Awards for everyone!

You ever get to the point in your resume when you have to remember if anyone's ever graced you with an award? It's weird, isn't it?

Much to my surprise, I've actually gotten to that point. 

Catholic Reads, Best of the Year

2019: WINNER, Hell Spawn

Helicon Award for Best Horror

2019: WINNER: Saint Tommy NYPD #1: Hell Spawn

2020: WINNER: Saint Tommy NYPD #6: Deus Vult.

Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance Book of the Year

2015: FINALIST: Honor at stake

2017: FINALIST: Set to Kill
2017: FINALIST: Love at First Bite Book Two: Demons are Forever (under the name Murphy’s Law of Vampires)

2019: WINNER: Saint Tommy NYPD #1: Hell Spawn

Dragon Award

Best horror

FINALIST 2016: Love at First Bite #1: Honor at Stake
FINALIST 2017: Love at First Bite #3: Live and Let Bite
FINALIST 2017: Best Apocalypse: Codename: UnSub


Speaking of awards, you should probably check out my current suggestions for Dragon Award nominations. I think you'll like them.

Review: Mel Todd's Commander

Not too long ago, I reviewed No Choice, the first in Mel Todd’s excellent Kaylid Chronicles series. It’s one of those books that remind me why I go to conventions – I get to meet great people and their awesome novels. Seriously, these books have been out for years, and I had to find out about them, and Mel, through conventions.


Anyway, with book two, Commander, while book one could have been urban fantasy, book two is where we go into science fantasy.

Because at the end of book one, our heroine, McKenna Largo, is hearing voices. At the start of book two, the voice is having full conversations … with everyone else.

The ability to shift doesn’t come from anything mythological, but from nanotechnology.

And oh boy, does the start of the flap copy say it all.

It can always get worse, unfortunately.Discovering an Artificial Intelligence lives in your head, strike one. Having the Artificial Intelligence explain aliens are the origin of shifters on Earth, strike two. Having it announce you are the commanding officer of the earth shifters, strike three.

Deciding there is only so much one person can handle, McKenna Largo ignores the strange new voice in her head and focuses on her law enforcement career. She soon learns there are other aspects to being a shifter. Who knew cougars had such a great nose for drugs? Her career prospects increase with each drug bust, but so do her enemies. Still McKenna insists on living as normal a life as possible. After one too many successes, these enemies target not just on her, but also her family and friends. Finding herself in a situation she never imagined, McKenna must step up and be the leader they need, a true commander. Now if she could just devise a plan that won’t get them all killed

TLDR: just do what I did and buy the whole series already.

For this specific book, there is, surprisingly, not a lot of action. This is probably because the last 30% of the book is almost solid action. The majority of the novel is heavily character based. In some respects, it’s sort of like a John Ringo Vorpal Blade novel – the first half of the book is how things get done, and the second part is where the plot happens. And the flap copy describes the plot. Thankfully, it still doesn’t give you a lot.

The funny thing is that the action scattered throughout the novel is very cleverly executed. Because that action isn’t real – they’re simulations. As said above, the shifters are caused by alien nanites. The reason? The shifters are to be foot soldiers for an alien race—mostly mindless, obedient drones. Why terraform the planet when you can terraform the people – and wage a Von Neuman’s War without losing a single one of your own kind? It’s almost like John Ringo’s Darhel had come up with a better plan to screw over people. So, of course, the nanites come with their own AI, and the AI come with battle scenarios that read like set pieces from a Halo game. 

So now if the plot gets slow, we can throw in a full space commando raid. Which was a nice way of inserting action into a story that, in other cases, would be considered slow… though, to be honest, we didn’t need the blow by blow of the scenarios to keep the story going. The story carried itself along well enough on its own.

Once again, one of the most impressive bits about this series is just how much thought goes into the impact of shifters suddenly existing in the world. If covers politics, sociology, mythology, science, medicine, and culture on every single level. And if Mel Todd doesn’t cover something, wait a chapter, she’ll probably cover it eventually. I’m almost certain that she came up with a lot of different impacts on plenty of different cultures, and anything she couldn’t show you in-story, she made a paragraph long vignette for a news story that topped each and every chapter.

