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October – 2019 – castaliahouse.com

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Just in time for Halloween! The hard boiled detective in a fantasy city has been done before, but never so authentically as in Misha Burnett’s Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Case Files of Erik Rugar.  Even if you don’t like Urban Fantasy, all you need is a love of hard boiled detective works and […]

Yesterday, on the 29th of October, Silver Empire Publishing, a publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and Christian fiction, awoke to find that pre-orders to their newest releases of explicitly Christian science fiction and fantasy were cancelled without notice, and the pages deleted–allegedly by the rights-holders themselves. While the books were eventually restored this afternoon, Silver […]

Indie Fiction (Jon Mollison): Given that indy comics are shouting into the gale-force winds of multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns.  It’s hard to get noticed, and every little of help that I can offer my fellow creatives is time well spent.  These reviews aren’t just the writings of a fan, they are recommendations to help you […]

One of the great science fiction adventure anthologies is Donald A. Wollheim’s Swordsmen in the Sky. This is a near perfect anthology in terms of theme, contents, and presentation. An Ace Books paperback from 1964, it sold for $.60. Four novelettes and one story written by classic science fiction writers. Of course, the cover by […]

She invited Joseph into the woods. Whether for a cult or a one night stand, he was not sure, but either way, he followed her. What Joseph encountered instead were Gray kidnappers, aliens who were using corporations to mold humanity into their own genetic image. Some people, enchanted by ancient lies, would get a choice […]

Alt-Hero: Q #2: Not Dead Enough After federal agent Roland Dane survives the successful assassination of the U.S. Secretary of State in Peru, he makes his way back to the United States in secret with the help of a mysterious organization opposed to the global establishment. But when a famous film star is reported dead […]

Cops chasing magical criminals, airship baronesses, embattled chi cultivating martial artists, and unwilling heroes feature in this week’s collection of fantasy’s newest releases. Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts (The Case Files of Erik Rugar #1) – Misha Burnett  It’s hard to fight wizards and demons when all you have is a gun and a badge. […]

Just a short post today, a little reflection on “My Hero Academia” (I know, bear with me) prompted by an already-famous scene from the manga. This is, I think, a good example of why it feels like such a breath air in modern fiction. A warning: What follows is a minor spoiler of season 4. […]

Horror (Skulls in the Stars): I would draw some attention to my friends at Valancourt Books, who have been doing such an amazing job reprinting classic works of horror. In particular, I thought I would mention the great job they’ve done in bringing some of the best haunted house books back into circulation!  When I […]

Forgotten All-Star A Biography of Gardner Fox by Jennifer DeRoss (Pulp Hero Press, 2019). Gardner Fox has been a guilty pleasure for over 30 years. I first read of him in Michael Franklin, Beth Meachem, & Baird Searles’ A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy (Avon Books, 1982) that mentioned Kothar and also that Fox had written […]

Mecha arena combat, brutal sieges of sky and space, hidden alien genetic machinations, and spacefleets-in-exile feature in this week’s list of science fiction’s newest releases. Captain Henry Gallant (The Henry Gallant Saga #5) – H. Peter Alesso Henry Gallant is the captain of the spacecraft carrier Constellation. He is the last hope of the Marines stranded […]

Is cozy epic a genre? At 178 pages, Noble Brown’s The White Arrow is not a particularly long book, but it is crammed with as much actual content as most thicker volumes.  The action kicks off with the assassination of a king as the poor old monarch struggles to survive the siege of his city.  […]