Book Review: Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

A fantasy story with hidden depths and nuanced contemplations of deeper subjects.

Martin Cahill’s debut novella, Audition for the Fox, has a premise that at first feels light and frothy and before cracking open the novella. The setup is that Nesi, who is a godblooded descent of one of the 99 pillars (gods) needs a divine patron in order to leave the temple she has lived all of her life (there are those who would capture and kill people like Nesi for their power, so it is non-negotiable that she can't leave the temple without such a patronage). There are 99 gods in the pantheon, and Nesi has had interviews/tests with 96 of them, and failed (in a funny bit, one of those is her own divine ancestor, Bison). So, if Nesi does not want to stay at the temple, or wait years and try auditions again, she has three choices, the God of Assassination, a God of Battle...and the God of Tricks, the Fox. Nesi decides on the last. And does she get an audition!

While the logline does say that she is thrown back 300 years in time when her homeland was occupied, that doesn’t quite show how dire Nesi’s position is, and how a god of tricks is far deeper than you might think. The novella opens us in a in medias res, and only gives us some background and establishes what is in the logline after Nesi is already in the deep end. Indeed, Nesi is back in the past, the past is not fixed, and yes, she could absolutely die here during the occupation.

Audition for the Fox, then, is a story that starts off as a story of survival, adaptation, and resistance. In that, instead of dealing with a relatively shallow god of tricks, Nesi and the reader find out just how complicated and complex Fox really is. Nesi asked for this trial, and Fox is not going to let her get out of it as easily as Fox’s brethren seemingly shrugged off her failures.

And it’s a story of belief and revolution, and resistance. This is not to say that there isn’t humor in it, but it is a far far more serious novella than I expected. I was going in to this thinking, even when the time travel was revealed, that this would be a much lighter fare than it actually is. The power of trickery to mildly befuddle an occupation, or showing a small light against the darkness of that occupation. And there is that, too but there are more and much deeper things going on here.

You see, the Wolfhounds of Zemin, in this era, are devotees of one god, the Wolf of the Hunt. The 100th God (which, yes, already made me start wondering right from the get go). They are the kind of monotheists who forbid, absolutely, the worship or respect of any of the other gods. Why the 99 other pillars do not intervene at all is not precisely clear, but given how hands-off Fox is once Nesi is going, there may be a timey-wimey effect here¹, or a reluctance to muck with the human world as the Wolf has done. One parallel I thought of, in contemplating this, is how little for so long the Maiar and Valar actually do anything to stop Melkor/Morgoth in rampaging across Middle Earth.

So, Nesi, babbling about the Fox in an era where such outward belief will get you punished, puts her on the radar of the occupying force. In turn, it makes her a leader, of a very small force, to commit small acts of resistance against the Zemin. As the story proceeds, then, Nesi realizes that while she can’t start the revolution against the Zemin alone (one that will take decades), but she can certainly be one of the first pebbles in the eventual avalanche. And it is recognizing that her potential is to do that, and in the precepts of the Fox, act on that, that is in the end the story of the novella.

So there is a lot more here too, in a tightly and sometimes to the brim novella Cahill writes to overflowing a bit in the book, I find this to be a feature. A fair chunk of this story and the worldbuilding are conveyed through stories within the narrative and the power of story (which clearly is something the Fox has in spades) is a central pillar (pun intended) of the novella. Fox tells some of their background through some of their encounters with other pillars. Nesi tells her story of some of her failed challenges. Fox addresses the reader and breaks the fourth wall. Cahill makes it clear that story alone can’t overthrow the Zemin and won’t (and also shows us how her people, the Oranoya, changed after the occupation, a “build back better” approach to their society in the wake of that authoritarian takeover), but story and narrative are important and central to Cahill’s narrative.

The novella also shows how authoritarianism is bad for the oppressors as well. We are introduced to a character, Teor, who is definitely not of the marching to victory type of Zemin. And yet, the society that he is in him is forcing and molding him into a shape, a design, an ethos that he himself does not want. Teor is a great example of how toxic empire can be to the denizens of the imperial system itself, as well as to the oppressed. Teor is shaped and molded to be an oppressor and is not allowed on his own to pursue his point of view and ethos. Part of Nesi’s ultimate arc is not redeeming him on her own so much as to show him that there is indeed another way of being.

I do have a criticism of the novella that I want to highlight here, for as much as I enjoyed it. It is something that broke my immersion a bit. As mentioned above, we have an invading and occupying force that is intent on universal conquest and universal devotion to the Wolf God. We are in a relatively isolated fortress far away physically from the main centers of their control in Oranoya and power. It’s a backwater, plain and simple. And while they do give a justification on why they hesitate to murder her, it didn’t sit with me, given what we see of the Zemin (see above, Teor). So it felt more likely to me that long before her grand and culminating strike against the Zemin, they would have had her killed or permanently imprisoned as a brutal example of what happens to resistance. Instead, she gets a series of lesser punishments, even when it is clear that she is a Troublemaker and probably should be dealt with harshly.

Aside from that concern, I found the nuance, depth and exploration of theme in Audition for the Fox to wipe away my changed expectations and draw me into a novella that has a lot of things to say about authoritarian systems and living under them that is unfortunately very relevant for today. With a richness to the worldbuilding and its approach to story, I highly enjoyed Fox and Nesi’s story. The story ends satisfactorily without any need for a sequel, a one-and-done story that will draw you in with its deceptively light premise, and leave you thinking much about authoritarianism, oppression and how to resist it--and the costs of that.

So this novella sits in a spectrum of recent books that clearly are playing in overlapping spaces. The epic fantasies of R R Virdi (The First Binding) are entirely about the power of story. The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is theatrically staged. Much more recently, The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson has a strong element of a trickster god manipulating events. Other works are exploring god spaces, the spaces of what telling story can and does do to a narrative, and, I will note, fighting authoritarian oppression or resisting it.

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Highlights:

• A bright and delightfully playful cover...that belies the contents
• Strong themes of resistance and fighting against oppression and authoritarianism
• A powerful story that uses the power of story within it. 
• A novella not from the 800 pound gorilla of novella publication and award winners and nominees.

Reference: Cahill, Martin, Audition for the Fox [Tachyon, 2025].  

