Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ETERNAL WORLD by James Chambers

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In A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ETERNAL WORLD, horror author James Chambers provides a new collection of Lovecraftian stories, each hitting a different dark note.

I’d read Chambers’s ENGINES OF SACRIFICE on a lark a few years back and loved it. I say “lark” for two reasons: One, I tend to read novels far more often than I do novellas and short stories, an art form I’m still learning to appreciate as time passes. Second, all the stories were based on the Lovecraft mythos, and I’m weird in that I love everything Lovecraft except reading the actual stories.

With these two collections, Chambers in my honest opinion improves on the original, giving me all the mystery and cosmic horror I love but told through the lens of modern prose and contemporary stories. Each is highly distinct, creating flavors of horror both cosmic and grisly. In A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ETERNAL WORLD, the unifying device is a fishing town called Knicksport, where weird things happen, and they might happen to you.

Overall, this collection is a lot of fun and highly recommended if you’re interested in a fresh and thoughtful take on the Lovecraft mythos.

FROM, Season 1

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In FROM, a community of people live in a town where people enter but can never leave, a place where monsters come out at night and the real world seems a distant memory.

Streaming on Paramount, FROM begins with the sheriff ringing a bell, warning the residents that dark is coming and they need to get inside. Meanwhile, a family discovers a tree blocking the road during a road trip, which forces them to detour to a crumbling town where nothing seems quite right. They soon discover they’re trapped like the residents, who either try to live as best they can in acceptance of their lot, or take a stand to learn more about the mysterious place and how they might escape.

There’s a lot to like here, from the basic TV drama to the themes of resistance/acceptance to the weird horror elements, which include some pretty gory slaughter of people caught outside after dark. There are plenty of riddles and strange elements to keep you engaged in the mystery, very similar to LOST, in fact this show has some of the same producers. Only, because it’s streaming, it’s like watching LOST with bad language and people torn to shreds.

I do have some criticisms. One is the show tips its hand very early on to show what the monsters look like, and they’re far scarier seeing the aftermath than seeing them attack. Another is every breakthrough on a mystery only leads to another mystery, which kept millions hooked on LOST but turned me off during the second season. I feel like shows like that lean so hard on the uncanny (there’s a dog that keeps showing up for some reason, which appears designed to generate internet discussion about what it means) that I start to feel played, and then leans on weird cliffhangers so much it boxes itself into a corner, and you wind up with a finale where it was all some weird plan by God or a collective near-death experience, because nothing else works. That’s a me thing, maybe not a you thing, though, as again, millions loved LOST and watched it to the end, so if you dug that, I think you’d dig this closer-to-R-rated version of it.

Overall, I thought Season 1 was great creepy fun, and I’m already into Season 2, which is rolling at a nice pace. Check it out if you like “Area X” or LOST type stories.

THE KING TIDE (2023)

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In THE KING TIDE (2023), a desperate community of island fishermen discover an infant with a magical power of healing, resulting in the community forming a virtual religion around the girl and becoming willing to do anything to protect and ensure their access to her powers. The filmmakers wring a ton of drama from a simple story and modest budget, with a terrific payoff.

Distraught after his wife Grace suffers another miscarriage, Bobby takes a walk and hears a baby crying near the sea. Discovering a lost infant, he and his wife adopt the girl, though she is no normal child. Named Isla, she has the ability to heal almost any ailment and keep people young. Years later, the island has sealed itself off and has formed a virtual cult around her. But Isla has another power, one that is darker than healing, and when the girl grows confused and appears to lose all her power, the community falls into chaos, turning on each other and outsiders.

It’s a simple premise and story, the kind of thing you might find in a Shirley Jackson short story or a play turned into a film, but the filmmakers mine a huge amount of drama and tragedy out of it. As things go wrong, everyone becomes an antagonist, and what makes these characters so great is every one of them has a powerful motivation for what they want and what they’re willing to do for it. The town’s now useless medic, for example, believes the community is exploiting Isla and wants her to have more choice. Her adoptive parents want to protect her, and their mother, cured of a catatonic form of dementia, is willing to do anything to avoid going back into that horrible fog. And on and on, all of it leading up to tragedy with a terrific ending. The real monster, it seems, is simple human nature.

Otherwise, the setting is notably bleak, an isolated community on an island in Nova Scotia where the houses are barely resisting the erosion of time and the harsh elements. The people who live there are ordinary people similarly turned rugged and hard by their environment. The pacing is solid and the dialogue just fine.

Overall, I was impressed by THE KING TIDE and would happily recommend it as a simple horror story about human nature that is well told.

EXHUMA (2024)

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Korean film has a real knack for horror, offering seriously creepy stories populated by terrific characters you care about. The latest I caught was EXHUMA (2024), about a shaman and a geomancer who team up to relieve a family of a curse, only to discover something far more evil buried beneath the earth. I really enjoyed this one.

