Title

Author: P.B. Cannon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 16, 2013

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 20 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Cady and Sam don’t like excitement. So, they have good reason to love their lifestyle in the small town of Matthews, N.C. They’ve got a cute kid, good jobs, great neighbors, and their home beats the wheels off their last address. Unfortunately, interruption rears its head when it’s least expected, leading to that unwanted unrest they’ve been avoiding. What’s a couple of homebody werewolves to do?

Content Warning: Brief references to sexual harassment and humans being attacked by fantasy creatures.

Review:

Werewolves need to rest, too.

Cady’s character development was quite well done. Her relationships with her husband and child were explored in depth as well as her feelings on a variety of topics ranging from race to European beauty standards to why she so desperately wanted her neighbourhood to remain a quiet and peaceful place to live. She was the sort of protagonist I’d love to invite out for a cup of coffee so I could get to know her better as what I learned about her from this piece only made me more curious about who she was as a person.

The ending felt abrupt to me. I should note that this is part of a serial, a type of tale that is well known for ending on cliffhangers, so do keep those facts in mind while reading. Even when including them, though, I wished more attention would have been paid to developing that final scene. The way it was written felt more like the end of a chapter in a book than a short story. In my opinion, serials work better when each instalment in them stands alone as a fully formed tale, and I did not feel like this quite met that standard even though I deeply enjoyed reading it otherwise.

This was a good example of how to write an exciting fantasy story in a suburban setting. Most modern fantasy that I’ve read has either been set in rural or urban areas, so it was refreshing to see a different sort of setting being utilized. I especially liked the brief moments where Cady talked about simple aspects of living in the suburbs like finding a good parking spot or maintaining positive relationships with the neighbours. Yes, both of these topics were relevant to her adventures on this particular night, but I’ll leave it up to other readers to discover why.

Interruptions was exciting.

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Here are a few of my happy memories.

Age 4. My mother was heavily pregnant with her third child. Me and my toddler-aged brother sat on the couch next to her, gently touched her belly, and talked to the baby that would soon be joining us.

Age 8. Our family lived in a trailer home next to a highway that was built on a big hill behind our home. We were very low income, and I know my parents worried about how that would affect their kids. The biggest thing on my mind then was how often I’d get to go sledding down that hill. We had some lightweight plastic sleds that glided down that hill perfectly. It was my favourite thing in the entire world other than reading, and I did not care that my parents couldn’t afford to buy us fancy new toys or name-brand clothes.

Age 18. Exams were wrapping up, and winter break was just about to begin. I sat in my college library and thumbed through the magazines they had there, paying special attention to the ones about science, literature, or history. It was neither a big library nor a fancy one, but I loved how quiet and peaceful it always was. I spent a lot of time there between classes even if I didn’t have any papers to write or upcoming tests to study for.

Adult. Recently married and living in Canada now. We couldn’t afford to travel on our honeymoon, so we explored a lot of free or low-cost stuff to do here in Toronto instead. I was amazed at how large, clean, and beautiful High Park was. Out of all of the parks in the world, it’s still my favourite one.

Adult. My first book was published, a collection of short stories. (There’s a link to it at the top of this site). I really should try to get more of my work published sometime. Writer’s block is terrible.

Here are ten books with rainy titles.

1. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

2. Rain Is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith

3. Rain Before Rainbows by Smriti Prasadam-Halls

4. Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali

5. Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years With a Midwife in Mali by Kris Holloway

6. Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression by Brooke Shields

7. Raining Sardines by Enrique Flores-Galbis

8. The Thing That Walked In the Rain by Otis Adelbert Kline

9. Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest by Mark J. Plotkin

10. Zonia’s Rain Forest by Juana Martinez-Neal

Title

Author: George Saoulidis

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 26, 2018

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 24 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Who is watching the stars, every second of every day, so we can better understand the universe? This short story was awarded the 2nd place in the Science Fiction category, in the Athens Fantasticon 2016 competition. Inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope which will be launched and deployed in 2020. It will hopefully be as invaluable as Hubble was, opening our eyes to the cosmos.

Review:

Eternity is a matter of perspective.

The first scene was momentarily confusing, but as soon as I figured out what was going on I was hooked on the storyline. There’s definitely something to be said for playing around with the audience’s expectations in any genre, and this was a good example of how to do just that. I’d recommend other readers avoid spoilers as much as they possibly can so that they, too, can have the chance to be surprised about exactly what was going on here.

I would have loved to see the last scene expanded by a page or two. The twist in it was what really brought everything together for this reader, and it would have been even better had it been given more time to develop. It’s difficult to go into detail here without sharing exactly what it was, but it made me smile and wish I could keep reading about this universe. This is a minor criticism of something I thought was otherwise well done.

