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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for July 2021

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some June books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have hardboiled mysteries, cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, retro mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, 1960s mysteries, humorous mysteries, paranormal mysteries, science fiction mysteries, steampunk mysteries, crime thrillers, legal thrillers, horror thrillers, police procedurals, police officers, private investigators, amateur sleuths, lawyers, burglars, assassins, FBI agents, organised crime, serial killers, murdered wives, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting realtors, crime-busting single moms, murder and mayhem in Bloomington, Indiana, New York City, San Francisco, Hawaii, London, outer space and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Glass Alibi by John Burns:

There is no mystery on this journey to hell. You are witness the to the crimes dealing the death sentences, each justified by liberal application of the seven deadly sins.

Enter the glamorous but insidious world of San Francisco’s ultra-wealthy socialites and dive into an immersing character study, filled with envy, greed, and cold blooded murder.

Sinister • Hard Boiled • Relentlessly Paced • Savagely Funny

Stealing Murder by Beth Byers:

April 1961

Cat Clarke tends towards the naughty. You know…a little vengeful pickpocketing. A smidgeon of well-aimed fraud. A dabbling of burglary from the deserving.

She’s a woman with her eye on the prize, and with her unexpected team, she might have planned her greatest heist yet. Only while she’s in the act of cutting the painting from the frame, she hears a murder.

If Cat doesn’t catch the killer first, the feds may never stop chasing her. Time for her team to accomplish their greatest feat yet: find the killer, leave him gift-wrapped for the feds, and disappear into the night.

Book ONE in the Cat Clarke 1960s Adventures. It’s time for a new adventure, and you’re going to love Cat Clarke and her family.

One-time orphans turned family, Cat might be fiendish, but her mother, Louisa, is all-good. Then there is the pragmatic Albert and the loyal Thea. This family sticks together no matter what hijinks Cat drags them into. Prepare yourself for a series of mysteries and heists and grab onto something, because it isn’t just her family that Cat will charm.

The Unexpected Flavor of Forever by Beth Byers:

Severine and friends have arrived in a new village once again, and they’re ready for nothing more than a place to call home. With large forests to walk in, a beach to stroll by, locals who are friendly, it is everything that they could have ever wanted.

On one of Severine’s long walks, however, she stumbles over a grisly scene. Now it’s up to her friends to clear her name before their chance of a home that fits them perfectly is ruined.

 

Dead For Good by Stacy Claflin and Nolon King:

When your only alibi is a dead man, you don’t have much of a defense.

Brad Morris likes to think of himself as one of the best: an assassin at the top of his game. For years, he’s juggled work and family — attentive husband and loving father by day, cold-blooded killer by night.

But when the charismatic neighbor that Brad openly despises turns up dead on the same night he was out on a hit, Brad suddenly finds himself a prime suspect. His wife lies to the police but her lie only lands him deeper in trouble, and it’s clear she thinks he might be guilty too.

Brad’s being framed and he knows it, but it’s nearly impossible for him to prove his innocence without admitting he’s an assassin.

Can he catch the killer without endangering his family — or blowing his own cover?

RICO Rocky by John Ellsworth:

The police are after…the police. An outsider is needed to hunt down the bad ones. Call up Thaddeus Murfee.

Thaddeus Murfee gets the call from the Los Angeles District Attorney, a crime-buster nicknamed RICO Rocky. There’s a ring of police on the take…and worse. The DA is known for his RICO criminal cases, RICO for Racketeer Influenced Criminal Organizations. RICO Rocky enlists Thaddeus to file a RICO indictment and take them down. Only problem is, it’s going to be very dangerous. Will be necessary to go undercover. Yes, bring your investigator, Marcel. He’ll need to go undercover, too. Thaddeus takes on the assignment. Can he take down the bad apples? Or, will he find that it isn’t the police who are dirty, but the District Attorney’s Office itself?

War breaks out: a battle of psychology, lawyers, and of dark deeds. And a hanging.

Dublin Moon by Mike Faricy:

US Marshal Jack Dillon, assigned to An Garda Síochána, Special Branch is just about to settle into an enjoyable evening with his neighbor Tara when his phone rings. Against his better judgment, he answers… Good thing he does. It’s his boss, Detective Chief Inspector McCabe. There’s been a shooting in Dublin and it’s all hands on deck. Turns out two police officers have been murdered. US Marshal Jack Dillon and Detective Inspector Paddy Suel begin an investigation that seems to be going nowhere— and yet… It’s bad enough two officers have been murdered, but apparently, that’s just the beginning. The bodies begin to pile up and Dillon and Suel can’t seem to get ahead of the game or find out who is responsible.

The Jack Dillon Dublin Tales series is written by Mike Faricy and was originally released under the pseudonym, Patrick Emmett. Faricy also writes The award-winning Dev Haskell series, the award-winning Corridor Man series, and the Hotshot series.

Without Sin by Rachel Ford:

A city in fear. A serial killer who crossed the line.

The Nursery Rhyme Killer took his brother. Now Owen Day will stop at absolutely nothing to find him.

A brutal killer haunts the streets of Kennington, leaving dead bodies in his wake – dead bodies, gruesome murder scenes, and nursery rhymes. The media dubs him NRK, the Nursery Rhyme Killer.

When NRK targets his brother, ex-military intelligence analyst Owen Day taps into the skills he developed in the Army to bring the killer to justice – before he strikes again.

‘He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone…’

Owen’s own hands are far from clean. But to wrest the city from the death grip of a madman, Owen will need to confront the demons of his past.

Sometimes, a man with blood on his hands is the only one who can stop a killer.

Sibyl Sue Blue by Rosel George Brown:

Stop a murder, save two planets!

Who she is: Sibyl Sue Blue, single mom, undercover detective, and damn good at her job.

What she wants: to solve the mysterious benzale murders, prevent more teenage deaths, and maybe find her long-lost husband.

How she’ll get it: seduce a millionaire, catch a ride on his spaceship, and crack the case at the edge of the known galaxy.

A thrilling, ground breaking story of mystery, crime, action and romance!

Wicked Whispers by Lily Harper Hart:

Jack Harker says the honeymoon will never be over, but it’s back to reality for him and his wife Ivy. Unfortunately for them, that means murder is on the menu … and this newest body is dropped in Ivy’s nursery parking lot.

Jack is a mess when he realizes a sniper took out a local woman. Ivy, although shocked because it happened right in front of her eyes, is also intrigued. When the duo starts digging, they find themselves drawn into an ugly underworld that’s happening right under their noses.

Shadow Lake might be a quiet town but it has an ugly side … and apparently there are a group of people looking to profit. The harder Jack and Ivy look, the more ugliness they uncover.

Ivy’s abilities are growing by leaps and bounds but even she can’t fight off a bullet. When her busybody nature makes her a target, it’s going to take everything she has in her arsenal to fight off the inevitable.

Jack loves his wife. Ivy will do whatever it takes to protect her husband. Will one of them have to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the other in the end?

It’s a hot race to the finish, and Ivy’s magic will have a say in the outcome.

Beach Front Hunt by CeeCee James:

Life is good for Stella O’Neil. She’s found her mother at last and is finally getting a chance to get to know her after 20 years apart. She’s also just landed the listing of a lifetime!

Trouble always seems to find Stella though and this time it feels personal. When she goes with her client to visit the beautiful remote mansion, her client is brutally murdered. No one else is around for miles. Stella becomes the prime suspect. It’s up to Stella to clear her name and find the killer.

She has no clues to follow until files start disappearing from her computer. Soon a threat follows. Stella is sure if she can find the person responsible, the hacker can lead her to the killer. But she doesn’t have much time until she herself is arrested and tried- will she go to prison after her mother was just released?

Absolute Unit by Nick Kolakowski:

Absolute Unit is a dark carnival ride through the underside of the American Dream, where hustlers and parasites fight to survive against gun-toting furries, sarcastic drug kingpins, old ladies who are startlingly good with knives, and angry ex-girlfriends. It’s a hardboiled slice of modern American horror that asks the deepest question of all: Is the human race worth saving?

Bill is a nobody, a health inspector who’s not above taking a few dollars to overlook a restaurant’s mouse problem, and hated by nearly everyone except his long-suffering girlfriend. His nephew, Trent, isn’t much better: sexually and morally confused, he’s probably the worst teenage con artist on the East Coast. But today, these two losers are going to become the most important people in the world.

That’s because Bill and Trent harbor a sentient parasite with a sarcastic sense of humor and a ravenous appetite. As the parasite figures out how to control its new human hosts, the focus of its desires grows from delicious cheeseburgers and beer to something much darker and more dangerous.

The apocalypse might come from within us…

Great Hexpectations by Amanda M. Lee:

Hadley Hunter thought she was getting a grip on the paranormal world she never knew existed until recently. She was wrong. In the shadow of a massive shifter retreat, she finds she knew absolutely nothing.

Her live-in love Galen Blackwood has his hands full with the conference. Not only is his mother pressuring him to make his presence known but it’s also up to him to keep the not-so-friendly factions from going to war. Things only get stickier when a member of the Michigan wolf contingent ends up dead on the docks.

Hadley wants to help Galen, as does his cousin Aric Winters, who has brought his magical mage wife Zoe and their daughter to the island at the behest of his father. Aric prefers distance when it comes to shifter politics but he’s happy to see his cousin, and be introduced to Hadley for the first time.

Because they’re not shifters, Hadley and Zoe are considered outsiders. That allows them to join together to track down a murderer.

Hadley is out of her element but she’s determined to help Galen by any means necessary. Unfortunately for her, the other wolves don’t like it … and decide to make it an issue worth dying for.

A wolf war is brewing and Hadley is at the center of it. Not only that but she’s a target. It’s going to take all of her witchy energy – plus a little help from a new friend – to make it through to the other side.

Somebody else has different plans … and they’re deadly. It might be the wolves warring, but Hadley is the one who might die on the battlefield.

The Sightless City by Noah Lemelson:

Kidnapping.
Enslavement.
Murder.

Those are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to actions some will take to protect their interests in æther-oil, the coveted substance that fuels the city of Huile.

As both veteran and private investigator, Marcel Talwar knows this firsthand, and he likes to think he’d never participate in such things. However, that naïve idea comes to a crashing end when he takes on a new case that quickly shatters his world view. A trail of evidence points to someone in Marcel’s inner circle who’s using him as a pawn to conduct grisly experiments-experiments that could lead to genocide.

Now, Marcel is more determined than ever to discover who’s pulling the strings to this sinister plot. But the further he gets, the larger the target on his back becomes, and it’s not long before Marcel has to ask himself how much and how many he’s willing to sacrifice to get to the truth.

Killer Surprise by Sonia Parin:

After several delays, postponements and reschedules, Eve’s parents are finally coming for a belated Christmas lunch and Eve is determined to give them a perfect Christmas feast. Everything is set for the family reunion at Eve’s Seabreeze Inn and she has everyone organized. Or, so she thinks.

When Detective Jack Bradford knocks on her door, Eve immediately goes into denial. There’s been a death on the island and she might be indirectly involved. Despite her reluctance to snoop around, Jack trusts her instincts. The more she learns, the more she realizes the truth could be staring her in the face.

The Labyrinth by Owen Parr:

SHE WAS THE PERFECT WIFE…

SO WHO KILLED HER?

The widower says his wife was killed by gangs— but now he’s running for Mayor of New York City. Just to be sure (or else to portray himself as a properly mourning husband), he hires P.I.s Joey Mancuso and Father Dom to solve the murder. Only they can’t help noticing he’s pushing them to come to the gang conclusion as well. Hey, is something fishy here?

Joey Mancuso, his priest half-brother–Father Dom–and their crack team have got their work cut out for them. A year ago, a Brooklyn politician’s wife was brutally murdered, seemingly in a terrible burglary gone wrong. But no one really knows: the case remains unsolved. The mourning politician hires Mancuso to solve the cold case–right before announcing his plan to run for mayor of New York City. Oh, and in that same speech, the politician blames his wife’s death on gang violence. And the politician tries to convince Mancuso to come to the same conclusion.

Well….none of the gangs in Brooklyn seem to have it out for the politician’s family. Plus, the politician may have a straying eye–there are rumors of the affair. It’s a labyrinthine puzzle, the kind Joey (forever inspired by his hero, Holmes) delights in. Mancuso and Co. take to their office–which doubles as a bustling, Lower Manhattan cigar bar–and delve into Joey’s strangest mystery yet.

