A Romance Story (I know, I'm just as surprised.)

Returning home from a disastrous ski trip, Jake is quick to trace Mel's hand in the welcoming touches scattered throughout his apartment. But when a closer look reveals more than she intended to show, Jake's world is turned upside down. Can he somehow prove to Mel that he's woken up at last, or has he lost the chance forever?

Love Blind by Angie Thompson is a love story, but not one of those mushy, over-the-top and unrealistic stories. Not to mention, this story is told from the guy's POV. Jake's epiphany about his ex-girlfriend, Danna, and Mel, the girl who has always been there for him, is something I think a lot of people will relate to.

We've all had the bad relationship we didn't know was bad until we got free of it, and it's easier to see others in a different light when we're not suffering from tunnel vision. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way. Luckily for Jake, a skiing accident gave him a clear view of the women in his life.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Family Feud to the Death

Driven home by grief, Cole returns to his family after being away for five years. He soon discovers that his brother, Joe, is locked in a bitter feud with a family who wants everything he's built for himself.

As things begin to escalate and tempers start to flare, Cole finds himself pulled into a world of violence, hatred, and unchecked rage.

There are no heroes. There are no villains. There is only the worst in us.

The Worst In Us by Elias Witherow (read 2017 interview with the author here at the Lair) is a brutal family drama, with the push-down-the-stairs delivery the author is best known for. Witherow carefully lays out each step, with individual challenges and success of one family contrasted with the downward spiral of another, only to hurt readers with one impact after another, as the quest for revenge escalates between the two groups of brothers.

The author does an excellent job of balancing savagery with suspense while revealing just how far all the characters are willing to go to punish one another. There are many horrific scenes in this novel, but Witherow shows decorum and does not use the violence as a plot device. There is some misdirection here and there, enhancing the shock value when the truth behind the feud is finally revealed.

Proceed with caution, Witherow spares no one...

As always,
AstraDaemon

Sunday Suspense Short Story

Jack Wrexall leaves his Heybridge home on a warm summer day - only to be embroiled in the sinister machinations of fungal antagonists.

Blackwater by Byron Black is a flash fiction nightmare centered around a young man named Jack. The story is similar in style to a Lovecraft tale, with the character's sanity slipping away in a countryside setting facing what appears to be a cult, as well as other mythos elements, but Black's idea of horror has limited interaction with the events presented within.

I think this story would be better in a longer format, with further character development and more intense action. However, Black does deliver the cosmicism.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Sci-Fi Saturday Short

The colony ship known as the Vale has been spiralling towards Epsilon Eridani for four millennia, and Barry - the semi-sentient AI set to guard its frozen human cargo - has had a long time to question the nature of his mission. There are too many gaps in his code, too many mistakes left unfixed.

Could Barry's programmers really have been so lax? Or does he have a greater purpose, some secret mission buried in his source code? He has another eighteen thousand years to find the answer. In the meantime, he's growing bored, and idle hands are the devil's playthings...

The Last Broadcast by Christopher Ruz is a science fiction short story, but the thought process the A.I., Barry, goes through is horrific. I found Barry's conspiracy theories about the Scrubbers intriguing and I wish the author had gone in that direction. Instead, Ruz chose to go with a theme which is overdone and in the sci-fi genre and result in a predictable ending.

I did enjoy the author's writing style. I'd love to read this same story, but from the Scrubbers POV and with a different ending.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Nothing Fun About It

Every family has a Funscreen on their wall. The question is... who's watching who?

When the government's new private welfare system begins rewarding unemployed viewers for watching the right kind of ads, Roger Birch welcomes a Funscreen into his home.

Like millions of others, Roger and his family soon depend on ad-viewing income for their survival.

Unlike millions of others, the events of one uncomfortable evening leave Roger aware of the government's shadier reasons for investing in Funscreens.

With HD cameras hidden behind a 60-inch glass veil, the answer was staring him in the face all along...

Funscreen by Craig A. Falconer is a scary science fiction prediction of what our future may bring, sooner, rather than later. This is also a depressing possibility as readers are shown how one family has all but fallen apart because of their dad's obsession with amassing credits for watching ads.

The stories steeped in realism are always the most horrific.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Don't Get Me Wrong

After a mass murder, an obscure and mysterious horror movie, available only on VHS, becomes the stuff of urban legend.

Brainrot by D.W. Nathan isn't much of a written story as it is a long, dragged-out one-sided conversation with the narrator, who isn't very good at telling a story. I think it would've been better if the focus had stayed directly on the three boys, but the timeline jumps in years and the storyline becomes fragmented. The ending is a huge disappointment.

As always,
AstraDaemon

For The Love of Reading

Joel has spent the last five years building maps of an imaginary city to deal with his grief. Or at least he thinks it's imaginary, until someone writes to tell him they used to live there. To Joel, it's just a hobby - a way to blank his mind until he figures out how to move forward to his life. 

But then things take an increasingly strange turn - and a dark one.

Scienceville by Gary Gibson is a fascinating sci-fi fantasy short story, with traces of steampunk fiction here and there. Absolutely brilliant. The author needs to either create a short story series or write a full-length novel. The concept of Scienceville - the metaphysics behind it - is just too damn interesting to leave inside one story.

It has been decades since a story evoked these kind of emotions within me. Do you remember the first time you read some really grand fiction that wasn't part of a school assignment, and you fell in love with reading as a consequence? Do you remember the joy of having worlds revealed to your imagination through the printed word? Granted, I read this on my Kindle, but that same "Oh, I remember why I love fiction so much" feeling came rushing back.

If you've been feeling burned out on genre stories, or feeling like you've read the same themes over and over, you need to read Scienceville!

As always,
AstraDaemon