The Book of M by Peng Shepherd - Out in June...

Mahnaz Ahmadi
Nax dreamed often about the night it all began. There was just so much joy, so much wonder. No one knew then what the shadowlessness would lead to. Even when she dreamed about it now that she'd seen what it all became, the dream still never turned into a nightmare. She didn't know what that meant. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all.

~~~

It's not often that I truly find little to like about a book. This is supposedly an apocalyptic fantasy. I found little that showed it to be that... Yes, it is definitely fantasy--the concept was interesting, but quite unbelievable...

In essence, the premise is that our memories are retained in our shadows. Thus if you lose your shadow, you will begin to forget. In a real world where Alzheimer's is growing, this "possible reason" seemed to be farcical...

For one, the reason behind the concept was never given, nor did it result in the total loss of the world's people... There was no reason given to those who kept their shadows and those who lost them. 

Nor was the division based on any tangible reason that some turned bad, evil, while others worked to help as many people as possible, shadowless or not.

What there was was a division based upon the power that some of those who had lost their shadows had attained...

And the foolish "transcenders" who looked to these powerful people and bowed down to them, while attacking those who did not follow them... This was the only hypothesis that perhaps had any semblance to today's world...if you thought about it.

So, those few that remained with a shadow either were going to be forced into transcendence or killed...or be taken by the "reds" who were called that because everybody painted their bodies red. Really?

There were too many inconsistencies also, conceptually in the beginning, it was suggested that if an individual "forgot" say, their home, that it would disappear... Later in the book, however, this did not hold true in some cases. The book also hones in on several medical doctors...while the rest of the world is ignored in the story...Readers wonder if there are shadowed people everywhere, or just the few that are the main characters in the story.

While the writing and story flow was excellent, I often considered stopping and did skip parts that seemed to be overworked. The only part of the book I enjoyed was the characters. The book is divided into the story from the perspective of the various main characters and it is only their personal stories that carried the book for me. On the other hand, the lead-in suspense of the supposed savior took a storied fable to create that "savior." Who...really...wasn't...

On the other hand, the twist at the end of the book surely was not a welcome one for those who were left hanging. If this was done to elicit interest in a sequel, it didn't for me.

Maybe it didn't mean anything at all... One of the characters mused that in the book... I must admit I concurred...This is one book that held nothing for me except a new, fantastical concept of an age-old hypothesis. I will soon forget it...

You can decide on this one, but I don't recommend it... Do check out other reviews...

GABixlerReviews

Earth's End Trilogy by Sandy Nathan - Book 2!

I had already read the first book, The Angel and the Brown-Eyed Boy, when I was able to pick up the entire Earth's End Trilogy in one book... I'll be reviewing the next two books separately rather than as just one book... But before you start today, I recommend you read my review of the first book to briefly begin to know the characters that will become very important in the next two books...namely, Jeremy and Eliana... 

Because it had been quite some time since I'd read the first book, the second one caught me off guard... Earth's End had already occurred! Very few survived. This is their nearly disastrous story. Interestingly, Nathan chose to throw readers directly into earth's end and then in the third book comes back to provide the story of how the preparation for the disaster had come about. 

Readers are immediately, therefore, thrown into the horror of Earth's Ending...

Lady Grace and the War

for a New World:Earth’s End 2 

Sandy Nathan

“Come on, Ellie! They’ll let us go this time.” Jeremy dashed out of the tiny place where he and Ellie lived. His waist-length dreadlocks flopped behind him and his bare feet slapped the smooth surface of the hallway. The door’s membrane tried to catch Eliana, but she slipped through. His wife was as agile and beautiful as the day they’d met. He carried two bags of survival gear that he’d created from intergalactic junk. 

The goldies had swept the heavens to get him raw materials for construction projects. Before they’d given him something to do, Jeremy’s boredom-induced screaming fits had traumatized the planet. He and Ellie ran through a translucent passage in the planet’s depths, bells booming all around them. Chimes always sounded on the planet, carrying messages. These bells were alarms. 

Horrified faces wailed in the walls, pointing at them with luminous fingers. They were the souls of the departed elders and formed the elastic, semi-transparent substance of the golden planet. The whole world was some shade of amber— ranging from glowing yellow to almost black. Lights shone from the planet’s depths, raking arcs like searchlights and then fading. 

Jeremy galloped past Belarian’s grand, bejeweled palace. “Bitch,” he shouted and kept running. Belarian, the “mother” Eliana had missed so much when she was on Earth, was really her owner. She had tormented Jeremy. He made a quick turn, going up another corridor. Jeremy thought living in their adopted home was like being inside someone’s guts. Undulating, ribbed tubes ran everywhere. The tunnels moved and shifted. But Jeremy knew where he was. They were on a major thoroughfare that didn’t change. “Come on, guys! It’s on!” Jeremy shouted as they ran past James and Mel’s “place...”

That’s all they had: places. No street names, no addresses, nothing but places. The natives didn’t need anything more than knowledge of a place’s existence to find it, but finding anything was hard for the humans. “Come on, we’ve got to go!” Jeremy yelled to the guys. A glass-like amber sheet locked Mel and James into their space. Mel kicked at it with the bottom of his foot. The wall retracted before he touched it. He and his partner, James, slipped through. They took off after Jeremy...

He held his hand up to the door and made various gestures, ending by flipping it off. “We know you’re in there. What you’re doing is illegal. You brought us here under false pretenses...”

He choked out his message to the elders. “We thought you had a free society. We thought we would be equal citizens. We didn’t know you brought us here to experiment on!

“Let us in! You know what I’m saying is true!” He didn’t feel afraid. The elders had confined or tranquilized him after his previous outbursts, but they’d never hurt him. “We can’t stay here any more!” 

You can survive? 

“With the packs, yes.” 

We will send you now. We will send the others later, and your bags. 

Jeremy found himself sitting in the middle of a wide grassy field. He looked around, amazed. Brilliant blue sky. Trees bordering a meadow. Something else: the crash of surf. He was on Earth! He took a deep breath. Good old air. The place looked gorgeous. The trees were huge. Obviously the danger from radiation had been over for centuries.