Joey Mancuso’s latest adventure is a gritty tour of a side of Brooklyn that’s rarely seen anymore; any fan of The Wire will find a lot to love in the gripping gang politics. Plus, author Parr weaves in the ritzy drama of upper class New Yorkers, all of whom have sordid secrets…

The Girl and the Dragon’s Island by A.J. Rivers:

A lifeless body, brought onto shore by the shifting tides.
A tranquil setting disguising the darkness behind a puzzling death.

While the nature of the world seems undisturbed.
And billions continue living.
There is one that carries with her the memory of the dead.
She has no choice but to replay the very beginning.
A beginning and ending that leads her back to Dragon’s Island…

For FBI Agent Emma Griffin, making the unsettling link among several cases has propelled her forward to finding the elusive truth.

The murder of her ex-boyfriend Greg has haunted her for years and as she spirals closer toward the final answer, she realizes it is more disturbing and painful than she could have ever imagined.

Her investigation brings her deep into what he went through during his disappearance. Forcing her to face questions about moments in her past and her future.

Now, the answers that have plagued her nightmares are finally revealing themselves.

But they just might be ones she never wanted.

Every ending gives birth to a new beginning…

Ring. Ring.
“I’m back.”

Cold Consequences by David Rohlfing:

Deadly Dealings in Bloomington, Illinois

Ashley Cummins, the granddaughter of a powerful judge, is unexpectedly shot while buying drugs from her dealer late one night on a city street. As detective Sasha Frank investigates her murder, all of his possible suspects start showing up dead or missing. Who is behind the killings? As pressure builds on Sasha to solve the case, he uncovers new information that begins to unravel a complicated web of evidence. Will Sasha be able to prove who the killer is and take down the person responsible for the murders?

Cold Consequences is the exciting second book in David Rohlfing’s Detective Sasha Frank Mystery Series, serving as a prequel to Deliberate Duplicity. In this gripping new tale, full of exciting twists and turns, Sasha pursues every lead to find the killer. You won’t be able to put it down until the final thread is unraveled.

Not Like Us by Ava Strong:

She barely escaped a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest—and now, he is hunting her again. Or is he? Ilse Beck, a niche expert in serial killer survivors, has faced many monsters, and seen shocking cases—but this one may be the worst of all.

In this bestselling mystery series, FBI Special Agent Ilse Beck, victim of a traumatic childhood in Germany, moved to the U.S. to become a renowned psychologist specializing in PTSD, and the world’s leading expert in the unique trauma of serial-killer survivors. By studying the psychology of their survivors, Ilse has a unique and unparalleled expertise in the true psychology of serial killers. Ilse never expected, though, to become an FBI agent herself.

Nothing can prepare Ilse for her new patient, a survivor from a near murder by a serial killer. The patient, paranoid, believes she is still being watched by the killer. And when the killer claims a new victim, the FBI needs Ilse’s help to solve it.

This case and this killer, though, strike too close to home for Ilse’s comfort. When she realizes that she herself is being targeted, the trauma of her own past comes full circle.

Can Ilse use her brilliant instincts to enter the mind of this killer and stop him before he strikes again?

And will she save herself?

Aloha Alibi by Jasmine Webb:

Most people flee to Hawaii for gorgeous weather, white-sand beaches, and cocktails at sunset. Charlotte Gibson, however, is fleeing for her life after a vengeful mobster leaves a severed finger on her doorstep as a warning. Message very much received.

That’s how Charlotte—Charlie to everyone except her mom— finds herself on Maui with six dollars to her name, living with a mother who can’t stop giving her advice on how to land herself a husband. But when a businessman is murdered and his company offers a reward to whoever finds the killer, Charlie sees an opportunity: with that kind of cash, she could afford her own place and start a new life here away from the people who want her dead. After all, how hard can hunting down a murderer be?

Teaming up with a couple of old ladies with more spunk than Betty White, Charlie is sure she’s on the right track to snag the reward money. However, the infuriating-but-smoldering-hot cop trying to keep her away from his case has other ideas. Throw in a day job at an ice cream shop, corrupt local politicians, and a best friend trying to act as the voice of reason, and Charlie has her work cut out for her.

Will she be able to find the killer, or is Charlie’s time in paradise going to go straight to hell in a handbasket?

Listen to Cora rambling on about Isaac Asimov and Foundation at the Stars End Podcast

I’m still busy with this year’s July Short Story Challenge (you can follow along here), so I almost forgot to mention that I’ve been interviewed on the Stars End Podcast, a great new podcast dedicated to the works of Isaac Asimov in general and Foundation in particular. As you may know, I was a huge Isaac Asimov and Foundation fan in my teens and still have a soft spot for the good doctor in spite of all his flaws, so it was a pleasure to geek out with likeminded folks.

I’ll also be interviewing the guys behind Stars End for my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight soon. We truly have an embarrassment of great SFF related podcasts out there.

You can listen to the episode here. And if you want to watch the trailer for the upcoming Foundation streaming series, you can watch it here. The visuals look great and I think Jared Harris will make an excellent Hari Seldon, though I’m a bit doubtful about the focus on the Emperor (who’s only a strictly peripheral figure in the stories) and the clone dynasty plot, which seems to be taken from Ancillary Justice rather than Foundation. Still, I’ll be watching and reviewing Foundation, when it hits the airwaves in September.

Loki Continues “For All Time. Always.”

It’s Wednesday, so here is my take on the final episode of season 1 of Loki. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

Oh yes, and if you missed my reading yesterday, you can watch a recording on YouTube or listen to an audio recording here.

Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!

When we last met our favourite God(s) of Mischief, Loki and Sylvie had just defeated the smoke monster Alioth and were about to enter the Citadel at the End of Time. Whereas the TVA prefers midcentury modern (design classic alert: towards the end, we catch a glimpse of the seating units Charles and Ray Eames designed for Chicago O’Hare International Airport), the person behind everything goes for the full gothic look, gloomy castle, black marble, Victorian furniture. Now you won’t find two styles of design that are more diametrically opposed to each other than midcentury modern and Victorian gothic. In fact, the actual midcentury designers who created the furniture and equipment the TVA is using explicitly reacted against the ornamentation, gloominess and gothicism of the Victorian era, which they considered “everything that’s wrong with design”. Particularly the heavy wooden desk behind which the person behind everything lounges is something that midcentury modern designers flat out hated. There are extensive rants from self-styles design specialists about how such desks are a waste of space and how only self-aggrandizing people would want such a desk. And no, I have no idea what any of this has to do with Loki, though the contrast certainly is interesting. In general, Loki has the best production design of all the Marvel Disney+ shows.

Inside the gloomy gothic citadel, Sylvie and Loki meet… – no, not the person behind everything, but Miss Minutes, the annoyingly chirpy animated clock. And is it me or did Miss Minutes sound a tad Southern in her latest appearance. Miss Minutes informs Loki and Sylvie that her boss, a person she calls He Who Remains, is impressed with them. Miss Minutes also offers Sylvie and Loki all they’ve ever wanted – beating the Avengers, the throne of Asgard, killing Thanos and getting the Infinity Gauntlet with all six stones for Loki and a lifetime of happy memories for Sylvie. However, it’s pretty obvious that all that is no longer what Loki wants. Meanwhile, Sylvie is too obsessed with her need to avenge herself on the person responsible for destroying her life to even consider the offer. And so, Loki and Sylvie get to meet He Who Remains, who is – as Camestros Felapton points out in his review of the episode – just some guy.

That said, the person behind everything is not just some guy, but Kang the Conqueror, a long time Marvel villain who started out as a Fantastic Four antagonist (and might actually be a descendant of Reed and Sue Richards as well as Doctor Doom), but has fought everybody from the Avengers to Thor during his long career. Kang’s one true love in the comics is none other than Ravonna Renslayer, though that Ravonna is a very different character from the one we met in Loki. In the comics, Kang is a time and dimension hopping villain, though not actually He Who Remains, since He Who Remains is the sole survivor of the previous universe who stuck around in our universe after the Big Bang and decided to keep watch by creating the Time Keepers and the TVA. You could say that He Who Remains is a tragic figure and at least means well, while Kang is just an unrepentant villain. Susana Polo has a handy explanation of Kang and his history at Polygon.

In the comics, Kang was a white dude with a silly costume. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kang is portrayed by Jonathan Majors, who also played Atticus in Lovecraft Country (which also starred Wunmi Mosaku who plays Hunter B-15), though he does wear a variation of the green and purple costume Jack Kirby designed for Kang back in 1964.

Now I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly impressed with Jonathan Majors in Lovecraft Country. He was all right and it’s hardly his fault that Atticus is gradually revealed to be a violent jerk and complicit in war crimes (yes, he was just following orders, but that excuse never saves anybody who does not happen to be on the winning side), but in general, I found the various female characters of Lovecraft Country a lot more interesting than Atticus. However, Jonathan Majors is absolutely brilliant as the deranged and completely insane Kang. Majors just nabbed an Emmy nomination for Lovecraft Country (though he’s unlikely to win, because SFF shows and their stars rarely win Emmys and Majors is up against such critical darlings as This Is Us or The Crown), but I hope he gets one for his turn as Kang as well. And since it appears that we will be seeing a lot more of Kang – in fact, he might even be the next Thanos equivalent for the Avengers to beat several years down the road – I guess we’ll also get to see more of Jonathan Majors chewing the scenery. At The Mary Sue, Kaila Hale-Stern calls Jonathan Majors’ tale on Kang finally a worthy villain for the Marvel Cinematic universe, while Guardian reviewer Andy Welch and AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede also praise Majors’ performance.

The bulk of the episode is made up of Kang sitting behind his desk – the sort of heavy Victorian desks that would drive midcentury modern designers as insane as Kang – and explaining the plot to Loki and Sylvie. Yes, even though this is the series finale, we get another round of people sitting at desks and talking. Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw also points out that bulk of this episode is basically expostition. And indeed, the only reason that Loki gets away with being basically a show about people sitting at desks and tables and explaining the plot to each other is that it has such an excellent cast that watching these people sit around and talk is still fun.

I’ve pointed out before that the TVA is basically Eternity from Isaac Asimov’s 1955 time travel novel The End of Eternity, which is one of my favourite books of all time. And the fact that Loki is a show about people sitting around and explaining the plot to each other is also a very Asimovian thing (and one you rarely see anywhere these days, because it’s so difficult to do well), because large chunks of Asimov’s science fiction consists of characters sitting around and explaining the plot to each other.

The explanation Kang gives Loki and Sylvie is a variation of the “What is the TVA?” infodump Miss Minutes gave Loki (and us) in the very first episode, only with the Time Keepers switched out for Kang. Once, there was a multiverse with multiple universes existing in parallel. Kang was a scientist sometime in the 31st century, who discovered the existence of parallel universes at around the same time other versions of Kang made the same discovery. The various Kangs visited each other and initially got along, until they hit upon one or more Kangs who wanted to conquer the multiverse and so the multiverse war broke out. The Kang Who Remains managed to tame the power of the smoke monster Alioth and use it to get rid of his alternates. Then Kang created the TVA to make sure that there was only one preordained timeline and that no more multiverses could arise. All this happened aeons ago and through it all Kang sat behind his desk in his citadel at the end of time and waited. Waited for the moment, when Sylvie and Loki finally track him down. In fact, Kang declares, he manipulated Loki and Sylvie and set them on the way to find him. Kang also knows everything that happens and will happen, including everything that Loki and Sylvie do or say, which allows him to avoid Sylvie’s repeated attempts to stab him, since Sylvie is not particularly patient about infodumps.

As for why Kang would manipulate two people who are extremely pissed off and have every reason to hate him to find his secret hideout at the end of time, well, it turns out that Kang is weary of basically running the universe. He wants to retire and thinks that Loki and Sylvie would be the perfect people to replace him as heads of the TVA and continue to preserve the sacred timeline. On the other hand, Loki and Sylvie could also kill him, allow the timeline to branch, multiple universe to reestablish themselves, which will lead to other, nastier versions of Kang popping up and may in the end lead back to the same point where only one Kang is dominant. This Kang has no idea what will happen, because his powers of ominiscience only work up to a certain point and that point has now passed. The timeline is beginning to branch and only Loki and Sylvie can decide the future of the universe or rather multiverse.

Meanwhile, back at the TVA, Ravonna Renslayer is having a very bad day. After all – the TVA, her whole life and purpose, which she tried to preserve by killing a whole lot of people – is a lie. And Miss Minutes is slow to download the files Ravonna requested, probably because she is also at the end of time, offering Loki and Sylvie everything they ever wanted. And when Miss Minutes finally does download the files, she doesn’t download the files Ravonna asked for, but the ones she’ll need. So is Miss Minutes Kang’s tool (and if so, which version of him?) or is she a free agent, an AI which has gained sentience, which rarely leads to good things in the Marvel Universe?

