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst
(My Favorite Fantasy Novel of 2021)

Getting the gang back together is a popular motif in many stories, fantasy stories included. One of the most popular (and one of the foundational fantasy sagas in this vein for me) is the DragonLance Chronicles, so I suppose I’m pre-disposed to liking stories that begin in this fashion. In The Bone Maker, the evil sorcerer was defeated 25 years ago, but at no small cost to the heroes who took him down.

Durst examines some deep things here, grief, forgiveness moving on (or not) from a powerful traumatic experience, faith/belief in ideals, and life being more than just one event. She does so this all while weaving a wonderful story and a fascinating, potent magic system in the back drop. The characters a mature, fully rounded, breathing, emotive people whose experiences so completely inform every action they take. Small things in the background of Durst’s writing, storytelling, and world-building make the story and characters on the page come across very elegantly.

In a shelf-filled with multi-volume fantasies it is not only refreshing to see and enjoy a single-volume Epic Fantasy novel, but truly something special for the book to be this amazing.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

I’m a big horror fan, but the slasher sub-genre was never my go-to subset of the genre. It isn’t that I dislike it, I just prefer some of the other flavors of horror. Of course, I’m familiar with a couple of the big ones like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and one of my overall favorite horror movies, A Nightmare on Elm Street, so some of the character stand-ins/homages didn’t land with me 100% since I’m not super well-versed in Slasher films. Again, that isn’t necessarily the point nor are those connections required to be made to completely enjoy the novel, more like a dash of whip cream on a delicious scoop of ice cream. In fact, Dr. Carol Elliott is likely an homage to Professor Carol J. Clover, who coined the term “Final Girl” and theory in her 1992 book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. All of that said, The Final Girl Support Group was an enormously fun, extremely smart, thrill ride of a novel. It is a novel that both entertains and Makes a Statement, which in my mind, is what great literature should do. I continue to say this when I write about Grady Hendrix’s work, but with each novel or thing (non-fiction like Paperbacks from Hell or films he’s written) he produces in the genre, he’s cementing himself as a foundational voice in early 21st Century Horror. His novels have become appointment reading for me at this point.

Blood of the Chosen by Django Wexler

In everything I’ve read from Django Wexler, especially Blood of the Chosen, the action and combat scenes are essential, and extremely fun to experience. I didn’t feel like I was just reading the words on the page, I felt like I was a proverbial fly on the wall in the action. This is especially true of the final conflict of the novel, so much of the narrative was slow burn build that the explosive ending was extremely compelling. The slow burn of the novel’s beginning made the build-up and the action of the finale that more enjoyable. That ending also sows seeds in some verdant land for a potent continuation in the third novel.

As thick as this novel was, just over 400 pages, I read through it rather briskly. Wexler is a damned fine storyteller and his love of the fantastic comes through the page as a catchy thing.

Near the Bone and The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry

 

The Ghost Tree: Henry does a great job with the pacing of the novel as she goes between the multiple threads of the novel. Alongside that strong element of the novel are the emotions of the characters and how strongly the come across the page. From the loneliness Lauren feels, to the awful feelings conveyed by Mrs. Schneider, to the anger the Lopez family feels, Henry makes each character unique.

The Ghost Tree plays on some popular tropes in the horror genre, a 1980s setting, a small town with secret, haunted woods/tree, a hidden lineage and plays with them extremely well. One of my favorite horror novels over the past decade and a half is Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge and I found some really nice resonance between the two novels – small, isolated town with a dark secret being the most prominent.

Near the Bone: This is the second book I read by Henry, but it will be far from my last. Set in a remote, secluded mountain cabin, Mattie is in what can be considered an unhealthy relationship with her husband William. She is confined to the cabin, except when William needs her help and William wants nobody to know of their presence on the mountain. When she discovers a mutilated fox, William decides to hunt down the thing that left the corpse near their house. Strange, inhuman voices begin to cry out in the night and visitors stumble upon Mattie and William. Part psychological thriller, part monster story, Henry tells a taut, gripping horror story here.