In this story, Korean shaman Hwa-rim and her protege are hired by a rich businessman to identify the cause of a strange illness affecting both him and his newborn son, which turns out to be a haunting by a vengeful ancestor. In Korea, they team up with a geomancer (specialist in cosmic energy flowing between people and their environments) and his own partner. Together, they must exhume the grave of an ancestor located in a horrible grave site in an area where the very ground appears to be diseased.

That’s when things of course go very wrong, as they contend not only with the vengeful ancestor but a far larger evil.

This movie is great horror, really folklore or religious horror, deeply steeped in realistically portrayed shamanism, geomancy, and Korean and Japanese mythology. The characters are very likeable, even though we don’t get to know them very well, and the shaman is unfortunately a bit underdeveloped; it’s in the spiritualist procedural aspects where this film really shines. Their cosmic battle against evil forces is compelling and different, with its nearest equivalent on this side of the Pacific maybe being THE EXORCIST. Plenty of twists kept me engaged, though some viewers may find it jarring how the story appears to wrap up halfway through the film, only for the real adversary to reveal itself. In its dark tone evoking dread, the movie reminded me a lot of THE WAILING, which had a similar tone. (That movie also had a very dark ending, distinguishing another great thing about Korean horror cinema, which is you really need to check your expectations at the door.) The ending to EXHUMA surprised me in a great way, and I loved how it came in for a landing.

Overall, I loved EXHUMA and look forward to what Korea comes up with next in horror.

FURIOSA (2024)

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In FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024), we get a prequel to the FURY ROAD film that I’d be very surprised if anyone actually demanded but honestly stands out for me as the best in the franchise since THE ROAD WARRIOR. I liked this movie a lot, far better than FURY ROAD, with the biggest downer being that aside from a glimpse or two, Mad Max isn’t in it.

In this film, we get the backstory for Furiosa, one of Immortan Joe’s Praetorians, who played a significant role in FURY ROAD. As a child, she lives in the “Green Place,” but it’s been discovered by raiders, and when she tries to interfere with them leaving to tell others this sanctuary’s location, she winds up captured by the Horde led by the warlord Dementus (played balls to the wall by Chris Hemsworth) and growing up in the wasteland. From there, she becomes increasingly mixed up in the political machinations between three players–Dementus, who captures the sole working oil refinery, Immortan Joe, who controls the Citadel with its food and water supply, and the Bullet Farm, which manufactures ammunition. All she wants to do is escape back to the Green Place, but the wasteland has other plans for her, setting her on a path not of escape but revenge.

Anya Taylor-Joy does a great job in the role that was previously well-played by Charlize Theron in FURY ROAD, embodying the role with a fierce sense of determination and making the action scenes look believable instead of staged. In my view, Hemsworth steals the show as Dementus, though, who is a great character, a product of the wasteland, a man who wishes things could be different and better but knows this can never be–that he in fact must help make it worse. Part charlatan and part emperor with no clothes, he is a pure agent of chaos, undermining and attacking his rivals because it’s all he knows how to do, and he appears to thrive on things falling apart, as if determined to make the world as horrible as his internal landscape.

Anyway, the characters are good, the politics simple and fun, the action scenes the usual riveting ROAD WARRIOR fare. There are a few moments that particularly stretch suspension of disbelief, such as Furiosa freeing herself from a tough situation and getting her robot arm, but whatever, it’s a Mad Max movie. Overall, I found FURIOSA a great addition to the Mad Max world and again one of the best in the franchise, though, I’d love to see something this fun with Mad Max back as the main.

ARMOR Diorama

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Hardcore military history buff and U.S. military veteran Andy Watts, a fan of my ARMOR series, recently honored the series by creating a model diorama of Bull, the battered Sherman tank, battling German Panthers in the town of Birk.

It’s a beautiful piece of work:

Here’s a closeup of Bull, the battered but formidable Sherman tank:

Andy also created an online role-playing game based on the crew of a Sherman tank, with some of its adventures inspired by ARMOR:

You can check out their adventures HERE.

Seriously, I can’t tell you how cool it is to see this series provide inspiration and fuel for so much creativity and fun.

Here’s the section in ARMOR that describes the battle at the crossroads in Birk:

As Bull approached Birk, the fog still clung to the earth. Finally, the town’s outskirts emerged in dark, misty shapes.

“Creepy,” Tank Sergeant Charles Emerson Wade muttered at his periscope.

He’d clapped at the news he might end up stuck in the field so long he’d miss whatever action B Company was rolling into, but now he missed being surrounded by a massive amount of friendly firepower.

The town looked eerie, deserted, haunted.

“I’m not getting through to the platoon or company,” Russo said. Bull’s radio had a limited range.

