Review: The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

 A deeply bizarre and grisly love story about freedom and choice. And an alarming amount of murder.

My initial response to finishing this novella was "what the fuck did I just read?", and I stand by that assessment... but in a positive way. It's a deeply peculiar book, and one that's somewhat hard to describe when dragged outside the confines of the story.

It's a reimagining of the little mermaid, but... after the story...

A mermaid and a plague doctor go on a journey, both haunted by the darkness of their pasts...

What if the really important part of the little mermaid was the murderous revenge she got on the entire kingdom...?

Creepy woodland child-cults are never a good sign! Do not trust them, even if you're functionally immortal...

All of these are perfectly reasonable ways of talking about the story. Essentially, we meet up with a mermaid after her offspring have devoured the kingdom of the prince who married her in her revenge, when a mysterious plague doctor sort of kind of invites her to come with them, wherever they're headed to, seemingly unphased by the total carnage she's caused. On their way to wherever they're going, they come across a group of children hunting one of their number in the woods, a chance encounter that leads down a dark and bloody path to the plague doctor's history, and the mermaid's future.

But even this does not give a true sense of what the story is, because it's one of those stories which simply refuses to be confined to its plot. It's not about what happens, but how. And the how is vividly, lusciously, darkly, incredibly gorily, sumptuously and intensely overwrittenly, in the best possible way. It is a story I devoured, simply and precisely because the prose was delicious.

It goes in hard right from the first paragraph, which includes:

I pause. In the penumbra, the fading dusk gorgeted by coral and gold, you could be forgiven for mistaking the ruined house a ribcage, the roof its tent of ragged skin. The foundation, at a careless look, could pass for bones, the door for a mouth, the chimney a finger crooked at the sky, or at a wife who would not be a saviour.

And if anything, it only goes in harder as the story goes on.

This is the core of this novella's appeal in my opinion - if you like that level of intricate prose construction (and don't mind the grisly nature of the story), you will probably enjoy it immensely. If, however, you don't, or prose just isn't an interest or priority for you, this might be one that passes you by.

What's interesting about that, at least for me, is that I tend to prefer my stories to be character driven. And this isn't, really. We see a lot of the characters, but they are often opaque to each other and to us. We see through the mermaid's eyes, hear her thoughts, and yet even then she is remote and cold. Which is by design - she's meant to be alien, a creature living in our world but not of it, born of the chilly abyss of the sea, and hungry and uncaring and vengeful from it. So we see her, we spend the time growing to know her very well, and yet she remains cut off from us emotionally, by her very being. Where the prose is overwritten, the emotions are understated, the stuff of hints and shared looks leading to shared understanding, left for the reader to parse or not.

And as we progress through the story, it becomes clear how deliberate this is.

Because while it isn't all of what the story is, or is about, some of it is the story of someone who has been stripped of agency, of personhood, and who has exacted her revenge, but is still living with the legacy of what was done to her by a man who wanted to own her. Who told stories about her that misled the world about her nature. Who cut out of her tongue so she couldn't tell her own stories to counter them. So the fact that our access to her is at arm's reach feels especially fitting. We will know her as she wants us to know her, and no more, because she deserves that choice now.

We know the plague doctor, at least at first, at an even further remove. They speak little, and their emotional responses are something of a mystery to the mermaid, and so they are to us, through her interpretation. And while we never really get a deep sense of them through their words and perspective, we do begin to see the plague doctor as a deeply emotional person through their actions. It is more their story than the mermaid's, really, though it is told through her eyes.

But the two go together, as both of them are people who had their choices taken away from them, and were made into something else by people who had the power to do what they liked. Where the mermaid responds to this with bloody vengeance, the plague doctor has chosen kindness and healing, at least for now. What they feel about the mermaid's choices remains hidden to us, behind their mask and the mermaid's incomprehension of human feeling.

And so at its core, it's a story of two people who've suffered the greatest of injustices against their persons, and how they choose to live beyond that, how they respond to it, and how they relate to each other in the wake of their shared and different experiences. Because whatever emotion there is or is not in how we see them each through the mermaid's eyes, what there plainly is is fellowship, right from the start, and that link is such an appealing one, such a lovely one, that it keeps you invested through all the grisly body horror that comes with it.

I'm normally too much of a wuss for this kind of darkness, but in this, I didn't mind it. The writing transforms it into something beautiful at key moments, and the core dynamic between the two main characters makes it worthwhile even when it isn't beautiful. It makes a very strange, dark story, all told, but one whose wonder lies in that strangeness. It ends up with the feel of some old, dark fairy tale we don't tell anymore, where nothing is explained, a lot of people get murdered, and if there's any moral at all, it's not a gentle one. But sometimes those are exactly what you want, and this does it brilliantly.

--

The Math

Highlights: beautiful, intricate, grisly prose; unapologetically brutal protagonist

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Cassandra Khaw, The Salt Grows Heavy, [Titan Books, 2023]

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

Microreview [book]: The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw

Luscious prose and compelling character dynamics abound, but The All-Consuming World struggles to deliver on the promise of its worldbuilding

There's only one sentence that can open this review: What the fuck just happened?

