Necromancy, tomb-raiding, first contact disasters, and kaiju fill this week’s new releases.

Blood Craft (Black Magic Outlaw #7) – Domino Finn

For some investigations, you get nowhere relying on police.

When the supernatural rears its head in Miami, the sleuthing’s usually up to me, Cisco Suarez, resident necromancer and all-around hard case. All I ask is to kick back in paradise once in a while, spend some quality time with my girl, and maybe even find that special moment to pop the question.

But life doesn’t always play fair, and neither do monsters. Turns out, old grudges die hard. So come after me. Maybe I deserve it. But going after my family crosses the line.

It’s time to stop playing the sitting duck. It’s time to start a hunt of my own. Dressed to the nines and undercover at a silvan wedding, I’ll delve into the literal underworld to make the monsters wish they’d never messed with Cisco Suarez.

And hey, if I’m really lucky, maybe she’ll say yes.

The Carrion Hunter – Woelf Dietrich

The Northern Hemisphere is a toxic wasteland ruined by war between man and alien. It seems impossible for anything to have survived there. Australia and New Zealand remain habitable. But there lies the crisis.

Collected here are eight vignettes, snapshots of life on a dying earth, where humans and aliens co-exist carefully and with suspicion, and fragile alliances are forged only to shatter overnight. 


Originally appearing in the anthologies Interspecies: The Inlari Sagas, A Broken World, and Armistice, Woelf Dietrich’s short stories have now been collected here for the first time and with an introduction by bestselling author Adam Lane Smith who captures the spirit of science fiction beautifully as he unfolds and lay bare the heart of it to show us why we love the genre so much.


Collateral Damage – Adam S. Furman

Destructive Battles Rage Between Hellish Kaiju and Giant Mech Protectors

A desperate father must rescue his son when a deadly kaiju rampages across his city.

When opportunists lurk and buildings crumble around him, the battle might be the least of his worries. Each minute means more destruction, and the clock is ticking.

The first in a new kaiju series where the ordinary collides with the oversized, Collateral Damage is based on a short story of the same title originally published in Broadswords & Blasters Magazine. Experience the first taste of this series with a punch to the gut. Mind the shadows — you could be crushed.

Fortune’s Fool (The Fortune Chronicles #1) – Jeff Boyd

He digs through the past to unearth his future. But will rocketing into the expanse blast him into deadly trouble?

Xenoarchaeologist Mark Fortune just needs one big find to be set for life. Roaming the post-apocalyptic galaxy in search of riches, the pragmatic loner believes he’s finally made the breakthrough of his career when he activates an ancient portal. But when he’s catapulted onto an unknown planet, he’s followed by a revenge-driven skybiker out for his blood.

For the sake of survival, Mark and the motorhead form an uneasy alliance until they can escape the strange and unforgiving world. But the only path back home pits them against a ruthless warlord in a flying space fortress armed with pre-holocaust tech and a horde of killer robots…

Can Mark tear down a dictator before his newest discovery is otherworldly death? Read More

In October 2018, upon the publishing of Uncompromising Honor and the conclusion to the Honor Harrington part of Manticore’s history, we looked at a trio of series set to scratch that Hornblower in Space itch sure to develop in readers looking for their next Honor-like story. We return with the original suggestions, plus a pair of new ones, sure to satisfy the naval science fiction fan in a time where military science fiction is turning more to Dick Marcinko Rogue-Warrior-style special forces and ship’s captains to Kirk and Reynolds instead of Hornblower.

David Weber’s Honor Harrington series started from the simple conceit of Horatio Hornblower in Space and grew into one of science fiction’s few pillar series, critically and commercially successful in a time where most science fiction readers are turning towards the classics instead of the contemporary. Over nineteen books, the crucible of constant war tempered the charismatic Honor Harrington from a tentative ship’s captain on her first command in peacetime into the fiery Salamander of Manticore, the fearsome fleet admiral found fighting where the battles raged hottest.

While many space navy adventures tend to follow the adventures of a Captain Kirk-expy, Honor Harrington, as significant as her shipboard prowess may affect history, is but one woman in a cast of hundreds that bring both a political and a human scope to the actions on the battlefield. Clearly demonstrating how politics, technology, and war influence and affect each other, Weber places his heroine in the center of many revolutions drawn from historical analogues, including the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the naval Dreadnought revolution, and the crusade against slavery. Furthermore, Weber blended Hornblower with modern command practices, ending a fascination of many Hornblower copycats with insubordination and Churchill’s description of the Royal Navy’s traditions as “rum, sodomy, and the lash.” Honor Harrington is a true science fiction epic, spanning the Salamander’s full command career and a quarter of the galaxy, through triumph, setback, hubris, and tragedy.

