June 2025 Indie Book Reviews

The Fatal Mind by N.J. Gallegos

Brain Chips Gone Bad
An Indie Book Review by Joseph Poopinski
4 Stars

The Fatal Mind is fun & smooth with ample comedy & textbook medicine. However, it’s not so light & fluffy once Dr. Absinthe’s sci-fi brain implants breach the darker frontiers of the psyche or subconscious. Maybe they go haywire… anyway that’s when the story turns much grimmer.

Highlights: Hysterical innuendo & double entendres. The startling conclusion audibly sounds like “dun dun duuun!” Such gifted writing full of colorful adjectives (“Brooke blasted the camera with her megawatt smile, & I fought an overwhelming urge to fidget.”).

Warning: The brain chip’s side effects include maybe turning you evil!

The Second Stone by L.L. Stephens

Best Frenemies Forever
An Indie Book Review by Joseph Poopinski
4 Stars

The multinational accord known as the Triempery must certainly fall. Infiltrated by Big Evil, Nammuor’s lackeys, subjected to at least seven greedy factions & lacking honest leadership, we are on the cusp of cataclysm after two wonderful books full of horrific disasters.

More politics & educational, if you will, than quests or battles, The Second Stone invests heavily in the last of Marc Frederick’s lineage & sanctioned king, the underwhelming Handurin, aka Hans. Magically he’s returned from a lengthy absence in a static realm (our familiar earth’s near past) for his own safety. But there’s more to Hans than there seems & this is the meat of the tale. How he thinks isn’t as mysterious as the other protagonists; he knows he doesn’t know & chooses, rightly or wrongly, with full awareness of those gaps.

Balancing his promise to Marc Frederick with instinctive distrust of Stephan’s little brother puts Dorilian in a pickle since Hans arrived on his doorstep & allegedly isn’t trying to assassinate him. Can this trustless, solitary hero discern the truth? Will he banish the riotously hilarious Endelarin for treason or some faux pas? Maybe Levyathan & Fame or Tiflan’s understanding & bridgebuilding can reconcile these gosh darn stubborn personalities…

Three (previously not alluded to) selected highlights: 1. When Dorilian practices the art of occupying two places at once. None of the Epoptes identify him nor realize where he actually goes, happily believing he is where he’s not. And what havoc he wrecks! There’s much fun in poor, egocentric Quirin tasting a little of his own bad medicine. 2. Continuing a theme of comeuppance, when Erenor the Regent, who’s done a deal with the devil, roars, “Handurin is where?” 3. Although there’s much humor, both the vivid descriptions of place, mood & tone (“What in darkness keeps you from sleep?”) and kernels of profound wisdom (“…because he did the things people thought he should do. A surer road to failure has yet to be found.”) eclipse said comedy phenomenally & fantastically!