Possession, Obsession and a Diesel Compression Engine / Gerard Brennan

Reviewed by: Keith Nixon

Genre: Horror

Approximate word count: 10-15,000 words

Availability    

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Author:

Gerard Brennan lives in Northern Ireland with his family and is currently studying for an MA in creative writing at Belfast University. Gerard has previously published several other works including the novel, Wee Rockets, a novella, The Point and contributed to a number of anthologies.

You can learn more about Gerard on his website.

Description:

Possession… is a collection of six lightly interlinked short (mild) horror stories.

Appraisal:

I’ve been lucky enough to be reading quite a lot of Gerard Brennan recently (for example the previously reviewed Fireproof). I’ve realized that Gerard likes to launch his stories with an eye-opening bang and none of these little gems disappoint. Each story is short (the entire book is under 11,000 words in length) so the author hits hard and hits fast.

For example there’s the opening short called Blood Bath which it literally is. The Devil likes to bathe in, yes, blood. He says:

The best bathing blood had to be extracted from frightened accountants. The easy part had always been scaring them; you just told them there was a problem with the bottom line or gave them a debit-heavy Balance Sheet. The tough part was catching them…

The other stories are about an obsession with rock ‘n’ roll, a possessed car (with a hilarious Thelma & Louise take), a ‘trip’ down memory lane, a deal with the devil and my personal favourite, An Irish Possession. The latter regards a boy possessed by an imp and his exorcism. This example describes the Irish priest carrying out the extraction process:

Aye, I know he had a mouth on him like a sailor. Well, compared to other priests, I mean. I never heard him say the F word, but he always said bastard and shite and all the not-so-bad curses. Plus I saw him hit wee Fra’ McGuinness from Dunville Street when he caught him smoking in the Chapel car park. It wasn’t a wee tap to embarrass him either. It was a right hook, and the wee fellah fell on his backside.

All the stories are based in Ireland with varying degrees of local dialect. This creates a strong sense of place. The dialogue is tight. The challenge in a good short is to use every word to its fullest effect. Gerard does this brilliantly.

FYI:

Adult language and mild horror.

Format/Typo Issues:

None.

Rating: ***** Five  Stars

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Klondaeg the Monster Hunter / Steve Thomas

Reviewed by: SingleEyePhotos

Genre: Fantasy

Approximate word count: 30,000 – 31,000 words

Availability   

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Author:

Steve Thomas is the author of four fantasy novellas. Klondaeg the Monster Hunter is a sequel of sorts to Smite Me, O Dark One!. He can be contacted at his website or through his Twitter account.

Description:

Monsters killed Klondaeg’s parents. Since he doesn’t know what kind of monsters they were, the simplest way to get revenge is to kill all monsters, guilty or not.

Appraisal:

I read, and enjoyed, the earlier story by this author, Smite Me, O Dark One! It struck me as a perfect combination of ‘dark and snark’, and I caught myself laughing out loud on occasion. I started on Klondaeg with high hopes that it would be in the same mold. Even though this story is set in the same world as the earlier one, what was funny in the first fell flat in the second. I was disappointed.

There were humorous moments, but they were more an aside than an integral part of the story. The novella is divided into five chapters or episodes. In each, Klondaeg sets out on a specific adventure. While the story as a whole is supposed to be a continuous thread, I found that there was very little to connect the various episodes except for the recurring characters. Each episode was its own self-contained little adventure, and seemed to have almost no relationship to the one before or the one after. The monster-killing, which was technically Klondaeg’s raison d’etre, was remarkably bloodless and pointless. His schizophrenic battle-axe was probably the highlight of the story. There were occasional mentions of things and events that sounded as though they should have been explained in an earlier episode, but weren’t, which left the reader wondering what context to put them in.

I feel that these stories would have been much better served if the author tightened up the storyline, gave more context for the goings-on, and linked the various episodes into a more cohesive whole. The world that the author has created definitely has possibilities and it seems a shame that this novella wasn’t able to live up to that potential.

Format/Typo Issues:

None. Formatting was very good and I did not notice any issues with typos.

Rating: ** Two stars

Guest Post from T.L. Haddix, author of Firefly Hollow

I have a confession to make. Something I’ve only shared with my husband. Of all the reasons it took me so long to pick up the metaphorical pen and paper, this one is the most personal.

I was terrified that if I sat down and wrote the way I needed to in order to immerse myself in my characters’ worlds, I’d get lost and never come back.

