book blog by Heena Rathore-Pardeshi | Of Whiskers And Words
Author: Heena R. Pardeshi
Heena is the author of the award-winning novel Deceived. She works as the novel critic and the chief editor at a local publishing house in Pune, India. She is an animal lover as well as an animal activist.
She loves books, music and wine. Travelling and learning about new cultures is an integral part of her life.
She is presently learning Piano and French language.
She lives in Pune, India with her beloved husband and 6 cats.
Author:Stephanie Vaccaro&Louise Allen Release Date: 4 April, 2024 Series: Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic Format: E-book Pages: 406 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Penny never thought sheโd have family. Penny lost family when Penny little. Penny scared when taken away from home. Penny stay quiet. Penny lost, Penny found. Now Penny have new family. Penny brave. Penny tell her story. Julietta Milardโs life had been rather mundane up until a few years ago when she found herself in the small town of Waterwealt. Though she had intended to move on to bigger and better things, a beautiful museum preserved in time had her sprouting roots rather than traversing the Wastes further. Having helped the sleepy town with its various mechanical-based problems, Julietta thought found herself in a smooth routine. That was until the universe decided to throw a curveball her way when about two cycles later a small girl shows up at her doorstep, sick, injured, and unable to speak with only a penny necklace as any identification. Nearly a cycle and a half later, the young girl, whom Julietta named Penny, has recovered but remains mute despite her best efforts. On top of taking care of little Penny, restoring the museum, and trying to find a solution for the now increasingly weakening water pressure in town, Julietta is faced with another issue. A stranger has come to town, a โdoctorโ named Charles Hawthorne, who seems to think the Arcane is real. Brushing him off, she finds herself questioning what the world is coming to. That is until the world as she knows it to come crashing down around her and vanishes in a cloud of dust.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Lucky Penny by Stephanie Vaccaro and Louise Allen is a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel with a surprisingly tender heart. Set in a dust-scarred world still recovering from the devastation of the Great War, the story begins with Julietta, a young restorer living in an abandoned museum, and Penny, the silent little girl she has taken under her care. What starts as an intimate survival story gradually expands into a larger conflict involving lost knowledge, government-controlled โgiftedโ children, dangerous facilities, buried science, and the mysterious force known as the Arcane.
The strongest part of the novel is, without question, its central found-family dynamic. Julietta is practical, guarded, intelligent, and extremely protective; Charles Hawthorne brings warmth, medical knowledge, and a gentler emotional steadiness; and Penny, with her silence, her attachment to Nelson, and her extraordinary electrical ability, becomes the emotional centre around which the whole story turns. The relationship between the three grows with real sweetness, especially as Penny slowly begins to trust them enough to reveal fragments of herself. Her transformation from a frightened rescued child into someone loved, protected, and eventually claimed as family gives the novel its most moving thread.
The worldbuilding is ambitious and often engaging. Waterwealt, the museum, the dust storms, the ruined technologies, the fragile settlements, the Apolis Academy, Rho-597, the Curied children, and the recurring tension between science and the โArcaneโ all create a layered dystopian setting. I especially liked how the museum functions almost like a character in itself. The novel is at its best when it combines restoration with discovery; when Julietta repairs machines, Charles interprets medical knowledge, and Penny instinctively understands old electronics in ways the adults cannot.
That said, the book does ask for patience. It is a long novel, and there are places where the pacing could have been tighter. Some conversations repeat emotional beats, and certain domestic scenes, while charming, occasionally slow the momentum of the larger dystopian plot. The prose is earnest and accessible rather than highly polished, and readers looking for a lean, fast-moving dystopian thriller may find the middle sections somewhat expansive. However, that same expansiveness also allows the relationships to breathe, which is clearly where the authorsโ emotional investment lies.
Overall, The Lucky Penny is a heartfelt, imaginative, and emotionally sincere dystopian adventure. It blends found family, post-apocalyptic survival, and soft science-fantasy elements into a story that is sometimes rough around the edges but very earnest in its intentions. Readers who enjoy protective family bonds, gifted-child mysteries, ruined-world settings, and hope emerging through care and repair will find much to appreciate here.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Peter Mattson for his latest release, The Ranch: For The Betterment of Hunmanity.
Book: The Ranch: Forย Theย Betterment of Humanity Author: Peter Mattson Release Date: February 20, 2026 Publisher: Mattson Publishing Genre: Political Dystopian Formats Available: e-book and Paperback For Readers Who Enjoyed: A Handmaid Tail by Margarat Atwood, 1984 by George Orwell, & Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
About the Book
In the dystopian nation of Harkiem, no one questions the systemโuntil journalist Jones Torren investigates the death of thirteen-year-old Jack Ovens and uncovers a conspiracy that could cost him his life.
Jack Ovens has always been labeled a troublemaker. After a series of mistakes, he is sent to the Refinement Centreโa government-run program promising discipline, reform, and job training. What Jack encounters is a system that favors some boys while quietly keeping others down.
Months later, journalist Jones Torren is assigned to cover Jackโs death. What begins as a routine human-interest story quickly unravels into something far more disturbing. Records are missing. Testimonies donโt align. And more families are coming forward with the same quiet, devastating truth: their sons never came home. As Jones digs deeper, he uncovers a hidden extension of the program, The Ranch. What happens there isnโt reform. Itโs something worse.
Exposing The Ranch could topple a nation. It could also get Jones killed.
The Ranch is a gripping dystopian novel that asks the question: What if the system meant to save society is quietly destroying its children? The Ranch explores what happens when authority goes unquestioned, and government policies operate in the shadows, revealing a chilling world where the perfect society comes at a devastating human cost.
Peter Mattsonย grew up in a Los Angeles suburb and now lives with his wife and children inย theย Coachella Valley. He has worked as a public high school Economics and Government teacher forย theย past 25 years.ย Theย Ranch: Forย theย Betterment of Humanityย is his debut novel, and he is currently at work on a follow-up book.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author:Mir Seidel Release Date: 02 September, 2025 Series: Genre: Non-fiction, Crossovers Opera & Biography Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 126 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Tesla’s Opera: The Real, Stranger-Than-Fiction Nikola Teslaย brings the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla to life through the opera he inspired,ย Violet Fire. For its creators, only opera could encompass the extremes and surreal qualities of Tesla’s life and career: the visions he had from childhood, his inventions that helped create our wired and wireless world, even his unrealized ideas. Tesla moved in the heights of New York society, yet he never married, and gave his love to a white pigeon. With a score by minimalist composer Jon Gibson, libretto by Mir Seidel, and directed by Terry O’Reilly,ย Violet Fireย had its world premiere in Serbia, Tesla’s homeland, on the 150th anniversary of his birth.ย Tesla’s Operaย includes the full libretto, stunning photos from the performance, and haunting images from the continuous video projections, along with commentary by the opera’s librettist, director, and conductor, critic Merilyn Jackson, and author/poet Andrei Codrescu. This book offers us the Tesla we need now-stranger than fiction, worthy of remembrance, and packed with meaning for our time.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Teslaโs Opera: The Real, Stranger-than-Fiction Nikola Tesla by Mir Seidel, is a hybrid work: part artistic archive, part cultural reclamation, part libretto, part visual-performance document, and part meditation on Tesla as scientist, mystic, showman, futurist, and mythic figure. The result is a slim but densely layered volume that asks us to look past the overused name โTeslaโ and return to the actual man behind it.
The bookโs strongest sections are those in which author Seidel reflects on why Teslaโs life demanded operatic treatment. Her framing is compelling: Tesla was not merely an inventor of alternating current, radio-adjacent technologies, robotics, and wireless possibility; he was also a man of visions, contradictions, loneliness, and strange tenderness, most famously embodied in his bond with the white pigeon he loved. That image becomes the emotional and spiritual centre of Violet Fire, allowing the opera to explore not only Teslaโs achievements but his isolation, his yearning, and the mystery of a mind that seemed always half in the laboratory and half in some higher electrical dream-state.
What makes the book especially engaging is its plurality of voices. Andrei Codrescuโs opening poem is sharp, irreverent, and intentionally provocative; Seidelโs essays are lucid and thoughtful; Terry OโReillyโs account of directing the opera brings theatrical intelligence and warmth; Merilyn Jacksonโs dance-critical perspective gives the White Dove and choreography their due; and Ana Zorana Brajoviฤโs brief reflection adds a deeply felt Serbian connection to Tesla as cultural hero. Together, these pieces create a living record of an ambitious multimedia opera that moved through Philadelphia, Belgrade, and New York, shaped by music, projection, dance, history, and myth.
Visually, the book is also rewarding. The performance photographs, projection stills, score excerpts, and historical images give the reader a sense of Violet Fire as something larger than text: a stage-world of light, bodies, machinery, pigeons, towers, sparks, and shadow. The libretto itself is poetic and fragmentary in the best sense.
That said, this might not be for readers looking for a straightforward Tesla biography. It assumes some openness to experimental form, opera, performance history, and artistic reflection. At times, the structure can feel more archival than fluid, especially when moving between essays, production notes, libretto pages, and appendices. But this is also part of its purpose: the book preserves the many layers of a performance work while arguing for Teslaโs continued cultural relevance.
Overall, Teslaโs Opera is a rich, unconventional, and intellectually alive tribute to Nikola Tesla and the opera he inspired. It is best read as an artistic companion, cultural essay, and poetic act of reclamation rather than a traditional biography.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Stefanos Sampanis for their latest release, The Grey Winter of the Enslaved (The Journey of the Wish Book 1).
Book: The Grey Winter of the Enslaved Author:Stefanos Sampanis Series: The Journey of the Wish (Book #1) Publication Date: 19 January 2026 Publisher: – Genre: Fantasy Formats Available: E-book and Paperback
About the Book
I perceived the world and acknowledged all of its colours. There was truth; the kind you cannot simply speak of. A tale suits the cause better. It is a disguise that anyone can enjoy and if intrigued, look behind it. This is my testament. Aย fantasy sagaย exploring the mostย human reality. A Journey that lies ahead and matures with each page turned.
You can findย The Grey Winter of the Enslavedhere: Amazon
About The Author
Stefanos Sampanis
Stefanos Sampanis was born and raised in Greece. He graduated from the Hellenic Naval Academy and has since served as an officer in the Hellenic Navy. Although his profession and curiosity have led him to many parts of the earth, he has travelled even farther into worlds crafted on the page. His first published book was a non-fiction collection of short stories, followed by a poetry collection, both in Greek. The Journey of the Wish, an epic fantasy saga, marks his debut in international publishing.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring authorsย Scott Martin andย Coryanne Hicks for their latest release, Play From Your Heart: A Journey Through Loss, Resilience, and the Beautiful Game.
Book:Play From Your Heart: A Journey Through Loss, Resilience, and the Beautiful Game Author:Scott Martin andย Coryanne Hicks Publication Date: 9 June 2026 Publisher: Library Tales Publishing Genre: Soccer Biography Formats Available: E-book and Paperback
About the Book
When rising college soccer coach Scott Martin was struck down by a rare, flesh-eating infection that took both hands and parts of his feet, doctors told him he was lucky just to survive. But survival wasnโt enough. Overnight, the man who lived for the game had to relearn how to move, teach, and live without the very tools that defined him.
From hospital beds and courtroom battles to the touchline of a dusty youth-league field, Martinโs twenty-year odyssey is one of heartbreak and rebirth. He rebuilt his body, lostโand foundโhis purpose, married the doctor who saved him, adopted five children from around the world, and, when everything seemed over again, rediscovered his passion by leading a ragtag team of twelve-year-olds to an undefeated state championship.
Told with unflinching honesty and humor,ย Play From Your Heartย is a memoir about endurance, grace, and the power of sport to heal what medicine cannot. For anyone whoโs ever faced the unthinkable, and still chosen to stand back up, this is a story that proves the human spirit is undefeated.
Fans ofย Wild,ย Crying in H Mart, andย Good for a Girlย will find themselves cheering, weeping, and ultimately believing again in the beautiful game, and in the resilience of the human heart.
