Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Chanticleer 5 Star Book Review

THE SCALES Of BALANCE: A Vengeful Realm Book 1 by Tim Facciola – Epic Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Political Intrigue

The Scales of Balance opens with an amnesiac gladiator, a queen certain her husband must die for the sake of the kingdom, and a prince who will do anything to save his father. Tim Facciola’s first novel in the high fantasy series A Vengeful Realm is threaded through with plots of assassination and political intrigue, all fueled by a divine struggle for dominance.

A Vengeful Realm is a study in richness. Its characters, setting, and world-building, the vital elements for a strong fantasy, pull the reader into the land of New Rheynia where the most valuable currencies are loyalty and power.

Facciola excels at characterization, beginning with an engaging tapestry of backgrounds.

The gladiator Zephyrus’ first memories are in a temple hearing the words of a prophecy that he can’t understand. Depending on the interpretation, he could bring peace or destruction. His only guide is his iron morality, which he hopes is enough to bring him back to who he once was.

Prince Laeden discovers a Revivalist plot to assassinate the king. This splinter group is displeased with his father’s handling of mages in New Rheynia, thinking exile and banishment to be too soft of a punishment for those who would blaspheme against the Six Gods of Valencia. But the last person Laeden would suspect is his stepmother, Queen Danella, who plots against King Varros from his marriage bed. And that’s just chapter one.

Facciola’s high-fantasy world feels like a finely tuned watch. As the characters come to life, they move inexorably toward the only choice they truly have.

A study in freedom and free will, the question of what rights and choices the enslaved gladiators who surround Zephyrus have features strongly in the book. With factions vying for control, the Uprising of enslaved who push back against their torment are a prominent force to be reckoned with, and an easy scapegoat for darker and more powerful groups to blame their own enterprises on.

The disgust Zephyrus feels with being a gladiator fighting for the entertainment of a gilded cast is not shared by all of his new brothers in arms. Some resent his prowess with a blade, others ridicule him for spitting on the honor of their house, and still more are drawn to him for what his prophecy might mean for all those forced into bondage.

As the first book in a series, The Scales of Balance lights dozens of fuses that begin to burn and cross over each other. Careful readers who adore titanic fantasy authors like Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan will be thrilled at the plots within plots and intrigue behind every move.

With the fate of a kingdom in the balance, tension is sky high from the very beginning. Multiple points of view allow the reader to see how Queen Danella stays one step ahead of her stepson, and the little ways in which Zephyrus and Prince Laeden are able to subvert and close in on her machinations. Death waits around every corner for those who misstep, and each character knows it, uncertain from where the next strike will come or where it will land.

All told, Tim Facciola’s A Vengeful Realm takes its place with the best caliber of high fantasy books.

The story of Zephyrus and the world of New Rheynia isn’t one of might makes right and violence putting evil in its place. It believes a different path is possible, that hope for the future is not just a dream, but a necessary reality to push back against cruelty in power.

The Scales of Balance: A Vengeful Realm Book 1 by Tim Facciola won Overall Grand Prize in the 2023 Chanticleer International Book Awards.

November 13, 2024
SOUR FLOWER by Maryanne Melloan Woods – YA Coming of Age, Family Relationships, 1970s

Sour Flower, the unpublished feel-good coming-of-age novel by Maryanne Melloan Woods, contrasts the joys of teen friendship with the hardships of growing up in a broken family.

As a fourteen-year-old in 1970s San Francisco, Marigold (call her “M”) Hayes is fed up with her life.

M is very much aware of her role as the mature buzzkill in the family. Her parents, college dropouts and now divorced hippies, barely have it together. M often has to act as the mature adult for the sake of housing and basic necessities. With a spaced-out father who barely supports them and a mother who thinks her daughter is a square, it’s a miracle that M has kept her family afloat for so long.

When her English teacher suggests M apply to Barnum—an elite prep school offering scholarships to students in need—she dares to hope. Maybe this could give her a chance to pursue her dream of becoming a financially stable businesswoman.

But the application process poses its own challenges, one being an in-person interview with Barnum and her tragically embarassing parents. As she prepares her application alongside Philip and Gabi, her best friends who also come from broken homes, M must contend with a range of insecurities both childish and adult.

She stalks Barnum students to determine how she can fit in, sells her crocheted patterns at street fairs to make ends meet, and helps her friends see their own potential as she strives to find her writing voice for her application essay. M faces an uphill battle where the stakes for a young teenage girl seem impossibly high.

As a writer, Woods masterfully approaches the bildungsroman with equal parts levity and melodrama.

M makes a compelling and flawed protagonist. She extends her parental role to protecting her younger brother, making sure he gets every opportunity to experience the joys of childhood—often at the expense of her own. M’s ambition to break out of the conditions that hold her back propels her into the awkward antics and embarrassing mishaps rife in any well-penned young adult novel.

The backdrop of 1970s San Francisco’s hippie scene makes for a pivotal plot point, as M’s family butt heads with their stances on the Vietnam War unfolding in real time thousands of miles away.

A comedy of errors follows many of M’s sour-hearted decisions, but it’s precisely this trouble that draws people close to her personal authenticity.

As she begins to attain true maturity, M learns to embrace the contradictions in her life and in the lives of others. She discovers along the way that some of her so-called nemeses may be more like her than they’d care to admit. Fans of Louise Rennison’s Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird would find Sour Flower heartwarming in M’s aching desire to fit in, and in the lesson to take life a little less seriously while learning to accept all of its complexities.

Sour Flower by Maryanne Melloan Woods won Grand Prize in the 2023 CIBA Dante Rossetti Awards for YA Fiction.

November 11, 2024
THE BYZANTINE CROSS by Dena Weigel – Espionage Thriller, Cold War Thriller, International Mystery

The Byzantine Cross by Dena Weigel starts at the end of an explosive rogue mission. Sarah Kraft is committed to saving a record of irreplaceable relics from a bombing mission in World War II. Despite her extraordinary success, the OSS spy is later put out in the cold by her handler, Albert Phillips, for a mistake she didn’t commit.

Years after World War II has ended and the Cold War is dominating headlines, Kraft has a new role as an art insurance appraiser in New York. The company’s lip service for their rich clients and irreverence for her skills don’t sit well with Sarah. It becomes clear that her moral compass will soon lead her into unemployment. But right at the end of her rope, Agent Phillips returns to recruit her back into the organization, now rebranded the CIA.

Sarah Kraft’s mission is simple: break into the Kremlin and retrieve an ancient relic from before the birth of Christ.

The story cycles through multiple points of view, all trained with deadly accuracy on Kraft. The prize she seeks is the titular Byzantine Cross. Carved from Noah’s Ark, it is a revered heirloom of the Romanov family and was last seen with Rasputin, the Mad Monk. Now, the Vatican, the Soviet Union, and the United States are all poised on a knife’s edge, wondering if the Cross’s rumored mysterious power could be the key to the next weapon of mass destruction.

Traveling to Rome before her trip to Russia, Agent Kraft circumvents the old office, wanting to avoid the man who betrayed her and ended her career in intelligence. The culprit, Kraft’s ex-lover, Marco, remained silent as her professional life was destroyed when he let her take the blame for his deception. He reappears in her hotel room, hoping to ingratiate himself with Kraft to further exploit her for his own gain. Still with the CIA and charming as ever, Marco is a dangerous seductive force. But he’s only one of the forces arrayed against her.

Kraft faces the calculating Cardinal Max and the ruthless mercenary Yuri Feodorov as they attempt to take the cross from Kraft.

Even as a man of the cloth, Cardinal Max’s plans for the Byzantine Cross go far beyond a rich score. He believes the relic is the key to world domination and undying worship from the faithful. On the other side of the coin, Yuri hopes to fulfill his darkest desires in addition to the payout he receives from killing Sarah Kraft. Together, these men weave an entangling web that Kraft might not escape.

The mystery around the Byzantine Cross deepens as she meets her MI6 connection, Nicolai Rodzyanko, once she’s inside the Soviet Union.

As complications arise and Nicolai’s cover is compromised, the two agents are forced to flee both the Kremlin guards and Yuri, heading south toward Istanbul. Whether or not the spiritual power of the cross is real, there’s no questioning they face danger at every turn. As Kraft continues to unravel the history of the cross and its connection to Rasputin, she decides she can only trust herself to choose where the relic will finally be safe.

The Byzantine Cross stands for more than a simple relic.

Like the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones, it symbolizes the collision of ancient beliefs and the desire for power, something to be feared and revered by those who pursue it. Weigel weaves in themes of loyalty and doubt as Kraft tries to discover what this power might mean, and who she can trust to help her.

The Byzantine Cross takes the best of James Bond and Dan Brown and adds a dark layer of suspense into Sarah Kraft’s adventure. Having a woman as the lead enhances the dangers faced and gives a unique perspective for the thriller genre, making this a great debut that promises more adventures to come.

November 8, 2024
THE FARAWAY MOUNTAINS by Radu Guiaşu – Historical Fiction, Communist Romania, Social Issues

The Faraway Mountains by Radu Guiaşu is a fascinating blend of fiction and autobiography that brings to light the restrictive nature of the Communist Era in Romania and throughout the Eastern European Bloc. Experienced through the eyes of a group of friends, their persistence to find their friend perfectly illustrates the importance of human connection, even within the cold confines of a communist country.

Guiaşu begins his story as a chronicle of the entwined lives of childhood friends Victor, Dan, and Alex—who embark on a quest to find their lost comrade, Gabriel. Along their journey, they debate the important issues of their day.

Their discussions reveal the intricacies of daily life from the broad, to the particular. Topics like the oppressive regime in the country, the egregious ineptitude of some high-ranking officials, the deterioration of living conditions, and the recent and shameful destruction of numerous architectural gems are discussed right alongside the possibility of the national football championship game being another sham, the rising cost of foreign blue jeans on the black market, and the record heat wave they left behind in the capital.

This work pays homage to those exceptional individuals who, in spite of the harsh conditions their government forced on them, retained their moral rectitude, bravery, and irreverent sense of humor. It is also a condemnation of everyone who worked in tandem with these oppressive systems.

In the second part of the book, Guiaşu depicts the mutual desire of two close friends to explore the bright promise of the West.

He goes into great detail about the complexities of obtaining permission to leave the repressive country of his origin. During his quest to weave his way through the red tape, he demonstrates the various ways in which officials took advantage of the situation to preach to the populace about the superiority of communist society and the inevitable, rapid collapse of the West.

As the story portrays, citizens were forced to stand up for a corrupt system where those in power took unjust privileges at the expense of those below them. Through the characters’ conversations we come to understand how the elite’s hatred for the less advantaged populous was fueled by the knowledge that many escaped their control to a less restrictive and more comfortable part of the world.

This novel goes deep into the subject of communism to present a realistic picture of what it is like to live under such an authoritarian form of government.

Guiaşu conveys the catalyst and motivation behind the regime’s blatant deceptions, indoctrination, repeated defeats, and continuous repression by deftly blending his personal experiences with fiction. He expands the story beyond the direct scope of a single person.

This work offers a fresh perspective on the value of freedom and independence while showing the brutal grip of a power that seeks to crush the characters’ last hopes of escaping.

Guiasu’s The Faraway Mountains is a novel that masterfully balances intellectual depth, emotional relevance, and creative perfection during brutally oppressive times.

Readers are fully drawn into the book as its vivid imagery and rhythmic language demystifies complex communist concepts and issues. Clever depictions of the many characters and their variety of reactions show how people deal with ambiguity and look for purpose when faced with hardship.

November 6, 2024
SHELTER In A HOSTILE WORLD: Love and Peace Series Book 2 by Mack Little – Historical Fiction, Caribbean Slavery, Psychological Fiction

Shelter in a Hostile World, second installment in Mack Little’s Love and Peace series, is an epic tale of resistance, desire, and tragedy, saturating readers in the complexity of Igbo culture.

Little paints a character-rich portrait of the horrors of enslavement and the unthinkable violence against women in the Caribbean, locking people together in relationships molded by adversity.

Set in 17th century Igboland—the invaded region of Nigeria — and on the island of Barbados, Shelter in a Hostile World is a searingly brief novel packed with mesmerizing prose. It blends genres to create a literary language entirely its own.

Throughout Little’s story, readers follow the life and loves of Badu Obosi, a haunted revolutionary escaping enslavement to protect his daughter from sexual violence.

As he seeks shelter from the hostility of his exterior and inner worlds, he is submerged in memories of his early years as a passionate young man deeply in love with an unattainable girl named Ekemma. Although separated from him by class status in their Igbo community, Badu’s adoration for Ekemma is overwhelming and alters the course of his life.

Badu eventually finds a mature love with his current wife—an equally traumatized yet empowered Irish woman named Saoirse. She forces Badu to come to terms with his ghosts, regrets, and desires so he can release himself of his emotional wounds and forge a new life as a marriage partner and a free man in control of his own destiny.

Throughout it all, the paranormal manifestations of his past—known in Igbo culture as “Duppy”—threaten to undo him. In the end, Badu must let himself be rescued not only from his physical threats, but from the mental and emotional terrors that have kept him from living fully embodied.

Shelter in a Hostile World weaves in and out of time, place, and perspective, allowing us to see how Badu has been shaped by his experiences.

Throughout this short novel, Little masterfully entangles genre and theme — including coming of age, horror, romance, and action — creating an expansive collage that can touch a vast audience.

Little’s writing is not for the faint-hearted. Shelter in a Hostile World is a complicated, difficult story that invites readers to deconstruct plot, themes, and motives and find their way to the truth. Cultural expectations and traditions are troubled by the human experience. Fleshed out in vivid detail, these characters resist the constraints of easy interpretations.

Women experience a variety of sexual traumas, innocent people are the victims of slaveholders’ extreme brutality, and the ghosts of the wronged come back to reconcile with their wrongdoers, often in grotesque ways.

Even so, the novel forges a bridge between the inescapable past and the grueling present, allowing characters and readers alike to pass into a world where peace and hope can be found even amidst the most horrific of circumstances.

In the end, Badu realizes that all the regrets and desires “that pulled him in opposing directions receded until the whole of his thought and purpose crystallized into a ‘shelter in a hostile world.’” Similarly, this novel pulls together threads that appear to be leading in different directions and knits them into something whole and entirely its own.

Infused with sensory language and descriptions of setting, Shelter in a Hostile World pierces readers’ hearts and demands the dignity of their attention.

Shelter in a Hostile World by Mack Little won Grand Prize in the 2023 CIBA Shorts Awards for Novellas, Essays, and Collections.

November 4, 2024
PSYCHOLOGICAL SECRETS For EMOTIONAL SUCCESS by Dr. Kelly Rabenstein – Workplace Culture, Interpersonal Relations, Success Self-Help

Do you often feel that you sabotage your personal and work relationships? In Psychological Secrets for Emotional Success, Dr. Kelly Rabenstein teaches readers exactly what psychological techniques will help them strengthen and maintain their interpersonal connections.

Dr. Rabenstein is a licensed psychologist offering her extensive knowledge of how to make sound, conscious changes in mindset and perspective to help you thrive in relationships across the board. If a person can thrive, then they can be fully authentic to themselves and to those who surround them.

Psychological Secrets for Emotional Success follows the structure of thoughtful explanations and emotional explorations, followed by insightful exercises at the end of each chapter to help readers understand and improve both their workplace culture and personal interactions. These questions reveal where we stand and how to develop a more balanced life.

Dr. Rabenstein lays out the deceptively simple key to emotional success: a combination of awareness, education, and empathy.

The book starts with the suggestion that the reader keep a simple journal, writing down a sentence or two to track daily happenings. These journal entries, plus mentally engaging questions within each chapter, bring clarity to your personal intentions. You can then begin to reform thought patterns and habits to better serve them.

Empathy is a cornerstone of productive relationships, no matter which kind they are.

Without compassionate listening and communication, relationships become stagnant as the wants and needs of others go unaddressed. While professional relationships aren’t put second here, Dr. Rabenstein offers particularly focused suggestions on communication between partners.

This expert guidance clarifies the ins and outs of sending and receiving information between people. It also highlights the struggles that crop up when communication falls short, such as hiding needs or simply being dishonest. Any move toward improving or hampering communication in a relationship has a compounding effect, for the positive or for the negative.

Our interpersonal relationships – business, romantic, and otherwise – are the paths to happiness. Psychological Secrets for Emotional Success opens our inner pathways wide for the reader who is ready to listen.

Learn how to break down aspects of relationships, following clear and simple directions, and implement positive changes in each of them. It won’t be long until you reap the benefits of healthier connections and emotional success in every aspect of life.

Psychological Secrets for Emotional Success by Dr. Kelly Rabenstein won the 2023 Grand Prize for the CIBA Mind & Spirit Book Awards!

October 30, 2024
A SEA Of GLASS: The Stockbridge Series Book 3 by Gail Avery Halverson – Historical Fiction, Colonial America, Slavery

A Sea of Glass by Gail Avery Halverson is a sweeping historical novel that captivates readers as it takes us from the bustling world of Colonial Boston to the shores of Barbados. But the island’s burgeoning sugar industry harbors dark secrets for those trapped there, either by circumstance or by slavery.

The colonial backdrop is brimming with conflict. Businesses struggle under British taxation enforced by the hated Red Coats. With the dangers of traveling through pirate—and privateer—infested waters, there are more than enough shifting winds to keep readers engaged until the very end.

Lady Catherine Abbott-McKensie, her physician husband Simon McKensie, and their daughter Charlotte, enjoy the pace of life in Colonial Boston, but their peace does not last long.

After a very personal tragedy, Catherine starts imagining life would be better in her homeland of England. But when a free black woman who works for the McKensie’s attempts to do something out of the ordinary, Catherine finds she has reason to stay in Boston and stand up for what she believes is right.

Catherine’s not the only soul struggling in this tenuous world of Colonial America.

Her brother Charles is planning to invest in a sugar plantation in Barbados. He soon sets sail with his wife, Arabella, to visit the plantation in person. But on their way, they are beset by pirates and are separated from each other. Eventually, Arabella makes her way back to Boston, but her trauma from the pirate attack renders her nearly mute.

News of the plundered ship sends Simon to Barbados to find Charles, and they both discover the dark underside of the “Barbados Plan to Prosperity.” A plan with dire costs to both Catherine, Arabella, and the slaves who smolder at their unjust treatment.

A Sea of Glass includes excellently researched details, but its greatest strength is the relationships between the characters.

The reader will find themselves invested in everyone’s lives, both in their successes and perils. The rich emotion behind these characters will make readers empathize deeply with them.

As the third book in the saga of Lady Catherine Abbott and Simon McKensie, A Sea of Glass artfully shares the details a new reader would need, while not frustrating returning fans.

Any lover of historical fiction will find a meaningful read in A Sea of Glass, with the preceding Stockbridge Series fully living up to it.

A Sea of Glass by Gail Avery Halverson won Grand Prize in the 2023 CIBA Chatelaine Awards for Romantic Fiction.

October 28, 2024
THE LAST MAN: A Novel of the 1927 Santa Claus Bank Robbery by Thomas Goodman – Historical Thrillers, Criminal History, Great Depression

In The Last Man: A Novel of the 1927 Santa Claus Bank Robbery by Thomas Goodman, four men in a small, depression-era Texas town lay in wait to carry out their unique plan for a holiday heist.

It’s December 23 and a man in a Santa Claus suit walks into a bank. But rather than his bag full of Christmas surprises, he’s brought a gun. With the element of surprise on their side, the robber and his two partners would collect the cash, while another partner waited in the getaway car. It all seemed so simple.

At the time, Texas bankers—in order to deter crimes such as this—promised a $5,000 reward for any dead bandits, “and not one cent” for the capture of a live one. Should anything go wrong, the possibilities for disaster were clear as a Greek tragedy, but what could go wrong?

Guns blaze within minutes of entering the bank.

Robbers are shot. Two lawmen—including a popular sheriff—die. In swift order, the criminals are captured, and Texas-style justice insures the death penalty is on the table for all four men.

But that’s just the beginning of this 20^thcentury western crime novel.

Based on a true story, we learn the sad tales of the four men who came together, mostly as strangers, to commit the robbery. We follow each of them through their individual court trials, as the prosecutors howl for bloody vengeance and the defense battles to keep each of them from the electric chair.

In the end, they all are found guilty and put on the court’s—and the public’s—“naughty” list. Two face the harshest possible punishment, and one dies at the hands of a violent mob who drags him from his jail cell and hangs him after an attempted prison escape goes terribly wrong.