Stargazing is something I like to do on occassion, and I was intrigued by how this topic could be turned into a science fiction story. There were elements of hard science fiction here that I found intriguing and would have loved to read more about. With that being said, I also liked the creative flair the author added to it and had plenty of questions about how that change happened and what a sequel might entail if such a thing were ever written.

Cosmophobia made me want to go observe the stars again.

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I’ve been looking forward to this topic for months! Let’s see if our ideas of unusual hobbies and interests match up.

I’ve already told you all about my pet earthworms that horrified my mother, so let’s dig up some other interesting memories.

When I was a kid, I sometimes played with coins.

I liked stacking them up on each other as tall as I could, or making groups of them in various sizes and pretending they were little families, or of playing a miniature version of curling with them where one penny would be pushed quickly on our laminate or wood floor to see how many stacks I could topple.

It provided hours of free entertainment.

The Black Death was another interest of mine for years. We must have had a lesson about it in school that talked about how high the death rates were, but I had trouble wrapping my mind around how many people died during those waves of disease and read many books about the subject as a kid and teen.

I had another phase after my grandmother’s death where I asked my mother countless questions about what heaven would be like since the Bible wasn’t vivid enough on the topic for my tastes. When she didn’t know, she eventually bought me a book from the Christian bookstore on the topic which I quietly refused to read because I didn’t know or trust the author. Was I expecting God to come down and answer my questions personally? I don’t know, and I did appreciate the effort, but I didn’t want conjecture. I wanted proof.

Slipping out of church to explore was another hobby of mine because preacher’s kids spend a lot of time in such places. If it’s not our home church, it will probably be a church pastored by someone we know.  There was one church we occasionally visited that was massive and had dozens of rooms to explore.A few rooms were filled with books, religious of course.  One time I wandered up to what I think was the attic and found a door with a piece of paper on it that said something like “Protected by Angels.” I did not open that door and still have no idea what was on the other side.

So those are or were some of my unusual hobbies. How about all of you?

Thank you to Susan @ blogginboutbooks.com for submitting this week’s theme! Let’s see how many titles I can find that help to describe myself. You might enjoy my sense of humour with some of these picks, too.

1.  The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I’m a quiet and unassuming person who likes to observe what’s going on before jumping into the fray.

2. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

I’d like to think I have a beautiful mind.

3. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

I eat a pretty healthy diet and was one of those kids who happily had fruit or a salad as an after school snack. Even to this day, I’d rather have a piece of fruit than a bowl of chips most days!

4. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

My family was low income for most of my childhood. On nice weekends my parents would take us out into nature for long walks and picnics because it fit our budget. I loved visiting the mountains most of all, and still adore nature to this day.

5. Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart

Unfortunately, as I’ve said here before, I’m terribly allergic to cats and so can never pet them.

6. We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen

Being technically true is the best kind of true.

7. The Past is a Foreign Country by David Lowenthal

Here’s another somewhat tongue-in-cheek answer from me. Although, as someone who immigrated from the U.S. to Canada as a young adult, my past literally is a foreign country now.

8. More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

Nobody’s life is perfect, of course, but mine has been more happy than not. I try to focus on the positive and what I do have instead of what I wish I could have.

9. Fairy Tales Written By Rabbits by Mary A. Parker

As a child, I read every single fairy tale I could find. As an adult, I love rabbits and read as many books about them as possible whether fiction or nonfiction.

Title

Author: Alfred Bekker

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: May 28, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 46 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

After a long period of tension and enmity between the Inner Planets and the Rim Worlds, a terraforming specialist travels to the end of the settled universe – and experiences wonders and horrors on a distant world populated by human colonists. Their world is to be made habitable – but strangely enough, the colonists have no interest in doing so.

Content Warning: Brief references to rape, murder, and violence. None of these topics were described in detail.

Review:

An open mind is essential for journeys such as these. .

This was an immersive tale that did an excellent job of drawing me into an unfamiliar world and showing me both the beautiful and the ugly sides of it. There were times when I genuinely felt as though I was learning about an alien planet. This isn’t something that’s easy to accomplish, especially with only a few dozen pages to work with, so kudos to Mr. Bekker for putting so much effort into it. He’s someone I will keep an eye out for as he hopefully releases more stories in the future. 

While I liked reading the beginning and middle, the ending felt abrupt to me. There seemed to be themes that were never fully explored and some plot lines involving the protagonist that were left dangling. For example, I struggled to understand why N’Gaba’s behaviour was shifting so rapidly when he had previously been a character I would have described as steadfast. The explanation given for this certainly helped, but I wished it would have been given more time to develop so that I as a reader could understand him better.

