Fantasy Books

A new week of Women in SF&F Month starts today with a guest post by Cheryl S. Ntumy! Her short fiction includes “The Ghost of Dzablui Estate” in The Bright Mirror: Women of Global Solarpunk, “Godmother” in Apex Magazine and later The Best of World SF: Volume 3, and those in her BSFA Award–nominated collection Black Friday: Short Stories from Africa. She’s also written stories set in the shared Afrocentric speculative fiction universe named the Sauútiverse, including the novella Songs […]

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Other LitStack Spots We’ve spotted a few other titles we are definitely adding to our…

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1996 was 30 years ago. And it was quite the year for movies. Big-screen extravaganzas dominated the box office, and some movies outside the Top 10 still more than resonate today.

On July 3, Independence Day dropped. Man, that was a huge hit. EVERYBODY I knew saw, or was talking, about it. And smooth crooner Harry Connick Jr. became a lot more popular. With a US gross of $306,156,000 ($644,338,000 in today’s dollars) on a budget of $75 million, it was a smash hit.

Big-screen action continued the trend of domination, with Twister ($241,721,000) second, and The Rock ($134,069,000) fourth.

And at number three saw the birth of a mega-franchise that seven hit follow-ups and which only wrapped up last year: Mission Impossible. That first movie was an homage to the original series, and I really liked it. Then John Woo turned it into special effects cotton candy and I never watched another installment.

Eddie Murphy was at the end of his run as a box office super draw, and came it at number five with The Nutty Professor. The rest of the top ten was Ransom (Mel Gibson), The Bird Cage (Robin Williams), A Time To Kill (Matthew McConaughey), 101 Dalmations (a bunch of dogs), and The First Wives Club (Goldie Hawn).

Some Other Notable films

Eraser (11)
Arnold Schwarzenegger was five years removed from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. And two years from the disaster that was Junior. Ugh. But in addition to the sci-fi noir Eraser, he also made one of my favorite Christmas movies, Jingle all the Way (number 25).

Star Trek: First Contact (14)
I loved the original cast reboot of Star Trek. And then Generations transitioned to a new era. First Contact ensured there would be more Star Trek films, and it had James Cromwell. BTW – if you’ve not seen 1997’s LA Confidential, it’s a superb hardboiled noir flick, and if you have read James Ellroy’s novel, Cromwell was a terrific choice as Dudley Smith.

Jerry Maguire (18)
The box office rankings are by the calendar year receipts. It released on December 13, and its total gross would have ranked it fourth for the year. This was the Romcom of 1996.

Twelve Monkeys (22)
I never got into this movie with Bruce Willis and Madeline Stowe, but it became a sci-fi cult classic. I should give this another try.

Tin Cup (26)
Post-apocalyptic movies – Waterworld (1995) and The Postman (91st this year) – did not exactly build on the success of The Bodyguard. But in between those two movies, Costner made a charming golf Romcom with Rene Russo and Don Johnson.

Grumpier Old Men (31)
The two-year take would put his up at number 17 (which was Broken Arrow). In the last 7 years of Walter Matthau’s life, he made Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, Out to Sea, and The Odd Couple II, with Jack Lemmon. And I am darn glad those two old friends rekindled their on screen magic, which began in 1966 with The Fortune Cookie. And if you like this duo, I highly recommend My Fellow Americans. James Garner slips into a Walter Matthau role opposite Lemmon. My favorite of this whole bunch.

Toy Story (32)
Released the prior year, it’s total gross would have made it the number three movie of 1996. This was Pixar’s first feature film, and it changed movies. Pixar, and the animated types of movies it influenced other studios to make, are still part of the industry today.

Happy Gilmore (38)
I’m not an Adam Sandler fan. Stuff like Little Nicky, and The Waterboy, falls in what I call ‘dumb funny’ and I think it’s just dumb, not funny. To each their own. However, I LOVE Happy Gilmore. It’s simply funny. And frankly, hilarious. Great comedy. I put Talladega Nights in this category.

The Ghost and the Darkness (39)
I’m a big William Goldman fan. He wrote The Princess Bride (novel and screenplay), and two memoirs about working in Hollywood are among the best memoirs you’ll ever read. His chapter on this movie, which was not the hit expected, is interesting. The guy was an elite screenwriter, if you check his IMDB.com.

No. Not THAT one!

Heat (42)
Michael Mann had hit it big with The Last of the Mohicans – not the case with his adaptation of F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep. Heat is a ‘really good but not quite great’ movie for me. Like Bogie’s Dead Reckoning. But man, this is a taut heist film, with a great cast. Another one I’m due to watch again.

Striptease (48)
I am almost done re-reading/re-listening to the first ten Carl Hiassen novels (they drop off for me around number nine, so this won’t be a complete re-read). But I do love his books. They are laugh-out-loud dark crime comedies. I remember seeing this movie and thinking it wasn’t bad. But the book was much better. I suspect that would still hold true. Still, I think I’ll check it out again. TV’s R.J. Decker (based on Double Whammy) is losing it’s Hiassen roots, but still worth watching so far.

