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Author Interviews & Guest Posts Science Fiction

The Sunday Brunch Author Interview Series: Featuring O.R. Lea

Happy weekend everyone and welcome back to the Sunday Brunch Series! Today’s episode (31) starts a string of SPSFC feature interviews that O.R. Lea is kicking off for us!

The competition is currently in the final round, so while we wait for those scores to start coming in I thought it would be cool to interview some of the authors who participated!

O.R. Lea caught my eye with stories of travel, CATS, and a hard scifi novel in which first contact takes a slightly different approach.  I love the section below on theme and cultural divides! Read on to see these things plus his thoughts on the SPSFC and so much more.

🥞 Welcome to the Sunday Brunch Series! Can you tell everyone something about yourself that’s not in your author bio?

🎤 Aside from writing, my younger self’s dream was to be a rock star. I’ve played in numerous bands before finally admitting I’m not that great a guitarist, but I’ve recently started getting back into it, partly for fun, and partly because my teenage daughter is proving to be a very promising bassist and I want to be able to encourage and mentor her (as much as she’s willing to let me!)

🥞What’s your brunch order today?

🎤One English muffin with poached egg and a thick slice of black pudding

🥞 So I enjoyed the preview of your book, Riebeckite! It didn’t make the SPSFC semifinalist round but I hope you still had a positive experience? How do you feel about the competition overall?

🎤 Everyone involved is so supportive of each other, ‘competition’ almost doesn’t feel like the right word for it! I was read and wonderfully reviewed by some fellow contestants, and it was exciting to put in the same group as one of my favourite indie authors, Zamil Akhtar: when he made top 3 in the group, I was so stoked. And I was even more stoked that one of my indie author buddies, N. C. Scrimgeour, made the finals! She and I published around about the same time and accumulated reviews so closely in tandem with each other that it was almost a running joke. It’s awesome to see the wind is still in her sails and her trilogy is well worth checking out.

🥞 I know you said you were born in Wales, lived in Canada, and then settled in England – what other cool places have you lived or been?

🎤I’ve not done half as much travelling as I’d like, but I’d had holidays in Bulgaria, Romania, France, Germany, Czech Republic. My only visit to the USA was for the 2014 Roller Derby World Cup in Dallas, which was a blast!. I’m a huge fan of American whiskey so I definitely want to do the Kentucky bourbon trail one day.

🥞 Cool, I asked because it seems like bridging cultural and language divides is a big theme in Riebeckite, which uniquely enough takes place in the Persian Gulf!

🎤I’ve always enjoyed making friends all around the world and I grew up at a time when the internet was really starting to make that possible. You’re absolutely right, bridging divides is a major theme for me, but even more specifically than that is the truth that the divide between one country’s perceived culture and government and yours is much greater than the actual divide between you and an ordinary person from that country. Most of my books are set in non-western countries, and I always try to make contact with some people from that country and learn some of their language(s). This has become especially true in the past year, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I have friends in both countries, and none of them wanted to go to war – as always, it’s the people at the top who make those decisions. In fact, one of my fondest moments in making and marketing Riebeckite was commissioning a wonderful husband and wife photography team from Voronezh to produce a photoset of scenes from the book. Darya, who portrayed Tahira, speaks almost no English, so we communicated with a combination of my limited Russian and Google translate, even managing to share the occasional joke. I was blown away by how well they recreated my vision despite the language barrier.

Like I said, I love exploring unconventional locations in my books. I’ve written a mercenary adventure in Zimbabwe and an urban fantasy about vampires in Jordan. The earliest version of Riebeckite was quite different from the final version, in that it was going to be an alternative history scifi set in Soviet Azerbaijan in which the asteroid actually struck the earth, not the moon. I needed a big inland body of water for the asteroid to land in, hence the choice of the Caspian sea. While researching Azerbaijan I learned about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and hit upon the idea of childhood friends from opposite sides of the Azeri-Armenian divide having to work together. Whilst developing the idea, that conflict actually escalated, and I decided it might be a bit tasteless to use a real-world conflict for my story. When I came up with the idea of the bruised moon and the skyscrubbers, it made sense to have them being trialled on an island, and I absolutely fell in love with Qeshm as a setting. And inventing a fictional conflict between Azerbaijan and Iran allowed me to keep the idea about childhood friends working together across a divide.

🥞So Riebeckite is a hard scifi novel that focuses more on biology & technology?  My question had to do with choosing this storyline and setting say, vs, writing a space opera.  What draws people to various branches of sci-fi?

🎤I’ve actually never been married to a particular genre. It just so happens that I like stories about ordinary-ish people thrust into highly extraordinary circumstances, and when those circumstances involve magic or fantastical elements, it gets called Fantasy, and when it involves hypothetical natural or technological elements, it gets called Science Fiction. I’ve come to realise, in fact, that my favourite book trope is simply the Quest, but where the characters are all unprepared underdogs! Riebeckite is very much a near-future, earth-bound story, but it still contains ‘Quest’ elements, such as items which are acquired early on that turn out to have a surprising use later.

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🥞What are your favorite scifi topics and tropes in general?

