My review of Prince of the Vampyres by Rohb Victory 📚
I read a digital edition of Prince of the Vampyres that I received for free from Reedsy Discovery in exchange for an honest review.
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction
Publisher: Lulu
Publication date: June 4th, 2021
Pages: 105
Synopsis by the publisher:
This work leans more towards science fiction than fantasy unlike many vampire books. Prince of the Vampyres tell the ‘true’ story of how the first vampire was created at the fringes of the Milky Way galaxy. It is a tale of a young boy’s fascination with a coven of vampires whom he secretly observes as they feed at night.
The creatures of the night feed on bovine herd animals, not humans. That is, until one fateful night one of them creeps into the walled enclave the boy calls home. It covers the history of how his people crash landed on an M-Class moon, terraformed part of this hostile environment, and made a deal with the enigmatic original vampire they would live to regret.
Through a series of adventurous encounters, the young hero ends up on earth, in the 15th century as Vlad the Impaler. Rather than focus on the usual vampire lore, I show the reader how it all came to be in the first place.
My thoughts:
Over the years, I have read my share of vampire stories, and I don’t often come across ones that surprise me. But when I read the synopsis for Prince of the Vampyres, I was immediately intrigued! It sounded like a very different and new approach to the subject of the living dead. And it turned out that that was exactly what it was!
Rohb Victory writes an engaging, funny, and original story that looks at vampires in a totally new light!
Following these characters was such an interesting ride into a world where space and vampires meet, and it’s a perfect match! The characters had some depth to them, and the book covered a lot of ground even though it was quite a short read.
I really enjoyed Rohb Victory’s writing and world-building. Sci-fi novels can sometimes be slightly confusing when introducing new worlds, characters, and systems, but that didn’t happen here. It was easy to follow along with both the whereabouts of the story and the characters as well. He has a seamless way of telling a story where a lot is going on, and the characters had unique voices that made them feel real and relatable.
It is a bold move to write a story about a subject like this that has been done so many times before, but I think Victory did a fantastic job with this one! It’s original, different, and definitely worth the read!
I would have loved for it to have been a little longer and follow some of the characters for a longer period of time, but maybe there’s hope for more stories? If so, that is definitely something I would pick up.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that!
Click on the Reedsy Discovery logo below to get to know more, maybe get your own copy, and let me know what you think of it💛
Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George – publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide – and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite – heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors – they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn – led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb – which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his – and the whole Turner clan’s – destruction.
My thoughts:
The thing that drew me to this book was the trailer for the HBO series that I haven’t watched yet), and I decided that I needed to read the book before watching it.
I’ve read quite a bit of Lovecraft, and I love the stories (not the white supremacist author), so I was intrigued to find out how another writer would incorporate Lovecraft’s stories into their own. I thought Matt Ruff did an excellent job of making the story his own and giving it that Lovecraft vibe. I also think that it’s so wonderful how Ruff took inspiration from a racist author and made this story with such an incredible cast of black characters and also portraiting racism as the real monster of the story at the same time. I always appreciate it when our author reveals that the real monsters to fear are often the ones that live inside the people we see every day.
Lovecraft country follows a cast of fascinating characters but does an excellent job of giving them each a unique voice so that as a reader, I never got confused. That being said, I wish we would’ve had more time to get to know them all. With so many lead characters, I felt like I missed a bit of the depth that would’ve made me more invested in them. We also got introduced to some places and creatures that I would’ve liked to know more about. But the story was fast-paced and action-packed. It was filled with mystery and well-developed characters. It all wrapped up quite quickly at the end, and I felt like it left me with quite a few questions unanswered.
Lovecraft Country was a fun, dark, and interesting ride. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Ruby will get her own book someday!
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The universe is a dangerous place in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, the first in The Old Man’s War series.
