A salacious coming-of-age novel that will enrapture fantasy readers.
Hall’s first book in a new series follows Lash, a “weresnake” assassin employed by a vampire.
The prologue opens in New Orleans, during the time of President Hoover, with Lash in the process of killing Ken, a man who surprises Lash by shape-shifting into a panther. Lash has to bite Ken and inject him with venom in order to kill him—a possibly incriminating mistake. Readers will be anxious to find out more about the past that haunts Lash, and the narrative delivers. The first chapter delves into his humble childhood as a weresnake named Trystan in the swamps of Florida. When Trystan is 16, his criminal father returns, complicating Trystan’s upbringing. His hope for a loving family reunion dashed, Trystan also loses his first love, Mara, a fully human woman. From there, readers follow Trystan as he ventures out, plagued by the strengths and weaknesses of his dual form and driven by an insatiable sexual desire. He meets a virgin, fully human woman named Gretchen, but their passion ends tragically, leaving Trystan longing for her. In the end, after becoming an assassin and perfecting his murderous skills, Trystan tries to recapture what he once felt for Gretchen. She tries to reciprocate, but the liaison once again ends in tragedy. Throughout the book, Trystan is steeped in regret; his empty, hopeful words are at once alluring and mournful. Fantasy fans will be enthralled by a world populated by werefoxes, werebears, werewolves and more, while evergreen themes—deception, regret, and the seeming inevitability of loneliness and despair—will pull readers in even closer. Given its gruesome killings and explicit, violent sex, this tale’s certainly only suitable for adults.
A salacious coming-of-age novel that will enrapture fantasy readers.Pub Date: April 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1938076152
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Bradley Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Those seeking Chicken Soup for the Soul homilies or tidy endings—or standard English usage and grammar—should look...
Nine short stories depict characters coping with various forms of loss, from a grieving teen boyfriend-turned-funeral-crasher to an alcoholic academic.
Short story writer Jung, here anthologized for the second time, circles themes of loss, regret and bereavement in tales—primarily set in the Great Lakes region—ranging from vignettes to longer narratives. All, however, are in the writer’s idiosyncratic prose, which includes rich imagery delivered (and sometimes obscured) in run-on sentences and interior monologues that read like poetry. In “Footfalls on the Stairway,” a former drunk marks 10 years of sobriety by pining for his fondly remembered ex-wife. Alcoholism also figures into “A Rainy Day for Daffodils”; three kids goofing off meet a well-educated bum who threw away his life for an existence of boozy vagrancy and who leaves the trio with a dubious gift of self-revelation before moving on. “The Sacred Cave,” one of the most successful shorts, invites readers to solve the riddle of Jamie Barrett, a high school footballer on a desperate mission to mourn at a funeral for a girl he actually doesn’t know; complications arise when the deceased turns out to be black, and the white teenager must come up with a plausible explanation (for us as well as the family) for his anomalous presence. “The Moping Man” is a seemingly harmless small-town recluse who indulges an implacable hatred for his imprisoned wife by obsessively collecting and contemplating bloody Crucifixion icons. The Rod Serling-esque “A Zoo Parting,” follows separate characters at a zoo who reach the climax of their lifelong personal torment at the hands of a mysterious, demonic bully. Happy endings are not Jung’s stock in trade, but “Professor Pearl’s Yelloweyed Dog” uplifts, as a jaded academic gets a boost out of rescuing an animal in peril, a sensation he well knows is purely temporary. For a collection that’s all about pain, Jung’s uneven batch still shows that people take diverse paths in reacting to anguish, including the deliberate avoidance of closure.
Those seeking Chicken Soup for the Soul homilies or tidy endings—or standard English usage and grammar—should look elsewhere, as author Jung explores depths of inner pain.Pub Date: April 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1936243334
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Chapbook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An entertaining but sometimes discordant blend of nerve-wracking fear and randy ooh-la-la.
A serial killer is just one of the men jockeying for the heroine’s attention in this suspenseful, distracted romantic thriller.
Fleeing her unrequited passion for a lifelong friend, Scott, 20-something veterinarian Audrey West embarks on a road trip across the South to the house she’s inherited from her uncle on Wright’s Island in South Carolina. Unfortunately, along the way she piques the interest of Ridley Myers, the notorious River City Killer, who feels that the feisty, fiercely independent Audrey will make challenging quarry. After freaking her out with his creepy mien and scorpion tattoo, Ridley decides to play a subtler mind game by planting himself, in disguise, on the island and anonymously stalking her while he savors her mounting terror. Ridley is a mesmerizing sociopath, a mix of cold cunning and seething psychotic rage, and the author makes his surreptitious siege of Audrey meticulous, devilishly shrewd and very scary. But Tharp can’t quite decide if she’s writing a dire thriller or a blithe romance, and the conflicting impulses disperse some of the novel’s tension. Audrey’s dance card is so full that Ridley sits out for long stretches while she dallies with roguishly handsome fishing-boat captain Jack Walsh. Brimming with concern and jealousy, Scott shows up to complete the triangle and provoke Audrey’s fraught ponderings of their relationship. Ridley may be spying on her from his hiding place, but Audrey is plenty busy with her own ogling of “the sweat on [Scott’s] back and the thin line of untanned skin at the top of his low hung shorts.” Tharp is a talented, observant writer with a knack for taking us inside her characters’ heads, no matter how unsavory. The gripping crime yarn and the romantic melodrama are effective on their own terms, but when smushed together, the tonal clash lessens the impact of both.
An entertaining but sometimes discordant blend of nerve-wracking fear and randy ooh-la-la.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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