Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 27

Rhyme Or Reason by Dan Chadwick

Have you ever gotten a ridiculous song stuck in your head?
Of course, we’ve all experienced that.
There’s a reason I mention this, but you’ll know that if you’ve already had the pleasure of reading this surprising story. If you haven’t read it yet, skip the rest of this review and remedy that mistake ASAP.
I’d hate to spoil the surprise.
Rhyme Or Reason details a series of gruesome murders taking place during the nights leading up to Halloween. The victims are horrifically dismembered while still alive to experience most of what’s being done to them. I would certainly hope I’d be long gone before the torture reached an end, but the people being slaughtered while the killer hums his eerily familiar tune are not blessed with that small mercy.
The brilliance of Dan Chadwick’s story is that every bit of the story is building up to a punchline that almost had me laughing out loud. It’s a horror/comedy that the reader doesn’t realize is a comedy until they’ve reached the end.
Does the killer commit these atrocities because the song is stuck in his head? Did the earworm drive him to do the things he does? Is he just a killer who finds humor in what he’s doing, irreverent and cruel enough to make light of it in such a way? Perhaps we’ll never know…and perhaps the author was just hoping to elicit a groan from the readers as they reached the end.
This is a fun story that sneaks up on the reader in a delightfully absurd way.

You can grab this one for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your mobile device of choice. Rhyme Or Reason was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event for October of 2021. The link is below:

Rhyme or Reason by Dan Chadwick

Gateway by Kristopher Triana

Gateway is vastly different from a lot of what one might expect from Kristopher Triana. The reader isn’t going to find the sort of vividly depicted gore and violence one frequently associates with Triana’s material. I have to say they’ll be missing out if they don’t dive into this story because they’re disappointed about the lack of brightly splashing gore and viscera in these few pages.
Franco Torres is a human trafficker who specializes in albinos, whether for sex trafficking or harvesting purposes. He’s a monster preying on superstitions and prejudice to accumulate wealth, and he’s exceptionally successful at it.
When a stunning, ethereal albino woman arrives at a party he’s attending, Torres can’t help but introduce himself to The Gateway.
Will his deepest wishes and dreams come true at the hands of this mysterious woman?
What will be the cost?
I will be eagerly anticipating the upcoming novel, The Ivory Dealer, that emerged from this short story. Triana successfully baited the hook with this one, leaving the reader with questions that desperately need answering.

This title is available as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can snag this one for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Gateway by Kristopher Triana

Casey’s Vengeance: A Killstreme Prequel by Rayne Havok

Casey’s Revenge might just be one of the rarest of things, a prequel story that surpasses the narrative it precedes. If you’ve read Killstreme for yourself, you know just how high a bar Rayne Havok set with that title, and how challenging it would be to do what she’s done here. If Casey’s Revenge isn’t better, it’s certainly no worse. It really just depends on what you look for in a story. For me, this had everything I’d have hoped for and more.
Packed with the brutality and violence one comes to expect from her writing along with the well-drawn characters and exceptional storytelling, we also have a heartbreaking story of innocence reclaimed and shattered.
Casey wanted a new start, at a new school with none of her previous mistakes haunting her or hanging over her head, and that’s precisely what she believed she had. Prom night was the night she promised herself she would give Evan the night they both wanted. unfortunately, it turned out that Evan’s wishes were altogether more terrible than she could have imagined. He didn’t want sex, he wanted her to suffer, and he wasn’t alone.
What could have broken her, simmered within her instead. Casey realized that revenge was the only thing that would give her back the power Evan and his friends had stolen from her. Her vengeance is brutal and perfect, directed toward vile young monsters who deserve every bit of what they receive.
Bonus points for the unique curb stomp that involves an altogether different head than what readers might associate with the term. Also, having one’s head up someone’s ass has never seemed quite so visually stimulating.

This title is available as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You should pick it up for yourself by going to the website or downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Casey's Vengeance by Rayne Havok

Dune (2021)