So, that’s it for the Top 50. Other notable movies of 1996:

Leaving Las Vegas (53)
Sabrina (61) Excellent remake of a Bogart/Hepburn film
That Thing You Do! (67) A total gem!!!!!!!
From Dusk til Dawn (68)
Escape From LA (70) A far cry from the original.
Scream (74) A late release that would have been #11 for the year
Fargo (75) Coen Brothers wizardry, but not box office magic
Last Man Standing (97) Based on Hammett’s Red Harvest (which influenced Yojimbo)
The Phantom (100) Bruce Campbell lost out to Billy Zane for the lead
GoldenEye (108) Late release that was a 1997 hit
My Fellow Americans (120) See Grumpier Old Men, above
Mulholland Falls (124) Was a good year toe be a hardboiled/noir fan
2 Days in the Valley (125) More noir
Two if by Sea (128) See Grumpier Old Men…
Seven (129) 1997 hit
Heavens Prisoners (161) Hollywood is 0 for 2 on James Lee Burke. Do better!)
Swingers (164) $4 million box office, but a cult classic
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (166) Big hit in 1997
Cutthroat Island (170) Not quite Pirates of the Carribean
Barb Wire (180) Pamela Anderson remakes Casablanca/The Maltese Falcon. Soooo bad

Tastes certainly vary, but there was a lot to go see in 1996. As a hardboiled guy, Heat, Mulholland Falls, Last Man Standing, and 2 Days in the Valley, were all worthwhile. I liked Heavens Prisoners okay, as a Dave Robicheaux fan.

Scifi, comedy, action, offbeat – a good year for movies.And up top, Independence Day is still a great watch. That was from Dean Devlin, who had written Stargate, and would give us Leverage, and The Librarians. Mission Impossible continued to make bank for decades.

Share your thoughts on the list. Or others I left off. I skimped on the horror stuff.

So…what year shall we look at next?

Some previous entries on things to watch:

Firefly – The Animated Reboot
What I’ve Been Watching – February 2026 (The Night Manager, SS-GB, Best Medicine)
What I’ve Been Watching – October 2026 (Return to Paradise, Lynley, Expend4bles, and more)
What I’ve Been Watching – August 2025 (Ballard, Resident Alien, Twisted Metal, and more)
What I’ve Been Watching – May 2025 (County Line, The Bondsman, Bosch: Legacy)
What I’ve Been Watching – October 2024 (What We Do in the Shadows, The Bay, Murder in a Small Town)
What I’m Watching – November 2023 (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, A Haunting in Venice)
What I’m Watching – April 2023 (Florida Man, Picard – season three, The Mandalorian)
The Pale Blue Eye, and The Glass Onion: Knives Out
Tony Hillerman’s Dark Winds
The Rings of Power (Series I wrote on this show – all links at this one post)
What I’m Watching – December 2022 (Frontier, Leverage: Redemption)
What I’m Watching – November 2022 (Tulsa King, Andor, Fire Country, and more)
What I’m Watching – September 2022 (Galavant, Firefly, She-Hulk, and more)
What I’m Watching- April 2022 (Outer Range, Halo, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, and more)
When USA Network was Kicking Major Butt (Monk, Psych, Burn Notice)
You Should be Streaming These Shows (Corba Kai, The Expanse, Bosch, and more)
What I’m BritBoxing – December 2021 (Death in Paradise, Shakespeare & Hathaway, The Blake Mysteries, and more)
To Boldly Go – Star Treking – (Various Star Trek incarnations)
What I’ve Been Watching – August 2021 (Monk, The Tomorrow War, In Plain Sight, and more)
What I’m Watching – June 2021 (Get Shorty, Con Man, Thunder in Paradise, and more)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
What I’ve Been Watching – June 2021 (Relic Hunter, Burn Notice, Space Force, and more)
Appaloosa
Psych of the Dead
The Mandalorian
What I’m Watching: 2020 – Part Two (My Name is Bruce, Sword of Sherwood Forest, Isle of Fury, and more)
What I’m Watching 2020: Part One (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, Poirot, Burn Notice, and more)
Philip Marlowe: Private Eye
Leverage
Nero Wolfe – The Lost Pilot
David Suchet’s ‘Poirot’
Sherlock Holmes (over two dozen TV shows and movies)

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.

The Dark of the Soul (Tower Books, 1970)

Here’s another anthology I picked up because it had a Robert E. Howard story in it.

The Dark of the Soul, edited by Don Ward, A Tower book, 1970. Cover artist unknown. It contains a short story by Robert E. Howard called “The Horror from the Mound.” It’s a good story, although not one of Howard’s best.

This collection is more horror and gothic, magic and witchcraft, and not Sword & Sorcery (S&S). The stories are atmospheric but maybe slow for modern audiences. Here are my thoughts.

1. Introduction by Don Ward. Gives some context to the stories but probably wasn’t needed.

2. “The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard has the highest level of action in the collection, and is genuinely creepy.

3. “The Muted Horn” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis doesn’t have any action and is not my cup of tea.

4. “Mrs Amworth” by E. F. Benson was also slow, with a long setup that could mostly have been cut.

5. “Song of the Slaves” by Manly Wade Wellman is a long way from this author’s best work.

6. “The Ash Tree” by M. R. James is a creepy piece. James didn’t beat around the bush getting to the heart of the tale and this is one of the better pieces in the book.

7. “Cool Air” by H. P. Lovecraft. I’m a big Lovecraft fan but this isn’t among his best stories.

8. “Taboo” by Geoffrey Household was a solid tale but maybe with too much unnecessary material.

