Book Review: The Dragon Has Some Complaints, by John Wiswell

A multi-headed allegory that rewards multiple readings

It’s tricky to attempt to pin down in a few paragraphs all the things that The Dragon Has Some Complaints is trying to say, because it operates on several layers of meaning at the same time. Its tale of a grumpy, battle-weary dragon who infiltrates a city of dragon riders to get free food while he quietly plots his revenge on humans is both hilarious and heart-wrenching, and the points it has to make about pain, kindness, hubris, cruelty, loyalty and resilience get richer the more one reflects on them.

The first and most obvious level of analysis has to do with disability and chronic pain. When we meet the protagonist, the fierce dragon Garrodigh, he’s badly injured and traumatized. In one of the frequent and interminable wars between human kingdoms, a cannon shot knocked him down from the sky, leaving him with the bones of one leg shattered, his wings torn to shreds, his four heads reduced to three, and his memory partially erased. Other dragons shun him because of an alleged closeness to humans he can’t remember. He can barely hunt his food, much less defend himself. If hunger doesn’t kill him soon, a stray cannon ball will. By the time the book starts, he already has nothing to lose.

Author John Wiswell has spoken openly and at length about his own experience with disability and chronic pain, and he uses that personal perspective to great effect in the book. Because the nature of dragonkind is all explosive fire and brimstone, Wiswell employs the imagery of water and ice whenever he needs to refer to things that harm dragons. The pain in Garrodigh’s broken bones is described as a freezing sensation, like being stabbed with needles of ice. To a dragon’s mind, the nearness of death feels cold. And in a fascinating bit of worldbuilding, dragons in this universe can’t swim. A dragon’s fire can’t survive immersion in water.

The reader will find such allusions repeatedly, because once Garrodigh sneaks his way into a dragon-friendly human city, the book takes its time to very gradually depict his recovery. These humans have an entire arsenal of techniques to rehabilitate injured dragons, but even after he has laboriously regained his full mobility, an echo of the pain still lingers. There’s no perfect cure, and a body that has taken that kind of beating will never not carry its old wounds. For a book that has dragons, this is a strikingly realistic representation of physical therapy in both its benefits and its limitations.

How the narration treats Garrodigh’s inner life is another point of interest. This dragon has three remaining heads, but the book is told exclusively from the perspective of Centerhead, who seems more in touch with reality than the perpetually hungry Bottomhead, who has no interest in complicated ideas and prefers to follow more animalistic urges, and the delusional Upperhead, who is horrified at dragon behavior and is convinced that he’s a human trapped in a bad dream. The constant disagreements between Garrodigh’s heads, with Centerhead almost always taking the role of the mediating and decision-making personality, can be read as a creative reinterpretation of the Freudian trinity of Id/Ego/Superego, with the missing four head serving as Garrodigh’s life-defining trauma, the symbolic castration in reference to which everything else is framed.

(Another possible reading of Garrodigh’s heads would view them as representing the fractured self that emerges in cases of dissociative disorders, with Bottomhead’s and Upperhead’s maladaptive coping mechanisms, as well as their selective amnesia, having developed to protect the primary identity from its life-defining trauma.)

(YET another possible reading of Garrodigh’s personality would use a Lacanian lens. The primordial Lack of the fourth head is what drives Garrodigh’s every goal and choice, and his inner conflict isn’t resolved until a later chapter where he crosses an ocean, facing the thing that can kill him. Here I should be careful not to spoil too much, but the turning point in this part of his journey is that he recovers a lost Archetypal Mother at the same time as he helps humans recover a lost Archetypal Father, an encounter that reconciles Garrodigh with both the order of nature and the order of society.)

Interestingly, with all the details the book provides on Garrodigh’s mind, it never mentions how dragons experience (or not) desire. This omission stands out because the narration goes out of its way to make a recurring joke about Centerhead’s bafflement at human sexual habits, and these moments showcase how humans can look outright alien when viewed at a distance. The human Rania, Garrodigh’s self-appointed rider, caretaker and confidant, has a head-spinningly convoluted love life that the reader only gets to see as filtered through the dragon’s inevitably inaccurate perception.

On the human side, things are no less complicated. Rania is an immigrant in the dragon rider city, a native of another kingdom with which her new home is at war. Some of her superiors expect her to simply fulfill her duty and fight, but others mistrust her by default and question the truthfulness of her sworn loyalty. These questions about belonging and acceptance mirror Garrodigh’s own dilemma regarding his place among humans: he hates them and wants to eat them all, but he’s unexpectedly met a human community where dragons are valued and cared for. Neither Rania nor Garrodigh see any reason to expect they’ll end up being loved, and finding exactly that will be the final test of their respective characters.

The Dragon Has Some Complaints continues Wiswell’s literary exploration of what we mean by the category “monster” and what we do to beings that label is applied to. Sometimes prejudice makes us eschew any attempt at communication, and sometimes we wish nothing more than to open up to each other, but never learned what to do if such connection succeeds. If you’ve ever felt it’s dangerous to open your mouth, imagine having three.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Reference: Wiswell, John. The Dragon Has Some Complaints [DAW, 2026].