And that’s just the side content. Mel puts in a ton of thought in on the individual elements of how things work. Again, it’s very John Ringo. Just going into the details of “Yes, you now have the sniffing ability of a drug dog, but with the higher processing function of a human being. Welcome to the drug squad,” was wonderful. She even had the legalities of such a sniffer cop down pat. 

But yeah, I like the character building. I like the world building. I liked the progression of the story, as each book raises the stakes, and segues right into the next book. 

Hell, I’ll tell you just how much of an impression this book made on me. When reading a book for review, I always make notes – either in the Kindle copy, or on a note pad (write on books? What are you, a heretic?). I haven’t even needed to reference my notes once during this entire review. Doing so now only provides some details – such as dealing with the foster care system, or that Mel Todd has a great way of delivering exposition that carries the plot, and an effortless way of conveying character backgrounds. Or that the little asides at the start of each chapter could be the plot of a book by themselves. Who am I kidding – Mel Todd even manages to make a reporter appear to be somewhat human. We won’t even go into the reality show. 

Negatives: There are some editing issues here – and they’re issues that I recognize. A word left over from rephrasing a sentence, but it doesn’t fit in the new sentence. Or a left over “I” from a first person narrator … even though the current edition is very much third person personal. I can’t say they were more numerous than the errors in the first book (I remember none from No Choice, to be honest) but they were more jarring. They kicked me out of the story for a minute or two.

The second problem is that the ending of book two is similar to the ending of book one. While book one ends with McKenna and a bunch of shifters kidnapped and forced to work on behest of criminals, book two ends with …  with McKenna and a bunch of shifters kidnapped and forced to work on behest of criminals. Granted, the mission is different and the stakes (and threat level) are higher.

Anyway, all the negatives aside, the book is 5/5 material. Just read it. 

Oh, and by the way....

And, while you're here, be certain to check out the Dragon Awards nominations list. Everyone should be voting in this. Everyone. The bigger it is, the fewer jerks can say that it's "invalid." I lost track of how many people vote in the awards, but I stopped counting at 8,000.

A Silver Dragon Empire

Once again, the Dragons are upon us.

You know why I like Awards season so much? Because it gives me an excuse to talk about books for months. In fact, it gives me an excuse to talk about the same once over and over again if I want..

And this year, I have thoughts. Quite a few, really. 

Best Sci Fi

Overlook by Jon Mollison.

I enjoyed that one so much, I may have underplayed my review.

Best Fantasy (/ Paranormal)

Brand of the Warlock, by Robert Kroese.

Best YA

The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering by L. Jagi Lamplighter.

I literally reviewed this one last week. I don't have to explain it again, do I?

Best Mi-SF

That's going to go to Chris Ruocchio's Howling Dark (Sun Eater #2). If Chris doesn't like it, well, he doesn't get a choice in the matter, since I don't have other slots open. 

Best Alt History

This Deadly Engine by Matt Ligon

I swear, one day I'm just going to say to heck with it and get around to reviewing all of Ligon's books. 

Best Horror 

Deus Vult by, well, me

Why this one and not Coven, which even Jagi says is better? 

Because this one scared reviewers. So, it's better for Horror.

Also, the name. Can you get better than that? Heh.

Though if you wanted to put Coven on the list for best fantasy, I'm not going to kvetch. :)

Best Media Tie-In

Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason.

I will only pimp this one Disney-related product for one reason.

It's Zahn writing Thrawn. Full stop. Thanks.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy 

TV Series, TV or Internet

We're going to need something in here before some dickhead puts in Star Trek: Picard, which may be the worst thing I've seen since, well, Star Trek Discovery.

So, does this slot go to The Mandalorian or to The Witcher? Those are pretty much the only two shows no one on the internet will shut up about. 

But I'd rather not hand Disney the win, and I like The Witcher books that I've read. 

Someone hand it to Henry Caville and he can put it on the shelf next to his 40K minis.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

Any thoughts? 

Again, this is a situation where we need something, otherwise a collection of mouth breathing jerks will insist on a terrible Disney product. 

Because if we don't come up with something, The Rise of Skywalker is going to end up with it by default

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy 

PC / Console Game

I'm just assuming that the FF 7 Remake is going to make it here. 

However, I'm not up on current games, since the patching in 90% of them makes it freaking impossible to play them at release without an hour of patching. Trust me, I made it a point to stick in multiple games to my PS4 so they could be patched overnight.

Then again, I've also heard a LOT of good things about Greedfall, which might have more momentum, as it's come out earlier than FF7. And I've noticed that the win goes to what has been out the longest.

Again, I've heard some good things about the latest Star Wars game. Jedi: Fallen Order, I think the name is. I'm still waiting for the price to come down.

No Contenders

This is a collection of categories for which I got nothing. Or almost nothing. 

Best Comic Book (the series)

The Immortal Hulk was on this list to start with. Why? Because it's dark and atmospheric, and feels a lot like if Marvel tried doing HP Lovecraft. But, they've decided to make a character suddenly trans, out of nowhere, for no real reason that fit in the story. And it was so jarring, it's really thrown my interest in the story. It took me out of the comic. 

Though if you want to give Immortal Hulk a quick read through at a Barnes and Noble, maybe you'll see more of what I did when I first read it.


Best Graphic Novel

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game 

You can nominate for the Dragons right here. Enjoy. And please remember to tell your friends. And share this list around the internet.


And UNLEASH THE DRAGONS.

Mildra the Monk: Interview with Declan Finn

A new interview from a new interviewer.

If any of these sound good, just pop on over to SilverEmpire.org and check out my books.

And of course

Remember to vote in the Dragon Awards.

Review of The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 5), by L. Jagi Lamlighter

Here we go again. 

If you haven't seen the other books of Rachel Griffin ... this is a very long story. And I have other reviews that you're going to want to look at.

Book 1: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin

Book 2: The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel

Book 3: Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dream Land

Book 4: Awful Truth about Forgetting

By this point, we should all realize that I'm still reading them at book five, so it's a good assumption that this book, too, was awesome, and you should read it. And if you don't read it, you are a bad person. 


For those of you who are not up to speed on this series: we have a magical girl from a magical family at a magical boarding school with her magical friends. Her best friends include how a Dickens character should look after going through the foster care system (less like Oliver Twist, more like the Artful Dodger), a magical Australian with a magical stick up her ass, and Victor von Doom -- I mean Vladimir von Dread.

Imagine if JK Rowling had done a deep dive and actually built a world from the ground up, and every character had a full range of emotions and conflicting thoughts and agendas, while there are actual stakes that amounted to more than just the existence of the school, but existence itself.

That's the Rachel Griffin novels. 

Also, it's so nice to find a fantasy novel that includes other magic traditions and mythology outside of the UK and continental Europe. If there's a myth or lore or type of fantasy magic that Jagi hasn't thrown in yet, I haven't heard of them. 

I'm going to avoid posting the description of the book here for one simple reason: It spoils events in the second half of the book, something I've found jarring since as long as I can recall.

When Book 5 opens, Rachel's school, Roanoke Academy, has a problem: the local wild fey are loose. The wizards were supposed to keep the local wild fey psychopath under lock and key. But now it's loose, and the local fey no longer need to adhere to their bargain. If the Heer is not imprisoned again, and the fey put back in their place, Roanoke Academy will close.

One must admire Jagi's restraint with book five. It opens a whole two days after the end of book 4 -- usually the next book will open the same say as the last book ended, giving Terry Goodkind a run for his money on "the morning after" opening of The Sword of Truth. And there is so much blowback here, yikes.

What can one say about the book that I haven't already in prior reviews? Her brother is Lord Peter, her family estate is in Dartmoor -- they have a local beast that is not specifically referred to as a dog, a hound, or even a Great Dane. Rachel's family use microexpressions both to read people and to mislead them. 

