Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "aliens"
Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies
Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies by Dario CannizzaroMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Dario Cannizzaro is a 35-year-old writer from Naples who managed to mislead me with the title of his collected stories Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies and a completely black cover of his book outlined with red images of a syringe, stars, planet Saturn, a cross, a profile of a woman, a naked female body, a hand digging out its way through earth, a spaceship, a pierced heart, and a cloud dialogue with xxx in it. My mind was sidetracked into believing that I will be reading gory, horror stories of aliens, zombies, death celebrated and life taken, so I embraced myself for this dark and short journey.
I was so wrong. And I wouldn't put a blame for it on Dario Cannizzaro for choosing this title and Vico for “lending his design talent” for this book cover. Actually, now when I reflect on everything that I've read in nine stories on 104 pages (Preface, Thank you and Bio & Contacts pages included), they are rather logical and smartly chosen. Only my dark and twisted mind has been looking forward to the rivers of blood and aliens and zombies hunting down the remaining surviving specimens of mankind!
Cannizzaro's stories are indeed stories about life, death, alien and zombies. They are stories about everyday life as we know it, life as it could be if things went slightly different (e.g. zombies walking among us, Pope admitting that aliens are gods we have been worshiping since the dawn of mankind), life and death that continue its perpetual circle despite the fact that aliens are watching us and we don't care much about it after the first initial shock of finding the truth that is out there, or that zombies are our new neighbors even though we do not see or hear them so we carry on with our daily life, normal as it can be under the new circumstances.
Cannizzaro's stories are also stories about love, passion and sex. In some we can so vividly taste the smells, fragrances and the bloodstream of Italy, in others we are faced with our own basic instincts, aspirations, cravings, hopes, dreams and memories. Some of them are not even two pages long, while others are a more complex and maybe even more demanding reading. All of them, though, are carefully written with Cannizzaro's beautiful style and meticulously chosen words and sentences.
Three of my favorite stories are Yet Another Zombie Apocalypse, The Best Place to Plan a Mass Shooting and The Announcement. If that describes me as an aspiring and sometimes misunderstood author who is scared shitless of zombies and hopes for aliens to come to his rescue, so be it. This is who I am. But these stories carry the weight of a deeper truth and hypothetical and yet not-so-alien reality, if we only allow ourselves to think outside the box we have been put and locked into.
There is one particular story I wanted to mention at the end and I am sure there is a good reason why the author saved it to end his first book of collected stories with it as well. Impurita is the most complex and in-depth story of them all, but what truly separates it and places it on a special pedestal is the beauty and love with which it is written, a strong and deep emotion and the poetry in every sentence through which it speaks to us. Would calling it a literary masterpiece be an exaggeration? I hope you will be able to tell me that after you read it.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
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Moobala Schmoobala Review
Moobala Schmoobala by M.G. WellsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don't deny I have a soft spot for aliens, especially if they are so cute as E.T. or Moobala Schmoobala. And I also have a soft spot for animals. So when Moobala Schmoobala visits Earth with his friend Boobala and encounters our animal kingdom, you get a super-cool picture book for kids!
On their exciting, enjoyable and peaceful journey to our planet they meet an eagle, a spider, fish, the bushbaby, coyotes, a dolphin, elephants, a giraffe, goats, hippos, a kudu, ostriches, a regal lion clan, and servals. Quite a bunch!
Illustrated by adorable images and written in a catchy rhyme by M.G. Wells, Moobala Schmoobala is a children's picture book, but grownups will love it too. Its intention is to teach the youngest ones about our wildlife and the harmony of coexistence on Earth and in the universe.
But there is also one other lesson, or moral, of this educational story meant for us adults. As kids, we dreamed big and believed anything was possible. Our world was beautiful, innocent and perfect, full of all kinds of creatures, wonders and possibilities.
If we only made ourselves to see it with these eyes again, on our return to innocence we would realize how amazing, special and promising it still was. For all of us.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
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Bernard Jan
The Thousand Years War Series Review
If you are a fan of high-packed action novels, and the rivers of gore and piles of dead, burned or evaporated bodies are your kind of thing, then you are at the right place! Welcome to The Thousand Years War Series by Angel Ramon Medina!
If we still don't believe we are not alone in the universe, it is the moment to reconsider our beliefs and everything they taught us as kids. Earth is under attack and our future and the future of our world rests on the shoulders of a few—a tiny group of four people—who put themselves on the frontiers of the new global war to save mankind.
Angel, Maria, Dayvon and Luis, popularly called our heroes in the three-book series, knew little about each other when the great evil decided to take over Earth for itself. They didn't have time to get familiar and overcome their differences when they bravely joined forces and stood against the new hostile, ruthless and violent alien race called gloobas, who already fought the similar war a thousand years ago. To save our world, they used a new virtual reality weapon, for whatever happens in this virtual world also happens on Earth.
In The Thousand Years War Trilogy casualties are many on both sides though the dead gloobas outnumber a lot dead humans and members of other alien races. Fight for survival is going on in all corners of known and unknown worlds: Brooklyn, Hollywood, the Arctic Core, the Solar System, black holes, outer space. Action scenes line up one after another like in a furious action motion picture, especially in The Thousand Years War and Revenge of the Gloobas: The Third Book of the Thousand Years War, while Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War gives us the brief moment of deceptive break when we get to feel the taste of a normal life of our heroes. In this central—and the shortest— part of the series, Angel, a victim of dirty politics and human enemies, has to justify his good name and his family's good name before he can take matters back into his own hands and sets himself into the ultimate and final showdown with the gloobas.
Even though all three books need additional polishing and editing and the author's writing skills a little fine-tuning (Revenge of the Gloobas much less than The Thousand Years War and Framed), this Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican young writer gave us an amazing sci-fi adventure saga. On 1,030 pages (brace yourself for a long reading!) Angel Ramon Medina gave us evidence of his very vivid imagination and enormous capacity to write much and to write fast!
It should not be left unnoticed that in only seven months Medina wrote, designed, self-published and marketed three of his novels and Angel's Nightmare Adventures short story, which is a 2016 precedent! So whether we like alien-related stories or not, we must give Angel Ramon Medina credit for rocking the 2016 universe. 2016 was the year of Medina-writing-machine and we shouldn't surprise ourselves that the gloobas stood little chances under the onslaught of his virtual pen!
For more information on Angel Ramon Medina please visit The Hybrid Nation.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Thank you for joining my mailing list and subscribing to blog Muse!
If we still don't believe we are not alone in the universe, it is the moment to reconsider our beliefs and everything they taught us as kids. Earth is under attack and our future and the future of our world rests on the shoulders of a few—a tiny group of four people—who put themselves on the frontiers of the new global war to save mankind.
Angel, Maria, Dayvon and Luis, popularly called our heroes in the three-book series, knew little about each other when the great evil decided to take over Earth for itself. They didn't have time to get familiar and overcome their differences when they bravely joined forces and stood against the new hostile, ruthless and violent alien race called gloobas, who already fought the similar war a thousand years ago. To save our world, they used a new virtual reality weapon, for whatever happens in this virtual world also happens on Earth.
In The Thousand Years War Trilogy casualties are many on both sides though the dead gloobas outnumber a lot dead humans and members of other alien races. Fight for survival is going on in all corners of known and unknown worlds: Brooklyn, Hollywood, the Arctic Core, the Solar System, black holes, outer space. Action scenes line up one after another like in a furious action motion picture, especially in The Thousand Years War and Revenge of the Gloobas: The Third Book of the Thousand Years War, while Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War gives us the brief moment of deceptive break when we get to feel the taste of a normal life of our heroes. In this central—and the shortest— part of the series, Angel, a victim of dirty politics and human enemies, has to justify his good name and his family's good name before he can take matters back into his own hands and sets himself into the ultimate and final showdown with the gloobas.
