Mike Jeavons’ The Secret Circle of Imaginary Friends is an interesting children’s book, which I found reminiscent of Goosebumps, with a slight twist of Roald Dahl.

It follows a young boy named Simon, who, after hearing his little sister talking to her imaginary friends, discovers that they aren’t imaginary at all. He joins the ‘secret circle,’ a group of children who know about the imaginary friends, but he soon comes to realize there’s more to the circle than he first thought. Bad things happen to people who try to leave the circle, and the imaginary friends may not be as friendly as they seem.

The book was suitably creepy, with great atmosphere. At the same time, it very much feels like a kids book. It gets dark, but never too dark. Some twists may be predictable, but it’s still done so well that you can’t help but enjoy the ride. The only thing that really bothered me story-wise, was the fact that then ending seemed a little sudden and rushed. I think the book could have used another dozen pages or so, for pacing’s sake.

The writing style, as well as the format and spelling was a little off putting at first, though that could be because it was written in British English. It didn’t take long to get used to though, so I’m not going to take off any points for that.

All in all, this is a fine book to give a pre-teen (or pre-teen at heart) who likes scary stories. It is genuinely creepy, the ending is fun, and it’s fully appropriate for children, without too much blood or realistic violence. If this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you check it out.

Oh, boy. Here we go, I guess.

Tom Wright’s Catalyza – Book 1: Origins is a deeply flawed novella. It just does so much wrong. I don’t even know why the book is called Catalyza. The word isn’t even mentioned once.

The author is obviously obsessed with race. Aisha, the main character, it black. If you forget this, don’t worry, because it’s mentioned or referenced on every page. Every person in the book is described by their skin color. And the character is obsessed with going to a black church (and won’t go to a white church), making black friends, joining black social clubs (and won’t join clubs that are ‘too white’), sitting next to black students in class, not going to white parties, and avoiding white policemen because they’re all racist. Oh, and this was written by a white guy (which actually makes sense. I can’t imagine a black person is that obsessed with race. I mean, I’m Jewish. Very Jewish. I stand out in a crowd. I wear a yarmulke in public, and have gotten my share antisemitic remarks as a result. Yet I don’t go around thinking ‘Jew,Jew,Jew, oh, are they Jewish? oh, a Christian group, I’ll avoid them. Jew,Jew,Jew.’ I’m a person, plain and simple. And I’m sure African Americans or Muslims feel the same way). This book seems obsessed with race in only the way that someone who isn’t part of that of that group can be.

But I could be forgiving of that little quirk if everything else was good. It’s not. There’s also so much minutia here. Conversations and scenes that go nowhere. Its frustrating. I don’t want to read four paragraphs of how many movies you watched before bed, or a page of exchanging pleasantries with people over the phone!

As for the plot, it follows a girl, Aisha, through her first few days in college. She goes to church, gets involved in a protest, gets superpowers, saves someone from an accident she caused, and goes to a party when she and her friend almost gets date raped (at which point she endangers their lives and plants false evidence to frame them when calling the police doesn’t work. Naturally the potential date rapists are white guys, who she was initially distrustful of because they were white). That’s the whole story, basically. It ends with a teaser that our hero still plans on taking down a corrupt police officer. <sarcasm>Because having the power to essentially control time means that such a task will be a huge challenge.</sarcasm> Also worth mentioning, during the story, she reveals her powers, which she just discovered hours before, to her professor whom she barely knows (she only met once, the day prior). Not the brightest of people, I suppose.

A couple of panels from Milestone’s Icon

I’m not saying this story doesn’t deal with important issues. It just deals it poorly. There are much better ways to go about it, where you don’t cause your audience to eyeroll or feel like they’re being preached to. Look at one of my favorite comic books, Icon, for example. It deals with race, tensions between African Americans and cops, even abortion, and its all done in a non-hamfisted way. It makes the reader think about the issues without making them realize it, while feeling just like an average (or really good) superhero comic. This story feels like the reader is being hit over the head with a mallet of the author’s personal propaganda.

So yes, this was a bad book. The worst one I’ve reviewed thus far. In a way though, I’m morbidly curious about the next book in the series. Like watching a plane crash, it may be horrible, but I just can’t look away.

