Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 61
February 22, 2015
Review: Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) by Jennifer Ellis
About Apocalypse Weird: Reversal
Publication date: Feb. 23, 2015
Snow, Volcanoes, and the End of the World
Contrary to Sasha Wood’s expectations, the isolated International Polar Research Station on Ellesmere Island turns out to be an incredibly dangerous assignment. After researchers and sled dogs go missing in a freak storm, distress calls go mysteriously unanswered from the outside world. Cut off and stalked by strange killer polar bears, Sasha and station caretaker, Soren Anderson, must search for their missing colleagues in the frozen tundra as their instruments begin to reveal an incredible truth: The feared magnetic pole reversal has occurred and the north has become the south. Psychotic scientists and giant methane-venting craters are just the beginning of a terrible and weird new reality as the leader of a polar research station down in Antarctica walks out of an otherworldly mist from the other side of the earth. Everything is being turned upside down, literally and figuratively. The Thing meets The Core on the plains of Ellesmere Island somewhere lost inside the Apocalypse Weird.
About the Author
Jennifer lives in the mountains of BC where she can be found writing, spending too much time on skis, and working as an environmental researcher. She also has a PhD and has been known to read tarot cards.
Her Derivatives of Displacement series is science fiction fantasy for middle-graders and adults. Books one and two are available, and book three is coming in 2015. Her second novel is a romance with a dystopic edge entitled In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation. She has also contributed to several anthologies, most notably Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel, which hit #16 in the Kindle Store.
You can subscribe to her blog for the latest book news and industry insights at http://www.jenniferellis.ca. She tweets at @jenniferlellis.
My Thoughts
[Note: I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book from the author for review.]
I’m a sucker for arctic survival stories, and have a particular soft-spot for thrillers and horror stories that are set against a snowy, frigid backdrop. So, when I learned that Apocalypse Weird would be venturing to the far north with Jennifer Ellis’s Reversal, I was eager to read it, particularly once I saw The Thing get name-dropped in the description.
I’ve mentioned in my other reviews of Apocalypse Weird titles that I was enjoying how this open-sandbox world was shaping up, and this entry is no different. As with the other titles kicking off the AW launch, there are certain touchstones to help unify it to the larger universe being constructed here but with enough room to maneuver to allow Ellis to tell her own unique story set in a very unique part of the world.
We have mentions of Dr. Midnight, several mysterious URLs, demonic members of the 88, and a deeper look at the day of blindness. All of this is fairly naturally crafted into Ellis’s own narrative about the End Times, which sees a sudden and complete reversal of Earth’s polarity and a central mystery about what, exactly, is happening. And this mystery is where a good amount of fun questioning comes into play – how did a scientist from the antarctic end up in the arctic, why is the polar research station suddenly different, and what’s with all these weird craters that have mysteriously appeared?
This culminates in a heated finale that gives us, perhaps for the first time, a glimpse at the true inner-workings of the Apocalypse Weird universe and an indication of just how expansive the overarching mythology could prove to be as the story builds. As with the other entries, there is a shared expectation of what comes next and further musings over how and when these various series will intersect, but whatever culmination is on the horizon promises to be big. In the meantime, the journey, which is really only just getting started, mind you, is shaping up to be epic and well worth reader’s investment. Keep on rockin’ it, Weirdos!
Buy Reversal On Amazon
Review: Apocalypse Weird: Immunity (Immunity Book 1) by E.E. Giorgi
About Immunity
Publication date: Feb. 23, 2015
Scorched by fire and the longest drought in recorded history, survivors flee the Land of Enchantment in order to escape a mutated flu virus that turns ordinary people into mass-murderers. Only a few resilient scientists have remained, gathered in one of the last national laboratories still working on a vaccine against the deadly virus.
When the disease starts spreading among the military corps guarding the premises, the laboratory turns into a bloody carnage at the hands of the infected soldiers. Determined to succeed where her mother has failed, immunologist Anu Sharma pairs up with computer geek David Ashberg to find a cure and escape the massacre. Outbreak meets World War Z in the deserts of the Apocalypse Weird.
