INDIETRIBE GOLD REVIEWS Seven Indie Books For You To Browse

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ICEJACKED by Adrian Hawkes

Having been born before the end of the second world war, I often think I’ve seen it, done it and bought the tee-shirt. But what I’ve got to offer by way of nostalgia is small beer compared to a man of 2,030 years.

Leddicus could not possibly be ‘wise beyond his years’. You’d have to be pretty wise to achieve that at such an age, but he’s certainly been around the block a few times and able to put everything in perspective.

At least he would be if he were not dead. His body found encased in ice, he was transferred to a morgue where scientists could pore over him and investigate the corpse of a perfectly formed Roman. A real authentic gent this one, he even smelt of pee, which fits, seeing as the Romans used to wash their clothes in it.

Now he wasn’t  to inhabit his new home for long, because, as he slowly thawed, his heart was found to be still beating. On the premise that a mortician’s slab is not a suitable habitat for a healthy, if rather old Roman, he was quickly transfered to a hospital bed, and Adrian’s story came to life, terrible pun I know.

The story is told through the eyes of Gerhardt Shynder, a Swiss student, who is gutted when he realises the Roman find is alive and well. Gutted because he now has him down as a modern day tourist, weirdly clad in a fancy dress costume, who had suffered a mishap on a Tyrolean mountain. His dreams of working on the investigation of a 2,030 year old Roman as part of his doctorate evaporated as quickly as Leddicus had melted.

Gerhardt visits Leddicus in hospital anyway and slowly realises that he is,indeed, a Roman of some 2.000 year stature. The relationship which becomes forged by the two men forms the background of the story, as each one becomes a phenomenal

Adrian Hawkes

source of information to the other.

Leddicus’s bemusement with modern day society, the logistics of introducing a man of such years into today’s society, and the incredible history lessons that Gerhardt is treated to make this a must read for most.

Having dreamed up an incredible story, Adrian Hawkes deals with it really well. He is a very talented writer and it is refreshing that within Leddicus’s life span, we never cease to be amazed by increasingly bizarre plots.

Adrian Hawkes lives in Multi Racial North London and has spent his life travelling to every continent. His entrepreneurial philanthropy has left a trail of schools, orphanages, refugee havens and foster care support, from as far afield as Sri Lanka, Kenya and continental Europe. Icejacked is his first work of fiction.

THE LUCK OF THE WEISSENSTEINERS by Christoph Fischer

The story is set in three European countries, each affected by war and political intrigue.

It starts in Bratislave in 1933, when the heroine, Greta Weissensteiner meets and is immediately attracted to a young bookseller. The writer’s skill is evident this early on when he successfully depicts the difference in these two lovers. Two quite different characters, she a serious, quite old fashioned young lady, he a  mischievous, devil may care romantic. Christoph Fischer captures the differences beautifully, together with the internal battles of each character to overcome them.

But such minor conflicts pale into insignificance as the full story takes over. It is, effectively, an incredibly powerful holocaust story, a tale which throws two families, one Jewish, one catholic, into turmoil.

Enduring love is challenged by the horrors of war, and the writer makes you care about each and every character.

It is not so much about the victims of the holocaust itself, as those on the edge of it, experiencing the heartache of it all, without the actual physical contact.

The Luck of the Weissensteiners is the first of a planned trilogy, the complete work looking set to become a classic of our time.

This is not a book that you will read and immediately forget. The effects of it will linger on, and that is the mark of a truly talented author.

Christoph Fischer was born in Germany in 1970 as the son of a Sudeten-German father and a Bavarian mother. Not a full local in the eyes and ears of his peers he developed an ambiguous sense of belonging and home in Bavaria.

He moved to Hamburg in pursuit of his studies and to lead a life of literary indulgence. After a few years he moved on to the UK where he is still resident today. ‘The Luck of The Weissensteiners’ is his first published work.

He has written several other novels which are in the later stages of editing and finalisation.

MAXIMUS, WARTS AND ALL  by ROBIN LEVIN

This could be described as a fictional book without fictional characters. Everyone in it was real once, everything they did is gleaned from what was written down at the time. Whether what was written down at the time was true or not is another matter, and that’s what probably pulls Maximus, Warts and All towards fiction. That and the fact that Robin Levin puts such a glorious spin upon the book, which is a sort of pseudo-autobiography. But there are still enough facts to ensure that history is not too distorted.

It is the story of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucossus Cunctator as he would have told it, but I doubt he could have told it as well as Robin Levin.Its a story in which we get to know Maximus intimately. What sort of person he is, how he developed as a person from tender yerars to his ‘current’ senior status of sevent seven years.

