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Knowing Who I AM by A.G. Allen
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Have you ever looked in the mirror and felt like the person staring back at you was a total stranger? Like there's this indescribable otherness about yourself that you can't quite put your finger on? That's the eerie, captivating premise at the core of A.G. Allen's genre-blending novel "Knowing Who I Am."
Right from the gripping opening chapters, we're introduced to Faith "Rosie" Miller - a troubled teen still reeling from an unimaginable tragedy years prior. After losing her mother and brother in a fatal car accident, Rosie's life has been a waking nightmare. With her emotionally distant father blaming her for their deaths, she's been neglected and left to fend for herself through petty crimes just to survive. Talk about a tough starting point for our hero!
But Rosie's dreary existence takes an exhilarating detour when she's unexpectedly recruited by the mysterious Frank into Shallow River Academy - a secret training facility for elite spies and operatives. I know what you're thinking—a teen spy academy sounds like such a YA cliche, right? But stick with me, because Allen makes this premise feel utterly fresh and unpredictable.
As Rosie begins her intense operative training, she starts manifesting wildly extraordinary abilities - superhuman strength, blinding speed, accelerated healing, genius-level cognitive powers. It turns out her late mother was part of a controversial, top-secret program to <a href="https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Genetic-Engineering">genetically engineer</a> an advanced new breed of human weapon, and Rosie may be the ultimate product of these experiments, codenamed "Trinity 5000."
I loved watching Rosie's <a href="https://www.bookishelf.com/benefits-of-journaling-for-mental-health/">journey of self-discovery</a> unfurl as she comes to grips with these mind-blowing powers. In gripping, pulse-pounding action scenes, she takes down multiple opponents with ruthless precision, yet is constantly wondering - what the hell am I? The tantalizing mystery surrounding her origins and her mother's shadowy work with genetic engineering at the Academy is endlessly compelling.
But "Knowing Who I Am" is more than just a showcase for flashy superhuman feats. At its emotional core, it's a rich, wonderfully nuanced character study of a traumatized girl still grappling with grief, neglect, and abandonment after her family tragedy. Rosie's existential struggle over whether she's actually human or just a science experiment crafted in a lab cuts deep. We've all felt that gnawing self-doubt over our identities at some point, and Allen taps into that with striking poignancy.
The author doesn't shy away from exploring darker themes, like Rosie's fraught relationship with her distant, emotionally unavailable father. There's a real gut-punch midway through when a shattering revelation puts years of rejection into a whole new context. I was genuinely moved by Rosie's heartrending desperation to simply feel loved and wanted by her only surviving parent after so much loss.
Amidst the high-octane action set pieces, Allen also skillfully interweaves Rosie's compelling coming-of-age arc as she learns to navigate first love, forge new friendships, and find her place at the Academy. Her crackling romantic chemistry with the swoon-worthy Mason had me utterly shipping their relationship from the jump. I was heavily invested in seeing these two troubled souls, brought together by circumstance, have a chance at happiness.
The supporting cast around Rosie is richly drawn as well, from her frenemy Sarah - an alpha operative-in-training whose intense rivalry pushes Rosie's skills - to more ambiguous adult figures working behind the scenes with murky motivations. Some shocking character losses hit like a playoff boxer's haymaker too.
Where the novel really shines, though, is in constantly subverting expectations and zapping you with ingenious twists and turns. Just when you think you have a handle on things, Allen deftly pulls the rug out in thrilling ways. There was more than one jaw-dropping revelation that had me gasping aloud in surprise. I love when a book can still catch me off guard like that as a jaded reader.
The escalating conspiracy grows more tangled and complex as the mysterious forces hunting Rosie are revealed, all building towards a wildly propulsive, explosive third act that had me tearing through pages. Allen doesn't hold anything back in the bonkers finale that loyal readers deserve.
I'd be remiss if I didn't praise the author's clean, cinematic prose too. It makes this sci-fi tinged tale so vividly immersive and accessible, striking the perfect balance of breathless action balanced with deep characterization. The descriptions of Rosie's superhuman abilities truly pop off the page with visceral intensity.
