Reviewed by Frankie Martinez

A powerful story of humanity, nature, and the fight for truth.

In a world where most of humanity has fled to live deep in Earth’s underground, Violet Murphy refuses to leave her family’s farm on the surface. Located in Fulminara, one of two habitable islands left on Earth, the Murphy estate is home to Violet, her horse Firestorm, and the relics of her family’s agricultural research.

Life is peaceful until one day, officers of the government’s Science Bureau arrive to conduct the annual census and invite Violet to visit their facility underground in the capital of Apricus. What is supposed to be a presentation on the Murphy family’s developments in food generation devolves into an unsettling interrogation—one which leaves Violet drugged and imagining the voices of what she believes are trapped animals in the stark hallways of the Bureau, pleading for help.

When Violet returns home and feels an unusually close sense of comfort from Firestorm, she is convinced that the voices she heard were real.

Meanwhile, there are others experiencing a strange connection with animals. Emily Steuben, an Earth preservationist, discovers ducklings at her home for the first time in three years after being led there by other animals’ insistence. Jack Collins, a retail director, is hunting a doe on the surface when he is suddenly struck with the deer’s fear, so much that he leaves and decides to swear off hunting for the rest of his life. Mason Agu, a computer programmer for the government’s Infrastructure Bureau, is spending a quiet evening at home in Apricus, until he gets a strong feeling from his cat that something has happened next door to his elderly, beloved neighbor.

The four strangers come together after responding to Violet’s vague online forum post about a “special connection to animals” and quickly become fast friends. As their bond grows, so do their questions about the government, especially after learning about Violet’s interrogation there.

The organization’s increasingly strange activities—starting with the census and leading to the announcement that they’d be evacuating Aprica permanently for an unknown, habitable land—lead the friends to start an investigation into the Bureau, one that leads them down a dangerous path to the truth.

Imber is about the light and dark in the world, highlighting both the comfort of the bonds between living things, as well as the strength to fight against overwhelming odds.

Mistina’s debut is filled with expansive, dynamic descriptions of nature and humanity. The novel’s quiet opening is moving and immersive—Violet walks through her family’s estate, remembering the day she found a dead hawk, only to find Firestorm peeking through the windows of the greenhouse in search of Violet’s mother after her untimely death.

Mistina is also playful with her portrayal of gestures and movement. Each character interacts with one another in unique ways: Jack can’t keep his eyes off of Violet’s freckles; Mason’s deep voice contains a childlike innocence when he’s around his cat or Firestorm.

Because descriptions are so detailed and plot details are so heavily focused on the government’s secret plans, the pacing of the story can be quite slow. There is something comforting about it, especially in the first parts of the novel that are more focused on worldbuilding and the friendship between Violet, Jack, Emily, and Mason, but it also does not quite match the content in the novel’s latter half with its somewhat shocking violence. A lot of information is jammed into the last half of the novel because of this. While Imber does reach a satisfactory, open-ended conclusion in the larger story about evacuating humanity from Earth, I longed for more important plot threads between the four friends.

But that’s also because I wanted to linger in Mistina’s world for just a little bit longer without the government’s evil plans. While lies, deceit, and the end of the world run underneath the surface of the novel, Imber is a gorgeous portrait of humanity, rich with the warmth between people and their chosen companions, whether they be family, friends, or animals.

Thank you for reading Frankie Martinez’s book review of Imber by Deborah Mistina! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Nick Gardner

Love conquers all, even the bizarre fantastical creatures from other realms.

Sheriff Sol Jefferson loves his wife, Yaya, more than anything. In their quiet island community of Webberley Island off the coast of Oregon, their mutual attachment to each other is easy, but when a red, seemingly invincible creature appears on the beach and begins murdering innocent people, their love is put to the test. While Sol and Yaya seek answers to this creature’s existence, their world is challenged and expanded to include other realms, new powers, and even dinosaurs.

Alan and Sairung Wright’s characters are without flaws, inherently good. While they battle demons, mages, and giant humanoid serpents, it’s easy to pick up who is good and who is evil. Sol, the sheriff, always does what’s right and is the voice of reason when his friend, Toby, for example, chooses to fight a creature using hand-to-hand combat rather than a gun. And Sol’s passion for Yaya, depicted as always kind and reasonable, draws him to her side as her protector for most of the book. Though their portrayal as absolute moral people may be simplistic, it makes the contrast more pronounced when the two are pitted against the seemingly incurable evils of other realms.

