I’m reviewing the audio book version of Headshot by John G. Hartness. At 2.5 hours, it’s a nice afternoon of action, bloodshed, and teenage longing for love and acceptance between classes and killing people. It all fits into the backstory that we begin to glimpse as Cindy deals with her mundane life.

Hartness pulls off the voice of a 16-year-old assassin who also goes to high school and has to read Huckleberry Finn. Along with her assassin training, she has a crush, a bestie, and a rival, the makings of a great story when the baddies come along.

The movie would be rated R for graphic violence, but there’s no sex, so it’s okay for the teens. I enjoyed it a lot, and the reader, Iyesha Nyree, does an excellent job of performing the story.

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Weigenstein develops the story by showing how the people try to heal the scars from the war and the old conflicts before the war that have not been resolved. It is textured plot with well-developed characters who each affect the well-being of the community

Each person–Charlotte, Emily, Flynn, James–has relationships to rebuild, wounds to heal, and each of them has developed new desires and different perspectives. Some people do not want the war to end, as they enjoy the excitement the bushwhackers who are not part of the community, but who are more interested in doing whatever they want–drinking, shooting, lynching anyone they don’t like.

Weigenstein writes from the history of his family and the area where the story takes place. He provides a few maps of the area to help the reader visualize the landscape, and he describes the way of life in sufficient detail to make it easy to visualize and be in the story.

I was given a galley proof of this book for an honest review.

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Being one of a kind is a difficult proposition at any point in one’s life, but in this story, it is dangerous for him even to exist, and from his birth, people are looking for him.

In a world where Were and Not-Were live in a fragile balance, an abandoned were-child must make his way alone, risking his life to find friends and something of a family. The themes of brotherly love and loyalty make this compelling and exciting.

While this is book three of the series, the world is sufficiently developed for the book to stand alone. The first-person narrator learns about himself and his world, so the reader is taken along for the ride—and it is quite a ride.

I enjoyed the narration, the character’s perceptions and understanding of how he came to be and why he is in the situation where he finds himself. There are several places where the story jumps over several years, summarized succinctly to get to the next place in the story, some of which I found a bit rushed and disconcerting. There are also sidebar chapters that explain some background as part of the information that the character has compiled in his research. While this was interesting, it also stopped the story, and I was tempted to skip over it.

Overall the story and the characters kept my interest. I wanted all the characters to succeed and to make their way into the kind of life that they wanted to have, despite all odds against them. There are more stories here to tell, but the ending of this was satisfying and well designed.

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The second in a series but a standalone story, Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe by Alexes Razevich follows a catastrophe brought about by the main character to save her world. The characters are all females in a society that interacts only with males at mating, and whose lifespans are limited to 35 years.

As an outsider even in her home, the heroine must deal with the alienation of her family, the disruption of her familiar norms, and the role she must play to keep her world from collapsing on itself.

The setting is a main character with many new words for alien society. I would like to have had a glossary, but I was able to follow the ideas fairly well. It is intriguing and worth the effort to visualize and understand the setting, which is well-developed with no info-dump or unnecessary details.

The Law of Unexpected Consequences takes hold, creating problems that were not foreseen despite the necessity of what was done. Archetypes still hold true, and the characters behave in believable ways, given the constraints of their customs and beliefs. I am curious about how the cultures will change as they have to learn new ways of getting along with each other.
I received a copy of this book for an honest review.

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I am inspired and humbled by the stories of these women of math and science who made significant contributions despite gender, race and religious discrimination. While many of them had family support and grew up in a privileged society, they went outside the bounds of what was expected and accepted for women to do to follow their own curiosity and intelligence.

They worked unpaid, they went to school sitting in the back of the classroom so as not to disturb the college boys. They taught themselves or hired tutors, they taught and sometimes built their own laboratories. They published when they could. The stories tell about their lives, not just their accomplishments.

What could young women today be inspired to do if they knew the stories of these women, now that almost anyone can get a decent education, can learn and contribute to the world? If you have a young woman or girl of your acquaintance, especially if she has any leaning at all towards the sciences, let a copy of this book fall into her hands.

I received a copy of this book for an honest review. I am very glad that I did.

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Need to kno whow to think about plotting. This is your key. Holly Lisle has written a few dozen novels, and she has a middle of the road style of planning that is not all outline or all pantzing. I’ve found her work very helpful in my own writing, and highly recommend this course, as well as her other courses.

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Grumpy Old Wizards I found this mildly amusing. Good premise, interesting world, some interesting characters.

What got me was the 80-year-old who looks, acts, and moves like a 30-year-old. I’d prefer a character who (Dr. Who notwithstanding) has to deal with the realities of life that magic does not quite overcome, such as aging.

Mr. Riley can write what he wants, of course, but I won’t likely read any of the other books because it wasn’t my cup of tea.

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This was such a lot of fun to read. Take a ne’er-do-well mortician, a ghost, a hooker, a hitter, and a mobster, shake don’t stir, and well, there’s a dog, the FBI, and a cruise. Everything you need for a thriller.

Not quite a spoof but very funny story of mistaken assumptions and finding one’s own priorities in the world, doing the right thing for love, even when it is dangerous.

Do take a couple of hours and retreat from your life. Read this book. You deserve a laugh today.

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What might seem like a dream come true is always a nightmare for Bubba when he’s laid up in the hospital after a family reunion. Highjinks ensue.

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Orphaned seventeen-year-old Alexis who moves to Washington state to live with a cousin at her mother’s death, where she meets Cougar, a Native Amercian teen who can transform into a cougar. This is a forbidden love because the shapeshifters or skinwalkers hate the whites,

Cougar falls for Alexis, but his clan brothers, Dante, who shapeshifts into a grizzly, and Caleb, who becomes an eagle, think that Cougar is a traitor to their kind and to their people. Cougar is trying to learn better control of the shapeshifting, but they don’t like his methods.

This is Cougar’s story, and I would have liked it better if it had stayed in his point of view, but it shifts from Alexis to Cougar. I found this disconcerting, since it was not always clear to me whose head I was in. Alexis is unremarkable except that she relates in her grief to the angst of Cougar.

Otherwise, the book is well-written. The action scenes, and there are many, are clear, crisp and well-motivated, with the conflict increasing on every page. The skinwalker tradition is explained just enough to make the story work. The story comes to a solid resolution and is satisfying.

I received a copy of this book from the author for an honest review.

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