The Tower

 

Details

“The beauty of Pauley’s work is that he makes the reader (relatively) comfortable with these fun, weird elements and then injects the narrative with short bursts of deep thinking and questions that cut to the marrow of human nature.” — Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

THE TOWER

Something is happening to the residents of Eighth Block Tower…

There's radiation in the walls. Salt covers the hallways. The food and water are poisonous. A giant green brain pulsates under the roof, pumping electric venom throughout the apartment building. The residents are trapped and losing their minds.

Sanity is a myth. Sickness is life.

Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐

At this point, I'm still trying to discern if strange things are really happening at The Tower, or if it's a psychiatric hospital and the residents are patients.

Get this: residents can't go out, not even to work. However, their needs are covered, each apartment seems to be more of a room with some facilities, but everything else is communal areas. All the residents seem to suffer from different types of hallucinations, but they share a certain collective delirium… I don't know, I think I'm just trying to make sense of what the characters are experiencing.

Leaving that aside, the story is quite entertaining, nothing is what it seems, and I enjoyed it quite a bit even though I am not a fan of horror or audiobooks. But the narrative has captured me and I want to know more about it.

Cover Reveal - Heir to Frost and Storm

✨ Cover Reveal ✨ 

Heir to Frost & Storm by Ben Alderson is the second book in the “Court of Broken Bounds” series that will be published on November 10th by Second Sky Books.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

“I needed this. I needed him. My mind was a storm and I wanted him to take it all away.”

At the prestigious and competitive Saylam Academy, Max trains to master his magic, surrounded by enemies who will stop at nothing to see him fail.

As he fights to survive, Max’s romance with proud, passionate healer Simion grows ever more intense. But magic still ties him to Camron Calzmir, the prince who seduced and betrayed him. While the enchantment lingers, even the slightest touch from Simion could tear Max apart.

To prove himself, Max enters a legendary contest that could win him the loyalty of a powerful, ice-breathing dragon. High in the mountains, he will face elemental monsters and vicious rivals. But these dangers are only the beginning.

When Max returns to find Saylam consumed by rebellion, it’s clear that even old friends hold dangerous secrets.

An ancient plan is falling into place. And if it succeeds, whole kingdoms will burn. To survive the war that is coming, Max must be willing to sacrifice everything…

Heir to Frost and Storm continues an addictive M/M fantasy romance series perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Elise Kova and C.S. Pacat. Building on the slow-burn tension of Book 1, it’s packed with heart-racing steam, deadly intrigue, found family and jaw-dropping twists.

Note: You can find the complete review for Heir to Thorn and Flame here

The Astronaut Dream Book

Details

A poisoned man dreams of astronauts.

Review

This is the first audiobook I've heard, and I'm so glad this book was my first experience with this format.

The story gave me vibes to a series of short stories called, Love, Death + Robots. ❤️💀🤖  At first it seems that each short story has no purpose or direction, as if it were a story floating alone in a vast sea, but if you pay attention to the small details you will realize that everything is related. It is like a puzzle, and I loved finding the pieces and trying to put it together.

Emphasis on: “trying to”

I have so many questions and doubts regarding some things, and apparently I will have to listen to the other books in the series to understand… I already saw that the first one is called The Tower, and in this, which is the third part in the series, a place called The Tower is mentioned several times… So if I want answers, I have to read the others.

My favorite short was The Church of Death and Nothingness, it took some interesting turns and twists.

The narrator did an excellent job and I loved his voice 🤤. Please, raise his paycheck 😅 

Thanks to Netgalley and Doom Fiction for this ARC.

Let me out

Details

A face-off with the devil! From writer Emmett Nahil (Leatherwood) and illustrator George Williams (Croc and Roll) comes a riveting queer horror story set against the backdrop of an outbreak of “satanic panic” sweeping the New Jersey suburbs in 1979.

When Pastor Holley's wife, Kelly, is found murdered, FBI agent Garrett takes on the case with local New Jersey Sheriff Mullen. Together, they start drumming up a convenient satanic-flavored scapegoat to cover up their own crimes of murder and experimentation. That scapegoat comes in the form of four Mitch, Terri, Lupe, and Jackson. The punks, the queers, and the outcasts. Soon, the group becomes the prime suspects of Kelly's murder. Now on the run from Garrett and Mullen, the group finds themselves in the midst of a deal with the devil themself.

Preview

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am speechless.

This was my “out of my comfort zone reading”, and oh boy, it was outside what I usually read, indeed.

This graphic novel set in 1979 show the story of a small town in which a tragedy recently occurred. The inhabitants of the town want answers that the authorities cannot give them, since said event is part of even worse things that are happening, of which the authorities are aware and worse still… they are partly responsible.

In their attempt to cover up their crimes, they decide to take advantage of people's fear and start a whole plan to sow fear and suspicion throughout the town using the sermons of the local church pastor.

Of course, all this means that soon all the suspicions fall on the group of the “weird” of the town. A group of four friends who stand out for not fitting in at all… they dress differently, listen to “violent” music, among other things, which makes them the perfect scapegoat to be framed.

I don't want to go into too much detail to avoid spoilers. The story begins after the tragedy has already happened and no background or explanation of the situation is given, it just begins and as the reading progresses we discover everything. At a certain point in the story, it feels a lot like the West Memphis Three case, in the sense that the fear and narrow-mindedness of a town turned against a group of people who, probably, have nothing to do with what happened.