The novel begins with a bang, with a monster and murder on the second page, and the gore is a gut punch, filled with decapitations and slews of blood. After Sol sees a man cut open on the beach, the pacing is breakneck, each short chapter depicting a gruesome murder from shifting perspectives.

But the book takes a turn after the first fifty or so pages, moving into sci-fi and supernatural fields that are, for lack of a better word, totally weird. The realistic world of Webberley Island expands to involve otherworldly “realms” filled with creatures that sometimes resemble a child’s imaginative drawing brought to life. The descriptions of this other world are intriguing, unique, and easy to visualize, but some of it tones down the pacing with an abundance of worldbuilding. The pacing does pick up for the final third of the book, featuring action-packed showdowns between Yaya, Sol, and an increasingly imaginative series of murder-bent monsters.

The Wrights’ imagination sets Two Suns apart from other horror or thriller novels. If the reader isn’t too queasy from the gore, they may even see the humor in the creatures’ designs. With the humor, the horror, the science fiction, and the supernatural all rolled into one, Two Suns is a difficult one to categorize, but the read is easy, intriguing, and filled with enough strangeness to expand the limits of the fictive dream.

Thank you for reading Nick Gardner’s book review of Two Suns by Alan Wright and Sairung Wright! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Gabriella Harrison

In which an irresistible adventure to an exoplanet transforms into a moving story about the complexity of sisterhood

Lissy and her crew just finished a horrendous mission. Their reputation within the space-salvaging industry is wrecked. So when she and her boyfriend find something with the potential to cleanse their reputation and wipe all their financial woes away, they’re quick to take it. But it’s going to take her sister, an anthropology professor at a prestigious university, to make it happen.

Despite the disaster of their last mission, the crew is eager to get started. Lissy’s sister, Therese, is insistent on following due process. That would help them all in the end since she needs to publish about the discovery, but it doesn’t win her any friends within the crew, especially since she is new and an introvert perceived as a snob.

Once they finally begin, it is immediately obvious that something is very wrong. The religious colony that inhabited the exoplanet before their arrival believed to have left fifty years ago for unknown reasons. The strange thing is that they left all their personal possessions behind. There is no evidence of a massacre. They’re just gone.

Things become even stranger when the rest of the crew finally see what they dub “The Anomaly.” A glowing artifact with an indecipherable origin that captivates everyone who looks at it. While everyone is still figuring out what to do, one of the crew members becomes sick, and things really start to go downhill from there.

The Glass Garden is a mystery-driven science fiction that unfolds over three days. On the first day, the crew arrives on the exoplanet, and The Anomaly is studied. The rest of the crew is introduced through Therese’s keen eyes: handsome Carver, whose main purpose in the crew seems to be to sweet-talk people and maintain peace; Tsieh, a sharp-eyed skeptic and brainiac; and McArdle, the hard-to-please pilot and mechanical whiz of the crew.

On the second day, they split into two teams; one conducting a proper in-depth study of The Anomaly and the other exploring the site where the previous colony stayed and trying to salvage anything of value. By the third day, they’re barely hanging on.

From the beginning, Therese is withdrawn, sitting at a corner of the ship’s galley, sipping coffee and observing her new crew members while remembering times when she has felt left out: “…she had flashes of the first day of sophomore year, sitting in the cafeteria of a new high school knowing absolutely nobody, hoping someone would sit with her, terrified that they would.”

With Therese, author Jessica Lévai aptly captures how easy it is to misunderstand an introvert who doesn’t know how to join a conversation with strangers. Balancing out Therese’s perspective is the equally nerdy Tsieh, who observes her reclusiveness as creepy: “She was probably listening, but not contributing, which was spooky as hell.”