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

Anime Review: Kaiju No. 8 — Season 2

A shift from character and comedy to action and intensity

After an entertaining and engaging first season filled with the right combination of comedy and action, Kaiju No. 8 successfully earned a nomination for Anime of the Year, joining powerhouses like Frieren, Solo Leveling, and The Apothecary Diaries. Season 1 gave us the unusual hero origin story of Kafka, an older, ordinary, working-class person who gets a last chance to chase his childhood dream of becoming a kaiju hunter. But when an unexpected attack turns him into a kaiju, he has to fight to remain a hero while keeping his newfound intermittent transformation a secret from the rest of the defense force. In season 2, Kafka’s kaiju secret is out and he must find a way to rebuild trust with his teammates and the rest of the defense force as they all take on a terrifying new enemy who seems unstoppable. While the first season focused on relationships and character motivations, the second season is primarily action. The pivot from character introspection to action results in a season 2 that is fast-paced and entertaining, but not as fully comedic or relationship-driven as season 1. However, the relatively short season 2 and the cliffhanger ending make it clear that viewers are still in the building portion of the larger story arc.

In season 1, thirty-two-year-old protagonist Kafka became part of a found family of much younger new recruits competing for a spot on the Kaiju Defense Force. Kafka’s best friend and confidant Reno supported Kafka as he used his kaiju transformation to secretly help his comrades out of lethal situations. However, an unexpected attack in a major battle forced Kafka to reveal himself publicly as he risked his life to save his team. Season 2 begins with Kafka’s role in the defense force redefined to include tests to use his kaiju powers to help in the fight. However, his fear that he might irreversibly lose control inhibits his ability to fully use his hidden strength. He also gets the bad news that repeatedly transforming will dramatically reduce his life expectancy. These new obstacles arise just as the unusually intelligent Kaiju No. 9 plots to destroy all humans in the country. Whereas season 1 focused on kaiju as mindless beasts, season 2 introduces thoughtful, strategic, super-strong monsters who are intentionally destroying people in coordinated mass attacks. As the human body count grows, Kafka has to decide if he can rise to the challenge.

Although season 1 was reasonably violent, season 2 is far grimmer as it brings viewers into the bleakest moments of the narrative. There are still some very funny moments, but comedy is no longer the primary story element. The original squad of diverse personalities is disbanded in season 2 as the original team of recruits is split up and sent to different squads. Some previous regular characters mostly disappear from the story as new characters compete for screen time. Although the cruel and creepy Kaiju No. 9 appeared in season 1, it now takes on a lead role as the main villain coordinating a team of similarly intelligent and homicidal monsters. As a result, the on-screen body count is specific and violent rather than vague and abstract. Additionally, the previously sassy and strong Shinomiya has a personal loss that drives her to greater seriousness in the ongoing battle.

All this intensity makes the 11-episode season seem very short, as the fast-paced stories fly by and end in an abrupt moment of mounting tension. Fortunately, despite the more serious tone, there are still some very funny elements that balance out the intensity. New character Gen Narumi is the pink-haired squad leader who is hilariously video-game-addicted and social-media-obsessed. His superficial immaturity stands in stark contrast to his cold-blooded killer skills on the battlefield, and the juxtaposition of both elements makes for great scenes in season 2. Shinomiya’s interactions with Narumi are entertaining as she moves from intimidated to irritated with Narumi’s immaturity. Additionally, the previously serious vice-captain Hoshino gets lots of funny moments. The season starts with a standalone short film called Hoshino’s Day Off, in which the members of the original squad secretly follow the vice-captain around on their mutual day off to see what he is up to as he engages in a series of suspicious activities. The short film (which was previously released in theaters) is a fun break from the carnage and a last look at the old squad working together during a comedic adventure. Also, each episode of season 2 has a post-credits scene featuring Hoshino as a late night television host interviewing various characters. One micro-episode references Narumi’s social media obsession, and another segment comments on the poor amount of screen time given to previously regular characters. The micro-episodes are a self-aware and amusing palate cleanser after the intensity of the primary stories.

Beyond the battle intensity and the still present comedy, season 2 has some moments of introspection. Kafka and Mina have a quiet lunchtime together for the first time in the series and reminisce about their childhood fears and dreams. There is also a poignant moment when Kafka admits to Shinomiya that he hasn’t looked at his phone messages because he is afraid of what his former teammates think of his monster status. Those quiet moments are a reminder of why Kaiju No. 8 retains its appeal even as the narrative tone shifts from comedy to intensity. Although the season ends in a moment of mounting action, it will hopefully lead to a worthwhile payoff if fans are willing to endure the wait for season 3.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• More intense action, less comedy
• Lots of hero angst but reduced focus on relationships
• Strong new character, less time for prior regulars

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

Book Review: He Who Drowned the World, by Shelley Parker-Chan

A masterpiece of politics, people, magic, murder, and war

Cover design and illustration by Lucy Scholes

I almost didn’t read this book. I had enjoyed the first book in this series, She Who Became the Sun (SWBTS), so much, and felt so satisfied by its ending, that I was hesitant to crack open the sequel for fear of a disappointment. But I was not disappointed, my friends! Everything that made SWBTS an outstanding book returned, in spades, in He Who Drowned the World. Twisty turny betrayals? Court politics? Conquest strategy? Tragic character arcs? Explorations of gender presentation? Wang Baoxiang¹? Yes, yes, and yes. Also yes. And, yes, again, yes.

