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Out of the Thicket
Drew Kizer’s Out of the Thicket begins with a wonderfully unsettling idea: every year in the seaside town of Yana, twelve-year-old boys vanish in an event known as the Seizing. No amount of running, hiding, chaining boys to their beds, prayer, or magic has stopped it, so the town has built rituals around an apparently unavoidable grief. From that premise, Kizer builds a fantasy adventure that mixes mystery, folklore, religious imagery, family drama, and some surprisingly funny moments. The story feels lived-in because Yana has its own sayings, prejudices, legends, political arrangements, religious practices, and old wounds. All of those details gradually turn out to matter, so the worldbuilding isn’t just scenery. The town itself becomes part of the mystery.
The strongest part of the novel for me is its cast, particularly Hannah. She’s abrasive, controlling, funny, wounded, brave, and often painfully wrong, which makes her much more interesting than a conventional heroic figure. After losing her son Baruch, she creates stories and ceremonies meant to help Yana’s families survive the Seizing, but her determination to help is tangled up with her own inability to release what she’s lost. Ramia, whose son Hazaq is approaching the Seizing, challenges Hannah’s assumptions at nearly every turn, while Hazaq and his best friend Bear give the story its adventurous heart. Bear is especially easy to like. His enormous size, gentleness, appetite, fearfulness, and loyalty make him funny without turning him into a joke. As the boys run from Yana, encounter the mysterious Isaac, uncover buried history, and stumble into dangers much larger than they expected, their friendship keeps the book grounded.
Kizer also gives the story more thematic weight than the fantasy mystery initially suggests. Images of hands, eyes, water, light, sacrifice, thickets, and things being held or released repeat throughout the novel until they gather meaning. The central question becomes less about defeating a supernatural phenomenon and more about the difference between loving someone and trying to possess, protect, or control them. Hannah’s journey is especially effective because the book doesn’t erase her flaws as she changes. Her final choices grow directly out of everything she’s been wrestling with from the beginning, and the conclusion turns the novel’s recurring language of clutching and grasping into an image of open hands. The biblical imagery is clearly intentional, beginning with the epigraph from Genesis, but Kizer works most of it through character and story.
I recommend Out of the Thicket to readers who enjoy character-driven fantasy with a moral or spiritual dimension, especially people who like stories built around mystery, friendship, sacrifice, grief, and redemption. Readers of fantasy with biblical or mythic echoes will have plenty to notice, but the emotional appeal is broader than that. It’s also a good fit for someone who likes an adventure populated by imperfect adults and believable young characters. By the end, the Seizing has become more than the strange hook that opens the novel. It’s the pressure that exposes what these people fear, what they believe, what they’re willing to surrender, and what love asks of them. That gives Out of the Thicket an ending that feels connected to the questions it has been asking all along, while leaving behind a hopeful image of a community learning to live with open hands.
Pages: 371 | ASIN : B0FP44T3Z1
Angel of Ashes
Angel of Ashes tells the story of Audie, a rare Phoenix Angel who is born from the ashes of her dying mother and raised by her human father on a Kentucky distillery farm. Her quiet life cracks open when strange forces break through the barrier meant to protect her. From that moment on, she is pushed into a hidden world of angels, demons, and breathtaking celestial places. The book traces her journey from a sheltered child to a young angel discovering her destiny. It does this with a mix of heartfelt family moments, wild mythical adventures, and a whimsical cosmic logic that shapes everything around her.
I felt completely swept up by the emotional core of the story. The opening chapter, where Evangeline dies and Audie hatches from the ashes, was very emotional for me. It felt tender and cinematic. The writing has this earnest charm that kept tugging at me. Even simple scenes shine with feeling, like August trying to raise a winged toddler who burps fire and floats out of bathtubs. The book often feels like a fairy tale that comes straight from their heart. The pacing shifts from soft emotional beats to frantic supernatural chaos, yet I found that unpredictability engaging. I never knew what corner the story would turn next, and that sense of surprise kept me turning pages.
I also found myself grinning at the creativity of the worldbuilding. The Tunnel of Delulu made me laugh. A pastel sewer full of scarecrows, glass spiders, cauliflower brains, and a giant furry mouth waiting to be fed. It is ridiculous in the best way. The Windmill Farm acting as a doorway into Heaven felt inventive and strangely beautiful. The angel culture is whimsical and full of personality, like the Cloudwalkers greeting each other with Haloha. The sheer amount of quirky ideas kept the story moving with an exciting energy. I loved how the author constantly surprised me, shifting from emotional moments to bold new landscapes that made the world feel vibrant and alive.
This book is a great pick for readers who enjoy heartfelt fantasy with a strong emotional center, younger teens who want adventure mixed with coming-of-age stories, and adults who love stories that feel like bedtime tales grown into something grander. If you want a read that mixes sweetness, chaos, magic, and genuine heart, Angel of Ashes will absolutely be your thing.