9. “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a memorable tale from an author you don’t generally see in such collections.

10. “Smee” by A. M. Burrage is a good ghost story, though fairly slow.

11. “The Dressmaker’s Doll” by Agatha Christie was a surprise. I knew her from her mysteries but this was creepy and with a strong ending.

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a review of two Sword & Sorcery anthologies from L. Sprague de Camp. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.

The fifteenth annual Women in SF&F Month continues with three new guest posts this week, starting with a new essay tomorrow. Thank you so much to last week’s guests for another fantastic week! The new guest posts will be going up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, but before announcing the upcoming schedule, here are last week’s essays in case you missed any of them. All guest posts from April 2026 can be found here, and last week’s guest […]

The post Women in SF&F Month: Week 3 Schedule & Week in Review first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Art by Vladimir Logos

I’ve lost count of novels that involve some sort of magical college featuring adolescent misfits plucked from humdrum daily existence thrust into contests between good and evil, not to mention raging hormones.

Blame Harry Potter, though Rowling was building on the trope, not inventing it (c.f., in particular, A Wizard of Earthsea). She just got wildly successful with it. So why shouldn’t others also build on that success?

Granted there is nothing new under the sun; no one is irked that Maggie O’Farrell did yet another riff on a Shakespeare play with Hamnet. Even so, not to knock the whole dark academia thing, I can understand how some might sneer at yet another mystical schoolyard fantasy.

Sure, some are tapping into a built-in audience without trying to rise much above the hackneyed (c.f., example, Starfleet Academy, despite the presence of Paul Giamatti and Holly Hunter, though you could probably say the same about most of the Star Trek spinoffs, The Next Generation and Strange New Worlds notwithstanding). Most others expand the form (c.f., the aforementioned Hamnet).

Which brings us to The Library of Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw. A sort of middle finger to the whole Harry Potter universe.

The Library at Hellebore, by Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire, July 22, 2025)

Here’s how it starts.

When I woke up, my roommate, Johanna, was dead… the walls were soaked in effluvium. Every piece of linen on our beds was at least moderately pink with gore. The floor was a soup of viscera, intestines like ribbons unstrung over the scuffed wood.

So despite all the familiar elements — The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted, students with magical abilities, the titular library — we’re not in Kansas anymore. Hammering home the point that this is not a Harry Potter clone is when the headmaster says,

That we might be sorted into houses, a prospect so repellant the crowd spontaneously lost all fear of her and began groaning objections.

“I am just kidding,” she simpered among the thunderous murmurs. “Although the way you’re all complaining, I might have to make it happen.”

Though she retained her mask throughout, what mystique she possessed was lost in the wake of that awful joke.

While Hellebore might seem to connote humdrum existence in the netherworld (and maybe at some level Khaw intends to convey that), a hellebore is actually a poisonous plant, sometimes used in antiquity to treat psychosis. Indeed, our narrator, Alessa Li, hasn’t escaped a humdrum Muggle existence by being chosen to enroll in the institute; rather, she’s been kidnapped to prevent her powers from harming normal society.

Further distancing the novel from run-of-the-mill dark academia is that the Institute’s faculty aims to eat the student body. Now that’s dark.

Which brings us to the titular library, where Alissa and some of her surviving classmates — though hardly friendly allies — escape from professorial ravenous cravings. But there are no safe spaces even at this bastion of learning and knowledge as the monstrous librarian has her own carnivorous cravings.

The only lesson here is that of kill or be killed. Not in a Hunger Games kind of way. More like in an eat or be eaten Darwinian kind of way. Literally.

The horror genre is transgressive, meant to provoke revulsion in reminding us of bodily disgust, of psychological dislocation, of humanity’s animalistic nature. The horror of the Library of Hellebore is that “things like decency are nothing but human inventions. The cosmos bends nowhere except toward annihilation.”

David Soyka is one of the founding bloggers at Black Gate. He’s written over 200 articles for us since 2008. See them all here.

As You Like It speaks directly to the twenty-first century through its explorations of sexual…

The post Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” | A Fun-Loving Celebration Of Sexual Ambivalence appeared first on LitStack.

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Tor Books (March 3, 2026)

Length: 368 pages

Author Information: Website

I enjoyed Jenn Lyons’ Sky on Fire, so when I heard she was returning with another standalone novel which sounds right up my alley, I was immediately intrigued. But while Green & Deadly Things is an undeniably entertaining “in the moment” kind of book, it’s also not one that’s easy to breeze through. Despite being packed with action and big ideas, it also somehow feels lighter and surface-level than expected, never quite digging deep enough to leave a lasting impression.

The story follows Mathaiik, a young novitiate training with the Idallik Knights, an order devoted to protecting the world from the lingering threat of necromancy. But though he has spent years preparing, Math still struggles to control the magic required to complete his training to become a full knight. At the same time, he’s hiding a secret related to his family’s past and his own strange connection to plants. In a world where nature itself has become increasingly dangerous, Math’s ability to tap into its powers is something that is viewed upon with suspicion.

