Author: char

Talisman of El by Alecia Stone

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The Talisman of El by Alecia Stone

Publisher: Centrinian Publishing

Release date: May 18, 2012

Note: Review copy provided by the publisher

Amazon blurb:

WHAT IF YOUR WHOLE LIFE WAS A LIE?

One Planet.

Two Worlds.

Population: Human … 7 billion.
Others … unknown.

When 14-year-old Char­lie Blake wakes up sweat­ing and gasp­ing for air in the mid­dle of the night, he knows it is hap­pen­ing again. This time he wit­nesses a bru­tal mur­der. He’s afraid to tell any­one. No one would believe him … because it was a dream. Just like the one he had four years ago – the day before his dad died.

Char­lie doesn’t know why this is hap­pen­ing. He would give any­thing to have an ordi­nary life. The prob­lem: he doesn’t belong in the world he knows as home.

He belongs with the others.

Okay. So. This book. It was different. Not in a bad way, mind you; it was just different.

Charlie Blake, fourteen year old orphan, is sent to yet another potential adoptive family. He’s hopeful, but so many possible adoptions have fallen apart that he’s always thinking he’s going to be sent back. This time he’s sent to live with a single guy named Jacob, whose late wife died in an accident that raised eyebrows throughout the village (she broke her neck). At first Jacob’s the nice quiet type. And then Charlie discovers something hidden in the house and we find out that Jacob is a total psycho nutjob.

I know, right? Just when things were starting to look up. I mean, he makes friends at his new school and discovers a guy who looks like he’s 102 but is really only 27.

Okay, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Will the superbug be our downfall?

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The super bug. You know, the deadly supervirus or superbacteria that will take over the world and kill us all. Or something. Sometimes I think that one of those superheroes supervillains microscopic killing machines will end up being our ultimate downfall, but other times I’m not so sure. Sometimes I think it’s more likely that someone will genetically engineer one of these superviruses and then unleash it into an air vent at Disneyland or something.

Other times, I think it might be more likely that our current dependence on antibiotics and other medications–and equal dismissal of the importance of finishing the damn prescription–will instead breed a bacteria that’s truly invincible (well, based on current medical technologies, anyway).

For example: there is currently a rising threat of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Yeah, remember TB? Newsflash: it ain’t extinct.

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The Future We Left Behind by Mike A. Lancaster

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No cover image available at this time

The Future We Left Behind by Mike A. Lancaster

Release date: November 13, 2012

Publisher: Egmont U.S.

Review copy provided by the publisher

(Note: This book was published in the UK as 1.4)

Currently, there is no blurb for the U.S. version of the book, so here is the Amazon blurb for the UK version (but note that some aspects of the book may have changed during editing for the U.S. version):

It’s a brave new world. In the far future, people no longer know what to believe…Did Kyle Straker ever exist? Or were his prophecies of human upgrades nothing more than a hoax? Peter Vincent is nearly 16, and has never thought about the things that Strakerites believe. His father – David Vincent, creator of the artificial bees that saved the world’s crops – made sure of that. When the Strakerites pronounce that another upgrade is imminent, Peter starts to uncover a conspiracy amongst the leaders of the establishment, a conspiracy that puts him into direct conflict with his father. But it’s not a good idea to pick a fight with someone who controls all the artificial bees in the world.

YOU GUYS. This book. THIS BOOK. I…have no words. But in a good way. Which is shocking for me, since I can’t recall the last time a book rendered me speechless.

I shall preface the inevitable squeeing by saying that I read this book, beginning to end, in one sitting. I very rarely do that anymore, because, well, I have kids. And every now and again, I like to sleep. So I usually read in short chunks, usually about five minutes at a time.

But this book! Holy godiva, it sucked me in and spat me out on the other side. One minute I was sitting in the rocking chair outside my toddler’s room (part of her bedtime routine), the next it’s three hours later and my Kindle progress bar is saying 100%.

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Winner of This is the New Plan

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Based on the votes yesterday, we have decided a winner!

The winner is….Jamie!

Jamie, email me at char(@)incaseofsurvival(.)com so we can figure out how to get you your e-book of This is the New Plan.

Thanks, everyone, for entering! I enjoyed all of the stories. (Now that the contest is over, you can all write your non-entry stories with those same ten words. Just post in the comments as per usual.)

 

Voting day for the This is the New Plan giveaway

Posted on by char

Bet you never thought this day would come, right?

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But it has! Today is voting day for the This is the New Plan giveaway! You can help change the future reading list of one lucky person–the one who could write the best 250 word piece of flash fiction that had to include a random list of words!

To vote, head on over to the contest page (link here), read the stories (in the comments), and then post your vote as a comment in this entry. As in this one. The one you’re reading now. Why this entry? To make me less confused when going through the votes. I’m easily distracted, after all.

Voting will run from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM Eastern time, today only.

Ready? And…vote!

This is the New Plan giveaway

Posted on by char


Today the review for John Xero’s book, This is the New Plan, went up (link here). Well, I’m excited to say that John Xero has been generous enough to offer one of our readers a free copy of the book (in e-book form)!

John wrote 33 stories for this book. (Well, 33 that he included in the book. I’m sure the original short list had quite a bit more stories.) Now, it’s your turn to get creative.

To win a copy of This is the New Plan, you will need to write a short piece of fiction. Really short–it only has to be 250 words long (or less). But! Your 250-word piece of creative genius must include the following words: zombie, evil space monkey, diving board, tipi, the Rapture, seventeen, contagion, telepathy, egg, Chevy.

