Review: Sweet-pea's Thief by J. Cassidy

Sweet-pea's Thief

by 

J. Cassidy

“If you can pay, I can get you your body back.”

Her body stolen, her soul pushed into a world of magic and monsters, Sweet-pea's best chance of survival is to stick with Alan and his promise of protection.
Hounded by the threat of bounty hunters, wanted by the mysterious Tin Master and chased by monsters attracted to her, getting home soon takes second place to staying alive.

My Take:

Gambling for dollars is one thing. But gambling for days is something else. Charlie is dying of cancer. He only has months to live. But he hears of a raven-haired girl that will play poker with you, gambling for your remaining time. If you win, you leave with more time. If you lose, you... lose time. With little to lose, he plays poker with Sweet-pea, who relates during the game the incredible tale of why she is gambling Years of Life with the dying.

With her body stolen by a monster, and her soul pushed into another parallel realm with monsters and magic, Sweet-pea's survival depends on the protection of others stuck in this horrific realm with her. Hunted by bounty hunters, monsters and the mysterious Tin Master,  Sweet-pea finds that while attempting to regain her life, she may lose her soul.

Content:

Drug Content:

PG - Sweet-pea is given a bottle of pills to help her cope with the shock of losing her body, pills she quickly becomes addicted to.

Violence:

R - There's a good deal of violence and death, blood and gore. A torture chamber provides a horrific gory backdrop for one of the scenes. A hand is cut off, a throat is slit.

Language:

PG - There are a few cuss words, nothing serious.

Adult Content:

G - there's really no sexual content, though some obviously happened once off-screen.

Christian content:

Nada. There are some concerning concepts in this work, mainly that souls aren't eternal and can be used for food, that Time can be gambled away, or gained through a game of chance. There are some references to an afterlife. Heaven and Hell are referred to as real places, in other dimensions, but monsters can capture your soul during the 'tunnel experience' while heading to the bright light at the end of the tunnel. Loyalty, self-sacrifice, destiny and friendship play large parts in this tale. There is a definite struggle between good and evil here, but the lines are grayed.

Final analysis:

This book has an incredible concept - that between life and death there is a dimension the soul must travel through, and those souls can be stolen. That the body can be stolen, and the soul released to wander rather than move on to heaven or hell. The plot behind this story is gripping, the world-building phenomenal, and the action fast and furious. New life, Old life, are gathered like glowing marbles. Strange creatures like Griwald and Deadly Mimics threaten constantly, along with Tin Men and other horrific creatures. Magic amulets and spells are formulated and used to gain access to further dimensions, while time passes at alarming rates. Characters are often larger than life. However, the pacing dragged for me. It seemed to take an eternity for me to plow through some sections, while other sections moved so quickly I had to reread to catch important details. So, a great read, but some pacing issues. Four Stars!

About the Author:
J. Cassidy's website reads,

I’m J. Cassidy and I used to be an oak tree growing in a park in England. I still like to be decorated once a year.

Pink, sparkly fluffles and rainbows make everything better.

Her website is https://6twistedbiscuits.wordpress.com/j-cassidy/

She can be followed on Twitter: https://twitter.com/6twistedbiscuit

Review: The Summoned King (The Kalymbrian Chronicles, #1) by Dave Neuendorf

The Summoned King (The Kalymbrian Chronicles, #1)

by Dave Neuendorf

Indiana high school senior James Madison Young can best be described as a Renaissance man: intelligent, of good character, and possessed by insatiable curiosity about everything from Krav Maga to robotics. One evening, he falls asleep while studying at the library. He wakes to find himself in another world, filled with magic, danger and romance. He has been summoned by court wizard Maynard to be the king of Kalymbria. Forced into marriage with the beautiful and magically powerful yet untrained Julia Roper for his queen, he must restore the lapsed Constitution in the face of opposition from a hostile Council of Advisors, and defend his new country from the evil machinations of the wizard Ruinga and her allied kingdom of Venicka. Rediscovering the lost art of enchantment may provide him with a powerful edge in his quest, if he can survive the assassins and conspiracies arrayed against him.

