Fantasy Books

F. Anstey

Thomas Anstey Guthrie was born in London on August 8, 1856. He attended King’s College School and studied at Trinity Hall in Cambridge. Over the course of his career, he used multiple pseudonyms, including Hope Bandoff, William Monarch Jones, and the one most associated with his genre work, F. Anstey. He had meant to publish under his first initial and middle name, but a typo rendered the initial F and he elected to keep it.

Anstey studied law and briefly practiced beginning in 1880, but gave it up to write, with numerous short humorous pieces appearing in Punch. He was also known for writing humorous novels, the most famous of which, Vice Versa, originally published in 1882, was adapted into a play by Anstey in 1883. He similarly adapted several other of his novels and short stories into plays, as well as adapting multiple of Molière’s works into English.

The Strand, December 1905

His novels and short stories are explorations of normal, bourgeois English life when they are touch by elements of the fantastic and magic. Many of his stories show the influence of William S. Gilbert, not only his plays like The Sorcerer, but also his short stories and The Bab Ballads.

Anstey anonymously published the story “The Wraith of Barnjum” in the March 1879 issue of Temple Bar, reprinting it under his byline in his 1884 collection of short fiction, The Black Poodle and Other Tales. His stories not only appeared in Punch, but in other Victorian magazines, and as Anstey built a reputation for incorporating magic into his stories, he would sometimes use that reputation to subvert the readers’ expectations by hinting at the possibility of magic, but writing a story without any fantastic elements.

His novels The Brass Bottle, The Tinted Venus. The Man from Blankley’s, and Vice Versa have been filmed multiple times, with two versions of The Brass Bottle filmed during Anstey’s lifetime (1914 and 1923) and The Man from Blankley’s released in 1930 and 1934. The earliest version of Vice Versa filmed in 1916 and The Tinted Venus in 1921. Vice Versa was also filmed in 1948 featuring a sixteen year old Petula Clark, and in 1988, starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage. It was also adapted for television at least four times.

Popular throughout the Victorian period, writing for adults and children, his style of writing influenced authors who would follow him, and his style became known as Ansteyan fantasy. However, the Edwardian era was not as enamored in his style of Victorian writing or morality and, while his writing remained influential on other humorists who followed, such as P.G. Wodehouse, his general popularity waned.

Guthrie died on March 10, 1934. He is buried in St Peter Churchyard in East Blatchington in East Sussex.

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: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 492 pages
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Release Date: November 2, 2021
ASIN: B08VNWJTXT
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 5/5 stars

“The realm of Azenor has spent years plagued by a curse. Every new moon, magic flows from the nearby mountain and brings nightmares to life. Only magicians—who serve as territory wardens—stand between people and their worst dreams.

Clementine Madigan is ready to take over as the warden of her small town, but when two magicians arrive to challenge her father for his domain, she is unknowingly drawn into a century-old conflict. She seeks revenge, but as she gets closer to Phelan, one of the vexingly handsome young magicians, secrets—as well as romance—begin to rise.

Clementine must unite with Phelan to fight the realm’s curse, which seems to be haunting their every turn. But will their efforts be enough to save Azenor from the nightmares that lurk around every corner.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook from Kindle Unlimited.

Thoughts: I have been a fan of many of Ross’s novels, and this is one of the few I hadn’t read yet. Previous books I have read by Ross are “Sisters of Sword and Song” ( loved it), The Queen’s Rising (okay), Wild Reverence (loved it), and the Letters of Enchantment duology (loved it). I ended up really loving this book as well. I loved the creative world here; this was very well written and easy to read. I thought the magic in here was especially intriguing and would have loved to learn more about the magic system.

Clementine (Clem) is training under her father to become the Warden of her small town. The Warden protects a town from the curse of the Nightmares of the residents that come alive every new moon. Clem’s future takes an odd turn when two magicians arrive to challenge her father for his domain. Clem finds herself drawn into a past and conflict that she never knew existed. She is forced to uncover the truth behind many lies and tell many lies of her own if she is going to survive the path forward.

I absolutely loved this world where Nightmares comes alive and wardens must protect people against them. It is a fascinating curse to have on a world and the magicians that fight this curse are intriguing as well. I thought the magic system here was interesting and would have loved the chance to hear more about it and understand it better. There are multiple kinds of magic in this world, and although we hear about them, we never really get to delve into how they work.

This starts as a revenge story, but quickly morphs into Clem trying to uncover secrets and mysteries from multiple directions. I really enjoyed all of the characters in here, including Clem. They are all very morally gray, none of them are really evil, but they make as many bad decisions as they do good ones. There is an enemies to lovers type of romance blended into the story, which I thought was well done. These are complicated characters, and making assumptions about any of them can be dangerous.

I enjoyed how the story wrapped up and always love a good fantasy that is contained to one book; however, I loved this world so much that I wanted more. I wanted to know what happens after all these events that take place and what happens to this amazing world in the future.

Ross is an amazing writer, and I find her writing both easy to read and incredibly beautiful. It always flows off the page so well.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I really loved this story. I loved the complex characters, the intriguing world, the mystery, and the magic. I thought the story wrapped up nicely but wanted more. I wanted to learn more about the aftermath in this world and more about how the magic worked. I always really enjoy Ross’s writing style; it flows so well, is easy to read and beautiful. I would highly recommend if you are looking for a stand-alone dark fantasy with a creative world and intriguing characters.

This Dark Muse News column continues its coverage of Beauty in Weird Fiction/Art via interviews (a series that began in 2014 on my author blog and was taken up by Black Gate in 2018). We’ve hosted authors such as Carol Berg, Anna Smith Spark, Darrell Schweitzer, CSE Cooney, Scott Oden, CS Friedman,  Bryn Hammond…. and many more… the latest being  Waclaw Traier.

Now we corner author Tim Waggoner, who has published over sixty novels and eight collections of short stories. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a two-time winner of the Scribe Award, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Splatterpunk Award. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

Waggoner has been getting a lot of press, and an award, for his novelization of the Terrifier movies that feature the serial killer named Art. You’ll learn more about that in this interview. Check out the juxtaposition of Art (the Terrifier on the Left, for clarity) and Tim Waggoner (innocent author on the Right). What wonderful hats they have!

Sword & Sorcery fans are also excited that Waggoner penned a Conan novel, just released from Titan Books, called Spawn of the Serpent God (Black Gate review ink). Being a fan of S&S and horrific art, I jumped at the chance to learn more about Tim Waggoner’s perspectives on craft.

