Novella Reviews – Baskerville Book Reviews

Review: The Ballad of Alchemy and Steel

In the Murkor culture, it is customary for the individuals bound during the unity ceremony of ujar’havel to compose a book of memories detailing the events that led to their first meeting and subsequent desire to be joined.

As a Murkor without a mother to guide him, Sal’zar is afforded unusual freedoms in his path to ujar’havel and the selection of a caste. In their strongly matriarchal society, his father’s voice holds little weight. He must forge his own destiny, though he struggles to find the proper way.

Sal’zar knows he is unsuited to the soldier’s caste, but is running out of options. One fateful day, he journeys to the sparring ring to test his mettle, where he meets Jal’den. Jal’den is the same age, but has already proven himself a better fighter than most of the older children. Noting Sal’zar is without a sparring partner, Jal’den offers to pair with him, and so begins a long friendship that may ultimately become something more.

Note: This story features LGBTQ+ themes. If it’s not your thing, that’s ok – I don’t expect everyone to read it. I wrote this story for my brother.

Review: Life Ever After

Tech City: Society is obsessed with relentless progress and the possibility of eternal life. A woman and a man meet in waiting room, anticipating a procedure that will incorporate the latest science and technology into their minds and bodies, heightening their awareness and increasing their productivity. Years pass, their relationship deepens and fades, and they grow increasingly uncertain where the AI stops and where they begin. A romantic drama exploring the potentiality of transhumanism, Life Ever After is a rich listening experience that is at once naturalistic and poetic.

Playwright Carla Grauls was awarded a commission through the Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund, an initiative dedicated to developing innovative original plays driven by language and voice. As an Audible commissioned playwright, she received funding and creative support to develop Life Ever After.

Review: In the Heart of the Fire

A bloodthirsty sheriff is terrorizing a small Texas town where justice has been buried with his victims. Until Nameless arrives – a vigilante whose past is a mystery and whose future is written in blood.

Anyone who crosses Sheriff Russell Soakes is dead, missing, or warned. One of them is a single mother trying to protect her children but bracing herself for the worst. Nameless fears the outcome. He’s seen it in his visions. Now it’s time to teach the depraved Soakes a lesson in fear. But in turning predators into prey, will Nameless unearth a few secrets of his own?

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz comes In the Heart of the Fire, part of Nameless, a riveting collection of short stories about a vigilante nomad, stripped of his memories and commissioned to kill. Follow him in each story, which can be read or listened to in a single sitting.

Review: Comfort Zone

There’s a killer lurking in all of us. Sometimes you just don’t know it. Take Phil Mercer, for example. What dark secret from his past changes a decent man and respected professional into a man with murder on his mind?

Down-to-earth Northerner Phil Mercer begins to question why so-called university friends failed to help him establish a practice at London’s Criminal Bar. Despite that and colleagues’ professional jealousy, he goes on to achieve success as a fearless defender of society’s less fortunate, until his career is threatened by events triggered by something completely out of his control. Figuring his life and career are about to change forever, Mercer strives to find a way to right wrongs by inventing a new parlour game called “Comfort Zone.”

At a dinner party surrounded by colleagues, he insists they all play the game. He introduces it after dinner as a “storytelling game”. He adds – “the easy choice is not an option at all. What terrifies you? What scares you shitless? Be brave. Be reckless. You are among friends. What can possibly go wrong? It’s just a parlour game, right?”