The art and illustrations are magnificent, the plot is also very well done. Horror is not a genre I read on a regular basis, but I enjoyed reading “Let me out.”

You Can Have My Back - Vol. 1

Details

I’ll Never Let You Go Again…

When Ionia, proud knight of the realm, loses his life in a violent insurrection, his memories are inherited by a boy born one day after his death. Years later, Leorino Cassieux, fourth son of the Margrave of Brungwurt and blessed with angelic beauty, begins to see Ionia’s memories in his dreams. He relives Ionia’s ill-fated romance with the king’s younger brother, Prince Gravis, as well as his death at the hands of a traitor to the kingdom! But as Leorino tries to make sense of the feeling swelling in his chest, he stumbles too close to the truth of that fateful day. The traitor’s identity is revealed, and in a panic, the traitor threatens to end himself and take Leorino with him! As Leorino’s life hangs in the balance, he instinctively cries out for his only the love of his past life, Gravis.

Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Not what I expected, but it doesn't disappoint.

When I chose this ARC, I thought it was a graphic novel/manga, so my first surprise when I started reading was to realize that it wasn't. The second, in a long list of surprises, was the prologue… I think they should put a content warning so that readers don't stumble upon these kinds of scenes inadvertently. I'm not referring to the explicit content, I mean the no-con.

Third surprise… I thought it would be a novel with a renaissance plot, but it's not like that, at least not completely. Ionia and Leorino are two different people, except that Rino has Ionia's memories and while he sleeps he can access them and learn about Ionia's life.

I liked that Rino found a way to express his thoughts and desires despite the fact that the people around him insisted on pigeonholing him into stereotypes or making him fit into their own versions of what he should be.

Even though I'm not a fan of political intrigues, that part of the story was quite interesting, at times I got quite angry because certain situations could have been avoided if the characters stopped keeping important information to themselves. But hey, there's nothing we can do more than wait and see how it all unfolds.

I loved the illustrations at the beginning of the book. Many things remained pending, but I suppose they will be resolved in the following volumes.

Heir to Thorn and Flame

 

Details

Married to a ruthless prince…

For years, Max had to serve and obey the vicious magical nobles. Now he is one of them.

When the heir to the throne attacks him, Max accidentally responds with a lethal burst of magic. Max is certain he will be executed. But his power is too rare and precious for that…

Instead, the king forces him to become the boy he killed, taking on the identity and duties of the heir. That includes an arranged marriage—to the dangerously attractive Prince Camron.

Living a lie, Max knows he can trust no one. Not Camron. And definitely not Simion, a handsome, dragon-riding spy sent to test his loyalty.

As a deadly struggle for power begins and desire sparks, Max must protect his secret and his heart at all costs.

Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I find it difficult to rate this book. On the one hand, I must say that it is a good story. I liked it, and it kept me on the edge of a precipice of emotions almost 100% of the reading.

The author delivers what he promises, and that must have been a hint for me of what was to come: it is, certainly, a mix between Merlin and The House of the Dragon… That means everyone lies, everyone has ulterior motives, and you shouldn't trust anyone. There is no black and white, only shades of gray. There are no bad or good people (except Julian y Jonathan Gathrax, they are absolutely bad, full-fledged sons of a b****); only people who have plans and purposes that they want to accomplish.

And on the other hand, there is the fact that I hate love triangles with all my heart, and that must have been another sign to me that this book would not be entirely to my liking… Not because it's a bad book, but because one of the important aspects of it is not to my taste.

So this is an honest and unbiased review, almost…

There is Max, who has lived all his life believing that he is the son of mere servants in the house of one of the rulers of the Southern territory.

The first chapters briefly explain the political division of the territory and the existing dispute between the South and the North (it would have been nice to have a map. I mean, what fantasy book worth its salt doesn't have a map?) We learn about the existence of mages, dryads, and dragons… So far, so good.

Things happen, and we find out that Max is a mage, which is supposed to be impossible since the magic source of the South was destroyed by the North… And thus begin the misadventures of Maximus Oaken (I found it curious and almost impossible to believe that nobody wondered why Max bears the last name Oaken, like Heart Oaken. A fact that nobody has paid attention to, and I wonder why).

Misadventures in which Max is abused, threatened, used for the purposes of others, forced to do things against his will, and made commitments that only death can undo (or perhaps not even death can set him free). Shortly after, our love interests Simion (who in my head I changed the name to Simon) and Camron appear. It is assumed that Max feels an undeniable attraction towards both of them and they in turn towards him, but that remains on paper… I didn't feel like it was really intense…

Max is kidnapped and/or held captive by one character or another, and although he always breaks “free”, he is never really free, he comes out of someone's captivity to be in someone else's.

The fact that everyone has a piece of the truth about what's going on, but no one wanted to talk about it had me desperate. And that in the end Max does the same and instead of revealing his conversation with the Queen he decides to keep quiet… that made me much more angry.

I don't know how to feel about being right about Beatrice. I liked that I didn't have to wait until the end of the book for Max to have his revenge, but I didn't like the ending itself.

This is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy or series. So I guess we will have to wait for the next books to know the whole truth and see how everything is solved.