I liked the plot twist that gave some reasons why the people who lived on Rand were so hesitant to allow outsiders into their culture and traditions. While I didn’t at all agree with their reasoning, this was an interesting way to explore how differently certain customs are experienced by people who grew up with them when compared to how someone who was first exposed to that tradition well into adulthood would think of it. There is something to be said for thinking critically about such things and accepting that there are multiple ways to interpret them.

Marginal Worlds was thought provoking. 

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

When I was a child, I was:

Quiet and shy. I still am!

Well-behaved. My friend Mei-Ling’s mother once asked her why she couldn’t be more like me. This embarrassed me as I didn’t think people should be compared like that.

Studious. I made the honour roll every semester, although I did get C grades in Spanish, Math, or Science sometimes. History the arts, and English were easier subjects for me.

Bookish. I read constantly and insatiably on every subject matter I could find.

Anxious. When I was about 8, I took a break from reading only to realize I couldn’t find my parents or siblings anywhere. We lived in a cozy trailer home at the time, and so I should have been able to find someone within a minute or two. Given that I was a preacher’s kid, my first assumption was that everyone else had been raptured but that I wasn’t devout enough to be chosen, too. I panicked and ran crying to a neighbour for help, but I was crying too hard for her to understand me. Eventually, my mother returned from running an errand, possibly paying the rent, and I realized that God hadn’t actually come back yet after all.

Imaginative. I was always imagining something in my mind no matter what else I was doing. Sometimes I talked to myself quietly about the beautiful stories that were going on in my mind.

Inclusive. Classmates who were left out of other groups could always hang out with me. Sometimes I was bullied for spending time with the kids that others thought were too weird or awkward to associate with. I say this not to toot my own horn or anything, just to give you a picture of what i was like on the playground.

Messy. My tidy parents somehow created a child who was not. I never left food or anything like that in my bedroom, but there were books everywhere and it could get dusty as well.

Thank you to Rachel @ Sunny Side for submitting this week’s theme!

I only have one setting to talk about this week: Prince Edward Island. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to visit since I first read the Anne of Green Gables books as a child. You can probably already guess what the first book on this list will be!

Someday I will visit that island, but in the meantime there are so many books set there that I sort of feel like I already know it.

1. Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1) by L.M. Montgomery

2. The Troop by Nick Cutter

3. Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog by Eileen Beha

’4. This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune

5. Acadian Legends, Folktale and Songs from Prince Edward Island by George Arsenault

6. Favourite Recipes of Old Prince Edward Island by Julie Watson

7. Mi’kmaq Campfire Stories of Prince Edward Island by Julie Pellissier-Lush 

8. Mermaids of Prince Edward Island by Allison Wolvers

9. Mirrors on which dust has fallen by Jeff Bursey

10. Black Islanders: Prince Edward Island’s Historical Black Community by Jim Hornby

Title

Author: Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: July 13, 2023

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: About 8 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A day in the life of a chronocourier, one of the few people who can travel through time without debilitating consequences. What the job lacks in security it makes up for in pay. Today’s mission is to go back in time and retrieve a single, fertile Dodo’s egg. Yet the path of timeslipping is a tricky one, and the effects of jumping into nearby timelines can be unpredictable, and dangerous.

Review:

How much trouble could one little egg be?

Dodos are one of those extinct species that I’m quite sorry I’ll never have the opportunity to meet, so this tale automatically caught my attention when I read the blurb. I wondered what the client wanted with one of these eggs and why they chose this species in particular out of all of the other options. It also seemed curious to me that only one egg was requested when one would need far more individuals than that if they were to, say, want to breed more dodos in the future. Wondering about these issues was always at the forefront of my mind as I read, and I would have happily checked out a much longer work on this topic if such a thing were available.

The world building in this story felt underdeveloped to me. I would have loved to learn more about how time travel worked in this universe as well as how the protagonist ended up in such a profession. These details were important due to a twist in the final scene that was revealed but never fully explained. So much time was spent explaining all of the precautions the protagonist took earlier on that the ending didn’t quite makes sense to me as a reader, especially given how little was explained about the mechanics of the missions. It could have been a genuine oversight on the main character’s part, of course, but I simply didn’t have enough information to say for certain due to how rushed the world building was earlier on. This is something I’m saying as a reader who was excited to read this short story and was hoping to give it a much higher rating.

With that being said, I did enjoy that last plot twist in and of itself. It left plenty of room for possible sequels if the author ever decides to write them, and it made me pause and wonder about everything I’d already learned about this universe and the chronocourier who went on this mission. These sorts of reactions are one of the reasons why I enjoy science fiction so much, so I was glad to have that opportunity. Yes, I know I’m being a bit vague here, but I think it’s better for other readers to discover that surprise for themselves.

Mendala was intriguing.