Confessions of the One and Only F.J.R. Titchenell (That I Know of)

Book Review: Memories of Ash

3/18/2019

Book Review:

Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles #2)

By Intisar Khanani

Purple Monkey Press, 2016

Grade: A

(See also my review of The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)

The Basics:

With most of her memories scorched away by the sunbolt she cast to save her friend Val, Hitomi is slowly working to rebuild her life with the help of her magical mentor, Stormwind. When Stormwind is summoned before the High Council of Mages on what Hitomi can only imagine to be trumped-up charges, she has to summon every trick she knows, from both her old life and her new one, to attempt a bold prison break.

The Downside:

Much like the first book, Memories of Ash is oddly structured, leading from one place to another as much as it follows the dramatic arc at hand. The experience of reading it is more like watching a Netflix season than reading an installment in a series of novels. Characters come and go, their significance seeming as flexible as if there were actors’ contracts to consider. Major plot threads are introduced, not just hinted at but explored for major sections of the book, and then left for a later entry without even temporary resolution.

The Upside:

Though the unconventional rhythm is frustrating in places, I personally didn’t mind too much, because each step in the story’s meandering course is engrossing in its own way.

The heist/prison break/courtroom drama at the center of this installment is especially hard to put down, mingling Hitomi’s criminal tricks, her varied collection of allegiances, and the unique mechanics of magic in her world into a tensely compelling thrillride.

The appearances of Hitomi’s lost mother are haunting, understated, and complicated. There may be more yet to come in her story and in their relationship, but if she never surfaces again, their encounter in this book would be perfect even in its gaping incompleteness.

Above all, I can never praise enough Khanani’s successful creation and maintaining of a fascinating pacifist hero. Hitomi’s refusal to take life under any circumstances would normally be a phase a hero goes through before returning to normal, or a nearly irrelevant quirk that comes up sporadically between scene upon scene of action that easily could kill unfortunate bad guys and bystanders but conveniently never does. Hitomi’s personal moral code is an ever-present core element of who she is, and it makes the solutions she comes up with all the more creative and interesting.

I do I hope to see some of the hanging plot threads resolved in future books, but I’m thoroughly on board to find out.

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Book Review: The Imperial Alchemist

3/2/2019

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Book Review

The Imperial Alchemist

By A.H. Wang

BW Press, 2018

Grade: B+

The Basics:

Thousands of years ago, Emperor Qin of China sent out an expedition in search of the elixir of life. Now, professor of archaeology Dr. Georgia Lee has been given the opportunity to pick up where that lost expedition left off. By tracing the clues across East Asia, she hopes to make a few new discoveries about a world-shaping period of Chinese history and perhaps secure the funding to save her research department, but before long, she finds herself chasing the secrets of her own past and of human mortality itself.

The Downside:

Although certainly not an outlier in the thriller genre, I’d describe The Imperial Alchemist as plot-driven to a mild fault. The prose is utilitarian, invisible except for the occasional peculiar word choice (I’m not sure I was supposed to laugh when a character being imprisoned, drugged, and interrogated in a remote basement lair described her mood as “hangry”), and much of the characterization feels paint-by-numbers. Grandmothers are doting and traditional, couples with dead children can’t bear the sight of each other, power-hungry tycoons have abusive alcoholic daddies, and gay administrative assistants say “fabulous” a lot.

The Upside:

The archetypal characterization does not extend to Georgia’s gender. She’s an archaeologist, she’s the hero of a globetrotting mystery adventure, and she happens to be a woman. That’s pretty much that.

And as a globetrotting mystery adventure, The Imperial Alchemist is not only fast-paced but wonderfully flavorful. Throughout Georgia’s travels, the local history and mythology act more as her costars than her backdrop, vividly interweaving with each other and with the story, allowing the reader to experience not only her sightseeing opportunities but her blurring perception of reality and fantasy.

Wang’s knowledge and passion for research are on prominent display from beginning to end, adding depth to the world without ever bogging down the story. The doses of reality aren't all pretty travel ads and grade school history crafts, either. Some of the glimpses of the past are gut-turning in a completely different way from the expected car chases and shootouts of a race for the elixir of life, and the truth of what happened millennia ago remains as complicated and subjective as a current events debate in any living time and place.

