The Brotherhood of the Dragon, by Phil Hore: What really happened in London 1888

She snarled in a most unladylike way, ‘Stay away from my grandfather, stay away from my family, and stay away from me.’ Robyn Stanford to our hero. P. 15.

We begin as Amun Galeas confides in us about certain events in 1888 in London and .. Wait, who is this Amun Galeas? He doesn’t seem to know that himself. Each time he carries his throbbing head out of a strange bedroom to seek answers he gets bashed again. I wondered if our narrator would even last the early chapters; nor did he seem to have much confidence about that chance himself.

Unarmed except for my razor wit, which many would argue made me totally defenceless, I crept through the gate ..

Time and again our hero is rescued by Sebastian Vulk, but just who is that randy old dog? We readers have little time to mull over these identities, however, due to the odd attitude of Amun’s hosts, the Stanton family, about their disappearing servants.

Journalist, Abraham (call me ‘Bram’) Stoker scents a scoop. Bram is turns out to be usefully related to Mr Doyle, a medical man, Arthur Conan Doyle, that is, who knows a peculiar corpse when he sees one.

Amun in the course of his most enlightening account, entrusts we readers with the curious and true facts of what really occurred in London the year 1888 (necesarily suppressed at the time); and we incidentally learn where Messers Stoker and Doyle first heard the genisis of the stories they were to later publish. The two cousins turn out to be handy with sword blades as well as quills, which is just as well because there is a certain degree of close quarter fighting in this story.

I hefted my sword over my head like some ancient statue depicting St George slaying the dragon, and then brought the weapon down with a noise similar to chopping into a thick cabbage.

A shipwreck in Australia, an overly-optimistic medical procedure on a Pope, a study of the London railway network, a survey of the complex Balkan history, and of one weird ‘Balkan Problem’ in particular, a hitherto unrecorded episode of young Winston Churchill’s career, and more .. These apparently disparent elements are most satisfactorily weaved together, twist by turn, in this thrilling, chilling, and entertaining novel from Phil Hore.

But, you ask, what about the dragons in the title? Oh, you will learn all about it in this true account, gentle reader. Select an armchair (set its back to the wall in the corner, of course) settle down, pour a red wine, a deep red red wine – and enjoy. Oh, and, err, keep a shield close to hand. Useful things, shields.

Where to learn about this dastardly Brotherhood of the Dragon: From Odyssey Books , and Amazon and Bookshop Org (supporting local bookshops.)
Or, ask your friendly local bookstore to order it in for you, and more for friends who appreciate gothic tales.

You Can’t Go It Alone, by Jessie Cahalin: life in a Welsh Village

Jessie Cahalin’s delightful read gives us the ‘ordinary’ worry-wracked decisions and moments of joy in the everyday lives in the village of Delfryn. Each character tries hard to convince themselves they can handle their problems, but none seem able to really go it alone. Then, can any of us?

Jim is haunted by the loss of his son and wife. Could the visits by sunflower loving Daisy from next door spark new life in him? Daisy’s mother Ruby fears to reveal her illiteracy to her husband Dan. He conceals from her the troubles of his business. Sophie and Jack, new arrivals in Delfryn, are desperately trying to conceive but unwilling to discuss the strain of the IVF procedures with Jack’s parents nor even with each other. And why have those parents visited them in a manner completely out of character? The owners of the village cafe, Rosa and Matteo, at first seem an adoring couple but there seem to be tensions there.

As these people’s lives cross and connect they see where they can help one another and, as importantly, they learn how to accept it themselves.

In this story there occour: no explosions, no murders, no car chases – apart from the camper van that hurtles toward a school bus. There are no vampires lurking in the woods or undead in the hills or villians plotting for world domination. We are treated instead, as the line on the cover says, to ‘Love, laughter, music and secrets’. I loved it all. This is the first in a projected series and I am certainly going to buy the next one.

Where to find You Can’t Go It Alone: Amazon.

Jessie Cahalin’s fun website is called Books In My Handbag Blog, a must for everyone who loves reviews of books (and photos of handbags).

Subliminal Dust, by Pooja Mittal: Poetry from Odyssey Books

Silence is never silent so long as there is a listening ear. (Back cover of book.)

I have read Subliminal Dust right through four times now and I am still finding lines to enjoy afresh and differently. The poems bring out voices in movements, whispers amid chaos, sounds trapped in small rocks, the stretching voids of unspoken emotions, terribly pale silences.

