Review: Strange Little Band: Two psychics. One mega-corp. All-around bad behavior.

Strange Little Band: Two psychics. One mega-corp. All-around bad behavior. by Nancy Brauer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Authors: Nancy Brauer and Vanessa Brooks

Genre: erotic urban science fiction

Publisher: indie/self-published

Where I got it: Smashwords

Warnings: language, sex (and plenty of that)

Disclaimer: I found this a very difficult book to rate as it’s not within my usual genres (young adult, skewed towards fantasy). I don’t tend to read romance or books with many erotic elements, so that is also affecting my rating somewhat.

The review (may contain spoilers):
Strange Little Band is a Strange Epic Duck. It’s a very difficult book to label and categorise. On the one hand, it’s an epic sexy romance, peering into a huge chunk of the lives of some very, well, bad people. On the other, it’s a hybrid science fiction and fantasy introducing a world that blends science, the paranormal, the alien and magick. Oh, and one foot is firmly aimed at being a solid family drama too.

We start off with two leads. The beautiful but, shall we say, testy psychic Addison, and the equally terse and inhuman Shane. They both work in the fairly evil Triptych Corporation. I don’t really know what they do or why, but they do seem to want to own the lives of all their employees. Case in point: both of Addison’s children are basically experiments. The leads are not nice guys. Addison is not averse to imposing her will on or humiliating her employees. Shane occasionally kills and resurrects people, or drives someone – literally - insane. It’s a match made in heaven, if they can just get over the cruel machinations of their employers.

Later, two more leads appear in the form of Addison’s daughter, Ashlynn, and her son, Jake. Shane is Jake’s father – through artificial insemination, of course, though this pair does end up having copious amounts of skin-on-skin action. Both kids are gifted psychics and geniuses, which is just as well, because when the plot kicks into hyperdrive, these two shine as the heroes.

The writing is impeccable. It’s almost Dickensian in scope. Originally written as a weekly web serial, it easily surpasses the length of many books in either of its genres. On the surface, this works with and against the book.

It works with the book, because you don’t miss any character development. You can see and feel the moment the two leads finally start seeing each other as equals, partners, something other than bugs to be crushed. It’s palpable in every little thing they say and do.

It works against the book, because it almost feels like the book could have easily been split into shorter separate volumes, with the overriding mythology and peril fleshed out and amped up in each instalment. A lot of the plot happens in the last quarter of the book, and while the threads were set up earlier, there’s just so much to contend with, that I forgot the finer details.

Final word
Strange Little Band is an interesting, unique tale that could do with some further exploring.




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The Company... not your average read

see disclaimer below

I've been quiet on the book review front lately for one simple reason: scripted web fiction.

You all know what web fiction is, and a fair smidgeon of you know what a script is, so of course, I've spent the past couple of weeks reading a total of 24 original web-only teleplays.

I'll go into more detail about scripts and scripted fiction at a later date, but here are the bare facts you need to know.

The Company, created by Sarah-Jane Sheppard, simply... rocks.

Do you love Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls or Dead Like Me? Because that's the kind of quirky, offbeat awesomeness you can expect to encounter in this young adult dramedy.

Meet Vi Morgan, a 16-year-old high school student. One day she's dead. And the next day, she kinda isn't. But her resurrection does come with an interesting price tag: she has to work for "The Company" and keep her secret life, well, secret from her family and friends. You can imagine how well that turns out.

Helping her out, is her scruffy, rebellious, but generally well-meaning mentor, Andrew, the efficient, but damaged, Jenna, and her best friend, the lovable, clumsy, musician-wannabe, Shane. Helping her keep on her toes is her nerdy, but adorkable, brother Cam, her neurotic, writer father, her commanding, but well-meaning mother and her bit-of-a-bitca sister, Penny.

Season one is a mere 13 episodes long, while season two rockets up to a full 22-episode roster. These numbers may seem daunting, but teleplays are a lot faster to read than novels, so it's quite doable to load up your Kindle and nail these beauties in under a week or two. And with Sarah-Jane's seemingly effortless ability to craft easy-to-read scripts, just overflowing with juicy dialogue, addictive character interactions and the occasional serial killer or two, it might even take you faster than that.

And believe me, you'll want to. Season 3 is coming soon!

Read The Company at:

Disclaimer: scripted web series will often use established actors to visually represent fictional characters. These actors are in no way affiliated with the series and are merely used as physical avatars. In fact, quite often, I replace characters with my own favoured actors (just like you'd do when reading novels).

Review: Jenny Pox

Jenny Pox by J.L. Bryan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A writer I follow on twitter linked me to an Amanda Hocking blog post, which in turn linked me to this book. I'm quite glad that odd chain of events occurred. This was a rather macabre but awesome tale of Jenny Morton, the unfortunate bearer of the "Jenny Pox". Any living thing she touches, dies.

At first Jenny is a wallflower, doing her best to stay out of sight and mind of a rather nasty piece of work named Ashleigh. Ashleigh is all sugar and spice and everything nice to people who can give her what she wants, but anyone on her bad side may very well imagine they've stepped into "hello, this is your life on steroids... in hell". As a thoroughly nasty creature, I spent a great deal of the book wishing she'd get a massive dose of karma. Jenny's emergence as a more confident person put Ashleigh in her place briefly, but even the girl who doesn't fear snakes, spiders and ghosts knows to fear the picture-perfect cheerleader.

The ending is rather gruesome and serves as a declaration of independence for two of the leads, which in turn opens the door for a more proactive sequel, one in which the leads may need to abandon the shackles of normalcy and embrace their natures and pasts if they are to make something worthwhile of their current lives. There is a rather sweet romance running through-out, which affected each of the main characters in profound ways. I can only imagine that the author is an animal lover, because Rocky the dog was quite simply the most inspired choice of catalyst to trigger these changes.

Well worth a look at, and I'll definitely be checking out the sequel.

A few minor niggles were to be had on the ebook version,which had a few formatting errors that occasionally distracted.

I would, personally, not classify this as YA - rather paranormal fantasy or horror fantasy. Even though the novel features teens, there are some rather adult scenes in it.

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Review: Still Life

Still Life by E.E. Horlak

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Still Life is the book that started me on my quest to find and read more of Sheri S. Tepper.

On the surface, it is a paranormal fantasy with elements of horror. What set it apart for me was how it didn't give into the clichéd happy endings and romance. It is well thought out and executed with a palpable atmosphere of foreboding and magic. I must admit, each time I read it, I still have the smallest bit of hope that there will be a happier ending... one day.

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