New Release Review – Red Queen by Juan Gomez Jurado #netgalley @JuanGomezJurado

Posted on March 14, 2023 by fundinmental

Because of the information at the end of the book, after this story is finished, I felt a need to share William Blake’s “The Tyger.” Blake is having a discussion with Evil in the form of the tiger.

The Tyger

By William Blake

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat.

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Blake, William. “The Tyger.” Songs of Experience. Facsimile reproduction of the 1794 illuminated manuscript, published by The William Blake Trust and the Tate Gallery, 2009, in William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books.

Amazon / Audiobook / Goodreads

MY REVIEW

The title Red Queen made me curious, but it was not what I expected. The author is unfamiliar to me, but the cover made me curious, with #1 International bestseller. Then, I read the blurb, and thought this could be a winner for me. And boy was it. Antonia Scott was so much more than I expected and I love that her ‘partner’ is a disgraced police officer. I love when a characters can find redemption, and I feel he will.

Antonia Scott allows herself to think of suicide no more than three minutes a day.

Does that intrigue you? It sure did me. Why did she think of suicide at all? Isn’t she a gifted forensic investigator? A personal tragedy leaves her with a heavy sense of guilt that she cannot escape. I am not going to tell you why. You will have to discover that for yourself.

Inspector Jon Gutierrez is a disgraced police officer, suspended from work. He has always been harassed because of being gay in a male driven society. He loves to cook. He is not fat, just rock solid. I think a lot of cooks love to eat. For others, like me, it is more like fuel. He has been tasked with bringing Antonia out of her self imposed isolation and has no idea what he is coming his way.

“My brain…isn’t normal. I can do things others find impossible.”

When I found the reason for that, I had ambivalent feelings. I guess, if it was what she wanted, who am I to judge.

Red Queen started out slow for me, but I think that is Juan Gomez Jurado’s way of preparing me for what is to come. The only problem I had was when he went back and forth between Jon and Inspector Gutierrez. It was early in the book and took me a little while to go with it and quit questioning whether he was talking about two people instead of one.

‘You sacrifice a pawn for the sake of continuing the game. Because the only thing that matters is to keep on playing.’

As we delve into the mystery, the suspense slowly rises. The story deepens. The sacrifices are costly, the players out for themselves

When Jon brings a rubber plant to her place, trying to make the barren room feel like a home, I cracked up. And…well, I can’t say. I will say this, though, the story kept getting better, the characters more real, foibles and all.The last quarter or more of the book was unputdownable. My desire to know them better, to work another case with them, intrigued me.

After the story is over, Juan Gomez Jurado shared some information that had me going to the internet to find out more for myself. Now…that is the sign of a great writer.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Red Queen by Juan Gomez Jurado.

Animated Animals. Pictures, Images and Photos — 4 Stars

GOODREADS BLURB

Introducing Antonia Scott – the most compelling and original detective since Lisbeth Salander – in the international bestselling thriller that has taken the world by storm.

Red Queen is the first book in a trilogy that has sold over 2 million copies in Spain, sold to seventeen countries, and is the basis of an Amazon streaming series to debut in 2023.

Antonia Scott—the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother—has a gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she’s refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment.

Jon Gutierrez, a police officer in Bilbao—disgraced, suspended, and about to face criminal charges—is offered a chance to salvage his career by a secretive organization that works in the shadows to direct criminal investigations of a highly sensitive nature. All he has to do is succeed where many others have failed: Convince a recalcitrant Antonia to come out of her self-imposed retirement, protecting her and helping her investigate a new, terrifying case.

The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder—a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again…is Antonia Scott.

ABOUT JUAN GOMEZ JURADO

Juan Gómez-Jurado (December 1977 Madrid, Spain) is an award winning journalist and bestselling author. He is one of the three most successful contemporary Spanish authors along with New York Times bestselling authors Javier Sierra and Carlos Ruiz Zafón. In 2016, Juan celebrated the mark of 6 million readers worldwide.

Juan is the author of nine international bestselling novels: GOD’S SPY, THE MOSES EXPEDITION, THE TRAITOR’S EMBLEM, THE LEGEND OF THE THIEF, SCAR, RED QUEEN, BLACK WOLF and WHITE KING. They have been translated into more than 40 languages. He is also the author of the young adult science-fiction series, ALEX COLT SPACE CADET.

Juan is an avid reader and traveller. He lives in Spain with Sam, his bad behaviored dog.