The All-Consuming World is Cassandra Khaw's debut novel, and it's a blend of ultraviolent action and post-human space opera that races by in a blur of dramatic heist-y tropes and ornate-but-sweary prose. In this future, humans have ways to control aging so you can live as long as you like, cloning technology if you want that life to involve dangerous life threatening stuff and don't mind the inconvenience of reconstructing yourself. AI Minds also exist, in various generations and societies, most of whom seem to exist and interact through a collective program called The Conversation. We don't see much of what this setup means for ordinary folks of the universe, because the characters we spend our time with are on the unpleasant margins of this world. To survive their mercenary life, Maya and Rita have both been cloned and augmented repeatedly, to the point where Maya's body is degrading from the imperfect technology and Rita is mostly machine. Forty years after a mission which went disastrously wrong, killing two of their former crew (the "Dirty Dozen") and scattering the rest of them, Rita reveals that one of their dead friends, Elise, is still out there in virtual space, and that finding her might be the key to discovering Dimmuborgir, a lost planet with valuable secrets. Why Elise's survival took forty years to reveal is explained in universe as "Rita is a manipulative piece of work with an agenda she isn't sharing with anyone", but it serves as a spur for the pair to get the remnants of their band back together at an interesting time in everyone's lives, and to mount an imperfect rescue, allying with a couple of AIs while avoiding the many, many more who want to kill them.

There's a lot of meaty worldbuilding in that set-up (and shades of Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha and The Stars Are Legion), but The All-Consuming World is mostly interested in the dynamics of its aging cyborg gang, and particularly the relationship between Maya and Rita. We see the story mostly through Maya's eyes (including the prosthetic one she has installed, with no anaesthetic and lavish descriptions of eye socket speculum usage, after the original is gouged out seconds after hatching a new clone body... don't say I didn't warn you about gore). Her perspective is deeply warped by love and codependence for Rita, which is generally rewarded with abuse, manipulation, and speculums to the eye socket. Maya's internal dialogue already acknowledges the gap between her unwavering loyalty and Rita's sadistic responses, but when her old colleagues come back into her life, their reactions to seeing her still in thrall to Rita and the juxtaposition with their own lives provokes Maya to question even more of herself. Those colleagues include popstar and former almost-flame Verdigris, mercenary-turned-law-enforcement Constance, and Ayane, who doesn't really have any identifying features beyond "is hot and violent", which doesn't really work in this crowd (she also did the eye gouging). Maya also connects indirectly, through family, with another member of the Dirty Dozen, and it's through these relationships that the tension of The All-Consuming World builds.

This tension is all quite dramatic, and combined with scenes from AI Pimento (who is working for the AI that gave Rita the information about Elise and holds the location to Dimmuborgir), and from Elise herself, we get a decently three dimensional picture of this gritty, complicated conflict. Unfortunately, the focus on character has two drawbacks: first, because most of the interactions we see involve Maya, and Maya's brain is very specifically wired to care about Rita and almost nothing else, we don't get much character development for anyone other than her and the other two point of view characters. There are a lot of external clues as to how things have changed, and a great deal of information, from various perspectives, about the group's mercenary days and the extent to which that was actually a good time. There are also some identity shifts: notably Verdigris and Constance both come out to Maya as trans in the same scene (Verdigris is genderfluid and uses both he and she pronouns; Constance is non-binary and uses they/them). All of the mercenaries have moved on from, or become stuck on, different elements of their pasts, and while it's interesting to see through the eyes of Maya, a character who is terribly equipped to figure all of this out, let alone show any empathy and insight into what people's pasts mean to them rather than applying it all to herself, it also loses the opportunity to see some of these folks through their own eyes. Most characters feel like they have a convincing inner life that's hidden from Maya, but some (Ayane, and also Rita) just feel two dimensional as a result.

The second drawback is that, while it's interesting to get invested in these characters, their problems and the extent to which they are too old for this shit, there's a whole lot else that could be going on in The All-Consuming World and just... isn't. While we're watching the old comrades of the Dirty Dozen argue in space, there's this sense of a huge world full of AI-clone conflict and space exploration and histories and secrets of this universe that are beyond the grasp or interest of Maya and her cohort and, therefore, don't really appear here. In a weird way, this isn't a book that's very interested in what the characters themselves would identify as the story: their goals, the reasons behind the AI attacks, the importance of Dimmuborgir and the results of their finding it (this, in particular... well, you'll see when you get to the end). Once you're clued in to the fact that this stuff doesn't really matter, then it's easy in some ways to sit back and enjoy the ride, but I can't help but feel a sense of wasted potential that we didn't, at least, get more of a balance. It doesn't help that The All-Consuming World is pretty short, when it feels like there's enough to carry a much longer story here (then again, Khaw usually writes at novella length or shorter, so this being a short novel is in-keeping with their storytelling style).

We also need to talk about the writing. The story of The All-Consuming World is told in lavish, almost purple prose interspersed with regular swearing, as for example with Ayane's introduction from the opening chapter:

"[Ayane's] casual numinosity is frankly offensive. It is empirical, how stunning she is, a fact that exists external to the hypothesis that beauty is qualified by the beholder. Maya had not consented to having her breath shanked from her by something as egregious as Ayane retreating into a halo of artificial light, and she is pissed at this misstep by the universe, pissed she hasn't become inoculated to such bodily treason, that Ayane after all these years could still have such an effect."

