Supernatural Hero (Book 1) by Eran Gadot

I was asked to review this book, but the following review is my true and honest opinion.

When I saw the cover of this book all of my cuddly fangirlishness seemed to spew out of me. I love little boys. Ok, that sounded creepy. What is mean is that young boys, in my mind, make some of the best main characters, and I always find it really interesting to read things from their point of view.

Andy is the nerd everyone makes fun of. He's really skinny, wears glasses and talks to himself, but he falls in love with the prettiest girl in the class. One day Grandpa dies and turns into a ghost. Then, Andy discovers a new power, he can see ghosts and talk to the dead. Join Andy's journey and find out how a nerd can become a hero.

Supernatural hero is a great children's book with an outstanding story, for the whole family to enjoy. This book series will stay with you forever.

Click to view on Amazon: Supernatural Hero (Volume 1)

I really wish that this book had been longer. It was a cute read. The beginning was a little hard for me, because poor Andy seems to have been dealt a bad family. I just wanted to cuddle him and tell him everything would be ok. And I loved that he was so close with his grandpa, just like me, so it was something that I could really relate to.

Now let's get into the nitty gritty. The ghosts. So, Andy has been seeing and talking to his grandma's ghost for years, but he suddenly can't understand it when he see's his grandpa's ghost. That was something I had a hard time with, especially since later in the book you find out he sees all kinds of ghosts. You think he would be more understanding of it all. But really that was the only flaw that I saw in the book.

It really felt like a good coming of age story, where Andy realizes that he needs to speak up and be himself and things will go his way. I also really liked a lot of the philosophies that his grandfather taught him. There are quite a few lessons to learn in this book, whether you are a child or an adult. There were also some parts where I got to relive the frustrations of being a child and having no control. Andy couldn’t control anything, his parents didn’t understand him and sent him to therapy, and when his sister bullied him his parents never took his side. I had forgotten that feeling, the one that feels like you have no say over your own life. I thought that came across very strongly here.

Definitely a cute read. I give it 4 out of 5 stars, because of the ghost inconsistencies, but other than that it was good. :)

Crash Gordon and the Revelations From Big Sur by Derek Swannson and Darren Westlund

I was asked to review this book, but the following review is my true and honest opinion.

I know I left you guys after the last Crash Gordon book with a lot of philosophy and what not, but this second book was a different story. I couldn't put it down, and while it was still very long, it read much easier than the first book.

An amnesiac convalescing in Big Sur encounters an oddly sinister envoy from the Freemasons’ Scottish Rite Psychophrenic Research Program…. A stoned surfer trespassing on Hearst Castle property gets hauled up into the sky by a massive flying black triangle…. A notorious starlet attending the wrap party for her first major Hollywood movie assassinates a Moscow journalist with a bottle of radioactive nasal spray.... In Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur, Derek Swannson combines these elements into a comic and subversive international thriller.  

OCTOBER 1988: It’s morning in America again. Ex-CIA Director George H. W. Bush is calling the shots as Vice President. Intelligence agency black budgets are on the rise. Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics has been trickling upon the American populace for nearly eight years. It’s been a non-stop champagne bash for the rich, who’ve become much richer, but for the middle class and the poor the trickling has acted like acidic piss, burning gaping holes in their social safety nets. Is the increase in suffering intentional? Gordon Swannson thinks so—and he has the metaphysics to prove it. Sort of. 

Fresh from a five-year resident scholar program at the Esalen Institute, Gordon (“Crash” to his friends) arrives in the sleepy seaside town of Cambria, California, to deliver a lecture titled “Galactic Loosh Farming and Reaganomics: How Much Longer Before the Fabric of Reality is Ripped to Shreds?” It’s the start of a bizarre chain of events that will launch Gordon’s career as an investigative journalist and entangle him with a cast of characters that includes: James Marrsden, a gleefully foul-mouthed radio DJ and Gordon’s untrustworthy childhood best friend; Kayleigh Fuller, a stoner witch who happens to be the niece of Buckminster Fuller; Skeeze Lester Huntley, a porn-addicted surfer whose alien abduction inspired him to become the Dope King of Central California; Rina Rowley, a lovely young actress with a shockingly ugly past; and looming largest of all, James’ morbidly obese and obscenely wealthy Uncle Lloyd, “super secret black-ops bagman for the medico-military-occult complex… and matchmaker.”  

Determined to uncover the truth behind Lloyd’s lurid tales of psychic killers and a mind control program known as Project MONARCH, Gordon chases down leads from Cambria to Amsterdam’s red-light district and the Brussels headquarters of an alien-inspired sex cult calling itself The OääD Institute—getting a profound education in the machinations behind the 20th century’s greatest unexplained mysteries along the way. Seeking the final piece to the puzzle, Gordon returns to his roots in the isolated, faux-Swedish town of Kingsburg, where those mysteries began. What he finds there will send him hurtling toward a climactic showdown against a naked assassin dead set on turning the Cold War into a hot mess.

Click to view on Amazon: Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur

 I was so excited to read this book because I really wanted to learn more about the psychic powers that we discovered Crash had in the last book. So I dove into this head first and I was not disappointed. I really liked this book. It was incredibly entertaining and it really inspired a lot of conversations with my loved ones about life and death. I usually have a tv show playing in the background while I do things, but with this book I kept finding myself pausing the show so that I could get more into the story.