Then, an unexpected attack throws the Idallik Knights into chaos, leaving Math in a position to help uncover the truth behind the sentient vegetation that has suddenly turned hostile. Subsequently, he finds himself magically linked to a mysterious woman he awakens from beneath the order’s fortress. A necromancer from the long-lost era of the Grim Lords, Kaiataris may hold the key to understanding and ultimately stopping the unchecked wild magic driving these cycles of destruction. From there, the two are forced into an uneasy alliance as they flee from the knights and into the unpredictable wilderness, where the enemy is the very landscape around them.

Necromancy. Ancient magic. Killer plants. There’s a lot to like here. Lyon’s creative talents are something to be admired for sure, especially when it comes to world-building and magic systems. The integration of botanical horror into the epic fantasy framework is genuinely cool, giving readers some vivid and occasionally unsettling imagery as the natural environment comes to life and IT IS PISSED. There’s also a quiet sense of dread lingering just beneath the surface, because I guess there’s just something deeply unsettling about the inevitability of cyclical destruction.

That said, my biggest issue with the book involves its pacing and its lack of depth, in that it never quite slows down enough to let all its ideas breathe and settle. The plot is relentless, throwing the characters into one crisis after the other. While this rapid-fire development is what kept the pages turning, paradoxically it also made it more difficult to stay fully invested as events started to blur together.

The characters fall into a similar pattern. Math is a likeable enough protagonist, but he’s also tragically bland, an earnest figure caught between loyalty, truth, and his own feelings, like any standard fantasy hero pulled from a template. Kaiataris, meanwhile, offers a slightly more intriguing dynamic as an ancient necromancer who challenges everything Math believes. However, rather than fully exploring that conflict, the story quickly steers them into a romance, and a rushed one at that. It’s frustrating and it’s disappointing, because one feels that both characters deserve far more than simply becoming a checkbox for a romantic subplot.

Still, that’s not to say the book isn’t enjoyable. Lyon’s writing is approachable and easy to get into. The characters’ banter has plenty of sass and humor to keep things from getting grim. I also love the fact that it’s a standalone. As it was with Sky on Fire, it felt refreshing to read Green & Deadly Things knowing you’ll get a complete story in one volume. These strengths go a long way toward counterbalancing the novel’s weaknesses, which mainly come down to parts of the narrative feeling predictable or too convenient, and the relationship between the characters relying too heavily on proximity and magic rather than more organic development. Still, all this, along with its accessible tone which sits comfortably in a crossover space between adult and YA, makes this book a strong “entry into fantasy” kind of read.

In the end, Green & Deadly Things is a fun, fast-moving fantasy with lots of cool concepts and an easy reading style, but while reading it, I also couldn’t help but feel a nagging sense that it’s reaching for something a little deeper, a little more. Regardless, it remains accessible and entertaining, a good standalone that will probably work best for readers looking for a lighter entry point into fantasy rather than something more complex or layered.

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Veronica G. Henry! Her short fiction includes “Lessons in Virtual Reality for Wayward Women” in Many Worlds and “A Terminal Kind of Love” in FIYAH Literary Magazine. She is also the author of the historical fantasy novel Bacchanal, which was a Manly Wade Wellman Award finalist in 2022, and the near-future fantasy books in The Scorched Earth duology, which begins with The Canopy Keepers. Her latest novel is The People’s Library, a science […]

The post Women in SF&F Month: Veronica G. Henry first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Neil R. Jones

Neil R. Jones was born on May 29, 1909 in Fulton, New York, the youngest for four children. He has stated that the first science fiction novel he read, in 1918. Was Will N. Harben’s The Land of the Changing Sun, a lost world novel, which led him to the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

His first published story, “Vengeance of the Ages” was published in his high school yearbook in 1926, with a second story, “The Meteor of Fate” appearing the following year.

“The Death Head Meteor,” was his first professional publication, published in the January 1930 issue of Air Wonder Stories and is believed to contain the first appearance of the word “astronaut.” He had previously sold the story “The Electrical Man,” but it didn’t appear until May of that year in Scientific Detective Monthly, earning him his first cover.

January 1930 Air Wonder Stories, Cover by Frank R. Paul

One of the stories he had submitted to Gernsback was “The Jameson Satellite,” which kicked off a series of stories about Professor Jameson. When his payment for “The Electrical Man” was less than expected because Gernsback declared he had charged Jones for editorial preparation, Jones decided to submit the revised story to T. Conor Sloane at Amazing Stories. The story introduced the cyborg Zoromes, who featured in subsequent Jones stories about Professor Jameson.

Another innovation Jones introduced was the idea of a planned out, reasonably coherent future history, focusing on the cult of Durna Rangue from the 24th through the 25th centuries and which also tie in to the stories about Professor Jameson, although those are set in the extremely far future. The Jameson story “Time’s Mausoleum,” however, includes time travel to the period of Durna Rangue and refers to events there and was published prior to most of those stories’ publication.

Between 1930 and 1942, Jones published 38 stories and a two part serial, with only about eight stories published after 1942. On May 2, 1942, Jones was drafted into the army as part of the war effort, becoming Corporal Neil R. Jones. He was deployed to North Africa, serving in Morocco and Algeria before participating in the invasion of Sicily. He was also part of the D-Day invasion.

Interplanetary board game

While in England during the war, Jones married Rita Rees on June 19, 1945 in London. The couple returned to the U.S. in the fall of that year and Jones was mustered out of the army in October. Having a wife to support now, he apparently found more traditional jobs working for the New York unemployment office and possibly other book keeping positions.  IN 1946, he also invented a board game called Interplanetary during this period, which he may have sold privately. Apparently only four copies are known to exist.

