The United Federation of Charles

    Dracula is a historical figure who is, arguably, a lot more interesting than Count Dracula. While Dark Prince is not the sort of movie which is going to persuade you of this fact, the historical Vlad the Impaler lived a very interesting life. Being raised at the Sultan's courts, intrigues, imprisonment, and more. If HBO ever wanted to do another show like the Tudors, they could do worse than do one based on his life.

    What does this have to do with Dracula Untold?

    Oddly enough, I would give it a B+ for educational content.

    I can already hear my readers making gasps of confusion. But C.T. Phipps, you magnificent stallion of a man, isn't this a movie where Dracula becomes a swarm of bats to kill hundreds of invading Turks?

    Yes, yes it is.

Luke Evans captures a haunted, tragic Dracula even if he's a man who makes entirely justifiable moral decisions.

     However, this is also a Dracula movie which remembers the Turks existed and even explains what Janissaries are. Any movie which has the Devşirme or "Blood Tax" where children are collected to be turned into the real-life equivalent of Unsullied is aces in my book. We even get a remembrance that Vlad III had a child and spent his formative years in the Ottoman Empire. His Turk-allied brother isn't mentioned (and seems to have been combined with the Sultan) but we can't have everything.

    The premise of Dracula Untold is Vlad III is the peaceful, noble, good-guy king of Transylvania. He used to be a prisoner of the Turks and was forced to fight for them (which isn't true in RL), but has given up his life of violence to live with his pretty blonde wife. The Turks, however, want 1,000 children for their Janissary army. Unable to oppose the Ottoman Empire on the field, he proceeds to seek a vampire out for the power to defeat their army.

    Much undead mayhem ensues.

The Old Vampire doesn't even have a name but Charles Dance makes him terrifying.

     The vampires in Dracula Untold are less like traditional portrayals of their kind and more like Abyssal Exalted, which are (for the laymen), basically gods. Dracula, at one point, kills an entire army by himself. The bigger problem for Dracula is, who would have guessed, vampirism is alienating to his subjects.

    Luke Evans plays an excellent Vlad III in this movie, more or less looking like a very buff version of Orlando Bloom. While I can't say I approve of a movie which turns Dracula into an unambiguously heroic figure, he's an excellent antihero throughout.

    Dominic Cooper as the Sultan looks (and acts) so much like Karl Urban, it hurts. Sarah Gadon has little role other than to be Dracula's loving and supportive wife but takes that in some unexpected directions, too. Loving and supportive doesn't necessarily mean weak, after all. Game of Thrones' Charles Dance plays a vampire elder so generic he doesn't even have a name but does it so well that he's a potential Palpatine in the making.

Sarah Gordan is a lovely-lovely woman. Reminds me of Rosamund Pike.

    The special effects are serviceable with most of the money saved for some really impressive feats by Dracula with the rest being alluded to. I didn't mind this and the sense of Dracula's godlike powers wasn't bad. This version of Dracula is about as powerful as the one from Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, which is pretty damn powerful.

    I wouldn't say the action in the movie is pretty good but it doesn't embarrass itself, either. Dracula fighting non-superpowered beings like the Turk soldiers could have gotten old quickly, so they mix it up a bit. Mostly, his main power is becoming a swarm of bats which he uses like teleportation in Dishonored (which isn't a flaw mind you). I would have preferred to see more of his super-strength or other abilities, however.

    In short, this is a good popcorn movie akin to the Resident Evil movies. Whereas watching Mila Jovavich be an unnaturally attractive zombie slayer is the appeal there, the appeal here is Luke Evans being a vampire-themed superhero slaying members of the Evil Empire. It's like 300 without the racism.

    7.5/10

    The Dragon Age universe is one of my favorite D&D inspired fantasy settings. It has a direct developer link to Baldur's Gate, which means it's linked to Forgotten Realms, which means it's plugged directly into my childhood. Dragon Age takes itself very seriously despite being game-fiction, which I enjoy a great deal. As a thirty-three-year-old man who reviews video games as well as books, I need to pretend I'm not still the big kid at heart I am. Anyway, to understand this novel I should lend some context.

    The Stolen Throne is the first Dragon Age novel, written by series writer David Gaider, and details a lot of the backstory relating to the country of Ferelden. In Dragon Age: Origins, Ferelden was the setting and developed surprisingly well. While mostly fantasy England like 90% of all fantasy video games, it included a lot of little details like the fact the culture is strongly influenced by breeding dogs and not so little ones like the country had just managed to overthrow its pseudo-French neighbors.

    The chief villain of Origins, after the Blight, was the character of Teryn (Duke) Loghain. This is not a spoiler since anyone who looks at Loghain knows he's going to be the villain almost instantly. The thing is, while he remains your antagonist, the game hints he's more tragically misguided than evil. You even have the option of sparing his life and recruiting him as a party member, allowing him to redeem himself for his crimes.

    The Stolen Throne is both Loghain and Ferelden's story. Ironically, Loghain plays less a role than Prince Maric. Maric is the lawful heir of Ferelden's throne (and father to series' favorite Alistair) who has never sat upon it due to the fact the Orlesians (the aforementioned faux-French) have ruled over his kingdom for a couple of decades. His mother, the Rebel Queen, is a legend for her resistance to Orlais but Maric is more or less a pathetic disappointment.

    Then the Rebel Queen dies.

    Poor Maric ends up in charge and it's up to a clever peasant boy named Loghain to help him become a man. The book has some very fun female characters like Rowan the Warrior Noble and Katriel the Elven Bard/Double Agent. Katriel is more or less Leliana (from Origins) with pointy ears so I was automatically inclined to like her best out of the characters in the book. Can they take back Ferelden from the Orlesians? Well, since Ferelden is an independent nation by the time of the games, yes, but how they do it is a winding twisty path.

    Part of what makes this story so appealing is it works entirely on its own. If you've never played any of the Dragon Age games, you can still enjoy this story on its own merits. Everything you need to know about the franchise is included in this volume and it has a satisfying narrative arc for everyone. Some characters will live, some will die, and others will have an unhappily ever after. How all this happens is quite entertaining to read.

     I also like the book's relatively modest stakes. Countless fantasy stories have the fate of the world resting on the shoulders of our heroes. Here, the fate of a single kingdom is on the line and it's not from monsters but their fellow human beings. The Orlesians are a brutal and repressive ruling class but not cartoonishly so. Or, if they're incredibly evil then it's because real-life regimes tend to be that way to conquered territories. You can't really outdo history in that regard.

     I found myself caring about the heroes and their personal lives, too, which I almost never do in fiction. The fact the romance story arcs aren't preordained to end in the way they traditionally do in these things is a nice change of pace. People get their heart broken, class stands in the way of true love, and sometimes what's broken can't be repaired. Which is, frankly, more true-to-life than most of us would like to admit.

    The book lives and dies on what I consider to be its authenticity. The world feels like it could have happened on some parallel Earth. Questions of morality, economic exploitation, racism, feelings of inadequacy, and cultural posturing all help ground the piece. It's really-really good and, in my opinion, not just a good game novel but a good novel period. Non-franchise fans could pick this up as an introduction to the setting.

    Buy it.

10/10

    Rough Magick is the first book in a trilogy called the GnomeSaga. This is intriguing to me because, as far as I know, gnomes are the least-liked race in fantasy. Existing somewhere underneath kender and well-beneath dwarves, gnomes are a group of people which don't really have a fantasy idiom to call their own.

    This is mostly Professor Tolkien's fault as he managed to define what elves and dwarves were but didn't take time to spell out what gnomes were. Margeret Weiss and Tracy Hickman gave gnomes the bailiwick of being the anachronistic holders of technology in a fantasy world, which the gnomes of Azeroth cemented as a quality of them, but they're still fairly unloved.

    Kenny Soward is not going to be the one who changes gnomes forever in the public mind, in all likelihood, but he'll likely be referred to by readers as a man who gave them their chance in the sun. GnomeSaga is a story about gnomes with gnomes as the heroes and it does a reasonable job at showing them as perfectly capable of holding their own in a high fantasy story.

    The premise is there is a multi-dimensional empire ruled by a mysterious "Baron" which utilizes a race of stone-based lifeforms called (appropriately enough) Stonekin to conquer other races. These people, along with mind-controlled slaves, are forced to fight to the end in the Baron's service with no hope of escape. The Stonekin's leader, Jontuk, has found an inventor who is prophecized to lead them to freedom.

    She just has no idea about any of this.

    Niksabella is a nerdy shut-in inventor who is too focused on trying to get her infinite energy device (powered by magic) working to care about these sorts of things. Ridiculed and laughed out of polite Gnomish society, she is taken care of by a handful of friends who still believe in her. Her brother, Nikselpik, is a Necromancer of no small skill but has ruined his life with an addiction to "Bugging." A habit which is functionally identical to heroin use.