The pace is only slightly more relaxed than usual. The opening threat wasn't lethal, which is about as relaxed as the book gets. The rest of the novel has an undercurrent of multiple threats, spread out along the length of the book. The pacing hurries along at a quick gallop, slowing here and there for world and character building. And then get out of a way before being run over. As I've said in previous reviews, if Rachel's days go any faster, she'll have to change her name to Jack Bauer. Hunting fey on the Roanoke Academy grounds makes for a wonderful subplot. It ties in nicely to the second subplot later on.

No, I'm not sure if there is a main plot anywhere along here. There are basically two major subplots jammed together, but they fit so well you don't care that the only main thread is the series plot, not a main plot for the novel.

We have Ankh-Morpork style football, a magical government that makes sense, sports team names that don't (show of hands: who wants your sports team to be named The Maenads?), Jim Butcher Scooby-Doo jokes, and students armed with a Bowie knife... which is an odd complaint given that they're all armed with wands, but seriously, who let that guy have a Bowie knife? Heck, Jagi even spells out the difference between the Seelie and the Unseelie... which I don't even think Harry Dresden explained.

It's so nice to see that in a world of magic, hydrogen peroxide is still used to remove blood from clothing. 

Oh yes, and Death? Death shows up. And of course, HE SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS. BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES, TERRY PRATCHETT HAS PROVEN IT TO BE SO.

There are problems, of course. Mostly with some of the characters being ... themselves. At least one magical princess needs to be smothered with a magical pillow; then they issue her a bodyguard with Omega beams. Rachel's best friend (of her own age) might be one kid who needs mild sedatives for everyone else's safety ... or he need to learn restraint, perhaps with a butterfly net. 

I think the problems of the book can all be summed up as, well, high school is one big problem. 

Rachel also has flaws ... largely in that she has to stop reading classic romance novels; when she starts thinking romance, the narrative voice goes into prose so purple, I swear the text color changes. And she is such a kid. Despite saving the world enough times that even the adults listen to her when she says there is a problem, Rachel has very definite ideas of what should happen. She has this idea that she should have a womanly figure ... at 14. (pardon me while I head desk).

And then her PTSD kicks in, because really, after the skeleton baby incident, we should be worried if she didn't have PTSD.

Also, seriously, in a world where magic is a day to day thing, you'd think someone would have taught them to be really REALLY careful, and very specific, about the wishes one makes.

But you can say one thing about their characters flaws -- these people characters have characters to actually develop, which is more than I can say for certain other books. Heck, there are some characters in this series who I didn't know they had characters to develop.

Anyway, 5/5 stars. Go buy the book now. Thanks.

Paperback here

Amazon Kindle link here

2020 HELICON AWARDS

I apparently ended up with another award.

Who knew?

Review: in Death's Shadow

This is one of those books where I cannot tell you how it came to my consciousness. 


I recall getting a review copy. For all I know, Kal could have mentioned asking for reviewers in one of our groups and I just volunteered.

However I am glad that I got a chance to get this particular review copy, though I cannot tell you for the life of me how it came into my possession. 

This book has so many fun entertaining elements to it, it is hard to know where exactly to begin.

• You have Metallurgy on bullets that I have not seen since the first Monster Hunter novel. 
• It brings in Creative elements that would make Jim Butcher want to take notes. 
• And frankly I also believe that there is a Quantum Leap reference just thrown in for good measure. (When you have a entity that no one else can see except our protagonist and he is called Sam I try to remember back to Quantum Leap to remember which character was played by Dean Stockwell — Al or Sam.)

Welcome to In Death's Shadow.

Ari lives in the shadow of death.
Ari is a combat veteran who has chosen to leave the military behind and live a quiet, normal life.  He's got a few problems though.  For one thing, the cops think he's a serial killer.  For another, a vengeful politician has put Ari in his crosshairs.  To make matters worse, Ari has a guardian angel... and not just any angel, Ari's protector is the Angel of Death.  When his life is in danger, people start to die, and Ari's guardian can sometimes be indiscriminate whose life he takes when protecting him.