Sounds a little woo-woo, New Age-y, right? It isn’t, not really. Not if you understand the way I grew up.

When I was two, I lost my parents and my sister to a drunk driver. I was in the same accident that claimed their lives. I don’t remember the wreck. It tore my family apart in ways that I can’t comfortably put into words. After they were killed, I ended up living with my maternal grandparents for a few years, then moved in next door to live with my mother’s sister. She became my Mom. We were a tight-knit little family unit, the four of us, brought together as much by grief as by love.

Although not physically injured, I didn’t escape the accident unscathed. The mental scars are still present today. In all honesty, it took me about twenty years to really start moving past what had happened. I had PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. I startled very easily at loud noises, the sight of any Jeep--which was the vehicle we’d been in when the accident happened--made me scream with terror. It just wasn’t a good time.

One of the symptoms I had was that I’d lose time. According to my family, I would stand at the window in my grandparents’ living room and stare out at the highway for hours, as though I was waiting for my parents and sister to come home from work or school. I can remember standing there, and can remember snapping to attention--and having no idea how long I’d been staring out that window, or what all I had missed. There was the sensation of time having moved all around me, and I had no recollection at all of things that had been said or done while I was “away.”

That continued until I was well into grade school. I don’t think anyone ever noticed it was happening, at least not once I started school, as the episodes were brief, lasting only seconds or a couple of minutes by then. But it could have been years passing for all I knew.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, my grandmother--my rock--started losing her mind to the ravages of dementia, her first symptoms appearing about a year after the accident. It was a slow decline, probably not Alzheimer’s but multi-infarct dementia. I spent literally all the years of my childhood watching her lose a piece of herself every single day.

So when I grew up and I’d start to think about writing, I was afraid. I knew that in order to get into the depth of the stories and lives of the characters who were clamoring for attention in my head, I would have to dive in. I’d have to submit to them, and push down that mental barrier keeping the characters and their stories inside. That terrified me.

What if I didn’t come back? What if I couldn’t find my way out of this fictional world that I wanted to write about? If I got stuck in Leroy, the fictional town my Shadows series is written around, how would my husband find me and pull me out? I had all these memories from childhood of losing time. I knew my grandmother had suffered a similar, more permanent fate. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

I resisted for a long time. I was too apprehensive to even try. It wasn’t so much the fear of failure that paralyzed me as it was the fear that I’d lose myself if I started writing. There would only be so much of me inside, and once I ran out of self, I’d just be a shell of a person, walking around the world numbly, and no one would realize it.

I don’t know what changed. I suppose I just got tired of worrying about it, and reached the point where I had to take the chance. The stories were fighting to get out, and keeping them inside seemed more of a risk than sitting down with a paper and pen and seeing what happened.

Now, three years into this venture as a full-time writer, I am still here. Still present. I understand that the creativity is just another layer of my psyche, not a separate dimension, or a mental illness that’s going to suck me in and keep me there. And I enjoy delving into the characters’ lives and loves. The journey of discovery is as fun for me as reading a book from a favorite author for the first time.

I’m still not entirely comfortable letting myself go and letting the stories overtake me, but I don’t fear the abyss like I used to.

Get your copy of Firefly Hollow from Amazon US (paper or ebook) or Amazon UK (paper or ebook). 

Guest Post from Collin Tobin, author of Upload

My main character in Upload, Jay Brooks, has a mother who, before her tragic death, was employed by the FBI. Her career choice is no mistake, or act of whimsy on my part. I feel like a grown man finally admitting how passionately I wanted to be a cowboy or astronaut. So here goes. Ever since high school, I had an intense interest in joining the FBI. As if by way of a cosmic sign, an FBI recruiter even visited our English class on a “career day”. For me, this was a wasted visit. I already had developed a keen interest and my entry into the academy was a certainty.

Standing before our class in an affordable-looking navy blue suit, the recruiter was preaching to the choir. I sat up in my seat, nodded vigorously, all the while looking around at the rest of the class, wondering why they weren’t similarly enthralled. I was so enamored, I half expected to spot a second agent stationed by the classroom door. After all, the room had only one exit. Odd that they hadn’t thought of this. This was spy 101, right? I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms, and skeptically listened to the man’s presentation. Maybe they sent a flunky? By that time, I had already read up on all the career paths in the FBI, with “field agent” as my focus, and had even written the agency for even more information packets. I had poured over their entry requirements, the physical fitness demands, and modeled myself in all ways possible to seem like a shoe-in G-Man. No drinking, intense physical exercise, high-and-tight hair cuts. I was all in.