Simply put, "Knowing Who I Am" takes a conventional YA premise - a teenager recruited into a covert organization - and elevates it into a densely-layered, emotionally resonant supernatural thrill ride that mashes up multiple genres. With her stellar character work, high-concept <a href="https://www.bookishelf.com/unconventional-science-fiction-books/">sci-fi blend of ideas</a>, and ability to keep ratcheting up the suspense, A.G. Allen establishes herself as a new voice to watch in YA fiction with crossover appeal to adult readers too.
It's an adrenaline-charged page-turner, no doubt. But it's also a thoughtful, nuanced exploration of identity, trauma, family bonds and what it fundamentally means to be human in an increasingly artificial world. For a summer reading experience that deftly juggles both pulpy genre thrills and rich interpersonal drama, you can't go wrong with this imaginative knockout from A.G. Allen. Highly recommended for readers of all ages and interests.
Right from the gripping opening chapters, we're introduced to Faith "Rosie" Miller - a troubled teen still reeling from an unimaginable tragedy years prior. After losing her mother and brother in a fatal car accident, Rosie's life has been a waking nightmare. With her emotionally distant father blaming her for their deaths, she's been neglected and left to fend for herself through petty crimes just to survive. Talk about a tough starting point for our hero!
But Rosie's dreary existence takes an exhilarating detour when she's unexpectedly recruited by the mysterious Frank into Shallow River Academy - a secret training facility for elite spies and operatives. I know what you're thinking—a teen spy academy sounds like such a YA cliche, right? But stick with me, because Allen makes this premise feel utterly fresh and unpredictable.
As Rosie begins her intense operative training, she starts manifesting wildly extraordinary abilities - superhuman strength, blinding speed, accelerated healing, genius-level cognitive powers. It turns out her late mother was part of a controversial, top-secret program to <a href="https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Genetic-Engineering">genetically engineer</a> an advanced new breed of human weapon, and Rosie may be the ultimate product of these experiments, codenamed "Trinity 5000."
I loved watching Rosie's <a href="https://www.bookishelf.com/benefits-of-journaling-for-mental-health/">journey of self-discovery</a> unfurl as she comes to grips with these mind-blowing powers. In gripping, pulse-pounding action scenes, she takes down multiple opponents with ruthless precision, yet is constantly wondering - what the hell am I? The tantalizing mystery surrounding her origins and her mother's shadowy work with genetic engineering at the Academy is endlessly compelling.
But "Knowing Who I Am" is more than just a showcase for flashy superhuman feats. At its emotional core, it's a rich, wonderfully nuanced character study of a traumatized girl still grappling with grief, neglect, and abandonment after her family tragedy. Rosie's existential struggle over whether she's actually human or just a science experiment crafted in a lab cuts deep. We've all felt that gnawing self-doubt over our identities at some point, and Allen taps into that with striking poignancy.
The author doesn't shy away from exploring darker themes, like Rosie's fraught relationship with her distant, emotionally unavailable father. There's a real gut-punch midway through when a shattering revelation puts years of rejection into a whole new context. I was genuinely moved by Rosie's heartrending desperation to simply feel loved and wanted by her only surviving parent after so much loss.
Amidst the high-octane action set pieces, Allen also skillfully interweaves Rosie's compelling coming-of-age arc as she learns to navigate first love, forge new friendships, and find her place at the Academy. Her crackling romantic chemistry with the swoon-worthy Mason had me utterly shipping their relationship from the jump. I was heavily invested in seeing these two troubled souls, brought together by circumstance, have a chance at happiness.
The supporting cast around Rosie is richly drawn as well, from her frenemy Sarah - an alpha operative-in-training whose intense rivalry pushes Rosie's skills - to more ambiguous adult figures working behind the scenes with murky motivations. Some shocking character losses hit like a playoff boxer's haymaker too.
Where the novel really shines, though, is in constantly subverting expectations and zapping you with ingenious twists and turns. Just when you think you have a handle on things, Allen deftly pulls the rug out in thrilling ways. There was more than one jaw-dropping revelation that had me gasping aloud in surprise. I love when a book can still catch me off guard like that as a jaded reader.
