You can outline a story beforehand or write it by the seat of your pants. It’s clear the author wrote Blood Noir the latter way, and not just because I know the backstory. Like Micah, this was originally going to be a novella, until something more developed. And it shows. Not only that, but I would’ve really enjoyed this had it been a novella and not this.

Jason Schuyler has never got along with his father, who is now dying of cancer. But now he has to go home to Asheville and say goodbye. And he’s traumatised enough that he’s bringing Anita Blake with him.

Review by Tez Miller

Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, 60s psychedelia, 80s Goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.

To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara re-brands the station as “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. But the “gimmick” enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher-and the perils graver-than any con game Ciara’s ever played…

Review by Jenn Moffatt.

For any of you who were frustrated or disappointed with Midnight Alley (Book Three), you’re in for a treat with Feast of Fools. Feast of Fools takes all that we learned or thought we learned from Midnight Alley and puts it all together in a very entertaining package. I could not put Feast of Fools down, and there aren’t a lot of books that I’ve read lately that I can say that about.

There is a level of tension in the Morganville books that keeps you on the edge of your seat, even in the background scenes you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it always does. Rachel Caine abuses her characters like a pro, and she doesn’t shirk because these are YA books. Claire and her friends go through hell just trying to survive in Morganville.

Review by Jenn Moffatt.

Finally, Jaz Parks goes where those in the CIA usually go: overseas. From Florida and Texas respectively in the first and second novels, the spotlight is now on Iran…as well as hell.

Jaz’s twin Dave is part of a CIA special ops squad, whose big target is the Wizard, whereas Jaz’s team’s enemy is the Raptor. Here’s where I don’t quite follow – why the two squads come together, and how the Wizard and the Raptor are linked. The Raptor is part of the series arc, but the Wizard may only be in this episode.

Review by Tez Miller

With characters working for the CIA, this series is ripe for social commentary on what it means to work for the government, and how to deal with conflicts between their ideals and yours. Unfortunately, the author hasn’t picked up this golden opportunity to create fiction that would really resonate with readers. And I think this is why I’m not connecting with this series ?

It isn’t doing what it could.

Review by Tez Miller

The second installment of the Elemental Witches perhaps unintentionally brings up the question of who’s more evil: demons, or the warlocks who summon them. Or, if you prefer: guns, or the people who use them. The answer in this novel seems to be demons (guns), which is good news for me, who had a thing for hot French warlock Stefan Faucheux in a previous installment.

Another perhaps unintentional issue is what’s more important: being protected, or being independent?

Review by Tez Miller

Like a lot of folks ’round these parts, I’m a huge fan of Robert E. Howard. I think he had all the imagination of Tolkien, and for my money, was a better writer. Your mileage may vary, of course, but that’s all moot.

I own all of the Del Rey collections: The Coming of Conan, the Bloody Crown of Conan, the Conquering Sword of Conan, Bran Mak Morn: the Last King, Kull: Exile of Atlantis, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Crimson Shadows,and Grim Lands. I eagerly look forward to the day when they finally release collections of his western stories, and would love to own collections of his letters (though I currently don’t).

I guess you could say that as a writer I hold the man in high esteem.

Review by Jason Vey

Munchkins have hacked their way through dungeons, kung fu temples, starships, haunted houses, and super-foes. Now they face their greatest challenge – Cthulhu! Will they survive? Will they retain their sanity? Will they . . . level up?

Munchkin Cthulhu combines the zany comedy of the previous Munchkin games with the oddities of the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft and its further developments by other authors and game designers.

Since we’ve started posting some teasers for the Hunter: the Vigil RPG this week I figured I would keep up with the theme and post about a few of the other monster hunter items that have caught my eye recently…

Comics, games supplements and fiction make up the mix this week…

In the third installment of the ongoing “Morganville Vampires” series, not-quite-seventeen year old Claire has opened a whole new can of worms: she’s agreed to work for the Founder, Amelie, an ancient vampire who has, for some reason been sticking up for her since she came to Morganville. It seems a simple enough exchange at first: Protection (with a capital P) for herself and her friends by promising her obedience. Better yet, her first task is taking advanced classes, and she finds herself with a scholarship to boot. But not all of those classes are the safe, classroom kind: she has an independent study with Myrnin, an old vampire who is brilliant, but seems on the edge of losing it.

Review by Alana Abott

The line between good and evil is clearly drawn in the first Elemental Witches novel. Coven = good. Duskoff Cabal = evil. Mira Hoskins doesn’t know she’s an air witch until there’s a home invasion, where she’s rescued/kidnapped by fire witch Jack McAllister who claims he’s hiding her away for her own good. Jack trains Mira to use her magick until the time comes to move to the Coven in Chicago.

Review by Tez Miller

In 2037 there will be an outbreak (a plague, maybe) that kills a whole lot of people. Don’t say I never warned you.