You can findย Play From Your Hearthere: Amazon | Website
About The Author
Scott Martin
Scott Martin is an award-winning soccer coach, educator, and advocate for the disability community. Holding an advanced national coaching license, he has spent over 30 years coaching at the select youth, high school, and college levels, earning Coach of the Year honors four times and leading multiple teams to state championships. His expertise has connected him with top coaches in the U.S. and internationally.
Beyond the field, Martin is a dedicated educator in Wisconsin and the host of the Lifeโs a Road Trip podcast, where he highlights stories of resilience and disability advocacy. After surviving a life-threatening illness that led to the loss of his hands and feet, he became a powerful voice for amputee abilities and prosthetic advancements. His contributions to research at the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University have helped shape innovations in the field.
Recognized for his advocacy, Martin serves as a Global Advisor for Billion Strong, a worldwide disability organization. His journey has been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Positive, and he is the author of Play From Your Heart (Library Tales Publishing), a memoir that chronicles his remarkable path of perseverance, reinvention, and the unwavering spirit that has guided him forward.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author:Luanne Castle Release Date: 1 January, 2026 Series: Genre: Memoir Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 172 pages Publisher: ELJ Editions Blurb: Luanne Castleโs new hybrid flash memoir, Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions 2026), is now available to purchase on Amazon and ELJ Editions.
Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his own biological fatherโs identity from his daughter for decades. Can this family be salvaged?
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Scrap: Salvaging a Family by Luanne Castle is a fragmented, lyrical, and emotionally precise memoir that sifts through family memory, inherited shame, childhood fear, and the difficult work of understanding a parent without excusing the harm they caused. Written as a โmemoir in flash,โ the book is built out of short, vivid pieces, named as scraps of childhood, domestic scenes, remembered violence, questions, photographs, family stories, documents, and imagined reconstructions, all stitched together into something devastating and incredibly artful.
At the centre of the memoir is Castleโs father, Rudy, a man carrying the wound of being born โillegitimate,โ by the absence of his own father, and by the shame that surrounded his origins. But Castle does not simplify him into villain or victim. He is frightening, volatile, sometimes cruel but he is also resourceful, hardworking, wounded, loving in broken and bewildering ways, and capable of gestures of strange tenderness. This complexity is what gives the memoir its emotional maturity. Author Castle is not writing to settle a score; she is trying to understand the system of hurt that made her father who he was, and how that hurt passed through him into her childhood.
The form of the book is one of its strongest elements. The flash structure mirrors the nature of memory itself as nonlinear, sensory, sharp-edged, and sometimes contradictory. Author Castleโs prose is beautifully controlled, often poetic without becoming ornamental. She has a remarkable ability to locate trauma in objects. The title Scrap is perfect because the memoir is not only about salvage in the literal sense, but about salvaging meaning from what was damaged, hidden, discarded, or misunderstood.
What I admired most is the bookโs refusal to offer easy forgiveness. It moves toward compassion, yes, but not sentimental absolution. Scrap is a beautifully crafted and intelligent memoir about trauma, inheritance, girlhood, secrecy, and family wounds. It is painful, yes, but also tender in unexpected ways. It is a memoir that feels intimate, brave, and unforgettable.
Author:John Westley Turnbull Release Date: 14 November, 2025 Series: Genre: SScience-Fiction, Dystopian, Alternate History Format: E-book Pages: 243 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Survival requires sacrifice. But what if the price is an entire world? Their home is cold and dying, choked by the toxins of their own progress. Now, an advanced alien species looks toward the Third PlanetโEarthโwith hope and fear. They see a fertile paradise, but one that is hostile, hot, and dominated by massive, predatory reptiles. The choice is stark: die in the heat, or remake this new world in their own image. As they descend to alter the climate and purge the planet of its prehistoric masters, they set in motion a chain of events that will echo through geological time. A Symbol of Time weaves palaeontology and astronomy into a chilling tale of survival. As the new masters of Earth terraform the planet, the question remains: does high intelligence inevitably carry the seeds of its own destruction?
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
A Symbol of Time by John Westley Turnbull is a haunting speculative fiction that begins with exhaustion, opening on a dying Homeworld, where the last surviving inhabitants of a once-thriving civilisation are forced to abandon their planet and seek refuge on the โThird World,โ a beautiful, brutal, water-rich planet teeming with monstrous life. From the very beginning, the novel positions itself as more than a survival story; it is a meditation on ecological ruin, migration, leadership, memory, and the dangerous arrogance of believing that survival justifies everything.
What I found most compelling is the moral tension at the heart of the book. Elthyris begins as a determined leader trying to save her people from extinction, but as the colony reaches the Third World, her decisions grow increasingly severe. The novel does not present colonisation as a clean heroic act. Instead, it asks difficult questions like when does adaptation become domination? When does necessity become cruelty? And how easily does a displaced civilisation carry the seeds of its old destruction into a new world? This gives the book its strongest intellectual weight, especially through the concept of โWorldshaping,โ where survival begins to blur into planetary violence.
The world-building is ambitious and often striking. Author Turnbullโs imagined species, their failing Homeworld, the Ark Dawn, the terrifying fauna of the Third World, the underground habitat, and the long generational arc all create a sense of scale that feels genuinely epic. The book is especially effective when it lingers on planetary time and the final movement is one of the most resonant parts of the novel, beautifully tying together the themes of grief, legacy, and the fragile sentient desire to be remembered.
Character-wise, Elthyris, Kithyon, Lyggra, Arrielle, Venryn, and Reuff all serve distinct thematic purposes. Kithyon and Lyggra bring emotional warmth to a narrative otherwise dominated by survival pressure and ethical compromise, while Arrielle becomes a powerful bridge between the founding generation and the long future that follows. Elthyris is perhaps the most interesting figure, not always likeable, not always morally defensible, but consistently compelling because she embodies the terrible burden of leadership under existential threat.
That said, the novel is not without issues. At times, the prose leans heavily into exposition, and some sections read more like historical chronicle than intimate drama. The sweep of the story is impressive, but the emotional immediacy occasionally gets diluted by the sheer amount of world-building, explanation, and long-range plotting. Readers who prefer fast-paced, character-centred sci-fi may find parts of the book dense. But those who enjoy philosophical, ecological, and civilisation-scale speculative fiction will likely appreciate its ambition.
A Symbol of Time is a thoughtful and morally serious science-fiction novel about survival, inheritance, and the repeating patterns of history. It is not merely about reaching a new world; it is about what a species chooses to become once it gets there. Imperfect but extremely ambitious, it leaves the reader with the uneasy sense that memory may be the only true defence against repeating the same old catastrophes. The ending captures this beautifully, reminding us that monuments, like civilizations, are both acts of remembrance and warnings against forgetting.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author John Westley Turnbull for his latest release, A Symbol of Time.
Book: A Symbol of Time Author: John Westley Turnbull Publication Date: 14 November 2025 Genre: Science Fiction Formats Available: E-book on Amazon, including Amazon Unlimited, Paperback and Hardcover. For Readers Who Enjoyed: Asimov, Harry Harrison, other science fiction well known authors of the 60โs,70โs & 80โs
About the Book
Survival requires sacrifice. But what if the price is an entire world?
Their home is cold and dying, choked by the toxins of their own progress. Now, an advanced alien species looks toward the Third PlanetโEarthโwith hope and fear. They see a fertile paradise, but one that is hostile, hot, and dominated by massive, predatory reptiles.
The choice is stark: die in the heat, or remake this new world in their own image.
As they descend to alter the climate and purge the planet of its prehistoric masters, they set in motion a chain of events that will echo through geological time. A Symbol of Time weaves palaeontology and astronomy into a chilling tale of survival. As the new masters of Earth terraform the planet, the question remains: does high intelligence inevitably carry the seeds of its own destruction?
I amย an Australian, whose fascination with science fiction began during long nights spent reading Asimov and other giants of the genre. I am a retired lawyer, husband, father and grandfather. I bring a lifetime of observation to my work, blending curiosity with a steady regard for how the world might have unfolded along other possible paths. My interests lean toward alternate histories and the points where timelines could diverge into something stranger. I continue to write with the same sense of wonder that first kept me awake long past bedtime. A Symbol of Time is my first novel.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author:D Reign Release Date: 30 April, 2026 Series: Book 1 of 1: The Fabled one Genre: Fantasy Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 170 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Come on a journey as we follow Gaelin find out who she is. The Fabled One is about a young woman who learns about who she is when her parents (or those she thought were her parents) are tragically killed. Gaelin is wanted by the King and Queen who rule in another realm. Gaelin must leave all that she knows on earth and seek to find her path navigating a fated love with two people who will lay down their lives for her. Gaelin needs to master the powers that she possesses as the Fabled one to bring peace and light to the realms around her. This series is full of intrigue, connecting with the ancestors, finding yourself, and believing in who you are. This a full fiction fantasy book with some steamy scenes so hold onto your hats for this one.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Fabled One: Book One by D. Reign does not arrive quietly, it enters through rupture: through death, revelation, prophecy, flight, and the sudden collapse of everything the protagonist thought she understood about herself. From its opening catastrophe, the novel makes its intentions clear. This is a story built on destiny, pursuit, and awakening that leans unapologetically into high emotional stakes and mythic revelation.
At the center of the novel is Gaelin, and she is easily its strongest anchor. What makes her work is not polish but immediacy: she is frightened, angry, mouthy, confused, and often emotionally raw in ways that feel true to her circumstances. The book does not ask her to become composed too quickly. Instead, it lets her remain disoriented by grief and betrayal, even as pieces of her power begin to emerge. That emotional instability gives the novel much of its life. Gaelinโs voice is direct, often impulsive, sometimes funny in spite of herself, and that first-person immediacy carries the reader through some of the bookโs denser exposition.
The other narrative engine here is the growing bond between Gaelin, Lahmae, and Chameleon, and this is where the story begins to take on a more distinctive texture. What starts as rescue and protection gradually becomes something more intimate and fated, and the novel clearly wants to explore not just magical destiny but emotional convergence. There is an earnestness to these dynamics that I found compelling, even when the pace of attachment moves very quickly.
The worldbuilding itself is imaginative, if at times impressionistic. We move through Earth, palace realms, hidden portals, the Fallen planet, magical bloodlines, psychic protections, conjuring, and the increasingly important mythology of the Fabled One. The mythology is interesting, and the sense of layered agendas around Gaelinโs existence gives the book a strong forward thrust. The problem is not a lack of ideas; if anything, it is that the novel contains many ideas at once and does not always distribute them with enough control. Information sometimes arrives in bursts rather than through gradual integration, and there are moments when the reader is being told about systems, titles, histories, and motivations so quickly that the emotional throughline has to work harder to hold everything together.
That, I think, is where the novelโs main limitations lie. The prose has energy, sincerity, and momentum, but it also bears the marks of a draft that could have benefited from further refinement. At times the sentences run too long or repeat an emotional beat more than necessary; at others, the punctuation and phrasing flatten scenes that might otherwise have landed with greater force. There is a strong story here, but it occasionally feels as though it is arriving faster than the language can shape it. Similarly, certain transitions, especially around revelation, trust, and romantic escalation, can feel abrupt rather than fully earned on the page. None of this erases the bookโs strengths, but it does mean that the reading experience is sometimes uneven.
Still, I want to be fair to what the novel is doing well. The Fabled One is never cynical. It is emotionally open, mythically ambitious, and extremely invested in its heroineโs significance. it is refreshing how sincerely it embraces its own stakes. The antagonistic energy around Meridah, QuโRah, Starmall, and Serena gives the story a clear sense of danger, and the ending understands how to close on intensification rather than closure: Gaelin is changing, her power is growing, and the conflict is clearly widening rather than resolving.
The Fabled One: Book One reads as a fantasy series opener with clear emotional conviction and a strong instinct for dramatic momentum. It is imperfect, certainly, even structurally loose in places, and stylistically rough in others, but it also has heart, urgency, and a heroine whose emotional reality remains compelling even when the world around her becomes increasingly fantastical. Readers who enjoy portal fantasy, magical destiny, dangerous courts, and emotionally charged fantasy romance will likely find plenty here to invest in, especially if they enjoy first books that spend as much time igniting future conflict as resolving present one.
