Hal Bodner

4.5 of 5 Stars Review copy

The newest anthology from Angelic Knight Press is just shy of perfection, kind of like the evil witch in Snow White looking into the magic mirror and finding she was not the fairest of them all. But it's OK, this collection is still plenty good.

What editor Stacey Turner asked her contributors to do was to take a classic Grimm's Fairy Tale and tell it from another point of view. You know how they say the victors write the History Books? Well, the same thing happened show more with all of our favorite Fairy Tales. To get to the truth we might need to hear the other side of the story.

Take "The Tortoise and the Hare," in the tale we grew up with, the hare was lazy, believed he couldn't be beat and as a result of diligence the tortoise wins the race. In Jay Wilburn's, 'Hare's Tale," we learn that all hares live under the tyranny of the tortoises and the hare in this particular story was injured and barely alive when the race was run. Makes a big difference when you see it from the loser's point of view.

Inside Fairly Wicked Tales you'll find twenty-three delightfully twisted re-tellings of many of your childhood favorites, but don't get the wrong idea, these are NOT stories you would want to read to the little ones before bedtime or any other time, not that Grimm's Fairy Tales are squeaky clean to begin with, but many of theses have adult themes.

Each of the story-tellers comes at the theme in a different way and, for the most part, they all weave wonderful new stories. Stories where Red Riding Hood is anything but sweet and innocent; there's a particularly fun twist to Sleeping Beauty; an even darker telling of Beauty and the Beast; Snow White is a vampire; the little mermaid has a taste for sailors; the boy who cried wolf is actually a were-boy and the Big Bad (B.B.) Wolf is totally misunderstood. And that's just a sampling of the more familiar stories reworked in this entertaining anthology.

Fairly Wicked Tales is published by Angelic Knight Press and is available now for the Kindle from Amazon.com.

If you're a fan of Grimm's Fairy Tales, I really think you'll enjoy these Fairly Wicked Tales.

Highly recommended. show less

Having a previous experience with Hal Bodner and his In Flesh and Stone, I knew that I shouldn’t have expected to read a “classical” romance, and already the blurb, the story of a mortician who is in love with the Dead, was a good sign of it. But for the readers who love the classical romance, then probably For Love of the Dead is more “romance” than In Flesh and Stone, at least in the end. This novel is not also out of the standard for the genre (zombies and romance are not often show more seen together), but also for the preface, I think that it’s not of many authors to open a romance novel with an Author’s Note of 4 pages, and it’s not of many publishers to allow it. It’s said a lot on the author and the publisher.

There is always the experience of loss in a Hal Bodner’s novel, at least in the two I read, but there is also the feeling that Hal Bodner believes in love, even maybe in a love that goes beyond death. In this novel Jake is a young and handsome mortician, and the second part of his description, “mortician”, prevents him to find a man to love even if the first part, “young and handsome”, would allow him to meet a lot of candidates. Even if already with a sad experience in the past, the loss of his lover when they were still young men with a lot of expectation for life and future, Jake didn’t stop to believe in love, in the possibility to find the one, Mr. Right. And so it’s almost tender to read how he approaches the cruising dating pool, discarding possible partners even for a small detail, something unheard if you are only searching for a one night stand. But Jake is like that, he is able to see beyond the first appearance of a man, he is able to read his mind even from a facial feature. In fact he does that also with the young men he sees everyday on his morgue table, he is able to read the lost hopes in those lives taken from the world so soon, and he loves them all since apparently no one else love them.

When yet another young man ends on his table, Mark, beautiful like an angel, Jake again thinks how big a waste is, he again imagines what it could have happened if he met him before, he wonders if maybe Mark is the one. But Mark, as many before, is dead, and so, in a way, Jake is safe; he will not risk loving and loosing, he has already lost him, and so he can now love him without worries. Only that this time Jake is the tool of a bigger scheme, and when Mark arises for the Dead, Jake has to help to bring him back. See, Mark is not exactly the angel he appears, his soul is dark, and there is no “rest in peace” for him, the Dead want for him to rot in hell.

As in the previous book I read from this author, there is a lot of sex, and sometime the sex lingers on the boundaries of comfort, at least for me, but strange is, they never go beyond the limit. And again, as in the previous novel, when the sex is detached by love, it’s graphic and detailed, and when instead there is love, the author doesn’t linger, it allows the reader to fill in with its imagination. I believe it’s not a coincidence, when sex is recreational, or detached, it can be described, but if it’s love and not only sex, then lingering in details is not necessary, the true feelings already fill all the available space.

As in the previous book, for sure Hal Bodner has not written an “usual” romance, and probably it’s not a romance for all, but for sure the quality of erotic romance you have here it’s well above the average.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZNJM0O/?tag=elimyrevandra-20 show less

I went in expecting a bit of brain candy, and was pleasantly surprised to find an entertaining story, much humour, and a cast of rather vivid (in some cases almost over the top) and entertaining characters. Given the subject matter (vampires - angst, guilt, woe *cough*Anne Rice*cough*), I was expecting a wallop of angst, and was pleased to find although there was action and excitement and perilous situations, I didn't have my gut unecessarily twisted six ways from Sunday emotionally. I show more didn't actually want to like Troy; he's very camp, in a way that normally irritates me in real life, but I think he's actually my favourite character. His lack of taste in decor probably endears him to me. :D

The author doesn't try to take himself too seriously, and as such had produced a story that is easy for the reader to settle into and just go with it, and has enough in it to keep readers engaged until the end.

I sincerely hope that the author writes more about these characters, because I feel a little bereft now I've finished the book. show less

I was pretty excited when I saw this book. The cover is great and I loved the idea of the plot. The writing is great. I particularly enjoyed the witty banter and the time I spent in the mind of the main character. Right up until he made a fat joke about one woman - then immediately after an "anorexic" joke about another woman.

Sorry, but it's 2021 and I can't continue to read and support books that body shame women and make light of serious eating disorders. Can we PLEASE stop with the body show more jokes?

So as enjoyable as the first little bit of this book was, the unkindness of the jokes took me right out of the story and I figured I just wouldn't continue.

I'm certain that if you can get past that this will be an entertaining read! I'm clearly not the right audience for this book. show less