This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** The past decade or so’s changes in publishing have hit young adult books and two conservative favorites, science fiction and fantasy, hardest. This is why right-leaning indie authors lean heavy on genre stuff. This is great, except for the fact that indie genre authors also love to write long. Do you want to stand out from the pack as a right-aligned indie novelist? Write mysteries or crime thrillers that are reasonably short. There are not a lot of such books. (If you’ve got one, drop a comment and I might review it.) For lovers of fantasy, though, let’s look at the long and the short of it. “Travel by Star” by Paul Scott Grill “Travel by Star” offers some of the best and the less appealing of the indie genre scene. A road-tripping fantasy novel grounded in the author’s Christian faith and an atypical Western setting, it’s not like the kind of stuff you’ll see major publishers putting out. The fall of a legendary city has doomed a frontier land to grinding struggle; now a young woman of angelic lineage named Nichole Littlestar has to convince reluctant horse whisperer Travel to brave dangers manmade and mystical, and guide her to the city’s site, in an effort to rekindle the lost hope of man. Along the way, they brave the dangers of a poisoned land, not least Drannach of Shrian, known as the Wathe, who will stop at nothing to purge Archewood’s memory from the world of men.  Also, there are superintelligent horses that act functionally sort of like Roy Roger’s Trigger. If nothing else will pique your interest, that should do it. There’s a genuine charm to “Travel by Star.” Its action and scares are balanced by an underlying gentleness. Its faith-based sensibilities are neither cloying nor overpowering, and Christians with a fondness for fictional worlds may particularly enjoy its handling of the influence of Jesus on a fantasy world and how Christ reaches the people there. The characters aren’t particularly compelling, but they are human and likable.  The only downside is the page count. This book would have been a terrific read at 250-300 pages. It would have been fine at 350. But “Travel by Star” is six hundred and thirty-six pages. As a result, the charms get a little lost and the parts that drag have too much time to settle in. But it’s a book with real heart and with some things to say, particularly about the temptation to repay wrong with wrong, and living with choices that haunt you. And while it may not be as polished as mainstream offerings, at its best it portrays a fallen world that truly feels eerie and out of joint, and that’s harder to pull off than you’d think. “The Turquoise Serpent” by Alexander Palacio This one’s lean and mean, folks. If you want more, there’s a sequel (“The Flowers of the Moon”), but the original is plenty fun on its own: It’s a straightforward sword and sorcery story with enjoyably contrasting characters, a hectic pace, and action aplenty.  Having captured the brutish exile Cayucali, a band of soldiers and the spiteful young wizard-in-training Tezca are forced by a storm to detour their march home, only to find themselves in an unholy land where the fallen nation Kalak Mool is in thrall to the deadly cult of a dark god. Do our protagonists fall into the hands of utter villainy? Indeed they do. Is the muscled hero forced to fight in an arena? Yes he is. Is the cerebral co-protagonist flattered and tempted by the enticements of an evil sorcerer? But of course. Is there a pretty girl who must be saved? Absolutely.  You can call a lot of the beats in this story going in. But that’s half the fun: “The Turquoise Serpent” does what it says on the tin, and isn’t it nice to know what you’re getting occasionally? The real spice comes not from the plot, but from the setting, a Mesoamerican-inspired fantasy world that isn’t afraid to get weird and have different attitudes from our modern day-to-day. It’s short, zippy, and doesn’t make the mistake of being overly ambitious. A good companion for a summer afternoon in the hammock. “The Mighty Sons of Hercules: Volume 1” published by Cirsova Publishing The mighty sons of Hercules once thundered through the years.  These men of steel could never feel the curse of a coward’s fears The mighty sons of Hercules were men as men should be They burned with dreams and turned their dreams into history! Er, sorry, that’s the catchy old TV show theme. Cirsova is hat-tipping here. In the late 1960s, some enterprising producers snagged the U.S. TV rights to a bunch of sword and sandal strongman pics. They renamed most of the heroes in dubbing, broke the movies into two hour-long episodes, slapped a title sequence on it, and dumped it into syndication. Tim Lucas’s Video WatchBlog notes that it aired around the U.S. for 11 straight years and had a revival in the 1990s thanks to the cable channel TNT.  What does this have to do with the anthology (and, one presumes, its sequel, “The Mighty Sons of Hercules: Volume 2”)? Absolutely nothing, except that the publisher is telling you the old sword and sandals are just what you’re in for here, in eight stories of inhumanly strong men, adventurers who help the troubled and free the oppressed.  The best tale by far is Misha Burnett’s “Summer of the Stranger,” wherein a boy from a bandit-plagued village tries to assemble a defensive force based on the example of a traveling son of Hercules, but there’s great fun in several. Hero-vs-evil-king tale “Mighty Umaeo and the Tyrant’s Test” features the most delightful herculean strength feat of the book, wherein the hero saves a sinking ship by towing it to harbor, and “Maciste in the Land of the Snakes” and “Melkart the Unchained” both get the feel of the old sword and sandals pictures to come across very well. Cirsova’s bringing back the rollicking, cheerful strongman hero, who tackles problems head-on with a smile and bulging biceps in the antithesis of grimdark fantasy. Villains are formidable but never seem unconquerable; the hero may be captured, but he never doubts or questions himself and always has good cheer and plenty of hope. Never for a moment do you doubt the good guy will win. And don’t we all need a little dose of that every now and then? *** David Hines has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and loves books. Possibly even yours.