If you have not read SWBTS you need to put down your device right now and go read it. It is superb. It won the British Fantasy Award both for Best Newcomer² (it is Parker-Chan’s debut novel) and for Best Novel overall. It follows the initial rise to power of Zhu Yuanzhang, historically the founder of the Ming Dynasty. However, in this telling, Zhu is not the son of a tenant farmer, but the daughter, so disfavoured that she is not even given a name. In a searing first chapter, relentless drought and famine, combined with a bandit attack, destroy her family, including her brother, who had been given a prophecy of greatness by the village fortune-teller. The girl, whose own fortune was a laconic ‘Nothing’, refuses to accept this future. She takes her dead brother’s name, and with it decides that she will fool the fates and take his fortune of greatness as well; and for the rest of the book she becomes Zhu Chongba, a man whose rise to power you can read about in the history books (or the wikipedia page I linked earlier). SWBTS ends with Zhu’s victory halfway up the ladder to total domination: she has taken the city of Yingtian, changed her name to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, and declared that she will lead her people to rout the Mongols from China. 

It is a wildly satisfying ending. I loved it. But it is not the end of the story. The Mongols are not gone yet, and the Ming Dynasty has not yet been founded.

He Who Drowned the World continues that story, from three primary perspectives. All three are familiar from SWBTS, and all three have achieved the first stage of their goals from that first book.

First, we have Zhu Chongba (now Zhu Yuanzhang), who’s doing pretty well! She’s in charge of an army and recognized as the Radiant King of her people in the southern regions of the disputed territory. She further holds the indisputable Mandate of Heaven, which manifests as the ability to generate light and see ghosts. She is also well-supported by her wife, Ma, who has managed to get over a bit of child-murder at the end of the last book. The child in question held a Mandate of Heaven of his own,³ so Zhu had to off him in order to remove a possible rival to her own claim. To be honest, the kid was a bit creepy throughout the book, so his murder didn’t really bother me as much as it probably should have.

Second, we have General Ouyang. Ouyang has also managed to achieve the first step in his life goal. When he was a child, his family was captured and murdered by the Prince of Henan, down to the last man — except him. Him the prince castrated and left alive, and Ouyang has since grown up as a kind of pet eunuch to the family, acquiring enormous skill in murder and warfare, rising to command the entire army of Henan, while nursing in his bosom the desire for revenge. His only goal in life now is to revenge himself upon the Mongols — but he’s not happy about it. He had started building a kind of life for himself, anchored by his deep, agonized, sort-of-but-not-really-but-kind-of sexual-romantic attraction to the Prince’s son,  Esen, who  in turn trusts Ouyang utterly. So Ouyang has been kind of putting off the first step in his revenge, until battlefield losses to Zhu kind of force the issue. By the end of SWBTS he has betrayed and murdered Esen, and feels pretty darn miserable about it. But that’s ok: All that remains for him to do now is to find and murder the Great Khan, and then his life will be complete. He is not in a good head-space, but he’s got his goals and is making progress toward them.

Third we have Wang Baoxiang. Wang was Esen’s brother, and now, after Ouyang’s murder-spree, the Prince of Henan. He is deeply pissed at how everyone has been treating him: they see him as effeminate and unmanly for being bad at stabbing, and refuse to recognize his bureaucratic skills. So he’s decided to use those skills to climb the ranks at court, and become the Great Khan himself. Also, he’s haunted by his brother’s ghost (he may have had something to do with smoothing the way for Ouyang to do the murder), and seems to have some sort of Mandate of Heaven of his own.

What makes He Who Drowned the World just sing is the way each of these characters engages with the same themes from different perspectives. Each has a clear goal which in some way requires taking down the Great Khan. Zhu is the merry warrior, who never doubts the rightness of her path. Ouyang is the tortured warrior, who is fighting the blackness of despair at every step, and regularly doubts the rightness of his path. But — having taken that terrible first step in betraying and murdering Esen — Ouyang cannot allow himself to take any other path. no matter the kinder opportunities that present themselves. Wang, too, is tortured by despair, unable to turn off his cruel, traitorous path to power, despite meeting kindnesses of his own that might, in other circumstances, have made a difference. But for all the similarity between Ouyang and Wang, Wang is not a warrior, so his actions are fundamentally different in strategy from Ouyang's. And all three of them, to one extent or another, must face the question: Is it all worth it? 

