Looking for a fantastically creepy book to start off October? The Apartment by S. L. Grey may be just what you need. It is a haunting tale told through alternating perspectives from husband and wife, Marc and Steph. Both have been traumatized and then things start to get …. creepy. I’ve read Sarah Lotz’s The Three and Day Four and loved them both. This is the first time I’ve read one of the books she co-authors with Louis Greenberg under the pen name S. L. Grey. It definitely did not disappointed and makes me think twice about house swapping for vacation. Marc and Steph’s relationship is definitely in need of work. In addition to dealing with the house invasion, Marc also has a traumatic history involving his first family, before he met Steph. So, when the opportunity arises to “get away” and take the honeymoon they never had, they leave their young daughter behind and head to Paris hoping this will get them back in touch with each other, make everything good again. Unfortunately, once they get to Paris, they encounter one problem after another, and their romantic, relaxing time away  starts to feel more like hell. The apartment is nothing as advertised, in a virtually abandoned…

I have to admit, I’m of two minds regarding Twilight of the Dragons. Yes, it’s a fun, foul-mouthed, frantic sequel to both The Dragon Engine and The White Towers, but its narrative quality is all over the place. Much of it reads like a first draft manuscript, awkward and juvenile in places, that somehow sneaked past the editor. Structurally, it feels like it’s one step removed from being polished as well, jumping between storylines, with random flashback chapters interspersed, and some definite pacing issues. It made for a frustrating read, which (unfortunately) took something away from the enjoyment. Having said all that, this is a bold, brash, bloody story in which Andy Remic returns to the world of grimdark fantasy. One story thread catches up with the survivors of the The Dragon Engine, following their war-weary, emotionally exhausted descent into the bowels of Wyrmblood. These are adventurers who suffered greatly in the last book – beatings, torture, and even rape – and it weighs heavily upon them. As depressing as it made those scenes, I admired Remic for not just shrugging off the pain and going all gung-ho with the heroics. The other story thread catches up with the survivors…

Ah, the final chapter in a trilogy. It is always bittersweet when pick up that last book in series, excited to find out what comes next, yet wondering how the final chapters will go for characters you have grown to love during the series, sad to think that your journey with them is almost at a close. I have really enjoyed the books in the Bloodbound series, so I definitely felt this going in. There’s almost a sense of nervousness if I will be satisfied the end of series. No one wants to depart on a bad note, and it is hard know that even if you love it, there’s no guarantee you will get to read more about the characters. But, excitement to read overshadows all of that, and so I dove into The Bloodsworn without hesitation. The Bloodsworn takes off immediately, with our beloved characters facing situations more dire than ever before as they face the prospect of the complete loss of their land and people. The threat is very real and quite dire. With King Erik, well, let’s just call him “indisposed“, due to the bloodbinder from the last book,  Alix and Liam face new challenges of running the land, while trying to not…

Around here, we get the worst infestations of odorous ants every year especially in the late summer. We’d see them swarming in these thick nasty black trails to get at anything sugary inside the house. They’re also impossible to get rid of because they form these huge multi-nest colonies in the suburbs, and no matter what you do they just keep coming back. Even worse, when you crush them, they give off this foul smell, hence their name. Some people say it stinks like rotten coconuts, but to me it smells a little like putrid lemon cleaner. Either way, it’s gross. Sometimes at night, when I’m lying in bed in the dark, I’ll feel an itch on my arm and reach down to scratch…only to feel my hand brushing against a tiny speck on my skin. I can’t see a thing, but when I bring my fingers up to my nose, sure enough, I’ll smell that horrible scent and know that one of those buggers had gotten under my blankets. I would become so disgusted and unnerved, that I imagine ants are crawling all over my body, and that feeling would keep me up for hours… Anyway, thanks to Chuck…

The Hike is one of those reads that quite unexpectedly takes you by storm.  I had no idea what the book was about and in fact confess I felt a little anxious before picking it up but as it happens this story grabbed my attention completely from the start and held me captivated for the duration.  I think my biggest dilemma now is how to actually write an effective review that gives nothing away at the same time as making you want to pick a copy up. I can say that this book has something of a surreal feel, well, that’s how I  felt reading it.  It’s a strange journey of discovery following in the tracks of a hapless man, Ben, who seems to have stumbled onto the strangest path, a path on which, having witnessed a murder and being forced to flee for his life deep into the wilderness, is nothing like you could ever imagine unless in your wildest dreams. So, being unable to really say too much more about the plot, because this really is a journey that you have to make on your own, I’ll make this review simply about why this worked for me. I…

