Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: ACCOUNTANT’S APPRENTICE

  • Spotlight on the October Awards! Don’t be Afraid!

    Adventure rises. Will you answer the call?

    A cavern with the words Adventure Calls

    October is the best month to step out into an adventure. We have three scintillating Programs to Submit to:

    • Ozma Awards for Fantasy
    • Paranormal Awards for Supernatural Fiction
    • Global Thrillers for High Stakes Suspense

    This spooky month feels like the best time for stories that inspire us to dream of realities beyond imagining, and threats to the world that leave us white-knuckled and waiting for the conclusion. What better place to find your next reads and submit your work than the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!

    Here are the Awards that are hungrier for your work than a horde of zombies.

    Ozma Awards

    Fantasy is that special world where anything can happen. We often go beyond Earth for this, looking into swords and sorcery, chosen ones and villains awash with power.

    Start out with our 2021 Fantasy Grand Prize Winner A Plague of Flies by Laurel Anne Hill.

    Excellent prose & description with an effective mingling of historical and fantasy elements. The tension is gripping and the pace is good. 

    Follow that up with From Brick and Darkness by J.L. Sullivan, a great YA Urban Fantasy.

    A new Teen Favorite, this Urban Fantasy delves down passages of mythology and more when Bax Allen unwittingly unleashes a demon into the world.

    And then you can wrap everything up with the 2020 Ozma Grand Prize Winner, Divinity’s Twilight by Christopher Russell.

    In the epic space opera a group of cadets must face the bloody past of their world, threatened by age-old conflict, and change the course of empires. Highly recommended!

    See the full list of 2021 Ozma Winners for Fantasy Fiction here. 

    Paranormal Awards

    What goes bump in the night and who are the superheroes who face them? The supernatural genre often involves vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, and superheroes. The characters may begin as ordinary, but they soon discover they may be extraordinary or transformed to be more than human.

    We would be remiss not to crow about J.W. Zarek’s The Devil Pulls the Strings. Reminiscent of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, this book took home the Overall Grand Prize Awards.

    J. W. Zarek weaves magic on the page, developing an epic, urban fantasy – first in series – readers will want to stick with for a long time. Highly recommended.

    The Insane God by Jay Hartlove brings back the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft in his mystery led by a trans woman.

    Sarah is cured of schizophrenia, only to face a battle with The Insane God. Her story balances humor, social issues like gender identity, and cosmic horror. Recommended!

    And, of course, it never hurts to remember Stoker’s Dracula with a book like Suburban Vampire Ragnarok by Franklin Posner that won First Place in the Paranormal Awards.

    Scott Campbell must face his divorce, job, and thirst for human blood, while caught in his fellow vampires’ political infighting. Recommended!

    See the full list of 2021 Paranormal Winners for Supernatural Fiction here. 

    Global Thriller Awards

    When you write a Global Thriller, you write about global consequences. The stakes are higher than ever before, whether or not this is a meticulously researched disease or a terrorist attack of epic proportions, you’ll want to read each one of these stories in one sitting.

    Ron McManus’ The Chameleon won the 2021 Global Thriller Awards

    Delightful to read with great development of story and characters. Clearly researched with a healthy dash of personal experience. A story to relish.

    Then you have First Place Winner Mission: Angola by the prolific Randall Krzak. Anyone who needs a series would be wise to check this one out.

    Xavier Sear is caught between dangerous factions and outnumbered in the first book of a new action-packed, tension-filled thriller series. Highly recommended!

    For those who prefer more of an environmental story, check out A Divine Wind by Norman M. Jacobs, another First Place Winner.

    See the full list of 2021 Global Thriller Winners for High Stakes Fiction here.

     

    You Can’t Win if you Don’t Submit!

    Enter the CIBAs today! Your book deserves to be discovered. 

    Blue button that says Enter a Writing Contest

  • ACCOUNTANT’s APPRENTICE II: The Return of the Fifth Horseman by Dennis M. Clausen – Spiritual Fiction, Contemporary Social Issues, Political Fiction

    Justin Moore fights for the survival of his homeless Mission – and potentially the world – in Accountant’s Apprentice II by Dennis M. Clausen

    As the reader catches up with Justin in this sequel, he now directs the East Side Rescue Mission in San Diego. The mission sits far from the clean streets and tourist attractions of downtown. As a homeless shelter, East Side Rescue provides temporary beds for as many as possible, homes for a few workers – including the director himself – and as many hot meals as they can afford for their residents and regulars.

