Reader Picks: Your favorite posts of 2017

The list of most-viewed items this year is interesting and a bit disappointing in that it's almost chronological for the first half of the year. Usually the entries are scattered, with a few things getting big bursts of interest. Of course, that result is pretty par for the course with the way this blog went this year -- a great deal of traffic early, tapering off late. That's most likely my fault, as work consumed me much of the second half of the year, and I did much less reading and writing than usual. When you go a month between posts, things tend to die.

Still, I'll keep with tradition in hopes that things pick up in the coming year and offer the most viewed posts of 2017.

10. "Son of the Black Sword," by Larry Correia. Published May 2. A bit of a departure from what I'm used to with Correia -- more serious with less humor -- but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

9. "The Death of Dulgath," by Michael J. Sullivan. Published April 11. I waited far too long to visit with my old friends Royce and Hadrian. Not the best of Sullivan's Ryria novels, but certainly not a disappointment.

Review: "Stone Cold Bastards" by Jake Bible

How could I pass up a book called “Stone Cold Bastards” ($15.95, Bell Bridge Books) with a hero that’s a cigar-chomping gargoyle, umm, I mean grotesque, charged with saving humanity from a demon invasion?

I couldn’t, of course. So that’s why the latest from Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Jake Bible leapfrogged to the top of my to-read list.

The situation is dire. The Gates of Hell have opened, and most of the humans in the world are husks, walking around possessed by the demons that escaped. Think “The Walking Dead,” only the zombies are far more malevolent.

Humanity’s last hope may lie in a small sanctuary that was transplanted to the Appalachian mountains years ago. Inside lives a ragtag group of gargoyles and grotesques who woke at the same time demons began spilling into the world. They were imbued by their creators, the Stonecutters, with one goal, protect the wards within their sanctuary from harm. So far, the Gs, as they call themselves to avoid confusion, have held strong, but Hell is coming.