Bunny's Reviews: Rune and Flash Review Spotlight

Welcome to the book tour for Rune and Flash: Inside the Dream Prison. On this tour you will find reviews exclusively at each stop, so follow along and find out what readers are saying!

Rune and Flash is the first book I have read by Joe Canzano, and if you are a fan of sci-fi novels then you're not going to want to miss out on this book. Remember, don't judge a book by its cover. It's the content on the inside that really counts.

Markla is a 16 year old girl looking to impress a guy she likes. Her and the group that she's a part of getting into a situation that quickly goes left. What happens next? Markla commits a crime that gets her fast-tracked to prison. Why? Because that's how the society works. There is no long drawn-out trial and sentencing period. It's all been sped up and condensed down. Now? She's staring down 20+ years and 1000 nightmares. No way is this going to be an easy stint. Add in that this is a prison where people look to hurt her (and not just the inmates). Can she make it? Now, add in her friend Rune, he's got his own issues, but when opportunity knocks...he jumps on it and begins making a plan to help out his friend.

Rune and Flash is an engaging YA novel that will really grab your attention the minute you start reading. You're going to start out with Markla, and then the story will shift to Rune. The story goes back and forth between these two characters throughout the book. We get a variety of separate locations for the characters, but it won't be long before it begins to consolidate down.

You'll both admire and want to scold Rune throughout the story, but he believes in what he is doing, but he really has an uphill battle. The detailing in this book is pretty good overall. You get images of some of the nightmares that Markla is subjected to. I'll be the first to admit that Rune is pretty good at what he does. I just don't get his dad's issue with it all...beyond the mother that is.

The author really keeps you on your toes with this book as you have so many "factions" running around. You have the police, the group that Markla joined up with, and then you have the "keepers of society" who like things the way that they are. You can't help but wonder - would they like if they were subjected to follow the same rules/punishments? We all know things become different when it comes to the "elite." But watch out because not everyone is what they seem.

This book gets everything wrapped up in the end, but I wouldn't mind returning to this futuristic world with some new characters and situations. It'd be interested to see how this society to reacts to everything that happens and how they make changes to "improve" things.

I'm rating this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. I would have liked a bit more of the nightmares and a tiny bit more detail (I'm a fan of horror LOL), but overall this book is really good.

Thank you to the author, Joe Canzano, and R&R Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book!

Rune and Flash: Inside the Dream Prison

Publication Date: May 14th, 2022

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/ Action/ Adventure (In the vein of Hunger Games and Divergent)

When 16-year-old Markla Flash is convicted of murder and sentenced to 1,000 nightmares inside the Dream Prison, her friend Rune vows to help—but he quickly finds himself pitted against his parents, and the police, and a gang of murdering “subversives,” as well as the keepers of a society where artificially created dreams are used for both punishment and pleasure.

“Rune and Flash” is an action-filled science fiction adventure about the power of truth, technology, and love.

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Excerpt

Markla didn’t care for the dark. Why did they need to be creeping around in the woods at night? The trees all looked like gnarled monsters, and the moon stared down like an evil eye, and couldn’t they attack this place in the daytime?

The Serenity Six Dream Station would still be around when the sun came up. It would still be around on a weekend, too—in case someone didn’t want to save the world on a school night. But she was the only one still in school, and being just sixteen years old no one seemed to care what she thought, anyway.

Dru was two years older and he was up ahead. He was stomping through the forest, snapping twigs and swishing his feet through every pile of dry leaves. If the darkness gave them a certain element of surprise, it was totally lost by all the noise they were making. They were supposed to be warriors in a primitive and ancient tradition, schooled in the art of silent attack—but now the idea made Markla roll her eyes. We’re as clueless as the enemy, she thought. Any second now someone was bound to walk into a tree and knock himself unconscious.

The thought almost made her laugh, but she bit her lip instead and stepped lightly over a thick root. She was tiny, and slender like a branch, and she wouldn’t be walking into anything. Then Dru held up his hand and whispered in a fierce tone.

“Stop!” he said.

Markla didn’t stop right away. Instead, she tossed back her hair and crept to his side. Markla’s hair was a shade or two darker than midnight, and it was always tangled and messy, and most of the time she liked it to hang down because it covered a small scar near her left ear and another star-shaped one on the right side of her forehead. But tonight it seemed appropriate to let her scars show.

They were standing at the edge of the dense forest. Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted and her heart leaped. She brushed a mosquito from her bare arm and peered across a grassy clearing. Did she really want to do this? Well, she did have a steel club slung across her back, and so did Dru, and so did the other three people who’d come trudging through the woods on this humid autumn evening. They were staring across the field at a knob-like building that resembled an observatory. There was no kind of visible fence around the place, but it was supposedly equipped with sensors that would detect anyone who crossed a certain perimeter—unless the system was disabled by someone inside.

Dru wiped some sweat from his forehead. He motioned for everyone to crouch down, and in the darkness three silent figures followed his instructions. But Markla remained standing, and so did he, and he turned to face her like she knew he would. Even in the moonlight, she could see his blue eyes, thick dark hair, and chiseled facial features—and yeah, he looked good. But just because Dru was sexy didn’t mean he couldn’t be infuriating, especially when he said, “Maybe you should wait here.”

“What?” She felt her stomach tighten. “What are you talking about? You want to leave me behind?”

Dru smiled. “Markla, no—that’s not how it is. I know you’re tough, but you’re also small, and we could use a lookout.”

“That’s stupid,” she sputtered. “That was never the plan. I’m part of the group, and now you want to leave me here all alone?”

“No one wants to do that. It’s not like that at all.”

“If you leave me here by myself, I’ll be alone, right? I can count to one.”

Dru sighed in dramatic fashion. Behind Markla, the three others remained silent, like they were waiting for the argument to end. And it did end, the way it always ended. Dru reached out with his big hands and squeezed Markla’s shoulders as he looked into her eyes and said, “I would never leave you behind, Markla. You know that.”

She was quiet. “Okay,” she finally said. Then she shrugged. “So what are we talking about? Let’s go.”

He laughed. “We can’t go yet, honey. We have to wait for the signal.”

Right. She knew that, and she hadn’t meant it literally. Then there was a chirping sound, and Dru was staring at a wafer-sized device in his hand.

“Okay, this is it!” he said. “Are we ready to do some damage?”

Everyone murmured that they were—and then they put on their masks.

About the Author

Joe Canzano is a writer and musician from NJ, U.S.A. His stories have appeared in a variety of printed literary journals, as well as in the Akashic Books online series, “Mondays are Murder.” He has also published five novels. His website is happyjoe.net.

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