Ashleigh Gauch's Blog, page 4

Chick Lit Book Review: Lightweight

Occasionally I get overwhelmed by the barrage of post-apocalyptic, dystopian, and generally dark fiction that has flooded Kindle Unlimited these days. Not that it’s a bad thing. Far from it. The cultural climate is ripe for the picking for authors who are good and bringing societal themes to the forefront and playing off their audience’s fears. But sometimes, I just need a break.

That’s why I picked up Kirsty McManus’s Lightweight, an adorable humorous romance set in Australia. Kirsty is an Aussie herself, so that makes sense. I just wanted to add the setting was part of the draw for this book, because a lot of Chick-Lit is set in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. At least, a lot of the KU fiction I’ve read.

Lightweight stars the recently single Isla Greenwood, who discovers in the opening chapter that her jerk ex, Guy, has posted the only nude photo she’s ever allowed anyone to take on a revenge porn site. Things haven’t been so great for her since they broke up, and she’s taken to food to soothe her aching heart–and deal with most of her problems. After discovering just how far she’s let herself go, she enlists the help of her cousin Grace, a supermodel, to whip her back into shape.

Grace goes through her kitchen and tosses out everything she considers not food (which, according to Isla, is just about everything in her kitchen) and puts her on a strict exercise plan at her gym, Aero. During a hot yoga session, Isla stumbles out of the room and passes out from heat exhaustion, and is rescued by her soon-to-be new crush, Wes. Wes just so happens to be a personal trainer at a competing gym. Thus begins Isla’s weight loss (and romantic) journey through the novel.

It’s told in an entertaining, first-person conversational style, which I really appreciated for its easy readability. Isla drowns in a great deal more self hatred than I would’ve liked at the beginning, but she recovers and finds motivations beyond simple weight loss–and her crush–for continuing her fitness journey. I also liked that the author did a bit of research, and other than some questionable supplements peddled by Grace, seems to know what she’s talking about when it came to nutrition and exercise science. I also liked the exploration of gym culture and motivation, as well as the fact that not everyone gets a full happy ending by the end.

The humor was a definite selling point. I found myself chuckling out loud more than once during a before-bed reading session, much to the puzzlement of my partner lying next to me. All in all, it was a quick and fun read. Just what I was looking for on Kindle Unlimited at the time

4.5/5 stars, well worth picking up if you like light romance or chick-lit.

Science Fiction Movie Review: Annihilation

It’s nearly impossible to discuss this movie without referring to the source material, the first book in Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, Annihilation. I’ll try to look at the movie as a movie first and leave comparisons to the book (and their related spoilers) for the later half of the review.

Just the Film

Director Alex Garland, who wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later and made his directorial debut with Ex Machina, didn’t adapt so much as draw inspiration from the 2014 novel.

In the film, protagonist Lena (Natalie Portman) discovers her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) in her home after he’d been missing for over a year. After he collapses on the table, bleeding out from the mouth, military forces from the Southern Reach whisk both off to the secretive military base known as Area X. Once there, she’s subjected to intensive psychological profiling by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) before deciding to venture on a one-way trip into the shimmering border of Area X.

From here on out, the audience is dragged on a psychadelic (and psychological) journey through a reconstructed Wonderland filled with terrifying creatures, suspense, and deep exploration of what it means to be human.

The script was well written, taking inspiration from the book (including the oh-so-familiar ending quote the book and film both draw their title from) but does take significant turns from the novel. I will applaud the director for his focus on the relationships between the three characters (and the relationship Lena had with Kane) and for his refusal to dip into pure shock-horror territory with the fertile ground the novel gave him to do so. This really is a thinking person’s sci-fi movie.

Natalie Portman owns the lead role as Lena, and the supporting performances surrounding her are strong as well. The only complaint I have is the seemingly unneccessary subplot involving


Spoiler

an affair with a colleague at the school Lena works at

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but that’s only a minor thing.
How Does it Stack Up?

All right, here we go. Spoiler territory.

The Protagonist



Spoiler

The character Portman portrays is radically different than the novel’s protagonist in just about every way possible. The book portrays a strong woman out to find answers and deeply entranced by intellectual curiosity, whereas the movie’s protagonist is driven by the need to be reunited with her lover and discover his fate. Both characters are complex intellectually and emotionally, but I find myself missing the biologist’s drive for discovery from the book. Portman’s character seemed determined, but more to find out about Kane than to discover the answer. That, and one of the supporting characters (the geologist) was the one who made the link about the DNA changes in the film, rather than the protagonist, as it was in the book.

