Our Favorite Books of September

Here we are at the end of another month and the difficult task of naming our favorite read is upon us. Last month was especially difficult for us to narrow our choice to just one. Was September any easier?

Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger ~ a Review

by MK French

General Tala was devastated by the war waged between the different kingdoms. Her homeland of Sanbuna included rituals to pact with animals, but she had gone over and above the usual shadepact prior to the war's end. Iron Prince Jimuro is all that's left of the Tomoda royal family and has to be escorted back to his homeland to be crowned the Iron Lord. There are factions within the Tomodanese that want to see Tomoda rule supreme again. In the meantime, Princess Xiulan of Shang had become a Li-Quan inspector and brought the Jeongsonese thief Lee in to help her track down the elusive Prince Jimuro in the hopes that she could present him to her father and become the heir of Shang.

Monsters, Mixed Drinks & Millennials: Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge

review by Donna Huber

I was really excited to start reading Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge after my interview with author Paul Krueger last month. The story's premise had great promise to be a terrific summer read.

Bailey Chen recently graduated from college and plans for a great adult life. Yet, things aren't going quite as planned as she is back living at home with her parents and working as a bar back in a high school's friends bar. But things aren't what they seem, as Bailey soon learns.

I liked Bailey. I saw a lot of myself in her when I was her age. I always had a plan growing up and knew exactly how life was going to turn out. Or so I thought. The other characters were likeable, but I felt like they could have been better fleshed out. Like I knew something was off about Mona. But instead of dropping more hints through out the story and showing the reader what was up, it is told to the reader at the end.

I also expected something more from Bailey. I thought there was too much emphasis on her ability to make a perfect cocktail without much thought, though when she was trying to make the perfect cocktail it failed, for there not to have been something of importance to it.

Actually, my biggest problem with the book was there was more telling than showing going on. This lack of showing made it feel like the story was lacking something.

If a novel is written in three acts, I felt as if there was act 1 and act 3 with a summarized act 2. Krueger did well in introducing the characters and this world where monters are attracted to the intoxicated and bartenders mix magical cocktails so they can fight them. It was when we got to the meat of the story that it faltered and turned more to telling.

Kruegar also seemed to go for 'easy outs', which, of course, telling the reader what they need to know is easier than showing. For example, little is known about the history of bartending because there was a "blackout" period were almost all documents were lost. How convenient.

While paranormal urban fantasy is not usually my thing, there were a few things that drew me to the book. I liked the plot thread of a new college graduate trying to find her way into adulthood. There was a diverse cast of characters. If you couldn't tell from the last name, Bailey is Chinese-American. I was also hoping that it being 'new adult' that the fantasy would be light or at least the reader would be slowly introduced to the universe as they often are in young adult.

I wonder though if the publisher thought the diverse cast would score enough brownie points with the reader to make up for the plot holes. For me, whatever points the book earned for diversity were lost with the reveal about Bailey's parents. It was like the author realized that he had stereotyped her parents and couldn't have that so right at the end he through in a twist, which I thought could have been executed better.

As for the 'new adult' designation...Thankfully it really did describe the target audience/age of the characters and not a code word for erotic scenes between young adults. If there weren't such an emphasis on alchohol consumption the story could have easily been YA.

Actually, my favorite part of the book was the description of the different cocktails. After each chapter there are pages from the "Devil's Water Dictionary", a manual for tremens-hunting bartenders, that provides the recipe for the cocktail and then history about the ingredients. The cocktails are real cocktails, so if you are hosting a book club meeting or a bookish party, themed libeations will be easy to provide.

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge was a fun read for when I was lounging in the pool. The plot wasn't overly complicated and the characters are unique individuals making the book an easy read. There was enough room in the ending that more stories could follow and I liked it well enough to read more should it become a series.

Buy Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge at Amazon

Donna Huber, founder & publisher. Donna is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour. She reads most genres, but her favorite books are psychological thrillers and stories that highlight the survival of the human spirit against unbelievable circumstances.

Book info:
available formats: ebook and print (288 pages)
published: June 2016 by Quirk Books
ISBN13: 9781594747595
target audience: new adults
genres: fantasy
source: publisher


Get even more book news in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mHTVL. A free book was provided for this review. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

Interview with Author Paul Krueger

by Donna Huber

Hi, Paul, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi! I’m the author of Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge, which is my examination of the post-recession millennial existence. But I have a short attention span, so it also has demons and alcohol magic to keep things interesting.

Other things about me: I love cooking, karaoke, punk rock, and Dungeons & Dragons. I’m the proud owner of a cat named Wrigley, and I sing lead in a band called Lemonbadd that only plays covers of songs from Adventure Time.


When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

When I was seven, I started reading Animorphs, and realized the name K.A. Applegate wasn’t just on the cover for decoration; it was the name of an actual woman who got to sit around and make up those books all day. Once I realized books were a thing people could make, and not some kind of crop harvested from a book farm, I wanted to be K.A. Applegate.


Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge is your debut novel. What has your publishing journey been like?

