Every week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy.

---

Conscript – Scott Bartlett

The Scourge are back And the Corps needs recruits.

Desperate to free his younger siblings from debt slavery, Po Abbato turns to crime. He’s caught, and offered a choice: spend 25 years in a digital prison while his body rots…

…or join the Marines.

War has returned to the solar system, sooner than anyone expected. Po must learn fast what it truly means to fight alongside others.

That is, if he’s going to make it.

---

Dark Dreams of Nilztiria (Tales of Nilztiria #2) – D. M. Ritzlin

Nilztiria! An ancient land where daring swordsmen and unscrupulous sorcerers alike strive against unfathomable monstrosities in their personal quests for glory. Its eon-spanning history is not even fully known to the most studious scholars.

In Necromancy in Nilztiria, thirteen legends of this fabled land were revealed. In this new collection, nine more tales can be found, detailing the exploits of infamous heroes such as the cursed warrior Vran the Chaos-Warped, the freewheeling barbarian Avok Kur Storn, and the enigmatic wizard Xaarxool the Necromancer.

“With a diverse assortment of tales spanning the length of traditional sword-and-sorcery both light-hearted and solemn, to the tales of horror and wonder more akin to the old weird tales or the Dying Earth series, Necromancy in Nilztiria is a great collection of new S&S that will delight any fans of the genre. It manages to stay true to the genre’s roots while doing some innovation of its own, avoiding slavish imitation. For 2020 this is nothing short of miraculous.” (Age of Dusk

---

Holy War (Abner Fortis, ISMC #10) – P. A. Piatt

“Activate the travelers.”

With those three words, The Master, leader of the Kuiper Knights, unleashed a horrific terror attack on the United Nations of Terra that united the entire planet against them.

Major Abner Fortis takes command of Second Battalion of the First Regiment of the newly reconstituted Second ISMC Division and joins the force deployed to the Free Sector to mete out punishment to the evildoers. Using out-of-the-box thinking and old-school Space Marine attitude, Fortis recruits his best friend, Gunnery Sergeant Petr Ystremski, to serve as First Sergeant and whips the battalion into fighting shape in short order.

But when tragedy strikes during the combat drop, the regimental battle plan is thrown into disarray and the Kuiper Knights—many of them former Space Marines—are able put up a stiff resistance. With another battalion under siege and the chain of command stunned into inaction, it falls on Fortis and Second Battalion to take decisive action to head off disaster. Outnumbered five to one, with their enemy dug deep into a seemingly impregnable position, can Fortis and the Space Marines prevail and deliver the justice they’ve come to dispense, or will the Space Marines suffer a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Knights?

---

The Swordsman – Jacob Peppers

The Everwar rages on…and the end comes.

What hope is left lies at the feet of a prince who cares only for dueling—and the accolades such duels give him—and the woman with whom he will spend the night.

Not the world’s greatest hope…

It’s only one.

Hope flickers like the dying ember of a fire, fading in the darkness. Only one man can fan that spark into a blaze, one that might fight back the shadow.

He is a prince. He is a swordsman.

And he is the world’s last hope.

---

Sunken Spaceship – Anthony Melchiorri

An unlikely hero is swept up into intergalactic affairs when he stumbles upon a crashed starship.

Ex-Army paratrooper Griffin “Fin” Brooks thought he left danger behind when his battlefield injuries forced him to pursue a new career in marine biology. But one fateful night off the coast of South Africa a ship nearly crashes into him and his loyal golden retriever, Jacques.

Not just any ship. A starship.

Though its alien pilot is dead, the rare extraterrestrial animal inside is not. Fin learns the creature is being smuggled across the galaxy when a pair of interstellar visitors respond to the crash. But those same investigators accuse Fin and his dog of crimes he didn’t even know existed.

The only way to clear his name is to take the strange creature to its home planet and find out who’s responsible for killing the starship’s pilot. Which means Fin quickly needs to learn how to fly a spacecraft and navigate a galaxy teeming with intelligent life beyond his wildest dreams.

And he’s not the only one with designs for the crashed starship and its cargo. Fin will need every skill he’s honed as a paratrooper and a marine biologist if he—and his dog—are to survive.

---

Ultimate Conclusions – a Kickstarter from Karl K. Gallagher

Hi, I’m Karl K Gallagher. I’m asking your support to help me put out a collection of my short stories.

I’m best known for my Torchship Trilogy, which is a hard SF adventure story about an undercover spy fighting a government which suppresses uncontrolled computers. The trilogy was a finalist for the Prometheus award for best libertarian science fiction novel.

There’s a few loose ends at the end of the story: what’s going to happen with the uploaded people? Will the humans win their war against the AIs? And how can they rebuild the planets devastated in the war?

I’ve written three new stories tackling those questions and giving a look at the characters we love from the trilogy, which I hope Torchship fans will enjoy

This Kickstarter will be available until 10 April, 2024