Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

THE WHITE TIGER (2012)

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THE WHITE TIGER (2012) is a Russian war film based on the novel TANKIST by Ilya Boyashov about a Red Army tank commander obsessed with finding and destroying a mysterious German Tiger tank that appears out of nowhere to wreak havoc on the Soviet forces. I thoroughly enjoyed this one as virtually unique among war films.

Normally, I take Russian war movies with a grain of salt, as they’re often over the top and ridiculously gung-ho. Probably the best I’d seen was TANKERS (2018), which had a lot of good elements and a grounded, lived-in atmosphere that pulled me in. WHITE TIGER is even more detailed, grounded, and immersive visually but takes a completely different approach to the storytelling, focusing on a fantastical element as the central plot: a Russian tanker and Nazi ghost tank seemingly created by the war and bound to each other as enemies.

The film begins with the aftermath of a horrific tank battle. In a burned-out T34, a Russian tank driver is discovered horribly burned but somehow alive. He miraculously recovers from his wounds unable to remember who he is and able to “talk” to tanks. Meanwhile, intelligence officer Fedotov learns about the White Tiger and that the Germans themselves don’t know what it is or who commands it. To counter the White Tiger, he gives the driver his own tank, beginning a mythic fight set against the backdrop of the war.

Visually, the film is incredible, with amazing sets, diorama views of the Russian advance, and an enormous attention to detail. The action is solid. The characters are engaging if not particularly deep, and the plot if very simple and somewhat inconclusive, with plenty of attention given to other things going on in the war, such as the German surrender at its end. This may put off some viewers but I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the eternal, mythical fight between the Russian tanker and the White Tiger (similar to Captain and the White Whale in MOBY DICK) and the grounded, realistic depiction of the actual war.

The complete film is watchable on YouTube, which I normally wouldn’t encourage, but I couldn’t find it anywhere else. Check it out if you enjoy war movies and are open to something different and strange.

THE DARK Season 3

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Season 3 of the moody, dark, and apocalyptic Netflix series THE DARK concluded what can only be described as one of the most truly remarkable science-fiction series, so odd and complex it’s one of those TV series you’re surprised got made. Season 3 builds upon the complex relationships and central time travel mystery from the first two seasons while adding another dimension and bringing the whole thing to a powerful and decisive finish.

This was an enjoyable but difficult series to watch. I would have appreciated its intricate details more if I were able to binge-watch it from start to finish, which begs for a second viewing now that the work is complete and I kind of know what’s going on, who’s who in what time period, and how they’re related. The show is not really three discrete seasons but a single vision meticulously planned from the first episode. And holy crap, it’s incredible when you see the whole thing.

During the second season, I have to admit I began to get frustrated with it. Too often, characters appear from offstage to deliver speeches short on real details and long on bland philosophy, while the time travel itself started to rely more and more heavily on the bootstrap paradox. This is a paradox in time travel where, for example, a man has a child, the child goes back in time and has his own child, and that child turns out to be boy’s father (each is the father of the other), resulting in time travel literally creating people, events, and objects living in a time loop. In many movies such as ARRIVAL, it provides an answer or solution that crashes into the plot as deus ex machina, and in THE DARK, it started to feel like the TV show LOST, constantly teasing mysteries that once revealed didn’t really mean anything. THE DARK, however, fooled me, as the bootstrap paradox became the central point of the show, the “knot” the characters seek to maintain or unravel depending on the faction, and with the key to unraveling it being finding the “origin,” the prime mover to a swirling, massive set of events occurring in an endless loop.

Holy crap, it’s dense, it’s enormously atmospheric, it’s tragic, and it’s possibly the work of mad genius. THE DARK isn’t for everybody, but if you like intelligent sci-fi, check it out.

ARMOR Audiobook Now Available!

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Available at Amazon, Audible, and iTunes, ARMOR: The Complete Series chronicles the journey of a tank crew through the Second World War, from North Africa to Berlin. Action-packed, authentic, and filled with flawed but tough men of the Greatest Generation, ARMOR drops you straight into the horror, brotherhood, and triumph of armored warfare. Enjoy the complete series as an audiobook available now–22 hours of entertainment–narrated by Garrett Michael Brown, who did an amazing job with the narration, characterizations, and a sprinkling of martial sound effects.

Listening to this book, you’ll fight alongside the crew as they go head-to-head with Tigers at Kasserine Pass, race to Palermo in Sicily, land during the horrific first assault wave at Omaha Beach, crash against the Norman hedgerows, make a stand against Hitler’s last blitzkrieg in the Battle of the Bulge, and batter their way into the heart of Nazi Germany. All the while, you’ll live with the crew in the cramped, noisy, and vulnerable fighting machine that was the American Sherman tank.

ARMOR: The Complete Series puts together for the first time all five episodes in my historical military fiction action & adventure series: The Battle of North Africa, The Fight for Sicily, Fortress Europe, The Bulge, and Reich’s Fall.

The eBook will launch June 26, and the omnibus paperback will launch around the end of the month. Thanks for reading!

Check it out here!

DOROHEDRO

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Wow, wow, wow.

Based on a manga, DOROHEDRO is an anime series about two worlds connected by magic a big lug named Caiman who travels between the two, searching for the sorcerer who transformed his head into that of a lizard. It’s absolutely nuts, gory, and frequently hilarious, and I fell in love with it.

The story follows two major intersecting story lines, both of which are fantastic. In the human world, called the Hole, a giant city in the midst of collapse due to magic, Caiman and his female friend Nikaido hunt sorcerers who come there through magic doors to practice their magic on humans. In the sorcerer world, a corporate boss named En is similarly searching for Caiman, and we spend a lot of time with him and his charming and oddball crew of lackeys, which include two powerful assassins, a sorcerer with weak powers, and a compulsive girl.

The plot is intricate and often falls into rabbit holes, with little resolution at the end of the first season, but the plot kind of doesn’t matter. What’s fun about the series is how absolutely batshit it is. A baseball game with a giant shrieking cockroach named Johnson and a Frankenstein zombie, a magical attack that turns a city into mushrooms, sorcerers waving hi to demons flying overhead, and so on, there’s so much lore, bizarre culture, and odd events, the show is almost constantly titillating, fun, and laugh out loud funny.

This was a real gem for me, highly recommended. (Streaming on Netflix, Japanese but good dubbing)

BETAAL

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Filmed in India, BETAAL is a zombie series with a terrific premise, heavy cliches presented so earnestly they kind of work, and plenty of ridiculous elements. The result is not quite serious, not quite camp, and I found it sort of overbaked but I just went with it and had some fun.

The show centers on an elite counter-insurgency military unit that has a reputation for brutality. While they are super patriotic and believe in the work they’re doing, their leader is corrupt, hiring out her unit to corporations to suppress resistance to development of natural resources. A businessman hires the unit to clear out the villagers living near a mountain so they can reopen a tunnel sealed since the Great Mutiny of 1857, which trapped a regiment of British East India Trading Company soldiers inside.

The villagers warn a great evil is trapped under the mountain that will come out, but of course they’re ignored, and the story quickly turns into one of survival horror as the soldiers and the businessman and his family try to last the night as the lost regiment emerges to claim the world.

The result was just fun enough to keep me watching despite the usual plot-pushing zombie cliches and odd elements like the British undead wearing military uniforms from the 1700s and not the Victorian era, complete with tri-horn hats, and an old abandoned British barracks that somehow got fluorescent lighting installed since 1857.

Check it out if you’re looking for something different in a familiar zombie package. (Streaming on Netflix)