My Top Ten Books Of 2015!

And, once again, only M/M-books made it to my Toplist.

1. Slaying Isidore’s Dragons, by C. Kennedy
What a ride! What an amazing story. I’m still reeling. And so full of hope, for the future, for the future of these boys, all our boys.
And then there is the momentous message to abuse victims and survivors that there is a future, also for them. That there is hope for sunshine and love, in all our futures.
My Review!

2. A Solitary Man, by Shira Anthony and Aisling Mancy
This story just speeds off from page one, running, dashing, skipping, and jumping obstacles.
It is a rush and a half—this storyline grabbed me by the collar, shook me to the core, made me scream, rave, laugh, rejoice.
My Review!

3. Home and Away, by Samantha Wayland
What a little gem this turned out to be. Hockey players, a cute British gentleman, fun neighbors, and lots of cuddly times.
My Review!

4. Silver Scars, by Posy Roberts
This book is a beautiful and hard read. I am constantly amazed at how this author manages to space from silly and funny, to real and harsh.
Read this. You won’t regret it.
My Review!

5. Misfits, by Garret Leigh
Wow. Simply wow.
This was better than good. This was dang good. Actually, this is the first time I’ve read about an open relationship that I actually believe in. And then see it turn into a ménage that is truly believable, to boot.
My Review!

6. Cronin’s Key, by N. R. Walker
I seriously thought I would never read another vampire book again in my life.
Right?!
And there goes Walker, writing me one that I just fall into and roll around in and fall in love with and just simply adore.
My Review!

7. True Brit, by Con Riley
Riley is adding more diverse figures in this story, with a backdrop of London, Cornwall, and Afghanistan. Soldiers, mothers, mansions, and project housing, all in one huge swirl of her paintbrush.
I loved this. I loved the fandom aspect (that not everybody will get, but that’s okay), I loved that Ed (-ward) got whiplash, and I loved the nod to the boy bands out there. I loved that the bad-guys don’t always win, and that smarts can still out-maneuver them.
My Review!

8. Silent, by Sara Alva
This story is heartrending. Sad. Full of devastation. Kids and drug dealers. Young people who probably never stand a chance.
And yet.
In the middle of all this misery is a young man of 15, standing tall, doing his absolute best. He mucks it up, of course, because he is only fifteen years old. But he tries. Oh, lord, but he tries.
My Review!

9. Hero, by Perry Moore
This book was a ride and a half! And then yet another ride!
I haven’t had this much fun in a long time, and still, there were moments of near despair here. YA at its very best.
What a fantastic book.
My Review!

10. Red Dirt Heart #4, by N. R. Walker
So, author. You proceed to break my heart in so many pieces I’m still looking for some of them. Then you go on and mend it, like it was never broken in the first place.
As I sit and read, I get lost in the red dirt trails, and I rightly don’t know where I am when I look up from the pages. It takes a moment to realize that I am in my home, not in the outback, struggling.
My Review!

Book Review – Freeing Stella, by Zoe Lynne

Stella Marshall feels invisible to everyone but her sister Jessica and best friend Jenna. Thanks to their Friday night LGBTQ youth group meetings, she can be true to herself and cast aside the boy she was born as, Steven. The rest of the time, she locks herself away, because if her super conservative, Christian parents ever found out…. When her little sister admits to liking a girl as more than a friend, it becomes ten times harder for Stella to keep up the charade. She wants to stand by Jess and take some of the heat away, and that means coming out of the closet—even if it costs Stella her family and the girl of her dreams, Lillian Nelson. Unfortunately, it’s too frightening to give up the security of hiding behind Steven. But Stella knows she has to be brave, for herself and her sister.

An absolutely lovely and short story (around 100 pages) about coming out a girl in a boy’s body. About family, siblings, parents, and close friends.

True to my usual form, I have jumped feet first into a series at #2, but it was totally standalone, and I will run and buy book #1 as soon as possible.

To free the person stuck inside the wrong body must be devilishly difficult. This story takes a beautiful look at how Steven struggles to become Stella, and how she manages to stay true to herself.

I am not a religious person, but I loved how there was also talk about how there are churches that accept you as you are, churches that don’t condemn you before even knowing you. Look for them! Search them out, if you need them!

This is a great book for young people, adolescents, who are looking for answers, and maybe finding that they are not so strange as they feel inside. Adolescence is a difficult moment at the best of times, and feeling lonely is a big part of that. Here, a young person can see how it is to be unique, not lonely.

There is no sex, only two sweet kisses, so if you are looking for something to put into the hands of your young ones, (perhaps 12-18?), you can relax. There is no talk of bits and pieces either, quite unusual for a transgender book. Very refreshing.

I found the story absolutely charming, with a little moment of angst, and then full of love and understanding—even though there, at first, was quite an upheaval within the family.

I adored the best friend’s mother, who told Stella there would always be room for her in her home, if needed. That is how you act as an adult, that is how you take responsibility for all our children, not just the ones that are straight and your own. Kudos for showing a real human being.