On September 29, 1964, Rita was found by a neighbor with her throat cut. She died in the hospital and an investigation declared it was  self-inflicted wound and that she had been suffering health issues. Although some of Jones’s stories were reprinted, he had few new stories published after this point. He retired from the New York unemployment office in 1973. Sometime in the late 1970s, he remarried, to Leona Tice, who survived him.

Jones died on February 15, 1988 and is buried in Mount Adnah Cemetery in Fulton, New York.

Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Paranornal Mystery
Length: 4 hours and 55 minutes
Publisher: Sittin’ on a Goldmine Productions LLC
Release Date: February 28, 2022
ASIN: B09TLF5FJ1
Stand Alone or Series: 4th book in the Mitzy Moon Mysteries series
Source: Bought on Audiobook
Rating: 4/5 stars

“Mitzy Moon’s clairvoyant abilities are growing, but she never predicted arson. After waking to a towering inferno and loading her mentor into an ambulance, she thought things couldn’t get worse. But when the sheriff links her father to the blaze, she’s forced to take the case.

Coming up empty on love and leads pushes Mitzy to unnecessary risks. Now her otherworldly helpers, a nosy Ghost-ma and a fiendish feline, are the only ones who can save her bacon. But with break-ins, Bingo, and big storms stalling out her investigation, she may not be able to keep her dad out of jail.

Can Mitzy dig up the right clues, or will she fall for a sinister plot that puts her six feet under?”

Series Info/Source: This is the 4th book in the Mitzy Moon Mysteries series. I bought this for audiobook.

Thoughts: This was a well written book in the Mitzy Moon Mysteries. I do think that this book is better written than the previous books were. Mitzy is starting to really grow on me as a character and I enjoy many of the side characters as well. The mysteries are well done, and the supernatural elements are subtle but getting more intriguing with each book.

Mitzy wakes up to find the building next to the bookshop on fire and a dead body is found in the blaze. Of course, Mitzy’s father is linked to the incident. Mitzy must work double time and use all of the illegal scrabble facts she learned from her Ghost-ma to solve the mystery and make sure the truth is known.

While this series is a bit too fluffy for me at times, I am growing to enjoy it. I originally picked up the first three book set for audiobook because I was looking for a 4-5 hour audiobook I could read on my monthly road trips for work, which are about 4hrs total (there and back). This whole series has been a easy, quick listen that I don’t have to focus on too hard.

Initially I was not a fan of Mitzy, but she is rapidly maturing and growing as the series continues. She’s learning from her mistakes and really starting to put her newfound fortune to great use. I still enjoy some of the side characters a bit more than Mitzy but I am starting to really like Mitzy as well. We learn a bit more about her background in each book and she starts to show a bit more emotion and vulnerability as well.

There is a well-done mystery here. You have the main mystery with the building that burned down and the body found there, which I enjoyed. However, the side stories around Rory coming to town and Mitzy’s powers growing also both make progress as well. I love a good mystery that has a contained story and progresses a larger story that spans multiple books as well.

The narration for this is well done. There are a couple of small incidents where the narrator seems to confuse voices for a moment or two, but overall, this is easy to listen to and is done well.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I thought this was the most enjoyable book of the series so far. I am really growing the love Mitzy and continue to enjoy all the side characters. I like the shorter mysteries in each book but enjoy that the broader story behind Mitzy’s powers is making progress as well. I look forward to the next book in this series, “Charms and Firearms”.

Arcane Arts and Cold Steel (Pulp Hero Press, December 24, 2025)

From History to Writing Sword and Sorcery, Pulp Hero Press has us covered

In 2019, Pulp Hero Press published Brian Murphy’s Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, which was notably covered by David C. Smith (link to review) and John O’Neill (link) on Black Gate. O’Neill highlighted that Brian Murphy was one of the earliest contributors to Black Gate, from way back in 2012! Six years have passed since the publication of Flame and Crimson; whereas the subtitle and focus of that was a history of Sword & Sorcery (S&S), Pulp Hero Press just followed with a sequel focused on writing it, penned by David C. Smith with a foreword by John O’Neill.

This post covers the complementary book Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (Pulp Hero Press 2025, 298 pages).  Greg Mele recently posted a Black Gate article on how this book is The Literary Sorcerer’s Toolkit; read that to learn more about the author.

The Red Sonja series by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney (Ace Books, December 1981-May 1983). Covers by Boris Vallejo

In short, David C. Smith (Wikipedia page) is a writer of horror, historical, and suspense fiction, and is also a medical editor and essayist. He is best known for his heroic fantasy novels (i.e., Oron and the Attluma books), including his collaborations with Richard L. Tierney featuring Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonja heroine. He has written plenty of nonfiction, too, and won the 2018 Atlantean Award from the Robert E. Howard Foundation for Outstanding Achievement, Book, for Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography.

Read this to learn the contents of the Arcane Arts and Cold Steel in more detail.

Frankly, it feels like John O’Neill has been moderating a panel on Sword & Sorcery since 2019, Brian Murphy covered the history of S&S, while David C. Smith covered writing perspectives, and Pulp Hero Press captured the transcript in book form.

Let us quickly recap some of Flame and Crimson to set up Arcane Arts and Cold Steel content.