There's a ton of interesting choices being made here which add to the characters being developed: Maya's weakness for physical beauty, even as she only has the capacity at this point to love Rita; Ayane being hot and dangerous (note how her beauty "shanks" Maya); the juxtaposition of an academic register, talking about hypotheses and empirical facts, with the religious notes (halos and numinosity) and then with slang like shank and Maya describing her emotional state as being "pissed". It's evocative stuff! But it's not a choice that's going to work for everyone, and to be honest, it's not a style that worked well for me. The All-Consuming World's expansive vocabulary it's not particularly accessible (I had to go and double check what "numinous" meant and that's nowhere near the most obscure word in this book), and it's also kind of relentless, even in pacy action scenes. It has the effect of either slowing the reader - and therefore the book - down, or making you feel like you've missed context by going along with it. At the end of reading, there are elements of the plot, especially the parts involving AIs, that I'm really unclear about, and I have no idea if it's because it was left mysterious or because my comprehension went on holiday at key moments, and while I fully accept that that's a me problem, it's a sign of this book and me not quite gelling.

All of that is quite a lot of negativity for a book that, actually, I liked reading a lot and think is objectively kind of amazing. Khaw's books have always almost worked for me, and after seeing their talents on such strong display, I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I enjoy the idea of them more than the execution. Still, The All-Consuming World is going to have lots of fans out there among those who really gel with Khaw's work and those who are looking for some grim, femme-led space opera - if that sounds like you, this is one to look out for.

The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 amazing prose; +1 some of the best grim mercenary femmes since Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha

Penalties: -2 Really underdelivers on its worldbuilding potential

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another (long delayed) edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about?

Addison, Katherine. The Witness for the Dead [Tor]
Publisher's Description:

Katherine Addison returns to the glittering world she created for her beloved novel, The Goblin Emperor, in this stand-alone sequel

When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had set the bombs that killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his father’s Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it. He lost his place as a retainer of his cousin the former Empress, and made far too many enemies among the many factions vying for power in the new Court. The favor of the Emperor is a dangerous coin.

Now Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live quietly. As a Witness for the Dead, he can, sometimes, speak to the recently dead: see the last thing they saw, know the last thought they had, experience the last thing they felt. It is his duty use that ability to resolve disputes, to ascertain the intent of the dead, to find the killers of the murdered.

Celehar’s skills now lead him out of the quiet and into a morass of treachery, murder, and injustice. No matter his own background with the imperial house, Celehar will stand with the commoners, and possibly find a light in the darkness.

Katherine Addison has created a fantastic world for these books – wide and deep and true.

Why We Want It: This is the novel we didn't think we'd get. Addison had said that The Goblin Emperor was a standalone and that was seven years ago, so a return to this world is a welcome surprise. The Goblin Emperor was a spectacular fantasy, so we are so very excited. Adri has a nanoreview.

Cho, Zen. Black Water Sister [Ace]
Publisher's Description:

When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she’s moving back to Malaysia with her parents – a country she last saw when she was a toddler.

She soon learns the new voice isn’t even hers, it’s the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she’s determined to settle a score against a business magnate who has offended the god—and she’s decided Jess is going to help her do it, whether Jess wants to or not.

Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business, but dealing with her grandmother is just as complicated. Especially when Ah Ma tries to spy on her personal life, threatens to spill her secrets to her family and uses her body to commit felonies. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she’ll also need to regain control of her body and destiny – or the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.

Why We Want It: The Sorcerer to the Crown and The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water are so different from each other in style and tone, but what they share is being two thrillingly excellent stories and it is that difference that tells me that whatever Cho writes is something that I want to read.

Khaw, Cassandra. The All Consuming World [Erewhon]
Publisher's Description:

Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies through the years of a long, dangerous career with the infamous Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy, at least before their untimely and gruesome demise.

Decades later, she and her diverse team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade . . . but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir.

The highly evolved AI of the galaxy have their own agenda and will do whatever it takes to keep humanity from ever regaining control. As Maya and her comrades spiral closer to uncovering the AIs’ vast conspiracy, this band of violent women—half-clone and half-machine—must battle their own traumas and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead, in order to settle their affairs once and for all.

Welcome to The All-Consuming World, the debut novel of acclaimed writer Cassandra Khaw. With this explosive and introspective exploration of humans and machines, life and death, Khaw takes their rightful place next to such science fiction luminaries as Ann Leckie, Ursula Le Guin, and Kameron Hurley.

Why We Want It: That description. It's not often that a book description actually sells me on a story, but oh my fierce god that description.

Pinsker, Sarah. We Are Satellites [Berkley]
Publisher's Description:

From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.

Everybody’s getting one.

Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.

Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.

Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.

Why We Want It: This is one we've already read (and reviewed not once, but twice) - so we already know We Are Satellites is great. But - just in case you don't know, Sarah Pinsker is one of our great storytellers working today. Her debut novel A Song for a New Day was eerily prescient and exceptional. Her short stories are all top notch, and we're here for everything she writes.

