Saturday, October 26, 2013

Adams and Eve by Elle Druskin

Blurb:

Halloween is murder.

Everyone in Liberty Heights is invited to LouAnn’s party. Dress as an Adams. Nobody can figure out why LouAnn chose such a peculiar theme, and the town’s residents wrack their brains for costumes representing famous characters named Adams. That doesn’t include the gate crashers; sister BettyAnn, now a bonafide member of Registered Witches of America, and her new boyfriend who’s practicing to be a vampire. Then there’s the uninvited costumed guest who plans to use the party to murder LouAnn, but this is Liberty Heights, where the unexpected usually happens.

Who’s trying to kill LouAnn? Why? How do the folks in Liberty Heights prevent a murder? Celebrate Halloween—Liberty Heights style.

Review:


WARNINGS:
  1. Choking Hazard: Do not eat or drink anything while reading Adams and Eve.
  2. Laughing Hazard: Do not read Adams and Eve in public unless you want to explain while you’re rolling around on the floor laughing your derriere off.
I read Adams and Eve at the VA while I was there to do my volunteer work.  It was a slow day.  I sit at a desk in a large waiting room with very little to absorb sound, so my peals of laughter echoed down the waiting room and through the hall.  And there were a lot of peals of laughter.  Of course, this was my sixth trip to Liberty Heights, New Jersey and I love its denizens, both human and animal, so I laugh at inside jokes as well as the obvious ones—like Wayne’s ESP.  Wayne is a beagle.  Or LouAnn Friedbush’s spelling.  She means, “Come as an Addams.”  She dresses as Morticia, her boyfriend Howie Fleischowitz is Gomez, and Wayne is Cousin Itt for a few minutes at least.  He isn’t fond of his costume.

BettyAnn and her boyfriend show up unannounced without costumes, but they’re weird enough not to need them.  Simon P. Stein, the wanna-be vampire, more closely resembles Herman Munster—and doesn’t like the sight of blood.

So, LouAnn’s expecting a Pugsley and a Wednesday or two, maybe an attempt at a Lurch, a few Uncle Festers and possibly another Morticia.  What she gets are John and Abigail Adams, Don Adams as Maxwell Smart with his faithful Agent 99, and a plethora of rather obscure Adamses plus a gorilla who Wayne clearly doesn’t like.

Yuppers!  Halloween Liberty Heights style is both hilarious and memorable.  But you’ll have to buy the book to find out who the gorilla is.  I highly recommend it.  Just re-read the warnings at the top of my review.

Length:  97 Pages
Price:  $2.50

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Thy Kingdom Needs to Fall; Thy Kingdom Fall by Austin Dragon




Blurb:

It is the morning of September 11, 2125. The New York City police commissioner stands on the 170th floor of the Three Towers, clutching his chest in shock. The sky goes dark, filled with dozens of them—the opening attack of World War III. Not merely the planet’s third global war, but the first one of the Tek Age—a hell we have never seen before.

How did we ever get to this place?

In 2089, a former skin-runner-turned-star-reporter quietly investigates the Washington DC daylight murder of the most powerful political king-maker in the nation. It is just the tip of a wider conspiracy and the start of a chain of events leading to this world catastrophe.

The world is a very different place: Western Europe has fallen to the Islamic Caliphate, Israel is gone, Eastern Europe has merged with Russia and Beijing runs the anti-American Chinese-Indian Alliance. America is very different too. The US Constitution has been found unconstitutional and replaced, presidential term limits are gone, and the culture wars are over. The three-term American president is obsessed with keeping the nation safe at all costs—by ending religiosity. But the Resistance stands in his way.

Thy Kingdom Fall is Book One of the epic After Eden Series.

Review:

I realize I’ve said I would not review a book until I finished reading it, but I see no way this book can redeem itself in my eyes regardless how it ends.  The characters are well-fleshed out okay, and the plot could be engaging.  But Thy Kingdom Fall is full of political rants and repetition, as each event is told from the point of view of different characters.  This is a four-hundred-plus page book that could easily have been edited down to three-hundred pages or less.