Warmly recommended. Will look for more books from this author, who says in the afterword that she wants to write stories for young people for whom very few stories exist.

I approve with all my heart.

Favorite sentence:

“I love you, I don’t understand you, but I love you.”


***

I was given a free copy of this book by the publisher, Harmony Ink Press, and a positive review wasn’t promised in return.



Find this book at: Harmony Ink/Dreamspinner Press

Book Review – The Prince and the Program, by Aldous Mercer

Mordred Pendragon, the Bastard Prince, has done a Bad Thing-again. Exiled to Canada for seven years, he has to find a job to pay his bills. For reasons he refuses to reveal, Mordred decides "Software Engineer" has a nice ring to it. And though experience with "killing the Once and Future King, my father" and "that time in feudal Japan" makes for a poor resume, he is hired by a small tech startup in Toronto. In the midst of dealing with a crippling caffeine addiction and learning C++, Mordred thinks he has finally found someone to anchor him to the world of the living: Alan, the company's offsite lead developer. Except that Alan might not be a "living" entity at all-he may, in fact, be the world's first strong AI. Or a demon that mistook a Windows install for the highway to Hell. Or, just maybe, the ghost of Alan Turing, currently inhabiting a laptop.

I didn’t read much of the blurb. I never do. But I saw that Mordred was the MC. And that Alan Turing had a big role. That was quite enough for me. Alan has earned some starshine.

So when the author contacted me and asked me if I wanted to read it, I said yes. At once.

What did I think of this book? Well, five stars, for starters. Duh.

Because it is Monty Python meets Douglas Adams chewing coca leaves smoking pot doing shrooms. Then it goes to a whole different level all together. Heh. I am sure I understood exactly nothing of this book, and I know I loved every second of it. Just terribly, terribly brilliant.

The author never tells you too much. At moments, he tells you too little, but he is never there to write stuff on your nose, you either get it or you don’t. (I need to vehemently stress that I mostly did not, in fact, get it. Not that it mattered in the least. Still brilliant). My intelligence was never questioned. (Except for by me myself, but that is a daily thing happening). The author took for granted that I would just strap in and follow.

And by god, I followed. All over the place. Everywhere, even through the moments where I understood nothing.

Brain-melt. That’s what this book is. My brain is now zombiefood, ready for serving.

Here is Mr. Mercer’s recipe: one part Fantasy, one part Legends, one part hot droids, one part running crazy, one part Save the world. Mix well, let simmer for hours, serve steaming hot. Decorate with artificial intelligence, shining metallic robots, androids and the occasional zombie. Add a side dish of a Final Bonus Quest with a thousand dollar reward, dead or alive. I loved it.

Why I loved it? Well, the language, of course. As usual. Seduce me with your English, please.
Here, let me show you a sentence that is nothing short of brilliant:

Instead of hurling a flamebolt at the bitch—a misbegotten chimera hatched in some wunderkind’s garage—I took a deliberate sip of coffee.

Then the author goes on to show me that this is a different and strange place. He doesn’t tell me, he shows me. Here:

It wasn’t until 28:23 that a large middle-aged man entered the room and gripped my hand in a bone-crushing handshake.

Ha, author, I see what you did there. An action sentence shows me that we are in a place where time is counted differently, but you are not writing it on my nose. Cool.

This book gave me many of the same feels I got when reading Douglas Adams for the first time, wide-eyed and smiling, with the occasional wild guffaws, and a lot of headshaking at all the crazy. Like this sentence:

…The owl returned to life and went to sleep.

I mean, seriously? Who writes that?
Oh, I guess the same man who uses Baron Samedi as one of his characters. I haven’t heard of him since 10cc.

Mr Mercer then continues to break me into little pieces with all the talk between Mori and Alan over IRC. I still remember when I got op status, and read ***Mode change “+o AnnaLund” for #Ferrari by ChanServ every time I entered the channel. Glory days. Much as gen-mai, I would proceed to kicking stupid users off my chan, banning half of them to kingdom come. (I connected from Sweden’s Swipnet, so I was holding on to the shit-end of that specific stick more often than not. If you were there, you remember. Oh, the amounts of hackers that connected through them, it was truly glorious).

And herein lies the strength of this story. Mr Mercer just tells it. You have to relate to it.

For me? This was an IRC-nerdgasm, turned to OIRC-gasm in one, small, brilliant sentence. Oh lord. I am sure I missed a plethora of interesting things, stuff that you will note, because it was part of your heritage. As I said, herein lies the strength.

There is even a sentence of redemption for the sadly mauled figure of Morgana, a line where Mordred says “Our mother was a child, caught up and betrayed by men that should have known better.” Oh, author, I do love you for that short phrase.

See? I have now talked and talked about this book, without telling you what it is about. I am very proud of this fact. Read it, and you tell me. What is it about?