About the Author
E.E. Giorgi grew up in Tuscany, in a house on a hill that she shared with two dogs, two cats, 5 chickens, and the occasional batches of stick insects, newts and toads her dad would bring home from the lab. Today, E.E. Giorgi is a scientist and an award winning author and photographer. She spends her days analyzing genetic data, her evenings chasing sunsets, and her nights pretending she’s somebody else. On her blog, E.E. discusses science for the inquiring mind, especially the kind that sparks fantastic premises and engaging stories. Her debut novel CHIMERAS, a medical mystery, is a 2014 Readers’ Favorite International Book Award winner.
NEWSLETTER: http://eepurl.com/SPCvT
BLOG: http://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/
PORTFOLIO: http://elenaedi.smugmug.com/
G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EEGiorgi/posts
My Thoughts
[Note: I received an advanced reader’s copy from the author for review.]
Author E.E. Giorgi delves into the Apocalypse Weird world with Immunity. Set in New Mexico, the story focuses on two scientists, Anu and David, who are working to find a cure to the H7N7 flu virus that has devastated Los Angeles (see Nick Cole’s The Red King for the scoop on that) and kicked off a zombie plague.
The writing is crisp and straight-forward, and Giorgi kept me hooked all the way through. After reading Cole and Bunker’s efforts, it was a bit refreshing to discover how tonally different Immunity was, despite being part of a shared universe. The first half of the book is a quieter effort than the other Apocalypse Weird books I’ve read, but certainly no less engaging. Giorgi is focused on the characters first and foremost, along with the science behind the bio-engineered autoimmune flu, and it makes for nifty reading, giving a bit more depth to the interrelated works without making the shared events feel repetitive.
Giorgi draws in several of what are quickly shaping up to be Apocalypse Weird staples: there’s the radio rantings of Dr. Midnight, and although the central villain, General Wick (perhaps short for Wicked?) Naga is not explicitly defined as one of the 88, the text makes it apparent that he is, and he brings his Black Hand subordinates in tow.
The inciting incident here is the day of darkness, when the whole world went blind for a day, as mentioned in Texocalypse Now, and it drives the back half of the book into all-out action as the plot’s various elements are drawn together in a fiery, adrenaline-fueled climax.
There’s a dash of science, a good bit of conspiracy, and plenty of apocalyptic dread casting a large shadow over the work. Giorgi brings a subtle bit of welcome flavoring to the Apocalypse Weird smorgasbord by taking a techno-thriller approach to the End Times, while fleshing out the AW world in sensible fashion. Immunity is a solid addition to the apocalyptic tapestry taking shape so far.
Buy Immunity At Amazon
February 21, 2015
Review: Apocalypse Weird: The Dark Knight (WYRD Book 2) by Nick Cole
About The Dark Knight
The story begun in The Red King continues as survivors band together to build a modern-day castle against a tide of dark forces overrunning Southern California. While Frank and Holiday struggle for power, Ash ventures into the night to rescue a lost special needs adult who has unknowingly glimpsed a horrifying future: a future where man is on the verge of extinction and a new predator rules the planet. The Apocalypse Weird is beginning, and it might just be something bigger than anyone ever imagined … or feared.
About the Author
Nick Cole is a working actor living in Southern California. When he is not auditioning for commercials, going out for sitcoms or being shot, kicked, stabbed or beaten by the students of various film schools for their projects, he can often be found as a guard for King Phillip the Second of Spain in the Opera Don Carlo at Los Angeles Opera or some similar role. Nick Cole has been writing for most of his life and acting in Hollywood after serving in the U.S. Army.
My Thoughts
[I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book from the author for review.]
I’ll be honest – when I found out that Nick Cole’s second entry in the Apocalypse Weird bookverse would be including a special needs character obsessed with Batman, I was little apprehensive. Would this just be a silly gag, or a manufactured attempt to tug at people’s heart-strings?