Fans of James Rollins and anyone who loves Lara Croft but wishes she were a better archaeologist should definitely check this one out.

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Book Review: The Living

2/3/2019

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Book Review:

The Living (Warm Bodies #3)

By Isaac Marion

Zola Books, 2018

Grade: A+

See also my reviews for Warm Bodies (#1), The New Hunger (#1.5), and The Burning World (#2), and witness my whole concept of the zombie genre taking a one-eighty.

The Basics:

On the run from an undead mega-corporation bent on consuming the world, and a fire-worshipping cult that means to reduce it to ashes, R, Julie, and their friends take to the roads, crossing the burnt out-shell of a U.S that’s in the process of remaking itself. They’re not sure what it’s remaking itself into, or whether they themselves might have a say in the answer, but before they can stop to find out, there’s one enemy that must be faced, that cannot be outrun — the ghost of the person R used to be, the one who helped set in motion everything he and his new family are now fighting against.

The Downside:

There are multiple instances, enough to be mildly irritating, of R’s friends making jokes about him to the effect that he’s overly sensitive, ethically conscious, or effeminate. A realism-based argument can certainly be made for this choice; the characters are imperfect people from a hard post-apocalyptic world, and someone like R could not even exist in the present world without drawing similar comments. Yet it doesn’t feel like realism. It feels like the author second-guessing and apologizing for the otherwise fearless sentimentality of R’s voice, and that works against the book as a whole. Slightly.

There’s also a scene, the only private scene between Julie and Nora this installment, in which they discuss the similarities between their respective love interests. Their conversation, while helpful for understanding both their trains of thought, draws unfortunately harsh attention to the book’s iffy Bechdel status and the series’ recurring, divided set of gender roles. Characters making the self-defining, heroic journey back from the Dead are mostly male. Living characters who wait, guide, incentivize, and judge are mostly female.

As a pattern in a story with a varied and fascinating cast, I’m compelled to note it, but given the particulars of what’s expressed through those male characters’ journeys, The Living gets a full free pass on this front as far as I’m concerned. More on that shortly.

The Upside:

The Living is an utterly breathtaking read, a fitting conclusion, and worth every minute of the roller coaster of a wait that fans have endured. With the introductions done and the dominoes lined up, this is one of those chapters of pure payoff that only comes once a fandom, and rarely so satisfyingly.

That’s not to say it’s overstuffed with non-stop action. As in the rest of the series, battles and explosions come only often enough to be heart-pounding in their importance each and every time, punctuating and adding an epic accent to the soulfully personal central story, which strikes every beat it’s been hurtling toward with the same weight and resonance as the fate of the world.

The text is densely poetic, perhaps even more so than the previous books, so much so that I’m tempted to reread it in ebook form solely for the non-paper-defacing highlighter tool. Marion can craft words into a sledgehammer and then a scalpel within the course of a few paragraphs, and that balance of intensity and restraint scales from individual lines to the overall plot and every level in between. He knows not only how to explain a thing, but when not to. Buildings burn, skeletons menace, characters argue, and more often than not, the point of the scene sits quietly in plain view waiting to be noticed, patiently and powerfully unspoken.

Yes, the perspective is thoroughly, conspicuously male (which is okay; men deserve their fair half of the stage too, after all), but it’s not just another echo of the same oversaturated male views of the world we see reflected over and over in vastly more than half of media every day. The social commentary hinted at in the first book and expanded upon in the second is further developed here into a finer-edged point. The Living is, in large part, a story about toxic masculinity; its myriad forms, its contradictory interpretations, its traps, its role in every other problem the story touches upon, and above all, the challenge of escaping from it.

The female characters are written with respect. They’re smart and complex and do what suits their own interests and honor codes rather than what they’re told. Even when they’re called upon to give or withhold affection as required to drive the men’s plots, they’re given far more nuanced and considered motivations for doing so than the norm.

But this is not their story.

It’s not a story about women going up against a bigoted system that’s obviously, blatantly unfair to them and overcoming it. I can recommend shelves full of those stories, and I'm always happy to discover new ones, but The Living is something just as necessary and much rarer. It's a story about men staring down that same system — not personified by roving rapists or abusive fathers or anything so comfortingly external and easy to beat up, but in the much more threatening form of their own assumptions, habits, and the lessons they’ve been taught — and either successfully conquering it, or not.