Oh, it would have been great, me in the FBI. To this day, I remain a steadfast rule follower. If I pick-up something in say, the grocery store, I refuse to orphan it later onto the nearest, most convenient shelf. I will walk the six aisles back and put it where it belongs. Since we’re in the grocery store, here’s another: I can’t bring myself to open and consume food while there, knowing full well I’m going to pay for it minutes later. This same self-governance must explain why I had enjoyed wrestling in high school so much—it was fighting, but it was organized. It had rules. The FBI felt like it could be much the same. Full front confession now: I even dressed up as an FBI agent one Halloween. I was so passionate about this possible future, I even memorialized it for all eternity in my high school year book under “Aspirations”. This surely has had a peculiar side effect—instead of sinking into mid-life obscurity at this point, I might hope my classmates would assume that I’m actually still in deep cover. Or not. But for all of these reasons, I wanted more than anything a career in the FBI, well before several movies had begun to make the FBI seem uber-cool.

One final inspirational boost occurred just before all of my FBI hopes were dashed for good. I remember it was the beginning of senior year in high school. I was caught in one of those weird, fickle, funky periods between books and my mother noticed it right away. She told me she had just the book for me and had me follow her up to the attic. She was an avid reader herself and our book-lined living room wasn’t enough to contain them all. She pulled aside several cardboard boxes and finally pulled out what she had been looking for: The Silence of the Lambs. My mother had a penchant for serial killer fiction, medical thrillers, and true life crime fiction a la Anne Rule. The Thomas Harris book had been right up her alley, and she hoped I would like it as much as she did. I loved it. To cap it all off, in one of those convenient little coincidences, just days after I finished the book, the trailer for the movie came out.

So it was exactly around this time, where the flames of my passion to join the FBI were stoked to their whitest, hottest heights, that I learned something critical about my uncle that decided my fate for me. At the same time, I learned the answer to several questions that had lingered with me for years while growing up. Why didn’t our uncle make it to all the family holidays? Why can’t my brother and I accept his invitation to go live with him for the summer? Why does he have a .357 magnum in his glove compartment?

Unfortunately, my uncle for most of his life had been living fast and loose with the law, and was at that time in Costa Rica fighting extradition back to the United States on drug charges. After a swift calculation in my head, and considering the FBI’s deep background checks for all applicants, and I quietly slid my partially filled-out application back into its drawer. My uncle’s troubles had caused him and the family deep emotional pain and long lasting separations; so much so that he was unable to even attend either of his parents’ funerals. He was barely able to reconnect with his two sisters before the passing of my mother and then his own, somewhat mysterious end.

All told, I’m grateful I didn’t pursue a career in the FBI. I haphazardly learned over the years how frustrating and exhausting the life of a field agent could be: what a tax it took on one’s family, the day-to-day stress, and the surprisingly unimpressive pay scales. But this doesn’t mean I can’t at least write about the FBI in my books, however peripherally, enjoying a kind of parallel G-Man existence through my writing. Besides, it’s not like I don’t get to challenge my investigative skills in day-to-day tasks: hunting down missing board game pieces, repeatedly losing and finding my keys, or becoming involved in more intense investigations, such as finally ferreting out who dinged my driver’s side door at work, and left an ultimately damning fleck of royal blue paint behind. I’ve narrowed it down to three possible suspects. Two of the three are actively ducking me at the coffee machine.

I’m on the case.

Get you copy of Upload from Amazon US (paper or ebook), Amazon UK (paper or ebook), or Barnes & Noble.

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The Dragon Keeper / Mindy Mejia

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Thriller

Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words

Availability    

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Author:

“Mindy Mejia is a fiction writer, finance manager, weekend jogger, wife, and mother of two. She writes compelling, plot-driven stories layered over larger societal issues. She lives in St. Paul and is currently working on a murder mystery set in rural southern Minnesota.”

For more, visit Mejia’s website.

Description:

“A zookeeper fights to save the animal she loves, even as her own life crumbles around her…

Meg Yancy knows she may be overly attached to Jata, the Komodo dragon that has been in her care since it arrived at the zoo from Indonesia. Jata brings the exotic to Meg’s Minnesotan life: an ancient, predatory history and stories of escaping to freedom. A species that became endangered soon after being discovered, Komodos have a legacy of independence, something that Meg understands all too well. Meg has always been better able to relate to reptiles than to people, from her estranged father to her live-in boyfriend to the veterinarian who is more concerned with his career than with the animals’ lives.

