The Dim Future by Phina Rheads


The Dim Future by Phina Rheads
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

“The Dim Future” is a rhythmic, musical poetry collection using profound language to express and unpack themes and concepts such as love in all its different iterations, philosophy, loss, admitting one’s mistakes, complex family environment, mental health, generational trauma, existentialism, temporality, growth, resilience, etc. The use of free verse verbalises and highlights the chanting quality and aesthetics of the poems, as well as the insight that the author wants to convey to the reader. In turn, allows the reader to receive this wisdom and elaborate it for themselves. Be sure that no matter who you are, at least one poem out of the thirty rhyming poems was written just for you.

Nobody’s life is perfect.

One never really knows what other people’s quiet struggles might be. This collection introduced readers to characters who are dealing with everything from racism to grief to a teacher who doesn’t realize how much pressure they’re placing on their students and more. Behind a happy smile might be someone who desperately needs some understanding and a break from the things in their life that feel impossible to fix. The first step to helping is to understand the emotions not everyone feels comfortable expressing, and this was an interesting take on the topic.

I found myself wishing for more details to be included in these poems. It was tricky to visualize what was happening in them because there weren’t many words in them that described any of the five senses or what the characters in them were like as people other than the difficult circumstances they were going through. Paying more attention to such things would have made it easier for me to maintain a high level of interest in every piece.

With that being said, there was some interesting imagery in “Black Teenage Girl.” It talked about the fragility and beauty of the main character who needed to be protected from the outside world, comparing her to an egg in a nest at the top of the tree. That’s the sort of description that makes me perk up as a reader and want to learn more about the metaphor and how it should be understood.

The Dim Future believed in compassion which is something our world needs more of!

Groomed by Jody Paschal


Groomed by Jody Paschal
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Groomed is a dark comedy coming-of-age story about Myles “Mylo” Gunn, a middle-aged man turning 50 during the 2020 global pandemic and #MeToo Movement. With nothing but downtime with his thoughts, Mylo reflects on what’s next in this new chapter of his life. Little does he know that watching a news exposé about an older politician grooming a teenager to be her husband is going to give him an unexpected reality check. The exposé sounds awfully similar to how his first marriage went, and Mylo realizes that he was groomed, too. Completely shocked by this new revelation, Mylo takes a deep dive into his past. But his trip down memory lane takes an unexpected detour. Groomed is a humorous, intriguing look at how misperception and manipulation can influence growing into ourselves.

It’s never too late to begin the healing process.

Mylo’s character development was strong and nuanced. One of the things I found most intriguing about him was how his abusive relationship stunted his social and emotional development and how he tried to heal from that terrible experience. He was a fifty-year-old man who still sometimes acted like the seventeen year old he’d been when the grooming began. It is not easy to write a character who has this many layers to his personality, especially since the author allowed so many of those layers to be revealed subtly through the way the protagonist reacted to small irritations in life or reminders of his past. The care and concern that was taken with making sure every aspect of Mylo’s life was represented and that his pain never overshadowed his honest and hardworking personality is something this reader noticed and appreciated quickly. Bravo for making this look so effortless and trusting one’s audience to notice these brief but important moments!

I did find myself wishing that the secondary characters had been given more time to be developed, especially when it came to April. Her reason for targeting Mylo made sense, but I would have loved to see it explored in greater depth. For example, knowing what sort of logic she used to justify the manipulative and cruel way she treated him and other people in her life would have been helpful whether it might have been due to how her personality formed, any past trauma she may have experienced, or something else entirely.

One of the biggest questions I had when I began reading this book involved what the responses of the people closest to Mylo were going to be when they learned he was dating a twenty-five year old woman while he was still in high school. Shouldn’t they have all been alarmed and disgusted? The answers to this question kept me reading as his friends and family members each came to their own conclusions about what was going on and how they should best respond to it. No, I can’t spoil anything by going into detail there, but I thought these passages were equally well written and an intelligent snapshot of what different parts of society thought of such things in the 1980s when society was generally less aware of or sensitive to the ways in which young men can be abused by the women in their lives.