At seventy-five years old, John Perry is after a fresh start – so, naturally, he joins the army. Earth’s military machine can transform elderly recruits, restoring their lost youth. But in return, its Colonial Defence Force demands two years of hazardous service in space. This is how Perry finds himself in a new body, crafted from his original DNA. A genetically enhanced and upgraded new body, ready for battle.
But upgrades alone won’t keep Perry safe. He’ll be fighting for his life on the front line as he defends humanity’s colonies from hostile aliens. He’ll pay the price for his choices, and he’ll discover the universe is even more dangerous than he imagined.
My thoughts:
This was such a fun read! I love it when science fiction novels feel effortless to read. When the gap between the reality we live in now and the futuristic setting doesn’t feel like an overwhelming mental leap and needs hundreds of pages of world-building for anything to make sense. Old Man’s War is a fast and brilliant read without taking away the depth and cleverness.
We get to be inside the head of John Perry when he decides to join the war at the age of 75, leaving everyone and everything he knows behind. With his new body, he’s able to do things he either hadn’t been able to do for years or never been able to at all. But Perry is in no way immortal, and we get to follow him into wars against alien creatures where he questions their missions and their outcome.
I loved Perry as a character and it was an absolute joy to be on his side at the beginning of what could potentially be quite a long and challenging adventure. I also really enjoyed the original and clever dialogues. It’s a story with a perfect balance of humor, action, and a tiny bit of romance.
I would highly recommend Old Man’s War if you enjoy science fiction. It’s a fast-paced and brilliant read that can be read as a stand-alone if you want to, but might get you hooked on the universe. You have been warned!
I picked this up while browsing in a bookstore in Oslo, having never heard of this book before, but I had enjoyed some of Scalzi’s other books. I had no idea that picking this one book up would get me hooked on a new series that even has a couple of other series that exists in the same universe. Scalzi, I guess you and I are in this for the long haul! I can’t wait to get my hands on The Ghost Brigades and find out what happens next!
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Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson participated in a drug experiment run by a veiled government agency known as The Shop. One year later, they marry. Two years later, their little girl, Charlie, sets her teddy bear on fire by simply staring at it.
Now that Charlie is eight, she doesn’t start fires anymore. Her parents have taught her to control her pyrokinesis, the ability to set anything – toys, clothes, even people – aflame. But The Shop knows about and wants this pigtailed “ultimate weapon”. Shop agents set out to hunt down Charlie and her father in a ruthless chase that traverses the streets of New York and the backwoods of Vermont.
My thoughts:
Firestarter is one of those Stephen King novels that has been mentioned and recommended to me several times as a King classic. I’ve also talked to several readers who told me that Firestarter was their very first King book. I stumbled across a first-edition of Firestarter at Mockingbird Used Books last year and I was excited to finally read it myself (even though it stayed on my shelf for a while before I finally got to it).
Firestarter starts with a bang, as Charlie and Andy are on the run from agents from The Shop (a secret government agency). (✨The Shop is mentioned both in The Stand and The Dark Tower series. It has also been compared to The Institute and the agency is suspected to have a part to play in several other Stephen King stories as well) And this story is one that never gets boring. Even the passages that are not as action-packed are filled with interesting character development and great storytelling. I know a lot of readers have an issue with some of the King stories dragging out too long and having unnecessary parts in the story, and I think Firestarter is a better choice for those readers. Its fast pace and overall engaging story will take a hold of you and not let go before the story ends.
Charlie’s pyrokinetic ability is scary on its own, but the really terrifying thing in this story is a secret government agency who sees themselves above the law (isn’t that a secret fear a lot of us carry around with us?), and the terror that grows in Andy as he fears for his daughter’s future, life, and the limits (or possible lack thereof) to her abilities.
My favorite part of this story is the bond between Charlie and Andy, and how it grows with all their experiences throughout the book. Their relationship is the thing that keeps the story going and engages the reader. Another favorite of mine was the character Rainbird, an agent/assassin of The Shop. He’s the perfect villain in the way that he’s a psychotic and amoral person, but his intelligence and lack of conscience makes for an extremely dangerous character and a whole new level of creepy. And he truly loves Charlie in his very own disturbing way.
