Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: My Kill Play: When a Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby by Tim Patten

★★★★

Roller derby, in its modern form, has been a cult phenomenon across the world. A thrilling and dangerous sport, it has evolved from childhood pastime to a spectacular arena of courage and cunning on-wheels. My Kill Play: When A Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby is a personal account of author Tim Patten’s experiences with the sport, as childhood hobbyist to professional, and the way his life and those around him changed throughout the late 20th Century during one of the most infamous first-world medical crises of the past forty years.

My Kill Play joins Patten’s previous publication, Roller Babes: […]

James Grimsby2017-03-31T11:44:57+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: LGBTQI, Memoir, Sports|

Review: The Archbishop’s Amulet: The Windhaven Chronicles by Watson Davis

★★★★

The Nayen armies have all but won in their conquest of the free peoples of this world. An empire of hell-spawn, alien beasts and supplicants has been built on the ashes of human civilization, pushing the last clans and communes to the fringes of the empire to await starvation, or worse, capture.

Caldane is one such captive – once a member of the Onei clan as a shaman, before his home’s enslavement by Nayen monks. With the help of Aissal – an alien world-traveler who seeks to free all the realms she can – and Rucker – a young […]

James Grimsby2017-05-15T09:25:43+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy|

Review: Shredded by Charles O’Donnell

With a splash of Orwellian dystopia and a frighteningly timely plot, Shredded, the new novel from Charles O’Donnell, challenges the creature comforts we have come to love in our newly digitized world, and poses a terrifying question: What if privacy could be completely erased? In the not-so-distant future, the safety of anonymity has been eliminated, thanks to the introduction of the Worldstream, the near-perfect catalogue of every life and event available through the Internet of Things. Essentially, the Worldstream is social media, Big Brother and live-streaming all rolled into one, making anyone’s most intimate details vulnerable to invasion.

In […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2023-04-03T08:54:07+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Charles O'Donnell, Dystopian Fiction|

Review: Despair to Deliverance by Sharon DeVinney, Ph.D. & Robin Personette

Despair to Deliverance: A True Story of Triumph Over Severe Mental Illness by Sharon DeVinney, Ph.D. and Robin Personette is a fascinating book dually written by a therapist and her client. Robin – a mental health care worker herself – had a breakdown, where she considered suicide. Dr. DeVinney was considering writing a book about the case, but was concerned about breaching the doctor-patient divide, until Personette herself expressed interest in writing about her story. The result is this collaboration, which covers the path out of depression from the perspective of both doctor and patient in a way that should […]

Lysa Grant2019-02-11T09:40:04+02:00March 28th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Psychology|

Review: Skip’s Legacy by Edward “Skip” Biron

★★★★

It is the dream of most people to live a life worth writing stories about. In Skip’s Legacy, a memoir by Edward “Skip” Biron, readers are introduced to a remarkable man and his fast-paced, spontaneous and impactful life. The details that the author remembers from more than 5 decades of life make for an exceptional read, as though this were a journal, rather than a memoir. The small points of humor and philosophic musing also fill in the gaps and give readers time to reflect on a life truly well-lived.

After serving in the Navy as a radioman, […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2017-05-02T08:40:23+02:00March 23rd, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir|

Review: P.O.VEE (The Chronicles of VEE Book 1) by Denis Jay Klein

★★★★★

There are many things we disagree about here on Earth, but the fact that we are in a period of rapid technological advancement isn’t one of them. Human beings are doing things every day that would have seemed like something out of far-flung science fiction fifty years ago.

In the cleverly titled P.O.Vee by Denis Jay Klein, readers are flash-forwarded two decades into the future, when android technology is beginning to find its footing, and the first real attempts at artificial intelligence are being fleshed out. Klein is a masterful storyteller who paints the future in completely believable terms, […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2019-04-29T12:16:52+02:00March 22nd, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Science Fiction|

Review: The Authority (The Charismatics Book 2) by Ashley R. Carlson

★★★★★

In The Authority, the second book by Ashley R. Carlson in the Charismatics series, steampunk, science fiction and fantasy collide in an unforgettable adventure of magic, intrigue, destiny, and a potentially collapsing universe.

Picking up directly where the first book left off, readers find themselves amid the wreckage of the dirigible crash where Duchess Ambrose and her rag-tag bunch of compatriots are choosing what to do next. Each has a special skill set, a particular ability based on Charisma, ranging from the ability to fly, becoming invisible, affecting the mind of others, seeing past facades or creating fire, […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2019-04-12T14:17:18+02:00March 15th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Steampunk|

Review: Faete (The Blood Moon Series Book 1) by Aimée Oswald Sellars

★★★★

Renny McGuire is the last in a long line of proud seanachies – storytellers of the “old country.” She carries the tales her grandfather once told – stolen from the hall closet when he would wax on at the dinner table late at night – and she continues the tradition with her late night readings at her mother’s Celtic bookstore, Seanachie.

A less-told tale of her heritage comes from a place far more mysterious than the Emerald Isle, as the McGuires have a dark family secret – a secret uncovered by one teenage descendant with just a little too […]

James Grimsby2017-04-21T04:00:12+02:00March 13th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult|