Dream Sweet in a Minor Sea (De Beer)

Dream Sweet in a Minor Sea
Janneke De Beer (2025)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a free Advanced Reader Copy from Library Thing. I'm encouraged (but not required) to leave reviews in exchange for the free books.

I left the following review on the Library Thing website:

In a dystopian future where political parties control the world government, a Mission Impossible / Ocean's 11 type team of experts is assembled to rescue a prisoner from a prison on an island in the Irish Sea.

The book opens with Mumilaaq Kuuluuiipiq preparing to steal a monkey from the zoo because she wants a monkey. When she returns home, there's a woman waiting to talk to her about a job because the stranger needs someone who can break into any place. A few more are recruited, including a hacker and the brother of the prisoner.

Unlike the teams I mentioned earlier, no one's safety is guaranteed, which we learn soon enough.

The rescue proceeds smoothly, and it's only afterwards that things start to go sideways. Unfortunately, the narrative goes a little sideways, and experimental, as well, making it a little difficult to follow.

Speaking of hard to follow, some of the characters occasionally speak in their native tongue. This is fine with the ebook's translator can handle it. However, Mumilaaq occasionally speaks in what I thought were symbols but is just a different alphabet, one which the translator couldn't work with. Toward the end of the book, I learned she spoke Inuktut, the main language of Iqaluit (in the Canadian territory of Nunavut). Interesting, but I have no idea what she was saying.

Anyway, there are unforeseen dangers and complications after the rescue, along with secret agendas, backstabbing, and broken promises. Nobody is really safe. Welcome to the Party.

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A few other notes that didn't need to be in the Library Thing review. Some of this stuff might contain spoilers.

As soon as the first person was blown up in their car, I knew that this wasn't going to go well for anybody. Oddly, from the excerpts that begin each chapter, I thought that the character was going to have a future ahead of him. I guess I missed what the date on that interview was.

A lot of stuff happens off-stage, and you have to read those things to understand what's going on.

The bit were the hacker is having a break-down didn't work for me -- this was when one AI murders a second AI which appears to be a part of her own personality. We're left to guess whether or not she'll survive.

There was a second experimental section where the same scene is told side-by-side by two different characters, one who is searching upstairs and the other who is searching downstairs. The problem is that niether character is anybody. They're both extras, and they're both on the same side, so they have essentially the same point of view.

This was weird to read in as an ebook, because I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling ... and then I have to scroll back. They weren't the same length, so it didn't make sense to go back and forth. If there had been breaks in the text, then maybe it might've made sense to try that, but I didn't.

I enjoyed this book, but I thought it fell about once the resuce went sideways, so I knocked it down a star.


If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Children of the Fire Moon (Bigfoot)

Children of the Fire Moon
Bigoot (2025)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a free Advanced Reader Copy from Library Thing. I'm encouraged (but not required) to leave reviews in exchange for the free books.

I'll be honest: I started asking for shorter books. My request is part of the reason that Library Thing now lists approximate page size in the descriptions. After getting several 400+ page books, I needed something a little smaller. This was under 200 pages, as are a lot of young adult books.

On the other hand, for some reason, I didn't notice that this one was authored by "Bigfoot", who also wrote Flume. I didn't like Flume. This one was a little better. Odd, but better.

I left the following review on the Library Thing website:

Three young kids live by themselves in an old cottage in a crater on a moon that circles a gas giant as part of an experiment that is never really explained. The kids themselves have no idea that they're part of an experiment and they don't know much else either. They know what they're taught by the Swamble, which is a mysterious voice that comes out of a lamp in a cave. They feed themselves by gathering spuds from trees but their supply is running out, and the kids are under-nourished. There's also an Observer in a satellite overhead who'd rather not get involved even when ordered to. One day, a rocket with an Alien shows up. We never learn the woman's name, and Margo calls her Twice-Girl because the alien is a girl who is twice as big as she is. She knows who the kids are and came to take them back to Earth. She sets up a picnic and tries to tell them a story but the kids won't listen to her. Bad things start happening, and the kids blame her. Who she is isn't really explained, and she's never named except as The Alien. Children of the Fire Moon is an interesting science-fiction tale that leaves the reader with a lot of questions, a few too many though.