¹ For the Fox, anyway, it's absolutely timey-wimey.(and I use that deliberately, given the grace note that the novella ends on). They know this past, has brought Nesi to it, and they are aware of the opportunity and possibility to change history (and not necessarily for the better). I do appreciate that it doesn’t feel like a stable time loop here, that what Nesi is doing is new and fresh and not just “playing out” something that is foreordained, which is true of a lot of time travel narratives. Nesi even calls them out on this and Fox responds that the future is NOT set in stone.

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

Realm of the Elderlings Project: The Tawny Man, Book 3: Fool's Fate

 Full of genderness, with a richness and depth that allows it to age into modern Discourse

It’s time, my friends. I've spoken about setting, plot, characterization, love, risk, desire, and how Fitz just can't catch a break, each time particularized to a specific book. And I could do the same here. I even took notes on the Fool's Fate-specific theme I wanted to discuss. But I think that I'd rather set that aside; because here, at the end of things, we finally have all the pieces in place to address a different topic. And so although the structure of this whole Realm of the Elderlings Project might lead you to believe that today's entry is about Fool's Fate, in fact it's more a retrospective over the nine books as a whole, all of which contribute to today's discussion: The Fool, and Gender.

What makes the Fool’s ambiguous, shifting gender work so well, I think, is the way all of the conversations in these books have aged — a very hard task in a domain as volatile as gender. Typically, ‘ageing well’ is used to describe works that express a value we now agree is the correct one, before other people were mainstreamly expressing that value. But the whole Fool + Gender tapestry does something different. Here, the same events and interactions were relevant to gender discourse Back Then are also relevant to gender discourse Today, but in a different way. They are sufficiently rich and textured and ambiguous that they can be interpreted fruitfully across decades of shifting landscapes.

To demonstrate, I'm going to explore three moments from three different books that hit some (but not all — oh, by no means all!) of the main discussion points.

 1. Misgendering: The Fool is a woman and she is in love with you [Assassin’s Quest, pg 551]

Cover art by John Howe

This claim comes from Starling, and sets off a long sequence in which she insists that the Fool is a woman, and resolutely uses she/her for the Fool until Kettricken finally tells her to knock it off. Everything about this can be read in a way that engages fruitfully with sexuality discourse of the 1990s, and with gender identity discourse of the 2020s.

Today, this kind of claim in a modern book would immediately set off alarm bells about misgendering, so it can come across as a bit jarring how the Fool remains fully unbothered by something that is intricately intertwined with some very ugly attacks in modern discourse. 'What does it matter what she thinks?' he says. 'Let her think whatever is easiest for her to believe' (pg 634). Today, it matters an awful lot what someone thinks about your gender. Misgendering occupies a very specific cultural role, and when it appears in books it is there to elicit a very specific reaction. In non-awful books, misgendering is almost always either a symbol of intentionally malicious transphobia, or else represents the more insidious consequence of society’s insistence on gender-conforming expression and performance. It is not innocuous. It is not something to laugh off. In a modern book, the Fool’s willingness to disregard Starling’s behavior as a quirky bit of silliness would come across as some sort of attempt to minimize the very real problem of misgendering.

But this is not a modern book. It was written in the late 1990s, and the sorts of conversations we’re having now about misgendering simply weren’t as mainstream then. Starling isn’t malicious in what she’s doing by insisting that the Fool is ‘actually’ a woman. She’s not a representative of 2020s-era society’s refusal to respect gender identity. Instead, she’s representing a different kind of societal constraint: an unwillingness to respect queer love. She is absolutely all in favor of Fitz and the Fool getting together. And she's not wrong in her observation that the Fool is in love with Fitz. The Fool repeatedly tells Fitz that he is absolutely DTF should Fitz be interested; it’s just that he’s not only DTF. 

The problem with Starling’s behavior here is not her observations of the romantic potential between Fitz and the Fool. It rather arises from the fact that she represents lot of 1990s opinions about male friendships. If there is love and affection between two guys, the opining opines, it had better not have any sexual overtones. No homo, dude. And if the romantic indicators become too clear to disregard, then you’d better find a way to make it straight. The 1990s were a banner decade for girls dressing up as boys to have adventures, so it’s not a surprise (in the Doylist reading) that Starling draws on that same trope to straighten out what she sees between Fitz and the Fool. The Fool is a woman, and thereby can be in love with Fitz. It’s a silly, hopeless attempt to change something unchangeable; and the Fool treats it accordingly. 

Of course, any attempt to minimize society’s implacable cishet norms is not quite as harmless as the Fool makes it — hence the nagging concern that his reaction to Starling’s imposition of those norms on him trivializes the very real problem that she could be representing. Except, of course, that throughout the rest of this book, and the full Tawny Man trilogy, the Fool does retains a certain distaste for Starling. Is it simply jealousy, of how she can enjoy a sexual relationship with Fitz that is denied him? It could be. The Fool can be quite petty at times. But his dislike for Starling could also be read as a more unconscious reaction to her attempts to reinforce societal expectations of gender and sexuality.

It’s not clear. It doesn’t have to be clear. Hobb doesn't tell us what to think. She simply gives us the facts on the page. Starling misgenders the Fool. The Fool doesn't care for Starling. What you read out of that is a function of what you bring to the discussion; and that will change between 1998 and 2025. Regardless, however, Robin Hobb's readers are the smartest and most discerning and thoughtful of all readers, so the conversation that ensues cannot help but be smart and discerning and thoughtful. 

2. Trans vs. drag personae: Why must I truncate myself to please you? [The Golden Fool, pg 404]

Jacket illustration by John Howe

 

What makes the whole thing between the Fool and Starling even more interesting is that, in more than one way, she’s right. She's fully correct that the Fool is in love with Fitz, and although she's misgendering him, she's only doing it in the Six Duchies context. Elsewhere, in Bingtown, the Fool DOES have an identity that is female. As we learn in The Liveship Traders, the Fool is also Amber, and he is Amber in a way which seems to go beyond any kind of disguise. Amber is as real a person as the Fool is, and she is just as in love with Fitz as the Fool is. She uses Fitz's face as a model when she repairs Paragon, carving his features into the figurehead from her memory of his visage alone. Amber's got it bad for Fitz. And this discovery is the core of that awful rift between Fitz and the Fool in Golden Fool: Fitz learns about Amber, and starts to worry that the Fool he knows is another identity, no more real than Amber the woodworker in Bingtown, or Lord Golden the Jamaillian fuckboi in Buckkeep.

