Of course it's The Last Storm if you've been eaten by an icky thing that fell from the sky.

 If I was a rich person, I'd buy the rights to make this novel into a movie. Full of tension, action, adventure, creepy things falling from the sky and a very good dog. Buy yourself a 32-ounce drink when you read this (or see the hoped-for film) because the desert and fire scenes will make you thirsty. The scorpions will make you feel like something is crawling up your legs. Ick.

There are some needles in arms scenes and some people being killed and, uh, devoured by above mentioned creepy things from the sky, but I close my eyes, which makes it hard to read but will work better in the hoped-for movie.

Thanks to Titan books and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review an eARC of The Last Storm

This isn't horror horror, but it is the real horrors of life and some smashing excellent writing. And some supernatural stuff.

 Okay, so I mostly write reviews of horror novels. Night of the Living Rez is more the horrors of drug and alcohol addiction on a Penobscot reservation in Maine (Ha! We all know Maine is horror central) and there are references to ghosts that knock on walls, havoc-causing children who never had a chance to grow up, and a swamp lady (being a swamp lady is one of my ambitions.)  But I want to recommend this book as some mighty fine writing. If Morgan Talty doesn't win a Pulitzer or Booker prize, I'll be surprised.

It's a collection of short stories, but it reads like a novel. The same protagonist and the same characters appear throughout the tales at different ages and different stages of their lives.

Really, if you want writing excellence, try Night of the Living Rez.

Do You Know What it Means to Be Dead in New Orleans? It's Jazzy! A Review of The Ballard of Perilous Graves.

 Know what's really magical in this book? That every character easily finds a parking space in New Orleans! Have you ever tried parking in the Big Easy? It ain't easy.

I found Mr. Jennings book, The Ballad of Perilous Graves, to have some highly imaginative characters and situations. A ghost piano that shows up unexpectedly followed by the ghost piano player. The P-people who get high by breathing in 3-D graffiti. Nightclubs that are visible only to artists seeking answers. Two versions of New Orleans existing in two different planes, unknown to each other.

Therein lies the only problem I had. There are so many characters, and so many situations, sometimes I had trouble figuring out in which dimension each was located at any given time. Some of the characters were alive, some dead, some were songs that looked like humans, and I'd lose track of who was what and where. That could have been me, the reader, though. Goodnight Moon has been known to baffle me with only two characters. in one room.

I was attracted to The Ballad of Perilous Graves because I love New Orleans. The fact that two of them existed initially confused me. (See Goodnight Moon.)  I really thought the city constructed Sky Trolleys after the last time I was there (some kind of monorail, I figured) until I realized this was in the NOLA, the sorta not real dimension. If any city planners in the Cresent City are reading this, Sky Trolleys are a good idea.

Like many fantasies, there's a lot of world building, a lot of characters, a lot of figuring out who belongs where, and it's fairly long. If you like the weird and the imaginative, this is a fine book but can be tricky reading. Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette for allowing me to read and review The Ballad of Perilous Graves.

Nice Cover!