The Others (Book 1 in the Council Trilogy) by Evette Davis; Blue by Charles Keatts; The Blind Smith (Book 1 in the Forge Trilogy in The Shadow Guardian Series) by G. Russell Gaynor; Eveningstar: Awakening by Samantha Curl
The Others (Book 1 in The Council Trilogy) by Evette Davis The entire review can be found on LitPick.
Evette Davis’ The Others is an intriguing concept that is illustrated with intrinsic copious details that fully explores it.
Political consultant Olivia Shepherd is suffering from a professional crisis when she encounters Elsa, a spirit called a Time Walker. Elsa informs her that her rival, Stoner Halbert has made a deal with a demon and is using that influence to grab power. As if that's not enough there is a hidden society called The Others: vampires, fairies, witches, ghosts, and other creatures. They live alongside our own and affect the human world around them. Olivia has some untapped abilities and must use them and her newfound friendships within the Others community to make some important political changes of their own, ones that will benefit humans and Otherkind not dominate it as Halbert wants to do.
The Others Society is captured brilliantly because it seems so much like the normal 21st century human society. The Others live in houses, have regular jobs, and go about their daily lives.
Once she is introduced to the concept, Olivia realizes that she is surrounded by The Others. Her best friend Lily, a teacher, is a fairy. William, a musician whom Olivia begins a relationship with, is a vampire. Gabriel, a multi billionaire who mentors Olivia, is a witch and so on.
There are also some other interesting facets to the plot. William and Olivia begin a tentative romance that is conflicted by differing views but a strong emotional and physical connection.
The political landscape is adequately explored and has some very timely relevance in an already eventful Presidential election year.
The Others takes a fascinating concept and lets the imagination run wild with it.
Blue by Charles Keatts
Blue by Charles Keatts is not an easy book to read. It's confusing, rambling, and disjointed, but it is also honest, introspective, and real. It shows the mental decline of a creative artist who is losing himself to addiction, depression, disconnection, and the despair felt by the people around him.
The Narrator mostly ruminates on his struggles and those of the people around him. They are highly artistic and highly troubled. There's Robert, a music critic, who falls into addiction and various love affairs. His painter friend, Ann soothes herself with heroin. The Narrator, a novelist and poet, has flashbacks of his unhappy youth and is overcome with depression, manic thoughts, and alcoholism. Other names and situations float through the book and disappear quickly as the Narrator’s sanity spirals.
This book is not an easy read. The narrative is confusing, repetitive, jumps from one point of view to another, and rambles on with little to no point. At times it comes across as boring. It tries for a stream of consciousness narration ala James Joyce or Virginia Woolf and sometimes it works but often it doesn't.
Blue works by capturing the slipping sanity of a brilliant but unraveling mind. The Narrator can't keep his thoughts together so it shows in the chapters. He repeats himself, tangles his thoughts, forgets names and places. Even his descriptions of Robert and Ann are causes for concern because The Narrator purposely leaves information out. It is unclear who Robert and Ann even are in his life. Are they friends of his? Is he Robert? Are they parts of his psyche? Fictional characters whose conflicts bleed into his own? We don't know and it is left to interpretation.
At times however, the narration is too complex and pretentious for its own good.
Blue contrasts with another recent book, blue: season by Chris Lombardi which also captures a stream of consciousness narration but does it better than Blue. blue: season is also narrated by a character who is a genius but has a fractured mind but this is a book with a character and plot. It doesn't lose focus so it can tell a good story along with a smart introspective narrative. We care about the characters and want to explore this strange journey into one woman's struggle with mental illness and traumatic memories of her past.
Blue on the other hand is more concerned with showing off the narration than putting it together in a book. It's hard to understand who the Narrator is or who the other characters are partly because of the limited perspective. We only see everyone through the Narrator's eyes. They all live miserable lives and that's it. The bleakness overpowers and since The Narrator jumps around, we can't really know the characters beyond mere sketches. The misery just piles on them without any full understanding of who they are as people or a reason why we should care about them when they reach rock bottom.
Blue is hard to comprehend and sometimes hard to care about, but it is an introspective and honest book about a brilliant mind that is falling apart. As those around him suffer from their own problems, he has to deal with his own heartaches and disappointments. The Narrator lives inside his own head and finds solace in his writing. If in fact, Robert and Ann are fictional characters that he created, he is perhaps using their addictions and psychological problems to confront or even avoid his own.
