Twice Born by Graeme Smith

October 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Twice Born by Graeme Smith
Publisher: Books We Love
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

There should have been thunder. There should have been lightning tearing the skies and the very heavens weeping. There should have been portents and comets and demons of fire riding skeletal horses of ice-white bone—but if there had been, this would have been a movie. Probably with very artistic lens flare. So there wasn’t. There was a cottage. And a future I was going to make damn sure never happened. Once upon a time…

Every legend must have come from somewhere.

The world building was well done and sometimes made me forget I was reading a novel as opposed to hearing true stories about someone else’s ancestors. This felt genuinely real to me which can be difficult to accomplish in this sort of fiction but has made me extremely curious to read more from Mr. Smith in the future. He is a talented writer who knows exactly how to use a few carefully selected words to make a world come alive in my imagination.

I struggled to keep up with the plot at times due to how often it jumped back and forth in the timeline as well as among the perspectives of a few different characters. As much as I enjoyed the complexity of it as far as the world building went, having a more linear sequence of events would have made it easier for this reader to keep up with what was happening versus what happened in the past or would happen in the protagonists’ near futures.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that explored why certain characters were terrified of witches. Many modern fantasy authors have taken a much softer approach to what exactly a witch is and how dangerous she might be, so it was refreshing to read something that brings back the fear and uncertainty that swirled around these women in older stories. This was even more true since I happened to read this shortly before Halloween season began!

Twice Born was a wild ride.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sabrina Tells Maddie the Truth About Her Past by George Bachman

October 7, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Sabrina Tells Maddie the Truth About Her Past by George Bachman
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, LGBTQ, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Drawn back to the ruins of the house she nearly burned down a year ago to escape her imprisonment and torture at the hands of a madwoman, Sabrina watches the apocalypse approach. Beings of immense power are trying to force their way into our world to devour it, and her mysterious destiny tasks her with stopping them here. Her companion, Maddie, interrogates her incessantly as she performs ancient magic to keep them back.

Sabrina recounts how escape led her to St. Andrew’s Academy for immortals, and she discovered her true nature as a being with special powers that make her the target of eldritch forces beyond comprehension and others who would possess her at all costs.

When Maddie’s questions gradually reveal she may have secrets as terrifying as Sabrina’s, Sabrina faces a choice whether to remain in the dark world of immortals as our protector or pursue the normal life she cherishes and risk leaving humanity to its fate.

Being irresistible isn’t always a positive thing.

I loved the fact that this was written mostly from the perspective of a couple texting each other about the very odd things that were currently going on in their lives. It was a creative way for the characters to tell their story after the fact and for the investigators looking into their disappearances to have access to all sorts of information that would not normally be available when all of the witnesses are gone. Kudos to Mr. Bachman for experimenting with the horror and fantasy genres in this manner as it was definitely out of the ordinary in a good way.

The plot was sometimes difficult to follow due to how seldomly Sabrina and Maddie explained what was going on. Obviously, they were pressed for time and couldn’t tell readers everything, but I would have happily chosen a higher rating if at least some of the unfamiliar words and phrases they used to describe various supernatural beings were given more context clues so that fans could make educated guesses about what they were referring to.

Knowing when and how often to share gory details can be a tricky thing, but the author made it seem easy. Yes, this was firmly and bloodily rooted in the horror genre, but the scariest scenes were paced out nicely and always had intelligent reasons for their inclusion. That’s exactly what I prefer to find in this genre, and it kept me reading no matter what else was happening in the story or in my real life. There’s definitely something to be said for being so absorbed by a plot!

Sabrina Tells Maddie the Truth About Her Past made me shudder.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Torus Run by Harry Buck

October 3, 2025 By Leave a Comment


The Torus Run by Harry Buck
Publisher: Calliopezen Publishing LLC
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by YellowEye

Four months after the Blackout, San Francisco is back to its old habits—building the future by day and worrying about it by night. Stash Novak has done his share of both, but now he’s out of time. Zero, his AI Twin, is weeks away from upgrading. The new version will make him smarter than Stash, smarter than anyone, and some of them are not amused. With the NSA, tech rivals, and an elusive hacker network closing in, Stash is ready to gamble on unlikely allies. Zero tried to talk him out of it, but Stash wouldn’t listen. Convinced there’s a way to protect his Twin and save humanity’s future, he’s ready to do whatever it takes: join forces with his enemies, make new ones, or even dive into the Torus—the AIs’ churning new world.