Groomed was a thoughtful take on an important topic.

Frankie & Chair by Johan Ingler


Frankie & Chair by Johan Ingler
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: YA (10-16 yrs old), Contemporary
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewed by Nymphaea

Nine-year-old Danny has an unusual best friend: Chair, an armchair. Together, they write The Adventures of Captain Redtail & Sir Winchester, a comic about a squirrel space pirate and his faithful companion, a robot cupboard. Content with life as it is, Danny dislikes any sort of change. He’s already had to endure the hardest change of all: the loss of his father.

But things take a turn when he starts at a new school and meets Frankie, a bold skateboarder whose friendship takes him by surprise. Frankie battles with a looming tragedy of her own, stirring emotions in Danny that he struggles to understand. And with Chair stubbornly opposing Frankie’s presence, the rising tensions set off a series of events that none of them could have imagined.

It’s a rocky journey toward new friendship and an understanding of grief, all mirrored in Danny’s comic world—a place where he explores the emotions he’s still learning to process.

How to learn to let go and grow up…we’re all trying to figure it out.

Ingler has written an interesting story that’s a cross between a YA and a fantasy. Danny has his best friend, a talking chair…Chair. They talk and he deals with his various problems. They even write a comic book together, The Adventures of Captain Redtail and Sir Winchester. It’s cute in that it reminded me a lot of Calvin and Hobbes. But Danny meets Frankie and has to figure out how to move forward. The author captures the feeling of being a kid and confused by the fact that the world never stops. It always keeps going forward.

I liked this tale of adventure and fantasy, but also the theme of growing up and letting go to move onto bigger things. It’s a cycle in life we all have to go through and it was cute to see how Danny does this. I liked how he was dragged out of his safe world and into the rest of the world.

If you want a book that’s comic, silly, cute and poignant, then this might be the one for you.

Paranormal Jelly: An Anthology of Whimsical Narratives Regarding the Comical Facets of the Occult by Zwahk Muchoney


Paranormal Jelly: An Anthology of Whimsical Narratives Regarding the Comical Facets of the Occult by Zwahk Muchoney
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Paranormal Jelly blends the bizarre with the everyday in the early internet era of 1996. Middle-aged author Albert runs a popular website, sharing tales of eldritch horrors, baby Sasquatches, cigarette-smoking ghosts, and dark cultists. A skeptic at heart, he dismisses it all as fiction—until reality starts to blur. Cryptids and hauntings become alarmingly frequent, always just out of the reporter’s sight, but impossible to ignore. As Albert struggles to document these strange events, he’s drawn into a web of the supernatural that threatens his very existence.

Both skeptics and true believers are welcomed here.

I loved the playful and humorous tone of Albert’s adventures. The fantasy and science fiction themes were subtle in some places, but that only made those scenes even more exciting once they popped up again and made me look at what just happened in a new light. It was a nice contrast to the more skeptical characters who didn’t always believe the stories about ghosts, cryptids, aliens, and other creatures they heard.

As much as I liked reading about the various characters in this novella, there were so many of them that only the protagonist was given a chance to become more well rounded. Even then, I didn’t feel like I got to know Albert as deeply as I would have liked to due to the relatively short length of this piece and how much was going on with the plot. With stronger character development, this could have been a four or five-star work as the storyline and themes themselves were fantastic.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that provided scientific explanations for why things like orbs sometimes appear in photos and why certain types of people are more – or less – likely to believe in conspiracy theories and the paranormal in general. There are many different reasons why strange things happen and why people can have a wide variety of responses to the same event. I thought these passages treated both believers and skeptics fairly and assumed the best of everyone. That makes these sorts of stories so much more interesting to read as I knew the author had good intentions and wanted everyone to think critically about what they’ve read, heard, or maybe even seen with their own two eyes.

Paranormal Jelly: An Anthology of Whimsical Narratives Regarding the Comical Facets of the Occult kept me guessing.

