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In reply to Bill.

Fair comment, just surpised that the thread from book#1 hasn’t developed…

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

Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Nightfire (May 26, 2026)

Length: 160 pages

Author Information: Website

After enjoying The Night Guest, I was pretty curious to see what Hildur Knútsdóttir would do next, especially since her style seems tailor-made for weird little psychological horror novellas. Unfortunately, Dead Weight ended up being a bit of a letdown. First off, I don’t think it was marketed correctly. While it’s pubbed by a horror imprint, I agree with a lot of other reviewers who felt this didn’t feel like horror. For me, it was barely even a thriller. Maybe a low-key suspense story would be more accurate? And yet, the tension hardly builds. Instead, the book mostly drifted along in a kind of muted haze before arriving at a strangely underwhelming ending.

The story follows Unnur, a lonely and emotionally detached woman living a quiet, isolated life in Reykjavík, when a black cat suddenly begins showing up in her apartment uninvited. Trying to do the responsible thing, she tracks down the cat’s owner, a young woman named Ásta, who arrives looking visibly flustered and more than a little unsettled when she comes to collect her pet. It quickly becomes clear that Ásta is dealing with serious problems of her own, though Unnur initially wants no part in getting involved. Still, the cat, Io, keeps returning to her apartment, almost as if it has chosen Unnur for itself. Before long, the situation becomes even harder to ignore when Io unexpectedly gives birth to a kitten in Unnur’s bed.

Distraught over moving the mother and newborn, Ásta convinces Unnur to let Io stay temporarily so that the kitten can be raised in a safe and stable environment. Ásta admits that her own home doesn’t have that kind of security right now, though she promises to stop by regularly to help care for the cats. Reluctantly, Unnur agrees, and what begins as an awkward arrangement slowly develops into an uneasy friendship between the two women. As they spend more time together, the story begins exploring their personal lives, their loneliness, their unhealthy relationships, and the things they’ve quietly convinced themselves to tolerate. Beneath the surface, a growing unhappiness hangs over both women, tied up in the emotional weight of the choices they keep making.

To be fair, the setup itself isn’t bad at all. I did find myself drawn to the atmosphere and to Unnur’s character at first. While Knútsdóttir’s writing style is admittedly a little rigid and aloof, I can’t help but wonder if some of the original prose’s texture and nuance might have been lost in translation. Regardless, it works surprisingly well for a story built around people navigating emotional scars or dealing with hardship. There’s a quiet strangeness to the novella that kept me reading, especially in the opening chapters, where just enough intrigue is established to hold your attention and carry you forward.

But the further I got, the more I found myself wanting from the story, which became a problem when the book never really delivered what I hoped it would. Despite delving quite intimately into both Unnur and Ásta’s lives, Dead Weight never quite develops the momentum or depth required to make their relationship feel fully realized, which made the ensuring crux of the novella feel less significant than it should have. I didn’t feel much urgency or escalation, even when darker elements started unfolding. Everything felt oddly distant and rote. Quite honestly, the cats ended up being the most compelling part of the whole book. Between Io and her kitten, there were genuinely more cute moments than tense ones (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess).

The biggest issue for me, though, was the lack of payoff. The novella spends its entire runtime hinting at something more, but when it finally arrives, it barely feels like a climax at all. To be fair, I might just be used to reading more intense horror and thriller, thus making this feel way more subtle and tame. Even so, I had expected more impact to justify all the buildup. I don’t think the short length was the issue either, because the ending itself feels abrupt in a way that doesn’t make the book feel complete. It just kind of stops, and I was left wondering, beyond the obvious metaphor of ridding yourself of life’s burdensome liabilities, what was the point?

Still, I can’t say I disliked Dead Weight. A bite-sized novella, it’s an easy enough read and it worked perfectly well as a palate cleanser for me between heavier books. Although it was mildly frustrating because I wanted more, it still works as a decent diversion for an afternoon.

Romantic Suspense

Olivia Cruz lives with the demons of her kidnapping three years earlier Save Your Breath (Morgan Dane Book 6). In an effort to exorcise those demons and get on with her life she agrees to talk with her friend, true crime podcaster Zoe March. But when she shows up for the meeting, Zoe is nowhere to be found. She has vanished off the face of the earth. 

