#Blogtour Redspace Rising by Brian Trent

It’s my turn on the BlogTour Redspace Rising by Brian Trent.

About the Author

Brian Trent’s speculative fiction appears regularly in the world’s top speculative fiction markets, including ANALOG, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Apex, Escape Pod, COSMOS, Galaxy’s Edge, Nature, and more. Trent lives in New England. Follow @BrianTrent on Twitter, Visit briantrent.com

About the book

Harris Alexander Pope is the man who ended the Partisan War on Mars. All he seeks now is solitude and a return to the life that was stolen from him. Yet when he learns that the worst war criminals are hiding in other bodies, he is forced into an interplanetary pursuit.

Teaming up with other survivors eager for their own brand of vengeance, Harris begins to suspect a darker truth: Maybe what he remembers about the war isn’t what happened at all…

Review

This is most definitely the kind of book that needs a ‘be careful what you say review’ – don’t want to give anything away.  Saying that I’m not sure I could do the truth of the plot real justice even if I did.

Harris is notorious for being a warrior, for changing the course of a volatile war. Now he is on a mission that can only be considered impossible, but that’s why he is the man for the job. The only problem is he isn’t quite sure whether he is the man he thinks he is. 

The information he is given seems to jar an instinct, a subconscious thought process – a resurfacing of memories perhaps. The problem is that they don’t gel with what he is being told in the moment, so what to do? Go with the information you think is correct or with the information that is trying to reach the surface. Who can you trust when your inner self doubts motives and memories, and more importantly when the people around you might not be who they seem to be.

This starts with an awakening and goes full throttle till the very last page. Of course, after that ending the real question is whether readers will get another taste of the world inhibited by survivors, deceivers and those willing to use anyone to get what they want – oh, and let’s not forget the others.

It’s a riveting sci-fi and speculative read – the author definitely deserves a seat at the table with the big guns.

Buy Redspace Rising at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: ‎Flame Tree Press pub date 13 Sept. 2022. Buy at Amazon com. 

#BlogTour Psychopaths Anonymous by Will Carver

It’s an absolute pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Psychopaths Anonymous by Will Carver. It’s a dark read and a cracking one.

About the Author

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series. He spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his  sporting career took off. He turned down a professional rugby contract to study theatre and television at King Alfred’s, Winchester, where he set up a successful theatre company. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his two children. Will’s latest title published by Orenda Books,

The Beresford was published in July. His previous title Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize, while Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Good Samaritans was book of the year in Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Express, and hit number one on the ebook charts. Follow @will_carver on Twitter

About the book

When AA meetings make her want to drink more, alcoholic murderess Maeve sets up a group for psychopaths. Maeve has everything. A high-powered job, a beautiful home, a string of uncomplicated one-night encounters. She’s also an addict: a functioning alcoholic with a dependence on sex and an insatiable appetite for killing men.

When she can’t find a support group to share her obsession, she creates her own. And Psychopaths Anonymous is born. Friends of Maeve.

Now in a serious relationship, Maeve wants to keep the group a secret. But not everyone in the group adheres to the rules, and when a reckless member raises suspicions with the police, Maeve’s drinking spirals out of control. She needs to stop killing. She needs to close the group. But Maeve can’t seem to quit the things that are bad for her, including her new man…

Review

What’s not to enjoy about the refreshing honesty with which Maeve goes about her daily life. The automatic and expected boxes are ticked to keep up appearances, but what happens when the small moments of truth and pleasure threaten to interfere with the way she runs her life. Can she sustain any kind of long-term relationship or friendship without being swallowed up by the darkness she likes to cater to.

I think I enjoyed this book for all the wrong reasons. At the top of that list is the fact the author peels back the layers of the shallow exteriors and presents a very real reality. In fact I wonder what would or will happen if psychopathic or sociopathic traits become an acceptable part of society? 

Next on the list, and I have mentioned this in a review of a book written by a recovering alcoholic who swallowed the scheme whole and shouted it out to the world, is the way Carver takes AA to task. It doesn’t work, and the statistics are very interesting. It divides the addicted into categories, some of which are set-up to fail like some self-fulfilling prophecy. Not because of the addiction per se, but because of the way it is infused with a cult like dependency on a reverence to religion and God. 