Another key theme is the subversion of gender roles. Zhu is the clearest example of this: a woman posing as a man. Or perhaps a non-binary person who takes up whichever gender presentation suits her needs at the moment. She does not envy men their bodies, except inasmuch as their larger size and strength makes them better at fighting; and she does not hate her own, except inasmuch as it poses obstacles to her goals. Honestly, she’s much more inconvenienced by her missing right hand (which Ouyang cut off in SWBTS) than she is by her anatomy.⁴

Not so Ouyang, who is a eunuch, and hates it. He has the manliest of manly roles — the general of an army — and yet everyone describes him as beautiful, woman-like. He is effectively the opposite of Zhu, who approaches gender from a deeply pragmatic perspective: she benefits both from everyone’s acceptance of her as a man as well as her ability to present as a woman when subterfuge is required. She gets the best of both worlds. By contrast, Ouyang, who abhors everything female, is denied maleness as well. Like Zhu, he is mutilated, but unlike Zhu, this obstacle is connected with gender. He gets neither world, and his misery and despair in no small part springs from that.

Wang Baoxiang offers a third perspective on gender roles: he is a man, a cis-het man, with all the relevant anatomy. But he is seen as unmanly (because he does bureaucracy instead of battle), and perceived as being one of those men who sleep with other men. He doesn’t like this perception, which contributes to the general social disrespect that motivates his own actions throughout the book; but he’s not above using it to his advantage, to make alliances and develop relationships that he can exploit and betray when the time comes.

Oh, and speaking of relationships, I’ve got to mention the sexual encounters in this book. Because, dang. There are a lot of them, and not a single one is built on basic kindness or affection. Every single sexual encounter is a power play, a political act, a treachery, a betrayal, manipulation. The degree to which Parker-Chan can construct such a wide variety of unhealthy sexual encounters, all of which are vital to the plot, is astonishing.

Because, yes, they are all vital to the plot. The plot is intricate, subtle, heart-breaking, surprising, inevitable, and deeply, deeply satisfying. The twisty-turny politics, the subtle character studies, the psychology of ambition and regret and sacrifice for a larger goal, are all woven into an astonishing tapestry. It is dark and brutal, with a great deal of dismemberment, but there is just enough hope and goodness that it’s not all awful. Just barely. Maybe. Assuming you don’t need a lot.

1 Wang Baoxiang is the half-brother of the Prince of Henan in SWBTS. He won my heart by being entirely uninterested in battle and manliness, instead turning his considerable brains to the minutiae of administration, supply, and all the other activities that make it possible to feed, outfit, and field an army to do the stabby bits. ‘Moar Wang!’ became my battle cry at my book group meeting. Friends, there is so much Wang in He Who Drowned the World. 

2 Full disclosure: I was on the the panel for that award, and I don’t mind sharing that there was no disagreement at all among panelists that SHBTS was far and away the winner.

3 The Mandate of Heaven hedges its bets. Sometimes as many as three or four people may hold it at one time. It recognizes the potential to be Emperor, but it does not mark inevitability. As demonstrated by the dead kid from SWBTS.

4 Mutilation, in this world, is seen as deeply wrong. Ghosts of mutilated people turn into soul-eating monsters; and even before they are dead such people are shunned and reviled, refused entry into monasteries and other important locations. Actions like, oh, say, sending a jar of pickled hands to your enemy have a very particular resonance in this context.

—

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10, mind-blowing/life-changing/best.book.evar

Highlights:

•     Trenchant psychological character work
•     Betrayal, politics, and manipulation
•     Twisty turny gender stuff

Reference: Parker-Chan, Shelley. He Who Drowned the World [Tor/Mantle, 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.

Review: The Runes of Engagement, by Tobias Buckell and Dave Klecha

An intriguing deconstruction of the “modern military vs. fantasy creatures” sub-sub-genre

You’ve probably seen the trope before, as it is a not uncommon theme in military fantasy novels. A military unit from our world has to suddenly deal with supernatural creatures, sometimes in our world, sometimes in another dimension. AR-15 rifles versus dragons. Mortars versus orc fortifications. Cavalry charges against entrenched army units. You know the drill. While it is more common in straight-up military SF, there is a burgeoning military sub-sub-genre in fantasy environments as well.

The authors of The Runes of Engagement tackle this theme in an evolving and even deconstructive way. We layer up the background of the story in the opening and throughout the book to get a sense of how and why and what the scenario is. A picture emerges of a world like ours which suddenly was attacked from another realm. There clearly is an Evil Overlord who decided to expand their domain by opening a front onto our world through magical portals. While the Overlord has been beaten back into his original realm, the costs were high enough that America and other forces have gone across to the other world themselves. Modern military forces on the ground in another dimension, with all the problems that implies.A firebase in a hostile environment, surrounded by enemies, is something armed forces know all about, even if it is in another dimension and the hostiles can do magic.

The actual plot spurs from this point on. Various world governments have forces in the alternate dimension and have been seeking allies and connections to help control the portals to Earth and to take the fight to the Overlord. Our focus is on the members of a Marine unit led by one Staff Sergeant Cale. Cale and his forces have been tasked with bringing an important diplomatic asset, Lady Wiela, a Princess in fact, to the portal to Earth. The goal is to get her to negotiate a treaty to gain her and her Elven realm as an important ally against the mutual Dark Overlord enemy. Needless to say, what seems like a complicated but doable trip in helicopters across a short distance to the portal turns into a much more complicated situation. And as always, it is the ground troops, in this case Cale's soldiers, who have to deal when things go sidewise. And they go so very sidewise, as the Marines have to deal with a radically changed mission, dwindling resources, and fearsome opponents.

Where the authors differ from many books in this subgenre, and make the book more open and more interesting to more mainstream SFF readers, is primarily in the tone, as well as the characters and composition of the army, its allies and associates. These are Marines of a modern mindset and era, rather than the more retrograde armed forces of earlier eras which seem to wrongly display themselves as the default mode of military SF and fantasy.

It’s not only that this is a military more in line with modern sensibilities, but the characters are also genre-aware and the authors make excellent use of that. A major throughline across the book is that the Marines, having grown up with (and in some cases been “forced fed”) fantasy books and movies, are most definitely tuned into genre stereotypes and ideas. No one needs to be explained who Tom Bombadil is, they know a 20 on a roll in D&D is a critical hit, and don’t need to be told that orcs are dangerous.

The fun that the authors have with this is that the fantasy realm that the characters are in only sometimes conforms to Tolkienian stereotypes, and sometimes those stereotypes are thrown right out the window. Trolls, for instance, are very much in the mode of Tolkien: dangerous, potent, but vulnerable to sunlight. On the other hand, Ents are not the friendly Treebeard types you find in The Two Towers. Time and again, the characters, genre-aware as they are, comment on what they are experiencing, especially when they are behind the eight ball.

This places The Runes of Engagement in a recent crop of books that is engaging with, deconstructing, commenting on and thinking on the rise of a general consciousness of epic fantasy tropes, ideas, characters and worldbuilding that has infused the mainstream. It’s coming at that consciousness from a different, military-focused angle (and in a real sense trying to drag that subgenre into the more general flow of SFF), but books such as How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler, or Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan, among others, are part of this bit of genre conversation. The context of that conversation between these books is still being worked out.

However, it is clear that there is a meta-moment of epic fantasy and fantasy in general inside of the genre, and The Runes of Engagement, with its Marines dumped into the deep end of a situation and a world that only sometimes conforms to their expectations (and is deadly dangerous when it does NOT) is part of that meta-moment. Buckell and Klecha, along with Wexler, Brennan and others, have grown up in a world where genre fantasy is a completely and utterly mainstream mode, and thus can reflect on what that means when perceptions of fantasy for characters or a society run up against an actual fantasy world. This is seen both in the large and small details; the latter, for example, as code phrases are lifted from lines of fantasy books; as well as the characters wondering and speculating why this realm aligns, however imperfectly, with Tolkien and other fantasy works.

Beyond this question of metafiction and the novel’s place in that part of the genre conversation, the book is a highly entertaining narrative of a small unit of soldiers put under stricture and having to work their way through it when things go wrong. The research and getting into the mindset of soldiers is a key to really making this novel feel authentic and relatable. As an example, early in the book, as air support for the Marines, a set of A-10 Warthogs show up to help push back the enemy. Any reader of Mil-SF, or more importantly, anyone who has experience with modern combat in the last 50 years on a battlefield can appreciate the presence of the “infantry’s friend” (and then showing how vulnerable they can be on a modern battlefield when not supported properly). The authenticity of the details of the military experience both big and small is presented for fantasy readers as a piece of worldbuilding that is rendered accessible for anyone who has puzzled through a chunky SF or fantasy novel, rather than incomprehensibility meant only for fans of the subgenre.

And it is a relatively lighthearted, at points funny, novel, and intended to be. Sure, Cale and his Marines are in tight spot after tight spot, but the authors leaven their predicaments and their encounters with good doses of humor, sometimes very dry. After all, the title itself is a pun.

The Runes of Engagement works very well for readers who are not immersed in the tropes and expectations of its subgenre, but are cognizant and immersed in the fantasy tropes that have infused popular culture. The novel stems from a short story and comes to a satisfactory conclusion (with some interesting questions raised). I’d read another novel set in this universe.

Highlights:

• Excellent narrative that speaks to the pervasiveness of modern fantasy in culture.
• Good use of military tropes and feel to give authenticity to the soldiers and their plight.
• How useful is a Panzerfaust against a troll, anyway?

Reference: Buckell, Tobias S and Klecha, Dave. The Runes of Engagement [Tachyon, 2024].

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

Review: House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Tyrant Philosophers series continues in a new setting

War? What is it good for? For the Palleseen, it's absolutely everything. Converting the world to their materialistic and rationalistic philosophy by armed force means that, in order to fight effectively, they are willing to try a number of things to keep their armies effective, including a rather special medical unit. As the Palleseen fight against their opposite and equal number on the battlefield, the members of that medical unit find that the costs of war are higher than even they can imagine.

This is the story of Adrian Tchaikovsky's House of Open Wounds.