What Sword-and-Sorcery is, and What it is Not

Brian Murphy opened with a chapter defining “What is Sword-and-Sorcery” before following with eight chapters on the linear history of it. He quoted David C. Smith from the very beginning!

We can give you clues to what it is — and what it is not. It is not high fantasy. High fantasy dresses up life and offers comfort; it is romantic. Our fiction is dark, often very dark, in the same way that unsettling dreams are never far from nightmares, and not at all comforting.
– David C. Smith, “Introduction,” Swords of Steel

Murphy’s Base S&S Elements (general, historic expectations of S&S):

• Men (and women) of action
• Dark and dangerous magic
• Personal and/or mercenary motivations
• Horror/Lovecraftian influence
• Short episodic stories
• Inspired by history
• Outsider heroes

David C. Smith reviewed Flame  & Crimson

At long last, we have a history of the sword-and-sorcery genre, and a very welcome and erudite study it is. Brian Murphy is to be commended for his honest appreciation of our frequently dismissed and often mocked genre. He intelligently surveys the expanse of the sword-and-sorcery field warts and all, low points and high, putting the genre into its proper literary perspective.

To present a linear history of the sword-and-sorcery genre is, in fact, to dissect a Yggdrasil of many branches, which is precisely what Murphy has done here…

He bookends his study with two important chapters, with his initial question “What is Sword-and-Sorcery?” ultimately addressed in the final chapter, “Why Sword-and-Sorcery?” In between, he takes us on a journey beginning with the roots of what is to come

Pulp Hero Press books. Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery by Brian Murphy (2019). Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction, David C Smith (2025). Arcane Arts and Cold Steel Motivated to Write, and Lie!

John O’Neill’s introduction to Arcane Arts and Cold Steel clarifies our loves of lies! He covers humans’ need for storytelling, converging from 17,000-year-old cave paintings summarizing wild hunting expeditions, to 5,000-year-old astronomical myths guiding the evolution of civilizations, to general fiction, and our need for heroic myths. To paraphrase, “there is potential inside us to accomplish things we can hardly dream of” and heroic myths fuel our fire.

O’Neill writes:

What tools do we have to teach [our children] to resist in the face of a terrible, implacable, or unexpected foe? You already know the answer. The answer is myth. Story. Fiction. Lies.

Expect a review of writing approaches, not a step-by-step S&S writing workshop

Arcana Arts and Cold Steel is about writing, but it is not a stringent workbook for the reader to follow. It is more of a compendium of reviews, collections of excerpts and quotes, and even reviews of other reviews. It is a free-form cookbook that simultaneously showcases over a hundred writers’ and reviewers’ work while categorizing examples for the writer to model. If you do not intend to write, you will walk away with a detailed survey of S&S literature and its fan base, and expand your perspectives of what S&S literature has become (and what it can be). Writers will gain access to countless examples of characters, plots, milieus, practical applications, and styles.

Over three years ago, I had the chance to peruse a draft of Arcana Arts and Cold Steel, and I encouraged David Smith to consider a more direct step-by-step guide. He replied kindly to me via email about that approach: “Who has the right to tell someone how to be their own writer?” Well, he had the credentials for that, but not the ego. Yet he was still driven to compose a book about writing S&S. In the end, the book is a splendid mix of David Smith’s insight blended with so many representations from the broader S&S community that it feels like an encyclopedic love letter to the entire fan base.  The Appendix Author Interview relates his development and approach toward the book.

Tales of Attluma by David C. Smith (Pulp Hero Press,‎ December 24, 2025). Cover by Tom Barber

You initially had the idea of having this be a book on how to write sword-and-sorcery stories.

I did. Who am I to tell anyone how to write? You sit down, you start, you learn by doing while referring to writers you like by dissecting how they’ve done what they’ve done. But my friends kept calling it Dave’s “how-to write sword-and-sorcery” book and made the case that offering guidance or ideas to readers would be helpful. Why write a book called “Writing Sword-and-sorcery Fiction” without giving people some ideas about actually writing sword-and-sorcery fiction? They were right. So I added the section doing that to complement the material in the main text.

I’d already come up with the ideas years ago on creating characters. Wrote it for an online writing group. So I had that, and when I reviewed it, I found some good common sense ideas in there. It wasn’t strictly prescriptive. I have a think skin whenever I hear a voice that sounds even vaguely imperative or prescriptive. Don’t tell me what to do! But when I thought of it as giving helpful advice or suggestions, I was fine with it. Started typing and went to town with a lot of ideas. So I hope those pages are worthwhile.

David C. Smith — Page 260-261

Arcane Arts and Cold Steel Contents 1. Sword & Sorcery Fiction: What it is and what it is not (pages 1-72)

This is a 70-page, condensed (and less chronological) version of Flame and Crimson‘s history that sets the stage for writing S&S.

2. Story Structure (pages 73-186)

• Character and Setting
• Must a protagonist be human?
• Flat and round characters
• Plots and scenes
• Style, voice, and tone
• Theme

3. The New Edge: Current Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (187-229)

In this section, David Smith surveys the rapidly diverging contemporary flavors of Sword & Sorcery. Howard Andrew Jones (HAJ, our beloved champion of S&S and its fan base, who passed in January 2025) coined the term “New Edge” to capture a rebirth of sword and sorcery. In 2008, as Managing Editor at Black Gate, HAJ posted his ‘manifesto’ regarding a resurgence brewing in Sword & Sorcery fiction: Honing A New Edge Part 1 & Part 2  (these originally appeared in the introductory editorials  Issue 3 & 4 as “The New Edge”).

