The Bookwyrm's Review of Black Heart Boy's Choir by Curtis M. Lawson

Author: Curtis M. Lawson

Length: 252 Pages

Release Date: September 8, 2019

Publisher: Wyrd Horror

Being  a fan of the author's other books, including his book Devoured and his Bad World series, it was a pleasant surprise to get an advanced review copy of his new release, Black Heart Boys' Choir. It is definitely a step back towards his horror roots after a swing into urban fantasy with Bad World and Weird West with The Devoured.

PLOT SUMMARY

Lucien Beaumont and his family have fallen on hard times. His father, a famous composer, committed suicide, and he and his mother have been forced to relocate to a much less affluent town in Massachusetts. This also means Lucien had to leave his prep school and start into public school. Being an intelligent, sophisticated music prodigy, Lucien dresses in suits, has manners, and has a superiority complex about who he is in comparison to the other kids. This of course leads him into conflict with the cool kids cliques, which are particularly nasty. He also runs afoul of the Glee Club kids, who he considers untalented pop music hacks. its under these conditions that the plot proceeds.

After some run ins with the school bully and the Glee club, Lucien and his only friend Maxwell decide to start their own musical group.  they enlist a couple outsiders like themselves who appreciate classical music, and start practicing. They are told on to the school administration, though, and banned from using school premises. This is where they pick up the name of their group, the Black Heart Boy's Choir, from their penchant for wearing all black suits and being aloof to the other students. 

It is also about this time that Lucien discovers his obsession, his father's last piece of unfinished work. It has been defaced, but he starts to reconstruct it. He also starts to have strange visions, as he sees into the past to events he sees in whole new light, seeing his father was inspired by more than a creative muse to create his masterpiece, the Madrigal of The World's End. the inspirations may or may not be an ancient demon named Amduscias, who manifests (or maybe not) in Lucien's mind as a black unicorn. As the group reconstructs the music though ever more terrifying and horrible means, the music comes together at last in a crescendo of blood, chaos and madness, as the Choir performs the finished piece to a very unknowing audience, with completely shocking results.

CHARACTERS AND WORLD BUILDING

The world building in this one takes a realistic approach, using an abandoned city n Massachusetts, reimagined as a suburb of Boston. Gritty, lower middle class, you can fairly see the variety of neighborhoods in the city, giving it a lived in atmosphere. The author goes into some loving detail with several of the locations, without going into info dump territory.

Characters are such a strength in this book. while you would think that high school kids would be cardboard cutouts of pop culture teens like those in Heathers, Mean Girls or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, these characters are surprisingly nuanced. The characters deal with realistic situations in realistic ways, while handling real world problems, like social hierarchy, bullying, decaying family structure, suicide, political correctness and class differences. Lucien is a great character, who has to deal with so many issues, and how he handles them is well written, if sad and terrifying at the same time. The various other characters get attention paid to their growth as well, and it really helps round out the story.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I was amazed how much this dark story spoke to me. I remember those feelings of loneliness and ostracism being an outsider at a new high school. Lucien is a complex, and ultimately horribly flawed character, but its hard not seeing a bit of myself in him, although with much different results. The end of this book is extremely relevant currently, and I recommend this book to anyone looking for a dark story with genuine, flawed characters on the path to ruin. One of the best reads of 2019 for me.

Rating: 5/5

 Amazon Link:

The Bookwyrm's Review of 8-Bit Bastards: Level One and Two by Joshua Mason

Author: Joshua Mason

Length: 267 Pages/ 9 hours, 47 Minutes

Release Date: June 6, 2019/ December 17, 2019 (Audio)

Publisher: Bebuka Books/ Spectrum Audiobooks (Audio)

Narrator: Michael Norman Johnson

Genre: LitRPG

Rating: 5/5 Stars

For me, LitRPG is very hit or miss genre. Luckily, 8-Bit Bastards is definitely in the hit category. avoiding a lot of the pitfalls I see in a lot of LitRPG, like five pages of stats, harem tacked on that doesn't advance the story and flat characters. It starts with an intriguing premise and runs with it, developing layers as the story proceeds.

PLOT SUMMARY

The story starts with Sean, who is on day 82 of a game and junk food binge, when a knock on his door changes his trajectory in life. Heather, with whom Sean had a three year relationship with long ago, has news that draws Sean out of his self imposed funk. One of their descendants is in trouble, and only Sean and Heather can help. considering they have 700 years experience where they are, it should be no problem, right?

Wait, did I say 700 years? That's right, I did. The story takes place in the digital realm of Afterall, which up until 50 years before the story starts, those with the resources could have their consciousness uploaded to Afterall, leaving mortal life behind forever. Afterall has been closed to new players for 50 years, but the occasional person hacks in, but the results aren't pretty, since they are stuck by the control AI, Bartelby, in the 8-Bit realm, an homage to old 8-bit games. Think the original Zelda or Phantasy Star on Nintendo and Sega. The problem is it slowly drives players crazy, so having Pliny, their descendent stuck there won't work.

After talking to Bartleby, and being given some mental protection from the 8-bit realm, Sean and Heather proceed to put Sean's old adventuring guild, the 8-Bit Bastards, back together to go find Pliny. The problem is, Sean burned his bridges with both other members of the Bastards, Matt and Claudia, centuries ago, and they are still mad at him. Sleeping with a guy's wife and sister will leave a few sore feelings. Sean and Heather do manage to get them to put aside their differences, and they proceed to the 8-Bit realm. 

