Cathartic Review of Book About an Alcoholic's Daughter

Title : Intoxic

Author : Angie Gallion

Author Website : angiegallion

angiegallion

Genre : General Fiction/Coming of Age

ISBN : 978-1536904055

Amazon Purchase Link  

Reviewed by Jendi Reiter originally for Amazon

5 out of 5 stars

This stunning coming-of-age novel introduces the indomitable Alison Hayes, 

a 16-year-old girl living with her alcoholic mother in a trailer park in small-town Illinois. 

Wise beyond her years, forced into adult responsibility too soon, but a lonely little girl inside, 

Alison shepherds her mother through cycles of recovery and relapse while striving to pass 

the milestones of normal adolescence: a job, a high school degree, a crush on the

perfect-seeming neighbor boy who owns a horse farm. She also copes with the aftermath 

of sexual assault.

This summary may sound depressing, but although Intoxic has many moments of painful 

truth, the tears it elicits are cathartic, and the honesty and courage of Alison as she matures 

will inspire you. Rarely have I read a story so accurate about the complexity of loving and 

hating an abusive mother (and Alison's mother, while she is more tragic than malicious, 

is so neglectful that I must put her in this category). Most fiction about parental trauma 

follows a simplistic narrative arc from anger, to understanding, to forgiveness. 

 spirals through these perspectives, and back again, multiple times throughout the book 

and its sequels. She does not settle on a single verdict on her mother and herself, 

but rather, starts learning to hold all of these contradictions together..

I was especially moved by Alison's pervasive sense of difference from her peers. 

Besides the stigma of relative poverty, she is isolated by the lack of freedom to enjoy her 

youth. She has to worry about paying the bills when other kids are playing sports and

 picking out prom dresses. Nothing can distract from the mission of becoming independent 

of her dysfunctional mother and leaving the small town that knows their shameful secrets. 

This was very true to the experience of having a mentally ill or addicted parent.

The first book ends with a crisis that produces both grief and liberation for young Alison, 

and a mystery to be resolved in the sequel. You will root for her all the way. I swear 

I shouted at my Kindle reader a couple of times, "No, Alison, don't do that!" knowing 

she would have to repeat some of her mother's mistakes, but also having faith 

that she would rise again. What gives one damaged person the drive to learn and heal, 

while another sinks beneath the waves of depression and addiction? Intoxic will not answer 

that question (perhaps no one can) but if you've been on that journey, 

you'll find a friend and companion in this determined young woman.

MORE ABOUT THIS REVIEWER

Jendi Reiter is the author of a poetic LGBT Novel, Two Natures, and editor at the prestigious (and helpful!) WinningWriters.com. Learn more about her at http://www.JendiReister.com.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ). This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Lauren Jones Reviews Robert Eggleton's Sci-Fi Novel

• Title: Rarity from the Hollow 

• Author: Robert Eggleton
• Web site link: www.lacydawnadventures.com   
• Genre: Adult Literary Science Fiction
• ISBN: 9781907133060;1907133062
• Purchase Links: 

https://www.amazon.com/Rarity-Hollow-Robert-Eggleton/dp/190713395X/

http://www.amazon.com/Rarity-Hollow-Robert-Eggleton-ebook/dp/B017REIA44

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rarity-from-the-hollow-robert-eggleton/1118420669#productInfoTabs

http://www.doghornpublishing.com/wordpress/books/rarity-from-the-hollow 

Reviewed by Lauren Jones originally for TurningAnotherPage.com

REVIEW

Tom threw in a couple of Amen’s. After finishing the psalm that she had learned in church, she looked into his eyes. “There was nothing that you saw that should have shaken your belief in Jesus. What you saw and what you will see on our mission will make him look stronger and bigger. Jesus is much more than human-kind. He existed for the salvation of all—not just humans. All means all. His sacrifice was never meant to have been discriminatory or selective to just one kind of people on one planet. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It’s just like you know in your heart. Good and evil have always been and will always be the balance on which survival of the universe depends.”