Fitz's discovery of the Fool's female-coded identity, and concerns over which one is 'real', can be related easily to modern discourses on transgender identity, just like the misgendering in Assassin's Quest. To the extent that anyone imagines one gender is less 'real' than another, that's just our resident dumbass Fitz. Certainly on the page Amber is never presented as anything other than a woman. And Fitz's reaction to learning about Amber has a lot in common with the furious, explosive rage that discovering a trans background can elicit in an ugly subset of our population (see the unpleasant history of the trans panic defense). We saw in Royal Assassin that Fitz does have a tendency to indulge in murderous rampages when he gets mad. It's uncomfortable to realize how much he has in common with those people who feel tricked or betrayed at discovering some intimate truth about a person, and persuade themselves that being denied access to those secrets justifies a violent response.

But to me, there’s another interpretation possible here. The Fool is not simply shifting his gender. He is not non-binary or gender fluid. He fully embraces whichever binary-coded gender he occupies at a given moment, and he is not gender fluid because when he shifts, he is shifting more than gender. He is shifting into fully distinct identities, with distinct skills and personalities, operating in separate spheres of his life. All of these facts are equally as important to the distinction of these personae as the fact that these personae have distinct gender expressions. 

And to me, that feels more like drag.

I'm going to phrase this next bit carefully, because neither trans identity nor drag culture are monoliths, and any statement I make will be inaccurate for a subset of individuals. Feel free to @ me; my social media usernames are at the bottom. But for now, here is my impression: gender transition is a change in the external expression of an identity. What was assigned at birth is left behind, and what replaces it is a new and entire person. This may not be the case for all transgender people, but it is the case for enough of them to have given rise to the term  'deadnaming': the old name, the old identity, is gone. It is dead. Long live the new.

By contrast, many people who do drag embrace a drag identity without rejecting their non-drag lives. So that brings us to the question that worries Fitz: which of the Fool's personae are ‘real’ and which are assumed? From what I’ve read about drag culture, I get the impression that this is not a simple question. An individual’s drag persona is not necessarily any less ‘real’ than the day-to-day mainstream counterpart. We’re always performing our gender — or our identity more generally — one way or another. Drag is what happens when that performativity is explicitly acknowledged, explored, and played with (Levitt et al 2018). This is why, when Fitz asks whether the Fool he has known and loved as his dearest friend is real, the Fool says, ‘You know more of the whole of me than any other person who breaths, yet you persist in insisting that all of that cannot be me. What would you have me cut off and leave behind? And why must I truncate myself to please you?’

The Fool is not one gender or another. He does not assume a gender solely as a stratagem in his travels. He is all the genders, because he is all the identities. He expresses one part of himself, or another, as the situation calls for it. And even if Fitz does know more of the truth of him than anyone else, still, even Fitz does not know all of him.

Then Fitz does his dumbassery and starts getting all het up about sex — which is a laugh, given how firmly the Fool told him not to confuse love with plumbing back in Assassin's Quest — and that lands us squarely into the realm of toxic masculinity.

3. Toxic masculinity: I let him take whatever comfort he could in the warmth and strength of my body. I have never felt less of a man that I did so. [Fool's Fate, pg 644]

Jacket illustration by John Howe

In the same way that the Fool's identity works as a commentary on sexuality, gender, and (in my opinion) drag, the arc of Fitz and the Fool’s relationship works really well as a commentary on toxic masculinity. The OED has citations for the phrase dating back 35 years, and judging from the quotes, not much has actually changed about this particular corner of gender discourse. Consider this example from 1990:

I speak of toxic masculinity as that which damages men, women, children and the earth through neglect, abuse and violence. We seek to overcome toxic masculinity, whose tools include homophobia, by recovering the deep masculine, which is playful, spontaneous, vital . . .

Fitz’s discomfort with the Fool’s love, and his repeated insistence on worrying about the sexual potential of such a relationship, is deeply homophobic. The Fool never asked him for any kind of sexual relationship. The Fool has always known that Fitz doesn’t swing that way, and respected that in their interactions. His flirting is mere playfulness, and doesn’t bother Fitz when it happens in private. Fitz only gets uneasy when other people start commenting on it, as they do when the Fool starts playing the libertine who indulges in all sorts of depravities with his manservant. But here’s the thing: the rumors that the Fool encourages in Buckkeep are not about the Fool and Fitz. They are about Lord Golden and Tom Badgerlock. They are rumors that serve a political fiction. Fitz is happy to accept that his role of Tom Badgerlock is assumed and distinct from his true self in every respect – except, crucially, when it comes to the possibility of who he sleeps with. Who cares if everyone in Buckkeep thinks Tom Badgerlock is being bedded by Lord Golden? Well, Fitz cares. Or more precisely, Fitz’s homophobia cares.

Consider a parallel with Nighteyes, Fitz’s Wit-bonded wolf. Fitz has always been willing to publicly deny Nighteyes’s identity. He calls him a dog. He treats him as a pet in public when he cannot pretend Nighteyes doesn’t exist. He will deny a sentient creature’s intelligence, relegating him to the status of a subservient animal, and accept that as a necessary fiction for the sake of not being lynched for being Witted.¹ Ok, fine: needs must, avoid the noose. I get it. 

But you know what also will get him lynched? Being Fitzchivalry Farseer! His assumed identity of Tom Badgerlock is just as necessary for his survival as Nighteyes’s assumed identity as a dog. But where Fitz is willing to accept the dumb animal portion of that assumed identity on Nighteyes’s behalf – indeed, to insist upon it! To reinforce it with his own words and actions — nevertheless he cannot accept the ‘maybe sleeping with Lord Golden’ portion of Tom Badgerlock’s identity for himself, even when that acceptance means nothing more than letting other people gossip about it.

That’s toxic masculinity for you: it is easier to explicitly deny your best friend’s sentience than to let other people imagine you might not be fully straight.