Firestarter is one of those King novels that I feel like deserves more attention than it has gotten. It’s a gem of a story with all the right elements of a thrilling psychological horror read, with a dash of science fiction, that will keep you at the edge of your seat.
Highly recommend!
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I read a Kindle edition of Waste: A Dark Science Fiction Adventure that was given to me for free from the author in exchange of an honest review.
Genre: Science fiction, Erotica
Publisher: K. Bevis
Originally published: September 10th, 2019
Pages: 181 (Kindle edition)
Synopsis by the publisher:
A radioactive wasteland. A man who isn’t entirely human. And a powerful evil that wants her dead.
Ode isn’t having the best year and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better any time soon.
Something dark and twisted is prowling the landscape, attacking people and leaving their mutilated bodies behind. Not that things aren’t bad already. There is a cult obsessed with evolution. the world has been destroyed by nuclear war and mutated creatures lurk in the shadows.
But now, whatever is behind the carnage has fixed its sights on Ode and it will stop at absolutely nothing until she’s dead. That’s if her inherited powers don’t off her first.
Forced to partner with the enigmatic City leader Cain and having to reconsider everything she’s ever been told about her life and history, Ode must find the truth behind the creeping darkness before it destroys her already broken world.
WASTE is a dark science fiction adventure with a strong female heroine who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. It is twisted and weird and soaked in radiation. It is not for the faint of heart, but for the adventurer who likes their science fiction books to have a splash of horror, a dash of survival fiction and a streak of dark romance.
Go on, be brave, give it a try.
My thoughts:
One thing is pretty clear from the very beginning of this story, and that is that it’s a graphic story. So, if you’re not into stories containing sex and violence, this is not the book for you!
Now that we’ve got that warning out of the way, let’s talk about the awesomeness of this erotic and action-packed science fiction novel.
As the author puts it, ever so accurately; It is twisted and weird and soaked in radiation.
We meet Ode, a strong and independent female protagonist, living in a radiated wasteland. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty and do so quite often to stay alive. Ode is not like the humans we know today, and whenever her bloodlust comes over her, the only way to not go into a killing frenzy is to have sex.
I really enjoyed getting to know Ode as a character. She’s such a strong female lead to this story, and even though she’s a sexually active and strong woman, we also get to see the softer side of her personality throughout this book. There’s a character development there that I feel like could have been explored even more than it was, but considering this is the first book in a series, I’m hoping to get to know more in the next book.
Ode’s past and the radiated world that she’s living in is soaked in darkness and mystery, and I really enjoyed exploring it and its characters, and seeing how the pieces all fit together, although it felt slightly rushed a couple of times.
I can’t wait to find out what’s going to happen next in this series!
If you’re looking for something that’s dark, twisted and weird, with a dash of erotica and a whole lot of action, then I would definitely recommend Waste.
But be aware, it is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
If you want to get your own copy of Waste, click on the Amazon logo below👇🏻
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I read a digital edition of Dreadmyre that I received for free from Reedsy Discovery in exchange for an honest review.
Dreadmyre is the first book in the Emberwall series.
Genre: Science fiction, Cyberpunk, Steampunk
Publisher: J.A. Raikes
Originally published: November 25th, 2019
Pages: 351 (paperback)
Synopsis by the publisher:
My name is Finnegan Benjamin Riley.
I don’t know how I got here or what ‘here’ even is. I nearly died when I got here, I don’t know anyone, the world doesn’t look quite right, and a cloud of black smoke covers everything. I’ve been chased by actual nightmarish creatures ever since I got here, and I’m freaking out. This is my only outlet while I process what the heck is going on. All I want to do is figure out how to get back home and hopefully not die in the process…
When Finn Riley takes a week off work and sets off on a camping trip, he wanted a relaxing time to clear his head and refocus on his life goals. When his outdoor adventure turns into a fight for his very life, he stumbles upon a contraption that seems legitimately out of this world. But when he’s plunged into a strange new world, Finn must figure out a way to survive when demonic creatures threaten to kill him at every turn and nothing he knows makes sense.