Ghost Talkers is an alternate history set during WWI. The British has a group of mediums, called the Spirit Corps, that is used for intelligence gathering. Their job is basically to interview the recently deceased soldiers before they move on to whatever awaits them beyond this world. The purpose of these interviews is to get critical information that would normally be lost forever , intelligence and information that a soldier would normally take to their awaiting grave. I immediately found the premise of interviewing recently deceased soldiers as part of a war strategy for intelligence gathering fascinating. I couldn’t help but theorize how this could be used, what kinds of information could suddenly become available and I found the possibilities very intriguing (and plentiful). Kowal did a great job with the fantastical element in this story. I loved the mediums and how they were used to gain advantage during war time. Their abilities also carried a risk to themselves if not done properly as safely. Interviews were done with groups that contain supporting members to keep the interviewing medium from losing themselves in the process. Ginger is our main character, and as one would expect, is a member of the Spirit Corps. Ginger’s…

The Fifth Season was one of my top ten books of 2015, and so I was beyond excited to start reading the second book in the series, The Obelisk Gate. I’m happy to say it was a more than worthy follow-up and I enjoyed it immensely. I have to admit I enjoyed The Fifth Season just a touch more, due to the slower pace of The Obelisk Gate and a slightly more confusing story structure. But overall this is a wonderfully intricate story with multilayered characters, a story that demands you pay attention and savor every new revelation. As she did in the first book, Jemisin treats her readers as intelligent beings and forces you to make many of the connections without spelling everything out. Be warned: this is a series you must read in order. Do not attempt to read The Obelisk Gate without reading The Fifth Season first. You will be lost, I guarantee. Also, there are some mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first book. Jemisin’s story alternates between two main points of view, with a third (and even a fourth, if you count the “interludes”) thrown in at times just to shake things up….

As its title implies, this novel is a bit of an oddball. Even the style of it reminds me a little of a children’s storybook, complete with its own whimsical fairy tale message: Your eyes only see what your mind wants to see, so sometimes all it takes is a change of perspective. Or, if you’d like: Magic is real, if you just look for it. The book starts with an introduction to the saddest protagonist ever. Wil Morgan is literally the kind of guy who has dreams about coming in second in a World’s Biggest Failure competition. He’s crotchety, cynical and unimaginative—but that didn’t used to be the case. His childhood was filled with hopes and dreams, and his mother the brilliant jet propulsion scientist Melinda Morgan always encouraged him to reach for the stars and believe in the possibility of magic. But the year he turned ten, Melinda died in a laboratory accident, leaving young Wil in the sole care of his father who is as different from his mother as can be. Barry Morgan, who was never an outside-of-the-box kind of man to begin with, became even more paranoid and set in his ways after the death…

Bite is not the book I was expecting, but I loved every minute of it. For some reason, when I read the synopsis for this book, I got it in my head this was a horror book which was completely wrong. Don’t get me wrong, there are some horrors in the book and world, but it’s a very exciting post-apacolyptic story that follows the journey for survival by one young woman. The world and land has been devastated by nuclear weapons, water and food are scarce, and the surviving people live in a free for all type of world where raiders and worse roam, destroying any semblance of order or safety. Our protagonist is a young woman, traveling completely on her own for several years since the death of her father. This is a dangerous world for anyone to be on their own, but probably particularly so for women. But she is often mistaken for a boy, which probably works to her benefit. Her life changes when things start to look the darkest for her. She is hungry and thirsty, traveling alone in the desert. She starts to resign to her fate when she crosses paths with a group of…

Fix is the final instalment of Ferrett Steinmetz’s Mancer series and brings to a conclusion a story that I’ve found totally absorbing and unique. I think for this particular review I’m not really going to delve too much into the story.  I don’t want to give anything away and I’m going to make the assumption that you’ve read the previous two books in the series.  If not, well then, I strongly suggest, nay implore, you to do so.   I also recommend not reading further in case there are spoilers for the first two books lurking below. This is a very entertaining series that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.  If you love gaming and movies and all sorts of culture references, huge splashes of fun and a world that brings to you a new form of magic with oodles of action then I think you’re going to love this series. At the end of the last book I remember wondering how this family unit, that I’d come to enjoy reading about so much, would actually get on or even survive.  Let me say from the outset that this book puts you through the wringer a little bit in that respect and in fact…