Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Review of Time Traveller's Resort & Museum by David McLain #sci-fi #fantasy


New Release by David McLain!
Title: The Time Traveller's Resort and Museum
Author Name: David McLain
Illustrator: Felix Eddy

Genre(s): Time Travel, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Romance, Comedy, Steampunk

Release Date: November 17, 2016

Publisher:  Mirror World Publishing 

Follow the Tour:

~ About The Time Traveller's Resort and Museum ~

“If you need to know men's secrets
Or if there's something you need to find 
If you want to see the dinosaurs 
Or the insides of your mind.
If you want to watch the earth begin,
Or see what the apocalypse will leave behind,
You need to thank Alice Anderson,
For Alice is the mother of time.”

That was how the rhyme went. Every time traveler knew it. Everyone that is, except of course, for Alice herself, since she hadn’t invented time travel yet. Since returning to London, Alice’s life has been turned upside down. She’s been accused of murder and lost her position in the scientific community. Her only ally in this journey is a strange man who seems to think that Alice may be about to open up a strange new world of possibilities, but is probably not telling her everything he knows.

~ My Review ~
The Time Traveller's Resort & Museum is quirky and a dirigible full of fun. Imagine not only that you could travel in time, but also slip into worlds where anything imagined was real. Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, dragons. Well, not dragons. Maybe.

Alice's world is turned upside down when she returns to England for a presentation with longtime friend Malcom and then he suddenly turns up dead. And she's the prime suspect. Luckily strange people start popping up to help her get away. Away from the police, away from the whole timestream where Malcom was killed.

Fabulous! Time travel exists. But the craziest thing is that Alice learns that sometime in her future, she's the one who invented it! We follow her twisted path to that invention along with her pet triceratops, a handsome pirate, a circus clown, and a mysterious oriental woman who knows Alice is a murder suspect and seems to be following her through time.

This was a really fun story. The writing was quirky and mostly fun although the tendency for many scenes to end in a telling mode, explaining what would happen in the future didn't always sit well with me. Mostly personal preference though. 

The characters were well developed, descriptions excellent. And the illustrations which don't usually come with adult reads were cute and really added to the overall imagery. The book could use some more editing to correct a few typos and unfinished sentences but the story twists kept that from being a focus.

Recommended read and I'd certainly love to read a sequel! 4 stars  from me.

~ Read an Excerpt ~

“Hello,” Alice said, with a certain degree of reluctant enthusiasm.

“You sound American,” an annoyed voice on the other end of the line said.

Alice dropped her bag. “I've been in New York for three years,” Alice said. “You're lucky I don't sound like I'm from the Bronx.”

It was Alice's sister, Wendy, giving what by her standards was a remarkably warm and friendly greeting. “You're lucky I don't steal your passport while you’re here and force you to teach Electrical Engineering at the University of the Orkneys. Electrical Engineering, that's what you do, isn't it?”

“You do realize that I just spent an entire evening in a metal tube, sitting on a very small seat that appeared to have been made from rocks confiscated from terrorists at security?”

“Terrorists use rocks these days?”

“Well, they're harder to spot going through metal detectors, aren't they?”

Ending a sentence with a question apparently sounded appropriately British and Wendy seemed to ease up a little.

“How was the flight, then?” she asked.

“I believe I aged three years,” Alice answered, looking for the way to the exit. “Do you want to have a drink?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“In America, it's considered polite to ask.”

“I believe that the University of the Orkneys has early tenure.”

Wendy took pride in her absolute loathing of all things American. She saw Alice's decampment to New York as nothing less than a complete betrayal.

“Would you mind if we met in at my hotel?” Alice asked, trying to sound as if this were a polite request and not a desperate plea.

“I don't know,” Wendy said. “There aren't going to be a lot of randy outer-space types there, are there?”

“It's an astronomy conference,” Alice insisted. “Not a Sci-Fi convention.”

There was the unmistakable sound of pursing lips on the other end of the phone. “What hotel are you staying at?” Wendy asked.

“The Kensington.”

Wendy thought about it. “I'll meet you, but let's meet somewhere else. There's a pub down that way that I've had my eye on.”

“Wendy–”

“I have to drive in all the way from Brixton. You can walk a hundred metres out of the hotel lobby.”

Alice sighed. She decided not to point out that in fact she had come quite a bit farther than hundred meters. “What's the name of the place?” she asked.

“The Gristle and Thorn,” Wendy said.

Alice spotted the word “EXIT” on the far side of the hall. “Couldn't find any place with a ghastlier name? Was the ‘Skull and Crossbones’ already booked?”

“Just meet me,” Wendy insisted, and for a moment, she did her best to sound kind. “I've missed you.”

It has been said that all journeys begin with a single step, and while it might seem that Alice's journey began all the way back at JFK, in actuality the first step of Alice's journey began with a decision. It was not a big decision, not the kind of thing that would strike a historian as a significant chapter in the decline and fall of the Western Empire, but for Alice Anderson, it was the equivalent of crossing the Rubicon. It was the simplest thing really – a choice of restaurants.