Then one day, Meg makes an amazing discovery. Jata has produced viable eggs—without ever having had a mate. Faced with this rare phenomenon, Meg must now defend Jata’s hatchlings from the scientific, religious, and media forces that converge on the zoo to claim the miracle as their own.

Finally forced to deal with the very people she has avoided for so long, Meg discovers that opening herself up comes with its own complications. And as she fights to save the animal she loves from the consequences of its own miracle, she must learn to accept that in nature, as in life, not everything can be controlled.”

Appraisal:

Have you ever known someone who related to animals better than people? I’d bet most of us have. Meg Yancy, the protagonist of The Dragon Keeper, is one of those people. Meg has what for her is the perfect job, working as a Zoo Keeper at the fictional “Zoo of America,” (part of a complex the author has imagined in between the actual Mall of America and the Minnesota River, south of the Minneapolis airport). She works with animals, whom she understands and relates well to, and is able to minimize the need for interactions with people. That changes when events force her to deal with people in order to defend her animals.

The Dragon Keeper has a story that, while classified as a thriller, where you’d expect a character to be at risk, is outside the norm, because the characters most in danger are the animals involved. Meg isn’t lacking in risks, but they aren’t of the  life and limb variety. However, there is a lot more going on. A romantic sub-thread, an education about Komodo Dragons, and a subtext that speaks to preserving the environment and evolution, take this further outside of the typical thriller storyline and do so in a good way. Not only is this a fun read, but it’s not one of those books you feel like you’ve read before. Always a plus in my mind.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues

Rating: **** Four stars

Beaten Zone / A. McLean Swanson

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Short story collection

Approximate word count: 25-30,000 words

Availability    

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Author:

A. McLean Swanson is a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Married, with three children, Swanson is currently at work on his debut novel.

Description:

A short story collection with a common theme of war and its aftermath.

Appraisal:

In the preface, the author puts forward a theory that “if there is to be [a] unifying theme about the Global War on Terror, it should not be about the loss of innocence and redemption,” as was the case with much literature surrounding both World Wars and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Instead, he says it should be “about trauma and recovery (or an attempt towards).”

These short stories broke out of the patterns I’ve seen in war stories in other ways as well. Some weave a war story with another non-war story of crisis in a way that was at first disorienting, but once I adapted helped illustrate how the effects of war linger on long after the soldiers have returned, which goes to Swanson’s theme of trauma and recovery. While Swanson’s approach isn’t without happy moments (the recovery portion of his theme), his break from previous formulas is both more realistic and more disconcerting. Worth a read, although it suffers from insufficient copyediting and proofing.

FYI:

Some adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

A large number of proofing errors. The majority I spotted were extra or missing words, with some homophone and verb tense errors and the occasional typo.

Rating: *** Three stars

Strangers Are Just Friends You Haven’t Killed Yet / Ryan Bracha

Reviewed by: Keith Nixon

Genre: Thriller

Approximate word count: 85-90,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

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Author:

Ryan Bracha started out in film, writing and directing his first feature. He wrote the follow up whilst living in Paris. More recently, Ryan turned to novels and Strangers… is his debut, three years in the making. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and a guinea pig.

Description:

Bodies are being found in Sheffield, England. The victims seem entirely unconnected except for the cause of death and their lack of clothes. The media are frantic, the population worried. But it’s really a deadly game of cat and mouse with terminal consequences for the losers.

Appraisal:

Strangers… is not your typical thriller by any stretch of the imagination. It’s unlike any other book of its type I’ve read. The general premise of a group of desperate people selected by a calculating, underhand process to play a game whilst the dubious wealthy place bets is in itself unusual. However, what really sets Strangers… apart is the method by which the author portrays the action - via a multitude of characters. A highly unusual approach to storytelling that works very well.

The cast in the novel is large, from the game players to the manipulators, gamblers, by-standers and reporters to name a few. All of the players are damaged in their own way, all make decisions for personal gain.

As well as the perspective switch. there’s also a use of time to unfold the story elements in an intelligent fashion, adding tension and intrigue. However what really underlies Strangers… is a story of relationships. Two of the more main characters, Tom and Ada, find each other in the most difficult of circumstances. Just when I thought the story had been satisfactorily wrapped up Bracha opens an entirely new, but related episode to ensure everyone gets their just desserts.

