On a cold November night, a grieving father picks up his hunting rifle and shoots his only daughter in the head. The police are mystified. Why was the girl even at the house? Why wasn’t she at the mortuary, awaiting her burial? After all Mary Winston had been declared dead two days earlier. When John Sinclair goes to Scotland to investigate the gruesome murder, he finds a town in the grip of fear.

1973 introduced John Sinclair, Demon Hunter, to German audiences. Sinclair is a Scotland Yard investigator with ties to King Solomon, Henry Sinclair, and Knight Templar Hector de Valois. He also has a penchant for finding undead and other monsters. A weekly pulp serial penned almost exclusively by “Jason Dark”, John Sinclair: Demon Hunter quickly established a reputation for inventive plots and a rich vocabulary. In 2015, the series was rebooted for English audiences, with twelve ebook episodes written by Gabriel Conroy. J-Novel Club is re-releasing this latter series as part of their new pulp fiction imprint.

In “Curse of the Undead”, the first of Sinclair’s English adventures, we find the inspector in 1977, with a stint in the British Army and a lifetime of occult strangeness under his belt, including a personal history with a monster known as the Gaunt Man. But while he does everything in his power to forget what he has seen, a new case is thrust upon him. A string of bloody maulings center around Argyle Castle, now newly owned by a Dr. Ivan Orgoff. Some claim the doctor is actually a necromancer. It is up to Scotland Yard’s Special Division to determine the truth.

“The Devil is in Middlesburgh. He’s punishing us for what we did that night…”

John Sinclair has a droll wit, but fails to fit nicely into extreme credulousness or skepticism. Sinclair follows the clues he finds to their logical conclusion, even if that means supernatural origin, but he does not seek to reject or embrace the supernatural or paranormal akin. The impartial rigor of the investigation is preserved. And when the investigation turns into action, Sinclair proves himself as skilled with his Baretta as he is with observation. In many ways, John Sinclair occupies the middle ground between Weird Tales‘ occult detectives and Larry Correia’s Monster Hunters, incorporating the better parts of each while leaving behind the excesses. While Sinclair is capable in a small fight, even he can be overwhelmed. Fortunately, the cavalry is on call. More correctly, an entire British Army armoured brigade trained to fight the undead and the supernatural, and, more importantly, trained to restore order when all Hell breaks loose.

“Curse of the Undead” heightens the horror, and not just in a period setting where instant communication is rare compared to today. Rather, it relies on the time-old method of telling, not showing. While Conroy does not shy away from violence and gore, he does not revel in describing it. Rather, he quickly tells what happened and then uses character reactions to heighten the horror of the off-screen events. For nothing is scarier than what the reader can imagine, and the indirect approach is a classic technique of true horror. And there are plenty of horrors when the dead rise once more.

But perhaps the greatest achievement of “Curse of the Undead” is Conroy’s ability to tell what’s essentially a zombie story without resorting to the bloated, distended, and rotting corpus of Hollywood zombie movie clichés, or the “perhaps humans are the real monsters” social commentary. What we get is a tense pulp thriller that is as much a clash between heroes and villains as it is a disaster movie. And while the heroes aren’t sure that good exists, they’ve seen Evil, and they act decisively to try to foil it. Because someone has to.

Even when the world is no longer rational.

Or, more likely, because the world is no longer rational.

Literary saints, Scotland Yard demon hunters, and interstellar gunrunners stalk through this week’s new releases.

Indie Saint (Words of Power #1) – V. K. Fox

Since she read a biography of Catholic saints and began spontaneously healing the sick and calling down lightning, Jane’s day-to-day has become a trippy journey of self-discovery. Lucky thing a pair of magical special agents appear and offer to train her because it turns out that, not only has Jane’s life taken a hard turn for the weird, but the fabric of reality is beginning to unravel.

Urban legends like Mothman, the Jersey Devil, and Bunnyman are manifesting in a sleepy Pennsylvania town, and they are haaangry.

The good news: Jane’s new boyfriend is part of an ancient corporation of literary superheroes ready to save the world. The bad news: life expectancy for people with powers kind of sucks.

If Jane wants to live long enough to see the year 2000, she’ll have to work with her new mentor, a teenaged, angsty King Arthur; her current crush, cuddly god-man Enkidu, and a gun-nun from a neighboring comba-convent to seize her role as a try-hard hero and stop a middle-aged madwoman from ripping a hole in the multiverse.