Like The Burning World, The Living isn’t always an easy read, in spite of its lyrical beauty and its page-turning pace. It treks through ugly places and jabs ruthlessly at parts of the mind already bruised by current events and daily life. But for all its incisiveness, it’s the fervent underlying optimism that makes it linger and stand out, and gives rise to its most haunting moments and quotes.

“We climbed from deep pits. The lowest thought of the basest human is a staggering achievement. [...] It’s easier to fall than to climb, and yet against all logic, life keeps rising. The line wavers, but the trajectory is upward.”

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The Prospero Chronicles Finale Tour & Giveaway!

1/2/2019

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I want to start off with a giant THANK YOU to Maia at Silver Dagger Blog Tours, and to everyone who's volunteered their time and blog space over the next month to celebrate The Prospero Chronicles' big finish!

The full tour schedule is available here to anyone who wants to follow along. As you can see, we've got some reviews and some guest posts coming up, some of them on unusually interesting subjects.

There's also a giveaway, which is already live at the very bottom of this page, if you scroll all the way down, but first, check out these tantalizing teasers Maia made!

Under normal circumstances, Ben and Mina would never have had reason to speak to each other. He’s an easy-going people person with a healthy skepticism about the paranormal; she’s a dangerously obsessive monster-hunter with a crippling fear of betrayal. But the small Northern California town of Prospero, with its rich history of cryptid sightings, miracles, and mysterious disappearances, has no normal circumstances to offer.

When Ben’s missing childhood friend, Haley Perkins, stumbles out of Prospero’s surrounding woods and right into her own funeral, Ben and Mina are forced to work together to uncover what happened to her.
Different as they are, their unlikely friendship may be the only thing that can save the town, and possibly the world, from its insidious invaders.

“A snapping, crackling, popping homage to classic horror.” —Kirkus Reviews.

“Whip-smart dialogue... genuinely terrifying Splinters, the descriptions of which will have fans of monster films utterly enthralled... A promising series opener, this will satisfy those readers who like their scary stories to be as clever as they are chilling." —KQG, the Bulletin of The Center for Children's Books.

“The stakes are high. The action is intense." —Washington Independent Review of Books.

**only 99 cents!!**

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When autumn descends on Prospero, California, Ben hopes the normality of the new school year may offer a reprieve from the town’s paranormal horrors. Mina knows all too well that there are no reprieves and no normality to be had in Prospero, but even she can’t prepare for what the coming year holds.
On top of the vivid hallucinations that have plagued Mina since the attack on the Warehouse, and the brewing Splinter civil war that threatens all of humanity, inside the walls of Prospero High, Ben, Mina, and their expanding Network face a vicious campaign to destroy their friendship, and a mysterious assassin picking off human rebels – an assassin with powers like no Splinter they’ve fought before.

Ben and Mina’s one hope rests with a mysterious old man hiding in the woods outside of town; a living legend who may be able to teach them how to fight this dangerous new breed of Splinter. That is, assuming he doesn’t kill the pair of them himself.

“Titchenell and Carter hold nothing back in this solid sequel that thrills and expands on its predecessor. Aided by swift writing, relatable characters and unexpected scares, Shards is a chill-inducing delight.” —David Powers King, co-author of Woven.

“Maintaining the same level of popcorn-munching fun, Titchenell and Carter are taking The Prospero Chronicles in a promising direction.” —Joe Dell'Erb, Washington Independent Review of Books.

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Ben

Growing up is hard, and growing up in Prospero is even harder, but I think we manage. I mean, yeah, my friends and I spend more of our time fighting a race of shapeshifting aliens than we do hanging out, but we have our fun. We go to parties, help each other with our classes, maybe even fall in love…

I’ve no illusions that we live ordinary lives, but they’re our lives, and I’m going to make sure we make the most of them whether the Splinters want us to or not.

Mina

The truce is temporary. We will not humor the Splinters forever. It's only until the Slivers can be stopped, until the army of Shards being planted among our classmates can be disassembled, until we get our hands on the thing I'd almost given up believing in.

