Director Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is not a horror movie. It’s not even a horror-comedy. It’s really a fairly straight forward comedy-comedy, the back drop of which involves zombies. And as such it works pretty well, just not as well as its components suggest it should.

The world has been overrun by zombies and a most unlikely survivor nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is heading east across the country toward home hoping to find others, his family in particular. As fate would have it, he crosses paths with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), another survivor heading east and Columbus’ polar opposite in just about every way. Soon the two of them run into a bad girl nicknamed Wichita (Emma Stone) and her twelve year old sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). These girls were conning men out of their money before zombies became an issue and have since parlayed their game into a post apocalyptic art of survival as they head west.

The Pirate King is the second novel of the Transitions series by R.A. Salvatore. The hardcover edition was released in the US on July 2009.

“Captain Deudermont has sailed to the pirate city of Luskan on a mission–a mission to once and for all defeat the true power behind the corrupt city: a wicked lich and his cabal of evil wizards from the Host Tower of the Arcane. But the Host Tower has some tricks up its sleeve, as do the pirate captains who would like to see both sides fail.”

As many know, the Forgotten Realms is changing. With the advent of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition the FR timeline is being advanced approximately 100 years. The various “Drizzt Novels” so far have been set earlier in the timeline (corresponding with 2nd Edition AD&D and D&D 3r/ 3.5 Editions). The “Transitions Series” is an attempt to reconcile the two converging timelines, bridging the gap between the setting we all know (and love) and the new setting which has MANY stark differences.

Billed as Jim Butcher-light, DEAD TO ME is an urban fantasy novel for debut author Anton Strout. In this series, the main character (named Simon Canderous) struggles with his psychometric ability while working for the Department of Extraordinary Affairs in Manhattan.

Strout introduces Simon as a conflicted character who hasn’t quite figured everything out yet. His ability allows Simon to get a psychic impression (which is portrayed as if Simon is reliving a memory) off of everything he touches — including people. Sometimes those impressions are multi-layered; sometimes they’re not. His psychometric ability has affected everything from Simon’s moral judgments to his love life and even his health; there is definitely a “cost” to Simon’s inability to control his power.

Eclipse Phase is a new sci-fi setting from Catalyst Labs, which immediately raises the question of why I’m reviewing it for a website dedicated towards horror. Between the fall of humanity and the chaos in rebuilding (where the story takes place) a great many horrors occur.

This is sci-fi with a thick black coat of ichor slapped onto it. While some game masters may be excited about the many, many thoughtful advances in this setting, other game masters will pounce upon the hints of Cthulhu and other horrors. When my review copy for this book came in, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The title of the book has an eclipse behind it that looks similar to the same artwork used on Heroes. I thought perhaps someone had taken the effort to make a game on that series. The truth is that an Eclipse just looks like an eclipse no matter how you draw it.

Back on August 14th, a two chapter preview of Personal Effects: Dark Art was posted here on “Da Flames” (Click here to read preview). Included in this preview were notes about this book being a “multi-media novel” or a “trans-media” thriller that makes it a unique experience. By the time I reached the end of the preview, it was an appetizer that made me want to sink my rotting teeth into the rest of the book. Actually, calling it an “experience” as opposed to simply a “book” would be a better description. What do I mean by that? Well folks, grab a fork and a knife and sample this delight with me.

To best review P.E.D.A., I’m going to split “the experience” into two halves. Starting with the book portion (which was author J.C. Hutchins contribution to the experience), our protagonist is mild-mannered art therapist Zachary Taylor.

As my legions of fans know, I’m not fond of fantasy games. I can’t quite define why elves and arrows or clerics and castles don’t appeal to me. Even fantasy settings with a hint of horror like Ravenloft don’t capture the essence of what I look for in a campaign. Ravenloft, however, is on the right track. Today, I’m looking at Fantasy Craft through a dark tint. With little effort, the options provided in this game can make an excellent fantasy or horror setting.

That said, this review will look a little differently as I try to include some seeds to make this setting a little more frightening. Fall is afoot and those shadows will be growing longer. Who isn’t ready for campfires and Halloween?

With the runaway popularity of Zombies these days, it isn’t surprising that we’re seeing the shambling undead teamed with nearly every other concept imaginable, from video games to Jane Austen. Even lighthearted zombie treatments are gaining a strong foothold, like Shaun of the Dead, the upcoming film Zombieland starring Woody Harrelson, and, of course, Zombie Mosh from Bucephalus Games.

Zombie Mosh is exactly that, a game about zombies bashing each other apart in a mosh pit. Players select one of six different character cards, then shuffle the Zombie cards and deal four to each player. The dealer then draws two cards and randomly places them in the “damage” row of each player, including himself. Each card has two different results, facing the top and bottom of the card, so orientation of each card matters.