Let’s learn from Tim Waggoner about how horror and beauty interplay! Who is Art? This interview series focuses on Beauty in Weird/Horror. You literally portrayed weird, horrific “Art” by novelizing the Terrifier 2 movie villain (named Art). Can you introduce folks to Art, and discuss how you expanded on the characters/lore (doubling the size of the script from Terrifier #2!).

Art is the scary clown archetype combined with the slasher archetype, and he’s an especially brutal one. He’s silent like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, but he’s far more expressive physically. He can be playful in a dark, sadistic way, like Freddy Krueger, and his kills are bloody and violent, like Leatherface. He has a childlike quality that can be strangely endearing, but when he drops his façade, we can see the cold, empty evil that lies at his core. All these aspects combine to make him the most effective horror villain to come along in years.

I’ve done ten novelizations at this point in my career, and a movie script doesn’t provide enough material for a full-length novel. Most editors want at least 80,000 words, and a movie script usually results in 40,000 to 50,000 words of prose. So you have to add quite a bit of material to create a full novel. I look for areas in the script that could be explored further. In Terrifier 2, Art has a van, but we don’t know how he gets it, so I wrote a sequence showing that. In Terrifier 3, we know that Sienna has spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, so I explored that aspect of the script. I also developed the supporting characters further, in order to make them seem more like real people and not just prey for Art. In both novelizations, I added details about what lies behind the mystery of Art – what exactly he is, where he came from, why he’s allied with what seems to be a demon, etc. I extrapolated these details from hints in the script since only Damien Leone, the writer/director, really knows what’s going on!

Well, we need to talk about the hats now!  Any comments on your fedora or Art’s top hat?

My wife and I attended the World Horror Convention in 2013 in New Orleans, and I brought a straw fedora to wear when we were wandering around the French Quarter so I wouldn’t get a sunburned head. People mostly ran into each other in the hotel lobby, so I was usually wearing my hat when people saw me. But during and after panels, people would ask me why I wasn’t wearing my hat, and I’d think, ‘Because I’m not outside!’ During the Bram Stoker Awards afterparty, I was talking with editor Leah Hultenschmidt. I told her how everyone kept asking me about my hat, as if it was a hall costume or something. Leah said I should keep wearing the hat at cons as a branding method. She said that since I was tall, people would always be able to find me because of the hat. “I challenge you to wear it for a year,” she said. I was reluctant, but I promised I would, and I did. I’ve worn it at conventions and author appearances ever since. I call it My Stupid Author-Branding Hat.

You covered effective monster-making on your blog regarding “Art Appreciation.” Do you think Art is an artist?

Art doesn’t display his kills the way some horror villains do, but he’s definitely creative in the way he commits his murders. And he’s creative when it comes to his clown/mime antics. I don’t know if he was named “Art” because he’s a kind of an artist, but it was something I leaned into when writing the books.

Any tips on creating “Monsters” in general? Is there any beauty in these creatures who typically villainize protagonists?

One of the best ways to create an effective monster is to drill down to what their core archetype is and then find a new way to express that archetype. For example, in the early sixties, Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho, based on Robert Bloch’s novel. Norman Bates is a version of the werewolf archetype – a human who transforms into a savage monster – recreated for the modern world. Using this technique, you can keep the power of an archetype without any of the baggage that might’ve become attached to it over the years through books, comics, movies, and TV shows.

You can also combine aspects of archetypes. George Romero and John A. Russo did this when they created the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. Their zombies are a combination of the living dead, ghouls that eat flesh, vampires that spread their contagion, humans that become alien, and a horde of monsters. Putting all these pieces together resulted in an iconic monster that’s become part of the pantheon of legendary horrors.

I do find beauty in the monstrous. It has a power and a dark majesty that I’ve been attracted to all my life as a reader and viewer. For some reason, the monstrous stimulates my imagination more than anything else. The great thing about the dark is that anything could be in it – anything at all.

You contributed to THE BEAUTY OF DEATH – Vol.1: The Gargantuan Book of Horror with a bunch of other horror masters. The collection’s title resonates with the topic of Beauty in Horror. What was your contribution?

I’m not sure why publisher Alessandro Manzetti used The Beauty of Death as a title. The anthology’s theme was horror stories relating to water. I wrote a story called “Fathomless Tides,” which deals with a couple having trouble in their relationship, along with the man’s fear of sharks. I often try to find the beauty in the grotesque in my horror stories, and I did this in “Fathomless Tides,” especially at the end.

“Writing in the Dark” is the name of your blog and your book(s) on how to write horror. Can you highlight your guides to writing?

Writing in the Dark is a book on writing horror. Writing in the Dark: The Workbook is a companion to the first book, which presents horror-writing exercises. Let Me Tell You a Story is a book about writing short fiction, using stories from throughout my career as examples. Just Add Writer is a book about writing media tie-in fiction. They’re all published by Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Muses and Mentors: from internationally known Garth Merengie (“The One Man Fear Factory”) to fellow once-Ohioan Dennis McKiernan, please discuss mentors and role models you have had.

There have been so many! In the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, “pay it forward” isn’t merely a platitude – it’s a core value. I was in a writers’ group with Dennis for several years, and I learned a ton about the craft and business of writing from him. He was kind enough to introduce me to writers and editors at various World Fantasy Conventions, and he also recommended me to his agent, Jonathan Matson, who took me on as a client. We worked together for nineteen years until his death.

Mort Castle has helped so many writers over the years, both as a professional writer and writing teacher. Before he immolated his career, Thomas F. Monteleone mentored dozens of writers, including me. Jonathan Maberry is so generous with his time and advice, and he’s supportive of all writers. Dawn Dunn taught me how to network at conventions. And I’ve learned a ton just by listening to writers on panels during conventions over the years and following them on social media. I learned a vast amount about being a professional from the late Mike Resnick, and I read Lawrence Block’s columns and books on writing religiously. I learned more about writing from him than anyone else. That’s why I dedicated Writing in the Dark to him.

I’ve been writing and teaching for forty years now, and I’ve done my best to honor my mentors and pay it forward to new writers, and I hope they, in turn, will do the same.

 

Any Horrific Beauty in your recent Conan Novel (just reviewed on Black Gate Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God?  

Sword and Sorcery fiction and horror go great together, so horror appears throughout Spawn of the Serpent God. There are serpent men, the evil god Set, giant spiders, an undead woman who was Conan’s girlfriend when he was younger, intelligent apes, ancient monsters, possession, shadow-snake zombies, a god-cursed warrior… Whether these horror elements are beautiful is up to the reader, I suppose. They’re beautiful to me, but then I wrote the book!

Tim Waggoner in 2019

“Years ago, a student asked me why I write horror. “You seem like such a pleasant person,” she said.

I looked into her eyes and smiled.

