Book Review: Redbacks (As Darkness Ends, book two)

Posted on by
Reply

Redbacks (As Darkness Ends, #2)Redbacks by Aaron Crocco

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Summary:

When a devastating global earthquake strikes, James Cole narrowly escapes the crumbling New York City skyscrapers with the help of a mysterious person. Now one of the precious few survivors, James’s goal is to get home to his wife through a locked-down Manhattan. But when an inexplicable darkness begins blanketing the city, deadly creatures appear and begin hunting anybody they can find. With James and his companion the only ones capable of fighting, they’ll put their lives at stake once more in order to save the last of the survivors.

My Review:

Redbacks is the second book in the “As Darkness Ends” series. The first book focused on Travis Hunter who has a specific job to do in the apocalypse sequence. Redbacks continues the saga from the eyes of James Cole, who has banded together with a small group of survivors. The story runs parallel to Travis Hunter’s story and shows the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. Emotions are concentrated and personal. While the reader has a sense of what is happening globally and why, these survivors only have what is immediately available to them. The sense of helplessness mixed with a need to DO SOMETHING is palpable. The story is absorbing and fast paced. At the end of this installment you will say “AHHHHH! Don’t end yet!” Where is book three? I need book three.

Nightmare Fuel: Off With His Head

Posted on by
2

(note: The picture above is unattributed – if you know the source, please comment)

The sounds of the Mardi Gras party leaked out of the mansion onto the empty street. Jane guessed it was around 2 am but thanks to her fussy costume, her watch was at home. The annual party was not just a costume party but a dressy society affair where the participants tried to one up each other. This year she was dressed as a naughty Marie Antoinette. Her dress, huge, included a corset that squeezed the ever loving breath out of her. As fast as she moved down the street, she was surprised her breasts were still contained in the low, square cut opening.

Thock, thock, thock, thock Her cheap shoes were ungodly loud and seemed to be the only sound. The street lights cast a yellow light over everything, leaching color. The mansion sat on a circle drive and she would have to walk nearly two blocks to get to the parking lot where her car was. When Jane had arrived that night, the streets had been full of people attending the street fair and carnival. Booths lined the streets along with the usual rides and games. Now it was a ghost town.

She was pissed. No, more than that, she was done. Her boyfriend, the fucking court jester, was drunk and slobbering on some tramp as usual. She was never the jealous type until she met Alan. Hell, she used to be that flirty girl that he liked to hit on in bars only now it wasn’t such an attractive quality on him.

As she was walking, she rummaged around in the folds of the skirt searching for her car keys. Her mind was preoccupied with Alan. She looked ahead to see the parking lot about a block ahead. As she did, she caught a movement. Instantly she became alert. “Shit, why didn’t I get that bouncer guy to walk me out to my car?” she thought. As soon as she thought that, she felt indignant. “Why should I be afraid? I have every right to walk out to my car and not worry about being attacked.”

She started whistling as loud as she could, hoping that she didn’t look like an easy target. The next time she saw movement, she could make out a figure but it was gone in an instant. Jane looked around, trying to decide what to do. “Running in these shoes is out”. She saw a fun house on her right that had an opening in the front. The opening wasn’t quite a door but a hallway with mirrors. She stepped inside hoping that whomever was out there would go on about their business.

She had to walk towards the back to hide herself from the street. She started down the hall but bonked into a glass wall. She slid her hand sideways, feeling for the next opening. It was hard to see in the dim light cast by the street lamp. The mirror walls were decorated exactly the same with Mardi Gras beads and masks which made it impossible to see her way around.

