“The Burning Battle: The King’s Frog Hunter Book 3”

The kingdom of Ameram, including its aging monarch, King Ahmbin, and his only child, Ekala Oleen, heir to the throne, is under siege. An evil force is at work in Ameram manifesting in the disfigured Baskin who wants nothing more than to rule from Ahmbin’s Castle Ambermal.

Baskin will stop at nothing to twist the many peoples of the kingdom and beyond to do his will. Only a small group of compatriots loyal to Ekala can offer a defense. They must try to untwist the twisted and fight with near-living swords against an enemy spawning deadly worm-snakes.

One such friend is the King’s Frog Hunter, Thalmus, “guardian of the Prophecy of Ameram” which predicts the rise of Ekala Oleen. (In Ameram, frogs are human-sized and plenty mean, but their legs are a delicacy.) 

Former Paradise resident Ken Young, now living with his wife Cindy in Idaho, brings his epic sword-and-sorcery trilogy to a conclusion in “The Burning Battle: The King’s Frog Hunter Book 3” ($18.25 in paperback, kingsfroghunter.com; also for Amazon Kindle). Book One, “The King’s Frog Hunter,” introduces Thalmus; Book Two, “Shadows Of War,” shows the Prophecy includes Boschina, the Stone Cutter’s daughter, whose father, Veracitas, carves the truth.

With cover and maps drawn by the inimitable Steve Ferchaud of Chico, and profiles of persons, animals, and locations included, the book takes Thalmus, Boschina, and others, through seemingly unending skirmishes. As Thalmus says, “There is a source stirring in the depths of Ameram that is driving this upheaval. We have felt its presence, experienced its wrath, but we have yet to find it.”

But find it they will. As battles rage in the North and South Fords of Ameram, Baskin seems always just beyond their grasp and Captain Kali, with her forces weakened, threatens to give up. But Thalmus encourages her. “There is always a way. Sometimes the answer is hidden from our sight until we venture forward.”

Then, in the most unlikely of places, the showdown with Baskin begins. A city is in flames, and the evil threatens to engulf all that is good. But for this deeply imagined story, the end, blessedly, is not yet.

“The New Freedom Warriors: Children Of Heremone, Book 2”

Former longtime Chicoan David Dirks, now living in Brentwood with Karen, his wife of 55 years, is imagining a world somewhat like our own but where spiritual warfare takes center stage. The first book in the “Children Of Heremone” series, “The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane,” finds young Elijah under the sway of one Grant Humphreys Harvard, president of the Harvard-Westwood Academy for the Gifted, located in the southern hills of Ojai Valley.

Sent by president Harvard to nurture a science and technology center in Botswana, under the guidance of a mysterious and evil spiritual force called the Keeper, Elijah is brought into the true Light of the Almighty One by Esi Ada Ogolla, a young Botswanan girl gifted with spiritual insight. Together they must confront the malevolent god Heremone and Heremone’s proxy, Sir Bitrus Bitrus Ghirmai, the Interior Minister of Botswana.

Through the mysterious “Spirit of Mars” Ghirmai has provided free, unlimited electricity to Botswana as he lusts to put the country under his sway. Though popular with the people, he “secretly specialized in a massive program of adoption and kidnapping of children and teenagers for sex trafficking.” With Esi (“the Almighty’s anointed warrior”) and her parents, and later a couple of wavering friends, Elijah hopes their small group can defeat Ghirmai and combat sex trafficking, one person at a time.

“The New Freedom Warriors: Children Of Heremone, Book 2” ($12.95 in paperback, independently published through Resurgam Books; also for Amazon Kindle) tells the harrowing tale of spiritual warfare on multiple fronts.

Elijah’s friend, James Darwin Carter, arrives in Botswana to carry out the Keeper’s sinister mission, but Esi’s father intervenes and guides “James through a detailed study of the ancient text and the redemption story.” He is set free. “Thokato—love—had freed him from the destruction of his soul.”

But James’ new spiritual roots do not go deep, and he proves an unstable ally. Elijah tries to get James to understand that “Ghirmai follows a different god, one perhaps more powerful than Keeper.” 

Then, when Esi is taken by Ghirmai, all seems lost. Will the darkness be overcome? The next volume will tell the tale.

“Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy, And Borders”

LA-based author Vanessa Angélica Villarreal joined a group of students at Butte College last week to present “Speculative Writing as Time-Travel to Heal the Present.” Sponsored by the Puente Project, helping “educationally under-served students enroll in four-year colleges and universities,” Villarreal used “Back to the Future” as a creative way to change the past to right the future despite the bullying Biffs of the world.

Villarreal expands on this in her “Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy, And Borders” ($29 in hardcover from Tiny Reparations Books; also in ebook and audiobook versions), longlisted for the National Book Award. 