Maximus was given a scarab beetle by his grandfather at the age of six as a good luck charm and it seems  to have served its purpose well over the years.

Throughout his years Maximus was a great soldier and leader of men, who always gave his all. . He was a key player in the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. To him this was an obvious thing to do. Indeed, he identified that the difference between Rome and Carthage at war, was that the Romans put their hearts and souls into the war effort and the Carthaginians did not.

Maximus did not deem himself ready to retire from the front line until the grand old age of seventy three when he decided he was no longer in any condition to lead an army.

Readers with an interest in Roman history are going to love the chance to listen to the life story of a significant Roman by listening to the man himself. Those with no such interest may try this book to whet their appetite, but could well find it a bit heavy going.

Robin Levin was born in Baltimore MD in 1949. She and her family moved to California in 1957. Her father was a chemical engineer and her mother was a technical editor. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1971 with an A.B. degree in anthropology and zoology, and completed training as a medical technologist in 1974. She is divorced with one adult daughter. She recently retired and spends much of her time reading and writing. She has had a strong interest in ancient history from childhood and her historical fiction works specialize in ancient Greece and Rome

THE PISACHAS RETRIBUTION by LEE CUSHING

Taking the law into your own hands is not without its consequences. If the boys in blue are called in, they start off a process where justice is, hopefully, eventually dispensed. If you decide on the D.I.Y. version, the baddies will come looking for you.

Forrest King prefers the ‘Do It Yourself” route. He dispenses with the need for restraint, trial and imprisonment, and bundles it all up in one gory package. He does the lot and it makes him feel good. It makes the reader, who may feel that society goes a bit easy on baddies, feel good too. But, a word of warning, King’s methods are not really for the squeamish. His accomplice, Catherine Jordan, is a bit more reasonable, and, in that sense, does try to apply brakes to him occasionally.

His wrath is incensed when henchmen working for an evil Mr Big, Stefano Balesi take an evening off and rape and abuse two innocent young ladies for fun. Step over Forrest King’s line and you die.

King and Jordan invade Balesi’s private Greek Island, see off the rapists and escape by speedboat. Job done! I’ve covered this scene in sixteen words, but it deserves more. It certainly gets more in the book and reminds me very much of an action packed Xbox game.

This whole scenario incenses Balesi who turns his attentions to  King and his accomplice and, in the words of George W. Bush, decides to “smoke ‘em out”.

But that’s just the start of this action packed story. King, an all action hero, and Balesi, so ruthless that his employees commit suicide if they fail him, lock horns. What makes it worse for King is that Balesi is part of a weird cult whose choice of weapon is a chain saw, and whose dietary requirements are quite unusual. Also, they’re rather unpleasant individuals who are not easy to kill. King becomes inadvertently involved in the death of one of these disciples and if you thought Balesi was upset before, watch out now, it’s red mist time!

I won’t spoil things by divulging more. needless to say this is a fast-moving page turner that I really enjoyed. Short, but not so sweet.

Go on, try it.

Lee Cushing is a pen name that is a combination of the great Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

He is an amateur student of the occult, folklore, witchcraft and anything else that is unexplained.

GRIM REAPING by ANTHONY LUND

This is a wonderfully funny story about Grim Alfonso Reaper , who has been in the business of collecting souls since the days of creation. He has always had a pretty steady life in that respect, but just as people in comfortable careers often become aware of knife-sharpeneers behind them, Grim has to start looking behind his back.

He was made aware of the need to do this by Boris, a deceased arthritis-ridden gravedigger. Grim often needs to talk to the Dead you see. It’s his job. On this occasion, he  probably wished he hadn’t. Boris told Grim that he had dug a grave for him. He wasn’t very specific as to why, but he did start Grim on a journey of discovery – to discover who was out to get him. Who was trying to kill death itself.

The journey starts when he visits the recently deceased Mr Bones, the ex Boris’s ex boss. This is an exceptionally funny passage that shows the extent of Anthony Lund’s humour. Mr Bones, having died by way of  chainsaw, literally lies in bits when approached by Grim, who asks, “Which part of you would you like me to speak to”? Priceless. And the conversation gets better. Having ascertained from Mr Bones that the gang out to get him are simply called the Wee, Grim has to grapple really hard with this. “How can it just be the Wee? I may not be fluent in the tongue of Scotland, but I have often heard of the wee one, wee Jimmy and the wee Bastard. so what wee are they?” Humour not dissimilar to Terry Pratchett’ Disc World here.

The conversational humour in this book is exquisite and you would have to be a pretty miserable reader not to find it ‘laugh out loud’ funny. I enjoyed it that much that, despite my onerous workload reviewing lots and lots of books, I’m going to read it again very soon. Loved it!