“The Gristle and Thorn it is,” Alice said, picking up her bag again and shuffling through the crowd.

Meet the Author:

David McLain is the author of the two novels: Dragonbait, and The Life of a Thief. His stories have been published in the anthologies Metastasis, Penny Dread II, and the Doctor Who Anthology Time Shadows, as well as over two dozen magazines. He has been featured on NPR's Off the Page and the History of England podcast. He lives in New York.

Connect with David McLain: 






Meet the Illustrator: 

Felix Eddy graduated Magnum Cum Laude from Alfred University. She is the author and illustrator of A Bestiary Alphabet, and has illustrated several book covers and children's books. You can find out more about her at www.felixeddy.com


Purchase Links:

MIRROR WORLD PUBLISHING: 




AMAZON.COM: 

AMAZON.CA: 

KOBO: 

BARNES & NOBLE: 

Chapters.Indigo: 

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

5* review of Edward Aubry's Prelude to Mayhem #fantasy #sci-fi

Prelude to Mayhem (The Mayhem Wave, Book I)

Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Young Adult, New Adult

Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press

Date of Release­­: November 28, 2016


~ Description ~

On May 30, 2004, the world transformed. Nearly all signs of civilization vanished, leaving in their wake a bizarre landscape of wilderness, advanced technology and magic, and leaving Harrison Cody very much alone. After weeks of surviving in solitude, he hears a voice on the radio, beckoning him to cross a thousand miles of terrifyingly random terrain to meet her, and other survivors, in Chicago. Eager to find any remnants of humanity, he sets forth, joined by an unexpected—and inhuman—companion.

For Dorothy O’Neill, the end of the world means she will never finish ninth grade. On her own, she builds a home in the ruins of a strip mall, relying on her ingenuity and hard work to maintain some semblance of creature comforts. When another survivor arrives, he brings futuristic technology and stories of monsters he has encountered. Armed with this information, she takes a new interest in exploring her world, but she is not prepared for what awaits her, and the new arrival has brought his own set of problems.

On their separate journeys, Harrison and Dorothy begin to piece together what has happened to their world. Their questions have answers to be found in what remains of Chicago, and from the mysterious voice on the radio offering the hope that civilization can be rebuilt.

Goodreads | Amazon Audio | Coming soon!


~ My Review ~

There are two sections to my review, first for people who’ve never read Static Mayhem and second, for those who have and why they should also read Prelude to Mayhem.

If you haven’t read Static Mayhem, then you should definitely read Prelude to Mayhem now! This is a awesome story in which most of Earth’s population has disappeared, leaving behind an odd scattering of magical devices and creatures as well as futuristic human technology.

What would you do in such a world? Have fun, panic, search for other humans? Probably some combination of all these. Harrison takes the crazy event in stride, but as soon as he finds out there are other humans left (from a radio transmission in Chicago) he’s on a mission to find them. Even though it means a dangerous trek from the northeast US where roads suddenly end in cliffs.

Along the way, he meets other humans and also magical creatures along with finding out that something/someone wants him dead. He meets Dorothy, a brilliant teenager surviving quite capably on her own and a young boy who’s terrified of something, along with my favorite character, Glimmer, a pixie.

What awaits them in Chicago? Of course not everything in this tumbled world can be loving and beneficial. And even Harrison finds out he’s been affected by magic in a completely unexpected way. Prelude to Mayhem shows the reader how these characters will be capable of handling a lot. Hopefully enough.

I thoroughly recommend this book. It’s a fun read with extremely well developed characters in an unexpected world.

Now, for those who’ve already read Static Mayhem - no major spoilers if you haven’t - I still recommend reading Prelude to Mayhem. While it’s basically the first part of Static Mayhem, it has been updated and explores more details of Harrison and Dorothy’s personalities. The chapters are more balanced between the two POVs.

I think this will set the reader up even better for the remainder of the story in the new version of Static Mayhem which is the final part of the first story. But even better, I thought the development of Dorothy was much deeper and made me appreciate her even more as a main character. I’ve also read an early version of the sequel, Mayhem’s Children, and this version of the start of the story sets up that book even better.

Aubry’s writing is awesome, the editing is quite good. Definitely one of my top reads for the last couple years. 5 stars, highly recommended.


~ About The Author ~

Edward Aubry is a graduate of Wesleyan University, with a degree in music composition. Improbably, this preceded a career as a teacher of high school mathematics and creative writing.

Over the last few years, he has gradually transitioned from being a teacher who writes novels on the side to a novelist who teaches to support his family. He is also a poet, his sole published work in that form being the sixteen stanza “The History of Mathematics.”

He now lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife and three spectacular daughters, where he fills his non-teaching hours spinning tales of time-travel, wise-cracking pixies, and an assortment of other impossible things.

 ~ Find Edward Aubry Online ~