She was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. The essays in the book trace her journey through challenging family dynamics, taking a job cleaning houses, marrying an unfaithful man, birthing a son, enduring a messy divorce, and eventually earning a doctorate at USC. 

Fantasy (which often in its world-building looks back at some golden age sullied by evil) and science fiction (which is forward-looking but tends to focus on apocalypse) helped her make sense of the abuses she endured. 

“Fantasy is a space safer than memory to process trauma and escape abuse into a world where the helpless are empowered by magic, friends are found among outcasts and survivors, and a hero will defend you with his sword until you find the hero was you all along.”

In nuanced analyses, Villarreal pulls back the curtain on the racialized and colonial stereotypes in much popular fantasy and science fiction, especially video games. And yet:

“Perhaps I am so drawn to fantasy because it is also the space of immigrant dreaming, the projection of the self into an impossible imaginary to bear the reality of the present one. Its central question: Forces larger than myself have estranged me from my home; what can displacement into new lands make capable in me?”

Readers will see the answer in this powerful memoir.

News: Brenda M. Lane, Napa author and contributor to “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope, Faith & Miracles,” will be signing her books at Barnes & Noble in Chico on Friday, October 24, from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm. 

“The Goolwind Tales: Book One”

“Avaleigh, a young girl of twelve, could not keep her tears from shedding. Her younger brother, Hayden, a boy no more than nine, followed her lead in sensing the fear that now overwhelmed them.” The Head Caster (a “master of sacred magical arts” and the siblings’ uncle) had just informed the two that their father, who had embarked on a secret mission a year before, was “lost.” 

No one had heard from him for nine months. Their mother had vanished four years ago, likely on the same mission—the retrieval of an ancient book of extraordinary spells.

Readers 9-18 are invited to join Avaleigh and Hayden in an enchanting sword and sorcery quest to find their parents that unfolds in “The Goolwind Tales: Book One” ($13.99 in paperback from Publisher’s Brew, publishersbrew.com; also for Amazon Kindle). 

Written by Ricky Hayes, born and raised in Chico and a consummate world-builder, the story takes place in a world called Goolwind, with “four major islands, each one divided by the treacherous tides of the seas.” Avaleigh and Hayden, descended from a bloodline that makes them no ordinary casters, must journey far from the caster monastery in the kingdom of Essend.

Along the way they are befriended by a group of Goblins as they encounter a series of monsters (pictured in the glossary). The Behemoth Toads, for example, are immense amphibians that devour Goblins; Ash Hounds are fire-breathing beasts; the Gnolls are “a war-minded race of vicious but simple-minded hyena-like humanoids.”

Battles abound (though very little blood is shown) as Avaleigh and Hayden grow in their caster abilities, controlling water and wind with Thunder Strikes and Sinister Cyclones, to fight ever-present enemies. But Hayden is a little too sure of himself, and faces his own demise, saved by a Bonecrackle Caster called Jasper, a specter “improperly laid to rest … who either died violently, foolishly by their own hand, or a curse of some kind.”

Each time Hayden overextends his powers, using up his life energy, Jasper pumps his heart back to life. But Hayden needs the curse lifted, so the journey continues with new urgency, paving the way for the next book in the series.

“The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane”

“As long as Paul Early Kane had been married,” we are told, “he desired his boys to have the best life opportunities. He had attended Harvard-Westwood Academy for the Gifted in the southern hills of Ojai Valley, California, before going to Harvard University….” 

But when Paul’s favored son, Joseph, fails to get into the Academy and his younger brother, Elijah Kidd Kane, 13, is accepted instead, and taken under the wings of the Academy president, Grant Humphreys Harvard, it becomes clear to readers that Elijah is being groomed for a secret, and sinister, project.

“The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane” ($12.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is the first in a new immersive fantasy series by former longtime Chicoan David Dirks, now living in Brentwood with Karen, his wife of 54 years.

Seen as “ordinary,” Elijah is neglected by his socialite mother; a child of privilege, “he lived life by allowing it to happen to him.” The boy is warned by his grandfather, Emmanuel, that he has visions regarding Dean-Headmaster Samuel C. EngleHoffer. “He is of German Aryan descent and still holds to some of their most ancient principles… He will use his power to trip you.”

The tension between Harvard and EngleHoffer notwithstanding, they both worship at the giant Sphere at the Academy, a broken sphere in which a smaller, perfect sphere emerges. There is talk of appealing to the Keeper, and a plan to use Elijah as Harvard’s agent to create a science and technology academy in Botswana. 

Somehow the “Spirit of Mars,” the spirit of the late scientist Nikola Tesla, has made it possible to establish free power for that African country, getting the populace used to all the electrified amenities, before lucrative charges are suddenly imposed. 

It’s clear a spiritual battle is taking place. A young Botswanan girl, Esi Ada Ogolla, must not only challenge the Interior Minister, a warlock, who craves spiritual power for himself, but bring Elijah to see the true Light and aid Esi and the other New Freedom Warriors in stopping sex trafficking of children.