Interstellar Gunrunner – James Wolanyk

Yesterday, he was a conman. Today, he’s the universe’s only hope.

Bodhi Drezek is heartbroken, universally despised, and drowning in debt from the sixty-five million tons of explosive compounds in his cargo hold. Despite his former glory as one of the galaxy’s foremost arms merchants, times are tough. The tyrannical Halcius Hegemony has nearly finished crushing a rebellion, depriving him of his top two customers.

Under the gun to absolve his debts, Bodhi takes a job to help a group of desperate rebels pull off a daring heist on a Hegemony flagship. But upon grabbing the loot, he realizes his employer only fed him half the story: Instead of precious gems, he’s hauling an alien weapon with apocalyptic levels of power. Accompanied by a future-seeing sidekick, a child prodigy, and the interdimensional being that fuels his ship, Bodhi prepares to pull off the ultimate double-cross—and turn the tide of war.

Standing in his way is the entire Hegemony fleet and his employer’s brutal hunters. But there’s no going back now. The universe’s last hope lies in one man—Bodhi Drezek, arms merchant and circumstantial savior.

Resistance – Toby Neighbors

Sometimes just surviving isn’t enough…

Staff Sergeant Eli Vanhorn is injured after a desperate battle with the Orrkasi aliens on Leonis B.  He’s cut off from the other survivors of the Space Fleet exploration ship Rihla, which was shot down when she entered orbit.  And he’s going to need every skill he’s honed over his long career in the Fleet Marine Corps just to stay alive.

Priority one, survive.  Priority two, find the other survivors and take stock of their options.  Priority three, take the fight back to the Orrkasi and make them wish they had never set foot on Leonis B.

Scaled Soul (Dragon Academy #1) – Gage Lee

When a fiendish enemy attacks his family’s keep, Taun, a human knight, must bond with the spirit of an ancient warlord: the Dread Dragon Tyrant Axaranth.

And though accepting the dragon’s soul scale saved his family from certain destruction in one battle, Axaranth’s power threatens to tear Taun apart before they can win the war.

To save himself from the dragon trapped within him, Taun must brave the dangers of the Celestial Academy. Surrounded by young dragons, the knight must master the power of dragon’s breath.

Something no human has ever achieved.

Faced with haughty young dragon nobles, deadly tests of his skill, and hostile traditions, the knight must transform a band of unlikely dragon students into a formidable force. Because if Taun doesn’t win the school’s brutal competition and an audience with the Scaled Council, his family and the dragon kingdoms are doomed to fall to the dark enemy of a previous era. Read More

The war lords and bandits of Western China thought all visitors were fair game—until they ran into Norcross and his hard-boiled black army from the American Expeditionary Forces.

Starting in 2015, Altus Press has rereleased the stories that filled the first and the greatest of pulps, Argosy Magazine, with its Argosy Library line. With over thirty volumes, stories by well-known pulpsters such Lester Dent, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, Max Brand, and Abraham Merritt have returned to print for the first time in years. Alongside these more familiar authors, Altus has introduced new generations of readers to George F. Worts, Loring Brent, Victor Rousseau, and many, many others, drawing from 96 years of pulp adventures and packaging them with the gorgeous covers from the pulp age. And it was the striking painting of a Manchu princess standing in front of her army that drew my attention to War Lord of Many Swordsmen, the first collection of the adventures of John Norcross by chinoiserie enthusiast and former lawman W. Wirt. Within its pages are two short novels detailing the adventures of Norcross, his infantry company of black soldiers, and his adopted sister, Princess Ch’engyuan.

The first adventure, “War Lord of Many Swordsmen”, interrupts Norcross’s pursuit of a legendary lost Zulu impi regiment into China. A wealthy donor hires his company of black WWI veterans to retrieve a sealed cylinder from a Chinese fortress city. Along the way, they rescue the exiled Princess Ch’engyuan and her betrothed, formerly of the same fortress city where Norcross’s treasure lies, ousted by a warlord supported by the same Russian and British spies sent to frustrate Norcross’s mission. Ch’engyuan and Norcross forge an alliance. He will help liberate her city and she will help him find the cylinder. But before they can reach Ch’engyuan’s city, Norcross’s company must first march through the Chinese hinterlands, with Russian Cossacks, Manchu bandits, and the Zulu impis barring his way.