Pages: 256 | ASIN : B0FTYDTTLD
River Talk
River Talk is a sprawling and dreamlike journey through myth, memory, and human frailty. It drifts between fables, folklore, and deeply personal reckonings with place and time. At its heart is Marchon Baptiste, a man both haunted and blessed by a heightened sense of connection to the world around him. His story, interwoven with echoes of gods distracted by their own games, high-stakes gamblers rising from the dead, and tribes living outside the reach of modernity, circles endlessly around the question of what it means to belong, or not belong, within the noise of humanity.
I enjoyed how the writing feels unpinned. Sentences sprawl and snap. They carry the same restless energy as the rivers and forests that pulse through the story. Sometimes I felt lost, like I was dropped into someone’s fever dream without a guide, and other times I felt stunned at how vividly the world cracked open. The language is raw, but that’s what gave it its weight for me. I loved how the prose could be coarse one moment, then suddenly dissolve into passages that felt more like prayers than storytelling.
The book kept circling back to this deep divide between human-made noise and natural rhythm. I felt admiration because it made me think about how little we listen, how much we dismiss in our rush to build walls of words and explanations. I can’t shake certain images: Marchon in the swamp hearing the river sing, the gods playing careless games with human lives, the silent communication of tribes who never needed words. These moments felt alive in a way I rarely get from fiction.
I’d recommend River Talk to readers who like stories that don’t walk straight lines. If you enjoy Faulkner’s twisting voices or the mythic strangeness of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, you might find something here to savor. It isn’t a book for quick reading. It’s for anyone who’s willing to wrestle with the unsettling question of what it means to really be connected.
Pages: 222 | ASIN : B0FJR45LQK
Boy of Heaven
Boy of Heaven, by Morris Hoffman, tells the story of an orphan boy in 17th-century Milan who discovers a fading mural, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, hidden in what has become the stables of a Dominican priory. As the boy labors among horses, he has named after constellations; he alone sees the painting’s slow return to clarity. What unfolds is a lyrical meditation on suffering, faith, grief, and vision. Hoffman’s novel blends historical fiction with a mystical edge, threading deep emotion through a richly imagined world.
Reading this book pulled something quiet but insistent from me. Hoffman’s writing is unusual, almost liturgical in rhythm. It doesn’t always make for an easy read, but it makes for a rewarding one. There were passages I reread just to feel them again. The boy’s interior world is raw and lonely, but never melodramatic. There’s very little action in the conventional sense. Instead, the story unfolds through daily labor, small kindnesses, and sacred echoes. And yet, I found myself emotionally swept up in the boy’s grief for a horse, his awe at a fresco, his quiet yearning to be seen.
I feel the book drifts at times. There were sections where the pace slowed, where there were long descriptions of the priory or repeated imagery. Everything is so reverent. Still, what the book lacks in momentum, it makes up for in heart. The blend of the sacred and the mundane, the way the horses become mythic, the mystery of the fresco, that’s where it shines. It doesn’t explain itself, and that made it feel more honest and more relatable.
Boy of Heaven isn’t just about art or faith or even memory. It’s about seeing what others miss and holding on to what shouldn’t be forgotten. It’s a quiet book, but it left a loud feeling. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves poetic writing, historical fiction with a spiritual bend, or stories where nothing much happens on the outside but everything changes on the inside. This is not a book to speed through. It’s one to sit with, one to cherish in silence.
Pages: 90 | ASIN : B0F7C4BSRP
The Undulating Shadows
In The Undulating Shadows by DC Eastman, readers are thrust into a world filled with enigma and longing as they follow the lives of three orphans—Justin, Raven, and Albert—united and then divided by fate but ever tethered by the haunting presence of a deadly specter.
From the outset, the tragic circumstances that land Justin and Raven in the orphanage offer a compelling foundation for the narrative. When they encounter Albert, who has spent his entire life within the institution’s walls, friendship blossoms. Eastman deftly captures the innocence of their childhood bond, as well as the complexities of growing up, as Albert and Raven’s adoption drives an inexorable wedge between the trio.
What really sets this novel apart is the slow unraveling of the mystery surrounding the specter. Eastman masterfully withholds key details, inviting readers to join the characters on their journey to discovery. This journey is one filled with twists and turns, and the realization that Albert is not who they believed him to be adds an unexpected layer to the story.
Eastman’s character development is particularly praiseworthy, particularly during the characters’ youth. His ability to make readers connect with these characters is skillful, playing on universal experiences and empathetic understanding.
The transition from childhood to adulthood, I feel, is somewhat abrupt, a jump that, while understandable, could have been smoothed for better narrative flow. Raven’s ‘other sense’ is an intriguing element that I would have liked to have seen explored more before becoming a key tool in solving the mystery. Still, this does not detract significantly from the overall enjoyment of the novel. Eastman’s vivid imagination and skillful storytelling make The Undulating Shadows an entertaining read that is sure to satisfy fans of thrillers and mysteries.
The science fiction elements add another layer of intrigue, and although the beginning may seem slow, the patient reader is rewarded with a rich and interconnected story that unfolds beautifully. For those interested in a thrilling tale filled with mystery, suspense, and profound human connection, The Undulating Shadows is a compelling recommendation. I look forward to diving into more of Eastman’s work in the future.
Pages: 376 | ISBN : 0639763707
