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Book Review: Times of Trouble edited by Lane Adamson

Times of Trouble edited by Lane Adamson

Permuted Press, 2013

ASIN:  B00CKZRAH4

Available: Kindle edition

 

    Times of Trouble is a collection of 22 short stories that explore the ultimate “Do – Over,” time travel.  Each author was tasked with taking a second chance to “get it right”, but with a delicious twist;  the  attempt actually makes a bad situation worse.  Each story starts fresh, and the result is a splendid variety of topics.  Some of them expected others, not so much.  The time travel tales include: Dinosaur Hunting, Tourism, The Civil War, Overlords, Missing Persons, The Butterfly Effect, Raising Children, Paradox, Detectives, Cartoons, Archeology, Revenge, Robots, and Zombies.  How these stories mix together is a fun read that makes you wonder what would you do with just one more chance to “Get It Right?”

      I loved this collection.  While some of the stories weren’t the type of thing I would normally read they were all thought provoking and highly imaginative.  The tales were well written with each of the authors doing a great job twisting the second chance down a darker path.  The settings were established excellently and the characters had distinctive voices.  The descriptions were laid in nicely leaving me with an excellent sense of place and time.  My favorite stories were Matthew Baugh’s “Rabid Season”, a mixture of time travel and 1970’s cartoons, and  Jeff Drake’s “Little Girl Lost”, with its creepy Lovecraftian nod toward time travel and missing persons.  The only criticism I have is that a few typographical errors sneaked in.  Ironically, the most poorly edited was the tale “A Hatful of Yesterday”, written by the editor, Lane Adamson: a good argument to have someone else edit your work.  That being said, I enjoyed the concept and looked forward to reading each story.  It was a fun read!  If you like time travel then this is well worth reading.  I have not read any of these authors’ works before.  Highly recommended for adult readers.

Contains:  Swearing, Sexual Situations, Gore

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher

Posted on January 24, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Everdead by Rio Youers

Everdead by Rio Youers

Audible Studios, 2013

ASIN: B00CPAMSY4

Available: Audiobook, MP3 CD

 

Luca, a nomadic vampire, is being pursued by the ancient original vampires. He finds himself on the beach front resort island of San Antonio,  where youths around the world come to drink, dance, and party.   Two vacationing partiers, Toby and Cass, come across Luca as he kills a young girl.  Furious at the interruption, Luca hunts down the couple to exact revenge.  

While Youers goes into Luca’s origin tale, he doesn’t try to paint him as a sympathetic victim. Rather, Youers shows Luca as a man who hounds another vampire to turn him, knowing full well that he will have to kill people to survive.   Youers does a good job of fleshing out the character of Toby, who has finally overcome his insecurities in approaching girls to finally meet Cass.  Everdead is a competently written vampire tale. It is currently not available in print format but is available in audiobook format.

Posted on December 14, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: End Times by Rio Youers

End Times by Rio Youers
IUniverse, 2007
ISBN: 0595437869
Available: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, MP3 CD

 

Scott is a man who has lived a hard, sad life. He suffers from an addiction to heroin. He is missing all of the fingers on both hands, and has to make do with only his thumbs, a fact that is disturbingly presented throughout the book. He is working as a journalist with peers who he doesn’t really like, and who don’t like him. The only thing good in his life seems to be his friend Sebby, a quadriplegic that Scott met at a drug rehab program. Then Mia, a mysterious Indian girl, steps into his life and changes everything. She sees him as he is, and still seems to love him. Mia becomes like a drug to his troubled mind, an addiction that he just can’t quit thinking about. Everything seems to be going his way until he finds out who Mia is– a dangerous mystery from his past that has come to the present with the purpose of making him pay for what he did to her. The story follows Scott from his life as a bum, trying to eke out an existence on the hard city streets, to his joining a dangerous and twisted cult that requires horrible sacrifices for their god, Voice, and then to his life as a writer and his journey into self-discovery and destiny. The story is written in first person, and is filled with pain and longing. At first I couldn’t stand the main character, his world and views being a far cry from my own, but as the novel progresses, he seems to change, becoming a character that I began to relate to and sympathize with. All of the characters are created with the utmost depth: they are dark and believable. This book touches on all the emotions. As I read Scott’s tale I felt his pain, love, hatred, longing, fear, and humor. End Times is a brutally unique work that surely deserves a place in any library, whether public or private.
Contains: Violence, Sex, Self Mutilation

Review by Bret Jordan

(Note: End Times is now in print available at Amazon.com)

Posted on December 12, 2018 by , Reply
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