The humanity test.

For the chance to know, once and for all, who can be trusted, some dealings with monsters must be excusable. Inevitable. Just like this feeling between Ben and me.

And that has to be temporary too.

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This is Prospero’s darkest hour. The few remaining humans trapped within the quarantine zone are all but defenseless against the multiplying forces of the Sliver Queen, Locusta. With Ben missing, Aldo among the enemy ranks, and more steel plates than bones left in her body, Mina’s passing the hours drowning in morphine and throwing heavy objects at her guards.

Stripped of her weapons, her gadgets, and the Network itself, she has just one card left, hidden somewhere under her oft-sutured skin. It might be powerful enough to complete her life’s work once and for all… or to reach the one person who could make her life into more than a means to an end. But playing it will cost everything she has, or everything she believes in.

The final chronicle of Prospero waits in these pages.

Add on Goodreads

Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Smashwords

Okay, okay, giveaway time! We've got a free ebook of my Horror/Sci-Fi standalone, Some Side Effects May Occur, and an Amazon giftcard up for grabs!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Book Review: Citadel of the Sky

12/20/2018

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Book Review:

Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn #1)

Chrysoula Tzavelas

Dreamfarmer Press, 2015

Grade: B

The Basics:

Many generations after a brave hero saved the kingdom of Ceria from evil and darkness, his royal descendants continue to protect the land from magical threats, using the hereditary magic powers of the Blood. Unfortunately, the Blood also carries madness, so each member of the royal family is matched during childhood with a regent handler. Most members of the Blood, including Princess Tiana, welcome the help and the lack of pressure to concern themselves with things like politics, but tensions and power struggles tend to bubble to the surface whenever a new Blight strikes, pushing the Blood and the rest of Ceria’s governing bodies together to confront it. The arrival of a sky fiend, disguised as a sword and magically bonded to Tiana, is just one herald of such an impending era.

The Downside:

The evil plot, rooted in the legacy of heroes past, is fairly divorced from the main characters’ lives and difficult to follow. It's only too easy to skim through the mythos-heavy sections, and then end up hopelessly lost when it all finally becomes important (not that I'm pleading guilty to that, or anything).

Tzavelas obviously didn’t want to tell the same tired, generic fantasy story over again, which is a major part of the book’s appeal. The time of Ceria’s legendary hero is over, and the reliability and importance of that legend is constantly in question. It’s an interesting concept, but given that the family history does become so central to the finale, the dull, distant aura of irrelevance it has through the rest of the story does the book a disservice as a whole.

The Upside:

There are many stories about people chosen for great things who “just want to be normal,” but this trope rings much truer with Tiana than with most. She's eager to help people whenever she can, and realistically glad to have the power she does to make that possible. Instead of vague angst about what a burden that power is and how much she envies people with dull, magic-free lives, we get to see exactly the life she wants — as a royal art patron hanging out backstage at her favorite theater and dancing with handsome noblemen at court functions — and exactly how her power’s side effects impinge upon it, by making it difficult to do things like tie her own shoes and hold conversations without trailing off to talk to people who aren’t really there.

She’s a wonderfully simple character in the best way, excited about the magical shiny things her world is full of, but that the other characters are too preoccupied to see. There’s a particular party scene, involving fortune-like cookies that contain dares instead of fortunes, in which every other character is manipulating the festivities to play some personal or political angle, and Tiana’s opinions on this come out as a frustrated, “Why does everybody cheat at the cookie game?”

Tiana’s illegitimate cousin and effective co-heroine, Kiar, is interesting as well in her opposite way. She wants to be powerful and special, so much so that she once nearly died stealing a dose of magic dust that gave her the ability to access the code of the universe. Yet she continues to underperform as a magic user and hold back from asserting herself as a member of the royal family, maybe for the same reason she took such extreme measures in the first place. She wants to belong somewhere, and there’s a very relatable conflict there between wanting to be noticed and fearing being noticed in the wrong way.

Also intriguing is the political situation of Ceria, with its figurehead royalty and semi-official appointed leadership, but only a few minor characters within Citadel of the Sky seem to be aware of just how intriguing it is, so allusions to it are subtle. Possibly later installments well delve deeper. There certainly seems to be plenty of room for it.

