Only e book - paperback to follow.

     Spiders have enslaved man. We are in the future, in a book dictated to 'the scribe' by a time-lord, one Orlando Oversight. This book appears now, a couple of hundred years ahead of the events it depicts, as like all science fiction it needs to prepare mankind to face his future. Nature provided two highly advanced sentient species to the Lush System, the spider-like Aranians and decapodal Cheetan that looks not so dissimilar to a louse. Both creatures are bigger and stronger than even the strongest of humans.

     Now, the Lush system has a large population of humans, harvested from Earth. Homo sapiens, along with other Earth species provide the spiders with meat. Humans also provide a vast amount of the labour. Possibly all is not lost for the humans, or yeng as they are there called. Possibly a fighter that has borrowed the name of the legendary Spartacus can lead humankind to a new 'promised land'.

     A giant Arcraft is being built to carry all three sentient species on a vast voyage across space to find fresh pastures. But exactly who or what may be aboard is unclear. This adventure starts in philosophy and science, runs through blood, passion, love and hate towards an adventurous end, which just may be a new beginning. This isn't horror, although ones own mind may paint horrific scenes, this isn't paranormal, though hardly normal. This is speculative future history, which in all probability will be one day happen almost exactly as you read it.

AMAZON LINK

I won this novel as part of a giveaway through Booklikes, and I was really looking forward to it. I enjoy flash fiction and even write it myself, unfortunately I'd say that a good 2/3 of the stories did not read as actual "stories" to me. Richard Bunning is nice enough to label the stories so that we know if it's supposed to be science fiction, romantic suspense, historical fiction, journalistic nonfiction, etc. However, many of the categories that have "fiction" as part of the name (such as historical fiction or fact-based fiction) come across as essays that someone may have had to write for a school project. Perhaps this is just Richard's style of writing, but unfortunately it wasn't a style I enjoyed. Now, I did enjoy several of his stories, and from all different "categories" (so it's not just an issue of me preferring certain types of genre and not others) and some of them really stood out and excellent:

Story 10: What's in those coloured smudges? (Paranormal Fiction) - this was a great story showing how someone with synaesthesia sees the world. It also snows the depth of emotion that people can put in their artwork and writing that may not be visible to someone with standard senses.

Story 11: Disassociated Consciousness and Hope (Speculative Fiction) - Consciousness after death has always been an interesting subject, and the author deals with it well in this story.

Story 17: Hostages, Combinations for Survival (Suspense Fiction) - I love the way that the author tells the entire story in a way that you don't know exactly what the protagonist is going to do, and lets us all understand the ending even though the story doesn't follow through to the end.

Story 24: First my complicity dies, then I (Warning - Sexual Slavery) (Real Life Fiction) - This story leaves the ending open, so that you only hope that the protagonist is successful with her plans.

And finally, Story 49: Pinks Reflection (Psychological Fiction) - Inside the mind of a madman.

Out of 50 stories, I only really connected with 5 of them. Now, there were some others that were also "stories" but the majority of this book seemed as if the author was padding the book with research and facts for random things rather than actual telling a story. Even with flash fiction, there should still be some conflict and either a resolution or hope that it's leading up to a resolution. It's supposed to be a story, not something that you would read out of a textbook. I gave this 3 stars on amazon (3 1/2 stars on booklikes) because I see promise in this author. However, I feel like he has set himself a goal with this project and he wasn't able to conclude it successfully.

My Twist:

Favorite story: “Pray for Mabinty’s Dream”. In a note at the end of the story the author mentions that he has not had first-hand knowledge on the subject. Well, dear Richard Bunning, I have. I have met and heard the stories of people travelling from the south of Africa, on foot, thousands and thousands of kilometers, for years on end, with nothing more than the clothes on their back, to get to the promised land: Europe. Your story is “very real”.

Favorite quote: “There is even a sort of ‘Wi-Fi’ I’ve invented, Why Fly, so that I have creatures to chat to. I pull off flies’ wings, so that they can’t abandon me.” (“Pink’s Reflection”) Dark humor is my cup of tea; need I say more?

Least favorite story: “Generic Hospital TV Drama” -  no matter how short the story was, I couldn’t finish it. If I were a soap-opera kind of ‘gal, I might have liked it.

Least favorite quote: “roasted cat organs are great in sandwiches” - eww, just eww! ("The Fixer - Dinah Paltrow's Job Story").

Aspirin of the book:

Word to writers everywhere: no matter what kind of author you are, what types of books you write, the amount of research that goes into your creation, or how long it takes you to finish a novel, in the end, you have written nothing more than an egg.

As usual, you can read the entire boring review here: Reviews with a Twist.

As a newbie on BookLikes, I was extremely excited when I discovered the giveaways. Thinking of it as a lottery, a game of numbers, I entered ALL the giveaways that were organized for what-looked-like interesting books, hoping that, maybe, I will win one. 

I have received seven so far!

And I have made a commitment to myself that I will read and review all of them, of course. But, God, when? And, please, make them stop!

Am I complaining about winning? No! Or am I? I guess I am... a little...

Seriously now, I want to thank all the authors for organizing giveaways, for sending me their work, and I also want to thank the automatic system that chose me as a winner (w00t! w00t!).

Also, a word to the authors: please be patient with me, I do have a day job, unfortunately :(

Blogging from me is about helping open the world of independent writers. Obviously, I am first and foremost in my list of concerns. 

Most of my reviews for self-published books are on my site-

http://richardbunningbooksandreviews.weebly.com

I have varying degrees of involvement with Awesome Indies, BRAG, Bookpleasures and IndiePENdents.

My own writing is now mostly centred around 'Speculative Fiction', though far from exclusively so. My latest endeavour being the very unbookish and quite frankly cynical attempt to get on the money making machine. It is a joke/gift book for anyone to give to the impossible to buy for male. There is very little content of any sort. 

The rest of my portfolio is value for money, quality reading. Well, that is my opinion. The anthologies wont please anyone all of the time, but that is more or less true of any such collection of different pieces. Most of all I like being read, so direct asks for free books work about 99% of the time! 

If you are kind enough to follow this blog I promise to try avoiding bogging you down with dumps of information that get passed around like common colds. There is far too many bogs in the webscape already.

If you like the idea of finding new authors, sometimes with really new ways, then please look at my Weebly site as well as following me here.

Kind Regards, Richard Bunning