Exciting Adventures Through Interdimensional Doors (Review of Ariele Sieling's All In)

My faithful readers know I am a sucker for a good portal story, having written a few myself, so I am thrilled to stumble across a new series based on such a premise, Ariele Sieling's "The Sagittan Chronicles."
All In is the prequel, and a gripping one it is, too, a fun yarn involving flawed yet attractive protagonists Quin Black and Jo Nash. Quin's job is to explore unauthorized "Doors," portals to other worlds that the government of Pomegranate City has declared illegal and confiscated. But Quin is compromised by a weakness for illegal gambling, and when he rescues Jo, the daughter of the organized crime boss who runs his favorite gambling den but yearns to study horticulture, they both find themselves in a mess of trouble.
It is a little jarring that the setting of Pomegranate City seems thoroughly American contemporary although it is on a distant planet in (presumably) the far future, as if the series can't decide whether it wants to be straight-up sci-fi or urban fantasy. But that quibble aside, it's been a while since I enjoyed a story this much. Also, I'm dying to know whether the rest of the series reveals what a "fudge lizard" is!
Rating: 5 Phoboses

Join Me at Balticon!

Come one, come all, and join me at Balticon this weekend for a launch party for my new horror novel, Day of Atonement! Also I'm on lots of fun panels. Here is my schedule:
Location: The Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, 202 East Pratt Street, Baltimore

Friday, May 25, 9pm
Panel: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
Guilford room

Saturday, May 26, 10am
Panel: Alternate History Worldbuilding: Not Just Evil Goatees
Club Lounge

12pm: Reading from my novel
St. George room

2pm: Autographing my books
5th Floor Lobby

5pm: Book Launch party: Day of Atonement
Club Lounge

Sunday, May 27, 11am
Panel: Jews In Space: Jewish SF On and Off The Page
Guilford room

7pm: Panel: Fictional Works of Fiction
Guilford room

9pm: Panel: How Contemporary Fears Shape Apocalyptic Fiction
Guilford room

Monday, May 28, 2pm
Workshop: Writing Intriguing Characters
Mount Washington room

My Horror Jaunts Around the Web!

Get a taste of two of the main characters from my new horror novel Day of Atonement, Amos and Vickie, which Meghan Shena Hyden (@Raiyine on Twitter) was kind enough to host on her fabulous blog. And check out my essay on "Horror and Religion" on The Scary Reviews. Preorder the paperback, out 7/3/18.

This Is Art, Friends (Review of Meg Eden's Post-High School Reality Quest)

Post-High School Reality Quest is a coming-of-age story that takes place among the geek-video gamer set in suburban Maryland circa 2010. The conceit is that it is written in the form of a 1980's era "text adventure," a dialogue between a sarcastic narrator and the main character, Elizabeth-alias-Buffy, or more likely a dialogue between different aspects of her own personality. (Non-gamers, like me, should look past the occasionally off putting jargon.) We are given to understand in flash-forwards that the heroine has suffered a nervous breakdown and is now a psychiatric inpatient reliving the disastrous events of her high school graduation and freshman year in college.
There are many flashes of wit in this story, but what comes through is an overwhelming sadness. You can't help feeling sorry for the characters, who despite being academically gifted can only express themselves in an emotional pidgin shaped entirely by video games, TV shows, Internet memes, and other trashy pop-cultural influences. Their capacity for friendship, let alone love, has been pixilated. The text-adventure conceit is a telling one because in such games the player can only enter pidgin commands, e.g. "out" for "go outside." Buffy keeps making "choices" that supposedly get her killed, only to be "resurrected" at a point a few minutes earlier, with the game proceeding relentlessly onward while her life just gets worse and worse. The choices she makes are no choices; her free will is a bad joke that is lost on her. You might think there would be a limit on the pathos such an emotionally stunted character could inspire, but not in author Meg Eden's hands. This is art, friends.

Rating: 5 Phoboses

Five-Phobos Recommendation for Keisha Fladrick's Strangers of Earth

With the human race facing extinction, what is the greatest threat faced by the survivors searching for a new world to colonize? Why, hell is other people, as Jean-Paul Sartre famously told us. Can low-level engineering drudge Nyota survive a mysterious plague striking down her shipmates, not to mention the evil predations of the onboard human resources department, long enough to find happiness with her lover Liam? With enough paranoid switchbacks in this plot to power one and a half Philip K. Dick novels, the answer will surprise you!

Buy now!

5 Phoboses!

Get Your Copy of Day of Vengeance!

Get your Kindle copy of Day of Vengeance ("Days of Ascension" Book 2) for just $2.99 until November 20! It's my ninth published novel, just out from Silver Leaf Books.
In related news, check out my brand-new interview on "The Gal in the Blue Mask" blog, which also interviewed Suzie Mitchell, one of my favorite characters from the whole "Days of Ascension" series! See http://the-gal-in-the-blue-mask.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-gals-2017-halloween-frivolities-day_4.html and http://the-gal-in-the-blue-mask.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-gals-2017-halloween-frivolities-day_39.html.

Just-in-Time Satire (Review of Martina Fetzer's Time Binge)

The concept of time travel has long since burst through the walls of the science fiction genre ghetto and gone mainstream, in everything from popular novels and movies to network TV shows. It's so familiar, in fact, that we're apt to forget how bizarre and illogical an idea it is, which is one of many reasons why Martina Fetzer's Time Binge (Brooks & Smith Book 1: 99 cents ebook, $12.99 paperback) is such a refreshing comic treat.

Zany energy pulses through this tale, told in a wry, deadpan tone, of the terrible troubles paranormal detectives Edward Smith and Arturo Brooks encounter when their employer, a secretive agency that calls itself "the Reticent," sends them to investigate the reported invention of a time machine in Staten Island. Smith and Brooks are fully drawn characters with massive personal flaws, which fuel the tragicomic plot along with their love for each other, and the setting of present-day New York City and its outer boroughs is vividly depicted. Other characters and supposed glimpses of the historical past and the far future are not as successfully fleshed out, although Patience Cloyce, a time-traveling Puritan from the height of the witch craze in Salem, Massachusetts, does show promise. Our present day's corporate drone world, electronic gadget obsession, and navel-gazing hipsters are the main, deserving targets of the book's sharp satire. Highly recommended.



This review is cross-posted on Amazon and Goodreads.

Four-and-a-half Phoboses (out of five).