Even though all three books need additional polishing and editing and the author's writing skills a little fine-tuning (Revenge of the Gloobas much less than The Thousand Years War and Framed), this Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican young writer gave us an amazing sci-fi adventure saga. On 1,030 pages (brace yourself for a long reading!) Angel Ramon Medina gave us evidence of his very vivid imagination and enormous capacity to write much and to write fast!
It should not be left unnoticed that in only seven months Medina wrote, designed, self-published and marketed three of his novels and Angel's Nightmare Adventures short story, which is a 2016 precedent! So whether we like alien-related stories or not, we must give Angel Ramon Medina credit for rocking the 2016 universe. 2016 was the year of Medina-writing-machine and we shouldn't surprise ourselves that the gloobas stood little chances under the onslaught of his virtual pen!
For more information on Angel Ramon Medina please visit The Hybrid Nation.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Thank you for joining my mailing list and subscribing to blog Muse!
Angel, Aliens and Zombies Review
Angel Ramon Medina is the author who writes faster than I get to read his books. He is the unstoppable writing machine and in less than past three months he has published his two new books! And as I write this, he is working on his new book. Crazy man, I tell you! Crazy in a good way.
If you like aliens, grab the last sequel Life's a Beach Expansion Pack Story of his The Thousand Years War series. If you like zombies, dig into the plagued action horror Angel's Nightmare Adventure 3: Nemesis.
On a second thought why choose between any of them? Just read both books!
If you have followed this indie author from his first self-published books, you have noticed the advancement in his writing and style. With these two new books, Angel did one more step forward toward his old/new Videogame/LitRPG/GameLit genre. You may ask yourself what the heck is that? It's best we let Angel tell us in his own words.
"When you think of a GameLit book whether it’s LitRPG, LitFPS, or whichever sub-genre, you think that the story mostly takes place in a "video game" world. The term GameLit is coined as a genre that has elements of a video game and we know that video games are not "real life". In other words, most titles in the genre have no real consequences in the real world since they take place in a separate virtual world." (From his article Gamelit/LitRPG – The Real Life Connection published on greatlitrpg.com, January 23, 2018)
Video games are not for everyone (I am not too big a fan either; if I have to choose between a video game and a book, books will win by a hundred to zero percent) but that doesn't have to concern you. His books are readable and fluent also with the GameLit touch, in a way adding to them being even more interesting.
Life's a Beach Expansion Pack Story is set in Puerto Rico and its story carries on from the events of the first book of The Thousand Years War series but you can read it as a standalone. While Angel and Maria with their new mates Ben and Steven are on a vacation in Puerto Rico, the gloobas summon their forces using the virtual world and strike again in their attempt to take over the world. Reading this novel after the actual catastrophe that in 2017 hit the whole island of Puerto Rico with hurricanes Irma and Maria is a bit an awkward and bizarre experience. However, Angel Ramon Medina, who survived the wrath of both hurricanes, has every moral right to plummet his fictional island into another ice age, freezing it to change the climate on the whole planet.
If you tasted the smell of explosions, scare and unease of Resident Evil while reading the first two books of Angel's Nightmare Adventure, the third part of the series Nemesis will catapult you there. The biggest change in the last sequel is that Angel is gone (lost somewhere in Croatia) and his girlfriend Maria is left to fight zombies and many other creatures that escaped from Hybrid's underground laboratory without him. Surviving the second zombie outbreak put her capabilities of survival to another test after she finds her family murdered and the whole of New York City faces the biggest threat ever.
If you like to be scared and thrown around by unstoppable action, those are the books for you. Angel Ramon Medina offers little compassion to his heroes and villains, sacrifices are given and taken with each turn of the page.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Bernard Jan
If you like aliens, grab the last sequel Life's a Beach Expansion Pack Story of his The Thousand Years War series. If you like zombies, dig into the plagued action horror Angel's Nightmare Adventure 3: Nemesis.
On a second thought why choose between any of them? Just read both books!
If you have followed this indie author from his first self-published books, you have noticed the advancement in his writing and style. With these two new books, Angel did one more step forward toward his old/new Videogame/LitRPG/GameLit genre. You may ask yourself what the heck is that? It's best we let Angel tell us in his own words.
