Want to read a horror review before you buy? Read over 225 full-length reviews of books, games, DVDs, music and more from Flames Rising horror and dark fantasy!
Gwen Frost is back at Mythos Academy, and she’s got a new attitude. In Touch of Frost (reviewed here), Gwen was a poor little Gypsy girl, stuck out of place at an academy full of warrior kids and wishing for her old life. While Gwen is still no warrior — and still wishes that her mother’s death had never happened — she’s got a new mission: get awesome, fast, so she can live up to the expectations of Nike, her patron goddess. At the end of the first book, Gwen was chosen to be Nike’s champion, and she has no intentions of failing.
This is the England that ought to have been, rather than the history of the one in which I sit writing this review. This is the mediaeval England of legend, with Robin Hood scampering around Sherwood Forest, a Good King Richard off fighting the Infidel whilst Bad King John does his best to steal a kingdom, never mind everyone’s hard-earned gold… this is an England in which excitement and adventure are to be found, but where drains don’t smell and nobody worries about the Black Death!
The Introduction outlines this setting, the mediaeval England of stories, rooted firmly in the history of the 12th and 13th centuries but with an eye to the rise of the ideals of chivalry, to the world of ballad and folk-song, the sort of mediaeval England that you’d like to visit. Designed to be used in conjunction with Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP) ruleset, there’s a handy list of what rules from that work will be of particular use when running this setting. Whilst there’s a whole section about running adventures and campaigns at the end of this product, it’s noted that Scenario Hooks are scattered throughout, to spawn ideas and help Game Masters come up with their own material, or players to develop their characters more fully.
After I received an advanced copy of Ty Schwamberger’s novella The Fields, I turned the first pages and immediately began reading kudos by notable authors and magazines such as Gary A. Braunbeck and Shroud Magazine. I never judge a book by its cover, but I do start judging books by their praise. And with an introduction by Jonathan Maberry (Rot and Ruin, Patient Zero), I was excited to start reading.
Jonathan Maberry starts off his introduction stating “The Fields is a morality tale. With Zombies.” Maberry then explains to the reader that zombie tales are more than cannibalistic and mindless corpses. These tales, if written with feelings and responsibility, remind the reader zombies are people and they have life and their own stories. This is what Ty Schwamberger accomplishes with The Fields. He, as many authors have tried but failed, brings out the emotion of the characters but not just the living, but the dead also with much success.
Review: A Tale of Two Savages
Agents of Oblivion and Peculiar Pentad
It’s no secret I’m a fan of horror RPGs and Savage Worlds, which makes these two entries especially appealing. Agents of Oblivion suggests a world where Jason Bourne gets put into a blender with HP Lovecraft and turns out rather interesting results. With the Savaged version of Peculiar Pentad, readers are given five entrepreneurs who have uncovered a troublesome niche market–those seeking items attached to the Cthulhu Mythos. I’m thinking a 401K isn’t a worthwhile investment.
Predators are competitors. They compete with other types of predators for food; they compete with others for territory. And they compete with others of their own kind for both food and territory as well. Sometimes, predators will form alliances with like-minded individuals to protect a larger area, making survival – even prosperity – more likely for all within the group. So it is with apex predators like vampires; they don’t care much to be around each other, but when faced with threats too big for one to handle, they band together to form protective groups. Those groups of like-minded vampires are called Covenants, and one of the most interesting of those is the Carthians. Based on the premise of greater equality and of emulating the institutions of their prey, Carthians hope to both blend in better – be less obviously a predator among the flock – and keep the stifling, unchanging nature of near immortality at bay.
Carthians begins with a fine piece of fiction by Greg Stolze to set the mood, then launches into a dissection of the Carthian Movement – its history, goals, and styles of governance.
The amount of source material produced for the World of Darkness role playing universe is truly impressive. Not all of it is useful to players – much of it being useful primarily to the game master for the purposes of fueling any individual group’s adventures – and some is of benefit to all players. Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners is a book that is fascinating to read for any aficionado of the setting, but is likely best left to the GMs (or “Storytellers” in White Wolf’s World of Darkness parlance) as it spends most of its 160 pages detailing powerful vampires that the players’ characters could bump into in-game.
This is a monumental work, a comprehensive and scholarly history of the role-playing industry from its inception in the early 1970s to the present day. The focus is interesting, concentrating on the individuals and companies that have made role-playing what it is today rather than looking at the games themselves.