“Maybe they rolled through already,” Payne said.

“Or they got lost,” Wade said. “I’m surprised we found it.”

“Nice and slow, Payne,” the commander ordered.

“Roger that,” came the earnest reply.

Bull crept into the small town, which showed signs of bomb damage and occupation by the 120th Infantry Regiment. Fog and smoke shrouded the buildings, some of which smoldered. Scattered by an artillery strike, gear littered the road, a jeep stood outside a cobbler’s shop.

No bodies, no people. Eerie, indeed.

Gunfire erupted again in the southeast, joining the never-ending distant chorus of the Wehrmacht counterattack up and down the line. Wade let go the breath he’d been holding. They were behind the front line. Still…

“I have a bad feeling,” he said.

“Don’t even say it,” Swanson warned. Wade knew the loader believed he was somehow responsible when his dire predictions came true.

“Quit it,” Woolworth said over the interphone, his voice edged with panic. “If you guys start losing it, I’m really going to lose it.”

“Thought you knew better and was chomping at the bit,” the loader gloated.

“Here’s a story,” Wade said. “Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo at Troy. When he visited, he traded a kiss for the gift of prophecy. When she saw him helping to destroy Troy, she spit in his face. He retaliated by cursing her so that she could see the future, but nobody would believe anything she said. After the Greeks abandoned the siege, she warned the Trojans the wooden horse the Greeks left behind was filled with enemy warriors waiting to sneak out and open the gates, but they didn’t believe her, and Troy was destroyed.”

“Enough, Wade,” Russo said. “Don’t feed the bear.”

“Actually, I like the Greek stories,” Swanson said. “They make you think.”

Wade warmed to the praise. “I’m glad you like them.”

“My curse is each day I wake up, and I have to listen to you. I’m like Prometheus, and you’re like the big vulture who comes to make his gut hurt.”

“Eagle,” he corrected.

“How about everybody button their lip?” Russo said. “Payne, drive on. The fog is starting to let up. I can see the crossroads.”

The assembly area. No Company B.

“Where the hell is everybody?”

“We should find a safe place to wait,” Wade suggested.

“Yeah, that’s not a bad—” Russo turned in the cupola. “Hang on. Somebody’s yelling at us. I can’t make out what he’s saying.”

Wade glared through his scope, his nerves jumping. “Eyes forward, Tony!”

In tank combat, punch, armor thickness, mobility, reload time, and turret speed were all critical, but one thing was most important of all: Whoever fired first usually won. Which required sharp eyes at all times.

“I hear something too,” Woolworth said. “Is that an engine?”

The men quieted. Wade paled.

“Panzer,” he breathed.

Wade’s hands instinctively twitched near the L-shaped handle used to traverse the turret and small wheel used to elevate the main gun.

Russo gripped his pork chop microphone. “Swanson, load with shot. Payne, turn left at the—”

A flash lit up the mist beyond the crossroads, accompanied by the boom of a gun. A green blob whirled toward Wade’s scope. The shell skipped across Bull’s steel chest and ricocheted off the turret with an ear-piercing whistle.

Wade flinched at the impact and took in a ragged breath. The hull trembled in the aftermath, vibrations he could feel in his teeth. The impact spot glowed red. The temperature in the turret grew hot.

Blood was dripping down the outside of his scope.

“Who’s hit?” he said.

The lieutenant’s voice appeared on the radio. “—at Birk in two minutes.”

“Reverse, reverse!” Russo was screaming. “Give it all he’s got!”

“Reversing!” Payne yelled back as he buttoned up. “The kid’s hit! He’s hit!”

“Wade, tank, shot, eight hundred, fire!”

“You’re up!” Swanson said.

Wade focused his scope’s vertical center on the dark shape emerging from the mist. He stomped the foot pedal, trusting the gyroscope to stabilize the gun at this range. “On the way!”

Bull bellowed with fury, spitting fire and smoke as it retreated. The shot zipped and smashed against panzer steel in a splash of sparks. Wade punched the button for the coaxial machine gun, which sent a stream of bullets and tracers downrange to pelt the enemy tank. Useless against the Panther’s armor, it nonetheless forced the German commander to button up.

“Up!” Swanson called out.

“Stop with the AP! I need smoke! Give me smoke!”

“—I hear firing in the town—”

Wade’s blood froze as the panzer revealed itself. One of the big and fearsome cats, it was a Panzer V, the vaunted Panther. While it had weaker side armor than the Tiger, it was lighter, faster, and had better gun penetration.

The tank weighed forty-five tons. Its 7.5-centimeter gun could punch through an American M4’s armor like warm butter.

“Bravo 1-2 to Bravo 1-6,” Russo ranted into the radio. “We’re engaged at the Birk crossroads and request—”

The Panther fired.