The book is told in flashback, which would be okay if the author started at the beginning and told the story chronologically.  Instead, he hops back and forth between 2089 and 2076 in Part One.  He adds even earlier dates to Part Two.  A flashback is fine, but here the flashbacks have flashbacks, and the transitions are choppy. It’s dizzying.

The thing that really makes me want to throw my Kindle across the room, however, is Mr. Dragon’s vilifying a group of people who do not deserve it.  Do your homework, sir.  The villains in this book are the Pagans, whom Mr. Dragon paints as godless people trying to stamp out religion.  The Pagans are the ones in charge of the government who trash the Constitution, pass laws against owning the Bible, and declare religious language (even the word “amen”) to be “hate language.”

That is not what Pagans are about at all.  The word pagan is derived from the Latin word paganus, or country dweller.  Most people today who call themselves “Pagans” believe in some form of deity and follow one of the ancient polytheistic paradigms such as the Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Nordic, Celtic, or Native American/Shamanic gods and goddesses.  We honor the Earth, the sky, and all of nature’s works.  Most believe in reincarnation, coming back until you get it right and then dwelling in Summerland, or Nirvanna, or Valhalla, or whatever.  Pagans are also the most accepting people around.  We don’t proselytize; we respect other people’s beliefs.  When was the last time a Pagan knocked on your door and tried to convert you?

So, again, Mr. Dragon—do your homework before you vilify a group of people.  We Pagans are not the villains you seem to think we are.



Length:  436 Very Long Pages

Prices:

E-Book:  $2.99

Paperback:  $13.51

Hardcover:  $24.29



Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Dogs of War: Vertigo by Frances Pauli





Blurb:

A modern day accountant with a level head and her feet firmly planted in ordinary reality, Genevieve doesn’t believe in past lives, demons, or true love. All of which seems like a perfectly practical approach to life until the thing that killed her in World War One decides it’s time to try again…

Genevieve Oliver doesn’t break the law. She doesn’t take risks, and she definitely doesn’t believe in anything weird. Getting pulled over for speeding on the way to pick up her new dog wasn’t exactly on her to do list. Even more surprising, the cop who shows up at her window seems familiar. She’s never seen him before, and yet, just looking at the man makes her want to cry. But Viv has her head on straight. Right?

She shakes off the encounter and heads to the dog breeder only to have an old magazine photo trigger a full blown, past-life flashback. Not only do the soldiers in the picture look like her and her mysterious cop, she remembers them—a memory that holds as much danger as it does passion.

Now Viv is bouncing between two lives and being stalked by something evil in both of them. As the love story of two soldiers unfolds, her own heart opens for a man who may not even be available. Not that she has time to worry about minor details. If she can’t figure out the demon’s identity fast, Viv could lose more than just her life. She could lose everything she never believed in.

Review:

Dogs of War: Vertigo was a fascinating mix of paranormal, historical and suspense, even though I pretty much figured out who did it about half-way through.  But I do that; it doesn’t mean you will.  And it didn’t ruin the book for me because there were enough red herrings to keep even me wondering a tiny bit about at least one of them until the end, which was chilling to say the least.  The evil that stalked Viv was evil, indeed, and promised to stalk her through every lifetime she and hunky soldier/cop/soul-mate Officer Adams led.  How could they ever escape their fate in this life or the next, and the next, and…  You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Dogs of War: Vertigo was also educational.  I didn’t know the French used dogs to find wounded soldiers among the bodies during World War I.  Ms. Pauli promises more books about the use of dogs in war, and I certainly look forward to learning more about our canine heroes and the people who partner with them.

Length:  216 Pages
Prices:
Paperback:  12.95
E-Book:  $4.99

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.  RIW