With all eyes on him, can Finn prevail or will his sudden arrival seal the fate of this new land with darkness forever?
My thoughts:
I’ve always thought that the cyberpunk genre has been an interesting part of science fiction, but for some reason, I haven’t really committed to a cyberpunk novel before now.
But when I first made the plunge into the cyberpunk world, I’m really glad that I did it with Dreadmyre.
The story is told by Finn our protagonist, and I enjoyed getting to know him and his witty and sarcastic sense of humor. Even in the darkest and most action-packed parts of this book, I could always count on Finn to come up with a comment on the whole thing that would put a smile on my face.
Dreadmyre is an action-packed, dark, funny and mysterious novel that I just flew through. It’s very fast-paced, but not so much that it runs away from you.
Mr. Raikes has made an interesting world come to life and with it a whole bunch of strange and likable characters that I would love to get to know even more. The steampunk atmosphere in the world that Finn suddenly finds himself is easy to picture with the way that the story is written, and I must say that I am more than a little intrigued!
The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that it was so short. There was so much to uncover, such an engaging world, and so many unique characters that I felt like I was slightly rushed through the story. I would have loved to be able to spend a little more time in this world to get even more invested in the characters.
That being said, I really enjoyed the first book in the Emberwall series, and I will definitely be picking up the next one when it comes out!
Click on the Reedsy Discovery logo below to get to know more, maybe get your own copy, and let me know what you think of it💛
A disturbed high-school student with authority problems kills one of his teachers and takes the rest of his class hostage. Over the course of one long, tense and unbearable hot afternoon, Charlie Decker explains what led him to this drastic sequence of events, while at the same time deconstructing the personalities of his classmates, forcing each one to justify his or her existence.
The Long Walk
In the near future, where America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The game is simple – maintain a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings, and you’re out – permanently.
Roadwork
Barton Dawes’ unremarkable but comfortable existence suddenly takes a turn for the worst. Highway construction puts him out of work and simultaneously forces him out of his home. Dawes isn’t the sort of man who will take an insult of this magnitude lying down. His single-minded determination to fight the inevitable course of progress drives his wife and friends away while he tries to face down the uncaring bureaucracy that has destroyed his once comfortable life.
The Running Man
It is 2025 and reality TV has progressed to the point where people are willing to wager their lives in exchange for a chance at enormous wealth. Ben Richards is desperate – he needs money to treat his daughter’s illness. His last chance is entering a game show called The Running Man where the objective is to elude police and specially trained trackers for a month. The reward is a cool billion dollars. The catch is that everyone else on the planet is watching and willing to turn him in for a reward.
My thoughts:
First of all, I want to thank Alex Ochoa, the wonderful YouTube subscriber that sent me a hardback copy of this book! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I was very excited to get my hands on the stories that Stephen King chose to publish under a pseudonym. This edition also has “Rage” in it which is a story that is no longer being printed. This is because a real-life event in 1998 was inspired by the book and Stephen King felt morally obliged to let the book die from the publishing world.
The typical Stephen King voice and references are definitely easy to spot when you already know that it is his work.
So let’s go through each of them, story by story.
Rage
The story of a young man named Charlie Decker who has been sent to the principal’s office because of an assault on a teacher. After that, he goes on a tirade in the school and holds a class hostage.
I thought it was interesting to read a story like this with the thoughts in mind of how often events like this take place nowadays. It’s equally as current now, and maybe even more so than it was back then. It is hard to try to set oneself in the shoes of someone who acts out in such an extreme way, and maybe even more interesting to see just how confusing it can all be inside the head of that person as well. The story is one of slow-burning suspense and I thought it was quite interesting.
