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 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.

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.

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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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 Red Wrath (The Storyweaver Saga #3) – D. K. Holmberg

Legends claim the gods watch over their people, protecting the faithful. That’s only part of the story.

Lan spends his days serving the Taihg—and the Raven Queen—searching for the dangerous magic users that nearly destroyed him. He’s come close to answers, but has not yet found what he’s looking for. The borders have been strangely quiet.

While Sophie studies sorcery and has grown skilled, she longs for a greater challenge. When the Raven Queen tasks her with a strange assignment, Sophie thinks it’s her chance to finally earn the Raven Queen’s trust so that she can study alongside her.

Evidence of new attacks threatens the safety of the realm—and reveals a new target for Darius’s quest for power. It’s one few understand, and even fewer can stop.

Sophie and Lan must come to understand the truth of their magic before Darius reaches his goal. As they work together to protect the realm, their power might not be enough, and it might already be too late.

How can they stop the power of the gods?

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!

Swain Kingsbane (The Saga of Swain the Viking #3) – Arthur D. Howden Smith

“Three kings make for weakness in the land; the folk fall apart; there is endless bickering. Two kings would be forever wrangling amongst themselves. One king—ah, with one king we shall see the old days return when Harald Haardrada made Norway feared by all!”

In Norway trouble breeds apace. Three kings divide the land, three brothers who are in no wise brotherly. It is Swain’s goal to end the turmoil and unite Norway under King Ingi, whose brothers King Sigurd and King Eystein continually intrigue against him. Furthermore, Swain’s arch enemy Olvir Rosta, a man completely devoid of honor, has thrown his lot in with King Sigurd. Before one man alone can wear the crown, blood will be spilled, battles will be fought on land and at sea, and Swain will earn the name Kingsbane.

In addition to the title novella, Swain Kingsbane includes the stories “Swain’s Outlawing” and “Swain’s Inlawing,” plus the novel Swain’s Folly.

The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #2 – Will Murray

Sherlock Holmes confronts the unknown in ten baffling tales that test his formidable mental powers, as well as his unshakable conviction that the world is a sane and rational place.

From the enigma of spontaneous human combustion to the possibility that coins minted during the era of supposedly mythical Atlantis survived into Victorian times, London’s premier consulting detective is tested and tried as never before, as his investigations cross the path of Algernon Blackwood‘s famed psychic physician, Dr. John Silence.

Will Holmes’s firm belief in an exclusively scientific reality hold––or must he at last give ground to the detested possibility that supernatural forces operate at will, unseen and only suspected?

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They told me they needed me to go to Samaris, as the rumors had been going on too long…

…and the only way to put a stop to them was to send someone there to see what was really happening.

On a counter-Earth 180 degrees removed from our own, a young officer in service to the city of Xhystos, Franz Bauer, is given a mission of vital importance. He volunteers to go to the mysterious city of Samaris, thought by Xhystos to be the foreign source of the malaise affecting its culture. Many have been sent to the fabled Walls of Samaris, yet none have returned. Driven by ambition, Franz ignores the objections of his friends and sets out for Samaris.

Perhaps he should have listened.

Thus begins the first of the tales of Les Cités obscures, known now in English as The Obscure Cities, a multi-decade fantasy written by Benoît Peeters and drawn by François Schuiten. Sadly, most of the series of this classic French bande dessinee remains untranslated in English, and many of the translated volumes fall readily out of print. Scarcity has driven up the esteem of this series, both in English and in French, yet the quality matches its reputation through mixing gorgeous architecture in the backgrounds and philosophical storytelling. As Julian Darius wrote in his overview for the Sequart Organization:

But The Obscure Cities? It’s pretty much what Americans want French comics to be. Intoxicatingly beautiful. Elegant, even. Willing to experiment. And smart in a way that it’s easy to lose yourself in the rich resonance.

There is a bit of subtle wordplay hidden by translation to the title of The Obscure Cities. Like Franz Bauer, we see through to the meaning dimly, knowing and perceiving in part. While these regions are not well known, the original French has connotations of darkness, menace, and hiding. It’s a proper title for a story driven by one central, even paranoid, concern: what mystery lays in the heart of Samaris’s walls with its carnivorous plant heraldry?

Franz arrives to the wonder of Samaris, a walled city that can be seen on the horizon nearly two weeks before arriving. The city combines a vast sprawling footprint with a bizarre mix of architectural styles from different civilizations and eras. However, the high society is confined to a narrow, even homely, section of the city. Franz soon falls into a comfortable rut of socials and soirees, but little details keep worrying him.

Why were there never any children in Samaris? Why were so many doors blocked off? Why wasn’t there anything behind the shutters that I pried open? Read More

In 2009, the Louvre Museum, one of the most renowned art museums in the world, gathered comic book artists together for a unique exhibit showcasing the breadth of contemporary art found in comic books. French bandes dessinées and American comic books featured prominently in the display, joined by panels drawn by Japanese manga artist Hirohiko Araki. While most of the featured comics used the grounds of the Louvre as a vehicle for investigating art or even as characters, Araki took one of his more popular characters, a manga artist turned occult detective, and thrust him into a mystery deep inside the Louvre’s underground tunnels, complete with all the accumulated quirks of his JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure -and a touch of body horror.