What would you do if you were tasked with saving the Earth or even the entire universe? If a cyber robot came to you from another planet, what would be your first thought? Would you feel crazy? Would you feel safe? What about fearful or excited? All of that is a bit much to take in, but what if you were only an eleven-year-old and told that you were the only one who could do it? With this novel, it is very difficult to put words down regarding the true emotional turmoil that exists in the main character’s life. The author creates an elaborate world, filled with an abundance of fantasy and science fiction. This world contributes to most of the story, an illusion of a world that a little girl can escape to in an attempt to avoid the inevitable and harsh reality of abandonment and abuse.

This story begins with Lacy Dawn, an eleven-year-old girl, who lives in a place called the Hollow. She talks to the trees, the rocks, her dog Brownie, a robot named Dot-Com, and her dead best friend. The first sign that something didn’t seem right, was the dead best friend. Now, this story is for adults and there is satire, but this is not to be misconstrued as a light or easy read. This is definitely not an easy story to read due to content, but it is brutally honest and very credible for an eleven-year-old who has lost her best friend and in a sense, her family as well. Lacy Dawn has suffered abuse at the hand of her father, and her dead best friend died at the hand of her father, aka the meanest daddy in the world. Once Lacy Dawn finds Dot-Com, things start to change for her. This robot teaches her things through plug-ins and tells her that it is her job to save Earth and make the universe safe…from what, he isn’t allowed to tell her until she completes a series of tasks that will validate her capability of such an important task. Can she get the help that she needs to save the entire universe?

Eggleton has a certain way of twisting the seriousness of the story with the satire that follows Lacy Dawn and her entourage on their journey. There are a lot of quips and a ton of experiences that these characters go through that symbolize real-life problems that we, as people face on a daily basis. From an eleven-year-old’s point of view, can it be deeply misunderstood, definitely! Can it be taken out of proportion, absolutely! But, is it credible and original, yes it sure is. Think about what preteens think about at that young age and then readers will be able to rationalize the thought processes that occur within the story. This author does a superb job with character development, but the reader must be open-minded to keep pace with the outlandish scenes and spontaneous adventures that the characters partake in as well as the depth of the issues portrayed. Most of the issues faced are taken lightly by the characters as if this is the typical way of life, but readers must remember that some of these characters do not know any differently and to them, this is the way life is. If you are a reader of science fiction and psychological fiction, you may want to try this book.

A copy of this book was provided to Turning Another Page by the author, but this in no way affects our honest opinion of the book or the review that has been written. We provide a five-star rating for Rarity from the Hollow by Robert Eggleton.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. 

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Dr, Wesley Britton Reviews Historical Novel

The Angel Strikes

Series: Volume 1 of The Brandt Family Chronicles

Subtitle: The Napoleonic Wars

Author: Oliver Fairfax

Paperback: 264 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2 edition (September 10, 2016)

ISBN-10: 1530995760

ISBN-13: 978-1530995769

Purchase on Amazon

Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton originally for BookPleasures.com

Should you see some of the publicity for The Angel Strikes, potential readers might think they’re learning about a new novel deeply involved with the Napoleonic wars. In a sense, that’s true,  especially in the last quarter of the novel. But much of The Angel Strikes isn’t a typical historical drama. In fact, it doesn’t read like most modern historical fiction but rather feels like a personal memoir or a novel written during the period where everything is set, that is the early years of the 19^th century. Just don’t expect much in the way of military action or struggles among the powerful movers and shakers of the period until the latter sections of the story.

The central figures at the beginning of the story, young orphan Paul Brandt and his uncles Franz and Albert, are Russian serfs trying to escape the poverty and misery of their lives by traveling east. Come winter, the trio hole up at an abandoned hut in a German forest, as far removed from worldly affairs as one could get.         But not for long. On the road near the hut, two women enter the men’s lives, Anna, a young waif, and her protector, the somewhat mysterious Rosalina.   Then other travelers draw the little company into larger affairs including agents for Napoleon’s Imperial Police, along with other gentlemen who might be German, English, or possibly American.