The Marriage Bribe by Amber Cross


The Marriage Bribe by Amber Cross
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Mistflower

Prissy is drowning in debt. Her only hope lies in finding a man equally desperate to marry her for six months so she can cash in on a big payout.

Logan has a solid reputation as a respectable businessman, yet he’s worried that won’t be enough to guarantee custody of his late brother’s unborn child.

When Prissy offers him a bribe-half her money for six months of his life-he takes the deal to strengthen his case with the courts.

Prissy doesn’t care why he agrees, if it means she can sleep through the night without visions of debt collectors coming to take her away.

It’s a simple deal. Live together for six months, and they both walk away better for it. But will they be able to walk away from the attraction growing between them?

When I opened The Marriage Bribe to the title page, I noticed a tagline beneath the title: A grumpy/sunshine marriage of convenience love story. I couldn’t have summarized the plot better myself—it perfectly captures the essence of this book.

The hero, Logan, carries emotional baggage so heavy that it fully justifies his grumpy demeanor. Personally, I’d describe him as downright bad-tempered at times, considering how mean he could be. Meanwhile, the heroine, Prissy, is the ultimate ray of sunshine—relentlessly positive and full of energy. She presents Logan with an offer he can’t refuse: a marriage of convenience. If they stay married for just six months, they’ll both receive a significant sum of money.

At first, Prissy doesn’t know (or care) why Logan agrees to the arrangement—she’s too focused on her own financial struggles. She’s drowning in debt, and this deal is her only way out. However, the why behind her situation turns out to be a dramatic plot twist I didn’t see coming. Her reason for needing the money also explains her over-the-top optimism, which makes for an interesting contrast with Logan’s brooding personality. Between the two of them, there was almost enough drama to drown me—but luckily, the supporting characters helped balance the story and kept it flowing smoothly, leaving me eager to keep reading.

Set in a small town where everyone knows each other and lends a helping hand, the story has a charming community feel. From Prissy’s coworkers and family to Logan’s close-knit group of friends, I loved how the secondary characters enriched the narrative and made the town feel real.

The chemistry between Prissy and Logan was sweet. Their mutual attraction was complicated by the boundaries of their agreement but watching them navigate those feelings made the romance even more satisfying. I especially enjoyed the ending, when they renegotiated the terms of their marriage—I always love a happily-ever-after!

If you enjoy small-town romance with a grumpy/sunshine dynamic and a heartfelt love story, The Marriage Bribe is definitely worth a read.

Mountain Interlude by S.V. Brosius


Mountain Interlude by S.V. Brosius
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Romance, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Can broken hearts mend if they are frozen in time?

Deep in the mountains of Colorado stands an old house shrouded in mist. A lonely, divorced woman will come face to face with the attractive man who owns the property. She will find herself in a world of paranormal mystery: a place where the lost are taken care of, the injured are healed, and time stands still.

Healing is for everyone.

Maizie’s character development was strong and made me want to spend even more time with her. She was an intelligent, resourceful person who could quickly solve problems if she felt threatened or confused. This is something I’m always happy to come across in stories, especially ones involving a woman driving alone in the middle of nowhere who has car trouble and needs to seek help. That’s a situation that just about any woman would feel rather vulnerable in, so it was a relief to meet a character who took her predicament so seriously.

It was never quite clear to me what the limitations of the paranormal elements of the storyline were. They seemed to wax and wane depending on what Maizie and Tony were currently doing, but it was never entirely clear to me if this was because their moods were influencing the spirit world or if this were a coincidence. If more attention had been paid to the logic of how this all worked, I would have happily given this tale a higher rating as it was well-written and memorable.

I must tip my cap at the author for their creative and thought-provoking ending. It was not at all what I expected it to be, but it fit the tone of this tale perfectly and made me wish for a sequel. There’s definitely something to be said for stories that play around with the audience’s expectations in order to keep their genre fresh and interesting.

Mountain Interlude was full of surprises.

