Indie Reviews

BOOKS IN REVIEW

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SHELF UNBOUND’S Books In Review

Self-Published & Small Press Book Reviews

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Annihilation.

BY KAYLIN MCFARREN

PUBLISHER: CREATIVE EDGE PUBLISHING

his way.

Adult

The second installment in Kaylin McFarren’s Gehenna saga (after 2020’s Soul-Seeker) is set largely in the realm of Hell, blending biblical myth, dark fantasy, and erotica.

The story begins with teenager Samara Daemonium attending high school in the realm of Middle Earth—a place where angels and demons exist like humans. Her mother Ariel, a guardian angel living in a demon’s body, and her father Crighton, a soul-seeking demon, grow worried when her former demon boyfriend Legend Hunter is murdered and Samara becomes entangled in a looming conflict called the Red War, prophesized to be the deadliest conflict in biblical history.

Meanwhile in Hell, Lucifer—believed to be dead—returns in the body of Legend and reclaims his throne from Queen Lucinda, who has been increasing her dark power in preparation of the upcoming war. As vindictive and twisted as ever, Lucifer tortures Lucinda—and others who stand in

Obsessed with Samara, Lucifer’s ultimate goal is to have her as his queen for eternity. But others see Samara as the key to defeating Lucifer and his officers. Samara must figure out who she is and her place in the world before she makes a mistake that could destroy countless souls.

The series is comparable in tone and content to Anne Bishop’s sensual Black Jewels saga and Cassie Ryan’s Sisters of Darkness novels. Most of the sex scenes are steamy, and the blending of dark fantasy and erotica is appealing. The story falls down, however, in the gratuitously graphic nature of the sex sequences, many of which contain brutal rape scenes. Additionally, the storyline is bloated in places due to numerous secondary characters and their machinations, and the planes of existence and their interconnectivity—Hell, Earth, Middle Earth, even a planet in the Twelfth Dimension—isn’t as meticulously described and coherent as it could have been.

The Rape of Persephone: A Novel.

BY MONICA BRILLHART

Adult

In his “Hymn to Demeter,” the Greek poet Homer wrote about Persephone, the beautiful daughter of Zeus and priestess Demeter, who is abducted by Hades, King of the Underworld. Homer’s poem is just under 500 lines long. Novelist Monica Brillhart has reimagined this story into an enchanting 431-page novel, the first of a trilogy.

The story takes place in ancient Greece. Brillhart offers some context in her introduction, explaining that in the original Latin, the word “rape,” means “seized or carried off, and does not necessarily imply sexual violence.”

In Homer’s myth, teenage Persephone is picking a narcissus when Hades’s chariot rises from the earth and he seizes the innocent girl by “her delicate ankles,” dragging her into hell. In Brillhart’s version, Persephone still has delicate ankles, but she’s not so innocent. She boldly steals a purse of coins Zeus gave her mother and buys passage on a ship called the Narcissus, aiming to finally meet her father. But a natural disaster thwarts her plan, and eventually Hades’s soldiers kidnap and carry her away to his dark castle. There, she develops a special bond with the Hounds of Hell and a serious crush on Hades.

In an original twist, the mythological characters here are humans (to be raised as gods after death). When Hades takes a ship to Olympus to ask Zeus for Persephone’s hand, he worries about seasickness. Zeus, the god of gods, has a bum knee. The author provides immediacy by using colloquial language in the present tense. Yet while she breathes contemporary life – and abundant humor – into this ancient tale, she remains faithful to the bones of Homer’s poem, quoting portions of it at the start of each of the book’s five sections.

This beguiling novel is sure to appeal to fans of Homer’s poem, who will enjoy the modern twist on familiar characters. But even those new to the story will be utterly charmed by Brillhart’s novel—and eagerly await the sequels. 

PUBLISHER: FERRYMAN PRESS

Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury.

BY KINLEY BRYAN

Adult

Three sisters find their lives at risk during a dramatic storm on the Great Lakes in 1913 in this utterly immersive historical novel.

Sunny Colvin has spent ten years working as a galley cook on freight ships with her husband, ship’s steward Herb. Now she has an opportunity to make her dream of running her own restaurant a reality and wants to talk Herb into it. But before she can do so, they must survive a days-long storm across Lake Huron.