Then Lissy enters, “splashing into the pond with all the subtlety of a rock thrown by a kindergartner.” Lissy is her younger, more vibrant, and daring sister. As the story progresses, the sibling rivalry and her resentment toward Therese for their mom’s preferential treatment toward her and repeated disregard of the career of a space salvager are evident. During one of their arguments, she remarks, “You never stand up for me when Mom tells me to get a real job or go back to school. It’s obvious you think I’m beneath you.” Amid the chaos of their mission, interactions such as this ground them in their humanity—a quiet reminder that beneath all the tension, they’re still just people. Unfortunately, Lissy’s sentiments rub off on the rest of the crew, and Therese must prove herself to belong.

The alien cave system of the exoplanet is brought to life through tactile, sensory detail, especially when the characters peel off their masks and interact physically with The Anomaly. These artistic details create an immersive and emotionally evocative atmosphere that is both magical and menacing, evoking awe and dread in equal measure. For instance:

“One wall of the cavern was lit as if from behind, and upon it were…images. Like a stained glass window in an abandoned cathedral…the images impressed on it reminded her of Tiffany lamps at the art museum, but more free, more alive. These were the flowers that watched martyrs put to death and grew exuberantly, mockingly, from their remains.”

Despite its emotional resonance, The Glass Garden leaves a few questions unresolved. While the ambiguity surrounding the sick crewmate is intentional, it doesn’t exactly provide closure, and readers may find this frustrating. The lack of psychological buildup, such as Therese and Lissy’s final decision concerning The Anomaly, can make some character decisions feel sudden, but in the novella form, these are likely to save space and allow for the reader to ponder the truth in the silence.

Jessica Lévai’s The Glass Garden is a surreal and thrilling science fiction novella that prompts you to wonder what truly exists beyond Earth, and it succeeds greatly in balancing introspection and action. Therese’s archaeological mindset provides a steady rhythm of analysis and reflection, while the unfolding mystery of The Anomaly keeps the tension alive.

Thank you for reading Gabriella Harrison’s book review of The Glass Garden: A Novella by Jessica Lévai! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

This chaotic & gory quest to stop a cult from supernaturally resetting planet Earth is both an all-in adventure and a cheeky read.

In Izzy’s father’s suicide note, he admits to being the serial killer who went viral for the murder of six victims across the globe, seemingly unconnected but for the fact that all their femurs were taken as a souvenir. His letter describes these murders in detail and provides directions to find each person’s remains. When he’s found, his body had been “burned and blackened beyond recognition.”

In addition to the suicide note, Izzy’s father—though she prefers not to call him that; he’s Nathaniel now—left a puzzle box and a letter with his lawyer, who delivered it to Izzy in person at his funeral. When she was a child, Nathaniel made these sorts of puzzle boxes and designed interesting tricks for Izzy to discover, each box with its own opening method. Now, six months after his death (and six months of hell for Izzy), she learns that he set up a treasure hunt for her to follow, in hopes that she can “finish his work.”

Izzy—who enjoyed her life with her pet rat and her job as a cleaner for the “the local leader in crime scene cleanup”—wants no part of this mission. She immediately threw the first puzzle box away, recovered only because her friend Felix literally dumpster dived to salvage it. (Every time I see a dumpster from now on, I’ll be thinking of this line: “The dumpster seemed to be watching her approach, its plastic lids open like a beast eager for a treat.”) Author Morgan Mourne is so skilled in scene description in both mundane and horrifying ways I’ll never forget.

With each puzzle box, Nathaniel left a new letter for Izzy to decode, leading to clues about where she can find more femur bones and next steps. Each letter is less cryptic and more informative, sharing the truth behind why he did what he did. This still   doesn’t convince Izzy to follow the trail Nathaniel had set up for her. 

What really kickstarts Izzy’s dark, disturbing treasure hunt is the fact that creepy men keep following her around asking about items in her possession—one going so far as to show up at a blood-and-guts-soaked apartment she’s cleaning and forcing a femur into her hands. 

Izzy’s friend Felix—a collector of occultish artifacts and the owner of a bookshop called Hex & the City—and their mutual friend Dr. Nakahara—a professor of occult studies—help Izzy by connecting the clues she decodes from the letters to supernatural theories they’ve researched, eventually coming to the conclusion that Nathaniel was gathering seven specific femur bones in an attempt to keep them away from a doomsday cult. 