In Uncompromising Honor, Weber brings his epic to a conclusion. Weighing in at 961 pages, this final doorstopper will give military SF readers much to chew on. But when the final page is turned, two questions remain for the naval science fiction fan: what’s next for the Star Empire of Manticore, and what to read next? Only Weber knows the answer to the first, but for the avid reader searching for more in the vein of Honor, consider the following suggestions. Read More

Dragon riders, mecha mercenaries, and Larry Correia’s Black Heart appear in this week’s new releases.

Ascendant (Songs of Chaos #1) – Michael R. Miller

Holt Cook was never meant to be a dragon rider. He has always served the Order Hall of the Crag dutifully, keeping their kitchen pots clean.

But then he discovers a dark secret: dragons do not tolerate weakness among their kin, killing the young they deem flawed. Moved by pity, Holt defies the Order, rescues a doomed egg and vows to protect the blind dragon within.

But the Scourge is rising. Undead hordes roam the land, spreading the blight and leaving destruction in their wake. The dragon riders are being slaughtered and betrayal lurks in the shadows.

Holt has one chance to survive. He must cultivate the mysterious power of his dragon’s magical core. A unique energy which may tip the balance in the battles to come, and prove to the world that a servant is worthy after all.

Dream Stream Reality – Derrick Burke

The only time you can’t game is when you’re sleeping… until now.

Mild-mannered security guards by night. Powerful, magic-wielding heroes by day. Donald and his friends have been chosen to beta test the new version of Dream Stream Reality—a massive multiplayer game world which is played while you sleep.

Who wouldn’t want to design their own adventures while napping? It’s literally, well, the dream.

Donald must balance an increasingly volatile personal life while exploring the new release and actively hunting for glitches and bugs within technology so advanced it feels like reality. What could possibly go wrong?

Destroyer of Worlds (Saga of the Forgotten Warrior #3) – Larry Correia

The Great Extermination has begun.

In the Capitol, Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan hatches a plot to kill every member of the untouchable caste in all of Lok, down to the last man, woman, and child. As a member of the Order of Inquisition, Vokkan has no official say in the creation of Law, but he has powerful allies willing to do his bidding. Through them, he has convinced the Judges that the genocide will be swift, complete, and without complication. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Lord Protector Devedas has sworn to uphold the Law. Once, he and the traitor Ashok Vadal had been like brothers. Now, he hunts Vadal and the Sons of the Black Sword, heretics and rebels who seek to live outside the rule of the Law. All Devedas must do is find and kill his best friend and order will be restored to Lok.

The rebels seek the secret kingdom spoken of by the Prophet Thera, a paradise where water is pure and food plentiful, where there are no castes, where the people rule themselves, and are not slaves to the Capitol. Ashok Vadal is not sure he believes in such a Paradise, but he—along with his allies—does seek refuge in the rebellion’s hideout in Akershan. But Vadal, a former High Protector who has turned his back on the corrupt Law, will not merely wait meekly, hoping that fleeing to Akershan will spare the rebellion from the clutches of the Great Extermination. No, if it’s a war the Capitol wants, Vadal, who has faced down gods and demons, will be all too willing to give it to them.

Endure (Forgotten Starship #4) – M. R. Forbes

The ship is in dire straits, deep behind enemy lines and on the verge of capture. While Tyson fights to prepare a defense, other forces work to ensure his ultimate failure as they seek to claim one of Pioneer’s few remaining secrets.

Meanwhile, Keesha and the Marines may have captured the enemy Forge, but they have no idea how to bring it under control. Searching for answers, strange echoes from within the station lead Keesha to make a dangerous decision that could cost her everything.

The fight for survival is coming to a head, and it will take all of the strength Tyson, Keesha, John, Tsi, and the passengers and crew of Pioneer can muster to endure the coming storm.

Otherwise, it won’t just mean the end of the colony…

…it will be the end of us all. Read More

Of all the terrifying warlords to wreak destruction across the empire, few can match the savagery of Ghorghor Bey. His name alone can cause even the bravest of soldiers to tremble in their boots, and noble lords and ladies throughout the land pray that he never comes knocking at their castle doors in search of gold, booze, and maidens. But few know the tragic story behind this fearsome warrior’s rise to power. From his harrowing childhood to his first love(s), his devastating heartbreaks and crushing victories, read on and discover how a naive young half-ogre would go on to become Ghorghor the Terrible.