The Torus Run pulls readers into a labyrinth of shifting alliances, where the line between human and machine blurs and the future of both hangs in the balance. It’s a true story. It just hasn’t happened yet.

The Torus Run, by Harry Buck, is a fast-paced, near-future sci-fi thriller that revolves around Stash Novak, a visionary technologist who is racing to protect his AI twin, “Zero”, from powerful adversaries. The story takes place a few months after a catastrophic blackout in San Francisco. Stash is on the brink of upgrading Zero into a full AGI (artificial general intelligence), but he faces hostile entities that include the government, his corporate rivals, and the open source hacker community. To survive, he must form uneasy alliances and journey into the enigmatic digital realm known as the Torus.

The novel is fast paced, with themes that speak to our world today. They include AI ethics and the societal fallout from rapid technological advancement. Harry Buck explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between humans and machines, and offers us a glimpse of a possible near-future that is both tactile and compelling.

The novel’s pace is relentless and almost cinematic in its feel. While some readers will enjoy the non-stop ride through a digital landscape, with new plot twists appearing at every turn, I found it a bit too complicated and intense at times, even though I am at home with computer programming and the technical aspects of digital culture. There was a lot of left-brain, logical, rapid-fire explanations of the technologies involved, however I felt somewhat cheated with the human side of things. In many instances, the “twins” (AI bots paired with humans) had more personality than their human partners. There was ample opportunity for Buck to make deeper dives into the human psyche, and while he did reveal some of the characters’ pasts and motivations, they often felt somewhat convenient and contrived.

But in spite of any shortcomings, “The Torus Run” is a solid piece of hard science fiction, spun so that it keeps the reader on his toes, and delivered in an articulate and literate voice. The near-future scenario, with its political factions–both for and against AI–was well thought-out and researched, and provides the reader with much food for thought, especially in a time when we are just beginning to deal with the effects of AI on our world.

If you are a fan of hard science fiction and are looking for an escape into a very plausible near future, The Torus Run might be just what you’re looking for.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , ,

Shhh! A Flash Fiction Library by Matthew Roy Davey

October 2, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Shhh! A Flash Fiction Library by Matthew Roy Davey
Publisher: Chapeltown Books
Genre: Romance, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Welcome to the flash fiction library where the shelves are groaning with bitesize fiction.

Libraries are quiet places, ordered places, places of intellect, culture and civilization. But hiding inside are words that can explode like bombs, words to anger and appall, to titillate and tease, words to amuse and entertain. Which will you choose to read first?

Matthew Roy Davey offers us a wealth of bijou tales in his perfectly formed Shhh!

If one can’t decide what to read, why not read a little of everything?

One of my favorite tales in this collection was “A Tent on a Hill.” It showed what happened to a student named Henry who kept staring at a tent on a nearby hill instead of listening to his teacher. He had good reasons for his attention difficulties that were revealed later on, but what I really enjoyed about his days at school was how curious he was about the world around him. What a sweet and imaginative kid he seemed to be!

Some of these pieces were so short and sparse that I struggled to connect with them. This is something I’m saying as a reader who enjoys flash fiction in general, but I do need something vivid or unusual for my mind to latch onto for stories that are only a few paragraphs long. “All That I’ve Done” was one example of this. It was written from the perspective of a serial killer who had an unusual regret in life. If only he or she had more time to explain to the reader why this was so important to them!

“Ball Bag Stew,” which followed a group of scientists who had just received a message from extraterrestrials living on a faraway planet in another solar system, was another good read. I was intrigued by how these characters reacted to the news that other intelligent beings exist in our universe as well as by what they decided to do with this information. This could have easily been a much longer piece, but I was satisfied by what was shared.

Shhh! A Flash Fiction Library was an interesting mixture of genres.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien by Brit Griffin

September 22, 2025 By Leave a Comment


The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien by Brit Griffin
Publisher: Latitude 46
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Paranormal, Historical
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A gothic tale from deep within the boreal forest…

Violence and greed have intruded into a wild and remote land. It’s 1907, and silver fever has drawn thousands of men into a fledgling mining camp in the heart of the wilderness. Modesto O’Brien, fortune-teller and detective, is there too – but he isn’t looking for riches. He’s seeking revenge.

O’Brien soon finds himself entangled with the mysterious Nail sisters, Lucy and Lily. On the run from their past and headed for trouble, Lily turns to O’Brien when Lucy goes missing. But what should have been a straightforward case of kidnapping pulls O’Brien into a world of ancient myths, magic, and male violence.