Before Ravonna can take off to parts unknown, Mobius reappears, very much not dead, to confront her. Ravonna isn’t particularly shocked to see him, in fact, she seems quite pleased that he survived the void, which further suggests that Ravonna and Mobius are more than just colleagues.

Their confrontation is fairly brief. Basically, Ravonna wants to preserve the TVA, even if it is a lie, because she feels that the end justifies the means. Whereas Mobius believes that the sacred timeline is not worth sending innocent people to the void to die en masse nor to kidnap and brainwash people into working for the TVA. Ravonna calls for back-up, but Hunter B-15 is busily luring her former comrades to a high school in Fremont, Ohio, in 2018, where Ravonna’s pre-TVA self is a teacher. This is also where Ravonna’s cherished pen, the one link to her true identity, comes from.

Mobius’ attempt to physically stop Ravonna from escaping fails, because Ravonna used to be a hunter, while Mobius always was an analyst, so she knocks him down and escapes through a time portal to hell knows where or when. I strongly suspect we will see her again.

Meanwhile, back in the Citadel at the End of Time, Sylvie and Loki are debating what to do. That is, Sylvie is perfectly sure what she wants to do, namely kill Kang. Loki is not so sure. Kang might be lying, but if he’s telling the truth, they might be unleashing something that’s a lot worse than this version of Kang, the TVA or the sacred timeline. It’s a clash of chaos versus order, free will versus predetermination. This disagreement leads to a very well choreographed sword fight, but then Tom Hiddleston is a Shakespearian actor and knows how to fence. Meanwhile, Jonathan Majors gives the best performance of “the villain gleefully watches as other people fight each other” since Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine all the way back in Return of the Jedi.

Loki begs Sylvie to at least think it over, before making any rash decisions, but she won’t have any of it and accuses Loki of lying and of just wanting to rule Asgard and the universe, even though it’s quite obvious to anybody except Sylvie that Loki doesn’t really want any of that anymore. In the end, Loki – with Sylvie’s blade at his throat – confesses that he doesn’t the thone or the infinity stones or to rule anything, he just wants her to be okay. Sylvie finally does what Loki (and the audience) have been waiting for since episode 4 at the very least. She kisses Loki, complete with a Michael Ballhaus type circling camera. Then she says, “But I’m not,” and pushes Loki through a time portal back to the TVA. Then she stabs Kang, who tells her with his dying breath that she’ll be seeing a lot more of him.

Back at the TVA, the timeline branch alarms keep going off, as the sacred timeline is branching all over. Mobius and Hunter B-15 watch, unsure if they should do anything or if they ever can. Loki, who’s back at the interrogation room at the TVA where Mobius brought him, picks himself up and takes off to warn Mobius and B-15 that they may have made a terrible mistake and that they will soon be dealing with multiple versions of a very dangerous man.

But Mobius and B-15 just stare at Loki in utter confusion. “Who are you? What department do you work for?” they ask. Turns out that they no longer recognise Loki. Worse, when Loki looks out of the window at the atrium of the TVA/the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, instead of the oversized statues of the Time Keepers, there is now an oversized statue of Kang. Cue cliffhanger… and a post-credits teaser that there will be a season 2 of Loki, which will hopefully resolve that cliffhanger.

So what has happened at the end? Did the timeline change, while Loki was in transit? Did Sylvie accidentally send Loki to the wrong universe and the wrong version of the TVA? But whatever the answer, the series ends with Loki in a worse position than he was in the beginning. The one person he ever had romantic feelings for is lost to him (for now), his only friend in the universe (since Sif and the Warriors Three were Thor’s rather than Loki’s friends) no longer recognises him and the villain has seemingly won and is controlling everything. And while the person Loki was at the beginning of the series wouldn’t have cared about any of that, this Loki does.

Overall, season 1 of Loki was very strong. A lot better than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which IMO was the weakest of the three Marvel/Disney+ series to date, but not quite as strong as WandaVision, which just nabbed a lot of highly deserved Emmy nominations, though it likely won’t win, because it was nominated in the limited series/TV movie category, where it has to compete against such critical darlings as The Underground Railroad, Mare of East Town, I May Destroy You and The Queen’s Gambit, rather than in the comedy series category, where it would have stood more of a chance. And since WandaVision is the lone comedic show amongst a bunch of very serious works about very important topics (slavery in the US, the US opioid epidemic, sexual violence… well, and chess), it doesn’t stand a chance. Sure, WandaVision was about a serious topic, too, namely how to deal with grief and trauma, but it used the form of the US sitcom to address that subject. And yes, WandaVision only had one season, but so does Lovecraft Country, which was nonetheless nominated in the regular drama category.

I think the reason why WandaVision is a little stronger than Loki in the end is because Loki had to do more heavy lifting. WandaVision mostly focussed on its own little self-contained story, though it did introduce SWORD and Monica Rambeau’s superhero persona, whereas Loki not only has to tell its own story, but also had to introduce both the concept of a multiverse as well as the new Big Bad for the entire next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a result, the actual story of Loki coming to terms with himself (quite literally), learning to like himself (again quite literally) and becoming a better person got the short shrift.

Furthermore, Loki wasn’t the really the show it was advertised as. Because the initial clips and trailers promised a Doctor Who like romp through space and time with the buddy team of Loki and Mobius. However, we only got that for two episodes. Meanwhile, ost of the series focussed actually on Loki teaming up with Sylvie and gradually falling in love. Which makes for a sweet romance – and Tom Hiddleston is perfect at portraying the vulnerability that lurks underneath Loki’s bravado and cynicism – but not the one that was advertised. Maybe we’ll get more Loki and Mobius buddy time cop antics in season 2.

So far, the Marvel Disney+ shows have all been at the very least entertaining (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and at their best (WandaVision and Loki) entertaining with hidden depths. It’s also interesting that some of the best villains we’ve seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far – Agatha Harkness, Kang and yes, Loki – all appeared in the TV shows rather than in the movies with their often lackluster villains (though Karli and the Flag Smashers from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier were rather lackluster, too). Part of the reason why Marvel is so successful is that it plays with many different genres and styles and is not afraid to experiment. The TV shows offer Marvel further room for experimentation, e.g. I don’t think WandaVision would have worked as a movie, as well as a chance to introduce characters and concepts. So far, their hit rate has been pretty good, so let’s see what season 2 of Loki has to offer.

See Cora Read at the Space Cowboy Books Flash Fiction Night

I have another event to announce. Cause on Tuesday, July 13th at 6 PM Pacific US Time I will be taking part in the monthly Flash Fiction Night organised by my friends of Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, California.

I’ll be reading some science fiction flash fiction together with Andy Dibble and Douglas A. Blanc. It’s already the third Flash Fiction Night and you can watch recordings of the first two on the Space Cowboy Books YouTube channel.

It’s an online event (well, I’m obviously not going to travel to California, especially since I’ve only had one covid shot) and you can register for free here.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up and join us for an evening of flash science fiction.

Loki goes on a “Journey Into Mystery”

Another Wednesday, another episode of Loki. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

A few words regarding the episode title, Journey Into Mystery was of course the title of the horror/monster anthology comic wherein Thor (and Loki) debuted back in 1962. So the episode title is an in-joke for longterm Marvel fans. It’s far from the only one in this episode.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

When we last met our favourite God of Mischief, he had just been “pruned”, i.e. disintegrated by Ravonna Renslayer. And Loki wasn’t the only victim of Ravonna’s pruning orgy, she also pruned Mobius and killed Hunter C-20.

However, the mid credits scene of episode 4 revealed that pruning isn’t quite as deadly as initially assumed. Instead, Loki woke up in a different place (revealed to be a no-place called “The Void at the End of Time” in this episode) and found himself confronted by four versions of himself, namely an older version (Richard E. Grant having the time of his life and absolutely rocking Jack Kirby’s classic Loki costume from the 1960s), a kid version (Jack Veal), a black version who wields Mjolnir (DeObia Oparei) and an alligator, which Ursula Vernon has nicknamed “Croki”.

The Lokis urge our Loki to come with them, because there is a huge smoke monster called Alioth after them. Alioth also exists in the comics as a smoke monster from the end of time and is linked to Kang the Conqueror and Ravonna Renslayer. And indeed, Kang will appear in the next Ant-Man movie, played by Jonathan Majors, and is rumoured to be the power behind the curtain in Loki as well, as Font Folly explains in his review.

In bits and pieces we also get an explanation for where all the Lokis have ended up. Turns out that people and realities “pruned” by the TVA aren’t disintegrated after all. Instead, they’re dumped in the Void at the End of Time, where they can neither escape nor do any damage. As for why the Void at the End of Time seems to be populated mainly by Lokis? Well, there are a lot of Loki variants, as we’ve been told back in episode 2, and they’re good at surviving.

The Void at the End of Time is a fantastic landscape, a hilly land with permanently grey skies full of the ruined remnants of familiar sights. There’s the Lighthouse of Pharos, the Sphinx and the Pyramids (that’s two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the Golden Gate Bridge, a ruined Stark/Avengers Tower, sailing ships, crashed flying saucers, Thanos’ yellow helicopter (the purple murder eggplant has a helicopter?), a rocket, vintage roadside signs,  crashed Chitauri Leviathans, giant stone heads, castles, ball-headed peacocks, Mjolnir embedded in the ground and even Frog Thor in a jar. I hope someone lets him out, cause Frog Thor is just too cute.

The Lokis take our Loki to their hideout, which is a bowling alley bunker, furnished with yet more midcentury design classics  (Richard E. Grant sits in a Charles and Ray Eames lounge chair), the throne of a mall Santa (maybe the tank-driving mall Santa variant I encountered at the age of five), the Polybius arcade game and what looks like triffids.  All in all, it’s a fabulous lair. In fact, Loki is the best looking of all the Marvel Disney+ shows to date.

We briefly get the stories of the other Lokis. Kid Loki killed Thor and made himself king, so the other Lokis defer to him. Alligator Loki ate the wrong cat. Black Loki (though he’s called Boastful Loki in the credits) defeated the Avengers and managed to get all six infinity stones – or so he claims, cause Black Loki is not particularly trustworthy.

The Richard E. Grant Loki survived his death at the hands of Thanos by letting Thanos kill a lifelike projection, while the true Loki hid. Realizing that pain and death follow him wherever he goes, this Loki then retired to a deserted planet, where he lived unmolested, until he decided to contact Thor, because he missed his brother, and was promptly pruned. BTW, if we ever get to see the Thor to Richard E. Grant’s Loki, I really hope he’s played by Paul McGann, because that would be just perfect.

The fate of Richard E. Grant’s Loki is particularly touching, because this is a Loki who tried to change and rejected his pre-ordained supervillain role. And just because he actually missed his brother, the poor guy got pruned. Because – as Kid Loki points out – whenever a Loki tries to become someone better, they get pruned. Though considering Kid Loki murdered (Kid) Thor, he doesn’t really seem like a Loki who wants to reform.

Also, Richard E. Grant’s Loki is awesome. Not only does Grant wander around in one of the most ridiculous costumes Jack Kirby ever designed and manages to look dignified, he also brilliantly portrays an aged Loki who’s disgusted both with himself and the universe. Honestly, give Richard E. Grant an Emmy/Bafta/Golden Globe/whatever.

Loki tells his other selves that he’s going to get out of there, get back and take down the TVA, which only elicits laughter from the other four. Our also asks if any of them have ever met a female Loki, which none of them have. “That’s a terrifying thought”, remarks the Richard E. Grant Loki.

But just as Loki is about to leave the bowling alley bunker, he finds himself faced with yet another version of himself, President Loki, who’s also played by Tom Hiddleston and based on this 2016 comic. President Loki has obviously watched the Mad Max movies one too many times and is now leading a post-apocalyptic gang, which he calls his army.

The other Loki’s are less than thrilled to see President Loki and accuse our Loki is having led him to their sanctuary. However, it turns out that the one who beytrayed them was not our Loki (and he had no time to do so anyway), but one of their own number, Black Loki a.k.a. Boastful Loki a.k.a. Backstabbing Loki. Apparently, President Loki had promised Backstabbing Loki the use of his “army” in exchange for the location of the bunker. However, President Loki, being his usual lying self, has no intention of upholding his side of that bargain.

