Vikings, dungeon lords, and starship troopers clash in this week’s new releases.

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Battle Lines (Tranquility #2) – Josh Hayes and Devon C. Ford

The Hive is gone, but the Queen’s effect on the world lingers.

As the people of Tranquility rebuild, those touched by the alien creature struggle to come to grips with what was done to them and the pain they’d caused to their friends and family. Joel Lander is no stranger to their hardships, but with a new threat looming, they have precious little time to lose.

The fight for Tranquility is not over.

Lander has defeated the Asiatic Chinese Alliance once before, but out here on the frontier, with no allies and nowhere to retreat, the odds are once again stacked against him. As old demons appear from his past and enemies press against him from all sides, new champions are forced to step up and fight.

Battle Lines have been drawn, and the victors will decide the fate of the world.

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Dungeon Heart: Halls of Stone – David Sanchez-Ponton

Adventurers are coming, and they will do anything to steal the dungeon’s power…

Since awakening to his new life, Smit has hardly had a moment of rest. Goblins, ogres, and adventurers all seem to be attracted to him like flies to honey. Smit and his monstrous children only wanted to live out their days in peace, but now that his existence has been revealed to humanity, all eyes have fallen on the Dungeon of Origins.

Every noble in the kingdom has hired a team of adventurers to secure Smit’s core, guaranteeing both a victory against their political rivals and their rule over him. This time, he cannot run away from the encroaching greedy and power-hungry nobles and ambitious men – his new family depends on him. Time is running out to save his dungeon. Can Smit grow his power fast enough, or will he and his children be enslaved forever?

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Eden’s Gate: The Scourge – Edward Brody

The Scourge have launched an attack, and the Freelands are overrun with Ergoth’s army of orcs and goblins. Travel is no longer safe, trade is at a standstill, and Edgewood Village is in ruins.

With the guild in desperate need of gold, Gunnar treks through the battle zone to complete an unresolved quest and is faced with a moral dilemma unlike anything he’s ever experienced in Eden’s Gate.

His choices lead him to join forces with some unlikely companions and sends him straight into the heart of the Wastelands.

Orcs would never allow humans to enter the Wastelands freely, so how exactly will he get inside, and what secrets are lurking deep below the Wastelands’ surface?

In an unforgiving land filled with bloodthirsty beasts and monsters, Gunnar will be left questioning, Who is the real monster, and who’s the worst monster of them all?

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Everyday, Including Holidays (The Valens Legacy #18) – Jan Stryvant

Several years have passed since the war with the djevels ended, the reality they’d infested was destroyed, and their king killed. But that left Sean and the lions faced with another problem: The million or so djevels currently in the world that needed to be hunted down and killed. Part of the solution was to fence in the biggest area that was infested, to stop them from spreading any further, while teams began hunting down the ones that had escaped. It’s not an easy job, but it’s a lot easier than the previous one by far.

While constant vigilance is better than constant battle, it’s still constant. Plus, fights do crop up from time to time, but the enemy is sneaky and underhanded, so trouble will always come from the corner you least expect it. The world is also now a much different place now that the war is over. Everyone now knows about magic, lycans, djevels, dwarves, elves, and all rest.

Worse still is that it’s not done changing as everyone has to learn to face the reality that there are demons in the world today, and they can and will show up where you least expect it. No one truly knows what the future holds anymore, other than the lions have their work cut out for them, for the next several hundred years.

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Fortitude (Scattered Stars: Conviction #4) – Glynn Stewart

An offer that no one else could match
A mission that no one else could achieve
An enemy only a few know they share…

Commodore Kira Demirci is now the commander of a small but powerful mercenary force—one of the most dangerous in the cluster of stars she now calls home. Her own actions have brought peace to the Syntactic Cluster, though, and a mercenary is in limited demand.

A mutual interest brings her into the circle of the heir to the Royal Crest, a wealthy kingdom dozens of light-years away. Jade Panosyan has a nightmare brewing—and a plan to deal with it.

In the Crest, a powerful political party beholden to Kira’s own enemies is maneuvering to remove Jade’s father before he can free a dozen star systems from the clutches of the Equilibrium Institute. If they are to fail and the Institute’s plans be thwarted once more, Jade Panosyan needs someone to complete an impossible mission.

The payment? The fleet carrier Fortitude, unmatched by any ship within a hundred light-years.

The catch? Kira Demirci has to capture the carrier—from the elite forces of her employer’s nation!

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An Uneasy Alliance (Sentenced to War #4) – J.N. Chaney and Jonathan Brazee

The war is over. Peace has at last descended over the humanity . . . or so it would appear.

The Centaurs may no longer pose a threat, but a new war is on the horizon, though it hides in the shadows of two empires.

Rumors of alien tech have set governments against each other, and with attention focused on defeating the Centaurs, criminal elements have gotten their tentacles firmly entrenched in the very fabric of civilization.

Staff Sergeant Rev Pelletier of the Perseus Union Marine Corps has now been assigned to the Home Guard, the elite unit made up of members from each military force in human space.

A new age is upon us. An age of exploration, treaties, and new enemies. But with tensions rising, can the Home Guard function as a viable, unified force to combat the growing lawlessness throughout the galaxy?

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Viking Adventures – edited by D. M. Ritzlin

The sagas of Northern Europe have captivated the minds of fantasists and fictioneers for centuries. Many a mesmerizing tale has been spun using the grim grandeur of Scandinavian myths as a basis. Viking Adventures collects eight such stories, ranging from the historical to the fantastic. Among the tales included herein are short, action-packed thrillers by Poul Anderson and Ray Wynn, Kenneth Morris’ rousing account of an aged Viking who refuses to submit to Christianity, and two Nordic novellas: “Vengeance,” Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur’s pulp adventure based on the Völsung Saga, and “The Valkyries” by E.F. Benson, a prose retelling of Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Stories included:

“The Teuton’s Battle-song” (poem) by H.P. Lovecraft
“The Trader and the Vikings” by Poul Anderson
“The Regent of the North” by Kenneth Morris
“The Valkyries” by E.F. Benson
“The Passing of Sweyn” by Ray Wynn
“Seanachas” by Fiona Macleod
“Vengeance” by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur
“Ragnarok” (poem) by Henry Kuttner

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A Warrior’s Rising – Jacob Peppers

Night falls on the kingdom of Daltenia and its people.

In the shadows of that coming darkness, Prince Bernard, eldest son of the king, stalks the alleyways of the capital city’s poor district.

He, like the rest of his people, is unaware of the doom that approaches. It is not some terrible knowledge that has driven him from his bed at the dead of night. He has not come to this place of murderers and thieves in search of understanding or wisdom. Instead, he has come seeking one thing and one thing only.

A reckoning.

A reckoning for the mugger whose blade nearly took his life. A reckoning for himself, a famed duelist, who, when faced with a true battle of life and death, was too scared even to draw his sword in his own defense.

Prince Bernard lost much at the tip of that mugger’s blade—his pride, his false understanding of the world, and nearly his life. But during the week past, a week spent writhing in agony as his father’s healers sought to save his life, he gained something, too—the truth.