C. J. Daley

I received this to review for the Indie Ink Awards for best narration. Aure Nash did a fantastic job that I really enjoyed. In particular, the voices she did for the gods had these larger than life almost ethereal edits on them.

This one features great representation as well. Black fantasy with lush character designs and cultures. Dreads and braids as well as great descriptors on the variety of skin tones really sells the world as diverse and rich.

I did listen through this one while going through some personal changes, so I am afraid I was a bit distracted. So let me just point that out. However, I found myself slipping in and out of the story throughout. In the beginning I was locked in, but the kind of meandering pace and continued scenes of intervention from the gods kind of made this one lack stakes. For me, the characters read pretty much the same as when they started, they may have come to some realizations, but I didn’t feel as if they actually grew. And the intervention of the gods kind of made what little action there was fall a little flat. I didn’t feel like I had to worry about the characters not surviving, and the action was cool when it happened, so I wish there was more.

Personally a 3/5* for me.

Read this one as a finalist in SFINCS, however I already owned the kindle version!

This is a mixture of eldritch horror with a fantasy backdrop. A mix of gods and what felt like industrial style weaponry made for what comes across as a sort of gaslamp fantasy horror. I would kind of liken it to Of Honey and Wild Fires by Sarah Chorn in its fantasy world feel, but instead of crippling grief, it’s actual horrors coming for the characters.

A bomb blast that rips souls from bodies and causes those that witness it to go insane, creates these shrieking husks of people that used to be. These apparition-like beings create a creepy atmosphere that has the reader as amped up as the main character.

Corrie Ecksley, an adjunct professor, is thrust into the middle of all of this and just trying to survive. I liked that besides her excavation experience giving her some background information, she was just a normal person trapped in an impossible situation. And of course, sometimes literally trapped.

I will say that some of the world building bits and character explanation beats kind of took away from that creepy atmosphere, so in the end I don’t think this really comes across as horror. Not necessarily a negative, but I felt like it was on the fence of blending the two genres well, and I would have liked to see it go all the way. I am still kind of going through it though, so my attention span is a little off and reading has been difficult.

Regardless, this was an enjoyable novella. The big beats were there, the pace is good, as the character faces more than one issue that’s very time sensitive, and there’s definitely enough that I could have kept reading longer.

After taking part in just about every goodreads giveaway possible, I finally got approved for the audio from NetGalley. I love the cover, and I really wanted to dig into this one.

Unfortunately, this may have arrived to me at just the wrong time or something, or perhaps not. It just didn’t grip me, didn’t work.

I sadly found the main character to be incredibly unlikable. So even with her living in and through trauma, there isn’t necessarily enough for me to grab onto to care. For me, adultery just turns me off to pretty much anything you could possibly say, so although it’s about her having control over something, any little thing, it just doesn’t matter to me. It’s wrong. Doesn’t matter if I understand the angle.

With that being said, it left the story feeling like it was really missing something, and in that sense, it read as sadly boring, and even confusing at some points. I think the confusion was meant to be, in part, showing the detachment from the main character, but it didn’t exactly work for me. Which is really sad, because the snippets of background world you get are really interesting. You’re dropped into this sort of Afro-futuristic Botswana where technology has reached all new heights—people can live longer, transfer consciousness into other bodies, and augment themselves—but sadly these heights are still being used to further invade women’s space. And in this case, sadly their literal minds and memories, and nothing is safe.

Unfortunately, this may have arrived to me at just the wrong time or something, or perhaps not.

I sadly found the main character to be incredibly unlikable. So even with her living in and through trauma, there isn’t necessarily enough for me to grab onto to care.

With that being said, it left the story feeling like it was really missing something, and in that sense, it read as sadly boring.