As I posted here, it's my goal to make at least one mix a month for 2026. Of course, February's mix is Valentine-themed. Here's the tracklist:
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Sunday, February 15, 2026
The Ninja
The Ninja is a 1980 novel by prolific genre author Eric Van Lustbader, which would kick off not only an eight-book epic series but play a vital role in the ninja boom of the 1980s. Jack and Kate wander into this world of martial arts mysticism, murder mystery, and erotic romance.
Is it ever acceptable to slide a finger into your partner’s butt on a first date? What the hell is up with the murderous sex ninja trope? Just how easy is it to get a teaching gig at Columbia University? Are we too far past the ninja boom to have someone steal great ideas like “Nashville Ninja” and “Ninja Cruising?” All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.
Sunday, February 8, 2026
The Lindworm
Characters
Toki, a skald
Sigridur. a scout
Hallbera, a berserkr
Gorm, a seer
Revna, a pyre
Events
The world passes under the heroes in a blur as massive ravens carried them in their talons, yet they still got a sense of the Broken World that now existed after a failed Ragnarok. Farmsteads and great jarldoms alike were naught but ruins. Wide rivers of fire cut swaths through the sundered land. And corpses, of men and monsters, choked the soil with their blighted black blood.
And still, there were signs of life. New settlements had appeared where forsaken people banded together for survival, eager to find the bonds of fellowship that would sustain them. Monsters, too, roamed the Broken World; they saw lonely giants in the mountains, bands of elves creeping through forests, and hordes of the walking dead riding forth from blood-soaked battlefields.
At last, their destination came into view. At first, they mistook it for a citadel, but as it neared they saw that it was the corpse of a great lindworm rising from a crack in the earth, forever frozen in the moment of its demise. The ravens dropped them at the foot of the grand worm, where a bonfire burned bright. As they wheeled away, one of the corvids said, “If thou seekest justice, enter the unhallowed worm and findest the five treasures that will call forth an end to the world's misery.”
After scouting around the perimeter of the lindworm, they discovered a way to enter it--a large wound gaping in its side. They fashioned torches and lit them in the bonfire, then proceeded in. Inside the first chamber, they found a family of trolls sleeping. Their attempt to sneak past the trolls failed, but Revna was able to slip behind the trolls and take one of their children hostage. Using the child's life as leverage--so dishonorable!--they convinced the trolls to leave without further conflict.
Further inside the lindworm, they found a "waterfall" of bile running from a pierced organ above. Behind the horrid fluid were handholds they could use to ascend further up the worm's decaying body. A few members of the party were cursed by the shower of bile as they traversed it, but they soon located a new bonfire that cleansed them of the evil.
In another hollowed-out "chamber" within the lindworm, the reality of their situation fell away and they found themselves once more in one of Idis's orchards; as before, the mother-maiden-crone tended a massive apple tree basking in a shaft of pure sunlight. Idis was able to tell them that the treasures they sought were likely to be a mistletoe-wrapped dart, a silver chain, a great hammer, a horn, and an iron spoon. Idis also added another draught to their mead horns before they departed.
Further exploration brought them to a pool of bubbling hot "mud," but when the substance proved corrosive they decided to return when they had a better idea of how to deal with it. They also encountered an ongoing spectral echo of Ragnarok in which Vikings allied with their jarl fought eternally against Norsemen allied to the jotunn. At another juncture leading upward, they battled a withered undead being who called himself "Hel's Champion.' After he was beheaded, he continued talking, warning them that death still awaited them.
Within the next "level" of the lindworm's body, they met a tall, thin man wearing a luxurious fur cloak and a horned helm. He offered them a hundred souls for the mistletoe dart they had found below. When they balked at his insanely generous offer--and his emphasis on the fact that they would be as powerful as gods with a hundred souls in their possession--he simply left, bewildering them. The heroes believed they had just met Loki, the trickster.
