The latest indie book reviews from Self-Publishing Review
Review: Vaporized by Victor Levine ★ ★ ★ ★
Vaporized by Victor Levine follows the exploits of up-and-coming/down-and-out musician Jon Cells who’s looking for his big break in the New York music scene of the early eighties. In the meantime, he’s working at a perfume factory, which is under investigation by the FBI for possible drug connections. John Cell gets caught in between the rivalry between two familes, the Iranian Monsouris and Italian Pecorinos, when all that he wants to do is make music.
What makes Vaporized shine over other rock and roll novels is its authenticity. Jon Cells himself was an actual musician and the record he’s working […]
Humor is hard. Pathos is much easier. Show a character being chased by a monster, and if you’re good at your craft, readers will sweat and squirm. Show poor orphaned children dying of hunger, and you may draw tears from your readers even if you aren’t that good. But make a joke, and who knows? A sense of humor is like taste in food. What appeals to one person might repulse another. How do you feel about fried chicken livers? See what I mean? So I always admire an author who writes humor, especially the kind of humor that you’ll […]
Timpanogos by Glen R. Stott is the romantic saga of Randal Anderson, beginning as a young boy in the spring of 1958 as he begins to discover the world of dating and the new boundaries and responsibilities of a young adult.
Just Pru, by Anne Pfeffer, is a laugh out loud, heartwarming story about a twenty-five-year-old woman named Prudence Anderson.
Swim a Crooked Line by Al X. Griz follows several people’s lives in Nebraska: a farmer and his family including Chad who’s enlisted in the army in Afghanistan, and Rico, a linebacker for the Cornhuskers. Each character is richly imagined and contends with major societal issues. Swim a Crooked Line is a quiet novel about big ideas.
Energy Dependence Day by Christian Burton is a political thriller about a terrorist attack in the U.S. generated in Saudi Arabia. It follows the lives of many characters, including a detective and the terrorist himself, with a step by step analysis of how an attack is put together. It manages to be both page turning and informative. Most of all, it’s believable.
In 2079, technology has advanced enough that machines and mankind are becoming more and more indistinguishable from and indispensable to each other. It’s in Northern California where Carmela Akronfleck – a physicist working on the secrets of time travel – succeeds in surpassing one final gauntlet of science, and transports herself to the year 1936.
Sebastian is a young man living a thousand years in the future, in the remains of a destroyed world hit by a nuclear apocalypse way back when. Orphaned by disease, and trapped with a horrible aunt as his guardian, he is not able to continue his passions for a long-gone mechanical, steam-powered age he had been experiencing with a caring teacher. But when he finds an envelope hidden in a jewelbox he must fight for his life in a violent and raging adventure – this changes everything.