I’m obviously not going to be posting this review to Amazon or Goodreads, as I don’t believe there’s a reason to ever post any review two stars or less on an indie book (unless it’s purposefully offensive or meant to rip people off). But it crossed my mind.

J.B. Garner’s Indomitable – The Push Chronicles: Book 1, is a superhero story unlike any superhero story I’ve ever read before. That’s because it just doesn’t feel like a superhero story. It feels closer to sci-fi if anything.

Indomitable follows Irene Roman, a scientist who witnesses the birth of a new reality: A world of superheroes. She takes it upon herself to try an return reality back to the way it was. Saying anything more would spoil the book, I think, but it seems heavily inspired by my favorite issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (issue #18, I think), A Dream of a Thousand Cats.

The novel plays with a lot of classic comic book tropes, such as monologue, with the main character being the only one aware of whats going on. It was very cleverly done, especially having the POV character being aware of the reality and tropes, but because she’s not a huge comic book fan (she doesn’t even like the things), she avoids coming across as smug.

Something I found interesting was that there is no true villain, which is quite a rarity for a story like this. Oh, sure, there are characters who are jerks or mentally ill, but no one comes across as evil. Sure, there’s mention of an evil mastermind pulling strings from behind the scenes, but he has almost no presence in the story and seems like almost an afterthought, although I’m sure he shows up in the sequel. Speaking of the sequel, one thing that felt a little off putting about the book seemed to be the build up to a specific ending without the payoff. I have a feeling that was intentional though, given the last line. The ending subverted the expectations of a superhero origin story, which is something I really enjoyed.

I did find it annoying, however, that the author commonly employed words that, to me at least, came across a little too pretentious,  like he was trying to show off or enjoyed abusing the thesaurus, usually using ten dollar words when a fifty cent word would’ve done the job. He also often chose awkward sounding choices when it came to the phrasing of his sentences (although they were grammatically correct). I do know that the author just recently come out with a new edition of the novel wherein it was reedited, so its possible those issues are now fixed.

All in all, it certainly wasn’t what I expected, but I’m glad I read it. If you’re a fan of sci-fi or superheroes, give it a read. It’s a superhero book for folks that aren’t necessarily big on superhero stories. It isn’t what it appears at first glance, but that’s not a bad thing.

Michael C. Bailey’s Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins, is a ridiculously fun superhero novel. It follows Carrie Hauser, a teenage girl who recently gain superpowers, as she deals with her parents divorce, tries to start a superhero team with her friends, deals with veteran superheroes who don’t seem to like her very much, and of course fight supervillains and a shadowy evil organization. I know it sounds very paint-by-the-numbers, but it really isn’t.

This book fixes all the issues I had with Earthman Jack. This guy gets how teenagers talk. It feels real. More impressive to me was just how well he captured the voice of a teenage girl. I legitimately would not have been able to tell it was a man who wrote this. Throughout the story, nearly every character is fleshed out. You really get to know not just Carrie, but her friends, her parents, her friends parents, the other superheroes, etc. They all feel like people, and you can’t help but feel like you have to turn the next page just to get the chance to know them better, which is more than I can say for most books.

While the characterization is flawless, the plot is rather episodic. It mostly ties together in the end though, but rather than seem like a big story, it seems like a lot of smaller ones. Personally, I like this approach, especially to a superhero story which by its nature is episodic. And don’t worry about a cliffhanger ending or anything. There’s a little teaser at the end, but otherwise its basically a complete story.

Something this book does that I found pretty distracting was that it switched from first person to third person mid-chapter. It was confusing at first, but I eventually got used to it, and at least there was a break within the chapter to indicate a different point of view. I understand the decision behind this. The first person narrative makes the reader feel as though they’re in Carrie’s head, and the author didn’t want to lose that. At the same time, there are other things going on that the main character isn’t privy too that is necessary to move the story along. It is a strange, jarring choice, and it wouldn’t have been the one I would’ve made, but at the same time, I understand it. I’d have been much happier though, if it had been done by having a chapter break, with the new form of narration taking place in a new chapter entirely, or use a few different POVs to tell the other parts of the story. In the writer’s defense, however, while it was pretty jarring at first, eventually I got used to the switching between first and third person. I just wish it was handled better.