She found a corner and turned to her right. This appeared to open into a room with street mime like mannequins. She reached out to touch one but it turned out to be another mirror. The image appeared to be more than a reflection, it appeared to be projected onto the wall in 3 dimension somehow. She figured there was only one and the rest were reflections. “Curiosity killed the cat, girlfriend” she laughed to herself. She kept moving along the walls, touching that reflection and the next. She laughed to herself, “they will need a whole lot of glass cleaner after I get out of here”. She felt her way around yet another corner and felt frustration and just a little bit of fear when she saw that she was back in the room that held the mimes. She felt along the opposite wall hoping not to make the same mistake. The mime in front of her lurched and grabbed her surprising a scream out of her. She smelled the booze on his breath, her fear turned to outright panic. The mime burst out laughing and removed his mask. In that moment, had she had a knife she would have killed him three times. “I scared the shit out of you, didn’t I? Do you like my new costume?”, Alan said.

Copyright © 2012 by Deborah Pardee. All Rights Reserved.

Book Review: How To Be Lost

Posted on by
Reply

How to Be LostHow to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Summary:

Joseph and Isabelle Winters seem to have it all: a grand home in Holt, New York, a trio of radiant daughters, and a sense that they are safe in their affluent corner of America. But when five-year-old Ellie disappears, the fault lines within the family are exposed: Joseph, once a successful businessman, succumbs to his demons; Isabelle retreats into memories of her debutante days in Savannah; and Ellie’s bereft sisters grow apart–Madeline reluctantly stays home, while Caroline runs away.

Fifteen years later, Caroline, now a New Orleans cocktail waitress, sees a photograph of a woman in a magazine. Convinced that it is Ellie all grown up, Caroline embarks on a search for her missing sister. Armed with copies of the photo, an amateur detective guide, and a cooler of Dixie beer, Caroline travels through the New Mexico desert, the mountains of Colorado, and the smoky underworld of Montana, determined to salvage her broken family.

My Review:

About a third of the way through this I wished that I had chosen a different book. The dialogue is painful at times and generally disjointed. It feels like the author is trying way too hard to be clever. The focus is on one character out of about seven that need attention which leaves you not caring about any of them. No real sense of loss or need to do anything about the missing child. Usually, I settle into a book and it evens out. Sad to say this book did not get much better. I would not count this as more than beach reading or to read if you don’t have any thing else. The story is plotted like a shotgun blast with so many different things going on that you don’t really care about any one of them. There is only really one likeable character and that is Agnes. The story is told via Caroline who is just, blah. The author commits several Point Of View transgressions which makes the story very hard to follow. There are details that seem to be added in as a writing exercise and are just plain annoying. I mean, really, did we need to know that the trashcan she threw the folders in was appliqued with sailboats? I would have understood if it had ANYTHING to do with the story. How about if the trashcan was appliqued with Ellie’s missing poster? Cut. It. Out.

The sad and frustrating thing is that this story had TONS of potential. I almost feel like rewriting the damn thing myself.

Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars

Posted on by
Reply

The Fault in Our StarsThe Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Summary:

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

My Review:

This book started a bit on the slow side with some prose annoyances (the water rose up and rose down? Really?) but once I got into the rhythm of the book, I fell in love with the characters. This is Juno for cancer kids. The precocious dialogue is perfect for kids who have been forced to face their own mortality when their friends are simply stressed by what to wear to the prom. Without spoiling the story too much (and you surely know what the end contains without being too much of a genius), I will say that I cried for the last hour of the audiobook. It was very well done without being sappy or cloying.

An added bonus is the author interview at the end. I truly love getting glimpses into the heads of the authors. Now I am off to find what else John Greene has done.

Love, Life, Loss

Posted on by
Reply

He watched the sleeping woman from the old arm chair in the corner of the room. “You are so beautiful”, the words slipped out of his mouth before he realized he spoke aloud. She didn’t stir. She never did. Jasper sighed and settled back in the chair. He would be gone soon but right now he watched her as he did every day. He loved how her dark brown hair lay in tangled waves on the pillow. He knew every freckle, every line on her face.

He wondered, as he often did, how it had come to this; this coming and going. Their lives had once been so carefree. They had been so excited to buy this house and to start a family of their own. He had done everything he could to give Susannah the white picket fence dream for which she had so longed.

A bird trilled outside the window breaking his reverie. Time to go, Alice would be here soon. He stood and smoothed the suit he wore every day.

