Tool
Fear Inoculum
Digital
Label: RCA Records
Release date: August 30, 2019

I’m not going to lie and tell you that I’m a diehard fan of TOOL. Sure, I really got pretty hot and heavy into the band’s 1993 debut LP, Undertow — Beavis & Butt-Head can have that effect on a young mind. Plus, it’s a fantastic freaking album that holds up really well even to this day. But I only got into subsequent releases on a marginal basis. I listened to them if I could find them legally without paying for them. And considering their last studio album released was 13 years ago, I couldn’t even tell you what that legal method was. Probably CD loaners from friends or the library.

But this year’s Fear Inoculum was one that my circle of music peeps was very heavily anticipating. This includes my IRL friends, my co-workers, my online friends… we were all looking forward to it very, very much.

Frogcatchers
Hardcover | Kindle
Written and Illustrated by Jeff Lemire
Publisher: Gallery 13
Release date: September 24, 2019

Frogcatchers begins with an elderly man awakening after a dream in which he was a child again catching frogs in a pond near his home. Where he finds himself is a strange room with no memory of, well, anything save for that dream. He decides to venture out to find out what happened, where he is, and why. What he discovers is a room key identifying that he’s in an old hotel from which he seemingly cannot get out. When he calls out for help, a young boy shows up and quickly ushers him into the basement of the hotel in an attempt to escape from the Frog King and his agents who are out to get them.

Even more confused and desperate now, the man convinces the boy to let him use the key to open its assigned room in hopes of discovering a way out on the other side. Begrudgingly and under extreme duress, the boy relents. Thus their adventure continues.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge – Black Spire
Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook
Galaxy’s Edge – Book 2
Written by Delilah S. Dawson
Narrated by January LaVoy
Publisher: Del Rey | Random House Audio
Release date: August 27, 2019

In the second book of Disney’s new Star Wars series related to the Galaxy’s Edge theme park, Black Spire focuses on spy Vi Moradi’s attempts to resuscitate a flagging Resistance in the days immediately following the eighth film, The Last Jedi. With the New Republic’s central government destroyed by Starkiller Base and their forces all but defeated, Vi is sent by her mentor, General Leia Organa, to seek promising new worlds on which to re-kickstart the Resistance. To help her, Leia sends along Archex, a man with an intimate knowledge of the First Order. You see, he was not only a former Stormtrooper Captain known as Cardinal, but he and Moradi have a history all their own… Cardinal tortured Moradi after capturing her. During their torture sessions, though, Moradi discovered a weakness in Cardinal/Archex and exploited it. This allowed her to not only escape the clutches of the First Order, but also rescue a Stormtrooper was now able to see the error of his ways.

Violet
Paperback | Kindle | Audiobook
Written by Scott Thomas
Publisher: Inkshares
Release date: September 24, 2019

In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Kill Creek, author Scott Thomas brings us a much more deliberate and slow-building terror in Violet. Kris Barlow, in an attempt to escape from the platitudes of friends, family, and strangers after a car accident claims the life of her husband, takes her daughter to a house on Lost Lake that has been owned by her family for decades, and that she hasn’t visited since she was about her daughter’s age.

Unfortunately, the best of intentions rarely go as you’d expect and the same happens here. Kris has forgotten that the reason why she hasn’t visited the house is because of things that happened to her family so many years prior. While she hasn’t thought about them in decades, those “things” never left the lake house. They’ve been lying in wait for Kris. And now they’re about to make themselves known again.

A Hero Born: The Definitive Edition
Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook
Legends of the Condor Heroes: Book 1
Written by Jin Yong
Translated by Anna Holmwood
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release date: September 17, 2019

Set during China’s Song Dynasty, approximately 1200 AD, A Hero Born, the first in the celebrated Chinese Legends of the Condor Heroes book series, starts when two sworn brothers are confronted with a terrible choice after being charged with treason by the local government: argue their innocence before a corrupt magistrate that will likely condemn them to death or try to make a run for it with their wives and sons in tow, fighting their way through soldiers who have come to arrest them.