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.

Film Review: The Conjuring: Last Rites

It isn't exactly scary, but it will appease fans looking for an emotional finale for their horror mom and dad

The first Conjuring movie (2012) is an absolute master class in dread, horror, and freaky vibes. It's not only my go-to spooky movie, it's also one of my favorite films just in general. The other movies in the Conjuring universe—the sequels and movies like The Nun and Annabelle—are kitschy at best, and they're ones I'll rewatch only occasionally. But the o.g. Conjuring is near perfect.

Flashforward to my anticipation of The Conjuring: Last Rites. It's meant to be the conclusion to this fictional film series based loosely on the investigations and experiences of famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. I always take the "based on" with a grain of salt, as ghosts do not exist. The cinematic portrayal of them, however, is extremely likable. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are absolutely delightful as tortured ghost hunters, and their chemistry is palpable. It's rare that you see on-screen characters that seem to truly love each other, and Ed and Lorraine do just that.

What sets Last Rites apart from the other films in the franchise is that this movie is about them and their family, not the tortured families who happen to inhabit deeply possessed buildings and their paranormal struggles. Here, we're in the 1980s, and the Warrens' daughter, Judy, is starting to become embroiled in their investigations. Like her mother, she is also an empath and possesses psychic abilities. As the family becomes concerned when she gets engaged to her boyfriend, Tony, the family is pulled into another paranormal case—this time one that the Warrens first encountered decades ago.

The Smurl family lives in a coal-mining-soaked town in Pennsylvania, and their demon origin story begins with a haunted mirror, one that the Warrens have experienced before. It seems like the setup of every other Conjuring story, yet something is missing. The haunting that's taking place at the Smurl house is creepy, to be sure, but it never really feels threatening. The stakes never feel high. I think this could be because the house is small, and its neighbors are jam-packed around it—there's only about six feet between them. I have strong opinions on what houses work well within the haunted house trope, and these babies need room to breathe. They need at least a few acres or so, and they need isolation. It's why you'll never see a haunted studio apartment or a haunted beach condo. You need to be able to climb a staircase and feel absolutely alone, and hear echoes and shouts from across the building that you can't readily identify.

When it comes to the scares in The Conjuring: Last Rites, there are a couple of good ones, but nothing that stands out like the spooks in the original. You learn the routine pretty quickly: A character is alone, the music stops, and then you get a jump scare of some unidentified demon.

We never learn the backstory of the demons in the Smurl house, unlike the tortured witch Bathsheba in the original. I think this greatly detracts from the emotional heft of the haunting. Turns out the demons lived on the "land" that the house occupies, so the lore is downgraded, and you never feel any stakes. Also, unrelated: One day I will write a paper on haunted houses as a metaphor for working-class people and the failures of capitalism, but today is not that day. It will revolve around how even though a family feels physically threatened, being unable to afford a non-haunted house or even to escape the mortgage of a haunted house is truly the most horrific part of this beloved genre.

You do get Easter eggs throughout the film, however, so hardcore fans of the Conjuring universe will appreciate that. At one point, you see the evil doll Annabelle blown up to 15 feet tall in a scene that made me laugh more than anything else. Speaking of laughter, I saw this movie in 4DX, which is the interactive, shaking-seats-and-gusts-of-wind experience. It is not, in fact, interactive, and it mainly just made me laugh. It takes you out of the experience, especially when the man next to you is shaking and spilling popcorn in his seat.

I wanted very badly to love this movie, as I've mentioned before, because I've been chasing the high of seeing the first Conjuring since 2012. Perhaps it was lightning in a bottle, or maybe I've become so much of a horror movie cynic that I'm incapable of being truly scared. There are moments of true high camp in this, and I found myself laughing more than shuddering despite the multiple different pools of blood, demonic jump scares, and priests hanging themselves.

This movie does work as a denouement to the fictional Warren storyline, though. The characters of Ed and Lorraine, and now Judy, are good people, and you're always rooting for them to save another family, even when they're so ready to be retired. When the Warrens are faced with possession and death, the stakes suddenly become much higher. I did find multiple parts heartwarming, especially towards the end, when they look toward the future and a life without ghost-hunting. If you're not into sentimentality for these characters, you'll be extremely bored at multiple points.

Judy and her boyfriend are (seemingly) set up as perhaps the next generation of demon hunters, but I suppose time will tell. In the meantime, I will be watching the original Conjuring every spooky season like clockwork, when the leaves start to fall and the temps get a little chilly.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

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

Film Review: KPop Demon Hunters

A fresh take on familiar themes, played out with bright animation and appealing characters

Netflix’s latest animated adventure, KPop Demon Hunters is a useful option if you’re ready to take a break from the weight of the world and enjoy bit of light adventure. On the eve of their greatest triumph, a trio of female K-Pop rockstars who moonlight as demon hunters find themselves thwarted by the arrival of a competing group of performers secretly bent on demon-serving, soul-sucking destruction. The story manages to be both comfortably familiar and freshly amusing, both laugh out loud funny and substantially tragic, and is filled with catchy tunes that will stay in your head long after the credits roll. Although aimed at a younger generation, older viewers will recognize the film’s familiar call back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jem and the Holograms, and other secret hero stories.

Musically talented orphan Rumi and her two besties, tough and cynical Mira and energetic rapper Zoey, are part of a super popular K-Pop trio named Huntrix. Beyond their musical success and millions of adoring fans, they also have a secret side job killing demons (hence the band’s name). All three young women are trained, fearless demon hunters, complete with magical blades and supernatural acrobatic skills. They are working towards achieving a final victory over the demon world via an event called the Honmoon (never clearly explained). However, just as victory seems close, an unexpected new enemy arrives to thwart their plans. They soon find themselves faced with an alluring boy band, the Saja Boys, secretly made up of super gorgeous demons. Their new competition is led by the seductive but internally tortured Jinu. Following a theme explored in the film Sinners, we learn that throughout time, variations of musically inclined hunters have used their special musical gifts to transcend the natural realm and fight demons. Huntrix gets much of their strength from the energy of those who cheer them on. The arrival of the Saja Boys creates competition for both Huntrix’s fans and Huntrix’s physical strength, even as the new arrivals secretly wreak havoc on the people of the city by stealing their souls. This may sound a little intense but the film is played out in bright neon colors and shiny computer animation. At times, the soul stealing is so subtle that it takes a moment to realize what is happening. But what makes the story particularly entertaining is the fact that Rumi, Mira, and Zoey immediately realize the Saja Boys are demons and the Saja Boys know the Huntrix singers are demon hunters. As a result, much of the film involves hidden hijinks and sarcasm as the two enemies publicly interact at press conferences, concerts, and televised events. And of course, there is a lot of music and a reminder of how influenced K-Pop is by American hip hop. The songs are high energy and bubbling with dual meanings, and all of this is wrapped up with ridiculously intense K-Pop choreography displayed in dramatic, big screen worthy animation.

