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

The Council of Yoran (The Chain Breaker #12) – D. K. Holmberg

The Chain Breaker must fall. Something greater must rise.

A dark power builds, but Gavin and his allies can’t find its source.

Much of what he’s learned has been fragments of what he needs. Gavin must find a way to bring it all together if he wants to protect the future.

But the key to stopping the danger may involve a sacrifice he’s unwilling to make.

He can’t fight his way past the danger that comes. The Chain Breaker must fall.

Who—and what—will replace him?

Dark Menace (Space Raiders #3) – Ken Lozito

The message came warning that Nate’s friends have been captured.

Aliens are abducting juveniles across the galaxy, and every species is a target, including humans.

Nate is certain he knows who’s responsible, but it’s impossible because they’re supposed to be dead.

Determined to uncover the truth and rescue his friends, Nate embarks on a journey that leads him down a galactic rabbit hole, exposing the darker undercurrents of galactic society and the fight for justice.

For Nate, it’s personal. For everyone else, it’ll be costly.

Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods – Johnathan Moeller

The ultimate artifact of dark magic. Only one may wield it.

At last Gareth Arban has found the resting place of the Dragonskull, the deadly weapon of dark magic that can either rule or destroy the world.

But the sorceress Azalmora has also found it and will do anything to claim the Dragonskull’s power.

To free the world from the Dragonskull’s curse, Gareth must pay the ultimate price…

Gruesome Futures (Tales to Make You Vomit #4) – edited by J. Manfred Weichsel

The librarian is back with her first misanthropic anthology!

When three brave astronauts embark on a trip to the moon, little do they know that a hidden purpose awaits them—an alien signal detected from the moon, shrouded in secrecy to prevent panic on Earth. The lunar module is damaged upon landing, stranding the astronauts on the moon’s surface, with no hope of returning home. Determined to fulfill their mission, they follow the mysterious signal to a crater, leading them beneath the moon’s surface and into an enigmatic library.

Here they meet the Librarian, a seemingly harmless elderly woman with a nefarious agenda. The bilious bibliosoph has decided to put humanity on trial by forcing each astronaut to read a sickening science fiction book from her liverish library. If just one can read a book without throwing up, the earth will be spared. But each time one of the astronauts gets green around the gills, the librarian will launch, by catapult, a giant rock at the earth, which will, upon impact, cause massive loss of life. As the bizarre book bazaar unfolds, the astronauts face an unsettling realization—the final rock will bring about the destruction of Earth. Read More

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

Lord of a Shattered Land – Howard Andrew Jones

The Dervan Empire has at last triumphed over Volanus, putting the great city to the torch, its treasures looted, temples defiled, and fields sown with salt. What little remains of Volanus is scattered across the empire, its wealth plundered and its survivors sold into slavery. It is an absolute victory for the Dervans in every way but one.

Hanuvar, last and greatest general of Volanus, still lives. He now travels the length of the Dervan Empire that conquered his homeland, driven by a singular purpose—to find what remains of his people who were carried into slavery across the empire, and free them from subjugation by any means necessary.

Against the might of a vast empire, he had only an aging sword arm, a lifetime of hard-won wisdom, and the greatest military mind in the world, set upon a single goal. No matter what the empire musters against him, no matter what man or monster stands in his way, from the empire’s festering capital to its furthest outposts, Hanuvar would find his people, every last one of them.

And he would set them free.

No Easy Dead – Jake Bible

A deadly wasteland. An elite unit. Can they protect the Stronghold?

In the post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested wastes, there is one beacon of safety in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains: The Stronghold.

For decades, the inhabitants have fortified and defended the Stronghold from zombie hordes, building their society and culture on military precision.

And chosen from the best of the best is Denver Team Alpha. DTA is the elite strike force used to rescue survivors and refugees that have made it to the hellish wasteland of Denver below. But because of the unbelievable risks, and high mortality rate, DTA has come to stand for something else: Dead Team Alpha.

Now, DTA will be put to the test as something far worse than zombies comes at them out of the wasteland…

Psi Wars 3: Imperium – Rick Partlow

They thought the war was over…the enemy had other ideas.

Two years after the end of the Psi War, Caleb Mitchell is Emperor in all but name, leading his armies on a crusade to cleanse the colony worlds and Earth itself of the last of the psionic madmen known as the Changed.

But the citizens of the Commonwealth weren’t the only ones devastated by the war; the criminal cartels in the Pirate Worlds are in chaos, their trade cut off, their resources running out.