My Take:

James Madison Young is a promising high school senior with a bright future. Intelligent, of high moral character, interested in politics and history, and a talent for Krav Maga, he delves deeply into every study he can get his hands on. With a library of nonfiction texts from engineering to history  filling up his Kindle Fire, he finds himself at the school library late one evening doing research, and falls asleep - only to wake up on another planet, where magic and danger abound.

He has been summoned by the court wizard Maynard to be king of Kalymbria. This country 'jobs out' their puppet leadership to protect the real leadership, the Council of Advisors, from blame for the odious legislation they pass, strangling the common people to fill their coffers and their indulgent lifestyle.

Immediately forced into marriage with a beautiful and powerful female wizard, James quickly finds himself the pawn of opposing forces set to tear this weary country apart. Hated by the council, hated by the citizens, and threatened by neighboring countries poised on the brink of invasion, James must refashion the government into a benevolent servant of the people, with no friends and no resources.

With a heart for the common man and a desire to establish a fair democracy modeled after the US, James must stand up to the corrupt Council and avert war with neighboring countries, all while trying to prevent his own assassination!

Content:

Drug Content:

PG - There is a minor level of drunkenness involved with some pirates.

Violence:

PG-13 - There are quite a few characters killed by poison darts, or executed by hanging. One family is murdered at their dinner table, a decapitated head is left as a warning. A child is kidnapped. Assassination seems to be an accepted practice.

Language:

G - squeaky clean.

Adult Content:

PG - Rape and prostitution is discussed, but only from a legal consideration as to punishment. The king and queen, though forced into marriage, remain celibate until they mutually decide to consummate.   

Christian content:

James is a devout Christian and works with a prophet from Kalymbria to bring the bible to this planet. Multiple characters convert to faith following miraculous evidence of God's power and guidance. The spiritual purpose behind James being summoned is explored.

Final analysis:

Sometimes reading a book for review is arduous, but this is not one of those times. I found The Summoned King to be like candy. Fantasy mixes with Faith in this high-stakes roller coaster ride. Fast-paced, action-packed, and filled with timeless truth, Neuendorf has hit a home run with this debut treasure. Looking forward to reading more about James and Julia in the pages to come. Five Stars!

About the Author:
Dave Neuendorf has been a lover of fantasy, science fiction, and political thrillers since the 1950's, when he would rather read than romp during recess in school. After decades of making notes of stories he'd like to write, he finally set out to create his own fantasy series in 2015. The first fruit of his efforts is The Summoned King, published in February 2016, as book one of The Kalymbrian Chronicles. Development of the series will proceed as time allows while he continues to pursue his day job as a Java software development consultant. He is also working on his first political thriller.

Dave has been married since 1976 to his one love, Patricia. He is the father of three sons, and grandfather of one young lady and one tiny gentleman, so far. He and his family live with their two dogs, a Samoyed and a Siberian Husky, in Aurora, Indiana.

Dave can be found on Facebook and at his author web site.

Review: Sweet Secrets by Stephanie L. Weippert

Sweet Secrets

by Stephanie L. Weippert 

At seven, Michael gets into trouble no more than any other boy his age but he does have a sweet tooth. When the mailman misdelivers a package from a candy company, the youngster has to sneak just one. As he eats the chocolate, his home, stepfather, and everything he’d known melts around him and disappears. He finds himself in a dreamlike world where he is taken as an orphan, tested, and before he knows it is enrolled as a student in the premier cooking school on the planet. His fellow students can make cookies that fly and chocolate turtles that actually walk. Michael is told he has more cooking magic than any of them. 

Brad is charged with watching his stepson Michael for first time. When the boy disappears before his eyes, Brad panics. Within hours he is on an adventure tracking his son alongside an enigmatic chef. Always one step behind his son, Brad soon finds that Michael is being used as a pawn between the two most powerful chefs on the crazy planet. Worse he has to get Michael home before his Mother finds out he’s gone or there is going to be hell to pay.

