The Hunter’s Apprentice

Lindsay Schopfer
Completed 12/20/2025, Reviewed 12/25/2025
5 stars

This is the (currently) the last book in The Beast Hunter series and it is everything that’s great about this series.  It’s full of creative character development, detailed world building, and is beautifully written.  Reading these books gives me a warm, cozy feeling, even with all the Cthutu-like monsters roaming around.  This time though, instead of being contracted to kill monsters, Keltin and his posse travel the infamous Salt Road to take Jaylocke to see his nomadic people, the Weycliff wayfarers.  Along the way, they have to deal with several monsters, including a flying beast that tries to abscond with a wayfarer child right from the middle of camp.  But also in this book, Keltin shows us his conscientious side, his respect for monsters when they aren’t an active threat to people.  

Keltin’s apprentice Jaylocke receives a letter that the wayfarers are holding a Gathering where events such as infant naming, marriages, and provings take place before the council of elders.  Jaylocke must attend to prove himself a master of his field to be deemed an adult.  It is only as an adult that he can marry the woman he pines for, who already is an adult.  However, he has a rival for her affection who will go through his own proving.  Keltin and Bor’ve’tai accompany him to vouch for his learning, along with the women these two pine for.  Yes, there’s a lot of pining going on.  On the way, they meet up with some big game hunters who want to hire Keltin to help them track and kill some monsters for sport.   Through this and later interactions with the hunters, we learn that Keltin not only has a healthy respect for the monsters, but also refuses to indiscriminately kill them if they are not a clear and present danger to people.  

A lot goes on in this book.  Through Jaylocke’s proving ritual, we learn a lot about his nomadic peoples.  They are somewhat like Native Americans in their roaming, rituals, and decision making.  As for his rival, he’s a quiet nervous young man who unfortunately has three obnoxious and belligerent older brothers.  They show no respect for either Jaylocke or his mentor Keltin and try to ambush both their characters by taking Keltin out on a monster hunt for food.  The brothers get drunk and shoot for sport rather than food, leaving seventeen monsters dead or dying from careless shooting.  Keltin, who shows them the correct way to mercifully kill a monster, is disgusted.  He takes their wagon back to camp, leaving them to return by foot.  The brothers claim Keltin tried to leave them for dead, but not until after the hunter has demonstrated to the elders the brothers’ recklessness.  Then, when Jaylocke doesn’t pass his proving, he finds the big game hunters to lead them on safari to take down an alpha male monster, proving he has what it takes.  This leads to a confrontation between Keltin and two rival alphas.  

Romantic love is also a theme throughout this book.  There’s the thread of Jaylocke wanting to be able to choose the woman with whom he is infatuated.  The woman of Keltin’s longing is also on the trip.  But he is too awkwardly shy to honestly express himself.  And, he just doesn’t get her hints.  There is even sexual tension between Bor’ve’tai and his own love interest, although it’s hard to pick up on them because the Loopi are such a calm, stoic people.  

Another major focus of the book is the society of one type of herding monster.  They are bison-like with many horns used by the males for defense and proving dominance.  One particular herd feeds near the Gathering.  The alpha male is known as the Emperor.  There is a rival male roaming the plains near the Gathering as well which wreaks havoc on one of the wayfarers’ tribes on their way to the event.  Needless to say, we have a lot of interactions with the two males before their final showdown for dominance over the herd which we get to experience with Keltin, Jaylocke, Bor’ve’tai, and the big game hunters.

One last point to make is that despite this being Old West flavored, the featured female characters are not simply damsels in distress.  They all have their gifts and strengths.  Elaine, who loves Keltin, is quite strong and fierce under her outward demure appearance.  The same goes for Bor’ve’tai’s love, though we know that from the previous books as well.  And the women of the wayfarer tribes, like a Native American tribe, also are strong women who play active and prominent roles in leadership, defense, and healing, to say the least.  While the series is very male-dominated character-wise, the female characters are by no means dismissed as subservient and powerless.    

I give this book five stars out of five.  It pressed all my good buttons for emotional involvement in the story and the characters.  I was sad this was the last of the books, for now.  I’m on Schopfer’s mailing list, so I’ll be alerted if (when?) another installment comes out.  In the meantime, I still have a huge TBR list to distract me, although I’ll probably find time to read some of his other books 😉

Dangerous Territory

Lindsay Schopfer
Completed 12/16/2025, Reviewed 12/16/2025
4 stars

Another winner in the Keltin Moore Adventures series.  While not as perfect as Into the North, it still holds up the series’ expectations.  The prose is flawless.  I loved the simple act of sitting down and reading it.  The buildup is slow and steady, with lots of character and plot development.  Schopfer carefully creates the physical and emotional environments to give us the motivations and challenges for Keltin’s task, to extricate the family of the girl he loves from inside the closed borders of a fascist regime.  Though this book was written six years ago, it felt very relevant to today.  My only problem with the book was that the ending felt very cinematic, that it would be more successful being depicted on film than described in the book.  Nonetheless, it is still a great reading experience and made me want to jump right into the fourth book.

With his earnings from successfully completing his bounty in the last book, Keltin opens his beast hunting business, aptly named “The Beast Hunter,” with his companions Jaylocke and Bor’ve’tai.  A request comes in for beast removal, and he sends Jaylocke and Bor’ve’tai while he stays to staff the office.  Shortly after, he is approached by the father of the woman he loves.  He asks Keltin to rescue her, his wife, and his two young boys who remained in the country that is now ruled by a Supreme Minister who has closed the borders.  He agrees to go despite his companions still being out on their assignment.  He reluctantly agrees to take on a journalist who wants to nab a firsthand account of beast hunting.  Having been a war correspondent during that country’s earlier war, he doesn’t have much fear of the journey.  Along the way, they meet a man and woman with a beast trained to kill other beasts.  So the four of them and the pet monster attempt to sneak across the border to smuggle out the family.

The coolest thing about the lead up to the action is everything that happens before Keltin’s leaving.  He visits with his sister at the estate where she is the governess.  The family treats her very well and extends that same warmth to Keltin.  Despite his introverted nature, he tries hard to return their hospitality.  He also meets Isaac, the young man with whom his sister has fallen in love.  Now he is faced with the dilemma of taking his deceased father’s role of giving permission to Issac to marry Mary.  This is a huge step for Keltin, and it takes him some time to reconcile the cognitive dissonance he faces.  While this is going on, he struggles with his own feelings toward Elaine, who is trapped in the country with closed borders.  He obviously has loved her since he saved her and her family in the first book, but Keltin is simply not good with feelings.  

As usual, Schopfer does a great job with the new characters that cross paths with Keltin.  From good guys like Ross and Wendi and their pet monster Kull, to the leaders of the secret brotherhood that tries to save the ostracized Loopi and their culture, the characters are multi-dimensional, each with their own distinct voice.  There was only one part where I got a little confused by all the characters at play in the chapter.  But as my regular readers know, this is not uncommon for me when a lot of characters are interacting at once.  

My only criticism was the climax.  As I mentioned above, reading it was not as riveting as the climax of the last book.  I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. last night to finish it but wasn’t as wound up as I was when Keltin and crew were fighting the Ghost of Lost Trap.  Yes, there are lots of monsters chasing Keltin’s charges, but I didn’t feel immersed in the tension and fear.  However, I think it would make for an exciting climax of the film version.  That is the only reason I took off a star, giving this book four stars out of five.  But make no mistake, this is a terrific book in a terrific series.  And yes, I already started the fourth book, at 1:30 a.m. last night!

Into the North

Lindsay Schopfer
Completed 12/11/2025, Reviewed 12/15/2025
5 stars

I chatted with this author at WorldCon in Seattle and picked up his fourth book in the Keltin Moore Adventure series.  I first met him a while ago at Orycon where I picked up the first three.  I really liked the first book, The Beast Hunter, but then stalled on continuing in the series.  Well, having such a wonderful chat with him in Seattle got me reinvigorated and have finally read Book 2.  I loved it.  It really came together for me despite being so long since reading the first.  His prose has a warm, cozy feel, despite being about chasing bloodthirsty monsters in the cold north.  The simple act of reading this book was a pleasure.  I easily slipped back into this wonderfully built world with enough references to his previous adventures to jog my memory without being info dumps.  So glad I finally picked these up again.  