The characters are well drawn, despite there being so many, and the multiple switches handled smoothly. The dialogue is sharp and gritty with the local accents and behaviours coming through strongly for colour. The location, Sheffield, is tack sharp in its definition. The writing style is in your face and uncompromising. An example of the ‘milder’ writing:

The mumbled hush of the room continued. Little Miss Impatient was pacing, her nicotine addiction grabbing her by the throat and not letting go, until a crackle then a hiss broke the suspense.

Overall a great read and entirely different.

FYI:

Adult language and content throughout.

Format/Typo Issues:

Some, but nothing that cannot be resolved.

Rating:  ***** Five Stars

The Complex / J. Rudolph

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Genre: Horror/Zombie/Post Apocalyptic

Approximate word count: 70-75,000 words

Availability   

Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: NO Smashwords: NO Paper: YES

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Author:

J. Rudolph lives in Southern California with her family and thinks way too much about zombies. The Complex is her debut novel.

Description:

A devastating virus has gone out of control that reanimates the dead. This is the story of a small group of survivors that have found refuge in their small, gated apartment complex.

Appraisal:

This story is told through the eyes of Cali, a nurse, a wife, and a mother of a ten year-old son. She and her husband Trent had always joked about a zombie apocalypse; it was a game they played, ‘what if’. It was never supposed to be real. They have banded together with their neighbors who stayed and succeeded in building a small fortress for their protection from the zombies. It is an interesting character study. The characters are well developed and I became invested in their future. The narrative descriptions were well done and the conversations between all the players were realistic. I felt that the plot had a nice pace and the twists were interesting and unexpected. I am not a zombie aficionado, nor do I ever expect to be, it is not my usual genre preference.

The weakest part of the whole story is the preface. I understand why it is there but I felt like it may have been better handled as a flashback perhaps. The beginning of a story is suppose to grab the reader and not let go, I don’t think the preface did that. It is interesting to know how the virus got so out of control so fast though. There are also several small editing errors mostly extra or missing words or letters, they were a minor irritant that made some sentences read clunky.

I enjoyed the story and was glad there was not a cliffhanger ending, although it is evident there will be a sequel. I am anxious to see how things develop for this small band of survivors.

FYI:

There are three F-bombs dropped and graphic gore.

Format/Typo Issues:

There are a small number of proofing errors.

Rating: *** Three stars

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Season of Lies by Monica Shaughnessy

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JusThis / Curt Rude

Reviewed by: Keith Nixon

Genre: Crime / Thriller

Approximate word count: 55-60,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Curt Rude is a highly decorated, ex-police officer with a 30 year career in law enforcement who then turned to writing.

You can learn more about the author at his website and blog.

Description:

Charles ‘Badge’ Pullet is a policeman in the small town of Normal. All his life he’s wanted to be on the force and to wear the badge. But Badge has a problem, the Urge, which affects his judgement, drawing him into deeper predicaments even as he rises through the ranks.

The Urge impacts others around him, his wife, his Deputy, and the women he targets, among others. For a small town Normal has some large personalities from which nothing good can come.

Appraisal:

This was a seriously disappointing novel, a strange mix of bland ‘thriller’, police procedure ,and trashy erotic novel, although I suspect the latter was unintended.

The Urge is Badge’s sexual proclivity, he cannot help himself when it comes to satisfying his needs. Unfortunately, the author seems to delight in various descriptions of Badge’s penis and what he does with it. JusThis goes through the motions of attempting to bring the issues resulting from Badge’s activities to a justifiable conclusion. Ultimately, it was a depressing end.

A comparatively minor example of Badge’s ‘conquest’ description:

If a woman’s husband didn’t understand her, Badge found out what she needed, then gave it to her–and she did the same for him. She’d get wide-eyed as his pants hit the floor and would spend a wonderful night wrestling with his trouser python, but once it was over, Badge lost interest. Once he had defiled her, the thrill was gone. He’d move on to another man’s bride.

Periodically there would be some description of actual police work, although it tended to be a particularly gruesome car smash or a brush with a troubled personality, some of which had succumbed to ‘Mr. Intoxication’ or ‘Mr. Mental Illness’.

The characters were distinctly unpleasant, I didn’t warm to a single one of them. They all had huge flaws that ultimately made them weak-chinned individuals that I just wanted to shout at, kick in the pants, or both.

There was virtually no dialogue, vast swathes of text was dominated by internalized thought or long descriptions meaning there was little real action until the culmination of the story in the final chapters. What dialogue there was tended to be bland. The following example is supposed to be a light-hearted joke directed at Badge (I imagine it spoken in a high-pitched, Marilyn Monroe like tone):

You’re really the first policeman I’ve ever spent time with. You must be brave to do what you do. I’ve been a good girl all my life, so it’s not like I’ve ever gotten a speeding ticket or been handcuffed.