Once they cross the river into the realm, they discover things aren't exactly as they remember. For one thing, they go from maxed out, multi-class epic level characters all the way down to weaponless, classless level one Sprouts. This means they will have to grind and level up the hard way. Also, they discover Pliny is ahead of them, questing on his own, so they need to do all this while chasing after him. What follows if a fun adventure filled with adventures, mob grinding, player class adding and enough snark and game culture references to choke a shark. All the while, Sean, Claudia, Heather and Mark each notices little things that just seem odd to the realm, and slowly start seeing that all  may not be what it seems, leading to their eventual confrontation with the Boss of the region. Or is it? 

In Level 2, Sean, Mark, Heather and Claudia have defeated their first boss foe, and have to enter the castle looking for Sean and Heather's ancestor. After entering the castle, the group discovers they are trapped within. They also start seeing weird stuff, as the 8 bit realm seems to be acting even more strangely than usual. Searching around the castle library for clues, Mark disappears, and his friends become desperate searching for him. Things start getting a little crazy from here, as they meet and old Teammate, Roger, who is also stuck in the castle. He warns them of a new threat in the castle, and lets them know they aren't nearly leveled up to deal with it. He offers to take them with him to level up, since he is maxed out, and his high level enemies, will shoot their levelling up to extremes. 

Meanwhile, Mark has fallen through a trap door and is wandering tunnels under the castle, where he encounters Pliny, who they have been searching for from the beginning. Things get complicated when they encounter Tevera, the giant snake boss in the castle, who has a much darker and more powerful purpose than the group would imagine. When the group finally reassembles after a series of adventures in the castle, they find out that this encounter in the castle is not random, and that there is a threat to the entire world they never expected, with an unknown enemy pulling the strings.

WORLD BUILDING AND CHARACTERS

Since Afterall is a digital world, anything imaginable can be created there. There are of course tons of fantasy elements, but the inhabitants can mix and match elements in any of the realms that aren't the 8-Bit Realm, so you will see anachronisms like Star Wars Endor speeders or a Tron light cycle going into a fantasy realm where they run across wyverns. The 8-Bit realm based on those old games, so its lots of pixilated bright colors and sounds. The NPC's are also true to form, so there's a lot of pre-programmed responses, but there's also some underlying depth as well.

The characters really shine. Sean has an interesting arc, starting out as an apathetic burnout who is looking for some meaning to a life spent wasted, and really going through some character growth. The other Bastards also have some interesting arcs, although Sean's is the most profound, since he was the most fundamentally broken. The secondary characters get some attention, and you feel there is more to them than the basic responses programmed into them. The AI's are especially interesting, although not in a Skynet kind of way. it's funny watching their interactions with the Bastards. there is a lot of humor scattered throughout, with some hilarious running jokes. After you're through reading it, you will never think of cheese cubes or biscuits the same way. There's much more character to the characters than you would expect, and there are some twists and turns along the way.

NARRATION

The narration is ably handled Michael Norman Johnson. I was unfamiliar with him before this book, but I have to say, he is a great find. He has just the perfect voice for this book, having a humorous snarky quality to his voice. He does an excellent job giving individual life to each of the characters, and his narrative pacing is excellent. He really keeps the listener engaged in the narrative. I think the addition of a little music and various sound effects throughout was well done, adding a fun touch to a fun story. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

After I finished reading Volume One, I was immediately interested in getting into the follow-up, Level Two. After reading book two and listening to the omnibus collection, I discovered the plan is for a much longer arc than expected (Nine!) and am thrilled at the prospect to continue with the series. This is such an engaging story, with such engaging characters, that it immediately shot into my top three Lit RPG titles, alongside James Hunter's Viridian Gate: Cataclysm and J.A. Cipriano's Soulstone: Skeleton Key. I highly recommend it to any fans of the LitRPG or GameLit genre's, and it will even appeal to fans of more traditional fantasy. With two books released so far, you have 500+ pages of fun reading so far, as well as almost 10 hours of audio goodness!



Amazon link

The Bookwyrm's Review of Witch For Hire by N.E. Conneely

Author: N.E. Conneely

Length: 258 Pages/7 Hours, 14 Minutes (Audio)

Release Date: January 11, 2014/ February 11, 2015 (Audio)

Narrator: Jeff Hays

Genre: Urban Fantasy

I was completely blown away by this book. It was a great read! The setting is a twist on our world, where magical types like Witches, Elves, Dwarves, Dragons etc. have been in charge forever, while vanilla humans were kept as slaves until 300 years ago. The current President of the US is a dragon, and is dealing with the idea of reparations to humans, basically a twist on our society. 

The story takes place in Georgia, where the main character, Michelle, is a witch with no clan affiliation, who has a consulting business helping different police departments solve magical crimes. She lives in a boarding house run by Brownies, and is trying to live a normal, busy life. She is contacted by local police to help with a case of Trolls escaped off their preserve, a danger, since Trolls eat people. Making matters worse is a group of humans who are helping them to evade capture, thinking they can be rehabilitated. She deals with other cases as well, all while dealing with office politics, a suddenly confusing personal life, and some personal revelations about her parentage. Will she be able to find the Trolls, and stop whoever is behind it? Read it to find out, it is very much worth the time. 

As far as the narrator, Jeff Hayes just shot into my top ten narrators. I actually thought the main narrative, done in the first person of Michelle, was being voiced by a woman. Instead, it was Jeff Hays, who did multiple female  and male voices in several registers and accents, each voice distinct. Some of the best voice work I've heard in 1000+ audiobooks.


I would recommend this to fans of Simon R. Green's and Mike Resnick's brand of urban fantasy, as well as fans of Patricia Briggs.  I can't wait for the next installment. This is an author to watch!

Rating: 4.5/5