Anna Tan's Blog, page 98

#bookreview: Blood Orchids by Toby Neal

Blood Orchids by Toby Neal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blood Orchids is the story of Lei Texeira, a young female police officer trying to make detective. Nothing much happens in Hilo, so when two teens are found murdered, the police force struggles to investigate the case. Lei begs to be put on the team, but when she's finally assigned to the case, she soon finds that the case is triggering long-buried memories of her tumultuous past. There's also a stalker leaving frightening notes on her doorstep...

Maybe I'm just supposed to be a kele-feh. Not.

I grew up hearing this word "kelefeh" bandied about during church plays and school presentations. I knew what it meant though I always thought it was some official fancy kind of theatre term (probably French) until I tried to find out how it was spelled. Then I discovered that the actual industry term for it was "extra" - and it was used mainly in movies/film. The only reason we used it that much was due to our Chinese speaking background (it's apparently Cantonese) and our need to be in...

#bookreview: Division by Lee S. Hawke

Division: A Collection of Science Fiction Fairytales by Lee S. Hawke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Science Fiction Fairytales. Read that again. Science Fiction Fairytales. Figured it out yet?
I haven't. But I like it.

From the first story, The Soldier, up to the final title story, Division Hawke draws you into a strange yet familiar future world of technology, pushing the limits of what we'd expect to be normal.

The Soldier tells the tale of being used as a soldier in the war against disease. Dissimi...

#bookreview: The Gift of Charms by Julia Suzuki (based on a preview)

Okay. So in the strangest of all review requests I have ever received... I was asked to write a review on a 3-chapter preview of Julia Suzuki's The Gift of Charms. Review requests are usually for the whole book but... since this was what was requested, here goes:

The Gift of Charms is a story of a dragon - a dragon with strange heralds from birth. Will he be a gift or a curse? It feels like the beginnings of another coming-of-age story, as well as a prophecy/omen-fulfilling story, and maybe a...

Fears and insecurities

A garden enclosed and barred is my sister, my [promised] bride–a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. (Song of Solomon 4:12 AMP)

Today I've been called two things. A spider and a clam. 
A spider because I've been resilient, always turning up where I'm not expected to be. I'm not sure about that. Resilient, yes. But I don't know about turning up in unexpected places when I don't even know if I'm in the right one. Sometimes where I am feels wrong, but at the same time it feels right. I don't k...

The Voices video is up! #GTLF2014

So remember that thing I wrote and read for the lit fest? The video is up.

#bookreview: Fire and Dust by Christopher Datta

Fire and Dust by Christopher Datta
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fire and Dust is the second book in the Fire Trilogy.
I read the first book, Touched with Fire, and thought it a pretty good read, so I decided to take a chance on this one too.

Fire and Dust has (almost) nothing to do with Touched with Fire, other than being a story of the opposite side of the war. Christopher Datta clarifies that in his author's note, and adds that the coming book three will see many of the characters in both books me...

#bookreview: Meritropolis by Joel Ohman

Meritropolis by Joel Ohman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the post-apocalyptic city of Meritropolis, resources are scarce and danger lurks in the surrounding forests. It's a city where survival of the fittest is the rule of the day - and the System of Societal Merit provides the most efficient and fairest way to decide who should live and who should die.

Charley, whose score is second only to Commander of the city, has been nursing a hatred for the System ever since his older brother was zeroed nin...

Writing goals for 2015

I don't like making goals. I don't like the fact that I almost always never achieve them.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I created a file in Google Docs to track submissions. Because I decided I'm going to get round to writing and submitting stuff. And since I do better with short stories anyway, that's what I'm going to work on more proactively this year while I figure out what I really want to do with the fairy tale novella that's kind of hanging and the rest of my 50K nanowrimo novels th...

Remembering the little things

The last post ended rather abruptly, mainly because in looking at the whole year, I slid into a funk that I haven't fully gotten out of yet.

2014 started off well. It was full of promise, it was hopeful. There was a spiritual high, and an almost prophecy, almost blessing for the future. And then somewhere along the way things happened, and things didn't happen, and when you look at it as a whole, it just felt really sad. There was the novella that didn't get published, the creative a...