There will be more to come in the series. Victory will not be easily won.

“The Goddess & The Pig”

Travel writer Karen Gilden, born in Chico, attending public school in Willows, lived for a time in southern France. During “a walk in the Val de Dagne, a magical place hidden in far southwest France,” just after her granddaughter was born, a curious little story suddenly made itself known. For a writer of non-fiction, that, she writes me, was a surprise.

“The Goddess & The Pig” (in Amazon Kindle format, independently published) is the story of Boris the Boar, “not a boring bore—not one who talks and talks without saying anything….” Boris “lived in a pen in back of monsieur and madame’s house, in a quiet little village beside a stream.”

That hadn’t always been his home. “He didn’t remember being found in the woods as a tiny piglet” and being “given to madame to raise and butcher (for monsieur thought boar meat tasted very, very good.)” But years pass, and madame becomes attached to Boris, pampering him until, one day, she leaves for a time to visit her sister. And monsieur can hardly wait to delight her with boar sausage when she returns.

Boris escapes and later meets up with a charming young girl who calls him “Pig.” “You are in my home,” she tells him. “I am Diana, goddess of the hunt and the hunted; so named by the Romans who long ago built a temple on this hill.” Her goddess-powers are much reduced, though, because few wild animals are left in the woods. Yet she promises to help Pig.

But, Boris asks, doesn’t she help people like monsieur? Yes, she says, “For hunters must eat. But the hunted must live as well. To keep everything in balance was my job. Now, there is only disarray.”

To restore order, Diana must help Boris find a proper family. With rabbits? Not a match. Badgers? No. Then monsieur appears in the woods, with a rifle, and Boris and Diana have, one might say, an arrow escape. Boris resolves to live by himself. “But everyone needs a family,” Diana tells him.

And it will be so in this charming tale of a wise goddess and a Pig who finds his true home.

“Moonbound: A Novel”

Robin Sloan, author of “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” spends his time in the Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley, but, he writes me, in 2021 and 2022 as he was “shuttling around in your part of state” he was making voice notes for his new book, “Moonbound: A Novel” ($29 in hardcover from MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; also for Amazon Kindle and audiobook formats).

It is, he writes me, “A novel dreamt up (in part) on the road between Capay Valley and Oregon House,” and, as his ten-year-old son Orion says, after Sloan read him the book, it’s YA (Young Adult) but something even younger children could enjoy—if they don’t mind the intensity of a post-apocalyptic world, in the year 11,377, full of talking beavers, giant flies, and dragons made up of information.

About those dragons. Back in the year 2279, the Anth (“for that is what humans called their civilization at its apex”) created seven engineered intelligences, the “dragons,” and sent them out on a spaceship. Instead of opening a door into the universe, the dragons on their return built a base on the moon, pulverized a chunk of their new home and created a dust cloud around Earth so it would “forevermore hide from the cosmos.”

The Anth tried to fight back, but most all humans were destroyed. It was “a bummer so colossal that it was definitely … the worst thing that had ever happened” in Earth’s history. 

Thousands of years passed and one of the mini-intelligences, engineered by the Anth as a “Chronicler,” found itself inside a boy named Ariel, 12. 

The Chronicler tells the story, about how Ariel, escaping from the Wizard Malory, who had somehow created him, finds his destiny. But Sloan, with sly humor, upends standard fantasy tropes. There’s a sword in a stone for Ariel to pull out, but he ignores it and finds a very different, talking, sword. (More details: robinsloan.com/moonbound.)

Sloan upends the whole idea of “destiny” in the book (the first of a planned series) so surprises abound as Ariel ventures out into a world brilliantly imagined, where, with every page turned, readers will ask: “What happens next?”

“Harmony: Legend Of Forest Ranch”

Wilma Rae Forester, LA-born in 1933, came to Chico with her family in 1940. Later on, marriage and children brought a move to Forest Ranch in 1964. A dedicated artist as well as writer, she has a tale to tell of many years ago. 

Actually, it comes from an old man she and her children encountered one day while walking in Forest Ranch soon after establishing residence there. They passed an old tree with a sign that read “World’s Largest Cherry Tree.” 

“The roots of it twisted beneath a rectangular shaped cement watering trough,” she writes, “with the words ‘Diamond Match Co.,’ imprinted into the side.” Then they saw the man, in red suspenders and with a long white beard, and though the tree couldn’t talk, he certainly did.

It's all recounted in “Harmony: Legend Of Forest Ranch” ($7.76 in paperback from ReadersMagnet LLC; also for Amazon Kindle), with more than two dozen of Forester’s whimsical illustrations depicting a young gold miner named Harlan, a Native American woman named Melody, and a creature called a Harmony.