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A few other notes that didn't need to be in the Library Thing review. Some of this stuff might contain spoilers.

The Alien seemed to be resigned to leaving the kids behind very early. She gave up pretty quickly after insisting on getting all three of them to leave with them.

Jimi had the biggest character growth, deciding that he'll be the new Swamble, despite being so weak and not knowing anything.

It was very difficult for them to climb out of the crater the first time, but the made it back down. It's implied that the did again a second time, weighed down with extra food but without blankets, which burned up, and the fact that Robert is now blind.

I couldn't tell if Robert was temporarily blinded or permanently disfigured. Maybe I missed it or maybe I didn't want to acknowledge it.

The Alien was in a hurry because she knew others were coming after her, but the others never came. And she apparently never went back to Earth. Who she, or the Observer, or who any of the kids actually are is never explained. Why did they experiment with these three kids? And are there other kids in other craters?

Too many things not explained. That aside, I did enjoy the book if for no other reason than it was better for Flume and didn't have the odd ending that Flume had.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Skim (Tamaki / Tamaki)

Skim
Mariko Tamaki / Jillian Tamaki (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a graphic novel that was donated to me from FreeCycle by a woman in Carol Gardens, Brooklyn. Thank you. I picked it up one Friday to be my Friday read after the other students had chosen theirs. (Nearly none of the students brought their own comic.)

The story takes place in 1993 at a private Catholic girls school in Toronto. I'm curious if the writer has a connection to that particular time (as in, that's when they attended) or if they just wanted it to take place before cell phones were a thing. Or both.

Kim is Japanese-Canadian, and she is on the heavy side. She's called Skim, right from the start of the book, like it's already a thing, but it's not a joke that she finds amusing. She's goth, practices Wicca, and has an arm in a cast because she tripped over her altar in her room.

She's friends with Lisa, who is also into Wicca. They go into the woods to attend a ceremony that appears to be a bunch of aging boomers more than Wiccans or goths. Since it's 1993, they could all be aging Hippies, I guess, close enough that maybe they attended Woodstock. Those details aren't important but Kim and Lisa find the outing to be a bit of a bust.

There's one teacher who Kim respects, Ms. Archer, who is the English and drama teacher, and here's where the drama starts. Kim is infatuated with her to the point of looking up her address in the phone book (another reason to set it in 1993, I guess) and then goes to her house. Ms. Archer stops her and says that she never gave Kim her address. However, she doesn't chase her off. In fact, the two start to become close in a situation that I would realize even if I were not a teacher crosses a line. The only resolution to this is that Ms. Archer is dismissed, off-screen, sometime in the middle of the book and doesn't play a role in the rest of the story. We don't even see her when she drops out Kim's Tarot card deck before leaving for the last time. (We don't see her, either.)

As Kim and Lisa start to grow apart, Kim starts getting closer to Katie Matthews. Katie's ex-boyfriend, John Reddeer, broke up with her and then committed suicide. No one knows the reasons, but the speculation is that John was gay. This is not confirmed, but it is the prevailing theory among the girls. Katie falls off a roof and winds up with her arms in cast (like Kim). Some of the girls believe that she tried to commit suicide over John Reddear and keep her close. She can't stand it.

There were times that I confused Katie and Lisa, because it's a black and white book and the biggest difference between them is their hair. That's on me, though, especially since I was only reading this on Fridays during class.

I found the book to be okay, but I'm not the target audience for such a book. It was a bit disturbing with the inappropriate relationship, which was never really addressed before the teacher was dismissed. I don't know the queen bee/wannabe culture of girl schools or teenage girls in general but there's a lot of drama. (I never saw Mean Girls, and watching it at this point would be silly.)

