Russell Carroll’s Relentless Blades is a visceral, well-crafted entry into dark fantasy, following a knight, a disgraced thief, and a conflicted half-skron guide as they race an empire to stop the awakening of world-dominating dragon hatchlings. Its greatest strength is character work, particularly the empathetic handling of Vigilanton’s near-illiteracy and Grimlock’s identity struggle, backed by cinematic combat and immersive world-building.
Tag Archives: Book Review
Unmasking the Heartbreaking Comedy: A Feature on Gary Got Goosed
Before the week from hell starts, Montarbo makes sure you know who Gary is, and that context sticks with you later. Gary’s spent twenty-five years delivering pizzas for Benwardo’s. He finds comfort in his “mountain of blankets,” his cat Seamus, and a cushioned toilet seat he calls his “porcelain altar.” He plays high-level online games as EtherealOG. For Gary, life is okay. Not exciting, not impressive by anyone else’s standards, but enough. That’s the whole point. This isn’t a guy chasing something bigger. He’s just trying to get through his shifts and go home to his cat. Which makes it all the more brutal when fate decides that’s not allowed this week.
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of August 6, 2026 at #JustReadingNook
Funny, Tender, Unflinching. Gary Got Goosed by J.R. Montarbo
J.R. Montarbo’s Gary Got Goosed follows Gary Gander through one relentless week, structured day by day, Sunday to Sunday, as an ordinary guy’s life buckles under a pileup of bad luck, embarrassment, and grief. It’s a small, internal story in scope, following one deeply flawed, deeply likable man through the worst seven days of his life, and it’s exactly that closeness that makes it work.
Unsettling, Grief-soaked, Restrained. Holes In The Somewhere by Richard Brown
Holes in the Somewhere by Richard R. Brown is speculative fiction in form — weird, unsettling, occasionally cosmic — but reads less like a genre exercise than grief given permission to take unusual shapes. Brown uses the uncanny as pressure rather than decoration, and the result is horror that bruises rather than shocks.
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of August 6, 2026 at #JustReadingNook
Finding Yourself in Two Cities: A Deeper Look at “Gnight, Sara / ‘Night, Heck”
There’s a particular kind of book that doesn’t just tell a story — it holds up a mirror to a whole generation trying to figure out who they’re supposed to become. Justine Castellon and Mike Dee’s co-written novel, Gnight, Sara / ‘Night, Heck, is one of those books. On the surface, it’s a story about two people who meet in a coffee shop. Underneath, it’s a study of everything that happens in your twenties when the plans you made at eighteen collide with the person you’re actually turning into.
Why Mafia Novels Still Work: From Mario Puzo to the New Wave
Mafia fiction survives generation after generation because it runs on a contradiction readers can’t look away from: institutions built on loyalty, family, and honor that exist entirely to break the law and hurt people. A mob boss is both a father figure and a killer. A “family” dinner table can host a murder plot in the next scene. That tension between intimacy and violence, between codes of honor and total moral corruption, is what makes the genre feel less like crime writing and more like tragedy in the classical sense: ambitious people undone by the very values that built their power.
Nothing is Safe. Everything Bites: J.R. Larriba Talks Itsy Bitsy Spyder Evolution
If you’re someone who enjoys a police procedural that slowly stops making sense in normal, human terms and starts tipping into something cosmic, particularly one where the detectives are carrying as much personal wreckage as the case itself, this book hands you an easy way in.
What’s New This Week at #JustReadingNook?
Here’s what’s new for the week of July 26, 2026 at #JustReadingNook