Bright Green Futures: 2024 by Susan Kaye Quinn, Editor


Bright Green Futures: 2024 (Solarpunk Anthology) by Susan Kaye Quinn (Editor)
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, LGBTQ, Romance
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

SHORT STORY COLLECTION
The Bright Green Futures: 2024 anthology is a collection of short solarpunk stories from guests of the Bright Green Futures podcast, where we lift up stories to build a better world. These hopeful climate-fiction stories include clicky space centipedes, sentient trees, a flooded future Rio de Janeiro and characters trying to find their place in a climate-impacted world. Each story imagines a way for us to survive the future, together.

Bright Green Futures: 2024 contains six short stories plus a bonus prose-poem.

The Doglady and the Rainstorm by Renan Bernardo
What Kind of Bat is This? by Sarena Ulibarri
Centipede Station by T. K. Rex
A Merger in Corn Country by Danielle Arostegui
Ancestors, Descendants by BrightFlame
The Park of the Beast by T. K. Rex
Coriander by Ana Sun
Good times are on the way.

Joseana was healing from a tragedy in “The Doglady and the Rainstorm.” I loved the world building in her tale and would have happily read something full-length about how this character navigated the extensive flooding in Rio and dealt with her painful memories of the past. Her love of dogs was another nice detail that added depth to the plot and gave her a good reason to face her fears when something unexpected happened.

“Centipede Station” showed what happened when Pebble and Moss woke up from cryosleep much later than they had intended to. The planet they had arrived at didn’t fit their expectations either due to the strange plants and animals they found living there. I enjoyed seeing their reactions to every plot twist as they once again had to adjust their expectations of what their lives would be like. There’s something to be said for characters who are willing to adjust to anything that comes their way, especially given how carefully they’d planned their journey before it began. Yes, I know I’m being a little vague here, but I want other readers to be just as delighted as I was once they figure out what’s going on.

Every homeland evolves over time. As Aster explored the country her great-grandmother left as a child in “Coriander,” I took note of the differences between how it had been a few generations ago versus how it was by the time the protagonist was able to visit. The nostalgia in this piece was strong, but I also liked seeing how the characters had adapted to climate change and the way it affected which types of food were still available for the average person. Science fiction doesn’t talk about food enough for my tastes, so I was quite happy to dive into the topic here.

Bright Green Futures: 2024 (Solarpunk Anthology) overflowed with hope for the future which is exactly what I needed to read.

Numbered Love – A Story from American Buddha by Maysam Yabandeh


Numbered Love – A Story from American Buddha by Maysam Yabandeh
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Romance, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Nam never stopped thinking about the girl who once held his heart. For thirty years, he kept her memory alive through ancient romantic tales from the Far East. But when he returns to America to find her, his hopeful search unravels into a journey full of unexpected turns as he confronts the realities of love in modern times.

There’s nuance to everything in life, even love.

The plot twists kept me on my toes, especially when it came to the relationship between Nam and Livia, his young friend who promised to fall in love with him once they both grew up. Just when I thought I’d discovered the most unusual places this childhood vow took these characters, they ended up in a slightly to dramatically stranger place than they’d been just a moment before. I’d like to tip my cap to the author for taking these sorts of risks as they make reading – and reviewing – so much more fun!

It would have been nice to have a deeper exploration of Nam’s personality as he didn’t feel well-rounded to this reader. He came across as someone who was unaware of how sexist he was but who would have been mortified and possibly changed his ways if he were better at noticing his own flaws. His intelligence and willingness to work hard were easy to spot, but I needed more details about him in order to sympathize with the double standards he set when it came to how men should behave versus how women should behave.

With that being said, I enjoyed the sections of this short story that discussed what Buddhism has to say about suffering, the consequences of one’s actions, and how people should live. There were several nuggets of wisdom there that I can’t go into detail here for spoiler reasons but that made a lot of sense to me. It’s always nice to walk away from characters with something to ponder over.

Numbered Love was a wild ride.

Humdrum by Mitchell Brockman


Humdrum by Mitchell Brockman
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Suspense/Mystery/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

How long can someone endure the silence? For David, the answer’s not long enough.

