Sanity Test by K.E. Adamus and Fate's Last Melody by Vanessa Smith

 

Sanity Test by K.E. Adamus 

This review is a summary. The main review is on LitPick.

Sanity Test is a short but very disturbing look at two very troubled, conflicted, and potentially delusional men

This is a series of emails between Hubert Kawka and Wlodzimierz Pawski. Their emails reveal a great deal about their characters and perspectives through the emails. 

It appears that Kawka is a mentally ill patient in a psychiatric hospital and Pawski is his primary carer, but as the emails continue they become more frantic and questionable. The reader starts to wonder who is sane and who isn’t and who exactly these characters are in relation to each other.

Kawka straddles between childlike impulsivity and frightening sociopathic behavior. Through his emails, he describes a series of dramatic means to get Pawski's attention. He harbors an unhealthy fixation to an unhealthy obsessive degree and is gaslighting the other man. 

However, Pawski’s emails also raise concern. He is more emotional and threatening from the initial emails. This is definitely a potential sign that things are not what they seem and adds to the overall uncertainty that we can’t trust either of these men.

As Pawski becomes more unstable, Kawka becomes more reasonable which leaves the reader with questions about who is real, who is fictional, who is sane, who is insane, and who we can trust. The book gives us no real answers and leaves the reader to make their own conclusions to understand this strange and disturbing duo, 

Fate's Last Melody by Vanessa Smith 

This review is a summary. The main review is on LitPick.

Fate's Last Melody has a strong sense of setting and tone by depicting Hell with all of its overall darkness, graphic violence, scares, and ominous energy coming out from every corner. There is a sense of abandonment, hopelessness, and desolation that exists primarily throughout the book. 

Melody is a woman who is abducted during a night on the town with some friends and a potential boyfriend. Her abductor is not a human psychopath. He is a demon named Nyx who takes her to Hell, where she learns that she is the daughter of one of the Fates from Greek Mythology. Melody has to find her way through Hell and learn how to use her inherited powers of seeing and changing other's Destinies before she meets The King of Hell who has his own agenda involving Melody. 

Melody’s first view of Hell is a dark desolate place shrouded in shadows. The descriptions aggravate the senses and the landscape shapes itself to torture those suffering. Needless to say, it's not a pleasant experience.

Smith makes her version of Hell a composite of different mythologies most notably Abrahamic religions and Hellenic Mythology. Hell is led by The King of Hell who is so vaguely described that he could be either Lucifer or Hades, so it could go either way. The Judeo-Christian influence is shown primarily through the 7 Deadly Sins while the Greco-Roman aspects are revealed mostly through the presence of the Fates and the Titans.

There is an overall feeling of helplessness and abandonment until the end when Melody and other characters are inspired to fight against The King of Hell. But there are some potential questions about the actions that were taken to do this which suggests that Hell might end up with another dictator, one who will also torture others for eternity, inflict pain, and control others.

Demons Also Dream: Summoned (Deadly Sins Book 1) by Ava Lock; Meta Dark Fantasy/Horror is Also an Effective How To Writer’s Guide

 Demons Also Dream: Summoned (Deadly Sins Book 1) by Ava Lock; Meta Dark Fantasy/Horror is Also an Effective How To Writer’s Guide

By Julie Sara Porter

Spoilers: Ava Lock’s Demons Also Dream: Summoned is not the first time that I have reviewed a How to Writer’s Guide disguised as a novel. That honor would go to D-L Nelson’s Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel which features author Nelson’s Historical Fiction novel about a British soldier during the Revolutionary War while giving us the process in which she created, researched, wrote, and edited said novel. Technically, Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series flirts with that concept as well, especially in the books, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays Are Missing when Thursday’s adventures are put in book form and she has to contend with an even more fictionalized version of herself. Jen Finelli's Becoming Hero gives us a graphic novel in which characters argue with each other and the authors about the directions in which the graphic novel is going. 

But Lock’s book Demons Also Dream, takes that step even further. She wrote an effective sharp witty satirical Fantasy but also offers advice how a Dark Fantasy novel should or shouldn’t be written by having the protagonists talk and argue about it during the action. 

Our Literary Deadpools are Jocelyn B. “Joss” Wild, best selling Horror and Fantasy author, and Azazel, AKA Fury, a demonic genie, former lover of Lucifer, and Joss’s muse. Joss shares a psychic connection with Fury and Hell’s denizens so she can see what’s going on down there and this in turn gives her inspiration for her works. Joss however wants to write her final Fury novel and move onto other works. This does not sit well with her favorite subject as Fury questions Joss’ novel and what this untimely end would mean. While this is going on, Fury bids to collect a bounty on Roger Ford Garrison, the escaped soul of a news anchor who in life kidnapped, tortured, and murdered members of the LGBT+ community. Joss encounters April S. Showers, a fan and aspiring author who is not exactly the picture of perfect sanity. 

Demons Also Dream is a Hell of a fun time, particularly because of its two leads. Joss is a cerebral sardonic character who probably would have preferred to experience Hell, demons, psychopaths, and psychic energy through the pages of the books that she writes. She would rather be an author of best selling novels and go to the bar to cruise for an attractive woman to sleep with. What she gets instead is Fury, an aggressive sexually charged denizen of Hell who lives up to her name. She reacts with passion and fury inspiring Joss with her experiences and her energy. It's a difficult life one of demonic encounters , kidnappings, torture, and frightening psychic visions but Joss endures it, reports on it, and even makes money off of it. The two bounce off each other really well in these insane situations in which they find themselves. 

The book is ripe with deliciously juicy bits that add to the overall tone of the story. Lucifer is described as looking and sounding like George Clooney. Roger works for, what else, Fox News. Hell is less a place of torture than a place of ineffective bureaucracy. When April holds Joss captive she submits her to the worst torture imagined: she makes her read her unfinished sappy Princess Fantasy novel! This book is a hilarious and savage delight.

The best parts are the meta commentary which reveals that this is a smart novel about how to write a Dark Fantasy novel. Characters call attention to various plot points that happen particularly Fury. It's one thing to kill off a lead character as Joss was planning to do in her novel. But when said lead character sits up and argues with you about it is something else entirely. It's particularly good when in the end Joss changes the name of her intended book from Demons Also Die to Demons Also Dream implying that the book that we just read is the one that she wrote. It makes one wonder how Lock’s actual creative process went in putting together her book.

The most brilliant and savage commentary is when Joss reads April's manuscript which, let's just say, makes the Vogons from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Mentor’s William Lansing look like misunderstood literary geniuses. Rather than outright attack the banal work, Joss gives her captor smart advice. She tells her to make her Mary Sue protagonist more real by giving her flaws. Put her into a conflict that raises the stakes and changes her outlook. Happy endings are fine but make them well earned by having her struggle. This is all good advice that any author needs to hear and the fact that it is written inside a novel that plays with and illustrates these conversations is really telling

 Demons Also Dream: Summoned is an amazing and effective Master Class on writing a novel that is Trojan Horse disguised as a fun and exciting novel.

New Book Alert: Midlife Shadows (Paraval Book 3) by Kate Swansea; Final Elise Clair Fantasy is Her Darkest Adventure Yet

 

New Book Alert: Midlife Shadows (Paraval Book 3) by Kate Swansea; Final Elise Clair Fantasy is Her Darkest Adventure Yet

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Here we come to more than likely the final book in Kate Swansea's Paraval Series. We will soon bid adieu to Elise Clair, Theo Stallard, and the other residents of Black Lake Falls, Washington. Swansea has clearly saved the darkest book for last. While Midlife Alchemy is the best book in the series, Midlife Shadows has a dark ominous energy and some unforgettable moments that prove that the Paraval Series definitely has gone out with a bang.

In the previous book, Midlife Incantations, Elise, Dentist and Town Warden, discovered the powerful Book of Mairel, a spell book which includes a spell to close the paraval to Inferium forever and prevent the nasty umbra from entering the world above ever again. The only problem with the spell is that it must be cast by an alchemist from inside Inferium. So, Elise must take a trip inside this book's answer to Hell and they have to do it in three weeks,by the next new moon, or it will be difficult to go through Inferium when it is pitch black. 

Elise is going but she's not going alone. She's going with Theo, her boyfriend, Nina and Jerome, their vampire friends, and Professor Marly Curtis, a scholarly expert on Inferium and Theo's ex-girlfriend. 

Most of the book is set in Inferium which is a marked contrast with Black Lake Falls. It's similar to the Angela Hardwick Science Fiction Mysteries by Russ Colchamiro. In two books, Crackle and Fire and Fractured Lives, we are taken to Eternity, the part of the Universe in which its residents are responsible for the design, creation, and maintenance of the Universe. It's a beautiful, wonderful place with many possibilities and great characters to explore. Then another book, Hot Ash, takes the Reader to the Arcasia System, a system filled with smog, pollution, slavery, and dictators. The Arcasia System is the Hell to Eternity's Heaven.

That is what is at play here in the Paraval Series. Everything that Black Lake Falls is, Inferium is its opposite and its shadow. Inferium is the Hell to Black Lake Falls' Heaven. The buildings and houses are structured the same way they are in Black Lake. But instead of the charming Old World European style, they are gray, dingy, and mostly abandoned. Instead of filled with friendly, eccentric, helpful locals, the houses are abandoned and desolate. Instead of a population of colorful and idiosyncratic witches, alchemists, vampires, and mythological creatures, Inferium is filled with umbra and other creatures deprived of their individuality and attacking others in the shadows like vicious animals at prey. Spending most of the time in Inferium makes the characters and the Reader long for the cozy comforts of Black Lake Falls, a town that for three books they have grown to love.

The Inferium setting puts quite a number on the characters the longer that they stay there. In this land of eternal night, the screams of dark creatures can be heard from beyond. Glowing eyes could peer out from anywhere. Sometimes one's own fears and insecurities can attract the umbra. The umbra attacks themselves are quite bloody, bloodier than they are up above since the protagonists are on their turf. Not to mention with the landscape always staying the same, it's hard to find your way through these dark lands. It's enough to drive anyone insane. One would have to be really brave, really crazy, or really dead to be there. 

 One character, Idris, acts as a guide through Inferium. He is deceased but has yet to become an umbra. He helps the gang while struggling to hold onto his integrity, compassion, memories, all the things that once made him alive. It's a painful and disturbing transformation that could engulf our heroes. Also Elise and the others are in danger of becoming umbra as well, the longer that they stay in Inferium. Idris' transformation is a preview of potential coming attractions for the others.

The landscape already changes the characters mentally and emotionally as well as physically. Their emotions are heightened and their fears and insecurities are more apparent. Elise becomes more doubtful of her alchemist abilities and suspicious of Marley's presence and her involvement in Theo's life. Theo becomes protective of the others to the point that he throws himself in danger and makes dangerous decisions. Jerome disappears for a time and questions about his loyalty are raised. Nina gives into her bloodlust and becomes terrifying to her non-vampire friends.

The one who is extremely difficult to figure out is Marly. Our first encounter with her is before they make the trip and she already acts very snobbish and arrogant by treating the locals like underlings. She demonstrates quite a bit of knowledge of Inferium through her studies but she definitely does not endear herself to Elise when she recommends that Elise remain home (even though the spell has to be performed by an alchemist and Elise is the only one who can read it in the Book of Mairel). Since this is our first impression of Marly, it's not a good one.

In Inferium, Marly gets worse. She makes some bad decisions that puts herself and the others in danger. Her research is sometimes flawed or works on paper but not in practice. She also comes on to Theo making Elise jealous. Considering Elise's marriage ended because of her ex husband's infidelity, this is a sore point with her.

