Tag: post-apocalypse

E.M.P. 333 Days

  By

★★★
“A thoroughly Canadian apocalypse”

Really, for a reported budget of about $6,500 – and those are Canadian dollars, which currently works out to less than five grand in freedom dollars – this is quite impressive. You could argue that trying to create a convincing post-apocalyptic scenario on such a tiny budget is biting off more than you can chew. And there are certainly moments which just don’t work. But in its low-key approach, it’s probably a more accurate reflection than many of the way in which the world might end. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and a slow grinding to a halt.

In this case, it’s an electromagnetic pulse weapon, detonated high in the atmosphere (most likely by North Korea, going off early radio broadcasts) and wiping out everything that use electronics. Which, these days, is virtually everything. When it does, young heroine Niamh (Ferreri, the director’s daughter) is staying with her grandmother, because Dad is away on a business trip. Initially, they hole up, trying to wait it out, but eventually resources dwindle and Niamh has to strike out on her own. Fortunately, Dad was a bit of a prepper and so she is better prepared than most girls her age for life in the new, primitive world, as well as encountering other survivors, both good and bad.

Undeniably, you have to allow a lot of leeway for the very limited resources. Even given the rural setting, it’s never clear to where 99% of the population has gone, or why; a throwaway line saying, “A bunch of people left a few nights ago,” is about as close as we get. The collapse of civilization into anarchy and chaos is depicted by a shot of Niamh and her grandmother, peering out the window and looking concerned, while somewhat riotous sound-effects are heard. All told, as the tagline above implies, it’s a very polite end of the world. It’s also a bit unusual, and therefore refreshing, to see a positive portrayal of survivalists. Rather than the usual wild-eyed paranoiacs, they’re depicted here as down-to-earth, and simply prepared for unfortunate events.

The technical aspects are quite impressive, especially on the visual front where it certainly doesn’t look like a microbudget production. However, the film does drag in the middle. From the point at which Niamh meets another young survivor, Will (Davidson), it seems to spin its wheels for the longest time, despite the pair stumbling across a rare car still capable of driving. It takes the injection of an external threat before the plot begins to move forward again, and Ferreri deserves credit for getting its depiction of killing right, as not something which should be done lightly by anyone.

The movie did tie up its loose ends up a little too conveniently, just when it was looking set fair to be nicely ambiguous. Though on the other hand, this offers a somewhat hopeful note on which to finish things. That might not be a bad thing after a generally downbeat experience, and if it remains the complete cinematic opposite of, say, Fury Road, that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Dir: Adriano Ferreri
Star: Rosa Ferreri, Liam Davidson, Derek A. Bell, Martin Saunders

Riot Girls

  By

★★
“Two girls, one gun.”

After a disease has wiped out all adults, the town of Potters Bluff has divided into two camps, delineated by the river running through the town. On the west are the Titans, a quasi-fascist order of jocks operating out of the old high school and led by Jeremy, whose motto is “Strength, power, respect.” On the east are the free-spirited remainder, living under and protected by Jack (Bourgeois). However, after hijacking the contents of a Titan truck, Jack is abducted by them and held hostage. A three-person party sets out on a rescue mission: Jack’s sister Nat (Iseman), her best friend  – and painfully obvious lesbian, right down to the mohawk – Scratch (Kwiatkowski), and Sony (Friese), a former Titan who recently defected to the East, and whose inside knowledge is essential to their survival and the success of the mission.

This provides a slightly different twist on the usual post-apocalyptic scenario, though the idea dates back at least to Roger Corman’s 1970 film Gas-s-s-s, in which a deadly gas wiped out everyone over the age of 25. Canadian show Between also explored similar territory, and the conflict-driven nature here brings us almost into Battle Royale territory. Though it’s more of a team sport than an individual pursuit, and natural division instead of artificial construct. But I have to wonder, how did Potters Bluff reach this point? What’s the back story which saw, for example, Jack and Jeremy become leaders of their factions and implacable enemies? I suspect this may have been more entertaining than what we actually get. And why is the soundtrack apparently fascinated with hair metal songs from a long bygone era? [I’m pretty sure it shares one with the 35-year-old Return of the Living Dead…]

After a bright, comic-book styled opening sequence to set the scene, at first it seems this may be building and then subverting expectations. For example, when on a foraging expedition, Scratch is delighted to come across a vibrator… But in a twist, her interest is purely for the batteries it contains. However, the further on it goes, the safer and more predictable everything seems to become. The hurdles Nat, Scratch and Sony have to overcome on their journey, are precisely the ones you’d expect (although there is one eye-poppingly brutal head-shot), and it all inevitably leads to a confrontation with Jeremy and his troops in their high-school gymnasium.

Most irritatingly, it ends up getting too bogged down in class and gender politics. The Titans are largely defined as the bad guys almost purely because they are white, straight and male. Meanwhile, it’s “diversity = good” for the Eastsiders – even if its tenets like affirmative action are a civilized conceit, which wouldn’t last two days in a proper apocalypse. Consequently, it’s absolutely no surprise Nat and Scratch end up as An Item – not minutes after the former has spurned a heterosexual advance, and while Nat’s brother is still in the clutches of his enemies. I guess, for some, the line between free love utopia and devastated dystopia is severely blurred.

Dir: Jovanka Vuckovic
Star: Paloma Kwiatkowski, Madison Iseman, Alexandre Bourgeois, Ajay Friese

Immortal Wars: Resurgence

  By

★★
“Let there be light!”

First, the good news. Whatever the issue was with its predecessor in the lighting department, it has been corrected. You can actually see what is going on. After spending the entire previous movie peering into murky darkness, trying to work out who was doing what and to whom, this was a blessed relied. Now, the bad news: it still falls some way short of interesting, so merits a mere half-star advance. Indeed, if anything, it’s a bit more tedious, not least because it clocks in at 112 minutes, without having anything like 112 minutes of content.

It does carry on immediately from Immortal Wars, so you might as well consider them as one single movie – watching one or the other would not provide anything close to a complete experience. Heroine Trikalypse (Gerhardy) continues her revolt against the evil Dominion Harvey (Roberts), with the help of her fellow rebel “deviants” – those who possess special powers. Apparently, this involves her escaping from Dominion’s facility… purely so she can break back into it. Not sure what that was all about. It certainly explains the expanded running time, with a lot of traipsing about, both through tunnels and across the (mercifully, well-lit!) desert, as Dominion’s henchwoman Hart (Alayne) tries to stop them.

There is no shortage of action, admittedly. It just isn’t very well-executed action, and for supposedly superpowered mutants, they seem to keep forgetting to use their superpowers much. We also discover the whole “fight to the death” thing from the first film was more true in the spirit than the actual observance, with Trikalypse’s BFF Iro not exactly as deceased as we were led to believe. Of course, as the rebels fight their way towards the inevitable confrontation between Trikalypse and Dominion, there are casualties, though it would be a stretch to say that any of them provided an emotional impact.

It’s all very predictable, such as the way that Dominion, despite his claimed aversion to deviants, has his own platoon of them. Yet, for someone who supposedly rules the entire United States, he can only apparently command a couple of dozen people. His actions also defy simple logic. If ever I become an evil overlord, and know the precise location of a group of my enemies who are coming to attack me, I will not send out a henchwoman to engage in banter and hand-to-hand combat. I’m taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…

And, again: Bill Oberst is listed second in the credits, yet barely appears. [He may not appear at all, but I did genuinely doze off for a bit in the middle, so can’t be 100% sure] At least this time, Lujan does have the good grace to provide something of a satisfactory conclusion: another area in which it does improve on the first part. Overall though, the plodding nature of the core narrative largely negates these improvements, and combined with the extended duration, you’re left with something which you need to be in a highly forgiving mood to sit through.

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Eric Roberts, Ben Stobber, Camille Alayne 

Immortal Wars

  By

★½
“Batteries not included.”

For whatever reason – presumably misguided stylistic reasons – the great bulk of the film is buried in darkness. Seriously, three-quarters of the film feels like it’s illuminated solely by natural lighting. And given it mostly takes place underground, in rooms with no windows, this is a major problem. The movie reaches its literally darkest moment during an early scene where the camera pans over an underlit set to an even more underlit door where someone has entered to deliver a message. You cannot see who it is. You just hear a disembodied voice, before the camera pans back. It’s a horrible mis-step, whether due to poor shooting, a poor transfer, or a bit of both. It largely dooms the movie, to the point where even an energetic final third is unable to rescue proceedings. For how can you begin to enjoy something you can’t see?