The first book in the series, City of Last Chances (reviewed by Roseanna here at NOAF) featured a rotating set of points of view, including Yasnic, a priest of a small god who has diminished so much that his name is just God, a peculiar god of healing. At the end of that book, he finally fell into the hands of the Palleseen conquerors. In House of Open Wounds, set sometime later, we find out what they decided to do with him. And that is to assign him to a medical unit, an experimental medical unit. After all, he is a priest of a god of Healing, right?

House of Open Wounds is the story of this medical unit and its characters, all broken in very strange ways. The metaphor I kept coming up with as we started to learn about the characters and slowly learn their stories is that this novel comes across as a mixture of M*A*S*H and Glen Cook's The Black Company. The hospital staff are all misfits, quirky, odd and weird. One might say, in the Pals parlance, that none of them are even near to be perfected. But since there is a war on, the Hospital unit is just barely tolerated (and the threat of its dissolution hangs over the unit throughout the book), and so the misfits of the hospital do the best they can in an endless cycle of war.

This book gives the spotlight to the relatively large cast of the hospital, as they find themselves in a number of locations and conflicts. They are not often in combat, but when that happens, it is a catastrophic and dangerous event, since even with some of the limited resources on hand, the hospital unit staff are not very effective fighters. But Tchaikovsky leaves the prospect of direct action only as a vague threat for much of the book (until he doesn't) and focuses the staff on the conflicts and considerations between each other, and with the rest of the army.

I've already mentioned Yasic (who finds himself with a new name to his chagrin, Maric Jack) but there are plenty of other memorable characters here, who conflict with each other, the army, the war and anything else. Banders, the most promoted (and subsequently demoted) soldier in the army. The Butcher himself, who is holding a very dark secret as to his alchemical skills and just why he is so good a surgeon. Fellow-Inquirer Prassel, who is a necromancer, who only gets new material if the Butcher and company cannot save someone. Cosserby, who can make golem-like servitors, but whose work is looked on with extreme suspicion by the powers that be. It's a whole set of misfits, and early on, Yasnic/Maric Jack (who is new to the unit) is introduced to all of them and what they do, cleverly giving us the essentials upon which the author then sets these characters into motion.

In other words, this would be a hell of an Apocalypse World-style game setting, with a bunch of misfits and castoffs, all of whom are keeping secrets (sometimes not even knowing that they HAVE a secret) and all of whom don't fit in with the rest of the army or with the world in general, all trying to get along with each other and with their lives, but the war keeps getting in the way.

This makes House of Open Wounds, for all of its interesting setting and worldbuilding, ultimately a very character-focused novel. This is not to say that Tchaikovsky's work has skimped on character before or that he hasn't had a good sense of characters in previous novels, but a lot of this novel is driven by putting these quirky, broken, unusual misfits in a pressure cooker (or an instant pot), turning it on, increasing the pressure, and watching what happens to them.

However, it's not all grim and humorless, just like M*A*S*H is a dark comedy. There is a lot of dark humor throughout, as one might expect. In addition to that, Tchaikovsky knows his pacing and timing, especially in a long novel, so there are definite rhythms to the war and its progress. An endless sequence of battles would wear down readers and characters alike, and so one of the most interesting worldbuilding bits and sequences in the entire book is when the hospital is sent to a distant front far away.

Given the time and logistics of doing so, the Pals use one of their incorporated people's magics to deploy flying islands for the purpose. Thus the hospital, and many others, are loaded onto a giant flying island and flown to the site of the new front. This gives a fair chunk of downtime away from the battle, and allows us to breathe and the characters to rest, and we get to see new and different sides to the characters when they aren't awaiting the conveyor belt of the results of war. It is not the climax of the book (the climax is rather interesting and different, and brings together some of the characters' secrets into a cohesive and satisfactory whole), but I think that it is its centerpiece, because it gives us a chance to really see these characters and think about the whole project of war and what they are doing and why. It is no surprise that when the island lands, Tchaikovsky plunges the hospital staff into an even worse conflict than when they left, and ramps us toward that finale.

It seems that whenever you are talking about epic military fantasy of this type, whether you will it or not, Malazan comes to sit at the table. Steven Erikson's Malazan books, with their devoted legion of fans that can be rather frightening in their passion, may well be the standard against which epic fantasy series are measured. Even 20 years after its initial release, I note that, for example, Subterranean Press is now in a third printing of Gardens of the Moon, the first in the series, at the high value, quality and cost that Subterranean Press editions fetch.

So how does this compare? If you are a reader of Malazan, you like your intense deep history worldbuilding, with strange gods, magic, morally grey characters, and military grade action and adventure. This novel is set in a military hospital, so our protagonists don't do a lot of fighting (when the war comes TO them, it's usually a disaster). But otherwise, there are a lot of parallels one could make here. The Pals and their rationalistic program of trying to convert the world to their philosophy, their logic of empire, will feel awfully familiar to Malazan fans. Characters like Banders, The Butcher and many of the others could be dropped into the Bridgeburners, or have the Pals fight the Malazans. The Seven Cities would definitely be in need of some correction in the Pals' eyes. There are definite differences in tone and style, and I personally think Tchaikovsky can write circles around Erikson, but people looking to scratch that "Malazan itch" (and given the sales and popularity, it is definitely there in the SFF community), House of Open Wounds is here for you.

This is the second book in the Tyrant Philosophers series, but aside from Yasnic/Maric Jack, God, and the common universe they are set in, it is a character sequel but not a full-on sequel to City of Last Chances. And like the rest of the characters, we get Yasnic/Maric Jack's backstory, as he tells it, in an abbreviated fashion but enough to make us understand him and his deal. This is all to say that, especially as these are chonky thick books and time is finite, if a character-focused story in a medical unit in a fantasy war really sounds like your jam, you could skip City of Last Chances and jump into this world here at House of Open Wounds. While Tchiakovsky is building and developing his world across books, you could start here if you really want.

House of Open Wounds, with its setting and selection of characters, does something untried and new in the epic fantasy genre, with his characteristic penchant for invention, worldbuilding and eminently devourable writing. It's rare for a writer to attempt, much less put out a high output and succeed at a wide variety of subgenres in SFF. However, House of Open Wounds continues to show that Adrian Tchaikovsky is definitely one of those writers.

Highlights:

• Strong character focused military fantasy set in a military hospital
• Excellent worldbuilding and depth
• Lots of dark and grim humour. 
• Fantastic cover art for this book and for the series as a whole.

Reference: Tchaikovsky, Adrian. House of Open Wounds (Tyrant Philosophers Book 2) [Head of Zeus, 2023].

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

Yasuke celebrates African heritage at the expense of Japan's

Even a mythical reimagining should make an attempt at making sense

First, the facts:

In 1582, Japan was going through a violent process of unification. After defeating almost every other local leader and conquering their provinces, warlord Oda Nobunaga had secured control over almost all of Japan when one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, betrayed him by launching a surprise attack on his castle and causing him to commit seppuku. One of Oda's most loyal soldiers, an African man he had originally bought as a servant from Portuguese traders who had kidnapped him probably in Mozambique, has entered the history books as the first foreigner to ever receive the rank of samurai, but after the fall of the Oda clan, nothing more is recorded about him. We don't know his original name. The Japanese called him Yasuke.

Now, the fiction:

The new Netflix animated series Yasuke imagines the Black samurai twenty years later as a retired old warrior struggling with his inner demons but suddenly called again to battle when a magical girl becomes the target of a weird Christian cult that wants to exploit her powers. The plot gives much more attention to the girl's development as a character, with Yasuke relegated to a glorified bodyguard. In essence, this show has the character of Yasuke, but doesn't cover what he did in life, doesn't explore the significance of his achievements, doesn't give him much of a personality, doesn't rely on what actually made him historically interesting, and isn't even about him.

To make matters worse, the show just isn't very engaging. The animation is flawless, and I have nothing but praise for how the show looks, but the story is bland, generic, painfully predictable, and peppered with unoriginal one-liners that the writers had to have known were not going to impress anyone.

The writers' room of Yasuke has three African Americans (LeSean Thomas, Steven Ellison, Nick Jones Jr.) and one white Canadian (Alex Larsen). Not a single Japanese voice was involved in writing the story. The production used the services of a Japanese animation company, but the credits make no mention of any cultural advisor, sensitivity reader, or anyone who could have provided input to correct the Orientalist stereotypes and historical distortions in the script. By distortions I don't mean flying robots and sorcery. By distortions I mean things like the portrayal of Oda Nobunaga as an enlightened reformer who planned to expand civil freedoms and who was deposed by traditionalists primarily because he dared to knight a Black man. This is not only a blatant butchering of how military rivalries worked in early modern Japan; it's a clumsy attempt to transplant 21st-century preoccupations onto a setting where they don't make sense.

The story does reflect African values nicely through its titular protagonist (for example, the principle that everyone in the community is responsible for every child's safety), but when it comes to representing Japanese culture, all we get are tired clichés like the fixation with honor, as if Japanese society didn't have any other values. In the end, we don't get any tangible hint of who Yasuke was as a person (or even who the writers wanted to say he was) beyond a set of formulaic platitudes.

Yasuke does a grave disservice to a fascinating historical figure to tell a paint-by-numbers escort quest plot that doesn't illuminate his character and wastes the narrative possibilities of a crucial period in Japanese history. It's a real pity.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10.

Bonuses: +1 for beautiful landscapes and expertly fluid animation, +1 for the uniquely bold kind of worldbuilding that allows for a samurai, a sorcerer, a robot and a werebear to exist in the same story.

Penalties: −3 for using almost every Orientalist trope in the box.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.

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

Interview: Myke Cole, author of Sixteenth Watch

Myke Cole's first novel, Control Point, was published in 2012, he's been putting out approximately a book a year since, alongside including short fiction, non-fiction, and even starring in television shows. If you enjoy Military Fantasy or Epic Fantasy (and now, with Sixteenth Watch, Military Science Fiction), Cole is an author you should check out. A veteran himself, Cole intimately understands the choices that soldiers make, and the long term consequences of those choices. He did three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. His work includes the Shadow Ops trilogy, the Reawakening trilogy, and the Sacred Throne series, and his short fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Weird Tales, and multiple anthologies.