To enter the contest, post your story as a comment. If you have problems posting, email your story to char(@)incaseofsurvival(.)com (but remove the brackets) and I’ll post it for you.

How will the winner be decided? Well, when I stopped editing I decided I was going to stop being the Crusher of Dreams, so I’ll leave this up to a vote. That’s right, people, YOU get to decide the winner of the contest! On voting day, go to the voting day post and leave a comment with your vote for the winning story. (The voting day post will go up on–you guessed it–voting day. Which is Thursday, August 30.) (This paragraph has the words “voting” and “vote” FAR too many times.)

The contest will run until 11:59 PM (Eastern time) on Wednesday, August 29. Voting will run from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM (Eastern time) on Thursday, August 30. Any stories posted on Thursday will be immediately disqualified. Winner will be posted on Friday, August 31.

Got that? Good.

Now what are you waiting for? Get writing! And may the best story win!

 

This is the New Plan by John Xero

Posted on by char

This the New Plan cover

This is the New Plan by John Xero (available now)

Review copy provided by the author. 

Amazon blurb:

This is the New Plan. Thirty three genre-blending works of fiction. Thirty one flash fictions book-ended by two short stories.

This is the way the world dies. The way it is born. The way it lives and breathes. Our world, other worlds. The past, the present, the never, the future.

Discover endings and beginnings; hope and damnation; angels and demons; stolen futures… Gods, cowboys, zombies, witches, sci-fi samurai, psychopaths, little red men from Mars, and more…

Let me take you on a journey, let me show you wonders.

You may remember John Xero’s brilliant short story, “Ragestorm Requiem,” which was featured here on ICoS last year. If you enjoyed the story, you’ll probably enjoy his new book, This is the New Plan (conveniently available now).

The book is a collection of John Xero’s short stories and flash fiction pieces–33 in all. Which is a few too many for me to review individually, unfortunately–which means, of course, that you’ll have to read the book. (Aw, shucks.)

There is a great variety of stories in the book, and a good chunk of them are post-apocalyptic in nature. All of the stories are well-written, and–in my opinion, anyway–work the way short fiction should: it makes you wonder what happens next, and lets you fill in the blanks.

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I’d have to say that my favorite story is still “Ragestorm Requiem,” because it’s so poignant. Maybe it’s because I have kids, and I could empathize with the way the story’s main character does everything possible to let her daughter Molly “fly.” The fact that Molly is actually dead and in an urn makes the story all the more poignant. (While reading the story I kept thinking, “What would I do if the world went to hell and one or both of my daughters died?” And I could see exactly where the character was coming from.

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)

Of course, that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the other stories in this book. I did–I enjoyed all of them. This one just stood out as my favorite.

Not every story is that sad/poignant/melancholy, of course; there are a lot of stories in the book. If poignant isn’t your thing, there’s bound to be something in there that is.

This book is great if you’re looking for short reads–these stories are the right length for a bus or train ride, or if you’ve only got five minutes here and there and don’t have time for a  novel.

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 Overall, I highly recommend this book.

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I truly enjoyed it–I don’t give out 5 out of 5 scores lightly, but I’m giving it to this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Book link (Amazon)
Xeroverse (author’s blog)

The Sacrifice Game by Brian D'Amato

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the sacrifice game cover

The Sacrifice Game by Brian D’Amato

Release date: July 2012

Review copy provided by Penguin/Dutton

Amazon blurb:

The mind-bending, stunningly inventive sequel to Brian D’Amato’s In Courts of the Sun, in which one man holds the key to saving the world from the 2012 apocalypse foretold by the Mayan Prophecy.

In Brian D’Amato’s cult classic, In the Courts of the Sun, a team of scientists sent math prodigy and Mayan descendant Jed DeLanda back in time to the year AD 664 to learn the “Sacrifice Game,” a divination ritual that the ancient Maya used to predict the apocalypse on December 21, 2012. But after arriving in the body of a willing human sacrifice instead of a Mayan king, Jed’s experiences led him to the fateful decision that rather than avert the apocalypse, he must ensure instead that the world ends.

 Using his knowledge of the divination game, Jed sets in motion a series of events that will bring about the destruction of humanity, ending the world’s pain and suffering once and for all. But before the plan can be completed, the organization that sent him into the past discovers his intention and devotes every resource to stop him.

 Taking readers back to the dizzying action of ancient times, The Sacrifice Game is a breathtaking odyssey in which Jed must survive bloody wars, ruthless leaders, shifting alliances, and unspeakable betrayal to learn about the Game, before his time in both the ancient Mayan empire and the present day runs out.

All right. So. To avoid a possible drama-filled timesink like what happened with this book review, I’m just gonna come right out and say it: this book was a DNF for me. And this makes me sad, because I seem to be the only person on the planet who couldn’t get through it.

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The post-apocalyptic legal system

Posted on by char

First, I apologize for not posting last week; I was on holidays and was so discombobulated when I got back (I’m not used to taking holidays, heh), I forgot all sorts of stuff. It got pretty ugly, actually. But now I’m back, with my head partially screwed on straight. (It’s only slightly askew.)

Anyway. Right before I left for holidays, I got a jury duty summons letter. Believe it or not, I actually want to serve on a jury (and have wanted to ever since I taught a high school legal studies class and got to go on a field trip to the courthouse with my students). So I was kinda a lot excited about my letter from the provincial government. Until Hubby reminded me that as a stay-at-home-mom, I now have two tiny-human, round-the-clock bosses, and where the hell would we put the kids if I got picked for a jury? So, sadly, I had to apply for an exemption. And my application was approved, which means I am now excused from jury duty. Which makes me a sad Char, indeed.

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