The same characters are back and they are just as funny as ever. Gordon is hilarious, but I have to say that my new favorite character was Skeeze. He was just so out of this world, literally (!), he was abducted by aliens multiples times. And his house of rats, and Senor Pepe...  I couldn't stop laughing. James (or Jimmy) really did make me nervous though, and I am really curious to see what becomes of his character if any more books were to come out. Jimmy had always made me uncomfortable because he was so violent and rude, but he really changed in this book and turned into kind of a nasty person. I wonder if he will stay successful or if he will have to face some sort of consequences for his actions.

There was less philosophy in this book, and while it was still there, it seemed to melt more seamlessly into the story than in the first book. And this book was so fully of aliens abductions and secret government programs that I barely noticed the philosophy. There were a couple of times that I did wish that I was as widely read as the author, though, so that I could understand his references better... I guess that is something that I will have to work on!

Over all I really liked this book and it will definitely be on my reread shelf. It can be read as a stand alone too, so you don't have to read the first book to understand everything in this one, but I was happy that I had read both. I hope another one comes out so that I can see more of these characters' lives! I give it a 5 out of 5 stars!

 Really guys, go get it!

Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg by Derek Swannson and Darren Westlund

I was asked to review this book, that being said this is my honest opinion.

Okay guys, this book was a bit of a doozy. When I was asked to review it and read the synopsis I was pretty excited, and then I saw it was 600 pages. Still, I felt confident I could breeze through it. I did not breeze through it, but not because it was bad, it was just very dense and thought provoking.

EASTER SUNDAY, 1973: Just before dawn in Kingsburg, California, six-year-old Gordon Swannson, asthmatic boy genius, gets his ass kicked by a spectral Easter Bunny—an event that sends his already hyperactive imagination spiraling toward paranoia. Gordon becomes convinced that ghosts and other weird entities inhabit a daimonic reality that can interact with our everyday world. He starts seeing mystery and danger everywhere in his isolated farming community. He even thinks his best friend, Jimmy, might be possessed by demons....
JUNE 7th, 1979: Reality catches up with Gordon's worst imaginings on the day after his thirteenth birthday, when his father dies by crashing a Cessna into the living room of their house. Gordon sets out to discover whether the plane crash was an accident or something far more sinister. Before he finds the answer, he'll experience puberty, Pink Floyd, trout fishing, lesbian vampire movies, and midnight cliff-diving with the Hells Angels—all while learning to cope with the trauma-induced narcolepsy that inspires his nickname, Crash Gordon....

HALLOWEEN, 1982: Gordon meets Jimmy's Uncle Lloyd, an obscenely rich insurance broker to the rocket industry who makes Woodward and Bernstein's Deep Throat look like a low-level bureaucrat. With Lloyd acting as their demented mentor, Gordon and his friends embark on a road trip to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Along the way, Lloyd lectures them about such diverse topics as hypnotism, assassination theories, MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst; serial killers, satanic sacrifices, interdimensional energy portals, and the remote viewing program at the Stanford Research Institute; shamanism, ayahuasca, Terence McKenna's tryptamine-fueled encounters with the Logos, and the role "future causality" plays in the world's current fate. And that's only a prelude to Lloyd's startling explanation of how Gordon and Jimmy have become unwitting participants in a CIA mind control experiment known as Project MONARCH....

Click to view on Amazon: Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg

Like I said before, this is a very long book. That being said, that is not necessarily a bad thing. While the material was sometimes very very dense, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. There was a lot of humor in this book. I found myself laughing out loud plenty of times, Derek/Darren is a hilariously witty writer.

I loved Gordon, I loved him when he was a smarty pants seven-year-old, and I loved him when he was a horny teen with narcolepsy. All of the characters were pretty great, they were all very vivid. I love when writers create a character that I love to hate. I hated Mal and Cynthia. Oh man, I hated them so much, which was such a great feeling. I'll admit it, I'm a hater, so when authors hand me characters like these I just want to send them a box of chocolates or something. Imagine the worst possible parents, then mix in some weird satanic rituals and you have got these guys. Besides the parents there are some complicated characters like Jimmy, who tried to kill Gordon, yet still stood by him as he got older. The interactions between all of these characters were so funny and genuine that I just had to keep reading. I have to say that my favorite character was Derek Swannson speaking from the womb. That was such a unique concept, and he did fill in a bunch of information while being hilarious. The story also took some crazy turns that normally I would be rolling my eyes at, but with all the philosophy going on, the weird plot twists made a lot more sense.

Now, Philosophy. This is the part that really slowed me down while I was reading. The first couple times that the book delved into philosophy it was easy to follow along, but as the book went on it got more complicated. I have to say though, that the author really did try to break it down to make it clear, and even took several different approaches to explain the ideas. It was just hard for me to grasp sometimes. And there were so many references to so many different writers and poets, and so many different religions, that I kept wondering how the author knew all of that stuff. It took a bit of effort to keep it all straight, and I think some of it went over my head, but what I did grasp kept me up at night mulling over it. The book really makes you think about life and our souls and spirits. It also had me looking up gnostic religion, and even Scientology because I got confused for a second when the aliens and lizard men started showing up.

Over all I think that I would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars, because it was good, I just feel like I didn't grasp everything that I needed to in order to fully understand the story.

If you want a real thought provoking book with a dash of humor and some dirty jokes, then this is definitely the book for you.

Year Long Hiatus

Hey guys! Sorry I took such a long break! I was focusing on finishing up school, and now that I have I have the time to get back into reviewing. I am going to start putting up more posts, so I hope that you all enjoy it! Thank you so much for your patience with me!