Blog Archives
sDon’t let the cover fool you, Choose Your Own Apocalypse won’t leave you flipping back and forth based on choices you make. Presented by The Space Balrogs, a collective of science-fiction authors who pool their writing talents and marketing savvy, this book feels more like a sampler platter than a meal, and that’s not a […]
The Crusader Kingdoms made a pretty good go of things, and the success of heroes such as Godrey of Bouillon, Hugh the Great, and Bohemund of Taranto bought the stay-at-homes in Europe a few generations of relative safety from the relentless encroachment of the Muslim forces. By 1191, Saladin’s forces had delivered a crushing blow […]
At the end of the 1940s, photos emerge of Hermann Göring alive and well in Namibia. Fearing that her once Allies have stabbed her in the back, Great Britain sends secret agent Kathy Austin to Africa to investigate. She attempts to track down the photographer, but finds him murdered, along with several informants. Kathy tracks […]
The quaint notion of conspiracies composed of smoky rooms filled with shadowy old men playing Stromboli to the common man’s Pinocchio has been dealt a serious blow over the last few years. They mystery and danger of modern-day conspiracies has been ruined thanks to major media coverage of Hilary’s unsecured email server, Peter Strzok’s mincing […]
Apparently they do still make them like they used to, and the world is a better place for it. Fenton Wood’s debut novel, Pirates of the Electromagnetic Waves, does so many things right that it’s hard to knowing where to start a proper review. The basic plot, “a small town boy named Philo, on the edge of his teen […]
In Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts, the celebrity chef and his co-writer, Joel Rose, combine three of Bourdain’s obsessions, food, storytelling, and the legends of Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan, into an anthology homage to EC Comics’ classic horror comics. Despite the five recipes in the the extensive appendix, food here is a garnish, little more than a […]
John Buchan’s “Huntingtower”, A Novel Fit for Cthulhu
Wednesday , 24, October 2018 Book Review 5 CommentsReading modern day Lovecraft pastiches to prep for your Call of Cthulhu game? What a moke. Reading Lovecraft’s own works to prep for your Call of Cthulhu game? That’s baroque. Reading John Buchan’s works to prep for your Call of Cthulhu game? Now that, my friends, is a brilliant stroke. Yeah, I’m still singing the […]
“This message is for my fleet. What I have to say is hard to accept, but you must listen.” Ibarra looked up at the camera. “As of now, you are all that is left. Every human being on Earth, the moon, Mars, everywhere…is dead.” An alien probe lands south of Phoenix, Arizona in the Gila […]
The small press has been the matrix that has produced many sword and sorcery writers. Andrew Offutt raided the small press magazines of the 1970s to fill out the Sword Against Darkness volumes. David C. Smith, Charles R. Saunders, and Charles de Lint all got their start in those literary labors of love. Carnelian Press’ […]
“I am robbed of a mighty death, manling.” – Gotrek Gurnisson In “Geheimnisnacht”, the first story in William King’s Trollslayer, two adventurers arrive in a small inn on the most unholy and Chaotic night of the year. The innkeepers mourn their son, who went missing among strange Chaos-tinged events. When rumors of dark Chaotic rituals […]
“Come then, try my steel and I will send you to hell where you belong. The gods of my people look down upon those that prey on the weak. There is no honor in it. There is no honor in you. I will enjoy killing you.”–Mortu In Mortu and Kyrus in the White City, Schuyler Hernstrom […]
My haul from the library book sale in June included a good amount of late Campbell era Analog magazine reprints with John Dalmas, Gordon R. Dickson, and Jerry Pournelle. I had read Jerry Pournelle’s The Mercenary in the late 1980s and remember liking it. I had read the first two books in the Janissaries series. […]