Author:Evan jellen Illustrator: Pineapple lavaย Release Date: 15 March, 2025 Series: Genre: Sci-Fantasy, Anime-esque, Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 431 pages Publisher: Helena St. George Blurb: A Cyber beast known as the Ouroboros, came from a higher dimension and viciously attacked the starverse. The land created by a powerful Demon god. The great Demon Lord fought the Ouroboros to a standstill. She was unable to fully vanquish the beast, so instead, she tore its body apart, sealing it across the stars. In her time of need, the great Demon Lord received aid. An interloper, the Magician, helped her create a system that produces candidates that have the potential to defeat the powerful god. After countless failures, five female warriors were born, created to finally defeat the perpetual snake god.
However, time is running out, as the great Demon Lord cannot maintain the seals for much longer. Her perpetual nemesis will soon break free. Their failure slay the snake god will bring about the end of the universe. The future depends on the success of the Divine Star warriors. This is Star Evolution, a story that fuses together a fictional sci-fantasy setting with non-fictional themes of philosophy, self-growth, and realism for a story that transcends normal writing conventions. Together, the five women chosen by fate will overcome the trials of the gods by cultivating their light that is hidden in the darkness. This is a realistic space opera with a grand mystery to unfold!
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Star Evolution, Volume 1 by Evanjellen is an ambition that announces itself from the first few pages to build an entire cosmology and ask the reader to step into it at full speed. From its blood-soaked prologue, with a crimson-armored warrior battling a monstrous silver-eyed serpent across a ruined cosmic battlefield, the novel makes its intentions clear: this is a science-fantasy universe of gods, ancient war, machine beings, sealed calamities, and unfinished destinies. It is expansive, anime-inflected, and unabashedly maximalist in its imagination.
What I found especially interesting is the bookโs dual structure. On one hand, it gives us the large mythic architecture: the Demon Lord, the Ouroboros, the realm gods, the repeated failure of prior โstar warriors,โ and the long cosmic project of finding the right champions to finally end the cycle. On the other, it narrows into more local, emotional terrain through Nameless and Divine Flash with two sisters from a harsh village in the Under Realm whose lives are shaped by loss, scarcity, violence, and a growing sense that the systems governing their world are neither just nor trustworthy. That contrast is where the novel often feels most alive.
The strongest character work, for me, lies in those sisterly dynamics. Nameless has an appealing volatility to her; she is impulsive, angry, proud, and deeply loyal, while Divine Flash offers a gentler counterweight shaped by fear, tenderness, and protective love. Their bond gives the story an emotional anchor it needs. By contrast, the realm-level material around Divi, Tony, the council of deities, and the missing Earth Goddess is conceptually rich, but it can sometimes feel more interesting as lore than as immediate drama. The ideas are compelling though the delivery occasionally feels like dense blocks of explanation rather than being revealed as fully dramatized tension.
This is, in many ways, the bookโs chief strength and chief weakness at once. Author Evanjellen clearly has a vivid imaginative grasp of this world, but because the novel carries so much worldbuilding, mythology, and terminology, the pacing can feel overloaded in places. Characters sometimes speak in exposition-heavy bursts, and the prose, while energetic and sincere, can at times become repetitive or mechanically emphatic when a gentler hand might have heightened the drama. That said, the action scenes do have momentum, and when the narrative leans fully into confrontation, it becomes much sharper and more immediate.
I also think it is worth noting that this first volume reads very much like an opening movement rather than a self-contained arc. It is setting pieces into place as it is the beginning of a longer journey.
Star Evolution, Volume 1, is a debut that may work best for readers who actively enjoy anime and RPG-adjacent storytelling with high-concept lore, dramatic confrontations, cosmic hierarchies, chosen-warrior energy, and characters whose destinies are entangled with the fate of worlds. Readers looking for polished restraint or subtle minimalism may find the novel rough around the edges. But readers willing to meet it on its own wavelength will likely find something earnest, imaginative, and promising here; a first volume with visible imperfections, yes, but also real heart and a strong sense of its own universe.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author B. Marcus Walker for his latest release, Spirit of the Plain: The Unnamed (Book #1).
Book: Spirit of the Plain: The Unnamed – Book 1 Author(s): B. Marcus Walker Publication Date: ย May 30, 2025 Publisher: Killbot Factory Page Count: 463 Genres: Dark Fantasy, Coming-of-Age
About the Book
The Forest Plain will not allow men to settle, farm, or cross with armies. Men of the west dream of breaking its curse, but doing so will destroy the way of life of the nomadic people who live there. In Grayhaven, they say, โGlory to Ahur and to the Plain,โ because it has kept them safe for five centuries and has allowed them to grow into the wealthiest nation on the continent. COLLIER TRUIT is from Grayhaven, but flees after his grandfatherโs failed political machinations led to the murder of their family. He is part Yurbo, through his father and seeks out his fatherโs clan, determined to win their help in retaking his ancestral titles. While in the plain, Collier faces mounting threats with his Yurbo hosts. One threat is the fearsome wolfmen known asย Lyken, themselves refugees from colonized homeland. This includes the drunk and shaggy ARNAK, and his friend, the troubadour MOJAG. They flee for Grayhaven but run into the Yurbo. The greater threat is from the west. There, ASHLYN, an acolyte of the order of mages known as the Bruj, heads into the Forest Plain to complete her prophesized destiny to break the Plainโs curse.
Originally from Chicagoโs south side, Brian Walker has worked twenty years in numerous industries as a web and eLearning developer, facilitator, and project manager. His true passion has been as a writer of fiction, both genre and literary. You can find his writing on Medium in publications including Thought Thinkers, ILLUMINATION, and Morning Musings, as well as short fiction in the Minetta Review. His first novel, Spirit of the Plain, is available in print and eBook.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Mir Seidel for her latest release, Teslaโs Opera: The real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla.
Book Cover
Book: Teslaโs Opera: The real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla Author: Mir Seidel Publication Date: September 2, 2025 Publisher: Fomite Press Genres: Non-fiction, Crossovers Opera & Biography Available in: Paperback For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: The Prestigeย by Christopher Priest,ย The Current Warย by Adam Cline,ย The Three Ghosts of Teslaย by Richard Marazano (graphic novel)
About the Book
Teslaโs Opera: The Real, Stranger-Than-Fiction Nikola Tesla brings the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla to life through the opera he inspired, Violet Fire. For its creators, only opera could encompass the extremes and surreal qualities of Teslaโs life and career: the visions he had from childhood, his inventions that helped create our wired and wireless world, even his unrealized ideas. Tesla moved in the heights of New York society, yetย he never married, and gave his love to a white pigeon.ย With a score by minimalist composer Jon Gibson, libretto by Mir Seidel, and directed by Terry OโReilly, Violet Fire had its world premiere in Serbia, Teslaโs homeland, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Teslaโs Opera includes the full libretto, stunning photos from the performance, and haunting images from the continuous video projections, along with commentary by the operaโsย librettist, director, and conductor, critic Merilyn Jackson, and author/poet Andrei Codrescu.ย This book offers us the Tesla we need nowโstranger than fiction, worthy of remembrance, and packed with meaning for our time.ย
“In Tesla’s Opera, Mir Seidel has crafted an inspired and visually stunning tribute to one of history’s greatest minds. Through music, choreography, and imaginative staging, this colorful book celebrates Nikola Tesla’s life in a way that is both joyful and moving. To quote one of the book’s contributors, “Tesla could make you proud to be human”โand this creative homage does just that. Insightful, festive, and richly layered, Tesla’s Opera brings Tesla’s multifaceted brilliance to life with style, wit, and heart.”
โMarc J. Seifer, author ofย Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Teslaย andย Tesla: Wizard at War
“Whatever happens through the centuries about Tesla, misusing his name, copying his work, this will still never overshadow his genius and contribution to mankind.“
โMarina Abramovic, Serbian-American artist
“The book is immersive in tracking the history, mysteries and mystique of Nikola Tesla. This is a fascinating, fun book about the world of science, opera and avian love. Poet Andrei Codrescu even weighs in on the current currency of the Tesla name in his fiery intro to the book about a certain musky billionaire appropriating the Tesla name.”
โLewis Whittington, Review of Tesla’s Opera in CultureVulture
About The Author
Mir Seidel
Mir Seidelโs latest book,ย Teslaโs Opera: the real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Teslaย (Fomite Press), considers the pioneering inventor through the opera about Tesla that she wrote the libretto forโa magic-realist retelling of Teslaโs life. The opera,ย Violet Fire, was performed in Belgrade, New York, and Philadelphia. Her novel,ย The Speed of Clouds, is out from New Door Books. Her writing has also appeared in places includingย Art in America,ย The Philadelphia Inquirer,ย Calyx,ย Bourbon Penn, andย Theย New York Review of Science Fiction.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring authors Stephanie Vaccaro & Louise Allen for their latest release, The Lucky Penny.
Book: The Lucky Penny Author(s): Stephanie Vaccaro and Louise Allen Publication Date: ย April 3, 2024 Publisher: – Page Count: 402 Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic Editions Available: Paperback and Ebook (Kindle) For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: Hunger Games and Divergent
About the Book
Penny never thought sheโd have family. Penny lost family when Penny little. Penny scared when taken away from home. Penny stay quiet. Penny lost, Penny found. Now Penny have new family. Penny brave. Penny tell her story.
Julietta Milardโs life had been rather mundane up until a few years ago when she found herself in the small town of Waterwealt. Though she had intended to move on to bigger and better things, a beautiful museum preserved in time had her sprouting roots rather than traversing the Wastes further.
Having helped the sleepy town with its various mechanical-based problems, Julietta thought found herself in a smooth routine. That was until the universe decided to throw a curveball her way when about two cycles later a small girl shows up at her doorstep, sick, injured, and unable to speak with only a penny necklace as any identification.
Nearly a cycle and a half later, the young girl, whom Julietta named Penny, has recovered but remains mute despite her best efforts. On top of taking care of little Penny, restoring the museum, and trying to find a solution for the now increasingly weakening water pressure in town, Julietta is faced with another issue. A stranger has come to town, a โdoctorโ named Charles Hawthorne, who seems to think the Arcane is real. Brushing him off, she finds herself questioning what the world is coming to. That is until the world as she knows it to come crashing down around her and vanishes in a cloud of dust.
It was the year 2018. Stephanie (USA) had joined a Minecraft server of an online friend. One Sunday morning she was working on her homework when she got a ping on Discord from another server member asking if anyone was around to play. Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, a woman named Louise (England) was bored and wanted to play some Minecraft, pinging the discord server of her friend asking if anyone was around. And thus the dynamic duo of Stephanie and Louise was born! Having been friends ever since Stephanie and Louise have delved into many creative endeavors, usually combining Stephanieโs programming abilities and story telling with Louiseโs writing prowess and digital artistry skills. Which is why it was not strange for them to decide to write a story together at the start of 2023. What was originally supposed to be a way for Stephanie to learn a thing or two from Louise about writing turned into a full blown story filled with what they describe as โChaos, Shenanigans, and most importantly CCCsโ.
You can findย authors Stephanie and Louise here: Stephanie | Louise
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author:Helena St. Georgeย Release Date: 15 March, 2025 Series: Genre: Dystopian, Speculative Fiction, Psychological, Social Commentary Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 431 pages Publisher: Helena St. George Blurb: In a world where productivity is the measure of oneโs worth, who decides human value? Set in a near-future America devastated by economic collapse,ย Shattered But Not Silencedย imagines a regime that targets social service recipients, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the homeless for โreformโ under the guise of economic recovery. At the center is Maya, an autistic young woman navigating a country in turmoil while surviving forced rehabilitation inside the New Thought Center. Her sensory sensitivities, coping mechanisms, and layered internal processing are revealed through her sharp, ironic first-person voice. She is complex. She is observant. She is defiant. The novel asks difficult questions. Who defines human value? What happens to those who do not meet the definition?
ARC Reader Review:ย “I liked Maya the more I got to know her. The writing is amazing! So many well-crafted sentences and paragraphs. The language used to describe the settings and in dialogue flows. Now that the novel has ended, Iโll miss Maya. Great job tying up loose ends. Well done!”