And so the confrontation quickly erupts into a Loki free-for-all, as the various Lokis as well as President Loki’s post-apocalyptic army attack each other. Backstabbing/Boastful Loki gets stabbed in the back, which is certainly fitting, while Alligator Loki bites off the hand of President Loki. “Bastards”, says Richard E. Grant’s Loki and laments the penchant for betrayal and self-sabotage that all Lokis seem to share. Meanwhile, our Loki is just embarrassed by the behaviour of his alternates. And indeed, the Loki free-for-all is not just hilarious, it also serves as a perfect illustration for Loki at war with themselves and also of Loki’s tendency for self-sabotage. In many ways, this episode and the entire series can be seen as a trip through Loki’s psyche. And indeed Camestros Felapton points out that the entire episode feels like a trip through a dreamscape, while io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out that the whole series might be an illustration of Loki’s internal struggles.

The Richard E. Grant Loki distracts his battling alternates with a lifelike projection of himself (he’s a lot better at projection and magic than our Loki ever was) and opens a portal through which he as well as Kid Loki, Alligator Loki and our Loki escape.

Meanwhile, back at the TVA Sylvie still has Ravonna at her mercy and demands the truth from her. Ravonna declares that she had no idea that the Time Keepers were fake and that she is as eager to get to the bottom of the mystery as Sylvie. I don’t trust Ravonna any further than Sylvie or Loki could throw her, though she might be telling the truth here. Maybe Ravonna truly doesn’t know what’s going on, though unlike Mobius, B-15 and C-20, all of whom are having their doubts, she is still one hundred percent committed to the TVA and the sacred timeline.

Ravonna and Sylvie enter a temporary truce. Ravonna tells Sylvie that Loki isn’t dead, but was just sent to the Void at the End of Time. She also offers to access some highly classified files about the Time Keepers and the founding of the TVA at the beginning of time. Sylvie, on the other hand, is far more interested in the end of time and particularly the Void, because – as she points out – it would be a perfect hiding place by whoever is truly behind the TVA.

Ravonna tells Sylvie that the TVA have a prototype spaceship capable of travelling through the Void at the End of Time and asks Miss Minutes to call up the files. But when the perpetually chirpy Miss Minutes takes inordinarily long to locate the files, Sylvie realises that Ravonna is just stalling. And indeed, the Minutemen storm the courtroom. Sylvie turns to weapon she took from Ravonna against herself and escapes by “pruning” herself. Ravonna is satisfied with this outcome, cause as far as she knows, there is no escaping from the Void at the End of Time.

A bit later we see Ravonna visiting the imprisoned Hunter B-15. B-15 has now fully escaped the control of the TVA and point blank tells Ravonna that she knows that Ravonna is as eager to know the truth and find out who’s behind the TVA as anybody else. She also tells her that Sylvie will beat her to that goal. Because while Ravonna wants to know who’s behind the TVA, Sylvie needs to know.

But for now, Sylvie has other problems. She wakes up in a rusty schoolbus in the Void at the End of Time and quickly finds herself faced with the smoke monster Alioth. Sylvie tries to use her powers on Alioth and gets a glimpse of a gothic castle, but Alioth is too strong for her and Sylvie has to run for her life.

Luckily, she runs straight into Mobius who has commandeered a pizza delivery car, which leads to some delightful banter between Mobius and Sylvie, as they look for our Loki. It’s notable that Mobius is a survivor as well.

Meanwhile, the Lokis are tracking Alioth, cause our Loki has decided that killing Alioth is the best way to escape the Void. In the course of their hunt for Alioth, the Lokis get a first hand demonstration what happened to anybody who’s not a Loki and gets send to the Void, when a full-size WWII battleship named the USS Eldridge (a real WWII era US Navy destroyer, which was involved in the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment”*) suddenly appears in the Void and is promptly gobbled up by Alioth, crew and all.

“I guess we’d better rethink the plan”, our Loki says. But before they can do that, the Lokis meet up with Mobius and Sylvie. Our Loki is thrilled to see Mobius again. He’s even more thrilled to see Sylvie, which leads to a romance movie style rush into each other’s arms, which ends with Loki and Sylvie stopping approx. 2 metres from each other, because they’re both unused to and awkward about romantic matters.

We now get another heart to heart between Loki and Sylvie, in which they assure each other that Mobius is totally, completely, absolutely wrong and that the Nexus event they caused on Lamentis was totally not due to falling in love with each other. And because the Void at the End of Time is rather cold, Loki also conjures up a blanket (though it’s more like a tablecloth, as Sylvie remarks), which he awkwardly shares with Sylvie. The contrast between Loki’s swagger and arrogance in the pursuit of his glorious purpose and his awkwardness and shyness regarding interpersonal connections in general and romance in particular is quite endearing. Tom Hiddleston also manages to sell this duelling sides of Loki really, really well, as Caroline Siede points out in her review at the AV-Club.

While Loki and Sylvie are having their heart ot heart, Mobius has a hilarious conversation with Richard E. Grant’s classic Loki regarding whether Alligator Loki even counts as a Loki. “How can you be sure he’s a Loki?” Mobius wants to know. Classic Loki, who also appears to be the only one who can actually communicate of Alligator Loki points out that Alligator Loki is green and that’s enough. But whether he really is a Loki or not, Alligator Loki adds yet another beautiful touch of absurdity to this show. He’s also quickly becoming a fan favourite, as Germain Lussier points out at io9.

Sylvie also explains her plan to enchant Alioth to make it go away to the Lokis and Mobius. Most of them are skeptical, but in the end they go along with it and so we’re heading towards the requisite Marvel climax with a big battle against a CGI monster. Sylvie initially wants to face Alioth alone, but our Loki won’t have any of it. They’ll do this together.

And so Loki and Sylvie bid good-bye to Mobius, who uses his TemPad to return to the TVA and burn it to the ground, and the other Lokis, who want to stay in the Void, though Mobius does offer to take them home. Loki and Mobius share an awkward hug, Kid Loki hands our Loki his shortsword (Me: “That’s a poniard“, which is a sure sign that I’ve been reading a lot of Conan lately) and then it’s time to face Alioth.

The initial plan is for Loki to distract Alioth, so Sylvie can get close enough to enchant the creature. However, this doesn’t work as intended. But just when it looks as if Loki is about to get gobbled up by Alioth, Classic Loki comes back and projects all of Asgard to distract Alioth, heroically perishing in the process. “How can he even do this?” Sylvie aska our Loki. “I guess we’re stronger than we think”, Loki replies.

Because several Lokis working together is a lot more effective than just one Loki, Loki and Sylvie hold hands and Loki adds his powers to Sylvie’s, even though he doesn’t know how to enchant people, at least not without his staff and an infinity stone. They succeed, too. Alioth disperses, revealing a dilapidated castle on the horizon, which is likely where the person behind the curtain resides.

“Journey into Mystery” is probably my favourite episode of Loki, even if it is just a lot of running around. However, if all that running around is so much fun and the landscape is so gorgeous, who cares? Unless the series completely manages to mess up the final, Loki is definitely another triumph for Marvel and Disney+. But then, all of the Marvel Disney+ series so far have been good. Even The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, IMO the weakest of the bunch, was at the very least highly entertaining, while WandaVision and Loki were both excellent.

 

*For a long time, I had no idea that the Philadelphia Experiment was at least alleged to be real (though it’s likely an urban legend). I only knew the 1984 movie and assumed that they made the story up from whole cloth.

First Monday Free Fiction: The Sphere That Ate the Mississippi Delta

Welcome to the July 2021 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

Since I’m currently in the middle of the 2021 July Short Story Challenge, here is a cosmic horror story that was one of the stories written during the 2016 July Short Story Challenge. It’s called “The Sphere That Ate the Mississippi Delta” and it may be found in the collection Southern Monsters.

So follow our narrator, an astronomer from Tulane University, as he faces…

The Sphere That Ate the Mississippi Delta

It all started in early March, just after Mardi Gras, when a streak of light appeared in the night sky over the Mississippi River Delta. Sheriff’s departments from Galveston to Mobile were inundated with reports of everything from UFO sightings via World War Three to angels, demons and the rapture.

But I was an astronomer, a man of science and reason in a part of the country all too often beset by irrationality. I’d clawed my way up from the Lower Ninth Ward all the way to Tulane, a local boy done good. And so I immediately recognised that the strange phenomenon that lit up the Southern sky was a meteorite, a meteorite that had landed somewhere in the delta. My calculations could even pinpoint the meteorite’s landing place with fair accuracy, estimates that were bolstered by eyewitness reports from fishermen who claimed to have seen a ball of fire fall from the sky near Delacroix Island.

The next day, three geology students from Tulane University set out in a small boat to locate and secure the meteorite for the University’s collection. They were never heard from again, just vanished without a trace. At first, no one was overly worried about that. A tragedy, for sure, but hardly unexpected. After all, the bayous were treacherous, the alligators perpetually hungry and the students had been inexperienced, three boys from the Midwest who’d probably never even seen a boat before, much less steered one.

So the university mourned the three lives lost, the dean of the geology department mourned the loss of a valuable addition to his meteorite collection and I mourned the chance to have my calculations proven right. But otherwise, we all went on with our lives.

Two weeks later, a tiny article in the local part of Times-Picayune caught my eye. A fishing boat had gone missing in St. Bernard Parish, near Delacroix Island. I didn’t think much about it — just another pointless tragedy — and promptly forgot about it.

But then, the following week, there was another article in the local section of Times-Picayune. A fisherman from Shell Beach had gone missing. His wife said that he’d gone crab fishing at Delacroix Island.

Then, two weeks later, another boat went missing, this time a speedboat carrying three young never-do-wells from Wood Lake. And once again, the boat had last been spotted near Delacroix Island. The three boys had been known troublemakers, drinking and driving, drinking and boating, all combined with weed and meth. It was only a matter of time before something happened, the locals said.

It was at this moment, when I read the article about the three missing boys from Wood Lake, that something clicked inside my head. Of course, boats went missing on the delta all the time, for any number of reasons. But four boats in six weeks? And all near Delacroix Island?

Of course, it might all be coincidence. The geology students had been inexperienced and really had no business being in a boat on the river all on their own in the first place. And the boys from Wood Lake had been known drinkers with a drug habit. So yes, their disappearances might have been a tragic accident. But the fishermen had been experienced and knew the delta like the back of their hands. Sure, fishing was a dangerous profession and deaths were common. But fishing boats rarely vanished without a trace. And what were the odds that all of these tragic accidents would happen in such a short span of time and all near the same small island? The very island where the meteorite had come down.

So I decided to investigate further. I drove down to St. Bernard Parish myself — no, not to head for Delacroix Island, I wasn’t that stupid. Instead, I went to the office of the local newspaper, the St. Bernard Voice, and asked to see their archives.

I found a lot more information about the missing fishermen, all highly experienced skippers who’d been fishing on the delta for decades. I found more information about the three missing boys — troublemakers, yes, but also the sons of local fishermen who knew their way around a boat. I found information on the missing students — though nothing I hadn’t heard yet at Tulane. I even found information about the meteorite, eyewitness accounts about a fiery ball straight out of hell that had fallen into the river near Delacroix Island.

But I found even more. For the four missing boats and their crews weren’t the only ones who’d gone missing in St. Bernard Parish of late. There had also been a wave of disappearances of pets — dogs and cats mostly, but also backyard chickens — all attributed to alligators, though some also suspected pet snatchers at work. In Meraux, a man had reported his wife missing, after she hadn’t returned from a visit to her parents on Delacroix Island. No foul play was suspected, it was believed she’d run off with a lover. And in Reggio, an elderly man with dementia had gone missing, believed to have fallen into the bayou.

There were other reports as well. An oyster bank had suddenly died off to much hue and cry from the local fishermen; the cause was believed to be pollution. Fishermen said they’d seen bubbles rise from the water near Delacroix Island. Others reported seeing strange lights, will-o-the-wisps, dancing above the bayou at night. And one fisherman, a fellow by the name of John Letourneur, claimed that he had spotted a black blob under the surface of the water, believed to be a massive oil clump left over from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

It might still all be coincidence. But the coincidences were really piling up by now. And they were all centered on one place: Delacroix Island.

So I finally did what I should have done in the first place. I went out to Delacroix Island myself. And unlike those unfortunate three geology students, I hired one of the most experienced fishermen of St. Bernard Parish to take me there, the very John Letourneur who’d claimed to have spotted the oil blob.

I asked him to take me to the exact spot where he had seen the oil clump. But in the end, that turned out not to be necessary, for the object that Letourneur had seen was easy enough to spot. And it definitely wasn’t an oil clump.

It was about the size of a house, a smooth sphere that rose from the water, its surface a glossy black. The meteorite, I was certain, only that it looked like no meteorite I had ever seen. It was also, so John Letourneur assured me, a lot bigger than the first time he’d seen it.