In a word: bonkers. In two words: super bonkers. And in a few more than that: I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting, befriending, and working with some of the most intelligent and generous people ever. I couldn’t be more grateful for everything I’ve gotten to experience along the way, and in a lot of ways I kind of still can’t believe any of it is happening.

In Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge, new college grad Bailey gets hooked up with a group of monster-fighting bartenders and with the help of some magically mixed cocktails they are trying to rid of the streets of Chicago of these bloodthirsty monsters. I also read that you are a cocktail connoisseur. What is your cocktail of choice and if you had to come up with the perfect cocktail to pair with this novel, what would it be?

My cocktail of choice is the old fashioned. It’s simple, delicious, and looks damned pretty sitting in a glass with a big chunk of ice. As for what cocktail pairs best with Last Call? I would say either the Bloody Mary or the mimosa, since you’ll probably need the wakeup after staying up all night to finish reading it.


If you could have lunch with one of your characters, who would it be and what would you talk about?

Vincent. Not that I don’t adore my younger set of characters, the Alechemists, but Vincent is a crotchety old punk rocker who has a lifetime of great stories to tell. And while it’s not officially established anywhere in the book, in my head he’s an excellent cook. I’d probably just sit at his counter while he chopped vegetables and ask him questions about the crazy things he’s done.

A hot topic in the publishing industry lately has been the lack of diversity, both in the characters as well as authors in the industry. You are Asian American and your character Bailey is Asian American.  Did you set out to write a book with a diverse cast or did it just naturally evolve that way?

The only person in my cast I specifically set out to write “diversely” was Bailey. I’d long been afraid to tackle Asian-Americana in my work, because I feared I’d be seen as speaking for the whole community. She was my way of getting over that. With the others, the honest truth is it never occurred to me to write a cast that was anything but diverse. Writing a story set in Chicago with an entire cast cut from the same cloth wouldn’t have just made for a boring book; it would have been untrue to Chicago. But once I committed to having that representation in my work, I promised myself to tackle it responsibly, and only after many hours of research and carefully listening to members of the communities I was writing about.


What advice do have for authors who are either from an under-represented group or wants to write a book with under-represented characters, but feel discouraged by the lack of diversity in publishing (perhaps they feel like they can’t get their story noticed)?

Support other creators from disenfranchised communities. The system in place actively stacks the deck against us by enforcing unofficial quotas of how many books from a given demographic can appear on their list each year. I hold the opinion that our current renaissance of diversity has very little to do with the industry actually embracing the principles of diversity, and a lot to do with chasing trends. Now, I’m willing to take whatever advantage I can, and you should be, too. But when diversity stops being trendy, all those creators won’t necessarily be able to count on the system to back them anymore. So they’re going to need you. And if you support creators of color, or members of the queer community, or religious minorities, or what have you, you’ll find that when you need them, they’ll remember, and they’ll have your back, too.


Your main character Bailey is a recent college graduate who is struggling to land her first “grown up” job. The timing of the release of Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge coincides with college graduations so I’m sure there a number of people in her shoes. I know I was when I first graduated college. Did you have a similar experience? What advice would you and Bailey give to these new graduates that are faced with “now what”?

My first job after graduating was pouring lattes for the one percent at a busy coffee shop in downtown Manhattan. It was a little humiliating for someone with a fancy new degree, especially when people I knew came into the store and saw me in my work uniform. But as I put in my time there, I slowly grew to be proud of the work I did. People sneered at me and treated me like a vending machine in a hat, but what I learned was that they were wrong, not me. My job had value, and I wasn’t a less valuable person for being the one to do it. And that emotional journey for me was the direct inspiration for the one Bailey takes in Last Call.

As for new grads who’ve just surfaced in the deep end and don’t know the way to dry land: just know that wherever you’re headed, you’ll get there eventually if you keep swimming anyway. Some people might get there faster than you, and some people might have more direct routes than yours, and that’s okay. And never forget, anyone you meet on your way up is someone you’re going to meet again on your way back down, so spend this time of your life making friends, not enemies.


I’m really looking forward to reading Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge. Even though it isn’t something I would typically pick up, I was drawn to this new grad trying to find her place in the world. One of the reasons I don’t read a lot of fantasy is because I feel lost in all the mythos that surround the fantasy creatures. You created your own fantasy creature – tremens. How did you set about coming up with these monsters? Were there any legends or mythology that you drew upon as inspiration?

Nope! The tremens were an original creation straight from my head. I originally was using folkloric monsters like trolls and oni, but my editor gave me a note telling me to come up with a new kind of monster instead. So I thought about it for a moment, and eventually made a simple decision: if my heroes were bartenders, then the obvious thing was to give them an enemy that drinks people.


Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. And congratulations on the publication of your debut novel. Do you have any other projects in the works that you would like to tell us about?

I’ve got a few irons in the fire, but nothing I can directly talk about just yet. I can’t wait for the day I can, though, because I’m really excited about them all. Thanks for having me!

Buy Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge at Amazon

About the Author
Paul Krueger is a fantasy writer and cocktail connoisseur whose work has appeared in the Sword & Laser anthology. He lives in Los Angeles.


Get even more book news in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mHTVL. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.