Book Review: Silverskin

When Ellie Forth sets out to have a great Alaskan adventure with her remaining family members, she’s got something to prove—and not to them, but to herself. Four years after the unexpected death of her mother and sister, she’s ready to re-embrace her adventurous side. Oliver Cole’s life, on the other hand, is very simple: go to work, catch fish, come home, and stash every penny earned into his bank account so he can afford to pay for college. But his life is turned upside down when Ellie and her brother—two nearly-forgotten acquaintances from his childhood—burst back into his life. After a horrific encounter with the supernatural deep in the Kenai Peninsula, Ellie and Oliver must team up to discover the truth about what happened in Portlock, and how to fight a rising tide of evil that has the power to envelop not just Alaska, but the entire world.

Book Review: The Hag Rider

Written as a Civil War memoir, The Hag Rider explores fifteen-year-old Jack Benson’s transition to manhood as he tells his soldier’s account of life in the Confederate cavalry, a life convoluted by the spectral manipulations of Vanita, an old witch-woman who is sworn to protect him. Her hidden presence seems to protect Jack throughout the war in amazing ways, across countless miles, through patrols, battle, and capture.

Book Review: Well of Shadows

Alden Bramblethorn’s job at The Whispering Willow is wearing on him. But it’s not just that. His family is broken, and he has no living relatives. Lonely, he seeks answers from the GoldenRoot Ancestral Repository. It doesn’t take long for him to strike gold. There, he finds an ancient letter with a deed to Starshine Farm—a chance to leave everything behind, make real connections, and start over. And, besides, he’s a [Level 4] Chloromancer. Plants love him. Farming can’t be that difficult. Right? Well, turns out, it can. Especially when the property was abandoned one hundred years ago. Which begs the question: Why did his ancestor, Balthazar Wildewood, leave the farm behind and disappear? The people of Twilight Haven don’t know. Most are scared of the property, and don’t want anything to do with it. But all that changes when Alden grabs a shovel, and starts digging away.

Book Review: The Path of Celestial Thunder

In a world of power, Jasmine is the outcast.

No matter how long she meditates, breathing in the vital aura of the world, her soul refuses to cultivate. Her betters say the Heavens forbid it, but Jasmine isn’t so sure. She can’t be destined to live the quiet life of a nun. She is tired of being pushed around and watching others treat her friends like trash. She’ll do anything, even break the peace of the valley, to fix her condition and protect those she loves.

Meanwhile, Ti'Lee is trapped by tradition. His father expects him to become an imperial scholar, but his true passion lies in spiritsmithing—a career that would blacken his family’s name. As the entrance exam for the School of Rising Sun approaches, Ti'Lee must make a choice that will change his destiny forever.

Little do Jasmine and Ti'Lee know, their fates are intertwined, and the choices they make will alter the course of their ever-dying world—a world their Emperor spent centuries building. And he’s not about to let them ruin it.

Book Review: Moon & Shadow

Moon & Shadow is the first book in The Channeler Trilogy. A finalist in the 2021 Best Book Awards and a second place winner in the 2021 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, J. Steven Lamperti’s Moon & Shadow is an enchanting fantasy with sweet romance, quirky characters, and engaging humor.

Book Review: Merchants of Knowledge and Magic

On one of the many planes of the Pentagonal Dominion, priestess Calinthe trades in information, collecting valuable secrets for her demonic employer. Calinthe has a secret of her own: she's intersex, making her a target for the matriarchal slavers of the Ophidian Plane whose territory she must cross in her search for hidden knowledge. But thanks to her friend Zakuro's illusions, Calinthe presents as a woman—a comfortable, if furtive, existence in a world determined to bring her to heel.

But when, instead of a mere secret, the priestess uncovers an incalculably powerful artifact, Calinthe finds herself in a high-stakes negotiation with the same matriarchs who sought to enslave her. On the table: Calinthe's discovery, a charm powerful enough to transform a mortal into a god… against a secret so deadly it could quell all life on every plane of the dominion. If Calinthe plays her cards perfectly, she and Zakuro could escape Ophidia wealthier than either of them ever dreamed possible.

But if she plays them wrong… she'll learn slavery in her pursuers' hands is a fate far worse than death.

Book Review: The Salt Grows Heavy

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three “saints” who control them. The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.

Book Review: Bloody Spade

A girl full of heart
A thief touched by darkness
A hot-tempered golden boy
An unwitting servant of evil

The era of magic was once thought to be a myth, but after the Reemergence ushered forces both dark and light into the mundane world, it has since become a harsh reality. Now those affected by this strange power—a specialized group of Empowered called Jokers, known collectively as Cardplay—must protect their world from the darkness that threatens to consume it, all the while fighting for equality in a society clinging to normalcy.

But the Reemergence was only the beginning.

When another influx occurs on the seventh anniversary of that fateful event, an unfortunate encounter at ground zero lands Iori Ryone, a teenage boy in possession of a corrupt and legendary magic, in the care of recent Joker graduate Ellen Amelia Jane. From him, she learns the Reemergence may not have been the inevitable natural disaster it first seemed.

Someone is trying to tear down the barrier that separates the magical realms from the mundane. The question is why, and can Cardplay stop them before it’s too late?

Book Review: What Was Your Name Downriver?

THE WITCHER MEETS TRUE GRIT

Evaline Cartwright, a world-weary bounty hunter, and runaway Trivan Esterhazy are newly-met on a riverboat while fleeing the violence of the gold fields, eager for a return to civilization. But the frontier isn't done with them yet.

Beset by the foul magicks of a rogue mage and the schemes of mutinous passengers, the women will have to navigate hostile country together, using wits and weaponry both, to have any chance of reaching their destination alive.

Book Review: The Inconvenient God

What happens if you try to retire a god who is not ready to leave? An official from the Ministry of Divinity arrives at a university to decommission a local god. She is expecting an easy decommissioning of a waning god of mischief but finds instead an active god not interested in retiring and university administrators who have not told her the full story about the god. Can the Decommisioner discover the true story of this god in time to prevent his most destructive round of mischief yet?