My Take:

Michael is an independent-thinking seven-year-old who has a talent for cooking with his stepdad Brad. When Brad is asked to watch his new stepson, he doesn't realize just how much trouble the boy could get into when left alone for just one minute.

The postman misdelivers a box of candy to their house, and while Brad is digging up the number to their mysterious new neighbor, to whom the package is actually addressed, Michael opens the package and digs out one of the candy bars.

When Brad comes back into the kitchen he sees Michael taking a bite out of a candy bar, and disappearing right before his eyes. When he confronts the neighbor, he learns that the candy are actually teleporting treats that send the person eating them to the stranger's home in another dimension, one where chefs are magicians and create incredible spells with their culinary masterpieces.

What's worse, Michael had to have talent to activate the treats, and is now in danger of being snatched up in the other dimension as a master magician. To top it all off, Michael has to be returned before Mom gets home, or Brad will have to answer for it... and the truth is an answer that no one would believe.

Content:

Drug Content:

PG - Several scenes in this book include drinking with a meal, none to excess.

Violence:

G - While there are certain veiled threats and some underlying unexplained fear in the top-notch school Michael finds himself in, the prodigy is fairly well treated. And while some bullying is present, it's quickly squashed by a ring of protecting friends.

Language:

PG - I don't recall any swear words at all. I think the stepdad uses the D-word a few times.

Adult Content:

G - Squeaky clean. 

Christian content:

Nothing. From a moral standpoint, certain subjects are broached in discussions, like faithfulness, family, and obedience. Pretty clearly depicted are the dangerous consequences of disobedience to parents, and the lengths that a parent, even a step-parent, will go to retrieve a lost child.

Final analysis:

It was an interesting and fun concept, sweets and foods making magic happen. The settings in the book were fun, and fairly well fleshed out. Michael and some of his friends were three dimensional, and Brad had some character shown, though a lot of it was desperation and anger over the frustrating situation he was placed in. I didn't find much deep content to recommend it from a teaching perspective, but it was fairly realistic in setting and action, and it was an interesting adventure, to say the least. Five Stars!

About the Author:

I write because I must. My writing addiction started with a slug.

Okay, I'll explain...

A Local convention held a contest for short stories involving a slug, and I entered just for fun, and found it hard to stop once I started. (Take note kids. This could be YOU!) 

I started with stories from the POV of wizard's familiars and even finished two 60,000+ books about them, but found that as I wrote more to build my skills, I wrote about lots of stuff from love stories to dystopias, including magic and space invasions. Fortunately for my sanity, not all in the same tale. lol

My muse is still an intelligent, ok very intelligent (you can retract claws now-thank you), cat. 

And if you're not scared away yet, I may be reached at my writing e-mail stephanie.weippert@gmail.com.:D

Review: The Lady of Foxdale by Malcolm Cowen

Lady of Foxdale
by Malcolm Cowen


Reeling from a dark past and jilted by the man that took her there, Mary took a stroll into the park and reread the letter ending the relationship. She wished for a new life, somewhere, anywhere, else. When she lifted her head, she was somewhere else. A new world, poised on the brink of war.

Could she find a new life here, amid a struggle for survival against a ruthless, depraved empire?

My Take:
Mary began the story disillusioned with her life and ready to turn her back on the life she'd lived. She becomes a person of character and exhibits a lot of depth. Her resourcefulness and courage surprise even herself. Joni, the man she rescues in the new world, is a brilliant strategist and has his own darkness buried deep in his past. He has come to grips with his past and helps Mary to deal with the demons haunting her past as well. The characters surrounding these two are all given depth and character, and the descriptions of the mountainous region they live in, and the battles to defend it, are engrossing.

The main antagonist, Moy-ni-Tan, is relatively one-dimensional and completely unlikable and unrepentant. His mind is eternally in the gutter and he considers everyone around him, even his own minions, as little more than cattle, to be used and cast aside. A more selfish beast I haven't discovered in text. There was, however, significant dimension to several of the men on his side, including an admirable general and a lieutenant forced to fight for Moy-ni-Tan.