However, one of the four does survive his sentence.

Despite multiple escape attempts and clashes with the law, the last of the four men avoids the harsh sentences handed down to the other robbers and instead gets a shot at a real life even with his criminal past.

This book intrigues readers with each robber’s individual odyssey, their prison lives, escape attempts, and the unrelenting searches to bring them back.

Particularly gut-wrenching are the descriptions of life for at least one of the men on Death Row. He awaits execution behind what the prisoners refer to as “the little green door,” an iron door that closes behind each condemned man as he faces the grim fate that looms just a few steps away.

One of these condemned men watches as 13 of his fellow prisoners are executed. Man after man, they take that long walk to the little green door as gospel music from an old needle-drop phonograph announces the electric chair. We feel his anxiety as he wonders how many days are left until he will walk the same path. And as he watches the others take their final steps, he is propelled to a horribly rash and dark act.

The Last Man brings readers into the center of these men’s lives through a poignant selection of details.

Goodman not only presents the facts of their lives—he delivers the quality of those lives. These are no heroes. There’s not much to sympathize with. But they all deserve better than what they got under the harsh hand of Texas justice.

Fans of true crime should put this book at the top of their list.

The Last Man by Thomas Goodman won Grand Prize in the 2023 CIBA Laramie Awards for Americana fiction.

Thomas Goodman’s The Last Man is on sale as a Kindle ebook for 99¢ until Saturday, Oct 26th, 2024.

October 23, 2024
A GOOD DAY And OTHER MOSTLY HUMOROUS STORIES And LISTS by Radu Guiasu – Humor & Satire, Short Story Collections, Contemporary Fiction

Through the thirty-six diverse writing efforts of A Good Day and Other Mostly Humorous Stories and Lists, Radu Guiasu masterfully combines wit, whimsy, satire, and personal contemplation.

These vignettes cover a wide range of topics, styles, and techniques. While they often seem to be typical “slice-of-life” moments, Guiasu clearly has a knack for finding humor in even the most absurd situations.

As a native Romanian now residing and teaching in Canada, Guiasu writes from his own knowledge and experience. He often broaches serious and meaningful topics, such as the world of academia, growing up under a dictatorship, and a love of nature.

The book’s title story, written while the author was a graduate student, follows a central character who cheerfully muses on fellow graduates not pursuing careers connected to their degree. Choosing not to sell out, he furthers his education and teaches high school to troubled students rather than drive a cab. Ultimately, he loses both his job and his girlfriend, thus deciding to celebrate his newfound freedom by writing about it.

In “My Mao Experience”, a 7th grade class is chosen to offer expressions of grief when Chairman Mao dies, as part of the national day of mourning in Romania.

“The Day The Bear Came” focuses on two friends who are forced to overcome their differences when a wild carnivore confronts them on a camping trip.

Guiasu incorporates a variety of writing forms into this anthology—from short story prose and primary dialogue pieces to creative rejection letters, invented submission guidelines, and thoughtful lists.

After reading Guiasu’s work, and in particular his “lists”, readers will undoubtedly come away wondering why this quick-witted writer doesn’t consider a second career as a stand-up comedian. It’s easy to picture him on stage in front of a live audience extolling the virtues of “Life Lessons You Probably Won’t Find in Self-Help Books”; “Reasons for Giving an Amazon Book a Poor Review”; or “Clues That a Lion Tamer Job Is Not For You.”

Guiasu’s underlying style is clear and concise. The stories do not need to be read in any particular order, and a shared thread of humor and satiric sentiment unites their many distinct ideas.

A bevy of interesting characters fill this collection, including a young writer who is told by an elderly gentleman that he needs more life experiences before he can write; a masters student who works in the basement of a museum; a man quarantined until a SWAT team can capture the rabid squirrel that attacked a German Shepherd; and an individual trying to figure out which neighbor turned him in for leaving his home more than one day during the COVID pandemic.

This compilation clearly demonstrates Guiasu’s remarkable talent and lighthearted, clever tongue.

He turns simple observations into relatable tales using humor, irony, and exaggeration—simultaneously exposing flaws in modern society. An artful display of storytelling that will engage even the most stoic reader until they can’t resist a smile.

