This review is a Writing Repository original.

Merynthia's Master

By Luana Saitta – Independently Published – April 25, 2026

Review by Robin Marx

Revolution is brewing in the seaside city of Merynthia, with the Sicanian underground yearning to overthrow the yoke of the Trynacrian Empire. The enchanted Amulet of Al-Khapish could tip the balance of power in the rebels’ favor, and the Sicanian wizard Barixes Crab-Eye is determined to acquire it at any cost. To that end, Barixes dispatches his light-fingered apprentice Worm to steal the magical artifact. When Worm’s initial attempts to pilfer the amulet end in disaster, Barixes forces him to undergo a startling transformation. Assuming the new identity “Wren,” the wizard’s apprentice goes undercover in the amulet owner’s lavish estate, encountering both unexpected threats and temptations.

Merynthia’s Master is the debut Sword & Sorcery novella by Luana Saitta. While Saitta has previously released a handful of short stories taking place in the same world at Swords & Sorcery Magazine, they focused on sorcerous dabbler Princess Kawtar and her bodyguard/lover Zeynep of the Plains. While I was initially surprised to learn that Merynthia’s Master dealt with an entirely new cast of characters, any faint disappointment at not being treated to a longer Zeynep and Kawtar tale evaporated after reading past the first few pages. As a protagonist, Worm is an entertaining underdog and it’s easy for the audience to root for them. Indeed, appealing characters abound in Merynthia’s Master, with cruel Barixes, affable Trynacrian legionnaire Marcus Posca, and the alluring Qazhia standing out from the pack. Despite the brief page count, readers are given a good sense of the characters’ distinct personalities. Saitta also succeeds in making the bustling pseudo-Mediterranean port of Merynthia itself a character, conjuring a real sense of place that makes the setting come alive.

Merynthia’s Master also benefits from its brisk action. The novella opens with a dynamic chase scene that ranges through, above, and even under the sun-drenched streets of Merynthia. This sequence kickstarts the book, providing thrills and spills from page one. While Worm sometimes wanders off mission, there’s never a lull in the action.

The novella similarly delivers a great deal of spectacle. While swordplay isn’t emphasized to the degree as it is in a great deal of Sword & Sorcery fiction, magic plays a critical role in the narrative. In addition to Worm’s pivotal transformation and the novella’s blockbuster finale, sorcery is put to creative and evocative use throughout. The skeletal scribes working away in a basement, mechanically producing Sicanian revolutionary literature is a fascinating image.

Adding a different kind of spectacle and spice, romance and sexuality occupy a more prominent role in the story than is commonly seen in Sword & Sorcery (at least since the passing of Tanith Lee). The friendly characters of all genders are extremely attractive, enthusiastically receptive to sexual overtures, and completely lacking in jealousy. The sex scenes aren’t incredibly extended or graphic, but they go into a bit more detail than the typical “fade to black” to which many contemporary fantasy authors nervously resort.

Merynthia’s Master covers quite a bit of ground within its slim page count. While I appreciated the fast pacing, parts of the novella—perhaps inevitably—feel underdeveloped. For a story ostensibly sparked by a desire to expel the foreign occupiers, readers aren’t given much cause to cheer on the Sicanian rebels or view the Trynacrian Empire in a very negative light beyond “some of their guards are arbitrary and mean.” Real world history tells us that imperialism rarely works out advantageously for the colonized, but it was vague exactly what yoke under which the people of Merynthia were suffering. The need for an independent Merynthia could have been more clearly established.

Sword & Sorcery stories work best when their authors demonstrate a certain degree of sadism towards their characters, but much of the novella is surprisingly light on conflict. Emotionally I want Elric of Melniboné to finally find peace, but intellectually I understand the story requires Michael Moorcock to put him through the wringer. Similarly, as readers we like Worm/Wren and want good things for them, but the story would have benefited from more obstacles. Worm becoming Wren is a rags-to-riches lifestyle upgrade with even fewer drawbacks than what Will Smith encounters in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Luxurious accommodations, found family, and plenty of sexy new friends! Love this for you, Wren. Perhaps Wren could have been put through more of an awkward adjustment period with their new form, or maybe a suspicious or unimpressed character could have been included in al-Thari’s household to provide some much-needed pushback.

