**Book review: The Owl, Alvin G. Burstein

(pb; 2012: novelette)


Review:

When college professor Lou Meade is accosted by a talking owl - a familiar of the Greek deity Athena, "goddess of wisdom, the practical arts, and warfare, and the protectress of cities"* - it's the first moment in his new life phase, an era that will lead him further into the works of author C.S. Lewis and intellectual warfare against Eris, the wily Greek goddess of discord.

Burstein's writing is straightforward, smart and exciting in a dry-humored way, which serves this atypical, Lewisesque work well. 

Readers of Lewis and gentler, clean cut-to-it readers of fantasy would do well to own this 70-page "neo-Pagan Fantasy" (as Burstein subtitles this intriguing work).  Don't expect the epic bombast and graphic grimness of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, but do expect to be entertained in a cerebral, sometimes phantasmagorical manner.

Worth owning, this.  You can purchase it here.

[*The Free Dictionary.com]

[This review was originally published on the Reading and Writing By Pub Light site.]


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Burstein's earlier, much-shorter work  - The crawfish boil - graced this site on January 11, 2012.  If you haven't read this story, check it out!

**Two of my short sex-pulp works were published last week

The Amoses: Molly and Chris was published on the Erotica Readers & Writers Association [ERWA] site, by-lined under the name Nikki Isaak. It will appear on the site through March 2013.

The Amoses incorporates a previously published microstory, Lithe undead (ERWA/October 2002), and, in loose link fashion, tells the offbeat tale of a death-resurrected woman, her scientist husband, a blackmailing IRS agent, and a famous horror movie house.

 

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Corporate Roach Facility, 1999 – c**krocked was published in issue #5 of the online magazine, Pink Litter.

Corporate is a Sapphic fluff piece with darkish overtones, involving a scientist, a security guard, hentai, BDSM and an insectile soundtrack.

 

Check these stories out, if you're a legal adult and so inclined!