    These two oddball antiheroes are going to find themselves caught up in an extra-dimensional war which not only threatens their Steampunk-esque fantasy homeland but much of the rest of the Mutliverse as well.

    I should mention, before we continue, Rough Magick reads very strongly like Dungeons and Dragons fiction. Clerics cast spells which heal, wizards throw fireballs, and just about everything functions like someone is rolling dice in the background. As someone who grew up playing 2nd and 3rd Edition, this isn't a bad thing. However, new readers may be surprised to find out this isn't official Dungeons and Dragons fiction but a wholly original piece. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if the author did a Pathfinder or other 3rd Edition-influenced supplement for the setting as it might be fun to play in once or twice.

    Despite its heavy D&D-inspiration, the setting still feels pretty original and evocative. The gnomes have a fantasy steampunk-esque society with its own laws, customs, practices, and habits. They feel somewhat like if you dropped a bunch of Londoners from H.G. Wells and his contemporaries in the middle of a Tolkien-esque fantasy setting then cut them in half. It's slightly more adult than most D&D fiction I've read with Nikselpik being a drug-addicted lech but not so much I'd even rate it PG-13 versus PG. The author even uses made-up swear words like "futtering", which means exactly what you think it does.

    The characterization is fun and I can't say any of the characters annoyed me. I could have used a bit more description in places like the amorphs, the Stonekin, and otherwise but the author is usually quite good at giving the reader an idea of his rather bizarre universe. Clearly, the author also sat down to figure out who does what and how in the gnomes' society and that effort shows. I even liked both leads' romantic troubles, which I rarely say.

    So, overall, I'm going to give this a very high rating. It's not perfect and the story often overwhelmed me with so many new names but the author transported me into a high fantasy world which I liked. If you have any affection for worlds where fireballs are flung, tyrants are overthrown, and steam robots fight with alien-parasite controlled zombies then this is the book for you. I barely even noticed the heroes were four-feet-tall.

9/10

Buy At Amazon.com

    What if Red Sonja wore clothes?

    This is an odd way to begin the review but it's what I thought about when I read this book. Red Sonja, for uncultured HEATHENS out there (or people who have just never heard of her), was an adaptation of a Robert E. Howard character to Conan the Barbarian's Hyborean Age created by Marvel comics.

    The character is infamous for creating the chainmail bikini outfit while also, perversely, being one of the strongest female characters then in print. Her dichotomy of being a male fantasy character who is otherwise empowered would also extend to her sexual politics: infamously being a woman who would never be with a man who could not defeat her in battle.

    Aella is basically Red Sonja without all that crap.

    Well, sort of. Sword Sisters is more like Red Sonja: The Teenage Years. I understand this is a prequel to an indie fantasy movie starring and directed by one of the authors, Tara Cardinal. I haven't seen The Legend of the Red Reaper so I have to just this novel on its own merits. For that, the novel works pretty well.

    The premise of the novel is, loosely, Demons (with a capital D) invaded the world a thousand years ago. They proceeded to engage in horrific war crimes, many of which resulted in half-demon hybrids called Reapers. The majority of these hybrids were just as bad as their parents. However, they also engaged in war crimes which resulted in quarter-demon hybrids who weren't nearly as horrible. These Reapers successfully drove off the demons and won the war. One last half-demon hybrid was born, however, and she was sent to live amongst her quarter-bloodlined brethren.

    This is Aella. Aella is prophecized to be the last of the Reapers and someone who will change the world. Many of her brethren, who have formed a sort of samurai warrior-caste, are less than pleased their civilization is going to die with her. Despite this, they have chosen to adopt her and treat her as one of their own. They are attempting to mold her into the perfect Reaper and, bluntly, Aella is taking to this like a fish to desert.

    So she rebels, goes out looking for trouble, and finds it.

    Before I get into the rest of the review I should mention that while the book ditches Red Sonja's weird sexual hangups, it does maintain a strong gendered focus. In addition to the fact that the entire of the superheroic sword-swinging badasses being the product of sexual assault, the world of Red Reaper is strongly patriarchal.

    Women do not fight outside of the Reapers and are expected to dutifully obey their husbands. They are also chattle to be used in the religious ceremonies of the people's oft-questionable deities. The titular sister gets introduced soon after Aella rescues her from being sacrificed to a giant spider. The novel got itself an automatic nine out of ten, there, just because the heroine fights a giant spider.

    You can't get much more Sword and Sorcery than that.

    I can't give Sword Sisters a ten out of ten despite how much I want to because of a few minor flaws. The introduction is an info-dump which could have been better told to us in the book itself. Aella's angst is rather annoying at times and more believable as a sixteen-year-old girl rather than a ninety-five-year-old-one-who-looks sixteen. I also am uncomfortable with the fact the heroic warrior caste of the novel are, literally, all the product of war crimes.

    Despite this, though, I would recommend this novel strongly. It's nice to have old school Sword and Sorcery and if the novel is strongly gendered, it's gendered in the way which Red Sonja was good rather than bad. Many of her best stories were about kicking sexist pigs in the face and rescuing young women from human sacrifice before teaching them how to fight. The Reapers are an excellent group of heroes, origins aside, reminding me of the Witchers from the titular series.

    The supporting cast is excellent too with Amelia, unsurprisingly, being my favorite of the group Aela picks up. She's a great take on the "clever peasant girl" archetype and reminds me of Belle from Beauty and the Beast if the latter was really angry at being dumped at the Beast's castle. I really bought Aella and Amelia's friendship and how it developed. I also became very fond of Damato after his introduction. Sort of a antihero version of Aragorn. Some of the characters I like won't make it through the book and others will, leading me to hope this will be a series.

    As for Aella, herself, as mentioned she gets a little whiny herself but insecurities do not overwhelm her positive qualities. She's a strong character still finding her footing but who doesn't hesitate to get in the face of her tormentors. I also like that she's more interested in teaching others to stand up for themselves than be their rescuer. I find her atheism curious in this world (as I do in most fantasy worlds) but being raised by demons then demon hybrids will, undoubtedly, leave an impression.

    In short, if you can look past its flaws, this is a great-great book. I recommend it for all Sword and Sorcery fans, men and women alike.

9/10

    Charity and horror fiction. Three words which do not normally go together but, honestly, should. All profits from At Hell's Gates sales go to The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. This gesture is something which naturally inclined me to like this book and its contents but I'll try to keep an unbiased perspective to the writing.

    This is a collection of a dozen or more short-stories which chronicle the adventures of various heroes as they deal with increasingly bad situations. They're the heroes facing hell (hence the title) and, in many ways, this is a surprisingly uplifting book. The heroes rarely come to a bad end and, when they do, it is a genuine surprise.

    At Hell's Gates is a book by such notable indie horror authors as Jacequline Druga (Contagion), Stephen Kozeniewski (Braineater Jones), Shana Festa (Time of Death), Stevie Kopas (The Breadwinner), and Paul Mannering (Tankbread).

    Quite a few of the vignettes deal with the characters from these works and if you're familiar with any of them, you're probably going to get more out of the stories than someone who is not. At Hell's Gates is a mixture of good, okay, and stories I found myself indifferent to.

    My favorite story is probably The Err Apparent by Tim Marquitz, which is a R-rated version of the Dresden Files with the Devil's nephew as its protagonist. Another standout is The Princess and the Flea by Paul Mannering. I wasn't familiar with either work beforehand but both were incredibly enjoyable and encouraged me to check out their universes.

    Some of the stories are ones that weren't so great, however. None of them were bad, per say, but some of them felt like they were teasers for the book worlds they came from rather than complete stories themselves.

    The best of At Hell's Gates is when the tales decide to show something in its entirety. Journal of the Undead: The Beginning by S.G. Lee is an example of one of the complete stories which is stronger for it.

    If there's a flaw with At Hell's Gates, it's the fact the vast majority of the stories are zombie ones. I think the anthology promoters would have done well to highlight this fact. Calling it At Hell's Gates: Zombies or something similar might have made things better, IMHO. Here, I expected a more diverse variety of stories and found, instead, a zombie anthology with a few outliers.

    Not every story will blow you away but it has a pretty good average against professional anthologies I've read. There's also some real gems in it as well. Given it is less than half the price of a comparably sized independent book, I think it's well worth the price to check out. The fact the profits go to charity also means that I encourage horror fans to pick it up.

     In conclusion, At Hell's Gates is a worthy edition to any horror fan's e-library.

7.5/10

Buy at Amazon.com

    So what if Harry Dresden was a foul-mouthed gunslinger?

    That's sort of what I think about Damoren. This is somewhat unfair to the author as the character of Matt Hollis isn't that similar to Harry Dresden. He's not a pop cultured badass, for example, but a grizzled veteran with a dozen years of demon hunting. The book does make me think of Harry, though, and Stephen King's Dark Tower series to some extent. If for no other reason there's not that many demon-hunting gunslingers around.

    Damoren is the first book in the Valducen series, which is about a group of demon-hunting soldiers who wield holy weapons capable of slaying them. Each demon-hunter is fanatically protective of their weapon, treating it like their partner in a marriage. This may not be wrong, either, as each weapon chooses its wielder and possesses some form of sentience. The Valducen aren't terribly happy about Matt possessing a weapon, though, because he's possessed.

    Or so it seems.

    A demon marked Matt Hollis in the past and the demon-hunter who was ordered to kill him, adopted him instead. Matt has since bonded with Damoren, the holy revolver which provides the book its title, and gone on to be a successful independent demon hunter. The Valducen have come to make amends, however, due to the fact someone is trying to destroy all of the holy weapons in the world. Thus, the Valducen need every holy weapon holder in their service, even if most of them would like to see Matt killed.

    The book is an entertaining collection of action scenes and Matt dealing with a centuries-old organization of which he has no relationship but everyone else is almost family within. Some of them want Matt dead, some of them think he's alright, and others are suspicious but all of them are speaking to each other like they've known each other for decades. Which they have.

    Honestly, Seth Skorkowsky is a little too effective in making Matt Hollis feel like an outsider since I really wanted him to kill them all at various points. Unfortunately, this series is about acclimating Matt to this group rather than showing he's a better hunter than all of them combined. What can I say? I'm a big fan of the lone badass who doesn't play by the rules and gives the middle finger to the arrogant blockheads who think they can tell him what to do.

    The parts of the book which aren't about Matt Hollis fitting in like a square peg in a round-shaped hole are excellent action scenes where the demon-slaying badass finds himself up against a host of vile fiends. Vampires, werewolves, Lamia, dragons, and more are all products of demonic possession in this universe. They're all completely evil and almost unkillable since they can jump to new bodies unless slain with a holy weapon. I like unromanticized monsters and find this book provides me with plenty.

    The mythology is well-developed in the book and there's a selection of writings from past-demon hunters interspersed with the book's present-day adventures. I like it when authors take time to develop how the supernatural "rules" of their setting work. Honestly, if I have a complaint about the mythology it's the fact the author reveals too much about the setting by the end. I think a lot of the book's last-minute revelations could have been saved for future volumes.

    In conclusion, Damoren is a top-quality urban fantasy novel. If it's not up there with the Dresden Files' latter volumes then it's certainly above the first couple of them. Matt Hollis is an enjoyable character and the villains are reprehensible. This would work quite well as a stand-alone volume but I'm eager to see where this series goes.

8/10

Buy at Amazon.com

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

    Today, I dissolved my contract with Permuted Press. This was a hard decision because I had a contract for ten books with them. Seven books for Cthulhu Apocalypse and three books for the Esoterrorism series. These books are still coming out, thankfully, but they won't be with Permuted Press anymore.

    I have a great deal of gratitude to Permuted Press for taking a chance on a first time novelist but our situation wasn't satisfactory to either party anymore. I could leave it there but this is a very big decision on my part and the purpose of blogs is, at least last time I checked, for unprofessional types like myself to ramble.

    Some background for those who are unfamiliar with Permuted Press save through my extensive reviews on their books. Permuted Press is a independent horror publisher founded by Jacob Kier a number of years ago in order to publish some zombie fiction which couldn't get published anywhere else.

    This was before The Walking Dead took off and zombie fiction was popular. It was a labor of love for Jacob and he soon found himself publishing other books which caught his fancy. Eventually, he published the first edition of John Dies At The End and Ex-Heroes.

    Enter me and my writing.

    In 2010, I was just beginning my writing career or perhaps I should say re-beginning. To say I'm a first-time writer is both true and misleading. I have been an author since I was six years old and actually had been involved in writing novels since I was twenty. The problem was my first publisher was, well, smoke and mirrors.

    It wasn't a scam, per say, but they misled me a great deal in their enthusiasm to appear better than they were. I got arrogant, myself, and tried to bring on some friends and the whole thing turned out so poorly that I didn't write anything for another four years.

    The writing bug, however, would not die. I had a new manuscript, eventually, which led me to go attend an author's conference in West Virginia. There, a Literary Agent talked about how to get into publishing. She explained to me that I needed to do two things if I wanted to make in the publishing industry:

    1. Get thee to a writing group.
    2. Try Permuted Press.

     Heading to Permuted Press' website, I found them open to submissions for a lot of things I liked. They loved Cthulhu, zombies, post-apocalyptic fiction, and more. Sadly, I wasn't quite ready to publish with them yet. You see, I'd written a lot of books but none of them were really GOOD per say. I also signed up for two writing groups. One of which was Permuted Press'"Pendulum" group that was for authors looking to get published with the host of their forum.

    What happened next would change my world.

     Putting aside my old manuscripts, I decided to write a book exclusively for Permuted Press. I wasn't a big fan of writing zombies, even if I loved reading about them, so I went the Cthulhu route. Thus, were the seeds of Cthulhu Apocalypse born. I would spend six months writing it and incorporating tips from my writing group.

     I'd also resign from the other writing group as I found they were less interested in pointing out my mistakes than congratulating each other on every sentence. I would also branch out and write a "funny" novel in The Rules of Supervillainy and later the first volume of my Red Room series, Esoterrorism.

    You may wonder why none of these books are out yet because this was all in 2010 and I had four years to get all of this in place. Well, the answer is that I was interested in making the best book possible versus doing something that was adequate. Jacob Kier had only a small window every year for accepting new publications and by the time I was ready with my first book, I decided I could do better. There's an old saying that your first million words are always going to be crap. Well, I thought that.

    And I was wrong, but we'll get to that.

    It was 2013, almost three years later, when I finally had improved my novels and writing skill to the point I wouldn't be embarrassed to see myself in print. Other stuff had happened during the meantime like getting married, graduating with my Masters degree, and publishing my Tabletop RPG Halt Evil Doer!.

    I was determined that Esoterrorism (Red Room 1#) would be my first REAL book. Which was a stupid thing to think because there's no such milestone. Every author views their last book as horrible by and large while thinking their NEXT book will be perfect. I would learn this lesson the hard way. Anyway, I was ready to get Esoterrorism published with Permuted Press.

    Which is when the company was sold and the forums where I'd learn to hone my craft all this time were about to be shut down.

    Oh boy.

   Continued in part 2.

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

    The revelation Permuted Press was going to be sold didn't actually fill me with all that much dread. After all, Jacob Kier was an artiste and selling his company was something that would improve the lot for the authors involved.

    Greater exposure, greater money devoted to making sure they got into the hands of readers. This was a contrary viewpoints to doom and gloom posters on the soon-to-be-no-more forums who predicted Permuted Press was about to go belly up under faceless corporate overlords.

    If you want to see what Jacob Kier has been up to since then, I recommend you pick up The Pen Name (see my review). I won't say what his relationship to that book is but it's a wonderfully dark and twisted story about an author eaten alive by his publisher.

    Hmm.

    Anyway, I submitted Esoterrorism to Permuted Press and I waited.

    And I waited.

    And I waited some more.

    Amusingly, my first interaction with Permuted Press' new overlord was a rejection letter but not for Esoterorrism. It turns out, much to my surprise, The Rules of Supervillainy had been accepted for publication by Jacob Kier but the new owners were reversing that decision. They had no interest in "superhero" novels and were kind of annoyed they had an acceptance for a book they didn't want so, after discussing it, decided they didn't want it.

    I was pretty okay with this because The Rules of Supervillainy needed a lot of rewrites.

    Also, I'd forgotten I'd even submitted it.

    (I was still suffering from "your old books suck, only new books are awesome"-itis).

    Still, I was hoping they'd be interested in Esoterrorism.

    Six months later.

    Yes, yes, they are!

    If I'm making the new owners seem callous, please understand I thought anything but of them. It turned out the Faceless Overlords actually did have a face and that was Michael L. Wilson.

    Michael was a former social media hawk (he worked for Taylor Swift at one point) who was part of Permuted Press' buy-out because he and his fellows were tired of the big company rat race--yet wanted to continue publishing what they loved. They'd bought Permuted Press because it was an established presence in the indie scene with a noted catalogue they wanted to expand.

    How would I like to be a part of that?

    Sure, I said!

    This was about the time that New PermutedTM revealed their goal. They were going to take the indie out of independent Press and make us a part of the big pleasures. Which, if not part of the big five publishers, would be still in their weight class.

    Albeit, Glass Joe for Punch Out! fans.

    We would have Permuted Platinum.

    Permuted Platinum was a program designed by the new owners to reach deep into their pockets and pull out the dough necessary to pay for physical print runs which would end up in Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and other major chains.

    With the closing of Borders, it was unlikely I'd get to see Permuted books in my local bookstores (which no longer existed), but it was the very definition of "the big time" for a lot of authors. If not published by Warner Brothers or Fox, you'd at least be New Line Cinema back when it was making Freddy Krueger.

