Blog Archives

This week’s fantasy new releases feature living saints, Depression-era folk magicians, online magi, and refugees hiding in a world of pike and shot. Awaken Online: Ember (Awaken Online: Tarot #1) – Travis Bagwell Finn Harris should have been the one to die. But he wasn’t – his wife took his place. What was worse, he […]

Pulp Modern: TechNoir Special pulls the rug out from under the reader in the best possible way. Scotch Rutherford serves as guest editor for this themed collection of darkly themed near future science-fiction stories.  None of that should surprise, given the title of the collection.  It’s all right there, just what it says on the tin, […]

The June 1923 issue of Black Mask was notable, not only for its anti-Klu Klux Klan theme, but also for the appearance of the first hard-boiled detective, Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams. Per pulp expert Robert Sampson, Williams: “strains the definition of detective. A hired adventurer who may occasionally detect if he blunders into a clue the size […]

This week’s science fiction new releases feature time-traveling peacemakers, cross-and-planet space templars, junkyard space engineers, powered armor mercenaries, and more. The Best of Us (Galaxy’s Edge: NOMAD #1) – Karen Traviss Half the world is a wasteland: the other half is on borrowed time. The West has been devastated by epidemics, bio-terrorism, war, and famine. […]

Just in time for Halloween! The hard boiled detective in a fantasy city has been done before, but never so authentically as in Misha Burnett’s Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Case Files of Erik Rugar.  Even if you don’t like Urban Fantasy, all you need is a love of hard boiled detective works and […]

Yesterday, on the 29th of October, Silver Empire Publishing, a publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and Christian fiction, awoke to find that pre-orders to their newest releases of explicitly Christian science fiction and fantasy were cancelled without notice, and the pages deleted–allegedly by the rights-holders themselves. While the books were eventually restored this afternoon, Silver […]

She invited Joseph into the woods. Whether for a cult or a one night stand, he was not sure, but either way, he followed her. What Joseph encountered instead were Gray kidnappers, aliens who were using corporations to mold humanity into their own genetic image. Some people, enchanted by ancient lies, would get a choice […]

Alt-Hero: Q #2: Not Dead Enough After federal agent Roland Dane survives the successful assassination of the U.S. Secretary of State in Peru, he makes his way back to the United States in secret with the help of a mysterious organization opposed to the global establishment. But when a famous film star is reported dead […]

Cops chasing magical criminals, airship baronesses, embattled chi cultivating martial artists, and unwilling heroes feature in this week’s collection of fantasy’s newest releases. Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts (The Case Files of Erik Rugar #1) – Misha Burnett  It’s hard to fight wizards and demons when all you have is a gun and a badge. […]

Just a short post today, a little reflection on “My Hero Academia” (I know, bear with me) prompted by an already-famous scene from the manga. This is, I think, a good example of why it feels like such a breath air in modern fiction. A warning: What follows is a minor spoiler of season 4. […]

Mecha arena combat, brutal sieges of sky and space, hidden alien genetic machinations, and spacefleets-in-exile feature in this week’s list of science fiction’s newest releases. Captain Henry Gallant (The Henry Gallant Saga #5) – H. Peter Alesso Henry Gallant is the captain of the spacecraft carrier Constellation. He is the last hope of the Marines stranded […]

Is cozy epic a genre? At 178 pages, Noble Brown’s The White Arrow is not a particularly long book, but it is crammed with as much actual content as most thicker volumes.  The action kicks off with the assassination of a king as the poor old monarch struggles to survive the siege of his city.  […]