This week’s new releases follow the adventures of a classic Edwardian occult detective; a different, even alien, version of the Cold War crisis; and a Marine exiled to Antarctica before retirement.

The hero dreamed of ascending. The monk craved redemption.
The dungeon only wished to keep things tidy.

Kai was the least likely young man to ascend. Raised on his uncle’s potato farm, he began his career as an adventurer with empty pockets and little skill. But a foolish attempt to prove his bravery leads Kai to unlock hidden power within himself and acquire a most unlikely ally.

Rhona is a battle-scarred soldier who’s as likely to toss a quip as she is to throw a punch. After setting aside a promising career in the army to pursue the Path of the Bleeding Tiger, she sets out to stop a war and seek atonement for a bloody past.

When Bancroft the Earth Core awakens, he can’t wait to clean up his dungeon and begin building things anew. A recovered item from his past reminds him that more is at stake, however, putting an end to such pleasantries.

Join The Guild Core, a small band of friends determined to restore the world to an age of dragons, heroes, and honor.

The Luna Missile Crisis (Contact Day #1) – Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle

The year is 1961. The Cold War is in full swing and the space race is on. Russia aims to send humanity to space… but what if space comes to humanity instead?

Soviet Yuri Gagarin’s historic first manned-spaceflight is disrupted when an alien Mothership jumps into orbit, causing a cosmic car crash that defies all odds.

Everything changes. The US and USSR must quickly put aside their differences. In exchange for the Earth’s help in the rebuilding of their Mothership, the mysterious aliens know as Vulbathi offer promises of technology beyond humanity’s wildest dreams. All the while, the world asks whether the Vulbathi are saviors or conquerors.

When an alien tech counterfeiter’s mistake sets off a chain reaction, the fragile peace is threatened. Connor McCoy didn’t mean to upset Earth’s new intergalactic neighbors. He only wanted to make some cash.

Now, Connor is the only person who can stop the doomsday clock from striking midnight. That is if his estranged brother, an agent in the new Department of Alien Relations, doesn’t get to him first. Read More

This was a project in the works for awhile.

And now, thanks to Ben Wheeler, it’s finally here!

Pinkerton’s Ghosts is a horror podcast about the adventures of the last Paranormal Detectives, Jack Morrow, Jim Donovan and Sean Russo as they uncover supernatural events and the mystery of their missing companions.

Ben is the Captain of this ship, but the team is made up of him, Ken Dickason, and myself. I am the writer of Sean Russo’s stories. Sean hails from NJ, and his stories range from the inner city to the mysterious Pine Barrens and everywhere in-between.

All three of us worked hard to put out a good product for you guys; the voice-acting is our own. I have been excited about this project for awhile and if you give it a shot I think you’ll enjoy it.

And yes, it is of course superversive. The best horror is.

The time for the extermination of the casteless untouchables has come. Only Ashok Vadal and his battle-tested Sons of the Black Sword fight for the fleeing nameless, in the name of an unknown god that Ashok cannot bring himself to believe in. But Ashok knows his duty, even if that forces him to cross blades with his sword brother, the Lord Protector Devedas. And their duel will shake the foundations of the Empire to its core.

Larry Correia’s trilogies tend to follow the same course. So far, his pattern of explosive first book, tedious but necessary second, and a nuclear-hot finale is holding, even though Destroyer of Worlds is just a conclusion to Act One, not the completion of the series.

Ashok even gets character development between brutal battles, as he shifts his single-minded purpose from the Law to something more personal. The romance that results is awkward, but it fits Ashok’s near robotic personality and obsessive purpose. The forces that forged Ashok’s zealotry left little else to his personality, after all, so it a relief that Correia did not travel down the well-trod road where a sudden girlfriend changes a stoic into an openly expressive and emotional man. Ashok is still a zealot driven by duty, but his understanding of duty has widened slightly. And this new understanding will shatter the South Asian-skinned version of a Legend of the Five Rings RPG world.

But no one reads Correia for romance, especially when the clash of steel is in the air. And the action does not disappoint. Some science fiction authors pride themselves on being bards of the soldiers. Correia understands men of violence. And he pairs that understanding of motive, emotion, and will to the marriage of audacity and plausibility that sets his fight sequences apart. Better still, the action scenes drive the plot forward to the inevitable clash of brothers. And it wouldn’t be a Larry Correia novel without someone, somewhere firing a gun. Even in an South Asian-themed fantasy.

At this point, if Sons of the Black Sword becomes Correia’s main series, I wouldn’t be disappointed. Read More

Death’s apprentice on an alien world, interstellar Ghurkas, and the robot apocalypse fill this week’s new releases.