There’s a certain amount of deftness that goes into creating and respectfully handling characters with special needs, and I worried that such a character might be improperly tended to, or that the balance required in fleshing out such a character properly would somehow be upset. It wasn’t a matter of Cole being PC or not; I just didn’t want the story or the character to feel cheap, and I didn’t want this character to be, even worse, just a prop.
Mostly, I just wasn’t as familiar with Cole’s work as I should be, having only read his prior AW entry (sorry, but I haven’t gotten to Soda Pop Soldier or The Wasteland saga yet…), and so I was unsure of his sensibilities as an author. And, shame on me for the apprehension. Cole handles this aspect of The Dark Knight with delicate aplomb and creates a character in Corey that is fleshed-out nicely. I really shouldn’t have worried, and this character becomes one of the more engaging aspects of the book and takes center stage beautifully. I was a bit broken-heated over Corey’s background, but not in a used, schmaltzy way. Cole quickly convinced me that he was writing a human being, with real human struggles, one that I could relate to and empathize with. I was worried about artifice, while Cole was serving up authenticity. I was right there with him, in the middle of this zombie plague, worrying for him and hoping he’d make it through OK.
Nicely done, Mr. Cole. I’m sorry to have doubted you initially, but count me as a fan now, please.
Regarding the rest of The Dark Knight, we pick up with the prior book’s survivors dealing with the personal fallout from that climax, and it proceeds in sensible fashion. Holiday isn’t quite the drunk he was last time around, working to make amends, but whatever trust he’d built up has been squandered. There’s a simmering tension between he and Frank, with the latter routinely calling out Holiday’s lack of foresight, and you just have to wonder how long it’ll be before these two snap and try to pound one another into the ground.
And, although I enjoyed Book 1 in the WYRD series, The Red King, I did have a few quibbles with it and felt it carried a little too much on its shoulders. The Dark Knight is measurably better, in my opinion, and now that there are other Apocalypse Weird novels breaking out onto the scene it allows Cole to focus solely on his own story without having to tease, and leave unresolved, other weird disasters that AW authors will be tackling. The core of the story is dynamite, and it’s allowed now to exist on its own, with its own agency, and act as less of a set-up for other ancillary tales. That said, some of the dangling threads from the prior book are explored here in much greater detail, and far more satisfactorily, helping to showcase the unusual dual nature in mankind’s fall by way of zombie horror and a detour to…well, I won’t say much more lest I ruin the fun!
We’re in a good spot with this AW bookverse now, and things are really shaping up nicely. With six titles in the wings, there’s plenty of pages out there to determine the worth of this ongoing Apocalypse Weird enterprise, and, man, I really think it looks like a winner. I’m excited to see what comes next, and will be anticipating my next fix of strange end of the world scenarios, along with the next WYRD book, naturally.
Buy The Dark Knight At Amazon
February 20, 2015
WIP Blog Tour!
J.S. Collyer nominated me to take part in the WIP Blog Tour, and just at the right time, too! My current work-in-progress is Emergence, a sequel to my sci-fi thriller debut, Convergence.
Collyer and I both made our big debuts in 2014, she with the publication of Zero, a wonderful space pirate story with a whole lot of action and suspense. Terrific stuff, so do be sure to give it a read! She’s currently working on Haven, the follow-up to Zero, which you can learn more about at her WIP post. I really dug her debut, and expect great things from this series. If you haven’t read it yet, get to it ASAP!
Now, before we dive into my end of this tour, here’s the gist of how this blog tour (supposedly) works:
The work-in-progress blog tour rules (which we all know are made to be bent or broken):
Link back to the post of the person who nominated you.
Write a little about and give the first sentence of the first three chapters of your current work-in-progress.
Nominate some other writers to do the same.
About Emergence
Emergence is going through the final round of edits, and then will be shipped off to the proofreader by the end of this month. After that, it’s on to cover design and formatting. I don’t have a release date nailed down just yet, but I’m aiming for a spring release.
Here’s the current description (and I’m going to issue a spoiler warning for Convergence, just in case):
Still recovering from the events that befell her in Los Angeles, Mesa Everitt is learning how to rebuild her life.