“God in Heaven,” John exclaimed and promptly crossed himself, “What is it?”

“I have no idea,” I whispered, and though I was a lapsed Catholic, I mirrored his gesture.

Of course, I longed to investigate further, but neither John nor I were stupid enough to go anywhere near the sphere. After all, it might well be connected to the disappearance of thirteen people and heaven knew how many pets. So we returned to make our reports, John to the local sheriff department and I to the university.

The investigation into the nature of the sphere was mounted by the geology department of Tulane. Everybody was there, the dean and his entire faculty, down to the last adjunct, the sheriff and his deputies, the State Police, a preacher who talked of the end times, and reporters from the St. Bernard Voice and the Times-Picayune.

The dean himself approached the sphere to take a sample. “It is hard…” he reported, “…smooth like… — arrgh!”

That was the last we ever heard of him, because the sphere suddenly swallowed him, just sucked him in. In the confusion that followed, it also consumed two deputies, the ranting preacher and the entire geology department of Tulane.

At first, we thought we could contain it. The State Police and the Coast Guard put up warning signs and barriers all around the sphere. But it was to no avail, for the sphere continued to grow, feeding on alligators and pelicans, on crabs and oysters and on the bayou itself.

The National Guard was called in and later the Army and the Navy and the Air Force. Planes from Keesler Air Force Base flew daily rounds over the sphere to monitor its growth, while their bosses were trying to figure out what to do about it. They fired everything they had at the sphere, from bullets to missiles. But nothing they could throw at the sphere as much as made a dent into its smooth black exterior. The bullets and missiles simply vanished, swallowed up, while the sphere grew a little bigger.

Delacroix Island was evacuated soon thereafter, then Wood Lake, Reggio, Yscloskey, Shell Beach, Scarsdale, Poydras, until eventually all of St. Bernard Parish and parts of Plaquemines Parish and Hancock County in Mississippi had to be evacuated as well. And steadily the sphere grew and grew.

You could see while it driving across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway now, a massive malevolent thing rising from the delta and blotting out the view. And still it was growing.

The federal government didn’t help us, but after Katrina and Deepwater Horizon we were used to that. The rest of America simply didn’t care about the Gulf Coast. We were the embarrassing poor relations, backwards, racist, rednecks, hicks. Even if like me, you were neither. No one cared what happened to us.

And still the sphere grew. Highways 300 and 46 were already gone, along with several towns and communities. And we all knew that it was only a matter of time before it took New Orleans, feasting on homes and businesses, streets and canals.

Some generals at the Pentagon — bless their hearts — suggested nuking the thing. Sure, it would turn Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast into a radioactive wasteland, but who cared? Those people were just hicks and rednecks anyway. But the President vetoed the decision and declared he would not nuke his own country, no matter the reason.

And still the sphere grew.

Now here I am, stopping my car on the deserted Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, one of the last to evacuate New Orleans.

I get out of the car — no traffic to worry about, not anymore — and turn around to watch the sphere consume New Orleans, watch it eat my city in its never-ending appetite.

I watch One Shell Square go down, the World Trade Center, Place St. Charles, the Plaza Tower, the Energy Center, the Sheraton, the Marriott, the Hyatt, the Hibernia Bank building, the First Bank and Trust, the Superdome, watch as the sphere swallows them up. I feel the Causeway shake beneath my feet, as the sphere consumes its southern terminus.

I know I should get into my car and leave, press down on the accelerator and get away as fast as I can. But what’s the point?

The sphere isn’t going to stop, once it has swallowed up New Orleans. It isn’t going to stop, once it has swallowed up Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, the entire South. It’s not even going to stop when it has eaten the whole country, when it has taken Washington DC and the Pentagon with the generals who wanted to nuke us and the White House with the President who didn’t.

It’s not going to stop, ever, until it has swallowed the world whole.

So I stay and watch the sphere nibble away at the Causeway, bit by bit, mile by mile, watch it eclipse the city and the lake and the sky and the entire world.

The End…

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

The 2021 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day

For starters, Smashwords is currently having its annual summer sale, where you can get plenty of e-books at reduced prices or for free, including several of mine.

In other news, blogging will be light this month and the remaining two Loki reviews may be delayed, because I’m currently doing the July Short Story Challenge again.

What is the July Short Story Challenge, you ask? Well, in July 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a brand new short story every day during the month of July. The original post seems to be gone now, but the Wayback Machine has a copy here. At the time, several people announced that they would play along, so I decided to give it a try as well. And then I did it again the following year. And the next. And the next. If you want to read my post-mortems of the previous July short story challenges, here are the posts for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Because I’ve already done the July short story challenge six years in a row now and always found the experience very rewarding, I’m aiming for a repeat this year. Though for now, I’m only committing to doing this for a week, which is already half over. If things are going well, I’ll keep going.

In previous years, I’ve always done a post-mortem post about the July Short Story Challenge in August. In 2019, I also started keeping a running tally of all stories written to date right here on this blog to hold myself accountable. It worked well and so I did it again in 2020. I will do it again this year as well and will update this post with every new story. This tally will be very basic, listing just the date, title, word count, genre, series, if any, and maybe a one or two sentence summary/comment.

Most of these stories will become longer in editing. Many will eventually change their titles and some may never see the light of day at all.

If you want to follow along with the challenge, bookmark this post. And if you want to play along or cheer me on, feel free to do so in the comments.

And now, let’s take a look at the stories:

July 1, 2021: I Deal in Death: Confessions of a Death Dealer, sword and sorcery, 1825 words

Once, Malaroc of Grim Valley was just a farmboy, chasing adventure and glory on the battlefield. Now, he is the royal executioner, known only as the Death Dealer. But Malaroc isn’t happy with his job and has hopes and dreams that are quite different…

This one was inspired by Frank Frazetta’s famous painting “Death Dealer”. I wondered who the man with the bloody axe and the horned helmet was and had the idea to write a “True Confessions” type story from his POV. It was initially supposed to be a humor piece, but turned out a lot more earnest in the end, as my take on this character is someone who’s deeply conflicted about staying in a job he doesn’t like, but that pays well and that he’d good at, or following his dreams.

July 2, 2021: The Thing in the Sewer, horror, 3882 words

During the summer after finishing school and before starting university, Nina takes a job as a newspaper delivery girl in a deceptively quiet suburban neighbourhood.

But then, cats and dogs start vanishing in the neighbourhood. And Nina begins to hear strange sounds from the sewers.

This one was inspired by my daily morning walks. Pretty much everything in this story is real… except for the monster in the sewers.

July 3, 2021: The Wrong Dragonslayer, fantasy, 2909 words

Khulan was never supposed to be the one who kills the dread dragon Shirasemur. But the knights of the realm are bloody useless, her friend Saranta is about to be sacrificed to the dragon and someone had to do it.

But Khulan’s troubles only begin once she has slain the dragon. For the knights of the realm are not only useless, they’re also treacherous…

This is another story that was inspired by a piece of fantasy art, namely this one by Brock Grossman.

 

Loki Experiences “The Nexus Event”, As the Plot Heats Up

Another Wednesday, another episode of Loki. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

When we last met our favourite God of Mischief, he and his variant Sylvie were just about to be blown up along with the exploding planet Lamentis, one of the apocalypses where Sylvie likes to hide from the TVA.

When their last way of escaping the doomed planet was destroyed, Sylvie wandered off. Loki follows her and finds her in the wasteland surrounding the city, where they sit down on a rock, hold hands and wait for the world to end.

Sylvie finally opens up and tells Loki that the TVA grabbed her when she was only a child. We see this happening in a flashback scene, as Sylvie, who’s about nine or ten in human years, is arrested while playing with what looks like a Playmobil viking ship and subjected to the same dehumanising treatment that we previously saw Loki subjected to. Only that it’s so much more awful, as is the impending disintegration, when it’s a young child who’s treated like that. However, Sylvie manages to avoid being disintegrated by stealing the TemPad of the TVA agent who arrested her – none other than Ravonna Renslayer – and escaping. Sylvie tells Loki that she was on the run for years, cause wherever she went, the TVA immediately appeared, until she figured out that she could hide out in apocalypses. “And so that’s where I grew up, the ends of a thousand worlds,” she tells Loki, “And now, that’s where I’ll die.”

Loki tells Sylvie that she is amazing to have survived all that on her own and that what makes them special is not the chaos that they cause or the fact that they seem to be destine to lose, but that they always survive, no matter how many times they are killed. They hold hands and look deep into each other’s eyes, just as the planet is about the be destroyed. And then, just in the nick of time, the TVA shows up, led by Mobius and Hunter B-15.

For Ravonna Renslayer is desperate to recapture Sylvie, the variant that got away from her, and Loki, the variant that Mobius decided to adopt. Mobius thinks that Hunter C-20 might have some insight, especially since she kept saying “It was real, it was all real” over and over again. Ravonna, however, tells Mobius that Hunter C-20 is dead, her mind destroyed by Sylvie. Mobius finds this difficult to believe, because C-20 seemed confused and distraught, but otherwise fine, when he and his team found her.

Before Mobius can press Ravonna (and come on, it’s pretty obvious that those two are colleagues with benefits) any further with regard to C-20, they are distracted by a massive branch in the sacred timeline, a so-called Nexus Event. They deduce that this is where Loki and Sylvie are hiding and sent a team to arrest them.

And so Loki and Sylvie are rescued from the impending apocalypse on Lamentis, only to find that they’ve escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire, because the TVA is determined to disintegrate them both, once they’ve figured out just what it was that caused the Nexus Event. Loki and Sylvie are separated, which bothers Loki quite a bit. Loki tries to tell Mobius that the TVA is lying to him, but Mobius won’t have any of it. He throws Loki into a kind of temporal torture chamber, where he relives a moment where Sif (played once again by Jamie Alexander now that Blindspot has ended) punches him and kicks him in the crotch, after Loki cut off her hair, over and over again. Sif also tells Loki that he’s alone and always will be, which clearly bothers him. Loki tries to make Sif listen to him long enough to explain what’s happening, but he only gets punched again and again.

This scene implies that Loki and Sif used to have a relationship, only that Loki blew it by being himself. Well, considering that Sif never got Thor to notice her, though not for lack of trying, it does make sense that she would eventually give up pining over Thor and give Loki a try. Only that Loki is who he is, so it doesn’t work out.

Mobius, meanwhile, tries to persuade Ravonna to let him interrogate Sylvie as well. But Ravonna declares that Sylvie is just too dangerous – after all, she destroyed the mind of poor C-20 – and that Ravonna is worried Sylvie will hurt Mobius, too.

Meanwhile, Hunter B-15 is having some doubts of her own, for when Sylvie briefly took over her mind, she also dug up some long erased memories of B-15’s life before she became a TVA agent. And so B-15 goes against orders to see Sylvie. She opens a time portal and tells Sylvie to come with her. The two women once again find themselves outside the doomed Roxxcart superstore from episode 2, where Sylvie took over B-15’s mind. B-15 now wants to know what the hell is going on, whereupon Sylvie tells her that’s she a variant like all TVA agents and had her memories erased. B-15 is understandably shocked and asks Sylvie to show her her memories again, which Sylvie does. “I don’t know who I was”, a tearful B-15 declares (great acting from Wunmi Mosaku, who didn’t get a lot to do in the show so far), “But I look like I was happy.”

I think this scene would have worked better, if we had seen the memories that Sylvie showed B-15, and indeed I wonder why we didn’t get to see them. AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede wonders whether this might be the effect of covid restrictions on filming that instead of a montage of B-15’s memories, featuring multiple actors, we merely get two actresses standing six feet apart in the rain. She might be on to something, especially considering how much of Loki consists of two people sitting alone in a room.

That said, even if B-15’s moment of truth is just Wunmi Mosaku standing around in the rain, it’s still powerful, because it shows just how awful the TVA really is. They take people away from their lives and families, erase their memories and – in the case of B-15 and C-20 – they even take away their names. Whatever higher purpose the TVA claims to serve, they are clearly the villains in this piece.

After hell knows how many times of Loki getting punched and kicked in the crotch, Mobius finally lets him out and we get another round of Loki and Mobius sitting in a room, chipping away at each other’s defenses. Mobius is furious at Loki for going after Sylvie and tells him he’s a bad friend, which must sting, since Loki clearly has abandonment issues. Loki tries to feed Mobius some bullshit that he and Sylvie had been working together for a long time and that he’s just using her, but Mobius isn’t fooled. He casually drops that Sylvie has already been disintegrated. The devastated look on Loki’s face tells Mobius everything he needs to know. Loki has fallen in love with Sylvie, which – as Mobius points out – is the ultimate in narcissism. However, as io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out, it’s also Loki – whom we learn is lonely, was an outsider all his life and doesn’t like himself very much – learning to love himself or rather herself.