Whilst detailed, the writing flows well, making it eminently readable and often entertaining, a fascinating survey of the companies and people who have shaped role-playing and are responsible for most of the books on my shelves (or, these days, lurking on the RPG hard drive) – and who have provided me with years of entertainment and passion. If your interest in role-playing goes anywhere beyond the next dungeon delve, if you like to know the background and history of the games you enjoy, you should find something here catches your attention… and once caught, be warned, it may be a while before you can tear yourself away!
Carl Kolchak, hard-bitten reporter of the supernatural from the TV series of the 1970s returns to action courtesy of an ongoing series of comic books and graphic novels from Moonstone Books. This time, Carl’s been fired by the owner of the newspaper that used to employ him, and he must find another way to make ends meet. He’s approached by a young couple, Otto and Mo Brerhahrer, who are ghost hunters in their spare time, and Kolchak can hardly say no, particularly when they offer to buy him lunch.
Through three related vignettes, the reader learns more about Kolchak, and why he has such a close connection to the supernatural. The first, titled “Fifteen Minutes,” find Kolchak at his wits end regarding where his next meal is coming from.
Mankind’s rise and fall in space begins here! Two thousand years from now, the Earth is nearly dead. A bold group of explorers led by philanthropist Thomm Coney pushes forward to take the first tentative steps out of Earth’s solar system. Their quest: new worlds to colonize, so that humanity may yet have a chance at survival. Facing impossible odds, political agendas, and a fanatical terrorist regime bent on their destruction, Coney and his crew brave the dangers of a potentially volatile star drive in order to preserve a civilization intent not only on killing itself, but also on taking down every other living thing around it. Will mankind set aside its greed long enough to see a future amongst the stars? Collects Critical Millennium: The Dark Frontier #1-4 and contains extra material, including data sheets, sketchbook pages, starship information sheets and more.
“The second SKULLKICKERS adventure is a wondrous tornado of action-adventure: a den of thieves, a city of danger, nobility, stupidity, plant monsters, dinner parties and bloodthirsty faerie folk.”
CRASH! ROLL! LAUGH! STAND UP! FALL AGAIN! LAUGH! APPLAUD! That about sums up what I think of this amazing second volume of Skullkickers from Image Comics (if you have read any issue you will get the opening line.) Vol. 2 takes the heroes and places them into even more fantastical trouble. As the story unfolded I was treated to so many laughs and even a scene that made me really uncomfortable to look at. Like past issues of the book, these pages are GORE-Geous. My jaw drops to the floor on practically every page from the line work to the colors there is not a single thing that does not shine. Trust me on this too, there are plenty of horror elements to be found. A huge highlight is the big bad boss reveal towards the end of the story. The layout of that page alone is worth 1,000 Opas. The story is what really gets me though.
“From acclaimed writer and artist team Robert Tinnell and Neil Vokes (THE BLACK FOREST, THE WICKED WEST) comes a sensuous horror epic in the spirit of European horror cinema of the 1960s and ’70s. The death of Carmilla, the seductive vampire, sets in motion events that lead to a monumental struggle between the forces of darkness and a brave band of mortals. Its members include a reluctant young Abraham Van Helsing and a mysterious monster hunter struggling to keep his own inner monster at bay. When Baron Frankenstein is recruited to add his scientific genius to the group’s arsenal, Dracula and his undead kingdom face the possibility of total annihilation.”
“Out in the Arctic Ocean, the research vessel Alesia manages to capture a mysterious Magnapinna squid, an animal never before captured by mankind. The researchers, led by Maria, decide to take the specimen back to port in Bergen, Norway. However, what they bring home isn’t just a scientific wonder but also a thing more horrific than Pandora’s Box. Soon, madness creeps into the crew of the Alesia and friends become monsters.”
Red Eye of Azathoth, published by Wolfgang Baur and the Open Design LLC, is an unusual adventure for Call of Cthulhu. This campaign pack has the investigators following an evil madman through centuries of effort to summon the Daemon Sultan Azathoth to earth, an event that would cause our planet’s near-total destruction.
In a unique twist, players take on the roles of different characters in each separate scenario – each time battling the same villain, who has possessed a different victim to further his diabolical ends.
IDW has a lot to live up to now that it’s acquired the rights to bring Godzilla over to American comic readers. The Big G has been through the wringer twice before: first, in a widely beloved, if short-lived, stint in the Marvel Universe, and once again, courtesy of Dark Horse Comics, which produced some of the most enjoyable adventures starring the King of the Monsters yet, owing to an incarnation that far exceeded the House of Ideas’ degree of faithfulness to the source. This time, IDW hopes to one up these previous efforts by bringing over, not just Godzilla, but the entirety of the kaiju eiga franchise’s rogues gallery.