Enough said, I think.

FYI:

Sexual scenes.

Format/Typo Issues:

None.

Rating: * One Star

Queen Bitch / Justin Harwood

Reviewed by: Keith Nixon

Genre: Crime / Thriller

Approximate word count: 45-50,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

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Author:

Justin Harwood was born in New Zealand and trained as a musician. He travelled with various bands during a successful career and ended up in New York for a decade where he began to write thrillers, before returning to New Zealand with his family.

Description:

McKenzie (Mac) Moss is at the end of her parole having served a five-year stretch. She wants to put her past behind her, but before she can, she has to claim what’s rightfully hers - $1m and revenge against those that put her inside.

Manfred Fuller and Bucky, two New York detectives, investigate the suicide of a paedophile. However, it’s not quite the cut and dried case it first seems, so Manfred and Bucky dig deeper and what they subsequently find has serious implications for them and Mac.

Appraisal:

Queen Bitch opens with Mac throwing a man off a roof before seeing her parole officer for the last time. Yes, it’s that sort of book. The writing is sparse. By that I mean there’s not a wasted word. Some chapters are very short, only a few paragraphs, however, it works. There are only a handful of characters, but all are well drawn and the relatively short length and tight style means there’s little room to successfully explore many more anyway so this was a good choice. Mac herself is quite startling, a girl with some serious issues. The dialogue is also sharp and snappy.

Throughout Queen Bitch two parallel plots run – Mac taking revenge and the detectives investigating first the apparent suicide and then Mac herself – which ultimately come together at the end.

I like the mix of 1^st person and 3^rd person perspectives in alternate chapters (it’s a technique I use) as it generates pace and multiple perspectives to make the story richer. There’s also a clever use of time where in the last quarter of the book one chapter deliberately lags another to create tension.

Underneath Queen Bitch is a difficult subject, but Harwood handles it well, using it to justify Mac and the story without sensationalising.

Unfortunately, there were some format and spelling errors but these are easily corrected.

This is a good book, I’d like to see more of Justin Harwood’s work.

FYI:

Plenty of swearing.

Format/Typo Issues:

Formating errors and some typo’s.

Rating:  **** Four Stars

Upload / Collin Tobin

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Techno-Thriller

Approximate word count: 85-90,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Although he has degrees in English and Education, Collin Tobin works in the software industry. He has had several poems published in various venues.

This is his first novel.

Description:

“Someone’s always watching.

Jay Brooks’s life is in chaos. His mother’s sudden death has unhinged his father, making Jay a stranger in his own home. He seeks solace by spending his spare time with his best friend, Bennie, but matters are further complicated by his crush on Chloe, Bennie’s older sister.

A wheelchair-bound hacker, Bennie Welch practically lives in his basement computer lab. Longing to make genuine connections to the outside world, he secretly films people’s precious memories for later sale and surfs the crowds at rave parties, despite the danger to his frail body.

One night, Jay’s hobby of Wi-Fi hotspot hunting turns serious when he unwittingly blunders into the scene of a crime and downloads a mysterious transmission. When Jay brings Bennie the contents of the transfer, Bennie embraces the opportunity to use his skills to investigate.

As Jay and Bennie dig deeper into the world of electronic secrets, they find that the simple video has far-reaching implications that not only threaten their lives, but society as they know it. Tracing the mysterious coalition responsible leads them on an inexorable journey that will change them forever.”

Appraisal:

Would I be saying too much about myself if I admit that one of the things I liked about Upload is that Jay and Bennie, the two main characters, are … pick your word, nerds or geeks. They’re the kids with different interests than the typical teen, maybe not as socially adept, and in Bennie’s case, a disability that sets him apart further. I’ve got nothing against books with teen protagonists who are cheerleaders, jocks, or some other flavor of big-person-on-campus and have enjoyed lots, but, umm, without naming names, some people (maybe a lot of people), may relate easier to the geeks.

Good characters are a good start, but in a thriller you need a story with some thrills. Upload has that too. A mix of technology, both real and slightly futuristic, but not so far into the future as to be unbelievable, some evil villains, and an ending that was a surprise on several levels, all kept the tension building to the end. A good read for adults and older teens.

FYI:

A small amount of adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: **** Four stars

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