Police are called but it quickly becomes obvious that Olivia and her boyfriend Lincoln are the only ones who really care about Zoe. 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Olivia Cruz series has been a long time coming. Melinda Leigh has focused on Bree Taggert for the last few years but now that series is winding down and there is some clean air to explore Olivia’s story. This story is great, it offers the familiar characters we know and love while introducing a few new characters who no doubt will come forward in the next few books. It is solid romantic suspense done well.

Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle, issue 1 (Dark Horse, October 2001). Cover by Humberto Ramos

From Dark Horse Comics and DC comes Superman Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle, written by Chuck Dixon with interior art by Carlos Meglia. Cover art on the original issue covers was by Humberto Ramos.

This is a 3-issue comic arc that riffs off the original Tarzan story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The mutiny aboard The Fuwalda takes place as usual, which is the start of Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1912/1914 serial/novel Tarzan of the Apes.

[Click the images for Superman-sized versions.]

Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle, issue 2 (Dark Horse, November 2001). Cover by Humberto Ramos

John Clayton and his pregnant wife, Alice, are about to be marooned on the coast of Africa when a flaming meteor sweeps over and crashes right where the crew was set to land. The crew takes that as a bad omen and instead returns to Cape Town to drop off the Claytons. Thus, the infant who would have become Tarzan is raised by his living parents in civilized Britain instead of by Kala and the Apes in the jungle.

Before that twist is completed, though, we find that the meteor which crashed was actually the ship carrying the infant Kal-El from Krypton to Earth. Kala ends up adopting “Superman” instead of Tarzan and he is named Argo-zan (fire-skin). That must have been quite an experience for the apes, though we don’t get to see any of Argo-zan’s earliest years.

Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle, issue 3 (Dark Horse, May 2002). Cover by Humberto Ramos

By the way, this appears to be the earliest incarnation of Kal-El where he is not so superpowered and can’t fly, but he is still far stronger than any human and cannot be physically injured.

Some spoilers ahead: The last 2 issues of the comic suggest that “fate” cannot be escaped because circumstances conspire to bring the man who would have been Tarzan and Jane Porter back to Africa, and they are accompanied by none other than Lois Lane.

La of Opar is set up as the bad guy and she’s discovered some Kryptonite that she hopes to use to control Argo-Zan. You gotta figure how that works out, and at the end, fate brings everyone back to the places where they should have been in the first place.

Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle collected edition (Dark Horse, September 30, 2002)

Here are my thoughts: It’s a cool idea and generally well done. Chuck Dixon does a smooth job with the story itself and the art facilitates the story.

My criticisms are twofold. 1. There’s a lot more story here than could adequately be told in 3 comic book issues. It’s a rich tale and because of word and length limits we only get parts of it.

I understand why but I’d still have liked more story, such as Argo-zan’s childhood and his interactions with the African wildlife, and John Clayton’s early growth as well. We see that John is “unsatisfied” with his civilized life and knows something is missing, but there were many scenes I’d have enjoyed getting a look at. (I’ll just tell them to myself in my head.)

Interior art for Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle by Carlos Meglia

My second criticism concerns the art. Let it be known that I have no artistic abilities myself and both Meglia and Ramos are immensely more talented than I am. I admire their skills, but I didn’t personally like many of the human images presented here, although I liked a lot of the jungle backgrounds.

The characters, though, are hugely exaggerated, particularly their faces. Superman looks like he has acromegaly on the covers, and some of the interiors are close to caricatures. (See the interior illustrations I include here.)

This may have been done on purpose as a style choice, but I mostly didn’t love that choice. I did like the pool reflection on issue #1’s cover. Your appreciation may differ and that’s perfectly fine.

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

In reply to Tharaniya.

I wonder the same thing. Healing sigls seem like good candidates.

Other Titles by Andy Weir Here are a few other books by Andy Weir that…

The post Desperate Characters Find Ways To Survive “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir appeared first on LitStack.

Stupid thought, but I wonder if it is possible to.. surgically implant a sigl inside of you and still be able to use it?

It sounds like a good ace to have up in your sleeve as a last resort, albeit risky in other aspects? I am not sure if I understand how sigls prescisly work either. You have to channel personal essentia through them while they are also in close enough proximity to you, right?

Welcome to Stacking the Shelves, hosted by Reading Reality.

This is my haul of books that I got for review over the last 5 months! Click on the book image to go to Goodreads to learn more about them.  Hope you all got some great books and that you have a great week (or many months) of reading ahead of you! Review Books:

Audible now has a listing for the L’Heure du Loup, Volume 1, the unabridged audiobook of the French translation of The Wolf’s Hour, just recently published in two volumes by Monsieur Toussaint Louverture. The French audiobook is narrated by Hadrien Rouchard. It will be available on May 29, 2026, and can be pre-ordered from Audible now.