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Stitches, 4th & Final Book of The Prospero Chronicles — Unveiled!

11/6/2018

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After too many years of pitfalls and promises, it's finally arriving, for real, with a release date and cover and everything! The Prospero Chronicles will have an ending at last.

Release day is December 18th (yes, this December 18th). Ebook pre-orders are live, and Patreon subscribers, even at the $1/month level, can download it NOW.

If you're one of those amazing fans of the series who's been waiting for this news since day one, I just want to say, thank you! This book would not have happened without your enthusiasm and patience.

If, on the other hand, you're someone who's thought about delving into the interdimensional alien horrors of Prospero but never quite got around to buying a ticket, you can now do so without fear of being left on a permanent cliffhanger.

So, without further ado, let's have a look at Stitches!

This is Prospero’s darkest hour. The few remaining humans trapped within the quarantine zone are all but defenseless against the multiplying forces of the Sliver Queen, Locusta. With Ben missing, Aldo among the enemy ranks, and more steel plates than bones left in her body, Mina’s passing the hours drowning in morphine and throwing heavy objects at her guards.

Stripped of her weapons, her gadgets, and the Network itself, she has just one card left, hidden somewhere under her oft-sutured skin. It might be powerful enough to complete her life’s work once and for all… or to reach the one person who could make her life into more than a means to an end. But playing it will cost everything she has, or everything she believes in.

The final chronicle of Prospero waits in these pages.

Release date: December 18, 2018

Pre-order links:

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

iBooks

Kobo

Google Play

Indigo

Paperback options will be available by release day at the latest, if you're waiting on something to wrap and put under the tree :)

Thanks again, to everyone who knew, or even vaguely hoped, this day would come!

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Book Review: Caraval

9/26/2018

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Book Review:

Caraval

Stephanie Garber

Flatiron Books, 2017

Grade: B

The Basics:

Scarlett and her sister, Tella, have always wanted to experience Caraval, a traveling show and game hosted by a mysterious entertainer known only as Legend. For years, Scarlett has written letters to Legend, imploring him to bring Caraval back to their island so that they can partake of its magic, as their grandmother claims she once did. On the year when Scarlett is set to escape her island, her father, and her childhood once and for all through a fashionable arranged marriage, Legend finally responds. Tella refuses to cast aside this long-awaited chance in the name of good sense, and throws herself so deeply into the game that Scarlett must not only play but win, if she wants to salvage any trace of her family, her marriage, or her desperately held ideas on the world.

The Downside:

The “nothing is as it seems” nature of Caraval sets it up for high expectations of twists and mind games. Those things exist here, and they’re fine and adequate, but not quite as satisfying as I was hoping for. There’s no moment where everything clicks and makes sense or does a complete one-eighty. It’s more of a gradual ninety degree curve, with plenty of time to adjust along the way. As a fan of interactive theater in real life, I also have to note how incredibly frustrating and disappointing Caraval would be as a game for the average non-main-character player who paid and traveled insane sums and distances to be there. That one’s more of a personal and silly gripe, but I couldn’t help thinking about how awful Legend’s Yelp score would be.

The Upside:

Garber seriously knows how to set up a story, and how to set a scene. I knew I had to buy the book after flipping through the first few pages, which introduce us to Scarlett and Tella, their wants and histories, and the wonder and menace of Caraval and Legend, all with a series of brief letters. It’s a demonstration of succinct show-don’t-tell that deserves to be studied.

Likewise, the visual beauty and allure of the Caraval arena is vividly rendered, to the point where I now have a crisper memory of it than I do of many real places I’ve actually been. There’s a palpable sense of magic emanating from every scene, and the forms that magic takes often have an unsettling mischief about them. The use of secrets as currency within the magical world of Caraval is a memorable touch that serves to drag character revelations to the surface and even add a touch of dark humor here and there.

My favorite scene of all might be the one in which Scarlett tries to buy a dress by taking a magical lie detector test and can’t figure out the answer to “What is your deepest desire?” Characters usually have their secrets neatly defined and waiting on the tips of their tongues to be revealed, but Scarlett, like many people, has as much difficulty knowing herself as she does sharing herself. This is not to say, of course, that Garber does not know her.