    Now there's a catch to all of this. Permuted Platinum wasn't the "Standard Rich and Famous Contract" offered the Muppets (and I'd be a dumbass to get into WRITING to be rich and famous--that doesn't happen until you sell your books to Hollywood).

    It was only for already-successful books published by Permuted Press or ones they really believed in. Michael L. Wilson was very clear about all of this.

    I'd like to stop and say I like Michael. He's a stand-up guy. The man wouldn't be in charge of Permuted Press if he didn't believe in publishing scary, spooky, and horrific stuff. He got put in a nasty position later on but I never felt he was an absentee owner or publisher. Any guy who buys an open bar for his authors BEFORE delivering bad news, at least has his priorities straight.

    But we'll get to that in part 3.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

    So, I was now an accepted author publishing with a reputable publisher. The guys who did the SAW movies versus, say, the guys who did Harry Potter but I've always been an iconoclast anyway. I was the Goth who wore colors in high school after all.

    Hehe.

    That was a heady feeling.

    I was so excited by it, I submitted Cthulhu Apocalypse directly to Michael despite the fact I'd been convinced it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Except, well, I decided to do some more rewrites. With fresh eyes, I found out, "hey, this is actually really good." This time, Michael responded within the week and said he LOVED it.

    He wanted a seven book contract for it.

    Wow.

    It was around this time I got acquainted with Permuted Press' style of doing things. Basically, it was of the "bean bags around the arcade-game-filled office" versus corporate drones. The Permuted Press author group was a collection of truly colorful and fun guys. Michael L. Wilson would often comment and give advice. We also had a wonderful tele-conference where Michael explained:

    1. What Permuted was.
    2. What is its marketing strategy.
    3. Where we fit into all this.

    We also had another teleconference with Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn) who told us about how to market out books. Awesome lady, btw. I really need to need her "Lara Croft meets Christian artifact" books sometime.

    What's interesting in all of this is Michael L. Wilson told us a lot about what was going on in Permuted Press but quite a few authors, flush in the promise of success, weren't exactly paying attention to what was being said.

    Myself included.

    What was said by Michael L. Wilson during the teleconferences were that Permuted Platinum was very successful but the primary focus of Permuted Press was going to be its ebooks. Print was a dying industry, in his opinion (and the investors) so they were going to focus all of their efforts in that respect. They were going to be exploring other avenues like their own indie film studio and audio books but ebooks were where it was at.

    EBOOKS.

    Remember EBOOKS.

    Ebooks are the Kobolds in publishing's Monstrous Manual. Everyone uses Kobolds and the game couldn't function without the little trap-laying bastards but no one really LIKES Kobolds. They're not like orcs. Everyone loves killing orcs. Even if Kobolds are the source of EXP you need when you're low-level, you really just want to get to killing orcs.

    I've lost you with my D&Disms, haven't I?

    It gets worse as Permuted Press was something of a bind because while ebooks are a great source of money for both publishers as well as authors (more on that later), quite a few of them were under-performing. Permuted Press was doing great with their top-sellers but a great number of the catalog just wasn't selling what they'd hoped.

    There's reasons for that but I think it boiled down to a number of factors: market saturation, inexperienced authors with no social media platforms, massive competition from other e-publishers, and Permuted Press' own quick-release schedule. Either way, Permuted Press was both doing well and not what they needed/wanted to be doing.

    What did the authors hear? Films! Audiobooks! Platinum for the top sellers (which will include me-obviously)!

    Which brings us to the kerfuffle.

    In part 4.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 5
Part 6

    The Kerfuffle is the big thing in the news with Permuted Press lately. There's the initial post from Gabrielle Faust (here), a follow-up post by Brian Keene (here), a rather explicit post by Sean Hoade (here), and some well-written works by Paul Mannering (here). The Lovecraft Ezine did its own discussion of the subject (here).

    But if you DON'T want to spend hours discussing this, here's the basic rundown. Permuted Press took note of the fact that 93% of their income came from ebooks and roughly 7% of their income came from Print on Demand volumes.

    Furthermore, roughly 42% of their income was spent on preparing the print copies of their book for Print On Demand services. For those of you who aren't writers, that's books which get printed per order versus the big "bulk orders" which end up in stores like Barnes and Noble (i.e. the Platinum line).

    Michael L. Wilson looked at those figures and decided that it would probably be a good idea to discontinue Print on Demand books for their titles which weren't selling. In laymens' terms, that means that the majority of Permuted Press books (esp. the underperformers) would be losing their print runs. This would be a massive savings for Permuted Press and have, literally, no downside in terms of dollars and cents.

    Except, of course, for the author.

    You see the dollars and cents above is very much a no-brainer from Permuted's ends but the author gets hit terribly hard. While 7% of Permuted Press' profit is a small sacrifice for Permuted Press if they save 42%, that 7% is entirely profit from the side of the author as they don't pay for any of the 42% cost which goes into formatting their book for POD.

    In short, the choice to discontinue POD would consist of an almost 10% pay cut for all authors who weren't part of the Platinum series or who had their books already formatted (and would be keeping them in print).

    Imagine how telling all of the workers at a plant they'd be taking a 10% pay cut would go.

    The thing is, of course, the issue was further complicated by the fact that authors (particularly in the horror scene) are very big on having physical copies of their books. Amongst other things, there's a thriving convention scene where it's kind of hard hocking ebooks. For many, the physical act of holding a book was one of the "stretch goals" to writer success.

    The absence of it was telling.

    The issue was compounded by the fact the release schedule would be frozen until 2015 and the release schedule would be subject to delays. This was so Permuted Press could avoid the market saturation and focus on making sure every book got the attention it deserved both in marketing as well as editing/proofing/etcetera. There were other changes as well, which included that Permuted Press would not longer be giving authors final say in their covers as well. A lot of changes there.

    All effective immediately.

    Most of this didn't effect me too much. I don't go to Cons. My first release date was in September of 2015. Which might as well have been a lifetime away for my enthusiasm. I trusted them with my covers too. The lack of a print copy was troubling, though. So was the pay loss from a PoD market.

    A lot of my family don't "e-read" and it was troubling enough to get them to take my author profession seriously. Hell, my parents don't even have the internet. It was enough to start making me reconsider my deal with Permuted Press. Overall, though, I was fairly neutral to mildly unhappy about the whole thing.

    I, it turned out, would be the odd man out.

    In part 5 we'll discuss those affected worst by the change and what the general reaction was.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 6

    The person hit worst by Permuted Press' decision was Gabrielle Faust who was formerly their marketing woman before she found herself let go due to wanting someone in Nashville, TN versus Texas.

    There's more to this story but separating truth from hearsay is problematic. One thing to note is Gabrielle Faust is an author with a very large web-presence. In the world of Goth, Gabrielle Faust is a Baroness if not Viscountess.

    Gabrielle's series, Eternal Vigilance (the first book reviewed here), was something that she was doing a good deal of self-promotion for. She even took pre-orders for the series that she would buy the physical copies thereof with her author discount and then proceed to market directly to her fans.

    The cessation of POD publication hit the Eternal Vigilance series hardest because of these pre-orders and also the fact there were already physical copies out there which wouldn't be continued into future novels.

    The fact she had to refund the money out of her own pocket along with inform her fans they would not be getting their physical copies of her series was compounded by the fact Permuted Press was willing to return published rights to all of the authors who wanted them back (voiding their contract) BUT with the caveat authors would have to pay for any work they'd already done on them.

    In Gabrielle's case, that was a significant amount of change. Another author I knew had a similar amount of charges because editing, covers, and so on added to a four figure number if he wanted to pursue self-publishing his own POD. Authors, like me, who wanted out would be able to do so for free because work wouldn't begin until Summer of 2015.

    People were unhappy.

    All of this was legal by the contract signed with Permuted Press. Technically, they didn't even to publish our books. They were contracting to right the publish our books when and if they wanted to (and that no one else would).

    The contract did, however, mention free ten paperback copies of the book and if they didn't have to do POD then they certainly implied they would. There was a general sense that Permuted Press had gone from being bean bags and cappuccino to this:

    Hyperbole? Certainly.

    However, authors thrive on drama and the situation was getting media attention. Brian Keene, who I'd never heard of before this but who is an indie horror celebrity I'm told, weighed in and groups like the Lovecraft ezine. Gabrielle Faust's outrage was made public and drew attention from her not-inconsiderable fanbase.

    The Horror Writers Association (HWA) became involved as well, which is like the Teamsters for horror writers. I'm a unionized author but due to what my previous works were before I moved to horror, I'm loathe to admit who I belong to.

    I swear I'll move as soon as my new books come out!

    Shana Festa (The Bookie Monster, Time of Death, At Hells' Gates) and myself found ourselves in the position of neutral arbitrators during this dispute. Having reviewed a lot of horror novels in my time, it turned out I was something of an expert in the field. If nothing else, people actually respected what I had to say on the subject. Which was a strange feeling to tell you.

