Queer things happen to the Foreign Legion in Africa; but the maddest affair of them all was that naval battle in the Red Sea.

In the cafes of Algiers, an old legionnaire with a cinnamon-colored beard holds court, telling all who pass by his classic old soldiers’ tales. Today, however, old Thibaut Corday’s humor is gone. Today, the old soldier is spooked by a puppet play outside of a mosque. Today, as long suppressed memories of the strangest parts of Africa come roaring back, old Corday unearths the story of the Death Watch.

Old soldiers may never die, but it is a shame that Theodore Roscoe’s tales of Thibaut Corday have, for most folks, faded away. Roscoe brings a relish to the old Frenchman’s tales, mixing the once best-selling legionnaire genre with a kind of naturalistic weird tale. And in “The Death Watch”, Roscoe and Corday blend into this mix the misdirection and stage magic that would fascinate so many pulp authors in the 1930s and beyond. But magic is magic, stage or otherwise, and it is treated with the same caution as a swordsman would treat sorcery or a handler his snake. Even if Corday eventually lets his audience peek behind the curtain.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, lets run the story back to its source, a strange Yankee recruit known as Jack the Goat. A man who is an outcast even among the outcasts of the Foreign Legion. A man whose valor old Corday never doubts. Read More

This week’s new releases open doors to other worlds for U. S. Army Rangers, Israeli tankers, Gilded Age artists, and dungeon building gamers.

China Mike (Abner Fortis, ISMC #2) – P. A. Piatt

Fresh from fighting bugs and clones on Pada-Pada, Second Lieutenant Abner Fortis and Third Platoon look forward to some well-deserved liberty on Eros-69, a plutoid colony built to provide all the earthly pleasures available in the far reaches of space.

When Fortis’s nemesis reroutes Third Platoon to Eros-28 instead, though, the Space Marines discover they’ve been sent to an industrial colony with limited R&R opportunities and no way back to the flagship. Everything goes downhill from there as two Space Marines are arrested and accused of dealing China Mike—a highly addictive and illegal synthetic drug—and Fortis is forced to either get involved in the war against the cartel or abandon his Marines to the local legal system.

However, as their involvement in the drug war deepens, Fortis suspects the platoon has been plunged into the middle of something much bigger. Rumors of a growing resistance movement against the colonial government abound, and it appears his men are being used to do the security force’s dirty work of putting it down.

As Fortis navigates his way between the corrupt colonial government, a corporate espionage agent, intergalactic mercenaries, and his own chain of command, he has to find the truth of the situation and answer one important question—is there any way for Third Platoon to be successful when everyone else on the planet wants them to fail?

The Cosmic Courtship – Julian Hawthorne

Mary Faust, a brilliant scientist, has developed a machine that can allow the conscious human soul to explore the cosmos! Her promising young assistant Miriam Mayne has accidentally transferred her consciousness to Saturn, where she falls under the enchantment of an evil sorcerer! Jack Paladin, her love, sets out after her on a thrilling celestial journey to the ringed planet! Swashbuckling adventure and high romance await in Julian Hawthorne’s The Cosmic Courtship!

While most are at least somewhat familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the great American authors, less well known is that his son Julian was an incredibly prolific writer in his own right. Julian wrote on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from literary analysis of his father’s works to poetry to period romances and adventures. Late in his career, Julian even dabbled in the emerging genre of Science Fiction.

The Cosmic Courtship was serialized in Frank A. Munsey’s All-Story Weekly across four issues, beginning with the November 24, 1917 issue and running through the December 15, 1917 issue. While this story has been in the public domain for some time, it has never been collected or published elsewhere until now.

Dungeon Core Online – Jonathan Smidt

James thought he would be just another adventurer in the world’s most anticipated dungeon delving VRMMORPG. But when he logs in, he soon finds out that he won’t be diving the dungeon – he will be creating it. Pretty awesome right?

At least that was what he thought when he boldly chose ‘Random’ as his dungeon type…

Then he summoned his first mob. A fearsome, bloodthirsty demonic… Chicken.

Still, Demonic Farm Animals are the least of his worries. The person who is supposed to be teaching him the ropes is a weirdly advanced AI pixie who drinks too much and is overly fond of gambling. Oh and some mysterious figure seems to be watching and judging his every move – so signing that NDA is feeling like less and less of a solid choice.

Either way, James is up for the challenge. Even if it means building a dungeon around kamikaze sheep, enraged cows, unhygienic pigs and yes… Dickens.