The French agents, enjoying the protection of Napoleon’s power over Prussia, have no problem murdering whomever they like and destroying anyone’s property they choose in search of important lost documents.   On the run from these agents, Paul, the narrator of the story,  and his group become involved in a battle between French forces and the Prussian army. Paul becomes known as the “angel of Jena” for his courageous killing of French soldiers which allows some Prussians to escape a slaughter on the battlefield.

As their picaresque journey continues, the party arrives at the castle of a friendly Duke who gives them lodging and protection while French assassins, a lusty seamstress, a pedophile priest, various servants trustworthy and otherwise, and a handful of spies become part of the growing Brandt social circles. At the same time, Paul gets more and more formal and informal education in the ways of a sophisticated world far removed from his Russian roots. Throughout his personal odyssey, Paul’s life is shaped by the influence of the Napoleonic clamp on Prussia and the fires of resistance he becomes part of.   Then, Paul takes us to Berlin where a young man on his own acquits himself very well by demonstrating what he has learned. It’s this part of the story where Paul Brandt is inevitably drawn into an important role in European history.

Author Oliver Fairfax deserves considerable credit for the level of minute detail he provides. He gives every scene and character in the book complete believability. He avoids making certain incidents melodramatic which other authors would be tempted to pump up. Again, readers can be forgiven for thinking they’re reading a story written between 1804 and the following decade in both style and substance. Perhaps some readers might be unhappy at the amount of description given meals, clothes, dwellings, and transports as well as the lengthy scenes establishing characters and their relationships intertwined with the shots of muskets and the cuttings of daggers and sabres.    Not until the final chapters do we witness an epic yarn spun out on a grand scale, but until then we experience a story that’s  engaging, personable, and likely to whet the appetite of many a history buff to continue the adventures in the sequels. After all, Oliver Fairfax has very successfully set the stage for the role of Paul Brandt in the coming conflict between France, Russia, and Prussia in 1812.    

 MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

  

Dr. Wesley Britton is the author ofThe Beta Earth Chronicles and a reviewer for BookPleasures.com. 

Explore the Beta Earth Chronicles website:

https://drwesleybritton.com/books/

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MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. 

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Literary Journal Shares Carol Smallwood Poetry Review

Interweavings
By Carol Smallwood
Shanti Arts Publishing, Brunswick, ME.
2017
ISBN 978-1-941830-46-8 
paperback, $16.95, 162 pages.


Reviewed by Kathrine C Aydelott, MLIS, PhD., Dimond Library, University of New Hampshire originally for Big Muddy: A journal of the Mississippi River, Fall, 2017

As Lynn Z Bloom writes in “Living to Tell the Tale: The Complicated Ethics of Creative Nonfiction,” “Because writers of creative nonfiction are dealing with versions of the truth, they—perhaps more consistently than writers in fictive genres—have a perennial ethical obligation to question authority, to look deep beneath the surface, and an aesthetic obligation to render their versions of reality with sufficient power to compel readers’ belief” (278). Carol Smallwood brings us into her world, shares her perspective, and we believe her.

Smallwood, well known in library circles for her volumes on libraries and librarianship, including ALA published titles Library Management Tips that Work (2011), and Bringing the Arts into the Library (2014), is also widely acclaimed for her poetry, in titles such as Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity, and Other Realms (2016), which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and for the well received In Hubble’s Shadow (2017).

She is as adept at creative nonfiction, as demonstrated by her recent volume, Interweavings (2017), a series of forty-three short essays, separated into seven categories: Visits, The Feminine Side, A Sense of Place, A Backward Look, Things Literary, Strands, and Observations. Conversational and sometimes intimate in tone, the book reads easily, like letters from a friend. The essays are often very short, almost to the point of being sketches, and like musical refrains, elements brought up in one story circle back again later in the collection, tying the whole together.

