Book Review: The Last Hour Between Worlds

A fast paced fantasy adventure with a single mom...and a multiplicity of shadow worlds, and a plot to change her own world, and not for the better.

Kembral Thorne needed a break. She’s a new mother, and although she’s used to the strain and stress of plunging through alternate realities (echoes) in her job as an investigative Hound, motherhood has proven a new challenge. But a ball at the turn of the year is a chance for her to relax, both away from Emmi and from her job. However, as the ballroom is plunged into ever deeper and darker nearby dimensions, Kembral has to team up with her rival, a thieving Cat named Rika Nonesuch, in a dimension spanning plot that might yet cost all of their lives.

This is the story of Melissa Caruso’s The Last Hour Between Worlds.

Caruso blends several inspirations for her intensely interesting worldbuilding and plot. Like a good stage magician, she focuses on what is necessary and needed for the plot and lets other things be in the amorphous fog of possibility. Given that the book mainly takes place in one house and the surrounding city, there are a lot of unknown questions one might have about this secondary world. The tech level for instance. There are no mentions of cars, trains or high technology. Is this early 19th century (in our terms) tech? Earlier? There is a complexity and integration of the society which suggests it is post-Renaissance, so I want to say this feels like the 18th or 19th century in our tech terms. But aside from some interesting artifacts, that doesn’t ever come up (there are also no firearms, either.). 

But not focusing on that allows Caruso to focus on the oligarchic nature of the city government (and the people, power and politics of same, which becomes plot relevant) as well as of course the magical nature of the world. In this world, we have the prime level of reality, and then we have echoes, which can be thought of as sub-levels of reality. These grow dangerous rather quickly and only people like Hounds can get you out easily if you slip down into one. The deeper you go, the more alien--or more precisely fey (there is a strong faerie theme in the book) it gets. There are immortal beings called Empyreans which are basically lords of the Fey, with dangerous powers, and a dangerous interest in the affairs of Prime. Their games and conflicts set off the plot that our main characters find themselves in. But they feel authentically part of the Echoesverse of multiverse/secondary worlds that the characters find themselves plunged in.

As far as the plot, I hesitate to spoil much of it, but the main conceit is that there is a “groundhog day” effect in the plot that is a clever bit of plotting on Caruso’s part. How and why and what the main characters need to do in the trap they find themselves in, I leave for the reader to discover. This is I will say a novel where the reader needs to pay attention, as things happen that Kem doesn't quite realize are important, but in retrospect are important clues to a perceptive reader as the plot goes on. 

And then there are the action beats. Readers of her previous two series know that Caruso has a penchant, skill and talent for writing action sequences. On the cover of this novel, you can see the silhouette of a woman in a ballgown carrying two swords. If any symbol could be said to encompass and give you the essentials of what you are going to get in a Melissa Caruso book, that silhouette is exactly indicative of it. And Kem, being a skilled fighter, and with a variety of ever more eldritch and inhuman opponents, delivers the combat action beats. There are plenty of other kinds of action that Caruso delivers on, daredevil chases and flights through the city, a perilous climb where the ladder itself is trying to eat you, and much more besides. Well insulated and immersed in the aforementioned worldbuilding, the action beats provide the hits of adrenaline just when you think things might have gotten too quiet.

But it is a balancing act, as always. Caruso is a strong proponent and explicator of her theories and ideas of writing (as seen on social media) and she puts them into practice here with the characters of Kem and Rika, as well as the secondary characters. We get a full character arc for both of our main protagonists as we really get to know them and their deals, and get character development within themselves and against each other. Oh, Kem and Rika have a *history* and that gets hashed out in the middle of the chaos of what is happening at the party.

Caruso gets major points in my book for having a new mother as her main character. While Emmi (her daughter) is offscreen for the entirety of the book, the fact of her motherhood is one that informs and infuses Kem as a character. She’s not used to being a mother and perhaps having lost a step to sleepless nights and the rigor of pregnancy. She’s has to and does need to learn to adapt to the new situation and the consequences of being a new mother. Emmi herself, and Kem’s relationship and hopes for her do at one point become plot relevant, but explicating that would be rather spoilery. But being a new mom is central to who and what Kem is, whether she will acknowledge it, or not. Kem may be a Hound, investigating and sometimes rescuing people from the Echoes, but that’s not all she is, not anymore and the novel explores that conflict.

And then there is Rika, the other half of this relationship/rivalry. She’s a Cat, as opposed to Kem’s Hound (not subtle, dogs and cats, living together), which means she is a professional procurer. Yes, she is a thief and a good one. But again, as with the worldbuilding, the way these various groups interact, Hounds and Cats and others, is more complicated than you expect. Hounds and Cats can be on the same team, although that is uncommon and can lead to friction. And when Cats and Hounds are on different sides of something...well, then, drama can happen for certain. We get a good sense of where Rika is coming from, filtered from Kem’s point of view (which is what we stay in for the duration of the novel).

But where Caruso also excels is in drawing secondary characters that also come off of the page as well. A lot of authors would be content (even pleased) to hit the character notes that we get from Kem and Rika as their sparks (of more than one variety) come off against each other (did I mention this is a queer friendly, and putatively queernorm book?) . However, Caruso does a great job with the secondary characters, the antagonists, the innocent victims, and the aforementioned Empyreans. All of them come across distinct, interesting and well drawn. The “groundhog day” approach of the plot and narrative means we get to see interactions play out multiple times especially in the beginning and get a good reinforced view of the various characters in the ballroom.