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The Psychologist



Spoiler

This requires a bit more knowledge of the series as a whole. The psychologist IS showcased as having been a part of the Reach for most of her life, and is driven by curiosity at what hasn’t returned as much as the way Area X taunts her. However, the subplot involving the Tower (which was relocated to the Lighthouse in the film) was taken out entirely, and the subplot about hypnosis and betrayal from the opening of the book was glossed over entirely. She acts and speaks similarly to the psychologist in the book, but all trace of her leadership of the Reach was erased from the film. She also isn’t quite portrayed as the villain in the film as she was in the book, more the party leader. All in all, I think she lost a lot of her depth in translation.

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The World



Spoiler

Area X in the book concerns itself with trying to look as similar to the wild versions of its surroundings as possible, and in the film, the alien consciousness behind Area X has a sort of pathology where it rewrites and rewires creatures with multiple rows of teeth, antlers, horns, etc. Very different approaches for concealing itself as well. In the book, the DNA changes are only briefly visible under the microscopes, as if Area X is mocking human attempts to understand it. In the film, it looks more like mindless mimicry than malevolent change. Also, the subplot about humans being transformed into animals was mostly dropped in favor of humans being replicated and destroyed from the inside out, bursting into a sort of fungal form. Strange stuff.

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The Ending



Spoiler

This is one of the biggest places where the film diverts from the novel. The Tower is located inside the Lighthouse, and the pile of journals was removed and replaced with video recordings of her husband’s expedition. When she confronts the creature at the end, the creature isn’t the crawler and the lines of text on the walls also don’t exist–it’s the psychologist that bursts into light and is consumed, and the original biologist is the one who survives, intact, with her memories to return to the Reach. It’s hinted at that the duplicate Kane is indeed a duplicate and that Lena has been changed, but not the way the book portrayed both of those things. The ending is explosive and beautiful, but quite different. Whether it carries the same weight and implications as the novel’s ending is up to you.

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All in all, it’s well worth seeing as a sci-fi film. Beautifully directed, gorgeous special effects, thought provoking themes. It isn’t the book, but then again, I don’t think it’s trying to be. Like I said at the beginning, it’s more “inspired by” than adaptation, and as much as I love the source material, I think that’s okay.

5/5 stars.

Science Fiction Thriller Book Review: City of Ice and Dreams

City of Ice and Dreams is the second full length novel and third book overall J. G. Follansbee’s Tales of a Warming planet series. Like the first two, it’s an ecologically themed science fiction thriller, though I’ll argue this one is a little more like Mother Earth Insurgency than Carbon Run. You can check out my reviews of the first two books here and here.

The novel stars three main characters in typical Follansbee style. We open with Sento, an woman who has lost most of her identity prior to boarding the now sinking ship Kildare. Over half the people on the ship with her die, and she barely makes it to the Antarctic shore with a small group of other inmigrantes, or immigrants. They’re all following rumors of a hidden paradise city known as Isorropia, Greek for balance.

Further in, we meet Artemis (nicknamed Artie), a “feral” who is tracking Sento for an unknown patron who has agreed to support him despite banishment from the (now confirmed to be real) city.

And our third protagonist is Elita Soares, daughter of the former First Citizen (elected representative, like a president) of Isorropia Ben Soares. She’s embroiled from the beginning in a debate about whether or not Isorropia should accept the pilgrim group Sento accompanies into the city, or whether they should turn them back for the sake of preserving balance. Balance, in this case, is the perfect balance of human input and output on the environment, something deeply ingrained in Isorropian culture.

The theme of balance, human ecological imperative versus the need for human survival versus human greed, is well developed throughout the book. Follansbee does a good job of balancing the various points of view, though much like in Carbon Run, his most powerful female protagonist, Elita, ends up coming off as selfish and a bit flat. I found his display of her relationship to her consort, Lucius, a bit distasteful. It’s similar to the criticism I had of the mother from Carbon Run: sex isn’t the biggest way women exert power, and her near slave-like control of Lucius through most of the book left a bad taste in my mouth. However, I will concede that she’s a much more well developed character than the woman from Carbon Run.

The majority of the book is from the much more engaging Sento’s point of view, so I can forgive it a bit more than with Carbon Run.

The vivid descriptions of both the city and Antarctica captured my imagination. I found myself tense and strained throughout the book, though I didn’t devour it quite as quickly as Mother Earth Insurgency. Follansbee’s talent for showcasing humanity’s spirit—and its demons—definitely shows through in the third volume.