The light from the window pierced her dream. Her eyes opened and she looked around foggily before her gaze settled on the chair in the corner; his chair. She felt the morning stab of anguish as she understood he still wasn’t there. He would never be there no matter how much she wished for him. Since the train accident a year ago, all she had of him was this house where they had begun to build their lives together. She had been so happy. Life had been so full of promise.

Someone had broken that promise but who could she blame? Not Jasper, he had simply gone to work that day. God? Yes, she supposed she blamed God often enough.

She heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway. That was Alice, her sister, coming to check on her and help take care of the house. Susannah was grateful for her sister’s help. Alice talked to Susannah about everything and anything as she cleaned the house. Most days Susannah did not get out of bed, preferring the drugged sleep to the harsh reality. Now it seemed that she could not get out of bed, that there was something more; something broken.

Alice opened the front door to her sister’s house. She set her purse and keys on the hall table with reluctance. The house was lifeless and musty. She didn’t like coming here anymore. This house that had once been filled with laughter and joy was nothing more than a hollow shell. Today, she would open up the windows and let in the fresh air. This time she would not mention her sister’s overdose to the couple coming to look at the house. This time she would help the house remember the happiness.

Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Pardee. All Rights Reserved.

Nightmare Fuel: Harold

Posted on by
Reply

Harold

This bed was way too comfortable Anna thought as she lay down next to Thomas. Like every night, she made a mental note not to fall asleep this time; she had too many things left to do before her own bedtime. She held a book behind her back, turned to the little boy and said “which book do you want tonight?”

He immediately shouted “Harold and the Purple Crayon!”. Anna laughed and pulled the book from behind her back. “How did I know that, Tom Tom?” both giggling. This made the sixth time over the last four nights. Nothing was like the persistence of a four year old. In the story, Harold drew anything he wanted or needed with a purple crayon. Thomas liked that so much that he had used a purple crayon of his own on his bedroom walls before Anna had discovered him in the act. He knew the story so well that she could not get away with skipping a page or two to hurry the bedtime process.

When the story ended, she leaned in and kissed her son goodnight as she climbed out of the bed. She thought to herself that he did not look all that sleepy at least, nowhere near as sleepy as she felt.

“Mommy, guess what? Thomas said in his impossibly tiny voice.
“What baby?”
“I drawed Harold” he said looking pleased with himself.
“You did? Where is he?” asked Anna, thinking this would be a cute addition to the refrigerator art gallery.
“He under the bed”, said Thomas.

Anna bent down and looked under the bed. “Good grief Tom, there is a ton of stuff under here!” She swept some of the stuff aside looking for the picture but did not see it. “You need to put your toys away when you are done.” Then she saw a shoe she had been missing and her hairbrush. “Why is my shoe under here?”

“Harold taked it. He say he need it.” Thomas slid out of bed and looked at the mess underneath it.

Anna looked at her son. Hard to be mad at such a cute little boy but why was he taking her stuff? “Tom, I don’t think Harold put this stuff here, he isn’t real.” As she said that, she saw a shadow move near the corner. “What was that!” she startled as she scooped toys aside with her arm. She couldn’t see anything. It must have been our shadows moving, geez Anna, jumpy much she thought to herself.

She stood up “let’s go mister, back in bed. Tomorrow we will get your room cleaned up”. She tucked the covers around her son and gave him another kiss. She walked out of the room pulling the door most of the way closed. This was a compromise as he didn’t like the door shut all the way. As she stepped away from the door she heard him whisper “okay, just put the stuff in a box so it is cleaned up; you maked mommy mad, Harold”.

Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Pardee. All Rights Reserved.

Nightmare Fuel: Fear Is

Posted on by
Reply

Nightmare Fuel Day 5

Fear Is

Moving through the house at night
No one is home
No one is here
Alone
Flicking lights on as you pass
One room into another
Double back
Turn that light off
Feeling silly
Do other grownups do this?

