This is the final book of the Genesis of Shannara trilogy. Since I am a huge fan of the Shannara books, I will try to be as unbiased as possible. Although I doubt I can. Things have come to a head in the world.

Angel Perez, a Knight of the Word, lies wounded and recovering from her battle with a ferocious demon. Kirisin and Simralin (elf brother and sister) make the difficult decision to leave Angel to heal and take the Elfstones and Loden stone back to the elvish city of Arborlon.

Also a demon army has approached the elvish city and is on the verge of attacking it. Findo Gas, the highest ranking demon leads this army and he is determined to crush them.
Review by Stacey Chancellor

Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he’s the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians’ time as well as their timely ghostly teachings-like the ability to Fade.

Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? And then there are things like ghouls that aren’t really one thing or the other.

Pre-Order The Graveyard Book at Amazon.com.

The newest CD from Spirit Creek, A Culture of Unaccountability, is the much anticipated CD release from them for several years. After a too long sabbatical from the band, they appeared out of nowhere on the scene again in Milwaukee, bringing with them their original lead guitar, Drew Ingle, and new bassist, Mike Jakubiak, as well as a brand new sound. Taking inspiration from Pearl Jam, Lacuna Coil, and The Cure, A Culture of Unaccountability has breathed new life into the Spirit Creek lineup.

After the introduction, The Black Co. bursts into the speakers, driving home the concept behind the album title.

Review by Crystal Mazur

Elaine Cunningham writes character-driven fantasy stories that are rich with humor, complexity, and action. She could very well be speaking of her own fiction when she describes “a satisfying story” as “both surprising and logical.”

Since 1991, Cunningham has written extensively in the Forgotten Realms, co-authored a novel with Ed Greenwood, ventured into the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and produced a steady flow of short fiction.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Book two of the series starts where the first one left off.

Hawk and his girlfriend Tessa had been pushed off the building for crimes against the compound. Only to disappear in a bright light.

Knight of the Word, Logan Tom has found they gypsy morph (Hawk), but he cannot get to him before he is pushed toward what could be his death. He is left with the Ghosts (the small street gang that Hawk led) and they begin a search to find the young man.

Review by Stacey Chancellor

Show your true black-and-red colors by picking something up from our Flames Rising Cafepress shop. We’ve updated our merchandise to reflect the new Flames Rising logo; check out our new women’s and men’s t-shirts, environmentally-friendly canvas bags for only $13.99 and more! Remember, Halloween is rapidly approaching — what better way to say “I love […]

Wizards of the Coast, Inc. a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. and a leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer today announced the unveiling of Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers, a video game extension of the successful Magic: The Gathering franchise for Xbox LIVE(r) Arcade. Scheduled for official release in Spring 2009, this year’s Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) attendees can demo the game at Wizards of the Coast’s booth (No. 1123) during the show taking place at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle August 29-31.

“We’re excited to bring the Magic brand to new platforms and give gamers new ways to experience this great property,” said Jared Gustafson, Brand Director for Magic: The Gathering at Wizards of the Coast. “The game successfully brings Magic’s inherent strategic game play to the Xbox LIVE community.

To be honest, I’m not really a comic book fan. There are only a couple select comics I’ve ever gotten into. This comic was pitched to me by David as Gilmore Girls meets Call of Cthulhu. He was selling 3 of the comics, issues 1,2 and 5, and an accompanying activity and coloring book for $15. His hook was great, and he grabbed me with the coloring and activity book.

Overall the art is really fitting for the story. It is more aimed for a more mature audience, so the artwork is on the revealing side. It is a cross between the classic American superhero art style and hints of anime thrown in. It is dark and trashy, and utterly fitting.

Review by Crystal Mazur

The Wicked Ones

Seductive lover and cannibal hag. Jealous queen and murderous bogeyman. The creatures out of fairy tales are immortal, born anew in each generation’s stories. Watch carefully over your children, and keep iron handy — for these childhood fears are all too real.

A Chronicle Book for Changeling: The Lost

Pre-Order Night Horrors: Grim Fears at Amazon.com.

Top Cow Productions, Inc. announced it will publish the first, complete story arc of William Harms Impaler in a new trade paperback that will debut this October, and then will launch a new series for the property in December.

The first three issues of the series were initially published by Top Cow parent company Image Comics in 2006-2007, but was never completed. The Impaler Vol. 1 trade paperback collects those three issues plus the final, three never-before-seen issues of the initial story arc. Top Cow was so excited by this series that it also greenlighted a new ongoing to follow the collection.

Recently we’ve had Greg Stolze tell us about creating his new game A Dirty World and Jason Morningstar fills us in on the development of The Shab Al-Hiri Roach. The design project continues today with Tim Brannan telling us about the work he did on the Ghosts of Albion RPG for Eden Studios.

Set in London at the dawn of the Victorian age, players join in the fight to keep the ever-present forces of evil at bay. Whether fighting a demon prince or even a band of infant stealing faeries, the battle wages on. Characters can join the fight as normal humans, ghosts, mysterious faeries or even wield the magic of the Protectors themselves. All against a backdrop of Victorian England with a dark supernatural undercurrent.