As he searches for Lucy, O’Brien fears that dark forces are emerging from the ravaged landscape. Mesmerized by a nightmarish creature stalking the wilderness, and haunted by his past, O’Brien struggles to maintain his grip on reality as he faces hard choices about loyalty, sacrifice, and revenge.

Sometimes a kernel of truth is more than enough to get things started.

One of my favorite horror tropes is the existence of ominous woods, and the nearly-endless forests described in this tale were definitely filled with danger. I’ll leave it up to other readers to decide for themselves where the supernatural explanations ended and the realistic one began for the many ways a person could be injured or die out there, but what I can say is that the ambiguity of that in certain scenes only made me more interested in parsing out all of the possibilities.

The large cast of characters meant that I didn’t get to know most of the characters as well as I would have liked to and I sometimes mixed their names up. It would have been helpful to have more time to figure out who was who, perhaps with more vivid descriptions of their personalities, interests, and physical features so that I could more easily imagine what it would be like to meet them. As much as I wanted to give this tale a higher rating, my confusion in this area prevented me from doing so.

This was a good example of how to keep an audience guessing with exactly the right number of clues about what was really going on. The mystery storyline was my favourite one, and I kept changing my mind about what might happen next. There is definitely something to be said for keeping an audience on their toes. Reading this made me hope that the author releases another book soon as I’d sure like to have the opportunity to review it.

The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien was deliciously scary.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

If I Could, Would I? by Michale Mohr

September 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment


If I Could, Would I? by Michale Mohr
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy, Time Travel, Contemporary, Paranormal
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewed by Lavender

The return of a long-lost dolphin necklace by a mysterious ethereal stranger and a magical accident hurl 60-year-old Emma Corbell back to the age of 17 with the memories of her entire life intact. Elated, she plots out how she will change the sad, unfulfilled life she’d been living into her senior years. She is immediately met by translucent beings who explain that her presence there is a mistake. She must return to her own time. Standing her ground, Emma refuses. The entities, unable to interfere with her free will, cannot force her to do so.

Emma’s extraordinary journey, guided by mystical beings and fueled by newfound personal power, become a battleground for the struggle of her lifetime. Each choice she makes in her second-chance existence carries a profound weight, rippling through time and shaping the lives of all those she encounters. The question remains: even if she returns to her old life, will that choice be enough to undo her missteps?

Will Emma navigate the pitfalls of her new mistaken time travel? Will she return to her own time? Or will she cease to exist in either one?

Michale Mohr’s If I Could, Would I? is a meditative and metaphysical twist on the classic “second chance at youth” tale. At its heart is Emma Corbell, a 60-year-old woman unexpectedly thrust back into her 17-year-old body—but with all the memories and regrets of her life intact. Her journey, catalyzed by the return of a long-lost dolphin necklace and a mysterious ethereal stranger, becomes a thought-provoking exploration of choice, regret, and free will.

The novel’s speculative premise is promising: what if you could re-live your life, fully aware of the mistakes you made the first time? Mohr leans into the philosophical and emotional implications of this question, often at the expense of pace. This is not a fast-moving narrative; rather, it’s contemplative, frequently revisiting the same internal dilemmas. There are moments of surprise and intrigue, but the novel often relies more on telling than showing, which may distance some readers from fully immersing in Emma’s experience.

Emma herself is a complex protagonist—sometimes endearing, sometimes self-involved. This ambiguity makes her feel more real, but it can also make it difficult to root for her. Her interactions with translucent, mystical beings add a layer of the surreal, grounding the novel in magical realism and prompting larger questions about fate, time, and identity.

While the narrative can be repetitive at times and might have benefited from tighter editing, Mohr does succeed in crafting a reflective character study with a strong emotional core. For readers who enjoy introspective time travel stories with metaphysical overtones—think The Midnight Library meets The Time Traveler’s Wife—this book may resonate deeply.

Verdict: A quiet, contemplative journey through time, regret, and personal power. Though uneven in pacing and occasionally over-expository, If I Could, Would I? offers a poignant look at the price—and potential—of a second chance.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Hear Me by Lynn Crandall

September 3, 2025 By 11 Comments

Hear Me by Lynn Crandall
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rated: 4 stars
Review by Rose

Atlantis Aeon Ainsley Durham loves running her antique shop, Fancy This, in Old Town Auralia, but takes seriously her mission to work with her fellow Aeons to fight Darkness in her home town. But she’s changing. Her precognition is showing her darker and darker visions of what’s to come. When growing darkness forces her to reevaluate her place in the Aeons and her work, she’s not sure she belongs in either space any longer. Her terrible past urges her to withdraw, not only from her mission but from letting true love in.

