by Zilla N.

Like everything I truly love, I have no idea how to describe Most Famous Short Film of All Time. This is not going to be a very good book review, which is a shame because it is a very, very good book. I got an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review so I’m honour-bound to do my best, even if it’s an impossible task.

I wish I had written this book.

In some ways, when I write, this is the book which I am trying to write. I can imagine telling Lev, the main character, that I no longer wished to write novels because he had already told my story better than I ever could. I imagine him answering that if I didn’t write, I hadn’t understood his story.

There’s a Philip K Dick book, Valis, which I read twice. I have never met anyone who read it even once, so I never get to talk about it. The book seamlessly weaves together mental illness, science fiction, and religion in a pseudo-autobiographical narrative. The first time I read it, I, along with the narrator, lost track of what was real. Years later, on reread, I still believed the narrator over my own memory of the storyline.

I was 25% through Most Famous Short Film of All Time before I realized that the protagonist’s name, Lev, was not the same as the author’s name, Tucker, so even though the book is written in the first person, it is not, strictly speaking, an autobiography. I’m making a joke about Valis but no one will get it unless they’ve read that book.

Philip K Dick had a religious epiphany that time was broken, and we’re actually living through one moment in 50 AD, waiting for the boss to come back. In the film Waking Life, they say Philip K Dick got it partly right. Maybe 80%. Time is stopped, and there’s only one moment, but it’s not 50 AD. It’s now. Like Alice (of Wonderland fame), Lev is stuck with jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today. Most Famous Short Film of All Time is about Lev choosing now.

This is not how to write a book review. I don’t know where I went wrong.

Please read Most Famous Short Film of All Time. I would like to talk about it with someone.

This stunning book came out yesterday. You can find it here.

by Zilla N.

We’re reviewing The Ghost in the Vending Machine, by Saevelle. 

Have you ever wondered what it’s like for authors when they read fanfiction of their work? When someone takes a thought they had and turns it into something bigger and brighter, a living, breathing story? The answer is: overjoyed.

Saevelle writes Night Beats stories. Not just stories with Night Beats in them—she writes paranormal investigations starring Lilith the vampire medical examiner, Jane the werewolf cop, and Jordan, the boring human cop. If that wasn’t fantastic enough, Ghost in the Vending Machine gives us both sides of the story. Not only do we see the investigation of Trix’s murder on the show, we also see the actors, stunt doubles and special effects creators as they create the magic, and as they live their own lives with their own dramas.

Both sides of the story are perfect. Saevelle brings all my favorite moments to life (or at least to undeath), from Brent the ghost making bad puns to the political implications of cryptids taking refuge in your city. I found myself invested in the murder mystery, not just seeing it as a plot device. And the actors’ stories are equally delightful. There’s an ongoing gag with Ao3 and rabbits that had me cackling with laughter, and a truly heartfelt romance between Fynn the enby deathly make-up artist and Derrick the presumed-straight stunt double.

This story is a must-read for Night Beats fans, and also anyone who likes the paranormal, investigation, humour, and romance, not always in that order. You can read it for free on Wattpad.

by Zilla N.

We were given an Advance Reader Copy of The Devil You Know (Hotel Heat Book 1) by Nicole Northwood in return for an honest review.

The Devil You Know is a romance, a steamy, smolderingly hot romance, the kind of book you’re grateful has an art cover so no one wonders why you’re smiling to yourself as you read it in public. It’s a very, very good romance. But it’s more than that.

Cam, the Prince of Lust, demon from Hell, is funny. He’s got a wry, self depreciating humour that makes me want to quote half his lines in my group chats to make my friends laugh. (I restrain myself to no more than a third of his lines.) And he’s got stuff going on in his life besides love, or maybe the love is a catalyst for the rest of his life. Lucifer wants him back in the unchanging world of Hell. Demon hunters want him off Earth or dead, preferably the first one. God isn’t impressed with him. Cam’s not only choosing between being with Giselle vs not being with Giselle. He’s choosing between the security of an eternally static existence and the pain and joy of growth.

Giselle has her own demons to fight (pun absolutely intended) but to avoid more spoilers, I’ll only say that I love her, and she is not an afterthought in someone else’s story. She is on her own journey, and she’s found herself in the liminal space of the Hedonism Hotel, deciding which destination her travels will take her to next.

Last but not least, Lucifer keeps a cat named Satin, and I love her with my whole heart. If she’s not in a future Hotel Heat book, I’m throwing my Kindle out the window.

If you’re looking for a story with love, and self discovery, and the occasional appearance from a distractingly attractive Prince of Wrath, The Devil You Know is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Find it here.

by Zilla N.

When the climate apocalypse awakens monsters and magic, a group of misfit Canadian activists try to prevent catastrophe by working inside the system. Can the master’s tools dismantle the master’s house before the second wave of supernatural devastation?

If you’ve lived in this world for any length of time, you can probably guess the answer, even without Ian’s precognition. But you still reach for hope. You debate trash television with good friends, you raise an aloe vera plant or a child, you fall in love. You march or write or teach or–you try, in your own way, to navigate your way through the labyrinth to a happy ending.

Cascade is a very hard book for me to review because I’ve been on a journey with this novel. When I met Rachel A Rosen, Cascade was unfinished. I read along as she wrote it, laughing at the jokes, wincing at the truths, decimating the semi colons. And more than that. In many ways, the character arcs of the novel mirror journeys I’ve been on in my own life. It’s a hard thing to read the climate science and know I’m living in the end days. It’s hard to look at a world where so much has already been lost and know the devastation is only beginning. Cascade holds a mirror to our world, and I see myself reflected back.