Keltin has returned home from his adventures in Krendaria.  He’s accompanied by his new apprentice.  Jaylocke is a Weycliff wayfarer, from the nomadic tribe who can draw on their ancestors for help.  However, Jaylocke has lost his ability and needs to prove himself to be useful to his clan by learning a trade.  So, he’s hunting monsters.  After a very short stay, the two answer a call for help with the mysterious Ghost of Lost Trap, a monster terrorizing miners who are trying to cash in on the recent gold rush in the frozen north.  In the boomtown of Lost Trap, they meet up with their Loopi acquaintances from the Krendaria campaign.  They work at the Inn where the two are staying.  Bor’ve’tai, who fought with them previously, joins them on their hunt for the Ghost, using his psychic powers to manipulate the weather and his uncanny reading of people and amazing intuition.  The three have regular run-ins with the corrupt Hunters’ Guild that forces everyone to pay protection while providing none, similar to mob protection.  Between the Guild and freezing temperatures, the three try to hunt this seemingly teleporting monster before it completely wipes out the miners and the town.  

Keltin continues to be the brooding beast hunter but works very hard to be more social.  He has developed a fondness for Jaylocke, appreciating his apprentice’s levity.  Keltin has learned to be the patient mentor using everything as a teaching moment.  Jaylocke is fun, but not disruptively so.  He adds a snarky sense of humor that helps alleviate some of the dread of their mission.  Bor’ve’tai is very sweet.  He’s of the Loopi race, the ape-like people who are the target of a lot of discrimination and fear.  But to Keltin and Jaylocke, he’s family.  The theme of fear and hatred between the races of beings is often addressed throughout the novel.   Keltin does his best to be a barrier between that and his Loopi friends.

What I liked best about this book was that it was perfect for the time of year in which I read it.  It’s winter now, and the book takes place in the far north.  I loved being wrapped in my quilt reading about Keltin and crew’s attempts to track and destroy this teleporting killing machine through the snowy forest.  Yes, they come across many bloodied bodies and there’s a lot of bloody trails through the snow.   Still, I felt magically transported to this scary wasteland and felt like I was tracking the beasts along with them.  Even though I didn’t read it in one or two nights, I still felt like I was glued to the book.  In the end, I felt like I was part of their team.  

There are other subplots as well that are carrying through this series.  There’s Ketlin’s sister Mary and their mother.  Mary has become a governess for a wealthy family and their mother has moved in with their uncle.  So Keltin no longer has to support them from his hunting bounties.  There’s also correspondence with Elaine, who he met in the first book.  She’s clearly fond of him, but Keltin doesn’t know how to figure out his own feelings toward her.  Then, in the town of Lost Trap, there are other colorful characters, my favorite was the proprietor of the Inn where they stayed.  She’s a fiercely independent woman who shares many of the same values as Keltin, but is a lot more brash and forthcoming.  I liked them all.  They were as three dimensional as Keltin and his companions.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  This book far exceeded expectations.  Despite being over three years since reading the first book, I slipped right into this terrific world and cozied up to the characters and their journey.  My goal is to finish the books in this series because, well, I waited too long and now just want to devour them 😊

Game Changer

Rachel Reid
Completed 12/8/2025, Reviewed 12/11/2025
3 stars

There were a lot of things to like about this book: the theme, the plot, the spiciness.  There was also one problematic thing, that is, the fairy tale resolution.  Despite the worry and angst about being a closeted gay man in a hypermasculine sport with rampant homophobia, it all works out a little too nicely.  However, that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book.  It just made it more fluff than substance.  But hey, it’s very spicy and the whole Game Changers series has been made into a major HBO Max event.  And, well, yeah, I’ll probably continue the series.  

Kip works at the counter at a smoothie shop.  He has a history degree, lives with his parents, and is working food service to survive in New York City.  One day a stunning man walks in and orders a blueberry smoothie.  There’s some flirting and banter, but neither makes a move.  Then Kip finds out the guy was Scott Hunter, the immensely popular, most eligible bachelor and center for the NY hockey team.  Scott’s team wins that night and he returns the next morning for another smoothie.  Like many in sports, he is superstitious and begins a new ritual.  Eventually, after hinting around while flirting with Kip, they hook up.  However, Scott is very closeted, fearing the loss of his job and corporate sponsorships.  But they attempt to see each other.  Of course, they fall in love, but Scott’s fear of coming out publicly puts a heavy strain on their relationship.  Kip must deal with being an out man dating a terrified closeted man.  

I have to give props to this book for dealing with homophobia in sports.  Scott’s fear is palpable.  Being with Kip has made him happier than he’s ever been in his rags to riches life.  But he can’t fathom coming out publicly when he is worshiped by the team, the city, and the media.  This cognitive dissonance is real, not only for the rich and famous, but for many people.  Kip, on the other hand, struggles with going back in the closet for his boyfriend.  This is a tough compromise when you have tasted the freedom of being true to oneself.  I thought his dissonance was well played out as well.

My biggest issue is with the ending.  There’s some acceptance and some rejection.  This story takes place at the end of the 2000’s, so it is possible that the outcome could be very rosy.  However, given today’s atmosphere where the dictator in chief wants to make supporting LGBTQIA+ people a political crime, I can’t help to think there would be more backlash for someone in the spotlight like Scott.  

I give this book three stars out of five, mostly because of the ending.  While the book is fairly well written, it mostly suffers from being a little too sweet.  At the same time, I do enjoy a spicy, gay, happy ending book.  It just doesn’t have the depth the I’ve come to expect from the M/M supernatural romantasy genre.  I know there’s a lot of fluff out there, and this is one of them.  Side note: after watching episode one on HBO, I’m finding the actors in the streaming series give the characters more depth.  I’ll watch the series on streaming, and yes, I’ll read the rest of the books.

Heavenly Tyrant

Xiran Jay Zhao
Completed 12/4/2025, Reviewed 12/5/2025
2 stars

I returned to this sequel after reading Iron Widow.  I restarted it, not trusting my memory and judgement of the first two hundred pages from my original attempt.  It began well, making much more sense having the full background on Zetian, the MC.  However, I found most of the book to be tedious filler to get to the end goal.  It spends most of its time in her head, rehashing all her fears and neuroses every time someone spoke with her or whenever something happened.  Then at the end, I found out that this is a trilogy and groaned.  I don’t know if I have it in me to get through another iteration of Zetian’s mental state.  This book was nominated for the 2025 Lodestone Award, which is the non-Hugo award for YA novel at WorldCon.

For the plot summary, be forewarned of SPOILERS for the first book.

So in this book, Zetian returns with the Emperor, who she revived after over two hundred years in a deep freeze to prevent his death by the pox.  She claimed the title of Empress at the end of the last book.  She is both loved and hated by the people.  The Emperor sees the benefit of keeping her around for the revolution he started before being put to sleep.  He declares that he will marry her, ensuring her title and begins a kind of cultural revolution, putting to death the oligarchs who kept the poor downtrodden and abused as well as the counterrevolutionaries.  His ultimate goal, like Zetian’s, is to bring down the gods who are in orbit around the planet, controlling and punishing them for deviating from the heavenly edicts.  While they wait to strike, Zetian convinces the Emperor to make many radical changes to society, including elevating women from being nothing more than the property of men.  In addition, he tries to consummate their marriage, but Zetian wants no part of it.  She also discovers the true nature of the alien Hunduns and the purpose of their war with them.  The majority of the book is Zetian’s mental gyrations over every interaction with the Emperor and the people around her as the plot slowly progresses toward the attempt to attack the gods.  

By about page 100, I had it with Zetian.  I couldn’t stand all the time we spent in her head.  She is the narrator again and she goes on and on and on about her hate for the Emperor, men, the oligarchs, and the existing cultural paradigm.  That all worked well in the first book.  Here it is simply tedious.  Every interaction with the Emperor is the same, rehashing her same issues of revenge and the terror of trust, sex with the Emperor, and pregnancy.  There were some good parts, like her starting a non-profit to help women and her softening the Emperor to repeal the witch hunts and death penalty for the rebels.  She does learn a lot about what makes a revolution successful and how to lessen its heavy hand.  Amazingly enough, the Emperor actually listens to her.

What struck me as most interesting about her is that she is self-aware.  In response to how to act as Empress, she says, “Becoming likable.  Now that is the most daunting challenge I’ve ever faced.”  Regarding the Emperor, “It shouldn’t be possible to drift off to sleep in the arms of someone who represents so much of what I hate, but the throne room is very cold and he is very warm.”  And the brilliant realization, “Every oppressor, through their denial of humanity, sows the seed of their own destruction.”

The Emperor is interesting.  It is hard to tell if he is good or bad.  He shares many of the same values as Zetian, but he’s also quick to anger and retribution.  It’s difficult to tell if we can trust him since we only see him through Zetian’s lenses.  Yizhi, who featured prominently in the first book, appears in this book, though not to the same extent.  He is elevated to the Emperor’s secretary.  Of course, he can no longer be in a relationship with Zetian.  In addition, she feels she can no longer completely trust him.  This creates a lot of tension in the book, adding to the tension with the Emperor.  Shimin, the third person in the polyamorous relationship between Zetian and Yizhi, seems to be with the gods being kept alive after nearly dying at the end of the first book, apparently like a hostage to control Zetian’s wild, reforming nature.

This book makes many good points, but it’s all lost in the delivery.  Zetian is only 18 or 19, but after everything she’s gone through, she should have matured at least a little.  She is still the bitter, angry child who won’t grow up.  The only positive is the help she provides women through her non-profit.  Granted, she has to constantly fight the public’s perception of her as a usurper, and she does learn a little from some of the people around her, but it wasn’t enough to get me to empathize with her like I did in the first book.  I give this book two stars out of five.  The prose and world building is fine.  The themes are good.  But in the end, I was just so glad to be done with it.

Sisters of the Vast Black

Lina Rather
Completed 11/28/2025, Reviewed 11/28/2025
4 stars

I had a tough time getting into this “nuns in space” novella.  It’s only 160 pages, but it took me the first sixty to get into the story.  Then I was completely sucked in.  I have a fondness for rebellious nuns, and specifically, radical lesbian ex-nuns with guitars, having been friends with several throughout my life.  They take the Gospel message seriously, providing good works and focusing on peace and justice.  This completely replaced the image I had of nuns from my experience in Catholic school as mostly being castrating and abusive, perverting the Gospel for conformity and punishment.  The story began feeling conformist but jumped into a battle against an oppressive new government colluding with the Church for galactic control.  

The book begins with introductions to the sisters of the Order of St. Rita on their living, breathing space convent, the Our Lady of Impossible Constellations.  They travel in space providing services to those in need.  Despite their call to live open, honest lives, they all have secrets.  Mother Superior has a dark past associated with the destructive revolution on Earth.  Now she hides aboard the Our Lady in a vow of silence so as not to give away her true identity.  Sister Gemma, the ship’s maintenance-biologist, has a secret love on another ship.  Other nuns have varying gifts and inner demons as well.  They are all arguing about the theological implications of allowing the ship to follow its own instincts to mate.  Some of the nuns want to preserve its virginity because it is a consecrated entity.  Amidst this contact, they answer a call from a new colony to perform some marriages and baptism and to bless the colony.  Some time after their visit, they get a desperate call from that same colony that they have been infected by the horrible plague and need help.  However, a priest sent by the new pope to bring the Order under rein refuses to allow it, opting for proselytization over service, sending them into a conflict about following the Gospel message or kowtowing to the whims of the oppressive Church-backed government. 

Yes, that was a long plot summary.  For a novella, it packs a lot of information.  I think that may be part of why it took so long to get into it.  It also took a while to get into the idea that the nuns were living inside a living creature genetically developed to fly through space and house humans.  Quite the conceit to wrap one’s head around.  And then to be dumped in the middle of a heated debate about allowing the ship to reproduce, it kind of made my head explode.  But it all came together after the first third when I finally suspended disbelief.  I also got into the more when the secrets of the nuns were made more clear and more specific.  And yes, at least one of the nuns is lesbian 😊.  That made me happy.  