There is music in this triangle, as in a shell ..

Iain Sharp of The Sunday Star said of Pooja Mittal, ‘Exceptional … A voice rather like that of a Zen master – insightful and enigmatic in about equal measure’. Zen often springs to mind on reading her poems, in particular the notion of koans.

Kōan, in Zen Buddhism of Japan, is described as a succinct paradoxical statement or question. The effort to “solve” a koan is intended to exhaust the analytic intellect and the egoistic will, readying the mind to entertain an appropriate response on the intuitive level.

I don’t suggest that Mittal intended her work in quite that way but certainly her images and unexpected juxtapostions had that effect for me. They set you loose from the usual tightness of linguistic meanings and adrift into the spaces and arenas of one’s own mind.

Gentle universes that float past
like tall, starry ships .

A favourite poem for me is ‘Seducing A Poem’ (p. 26), which so well conveys the frustrations of writers and the patience needed to bring to the fore that elusive something that you know you must write down, somehow.

.. come here poppet on little black shoes ..

Pooja Mittal has been widely published since the age of 13. At 17 she was the youngest Featured Poety ever in Poetry New Zealand. In 2007 she was featured in The Best Australian Poetry 2007. Her work has been performed in Moscow in Russian translation.

Subliminal Dust was published 2010 published by Odyssey Books .
Where to find it: On Amazon it is only $1 to buy in digital but I recommend the Paperback so that you can dip into it off. everal outlets on Abebooks.com that also have it.

When a Brave Bear Fights Cancer: A Get Well Soon Gift, by Carola Schmidt:

Mawson’s Guardian Says: When A Brave Bear Fights Cancer: A Get Well Soon Gift, is by Carola Schmidt, an award-winning author of children’s cancer books.

The book is to help kids feel much more brave when they are getting treatment.

It’s illustrated by Me, Mark: You can see pictures of Big Gus in the laboratory, and Stitches and Paddy who are patients too in the ward, and Nurse Bree and Doctor Caddy, and technician Gus and more.

Three of the bears in the book read their copies. You can see Dr Caddy wearing her specs, patient Stiches in his dressing gown, and Nurse Bree. — ‘You are not alone! Hold a paw, hug one another, makes friends with others on the journey.’ (Joey Madia)

About Scottie, the unwell bear.
Scottie, clutching his own Little Teddy, visits the surgery of Dr Caddy and Nurse Bree. He learns he has leukaemia. The Doctor and nurse explain all about it. Scotty meets fellow patient bears and they keep each other brave and strong as they go through their different treatments.

And now a word from Me, Mawson’s Guardian (Mark O’Dwyer).
I and all the bears in our house helped to make the pictures in this book In the pictures on this post you can see Brave Scotty, Little Teddy, Big Gus in the laboratory, and Stitches, a patient in the ward with Dr Caddy and Nurse Bree.

You can see a little video about it on Spotify, Youtube, and TikTok. Here is the link to the one is on Youtube: https://youtu.be/b57VMmV_NVM .

About the Book:
And now a word about When A Brave Bear Fights Cancer. The author Carola Schmidt is an award-winning author of children’s cancer books, and uses her experience as a pediatric oncology pharmacist to write scientific books for Springer Nature. You can usually find her on Twitter @_CarolaSchmidt. And you can find Scotty and his friends and Me, Mark, all over the bright web world including right here on this WordPress Den and at Baffled Bear Books.

Where to buy When A Brave Bear Fights Cancer: A Get Well Soon Gift:
Amazon everywhere, including Amazon UK and Amazon Australia and Brazil and Canada and India and Japan and Mexico and Sweden. Also Waterstones, Book Depository (with free shipping), Bookshop Org (supporting local bookshops) and Barnes and Noble.

You have wandered into Mawson Bear’s web-den. Mawson is a Ponderer of Baffling Things (between naps) and the Writer-Bear of Dreamy Days and Random Naps and of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In and She Ran Away From Love.

Mud and Glass, by Laura E Goodin: Mayhem on campus

‘Everything is Geography.’ Ty Kornotz, Professor of, yes, geography.

Mud and Glass by Laura E Goodin is an affectionate satire of the academic world, Unwittingly, Dr Celeste Carlucci becomes the target of everyone who thinks she can help them find the missing Littoral Codex and thus the key to power and glory. Especially power. Their power.

‘Everything is dramatic arts’. Russ Garrick, Professor of, unsurprisingly, dramatic arts.

In this zany romp we have media billionaires (ruthless), The Littoral League. (weird) , librarians (never underestimate librarians), newly minted ninjas, and a resistance movement of geriatric academics.

Mud and Glass by Laura E Goodwin. A satire of campus life and academic politics

Tenureless and struggling to survive until payday, Celeste is as keen to defend her precious cache of cookies as on dodging her multiplying enemies.She gets shot at, assaulted and dragged along secret tunnels. Will anyone even explain to her what all this is about? With intellect and altruism their only strengths, street theatre their only weapon, and a library to die for their only equipment, can our motley band strike back at the forces of greed and evil? Can you and I?

Mud and Glass is published by Odyssey Books.

More books from Laura E Goodwin: After The Bloodwood Staff (follow link to see my review).

PS. After reading Mud And Glass, I feel in a strong position to advise you to never order a cup of macadamia-chilli icecream. Even if you do want to ‘feel more alive’.

PLEASE FOLLOW US At Baffled Bear Books .
Simply plonk your paw on the FOLLOW buttons on this very page.
You can also follow on Amazon and on GoodReads. We are also on Instagram, and Tiktok, and Spotify and Mastodon (link is @mawsonbear@mastodon.au. )

The Mirror Image of Sound, by Dan Djurdevic

The Mirror Image of Sound, A Novel Written in Real Time gives us several levels to absorb in one book: the portrait of a failed marriage, martial arts action, workplace and domestic bullying, a philosophy and possible science of alternate worlds, or parellel lives, if you like; and there is even a romance.

The Mirror Image of Sound by Dan Djurdjevic

It would become a classic of it’s kind but only for the fact that it is the one novel of its kind I believe to exist, particularly as it was written in real time – of which more later. I feel fortunate to have read it.

Black comedy of the darkest hues

We are at first spiralled down into a black comedy of a disintegrating personality. Because much of the daily detail is horribly familiar to the experiences you and I have also endured and yearned to escape, we can’t help following Dan, the hapless hero, through his ghastly days with the boss from hell, the friend from purgatory and the wife from nightmares.

Only Dan’s Uncle Frank seems to care about him. But when Frank suddenly dies, Dan finds himself being manipulated from beyond the grave. Exhausted by the demands on him, Dan wrestles with mounting debt, the scorn of his relatives, a mystery basement filled by sound equipment with peculiar instructions, and the curious case of Bugsy, the droopy-eyed cat, who simply vanishes.

If only Dan, and you, and I, could just vanish and start again

If only Dan could vanish too – to a whole new life: new house, new friends, new job, new love affair. Have you not toyed with such a dream?

But if you do create a new life, even a new self, you might also unleash new and drastic consequences of your actions. After all, do you know the extreme possibilities of your own personality? Really, do you? I HAD to read on.

This science-fiction tale warps within inner space, the infinite space of Self. As you barrel through it, you will not only learn Dan’s chosen path but also be whisked across useful tips on how to create your own band, how to make Balkan moussaka, and how to totally destroy a front lawn. There is also a heartfelt homage to the music of The Hunters and Collectors. (You may recall Throw Your Loving Arms Around Me, from this band.)

Real Time Writing

We’ve seen a few movies try to portray say two hours of action within the two hour running time. But this novel began with a much greater challenge. It was uniquely written and presented, at first, in real time, that is each day of writing became a day in the life of the character.

As the author completed, for instance on a Monday, what the hero ficitionally endured on that Monday, he uploaded that chapter/day to a blog the same night. This must have fascinated the readers for some 8000 followed it in those (real) weeks).

But the author states that he often finished the chapter/day with no idea how he was going to extricate his characters the next day. And there was no going back. He couldn’t think, oh that angle is not working, I’ll go back and change what’s happened so far. No, he pressed on with what he had. Dan talks about this fascinating approach in an appendix to the book. (Personally I would wonder, children, whether to try this at home. The pressure on the author strikes me as enormous.)

The supplementary website provides more material to enhance your experience of The Mirror Image of Sound, including sound tracks and even videos of the martial arts moves described (see notes below).

Dan Djurdjevic’s other tales include, Nights of The Moon , The Shadow of Dusk and, not shown here, A Hazy Shade of Twilight. You can find all of them at Abebooks.com.