A Harmony, Forester writes, “is a tiny playful horse-like creature that looks like it’s made of glass. It has a white fuzzy mane and tail, two sparkling bright eyes and wings like a dragonfly. Since they are only about four inches tall, they may easily sit in the palm of your hand…. Listen, did you hear a soft haunting melody or is it just the water bubbling over the rocks?”

When Harlan and Melody, riding in what is now Bidwell Park, and admiring Big Chico Creek, fall in love, Melody’s brother puts a curse on Harlan, who promises to return to marry Melody but, mysteriously, stays away for years. 

“You see,” writes Forester, “Harmonies were originally created to send out feeling of happiness and good will to everyone … but it wasn’t working. Because of the terrible battles and bad feeling between the White man and the Indians, all Harmonies were ordered to leave the West. Only two were left and they were grieving and sad.”

Would Harlan ever return? Only the Harmonies Dusty and Silky can help and, fortunately, a happily-ever-after is not far behind.

“The Boy Who Earned His Magic”

Three schoolyard bullies hold Howell Evans, twelve (almost thirteen), upside down by his ankles. It’s just another day in the town of Mount Shasta, where Howell lives with his parents and sister. Tormented by Bully Harold Bully, Pug the Pyro, and Sloppy Jack, Howell hears them howling and chanting “Witch, witch, your mother is a witch. Hunt her down, tie her up, and toss her in a ditch.”

This particular day, however, Howell has a series of strange encounters, including a Latino boy who cannot see; a creole girl who cannot hear; a Navajo girl with a great wolf; and an unsettling man in black whose eye patch glows. Then comes news that Howell’s mother, Rhiannon, named after a Welsh princess, has been in a car crash in the Sierras driving home from New Mexico. 

Howell’s eccentric uncle Tal (who drives an old VW van) explains all the weird appearances mean “they” have his mother and Howell must ride with him to find her—and prepare for the mysterious “transfer.” Otherwise the evil Drygoni will win. 

The tale is told in “The Boy Who Earned His Magic” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) by Chicoan Lynn Elliott, playwright, novelist, Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Chico State. Originally published in 2020 as “The Crossingway,” the book has now also become a teleplay.

The script won monthly honors from the London Indie Film Festival in Best Family/Children’s Film, Best Feature Script, and Best Television/Pilot Program or Series categories. If Elliott “earns his magic” and the series is produced, it will make for a phantasmagorical ride.

Born in Wales, Elliott notes in a talk that when he emigrated to the US in his twenties he wanted to know more of the “magic” of indigenous cultures that seemed to emanate from New Mexico, “a land of desert landscapes, howling wind witches, a ghostly woman in white…. A land where people ... still live with their tales and stories of the battles between good and evil … in this mysterious land with its ancient cliff dwellings and deep, haunting canyons.”

Welcome, dear friends, to “the place between here and there.”

“Setting Sun Story, Book 1: Awash In Jealous Freedoms”

“I grew up here in Chico,” Doug Hufford writes me. “From a young age, I've been interested in storytelling.” What began as a short story writing project at Pleasant Valley High School is now a series of novels (published and planned) portraying a strange fantasy otherworld very different from our own, and yet perhaps not so different.

“Setting Sun Story, Book 1: Awash In Jealous Freedoms” ($18 in paperback from Douglas Hufford Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is more than a sword-and-sorcery tale full of dangerous visions and powerful magic. “As my ‘adolescent “whys”’ ended I was able to look back on my teenage, and later on, early adult mindsets with a critical lens…. I hope that this sort of post-modern, tragic, transcendentalist approach to such a story could act as an inspiring place for folks to get a fresh view of their own lives.”

Hufford imagines a great spired city, Baustas, ruled by powerful Deacons who are answerable to a mysterious figure called “the Savior,” that is a bulwark against the “Savages” outside. Baustas is “Place of Peace,” an “ark” to carry its inhabitants from the present world, bathed in the constant red glow from the sun and moon, into a future world of light.

For the Prophecy to be fulfilled, the Deacons must raise up a cadre of Chosen along with fighters called Patriots. Young Adam, as the story opens, may be one among the Chosen, but it is unclear whether that is his true mantle. Adam thinks those within the city, “blessed by a divine Savior,” are “refugees from reality.”

The Deacons say the “world outside is … a place forsaken,” and “the Baustians … should be able to cure the world of its disorientation. Cleanse the Chaos, and heal it all.” But only a few, the Deacons and the Chosen, “have ever left this place.” 

Elsewhere in the story, young Erin and Rain, brothers in arms, discover a mechanistic world underneath Baustas, and together with Jun, a young woman of mysterious origins, must face the implications of free will in a real world not controlled by the Savior. A cliffhanger ending awaits Book 2.

“Unfatally Dead: To Thaw Or Not To Thaw?”

Wayne Edmiston graduated from Chico State College in the 70s; now living on the Central Coast with his wife, Jacque, they teach Science of Mind principles as ordained New Thought ministers with Centers for Spiritual Living.

