Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Rosetta (Jim Meade: Martian P.I.) by R. J. Johnson

Jim Meade is an underachieving private investigator who lives on a Martian mining colony. Nuclear war has rendered Earth habitable by only a horribly oppressed underclass; the more fortunate survivors dwell in orbital cities surrounding the planet. Meade has loyalties to neither of the superpowers who run the post-apocalyptic galaxy, a duo of empires reminiscent of old cold-war foes USA and USSR. Jim’s ultimate goal in life is strictly mercenary. He wants to make enough money to retire to one of those orbital cities.

In typical P.I. novel fashion, Meade, who has never left Mars and has no plans to […]

Review: Synthesis by J. A. MacLeod

Don’t you just hate it when you’re at a subway stop and you hear someone calling for help from the tunnel? Then when you venture into the tunnel to see what’s happening, you stumble upon a hideous monster. Okay, that hasn’t happened to me. But after reading Synthesis by J. A. MacLeod, I’m now terrified of subway tunnels. And of monsters.

In MacLeod’s novel, Jack Gray can’t turn a deaf ear to someone calling for help in a Cambridge subway station. The monster that he encounters doesn’t seem to be from this world. After a terrible fight, Jack wakes up […]

T B Markinson2012-12-28T14:29:41+02:00December 28th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Grim Reaping by Anthony Lund

I’m not sure many people would volunteer for the job of Death. It’s not an easy occupation, which involves collecting all of the souls of those who have perished. The list keeps growing, no matter how hard and fast he works. But it’s a job that Grim Alfonso Reaper takes seriously.

Anthony Lund’s Grim Reaping, is a humorous tale about the Grim Reaper. Even though his job is daunting, usually everything goes according to plan for Grim. He shows up at the moment someone dies, asks them a few questions, and sends them on to their eternity either in […]

T B Markinson2012-12-27T13:43:49+02:00December 27th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Humor|

Review: Galactic Exploration by Peter Cawdron

Peter Cawdron’s Galactic Exploration contains four novellas: Serengeti, Trixie & Me, Savannah, and War. All of the stories are loosely connected and deal with the exploration of the Milky Way. Like Christopher Columbus, the intrepid explorers set out in three ships, of course they are space ships. Unlike Columbus and his crews, every crew member is a clone, or to be more exact, Homo sapiens replicas. Cawdron’s format reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. While Asimov’s short stories analyzed the limits and injustices robots had to contend with living among humans, Cawdron discusses some of the […]

T B Markinson2012-12-26T13:18:34+02:00December 26th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: The Puddingstone Well by William Westhoven

Glancing at the cover of this book we know right off the bat something is up with that well. There are too many historical writings about fountains of youth to count, not to mention the legendary island of Avalon and utopian villages such as Shangri-La. In The Puddingstone Well, the second novel from William Westhoven, variations of these myths are indeed relied upon, but with a contemporary spin. In the Prologue to Part One, the phrase “what history does not recall” lets us know this is Westhoven’s tale for the telling.

Our first protagonist is a freelance writer for […]

Lela Michael2019-01-22T07:12:18+02:00December 20th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Mystery Book Reviews|

Review: Travels With A Road Dog: Hitchhiking the Roads of the Americas By R.K.

Rajam, named after a distant Indian friend, decides, on a whim of teenage wanderlust to leave it all behind in her small Alabama town and take to the road to follow the hippy festival trail across the country and beyond. Giving away all her “stuff” she takes off to the famous Rainbow gathering and falls in love with the vagabond lifestyle as she hitches with truck drivers, do-gooders and other drivers of questionable motive with only a pan and a tarp to get by and becomes a “road dog”: a hitchhiker living free on the open highways with only her […]

Cate Baum2014-05-09T21:17:07+02:00December 17th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: Colt O’Brien Grows Up by George M. Cole

The book, a sequel to Colt O’Brien Sees The Light centers around Colt O’Brien, a student who takes an internship as an IT helpdesk assistant as part of his college studies, and follows his career in IT and his personal life as he discovers more about life.

An unusual format is used as emails between Colt and his colleagues head up each section to lead into the next part of the tale. This is a nice touch and could have been used even more.

Having worked in IT development I found the helpdesk scenario and process is well described. I […]

Cate Baum2014-05-09T21:18:15+02:00December 13th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Young Adult Book Reviews|

Review: Saving Grace by Ann Grant

If you heard that Saving Grace by Ann Grant was the story of a perfectionist who tanks after a debilitating fall and ends up leaving her husband and kids, you might think you didn’t want to read that story. You’d be making a big mistake. With humor, insight into the human spirit and, well, grace, Ann Grant tells a captivating tale of love, frustration, anxiety, and (no spoilers here) an attempt at recovery.

Grace and her husband, Rob, have been married almost ten years and have two sons and a daughter. She’s a high-earning corporate lawyer and he is a […]

Elaine L. Orr2014-05-09T21:19:19+02:00December 12th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Women's Fiction Book Reviews|