Solomon, Rivers. Sorrowland [MCD]
Publisher's Description:

A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction

Vern—seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised—flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future—outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

Why We Want It: It is difficult to say that we're "excited" for a new book from Rivers Solomon because their books are just so heavy, but their work is so exceptional that you don't want to look away. Sorrowland, even just suggested by the title let alone the description, is looking to be a heavy and spectacular. Adri already wrote about it, so check out her review.

Vaughn, Carrie. Questland [John Joseph Adams]
Publisher's Description:

YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A MAZE FULL OF TWISTY PASSAGES...

Literature professor Dr. Addie Cox is living a happy, if sheltered, life in her ivory tower when Harris Lang, the famously eccentric billionaire tech genius, offers her an unusual job. He wants her to guide a mercenary strike team sent to infiltrate his island retreat off the northwest coast of the United States. Addie is puzzled by her role on the mission until she understands what Lang has built: Insula Mirabilis, an isolated resort where tourists will one day pay big bucks for a convincing, high-tech-powered fantasy-world experience, complete with dragons, unicorns, and, yes, magic.

Unfortunately, one of the island's employees has gone rogue and activated an invisible force shield that has cut off all outside communication. A Coast Guard cutter attempting to pass through the shield has been destroyed. Suspicion rests on Dominic Brand, the project’s head designer— and Addie Cox's ex-boyfriend. Lang has tasked Addie and the mercenary team with taking back control of the island at any cost.

But Addie is wrestling demons of her own—and not the fantastical kind. Now, she must navigate the deadly traps of Insula Mirabilis as well as her own past trauma. And no d20, however lucky, can help Addie make this saving throw.

Why We Want It: I'm sorry to admit that I had fallen off of Carrie Vaughn for a bit following her concluding the Kitty Norville series of novels in 2015, but her two Robin Hood novellas last year was a reminder just how much I like her writing. I've heard nothing but great things about Questland and it's time to get back.

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Born to the Blade: Episodes 7 & 8

Today we return to my look at Michael R. Underwood's consistently excellent serial Born to the Blade. Following my thoughts on Episodes 5 & 6 (see here), we continue on with episodes 5 and 6, written by Cassandra Khaw and and Malka Older, respectively.

Episode 7: Dreadnought

War! Or, at least the first steps towards war have been taken. With the suspicion between Quloo and Rumika over the destroyed shipment of aerstone, Quloo has parked a warship over Twaa-fei and all the nations are more than on edge. They're taking sides, they're breaking old alliances and friendships. The neutral ground of Twaa-fei is looking more and more like it is going to be where the peace of nations is fully shattered.

Though the last episode was titled "Spiraling", that title would be just as apt for this one. Cassandra Khaw is extremely effective at bringing that spiraling distrust to the forefront. Each warder is on edge, Ojo in particular is as tightly wound as it is possible to be.

There is a moment of crowning awesomeness in "Dreadnought", which is that of Lavinia facing down that titular dreadnought. A loaded to bear warship is anchored above Twaa-fei and Lavinia, with just her sword and her skill, is able to use the magic of the forms and symbols of bladecrafting and single handedly take on that warship. It was spectacular and Khaw made that extended sequence do double duty, working through narrative of Kris feeling betrayed by a friend and Michiko's exerting a small bit of independence after finding herself the primary warder of her nation.


Episode 8: Refugees

"You mean like unprovoked attacks, colonialist rhetoric, stronger powers ganging up on the weak? Yes,  I'd say something is going around."

Even in an episodic series as smoothly written as Born to the Blade, there are certain story beats and landmarks that puts me in mind of who the writer is. A story tangentally dealing with refugees (despite the title, which is more a story driver than the story itself) is very much what I would expect from Malka Older.

We're still on the edge of a massive explosion into war. Both Quloo and Rumika are becoming increasingly isolated, though we see Kris Denn from Rumika still working to learn the truth of the destruction of the Rumikan fleet with hints that if he aligns Rumika with the Merkitan Empire that he will receive support. But that goes back to the opening quote about colonialism and stronger powers.

While I'm sure at some point Born to the Blade will erupt into all out war, I'm not in a rush. The gradual alienation is so effective and so - well, entertaining isn't the right word because the parallels to the real world is are just a touch too close for comfort. The alienation is compelling. Will Ojo be torn between duty to his nation or opposing what he feels is wrong? Will Lavinia succeed in driving every other nation to their knees in an echo of American arrogance? Will Rumika truly find allies? There's a lot to think about and more questions than that to see if Older will answer in Episode 9: "Assassination".


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. 

Born to the Blade: Episodes 3 & 4

Welcome to the second part of coverage of Born to the Blade, the newest epic fantasy serial from Serial Box and created by Michael R. Underwood. After my look at the first two episodes (see here), I realized the format needed to change just a bit so I could focus a touch more on each episode rather than a weirdly generic essay.

Today we're going to look at episodes 3 and 4. 

Episode 3: Baby Shower

In the hands of Cassandra Khaw, even baby showers are political. On the island of Twaa-Fei, everything is political. We learned that Ojo Kante, a warder was the father of Penelope Krykos' baby. Penelope is another warder, known as a "fierce battlemistress" - which though I'm not completely sure what exactly that is, I'm pretty sure it means that Penelope is a complete badass. It also means that she has no interest in the baby shower being thrown on her behalf by Bellona, the junior warder for the Mertikan Empire. Bellona is attempting to both curry favor with Penelope as well as soften the forceful impressions and personality of her more senior warder, Lavinia.