In an homage to his late wife, Sherry Plaster Edmiston (1944-1989), Wayne has crafted a tale mixing fact, fancy, and a heavenly bureaucracy, all centered on the fate of one Walter Elias Disney and his sidekicks Mark Twain and soul-in-training Eepia, who tells the others that “art, science, and religion are interrelated, part of the Universal triune.”

Disney died in 1966, but his body was cryogenically frozen. At the same time, “a place known to all who have passed into the wild blue yonder, Heaven’s Creative Department is headed up by Walt Disney himself.”

As the angel Gabriel makes clear, Walt has a choice. He can remain or return to his body to be resuscitated and, if all goes well, bring his creative spark to new generations. “Unfatally Dead: To Thaw Or Not To Thaw?” ($14.99 in paperback from WEDmiston Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle and audiobook formats), adapted from a 1986 screenplay, is indeed the question.

In order for Walt to decide, he, Sam Clemens, and Eepia are sent to various venues to see what has transpired after their deaths. Eepia in the beginning remains a shimmering presence, while Disney and wise-cracking Clemens take on their human forms and keep altering the timeline by interacting with others.

The trio flits from Haight-Ashbury in 1968, to Menlo Park in 1973 (where Clemens takes a bite out of an apple and hands it to a young man at a garage sale named Steve Jobs), to Disneyworld, to Hurricane Katrina—their presence mystifies (especially when they suddenly disappear)—and inspires. 

A girl named Sherry finds inspiration. “The gigantic screen zeroes in on the young cartoonist they had just been discussing. In the bottom left corner of the screen, a time stamp indicates the year, 1957, when the young girl was enrolled in a junior high school reading classroom in Chico, California.”

Walt’s decision? Readers will need to join the wild ride that rivals Mr. Toad’s.

"Into The Shadow Realms: Book 1"

For seven-year-old Aislinn nightmares are not just kid stuff; she and brother Alex, 11, are Travelers, able in their all-too-real dreams or daydreams to visit the strangest of worlds and their colorful (especially purple) inhabitants--and to see the terrifying end to one of those worlds.

Chico novelist Hope Hill introduces readers to Aislinn, Alex, their parents and their Traveler cousins in "Into The Shadow Realms: Book 1" ($10.99 in paperback from Ink Drop Press; also for Amazon Kindle). The dreamlike story intertwines excursions into the Shadow Realms with the quotidian dailyness of kidhood.

Will the adults at the family gathering understand Aislinn's night terrors are caused by something real? "How could she tell her family that she Traveled to other worlds in her dreams and the things she’d seen terrified her?"

Terrified her so much her parents at times can hardly rouse her, as if she were in a coma. Alex explains to one of his cousins: "'She found an interactive globe showing a planet called Theopolis. When she asked what the place looked like now it showed a desolate, hostile environment.'" 

There is more: "'She asked what happened and saw the death of the planet as its atmosphere became unbreathable. She saw the people there fleeing, but not all could escape, and some chose to stay in the hopes of fixing the planet’s atmosphere. Their best and brightest minds were killed and she saw it happen.'"

With the aid of a shapeshifter named Merrick the trio and cousins find supposedly wise Observers and certain sinister Travelers want to use Aislinn in some frighteningly mysterious plan as the long-promised Prophecy Child who will save Theopolis. Is Aislinn really the Chosen One? Even if not, she has a vital part to play in the struggle yet ahead as the book comes to a close.

Alex is desperately protective of his sister. He remembers that "when he was scared as a little child and worried things would continue to get worse his father told him something he never forgot. 'Happy endings take hard work. If you don’t like how your story’s turning out work to make a happy ending.'" We shall see.

"The Kingdom Of Dadria: The Blood Of Wolves And War"

Chico writer N.J. Hanson's sword-and-sorcery saga begins with "The Kingdom of Dadria: A Lamb Amongst Wolves" wherein red-headed Princess Endelynn of Dadria is set to wed Prince Sedrick of Kahren and thus unite the two great houses. 

It all goes awry as plots within plots center on Sedrick's brother, Kendrick, who aims not only to take over Dadria but to fulfill his genocidal ambitions to raze the Forest of Wayward Souls and destroy all the indigenous peoples within.

Those peoples are the "skinwalkers," humans from the Wolf, Bear, Panther, and Hawk clans able to transform into those very animals. Endelynn finds herself captive of the Wolf Clan after a fake kidnaping engineered to show Sedrick's bravery; he has gone missing in the Forest and Endelynn's life hangs in the balance. 

One must not forget the ancient prophecy of a young wolf warrior returning from the dead "as a wolf with fur red as flame, born to a woman called the Aleutsi, the Great Mother," the only hope against the pale invaders from the Walled Cities.