My favorite secondary character has to be the vivacious Jaycel Morningray, who is definitely too much trouble and too impulsive for her own good, but I was charmed immediately by her the moment she came out onto the page. A date with her might be too much for my heart (I could imagine her wanting to challenge Dave McCarty to a duel) but it would be SO much fun. And I am so out of her league, anyway. Kem and Rika realize that she IS too much trouble and in the course of trying to solve the problem, decide not to try and bring her into the solution. But, of course, Jaycel being Jaycel, she gets into the mess *anyway*.

With a strong cast, action beats, and very interesting worldbuilding, The Last Hour Between Worlds shows that Caruso’s talents, formerly confined to more traditional epic fantasy worlds in the Swords and Rooks and Ruin series, can and does translate to other fantasy realms as well. This appears to be the first of a duology, and there is plenty of material, character, plot and worldbuilding wise, for that followup. I’m already looking forward to it.

--

Highlights:

• Fascinating and interesting world and plotting, Multiverse, Fey and more!

• Excellent action beats

• #teamjaycel

Reference: Caruso, Melissa The Last Hour Between Worlds  [Orbit, 2024].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Video Game Review: Catan: Console Edition - Cities and Knights by Dovetail Games/Nomad Games

Anyone willing to trade labrious effort for some convenience and a few glitches?

For those who don’t know, Catan, previously known as The Settlers of Catan, is a board game from 1995. Its expansion, Cities and Knights, was released in 1998 and both versions are highly revered and still played all these years later. Over the years it has spawned many expansions and updates (including 5-6 player add-ons, Explorers and Pirates, Seafarers, etc.). I learned about the game eight years ago and have since loved playing with friends who know all about it (or when my cousin comes to town). I will do my best with this review to focus on the console version of the game, though some explanation of the base game and its expansion will be necessary, not to mention some observations I've discovered through multiple games. Most of this review will refer to gameplay experienced through the City and Knights expansion.

First and foremost, Catan is a board game that focuses on collecting resources, trading, and building. The goal is to beat your opponents to a certain score (ten points in standard Catan, thirteen in Cities and Knights) by building settlements, cities, development cards, city upgrades, and more. You gain resources by placing settlements on hexes with numbers and getting said number rolled. Which strategy you employ is up to you, and sometimes a pivot is necessary when things don't go your way. Trading is important and happens more frequently at the beginning of a match than toward the end. After all, the fear that one’s trade may place their opponent that much closer to a win is quite a deterrent. Catan: Console Version takes all the rules of Catan and perfectly implements them onto a virtual board, making long-distance Catan a possible thing. If you are a fellow Catanian, this is your best option to play with friends at a distance.

But is this the best way to play the game in general? Well, there are some caveats here that I must convey before endorsing such an investment. First and foremost, the game can be quite buggy. Not always, and sometimes not necessarily game-breaking, but still an irritation. Some of these simple things make me think no one at the studio used a quality assurance team to check for any issues. For instance, when a seven is rolled in Catan, there is a robber that is placed somewhere on the board (wherever he is placed, the hex will no longer give any resource of that type when the number is rolled until he is moved by a development card or another seven). When playing Cities and Knights, the robber will frequently hide behind a knight, making it difficult to discern his location at a glance. Visual cues in the game are sometimes iffy, sometimes leading to an improperly placed settlement, city, road, or knight. Sometimes the dice are difficult to see (particularly when they land on a wooded zone), which takes a few seconds of precious time away when you're playing on a timer. Minor things, but many of them added up can become an annoyance.

Catan: Console Edition also introduces the option to include AI opponents. This is great when you only have one other person willing to play (or just want to go one round yourself). While the AI is infrequently good enough to win (they have won once in all the games I've played), it is always almost too predictable. Only once in all the time I played did they use The Alchemist card (which allows you to choose the roll of the numbered dice) to roll something other than a seven. They almost always go for city upgrades first. They almost always penalize the player, even if another AI is a point or two ahead (Curse you, Yngvi). It is rather basic but still works well enough to have an enjoyable game of Catan. Sometimes, especially late game, the AI will play multiple cards or build multiple things. This occurs so quickly on screen that it’s sometimes difficult to tell what occurred, then I’ll look at my hand and a few of my cards are missing. I just have to laugh and move on. On the whole, I’d say that despite its simplicity and over-aggression toward the player, the AI is a welcome addition that allows more options for fellow settlers.

Unfortunately, there are some ugly glitches that I've encountered during a heated game. Whenever I play with my cousin and her partner, they are frequently kicked out of the game. Luckily she can rejoin, but sometimes one of them doesn't get back before their turn and the AI takes over briefly, using the player’s cards in a way they did not intend. This has also happened to my partner and I, though less frequently. There should be an option for all players to pause the game (if a timer is running) so that online opponents can rejoin. One time I got kicked and I was completely unable to rejoin. The game continued to bug out by saying that I joined, but never put me back in the action. It was near the end of the game which makes it even more frustrating. I’ve also paused an online game and quit (which is supposed to save the board you were playing to be resumed later), and when I came back, the game was bugged and unplayable. If a game is going to include a convenient option, it should be reliable. I didn't run into too many problems with resuming games in offline mode against AI thankfully. One of the most recent glitches forced the end of my turn, costing me a hefty amount of cards when the robber was rolled and completely ruined my plans (this frustration led me to quit that game).

