Category: Book Review

Book Review: Strange Fruit

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Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History by Joel Christian Gill

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Strange Fruit Volume I is a collection of stories from early African American history that represent the oddity of success in the face of great adversity. Each of the nine illustrated chapters chronicles an uncelebrated African American hero or event. From the adventures of lawman Bass Reeves, to Henry “Box” Brown’s daring escape from slavery.

 

MY REVIEW

Strange Fruit was a poem written by Abel Meeropol and sung by Billie Holiday. One of the cultural memories of Black American History which white America lacks but needs to become aware of.

Ever read a comic book with a bibliography? Strange Fruits is a graphic novel by Joel Christian Gill about nine tales of black folks (researched and pulled from obscurity). Some of them are traditional hero winning the day, but others like Theophilus Thomas, chess master, ends with questions or heartbreak.

White America cuts tales short so winning leaves a high, a success, an accomplishment – no need to seek further justice as the winning was won. Black tales witness the temporary achievements, but leave no doubt that the system hasn’t been completely fixed. The war isn’t over, and may never be over. Battles need to be fought every generation.

Mr. Gill starts with “Henry ‘Box’ Brown” – an upbeat traditional tale, followed by a glimpse of people overcoming with “Harry ‘Bucky’ Lew” and Richard Potter’s Greatest Illusion. The tales then twist and turn, like your gut when faced with the triumph and question of “Theophilus Thompson” and the complete destructive heartbreak of “The Shame” and “The Noyes Academy.” The creator of the graphic novels returns to the triumphs and questions with Marshall Taylor and Spottswood Rice. And finally Bass Reeves, another hero traditional tale, but ends with giving a hint of appropriation. – It’s not enough to outlaw reading and writing, and destroying communities and education systems, Jim Crow and his ilk need to take the few stories saved and make them their own. It’s time to claim the tales back.

A great series of stories shaped together into a single, satisfying narrative.

Book Review (SERIES): The Forever Desert

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The Forever Desert by Moses Ose Utomi (He also has a young adult series out, which I haven’t read yet.)
Book 1: The Lies of the Ajungo
Book 2: The Truth of the Aleke
Book 3: The Memory of the Ogisi

This quote from the final novella of the series is the reason why we need to read other voices:

The cruelty of forgotten transgressions. The cruelty of children absolved of the sins of their parents but never disinherited from their plunder. The cruelty was an evil inscribed into history, so that those who came afterward would know nothing else.

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Moses Ose Utomi’s debut novella, The Lies of the Ajungo, follows one boy’s epic quest to bring water back to his city and save his mother’s life. Prepare to enter the Forever Desert.

They say there is no water in the City of Lies. They say there are no heroes in the City of Lies. They say there are no friends beyond the City of Lies. But would you believe what they say in the City of Lies?

In the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn thirteen, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be thirteen in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a deal: she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city, and himself.

The Lies of the Ajungo opens the curtains on a tremendous world, and begins the epic fable of the Forever Desert.

MY REVIEW for THE LIES OF THE AJUNGO

When you live in the City of Lies, there are no heroes nor is there water. One thirteen-year-old male (not a boy … and this is not a YA science fiction story) leaves to find water. But is there truth, heroes, or water beyond the City of Lies?

The Lies of the Ajungo is a very good science fiction / fantasy story.

Ebook read through the local library system.

 

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Moses Ose Utomi returns to his Forever Desert series with The Truth of the Aleke, continuing his epic fable about truth, falsehood, and the shackles of history.

The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming.

Five hundred years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people.

Seventeen-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God’s Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility―destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God’s Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.

MY REVIEW for THE TRUTH OF THE ALEKE

Five hundred years have history remembered differently. (Note in normal life, history can be remembered differently in months (example, how many people remember the Suez Canal being blocked for six days in 2021) – 500 years is overkill. See below in spoilers for editing comments on that.)

Anyway, back to the review. Much more complicated than The Lies, The Truth has layers of gray rarely seen under the bright sun of the Forever Desert harsh light. One of the differences I have found in BIPoC stories vs. typical dominate culture mainstream narratives is easy answers are not always available. Survival vs right vs wrong vs growth vs family vs culture vs power vs hope, all mix together into a messy reality.

The Truth of the Aleke is uncomfortably messy and worth the short read a novella gives. Comparing and contrasting The Lies against The Truth would make a great book club discussion.

Ebook read through my local library.

SPOILERS: As is often the case with science fiction and fantasy, the time for things to change is SEVERALLY overestimated. America is ONLY 250 years old – four generations or less if the oldest of a generation is shaking hands with the youngest of the next. History is being rewritten daily. Entire nations are blended and erased in 200 years. Climate changes from snow higher than houses and missing summers to glaciers melting. The fact that the Forever Desert doesn’t change, but three hundred years of active war is a thing doesn’t make sense except in a fantasy setting. Fantasy keeps breaking this out and it just bothers me.

Addition comment. I always dislike the use of foreshadowing at the end of chapters to create a false tension. Stuff like “If he knew what would happen, he would have run” (not a quote from this book). It just feels cheesy to me and is a personal preference.

 

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The epic conclusion to Moses Ose Utomi’s critically-acclaimed Forever Desert series, The Memory of the Ogisi shatters every truth, interrogates every lie, and is a story of oppression you’ll never forget.

Even deserts have a beginning. Even gardens have an end. Even water has a story.

The City of a Thousand Stories stands resolute on the edge of the Forever Desert. It is a lush metropolis, where water flows into every mouth that thirsts and knowledge sprouts in every mind that craves it. Yet despite their prosperity, no one can remember how the city began. It is a dire state of affairs: a people who do not learn their past cannot chart their future.

Ethike is an Ogisi, one of the City’s many historians, who has devoted his life to studying a little-known figure named Osi. He believes Osi to be the key to the city’s origins, but his years of research have only raised more questions about Osi’s identity. Until, one day, he believes he has found the answer.

Spurred by his love for his city and his family, Ethike ventures into the Forever Desert in search of the Lost Tomb of Osi. If he can find it, he will finally be able to prove his worth to the City’s Elders and cement Osi’s role in history. But history is a story told by the powerful. What Ethike uncovers beneath the sand is a power far beyond anything he could have expected…and it wants vengeance.

MY REVIEW for THE MEMORY OF THE OGISI

“Evil didn’t change. The evil of yesteryear was no different from the evil of today, … History was a story with no ending.”

The third and final installment of The Forever Desert trilogy continues the masterful cadence of oral storytelling in prose form. While the weakest of the three narratives, The Memory still is powerful. The power of the tongue, ears, and eyes continues to be controlled for political purposes; a means to control the narrative of the people, because, as the first book says “an untongued people cannot tell their story.” When stories cannot be shared, when they are banned, when they are erased from existence, history is also removed.

History removed is history without ending, and the cycles of the past will continue into the future.

Monsters, heroes, magic, desert, all play their role. Even water has a story. And Cities lie.

Hardback book checked out through the local library. Keep history honest and known, support your local library.

Book Review: Telecommuting

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Telecommuting by L. Marie Wood

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Working from home has its perks, being able to attend meetings in your pajamas chief among them. But when the house you occupy all day is empty – when the only voice you hear after work comes through television speakers, it can get a little old.

Unless you like it that way.

And Chris did like it that way

… until the whispering started.

Telecommuting is a modern psychological horror story set in what could be your town, your street, your house. The lyrical slow burn is subtle; the terror in this tale sneaks up on you before you know it.

 

MY REVIEW

Home safe home. That is where comfort and family is, where you lay down your burdens, unless your potential family leaves you the moment you move into the house AND you telecommute to work.

Now your work environment invades – the bad coworkers, the off-hour requirements, the being “on the job” in what should be your safe place. And no one to break you out of that mode, no time – like a commute – to change your mindset.

Telecommuting fails at creating safe boundaries between work and not-work.

It’s in your house, your home, your safe place. With no way to turn.it.off.

Great slow-burn modern psychological horror.

Book Review (SERIES): Adam

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Adam – from the Shadow Council Archives series by S.H. Roddey
Book 1:  Gods & Monsters
Book 2: Blood & Bone
Book 3: Between the Dim & the Dark

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They have worked behind the scenes of society for centuries, protecting humans from threats beyond their understanding. They are The Shadow Council, and these Archives are the stories of their members and adventures throughout recorded history. From folk heroes to monsters out of darkest nightmare, the Shadow Council Archives explore the world beyond mundane understanding.

He is the original horror novel. He is the first science fiction hero. He is Adam, creation of Victor Frankenstein, and he is more than dead, but less than alive. And he is being hunted.

From the pages of the Quincy Harker novellas comes this original tale of Adam, Frankenstein’s monster, in his earliest days. Wandering Europe shortly after the death of his “father,” Victor, Adam encounters a secret society determined to unlock the mysteries of life and death. He’s seen this obsession before. It never ends well.

Blood, lust, life, death, and friendship are all explored in this incredible look into the mind of the original monster.

MY REVIEW for GODS & MONSTERS

In the Shadow Council Archives, Adam has his own file. Frankenstein’s Monster.

Ms. Roddey brings to life this introspective being, who has major daddy issues. Even more so when a group of cultists seek him out to raise Frankenstein from the dead into unnatural immortality using the perverted blueprint of life Dr. Frankenstein had used to create his manufactured offspring.

The Brotherhood wants immortality at any costs, and they think the Doctor can bring give it to them. Uncle Luke, as Quincy calls him – known to most people as Dracula, crosses path with Adam while investigating the Brotherhood.

Will Adam overcome his nature or will his bestial anger take over? With Luke helping the assembled man called Adam, can the perversion of life be stopped? Can two monsters make a right?