The plots thicken in the second in the series, "The Kingdom Of Dadria: The Blood Of Wolves And War" ($15.99 in paperback from Ink Drop Press; also for Amazon Kindle). When Endelynn is surreptitiously freed, she is befriended by the warrior Shunka, himself a Wolf Clan exile, who uses his powers to confront the monster in the forest. (This is the Wendigo, the eater-of-humans, portrayed on the cover by artist Steve Ferchaud.)

It's a neat trick: "Shunka had crouched on all fours. He'd felt the wolf spirit swell within him, his body changing to match. His face lengthened into a muzzle, hands and feet became paws, and fingers and toes turned to claws. A tail sprouted from the base of his spine. Thick, black fur rippled across his body. The man was gone, the wolf had emerged."

Months pass in the forest. Endelynn is taught hunting and fighting, and Shunka grows fond of the pale princess. It's mutual, yet as fondness morphs into love, a great betrayal looms, and readers of this captivating and violent epic will yearn for the next installment.

"Joe And Me: A Love Story Of A Guitar And Her Boy"

In 1933 Victor Marcini, master luthier (a maker of stringed instruments) crafts a special guitar for his soon-to-be born son. Young Joe begins calling her "Wose" and, later, Rose, since she's partially made of rosewood. Readers get the whole story not from Joe, but from Rose.

Rose is a magic guitar. "Joe And Me: A Love Story Of A Guitar And Her Boy" ($13.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is lovingly crafted by Chicoan Carolyn Ayres, combining her own love of the guitar with a deep insight into how the world looks through Rose-colored glasses.

"Although I had no eyes or ears," Rose tells readers, "I could see and hear. Victor had inadvertently activated the tree consciousness that was ingrained in my wood."

Though Rose doesn't talk, she expresses herself in more subtle ways. As Joe's guitar instructor says in wonderment, "I've never seen or heard another like it. When you play it, the guitar seems to be trying to please you by resonating with a tone I can't get from it." That's what love will do. 

Rose's narration is studded with puns (and Ayers provides a short glossary of music terms so those not familiar can join the fun). Yet--and this is hard to explain--the wordplays are not jokey but rather part of Rose's stream of consciousness. 

When Victor's wife, Collette, takes ill, Rose begins to fret. With Collette's death, and then Victor's, Joe flees the area so creditors will not claim Rose for themselves.

Joe, now a teenager, hooks up with a musical group and is soon packing them in with his playing. But Rose's magical sounds attract the attention of thieves, and Rose tells the extraordinary story of what happens over the next decades as she is separated from Joe, yearning to return. 

Rose, it turns out, is not only magically beautiful, but knows it all too well. Events will take her down a peg but that's part of the symphony of her life, a symphony constructed by Ayers with a kind of whimsical clarity that will surely pluck the heartstrings of those who listen carefully.

"The Yahi Storyteller"

Lewis Foreman, a correspondent tells me, was part of the Chico High School graduating class of 1959. Now, in his eighth decade, he has written and illustrated a book of extraordinary tales that tell of ancient civilizations, galaxy traveling machines, and a perpetually sunlit garden world at earth's center.

And it begins with the story of a talented drummer whose stage name is Frosty. Years ago "he had left his home town of Chico, Ca., which had not satisfied his musical desires, and moved to the City." In San Francisco he finds "drugs and Rock and Roll" and later sets off to Reykjavik to explore his Viking heritage. What he finds is no less than the Reality behind all mythologies--and sword-and-sorcery adventures aplenty.

"The Yahi Storyteller" ($39.92 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) prefaces Frosty's own incredible journey with the long tale of Sky Hawk, part of the Acoma Anasazi, who "had wandered the southwest and had eventually entered California," coming to the land of the ancient Yana nation and the Yahi people.

Only a few Yahi survive the cattlemen's attacks (and Foreman's book does not look away from the grisly slaughters), but they do find hidden caves in which to live, and eventually Sky Hawk the storyteller is welcomed into the Yahi family.

"The Great Spirit is the manifested Father and Mother Creator," Sky Hawk tells the children, "and has been called by many names. The Navaho people call it the Holy Wind, the pale-skins call it the Holy Ghost."

Father and Mother Creator, neither male nor female, "are beyond creation." "They, together with the manifested Great Spirit, are the Creator. Three, yet all one. They are Power, Wisdom and Love." 

This back story sets the stage for Frosty's literal slide into the Viking era, where the drummer is renamed Sigmund Thorsson, summoned by the leader, Ice Wolf, to learn drums--and to explore a strange tunnel into the center of the earth wherein Centaurs, Sprites, Satyrs, Dragons and apes reside. 

The dark lords and their Fallen minions have arisen to enslave others, so the Viking exploration turns into a battle with cosmic consequences. 

Foreman's fertile imagination is wonderful to behold.

"The Illusionaires"

"As he passes through Redding he can still see them. The leftovers from his little outing. Blinking traffic signals, and darkened storefronts, and utility trucks on the move. He hadn't meant to cause this chaos. Hadn't known he even could. Only now is he feeling the ripples he'd left; the spoiled food, the fender benders, the missed appointments and disrupted lives."

