Short Review: The Fairy Pond by Jason Black

Title:  The Fairy Pond

Series: ---

Author: Jason Black

Publisher: self-published

Release Date: December 17, 2018

Length: 29 pages
Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fantasy

Tags: Dark, Fantasy, Historical, Period, Fae, Faeries

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43280397-the-fairy-pond

Synopsis:

Nevan lives a simple life. He works hard in the fields with his brothers and his grandpa and adores his mother wholeheartedly. He's a good boy who usually stays out of trouble, but even when Grandpa warns him to stay away from the pond, he can't help feeling curious about it...and the creatures that watch him whenever he's near.

My Review:

Black has captured the true feeling of dealing with faeries in this short but heartwarming, if not a little unsettling tale, of a family farm and its fae populated pond.

The main character is a young boy who is the only one (other than his Grandpa) who can see the faeries that inhabit the farmyard water feature. Nevan is charming, hardworking and a most well-behaved youngster.  His character is in direct opposition to the creatures that live in the water - they are definitely not kind, although perhaps as charming - but those who would venture too close quickly discover how deadly the fae are.

The author has also done an outstanding job in creating vivid descriptions of 'life on the farm, back in the day', and creating a short tale with various layers that will have each reader walking away taking something different with them.

The last paragraph will send shivers down your spine.

A perfect fairy tale.

Rating:

Available At:

Amazon 

Meet The Author:

Jason Black lives in Texas with his partner and two roommates. He cooks. He writes. He's an okay guy.

Goodreads

Book Review: A Dragon for Christmas by M.D. Neu

Title: A Dragon for Christmas
Author: M.D. Neu
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: December 18, 2017
Heat Level: 0
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 50 pages (12000 words)
Genre: Fantasy, Holiday, Young Adult, LGBT, Lesbian

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36654437-a-dragon-for-christmas

Synopsis:
Carmen is eleven years old and wants to get her dragon. Since she was seven years old, she understood two things. Once, she was going to be the strongest Dragon Keeper there ever eas. The Second was that she was going to marry her best friend, Mattie.

As Christmas approaches the magical charms Carmen has to use to fight off her curse are taking a toll on her health. But that can't stop her from taking her final test to become a Dragon Keeper. If she passes her test she gets her dragon if not, she has to start all over relying on different magical charms to fight the curse for her. That is something Carmen doesn't want to have to go through. The testing is difficult and charms make her sick. Carmen has decided that if she doesn't get her dragon this Christmas she's not going to go for a third attempt, even if that means she can't marry Mattie when she grows up.

My Review:

M.D. Neu has done it again! You may recall that I read and reviewed his vampire novel, The Calling. Although both The Calling and  A Dragon for Christmas would both fall into my definition of Urban Fantasy, A Dragon for Christmas is unabashedly sweet, with just enough sadness to make it a perfect Christmas Story.

And yes, before you get all "but it's April - why are you reading Christmas stories?", let me just say that a good Christmas story is good at any point of the year.  Like who doesn't want Christmas in July, or October, or even April. So there. Deal. (I'm looking at you right now with a cocked eyebrow. That's a challenge for you to defy me and tell me I'm wrong.  Go ahead, do it...)

I digress.

As I've said many times before, I don't like giving away a story's twists and turns, but I have to spill a little bit of the beans on this one.  Neu has written this story from the perspective of an eleven-year-old girl. It is uncomplicated and straight to the point - just like any other girl would be at this age. The words aren't big, the concepts aren't twisted, and big grown-up problems aren't addressed - but we see them. We see it all through the eyes of Carmen who is honest, optimistic, but sometimes moody. (Just like every eleven-year-old girl I have known!).

You see, Carmen is cursed. We're never really told what that curse is, or how she got it, but that is the reality. The only thing that will help her is by having a dragon of her very own. There are many things that cursed children have to do in order to obtain their dragon, and Carmen is on that journey.

You can't help but make some comparisons to kids with cancer, or other life-threatening diseases, and it pulls at the heartstrings.

In Neu's world, Dragon's carry potent magic, and it is that magic that staves off curses. Hence, Carmen needs her own dragon to be healthy. Dragons, it would seem, are abundant in nature (I wish!). In fact, I was delighted with Neu's portrayal of the flying lizards.  With common names like Blue Bottom, Yellow-Tip, and Canadian Whites, you would think we were talking about various subspecies of finches, not dragons. By the way, I have to say I was pleasantly tickled by the Canadian Whites. Living in the Great White North myself, it currently being April, and with snow still on the ground, I thought Canadian dragons being white, and of course, I would assume ice-liking, was perfect. I can only extrapolate from that concept that Canadian dragons only appear in the winter, and hibernate during the summer, or perhaps migrate to either the Arctic or the Antarctic where they live out their days in glacial snow valleys and polar ice caps.

But again, I digress.

Carmen, our cursed little girl, relies on her best friend Mattie in order to get her through her struggles. Also of note, in Neu's world, same-sex pairings are the norm. It's a matter of fact. No one makes a big deal out of it. And Carmen has made it very clear that she loves Mattie, and one day, the two will marry.

That's all I'm going to tell you. You'll just have to read the rest yourself. But even though there are images that will make you feel sad, the hope and promise of getting a Dragon for Christmas, in order to cure Carmen of her curse will make you zip through this short story with the wild abandon of a Blue Bottom dragon.

Well done, Neu, well done.