Read More

Lost intergalactic secrets, interstellar pit stops, and heavy metal sword & sorcery fill this week’s list of new releases.

Awaken Online: Hellion – Travis Bagwell

Jason’s back! And he’s ready for some revenge!

Roughly a month has passed in-game since Thorn’s attack on the Twilight Throne. In that time, the dark city has managed to recover and rebuild – growing the ranks of Original Sin at the same time.

Which is good, because that brief respite is over. The Avatar of Flame has risen within the depths of the northern desert and has thrown down a digital gauntlet to Jason – with a gate piece hanging in the balance. Even worse? His opponent is none other than Finn Harris, the ‘father of modern AI.’ The same man that may have been behind Thorn’s attack on the Twilight Throne.

And in the wake of recent events – the committee hearing back in the real world and the attack on his people – Jason is no longer content to just react; to wallow in the safety of his kingdom. If he’s to be painted the villain… well, then it’s long past time he fully embraced that role.

Because now it’s personal. And there’ll be no holding back…

The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor Volume II – Byron A. Roberts 

The Wolf of the North Returns!

Caylen-Tor, the mightiest warrior of a savage, time-lost age surges back into the fray, carving an ensanguined path to his grim destiny in a new collection of thrilling sword & sorcery tales by famed Bal-Sagoth vocalist/lyricist Byron A. Roberts.

From the desolate deserts of a war-torn empire to the shadow-haunted forests of the northern clans, join the legendary Lord of Wolves as he pits his strength, his courage and his cold, hard steel against a legion of fearsome foes, ultimately facing the malefic avatars of the Elder Darkness at the ersatz heart of the Hollow Earth!

All hail Caylen-Tor…

Mercenary, corsair, warlord, king!

Erebus Dawning (Seven Stars Saga #1) – A. J. Super

Everyone wants the Star of Erebus. Space-pirate Nyx Marcus is no exception. With it, she can prove to her father that she is worthy of his legacy.

But she’s come up empty-handed aboard the space-ship Thanatos and now Malcam, her father’s First Officer, is mutinying. As Nyx flees with a loyal skeleton crew, she discovers that the planet-killing weapon, named after one of the seven gods, is more than what it seems.

Erebus isn’t a simple weapon. It’s an ancient AI and a technological god.

With the oppressive Queen of the Protectorate and new pirate captain Malcam searching for the Thanatos and Erebus, the AI god has more surprises for Nyx. Waking dormant AI code in Nyx’s blood, Erebus reveals they are family and Nyx is the head of the Seven Stars pantheon. Now Nyx must learn to control her power without sacrificing her own humanity or give her enemies a new way to oppress the known universe and lose the family she holds dear.

Junkyard Veterans (Junkyard Pirate #4) – Jamie McFarlane

With a price on their heads, grumpy old vets will risk everything to bring alien assassins to justice.

Someone is killing off the old team of vets who repelled Earth’s first Korgul invasion. With the end of a war precious few even knew was happening, life’s been peaceful. Of course, Albert Jenkins isn’t a bit surprised when that peace is shattered by the sounds of rocket propelled grenades fired over the Georgia swamps. To make matters worse, when he reports the alien’s foiled attack to the Army, he’s ordered to keep things quiet and stop causing trouble.

The problem is AJ has only one gear and avoiding trouble isn’t in his makeup. So instead of sitting around and waiting for the next RPG to be tossed his way, he takes to the stars and starts tracking bounty hunters the only way he knows how – up close and personal. Read More

Love at first sight turns into a love that transcends the cosmos in Julian Hawthorne’s lost pulp romance, The Cosmic Courtship. 1917’s Argosy saw the introduction of Jack Paladin, nephew of a famous explorer, and his attempt to win the hand of the brilliant Miriam Mayne. But when Miriam goes missing, Jack sets out to find her. Even if that means beaming himself to the ringed world of Saturn to retrieve her from a sorcerous space tyrant. The result is a strange, redemptively Christian mix of romance and raygun romance that presages C. S. Lewis’s better known Out of the Silent Planet. But where Lewis’s Ransom tries desperately to prevent another fall, Paladin and his Saturnian allies seek to redeem and restore those who are lost.

