Book Microreview: Amusement Park Arcana by Jennifer R. Donohue

A contemporary horror/dark fantasy novella with a strong grounding in its setting

Riley is a Jersey Girl. She lives near the Shore, and has a season badge at Asbury Park. She has been drifting since before she graduated from high school, because her best friend Tara disappeared months ago. The last place she was seen was Thrill Park, a family-owned amusement park. And Riley is determined to find out what happened to her. Even if she has to become part of the staff of Thrill Park to do it.

This is Amusement Park Arcana by Jennifer R. Donohue.

One of the book’s strongest points is the voice. We get a first-person point of view from Riley, full of her opinions, determinations, fears and doubts. She has been devastated by losing Tara, and trying to find her is what keeps her going. Even as strange things happen to her at the park, she keeps that drive, that internal voice, that forward momentum going. Riley feels authentic, and we get to understand her deal in a short space thanks to the author’s writing. It shows just how broken a person Riley has become since Tara’s disappearance.

Another strength is the grounded worldbuilding. The book is set in coastal New Jersey and expertly captures the feel of a place I didn’t grow up in, but visited often enough to find the sense of place to be in accord with my memories. There are a couple of comparisons and allusions to an infamous amusement park, Action Park. Having been to Action Park several times growing up in the area, this was an excellent reference point for me to really get a sense of how Thrill Park compares, or doesn’t. The horror and real life dangers of Action Park are different from the more supernatural ones of Thrill Park, although there is an attraction in the fictional Thrill Park that definitively evoked its Action Park counterpart.

That handling of the mundane elements is strong, perhaps almost too dominant a flavor in the novella. I think I would have liked more of the supernatural elements, which were applied with a lighter touch than most of the fantasy fiction I read. But perhaps that is part of the point this story. The mundanity of Riley coming to terms with Tara’s fate and processing her feelings about it has more narrative weight.

That said, I was darkly amused by what was for me the central supernatural element, that the penumbra of mundane space coincidentally leans into a hot topic in horror and fantasy: liminal spaces. And of course, the recent movie Backrooms. The worker and employee spaces in an amusement park are a backrooms-like liminal space if someone not of that public (or someone new to it, like Riley) should stumble into it. It’s a space that we don’t normally see, but logically they exist.¹

And that brings me to the title of the book and what the author focuses on, and what I focused on. The title of the book is Amusement Park Arcana, and there is a tarot reading as a centerpiece and a station on the Riley’s path to find out what happened to Tara. At the point it happens we’ve already had a weird/fantastic note. And the tarot reading leads Riley to get into the liminal space where she finds out what really happened to Tara. That reading, given the title, is a big sign.

Perhaps it’s because of my lack of real knowledge of the tarot that I didn’t focus on the details when I was reading it, but looking back now, my focus on the liminal space, dictated by recent media, led me to not realizing that the tarot reading is the real focus of this story. Riley’s reading has her embody the card she represents: the Knight of Swords. This card, I am given to understand, is an energetic, driven figure, who wants to accomplish their goals at any and all costs. That certainly is Riley, who has responded to her best friend disappearing at an amusement park by charging in and signing up to be hired by the park so that she can investigate it herself. Rushing in where angels fear to tread is this archetype.

That, indeed, is Riley. Rushing and determined. Sort of like the story itself, come to think of it.

Thus, Amusement Park Arcana rushes by, in a similar manner, quickly. I am not sure about the ending; it felt a little underwhelming to me. But the story up to that part, for its relative balance of mundane versus supernatural, is solid. It flows well and quickly, and as I think about it in retrospect a week later, especially as noted above with the tarot implications, my initial hard feelings about the ending have softened. It’s not as much of a resolution as I might have liked, but for other readers, it might be enough.

Highlights:

• Great sense of place in New Jersey
• Good use of tarot as magic and central theme
• Strong first-person POV protagonist

Reference: Donohue, Jennifer R. Amusement Park Arcana [self-published, 2026].

¹ Now thinking back to my days of working in a supermarket, and not really realizing at the time how I was often in spaces that we would now consider liminal. I know the backrooms of Pathmark (rest in peace) and can walk them in my mind to this day. But a stranger thrust into that space would be at sea.

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

Book Review: The Sleep of Empires by David Annandale

The first entry in the Book of the Null series takes a writer better known for Warhammer 40k and Doctor Doom and introduces us to an original fantasy universe of his own

Big things start from small beginnings. In a world in a very tenuous cold peace between various factions, several small events upset the balance of power and begin to change the face of a continent, and of a long history as well. David Annandale’s The Sleep of Empires, his first foray into an original universe for quite some time, starts us off small in a relatively typical fantasy mode. We have a student at a university who is seeking to steal an artifact. We have a star-crossed couple seeking a marriage that would end a family feud—except the would-be bride’s father has other marital plans for her. And the cut-out would-be suitor has a force at his back to help said father. But when the father sets the groom an impossible task, what is found is as equally dangerous as the artifact book…

And the result of all these actions is much more than a thief on the run, or a fractious family feud. Instead, the world, and even the gods, will have to take notice as unexpected consequences and long-held secrets come to light.

Our points of view are several. Latanna Forgrym and Alisteyr Huesland are the prospective couple. The feud between the Hafields and McCoys could be sealed with a marriage, and they do seem to love each other. At least, Alisteyr does. Latanna is a little more cagey about such things. The author drops some hints here and there right from the beginning that this relationship isn’t going to go as planned, even before her father objects.

Another point of view is Garwynn. He plays at being a magician, because magic doesn’t really exist anymore, or so people think. Tricks and sleight of hand is all that one can do… until his power manifests spectacularly and suddenly. That brings him to the attention of the authorities, and is a signpost that the world indeed is changing, and perhaps not for the better.

Annandale has nicely built in connections and history that link all these characters one way or another, so it does not feel like a set of random viewpoints. Garwynn, although living in “the big city,” is from the same area as Alisteyr and Latanna, and had unrequited feelings for Alisteyr, once upon a time.

Kansthun and Memory are mercenaries hired by Latanna and Alisteyr. Kansthun is a Kaul, of which we will talk more in a bit. Memory is aptly named, because he doesn’t talk and seems not to remember his past. And just what he is is not clear, even to himself. Memory is a real heart of this book in a sense that the others are not. It turns out Memory is much more than he appears, even to himself, and The Sleep of Empires is fundamentally about Memory starting to recover his legacy. It’s not a happy one.