Rachel A Rosen is a very good writer, and Cascade is a very good book. I don’t know what else to say, but I’m excited to talk about it with you when you finish reading it.

Order a paperback copy on Amazon, or a digital copy on the BumblePuppy Press or your favourite digital retailer.

by Zilla N.

We received an Advance Reader Copy of Beneath the Starlit Sea by Nicole Bea, and we could not have been happier.

I ONCE WAS a little girl with an affinity for fire. Now, many moons later, I am a king’s sorceress from Strandkant with a weakness for staying alive.

As a sorceress living among humans, Illyse’s life is marked by loneliness. She has her three foxes, and she has the energy the land gives her for fire, but she is kept apart from others by prejudice and by the King’s law. Magical and non-magical people are forbidden to be in love.

The King takes her solace from her, throttles her magical connection to the earth with an iron bracelet. Two of her foxes die in the task he sets for her, working alongside his trusted advisor, Garit, to solve magical murders. But Illyse is not left alone. She has her fox, Thierry. And she finds a companion in Garit, who is willing to defy his King for love.

Nicole has a gift for language, for turns of phrase that perfectly capture a mood or a moment. She captures perfect details–a fox playing with a stick, the sweetness of a candy, the heat of a fire. It’s a fairy tale, a fantastical story of love in a world that holds a mirror to our own.

Nicole will capture your heart when you read this, as she always does in her stories. 

Get your copy here.

by Sabitha F.

In a first for Night Beats News, let’s have a look at a work that tells a story in pictures rather than words.

Social Distortion, a limited edition photography ‘zine by Stephanie Saroiberry, is an evocative, melancholic work about life under lockdown. Through a series of Polaroids—a medium that I absolutely adore and which is criminally underused in the age of Instagram—Stephanie explores Ohio at the beginning of the pandemic during April and May 2020. Her dreamlike shots of worn billboards and empty playgrounds paint a picture of a world emptied and abandoned, their faded pastels in stark contrast with the bleak landscape.

This ‘zine brims with nostalgia. I’m reminded of my childhood in empty, inhuman spaces designed for cars with people as an afterthought, and this wistfulness is enhanced by the use of Polaroids. The high production values emphasise the subtle details in these faded, distressed photos. Even the title harkens to the music of the 80s and 90s. When you’re isolated and lonely, the past is what you have left, and this ‘zine does an incredible job of summoning that sense of loss and memory.

There are only 50 copies in existence, so get yours while they last.

by Zilla N.

Vita Nostra is by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated from the original Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey.

You need to read it.

Immediately.

Stop reading this newsletter, go to your library website, and reserve a copy. Download an app and buy it on your phone. Don’t hesitate. I’m not asking the impossible.

This book is stunning. It defies explanation in its celestial beauty, its cosmic horror, its deep, dark reality. Vita Nostra is the object, and other books are shadows on the cave wall.

I’m not doing a very good job explaining it. How can you explain a new state of being, an alteration of the mind which leaves you forever changed, a word reverberating?

Let me try again. It’s a book about a magical boarding school, but not like that. It’s a book about the corruption of academia, twisted by power without empathy. It’s a book about the joy and isolation of knowledge. It’s a book about the creation of words. It’s a book that knows that it is a book, and that revels in this knowledge, and you will revel too. It’s a book that will haunt your dreams, and you’ll be grateful, because that means another moment exploring its world.

Read Vita Nostra. You don’t have time to wait.

by Zilla N.

N.B. We were given an Advance Reader Copy of Soulmate, Stage Right to review, and we could not have been more delighted.

Things that make me happy, a partial list:

• Cats
• Convoluted television plotlines that the novel’s Protagonists can’t stop watching
• HEA
• There are two cats
• Hot people
• People who are doing Their Best
• Did I mention one of the cats is a kitten?
• And orange
• He was named Pumpkin by the Love Interest’s daughter, Pressie
• And the Protagonist has to use her Expert Cat Detecting Skills to find Pumpkin for Pressie when he hides behind the dryer

Bixby’s contemporary romance Soulmate, Stage Right is the kind of story that makes me happy. That’s what this story is for. There’s drama, to move the plot, but it keeps running into two Protagonists who are deeply caring people, who just need to find someone who can give back the wealth of affection they have to offer. They’re going to end up together because they make each other happier, fuller people by being together, and they make a little girl and two cats happier that way too.

The plot is a delight, of course. D is a former soap opera star discovering that television and theater call for different skills, and Abby is a high school drama teacher and stage actress who is extremely committed to her craft. And to D’s abs. The plot of the soap opera is as confusing and contrived as any Night Beats fan could hope for. (Though I know Bixby – we got this as an ARC – and when I asked, Bixby assured me that she’s worked out the plot twists of All or Nothing for seasons to come. And she promised me more soap opera goodness in sequels!) There are well-meaning meddling mothers aplenty, not to mention the twin sisters and friends. But there’s no moment where I doubted they belong together.

At its heart, this is a romance about family. It’s about people looking out for the ones they love (though it’s not always appreciated at the time!) It’s about the family you choose, stage friends who are with you for life. Most of all, it’s about the family you make. Two adults, a kid and two cats (one of them an orange kitten named Pumpkin). No wonder this book makes me happy.