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Shadowspawn used to rule the Earth as gods. But you can get kind of lazy when you’re immortal and nearly indestructible. After thousands of years of cross-breeding with humans, today’s Shadowspawn posterity isn’t as pureblooded, making for all kinds of problems. Even worse, humans have over-populated the Earth and kind of taken over things. By the time you get around to dealing with the issue, you have to do something drastic, say, another plague to wipe out all the extra humans so you can reestablish yourself as the one in charge.
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I came across THE RED WOLF CONSPIRACY (Amazon) for the first time a few months ago at the library. It caught my eye because the cover was striking, the title intriguing, and it had some good quotes from people I actually recognized. At the time, I was in the middle of another novel and ended up forgetting about the encounter. Interestingly enough, I was given the chance by our illustrious Overlords to once again get this book in my hands, and this time to say something about it.

CONSPIRACY is the first in a planned trilogy (of course, it IS fantasy after all…) of books by Robert V. S. Redick and is his debut novel as a published author. As such, I expected going in that there would be some decent world-building, a fairly direct plot, possibly some good characters, and more than likely some horrible “new author” errors that would make the experience a less-than-shining example of perfection.

Of course, that’s exactly what I found.
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If you are an aspiring author, we can guarantee you have heard this advice: write what you know. Now granted, for the most part you can come to know most anything via study and research. When it comes to disabilities, however, you simply can’t know unless you’ve experienced it. We use this as a preface to Blake Charlton‘s SPELLWRIGHT (Amazon), because Charlton took that bit of advice and ran with it.
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James Dashner‘s THE MAZE RUNNER (Amazon) has garnered a lot of attention since its release. It is a novel filled with really cool and unique ideas, so on that end, its attention is completely understandable.

The plot centers around a group of amnesiac teenagers, stuck together in a foreign, hostile, and deadly maze, where bizarre creatures roam. These creatures are called Grievers, and they hunt the Gladers–as the kids call themselves–while the walls of the Maze are constantly changing. They are in marginal contact with their “captors” who send them supplies and new kids. However, the schedule of “one new kid a month” is broken the day after the main character Thomas arrives, when Teresa, the first girl Glader ever arrives with a message that “Everything is going to change.” We should mention hate this over-used phrase.
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