“Writing horror is what keeps me pleasant.

I meant it as a joke, but I think it’s as good an explanation as any, and probably the closest to the truth.”

There is a fun anecdote from your Kendall 2019 interview to explore more (excerpt above). How does horror bring joy/pleasantries?

There’s the carnival thrill-ride aspect. Scary stories are fun! There’s also a deeper emotional catharsis you can reach as you emotionally wrestle with some of the darkest aspects of human existence. Perhaps the greatest thing that horror can do is help us confront the most serious existential question that we face as mortal beings: We all know that we’re going to die eventually, so how do we go on living with that knowledge? How can we find meaning in a universe that is dying all around us? Characters in horror stories, whether they survive or not, contend with darkness, fight back against it… They keep living until their very last moments – and we can do the same. I find that idea very comforting.

One of your blog posts indicated that “the worst thing artists can experience is indifference to their work.” How do you balance being empathetic while intentionally disturbing the reader? 

I write with a close point of view, so readers can understand what a character is thinking and feeling, even during the most intense scenes. I believe in giving every character his or her dignity, even if they only spend a short time onstage. A number of reviews I’ve seen about my Terrifier books discuss how they’re even more intense than the movies. That’s because I stay in the characters’ point of view when they suffer and die, and I invite readers to do the same.

You have a fascination with dark fantasy. Can you explain your muse, like where it originated and where it takes you?

 When I was in my early twenties, I wondered why horror writers’ stories were so limited when they had the whole realm of the supernatural to explore, and I wondered why fantasy writers’ stories didn’t take more advantage of magic in their worlds. Their worlds and magic systems tended to be similar. I eventually ran across the work of Charles DeLint and Robert Holdstock, and their fantasy fiction had strong elements of horror. Bradbury did a much better job of this fusion in his fiction. I decided to explore blending horror and fantasy in my own work, and then in my mid-twenties, I began reading Clive Barker’s novels. Not only did he blend horror and fantasy to great effect, is novels had an epic scope and world-building as well. Shortly after this, Twin Peaks came on the air, and I loved it so much, I checked out all of David Lynch’s films and became a lifelong fan. I think Lynch’s work is an ultimate expression of fantasy fused with horror (along with mystery and noir elements).

Do you find beauty in your, or others’, weird fiction/dark art? Dissect an example.

One example I’d give is Richard Matheson’s short story “Born of Man and Woman.” I first read it in high school, and it had a huge impact on me. It’s written as a series of short diary entries from a monstrous child whose human parents keep them (a gender is never specified) locked up in the basement. The child has only rudimentary language and simplistic thoughts from having been isolated all its life. Sadness permeates the story, which is a metaphor for child abuse/neglect. It’s also the story of how monsters are made, not born.

Do you see beauty in the things that terrorize/scare you?

I’ve been a horror fan all my life, so horror media of any kind doesn’t scare me. The real horrors of the world can be too hard to look at straight on, like an eclipse, and horror lets us look indirectly at darkness, through imagery and metaphor. That’s what I think the true beauty of horror is.

Tim Waggoner in 2026

“The real horrors of the world can be too hard to look at straight on, like an eclipse, and horror lets us look indirectly at darkness, through imagery and metaphor. That’s what I think the true beauty of horror is.”

Have you any other muses besides writing (music, drawing, pottery…)? Can we share any of those here via images/links?

 Here’s a list of bizarre/surreal films I find inspiring:

• Brightwood
• Resolution
• The Endless
• Something in the Dirt
• Vivarium
• Titane
• Berberian Sound Studio
• The Editor
• Men
• Hostile Dimensions
• Koko-Di, Koko-Dah
• Strange Factories
• Caught
• Dark City
• Lost Highway
• Yellowbrick Road
• The Attic Expeditions
• In the Mouth of Madness
• Triangle
• Drive Back
• Dead End
• mother!
• Being John Malkovich
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• Dave Made a Maze
• Naked Lunch
• Jacob’s Ladder
• Mad God
• Gozu
• The TV show From

Any inside scoop we can share exclusively here (i.e., what is something most people do not know about you or your creative endeavors)?

My first published novel was an erotic novel called Dying For It, which I wrote for the long-defunct Foggy Windows Press. Foggy Windows’ brand was erotic stories about married couples. I wrote about husband-and-wife private investigators who have trouble keeping their hands off each other while they’re working. I couldn’t take the whole thing seriously, so I made the book a comedy, too.

Any new releases in 2026?

Winding Road Stories will be releasing a reprint of my novel Beneath the Bones, as well as a new sequel called The Gatherum. I’ll also have a new horror novelization out, but it hasn’t been officially announced yet. I’ll have a handful of short stories out in anthologies, too.

 

Tim Waggoner

Tim Waggoner has published over sixty novels and eight collections of short stories. He writes original dark fantasy and horror, as well as media tie-ins, and his articles on writing have appeared in numerous publications. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a two-time winner of the Scribe Award, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Splatterpunk Award. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. His papers are collected by the University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Studies Program.

• Four-Time Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author
• Website: timwaggoner.com
  Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/tim.waggoner.9
  Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
• Threads: @waggoner.scribe@threads.net
• Bluesky: @timwaggoner.bsky.social
• YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZEz6_ALPrV3tdC0V3peKNw

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.

 

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Love, Lies, and Ley Lines (The Fast & the Fae #1)by Jeffe Kennedy
What is it about:It’s been years since the infamous smuggling team of Bandit and Goldilocks thumbed their noses at the fae authorities, running the priceless magical pixie dust desired by everyone from hedge witches to the storied magic academies. No one in the human principalities controlled by the fae can work even the simplest spells without the stuff. And without fae magic, humans will find themselves back in the dark ages of disease and fast mortality. But the enigmatic fae keep a tight grip on their monopoly of pixie dust, charging extortionate prices at their whim.
Bandit has been doing her best to get by on her racing wins and the quick thrill of one-night stands while her former partner and best friend, the powerful sorceress known as Goldilocks, is off playing house and having babies. But when Bandit gets the offer of a lifetime, she convinces Goldilocks to come out of retirement for one last, hugely profitable gig.
And if the Bandit picks up a mysterious and seductive hitchhiker fleeing his wedding, well that just adds a bit of spice to the job. When he refuses to tell her his name, she dubs him Prince Charming and only regrets that she won’t have time to find out more about her enticing companion—and what he looks like under those fancy clothes.
As the Bandit and Prince Charming run distraction for Goldilocks and her precious haul, they face untold dangers penetrating the arcane fae realms.
All for gold, glory, and maybe even true love.
What did I think of it:Do you even need to ask?!
Jeffe Kennedy isn't my favorite author for nothing: this book is yet another winner!
This book had Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves vibes, but did it so much better in my opinion. They absolutely should make a movie based on Love, Lies, and Ley Lines. I'd watch the shit of out of it while also rereading this book.
I absolutely fell in love with Cha & her best friend, had my doubts about Prince Charming as well as finding him super intriguing, and couldn't get enough of the cool world Jeffe created for this thrilling adventure.
You bet I finished this in one day and that I'm now eager for the next book!
Why should you read it:It's such a cool and delicious read!
Go Buy Here