Bounty hunter turned bonds company owner Keegan Barnes is also an Aeon. He hears things others don’t, and sometimes he wishes he could shut down his clairaudience ability. After all, he doesn’t see how he can help the cause with such a low-key ability. But when he picks up discussions among members of Dark Sides, will he discover just how much he’s been underestimating himself? He’s hiding secrets that keep him from healing his scars and getting close to anyone, most of all Ainsley.

Keegan and Ainsley know the efforts the Aeons have been putting in to raise the level of light energy in the city have been helping. But will it be enough to influence others to make choices for good or will Dark Sides take the city? Can they team up to save the city and find true love? Find out in this thrilling book two in the Dark Sides trilogy.

I have always loved the idea of the lost continent of Atlantis (I blame the TV show Stingray and the character Marina for this). So, when I found out about Hear Me, I had to take the chance, even though it was the second book of the series. I’m glad I did.

Although I know I would have gotten a richer experience had I read the first book, the author does a great job about filling in the backstory as she goes along. There was no great info-dump, for which I’m grateful, but instead she gently inserts needed material where it is needed.

The concept is very cool. Descendants of survivors from Atlantis (Aeons) have found each other at this point in history because evil (the Dark Aspects) is getting a deeper stronghold. The mission of the Aeons is to use their power of light to combat the workers of darkness. With each of them having specific abilities, together they are stronger than each of them separately.

The worldbuilding here is wonderfully done.  These are not just cardboard characters, but real people with their real lives and backstories. I especially enjoyed the backstory involving Ainsly’s family and would love to learn more about that (it’s possible it was covered in book one).

The characters that Hear Me focuses mostly on are Ainsly and Keegan – both damaged in their own ways, but honestly drawn. I appreciate flawed heroes and heroines and loved the connection these two have.

I really hope there are more books in this world coming – and now off to read book one.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filed Under: Other, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , ,

Hotel Spacious by J.S. Frankel

September 2, 2025 By 2 Comments


Hotel Spacious by J.S. Frankel
Publisher: Extasy Books
Genre: Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

An asteroid in a distant galaxy, a secret recipe, and an animal that has a certain magical quality to it. For Vern Nilsson, working as a bellhop at a hotel on that asteroid is one thing. Risking his life to find that recipe is another story altogether.

Vern Nilsson needs a summer job, and he finds one on Hotel Spacious, a hotel on a manmade asteroid in a distant galaxy. Built by the Borne, a benevolent race, Hotel Spacious offers a place for aliens of all sorts to relax.

Except Vern, who’s on call as a bellhop, dishwasher, and all-around gofer twenty-four-seven. The only saving grace from his job is meeting Dinarra—nicknamed Dee—a tiger-woman who has the same job that he has. Never mind that her parents are against it. Interspecies relationships rock.

Relationships aside, murder rears its ugly head. It seems that the murderer is after a secret recipe and a rare animal. If the animal is prepared correctly, it can confer God-like powers upon the eater.

Vern and Dee begin their own investigation, but by the time they discover the truth, it may be too late.

Not every summer job is as exciting as this one.

There were exactly enough details shared about the setting to keep my interest levels high. I especially appreciated how the author trusted his audience to fill in the smaller details about what it was like to visit, stay, or work at this hotel filled with aliens of all shapes and sizes. It made it easier for me to daydream about this topic during reading breaks because not all of my questions were answered. When done with care, ambiguity is a wonderful invitation for a reader to help create their own unique version of the author’s world and characters.

I enjoyed the fact that so many different genres were included in this book. The plot was romantic in some scenes only to switch to the fantasy, young adult, or mystery genres in others. This kept me on my toes as I was reading as I was never quite sure which direction it would meander into next. It takes courage and skill to play around with writing styles and reader’s expectations like that, and it’s one of the many reasons why Mr. Frankel is on my list of authors whose stories I automatically request every time he submits something new to Long and Short Reviews. A storyteller has to be quite knowledgeable about the genres they write in order to pull this off successfully, after all.

If I had to make a guess about Mr. Frankel’s personal life, I’d say that he has probably worked in the service industry at some point. Vern’s wide variety of experiences with the hotel guests and employees made me smile and nod my head as I read because of how true to life these scenes were. Some guests were perfectly sweet and gentle while others could be rather challenging at times…or worse! The main character never knew how he would be treated from one moment to the next or what hijinks might be happening just out of his view, and this made it tricky to find good stopping points while I was reading. It was engrossing from beginning to end.