Remember that horrible conversation in Golden Fool? The one where Fitz says, ‘I could never desire you as a bed partner. Never,’ and the Fool says, ‘We could have gone all our lives and never had this conversation. Now you have doomed us both to recall it forever' ? 

That’s also toxic masculinity for you, perpetually obsessed with sex, seeing it as the sole role of women, and absolutely forbidden between men. Toxic masculinity is why Starling is uncomfortable interacting with the Fool when it becomes clear he has no interest in bedding her. Toxic masculinity is why Starling, upon realizing that the Fool is actually pretty good at listening to her confidences, must decide he's actually a woman, because toxic masculinity disallows nonsexual intimacy with men. And thus, toxic masculinity will look at a friend whose love is unwavering and true, who has shared with you more of himself than any other person who breathes, who knows you will never have any kind of sexual interest in him, and who has never asked it of you — toxic masculinity will look at that friend, and force a conversation to say, for the avoidance of doubt: No homo, dude. 

And that brings us to the end of this character arc, in which Fitz learns the Fool has died at the hands of the Pale Lady. Fitz stays in the Outislands to retrieve the Fool’s body from the icy caverns where he was flayed and tortured to death; he uncovers the secrets from the Rooster Crown to retrieve the Fool’s self from where it had fled when he died; he swaps bodies with the Fool² so that the Fool does not need to be present in his ruined husk as Fitz takes on the agony of its damage and repairs it. All of these Fitz will do unthinkingly, because these actions — loyalty to comrades, rescue, and self sacrifice — are traditionally masculine acts.  At any point in his life Fitz would probably have done these things, if not for the Fool, then for Molly, for Nighteyes, or for Verity. Has already done something similar, actually: he accepts his own dose of tortured-to-death for Verity’s sake in Royal Assassin. Fitz has always been pretty strong on the traditionally masculine virtues. The reason I keep calling him a dumbass is because emotional intelligence is not included in that category.

So the moment that stuck with me in the years since I last read this, the culmination of Fitz’s character arc that I was looking forward to rereading, is not any of that. Instead, I waited for that moment after the rescue, the body swapping, the mechanical repair of injuries. Because in addition to the physical recovery comes the emotional toll. This scene is the middle of the night, when the Fool wakes, tortured by the remembered agonies he endured, and Fitz takes him in his arms and holds him, giving love and comfort. This is what toxic masculinity disallows; and that is what Fitz must overcome to be the kind of friend the Fool needs him to be. For all that the Fool openly admits he would not decline a sexual relationship with Fitz ('I set no boundaries on my love. None. Do you understand me?' [The Golden Fool, pg 404]), he nevertheless understands that intimacy can exist without it. Only by decoupling this knee-jerk association between intimacy and sex that runs through the heart of toxic masculinity can Fitz properly realize the closeness that has always been present between him and the Fool, and never feel less of a man for doing so.

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1 Let us take a moment to appreciate the construction of these taboos in this book. The Wit is something shameful, to be hidden and indulged in only in private, or in the safety of hidden subcultures, which develop their own norms and customs, where Old Blood is recognized as something not only harmless, but beautiful and natural. Outside that culture, however, it’s all Oh, Nighteyes? We’re just . . . very good friends. You know, as a man and a dog are in the usual way. Dogs: man’s best friend. Really we’re just friends. And roommates. Best friends and roommates. So, in Hobb’s incomparable richness of characterization, Fitz serves as a commentary on homophobia in two orthogonal ways: both in the text, with his own explicitly homophobic actions, and in the subtext, where he must exist as a queer Witted man in a society that abhors queerness the Wit.^↩

2 Fitz’s body really does seem to be kind of the town bicycle in this series. Verity has a ride in Assassin’s Quest, and now, in the very same quarry of black memory stone, the Fool is taking it for a spin of his own^↩

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References: 

Hobb, Robin. Assassin's Quest [Voyager, 1997]. 

Hobb, Robin. The Golden Fool [Voyager, 2002].

Hobb, Robin. Fool's Fate [Voyager, 2003]. 

 Levitt, H.M., Surace, F.I., Wheeler, E.E. et al. Drag Gender: Experiences of Gender for Gay and Queer Men who Perform Drag. Sex Roles 78, 367–384 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0802-7 

Oxford University Press. (2023). Toxic masculinity, n. In Oxford English dictionary. Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7276139079 

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Manga Review: Before You Go Extinct

An incisive, heartfelt plea for the worth of useless actions

It's usually bad manners to make the review about the reviewer, but this time I'll ask for your indulgence, because this book has touched me on a very personal level. Because my parents had no imagination, they made me study for a business degree. Out of the options they could afford, that one sounded to me like the most dreadful. I melted in hopelessness every time I envisioned what kind of life I would have with that degree, burning my few decades of fresh vigor on this Earth for the Dark Art of transmuting money into more money. I would have given an arm and a leg to study history. Or cinema. Or psychology. Or archaeology. Gosh, how I dreamed of archaeology. But my parents' choice was incontestable, supported by their totally scientific method of reading the classified ads in the newspaper and taking note of which jobs were the most demanded. Their guiding principle, for their lives as well as mine, paid no heed to what was interesting to do, but to what stove off destitution. With a business degree, they promised, the rest of my life would be guaranteed. I tried many times to make them see that that wouldn't be a life worth living, but they didn't even have that concept. So I never let them know, because they didn't deserve to know, how much of my twenties was spent wanting to die.

All those ideas, about the seductiveness of the death drive, about the socially transmitted imperative to not do anything unproductive, about the anxiety that comes with the awareness of our finitude, about the fascinating nature of wasted time, about the tragedy of uncritically accepting a set lifepath, about our need to express a personal meaning in ways that reach beyond practicality, about the unacknowledged extortion that biological urges commit against our freedom, about the emptiness of mere survival, about time's perverse joke at our expense came cascading over me while reading Takashi Ushiroyato's collected manga Before You Go Extinct.