🎤 I like when SciFi explores the idea of just how alien and divergence life from other worlds might be. Unsurprisingly, the Alien franchise is one of my all time favourites. I’m also a huge John Wyndham fan: I love the way he write a very engaging human story with imaginative alien elements encroaching from the fringe.

🥞What other generally nerdy things are you into?

🎤 As a guitarist, I’m a geek for music gear to a degree thoroughly unjustified by my actual musical ability. I’m also a whiskey nerd: I keep a book of my tasting notes for every new whiskey or bourbon I try, and if I come across one I haven’t tried yet I absolutely have to buy a measure of it, not matter how much it costs or how early in the day it is. Finally, like many writers, I indulge in a little tabletop roleplay. Although, for me, this is less about the dice-rolling rules-exploiting min-maxing geekery, and more about the opportunity to enjoy a different format of storytelling.

🥞Is there a scifi book that you always recommend to everyone?

🎤 The scifi book(s) I recommend most often are Chris Wooding’s Tales of the Ketty Jay series. They are just so fabulously written, and I love everything about them. Recently I’ve been championing a fellow indie author, Steven William-Hannah, whose Interloper Series (beginning with Icebreaker) is just magnificent and I’m hoping he enters it into the SPSFC next year. But the one book I will never stop recommending to anyone who will listen is actually a fantasy series: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and its sequels. Lynch is the writer I wish I could be.

🥞What can we look for next from you?

🎤Torpor’s End – the sequel to Riebeckite, and the second and final book in the duology I’m calling the Bruised Moon Sequence – is landing on the 15th July. After that, I’ll just have to spin the tombola that is my brain and see what idea is ready to come out next. There is a “ghost ship in space” story idea I’m particularly excited about – so much so that I already commissioned the cover art as a promise to myself that it will be written eventually!

Thank you so much to O.R. Lea for taking the time to interview! You can find him online at:

Book: https://mybook.to/Amazon_Riebeckite…

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ORLeaAuthor

Website: https://www.orlea.co.uk/

Author photo credit at the top, to himself!

Stay tuned for SPSFC2 updates and good luck to everyone! As always, if you are reading this we love it when you leave comments and let us know you’re here!

Categories
audiobooks Fantasy

A King’s Bargain by J.D.L. Rosell (Audiobook Review)

As I am reading all things fantasy this month for Wyrd & Wonder, I switched gears to go indie! JDL Rosell is an author with an impressive amount of work out so far, and those books are absolutely everywhere in the indie community.  I wanted to start towards the beginning and found books one and two of The Legend of Tal series on Audible (and KU too) so I decided to start there.

I’m not disappointed at all. This is an incredibly tropey classic feeling fantasy with everything from a cursed piece of jewelry to a petulantly funny king.

Bookish Quick Facts:
  • Title: A King’s Bargain
  • Series: The Legend of Tal, #1
  • Author: JDL Rosell
  • Length: 386 pages (Kindle)
  • Release: Self published, 2020
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ for fans of classic fantasy

The audiobook is a combined book 1 & 2, narrated by Derek Perkins.  Released in 2021 through Podium Audio. I gave him 4 stars too for narration!

Here’s the synopsis from Am*zon

The legend of Tal Harrenfel is sung across the Westreach—and with each telling, the tales grow taller. But though he’s declared a hero by his king, Tal has never claimed to be more than a man…

After three decades of fighting warlocks, killing mythical beasts, and hunting enchanted treasure, Tal has had enough. Running from the deeds of his past, he retreats to his home village under a different name and meets an unlikely companion: Garin, a village boy who dreams of making a name for himself and seeing the world beyond their sleepy town.

When Tal receives a mysterious visitor, both he and Garin are thrown into a journey across the kingdom. Soon, they become embroiled in the plots of monarchs, on the frontlines of an ancient war, and at the mercy of a fabled sorcerer.

Now Tal must live up to his legend, and Garin discover his own power, to survive the forces pitted against them…

My Thoughts:

You want tropes, we have tropes! A boy (a man!) leaves a small town and has a coming of age adventure. There’s a cursedly evil piece of jewelry. The retired hero is going to either save the day or epically ruin everything, or a little of both. There’s first love and plenty of humor and banter.  A big bad guy and a big fabled magic item.

If only everything we’re so simple, right?

What I liked about A King’s Bargain is that while Rosell doesn’t do anything new or stunning, he makes the old tropes interesting through likeable characters and a fast paced plot.  I like that I can read something like this in 360 pages when something like the Wheel of Time is a thousand page investment for a similar result.

Legends are a big theme and one of my favorite themes. What is true? Why are stories told like they are? Are the fables real, and what were they based on? Tal’s story unveils and eventually ties into that of an old “evil”.  I also like that the big picture is revealed slowly throughout the story, keeping me interested in long term as well as short term events.

The points of view go between Tal trying to reason his way through his return to the spotlight, and Garin who is along for the ride and maybe making his own story along the way.  I like Tal’s moral conflicts put against Garin’s learning curve.

There’s plenty of action, plotting, and magic to keep things interesting. There are some darker parts so it’s not all fun and games and creates a good overall balance. I wish he had done more with the various races but i think we are going to meet more of the dwarves, goblins, etc later in the series.

Overall I like this one and recommend for fans of classic fantasy. I don’t want to go into too many details but it’s a solid read, almost a popcorn fantasy, and definitely a good investment on audible (1st two books currently free with membership). Derek Perkins is a great narrator – I couldn’t speed him up very well and still understand names (settled on 1.10 speed 🤷‍♀️) but he does good voices and brings a lot to the storyline.  Continuing on to book two soon!

Thanks for checking out my book & audiobook review for A King’s Bargain by JDL Rosell! I acquired the book with KU/Audible as a mood read and as always, all opinions are my own ♥️

Categories
Science Fiction Young Adult

SPSFC2 Semifinalist Review: Dim Stars by Brian P. Rubin

As the semifinalist round of the 2023 SPSFC comes to a close, here is another full review from me. If you haven’t been following along, I’m a member of team At Boundary’s Edge and have been posting my individual reviews and scores. These opinions are mine alone and don’t reflect those of the team nor anyone else in the competition. Anyway, let’s look at the book and then you can see my 5th review out of six to come before the end of April!

Bookish Quick Facts:
  • Title: Dim Stars
  • Series: N/A
  • Author: Brian P. Rubin
  • Release: Self Published, 2020
  • Length: 353 pages
  • SPSFC Rating: 7.5/10
here’s the synopsis via Am*zon:

Kenzie Washington, fourteen-year-old girl genius, signs up for a two-week tour as a cadet on the spaceship of her idol, Captain Dash Drake. Too bad Dash, who once saved the galaxy from the evil Forgers, is a broke loser and much less than meets the eye. But when an intergalactic evil appears and launches an attack, Dash, Kenzie, and the ship’s crew escape, making them the next target. On the run and low on gas, Dash and Kenzie encounter cannibal space-pirates, catastrophic equipment failure, and a cyborg who’s kind of a jerk. Kenzie is determined to discover the bad guys’ secret plan. But for her to succeed, Dash needs to keep his brilliant, annoying cadet from getting killed …which is a lot harder than it sounds.

My thoughts:

Dim Stars: A Novel of Outer-Space Shenanigans is full of humor and, yes,  shenanigans. There’s an octopus first mate and a 14 year old super hacker genius girl who saves the day. A pasta obsessed commander. A captain who’s kind of an idiot. A snarky robot ship doctor. These are just some of the characters you’ll meet and together they make a mildly exasperating crew.

I think Dim Stars is totally appropriate for middle grade or younger teens. I mostly found it silly but there are good themes for teens.  What do you do when your hero isn’t actually that heroic? Believe in yourself. Make the best out of, and do your best in every situation.  Be brave. I would hand this off to a middle grader for sure.

Plot wise Dim Stars definitely wasn’t slow or boring.  There’s a plot to steal planets and wreak havoc in the galaxy. There’s a cranky not-heroic-at-all captain who’s heart grows about three sizes as he admits he has responsibility to the galaxy and his crew. 

And…an octopus. I already said that but come on, there’s an octopus crew member. I love when alien biology and different races comes into the plot.  There’s a hilarious exchange where one alien thinks the octopus is a human and says they all look alike 🤣

Anyway, I don’t have a ton to say about the book but again, I like it for the recommended age group. I think he hit all the boxes for YA and am coming in at 7.5 to indicate a fairly strong book.

Thanks for checking out my book review of Dim Stars by Brian P Rubin. I found my copy through Kindle Unlimited and as always, all opinions are my own 🚀 Stay tuned for one final SPSFC2 Semifinalist Review as we wrap up this month!

Categories
Fantasy

Sordaneon by L.L. Stephens (Book Review)

You guys might remember that I was on a book tour for Sordaneon a few weeks ago. LL Stephens did a great Sunday Brunch Series interview for that and I hope you’ll all check it out if you haven’t yet.  I took my time reading the book itself since it’s pretty dense and honestly took me a while to get into, and now I’m finally catching up on back reviews. Let’s take a look at the book and see my thoughts finally!

Bookish quick facts:
  • Title: Sordaneon
  • Series: The Triempery Revelations #1
  • Author: L.L. Stephens
  • Publisher & Release: Self, 2021
  • Length: 538 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ for epic fantasy fans
Here’s the synopsis from Am*zon:

Secrets sheathe swords.

A fallen world is littered with the corpses of broken god-machines, and a sheltered, angry youth is destined to re-awaken their power. But to embody a god, Dorilian Sordaneon must first learn to be human…

Dorilian is blood bound to the Rill, a quasi-living artifact that spans continents and empowers a privileged few to reap the riches of an entire civilization. Unfortunately, decades after seizing control of the remaining god-machines, those privileged few aren’t willing to give up their power—even if it means destroying the human bloodline to which the Rill is tethered.

My thoughts;

This is a big book with a lot to unpack, aka perfect if you like epic fantasy.  There’s politics and godlike abilities and character arcs that will provide something for every type of fantasy fan. My initial reaction was to be turned off by all the names and places and threads at first but my advice is to use the appendix in the back and be patient: the reward is worth it!

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Two unlikeable princes are the major points of view. One on either side of a political conflict. Dorilian is the main character and while I did warm to him eventually, there’s a godlike quality to his race that makes him inaccessible. He’s got a great arc that ties into that of the King of the occupational force as the books set up for the rest of the series.

As someone who doesn’t like character driven stories, my favorite part was watching Dorilian learn to be human.  The opposing king is an older guy that miraculously steps in as a father figure and tries to change the course of conflict moving forward by teaching Dorilian about family, history, civility, and so much else.

How much of Dor’s world view is true and how much is manipulation from people trying to stay in power?  One would be surprised. The other POV is Stefan, the king’s grandson, who embodies the “other side” of the political spectrum.  More of a static character than I was expecting. I’m excited to see where the two boys take their countries in the next book.

The political plots are epic, brutal, and Stephens isn’t afraid to kill off a few characters. I love all the backstabbing, plotting, and paranoia threading the pages.

The magic is there on a big epic scale too. A lot of it is done through magical objects but I also think that Stephens is leaving a few things dormant until later books, like a powerful sorcerer and the attention of a god entity.  The magic is there but this is more of a political fantasy so far.  The other interesting thing is that Stephens I think had written later books in the series first, then went back to the start to tell Dorilian’s story first.  I’m most curious to see where this goes now that the story is set.

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And what a story! Vaguely so it’s not spoilery, towards the end there is one of those huge, vastly huge, events that I love in fantasy.  There’s absolute slaughter. Total mayhem. Souls screaming as they die as a tower is cracking and raining destruction.  It’s really a wonderful reward for getting through the book and I’m just so excited to keep reading on.

The only part I didn’t like was again, something that I think will be important later on in the series because it’s too big to just toss into a book like it’s nothing.  There’s a big idea of the gods creating layers of the world so that humans can live in reality. Tying into this somehow is modern day Earth – I mean are we A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court or are we an epic fantasy? Bringing “reality” into this amazing fantasy setting seemed like a terrible idea, but I’m willing to see where it goes in future books.

Overall… Yeah, I like when fantasy is actually pretty epic.  Sordaneon has a lot of background but it also has a ton of action and heartfelt moments, and my pulse was pounding by the end.  A lovely mix of political, personal, epic fantasy. Check it out for sure and don’t forget to go read the author interview too!

Thanks for checking out my book review of Sordaneon by LL Stephens. I originally won the paperback in a giveaway and as always, all opinions are my own. Support indie!

Categories
Science Fiction

SPSFC Semifinalist Review: The Last Gifts of the Universe by Rory August

As we read through the semifinalist round of the 2023 SPSFC, here is another full review from me. If you haven’t been following along, I’m a member of team At Boundary’s Edge and have been posting my individual reviews and scores. These opinions are mine alone and don’t reflect those of the team nor anyone else in the competition. Anyway, let’s look at the book and then you can see my 4th review out of six to come before the end of April!

Bookish Quick facts:
  • Title: The Last Gifts of the Universe
  • Series: N/A
  • Author: Rory August
  • Release: Self Published, 2022
  • Length: 203 pages
  • SPSFC Score: 10. I’m blasting this one with ALL the stars
Here’s the synopsis:

A dying universe.

When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilizations, a sea of lifeless gray planets and their ruins. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last civilization left in the universe, and whatever came for the others will come for them next.

A search for answers.

Scout is an Archivist tasked with scouring the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals—anything left behind that might be useful to the Home worlds and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.

A past unraveled.

Blyreena was once a friend, a soul mate, and a respected leader of her people, the Stelhari. At the end of her world, she was the last one left. She survived to give one last message, one final hope to the future: instructions on how to save the universe.

An adventure at the end of a trillion lifetimes.

With the fate of everything at stake, Scout must overcome the dangers of the Stelhari’s ruined civilization while following Blyreena’s leads to collect its artifacts. If Scout can’t deliver these groundbreaking discoveries back to the Archivists, Home might not only be the last civilization to exist, but the last to finally fall.

My thoughts:

Oh gosh I finished this book over a week ago and I’m still having trouble writing about it. My disclaimer is that I lost a parent (who unfortunately passed alone) recently enough that the ideas of “I hope they weren’t scared” and “did it hurt” and lots of other self reflection related feelings still eat at me when I start thinking too hard.  I have a good enough handle on my grieving to read objectively but man, this book hit directly in the feels for me.

There’s a beautiful story about two siblings and their cat in space, trying to discover the key to saving Earth from whatever is turning the rest of the Universe into a graveyard.  They find dead world after dead world and finally there is  a potential lead.  The thing is the crew has to race against two employees from a selfish corporation for those answers and … well, it’s an ongoing morality play.

While they wait, Scout learns the story of Blyreena and Ovram, two aliens who meant the world to each other.  It’s a sweet interlude to the rest of the action and while I admit that at first I didn’t care about their story so much, I was hooked by the final Last Stand.

