![]() The Fourth Tier starts out with Demba, of the city Kaz, under a beautiful sky which really shows the author’s strong suit of visual description. This is a dark fantasy filled with sorrow, conflict, and a vast cast of characters. The work is heavily driven by dialogue, and there is a formalness around it that really gives the feel you are in another world or far away land. Be prepared to look both death and undeath in its face as these characters face the underworld head on. The underworld holds many secrets that the characters must uncover. The tasks are not for the faint of heart. We at NeoLeaf Press give this book our Silver Recommendation and rate it 4 out of 5 stars. To purchase this novel you can go HERE
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![]() Simon starts you out with a nameless loveless woman that the author portrays through narrative foreshadowing. What you end up with is the result of two different types of predators with entirely different desires. Julia is a man hunter. And she’s willing to go after her prize no matter the danger. Alex Bowman is cool, too good to be true, and the suave type with a dark alternative motive. Despite the warning signs, Julia plays her game to hook this 10/10 man, specifically manipulating everything she can to be around him. She starts to regret her choice when she reveals to Alex that she is in the law program at the University of Montana. His reaction should have been a warning sign, but after some smooth-talking Julia concludes he’s still a man worth perusing. Until the bitter end… Simon weaves the story together with dialogue and narrative focusing on character interaction. Although better setting description and increasing relatability of the characters would benefit the book, Simon does well at portraying two separate people with following their agenda’s and weaving a dark and suspenseful tale. We at NeoLeaf Press give this book our Bronze Recommendation and rate it 4 out of 5 stars. To purchase this novel you can go here HERE
![]() Tony Brunal depicts a dangerous and devastated, yet united, after war world. With snowstorms, collapsed cities, and ever-changing weather, the book moves you through the feeling of utter loss to a bright light that there may be hope. This present tense novel is filled with beautiful and moving imagery which gives you goose bumps at times. The beginning starts with a resemblance to a M. Night Shyamalan story line, but quickly moves into what feels like a prequel novel before a grand space adventure. As Time Narrows takes you through the story like a movie, setting great detail, but not getting too close to any one character. There is a dusting of typos and formatting errors, but nothing that takes away from the overall story and quality of the book. As Time Narrows makes you think of what a destroyed world would really be like, and lets you feel the desperate struggles to save humanity. We at NeoLeaf Press give this book our Bronze Recommendation and rate it 4 out of 5 stars. To purchase this novel you can go here HERE
![]() This character study of a man approaching the end of a long life with many regrets but no remorse is at times almost a stream of consciousness novel, other times an elegant soap opera with deep, believable characters. The novella begins on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding day, where Augie is surrounded by the women of his life. Author J.C. Everett uses great emotional imagery to paint strong portraits of these characters; their interactions and smart dialog often turn into adroit fencing matches. Despite this, it does take careful reading in some places to keep sense of the cast of characters. While the author often makes excellent use of the five senses in setting scenes, physical locations are never overly established; this is most decidedly a character-driven work. We at NeoLeaf Press give this book our Bronze Recommendation and rate it 4 out of 5 stars. To purchase this novel you can go here HERE
![]() In Sisters of the Perilous Heart, author Sandra Vasher crafts an intriguing adventure tale set in a low tech medieval culture on a remote, alien world, sprung from Earthly explorers of the far future. Using a clever scientific premise, she creates two conflicting future “races”, Mortals and Immortals, and a well-thought-out “magic” system based on the source of their differences. Against this backdrop of science fantasy, Sisters follows the perilous journeys, both geographical and emotional, of two diverse groups of characters who are drawn together and then separated by events as they unfold around them. Most primary characters are well-drawn, and the reader will come to care about what happens to them; others are less defined. Author Vasher’s writing is crisp, and her dialog is both believable and true to character. Her scene-setting is sparse at times, leaving more to the reader to fill in than might be wise, but the plot and narrative flow well. Sisters in intended to be the first book in the Mortal Heritance series, and as such both stands alone well and yet does leave the reader wondering what will happen next. Something of a coming-of-age journey of one of the main protagonists brings a minimal romantic aspect to the story, which may be expanded on in future volumes. Excerpts from fictional works such as diary entries, reference books and scientific journal articles provide some insight into one group of characters who are never revealed in any detail, but the reader could be left wondering about the true reasons the protagonists are in conflict with them. One hopes this is intentional on the author’s part and will be clarified later in the series. But Sisters is mainly about adventure, conflict both armed and unarmed, magic, royal intrigue, and the beginnings of a culture’s race for survival. We at NeoLeaf Press give this book our Gold Recommendation and rate it 4 out of 5 stars. To purchase this novel you can go here HERE
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