In another chamber, they found two monstrous wolves snarling at each other, apparently fighting over a horn that lay between them. Hallbera attempted to offer a meal of fish to one of the wolves to get it to be her friend, but it bit her viciously. Battle commenced! During the fight, two of the party were slain--Hallbera and Sigridur awoke at the last bonfire they had rested at and had to backtrack to where the others fought the Children of Fenrir.
Continuing on after besting the wolves and taking the horn, they found a young jotunn chained to stone slab. Above him, a diseased organ dripped the corrosive "mud" substance onto him; whenever it touched his flesh, he thrashed wildly, causing the entire worm to shake. Revna smashed the chains that held him with her hammer; before he disappeared, the jotunn gave her a smile of thanks. When they retraced their steps back to the pool of "mud," they found that it had drained through holes in the lindworm's flesh and that they now had access to a single soul that sat at the bottom of the pool.
Back above, Hallbera became entranced by an orb surrounded by hooded wraiths; Toki slapped her back to consciousness; Hallbera then shattered the orb, causing mist to flood the chamber. The group beat a hasty retreat.
At last, they once again encountered Jarl Angraboldr. However, this time his specter begged them to forgive him for asking for their blood and souls in the cave. After forgiving him, they climbed higher, but were ambushed by an enormous serpent who tried to swallow Gorm as it slithered down from the ceiling. The battle was fraught, but once slain they were able to take the hammer roped around the serpent's neck. Realizing that they had probably missed one of the treasures on the first "level," they returned below and found the sharpened iron spoon in the possession of a dead, dismembered dwarf.
Back up top, they at last emerged out onto the lindworm's wide-open mouth. A crazed, battlesorrowed valkyrie flew down from the heavens; around her waist was the silver chain they sought. The valkyrie summoned four undead warriors to join her in the fight, but ultimately the heroes were victorious and gained the last of the treasures the ravens sent them to gather.
Once out of the decaying lindworm, they stood at the edge of the sea and blew a long, melancholy note from the horn that resounded over the sound of the crashing waves. The water stirred, becoming tumultuous, and then the dragon-headed prow of a warship broke the surface as it emerged from the frigid deep. Water poured from the ship. There was something strange about its construction. And then, they realized--the ship was made of the fingernails of the dead.
The frozen waves bit at their skin as they swim to the ship. A rope ladder was tossed overboard by unseen hands. As they clambered aboard, they saw that a woman was watching them. She stood in profile. She was blonde, thin, and comely of face. When she turned, they were horrified to see that the other side of her body was withered and blackened. She smiled a grim smile. The ship lurched downward, taking them into the fathomless mystery of the sea.
To what realm do our Viking heroes now speed? We'll find out next time.
Monday, February 2, 2026
Total Skull: January, 2026
All the things the delighted me in January, 2026.
My yen for Westerns carried over from December into the New Year. Luckily, first season of The Abandons was there for me in my time of need. The Abandons is set in the Washington Territory and centers on the conflict between two powerful matriarchs, the wealthy mine owner Constance Van Ness (played by Gillian Anderson) and rancher Fiona Nolan (played by Lena Headey). The first episode was truly great; it's pedal to the metal right from the get-go. The episodes that follow slow the pace a little, but it's all just "pot coming to a boil" as a confrontation between the two central families becomes inevitable. My only complaint is that the cliffhanger ending of this first season felt a little cheap.
Imagine if Frankenstein's monster was working at a Wild West show and his wife was hunting him down to end his unnatural life. That's the starting premise of Josh Rountree's The Unkillable Frank Lightning, but this is a a novel where the situation definitely...evolves into something else. Said wife discovers that her reanimated husband is not the same person he was the last time they met, and the hired guns she's brought with her have their own unheralded issues to deal with. Strangely, and somewhat surprisingly, I think this is actually a book about learning to navigate regret.