I enjoyed the artwork, and the use of diary entries for the narrative. I'll likely skim through the book (I see the pun) to find some pages to use in class to talk about the technique in story telling: use of background, graphic weight, contrast, etc.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

The Sorrow Road (Dunstan)

The Sorrow Road
Mark Dunstan (2025)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a free Advanced Reader Copy from Library Thing.

I left the following review on the Library Thing website:

Heavily inspired by Greek mythology but set farther north, The Sorrow Road is the tale of people from different nations being kidnapped by Satyrs and Cyclopes to travel The Sorrow Road, a sort of Hunger Games, where those carted away have a chance to earn their freedom if they can make it to the end of the Road before being hunted down by hounds, bears, satyrs, and Cyclopes.

The main group that we focus on, some of whom were enemies before they were abducted, don't believe that the Cyclopes will let them live so they set off cross-country through the mountains. Apparently, this has been done many times before because the Cyclopes mention it. And others figure out the same thing because the run into many others.

The format allows for some of the original travelers to be killed off because more will be added later. Unfortunately, by the end, so many are added that you never really get to know many of the characters or even care about them. You also wonder, considering how Brontes the Cyclopes is tracking Torben and his group, believing that they are exceptional prey, you wonder how so many survived to make it to the abandoned city.

If you like fantasy novels with big climatic last stand battles with mythical creatures, where no one has any plot armor and you wonder who will live or will they all get slaughtered, then you might enjoy this book.

I, on the other hand, thought it started off a bit clunky, but it picked up steam. I was all set to give it four stars, but the final battle just went on way too long after too much prelude. Any good editor would've cut 100 pages from this book, split before and during the final battle. (A good editor would've handles some of the grammar problems, too.) Too many character stories are set up that deserve some kind of resolution, but there's only death. And, honestly, some of the death could have been avoided if the author just didn't decide to kill the character. I don't like plot armor, but I don't like going out of your way to kill people either. (Also, two characters appear to have died but it turns out by some miracle they survived! They are immediately killed again in a scene that adds nothing to the narrative. They could've just stayed dead.)

And for all that, there's barely an epilogue to cover what happens after, even though years pass, and the little we get isn't satisfying for such a long trek.

I was determined not to DNF this novel.

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A few other notes that didn't need to be in the Library Thing review. Some of this stuff might contain spoilers.

Okay, it's been a couple of weeks since I wrote the above, and most of what I wanted to complain about have fallen out of my head. But I'll try...

For starters, too many of the characters had stories, and many of them are left unresolved because so many of them died before the end. We get one small epilogue for one character, and we get to find out that four of the core members not only survived the Sorrow Road but also the dangers of the five-year trek across the continent to get home. It isn't enough. It's almost as if the author was just as tired of this book as I was. And I literally pushed on to finish it.

We don't learn about other survivors, and no, I wouldn't want a sequel to let me know.

I think the satyrs bothered me if only because for all the Greek stuff (weapons, clothing, terminology) that I was expected to know in advance (I looked them up -- forget about what kind of sword the thing was -- I didn't even know it was a sword), the author went into a bit of detail about what a satyr is. In my humble opinion, if you didn't know what a satyr was, you definitely didn't know that other stuff. But on the subject of satyrs, they're supposed to be men on top and goats on the bottom. Okay, maybe with horns as well (the goat kind, or maybe the musical kind, too). As I kept reading, they started to seem more and more animalistic and they weren't very bright. They could've been orcs or kobolds, but I assume that they needed something bigger, more threatening (and more Greek?) to go alongside the Cyclopes, which are big enough that they kept getting called Giants.

And speaking of giants, they were supposed to be 11-15 feet tall or so. The cover made one look the size of a Titan just from the perspective because he was supposed to be farther away and leaning in, not just standing next to them. I would think 11 feet shouldn't be too much bigger than a centaur, with is half a human body on top of the body of a horse, particularly if a centaur reared up on its hind legs.

If more occurs to me, I'll update this, but I likely won't.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.