This specific cult is on a mission to gather the bones to supernaturally reset planet Earth, erasing all evidence humans were ever here, and putting themselves in charge of all nature when it begins afresh. With each new puzzle box they find comes a letter less cryptic; every set of instructions leading to a more dangerous mystical bone. “Each [bone] harbors massive destructive potential. If all seven bones are not united during the Convergence, then each bone will activate its own curse.”

“It wasn’t because I was some kind of monster,” Nathaniel writes in one of his letters to Izzy. “I thought I was saving you, saving everyone from unimaginable terrors.” 

The Bone Collector’s Daughter begins as a story about a young woman trying to escape her father’s dark legacy, forever written into her surname, but along the way, it transforms into a story of friends fighting to stop the exponential damage this cult is trying to inflict on the world. 

The further Izzy gets into this quest and the more letters from her father she reads, the more the story transforms—next into the complicated emotional journey of a daughter working through the trauma of everything her father has put her through. Was he doing good, just in his own way? His death starts to become more painful the more she learns. 

A nostalgic, emotional ribbon threads itself through the journey of Izzy learning that her father may have had honorable intentions, while she relives positive memories of her childhood and remembers the man she believed her dad was then. More than that, this quest leads Izzy to realizing that her father saw her as capable, brilliant, talented, and creative. What first felt like a burden now feels like a responsibility, a legacy she wants to uphold. 

“All these damned letters with their cryptic clues, puzzles, and references, and he always trusted her to figure the shit out. How could he have so much trust in her?”

And there’s lots of action: Felix is beat up so many times by the henchmen trying to   rob them of the puzzle box and bones that it becomes almost a running joke between them. We enter a world of gadgets built for surveillance and self-defense, and later, in order to protect the bones they’ve found from the cult, the trio signs up for a super high-tech safekeeping company that uses their biometric data to personally safeguard their belongings. “So we’re basically turning into walking passwords?”

In terms of content that readers should be aware of in this novel, other than the blood, gore, and murderous cults, it’s only mentioned once in passing, but we learn that her motherkilled herself and Felix’s younger brother diedin a similar situation involving a group on the hunt for occult-related items.

The tone of this book feels so much like The CW show iZombie and the TV series Lucifer, both of which understand the seriousness of solving the murders they’re tasked with, but their lead characters are such unserious people that it never gets too dark. It’s the casual, upbeat, bright and cheerful let’s-get-on-with-it tone of a day out with your quirkiest, closest friends—even if that day out is an errand to secure trackers and weapons because you’re being stalked by a cult.

This book will be a hit with readers of cozy murder mysteries, not because it’s cozy exactly, but for the way it revolves around a small group of bookshop friends in a situation that pulls them out of their regular social circle and requires they use each of their interests, hobbies, and connections to complete the mission successfully. I loved the playful chapter titles (Chapter 14: “Yeah, I Had Visions;” Chapter 57: “Uh-oh” Chapter 34 “Aunt Joan’s Creepy Frigging Basement,”) and I’d recommend this book (from personal experience) for readers with ADHD or brain fog, because the short chapters each include one fast-paced, focused scene, which enables readers who struggle with focus to dive into this story effortlessly.

I was often struck by the brilliance of the prose while reading even the most shocking, gory scenes. On rainy days outdoors, I’ll forever think of Izzy standing at her father’s graveside, in thick mud “that sucked at her shoes.” I could hear the sickening squelch as the guts dropped out of the bodies in one of the most unsettling scenes of the book.

Author Morgan Mourne somehow keeps this subject matter dark and upbeat. There are many amusing moments in this fierce adventure, like when Izzy learns that the seven mystical bones would wake at any signs of human destruction to the earth and damage to the planet’s natural state, and she blurts out “Okay, so the bones are definitely awake.”

While there are a few unanswered questions once you sit and think about it (and which I’m growing hopeful means a sequel), The Bone Collector’s Daughter is a thrilling, heartwarmingly horrifying tale that is gory and gruesome and a complete joy to read. An entertaining journey with genuine heart, unexpected friendships, disturbing darkness, shocking twists, and a cast of people you’d like to hang out with—if they weren’t officially on the radar of a vicious, murderous cult and the literal and hallucinated monsters they can unleash.

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of The Bone Collector’s Daughter by Morgan Mourne! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Alexandria Ducksworth

D.L. Gardner sure knows how to keep the fantasy alive.