In the end, however, my gripes with Merynthia’s Master can basically be summed up as “I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I just wish there was more of it.” More background, more interpersonal clashes, more setbacks. The characters are endearing, the action exciting, the spice is welcome, and the prose is the strongest Saitta has delivered to date.

Merynthia’s Master is available in ePub and PDF formats from itch.io, and Kindle and paperback formats from Amazon.

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This review is a Writing Repository original.

JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage

By Logan D. Whitney – Cliffhanger! Press – June 1, 2026

Review by Robin Marx

The pounding of drums deep in the jungle draw savage wild man Jangar to an encampment of Ur-Men—hostile ape-like creatures—who revel as caged humans cower in fear. When he spies a terrified young woman tied to a spire in the outpost’s center, offered up as a sacrifice to the Ur-Men’s lumbering god, Jangar is pushed to violently intervene. Even after his daring rescue is complete, however, Jangar’s troubles have only begun. While Jangar was born to the jungle, Yala—as the beauteous former captive is known—is altogether unprepared for such a dangerous environment and unlikely to survive on her own. As Jangar and Yala set off for civilization, the pair soon encounters threats unknown even to Jangar: the otherworldly Mind Mage and his eerie servitors.

Hot on the heels of February’s Honor Among Rogues: Six Thrilling Tales of Pulp Adventure, JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage marks the first installment in a new project by Logan D. Whitney. It’s the first novelette of six planned monthly releases; the first five will be DRM-free ebooks, with the sixth installment to be collected along with the previous installments and printed as a mass market-sized paperback.

Where Honor Among Rogues kept to the relatively grounded terrain of Earth’s historical past as viewed through an adventure pulp lens, in JANGAR! Whitney is in full Sword & Sorcery mode. In his Author’s Note, he cites contemporary author Steve Dilks’ hero Gunthar as an inspiration, one that then led Whitney to another character that would become a further influence on JANGAR!: Lin Carter’s Thongor. While the broad-strokes setting of primeval Muu does feel reminiscent of Carter’s ancient Lemuria, readers are also likely to feel the shadow of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan. Like Tarzan, Jangar is a solitary human raised in the wilderness by animal parents: saber-tooth tigers rather than the gorilla-like Mangani from Tarzan of the Apes. The panther-like Jangar is portrayed as more beast than man, and his interactions with other human beings as guarded and tentative. In one memorable passage, he even teaches Yala how to use dangling vines to navigate the jungle.

The greatest strength of JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage is its fast pacing. Just 42 pages in length, there’s no wasted verbiage. Jangar and Yala face one struggle after another, with very little opportunity to catch their breath. Readers are only given enough worldbuilding required by the story, and the distant metropolis of Q’oth and the rest of the continent of Muu remain mysterious and ripe for future elaboration.

With a savage barbarian hero, a beautiful woman in need of assistance, brutal ape-men, and glimpses of cosmic horror, the ingredients of JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage will be familiar to seasoned readers of Sword & Sorcery, but they’re served up in such an entertaining manner that I suspect most fans of the subgenre will happily overlook the lack of boundary-pushing. Indeed, Whitney includes several amusing references to other pulp tales as if affirming the story’s connection to similar adventures, rather than trying to stand apart. Jangar’s jungle home is named “Zan-Tar,” a barely-concealed anagram for “Tarzan.” Paraphrasing Conan’s memorable “if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion” reflection from “Queen of the Black Coast” (1934), Jangar echoes “If life is a dream, then I, too, am a dream.” There’s even a sly reference to the work of Whitney’s Rogues in the House podcast associate Matthew John when Yala is tempted with the knowledge of how to “walk on worlds,” a phrasing suspiciously similar to the title of John’s first S&S collection.

Fast-paced and action-packed, with a satisfying conclusion, JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage is a tasty Sword & Sorcery snack. I look forward to future installments. The digital novelette is available now via Amazon Kindle and Payhip.

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This review is a Writing Repository original.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

By Philip Fracassi – Tor Nightfire – September 30, 2025

Review by Robin Marx

Horror fiction has been undergoing a resurgence in recent years, and with outstanding releases like Gothic and Boys in the Valley Philip Fracassi quickly established himself as an author worth watching. Released by Tor’s Nightfire imprint, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre feels somewhat different from past Fracassi books, but more of an expansion of his repertoire than a permanent change in direction. It experiments with genres in a way that is interesting, but perhaps not entirely successful.

Nearly eighty years old, retired high school teacher Rose DuBois lives a quiet life at the titular Autumn Springs Retirement Home in upstate New York. She’s comfortable in her routine and surrounded by friends, most notable among them the affable former professor Beauregard Mason Miller, with whom she enjoys a warm companionship that—to Miller’s obvious chagrin—hasn’t quite blossomed into a Golden Years romance. A shadow falls over Autumn Springs, however, when Rose’s friend Angela dies of an apparent bathroom fall. Given their advanced age, the Autumn Spring residents largely take the death in stride, but the retirement home administrator’s horrified reaction to Angela’s body and the extent of the injuries seen on the corpse make Rose wonder if foul play was involved. In the days to follow, more of Rose’s friends and acquaintances fall victim to similar mishaps and maladies. Rose’s suspicions mount, and with Miller by her side she begins to investigate the deaths that the larger retirement community mostly shrugs off. Her stubborn persistence, however, marks her as a future target for a shadowy murderer.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre benefits from its brisk pacing. While the story itself is a bit of a slow burn—for most of the book the retirees are blissfully unaware that a killer lurks in their midst—individual chapters are brief and proceed at a rapid clip, frequently hinting at the murder to come, depicting its actual execution, or the discovery of the aftermath. While the proper amount of attention is spent on nice character-establishing moments, there isn’t a lot of extraneous fat; this is a lean, fast-moving book.

The appealing characters are another highlight of the book. Readers spend the most time with Rose and Miller, and both are well-rendered, realistic-feeling characters. I’ve met people very similar to them, and I imagine many other readers have as well. But we also get to spend some time in other characters’ shoes, frequently in their final desperate moments, and Fracassi doesn’t skimp on the supporting cast’s characterization. I noted it in my review of Boys in the Valley, but Fracassi’s uncommon ability to breathe life into a large cast of supporting characters through economical and empathetic characterization is again showcased in The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre. The elderly residents’ vulnerability and isolation are especially poignantly rendered in one brief chapter late in the book, after it has been unequivocally established that a killer is stalking the halls of the retirement home. Desperate to flee, various residents phone family members and former spouses begging for sanctuary until the danger has passed, only to have their pleas fall on deaf ears. Their relatives are all busy with their own lives and don’t welcome the intrusion from the old folks; better they go back to being out of sight and out of mind, warehoused at faraway Autumn Springs.

While promoted as a “slasher” novel, that aspect doesn’t arrive until quite late in the narrative. Most of the murders are orchestrated to appear as accidents or deaths from existing health issues, the knives only come out towards the end. Indeed, the “Massacre” in the title almost feels like a misnomer, suggesting more of a kinetic bloodbath than the methodical and gradually escalating series of serial killings we are presented with. While there are some gory passages, horror elements in general are fairly muted. Subtle supernatural elements do appear in the book, but they’re plausibly deniable and so lowkey that part of me wonders if Fracassi would have been better off omitting them entirely and aiming more squarely at the thriller genre. Had Fracassi pursued that direction, he could have further augmented the mystery elements of this book. There are a handful of attempts to misdirect the reader regarding the masked killer’s identity, but they’re quickly discarded; Fracassi doesn’t really commit to the red herrings in a way that made me as a reader entertain them to as realistic possibilities. And while we eventually learn the murderer’s identity, even despite a handful of first-person perspective scenes we do not receive much insight into their motives for the killings beyond opportunism and contempt for the infirm.

Straddling the mystery and horror genres, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre feels slightly less self-assured than Fracassi’s Gothic or Boys in the Valley. I get the sense that Fracassi is trying something new here, going out on a limb. Indeed, in the Afterword Fracassi remarks that the final novel did shift and grow beyond his original concept, changing through his development of Rose as a character and the experience of losing his parents. If you’re already acquainted with Philip Fracassi’s work, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is well worth checking out. Fracassi’s strengths—empathetic characterization and effective pacing—are present and accounted for. Horror enthusiasts unfamiliar with Fracassi are better directed to something like Boys in the Valley first, however, as the “slasher” marketing overstates the amount of gore and brutality present in the actual novel. “Final Girl” labeling aside, Rose owes more to Jessica Fletcher than Laurie Strode. Even if the mystery elements aren’t as developed as they could have been, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is an easy recommendation for thriller fans. I enjoyed the time I spent with Rose DuBois and Beauregard Mason Miller and I’m pleased to see Fracassi resist complacency and push himself in new directions.

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