Clearly only the door reading you must accept God and faith into your heart or fail automatically, means everyone who steps through another door is on a fast path to failure. It also means blame and guilt for loss of sobriety has an automatic perpetrator, as opposed to having personal accountability or looking at the cause and not the symptom.

And the third point is the logistical aspect of certain victimology, which should probably raise alarm bells about the writer, if I were so inclined, but I’m not. (My next FoM meeting is coming Wednesday at six pm – just saying.) 

If Friends of Maeve groups start to pop up everywhere we all know whose door to knock on, right? Talk about giving people ideas and some direction in their lives. Trust Carver to create the kind of book that people will probably either feel uncomfortable about or not admit to liking it for being a bit more than a crime read. I loved it. It’s deliciously dark. It lacks any kind of societal norm or boundary. Most importantly it speaks softly to the dark side – they might not acknowledge it, but they are listening. It’s a superb read.

Buy Psychopaths Anonymous at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher ‏: ‎Orenda Books pub date 25 Nov. 2021. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Orendabooks.

#BlogTour We Are Animals by Tim Ewins

Today it’s my turn on the BlogTour We Are Animals by Tim Ewins.About the Author

Tim Ewins has enjoyed an eight-year stand-up career alongside his accidental career in finance.

He has previously written for DNA Mumbai, had two short stories highly commended and published in Michael Terence Short Story Anthologies, and enjoyed a very brief acting stint (he’s in the film Bronson, somewhere in the background).

He lives with his wife, son and dog in Bristol. We Are Animals is his first novel.

Follow @EwinsTim  and @EyeAndLightning on Twitter, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on Instagram and as @quickbooksummaries, Visit tim-ewins.com, Buy We Are Animals

About the book

A cow looks out to sea, dreaming of a life that involves grass.

Jan is also looking out to sea. He’s in Goa, dreaming of the passport-thief who stole his heart (and, indeed, his passport) forty-six years ago. Back then, fate kept bringing them together, but lately it seems to have given up.

Jan has not. In his long search he has accidentally held a whole town at imaginary gunpoint in Soviet Russia, stalked the proprietors of an international illegal lamp-trafficking scam and done his very best to avoid any kind of work involving the packing of fish. Now he thinks if he just waits, if he just does nothing at all, maybe fate will find it easier to reunite them.

His story spans fifty-four years, ten countries, two imperfect criminals (and one rather perfect one), twenty-two different animals and an annoying teenager who just…

Will…Not…Leave.

But maybe an annoying teenager is exactly what Jan needs to help him find the missing thief?

Featuring a menagerie of creatures, each with its own story to tell, We Are Animals is a quirky, heart-warming tale of lost love, unlikely friendships and the certainty of fate (or lack thereof).

For the first time in her life the cow noticed the sun setting, and it was glorious.

Review

I’m not sure I will ever be able to look at a ‘vest’ again without thinking about the life philosophy of vests in relation to non-vests and the world in general. It’s the kind of thing you are aware of at a subliminal level. You take it in and think nothing more about it – like so many other things.

It’s via the vest that Jan and Shakey make the first connection that leads to a long conversation. Jan reminisces about his lost love. The way his life has intersected with hers at different moments. It not always being the right place or the right time.

What is more important in the grand scheme of things is the way Jan perceives his own impact on the people around him and the world. Like many of us, who walk around in invisible bubbles of our own creation, he believes he walks and has always walked the world without leaving an imprint.

The story shows how his interactions with certain people have indeed left an impression, which is true of everyone. Nobody leaves no imprint at all – everyone influences and has an impact on someone else. Those small moments that mean nothing to many and something to the living beings going through it.

It’s not easy to squeeze this into a specific genre, perhaps because it is on the rim of more than one. It’s speculative, spiritual and very much a contemporary read.

This is very much a story that asks the reader to read between the lines, to make conscious and subconscious connections. Ewins uses the animals to draw parallels, and in a way that in itself is an example of the microcosms we tend to ignore, because of our self-titled and established superiority.

Buy We Are Animals at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Lightning Books; pub date 2 Mar. 2020. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Eye-books.com.