A Not So Singular World - Patrick Hatt

Jeremiah has spent his whole life searching for his parents with nothing but a faded picture of them to keep him going. His search had hit a dead end until his birthday rolled around and he received a gift, being run down by a car that seemed to have no driver. And that was the best part of his day. 

Jeremiah is just your average loner, content with just his trusty cat, Orlin.  Until a weird guy from the "Brother of Olympus" shows up, and he's told soon after he has cancer.  Or when a weird science dude goes to find him, and a punk Brit reality TV show host is hired to capture him, and well.  Things certainly turn topsy turvy for this fellow.

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

The Plantation - Stella Samiotou Fitzsimons

A century has passed since they arrived. Human history has been erased. Children are enslaved on Alien plantations. Some have heard whispers of the existence of a rebel band of humans who roam free in the forests. Most slaves dare not speak of the rebels for fear the mutant guards will grab and make an example of them.

It's one hundred years after the fall of humanity. Aliens have taken over the earth, enslaving humanity and putting them on plantations. Not all hope is lost, however, as Freya, Finn, and the band of escapee slaves who call themselves the Saviors are out there, training and waiting for the day they can start a revolution. While every Savior has some sort of superhuman ability given to them by alien testing, Freya is average, making her the weakest one on the team. Tensions rise as leadership is challenged in this struggle for humanity. 

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Arrival (The Maddy Young Saga) - Nick Pirog

Maddy Young is dead. Or at least that's what they tell him. Imagine that when you die, you have a 1 in 3 chance of having another life; same body, same age, same place as when you died. But for Maddy, everything is not making sense. He was just a week away from his Bar exam and starting his life as a Public Defender, when he made a grand entrance into this second life of his—a place they call Two.

TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS STORY:  Mentions of death and various ways to die throughout; brief rape mention, lesbophobic language and general homophobia

This story is about Madison "Maddy" Young, a young man who has died jerking off in the shower before the story has even begun.  But he doesn't find himself in your typical afterlife, but instead a facility with other people, who all have died too.  They've found themselves in a rehabilitation center in a place called Two, a world were one in three people arrive to in the afterlife.  It's just like the living world, Maddy finds, only with people who have died.  However, some things are not quite as they seem.  They surround the conspiracy of the 'Borns', people who are supposedly born in Two.

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Botanicaust - Tam Linsey

After genetically altered weeds devastate Earth's croplands, Dr. Tula Macoby believes photosynthetic skin can save the human race. Her people single-mindedly embark on a mission to convert the cannibals roaming what's left of Earth. But when Levi, a peaceful stranger, refuses alteration, Tula doesn't think the only options should be conversion or death.

It's a futuristic, crapsack world. The earth has experienced the Botanicaust, in which foreign weeds have overtaken almost all plantlife, leaving no crops or the like for humanity. Most have resorted to cannibalism in order to survive; other humans have found a way to survive without much sustenance: by inserting chloroplasts into their skin and photosynthesizing like plants do.

In Levi's case, his community does neither. A heavily religious, tightknit town, using electric fences to keep out the dangerous weeds and the cannibals, the Holdout has been able to survive the Botanicaust. However, his son, Josef, has cystic fibrosis, and there is no way of curing it, except for maybe contacting the Fosselites, advanced people who have also survived the Botanicaust and have discovered eternal life. His journey begins when he searches for them.

Tula is a Haldanian doctor, a Conversion Psychiatrist who aids cannibals in converting to Haldanians, people with chloroplasts implanted in their system.  However, when the Burn Ops capture a person who might not actually be a cannibal, Tula takes off on an adventure that will change her life.

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars