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

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The Ascendant Wars 2: Brimstone – Rhett C. Bruno and M. B. Vance

The Ascendants’ wargame has begun…

Scott Carrick never counted on games within games. Nor would he have believed the sadistic lengths to which mankind’s inhuman overlords would go to for entertainment value.

As Scott and his crew battle in a cruel tournament for survival, Intelligence Chief Rylan Shaw and Combat Nurse Aila Okuma race to extract from the deranged Lilith her secrets before she’s executed.

Meanwhile, the Lucians and their allies prepare for their next campaign. There’s little room for mistakes, but Rylan and Aila soon discover a dangerous complacency in their ranks—and what it may cost them.

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Captain (The Last Horizon #1) – Will Wight

“To survive in this galaxy, you need a wand in one hand and a gun in the other.”

On a little-known planet, Archmage Varic Vallenar casts a grand spell to empower himself with the magical abilities of his alternate selves. The ritual works too well, granting Varic not only the magic but also the memories from six lives.

Including their gruesome deaths.

Now, Varic has power greater than any wizard in galactic history, but he knows that won’t be enough. The enemies he faced in those alternate lives were apocalyptic in scale. Terrors of technology and magic. Nothing that he, or anyone, can defeat.

Sun-eating extra-dimensional insects, shadowy secret organizations, genetically enhanced alien super-soldiers, ruthless mega-corporations, and hordes of cyborg undead all lurk in the darkest corners of the galaxy, and Varic knows that any of them can become a world-ending threat at any moment.

All these are beyond any wizard, no matter how many spells he’s mastered or how many interstellar warships he’s rallied to his cause. Hopeless, Varic finds himself trying to preserve what little he can from the coming doom.

Until he hears rumors of a mythical starship, an invincible vessel of heroes made to do battle against galactic threats.

A ship called The Last Horizon.

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Hyperspace War: Behemoth – Joshua T. Calvert

A colony cut-off. A mysterious alien wormhole. A Captain with nothing to lose…

Contact with Earth has been lost for generations and mysterious waves of disappearing colonists have been shaking the five moons of the Archimedes System for decades.

When suddenly a wormhole appears in the middle of the system, the Union Navy faces an ancient danger from the darkness of deep space.

A merciless war erupts, and Jeremy Brandt, Captain of the UNS Concordia, is sent through the wormhole to confront the mysterious enemy.

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The Lost Task Force (Lost Starship Series #18) – Vaughn Heppner

Task Force 3 is Star Watch’s elite deployment unit against any surprise threats to the Commonwealth.

A mysterious enemy appears 40.7 light years from Earth. Task Force 3 deploys but fails to defend a populated planet against a massive alien Annihilator. Then the task force is sucked through a rip in the space-time continuum, disappearing with the enemy.

This is a nightmare situation. How do you defend against an evil that can appear anywhere and uses technologies beyond our comprehension?

The crew of Victory is ordered to find the answers, and if possible rescue the lost task force.

Captain Maddox, Valerie and Galyan face their most horrific and mind-numbing challenge yet, crossing boundaries they didn’t know existed.

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Silence & Starsong #1 – edited by Joseph Knowles

The inaugural issue of Silence and Starsong Magazine contains stories in a variety of genres from science fiction and horror to fantasy and action/adventure. There are authors you already know and love as well as promising newcomers. All share a common goal: to inspire wonder and awe through stories of high strangeness and other modern fairytales for grown-ups.

Decades of religious war have forced friends and foes under one roof for the night. Will bonds of friendship and fragments of a common faith be enough to protect them from a supernatural enemy?

American missile silos promise annihilation by the heat of a thousand suns. In Czarist Russia, however, even more sinister weapons lurk beneath the ocean.

In the world of espionage and counterintelligence, the men who secretly guide the ships of state will take whatever advantages they can get. When Joseph Cartwright is dispatched to CIA headquarters, he discovers just how far the agency is willing to go.

…and more!

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The Weight of Magic – D. K. Holmberg

The Weight of Magic is a burden not all can bear…

Torian Ranth wants nothing more than to master his sahir magic. Having spent years training, he still can’t form even his primary patterns consistently, let alone attempt any higher tiered power. His continued failures mean that his time in school must come to an end.

When the neighboring country attacks his town and the trained sahir are lost, Torian escapes. There he meets a strange man who demonstrates power greater than any of his instructors, and who understands an ancient power that has not been seen for centuries.

Somehow, Torian must learn the secret of his magic, which may be the key to stopping a greater war…

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Anvil: Iron Age Magazine – a crowd funding campaign by IronAge Media

In this age of derivative and propagandistic mainstream media, creators across mediums and genres have begun pushing back. ANVIL celebrates and highlights those artists and authors drawing inspiration from the roots of comics and pulp. Heralding the rediscovery and refocus on quality over ideology which is already underway, and gaining momentum.

ANVIL is the first official step into the world of publishing by IronAge.Media, a site focused on connecting Iron Age creators with new fans. The dedication and growth from the community surrounding this site has allowed me to pull together a fantastic team to bring this magazine to fruition. Daniel P. Riley, of Whimsyland as Editor and Jacob Calta of 365 Infantry as Designer. Together with the fantastic Iron Age authors and artists we’ve collaborated with, the first issue is over a hundred pages of pure talent guaranteed to blow you away.

Catch an early glimpse of RazörFist and George Alexopoulos’ upcoming Hellfire and Brimstone Western comic!

The crowd-funded campaign will close on 2 May, 2023.