Libraries, texts, and learning are prominent in these essays and it’s clear that Smallwood has a deep love for words, for education, for science, and for books. But for me, the motif of time passing predominated my readings. In retirement, Smallwood has moved to a small college town from a larger city, and her private thoughts and public encounters center around moments of connection and disconnection, of nostalgic looking backwards and of the necessary moving forward. Smallwood is on the cusp of the rest of her life, and many of the familiar elements of society are taking new shapes in the face of war, technology, aging, and of transition generally. Like Sarah Orne Jewett’s nineteenth-century short stories of Maine, or Virginia Woolf’s twentieth-century musings in Mrs. Dalloway, in Smallwood’s work we see a familiar world coming to an end and a fragile new era about to begin.


For example, in the first essay, “The Library Visit,” Smallwood, writing this time in the third-person, is struck, Alice-like, by a college campus’s renovation of a traditional institution. The building’s newness makes her feel foreign in a familiar place. The library itself is in a period of transition. If the books “didn’t have the answers, they’d done their best,” and the reference area is “deserted” (16).  The “psychedelic” carpet evoked the seventies, while the technology of the expanding bookshelves “encouraged a wariness of being smashed when you walked between them” (20). In Woolfian stream-of-consciousness, asking herself questions discursively, she muses on the architecture inside and the environment outside, all while the library’s new atrium windows evoke a beautiful panopticon, where all of nature is staring back at her, beckoning the author in spite of the rain, to return to an arena that is familiar and unchanging.



Thinking in snippets of lyric language, Smallwood both locates the reader in the present and simultaneously makes clear that there is a discomfiture of time and place. A feminine zeitgeist predominates. In the essay “Women and Time,” Smallwood remarks that “Perhaps their monthly cycles give women an accurate sense (call it intuition) that everything is in flux as they revolve on a planet that’s still forming” (40). As such, Smallwood’s details depict everything as new, and we enter the author’s mind that is observant in all of the senses.



Although her tone is often gentle and wistful, the author travels lightly along in the current of change. In “Karen’s Visit,” she thinks her friend’s voice “had such sadness in it that I wanted to show her it was possible to have dreams” (33). In “Women and Time” Smallwood even admits that “Time is an illusive, slippery, chimerical companion, exasperating to understand especially as one gets older and no closer to finding wisdom long thought to accompany age” (40-41).



Some of the essays are ultimately too short and read more like blog entries than finished pieces. I would have been happy if many of these had been longer, as it is a pleasure to spend time with the author as she considers her life’s triumphs, her reading, and her memories. The strongest essays are in the beginning, I feel, in Visits, where the writing shines and the words are most compelling. But don’t overlook the final essay, “They Will Come,” which masterfully closes the volume. This essay speaks of spring, and renewal, and here Smallwood acknowledges what she does not know, and is confident in the ambiguity. She states, “Yes, I will capture spring this year. Or, like aging, will it be too gradual and immense to grasp?” (159). Interweavings is an attempt to understand what it means to age, in all of its gradations and immensity. 


Philip Gerard, in Creative Nonfiction, defines the genre as “stories that carry both literal truthfulness and a larger Truth, told in a clear voice, with grace, and out of a passionate curiosity about the world” (208). Carol Smallwood’s writing epitomizes this definition.





1.     Bloom, Lynn Z. “Living to Tell the Tale: The Complicated Ethics of Creative Nonfiction.” College English, vol. 65, no. 3, 2003, pp. 276–289. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3594258.



2.     Gerard, Philip. Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life. Cincinnati: Story, 1996.











MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Veteran Book Review Chief Passes Along Competitive Tip for Authors

The editor-in-chief of Midwest Book Reviews has given me permission to reprint editorials (and other things) from his newsletter. He must know how valuable what he has to say are for readers of this blog. They are, of course, readers looking for great new mostly alternative reading, reviewers who want more exposure for the books they cared enough about to review, and authors who like extending exposure for their favorite reviews (see submission guidelines in the left column of this blog!).  There are a few others who come back time again like blog tour operators and publishers who care about the publicity their authors are getting!  

