The Nano Experiment (Wid Bastian, Ivan Castillo)

Pages - 206

Authors - Wid Bastian, Ivan Castillo
Published - January 2015

ISBN - 9781506021980

Genre - Science Fiction

In the twenty second century, total war is destroying the planet. In a desperate effort to defeat the enemy, the Western Alliance develops nano technology, tiny machines that are implanted into human beings to enhance their physiology. A few super soldiers are created from this nano technology, but the West has also unwittingly unleashed hell. Earth is ravaged by hideous abominations spawned from a global nano plague.

Decades later there is little of humanity left, except in small outposts in the Arctic. A very special boy is born in one of these Alaskan colonies. Perhaps he is the one humanity has been waiting for, the warrior who can destroy the nano monsters and save the last vestiges of the human race.

Creating Monsters (Novel Review)

Intro

A psychedelic adventure set in a city on the verge of disaster.

In modern Philadelphia, where a deep economic depression has left the city near collapse and most of its inhabitants in gruesome poverty, Mitchell Gray, a twenty-year-old graduate student in a beleaguered university physics department, spends most of his time playing piano and touring the city’s worst slums in stolen cars. He is a technical virtuoso whose scientific ideas challenge the foundations of his field but he lives in hiding from one of the world's most powerful billionaires, a man obsessed with the quiet Mitchell and determined to capitalize on his strange inventions.

When Mitchell falls in love with an older woman, the wife of a wealthy pharmaceutical executive, their relationship inspires him with a mad plan use his creations to change the world. With the help of a brilliant and neurotic chemistry student named Charlie Nolan and technology so advanced that it resembles magic, Mitchell devises horrifying yet harmless schemes and supernatural hoaxes, causing an uproar in the city.

His nights as a modern day robin hood also raise the alarm of some of the real monsters in Philadelphia, including a mysterious child murderer rumored to possess supernatural powers, known only as "The Demon." Christopher Rankin's debut novel is a haunting story of love, friendship and survival in a world of revolution. 

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Review

A very dark, enigmatic story that explores the familiar themes of despair, anger, and revenge, Creating Monsters is a book that is hard to put down. If you had the intelligence and ability to exact revenge, would you? The main character is thoughtful and insightful, but allowed himself and his talents to be manipulated in ways he didn't approve. Along the way to revenge, monsters are created all around him: some by his doing, some by circumstance. In the end, when he steps back to view the whole picture, what has he really accomplished? 

The storytelling is exquisite. Word choices and ease of phrasing lull the reader into this dream-like world. The haze over the city is a great metaphor for the lack of clarity most of us have for what is happening around us. At times, imagery reminded me of the dark Batman movies. 

There are other common themes in this book: vigilantism, love, losing one's parents, young scientists in a lab... Many readers can enjoy this story because of their interests in similar genres.

The biggest problem I had with the book was the editing. Many issues of missing punctuation, missing words, incorrect pronouns, homonyms used, spelling errors were throughout the entire book. Normally, this would be quite upsetting to me. However, I enjoyed the story so much, I jumped right over the problems. This may not be the case for all readers. For this book to be great, it needs a thorough editing job. For now, it is very good.

If you are a reader who enjoys dark stories, who likes to read about characters exacting revenge, you enjoy comic book characters who create a new powerful persona to seek justice, or you enjoy futuristic fantasy, please check out this book. It's the author's debut novel, and I'm excited to read more from him! 

Rating - 4/5

The Reapers are the Angels (Reapers # 1) Book Review

The Reapers are the Angels (Reapers # 1)

Pages - 225

Year - 2010

Author - Alden Bell

Zombies have infested a fallen America. A young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, Temple is surrounded by death and danger, hoping to be set free.

For twenty-five years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself - and keeping her demons inside. She can't remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her on a personal journey toward redemption. Moving back and forth between the insulated remnants of society and the brutal frontier beyond, Temple must decide where ultimately to make a home and find the salvation she seeks.