The murder of a memorialist enclave changes all of that and sets into motion a series of violence that forces her into hiding.
Hunted by a squad of corporate mercenaries, with the lives of her friends and family in danger, Mesa has no one to turn to, but she holds a dark secret inside her skull. She has no knowledge of that secret, but it is worth killing for.
The ghosts of her haunted, forgotten past are about to emerge.
Stay tuned for more details soon!
The Excerpts (Or, Breaking Rule #2):
Chapter One
Sex and death flowed freely, amped up across the nightclub’s bio-fi. The emotions and sensations were intoxicating. The music was loud; the bodies, sweaty. Strangers ground against one another, riding the waves of euphoria.
Chapter Two
Coffee was the lifeblood of a memorialist, Mesa thought.
Chapter Three
Her underwear missed the hamper. Mesa bent down to pick them up, heard the glassine pop, and felt plaster fall against her wet hair. She dropped flat to the floor, quickly crawling away from the point of attack. She glanced up and saw the bullet hole in the wall, exactly where she would have been standing if she hadn’t gotten clumsy.
Soft thumping noises peppered the mattress, sending puffs of foam into the air. They were trying to draw her out, get her to panic and run.
She cursed Jonah’s paranoia—only because he’d been right.
And the WIP Blog Tour nominations are:
Seeing as how J.S. Collyer and I are both contributors to the upcoming anthology, No Way Home (releasing March 2!), I thought I’d tag some of our fellow writers from that collection:
Lucas Bale writes the sort of intense, gripping science-fiction thrillers which make you miss your train. Stories which dig into what makes us human and scrape at the darkness which hides inside every one of us.
His debut novel, THE HERETIC, is the gateway to the BEYOND THE WALL series, an epic hard science-fiction space opera about the future of humanity and the discovery of the truth of its past.
He wasn’t always a writer. He was a criminal lawyer for fifteen years before he discovered crime doesn’t pay and turned to something which actually pays even less. No one ever said he was smart, but at least he’s happy. He blushes when people mention him in the same sentence as Iain M. Banks or George R. R. Martin, bless him.
If you’d like to hear about new releases before everyone else, get advance review copies of those new releases and every short story he ever writes for free then subscribe to INSIDE, his semi-regular newsletter, here: http://www.lucasbale.com/inside
If twitter is your thing, you’ll find him at @balespen
S. Elliot Brandis is an engineer and author from Brisbane, Australia. He writes post-apocalyptic fiction, often infused with a variety of outside elements. He is a lover of beer, baseball, and science fiction.
His stories are about outlaws, outsiders, and the others.
To find out more:
Web: http://selliotbrandis.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/selliotbrandis
Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/PsmMv
email: s.elliot.brandis@gmail.com
S.W. Fairbrother is an avid reader whose love of stories couldn’t help but spill over into writing them. I read almost every genre, but have a special love of fantasy and science fiction. My debut novel, The Secret Dead, was published on 11 April 2014.
If you’ve read my book and are popping by to stalk me, please say hello. Us writers thrive on feedback.
I’m also on:
Tumblr
Facebook
Goodreads
Twitter
Shelfari
Librarything
February 17, 2015
Review: Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz
About Flex
Publication Date: March 3, 2015
A desperate father will do anything to heal his daughter in a novel where Breaking Bad meets Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files.
FLEX: Distilled magic in crystal form. The most dangerous drug in the world. Snort it, and you can create incredible coincidences to live the life of your dreams.
FLUX: The backlash from snorting Flex. The universe hates magic and tries to rebalance the odds; maybe you survive the horrendous accidents the Flex inflicts, maybe you don’t.
PAUL TSABO: The obsessed bureaucromancer who’s turned paperwork into a magical Beast that can rewrite rental agreements, conjure rented cars from nowhere, track down anyone who’s ever filled out a form.
But when all of his formulaic magic can’t save his burned daughter, Paul must enter the dangerous world of Flex dealers to heal her. Except he’s never done this before – and the punishment for brewing Flex is army conscription and a total brain-wipe.