Wizard of the Pigeons by Meghan Lindholm

Wizard of the Pigeon is a novel that can work on multiple layers, and the power of Lindholm’s prose is in the ambiguity that allows the reader for that kind of experience. It can easily be readable as a novel with real magic in Seattle while it can also be read as an account of a man suffering from severe PTSD whose coping mechanism is thinking of himself as a wizard. The third alternative is a combination of the two. For me, I see magic.

I must also comment on the physical book itself. As I intimated above, this book has largely been out of print for well over a decade. Sean Speakman, owner of Grim Oak Press decided to publish this 35th Anniversary edition and it is a book whose beauty does justice to the powerful story told between its covers. With evocative full-page color art pieces by Tommy Arnold, the book gets a truly Artistic treatment in terms of a physical book being a piece of art or an artifact.

This book is a must read, must own for readers of the genre especially if you’ve enjoyed anything by Robin Hobb. Wizard of the Pigeons is a progenitor of the Urban Fantasy genre in the truest sense of magic in the cityscape and not leather-clad vampires and vampire hunters. Not that there’s anything wrong with leather clad vamps and vamp hunters, but this book is not that. This book is a beautiful testament to the power of prose, how beauty can be found and carved out of pain and through suffering.

Mount Fitz Roy by Scott Sigler

Mount Fitz Roy is the sequel to Sigler’s hugely popular novel Earthcore. I listened to both books via audible. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read from Sigler and when he re-released Earthcore with the great Ray Porter on audio, I finally read it…and immediately wanted to read Mount Fitz Roy. The premise is that an something on is hiding in the caves of large mountains where knives form an ancient civilization are found. It really isn’t a spoiler to point out this civilization aren’t human. Sigler builds up tension incredibly well and is a master at science fiction horror. Porter is maybe the best narrator I’ve had the pleasure to hear.

 

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

A run down motel, murders in the past connected to our protagonist Carly who decides to work in the hotel to try to solve the unsolved murder of her aunt Viv 35 years earlier. St. James tells the story in parallel timelines, Carly in the present and Viv in the past, which makes the pages fly by because of St. James’s ability to end each chapter in a way that forces you to continue reading. The Sun Down Motel was a near pitch-perfect supernatural murder mystery, one of those books I wish I could read again for the first time.

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

Ava Reid has boldly announced herself as a literary force with The Wolf and the Woodsman. The novel is impressive in its beauty, characters, and uncompromising nature and is all the more impressive for being Reid’s debut novel. I would not be in the least bit surprised if The Wolf and the Woodsman lands on multiple “Best of the Year” lists for 2021.

Of Honey and Wildfires by Sarah Chorn

Sarah Chorn’s second novel, Of Honey and Wildfires, is the start of a new series/new world and new characters. Set in a world that evokes the old West/Frontier, the Shine and mining of it dominates everything. The closest analogue I can think of is that Shine is kind of like Spice from Dune. It heals, it is a source of power, it can be consumed, it is everything. …

Human emotion, tragedy, and pain are wrought beautifully on these pages through Sarah Chorn’s carefully constructed prose. There’s a sliver of hope throughout the undercurrent of despair and pain that helps to drive the narrative. Of Honey and Wildfires is a compulsively readable novel whose relatively short page count for the genre (barely 300 pages) belies the epic story and gamut of emotions and purely powerful storytelling on display.

Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman

Chapman takes very real-life events and uses that as a launching pad to spin a gripping story out of those events. He does a fantastic job of humanizing the participants of what would seem to be a larger-than-life bombastic news story. I’ve long been fan of parallel narratives and here in Whisper Down the Lane, Chapman builds up the tension in both Sean and Richard’s stories. It is probably not much of a secret that these stories converge in some fashion, but how Chapman builds towards this convergence is extremely effective. He has a knack for creating a compulsive narrative, which is why I burned through the novel in a couple of days, Whisper Down the Lane was extremely challenging to set down.