There is a sense that "Baby Shower" is the calm before the storm. A baby shower should be an innocuous and happy event, but on an island where everything is politics and every warder is seeking to advantage their own nations (some more aggressively than others), the baby shower here is a political event and gathering filled with posturing and planning.

What I most appreciate so far is how deftly Khaw (as well as Underwood and Brennan before her) handles the characterization and development of the story so far - building on what came before and setting up what comes next - all the while telling a compelling story on its own.

Episode 4: The Gauntlet

Here's the action I've been waiting for since the teases in the first two episodes. "The Gauntlet" is the opportunity for the much smaller (but wealthy) nation of Rumika to earn a seat on the Warder's Circle of Twaa-Fei, to earn a voice in that quasi United Nations of diplomacy and dueling. It is the opportunity for Kris Denn to live up to the trust their nation put in them and to protect the future of Rumika. All they have to do is defeat four of the six sitting warders in armed combat, or earn enough respect and esteem in combat and diplomacy that they vote Rumika a seat at the table.

"The Gauntlet" is not a wall to wall fight scene, but it is packed with action, dueling, and (as always) scheming. Michael R. Underwood understands how to write action. The combat in "The Gauntlet" is tightly written and, similar how Robert Jordan wrote the swordplay in The Wheel of Time, we may not exactly get everything happened in each fight because of how certain forms and maneuvers are named, we get the flow of the fight. It's delightful and suspenseful. After the twist in "Arrivals", we don't quite know how this is all going to end up for Rumika. Maybe Kris will earn that seat on the Circle, but it is just as likely to the story Underwood and company are telling that Kris will lose and suffer Rumika to lose the right to challenge for that seat for a full decade.

The greatest success thus far into Born to the Blade is how much finishing each episode makes me want to immediately start reading the next one.



POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.  

Fireside Chat: Amanda Rose Smith of Serial Box

One of our contributors, Shana, is also the social media manager for Serial Box, a company that creates and distributes serialized audio fiction. Think audiobooks with extra bells and whistles. Shana put me in touch with Amanda Rose Smith (@LadySoundSmith on Twitter), who is the audio producer and composer for most of Serial Box's output, including the new fantasy series Born to the Blade. This series has an impressive pedigree, and boasts a writing team of Michael R. Underwood, Marie Brennan, Malka Older, and Cassandra Khaw. Amanda is an audio pro with literally hundreds of audiobook credits under her belt, and production and composition credits for a number of other projects across many different media. We spoke through the interwebs to discuss some of the ways this type of audio production overlaps and differs from other kinds of production work. — Vance K

VK: Could you give a quick overview of your involvement with Serial Box? I know you composed the Born to the Blade theme, but does it go beyond that?

ARS: Yes, I'm actually the audio producer for just about all the series. So that means I cast (with their final approval) and coordinate the recording and post production. I do all the sound design and themes as well. There are a couple series I didn't do, such as The Witch Who Came in From the Cold and Belgravia, but that's it.

VK: Gotcha. I listened to Born to the Blade Episode 1, and it wasn't exactly what I expected. I don't know why, but the notion of "serialized audio fiction" made me think of old radio shows, with full casts, etc. This was more like an audiobook with sound effects. Is that an accurate description? And for context, I loooove audiobooks.

ARS: Sort of! In the audio world, those old audio dramas are kind of antiquated and I didn't really want to harken back to an older form as much as work towards a newer one. Serial Box calls itself the HBO of reading, and I was thinking of it more as a hybrid between a television series and a book. So my [audio] effects are meant less to give sound to every little thing that might make sound, and more to just subtly make the listening experience a bit more immersive than it would be in a straight audiobook.

VK: Do some of the series feature a full-cast production, or are they exclusively a single narrator?

ARS: Some of them are multicast! Tremontaine has 3 narrators. It's still not like a radio play though, because they tend to narrate different sections from the point of view of different characters, less than speaking directly to each other.

VK: I want to circle back to the "audiobook with sound effects" thing later, but since you mentioned multiple narrators, that leads me to something else. When you're dealing with something that's hours long, are your narrators there with you in-studio, or do they all record separately and then send in the audio? The last time I did a lot of voice over recording, I insisted on bringing them in because — I know many performers have home studios — but I was too nervous as a producer to cede control of the read to someone I hadn't worked with before. What's your approach?

ARS: I do both in different situations. Sometimes I also direct via Skype. If someone is going to record at home, I often do that for the first episode, but we also do comprehensive listen downs and rounds of corrections. So if someone does record at home, self-directed, we make changes as needed if something feels off.

VK: What is that "listen down" like? How many people are involved?

ARS: It varies. Sometimes its just me. Oftentimes, the series producers listen before a piece airs as well. And, depending on the project, I sometimes enlist proofers to listen and note any mistakes. Every episode gets listened to at least twice before airing, which is really important for quality, I think.

VK: How meticulous can you afford to be in line readings and nuances of performance? My work with narration and voice over has extended only to projects that are less than an hour in length, but I'll drill down on almost any single line that isn't as good as I feel it can be. But when you expand out to novel/series-length work, I assume there have to be "we can live with it" moments.