Welcome to the alt history/fantasy world of "The Illusionaires" ($12 in paperback from missppelled press; also for Amazon Kindle) by Brian T. Marshall. For the Ridge-area writer the world in his newest novel is our own, the power outages real, save for their cause: magic. 

Marshall has crafted a world where spells work and magicians with various Talents (like the ability to conjure flying monkeys or mind-mess with electromagnetic radiation) are represented by the Sorcerers Guild. 

But the Guild is corrupt, and in 1938 stage magician Richard Constairs forsakes his dwindling audiences and travels to Hollywood, offering Louis B. Mayer his services as special effects wizard for a movie in production called The Wizard of Oz. Constairs wants to break the Guild's sweet deal with MGM by creating a new group called The Illusionaires.

Dangerous business indeed. There is a dark, perhaps unworldly, force behind the Guild, constantly seeking--something, and it's not pleased with Constairs. And how to bring together for the good of all a bunch of vain and self-promoting magicians who lie for a living?

Constairs is far from a model human himself. After a one-night-stand with his stage partner, knife-throwing Karla Livotski, he is befriended by Charlie, the Invisible Boy, goodness personified until Constairs' bumbling attempts to escape the bad guys causes Charlie to kill a man.

All of this has consequences as the lives of the characters intertwine. Over time, with "hoopla and hype," Constairs convinces the public "that magicians really could do just about anything. Cure cancer. Right wrongs. Get rid of that bathtub ring." But then--what really happens in the assassination of JFK? What happens to Apollo 11 as it heads for the moon?

And always that question: In order to fight Evil, must one become evil? In answer, Marshall the novelist offers a bravura performance.

"The Vault Of Adon"

After Camp Fire survivor Michael J. Orr (wordsmithmojo.com) and his family moved to southern Idaho, he began writing a series of novels under the name of T.J. Tao that have grown ever more fantastical. His first, "Burn Scar," reimagined the fire as occurring in the town of Genna (Maltese, he writes, for "Paradise"). 

Among the characters is recovering alcoholic James Augustine who, in "Stone Scar," teams with Boise State University archaeologist Stuart Angeline as they find a portal in Idaho that leads to other parts of the world and to a monk named Adon, trying through the centuries to bring humanity to its senses.

With the apparent death of their antagonist, Gavin David (pronounced "dah-veed"), James and Stuart are confronted in the third novel with his twin brother, Marcel, who has even grander ambitions: "He wants to become a god." "The Vault Of Adon" ($13.99 in paperback from WordsmithMojo Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) begins with an earthquake and ends with an existential threat to Islam and Catholicism. 

Adon explains that the gods of mythology, such as Thor and Odin, were actually those who wielded sophisticated technology unknown to ordinary folk, but they all failed, and their weapons were buried deep in an Icelandic cavern, now revealed by the earthquake. 

There, two locals, seventeen-year-old Ásdís Axelsson and her father Kristján, discover the vault; guarding it is a shield, which turns out to be the actual shield of Odin.

Marcel is following it all; his minions kidnap and torture Kristján in an effort to snare Ásdís, who has escaped with James. Does she have the key to opening the vault? Stuart is taken to the vault as well; with threats to his family he is charged with translating the strange symbols on the shield and vault entrance. 

On the run, James finds Ásdís a quick study, accepting his bizarre story of ancient Travelers (Ava, called "Mother," is 11,000 years old) and godlike powers (through the strange metal Atlantium which tips Poseidon's trident and the spear that pierced Jesus on the cross).

If the vault is opened Marcel's quest will be fulfilled. Humanity's subjugation appears imminent, but the end, as they say, is not yet.

"Secrets Under The Skin"

Chicoans Hope Hill and N.J. Hanson begin their novel with a splash. Seven-year-old Jocelyne (Jocy) Chambers, her two twin brothers, Jacob and Travis, now four, and their babysitter Lisa, journey to the Pacific Bay Aquarium. With her parents away on a business trip, Jocy finds it hard to keep her brothers in line and at the aquarium they sneak onto a catwalk above the shark tank. What could go wrong?

Hearing a shout, Travis turns but his "shoe slipped on the slick, wet metal and he pivoted to the left. His arms flailed in a desperate attempt to grab something, to steady himself, but he only caught empty air. Jacob reached for his brother, but it was too late. Travis fell screaming, and plummeted into the cold water of the shark tank." At feeding time.

The shark grabs Travis; in a moment, Jocelyn "dove headfirst, breaking through the water's surface. She'd closed her eyes before hitting the water, but once beneath the waves she found her vision as clear as crystal. A trail of blood led down to the shark swimming away with her little brother. ... She swam faster than should be possible, her hair streaming behind her like in a wind tunnel." And then she screams as the shark lunges.