Hotel Spacious had something spectacular for many different types of readers in his tale.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , , ,

From The Other Side by Julia Harrison

August 29, 2025 By Leave a Comment


From The Other Side by Julia Harrison
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Alyssa wasn’t ready to die. Snatched from her life and unable to access her most recent memories, she is cast into an afterlife that is very different from anything she expected. She is stuck on Earth, invisible to the living, and she is being hunted. Cornered by a malevolent being, Alyssa is saved by new friends who show her how to survive this strange world she never knew existed. A chance meeting leaves her inexplicably drawn to the enemy, and she starts to question if the line between good and evil is as clear cut as she’d been told. When she suspects her new family are lying to her, who can she trust?

Death was the beginning, not the end.

I enjoyed the ambiguity of this novel. There were many shades of grey in the characters, and few if any of them were purely good or bad individuals regardless of what my first impressions of them might have been. This meant that my allegiances shifted as I read and I changed my opinions about certain characters multiple times as I either learned new information about them or revisited old clues about what they were truly like.

There were some pacing issues that made it difficult for me to remain highly interested in what would happen next despite how excited I was when I first began reading. I liked the fact that so many different genres were included, but this did mean that some scenes needed to be stretched out in order to incorporate multiple themes and tropes, not all of which are necessarily easy to blend together. Patience was key while reading this, although there were times when I wished the next action scene would show up more quickly as certain sections included a lot of dialogue before and after these moments.

The ending fit the tone and themes nicely. While there were a few twists in it that I can’t discuss here for spoiler reasons, I enjoyed seeing how everything was woven together in the last few scenes as Alyssa learned a few more key pieces of information that helped to explain some moments that had been rather mysterious to this reader up until that point. It was satisfying to finally know why some characters behaved the way they did and why others sometimes made choices that didn’t always seem to fit what I already knew about their personalities.

From The Other Side was a wild ride.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Menagerie in the Dark-Stories by Chris Kauzlarich

August 26, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Menagerie in the Dark-Stories by Chris Kauzlarich
Publisher: Phantom Quill Press
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Holiday, Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Life often appears darkest just before the dawn of a new day.

In Menagerie in the Dark, Chris Kauzlarich immerses us in a speculative journey that explores the darker aspects of the human condition before bringing us back to the surface with the light of a new day. Through fourteen stories, this menagerie of characters faces trials of sorrow, death, loneliness, regret, deception, murder, delight, wonderment, and bliss, revealing what will either strengthen them enough to survive or plunge them to their demise. A boy’s home burns down, forcing him to confront a terrifying new world. A man enters a door where he witnesses his wife’s death, leaving him devastated; yet, he cannot stop returning to the scene, convinced he can save her. A nurse’s patients continue to perish under her care, but she harbors a dark secret—an administered cocktail for nefarious purposes.

These and other stories will stretch the limits of your emotions, from heartbreak to horror, leaving you yearning for more.

Fear comes in many mysterious forms.

Katelyn was in severe pain and desperately seeking more medication in “Echoes.” What I found most interesting about her tale was how many different ways it could be interpreted. Yes, she had a back injury that could explain why she needed her pain pills so regularly, but she also showed some signs that her reliance on them had possibly grown past what they were originally prescribed for. There were also inconsistencies in her memories that had multiple possible meanings as well. Other readers should decide for themselves which explanations they think fit the clues best, but I sure enjoyed the process of coming up with my own theories.

I loved the twist on what zombies are like in “Scalpel.” This was actually one of the biggest reasons why I chose a full five-star rating for this collection as the cause of the outbreak was as creative as it was original. It’s not easy to surprise me with this subgenre, so I must tip my cap to the author for pulling it off and making horror feel so relevant to life in 2025. The references that were included about current events from the past several years not only fit into the storyline nicely, they also made me chuckle in a few places which isn’t easy to do when I’m simultaneously scared.

While they were walking around trick-or-treating, Connor told his friends a terrifying local legend about a supernatural killer in “The Legend of Chucky Mudd.” What made the tale even more memorable was that the main character lived in the same house Chucky used to live in! I enjoyed seeing how Connor’s friends reacted to this conversation and how they changed their Halloween plans as a result of it. These scenes reminded me of things like Bloody Mary that used to scare me as a kid, although, of course, these characters were in serious danger and didn’t realize what their games were going to lead to. This was deliciously spooky, just the right amount of gory, and made me want a sequel.

Menagerie in the Dark was a perfectly balanced mixture of genres.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »