Tag Archives: fiction

Boogeyman Resurfaces in “The Stuff of Legend” by Mike Raicht, Brian Smith

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Do you remember times when, as a kid, you would be in bed and in the dead of night you would look up to see something in your room that made your heart pound in fright? I was not a fearful child, but a couple of times I did find myself cringing in the dark from a perceived monster, which usually turned out to be clothes harmlessly hanging in the doorway of my closet. In The Stuff of Legend, Book 1: The Dark, such an event turned out to be not quite so harmless when a little boy is snatched by the boogeyman and carried off into the dark. But the story in this graphic novel is not about the boy — it’s about the toys that stage a rescue.

Enter the Colonel, who leads an intrepid band of compatriots comprising an Indian princess, a bear, a pig, a jester, a duck and a ballerina into the realm of the Dark. There, in the face of betrayal, death and hardship, they face the boogeyman and his army of forgotten, lost, now-evil toys.

Illustrator: C.P. Wilson III

Be forewarned, this is not a child’s book. The dark yet masterful illustrations created by Charles Paul Wilson III (see his boogeyman at the left, click on the image to see his website) would probably give the little ones nightmares, but I believe many older teens and adults would appreciate the artist’s skill as well as the positive themes of the story written by Mike Raicht and Brian Smith. I agree with the publisher when it says, “The Stuff of Legend is a haunting and ultimately redemptive tale of loyalty, camaraderie, and perseverance.”

When the book was first released in 2009, it quickly sold out and a second printing was immediately ordered. Since then several subsequent editions in the series have been released. For more info on the series, click here to visit Th3rd World Studios.

Just in time for Halloween, I’d like to pass along to you a copy of the trade paperback version graciously given to me by Del Rey. To enter, email me before November 3 at contests@(no-spam)fantasyandfaith.com. (Before you press “send,” make sure to remove (no-spam) from the email address.) Make sure to include your snail mail address in your email. I only ship to the U.S. or Canada, so please keep that in mind when you enter. Multiple entries will be disqualified.

You can connect with the creators of The Stuff of Legend at:

Authors:
Mike Raicht, Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikeraicht
Brian Smith, Twitter: https://twitter.com/yourpalSmitty

Illustrator Charles Paul Wilson III is on on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/cpwilsoniii. You can see some of his other artwork at:
http://cpwilsoniii.deviantart.com/

You can order a copy of the book by clicking here on my affiliate links:
The Stuff of Legend, Book 1: The Dark (Amazon)
Barnes & Noble

I love to hear from you! If you have any favorite horror books, let us know what they are by leaving a comment below. Happy Halloween!

Disclosure of Material Connection: At times, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Cherie Priest’s “Boneshaker” Earned its Awards

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Last night I finished reading Boneshaker, Book 1 in Cherie Priest’s series “The Clockwork Century.” I’ll admit I’m a little slow in jumping on the steampunk bandwagon so to make up for lost time, I thought it might be good to put the crème de la crème near the top of my reading list. When Tor Books offered ebook versions of three of its best steampunk novels on sale for $2.99, I could resist no longer. (The other two top-selling ebooks offered for $2.99 were The Affinity Bridge by George Mann and Mainspring by Jay Lake.)

So I bought Boneshaker, I read it, and I’m here to say that this book is definitely worthy of the accolades it has received, including the 2010 Locus Award in the Best Science Fiction Novel category and a nomination for the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel. While the book wasn’t the fastest paced book I’ve ever read, Ms. Priest combined plenty of plot elements and twists with imaginative and tight writing to create a book that I wasn’t willing to put down until I was finished.

Here’s the gist of the book. Boneshaker is set in Civil War era Seattle, a jumping off place for prospectors eager to make their fortunes in the frozen Klondike gold fields to the north. Enter Leviticus Blue, an inventor commissioned by Russians to build a machine capable of mining through solid ice — and the Boneshaker device was born. Unfortunately, on the machine’s test run, things go terribly wrong, resulting in the destruction of downtown Seattle and the release of a noxious gas that turns anyone who breathes it into a “rotter,” a stumbling, slavering undead being.

Speeding forward sixteen years, Briar Wilkes (Blue’s widow) and her son, Ezekiel, struggle to eek out a living outside the wall built to enclose the toxic part of the city. But Ezekiel, intent on clearing his father’s tarnished name and reputation, ventures into the old city, only to battle zombies, air pirates, criminal overlords and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can save him.

For my more conservative readers, know that there is some mild swearing, but if that doesn’t deter you and you want to check out a book sure to become an American steampunk classic, I suggest you give Boneshaker a try.

For more info, see Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

To visit the author’s web site, click here:
 http://www.cheriepriest.com/

Disclosure of Material Connection: At times, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Vanishing Sculptor, by Donita K. Paul

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vanishingsculptorWith The Vanishing Sculptor, Donita K. Paul begins a new series set in the same universe as her DragonKeeper Chronicles, with the exception that this newest novel is set in an earlier time period.

The book centers around Tipper, a young emerlindian woman who has been trying to manage her family’s estate in her father’s absence. Unfortunately, she has no idea where her father went when he disappeared years earlier. In addition, her mother has become confused and befuddled as she has gotten older, thus leaving Tipper even more alone. Fortunately, she has Beccaroon to rely on, a giant parrot her father asked to watch over her if something should happen to him.

To make ends meet in her father’s absence, Tipper has been selling off her father’s artwork without realizing her actions have placed the world at risk of collapse. The only way disaster can be averted is to reunite some of the statues. But Tipper cannot brave the trip alone and a group of companions is formed to undertake the quest.