~~~

Eliana had been used by the residents of another planet to persuade people from Earth to escape to their planet before the end of the earth. Jeremy, as well as other scientists and intellectuals, were invited and had accepted, believing they would be free to pursue their lives there...

Jeremy and Eliana had fallen in love and had a child...It was taken away from them as soon as it was born--just like every other child that had been born to earth's former residents. They definitely had not received the expected welcome and freedom.

Jeremy, a brilliant young man who had been told of the upcoming nuclear destruction of earth had created underground bunkers all over the world to save as many people as could be saved. While he loved Eliana, he had almost gone mad without work on his adopted planet...and expressed his anger loudly until they started gathering materials from other planets to allow him to continue his research and preparation for moving back to earth...

And now, after gaining support from a small group who were willing to go back, he had demanded that the elders allow it... They sent only Jeremy... He was alone on, thankfully, an earth that was totally free of the environmental dangers that had been there... But...now what?

He’d been returned to Piermont Manor. He was Jeremy Bentham Piermont Edgarton, heir to all he saw. He was in the good ol’ USA, in the great state of Connecticut. They’d send the others and his stuff soon. Everything was A-OK.

Jeremy was emaciated and arrived naked. No clothes were used on the gold planet and Jeremy had figured the goldies had wanted them to look like them...or else the loss of weight had simply come from having to eat seeds and the tasteless golden glop for thousands of years...

Nothing was left of the estate, he could look out and see for miles, but he slowly began to figure out the location of the various buildings... He knew approximately where the shelter was and wondered how things had gone...was there anybody alive? Occupancy by the scientists and scholars that had been intended for this shelter had been prevented when the nuclear blasts had come so fast. It was the small town of estate workers who had moved into the shelter.  Everything had to move so fast that he'd named his Headman as the leader and, worrying about the occupants, he had thrown out a list of suggestions on how to survive... One of the main commands had been to not marry cousins... Also, no drinking or drugs... The suggestions had remained and became commands... The underground had split based upon those who had followed the commands and those who had not...

Thinking back was interrupted by the sound of wolves...

The wolves howled again, coming closer. That’s when the nerve block wore off. They weren’t sending Ellie or anything else. He’d been a pain in the ass on Ellie’s planet, so they spit him back. They’d sentenced him to death.

~~~

But Jeremy was not the type to give up hope, especially when he found her...was it a far-distant relative of Flossie who had lived on the plantation? Was she friendly?

The bitch stood up and yipped, motioning him to follow with her head. She had a rabbit stashed by the oak’s trunk and grabbed it as she trotted into the forest. He could barely keep up with her. Only the howling behind him kept him going. She led him deep into the forest, to a hill he’d never seen with a small clearing in front of it. Flossie took him to a hole in the hillside and disappeared inside. He looked at it, not knowing if he could fit. A howl from the forest behind had him clawing at the hole’s dirt sides. He made his way in, leaving some of his skin on the walls. Inside, Flossie fed her babies while having her own dinner. She ripped the rabbit’s guts open and devoured the contents. She made a handy job of it, also consuming one of the rabbit’s hind legs. The rest, she prodded to him with her nose. 

“Thankee, Flossie,” he said, attempting to speak the brogue of the old village.

~~~

Thankfully the hounddog had not turned feral, and even offered him part of the rabbit he'd caught...Jeremy was hungry... but it took some time until he began to eat the raw meat... and gain strength to move forward...

If you can think of any backwoods horror movie you may have seen combined with the totally high tech facilities built to last for thousands of years if necessary, you will begin to understand what Jeremy might run into when he discovers that a shelter occupant has been thrown out  through an escape hatch...to see if he lived... Fortunately, he was right near the cylinder when Sam was thrown out... Jeremy quickly pantomimed for him to pretend he couldn't breathe and start screaming... Sam obeyed!

And then there were two humans on the earth's surface...