The story takes place in a future world, now divided into ten sectors. A small fraction of the population, known as “deviants”, have developed superpowers, becoming the subject of fear and hatred by regular humans. For popular amusement, there’s an annual competition in which each of the ten sectors capture and nominate their top fighting deviant. They are then taken to a central location and made to battle each other to the death, in a globally-televised contest run by Dominion Harvey (Roberts), which is watched by just about everyone else. So, basically: The Hunger Games crossed with X-Men. On a very, very much smaller budget.

The main heroine is Trikalypse (Gerhardy), one of the ten combatants taking part in this year’s model. Though for the first hour, it’s more chatty, as she bonds with another of the fighters – inevitably, of course, one she ends up fighting later on. But it is refreshingly female-oriented, with both of the finalists being women, as well as the super-boss that the winner then has to take on. However, the film then ends – literally going to the end-credits – just as that fight starts. Fortunately, I didn’t watch this until after the sequel was also available, otherwise I would have been very annoyed. It’s the sort of cliff-hanger you expect from a free e-book on Amazon, not an actual feature film.

Despite the lack of originality, it’s a decent concept and I’d have forgiven this, if the fights had actually been better than mediocre. Instead, as well as the lighting problem, they’re not very well-choreographed, though do have occasional moments which are somewhat effective. I was most impressed with Cruz as bad bitch Dekay, who had the presence, the look and the apparent skills, to keep me at least somewhat interested. But this was small consolation for something which, far too often, crossed the boundary into being genuinely unwatchable. It even managed to waste the talents of Bill Oberst, who shows up for exactly one scene – though at least that’s in daylight – while Tom Sizemore also manages to cameo his way through the darkness. I’m not exactly eagerly looking forward to the sequel, but it’s there…

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Lindsey Cruz, Eric Roberts, Taylor Kilgore

Assassinaut

  By

★★
“Over-stuffed to the point of bloat”

There are some very interesting ideas here. Unfortunately, probably too many of them. As a result, the end-product feels like a half-baked collection of semi-formed thoughts – none of which are explored to the extent they deserve. It begins with an apocalypse, apparently triggered in order to stave off an alien invasion. Fast-forward a few years, and we join Sarah (Hutchinson), one of four children who are shortly to be teleported to a space station orbiting around another planet, which is the target for future habitation, and where the President of Earth now resides. Except an alien sympathizer stages an assassination attempt, leaving the children dropped onto the planet’s surface, along with the Commanfer (Trigo), who had a role in the apocalypse seen earlier. But he ends up being taken over by a parasite which turns him psychotic and he begins hunting down the children. Who need to locate the President, who also crash-landed nearby, because…

Well, I’m still not sure about that. Or about a number of other things here. For the film seems to have the attention span of a goldfish, and ends up like an elevator pitch, hurling concept after concept at you, in the apparent hope that you’ll do the work of arranging them into something coherent and interesting. Because it appears writer-director Bolduc couldn’t be bothered. There’s no shortage of imagination here. Heck, you’ve got enough here for at least a trilogy of films, possibly more, covering territory from The Terminator to David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within. And I genuinely wanted to root for Sarah, a serious-minded and likeable girl, who is thrown in at the deep end, having not only to survive on an alien planet, but also keep the other three from bickering their way to death. While the alien planet looks suspiciously like Earth,  the effects are generally decent for the budget, save for one wobbly monster earlier on – and that’s in Sarah’s imagination, so probably deserves a pass.

But you’ll be left with far too many questions for this even to approach acceptability. Why does the terrorist set his bomb with a 15-minute delay? Why does the space station only seem to have a couple of escape pods? How can an alien fish parasite effortlessly infect and control a human host? Why does it want to hunt down the kids? What’s so important about this President? Is there any relevance to Sarah’s bed-ridden mother? How does this all tie together with the pre-apocalypse footage, where the Commander appears to play a key part in triggering Armageddon? There’s an apparently wilful failure to explain what is going on, which grew increasingly wearing on me, over even the relatively brisk 83-minute running time. In this aspect, it reminded me of another recent SF film with a teenage protagonist, Prospect. The two films’ directors should combine forces: maybe they could come up with one decent story between them.