All in all, despite my issue with the switching between writing styles mid-chapter, this book is by far the best of the indie books I’ve reviewed thus far. The story was fun and engaging, the characters felt real, and the prose itself was very well done. I cannot recommend this book enough. If you like superheroes or even just a good teen drama, check this book out. You won’t regret it.

Ah, how to describe this one? Chris Fox’s The First Ark is an… interesting novella. It’s certainly creative. However, it makes a vital mistake. It isn’t a full story.

It takes place in a time before written history, during an ice age. The main character is Isis, a shaman of an ancient human tribe. It is implied that this is the same Isis as the Egyptian god, and the other characters from the story seem to share the same names as other Egyptian gods. It comes across essentially as an origin story for this pantheon, but with a sci-fi twist. It is, unfortunately, incomplete. I understand that it is a prequel novella, meant to lead into a series a books. But being a prequel novella is no excuse for being incomplete. If you’re offering something as a book, novella, or short story, it shouldn’t feel as though it stopped in the middle. Sure, Meta and Earthman Jack had small teases of what’s to come, but they felt like complete stories. This one did not.

It was well written and interesting. And at the end of the day, it was still good enough for me to ultimately decide to pick up the first book in the series, but only because it was free. If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have picked it up. Let this be a note for aspiring writers: writing a short story or novella is a great idea to give folks a taste of what you have to offer, but please leave them satisfied with an ending.

Matthew Kadish’s Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet is certainly an ambitious book. For a younger-skewing YA novel, its ridiculously long. Possibly too long, but I’ll get to that later. It follows Jack Finnegan, an average teenager, who stumbles into an interstellar adventure. While I won’t summarize the plot for risk of spoiling it, I will say that it has space battles, alien invasions, a princess to save, and ancient order of knights, Michael Chrichtonesque ‘science,’ pirates, robots, basically everything a young teenager would be into. And the book mixes all these diverse ideas excellently. Every one of the characters, and there are a whole lot of them, has a fully realized personality. The plot, while it has shades of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, still feels fresh. The narrator is also quite funny, and seems reminiscent of Lemony Snicket at times. Another thing I really liked about it was during a point where Jack loses something important to him, he actually morns, something you usually don’t see in a YA novel (which usually jump right to anger and revenge). It was a nice realistic touch. As a whole, this is a fun YA novel, with a lot going for it.

My biggest issue is probably the dialogue, specifically Jack’s dialogue. At times, it sounds very real and genuine. Other times, it sounds like an older person trying to write what he imagines kids sound like. It can be very unnerving, and took me out of the story more than once. Another thing I found a little annoying is that it seemed just a little too long, purely because of meandering description or pointless dialogue or detours. It could have been a good 10% shorter without losing anything important.

Ending this review on a positive note, this is probably the first book since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where I actually bought the second book before I even finished reading the first. To put it simply, it is just a good, fun, enjoyable book. If you like science fiction or young adult fiction, check it out.

Robert Louis Stevenson is probably best known for Treasure Island  (which gave us a fantastic Muppet movie) and  Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which was a brilliant mystery that’s marred by the twist ending undoubtedly being spoiled before you read it). However, my favorite work of his is a short story, The Bottle Imp.

The Bottle Imp follows Keawe, a Hawaiian (not an American, as it was written before Hawaii became a state, and was still called the Kingdom of Hawaii), who buys a bottle from an old man, who tells him the bottle can grant any desire. There’s a catch, of course. If the bottle is in someone’s possession when that person dies, then that person’s soul will spend eternity in hell. There are also rules surrounding the bottle, such as how exactly it can be sold (it must be sold at a loss, which means inevitably, someone will be stuck with it) and the way the wishes are granted are reminiscent of the Monkey’s Paw. It is an unholy object, after all.

The story is written almost like a fairy tale, and has  all these great twists and turns. They even tie in historical events and figures. The best way to describe it would be clever. It’s just a fun, clever story. Not to mention it has a fantastic ending, which probably ranks as one of my favorite ending to a short story ever. If you have the time, you really should check this one out.