Review of A Different Kind of Fire by Suanne Schafer

Love has always been one of the most difficult emotions to portray in the light of art and under the shadow of internal conflict. In the strongest scenes of the story, Ruby, who embodies a 19th century innocence, breaks through the barriers of an age when the inadequacy of human civilization begins to become apparent in her life.

“Many letters arrived from London and Paris. A sole dispatch from Rome was followed by an abrupt cessation. As the silence from her lovers lengthened, Ruby worried about them both.”

Through her spontaneous and inflammable prose, Suanne Schafer makes Ruby’s world more intriguing by pushing her heroine into a battle of a mysterious desire and an existential confusion. She helps us grasp the intimate connection between art and love—passionate romantic instincts and “misplaced” artistic sensuality. Devouring vivid scenes of same-gender courtship can be one of the great pleasures of reading fiction. It can be a tonic to sensibilities blunted by post-modern literature and intended to arouse creative desire.

As the story seesaws between Philadelphia and Truly of an America that flourished before the age of motor cars, the scenic landscape of ranches leads us to a world that at first seems to challenge the contributions of the Renaissance. Then her roommate—someone from old wealth, and Ruby’s visit to their mansion, continues to create fascinating history until we reach the point of ecstasy. America is struck by a financial depression, but not the unexplored desires of a ranch girl’s heart. Ruby acts and reacts in a sensible state of receptivity in which the other actors play the role of governing her emotions. Ruby projects an endurance of composure under dire straits when future artistry miraculously arrives at her doorstep, and does not look disturbed by her curious surroundings. It is a story that is difficult to discuss without giving away the plot. The author, for her part, is so judiciously imaginative and psychologically astute that she turns A Different Kind of Fire into a brilliant portrayal of love at a restrained pace and with a contemplative tenor. It has situations, superbly sensual and inventively vivid. Until I read this book, I always thought that creating a classic piece of work is literature’s hidden secret of appeal only a few like Jane Austen and Marilynne Robinson could master.

Sidd Burth

18th February, 2019

Review of AntiAmerica by T. K. Falco

As a person who grew up in the midst of anarchy, the excitement for me didn’t start right away. But what provokes a criminal crisis in teenage Alanna or her boyfriend, is not as immediately evident as the secret forces that keep her clandestine endeavors in “solitary darkness”.  For the most part, her place in the cyber world has been well-portrayed. It is a novel that is difficult to discuss without giving away the plot.

“She remained motionless with arms hanging from the sides of the chair. Secret Service and FCCU. Overkill for a simple breaking and entering. She wondered which of her scams popped up on their radar. Or how long they had been watching her. Whatever evidence they had, she had no intention of revealing anything surrounding her scams or the break-in.”

T. K. Falco’s minimally punctuated prose shows us a world hinged between trust and distrust, jolting us out of our slumber of ignorance to watch the filthy power of the combined threat of information technology and cyber crimes to the American financial sector. It would be interesting to see if Alanna would keep all of the things surrounding her scams safely concealed. She is ahead of fed agents and she lives in fear almost every minute of her life, not really able to resolve doubts and mysteries but trying her best to come clean. By the time the plot recedes into the center of horrible events, Alanna negotiates twists and turns of the author, in scene after scene, revealing a unique narrative strategy, where it is hard to ignore the cinematic echoes in the flow. She makes us understand the “sanctity of mistrust” and falls foul of an invisible crisis that spurs her to leave town forever.

A democracy’s greatest threat is not external, but internal in nature—its own people turning anarchists and posing challenges to a State that constantly strives to maintain order. AntiAmerica makes it clear that all along, Falco has asked us to witness anarchy not in order to understand it but to accept its incomprehensible existential reality in our complex world of modern capitalism. This story will arguably go down as a tale of danger from anarchist insecurities in the financial world.

Sidd Burth

22th January, 2019

Review of The Sinking of Bethany Ann Crane by K. Kris Loomis

As a person who grew up in the midst of anarchy, the excitement for me didn’t start right away. But what provokes a criminal crisis in teenage Alanna or her boyfriend, is not as immediately evident as the secret forces that keep her clandestine endeavors in “solitary darkness”.  For the most part, her place in the cyber world has been well-portrayed. It is a novel that is difficult to discuss without giving away the plot.