Dir: Drew Bolduc
Star: Shannon Hutchinson, Vito Trigo, Jasmina Parent, Johnathan Newport

The Precipice

  By

★★
“Teeters on the edge of complete failure”

There’s nothing wrong, as such, with a film playing its hand close to its chest. However, you’ve got to give the audience enough information to keep them interested, and wanting to find out more. It’s here that this movie fails entirely, doggedly remaining so reluctant to tell you anything, I wanted to strap it down in a chair and start waterboarding. We don’t even get names for anyone involved, it’s that willfully unforthcoming. This begins in the aftermath of a shoot-out at a wind-farm, from which there are apparently only two survivors: a woman (Szep) and her captive (de Francesco). They head across the rural terrain towards a rendezvous with her allies, pursued not only by the captive’s allies, but also other interested parties.

I’ll fill in some of the background, since the movie is painfully averse to doing so. There is a looming, if not already happening, ecological catastrophe, which will result in the loss of all potable water. This may potentially lead to the collapse of civilization, particularly in the more crowded Northern hemisphere. The 1% are aware of the impending situation, and are plotting to head south, taking over resources there for their own benefit – in particular, a large underground water source. This is what the captive was involved in, and what the woman is attempting to prevent. Yet there may also be other, hidden agendas.

The interplay between the two leads is probably the best thing about this, with trust hard to come by on either side. For instance, just before bedding down, he asks her, “What makes you think I won’t slit your throat in the middle of the night?” Her reply, which genuinely made me LOL: “Probably the ketamine I laced your food with,” just as he falls unconscious. It’s a shame their relationship operates in such a vacuum, as far as reasons to care go. Both she and he clearly know what’s happening here: they’re just unwilling to share this data with the audience, and the result is a low-intensity apathy. Which is a bit of a pity, since Szep is decent, a low-rent version of Rhona Mitra, and the pursuing group is led by another unnamed woman (Walker). Say what you like about this dystopian future, at least it’s clearly an equal opportunity one.

The scenery is quite nice, and well-photographed too, though I was a bit confused by the lobbing in of some South African references. I guess it’s all Southern Hemisphere. There’s also a scene where the woman just lets her captive run off, because… Well, like just about everything else here, it goes unexplained. Perhaps the most telling point is, I actually ended up watching this twice, because the first time, I got an hour in and realized I had no real clue what was happening. I blamed this on my having been distracted somehow, so restarted it. Nope. A second viewing proved it was truly a case where it was the movie’s fault, and not mine.

Dir: Michael Hatch
Star: Paris Szep, Vito de Francesco, Alyson Walker, Benjamin Francis Pascoe

Hostile

  By

★★★
“We are the monsters.”

After an un-specified global apocalypse, humanity is reduced to small bands of scattered survivors, who have to try and scratch out survival, while avoiding the attacks of “reapers”, mutated creatures which stalk the landscape, especially after dark. One of those survivors is Juliette (Ashworth), who is on a foraging mission in the desert when an accident throws her off the road, and leaves her with a badly-broken leg. She has to wait for help to arrive, fending off the reaper (Botet) which is prowling the area, with whatever she can find to hand. As she does so, she thinks about life before the apocalypse, where she escaped drug addiction with the help of her boyfriend, gallery owner Jack (Fitoussi) – only for happiness to be fleeting, and taken away from her when multiple tragedies strike.

Initially, the structure bugged the hell out of me. Just when tension was being ramped up, with Juliette in peril and having to cope with a host of issues, simply to survive, we’d suddenly flash back to mundane reality, and thoroughly unconvincing chat between her and Jack. This happened on multiple occasions, and I was left wondering what the relevance of it all was. Beyond her apparent issues with reading, there seemed to be little or no connection. Finally, at the end, you suddenly get the point. While it’s quite a touching revelation, and the ending in undeniably poignant, I’m not sure it was enough to counter all the irritation the approach generated earlier.

