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Linda Broday reviewed The Shepherd (Black Cloud Rising Book 1)
Promise Made, Promise Kept September 25, 2018 Every time I pick up a Darrel Sparkman book I'm instantly transported to a different time and place. In the opening pages he promises a riveting story that you can't put down...and he delivers. I'm awed by his writing style and story quality. No one does it better than Sparkman. Rescue TrailA short story long on action. Some decisions lead to regret, others confirm basic decency. The characters were well-written and felt real. Definitely worth reading. by Kindle Customer
Why put in a review by an anonymous reader? They bought it. They read it. They liked it. That's the best kudos any author can have. |
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Chrysalis -- What's the buzz?
in a world obsessed with zombies, Chrysalis deals with a premise far more worrying and dangerous. Sparkman delivers another knockout.”
—Gil Miller, author of Spree (208 pages, Stirling Press, 2018)
Wow, where to begin??
Black Cloud Rising: Chrysalis by Darrel Sparkman is bone chilling exceptional!!!
Mr. Sparkman has written an amazing graphic book of how our country might react to an Armageddon type encounter.
When government shutdown occurs, no gas left to heat homes, for automobiles to move, and the shortage of food and water.
All communication links cut off, a world rivaled to a third world country.
Detailed description on how everyone turns on everyone and chaos ensues.
Mr. Sparkman’s detail to the end of civilization and the survival of the fittest is graphic, eye-opening, and surreal.
Once I started this book I couldn’t stop, I had to see how it ended and if anyone survived.
Tonya Lucas 6/7/2018
Review from Ronda Del Boccio, top Amazon Reviewer
Welcome back to another Write On Purpose book review. Each week, I review a well-written book, highlighting what makes it good from the reader’s perspective and what writing skills and techniques make it an irresistible read. Thus, each review serves both writers and readers.
This week's review is yet another in a genre I don't often read. I like expanding my horizons. This time it's Black CLoud Rising: Chrysalis by Darrel Sparkman
Colton Blaine had it all. A great job in scenic Springfield, MO, a new house in suburbia, a beautiful wife and two wonderful kids. Then fuel supplies ran out and the delivery trucks stopped running. No long haul deliveries? No food. Most cities had only a two-week supply of food on the shelves. The nightmare had just begun.
Law enforcement and the National Guard crumbled before the organized gangs. The city and countryside became a funeral pyre of desperate, starving people with no hope, nowhere to go and nothing left to do but die. Zombies? Nope, just plain folks like you and me.
Fast paced and raw, CHRYSALIS is the story of one man’s journey from despair to triumph, and what he became to get there.
A Character's Hero's Journey
Throughout Chrysalis we follow Colton. As the tale begins, he lives a cushy life in a suburban home with a wife and kids. Circumstances beyond his control, namely the collapse of society, turn his life and society inside out. He begins his quest for survival in the midst of gangs, dwindling resources, sickness, betrayal and death. His personal journey takes him to a whole new way of being, for better or worse.
The hero's journey (or monomyth) is the 1 story that captivates and truly unites all of humanity, even those who have no contact with the outside world. Mythologist Joseph Campbell uncovered this global pattern as his life's work.
An emerging hero goes on a quest for a goal, in this case survival in a world without gas, food delivery, running water, etc. This quest leads to a road of trials a series of challenges. Finally, the ultimate goal is either achieved or in some cases lost.
In this story, Colton's happy life is disrupted by the changes in society. No fuel means no food deliveries. No power means no more city water. His challenge is survival. The person he loved dearly showed her true colors early on in the book.
Character Development
What makes this a 5-star read for me is watching Colton make his choices in the midst of the various challenges. He finds his innovative side in the search for potable water. He tries to recover from the betrayal by someone dear to him while evading gangs and trying to stay alive.
Character development is what makes this societal collapse story work for me. Colton and a cast of well developed characters populate this struggling world.
I love a story with an interesting hero. This really is a book about the people coping more so than the mechanics of dealing with the collapse of society..
Sharla Taylor Rodgers
I have always held a deep appreciation for the written word, and often carry phrases along with me from enjoyed novels, moving songs, screenplays or just day-to-day interactions. There is a distinct difference between the writer that tells you the sun is shining on your face and the writer that crafts words that leave you feeling the warmth of the sun on your face. This author's work falls in the latter of these two categories.
Linda Broday, NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
A fantastic storyteller with a gift for creating memorable characters that linger in your mind long after you finish the story.
Linda Rigsbee, Author
Once you start his book, you won't be able to put it down. A master story teller!
Dusty Richards—Author of The Mustanger and The Lady - made into the motion picture Painted Woman
Sparkman is a rare new talent in the Western genre. He knows the people and the history, and delivers a story with guts as well as brains.’’
J. T. Biggs - Author of Clementine
I'm now a confirmed western fiction fan. SPIRIT TRAIL pulled me in right from the start. How could it not. This novel has everything, slavers, Indian fighters, Native American mystics, and even a child protagonist, Beth, who I hope we'll be seeing more of in future novels. The author has researched the region, the period, and the cultures thoroughly and has rendered a novel full of memorable characters and plenty of action.
John Dwyer - Author of The Oklahomans, Stonewall, Robert E. Lee, and When the Bluebonnets Come
Darrel Sparkman snuck right up on me like the intrepid Ghostrider or the relentless Buffalo Shield of his memorable new Western adventure Spirit Trail. Compulsively readable from the first page, Sparkman’s story stealthily ferries the reader from an Old and very Wild West vengeance saga to a heartrending odyssey of yearning, restoration, and redemption.