 

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The Brotherhood has returned, with a demon-summoner in Paris.
Adam must go to the City of Lights to do battle with an ancient evil.
Luke is keeping secrets that may test the limits of Adam’s strength and endurance.
There is a greater evil behind The Brotherhood than anyone knows.

S.H. Roddey returns to the Shadow Council Archives, the tales of bygone days in the world of Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter, with Blood & Bone, a tale of intrigue, revenge, magic, lust, and love with ripples that will be felt throughout history. The evil Brotherhood has captured a woman capable of summoning demons, and they plan to unleash her evil upon the City of Lights, Paris. Adam has been enlisted by his sometimes friend, sometimes companion Vlad Dracula to rid the world of this evil.

But there’s something about this woman that Dracula isn’t telling him, and those secrets may get Adam killed…

MY REVIEW for BLOOD & BONE

Adam returns in the second book of this Shadow Council Archive series about Frankenstein’s Monster. The flavor of the Victorian mashes up well with modern sensibilities under S.H. Roddey’s tender author mercies as Adam continues his quest of personhood. And while he has this noble quest, he is like most of us, while introspective, life is about living day-to-day life, surviving – both escaping boredom and escaping our baser nature. (Such a Victorian conundrum.)

Adam is concentrating on this when Luke (most people call him Dracula) drops by for a visit. The Brotherhood have become active again in their quest for immortality. This time innocents are on the line.

And if you want to get the attention of Adam, both the sensitive and the monster sides, endangering children will do it. But can Adam keep his steadily increasing rage issues under control long enough to save lives instead of end them?

 

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A castle on a lake.

A lonely woman.

A darkness lurking just out of reach…

Adam knows something is about to happen when his vampire friend takes him to the home he never wanted: Castle Frankenstein in Geneva. Having successfully eradicated the Frankenstein bloodline, the old house belongs to Adam, and with it come all of his father’s possessions. Through Victor Frankenstein’s journals, he begins to learn the truth about himself and his origins.

On the other side of the lake, Mary Godwin is unhappy with her current living situation. Her housemates, more interested in debauchery than intellect, mock her pain and laugh in the face of her grief. She and Adam find themselves tangled around one another after a chance meeting that turns the sleepy banks of Lake Geneva into a burning battleground.

History knows nothing of the events of that dreary June. Only the Shadow Council can tell the truth. The Shadow Council Archives are historical accounts of events witnessed by the Shadow Council, a shadowy cabal of folk heroes and anti-heroes from the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter series by John G. Hartness.

MY REVIEW for BETWEEN THE DIM & THE DARK

The Victorian language bathes a reader in ash and rain when Adam returns to his birthplace in this story. In Geneva he meets Mary Goodwin as she holidays in a nearby cottage with her fiancée Percy Shelly … yes, that Mary … their path crossing has she heaves her angst from the death of her daughter against stone, both of them getting soaked in the rain.

Inside, her companions, Percy, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori, ignore her emotions, trading compassion for pipe and drink. Outside, Mary and Adam discover kindred spirits.

When the Brotherhood return to harass the patchwork man yet again, will the new relationship continue to blossom or will it wilt from betrayal? Because someone from the summer cottage is connected to the Brotherhood and called them to Adam’s location.

While not as action-oriented as the previous two stories, Dim & Dark continues Ms. Roddey’s incredible language and mythos.

Book Review: The Weight of Command

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The Weight of Command by Michael Mammay

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Lieutenant Kiera Markov is a scout platoon leader for a peacekeeping force on the remote planet of Tanara, where little has happened for decades, and the only mission is to keep the lithium flowing up the space elevator to feed the galaxy’s incessant demand. But when an unprecedented attack kills the entirety of the brigade’s leadership, the untested lieutenant suddenly finds herself in command.

Isolated and alone, Markov must contend with rival politicians on both sides of the border, all of whom have suspect motives and reason to take advantage of an untested leader, while an unseen enemy seeks to drive the two sides toward a war that Markov has a mission to prevent. It’s enough to test even a seasoned leader.

Markov isn’t that.

With challenges from all sides, and even from her own troops, Markov will have to learn quickly and establish her authority. Because what hangs in the balance is not only the future of the peacekeeping force, but of the planet itself.

 

MY REVIEW

What happens when a lowly lieutenant finds herself the highest ranking officer on planet? And unlike some “any-man” armies, in this science-fiction world, officers come wired for bear. They are the only ones who are completely wired to connect to the command network. A master sergeant can’t step up to the plate without several surgeries and nearly a year of specialized training.

After the chain of command is snipped to its last link, the lieutenant has to figure out how to operate a division instead of a platoon, deal with escalating tensions between two powers on the planet while obeying the peace-keeping directive, and connect back to her command-structure after all space-communication goes down. She is fortunate to have amazing non-coms at her side.

The constant escalation of tension, changing of stakes, and juggling of external political & internal military command balls brings the full Weight of Command to Kiera’s shoulders in this pulse-pounding can’t-put-it-down book.

(Originally created as an audio-book exclusive – now available in kindle and print formats.)