"Her voice came out like a high-pitched, powerful shriek. A siren wail that vibrated through the water like a sonic wave. Schools of fish froze, stunned. ... And the shark, the deadly, powerful great white came to a stop."

"Secrets Under The Skin" ($8.99 in paperback from Ink Drop Press; also for Amazon Kindle) is a gripping story of self-discovery. 

Years later, befriended by a school counselor named Mr. Otto, Jocelyn comes to understand that nothing is as it seems. Hill, an author, poet, and former foster child, and Hanson, lover of science fiction and fantasy, have crafted a tale with a cliff-hanger ending that will have readers craving for the next. It can't come soon enough.

The authors will be signing copies of their book at ABC Books, 950 Mangrove Avenue in Chico, on Saturday, February 22 starting at 11:00 a.m. and extending into the afternoon. The public is invited.

"The Kingdom Of Dadria: A Lamb Amongst Wolves"

We are not in Kansas anymore: "His human form fell away the same way one might throw off dirty clothes or a snake would shed its old skin. He fell on all fours, thick black fur sprouted all along his body, hands and feet became paws, his face stretched into a muzzle full of sharp teeth. He was no longer a man, he had allowed the wolf to take over."

Many are the mysteries in the Forest of Wayward Souls, not least of which are the Skinwalkers, humans from native clans able to change into Wolf, Bear, Panther, Hawk, a gift of the Great Spirit enabling them to defend against the pale invaders from the kingdoms beyond the forest.

An ancient prophecy says a young wolf warrior who died in battle would return, when his people were in greatest need, "as a wolf with fur red as flame, born to a woman called the Aleutsi, the Great Mother."

The Skinwalkers play a pivotal role in Chico writer N. J. Hanson's riveting sword-and-sorcery epic, "The Kingdom Of Dadria: A Lamb Amongst Wolves" ($17.99 in paperback from Ink Drop Press; also for Amazon Kindle). The cover, by Steve Ferchaud, features red-headed Princess Endelynn of Dadria, the only heir to the throne, soon to be wed to Prince Sedrick of Kahren to unite two great houses. What could go wrong?

Well, pretty much everything. There's a plot afoot instigated by the king of Kahren, Sedrick's older brother Kendrick, to take over the kingdom of Dadria and threaten the peoples of the forest. 

Add to the mix the loyal Dadrian bodyguard Sir Aridain, protector of Queen Beatrice (especially after King Cassius dies unexpectedly), skeptical of the planned union; and Sir Darren, "captain of the Black Swords of the King," a man willing to carry out the king's dastardly plan.

A plan that includes the fake kidnaping of Endelynn so Sedrick can show his heroic chops, but things go awry and she finds herself captive of the Wolf Clan. Therein lies the tale, so to speak, full of violent action, narrow escapes, and a promise in the next book for all to be resolved.

"Shadows Of War: The King's Frog Hunter, Book 2"

Paradise novelist Ken Young continues his magisterial "frog hunter" epic fantasy with Book 2, "Shadows Of War" ($16.95 in paperback from North Point Publishing). In the Kingdom of Ameram, where fierce frogs are as big as humans, Thalmus, the King's Frog Hunter, must defend Ameram against a new incursion of evil.

The tale begins in the aftermath of Metro's defeat. The sinister magician's evil influence had seemingly been vanquished, old King Ahmbin had been spared, and now his daughter, Ekala Oleen, had become Queen. It was the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that she would become "the first woman ruler of Ameram."

The prophecy is guarded by Thalmus (one of the Order of Servants who is, mysteriously, "much older than I appear and much younger than I am") and by Larma, a female mystic who listens to the clouds ("Occasionally, the clouds, just like the wind, will speak the truth we need to hear"). That prophecy encompasses the fate of Boschina, the Stone Cutter's Daughter, whose father, Veracitas, expresses the "stone truth" in his carvings.

Ekala and her "Oleens," (mostly) female warriors, ride with Prince Bolimaz, exiled from the northern land of Toulon, to investigate strange doings at the the ford separating Toulon from Ameram. Weapons are being smuggled into Ameram; Metro's evil remains like an invisible fog.

The evil is greater and deeper than any have imagined. Larma listens to the clouds and writes out an urgent message to Thalmus, which Boschina must deliver. Boschina confronts the terrible fighting beast called the Chorgen and she, Thalmus, and Thalmus' trusted animal friends (Dallion, "the striking white and brown Paint stallion"; Bubo, the Great Horned Owl; and Thunder, the giant shell creature, "a mix between a tortoise and a snapping turtle") must battle enemies from without--and within.

Treachery abounds, and two questions haunt the book: Who can be trusted? And what is the truth?

The action never flags, and Ekala and Boschina become wiser through their trials. Though the ending is fitting, it's more of a pause, with the two women now prepared to work out their intertwined destinies in the next book. It can't come soon enough.