Now I think that it would do Loki a world of good to have someone in his life. Though I can’t help but notice that following the revelation that Loki was bisexual, the two times we see him in a relationship or at least at the beginning of one in this episodes, both times the partner is a woman, namely Sylvie and Sif. This continues the tradition of Disney only mentioning LGBTQ+ people in blink and you’ll miss it scenes, which can easily be cut for distribution to a conservative country.

Loki, meanwhile, drops the bomshell that the TVA agents are all variants who were kidnapped and had their memories erased. “You had a life and a family”, a desperate Loki tells Mobius, but Mobius is having none of it. After all, Loki is a compulsory liar, so no one believes him, even when he’s telling the truth. “You’re the greatest liar here”, Loki tells Mobius before he’s sent back into the time cell to get punched and kicked by Sif some more, “Cause you’re lying even to yourself.”

Next, we see Mobius in Ravonna’s office, celebrating the closing of the case. Ravonna tells Mobius that Loki and Sylvie will be pruned and that the Time Keepers themselves want to oversee the execution. Mobius is invited as well . “Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?” Ravonna asks Mobius. Mobius has no answer to that, after all, he’s already been everywhere.

Even though Mobius brushed off Loki’s remark that the TVA agents are all variants, he, too, is beginning to have his doubts. And so he distracts Ravonna to steal her TemPad (Ravonna sure has her TemPad stolen a lot) to access the classified files about Hunter C-20. He learns that Hunter C-20 really is dead, but not from brain damage, but because Ravonna killed her, when C-20 insisted that the memories Sylvie showed her were real and that she once had a life and friends.

Now he knows that Loki was telling the truth, Mobius rescues him from the time cell. “You can be anything you want”, Mobius tells Loki, just before they return to the TVA to kick arse and take names, “Even someone good. Just in case no one ever told you that before.”

However, once they make it back to the TVA, Ravonna and her goons are already waiting for them. Mobius confronts Ravonna and tells her that the place where he most wants to go is wherever he was from when the TVA took him. Oh yes, and he also wants a jet ski. Ravonna is not impressed, but disintegrates Mobius.

Is this the end of Mobius? Personally, I doubt it. First of all, not even Marvel hires an actor of Owen Wilson’s calibre for only three episodes. And besides, in comicss and comic related media, no one is ever really dead.

However, since Mobius is at least temporarily dead, Ravonna takes Loki and Sylvie to the Time Keepers for execution. Sylvie wants to know just what exactly the Nexus Event that caused her to be taken by the TVA was, but Ravonna claims she doesn’t remember.

I have to admit that I was surprised, when the elevator opened and there really were Time Keepers, because I had assumed that the Time Keepers were long dead, if they had ever existed, and that Ravonna was secretly running the TVA. However, the Time Keepers turn out to be about as real as the wonderful Wizard of Oz, for once Loki and Sylvie break free – with some help from B-15 – and fight off the TVA, Sylvie beheads one of the Time Keepers, only to realise that the Time Keepers were robots all along and fake after all.

Regarding the Time Keepers, they did look pretty fake and the CGI was remarkably bad for a company with as much money as Marvel/Disney.  Their dialogue was also almost impossible to understand. Not that it matters much, because they turn out to be fake anyway. The Time Keepers’ lair turns out to be icy cold and emblazoned with glowing odal runes (and an odal rune shows up in the title sequence as well). The odal rune stands for legacy and inheritance BTW. I wonder whether that will be significant.

Sylvie is understandably frustrated that her grand plan only led her to the decapitation of three robots. Loki, meanwhile, tries to confess his feelings to her, only that he’s really bad at it. Just before he can kiss her, Ravonna – who was knocked out during the fight – recovers and disintegrates Loki. A furious Sylvie attacks and disarms Ravonna. “Kill me”, Ravonna says, but Sylvie has no intention to kill her. Instead, she wants the truth.

The twist that the Time Keepers are not what they seem is rather predictable, as Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, Emmet Asher-Perrin and Caroline Siede point out. Just as the fact that Ravonna is a villainess is not all that surprising, though personally I hadn’t expected her to be the cold-blooded murderess she turns out to be.

Talking of which, it’s interesting that while most Marvel villains so far have been men, all three Marvel/Disney+ TV series to date had female villains, namely Agatha in WandaVision, Karli Morgenthau, Sharon Carter and the somewhat ambiguous Countess Valentina in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and now Ravonna Renslayer in Loki.

As for Loki, even if Tom Hiddleston is tired of the role, it’s unlikely that they would kill off the title character halfway through the series. And indeed, the mid credits sequence reveals Loki coming to somewhere else. “Am I dead?” he asks. “No, but you soon will be, unless you come with us”, a voice says and the camera pans up to reveal four more Loki variants. There’s Richard E. Grant, dressed up in an exact copy of the Jack Kirby designed costume Loki wore in the Thor comics of the 1960s. There is a teenaged Loki, who is apparently supposed to be Kid Loki, a character from the Young Avengers comics. There is a black man carrying mjolnir, who might also be a Thor variant. And finally, there is lizard Loki who is literally a lizard.

As cliffhangers go, this one is certainly intriguing. And it also ramps up the Doctor Who links once again, because Richard E. Grant has been an unofficial Doctor not once but twice.

What plot there is does heat up in “The Nexus Event”, though it’s still notable that Loki doesn’t have a lot of plot. This is a show that works mainly because of its stars and their chemistry. Tom Hiddleston really get to show off his skills here, including showing the vulnerable side of Loki. Sophia di Martino not only had great chemistry with Hiddleston, but also managed to portray Sylvie’s vulnerability. Owen Wilson again has a lot of chemistry with Tom Hiddleston and also brings across Mobius’ growing doubts well. Wunmi Mosaku doesn’t get much to do, but the scene where she gets to see her memories is great. And casting the normally likeable Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a villainess is a great idea.

The reviews of the last two episodes may be delayed a little because of the 2021 July short story challenge.

Conan the Socialist

I know that I should probably spend more of my time reading current year Hugo finalists, but instead I’m still reading my way through the entire Conan series. I read some of the bowdlerized Lancer/Ace Conan editions years ago, but I finally decided to replace them with the definitive Del Rey editions.

My teenaged self certainly enjoyed the Conan stories as great and glorious adventures. Plus, there was the thrill of reading “violent American trash” that sensible educated people weren’t supposed to read or enjoy. However, upon rereading these stories as an adult, I find that there is a lot of depth and subtext in the Conan series that my teenaged self missed.

I just finished rereading “The Black Stranger”, one of only three completed Conan stories that remained unpublished during Robert E. Howard’s lifetime. According to the notes in the back of the Del Rey edition, “The Black Stranger” was written sometime in late 1934/early 1935.

I don’t think I read this story during my earlier encounter with Conan. Or maybe I just forgot I read it, because this was one of the stories that suffered badly from L. Sprague de Camp’s and Lin Carter’s “editing” efforts, even though there really was no reason to mess with this one, because it is a complete story.

Warning: There will be some spoilers in the following!

“The Black Stranger” has a fairly complex plot and various important characters, all with their own agendas. There’s Count Valenso, a Zingaran noblemen (Zingara is Aquilonia’s vaguely Spanish southwesterly neighbour) who’s running from his demons (quite literally) and has washed up in a secluded cove on the shores of the Pictish territory. There are Zarano and Strom, two rival pirate captains, who are both after the same legendary pirate treasure that’s hidden somewhere near the secluded cove where Valenso has made his home in exile. There Belesa, Valenso’s niece, and her young ward Tina, who basically just want to survive without getting killed, raped, married off or sold into slavery. There’s Conan, who’s on the run from the Picts after the events of “Beyond the Black River” and is looking for a way back to civilisation (for no matter how much Conan complains about civilisation, he always goes back there) and some loot. There’s the titular Black Stranger, who wants revenge on Valenso. And there are the Picts who just want all of those interlopers gone from their territory.

As the story unfolds, the various characters are plotting, counterplotting and outwitting each other. They also reluctantly cooperate, because each as something the others want. Valenso has a fortified estate as well as manpower and supplies and a beautiful niece. Zarano has a ship (at least at first) and a crew and a vague idea where the treasure might be. Strom has a ship and a crew and a map that shows the location of the treasure (at least at first). Conan actually knows where the treasure is, because he stumbled upon it during his escape from the Picts, but he needs help to carry it off. Watching all of the characters trying to outwit and outmanoeuvre each other is a lot of fun as well as genuinely suspenseful, because how will Conan manage to keep the upper hand, when Valenso, Zarano and Strom all want to kill him?

The popular image of Conan is that of a brawny and not very bright barbarian, probably based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies of the 1980s. However, this image is wrong, because the Conan of Robert E. Howard’s original stories is actually very intelligent. He can read and write, speaks multiple languages, he knows how to navigate a ship and is a brilliant military tactician. And while Conan often wins the day due to his superior strength and endurance, he uses his brain as much as his brawn and just as often outwits rather than outfights his opponents. In “The Jewels of Gwahlur” a.k.a. “The Servants of Bit-Yakin”, a Conan story written shortly before “The Black Stranger”, we see Conan in full con artist mode, running a long con to steal a kingdom’s stash of sacred jewels. He almost succeeds, too.

“The Black Stranger” features not just Conan the pirate (even dressed up in full 17th/18th century pirate regalia at one point), but also Conan the con artist, who is fully intending to trick and kill his temporary allies Zarano and Strom. But that’s okay, because Zarano and Strom plan to kill him, too, and are generally awful people, as is Count Valenso. In the end, Conan’s plan fails due to the interference of the titular Black Stranger, who stirs up the Picts, and Valenso’s greedy seneschal, who springs Conan’s trap too early. As a matter of fact, Conan’s plans often fail, because if he did get the loot of priceless jewels, he might well decide to retire from adventuring, bringing the series to an abrupt end. And indeed, most sword and sorcery heroes tend to be financially unlucky (also see Fafhrd and Gray Mouser), because once they actually get to keep the priceless jewels that’s probably the end of their career.

By the end of the story, everybody except for Conan, Belesa and Tina is dead, either at the hands of each other or the Picts or the Black Stranger, making it one of the gloomier stories in the Conan canon, though not quite as gloomy as “Beyond the Black River” (another “everybody dies, even the dog” story), because unlike in “Beyond the Black River”, none of the characters who die in “The Black Stranger” are even remotely likeable. Only Conan, Belesa and Tina survive and Conan takes control of the now captainless pirate ship. He also hands the loot he has managed to secure – a bag of rubies – to Belesa, so she can build an independent life for herself and Tina. When Belesa tells Conan she can’t possibly accept the rubies, Conan says something quite remarkable, which I’ll quote in its entirety below:

“Of course you’ll take them. I might as well leave you for the Picts to scalp as to take you back to Zingara to starve,” said he. “I know what it is to be penniless in a Hyborian land. Now in my country sometimes there are famines; but people are hungry only when there’s no food in the land at all. But in civilized countries I’ve seen people sick of gluttony while others were starving. Aye, I’ve seen men fall and die of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food. Sometimes I was hungry, too, but then I took what I wanted at sword’s-point. But you can’t do that. So you take these rubies. You can sell them and buy a castle, and slaves and fine clothes, and with them it won’t be hard to get a husband, because civilized men all desire wives with these possessions.”

So here we have Conan making a harsh indictment of capitalism, in contrast with his native Cimmeria, which is described as a quasi-Socialist society here. We also learn why Conan has no compunctions about robbing and stealing (and it’s notable that Conan always steals from those who can afford it, e.g. Kallian Publico from “The God in the Bowl” or Yara from “The Tower of the Elephant”) – because this is his way of surviving in a cutthroat world which he considers already immoral. Finally, Conan also has things to say about the economies of marriage to which Jane Austen would likely nod in agreement (though there is no record that Howard ever read Austen).

Of course, the Conan stories were written at the height of the Great Depression and people falling and dying of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food was something that actually did happen in the US at the time. Just as there were people whose response to the stark economic inequality of the Great Depression was very much like Conan’s, namely take what they want at the point of a gun. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow had been killed in May 1934, less than a year before Howard wrote “The Black Stranger” and part of their crime spree took place in Howard’s home state of Texas. And considering how glorified Bonnie and Clyde as well as other gangsters and outlaws of the era like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd (both of whom also met their ends in 1934) and Ma Barker (killed in January 1935) were in popular culture, one can suspect that quite a few people sympathised with them.

