Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Flying Snakes and Green Turtles: Tanzania Up Close by Evelyn Voigt

Flying Snakes and Green Turtles: Tanzania Up Close is a love story. Not just between Geoff and Vicky Fox, but also their love of Tanzania. This small nation in Eastern Africa may not be well-known and that is a shame. Tanzania is one of the poorest countries economically, but its biodiversity abounds and astonishes those who witness it first-hand.

The scope of this work is vast. It takes the reader on a journey that begins before World War II and doesn’t end until the present. Along the way, the reader learns about Nazi incursions into Tanzania, tea companies, postwar events, […]

Review: Albatross by J. M. Erickson

Before turning his hand to Sci-fi, J. M. Erickson, the author of Future Prometheus, wrote a series of spy thriller novels, the Birds Of Flight series. Albatross is the first book of that series. In this book we meet Alexander Burns, a former special-ops agent who has been set up by a colleague. Burns’ helicopter is shot down by “friendly fire.” In the accident intended to kill him, Burns loses his memory. With the help of a kind and competent therapist, he regains (some of) his memory, only to discover that some very powerful people are as interested as […]

Avery Hurt2014-05-11T21:44:30+02:00April 5th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Thriller Book Reviews|

Review: Prince S by Anita Renaghan

Anita Renaghan’s Prince S is a delightful addition to the young adult fantasy genre. S. Avalon Hall, a girl, is raised by the king of Fontanasia as a boy. The king needs to have a rightful heir to the throne to protect his rule and to ensure that the Hall family maintains their control in the kingdom. Not many know the secret and as Avalon grows up, she worries that their family secret will be discovered.

At the age of fourteen, Avalon embarks on a dangerous mission to Cormicks, a faraway land, which is also a secret from most of […]

T B Markinson2014-05-11T21:47:29+02:00April 2nd, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Young Adult Book Reviews|

Review: The Last Falcon by Colleen Ruttan

Warning: Do not start reading this book until you’ve cleared your schedule. Take the dog out, make lots of tea, and have snacks available. Once you start, you won’t want to stop reading.

At the age of fourteen, Erynn Taylor witnesses her father’s murder. Luckily she escapes the same fate when a dragon suddenly appears and lunges at the attackers, providing Erynn the chance to slip away. Granted the dragon saved her, but the young woman is denied the opportunity to avenge her father’s brutal slaying.

Two years later, Erynn is King Wryden’s scribe and a helper in the castle’s […]

T B Markinson2019-01-23T13:07:35+02:00April 1st, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Young Adult Book Reviews|

Review: Bookends: Stories Of Love, Loss, And Renewal by Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold

This slim volume of short stories works as something of a fugue on grief and loss, featuring fragile women at both ends of their adult lives. Strangely, the two stages are not that different, at least not for these women, and that is perhaps the saddest thing in these rather sad stories.

The characters in these stories are, for the most part, weak, wispy women—widows adrift, and vaporous young women with overbearing mothers (more than once called dragons)—who seem not so much unable to cope as unable to navigate when the men in their lives abandon them or, more often, […]

Avery Hurt2014-05-11T22:52:26+02:00March 31st, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|

Review: Fiat by Jeffrey D. Schlaman

Apocalyptic literature has been with us a long time, perhaps as long as humans have been telling stories, and certainly long before nuclear weapons and human activities threatened civilization. From Noah and his ark to Mary Shelley’s The Last Man to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, readers (and listeners) have loved stories about the worst that might happen and how the fittest might survive.

Fiat, by Jeffrey Schlaman, is one such story, and this time the cause of the apocalypse is economic collapse. The book is set in the very near future, just after the recent economic crisis. A greedy, […]

Avery Hurt2014-05-05T20:32:25+02:00March 31st, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Apocalyptic Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Dirtball: The Diaries of a Worthless Somebody by Eric Olsen

Dirtball: The Diaries of a Worthless Somebody is an autobiographical first novel by Eric Olsen. The book follows character “EO”, a reasonably average young American man who realizes his need to change his life after an incident with a friend who calls him the personally poignant name of a “dirtball”. What follows is a recounting of the author’s attempt to turn around from his built-up bad decisions and bad luck by starting fresh, despite his adversity in problems old and new.

Whether he really can is one of the questions the book aims to provide answers to, but by far […]

James Grimsby2019-01-22T17:13:52+02:00March 27th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews, Men's Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Autumn for Dragonflies by Theresa Sweet

This first of a three-part romance series about young and innocent Mary Lakas is a smooth and easy read with charming characters and wonderfully detailed settings. Mary is a college freshman studying science with the somewhat vague aim of becoming a physicist. When she is not in school, she is very involved in the choirs at her church. Music and science are the two passions of her life. Each realm provides a potential love interest for Mary, yet it is less her budding love life than the character of Mary herself that captured my interest.