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Book Review (GR)

Over a hundred people have shelved this as a YA novel. This is not a YA novel! The prose is artful and does not condescend, there is a fair amount of (admittedly half-baked, being birthed in the brain of an illiterate fifteen-year-old) philosophy that does not bear directly on the story, but most importantly, it doesn't have a YA ending.

YA novels pretty much have to have a happy ending. Or at least a triumph. Sure, the author might kill off a kid sister or a friend or two, but ultimately the heroine is going to find some measure of peace and happiness, or at least safety. There is closure of a nature reassuring to the kids who read YA novels and the neotenous adults who prefer them to adult literature.

The Reapers are the Angels has closure, but not that kind.

Temple was born after the zombie apocalypse ended most of what passes for civilization, and doesn't remember the old world. She is a wanderer by nature, with no surviving kin, but by chance she comes across a mentally disabled man for whom, quite against her wiser inclinations, she takes up the burden of escorting on a road trip to probably no longer living family on the other side of a zombie-ravaged country. Why? She never explains this herself, but it seems she just really doesn't have anything better to do.

Along the way, they encounter any number of horrors, and a very small number of kindnesses. The "meatskins" are really the least of the dangers — Temple dispatches them quite readily with a gun or her Ghurka knife. But there are creepy ordinary folks in mansions, and even creepier Texas Chainsaw Massacre-type folks in the hills. And then of course there is Moses Todd, whom Temple irks by killing his brother. Even he admits that his brother had it coming, but now he has to kill her. That's just the way it is. And like a slightly more affable Anton Chigurh, he pursues Temple and her mute companion (whom she just refers to as "dummy") across a blighted American landscape.

It is written in Southern Gothic style, and the dialect of Temple, who was born after the zombie apocalypse ended most of what passes for civilization, has shades of McCarthy and Faulkner.

It has become something to her, that memory — something she can take out in dismal times and stare into like a crystal ball disclosing not presages but reminders. She holds it in her palm like a captured ladybug and thinks, Well ain't I been some places, ain't I partook in some glorious happenings wanderin my way between heaven and earth. And if I ain't seen everything there is to see, it wasn't for lack of lookin.

Blind is the real dead.

Plotwise, The Reapers are the Angels is derivative of Stephen King and any number of zombie novels; the story is good enough, but this is the sort of book you're likely to like, or else find annoying, because of the prose.

If you are not completely burnt out on zombie novels, The Reapers are the Angels is a short, literary take on this well-worn theme. Highly recommended for YA readers as well who might like to try something a little more upmarket. 

Indy Pro Wrestling Vet Rant

"I'll have an easier time teaching a good talker / actor how to be a passable wrestler, than I would teaching a good wrestler to be a passable promo guy / actor. Everyone knows how to talk, so if your stuttering and stammering and have no confidence in your voice people are going to call bullshit real fast, and then disconnect emotionally from you. Not every wrestling fan knows quality wrestling... Infact Id say 80-90% have no clue what a TRUELY great match is. But if you suck them in with your gimmick, live your moments, they won't focus on the wrestling they will focus on the emotional struggle your character is going through.

Point is, we are in the era of entertainment ... Give an equal Focus on character speaking skills and confidence at your wrestling schools this week ... Too often you kids get sucked into a routine of bumps, basic chain, and blow up drills ... And while that's all essential, remember ... This is entertainment, and when is the last time you drilled promos and skits... When is the last time you drilled how to get your specifics characters emotion across in the ring ...

Wrestling isn't just for meat heads, some of the most successful people I know in this business are truly brilliant actors as well...For the advanced wrestling student ... These acting skills quickly come in handy when it comes to dealing with all of the backstage drama and politics ... Learn to control your emotions, and manipulate others and do what's best for your, and the company's best interest ... (With this being said this is not a pass to work the boys or be a snake cancer, it's meant as a problem solving and conflict resolution statement)"