“She remained motionless with arms hanging from the sides of the chair. Secret Service and FCCU. Overkill for a simple breaking and entering. She wondered which of her scams popped up on their radar. Or how long they had been watching her. Whatever evidence they had, she had no intention of revealing anything surrounding her scams or the break-in.”

T. K. Falco’s minimally punctuated prose shows us a world hinged between trust and distrust, jolting us out of our slumber of ignorance to watch the filthy power of the combined threat of information technology and cyber crimes to the American financial sector. It would be interesting to see if Alanna would keep all of the things surrounding her scams safely concealed. She is ahead of fed agents and she lives in fear almost every minute of her life, not really able to resolve doubts and mysteries but trying her best to come clean. By the time the plot recedes into the center of horrible events, Alanna negotiates twists and turns of the author, in scene after scene, revealing a unique narrative strategy, where it is hard to ignore the cinematic echoes in the flow. She makes us understand the “sanctity of mistrust” and falls foul of an invisible crisis that spurs her to leave town forever.

A democracy’s greatest threat is not external, but internal in nature—its own people turning anarchists and posing challenges to a State that constantly strives to maintain order. AntiAmerica makes it clear that all along, Falco has asked us to witness anarchy not in order to understand it but to accept its incomprehensible existential reality in our complex world of modern capitalism. This story will arguably go down as a tale of danger from anarchist insecurities in the financial world.

Sidd Burth

22th January, 2019

Review of The Twilight Tsunami

Shelby Londyn-Health’s debut novel The Twilight Tsunami reveals her originality, a passionate voice given equally to beauty and ugliness. Her unapologetic prose carries readers through peoples’ affirmative actions towards rescuing wretched souls such as the four-year-old toddler bouncing through nine different foster homes in a lifetime of four summers, a neglected thirteen-year-old experiencing traumatic events with no clear picture of a future, and a passionate caregiver with no safeguards for her personal life─ suffering frightful upheavals from the foster care system.

While Londyn-Heath attempts to explore the intense dynamics between a power hungry supervisor and her subordinates, she brings into the scene a large cast of characters—interesting with strange behaviors, sometimes funny and at other times gloomy—constituting the story’s most vibrant chapters. For sure, we see in this story fragmented sketches of characters struggling with one thing or the other, or multiple opposing forces competing to make the world a better place for a teddy-hugging toddler wandering through multiple foster homes. We also meet compassionate foster parents and brave empathy-filled social workers standing up to change the foster care system. Consider a social worker struggling with her job of removing children:

“She knew Dwight was drifting on The Titanic of social services. Often, foster children sat in parks waiting for visits with their parents. They waited under pavilions in heat, cold, and rain. They waited for parents who were too high to remember to come.”

These children find themselves suddenly and incomprehensibly drawn into a confusing world, sometimes passively and at other times aggressively— into a system voracious and indifferent to their youthful limits of tolerance.  Londyn-Heath writes about a mother giving up her child to a social worker named Karen:

“On this day, she was calm as she quietly handed her baby to Karen. The baby slept. Easy. As Karen approached her car, she heard a pop like the sound of a firecracker. The police officer walking with her turned and instinctively grabbed his gun and pointed it at the house. He yelled at everyone to hit the ground.”

Londyn-Heath manages to locate in her society’s anguished consciousness a kind of terror a great majority of us conveniently deny with open eyes. She has put evil in perspective, not in order to understand it, but to affirm its inexplicable inevitability in human society. One of the most elusive offenders of humanity is the absence of empathy. Through her prose, I realized one thing─when a society is sandwiched between two opposing forces of the universe—good and evil, the latter competes for supremacy over the former, then someone must triumph over both with wiser thoughts and judicious actions.

For some readers, though, this story might be disturbing─a painful allegory of drugs, violence, jealousy and despair. But I dare say—you would be utterly mistaken. For most who understand what constitutes a systemic problem and its ramifications across society, The Twilight Tsunami will go down as a courageous effort at strengthening the fifth pillar of democracy. I define Literature as the fifth pillar of democracy, because a truly democratic state relies on the narrative of its observant society.

Sidd Burth
22 October, 2018

Review of LOST SOULS by Anne Francis Scott-

“Yes, I believe in ghosts, because I’ve seen them, heard them and have shared a house with them.”

