Alex Neptune: Zombie Fighter by David Owen – Blog Tour Book Review

About the Book

When a creepy fog rolls into Haven Bay, Alex, Zoey and Anil are ambushed by terrifying crab-riding zombies, controlled by the evil spirit of Brineblood the pirate.

The only weapon that can stop Brineblood’s zombie army is a powerful trident – but it’s been broken into three pieces. Alex, Zoey and Anil must enter three deadly worlds that have been magically trapped in bottles to retrieve the hidden pieces, all before the zombies can catch them. But with some penguins, an octopus and a frozen dragon on their side, how can they go wrong?

About the Author

Having worked as a freelance games journalist and taught on a BA Creative Writing course for three years, David Owen’s debut novel, Panther, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and was followed by three further highly acclaimed YA novels. Alex Neptune is his first series for younger readers, born of his love for nail-biting heists, fantastical monsters and heartfelt friendships.

Instagram –  https://instagram.com/davidowenauthor

What I Thought

Book 1 Review – Alex Neptune: Dragon Thief – https://kirstyes.co.uk/2022/08/03/alex-neptune-dragon-thief-by-david-owen-blog-tour-book-review/

Book 2 Review – Alex Neptune: Pirate Hunter – Alex Neptune: Pirate Hunter by David Owen – Blog Tour Author Interview and Book Review

Book 3 Review – Alex Neptune: Monster Avenger

Monster Avenger is my favourite book of the series to date. In it a parasite is infecting all the ocean creatures starting with Loaf the seal and there’s evidence that the Water Dragon is losing its battle with the infection and the results of that would be catastrophic.

Alex, Zoey and Anil get a distress call from new friend Meri and go in search of them, the missing baby dragon and a cure for the infection.

Then we take a very Inner Space like journey into the belly of the dragon, and its heart, lungs etc in order to administer the cure. As well as deadly stomach acid there are more foes lurking inside to keep them from their goal. There was also a highly entertaining Tarzan of the Jungle type scene featuring mucus vines!! (Spoilers for this book will feature in the book 4 review below).

Book 4 Review – Alex Neptune: Zombie Fighter

With Zoey and Anil having been gifted water magic Alex is no longer alone but instead finds himself in the role of teacher, while he is still coming to terms with the power himself.

But there is not much time for lessons when a mysterious fog and the mysterious clicking noise it contains rolls over Haven Bay and the safety of the town is once again threatened.

The zombie crabs are after Brineblood’s skull and after previously deciding that Argosy was not trustworthy enough to hold onto the skull his house is a last refuge to keep it from a greater evil.

Faced with a frozen water dragon it is up to the three fledgling magic holders to locate three trident prongs that when reunited would have the power to save them all.

What follows is a portal adventure and treasure hunt featuring volcanos, floods, penguins, monsters and some people who may not be what they seem.

The loss of the water dragon to icecubeness in this one drives Alex, Zoey and Anil to work together and learn from each other to achieve their goals.

As with the other books I really enjoy how the kids aren’t completely on their own with this and benefit from ongoing help from family and a variety of sea creatures. Alex’s Grandpa and sister Bridget are also excellent human characters to have along for the ride.

This is such an enjoyable series. Fast paced and action packed with an undercurrent of climate change/protect our oceans messaging that weaves into the plot smoothly.

Book 5 Review – Alex Neptune: Dragon Champion

Zombie Fighter’s ending has set – 2025 release Dragon Champion – up to be an epic concluding battle to a very fun series and is a book I will definitely be on my anticipated reads list for next year.

Huge thanks to Bee at Kaleidoscopic Tours and the publisher Usborne for the gifted copy for the purposes of an honest review. Do go check out the rest of the tour stops too.

A Girl Beyond Closed Doors by Jessica Taylor-Bearman – Blog Tour Book Review

About the Book

The perfect memoir for Christmas 2023! The much-anticipated concluding book in this best-selling series.

After 12 years of being trapped in the world of one room by the M.E. Monster, Jessica’s dreams start to come true. She’s pregnant! But Jessica has to adjust to being a disabled mum in an inaccessible world and face the critics who doubt her abilities. And when the pandemic hits just as they relocate to a new county, isolation takes on a new form, as they learn to adjust to being a family of three in one flat limited by government-enforced restrictions and fear of contracting Covid.

Balancing parenthood and chronic illness, expectations versus reality, Jessica discovers alternative fairytale endings are possible… a life beyond closed doors.

About the Author

Jessica Taylor-Bearman was born in March 1991, at Maidstone Hospital in England. She grew up in Rochester and Canterbury, Kent, where she attended Rochester Grammar School for Girls. At the age of 15, she became acutely unwell with an illness called M.E. She was continuously hospitalised from 2006 to 2010, suffering with the most severe form of the condition. This included her being bedridden, unable to move, speak, eat and more. She began to write in her mind, and when finally able to speak again, she began to write through her audio diary ‘Bug’.

Taylor-Bearman is the number 1 bestselling author of A Girl Behind Dark Glasses and A Girl In One Room which shares her real life experience with living with M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). Jessica writes a blog called The World of One Room and has a YouTube video of the same name that has reached tens of thousands of people in multiple countries. Jessica has also featured in a film called Unrest. She is an advocate for raising awareness of M.E. A Girl Behind Dark Glasses has stayed on the bestsellers list since its release in 2018.

Jessica lives with her husband and two children in Essex.