ARS: It does happen sometimes. And certain things are also subjective. It's not always a matter of it being wrong, but of different interpretations. When it comes to straight errors, I'm pretty serious about that, but all the actors we work with are truly fantastic and sometimes their interpretation is something I might not have thought of, but it's still great.

VK: Yeah, that happens a lot. This isn't any kind of revelation, but I feel like the longer the project, the more crucial that trust in the person you've cast becomes. If I'm doing something very brief, I feel like I've got a bag of tricks that can get almost anybody through to a workable final product. But that only holds for so long. What is your casting process, then? Do performers read small samples, do you work off of recommendations, etc?

ARS: I've been working in the audiobook world for about 10 years, so I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of actor contacts. So I draw on them a lot. Generally I get a lot of auditions, pare it down to a few people I think are all great, and then make the final decision from those people with the producers of the series. But trust is SO key. Like, for me, following audition instructions is really important. If you don't do that, how can I trust you to take care of the project?

VK: Right. Circling back, I'm curious what the decision-making process is for how to structure your approach to sound design on a project like Born to the Blade. The canvas seems so vast, you could do an entire start-to-finish sound mix, but instead you pick your spots. What helps govern your approach when the options seem endless?

ARS: Well, obviously time is a factor, as much as I wish it weren't. But it's also an aesthetic choice — for me, it's about supporting the actor's performance, enhancing it, but not competing with it. It's not like a visual medium, where you can design around the dialogue. The whole thing is dialogue. So you have to consider that with the effects, to make sure you aren't covering the performance up. All the information about the story is coming primarily from their words.

VK: Do you have any insight into what's driving the push into serialized fiction at the moment? A couple of years ago John Scalzi started releasing The Human Division as a serial, which harkens back to old...I mean, Dickensian...publishing models, but now the trend seems to have caught on. Is it the influence of podcasting? Something else?

ARS: I think podcasting has a lot to do with it...people are doing a lot of multi-tasking, and I think that these episodes are great for commuting, or doing things around the house. It can be nice to have a bite-sized story rather than a full novel, and also following along with something as its being released, weekly, or monthly, or what have you.

VK: Before moving on, I have to ask — there are people who physically make books who can't stand to read them, there are grips who make movies who can't stand to watch them, etc. — do you get to enjoy podcasts and audiobooks yourself, or does being in the trenches make you want to keep them at arms' length, as a consumer?

ARS: It can be hard. I'm not sure if it's that I want to keep them at arm's length in general, or just that since I spend so much time listening to them that it can be nice to get away. I have about 1000 books under my belt in general, including Serial Box and my other work, I probably end up working on around 75-100 books a year so I don't always want to hear more in my free time, especially since it can be hard not to listen with a work-critical ear. BUT that said, I also really, really enjoy listening to the ones I work on, and sometimes have to re-listen to passages because I was into the story and not paying close-enough attention to the accuracy or what have you. So I really do enjoy listening to them, and I think if for some reason I weren't working on so many I would listen a lot.

VK: That's always a nice feeling. Getting lost in something you helped bring into being.

ARS: Totally!!! I had the Born to the Blade theme stuck in my head for two days, and was really proud of that.

VK: Can we talk about your music? Music started my journey into the arts, and into my career. I started off in a band, we decided to make a music video, made album art, etc., and that got me hired to do graphics, and then video work, etc...So I'm always interested in other artists' journeys. How did your creative/music endeavors intersect with a career in audio production?

ARS: Well, I started off as a classical composition major, specifically interested in film music, and I started engineering originally to record my own music. And then found that I loved that, too. Interestingly enough, my work study was with the office of disability services recording textbooks onto tape for blind and dyslexic students with one of those old little dictation recorders. I'd get their weekly assignments and then read them aloud.

VK: The tools have changed a little bit.

ARS: Heh. For sure. When I was graduating, I realized that as a composer and musician, making a career was...challenging. I come from a poor background and there wasn't anyone able to subsidize a beginning composition career. So given that, I liked recording, I decided to continue school in that vein, and ended up getting a masters in music technology from NYU. Over the years, all the different backgrounds and skills have just kind of...merged interestingly. Recording, composing, and also the out-loud expression of stories. Working for Serial Box has been a particularly cool way to mix all those skill sets.

VK: Between the Born to the Blade theme and the work you have on your website, I'd certainly describe your music as "cinematic." B2tB is as epic and sweeping as you'd expect in a fantasy TV show or movie. Do you bring a sense of genre (of the overall project) to bear when you start composing, or is it rooted in character, story scope, etc?

ARS: Definitely both. Part of what I love about this kind of composition is the opportunity to step into so many different worlds and genres. Just in the themes...Born to the Blade, Remade, Royally Yours, False Idols...they're all totally different styles. I've always been a giant nerd, and most of the other projects I work on are smaller scope, so I was particularly psyched about B2B. I so rarely get to use choirs in my pieces!

VK: When you're digging into pieces that are very different in terms of genre, do you find yourself relying on your training, or do you seek out a lot of examples in that style that you look to for inspiration?