    My opinion was authors didn't have to be happy with this situation and it was important to protect your rights. The thing is, of course, if you felt you were getting a bum deal then I suggested it was better to show yourself out the door rather than try and force the issue.

    I respected Permuted Press' right to do what they were doing but I also knew it was perhaps a deal which I didn't want to be part of anymore. I wouldn't mind ebook release alone if it weren't series I'd devoted three or four years to perfecting and knew were good enough for print release.

    Permuted Press said it would publish series they felt were worth marketing and gave a decent but achievable number for a POD release but as an author--I had to prepare for the worst. I decided I'd wait to see how they handled things before announcing my departure.

    That's when things got interesting. In the Chinese sense of the word.

Concluded in Part 6.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

    Permuted Press responded to the allegations against it fairly well. As mentioned, they agreed to let anyone out of their contracts with "no harm, no foul" who hadn't already had work done with them. This wasn't something which helped those who were already committed to series with Permuted Press but didn't want to do ones without physical book copies.

   They also wouldn't budge releasing print rights back to the authors. It was all or nothing. Some authors had even suggested getting a third party for authors who were willing to pay for having their books formatted for POD release.

   Again, not happening.

   Permuted Press, eventually, came to an agreement with the HWA about modifying their contracts to better reflect what the latter felt were amicable to authors. Permuted Press was clear, though, that previous contracts would remain binding and there would be no "update of terms." I don't blame them for any of this but it occurred to me that I probably could get myself a better deal elsewhere.

   Or could I?

   The biggest blow from Permuted Press' decision was not financial but to many first time authors' pride. Permuted Press was (and still is) a fan favorite with many independent horror authors. For quite a few, the new terms felt like they weren't believed in anymore and that Permuted Press weren't sorry to see them go. The overstuffed release schedule even made some believe this was a way of doing some sort of Office Space-style plot to force unwanted authors to quit.

   Which is ridiculous.

   For these authors, quite a few panicked and believed they would never be able to find another publisher ever. Self-publishing, despite being five times as profitable for authors as often as not, was somehow less in their minds. They felt strong-armed into either remaining with Permuted Press or never seeing print ever.

   Which is unfair to both them and Permuted. You need to believe in your product if you're going to make it in this decision and never stick with a deal you're unhappy about. If you do, you're only going to end up hurting yourself as well as your publishers in the long run.

   For me, it was a business decision to end my professional relationship with Permuted and I intend to continue reviewing their books here on the UFoC. For others, it was a personal decision. Friendships were lost, professional associations ended beyond just publisher and author, while others still just became distant.

   It got ugly. Game of Thrones ugly.

People were forced to choose between what they perceived as a Permuted Press family versus Ex-Permuted Press friends. My reaction to this was to consider this just the latest bump on the road to my professional writing success.

I'm a professional.

    I don't have anything against Permuted Press. I might if I lost money on the deal but I benefited from my time with them. I learned about social media, I found a lot of great contacts, and read a lot of free horror novels I might not normally be exposed to.

    If nothing else, my social media platform went up from non-existent to something which may someday qualify as the Glass Joe of the reviewing world. I'm an orc, not a Kobold, and maybe someday I'll be a Troll if not dragon. My books will see print because Permuted Press, for better or worse, was willing to print them and that gives me the confidence to know people will want to read them.

   And I wish everyone on both sides of the issue nothing but the best.

Hey folks,

We have a real special treat for you today and that is an interview with Seth Skorkowsky, author of the Valducan series! He's been gracious enough to sit here down with the United Federation of Charles and answer a few questions about his books. The first book, Damoren, was released April 21st and was reviewed here.

The Valducan series follows the adventures of the titular demon-hunting organization. In a world filled with spirits which possess humans and turn them into the monsters we know and love (vampires, demons, werewolves, etcetera), the only way to permanently kill a demon is with a holy weapon. Damoren is a holy revolver wielded by anti-hero Matt Hollis in a, previously, one-man crusade against the forces of evil. In Damoren, Matt gets recruited the Valducan to find out who is destroying their holy weapons.

Even if many of the organization want him dead.

Thanks for coming by, Seth!

1. So, Seth, what separates Damoren from other Urban Fantasy novels out there?

I’d say that the most significant separation is that Dämoren is just as much an Action/Horror as it is an Urban Fantasy. Instead of a mystery story set in a large city, it’s a globe-hopping adventure. Most of my inspiration came from movies and anime, and I wanted to emulate the same feeling that I got from Blade or Hellsing or Hellboy.

2. Your protagonist, Matt Hollis, is a very interesting character. All rough-edges and thick-skin. How would you describe him to prospective readers?

Matt is a loner. His family was killed when he was very young and his only friend was his adopted father who taught him how to hunt. Since then, his only real friend is Dämoren. He lives in a very secretive ‘kill or be killed’ world, flying just below the radar. Matt fears what he is and he buries that fear in a full-on war against these monsters.

3. Damoren is as much a character in your novel as her wielder. How did you come up with your first novel's titular weapon?

The original concept for Dämoren was simply an attempt to explain how a magical gun would work. Magic swords are as old a fantasy itself, and the concept is easy to understand. Magic blade hits the monster and kills it. But with guns, the gun itself never touches the target, so I wanted to show how that enchantment transfers to the bullet. Later on, I decided that I wanted it to be an old-style single-action revolver, and then later that it was crafted from a broken holy sword. The blade under the barrel was a last-second addition.

4. Can you describe the Valducan for readers?

The Valducan follows a secret society of demon hunters. Their principal duty is to protect their holy weapons, which are the only means to kill demons. Each of these weapons in unique and bonds with its owner. In a lot of ways, the weapons are the Valucans and the people are the tools they use to kill monsters.

5. The series is named after them rather than Hollis. Do you see them as the real stars?

Yes. There are so many personalities, both for the weapons and the hunters, and each of them has their own story to tell. I’d grow bored if I simply kept following Matt around, doing what Matt does, when there are so many other stories that can be told in that world.

6. Your mythology is pretty binary with the holy weapons on one side and the monsters on the other. Is it ever shades of gray or it is monsters versus humans with never the two meeting?

The monsters will always be monsters. They’re inhuman and evil. Later stories will go into deeper details about them, but they’re always going to be evil. However, there are other entities that won’t fall into either category.

7. Matt doesn't get along very well with his fellow demon hunters in the Valducan. Do you think it's a good thing your hero is such a loner?

I think it’s easier for a reader to empathize with him. Like Matt, the reader is an outsider that’s being introduced to this society and learning the ropes with him. Matt’s specialty is working alone, and forcing him into a group, especially one that doesn't trust him, is part of what he has to overcome. The next book, Hounacier, will follow the opposite approach. There, we’ll take a very accomplished team-leader, isolate him, and force him to work alone.

8. What do you think is the appeal of Urban Fantasy to writers? How about you specifically?

Unlike Historic Fantasy or Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy takes place in our own world. We can’t fly in a starship or live in a castle, but we can walk down the streets of London or Chicago. Writers don’t have to project their adventures to some far-distant place that they’ll never see, but can put them here and now and make their own world more interesting.

For example, when I was first starting the novel, I spent a week in Florence Italy. My very favorite statue is Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa. I remember standing on the street, looking up at it, and how much I enjoyed it. So in Dämoren, when Matt is looking up at it, he’s standing exactly where I was, and everything he hears and sees and smells is real. I love knowing that in some minor way I’ve shared this experience with him. I hope to find out that a reader gets to have that experience, too.

9. Aside from Hollis and Damoren, who is your favorite character in the novel?

I go back and forth depending on my mood at any moment, but it’s either Schmidt or Malcolm Romero. Both of them serve as conflict characters for Matt, but in order to explain why they dislike him, I had to put the most work into how they thought and where they were coming from. I didn't want them to be conflict characters just to be conflict characters, I needed to get into their heads and have logical reasons for their behavior rather than simply saying, “They’re just dicks.” That made me really fall in love with them.

10. What can we expect from you in the future?

I’m finishing the second book, Hounacier, right now. I expect it done in the next week. It’s a much darker story with more of a noir/mystery element. We hope to have that out next year. In the meantime, Emby Press will be releasing ‘The Vampire of Somerset’ in their Grimoire of Eldritch Inquests anthology. It’s a 1930’s short story from the Valducan’s archives. It’s the first of my planned Archive Adventures.

I also have two Sword & Sorcery collections coming out next year with Ragnarok Publications. Mountain of Daggers and Sea of Quills will follow a thief character called the Black Raven, who is kind of like James Bond meets the Gray Mouser.

Thanks! Those sound awesome. I can't wait to get my grimy mitts into them. We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.

    I got spoiled for Amid the Ruins by the internet. It was my own damn fault, really, and the spoilers were so bad that I decided to put off playing the game for three whole months. I'm over my feelings, however, so I'm going to continue my review.