That's not even the worst problem.  Death wasn't assigned to him by mistake.  An ancient werewolf wants Ari dead and even with death on his side, Ari might not survive.

Ari needs to find a way to stay alive, to clear his name, and most importantly to get out from under the shadow of death and live a normal life... even if it kills him.

Yes, a reaper playing guardian angel. I appreciate how Kal has avoided making our hero utterly indestructible by giving him a guardian angel who is akin to a weapon of mass destruction. 

Also appreciated? The execution and showing us the point of view of how at this reaper operated within his rules and regulations. 

Overall the book is so much fun I didn't put it down from the moment I picked it up. Right now I am only waiting for book two to come out (and I suspect book 3) so I can just buy all of them in hardcopy and spread them among my friends and family.

Kal brings a lot of wonderful little touches to his writing style. He has one of the better opening lines I've seen since "the building was on fire and it was not my fault." The very off-hand casual easy descriptions and backstory feels effortless -- largely executed with nice sharp background notes that leave a nice little sting and then move on with the rest of the story, easily throwing them out... But boy, does the reader feel them. 

There is also a lot of very easy humor such as how Sam (our Guardian Reaper) chooses to protect our hero. Sometimes to laughable degree — that though Kal never resorts to a Rube Goldberg mechanic. In terms of little touches, there are lines like "I'd managed to avoid ruining this set of clothing with blood at least." 

As I said, it's the little things.

Due to the nature of the Guardian reaper, Sam's protection has led to him having more than a few run-ins with the police. 

Kal even manages to have to make use of the old canard 

"Do you have plans for the day?" "No, I can't make plans, then they can throw around words like premeditation." 

I've been waiting for someone to use that in a novel for years. He just slid it in like a nice stiletto and moved on.

And no, even though Sam is very thorough about his job, he never turns into a deus ex machina. Never. That's freaking impressive.

I even like the little bit about how Sam really enjoys he 24 hour news cycle as "like an athlete staying up on sports news". Also, Sam's commentary on CNN is beautiful.

Great one liners include

"Are demons common in Detroit?" "Clearly you haven't been to Detroit lately." 

"Angels are the police of the Supernatural world" "What does that make Sam?" "Designed sniper."

There are several elements that almost feel like nods to other genre novels. For example one could be forgiven for thinking that Harry dresden's werewolf / Terminator scene is slipped in this one, or having supernatural beasties encountered in Afghanistan feels a little bit like Monster Hunter. And again, little touches like casually mentioning a werewolf and "how thermite grenades work wonders." 

As I said above, some of the metallurgy is so good, I intend to steal a lot of it. Including silver and mercury arounds, as well as electrum.

We have great action, dark humor, easily executed backstory that is all relevant to the plot, along with some great world-building at a pace Mickey Spillane would have loved.

I will also admit to highly enjoying Kal's version of werewolf mythology and lore. He does some nice variations that I personally have never seen before. And he comes up with perfect reasons and rationale for werewolves to be 100% pure evil all the time. After all, one of the enemies is literally a soul sucking werewolf from Hell.

And these are some of the lesser problems our hero will have to deal with. Because on top of a wonderful first novel, Kal has effortlessly set up a sequel without any actual sequel baiting. There is no Empire Strikes Back level BS. There is no "to be continued." And there is only an ending that would have worked perfectly well with the final line of a comic book movie. I mean a good one.

Spriggs is such a good author that it was nearly halfway through the book before I realized how many tropes and cliches that Kal had made good use of without them feeling at all like cliches or tropes. Including: a dead fiance, memory loss before a certain age, et al. However it feels more like the sort of mash up that brought us something as brilliant as Jim butcher's Codex Alera novels. 

At the end, we even get a little of the "hero of the borrowed heart."

Anyway, 5/5. This book was excellent. I look forward to the next one. Hopefully, it comes out soon.

The return of the Planetary anthologies

So, Pluto is out

Luna is out.

And the returning anthologies are already up and ready to go.

Mars is up for pre-order, and it has a new editor. 