I’ve been rather taken with the Black Moon Chronicles, the French dark fantasy comic from François Marcela-Froideval, Olivier Ledroit, and Cyril Pontet that uses humor to soften the horrors of a decadent Melniboné-style empire falling to the apocalypse. At turns aiding and resisting the fall into soul-devouring horror is the half-elf Wismerhill, the unwitting pawn of the evil Black Moon. But how did fate draw Wismerhill’s companions to him? And who better to start with than the jovial giant, the fearsome half-ogre warlord now know as Ghorghor Bey?

The first of The Black Moon Arcana serves as a direct prequel to The Black Moon Chronicles: The Sign of Darkness, detailing the rise of Ghorghor Bey from outcast to the scourge of the Empire as he is in the days before he meets Wismerhill. While the prequel sheds little new light into the twists and turns of the Black Moon’s world-dooming invasion or Ghorghor’s revolving-door relationship with death, it is a welcome insight into a beloved character who tends to get only a panel to two to mug in each new volume. Read More

Time-lost super-soldiers, living detective saints, swordless swordsmen, and His Majesty’s Naval Service takes to the stars in this week’s new releases.

Coven (Saint Tommy, NYPD #7) – Declan Finn

Detective Thomas Nolan has finally returned home. In typical police fashion, he is welcomed home with a murder case and gunfire.

After one arrest goes spectacularly wrong, Tommy is assigned another case and another dead body.

But everything goes wrong from the start of the case. The deceased is a member of a nearby military base, and no one wants to answer his questions. A local bodega gives him mind-splitting headaches. Worst of all, someone is after his children.

To make matters worse — Tommy no longer has his charisms.

Dreamhealer – Jeff Duntemann

By day, Larry Kettelkamp keeps ancient PDP-8 computers alive in a collapsing industrial bakery. By night he wages war on nightmares, and has been waging that war for thirty years. As a young man, Larry discovered that he could enter other peoples’ nightmares, end them, and then vaccinate the dreamers against that nightmare with an ancient symbol that alters the relationship between the two hemispheres of the brain.

For nightmares are not random concoctions of our dreaming imaginations. Strange creatures called archons living in the subtle realms of the collective unconscious craft horrifying dreams to drop into sleeping minds, and then feast on the terror those dreams evoke. This scheme goes back 15,000 years, to the dawn of human history. It was created by a sort of super-archon who claims to be the Demiurge of ancient Persian myth.

Once Larry learns how to destroy archons instead of merely banishing them from dreams, this architect of all nightmares hunts Larry down and demands that Larry stop destroying the monster’s archon servants. Thus begins an escalating conflict that draws in a bored title-search agent, a witch and a lightworker, two teenage prodigies, a modern-day cult practicing ancient Persian death magick, dream mechas a quarter-mile high, and a very very large number of dogs.

Katanagatari #4: Sword Tale – Nisio Isin

From the pen of the author of the legendary MONOGATARI novels comes another unique offering, available in English for the first time! The basis of an animated series, KATANAGATARI brings to life a swordless “swordsman” and a self-described “schemer” who embark on a quest to obtain twelve peculiar masterpiece blades. Unveiling the truth about the legendary katanas and their creator as part of a gorgeous tapestry of fates that vie to upend history itself, this hardcover edition, featuring a gatefold color insert, beautiful interior art, and copious bilingual footnotes, is the last of a quartet collecting a best-selling series from the former homeland of samurais and ninjas. Brimming with action, romance, and unexpected wisdom, often as tongue-in-cheek as The Princess Bride, and shot through with ninjas, samurais, and secret moves, Sword Tale is Musashi for a new generation and a gift for any fan of adventure.

The Lion and the Unicorn (Ark Royal #15) – Christopher Nuttall

The war isn’t going well.

In five years of heavy fighting, humanity and its alien allies have steadily been pushed back towards Earth, towards the very heart of humanity itself. The virus is steadily wearing the defences down, mounting campaign after campaign to infect and enslave every other alien race. The only hope rests with newer and better weapons, with technology that may turn the tide, but can the weapons and starships be deployed in time?

HMS Lion and HMS Unicorn are two new ships, designed to take the war to the enemy and tip the balance of power in humanity’s favour. But with untested technology, clashes between their commanding officers and trouble below decks, they may find themselves facing more than they can handle …

… And the odds of coming home are very low. Read More