One of the advantages of Catan: Console Edition is its display. The board looks great and even has small animations for all the hexes, cities, knights, the robber, etc. It brings the game to life a bit, even if the soundtrack and sound effects leave a lot to be desired (honestly just mute the game and put on some music). The sound effects for the barbarian attack are ridiculous and prompt players with a stupid screen that everyone must endure, each in turn, for a few moments (a bit of poor game design) instead of everyone seeing it at once and pressing the X button to continue. Despite these things and some previously mentioned visual issues, looking at the board and seeing it come to life is a welcome incorporation. They could have made it static and it would have been fine, but the extra polish breathes a little life into this thirty-year-old game. It is also nice that the console version gives you the option to view your hand from your phone (if multiple people are playing on the same console), though sometimes it lags behind a bit so you have to reload the page.

One of the biggest advantages of Catan: Console Edition over the tactile board game is the setup. Everything is quick and easy. The board sets itself up and randomizes everything significantly quicker than a person could. Plus it takes the additional sting out of losing (after all, the loser sets up the next board, right?). Not to mention the lack of cleanup and potential loss of pieces. Catan is an extensive game with many pieces and the convenience of the online version is undeniable.

Now for a brief aside about the game itself. Playing the Cities and Knights expansion made me realize how unbalanced the game can be. Make no mistake, when in the heat of a competitive game Catan is one of my all-time favorites. But when your luck is bad, the game becomes an absolute drag. This would be fine if you weren't aware of the fact that you are going to spend the next hour to an hour and a half losing. Sometimes other players are just too far ahead and luck is against you. In these instances, the game goes from being a fun, competitive, strategic escape to an absolute bore. I believe that the lack of tactile pieces makes this even more apparent, as I am drawn to my phone and any other stimuli in these long drawn-out bouts. This doesn't happen every game, but when it does, it can be painful.

When it comes down to it, I believe that the question of whether Catan: Console Edition is for you comes down to a matter of distance and convenience. Do you hate setting up and putting away the board after each bout? Do you want to play with friends across the country? Do you want play to online against strangers (the wait time is rather long, mind you)? If so, the game is for you. Despite its shortcomings, Catan: Console Edition is a convenient way to play this beloved board game, just be ready to fork out a little cash (Cities and Knights and other add-ons are an additional fee). If you've never played, I highly recommend getting the physical board game. It's a safe place to start. If you want to jump into the console experience, expect a few issues, but don't let it bother you too much. Catan is a fun game to lose hours to, just don't get on the bad side of the dice… or the AI.

--

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7/10

Bonus: +2 for convenience. +.5 for non-static visuals. +1 for online play.

Penalties: -3 for bugs. -1 for poor visual cues. 

Nerd Coefficient: 6.5/10

Catan/Cities and Knights (traditional board game version): 8.5/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

Film Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Not so much beating an undead horse, more like apathetically poking it with a stick

In case the term "revival" wasn't suggestive enough, the ongoing sequelitis in the moviemaking world has many times been compared to unabashed necromancy. Although sequels to 1988's Beetlejuice were attempted a number of times, the capricious stars that preside over Hollywood refused to align until this century. The result is undeniably funny, but at the lowest-effort level. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice recycles many of the original's jokes and even copies its method of defeating the villain, and the new material it introduces is so underutilized that one wonders what's the point of having it in the movie.

When we first met the titular trickster ghost, he was a fearsome presence, menacing and treacherous. His day job was to terrorize the living, and his driving motivation was to escape the afterlife and enter our world permanently. In the sequel, his menace factor has been disappointingly defanged. No longer an irreverent troublemaker, he's now a businessman on friendly terms with the ghost police. In other words, he's become exactly the type of comfortable bourgeois that the first movie delighted in mocking. And the script gives him a decades-long obsession with the girl he tried to marry, which is a grave misunderstanding of his character. His attempted marriage to a human girl was merely a means to an end. This movie not only says that he still wants to marry her, but makes it his central goal, a plot point that ends up being key to him becoming exactly what he should never be: the hero who saves the day.

(The script pretends that the actual hero is Jenna Ortega's character, but it's Beetlejuice who fixes the big problem the movie centers on, although he does it very quickly and with little emotional impact, while Ortega's character gets a grand, dramatic, climactic moment for an action of negligible consequence, right before she gets a small, undramatic moment for a much more important one. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum: the first action is to incur near-lethal danger to save Beetlejuice from a punishment he probably deserves, and the second action is to quote a legal technicality to save her mother from eternal agony. This movie is very confused about which stakes we should care about.)

Instead of the sharp-witted, opinionated girl we all had a crush on in the first Beetlejuice, adult Lydia Deetz is an anxious mess with a selective color-blindness to red flags. Her character comes off as so passive, so fragile, so easy to manipulate and so scared of everything that at times I wondered whether Winona Ryder had gotten confused and thought she was playing Joyce Byers from Stranger Things.

Speaking of badly written female characters, Monica Bellucci got a terrible deal out of this movie. She's given a fascinating backstory, impressive makeup, scary superpowers, several scenes of escalating setup, and then she's dispatched without a thought. She may as well not have been in the movie. The same confusing choice is made with Willem Dafoe's character, who, given the events of the plot, would be expected to play a pivotal part, but he's reduced to a recurring joke that gets tiresome the first time and ultimately has no effect on the story. These two characters are very good concepts that would have been better used in a different movie. Here, they just occupy space.