The plot is an extended philosophical dialogue held across six reincarnations between a soul that has bought into the game of animalistic survival, and thus eschews what seems useless, and a soul that safeguards its little private dignity by perfecting some or other pastime as a vehement yet futile protest against a universe that isn't listening. The genius element in this story is that it's told with talking animals. For us humans, the truism that we must create our own meaning has through repetition lost some of its impact. But we still think of animals as beings that exist primarily to obtain food and reproduce; to use their voices lends more impact to the message that we shouldn't feel compelled to abide by the ancestral template that prescribes birth-growth-breeding-death.

For added rhetorical effect, the animals we follow in this story belong to endangered species. These characters think of mortality in terms that exceed the dimension of the personal: every Hawaiian crow, every Japanese otter, every New Zealand kakapo that dies is a cosmic loss. The obligation to obtain food and reproduce nags at them like a ticking bomb, but the plot leads them, in each of those lives, to notice that they don't have to comply with that obligation. There's more to being alive than staying that way. Being a free person implies that you aren't required to find food and reproduce, even if your species depends on it.

We're introduced to a cute, murderous penguin who has figured out that penguins are disappearing, so he decides he may as well speed up the process. The point of this chapter isn't how a penguin manages to acquire dynamite and machine guns; it's why he doesn't kill his roommate, whose way of protesting against the future is to take care of a small rock (which is something real penguins sometimes do when they can't have an egg). In their next life, they're crows debating what's the point of honoring the dead if neither the dead nor the living get any benefit from it (spoiler: benefit is not the point). In their next life, they're otters captured by a circus who rebel against its system that assures their sustenance in exchange for obedience. In their next life, they're another species of otter, torn between fun and responsibility. In their next life, they're kakapos with a passion for music, learning that their song isn't wasted just because it doesn't attract a mate. And in their next life, they're penguins again, this time literally the last two, a parent and an adopted chick, and in their conversations they admit that parenthood isn't inherently heroic. Throughout that journey of spiritual discovery, they're accompanied by their favorite rock, a clear symbol of the useless things that nonetheless we defiantly choose to value.

The implied punch of this story, one comes to realize, is that it was written by a Japanese creator. Before You Go Extinct isn't just a rebuke of longtermism and its mandate to sacrifice the actual for the potential, but more specifically a response to the cultural panic over the demographic shift that is going on in Japan. Governments are treating depopulation as an existential threat that must be countered, but this book makes the case that it's fine if that happens. There's no law of the universe that says your nation has to exist. But rather than a flat "don't have kids," the book proposes that having kids (or not) is a choice that only has meaning if you make if for your own reasons, and you should be honest with yourself about having those reasons instead of pretending it's the natural or patriotic thing to do. To put it in Kantian terms, it's evil to make children exist if they're instruments of someone else's goals, like in this case state goals. And on a more individual level, it's evil to willingly turn yourself into an instrument of a system.

It's a curious feeling to read Before You Go Extinct and notice the usual devices of humorous manga in the middle of hard conversations about what's the point of living (spoiler: having a point is not the point). All the animals are adorable to look at, even while they're enduring full-body burns or driving an armored tank or rehearsing their own funeral or remembering a dead friend's love for ball juggling. That aesthetic choice is a statement by itself: the most hurtful experiences don't negate the possibility of finding beauty. Note that I didn't say finding purpose, or even finding meaning. Those are nice to have. But if you're serious about refusing to be an instrument, finding some beauty, gloriously useless beauty, shall be enough.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

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

Reference: Ushiroyato, Takashi (author), Abiko, Kanato (illustrator), Tejima, Yuki (translator), Grandt, Eve (letterer). Before You Go Extinct [Kodansha, 2025].

Book Review: The Outcast Mage by Annabel Campbell

An interestingly crafted world and characters with resonances to today

It is said (well, I have said and paraphrased others) that science fiction doesn’t predict the future, or even reflect a future so much as it talks about today and what is happening today. Secondary World Fantasy has often been very different, and more conservatively looking backward on a past that never really was, more than anything else. You “can’t get there from here in fantasy;” it’s not showing an aspirational place, or usually even our own world as it exists now. Urban or Contemporary Fantasy is one thing, and that is often very topical and political, but secondary world fantasy, not so much.

I feel like that paradigm is being confronted, lately, when it comes to fantasy. Is this due to the decline of science fiction versus fantasy (at least from an anecdotal observation)?¹The Outcast Mage by Annabel Campbell is stepping up to the plate to challenge that paradigm along the way of telling its absorbing story, with interesting characters and immersive worldbuilding. It’s a secondary world fantasy, not even science fantasy, that boldly leverages real-world and contemporary politics today. Let’s dig in.

We have several main characters that the novel revolves around. Our primary POV character is Naila. Naila is a student at a magical academy in the city of Amoria, a city of glass and magic where magicians are dominant and those without magic are second-class citizens. Naila tested as having magical ability, but frustratingly, she has shown absolutely no ability to control her magic, and she can’t leave the academy until she does. She’s a grain in the sand in the oyster of the academy, irritating the establishment all around her. She is the titular Outcast Mage, a magician who can’t even do a single spell. She’s Rincewind, but played straight and to more serious effect.

Naila’s life changes when she runs into Haelius. Haelius is not only a magician, but a wizard, a powerful, idiosyncratic one, whose raw power is unquestionable and his eccentricity undeniable. On paper, he’s one of the most powerful people in the city, if not the world. But he is interestingly complex and sometimes fragile as well.

Their meeting and their efforts to help each other, Haelius very curious about Naila’s untapped talent, and Naila frustrated at being caught between two worlds, would make a pretty solid if not particularly noteworthy fantasy novel. Haelius is a few years older than Naila, but this is not the kind of book that is a romance, or a romance in the making, although the bond that the two develop is a strong and interesting one. Haelius tries to unravel Naila’s true nature, and finds that it is stranger and odder than even he, a premier wizard in Amoria, can possibly guess.

But that’s not all that is going on here, and this is where we start to get into that paradigm challenge. Another POV character is Larinne. Larinne is Consul of Commerce (Amoria is something of a republic, at least at the start). She does have her hands full helping manage trade, but she soon gets into the attention of Oriven, and here is where the novel starts to look at things from a contemporary angle. Oriven is a nakedly ambitious politician who uses the power of demagoguery to sow fear, dissension, anger and intolerance, particularly toward foreigners, and also the residents of the part of the city called the Southern Quarter, reserved, almost like a ghetto, for those that do not have magic. While a Senator with tyrannical ambitions certainly can invoke, say, Star Wars, the rousing of intolerance in the public, and the reactions to it are very much a lens to the rightward yanking of governments in many countries. Oriven’s rhetoric that Amoria is in decline and that people must act, quite frankly, could be rewritten as “Make Amoria Great Again” without missing a beat.

