Location: United Kingdom
Member Since:
Feb. 19, 2012
k3books
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Smashwords book reviews by k3books
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Crimson Rain
on Feb. 25, 2012
Crimson Rain by Vanessa Finaughty The book is only 40 minutes to read, I love quality short stories like this. This is an exceptional vampire story. Generally speaking you may find vampire tales boring, vampires in space, vampire westerns or vampire bankers attacking wall street, Yawn, Yawn, I know how you feel. But this book is different, The Crimson Rain is human blood which is catalytic. That is to say, when it hits human flesh it changes you into a vampire. The first blood transfusion from the red clouds turns you into a vampire and the second infusion reverts you back to being human. The question for our Vampire prince in the book is… do other vampires want to revert back to being human? Should he deceive his fellow vampires including his lover also a vamp and take away their free choice? The book gets interesting as Mother nature is invoked as the agency sending the blood rain in the first place, like God in the Bible who "sets man up to fail".. With the… don't eat that apple scam, a scam because predictably curiosity.. plus free will.. plus time and chance, make it inevitable that curious man will eat that apple. Ultimately one day I predict man will even end up making a hydrogen bomb. Can we avoid a massive global war that will render man extinct? The Crimson Rain threatens the vampires? In the same way nuclear weapon or killer viruses threatens us now. So the vampire having suffered for 300 years.. He sees like Adam, sees and has tasted (literally) blood, horror, brutality, hunger and pain. The Crimson Rain, like the magical apple in the garden of Eden turns men into a beasts. But unlike the one way street of the apple there is a way back with the this rain. Meanwhile back at the ranch… Mother nature is the agent of the vampires infection with evil, and the one delivering the vampires from being trapped in fallen flesh. Pay attention there at the back.. The Crimson Rain will bring about a dinosaur style mass extinction. Maybe it was a Crimson Rain that killed off the dinosaurs 60 million years ago ?.. OK pull yourselves together that’s ridculous..we know for a fact (but I can't prove it) that Aliens nicked our dinosaurs and now Aliens keep Earth's dinosaurs in zoos all over the universe. Today man is base and vulgar (well I am at least) sick of beer, lose women, drugs, fast cars, films, books, sport, five star hotels expensive holidays...hang on...hang on. wait a minute what am I saying? Maybe I don't want to eat that second apple or stand under the second rain after all. Erm.. the dilemma.. read the book it explores this dilemma brilliantly. Stay like this and it's a wipe-out war and extinction.. Or walk outside and stand in the crimson rain of redemption. Could you really go back to being naive and living in a walled garden? That is the question.. It's what the snake asked Eve..That is the question…the vampire's dilemma., but the Rain is not a retrograde step back into ignorance and bliss, but an elevation into a higher plane of enlightenment and bliss. Then the ending.. it is sensational. You will have to read the book. This is a brilliant short story (like all good things in life) it's FREE on smashwords and Barns & Noble. The review was of the smashwords edition. (think this book would make a good radio and stage play) Paul Kendall Leeds (Yorkshire) UK
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"Secrets of the CitySpire - Book 1, A Familiar Love Song"
on Aug. 02, 2012
Secrets of the CitySpire By Nathan Reece Maher I found the book to be very good value for money. This book is a modern masterpiece. It's starts with Mr Bell the central character awakening from what appears to be a bomb blast. He has some memory of his life before the blast but it's all reminiscent and vague this failure to recognise this new reality he finds himself in and the failings of his memory is the foundation of the horror. The book starts by describing the magical half real, half dream world that is the CitySpire.. I don't know if the author has ever recovered from a bomb blast or a serious car accident, (I have) and I can tell you he has a good idea of how the post traumatic mind sees the world. Food taste differently, colours seem duller, the fear is turned up to 11. The author has done a good job here. The book is well written, if he has written this entirely from imagination it's amazing.. The CitySpire is no ordinary place, the maker of this world is a dark God. I loved this part of the book because the CitySpire is hard to imagine, the tall buildings the ever-present menace. This aspect of his state of mind is complicated because this fear is not entirely irrational, there is someone watching him, there is real danger hunting him. In the first chapter of the book Mr Bell (love the name in the understated context of this story) meets up with his soul mate Emily. But we experience the CitySpire and this love affair with Emily through Mr Bell's apparently paranoid eyes we can feel his pain and empathise with his post traumatic phobic state of mind….his world, and what a world. I love the language used to describe the mood, the feel of the place, the desolate oppressive buildings, the emptiness that pervades the CitySpire. The rich use of adjectives, you ask the question is this a real place? is Mr Bell still in a coma? This is a nightmare world. The love story is set in this nightmare world. I liked this aspect of the book not everyone will… but I did. The mind is at it's most vulnerable when in recover mode after a trauma. But the CitySpire is a magical place, the love story is romantic and frantic, the book is a puzzle, the plot is elusive, the si-fi springs out of this nightmare and distracts your then reminds you this is not an ordinary place. But for me the physiological horror is the best bit, and horror is a potent mental poison. Without solid memory and certainty the mind turns to a quivering jelly of fear. The love affair with Emily moderates Mr Bell's fear, but it's still there. I have read then I have re read this book a numbers of times. It's huge at 200,000 words. Mixed genre is not for everyone, but I guarantee the writing is top quality and I predicted one day this book will be a best seller or rather I should say it should be. The world is dumbing down and few people can read a large book like this and enjoy it. But it's worth the effort. The CitySpire is a fantastic imaginative world a phobic state of mind that you may well… one day… find yourselves in. A very strange place to fall in love. The book is highly recommended. Paul Kendall Yorkshire UK