And then we get to Jenna Ortega's character, whose arc reveals the scriptwriters's biggest mistake: they treat Lydia's antipathy toward her shallow, greedy stepmother as a phase she had to outgrow, so they write Lydia's daughter as having the same relationship with her. This gives the movie a conservative vibe: parents are always right, kids had better listen, and rebelliousness is foolish. All of young Lydia's edginess has been meticulously sandpapered.

This is a pity, because the relationship between Lydia and her daughter is the emotional pillar that sustains the whole movie. At its core, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is about a mother and a daughter who desperately wish to connect but don't know how, and finally get the push they need when they're each targeted by social predators. In a better version of this movie, the characters played by Bellucci (a spiritual parasite with a long trail of victims) and Dafoe (a poser in a role he can't play convincingly) should have provided thematic resonance to the dangers that Lydia and her daughter face in the human world, but, as I said above, they're barely there.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice makes up for all its faults with genuinely funny absurdity. But one misses the acerbic critique of its predecessor (Beetlejuice shares with Ghostbusters the brilliant premise of a group of jaded New Yorkers whose first impulse upon discovering that the paranormal is real is to monetize it). Michael Keaton's character is reduced to a family-friendly echo of his former, funnier self. But the worst choice in this movie is to add to the postmortem hellscape of eternal bureaucracy a next realm of blissful rest. I'm reminded of the 1975 season of Tom & Jerry, where the mortal enemies were rewritten as adventuring partners. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice waters down precisely the parts that were interesting about the original. There's a bit of unintentional irony in the fact that this movie contains a line that makes fun of Disney, even though it follows the same Disney modus operandi of sanitizing a scary world to render it inoffensive. Like its titular character, this movie is exactly the thing it pretends to criticize.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Quick Round: A Gateway Guide to Anime

For viewers not quite ready to swim through a thousand episodes of One Piece, here are a few suggestions of compact, accessible anime that are easy to jump into.

 

Anime, once a niche, specialty indulgence, has rapidly become mainstream. Millennials were raised watching Naruto on Adult Swim and Gen Z has fully dived into Netflix’s and Crunchyroll’s easy streaming access to classics such as One Piece, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer. Celebrities like Michael B. Jordan, John Boyega, Jamie Lee Curtis, Megan Thee Stallion, and others have publicly embraced their love of anime leading to a new wave of curious fans. Like approaching a long running soap opera or a lengthy book series, newbies may not know how to connect with the growing popularity of anime. However, the journey will be worth it if you follow the right path. A good anime is the perfect balance of edgy and entertaining, clever and emotional, creative and engaging, quirky, funny, yet incredibly relatable in both profound and minor themes.

Many of the popular anime shows are based on manga (Japanese comics) which are serialized in weekly or monthly publications. Most of the most popular anime are shonen, meaning they are primarily or originally targeted at teen boys. This doesn’t define the viewership but it is a helpful context for understanding some of the questionable content that’s included in otherwise great storytelling. The “Big Three” anime are generally considered to be Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. Each of the long-running series clocks in around or beyond a thousand episodes (including time skips and sequels). However, there are hundreds of other excellent and/or very popular anime out there including Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero Academia, and Demon Slayer, as well as classics like Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, and others. Anime is elusive for some because of its quirkiness. The character design differs from series to series, with artistically realistic characters to fantastically strange but the thing that makes anime accessible is the diversity of stories. From sports to cooking, fantasy to mysteries, romance to horror, there is an anime for every personal taste, you just have to find the right one. For viewers who are not quite ready to swim through a thousand unpredictable episodes of One Piece, here are a few suggestions of compact, accessible anime that are easy to jump into. 

Spy x Family – Superspy Twilight (Loid Forger) creates a fake family to infiltrate an elite private school to track an elusive political figure. He adopts secretly telepathic Anya from a rundown orphanage and later enters into a marriage of convenience with gentle city clerk Yor, who needs a fake marriage to help with her own job security. Despite her genuinely sweet persona, Yor is a clandestine assassin. Neither Yor not Loid know the other’s true identity but Anya does. Anya keeps her telepathy to herself, afraid that her new parents will abandon her if they find out. However, she uses her skill to secretly help her parents without their knowledge. The show has a family friendly vibe although people do get shot and stabbed onscreen. In true anime fashion it’s relatable and quirky, charming and edgy. Some of the later episodes are a bit slow but overall, the first season is entertaining as we watch these three orphans create a family and navigate intrigue and adventure while still struggling with the slice-of-life reality they have created for themselves. 

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – A zombie adventure with a twist. Anyone who has had to endure a soul-sucking job will relate to overworked, entry-level office worker Akira’s exhaustion, misery, and disillusionment as he works around the clock with no time for himself. All of that changes when a zombie apocalypse breaks out. Instead of being horrified, Akira is relieved that he no longer has to go to work. He creates a bucket list of things he has always wanted to do and navigates the zombie overrun cityscape to try things he’s never had time to do. Each day he encounters friends, allies, and of course zombies as he builds a cohort of fellow survivors. The zombies are grotesques but the blood splatter is brightly multicolor so it’s more palatable for the squeamish. It’s weird to have a comedy version of The Walking Dead but the delivery is hilarious and relatable. The show is a grim mix of character study, societal commentary, and laugh out loud humor.

My Happy Marriage – For romance fans, My Happy Marriage is a fairy tale remix with fantasy elements and all of the best romance tropes including: grumpy-sunshine, forced marriage, knight in shining armor, and Cinderella. Kind-hearted Miyo is abused by her step-mother and half sister and ignored by her scheming father. In a world where elite families are blessed with magical powers, Miyo seems to have none. She is reduced to being a servant in her own home after the death of her mother. When her father sells her off to a cruel military leader, she accepts her fate only to discover that her betrothed is different from his reputation. The show is filled with adventures, friendship, and romance and season one is a satisfying complete story that will leave traditional romance fans happy. 

The Promised Neverland (Season One) – Don’t be fooled by the adorable children in the anime graphics. Promised Neverland presents cuteness with a violent twist. Grade school aged Emma, Norman, and Ray live happily in a home for children with their kind caregiver, “Mom,” until they discover the real reason they are so well fed and cared for. Season one is a twisty adventure in survival that draws you in from the first stunning episode.

Fruits Basket (2019 version) – The ultimate anime soap opera. Sweet, optimistic high schooler Tohru’s life is changed when she moves in with the cursed Sohma family of shape shifters who uncontrollably change into animals of the zodiac. The large ensemble cast includes cynical author Shigure (the dog), the older cousin to short-tempered Kyo (the cat) and the designated family prince Yuki (the rat). Tohru is homeless and mourning the loss of her mother, Kyo is scarred by his own mother’s suicide, and Yuki’s smug charm masks his own childhood trauma. The Sohma clan is controlled by the cruel, narcissistic Akito who torments the family. Fruits Basket is filled with romance, tragedy, plot twists, attempted murder, everyday high school life, random comedy, and lots of adventure. If you can get past the quirky shape-shifting, the addictive plot will be appealing to fans of complex, family dramas.

Attack on Titan – Humanity has been overrun by horrifying titans: giant, murderous humanoids. To survive, humans live in walled communities to keep the titans out. But when the great wall is breached, Eren, Mikasa, and Armin join the Survey Corps to help track and defeat the monsters. The very violent series is a good fit for fans of grim, intense, political/military stories. The first episode is jaw-dropping and the series only gets more intense as the violent encounters lead to unexpected twists, betrayals, and political and social commentary amidst the carnage.

Other new shows that work great with non-anime fans are Apothecary Diaries (cynical, witty, mystery series set in the ancient world), Wind Breaker (a fight gang adventure with an endearing twist), and Kaiju No. 8. (an ordinary guy becomes a monster fighter and a monster). With so many great anime, from classics to newcomers, there is a good fit for a range of tastes. If you want a quick intro to anime storytelling before you dive into a lengthy series, the above suggestions will hopefully be a good start.

--

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Book Review: Asunder by Kerstin Hall

A disappointing use of interesting ideas that never manages to fully engage with the framework it lives within.

Some books' endings, I can look at them and go... well, this isn't for me, I don't like how this went, but I can see how someone might. I often find this with ambiguous endings. Sometimes they hit just right, sometimes they pass me by, but I get that they're someone's jam. You can probably see where I'm going with this. I hated the ending of Asunder. I left a few days between reading it and writing this review, letting my thoughts percolate, and the thing I keep circling back to is how everything is tied up at/after the big finale, and how deeply, frustratingly unsatisfying I found it. I struggle to see, in a way that is not often the case, how this would work for anyone. I'm clearly wrong and it does, because I've seen praise for it! So much praise! But it is beyond the scope of my comprehension. Which is a shame, because it all comes down to something that's worked through the entire narrative, something that I think has promise, that is clearly thoughtful, clearly deliberate, something that left me slightly wrong-footed (in a good way, mostly), and trying to figure out exactly where the story was going, and what is was going to be.

It all comes down to expectations.

I could talk about the worldbuilding of Asunder, I can talk about the characterisation (both fine, trending good), I can talk about the plotting (fine) and the pacing (mixed). But that's not what's interesting about it, as a novel, so I'm not going to bother. Instead, I'm going to focus on the thing about it that I think makes it stand out* - exactly how it interacts with genre conventions, and the expectations that the weight of the existing corpus impose on/instill in readers. More than anything, while I was reading it, I was constantly uncertain about exactly what sort of a thing Asunder wanted to be, a quality in a book that has the potential to deliver an absolutely stellar story... or a distinctly mediocre one. Take The City and the City by China Miéville, as an example. The way that it plays with your understanding of whether or not there are genre elements in play is key to the impact of the finale. Not everything has to do it to quite that extreme, but it's a great example of how subverting the expectations of the reader can deliver something wonderful. There's also The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo, for something more recent, or The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton. Books that play with exactly what kind of a story you're dealing with can deliver magic. Or... they can feel muddled, uncertain, unfinished things. I still haven't quite decided which one Asunder is, for me.

If you look at the fantasy genre, especially mainstream, tradpubbed novels, right now, and doubly especially ones with a female protagonist, it is very often the default for those stories to contain an element of romance. Not necessarily to quite the extent of romantasy, but a strong thread lying alongside the main plot, supporting the character development and helping to deliver a satisfying ending on an emotional level. It's another kind of payoff, another way for your hero(ine) to get their just deserts (or righteous comeuppance, or tragic crescendo, depending on how the romance plays out). So when Asunder gave me a female character who ends up stuck with a newly-met male character inside her head, having to become comfortable with that incredible, infuriating intimacy after a hard and lonely life... well, the cues were cue-ing, right? And then he turns out to be nice! But he has some mysteries... ohoho I know where this goes, yes? Except... it doesn't. It hints. It lets you wonder. But it also has the cute scholar she meets at the university flirt with her, help her more than she expects and ask her out to dinner. Is that just friendship or the start of something more? And then you meet someone from her childhood, and there are hints that maybe what they felt for one another was more than just friendship... or are there? No, really, are there?? Or am I just imagining it because I am so thoroughly, constantly used to seeing romance in my fantasy novels that I'm trying to figure out where it's going to come from, ending up jumping at ghosts?

