Tag Archives: fantasy

Black Badge: Ace in the Hole

Posted on June 10, 2025 by smellincoffee

For untold years, the thought-dead gunslinger James Crowley has roamed the wild west doing the bidding of the White Throne – hunting wretched nephilim that prey on humans and subvert creation, like vampires. This was his reward for dying in … Continue reading →

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Camino Ghosts

Posted on March 2, 2025 by smellincoffee

In The Guardians, readers were teased with a voodoo-cursed cabin that..ended up never being visiting again, causing me to wonder why on Earth it had been included to begin with. Camino Ghosts revisits not that cabin, but the general premise … Continue reading →

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

An Unexpected Hero

Posted on December 28, 2024 by smellincoffee

It was a night like any other: Danny was on the stage at a dive bar, very nearly earning his keep but ruining it by digging at customers who got on his nerves. Then, one of them decided to teach … Continue reading →

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Saving Cinderella

Posted on July 12, 2024 by smellincoffee

Disney’s adaptations of classic fairy tale and folk stories like Cinderella have charmed girls across generations, but as the decades pass they’ve been subject to increasing criticism that the early princesses were passive sillyhearts lying around waiting to be rescued. … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics and Literary, Reviews | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Posted on January 18, 2024 by smellincoffee

There is a little underground cafe in Tokyo where, if you sit at a certain chair under the right conditions, you can find yourself in that chair in that cafe at some other time, where you can meet someone who … Continue reading →

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Short rounds: C.S. Lewis and the anthropology of sanitation workers

Posted on November 27, 2023 by smellincoffee

First up, C.S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress. Lewis dashed this off immediately after converting to Christianity in 1933, and it’s a fictional and fantastical rendering of his own journey throughout the twenties as he fell away from his childhood faith, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and Civic Interest, Religion and Philosophy, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Vein Pursuits

Posted on June 3, 2023 by smellincoffee

Vein Pursuits© 2023 Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle322 pages | Audible version read by Roger Clark, 11 hours & change Cold as Hell introduced readers to James Crowley, an undead gunman who was killed trying to protect an innocent … Continue reading →

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Dead Acre

Posted on April 30, 2023 by smellincoffee

Dead Acre© 2020 Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime CastleRead by Roger Clark. 3 hours and change If you read Cold as Hell, you were introduced to Crowley, a gunman of the old west who died trying to protect a young … Continue reading →

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The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights

Posted on April 27, 2023 by smellincoffee

The Acts of so-called Arthur King and his Noble Kannnnnigits© 1976 John Steinbeck364 pages It befell in the days of yore, as I rode by a book-stall in a great city, that mine eye was caught by a fair volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics and Literary, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Cold as Hell

Posted on February 3, 2023 by smellincoffee

Cold as Hell: A Black Badge Novel© 2022 Rhett C. Bruno, Jaime CastleAudible narration provided by Arthur Morgan Roger Clark419 pages | Audible edition ~13 hours James Crowley was a notorious outlaw and gunman, riding with a band of bank-robbers … Continue reading →

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