Departure is the second book in the Redemption Trilogy set in the world of the Chronicles of Ramlar Role Playing Game, which is also known as Eranon. This book picks up where Into the Reach left off, continuing the adventures of Kennerly, Lydia, Nara and Taru as they build new lives for themselves away from their homes and events in their individual pasts that brought them to the Reach.

Monster Island opens sometime after the rise of zombies across the world. Most of the civilized nations have already been overrun and there are only a few survivors left. Not surprisingly, larger population centers are early victims of the zombie menace and, as a result, the more developed countries fall more quickly. For example, the sheer population size of a city like New York makes the epidemic difficult to contain. Too many people, coupled with poor “epidemic” containment, prove to be the city’s downfall in Monster Island.

Having been a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos and Live Action games for years, I was thrilled when I came across a book that merged the two. I first discovered Cthulhu Live years ago in its 2nd Edition format and had a blast running the game, creating characters and designing plot hooks for players. I had a lot of fun with the game and was really excited when I heard there was a 3rd Edition in the works.

The Nightside novels are Simon Green’s homage to the classic “hardboiled” detective fiction of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. The strengths of these novels are the endlessly-varied settings and characters. In Hell to Pay, Simon’s signature Nightside hero, John Taylor, tackles a missing-persons case. Taylor finds himself at odds with militant nuns; cross-dressers with a strong sense of solidarity; and the usual array of angels, devils, and demigods.

Within the realm of post-apocalyptic novels and settings, there are books that inject religion into fire and brimstone and then there are those that fast-forward into a totalitarian, bleak, hungry future where hope is a luxury. In the realm of Seraphs, the main character, Thorn St. Croix, lives in a world that is somewhere in between. Angels, demons, neo-mages (advanced humans that lack souls), and biology are all at play in an ice age following a biblically-inspired apocalypse.

Billed as an erotic thriller, Season of the Witch is a mentally-seductive tale of tragedy that delves deep into the occult. Before I go any further, I’d like to say that there are a lot of books within the spectrum of supernatural romance that are not soft-core. This is one of those books; personally didn’t think that it was “erotic” in the physical sense; hidden far deep beneath the layers of the plot is a subtle message that will make you stop and think, as if the alchemy in this tale has worked its magic on you.

A few months ago a friend recommended I read Battle Royale, a magna published by Tokyo Pop. I read the first volume, but did not care for it. Maybe it was the translation, or maybe it was the story, but it did not click with me. I then learned that Battle Royale was a novel, and everything coming after was based on it.

The prequel to this book did itself good by creating a story that made itself stand out, but with the sequel, the book seems to jut out on the bookshelf with a bloody and violent cover, one that official says, ‘Do not be alarmed, everything is under control . . .’

From role-playing games to television series, Flames Rising horror webzine offers hundreds of reviews on products from every world of horror imaginable. We feature nationally-distributed and licensed products like Hellboy, to small press ventures like the game InSpectres from Memento Mori.

Our philosophy on reviews is simple: we encourage our horror reviewers to channel their inner Poe to write reviews that are easy-to-read and provide you, the horror fan, with the best information possible.

Whether you enjoy paranormal romance or post-apocalyptic horror, this list has a little something for the monster in all of us. If you would like to be a horror reviewer for Flames Rising, we encourage you to visit our submission guidelines. We go out of our way to reward our regular horror reviewers, and encourage you to add your voice to our choir.

Our reviews are listed in alphabetical order by type of review category (click on the “Read more…” link just below this paragraph). For an alternative means of navigation, feel free to take advantage of the search box on our site to find what you’re hunting for.

Mythmaker, while affording Key and Ogre their individualism as musician and artist and possessing the “updated” sound of the current iteration of Skinny Puppy, reaches back in time. Back into the closets. Back down into some of the hidden holes and shallow graves that the band had dug with their bare hands back in the day when they began pioneering away from Winnipeg and into the faces of the rest of the world, changing the meaningless term of “post-punk” into the force to be reckoned with genre of modern industrial music.

There does seem to be a terrific appetite for new systems for governing role-playing games, despite there being more already in existence than it would be possible to play even in a very extended lifetime. If anyone really needs a new mechanism for a generic setting with a GM willing more or less to improvise action, this would be a good candidate and, being a few download, the price must be right. I would hope that the author will feel encouraged enough to put some thought into how the basic system could be used in a more fleshed out background world.

Horror-genre lovers (like you and me) can’t resist sharing our love of the macabre. If we tell our friends about a dog of a film, they probably won’t go to see it. How then do we write a film review that finds the happy medium between gushing over the latest hit and bashing that worthless dud?

A soft-cover, perfect-bound book boasting gorgeous full color, wrap-around, Larry Elmore cover art, The Chronicles of Ramlar is a roleplaying game of high fantasy made available by White Silver Publishing, Inc. The book weighs in at a hefty 350 pages (including 19 pages of record sheets and quick references) and contains everything that you will need to run a campaign in the game’s default setting of Eranon, one of two continents on a nameless world (the titular “Ramlar” is the who created the world in question).

Into the Reach brings a small group of “heroes” together through unlucky circumstances that are forced to work together against an evil necromancer and his undead minions. Each of this tale’s protagonists have lost someone dear to them in the recent past and are attempting to start new lives on the outskirts of the Reach (a Northeastern corner of the continent, well-known for its blasted wasteland and mixed population of outcasts and outlaws). Some of them meet along the way to their new home and finish the journey together.

For many GenCon Indy veterans, this year’s convention had several noticeable changes. The winds of change were blowing through the vendor booths and demo areas, as evident by a stronger focus to video, card, and board games than in previous years.

Epic Role Playing is a fantasy role playing game system published by Dark Matter Studios and presented in three separate volumes (the Rules Manual, Bestiary, and Book of the Arcane, respectively). Additionally, a setting designed for use with the Epic system is also available in the form of the supplementary Atlas of Eslin (Volume 1). This review deals specifically with the Epic Role Playing Besitary, while other reviews discuss other Epic core books, as well as the Atlas of Eslin setting supplement.

Paxton and Josh are two buddies from the US backpacking their way through Europe. On their journey they have picked up an Icelander named Oli, and together the trio have made it their mission to smoke as much pot and chase as much tail as possible. This incentive has lead them to a Slovakian hostel where something much more terrifying and gruesome awaits them than beautiful women. Unfortunately for the boys, in this city, foreigners are kidnapped and, for the right price, tormented and tortured by their buyers.

These days almost everyone with a home computer at some point or another wants to be a writer. As a consequence the fiction market has been flooded with new authors: some good, some bad. But what makes a piece of fiction “bad”? How does the average reader know what’s worthwhile to read and what isn’t?

How did you get into gaming? I started roleplaying in college, mainly GURPS. I had been trying my hand at writing fiction for a while, and amassed a nice collection of rejection letters; my girlfriend suggested I tried submitting a gaming article, and next thing I knew I was writing GURPS Martial Arts for Steve […]

The purpose of a review is to provide readers with enough information to decide whether they would like to spend their time or money on reading the book, watching the film or, in our case, playing the game. Whether or not the reviewer enjoys or is enthused by the game is of less importance. The reader must come first.