In the 2013 apocalyptic drama These Final Hours, a meteor has crashed into the North Atlantic causing a spreading firestorm that will inexorably destroy all of humanity. As the film begins, roughly twelve hours remain until the wall of fire will reach Western Australia. With absolutely no chance of escape or survival, society is rapidly devolving into chaos and madness. Frankly, it's not a particularly original scenario - off the top of my head I have seen this same setup in 1998's excellent Last Night and again in 2012's Steve Carell / Keira Knightley vehicle Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. It's a simple enough hook as the launching point for a story, and the success hinges entirely on the strength of the actors and the characters they play. How does this movie fare? Well, let's check it out.

I was the perfect age for Wes Craven. I suppose by extension that should mean that I am still the perfect age for Wes Craven, but let's face it: As a middle-aged guy who has lost track of the current zeitgiest of modern horror, I don't have anything interesting to contribute. But as a sixteen-year-old boy in the winter of 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street was completely transformative.

With May's release of Forbidden Trespass Gold Eagle continues its continued slow-motion sprint towards the not-quite-untimely demise of the Deathlands series. (It's hard to call it untimely when the three-decade-old series has outlived all of its genre contemporaries by a solid twenty years.) The good news is, this entry continues the surprising trend of being a solidly entertaining novel in the series' final year. It is almost cruel that after years of repetitions, predictable story lines, Ryan Cawdor and company are finally getting some very interesting and inventive adventures just in time to (probably) disappear forever.

As we unfortunately found out a few months ago, due to the shuttering of the Gold Eagle imprint at the close of 2015 that means that the end is very near for Deathlands. But this month, End Day comes even sooner. It is not the final book in the series (although arguably it probably should be), but it is the final book written by fan-favorite author Alan Philipson. With a time-traveling story set primarily in New York City just hours before the impending nuclear apocalypse, the companions face off against the Magus - a nemesis who goes all the way back to the original Deathlands novel Pilgrimage to Hell published all the way back in June of 1986. As I said, it’s not the series finale but it surely feels like it could be.

For whatever reason, the Axler-verse has been spending time in the snow lately. Back in November we had Deathlands make a trip to Antarctica with Polestar Omega, and now we have this month’s Outlanders taking a trip to the Great White North to visit the hidden ville of Terminal White. Where Polestar Omega was a gonzo tale of generational science run amok, Terminal White follows a much more clinical foray into behavioral science and rigid population control. There is certainly plenty of action to be had, but (as is frequently the case with Outlanders) the real battle is one of ideas and the value of self-determination.

Generally speaking, the Outlanders series is best known for its high adventure story lines pitting a small group of human warriors against global, or sometimes cosmic, adversaries. Every now and then, though, a story comes along that is much more personal in nature. Although the titular menace has the potential for widespread mayhem (particularly in the mind of the story’s villain), the November 2014 Outlanders release Judgment Plague is pleasantly contained in its actual scope.

My intention is to post a review here on the PostApoclyptica blog of each current James Axler title on the month it released. Unfortunately, due to family issues I have gotten a little bit behind. In any case, here is my review of February’s Outlanders title Wings of Death (only two months late!)

Before I get to the review proper, though, I have to comment on the quality of the editing of this particular title - or extreme lack thereof. It is virtually impossible to publish a novel with no typographical errors. My own personal experience with my own novel was that I spent months going through the text over and over again, and enlisted the help of no fewer than three additional editors, and still a few typos slipped through. So really I do understand that a certain small number of errors are virtually unavoidable. That being said, I thought that this particular book had an egregious number of errors. There were easily dozens of cases of two words being run together, along with misspellings and other similar errors. It was enough that it continually knocked me out of the book, and made it very difficult to enjoy. I don’t know who was asleep at the switch, but clearly there was a significant quality control issue with the book. I hope the issue has been addressed, as I would hate to see the same decline in quality appear in future books.

But enough about that, what about the story itself? Well, read on for my thoughts.

Continuing last week's theme, today I am writing about the other current James Axler title -- Deathlands #114: Siren Song. Theoretically, the entire driving motivation of the series is the search by Ryan Cawdor and his companions to find a place that they can call home, away from the everyday violence and bloodshed of the Deathlands. I say "theoretically" because more than one hundred books on, nearly thirty years of publishing time and at least several years in story time, they have never even hinted at actually reaching that goal. Siren Song poses the question, what happens when the companions finally stumble across a safe haven where they can lay down their arms and live a life free from the constant struggle for survival?

First off, a quick apology for the dearth of posts on this blog. Let's just say I had some stuff happening, and leave it at that. In my rebooting of PostApocalyptica, my intention is to return to a weekly post schedule and to always feature the current James Axler title when it comes out. Kicking things of is the latest Outlanders novel, released last November.

I first heard about the book John Dies at the End by David Wong a few years ago when my wife pointed it out to me. This was back around 2008 or so, when it was pretty much impossible to find a printed copy. The book began its life in 2001 as an online serial that gradually gained notoriety as the story progressed. By 2004 it existed as a complete manuscript and its popularity continued to grow. More recently David Wong has become a very popular contributor over at Cracked.com, the book has been adapted into a film directed by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), and the novel is now widely available in multiple formats. After years of hearing about it, I finally decided to sit down and read the thing.