T. R. Jones’ Lost Survivor

Independent Publishers Group

This is one of the best war novels I’ve ever read. Jones uses memorable characters to depict a story not merely about war, but also about the psychological impact war has on the soldier and his loved ones when he returns from the field as a survivor. Powerful!

Johnny leaves home to go to Vietnam as a Corpsman. Under fire from the moment he lands, Johnny transforms from the polite young man he was back home in central Illinois to become JD, the survivor and veteran. But thirteen months later JD’s tour ends and it is time for him to return to the States and resume his life as a stateside soldier.

The intervening time has changed JD completely. And yet, almost nothing has changed back home. How is JD supposed to speak to anyone about his experience when all they have to frame it in is what they’ve seen on TV? Betrayed by the very strategies he used to survive in Nam, JD feels nothing but lost back in his own hometown.

What is there left for him to do? Take another tour in Nam? Go on to an obscure training that will ensure his never returning to Nam?

Johnny learns two things very well: whatever world you leave will change when you’re away; and what leads to survival in war is totally antithetical to survival in the ‘civilized world’.

Wizard’s Bane

WOW. Where did that week go?
So, I finished the book. Silly me. I should know by now that if I make it halfway through a novel with sequels that I should have the sequel in hand before finishing the current novel.

Wizard’s Bane is a journey. It starts simply enough with a guy named Dale who is lost. Crystalwizard lets the reader find his way along with Dale, which, for me, is a huge compliment to the reader’s intelligence. I applaud it vociferously! We feel Dale’s sense of dislocation as we follow him from a small ranch in . . . some backwoods planet apparently stuck in pre-industrial evolution . . . to find some answers in the city of wizards, Villenspell (consequently, the title of the next in this series).

Along the way, Dale seems to have a tendency for adopting strays and a near-pathological need to reform them. Which is a very good thing, as he tends to run into rather flat characters and is the impetus for their rounding. This is very realistic, as it is how we all form character. By our associations and shared experiences, as well as conversations relevant to social indoctrination.

And wait . . . there’s more. The malign Gorn keep showing up. Which is a very not-good thing. They’re nasty little mercenary reptiloids with powerful technology and a taste for mayhem. And they pop up in ever-growing numbers as well.

Wizard’s Bane does a wonderful job of blending elements: world-building without information dumps; character-building via dialogue and action; epic plot, veiled and mostly only hinted in this first of the Sojourn Chronicles.

So in a serious critique you’re supposed to pick at nits, right? Okay. I’ll pick. But please understand that these nits in no way outweigh the virtues of storytelling incorporated in the book. Physically, the page layout is not to my taste. Spaces between paragraphs, in fiction specifically, indicate to me a skip in time; the layout of this novel, the version I have anyway, is more suited to academic books than to fiction. CW has a number of dictional eccentricities, nearly all of which have to do with compound words such as somewhat (versus “some what”).

Overall, though, I find this novel to be well worth the price of admission. And, yes, I bought this book with no intent of doing a review. Which this is not, exactly. This is merely a blog entry lauding a book I like. Otherwise, I assure you, this would be far better crafted and better outlined in detail. Meantime, I definitely recommend it for pleasure reading, and I eagerly anticipate my copy of Villenspell.

Bohemian Word Werks – Return of the Sword Antho

Bohemian Word Werks – Return of the Sword Antho

It’s out now. I’ll try to find a review on it.

Dear reader, please do feel free to order your copy and review the book. I’m happy to link to it on your blog or even place it here on my blog.

I’m SO jazzed!!!!

Heaven-tickling sculpture of Virtue

Janet Leigh wrote: The other night while I wasn’t looking, Allen Taylor of World Class Poetry Blog tagged me to write a six-word memoir, no small feat I assure you. Here’s the one I rejected, although on some level it rings true:
Namesake destiny provides sequel to Psycho.
But those who know me best would agree this sounds about right:
Headliner: breech birth, embraced life headlong.

Apparently, the game is based on a bet presented by Ernest Hemingway that he could condense his life story into six words. Hemingway wrote: For Sale: baby shoes, never worn. Now this bet was discovered by Bookbabie who started the six-word memoir meme with these rules:

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links.
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

So . . . I’m tagging Sio, Ali, Steve, Von Darkmoor, and my soul.

My 6W bio? (considers the compound word as a single word)

His life: heaven-tickling sculpture of virtue

ALT: optimist, embodiment of multiple, paradoxical abundances

Fringe-monkey version: revolution of living art, poetry, and . . .

Wizard’s Bane

CyberwizardProductions – Wizard’s Bane

Dale is in very deep trouble . . . And I’m about 25 pages from the end of the book! Oh, for more time to read. Wonderful story telling and character building gives this novel a solid core on which the author carefully crafts muscular description and fleshes it out with a fresh turn of slipstream narration and plot.

Next to my own novels, this is the best SFF novel I’ve read so far this year! And, of course, mine are not yet published, so click over and pick up your copy of this unique trilogy – or is it a series . . .