“Then let us pursue without asking what we chase, and when we catch it, let us chase again.”

Mangos is the Mongoose, a skilled, boastful, and hotheaded swordsman, while Kat is the Meerkat, a beautiful yet mysterious woman who favors the oblique approach to her well-chosen blade. Together, they’ll take on any job to keep their purses full and their cups overflowing.

Pursuit Without Asking, by Jim Breyfogle, collects the first five Mongoose and Meerkat stories, of which “The Battlefield of Kerres” and “Brandy and Dye” have been reviewed here in depth. Also included are “The Sword of the Mongoose”, where Mangos learns of the location of a rare masterwork sword, “The Valley of Terzol”, in which Kat and Mangos guard an archivist through the jungle ruins of a fallen empire , and “The Burning Fish”, where they are commissioned to recover a rare animal sacred to a goddess. The non-Mongoose and Meerkat “Deathwater” and appendices of Mangos and Kat-inspired role-playing modules and character sheets round out Pursuit Without Asking.

As mentioned before, the introduction to Mangos and Kat in “The Battlefield of Kerres” is serviceable, but thin compared to later stories. Fortunately, the characters and prose grow more complex with the next story. By the time the Mongoose and Meerkat face off against a giant serpent in “The Valley of Terzol”, the two have the light and breezy banter of long companions who have risked their lives together on countless occasions. Yet for all the time together, Kat still surprises Mangos. Each new story teases out another detail of this secretive adventurer. Scholarly yet skilled with a blade, beautiful yet unapproachable, always attacked first by monsters, each new revelation only adds to the mystery around Kat, making her more exotic.

And Breyfogle has a knack for the exotic. Read More

Child heroes, conceited sorceresses, and interstellar bounty hunters fill this week’s new releases.

Game Spaced – Justin M. Stone

Pirates on a treasure hunt. An ancient weapon lost long ago. Two kids determined to save us all. Oh yeah, and space travel.

Trish and Patrick never saw themselves as heroes. But when they go into a Cryo-Sim world on their space flight to train for their new lives on a colony far away, everything changes.

A gang of pirates searches for a legendary weapon called the Blade of the Sea. Their quest drags our kids into crazy adventures that includes an underwater fortress and secret temples.

Trish and Patrick fight zombies, TNT-loving goblins, and even befriend a robot wolf as they solve mind-boggling puzzles and overcome over-the-top obstacles.

It’s great fun, but they have no doubt that they’re in way over their heads. Even more so when they learn that the Blade of the Sea is the key to an ancient treasure with the power to bring the world to its knees.

Genesis (Defiance #1) – Devon C. Ford

Power corrupts. Freedom is dead in the wasteland.

Generations after the world was reduced to ruins by war, the remaining pockets of humanity are ruled over with an iron fist. The streets are patrolled around the clock, curfews are enforced and executions occur for minor offences.

That ruling power, totalitarian and cruel, doesn’t go unchecked.

Born, raised, and trained in secret, Eve is forged into the perfect soldier. The time comes for her, and the others like her—the members of Project Genesis—to take the fight to their oppressors.

But the Party have their own clandestine projects lying in wait.

Rogue Planet (Flight of the Javelin #3) – Rachel Aukes

Space isn’t so big after all.

The Black Sheep are ready for a vacation. Instead, they get sucked into a black hole that spits them out into an uncharted system with a single rogue planet that’s inhabited by an AI force that’s none too fond of humanity.

From there, they find themselves at the front of a deadly military operation to stop the alien threat before it’s too late.

The battle against planet rogue has arrived.

Slayers #1 – Hajime Kanzaka

Beautiful and brilliant sorcerer girls just can’t have nice things, huh?

All I wanted to do was swipe a little bit of bandit treasure.

Now suddenly I’m being chased around by icky trolls, nasty demons, mean mummies, and brooding golem bad boys.

And for what? A tiny little artifact that can bring about the end of the world?

Hah! I’ll show them there’s a reason you don’t cross Lina Inverse… Read More

Somewhere in the vast multiverse that makes up the worlds of fiction, a spoiled brat of an eight-year-old princess is about to bump her head. The blow knocks more than a little sense into the girl, for it will gift her with knowledge of her impending execution as an adult. This may be granted through isekai shenanigans or strange forms of reincarnation, but one thing is certain. If the princess is going to see her eighteenth birthday, she is going to need to change. Slowly, the self-absorbed little brat opens up to others and discovers that she can make a better fate for herself by growing involved with and helping others around her.