What I Thought

As someone living with and working with people living with Long Covid, earlier this year I read the first two books in Jessica’s series. A Girl Behind Dark Glasses shows the start of Jessica’s experience with severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME – also referred to by Jessica as the ME Monster). This book frustrated me as much as Jessica awed me. The frustration comes from how Jessica was treated particularly by healthcare alongside the knowledge that similar attitudes are being faced today by those with Long Covid. Please note book one has a trigger warning for sexual abuse also.

A Girl In One Room follows Jessica’s online dating experience and her challenge to develop into adulthood as someone who needs a high level of care.

So when Literally PR said they were looking for bloggers to read the final book in the series A Girl Behind Closed Doors I definitely jumped at the chance.

I knew that this book of the three would be a harder read for me because it focuses on pregnancy and motherhood – something that for a number of reasons I don’t think will happen for me now.

But neither did Jessica.

We follow Jessica’s entire pregnancy – from the range of reactions she experiences to it, to multiple hospitalisations and past the birth of her first child. We also cross over with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic which has sadly added more people to those who share a similar healthcare experience to Jessica. There is research ongoing to explore the overlap between ME and Long Covid, with some people with Long Covid already getting diagnosed with ME.

I love the chatty style that the books are written in, it makes them so readable. And despite this, Jessica doesn’t sugar coat her experience, sharing with us the lowest lows as well as the highest highs. Many people with disabilities will recognise the ableist attitudes that often face people who live a disabled life.

A big question some people might have is, is this the story of someone that overcomes their disability. The answer to that is No. Disability is not always something that can be overcome. It is something that we live with on a daily basis. And sometimes it really sucks.

But does that mean we can’t live fulfilling lives? Not at all. And the A Girl series demonstrates this beautifully. It is not about an inspirational person’s journey to overcome adversity to climb a mountain, but about an ordinary woman with goals of sitting up, finding someone to love and being the best parent they can be. Inspiration in the everyday.

I did like how the story was bought full circle with people from book one making an appearance in this final book. And a big message for me is to try hard to be one of the people that others would be happy to see again later in life, the support network, rather than someone you’d want kept away from you behind closed doors!

A huge thank you to Jessica for sharing her experience, raising awareness for those living with severe ME and to Literally PR for the gifted copy for the purposes of an honest review. I definitely recommend this series.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree – Blog Tour Book Review

About the Book

High fantasy. First loves. Secondhand Books.

Set twenty years before the events of Legends & Lattes, Bookshops & Bonedust is a standalone cost fantasy about the power of good bookshops, great friends and the unexpected choices along the way.

Viv’a career with the renowned mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk – so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a struggling bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted. Even though it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t far away. A suspicious traveller in grey, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv ever could have expected.

Sometimes, right things happen at the wrong time. Sometimes, what we need isn’t what we seek. And sometimes, we find ourselves in the stories we experience together.

About the Author

Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his very patient family and their small nervous dog.

What I Thought

I well and truly loved Travis’ first book Legends & Lattes (You can read my review of it here).

So when I found out we were getting Viv’s prequel I was excited and maybe a little scared. Most of the characters we love wouldn’t feature! But I needn’t have worried because I think Travis is a master at creating bands of loveable characters for us to root for. I’m not going to name them here because I want you to experience the joy of meeting them yourselves. There are so many in B&B – that provide Viv with friendship, love, rivalry and food. Never fear, there is a Bakery in this town and the descriptions of its delicacies are as mouthwatering as those in L&L.

“Murk seemed to have a sleepy power over her, a seductive song of indolence.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

It is the town itself, and its pace of life, as much as the people, that creates this feeling in Viv, a precursor to the feeling I think she wants to recreate with her later retirement in L&L. But she is not quite there. Her soul is still hankering for adventure so this is but a temporary pause for her.

Whilst some of the complaints people (not me) had about L&L is that there were very low stakes, there is definitely more at risk in B&B although not perhaps until a bit later in the book. A necromancer definitely gets in the way of a smooth ride to both Viv’s recovery from injury and the bookshop’s renovation.

This story is definitely a love letter to books and reading and there were quite a few moments that readers and booksellers are definitely going to enjoy in terms of parallels with publishing currently. This quote however sums up how I felt reading:

“…leaving her alone in the centre of a perfect sphere of story.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

A character that turns out to be my favourite in this book describes their experience of reading as this:

“I look at the page, and then the words are in my mind. That’s the accepted way, yes!”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

And this observation is also made:

“Never trust a writer who doesn’t have too many books to read. Or a reader, for that matter.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

As readers, we are often to be found bemoaning the size of our TBR piles, bookshelves, rooms, etc, so surely the idea of being to soak up an entire page of text at once to help us speed through appeals, right? Nope. Savouring each word, letting the revelations creep over you, lingering in that story sphere is what many of us love most. That being said, I do like to immerse myself in a book over a shortish period of time with limited distractions from reality, so the short chapters and steady pace of this made that easy to achieve.

There is an author character in the book and as a writer myself these two quotes made me snort.

“You’re in luck. She’s not writing so she’s in a good mood.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

“I reckon writers got to have a good imagination…because they can’t all be that lucky.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

But with Viv’s temporary pause has to come to an end. The omnipresent thought of Rackam’s Ravens reappearing to whisk her away hovers over proceedings and their hello would mean a host of bittersweet goodbyes.

“A parting was imminent and big gestures felt like lies.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

And then we have – that epilogue – and we are wrapped up once again in cosy and I am, at the very least, hoping now for the sequel to L&L to come into creation. I hope to see Viv and others…

“…in the story past the story.”

Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree

Huge thanks to Black Crow PR and the publisher Tor UK for the gifted ARC. This review is entirely my own gushing. Check out what everyone else on the tour thinks too and as the book is out now join in on the readalong which starts tomorrow – 10th November.