    But the tide of homelessness and the desperation that follows in its wake is rising all over the country. San Diego especially struggles, with winters and summers that people can still survive even on the streets.

    Corrupt forces array against Justin and the Mission.

    These rich and powerful people will do anything to reduce if not eliminate the struggling homeless. They see them as only interruptions to their flow of commerce and tourists.

    Even Justin doesn’t always see how truly awful the situation has become. Not until he’s called back into service by his old friend and mentor, the late “accountant” A.C. who just might be literally on the side of the angels.

    Or, has Justin’s weary, depressed and downtrodden head merely created an illusion of his old teacher?

    Justin is an unreliable narrator. Even he can’t decide whether he’s hearing A.C. giving him a mission to save the world, or whether he’s deluding himself in order to feel a bit of hope. What if he just wants an escape from everything wrong with the world?

    But Justin doesn’t even know the extent of the trouble. When he dreams that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are literally barreling towards Earth, how literally should he take the vision? Neither Justin nor the reader knows for certain, but Justin, at least, has to try.

    Justin strives to save the world or at least stave off the inevitable.

    His quest will take readers on a compelling journey with roots in the allegories of Good Omens and American Gods. Along the way, they’ll find a fascinating puzzle hunt like The DaVinci Code – only with much higher stakes.

    Accountant’s Apprentice II explores everything from Renaissance art to ecological destruction. Political demagoguery and corruption frame the philosophical questions about how things got to be this way. Justin’s journey to hope and just a bit of enlightenment will keep readers guessing until the very last page – and after.

    Read our review of the first book in the series, Accountant’s Apprentice here.

     

    5 Star Best Book Chanticleer Reviews round silver sticker

  • The ACCOUNTANT’S APPRENTICE by Dennis M. Clausen – Magic Realism, Mystery, Philosophical/Apocalyptic

    The ACCOUNTANT’S APPRENTICE by Dennis M. Clausen – Magic Realism, Mystery, Philosophical/Apocalyptic

    Philosophically sophisticated, the supernatural mystery of Dennis M Clausen’s The Accountant’s Apprentice is reminiscent of the classic apocalyptic comedy Good Omens while bringing its own unique and serious take on the fight against good and evil.

    Justin Moore is a priest on leave after witnessing a murder in his parish office. He is haunted by the events and struggles with making sense of what happened and why the assailant spared him.

    Living in a small rundown studio apartment, Justin makes ends meet by becoming the driver of a mysterious neighbor who calls himself A.C. and claims he is an accountant. But Justin quickly becomes suspicious of his new employer when he fails to find any information about A.C or his company. To make matters worse, Justin attracts the attention of local police after not one, but two neighbors die while living in the apartment across the hall from him.

    As Justin investigates the strange events he is connected to, he begins to question his state of mind, unable to pinpoint the agenda and motives of his mysterious employer. Whenever Justin finds answers, several more questions appear as more and more people connected to him end up dead. In the end, Justin learns that there are forces at work above his understanding and that he has an important part to play in it all.

    Dennis M Clausen is a masterful writer that creates a full and multi-faceted story in a relatively small package. In what starts out as a mystery with a spiritual backdrop, the plot quickly brings in philosophical questions about the good and evil of our capitalistic society and what effects artistic genius has on the world. There are also touches of the supernatural that come into play as Justin tries to make sense of the mysteries around him.

    Clausen develops Justin Moore with a level of mystery to the character, who can arguably be seen as an unreliable narrator. Not much is known about Justin and his life before the traumatic incident he witnesses, and the details of that event change ever so slightly every time he goes back to those memories. These changes and other events cause Justin to question his reality and make him an interesting narrator. Even less is known about the characters A.C. and Ilsa, but they both undergo their own satisfying character development by the story’s end.

    A compelling novel, The Accountant’s Apprentice, leaves many areas of the story unexplored and underdeveloped in a way, perhaps to maintain a mysterious atmosphere. Certainly, its effect will leave readers longing to know what happens next. Perhaps a sequel? (We hope!)

    Clausen employs multi-genre storytelling here, and this approach makes the book a screaming success. In that complexity, there is a literary feast. It is spiritualistic, philosophical, supernatural, mysterious – and apocalyptic. In other words, this story has a charismatic appeal for everyone.