Whisper Down the Lane is a potent, compulsive thriller with horrific elements that is one of the most gripping novels I’ve read this year.

Slewfoot by BROM

Much of the story feels like a historical fantasy / fairy tale, but then Brom shifts the tone into something darker and a story firmly entrenched in horror. That build of tension and build of Abitha’s character is like a powder keg that explodes in what at one time could be considered dark magic. Here also is what Brom does so well…he upturns the historical perspective and turns the “good” on its head into something not quite so pleasant. He does this via the simmering of tension I mentioned earlier as well as the path Abitha’s nemesis Wallace takes. Brom gives readers a character to root for in Abitha and an antagonist that is unlikeable in Wallace. Brom doesn’t just make Wallace a cardboard cut-out of a villain, he balances the character by showing some insight into the Wallace’s motivation. We see why he feels the way he does, even if his reaction to those feelings are villainous.

Brom’s art, a half-dozen color plates in the center of the book and chapter icons that take up half the page, enhance the immersive experience of Slewfoot. His words are just as potent at telling the story as is his art. The obvious comparison in recent years is to the film The VVitch because the timeframe, horrific elements, witchcraft, but except maybe a bit more hopeful.

Brom has created a story that feels familiar and fresh and is the kind of powerful story that could last through the generations as a book/novel/story to revisit every Hallowe’en.

Star Kingdom by Lindsay Buroker

This is the second series I’ve read from Buroker and she has a great knack for character and storytelling in her work. She’s self-published (one of the biggest names in genre self-published authors), but most of her work is also available via audible. This series takes place thousands of years in the future when humanity has left Earth. The Star Kingdom series focuses on robotics professor Casmir Dabrowski, who is forced to flee his comfortable life when he is being hunted for reasons he can’t imagine. Joining Casmir is his best friend and roommate Kim Sato and filled with great character development, thrilling action, and are just pure fun. These audio books are available as omnibus editions and are fantastic listens.

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

I guess I re-read this series about once every ten years. Or when the TV Show starts up. Either way, I am in the midst of re-reading the series via audiobook and I’m loving it. I’ve said quite a bit about this series in the past, and as of this writing, I had just finished The Dragon Reborn. 

Maradaine by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Maresca’s interlinked series of series has been a delight. I read The Thorn of Dentonhill back in 2015, dove back into some of the Maradaine novels last year, and have continued to make my way through the various series this year, in chronological order not in series order, which is what Mr. Maresca recommends. These books are relatively short (barely 400 pages at most) in mass market paperback and have a sword and sorcery feel to them, taking place in a shared location. In many ways, his Maradaine saga is not unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, four trilogies that eventually tie together. You don’t necessarily need to read one of the trilogies to get what is going on in the other, but it makes for a more rewarding experience. Maresca has a handy "reading order" guide.

I also reviewed, and loved the 2021 entry in this series, An Unintended Voyage, which seems to act as a bridge between "Phase One" of Maradaine and the next phase. 

Miriam Black by Chuck Wendig

For all that I’ve read by Chuck Wendig, I’d never read his breakout series, Miriam Black and the only reason I’m not kicking myself for not getting to this series sooner is because I’m not getting to experience these books for the first time. Miriam can tell you how you die and exactly when you die just by touching you. That doesn’t sound fun at all, and Miriam would agree with that sentiment. Horror/thriller/mystery rolled together, I think Chuck has said he envisions these as horror novels. I’m not going to argue with the man. I’ve read the first three thus far, Blackbirds, Mockingbird, and The Cormorant.

I think it might be obvious at this point that my author of the year is Chuck Wendig. Even if I hadn’t met and chatted with him in the past, I’d love his books and writing.

So...not a bad year for reading for me. This year was the first time in probably 15 to 20 years that I got close to reading 100 books in a year.