L’Heure du Loup Volume 1 audiobook from Audible

Version 1.0.0

So: it’s become a thing for me that Ray Nayler, with I believe only two novels, a novella and a short story to date, has become a must-read author. Both novels, The Mountain in the Sea and Where the Axe is Buried, have both been in my best of the year lists when they were…

Enter now until 5/24/26 to win a signed copy of Twelve Months!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Enter between 6:00 PM (ET) on May 4, 2026 and 11:59 PM (ET) on May 24, 2026. Open to US residents, 18 and older. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

See Official Rules for full details.

The official Tor account on Instagram did the Millennial vs Gen Z Marketing trend for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me this week, and I was helpless before it.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tor Books (@torbooks)

For the happily offline among us, the meme format is simple: the Millennial Team gives you the earnest, back-cover-copy voice that tries hard. The Gen Z Social peeps release the group-chat vibe check pitch that hooks you in under 3 seconds.

It’s not a dig at either generation, just an acknowledgment that the same content can reach different audiences if captioned accordingly.

I guess I have more in common with Steve than previously assumed, because I immediately had to do it to the other books. It’s Friday, House Andrews are heading to their event, I have access to Canva, and no one stopped me in time.

As your resident Millennial, I have no illusions about my ability to be cool on command. When I try to write promo copy, it’s immediately Cheugystan, and I realise the moment that third sentence starts that I’m a lost cause. I offer my Gen Z voice with humility and the complete expectation that the youths of the Horde will roast me accordingly.

Text in captions for accessibility.

The Inheritance, Breach Wars volume 1:

“single mom solos interdimensional OSHA violation” VS “A gripping sci-fi from #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews – perfect for fans of Stargate! Adaline has bills, kids, and a government job that keeps sending her into alien death labyrinths for humanity’s survival. This time, the job goes very wrong.”

The Innkeeper Chronicles:

Millennial “Dina Demille runs a quiet Texas inn for intergalactic visitors. The house is sentient, the neighbor’s a werewolf and everyone who threatens her guests will discover that hospitality can be extremely well armed. A cozy sci-fi from #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews.” VS Gen Z’s “b&b & intergalactic drama. early check-in available for philosophical space chickens”

Iron and Magic (Iron Covenant 1)

“warlord villain gets wife-guy’d by an eldritch farm queen” OR “A dark, explosive fantasy set in the world of Kate Daniels. Hugh d’Ambray, freshly-discarded warlord, must protect his Iron Dogs by forging an alliance with Elara Harper, the mysterious White Warlock. They need each other, they do not trust each other, and marriage may be the least dangerous part.”

Hidden Legacy:

“In a world ruled by magical dynasties, the Baylor family runs a private investigator firm with a dangerous case load, powerful enemies, and billionaire Prime allies entirely too used to getting their own way.” OR “houston’s magical nepo babies discover warehouse girlies bite back”

Which version would have made you pick up the book?

The post Millennial PR vs Gen Z Socials first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Paul W. Fairman

If Paul W. Fairman’s name is known, it is likely as an editor or the ghostwriter who wrote several of the juvenile novels published under Lester del Rey’s name when the latter author suffered from writers block. However, he had his own career as an author and Marvin W. Hunt commented, his “novels deserve the attention of science fiction enthusiasts not only because his books display the requisite technological prescience of good science-fiction, but especially because they are well written.”

Fairman was born on August 22, 1909 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Fairman began publishing in the February 1947 issue of Mammoth Detective with the story “Late Rain,” and in 1950 he published his first science fiction story, “No Teeth for the Tiger” in the February issue of Amazing Stories. Between 1951 and 1953, he occasionally used the housename Ivar Jorgensen, and in 1954, the film Target Earth was based on Fairman’s story “Deadly City,” which appeared under that pseudonym.  He also used the pseudonyms Robert Eggert Lee and the housename E.K. Jarvis, which was also used by Robert Moore Williams.

Amazing Stories, February 1950
Cover by Robert Gibson Jones

In 1952, James L. Quinn hired Fairman to help him create rivals to the magazines Fate and Other Worlds. The results were the nonfiction magazine Strange, which looked at the bizarre and mysterious in the world, and If, which published science fiction. Fairman became the editor of both magazines. His knowledge of the field, however, was limited and neither magazine had an auspicious start, with Strange being cancelled after only four issues. If tended to look back to an older form of science fiction, ignoring what was being done by the newer magazines in the field. After the fourth issue, Fairman was fired and Quinn began editing If.