That was my experience, for a lot of reading Asunder. Such hints as there are, for a good chunk of the book, are so gentle, so subtle, that I found myself second-guessing them and myself. And it wasn't just the romance. The story also sets up what seem like familiar structures, only to never quite grasp them and move onto something new instead, leaving behind a trail of brief encounters across the scenery of this imagined world. There are moments where the story veers political, and then drifts away again, just as it meanders towards adventures and heists and crime and magic and gods and empire, never quite committing itself to fully delving into any one box it opens. But nor do these disparate elements ever feel like their variety coheres into something greater than the sum of its parts. If anything, it reminds me of the structure of a myth, a fairytale, where events just sort of... keep eventing, until an unseen clock runs out and it's time to have a resolution now. A story unbeholden to the logic of the meta. I don't necessarily hate that. But I never felt like I could settle down into it either, I could never get comfortable enough to immerse myself fully into what it was giving me.

And then on top of all that there's a whole other bunch of expectations that don't quite have anything to do with the book itself. I came into this having seen a number of people talking positively, enthusiastically, nay even ecstatically about it. So, naturally, my expectations were set pretty high; I was waiting to be stunned. I never quite was.

It's like reading books for awards. The frame of reference you bring with you to the reading experience necessarily colours it. No one can read a text free from context. You can do your best, if it's something you want to strive for - I tend not to read proper, deep reviews of books I know I'm going to have to read with purpose (either for a review or for awards judging/voting), for example - but you can never truly free yourself from it. After all, something has to be the prompt to read the book, right?

And, just like many times where I've read an award shortlist, Asunder suffers because I'm holding it up to this unfairly high standard. It's not, for me, a stellar book. It's not world shattering, not emotionally devastating. It's fine. It's... probably a little unmemorable, but so are the vast majority of stories. It treads familiar ground in familiar ways, changing some of the aesthetics, the vibes, but ultimately delivering the sort of standard fare that the genre thrives on, because not everything can (or should) be a work of deathless prose that lasts through the ages. But much like the expectations the story framework set up around romance, around plot points, I am incapable of seeing past the expectations set by the critical response I've seen before reading - and it simply does not live up to either set.

For the genre ones, there are two reasons I could see for this - is it playing with my expectations and it's simply not working for me, or is it failing to craft them at all, and what I'm seeing is the baggage I have brought with me, unasked? I'm unsure to what extent it is which of those. If it is the latter, I do think this is something of a failure by the book - it's leaving something on the table that could be put to use crafting the story into something tighter and more thoughtful.

In any case, we now come back to the crux of the problem with how those expectations are crafted and managed throughout the story - the ending. For every genre, there are some assumptions about what the story's end might look like, whether as rigid as the happily ever after of true romance, or the less formalised but no less present mores about a satisfying wrap up of threads that tends to accompany traditional SFF. Asunder... neither meets them, nor convincingly flouts them in a way that feels deliberate. It instead does the secret third thing (confuses me). By the time we get towards the conclusion of the story, some of the less clear aspects of plot and interpersonal dynamics have been spelled out, and we begin to see the shape of what the ending might look like. There's a glimmer of some possible goal that maybe the characters will achieve, or maybe fail to achieve, but there could be pathos either way in that. And then the story drops into a big dramatic scene, one that feels perhaps longer than it needed to be, that is all action and tension and then... well. It's hard to discuss this without explicit spoilers, but essentially, neither the good nor the bad ending comes to pass, and instead various threads are simply dropped. We're robbed of the catharsis in either direction. There's a hint that resolution could come later, maybe? Sort of? There's a solid impression that things will continue in the next book. But what felt like a genuine framework had finally been set up, and then is entirely ignored in how things shake out. It was the worst sort of cliffhanger ending, rejecting any sense that the first book in a series needs to also function as a contained narrative, as well as a part of the wider whole.

Perhaps Hall has been playing with the reader's expectations all along, and this final subversion of the norms of story resolution is just the pièce de resistance? It's perfectly possible, I suppose. But if so, it entirely fails for me. Without some sort of emotional conclusion, even one that is less impactful and necessarily subordinate to the longer term one that will come in the sequels, the story feels unnaturally abbreviated. I see no benefit to the end state of things that has been brought by this subversion, and the cost is of any satisfaction with how events played out, just after I finally dared to hope there might be something to cling onto.

Especially when this is sat alongside what is quite a quotidien story in how it crafts a fantasy narrative, I find it hard to think it's just a clever decision that has passed me by. In something more nakedly ambitious in its approach, I might buy it, but it feels like "right at the end" is not the correct moment to unleash as-yet-untapped seams of narrative anarchy. Certainly, by doing it that way, the story seems doomed to please no one - those who want full weird, full subversion, don't get it for the vast majority of the book and so remain mostly unsatisfied, and those who wants the more traditional structure feel cheated of their conclusion. Who is this designed for, exactly? Who actually likes cliffhangers?