Even though Conan lives in the Hyborian Age millennia before our time, he is still very much a child of the Great Depression. Though unlike the real life outlaws of the 1930s, Conan gets to walk away and goes on to bigger and better things, eventually becoming King of Aquilonia.

“The Black Stranger” is not the only story where Conan makes a political statement. We do get glimpses of Conan’s politics (and possibly those of his creator) throughout the series. I’ve already discussed Conan’s brushes with the law in my review of “The God in the Bowl”, which usually result from the fact that Conan is absolutely loyal and unwilling to betray friends and accomplices (he does double-cross his temporary allies in “The Black Stranger”, but a) this story features an older and more jaded Conan than “The God in the Bowl” or “Queen of the Black Coast” and b) those allies were planning to murder him and Conan knows it) and that he can’t understand that “I’m sorry, but I can’t possibly betray my friend” is not considered an acceptable answer, when questioned about a crime, and that stating “I didn’t do it”, doesn’t necessarily mean that a police officer or judge will believe him. “The God in the Bowl” also features a bonus indictment of police brutality and suspects being railroaded.

We learn more about Conan’s politics in the three stories (“The Phoenix on the Sword”, “The Scarlet Citadel” and “The Hour of the Dragon”), which feature him as King of Aquilonia. And so we learn that Conan lowered taxes compared to his predecessor, that he stopped aristocrats from abusing commoners and that he’s not a fan of hereditary monarchy in general. In “Beyond the Black River”, Conan also speaks out in favour of land reform, when he criticises the fact that instead of seizing the hunting grounds of various aristocrats and giving them to farmers, the Aquilonians instead force people to settle in the dangerous border regions at constant risk of getting killed by the Picts. In the same story, Conan also points out that Aquilonia will never hold its colonies in Pictish territory, just as it was not able to hold its colonies in Cimmeria, when the Cimmerians, a young Conan among them, kicked them out. And yes, it’s ironic that Conan began his adventuring career by kicking the Aquilonians out of Cimmeria, only to end up ruling them some twenty-five years later. Conan also speaks out against colonialism and imperialism in “The Hour of the Dragon”, when he tells his friend and supporter Count Trocero that he does not want to build an empire nor does he want to conquer any of the neighbouring lands, he just wants his kingdom of Aquilonia back.

Conan speaks out against slavery at several points and even leads a slave revolt in “The Hour of the Dragon” (and it’s notably that the galley slaves he frees are black). Also in “The Hour of the Dragon”, we learn that Conan is in favour of religious freedom and believes people should be allowed to worship whatever gods they please (and notably Conan does not share the religion of the Aquilonians). It’s this tolerance that eventually helps him regain the throne and the cult of Asura, which was persecuted in Aquilonia, before Conan put a stop to that, saves his bacon more than once. Finally, Conan reveals himself to be a supporter of the artistic freedom and the arts in general in “The Phoenix on the Sword”, when he refuses to have the rabble-rousing poet Rinaldo arrested. Rinaldo thanks him for this by participating in a plot to assassinate Conan. Of all the conspirators, he even comes closest to success.

So in short, if you were to find yourself living in the Hyborian Age, you could do worse than being a citizen of Conan’s Aquilonia. And it’s notable that the Aquilonians generally support Conan and want him as their king, for even though he is a foreign barbarian, he’s clearly better than the alternative. And indeed, in “Hour of the Dragon”, we see how bad the alternative – a fellow named Valerius, who’s a relative of the king Conan killed – can be.

That’s also why the oft quoted remarks of German SFF author and critic Hans Joachim Alpers (who hailed from Wesermünde, i.e. he was almost local to me) who claimed that Conan and his authors had “the mercenary mentality of a Kongo-Müller” annoy me so much, because it’s flat out wrong. Alpers’ original article, which appeared in a fanzine in the 1970s, does not appear to be available online anywhere, but German sword and sorcery critic Peter Schmitt quotes from it at his blog Skalpell und Katzenklaue. Here is a translation:

Conan has the mercenary mentality of a Kongo-Müller and naturally, so do his authors. If Conan helps others, then not for noble reasons, but out of pure calculation. What drives him is first of all money (which unites him with many heroes of the sado-western*), but also the joy of killing. Conan will do anything for money: he is the bought henchman of any ruler in the pursuit of any aim, who helps to oppress the people and puts down uprisings, if he does not work for himself and travels through the lands, murdering and plundering, while gauging himself on the blood and sweat of the working population.

Every single word of this is wrong. I have a lot of respect for Hans Joachim Alpers and what he did for German SFF, but honestly, has he ever read a single Howard Conan story? Because I have no idea how anybody can read the original Conan stories or even the pastiches and then write complete nonsense like that. Honestly, this is just as bad as the leftwing German critics who saw Conan as a fascist figure and example of a blonde and blue-eyed Aryan master race stereotype, clearly missing the fact that Conan has black hair (which is only mentioned in every single story) and is Celtic rather than Nordic. Now leftwing German critics of the 1970s will view everything as fascist, even Captain America (yes, really), but in the case of Conan, this is particularly unfair, because Howard is on record as being disgusted by Hitler and Mussolini and “The Hour of the Dragon”, written barely a year after Hitler came to power, feels like an eerily prescient parable for the rise of fascism.

So let’s unpack this. Yes, Conan works as a mercenary in several of the stories. He’s also a pirate, a thief, a warlord and a king at various points in his life. Now mercenaries have a horrible reputation in Germany. They’re frequently viewed as murderous and raping thugs who’ll do anything for money. Just as Alpers views Conan. The reason for this is some kind of intergenerational PTSD caused by the Thirty Years’ War, where mercenary armies plundered and devastated large swarthes of Central Europe. The bad reputation of mercenaries was later upheld by Prussian propaganda in order to promote their great invention of the conscript army by basically arguing that you won’t have problems with plundering unemployed mercenaries after the war is over, because the conscripts just want to go home and back to their lives. Yes, that was honestly an argument. So Alpers did grow up with the intensely negative connotation of the term “mercenary” as did I. But while I somehow managed to overcome those four-hundred-year old prejudices, partly due to reading speculative fiction and encountering positive portrayals of mercenaries, Alpers projected the prejudices he inherited onto a character who was created in a completely different cultural environment.

As for “Conan never helps people for noble reasons, but only out of pure calculation”, so why does Conan give Belesa the rubies? He has nothing to gain here, he doesn’t even have any sexual interest in Belesa, most likely because she’s a little young for him. For that matter, why does Conan help Yag-Kasha, the abused alien elephant creature in “The Tower of the Elephant”, to find release in death and turn the tables on his abuser, when he could have just made off with the jewel? Why does he lets a chest of priceless jewels he plotted months to acquire fall into a river in order to save Muriela in “The Jewels of Gwahlur”? Why does he risk his own life to give the settlers the chance to escape in “Beyond the Black River”? Why does he sneak into a dungeon to save the Countess Albiona (in whom he has no sexual interest either) from execution in “The Hour of the Dragon” rather than make a run for it? Why does he rescue the witch Zelota (who’s an old woman in whom Conan has no sexual interest as well) and free the black galley slaves in the same story? Why is he so eager to save the seven captured hill chiefs in “People of the Black Circle”? Why is he willing to risk imprisonment and death rather than to betray a friend or accomplice in several stories? We often see Conan being selfless and caring for others throughout the stories.

Nor is Conan’s only motive for doing what he does money Yes, he needs money, because like everybody he needs to eat. And, as he explains to Belesa in “The Black Stranger”, in the cutthroat capitalist world of the Hyborian lands, taking what you need by force strikes him as perfectly acceptable. We also do have Conan the thief and Conan the con artist. However, we frequently see Conan giving up riches – in “The Tower of the Elephant”, “The Black Stranger” or “The Jewels of Gwahlur” – in order to help someone else. As for the joy of killing, yes, Conan kills people. Most of them deserve it, but sometimes – e.g. in “The Tower of the Elephant” or “Pool of the Black One” – Conan kills people with little provocation, though again they’re usually awful. Conan is capable of nobility, but he’s not a nobe savage. Nor is a murdering psychopath, as Alpers believes.

As for Alpers’ claims that Conan helps to oppress the downtrodden populace and puts down uprisings in the service of various rulers, there simply is no evidence for this at all. In his chronicled career as a mercenary, Conan nevers puts down a single uprising and he actually participates in one, when he seizes the throne of Aquilonia.  As for oppressing the downtrodden, that’s what Conan’s temporary successor Valerius does in “Hour of the Dragon”.  Meanwhile in the same story, Conan is utterly furious because Valerius and the Nemedian soldiers are abusing and oppressing the people of Aquilonia, people he feels responsible for. Nor does Conan gauge himself on the blood and sweat of the working population – indeed, Conan lowers taxes and restricts the privileges of the aristocracy. Again, the one who exploits the working population is Valerius, not Conan.

As for travelling through the land, murdering and plundering, Alpers does have a bit of a point there, because Conan does plunder villages and ships during his pirate days as well as during his time with the Kozakhi or the Afghuli hill tribes. And while we don’t see Conan engaging in random slaughter – the closest we come to that is the jailer in “The Scarlet Citadel”, who wants to kill Conan, because Conan killed his bother in a raid during his pirate days – it very likely happened.

The core theme of the Conan stories is barbarism versus civilisation, whereby civilisation is usually portrayed as corrupt. And while Conan’s quasi-Socialist homeland of Cimmeria may be a rather naive utopia (but then we never actually see Cimmeria in any of the stories – the closest we come to actually seeing Conan’s homeland is the poem “Cimmeria”, which is mainly about the gloomy hills of the country), but Conan himself is not a noble savage nor is he the murderous mercenary psychopath that Alpers described.

Robert E. Howard’s Conan is a nuanced character, capable of great good and also of random acts of violence. And that’s also why the Conan stories are so rewarding, because there is so much more to them than just the adventures of a wandering barbarian with lots of muscles and a big sword.

*I presume that Alpers refers to Italian westerns of the 1960s and 1970s here.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for June 2021

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some May books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have epic fantasy, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, paranormal mystery, science fiction romance, space opera, space westerns, military science fiction, horror, time travel, first contact, vampires, wizards, dragons, black knights, barbarian kings, blood cults, aliens, monsters, space cruises, intergalactic smuggler, crime-busting witches, crime-busting ghosts and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Rogue Wolf by K.T. Belt:

Billions dead, entire worlds under siege, and no end in sight.

The most destructive war in the history of the galaxy has arrived and every able-bodied man and woman is mobilized, save one. Carmen Grey has been released from the facility into an uncertain future. The young Clairvoyant can fly and read minds and has been trained since the age of six to do one thing and one thing only: kill. Yet Carmen struggles with an entirely different battle—how to ring up customers without them running away from her.

As she tries desperately to keep her life from falling apart, everything changes when someone close to her is swept into the conflict. Carmen vowed to never fight again, but she will have to rely on her best skill in a race against time. When everything is on the line, will she be able to stay good?

The Black Knight by Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert:

The Lords of Angilbert have been a thorn in the side of the Kings of Azakoria for decades, refusing to pay taxes or to accept the authority of the throne.

King Kurval of Azakoria inherited the conflict with the Black Knight of Angilbert from his predecessor. Determined to bring the Black Knight to heel once and for all, Kurval besieges Castle Angilbert. But when he finally comes face to face with the mysterious Black Knight, he’s in for a shock.

The law demands that the Black Knight be executed for treason. However, Kurval does not want to sentence the Black Knight to death, especially once he learns that the Lords of Angilbert have a very good reason to hate the Kings of Azakoria.

But is it even possible to find a peaceful solution or can the feud with the Black Knight of Angilbert end only in bloodshed and death?

The new sword and sorcery adventure by two-time Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert and her occasional alter ego, 1930s pulp writer Richard Blakemore. This is a novella of 33400 words or approx. 112 print pages in the Kurval series but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Warning: This is a dark story, which contains scenes of a violent and sexual nature.

The Bridge by J.S. Breukelaar:

Meera and her twin sister Kai are among thousands of hybrid women—called Mades—bred by the Father in his Blood Temple cult. Meera is rescued by a mysterious healer and storyteller, Narn, but her sister, Kai, does not survive the Father’s “unmaking.” Years later, when the cult is discovered and abolished, Meera, still racked with guilt and grief, enrolls in college to take advantage of a generous new Redress Program. When Narn’s conjure stories buy Meera a free ride to a notorious horror reading series, she is soon the darling of the lit set, feted by the other students, finally whole, finally free of the idea that she should have died instead of her sister. But college is not all it seems—Narn has lost a sister too, and Meera agrees to try and find her if Narn will keep feeding Meera the stories that are opening her up to memories she’s never acknowledged, secrets she’s never wanted to know, about Narn’s and the Father’s connection to a violent campus stalker.