While I wasn’t able to get as invested in the relationships as I was hoping, Scarlett’s story is ultimately one of outgrowing fairytale love, and discovering the need for something more mutual and substantial, so the romance works well in that sense. Altogether a story with the power to linger.

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Book Review: Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)

8/19/2018

5 Comments

Book Review:

Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)

Intisar Khanani

Purple Monkey Press, 2013

Grade: A

The Basics:

As an illegal Rogue Promise, Hitomi must conceal her magical aptitude, for fear of being forced to devote her abilities to exacting the will of the rich and powerful. By day, she hides among the struggling merchants of Karolene, but by night, she works with an outlaw legend known only as the Ghost, to protect the few dissenters who remain. When she’s captured by their enemies, she’ll have to cooperate with a Breather, a life-draining creature she once thought of as nothing but a nightmare monster, to survive. And even if they manage to escape, she might never make it back to the life she remembers.

The Downside:

Sunbolt is the first book of its series, but it feels structurally like the transitional middle of a trilogy. We meet Hitomi as an established member of the Shadow League, with its own internal personality conflicts and its work already in progress. All too soon, she’s separated from her allies and sent instead on a buddy road trip adventure, spending much of it unconscious or weakened from magic use.

I often found myself wishing I could go back and read a nonexistent previous book about her time in the Shadow League. Not because such a book is necessary to understand or appreciate this one, but because the taste we get of that story was my favorite part. I’m crossing my fingers that we get more of the League in future installments.

The Upside:

I read Khanani’s debut, Thorn, about a year ago and liked it a lot, so The Sunbolt Chronicles have been on my radar for a while, and I’m wishing I hadn’t dragged my feet so long. Sunbolt is the first series opener in quite a while that’s made me need to buy the next book right now.

Hitomi is an instant favorite, charmingly bumbling and resourceful at once. Nothing ever goes quite the way she plans, but she keeps on adapting on the fly until something works. She’s heroic and confident in her worthiness to be the one to tackle any given problem, but self-preservation still kicks in often enough to saddle her with some weighty moral grayness.

As was the case in Thorn, the fantasy world is drawn with efficient but vivid lines. The details are right where they need to be to make the story come alive, and invisible where they would get in the way. Scenes of magic are surprisingly dynamic. There are only so many ways authors can describe swirling patterns of light and psychic exhaustion, but Khanani manages to make even Hitomi’s spellcraft challenges interesting and different, especially when they involve conversations with birds.

There’s no love story in Sunbolt, and while I won’t be disappointed if there turns out to be one later in the series (Hitomi left a few interesting men back in Karolene that I’m hoping to meet again), it’s always refreshing to watch a heroine, especially of a YA fantasy, focus entirely on other things for a change.

All in all, though I’m hoping to get back to what the Shadow League’s up to eventually, I expect I’ll gladly follow Hitomi wherever she goes.

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Book Review: Daughters of Anarchy, Season 1

8/17/2018

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Book Review:

Daughters of Anarchy, Season 1

C.A. Hartman

5280 Press, 2016

Grade: B+

The Basics:

In the not too distant future, government surveillance is everywhere, from offices to streets to homes. Citizens hardly notice the intrusion anymore, yet crime remains rampant and often unpunished, especially among the irreproachable elite. Men are now the significant minority but no less the powerbrokers of the population, basking in an abundance of women desperate enough to rewrite their DNA for a chance at scoring a provider husband — a small chance, but not as small as breaking the glass ceiling. Armed with antique weaponry, professional access to the surveillance and its blind spots, and a mistress of disguise’s homegrown gene lab, Stevie sets out to right wrongs in the few untapped shadows that remain.

The Downside:

As the title suggests, the format is fairly episodic. Enjoyable as it is to watch self-satisfied bullies and predators get what’s coming to them, Stevie doesn’t vary her methods much, so there's a bit of a lull in the early middle, as her work becomes monotonous before the overarching plot catches up.

The biggest drawback for me came down to not liking the love interest all that much. Both Stevie and Seth are deeply damaged people, so there is a sort of “matched set” feeling to them. Still, after spending one of her side-adventures coaching another woman on how it’s better to be alone with her self-respect than to settle for catching a man who doesn’t respect her, it feels oddly as if Stevie wants to settle herself. She doesn’t see it that way, because she loves Seth for being the most decent man in the book, but that just means he regularly dismisses and underestimates her instead of trying to rape her. The bar isn’t high in her world.

