The Unwanted

Carter, Daniel L. The Unwanted: The G-6 Chronicles (Volume 1). CreateSpace (May 10, 2010).  ISBN-10: 1477479724 (sc) ISBN-13: 978-1477479728 (e)

In Chicago, FBI Agent Nick Catlin spent months setting up a sting on Damon Hannah’s business, INYO Industries, that supposedly focuses on high-end medical equipment. It is clear there is a leak in the FBI team.  Twice an enormous explosion has obliterated all traces of genetic manipulation and murdered five babies and ten or more adults. Each time Hannah has moved his operation to a new city.

Now, fourteen months after the Chicago murders, Catlin has traced Hannah’s operation to Poughkeepsie, New York. This time, as the explosions begin just ahead of Catlin’s raid, nurses Janet Renard and Michele Townsend manage to get the five infants under their care into the backseat of Janet’s jeep. Running just ahead of Hannah and Catlin, Janet and Michele transport the children to Oklahoma. Janet’s uncle, Leigh Barrus, her only living relative, has a vast ranch there.  They fix up a cabin, far removed from any roads or houses, and Janet and Michele take on the seemingly insurmountable task of mothering five unwanted children.

Because of genetic manipulation the babies grow at an abnormal rate, at twenty-four days they need solid food, at nine weeks all can roll over in their cribs, and at four months, they speak their first words. Each child begins exhibiting extraordinary gifts. Uncle Leigh teaches Mama, Aunt Shelley and each of the children to keep their eyes on God not on the concerns their gifts cause or on their fear of discovery.

The back of the book says in part: “Born out of vengeance, five discarded children must fight to keep their family safe. Millions of lives stand in the balance as sacrifices are made. This family will never be the same as heroes rise and fall.”* A book where the bad guys are bad and the good guys try really, really hard to be good.

The cover will draw the reader into the manipulation of the DNA of innocent children, the power, the love, and the anger that carries this book.Written as Janet’s journal, here X-men for Christian readers begins. Mystery, science fiction, adventure, romance: something for every tween, teen and adult that has ever felt helpless, unwanted, or alone. Carter has incorporated his love of fantasy and science fiction with his fascination with the spiritual principalities of the Bible and given us a new paranormal fantasy. He gives us a book where the bad guys are bad, and the good guys try really, really hard to be good.

Carter has penned a story that will keep readers up at night wondering what will happen next. The tone is consistent and reasoned, exciting and compelling, the reader will gladly suspend their disbelief. Contemporary social, economic, ethical, and political issues are incorporated while conforming to the reader’s expectations of an adventure in the near future. There are enough unanswered questions and partial possibilities to make the reader look forward to the trilogy and the series to follow.

* The G-6 Chronicles: The Unwanted Trilogy, http://www.theunwantedtrilogy.com/ (accessed September 8, 2012)

Pirolozzi, Jayna. (2009). The Resolution of Red Tears.

Daniel “Red Tears” Patterson begins this story as an undersheriff in Stake Town, Arizona. The sheriff and the other men who work in the sheriff’s office alongside Patterson are white supremacists. A man of Navajo blood, Patterson works daily beside the men he is certain killed his wife. He refuses to be intimidated until he is nearly beaten to death and his daughter is threatened.

When he is reassigned to the nearby Navajo reservation where he grew up, he leaves Stake Town, primarily to protect his daughter Jessica and the sheriff’s son Tommy who loves her. He returns to his home to face an angry brother, and a grandfather who believes Red Tears is destined to stand before the white fathers to receive their reconciliation for the First Nation People.  Two reasons he left the reservation in the first place. 

But once there, helping his friend Ben investigate a missing clansman, Daniel discovers the sheriff’s plot to raise an Aryan army and to enslave the Navajo men. All this eventually leads Patterson to stand before the Senate of the United States seeking reconciliation between the United State Government and the First Nation People.

Pirolozzi, given a heart for the First Nation People by The Great Creator, worked with Senator Sam Brownback and the people in his office when she was completing research for this project. In the epilogue she reports that Brownback presents a resolution for apology and reconciliation that was passed by the 111^th Congress in 2009, after it had been politely sidelined each year since 2005.  

In 2010 Brownback ran for and was elected as governor of Kansas after he left the United States Senate. Does such a resolution as this exists, or is this, too,  fiction. If so, surely the reporters who cover national news would have announced such a momentous occasion.

However, buried deep in a billion dollar defense appropriation bill, President Obama did quietly sign into law an apology to Native Americans. After years of seeking for bipartisan wording, the resolution states “The United States, acting through Congress … apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States.” The focus is on reconciliation rather than compensation, an apology extended to another nation living on the same land. An old, yet contemporary social, economic, and political issue, the buried apology is not even the “formal apology by the President” called for in the resolution. Probably not enough, and probably too late; it is too bad that Red Tears is a fictional character in a fictional world where "one apology can change the course of a nation."

A disabled veteran, Pirolozzi attended Bethany College and Lee University. She is a member of the John 3:16 Marketing Group. The Resolution of Red Tears was released on January 11, 2011. 

 

Her next book For God and Country will be published soon by Createspace.

The Emperor's Edge

A high fantasy novel in the age of steam. Reviewed by Jorja Davis 7/7/2012

Buroker, Lindsay. The Emperor’s Edge. Ebook creation by Dellastar Designs 2010. Rated PG Violence: Young Adult and Adult

Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is sent by the emperor’s regent to seduce and kill Sicarius, the empire’s most notorious assassin. Either the regent believes she is implacable or they want her eliminated. While searching for a secret way out of the palace dungeons she over hears what seems to be a plot to poison the young emperor, Sespasian.

Amaranthe begins to gather an unlikely band of heroes and comes across a deadly fire on the waterfront. She finds arson covering human sacrifice and a powerful coalition’s machinations to take down the empire.


Brouker brings to print adventure, romance, and mystery in a fast paced fantasy. Her characters are flesh and blood and bring fresh, humorous and lively dialogue to this well thought out urban fantasy. 

Lindsay Buroker

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