At least his next randomly selected mob type can’t be worse… right?

Lay the Hate (Forgotten Ruin #4)  – Jason Anspach and Nick Cole

The War Begins…

The world of Ruin erupts into the flames of war as a great evil rises once more from the Tombs of Eternal Midnight. Werewolves and vampires march from the east, the orcs of Umnoth are on the move, and cities disappear beneath the boots of these savage hordes. Kingdoms field desperate armies in a last desperate bid to stop the tides of darkness, but the truth is clear.

The hour of final ruin has come.

Yet the wizard Vandahar has one more card to play: Rangers. Allied with elves and dwarves, they set out to strike at the very heart of the evil Lich Pharaoh’s domain by attacking from a wholly unexpected direction.

Survival. Asymmetrical warfare. Total surprise. This is what the Rangers do best.

But first they must survive the Citadel.

What the forces of evil have started, the Rangers will finish! Read More

Fresh off the success of The Cosmic Courtship (reviewed here), the Cirsova Classics line continues with a new Kickstarter campaign that completes Julian Hawthorne’s pulp run. Readers can chose from three new volumes, two of which deal with Martha Klemm, Hawthorne’s pulp heroine with a connection to Salem witches, with the third collecting a set of standalone romances in Doris Dances and Fires Rekindled. This will be the first time these pulp stories have been available in a century, with Absolute Evil, A Goth From Boston, and Sara was Judith being predecessors to the weird fiction made popular by Weird Tales. The already successful Kickstarter campaign will continue until October 29, with a general release to the public to follow.

“It is hard not to compare Hawthorne’s interplanetary adventures to those later adventures of the Inklings. The prose is elevated and aspirational, ornate without being purple, and a far cry from the simplifications of the Black Mask style to be born ten years later.” Read More

Wars for freedom, space, and magic fill this week’s new releases.

Embark – Jon Justice

Kaytha has found something, and humanity won’t survive with it.

In the future, global corporations DeCorp and EnerCon have made interstellar travel possible and space flight available to all humanity. But, when an industrial accident inside DeCorp sets off an apocalyptic chain of events, all of Earth is at risk.

Meanwhile, Kaytha Morrow receives a cryptic message from her father, an aerospace engineer who died one year earlier. As the planet-wide evacuation begins, fellow pilot Taft Gaurdia eagerly agrees to help her investigate.

Amid the growing chaos, the ruthless Sint Argum of DeCorp attempts to exploit the disaster and gain control, while Taft and Kaytha make a shocking discovery that may hold the key to saving humanity from the tyranny of DeCorp’s evil leader.

Knights of Visaria (The War Masters #1) – Michael G. Thomas

A thousand year ago the First Empire fell, now the remnants of that ancient realm face an even greater enemy.

A new power rises, and first to face its wrath is the peaceful Duchy of Visaria and its glittering City of Light. Legions of northern mercenary soldiers, horsemen from the east, and centaur beasts from the great plains march against them burning ports and towns as they head further south. As the duchy is quickly overrun, the fearless Princess Ikarae escapes the carnage to look for aid wherever she can find it.

With the old kingdoms refusing to intervene, Princess Ikarae assembles an unlikely band of heroes and mercenaries to help Visaria take the fight to the enemy. Franz von Müller, the aged military strategist, Reinfried, the young knight keen to prove his prowess in battle, Henry Hawkins, the suave arms dealer, Captain Harlac, a skilled sailor and privateer, and Adept Uriel, a mysterious eyeless praetor with the power to harness the natural world to deadly effect. Will these heroes, and the remaining Knights of Visaria be enough to turn back the tide before the City of Light falls?

Neverstone: The Mad Elf – Ned Caratacus

Era Gualtieri lives his life on permanent hard mode…

His right leg is gone, his hometown was bombed into toxic waste, and he’s elvish in an age when pointy ears are the mother of all “kick me” signs. He’s spent the past four years hopping trains and shoplifting just to survive, with only his flying sword to keep him safe.

Now, he’s suddenly the only guy on the planet who’s legally allowed to stop the new Dark Lord.

But Era’s in no mood to bail out. Besides, his new government-appointed comrades (the edgiest sorceress in the food court, and a healer who’s all heart and 0% brains) won’t stand for such nonsense.