ARC Reader Review: “Great writingโฆ You had me at the first page wanting more. Four chapters in and I canโt wait to read the next one! Honestly!!! I canโt put this book down. Maya got arrested! Wow! Didnโt expect that!”
ARC Reader Review: “You know it’s a good read if it makes you cry.”
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Shattered but Not Silenced by Helena St. George offers a very unsettling yet profound narrative that examines control, autonomy, and the fragile line between protection and oppression. At its core is Maya, a neurodivergent protagonist wading through a society that increasingly defines human worth through productivity, compliance, and conformity, a premise that feels less like fiction and more like an uncomfortable extension of reality.
What struck me most about this novel is not its dystopian machinery, but its interiority. This is not a plot-driven rebellion story in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a slow, deliberate descent into systems of control, especially economic, institutional, and psychological. The narrative begins almost deceptively grounded, but as the story progresses, the cracks widen, revealing a society tightening its grip through surveillance, propaganda, and systemic erasure.
Mayaโs perspective is the novelโs greatest strength. Her sensory processing, looping thoughts, and emotional responses are not treated as narrative devices but as intrinsic ways of being. Author Helena handles this with notable care and authenticity, ensuring that Maya’s neurodivergence is neither romanticized nor reductive. This lends the narrative a rare intimacy where the reader is not simply observing oppression, but feeling its texture through Mayaโs experience.
Thematically, the novel is relentless. It interrogates systems that claim to rehabilitate but are built to control. The progression from societal unrest to forced confinement and indoctrination is chilling precisely because it feels incremental. Structurally, the book is expansive. With a timeline that spans over a year and a half, the narrative charts Mayaโs transition from a struggling young adult to someone entangled within a system that seeks to redefine her very identity. This progression allows the author to build tension gradually, though, in my opinion, at times it also leads to a sense of narrative diffusion leading to certain stretches that could have benefited from tighter pacing and sharper scene consolidation.
Where the novel wins is in its refusal to offer easy catharsis. The ending, and especially the afterword, makes it clear that this is not a story of triumphant resilience in the conventional sense. Survival here is not heroic; it is uneven and personal. This is a bold narrative choice and that may unsettle readers expecting a more traditional arc, but it ultimately reinforces the bookโs thematic integrity. That said, the novel is not without its limitations. The density of its themes occasionally overtakes narrative momentum, and some external characters feel less fully realized compared to Mayaโs richly developed interior world. Additionally, readers seeking a faster-paced, plot-heavy dystopian thriller may find the introspective tone demanding.
But perhaps that is precisely the point as Shattered but Not Silenced does not try to entertain in the conventional sense, it simply tries to bear witness. It asks difficult questions about who gets to define value, who is deemed โfitโ for society, and what happens to those who exist outside those definitions. And more importantly, it refuses to look away from the answers.
Author: David Yarnton Release Date: 8 December, 2025 Series: Genre: Techno-Thriller, Financial Thriller, Boardroom/Corporate Thriller Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 472 pages Publisher: 8TE,ย 8 Tech Express Limited Blurb: When Isabella Lindstrรถm is drawn into the glittering world of VANTIXโข the tech startup promising to take on Nintendo she thinks sheโs backing the next big thing. But as launch parties give way to missing money, vanished allies, and whispers of criminal ties, she and her friends uncover a scheme far bigger than anyone imagined. Set across Stockholm, London, and Los Angeles, โGameTrapโ is a gripping financial thriller where ambition comes at a cost, and the truth is buried under layers of branding, buzz, and betrayal. INSPIRED BY REAL EVENTS Against the high-stakes backdrop of early 2000s tech ambition, โGameTrapโ weaves a compelling tale of deception, ambition, and fractured loyalties loosely inspired by the real-world collapse of Gizmondo. What begins as a flashy handheld-console launch spirals into a far-reaching thriller filled with questionable finance, charismatic manipulators, and a determined trio trying to uncover the truth.
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
GameTrap by David Yarnton is the kind of thriller that thrives not on bullets or body counts alone, but on performanceโon image, seduction, money, access, and the soft glamour of rooms where everybody is pretending not to calculate everybody else. Framed against the feverish optimism of the early-2000s gaming boom and loosely inspired by the real-world collapse of Gizmondo, the book enters its world with style: handheld-console ambition, startup mythology, champagne-fuelled persuasion, and the dangerous ease with which hype can be mistaken for innovation. From the outset, author Yarnton makes it clear that VANTIX is not merely a tech dream but a warning system disguised as one.
I especially liked the novel’s atmosphere of cultivated unreality. The early Uppsala and Stockholm sequences are lush with intrigue, but also just slightly overlit, as though the reader is being invited to admire the chandeliers while something darker moves beneath the floorboards. The introduction of Isabella Lindstrรถm and Isolde is written with almost operatic confidence: they arrive as forces, women whose glamour is inseparable from their danger. That heightened, almost cinematic energy becomes the bookโs signature mode. Author Yarnton clearly understands the allure of surfaces, of beautiful hotels, expensive wine, private dinners, and coded invitations, and more importantly, he understands how those surfaces can be weaponised. In that sense, GameTrap is as much about theatre as it is about finance.
The novelโs core conceit, a gaming platform and handheld device that doubles as a behavioural surveillance engine, gives the book its most interesting thematic edge. What begins as startup seduction gradually reveals itself as something far more invasive: a system designed not just to entertain, but to profile, predict, and monetise human behaviour. Author Yarnton is at his strongest when he leans into that idea. The line between game, trap, and financial instrument grows increasingly blurred, and the novel is most compelling when it exposes how naturally those worlds bleed into each other.
The character dynamics, too, carry a real current of interest. Isabella is arguably the novelโs most compelling creation: poised, intelligent, and always slightly unreadable, she moves through the narrative with the kind of controlled opacity that suits this world. Her relationship to power gives the book one of its stronger psychological undercurrents. Isolde, by contrast, brings volatility, instinct, and a more emotionally exposed energy, particularly once the novel begins threading in questions of inheritance, criminal legacy, and the revelation that her family history may be tied to the same underworld that shaped Stiegโs ascent. Erikโs thread, with Jonasโs disappearance and the gradually resurfacing truth, adds a more grounded emotional stake that helps counterbalance the novelโs glossy surfaces. There is a genuine attempt here to make the thriller machinery personal.
What I admired most, however, is the bookโs ambition. Author Yarnton is not content to write a narrow corporate thriller; he wants glamour, crime, surveillance, old money, nightlife, academic memory, organised violence, tech-world delusion, and transnational fraud all in the same ecosystem. At times, that maximalism works very well. The novel has momentum, and it knows how to build a chapter ending that makes you keep turning the pages. Its world is populated by stylish operators, dubious financiers, vanished friends, and men who reinvent criminality as entrepreneurship. The prose often leans deliberately cinematic, and in the right scenes that heightened quality gives the story exactly the sort of sleek, high-stakes pulse it wants.
That said, GameTrap is also a novel whose reach occasionally exceeds its grip. There are stretches where exposition arrives in dense waves, and where the sheer amount of backstory, intrigue, and revelation competes with emotional texture rather than deepening it. The book sometimes tells us a little more than it needs to, especially in scenes where atmosphere or implication might have served the suspense more elegantly. Likewise, because the story moves through so many tones such as seductive thriller, noir mystery, tech-conspiracy drama, and criminal legacy saga, it can at times feel slightly overextended, as though several different novels are trying to coexist under one stylish roof. Some readers will enjoy that abundance; others may wish for a firmer editorial hand, particularly where pacing and repetition are concerned.
Still, even where it sprawls, GameTrap remains interesting. It is never dull, and it is rarely without intent. Beneath its polished surfaces lies a recognisable contemporary anxiety: that in an age of branding, venture capital, and behavioural data, the most dangerous scams are the ones that arrive looking like innovation. Author Yarnton understands that well. He understands, too, that people are often seduced less by lies than by the version of themselves those lies permit them to become.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author David Yarnton for his latest release, GameTrap: Silicon Dreams, Criminal Schemes.
Book: GameTrap: Silicon Dreams, Criminal Schemes Author: David Yarnton Publication Date: December 8, 2025 Publisher: 8TE,ย 8 Tech Express Limited Page Count: 472 Genres: Techno-Thriller, Financial Thriller, Boardroom/Corporate Thriller Available in: e-Book, Paperback & Hardback For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, The Fear Index by Robert Harris, The Circle by Dave Eggers
About the Book
G L A M O U R, G R E E D, A N D A G A M E C O N S O L E B U I L T O N L I E S.
G A M E T R A P I S N O T J U S T A T I T L E. I T โS A W A R N I N G.
When Isabella Lindstrรถm is drawn into the glittering world of VANTIXโข the tech startup promising to take on Nintendo she thinks sheโs backing the next big thing. But as launch parties give way to missing money, vanished allies, and whispers of criminal ties, she and her friends uncover a scheme far bigger than anyone imagined.
Set across Stockholm, London, and Los Angeles, โGameTrapโ is a gripping financial thriller where ambition comes at a cost, and the truth is buried under layers of branding, buzz, and betrayal.
INSPIRED BY REAL EVENTS
Against the high-stakes backdrop of early 2000s tech ambition, โGameTrapโ weaves a compelling tale of deception, ambition, and fractured loyalties loosely inspired by the real-world collapse of Gizmondo. What begins as a flashy handheld-console launch spirals into a far-reaching thriller filled with questionable finance, charismatic manipulators, and a determined trio trying to uncover the truth.
David Yarnton has spent more than thirty-five years in the global video games industry, including seventeen years in senior roles at Nintendo in Australia and the UK. A pioneer in esports, he was a founding director of Gfinity, the first company to open a dedicated esports arena. He has since advised governments, tech innovators, and universities worldwide on gaming, digital commerce, and the future of interactive entertainment. David has also been deeply involved in policy, industry leadership, and education. He has served on several boards, including as Chairman of the esports subgroup for UKIE, the UKโs interactive entertainment trade body; Board Advisor for the British Esports Federation; Chairman of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival; and Founder Chairman of the British Inspiration Awards, celebrating UK creative achievement. His expertise has taken him worldwide as an advisor on national video games and esports strategies from the UK, Korea to the Middle East and China working with organisations such as NEOM and Qiddiya. He has guest lectured at institutions including LBS, ISDE Barcelona, Loughborough University, and Stanford University, contributing to research on video games, esports, technology, and social responsibility. In his spare time, David channels his passion for teamwork and discipline into managing a semi๔ฒprofessional National League Rugby Union side in the UK. GameTrap is his latest venture drawing on decades of industry insight, global experience, and an eye for the stories that unfold behind the screens.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author: byBrian L. Reece Release Date: 13 January, 2026 Series: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller Genre: Cold War Techno-Thriller Format: E-book Pages: 472 pages Publisher: Waffle Ink Press Blurb: The only way to protect the ultimate secret is to steal it. 1977. Deep inside the secretive Skunk Works facility, the United States is forging its biggest advantage of the Cold War: Stealth technology. Invisible to radar, it will shift the global balance of power forever. But a traitor at the highest level is about to hand the blueprints to the Soviets. CIA Officer John Olson has seven days to stop the leak. But his agency is compromised, the FBI is hunting him, and the official protocols are a suicide pact. Out of time and out of options, Olson realizes he canโt save the program by following the rules. He has to break them. Olson turns to the only person capable of stealing the unstealable: Gabrielle Hyde. The brilliant, elusive con artist he spent a decade hunting is now his only hope. Together, they must launch an elaborate con against the U.S. government itself. From the dusty streets of Africa to the high-security vaults of Los Angeles, they must outwit a ruthless KGB assassin and a vengeful FBI agent to pull off the greatest heist in military history.