Fairman landed on his feet at Ziff-Davis, where he worked as an Associate Editor of Fantastic Adventures. Although he briefly left Ziff-Davis in 1954, he returned the following year and when Howard Brown left the company in 1956, Fairman became editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic. He also oversaw the launch of the magazine Dream World, which had been started by Browne. He also launched Amazing Stories Science Fiction Novels, which lasted a single issue and published the novelization of the film 20 Million Miles to Earth, by Henry Slesar. It lasted a single issue.

Despite the magazines he edited, Fairman was more interested in writing than editing and he began to let his assistant handle more and more of the editorial work. At the end of 1958, he stepped down as editor of Amazing and Fantastic to edit Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and his assistant, Cele Goldsmith, took over the job of editor of the two speculative fiction magazines.

In addition to the previously mentioned adaptation of “Deadly City” into Target Earth, Fairman’s story “The Cosmic Frame” was adapted into the 1957 film Invasion of the Saucer Men and a decade later as the television movie Attack of the Eye Creatures. He also had stories adapted for The Twilight Zone and General Electric Theatre.

Fairman died in October, 1977 in Newark, New Jersey.

Steven H Silver is a twenty-two 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.

In reply to Jørgen.

Too much going on? He literally only has one paying job and that’s to watch over her…

Daybreak 2250 AD, originally published as Star Man’s Son, one half of Ace Double D-69 (Ace Books, 1954). Cover artist unknown

I started intentionally looking for science fiction to read in elementary school. Our city library had one big room full of fiction for young readers, from preschool through high school, so I found books that were meant for readers older than I was — but I enjoyed reading them, even if I didn’t understand everything that happened to their protagonists. The top two science fiction writers, for me and I think for a lot of other people, were Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.

Norton had written half a dozen novels, mostly historical, before she ventured into science fiction in 1952 with Star Man’s Son. But it seems to have been successful; she wrote a new fiction novels nearly every year for some time after that, and I went on reading the library copies at least up through Catseye in 1961.

[Click the images for giant cat versions.]

Ace Double D-69: Beyond Earth’s Gates by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner) and C.L. Moore,
and Daybreak 2250 A.D. by Andre Norton (Ace, 1954). Covers by Harry Barton, unknown

Star Man’s Son was a cleverly chosen title. It clearly signaled that this was science fiction. But it wasn’t, as the words seem to promise, a story about travel between the stars. Its Star Men were the elite of a hidden community high in the mountains, called the Eyrie, whose mission was to go out into the largely depopulated lands around them and look for the ruins of cities, both to find treasures such as colored pencils and to try to recover the lost knowledge of their builders.

Star Man’s Son is one of the founding works of the post-nuclear-war genre, published only seven years after Hiroshima, but envisioning a world devastated by nuclear weapons: massively depopulated, with many areas left lethally radioactive, and with parts of the land geologically transformed.

Gamma World by Gary “Jake” Jaquet and James M. Ward (TSR, 1978). Cover by David C. Sutherland III

As a by-product of the radioactivity, there are mutant forms of various species, including human beings. In fact this setting could be a prototype for the early roleplaying game Gamma World.

Norton’s hero, Fors, is one of these mutants, and that’s the starting point for her story’s conflict. Fors’s father was a Star Man, and a very successful one. But Fors’s mother came from a different culture, the Plains People, who lead a nomadic existence in the deserted lands outside the Eyrie; and Fors himself has mutant traits, both visible — white hair — and invisible — night vision and preternaturally keen ears.

Dust jacket for Star Mans Son 2250 A.D. (Harcourt, Brace & Company, August 1952). Cover by Nicolas Mordvinoff

Orphaned by his father’s death on an expedition into the wilderness, Fors wants to succeed him as a Star Man, but is repeatedly rejected, out of a prejudice against mutants. At 17, after his sixth and final rejection, Fors rebels, stealing his father’s gear (but not his father’s star, which he hasn’t earned) and venturing out into the wild lands on his own, looking for a fabled lost city of the ancient world that would prove his worth.

