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Book Review: Gods of Kiranis (Kiranis #1) by Ronald A. Geobey

Gods of Kiranis (Kiranis #1) by Ronald A. Geobey 

Temple Dark Books, 2021

ISBN: 9781838259419

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Amazon.com

 

Gods of Kiranis isn’t just a sci-fi novel.  It’s an achievement, and a very notable one.  The book has an unbelievably dense and complex plot, on the level of the Game of Thrones novels, and it’s impressive with the scope and imagination of the science fiction elements used..    Most importantly, it provides entertainment and leaves you wanting more.  Readers looking for a truly unique novel in terms of universe building and scope won’t want to miss this one.  It’s probably a bit much for readers who just like straightforward sci-fi, a la Buck Rogers.  

 

The book begins with a large metal cage suddenly arriving from space and being placed around Earth, and ends with a large battle (among other things) near the planet Kiranis in another part of the galaxy. It all connects to a genetic cross-breed experiment performed centuries before on humans and Garrans, one of the alien races involved.  Between those two events is a multi-layered story of lies, backstabbing, and shifting alliances between mankind and various alien races, as each race tries to come out on top, or just survive.

 

The story format is unique, and gives the book its unusual flavor, but it also may make it off-putting to some readers.  The four sections of the book essentially cover the same events in the same time period, but each is done from the point of view of one of the four species: human, Jaevisk, Garran, and Kwaios.  During the first and second sections, many elements are inserted into the story with no background, so the reader doesn’t know how they relate to the story, or why they are present.  Context is provided later in the other sections, but it can be confusing at times.  There is a LOT going on in this book: it’s one of the most layered stories I’ve ever read.  Almost everything makes sense in the end, but the journey getting there can be difficult at times.  The book would have been helped by adding a simple “cast of characters” appendix to keep all of the names straight.    

 

Worth noting is the outstanding job the author did of world building, particularly with the Garran homelands.  It doesn’t go into every little detail, but it’s enough to make you feel like it’s an actual place, not just a figment of the author’s imagination.  All the science fiction elements (the cage, space vortexes, etc.) are used well, but the author avoids going the “hard science” route of Kim Stanley Robinson or Neal Stephenson.  The main focus is the characters, not the science or the devices.  Did I mention this book has dragons in it as well?  That’s not an element normally found in sci-fi!

 

Bottom line: it’s an amazing story, both in terms of interest level, creation, and complexity.  There are plenty of unanswered questions at the end, but considering this is the first of a planned seven books, there’s plenty of time for answers.  It will be interesting to see where it goes: we just might be looking at the science fiction equivalent of Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

 

Recommended, highly so, for lovers of elaborate stories.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on September 15, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Monster Club by Darren Arnofsky and Ari Handel

Monster  Club by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel

HarperCollins, 2022

ISBN: 9780063136632

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

If you’ve seen The Wrestler, Black Swan, or The Whale, you know Darren Aronofsky is a serious director who directs serious films.  Who knew that he and Ari Handel could write such a seriously fun kid’s book?  A loving tribute to the nerdy, role-playing gamers who still hide amongst the ‘cool’ students in junior high schools across the country, it’s impossible to dislike Monster Club.  It has it all: cool, comic-book styled monsters, light, frothy action that’s its easy to enjoy and laugh along with, and of course, the nerdy kid gets the girl!

 

Set against the backdrop of the famed Coney Island boardwalk, Eric “Doodles” King and his junior high pals, who go by the nicknames of Yoo-hoo, Smash, Hollywood, and Beanie, spend their time outside of school playing Monster Club, an RPG game they designed themselves, a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and pro wrestling. Their characters consist of monster drawings created by the players, each with hit points and attack skills, using some dice and a spinner from the old boardgame LIFE to determine their actions as the characters battle it out for superiority. 

 

Fortune strikes in the form of a Sharpie with magic ink, which allows Eric to draw characters that come to life off the page.  Can he use this gift to help save his dad’s carnival, which is threatened by land developers?  