"When you think of a GameLit book whether it’s LitRPG, LitFPS, or whichever sub-genre, you think that the story mostly takes place in a "video game" world. The term GameLit is coined as a genre that has elements of a video game and we know that video games are not "real life". In other words, most titles in the genre have no real consequences in the real world since they take place in a separate virtual world." (From his article Gamelit/LitRPG – The Real Life Connection published on greatlitrpg.com, January 23, 2018)
Video games are not for everyone (I am not too big a fan either; if I have to choose between a video game and a book, books will win by a hundred to zero percent) but that doesn't have to concern you. His books are readable and fluent also with the GameLit touch, in a way adding to them being even more interesting.
Life's a Beach Expansion Pack Story is set in Puerto Rico and its story carries on from the events of the first book of The Thousand Years War series but you can read it as a standalone. While Angel and Maria with their new mates Ben and Steven are on a vacation in Puerto Rico, the gloobas summon their forces using the virtual world and strike again in their attempt to take over the world. Reading this novel after the actual catastrophe that in 2017 hit the whole island of Puerto Rico with hurricanes Irma and Maria is a bit an awkward and bizarre experience. However, Angel Ramon Medina, who survived the wrath of both hurricanes, has every moral right to plummet his fictional island into another ice age, freezing it to change the climate on the whole planet.
If you tasted the smell of explosions, scare and unease of Resident Evil while reading the first two books of Angel's Nightmare Adventure, the third part of the series Nemesis will catapult you there. The biggest change in the last sequel is that Angel is gone (lost somewhere in Croatia) and his girlfriend Maria is left to fight zombies and many other creatures that escaped from Hybrid's underground laboratory without him. Surviving the second zombie outbreak put her capabilities of survival to another test after she finds her family murdered and the whole of New York City faces the biggest threat ever.
If you like to be scared and thrown around by unstoppable action, those are the books for you. Angel Ramon Medina offers little compassion to his heroes and villains, sacrifices are given and taken with each turn of the page.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Bernard Jan
The Shadowverse: May the Shadowforce Be with You
The Shadowverse: A YA Sci-Fi Superhero Thriller by John-Clement GalloMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
2019 is the year of discoveries for me. By accident, or guided by the starlight, I wouldn’t know, I came upon two teenage writers and authors who are still not out of their classrooms but are already “competing” with thousands of more experienced writers on equal footing on Amazon and other book-selling platforms.
In February this year, Michael Evans disarmed me and won my sympathies with his dystopian Control Freakz. A month later, John-Clement Gallo did it with his Sci-Fi adventure novel The Shadowverse.
“This parallel universe, what I call the Shadowverse, is a mere shadow of this one, where energies of all kinds reign. It is connected to this one by a series of wormholes—the creators of which I do not yet know. Sometimes the portals open where they should not.”
If this “definition” of the Shadowverse, in the words of the villain Titan, is not enough for you to grab and time-travel through this book, then I hope the group of six of our superheroes with their incredible powers gathered under the name the Shadowforce will be. Just out of their teenage years, they are warriors of the universe on a mission to save our home planet from the alien force which wants to take it over.
Still being a teenager, Gallo delivers us natural, funny and witty dialogues between his young protagonists and development of a clumsy romantic relationship I enjoyed very much. His personal expertise in martial arts (he is ranked a black belt in taekwondo and hapkido) gives his fighting scenes an extra-realistic touch and excitement.
But it is his love for astronomy, astrophysics and distant worlds that breathes life into this story. John-Clement is a teenager who dreams of stars. His enchantment by a star-spangled night sky and the modern culture of superheroes saving us in various blockbusters and comics is the real juice that sets his imagination in motion by creating a fast paced and action-packed story of tall, likeable and ordinary-young-people-turned-superheroes with an important mission.
If we had doubts about the future of Sci-Fi or dystopian genres, we can be at peace now. Both Gallo and Evans want to save humanity, they both have talent to entertain us and capture our attention, and their determination to write and publish the series of books is nothing but commendable ambition at such a young age.
What more is there to say?
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
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