WARNING: This story is dark. Not dark like chocolate. Dark like blood. It runs – by turns – horrifying, grotesque, and utterly spellbinding.

Some time ago we had a review of Earthrise and MindTouch, both solid, feel-good stories if a bit on the offbeat side. The Prince’s Game series explores the darker side of her universe and how power binds those who wield it as much as those who are victims of it. If you want to appreciate the genius that is Maggie Hogarth, you need to read this unflinching tale of power, pain, and redemption.

As always, don’t take my word for it. Grab a sample and see for yourself – but don’t be surprised by how it makes you feel. I’ve warned you.

About the reviewer:

Nathan Lowell has been writing science fiction and fantasy most of his life. He started publishing in 2007 and has no intention of stopping any time soon.

Learn more about Nathan Lowell and his works at http://nathanlowell.com

[Note: You’re seeing more reviews from me because fellow authors aren’t sending reviews of the books they like. If you’re an author, consider the submitting a review about an indie book you loved. The submission guidelines link is at the top of this page.]

I “met” Maggie Hogarth when I joined SFWA. I’ve followed her on twitter for years and find her quirky, sometimes off-beat, sense of humor quite intriguing. She’s an artist in many media–including words.

After talking with Maggie online for a while, I wanted to try some of her fiction and I picked this one. When I first saw this book, I dismissed it as “cute.” The cover has these furry, anthropomorphic critters, you see. I found them to be tragic and daring, wondrous and wondering. But they’re not cute. Not even.

Maggie has a gift. She can take humanity out of people and show it to us through different lenses. In the Dream Healer series (MindTouch is book 1), she takes empathy and compassion, fear and foible and blends them into a breath-taking froth that hooked me from the first few paragraphs through this series and across space-time into a very different universe ruled by – for lack of a better term – dragons. Not cute. Bloody, clawed, sadistic dragons who were just as human as the guy in line at the coffee shop.

But my journey with Maggie Hogarth started here. With MindTouch and the Dream Healers. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Why not grab a sample and see what you think?

About the reviewer:

Nathan Lowell has been writing science fiction and fantasy most of his life. He started publishing in 2007 and has no intention of stopping any time soon.

Learn more about Nathan Lowell and his works at http://nathanlowell.com

[Note: You’re seeing more reviews from me because fellow authors aren’t sending reviews of the books they like. If you’re an author, consider the submitting a review about an indie book you loved. The submission guidelines link is at the top of this page.]

Earthrise is an interstellar cargo ship, captained by Theresa Eddings (aka Reese), and crewed by an assortment of human-variation species and some true aliens. They’re just scraping by, always hoping that the next run is finally going to give them breathing room, but it never seems to. In fact, they wouldn’t even be out there but for the long-ago help of a mysterious stranger, and now that stranger has called in the favor.

The request seems simple: Go to a backwater world, find a man named Hirianthial, and break him out of the local jail. With a few bumps along the way, they manage it, but then it gets dicey. Hirianthal is no ordinary man. In fact, he is an Eldritch, a race whose telepathic abilities have forced them into isolation,
and beyond that, his own history with the Eldritch is clouded in mystery. And the locals who put him in jail aren’t happy that Reese took him.

Reese and Hirianthial clash, but they also work well together, with both of them rising to the occasion when the other needs help. I’ll say I was caught by surprise when a romance subplot began, mostly because I wasn’t expecting it, and I generally don’t enjoy that kind of plot. However, this one was good, and it did not make me want to smack the two of them for their foibles. In fact, I’m feeling drawn to the sequels to see how this plays out.

But as I said, the romance is a subplot. In the foreground we have pirates with a mind towards revenge and naval officers who only seem to help enough to get Reese and her crew into even more danger. Don’t come looking for huge space battles, but expect the occasional explosion and plenty of tension as Reese and her crew look for any way to keep the Earthrise flying.

About the reviewer:

Dan Thompson started writing fiction at the age of ten. Luckily for the world, all copies of that early Star Wars rip-off have been lost to time and Sith retaliation. Moving on from that six-page handwritten epic, he has self-published two books with more on the way – honest!

He lives near Austin with his wife and three children, drives old police cars, wears kilts when the weather permits, and is generally considered to be the weirdo next door. Fortunately, the neighbors don’t know how weird he really is.

Find out more about Dan at http://www.danthompsonwrites.com