This review of an author that is one of my favorites. Terry Brooks. I first read The Sword of Shannara when I was fourteen and although it had many (and I say many) similarities to the Lord of the Rings, I still liked it enough to read more by him.

The story is this. It is the near future, civilization has fallen into chaos. Nuclear war has left the land barren of food and water and people struggle to survive anyway they know how. Demons are pushing the world farther into oblivion, and there are only a few that stand up to them. Knights of the Word. Logan Tom and Angel Perez are those knights and it is there job to take the remnants of humanity to find a safe haven for their survival.

Review by Stacey Chancellor

If you’ve checked out our submission guidelines, you may have noticed that we mentioned our Flames Rising Reviewer Rewards program. As our site continues to grow, our reviewers and content providers are a vital part of Flames Rising. We’d like to light a match and shed some light on what this program actually entails.

Flames Rising Reviewer Rewards Program

Once our reviewers show a commitment to the site by submitting a minimum of (5) reviews, we will then provide the review material for them. From indie films to pre-released copies of fiction novels and new games, we receive tons of review material we’re more than happy to provide free-of-charge to our reviewers. (We’ll even cover the postage.) What’s more, our reviewers can keep the material as a “thank you” for spending the time to contribute to the site.

Matt Forbeck writes about superheroes. And mutants. And parodic, homicidal American football players in his Blood Bowl novels. He does some Weird West, too.

In fact, there’s more than a little cowboy thrown into every thing he does. Check out the Lost Mark Trilogy for an idea of how seamlessly the Wild West and heroic fantasy can meld into something much bigger than the sum of both genres.

For the last twenty years, most of Forbeck’s work—game design, fiction, non-fiction—has in some way or another been connected to a shared world or licensed setting. He has worked with many settings from just about every possible angle—writer, editor, and developer.

A while back, Forbeck and I talked about writing in general and shared world writing in particular.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Three new Shadowrun titles are now available at RPGNow!

Unwired

HACK THE PLANET!

Unwired is the advanced Matrix rulebook for Shadowrun, Fourth Edition. For everyday users, it explains how the Matrix works in easy-to-understand terms, and provides new software, qualities, and gear. For hackers and technomancers, it introduces new hacking tricks, malware, echoes, and sprites. It also covers system security and new Matrix phenomenon, from AIs to the resonance realms.Unwired contains everything players and gamemasters need for exploring the Matrix in Shadowrun.

Noumenon is a role-playing game of mystery and abstraction. Players assume the roles of the Sarcophagi, strange insect-like creatures trapped within the Silhouette Rouge. During their adventures, players will encounter bizarre entities and explore strange locations. The Silhouette Rouge, Noumenon’s setting, is detailed enough to spark the imagination yet open enough to allow customization. In Noumenon, player cooperation is key. Noumenon uses a domino-based task resolution system that enables players to build upon each other’s successes.

We have a small selection of books left over from GenCon and this is your chance to scoop them up while they last. Each book will be autographed by Monica Valentinelli, contributing author.

Annual Award “For Excellence in Gaming” Locked in Second-Ever Tie

The 2008 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming has been given to two winners: Grey Ranks (a roleplaying game by Jason Morningstar, published by Bully Pulpit Games) and Wolfgang Baur and his Open Design business model. This is the second time the awards committee has locked into a tie over the winners in its eight years. The winners were announced at a ceremony packed with games industry professionals, from designers to publishers and distributors, held at Jillian’s in Indianapolis at 9 PM on Wednesday 13th August, the day before the opening of the games convention Gen Con Indianapolis.

Greg Stolze (REIGN, A Hunger Like Fire) has recently released a new game called A Dirty World.

The black and white images conceal a world of baffling gray moral complexities. Noir is about secrets, deception, betrayal and hidden vice. “A Dirty World” rebuilds the One Roll Engine from the ground up to support those themes. Action has consequences, but it’s the only way to make progress. But be careful: Your character’s effectiveness hinges on the choices he makes. It doesn’t matter how nice you say he is: If he acts like a rat, soon a rat is all he’ll be able to be.

Today, Greg takes part in our ongoing design project and tells us how A Dirty World came together and what his goals where while writing the game.

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society is a collection of stories inspired by the Aletheia role-playing game published by Abstract Nova Entertainment. Each of these stories is a possible continuation of the events described in that book.

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society was written by Jim Johnson, Monica Valentinelli and Matt M McElroy. A special limited printing of the book was available at the Abstract Nova booth (#2115) at GenCon in August.

Stop by the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop to order your copy of Tales of the Seven Dogs Society today!

He has exposed The Cainite Heresy, and dug up the Secrets of the Ruined Temple. He has broadcast the Suppressed Transmissions, and ventured through Infinite Worlds. Now, horror heresiarch Kenneth Hite, the author of GURPS Horror 3rd Edition and Nightmares of Mine, assembles the Dubious Shards of the Cthulhu Mythos!

Look for Dubious Shards at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.