Worse, an ancient conspiracy lurks at the heart of the whole Dark Lord fiasco, keeping the world in a cycle of constant violence for profit. Era’s determined to get to the bottom of it, even if it means being branded an outlaw for the rest of his life.

Give a Gualtieri two paths to choose, and he’ll take the third. Read More

Reynard “The Fox” Douglas is an outlaw racecar driver who despises the government that jailed him, drafted him, and seized his money.  He’s also the only man with the skills to pilot an experimental race car into a strange Zone that is growing in New Mexico, a place where nothing gets out alive. Charged to find whatever is causing the Zone and destroy it, Reynard overshoots his goal–by millions of years. Now stranded on a nighttime Earth in the shadow of a dying demon star, Reynard must race past abhumans, demons, and even the twisted remnants of humanity as he tries to discover what happened to Earth and if it has any connection to the Zone he left behind.

Fenton Wood returns with Nightland Racer, inspired by William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land. If Wood’s Yankee Republic was a past that should have been, Nightland Racer is a future which should never be. The familiar signposts are here, from abhumans to strange Watchers and the Lesser and Last Redoubts of men. But Wood refuses to wallow in defiant last stands and grim dark futures. Instead, he swerves hard right from the Redoubts towards something more hopeful and far more desperate: how to fix the cursed Night Land. Reynard soon finds himself walking in the steps of Hercules as he strives against the demon star that replaced the Sun. But as fanciful as the scenario may be, Wood grounds the shifts in lands and peoples in a hard science sensibility that heightens the horrors of the Night Land instead of undercutting it. With Nightland Racer, Fenton Wood spits in the eye of science fiction’s woeful lament about the loss of wonder caused by “single vision and Newtons sleep” and delivers a rousing mix of the mythological and the technological that should be a signpost for science fiction’s future. Read More

Alien invasions, fog monsters, and rebel moons fill this week’s new releases.

Arrival (The Kyron Invasion #1) – Jasper T. Scott

Chris Randall just lost his job as a bodyguard. That night, after picking up his wife, Bree, from her shift at a local casino, he breaks the bad news.

Moments later, thunder cracks the sky, but there’s no lightning. Flaming debris rain across the valley, and a dark mass goes sailing out of the clouds, headed straight for LA.

It’s not one of the Union’s starships, because they can’t defy gravity like that. But then what is it?

The answer chills both Chris and Bree to their cores: it’s an invasion.

They have to pick up their kids and get away from the city. But the Randalls soon discover that nowhere is far enough away to keep them safe.

Blessed Time – Cale Plamann

Some disasters can only be avoided if you know they’re coming…

On Karell, you are either blessed by the gods, granted a unique power and the ability to gain experience and levels, or you are forgotten. Micah Silver was a boy picked for greatness. Chosen by the gods to bear a mythic power, he longed to take his place amongst the heroes and legends he grew up reading about.

Unfortunately, his primary blessing only allows him to travel into the past by sacrificing his class, wealth, and levels–a psychological burden that Micah is reluctant to shoulder. But, even if Micah is unwilling, fate has a way of forcing you to face your destiny… and running away can cost you everything.

Over and over again…

Brutal Dreams – J. D. Cowan

A Living Nightmare

After awakening in the woods, Christopher Archer finds himself trapped in a world outside of time. Fog monsters, armed gangsters, and a legendary spear, all await his arrival. But what about the fiancé who disappeared months ago?

As Archer explores this eternal midnight, he can only wonder—is this all just a dream, or is there something more hidden in the dark, watching his every move?

There is one choice. He must traverse the nightmare and learn the truth.

Dark Victory (Galaxy’s Edge #12) – Jason Anpach and Nick Cole

The Darkest Secrets Stay Hidden

Galaxy’s Edge Season Two continues as a divided galaxy is navigated by heroes forced to chart their own dangerous courses.

Wraith, seeking to acquire intel on the mysterious Kill Team Ice, finds himself teamed up with an unlikely Nether Ops ally. Zora and Garret, in pursuit of a lost friend, will have their loyalty to Captain Keel tested. And the strain on Nilo and Black Leaf continues to grow, with unexpected intensity.

For all of them, the path forward is a crooked one, weaving through House of Reason loyalists, Bronze Guild bounty hunters, brutal slavers, Legion operators, and the mysteries now emerging from the empty and foreboding space beyond galaxy’s edge. And each step along that path only seems to reveal a new, darker truth about what’s coming for them.

But one thing is increasingly certain. War is brewing.

Read More