Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Why Leadership Sucks by Miles Anthony Smith

The book by author Miles Anthony Smith reads as a meaty and backed-up book choc full of crafted points on business leadership – nothing I haven’t read before, but it was all here in one book and documented thoroughly. I didn’t really fully grasp his rendition of the Level 5 Servant Leadership doctrine (I think some explanation is needed further using the originators of this theory as examples such as Greenleaf or Collins – thankfully I am familiar otherwise would have been lost) but thoroughly enjoyed his “start stop continue” team instruction: telling your team where to stop, start and […]

Cate Baum2014-05-06T22:33:43+02:00March 5th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Business Book Reviews, Religious Book Reviews|

Review: The Story Makers by Tamara Pratt

What would you do if your family blamed you for the death of your younger brother? Eden Mellor was 13 when her brother, age 3, died tragically. For three years she lived knowing that her mother and sister blamed her. The night Liam died, Eden can’t remember what happened. Deep down Eden knows she didn’t kill Liam, yet the accusations eat away at her. Three years have passed when the Story Makers invite her and Eden’s best friend, Cynthia, to audition to be the next big celebrity. The Story Makers dream-mine all of the candidates in search of stories for […]

T B Markinson2019-01-22T17:50:33+02:00February 26th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, YA Fantasy Book Reviews, Young Adult Book Reviews|

Review: Guilty of Honour by Tony Mead

Ben Stone has mastered being at the wrong place at the wrong time. His worse instance of bad luck yet – being framed as the murderer of the regional magistrate’s son – is what puts the book’s main plot in motion.

The chase is an intense one. Dogs and men alike are hounding him, and to make matters worse, the weather is absolutely terrible. Even as Ben is running, he knows escaping will mean never seeing his aunt, uncle, and the girl he was falling in love with behind. Then again, it’s perhaps a good thing Ben got away from […]

Tiffany Cole2019-01-22T17:51:08+02:00February 25th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Men's Fiction Book Reviews, Thriller Book Reviews|

Review: The Witches Of Jericho (Edenwitch Book 1) by Sam Hammack

The Witches of Jericho is a fantasy novel that takes place in Eden, but this is no Eden you ever heard about in Sunday School. This Eden has an Eve, but she’s a witch, and her husband is not Adam, but a Guardian named Saul. The Dark One, however, is true to form, stirring up trouble. The real protagonist of the novel is Sophia, Eve’s daughter. Eve and her family escape their home city of Jericho after it is invaded by a mysterious group of witch killers known as the Horde. One of only a few surviving witches, Eve goes […]

Avery Hurt2019-01-23T13:06:20+02:00February 21st, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews|

Review: Dust of the Universe by V.S. Kemanis

Reviewing self-published fiction can sometimes feel like a thankless task, even when you’re being paid for it. You can find yourself slogging through a book so woeful that you wonder how the author could possibly think it was ready for publication. Other times, you’ll be excited by a premise or intrigued by a character, but ultimately disappointed because the book doesn’t quite reach its mark. Then, there are those rare occasions when you find yourself in the hands of an author so unarguably gifted that your critical faculties are temporarily cut off. Within pages, you’ve slipped into the experience that […]

Steven Reynolds2014-05-06T22:37:30+02:00February 19th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|

Medusa’s Cause by P.E. Zimmerman

Author P. E. Zimmerman spent six months “eating, living sleeping, and breathing Greece” in preparation for this novel, and the research shows. Richly imagined, the story brings the reader into a wholly believable ancient and mythological world.

Events are set in motion when a beautiful young woman is compelled to join a mysterious man at the temple of Athena in the middle of the night. A dedicated virgin, she nevertheless gives in to her passion for the extraordinary man — who is actually the god Poseidon — despite the sacrilege of making love in the virgin goddess’s sanctuary. This act

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BlueInk Review2014-05-06T22:38:26+02:00February 19th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|

Review: Beauty And The Singularities by John Waite

Short stories seem to be on the upturn in self-publishing and I am beginning to warm to the genre when I get to read something as original as this collection, “Beauty And The Singularities” by John Waite.

So what are the singularities of beauty? The development of knowledge of some other kind of beauty, maybe, beauty in the soul or in a memory, or maybe how one small happening can relate to another quite by accident and yet cause an event that is very much on purpose. This is the theme here, and with eight stories that somehow feel connected […]

Cate Baum2014-05-06T22:39:01+02:00February 15th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|

Review: Enoch’s Device by Joseph Finley

Derry, Ireland, 997 A.D. One stormy midday, a black-hulled ship moors near the local monastery, setting down the towering Bishop Adémar, three priests, and a small army of Frankish soldiers and vicious dogs. The black-robed bishop tells the assembled monks he’s here to find a murderous heretic in their midst. Suspicion soon falls on the freethinking brother Dónall mac Taidg who studied in Reims and has long been the guardian of an orphaned boy – Ciarán, now a twenty-year-old monk and scribe. Ciarán can scarcely believe his mentor is involved in the kind of villainy alleged, but he soon uncovers […]