The Best of the Best 2022: New Book Alert
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Now on with the review for the books published in 2022. Books in a series will be reviewed together if I read them all this year. Otherwise they will be individual entries.
20. Shadow of the Mole by Bob Van Laerhoven
Van Laerhoven's WWI historical novel tells of a doctor treating an amnesiac victim. He also reads the patient's book which tells of a strange story of a Frenchman's encounter with a Romany duo and a curse.
The story between the doctor and the patient is brilliant as it deals with obsession and wartime trauma. However, the highlight is the Mole's book. It is a creepy hallucinatory story about a man who desires fame and gets it in the worst way possible.
19. Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality Books 1-2: Overture for the Overawed and Certain in the Circumvention by Francessca Bella
Francessca Bella reveals her gift for poetic language and writing excellent female characters by introducing us to Calista Soleil, the Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality and Overseer of Port Sunshinescence. Calista has to travel to Earth when an omen foretells the planet's destruction. Then she has to return to Earth to find out what happened to people who were supposed to arrive in Port Sunshinescence.
Calista is a great protagonist. She has a heroic reputation and exhibits many heroic qualities like courage and selflessness. However, she can also be cold, demanding, and polarizing. In both books, Calista reveals that she must encounter her worst qualities and her own frailties so she can achieve true heroism.
18. The Paraclete by Bernard Leo Remakus, M.D.
A strong suspenseful murder mystery in which Father Paul Thiemelman and Sister Michelle Ezengal investigate the death of an altar boy.
The book opens up the secrets of the Catholic Church and the long term cover ups of sexual abuse within the church. There is a strong theme of guilt and innocence, particularly how justice is met when legal means are closed off.
17. The Monsoon Ghost Image (A Detective Maier Mysteries Book 3) by Tom Vater
Vater's latest and possibly final Detective Maier book takes the German detective to Thailand and a case that puts him right into the sex trade.
Maier's search involves encounters with several sinister people who walk against the law. We also peer into the circumstances that created them and why a life of lawlessness was the only life that they could choose.
The tensest chapters show Maier spending months in captivity and being tortured. The once kind devoted detective may disappear leaving a traumatized and hardened individual in his place.
16. Cursed Beauty: Stories of Strong Women by Valentina Tsoneva
Tsoneva captures 1980's Bulgaria in her anthology of women who have to live in a repressive regime that forces gender roles.
The women in Tsoneva's anthology are faced with unhappy marriages, sexual abuse, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and forced conformity. Each woman is faced with the choice to conform to these rigid expectations or to rebel against them and become their own person. These women are well written and capture the facets of the Soviet regime.
15. Born for the Game by Mike DeLucia
A brilliant novel about the first woman to play Major League baseball. Ryan Stone has been born, trained, and groomed to be a Major League champion.
Ryan's drive to break that all-male barrier is amazing as she uses her superb skills to prove herself and her intelligence to argue against those who stand in her way. However, her relationship with her handlers is where the real conflicts and devotion comes through.
14. Life Between Seconds by Douglas Weissman
This is a beautiful and surreal novel about Peter and Sofia, two people overcoming the deaths of family members.
There are moments of anguish and heartbreak as Peter recalls his late mother and Sofia harbors regrets over the death of her daughter. They develop a bond that transcends their grief. There are some touches of magical realism in the book that reflect the inner psyches of the characters.
13. Emma's Tapestry by Isobel Blackthorn
Mystery author, Isobel Blackthorn takes a personal look at her own family with this book. Her semi biographical novel is based on her great grandparents, particularly her great grandmother, Emma. Emma is abandoned by her husband and tries to start over with her children in the United States. Unfortunately, the U.S. is very xenophobic towards German immigrants after WWI.
Blackthorn takes a sharp, at times critical but understanding look at her great grandparents and how their actions affected the later generations. For Blackthorn, this book answered a lot of questions.
12. The Adventures of Ruby Pi Book 1&2 The Adventures of Ruby Pi and The Geometry Girls/ The Adventures of Ruby Pi And The Math Girls: by Tom Durwood
What Tom Durwood's Illustrated Colonials series was to history, his The Adventures of Ruby Pi Series is to mathematics. He takes a complex subject and creates an engaging YA series around it.
