Tag: Book Review

WARLORDS OF WYRDWOOD – RJ Barker

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The Forester known as Cahan led the village of Harn in rebellion against the all-powerful, oppressive forces of the Rai. A great victory was won, but to avoid retaliation he must lead the people of Harn into the Wyrdwood. 

Cahan never wanted this responsibility, but fate has its eye on him, and without him the people will be helpless against the terrors of the forest.  

But in the ground of Crua, a dark god is growing in power using the strength of decay. It is something new, something worse than the magics of the Rai, and it has its claws in Cahan. The people of Harn need him, and they will need new allies if they are to have any hope of surviving in the depths of the Wyrdwood.

Especially if the man they consider a hero, the Forester, Cahan Du-Nahere, is as lost to them as he believes.
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STAR WARS: THE ACOLYTE: WAYSEEKER

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Jedi Master Vernestra Rwoh has spent years exploring the Outer Rim as a Wayseeker, answering to no authority but the Force itself. When the Jedi Council orders her to return to Coruscant, Vernestra ignores the summons, feeling that her priority is the beings she’s already serving.

So the Council dispatches Jedi Knight Indara to track down Vernestra to deliver the urgent message that a Republic senator has formally requested Jedi assistance, asking for Vernestra’s aid by name. Intrigued, Vernestra quickly finds herself pulled back into Coruscant’s complicated world of Republic politics and underworld crime.

The two could not be more different: Vernestra, a Jedi Master who has known conflict and loss during her decades in the Order, and Indara, a young Knight just coming into her own as a Jedi in a galaxy at peace. Trust is slow to develop as they clash over their views on serving the Jedi Order, the galaxy, and the Force.

But they must work together to decipher the connection between the senator and a trail of dangerous weapons threatening to wreak havoc on the Republic. As the two delve further into their investigation, the lines between Jedi and Republic business blur, and Vernestra must rediscover what it means to serve for Light and Life.
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ETHERA GRAVE – Essa Hansen

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Caiden has finally been reunited with his companion Leta after ten years on the run with his unique starship and managed to convince his longtime enemy—Threi—to join his side. But the multiverse isn’t safe yet. Threi’s sister Abriss is still the most powerful being in existence. And she still wants to collapse their beautiful, diverse, constellation of universes down to one, growing more powerful and more ruthless with each unique world she destroys.

As Abriss’s strength grows, her sanity wanes under the burden of the universe’s whispers. And Caiden must weigh his final sacrifice against a new risk: if he finally unlocks the ancient Graven abilities lying dormant in his genetics and saves the multiverse, he might lose himself to the whispers just as Abriss has. For the last time, Caiden and his makeshift family must carry the fate of all the worlds in their hands.
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SENSELESS – Ronald Malfi

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What do you see…?

When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can’t deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different scenario: a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.

What do you hear…?

Maureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.

What do you feel…?

Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human.
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THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD – Tiffany D. Jackson

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When Springville residents—at least the ones still alive—are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.
An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she’s dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.
After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High’s racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school’s first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it’s possible to have a normal life.
But some of her classmates aren’t done with her just yet. And what they don’t know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.
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WHAT KIND OF MOTHER – Clay McLeod Chapman

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After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market.  

It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear.
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COMPOUND FRACTURE – Andrew Joseph White

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On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.

The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death. 

In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidently kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?
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ONCE WAS WILLEM – M. R. Carey

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Eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England, I, Once Was Willem, rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham. The words enclosed herein are true.
 
I speak of monsters and magic, battle and bloodletting, and the crimes of desperate men. I speak also of secret things, of that which lies beneath us and that which impends above. By the time you come to the end of this account you will know the truth of your own life and death, the path laid out for your immortal soul, your origin and your inevitable end.
 
You will not thank me.
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BLACK TUNNEL WHITE MAGIC – Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough

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In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck?

Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker’s two male roommates, one Black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King.

In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly’s beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it.
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THEY STOLE OUR HEARTS – Daniel Kraus

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The teddies―clever Buddy, brave Sunny, sweet Sugar, and wise Reginald―have managed to find a child. Life with Darling is far better than any they’ve known. But something’s not right―the promised bliss of Forever Sleep hasn’t come. And they are kept a secret from Darling’s mother, hidden underneath the child’s bed in the dusty darkness.

Then the inevitable happens: Mama discovers the teddies. And like all adults they’ve met thus far, she responds with fear and anger. The teddies must watch as one of their friends is destroyed. The remaining trio barely escape, thrust back into a world that does not want them.

Disillusioned and lost, the teddies embark on a journey back to the factory where they were created. En route, they find a civilization of discarded teddy bears. The comfort of a town of teddies has its allure…but the need for answers weighs heavy. And there’s something definitely off about these new teddies. Will our heroes accept their strange rules? Or must they dig deep for one more grand adventure to finally learn why they were thrown away?
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