And as the novel goes on, and Oriven’s power grows, the climate of fear and the power that he gathers and wields does feel unnervingly like it is set in the modern day. Like in Samantha Mills’s The Wings Upon Her Back, a science fantasy novel I reviewed in 2024, Oriven’s authoritarianism and efforts at social control are very pointedly resonant with the current state of affairs in a number of countries around the world.

And the political is personal, as Naila comes from non-magical parentage. So her visits to her family in the Southern Quarter become more and more fraught as Oriven’s campaign continues. Campbell does a great job in showing that these systems of control and manipulation, stoking hatred and fear, ultimately hurt people and put strain on their relationships with those they love and trust the most.

On the theme of foreigners and what is directed toward them, another POV character, Entonin, shows us the hazards of that, and the fruit of Oriven’s campaign as well. He is a priest who has come to the city on ostensibly a diplomatic mission. Oriven and his efforts, though, not only blunt Entonin’s efforts, but manage to poison the well and portray his work as an attempt to undermine the city and set up a war. Again, this feels really relevant and important in a world where countries are being poisonous to longstanding allies and ruining once friendly or neutral relationships, stoking the fires of hatred and violence.

Let it be said that, for all the political relevance that is the heart of this piece, and my perspective on it, the novel does have what you’d expect in a rich and interesting fantasy. There’s interesting theories on how magic works (and what is exactly going on with Naila). The city of Amoria itself, underneath its glass dome, in the desert, in a normally inhospitable place, is a wonder of worldbuilding and rich immersion into a fantasy landscape as one could hope for. It reminds me somewhat of Ninavel, a mage-ruled city in a desert in Courtney Schafer’s Shattered Sigil series. Ninavel was far less organized as a polity than Amoria; Amoria may be a republic falling to a demagogue tyrant, but it is a functional polity in a way that Ninavel, ruled by gangs and mages in cutthroat competition, is not. But the vision of a city using magic in an inhospitable place is a good one, especially when the fragility of longtime systems is shown, as well as how they threaten the city when undermined. That, too, is part of the political water of the book.

So one final note on that worldbuilding. For all that is turning into a totalitarian autocracy under Oriven’s ambition, I do want to give Campbell credit for escaping the too often retrograde feudal or monarchical systems of government that many secondary worlds rely upon. While we don’t get any points of view into that government other than Larinne, as above, there is enough shadowplay to feel how Amoria should work and act when not under stress, and that is NOT with a King/Queen and a court. Republics and systems with representation are worthwhile to explore in fantasy, and once again, the book shows what happens when such systems are turned to evil ends.²

With some stunning revelations at the end, the book doesn’t quite end on anything like an potential offramp. I do look forward to more in the series, and I hope Campbell continues to explore this contemporarily resonant space she is engaging in with her world and characters. Secondary world fantasy CAN talk about the contemporary world in an engaging and relevant way, and I hope the author continues to do so.

Highlights:

• Relevant to contemporary politics in a fresh and interesting way
• Strong set of characters with engaging stories and connections
• Immersive and rich worldbuilding

Reference: Campbell, Annabel. The Outcast Mage [Orbit, 2025].

¹ Outside of the scope of this piece, but just looking at what books publicists try to sell me on, and the books in catalogs and the like I am exposed to, Fantasy is Queen. Not even just Romantasy, the new Hierophant of Fantasy’s Court. I think it’s been like that for a long time, perhaps even during the entirety of my fan writing life, but it feels even more lately that science fiction is increasingly a smaller portion of the SFF landscape. Thus, fantasy has an opportunity to pick up some of that slack. Science fantasy as well; see later on when I mention Samantha Mills.

² So, if fantasy is going to pick up the slack (see note ¹), it’s going to have to give up the monarchy as the paradigm of government. Even autocracies, soft and hard, in the modern day really aren’t monarchies. So am I calling for fantasy writers to expand their horizons? Well, yes.

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

Anime Review: The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Escalating drama, family secrets, disturbing themes, and increasing heat on the slow-burn romance

After a clever and addictive first season, it was no surprise that The Apothecary Diaries earned one of the coveted nomination slots for 2025 Anime of the Year. The first season introduced Mao Mao, a cynical genius apothecary in an ancient kingdom who gets kidnapped and sold into bondage as a servant in the harem of the imperial rear palace. Mao Mao’s foil in all of this is the gorgeous and clever eunuch Jinshi, who is in charge of the rear palace. Despite his swoon-inducing good looks, Jinshi is clever and clearly more than he appears to be, just as Mao Mao is more than she appears to be. In the first season, Mao Mao solved mysteries ranging from dying royal infants to dancing ghosts and mysterious murders. Both leading characters spend much of season 1 hiding who they really are while dealing with a relentless assassin and lots of palace intrigue.

In season 2, Jinshi is hunted by political assassins and Mao Mao is abducted during a clan insurrection and tasked with a heart-rending task while the safety of the nation is at risk. The new stakes are higher and the emotional investment is deeper, with a sinister conspiracy to overthrow the emperor, and revelations about the lead characters that will permanently change their relationship. Mao Mao is publicly revealed to be the secret daughter of the quirky genius and politically important clan leader, General LaKan. Similarly, Jinshi’s true identity, which was hinted at in the first season, is finally revealed to be Ka Zuigetsu, the Moon Prince, younger brother to the emperor.

While season 1 delivered a solid combination of a historical detective mystery, quirky opposites-attract personalities, hidden identities, lethal adventures, and lots of subversive feminist commentary, season 2 leans into the drama with upsetting sexual power dynamics, violent betrayals, profound family revelations, and an explosive uprising with far-reaching implications.

The Apothecary Diaries continues to use clever techniques to captivate viewers. For example, the show gives access to different characters’ points of view. As a result, in a given scene, the audience is often aware of more facts than one or both of the lead characters. This storytelling technique adds to the anticipation as each revelation occurs. In a recurring plot point, Jinshi’s repeated attempts to tell Mao Mao the truth about his identity become increasingly entertaining, especially since the audience knows a deeper level of truth about Jinshi than Jinshi does. Their fraught conversations are also funny because Mao Mao’s desire to avoid being drawn into drama makes her avoid engaging in things that will unnecessarily land her in trouble. In an iconic and awkward scene, she comes up with a particularly ridiculous explanation for a shocking truth she discovers about Jinshi. These early bits of humor soon give way to disturbing conversations and tragic events, making season 2 much less humorous and much more intense than season 1.

Season 2 also uses poignant flashbacks to provide a deeper understanding of the unusual personalities of the two protagonists. The new season focuses on Jinshi’s thwarted efforts to avoid both his destiny and his political role and also shows him being called to task by multiple characters for hiding his identity. However, we get an intriguing picture of his early childhood in the palace where everything (toys, people, pets) he shows particular love for is intentionally taken away from him to force him (as the potential future emperor) not to get attached to things he cares about. As a result, he grows up with a profound longing for attachment, and, although he is confirmed to be much younger than he purports to be (only nineteen years old), he is also emotionally immature, and at times clingy and jealous in relation to Mao Mao. However, consistent with his sharp intellect and secret royal status, he is also conversely shrewd, manipulative, focused, aggressive, and lethal.

As a servant, Mao Mao aggressively tries to avoid involvement in palace drama by internally denying or externally avoiding dangerous information. However, we also get a glimpse into her early childhood being raised in a busy brothel, where her cries were largely ignored until time permitted someone to attend to her. As a result, she grew to be stoic, self-reliant, and highly distrustful of relationships. In season 1, she is irritated by Jinshi and also annoyed by her gossipy fellow servant girl Xiaolan. However, in season 2, she is decidedly protective of Jinshi (but still distrustful of his advances). She also, ironically and reluctantly, finds herself drawn into an ill-fated friendship with the child-like fellow indentured maid, Xiaolan and the mysterious bug-loving newcomer Shisui. That tragic friendship, the fraught but addictive relationship between Jinshi and Mao Mao, the cruelty of the Shi Clan uprising, and Jinshi’s ascension to power politically and personally, make up the four primary pillars of season 2.

Overall, we have a feast of a fast-paced storytelling adventure with a dizzying array of family secrets, unexpected connections, and lots of revenge. All this intensity is balanced with quiet moments of meaningful character introspection, explorations of identity, and an examination of disturbing themes. In addition to the political intrigue, the show gives us an uncomfortable exploration of sexual power dynamics for those associated with the imperial palace. In one episode, the emperor flippantly suggests taking Mao Mao as a concubine to help him solve a restricted royal maze, which upsets both Mao Mao and Jinshi. Seeing their reaction, the emperor suggests Jinshi to claim her as concubine. As the season progresses, the show presents a disturbing backstory on the old emperor’s abuse of young girls who ultimately end up trapped in the rear palace forever. And we see the way his behavior is finally stopped by another disturbing act of revenge by the empress. The show also addresses war and its effect on the innocent, particularly children.

The slower, less traumatic episodes of an otherwise fast-paced season are not merely fillers but provide context and connections to characters whose lives are about to change dramatically in the subsequent, more intense episodes. Although the show still has elements of humor and avoids very graphic scenes, the themes and topics are clearly aimed at mature viewers. We also learn that many beloved characters are quite capable of harsh acts and violence. It is a fascinating contravention of expectations in a show that has had (and still has) moments of hilarity and classic anime-style humor.

Season 2 asks a lot of hard questions and offers less humor and playfulness than season 1. However, the exploration of difficult themes is worth it for viewers who want to see the intrigue and storytelling of season 1 expand and deepen rather than merely repeat itself. And we see the evolution of Jinshi and Mao Mao’s relationship and learn that, despite Jinshi’s ultimate power, it is Mao Mao who will determine the pace of their interactions. After a bold and clever first season, The Apothecary Diaries continues to push the boundaries of storytelling, identity, and social issues while still maintaining its core of intriguing characters. And, given its expansive source materials from numerous light novels and manga, there should be much more enjoyment and intrigue to come.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

• Drama, betrayals, and fast-paced adventure
• Disturbing and challenging themes
• Unique and intriguing storytelling

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

Book Review: The Raven Key by Harper L. Carnes

Can you hope for love if your heart is filled with shadows?

Seth is a troubled high school student. His first boyfriend dumped him without saying why, and his second turned out to be a violent abuser. Maybe his newest crush, a mysterious college student with a melancholic air, will be Mr. Right? The only problem is that his crush is an adult, and Seth won't be for some months, so the legal implications of pursuing that relationship leave everyone looking bad. Choosing lust over good sense, Seth lies about his age, betting that soon enough it won't matter anyway. Spoiler: it does turn out to matter, with heartbreaking results.

But his age isn't the worst secret Seth is keeping. There's a darkness inside him, an ancient power that has remained dormant all his life. The threat he carries moved his mother to try to kill him as a child, and he's been dealing with that trauma ever since. Even with her locked away in a mental hospital, he hasn't gotten rid of the constant nightmares. Of course, he has never believed her desperate claims that he's too dangerous for this world, that the thing that lurks within him must be eliminated. He tells himself she's just hopelessly deluded. She has to be.

Still, strange events seem to follow Seth everywhere. His touch starts giving people small electric shocks. A wolf crosses his path, looking at him like it knows him from somewhere. And no matter where he goes, a flock of ravens is never far behind, watching out for anyone who dares to threaten him. He takes refuge in his new relationship to try to forget about all the weirdness, but his Tall, Dark, Handsome obviously knows more of occult matters than he's letting on, and the way his eyes gleam sometimes hints of something beyond this realm...

The Raven Key is a slow-burn romantasy that takes its sweet time to really get going, but the extended buildup is no less enjoyable than the action. For most of the first half of the book, we follow Seth taking the risk to fall in love again after some awful past attempts, and the hidden encounters with his crush are narrated with the sweetness of youthful yearning. One almost forgets this was supposed to be a fantasy story, with how much space is given to developing this growing relationship, but the author knows how to make the mundane feel compelling and meaningful. Seth just wants to be happy, despite the indelible way his mother hurt him, despite his self-doubts, despite the legally questionable choices he knows he's making. And by the story's midpoint, it almost looks like he's succeded.

But the weirdness only gets worse from there, snowballing into an unstoppable train of awful consequence after awful consequence that starts when his boyfriend finds out about his age. That part is painful enough, but at the same time the presence that lives inside Seth gains more power and starts manifesting its intentions in horrific ways, seizing more and more control over him. He needs to find where this curse came from, even if it means talking to his mother after all these years, because if he doesn't stop what's happening to him, he will lose himself completely, and the whole world will suffer.

The escalating revelations that come during the second half of the book do a good job of rewarding the reader for waiting all through the first half. The truth behind Seth's curse points to a layer of mystical phenomena underlying our reality, giving the reader the right amount of detail to satisfy this book's longstanding mysteries but leaving ample space for further secrets to be explored. The ending, however, comes too abruptly, a cliffhanger at the wrong time that makes the built-up momentum crash against the last page. It's one thing to write your book as the first in a series and leave some events unfinished; it's another to take your climactic scene and rip it with a machete. The misjudged execution of this ending is the only reason I don't give the book a higher score.

The Raven Key is written with impressively polished prose for a debut, and the thorny legal question at the center of its plot is handled with the proper care and nuance. It's clearly conceived as introducing a whole series, and the reader must be prepared for a less than conclusive ending to this first entry. Setting aside that last bit, it's a captivating story with a solidly delineated protagonist and judicious doses of worldbuilding. Recommended with minor reservations.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

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

Reference: Carnes, Harper L. The Raven Key [self-published, 2023].

Film Review: Honey Don't!

The second installment of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke's lesbian B-movie trilogy is exactly what it describes itself as: very gay, very B-movie, and very noir

Honey Don't! is getting a lot of negative press and reviews out there, and I feel compelled to defend it. I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening to a packed house, and the middle-aged man sitting next to me walked out with 20 minutes left. Come on! That's ridiculous. It's a tight 90 minutes, the vibes are excellent, it's funny, and it's entertaining. Will it win Academy Awards? No. Will it enlighten you about the human condition like The Shawshank Redemption? Nope. What happened to having fun at the movies for an hour and a half and enjoying a cool character study?

To be fair, I knew this movie was made for me the moment I saw the trailer. Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley in a lesbian neo-noir movie set in the desert by the makers of Drive-Away Dolls? Sign me up. Granted, as a lesbian myself, I feel biased in my interest in this film—other queer people may also agree. We're not used to leading romances in movies that often, so when one pops up, we'll defend it to the death. Hence my tome.

The main criticisms I've seen of Honey Don't! are that the plot goes nowhere and that nothing makes sense. To which I say, have you rewatched The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona lately? I have, as they're some of my favorites, but it's not like those movies are crystal-clear plotwise. Some may feel it's a cop-out to enjoy a movie purely on ~vibes~, but I'm easy to please.

Honey Don't! is exactly what it was marketed as. It's a slightly comic ode to film noir, as it follows a stunning, cold-as-ice personal investigator as she gets involved in various murders and a religious cult in a sun-drenched, wind-swept Bakersfield, California. There's a subgenre of film noir (which literally means "dark film") called film soleil, which means "sunny film" and is characterized by hot, desert settings with powerful women and vicious crimes. You just swap out the dark, brooding alleys in Chicago for the sun-baked, wind-whipped desert streets of the west and sand-blasted old Camaros. It's kind of like how Midsommar still manages to be absolutely terrifying in broad daylight.

Film noir characters are also trope-based and predictable. Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donahue is absolutely captivating, and I would read a dozen books that followed her hard-boiled adventures through rural California. She wears trousers with a purpose like Kate Hepburn, all hipbones and hands in pockets, and she struts through police stations and crime scenes like she was born to do it. I'm impressed by her screen presence in something like this film, but she's equally as captivating in something completely different tone-wise like The Substance. Her accent is light-years apart from her southern drawl in Drive-Away Dolls, veering more into a Bogart-ian, transatlantic lilt that's fun.

The film revolves around Honey's investigation of a young woman's mysterious murder, and as she pokes around, she manages to get involved with a French-financed sex cult and a surprise serial killer. There are more red herrings in Honey Don't than the tinned fish section of a Swedish Bi-Lo, but that's half the fun. It's also way gorier than I anticipated.

In his article "A Guide to Film Noir," Roger Ebert lists out some of the defining tenets of the genre, and the one most applicable to Honey Don't! is rule #9: "Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death." Aubrey Plaza, starring as a timid police officer, strikes up an affair with Honey throughout the movie. Their romance and chemistry are real, and their physical relationship in a desert town full of dangers, sleaze bags, and betrayals reminds me of last year's Love Lies Bleeding with Katy O'Brien and Kristen Stewart.

But in a classic film noir twist, it turns out Plaza is the real killer, but not before several lurid sex scenes that ratchet up the tension in the film. Aubrey Plaza is fantastic in this role, as she's playing a sort of trashy and sleazy character that's a bit different from her usual parts. Honey, cunning private dick that she is, discovers that Plaza was, in fact, the culprit behind all of the missing women in town, and in a final act of dysfunction, is forced to kill her in self-defense. I didn't see it coming, so I thought the twist was good. See Ebert's rule #3: "Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa."

All my thoughts on Honey Don't! probably won't convince anyone to change their mind who saw it and didn't like it, but I do hope I can inspire folks who are a little more forgiving in their approach to movies to give it a shot—at the very least give it a chance when it hits streaming. It feels like a modern Raymond Chandler short story, something you can stay on the surface level of and still enjoy, even if the plot isn't locked up tight or the performances won't win Oscars. It's got dark humor, and Chris Evans as a horny sex preacher at a church called Four-Way, giving his best Righteous Gemstones impersonation of a sinful cult leader, is top-tier stuff

Honey Don't! may not be for everyone, but I'll keep defending this sun-drenched mess. I watched it a second time and liked it even more, but it's a shame folks will keep walking out of theaters when they go to see it.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10 for straight people, 9/10 for lesbians.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.