Done with downstairs
Stairway light?
Come on
No need
Flicker
In the periphery
What was that?
Get a grip
Heart pounding
Walking faster
Skip last step

Quick quick
Bedroom light on
Avoid mirror
Bloody Mary
Three times
Not playing that game

Lights off
Dive in bed
Like a child
Pulling the covers up
No skin exposed
Witch will get you
If she sees

You are alone
Alone?

Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Pardee. All Rights Reserved.

Nightmare Fuel: Gramma’s Lake

Posted on by
Reply

Attention! In this FICTIONAL story, I used a few real childhood memories, however, it is MOSTLY FICTION.

Nightmare Fuel Day 4

Gramma’s Lake

The best part of our summer was swimming in our Gramma’s lake. The lake was made from an old sink hole and had a shallow slope that drops off fast after about fifteen feet. I don’t think anyone had any idea how deep the center was. Hell, I didn’t even know it had a real name until long after I was an adult.

Grampa and Uncle Donny built a dock that was held up by used oil barrels and anchored by a chain that ended 15 feet down with an old car transmission. Grampa owned a sand company that yielded plenty of gigantic inner tubes from tractors and trucks. My sister and I would stack them so that they looked like floating pyramids. You had to stack them just right because there was no pain like the pain of the gouge down your back from the stem when you dove through them.

When we were little, we sat catching minnows with old coffee cans on the beach made from truck loads of white sand. My dad would give us rides out to the dock on his back. As we learned to swim, he would trick us into swimming farther and farther by backing up while we were swimming. Soon, we were fish frolicking around and under the dock, daring each other to swim down the length of anchor chain.

The water was murky and the bottom ooky under your toes. Along the beach were reeds and cattails that hid moccasins and alligators. We had at least two dogs eaten by the gators as well as a one legged duck that survived a gator attack. Once we were old enough to be aware of the danger, swimming out to the dock was filled with fear of what might get you if you dawdled. The fear was used in a game between my sister and me to see who could get to the dock the fastest. Neither of us would admit to being afraid, of course, just that one of us was the winner and the other was eaten.

No matter the fear, Florida kids are in water all summer long. We learned to ski in stages. The first time I got up on two skis, my dad pulled me all the way around the lake three times before he finally yelled “let go at the beach”. No way, no how was I falling off the skis so far from the dock and beach. He learned to drive the boat near the shore and I just skied straight to land. The dock became our launch point by sitting on the edge with my dad gunning the boat and ripping us up and away.

Teenage years on the lake were filled with clandestine skinny dipping and kissing underneath the dock. Our dry supplies were towed out to the dock where the party would get rowdy making ‘dry’ impossible. When I was seventeen, a kid from school died at one of these parties. The official report said that Dustin drowned but I saw him swim out to the middle. He just disappeared like something yanked him under the surface. Of course, I was stoned at the time. They didn’t find his body but the guess was that he was either eaten by a gator or his body was trapped under a ledge in the limestone.

After that happened, the fun was gone from the lake. I couldn’t even ride on my Uncle’s Hoby Cat anymore for fear that I would fall in somewhere in the middle of the lake. I tried a few times to swim out to the dock but would panic about what was going on under the water that I could not see. Not being sure I would win the speed dock swim challenge one more time killed the lake for me.

Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Pardee. All Rights Reserved.

Nightmare Fuel: Getting Schooled

Posted on by
Reply

Nightmare Fuel Day 2

Getting Schooled

He heard the voices everyday. They sounded like a low rumble without any words. He passed the old school twice a day and the sound no longer frightened him. The new elementary school was just a block past the old one and both of them were close enough to Jake’s house that he walked to school. He had gone to the old school all the way up to this year when the new school opened.

The sounds started in September, a little while after school started. Now that he was in fifth grade this year, he walked by himself because his older brother now went to the junior high. It had taken him awhile to figure out what the sounds were. At first, he thought there were people inside the school but when he told his mother, she had said that the building was empty now about to be demolished. After she said that, he felt nervous when he walked past the school. What if it was ghosts? He did not dare tell his brother Eli because that would just get him punched in the arm. Eli thought Jake read too many books and made fun of him for it. He would just say that Jake needed to lay off the ghost stories if he was going to be such pussy about it.