This one, Durwood tells several stories of various girls who use math processes like geometry, code breaking, statistical analysis, measurements, card counting, engineering, and others to shape and change the world. These are brilliant dedicated young women who would inspire anyone, particularly young female Readers, to study the STEM fields.
11. Psychonautic by Darren Frey
The first of two vampire books on this list. This is a dark fantasy romance in which Julian encounters Violet who entices him to visit her vampire family.
Julian's involvement with the vampires opens up a deeper level into his subconscious and also gives him the family that he longed for. This new world allows him to cut ties with his abusive birth family and the mental restraints that previously held him back.
10. Cardinals by Ian Conner
The second vampire book on this list is more of a dark fantasy satire of religion.
God's wife, Asherah is cast out of Heaven. She becomes a vengeance seeking vampire who wants to return to Heaven to confront her ex, even if it takes centuries.
Asherah is an alluring seductive presence to the novel that makes her fascinating even if she makes some decisions that make her hard to root for. She obtains a long list of enemies that would love to do away with her.
It is a fascinating and sometimes frightening allegory of the decline of the goddess in favor of the god.
9. Lakshmi and The River of Truth: A Fairy Tale for Adults by Paul Chasman
This is a clever satire in the disguise of a modern fantasy. The protagonist, Lakshmi dreams that she is taken to a magical land where she has to fight the dastardly Mr. Bigly.
The satire is spot on as it spoofs everything from modern politics, literature, arts, media, and everything and everybody else. Individuals also get mocked such as Mr. Bigly being an obvious parody of a certain ex-President. It's a great fun book with a lot of great fantastic touches that calls to mind other fantasy satires of the past like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Phantom Tollbooth.
8. The Book of Uriel by Elyse Hoffman
This is a heartbreaking historical fiction novel that combines the realism of WWII with the fantasy of Jewish folklore. Uwe, a translator for the German Army, encounters Uriel, an orphan from a Jewish Polish village. They form a surrogate family despite their different assignments to help the people around them defeat the Nazis.
Uwe's story is gripping and suspenseful as he goes against the army that employed him for his principles. He tries to unite Jewish and Polish Christian partisans who don't trust each other. Meanwhile, Uriel's journey is a fantastic one as he encounters angels, demons, and other mythological creatures to free Archangel Michael, protector of the Jewish people.
It's a strange combination of reality and fantasy, but it works.
7. Dusk Upon Elysium by Tamel Wino
This is a fascinating science fiction novel that warns of technological dependency especially during times of great stress. In it, the Paradiso VR is able to activate all five senses and become slowly personalized to fit the user. It can be truly addictive.
The book goes from science fiction to psychological horror as two of the programmers encounter people that they once knew acting obsessive and almost homicidal. This book shows that what we put into technology is often what we face in the real world, making both dangerous.
6. 50 States: A Collection of Short Stories by Richard R. Becker
Becker took what could be an insurmountable task and did it admirably. He wrote short stories set in each of the fifty states and captured each state's resident's individual personalities and characteristics.
Using different characters and genres like mystery, flash fiction, psychological thriller, slice of life, romance, western, history, coming of age, and even some modern fantasy, Becker creates a mosaic of the United States and its people.
Slipstream (Book 1 of The Slipstream Series) by Alice Godwin
This is a science fiction novel which shows a woman with a unique power. Raven has the ability to travel between the physical world and the cyber world but unlike the people around her who need a device, she can travel on her own.
There are plenty of chapters where Raven travels through fantastic and haunting worlds and meets characters that both help and harm her. Also her origins are part of a deep mystery and conspiracy that involves other characters.
This is an adventure/treasure hunt that journeys into the world of fairy tales and the secrets behind their origins. A dead body leads Folklorist, Anne Anderson and DCI David Tale down the Fairy Tale Road, a series of locations in Germany that may have been the sites of the real people who inspired the fairy tales like Cinderella, Snow White, Bluebeard, Rapunzel, and others.