I will say, I’m finding it hard to place the books on a coherent timeline. I didn’t find one in the book and I’m not sure if there is one on the website. It would be really helpful in placing why disidentification erases the memories of its victims in City of Ice and Dreams, but not in Carbon Run.

4.5/5 stars.

Covenant of the Hollow Comes Out Tomorrow!

Well, it’s finally here. My novel Covenant of the Hollow comes out tomorrow after a 3 week pre-order period, and I couldn’t be more excited if I tried!

I figured I’d take the opportunity to talk a little more about the release, and drop a link to an interview I did on the same subject on the wonderful Michele T. Berger’s blog, The Practice of Creativity. You can find the interview here.

Writing Covenant of the Hollow is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a writer, in part because it’s my first full length novel. Although I deeply enjoyed writing Diary of the Hollow (and the experimental style was the most fun part of it!), Covenant connected with me on a deeper level. It’s definitely not in any way biographical, but I did connect with Annalise Silva’s struggles to gain acceptance and claim power over her life after hailing from a destructive family culture. My own upbringing was what one could call messy, so there was a bit of personal experience blended with the information I gleaned from interviews with a Puerto Rican friend about her cousin and her culture.

I’m deeply grateful for the experience.

There are a few interesting bits about the book I’d like to discuss. The ones that affect the plot are in spoiler tags, so it’s your choice whether to find out now or after you read the book. The Kindle format is available for $0.99 today through release day, and that price will increase to the full price of $2.99 on February 22nd, 2018. It’s also available for Kindle Unlimited and in paperback form. The paperback is $14.95, and is on Amazon and at Page Turner Books in Kent, WA.

Spoiler

One is that the chapter headers are pieces of Dasha Berenzety’s suicide note, which was a decision I made early on in the book’s conception. She’s the protagonist in Diary of the Hollow, and also plays a key role in why the antagonist, Ga’algaaysi, chooses to harass this particular group of friends.

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Another interesting tidbit is a note on historical accuracy. I covered this in my interview, but Elizabeth Bathory was around 10 years old when she got engaged to Ferenc Nasdasdy, and may have been around 11 or 12 when she either had an abortion (according to some accounts) or gave a child up for adoption. Regardless, the idea of writing sex that young made me all kinds of squicky, so I aged her up in my novel. The magical powers of fiction writing allow me to do that.

I also had to fudge some dates involving hurricane Maria (named Misty in Covenant) both for time-line and for story tension reasons. I wanted to showcase the effect that losing a family member can have on people that have moved stateside, and the terrible racism and sexism women of Puerto Rican descent experience despite being citizens. Although I didn’t get to dive as deeply into that as I would have liked, the conflict introduced at the beginning involving Annalise’s father, Estefan, was one of the most painful things I wrote in the book.

I wanted the story to showcase two flawed women experiencing very different sides of the patriarchy’s ability to crush the human spirit, and how things really haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think across the centuries. People seem to have an issue relating to flawed female characters, because the Madonna/Whore complex is still alive and strong in today’s culture. My hope is that this book will help bridge that gap.

I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking about Prisoner of the Hollow. Right now, I’m working on trying to get it out toward the end of May.

Spoiler

It primarily deals with Ga’algaaysi’s backstory involving the demise of his dimension with the Brightening, his condemnation at the hands of Harmony, and his master Sti’da’s role in everything leading up to the events of Covenant of the Hollow.

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I’ve had a blast doing the research and world building for it, and I think it’s going to be a real treat. It’ll also be on Kindle Unlimited when it comes out, unless Amazon does something major to restructure how the program works between now and then.

Psychological Thriller Book Review: Shadows in the Water

Continuing on with my journey checking out the other authors in the Strong Woman/Thriller giveaway, I picked up Shadows in the Water by Kory M. Shrum. It features a strong female protagonist by the name of Louie Thorne, who we see disappear into her bath through her mother Catherine’s eyes in the prologue.

Fast forward several years in the coming chapters, and Lou’s parents became victims in a drug war and Lou didn’t take it so well. She gets her kicks by exacting revenge against the Martinelli crime family, who sent the men after her father in an attempt to stop him from busting them. The “disappearance” of her youth, as we find out, actually was the manifestation of a terrifying power, which she calls “slipping.” She can do it in shadow and move all through our world, anywhere where very little light touches.

But when she goes through water, she re-emerges in the surreal (and dangerous) La Loon, the dumping ground for her crimes.