In addition to the external battles, the film deals with internal elements of self-identity, self-hatred, guilt, and shame. It also reflects themes from contemporary popular fiction, including enemies to lovers and morally gray love interests, as Rumi and Jinu find themselves thrown together. The vibe of fierce but hidden female fighters is reminiscent of the vibe in Justina Ireland’s novel Dread Nation. The importance of music as a spiritual element in fighting and provoking evil is an interesting call back to Sinners. However, unlike those stories, the Netflix film is gore-free, safe for tweens, but still entertaining enough for adults who want something lighter and more amusing.

A key element of the film is the visual choices. The demon king is never really seen but appears as an amorphous pink cloud. The Saja Boys are each designed with extreme K-Pop beauty that creates a hilarious contrast to their true nature. Jinu communicates with Rumi via a show-stealing, enormous, teal blue, striped cat who travels with a bird who wears a top hat on its head. The big cat is the most understatedly fun and funny thing in the visuals and it roams throughout the plot unbothered by being both gorgeous and outrageous.

Despite the interesting set up and the seductive dynamic between Rumi and Jinu, the ultimate messaging of the film stops short of attempting a deep dive into, or a meaningful resolution of, the demon world. The demons are portrayed primarily as comically grotesque, generally evil, and mostly two dimensional. That approach is not uncommon in many demon hunter stories (such as Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer) but, in this film, two of the main characters have a significant connection to the demon world. So, it feels like a missed opportunity not to delve deeper into the identity and motivations of that world, especially since it defines and affects the two lead characters. Additionally, unlike Jinu, Rumi’s backstory remains mostly a mystery. We never hear the story of her parents or their demise although it’s a critical element in who she is. But this is a ninety-nine minute animated PG film and the focus is on the primary plot: achieving the Honmoon and defeating the demon world despite the efforts of the tortured yet seductive anti-hero. Does that happen? Surprisingly, you’ll have to watch and see, because KPop Demon Hunters has enough built in twists to keep viewers guessing.

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Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Fun, likeable, characters
• Familiar explorations of classic themes
• Catchy music and animation, safe for the whole family

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

Film Review: The Parenting

Hell is other people... 's expectations.

You know how conservatives keep saying that queer people are possessed by demons? Well, the new HBO Max horror/comedy/romance film The Parenting turns the tables and argues that the actual demon is intolerance. Picture this scenario: you're nervously introducing your boyfriend to your family, hoping that they'll like each other, and all of a sudden, the loving father you've known all you life turns out to harbor a hateful spirit inside of him, one that spews homophobic slurs and even attacks your boyfriend physically. In our supposedly modern times, that's a nightmare queer people still dread. That's why a jocular title like The Parenting is quite clever: although the format of the story is that of spending a vacation weekend at a remote haunted house, this is really a movie about being terrified of your own parents. While it draws copiously from the usual tropes of the haunted house genre, as well as the meet-the-parents genre, the movie wouldn't work without the queerness element at the center of it. This is a specifically queer fear that can only be faced and overcome through queer means.

The movie starts with a prologue in the 80s, on the night the series M.A.S.H. broadcast its final episode. That's an important signpost: although it was set in the Korean War, M.A.S.H. was widely perceived as an allegory for the Vietnam War and for the heated sentiments it sparked among Americans. The end of M.A.S.H. coincides with the end of an era of countercultural experimentation and the rise, in its stead, of the conservative nightmare that still haunts the American consciousness. And in that prologue, the manifestation of that nightmare is juvenile disobedience, which of course was tied to the Satanic Panic and the cultural anxieties about the fate of the nuclear family. In a deceptively simple scene, we see a mother struggle to get her kids to come to the dinner table, only to be dragged to the underworld by something sinister. It takes the son too, and lastly, the daughter, who until that moment had been locked in her room with as-of-yet unspecified female company. It's a very subtle hint, but yes, this character is definitely queer. A possible reading, given the events that will follow, is that this specific demon is one that consumes families where someone is queer, which is why it's significant that this prologue happens in the 80s. (We learn later that said female company is the quintessential incarnation of everything Reaganites were scared of: a sexually unafraid teenager with a goth-ish/punk-ish aesthetic and pagan leanings. It's this archetypal bogeyman that brings the demon into the house, which strikes me as a fitting encapsulation of the way the conservative mind blames the culturally deviant for the hatred thrown at them.)

Fast forward to the 21st century, and we meet our actual protagonists: two young gay men, very cute, very much in love, and very nervous about the special weekend vacation they've organized for their respective families to meet for the first time. As it happens, the house they've rented is the same one from the prologue. And sure enough, after night falls, things start making strange noises. So far, so normal for a haunted house movie. Except this is too similar to the sound of, as a character puts it, "interplay." Each couple believes the other couple is doing it, and the movie extends this joke for as long as it will give. Here we get our first impression of the precise nature of this form of queer fear: telling your parents about your significant other implies making your parents aware that you are a sexual being. This is true of any pairing of orientations, but parents of straight children have the privilege of not having to imagine other forms of "interplay."

This fear reoccurs later, when one of the couple's parents, already possessed by the demon, starts throwing around the kind of hurtful remarks that people with little imagination use against queer people. And bring up the problem of having little imagination because, truly, it seems to break queerphobes's brains to think about a gay couple having a sex life. In a curious reversal, other scenes in the movie push the two young gay men to think of their parents as sexual beings, in awkward reenactments of the Freudian Urszene where children happen upon their parents' naked bodies. In themselves, these scenes are well executed jokes. But in the context of the implicit sexual humiliation that the demon inflicts on our protagonists, the choice to cast the same gaze back at the parents exposes the absurdity of the intended attack.

So how do you defeat this demon? To complete this analysis of the movie's themes, I'm going to have to spoil the ending. One of our protagonists, saddened by his father's deteriorated state, decides to invite the demon into himself and then ask his boyfriend to kill him. Let's untangle what this choice means. As I said above, the actual demon is intolerance. Inviting the demon into yourself for the purpose of taking it down with you is the movie's way of representing a case of internalized queerphobia leading to suicide. Now let's take the metaphorical eyeglasses off for a moment, because this is the core message of the movie. In the nightmare scenario where you take your boyfriend to meet your parents and they react violently, internalized queerphobia leading to suicide is one of the possible outcomes. It has happened and keeps happening in real life. Fortunately, in the movie this plan does not succeed. As our protagonists discover, the true way to destroy this demon (of intolerance) is to starve it of a human host to invade.