Norton doesn’t link any locations to familiar geographic names, but her readers would naturally have assumed that her story took place in North America. From her descriptions, the Eyrie could be in the Rocky Mountains, perhaps in Colorado; the plains might be Kansas or Nebraska; and the city that Fors eventually finds might be any major Midwestern city, though I’ve long assumed that it was Chicago, and apparently other readers commonly do the same. (This isn’t like Pangborn’s postapocalyptic setting, with little kingdoms bearing easily parsed names such as Bershar, Penn, or Vairmant.)

Dust jacket for Star Mans Son 2250 A.D. (Staples Press, 1953). Cover by R. Dulford

The combination of ruined structures and depopulation is curiously similar to Tolkien’s realm of Arnor, which would appear a few years later in The Fellowship of the Ring; Tolkien rejected any suggestion that the One Ring was an allegory for the atomic bomb, but both stories seem to reflect the idea of a fallen higher civilization, analogous to Rome, and perhaps the idea that the industrial West could also fall was made more credible by the destructiveness of the World Wars.

Another parallel to what Tolkien would publish is the existence of an inherently hostile race, the Beast Things. Like Tolkien’s orcs, they have a roughly human form, but one that’s hideous to human eyes; in this case, they have faces and clawed hands that make them resemble gigantic rats.

Daybreak 2250 A.D. (Ace Books, 1961). Artist unknown

The Beast Things seem to lead entirely collectivized tribal existences and to be naturally cruel and hostile to human beings.

And in Star Man’s Son, where they previously were a minor threat, dangerous mostly to solitary explorers, they have emerged to more organized hostility, attacking various human groups in vast hordes (where those hordes came from is no clearer than it was for the “goblins” in The Hobbit; such enemy races tend to have a nightmarish fecundity).

Their origins are obscure, but they’re clearly mutants, and help explain where the common hostility to mutants came from.

The 1977 cover refresh from Ace Books. Cover artist also unknown

Fors’s own venture acquires a companion from a different culture still, with its own traditional heritage from the more civilized past: Arskane, whom Fors pulls out of a pit trap and treats with an antibiotic salve (and in return, Arskane introduces him to coffee, which Fors doesn’t like at all!).

From Norton’s description, it’s clear that Arskane is Black, and it’s curious that where Heinlein found it necessary to hint cryptically at Rod Walker’s ethnicity in Tunnel in the Sky, published only a few years later in 1955 (his publisher was worried about sales in the South),

Fawcett Crest paperback edition, which returned to the
original title (Fawcett Crest, August 1978). Cover by Ken Barr

Norton didn’t have any trouble showing Fors and Arskane teaming up and even coming to regard each other as brothers. (Or might Heinlein have been unnecessarily worried?) Arskane’s account of his people’s origins to Fors makes them descendants of aviators, and perhaps Norton was thinking of the Tuskegee Airmen and expecting her readers to do likewise. And in parallel, Norton mentions a legend that the Eyrie was originally a base for an intended venture into space, which is why its elite explorers are called Star Men.

Fors is also accompanied by another mutant: Lura, descended from domestic cats, but grown larger and apparently empathic through the effects of radiation. (The image of the symbiotic goes back a long way before Honor Harrington.)

The first ten Honor Harrington novels by David Weber, plus two novels in the Honorverse series (Baen Books, 1993-2016). Covers by David Mattingly, Laurence Schwinger, and Gary Ruddell

Lura is described as having a coat coloration similar to Siamese cats. She accompanies Fors through most of his journeys and is only temporarily parted from him during one major crisis. Aelurophilia seems to be a common trait among science fiction writers and readers, and Norton does a persuasive job of appealing to it.

All of this shows that the novel’s recurring theme is mutation: The Beast Things, Lura, Fors himself, and a variety of exotic life forms such as a race of diminutive lizards that tend farms and wield poisonous weapons are all mutants. And the novel’s continued point is that “mutant” as such is not a moral category: Mutation can be either good or bad, depending on what the mutant does.

The Darkness and Dawn omnibus, containing the novels No Night Without Stars (1975) and Daybreak 2250 A.D. (Baen Books, March 2003). Cover by Bob Eggleton

At the novel’s climax, we have the mutant Fors playing a vital role in a stratagem aimed to have all the human forces unite against an army of the mutant Beast Things — and then confronting a threatened outbreak of war between the different formerly allied human forces. Norton seems to be making a point similar to St. Paul’s statement that “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free” — or, in this case, mutant or nonmutant.