In many ways, Araki was the perfect choice for such a collection. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is rooted in both Japanese and Western pop culture, mixing Japanese punk brawlers with a love for Western music and the traditions of both cultures’ occult detective stories.

The series is still going strong after thirty years, following the Joestar family throughout generations as they fight against an ancient and undead enemy of the family. To properly explain the JoJo’s series would easily require a month’s columns and the average reader might still think the plot and the setting a fever dream. After all, the names of several characters may be familiar: Dio, Speedwagon, Red Hot Chili Pepper, Cream, Aerosmith, Green Day, Black Sabbath, etc.. Perhaps one way to think of the series is if the X-Men fought each other with Pokemon and their fists. And, strangely enough, it works so well that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has been a staple of manga readers throughout it’s entire run.

To overcome the daunting barrier of entry that such a long-lived series creates, Araki crafted his exhibit, collected in Rohan at the Louvre, to be a stripped-down version of a JoJo story. Focusing on Rohan Kishibe, the aforementioned manga artist turned occult investigator, Araki moves the powers and other regular JoJo characters to the background, allowing guests to the Louvre to experience this ghost story through his eyes. After a brief introduction to Rohan and his power to read people like books–illustrated with a touch of body horror as their skin peels like pages, Rohan tells his story of a search for the darkest black ever seen. And so begins a horror story worthy of mention in the same sentence as Manly Wade Wellman’s “The Golgotha Dancers”. 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.

(Note: next week’s spotlight will be postponed to 4 April.)

Codex Babylon (The Cross-Time Crusade #1) – Robert Kroese

A secret cabal of demonic forces threatens to destroy civilization and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Humanity’s only chance is a shadowy organization called GRAIL–the modern day heirs to the Knights Templar–which has discovered the secret to time travel. The past cannot be changed, but if GRAIL can send an agent into the past to recover a lost book on demonology called the Codex Babylon, they may have a fighting chance to save humanity from utter destruction.

The Cross-Time Crusade is a series of books chronicling GRAIL’s efforts to preserve a remnant of humanity from an unstoppable cataclysm.

Forge Master – Seth Ring

Ascending should have been the easy part…

But after being thrown into the void, Thorn finds himself stranded in a strange world filled with even stranger creatures.

Together with his cute battle pet, the mysterious god beast Hati, and a sentient AI named Eve, Thorn must forge a place for himself in this new world. Unfortunately, the local guilds all have other ideas and soon the Titan finds himself embroiled in plots that even his famed strength cannot help him with.

Rallying his strengths and learning how to fix his weaknesses will be the absolute minimum Thorn needs to survive, but if he wants to thrive, he’ll be forced to take risks that put his life and the lives of his friends on the line.

The Hunter (Drop Trooper: Recon #2) – Rick Partlow

Randall Munroe’s past won’t stay dead.

Born Tyler Callas, the pampered heir of a Corporate Council scion, he fled that life and adapted the new identity of Randall Munroe so he could join the Commonwealth Space Fleet Marine Corps’ elite Force Recon unit in the war against the alien Tahni Imperium.

But when he returned from the war, his old life found him. His mother, Corporate Council Executive Patrice Damiani, tracked him down and tried to return him to her web of control, even if she had to have his personality altered by drugs and psychological brainwashing to do it. Narrowly escaping her clutches, he made a deal with the devil to stay free…and now the debt is come due.

Cowboy, a former Space Fleet Intelligence commando who fought beside Munroe on Demeter, now works for one of Patrice Damiani’s rivals in the Corporate Council and he agreed to keep Munroe safe from her, in return for Munroe using the skills he learned as a Recon Marine in the service of Cowboy’s boss. Cowboy has tracked down rumors of an ancient alien artifact that has been discovered by one of the criminal cabals out in the desolate Pirate Worlds, and he needs Munroe to steal it.

The Last Argonaut (The Coalition #15) – Ian J. Malone

“Great moments are born from great opportunity.” — Herb Brooks, head coach, 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic hockey team.

Zack Monahan had it all ten years ago. A “rags to riches” story as anointed by the Sol system press, the human quarterback from the slums of Tretra took college warball by storm, smashing every record on the way to being the projected top pick in the next First Interstellar Warball Association amateur draft.

Then came the hit that shattered everything.

Deek Xatori never had a chance. An undersized player on the heels of his fifth roster cut in four seasons, the reeoli journeyman was headed home, hoping for one last shot at professional glory.

Neither being had much to offer to a cellar-dweller franchise on a backwater world, still reeling from the worst natural disaster in planetary history.

Welcome to the world of high-stakes interstellar warball, where craniums collide on the field, secrets lurk off it, and the fates of civilizations rise or fall on a single play. It’s also where a ragtag club of misfits, backed by a city of outcasts, just might find their opportunity for redemption. Read More