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Stealing Stealth by Brian L. Reece is a cold war techno thriller that aims to build an entire machinery of tension around intelligence, ideology, and people’s weakness. Framed around the race to protect an experimental U.S. stealth program from Soviet acquisition, the novel operates on two levels at once: as a brisk Cold War espionage thriller, and as a character-driven study of ambition, loyalty, grief, and moral compromise. From its opening pages in 1975 Toronto, where master thief Gabrielle Hyde stages an audacious burglary and first collides with rising CIA officer John Olson, the book makes clear that it is as interested in psychology as it is in action.
What gives the novel much of its energy and flair is this central pairing. Gabrielle is not written as a stock femme-fatale criminal; she is elegant, manipulative, deeply intelligent, and consistently operating several moves ahead of everyone around her. John, by contrast, begins as a man of structure, duty, and institutional faith, yet the novel repeatedly places him in situations where those systems fail him, exploit him, or demand moral elasticity in return for survival. Their first major encounter, ending in Hydeโs escape and Olsonโs humiliation, sets the emotional temperature of the book, but author Reece smartly refuses to leave their dynamic in simple opposition. Over time, the relationship develops into a battle of methods, then of values, and eventually a wary, unstable interdependence.
The bookโs strongest thematic thread is its preoccupation with systems such as government systems, intelligence systems, bureaucratic systems, and the ways all of them reward expediency over truth. By the time the plot widens into the stealth-theft conspiracy, the novel is no longer merely asking whether the Soviets will obtain classified technology; it is asking who within the American apparatus is willing to betray principle, how far โpatriotismโ can be manipulated, and whether institutional loyalty is ever morally clean. The discovery that the stolen material concerns the Have-Blue, a stealth fighter program, and the fear that Soviet access to it could destabilize nuclear balance, raises the stakes effectively without reducing the story to dry technothriller exposition.
I also appreciated that the author gives the novel emotional ballast through loss and aftermath. Olsonโs partnership with Nate Balik and the tragedy that follows in Mogadishu sharpen the book considerably, because from that point onward the story is no longer simply about stopping adversaries; it becomes about what failure costs, and what kind of man John is becoming in response to that cost. By the final stretch, the novelโs question is not just whether Hyde can be caught or trusted, but whether John can emerge from this world with any coherent sense of self still intact. The closing chapters land this surprisingly well: Hyde remains elusive and morally uncategorizable, while John, having survived the machinery of espionage and compromise, moves toward a humbler but more self-directed future. The final pages, with John reclaiming choice in ordinary life while Hyde vanishes once again on her own terms, give the book a satisfying emotional aftertaste without sanding away its ambiguity.
If I were to pick a minor flaw (which I can’t help being an editor), it is that the novelโs sheer velocity and density can occasionally work against it. There are stretches where plot mechanics, operational briefings, and layered maneuvering arrive so quickly that the emotional transitions have to fight for air. Readers who prefer leaner spy fiction may at times feel the book is carrying several thriller modes at once such as classic espionage, political conspiracy, procedural pursuit, and caper energy. But to be fair, that maximalism is also part of its identity as author Reece is not writing a minimalist chamber thriller, he is writing a large, unapologetically cinematic Cold War story with moving parts, ideological stakes, and characters who are always one betrayal away from collapse.
Overall, Stealing Stealth succeeds because it understands that espionage is never only about secrets, it is about the people deformed, seduced, or sharpened by proximity to those secrets. Smart, ambitious, and highly readable, it offers enough action for thriller readers while giving its central relationship a complexity that elevates it above mere cat-and-mouse entertainment. It is, in the best sense, a novel about pursuit… of technology, of truth, of redemption, and of the one person clever enough to keep turning all of those pursuits inside out.
Author: by Victoria Alvear Release Date: 20 January, 2026 Series: Genre: Historical Fiction Format: E-book Pages: 314 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Based on a true story, this is not the enlightened Rome of myth. This is a city choking on fear, where blood flows on both the battlefield and altar, and where generals and politicians alike are desperate to appease rageful gods. When 50,000 Romans fall in a single day at the Battle of Cannae, priests claim there can be only one reason the gods abandoned Rome: a Vestal Virgin has broken her vow of chastity. And they accuse Opimia (Mia), the strongest, most defiant of the six sacred Vestal priestesses. Forced as a child into serving Vesta, the goddess of fire, Mia has always chafed against Romeโs control of her every moveโespecially after being separated from her childhood love, Attius. Now, accused of a crime she did not commit, she must defend herself in a hostile court to avoid being buried alive for her โcrime.โ
Betrayed by the high priestess, hunted by Romeโs political and religious elite, Mia must either accept her fate โ or join with the Sybil of Cumae to expose the truth behind a world built on superstition, fear, and lies. A story of personal awakening amid public catastrophe, The Cleansing is a haunting journey through a city at war with itself โ and a woman who risks everything to survive it.
โShocking, searing and all too timely.โ โ Kate Quinn
“Excellent and very evocative.” โ Ben Kane
Review
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
The Cleansing by Victoria Alvear is one of those rarer historical fiction works that prise history open, exposing the old wound beneath the page. Set in 216 BCE, in the aftermath of Romeโs catastrophic defeat at Cannae, the novel follows Mia (Opimia Pansa), a Vestal Virgin whose private grief for Attius is forced beneath the rigid choreography of ritual, purity, and public performance. From its opening movement of war, loss, sacrificial spectacle, and the October Horse rite, author Alvear establishes a world in which religion is not merely belief, but governance, theatre, fear, and social control.
What makes this novel so effective is that it is not content to be โimmersiveโ in the decorative sense. Yes, the atmosphere is richly built with smoke-blackened Rome, blood rites, public ceremony, the machinery of priesthood and patriarchy. But the real force of the book lies in how intimately Alvear understands the psychology of indoctrination. Mia is not merely trapped by institutions; she has been trained since childhood to believe that her body is responsible for the fate of the state. That interior conflict gives the novel its nerve. Even when the story becomes a courtroom drama and political indictment, it never loses sight of the horror underneath: what it does to a woman to be told, from girlhood onward, that catastrophe will be her fault if she fails to remain symbolically pure. The authorโs historical note makes clear that the novel grows out of the real accusation against Vestal Virgins after Rome sought a reason for the godsโ โabandonmentโ following Cannae.
Mia is, in many ways, the bookโs greatest achievement. She is intelligent, wounded, observant, angry, indoctrinated, skeptical, tender, and often divided against herself. Her voice carries both lyrical sensitivity and sharp interior argument, and that combination allows the novel to move between personal grief and public crisis with unusual ease. Her memories of Attius, her complicated bond with Prisca, and her slowly sharpening awareness of how ritual can be manipulated by men in power give the novel its emotional and philosophical density. Even secondary relationships, like Ketet, Floronia, the Maxima are used not merely to populate the story, but to deepen its meditation on complicity, affection, fear, and survival.
What I particularly admired is the author’s refusal to soften the ugliness of the system she is depicting. This is a novel deeply concerned with scapegoating, with the ancient logic by which societies transfer collective fear onto the bodies of women and call it justice. The author states plainly in her note that she was interested in the dynamics of โshame, blame, and scapegoat[ing]โ in response to people’s suffering, and that urgency is palpable throughout the novel. At times, the thematic architecture is so strong that the novel edges close to argument as much as story; there are moments when the parallels to modern purity culture and moral panic feel more underlined than implied. But in truth, that explicitness rarely feels clumsy. If anything, it reflects the bookโs moral seriousness. Author Alvear is not coy about what she is writing against, and The Cleansing gains force from that clarity.
If I were to offer one measured reservation, it is that the novelโs intensity can occasionally make it feel emotionally unrelenting. There is very little air in this world, and that is of course deliberate. Yet some readers may find that the sustained pressure such as the ritual, accusation, dread, misogyny, and grief allows fewer moments of expansiveness than they might desire in a historical novel of this length. Even so, I would not call that a flaw so much as a function of the story the author is telling. This is, after all, not a lush costume drama dressed in antiquity. It is a severe, intelligent, and often searing excavation of what happens when political failure seeks a sacrificial body.
In the end, The Cleansing is not simply a novel about ancient Rome. It is a novel about the frightening durability of certain instincts, such as to moralise disaster, to sanctify control, and to make women carry the symbolic burden of collective fear. That the author roots those ideas in a vividly realized historical setting only makes the story hit harder. This is a powerful, unsettling, and deeply relevant work of historical fiction that understands that the past is never truly past, especially where shame, superstition, and power are concerned. The book is also upfront about its difficult material, including animal sacrifice, slavery, capital punishment, rape references, and suicide-related content, so readers should approach accordingly.
Brian L. Reece spent 26 years in Air Force special operations, flying combat missions across the Middle East and Africa. He holds masterโs degrees in strategy, history, and business. An award-winning screenwriter and SAG actor, he also served as a technical advisor on films like Transformers and Terminator Salvation. His work fuses real-world experience with hard-boiled noir, exploring what happens when systems fail and professionals are forced to make terrible choices.
The only way to protect the ultimate secret is to steal it.
1977. Deep inside the secretive Skunk Works facility, the United States is forging its biggest advantage of the Cold War: Stealth technology. Invisible to radar, it will shift the global balance of power forever. But a traitor at the highest level is about to hand the blueprints to the Soviets.
CIA Officer John Olson has seven days to stop the leak. But his agency is compromised, the FBI is hunting him, and the official protocols are a suicide pact. Out of time and out of options, Olson realizes he canโt save the program by following the rules. He has to break them.
Olson turns to the only person capable of stealing the unstealable: Gabrielle Hyde. The brilliant, elusive con artist he spent a decade hunting is now his only hope.
Together, they must launch an elaborate con against the U.S. government itself. From the dusty streets of Africa to the high-security vaults of Los Angeles, they must outwit a ruthless KGB assassin and a vengeful FBI agent to pull off the greatest heist in military history.
You can findย Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thrillerย here: Amazonย |ย Goodreads
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author: Sebastiano Lanza Release Date: January 2, 2026 Series: Burn My Shadow (Book 3) Genre: Graphic Novel Format:ย E-bookย Pages: under 100 pages Publisher:Markosia Enterprises Blurb: At long last, Tharmas manages to carve – out of sheer determination – a face to face meeting with Thomas Crowley. Unfortunately for him, Mr Crowley will not cooperate as readily as one might have imagined. Tharmas and young K will have to squeeze every wit at their disposal to live another day.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
The third issue of Burn My Shadow deepens the seriesโ dystopian intrigue by narrowing its focus: rather than attempting to widen the world too quickly, it invests in tension, movement, and uneasy alliance. This is a graphic novel that understands the value of escalation. From its opening pages, it becomes clear that the series is interested not only in oppression, but in the rhetoric that makes oppression sound reasonable. That tension between official language and reality gives the issue much of its bite.
What works particularly well here is the contrast between scale and intimacy. On the one hand, the world appears tightly controlled by faceless systems, drones, compliance codes, and behavioural technologies; on the other, the issue unfolds through a relatively small, immediate mission involving a guarded protagonist, a child in tow, and an unstable but gifted tech contact. That combination keeps the story readable and kinetic. The bearded central figure remains compelling because he is not overexplained. He moves with purpose, suspicion, and fatigue, and the graphic novel wisely resists turning him into a mouthpiece. The child, meanwhile, adds vulnerability without tipping into sentimentality, functioning as both emotional ballast and a quiet reminder of what is at stake.
Visually, the issue has a strong sense of atmosphere. The muted purples, greys, and blues create a world that feels drained yet hyper-controlled, while the rain-soaked exterior sequences and holographic overlays lend the city a cold, synthetic beauty. The novel’s visual language is arguably its greatest strength; even when dialogue grows exposition-heavy, the imagery continues telling a sharper, subtler story underneath.
That said, Issue 03 is not without rough edges. At times, the dialogue can feel slightly over-insistent in its delivery of concepts, as though the script is working hard to make sure the reader understands the mechanics of the world. In a medium as visually expressive as comics, a little more restraint would occasionally have made the issue even stronger. There are moments where subtext could have carried what the dialogue states outright. Similarly, because this is an issue built around setup, extraction, and escape, some readers may feel that characterization is still being assembled in fragments rather than fully embodied. But in fairness, that fragmentation also seems partly intentional: this is a world of partial truths, unstable trust, and identities kept under pressure.