October 21, 2024
SUMMER CYCLONE: Magic at Myers Beach Book 4 by Alan B. Gibson – Fantasy Romance, Urban Fantasy, Fairies
The citizens of the three fairy kingdoms clash, forced to live shoulder-to-shoulder alongside ungoverned Outliers. In Summer Cyclone, fourth book of Alan B. Gibson’s Magic at Myers Beach series, unassuming tea-shop manager Stefán tries to find love while keeping all of fairy society from fracturing.

The three fairy kings, Theos, Zsombor, and Christophe, evacuate their people to Myers Beach. It’s only here that they have any chance of recreating fairy dust after their old sources had been poisoned, and saving every fairy life. They take in the Outliers, remnants of a fallen kingdom, and at first find good will between the groups. But with thousands of fairies moving in, they have to keep everyone on a short leash or else risk humans catching wind of their new neighbors. Resentment of these strange Outliers builds.

Stefán, a close confidant to Theos, struggles to keep anti-Outlier sentiment at bay with the help of some enigmatic and knowledgeable new friends. Rumors of him giving the Outliers special treatment grow stronger as some fairies begin to suspect that he’s actually one of them.

As an orphan of asylum-seeking parents, Stefán doesn’t even know his true ancestry.

But though his responsibilities weigh heavy on him, Stefán finds a bright spot in his life. He falls for Julie, the human woman who—even as a relative stranger—offered him kindness and support while he watched over Christophe’s recently-possessed sister, Princess Zoë.

Julie herself hesitates to be honest about her feelings, a recent failed relationship fresh in her mind. They tip-toe around each other, but draw gradually closer. Stefán makes her morning coffee and teaches her to cook. Julie shares her love of skateboarding, and the adventures she and Christophe had while travelling together the past few months. And at first, they bond as they help Zoë recover despite having lost her magic and wings to the witch possessing her body.

Julie worries, however, that Stefán and Zoë are getting too close. And with nearly all of her friends now fairies, it’s easy for her to feel like she has no lasting place in their world.

All the while, a murderous figure from the past—the very man who poisoned the old fairy dust—returns to take advantage of the weakened kingdoms.

Cross-kingdom tension builds beneath the surface until the fairies are nearly erupting. Agitators push greater and greater anger at the Outliers, empowered by the fear of a ticking clock. The royals only have a few weeks left to find the final ingredient to fairy dust before their people starve.

Each time Stefán and his friends think they have a solution to one of their pressing issues, it leads to greater outcry from the populace and more opportunity for sinister forces to take control. The patience of their people wears thin, and eventually, so does the patience they have for each other. Even a loving group of friends can be made to turn on each other with the right combination of fear and magic.

But with his willingness to tackle impossible tasks, and his deep desire to understand himself, Stefán opposes the destruction of his world while easily pulling readers into his shoes.

He and Julie are both outsiders among the people they love. But neither of them lets that stand in the way when their friends need help, proving that even if they don’t have the title of fairy royalty, they have no shortage of strength or nobility.

As it brings together both old friends and old foes from across the series, Summer Cyclone explores meaningful emotional threads.

Myers Beach shines with the return of characters from previous installments, particularly the fairy royals Theos, Lily, Zsombor, and Greta. Their distinct personalities weave together and clash now that they’re a team with the weight of fairy society on their shoulders.

Julie’s just happy to have her best friends back in her life, especially as Lily and Greta reveal that she’s going to be godmother to their future fairy children. But as a human, Julie’s as far from fairy royalty as someone can be. She has no magic. No authority. And as matters of state become overwhelming, she fears she’ll be left out of her friends’ lives once again.

Stefán’s easy friendship with Theos and Alias—nearly his adoptive brothers—is tested by the conflicting demands of royalty. While they all want the same peace between the different fairy peoples, Stefán will have to learn how to navigate changing dynamics of power.

Personal relationships blend into societal strife with dire stakes. Stefán and Julie lift each other up even as they struggle with their insecurities. And as the fairy kingdoms approach a vital choice in how their way of life will change—unity or division—Summer Cyclone delivers on the promises of its preceding books with a suspenseful whirlwind romance.

Read the whole series of Magic at Myers Beach!
October 14, 2024