 

The story sells itself with the characters and breezy, happy nature of the writing. It’s easy to root and relate to the Monster Clubbers since we all knew kids like them when we were kids, charming in their goofiness. Brainy Beanie is a member of a club that designs drones and Smash tends to crash her skateboard, often into lockers.  Of course, they get picked on by the big kids, and can’t play sports worth a damn.  The story picks up the pace and shifts into the crazy fun section when the Sharpie falls into the wrong hands, allowing for creatures such as Noodle Monsters and Crumple Noodle.  The last quarter of the book is insane fun,  reminiscent of the movie Gremlins.  You knew that the gremlins were bad and were wrecking the town, yet you had to laugh at how they did it, thanks to the presentation.  It’s the same with the Noodle Monsters as they go wild on Coney Island.

 

However, the Monster Club creations of Brickman, BellyBeast, Robokillz and their ilk stand ready to do battle and save Coney Island.  The fights themselves are some of the best parts.  They aren’t bloody, they are fun, Gremlins-style.  BellyBeast picks his nose and sticks it in Brickman’s ear, while Brickman himself dishes out some pretty mean ball-shots with his cannonball on a chain to neighborhood bullies.  Readers will be enthusiastically cheering on the good guys in their quest to smash those evil Noodle Monsters and save the carnival.

 

Bottom line here: this is lighthearted fun with a lot of bounce to it, and it’s one all readers of this site would enjoy.  It’s oriented towards the middle grade/early teen crowd, but it’s plenty of fun for adults too, especially those who grew up like the main characters, they will see themselves in the story.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on September 13, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Girls from the County by Donna Lynch

 

Girls from the County by Donna Lynch

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2022

ISBN: 978-1947879478

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

The city and the country are not the only dangerous places for a woman, according to Donna Lynch’s Girls from the County. In these poems, girls create a permanent connection to their landscape through the memories of places that “want to kill you” and the tragic deaths that result from ignoring ghostly warnings.

 

Lynch depicts the county as a haunted setting where people continue to tell the stories of horrible events involving nameless women whose lives have been destroyed there or, conversely, whose names became famous only because of the grisly details of their death. These are old stories, but also current ones, which show that some things do stay the same and that the only thing between you and disaster might be, as Lynch tells us, the words of your wise grandmother who knows how to survive. 

 

The county girl, as Lynch points out, soon realizes that what passes as tradition, ritual or symbol is darker than it seems and even darker when you trace it to its roots. Men play a big role in this hidden evil – of violence by the river,  “animal screams” mixing with unidentified screams in the woods, and things known by county girls that can’t be proven in order to save them or get them the justice they deserve. Even ordinary parties are characterized as events where county girls are likely to be “devoured” by men.

 

There is an occult connection between these horrors and old parts of a county – old burial grounds, old home sites now vacant, old houses where someone might think there was “something” scary in the window, old quarries and old cars that might be hiding dead bodies, and even gatherings of women trying to use the dark arts to protect themselves or to take revenge, not knowing whether they are really unleashing even more destruction.    

 

Lynch’s short, free verse poems that often read like prose narratives describe the county as a place where girls are held “in captivity” and want to escape, where the “beauty queen” finds out how her good looks are also a curse, and where people talk to you one day and disappear or abandon you the next. There are threats that make these girls stay silent about what they know, that warn them to avoid being “dramatic” by not making accusations without “evidence,” that cause them to be concerned about their safety if they are “pretty” or “sad” because being perceived in those ways opens them up to being targeted by a predator.

 

With menacing poem titles like “The Thing about Girls with Hammers” and “When the Cloud Comes for You,” a reference to a Dorothy in Oz who does not want to go home, Girls from the County depicts the county as a place where there is a barely contained fear, a lurking anxiety, a sense that every person, location, and situation is a potential threat to girls. In “Thirty-two Years (Eighteen Years Reprise)” the speaker worries, “What if / what we really saw / were all the things / we could not escape” and realizes that, ultimately, the “hurt” “waited for us in the trees,” and so, these girls have no choice but to run while the past always follows closely behind.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Posted on September 11, 2023 by , Reply
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