Even so, Burn My Shadow โ Issue 03 succeeds where many third issues falter: it builds momentum without losing atmosphere. It leaves the reader with sharper stakes, clearer threat vectors, and a strong sense that the larger architecture of this world is only beginning to show itself. More importantly, it makes you want to follow these characters further, not simply to see what happens, but to understand what kind of moral cost survival will demand from them.
Overall, it is a visually moody, conceptually intriguing third issue that strengthens the seriesโ dystopian foundations. While some exposition occasionally lands a touch heavily, the comicโs atmosphere, pacing, and central dynamic more than compensate. Burn My Shadow continues to feel like a world worth entering, as it continues to be uneasy, watchful, and increasingly dangerous.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring authorย Brian L. Reece for his latest release, Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller.
Book: Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller Author: Brian L. Reece Publication Date: January 13, 2026 Publisher: Waffle Ink Press Page Count: 472 Genres: Cold War Techno-Thriller Available in: ebook, paperback For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: Atmosphere: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Le Carrรฉ); Action: Damascus Station (McCloskey); Tech: The Hunt for Red October (Clancy)
“Reeceโs background in military intelligence gives the novel authenticity… The action is sharp, the briefing-room politics are tense, and the heist sequences cinematic.”ย โย Publishers Weekly
About the Book
The only way to protect the ultimate secret is to steal it.
1977. Deep inside the secretive Skunk Works facility, the United States is forging its biggest advantage of the Cold War: Stealth technology. Invisible to radar, it will shift the global balance of power forever. But a traitor at the highest level is about to hand the blueprints to the Soviets.
CIA Officer John Olson has seven days to stop the leak. But his agency is compromised, the FBI is hunting him, and the official protocols are a suicide pact. Out of time and out of options, Olson realizes he canโt save the program by following the rules. He has to break them.
Olson turns to the only person capable of stealing the unstealable: Gabrielle Hyde. The brilliant, elusive con artist he spent a decade hunting is now his only hope.
Together, they must launch an elaborate con against the U.S. government itself. From the dusty streets of Africa to the high-security vaults of Los Angeles, they must outwit a ruthless KGB assassin and a vengeful FBI agent to pull off the greatest heist in military history.
You can findย Stealing Stealth: A Gabrielle Hyde Thriller here: Amazon | Goodreads
“A stellar series debut… sophisticated thriller that prizes psychology as much as action.”ย โย BestThrillers
About The Author
Brian L. Reece
Brian L. Reece spent 26 years in Air Force special operations, flying combat missions across the Middle East and Africa. He holds masterโs degrees in strategy, history, and business. An award-winning screenwriter and SAG actor, he also served as a technical advisor on films like Transformers and Terminator Salvation. His work fuses real-world experience with hard-boiled noir, exploring what happens when systems fail and professionals are forced to make terrible choices.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author: ย Isaak Uriarteย & Karsten De Boltย Release Date: 20 October, 2025 Series: Genre: Science-Fiction Fantasy, Dark Fantasy Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 294 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Nikki Sinclair has spent years hiding her gifts, living in the shadow of her mother’s secrets and her father’s disappearance. But when a mysterious figure emerges from the Black Realm, spreading chaos and corruption through her world, Nikki discovers her powers may be the only thing standing between survival and annihilation. Alongside her mother, a hardened Task Force commander torn between duty and family, Nikki is thrust into a battle that spans from darkened alleyways to hidden laboratories, from burning rooftops to ancient mountain temples. As allies fracture and enemies multiply, the line between protector and destroyer blurs.
But this entity is not alone. Its reach spreads across realms, and its hunger for power knows no limits. To save her realm, Nikki must embrace the truth of who she is, even if it means becoming what she fears most. Full of heart-pounding action, shadowy villains, and a heroine torn between destiny and choice, Midtown: The Forsaken Virus of the Black Realm is the electrifying first entry in a bold new fantasy series. Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, and Veronica Roth!
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Midtown: The Forsaken Virus of the Black Realm by Isaak Uriarte & Karsten De Bolt leans into the kind of dystopian chill that hits harder than rubble and ruined skylines and gives the reader the sense that the world didnโt end so much as it was repurposed by something patient, intelligent, and hungry. The atmosphere is almost immediate: metallic air, dead silence, and that creeping certainty that the dark isnโt empty, itโs listening.
What I enjoyed most is how the book balances high-stakes speculative action with street-level tension. On one side, you have covert operations, unstable science, realm-breaches, and the ominous physics of โcrystalsโ and portals; on the other, you have the grimy pulse of Midtown itself, the neon-and-shadow underbelly, where Nikki feels like the readerโs anchor inside the cityโs daily rot. She isnโt written as a polished โchosen oneโ archetype; sheโs written as someone surviving on instinct, impatience, and just enough conviction to keep showing up.
And then thereโs the central menace, the Virus, less a simple villain and more a seductive thesis. The book consistently frames power as an offer that arrives right when grief makes you most persuadable. The writing understands a crucial truth of dark speculative fiction: monsters donโt only destroy, they recruit.
Structurally, the pacing escalates cleanly into a cinematic final act and the story commits to spectacle without abandoning character dynamics. The climax leans into destruction, pursuit, and the terrifying sense that something worse is queued up behind the current crisis. By the end, the epilogue lands exactly where a solid first volume in a larger arc should, with a sharpened objective and a visible horizon of threat. The โcommunication without openingโ idea is a smart way to widen the cosmology while acknowledging the cost of unstable gateways, and the final reveal is the kind of line that makes you sit up, because it reframes everything as merely the opening exchange.
Readers who like dystopian sci-fi/fantasy hybrids with portal-tech mystique, morally pressured characters, and a villain whose philosophy is as dangerous as his power will love this book. If you enjoy stories where cities feel like organisms and โsalvationโ comes with teeth, Midtown will scratch that itch.
Author: Adam Lawless Release Date: December 14th, 2025 Series: Genre: Thriller, Fiction Format: E-book Pages: 378 pages Publisher: – Blurb: Four lives. Four nations. One slow-burn collapse of the world order. Drawn together by desire, betrayal, and ambition, four strangers from opposite corners of the world collide as love turns toxic and loyalty becomes lethal. As the world edges toward an Armageddon of historic proportions, one question remains: can love redeem the brokenโor will the master manipulator finish what fate began? A soldierโs blind devotion. Brian, a Delta Force Colonel once celebrated as a patriot, is erased after reckless ambition leads to the deaths of 22 American soldiers. Court-martialed and cast out, he reinvents himself inside the power corridors of Washington. But his greatest vulnerability isnโt his pastโitโs the affair he begins while still married. As scandal, blackmail, and surveillance close in, Brian must decide how much of his country he is willing to burn to feel redeemed. Heroes fall quietly. Damage does not.
A South Asian immigrantโs disappointment. Sayeed arrives in America believing in freedom, tolerance, and the promise of a better life. A Muslim immigrant with hope in his heart, he soon finds himself torn between family, culture, and a nation that does not always practice what it preaches. As injustice and hypocrisy mount, will Sayeed cling to his idealsโor will betrayal push him toward a darker path? The Chinese spy who loved too deeply. Jie rises swiftly through the ranks of Chinaโs MSS, driven by brilliance, discipline, and ambition. But her greatest weakness is the one thing she cannot controlโher heart. Preyed upon by a married man, her beauty and vulnerability ignite obsession wherever she goes. In Washington, D.C., love tempts her once more. The Arab dreamer on the edge of ruin. Ahmed, a poor but joyful youth from Iraq, is manipulated into stealing a sacred Islamic relic from Uzbekistanโan act that destroys his life and reshapes geopolitics. Captured and imprisoned in China, he is stripped of dignity, belief, and mercy. What survives his confinement is no longer innocent. When he finally emerges, the question is no longer if he will be usedโbut by whom. Shards of an Empire is a bleak, high-stakes political thriller where nations maneuver through human weakness and love is the most exploitable asset of all. As these four lives converge, the world inches toward collapseโnot with a bang, but with quiet decisions made in dark rooms. History will call it unavoidable. The truth is far more personal.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Shards Of An Empire byย Adam Lawless is a geopolitical thriller that braids together multiple POVs. The bookโs biggest strength is its ambition of scope: four protagonists from radically different contexts are pulled into the same widening blast radius: Brian OโNeill, a Delta Force colonel disgraced by a catastrophic mission; Sayeed, a Muslim immigrant chasing (and testing) the American dream; Jie, a rising MSS operative whose personal life and professional life keep bleeding into each other; and Ahmed, a โhappy-go-luckyโ Iraqi youth manipulated into a relic-theft mission that turns into something far darker.
What I enjoyed most is how author Lawless builds parallel pressures across these lives with ambition, belonging, loyalty, and desire so the novel feels like four different angles on the same question: who gets to feel safe, forgiven, and free in a world built on unequal power? Brianโs arc carries the muscular, kinetic energy youโd expect from a military opening (the book throws you into the chaos fast), while Sayeedโs thread brings the emotional and ideological tension of assimilation, hope curdling into disillusionment when ideals donโt match reality.
Jie and Ahmed, though, are where the novelโs most haunting notes land. Jieโs chapters blend tradecraft with vulnerability, sheโs positioned as capable and ascending, yet repeatedly confronted by the cost of attachment and the way obsession can masquerade as love. Ahmedโs storyline is the most classically tragic: faith, poverty, and coercion converge into a โmissionโ framed as devotion, complete with a stolen relic and an expanding web of handlers who keep him blind to the true game being played. Without spoiling the mechanics of how it all locks together, I will say that the novel doesnโt flinch from the brutal idea that ordinary people are often just pieces moved by someone elseโs hand, and the book makes that โmaster manipulatorโ theme explicit.
Critically, the same ambition that makes this story compelling can also make it feel dense and high-velocity as youโre asked to track multiple arcs, multiple moral frameworks, and a widening conspiracy as it accelerates. If you like thrillers that feel realistic, political, and morally knotted, and where romance doesnโt soften the world but sharpens i, this will hit. And if youโre the kind of reader who loves an epilogue-style historical sting (the book frames โempireโ as something that echoes across centuries), the closing โPrelude/Postludeโ cements that larger thesis in a way thatโs both unsettling and memorable.
Shards of an Empire is big, bold, and unapologetically intense with equal parts spy intrigue and emotional unraveling, written for readers who enjoy stories where the personal is political, and love is never just love; itโs leverage, risk, and occasionally the only remaining rebellion.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Alexandra Devane for her latest release, Inconclusive Volume 1.
Book: Inconclusive Volume 1 Author: Alexandra Devane Series: The Shards of Sansatia Series (Book 1 of 2:) Publication Date: 31 August 2025 Publisher: – Page Count: 139 Genres: Fantasy, dark Romantasy Format Available: ebook and paperback For Readers Who Enjoyed: Fourth Wing and ACOTARย
About the Book
Eighteen-year-old Acteo Venand is anย elite striker cadetย at Inoton Academy, a military institution that prepares him to battleย Noxvaleres, supernatural warriors who hold sway over the three pillars of desire: memory, fantasy, and reality.ย With graduation just a few months out, Acteo is ready to dedicate his life to the righteous destruction of Noxvaleres and avenge the traumas that he and his family have enduredโuntil anย ill-advised prize fightย entangles him with Reyna Ward, anย alluring assassin and Inconclusive, meaning a human with a chance at converting into a Noxvalere.ย Reyna continuously challenges Acteoโs worldview, and soon, his understanding ofย the distinctions between human and Noxvalere, and justice and desperation, begins to fracture. In thisย spicy dark Romantasy Series,ย you will find – Magic, mystery, and mayhem – Crime & Intrigue – Sword & Sorcery with aย modern twist – A fascinating cast of characters who areย as skilled at secrecy as they are at combat
Alexandra Devane is a Fantasy novelist who is partial to powerful female leads with a dark side and love octagons. Her passions include family, spicy food, and of course, the thrill of writing.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author:J.D. Macpherson Release Date: December 3rd, 2025 Series: Genre: Blend of Psychology, Philosophy, and Technology, Non-Fiction, Computer Science, AI Format: E-book Pages: 221 pages Publisher: Cairnstone Press Blurb: Are you using AI or is AI using you? In a world where algorithms shape thought and automation floods the creative field, Human Again is a field-tested playbook for staying awake, original, and alive in the age of machines. Part reflection, part practical guide, it invites readers to explore identity and inspiration in real time, learning to think with AI rather than be replaced by it. Bending cultural insight, personal experience, and practical tools, Macpherson explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, work, and identity, and how to harness it without losing yourself.