File Under: Urban Fantasy
About the Author
FERRETT STEINMETZ is a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise, and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, for which he remains stoked. Ferrett has a moderately popular blog, The Watchtower of Destruction, wherein he talks about bad puns, relationships, politics, videogames, and more bad puns. Noted online personality, whose letter to his daughter ‘I Hope You Have Awesome Sex’ went viral. He’s written four computer books, including the still-popular-after-two-years Wicked Cool PHP. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, who he couldn’t imagine living without.
Find Ferrett online at theferrett.livejournal.com or follow him @ferretthimself on Twitter.
My Thoughts
[Note: I received an advanced reader’s copy of this title from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.]
Flex is a novel that grabbed me right off the bat, from its evocative cover art to the intense magic-as-a-drug fueled prologue, and sucked me in with Paul’s struggles to cope with and help his tragically burned daughter.
Ferrett Steinmetz is able to quickly construct a familiar world, one where not only is magic real and rightfully dangerous, but which can also be synthesized into a drug called Flex. Needless to say, magic is illegal, with its wielders forced into military service. In the book’s opening pages, Paul learns that he is gifted with ‘mancy, but that it’s use has very real, very serious repercussions. Magic flexes the universe, but that’s not something to simply toy around with because the universe flexes back. And while magic may break the physics that shape our world, it remains true that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And karma, well, she’s a bitch.
After learning that a terrorist named Anathema, who uses the Flex blowback to target her victims, is responsible for nearly killing his daughter, and that the insurance company, who Paul works for, is refusing to cover her treatments, Paul goes into the Flex making business. This is where Steinmetz earns his Breaking Bad comparison, and it’s well-earned. If you’re going to put a magical spin on recent pop culture phenomena, you could do a lot worse than look to that drug dealing drama for inspiration.
One thing that I really appreciated in this title, though, is just how mundane it can be, and that really helps to ground the story. For instance, although magic is dangerous, it’s not exactly sexy. Paul’s powers stem from his love of bureaucracy and filing paperwork, and he’s able to tap into top-secret CIA documents and police reports by magically filing requisition forms. His partner-in-crime, Valentine, is a gamemancer – she’s a video game addict, and her love of Wii and 3DS fuels her magical abilities, along with some healthy inspiration from the Metal Gear Solid series.
It helps, too, that Steinmetz casts his characters are real people, first and foremost. These aren’t part-time models who strut around on the catwalk and then fight crime at night. Paul’s a paper-pusher for an insurance company. An ex-cop, he lost a foot in the line of duty and has a robotic prosthetic that can be a bit ungainly. Valentine is a wonderfully natural heroine, a bit chubby, a bit geeky, a bit sarcastic, and she adopts Paul’s mission as her own out of sincere compassion. They make for a dynamic team, and their relationship shows wonderful growth.
I have to give Steinmetz a lot of credit for inserting as much realism and humanity into the story as he does, and this is a large part of the reason for why the book works as well as it does. It’s clear that a lot of effort went into making the fantastic as relatable as possible, and there’s a terrific amount of world building constructed around the disruption that magic, and its rules, brings to the table. Flex was an absolute delight to read, and my only real lament is that I can’t cast some bureaucromancy of my own to conjure up the sequel right friggin’ now.
Buy Flex At Amazon
February 16, 2015
No Way Home – Releasing Soon!
I have to admit, this has been sort of an emotional morning. I, along with the other contributors to the No Way Home anthology, just sent out ARCs to our reviewers.
There’s been a huge measure of involvement in this project, each of us devoting a heck of a lot of time, effort, energy, blood, sweat, and tears into creating this collection. Pretty soon, we’ll be sending it out into the wild for readers to enjoy and opine on.
Whenever I release something, there’s a good bit of nerves to go along with it, and this is no different. Maybe there’s a little bit of safety, though, a little less weight carried, thanks to the number of other talented authors involved here. If my contribution with Revolver falls flat, well, at least there’s a solid batch of titles to prop mine up! And, honestly, there’s some real doozies in here. I’m ridiculously proud to be included in this anthology with so many other talented authors; it’s just awesome.