Editor P. Alexander, who is bringing The Cosmic Courtship back into print, describes Hawthorne’s background:

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 Hawthorne, 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 [Hugo Gernsback had only recently coined the awkward term “Scientifiction” when this story was first published.]

It is hard not to compare Hawthorne’s interplanetary adventures to those later adventure 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. Hawthorne sets out to explore love, both romantic and compassionate, and places it in an otherworldly realm that cleaves closer to fairy tales than the unimaginative sciences of Hugo Gernsback. It becomes difficult to not draw parallels between The Cosmic Courtship and Lewis’s Malacandra and Tolkien’s Samwise Gamgee, as examples of an unfallen Christian cosmic kingdom and steadfast, sacrificial friendship have fallen out of favor. Read More

Space opera dominates this week, with the return of Galaxy’s Edge and The Ember War, and more Four Horsemen.

Asylum – Lindsay Buroker

A young woman with cybernetic upgrades, Mari Moonrazor has decided to flee the restrictive machine-worshipping cult she was raised in. She longs to know what it’s like to live among normal humans and experience simple biological pleasures like consuming alcohol, kissing a boy, and—most importantly—eating chocolate.

But her mother, the infamous astroshaman leader Kyla Moonrazor, is determined to get her back, even if it means sending a bounty hunter after her.

Mari’s only hope for freedom is to be granted asylum from the leaders of the powerful Star Kingdom. First, she must prove that she has knowledge and resources she can offer them. Second, she has to earn their trust.

This all would have been easier if her people hadn’t bombed their planet…

Empire of Ashes (The Augmented #1) – Ben Hale

Across thousands of planets in the Krey Empire, all humans have a single title… Slave.

Born to oppression, Siena is an ordinary young woman, until an act of defiance leaves her scarred and marked as a rebel. She’s sold to Ero, a fallen Krey with a desperate plan to redeem his once-powerful family. He intends to enhance slaves by altering their genetic code, increasing their value through an illegal experiment.

Reklin, a bone-armored soldier, hunts them both. His orders come from a mysterious source, but his loyalty to the Empire has no limits.

Noble, soldier, and slave, they are about to discover a dangerous truth–that humans can be augmented. But none can predict the abilities they’ll unlock, or the rebellion they’ll unleash.

Eye of the Storm (Four Horsemen: Guild Wars #11) – Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy

The Dusman offered to let humanity become their servitors, but the leaders of Earth’s Four Horsemen were unified in their decision: no thanks.

With the Dusman returning in strength, though, and steadily growing their influence and armed presence, humanity finds itself in a difficult place. The Guild War continues to rage, with planets becoming increasingly desperate for nonexistent help, while the Mercenary Guild continues to sit on its hands, despite Nigel Shirazi’s attempts to break the deadlock.

However, events have transpired in the galaxy which have, once again, forced humanity into the center of the storm. We have been deemed a danger, and thus a target for neutralization. But not by the Mercenary Guild this time; instead, we’re in the cross hairs of the Science Guild, as our technological innovation cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.

Deadly plots have been unleashed not only to cripple Earth, but to assassinate Alexis Cromwell and her Winged Hussars, humanity’s only reliable space navy. And even if Alexis survives, that’s only the start of the Science Guild’s plan to turn Earth’s people against themselves. As the galaxy continues to splinter, there may not be any option but to take the fight to the Science Guild.

The Guild Wars aren’t over; this is only the eye of the storm.

Legacies (Galaxy’s Edge #11) – Jason Anspach and Nick Cole

Galaxy’s Edge returns with an all-new adrenaline-fueled season of the military sci-fi series!

With his duty to the Legion satisfied, Wraith sets out to find a lost member of his crew—the young girl, Prisma. But not only does the journey bring with it more death and destruction—and loss—than he ever imagined, it revives the shadows of a forgotten past… and the only way forward is to follow the footsteps of the legendary Tyrus Rechs.

Meanwhile, as the galaxy struggles to steady itself following the fall of a corrupt and bloated Republic, dangerous threats vie for power. These enemies include both the exceedingly modern and the impossibly ancient, awakening at long last to emerge from the darkness between the stars. Read More