Anthony has a personal library of over 1000 books in every genre from humour to horror to fantasy to thriller.

His hobbies include cinema, rock music, playing guitar (almost) and writing songs and slumping in front of the TV. His true TV loves are every crime drama from “Wire in the Blood” to “Midsomer Murders”, every comedy from “Only Fools and Horses” to “The Simpsons”, and not so secretly “Eastenders”.

Anthony also has something of an acquired taste in collectibles. His wide array of oddities include a large collection of Gremlin replicas, eight Grim Reapers, two Homer Simpsons, a collection of Roland Rat soft toys and a self-made life-sized working puppet of Animal from The Muppets.

He lives in a rural village with his wife and daughter.

PIE: An Old Brown Horse (That knows What He’s Doing) by Kandy Kay Scaramuzzo

Pie narrates this story, a true story about his very full and varied life, an autobiography if you like.

Pie would not be out of place as a guest on one of Piers Morgan Life Stories, and would certainly be more interesting than some who have trodden that hallowed path.

We are treated to all aspects of the horse’s personality. We are there with him when he firmly trains a young horse in the art of wrangling. We are there when he gets into a gory battle with an enraged bull.

We share his joy as he makes a new friend, Dusty, and finds a new owner, a young girl who he refers to as ‘the little one’. We share his grief when he loses his best pal to a brain tumour.

Pie introduces us to many other horses during this tale, all different, all interesting in their own way, some having pet hates, pardon the pun, such as snakes, some suffering from mishaps they had encountered in the past. Often their owners did nor realise the problems that their horses were suffering from, and it was left to the horses and their friends to assert themselves.

All in all, an interesting introduction to a horse’s world. A book which horse lovers of all ages, and there are lots of them, will enjoy.

For me, who can take or leave a horse (don’t tell Tesco that),  an easy going romp, which whilst leaving me with a pretty decent feel good factor, did not tax my emotions as much as I would have liked.

Kandy Kay Scaramuzzo is a seventh generation Texan. She has taught in alternative education for over twenty years. Ms. Scaramuzzo is a member of the 2012 Strathmore’s Who’s Who. She has a BA in Criminology and a MAedCT. She works in horse,dog, cat and snake rescues.

Ms. Scaramuzzo has been a tester observer for therapy dogs for nine years. She ran a therapy horse program for autistic children for five years. She has been a recognized animal behaviorist for over twenty years. This is her first book about an exceptional horse.

She feels it is important to give back to maintain the balance of a civilized society.

THE LANCE by ALEX LUKEMAN

Nick Carter is the hero of this thriller, a member of the Project, a clandestine group that answers only to the President of the United States.

He is pitted against a motley crew that wields the Lance, an ancient weapon which chills the blood of the modern world.

It may be an ancient weapon, but we’re not talking battering rams or slings and arrows here. The Lance is in fact the spear that pierced Christ’s side when he was crucified. It is not so much the physical power of the weapon which people dread, more the belief that simply owning this weapon would render the holder unstoppableallow the owner total destiny of the world. This is certainly a theory subscribed to by Himmler in the second world war.

That’s why it was hidden by the Nazis in the frozen wastelands of Antartica.

It is found by the bad guys, who discover what it can do and all hell is let loose.

The action starts as Carter is enjoying a morning coffee in Jerusalem. Let battle commence! The whole square erupts in smoke and flames.

The action rarely abates from thereon, as a group of nazis try to kill the President and irrevocably upset the equilibrium in the Middle East by bombing the most sacred Mosque of Muslims.

Alex Lukeman’s writing style is sharp, punchy and easy to read.His powers of description are immense and succeed with the minimum of words. This brief extract illustrates what I mean:

‘Broken glass and smashed furniture littered the plaza. There was blood on him, but it wasn’t his. Carter took a step and tripped. He looked down at a child’s foot in a blue shoe. It was just a small foot. A piece of white bone stuck out of a pink sock. He bent over and threw up the espresso in a yellow brown stream. The acrid, coppery stench of blood poisoned the clean night air.’

He has you hooked early on and it’s then difficult to put the book down. I enjoyed every minute of it and can’t wait to explore the other books in the Project series:  White Jade, The Seventh Pillar, Black Harvest and The Tesla Secret.

Alex Lukeman is a former Marine and professional musician.

He likes riding old, fast motorcycles, sipping Barbados rum and playing guitar, usually not at the same time.

He writes Action/Adventure Thrillers featuring the PROJECT, a covert Presidential counter-terrorism unit.

Alex lives in the Sierra foothills of Northern California.