We started formulating this book back in July 2014, and the ball really got rolling as we moved into the fall, building up a good head of steam. The last few months have moved at a frenetic pace, but our curator, Lucas Bale, and editor, Alex Roddie, have really kept this ship on course, and kudos to them. This was a seriously labor-intensive project for them especially, and they’ve done an incredible job keeping us all in line!
No Way Home lands online March 2. We’ll be running a KDP Select promo during the first week of its release, with a sale price of only 99 cents. I’ll certainly update you with links as they become available, but for now you can add it to your Goodreads queue.
Keep an eye out for reviews in the coming weeks leading up to our release. And be sure to pay attention to the other authors involved: Lucas Bale, S. Elliot Brandis, J.S. Collyer, S.W. Fairbrother, Harry Manners, Nadine Matheson and Alex Roddie.
February 11, 2015
Calling All Reviewers: NO WAY HOME ARCs Available Soon!
According to our wonderful curator, Lucas Bale, advanced reader copies will be available soon! So, here’s where I ask you for some help.
Our release date is March 2, and we’re hoping to launch with a solid number of honest reviews. If you are willing and able to provide a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and your own blog (if applicable), please contact me by submitting a request. The ARCs will be available in .mobi files for Kindle, but epub files may be a possibility.
Copies will be going out early next week, so get those requests in ASAP!
Here’s some details on the release:
An anthology containing stories by some of the most exciting new speculative fiction authors working today: Lucas Bale, S. Elliot Brandis, J.S. Collyer, S.W. Fairbrother, Michael Patrick Hicks, Harry Manners, Nadine Matheson and Alex Roddie.
Stories From Which There is No Escape.
Nothing terrifies us more than being stranded. Helpless, forsaken, cut-off. Locked in a place from which there is no escape, no way to get home.
A soldier trapped in an endless war, dies over and over, only to be awakened each time to fight again – one of the last remaining few seeking to save mankind from extinction.
In rural 70’s England, an RAF radio engineer returns to an abandoned military installation, but begins to suffer hallucinations, shifts in time and memories that are not his own.
A widower, one of ten thousand civilian space explorers, is sent alone to determine his assigned planet’s suitability for human colonisation, but stumbles across a woman who is part of the same program and shouldn’t be there at all.
A depressed woman in a poverty-stricken near-future America, where political apathy has allowed special interests to gain control of the country, takes part in a particularly unpleasant crowd-funding platform, established by the nation’s moneyed elite to engage the masses.
An assassin from the future, sent back in time to murder a woman, is left stranded when he fails in his mission and knows he will soon cease to exist.
These sometimes dark, sometimes heart-warming, but always insightful stories and more are to be found in No Way Home, where eight of the most exciting new voices in speculative fiction explore the mental, physical and even meta-physical boundaries that imprison us when we are lost.
Review: Masters of Blood and Bone by Craig Saunders
About Masters of Blood and Bone
Publication Date: February 3, 2015
Holland’s a man who’s good with death. Good at death.When his daughter goes missing, he finds himself pitted in a deadly game against the Gods themselves. Powerful enemies surround him—a changeling, a mage, and a god who wants to destroy the world.
With silver bullets in his gun and death on his mind, Holland aims to set things right…or die trying.
For the captors of Holland’s daughter, death is not only on it’s way, it’s in their very possession as Holland’s daughter isn’t just a girl…in fact, she’s barely mortal at all…
She’s Ankou, Death’s daughter, and she’s not an easy mark.
The battleground has been set, the world’s at stake, and all Hell is about the break loose.
Masters of Blood and Bone is an epic clash between good and evil, life versus death, Gods against mortals, a timeless story of power and corruption and one man’s pursuit to protect what he loves at any cost.