ARS: Both. I always ask the series producer for a few links, even something on YouTube, that they like and that they feel is in the vein of what they want. And if possible, I try to wait until I've finished recording and creating the first episode until I finalize the theme, so I know that it fits with the genre but also the characters and mood and plot trajectory. Music is such an emotional thing, it's hard to explain what something should be in words. Just saying something like "fantasy, epic" means so many different things to so many people.

VK: This is something I struggle with: if you're trying to do a piece that's "like" something else...like a fantasy theme, or like a mystery thing...do you try to nail that thing — the best Amanda Rose Smith version of a mystery theme, for instance — or do you also try to subvert expectations in some ways?

ARS: I don't try to subvert anything unless I think that's part of the process. An old professor of mine once said that in a film, the score is like an invisible actor, or the psyche of a character. It doesn't add something that isn't there, but it does illuminate something that someone might not know is there. So that could subvert expectations in some instances, but that's not my goal. So, for Born to the Blade, it's epic, but its also emotional. There's a lot of political stuff there, and stories about cultures that have been subverted by other ones. So I didn't want to only go big and bombastic, but also to inject some emotion into it.

VK: I think you did. If I remember right, you did some academic work on whether regular folks can tell the difference between acoustic and sampled instruments.

ARS: Yes! That's what my master's thesis was on. Of course that was a decade ago now, but still.

VK: How does that inform your approach to recording? I assume you're mixing live and sampled instruments in a lot of your work?

ARS: Well, mostly due to time constraints, these themes have been largely computer only. But when the opportunity arises, I do like to mix the two, even if listeners can't tell the difference. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, for the same reason that an actor's interpretation might be worthwhile even if it's not the same as mine would be. Real live musicians bring their own soul to the work. I've heard other people play things that I've written and thought, "Wow! I didn't even know it could sound like that"

VK: Another lovely feeling.

ARS: I wrote my first orchestral piece when I was 17, and though it was pretty terrible in retrospect, I remember that feeling well.

VK: But for all of that, people can't generally tell the difference, is what you're saying?

ARS: Generally not. Even when I did my experiment in 2008, people only guessed right about half the time. Tut there are certain instruments and genres that are harder to do all with computer.

VK: For sure. But regardless of the method of production, I feel like the goal is always to land emotionally with the listener, or viewer. So if you can accomplish that, what does it matter if the strings are synths or not?

ARS: Agreed!

VK: It seems like in a lot of ways your Serial Box gig is kind of a perfect one for you — you get to bring a lot of strengths to bear. Is this sort of a dream project, or is something dangling out there that you think, "One day I'd really love to...?"

ARS: I think that to some degree, just because of my personality type, I'll always have those dangling ideas. But to be honest, it really IS a fantastic gig for that reason. I get to merge a lot of different skill sets, but also the projects are all super high-quality, and the producers I work with really respect me and the skills and ideas I bring to the table. I feel that I'm really allowed to do a lot creatively. In a perfect world, every project would also have unlimited time for completion too! But alas I can't keep the listeners waiting forever.

Check out Born to the Blade here. And take a look at our (very positive) review of the first two episodes here. 

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather since 2012, folk musician, and Emmy-winning producer.

Nanoreviews: Elysium, Hammers on Bone, A City Dreaming

Brissett, Jennifer Marie. Elysium [Aqueduct Press, 2014]

I wonder if reading the publisher's description would have reset my expectations for Elysium. Pun intended.
"A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program’s data, however, has been corrupted." That's the description from Aqueduct's website and might have helped center how I read the novel. Elysium is disjointed, meeting the fractured nature of the program. One section has the characters as male and female with one set of names. The next has the same characters, but gender flipped with slightly altered names. The next they are father and daughter. The next they are different again.

This builds the sense of unease as we can't quite figure out why the narrative / computer program is broken and what that means for the story Brissett is telling. I often struggle with non traditional narratives and it is only at the very end that I finally began to understand the story of Elysium and how everything fit together. I have the sense that a second reading of the novel would be much more rewarding than the first, but the problem is that I don't actually want to read Elysium again. There's only so much time.
Score: 6/10

Khaw, Cassandra. Hammers on Bone [Tor.com Publishing, 2016]

Hammers on Bone is noirish detective novel with Lovecraftian overtones that become more overt as the novella progresses though they do not dominate the story. There is a lot to like here and I appreciated how Khaw treated the morality of the the protagonist, John Persons as well as how the story becomes increasingly creepy and disturbing the deeper into the investigation Persons gets. The thing is, I struggled to really connect or care much about how this was all going to turn out.