I’m not one for the dungeon crawl. Despite the fact I’ve been gaming since the mid-eighties, catacombs filled with creepy-crawlies that seem to have no apparent food supply just bores me to tears. One thing I do like though are the Choose Your Own Adventure books from days gone by. While Dungeon Crawl can be played with two or three people, it is intended as a solo-game. While it isn’t a new concept (TSR did it with the Marvel Super Heroes line with their title Thunder Over Jotunheim), it is a rather rare one. My allegiances are bitterly torn on this review, so watch out.

Before I go into my standard format, let me explain a little bit about what this game does. This game is part tile-based and part RPG. You take on the role of a character (Human Thief, Elf Sorcerer, or Dwarf Fighter) and stat your character out. They pretend that there are six character types, but differentiating between male and female Elf Sorcerer loses much of its argument when the following politically-correct sentence dictates that there are no benefits or penalties from playing males or females.

Look, I was hooked on this collection of short stories from the minutes I saw the premise. Seriously, whose timbers don’t get shivered at the prospect of well written, thoughtful pirate fiction? Well, that’s what I was handed when I got my copy of Fast Ships Black Sails.

Ann and Jeff Vandermeer rounded up a deadly crew of writers a list of which kind of staggered me. Some of the names were familiar to me, some not so much, and a few of my favorite writers included. None of these varied authors disappointed or brought me anything less then fantastic pirate fiction. That makes it hard to talk about the collection, as I want to go on for pages about each story, but I’d probably lose you pretty quickly into that sort of dissertation so let me point out the two stories that really rocked my world.

Published in 1879, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was one of the reasons why I was drawn to the horror genre. Even though it was published in 1879, I felt it was brilliant the way Stoker wove letters and newspaper clippings together to show the now-infamous characters of Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dr. Steward, Arthur Holmwood, Lucy Westerna and (of course) Dracula.

Needless to say, I am not the only one who has enjoyed the book. Reprinted several times in multiple languages, Dracula has been heralded as a literary classic that’s been discussed, dissected and enjoyed. Its story has been made into comics and graphic novels, movies and animated features; its characters have been reused and reinvented so many times that they’ve become iconic.

All Things Zombie comes from Two Hour Wargames. Wargaming is a very different hobby than role-playing, which I take part in most often. I’ve tried a few games over the years with minis. Some were true wargames like WarZone while others were toned-down versions like Savage Worlds or HeroClix. The deciding factor for these games to win me over was speed of play. I don’t want to check charts constantly when I’m playing a game. A character sheet and perhaps a index card-sized grouping of key rules is more than sufficient. I’ll allow for each player to work with their own screen because some games dictate that.

At the end of the day though, a game system better have something backing it up if it plans on being convoluted. I realize that some people want as much realism as possible in their miniature combat. I’m not writing this review for those people. I’m writing from the other side, the side where realism takes a backseat after a spell. I’ll elaborate more as I continue.

When I went out to see one of this weekend’s newest box office’s offerings “9”, I knew a scarce few details about it. I knew from the trailers it was CG animated, it has robots covered in burlap bags, I knew it had something to do with a post-apocalyptic setting, I knew that the #1 fan of darkness and the macabre himself Tim Burton produced it and I knew it carried a PG-13 rating. With these details I was eager to see it, and to make sure I was covering more bases since I planned to review this flick, I brought along my fourteen year old daughter with me to get her thoughts and insights. I assumed the film might have been more aimed at an audience more her age level than my own. To a point I was right on in my assumption, but in others points I was way off.

Doing some homework after paying 9 a visit, I’ve since learned that it was based off of an 11 minute silent short from new director Shane Acker as his thesis project from his grad school days at UCLA. The short film gave the world a 3-D setting, by that I mean Dark, Desolate & Destroyed.

Review by Steven Dawes

The Flash Fire Mini-Reviews are back with a set of reviews from Todd Cash. Todd is going to wrap up his the Ready-Made Characters series from White Wolf.

This is the third time I’ve approached character packages like these, so I won’t retread basic thoughts on these character packages (not much at least). If you’d like these details you can find them here and here. Each of these collections, which are fitted for specific settings (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc), run about five dollars (slight differences between titles in price seems mysterious).

They had me at the giant demonic bats.

Evil Ways is a suspenseful dark fantasy novel by Justin Gustainis. Black magic and occult investigators are mixed together skilfully creating a exciting plot. It’s a very entertaining book… so long as you don’t mind jarring geographic errors and odd attempts at dialect.

The second book in the “Morris and Chastain” investigations, Evil Ways (published by Solaris Books) presents its protagonists with a problem: someone is killing children and stealing their organs, and this means dark magic is afoot, and a lot of it. Quincey Morris is an paranormal detective with skills in a variety of areas, including burglary; Libby Chastain is a white witch with experience in taking out some pretty nasty guys.