It’s a simple premise, but one of growing popularity in Japan. These princess improvement stories also serve as a strange contrast to the ever-present “The Princess Saves Herself in This One” titles common in American stores. For in these light novels, the girls learn the soft power of inspiration, devotion, and persuasion as opposed to force and the other accouterments of the action girl. After all, who is more powerful, the one who acts or the one who can move a hundred to act in her place?

Yes, these princess improvement fantasies are still feminine power fantasies. But they are fantasies of feminine power, of living up to the stories of fairy tale princesses, of persuasion instead of high kicks, and selfish girls faking virtue until they make it.

There’s a strange undercurrent to recent Japanese light novels, both those aimed at boys and at girls. Compared to the many idealized young women in these fantasies, the portrayal of Japanese girls is almost disparaging. Readers could be forgiven for mistaking these brash, immodest, and self-absorbed girls who turn the attitudes of all around them against them for Americans. One could chalk this up to a form of frustration in the male-aimed light novels, but the portrayal exists in girls’ shoujo light novels as well. Perhaps the princess improvement novel came about with trying to figure out how to make a selfish wastrel into a good girl. But how to get through to a character who only pays attention to herself?

The threat of death does focus the attention wonderfully. Read More

Whether in a Celtic Otherworld or the ashes of a future Earth, magic worlds swarming with elementals or the cold vastness of space, this week’s new releases are filled with valiant deeds and desperate acts.

Duty, Honor, Planet – Rick Partlow

We thought we were alone…

We’re going to wish we were.

Jason McKay and Shannon Stark, two young Republic Space Fleet Intelligence officers, are given the leadership of a new special ops unit. The mission? Guard the spoiled daughter of an important senator on a tour of the colonies.

Neither of them thought the mission would be anything more than babysitting…until the aliens invaded the colony.

Implacable, relentless, merciless, the armored creatures slaughter everyone who gets in their way. The team is forced to go on the run with the people they’re supposed to protect.

But survival will be the least of their challenges. Because it’s not as simple as an alien invasion, and the truth may be even stranger than they can imagine.

Jason and Shannon are forced to weigh the lives of the people they lead–and the ones they love–against their duty, honor, and planet.

A Fire Reborn (The Elemental Warrior #3) – D. K. Holmberg

The threat Tolan has long feared has been defeated, but a new danger emerged, one that poses a threat to both shapers and the elementals.

For the first time since mastering his connection to the elements, Tolan fears an elemental. He’s long advocated the elementals were misunderstood, and tried convincing others within Terndahl to free them from the bond, but the appearance of Light has proven his mistake.

Chasing the threat leads Tolan to take a dangerous journey, one that challenges all that he’s learned of spirit and brings him back to the lands beyond the waste where he discovers a secret hidden from the rest of the world for centuries.

What he uncovers is more deadly than anything he’s ever known, and one his unique connection to the elements might not be enough to stop. It will take more than a master of spirit to survive; it will take a true element warrior.

Fulcrum of Light (Catalyst #2) – C. J. Aaron

Freedom has come at a price.

Stranded on the coast of an uncharted land, Ryl will be tested as the world outside the Palisades proves darker than within.

With little to no direction save the cryptic information from a mysterious stranger, Ryl must rely on his new-found skills and place his trust in his new companion. Together they forge onward into the barren wastes of the Outlands. As the sickness approaches, their time and hope fades.

Surrounded by uncertainty, will they discover there is more to fear than just the unknown?

Ryl survived The Stocks. Will he survive the Outlands? His search for the secrets of the power that flows through his veins continues.

Will he find the answers before his time runs out?

Gale Force (Four Horsemen: The Guild Wars #7) – Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey

In the aftermath of Peepo’s war against humanity, the Mercenary Guild is still in chaos. On Earth, the moratorium on mercenary contracts is disrupting Jim Cartwright’s efforts to stand up the new Terran Federation. Making matters worse, Jim has received intelligence that someone is squatting on asteroids in our Solar System…and Sansar Enkh is pretty sure they don’t have Earth’s best interests in mind. Fearing the aliens have plans for another invasion—or worse—Jim takes his ship, Bucephalus, and sets off to investigate.

While the mercenary guild is in recess, Nigel Shirazi has an opportunity to make some credits, and when he leaves to pursue an illicit contract, Alexis Cromwell decides to follow up on some information she’s received on the mysterious Weapons Conglomerate. Nigel wouldn’t approve of her running off, especially eight months pregnant, but Alexis has never been one to listen to instructions—or orders for that matter. She gathers a squadron of Hussars and heads off on her quest.

Events in the galaxy are happening at a frantic pace as the guilds battle each other in the shadows…and sometimes in the open. The Four Horsemen are once again at the center of it all, and as the guilds squabble, the Dusman aren’t sitting on the sidelines. They have their own plans, and humanity is only part of them.