You will learn how to:
Ask sharper questions that create leverage, not noise
Build a High Signal Question Engine to think deeper and faster
Use the Socratic method and mindfulness to train deeper thinking
Recognize the โqualia,โ the unspeakable textures of human experience, that no algorithm can touch
Protect your authenticity, taste, and voice while others sound the same
Learn how to compound clarity and creativity
Whether you are a professional, a creator, or simply curious about what is next, Human Again shows how to use AI better than anyone around you while keeping what no algorithm can replicate: your judgment, conscience, and imagination. Because finding identity and inspiration in the AI age begins with remembering what it means to be human.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Human Again: In the AI Age by J.D. Macpherson reads like a candid, idea-rich notebook from someone whoโs spent time living with generative AI, not just theorising about it. What makes this book work is its voice; it is curious, slightly confessional, and persuasive, with โcome sit with me, letโs think this throughโ energy. It doesnโt treat AI as a shiny toy or an apocalyptic villain; it treats it as a force that is already in our homes, our workflows, our attention spans, and our sense of self.
Structurally, itโs clean and bingeable with four sections: Discoveries, Possibilities, Operations, and Pitfalls, that move from first-contact curiosity (the early chapters feel like the author at the kitchen table, actually trying things) to more grounded strategy. I especially liked how author Macpherson keeps returning to a central tension that AI isnโt conscious, but it is convincing, and that gap between โsounds rightโ and โis trueโ is where modern humans are about to get tested. The chapters on credibility, creativity, mindfulness, and the practical mechanics of using AI (including promptcraft as a real skill, not a gimmick) feel written for readers who want to stay agile without losing their spine.
Where the book becomes most valuable is in the Operations + Pitfalls stretch: the mindset shifts, the attention economy warnings, the โdonโt outsource your thinkingโ reminders, and the honest naming of risks like hallucinations, dopamine loops, and the subtle emotional attachment people can form with a tool that mirrors them too well. Itโs also refreshingly not preachy, but more like a friend whoโs a step ahead, turning around to say, โHereโs what I wish Iโd known before I got swept up.โ
That said, readers looking for a richer academic, citation-heavy AI book may find Macphersonโs approach more reflective than research-dense, as this is more experience-based wisdom and philosophical framing than a technical manual or a policy treatise. So if you want a smart, readable, humane guide to staying human while becoming AI-literate, Human Again: In the AI Age is a timely and thoughtful read that leaves you more alert, intentional, and (ironically) more present.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Adam Lawlessfor his latest release, Shards of an Empire.
Book: Shards Of An Empire Author: Adam Lawless Publication Date: December 14th, 2025 Publisher: – Page Count: Genres: Fiction, Thriller Available in: ebook, paperback, hardback For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Other Side of Me by David Cordisco
About the Book
Four lives. Four nations. One slow-burn collapse of the world order.
Drawn together by desire, betrayal, and ambition, four strangers from opposite corners of the world collide as love turns toxic and loyalty becomes lethal. As the world edges toward an Armageddon of historic proportions, one question remains: can love redeem the brokenโor will the master manipulator finish what fate began? A soldierโs blind devotion. Brian, a Delta Force Colonel once celebrated as a patriot, is erased after reckless ambition leads to the deaths of 22 American soldiers. Court-martialed and cast out, he reinvents himself inside the power corridors of Washington. But his greatest vulnerability isnโt his pastโitโs the affair he begins while still married. As scandal, blackmail, and surveillance close in, Brian must decide how much of his country he is willing to burn to feel redeemed. Heroes fall quietly. Damage does not. A South Asian immigrantโs disappointment. Sayeed arrives in America believing in freedom, tolerance, and the promise of a better life. A Muslim immigrant with hope in his heart, he soon finds himself torn between family, culture, and a nation that does not always practice what it preaches. As injustice and hypocrisy mount, will Sayeed cling to his idealsโor will betrayal push him toward a darker path? The Chinese spy who loved too deeply. Jie rises swiftly through the ranks of Chinaโs MSS, driven by brilliance, discipline, and ambition. But her greatest weakness is the one thing she cannot controlโher heart. Preyed upon by a married man, her beauty and vulnerability ignite obsession wherever she goes. In Washington, D.C., love tempts her once more. The Arab dreamer on the edge of ruin. Ahmed, a poor but joyful youth from Iraq, is manipulated into stealing a sacred Islamic relic from Uzbekistanโan act that destroys his life and reshapes geopolitics. Captured and imprisoned in China, he is stripped of dignity, belief, and mercy. What survives his confinement is no longer innocent. When he finally emerges, the question is no longer if he will be usedโbut by whom.
Shards of an Empire is a bleak, high-stakes political thriller where nations maneuver through human weakness and love is the most exploitable asset of all. As these four lives converge, the world inches toward collapseโnot with a bang, but with quiet decisions made in dark rooms.
History will call it unavoidable. The truth is far more personal.
Adam Lawless is an avid student of world history, culture, philosophy, and religious thought. He loves meeting people from diverse cultures, religious backgrounds, points of view, and exchanging ideas. While he is not authoring books, he loves eating out, hanging out with friends, camping at Yellowstone National Park, sit by the fireplace and sip hot chocolate, watching thrillers, and comedy movies. Adam’s mantra for life – Life is too short to be grumpy, enjoy the tiny joys in life, be grateful for the warm sunshine, the green grass under your feet and the blue skies spread over your head. Whenever he can, he travels to other cultures to learn about their history, their civilization, their customs, and their way of life. Human beings fascinate him! His favorite thing to do is sit by the beach and watch the sun set in the orange skies.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
Author: James D. Reginatoย Release Date: 3rd November 2025 Series: Genre: Memoir Format:ย E-bookย Pages: 141 pages Publisher: James D. Reginato Blurb: Quiet Enduranceย is James’ debut memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, and endurance: a haunting exploration of identity, resilience, and the human need to be believed. At aged 23, James Reginato was a law and commerce student who loved structure, precision and meaning. He found peace in order, whether through flying, study, or music. Life made sense until a trip overseas left him with a severe infection that marked the beginning of a long and confusing decline. What began as physical illness became something far more complicated when doctors could not explain his symptoms. Quiet Enduranceย is a hauntingly raw recount of his journey through misdiagnosis, disbelief, and the quiet erosion of identity that comes from being treated as a problem instead of a person. It is an intimate account of how a once healthy body can become a source of fear and how the healthcare system can lose sight of the human being behind the data.
Through vivid storytelling and careful reflection, James explores the moments that broke him and the small acts of persistence that kept him alive. He writes about the hospitals that misunderstood him, the labels that trapped him, and the eventual discovery of the real conditions that he had been researching all along. Alongside the medical struggle runs a portrait of family, love, and endurance in the face of a system that could not see past its own limits. This memoir is both personal and universal. It speaks to anyone who has been dismissed, doubted, or reduced to an explanation that does not fit. It is about what happens when you are forced to become your own advocate, when survival depends on refusing to be erased. Quiet Enduranceย is not a story of miracle recovery. It is about the resilience that remains when there is nothing left to prove. It is a record of persistence, truth, and the strength that comes from still being here. Disclaimer This text includes detailed descriptions of medical treatments, trauma, hospitalisations, severe mental health challenges, suicidal themes, and systemic mistreatment. Reader discretion is advised. This work is based on the authorโs personal experiences and medical history. Excerpts from medical correspondence and clinical records are drawn from the authorโs own files and have been reproduced or paraphrased for context. Identifying details of individuals, institutions, and locations have been altered or omitted to protect privacy. These passages are presented in good faith as part of the authorโs lived experience, and are not intended to criticise or make factual claims about any identifiable person or organisation.
Review
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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Quiet Endurance: A Memoir byย James D.ย Reginato is an unflinching account of what happens when a body falls apart, and the systems meant to hold you together decide your suffering is โsomething else.โ It opens with the authorโs intent to show how misunderstanding, systemic rigidity, and misplaced psychiatric assumptions can fracture care, and the patient inside it.
What makes this memoir so memorable and really mand is the voice; it is controlled, articulate, and furious in the way only the truly exhausted can be. Author Reginato writes with the discipline of someone who thinks in procedures and that contrast becomes painful (and powerful) when medicine fails to offer the same clarity. The result is a narrative that reads like a slow, relentless erosion of selfhood, until โsurvivalโ stops meaning improvement and starts meaning persistence.
The bookโs emotional hinge is how plausibly it tracks a descent from โtreatableโ to โsuspect.โ We watch an origin-point illness after a Bali trip (later identified as typhoid) and the cascade that follows as weight loss, gut dysfunction, hospitalisation, escalating fear, and a homecoming that doesnโt feel like safety so much as being left alone with the consequences. When validation finally arrives in the form of a POTS diagnosis, thereโs a brief, aching sense of โfinally, I have a name for this,โ and then the bitter aftertaste. The memoirโs strongest chapters donโt just catalogue events; they show what repeated dismissal does to the mind and how it teaches you to doubt your own sensations, your own reality.
I want to be fair about what may not work for everyone. The clinical specificity, such as the cycles of admissions, tests, discharge plans, and the repeated need to โproveโ symptoms, can feel intentionally repetitive, because thatโs the point: the systemโs loops become the patientโs prison. Still, readers who prefer a tighter memoir arc may find portions heavy with medical process. But for the audience this book is speaking to, such as patients with complex illness, caregivers, and clinicians who want to experience texture behind the file, those details are exactly what give it authority. And the ending pages, which return to the ethics of care and the radical act of reclaiming narrative (โkeep the pen firmly in your handโ), leave the reader with something rarer than inspiration, a sober, hard-earned clarity.
If you pick up Quiet Endurance, do it with appropriate care as the book explicitly warns of trauma, systemic mistreatment, and suicidal themes. But if youโre in the right headspace, this is a compelling and necessary memoir that argues, persuasively, that medicine canโt be reduced to protocols alone.
Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring authorย James D. Reginatoย for his latest release, Quiet Endurance: A Memoir.
Book: Quiet Endurance Author: James D. Reginato Publication Date: 26 October 2025 Publisher: Coffee Shop Publishing (Self-Published) Page Count: 139 Genres: Personal Memoirs, Patient Experience, Mental Health Book Links: (Paperback) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FXTW8W41 , (Kindle) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FYTLKY8M
About the Book
Quiet Endurance traces the collapse of a young manโs health after a post-travel illness triggers relentless gastrointestinal and autonomic symptoms that no one can explain. As his body falters, the medical system repeatedly reframes his condition as psychological, leading to misdiagnoses, harmful assumptions, and an admission to an eating-disorder unit that never fit his reality. The memoir follows his struggle to stay alive, be believed, and make sense of a body that no longer obeyed the rules, revealing how easily complex patients are dismissed when their symptoms defy neat categories. It is a story of misdiagnosis, persistence, and the quiet resilience required to survive a system that stops listening. Quiet Endurance speaks to readers who appreciate memoirs grounded in vulnerability and insight, those drawn to works like When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan and The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmรฉ Weijun Wang. It will resonate with readers navigating chronic illness or misdiagnosis, healthcare professionals seeking to understand the patientโs perspective, family members supporting someone medically complex, and anyone drawn to the moral and emotional landscape of modern medicine.
Key Themes
The intersection of medicine, identity, and meaning. The emotional cost of misdiagnosis and disbelief. How illness reshapes relationships, purpose, and self-perception. Endurance as an act of courage when clarity is denied.