Of all this moving and twisty-trailed journey’s many attributes, none loom larger than the three-dimensional human authenticity of its characters. There is Sean MacLeod, the Ghostrider himself, blazing a Josey Wales- or Hugh Glass-like path of comeuppance after the slaughter of his loved ones…Buffalo Shield the fearsome Blackfoot warrior and medicine man with his own scars inside and out…Ellen Mackey, the tough but tender, beautiful but damaged heroine…Hawk, the enigmatic Osage chief…even Charbonneau the vile French trader of furs and flesh. All evince fascinating human complexity.
Sparkman has crafted a page turning story that gathers velocity and power as it proceeds. For this reviewer, who has been consuming historical tales for better than half a century, few things in life are more satisfying than an adventure of the American West that delivers action, suspense, and romance, keeps the reader guessing—and increasingly anxious about what is to come—then delivers a climax whose pulsating physicality is surpassed by its heart and nobility. To ride the many trails and follow the evasive aspirations of the Ghostrider, “Missus” Mackey, Buffalo Shield, and others, all of them frequently at odds and cross purposes with one another, then close the book with a knot in one’s throat and tears in one’s eyes is a literary payoff of the highest order.
Channeling the nonmonolithic nature of Fenimore Cooper’s American Indians, the naturalism of Frazier’s Cold Mountain, the ambiguity of McMurtry’s beautiful and terrifying West, and the wry Native characters and humor of Carter’s Josey Wales tales, Sparkman knows his terrain, its reds and whites, its wildlife and weapons, its tribal feuds north and south, including Osage vs. Cherokee and Blackfoot vs. Nez Perce, and the cycles and rhythms of its endlessly varied landscapes—and deathscapes.
Indicative of his ability to evoke the imagery of Spirit Trail’s universe are the many Western films whose own spirit and footprints run through this book, including The Searchers, Last of the Mohicans, Jeremiah Johnson, and especially the current blockbuster The Revenant.
In the end, Spirit Trail proclaims for a generation that knows little of its own national heritage and origins, just how difficult and costly was the “winning” of America. Harder still, it declares, was the changing of hardened, wounded hearts. Yet Darrel Sparkman leaves us the parting treasure that both change and hope are not only desirable but possible. Even, perhaps, in our own, loss- and sorrow-stained lives.
Sparkman is a rare new talent in the Western genre. He knows the people and the history, and delivers a story with guts as well as brains.’’
J. T. Biggs - Author of Clementine
I'm now a confirmed western fiction fan. SPIRIT TRAIL pulled me in right from the start. How could it not. This novel has everything, slavers, Indian fighters, Native American mystics, and even a child protagonist, Beth, who I hope we'll be seeing more of in future novels. The author has researched the region, the period, and the cultures thoroughly and has rendered a novel full of memorable characters and plenty of action.
John Dwyer - Author of The Oklahomans, Stonewall, Robert E. Lee, and When the Bluebonnets Come
Darrel Sparkman snuck right up on me like the intrepid Ghostrider or the relentless Buffalo Shield of his memorable new Western adventure Spirit Trail. Compulsively readable from the first page, Sparkman’s story stealthily ferries the reader from an Old and very Wild West vengeance saga to a heartrending odyssey of yearning, restoration, and redemption.
Of all this moving and twisty-trailed journey’s many attributes, none loom larger than the three-dimensional human authenticity of its characters. There is Sean MacLeod, the Ghostrider himself, blazing a Josey Wales- or Hugh Glass-like path of comeuppance after the slaughter of his loved ones…Buffalo Shield the fearsome Blackfoot warrior and medicine man with his own scars inside and out…Ellen Mackey, the tough but tender, beautiful but damaged heroine…Hawk, the enigmatic Osage chief…even Charbonneau the vile French trader of furs and flesh. All evince fascinating human complexity.
Sparkman has crafted a page turning story that gathers velocity and power as it proceeds. For this reviewer, who has been consuming historical tales for better than half a century, few things in life are more satisfying than an adventure of the American West that delivers action, suspense, and romance, keeps the reader guessing—and increasingly anxious about what is to come—then delivers a climax whose pulsating physicality is surpassed by its heart and nobility. To ride the many trails and follow the evasive aspirations of the Ghostrider, “Missus” Mackey, Buffalo Shield, and others, all of them frequently at odds and cross purposes with one another, then close the book with a knot in one’s throat and tears in one’s eyes is a literary payoff of the highest order.
Channeling the nonmonolithic nature of Fenimore Cooper’s American Indians, the naturalism of Frazier’s Cold Mountain, the ambiguity of McMurtry’s beautiful and terrifying West, and the wry Native characters and humor of Carter’s Josey Wales tales, Sparkman knows his terrain, its reds and whites, its wildlife and weapons, its tribal feuds north and south, including Osage vs. Cherokee and Blackfoot vs. Nez Perce, and the cycles and rhythms of its endlessly varied landscapes—and deathscapes.
Indicative of his ability to evoke the imagery of Spirit Trail’s universe are the many Western films whose own spirit and footprints run through this book, including The Searchers, Last of the Mohicans, Jeremiah Johnson, and especially the current blockbuster The Revenant.
In the end, Spirit Trail proclaims for a generation that knows little of its own national heritage and origins, just how difficult and costly was the “winning” of America. Harder still, it declares, was the changing of hardened, wounded hearts. Yet Darrel Sparkman leaves us the parting treasure that both change and hope are not only desirable but possible. Even, perhaps, in our own, loss- and sorrow-stained lives.