Sunny’s younger sister Cordelia is also on the water, on Lake Superior. Newly, and possibly rashly married to a ship’s captain, she’s travelling with him in the hopes of knowing him better.

Meanwhile, on land, their widowed third sister, Agnes, chaffs at her life at home with their demanding mother and finds herself drawn toward the lifeboat keeper’s sister, Lizzie. Each sister dreams of changing her life. Will the storm make or break them?

This tale of one week in November 1913 is recounted in vivid, absorbing detail. Chapters alternate between the three sisters, all strong characters. Sunny is brave and resilient, Cordelia hopeful and kind, Agnes more resilient than she knows but unsure of what she wants. As events unfold and the storm wreaks havoc on land and sea, each sister’s story is moving to read.

Kinley Bryan successfully weaves description, dialogue and dramatic action, conveying a detailed picture of life onboard a ship without slowing the story’s pace. Secondary characters are well rendered; each strand of the narrative is emotionally charged; and the storm itself is masterfully described as ships and shore are battered by hurricane force winds and blizzards. “In watching that expanse of dark water stippled with whitecaps,” the author writes, “it wasn’t hard to imagine a fantastical sea creature like Mishipeshu rising up and thrashing ships with its gigantic tail.”

Inspired by actual events and the author’s own family history, Bryan’s debut is a highly assured and gripping novel. 

PUBLISHER: BLUE MUG PRESS

A Black and Endless Sky.

BY MATTHEW LYONS

Adult

PUBLISHER: TURNER PUBLISHING . In Matthew Lyons’ second novel A Black and Endless Sky, we find ourselves back in a world of mystery and supernatural mysticism the way his debut novel The Night Will Find Us embarked on.

Emerging from a recent divorce in San Francisco, Jonah, and his sister, Nell, make plans to go on a road trip across the American West. With positive vibes at hand, the siblings attempt to mend a rocky relationship as they drive home to Albuquerque, New Mexico. But when their luck’s overturned by mischief and old habits, their best laid plans are unexpectedly spoiled.

The change in mood and atmosphere lead to an unforeseen accident that succumbs Nell to an ancient power that possesses her. Troubled by his sister’s abrupt shift in behavior, Jonah ignores the truth until the entity vehemently begins to divulge long kept secrets only he could know about.

As the story advances, Nell and Jonah somehow achieve the concept that the desert will offer reprieve—but when they find themselves buried in a siege of passion with a local criminal ring, the power of the supernatural Murmur is summoned for a final showdown that saves them from annihilation.

In a relatively short novel told from multiple perspectives, A Black and Endless Sky takes its reader on a ride horror fans thrive on. Blood and guts, and more blood and guts.

Packed with bar fights, chilly nights, and ghastly violence, A Black and Endless Sky invokes components of some of the best known horror stories in the industry. Nothing falls short in this eerie tale on redemption, loss and second chances.

First time readers of Lyons’ work will find themselves on the edge of their seat wanting to know if Jonah and Nell will survive an exhaustive excursion along the great American scape.

All Who Belong May Enter.

BY NICK WARD

Adult

PUBLISHER: AUTUMN HOUSE PRESS In All Who Belong May Enter, Nick Ward challenges American culture at homegrown and national levels, relaying his experiences of masculinity, whiteness, and being a career restaurant server. This collection of personal essays is introspective and intimate, a necessity as Nick forces his Midwestern upbringing into conversation with topics that are considered taboo, potential sources of conflict, or frankly too uncomfortable to be vulnerable about. My favorite essay in the collection was The Dresden. In it, Nick and his roommates decide to throw a broken speaker through a fraternity house window. Overall, it’s an understandable decision. The way the boys of the Dresden house are presented is less than flattering; they were vulgar and violent. Nick and his friends were never caught, but they later heard that the fraternity found someone else to blame, beating them to a pulp. By the end of the piece, Nick is humbled, realizing that he wasn’t that different from the frat boys after all.

This attitude is what makes Nick’s writing successful. Despite his frustrations with people or culture, he acknowledges that he has—sometimes unwittingly— contributed to the very things he criticizes. It makes the writing more human because we often know what the right thing to do is, but until we are faced with a choice to take the higher ground, we don’t actually know what we will do. Throughout his work, Nick shows the reader that failure can be just as instrumental as success when it comes to personal growth.

