Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /home/linweb28/c/castaliahouse.com/user/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/page-theme/pageTheme.php on line 31
October – 2021 – castaliahouse.com

Monthly Archives:

s

It’s Halloween and as I wrote last week, my reading habits shift towards horror in October. Not so much horror, how many “horror” stories really scare us? Possibly the scariest book I ever read was William Forstchen’s One Second After and that is not a horror novel. Horror/weird/supernatural is what we are talking about. H. […]

“You are the first Arkonide who has ever set foot on this planet. In your body there are literally two worlds colliding.” When last we left Perry Rhodan, the astronaut had landed in the Gobi Desert, announced the presence of the Arkonides to Earth, and invited the world to come help found the new city […]

Alien invasions, fantastic swordswomen, benighted post-apocalyptic lands, and more! Blade of the Faithful (Origins of Gilia #1) – R. G. Long Kyne, a quiet warrior, is beaten and bloodied. Left for dead on an island beset with pirate attacks and a mysterious sickness, there’s little hope for his future. Though his wounds may heal, his […]

Gaming (Wert Zone): Sony have confirmed that one of their signature PlayStation franchises, God of War, is making the jump to the PC format, with the latest game in the series hitting PC as soon as January. The God of War franchise began in 2005 with the eponymous debut game on PlayStation 2. It was followed […]

The days get shorter and cooler (if not colder) in October with the leaves turning colors and falling. These seasonal changes put me in the mood for reading horror fiction in the lead up to Halloween. Last year I read Richard Laymon’s The Traveling Vampire Show and Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest. I had issues with […]

Dragon prince, time-traveling pilots, and Ember War crusades fill this week’s new releases. Drakon Prince – Jamie McFarlane Separated as a child from his family, Theo has always had a feeling that he’s made for something bigger than the suburban life he seems to be headed for. When a thug threatens his best friend, he […]

Fantasy (Ken Lizzi): I’ve written about Roger Zelazny before in my sporadic Appendix N series of posts. My recent reading of the entirety of the Dilvish the Damned sequence of tales requires that I add this supplemental. Because Dilvish is worthy of the effort. Now, the culmination of Dilvish’s saga (The Changing Land, 1981) postdates […]

The ability to create your own book has lead to an explosion of small press publishing. Genres such as sword & sorcery are seeing a recrudescence after decades of shunning by the big publishing companies. One new anthology from this year is Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords #6 from Timaios Press.             Timaios Press “publish thought-provoking, […]

Failing empires, cast-off genetic super soldiers, and dragon charmers shine in this week’s new releases. A Dark Dawn (The Great War #5) – Ralph Kern The Dawn Empire’s light is fading. Admiral Ikson Koto has one chance to renew the flame before it is extinguished forever. To save the Empire from a slow death, he […]

Firepower of The Legend of Tarzan Chris L Adams Intro <Note: This article originally appeared in ERBapa #149> In the interests of continuity (See: The Guns of Geronimo (ERBapa #142), A Message in a . . . bottle? (ERBapa APA #143), and Guns of The Land that Time Forgot (ERBapa #145 and Castaliahouse.com) regarding prior submissions […]

Books (Talking Covers): Editor Gary Fisketjon launched Vintage Contemporaries, a paperback imprint of Random House, in September 1984. There were seven initial titles. By decade’s end, there would be close to 100. The line was a mix of reprints and originals, and nearly thirty years later the checklist found in the back of the books […]

For four years, I have been blogging on sword & sorcery artists. Some are forgotten, obscure, a few are classic. Art has been important to sword & sorcery fiction going back to Hugh Rankin in Weird Tales. A recent artist and one of my favorites is Samuel Dillon. I think I first became aware of […]