However much I talk like I know what I'm on about here, obviously I can't account for authorial intent. I'm not psychic. And also, frankly, it doesn't really matter (up to a point, at least). But the perception of intentionality matters a great deal - whether or not I enjoy a book is going to change enormously depending on whether it feels composed and deliberate vs just... a bunch of things happening with no particular coherent drive. It such a hard thing to quantify because it's something that so often comes down to "feeling". And whatever Hall was actually wanting and doing here, the feeling I get from it is a muddled one, of a story that hasn't quite been pinned down into a coherent place, nor with a clear signal of how the readers will interact with it. When you remove that, when you remove that clear sense of purpose, what remains is a bunch of perfectly fine ideas, characters and events, but without the soul that makes them into something substantial. It's a shame, because those ideas, characters and events are perfectly fine, but this is too big of a problem for any of them to overcome. They need tying together, and it simply does not feel like they have been.

*Being brutally honest, in those categories combined, I think this a perfectly fine but unexceptional book, the likes of which I have read a number of times before and will again. If you like trad fantasy but updated to more modern mores - great, have at it. If there's a downside to it, it's that the events of the story feel a little bit "a thing then a thing then another thing" rather than something with a definitive structure and drive. There's your tl;dr review.

--

The Math

Highlights: interesting world, pleasant characters, cool pseudo-warlocky magical powers

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Reference: Kerstin Hall, Asunder [Tordotcom, 2024].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Book Review: The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

A stunning science fantasy novel with a strong theme and timely and resonant message underpinning a strong character study. 

Science fantasy seems to be having a moment again. The peanut butter and chocolate of the two main halves of speculative fiction are once again meeting in the middle with novels that combine the technological speculation of science fiction with the social structures, and sometimes outright magic and the unexplainable elements of fantasy. Gary K. Wolfe considers science fantasy as an SFF story that you can read as a science fiction story, a fantasy story, or both at the same time, which is as good a definition of science fantasy as you can get. 

So it is with Samantha Mills The Wings Upon Her Back, Mills' first full length novel. If you have read Mills before, it is probably the story "Rabbit Test". This is rather different and shows her range. Here, Mills sets us up in the city state of Radezhda, where all of our action takes place. Long ago, five deities visited the city and uplifted the civilization of the city, ancient aliens style. The power and technology they have given the city are not completely comprehended by the residents but it is enough for them to assert their independence and defense from the rest of the world. Those gods are mostly sleeping now, leaving their mortal Voices to commune with them, occasionally get news or judgments, and contribute to the welfare of the city. 

Our main character is Zenya. Although born under the auspices of the god dedicated to learning and knowledge, she has always dreamed of flying, of being a warrior. We start the novel, then, with her showing a dissident a small act of mercy, for which as a reward for her years of loyal service, both to the warriors and personally to their leader Vodaya, with being stripped of her biomechanical wings, and left to die. It's when she is found by the real revolutionaries that the plot really kicks off, as Zenya has a painful coming to terms of who she is, what she has done.

This comes to us in a narrative set in the present day, following the events of her being cast out, and in a parallel narrative, we get to see how Zenya became Winged Zemolai. Mills cleverly uses the flashback sequences in a threefold sense. First and foremost, we get the full character arc of Zenya, how and why she became the woman she was, who is both a fearless warrior with wings, and yet someone who showed that act of mercy. Second, we get to see how and why the city has strayed and moved from a path of five representatives of the various gods cooperating into the brutal authoritarian rule of Vodaya. This strand of the novel is frankly an out and out blueprint of how fascist and authoritarian societies emerge from innocuous beginnings. And third, mixing the two, we see how the toxic relationship between Zenya and Vodaya came to be, growing and flourishing in its poisonousness. This also serves as a character study of Vodaya herself, showing how a fascist leader can emerge and take power, but also, it shows just how seductive and alluring such a leader and their ideology and methods can be, especially to a young and impressionable youth such as Zenya. Seeing Vodaya use and manipulate the young Zenya is a horrifying masterclass in such psychological techniques. 

The novel can be relentless at times, because in the present day narrative, Zenya has fallen with true and real revolutionaries who are seeking to stop the authoritarian tyranny that Vodaya has instituted. These are not protesters hanging up signs, this is a movement with cells, goals, and that can and will use violence to achieve their ends. Zenya really has gone from the frying pan of being the hand of Vodaya to falling in with a group that trusts her not at all but is willing to to kill and do damage in order to oppose the tyrannical rule, as well as torture, and also manipulate prisoners and those not trusted, including of course, Zenya. 

But I want to go back to the science fantasy nature of this novel and explore briefly, how it fits into that context.

How can one read this in both modes? A city-state where technology-as-magic allows for biomechanical wings, and five sleeping gods whose worshipers squabble and try and interpret what their gods want to do and why, and feeling lost and forgotten, is definitely a fantasy setting if I ever heard one. The novel fits my medium stakes and "city-state fantasy" paradigm rather well - if you read the novel in a fantasy mode.

And yet this is also a science fiction novel. The technobabble of the wings refers to "ports" and there are flying boats, bombs, and even (although not really named as such) an EMP device. There is very heretical thought that the gods aren't gods at all, but rather are ancient aliens who came, gave some technology to the people of the city, but mostly now for reasons unknown, are asleep and not generally reachable on a regular basis. 