Sigh… There’s plenty of action in the book, lots of danger and high tension moments. I was never bored. There is a fluffy orange cat with plenty of opinions and LITTLE BOOTIE FEET.  Was I bawling at 4am because Pumpkin’s life means everything or because I was in a useless knot for the past 100 pages anyway? I don’t know.

I really don’t know. Last Gifts is about the journey, not the destination, so don’t go in expecting a showdown against the planetary life eating aliens. The point is that life is worth fighting for.  It’s so much more than I expected going in.

I waited a bit to make sure I was being objective but I loved the book. I can’t find a darn thing to dock a point for. It’s flawlessly edited and a wonderful reading experience. I’m throwing all ten stars here 🤷‍♀️

Thanks for checking out my SPSFC2 book review for The Last Gifts of the Universe by Rory August. I found my copy on KU and once again emphasize that all opinions are mine alone, and do not reflect that of my team. 

Categories
Science Fiction

Cover Reveal Day: Down Below Beyond by T.A. Bruno!

Hi everyone! I’m so excited to help reveal the cover for Down Below Beyond today, thanks to Escapist Book Tours! I am a huge fan of the author’s Song Of Kamaria trilogy and can’t wait to check out his new novel when it hits shelves, hopefully this summer.

Cover - Down Below Beyond (hidden)

Here is the book’s tentative publication info:
  • Title: Down Below Beyond
  • Series: N/A, Standalone
  • Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy
  • Intended Age Group: General Audience (PG-13)
  • Pages: 260 (unofficial)
  • Published: Forthcoming, tentative June/July 2023
  • Publisher: Feathersong, LLC. (Self Published)
The blurb:

Levort Aatra is a prospector on a planet named Tayoxe. While scavenging the wastes of the abandoned world, he discovers a mysterious starship and stakes his claim on it. Little does he know; he just put a big target on his back.

DOWN BELOW BEYOND is a sprawling sci-fi fantasy adventure filled with aliens, planets, and portals set in a universe crafted by T. A. Bruno, author of the award-winning Song of Kamaria trilogy.

Are you excited yet? If you’d like to learn more about the author, he was one of my first Sunday Brunch guests and you can go read The T.A. Bruno interview!

Here is an exciting thing that he has shared with us today: character art! I picked my two favorites!

Character Art - RedCharacter Art - Orange

Well…. Is the suspense big enough yet? Are you guys ready for the cover?

 

Blank Book Cover Mock-up

So there you have it! The cover artist is Lance Buckley and he can be found at https://www.lancebuckley.com/

The author created the character art!  His books are full of sketches and internal art so if you’re a fan of that, definitely check them out.

Here are the book & author links!

The Song of Kamaria trilogy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B4YVKGT

Author Website: https://tabruno.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TABrunoAuthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/TABrunoAuthor/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TABrunoAuthor

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TABrunoAuthor

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/tabrunoauthor

T. A. Bruno grew up in a suburb south of Chicago and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the film industry. Since then, he has brought stories to life for over a decade as a previz artist. At home, he is the proud father of two boys and a husband to a wonderful wife. He wrote his first trilogy of novels in the early 2020’s, the Song of Kamaria. (In the Orbit of Sirens, On the Winds of Quasars, and At the Threshold of the Universe).

Categories
Fantasy

A Prelude to Ashes by Thiago Abdalla (Novella)

Hi everyone, sorry I haven’t been reading or posting much while travelling for the past two weeks! I’ll have more on that to come but for now, let’s talk about this prequel story to The Ashes of Avarin.

Bookish Quick facts:
  • Title: A Prelude to Ashes
  • Series: The Ashes of Avarin 0.5
  • Author: Thiago Abdalla
  • Publisher & Release: Self, 2022
  • Length: 144 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐ for fans of fantasy and I mean, there are briefly Griffins
Here’s the blurb:

Prince Adrian has a secret.

He has been meeting with Myrra, the princess of Dakhra. They love each other, but their fathers are mortal enemies, and Dakhra is not a part of the Domain.

The rulers of the Domain nations have been granted hundreds of years by the blessings of the Seraph, their borders kept safe by the Church’s elite griffin riders. But the enemies of the Domain are gathering.

A foreign threat may be the chance for Adrian and Myrra to bring their nations closer, if they can convince their fathers to work together.

Will new enemies be enough for rivals to overcome old grievances, or will they bring them closer to war?

A Prelude to Ashes is a prequel novella that takes place one hundred years before the events of A Touch of Light, the first book in the Ashes of Avarin series.

My thoughts:

So usually you obtain this novella by signing up for the author’s mailing list, but was having website issues and posted the novella for free for a few days. I grabbed it thinking ‘ok what the heck’. I’m willing to say now that despite knowing I’m in the minority, this isn’t the series for me.

Everyone on the Indie Accords Discord was saying that this story answers a lot of questions about the book. First, I don’t think there should have to be a prequel to explain things. Second, I don’t agree that the pages explained much. We got to meet Jovu and spend some time with Myrra which are about the only new things. We learn a little more about the political background which we already mostly knew.

I feel like I’m reading the outline of a bigger fantasy work, which is exactly how I felt with A Touch of Light too.

