Remember when conspiracy theories were fun? Pepperidge Farm remembers. So does Escaping Denver, a new novel by Teague Bohlen that is based on the popular podcast.
Chapter 1:
The first thing I noticed here was how much this first chapter reminds
me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You have a really similar
style and I'm not complaining at all!
I also really appreciated how you used dashes instead of commas, most
people choose to be boring.
I loved the personification and the attention to detail, the way you write
things really makes me feel as if | am there myself.
Final Impression:
I was really hooked on reading this story and youdefinitely did not disappoint! I love your books so, so much and Ihonestly couldn't find much to nitpick at. I hoped this helped at least a tiny bit <3
As a #writer and #author, there are a few things of which I would like to remind you.
Firstly, covers, titles, blurbs are seldom under full control of the #author, if at all. If they went through a traditional publisher, even less so.
But this is the least of it.
The entire publishing industry, which includes you, is a nasty, predatory, and exploitative machine that sucks #writers in, chews them, and often dumps their corpses
🧵 I just discovered there are reviews for my books on #StoryGraph ! Look at this one for Chalice of Caladriai! (Also... when someone gets it! It has always bugged me how books often completely ignore the fallout that any normal person would be dealing w/ after the experiences in the story!)😊🥹
This concept of "what happens after?" was a BIG part of Chalice of Caladriai. What happens after a kid is forced to confront an evil adult hell bent on destroying everything? How do they deal with that? And what if a friend paid a steep price for that "win"? What then?
How are the friendship dynamics affected? What about the supporting characters? What happens to them? These were all things that were dealt with in CoC, along with the usual mix of action, magic, and mayhem. I am SO HAPPY someone else wanted to know, too!
In the next book, Team Arcania will be dealing with repairing their friendships and the aftermath of book 4's cliffhanger ending (I love my cliffhangers, what can say? 😏) and then there's the two big reveals from CoC that are going to play parts in the rest of the series, too!
A screenshot of a 5-star review for Chalice of Caladriai over on Storygraph. It says:
The main highlight of this book for me was covering what happens after. When the evil is defeated and the heroes return home, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. We see Ty struggling with suddenly being back home; he's dealing with PTSD from everything he's been through and it's so rare to see that represented in a book of this genre.
Read THE INCANDESCENT by Emily Tesh if you love messy bisexuals, magical schools, demon hunters, incredibly specific specialties, beautiful tattoos, containing multitudes, centuries of tradition, pastoral settings, class dynamics, tragic backstories, hot butches on bikes, and a gin & tonic.
I love that people do #book#reviews on Fedi, but I always wonder what their selection process is for deciding what book ends up on their #bookreview
It's ok to review books on the Amazon bestseller list or on the NYT list, but those sorts of lists tend to boost the traditional publishers at the cost of the #indieauthor#writers
So if you review books, please cast your net out a bit further, and sample some of the indie books
The usual weekend roundup, this week with a bunch of books to review, some new manhwa, and of course my British Library Crime Classic. Also all my reviews/posts for the week.
I swapped my phone for a sketchbook for 100 days, and Detox Doodles is the result! I’m looking for ARC readers to get an early look at my visual diary of 100+ adorable, funny animal sketches before my Kickstarter launch next month.
Photo of two copies of Detox Doodles: Replacing Scrolling with Sketching. The left book is closed, the right book is open to two pages of the book, one with frog sketches and one with chicken sketches. Both books are on a wooden floor.
Review - Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language, by Adam Aleksic: an interesting discussion on which the author is absolutely not objective, being embedded in it. I felt so old. 💀 Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Unbeknownst to me, there is a fiction genre called LitRPG. I read my first and last book in this genre, Ryan Rimmel's The Mayor of Noobtown. Pure, poorly written garbage. One of the worst books I didn't throw in the DNF pile. I hated, hated, hated this book. Highly highly unrecommended.
A stylized **Kindle e-book cover** for *The Mayor of Noobtown* by Ryan Rimmel shows a dark, weathered stone castle rising from a rocky hillside. A tall central tower dominates the composition, with crumbling walls and battlements stretching outward, while birds circle in a cloudy gray sky. The artwork has a gritty, textured look, with torn or worn edges framing the scene. The title appears in large, glowing blue-white letters across the center, the subtitle “A LitRPG Adventure” sits below it, and the author’s name is displayed prominently at the bottom—clearly designed for digital storefront visibility.
Review - Still Waters, by E.C.R. Lorac: another fun one set in Lunesdale, with some recurring characters. A really tense stakeout scene, too! Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Read WHAT STALKS THE DEEP by T. Kingfisher if you love a missing persons case, helping an old friend, the color mauve, SCIENCE!, abandoned mines, definitely not being claustrophobic, mysterious lights, boredom & terror, the whole & fragments, trauma narratives, skeletons, pronouns & dogs.
Review - The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish, vol 3, by Xue Shan Fei Hu: the series continues to be really cute, and now there are babies too! Ridiculous and silly, and lovely. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
#BookReview for "The As If Principle: The Radically New Approach to Changing Your Life" by Richard Wiseman
Mixed feelings
I want to love this book. I enjoy learning about how the mind works. Many entertaining and informative studies are cited.
But many have been disproven, such as power posing. Psychology has faced a massive "replication crisis," where a study with a fascinating finding does not have the same result when the experiment is repeated by other scientists.
Some of the science here is solid. Some has been disproven or could not be replicated.
But which is which?
It would be very time consuming to go through the scores of claims in this book and try to look up the evidence to ascertain which are believed and which are not. That's why it's hard to recommend this book. How much of it can be believed? 70%? 50%? 30%? I'm not sure. It's too bad the author didn't update this book with the latest science.
Review - The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh: aside from one major flaw where a character missed something that felt bizarre to miss, I really loved this and how rooted it was in trying to be realistic about teaching magic to teenagers. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Rare Children's Book Review: The Cat Who Tasted Cinnamon Toast (1969) ( bookwyrm.social )
"The Cat Who Tasted Cinnamon Toast" (1969) by Ann Spencer is a delightful and funny high-culture treat for children and adults. ...