The voices seemed different today, somehow louder or more clear or something. Jake wasn’t sure what it was. He still couldn’t make out any words. He decided to go up to one of the windows and look. The gate was closed but it wasn’t locked. The first window he came to was near the front corner of the building. He didn’t want anyone to see him if there was someone inside so he stayed close to the wall. Then he heard it. Someone said his name. His heart skipped a bit and started jumping around in his chest. He flattened himself against the wall, the bricks scratchy against his face. He immediately felt a sense of calm against the sun warmed bricks. He heard several voices calling his name now but instead of running away like he had wanted to do, he felt he needed to go inside and find these people.

Only he couldn’t. He couldn’t move his arms or his legs or anything. He stuck to the wall like someone pressed against him into the building. The voices washed over him like a song now. “Come” and “We miss you” and “Be with us” they chanted. He felt no pain, only a need to join them.

Nightmare Fuel: Trying Something New

Posted on by
Reply

Warning: This story is adult themed!

Nightmare Fuel Day 1

Trying Something New

She opened the box on the bedside table and took out the restraints. Mark eyed the leather straps with boredom, “Janice, please tell me again why you want us to do this? I told you bondage is not a turn on for me.”

Janice put her hand in the middle of his chest and gave him a hard, nearly angry shove backwards onto the bed. Through gritted teeth and an insincere smile, she said “And I have told you already that I want to try something, anything new”. He allowed her to put the wrist restraints on all the while grinning. She stared at him for a moment and then her face changed to playfulness. “I just want to have a little fun. If we can’t have fun anymore, then what’s the point?” She fastened the ankle restraints so that now Mark lay spread eagle on the bed. She had to admit, it was not a sexy sight. She thought to herself that he had let himself go in the last few years. It was fun to have him where she wanted him and that did turn her on. Their relationship had become such a mess that they barely spoke to each other anymore and had been basically roommates for the last year.

“What else do you have in that box” he asked, now curious as to where this was going. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go along with this experiment but if that is what it took to get her off his back, hell, let’s go. He looked at her naked body for the first time in what seemed like a year and saw her beautiful breasts. That had always been his favorite thing about her, about any woman to be honest.

She reached in and took out a long feather that she stroked down his chest and around his cock. He felt his balls tighten. “Well, look who isn’t turned on at all now” Janice said as she stroked his stiffening cock. She leaned down and gave him a deep kiss they way that they used to kiss when they first met.

Her nervousness turned into an adrenalin rush as she reached into the box a third time. She took out a plastic container and pried off the lid. “Let me guess, you are going to lick vanilla pudding off my balls”, Mark snorted with laughter. “Did you read this in some chick magazine?”

This time her smile was genuine. “No, this will be much better than that”, she said. When she took the first one out, his eyes widened.

“What the fuck!; he wasn’t laughing now. “What the hell is that? A Squid or something? You know I don’t like those things like that.”

“You will just have to trust me, Mark. These have a cool coating on them that will give you sensations like you have never felt. Remember back in college how your fraternity licked those toads? Kind of like that.”

Janice set the first one on his chest. If felt cold and wet but then he noticed a definite tingling. His curiosity won over his revulsion as he waited to see what would happen. She took out several more and set them on his face and forehead. Odd, but they felt soothing. She watched intently. He tried to say something but his mouth wouldn’t work. With a growing panic, he felt the numbness creeping over his body. By the time he wanted to scream, he could not. The things crawled around on him now but he couldn’t feel them. “Why, why, why?” It took him a minute to realize he wasn’t making any sound.

She remembered what the woman said, that he would be conscious until the end which she rather liked. He had violated their marriage every way possible in the last year and as much as she wanted him dead, she wanted him to suffer first. She saw tears slipping from his eyes but his face was a frozen mask of horror. A shudder ran down her back. “Disgusting.” She stood up and pulled on her robe. She had done all her talking in the months prior to this to no avail. He would get no more of her time.

Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Pardee. All Rights Reserved.