If you have read Annandale’s work before, he writes in dark worlds and often features characters who are charitably called dark, and in many cases can be better classified as outright villains even if their sense of purpose obscures from them how they are perceived. Sometimes they come to the awareness they are considered villains and yet do what they will anyway. Annandale loves the “villain is a hero of their own story” trope and uses it here, and not just for Memory. There are multiple characters in this story who really could be considered villains in any sense of the world, or perhaps, at the very least, monsters.¹ The care and humanity that Annandale shows for characters like Corvus Rebine and Doctor Doom transfers very well to his characters here. The monsters and villains here are humanized, but what they do and what they are is not sugarcoated. And, in keeping with Davies’s book as footnoted above, the villains also have been painted by mythologized history and its sometimes deliberate rewriting.

Now let me talk about the worldbuildi|ng. Given the strength of Annadale’s work with villains and such characters, I wanted to save the world for after my discussion of same, so here we are. As mentioned above, this is an original world of his, one that has been gestating for quite some time. It’s a secondary world fantasy, dark in tone. We have some fractious (from within and without) human kingdoms and polities. These kingdoms have a cold peace with the nearby imperious and imperial elves, with designs of their own. And then there are the Kaul, from out east, skeletal, monstrous. If one wants to use a generic term for them, they are most definitely the “orcs” of the setting. This really puts, as noted about, Kansthun (and Memory as his partner) as real outsiders in the human and elven polities. Does all of this sound familiar (Elves, Humans, etc). Yes, although the use of gods, the theological history, helps stamp this into his own mold and makes it rise above a repeat of old tropes.

So there is that theological history. Long ago, apparently there was a war against a Morgoth-like figure ruling a land called Voran. Humans, elves, dwarves and gods marched against this figure and destroyed the land and dealt with the God of Evil. Just how and what happened to him, is a case of “history became legend, legend became myth.” Voran is just a word to the humans, even as both they and the elves keep watch over the destroyed area just in case. That sort of fantastical watch over things of Voran and the Void extend even to mathematics. For, you see, the “Book of the Null” refers to one of the most useful (but in this world, dangerous) concepts that exist: the number zero.

So who is the ideal reader for this book? I think this is a case where a book is not going to have universal appeal. If you like dark fantasy worlds², this is the place for you. If you are a fan of Annandale’s previous and want to see what he can and does do in an original setting, this book is absolutely for you. In a darker tone, this book makes me think of Jacqueline Carey’s Banewrecker or other recent novels that have a villain protagonist, like, say, Cameron Johnston’s The Maleficent Seven (although tonally it reads very differently) or Ari Marmell’s The Conqueror’s Shadow.

The book ends with some revelations and an unveiling of what the conflict for the rest of the series is going to be about. I’m very interested in seeing how, now with more cards face up, Annandale shows off his main characters (especially the villains) and how the shattering conflict he has brewed up unfolds.

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Highlights:

• First original universe in a long time a from long-established author of Warhammer 40k and much more
• Villains: monsters and misunderstood
• Rich and deep fantasy world

References: Annandale, David, The Sleep of Empires Book of the Null, Nightshade Books, 2025.

¹ See my review of Surekha Davies’s: Humans A Monstrous History: http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/05/book-review-humans-monstrous-history.html

² Is this “grimdark”? Well, Warhammer 40k is one of the originators of the idea of grimdark. Annandale’s fiction is dark, and there are characters doing questionable things,but it is not a morosely and complete shades of dark grey and black world like you find in a grimdark setting of the first water. But I could see someone wanting to slot it in that category.

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

Book Review: The Gryphon King by Sara Omer

A monster-filled secondary-world fantasy that takes its cues and worldbuilding inspirations from points east of the Bosporus Strait

In a world of Khans and khanates, opulent city states and dreaming complacent kingdoms, Sara Omer’s The Gryphon King revolves around the driven desires of Bataar, the man who would be the titular Gryphon King as his ambitions and desires run up against a kingdom and its formidable women. One of them, Nohra, has worked hard to be one of the Harpy Knights, given one of the powerful weapons of her kingdom; and she rides and cares for her carnivorous pegasus, Mercy. Quite frankly, Nohra would rather be flying and defending the throne. But when Bataar shockingly and suddenly conquers her kingdom of Dumakra as part of his very successful campaign for universal conquest of the continent, Nohra finds herself nearly a hostage in the palace, a Harpy Knight chained to the whims of the Steppe Conqueror. She is definitely interested in getting rid of Bataar and restoring her homeland. But in the midst of courtly politics, intrigue and trying to walk a fine line with Bataar, strange things have been happening in the Kingdom. Monsters are afoot… and not just the titular Gryphons, either. Nohra and Bataar find themselves the unlikeliest of reluctant allies.

This is how the novel thus unfolds:

We have an interesting set of flawed characters, with secrets, lies, and hidden agendas, drawn into uneasy alliances and conflicts. Bataar and Nohra are our sole point-of-view characters, except for a chapter at the end featuring a character about whom any talk is extremely spoilery, so I will leave them out of the discussion. In addition to the monsters, I wonder whether this character is more of a central axis of the novel and the trilogy than one might first expect. Bataar, despite being a capable warlord, a cunning strategist, and a clever ruler, is arrogant, and way too often puts himself right in the front line of danger. Nohra, despite being a Harpy Knight, has some rather large blind spots, and she is sometimes overfocused on her goals and misses the bigger picture. Qaira, Bataar’s wife and political right hand, seems to have scheming plans of her own that neither Bataar nor Nohra suspect. Other intrigues fill out the narrative. Having conquered Dumakra, Bataar has set himself a whole host of headaches. This provides plenty of drama for the reader in between the more bloody conflicts.

What I really want to talk about, of course, if you have read any of my reviews, is the worldbuilding and the structure of the book. This is epic fantasy, clear to the vein, but there are notes of grimdark and darker fantasy in here. One of the comps given in the promo kit is Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller, and I think that is a good book to tie this to. It’s not full-on grimdark, even if, as noted above, we have a whole raft of flawed characters whose motivations, secrets and desires leave us with no clear white and black hats. It’s definitely taking notes from grimdark, showing the influence of that subgenre on the main body of epic fantasy. The courtly intrigue and very rich worldbuilding put me in the mind of a more straightforward Jenn Lyons. No footnotes, and playing with reference and metafiction, but keep the very rich empire and complicated characters. Samantha Shannon, in The Priory of the Orange Tree mode, also feels like a book and author that has kinship with this one.

But the world itself is what fascinates me. Omer has described herself as taking notes from the Ottoman Empire, and there is definitely the courtly intrigue, including among wives and concubines, that you’d find in, say, Magnificent Century.¹ Also the decor, the social relations, the descriptions of palaces and spaces, all point to, as I said above, cultural and social touchstones east of the Bosporus, toward Anatolia, Armenia, Persia and Central Asia. The physiogeographic setup of the continent is varied, ranging from the steppe that Bataar comes from to the dry desert realm that dominates Dumakra, and high mountains as well. There is a map, but I admit that I have strong questions about the river setup on the map and the geology of the continent as a result.

But returning to the cultural worldbuilding: I think, especially with Bataar and his steppe origins, the feeling I kept getting was not the Ottomans at all, but rather Timur the Lame. Tamerlane was a Turkic-Mongol warlord of the 14th century. Born on the steppe, like Bataar, he was injured at a young age, again, like Bataar. Tamerlane got the steppe tribes to unite under him to go on campaign. Same with Bataar, although that part of his story gets skipped over; we go from his formative fight with a gryphon to him off conquering.

Tamerlane had a wide set of military victories against a variety of opponents. Bataar seems a little less cruel than Tamerlane (who was very cruel, so don’t be deceived here), but is no less ambitious and expansive, and clearly is “punching above his weight” in taking on polities that he really shouldn’t. Both men want to conquer the world, and Tamerlane did a pretty good job at it, and in the first few chapters until he reaches Dumakra, Bataar is doing an excellent job, and is eager to continue his conquest. Granted, in our world, Tamerlane didn’t have to deal with carnivorous pegasi and worse, but the military genius, the fluidity of his responses, and the determination are all things I see in Bataar.

But yes, going to the fantastic, this novel is full of monsters. The pegasi and gryphons in this world, besides being strong and ferocious with beak and claws, also carry a debilitating and sometimes deadly infection if you are scratched by them. There are aquatic monsters as well, and then there are the ghouls. The ghouls are nasty and dangerous, and remind me of the ghuls in Saladin Ahmed’s Tower of the Crescent Moon. And fittingly, like those, they are found in a set of ruins our main characters camp in—and really, really shouldn’t have. This goes back to the flawed characters, and how Omer effectively uses their weaknesses to help drive the plot, again and again. They might be competent, strong and talented, but they have feet of clay.

There is definitely magic and mayhem (and even a hint of Gunpowder Empire) to the magic and the weapons that the Harpy Knights wield, as well as other magical items that show up. Omer is tapping into cultural touchstones that have rarely gotten play as the center. Places like Dumakra and the Steppe of Bataar’s homeland have, if they have been shown on screen in fantasy novels, often been places visited rather than the focus. And when we do see Southwestern Asian fantasy, it’s often been hundreds of years before, in the Caliphate, rather than the Timurid and Ottoman Empires. The Mughals, a couple of centuries ahead, and some distance east, seem to be also finally getting their due as inspiration for cultures, societies, characters, and worldbuilding. There is a rich vein here that Omer is mining for plenty of untapped potential. I find it interesting that her “Europe” analogue, Aglea, is off screen to the far north of the map. Omer is exactly inverting the tropes of the Great Wall of Europe by having the “Europeans” be the area only seen on a map and of much lesser importance.

There is one other thing I want to mention about The Gryphon King, which you may have picked up on already. The book is neither marketed as, nor actually is, the hot new invented category of romantasy. It’s firmly and apologetically widescreen secondary-world fantasy, and while there are all sorts of dynastic and court politics, schemes of succession and ownership based on marriage alliances, concubinages and the like, this novel does not fit in the romantasy category in the least. Just to make sure, since I seem to see every fantasy novel written by a woman labeled as “romantasy” these days, I looked back at the publicity for the book. It is, in fact, not. That is not to say that there isn’t a loving and clever marriage in here, as well as characters plotting for such marriages, and various characters finding each other attractive. But the focus of the novel is on more sociopolitical relationships, and sibling relationships, and, of course, the monsters.

If you want courtly intrigue, adventure, politics, and a large helping of man-eating monsters, based on Medieval Southwestern Asian motifs and cultural touchstones, The Gryphon King is definitely for you. It’s the first book in a series, and it only comes to a stopping point, but with a very appropriate hinge. I look forward to more in Omer’s world and characters.

Highlights:

• #teamgryphon
• Strong use of Southwest Asia as inspiration for setting and character detail
• NOT romantasy: epic fantasy with notes of grimdark and plenty of intrigue
• Richly written, with an excellent eye for detail

Reference: Omer, Sara. The Gryphon King [Titan Books, 2025].

¹ A Turkish TV historical drama that tells the story of Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman ruler, and his wife Hurrem, former slave girl. I came across this show last year by complete accident (someone in a seat in a plane in front of me was watching it, I took a screenshot and eventually figured it out). It's hugely popular in the Middle East but much less well known here. Which, frankly, if Netflix or the like got wind of it, an American version would come out, yesterday. Complicated, crafty and fascinating.  Think of it as I, Claudius, except for Suleiman, and you're there.

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

Book Review: We Who Hunt Alexanders by Jason Sanford

A dark fantasy contemplation of family, and monsters, and darker subjects still.

Amelia lives with her mother. Driven out of their village into the big city of Medea, they live on the edges of society. Amelia and her mother have special... dietary needs. Dietary needs that cause them to pursue and hunt a particular two legged sort of prey. For, you see, Amelia and her mother are both monsters. Rippers, specifically. Rippers are monsters who hunt a particular kind of man called Alexanders.

This is the story of Jason Sanford’s We Who Hunt Alexanders, a dark fantasy novella.

The novella is set in a somewhat fantastical version of our own real world, in the imaginary city of Medea, in a county that is never named, but feels like from context and clues like an analogue of Great Britain during the Victorian or maybe early Edwardian Age (Amelia, it turns out, loves to read penny dreadfuls). With that set up, Sanford plunges us immediately into the nature of Amelia and her mother, what rippers do and how they do it. And quickly from there sets up the conflicts and themes of the novella. The novella is a lean and mean story that stays in Amelia’s point of view throughout.

The novella makes Sanford’s theme explicit from the get go: Rippers are monsters who only hunt men, and only men who have or do commit violence, the Alexanders.¹ The Rippers, it turns out, cannot actually hunt men who haven’t taken that violence into their heart, that violence into their hands. Amelia and her mother are in a new age (and we learn that her mother is old, and dying, and of another age). In this world, there are almost too many Alexanders, and they are too powerful to reduce their numbers. Amelia, young and uncertain and not yet strong, grows into her own. In addition to that coming of age story, Amelia slowly begins to realize she is different from her mother, different from other Rippers in fact. And as her mother slowly weakens, the outside threat that hunts them both comes to the fore: Bishop Stoll. He is, in the parlance of the novella, an incendiary : a man who stirs up anger and hatred and violence on a large scale but is not directly an Alexander himself. They convince others to do their bidding, or others are inspired by the incendiary to actually turn Alexander themselves.

The problem for Amelia’s mother is that since Stoll is NOT an Alexander, they cannot attack and harm him, and actually suffer physical consequences in trying to do so. Part of the genius of Sanford’s writing is in the antagonist of Stoll. Not only is he an incendiary and not an Alexander, he is genre-savvy enough and knowledgeable enough to know about Rippers... and about their limitations. And is willing to use those weaknesses against Amelia and her mother, as needed. There is a gloating intelligence and cleverness and evil to Stoll that shows his dark charisma not only to his followers but to the reader as well.

And given Stoll’s charisma, and his backing of the church, he is an existential threat to Amelia and her mother. Not only are there now too many powerful Alexanders to try and control, but these Alexanders, led by Stoll, have other targets. Not necessarily the other monsters (we learn and meet a vampire in the course of the novella) but Stoll sets his sights on disrupting and destroying an underground gay bar. In the course of the novella, Amelia, who has made friends with the owners and a frequenter at the bar (as well as come to an accord with a Ripper who spends time there), Amelia finds her friends and colleagues in the course of Stoll’s persecution and rage. While Stoll is genre-savvy as noted above, and wants to deal with and extirpate Rippers at all times, Stoll and his followers have this broader “culture war” target in mind. The framing is obvious and direct: Stoll sees queer folk as monsters, and to be dealt with as such. But of course, since Stoll himself is not an Alexander, merely the leader of many Alexanders, the still inexperienced Amelia and her weakening’s mother’s opposition to Stoll is necessarily fraught and perilous.

It was fascinating, taking apart the concept, once I had read it, and thinking about it. Rippers specifically target male purporters of violence. Could a ripper target, say, a female serial killer? As I further thought about it and the limitations of the food supply of Rippers, or, instead, their target base, I went again to the theme of the novel. The novel is an indictment of how male violence is institutionalized in modern society, how there are many Alexanders, and worse, as in the case of the Bishop, those who do not commit violence themselves, but instead whose words and actions incite others to commit violence. Parallels to contemporary society, and contemporary leaders come to mind and its not a big leap to see how Sanford’s Victorian world resonates with the modern day and its own problems. One can also see the transphobia rampant in modern society today as the modern inspiration for this world’s Stoll’s crusade against queer members of society, making them monstrous (like the “real monsters” Amelia and her mother and rippers and vampires are).

And there are strong themes of family and found family in the novella too. Amelia and her dying mother of course, but also the humans that they live with, the aforementioned vampire, other rippers and the sense of community in the bar. Families come in all shapes and sizes in this novella with intersecting and interesting memberships and interactions. All of these families are under threat by the Alexanders, one way or another, and grow and change as those interactions intensify as the novella progresses.

The ending of the novel, then, as Amelia finally grows into her own abilities and in fact proves herself a different sort of ripper, is one where Sanford is addressing, through the medium and milieu and the nature of this different sort of ripper, the limitations of the original ripper variety. That is to say, the limitations of old ways of combating and opposing hatred in society. Amelia represents a fantastical version and answer that points to the need in our own society for different and broader solutions to societal problems. Amelia shows that retail response to a societal problem is insufficient, and for real change and growth to occur, in this modern worlds, other, deeper solutions are needed. Amelia’s mother’s solutions are insufficient in the modern age, her encounter with the Bishop proves that. Amelia points to a potential future.

So I don’t think that is a horror novella, and is definitely much more of a dark fantasy. There are dark subjects here, sexism, queerphobia, domestic violence. One might say that Sanford himself is being provocative and incendiary in this novella in tackling these subjects, so for those who wish to avoid these subjects, this novella is probably not for you. The fantastical nature of rippers and how they kill does mitigate the impact of the violence, it's not in excruciating realistic detail. But this is a story of monsters who hunt other monsters and are hunted in turn.

There is probably a whole additional piece to be written in reading this in concert and parallel with Crista’s story in Plague Birds. Sanford clearly is still hitting the themes of Plague Birds, from a somewhat different voice , but the same strong storytelling and characterization. Consider, Crista becoming a plague bird in the titular novella, and what plague birds are expected to do, and contrast with Amelia, growing into her role and identity as a ripper. While Amelia was never human, and Crista was thrust into the role, one can see rippers and plague birds as two varieties of Erinyes that Sanford has created. To put it in musical terms, Sanford is building a fugue with this theme, with Plague Birds and We Who Hunt Alexanders as the canons, not identical but clearly in dialogue with each other, as voices in that fugue.

I look forward to more voices in Sanford’s fugue of resistance and response to violent patriarchy and the forces that nurture it.

¹ The etymology of Alexanders is something that Amelia herself wonders about and we do get an answer, but it’s a lovely bit of worldbuilding that I am not going to spoil. 

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Highlights:

• Strong themes of found family, fighting against institutional violence and patriarchy.
• Vividly imagined central problems for main character: coming of age, uncertain of abilities even as their mother is clearly dying
• Rippers as strongly imagined Agents of Vengeance-- not the first use of the idea by the author.
• Stands strongly with author’s previous work.

Reference: Sanford, Jason, We Who Hunt Alexanders (Apex, 2025)

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

Film Review: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

Stunning animation and nonstop action

The long-awaited Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues to break box office records for anime storytelling. Infinity Castle is the latest adventure of the popular anime Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba), which is known for its high-quality animation, likeable characters, and intense action sequences. Demon Slayer tells the story of the pure-hearted, hard-working child Tanjiro, who comes home to find his widowed mother and young siblings violently slaughtered by demons. The lone survivor is his younger sister Nezuko, who has been infected by the attacking monster and has turned into a demon. Initially violent, speechless, and unable to tolerate the sun, she eventually overcomes her murderous instincts and becomes an ally to Tanjiro. He begins a journey to heal his sister and become a formal demon slayer, and trains under a team of elite slayers known as Hashira, who battle violent demons controlled by the thousand-year-old villain Muzan. Tanjiro is joined by other students, including the comically fearful but secretly strong Zenitsu and the loudmouth wild boy Inosuke. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is the latest feature film to present a major story arc in the ongoing epic.

The most recent season of the Demon Slayer anime ended on a dramatic cliffhanger as the slayers’ intense confrontation with their enemy Muzan ended with them falling into an alternate-dimension-style, infinite multi-level structure. Infinity Castle picks up immediately with the falling slayers beginning the fight against the elite demons who are waiting for them in the vast surreal space. Unlike many other anime feature films, Demon Slayer films are directly connected to, and essential for, the primary ongoing anime arc. As a result, if viewers haven’t been watching the series, they may feel somewhat disconnected from the adventure and the emotions underlying the action. Even for those who have been watching, there are some moments that make it seem as if we may have missed something in the continuity. However, Infinity Castle is highly entertaining, despite some shortcomings, and well worth the effort to see it on a big screen.

Demon Slayer has always stood out for its stunning animation and was this year’s winner for Best Animation at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in addition to winning Best Continuing Series. Although the series always excels in fluid, innovative, and intense animation (even when the plot becomes repetitive), Infinity Castle takes high-quality animation to a new level. The titular Infinity Castle dazzles with a perfect fusion of color, light, geometry, and movement as the characters navigate the enormous Inception-like space. Beyond the grand-scale effects, simpler art expressions (such as an airy fall of snow in a backstory, or the fantastical eyes of many of the characters) add to the immersive art style.

While the Demon Slayer anime periodically slows down to focus on human interaction and character growth, Infinity Castle is all about fighting. Demon Slayer often presents a character’s backstory in the form of flashbacks during a fight, and the new film fully leans into that style of storytelling. As a result, characters who are not involved in the main sets of physical duels disappear almost entirely from the story. This is true for lead characters Nezuko and Inosuke, who get very little screen time. On the other hand, the succession of battles with the accompanying backstories (in some cases, very long backstories) makes for a very long film. Among the primary battles is Hashira Shinobu’s poison battle with the sociopathic, murderously polite demon Doma. Another key fight is Zenitsu against his former training partner Kaigaku, whose cruelty is shown in the previous Hashira Training Arc season. Zenitsu is a unique character whose humorously fearful comic relief personality is contrasted with the lethal killer he becomes when he blacks out. The Jekyll-and-Hyde effect is always entertaining. However, in Infinity Castle, Zenitsu arrives in his lethal state and remains consciously engaged with his enemy throughout the battle. Other than a two-second backstory glimpse, we only see the killer version of Zenitsu. This stylistic change makes the battle particularly powerful and creates a significant shift in the tone of the narration.

The primary battle of the film is between the protagonist Tanjiro and the returning upper rank demon Akaza. Instead of being aided by his usual besties Inosuke and Zenitsu, Tanjiro fights with his long-time, stoic, young mentor Giyu, who finally gets enough screen time to lean into his awesomeness. Their battle is a callback to the critical final fight scene in Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, where the demon Akaza battles the confidently powerful and kind-hearted Rengoku. The original battle went beyond the usual tropes and created an emotional connection between the two evenly matched opponents. It left an impact that lasted long after the film ended. In contrast, the key battle in Infinity Castle is characterized by the fighters’ disdain for each other. The normally kind Tanjiro is focused on revenge, and the always serious Giyu is focused on the larger goal of killing Muzan. A traditional element in anime battles is the trash-talking or persuasive arguing that accompanies the physical fighting. However, Tanjiro is too angry to engage, and Giyu (in my favorite line of the film) stoically announces that he just doesn’t like talking. As a result, the film uses a lengthy one-sided backstory to explain Akaza’s personality. The story is tragic and thoughtful, but also very long, and occurs in a climactic moment of the battle. While integrated backstory is standard in Demon Slayer and many other anime, this backstory lasts around forty minutes, creating almost a separate movie. Depending on your storytelling tastes, this may be a welcome bonus or a too lengthy diversion from both the larger story and the momentum of the current intense fight.

While Mugen Train was a cohesive, linear, and complete story, Infinity Castle is the beginning of the long final war between the demons and the slayers with the fate of humanity in the balance. With a large cast of characters and a story that starts right in the middle of the action, Infinity Castle may seem jarring and intense. But the overall effect is entertaining, engaging, and stunningly artistic as we progress to the ultimate battles that lie ahead.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

• Stunning animation
• Lots of backstory
• Intense fighting

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

TV Review: Wednesday Season 2, Part 2

The Night of the Return of the Revenge of the Attack of Unresolved Mommy Issues

In season 1 of this show, Wednesday Addams solved a murder mystery and saved her school. At the start of season 2, she deals with her unwanted fame by doubling down on her lone genius act, thus antagonizing the allies she ought to be relying on when a new murderer comes to town. The season concludes by showing Wednesday the consequences of her arrogance and putting her on a path toward repairing her strained relationships.

The execution isn't the most elegant, a problem that the show had since the previous season, but the expanded focus on the supporting cast provides parallels to Wednesday's journey that help the clumsy bits of the plot work more smoothly. Wednesday's roommate Enid has been avoiding her first boyfriend because she's afraid of telling him she fell in love with someone else, an unstable situation that resolves with a serving of karmic irony. Their classmate Bianca has been suffering in silence under the blackmail of the new school director, who is forcing her to use her mind control powers to secure donations; her plight gets predictably worse as she continues to refuse to ask for help. And Wednesday's brother Pugsley has been coping with his loneliness by keeping a zombie as a pet, starting a series of events that come back to threaten his whole family for their unhealthy habit of keeping dirty secrets.

The theme is clear: we can't handle everything on our own, and keeping people in the dark only brings more complications. Wednesday herself is the most significant illustration of this idea. She received a psychic vision that said she would cause the death of Enid, and she keeps this information to herself because she underrates Enid's strength and overrates her own. Through the whole season, Wednesday's biggest flaw is her excessive self-reliance. With Enid, she learns of her mistake by literally walking in her shoes. With her mother, Morticia, it takes the rest of the semester. Wednesday has valid reasons to keep strict boundaries with her meddlesome parents, but when lives are at stake, she should admit that her mother is more versed in the occult arts and that there's a precedent of psychic mishaps in her family tree.

Motherly ties are a central axis of this season. Besides the difficulties between Wednesday and Morticia, the latter also has unfinished business with her own mother. Bianca's predicament revolves around keeping her mother away from the influence of a destructive cult. Tyler, the secondary villain of season 1, kills his substitute mother figure, only to reunite with his actual mother, with whom he has a big final fight after she schemes to (symbolically) emasculate him. Even Pugsley, by virtue of accidentally giving life to a zombie, gets thrown into a motherly role at which he fails repeatedly and catastrophically. And to the extent that a severed hand can experience mommy issues, Thing goes through a small identity crisis arc of its own when its original body reappears to reclaim it.

While the character-focused writing is more solid this time (and one always welcomes more scenes with the radiant goddess that is Catherine Zeta-Jones), the first season's bad habit of overcomplicating the plot comes back with a vengeance. The early episodes build up to what promises to be an important antagonist who soon turns out to be a red (-headed) herring and becomes far less interesting from then on. The mysterious flock of ravens that plague the first half of the season are given an underwhelming explanation before being removed from the picture. The cult that had trapped Bianca's mother makes a last-minute reappearance that feels out of nowhere. In total, we meet no less than six separate characters who at some point seem to be this season's Big Bad Boss. Our young heroes are kept so busy investigating and unmaking this tangle of conspiracies that it's no surprise that, once again, this show that is supposedly set in a school doesn't have scenes where they attend classes or do homework.

Finally, there's the issue with the characterization of the Addams family. The show doesn't know whether it wants to portray the Addams as endearing weirdos or heartless sociopaths, so when they join efforts to save one of their own, it's hard to buy that they truly love each other (at one point Wednesday suspects her family will be threatened, and coldly proposes to sacrifice Pugsley; shortly after, he does fall in real danger, and she forgets her own words and jumps to the rescue). Add to this incongruity the family's volatile way of choosing which deaths to care about, and what we get is a tonally scattershot story that is more interested in the spooky aesthetic than in the consequences of dealing with dark forces on a daily basis. You can either tell a silly absurdist comedy where casual cruelty is hilarious and random murders are background noise in the macabre goofiness that defined the '90s films, or tell a crime drama where people's feelings matter, death is taken seriously and family trauma weighs on the protagonists. Aiming for both is trying to have your ant-infested cake and eat it too.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

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].

TV Review: Wednesday Season 2, Part 1

Clever, funny, horror mayhem and lots of family drama

After a bold and successful first season, Wednesday has returned to Netflix with a suitably creepy new adventure. For those unfamiliar with the series, Wednesday is the latest iteration of The Addams Family, the creepy, wealthy, cynical, and humorously ghoulish family that evolved from classic New Yorker cartoons to a 1960s sitcom, to numerous feature films, and now to a daughter-focused, light-horror, Netflix series. In season one, teen daughter Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is sent to Nevermore Academy after her defiantly macabre behavior gets her in trouble elsewhere. Nevermore is an isolated academy for “outcasts” who, in this setting, are teens with supernatural identities such as werewolves, sirens, gorgons, vampires, witches, etc. Cynical, dour Wednesday must adjust to life on the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired campus while reluctantly accepting the friendship of her sunshiny roommate Enid (Emma Myers), and solving the mystery of a serial killer who is deceptively hiding in plain sight in the town. She approaches the challenge with her signature combination of intelligence, clairvoyance, and fearlessness.

In season two (part one), Wednesday overuses her clairvoyance and begins to suffer physical consequences including crying or bleeding black tears and becoming exhausted and passing out. Meanwhile, as she returns to school at Nevermore, she is irritated to discover that she is now a beloved celebrity on campus. But, there is a new mysterious killer in town, assassinating people via a swarm (murder) of crows and also overtly stalking Wednesday. When Wednesday has a vision of Enid’s death, she becomes determined to use her clairvoyance to find the killer and save Enid. This puts her at odds with her mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who is openly worried about Wednesday succumbing to the same obsession, psychosis, and physical harm that Morticia’s sister Ophelia suffered. As a side story, Wednesday’s younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) enrolls at the school and accidently creates a murderous zombie from a long dead Nevermore student. With multiple killers, stalkers, and high stakes crises, Wednesday quickly moves towards a mid-season climax in which yet another killer joins the chaos.

Season one was a funny, clever, horror mystery with lots of red herrings and lots of adventure. However, season two intensifies the emotional investment of the characters. Instead of directly rehashing the same type of plot, season two builds on certain elements of the first season but takes the storytelling in a more character focused direction. A major driving force of the current season is Wednesday’s friendship with Enid. Instead of Enid being a comedic foil or general annoyance to her, Wednesday’s determination to protect Enid emphasizes Wednesday’s emotional evolution in the midst of the mayhem and cynicism. Conversely, in season two, Wednesday has a degenerating antagonistic relationship with her mother, even as Morticia struggles with anger at her own mother. The multi-level mother-daughter conflicts, and the mutual insecurities that fuel them, is a secondary driving force of the story. Despite these meaningful emotional overtones, the show still has plenty of action as Wednesday deals with a primary murderous stalker, as well as a creepy fangirl stalker (a show-stealing Evie Templeton) and the fallout of her little brother’s accidental zombie creation.

While the core adventure and emotional overtones are solid, the show sometimes suffers from an overabundance of side plots which can, at times, be distracting and does periodically slow the pacing of the primary story. In addition to the main storyline, we also have Pugsley’s rampaging zombie, Enid’s love triangle with Ajax (Georgie Farmer) and Bruno (Noah B. Taylor), a newly arrived music teacher (Billie Piper), and a mysterious psychiatrist (Thandie Newton) at the town’s high security psychiatric hospital. There is also a bit of social commentary regarding the way Bianca (Joy Sunday) is manipulated by the new Nevermore headmaster (Steve Buscemi) who uses her status as a scholarship recipient to exploit her for financial gain. And we have Bianca’s issues with protecting and hiding her mother. Most of the stories are entertaining, albeit voluminous, with the possible exception of Pugsley’s zombie, which is often a bit campy despite being a poignant representation of Pugsley’s relatable feelings of awkwardness and isolation as he begins the new school.

Despite being a teen adventure, Wednesday is also a horror comedy series, which means several characters meet their demise onscreen in horror film ways. Fortunately, the actual gore is kept to a PG safe minimum. This balance of intensity makes the show a satisfying and entertaining gothic adventure without becoming overly graphic. Overall, the first half of Wednesday Season 2 is off to a promising, albeit overstuffed, start with solid acting and entertaining plotting as things move from bad to worse for Wednesday.

Highlights:

• Escalating emotions
• Lots of subplots
• Clever, funny, horror adventure

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

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

Book Review: Miserere (Revised Edition) by T. Frohock

The revised version of T. Frohock’s Miserere is a major overhaul of the author's debut novel, more than a decade afterwards.

Disclaimer up front and personal: In the process of this rewrite, the author asked me for my advice and suggestions for some of the Latin she uses.

Miserere was a 2011 debut novel by Teresa Frohock (who goes more these days by T. Frohock. Part of the wide ranging net that Night Shade books attempted to cast in those halcyon days, I read the original back in my relatively early days as a reviewer.

This new review is of the 2025 edition and focuses primarily on how I feel about the changes between the original and this version.

The basis chassis of the story remains from the original. Our major characters are four. Lucian is a Katharos, a holy warrior in the service of God, but he has been banished for abandoning his lover, Rachael (another Katharos) in an an attempt to save his sister, Catarina (who is basically a fallen Katharos at this point). Our fourth character is Lindsay,a young woman drawn to the liminal world of Woerld where Rachael, Lucian and Catarina live to be a Katharos herself.

The major conflict revolves around Lucian’s attempt to oppose his sister, who has truly turned to the dark side, the side of demons and evils. Lucian sacrificed his career, life and the trust of others to try and save his sister, but his sister had made her choice, now, to side with the demons seeking entrance from hell into Woerld (whereupon they will go to Earth, and thence to storm heaven, raining destruction in their wake).

Mixed in with this is that Rachael is being possessed by a demon that is slowly eating her alive, Catarina needing her brother to execute her plans to open these gates, and Lindsay, recently arrived to Woerld and a good source of “How does this all work?” just wants to go home, and find her brother (also caught in the same event that brought her here) in the process.

The subtitle for this novel is “An Autumn Tale”. And the original was indeed a dark story. It felt then and felt now like something you’d read in early November, as Autumn truly takes hold, the shadows get longer, the ground gets colder. The relative barrenness and harshness of the liminal world of Woerld encourages it. But this new version of Miserere feels more like a *late* Autumn tale, on the verge of but not quite winter. This new version makes both Catarina and Rachael more active characters.

To the positive of having Rachael as a more active character with more action on the page, this does make her a more heroic and less passive character. Frohock does this on the line level, and with her scenes from her point of view as well. The former version was very much a hand-wringing Lucian caught between his sister, and his ex. This new version has Rachael much less passive, much more active in this broken relationship and the relationship is all the better for it. Rachael’s trust of Lucian, broken at the start of the novel, has to be earned strand by strand and it is not easy. Her relationship with the demon that’s inside of her is also a more active sort of fight that she is having on a minute by minute basis.

Next up is Catarina. I thought Catarina was a dark force of nature in the original version, a memorable villain with dark goals and a dark relationship with her brother. This new version of Catarina is even more toxic, even more active, even more dangerous. Catarina has a very dysfunctional relationship with her brother in this new version. She uses, abuses and manipulates Lucian every moment she gets, all the way to the end. Hers is a tragic story, someone who has grasped for power, and grasps no matter the cost. Her scenes with Cerberus, as she bargains for ever more power, for ever greater costs, are well written and sharp.

But overall, in terms of writing and style, the additional scenes, removal of scene, and rewrite, especially early in the novel puts it a couple of shades of darker fantasy than it was originally. Is it horror? Not quite, because I think horror is a mode, and Frohock is not going for horror here. But it is a dark world, dark things happen and the overall aspect of the book can be, despite the hope and the light in it, rather dark and oppressive. I say in all seriousness this is not a book to read when you are in a dark place, mentally.

So let’s switch gears and talk about Lindsay. Lindsay and her brother Peter, fleeing a conflict with some local toughs, get caught in the veil and are brought to Woerld. The original version didn’t make it quite so clear, but this newer version clarifies just how and why this works. It’s a call to service, basically, from the godhead, to come and oppose evil on the front line of Woerld. I have some more questions now, but a lot of the roughness from the first novel is cleared up now. Lindsay asks a lot of questions and gives us a ground level introduction to some of the basics that Lucian and Rachael take for granted. And she is an unsullied beacon of light and innocence in the novel, as opposed to the far more world weary Rachael. And, of course, Lucian.

And so there is the heart of the novel, Lucian. He’s right there on the cover, flanked by Catarina and Rachael. At the start, he is in exile from the people he has served every since coming from our Earth, from the woman he loves, living as a house prisoner in the house of his sister. His is a painful journey, the realization that he cannot save his sister, his escape, he encounter with Lindsay, and the extended chase/journey as he tries to get Lindsay to safety. Lucian is full of doubt, throughout the novel, and needs the help of both Lindsay and Rachael, and needs to both convince them to help him, and accept their help when it comes. There is a whole lot of redemption that Lucian needs if he is going to survive.

Or not just redemption, but mercy. Hence the title of the novel, Miserere. The mercy that Lucian tries to show his sister. The mercy that Lucian himself *needs*.

This new version does add some worldbuilding and fleshes out more detail on Woerld, something that I had mentioned in my original view. This newly rewritten version, especially with the more active Rachael as mentioned above, and other changes does address some of the worldbuilding deficiencies that I saw in the original novel. I think on that the balance, the world of Woerld feels more complete in this world and I have a better sense of how and why it works. I would still like to see more of the world and get a better sense of it, but I do think this new version is an improvement.

I thought then and I think now that the theology of the book might turn off some readers. It’s not Christian apocalyptic fiction like Left Behind, but the theology of Woerld, despite being described as being very pantheistic, is, thanks to Lucian, Rachael, Catarina and Linday being Christian, strictly Christian. We get a full on exorcism, a lot of use of Latin, and so on. The real comp for Miserere that I can think of, and its a stretch even so given just how narrow and unique Miserere was then, and is now, is the RPG In Nomine. In In Nomine, you play minor angels (or devils) in a world where Christian theology is real, and you are trying to support your side, your own power and promotion, and trying to get along in a world where there are some very scary characters indeed. But that unique sort of world, theology, setting and characters is what drew me to the novel in the first place.

I think overall this version of Miserere is an improvement over the original on all axes, but it may have narrowed slightly the market for its readership by its somewhat darker turn. The stronger female characters do it a lot of credit and make it a much better book, without question, but this is a book that is most definitely not for anyone. But if you want to read a book were heroic men and women stand in the darkness against demons, and wrestle rather grimly with their own personal ones (including a literal one), and don’t mind and embrace the Christian theology of the book -- Miserere is the book for you. For those who might be curious about Frohock’s work but don’t feel this is quite the spot to read it, that’s understanding. The Los Nefilim novellas and novels and stories, which have a race of beings between angels and devils, might be a better fit for you than Miserere.

--

Highlights:

• Revised and Expanded Edition: But Darker, too
• Stronger set of characters
• Better worldbuilding, stronger overall

Reference: Frohock, T., Miserere: An Autumn Tale, Revised and Expanded, [Nightshade Books, 2025]

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

Book review: The Wolf and the Wild King by K. V. Johansen

A high fantasy story of two men caught in the tendrils of justice, invasion, heroism, and dark recurring magic

Mairran is the son of the Dragon Queen, and her bloody agent. Bloody in the sense of covered in blood; an agent of the Queen’s command, Mairran is sent when justice requires the edge of a sword. Or sometimes something less noble than justice... and just the command of his mother the Queen.

Meanwhile, in another time period but in the same area, Lannesk is a bastard son, along with his younger brother Anzimor. Theirs is not an easy life, especially with trouble brewing in the north from dragonkin. His is a story of growing up and surviving in a cold, unforgiving land.

And both Mairran and Lannesk are going to be confronted by a mysterious figure from the forest, one whose power holds fate and secrets for them both. The mysterious and eldritch and titular Wild King.

This is the story of The Wolf and the Wild King by K. V. Johansen.

Johansen’s adult fantasy novels, particularly that of the Caravan series, are full of old gods, demons, devils, and dark magic that is definitely not of the Sandersonian school of comprehensible and documented “scientific magic.” Mysterious beings of power, landscapes evocative, rich and immersive. Complicated wheels within wheels of plots, characters whose motivations and true intentions only slowly reveal themselves. Complex and multi-varied characterizations of protagonists.

The Wolf and the Wild King is no different in this regard.

Our setting is a northern taiga near the coast, but the main feature of the area is an enormous lake, large enough to be a sea with islands. This is a wild and hard country, where winters are long and hard, and growing and warm seasons brief, intense, and all too short, and life is unending toil for anyone from the Queen (or local Earls) on down to the peasants. It’s of a piece with previous novels by Johansen, but this is a land that we haven’t directly seen before in the narrative. The landscape is winningly evoked on the page, and I could almost feel the chill whenever the story turned to winters that even a Minnesotan or Canadian would respect in their ferocity. The lake itself almost feels like a character, the center of a lot of the action and the plot, and we get to see it in multiple seasons as well. It feels like a large Lake Superior, but with an outlet to the ocean, and kingdoms, earldoms, castles, villages, towns and more all huddled around its shore.

It’s no wonder that Mairran, son of the Queen, and Lannesk, a poor bastard son clawing his way through life as best he can, don’t have the most pleasant of lives. There is also a strong and abiding sense of stubborn independence in the people of this land. The Earls chafe under the rule of higher nobles, such as the Queen, which is where Mairran and his justice come into play. The commonfolk are cold and stubborn and often look out for themselves. Lannesk’s life on the road with Anzimor, once they are forced by circumstance, is not an easy one.

One interesting puzzle that pulled me through the narrative was just what was the relationship between Mairran and Lannesk, both as characters and when they were aligned in time and space to each other. Johansen layers her worldbuilding and exposition with rich detail, and I enjoyed the puzzle of picking up the pieces to try and make sense of the narrative. There is a real sense of fantasy history in her novels, a history told in songs and stories rather than tomes, and the contradictions and complications of historical narrative comes across. The characters, especially Lannesk, really inhabit this sort of thinking and mindset.

Another interesting series of choices is in Lannesk’s narrative. Lannesk is a mute, and in fact, aside from a couple of attempts at music, all of his communication, especially with his brother, is nonverbal. In order to accomplish this narratively, Johansen breaks away from the intimate first-person PoV that we get in Mairran (whereby we really get into his head). Instead we get a third-person PoV, and no word or explanation that Lannesk isn’t speaking for some time, something for the reader to discover and then reveal the narrative possibilities of. It’s an excellent use of the craft and techniques of writing to better tell a story. This helps distinguish Lannesk’s story from Mairran’s and gives us an outside perspective on some of the events in the book.

I have not really detailed the meaning of the title, talked about the Wolf or the Wild Man. This is deliberate on my part, since who they really are, and what they are to each other, is another of the mysteries and past narratives unfolding in the book. Suffice it to say that there are a number of powerful immortal beings memorialized in songs and tales by the characters, and they do impinge on the plot itself. To say more would spoil some of the lovely surprises the book has. It’s a rich and well written story that entertained throughout for both narratives.

This does make the subgenre of the book an open question. It’s not quite a full-screen epic fantasy; the fate of the world or the kingdom isn’t quite at stake in either narrative. However, it’s not a narrow book, either. It is a secondary world fantasy, and it can be dark at times (Mairran is not really a hero, and Lannesk is just trying to survive). I don’t think this is quite grimdark, either. It’s brooding, lyrical, dark secondary world fantasy.

One major criticism I have for this story is that it is incomplete. The story is “to be continued” in the second volume, The Raven and the Harper. From a plot point of view, that means the story gives me an air of dissatisfaction, especially considering where Lannesk is left off at the end (Mairran is in a more stable situation, but his mission is far from done). While I do definitely want to read the second volume to find the conclusion of the story, readers who want a complete narrative in one volume will not find it here.

Highlights:

• Strong mythic narrative, with interesting plotting and worldbuilding puzzles
• Excellent use of setting
• Not a complete story in one volume

Reference: Johansen, K. V. The Wolf and the Wild King [Crossroad Press, 2024].

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

Book Review: Asunder by Kerstin Hall

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

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

It all comes down to expectations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Math

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

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

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

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