Science and magic come together to decimate Las Vegas’s population in the second volume of the Signs of the Zodiac series.

Joanna Archer is still living a double life as a superhero and a socialite heiress, going under her sister Olivia’s name. But someone else knows her as Joanna: a Shadow initiate whose metamorphosis isn’t far away. Regan DuPree seems both a helper and a hindrance, and Jo trusts her when she probably shouldn’t. As a result, she unintentionally spreads the deadly virus that the Tupla let loose, and things worsen from there.

Review by Tez Miller

Eryn James is a medical secretary by day who the police have asked to become bait. Five women who’ve been to LifeMate have been murdered; Eryn looks similar and she’s a shifter – though I’m not sure if it was explained how she met the police and how they know she’s a shifter. But Eryn’s not just a shifter – she’s a beagle shifter. Okay, that’s something new, and it causes for perhaps unintentional hilarity…

Review by Tez Miller

Vicki Pettersson brings fresh ideas, deep psychology and Las Vegas’s underbelly in this flashy first volume in the Signs of the Zodiac series.

Since her almost-deadly assault about nine years ago, Joanna Archer has been tough and hard, with an empty façade that keeps even her nearest and dearest away. A blind date ends in violence and death, and Jo’s not just an innocent bystander. Turning twenty-five has awakened powers that have made her a target of the warring Zodiac factions, Light and Shadow. With a parent from each faction, Jo could go either way, and though she chooses to align with the Light, a traitor walks among the troop and exposes them all to the Shadow agents…including Jo’s father.

Review by Tez Miller

Requiem for Rome is a historical supplement and setting for Vampire: the Requiem from White Wolf Publishing, much like Dark Ages: Vampire was a historical setting for Vampire: the Masquerade. Requiem for Rome is a beautiful, but dark, book full of cunning aristocrats, noble savages and mysterious monsters. It is a 260 page hardcover (or eBook) filled with history, rumor and legend.

Ken Hite’s Foreward, The Deathless City, sets the mood immediately with a look at the history, secrets and terrors of Rome. Any Storyteller should be able to gather more than a few ideas from this section of the book alone. It is definitely worth the read if you get the chance.

Last week I posted the first in a series of horror design essays. That essay, Degrees of Horror from Preston Dubose, told us about the work on an upcoming project for the Savage Worlds system.

The essay project continues today with Clash Bowley of Flying Mice LLC telling us about the history of the Blood Games RPG. In this essay Clash tells us how the original Blood Games came about and fills us in on some of the design goals, changes and other work that went into the development of the new Blood Games II that was released last year.

I would assume, given all the fuss about the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, that I’m missing a great deal of what makes them good by reading From Dead to Worse before reading the beginning of the series. I hope this is true, because otherwise, I don’t really understand what all the hubbub is about. Sookie is a fun main character, the writing is charming, and the setting is both intriguing and well used (how many urban fantasy series take place in the South, much less post-Katrina Louisiana?). But From Dead to Worse is missing something extremely core: a plot.

Review by Alana Abbott

Descent into Chaos, the follow up novel to A World Torn Asunder (part of the Vampire Apocalypse series written by Irish author, Derek Gunn) is now available to preorder from the publisher and will be released in the Fall. Chapters are now available at the author’s website.

Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (released in September 2006) was Derek’s debut novel. It received rave reviews, was optioned for film by producer/screenwriter Richard Finney. Finney and screenwriter, Franklin Guerrero Jr., recently penned a script based on the book. Their adaptation led to a recent partnership on the project with producer, Robert Lawrence (Die Hard: With a Vengence, Clueless, The Last Castle). Currently the project is being represented by the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) who is packaging the project for the studios.

In this hardcover edition of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The First Death, fans will get both issues in the series, as well as the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures Handbook. Published by Marvel with a retail price of $19.99, the book is a prequel to Laurell K Hamilton’s best-selling novel Guilty Pleasures, which is the first in the Anita Blake series.

Adapting a comic book from a novel series isn’t an easy thing to do, because of the novel’s rich format, rife with details and setting descriptions. Additionally, the Anita Blake series is told from the first person point-of-view, which can be challenging to display visually in a graphic novel. Stray too far from the point-of-view, and you may encounter oddities–things that the main character (Anita Blake) may be describing but hasn’t seen yet. A nod to the writing team of Laurell K Hamilton and Jonathon Green, each scene was pointed and specific to Anita’s character.

Private investigator Vicki Nelson, like most everyone in Toronto, doesn’t believe in the paranormal, but when it appears that the latest serial killer could be a vampire, she’s out of her depth. Retinitis pigmentosa has already cost Vicki her former life as a homicide detective, and she needs specialised help with this case. Enter historical romance writer Elizabeth Fitzroy, or known about town as Henry Fitzroy, the bastard son of Henry VIII. He’s also a vampire, and as he and Vicki investigate, they realise that a vampire may not be to blame – but a demon and a screwed up college kid are.

Review by Tez Miller

Freedom is on the march as the rebellion against the Kurian Occupation of Earth takes the offensive. David Valentine has recruited an ad hoc company of former Quisling soldiers and puts them through a trial by fire with a successful raid against an enemy armory. Now, they’re ready to join forces with a guerilla army planning to establish a new freehold in the Appalachian Mountains.