There is an additional piece within the novel, a plot point/MacGuffin that becomes extremely important to the unfolding of the plot. I don't want to give it away because it becomes such an important hinge later in the novel, but the fact that it can be read either as technology or as something in a fantasy mode helps solidly that science fantasy is indeed the axis that this novel very deliberately spins around.

In the end, the world of the novel is a world where both sides do very dirty things, and neither side's hands are clean. The Wings Upon Her Back, though, grounds this all in Zenya, and thanks to the dual narratives, we slowly close the loop and fully understand Zenya. Why would she find service to the mecha god instead of "her" scholar god in the first place, how her brutal training, physically and psychologically molded her to be Vodaya's creature, and how the seeds of her (at first) mild disillusionment came to be in the first place. 

But even with Zenya in the rebellion and opposing Vodaya, her toxic and disturbing relationship to her old life and her relationship with Vodaya always comes to the for, and Vodaya, besides Zenya, has staying power as the most memorable and darkly compelling aspect of the novel. Vodaya has spent years molding Zenya, and this novel could be read as a story of deprogramming. The deprogramming is twofold, first of all Zenya herself from Vodaya and her toxic methods, and the deprogramming of an entire society which has been molded to be brutal, uncompromising, fascist, and authoritarian. The novel shows that it is a painful and not easy process, and there are no simple magic bullets or answers for either. I felt strongly for Zenya especially in the flashback scenes, as Mills makes what Vodaya is doing to her plain and unmistakable. 

And again, given the rise of authoritarianism around the world, and those it impacts, what Vodaya goes through feels timely and relevant.

The last part of the book, then, has in the flashback sequences Zenya taking her first flight with her wings, showing her joy at the pinnacle of her triumph as a youth, and in the present, Zenya recreating that journey, without wings, older, wiser, and irrevocably changed by her experiences. It's a potent and strong ending to a potent and strong novel. The novel is complete in one volume and there really isn't, as far as I can see, need or room for a sequel hook. 

--

The Math

Highlights:

• A potent and important story of authoritarianism and what it does to a society and people
• A strong science fantasy hybrid
• An unflinching look at a protagonist and the character who manipulates and molds her

You can read more about the book, and Samantha Mills, in my Six Books interview about her.

Reference: Mills, Samantha, The Wings Upon her Back [Tachyon, 2024]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Film Review: Blink Twice

What you don't know will absolutely hurt you

That the über-rich act as if they were exempt from the law of the land, common rules of courtesy, and basic human decency isn't news to anybody. Nor is their disturbingly common tendency to build secret lairs that keep the world out (and its pesky laws). And the disingenuous non-apology apology has become the rare genre of drama where bad men all recite the same lines while hoping no one will remember the spectacle.

Zoë Kravitz's debut as a film director, Blink Twice, points an irate finger at the uselessness of the public apology tour. The story is deceptively simple: a working-class woman crashes an exclusive party for billionaires, gets the attention of a sketchy creep with money, and joins his entourage for a tropical getaway at his private island. Soon enough, we learn that the reason this place is disconnected from the world is exactly what you were suspecting when you bought your movie ticket.

During the first half, the storytelling is cleverly anchored on what it's not showing: at the private island, our protagonist finds all the gourmet dishes, cocktails, sunny afternoons at the swimming pool, and wild drug-fueled parties that anyone would imagine the 1% have an endless supply of. This goes on day after day until you suddenly wonder: hey, if this is supposed to be a hedonistic extravaganza of excess and licentiousness... where's the sex? What we've seen so far is surprisingly chaste.

What are we not seeing?

Of course, it turns out there is sex on this private island, and oh boy does it make you wish you hadn't seen anything.

The modus operandi of the villains in this story is a terrifying logical extension of what happens in real life: the focus isn't on not doing evil, but on not getting caught. If you're used to controlling thousands of subordinates, it's easy to be lured by the prospect of controlling perception and memory. The same sociopathic traits behind the harmful actions of powerful people can produce elaborate mechanisms of deceit. Nothing to see here, keep going, don't believe your own eyes.

Channing Tatum plays the main villain with a dramatic potency I never suspected he had, especially in a tense scene toward the end, where his character spells out his worldview with raw fury. Maybe this achievement in acting should be attributed to Kravitz's direction, which makes the whole feat even more artistically interesting: she's crafted a burning portrait of evil from the image of her real-life fiancé.

Blink Twice has a mystery plot, but it's very direct about it. There are no layers of symbolism or allegory. It could be because the message it conveys needs to be shouted clearly: #MeToo has been a big necessary step, but it's been far from enough. Roman Polanski still walks free. And Woody Allen. And Bryan Singer, and Bill Cosby, and Brett Ratner, and Louis C.K., and James Franco, and Kevin Spacey, and untold numbers of other perpetrators who haven't been exposed yet. It hits hard to watch Blink Twice while the Neil Gaiman case is still unfolding.

It's a no-brainer to empathize with this protagonist, but I'm ambivalent about the revenge fantasy with which the movie ends. After the secondary villains have been dispatched with bloody gusto, the final boss gets trapped forever in the bliss of ignorance. One thing I'll grant is that this choice leads to an important point of discussion: what's an appropriate punishment for unrepentant abusers?

Blink Twice is an effective thriller that knows how to maintain high tension even long after all the secrets have been revealed. The trick it plays on the viewer is the same one abusers execute on their victims: it's absolutely obvious that something very wrong is happening, but as long as no one acknowledges it, the pretense can continue.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.