You shouldn't expect any new tricks from this movie, either comedy- or horror-wise. But it works. The performances are enjoyable, the leading couple has a sweet chemistry, and the dialogues ring true to the everyday dynamics of a queer family. Only a content warning is warranted for dogs that die of slapstick shenanigans during the movie. Otherwise, you'll spend a fun time laughing and/or screaming at The Parenting.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

Anime Review: Dandadan

Strange but addictive storytelling wrapped in stunning animation

Dandadan debuted with much hype and anticipation this year and has quickly become one of the most talked-about fall anime. With its addictive opening song and quirky, opposites-attract friendship vibe, Dandadan’s strange upbeat feel draws viewers in. But underneath is a strange tale of sexual assault, angry demons, and dysfunctional relationships. The show combines the vibrant, violent demon-fighting of Jujutsu Kaisen with the tortured, shapeshifting, slow-burn, romance/friendship (?) of Fruits Basket. In the end, it’s hard to know what to make of this anime debut. But, since it’s based on a manga, we know much more is yet to come.

Summary: Orphaned high schooler Momo is raised by her ghost-aware grandma. As a result, Momo has a deep awareness of the occult, although she tries to avoid it. She is also obsessed with movie star Ken Takakura. The first episode opens with Momo breaking up with her obnoxious, older boyfriend, whom she only dated because his tough guy attitude reminded her of her beloved movie star. Later, she intercepts a group of students tormenting a quiet, nerdy boy at school. She discovers that the boy’s name is also Ken Takakura. Momo and Ken become embroiled in a debate about the existence of aliens versus the existence of ghosts and agree to a dangerous bet. Momo sends Ken alone to a haunted area and Ken sends Momo alone to an abandoned hospital allegedly frequented by aliens. What could go wrong? It doesn’t take long before Momo gets kidnapped by aliens who take most of her clothes and threaten to assault her. Meanwhile, Ken gets a beatdown from a demon ghost who steals an essential sexual body part. The aliens’ attack on Momo releases her latent psychic abilities, and Ken’s demon possession leaves him with intense powers and, ultimately, an alter ego demon personality. Momo’s youthful grandmother helps the teens after they escape from both the aliens and the demon and then embark on a quest to get all of Ken’s body parts back. Eventually they connect with a popular girl, Aira, who, in a tragic episode, has her own supernatural experience and unlocking of power. From the opening sequence, we know there will be another person joining their crew.

I will admit I had mixed feelings about this anime despite the enthusiastic recommendations. The animation, character design, and music are all top notch and highly engaging. However, the plot, particularly of the opening episode, was problematic. A high school girl is dragged into a sexual assault situation by creepy alien men and the entire scene is played for laughs or at least flippantly. It was troubling and distasteful enough for me to want to stop watching. And the boy (also a minor) having his body parts stripped from him by an old woman was likewise distasteful. The other element that’s vaguely annoying is the constant potty humor. It’s meant to fit the farcical vibe, but ultimately feels distracting. There are many anime that deal with tough subjects or lean into low humor. Dandadan stands out in the way the disturbing content is merged into brightly colored, murderous teen angst.

Fortunately, the more you watch, the more the pieces fit together. It took a few episodes for me to realize the theme of sexual assault and violence against women was intentional. The demon who assaults Ken is nicknamed Turbo Granny. She is monstrous, hideous, violent, and vulgar. However, we later find out she was an assault victim, and she haunts areas where other girls were assaulted and murdered. The vibes are similar to Jujutsu Kaisen with its themes of sorrow leading to rage then leading to demon creation. In a later episode, we meet another victim whose unimaginable loss leads to a monstrous transformation. In that particular episode, the animation style changes, gradually becoming more realistic and dreamlike at times. Stunning moments like that make the show worth watching despite the juvenile hijinks happening elsewhere.

In addition to the quirky plot, Dandadan has two memorable protagonists. Momo is loud, bossy, and opinionated. She dominates the show with both personality and screen time. She refuses to call Ken by his real name, and instead gives him the nickname Okarun. Still, Ken is the more interesting character. Despite having strong opinions, he is insecure, soft-spoken, and passive, and he is the complete opposite of the tough guy movie star who shares his name. He has little backstory so far, and we don’t really see his parents or his home. However, when he becomes cursed, his demon form is powerful, cynical, and disinterested, while still being reluctantly heroic. The character design of Ken’s demon form is intense, and the animation is intriguing and addictive. And it brings a nice bit of irony to the story. I find myself feeling almost relieved when he finally transforms in each episode. Another intriguing character is Momo’s grandmother, who looks almost as young as Momo. She is gruff and cynical, and is obviously hiding a lot of information from the two protagonists. The story initially feels limited with the sole focus on Momo and Ken rather than a more traditional anime ensemble cast. However, the opening sequences foreshadow the others who will expand the story to more of a team adventure.

Dandadan is quirky, irreverent, and exhausting at times, but the core story provides a good payoff and the animation is stunning. If you can get past the strange plot elements and the weird combination of very adult and very juvenile content, Dandadan can be a good weekly fix of unique storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Stunning animation
• Weird, flippant treatment of adult themes
• Quirky, innovative storytelling

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

Review: Jujutsu Kaisen - Season Two

A nihilistic departure from the edgy optimism of the first season.

When Jujutsu Kaisen arrived in the anime world, it became an instant hit. Fans were drawn to show’s edgy, elevated execution of the traditional shonen elements. Shonen anime often contain a central protagonist who is optimistic and heroic (Naruto Shippuden) or cynical and heroic (Bleach), and who has an interesting ensemble cast of scene-stealing characters, along with layers of complicated villains, intense battles, devasting family secrets, and extensive and powerful character arcs. Jujutsu Kaisen Season One gave viewers many of the things they loved about Naruto, but delivered it in a sleeker, edgier story with incredible art design and fantastic music. But Season Two of Jujutsu Kaisen makes a significant shift in both tone and storytelling style.

Season One Recap – Pink-haired Yuji Itadori is a strong, athletic high schooler being raised by his dying grandfather. After school, he attends his friends’ “occult club” meeting where they accidentally unleash a violent monster who begins to kill his classmates. To save them he consumes a dangerous artifact, the mummified finger of Sakuna, an evil supernatural being. As a result, Yuji is possessed by the villain Sakuna but can also harness his power. To everyone’s surprise, Yuji is strong enough to bring the violent Sakuna’s psyche under control. He is able to save his classmates and work alongside his new ally, Megumi (a sorcerer / monster-slayer) to defeat the attacking cursed creature. “Curses” are murderous monsters created by the negative emotions of humans. It’s a fascinating commentary on human thoughts.

Unfortunately, like Naruto in Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, Yuji now has a violent demon sharing space in his mind and his body. This means he is going to be executed…eventually. In the meantime, Yuji is sent to Jujutsu High School to learn how to be a sorcerer (curse-slayer) and save the world along with his new first-year classmates: fierce, outspoken Nobara and moody, deadly Megumi, all under the guidance of Satoru Gojo, their blue-eyed, blindfolded, irreverent teacher and mentor. In the course of Season One, Yuji builds bonds with his teammates and mentors, connects with his other classmates, and encounters life-changing conflicts while he struggles to maintain control of the monster inside him. Despite the grim premise, Season One maintained an unexpected sense of humor—simultaneously edgy, likeable, violent, and clever, with great character development.

Season Two is such a significant shift in the tone and storytelling style that it almost seems like we are watching a different show. The season begins with a multi-episode prequel arc about Yuji’s all-powerful young teacher, Satoru Gojo, and his deteriorating best-friendship with soon-to-be villain, Suguru Geto. However, the friendship between the two men is mostly just told to us and Geto’s sudden pivot from “save all humans” to “kill all humans” is so abrupt that it requires more of a willing suspension of disbelief than the fantastical magic systems that define the show.

The best part of the extended prequel episodes is the story of Megumi as a young child, Megumi’s violent, cynical father Toji, and how the father and son intersect with Gojo in a life-changing way. After an extended set up of Geto as a remorseless, smirking villain we get a time-skip to the present where we finally reconnect with the Season One trio of Yuji and his friends Megumi and Nobara. However, we only get a brief moment with them including a confusing introduction of an old classmate of Yuji who then disappears entirely from the story. In a few scenes, we move into the bulk of Season Two, a nihilistic, violent series of multi-episode long fight scenes, minimally explained villainy, and such extreme violence that I felt like I was watching Attack on Titan. Season One and Season Two both have lots of violence, but Season Two lacks the character-driven plotting and humor that Season One so effectively wove into the main horror elements.

In Season 2, Gojo’s frenemy, Geto’s, body is now possessed by another villain but everyone refers to him as Geto for convenience. On Halloween night, Pseudo-Geto and his minions trap thousands of festively costumed humans at the Shibuya Train Station in order to lure and trap Gojo. Gojo is believed to be the only one powerful enough to stop them so they use the trapped humans as bait and hostages to capture him so they can destroy the world without Gojo interfering. The plan results in a lot of carnage which is made more surreal by the brightly colored and often humorous costumes the unsuspecting party-goers are wearing. This attention to visual detail is one of the many ways in which the art design of Season Two is outstanding and riveting. From the sweeping views of the nighttime cityscapes to a carefully animated shot of the wide, lengthy almost golden staircase of the Shibuya train station, Season Two is a feast of thoughtful and immersive animation.

The main problem of Season Two is the plotting. Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara are no longer fighting as teammates but are separated from each other. Additionally, there are so many minor characters thrown into the narrative that viewers might repeatedly find themselves googling unfamiliar names. With so many key characters available, it’s confusing that minor players got so much screen time. Nobara, who is such a well-written, strong female character, is largely removed from the main story except for a few ill-fated fight scenes.

But, despite the gory, nihilistic tone of the second season, there are several elements and scenes that maintain the show’s intense appeal and explain its return as the 2024 winner of Anime of the Year.

In one story arc, the young sorcerer, Ui Ui, has an intense worship-like love for his super strong, monster-fighting older sister, Mei Mei. Mei Mei’s tone is always seductively calm regardless of the creatures coming at her or the creepy adoration of her little brother. In the midst of a fight, Mei Mei, needing a human sacrifice to succeed against her opponent, turns to her young brother and serenely asks, “Ui Ui, will you die for me?”

In another fight scene, a curse technique resurrects Toji, Megumi’s long dead father, and the two enter into a protracted battle unaware of the other’s identity. In another excellent scene, an injured, bloodied Nanami (Yuji’s business-like mentor) simultaneously walks through the haunting, dark subway station while also walking an uncomfortably bright beach, uninjured, wearing his business suit which is too warm for him. Both moments are overlaid on each other. After so many intense visuals, fight scenes, and overt horror, the simplicity of the overlaid moment is tragic and beautiful.

After protagonist Yuji sustains a near-fatal injury, the murderous monster Sakuna escapes Yuji’s control and lays waste to the Shibuya station using Yuji’s body as executioner. The close murders are shocking and terrifying and the final cataclysmic devastation is extremely powerful. At the same time, Megumi decides to sacrifice his life to create an avatar powerful enough to defeat the rampaging Sakuna. We see the epic clash between Megumi’s monster and the unleashed Sakuna. The lengthy battle is filled with astonishing visuals of the fighting and of the resulting destruction. Megumi’s strength, even though he’s unconscious, fuels Sakuna’s long-running obsession with him.

At the end of the battle with Sakuna, the art design of the devastation is terrifying in its controlled boundaries. Sakuna’s decision to inflict death and destruction go to an exact point, leaving a clear line of delineation between the survivors and the decimated. It’s a creepy way to show that everyone’s fate (of survival or death) is entirely in Sakuna’s hands. When Sakuna releases back to Yuji, the resulting emotional response is heartrending for Yuji as the panned out destruction blows him away. The music in this scene is fantastic. The haunting, driving beats of the show’s opening song circle back to the viewers as a devastated Yuji pleads for his own death.

Later, after Yuji regains control of his body, he has a final showdown between the long-time villain Mahito. During a climactic scene, the subway station transforms into a surreal winter-scape of desolate winter trees, deep white snow, and hunting wolves.

Overall, Jujutsu Kaisen’s powerful use of visual storytelling through its incredible art design make Season Two terrifyingly appealing, but the nihilistic change in both tone and plot may leave some viewers emotionally exhausted.

--

The Math

Highlights:

· A nihilistic departure from Season One
· Incredible art design
· Limited character development in favor of action

Nerd Coefficient: 7 

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

Novella Project: If Found, Return to Hell

When life gives you call centers, try kindness

Institutions breed call centers, with the probability of hold music hell rising with every added service the institution offers. Such webs of bureaucracy are prone to snarls and tangles, and somebody’s got to put on a headset, pick up the comb, and try to make order of it all. Yes, even if there’s magic. 

Em X Liu’s kindhearted novella If Found Return to Hell focuses on one such somebody: you, the reader. Because I do not really hold with 2nd person narration (at least, not enough to engage with it in reviews), I shall refer to this viewpoint character as Reader. Reader is a journeyman wizard for One Wizard, a massive firm whose job is to provide magic-care—like an insurance company that you call in when your magic goes wrong and you need someone to unwrong it. Naturally such calls must be received and triaged—hence the call center, and hence Reader’s job answering phones and troubleshooting wrongnesses. One day a client calls in to report a problem, and Reader makes a rookie mistake: promising to provide help that goes beyond standard One Wizard operating procedures. Upon making an actual house call to the client—a young man named Shine—Reader discovers that Shine has become possessed by a demon from Hell. Except this isn't a bad possession, as it turns out. The demon’s name is Wang Ran, and he and Shine get on well--so well that after a (surprisingly) brief period of adjustment Shine seems open to the idea of having a second person living permanently in his head and sharing control of his body. But Hell wants Wang Ran back, and One Wizard really doesn’t have any reason to take on the inter-institutional headache of fighting against Hell to support a call center lackey who should never have gotten involved in the first place. And so the struggle for freedom and self-determination against vast bureaucratic force is on. 

For a book about demon possession, this is a very warm and gentle story, full of details of family, friendship, food, and people caring about each other. Families are found, dingy little cheap apartments are made warm and comfortable and welcoming, and a great deal of comfort food is eaten. It is the mundane details of human life that attract Wang Ran as much as the freedom from Hell. He dives into projects like frying an egg, shopping for clothes, eating the dumplings that Shine’s mother made with love for her boy. He’s also rather a selfish asshole—Shine is the first to say that—but he is endearing. At least, Reader and Shine find him so.  

This is the kind of novella that is doing one very specific thing, and so its success or failure depends on how much you enjoy that kind of thing. Do you want a sweet, endearing story about the value of simple comforts, friendship, and family? A story whose villains can be reasoned with, whose faceless bureaucracies still have real people manning the phones, people who are eager to help? A story that uses the same structures in its magical world as the ones we encounter daily in our own, but allows the little people to triumph? If so, you’ll like this book. Many people did. I’ve seen lots of praise for its gentleness all over social media. 

But I myself found that its approach fell a bit short. The combination of ideas—call centers, demons, possession, hell—felt like it could have combined to make quite incisive commentary about the ubiquity of capitalist infrastructure which can poison everything—even magic. But the warmth and humanity of the characters worked against such a tale, and in so doing either undermined its indictment of bureaucratic hell, or else undermined its own world-building. It tells a tale in which an effective way to combat faceless bureaucratic inertia is through the power of individual action, personal virtue, and speaking sensibly to the people in charge. And I don’t know how many faceless institutions you’ve dealt with recently, but if that’s all it takes to get a good outcome, then One Wizard and Hell itself are a pretty weaksauce pair of institutions. And if One Wizard is instead supposed to be as intractable as State Farm, as immovable as AllState, then the outcome of this book fails to convince. Wizards and demons are fine, but believing that kindness can be as effective as it is in this story requires more magical thinking than I can muster.  

But that is because I am a jaded, curmudgeonly old fart. I hope you are soft and warm enough in your heart for this book to reach you and persuade you of the sort of magic we might bring to our own world through kindness. 

——

Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 6/10: Still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore.

Highlights:

• Call centers
• Dumplings
• Demons
• Hell

References
Liu, Em X. If Found, Return to Hell [Rebellion Publishing, 2023].

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

Novella review: 8:59:29 by Polly Schattel

Academia is hell—literally!

When I finished my last undergraduate final, I walked out of the room wanting to never take another test again, and so far I have kept to that vow. I have many friends, however, who went on to graduate school, and I try to understand the ordeal they have gone through; Bret Devereaux’s blog paints a bleak picture that makes me feel like I dodged a bullet. The widespread adjunctification of higher learning, combined with the slow transformation of secondary and increasingly primary education into college-oriented pressure cookers, must have been contributing factors to the rise of dark academia stories, where fantastic horrors are added to the real horrors of the academy. Here, Polly Schattel has made an odd but engrossing addition to this subgenre, 8:59:29.

The numbers that comprise the rather odd title are terms from filmmaking; this is quite appropriate, given that our protagonist is an adjunct professor of film at a university in the Appalachians that is clearly having funding woes and has seen better days. Her life is miserable; she lives in poverty with a department head who hates her, and her students don’t care about the material at all. Only one does: a local dropout who audits the class until he is forced out by the aforementioned department head. Out of anger, the two conspire to send him to hell.

Yes, that’s right. They find a demonic ritual on the dark web and start to plot not only his demise but his damnation. In this regard, this slim volume is a modern reimagining of the archetypical deal with the devil, adapted with great skill to modern conditions. It’s clear that Schattel has lived these conditions; this college is in what is clearly a dying town, ravaged by neoliberalism and outsourcing, and with no real sense that it has any sort of future worth sticking around for.

Stories of deals with the devil all revolve around, on some level, fervent hope that one’s circumstances could improve, a hope that rapidly spirals into desperation (K. J. Parker’s novella The Devil You Know is another take on it I liked). They’re about the desperation that leads people to fall for Nigerian prince scams, or get roped into multi-level marketing, or swear that essential oils will cure all their ills. It’s the rage of feeling that your future has been snapped out from under you, like being expelled from the course you’re auditing against the professor’s will. The professor once saw herself being successful, but has long since given up on it; the student sees glory in his grasp. When the future is stolen, they will go through hell to get it back.

There’s a grottiness here, not of the swampy fantasy inn, but of the all-too-real rust belt that soaks through every scene. The apartments are grungy and the souls of their inhabitants feel like they’ve rusted along with the factories. These feel like people who would make a literal deal with a demon just to feel something.

Befitting a horror story, it’s properly scary. The demons and the other accoutrements of hell are properly grotesque or otherwise eerie, with enough disturbing images to haunt your dreams for at least the next few days (being so short, it’s quite dense, and most of these are near the end!). But it is modernized in just the right way, to feel plausible for this century.

This book is also, in its own strange way, a love letter to film as a medium. It’s what I’d imagine could be the plot if Martin Scorsese directed a horror movie and was in a nasty mood about the modern economy. The two main characters both love their art, and their nemesis at least claims to (but perhaps loves his own ability to sneer at those with ‘lesser’ tastes more). These two are artists, aesthetes, aspiring bon-vivants who had the misfortune of not living in interwar Paris, two who want glory and fulfillment but are run through the wash by capitalism. By the end, you realize, this story could have only ended one way, and what a fitting ending it is.

8:59:29 is short, sweet, and to the point, and never overstays its welcome. It is a triumph of brevity, a paean to film, and a lament of the fate of Appalachia. I recommend that horror junkies and movie buffs read it post-haste.

--

Highlights: Grotty depiction of late-stage capitalism, also demons

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

The Novella Files: Inside Man by K.J. Parker

Subject: Parker, K.J. Inside Man [Tor.com Publishing, 2021]

Accolades: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Executive Summary: K.J. Parker returns to the amoral world of Prosper's Demon with a wry, sardonic novella that flips the eternal, rule-governed battle between men and demons on its head.

An anonymous representative of the Devil, once a high-ranking Duke of Hell and now a committed underachiever, has spent the last forever of an eternity leading a perfectly tedious existence distracting monks from their liturgical devotions. It’s interminable, but he prefers it that way, now that he’s been officially designated by Downstairs as “fragile.” No, he won’t elaborate.

All that changes when he finds himself ensnared, along with a sadistic exorcist, in a labyrinthine plot to subvert the very nature of Good and Evil. In such a circumstance, sympathy for the Devil is practically inevitable. (From Goodreads)

Assessment: Inside Man explores the nature of “His” plan—you know the one. The entity that makes some people think the world is either formed from premeditated or off-the-cuff chaos. Similarly, reading frenetic, off-the-wall stories makes me wonder how the author formed their creations. K.J. Parker consistently displays (or at least fools me into thinking) that his stories are carefully crafted and expertly conceived, even at their most chaotic instances.

Inside Man is best experienced having read Prosper’s Demon first, but it’s by no means a requirement. The story lays the groundwork for the worldbuilding quite clearly, but there are some character interactions that are augmented by prior exposure to the series. The banter between the demon protagonist and their nemesis-exorcist-turned-accomplice is vibrant and engaging—even more so than in Prosper’s Demon. And the workings of the demon world had a Pratchett-esque feel to it that swept me up in a world of witticisms and boundless creativity. Whether it’s their unique bureaucracy, history, or machinations, I was always gleefully enraptured. Prosper’s Demon might be the superior story in terms of dramatics, but I found Inside Man to improve the series on what was already a strong sense of humor.

My one complaint is that the story didn’t fully possess me until about a third into the novella. It covers a lot of groundwork at first, and looking back, I’m not quite sure all of it was necessary. But once the story finds greater focus, it moves with zippy and twisty momentum. It’s impressive and baffling how many intelligent turns the story takes while never coming close to muddling itself into convolution. And those countless turns in the latter half of the story always informed the world and themes. The themes on predeterminism, dissenting when feeling voiceless, and faith, are able to bounce between the narrative of the mundane and demon world, encompassing settings that are dichotomous in nature into thematic unity.

Inside Man lives up to Prosper’s Demon quality. It ends in a fashion that could be a fitting conclusion to the story but also leaves room for exploration. If K.J. Parker writes another sequel, I have no doubt it’ll at least appear thoroughly planned out. It might be blind faith in an entity I’ve never met, but he’s deserved it.

Score: 8/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, editor, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!”

Microreview [book]: My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

What if Stranger Things and The Exorcist had a child? A book child. 

Grady Hendrix is probably best known for Paperbacks from Hell, a nonfiction tribute to the outlandish and fun world of horror novels in the 1970s and 1980s. But he's also an accomplished horror novelist in his own right. My Best Friend's Exorcism is, in essence, Hendrix's attempt to write his own "paperback from hell" - an endeavor you might expect to go the full hipster route, complete with all the winks, nudges and avalanche of pop culture references that weigh down similar exercises, like Ernest Cline's Armada. Credit Hendrix for instead threading the needle, and producing a novel that is both loving paean to the paperbacks of yesteryear and a legitimate horror novel with a solid emotional core. 

My Best Friend's Exorcism tells the story of Abby Rivers and Gretchen Lang, teenagers and best friends in late 1980s Charleston, SC. Both attend a prestigious private school, but whereas Gretchen comes from a wealthy family with a sought-after address, Abby is a latchkey kid on scholarship. In their review, the AV Club offers this succinct synopsis of the plot:

Abby Rivers and Gretchen Lang are entering their sophomore year of high school, part of a four-girl clique both popular and academically successful. Abby and Gretchen have been besties since grade school, possessing the kind of near-telepathic communication and her-before-me selflessness that characterizes the most intimate friendships. So naturally, Abby is the first to notice when Gretchen returns—after disappearing for the night during a sleepover—a little… different. Soon, she barely recognizes her oldest friend, as Gretchen begins executing progressively more malicious schemes that rain down disaster upon everyone in her orbit. Surely, Abby reasons, this can’t be the work of her friend. Someone or some thing has taken hold, and is twisting her, forming her into someone fearsome and new. After a school assembly visit from a bodybuilding troop of Christian brothers, Abby suspects her worst fear might be true: The devil has taken her best friend.

This is not a YA novel, though it has a certain YA sensibility. At its core, My Best Friend's Exorcism is a novel about friendship, and more specifically, about the kinds of friendship you only make when you're young, still forming as a person and so struggling to make sense of the world and your place in it. It feels emotionally authentic, which is not something I take for granted with genre fiction. Honestly it's pretty rare for me to feel to wholly invested in a genre novel's characters when you discount the plot and setting. But I'd honestly read this novel about Abby and Gretchen and their lives even if it didn't have anything to do with demonic possession. 

Of course it is also a novel about demonic possession, and it's here that Hendrix really threads that needle between serious horror and campy retro fun. The story of Gretchen's possession is unnerving, unsettling and at times pretty shocking - but it's also peppered with elements of humor, especially when the '80s-tastic exorcist comes into play. The result isn't exactly funny and isn't exactly scary, but by blending the two, he does capture the feel and thrill of those old paperbacks. 

It's worth noting that this isn't a gory book - it certainly has its moments but, in the aggregate, it's pretty low on the gush and splatter. Instead it burns slow, amping up the creep factor and occasionally venturing into the macabre. A lot is left to the imagination, which as often is the case, ends up in a darker place than the book itself.

Next comes the question of who the book is for, and I imagine some people will bounce of the retro '80s concept. That, in turn, begs the question: could someone less invested in '80s nostalgia enjoy the book as much as I did? I think so. You will get more mileage out of the book if you've also sung the wrong words to "Against All Odds," but the story and emotional core are strong enough that your enjoyment doesn't hinge on it. And this is what sets My Best Friend's Exorcism apart from many other entries into the '70s and '80s nostalgia cottage industry - the nostalgia is pretty well backgrounded.

There are also lots of little details I appreciated as well, many of which suggest things but don't outright say them. For example, we know Abby's family is struggling financially but she attends an elite school on scholarship - we get hints throughout the novel that her family has fallen on hard times, and *might* have once been prominent in the community, but it's never stated outright. It may not be true at all. I always like this kind of approach, the kind that leaves questions to be answered by your imagination. 

Bottom line, this is a fun book that delivers mood, thrill and more than its share of heart. It's also hard to put down, and leaves enough questions unanswered that I'm already contemplating a re-read. One complaint: it's too short. I would happily have spent another one or two hundred pages with Abby and Gretchen. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for this is how you do nostalgic art; +1 for copious references to Phil Collins

Penalties: -1 for it's too short

Nerd Coefficient. 8/10. Well worth your time and attention. 

***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Microreview [book]: Wrath, by John Gwynne

A satisfying denouement to a tetralogy teetering on the edge of drowning in grimdark savagery

The reviewer isn't kidding about 'all manner of betrayals'!

Gwynne, John. Wrath. Orbit, 2016.

You can buy this book here.

A fundamental principle of fantasy (all?) literature is that a sufficiently melodramatic, cathartic victory/ending can only be achieved through the sacrifice of (usually) second-tier characters. These are the ones you can remember, whose names and backstories are vivid in your minds, but whose survival isn’t absolutely essential to the everything-and-everyone-tied-together happy ending the book or series has been moving towards since page one. A series like Harry Potter, hurtling towards happiness, could never dare off one of the three principals, forcing Rowling to select her final victims from the B-list: Snape, one of the Weasley twins, etc. Killing anyone more central to the narrative would jeopardize the catharsis. And I don’t mean to single out Rowling/Harry Potter: this is a near-universal feature of fantasy literature. A few B-listers have to die nobly so that the A-listers can live happily ever after.

Enter John Gwynne, who has taken this principle and grimdarked it. The essential calculus hasn’t changed—the principals will still survive and earn their happy ending—but the sheer quantity of second-tier characters required to throw themselves into harm’s way boggles the mind. Readers of the first three books of this tetralogy will be quite familiar with Gwynne’s penchant for throwing beloved but still slightly peripheral characters into the meat grinder, but he has savagely upped the ante here. I thought at one point of the memorable exchange from Casablanca: “What is [this book] like?” – “Oh, just like [the other three], only more so.” Remember Rowling’s judicious choice of a single quasi-central figure, one of the Weasley twins, as scapegoat? Gwynne puts almost the entire cast of B-listers on the sacrificial altar. I haven’t spoiled the story if I say: expect the very-most central characters to survive (obviously—no writer dare do otherwise) and practically no one else!

Multiply this scene of grief at a dead B-lister by a billion, and you will understand Wrath

This savagery may or may not register in the reader’s mind as a bad thing (it struck me as gratuitously excessive, but others might respond more favorably). But one feature of Gwynne’s approach does seem unambiguously problematic: his apparently quite dark view of mercy. Several times in the series, but especially in this fourth and final volume, “bad guys” spared by well-meaning heroes take their unexpected reprieve to (often literally) stab those same heroes in the back at the first opportunity. It’s as though Gwynne believes a) bad guys are incapable of change, or even of admitting their guilt, and (perhaps as a result) b) mercy is always a terrible mistake.

Take Nathair, who has sensed the error of his ways. Gwynne seems to be building to a tearful confession, leaving open the possibility of a way back to the light even for a treacherous viper like Nathair, only to slam that door shut and have the king double down on his evil deeds. Truly we are living in the age of the double-down! But the worst example of the heavy cost of mercy must be Rafe, who once again seemed potentially redeemable (indeed, quite a close approximation of the Harry-Draco dynamic is at play with Corban-Rafe), only to amass quite a body-count after the good guys (foolishly, it would seem) let him go. Naturally, some of the evildoers in the world, if granted a new lease on life, will misuse their second chance, to be sure, but since Gwynne’s only positive examples of the potential of bad guys to change were Veradis (the honorable if naïve warrior) and Alcyon (the honorable giant forced into evil due to magic and the fact his wife and son were held hostage), neither of whom, of course, is actually bad at all, his message is clear: genuine bad guys can’t learn from their mistakes, and will betray their merciful benefactors 100% of the time.

Ironically, this dark-as-grimdark-can-be attrition of B-listers and total denunciation of the idea, for bad guys, of moral rehabilitation after doing something terrible has restored my idealistic faith in humanity. I’m left strangely optimistic, muttering “Surely we humans can’t be that bad?”

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for keeping victory for Corban at all almost inconceivable until the very last minute, +1 for managing a fairly emotionally satisfying denouement

Penalties: -1 for the somewhat gratuitous/monotonous near-total annihilation of the second-tier characters, -1 for reinforcing the pessimistic idea that those who have once done wrong have essentially no chance of reform (and instead will stab a bunch of beloved B-listers in the back)

Nerd coefficient: 7/10 “An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws”

Read more on our nerdy scoring system here.

This message brought to you by Zhaoyun, still an unabashed optimist despite a steady diet of the most savage grimdark out there, and reviewer for Nerds of a Feather since 2013.

Microreview [book]: Valor, by John Gwynne

Not bad, but the problems of Malice worsen...

Gwynne, John. Valor. Orbit: 2014.

Buy it here.

In my review of author John Gwynne's first installment of this trilogy, Malice, I pointed out the extreme difficulty, as a reader, in suspending my disbelief that some 'good guys' would continue to serve an antiChrist-like figure even after he starts showing his true nature. Such guys include legions of samurai-like ninja supersoldiers who had spent their entire lives preparing to serve the prophesied avatar of the good god, one half of the world's Zoroastrian battle between light and darkness (complete with angels and demons). But even if they're completely unable to tell right from wrong, and even if we as readers are willing to swallow this wildly improbable state of affairs, Main Baddie Nathair's right-hand man, Veradis, continues to be such a good soul in this volume and to serve Nathair loyally—even after seeing his friends murdered by Nathair's other right-hand man, the "angel", and his pet giant—that I have to draw the line at him.

Gwynne is obviously building up to a Big Reveal, when Veradis will realize the error of his ways, switch sides to Main Good Guy Corban and (it's looking likelier and likelier) fall in love with Corban's spunky sister, but the sustained dramatic irony, an annoyance in the first book, is an extremely distracting cacophony here in book two. Much of the suspense in the book is built around different characters (finally!) figuring out who's good and who's bad, and that sort of thing got old quickly. Essentially, it's melodrama: we the readers are meant to empathize with poor misunderstood Corban and hate slimy pretender Nathair, grow furious with each new betrayal of the latter and cheer for each narrow escape by the former. That formula worked fairly well for book one, but here in Valor, it's not doing it for me anymore—I feel like Gwynne tried to milk this angle for too long.

On the other hand, in world with such starkly delineated notions of good and evil, once the battle lines are drawn, there won't be much left to do but have a Big Fight, and Gwynne wisely reasoned, I suppose, that having Corban and Friends on the run, constantly harried by foes, makes for better entertainment than a 500-page battle. Only trouble is, the extended chase scenes follow a predictable formula as well: each time, Corban manages to escape, but almost invariably loses another person precious to him, a member of his (as they literally call it) 'pack.' So I didn't even need to glance at the number of pages remaining in the book to know when I was getting near the end—let's just say the steady attrition of Corban's buddies takes its toll, until there obviously wasn't any more mileage Gwynne could get out of it without sacrificing a Main Character (you know, the kind that Storm-trooper types can never hit no matter how many times they fire their ray guns!), since he'd run out of Second-Tier Important Characters Whose Death, While Sad and All, Doesn't Really Change Much (you know, the kind people like J.K. Rowling sacrifice instead of really important characters so there can still be a happy ending! Just imagine the stink everyone would have put up if, instead of one of the totally expendable Weasley twins, it had been Ron—or Harry!?!?—who fell at The End!).