James Reginato is an Australian writer, musician, and former law student whose work examines resilience, identity, and the unseen realities of chronic illness. His writing emerged after a sudden collapse in health in his early twenties, an event that dismantled the structured life he had been building and forced him to confront the loss of mobility, certainty, and independence. Living with conditions including Gastroparesis, POTS, Osteoporosis, Atrial Tachycardia, Ehlersโ Danlos Syndrome, and Small Fibre Neuropathy, James navigated years of misdiagnosis, medical uncertainty, and the isolation of invisible illness. Writing became his anchor; a way to reclaim agency, translate chaos into meaning, and hold on to the parts of himself that illness could not diminish. His debut memoir, Quiet Endurance, explores collapse, adaptation, and the reclamation of identity, offering an unfiltered account of what it means to live honestly within chronic illness rather than triumph over it. James also writes about the systemic limitations of medicine, advocating for more humane and nuanced care for those with complex conditions. Outside of writing, he is an accomplished guitarist and lifelong aviation enthusiast; pursuits that reflect his search for clarity, structure, and freedom. Through all of his work, James seeks to illuminate overlooked experiences and give voice to those whose stories often remain unseen.
You can findย author Reginato here: Website | Amazon
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Author: Chris Waddington Release Date: 19 October 2025 Series: Genre: Historical Fiction, WW1 Format: E-book Pages: 288 pages Publisher: Coffee Shop Publishing (Self-Published) Blurb: I donโt know if Iโm living longer or dying slowerโฆ Armed with dreams of heroic victory and Lord Kitchenerโs rally cry ringing in his ears, Jack Crosby proudly made his way to the front line. Once there, he quickly realised that there was no glory to be had on the blood-soaked fields of Flanders. On the back of unrelenting German fury, December delivers a brutal Belgian winterโฆ
Water pours in, swirling around Jackโs ankles, it meanders effortlessly through the trench, bringing with it the pungent stench of death. Body parts intermingle with rats and slushy mud, facilitating the inevitable spread of disease. Cutting a forlorn figure, Jackโs hardening heart aches for home, his beloved Rose and the idyllic life he now mourns. But then, on Christmas Eve, dulcet German tones carried on the wings of angels float serenely through the gloriously placid night airโฆ Christmas in Flanders Fields is a poignant and moving depiction of the ungodly struggles encountered by decent men, too young to die. Set against the backdrop of the remarkable Christmas truce in 1914, Itโs a story that encompasses love, hope, fear, bravery and the most unlikely friendships forged on the rugged plains of No-Mans-Land.
Review
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Rating: 5 out of 5.
Christmas in Flanders Fields by Chris Waddington is told through the reflective voice of British soldier Jack Crosby, immersing the reader in the muddy trenches of World War I, where brutality has become routine and hope feels like an act of rebellion. From its opening pages, the book establishes an unflinching realism where rats, corpses, fear, and exhaustion are rendered with lyrical restraint rather than sensationalism.
At its emotional core is the historical Christmas Truce of 1914, a fleeting moment when enemy soldiers laid down their weapons to sing, bury the dead, exchange gifts, and briefly remember their shared humanity. Author Waddington captures this event with remarkable tenderness. The scenes of candlelit trees rising from German trenches, carols drifting across no-manโs-land, and men shaking hands with those they had tried to kill only hours earlier are written with a sense of awe and disbelief that feels earned. The friendship between Jack and German soldier Wilhelm Becker becomes a powerful symbol of the fragile, fleeting nature of peace.
Equally affecting are Jackโs memories of home, particularly his love for Rose, whose letters and small gifts sustain him through despair. These quieter passages ground the novel emotionally, reminding us what war steals and what soldiers fight to preserve. The prose is evocative and reflective, often reading like a lament for lost innocence and squandered potential.
On the whole, Christmas in Flanders Fields by Chris Waddington is a poignant, immersive, and deeply emotional and moving tribute to a moment when compassion briefly triumphed over conflict. It is historical fiction at its most heartfelt. It is sobering, beautiful, and unforgettable.
Welcome to TRB Lounge. Today, Iโd like to welcome J.J.N. Whitley, author of The Orichalcum Crown, for an author interview with The Reading Bud.
About The Author
J.J.N. Whitley
J. J. N. Whitley is a licensed attorney and proud cat-dad. His time in Okinawa sparked a love for anime and JRPGs, and living in Australia did the same for sports.
Welcome to TRB! Could you provide our readers with a personal introduction beyond yourofficial Author Bio?
Sure. I’m JJNW (Juh-jin-wuh). I introduced myself as that one year in drama class, and the name stuck. One year for Halloween I told a friend I was JJNW’s ghost, and that stuck too.
I’m naturally fidgety and always itching to work on the next project, whether it’s something I’m writing, playing or watching. So when I was diagnosed with ADHD last year I thought it explained a lot.
Beyond the blurb, can you share a unique aspect or background detail about your book’s setting or characters?
One major detail is the prevalence of gods. The oft aloof All-Mother is the literal mother of Athena and one of her sisters. The original emperor runs a brothel just down the mountain. Even when theyโre not directly involved in the plot, their shadows loom large.
Every book begins with an idea. What was the initial inspiration that led you to write this particular story?
Funny enough, it came from a lack of inspiration. I realized that while Iโd been working on existing projects for several years, I hadnโt come up with anything new in a long time. I started with the central idea of exploring the relationships of a royal family with an aging emperor on the decline and let it flow from there. ย
Fantasy often tackles profound themes. What central message or theme do you hope readers will take away from your book?
The initial theme was about the weight of leadership. Heavy is the head that wears the crown and all. But, despite the best intentions, that head is still human and prone to err. As the story evolved, it also tackled the theme of feeling like an outcast even in places where youโre supposed to be loved.
Of all the characters in your book, is there one you feel particularly close to? Why?
As much as I love Athena, Iโd have to say Makoto. At her core, Makoto is someone who believes love must be earned and is almost always at risk of being lost. She wants nothing more than to be loved without needing to perform but is terrified of her authentic self being rejected.
There are elements of that I relate to. My favorite line in the book comes from her conversation with Ephraim in the garden and came right from my own heart.
How do you approach character development in a fantasy setting to ensure they are relatable to readers?
By grounding key character traits and relationships in reality. A handful of examples.
Athena being a protective older sister comes from her strained relationships with her parents. Dad is busy running the empire, and Mom is too busy being a god to care. So, she takes it on herself to make sure the little scamps are cared for.
Olive’s love of art stems from Athena’s encouragement. Now it helps her feel connected to a sister that’s no longer around.
Makoto and Ephraim are so close, because they met at a time when they each needed friendship. She needed a friend to make her feel safe in a new environment, and he needed a friend to deal with the grief of losing his parents.
When the characterโs core feels grounded, their development comes naturally. Even in the face of fantastical elements.
What served as the primary inspiration for your characters? Were they from existing myths, personal experiences, dreams, or something else entirely?
Once I decided on the initial premise of a royal family, I had to start filling out the ranks. While some characters, like Ephraim and Klaus, are unique to this story, several others are from other ideas that never went anywhere. This includes major players; such as Athena, Makoto and Reina. Itโs why I often refer to this story as my Island of Misfit Toys.
How long did the process of writing this book take from inception to completion?
About six years off and on. I had several drafts that started and ended in different places. Iโd take breaks from writing or to work on other projects before coming back to tinker with it some more. The first idea started around February, 2020 when I was walking the track at the gym.
Are there other stories or fantasy worlds you’re currently developing?
Absolutely. One of them is a story of people trapped in a video game, so itโs a hybrid science fiction story as well. Another takes place in a world my friend made. And another is small town Indiana but with a little dash of magic.ย
What attracts you to the fantasy genre specifically? Do you explore other genres as well?
I usually stick with fantasy but include other genres as part of the work. I love that fantasy has no limits and can encompass other genres. You can still write romance, horror, comedy and drama within a fantasy setting.
When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer? Was the journey straightforward, or did you face challenges along the way?
My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Kolp, had a mandatory journal writing period. I would write stories based on shows I was watching; like Dragon Ball or Pokรฉmon. Had so much fun that I kept doing it. Thereโve been a lot of challenges. Self-doubt, low sales and all that. But, here we are still doing it because I love it.ย
Can you describe your typical writing routine?
It usually goes one of two ways. Iโll either have a flash of inspiration and starting writing a scene on my phone until the scene ends or I get stuck.
Alternatively, Iโll sit at my computer and re-read the last few paragraphs to get back into the scene. Iโll see it play out in my head and transcribe it as best I can. If I get stuck, Iโll go for a walk and think through it and hopefully get unstuck.
Editing is a crucial part of the writing process. How do you approach revisions and self-editing in the context of a fantasy narrative?
I try to note whatโs missing or inconsistent in a draft when Iโm reviewing it. If a character mentions something thatโs from a previous draft then it needs to be cut or reworked. Likewise, if someone acts in a way they normally wouldnโt there needs to be a good reason for it or else itโs gone.
In addition, if there are elements of the plot or characterization that are lacking or not featured at all then I note where they should be inserted and rework those moments.
With the growing popularity of audiobooks and multimedia adaptations, have you considered these formats for your work?
I haven’t looked into audiobooks at this time, but I’d love one. I think it would be really cool.
I’d be ecstatic if someone wanted to adapt Orichalcum into a show, movie or game but I’m not holding my breath yet.
If you had to describe your writing style in three words, what would they be?
Talkative but violent.
What tools or methods do you prefer for writingโcomputer, typewriter, voice recording, or traditional pen and paper?
My go to is the notes app on my phone. That way I can write in just about any situation. But when I need to grind out some pages or editing, then I have to sit at my computer. Every now and then I do enjoy hand writing a few pages.
Could you share five books or authors that have influenced your writing, especially within the fantasy genre?
The Harry Potter series is a big one. I know I read a lot as a kid, but itโs the first time I remember being sucked into another world and not wanting to leave.
Lord of the Rings and Warriors as series with their own mythologies and large casts of characters.
I read Mistborn a few years ago, which helped a lot in developing the magic system of another story.
While not a book series, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the Trails series for its world building and character writing.
How do you tackle Writerโs Block when working within the expansive boundaries of fantasy?
A couple different ways. If a particular sentence is giving me trouble Iโll write a very basic to the point sentence, put it in brackets and move on with the paragraph.
If itโs the start of a scene or story, Iโll try hand writing and just seeing what happens. I did that with one story and a character I hadnโt previously imagined showed up and changed the whole ding dang thing.
If itโs a big picture element, Iโll play around with different versions of it and discuss it with people who know the story.
What piece of advice would you offer to budding writers, especially those looking to venture into fantasy?
Number one is to write. It’s the cliche answer, but your idea will always be just that until you write it down.ย
Number two is be flexible and willing to adapt. Sometimes plot threads and characters don’t go where you initially imagined, and that’s okay.ย
Last is to have a “why guy”. Someone who knows the story about as well as you do who you can bounce ideas off of. Regardless if they like the new idea or not, their job is to ask why a new direction is a good thing. The process of explaining it will generally show if it’s a passing fancy or something with deeper roots. Then you can have a good faith discussion about it.
Thank you, author Whitley, for taking the time to answer our questions and for all your insightful answers!
About the Book
The Orichalcum Crown
Makoto lost her mother to a battle she canโt remember before being adopted into the Kauneus Empireโs royal family. Upon her eighteenth birthday, she receives her motherโs necklace from the emperor. Makotoโs memories slowly return, haunting her with visions of her lost sister and her motherโs murder. She is torn between the family and answers awaiting her across the sea and the relationships with her family, best friend, and his handsome brother. Makoto fears returning home will cast doubt upon her loyalty to the emperor and sever her from the family. After all, Kauneus has no need for a disloyal princess. Makotoโs eldest adoptive sister, Athena, remains banished from Zenith Palace for uncovering the emperorโs secret bastard. She is visited by her former dragon uncle, who shares a rumor that the emperor will be assassinated during the annual ball. Athena has no choice but to break her exile to save her father. Returning home risks death, but sheโll pay any price for her familyโs safety. As night falls upon the ball, lurking shadows and hidden agendas threaten the empireโs fragile peace. Makoto and Athena must navigate the delicate lines between loyalty and betrayal and learn what they are willing to sacrifice for freedom, truth, and family.
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
The Reading Bud 