A young warlord named Amos Dobrev rises up to unite the cartels into a union they call the Syndicate. He builds an army of psionic supermen and tries to carve out his own kingdom among the former Commonwealth colonies.

Dobrev says they are only doing what they have to do to survive. Mitchell considers Dobrev a threat who needs to be put down before he destroys everything that’s left.

And caught in the middle is Randall Munroe, Mitchell’s right-hand man, trying to decide whether the bigger threat is an outlaw Syndicate…or the power of Cal Mitchell’s Imperium.

Read More

The fabled city of Volanus has fallen, pillaged by the Dervan Empire. Those of its people who were spared the sword have been scattered throughout Derva as slaves. Now, Volanus’s greatest general walks hidden through the Dervan Empire, searching for his lost people, that he might rescue them, one by one, so that Volanus may once more live again.

His name is Hanuvar.

And he will save them all.

Howard Andrew Jones’s Lord of a Shattered Land collects the first fourteen of Hanuvar’s adventures, presenting them as vignettes in the Hanuvid, a cycle of once historical records turned into plays by Hanuvar’s traveling companion, Antires Sosilos. The keen of mind and ear may already have detected the first resonances between Hanuvar and the famed Hannibal Barca, Volanus and Carthage, Derva and Rome. However, the resonances do not stop there. Lord of a Shattered Land is a hauntingly familiar book, holding up a mirror to the past and the present of the twin genres of heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery.

One can catch glimpses of Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Gotrek and Felix, and even the depravities of Hoptor the Vintner throughout the Dervan countryside. And Hanuvar grapples with the same inspirations and themes that have led to his indie contemporaries, such as Mortu and Kyrus, the Mongoose and Meerkat, the Rogues of Merth, and Jacob Pepper’s Known Lands.

Many literary critics would be tempted to reach for the deconstruction label.

Perhaps “love letter to the genre” is more appropriate. Read More

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

City of Steel and Shadow (The Last Eternal #5) – Jacob Peppers

Death has a voice.

The wanderer knew that, for he had heard that voice often enough.

And as he walked through the village of Alhs, past the corpses of those who had chosen to stay, he heard it again.

He heard it in the rasp of the wind along the eaves of the abandoned homes he passed, heard it in the slow, methodical banging of window shutters with no one to secure them.

Death has eyes.

Eyes that looked out from the corpses of those the wanderer had not been able to talk into coming with him and the others, that watched him walk down the empty street, searching in vain for any he might help, any he might save.

And with each body passed, each tragedy witnessed, the wanderer made himself a promise.

There would be a reckoning. He would see to it.

Galaxy Unknown (Forgotten Galaxy #1) – M. R. Forbes

Two hundred years ago, the generation starship Pathfinder fled a war-torn Earth, never to be heard from again.

Now, Captain Caleb Card and his crew are on a mission to investigate a transmission believed to be from the lost ship. Ambushed upon arrival, they immediately fear the worst. But the beacon isn’t only still active, it’s on the move, and where it leads will change everything they thought they knew about the universe. Thrust into a galaxy of danger, treachery, intrigue, and mystery, they’ll need to adapt quickly if they want to survive.

Caleb knows war. He’s been fighting most of his life.

He’s never seen anything like this.

Gemini Drifter (Gemini Man #2) – J. D. Cowan and Thomas Plutarch

On the Road to Nowhere

Matthew and Jason are on the run. With bounty hunters, magical monsters, and an entire alien world after them, the pair have their work cut out for them. At the same time, a mysterious cult has infiltrated the town of Albion and the only one that can stop them is the Gemini Man.

Can the two fugitives work together to stop the invasion of another world? Or are they doomed to wander the back roads forever?

Perry Rhodan NEO #14 – Michelle Stern and Christian Humberg

Aescunnar follows Hetcher out into the untamed Martian landscape, desperate to save him and find some answers. Meanwhile, the Tosoma has docked at a Mehandor Web for repair, but intrigue and secrets threaten to derail the mission. Rhodan and his crew face off with an alien race while facing uncomfortable truths among their own ranks.

On Topsid, the chase is on for Eric Manoli and Khatleen-Tarr, who have been forced to go on the run now that dissidents have turned the streets into a war zone. With a hunter on their trail who will stop at nothing, they are forced to take refuge in the sewers. But these are no ordinary sewers, and Manoli is about to learn why the Topsidans fear descending into them…

Back on Earth, Bai Jun is determined to find out what Adams is hiding and sends Lhundup into the depths of the Stardust Tower, where its foundations are being built. Poor Lhundup doesn’t make a very good miner…but who is this mysterious woman he meets there, and what secrets does she hold? Read More