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

Haven by Ani Katz

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Thriller, Science Fiction

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Penguin Books (March 10, 2026)

Length: 256 pages

Author Information: Website

Haven by Ani Katz was interesting and a little weird, in both good and slightly frustrating ways. It has the sort of premise I’m usually drawn to, kind of a mix of near-future science fiction and thriller elements, but at the same time, the story leans heavily into an uncanny, surreal atmosphere that leaves you with the nagging sense that something is off, even if you can’t quite put your finger on what.

The novel follows Caroline, who arrives at the island community of Haven with her husband, Adam, and their infant son, Gabriel. The past few months have been challenging, marked by the stresses of new parenthood and financial uncertainty while Adam searched for work. Things finally seem to turn around when he lands a position at a powerful tech company called Corridor. Though it means long hours and time away from his family, the promise of stability and security makes it all worth it. And with Haven serving both as the company’s base of operations and a summer retreat for its employees, the couple decides to take advantage of the opportunity to unwind and strengthen their bond. Besides, Caroline is curious about Adam’s new friends and colleagues, hoping to gradually integrate into their world.

But Haven quickly proves to be anything but relaxing. The community feels overly curated, the residents polite yet distant, and there’s something about the island’s culture that seems a little too polished to be genuine. Adam’s new colleagues are friendly enough on the surface, but beneath that geniality runs an undercurrent of detachment, their relationships both exclusive and vaguely performative. Caroline senses the tension, and even though she can’t fully make sense of it, she feels an odd pull toward these social dynamics. When Adam leaves for work, leaving her alone to take care of Gabriel, that temptation only grows. Then one morning, she wakes up to find the baby missing, and that lingering sense of unease suddenly snaps into something far more immediate and terrifying.

I want to reiterate how much I really liked the book’s concept here. However, the execution had a way of stumbling all over itself. The combination of tech culture, the seemingly idyllic isolation, and an almost cult-like elitism among the characters was compelling, but at times, it was like the plot was circling itself without knowing what it wanted to say. Something about control? Influence? Complicity? Caroline’s perspective adds to this haziness, because in a way, she is an unreliable narrator, filtering everything through her own anxiety, isolation, and fear that she might be missing something just out of reach. I will say this works wonders for the atmosphere, but when it comes to clarity? Nope, I am still very confused.

That same quality extends to the world-building. There are a lot of interesting ideas baked into Haven as a setting, this polished and almost artificial community shaped by Big Tech. Again, the vibes are spot on. There’s just enough strangeness in the residents’ behaviors, the manicured landscapes, the absurd commercials on the television, etc. to be appropriately creepy and off-putting. But at the same time, the details never fully coalesce, leaving you with questions about why some of these eccentricities even exist or how this world actually functions.

As an example, the inclusion of medically assisted suicide is another element that feels like it’s reaching for something weighty and provocative, but in reality, it is already something happening in some parts of the world, and the book’s presentation of it as shocking or ethnically extreme comes across as a bit overdramatized, adding to the sense that the story is gesturing toward themes that are big and profound without fully grounding them. Characters fall into a similar pattern. Caroline’s motivations are solid in theory, being a new mother who is navigating an unfamiliar environment. But as the story progresses, she drifts further from us, so that by the end her reactions feel increasingly untethered and harder to understand.

Even so, there was something about Haven that kept me reading. There are moments, especially after Gabriel goes missing, where the suspense is sharpened and the story starts to come together in a more satisfying way. However, the final sections deliver a resolution that, while tense and dramatic, feels a little rushed and leaves several of the novel’s bigger questions only partially answered.

All in all, Haven is one of those books that lingers in your mind more for its atmosphere and ideas than for a fully coherent story. It’s uneven, occasionally frustrating, and doesn’t quite deliver on all its promises, but at the same time, there’s a certain magnetism that made it hard to put down. If you’re drawn to stories that blur the lines between thriller and speculative fiction, there’s a lot here to enjoy, but don’t expect everything to be neatly tied up by the final page.

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Nine Goblinsby T. Kingfisher
What is it about:When a party of goblin warriors find themselves trapped behind enemy lines, it'll take more than whining (and a bemused Elven veterinarian) to get them home again.
Nine Goblins is a novella of low...very low...fantasy.
What did I think of it:This such a fun read!It's silly, funny, and touching all in one.
The story switches viewpoints between the goblins and Sings-to-Trees, an Elven veterinarian. I loved the goblins and their view of the world, but I will confess I loved Sings-to-Trees even more. He's on the receiving end of a lot of trouble, still he keeps going and stays helpful.The goblins get themselves in hot water as well, but they're tough and resourceful in a unique goblin way.
All in all this was a delight to read, and as promised when I read it last year: I got my trotters on the hardcover for this first of many rereads!
Why should you read it:It's a super fun Fantasy read!

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Cozy Fantasy
Length: 422 pages
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: February 3, 2026
ASIN: B0G3JRZX3B
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the MEOW series
Source: Borrowed ebook from Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 4/5 stars

“The winter solstice is coming, and with it, a reckoning.

Sable thought being the Shopkeeper meant serving coffee, shelving books, and managing a talking cat’s attitude. She’s made peace with the magic, even embraced her role as guardian to Indigo, the world’s most curious baby bookdragon. But as the solstice draws near, a magical teacher arrives at the shop’s door—someone from the Cat’s past who might hold the key to his freedom.

The Fates begin whispering to Sable through golden auras. Old bargains, made long before her time, surface with dangerous demands. And somewhere in the chaos of rearranging shelves, interrogating a cryptic teacher, and managing interdimensional customers, Sable has to figure out how to tell her mother she won’t be home for the holidays.

The secrets she’s uncovered can’t be ignored. And the Cat—mysterious, maddening, and more vulnerable than he’d ever admit—might be the key to everything, if only Sable can get him to trust her.

Coffee can only solve so many problems. But friendship, courage, and one very determined Shopkeeper might just be enough.”

Series Info/Source: This is the 2nd book in the MEOW series. I borrowed this on ebook from Kindle Unlimited.