Amazon links: The Mirror Image of Sound (Currently FREE to read in Kindle Unlimited). Essential Jo, The Girl In The Attic, suitable for young adults (See my review here), Nights of The Moon, and The Shadow of Dusk.

Information about the author for those interested in martial arts

Dan is the author of the award winning blog “The Way of Least Resistance” as well as Essential Jo and “Applied Karate”.

He is the current chief instructor of the Academy of Traditional Fighting Arts based at the Bayswater Martial Arts and Yoga Centre in Western Australia. There he teaches Okinawan karate, Chen Pan Ling style taiji (t’ai chi) and other gong fu (kung fu) as well as various traditional weapons systems.

Misterios de las Islas Canarias

Cinco Novelas en las Islas Canarias Estoy encantada de anunciar que mi serie de novelas situada en las hermosas islas de Lanzarote y Fuerteventura ahora está disponible en español. Conoces a personajes ingleses muy divertidos y graciosos, junto con algunos personajes majorero o conejero. La historia, la cultura, la geografía, el turismo y el medio […]
Misterios de las Islas Canarias

Mawson’s Guardian says: Isobel Blackthorn has also written The Drago Tree, reviewed here by me, and Click on the above to read more about this trilogy. You can see my reviews and details of some of Isobel’s other books right here on this web den. The Drago Tree is the first of Blackthorn’s several books set on the Canary Islands. And the Perfect Square is a meditation on art and artists. A Perfect Square, which I reviewed here.

Mawson Bear reads The Drago Tree, a novel set on the Canary Islands

The Ouroboros Key, by Patricia Leslie: mythology adventure in modern day Colorado

The Ouroboros Key, published by Odyssey Books, blends Sumerian mythology, esoteric Templar secrets, and a detective story, all played out in the mountains of modern day Colorado.

Before Dan Tenney can understand the strange dreams he’s had all his life, he’s attacked by an enigmatic group, the Brotherhood of the Grail. When he is whisked away from them to underground sanctuary by an even less explicable pair of men, he comes into the possession of what is apparently an ancient relic. His dreams get worse!

His friends search first for Dan, and then for the meaning behind the mystifying events they stumble upon. We readers learn the clues, the connections and the mythologies at the same pace as the band of searchers as they dodge villains and attempt to pin down straight answers.

This is as much a story about these characters and their idiosyncrasies and relationships as it is about a myth-riddled artefact. I liked this approach, as the details and lore of each mystery never got too heavy, too scholarly. We learn, together with our little band, enough to get some sense of things, and then are on the way again, as the quest develops into a dangerous trek in the mountains.

This novel will be enjoyed the readers who love to delve into the mysteries of ancient myths and at the same time enjoy a good adventure – and isn’t that most of us?

Patricia Leslie gives more details about this, including how she came to write, and also her other books at patricialeslie.net.

Where to find it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Chapters Indigo and more. Or ask your friendly local bookshop to obtain it for you.

You are at Mark’s blog called Baffled Bear Books. Mark is a dark coffee tragic and bibliophile as well as the Guardian and blundering typist for Mawson Bear, Ponderer of Baffling Things and one of this bright world’s few published bears.

A Perfect Square, by Isobel Blackthorn

From the book’s cover: When pianist Ginny Smith moves back to her mother’s house in Sassafras after her breakup with the degenerate Garth .. eccentric artist Harriet Brassington-Smythe is beside herself and contrives a creative collaboration to lift her daughter’s spirits: an exhibition of paintings and songs … As Ginny tries to prise the truth of her father’s disappearance from a tight-lipped Harriet, both are launched into their own inner worlds of dreams, speculations and remembering.

Harriet, living amid forests in Victoria, paints abstracts of the downs of south England. Judith, living in another place, the south of England, and indeed, in another time line, paints landscapes of a country she has never seen, the Wimmera of her imagination. To the dismay of each, their respective daughters abruptly return home, escaping awful men, ‘The Degenerate’, ‘The Troll’.

‘Happenstance would lodge in (Harriet’s) imagination, resonant with significances’. Ch. 1

A feast for the reader, this multi-layered novel is itself resonant with significances, some increasingly disturbing, such as the recurring appearance of the triptych in black, white and grey by ‘an unknown artist’. This was purchased by Harriet’s agent Phoebe. But no buyer wants it. We later learn it was commissioned by Judith’s own business friend, Bethany, from Judith herself, who disliked painting it. Progressing from one deceased estate sale to another, this thing trails ominously across the novel. More shadows disturb the gardens, friendships, music and art filling so much of the book: Ginny’s nightmares, the conspiracy theories to which Judith feels morbidly drawn, Harriet’s memory of ‘a darkness’ around Ginny’s father, Wilhelm, the hints that Wilhelm,’ The Lemurian’, was immersed in something worse than merely criminal.