By itself, it reads fairly quickly and has plenty of action and kept me entertained.  Then there is still a huge jump in time before the events of A Touch of Light, which jumps again between the prologue and actual start. Seeing Myrra’s point of view did give a little more insight into her life but these events happened a few centuries ago. I was at least hoping to see something about how the Domain eventually accepted her, but their relationship is still a shell. How did they meet at least? My bad but I’m not believing that he’s going to war for her unless there’s some background 

Abdalla is a good writer which is why I even went here, but he’s not giving me much more to like about the books 🤷‍♀️ I think I gave A Touch of Light three stars too despite not enjoying it much, and you can see my review there. I was just hoping that more would be revealed in the prequel.

Categories
Author Interviews & Guest Posts Science Fiction

The Sunday Brunch Author Interview Series Features JCM Berne!

Hey everyone, Brunch is back! Don’t confuse it with the guy on YouTube who started a new brunch, this is the Sunday Brunch Author Interview Series! We are now into year three of interviews featuring indie and traditionally published SFF authors hanging out and talking books, publishing advice, nerding out, random everything, and of course Brunch.

Episode 28 features indie author JCM Berne! He is the author of the Hybrid Helix series, a wonderfully readable and witty sci-fi space opera adventure with superheroes!

Read on for JCM’s thoughts on superhero sci-fi roots, sentient AI, his favorite Star Trek, and so much more. Enjoy!

🥞Welcome to the Sunday Brunch Series! As an introduction, can you tell everyone an interesting thing about yourself that isn’t in your author bio?

🎤My college and grad school roommate, John Chu, is a Hugo award winner. It’s extra funny because we weren’t really involved with writing at the time – it’s not as if we were in a creative writing program together; he was an electrical engineering student and I studied philosophy. I have one biological child and one adopted child; my wife, who I knew in high school (a very long time ago), also has one biological and one adopted child. All coincidence!

🥞What’s your brunch order today?

🎤 I’ll start with a bottomless mimosa and I’ll end up on the floor. Something about brunch mimosas makes them irresistible to me!

🥞Hmm let’s jump into talking about The Hybrid Helix and your superheroes in space, space opera! I love the concept of bringing big action figures into sci-fi. What led you to this mashup?

🎤I don’t really think of it as a mashup! Superheroes and sci fi have always gone together. Superman came here from another planet in a spaceship. The Fantastic Four got their powers from an accident in space. Jim Starlin wrote stories set entirely on other planets with no human characters whatsoever back in the 70’s (he invented Thanos and told a ton of Warlock stories that were amazing). More recently you have films like the 3rd Thor movie and Guardians of the Galaxy. I wanted to tell stories that honored those antecedents, mostly because I think superheroes fighting spaceships is cool. I do it in prose form because I can’t draw and because I’m too much of a control freak to share my vision with other people (like artists!)

🥞 This had me thinking, and he is 100% right! So much superhero content that we know and love is based in sci-fi. It’s cool, it works, it’s classic

Ok, so did you have any part of the whole series mapped out when you started, or was it a play by play writing each book?

🥞I get ideas for future books as I write. When I started writing Wistful Ascending I knew I wanted Rohan to grow and change, but I wasn’t sure how. I thought of the rough outline for Return of The Griffin while writing WA, and so on. Right now I have a very detailed outline for book 4 and a very loose idea for 5 and scattered bits and pieces for later books. I know how I want the series to end, and I thought of that while writing Return. So it’s a combination – I know what I want the characters to be in the broadest sense, but I didn’t try to fill in every detail before writing the first book.

🚀💢🚀Book….5? I love that more is coming🚀💢🚀

🥞One of sci-fi’s long running themes with first contact stories, is, I guess – who or what else is out there? I liked your bear-people (and their anatomy 🤣), how did that alien race form in your mind?

🎤I’m not entirely sure! There was a manga I read back in the 80’s or early 90’s in which a bunch of characters had animal heads – wolves, bears, etc. – for no apparent reason. It wasn’t explained, not that I remember, it was probably just something the artist thought was cool. (I want to say it was Outlanders but honestly I’m not sure). I remember a scene of a bear-headed character with his mouth hanging open, shocked by something, and it stuck in my head. I have no idea why. It wasn’t even my favorite manga or character.

I didn’t really intend for the Ursans to be a big part of the series past the first four chapters or so of Wistful Ascending. But they became useful, and now I’m stuck with them! But they’re fun to write, so no complaints.

I’ll tell you a secret – when I wrote them I didn’t have a clear idea about their origin. I figured that out while plotting Blood Reunion.

As far as that particular anatomical detail… I’m pretty sure Ursula was teasing. Never rely on narrators in my stories!

(🤣I took it as Canon 🤣) You’ll have to read to find out what this refers to

🥞Your ships and space station were sentient! What characteristics should a well written sentient AI have?

🎤I love this question. All organic things have such a vast array of drives that we evolved with. Hunger, thirst, pain, etc. An artificial being doesn’t have to have any of that. Their drives are going to be whatever they were designed to have – maybe an urge to serve, or to be useful, or to follow orders – and/or drives they choose themselves, if you imagine that they can self-program.