Thoughts: I really enjoyed this second book in the MEOW series. The story moves a bit slow for me, but I am enjoying the characters and the concept of the MEOW. I like that the background story makes more progress here and I love learning more about Cat’s history.

Sable is continuing her contract as Shopkeeper for the Magical Emporium of Wares (MEOW). Every day is a new adventure as she helps Cat to serve different interdimensional visitors. As Solstice approaches, Sable is determined to make the holiday special for everyone at MEOW. Little does she know she might have magic of her own she needs to manage and learn.

I am not a huge fan of “day in life” type of reads, and this has a lot of that in it, those type of stories just move a bit too slowly for me. However, that being said, there are enough elements in here that I really enjoy that I am liking this series quite a bit. I love Sable and her constant positivity and willingness to confront each day like a new and amazing adventure. I love Cat with his tentative hopefulness and the baby Bookdragon full of insatiable curiosity. I am also really enjoying the unfolding of Cat’s past and the hints that Sable’s birth family is not exactly what she thinks they are.

I enjoy that we get little odd stories from day to day as well. The beings that show up at MEOW are varied and intriguing. I also enjoy the expansion and discovery of Sable’s own magic. This is a cozy, creative, and intriguing read.

The only thing I don’t enjoy is that the days can feel a bit repetitive despite the changing customers, and the story moves a bit too slow for my liking. However, that is a personal preference and I have always preferred my stories fairly fast-paced.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I am really enjoying this series. I love the characters, the unique premise, and how some of the mysteries behind Cat’s past and Sable’s magic are unfolding. I am still struggling some with the slower pace to this and the very “day in the life” feel. If you are looking for a cozy, creative, magical, and deliberately paced read, I would definitely recommend. I look forward to reading each book in this series, even though there are points during reading the book where I wish things would progress a bit quicker.

Warlocks and Warriors, edited by L. Sprague De Camp
(Berkley Medallion, January 1971). Cover by Jim Steranko

Warlocks and Warriors (1970) was edited by L. Sprague De Camp, who did quite a few anthologies around this time while also busy editing and rewriting Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales. It’s certainly a good collection, and quite varied, though not all these fit the heroic fantasy label associated with the collection. Certainly, not all are Sword & Sorcery (S&S). The cover is by the great Jim Steranko.

The anthology contains:

An intro by de Camp
“Turutal” by Ray Capella
“The Gods of Niom Parma” by Lin Carter
“The Hills of the Dead” by Robert E. Howard (a Solomon Kane tale)
“Thunder in the Dawn” by Henry Kuttner (Elak of Atlantis)
“Thieves’ House” by Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser)
“Black God’s Kiss” by C. L. Moore (Jirel of Joiry)
“Chu-Bu and Sheemish” by Lord Dunsany
“The Master of the Crabs” by Clark Ashton Smith (Zothique)
“The Valley of the Spiders” by H. G. Wells
“The Bells of Shoredan” by Roger Zelazny (Dilvish)

The Ray Capella story, “Tutural,” is set in Robert Howard’s Hyborian Age but is not about Conan or a “Clonan.” One might consider it fan work but it’s quite well written. Capella’s full name was Raul Garcia-Capella (1933 – 2010), and you’ll sometimes see his work under just Raul Capella.

Solomon Kane: The Hills of the Dead by Robert E. Howard (Bantam Books, March 1979). Cover by Bob Larkin

The Howard contribution, “The Hills of the Dead,” is one of his Solomon Kane stories. The Solomon Kane tales were written before REH started working on Conan and they feature a very different kind of hero. I like them a lot.

Moore’s “Black God’s Kiss” is a Jirel of Joiry tale and my favorite piece here. Henry Kuttner was married to C. L. Moore. His tale here is his longest piece about Elak, which is well worth reading. Fritz Leiber seemed to be in just about every anthology that appeared around this time with his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales. This is another one. Wells’ story here is fantasy rather than SF and quite fun.

Warlocks and Warriors, edited by Douglas Hill (Mayflower, 1971). Cover by Josh Kirby

A second, very different book with the title Warlocks and Warriors appeared in 1971. It was edited by Douglas Hill (1935 – 2007) and published by Mayflower books in London. It has a very simplistic cover, artist unknown, although the reflection in the knife is kind of cool. Hill apparently wrote a number of books of his own, though I haven’t read any.

After Hill’s short introduction we have the following stories:

“The Sleeping Sorceress” by Michael Moorcock (an Elric tale)
“The Curse of the Monolith” by Lin Carter and L. Sprague De Camp (Conan)
The Ogyr of the Snows” by Martin Hillman
“The Wages Lost by Winning” by John Brunner (The Traveler in Black)
“The Wreck of the Kissing Bitch” by Keith Roberts (The Ice Schooner)
“The Unholy Grail” by Fritz Leiber (The Gray Mouser)

I’d read “The Sleeping Sorceress” before. This is an early Elric and Moonglum story by Moorcock and is quite good. I’d also read “The Curse of the Monolith,” which is a Conan pastiche by Carter and De Camp. Not quite Howard’s Conan but it was an OK tale.

I also had previously read “The Unholy Grail” by Leiber. This tale recounts the earliest adventure of the Gray Mouser, of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fame. Not my favorite of the series, probably because I like the Fafhrd character better than the Mouser character.

The Traveler in Black by John Brunner (Ace Books, January 1971). Cover by Diane and Leo Dillon

What were new to me were the tales by Hillman, Brunner, and Roberts, and all three were quite good. Brunner, I know, of course. I’ve read a lot of his SF. This is a story of the “Traveler in Black,” definitely fantasy though not Sword & Sorcery. The Traveler is a kind of mixed angel/devil character with the power to grant people’s desires. I’d not previously read these tales. It was beautifully written but meandered until it got to the main plot.

Martin Hillman’s “The Ogyr of the Snows” is definitely S&S, and a well written piece. The hero is Conanesque but wins the day mostly by wit. According to the introduction, this tale was extracted from a “novel in progress” by Hillman, but it turns out Hillman was Douglas Hill’s pseudonym. I looked through a list of Hill’s books but am not sure which one this piece may have come from.

The Ice Schooner (Berkley Books, May 1987) and The Sleeping Sorceress (Lancer Books, September 1972), both by Michael Moorcock. Cover art: unknown, and Charles Moll

The greatest treasure in this collection is “The Wreck of the Kissing Bitch” by Keith Roberts. This tale is set in the world created by Moorcock for The Ice Schooner. The world was already beautifully conceived and Roberts does a fine job playing in the same universe. My favorite tale in the collection, concluding with a tense and exciting chase scene of sailing ships across the great ice seas.

I’ll be talking a lot about Moorcock down the line but above is a little tease in a picture of two of his books mentioned in this post (The Ice Schooner – cover artist unknown: The Sleeping Sorceress – cover by Charles Moll).

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a review of Swordsmen and Supermen, edited by Donald M. Grant. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.

Book Review: The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer

Buy a copy here - U.S | U.K.

Book links: Goodreads

BLURB: Follow the Rites...
Nothing less than the survival of humanity is at stake.

From Marcus Kliewer, a new “titan of the macabre and unsettling” (Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author), comes a supernatural horror about a young woman who accepts a caretaking job from Craigslist, only to discover the position has consequences far greater—and more dangerous—than she ever could have imagined.

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY:
Caretaker urgently needed. Three days of work. Competitive pay. Serious applicants ONLY.

Macy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention—it had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all—vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she's not exactly in the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for.

Besides, it’s only three days’ work…

Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness.

What starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property—and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between it, and the rest of humanity.

Follow the Rites...

Follow the Rites...

Follow the Rites...
AUTHOR: Marcus Kliewer is a writer and stop-motion animator. His debut novel We Used to Live Here began life as a serialized short story on Reddit, where it won the Scariest Story of 2021 award on the NoSleep forum. Film rights were snapped up by Netflix, and it was acquired by Simon & Schuster for publication even before it had been extended into a full-length novel. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Follow him on Instagram @marcus_kliewer for exclusive book updates / writing things / stop motion animation & a lot of pet videos.
Publisher: Atria Books  (April 21, 2026), Bantam (April 23, 2026)Page Count: 320 pagesFormats: hardcover, ebook, audio
REVIEW: I thought this was really clever.
It's one of those that does the jump scares well, and provides a compulsive story that gets more and more intense and heads to a bang of a finale. Before anything else though, be warned, it contains a protagonist who suffers from depression and has tendencies of suicidal ideation.
Macy has had a bad life so far, and there seems to be nothing bright lined up. She is unemployed, responsible for her younger sister after the unexpected death of their father, and everything she does only takes a turn for the worse. Until she finds a three day gig to take care of a huge mansion and follow strange rites to the T. The pay and bonus are unbelievable, so despite her sister's insistence to stay away, she accepts it.
The more I think about it, the more I think I like it. I want to say so much about this, but that will spoil it. It delivers well on the combination of horror with mental health. The main character can be annoying and seems to get more and more incompetent as the book progresses, which kind of is the point. It's a horrifyingly good metaphor for how downward spirals can be, when every action seems pointless and the only consistent feeling is that of being a failure.

After all, what is the more terrifying than your own mind working against you?

Alien Clay (Orbit, September 17, 2024). Cover design by Yuko Shimizu

Mushrooms in the cellar. Brood parasites. Puppet masters. Body snatchers. The Borg.

Resistance is futile.

But what, exactly, are we resisting?

Possession by alien entities into some kind of hive mind may have been inspired by studies of the social behaviors of ants; indeed, aliens are often depicted as bugs that threaten to unseat humankind’s self-awarded seat at the top of the evolutionary pyramid.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Allied Artists Pictures, February 5, 1956)

The invasion of body snatchers held particular appeal during the Red Scare of the 1950s and the supposed threat of sleeping Communist cells dedicated to destroying the American Way of Life (which was its own variety of hive mind) and instituting mindless collectivism (a fear to this day stoked by right wingers). The 1956 film about the pod people, based on the Jack Finney novel, is a classic depiction of insidious conformity and the inability of the individual to withstand it.

A trope that Adrian Tchaikovsky subverts in Alien Clay.

The first person narrator is Professor Arton Daghdev (whose last name is frequently mispronounced, something I expect the author as a fellow descendant of Polish ancestry also experiences). Daghdev is a dissident biologist challenging an academic orthodoxy demanded by the fascist Earth government termed the Mandate. For the “crime” of questioning whether humanity is the evolutionary pinnacle, Daghdev is sentenced to the exoplanet Kiln, a penal colony charged with investigating what appears to be the archeological remnants of an alien civilization.

For a scientist, such a punishment might seem to have an upside. There are two problem, though. The first is that any findings must adhere, any evidence to the contrary, to Mandate authorized dogma. More significantly, harsh environmental conditions on Kiln render any on site excursions extremely hazardous. Which is why they are using prison labor. Of which there is always a plentiful supply from a home planet bent on crushing those who don’t toe the autocratic line.

There was a time where I might have had trouble with this premise. Why would an authoritarian regime commit resources, even expendable resources, on a scientific mission for which conclusions are preordained with unclear benefits? But these days, with health policies determined by unsupported dictates and political correctness, it seems perfectly appropriate.

Alien Clay (Tor UK, March 28, 2024). Cover uncredited

Of course, once a revolutionary, always a revolutionary, except maybe when you question not only your own commitment and sufferance to the cause, but also who among you is likely to sell you and your comrades out. Or that your comrades might think you are the one doing the selling out.

So there is an attempted insurrection, one that is quickly smashed thanks to a betrayal. For his participation, Daghdev is removed from relatively safe bureaucratic chores conducted within the safety of the camp compound and assigned to Excursions, teams sent out to explore the alien ruins exposed to the highly infectious Kiln atmosphere. While they are issued some protective gear, they are prisoners, so expense is spared. Infection is expected.  A saving grace is periodic three-day decontamination to forestall contagion. A process that sometimes is withheld as punishment.

Should an Excursion team not return to camp within minimal “safety levels” and suffer long-term exposure to Kiln’s strangely recombinant biologics, as happens to Daghdev’s team, no rescue mission sent out. Excursions are also Expendables.

In another type of story, the infected rise to absorb the rest of humanity. Here is where Tchaikovsky flips the script. Infection leads not  to madness, but evolutionary jumpstart. Where the hive mind isn’t the embodiment of totalitarianism, but its enemy.

The alien clay here is actually human, on a planet named after an oven that transmutes clay into hardened finished material. A transmutation that has a ways to go before it can be considered finished.

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.

Other LitStack Spots Here are some other titles LitStack has spotted to add to your…

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No teaser from my current read today, but pictures of my newest arrival, just because it's pretty.
Slaying the Vampire Conquerorby Carissa Broadbent



Have you read it?What did you think of it?

Book links:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Publisher: Length: Formats:

Carrion Saints opens after the end of the world. The great cities are gone, only small towns, quiet hills, and monsters remain.

Crow is an immortal saint who looks like a monster and sometimes acts like one. She has wings, red eyes, and the weary patience of someone who has watched empires rise, fall, and rebrand. She arrives in a small village with a local monster problem. The monster, known as the Woman in the Hills, lives under a large magnolia tree and eats hunters. This arrangement has been going on for some time. The villagers are not thrilled, exactly, but they’ve adjusted. Crow has already fought so called Great Adversaries and so she accepts to slay the monster. The confrontation doesn’t go as planned.