Content:
Violence:
PG-13 - Like Lord of the Rings, this book is about a war, and people die left and right. There are a few pillage scenes and people are killed. Their deaths are described but not gratuitously.

Language:
PG - I don't recall many curse words at all in the book, but i believe there were a few leaked out by the bad guys.

Adult Content:
PG-13 - There is no invasion of the bedroom at all, and the marital bliss in the book is squeaky-clean. This book is a romance, but it's very clean from that perspective. What gives the book this rating is the multiple attempted rape scenes in the book. These are not described in any detail, but also involved the repeated sodomy of a young boy. The obvious intent of these occurrences are to underline the 'crossed the line' status of the unrepentant Moy-ni-Tan, who considers himself a Prince but proves himself nothing but a murderer and worse.

Christian content:
In many places in this romance, scripture is quoted obliquely - that is, wisdom from Proverbs, the Book of Ruth, and other places are paraphrased but would not be recognized unless you knew the verses. The only god referred to in the new world is He Who Is, a clear reference to the I AM. The character of this God aligns with the character of YHWH. The people of the mountains clearly worship He Who Is, while those of the plains do not seem to, and the leaders of the empire are obviously atheists. In one poignant scene Moy-ni-Tan, on trial for his crimes, reviles Mary and Joni for their faith, revealing some knowledge of their darkness and asking whether He Who Is would accept them, flawed as they are? Would he make weregeld, or sin payment, for them? While Jesus is not mentioned, Mary's response indicates that they will trust He Who Is to make it right somehow.

Final analysis:
I thoroughly enjoyed Lady of Foxdale. It is a story of transformation, a redefining of the main character and those around her in the midst of death and war. The characters are likable, believable, the setting and world-building are immersive, the action gripping and engrossing. Edge of the seat action in a clean romance. What could be better? Five Stars!

About the Author:
Malcolm Cowen is a freelance software designer living in Manchester, UK. He’s spent most of the last 5 decades writing everything from operating systems (GEOrge 3) to games (Colossal Cave for Dragon 32). He currently does database backends for website designers. They make it look pretty, he makes it work, which clearly qualifies him as a 5 anorak nerd.

Over the years he’s picked up German, Welsh, a bit of French and is currently learning Anglo-Saxon.

He started writing about 19 years ago and had some 30 or so stories published, mainly by a now defunct trade magazine, Freelance Informer. You can find more about him at www.ebook.cowensw.co.uk, together with some poetry and translations from Welsh. His translation of the Welsh Song Calon Lan has appeared on the BBC and on a Russell Watson Album.

More recently Malcolm has had 2 novels, "Lady of Foxdale" and "Daughter of the King", published on Kindle, several short stories published both on paper and electronically and a couple of scifi whodunit audio scripts which have been broadcast on local radio, see www.levenshulmeplayers.co.uk.

Malcolm's preference is for hard sf with detailed alternative cultures. It matters to get the scientific details right, or at least to get them credible. Then the story should follow, and if it's a good story, it should grow naturally out of the world and the culture it's set in.

If it's fantasy, then similar rules should apply. Build a consistent world, with a believable culture, and then tell a story of real people living in that world. That's far more fun than space opera or yet another Dracula ripoff.

It's almost more fun than should be legal.

Review: Dover Park by Bruce Fottler

Dover Park
By Bruce Fottler
On the eve of summer, a mysterious visitor turns up in a quiet, suburban town. The very existence of this enigmatic presence is a paradox, one that upends the idyllic lives of the Moreaus, a well-respected family of the community. Unsettling revelations are made surrounding a tragic accident that occurred many years ago, and routing out the truth threatens to tear the Moreaus apart. Was the drowning of a close friend in Dover Park an accident...or not?

This offering by Bruce Fottler concerns three related men and their families. Jim Moreau is a successful businessman working in R&D at a manufacturing concern, and his wife Sara and he have two boys, Kevin and Dylan, but long for a girl. That ship has sailed, as Sara recently underwent a hysterectomy.