The core criticism I had with this collection was there were a few essays where the transition between anecdote to thematic summary was abrupt. Also, these sections sometimes muddled the thematic development of the essay, introducing new topics that haven’t been clearly developed. The points Nick makes are valid and significant, but I would have been happier to see these elements of story and summary more thoroughly entwined, unifying the personal tone taken with the essay’s underlying purpose.

Overall, in “All Who Belong May Enter, Nick lets the reader get to know him. The writing is personal and casual, and it forces you to wrestle with things you may have been aware of or insulated from. And all of this lends nicely to what I believe is Nick’s end goal: to start a conversation. 

Sankofa.

BY CHIBUNDU ONUZO

Adult

Sankofa is Chibundu Onuzo’s third novel, following a woman (i.e., Anna) in her 40s as she looks for a sense of identity and belonging. Anna is separated from her husband, her daughter has grown up, and her mother, the one who raised her, has just died. However, while looking through her mother’s things, she finds proof of her biological father – a West African man named Francis who was involved in radical politics while in London, where he unknowingly impregnated her mother.

Desperate for answers, Anna learns whatever she can about Francis through the diary he left behind, and soon discovers that he is, in fact, still alive. However, all is not as it seems, and when she goes to West Africa to meet him in person, she must deal with her shattered expectations of what her father is really like. A retired president of Bamana, Francis (who now goes by Kofi) seems to be a completely different man than the one who wrote the journal.

My favorite part of the story is the moving, multi-faceted internal journey that Anna goes on. One of these facets includes her growing up as a black child with a white mother, considered too ethnic by her prejudiced English town to belong. However, upon arriving in Bamana, she learns that she is viewed as a foreigner by her own people, and subsequently feels out of place in both environments. In this way, she keeps her life with her mother separate in her mind from her father’s history in West Africa. Onuzo is masterful in the way she demonstrates these complex themes – any person who is bi-racial and/or part of an ethnic diaspora will relate to Anna’s struggle on a deeply personal level.

The ending is my favorite part, as it sees Anna being given her West African name, Nana (an anagram of Anna, demonstrating how close her father’s heritage was to her identity from the start). Although well into her 40s, she undergoes her country’s ceremonial rite of passage into womanhood, through which the rift between her multiple identities, experiences, and ancestors is bridged within her own heart. It is a powerful end, and brings a satisfying yet compelling sense of closure to the story.

I also like how the name of Anna’s father changes throughout the book based on how she perceives him. In the beginning, when she hopes he is still the same man from his journal, the narrative calls him Francis. As she learns that Francis isn’t fully there anymore, he is then called Kofi. And finally, within the final pages of the book, Anna calls him Papa for the first time, and the book reflects that. It is a small detail, but I think it’s a compelling touch, and is effective in portraying the different identities of Anna’s father within her own heart.

I initially didn’t know what to expect when opening Sankofa for the first time, but I’m very glad I read it – it’s a journey of identity and belonging unlike anything I’ve ever read before. 

PUBLISHER: CATAPULT

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere.

BY SINDYA BHANOO

Adult

To leave home inherently means that one must endure loss, whether it’s losing family, friends, culture, or simple familiarity. Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo is collection of eight short stories about this very thing, following South Indian immigrants as they’ve left their homes in search of more. Though there are challenges, what makes this collection stand out is how Sindya backlights struggle with beauty, so even the most bittersweet endings hold hope for the future.

Chandrasekharan or ‘Chand’ of “A Life in America” is a university teacher whose generosity and care for his Indian graduate students eventually backfires when he is accused for taking advantage of them, that he forced them to tend to his lawn or dishes after parties. Convinced that this was a smear campaign started by a fellow professor with a vendetta against him, Chand’s relationships and memories of these events are challenged. The realism of the characters and the intrigue of whether the claims against Chand are legitimate kept me invested until the story’s closing lines. “Malliga Homes”, a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner, is about a woman whose emigrated daughter pressured her to live in a retirement community after being widowed. Despite the welcoming accommodations, the narrator misses her life in the city. More importantly, she misses family being close by, but her children have not visited in years despite promises to do so. This short fully deserves all praise it receives, delivering a story that is simultaneously sorrowful and heartwarming.

