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May – 2021 – castaliahouse.com

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Cinema (Skillset): For most people, there is likely one film that in their minds defines a generation of hardcore, action moviegoers with its scenes and quotes. For the Generation X crowd (those born from 1965 through 1980), Red Dawn was that defining movie. It opened at the box office in August of 1984 during the […]

Great Science Fiction Adventures (Lancer Books, 1963) is one of my favorite reprint anthologies. The book consists of four novellas reprinted from the magazine Science Fiction Adventures. Larry T. Shaw edited both the magazine and this anthology. Science Fiction Adventures was a digest magazine from Royal Publications published from December 1956 to June 1958 for […]

Interstellar wars, deadly games, and steadfast protectors fill this week’s list of new releases. Blue Sun Armada – Scott Moon War is coming. Duke Uron Marlboro led his mighty house to victory in the Zezner war. The last thing he expected was for his allies to turn on him. With a new civil war brewing, […]

Fiction (The Guardian): Years before becoming one of America’s most celebrated authors, John Steinbeck wrote at least three novels which were never published. Two of them were destroyed by the young writer as he struggled to make his name, but a third – a full-length mystery werewolf story entitled Murder at Full Moon – has […]

Meditations on Middle-Earth was a collection published in 2001 containing essays by authors on the personal impact of J. R. R. Tolkien. Contributors included Poul Anderson, Harry Turtledove, Charles de Lint, and Ursula K. Le Guin. It made for an interesting niche book reading on the impact the Oxford Don made on generations of fantasy […]

On a cold November night, a grieving father picks up his hunting rifle and shoots his only daughter in the head. The police are mystified. Why was the girl even at the house? Why wasn’t she at the mortuary, awaiting her burial? After all Mary Winston had been declared dead two days earlier. When John […]

Literary saints, Scotland Yard demon hunters, and interstellar gunrunners stalk through this week’s new releases. Indie Saint (Words of Power #1) – V. K. Fox Since she read a biography of Catholic saints and began spontaneously healing the sick and calling down lightning, Jane’s day-to-day has become a trippy journey of self-discovery. Lucky thing a […]

RPG (Walker’s Retreat):  There is a very good reason for why you should follow Jeffro Johnson and his rediscover of how to properly play tabletop RPGs. It is because the habits of thinking that you acquire by playing them as intended are directly transferable to everyday life, and not just in the sense that learning […]

Almost six years ago, I wrote about Tanith Lee when she died, as a sword & sorcery writer. She was not at the blood and thunder end of the spectrum but at the other more fantastic end. Her stories were dark fairy tales. They were fables presented as modern fantasy. Tanith Lee could be more […]

The war lords and bandits of Western China thought all visitors were fair game—until they ran into Norcross and his hard-boiled black army from the American Expeditionary Forces. Starting in 2015, Altus Press has rereleased the stories that filled the first and the greatest of pulps, Argosy Magazine, with its Argosy Library line. With over […]

Lost intergalactic secrets, interstellar pit stops, and heavy metal sword & sorcery fill this week’s list of new releases. Awaken Online: Hellion – Travis Bagwell Jason’s back! And he’s ready for some revenge! Roughly a month has passed in-game since Thorn’s attack on the Twilight Throne. In that time, the dark city has managed to […]

Fiction (Ken Lizzi): Science Fiction has its big three. Most often these are listed as Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. The line up varies, of course. It can’t be objectively determined and prominence waxes and wanes with time. Weird Tales had its own holy trinity: Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith. Three seems to be a magic number. […]