Welcome back to the island of Cho Nisi! This time, the legendary island is under a major threat: its magic is fading. Someone has stolen the island’s ability to protect the land from foreign invasions. Once it’s gone, they’re vulnerable against anybody who is willing to take over their long-reigning kingdom. 

12-year-old Maurice, the son of King Arell and Queen Ericka, is more worried about the current island’s state than anything. He sets out against his parents’ orders to seek help, but it will come in the form of a mythical dragon. 

Anna, daughter of traitorous Lord, is just trying to make ends meet when a group of sorcerers kidnap her and take her to their airship. There, Anna learns who is behind the magic from Cho Nisi and the plan that’ll lead her back to Prince Barin, a man she once loved and was supposed to forget. 

Many things are at stake in Gardner’s latest Cho Nisi book. There’s great adventure and deep lore, but the story also develops various themes of bravery, politics, and traditional vs. modernity.

The slowly disappearing magic of Cho Nisi is one side of the kingdom’s problem, but it only signifies the loss of hundreds of years of history. While Arell and Ericka are prepared for the transformation, young Maurice is determined to keep the old traditions alive. 

Maurice, ever the one asking questions, gets his answers when he meets The Keeper, the last dragon to help him restore the island’s magic. Representing the rising modernity of Cho Nisi, Maurice’s parents are ready to rule a land of no more magic. Maurice, ironically part of the younger generation, represents the old ways fighting to stay alive. D.L. Gardner makes a number of smart choices when it comes to developing these characters and revealing their ideals. 

The arrival of the mysterious The Enchantress airship reveals there’s more to the Cho Nisi than we even realize. Yet, this is how we’ll come to know that there’s room for growth when new challenges arise. The people of Cho Nisi might have been used to their bows, arrows, swords, and ancient magic before foreign sorcerers arrived, but it blossoms into a great opportunity to grow stronger.

The Keeper is wonderful addition to the Cho Nisiseries! We’ve unlocked new entries to the world’s lore but returned to characters we’ve come to love from previous tales. Like the other books in the series, this book comes with loads of heart, acting as a reminder that there is enough magic in each of us to overcome any challenge.

Thank you for reading Alexandria Ducksworth’s book review of The Keeper (Sword of Cho Nisi) by D.L. Gardner! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Timothy Thomas

A short graphic novel with real depth that questions if we are truly the heroes of humankind’s story

Can heroes be made? What does it to take to make one? Can we ever truly save ourselves, or will our pursuit of that goal only lead us further away from it?Despite a short page count, Once & For All raises some serious, thought-provoking questions regarding the nature of heroism. 

From the minds of Daniel Benedon and Daniel Reed, this graphic novel drops readers into a world where heroes are not just those who are equipped with extraordinary technology or given powers by some peculiar, radioactive accident; instead, they are coals turned diamonds under incredible amounts of intentional, intensive, impossible pressure. With clear allusions to Biblical literature, this story ponders the consequences of putting our trust in ourselves when there exists a greater power capable of doing what we can’t. 

“Designed with no hope of success, and an absolute certainty of failure,” the “Forging” is a process of grueling intensity that all aspiring heroes must make it through. It combines hours of impossible endurance exercises in the hot sun and practically no sleep or food, and it forces the complete loss of personal identity necessary to become a hero and join the hero brigade—a group whose ranks are filled with the cynical and nihilistic who see the mission as hopeless but who still prioritize it above helping those actually in need. 

There are still those, however, who believe in a better way: the All. He is said to be the very source of all being—to whom all that has been, is, and ever will be owe their very existence—a being of great love who desires to bring the discordant notes of humanity back into harmony with himself. To many, this is an outdated, childish, and vain hope, but a hero brigade’s mission gone sideways may well bring all those assumptions into question.

Once & For All wastes no time jumping into the story. It delivers a lot of content in a short space and gives readers quite a lot to chew on. Even though it is only the first installment of a series, a feeling of incompleteness lingers beyond the bite-sized experience. Could we have gone beyond the cliffhanger?

But the material! The writer and illustrator have done excellent jobs in creating a product so difficult to pull one’s attention away from. Replete with appealing details and memorable artwork, Once and For All conveys a captivating mood that calls for an examination of the little things in the art. The written content is equally strong, with dialogue that feels natural and language that is refreshingly poetic at times. This purposeful harmony of the art and the language leaves no room for ambiguity in the intended mood of any given scene.

Daniel Benedon and Daniel Reed craft a story of great depth in Once and For All. Fans of the fantasy superhero genre and those who appreciate a fresh take on it will find a lot to love here. My hope is the next installment comes with even more—and soon!

Thank you for reading Timothy Thomas’s book review of Once and For All by Daniel Benedon and Daniel Reed! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Addison Ciuchta

A high fantasy adventure in a world full of heart, beauty, and found family

Alderelm opens with LittleLeaf LeadTree, the youngest and last-born of a Faerie species called the Treeans who live as one with the ancient, sentient trees of their land. 

When the story begins, LittleLeaf is going about her normal routine, visiting and communicating with her tree Miriam and itching for experiences beyond her day-to-day in the confines of her forest. Their forest, Alderelm, is one of seven ancient forests full of trees that hold the knowledge of the history of everything. 

Soon, though, fire appears on the outskirts of their land, signaling impending danger. They quickly learn a similar fire has wiped out at least one of the other ancient forests. This tragedy was caused by the Geul, beings from the underworld itching for destruction for destruction’s sake. 

LittleLeaf, the carrier of the seed of Alderelm, must unite with two elves, Noblien and Sage, and a huntress named Tullkaee to keep the seed protected from those who wish to destroy it and with it, her people and their history. Through beautiful and strange lands, the group encounters enemies and unexpected friends on their journey together.

There is quite a bit of worldbuilding in this, especially with the pure number of species, lands, and histories introduced in just the first few pages of the book. It can be disorienting at first as new character after new character appears, especially when chaos breaks out with the fire and the action starts moving. It can be difficult to tell who will come back later in the novel and who is only there for one or two scenes. The appendix at the back is particularly helpful with keeping track of who is who and what species they are, so make sure to be flip to that regularly.

As the story progresses, it becomes easier to remember the characters and their histories, since the point of view tends to focus on LittleLeaf and her small group of adventurers. The relationship between the four of them is touching as they all come from different places with different histories, but they’ve found a common ground in the love they end up sharing with each other. 

While they aren’t without argument or fight, all four find a deep respect for each other and the strengths they have. A scene near the end between Sage and Noblien is sure to bring a tender tear to the eye, as are all of the moments the two of them share as they slowly and hesitantly open up to one another. It’s a true found family story in the midst of high fantasy chaos.

“They were two warriors facing vulnerability for the sake of confronting the truth and, therein, being the bravest testament to courage.”

The worldbuilding is detailed and wide-reaching. The strongest part of this is the way each species or character has their own understanding of what is myth and what is real, which feels so realistic to how that might play out in reality. One character who grew up with the Treeans may not know, exactly, the history of the Puman elves or the Coyotls the same way someone who grew up in a different part of the world would.

“’Hold now,’ whispered the captain. ‘This cannot be so. You speak of children’s stories.’”

The writing style may take some getting used to. It’s written in a lovely, lyrical style, but some moments can be difficult to figure out what is happening. A few scenes or sentences may require re-reading to figure out its true meaning, but the result is also rather beautiful prose that matches the beauty of the world in Alderelm.

“As a being of the elements, she was a tender compilation of all the world’s sorrow in a day.”

While it takes some adjusting to the world and the voice, Alderelm is a touching, intricate fantasy story of loss, yes, but also friendship and love found in characters so very different from each other. You’re sure to meet strange creatures, stunning lands, and stirring emotionality in this one.

Thank you for reading Addison Ciuchta’s book review of Alderelm by Ellis McCauley! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Timothy Thomas

A constantly engaging story about a newly elected queen struggling to lead her people to victory in an utterly foreign war

By taking great liberties with history, author Justin Hébert’s work of historical fiction succeeds in retelling California’s origin story with creativity and distinction. 

Arising from a preoccupation with the origin of the name California, Califia’s Crusade mixes fact with fiction to produce an unpredictably gripping narrative that links “the black Amazons of California with the mythical Amazons of ancient Greece” and sees them off on a quest across the world to avenge their ancestors who were driven from their homeland by the Greeks. 