I’ve not been privy to the works of Brian Keene before this past week, nor had I ever even heard of him. I’ve got plenty of reasons as to why Brian has flown under my radar, ranging from my recent urban fantasy kick (I’ve been on a mission to complete The Dresden Files and The Mercy Thompson series lately), making an earnest attempt at reading more of the books my friends ask me to read (recently wrapped up The Lovely Bones to discuss with a gal-pal of mine), to boning up on my ghost hunting & ghost story lore to finish up some of my freelance work for Palladium Books. For these reasons and others I’ve not read a horror novel in what feels like way too long.

But the other week I was hanging out with a buddy who had a copy of Urban Gothic chilling atop a box of books he calls his “finished and ready to trade in” box. Curiosity got to me and I glanced it over, catching various notes of praise like “Brian Keene is the next Stephan King”, “Post-apocalyptic… blunt and visceral” and “One of horror’s most impressive new literary talents.”

When I first heard that Permuted Press was going to release a “robot” anthology I was a little skeptical. The folks at Permuted had done well sticking to the zombie/post-apocalyptic genre and I wondered what was up with the branch of into sci-fi. Nothing wrong with with it really, just me wondering what was up.

Anyway, I got the book a little while ago and had only manged to read the first couple of stories before getting really busy with conventions. I finally manged to get back into the collection just this week. Like most anthologies Robots Beyond has a mix of great fiction and not-so-great stories. With this many different authors and concepts in one collection there is bound to be a few tales that stand out among the set as awesome reads and fun adventures. Also, not everyone is going to enjoy the same stories. Different writing styles and characters will appeal to different readers. Stories that I like may not work for someone else, the opposite holds true as well.

Bentley Little (The Academy) brings to life a new story of paranoia, inference and murder in His Father’s Son. Please note that this review does have a few spoilers.

This novel is about Steve Nye, a frustrated writer (literally) whose mediocre life is shaken up when his father is admitted to a psych ward after trying to kill his mother. After getting to know the Nye family, you’ll realize that they are normal-yet-dysfunctional in a way that any family might be; the mother is a devoted Christian while the rest of the family is not and the family doesn’t normally show affection to one another. Desperate for his father’s approval, Steve ends up trying to understand his father’s cryptic phrases and words in the hospital. Although his dad cannot semantically put words together due to his physical state, there are times when his dad is lucid. As a result, Steve places an almost unnatural importance on the phrase “I killed her,” to the point where he feels compelled to not only investigate, but also to “protect” his dad’s “secrets” by killing others himself.

If there is a single grouping of monsters that are a favorite, undead would probably be at or near the top of everyone’s list. From ghosts to zombies and from vampires to mummies, undead are the critters we love to hate. In Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead, Wizards of the Coast offers up a tasty book filled with intriguing information for GMs wishing to get the most out of their players’ encounters with those who refuse to stay dead.

It’s important to note that this volume isn’t a simple monster manual for the Undead. It doesn’t bother to cover the basic types; skeletons, zombies, and even straight-up vampire types are totally ignored, being covered in some depth elsewhere. What it does offer are variations on the standard creature, with strategy tips and useful tricks for effective deployment.

In a world where those with special powers are looked down upon and hunted, a secret team is brought together to protect it from the machinations of fallen angels and their children. From a noble cyborg warrior to a jumpy raver girl with electrical powers, they are brought in by a mysterious stranger and have to save a world that wouldn’t save them.

The graphic novel is a collection of short stories, introducing a reader to the universe of Alpha Gods. It is a world of magic and mutants, with sinister demons lurking in the shadows and with human beings developing strange powers. Called Extra Humans or Ex-Hus for short, the world knows they exist and has a largely negative view of them. The Alpha Gods try to protect the innocent ones while they struggle against a sinister corporation known as Grigori Enterprises that is performing experiments that will aid their demonic masters, the Nephilim.

Review by John D. Kennedy

My experience watching Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 was similar to how I imagine it must have been when George Foreman discovered he was as adept at selling grills as he was putting people to sleep with his fists. In other words, it was not what I expected. In fact I expected to hate it. I was so disgusted with Zombie’s unfortunate stab at remaking, re-imagining, and regurgitating John Carpenter’s 1978 seminal slasher that for a while I became the elderly curmudgeon of horror movie journalism. I may have even yelled at some kids to stay the hell off my lawn.

However, this time it wasn’t long before I came to the slightly confusing realization that I wasn’t hating this dreaded sequel, an emotion I felt specifically entitled to given the majority of films I’ve suffered through lately, but rather I was riveted by Rob Zombie’s brutal, gritty, and most importantly, original chapter in one of horror’s most important and longest running series.