*Reposting an older but awesome review while Mort is on a break. Never can have too much of Beauregard & Volpe.
Mort is back this week with a double feature. As you all know Aron Beauregard and Daniel Volpe released THROUGH THE EYES OF DESPERATION, Red and Black versions, this week. Mort is here to tell us all about it!
Aron and Dan both have signed copies available on their websites and it is available on Amazon as well!
Enjoy!!
THROUGH THE EYES OF DESPERATION: BLACK VERSION
By Daniel Volpe
Volpe and Beauregard are at it again, and they have made another stunning collaboration on this. But there is an ingenious twist: You, the reader, will get to decide the ending on a gamble.
Cee is still a young girl when she is introduced to the dark world of gambling in a place called Shadows. And she will grow up fast and learn that you are not given anything, you have to take it.
She had to pay her dues and claw her way to the top and become what everyone feared.
Is there still a glimmer of hope left for Cee, or has she killed off every last scrap of humanity she had left?
This story is about power: not only how to get it and keep it, but the heavy cost it might have. I am willing to bet that you will be rooting for Cee at the beginning of this story, but the question is whether you will still be rooting for her toward the end.
And it is not going to be a simple answer, because you might just understand her a little better.
Volpe’s talent shines through and he is an author I can’t recommend enough.
The true genius of this story is that you, the reader, will get to decide his fate. Yes, you will gamble with Cee about the outcome of this book. And I find it hard to imagine how much more interactive the writers could have made this extreme gambling story.
As a side note:
There are two endings to this story. There are also two endings to Aron Beauregard’s story THROUGH THE EYES OF DESPERATION: THE RED VERSION. And while the story takes place in the same place at the same time, with some interacting characters, all four endings are unique. This means both stories can be read as a stand-alone, but you will enjoy it so much more if you tackle both.
5 Stars!
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THROUGH THE EYES OF DESPERATION: RED VERSION
By Aron Beauregard
Roses are red
And so is this guy.
Will he make it out alive
Or will he die?
This one should have you very excited, people, because there is a LOT happening here, and Aron is getting better with each new release. When you team him up with another author on the road to greatness, namely Mr. Volpe, they create a special kind of magic–bloody, brutal and gory, of course–that is original and ultimately impressive.
The main character is Red, who is a gambling addict who is down on his luck and unwillingly finds himself at an underground casino called Shadows, because it is the only way he can solve his problems. Here, the only commodity he has is his body, and survival becomes less likely with each game he plays.
And you, the reader, gets pulled into the ending on a gamble, because it is up to you and the choice you make to decide his fate.
I have sympathy for gambling addicts, though I do not understand it. It is not that I am immune to addiction–I was a smoker for 25 years and know very well how difficult it is to resist the temptation–but it is hard for me to create the kind of optimism it must take to convince yourself that your luck is about to turn on a losing streak.
As a child, I was kept away from gambling, for the most part. I was probably eight or nine years old when a bunch of kids were visiting someone whose mother liked to play the horses. So she opened her purse, took out all her coins and handed it out to us, telling us to pick a number and that would be the horse we are betting on. I had three cents, so I bet on number 3. Turns out it was the favorite and the horse won.
And I think that would have been a pivotal moment in my life that could have gotten me hooked. But even at that age I knew it was nothing but dumb luck, and that risking something valuable on something that was 100% beyond my control was just silly.
Fast forward to my thirties, when the internet opened the world and gambling became so much easier and accessible. I was watching a lot of World Series of Poker on ESPN and decided I wanted to learn the skills of those people. After all, they said it wasn’t just dumb luck and listening to the commentators, I started to see that this is actually a game of the mind more than luck, though luck could still destroy all the odds.
I went to a site where I got some free chips and started playing, reading up on tips and learning to read my opponents. On the internet, where you can’t see their faces or actions, you had to learn their patterns of how they bet, when they bet, how fast they bet, etc. It also taught me to try and be consistent. Try to take the same amount of time placing my bet, try to keep the math the same (for example, if you raise two and a half time the big blind with your initial bet, do that with good and bad hands) and look for the patterns of my opponents.
Like the old Kenny Rogers song:
“Know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ’em.”
After more than eleven thousand hands, I felt I was ready to actually start gambling with real money. Of course, there are some things you have to relearn, because most people bet a little differently when there is actual money at stake, so my first fifty bucks was gone after a month. But I kept at it, keeping to the small tournaments, and after a few months I was not only breaking even, but actually making a profit some days. I did this daily, and started to win a few tournaments, my biggest prize being a seat in a big tournament where the prize money went into the thousands (big deal for me).
And then my country passed a law against this type of gambling, the official reason being a bunch of bullshit about gambling addiction, but the sites they could control were still licensed to continue.
This was the next pivotal moment, having played almost every day for most of a year, where I had to make a choice between walking away or continuing on more shady, not quite legal rooms on the net. And the choice was not that hard – I walked away.
Which brings me back to the original statement I made: While I don’t understand it, I have sympathy for those who struggle with this addiction. However, with a very crass, abnormally sadistic kind of mentality, a case could be made that the approach of Shadows may be the very motivation some people need to walk away.
Extreme rehab?
Aron and Dan wrote two very different stories in the same universe and, though they overlap during the same timeline, the endings are unique to the stories. I must admit, I had a favorite ending (between both books) which I am not going to share, but the fact that it ends in a gamble is quite ingenious, as you can’t blame the authors for your choices.
May lady luck be with you.
Quite extreme, so fuck trigger warnings, if you need them, you probably can’t handle this author.
5 stars!
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