Finally, Godzilla will get to tangle with the comic book counterparts of the likes of Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah, and IDW’s marketing strategy points towards showcasing as many of them as possible, all at once.
Diving straight in, the work opens with a brief note about how it provides a ready-made, populated location for gamemasters to use, or useful background for players whose characters are scumborn or belong to a scum faction… and just in case you are not sure what that means, it then launches into an introduction to the whole concept. Briefly, a scum swarm is a space-faring community with a very democratic – even anarchic – approach to everything: collective decision-making, consensus… and little regard for rules or reverence to what more settled societies may find important.
From such generalities, the narrative turns to a specific group, the Stars swarm. Born out of industrial unrest in turbulent times, the swarm began with workers in lunar orbital facilities taking control of the resources around them… just when the situation back at headquarters took a turn for the worse, and so nobody was in a position to object as the collective upgraded propulsion systems and took off, gathering many other refugees as they departed. Rather more ordered than some swarms, they now follow a set route around the system, trading as they go but still adhering to their original libertarian collectivist lifestyle.
“In Los Angeles in the year 2064, the dead have risen and corpses live again, cohabiting among us…well, somewhat. As a zombie apocalypse engulfs America, we follow a group of friends on a their journey to start a little business of their own…zombie catchers!”
It is not as often as one would think that a comic book has what I consider to be the perfect pairing of artist and writer, however The Zombies that Ate the World is one of those books. I have been a big fan of Guy Davis from his early days on Baker Street. So it is no surprise to me that I really love the look of this book. However the perfection in the pairing comes in when you get to see how well his style fits the storytelling.
David Agranoff’s Hunting the Moon Tribe is an interesting and well-thought out coming of age story that spans the globe. It starts us out in China with a soon-to-be-former Red Guard, Yuen, and his wife, Elsa, at the time of the birth of their son. Without much warning, they are attacked and this sets up the story of a centuries-old war that will eventually lead to California and the life of a young man that is about to awaken to his destiny.
Vampires of a different sort, martial arts, dreams and difficult choices take center stage. Enrich is a bullied American high school student. He decides to learn martial arts to combat the daily attacks, but what he doesn’t know is that he is training for the biggest battle of his life.
Blair Witch 2 holds a special place in my black heart. No so much because of the movie itself, it happens to be the first movie my wife Lilly and I went to see together (somewhere along the lines of a 3rd of 4th date.) We were both fans of the 1st film (me more so than her), and as it was the autumn/ Halloween season so seeing a scary movie seemed like the thing to do at the time. It was incidentally the inaugural “dinner and a movie” date ritual that became a cornerstone of one of our favorite things to do together to this day. During the few times I’ve watched it since, I get a twinge of nostalgia, and did so again during this last watch for reviewing purposes. But does nostalgia a good movie make?
“Shadow Hunters is the new supernatural comic book that revolves around the lives of 3 teenage girls. As they seek vengeance on the dark demon that wiped out hundreds of lives, they encounter both a vast array of darkness that dwell around them and a shadow army that combats it. This is a new series from Scattered Comics that is written by Jason Dube and drawn by Benjamin Jordan. It is a comic that is recommended for more mature reader with its heavy themes of death, mature subject matters, and violence.”
The Gumshoe mechanic gets tested on a new genre: sci-fi. In Ashen Stars, players enter the Bleed where they play Lasers, law enforcement of sorts. This heavy (305 pages) book is a stand-alone game that fully details Law’s sci-fi setting and delivers the Gumshoe rules. I have enjoyed the previous Gumshoe setting, particularly Mutant City Blues and Esoterrorists, so I was intrigued to see what the future held.
The layout and artwork of the book holds the same feel as Trail of Cthulhu and MCB. Bordering is neat, but doesn’t attract much attention. Sidebars are tight. The artwork has more hits than misses, though nothing really stands out as excellent. One thing I do like is the full color splurge on the book. It makes reading a volume of this size all the more pleasurable.
Gwen Frost is back at Mythos Academy, and she’s got a new attitude. In Touch of Frost (reviewed here), Gwen was a poor little Gypsy girl, stuck out of place at an academy full of warrior kids and wishing for her old life. While Gwen is still no warrior — and still wishes that her mother’s death had never happened — she’s got a new mission: get awesome, fast, so she can live up to the expectations of Nike, her patron goddess. At the end of the first book, Gwen was chosen to be Nike’s champion, and she has no intentions of failing.
Review: A Tale of Two Savages