In Gwynne's world, bad guys hit their targets, alright, but only if they're aiming for second-tier nobodies!

You might be sensing by now that my tolerance for authors who have melodramatic cake and eat it too is rather low. I'd prefer to see an author unafraid to sacrifice the Ned Starks now and again, because it makes the story weightier to know that even those hard-to-hit Main Characters are vulnerable—in short, it places the Happy Ending in jeopardy! But Gwynne, at least so far, is having his Storm-trooper stand-ins fire and miss (or at least, hit only the equivalent of the Weasely twins).

The vaguely post-apocalyptic setting remains interesting, as does the under-populated human lands—but the latter are definitely firmly within a Celtic/Western European middle ages paradigm, and I'd say that particular brand of fantasy has been war-hammered almost to death by now. I hope that Gwynne can raise his game for the titanic final volume in the series, which I will look forward to reading—even after the slight disappointment of Valor.

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for continuing the cool blending of post-apocalyptic world with Mithraic/ Zoroastrian struggle between angels and demons, light and dark

Penalties: -1 for continuing to milk the dramatic irony/melodrama angle for all it is worth, -1 for keeping Main Characters safe at the expense of the second tier of supporting characters

Nerd coefficient: 6/10 "Still enjoyable, but the flaws are (getting) hard(er) to ignore"

[I know what you're thinking. "A 6/10? That's harsh!" Not so—at NOAF, that means Valor is a cut above the typical fare out there.]

This has been a communique from Zhaoyun, glasses-wearing academic by day, superhero sf/f aficionado by night, and one of the Main Characters at NOAF since 2013. Vive la resistance boutonneux! 

Microreview [book]: Malice, by John Gwynne

Gwynne, John. Malice. Orbit, 2012.

 Buy it here.

The Meat

When this book makes it big—and it certainly deserves to do so—people will be jumping all over themselves to make comparisons to George R.R. Martin, the current king of gritty fantasy (just as everyone used to compare everything to Tolkien, the doyen of high fantasy). As a comparison, it's not entirely without merit: it's plenty grim, with distinct echoes of Red Wedding-esque betrayal in particular, and plenty of great game politics, with only a limited deployment of magic. But what Gwynne has accomplished is both less and more than the Song of Ice and Fire.

First of all, the scale—while impressively detailed—is noticeably smaller, and feels more manageable than the grand epic drama of Westeros (let alone the rest of Martin's wide world), with their huge armies and titanic clashes. If Martin speaks of tens of thousands (or more), Gwynne limits himself to thousands—and usually far fewer. In Gwynne's world of exiles decimated by an ancient catastrophe, humans have only started to dominate the land recently, and while the warrior arts are important to every man's life, each also seems to have a trade: the 'armies' of this world are not professional soldiers but a kind of clannish militia.

This should not be thought of as a weakness of the book, not by any means. Combat in Malice takes place on a human scale, where it is still possible to believe that individuals, perhaps even those without any great martial skill, can affect the course of a battle. This is so because a culture of honor—but not chivalry per se, at least not of the Arthurian kind, the knights and ladies and foppery of high medieval romances—pervades life in the world of Malice, and as such, combat is still largely a series of duels, almost Homeric in its cadences (though thankfully without Homer going on and on about Achilleus's shield in book sixteen!).

Gwynne's work is also more than the rather limiting knee-jerk comparison to Martin might suggest. For one thing, he is to be commended for crafting such a powerful mythology for this small-enough-to-be-comprehensible world, and keeping a tight focus on the moral drama at the heart of the prophecy regarding the Zoroastrian struggle set to commence between the nice god and his human avatar, Bright Star (the good guy, who the attentive reader will correctly ID almost immediately) and the bad god and his own avatar, the Black Sun (not such a good guy). Rather than "malice" itself, I would say the one catalyst provoking much of the more horrid events in the book is jealousy, which, combined with an honor culture in which any sort of slight could lead to vicious duels (or any success to great rewards), is a potent motivator indeed. One hopes Gwynne wasn't drawing on personal experience to paint such a vivid picture of the sort of childhood feuds that festered, in this honor-based society, into full-blown murder plots!

(For any foolish romantics who still long for a return to the glorious days of the past, back when men were men and any problem could be solved by sticking it with your sword until it stopped talking, you should read Steven Pinker's book Better Angels on the astonishing reduction in violence over the course of human history, and how the last holdouts opposing this growing aversion to violence were honor-based cultures.)

 
Naturally, some aspects of the book could be better. Stylistically, Gwynne's prose, and dialogue, is somewhat uneven, with his strongest passages tending to be the least dialogue-heavy; still, he does manage occasional flashes of true brilliance (the chapter describing Corban eventually selecting a name for his horse was especially memorable). And some aspects of the story he's begun to weave together here are formulaic enough to be predictable, and predictable enough to be, essentially, quite melodramatic dramatic irony; sometimes a good-hearted character keeps following at the beck and call of a(n obviously) black-hearted traitor for an unbearably long time. But lest we judge too harshly, remember this: Malice is Gwynne's first book, and as such is an astonishingly forceful tour (I've sworn off French expressions while writing under my nom de plume of Zhaoyun—haha!).

When you look at this guy, is your first thought "Gosh, I hope I can protect this gentle soul from the bad guys impugning his good name! I'll bet he likes to pet bunnies, too!" If so, you're like more than a few good-hearted characters in Malice, devoted to guys who are obviously sworn to their world's equivalent to Satan!

The Math

Baseline assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for consciously limiting the scale of his world, +1 for the intriguing mix of realpolitik, magic lite, and various animal and other factions (giants, wolven, draigs, wyrms, etc.), +1 for the scintillating story of how Corban came to name his steed

Penalties: -1 for not managing that same scintillating brilliance throughout the book (especially with the sometimes stilted dialogue), -1 for making who is good and who is bad so obvious (despite their little glamours!) that it amounts to dramatic irony/difficulty in suspending disbelief that good-hearted people would continue to serve these monsters

Nerd coefficient: 8/10 "Well worth your time and attention"

Don't be fooled by this score, which probably seems low to readers used to other sites and their endless lists of 10/10; here at Nerds of a Feather, an 8 is quite rare!