Website / Twitter / Instagram / Facebook

You can see my Giveaways HERE.
You can see my Reviews HERE.
If you like what you see, why don’t you follow me?
Look on the right sidebar and let’s talk.
Leave your link in the comments and I will drop by to see what’s shakin’.
I am an Amazon affiliate/product images are linked.
Thanks for visiting fundinmental!

Giveaway – The Phantom Glare Of Day by M Laszlo @GoddessFish

Posted on March 14, 2023 by fundinmental

The Phantom Glare of Day by M. Laszlo

GENRE: Historical (Metaphysical) Fiction / Coming of Age Fiction

BLURB

In this trio of novellas, three game young ladies enter into dangerous liaisons that test each one’s limits and force them to confront the most heartrending issues facing society in the early twentieth century. The Phantom Glare of Day tells of Sophie, a young lady who has lived a sheltered life and consequently has no idea how cruel public-school bullying can be. When she meets Jarvis, a young man obsessed with avenging all those students who delight in his daily debasement, she resolves to intervene before tragedy unfolds. Mouvements Perpétuels tells of Cäcilia, a young lady shunned by her birth father. She longs for the approval of an older man, so when her ice-skating instructor attempts to take advantage of her, she cannot resist. Not a month later, she realizes that she is pregnant and must decide whether or not to get an abortion. Passion Bearer tells of Manon, a young lady who falls in love with a beautiful actress after taking a post as a script girl for a film company—and is subsequently confronted with the pettiest kinds of homophobia.

EXCERPT

London, 29 September, 1917.

In the dead of the night, Manon returned to her hotel suite and lay down in bed. Please, no more nightmares.

At dawn, she had a terrible dream.

A long, plump, phallic, pulsating Zeppelin approaches the city.

Like every other tenant, she exits Chelsea Court Hotel. Alas, as she races past one of the refuge islands rising above the thoroughfare, she trips and falls.

From all directions, meanwhile, various artillery units open fire—and the terrific cacophony of battle roars and blasts and rumbles and bawls.

As the shell-shocked crowds rush down into the neighboring tube station, a lady beggar approaches. “Stay where you are,” the wretched woman tells her. “It’d be your destiny to perish during a tribulation such as this.”

In time, a fragment of what looks to be the Zeppelin’s rudder plummets into the park not thirty feet from the place where Manon stands.

And now she looks up to find that a torrent of flames has engulfed the airship’s nose.

As the doomed Zeppelin drifts this way and that, the bittersweet-orange blaze spreads down the length of the passenger gondola.

With an awful hiss, the airship’s carcass descends toward her and then . . .

She awoke from the dream, quite certain that she must be tangled up in the gondola’s guy-ropes. Blinded by the morning light, she thrashed about.

Ultimately, she fell out of bed. How to go on living here?

At one o’clock, when she arrived at the offices of the London Moving-Pictures Company down on Coronation Avenue, she paused before the reeded-glass doors and debated whether she ought to resign her post. Why not go home to Manchester?

A dark presence rolled through the sky. Could it be a Zeppelin passing by overhead, the bomb bay slowly opening?

The darkness proved to be nothing more than a large skein of geese, but even so, she felt positively frantic—and now she continued through the door. Hopefully, the hall porter would be willing to tell Mr. Pomeroy that she had decided to back out. If so, she could be on her way before the production manager had even had a chance to protest.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

M. Laszlo is the pseudonym of a reclusive author living in Bath, Ohio. According to rumor, he based the pen name on the name of the Paul Henreid character in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked all over the world, and he has kept exhaustive journals and idea books corresponding to each location and post.

It is said that the maniacal habit began in childhood during summer vacations—when his family began renting out Robert Lowell’s family home in Castine, Maine.

The habit continued in 1985 when, as an adolescent, he spent the summer in London, England. In recent years, he revisited that journal/idea book and based his first work, The Phantom Glare of Day, on the characters, topics, and themes contained within the youthful writings. In crafting the narrative arcs, he decided to divide the work into three interrelated novellas and to set each one in the WW-I era so as to make the work as timeless as possible.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked in New York City, East Jerusalem, and several other cities around the world. While living in the Middle East, he worked for Harvard University’s Semitic Museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and an M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

His next work is forthcoming from SparkPress in 2024. There are whispers that the work purports to be a genuine attempt at positing an explanation for the riddle of the universe and is based on journals and idea books made while completing his M.F.A at Sarah Lawrence College.

NOTE: THIS BOOK WILL BE $0.99 DURING THE TOUR.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow the tour and comment. The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. Follow the tour HERE.