Rating:

Purchase Links:

NineStar Press: https//ninestarepress.com/product/a-dragon-for-christmas/

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y6uzd3p4 

Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/yac67ojl 

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/a-dragon-for-christmas-1

Meet the Author:

M.D. Neu is an LGBTQA Fiction Writer with a love for writing and travel. Living in the heart of Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) and growing up around technology, he’s always been fascinated with what could be. Specifically drawn to Science Fiction and Paranormal television and novels, M.D. Neu was inspired by the great Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas, Stephen King, Alice Walker, Alfred Hitchcock, Harvey Fierstein, Anne Rice, and Kim Stanley Robinson. An odd combination, but one that has influenced his writing

Growing up in an accepting family as a gay man he always wondered why there were never stories reflecting who he was. Constantly surrounded by characters that only reflected heterosexual society, M.D. Neu decided he wanted to change that. So, he took to writing, wanting to tell good stories that reflected our diverse world.

When M.D. Neu isn’t writing, he works for a non-profit and travels with his biggest supporter and his harshest critic, Eric his husband of eighteen plus years.

Links:

Website: http://www.mdneu.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Writer_MDNeu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mdneuauthor/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17206592.M_D_Neu

Book Review: Beneath the Surface by Rebecca Langham

Title:  Beneath the Surface

Series: The Outsider Project, Book One

Author: Rebecca Langham

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: January 15, 2018

Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 93700

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Sci Fi, interspecies, captivity, teacher, politics

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37648481-beneath-the-surface

Synopsis

When a change in collective conscious sends the Outsiders, a group of aliens, to the shadows below the city, humans reason that the demonization of their peers is simply more “humane.” There’s no question, nor doubt. Just acceptance.

Lydia had embraced that sense of “truth” for as long as she can remember. The daughter of a powerful governor, she has been able to live her life with more comforts than most. Comforts can be suffocating, though, and when the opportunity to teach Outsider children in their private, “humane” community becomes available, she takes it.

What she finds beneath the city is far from the truth she had grown to know. There she meets Alessia, an Outsider with the knowledge and will to shake the foundation of all those who walk above ground. The two find a new and unexpected connection despite a complete disconnect from the technological world. Or perhaps in spite of it.

Still, it takes a lot more than an immutable connection to change the world. Lydia, Alessia, and a small group of Outsiders must navigate a system of corruption, falsehoods, and twists none of them ever saw coming, all while holding on to the hope to come out alive in the end. But it’s a risk worth taking, and a future worth fighting for.

My Review

Beneath the Surface, Rebecca Langham’s debut novel, nicely falls into what I would call Soft Sci-Fi, in that the nitty-gritty aspects of science aren’t explored, rather the social sciences are.  As someone who studied Anthropology for several years in University, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this entire novel is a reflection of exactly that: a social experiment gone horrendously wrong.

The story unfolds slowly, eloquently, almost softly if I could put texture to it. The main character, Lydia, the daughter of a powerful politician, is a teacher in a society where being constantly connected to the “Hive” is a direct equivalent to our current modern day reliance on the internet and social media. Lydia, who could have chosen to do or be just about anything given her privileged family, selects a most unusual contract of going into the underground community where an alien race has been placed; a sought-after refuge and sanctuary.  She teaches the alien children a very sterile and prescriptive curriculum all under the guise of protecting them. But security and shelter equate to nothing less than ensuring Earth’s human population maintains its own cultural standing as the prominent species.

There are some not-so-subtle comparisons that can be made throughout this story to the many refugee crises that have occurred in recent years in our own timeline. Not to mention how we as a society treat those we might consider ‘Outsiders’.  Who belongs and who doesn’t? How do we identify those who are different than us? How do we treat anyone else who doesn’t resonate with exactly what we are? What are those differences? Skin tone? Sexuality? Gender? Nationality?

The number of times I read passages from this book and then thought about the news I had seen the night before often sent shivers down my spine.

We as a species simply need to do better – and this story amplifies that.

I still haven’t captured all the complex and underlying themes that were covered in this novel, and I’m sure that I could read it again and uncover more terrifying parallels. Of course, there’s a hook at the end of the book, setting up the story for a sequel. I can’t tell you what that is, but I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I had it figured out about halfway through the story – and yet, when it is revealed, it still comes off as shocking and abhorrent.

Langham has told this story in a crafty way. None of the themes explored in this novel point out where our own humanity is desperately failing, nor does it come off as abrupt or in-your-face. Instead, they are hinted at, even glossed over, and I found myself thinking about them pages later.

Shameful things we do to each other are like that though, aren’t they? We so often see the blunt and horrifying stories told on the Ten O’clock news. Stories that shake us, repulse us and draw immediate reactions. However, I think it’s the casualness of our faults, be it racism, homophobia, sexism (and certainly this is not an exhaustive list), that are our most hideous stains upon humanity. And that’s exactly how I felt as this story progressed. How easily we are manipulated as a society by media, how numb we become to bad behaviour and accepting what everyone else considers ‘the norm.’

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I wanted more. More details about the alien race, how they were different, where they came from, how the technology in this world worked, but then it would have altered the flavour of this book. This is really an insidious exploration of how terrible we are at being human. It truly is a glimpse beneath our own surfaces.

Rating:

  

Available at:

NineStar Press: https://ninestarpress.com/product/beneath-the-surface/

Amazon: http://hyperurl.co/egei88

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/772940

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beneath-the-surface-rebecca-langham/1127744319

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/beneath-the-surface-65

Meet the Author

Rebecca Langham lives in the Blue Mountains (Australia) with her partner, three children, and menagerie of pets. A Xenite, a Whovian and all-round general nerd, she’s a lover of science fiction, comic books, and caffeine. When she isn’t teaching History to high schoolers or wrangling children, Rebecca enjoys playing broomball and reading.

Author Links

Website: http://www.rebeccalangham.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RLanghamAuthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rlangham85

Instagram: https://instagram.com/Beckles1985