Which just means that a well written sentient AI has to have desires and needs, but there’s no reason to make them similar to organic creatures. You have a blank slate! If you think about whoever designed and built them you can figure out a lot about how they’ll behave.

Then, it’s always fun to have them malfunction in some way. After all, not every organic creature works ‘right.’ So I throw in a few AI’s that are not quite sane.

🥞I love audiobooks and I’ve heard it’s a bit hard for indie authors to connect with good narrators and have a good production experience, can you talk about yours at all or offer any tips?

🎤 My narrator, Wayne Farrell, did a fantastic job. I’m not sure whether finding him was skill or luck. I simply put my book up on ACX and offered money, listened to 50 auditions, and he was the best of them all. And while he’s worth every penny, I had to shell out quite a bit to pay him, and that came out of pocket. I’m lucky to have a fairly well-paying day job. Not every indie author has those kinds of resources.

I think if I had less cash to invest I’d try to find someone with less experience who would be willing to work more cheaply or for profit sharing. I know a couple of narrators looking to break in right now!

🥞Wormholes, sentient space stations, and the mention of a transporter incident in Wistful Ascending ‘s book plug… Would you like to share your favorite Star Trek series and why 😆

🎤 Hmm… probably DS9! I was raised on the original series and I haven’t really watched the shows that have come out over the past five years, just because I don’t subscribe to the right streaming services. I like DS9’s level of grit and the way the setting (a space station instead of a traveling ship) allowed for long term stories to develop. With something like Voyager, the recurring stories felt very forced – after all, the ship was traveling in a line, trying to get home. I’m a fan of big plots, not standalone episodes.

🥞 💯💯💯💯. Yep. DS9 is the only acceptable answer in my book 🤣

🥞 What other nerdy things are you into right now?

🎤 Generally, I read a lot of comics (mostly Marvel and a few independents), manga, manhwa, and sci-fi and fantasy novels. I watch a lot of martial arts and science fiction movies and tv shows, South Asian action movies and comedies, and cartoons from all over. I go through phases. My eyesight deteriorated a little in the past decade and I’ve read a lot less print than I did when I was younger (it’s nothing serious, just makes it inconvenient). I played quite a bit of D&D in my younger days, but not recently. On the creative side, all I do is write – I don’t paint miniatures or anything like that. I’m not much of a gamer, either.

🥞Do you have a favorite book, author, series of all time? (I know how hard that question is😅)

🎤I  don’t know! Probably Malazan Book of The Fallen. There’s so much depth and complexity to it, if I could only read one thing for the rest of my life, that would be it.

“Favorite” is such a tough word. Master of Kung Fu comics were super meaningful to me when I was young, but I don’t know that they hold up as well as some other things. I really like the first 35 or so volumes of Naruto. Jhereg, Dresden, and P.I. Garrett loom very large in my mind

🥞Thank you so much for taking the time to interview! This last is an open forum for you so feel free to talk about anything else you might want to say!

🎤Thank you so much for this opportunity!

Book 4 of the Hybrid Helix, Shadow of Hyperion, should be out this year. I’m hoping for September.

I just finished a wuxia fantasy novel that is very strange. I’m not sure if it will ever see the light of day, but if it does, you can bet I’ll plaster it all over social media.

It’s been an absolute thrill to become part of the indie book community this past year! Reviewers are so important, because without you, readers have no easy way to find stories that will work for them. I’m so grateful for you all!

You can find the author online at

Thank you so much for tuning into the Sunday Brunch Series!  I’m opening back up to authors so do feel free to contact me if you’d like to feature.  As always, thank you all for supporting indie authors and do check out the link if you are interested in JCM’s books!

Categories
Science Fiction

SPSFC2 Quarterfinalist Review: The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin

The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin

The At Boundary’s Edge team has narrowed our original allocation down from 28 books to 7 “Quarterfinalists”, all of which we are now reading in full and scoring out of 10 points. The top three books will move forward as semifinalists. As always, this is my own review and reflects only my own individual opinion and score, not that of the team

As one additional note here, the first round is now complete! We chose to read seven full books and you’ve seen my reviews for each of those.  Soon there will be semifinalist announcements from the competition and I’ll know which six books we are reading next!

Alright everyone, my last “quarterfinalist” review is for a space opera called The Empyrean! Let’s take a quick look at the book first and then I’ll share my thoughts.

Bookish Quick Facts:
  • Title: The Empyrean
  • Series: Galaxy of Exiles #1
  • Author: Katherine Franklin
  • Release: Self pub, 2022
  • Length: 478 pages (Paperback length)
  • SPSFC Rating: 5.5/10
Here’s the synopsis via Am*zon:

Emotion is a weapon. Harnessing its power could destroy worlds.

Palia’s emotions are in turmoil. After watching her son succumb to Empyrean fire, she barely escapes the same fate. Guilt ridden and alone, she will not stop until his killer is brought to justice.

The Protectorate forbids Ferrash to have emotions. That suits him, since he cannot avoid the people who control the Empyrean. Making this sacrifice prevents them from hijacking his feelings and using them as a weapon against him.