Except there’s more to the story, of course. Because Lou isn’t the only one with the power to slip. Her aunt Lucy also has the ability, and before his death, her father Jack tried his damndest to send Lou to her in order to save her from herself. Or at least teach her how to control her powers.

Lucy is afraid of Lou’s growing coldness and the comfort Lou gets from murdering people. She sends Lou to visit an old flame, Detective Robert King, in an attempt to tame her niece’s wayward tendencies.

Together, she and King find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving Senator Graham, a serial murderer who sent countless girls to their deaths aboard his ship.

Lou is a fascinating character not unlike the hard-boiled detectives of old. I found myself relating to her despite the obvious squeamishness of her…hobbies. We’ll call them hobbies. That said, sometimes I found her responses to those around her, particularly Lucy, a bit bothersome. She comes off as very selfish toward the beginning, though we do see some growth by the end.

Shrum’s prose is quick, decisive, and easy to read, and her descriptions are beautiful. I never once found myself lost in a scene, and I admire the way she choreographed the fight scenes and made use of Lou’s fascinating power. I found myself bingeing through until the end, something not so common for me in the thriller genre and especially so for a book that’s over 500 pages long.

4.5/5 stars, am looking forward to checking out the rest of the series.

Psychological Thriller Book Review: Nightmares of Caitlyn Lockyer

Early last month I teamed up with 42 other authors to help organize a giveaway for fiction with strong female protagonists, particularly focused on strong women in Action and Thriller genres. The genius behind the giveaway, Mark Tiro, deserves most of the credit.

In good faith, I picked up a few of the books in the giveaway to see which I’d like and could recommend, and Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer by Demelza Carlton was one of the ones that really stuck with me.

The premise alone had me hooked. Nathan Miller, who works for an unspecified quasi-government intelligence agency, witnesses violence against and the dumping of Caitlin Lockyer’s unconscious body on a beach in Australia. She half wakes up and begs him not to leave her, and he promises he’ll be there when she wakes up. The police suspect he may have been involved with her kidnapping, but hospital staff can’t get her to calm down without him, so he’s allowed to stay with her in her room until she wakes up.

Every night, she awakens him with screaming and horrifying mumblings about her time while kidnapped by an also unnamed terrorist organization.

By the end of the book I felt I was left with more questions than answers regarding Nathan himself, but the characterization and relationship development between Nathan and Caitlin made up for the slightly unsatisfying ending. It’s the first in a trilogy, and in the second book the teaser says Caitlin gets to speak for herself, so we’ll see if that helps answer any of the cliffhanger questions left at the end of this book.

The only major criticism I have of the book is that large parts of it felt a little devoid of initial setting, though there are some very well described scenes through the middle and end. It wasn’t a HUGE issue because the dialog was sharp and the emotion raw through the whole length, so I ended up finishing it in a single setting.

4.5/5 stars, I plan on picking up the other two soon.

Reflections On My Second Signing

Photograph courtesy of Ramona Ridgewell

This past weekend, the wonderful Wayne Curran Jr., owner of Page Turner Books in Kent, WA, teamed up with myself, J. G. Follansbee, Kelly Antoine, Elizabeth Guizzetti, Edith Follansbee, Meescha Dare and Lori Collins to put on a fantastic nerd party for lovers of all things local and speculative.

Even though it was a rainy, dreary day outside, inside we found a bustling (and newly expanded) store filled with local fans eager to sample new voices and new ideas from local authors and artists.

Photo courtesy of Ramona Ridgewell

Kelly (to my left) brought her mystery novel The Ghost of Fort Leavenworth.

Photo courtesy of Ramona Ridgewell

I brought the wonderful UnCommon Lands collection from Fighting Monkey Press, alongside Starward Tales 2 from Manawaker Press. I ended up selling out of both before the end of the night!

Photo courtesy of J. G. and Edith Follansbee

J. G. Brought Carbon Run (you can find my review of it here) and a special pre-release paperback version of his upcoming third installment in the Tales of a Warming Planet series, City of Ice and Dreams.

Photo courtesy of Ramona Ridgewell

And Elizabeth brought her books Light Side of the Moon, The Grove, and The War Ender’s apprentice, alongside some of her original prints.

By the end of the night, we were all exhausted and thrilled at the wonderful turnout. I know Wayne has big plans for Page Turner Books in the future, and his Local Author shelf can only expand as time goes on. I hope I’ll get to see more of you next time he throws another Nerd Party!