    Amid the Ruins picks up immediately after the events of In Harm's Way. Our heroes are fleeing from Howe's Hardware (a converted Lowes stand-in), covered in Walker-guts, with a herd of zombies descending upon it. Their plan of escape has already hit a few snags as Kenny's new wife Sarita gets bitten in the process, Carlos is mistaken for a zombie and shot, plus Sarah runs away screaming after her father is killed.

    The idea that there could actually be a video game bleaker and more tragic than the original Walking Dead video game surprises me but this episode confirms Season 2 is it. Amid the Ruins takes the already dark and tragic storyline to new lows. Without spoiling, quite a few sympathetic characters die in this episode no matter what Clementine does.

Poor Kenny. Poor, poor Kenny. Poor Sarita too.

    Much of the episode is based around the group fleeing to an old Civil War memorial which is neither filled with supplies or capable of providing adequate shelter to the survivors. It is, unfortunately, all they've got since events have utterly screwed them over. Rebecca is about ready to have her baby and Kenny is traumatized by the events back at Howe's Hardware. This includes losing an eye and what happens with his wife.

    The character of Jane gets a lot of focus this episode and we get a sense of who she is, which is good because she seems like an interesting character. We get a general idea of how traumatizing living on your own can be as well as why it might appeal to some individuals. As the Simon and Garfunkle song goes, "A rock feels no pain and an island never cries."

    Unfortunately, this episode is hampered by the fact all of Clementine's actions feel ultimately pointless. Clementine can go to extreme lengths to try to save characters during this episode but nothing she does will make the slightest bit of difference. This episode is squarely on the rails and while you can choose how you're going to fail, you can't choose to succeed. I found this to be disingenuous.

No, you don't get to fire it. A pity.

The series has always been fairly linear with issues being more about how you choose to react than anything you accomplish, but this episode is one of the few times it becomes actually frustrating. The game feels like it's punishing you for attempting to save certain characters and there's even a lengthy lecture by Jane about how you "just can't save some people." I found this to be annoying as my Clementine argued with Jane over it.

Despite this, there's several gut-wrenching and emotional moments spread throughout the episode. For those players who are fond of Kenny, as I am, this is the episode which will be the most heartbreaking for him since Episode 3 of the first season. He's truly teetering on a ledge and I'm worried the game won't give me the option to save him. I also was a fan of the Sarah character and her plotline during all this really moves me.

Our heroes never catch a break.

I'll miss some of the characters killed in Amid the Ruins and I'm a little disturbed the storyline seems to be setting up Clementine for a "Lone Survivor" ending. Given she's already survived the destruction of one group already, this is problematic to me. In order for you to care about survivors, they kind of have to survive.

In conclusion, this is a really good episode but the the rail-road tracks for your decision are much-much visible than in previous episode. I'm getting a little sick of it to be honest and the lack of freedom is hampering my enjoyment. The storytelling is still top-notch, though, and I hope we'll continue to see it until the end.

8/10

    Contagious Chaos is the third volume of the Contagium series, which is the chronicles of a young woman (Orissa "Rissa" Penwell) as she struggles to survive a zombie-outbreak. Rissa' situation is slightly better than most zombie survivors as she quickly hooks up with a group of Marines who defy genre convention by NOT being evil rapists or morons. Indeed, the Marines are some of the few characters in the genre actually trying to take the world back even if it's going very-very slowly.

    The premise is Rissa has gotten herself captured while exploring a former insane asylum. The inhabitants (a group of white-supremacists which have taken over) have set up their own quasi-Woodbury-esque dictatorship under a man named Dre. The asylum-dwellers have ample food, medical supplies, and weapons which they have been using to (what else) prey on other survivors. They intend to beat and torture a location of Rissa's group out of her. Rissa doesn't intend to let this happen and will do her best to escape so she can warn her friends.

    I think the asylum-dwellers are biting off more than they can chew as I would put my money on the Marines rather than a group of heavily-armed gang members. The author tries to sell them as a serious threat, however, and a group comparable in might. I can't say I'm a big fan of setting up "utterly evil settlements" in zombie stories, though, even if there's justifications for this like them being composed of racists.

    I'm more a fan of things like Rick being willing to take the Woodbury survivors into the prison at the end rather than total destruction as the only recourse. We have enough arguing for that in the real world without fictional people being reduced (ironically) zombies.

    Contagious Chaos is more interested in telling a story of good versus evil with a side order of revenge than moral ambiguity, however. The asylum dwellers killed a friend of Rissa and tortured her, which drives her to want to exterminate them throughout the story. Any and all obstacles which stand in her way are ones she cuts through with a knife. Rissa even plans to unleash zombies onto the asylum, something I'd only advocate for the Terminus folk.

    The book makes use of one of my personal bugbears in sexual assault (or the threat thereof) as a means of illustrating the villains are evil. I automatically remove a point from any novel which makes use of this plot point. I've seen it too many times in everything from the Book of Eli to The Walking Dead to ever want to see it again. Thankfully, it never gets beyond the villains suggesting it is Rissa's fate if she doesn't cooperate.

    Despite this, Contagious Chaos is good.

    Quite good.

    Rissa is an excellent proactive female heroine in a genre which is only now starting to produce excellent ones. She's tough, intelligent, motivated, and neither overly sexualized or removed of those qualities. Rissa has a fully-realized personality and we get to know her intimately during this book. Even if I believe her desire to destroy the asylum residents verges on the brutal, many readers will appreciate a female protagonist motivated by anger and revenge.

    My wife certainly does.

    I liked the character of Hayden who is a wonderful romantic foil for Rissa. As the handsome Marine she's seeing and the only human being with an immunity to zombie-itis (so to speak), he could easily be the protagonist of the series but isn't. I like how he desires to be protective of Rissa but understands that's a stupid attitude to have with someone so proactive. Their relationship sort of reminds me of the best of Buffy and Angel.

    The book is filled with action, great emotional moments, and hard decisions. Rissa is the toughest woman left alive in the world and it's fun watching her have to push the Marines to the right decisions sometime. I also like her relationship with her fellow female survivors, teaching them how to be tougher in a world where weakness is going to be exploited.

    In conclusion, I think this is an excellent action-orientated zombie apocalypse novel. It's about finding the bad guys and smashing them up good. It's got plenty of zombie-killing, romance, and despicable villains. I may not like its depiction of the mentally ill or the threat of sexual assault as a problem for our heroine to overcome but these are minor issues in the grand scheme of things.

8.5/10

    Recently, I was talking with some Facebook associates about the subject of bad reviews. I'd given a slightly-lower-than-expected review of a book and they were surprised by that, asking about what my criteria were for giving a score and whether or not I'd ever given a bad review.

    I'd answered, yes, I'd given bad reviews in the past and would continue to do so in the future. Then they asked me if I was ever worried about authors trashing my work in public or getting mad. I answered, "Well, if I was intimidated by hard feelings, then I wouldn't be a very good reviewer, now would I?"

    It occurred to me, however, that there's not much on the internet about the right way to give a bad review. There's plenty of Caustic Critics (thank you, TV tropes) who love to put down things because they suck and it's funny to hear popular stuff get heckled. These reviews are wildly popular and with good reason.

    People appreciate the honesty of having the flaws of a work pointed out to them. However, I've seen a lot of reviews which are just teeth gnashingly nasty with no real content to them to. It's okay to hate on a work but I've never really gotten much feedback from, "It sucks! Don't buy it!"

    There's also the purpose of a bad review. For me, the purpose of a bad review is to hold up a sign and warn away people like a lighthouse warns people against rocky shores. I'm also a great believer there's so such thing as bad publicity so I have to always gauge, "Is a bad review better than not reviewing this at all?"

    There have been several books I have refused to review on the United Federation of Charles because, bluntly, they weren't very well done. The authors were friends of mine but I couldn't, in all honesty, review their work without putting it down.

    One free ebook I got from an author hadn't been formatted properly so it didn't have paragraphs. I told her that she should correct that but that it being for sale, now, was a mistake. I would have mentioned this on her Amazon.com page but there were already reviews which pointed this out.

    So, when should I actually post a bad review on my website or other locations?

1. When you feel the need to be a dissenting opinion: This is something that often motivates me and that's when I find myself reviewing something very-very popular which I don't like. My review of (here) reflects the fact I found Cole Phelps to be a sanctimonious jerk who's use as a mouthpiece by Rockstar to compare World War 2 to the then-current war in Iraq to be astoundingly ashistorical.

    I also found the game's open-world to be unnecessary. The game was often called the best game of all time and I felt it was most certainly not. Still, I gave it a two-star rating because a one-star rating wouldn't acknowledge the fun I did have. I gave a similar review to Fallout: New Vegas: Dead Money (here), which I found to be boring and poorly designed.

