Island Song by Alan Chin

Reviewed by Josh Aterovis

It's been two years since the death of Garrett Davidson's lover, but for Garrett, the pain is still just as fresh as if it had been only yesterday. His pain is so overwhelming he feels he won't be able to move on until he's exorcised his lost lover from his life. He'll do that by keeping his promise to write their story.

Garrett quits his successful job in San Francisco, packs up, and indefinitely rents a secluded beach house in a small Hawaiian town. The house comes with its own caretaker, a handsome young islander named Songoree.

Songoree's grandfather is the local shaman, a revered and feared figure in the village. He's been training Song to take over for him, teaching him to carry on his vision of a world living in peace instead of war. Grandfather is convinced that Garrett is the Chosen One he has been promised, but Song isn't so sure. Still, there's something about the man that intrigues Songoree.

Much to his surprise, Garrett is finding himself attracted to Songoree as well. As the two face their growing attraction, they must also face the disapproval of the conservative islanders, as well the expectations of Song's grandfather.

Island Song is a beautiful novel. Technically, this book would probably be categorized as a romance novel, but it's really so much more. Island Song is about loss, healing, finding love in unexpected places, leaving the world a better place when we're gone... and the sacrifices we sometimes have to make to achieve that.

First-time-author Alan Chin writes characters that are richly drawn. Garrett's pain is revealed slowly through flashbacks and dreams. He's a broken man haunted by the love of his life, but he has to let go in order to move on. Songoree is a sensitive, sweet soul. While he doesn't quite fit in with his rough-and-tumble surfer buddies, he's accepted as one of the gang as long as he sticks to the straight and narrow.

Even the secondary characters are vivid: Grandfather, Audrey, Mother Kamamalu, Hap. Each stands on their own as fully realized personalities, adding depth and dimension to an already strong story. Just as important as the human characters is the island upon which the story is set, Hawaii. While Chin does a fantastic job of recreating the lush, exotic feel of the island, he goes beyond a mere travelogue and really captures the spirit of the island.

The book is written in the present tense, an unusual approach these days. It took me a while to get into the rhythm, but once I did, the style really works. It creates a sense of urgency and immediacy that serves the story well. I was completely enchanted by this novel, and I look forward to more from Alan Chin.

http://alanchin.net/

His Name is John by Dorien Grey

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Reviewed by Richard Labonte, Book Marks (http://www.qsyndicate.com/)

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Grey, author of a dozen well-plotted and comfortingly formulaic Dick Hardesty mysteries, breaks entertaining new ground with the enigmatic debut of a different series. This time around, his sleuth isn't, like Hardesty, a professional PI. Elliott Smith is the scion of a wealthy family who, rather than living off his trust funds, works for a living as an architecturally sensitive real estate speculator. The mystery is decidedly different, too: though Smith does in the course of the story figure out who the killer is, his real focus is on identifying who was killed - because he's being haunted by the unsettled ghost of a man who died beside him in a hospital's emergency room, and who has lost his identity. Grey's mysteries are relatively placid affairs, as gay whodunits (or, in this instance, who-it-was-dun-tos) go: there's very little blood and the man-on-man sex is more romantic than explicit. But Grey's writing is simultaneously sinewy and seductive, always appealingly lean and emotionally precise - the perfect formula for solid storytelling.

http://www.doriengrey.com

Angel Land by Victor Banis

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Reviewed by Robert Buck

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It takes a very talented author to pen over 150 diverse and very entertaining books over the course of a career spanning more than 50 years, but it takes an exceptionally talented writer to write a sci-fi adventure book that both keeps the reader on the edge of the seat and at the same time is very unsettling and dark and is a tale that one day could be closer to fact than fiction. With his latest novel, Angel Land, this is exactly what the prolific Victor Banis has done.

Angel Land is a dark and cautionary tale of what can happen when a state sponsored religion is wielded as a cudgel of power and retribution over the populace. Set in the late 21st Century, much of the United States has been cordoned off, by the state sponsored church, into the Fundamental Christian Territories such as the area called Angel Land - nothing more than a ghetto for gays, who are blamed for bringing the Sept virus into the world – the latest strain of the HIV virus. It is a land where Jews, Catholics and even Baptists are branded heretics and are kept in line through terror applied under the guise of religion. Inevitably parallels must be drawn to such travesties of a recent century as Hitler's Warsaw ghetto as Banis weaves a plausible and chilling tale of what can happen when the true Church and other good people turn their backs and allow those who wield power for evil to take charge. Banis draws the line between religion and spirituality sharply and distinctly.

The story follows one Harvey Milk Walton, who is one of the most likable and interesting protagonists I have encountered in some time, as he enters Angel Land and through his actions and interactions with the residents of an section of Angel Land called the Casa, completely and irrevocably brings changes to the Zone of Perversion. Along the way Harvey meets many well fleshed out and memorable characters and even finds love, for the first time in his life, with someone who would seem to be the last person he would ever choose. In the broadest scope, Harvey Milk Walton represents mans indomitable spirit to overcome all adversity.

The book also contains quite interesting exploration of 20th Century San Francisco and many of it's icons, including the Casto district and the Golden Gate Bridge as well as other points of interest. Though the subject matter is on one hand dark and disturbing and is a warning of what might come to be if we allow our civil liberties to slip away, on the other hand the author has always demonstrates his rare gift of being able to leaven even the darkest story with humor and with eternal hope. More than once I found myself chuckling out loud upon encountering one of Banis' witticisms, such as the reference to one of Henry David Thoreau's famous works.

It can scarcely be said of most writers that their work over an extended period of time just keeps getting better and better, but it is certainly true of Victor Banis in the opinion of this reviewer. I recommend Angel Land as highly as I have ever recommended a book. Angel Land is a crackling good, edge-of-the-seat adventure that is also an object lesson of what can happen if we as people don't vigilantly guard our civil liberties, and should not be missed.

http://www.vjbanis.com/

Dead End Street By Rick R. Reed

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Reviewed by Janie Franz for http://www.myshelf.com/

Rick R. Reed is a prolific horror writer whose body of work has chilled many an adult reader. Dead End Street is his first horror fiction for younger readers. In this one, Reed hangs a horror story around several eerie offerings by five middle school kids in a small Pennsylvania town on the Ohio River called Summitville. Peter, Marlene, David, Roy, and Erin have created a number of short-term clubs in the past, but this particular Halloween, they launch a brand new club: The Halloween Horror Club. They pick the spookiest, vacant house in town on a dead end street to tell their stories in, one tale a week for the five weeks leading up to Halloween. The house is the site of a gruesome murder fifteen years before, and it adds ghoulish atmosphere for their storytelling. As the tales unfold, the kids soon realize that they are not alone in the house.

Reed is able to create just the perfect amount of icy fingers up the reader's spine without the gore of some horror novels or movies. The characters are well-drawn and believable, and the plot and subplots are good and scary. Move over, R. L. Stine. It looks like Rick R. Reed may be the next new horror writer for young readers for this century. (Because I enjoyed this book so much, I'm going to track down his adult horror fiction and dip into some of those.)

Dead End Street is available as an ebook in a variety of formats [HTML, PDF, LIT, RB, and Mobi (PRC) ] from the Amber Quill Press or as a trade paperback from Amazon.

http://www.rickrreed.com