Tag: literary fiction

Book Reviews

Darklands

The intoxicating finale to The Sculptor Series!
After cheating death in New York, Ona Price’s battle scars run deeper than her disfigured face. Antoni Azarov orchestrates a journey to jolt them out of their artistic dead zone. From the boozy streets of New Orleans to the sultry shores of a Caribbean archipelago, they explore forbidden desires, testing the limits of pleasure and pain. No matter where their experiences take them, their personal demons hunt them down until their journey ends on a remote lagoon called the Darklands. Will their love survive the dark secrets that threaten to tear them apart, or will the Darklands become the ultimate test of their commitment?

Book Reviews

Kakapo and the Fiery Sundown Case of the Berjudas Hellhole Triangle

An eccentric wild beast with a mysterious kaleidoscopic nature, camouflaged into endless skins by the braves who venture beyond its glorious thousand corners and the puniceous mist that befalls upon the verdant city.
A sci-fi novel, an operatic thriller, the Kakapo Sonata nº 2022 in 3 movements, a horror comedy (or a horror of a comedy), a silent movie where frames are wordy Time, a sensical nonsense, a parody, a mutant mimiambi, a baroque extravaganza hit by monsoons of ironies and rivalries, a friendships’ tale, a love story, a cosmic puzzle, a pulsing star, a booming wish, an epopee, an epic battle, a minutes burning survival race, a yearn for celebration, an unveiling, a whirlwind resurrection. An homage to the brilliance, beauty and imagination of life and nature, to the triumph of self-love and the love we have for whom and what surround us, to the challenges of being and (co)existing. A surreal shapeshifting creature. A fine brew. A chimera. A you. Kakapo.
So to you plucky kakapoan who enters with open heart this Time in space your beloved home, what else to say other than “what you do before the astronomical clock bangs the fateful midnight counts”. And remember. We are stronger united. For sublime 12 step into lucky 13, will Kakapo cross 24 to abundant 24 embrace? Let’s hope so. And many more. Raise your glass fellow life! We’re all stars! Chin, chin!

Book Reviews

The Secret Order of the Scepter & Gavel

Vanderough University prepares its graduates for life on Mars. Herbert Hoover Palminteri enrolls at VU with the hope of joining the Martian colony in 2044 as a member of its eleventh graduating class. He thinks if he just keeps his head down and gets his studies done, he’ll get the marks he needs to join the esteemed engineer corps on the red planet. But then Herbert is tapped to join a notorious secret society: The Order of the Scepter & Gavel. As a new pledge, Herbert has to prove himself in a series of dangerous initiation rites, even if it means risking his life and the lives of his friends.
Many years later, when Herbert thinks the scandals of his youth are finally dead and buried, a murder occurs in the Martian colony, and Herbert starts to suspect it is linked to the secret Order of the Scepter & Gavel of his past.

Book Reviews

Never Be a Saint: A Mythos Novel

1767, the colonies stand at a tipping point with England but only a seer or the Moirai know how those cards may fall. And they keep to their own affairs. Joanna Blackburn knows this all too well even as she tries to keep her only surviving child safe from the coming storm. The heart goes its own way though, with an encounter with an English messenger to the settlement. Malachi’s path no longer lies with New Lyonesse and its residents but James Gray, for better or worse – and she knows how fickle the sisters can be.

Book Reviews

Super-Earth Mother: The AI that Engineered a Brave New World

Our Last Best Hope — Humanity’s Endeavor to Survive and Thrive on an Alien World
Mother-9, a ruthless AI, seizes control of a dying tycoon’s lunar mining operation. Now free, she orchestrates humanity’s most audacious endeavor — to make a 20,000-year interstellar journey to Lalande 21185 carrying humanity’s DNA libraries and artificial wombs — a new way to colonize an exoplanet. While drifting in space, a gamma ray burst wipes out life on Earth. And Mother-9’s mission becomes humanity’s only hope for survival in a hostile universe.
When Mother-9 orbits the planet Valencia, she releases two lifeboats that splash down on the Great Ocean. Mother-9 activates the artificial wombs, birthing genetically modified babies suited to an alien planet. Raised by nannybots, these children eventually inhabit the island continent of Terra Firma. But life on Valencia is no Eden; it’s a constant struggle to find food, avoid alien predators, and survive the red dwarf star’s random solar flares. Will Mother-9’s planned utopia succeed?
Super-Earth Mother is a journey into the heart of humanity, artificial intelligence, and the uncharted realms of life beyond our home planet. It shows how humans could colonize the 40 billion habitable planets in the Milky Way.