It’s worth mentioning right away that I have always been a fan of David Lynch’s admittedly flawed adaptation of Dune from 1984. I saw that movie on cable television sometime in the mid-1980s, and though I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on, I found myself captivated by everything happening on screen. I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old at the time, so I clearly hadn’t read the novel yet. It was, in fact, the impact of that barely remembered movie that influenced me to read the novel later in life. Since then, I have read and re-read the original six novels as well as almost all of the supplemental books written by Frank Herbert’s son, Brian, and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune is something I can’t seem to get enough of, and it all started with a young boy seeing the confusing experience unfold on an old box television.
I’m also somewhat fond of the 2000 miniseries John Harrison directed for the Sci-Fi Channel, though substantially less so than the version provided by Lynch. I’ve seen multiple versions of the 1984 release of Dune, owning it on VHS and later on DVD and Blu-ray, with collector’s editions that included multiple cuts of the film. There are a lot of things to love about the 1984 adaptation of Dune, from the dark tones to the dialogue ripped directly from the novel, and the overall aesthetic from set design to costumes and makeup. There are also a lot of things to dislike about it, most notably the significant deviations from the source material and the condensed narrative that ignores some of the most important components and sidelines numerous characters to the background. For most of my life, I expected Lynch’s vision, as corrupted as it was by studio interference, to be the best possible version of Dune I’d ever see on the screen. I was wrong.
As soon as I heard Denis Villeneuve was going to direct a two-part adaptation of Dune, I knew something I’d wanted to witness most of my life was finally coming to be. After seeing Arrival, Villeneuve’s adaptation of the Ted Chiang short, “Story of Your Life,” and the spectacular sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, Blade Runner, I knew there was no other director who could bring Dune to life with any chance of successfully capturing everything important. His previous movies like Sicario and Prisoners were good, and they showcased an impressive directorial talent, but it was Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 that blew me away and made him one of my favorite directors.
Having seen his vision for Dune, or at least the first part of the narrative terminating as Paul and Jessica meet up with the Fremen, I felt like a childhood dream had finally come true. Everything about this movie was more than I could have hoped for. Though it lacked the directly adapted dialogue Lynch brought over from the novel, it more truly captured every beat of the story in a way Lynch’s vision didn’t even attempt to approach.
Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Paul Atreides is nuanced and captures the fear Paul experiences in response to the changes he feels in himself as well as the visions of a future he’s horrified to witness. More age-appropriate to the role than Kyle MacLachlan was, he captures the youth and aborted innocence of the young Atreides.
Similarly, Rebecca Ferguson captures the role of Lady Jessica Atreides spectacularly well, portraying a woman torn between two worlds and two vastly different sets of loyalties.
The rest of the cast is no less fantastic in their designated roles. Each individual proved themselves to be capable of thoroughly projecting their characters with such quality that I never once felt like I’d have preferred the original cast. I look forward to experiencing more of the performances from Zendaya (Chani), Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck), Stellan Skarsgard (Baron Harkonnen), Dave Bautista (Rabban Harkonnen), and Javier Bardem (Stilgar) when the second half of the epic story hits the screen in 2023.
The cinematography was jaw-dropping at times, and the sets and landscapes were captured with vivid detail that made the experience of watching the movie an immersive one.
The score provided by Hans Zimmer was the most surprising aspect of the movie, incorporating hints of the score TOTO provided for the 1984 adaptation of Dune. At no point going into this had I anticipated that there would be such a respectful nod to what had been a stellar score, one that I still consider one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of hearing.
I will spend the next two years eagerly anticipating the release of the second half of Dune, and I will also spend that time daydreaming that Villeneuve gets the green light to direct an adaptation of Dune Messiah.

Dia De Los Death by Ryder Kinlay

David Longbottom has a girlfriend! You read that correctly.
That’s how Dia De Los Death begins, well, it actually begins with a perverse Oedipal fantasy played out by Longbottom and the aforementioned girlfriend, but that’s neither here nor there.
After murdering his bride on the honeymoon in the first installment, it was high time David got back on the horse, after all.
Will his best friend, Dakota, approve of her?
More importantly, will his mother?
Ryder Kinlay immerses us once again in the lifestyles of the rich and homicidal with this third Longbottom misadventure. She knocks it out of the park yet again. I can’t share much, without giving it all away, but you can probably guess mommy dearest does not approve of the new girl on David’s arm. Where it goes from there, well, you’ll have to let Mr. Longbottom tell you those details himself.

This title was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can check it out for yourself by going to the website or downloading the app. The link is below:

Dia De Los Death (David Longbottom's MISadventures III) by Ryder Kinlay

Billy Silver by Daniel J. Volpe, Narrated by John Wayne Comunale

Billy and Jeannie are definitely not Jack and Diane. They’re not the sort of couple Mellencamp would immortalize in song. It’s more likely they’d be immortalized by a band like Cannibal Corpse, preferably before the departure of Chris Barnes.
Billy Silver is a junkie and an alcoholic, a guitarist and singer, and an all-around degenerate. Despite all of his flaws, and there are many, he’s also captivating and occasionally funny. Within the first few pages, you’ll come to loathe him. That sensation never quite disappears, even as you begin to feel a small amount of sympathy for him along the way.
With his life falling apart even worse than it already had, Billy finds his way into a tattoo parlor where the mysterious Talia pays him to obtain a new piece of ink under the pretense of needing practice before the shop officially opens. It doesn’t take long before Billy’s self-destructive nature takes on an altogether more horrific and direct manifestation.
Daniel Volpe captures Billy and the other characters who populate his dingy, filth-riddled corner of existence with such detail that you can almost smell the halitosis and urine as the story carries you along.
Volpe brings the streets and back alleys of the city to life in crushing, grimy detail that is further enhanced by the narration provided by John Wayne Comunale. These two men together provide us with something as splendid as it is awful. I’m glad I’ve snagged more audiobooks narrated by Comunale because he is not only an excellent writer but a truly amazing narrator.