The shell slipped under Bull’s bow and exploded, sending dirt and cobblestones blasting along the tank’s belly. The bow bucked, groaning high into the air before crashing back down. Wade whiplashed against his scope, smashing his nose against the glass. Stars flared in his vision.

The engine roared but didn’t stall. Bull lurched, and Payne straightened it out and floored the accelerator to keep pulling back. With buildings on both sides, they had nowhere else to go. They’d driven straight into a kill box.

Abandon tank, Wade thought. The stars were gone, but his vision remained blurred with hot tears. A crushing headache bloomed in his skull. Blood poured down his face from his stinging nose. Feeling light-headed, he spat and tongued a chipped tooth, his second since he’d shipped out to war. Rolling clouds of dust filled his periscope. Bail out!

The Panther stopped, readying itself to fire again as the dust dissipated into a brown veil.

“—Negative contact, Bravo 1-2. Repeat message, over.”

Then an unlikely hero saved Wade’s life.

Another Panther appeared in the intersection ahead, trying to cross, blocking the first Panther’s shot for several critical seconds. Enough time to put some distance between Bull and its enemies.

Enough time to shoot.

“Request support!” Russo howled into the radio.

Wade took a deep breath. “STOP THE TANK.”

He lay the gun’s sight on the crossing Panther’s weak side armor, painted in a jagged camouflage pattern. The black-uniformed German commander gazed back at him, his mouth open wide in a shouted order, no doubt telling his driver to pour on speed.

Too late, kamerad, Wade thought. “On the way!”

The 76 recoiled with a roar. The armor-piercing shell flashed into the Panther’s flank, punched though the armor, and detonated inside. A jet of blue fire flared from the hole. The commander heaved himself out of the cupola, his right knee a smoking stump, and rolled onto the ground. He’d made a mistake, and in war, that was all it took to lose everything.

The smoking hulk now blocked the intersection. Visible in glimpses, the surviving Panther continued its approach.

“We’re coming, Bull,” Alexander said over the radio. “Hang tight.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Swanson said. All they had to do now was drop smoke and wait for the cavalry.

“Wait!” Wade turned to Russo. “If he tries to get around the panzer we knocked out, he’ll be in killing range.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He might think we have a 75.”

Only now Wade became aware of the machine gun and rifle fire crackling across the town. Hidden in the buildings, American infantry had surrounded Bull the whole time. Artillery fire had forced them to cover, where they’d been waiting for the counterattack. Whoever had yelled at Russo was probably warning them not to advance any farther, along with a few choice expletives.

Russo gaped at Wade’s bloody face, his own sporting a shiny bruise already blooming under his left eye.

“Engage on contact,” the lieutenant told his tank commanders.

Russo set his jaw. “All right.”

“We got WP loaded now,” Swanson said.

“Keep it. We’ll smoke him then fire every AP shell we’ve got at him.” The commander grinned, an ugly sight thanks to the massive bruise. “Who’s with me?”

“Shit,” Swanson said.

Wade leaned into his scope. Still buttoned up, the Panther crept around its fallen comrade, its turret turning to keep its gun’s long barrel aimed toward the street where Bull waited. Fearing machine gun fire at close range, Russo closed his own hatch. Booms sounded to the north.

“—That’s Second Platoon. They’re in action. Drive on—”

The Panther emerged into the open.

“On the way!”

The white phosphor round struck the corner of the building beside the panzer, ricocheted, and struck its turret, where it flared and burst with brilliant white smoke, blinding the panzer crew.

“Left a hair,” Russo said. “You’re on!”

“Up!”

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

Bull launched its AP shell at the same time the Panther fired. The building on Bull’s left exploded across the street and crumpled. An avalanche of bricks, lumber, furniture and dust crashed against the tank’s flank.

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

The 76 reared back on its haunches, spitting out another smoking shell casing. Swanson rammed the next into the breech. “Up!”

“On the way!”

Then another and another until Wade lost count. At last, a flash of light burst inside the smokescreen, which slowly darkened with oily black smoke.

“Check fire,” Russo said. “Payne, reverse. Get us rolling if you can.”

“Roger.”

“How’s the kid?”

A long pause. “He’s dead.”

“You sure?”

“The round took his head clean off, Chief.”

Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say. The dumb little eager beaver had wanted to experience combat and had gotten his wish. Wade massaged his temples as his headache began to pound.

Bull shuddered and shoved through the wreckage, shedding bricks and dust as it rolled in reverse down the street.

Russo sighed. “Everybody, give me a damage report.”

Another crewman lost, another battle survived. For Wade, it had been the most terrifying fight since Mortain. Looking at it another way, it was simply another day’s work. For now, they were heading to the rear. Tomorrow, they’d drive right back into the war and might have to do it all over again.