I think it is about reparation for Alan Turing and I think it is brilliant. At the same time, I feel it is also a kind of reparation for Mordred himself, who was handed a shitty deal already at birth.

Yes, this is not your normal romance. Who cares? This is a real story. It took me by the hand and ran like the wind. By pure coincidence (there is no such thing) I was in Toronto while reading most of it.

***
I was given a free copy of this book by the author, after he had read one of my reviews. He thought I’d like it. He was right. A review wasn’t promised in return.

***
Addendum to this review:

None of my girlfriends cared for the Arthurian legends. None of them read Tolkien. None of them understood my fascination with science fiction; they were all reading Green Gables or something.

You see, science fiction is my old love, my almost-forgotten love. I grew up with the ABC of Asimov/Bradbury/Clarke, and I was the only girl I knew then who loved them.

This love has been trampled and abused and almost killed during the last decades, as I haven’t found anything to stir my mind for ages.

Then suddenly, this year, 2013, three (3!) different authors suddenly swing by and make everything better. Aldous Mercer is one of them. Lisa Henry is another. And Julio-Alexi Genao is the third. Each one of them with a different angle, one more about science and computers, the second writing a more deep space sci-fi, and the third with a dystopian darkness of a love story.

All three spoke to me. All three handled subjects that I love. Crazy and fun. Distress and fear. Loneliness and love.

So, from the old timers to these three new authors, I’d like to instate the HeGeMe of Henry/Genao/Mercer.

Because M/M tops it now.

Heh.


Find this book at: Dreamspinner Press

Book Review - Tell Me It's Real, by TJ Klune

Do you believe in love at first sight? Paul Auster doesn't. Paul doesn't believe in much at all. He’s thirty, slightly overweight, and his best features are his acerbic wit and the color commentary he provides as life passes him by. His closest friends are a two-legged dog named Wheels and a quasibipolar drag queen named Helena Handbasket. He works a dead-end job in a soul-sucking cubicle, and if his grandmother's homophobic parrot insults him one more time, Paul is going to wring its stupid neck. Enter Vince Taylor. Vince is everything Paul isn’t: sexy, confident, and dumber than the proverbial box of rocks. And for some reason, Vince pursues Paul relentlessly. Vince must be messing with him, because there is no way Vince could want someone like Paul. But when Paul hits Vince with his car—in a completely unintentional if-he-died-it'd-only-be-manslaughter kind of way—he's forced to see Vince in a whole new light. The only thing stopping Paul from believing in Vince is himself—and that is one obstacle Paul can’t quite seem to overcome. But when tragedy strikes Vince's family, Paul must put aside any notions he has about himself and stand next to the man who thinks he's perfect the way he is.

This was a ride and a half.
This was a crackfic on meth, smoking pot, while chewing coca leaves. So THERE went the spelling, right out the window. And look, THERE went the politically correct, straight out the other window, without even opening it first. (The crash you just heard was the glass shattering, and falling to the ground several stories down, on all kinds of people who are not gay). And booom THERE went half of your fans, the female ones who can't handle that many gay men have issues with vaginas. LOL. (Yeah, there could have been a few less jokes and less dumping shit on the vagina, but hey, it takes a true connoisseur to appreciate the art of the female fancy parts). (No, knowing Helena Handbasket is not enough). And KABOOOM there went a bunch of people who don't like slurs of any kind.

I don't mind, when it's done this way. I love it when everything gets put upside down and inside out, because THAT is where you notice it. Suddenly it's RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. So you notice.

About bloody time, if you ask me. (But I still love my vag, so stop cussing it, will ya?)

This book was pure crazy. It could most certainly have taken three more tours through the editing process, as both verbs and words were in the wrong tense and just plain wrong. Prepositions up the creek without a paddle. And usually that grates on my soul. Usually, I hate it.

BUT HEY! I just laughed my ass off, I laughed and laughed, and then I laughed some more. In two separate instances I even woke up Mr Lund from my guffaws.

So, even if the language wasn't up to Mr Klune's usual standards, I feel this book was written in one looooong sitting, maybe while he was writing some really deep and hurtful stuff in another book? (Into this River I Drown, comes to mind—that must have been a dark and heavy book to write, and this one would have cheered him up a lot).

What saves the day here is how it all gets so fucking out of hand it borders on the comically tragic. Or the tragically comic. There is one instance where a serious discussion about in how many ways Paul could possibly destroy their relationship, and ends up, after mere minutes, to be all about the superhero costume that Sandy should be wearing. Something just goes SPACE-BOINK-OIK in my head.

Crazy book is crazy. Now you will either love this book or you will hate it. There simply is no in-between.

You all know where I stand. I am firmly in the corner with the two-legged, squeaky-wheels dog named Wheels and the homophobic, slurring parrot named Johnny Depp. We are having a ball over here.

So, Mr Klune, please. Continue. We are all ears, over here. Feed us more words.
Pretty please.


***

I was NOT asked to read this book by anyone, I paid for it with my own money.

Find this book at: Dreamspinner Press