Toby Bennett

This is my 26th SPFBO book, wow! Keep 'em coming!

I was expecting a book with pirates and the high seas; I didn't expect how this book would unravel. The story begins with a somewhat mundane magic school setting, where star student Adrian wants to secretly reject an imposed scholarship to a top tier school for the well-connected and royalty in order to go to an ordinary school to be with his twin sister Clare.

While everyone boasts Adrian's control of magic and impeccable mind reading, Clare has been struggling with water bowl scrying. Every time she looks into one, she sees weird visions of strange vessels and storms. Worse, she has once again been berated for accidentally setting a small explosion in a fellow classmate's desk. What her school doesn't know is that while Clare is getting caught time and again screwing up, Adrian's school approved cat familiar is actually a ploy to avoid getting into trouble of his own. He never intended it, but the day a little chameleonic gecko flew into his dorm room, he instantly fused with the little critter now named Eko. Clare knows that Adrian would get into huge heaps of trouble if the school that picked them up as abandoned orphans found out, so she has been helping keep Eko a secret.

Frustrated because both siblings are going to be separated forever due to Adrian's upcoming graduation, they take a stroll into an abandoned beach and find a shipwreck. Enthusiastic because he might find a pirate treasure trove, Adrian encourages his sister to go inside... until they meet a man that will change their lives forever.

Now, the SPFBO annual contest has been a source of direly needed reader exposure for indie novels, and competition has been getting increasingly fiercer with each passing year. Absolutely fabulous books that could stand on their own with more publicity have ended up biting the dust, and some of the judging groups have been dubbed death groups for good reason. This book reached a very envious semifinalist stage, and the interesting review for the contest was what prompted me to read it.

And man, the book is good, real, real good!

It is very hard to tell much about where the story heads because I do not wish to spoil anything. I loved self-professed pirate elite Captain William Stark. He is the epitome of freedom that draws plenty of pirate book fans, and he is not only an ace with the sword, but very knowledgeable in magic, diplomacy and ancient mythology.

Adrian suffers a lot during the course of the book, but his ordeal is very important because it is Clara's motive for joining forces with Captain Bill as he likes to be called. He acts as an encouraging mentor who sees great potential in her as long as she starts to believe in herself.

The world is bizarre and it may or not be a flat Earth (yes, flat Earthers are going to love this book). I know that when I am reading a book and feel frustrated that I have to pause it for any given reason, it is a really great read, and this is one such rare example where I would nab a page or two and devour it whenever I had the chance. This was a really thrilling read and while it did have a few menial flaws, it wholeheartedly deserved its rock-solid 5 stars. Chances are that I will not wait very long in order to start reading the sequel, and hope I enjoy it even half as much.

Good job!… (més)

Review copy

Toby Bennett was born in 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa. He holds a degree in philosophy from the University of Cape Town. To date he has written eight novels and appeared in various collections of short stories. Benjamin Knox writes fun pulpy genre-fiction, horror, a little sci-fi and anything gleefully maniacal.

Viral - Vector 1: Raw Feed is another twist on the traditional Zombie tale. Here the outbreak has been quarantined to an area known as the Western Sector. There are four types of the Undead. Stalkers. Shamblers. Scraps, and (New!) Dumplings.

"At first it had seemed a simple progression--the infected became stalkers, stalkers degenerated into shamblers and those to far gone to even qualify as either became scraps. The dumplings were what had everyone panicked. No one had imagined, until a few months ago, that the contagion had the capacity to gather those scraps together and turn then into a single organism."

It's now been two years since the outbreak. Armed with a potential cure, a group of military and civilian volunteers enter the Western Sector, believing their lead tank and Armored Personnel Carriers will offer sufficient protection. Problem is, no one expected the zombies would be that smart.

Viral - Vector 1: Raw Feed was OK. One thing I found to be particularly annoying was the use of channel surfing to bring the reader up to speed on what was happening. Not a bad technique, but with every click the next story would start at the beginning. I don't know about you, but when I channel surf I never have that kind of luck.

As a rule, I don't mind novellas, but it seems to me this story may have been better served as a novel. Given its $2.99 price tag, this puts the overall cost of the tale at $11.96. That's a bit high for an e-book.

Viral - Vector 1: Raw Feed will be available as an e-book on October 1st, 2015 with the rest of the series available on consecutive Thursdays. Published by Macabre Ink, a digital imprint of Crossroad Press.… (més)