2. When I feel the author can do better: I find it amusing that, hands down, the single most popular review on my website is my review of Charles Stross'The Jennifer Morgue (here). To date, it is my only one-star review on this website. I hesitated to post it anywhere but my blog because I love Charles Stross' writings and respect him as an author. He's a guy who writes Cthulhu-themed spy fiction, more or less catnip to my Delta Green-loving brain.

    However, The Jennifer Morgue was one long shallow parody of James Bond which turned up its nose at the series every chance it could get while cribbing its plot from Thunderball (the most overused of all Bond films/novels to rip off).

    It was painful to get through as a James Bond fan and I felt it was unworthy of the author's efforts. I hope to meet Charles Stross someday but if we ever do, he needs to know I don't think much of that work.

3. When there are problematic elements: As mentioned above, I'm a fan of both the literary as well as the film version of James Bond. If I were to ever review Ian Fleming today, however, I would find myself unable to give him ten out of ten for his books on the basis of the fact he was really a raging sexist and racist.

    I don't mean "kinda" racist or sexist either. I mean stuff like that in From Russia With Love, Kerim Bey talks about how he used to keep his future wife prisoner in his basement. H.P. Lovecraft is the greatest horror author of all time, in my mind, but if I glossed over some of the vile crap he said about other races (let alone alluded to) then I'd be doing a disservice to my readers.

    The thing is, I still love H.P. Lovecraft but he has quite a few stories I'd give 1 star or below like The Medusa Coil. That's the story where the "horrible revelation" the protagonist discovers about herself is she's got black ancestry. Not exactly sanity-blasting, IMHO. I weigh in how these elements effect my readership and point them out so readers can judge for themselves whether they think they'd enjoy a book.

    While most modern authors avoid the excesses of the past, I can't tell you the number of times I've knocked off a point or two because the villains are a bunch of rapists because the author has decided that's the best way to show they're evil. That particular bit of storytelling really burns me.

4. When I think the flaws are not immediately apparent: This is where I will make my own confession time: my first Tabletop RPG, Winterweir, sucked. This is a somewhat overly harsh opinion, I've been told since I have a fairly rabid fanbase and my reasons for taking it off the market have more to do with a few typos which got repeated throughout the book than the actual content. However, the actual appearance of the book was quite pleasing to look at because of its kickass cover art by Storn Cook.

    However, those amateur mistakes from a first time self-publisher ruined the pot for me and bad reviews convinced me the book should be off the market. While these reviews hurt, they helped me understand what was necessary to correct in my writing and made me the insane perfectionist I am today. In this day and age, anyone can buy an awesome cover or even excellent editing (which they don't do often enough) but you can't buy good writing.

    That only comes with practice.

    Finally, the 5 and most important rule.

5. When you *do* post a bad review, be specific and honest: A review where you praise everything and don't mention what you dislike doesn't help an author (unless you really liked everything). A review where you criticize everything but don't mention what you like is equally valueless (unless the author just stinks that badly).

    I use the 1-10 scale for a reason because it is the rare book I think is technically perfect as well as awesome to read. Stuff like Heir to the Empire or Time of Death: Induction are the rare books I think are genre classics in the making. Most books, by contrast, get lower scores even when I really like them.

    If I'm unhappy I've read a book, then I'm happy to assign a 2-5 score for a work. However, if I've liked it in even the mildest way I tend to give a six or above. 8 is what happens for book I really-really liked but don't think hit my highest scores. I only give 9 or 10 scores to books that I think not only tell a good story but do something which really sticks with me, sticks in my head, or makes me think.

    Don't dilute the 10 out of 10's power or the 1 out of 10's venom by throwing them around causally.

    I hope this has helped future reviewers out there. I also hope readers and potential reviewers will understand that writing out reviews for authors is something they live for (both good and bad). Take the time to review the books you like (and dislike) and share those opinions. Staying silent is something I reserve for only the worst of the worst.

    The books I'd rather see forgotten.

Addendum

    Some friends have e-mailed me privately about this article and mentioned they feel intimidated by potential audience retaliation. Part of what Amazon.com has made the mistake of doing was including a "helpful" or "unhelpful" response system. Likewise, other authors have attempted to go after authors they find to be problematic. My response to this? Barring tracking you down to your house (where you should call the police), don't sweat it. No one likes getting a bad review and some people are going to be immature asshats about the whole thing.

    I've posted over a hundred reviews at Amazon.com and a tenth of them have been marked unhelpful. Nine-tenths of them, however, have been marked helpful so I know I'm doing something right. You can't deal with the audience reaction to your reviews, whether from rabid fans or authors who act like five-year-olds. The majority of Amazon readers aren't going to pay attention to your review ranking, either, but instead what you wrote.

    Remember that.

     The Blackthorn novels are my favorite Paranormal Romance series.

     Period.

     I think it's because they straddle the line between genres so well. They're predominately romance with lots and lots of sex but don't sacrifice plot, drama, or world-building. The world is well-developed, divided on cultural as well as species lines with a heavy-emphasis on social ills. The character arcs are nicely done too, each lead showing genuine growth by the end of the novel.

    The books have a signature style too. A pair of lovers meet, initially antagonistic, only to grow closer as they struggle against one another. This is always in the decaying urban hellhole of Blackthorn, a ghetto where the supernatural is segregated away from quote-unquote "polite" (read: human) society. Each couple is somehow tied to the Vampire Prophecy, which predicts the rise of a leader who will overthrow the human-run establishment to set up a more egalitarian society.

    Blood Deep is the fourth novel in the series, introducing our fourth and final pair of star-crossed lovers. Jessie and Eden are a human male and supernatural woman caught up in covert operation gone horribly wrong. Eden, the man, has been sent to infiltrate crime boss Pummel's twisted "Circus" in order to extract Jessie for his employers.

    Eden has been promised medical treatment for his niece if he can extract Jessie in three days. Jessie is a member of an unknown Third Species (non-humans like vampires or werewolves) with the power to heal. She is mystically enslaved by Pummel and if she tries to turn against him, she'll die.

    Eden, of course, falls in love with Jessie but can he deliver her from one slave master to another?

    Read and find out!

    Interestingly, I find Eden and Jessie to be the healthiest relationship of the four series couples despite the fact she's a slave and he's an undercover cop pretending to be a convicted murderer. Previous romances in the series have involved a lot of emotional blackmail and even attempts to kill one another.

    Here, Eden wants to help Jessie but he's caught in a situation where he can't blow his cover. Jessie would dearly love to trust Eden but she's a woman who has been seeing nothing but the worst of humanity in Blackthorn since its creation. Trusting a man who appears to be a hardened felon (and who isn't that far from one in reality) is a risk she isn't willing to take.

    At least, initially.

    What I really liked was the Noir elements and how they were taken to new heights this volume. We get a real sense of the injustice of Blackthorn's world and the segregation of species. The Circus isn't that far from John Carpenter's Escape from New York, a place where criminals are dumped to live out lawless lives where the strong feed on the weak. The immense poverty in Lowtown and surrounding districts also highlight the troubles of Blackthorn aren't as isolated as initial books implied.

    We also get some development of the Vampire Prophecy plot and how the major powers are dealing with it. I admit, I wasn't too keen on the metaphysical results of our heroes "defying destiny" implied by this book and hope there's an explanation as to who (exactly) is so offended by it. I am, however, glad to see fictional power brokers dealing with prophecies in a proactive way. Which side is more evil is up in the air and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that Jessie is premature in her belief humans are worse.

    I like the characters of Jessie and Eden, both of them appealing to me for various reasons. Jessie's Third species race turned out to be a genuine surprise and yet made perfect sense with all of the clues dropped earlier. While, "I did it all for a sick relative" may sound somewhat contrived, you can tell Eden is a ruthless man at heart. Jessie is hard in her own way, cleverly manipulating Pummel to avoid the worst of his abuses while plotting to figure out her next move. Jessie could easily kill Pummel, in all likelihood, but where would she go instead? As events reveal, there's nowhere safe in Blackthorn's world.

    I liked the supporting cast, too, which is surprising given the majority of them are unrepentant psychopaths. Everyone from Mya to Chemist to Tatum is one sort of scumbag or another but they're all likeable scumbags. I wouldn't mind seeing the survivors come back in future books as allies of convenience. It takes skill to make likable protagonists but it takes an artist to make bad guys you enjoy reading about.

    I really liked this book, arguably as much as any other in the series if not more so. This is one of those rare series I think which may get better the further you get into it like the Dresden Files. The fact the main plot finally getting off the ground is good too. I'm eager to see how the Vampire Prophecy ends and hope we'll see a conclusion in the next couple of books. Despite this, I'd still be happy to read more in the world.

10/10

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    Wow.

    That was a trip.

    No Going Back is, easily, the best of the Season 2's episodes. I also think it's got some of the most troublesome plot twists. A lot of the drama is forced and requires the characters to act like idiots but I was willing to overlook this because the story was so good. The funny thing is this is probably the least "plot-centric" episode of the series and works due to the strength of its characterization.

    The premise of this episode is the group has survived its shoot-out with some Russian Survivors and is now stuck with a teenage boy who was traveling with them. Kenny doesn't trust him because, well, the boy was part of the group which just tried to rob them. The rest of the group doesn't trust Kenny due to his violent murder of a character in Episode 3 and his depressed rage from his second wife's death.

    The group splitting up is something which was foreshadowed in Episode 4 and the events which do it are shocking. By the end, you will probably hate some characters you previously liked and possibly killed some.

Tensions rise in the group for very good reasons. Also, because everyone hates everyone else.

    Either way, Clementine will know the sting of betrayal.

    Or she'll commit it herself.

    The theme of No Going Back seems to be, "sometimes good people will do bad things when they're scared." No one is evil in this episode. Even if you buy into some conspiracy theories about the character of Arvo, he's just a guy stuck with the people who killed his group. Everyone just wants to be safe and that means getting rid of the people they don't trust. The sad part? The only person trusted by everyone is Clementine.

    And she can't keep this group together.

    One thing I liked about this episode was the fact Telltale forgoes its usually railroading to allow no less than five different endings. While none of the choices really "matter" until this point, the final choices can have a dramatic effect on who lives or who dies. I'm happy with my ending, Clementine staying true to herself and not abandoning those she loves. I've seen the other endings, though, and they are pretty damn bleak.

    So I guess I lucked out.

Amazing how a touching moment like this can go downhill so quickly.

Sadly, as I mentioned, some of the characters are required to be idiots. They must be willing to go over, rather than around, an avoidable natural hazard. They must be willing to trust the opinion of a relative newcomer to someone they know well. They must be willing to endanger their own lives in order to make another character appear less trustworthy. Really, the characters make stupid decisions this episode. I can't be too mad at them, though, because people in real-life do that under stress.

As a finale to Season 2, No Going Back was a good one.There's some truly powerful moments like a flashback to Season 1, the fate of a character who I'd grown to like, all of the finales, and conversations where you get into the heads of characters who all want your approval. Clementine is the glue which keeps this group together but none of them really see her. I was glad for the opportunity to mention, in-universe, no one listens to Clementine even when she's talking sense. No wonder this group was doomed.

My ending actually brought tears to my eyes. Okay, not really, but it came close.

    Some gamers may complain the finale for Season 2 isn't very well plotted out but I think the actual plot-plot ended with Episode 3. Carver was the main threat which drove the story and everything else is just denouement. The threats which menace Clementine here are human nature and distrust, which can't be shot or beaten to death with a crowbar. It's a nice contrast to the Stranger plot which so dominated the end of Season 1.

    Goodbye Season 2, I look forward to your sequel.

    10/10

Having purchased this yesterday, I'm not going to be giving a comprehensive review. Rather, I'll be discussing the first five or six hours of the game and whether or not I think it's worth purchasing. After I finish, I'll do a separate review of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel's storyline. To begin, I'd like to mention I consider Borderlands 2 to be one of my top five video games of all time. They go: Skyrim, Dragon Age: Origins, Knights of the Old Republic, Borderlands 2, and Mass Effect 2.

Moon-bot! It's fun to say Moon-bot!

     You might guess from these games, I'm primarily an RPGer, so it's to Borderlands 2's credit I put it on the list. The game is fun, has interesting characters, and is one of the best open-world experiences I've ever played. It was also funny, which deserves kudos by itself. I enjoyed all of Borderland 2's DLC and am planning to go through the first game when time permits.

    The main game and DLC set up numerous sequel hooks: the existence of other Vaults, the assault on Hyperion's space-station above the planet, and the existence of other Sirens. Sadly, Handsome Jack was dead and his passing left big shoes for any successive villain to fill. Gearbox seems to have realized the latter as well, which is why this is an intrequel between the first and the second games.

    The premise is a modification of the "take back Helios" sequel hook. The player characters are one of four Vault Hunters Handsome Jack has hired to, what else, find a Vault. Two of the Vault Hunters are his minions from Borderlands 2: Nisha the Lawgiver and Wilhelm the Enforcer.

    The other two are a mysterious assassin named Athena and series mascot Claptrap. Playing the role of the villain's henchmen isn't so far from the normal Borderlands experience since all the Vault Hunters, with rare exception, are one form of anithero or another.

There's lots more guns--and that's really the whole point, isn't it?

    Handsome Jack isn't yet the CEO of Hyperion. Nothing more than a low-level programmer, Jack is acting way above his pay grade by hiring mercenaries. It's a good thing he did, however, because a legion of former Dahl corporation mercenaries seize control over Helios Station in order to prevent Jack from finding the Vault he's hunting.

    Keeping Jack from opening a Vault is a VERY good idea but it appears they're bad since they attack without provocation. Your character is forced to flee the station and head down to Pandora's moon, which is where you will prepare to take back the station. This is where the game really begins.

    For the most part, this plays identically to its predecessor. The protagonists and their abilities are different but only slightly. Wilhelm, for example, doesn't have a turret but a pair of flying weapons platforms which heal him as well as attack his enemies.

    Claptrap is the most interesting character given his abilities are somewhat random. I've yet to play the others but am eager to give them all a try. Additions to the gameplay is the moon's gravity is low so super-leaps are possible. Likewise, air pockets are scarce on the planet so you have to use oxygen tanks in order to move between habitable areas.

Handsome Jack is still handsome. That's going to change.

    Long-time fan-favorite Scooter is replaced with Australian lesbian Janey Springs, who is one of the few inhabitants of Pandora's star system possessing a moral compass. In a way, I regret the loss of Scooter because he's wonderfully repulsive but I'm interested in this new character. Hopefully, she'll demonstrate some of the horrific personality flaws which make the series so entertaining.

    So far, I'm seeing a lot of the same only with new environments as well as a few tweaks. This isn't a bad thing since there's no reason to change a formula which works. There's no significant upgrades to the game environments but they're entertaining and the writing is top-notch if silly. I'm hoping we'll get to see more series regulars since the series' appeal is, in-large-part, due to its quirky characters.

    Fans will appreciate more Handsome Jack and the development of several characters who died in Borderlands 2. If this is the last video game I ever buy on Xbox 360, then I'm happy to say it's money well-spent.

    10/10

Buy at Amazon.com

     I like urban fantasy which doesn't take itself too seriously.

    One of the greatest fantasy novels of all time, The Hobbit, is a ridiculous story from start to finish. Which, of course, you might miss if you're only familiar with the movies. Terry Pratchett has made a cottage industry out of using fantasy explore absurdity. John Golden: Freelance Debugger is a funny urban fantasy novella, only sixty-eight pages, which I'd gladly read a full-length series about.

    Before I begin this review, I should talk about the size. It's about a quarter the size of a full-length novel but costs half-as-much. Despite this, I'm still going to recommend purchasing this novel and its sequel. While not a big fan of novellas, sometimes they're entertaining enough to be worth the purchase price (and then some).

    This is.

    The premise is fairies are real but instead of menacing the quote-unquote real-world they've discovered they can manifest in computer networks. Fairies proceed to screw up bandwidth and play pranks on their users, which really plays havoc with computer owners. Sometimes, they even kill and eat the souls of their computer operators.

    This is where Debuggers come in. Debuggers are those rare humans who can physically enter the virtual reality worlds of fairies and "kill" them. This act banishes them back to their home-dimension and frees the networks from their control.

    John Golden is one of the world's foremost debuggers, existing as a combination IT guy and James Bond. Well, he likes to fancy himself the latter but he's much-much more the former. John travels with his sister, Sarah, who lost her body during one of his adventures and is now a kind of ghost in his laptop. Sarah, notably, resents this as she's an atheist and prefers to think of herself as a computer simulation of the very-dead flesh-based Sarah.

    The books are written from the perspective of John's memoirs with Sarah hacking them to add her own (often hilarious) commentary on events. John tends to take a somewhat action-orientated view of his adventures with a heavy dose of romance while Sarah is ruthlessly pragmatic. How the two describe a programmer John crushes on is, for example, very different.

    I could spoil the story but it's better experienced. This is a fun-fun adventure and I recommend it for anyone with an e-reader.

10/10

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Dracula Untold review

Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne review

GnomeSaga: Rough Magick review

Sword Sisters review

At Hell's Gates review

Damoren review

My Writing History and Permuted Press part 1

My Writing History and Permuted Press part 2

My Writing History and Permuted Press part 3

My Writing History and Permuted Press part 4

My Writing History and Permuted Press part 5

My Writing History and Permuted Press part 6

Exclusive Interview with Seth Skorkowsky!

The Walking Dead Season 2: Episode 4: Amid the Ruins review

Contagious Chaos review

The Etiquette of Giving a Bad Review

Blood Deep review

The Walking Dead: Season 2: Episode 5: No Going Back review

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel review

John Golden: Freelance Debugger review