Mercury is back for pre-order 

As is Venus.

You can pretty much order or pre-order the entire series as of right now. Just click here.

But yeah. They've got editors and they've got covers, and they have release dates and everything.

Tuscany Bay is such a nice, efficient publisher, and they run a tight ship.

It's so nice working with people who know what they're doing.

The entire Planetary Anthology series.

Fighting the Void: A Sliver Empire Rises

This is one of the guys from Catholic reads interviewing my publisher, Russell Newquist, about the Silver Empire Book Club.

If you're interested in joining the Silver Empire Book Club. You can click here at any time.

Review: Psycho (and Psychic) Games

I've already reviewed Amie Gibbons' Psychic Undercover (with the Undead), a law enforcement UF novel that really makes Laurell K. Hamilton look like an amateur (okay, LKH does guns better, but since LKH has even managed to make Edward a useless character, I'm not feeling charitable).

And now, we have Psycho (and Psychic) Games (The SDF Paranormal Mysteries Book 2)

Psycho (and Psychic) Games is ... 

Well, let's just say this is what happens when southerners make a Hannibal Lecter.

And they thought catching the serial killer was difficult...

Psychic Ariana Ryder just completed her probationary year and is now a full agent in the FBI's Special Division Force, a semi-secret branch that investigates paranormal crimes. She's got a great, if strict and strictly yummy, boss, a vampire for a boyfriend, and yeah, that has its issues and politics, but overall, life's lookin' pretty good.

The director, in a bid to score political points, puts Ariana on interrogating famous serial killer JB Truck, aka The Puzzle Master. Truck's been in prison two years and the authorities still can't figure out who all his victims were or where his vast resources came from.

Ariana's mission is simple, get visions off the psycho until they get the information they need.

But nothing's ever simple when there's magic afoot. The vampire queen's gunning for Ariana, there's a mysterious new shifter in town who needs a psychic's help (and is way too flirty considerin' she's a lady with a boyfriend), and Truck's got a few tricks of his own.

And he didn't end up in Nashville by chance.

Frankly, this book already has a very nice summation of the novel.

"This isn't Silence of the Lambs, it's freaking Nightmare on Elm Street."

I think this sums it up nicely.

I would say that this is as good as the first novel, though there are some minor issues. You don't "sick people" on others. There were one or two moments where I was concerned we were going to enter into squicky Anita Blake BS. Don't worry: while the sex did get heavier into detail, it's still better (and easier to skip) than the Hamilton books. In fact, it's more like how I with Hamilton would write her books. Maybe I could get back into them.

But as I said, this was is just as good as Gibbons' first novel in the series. It has elements of fantasy microbiology (which was my favorite parts of Grimm, and I would like to see more of that in fantasy in the genre in general).

And Gibbons' does some cute bits of business with the psychopath du jour. There was a good deal of 3D chess going on that reminded me of the Joker. And then he turns into Deadpool (from before he became a popular character)

This one even solved a lot of my problems with the first one. Because this was the book where our heroine is a full agent, and it was time for her to just grow the hell up.

And then she ends by setting up book three.

I've only got one noticeable problem with the series in general so far and this individual book in particular.

With the book, it's a bit unbalanced. About 75% deals with the serial killer. Then we have a break and we switch tracks, where it turns into a relatively good variation on an Anita Blake novel (a bit of soap opera, a touch of melodrama, and let's talk about feelings -- though that was in service of actually FURTHERING THE PLOT, so it gets a pass).

With the series. I don't have a really good sense of place. This is something that is occasionally a problem with even Jim Butcher. I don't get a sense that this is Nashville. I like to get an idea of where the heck I am. But aside from some of the accents, this could be almost any city and state in the union.

To be perfectly honest, this is still a 5/5. The problems in the book are easily overlooked and forgiven. If I were being more nitpicky, I'd penalize the overall score. But I'm not. And the book was still enjoyable.

So if you're interested into a nice mystery, something that harkens back to the days before Anita Blake before it became Penthouse letters, you're going to want to read this one.