The escalating conspiracy grows more tangled and complex as the mysterious forces hunting Rosie are revealed, all building towards a wildly propulsive, explosive third act that had me tearing through pages. Allen doesn't hold anything back in the bonkers finale that loyal readers deserve.
I'd be remiss if I didn't praise the author's clean, cinematic prose too. It makes this sci-fi tinged tale so vividly immersive and accessible, striking the perfect balance of breathless action balanced with deep characterization. The descriptions of Rosie's superhuman abilities truly pop off the page with visceral intensity.
Simply put, "Knowing Who I Am" takes a conventional YA premise - a teenager recruited into a covert organization - and elevates it into a densely-layered, emotionally resonant supernatural thrill ride that mashes up multiple genres. With her stellar character work, high-concept <a href="https://www.bookishelf.com/unconventional-science-fiction-books/">sci-fi blend of ideas</a>, and ability to keep ratcheting up the suspense, A.G. Allen establishes herself as a new voice to watch in YA fiction with crossover appeal to adult readers too.
It's an adrenaline-charged page-turner, no doubt. But it's also a thoughtful, nuanced exploration of identity, trauma, family bonds and what it fundamentally means to be human in an increasingly artificial world. For a summer reading experience that deftly juggles both pulpy genre thrills and rich interpersonal drama, you can't go wrong with this imaginative knockout from A.G. Allen. Highly recommended for readers of all ages and interests.
Dissonance: Volume I: Reality by Aaron Ryan
adventurous
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
As a hardcore sci-fi nerd always on the hunt for fresh, intelligent speculative fiction, I can't overstate how stoked I was to discover Aaron Ryan's Dissonance, Volume I: Reality. This gripping post-apocalyptic saga isn't just a thrilling alien invasion yarn - it's a masterclass in immersive world-building, morally complex storytelling, and spinning compelling human drama amid the bleakest of futuristic scenarios.
From the opening pages, Ryan establishes a richly unsettling milieu like few other debut novelists. In the year 2042, Earth has been overrun by a mysterious alien race dubbed "gorgons" - sleek, ghostly creatures with the ability to psychically paralyze humans before devouring them. It's the stuff of visceral nightmares, made all the more palpable by Ryan's meticulous attention to terrifying detail. These gorgons are rendered in disturbingly tactile depth, from their translucent corpse-like complexions to the eldritch mists and susurrations that herald their arrivals. It's pure high-octane cosmic horror fuel.
But what really hooked me was Ryan's grounded, emotionally authentic entrance into this sci-fi hellscape through the eyes of 23-year-old infantry sergeant Cameron "Jet" Shipley. Having narrowly escaped the gorgons' decimation of 85% of mankind, Jet belongs to the scattered human resistance taking shelter in makeshift underground "Blockades." His is an existence defined by abject terror, having born witness to unfathomable tragedy and loss - including his entire family save one sibling.
That surviving brother Rutledge immediately emerges as the key emotional anchor to Dissonance's overarching tale of shattered humanity, broken bonds of allegiance, and perseverance in the face of soul-rending despair. When a pivotal plot mission to implant a tracking device onto a live gorgon claims Rutledge's life, the narrative spirals into a gut-punch of philosophical provocation and psychological inquiry - what moral atrocities are justifiable to ensure humanity's endurance? Just how far is too far in the name of species survival?
I was in awe of how deftly Ryan literalizes these knotty conundrums through riveting twists and escalating shards of recontextualization that have Jet questioning the very people and military authority he's pledged himself to. No motivation is simple, no alliance left unruptured by the time the shockwaves from these cascading paradigm flips have fully landed. It's powerful, bracing storytelling that tangles the mind as much as the heart.
At the same time, Ryan orchestrates all the visceral pyrotechnics and balls-out action set pieces that make for a raucous genre spectacle. Numerous combat throw-downs with the gorgons explode off the page in deliriously immersive strokes, each brimming with hard-core, guns-blazing kineticism that never skimps on the raw grotesquerie. He also deploys some awesome original sci-fi conceits around "DTF" sonic weapon tech derived from the gorgons' own biologies - the sort of clever high-concept flourish that makes for legit, fist-pumping awesomeness.