Mother Superior was a very interesting character.  It takes a long time to unravel her past, considering that she only communicates through sign language and is even spare with that.  Somehow, she escaped the massive bombing of London at the beginning of the revolution that radically changed life on Earth.  And while dealing with being head of this Order in a state of disarray, she seems to be experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s.  Her mind gets unstuck in time and she panics, forcing her translator to figure out what’s going on with the slurred signing.  But you get the sense that she was a powerful force back on Earth and has been using that skill as the leader of the Order.

It is through Sister Gemma that we get the complete picture of the spaceship creature.  It has interesting little details, like the moss that grows around standing feet to help stabilize the person in zero-g and acceleration.  There’s also an intimate moment between Gemma and the ship when she goes into its reproductive area to observe the eggs being produced and to read the communications with her girlfriend from another ship.  It is because of the ovulating ship, Gemma falling in love, and Mother Superior’s Alzheimer’s that we learn of the conscience conflicts of the other featured nuns in the story.  This personal conflict sets the stage for the decision they all must make whether to answer the call of the plague infected colony or follow the new orders of Rome by acceding to the new priest on board.

I ultimately really liked this book.  It is the in-person book club selection for December.  Being so short, I may try to reread it before book club to get the full impact of its beginning.  I give this book four stars out of five.  It felt really good to read about nuns making the radical choice to follow Jesus’ message rather than the Church’s nationalist mandate.  It warmed my heart during this time of spiritual despair over current events.  

The Hyperspace Enigma Part 1: Destination Unknown

Adam Andrews Johnson
Completed 11/27/2025, Reviewed 11/27/2025
4 stars

This book was a hoot and a half.  I bought it at Beaverton Pride last June at the author’s booth, along with its sequel.  He was an hysterical guy and I thought his books would be too.  This one certainly is.  It’s not great literature, but it’s excellent fluff.  Imagine an out-of-control Star Wars in a queer-normative universe with tons of puns, glorious drag queens, hunky gay mandroids, tough lesbian bounty hunters, people-eating giants, abducted children needing to be saved, a ton of space pirates, and a lot of “pew pew” (laser gun battles).  Everything, including the plot, is outrageous and fabulous.  I read this in two days and wished I had brought the sequel with me on my Thanksgiving vacation because it leaves you on a cliffhanger. 

The story begins on a spaceship that’s an all-male “reverse harem.”  One mandroid named 5NTR0M  (pronounced Phentrom) experiences a programming snafu and experiences real falling in love with Lyoth.  The ship’s computer declares him a danger to the crew and needs to be decommissioned for study.  But when that fails, the compassionate captain chooses to place the two lovers to a cozy island world, away from nasty computers that want to harm Phentrom.  However, they are abandoned there when a mutiny happens.  They discover that the planet has become a haven for space pirates.  They meet Stawren and her father Jintrin, who runs a drag bar.  Stawren, Lyoth, Phentrom, and a few others decide to lead a revolt to wipe the space pirates off the planet.  It turns out Lyoth is not just a lover, he has quite the heroic past.  Then they discover the mutiny plot and pursue the ship to save the captain and the faithful crew.  This leads them to a prison lab at the end of the known universe, an unreliable wormhole, and a plot to overthrow the governments of the known universe.  

Yes, it’s all very silly, but it’s also very enjoyable.  The characters are rather wooden, but still somehow, very sweet.  For most of the book, they are all unbelievably amazing at getting out of jams and leading rebellions.  Things don’t get dicey for them until very end, during the lead up to the cliffhanger.  One of my favorite scenes is when a bounty hunter tries to capture Phentrom at the drag bar and it turns out Priestess the drag performer is the bounty hunter’s boyfriend.  He humiliates him into surrendering up Phentrom, throwing enough shade for an episode of Drag Race and threatening to withhold sex.  It’s quite hysterical.

There were times when I thought the writing was clunky, with statements like, “They had a great time,” or “They really enjoyed themselves.”  But I forgave the author those unnecessary obvious statements because the overall effect of the romp is just so fun.  I think if I was a hardcore reviewer, I would say this is maybe a three-star book.  But I also like to support the indie writers, especially in the LGBTQIA+ community.  So I give this book four stars out of five.  To me, a fun, fluff novel is just as worth the investment as serious genre literature.  The escapism is worth it to me.  It is more fulfilling than a 600 page, dark, depressing, heavy handed space opera.  And I must say, the world building is absolutely terrific!