As his life and the other's collapse, The Narrator who once found solace in his own mind can no longer trust it. He completely retreats into the fragmented remains in his mind as they slip away into nothingness.
The Blind Smith (Book 1 in the Forge Trilogy in The Shadow Guardian Series) by G. Russell Gaynor
Note: This book was not selected because of current events. This schedule was made beforehand. Use caution when reading this review.
Even though G. Russell Gaynor’s The Blind Smith is 112 pages, it is a tightly wound and taut thriller about betrayal, revenge, and using one's own abilities and power to get that revenge.
An assassin blinds teen tech billionaire John J.J. Moore and kills members of his security team. He is taken in by Bob, a mysterious figure who teaches the young man how to be an assassin. Within a few years, J.J. excels in his training and recruits some new assassins to help him plan his revenge on the people who attacked him and killed his friends.
The opening chapter begins with a violent attack and there are some other subsequent action oriented chapters. However, the emphasis in this book is on gathering intelligence and planning strategies. Fighting harder takes a backseat to fighting smarter.
J.J. is particularly skilled in the whole “fighting smarter” mindset. He fits the description of someone who “plays 3D chess while his opponents play checkers.” In the beginning of the book, he is taught to use his other senses to become a formidable fighter ala Daredevil.
This style not only sharpens his physical strength but his mental strength too. He almost obtains a second sight and awareness into his allies and opponents's thoughts and actions.
With J.J.’s physical strength and analytical prowess, he is more than formidable against his enemies. Half way through the book only a few years into his training, he is already recruiting and leading his own groups. He picks into his protegee’s desires for revenge and anger at being wronged.
He helps his new recruits channel their anger into being a fighting team that makes up for the deficiencies that he lacks. They will be his force for revenge over the enemies who attacked him and the traitors that allowed it.
The Blind Smith is a brilliant game between a genius who is conditioned to fight and those who he is conditioned to fight against.
Eveningstar: Awakening by Samantha Curl
Samantha Curl’s first Eveningstar novel, Awakening, skillfully tells three separate stories with the same characters. Curl then entwines them into one wide reaching expansive Epic High Fantasy that passes through three universes.
Alethia Eveningstar is the daughter of Marcus, the God of War and Queen of the Stars and is destined to defeat Kakaron, God of Chaos before she can inherit her father's title. Kakaron seduces and betrays Alethia before making an escape. The Goddess-to-Be has to live ten or eleven lives encountering and fighting Kakaron before their final battle. Most of the book is set during two of those lives: Our Realm, where she is a high school girl in modern times discovering magic powers while dealing with new friendships, romance, and studies and the Other Realm, a Medieval like forest where her powers manifest as she is involved in a love triangle between her betrothed and a handsome and familiar stranger.
For a short novel of 178 pages, a lot is accomplished in an impressive manner. Curl devotes enough time to all three universes to give us ideas of the plots, settings, and characters and how they overlap and interact with each other.
With time and interdimensional travel and the decision to set alternating chapters into different worlds, Awakening can be a very difficult book to follow. But thankfully many plot points parallel each other enough so if it already happened in one universe, the Reader will expect it to happen in another.
The key is to make each universe unique from the others and Curl does this superlatively. We know that Alethia and Kakaron are destined to encounter each other in each universe.
There are also friends, relatives, authority figures, and romantic rivals that carry over in amusing ways. It gets to the point where the Reader goes “Okay there's this character in Our Realm. She should appear in the Outer Realm right about..now.” It becomes an interesting game to see how quickly the characters' doppelgangers appear and in what way plots shift in the various worlds.
There are some interesting twists to keep Readers from expecting or assuming too much. One character strangely can jump from universe to universe so instead of being a reincarnated soul or a double, he's the same person in all three worlds and is able to teach Our World Alethia this ability so she can see what her Other Realm counterpart can. The circumstances of how Alethia and Kakaron meet, what forms they take, who seduced who, and how they discover the truth are different each time. Different enough that in one universe, Kakaron’s reveal is a genuine surprise. It keeps the momentum going in this strange novel.
Eveningstar: Awakening has a lot of fun playing with the laws of time and space and taking the Reader along with it.
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