Ultimately though, Dissonance transcends mere genre thrills into something starkly compelling and brutally profound thanks to its meticulous excavation of just what happens to humanity itself when social orders and ethical rubrics start fraying amid desperation and survival-at-all-costs mentalities. With each revelation and upending of assumed power dynamics, Ryan bears down uncompromisingly on those most harrowing human truths lurking at the apocalyptic brink.
By its haunting climax, Jet's entire rationale for fighting hangs in shards around him - and the novel stands as a searing character piece pondering whether morality and integrity have any place in a civilization's death gasps. Massive props to Ryan for going so unflinchingly there while tantalizing us with the promise of escalating soul-ruptures still yet to come. This is thinking-person's sci-fi dynamite of the absolute highest caliber.
Dissonance makes for an electrifying genre juggernaught, turbo-charged by soaring imagination yet anchored in raw human vulnerability. Ryan's ambitious narrative scope and layered philosophizing mark him as a unique new voice with the potential to be breaking massively huge before long. For mind-blowingly intelligent dystopian world-building fused with all the intricate human anguish and cathartic hope that makes sci-fi endure, this is essential reading of the absolute highest wattage. I can't wait to see where this saga detonates next.
Maestro! Maestro!: Good Times on the Way to Hell & a 1900 Spring Romance by Fred Calvert
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Billed as "a tale about a deal with the devil and a feel-good romance," Fred Calvert's dazzlingly unhinged novel Maestro! Maestro! makes good on that audacious promise while twilighting into far more uncharted territory. For embedded within this phantasmagorical saga set in 1900s Vienna is nothing less than a ferocious metaphysical fantasia on the primal, inextinguishable potencies of creative individuality and the myriad supernatural forces arrayed to suppress it.
We meet our protagonist Anton Becker, a daring young composer whose "radical music" innovates discordant new sonic grammars that scandalize Vienna's aristocratic elite as "barbaric and loony." While the city's stuffed shirts recoil in horror from Becker's convention-shredding masterworks, they earn the rapturous appreciation of two markedly divergent admirers - the beautiful noblewoman Lisa von Schelling, described as the tormented artist's "off-limits love of his life," and Satan himself. Yes, the Prince of Darkness himself, depicted as desperately seeking fresh talent to "upgrade the cringingly awful music of hell."
In an inspired bit of comic book mythologizing, Calvert conjures the infernal embodiment of pure unconstrained id - a demonic figure who sees in Anton's avant-garde genius a primordial eruption of the forbidden music that can blast his stagnant hellish realms into shocking new frontiers of profane grandeur. And so the Dark Lord brokers an overt Faustian pact, offering Becker success, riches and the matrimonial conquest of his beloved Lisa in exchange for his immortal soul's damnation to the ranks of hell's house band.
If the ensuing plot convulsions that stem from this deliciously insane premise recalled Milton's Paradise Lost by way of Robert Johnson at the Crossroads, readers will likely be caught off guard by the ungovernable bursts of hallucinatory excess, profane slapstick and altogether unprecedented narrative shapes that emerge instead. For Calvert almost immediately unleashes an aesthetic of uncompromising delirium, with passages of swooning romanticism combusting into synesthetic fugues of deconstructed lyricism. During signature sequences when Becker's earthshaking compositional breakthroughs catalyze ruptures across the metaphysical continuum, Calvert's prose assumes an unshackled musicality of its own - with grammatical and syntactical moorings dissolving into exquisite cyclones of polyphonic abstraction.
It's in these vertiginous literary raptures that Calvert's collaborator A.B. Dance makes his signal contribution. Working in a scratchy, unfinished pen-and-ink style with echoes of Ralph Steadman and Gillray alike, Dance's renderings attain new heights of phantasmagoric expression precisely when Calvert's language metastasizes into convulsive shape-shifts of linguistic being. At these climactic moments, Dance's wild calligraphic splotches and smears of line seem to levitate off the page into lurid synesthetic evocations of unfurling sonic psychedelia. His disjointed, libidinously warped figurations of bone, lump and crevice appear to unhinge from corporeal grammar altogether, accruing instead into pure transcriptions of libidinous force and abstract elemental propulsion.
