ThatBookIsOnFiyah

4.75/5 stars. SGJ is a master of turning a normal-seeming situation into something completely off the rails. This is the story about four childhood friends from the Blackfeet Reservation who, one day ten years ago, killed a group of elk on a hunting trip. One of those elk was pregnant, and one of the friends buried the fetus before the game warden caught them. Now, ten years later, something strange has started happening to these four men. This horror story builds up slowly, but once the action gets going, it is nearly non-stop. Lewis and Ricky have moved away from the reservation. Ricky gets killed, and now Lewis is afraid for his own life. At first, it seems Lewis starts losing his mind and becomes increasingly paranoid after seeing images of an elk in his rented house. He feels the most guilt for the elk slaughter and with the ten-year anniversary upcoming, he knows the elk is out for vengeance! These thoughts lead him to suspect both his wife and his coworker of being the elk rei...

4/5 stars. Christopher Golden certainly has a magnificent imagination. This story takes an often-told story about the immortal vampire and turns it on its side. Maggie Wise is dying. She has lived a long life and has three children, two of whom are no longer around. Only Malcolm, her youngest son, and his brother’s wife, Violet, have stayed by Maggie’s side as she has succumbed to her old age. Her only request of Malcolm is for him to return her to Maine, and the place of her birth, to bury her after she has died. Little do Malcolm and Violet understand what exactly taking Maggie’s corpse on this journey to her hometown will mean for them, and what they will have to go through to get her there, because Maggie hasn’t shared all of the details with her son! The characters in this story are well-developed. The story, the action, the mystical questions (and the answers) are all superbly written. My only issue with the story is that it ends exactly the way the reader imagines it will. Th...

5/5 stars. Hugo Weaving is the narrator of this audiobook, which releases on Aug 25 2026, and does an absolutely fantastic job with the voices and depicting the action throughout the tale, as one would expect from such a talented actor. In all honesty, I was unsure about this story at first, particularly if I would mesh with it as a reader/listener. I remember it being immensely popular on Kickstarter a few months ago and debated with myself at the time whether to back it or not. I decided not to back the Kickstarter, but regret that decision now. After listening to this first installment, I am excited to see more of these novels published and I look forward to continuing the story. I have no doubt the physical copy is beautiful! This fantasy story uses some traditional tropes, but the fresh setting for the story expands the narrative in beautiful ways. The novel has vibes of the world building from James Cameron’s Avatar series without the conflict between cultures. This story does ...

5/5 stars. I have read all of Swan’s fantasy novels, but this is the first of his sci-fi stories that I have read. I have been anxiously anticipating The Infinite State since it was announced, and I am not disappointed in the product of Swan’s imagination. With the vibes of ‘1984’ and ‘V for Vendetta,’ a totalitarian regime, the Decurion Empire, controls its citizens, and their thoughts, through displays of power, intimidation, and fear. One woman dreams of a different life, safely away from this country and the Eternal Father (Pater Aeternus), after the sudden death of her husband, an important party member. She inherits a hefty sum of money from her husband’s estate and decides to buy her own planet. This story does a wonderful job of distinguishing the importance of free thought and living free from the fear that a misspoken word could result in death. Katherine, our planet-buying widow, sets out to establish a country where all citizens have input into the decisions of the countr...

4/5 stars. I have heard a great deal about this book in the last couple of years. It is the first novel by Ishiguro, written in the early 1980s, and tells the story of a mother whose oldest daughter recently committed suicide. Her younger daughter comes to visit and causes her to reflect on her life before she had children, while living in Nagasaki, Japan, in the early 1950s. Historical fiction is a fascinating genre for me, and Japanese historical fiction has been on my TBR quite a bit in the last couple of years, having read quite a few of Haruki Murakami’s early works last year, and a couple of other Japan-centered magical realism novels by other authors. For this to have been his first novel, Ishiguro writes exceptional prose and his descriptions take the reader into the world of mid-20 th Century Japan. I finished this short novel very quickly, reading about 1/3 rd of it at each session. The story is interesting, if a bit tragic and sad, yet still hopeful in the end, for both ...

4/5 stars. The first book in a new mystery/thriller series by fantasy writer RJ Barker, writing under the pseudonym RJ Dark. This story has an interesting mystery featuring local gangsters and the Russian mob in the northern part of England, but the best part of this story are the characters. In particular, the two main characters who are investigating the mystery, Malachite Jones and his friend Jackie Singh Kattar, make for an unusual friendship. Mal is a recovered addict. Jackie is former military and currently an independent ‘businessman’ running protection for the local community, and perhaps much more. They are friends from their youth, growing up in the Edge, a low-income community rife with crime. Mal is a paranormal investigator, a ‘psychic’ who helps clients through their grief. His newest client is a local woman whose husband recently died in a motorcycle accident who hires him to find her husband’s missing lottery ticket worth millions. Unfortunately for Mal, both the loca...

5/5 stars. Harry August is a kalachakra, a person who lives the same life over and over again but remembers everything that happened before. In each life, Harry learns that the world is approaching its end faster than it should be, but Harry thinks he knows who is causing this to happen. What can he do to put the world back on its correct path? This novel was my first experience with Claire North. I am impressed with her prose and her imagination in building such a fascinating story. I bought Slow Gods recently and plan to read it, but I know she has many other novels that I will be checking into. I am always impressed with a writer who tells a good story but also makes me consider the consequences if the story were actually true! This book was recommended to me by a friend over a year ago and I finally got around to reading it. I wish I had read it sooner. Harry August is an interesting character with the desire to do good for the world, mostly. I highly recommend checking out this un...

3/5 stars. I read some of LaRocca’s short stories earlier this year and was excited to get into his full-length novels. Unfortunately, this novel demonstrated that his longer fiction might not be for me. The story is really about Burnt Sparrow and its inhabitants, and this is an ugly, depraved town, with some of the wickedest perversions I have ever seen portrayed in a book. However, the story bounced around too much. It seemed like it was setting up one story, then changed to something else, then went back to the earlier idea and added a new twist. The novel finished with a completely different focus, a separate piece of fiction from the main character. I understand that this is the first book in a series, but the disparate storylines, with no resolution for any of them, put me off of the story quite a bit. With all of that being said, LaRocca is a fine writer, has created an unusual locale, and developed some intriguing, if completely mad, characters. I certainly would caution a re...