Magnolia is a chatty severed head attached to a tree. She finds the one crack in Crow and pries it open. The dynamic between them works incredibly well. Magnolia chatters, taunts, philosophizes while Crow mostly endures. Sometimes she pushes back, but sometimes she can’t. She also wants to do the least harm possible, but the story keeps forcing her into situations where harm is unavoidable. 

I like Hiyodori’s writing, but sometimes I wish she condensed things more. There are long stretches of conversation between Crow and Magnolia that are conceptually interesting but start to circle the same ideas of power, choice, mortality, and what it means to be a saint. The philosophical back-and-forth feels overextended. 

The worldbuilding is intriguing but not fully explored. We hear about the other Great Adversaries, the long decline of the world, the strange ecology of monsters and saints. It’s compelling in outline, but much of it stays offstage. This keeps the story focused, which is good. It also makes the setting feel a touch abstract.

That said, the book makes two near-omnipotent beings arguing on a hill feel tense. Their conflict is about who understands the other’s weaknesses first. I’ll add that Magnolia is a great antagonist because she’s not frothing with rage. She’s amused. Curious. Almost affectionate in a warped way. Crow’s quiet fury and Magnolia’s gleeful prodding create a steady, uncomfortable tension. 

Emotionally, the book feels heavy. It’s about grief that never quite fades. About living so long that loss becomes sediment. If the book has a weakness, it’s that its pace can feel flat in the middle. The stakes are clear, but the story sometimes pauses to explain things rather than letting events reveal them. 

Overall, Carrion Saints is a strong Dark Fantasy that keeps things personal and intriguing throughout. It’s also my second book by Hiyodori and I’m becoming a fan.

Eric LaRocca is one of the cutting-edge voices of horror today (mid 2020s), known for uncompromising stories that defy boundaries of any kind. When I was provided the opportunity to review his novel Wretch after his publicist reached out to me, it was an easy yes, please. This was my first opportunity to read his…

Titles by Marie NDiaye Here are other titles by Marie NDiaye spotted by LitStack, including…

The post Spotlight on “The Witch” by Marie NDiaye appeared first on LitStack.

I LOVE the movie, Eddie and the Cruisers. I’ve seen the flick, about a short-lived Jersey bar band, at least a dozen times. And it’s got a terrific soundtrack by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown band. I like Cafferty more than I do the much more famous Bruce Springsteen, who he kinda sounds like. To each their own.

Eddie and the Cruisers was the #110 box office film of 1983. With a budget of $5 million, its domestic gross was $4.7. It was Embassy Pictures’ first ever try at distribution, and they pulled it from theaters after only three weeks. Needless to say (though I’m saying it anyways…) there was no international release. Pretty damn poor choice by producer Martin Davidson, who admitted he selected them – knowing they had zero experience – because they offered the most money.

Then it ran on HBO in 1984 and became a cult classic. I was part of that happening. On the Dark Side had charted at #64 when the movie came out. The HBO success prompted a re-release and it hit #7 on the Billboard 100 – and #1 on the mainstream charts. For a movie that nobody saw in the theaters, for the next three+ decades, EVERYBODY knew Eddie and the Cruisers. It was only in the past ten-ish years that I have started running across folks who have never heard of it. Truly a cult classic.

It’s adapted from P.F. Kluge’s novel of the same name. Kluge also wrote Dog Day Afternoon, which became a smash hit movie in 1975 (it made about 25 times its budget at the box office). A few weeks ago, I finally decided to read the book. I finished it in two days – and I worked on both days.

This was my first Kluge. There’s a lot more to this book than there is in the movie. Keep in mind I love that flick, so I’m not disparaging it. But they massively changed the tone of the novel. There’s a very different vibe. And I get why: it wouldn’t become a hit movie, ‘as written.’ Unless I specify otherwise, I’m talking about the novel from here on in.

The book is told from Frank ‘Wordman’ Ridgeway’s point of view: Tom Berenger’s character in the movie. He and the other characters are far more developed, which is essential to the story.

First off: this is much darker than the film. There’s murder. There’s a world-weary cynicism to Frank which reminds me a little of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. As in the movie, time shifts between the present and the past. And that’s thematically at the center of Frank’s narration. That summer on the Jersey shore, was a moment. There was a road of fame and accomplishment and…a life, ahead, for each of them. But a flaming car crash (no bridge involved in the book) detoured all of the Cruisers to back roads and other paths. Not shiny (a little Firefly for you, as I’m immersed in that ongoing story), Hallmark ones, either.

Frank walked away from music and became a high school literature teacher. Words and music. Eddie was the music, and to borrow from Don McLean, Eddie’s car wreck was the day the music died. Frank had only his words, now. Silent, bereft of their place. You can guess how receptive high schoolers were to his words, day after day. Year after year.

But as you move through the book, chapter-by-chapter, Kluge – somewhat subtly – shows that they are living lives with an echo of what could have been. Not of quiet desperation (well, Sal maybe). Beyond the ‘words and music’ scene which is repeated in the movie (and it’s brief, on screen and on the page), the book leads us in Frank’s wake as he moves through the shadows that part of his life, which he had left completely behind, are casting on him now. The echoes become louder, rising to a violent crescendo.

The differences from the movie are big enough that I don’t want to drop a bunch of spoilers. I already mentioned there’s a murder. And instead of Seasons in Hell and the lost master tape, it’s a search for secret recording sessions that only Wendell was at with Eddie. There’s an actual funeral for Eddie; his body doesn’t go missing after the accident.

As Frank digs deeper into the mystery of what happened at the mysterious Lakehurst sessions, he traces the paths which each Cruiser (it’s ‘Eddie and the Farway Cruisers in the book) went down after the band broke up after the funeral. All of their lives changed completely. Wendell didn’t take a fatal overdose while the band is still together. I think his fate is actually harder in the book. As Eddie (unrelatedly) says in the sequel movie, he got away by dying.

And it’s Frank reflecting on his own life, while he reconnects with the band members, which gives this book its depth, its weight. It’s gravitas. It’s not a wistful ‘what might have been.’ It’s more about the lesser lives that resulted for each of them, because Eddie was the heart of the body that was Eddie and the Cruisers. And when he died, that life as Cruisers died.