About the Author
Craig Saunders is the author of many novels and novellas, including Flesh and Coin and The Estate, Deadlift and Masters of Blood and Bone, which examiner.com called a ‘rare treat from a master of horror’. He writes horror and fantasy for fun and humour when he’s feeling serious, which isn’t often.He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and children, likes nice people and good coffee.Find out more at: http://www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com, http://www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor, @Grumblesprout
My Thoughts
Masters of Blood and Bone is a hard work to pin-down, so steeped is it in a multitude of genres that it defies simple categorization. Craig Saunders has taken the detective genre, by way of urban paranormal noir, and run it through the blender with a strong measure of high fantasy, and written with a deft, contemplative style ripe with intense imagery.
Honestly, I’m not sure that I can adequately write about this work, because it’s one of those books that you just need to read for yourself and experience. Go drown yourself in the words and let those inky worms crawl over your flesh and consume you. (Trust me, that will make more sense after you read this book…)
Taking center stage in Saunders’s narrative is a fat ex-cop named Holland. When we meet him, he’s reading a book of significant power, and by the time his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ank, reads some of it, the damage has been done. An ancient wizard had cast himself into the book’s pages long ago, and Holland has inadvertently unlocked its cage. Now, his daughter is missing and an old evil is loose in the world.
Saunders has a terrific writing voice, and he’s able to blend these disparate genres seamlessly. I absolutely loved the twists of turns, and pitting a hard-boiled PI against ancient gods of lore in an effort to save his daughter was perfectly mesmerizing. I also really loved the characters – Holland is a great protagonist and his daughter is a wonderful character filled with an agency of her own. Ank is a real spit-fire and a far cry from the damsel in distress, despite being trapped in a rather peculiar and threatening situation.
In short, I found Masters of Blood and Bone to be a perfect read, and I loved every page of it. There’s just so much literary panache and noir-cool that it’s utterly impossible for me to not fall in love with this book. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a return to this world in the near-future, and I think it could make for a fantastic series if Saunders is willing. Highly recommended.
Buy Masters of Blood and Bone At Amazon
February 9, 2015
Review: Apocalypse Weird: Texocalypse Now (DIGGER Book 1) by Michael Bunker and Nick Cole
About Texocalypse Now
Publication Date: February 23, 2015
Michael Bunker (Pennsylvania) and Nick Cole (The Old Man and the Wasteland) bring you a gritty tale of survival in the Post Apocalyptic Weird West Texas Badlands where towns have become abandoned wastelands and “Hordes,” packs of feral, cannibalistic humans made so by a diet pill Slenderex, devour anything and anyone they can find in search of protein. A band of children, led by a boy barely a man, will stand against a rising tide of humans gone feral, greedy precious metal pirates and psychotic roving biker gangs to make a home for themselves atop a hidden valley. But when a member of the 88, a Man in Black simply known as Mayhem arrives in the badlands, Ellis and his small “family” of orphans and lost children will have to go underground into a mysterious system of tunnels to fight back and survive. Lord of the Flies meets Mad Max beneath the Apocalypse Weird.
About the Authors
Michael Bunker is a USA Today Bestselling author, off-gridder, husband, and father of four children. He lives with his family in a “plain” community in Central Texas, where he reads and writes books…and occasionally tilts at windmills. Michael is widely considered the “father” of the Amish/Scifi genre, and he is the author of several popular and acclaimed works of dystopian sci-fi, including the Amazon top 20 bestselling Amish Sci-fi thriller the Pennsylvania Omnibus.
Readers who subscribe to Michael’s newsletter get free copies of his books, usually before they’re published: http://michaelbunker.com/newsletter
Nick Cole is a working actor living in Southern California. When he is not auditioning for commercials, going out for sitcoms or being shot, kicked, stabbed or beaten by the students of various film schools for their projects, he can often be found as a guard for King Phillip the Second of Spain in the Opera Don Carlo at Los Angeles Opera or some similar role. Nick Cole has been writing for most of his life and acting in Hollywood after serving in the U.S. Army.
My Thoughts
[I received a complimentary copy of this book from the authors for review.]
Although I had a few criticisms with the way various subplots were laid out and resolved (or unresolved, in some cases) in The Red King, the opening gambit to the Apocalypse Weird brand of books was strong enough to hook me on the universe (or bookverse, if you will) as a whole. The premise behind Apocalypse Weird was intriguing enough, and I was excited to see where things were heading with future releases.
The latest, Texocalypse Now, a collaboration between Michael Bunker and Nick Cole, is a solid, stronger, and more assured work, and gets right down to its nitty-gritty post-End of Days scenario. There’s plenty of Easter Eggs to be had, too, including brief teases of other AW reads and a nice homage to Stephen King via the book’s central antagonist, Mayhem (who, upon his introduction, is described as the man in black – a description King’s faithful will recognize immediately, along with the previous names Mayhem has gone by in the past).
The Apocalypse Weird banner itself is intriguing in its own right, and Bunker has described it as a sort-of Marvel Universe of digital publishing that allows authors a massive sandbox to play around in with their various apocalyptic tropes. Cole’s The Red King kicked things off with a zombie uprising in LA. In Texocalypse Now, Bunker and Cole set their sights on Texas, five years after the apocalypse.
After life unraveled in the blink of an eye, and humanity was cursed with blindness for twenty-four hours, the survivors struggle through the wastelands and their day-to-day lives. Twenty-something Ellis and his makeshift family of teens survive on a farmstead. Bunker’s own life experiences as an off-gridder in Texas help make this scenario of daily survival read not only as entirely plausible but completely realistic. Bunker knows his stuff, and the pages devoted to farm life are well lived in, enough so that you might feel a bit dusty from toiling in the soil.
Mayhem’s arrival in a nearby deserted town drives the books action and introduces us to the villainous Black Hands, after they are enlisted by Mayhem, a member of the demonic 88, to attack the farm.
Having had time to adjust to Bunker and Cole’s episodic conceits to the line-up of stories taking place in the AW series, I’m a bit more patient and lenient in my expectations. While I would have liked to have learned more about the 88 and the Black Hand, I’m putting an awful lot of trust in these authors to sort things out and provide more background as these assorted series progress. While the authors may cite the Marvel Universe as inspiration, there’s a fair amount of small-screen influences at work here, too, and it’s best to approach these stories as “episodes” rather than single, complete works.
Given that, I’m much more satisfied with the brief narrative on display in Texocalypse Now, and I’m really looking forward to digging into (forgive the pun) Digger 2.0, as well as the other eclectic books that are forthcoming. Apocalypse Weird is just getting started, but I’m marking it as a brand to watch and pay attention to. Consider me sold.
Buy TexocalyPse Now At Amazon
February 6, 2015
Apocalypse Weird!
Over the next few days, I’ll be diving into a few books tied into the Apocalypse Weird universe.
The Apocalypse Weird banner is the brainchild of indie author Michael Bunker (Pennsylvania, The Wick), hybrid author Nick Cole (Soda Pop Soldier, The Wastelands), and a few others to tell tales of weird science, apocalyptic destruction, dystopian visions, and hordes of zombies and cannibals, the occasional Kaiju, and various good, old-fashioned mayhem.
For a primer on this stuff, check out Bunker’s blog post, “What is this Apocalypse Weird that everyone is talking about?“
Also check out “Apocalypse Weird – A Revolution in Publishing” over at Stefan Bolz’s blog.
I’m pretty excited to see what these authors have in store for us readers and how the AW universe unfolds. This could be a really thrilling step forward in the indie digital publishing scene, and a great way for authors to reach a new audience (and vice versa). And, if you’re a writer, word has it the AW crowd is looking for new contributors.
The first wave of five books (you can see the cover art for four of them up above) is due out Feb. 23. The Red King by Nick Cole, which kicked-off the AW line, landed back in November (I reviewed it here), and at the time of this writing I’m about 25% into Texocalypse Now, a collaborative effort between Cole and Bunker. I’ll have a full review of it up in a few days, and it’s available for pre-order at Amazon. Keep an eye out for Immunity from E.E. Giorgi, and possibly a few others in near-future.