This sentiment resonated with many authors and editors, and a decade after its posting, directly inspired the creation of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine (though editor Oliver Brackenbury has a slightly different definition than that of HAJ, read Oliver’s interview at BG for more).

4. Final Words

• Appendix I: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery  Fiction (p231-252)
• Appendix II: Recommended Reading (p253-256)
• Interview with the Author (p257-264)

More David C. Smith on Writing S&S

As complete as Arcane Arts and Cold Steel is, there is more in David Smith’s head to tap. As an editor and literature guru, he has keen takes on syntax, which he sprinkles throughout the book. I privately hoped for a reprint, or relook, of his “The Writer’s Style: Sound and Syntax in Howard’s Sentences” (published in The Dark Man, February 2013). That essay, like many of The Dark Man (The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies)‘s articles, delved into Robert E. Howard’s writing. Reading Smith’s Arcane Arts and Cold Steel motivated me to reread Smith’s article which dissects the Father of S&S’s syntax:

• Natural Order of Sentences and Plain Style
• Alliterative Devices, Conventional Phrases, archaic Flourishes, and Diction (poetic
• Color
• Use of Present Tense (mixed with past)

“You sit down, you start, you learn by doing while referring to writers you like by dissecting how they’ve done what they’ve done.”
— David C. Smith

S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books and interviewing authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.” He has taken lead roles organizing the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium (chairing it in 2023), is the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group, and was an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As for crafting stories, he has contributed eight entries across Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series, and has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies. He independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction; short stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone Amateur S&S Magazine, Swords & Sorcery online magazine, Rogues In the House Podcast’s A Book of Blades Vol I & II, DMR’s Terra Incognita, the 9th issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Savage Realms Magazine, and Michael Stackpole’s S&S Chain Story 2 Project. 

 

 

 

LitStack Spots We’ve spotted a few other titles we want to add to our TBR…

The post Spotlight on “Homebound” by Portia Elan appeared first on LitStack.

 

The Wonder Engine (Clocktaur War #2)by T. Kingfisher
What is it about:Pull three people out of prison--a disgraced paladin, a convicted forger, and a heartless assassin. Give them weapons, carnivorous tattoos, and each other. Point them at the enemy.
What could possibly go wrong?
In the sequel to CLOCKWORK BOYS, Slate, Brenner, Caliban and Learned Edmund have arrived in Anuket City, the source of the mysterious Clockwork Boys. But the secrets they're keeping could well destroy them, before the city even gets the chance...
What did I think of it:This was an entertaining read and a mostly cool conclusion to this duology.
I absolutely loved Grimehug, the gnole who joined Slate and her team in The Clockwork Boys. He and the other gnoles are my favorite of the creatures in the Clocktaur world.I also really liked Learned Edmund and Brenner.The story was fun and exciting as well. I was eager to find out how our band of misfits would deal with their predicaments and how they would complete their mission.
But the Romance...
I loved Slate, but Caliban...I know which Knight Commander inspired Caliban, and I can say that Caliban is just as annoying as I find that particular Knight Commander, so well done, I say.And mostly the romance is cute and sweet, and I might even have been satisfied with it, but near the end of the book something happens that for me would have meant the end of the relationship or should have had at least a different aftermath then it got. Now the Romance to me ended with a lopsided relationship that I don't think will last.
All that said: the overall story was still tons of fun, so this book will be added to my growing T. Kingfisher collection.
Why should you read it:It's a really fun and entertaining Fantasy read.

 

Buy The Fake Divination Offense

FORMAT/INFO: The Fake Divination Offense will release on May 19th, 2026 from Bramble Romance. It is 336 pages and available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: It's time for a new chapter in Orok's life. He's starting the rawball season on a new team, and ready to make a clean break with the Church of Uzroth (patron god of aggression). But when Orok protects cheerleader Alexo at a bar, the Church of Uzorth approaches Orok and Alexo with a proposal: be part of a fake relationship for the season to give the Church a needed PR boost, and they'll sponsor Alexo off the bench and onto the main cheerleading squad. Orok's already attracted to Alexo and he can see how much the sponsorship would mean to the man, so he agrees to the deal. But while genuine sparks fly between Orok and Alexo, Alexo has dangerous secrets in his past - ones that threaten much more than a simple sponsorship.

The Fake Divination Offense is an adventure-filled fantasy sports romance that's about all kinds of love: self-love, platonic love, and yes, romantic love. Main character Orok is a half-giant, raised in a church that believes its followers should resolve all conflict through physical violence and posturing, and should always be the alpha in the room. (Quick Note: Although Orok struggles with his church in this book, this is a queernorm world, and none of his struggles have the slightest thing to do with homophobia.) While Orok doesn't follow his church's tenets, he also wrestles with his own belief that relying on his friends just drags them down. He shouldn't bother them with his problems, he should be strong enough to deal with them on his own. Learning to accept his friends' help is just one journey this quiet giant goes on.