A little of it comes through in the movie. Fragments of the scene with Sal after his oldies band show, when he talks about how mad he gets at Eddie. There’s another layer to that. And Sal wanted to continue the band, with a look-alike. He’s done with all of them when they say ‘No’ and he’s forced to go down the ‘Holiday Inn Lounge’ oldies approach instead. That makes Frank visiting him again a dubious move, and as I keep saying, there’s more to it.

Or the walk with Kenny where he talks about Wendell’s drug overdose. Kenny is a womanizing party goer in the book. He becomes a married minister. When Frank visits him, and is told “It wasn’t all good stuff,” that’s just a few seconds on screen. But it furthers the mystery in the book. And again, there’s a lot involved with that.

These are just tidbits in the movie, but they’re part of the theme that weaves throughout the novel and holds it together. Kluge really was a good writer.

If you’re looking for happy stories, you’re in the wrong book. Frank doesn’t ‘find’ himself. Eddie doesn’t live happily ever after. People die (though not Wendell). The vibe is more like Hemingway than it is the movie.

Martin Davidson optioned the book, wrote, and directed the original movie. He wanted nothing to do with the proposed sequel. The second movie has zilch to do with Kluge and the original novel, other than Eddie Wilson was a Jersey rocker. Eddie and the Cruisers is a gourmet meal. The sequel is greasy fast food. Even the soundtrack is just okay, and I’m a big John Cafferty fan. I only watched Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives, once. Even writing this essay, I have no inclination to revisit it.

You know I’m a Pulp guy. I bristle when I see critics of the time dismiss it as garbage: not ‘literature,’ said with nose stuck up in the air. You’ve run across that dismissive attitude for some genre things you like. Fantasy fans had to put up with it before it became mainstream. I see it today with pretentious twits who like to say “Andor is Star Wars for intelligent people,” like being slow-paced and dull makes it better than the action-packed Mandalorian. I’d rather re-read Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, than watch an episode of Andor. That’s fine if you like it – but I have no use for people who think it’s on some higher plane than the rest of Star Wars. They’re the same type who looked down on Hammett, Louis L’Amour, and comic books.

So, acknowledging that I dislike those distinctions which use ‘a classification to look down on another one,’ the novel is more literature, than ‘just’ fiction. The fact that it brings to mind The Great Gatsby (which is mentioned more than once) and Hemingway, is indicative of that. It doesn’t make it superior to the movie. But it absolutely adds depth that got dropped in the film. It’s a fuller experience of the characters.

If you remember the “I like the caesura” scene, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that things are a bit high-browed, at least thematically. Frank is the book. Sal is the movie.

This is really a mystery novel, as the Lakehurst sessions become the central plot point. Many elements were transferred to the movie, but the tone is different. Be warned: it turns pretty dark at the end. And the movie tacked on the happy ending, which I like. But reading Eddie and the Cruisers is a different experience from watching it.

The fact that I tore through this read in two days tells you that I liked it. A lot. I prefer the movie because I’ve been a fan for decades, and it’s not as depressing. And I listen to the soundtrack on its own.

But Kluge is a good writer. The book moves along, and I was pulled into the story the longer it went on. Knowing what happens in the movie, I was curious where the Lakehurst sessions element was going. We definitely find out.

The premise that maybe Eddie’s not really dead comes along fairly late in the book. As I read this, I saw the actors from the film. But many of the scenes were different. So I saw them, but I wasn’t just replaying parts of the movie in my mind as I went on. The film changes what you’re reading a fair amount. And Ellen Barkin is actually an obnoxious young guy Rolling Stone reporter in the book. Kruge drops in a lot of the Garden State; not just where they lived and played. I imagine that Jersey-ites familiar with places from the sixties and seventies saw a lot they recognized. Lifestyle, and locations.

For me, Eddie’s “Monument to nothing” speech at the junkyard castle is one of the great scenes of the movie, and it presages what is coming. It’s based on a real place called the Palace of Depression, which was bulldozed in 1983. Those lines embody Eddie’s emotions and musical aspirations, and they fit the movie perfectly.

His speech is different in the book. His working title for his secret project is Palace of Depression – like the guy who fused a bunch of stuff together to try and make something useful. Even though it all came to nothing. But Eddie changes the title to Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman’s poetry. And that has a strand throughout the novel.

It wouldn’t have fit the movie at all. But because Kluge is a good writer, it helps tie together the novel. So, two different meanings from the same thing, but both work. And for me, typifies that I love the movie and also really like the book, on their own merits.

Maybe I’ll do a movie-centric post and dig into it from that side. Go watch it. Read the book. Absolutely listen to the music. Follow-up with Eddie and the Cruisers II, if you’re so inclined. Though I believe you’re okay leaving out the sequel and just doing an Eddie Wilson trilogy (book, movie I, soundtrack).

As for the possibility of a third film, Pare is 67. Make of that what you will. He said a few years ago, the rights are in a very murky state, apparently owned by someone in France. Sounds like somebody would have to do some work to sort them out, then acquire them. After II, I hope they don’t even try a III.

But you know what?

Eddie lives!

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.

 

 Buy The Fox and the Devil

FORMAT/INFO: The Fox and the Devil was published on March 10th, 2026. It is 368 pages long and available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Five years ago, Anneke's father Dr. Van Helsing was murdered by a mysterious woman. Anneke has been on the hunt ever since, using her skills as a detective to consult on unusual cases across Europe. And after five years, Anneke finally has a lead on her father's killer. Along with a crew of other unusual detectives, Anneke will need to figure out the method to the killer's madness so they can stop her once and for all. But when the killer makes the unusual move of leaving behind a letter for Anneke, the two find themselves drawn into a relationship that is far more than cat and mouse.

The Fox and the Devil is an engrossing supernatural murder mystery across Europe. I really liked watching the early 20th century methods of detective work, and watching our crew start to put together a profile of the killer. I like watching smart people do their thing, and in this, The Fox and the Devil succeeds. The growing shift towards treating the case as supernatural also happens well. Our characters are coming from a point of view of vampires and other such creatures are purely myth; but after a few incidents, they take the evidence that they have and realize that their killer may be something other than human.

Unfortunately, The Fox and the Devil also tries to be a dark love story and in that aspect, it fails. We are told from nearly page one that Anneke has an intense obsession with the killer that goes beyond a desire for revenge. It's very hard for me to get into relationships where I'm just told "these two people have a history and chemistry, go with it." As a result, the dark romance between Anneke and the killer Diavola just didn't land for me. I like watching the build up of a relationship, and short of that, I want to actually see some tension and chemistry. I didn't get that in this story.

On the whole, The Fox and the Devil works well as a supernatural tale, as a group of detectives slowly piece together that their killer is something inhuman. I enjoyed the globetrotting adventure and the mystery tale itself, even if I didn't love the central relationship.