This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.
Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite
GR3T3L-1: Good Tales for Bad Dreams by V.M. Sawh provides an imaginative retelling of the Hansel and Gretel fairytale with a futuristic twist. H4NS3L and GR3T3L are two quite dissimilar robots who awaken on a distant planet, only to find themselves with no immediate memory of their mission, their function, or their destination. More urgently, they have no contact with their mother ship. H4NS3L is the classic military drone, programmed to seek out a necessary enemy to destroy. GR3T3L has been surreptitiously developed to evolve, to become a free thinker and, by implication, to become the convenient enemy that H4NS3L must destroy. Stranded on an inhospitable planet, the two artificial beings must work together to survive – if they can find a common ground before H4NS3L completes his primary directive. When a witch-like alien – the Salem – intrusively appears, trouble is programmed into their differences right from the start.
The brevity of GR3T3L-1 – technically a short novella or a lengthy short story – while leaving the reader wanting more, does allow the author to accelerate his narrative to suit the urgency of his plot. One reads with great anticipation for the next event to follow. V.M. Sawh’s greatest accomplishment lies in his masterful juxtaposition of clichéd roles. Both robots acquire the reader’s compassion for their human-like confusion over an individually programmed fate and for their suggested evolution based on choices that they make, whereas the human actors seem preordained to submit blindly to unquestioned rules of their own. What survives and remains implanted within the satisfied reader is the noble human spirit at its best.