In the hum of an office filled with laughter and camaraderie, David Clark exists on the edges unseen, unheard, and trapped in a cycle of quiet isolation. Nights in his empty apartment feel endless, and the world outside his window moves on without him.

When a coworker’s kindness cracks open the walls he’s built, and a sudden tragedy shakes his fragile existence, David is forced to confront the silence he’s lived with for too long. As his carefully guarded life unravels, he must decide: will he take the risk to finally connect, or retreat further into the safety of solitude?

Everyone carries their own burdens, some more quietly than others.

One of the things I liked the most about this book was how thoroughly it explored the emotional pain and loneliness of mental illness, especially for people who don’t have strong support systems to help them cope with their worst days. David was plagued by thoughts and feelings that overwhelmed him with anger, paranoia, grief, and fear. It was difficult for him to describe this cascade of emotions and even harder for those around him to understand why he reacted so negatively to what most people would interpret as friendly banter or, at worst, genuine misunderstandings.

I would have liked to have learned more about David’s past, from his childhood to any family history of mental illness that he might have been aware of. Both genetics and adverse life experiences can trigger the sorts of symptoms he dealt with, and I think it would have been helpful for the audience to have a deeper understanding of who he was as a character and how long he’d been struggling with his dark thoughts and feelings. Was this a recent change in his mental health, for example, or something he’d been dealing with since early childhood?

Let’s see how much I can share about the ending without giving away any spoilers. The shift in tone was surprising, but I appreciated the points it made about what could be learned from David’s experience and how the storyline would be moving forward from that point forward. I could close my eyes and imagine a few different directions things could be headed, all of which matched what I’d previously read and made me wonder if those possibilities were the closest to the author’s assumptions about the future. It’s nice when readers are given this sort of opportunity!

Humdrum was thought provoking.

Logos 43 – A Witty Philosophical Adventure Chasing the Logic of Desire by N Wende


Logos 43 – A Witty Philosophical Adventure Chasing the Logic of Desire by N Wende
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

When one morning, a brilliant robot named Logos discovers he wants to play the violin, his life spirals into dangerous chaos. The transistors in his brain vibrate, copper coils heat up, as he can’t bear a thought as random and unfounded as desire. Now, he has no choice but to find a logical justification for this strange phenomenon. Otherwise, he’ll fall into a severe psycho-electric crisis, and his mind will completely crash.

And so, with a draining battery and a determined enemy in pursuit, Logos embarks on a daring, dangerous, and hilarious journey. He’ll examine with robotic sensitivity the values and fundamental thoughts of us all. He’ll encounter bizarre religious sages and mad scientists. He’ll confront deep philosophers and active idealists, all in pursuit of one troubling question: Is it even logical to want something?

Everyone has desires, even robots.

The setting grabbed my attention immediately because of how crisply and clearly it was described. Sometimes I’d go back and reread a previous paragraph to have another chance to imagine what Logos 43 was experiencing as it attempted to figure out why it suddenly had the urge to play the violin despite its programming. The gentle beaches and peaceful forests provided a nice contrast to the conflicts the characters dealt with and the complex discussions that happened during this quest.

It took me a little while to settle into the rhythm of this book due to how differently Logos 43 viewed the world when compared to how the average human would describe the same experience. I needed to observe him respond to multiple types of religion before things clicked for me. Patience was key, and while I was a bit confused in certain places in the beginning, it was well worth it later on once I better understood what the main character was saying and how to better interpret some of his unusual reactions to ideas I wouldn’t necessarily find surprising myself.

With that being said, I appreciated the protagonist’s logical approach to what should or shouldn’t be classified as a religion. His arguments made sense even though I wouldn’t ever have thought to lump some of those belief structures together before I read this. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy reading science fiction so much, and I look forward to checking out more from the author in the future.

Logos 43 reminded me of a grownup version of The Phantom Tollbooth. I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves wordplay and thought-provoking fables.