Today, my borrowings from Jim Cox are especially important because they help all those people compete for the limited space available for reviews these days when some 700,000 books a year are released. So listen up!   

Dear Publisher Folk, Friends & Family:

Some sixteen or so years ago I wrote an article called "War, Religion, and Publishing" in response to the 9/11 attack in New York. I had quite forgotten that article until Mark R. Anspach (an author living in Bologna, Italy) submitted his book "Vengeance in Reverse: The Tangled Loops of Vilence, Myth, and Madness" and included a reference to my article in his accompanying cover letter as the reason that he thought I would find his book of particular interest.

That prompted me to go back and re-read what I had written so long ago. It's archived, as most of my stuff is, on the Midwest Book Review. Here's the link to that specific article just incase you are interested or curious:

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/advice/war.htm

I think it still applies to the world as we see it today -- only add North Korea and the Russian corruption of the American electoral process to the mix.

The reason I'm referencing all this is actually because author Mark Anspach's referencing that article in his cover letter [also called query letters] was an excellent (and effective) marketing tool used by him when submitting his book for review against all the competing titles for my attention -- and underscores the importance of the cover letter as a tool of persuasion. If you as an author, publisher, or publicist know something about a reviewer that would incline him or her to view your book submission favorably then use it.

Perhaps you are aware that the reviewer has reviewed other books in the same genre or subject matter as yours. That's always a good 'opener'. It also tends to flatter the reviewer (who will have an ego at least as large as any author) that you are aware of their work.

In the game of poker, 'suited connectors' (that is two cards of the same suite that are in line with each other such as 8 & 9, or King & Ace) has an additional 2% statistical chance of winning over two connected cards that are of different suites. That's called an edge. -- Knowing something thematically favorable about a reviewer with respect to your particular book gives you a similar kind of edge over your competition which is comprised of all the other books being submitted to that reviewer whose time is limited. Believe me, any reviewer that is competent and conscientious will always have far more books presented to him or her that he or she will have time to deal with.

By the way, Mark's books turned out to be exceptionally well reasoned, written, and 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation -- and thematically in line with that old article of mine. You'll find the review for his book on the Midwest Book Review website this month (October 2017).

All of the previous issues of the "Jim Cox Report" are archived on the Midwest Book Review website at www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/jimcox.htm. If you'd like to receive the "Jim Cox Report" directly (and for free), just send me an email asking to be signed up for it.

So until next time -- goodbye, good luck, and good reading!

Jim Cox

Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive, Oregon, WI, 53575
http://www.midwestbookreview.com

NOTE FROM CAROLYN

Speaking of cover letters! I interviews more than 100 agents for the chapter in my The Frugal Editor to get their cover letter pet peeves. I edited them down to several and quoted them in the chapter.  They were kind enough to help me help authors, I also listed them as a resource in the Appendix of that book.  You will find more on cover letters in The Frugal Book Promoter and sample cover/query letters in both of those books.   

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ). This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Author/Reviewer Resource for New Book Review Visitors

I know. This isn't a review. It's a resource! One I thought would appeal to the authors who visit this blog and maybe inspire more readers to follow my new writing friend's lead!  And more authors to review as part of their marketing campaign as suggested in How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.

