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Book Review: Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper


Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper

BlackWyrm Publishing, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-1-61318-138-6

Availability: Paperback, eBook(Kindle)

 

Ronald Glassner is a successful web journalist who runs and writes a webzine called American Sane.  Publishers have been calling him to go to the next step, and    write a book. Glassner  decides to tell the story of Brian McCullough. Five years ago Brian was a small town teenager who came home from school to find that his ten-year-old sister, Fran, had murdered their parents. Then she killed herself in front of him. Brian did not speak for a year. Ronald goes to the small town of Kenning, Georgia to investigate, and get the facts firsthand for his readers. He meets with Brian, who is still living in the family home where the murders occurred. Brian seems to be a regular young man. That evening, Ronald stumbles into a pack of dogs that attack him, and he ends up in the hospital. Concurrently, a fight between two churches emerges. One is the established First Church, headed by the mysterious Reverend Michael Cox; the challenger is the New Church, run by the rebellious Jeanne Harper. Before he knows it, Ronald is caught up in the middle of small town intrigue that is more than he and his webzine readers bargained for.

This book started out well; the suspense built steadily and kept me interested. The characters were distinct; their voices were easy to separate. The pacing was good, the descriptions were adequate, the main theme, “good vs. evil” was developed nicely, and the book was well-written, with very few typographical errors.  But halfway through the story it lost me. It just didn’t work for me anymore. The religious aspects got too thick for me personally, and I just stopped caring what happened. Possibly, other readers might be more engaged.

 

Contains: homosexuality, profanity, adult situations

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher

Posted on November 13, 2014 by , Reply

Book Review: Water Vamps by G.L. Giles

     Water Vamps by G. L. Giles

BlackWyrm Publishing, June 2013 (Second Printing)

ISBN-13: 978-1-61318-147-8

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

Psychic vampire Setiana and her partner, a shape-shifter, stop at an inn for a good day’s sleep. While there, Setiana enters a dream state, and visits a young girl, Robyn, in Charleston, South Carolina.  It is Robyn’s 11th birthday, and her life will never be the same. Setiana welcomes the girl into a new life. Robyn meets a new companion, a boy named Marion, who discovers he is a shape-shifter. Setiana and her partner help Robyn and Marion understand what their lives will be like in their new forms. There are many types of vampires in the story– some good, some evil. They must all beware of the Water Vampires.

I had real trouble following the story in this work. The overarching problem was the overuse of descriptive elements. This really muddied up the storyline. I give the author kudos for having a unique style, and based on other reviews, I know it works for others. At any rate, the theme of love came through clearly in the story. Ages 12 and up.

 

Contains: Homosexuality

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher

 

Posted on November 3, 2014 by , Reply

Book Review: The Detainee by Peter Liney

  The Detainee (The Detainee Trilogy, Book 1) by Peter Liney

Jo Fletcher Books, 2013

ISBN13: 9781623651084

Available: Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook

 

I am a sucker for a good dystopia. In fact, I often complain about “end of the world” stories that don’t have enough gloom. However, although there are plenty of good elements here, and the book ranks high on other review sites, I have to admit it didn’t connect with me.

The first person narrative style was the first strike against novel for me; I felt this slowed the pace. 70 pages in, I still had no idea who the main character was. He was just an amorphous “I”.  The book went on at length about the setting, and a few unfortunate events, but I didn’t know the protagonist’s name. I had to look it up in an online review. This really bothered me. I needed to have a strong sense of who the narrator was by now. That is a bad sign.

Clancy, the protagonist, is considered undesirable by the hyper-capitalist society he lives in, and has been exiled to a giant trash heap of an island for “unproductive” people. “Unproductive” includes the elderly, so the island contains many people of an advanced age, like a reverse Logan’s Run world. The setting provided the potential for this to be a fantastic dystopian novel, my favorite kind of science fiction/horror crossover. It’s a great concept; I like the point of view and the message, a warning of what could happen if the right wing’s stance against social programs and welfare were taken to an extreme.

However, this is a novel, not an essay. No matter how interested I am in the socio-political philosophy of inevitable dystopia, a novel has to be a story first. I admit I found myself skipping entire paragraphs, which is not typical for me. It just didn’t hold my interest. To be fair, this book has lots of great reviews. It’s been promoted as a Hunger Games for adults, and certainly many responded to the book’s take on ageism. Because the themes are so timely and well defined, libraries should make it available despite my personal dislike for it. Recommended for ages 12-adult.

 

Reviewed by David Agranoff

Posted on November 3, 2014 by , Reply
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