Indeed, her characters raise the question of whether it’s good to preserve the unchanged likeness of the ancient humanity that destroyed its own civilization in a vast war.

Star Man’s Son title page, with illustration by Nicolas Mordvinoff

In a review of this novel, quoted in the copy I read, the Denver Post called it “a good adventure story which is a thoughtful book as well,” and I think that’s a fair summary. Like Heinlein, Norton assumed that her readers would be interested in serious themes and able to make sense of them; and that was part of what made her a leading author of “juvenile” science fiction.

William H. Stoddard is a professional copy editor specializing in scholarly and scientific publications. As a secondary career, he has written more than two dozen books for Steve Jackson Games, starting in 2000 with GURPS Steampunk. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, their cat (a ginger tabby), and a hundred shelf feet of books, including large amounts of science fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels.

One week from today, I’ll be doing the second quarterly virtual book recommendations event with the Ashland Public Library in Massachusetts of this year. If you followed last year’s recommendations, both fantasy and science fiction books were covered. This year, I’m focusing on fantasy books and author Elizabeth Bear is covering science fiction recommendations. (She just did her second recommendation event last night, which made me want to start a couple of books on my shelves I still need to […]

The post May 2026 Virtual Fantasy Book Recommendations first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

This is your reminder that tomorrow, Friday, May 15th, at 6:30 pm, Veronica Roth will be at Half Price Books in Dallas for the release of her new series debut, Seek the Traitor’s Son – and Ilona and Gordon will be the ones moderating the event!

Seek the Traitor’s Son is book 1 of the Burning Empire series, and is out now from Tor Books in a deluxe hardcover edition with sprayed edges. This new dystopian fantasy brings us destiny, prophecy, enemy generals, romance, warfare, mysterious gifts, and the fate of nations hanging in the balance.

There are a few tickets left for the event, available for purchase here.

If you would like to attend a signing and you can’t make it to Dallas, Veronica’s tour will have multiple stops in both the US and the UK – for full details of all appearances, moderating authors and dates, check out her website here.

To be extra clear, as there was a bit of confusion last time: this is Veronica Roth’s event. House Andrews are not doing a separate IA signing or presentation at this time. They will however appear as Featured Authors at the 2026 Columbus Book Festival in Ohio on July 11 and 12, 2026.

Keep an eye on the blog and newsletter for other House Andrews announced appearances!

The post Reminder: Ilona Andrews chats with Veronica Roth tomorrow first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

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

The post Spotlight on “Marching West” by Karin L. Stanford & Mark Speltz appeared first on LitStack.

Veronica Roth first came to my attention, as she did many others, I’m sure, with her Divergent series of novels (2011 – 2014), a dystopian science fiction series that seemed to be what readers of The Hunger Games (2008 – 10) wanted. More than a decade later, those Divergent readers have become adult, and so…

The Iron Tower Trilogy: The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day
(Signet, August 1985, September 1985, and October 1985). Covers by Alan Lee

I recently posted some of my thoughts about High Fantasy. I haven’t read a large amount from that field but I did read Dennis L. McKiernan’s first trilogy of books, the Iron Tower trilogy, which is definitely High Fantasy written very strongly in the Tolkien tradition.

Here’s my review of those three books, which I read in an omnibus edition.

Back covers for The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day

While laid up after a motorcycle accident for several months, Dennis L. McKiernan (1932 – ) began writing what he first intended to be a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. When that plan fell through, he changed some of the setting and produced his Iron Tower trilogy, which was published by Doubleday in 1984, although he started the work in 1977 after his accident.

I read the three in the omnibus edition shown below, but the three books are:

The Dark Tide (Signet, August 1985)
Shadows of Doom (Signet, September 1985)
The Darkest Day (Signet, October 1985)

The omnibus edition of the Iron Tower trilogy (Roc, 2000). Cover by Jerry Vanderstelt

These are McKiernan’s first books and show his inexperience, but he did produce some memorable characters and I generally enjoyed the books.

Perhaps because of how the work was initially conceived, as a sequel to Tolkien’s work, they bear a very close resemblance to Tolkien’s setting, characters, and overall story arcs, so much so that one might be forgiven for considering them pastiche Tolkien. From what I’ve heard, McKiernan went on to write much more original material later.

However, though I have a couple of his later books I’ve not read any of them. Anyone have a recommendation for something good from him?

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a a review of the Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman graphic novel by Josh S. Henaman, Andy Taylor, and Tamra Bonvillain. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.