Acheron Inheritance (Federation Chronicles #1) – Ken Lozito

On a dying world along the galactic fringe, Quinton Aldren awakens in the body of an archaic android that’s barely operational. He has only vague memories of who he was and no idea what has happened. Everyone is gone and autonomous mechs are hunting for him.

As remnants of the old federations struggle to survive after a devastating war, old alliances are eradicated, leaving warlords and mercenaries to fill the void. When a powerful mercenary discovers Quinton’s origin, he’ll stop at nothing to capture and enslave him.

The galaxy has changed, forcing people to adapt, while the dangerous machines of the Federation Wars hunt for people like Quinton, and they don’t care who gets in the way. Quinton might have missed the war, but his link to the past could be the key to save humanity’s future. Will he survive long enough to discover it in time?

Death Cultivator – eden Hudson

Fight for your Death.

When regular high schooler Grady Hake is mistakenly taken by the Angel of Death, he thinks his life is over. Then he wakes up on a prison shuttle bound for Van Diemann’s Planet, a penal colony run by brutal gangs of criminal cultivators. This is his life now, and if he wants to survive it, he’ll have to learn to harness his unique Death Spirit, make friends with alien outcasts, appease a band of hungry ghosts, and fight his way into one of the strongest gangs on the planet.

From eden Hudson, bestselling author of Rogue Dungeon and Path of the Thunderbird comes a brand new series you won’t want to put down. Death Cultivator is a sci-fi wuxia for fans of shonen manga and anime such as Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, and Deadman Wonderland.

Falling Earth (The Circuit Saga #3) – Rhett Bruno

The time to return to Earth has come…

Cassius builds an android army under the control of ADIM in order to attack Tribune Benjar Vakari. While ADIM loves his creator unconditionally, he grows more independent by the day in his methods. Soon, he may be too powerful for anyone to stop.

Talon Rayne teams up with Sage Volus once more when Talon discovers that his daughter has been captured by the very Tribune Cassius Vale is after. Together, they have no choice but to ask for his help in saving her.

Are they just another cog in his scheme for bringing down the Tribune, or is there a part of him left that cares about anything other than vengeance? 

A Heart of Ice (The Great War #4) – Ralph Kern

The largest invasion in the history of the galaxy begins.

The People’s territory is a prize ripe for the Hegemony’s taking. Their worlds myriad. Their resources immense. From the highest echelons of government to the citizen toiling, it is a beacon of equality and a worker’s paradise.

Except some are more equal than others. To disobey, even to question, means death. Or worse.

Private Iriana Sharov is just one soldier in the People’s army of millions. When Hegemony assault ships darken the skies and disgorge legions of merciless troopers and mechs, she learns they are all merely pawns for their masters to sacrifice on an uncaring whim.

The two brutal empires collide. For Sharov and her comrades, hope is measured in surviving each day, even each hour, as it comes. But when she discovers her skill with a sniper rifle, Sharov soon finds herself a hero of the People.

Her odyssey will take her from the battlefields of an agricultural world, through the vicious street fighting of a labyrinthian factory moon, and into the very corridors of power in the People’s capital city.

But the greatest danger isn’t the Hegemony and its vast armies of ever-advancing troops and war machines. It is telling the truth to those who don’t want to hear it. Read More

This article was originally posted on 1 December, 2018 as “A Peep at The Spicy Pulps”. Next week, we’ll return to normal with a quartet of reviewed new releases, including the newest offerings in Fenton Wood’s Yankee Republic series and Larry Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior.

Last week, we examined how Martin Goodman, future publisher of Marvel Comics, combined science fiction with the popular “Spicy” genre to bring renewed interest to science fiction, fueling the first science fiction boom in the late 1930s. This would not be the only time the Spicies would shape the future of the pulp market. What once were stories intended to feature sexual content without obscenity soon turned into the salacious tales of sin and sadism of weird menace, the loss of the children’s market to comics, and government censorship of the pulps.

Between 1929 and 1934, many publishers, from the pornographic to the mainstream, were experimenting with ways to bring the spice of sex to popular fiction. Everything from toned-down porn to bad girl romances was tried, with the actual act disappearing behind the editor’s ellipse, leaving details to the imagination. But none lasted for more than a handful of issues until 1934’s Spicy Detective Stories sold out. Soon, a number of copycats followed suit, including Spicy Adventure, Saucy, and Spicy Mystery Stories, the last of which birthed weird menace.

The Spicy tale charted a perilous course between mainstream respectability and the thrill of sex. Anatomical descriptions were out, as was complete nudity and any details of the act the heroine submitted to. The women could disrobe voluntarily or have their clothes torn from them, but some scrap of cloth had to remain. The idea was to have a strong sexual element without being obscene or vulgar. After all, government investigation would reveal just who bankrolled these magazines, and the Mob did not want the attention. Read More