The Guild Wars aren’t over; they’ve only just begun. Read More

The great highway stretched out before them. The miles flew underneath the wheels of the iron horse as they rode. Mortu the Kinslayer, Mortu the Merciful, scion of the north, where warriors were once bred like princes breed their race horses. Kyrus the Wise, a man of faith, of sacred vows and probing intellect, sharp tongued and sure of himself. Sometimes too much so, as a conflict with an evil sorcerer has resulted in his imprisonment in the body of a small monkey. Our heroes cross the wasteland in search of a cure for Kyrus, seeking magics and wisdom from the east.

Thus begins the newest adventure of Schuyler Hernstrom’s motorcycle barbarian Mortu and the monkey monk Kyrus, found in The Penultimate Men. The heroes race through desert plains and deserted relics from the alien Illilissy. But the heart of the great steel beast they ride is failing, and their next pit stop brings peril. For the cult of Daganha has settled in the nearest city, worshiping the giant scorpions that vexed Mortu and Kyrus’s recent travels. And the bright iron needed to repair Mortu’s iron steed can only be found by Oram, the merchant who controls the cult.

When Oram’s granddaughter is taken with the talking, chess-playing monkey Kyrus, he poisons Mortu. When that fails, he arranges for Mortu to be a sacrifice for Daganha’s giant scorpions. Mortu, of course, has other plans:

“Gods, protect my friend and I will spill oceans of blood in your names.”

Read More

Black Cutlass (Privateer Tales #19) – Jamie McFarlane

He thought the bloodshed was over. The true terror is just beginning…

Captain Liam Hoffen has no time to relax after defeating the Mendari. Hastily organizing an expedition to their home world, he brings his beleaguered crew across the stars to install the new leadership. But as soon as he arrives, a massive prototype warship slices into their path and threatens the entire mission.

After a daring confrontation, Hoffen pushes through to the planet. But once there, he discovers a terrifying weapon of mass destruction was launched at the end of the war. And the Mendari people are mind-controlled from revealing any secrets… including its deadly course.

Can Hoffen break through the horrific mental manipulation and stop an apocalyptic attack?

At Circle’s End (The Mako Saga #3) – Ian J. Malone

In the months since his disappearance, Danny Tucker has retreated to the darkest corners of Alystierian space, seeking intelligence on the Empire’s new chancellor, Alec Masterson. Backed by a crew of outcasts and fighting from the shadows as the enigmatic Rogue centurion, Danny will stop at nothing to achieve his mission—vengeance for the brutal murder of Madisyn Reynolds.

Still, try as he might, Danny can’t remain underground forever, and with sightings of the Rogue growing more frequent, Lee Summerston won’t rest until the lost Renegade is found. Meanwhile in the core, Aura stands on the brink of annihilation as Imperial forces draw ever closer to her shores.

In the end, scores will be settled and brothers will rise united…or they’ll all burn together.

Cirsova #4 / Summer 2020 – edited by P. Alexander

This issue of thrilling adventure and daring suspense features the following stories and more:

“Battle Beyond the Continuum”, by DARREN GOOSSENS
Rex Funnel and Paul Aglet have travelled across time and space, testing their new continuon flux drive—and found themselves in the midst of a planetary conflict!

“The Meeting”, by LIVIU SURUGIU [translation by RALUCA BALASA]
Two star-crossed lovers, doomed by their strange malady to never meet, must share their thoughts and feelings by the letters they hide within their asylum chambers!

“Henry and the Prince of Cats”, by DAN WOLFGANG
A strange incident has left his master dead! With his newfound intelligence, Henry, a Scottish Terrier, sets out to solve the mystery of what happened to all the humans!

“Death’s Shadow”, By CAROLINE FURLONG
Iraq War vet Matt Barnaby has been blessed—and cursed—by the ability to see the shadow of death, hanging about the auras of those around him!

Final Days: Escape – Jasper T. Scott and Nathan Hystad

The secret of their new home has been revealed. Now there’s only one thing left to do…

Escape.

Andrew and Kendra have learned what’s on the other side of the ridge, but it leaves them with more questions than answers. Their colony has turned into a dictatorship under the thumb of its delusional self-appointed leader, the Reverend, making their lives a living nightmare.

With a plan in place, and help from their new allies, the group plans to sneak out of the colony and make contact with their new neighbors.

But nothing in Eden is ever as simple as it seems.

Join Earth’s remaining survivors as they struggle for freedom and learn the truth of why they were really saved. Read More