I've had my copy of Stephen Graham Jones's The Buffalo Hunter Hunter for a long while now, but I was waiting for a weekend where I could read it straight through without interruption. I gotta tell you--it completely lives up to all the hype it got in 2025. Plus, it has one of my favorite fictional conventions--a frame narrative! A dissatisfied academic learns that one of her ancestors, a Lutheran priest, wrote his memoir of meeting a vampiric Native out to kill the men responsible for crimes against his people and for the decimation of the buffalo population. Man, Stephen Graham Jones has done it again. Essential reading.
Will Maclean, The Apparition Phase
In Will Maclean's The Apparition Phase, two weirdo twins obsessed with faking ghost photographs show their work to the wrong classmate; all hell breaks lose from there. Especially when one of the twin's therapists suggests he visit a remote grand house where a ghost investigation is already underway. Fans of classic British ghost stories and the 1970s spectral revival will love this; it reminded me, in places, of M. R. James, William Hope Hodgson, and Andrew Michael Hurley, but it very much stands on its own noteworthy merits.
Eyes of Fire is an incredibly strange American folk horror movie from 1983. A heretical preacher and his flock abscond from their community to settle a commune (read: cult) deep into the "unknown" frontier, but they encounter a "devil witch" and her clay-smeared minions in the territory. I really enjoyed how unapologetically weird it was--it feels like a made-for-tv movie that never would have been aired and the witch looked suitably freaky.
I knew Netflix's adaptation of The Seven Dials Mystery was coming, so I got myself a second-hand copy of the novel to read first. There is a mystery in the novel, but this is a particularly madcap Agatha Christie book in which a plucky young heroine is encouraged by the police to stick her nose into a case of conspiracy and murder. Very fun. The Netflix adaptation is also pretty fun, but be aware that they put in some effort toward hammering it into a more conventional narrative structure with the expected plot beats. If possible, I recommend reading the book first because it's much weirder and more idiosyncratic.
I'd been meaning to read this book for years, as it is always noted as being one of the best in its class, but with a prequel coming soon I decided it was time to get on with it. I read a lot of this sort of neo-Victorian Gothic novel, and you always want to find in them some special spice that allows the book you're reading to stand out among the other fiction in that genre. In Laura Purcell's The Silent Companion, that spice is the presence of "companions" in the haunted house: wooden cut-outs painted so cleverly that they can be mistaken for real people. (These are real things that exist; check it out.) Of course, these companions crop up where they're least expected, and no one will admit to moving them around the household. Excellent book, now I'm really looking forward to the new one!
Based on the classic occult nonsense book by Dennis Wheatley, with a screenplay adapted by Richard Matheson and directed by Terrence Fischer, it's hard not to love The Devil Rides Out. Christopher Lee is great as a priggish man out to foil a devil-worshiping cult's machinations, and the plot throws in everything from damsels in distress, occult rituals, psychic connections, spirit possession, the Angel of Death, and even...time travel? Okay, so maybe it's a trifle too "Christian" in its morality to satisfy in the long term, but consider the story's source. And just look at that movie poster! Isn't that one of the all-time greats?
The Initiation of Sarah is one of the crop of "bullied teens with supernatural powers" made-for-tv flicks that sprang up in the wake of Carrie's success. This one skews slightly older than the usual, with its adopted protagonist heading off to college with her non-biological sister. You see, the sister is poised for success--all her life she has been primed to follow in her mother's footsteps and pledge to the "powerful" sorority. The bookish, classical music-loving adopted sister? Not so much; she only finds a place in the misfits sorority, which happens to be bullied by the popular sorority on campus. How will they push back against the mean girls? Psychic powers, baby. I thought this was pretty good for a made-for-tv movie, with a strong cast and some interesting turns. Honestly--I keep thinking about it.
Poppy's evolution into screaming metal valkyrie has been fascinating to watch. On previous outings, the mix between the heavy parts and the pop hasn't always felt balanced; sometimes it was even prone to give the listener whiplash from track to track. However, Empty Hands is Poppy's most seamless release to date--yes, the electropop elements are still present, but they're woven into the fabric of the heavy songs on offer. There's also some surprisingly crushing songs on this one; Poppy is convincingly unhinged.
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