As this is Day 1 of the three-day Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour, I will continue my review of The Vanishing Sculptor tomorrow. Let’s see what the others have to say:

Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Rachel Briard
Karri Compton
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Linda Gilmore
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen (posting later in the week)
Nissa
John W. Otte
Lyn Perry
Crista Richey
Cheryl Russell
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Elizabeth Williams
KM Wilsher

For more info on The Vanishing Sculptor, see: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400073391

Information on the author:
Donita Paul’s Web site – http://www.donitakpaul.com/
Donita Paul’s blog – http://dragonbloggin.blogspot.com/

Disclosure of Material Connection: At times, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Free McCaffrey/Scarborough, Keri Arthur, China Mieville Novels

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Suvudu does it again. I could have swore Suvudu just added their August freebie novels to their list of free ebooks and now I find out they have added three more for September. One or two of them are not my style, but since I just posted the other books on the Suvudu list, I thought I go ahead and post these too. At the bottom of this post you’ll find the link to Suvudu. Here are the official summaries:

mccaffrey-changelings- The Changelings: Book One of the Twins of Petaybee, By Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

They are Ronan Born for Water Shongili and Murel Monster Slayer Shongili. Twin brother and sister. Children of Yana and Sean. Children of Petaybee. As such, theirs is a destiny deeply intertwined with the sentient planet that is their home. For Ronan and Murel are more than human. Like their father, each can transform into a seal and converse telepathically with the planet’s creatures–such as the friendly otter whose life they save one day from a pack of ravenous wolves.

But the twins’ bravery has unforeseen results when a visiting scientist witnesses their startling metamorphosis and becomes obsessed with their capture. To protect their children, Sean and Yana send them to stay with a powerful family friend on an orbiting space station. But no one realizes that Ronan and Murel hunger to discover the origins of their shape-shifting talent-and that their search for knowledge will place them squarely in the path of peril.

Meanwhile, Petaybee is changing–and much faster than an ordinary planet’s natural evolution. It appears that portions of the sea are heating up and a landmass is suddenly rising from the depths. To investigate the startling occurrence, Sean heads out to the open water in his seal form. But the newly unstable region holds untold mysteries–and the potential for disaster.

arthur-full- Full Moon Rising: A Riley Jensen Guardian Novel, By Keri Arthur

A rare hybrid of vampire and werewolf, Riley Jenson and her twin brother, Rhoan, work for Melbourne’s Directorate of Other Races, an organization created to police the supernatural races-and protect humans from their depredations. While Rhoan is an exalted guardian, a.k.a. assassin, Riley is merely an office worker–until her brother goes missing on one of his missions. The timing couldn’t be worse. More werewolf than vampire, Riley is vulnerable to the moon heat, the weeklong period before the full moon, when her need to mate becomes all-consuming…

Luckily Riley has two willing partners to satisfy her every need. But she will have to control her urges if she’s going to find her brother…Easier said than done as the city pulses with frenzied desire, and Riley is confronted with a very powerful–and delectably naked–vamp who raises her temperature like never before.

In matters carnal, Riley has met her match. But in matters criminal, she must follow her instincts not only to find her brother but to stop an unholy harvest. For someone is doing some shifty cloning in an attempt to produce the ultimate warrior–by tapping into the genome of nonhumans like Rhoan. Now Riley knows just how dangerous the world is for her kind–and just how much it needs her.

mieville-perdido- Perdido Street Station, By China Mieville

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none–not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda’s request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac’s experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger–and more consuming–by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon–and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes…

Here’s the link: Suvudu Free Library

Disclosure of Material Connection: At times, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

DragonLight, by Donita K. Paul

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DragonLightIt’s taken me a while to get to DragonLight, which was published in 2008, not for lack of interest but because I was reading it with my daughter and we were having a hard time finishing it together. You know how it is, life happens. When I found out the next book on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour was Mrs. Paul’s recently published new book, Vanishing Sculptor, I figured I’d better get with it and finish DragonLight. From the preliminary information, the two books are set in the same universe but different timelines. As such, I suppose I didn’t have to finish DragonLight, but the perfectionist in me protested. My kids and I had already read the other four books in the series and it just didn’t seem right not to finish.

Here is the summary that appears on the back of the book:

The fantastic land of Amara is recovering from years of war as well as from the spiritual apathy corroding the Amarans’ hearts. With Kale and her father serving as dragon keepers for Paladin, the dragon populace has exploded. It’s a peaceful, exciting time of rebuilding. And yet, an insidious, unseen evil lurks just beneath the surface of the idyllic countryside.

As Kale and her father are busy hatching, bonding, and releasing the younger generation of dragons, the light wizard has little time to develop her skills. Her husband, Sir Bardon – despite physical limitations – has become a leader, serving under Paladin. When Kale and Bardon join the dragons on a quest to find a hidden colony, they encounter sinister forces. Their world is under attack by a secret enemy…can they overcome the ominous peril they can’t even see?

DragonLight, the final book in Mrs. Paul’s DragonKeeper series, did answer several questions posed in the previous books, which was good for me because I really don’t like loose ends not resolved at the end of a book/series. In fact, I think that if you are interested in reading the series, you definitely should start at the beginning or you will miss quite a bit.

Overall, DragonLight is an excellent YA book and I would definitely recommend the entire DragonKeeper series to any young lover of fantasy, particularly those ages 9–12. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to revisiting Amara in Vanishing Sculptor. Stay tuned for that review in a few weeks.

The DragonKeeper series was published by Waterbrook Press. The previous books are (in order): DragonSpell, DragonQuest, DragonKnight, DragonFire

Donita K. Paul’s website: http://www.donitakpaul.com

Disclosure of Material Connection: At times, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”