What's nice about this romance is that although it's a fake-dating story, from the jump Orok makes it clear to Alexo that he's interested in a real relationship. There's no dancing around what's pretend and what's real; the two have frank conversations about their feelings and what their boundaries are. That doesn't mean there aren't secrets or that their relationship is perfect. But as someone who hates when miscommunication is used, it was nice to not have to deal with "is any of this real?" type story-lines.

Speaking of not-perfect, Orok is a possessive person by nature. While he is constantly checking in on Alexo and his wants and boundaries, Orok is also the kind of person who sees the person he loves and thinks "this person is MINE, I will protect them at all costs." Naturally, Alexo has been written as the kind of love interest who is fine with this dynamic, but if possessiveness isn't your cup of tea, you might bounce a little on this. But as Alex is in a certain amount of danger throughout the story from nefarious individuals, it's a dynamic that does make sense, as Orok will do whatever it takes to keep his love safe, whether it's sucking up to people he doesn't like or physically defending Alexo from a villain.

I did also enjoy the fantasy sports aspect of the storyline. Orok plays a fantasy sport called rawball (the name is a play on a D&D term) that vaguely resembles football if magic was allowed. The rules of the sport aren't important; what IS important is Orok's journey to integrating with his new team. After a bad experience with his previous team, Orok is constantly looking for his teammates to undercut him, ignore him, or outright attack him. Learning to let go of past social traumas and to open up to his teammates is part of Orok's own growth, and a story I really enjoyed watching.

The Fake Divination Offense is another lovely story of love, healing, and acceptance from Sara Raasch. I've really enjoyed this romance duology and look forward to checking out more of her work in the future!

 

Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy, edited by L. Sprague de Camp
(Pyramid Books, December 1963). Cover by Virgil Finlay

Here are two more Sword & Sorcery anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Both are from Pyramid Books. Swords & Sorcery is 1963, with interior illustrations by Virgil Finlay. ISFDB indicates the cover is by Finlay as well, although it looks to me very much in the cover style of the second book, The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967), where the cover is attributed to Jack Gaughan. Some of the experts who visit this page probably know the truth.

1. Swords & Sorcery is a nice collection. It contains “Shadows in the Moonlight” (Conan) by Robert E. Howard, and stories by Poul Anderson (the excellent “Valor of Cappen Varra”), Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd, Gray Mouser), Kuttner (Prince Raynor), Lord Dunsany, C. L. Moore (Jirel), Clark Ashton Smith, and Lovecraft (“The Doom that Came to Sarnath”). The introduction on “Heroic Fantasy” by de Camp tends to piss some people off that I know, although I’m not one of those particularly. It suggests that S&S is purely escapist reading. I think it does make for a good escape from life’s mundanities but there’s more to it than just that.

The Fantastic Swordsmen , edited by L. Sprague de Camp (Pyramid Books, May 1967). Cover by Jack Gaughan

2. The Fantastic Swordsmen is also a pretty good collection, with stories about Conan, Elak, Brak, and Elric, along with a few new items. The cover shows us Brak. The Conan story is one that de Camp finished from a Howard outline and isn’t terribly strong. There’s also a very early story by Robert Bloch, which, while well written, shows his lack of storytelling experience at the time.

Fantastic Swordsmen also contains:

“Tellers of Tales” an intro by L. Sprague de Camp
“Black Lotus” by Robert Bloch
“The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth” by Lord Dunsany
“Drums of Tombalku” by REH and L. Sprague de Camp
“The Girl in the Gem” by John Jakes (Brak)
“Dragon Moon ” by Henry Kuttner (Elak of Atlantis)
“The Other Gods” by H.P. Lovecraft
“The Singing Citadel” by Michael Moorcock (Elric & Moonglum)
“The Tower” by Luigi De Pascalis, who also wrote an Afterword

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a review of The Imaro Saga by Charles Saunders. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Shay Kauwe! The Killing Spell, her upcoming novel that follows a young Hawaiian woman in a future with language magic, will be released on April 14 in the US and April 23 in the UK. Her book has received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly, which called it a “smart and satisfying urban fantasy debut [that] combines gripping mystery, tantalizing romance, and sharp cultural critique.” I’m delighted she’s here today to discuss […]

The post Women in SF&F Month: Shay Kauwe first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Here are seven Author Shoutouts for this week. Find your favorite author or discover an…

The post 7 Author Shoutouts | Authors We Love To Recommend appeared first on LitStack.

 

He interjects, 'And this is my mate, Jake. He was meant to come dressed as you, actually, but had a wing malfunction.'
(page 184, Do You Ship It? by Beth Reekles)

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, previously hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: - Grab your current read - Open to a random page - Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) - Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their  TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Young Adult / Dystopian

A virus has turned the planet into a dystopian wasteland. After their father is bitten Dayna and Pax venture out after hearing the promise of a vaccine. What they find are religious fanatics, deviants and a group who have decided they are in charge and will crush anyone who stands against them. 

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Day of Now reminded me of so many books. I can see reflections of the John Wyndham classic, The Day of the Triffids, a book I last read in the late 1970s by Robert C. O’Brien, Z is for Zachariah and more recently a book by A.M. Geever, Love in an Undead Age. It’s all of those books and it’s none of them. I really hope young people read this one because I think it has the potential to be something they will remember reading in 50 years just like I remember reading Z is for Zachariah when I was young.