Art of the Hunt by Lindsay Buroker:

Our heroes have escaped with the ancient dragon gate, but powerful enemies are right behind them.

If they can’t figure out the magic of the mysterious artifact, and find great allies and resources in another world, their hopes of overthrowing their tyrannical wizard rulers will end as surely as their lives.

 

 

Jury Duty by Peter Cawdron:

FIRST CONTACT is a series of stand-alone novels that explore the concept of humanity’s first interaction with extraterrestrial life.

The United Nations is thrown into chaos when an alien spacecraft is discovered buried beneath the ice in Antarctica. With no one nation able to lay claim to the craft, a multinational effort is undertaken to salvage the vessel, which is estimated to have crashed several hundred thousand years ago. Rather than leaving key decisions to hostile governments or their armies, a jury is established to represent the average global citizen, being selected from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Their job is to review findings and guide the process of discovery.

The FIRST CONTACT series is like BLACK MIRROR or THE TWILIGHT ZONE in that it is based on a common theme rather than common characters. This allows the series to be read in any order. Technically, they’re all first as they all deal with how we might respond to contact with an alien intelligence. This series explores the social, political, religious and scientific aspects of First Contact.

A Grimoire for Gamblers by Amanda Creiglow:

Magic may be secret, but it’ll kill you anyway.

Small town mayor’s assistant Elizabeth has enough on her plate grieving her father’s suicide. She doesn’t need his stash of magical knowledge in the attic. She doesn’t need the hidden supernatural subculture of monsters it pulls her into. And she certainly doesn’t need hints that her father’s madness might have been a smokescreen for something far darker.

But uncovering her father’s secrets could be the only way Elizabeth can stop a string of suspicious suicides… if the local wizard doesn’t rip the memories out of her mind, first.

Wizards, right?

Simultaneous Times Vol. 2, edited by Jean-Paul Garnier:

From Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, California. The second volume of the companion book series to the Space Cowboy Books Presents: Simultaneous Times science fiction anthology podcast. In Simultaneous Times Volume Two Space Cowboy Books brings you a collection of science fiction short stories from our local Hi-Desert authors, featuring both stories that have been featured on the podcast, as well as some appearing for the first time. An eclectic mix of approaches to the science fiction genre which range from rebellions against oppressive robots to alien encounters to pure campy fun, with writing styles varying from traditional to experimental. The collection features nine different authors, each paired up with five different illustrators to bring each story to life with original artwork.

Galaxy Cruise: The Maiden Voyage by Marcus Alexander Hart:

Humanity needed a hero. It got a karaoke DJ.

Leo MacGavin is not the brightest specimen of humanity. But when he inadvertently rescues a flirty alien heiress, he’s promoted from second-rate lounge entertainer to captain of the galaxy’s most sophisticated cruise ship.

Before he can flee in terror, a human-hating executive gives Leo an ultimatum—complete the vessel’s maiden voyage or mankind’s last colony will be turned into a sewage dump. To make matters worse, a militant cyborg is undermining his authority, a giant spider is terrifying the passengers, and a sentient plant keeps stealing all the beer.

If Leo ever wants to see his home again, he’ll have to keep the guests happy through seven days of onboard antics and madcap shore excursions. As strange malfunctions tear the ship apart, can he hold his rag-tag crew together, or will he flush the last bastion of humanity down the crapper?

Bloody Magic by N.R. Hairston:

The second I enter the world Pilo, I get a fireball hurled towards my face. My crew and I end up in a fight that has nothing to do with us. Now we’ve offended some very powerful people, and they’re coming for us.

We’re used to fighting, but they made the mistake of going after our loved ones. Now we’re coming for them. No Mercy.

This is a fight to the death. These people mean to kill us and everyone we love. My crew and I can’t let that happen. We’ll fight to our last breath.

They call me the World Breaker. They call my crew the Wrath Bringers. We never back down from a fight, but this time I wonder if any of us will make it out alive.

Bourbon Street Ghosts by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow-Monroe and Zander Pritchett have been excited for their upcoming ghost conference in New Orleans for years, since before they were involved with their significant others. What was once a trip for two has now become a trip for four … but that doesn’t make them any less excited.

Ofelia Archer has just found out that her bar Krewe is about to be inundated with ghost hunters … and she’s beyond excited. She’s looking forward to a good week, which means more money to funnel into her next business venture.

Two worlds collide when Harper and Ofelia meet in Jackson Square, a ghost catching their attention. Before they realize what’s happening, they’re embroiled in a huge mystery … one that involves New Orleans’ colorful past and worry for the future.

Harper and Ofelia have a lot in common and they bond quickly. That adds a colorful edge to their friendship. Add Zander to the mix and the Big Easy is in for big trouble.

Hang on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Between ghosts, Zander’s attitude, and Ofelia’s mother … it’s going to be a very strange trip. It could also be deadly.

Note: This is a crossover book between Harper Harlow and Ofelia Archer. It’s set after Ghostly Travels and Hex, Drugs & Rock and Roll.

The Asylum Aberration by Amanda M. Lee:

Charlie Rhodes has spent her entire life wondering who she is, why she was abandoned as a child, and what’s behind the magical powers she can wield in the blink of an eye.

She’s finally getting her answers.

Now that she’s been reunited with her birth mother and brother, the search is on for her father. He’s supposed to be somewhere in Boston … but where? He’s fallen out of touch and finding him is virtually impossible.

Thankfully for Charlie, the Legacy Foundation’s next assignment is in a suburb of the very city where she lives, which means there’s plenty of time to find her father and solve the mystery of a haunted former hospital that’s apparently eating construction workers on a regular basis.

Heavenstone Asylum was considered the height of sophistication in psychiatric circles back in the day. In the years since the facility closed, the main doctor’s legacy has been tarnished by horror stories of treatments gone wrong and disappearing patients.

The second Charlie walks into the building, she recognizes that the past is hardly buried within the walls. There are tortured souls at every turn, and it’s her job to help them.

Heavenstone’s history makes for interesting reading but the harder Charlie digs, the more horrifying the story. Somehow she needs to uncover the truth … and survive the ghosts long enough to free them.

It’s going to take everything she’s got to see things through until the end.

All Charlie wants are answers. She’s going to get them. Surviving long enough to do anything with them is another story.

It’s about to be the Legacy Foundation’s finest hour … or is it?

Thunder Moon Tussle by Torn MacAlester:

Nils Carmike, a fallen from grace astronaut turned smuggler, forges a new life on the lunar frontier. Harassed by the strikingly beautiful and demanding Deputy Miller, he is faced with fines and conflict, resulting in a tumultuous relationship and ultimatum he can’t refuse. Running for their life they struggle against their pasts, hoping to outsmart the common faceless enemy and forced to focus on the only rule that matters: survive!

 

 

Blue Sun Armada by Scott Moon:

War is coming.
Duke Uron Marlboro led his mighty house to victory in the Zezner war. The last thing he expected was for his allies to turn on him.

With a new civil war brewing, the Duke and his family have one option to survive the king’s wrath—

They must flee.
Will they survive the political games of their past? Can they escape their doomed planet and find a new place to thrive before their once great house is destroyed… forever.

Blue Sun Armada is the first in a new epic space opera set in the far-flung future. Legendary mech battles, intense fleet engagements, and deadly politics all make Blue Sun Armada a magnificent read. Pick your side and buy now to start the fight for survival!

Blood Moon by Nazri Noor:

All vampires suck. Sterling just happens to be very good at it.

Vainglorious vampire Sterling is forced to trade his big city hedonism for a trip to a sleepy mountain town, where mangled dead bodies have been discovered. Soon he’s entangled with snooty vampire nobles, territorial werewolves, and a society of law-enforcing sorcerers.

The locals aren’t so bad, like the luscious young lady at the fruit shop, or the hunky electrician whose smile sends out sparks. But they’re distractions from the hunt for the mountain murderer. And then there’s the eerie enigma: why are all these corpses missing their faces?

Catalyst by Amanda Quintenz-Fiedler:

When a serious accident triggers dangerous medical episodes, 25-year-old Taylor must unravel the clues in her past to save her own life.

Taylor’s old life is just a memory. No more dinners with friends, afternoon gardening, or partying with her sister. Seemingly at random, violent episodes catapult her body into shock and her mind into her past. She’s lonely, depressed and confined to a hospital. What’s worse, she’s surrounded by medical professionals who don’t know what’s wrong with her and won’t let her leave.

When a handsome young doctor’s interest ignites Taylor’s desire to live, she and another patient set out to solve the riddle of her mysterious illness themselves. But as the clues mount, Dr. Riaz begins to doubt her sanity. And as the physical toll of her fits escalates, Taylor discovers the only way to solve the riddle is from inside an episode.

Can Taylor discover the key to the illness that plagues her in time to save her life and build a future worth living?

With elements of science fiction, mystery and romance, Catalyst is the fast-paced first installment of Amanda Quintenz-Fiedler’s riveting Möbius Syndrome trilogy.

You See the Monster by Luke Smitherd:

The sound hits Guy in some low, forgotten part of his psyche – a part of him that understands the truth about shadows. The part of him that knows the deep, dark truth behind fairy stories and myths.

Guy is about to finish writing his breakthrough online article. He overheard the story by chance in a pub and it’s guaranteed to go viral – all he needs to do is persuade the World’s Unluckiest Man to talk to him. His best friend Larry’s quest for killer clickbait material has led him to a recently-appeared shanty town in Glasgow, where he finds some kind of urban voodoo cult. Ex-cop Sam has already come face to face with the terrifying force behind both these phenomena, but he’s been trying to put it out of his mind.

When Larry is killed in inexplicably gruesome circumstances, Guy knows he’s also a target. The evidence of malevolent power is suddenly proliferating – but why now? Together, Sam and Guy enter a shadow world of ancient monsters and modern curses, in a battle to figure out the rules of the game and bring them to the light before it’s far too late.

Drifter’s Folly by Glynn Stewart:

An enemy on the run to neutral space
An elite squadron beyond the reach of any backup
A secret deal that could doom the whole sector…

When United Planets Alliance Captain Henry Wong and Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich attempted to bring peace to the Ra Sector, they turned to the Drifters for neutral ground. Instead, the nomadic spacers betrayed the summit and attempted to kill everyone there.

With peace forged despite the Drifters’ betrayal, Henry and Sylvia take an elite squadron in pursuit of the Drifter Convoy. Their enemies have friends at every turn, neutral worlds who will give them shelter—and if the UPA breaches that neutrality, everything Henry and Sylvia have worked for could crash down in flames.

If the UPA is to keep the peace in the stars of a fallen empire, their diplomats must be untouchable, their honor unblemished. But as Henry’s superiors prepare for all-out war, his ships fly ever closer to a deadly trap laid by an enemy that knows them all too well…

Find(H)er by Charles Welch:

Laurie is a woman with a penchant for displaying impatience and judgement. She does not like to be bothered, particularly when she is in a hurry, which is a most unfortunate thing. One morning on her way to an important appointment, Laurie is confronted by a homeless woman who wants a small amount of money, and respect.

Instead, of respect, Laurie tells the woman that she is a lost soul, feeding off the back of humanity.

What Laurie doesn’t know is that this particular homeless woman is not simply an unfortunate, down on her luck member of society.

She is a powerful, ancient God, as old as time itself. A God who has been escorting mankind to the Land of the Dead for an eternity. Soon, Laurie finds herself lost in this timeless, corrupt land.

Boone is a man who desires nothing more than to be known as ordinary. He does not like attention from others and detests physical touch. Boone lives a life of contentment, until the day that he discovers his new gift. It is a gift that Boone has not sought, and one that he does not want, for he suddenly has acquired the gift to find things that have been lost.

Amid his struggle to comprehend where his gift has come from, and why it has selected him, Boone’s best friend, the only person he trusts, Sly, comes to him with a request.

Sly asks him find Laurie.

The Land of the Dead is a poisoned land. It is a land filled with angry and vengeful Gods who protect the Hall of Truth from those who have not yet been judged for their sinful existences.

Sly will stop at nothing to find his lost love, Laurie.

Can Laurie be saved before she is judged in the Hall of Truth?

Boone and Sly will need to survive the dangers of a lost world to save her.

They will need to overcome a wasted land, and the evil that desires their death, to Find(h)er.