I reluctantly put down my copy of One of Us by Craig Dilouie when I was finished. I just didn’t want that book to end. The story of “monster” children rejected by their families and society broke my heart and had me craving revolution. Ugh, it was so good. The icing on the novel cake was getting to interview the twisted mind that created Dog, Brain, and Goof… Mr. Craig DiLouie.

Check out my interview with the author here below.

One Of Us: A Novel
Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook
By Craig DiLouie
Publisher: Orbit | Hachette Book Group
Release date: July 17, 2018

It is 1984 and the world is a strange one. A germ spread in the 1970s, causing genetic mutations in some of the children. Not harelips or six fingers or webbed toes, but fur and blobs, and upside down faces. These children are getting older and were put in a home, treated like slaves, unwanted and unloved. In a sleepy Georgia town, Enoch — or Dog, as he is called — just wants to belong, but hate and fear of the unknown will always keep him from being “One of Us.” When someone is murdered, it’s human (monster) against monster (human).

More below on One Of Us by Craig DiLouie.

The Boy On The Bridge
Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle
Written by M.R. Carey
Orbit Books
Release Date: May 2nd, 2017

The world has gone to pot. The Cordyceps fungus, a “zombie” affliction previously natural to ants, has turned the world into a dead one. Humans are now infected, and transmit the disease through saliva (with teeth), almost instantly turning victim into predator. A team of scientists and soldiers travel through England towards Scotland on the Rosalind Franklin aka “Rosie,” collecting samples to come up with something to stop or slow this epidemic. The story centers around scientist Dr. Samirah Khan and her “adopted” son, Stephen. Khan is pregnant, a scary prospect under these new circumstances. And the rotten cherry on this garbage cake is a horde of strange children who feed like hungries, but are sentient.

The Boy On The Bridge by M.R. Carey sets us back right in the middle of the unforgiving “hungry” world Carey created with The Girl With All The Gifts.

Fellside
Hardcover | Kindle Edition
Written by M.R. Carey
Orbit Books | Hachette Book Group
Release Date: April 5th, 2016

Jess is a heroin addict, a burn victim, an amnesiac, and… a murderer. She does not really remember what happened, but she knows she must be guilty, even if it was not intentional. She feels so guilty she just wants to die – she deserves it. But something pulls her back… something so unbelievable that it gives her a spark of purpose in this hell of a prison, where most are corrupt on both sides of the law.

Alex Beech – the boy she befriended and burned.

Jess realizes she has the remarkable ability to enter the dreams of others, a talent she had forgotten about. It was “therapy’d” out of her as a kid. Alex shows her that place once again, as they try to figure out what really happened to him.

We try to figure it out too in Fellside by M.R. Carey.

More below.

The Science of Avatar
Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle Edition
By Stephen Baxter
Orbit Books
Released May 29, 2012

Prolific science fiction author Stephen Baxter invites us to explore with him both real life science and space fiction in The Science of Avatar. There are lots of details sprawling in every direction, from speculation to established facts, in an almost scene-by-scene recount of the entire movie. He posits what our real world might be like in the year 2154, the year Avatar takes place.

We begin with Jake Sully leaving an ecologically devastated Earth, which we get the barest glimpse of in the film. Baxter explains to us what might have happened in an all too real account of ecocide, wherein Earth’s resources are depleted and space exploration offers the only hope of finding the resources we need to stay alive here. In the movie, this is the reason for the journey to Pandora.