This trilogy has already won many awards, but, hey, books never die...each new reader shares the story and falls into the setting... Nathan has created a brilliant trilogy unlike any that I've thus far read. It merges old country ways with such hi-tech fantasy that readers are amazed by the facility that had been created (mostly seen in the final book) which allowed survival for thousands of years... If you love scifi and fantasy, don't pass up this entire trilogy! Highly recommended!

GABixlerReviews

I used to be a princess. My parents were born in the hungry days of the Great Depression. They overcame the poverty of their youth by becoming extremely successful. I spent my time showing horses and water-skiing behind my dad’s obscenely overpowered boat. That life vanished when a drunk driver hit my father head-on in 1964, killing him. 

Not instantly, though. My dad's death was the stuff of horror movies and plunged my family into years of darkness. 

My old life disappeared. I lived at close to poverty level for a while. What happened in the following decades opened my eyes. I've seen and lived the over-privileged existence I describe in the Bloodsong Series. I've seen how it can warp those who are lost in it. I've seen how the power of money can mask mental illness and allow evil to ruin lives.

I know the mental and emotional landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, as it has come to be known. I know the physical geography just as well; I lived on the San Francisco Peninsula for fifty years. I made my home in the iconic cities and towns of Atherton, Woodside, Cupertino, and Palo Alto during that time. 

How did such a hothouse flower end up writing the rough and visceral fiction I do? It’s because of what happened in those dark years. 

My writing has a bite. My life has had a bite. Recovering from what happened to me has taken many years. And I have recovered. What was legitimately mine came back to me, along with the fruit of my own labor. If your life echoes mine, you might like to see how I healed; it’s in my books. 

My writing isn’t for everyone. I write about people getting better and the world working out, but it’s not always gentle and nice. A reviewer described one of my books as “equal parts horror, spiritual, romance, and action.” If that’s for you, you’re my reader. 

I consider what I write as falling primarily into the visionary fiction genre, which is about psychological maturation and making the world a better place. I have had huge spiritual experiences all my life, as well as gentler, ongoing inner guidance. Whatever is behind these experiences and this earthly life wants me to tell you my visions through my tales: my darkness and light.

Now for my “regular bio”: I’ve been in school a very long time and have two advanced degrees. I’ve had prestigious careers. My writing has won thirty national awards. I’m very happily married; my husband and I have been together forty years. I have three grown children and two grandchildren. My husband and I live on our California horse ranch and love it. We still ride the trails together, metaphorically and on our horses.

Liz Jensen's Novel Out This Month is Chilling Look at World Changes...

The Uninvited
(Out this Month)

By Liz Jensen

Read an Excerpt!

This is one of the most chilling books you may ever read--but also, one of the most engrossing. Forget about enjoying it! Not even as a horror novel. In fact, it might be the strangest apocalyptic story you may "not" be able to forget...

After all, we who live on this planet continue to do little to ensure our planet can continue to sustain the humans living here...So what if, in some way, all the children of the world (or another one?) decided to do something?

It started with a little girl who killed her grandmother... She was 7 when she put a nail gun to her neck and fired...

She knew what she was doing because when her father ran to try to stop her, she put the gun to his eye...

No, it was not an isolated case...

But if it had not been for other things happening at the same time, it might not have been noticed that there was a pandemic happening around the world.

In Taiwan a whistle blower had told about the corruption in his company. Phipps and Wexman was called in to investigate...

Hesketh Lock is the main character. I'd like to add a personal note here about this character...The author chose that the man had Asperger's Syndrome and then proceeded to create many weird things and/or dialogue based upon what an individual would be like. I think when this occurs that authors should include a disclaimer that they have created that image and does not necessarily represent an individual who has been diagnosed with A.S. Indeed I have a close relative who in no way resembles the character in this book, even though some of the characteristics might be "textbook..."

In any event, Hesketh is a genius, an anthropologist who knows most languages and or easily picks them up. He also is logical, and was trained by a gifted professor and then recommended to his present boss. It is Hesketh that interviews and begins to discover what had not been previously shared to police, et.al. Specifically, the whistle blower and others who also committed some type of sabotage against the company where they worked, shared that they were forced to do it--that children (or demons, or the dead, etc.) were really who was responsible. Unfortunately, each of those who had committed some type of sabotage were also dead...

While more and more reports of children attacking adults were confirmed at the same time company sabotages continued across the world, Hesketh is caught in his own personal nightmare. He had been in love with a woman who had cheated on him. She had a young boy who Hesketh loved as his own son and the child loved him as well. But then several things happened and Hesketh knew that he might also be part of those infected...

This is a strangely intense and compelling novel that follows the investigations being conducted and goes fairly deeply into potential causes.  For instance, one of the things that was realized was that the children and/or victims of those children craved salt... They were already calling their lives as the New World, where they hoarded food, ate bugs, worms or anything that could be shown not to be contaminated...

But while it's a well-written, relevant book, it is also hard to read without envisioning...the children... You decide!


GABixlerReviews

Liz Jensen is the author of seven previous novels, including Ark Baby, shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award, War Crimes for the Home, The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, and most recently, The Rapture. Her work has been published in more than twenty countries. Jensen lives in London.

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