On the day of her coronation, a newly elected queen (Califia) hardly has time to celebrate before she is unceremoniously “gifted” the first decision of her position by her rival Malachea, the Strategos of the Gorgon people: the decision to execute an alleged intruder, as the law of the Amazon demands. 

When Califia decides to spare him, instead, due to a lack of evidence for ill intent, they soon discover the intruder was lost, separated from a party roaming the oceans in search of an army to help them in a war with the Greeks. Once the party lands and bears witness to the Californians’ fighting prowess, they solicit their help in the war, and the Californians, eager to avenge the fate of their ancestors, agree to aid them. 

After many months at sea and a trek inland, they arrive at the siege grounds outside of Constantinopolis to a cold reception by the head of the Osman army, who is disappointed that an admiral has brought back an all-woman army. 

An opportunity to prove themselves arises, however, when an attempt to take the city by the invaders begins to fail and their forces threaten to be overwhelmed, prompting the queen to lead her forces into battle. Having earned the respect of their allies, the queen devises a plan to bring the siege to a swift end so the Californians can return home, but it may come at a bloody cost.

Califia’s Crusade is a delightfully accessible and intriguing work of historical fiction that keeps you guessing. Though the story moves forward by veering in unpredictable directions at times, it is nevertheless realistic when it does so. That realism isn’t just limited to the narrative itself, but also to the characters and their interactions with one another. The Californians are a society made up only of women who have had no interaction with the larger world since settling in California. Thus, there are many aspects of their society that are bewildering to their foreign allies, and vice versa. The author does a great job of depicting the reactions these entirely different cultures would have to one another. 

As a consequence of this, however, there are moments that portray men and religion (primarily Islam and Christianity) in less than favorable lights. Far from being a criticism of the novel—it is actually another of the author’s storytelling strengths— it is still something that readers sensitive to these topics should be aware of. 

Historical fiction fans will appreciate all this creative origin story has to offer. Califia’s Crusade is jam-packed with drama, action, and emotional depth that you will no doubt find true entertainment in. 

Thank you for reading Timothy Thomas’s book review of Califia’s Crusade by Justin Hébert! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Toni Woodruff

A quirky novel of boundless proportions

Alex is an alcoholic. We’ll call it that now. After turning to the bottle (or five of them) to start Fallen Spirits, the second book in this series, she’s lost and drowning and hurt to start The Light of Wounds, book three of this highest-of-stakes fantasy thriller series.

She’s dealt with abuse nearly her whole life, but the most recent abuse by JT, her incredibly rich and repulsive boss, is of a different stature. He went after her. And now he’s going after the world, creating mini black holes throughout Earth for his own gain and causing widespread panic. 

But he’s not the only villain in The Light of Wounds. Tech genius Aaron Minor was thought to have died, but he’s just in the internet. He’s got his sights set on JT, but as these two crazed rich guys try to one-up each other, the whole planet is going to get sucked into oblivion. 

Alex is deep in her trauma, so we can’t even be sure there is a way out of this. She wonders if she can she make it, as we do. What’s the fate of the universe if all you want to do is shut off your world anyway? 

Luckily, Alex has help. Brave, strong friends who lift her up, watch out for her, give her the space she needs, and still propel her toward the only ending they can see possible: the one where they save the world.

“‘Healing your pain from the inside out is the spiritual path. Nothing outside f you can give you answers or make you happy. The light only enters through your wounds.’”

The Light of Wounds is the quiet cousin of Fallen Spirits, despite being on the verge of apocalyptic demise. The stakes are as high as they come, and the powerful can make anything happen. I don’t know what person is out there who hasn’t dreamt of surfing the inside of the internet, but I also don’t know which reader doesn’t want to read about it. 

Aaron Minor’s entrance into this novel is such a cool wrinkle into the Mind Monsters series, especially since there’s complexity there. He wants to take down JT; we do too. He was even wrongfully murdered by JT. As a reader, I kept clawing at the possibility of teaming up with this guy, even though his presence as a villain is darn clear. Oh, what big things are coming in book four!

Despite the super-high stakes, this novel just doesn’t come with the same thrills and intrigue as Fallen Spirits. The dialogue can be unnatural and over-expositional, Alex is stuck still for so long, and the ending pulls up short of the full story. I know that’s due in part because I just want to see this whole thing play out so badly, but it’s also because there’s just not much narrative movement from the last book to the next one.