‘ Grey eyes that looked to the back of you with innocence and suspicion’. About Ginny, Ch. 1.

Tensions between Harriet, who feels artistically stuck, and Ginny, determined to know why her mother abandoned her father, play out in the creative field. Harriet’s art is rooted in the Bauhaus movement and Kandinsky’s artistic theories of line, point and colour, most particularly of the possibility of synaesthesia. Even while we readers wonder at the connections between two women, two daughters, on far sides of the world, we are also treated to a skillful portrayal of the need for art, the drive to create. Harriet and Ginnys’ creative battle itself shows the constant tension between the method and the artifice of it all on one hand and the desire to evoke something greater and nameless from it, on the other. Chromatic scales, in colour as well as in music, number theory, layers, curves, lines, correspondences, all tell their own story, combining into a new level as something the art ‘evokes in the beholder or listener’ (Kandinsky, Harriet). Or, could it be, as Ginny writes in her PHD on transformative experience, resulting in what the expression is ‘for the person expressing it.’ p.75.

‘Too many composers view composition as something that happens to the individual, not something the individual steps inside. She thought otherwise”. Ginny. P 120.

Here for you to absorb for more than one viewing is a painting, or perhaps a novel, of intricate characters and their inner worlds, the whole ridden through with an increasing sense of dread that something is going to go horribly amiss.

Step inside.

Where to find it: A Perfect Square is available through Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble and Chapters Indigo.

At Isobel Blackthorn’s website you can enjoy background material on her books, including music especially composed to accompany this novel, by the author’s own daughter and pianist. It’s available on iTunes, Spotify, and at Bandcamp.

Isobel Blackthorn is author of the Canary Island quartet, which has received glowing reviews: The Drago Tree (reviewed here), A Matter of Latitude and Clarissa’s Warning. Her dark fiction includes Twerk and The Legacy of Old Gran Parks and Cabin Sessions.Her collection of stories, All About You, Eleven Tales of of Refuge and Hope is reviewed here.)

Mark is guardian and blundering typist for Mawson, one of this bright world’s few published bears. He is the writer-bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In.

The Drago Tree, by Isobel Blackthorn: excellent trip fiction available in Spanish and English

After the slow motion collapse of her marriage Anne seeks refuge on the jagged island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands off Africa.

Wounded, introspective, prickly – like the Drago tree of the title – Anne broods about her past, trying through writing in her notebook to exorcize the ghosts of her husband and troubled sister.

She meets the novelist Richard . He lives on the island seasonally, perched in his house as though at an outpost of progress, surrounded by artefacts made by the local potter Domingo. His plan to pluck bits of the islanders’ story from Domingo to use in his next book becomes, in Isobel Blackthorn’s hands, a parallel for robber cultures that plunder from others .

With Domingo and Richard, Anne explores Lanzarote, learning the unhappy story of its fragile population, the target of conquerors and pirates, and now of tourists. Anne both welcomes and distrusts Richard’s interest. He advances but exasperatingly retreats. Domingo just as infuriatingly holds his counsel. Unexpressed emotional forces heave beneath the surface, like the volcanic forces that shape the island. When they erupt it is in the form of their argument over tourism, whether it is ruin of the island or its salvation. This disagreement shifts the dynamic between the three, ultimately leading to a later plot twist.

A current running beneath the story of these three people is a meditation on the art of writing. Richard, seeing Anne’s notebook, thrust upon her his views as a professional writer. As Anne tests his critiques, expanding her notes, trying for her own voice, Blackthorn weaves them also into her novel, playing with them, taking us alongside the writing process at the same time as we are reading its results – this book. It’s a risk to skim along just inside the “fourth wall’ in this way but Blackthorn beautifully pulls it off. And when Anne confronts her ambiguous feelings about Richard, Blackthorn unexpectedly turns us further down the theme of exploitation, this time about where personal lives meet literature.

For readers who love layered levels of feeling and thought expressed in fine language, this is your novel.

Where to find it: The Drago Tree is available at Amazon; AND it is available in Spanish.

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy

Share the Joy