Valentine knows that a permanent outpost near the East Coast would provide a strategic victory over the Kurians—and he believes that only his old ally Ahn-Kha could be leading the guerillas. But nothing could prepare Valentine’s fighters for what awaits them at the end of their journey.

Fall with Honor is available at Amazon.com.

Unpublished fiction writer Milagro De Los Santos lives with her boyfriend and his wealthy, vampiric family, but it goes downhill when Oswald’s parents come to stay. They’re the kind of rich bitches who look down on the ‘lower lands’, and on Mil, a woman with a small bank account and massive mammaries. It’s no surprise that on a wine tour with these dreadful people, instead of catching up with them Milagro hangs out with drunken Australians. (In fact and in fiction: where there’s booze, there’s Aussies. And to add to the Antipodal flavour, her conversations with her pal Nancy strongly recall the banter of Prue and Trude from Oz comedy Kath & Kim.)

Review by Tez Miller

Individual PDFs from Bloodlines: The Hidden available at RPGNow.com Alternative Publishing Developer, Eddy Webb, has worked with our friends at RPGNow.com to offer something new for our Vampire: The Requiem fans. Available now, for $1.99 each, you can purchase the individual bloodline descriptions originally published in Bloodlines: The Hidden. Khabit, Bohagade, Oberlochs and others are […]

This second edition of Blood! updates an original game from 1990, although quite why the author wishes to do this rather than create a completely new game which just rips off (adapts) some of the original concepts is not clear. As author Desborough points out, this makes the game a little unusual in the current environment in that games now tend to be rules-light and high-concept, while Blood! is a comparatively rules-heavy game. There are, for example, something like 400 weapons which can be used, including a fishing rod and a knitting needle. There are also extensive critical hit tables describing what might happen to the human body when it is variously bitten, stabbed, crashed into by a moving vehicle, shot, electrocuted and so forth. These are generally quite graphic in nature and this underlines the principal approach to the game, which is that of the gorefest.

Review by John Walsh

Chuck Wendig has contributed to over sixty books for White Wolf Game Studios. His short fiction has infiltrated Whispers From the Shattered Forum, Not One of Us, and an upcoming Carnifex Press anthology.

In this interview Chuck tells us about how got his start at White Wolf Game Studios. He also tells us a bit about working on the previous World of Darkness, Requiem for Rome and, of course, Hunter: the Vigil.

The War is Over. The Vampires have Won. But a new campaign is about to begin …

The first battle is over and Nero is dead. Now the human survivors will pull themselves from the ruins of their base to find that the world is a very different place outside Nero’s territory.

Nationally, the vampires have organised themselves into cabals but the scramble for power, raw materials and humans for their food, have led to an uneasy peace. Below the surface each state plots against the other and only the far-reaching power of the Vampire Council holds all-out war at bay.

Their control is slipping. And Peter Harris and his team have a plan that might just push them over the edge…

Death has never looked so good

Love them or hate them, the Daeva are the ones you die for. Tempters and priests, madonnas and horrors, these vampires feed on the blood and vices of the World of Darkness — and feed well. From the best parties to the worst parts of town, be seduced by the beautiful among the Damned. For the Succubi, a good-looking corpse is only the first step in the Danse Macabre.

You can outline a story beforehand or write it by the seat of your pants. It’s clear the author wrote Blood Noir the latter way, and not just because I know the backstory. Like Micah, this was originally going to be a novella, until something more developed. And it shows. Not only that, but I would’ve really enjoyed this had it been a novella and not this.

Jason Schuyler has never got along with his father, who is now dying of cancer. But now he has to go home to Asheville and say goodbye. And he’s traumatised enough that he’s bringing Anita Blake with him.

Review by Tez Miller

Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, 60s psychedelia, 80s Goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.

To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara re-brands the station as “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. But the “gimmick” enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher-and the perils graver-than any con game Ciara’s ever played…

Review by Jenn Moffatt.

For any of you who were frustrated or disappointed with Midnight Alley (Book Three), you’re in for a treat with Feast of Fools. Feast of Fools takes all that we learned or thought we learned from Midnight Alley and puts it all together in a very entertaining package. I could not put Feast of Fools down, and there aren’t a lot of books that I’ve read lately that I can say that about.

There is a level of tension in the Morganville books that keeps you on the edge of your seat, even in the background scenes you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it always does. Rachel Caine abuses her characters like a pro, and she doesn’t shirk because these are YA books. Claire and her friends go through hell just trying to survive in Morganville.

Review by Jenn Moffatt.

Finally, Jaz Parks goes where those in the CIA usually go: overseas. From Florida and Texas respectively in the first and second novels, the spotlight is now on Iran…as well as hell.

Jaz’s twin Dave is part of a CIA special ops squad, whose big target is the Wizard, whereas Jaz’s team’s enemy is the Raptor. Here’s where I don’t quite follow – why the two squads come together, and how the Wizard and the Raptor are linked. The Raptor is part of the series arc, but the Wizard may only be in this episode.

Review by Tez Miller