‘Salem’s Lot Author: Stephen King Page Count: 672 Available Formats: Print / eBook / Audio Book But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way…
Category: Fiction
The Long Night: A Review of Wolf Winter
Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck I heard of the novel Wolf Winter when I was looking for inspiration for a campaign of the Swedish horror RPG, Vaesen. I’ve enjoyed a fair amount of Swedish suspense and horror fiction, albeit in English translations. Wolf Winter takes place in Sweden in 1717, in a region known as Lapland,…
Everything They Touch Rots – A Review of Mexican Gothic
Mexican Gothic Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia Publisher: Del Ray / Penguin Random House Page Count: 320 Available Formats: Ebook & Print [E]verything they touch rots. Wuthering Heights meets Dracula meets The Shadow Over Innsmouth? I first heard of Mexican Gothic’s author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, at Necromicon back in September of 2019. She was speaking at a panel on…
Orphans of the Sky – Adopting Ideas
Orphans of the Sky Author: Robert A. Heinlein Publisher: Signet Books Published: 1965 Page Count: 128 Purchase on Amazon: Price Varies Cruising through the blackness of space to Centaurus, a mutiny among the crew erupts on the colonization spaceship Vanguard. The conflict leaves no one left alive with the knowledge to continue the mission….
A Review of Midnight Riot
In November of 2019, Chaosium announced they were producing an RPG for Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London urban fantasy series. The series sounded familiar to me and sure enough, I had the first book, Midnight Riot in my Kindle and Audible libraries, Unread, alas. (Note – Midnight Riot is the US name of the work…
Planet of the Apes – Variation on a Theme
The book was better than the film. How many times have you heard that? A lot I bet. When a book translates into another medium like films it becomes restrained by budget, run times, practical effects, and other factors. The story is usually altered to fit the medium. In the case of Planet of the…
Starship – A Non-stop Trip to Inspiration
Starship (Original Title: Non-stop) Author: Brian Aldiss Publisher: Avon Books Reprinted: 1969 Page Count: 224 Purchase on Amazon: Price Varies Starship or by its first published title Non-stop (1958) is about a group of humans living on a generation ship after dozens upon dozens of generations have gone by. In the story, the inhabitants no longer…
Dune as an Example of World-building
One of my first “grown-up” science fiction novels I read was Frank Herbert’s Dune, in my sophomore year of college. Over the next several months I found myself inhaling the rest of the classic Dune novels (this was long before the later prequels – which to be honest I did not particularly care for). The science fiction…
Dark Ages — Terragard Fantasy Novel Review
Dark Ages Author: D.S. Tierney Cover: Warmics Pages: 370 Amazon: Paperback $14.99 or Kindle $9.99 From the author and creator of the bi-weekly audio drama Terragard Tales: A Fantasy Story Podcast comes the first novel set in the world of Terragard—Dark Ages. Terragard is a medieval fantasy setting filled with magic, mythic tales, rival houses, wondrous objects, deadly…
Fiction Review: Time And Again
That the sending of this should cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World seems well-nigh incredible. Yet it is so, and the Fault and the Guilt mine, and can never be denied or escaped. So, with this wretched souvenir of that Event before me, I now end the life which should have ended…
Rolling Boxcars 