Excluding the prologue, this novel takes place in 2093. The world is now divided into four parts: the Northern Waste, the Equatorial Band, Africa and the Southern Hemisphere. Born in a laboratory in the icy Northern Waste, Tatiana is now free. But there’s something seriously screwed with her genes, clearly evident when she slices off a bloke’s hand with no weapons other than her own hands.

Review by Tez Miller.

It is curious that Vampire adventures seem to be particularly susceptible to this kind of role-playing when the rules-givers at White Wolf are forever bringing out new rules constraining vampire characters to behave in certain ways and to react to each other based on templates relating to membership of different social organizations and family structures. This seems to be rather un-American to me – no wonder there are so many foreigners in the World of Darkness. Europeans, for example, with their dastardly class-based societies and ability to speak languages. Rafael Pope, a central figure in this adventure, for example, is described as ‘a tall European man, probably Italian.’ Not Scandinavian, then or Slavic or Gaelic. In any case, obviously someone to be watched and subject to the vampiric versions of phone-tapping and having to take his shoes off before being allowed on an aeroplane.

Review by John Walsh

This week’s Flash Fire Mini-Reviews list is going to be a little different…

We talk about a lot of great Horror & Dark Fantasy books, games and other entertainment on Flames Rising and often have suggestions of where to get these great items. This week we’re going to take a look at a few of these online stores and hit the highlights of what makes each of them work for fans of horror…

Welcome to the future, where souls have the options of many planets and species to inhabit. The souls have invaded Earth, creating a utopian society where violence doesn’t happen and money is not an issue. Wanderer is inserted into host Melanie Stryder, after a mighty struggle to avoid the souls. Usually the host fades, though their body is well and truly active controlled by the soul. Mel remains fighting furious, but to reach common goals she has to work together and get along with Wanderer, nicknamed Wanda.

Review by Tez Miller

The Dead Girls’ Dance is not a stand-alone novel. A reader new to the series (like me) can figure out what’s going on with no problem–but the story doesn’t begin here. Nor does it end here. The conclusion leads straight into Morganville Vampires Book Three (which I’ll be reviewing in the near future). Claire has to choose how best to deal with being wanted by vampires, and how best to gain the protection she and her friends desperately need to survive–how she makes that decision and the consequences of her choice are likely to be the plot of the third entry in the series. As a series book, the story is compelling, the characters sympathetic (even some of the villains), and the world that Caine has drawn is easy to sink into, if not pleasant. Her world is one where monsters aren’t just vampires, but humans, where it’s not safe to be out after dark, and where demons lay in wait in dark alleys.

Review by Alana Abbott

The Inquisitor’s Handbook is a hodge-podge of bits and pieces scattering all around the game system and the background. It’s a goody-bag of weapons, skills interpretations, new background options and new ‘fluff’ which may or many not suit a particular player group. To me it didn’t feel like it had quite the same character as a player’s guide for other systems – ones which generally limit themselves to player advice and increasing player options – but it felt like an expansion of the corebook material overall, for both players and Games Masters. I felt, reading through it, as though some of the content here should have been in the corebook and vice versa, particularly the background information and the Calixis sector particulars. It would have made more sense, to me, to have increased the player and character creation options in the main book and then had the Calixis specifics in a sourcebook, or collected in this volume with the specific data appropriate to it. The ‘imposition’ of the Calixis sector as the group’s playground is just another aspect of the ‘hemming in’ that has been a criticism of Dark Heresy.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

After a short break, the Flash Fire Mini-Reviews are back (from the dead)!

Zombies have always had a following among horror fans. We have several reviews of great zombie games, books and more here on Flames Rising. Among the recent zombie reviews are Plague of the Dead 2, Happy Hour of the Damned and Zombie Fluxx. There are plenty more, including great titles from Permuted Press and Eden Studios.

This week we will be checking out a mix of zombie entertainment. Games, Novels and a Movie will make up the horde…

You’ve seen it before: authors blurbing other books, claiming ‘I wish I’d written this’. Seems kind of hyperbolic, I know. But then I experienced it. This 300-something-page tome shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did to read. This is my fault because as I started reading, mood-killers kicked in: jealousy, envy and that dreadful thing that’s summed up as ’emo’. I did not want to feel this way, so for the first half of the book I read only in short sessions. For the uninitiated, I’m only an occasional fiction writer. Still, Mark Henry’s writing is so all-encompassingly engaging that I started hating my work and myself, lalala (emo).

Review by Tez Miller

This is a tightly presented 165 page PDF in two column format in a fair imitation of much of Wizard’s own presentation, it cover PC and NPC character clases, prestige classes, mechanical devices and effects, the interaction of magic and technology, automations, skills, feats and everything else. Basically this is one entire plug-in to bring technology and its users into the game, along with brief discussions on the affect technological change might have on a society and the means by which it might be introduced. To my mind there wasn’t enough material on this side of things, doubtless to make room for all the mechanical crunch.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough