Chicago Workings is a World of Darkness adventure released under the Storytelling Adventure System from White Wolf Publishing. Written by Will Hindmarch (with a little help from Ken Hite and Bill Bridges) this adventure puts the player characters in the middle of an ongoing conflict between rival architects. At first that doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but what if these two designers had access to mystical writings? These writings allowed them to build geometric grids of power within the city, forever altering the flow of magic and power.

The obvious comparison with White Wolf’s vampire has to be made when reading VDG, while there are some independent and different concepts the overall one – breeds of vampire fighting it out for control – remains the same and the authors are clearly fans of the earlier version of Vampire and the style and methodology of White Wolf, at least as White Wolf used to be at any rate. This is fine by me, I like the old stuff though I have my pet hates of certain White Wolf ways of going about things too, and I much prefer the old World of Darkness to the new World of Darkness, VDG presents a game that is very much like what a post-Gehenna old World of Darkness campaign setting might have looked like and this is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Some would consider this a rip-off of White Wolf, I prefer to see it as an homage to White Wolf at the height of their creative capabilities and see the relationship as being more akin to a Nightlife/Vampire relationship than something more negative.

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

I love the world-building. Atlanta has two stages in time – tech (when life is as we know it) and magic. But the transitions between the two are getting faster, and Celtic mythology comes to life. (That sounds vague, I know, but I didn’t really understand it.)

Kate Daniels (whose father is supposedly Russian, but you wouldn’t know it from her surname) still has her almighty saber Slayer, but also has a new companion: teenager Julie, whose wannabe witch mother is missing.

Review by Tez Miller

This is book two of series, and admittedly I had not read Touch the Dark. I was hoping that there would be enough context to bring me into the story and setting without feeling lost. Although Ms. Chance does offer a few lines here and there of Cassie talking about past events, I still felt a little lost. Not huge deal though because the book starts off with plenty of action. Even with me not knowing exactly who some of the characters are…things were certainly interesting. Cassie is looking for a little help in her ongoing feud with some of the vampires. She is hanging out at a supernatural brothel and causing a little bit of trouble along the way.

When I picked up Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith, I was expecting something along the lines of Stephanie Meyers’s Twilight. Though I’m not sure where I got that impression, I quickly discovered that, while Tantalize and Twilight may both feature stories of star-crossed love and potentially doomed relationships, Tantalize doesn’t make the love story its center. Instead, it focuses on a sort of coming-of-age for Quincie, a heroine named after the Texan vampire hunter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Quincie is a strong young woman who, by the beginning of the story, has already had to cope with the deaths of her parents. She is going to inherit the family restaurant when she turns eighteen, but until then, she shares responsibilities for running it with her uncle. Because business has been bad, her uncle formed a plan to increase sales by remodeling their traditional Italian eatery to have a vampiric theme, still keeping the best of Italian dishes while serving the would-be vampire crowd, which happens to include his girlfriend.

Review by Alana Abbott

The Revised Tome of Horrors is a massive play on nostalgia. A book hoping that you miss the strange, often inexplicable and forgettable monsters from 1st edition. The problem becomes, that if you do not know what the hell these monsters are and you have no attachment to a pech or a tentamort, you will think this is simply a massive collection of strange and unremarkable creatures.

The book is single minded in its approach; proudly presenting you with over 300 monsters from the “good old days” of D&D. It clocks in at a massive 451 pages and is only available in PDF format. The reason for this decision is explained at the opening of the book. Ultimately it boils down to the cost involved with a reprint of a book this size.

Review by Vincent Venturella

I had high hopes for this book. The author is a pal of one of my favorites, Mr Mark Henry. And he’s an MRI tech. That latter factor particularly perked me because I love medical thrillers, and people with medical qualifications are smart, and I like to associate with those more intelligent than I. I was thinking Mr Schreiber would be my kind of writer, a male Tess Gerritsen – and it certainly helped that the aforementioned Ms Gerritsen had a blurb right on the front cover.

Review by Tez Miller

Georgina Kincaid just isn’t into her job. Sure, living off of the life energies of men she seduced used to be fun centuries ago, but now bringing good men down just makes her feel guilty. Is it too much for a succubus to ask to have just one worthwhile relationship in her immortal life? But fulfilling her dream of meeting the right man (who she won’t kill by sleeping with him) has to be put on hold when several minor immortals in the Seattle community are killed or murdered.

Review by Alana Abbott

So what happens when you die: become a vampire, zombie or ghost? Or do you get reincarnated, no matter how many years later?

A novel that’s been years in the making, the author takes us to contemporary Italy, where photojournalist Josh Ryder – who works for the Phoenix Foundation, which researches children’s past life regressions – visits an archaeological dig. Josh has regressed before, but now the memory lurches are happening more often and in more detail. In Ancient Rome, he was Julius, who had an affair with Vestal Virgin Sabina, whose punishment was to be buried alive.

Review by Tez Miller

The Suzerain rulebook is a slim fifty pages of very pretty plate artwork and a lot of apparent coffee spillage. Rather than being tied to a particular setting or world this Suzerain seems to be trying to pass itself off as a generic system with specific world books, though there are hints of the New Age mysticism and multiversal aspects in the fiction snippets and illustration explanations throughout the book. The immediate first impression is one of over-engineering for such a small book(let). For your money you get a brief introduction, basic rules, advanced rules, character creation and ‘Feats’ which covers the ground of skills, innate abilities (merits), innate failings (flaws) and special powers such as magic, cybernetics or SCIENCE!

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

For those of us who were geeks in high school, comparing prom to hell wasn’t much of a stretch. The same can absolutely be said of Maggie Quinn, who has no intention of getting conned into going to prom. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, so that’s not a concern, and her stalwart friends have mocked the dance as much as she has in the past. But as the dance nears, and supernatural danger strikes, all of Maggie’s plans are scattered. Welcome to Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Prom Dates from Hell.

Review by Alana Abbott

Kristopher Reisz’s Unleashed sheds light on the steel city of Birmingham, with its cultural history and blue-collar community. Daniel Morning’s parents are far from rich: they struggle to make ends meet whilst doing everything they can to insure that Daniel and his brothers have a better future…even if it means cheating to get into an Ivy League college.

Review by Tez Miller

I’ll have to post something of a caveat up front: I’ve never read the first installment of the Morningstar Saga, Plague of the Dead. That will have to change pretty soon though, considering the quality of Thunder & Ashes.

The zombie apocalypse has come and gone, and a handful of survivors–some of them ex-military, and one a brilliant female scientist–are fighting to find a cure that will save the world. Yes, the plot isn’t exactly original, but the quality of the writing and the characters manage to elevate Thunder & Ashes above most novels that share this popular plot.

Review by Leah Clarke

Scion is about the only recent output from White Wolf that I’ve really cared for other than Exalted. While the game overall seems to have been completed with Hero, Demigod and God it’s nice to see that it’s getting some ongoing support and even more nice to see that White Wolf seems to be one of the first companies to really start taking PDF publishing seriously. There’s still some imperfections, I believe the idea is to sell sections of the Scion companion bit by bit as complete PDF releases, but to omit some final sections which will only be present in the print version, but it’s a big step in the right direction and one that I hope will be followed up on by other companies. Incidentally, I was about to write a Celtic pantheon fan-offering up for Scion when this came along, so they just managed it in the nick of time!

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

In Dead to Me, reformed petty-crime naughty boy and psychometrist Simon Canderous (whose surname probably means something, but I haven’t checked the dictionary yet) works for New York’s Department of Extraordinary Affairs. Psychometry made me think of Kim Wilkins’s Gina Champion series, and the government made me think of Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan series. But Anton Strout’s Simon Canderous is neither a teenage girl nor a political adviser (and not Australian, for that matter).

Review by Tez Miller

Cat Crawfield would love to kill her father. Literally. After raping her mother, he took off, leaving Cat as a reminder of the evening. Oh, and he’s a vampire, making Cat a weird sort of hybrid: living with but a vampire’s strength and speed. So as a way to get even, she starts hunting vamps, picking them up at clubs and staking them for all they’re worth. Every time she does it, there’s one less monster in the world. But then she meets Bones, a vampire far stronger than any she’s met before. When he threatens to kill her unless she studies under him, she challenges him to a duel of sorts–as the loser, she is forced to train with him, learning to be a better, more effective vampire hunter, ready to take on some of the big marks.

Review by Alana Abbott

A few months ago I read the first three chapters of Jackie Kessler’s Hell’s Belles, but had to put it aside when I got caught up in library books and their due dates. My sieve of a memory left me doubtful of how well I could remember these opening stages when I picked the book up again the other day.

I needn’t have worried. I’m the first to admit that I’m very skeptical. Just because something is a best seller, or comes with gushy fangirlies, that doesn’t mean that it’ll automatically appeal to everyone. But I’m happy to report that this novel did appeal to me.

Review by Tez Miller

This is a collection of short stories by Jeff Vandermeer both tangentially and directly about a fictional fantasy city called Ambergris, noted for its somewhat piratical past, the presence of mysterious and sinister mushroom men and freshwater squid. It is also very, very, very weird and very, very, very surreal. I suppose, broadly, it fits into the general thrust of the urban fantasy movement but it is also a damn sight weirder, more Burroughs than Mieville. One story might be a more conventional fantasy story, another might play with the relationship between fantasy and reality and the other might leave you scratching your head and reaching for the dictionary just so you could read something fully comprehensible for a change.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

The problem I have with anthologies is that the quality of the stories varies greatly, as far as I’ve read. Thus, I am not a big fan. Indeed, the authors in this collection are varied: some of them you know well from various paranormal novels, while others are dipping into the supernatural for the first time (they’re primarily mystery writers, on the cosy side, I think). Instead of judging the collection as a whole, let’s look at the stories individually:

Review by Tez Miller

The game of Dungeons & Dragons is, at its core, a game of epic fantasy. The characters we choose and role-play more closely resemble the mythological heroes of ancient times or modern fantasy literature. The nature of an epic fantasy adventure is that the hero(es) will face a great threat which will endanger the lives of innocents/family/the world. There will be a great struggle, but the outcome is never in question. Epic fantasy stories end with our protagonist overcoming the long odds and great trials to become a truly legendary hero. But this begs an interesting question.

What if the hero can not succeed?

Review by Vincent Venturella