Part of my problem, I think, is because I read Hammers on Bone back to back with Ruthanna Emrys' forthcoming novel Winter Tide. Even though they are really only similar in the sense that both novels touch upon Lovecraftian mythos, reading them so close together has connected them in my mind. I'll admit that this isn't fair because the two novels are so stylistically different that comparing them is really without merit. I bring it up because I fully acknowledge that one of the reasons I didn't appreciate Hammers on Bone as much as I might have is that it isn't the book it isn't supposed to be. That's not fair, but that's also the reason I can't rate it higher.
Score: 6/10

Polansky, Daniel. A City Dreaming [Regan Arts, 2016]

Though I have no idea what it would feel like to drop acid, I imagine the literary equivalent would be Daniel Polansky's A City Dreaming. This is a bizarre, non-linear novel of linked vignettes which build the overall atmosphere of this sideways New York City filled with impossible magic and even more impossible creatures. This is what A City Dreaming is, and if you struggle with non-linear novels which bounce around as a series of scenes and prefer a much more straight forward narrative (as I do), you'll likely struggle with this one. I know that a novel is not for me when I have to wonder if taking drugs is perhaps the way to better appreciate a novel. This is not a flaw of the novel. It has everything to do with how and what I respond to in fiction. Of course, this does not change that I failed to engage with or appreciate A City Dreaming.
Score: 5/10


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004. Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015, editor since 2016. Minnesotan.  

Microreview [Novella] Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef by Cassandra Khaw

Don't worry, there are kittens at the end of this review...

The Meat:

In Kuala Lumpur the gods from a number of different pantheons are vying for power. And Rupert Wong, remarkable really only for his ability to render delicacies for his ghoulish masters and for his bloody past, is thrust into the middle of a situation that could lead to a war between them all. If that's not a great hook, I don't know what is. And if the novella was only about Rupert flailing against the momentum of war, trying to save what he can, which mostly means his own skin, it would be an entertaining tale worth checking out. But this story...does something a bit more than that, something subversive and subtle that makes it even better, that layers meaning and intent into a powerful tale about corruption and the responsibility of one person against a rotten system.

Stories featuring pantheons at war are not exactly new to urban fantasy. The Greek gods fighting the Norse fighting the native gods of the Americas, at times it feels like you can't turn around without bumping into one or another. What is unique and compelling here is that the mythology takes place in a non-Western context that complicates the more common tropes it conjures. Rupert Wong is an easy character to understand. In many ways he is exactly the Western hero, the everyman, the poor sod just trying to get by. His voice is wry and sarcastic, his life a series of unfortunate events. He's trying to do right by those he cares about. To a point, at least. He's a man with a dark past who got a glimpse of what to expect when he died, an eternity of the deepest hells, and determined to try and turn over a new leaf. Not by being a good person suddenly, but by working for those hells he was bound for in order to commute his sentence.

And here's where the work gets deliciously complex. Because the story can be read as just a man trying to do the "right thing." Rupert does always seem to be at the bad end of a beating, or a possession, or a plot to spark off a war. He's a sympathetic character in many ways, because his actions always seem reasonable, even clever at times. He's the main character, the hero, and while he might not always be heroic, isn't that what's expected? In the landscape of grit and grimdark, isn't that what people expect from their heroes? What they want, because what's the fun of a hero who's nice, who's good? Isn't "good" an illusion in the face of the ugliness that Rupert sees, that he is forced to participate in? Isn't Rupert doing the best he can, and shouldn't we applaud him for that, because things will work out in the end?

The answer is, of course, no. And it's a no that the novella weaves expertly, revealing again and again the extent to which Rupert is not a good person, is not a hero. The extent to which believing that "good" is an illusion allows evil to prosper, to continue. In accepting the belief that Rupert is doing the only thing he can, the reader (and the character himself) become a part of the corruption that makes victims of everyone. It is no surprise that those most victimized by the story, by the setting, are not the able men. It is the children who pay. It is women who pay. It is the poor who pay. And Rupert, for all that he's the everyman, is in reality one of the privileged class, can escape his damning as long as he supports the system. As long as he passes on the injustice, he can protect himself from it. But he also becomes a part of it.

More and more I'm finding myself both drawn in and repulsed by stories like this. They are, by necessity, sometimes ugly stories. Violence is rampant, even to Rupert but more horrifically to those around him. Children are brutalized, women are objects. The story really does sell his pain and his choice, but it also shows what focusing on that pain means. There's a strong (for me, at least) urge to identify with Rupert. He's the main character. The Hero. He's funny and entertaining. He's clever and wily. He's the underdog being used by the gods. He sees the corruption of the system and he hates it. Except he uses that corruption to benefit himself and those he cares for. He consciously decides to become culpable, to privilege his own comfort over stopping a war. And in that moment he confronts the reader with their own role in corruption, in their own guilt for falling into the narrative that this is about Rupert. For all that he is the main character, this is not his story. This is the story of the people that Rupert fails, those that go largely unseen. It is the weight of their stories that make this project work.

In the end, the novella works as both an entertaining romp and as something much darker and much deeper. It becomes one of a growing number of stories to complicate the everyman character, the lovable loser. To show just how dangerous that narrative can be. It grows right out of the conventions and tropes in SFF, grittier than grimdark and much more hitting. It is fun and funny and charming, but it is also subversive as hell and exquisitely pointed. It left me numb. Luckily, thanks to my previous review of Making Wolf, I came prepared this time. Behold, adorable kittens to aid in recovery!

The Math:

Baseline Assessment: 7/10 

Bonuses: +1 for a fresh, fun voice and interesting character in Rupert, +1 for really complicating morality and complicity

Negatives: -1 for wow some of that was really fucking dark and difficult to read

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 "mind officially blown" see our full rating system here.

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POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.

REFERENCE: Khaw, Cassandra. Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef [Abaddon Books, 2015]