The Light of Wounds still comes with more of Hatz’s signature flare on the sentence level. The author is funny, creative, and spiritual; there’s much to connect with on the internal level of this book, especially in its ongoing conversation with addiction. This series is set up to have one explosive finale.

Thank you for reading Toni Woodruff’s book review of The Light of Wounds by Diane Hatz! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Victoria Lilly

A throng of terror, loss, doubt, and reckoning with trauma swirls together in a collage of wondrous worlds.

Trina Bell is on the run. Strange human-like shadows chase her across towns and fields. But their nightmarish presence pales in strangeness compared to what happens to her with each new day. The world is changing.

The rough outline might stay similar, but details change, and no one recalls her presence from the previous cycle. No one, that is, until Trina meets an old librarian by the name of Colin. He, too, changes with the turnings, but he remains a librarian, and he remembers Trina even as days and worlds pass. This oddity unsettles Trina, and she latches onto Colin as a life buoy. 

Concerned for Trina—bewildered, young, alone in the world, and on the run from shadows—Colin takes her to a sanctuary for dispossessed girls. At first Trina believes she has finally found a safe harbor, someplace to make sense of what has been happening to her.

Then she meets the asylum’s resident physician, Dr. Sweets, and what he tells her disorients Trina even more than the turnings of the world have done: that she is the cause of them. From that point on, Trina is on an ever more desperate run for her life; from the shadows, the accelerating crumbling of each successive world, and Dr. Sweets himself. Yet the more she runs, the more she comes to realize that her pursuers might not just be behind her, but also within.

While the premise of multiple universes is hardly new in popular culture, success of certain Marvel films and, in 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once has certainly increased the concept’s popularity and visibility. To put a fresh and compelling spin on it is, therefore, no small feat. I am happy to say that Christopher Hawkins has achieved such a feat with this book.

Jumping from small-town flyover-country America, to a Victorianesque metropolis, to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and more, I Contain Multitudes contains quite a few worlds. Certain motifs connect each of them into a cycle. The library, where Colin works. The asylum for dispossessed women. The ensemble of recurring characters, from the kind and helpful Edie, to the increasingly violent and erratic Dr. Sweets.

Hawkins’s seamless and simple prose immerses the reader in every successive world so thoroughly, I wished each episode within the novel was a book in its own right. The cast and the constant locations and motifs not only give cohesion to the multiverse storyline, but attachment to them are the bricks upon which the structure of heightening tensions and stakes solidly rests.

At the center of the story, Trina begins as a relatively characterless figure. We know she is on the run, that she doesn’t dwell much on the reasons behind her world changing, and that she avoids attaching herself to people. The latter is understandable, since no one remembers her the next day anyway, but this is already a clue as to the true demons haunting Trina, and why she is the person that she is. Her latching first onto Colin and then the gentle asylum manager Edie simmers with tension, as Trina struggles to bring herself to open up, be vulnerable, and try to face a forgotten past.

“And she really did feel like it might be okay. Okay the way it hadn’t been in months. There was something so trustworthy in Edie’s smile, in the gentle way she held out her hand toward the wide, curving staircase at the end of the lobby, that Trina might have been happy to follow her anywhere.”

If there is one flaw to I Contain Multitudes—and it is not a major one—it is that the fast-paced psychological thriller story limits the extent to which the characters and the worlds are developed. There is enough of each world to intrigue and want to explore it, but ultimately that isn’t the point.

This is all, of course, part of the point of the story, these shortcomings logical within the central thematic thrust. Trina’s emotional arc, her relationships with the likes of Colin and Dr. Sweets, and the particulars of the worlds she visits are neatly tied together. 

The novel’s theme might be relatively simple, but as my dad would say, “simple is beautiful.” The emotional core, the punch of the story, makes for an affecting read. Lovers of drama will appreciate the final resolution, and thriller fans get more than their money’s worth from the journey to the said ending. The heroine escapes into neither fantasy nor oblivion, but bravely begins the world anew.

Thank you for reading Victoria Lilly’s book review of I Contain Multitudes by Christopher Hawkins! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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