The other problem, is that Turi is considerably better at the action/horror aspects, than at relationship drama. It’s a while before we see the first reaper. Juliette’s first encounter with one takes place inside a caravan where she foraging; the camera remains outside and, brilliantly, we only see the impact of her battle with the creature on the caravan, as well as hearing it, of course. When we finally see one, it lives up to what our imagination has crafted, and is creepy as hell. That’s thanks mostly to Botet’s fine work as a “body actor,” along the lines of Doug Jones. In contrast, there’s little or no wallop packed by the scenes involving Juliette and Jack, which are closer to bad soap-opera.

As noted, you eventually understand why, yet I can’t help thinking there were better ways to handle it. While necessary exposition, front-loading all the set-up, rather than spreading it out through the film, and doing so more efficiently, would perhaps have helped. I’d rather have seen how we got there from here (“there” being the post-apoc world, in case it’s not clear), than rehash every detail of what’s clearly a doomed relationship. If we’d had the reaper stalking her over an extended period, that might also have helped credibility in terms of the final revelation, and a bit more likeability for the heroine would have been welcome. As is, the good here is really good; it’s unfortunately countered by a number of significant issues.

Dir: Mathieu Turi
Star: Brittany Ashworth, Gregory Fitoussi, Javier Botet

I am Mother

  By

★★★½
“Lies, damned lies and motherhood.”

After an extinction-event has turned Earth uninhabitable, an underground “ark” holds thousands of human embryos, overseen by a robotic Mother (voiced by Byrne, performed by Hawker). One embryo is brought to fruition, becoming Daughter (Rugaard, resembling a young Jennifer Garner), who grows up into a young woman, educated by Mother to believe she’s alone on the planet. But she begins to doubt what Mother tells her, and these doubts are confirmed when another, older woman (Swank) shows up. Let in by Daughter, she tells tales of humanity outside struggling for survival against robot killers. Everything Daughter has been told is a lie. Or is the new arrival telling the whole truth either?

The film’s main strength is the way it manages expertly the shifting sands of audience perception. Initially, we’re led to believe that Mother is potentially the saviour of humanity. However, it soon becomes clear that the robot is not being entirely honest with her charge, and our sympathies move towards the Woman, who wants to rescue Daughter from her enforced isolation. Yet, in the end, there’s another agenda there as well, and right until the credits roll, you’re kept watching to see beyond the next bend in the story-line. While there are clues dropped, almost from the beginning, you may not notice them until everything comes together. Or perhaps even past that point; I’ll confess, I did have to do some light post-viewing Googling in order to grasp all the consequences.

It’s rare, especially in the SF genre, to see a film without a male speaking part [bar some archive footage from The Tonight Show, anyway!]. Though one senses any money saved on the small cast was simply diverted to an impressive set of production values, depicting not just the facility, but also the devastated outside world after… well, whatever the extinction event was, since it’s never described. That’s not really the focus of the film, yet I felt it was a bit of a shame, The story of the Woman’s survival, up until she came banging on the door, would have been equally interesting as the Daughter’s. I do have… let’s just say, some questions about the coincidence of them arriving at the air-lock at the same time, and also the Woman’s plot-convenient amnesia.

At 113 minutes, it does run somewhat long, and is a little light on action for my tastes. The film is definitely on the more cerebral side of science fiction cinema, something not apparent from the trailer. Rather than explosions, the script prefers to pose awkward questions about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the moral implications of ripping it all up to start again. However, it never sinks to boring, with decent performances which help guide the film through the occasional doldrums. Hat-tip to Rob for steering me in the direction of a film which I’d otherwise likely have skipped past, in the never-ending and ongoing stream of Netflix original movies.

Dir: Grant Sputore
Star: Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne, Hilary Swank, Luke Hawker

The Sisterhood

  By

★★★
“Many Mad Maxines.”

This one may be the origin of the meme, “After the apocalypse, food, water and gasoline are in short supply – but hair-spray will still be plentiful.” For there’s no denying the absolute silliness of this slab of post-apocalyptic nonsense. But it’s still imaginative and energetic enough that my interest was largely sustained. We’re apparently long enough after World War III for it all to have become the stuff of almost-forgotten legend. In the aftermath, the world is now occupied by roaming bands, mostly of men. However, certain women are gifted with special powers, and they have banded together into the titular group, under their reverend mother, and are feared by most as witches.

After her settlement is attacked by Mikal (Wagner, looking like a low-rent Chuck Norris), and her brother killed, Marya (Johnson) hits the road, seeking revenge. She meets two members of the Sisterhood, Alee (Holden) and Vera (Patrick), and when they discover Marya’s gift, the ability to communicate with her pet hawk, they allow her to join them. Vera is abducted by Mikal, who then heads off to add her to the collection of Sisterhood members, being held in one of the few remaining cities. Alee and Marya follow, until a shortcut into the forbidden zone of radiation and mutants lets them stumble across a pre-apocalypse arms dump. Now armed with automatic weapons and a tank (!), they are thoroughly well-equipped, first to rescue Vera, and then storm the city and liberate the rest of their sisters.

Made in 1988, the debt this owes to the Mad Max trilogy (which had finished with Beyond Thunderdome, three years earlier) is apparent to the point of being blatant. There’s a lot of whizzing around in a quarry, with giant fireballs going off just to the side of the target. For, while it’s remarkable the heroines are able immediately to drive their tank, their talents clearly do not extend to aiming the guns accurately. This is all highly mockable, not least that it’s apparently set in the far-distant future of… er, the year 2021. Yet those involved play it all entirely straight, and eventually I found this seriousness rubbing off on me. There were occasional moments which, if not making me go “Wow!”, did extract a somewhat-impressed “Huh.”.

Director Santiago should be well-known to readers here, having also given us Angel Fist and The Muthers; he brings much the same combination of female empowerment and exploitation here. Because, for all the strong female characters, they also seem to spent a inordinate amount of time either chained up or getting their tops ripped open – and, occasionally, both. But Holden and Johnson manage to rise above the low-rent production values with their dignity intact – even if nothing remotely like the video sleeve is to be found in this one! By the admittedly low standards of the genre, this is likely well-above average. And we only have to wait two years for it all to come to pass…

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Rebecca Holden, Chuck Wagner, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Barbara Patrick

No Safe Haven, by Kyla Stone

  By

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

I’ve read enough action heroine novels now to be more than familiar with the tropes of the genre. For example, I can do without ever reading another novel which puts fantasy creatures like elves and magic into a modern-day setting. The zombie apocalypse is another scenario which has been done to death. I mean, we even abandoned The Walking Dead, and watching that was pretty much muscle memory. However, this novel proves there’s still life in the genre, offering some interesting twists on it.

Though, admittedly, it’s not strictly a zombie scenario. More a 28 Days Later one, with a highly-infectious global pandemic, transmitted by bites, etc. which cause the victims to become extremely aggressive. On the fringes of this is Raven Nakamura, a young girl who is rather disaffected with her current life. She lives in the middle of nowhere, helping her taciturn father run the Haven Wildlife Refuge, a private zoo in Northern Georgia. Mom has already bailed, and Raven is on the verge of doing the same.

Then terrorists release the Hydra virus, and when her father becomes among the infected. Raven is suddenly thrown onto her own resources. On the plus side, she had always been taught survival skills, so is in better shape than most people to survive the collapse of the food distribution network. On the other hand, most people don’t have to deal with a group of bikers, who descend on the Haven Wildlife Refuge. If they’d just looted the place and left, that might not have been too bad. But when they start shooting the animals, Raven have had enough. And so have the animals.

For, to mis-quote Chekhov, “If in the first act you have large, genetically engineered wolves and an irritable tiger, then in a following one they should be let loose.” Such is the case here: right from the moment Vlad the tiger arrives, you just know someone is going to end up becoming a gratifying buffet. The animals probably do more of the actual violence than Raven, which is why the kick-butt quotient is relatively low. However, this is made up for in its impact, particularly the emotional toll it taken on our heroine, who really just wants the bikers to leave her alone.

While set in the same universe as the author’s Lost Sanctuary series, it seems to operate as a standalone entity. I must admit, this was a story that crept up on me. I’m usually quite strict about how much I read in a sitting, but confess that this was one where “Just one more chapter” happened on a number of occasions. Seeing the entirety of Lost Sanctuary on sale for 99 cents, the day I write this review, became a no-brainer purchase, regardless of whether or not it qualifies for the site. Now, I just have to find the time to read it!

Author: Kyla Stone
Publisher: Paper Moon Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
A side story in the 5-volume Lost Sanctuary series.