Representing the book's lurid visions through improvisational scribbles and visceral painted gashes onto stock illustrations, Dance makes inspired vessels from the contents of pot shards and gutters alike. His renderings of Calvert's Satanic haunts and torture chambers resonate with the same reckless spirit as Goya's Disaster of War etchings, lending depraved cosmic tableaus an earthy, homemade vitality that transcends genre cliche and attains legitimately explosive primordial terror. And when Dance periodically collides earthly bodies into unholy demonic archetypes spilling blasphemous secretions and bodily exhaust, his deranged scrawls recall nothing less than Blake's revolutionary engravings of proletariat insurrection.
Throughout these passages, Calvert complements Dance's demented experiments in abstract evocation by summoning into being a teeming cast of profane and sacred entities locked in ageless existential battle over Becker's creative destiny. Representing the novel's hellish vanguard is Villi, a petulant gargoyle henchmen prone to pathetic pandering and explosive bouts of flatulence. Rendered by Dance as an equine amalgamation of emaciated limbs and protuberances, this unctuous villain was previously incarnated as a "cruel-hearted music critic" whose sadistic reviews once drove multiple composers to take their own lives.
Working in satirical contrast to Villi's venal appetites is the Angelic host led by none other than the composer Ludwig Van Beethoven himself. Characterized with cranky, salt-of-the-earth dignity by Calvert, this totemic musical revolutionary wields the impatient petulance of Working Class heroism itself as he tries to steer the errant Anton back towards integrity and transcendent self-actualization. His motivations reflect the highest sacred imperatives even as Calvert renders him in all-too-human terms, as a crusty celestial grunt whose efforts are continually thwarted by demonic saboteurs like Villi and the inscrutably vague machinations of his heavenly hosts.
That Calvert's supernatural myrmidons continually upend our mortal perceptions of their roles and archetypal auras itself reflects Maestro! Maestro!'s sly subversive brilliance. For even as his absurdist cosmos atomizes conventional narrative into exquisitely granular impressionist abstractions, it reifies the only text that ultimately matters - the unvarnished soul manifesting its sanctified rites of perpetual creative regeneration through hieroglyphs of unfurling desire and euphoric transliteration. Calvert's hydra-headed tale sheds its generic masks again and again until all that remains is a primal symphony of the unbound human instrument, exultantly transcribing its voice across the stars in eternal guerilla warfare against puritanical suppression and creative constraint.
And so by the novel's cataclysmic finale, when Anton's avant-garde dissonances erupt into literal metaphysical ruptures scrambling the primordial DNA of heaven and hell alike, readers will find meaning has been meted out. Demonic entities and heavenly angels burst like soap bubbles amidst the raging elemental fires of the young composer's magnum opus, revealed as empty cultural signifiers in the path of creative light's inexhaustible forward march. As his ecstasies unspool in dionysian orgies of pure vivid synesthesia, readers blink and realize this journey unto terra nova wasn't some druggy reinvention after all - it was a rediscovery of artistic deliverance's original source code, with Maestro! Maestro!'s avant-sorcerers charting their odyssey into the great prismatic uncreation through dazzling reconfigurations of text and image into unexplored dimensions.
As such, Calvert and Dance have somehow alchemized an outrageous supernatural picaresque, a rapturous erotic romance, a demented comedy of infernal humors, and an avant-garde masque of narrative disintegration into a single unified text unshackled from constraints of convention or decorum. Maestro! Maestro! reveals itself as nothing less than ground zero of iterative creative expression, that singular lightning strike of transcendent artistic revelation extracted from the profane muck of suppression and censorship through rapturous acts of lasting psychic deliverance.
No force of reaction or puritanical denial will stop its thundering advance into luminescent realms of prismatic becoming. For as its transmissions make abundantly clear, the radical morphogenic fires of Music and Love radiate from the same unquenchable source as boundless human imagination itself. And that inexhaustible creative beacon demands singular expression at all costs - no demonic infringement or heavenly constraint shalt halt its inevitable victory march. This is the ecstatic final amen that Maestro! Maestro! howls across the cosmos in defiant convulsive splendor.