When Ferrash spots Palia’s ship venting atmosphere, he is forced to save her. Having an enemy from the Hegemony on board could see him accused of treason. But when the Empyrean reveals its potential as a destroyer of worlds and Palia’s link to it, Ferrash knows he can’t let her leave.

With billions at risk of succumbing to the Empyrean weapon, can the enemies join forces and prevent the same fate that killed Palia’s son?

My thoughts:

I first want to add the disclaimer that I purchased the audiobook (I can only stare at an e reader for so long). I physically read the first 150 pages in order to judge technical presentation, editing, etc.  The fact that I listened to the rest is not affecting my score nor am I going to comment on the experience, other than that it was a decent production and James Alper seems like a solid narrator.

So, about the book! I liked the overall idea quite a bit.  The story opens with a planetary explosion and utter devastation, vivid imagery, and it was enough to snag my attention from the get go.

Broadly, I can appreciate the plot regarding interstellar weapons potential and the fact that emotion could be harvested as a source of power, magic, fire. The Empyrean is full of interesting concepts.

It’s also got a few likeable characters and, my favorite part, a hilarious but all too brief episode with a rather large animal companion.

Where this story ended up falling flat for me was in execution.  There were some big, overarching mysteries hinted at throughout, and the thing is that for an author to hold onto those mysteries and just keep dropping hints, the reward has to be worth it.  I really truly hate to say that the “answers” fell flat for me and that the entire final resolution was a bit of a weak setup for the next book in the series.  Many characters and events appeared and vanished throughout without the page time they needed to land an impact.

While individually I liked Palia and Bek, Farrash felt pretty out there. The romance felt more like a proximity attraction without much to ground it on, so the … Uh … Pinnacle of Action scene didn’t land either. The concept did, I get what the author was going for, I just couldn’t see it.

I’m smacking myself because this sounds harsher than I mean it to.  For editing and presentation this is one of our stronger books, and if I had spent a tiny bit less time feeling lost I would have enjoyed it much more overall.  It’s a great plot that just got lost in the execution.

(Plus, I’m one of those blind-ish people who endlessly appreciate books that are turned into audio and made affordable).

TLDR: Overall – The Empyrean held a great idea and a lot of wonderful imagery, but overall it didn’t hit home for me.  I’m rating 5.5/10 for SPSFC purposes and would recommend for fans of space operas with broad scopes!

Thanks for checking out my book review of The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin! I was provided a free digital copy for judging purposes, although I purchased the audiobook on my own to help me finish our books (and save my eyes) within the allotted time frame. As always, all opinions are my own 🚀

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction Fantasy Paranormal

Book Tour Stop: A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell by Luke Tarzian

Thanks as always to Escapist Book Tours for having me on their tour for A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell by Luke Tarzian! You can check out the book tour’s home page, see the other posts, and find out about the author at the link there!

A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell book cover

Here’s the book blurb:

BRIEFLY, A WORD ABOUT ORDER

Order is the focal point around which existence revolves. Without order there is only chaos. And in the halls of Damnation (pronounced Dam-NAWT-ion, thank you kindly) the first sign of impending chaos is a cup of tea made without the water having first been well and properly boiled in a kettle.

Why is this relevant, O nameless narrator, you ask? Who cares about the preparatory order of tea in the fires of Hell?

Lucifer, dear reader. After all, how does one expect to properly greet the newcomers to Hell without having first had a hot cup of tea to bulwark the cold?

Behold The Morning Star, frantic on the annual Morning of Souls, the arrival of Damnation’s newest recruits.

Someone has misplaced the kettle.

See Also: Sad Boi Searches for His Missing Tea Kettle • Bring Your Tissues • Me, Myself, and I and the Times We Got High

My Thoughts:

I have a hard time rating emotional outpourings, it feels wrong to!! How do you even?  What can you say? The story itself is whimsy, clever, and a mix of funny and slightly hard to push through since I also lost a parent very recently and things are a bit .. fresh 

The novelette starts in one place and ends somewhere totally different.  Join the characters for Lucifer’s therapy session and a joint at a hellish pizza parlor before having a look at the author’s own life.

The story itself is a bit hard to follow in that at first the demon, Stoudemire, is telling the story, then there’s a “real life” letter thrown in, followed by more demon narration before Lucifer is the final voice. He uses the same phrases as Stoudemire too so while it’s not relevant to the story itself, it’s tough for me to follow similar voices on both narrators. Lastly, it switches back to the “real life” narrator before the third section, which is a lovely collection of the  author’s own meditations on grief, trauma, writing. I think my point is that the organization threw me off

But overall? Totally recommend. This is great. It’s funny. It’s “whimsy Hell” and you’re traversing trauma and The Phallic Forest at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it (and read it twice), I just think I’d have loved it if he would have grouped the fiction and nonfiction into their own sections to let the respective narratives flow.  I’ve actually got copies of the author’s books and 100% going to check them out sooner rather than later.

A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell quotes (ig) (1)

Once again, thanks so much to Escapist Book Tours for having me. I found my copy of A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell on Kindle Unlimited and as always, all opinions are my own ♥️