While more than likely Inferium is bringing out Marly's worst qualities, we barely knew her before her entrance into Inferium and in those few chapters, her character doesn't amount to much. Marly is the one weak spot in an otherwise great book. She shows some flashes of insight and intelligence but she is more of a plot device to give some exposition on Inferium and provide Theo some emotional baggage than an interesting character. 

The final confrontation is filled with suspense and frightening chills as the characters gather the ingredients to make the spells and fight the umbra while avoiding being turned into them. The appearance of the Dark Commander is worth the wait when in the previous volumes, he was a voice in someone's head. He is powerful, terrifying, and his identity is a brilliant twist. It is he who is the final test for Elise and her friends to pass before they can cast the spell.

Midlife Shadows is a fine ending to a great series that captures the imagination and brings out the best in its characters.

New Book Alert: The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel by K.T. Rose; An Engaging Haunted Hotel Journey Through Hell And Back

 

New Book Alert: The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel by K.T. Rose; An Engaging Haunted Hotel Journey Through Hell And Back

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: The second dark fantasy horror book that I am reading to scare up the Holidays is The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel by K.T. Rose. It also continues another trend that has been running through the blog this year: a literal trip through Heaven or Hell. This time, it's the latter. 

The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel is an engaging trip through Hell via a haunted hotel which opens up the guest and staff's guilty secrets forcing them to confront those secrets for all eternity.

Like all haunted buildings, the Gallagher Hotel has an interesting backstory to go with the current ghostly occupants. In 1921, hotelier Trudy Mona Lisa Gallagher is condemned to death for arson, destruction of property, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder. Her business connections and illegal dealings helped put the town of Holloway, Michigan on the map and now the town has hypocritically turned against her. Trudy decides to make her disappointment known in a very public and explosive manner. She burns the hotel down and curses the town before succumbing to the executioner's noose.

Over 90 years later, the Gallagher Hotel is under new management. Brenda Scott, modern businesswoman, wants to rebuild the Gallagher and turn it into a haven for ghost hunters and tourist trap for the morbidly curious. She hires a staff and invites a select group of guinea pigs uh I mean VIP guests to experience the place in all of its hellacious glory.

The guests are the usual peculiar bunch you find in these locked room mysteries/horror stories: the war vet with PTSD, the heiress with a naughty past, the flirtatious doctor with broken hearts behind him, and the staff member who mysteriously knows every nook and cranny of this place, even more so than the owner. Everyone of these characters have something to hide that is forced open in the most gruesome and unforgettable ways.

The two protagonists in the book are two helpless individuals sucked into this nightmare. Of course they carry a lot of emotional baggage that the demons and spirits dwelling in The Gallagher don't mind exploiting for their own needs.

Riley is a young woman hired as a server for this event. She is very spiritual despite or because of a troubled past in which her son died as a result of her negligence. Riley has been unable to fully recover from his death but still hopes her belief in God will pull her through.

Chris is a foil for Riley as well as co-protagonist. He comes from a family of professional thieves who want him to accept the invitation solely to clean the place out of whatever valuables he can find. Like Riley, he too has a tragic death behind him, one that has earned him the ire of his very powerful and very dangerous family. (This robbery is meant to be his last chance). Riley and Chris are already haunted tortured people, so they are like catnip to the ghouls that are looking for a few good mortals to torture and mess with.

There are some pretty graphic passages that reveal the characters' guilty secrets in very violent means. One features a doctor being haunted not only by what remains of a patient that died on his table but an obsessive nurse with plenty of sharp medical instruments.

Another features a veteran whose war ghosts come to life literally.

There are some particularly chilling passages involving Riley, Chris, and Brenda but in the name of plot revelations will be unmentioned. However, they are pretty fascinating and clever twists which causes the Reader to rethink the characters and where they really fall in the good vs. evil spectrum. 

The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel is not the type of setting that one would want to check into in real life, but it is certainly one Hell of a vacation.