Jim's brother Tom is a detective for a police department in a city nearby. Both Tom and Jim are somewhat dissatisfied with their jobs, and Jim is about to go into business with Andrew, their cousin, a plumber by trade.

Jim's world and plans are upset by the arrival of a girl who claims to be Jim's seventeen year old daughter Rachael, by a woman who drowned twenty-two years ago. She also claims that she's been living with Jim her entire life, and that his cousin Andrew murdered her mom and has spent the last twelve years in prison. But of course, none of that is possible. Or is it?

Rachael must be lying. The only other option is too incredible to believe - where Rachael is actually from another timeline, where the events she claims to have happened actually... did.

Jim and Tom work together to expose this girl for the hoax she must be, but each piece of evidence they examine makes her story more plausible. From the arrival of Rachael a couple chapters in until the unexpected ending, this book had me on the edge of my chair.

Content:
Violence: Minor.

Language: There are a few expletives in the book.

Sexual Content: Light. There is some sexual tension and innuendos passed back and forth among the men, and a reference to a possible incest attempt. PG.

Spiritual Content: Moderate. God is referenced as the reason why Rachael could have been transported across timelines to a better existence. Church is attended, but the faith of the main characters appears shallow and surface.

Bottom Line:
This book kept me up, and I finished the last half of it in one sitting. It's a page turner. I gave it five stars.


About the Author:
Since exiting a finance career in a world of cubicles, Bruce Fottler has been busy writing novels. His latest is the suspense thriller: "The Initiative: In Harm's Way (Book One)."

Bruce grew up in the Chicago suburbs and moved to the Boston area as a young teen. While seeking a career-track that mostly put him behind a desk, he dabbled in creative pursuits such as producing, writing, and directing film shorts. However, it was always writing novels that interested him the most because they aren't limited by production budgets, technical capabilities, or tight shooting schedules.

Bruce has three other published novels: "Chasing Redemption" (Sci-fi thriller), "Dover Park" (Mystery), and "Paladin's Odyssey" (Post-apocalyptic thriller).

You can visit his Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/BruceFottlerAuthor

Review: Rise of the Magi by Randy Blackwell

Rise of the Magi
by Randy Blackwell

Heavily laced with Christian allegory, the Rise of the Magi is a fast paced adventure involving an alliance of the most unlikely friends-

Myles a famous con man whose abilities rival those of Houdini and Dillinger, Omar, a world renown scientist and inventor bent on saving his sister, Sebastian, a strange alien believer from the world of Soterian, and Kasey, an assassin that we meet halfway through the book.

Myles and Omar jump through portals on different continents and end up in a world of mazes and tunnels, thrust together and trying to survive. But with their combined resources and abilities they quickly overcome every obstacle, and form the Order of the Magi.


I thoroughly enjoyed this fast-paced adventure, through multiple worlds populated by all kinds of fantastic creatures and enemies from demons and giant spiders to creatures like fairies. The amazing cover art by Jin Kim didn't detract from the experience in the slightest.

I finished the last third of this book in one sitting, I found it too gripping to put down. That ran very late into the night. I don't know how I'm going to get back that sleep you lost me, Randy. 5 Stars.

Content:
Language: none
Violence:
Torture is mentioned but never described, there are many battle scenes and mostly creatures die. A planet of zombies is mentioned but we never go there.
Sexual Content: Some kissing.
Spiritual Content: Rich and threaded well into the story.


About the Author:

Randy Blackwell used to run roleplaying games before coming to faith in Christ. Now he spends his time spinning tales for Christ, running his media business, and loving on his wife, Vanessa, and their four kids. He lives and works in Knoxville, TN.

He is the author of the Forgotten Portals series starting with Rise of the Magi which just came out at the end of 2012.

His books include Rise of the Magi (this one), Deep Flux (Book two of the Forgotten Portals series), and Soterion, an official Roleplaying Game Book for the fantasy world Soterion in the Forgotten Portals series.

He is working with a Director on a screenplay for an upcoming movie based upon his series.