This book brilliantly captured the female influence of fairy tales and why many of the lead characters in the stories are women. It offers some possibilities to a history that had been buried by a patriarchal society.
Anne and David are also great leads who hope that this search will provide some closure for the loss of their siblings. The most memorable characters are the Ortiz Sisters, seven sisters who are part of a secret society protecting the origins of these stories. The stand out is Lily, a little person, who has to weigh her orders and her conscience, wondering what sisterhood really means.
2. The Desire Card Series (Immoral Origins, Prey No More, All Sins Fulfilled, Vicious Ripples, Desire's End) by Lee Matthew Goldberg
If there is one name I heard a lot this year, it's the Desire Card. This is a card which promises the user anything they want from a romantic affair, to money to pay their bills, or a new organ for a price.
The five books go from the Desire Card's origins as a secret organization formed by "Clark Gable," a man who dresses and assumes Gable's role as he entices his employees to dress like other Hollywood stars. They start as a decadent group in Hell's Kitchen in the 1970's that gets involved in drug dealing, murder, embezzlement, and other things. The Desire Card moved forward 40 years where they achieved international success getting involved in greater dealings and swaying the wealthy and powerful. Their fall is also portrayed as Gable collects several enemies who have different reasons to do away with him.
It is practically a modern day Faust story as various characters are drawn into Gable's web and suffer the consequences by threats, intimidation, and violence. However, since Gable is thankfully human he too comes to an end because of his own hubris. It's a suspenseful series that draws in the Reader from beginning to end.
Merchants of Knowledge and Magic (The Pentagonal Dominion) by Erika McCorkle
This is the second science fiction novel that has amazing world building. But this world actually bests Fox's Tierra Mejor by not having any ties to Earth whatsoever. In giving us The Pentagonal Dominion, McCorkle gives us a unique, creative, imaginative detailed world that is so unlike our own. It's one of those fictional worlds that the Reader falls into.
Part of what makes this book are its two leads: Calinthe Erytrichos, Merchant of Knowledge, a half-Ulnese half-Odonata, who has green skin, wings, and is intersex and Zakuro "Pom" Rathmusen, Merchant of Magic, a four armed, dark skinned, Godblood. The two are lovers who travel together and support each other even when they are faced with problems like Calinthe growing new appendages and powers and Zakuro being rejected by her birth family.
The Pentagonal Dominion is a fascinating setting filled with amazing touches such as the atmosphere changing in different areas. There are original characters such as one with a hollow belly who can store things like a container. The different social structures like a misandrist society that is so corrupt that two members of leading prominent families want to leave it, tell a lot about how The Pentagonal Dominion is run. Then there is the theology with humorous gods who act all too human. There are also various conflicts most notably when Calinthe is held captive and enslaved for months reduced to a shadow of her former independent strong willed self.
Merchants of Knowledge and Magic is one of those dream-like book worlds that takes hold and doesn't let go. No Reader can ever forget this book.
Honorable Mention: Wicked Bleu (Simone Doucet Series Book 2) by E. Denise Billups, Mandate Thirteen by Joseph J. Dowling, Eliana-Who-Sees Us by Amani Jesu, A Kelly Society Christmas (The Kelly Society Book 2) by S.K. Andrews, Cleopatra's Vendetta (A Stryker Thriller) by Avanti Centrae, Glitches and Stitches (Death Violation 01) by Nicole Givens Kurtz, Where The Witches Dwell (Everlan Book One) by Conor Jest, The Girl With The In-Sight by William P. Mills, SexyQuad Chronicles: The Life and Times of a Salacious Quadriplegic by Luke Stewart, Hell Spring by Isaac Thorne, The Resistance Lily by Dana Levy Elgrod, The Beached Ones by Colleen M. Story, Lost to the Lake by Anna Willett, Code Name Jane Doe: A Call to Action by Jane Darrcie, The Old Dragon's Head by Justin Newland, The Last Keeper (Book One of the Warminster Saga) by J.V. Hilliard, Thunder Road by Colin Holmes, Double Down by C.J. Axlerod, Ela Green and The Kingdom of Abud by Sylvia Greif