This is author Anne Francis Scott's words about her own life.  I, as a reader and a writer, see a mirror image of myself in her revelation. Scott’s book Lost Souls transported me back to my younger years.  I grew up in an overly paranormal region of the world with frequent appearances of women in white robes by midnight highways, weird nocturnal noises in long-abandoned tea estate bungalows, old and gloomy patches of villages with unsolved mysteries, witchcraft and black magic ravaging the countryside even today. Some of them have found their rightful places in my next novel.

In Lost Souls, the narrator’s perspective gives the prose a mysterious power, producing shudders in the reader, not as often as one would expect, but “quite often.”  The author depicts through her writing the real threats that our souls vividly experience and react to. This is not a tale of a woman’s everyday madness. It is much deeper.  

“...In the clearing bordered by tall pines, fading daylight brushed a soft glow over two crossing ribbons of path. Straight ahead, a giant oak stood like a bastion. A canopy of hardy, bright gold leaves still clung to its branches...”

Anne Francis Scott, at times, writes deliberately frightening prose. There is, however, humor and beautiful descriptive prose in her writing, sometimes straining a reader’s patience, yet always remaining engaging. The author manages to locate her characters’ terrors in their anguished consciousnesses. Yes, her harmonious writing style generates a sort of real-world unease.

For the most part, the main character’s place in the paranormal world has been well-portrayed. What provokes a crisis in Toni Harper, the protagonist, is not as immediately evident as the cause that instigates her journey. But Toni is someone who will not quit. She is relentless and therefore adorable. 

Lost Souls held my undivided attention to figure out a crime where the “giant oak” holds something of scenic Tennessee in its forks of secrecy. Is this story a social commentary of friendship and bonding too? Sorry, but you will have to wait until not-the-end to find out how it takes us through amazingly extrasensory perceptions of psychic forces and more. This story will arguably go down as a tale of danger, mystery, darkness and beauty in the city of Tennessee.

Sidd Burth

17 September, 2018

Review of CROSSING THE LINES

At first, it looks as if Nikki Rose has written a book that is more thriller than romance. Her free-flowing narrative alternates between points of views, sometimes tense and partly logical, and at other times naive and immensely erotic. Her book touches upon an issue that has been close to my heart: trafficking of humans. Witnessing something horrible and then living one’s life in the prison of a witness protection program is even “more horrible”. A young woman restarts her life in a new city and her life goes haywire. She finds it difficult to convey the magnitude of her uncertainties to strangers. And then a hunky male finds himself watching her across the road from his apartment. Helplessly drawn in by her attractiveness, he goes on doing what he should NOT, and things take unpredictable turns. The novel's twists come, fast and screeching.

[ I sipped the tea which seemed to calm me. In fact, it was relaxing me a little too much. My body felt too heavy and I leaned back in my seat.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just... What kind of tea was that?”

“Oh, this? An herbal blend. Do you like it?”

I stood and the room spun, the floor jerking out from under my feet.]

This book has Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes type dialogues and action. Will the protagonist become a victim or a victimizer? We don’t know yet—that’s Nikki Rose’s prose style.

As we begin to learn about the character through the prose, we understand what an identity crisis really is and how one should behave during a witness protection period. This novel is halfway done before its first reveal, but it’s worth the wait. Towards the end, plenty of revelations ensue, and as they pile up, screams, police sirens, fire engines and more, nearly destroy the character’s possibility of a happy future. Not everything makes a lot of sense, but the storyline and its characters, along with the author’s timely inclusion of shocks and surprises, make CROSSING THE LINE an exciting read.

Sidd Burth

Author of THE POISON EARRINGS

30 August, 2018

The intense story of THE POISON EARRINGS of Sidd Burth is summed up on a beautiful island of a mighty river where their destinies sowed the first seeds of love. Whether we call this story tragically comic or comically tragic, for sure, there is nothing I have read quite like this novel. There is a moment here which I would love to call "The Titanic moment" although it’s not like the movie "Titanic" where Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) dies and Rose (Kate Winslet) dramatically survives to tell us their story. Here who actually survives to tell us the story and mystries , only the future will reveal. For the new world of drama and its actors and for showcasing the transformation of emotions from one form to another and life's supremely therapeutic qualities, THE POISON EARRINGS is a novel that will be marvelled at for years to come.

                                                                                                       - Anastacia Barker, London