The Upside:

While I didn’t ultimately find them shippable, the scenes between Stevie and Seth are gloriously, truthfully uncomfortable. Hartman infuses a potent blend of awkwardness, uncertainty, and hurt into Stevie's fondness for someone who doesn’t even realize he’s insulting her, when experience has taught her not to expect better. Their friendship walks the trembling tightrope of “should I just let this slide?” that lies between “should I walk away?” and “should I stick my neck out and try to explain things he couldn’t possibly know from his own experiences?”

I would have liked to see them fall off that tightrope one way or the other by the end, but then, there are more seasons to come.

The relationships between many of the women are excellent too, affectionate but imperfect and filled with chafing disagreements. Stevie's pity for her female neighbors, her long-term friendship with another woman from her former neighborhood, and her curiosity about the mysterious Daughters of Anarchy all highlight the differences that can exist between people who might be lumped together by an outside observer. Even the women who've had near-identical experiences in Stevie's city often come up with entirely different coping strategies, to the point where it becomes a challenge for them to trust or understand each other.

Probably the most compelling dynamic of all involves a character we never meet in person, Stevie’s mother, who remains the loving, well-intentioned voice of all of Stevie’s doubts long after her own death. Her echo in Stevie's head is a character unto itself, as well as a humanizing window into Stevie’s own nature.

Unlike many fictional dystopias, this futuristic city remains but a setting for the story, rather than its primary subject, which serves it well. It’s a lived-in backdrop with no chapter-long history course necessary to understand it, well-painted by the same polished prose that knits the whole book together.

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Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir — Now Available!!!

8/14/2018

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It's here, it's here, it's here...

Matt and I are pleased and proud to announce that our latest dark sci-fi adventure, Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir, is now available from Talos Press!

If you've already read Matt's Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel, you might notice that Pinnacle City takes place in the same universe, but the characters and story are entirely new. If you haven't read Almost Infamous, don't worry. You don't need any special knowledge going into this one.

What do you need to know about Pinnacle City? Read on.

What It's About:

To some people, Pinnacle City is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. But beneath the glitz and glamour is a gritty underbelly, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past, where the lower class―immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike―jostle and elbow for scraps to scrape by on.

Private investigator Eddie Enriquez is an ex-con and veteran with powers of his own who still bears the scars of his time as a minion for a low-level supervillain. Good work’s been hard to come by until a mysterious woman shows up at his office with a case the police and superheroes are ignoring: the suspicious death of a prominent non-human rights activist.

Meanwhile, superhero Kimberly Kline, a.k.a. Solar Flare, has just hit it big, graduating to the Pinnacle City Guardians. With good looks, incredible superpowers, and a family name that opens doors, the sky is the limit. But in trying to make the world a better place . . . she’ll discover Pinnacle City isn’t as black and white as it once seemed.

From the minds of Matt Carter and Fiona J. R. Titchenell, Pinnacle City is a pulpy, throwback noir of yesteryear, where two people from opposite sides of the track must team up to do good in a world full of bad.

What People Are Saying:

“In this skillfully constructed secondary-world noir novel, having superpowers isn’t always so super, and everyone has something to hide. . . . By allowing everyone to be a little morally grey, Carter and Titchenell spin a superhero story with staying power.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A rollicking take on the all-American superhero tale. It’s Stan Lee meets Dashiell Hammett, with just a little Clive Barker thrown in for good measure.”

—Scott Kenemore, author of The Grand Hotel and Zombie, Ohio

“Lively and endearing, funny and hip, Pinnacle City puts gumshoe to cape and in a fantastic adult alternate history throbbing with modern pop-cultural conflict and absurdities.”

—Johnny Worthen, award-winning author of The Finger Trap

Where can you get a copy? We're glad you asked...

Just about anywhere you'd like:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Kobo

Google Play

Indigo

Books-a-Million

Indiebound

Or if you want to be especially retro-awesome, request it at your local bricks & mortar bookstore.

Happy reading!

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Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir — Now Available!!!

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