One of the attendees at the last conference I presented at is offering to review my SharingwithWriters subscribers’ books. All you need to do is send him one of your famous HowToDoItFrugally query letters. He says, “My preferred genres in descending order are: historical fiction, spies and espionage, war and military, history, action and adventure, and biography. I will read other genres if the topic appeals to me. I do not want to read vampires, zombies, Christian lit, or romance. A book with a romantic theme may interest me if it falls into one of my preferred categories. If you care to check my reviewing style, there are some here: https://scottskipperblog.com/.There are only a few because I recently had to move from Blogger to Wordpress. Find Scott Skipper at: 

Official Author's Website www.ScottSkipper.com
Facebook.com/Scott Skipper@SSkipperAuthor  

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ). This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Essays for Planet of the Apes Buffs and Newbies Reviewed

Title: Bright Eyes, Ape City

Subtitle: Examining the Planet of the Apes Mythos

Edited by Rich Handley and Joseph F. Berenato

Paperback: 306 pages

Publisher: Sequart Research & Literacy Organization (March 13, 2017)

ISBN-10:1940589150

ISBN-13:978-1940589152

Purchase on Amazon

Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton originally for BookPleasures

Many times over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of reading and reviewing a number of essay collections published by the Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. Sequart specializes in analytical explorations of popular culture figures, especially characters like Batman and the X-men who have roles in both comics and on screen as well as sci fi phenomena  like Star Trek in their comic incarnations.   

      Naturally, the publisher’s  first look into Planet of the Apes lore began with 2015’s  The Sacred Scrolls: Comics on the Planet of the Apes edited by the same team responsible for this year’s comprehensive look into, well, pretty much every other incarnation of Apes projects.    This includes analyses of Ape films, books, TV shows, even British rodeos. British ape rodeos?

In fact, nearly every page of Bright Eyes, Ape City is filled to the brim with surprising historical tidbits and well-considered perspectives from Ape experts and self-admitted Ape geeks.   Appropriately, the essays begin with   Robert Greenberger’s “Welcome to the Monkey Planet,” an appreciation of author Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel where it all began.

I suspect most serious Ape geeks will want to compare their own perceptions with the essays that discuss the first five films, including “Love Conquerors All: Sci-Fi's Greatest - and Most Feminist – Couple” by Ian Brill, “Nothing Ape is Strange to Me: Looking at Escape and Conquest Through the Eyes of a Zoo Professional” by Corinna Bechko, “The Second American Revolution: Did Another Coup on U.S. Soil Precede the Apes' Own Conquest?”by Jim Johnson and “The Mis-Shape of Things to Come: Paul Dehn's Planet of the Apes” by Neil    Moxham.  Throughout this section of the book, the critics explore the   social commentary and  religious imagery on the large screen,  and we are  teased with speculations about some of the series unconnected plot points.

But if you want to prove just how serious an Ape geek you are, you gotta know about and care about the short-lived live and animated TV shows as explored in “It's a Madhouse Every Week!” by Dayton Ward, “Escaping to Tomorrow: The TV Series Novelizations” by John Roche, and “Saturday-Morning Simians: Animating the Planet of the Apes” by Zaki Hasan. No, if you  want to earn your Ape geek merit badge, you gotta know about and certainly care about   the live arena shows and British rodeos as recalled  by Dave Ballard. 

Most general readers will be interested in the analyses of the more recent ape films, beginning with editor   Rich Handley’s “800-Pound Gorilla in the Room,” his re-evaluation of the much-maliegned  Tim Burton reboot. Then, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and this year’s War for the Planet of the Apes  are compared and contrasted  with the first five ape films in   Edward Gross’s “Caesar: A Tale of Two Kings.”

But the real diving into Ape ephemera can be found in Steven J. Roby’s examination of the film novelizations, Paul Simpson’s review of the film scores, and everything else you can possibly imagine in “Before, Beneath, Beyond, and Between the Covers of the Planet of the Apes: A Meditation on Precursors, Predecessors, Ripples, and Rip-offs” by Stephen R. Bissette  and “Ape Shall Never Spoof Ape: Skits, Parodies, and Piss-Takes” by Matthew J. Elliott .

Clearly, most readers of this collection will be die-hard ape aficionados. Other sci fi geeks will likely want to explore some, if not all, of the offerings. All film and popular culture libraries should shelf this entry,   as well as the rest of the catalogue of the Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. Looking at the article titles alone should signal these are intellectual and scholarly critiques, not simple, affectionate fan blog pieces.

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 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ). This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.