Court of Shadows is a brand new setting for Shadowrun 5th Edition that takes place on a metaplace filled with faeries, the Seelie Court, and rich details and characters. I co-designed the setting with Jason Hardy for this supplement, and contributed a huge chunk of the writing, too. I’m so excited to present this alternate setting, and hope fans’ll dig how I blended inspiration from previous sourcebooks into this unique metaplane.

NIGHT VEIL is the second book in the Indigo Court series by NYT best-selling author Yasmine Galenorn. It follows the story of Cicely Waters who found herself inexplicably drawn to Grieve, a Fae Prince, then torn from his side. This story is the second in the series and may not be as powerful if you haven’t read the first book, so please keep that in mind when you’re reading this review and you’re worried about spoilers. My review of NIGHT MYST was published during our Vampire Week, and we do have a NIGHT VEIL excerpt you can read at your leisure.

One of the reasons why I like this series, is because Galenorn presents the darker side of magic, vampires, Fae and other creatures. This is not the happy-go-lucky world where everyone winds up together.

Tad Williams returns to his current epic fantasy series with the third (and not-yet-final) installment of a novel entitled “SHADOWRISE.” This particular tome is well over five hundred pages, and continues the story of the betrayal of the Eddon family and the battle between the faeries and the mortals.

If you’ve been following my work here on FlamesRising.com, you might recall that I reviewed SHADOWPLAY, which was the second book in this series. After reading that book, I ended up going back and buying the first volume entitled SHADOWMARCH in order to get caught up on the series. I feel that’s a pretty important distinction to make, since there is a lot that happens between books one, two and now…three.

As a fan of Big Red, I was eagerly anticipating seeing this sequel to Hellboy after watching the Hellboy and the Golden Army trailer and hearing about Guillermo del Toro’s involvement with the film. Impressed with del Toro’s work on Pan’s Labyrinth and Christopher Golden‘s novelization of Hellboy with artist Mike Mignola, I went into the movie with certain expectations.

Like other films and content within the Hellboy franchise–you do not need to be familiar with the characters or the setting to watch this film.

“The Zantabulous Zorceror of Zo,” by Chad Underkoffler and Atomic Sock Monkey Press, is a game of adventure and wonder set in a world of fairy tales. But the land of Zo is more than just pixies and knights. The game includes classic story elements from almost every childhood fantasy, from “The Wizard of Oz” and “Alice in Wonderland” to “Peter Pan” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

The game uses Underkoffler’s Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) system, which is also used in the super-hero RPG “Truth & Justice” and the manic “Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot: the Roleplaying Game.” In PDQ, characters use Qualities to represent their abilities. Qualities can be anything from skills to beliefs to personality quirks.

Review by Michael Erb