Zippo by Susan Snyder

Homelessness is a problem for the city of Zenith, and Mayor Bob Hooper has a solution. Working for the Mayor, Kristin is only recently removed from a life of destitution herself. Disheartened by the conditions her former friends are living with, she’s proud to know an end is in sight
With her trusty Zippo lighter constantly fidgeted in her hand, Kristin has high hopes that this solution will resolve the issue in a compassionate and humane way.
Susan Snyder shares a bleak tale of class warfare and gentrification, no less heartbreaking for how short it is.

You can pick Zippo up by going to http://www.godless.com or downloading the app. This title is part of the 31 Days of Godless event for October of 2021. The link is below:

Zippo by Susan Snyder

Celestial/Chthonic by Ben Arzate

Celestial/Chthonic provides the reader with two vastly different stories delivering a familiar hallucinatory characteristic one might expect from Arzate, if one has been exposed to some of his other writing.
Angel Lust escorts the reader on a journey that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, not only for the reader but for Sylvia as well. Is there something strange taking place? Is this some recurring, disorienting nightmare or is the actress simply supplying us with a spectacular example of method acting? I know which interpretation I choose. You’ll have to find your own.
Outhouse Boy is equal parts heartbreaking and disgusting, telling the tale of an unwanted pregnancy and an infant cast away in filth. Surviving, against all odds, the infant grows into a young man hoping for the same companionship we all crave.
These two stories definitely show the reader both the range and distinct flair in style and substance that will continue to mark Arzate as a fantastic writer.

This two-story collection is available as part of the 31 Days of Godless event, celebrating Halloween at http://www.godless.com. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the site or by downloading the app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Celestial/Chthonic by Ben Arzate

Three Family Portraits by Matt Henshaw

Matt Henshaw provides us with a rather unique series of snapshots, showcasing a dysfunctional family at three different stages. The parents are awful, disgusting, and happier apart. As it turns out, they receive a child that almost perfectly resembles the state of their relationship and the household he’ll soon be joining.
We begin with the premature birth of Mother and Father’s new son, as labor begins during Mother’s shift waitressing at the diner. Father, unfaithful and almost certain the child isn’t his, finally arrives in the delivery room to witness the excruciating birth of a child neither parent could have anticipated.
We skip forward eighteen months for our next glimpse of the family trio, witnessing further descent into chaos. While they’ve been blessed with something that is not the child they expected, Mother insists on struggling to do her best while Father distances himself to a greater extent.
Skipping forward one final time, we are treated to something repulsive and insane, a household fully descended into madness, filth, and decay. You’ll have to read it for yourself if you want to know more. I can’t tell you anything else because sharing any further details would spoil the whole experience.
Henshaw hits us with a raw and visceral nightmare of parenthood. Tapping into something I think might be more common than a lot of people think, he paints us a textual portrait of the fears and terrors that plague all new parents as they await the birth of their first child, or maybe every child, taken to an extreme that leaves the reader repulsed.

This title is part of the http://www.godless.com 31 Days of Godless event, released on October 24th, 2021. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Three Family Portraits by Matt Henshaw – OCTOBER 24th

Dissing D*sney by Matt Shaw

It pleased me a great deal to see another author, one I respect a great deal, deciding that it was worthwhile to focus on Disney as a target for extreme, unpleasant literature.
Matt Shaw dedicates his exceptional talent and delicious wit to providing the reader with horrific, unsettling epilogues to well-known tales previously co-opted by Disney and watered down for children. In a sense, it feels almost as though Shaw is restoring a sort of balance by bringing the darkness and sardonic wit to stories that were largely rather dark before Disney got ahold of them.
I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, but just the act of sharing which story connects with which fairytale property will, in some cases, spoil some surprises. I want to be sure you take that into consideration before you read beyond this point.
The escapades of Prince Charming with a series of princesses begin to seem reminiscent of Henry VIII in the stories Happy Ever After, Glass, and Bloods. I was especially pleased with Happy Ever After, in that it went the direction I anticipated it would go by the end. It’s nice to know there’s a writer out there with the key to my perverse, cruel heart.
The Toy Maker paints a picture of kindly old Gepetto that would disturb any fan of Pinocchio.
A Dinner Date provides us with the natural outcome one might expect for the characters of Bambi.
Wonderland shows us a terrible fate befalling Alice in her desperate search for Wonderland.
Grief brings the story of Nemo to a close, teaching an important lesson to a child along the way.
The Lion King is concluded with a truly ignoble end with Selfie.
The Harsh Truth shares The Little Mermaid meeting her end.
Finally, The Biggest brings a close to this collection as well as the story of The Jungle Book.
If you’re looking to ruin your childhood in retrospect, this is the collection for you. This is the end of innocence, the graphic and bleak punctuation that closes the book on the comforting tales that brought vibrant, technicolor characters to your youth.

Dissing D*sney was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. For a limited time, you can obtain this for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Dissing Disney by Matt Shaw