I can definitely understand why King felt it necessary to take it off the market, but in the same way, it seems like all the school shootings around are not specifically inspired by the literature that takes on that specific setting but more inspired by other events like them. Even so, I highly respect King’s decision to take the story out of print. Rage was an interesting read, but it didn’t quite grab me.
The Long Walk
And what a long walk it was indeed! I have no idea why it took me what felt like forever to get through this story. It’s a really interesting story about the will to live. You have 100 boys setting out for The Walk where they have to hold a certain pace and always stay on their feet until there’s only one boy left who will win “the prize”.
It touches on some really good subjects of mental strain and mental health. Showcasing the way a mind can completely fall apart when it’s put under too much pressure. It’s also a take on a very conservative futuristic America.
It is a gruesome tale of staring death in the eye and trying to find the will to survive when everything feels hopeless. I also really enjoyed the friendships that we got to see between the contestants, as well as the rivalry. The pressure put on humans can bring out both the best and the worst in us all.
Roadwork
Roadwork tells the story of Mr. Dawes who has a lot of anger towards the new highway extension project in his town that forces him to move away from what has been his home for many years. We also get to know a lot of Dawes’s emotional hardships, and his unwillingness to let go of the past throughout this story.
We follow a man on a mission. A man who completely unravels. Reading Roadwork is like watching a train crash in slow motion. You know it’s going to end in horror, but you just can’t look away. It’s a detailed and interesting journey of how a single thought or an idea can grow into something truly insane when fuelled by hate and unresolved issues.
I enjoyed it as much as I found it uncomfortable, but in a good way. If that makes any sense?
The Running Man
In The Running Man, we visit a dystopian US in 2025 where there’s a television game show that hunts its contestants to their death. Ben Richards joins the game show in the hope of winning enough money to get medicine for his gravely ill daughter. The contestants earn $100 for every hour they stay alive, an additional $100 for each law enforcement officer or Hunter he kills, and a grand prize of $1 billion if he survives for 30 days.
It’s a suspenseful cat and mouse kind of story, with an interesting and mysterious countdown going on throughout that has you guessing. I really enjoyed this story and found it to be the only one in the book where I felt like I was kept at the edge of my seat and did not want to put it down. It touches on some interesting subjects of the economy and society. How far are we willing to go? How much are we willing to accept as entertainment instead of cruelty? How easily do we eat up the information fed to us by the media?
Again, this truly is a story of how horrible and selfish some people can be. I loved it!
Overall I found The Bachman Books to be a solid collection of good stories. It took me forever to get through them, but not because I didn’t enjoy them. I kind of wish that I would’ve read them as separate books instead of a collection. It might not have felt as intimidating as individual books.
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I read a Kindle edition of Sleeping Together that I received for free from Reedsy Discovery in exchange for an honest review. Sleeping Together is the first novel in the Perfect Drug series.
Genre: Science fiction, Romance, Contemporary
Publisher: Brass Anvil Books
Originally published: March 6th, 2019
Pages: 310 (paperback)
Blurb by the publisher:
Vanessa Brown is having nightmares: about babies. Ever since her husband, Pete, mentioned he wanted to start a family, Ness has been trying to convince herself she’s stoked to spawn despite her inability to keep a cactus alive–and a decade-old secret she doesn’t like to remember. So when she catches her slacker-cool coworker, Altan Young, stealing sleeping medication from the pharmaceutical company they both work for, she decides to try the pilfered pills to finally find some rest.
But side effects of Morpheum include headaches, nausea, and possible mind melding–a fact Ness and Altan stumble upon when they share the same freaky sex dream. (Awkward.) Now these two colleagues are joined at the brain by night, experiencing dozens of fantastic sleep-staged adventures courtesy of a little imagination and a whole lot of drugs.
