Corridor to Nightmareby Dave DuncanPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Toby A. Welch  $26.99 ISBN 9781989398937 Why is it that tales that involve portals to other worlds are fascinating? Corridor to Nightmare falls firmly into that category. It starts off with a bang and jumps into a world of sorcerers, gatekeepers, and beasts that are half-man, half-Krendel. To keep things spicy, unexpected nasty people and things also go through the portal. When I crack open a book and find a list of characters before chapter one starts, I appreciate it so much. (I wish more authors did that.) The list is only nine characters long, but I referred to it often as I couldn’t always keep people straight. Such a bonus!  The premise of Corridor to Nightmare is an interesting one. An elderly lady, Agatha, is looking forward to retiring from her job as a village schoolteacher. But that doesn’t happen as she is sent through a portal and lands in another world. What comes next is a roller coaster journey! Agatha’s adventure could’ve been fun and lighthearted – but it wasn’t. (I love books with a tinge of darkness and this one delivers!) When it comes to names, Duncan gets huge kudos for creativity, both…

Realiaby Michael TrusslerPublished by Radiant PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$20.00 ISBN 9781998926039 As a longtime reviewer, I occasionally receive a book that I quickly discern will require disproportionate time and patience to digest. If, for example, I don’t know what the title means—ie: Realia, by award-winning Regina poet and nonfiction writer Michael Trussler—I can expect that Google’s going to be my friend. In a review of Trussler’s The History Forest, I suggested that reading his complex work is “like walking through a forest under the cape of night”. I’m still mostly in the dark with his latest work, Realia, but surmise that this very perplexity is indeed the point. Non-sequiturs, unfinished lines, seemingly random symbols, footnotes, bizarre juxtapositions (“History = milkshake duck”) … colouring outside the lines is this writer’s style, and he’s nothing if not consistent. I needed to take a deeper dive. Trussler’s bio reveals that he’s “neuro-divergent,” and there are references to “phobic anxiety,” “OCD,” and “the psych ward [he] spent a week in downtown”. As I toddled through the pieces—frequently stopping to research names and words—and realized that much of what the poet questions is actually reality, I began to fall under the work’s strange spell…