Samurai’s and Dildos

Hot Love Inferno – Prophecy Allocation Series Book Two by Nicky Blue.
Reviewed by Gabriel Constans.

Once again, Mr. Blue provides a wonderfully creative, bizarre, and entertaining tale, that has the awkward hero and gardener, Barry, using his debatable ninja skills to fin an attempt to rescue his girlfriend Flo from the Pleasure Factory, where she has been taken by three seven feet high, helmeted samurai warriors from a different dimension and time. Luckily, Barry is not alone in his quest, as he is assisted by a dog named Keith, Dr. Harper, and an ancient Goddess called Mrs. Jittery Twitch.

Hot Love Inferno is a cosmic compilation of every genre imaginable – sci-fi, fantasy, horror, humor, family saga, romance, satire, and other indescribable categories. The narrator in the book says it is “savory sci-fi”.  If you took Mr. Bean, Bruce Lee, Mr. Ed the Talking Horse, and Maude (from Harold and Maude), and threw them all into a Monty Python movie, you’d have an inkling of this series. An added kick are the footnotes at the end of each chapter. These aren’t ordinary footnotes, but humorous explanations and thoughts about British people, food, and slang. The notes are as funny as the main course.

Here is an excerpt from chapter ten (Be Careful What You Wish For).

Barry flapped open his kimono to reveal his portable cassette player, took a deep breath, and hit play. ‘I’m Too Sexy’ by Right Said Fred came blaring out of the speakers, and Barry launched into some furious body-popping. A bit rusty at first, he soon began to find his mojo. His routine started with the classic two-step, progressing into the robot. As his confidence grew, he went down for a bit of floor work. An awesome back-spin took him into a position known as the freeze which set him up for a moonwalk to the bottom of the staircase. The routine may not have won Barry first place at a New York dance-off, but it served it purpose. Above him, the samurais looked confused as hell.”

Nicky Blue’s ability to write characters that are believable, different, and set in situations that are far from the ordinary, is remarkable. The predicaments, reactions, and combinations of science, fiction, fantasy and various cultural euphemisms, is fantastical, yet somehow grounded. It all makes sense, even though it is bizarre, weird, shocking, and out of this world. Only in Hot Love Inferno (and the Allocation Series) will you find an elder mother who loves death metal; an adult boy/man who still lives at home, is a terrible gardener and sees himself as a skilled ninja; a dog from another dimension; and Mrs. Garrett getting half of her body stuck in one world, and the other half in another.

Redesigned by Death

I Avatar by Heather Harrison.
Reviewed by Gabriel Constans.

I’ve said before that I don’t read much sci-fi, but every once in awhile something catches my eye, or yells in my ear. I Avatar is one of those yellers. The story, written by Heather Harrison, describes a time in the 20th century, and a character named Panama, who is suddenly reactivated in the year 2082. At first she’s not sure what has happened, but soon discovers that her handler is called Gina, and her name is now Sila.

“During my first few weeks as an avatar, there was a lot of whining and crying involved. I can’t say I’m proud of how I handled it, but hell, give me a break. Finding out you died and were stuck spending the rest of eternity as someone’s video game piece sucked ass. On the positive side, at least I was able to think. Avatars are supposed to be dead, as in not retaining any emotions, feelings, or thoughts. I on the other hand, retained all three.”

It turns out that young gamers in the future (Gina) have the same kind of love interests as those nowadays, and Sila (Panama) is with Gina all the way (literally). There are some wonderful twists and turns in this story. The process by which one becomes an avatar is bizarre, yet believable. If you take an episode of Black Mirror and Westworld, and throw them in bed together, you might wake up with something similar to I Avatar.