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Archaeopteryx (The Albuquerque Trilogy – 1) by Dan Darling

John Stick, zoo keeper and giant, just wants to sit alone in a dark room with his pet tarantula. However, when ten thousand birds fall dead from the New Mexican sky, the woman he loves, an ornithologist with severe facial deformity, begs him to decipher the cause. He grudgingly agrees, a decision that plunges him into a tangle of weirdness as old as the American Southwest.

Stick’s investigation reveals that the birds’ mass death is an offshoot of a much larger conflict. On one side, the Good Friends, an underground railroad for undocumented immigrants, wants Stick to oust the man they believe responsible for killing the birds and persecuting immigrants. This same man leads The Minutemen Militia, which covets Stick’s expertise in handling their genetically mutated immigrant-tracking monsters. Meanwhile, a beautiful animal theologian tries to seduce Stick into believing his existence is key to balancing an off-kilter universe. Shady characters whisper of chupacabras loose in the desert. The exsanguinated corpses of strange beasts begin to turn up, some of them Stick’s close pals. At the center of it all lurks an enigmatic antagonist who, so they say, has harnessed the power of God in an ancient hot springs and is using it to herald doomsday.

Stick’s journey upends his stable life, shakes apart his fragile relationships, and sets him on a collision course with his family’s secret ancestry. Ultimately, as chupacabra-like monsters, Minutemen, and Good Friends head toward a final showdown, Stick must make a hard choice about his own identity and values.

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Author’s Bio

Dan Darling is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Before becoming a writer, he was a comet, rocketing around the world in long, haphazard, parabolas. While traveling through twenty countries and many states, Dan made a living as a circus performer, bartender, café manager, IRS agent, graphic designer, and magician. In his prime, he spoke Swedish, Spanish, and Mandarin and has studied half a dozen other languages. Dan received his BA in English from the College of Wooster and his Master of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico.

Gravity having reined him in, Dan settled in Minnesota, where he labors over novels that fuse the language of noire detective fiction with the imagination of magical realism. His greatest influences are Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie, and Raymond Chandler. Besides working on novels, he teaches writing and literature at Normandale Community College and is an avid bowler. He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and daughter.

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My Review

5 stars

John Stick is a zoologist and suffers from gigantism. His close friend, Melodia is an ornithologist that suffers from half her face being covered in tumors. Both lead a very private life but Melodia asks John to get samples from a strange even in New Mexico. Ten thousand birds mysteriously fall from the sky. But after getting the samples, John finds himself in some serious trouble. The Minutemen Militia would love his help patrolling the Mexican border. The Good Friends, anti-Minutemen, want him on their side. Creatures, normal and genetically engineered love the smell of him. An apocalypse is coming and John is in the middle of it.

This book is filled with a little bit of everything wrapped up in beautiful description and some snarky humor. Ironically the misfits of our world are going to be the ones to keep it going. I really loved all the zoology facts that you learn along the way.

I love how you find solace in the individual yet they have to learn to work together to save the world. This books is beautifully written and quickly draws you in. It’s one that I recommend checking out. I can’t wait to see where this series goes from here. For a first book I absolutely loved it!!

I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.

I would like to thank Author Marketing Experts for the opportunity to read and share this book.

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Night Home
By Rose Titus
Genre: Fantasy/Vampire

When Muriel Aubrey inherits an old house in a small town, she imagines that moving into the rural community will be deathly dull.  But the old house once belonged to her eccentric granduncle, a professor who was said to be researching something very mysterious and unusual before his untimely death.  While exploring the slightly rundown Victorian age home, she finds the research notes that had been hidden away, and discovers that the professor was researching vampires.

It isn’t long before Muriel meets residents of the small town who knew the professor almost a century ago, and that everything he wrote in the notes he kept is true…   And she suddenly finds herself stalked by a vampire hunter.

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 Why is this series of books different?

In the past most vampire books were basically horror novels in which the plot was driven by an evil creature, and the evil creature is defeated by the hero, who in the end rescues the girl.  And today many vampire novels are romance driven plots:  girl meets vampire, girl falls in love with vampire, and then happily ever after forever…

This trilogy of books, which I like to call the Vampire Next Door series, and in which Night Home is the first in the series, involves neither romance nor “hero defeating an evil creature and recuing the girl.”
In my work I use stories about vampires to discuss problems in our society: bigotry against those who are considered different, against those who live at the fringes of society, and also to bring awareness of poverty, homelessness, violence, and other social problems we still endure today.

In Night Home, the main character, Muriel Aubrey, discovers that her neighbors are vampires.  When she gets to know them, she realizes they have been wrongly persecuted for centuries.  She suddenly finds herself needing to protect them from a vampire hunter who shows up unexpectedly.

In the second book, After Dark, another community of vampires on the west coast realizes that a serial killer is terrorizing the city in which they inhabit, and they must work to stop this serial killer before they are blamed for his atrocities.

In the third book, All the Way to the Moon, the two communities of vampires decide to communicate with each other, but while doing so, they also become involved with defeating an evil billionaire and his hired hit man.  Fortunately they have help from an environmentally concerned werewolf.

Author’s Bio

Rose Titus works two jobs to support her writing habit.  She exists somewhere in cold, dreary New England, with two manipulative cats and a very out of date Macintosh with which she creates horror and fantasy fiction.  She also has a restored classic car to ride around while in search of adventure.

For travel she has stayed for the night in an allegedly haunted castle, has taken a boat ride on Loch Ness, and has visited the fabled Bermuda Triangle, without getting lost.

Her work has previously appeared in Lost Worlds, Lynx Eye, Bog Gob, Mausoleum, Midnight Times, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Bugle, Weird Terrain, Descend, Wicked Wheels, Carnival of Aces, The Dead River Review, Fortean Times, and other literary magazines.
When she’s not writing or working or messing around with her old Buick, she waits by her mailbox for the next issue of Fortean Times to arrive.

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My Review

5 Stars

Muriel Aubrey has just inherited her Granduncles old house. While exploring she discovers some old notebooks of Professor Aubrey. They contain a history of vampires and she thinks that this is a great story that he wrote. But after meeting her neighbors she learns the stories are true. Vampires do exist although not like the myths. But just as there are vampires, there are hunters that are trying to kill them all.

This is a quick read that sucked me in and had me wanting to learn more about Titus’ vampires. I love how they could kind of be a distant cousin of vampire myths yet a more realistic approach to them.

This is a great story and one that I recommend checking out. I see that this is supposed to be a series and I cannot wait to get my hands on the second book.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.

I would like to thank Sage’s blog Tours for the opportunity to read and share this book.

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