Sindya’s writing as a whole is refreshingly simple, and this lack of linguistic garnish highlights her mechanical skill: her attention to pacing, character, and theme. Throughout each story, Sindya adds layers of nuance, so each story has subtleties that aren’t immediately apparent until a second or third read. Most of all, Sindya’s skill in creating compelling plots does justice to the characters within them, often showing the importance of compassion. Life is hard. It’s complicated. This is especially true for those who are far from the place they call home. In Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, you can sit down with these individuals, knowing that even if they are fiction, there is someone out there just like them. 

PUBLISHER: CATAPULT

The Apartment on Calle Uruguay.

BY ZACHARY LAZAR

Adult

Zachary Lazar uses a unique writing style and creates believable characters in his upcoming release, The Apartment on Calle Uruguay. When the story opens, Lazar takes readers to the east end of Long Island where we first meet the characters of the story. Christopher Bell is a blocked painter trying to paint again, and Ana Ramirez is a journalist looking for a job in New York City.

Having believable characters is an author’s hope, and Lazar does an excellent job of creating his two main characters and showing us what it’s like for immigrants coming to the United States. At the beginning of the novel, we learn Chris came from Israel as a child and has lived in the U.S. since then, and Ana fled Venezuela when that country was in turmoil. Soon after Chris and Ana start dating, a complicated romance develops between the two, and we learn more and more about their past lives. Chris is dealing with the loss of his love interest, Malika, and he feels the need to visit her incarcerated brother in prison while Ana is worried about her family, who is now living in Mexico City. With both characters, Lazar describes them in such a way that I really began to feel like I could have known either character in real life. They are that believable.

Over the years, I’ve read many books, but I haven’t read a book with the unique writing style that Lazar has. Chris tells the story not only in a first person narrative but also in a stream-of-consciousness way. I felt like I was inside his head and actually seeing the story unfold in front of me. At the same time, this unique writing style makes it hard at times to follow the story, but I could easily get back on track. I mean, think about how we speak. Don’t we sometimes lose our train of thought and jump from topic to topic? This novel is no different than our real-life conversations. If you’re looking for a book with well-developed characters and a stream-ofconsciousness writing style, The Apartment on Calle Uruguay is a must-read. 

PUBLISHER: CATAPULT

Search History.

BY EUGENE LIM

Adult

Sometimes a book comes along in which the reader isn’t quite sure where they stand on it until the final page is reached. Such is the experience with Eugene Lim’s Search History. Published by Coffee House Press in October 2021, the book landed on multiple “Most Anticipated” lists. K.W. Colyard from Bustle deemed it “A delightfully strange little book,” and The New Yorker wrote, “As the book toggles between the narrator’s autobiography, a meandering quest for the friend, and conversations among the search party about grief, selfhood, and Asian American authorship, Lim evokes the disorienting idiosyncrasy of an Internet search history.”

That concept of the internet search history is what the reader keeps coming back to as they drift through the book. The plotline is clear, but progress from chapter to chapter often feels more like a leap than a transition, until the reader reaches a point where they are brought back to where they previously left off. Imagine jumping between different tabs in a browser, moving to the next one in line before finishing the information on the first. At times, confusion set in, but a quick backtrack by a page or two allowed catching up in the narrative, which features a robust cast of eccentric characters including a robot named César Aira, an artificial intelligence scientist Doctor Y, a piano player Frank Exit, Frank’s friend Muriel, and more. Each has a role to play, though at times, the reader may be unsure of exactly who is speaking.

Aside from the unique structure, some of the most memorable parts of this book are the autobiographical interludes that Lim intersperses in several places. Thoughts on death, friendship, memories of his mother and son, and cultural identity shed light on Lim himself, his values, and societal viewpoints and expectations, and those passages reiterate the book’s themes of grief, mortality, and memory, especially.

Search History is the sort of book a reader might want to read multiple times in order to feel as though they’d gained all it has to offer. It’s a challenging read, but with 2022 having just turned the corner, it’s a good one with which to begin. 

PUBLISHER: COFFEE HOUSE PRESS