With the stress of being caught between the men of her literal and figurative dreams (not to mention her nightmare of a boss), Ness starts to enjoy snoozing more than being conscious–and the company of her work husband more than her real one. If she doesn’t wake up and smell the coffee soon, her dreamy escape could become a dirt nap in this feisty debut novel about the dark side of dreams’ coming true.
My thoughts:
What first caught my attention with this one was the beautiful cover. Yes, I am an absolute sucker for a pretty cover. Well done on the beautiful cover design! And then I read the synopsis of the book, and I was immediately intrigued. A story about a drug that makes it possible for two people to meet and connect in their dreams. Interesting premise!
The whole story starts off with Vanessa’s baby/pregnancy nightmare, and I thought that was a good way to have that character’s anxiety and uncertainty come across to the reader. Vanessa’s dilemma of being in a relationship where the love is strong, but they want different things is oh so relatable to many.
I loved the fact that Altan is an Asian character. Yay for diversity! And the relationship and dialogue between him and Vanessa were one of the key elements to this story that made it so enjoyable to me. There was humor that had me giggling, sex (not very graphic) that made it slightly steamy, a horrible boss that made I want to jump into the book and punch the guy’s face, mental health issues that are important to address, romance that wasn’t too cheesy, and a pageturner of a plotline that had me up later than I should have been.
Kitty Cook has written the dream state of the characters so well that it all comes very easily to life as I was reading.
The characters are relatable and we do get to know both Vanessa and Altan quite well throughout this story. I didn’t find myself completely obsessed with them, but I was very invested in their story and with the mystery of how the Morpheum drug was actually working, and how it would impact the people using it.
Sleeping Together is an incredibly creative, intriguing and interesting story that touches on some sensitive subjects and has a slight element of science fiction to it that I really liked. I feel like I still have a lot of questions, and that these characters still have a lot more story to tell, so finding out that this is the first book in a series was definitely a pleasant surprise.
Highly recommend if you want to read a different kind of romance. And now, the waiting for book two begins.
Click on the Reedsy Discovery logo below to get to know more, maybe get your own copy, and let me know what you think of it💛
After an ‘incident’ one wet Friday night where he is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, Professor Andrew Martin is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst an alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he’s a dog.
Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race . . . ?
My thoughts:
The first time I got to enjoy Matt Haig’s writing was when I found How to Stop Time at an airport while traveling, and that one was told so brilliantly that I knew that Matt Haig would potentially be another author to add to my favorites list. But before he could end up on that list, I had to find out if it was just the one book that I enjoyed, or if it was his writing and storytelling that would captivate me more than once.
So, when I saw The Humans while I was on another trip (maybe Matt’s books and I are destined to be travel buddies?), I had to give it a go.
The Humans is one of those books that got my attention not just because of the author, but also because it just sounded magically quirky and just up my alley. What can I say? I love weird books!
Little did I know just how weird and wonderful it would turn out to be, and what a special place in my reader’s heart it would find.
In the very beginning of the story, we find out that Andrew Martin’s body has been occupied by an alien (so not really a spoiler), and what I thought would be a big mystery of why Martin had changed, was more a wonderful story of an alien trying to navigate itself on earth.
The best thing about this story is definitely how the alien experience and reacts to the utterly weird things that we humans do. I laughed out loud and almost felt a little embarrassed when recognizing some of the human actions for just how weird they are.
There were so many moments where I thought to myself: “Yep. We do that and it’s so stupid!”.
Matt Haig touches on a lot of the ways we humans seem to be unable to change, how we can be way too self-destructive, but also the wonderful little things that make us the weird humans that we are.
This is the true magic of The Humans and what made it such a unique and wonderful read.
There are other elements to the plotline that makes this story a quick and exciting read. The alien’s mission is definitely one that makes it into a pageturner.
So, the big question is: did Matt Haig make it to the favorite authors list?
Absolutely!!
If you’re looking for a different kind of science fiction read, I would highly recommend The Humans.
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Christina de Vries 