Angry Robot is publishing Myke Cole's forthcoming novel Sixteenth Watch (available March 10), in which the Coast Guard must prevent a lunar war. This book promises to be low G and high intensity!

I was lucky enough to see Myke at ConFusion science fiction convention many years ago, and I remember him being funny, humble, razor sharp, and an absolute stand up guy. He's super busy these days, so I was thrilled that he found time to answer all my questions about Sixteenth Watch, writing about middle aged characters, being on TV, writing non-fiction and comics, and more!

You can learn more about Myke and his work by checking out his website, MykeCole.com , or following him on twitter, @MykeCole.

NOAF: I love that the plot of Sixteenth Watch focuses around de-escalating a possible war. Your characters are trying to avoid a war by stopping it before it starts. Why did you want to tell that particular story?


Myke Cole: Military SF is a tried and true sub genre. It has a solid and reliable fan base that has a set of expectations that military stories will be about the military’s core function - to kill people and destroy property. While that is most certainly at the heart of what militaries do, it is only one of the things they do. Militaries do search-and-rescue, further diplomacy, provide aid, build infrastructure, develop new technologies and processes, and even influence pop culture. I’ve read a lot of Military SF, and I’ve been feeling for a while that these other aspects of militaries aren’t sufficiently explored, and the US Coast Guard, a military branch dedicated first and foremost to saving lives rather than taking them, was the perfect branch to do the exploring.

NOAF: The main character of Sixteenth Watch, Cdr. Jane Oliver, she's in her 50s, she's counting down the time to when she can retire. How did you develop her character? 

MC: Although it’s easy to forget since 2016 when this country has been saddled with a corrupt gerontocracy, America is a country that hates old age and lifts up youth at every turn. Older people are expected to disappear, or at least fade socially, to shut down their ambition, sexuality, and vitality. I didn’t realize how much that culture that impacted me until I crossed the line to where I’m closer to 50 than 40. It’s only as I become more interested in stories about people dealing with the second half of their lives that I realize how few stories are told about them, and in particular how few stories that deal honestly with the fact that while our bodies wither, our humanity doesn’t, and we have to grapple with the frustration of a heart that wants to write checks the body can’t cash.

NOAF: One challenge to writing Military Science Fiction and Military Fantasy is that not all readers will be familiar with military terminology and acronyms. What is common knowledge to active military members and veterans may be opaque to readers with no military experience. How have you handled this challenge?

MC: I have to thank my agent for this. When I was first doing my military fantasy Shadow Ops trilogy, I used military argot to the hilt. I used every acronym that I would normally, expecting my readers to pick things up by context. My agent read it and said “Dude. Take all that shit out.” And I was horrified. “But it’s authentic!” I cried, “it will transport the reader and make them feel like they’re really experiencing a military environment!” “Hell, no it won’t,” he said, “it’ll confuse them and throw them out of the story. Trust me, this book is so military, they can’t fill to pick up on that. Your first goal should be to make the book accessible to people who lack that first-hand experience. Put a glossary in the back if you want, but for the love of god, make another pass and take out 80% of these acronyms.”

It was hard advice to accept, but I’m glad I did. Because he was right.

NOAF: How did you come up with the title Sixteenth Watch? Is the number 16 significant?

MC: Astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS) see sixteen sunrises and sunsets every day. In my fictional universe because of this, getting assigned to the ISS became called “going on the Sixteenth Watch.” Eventually, the term “Sixteenth Watch” became used by all branches of the military as slang to mean “any duty in space.”

NOAF: What was your favorite scene to write in Sixteenth Watch?

MC: I can’t answer this without giving major spoilers. Sorry. Suffice to say it’s a conversation between Jane Oliver and the Commandant of the US Coast Guard, a conversation that Jane (and hopefully the reader) expects to go one way, and takes a delightful left turn that, if I did my job right, will evoke a tear or two.

NOAF: As I was writing these interview questions, you posted on twitter that The Bronze Lie is done". What can you tell us about The Bronze Lie?  On a related note, of course I need you tell us everything you can about Hundred Wolves from Vault Comics!

MC:  The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy is my second history book. It takes Sparta’s complete military history and compares it to their mythic status as the biggest badasses in military history and asks the question “were the Spartans really so tough?” It’s essentially a book-length version of the argument I made in an article for The New Republic that came out last year. You can read it here. 

Hundred Wolves is my comics debut. I wrote the script of issue 1 and a synopsis for the whole story arc years ago, and pitched it around unsuccessfully. But then I got incredibly lucky when I pitched it to the legendary artist Tony Akins (he did Wonder Woman, Hellblazers, and Fables, among other projects). It just so happened that he’s into the same period of history that I am (17th C. Eastern Europe) and jumped on the opportunity. With him on board, I was able to sell it immediately, and it’ll come out from Vault Comics in April.

The comic is set in the 17th C. in the lawless borderlands between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire. It’s about two Cossacks - Andrei and Oksana - steel-eyed killers who made their living raiding with the Cossack band Hundred Wolves. They eventually gave up the raiding life to raise their daughter Yulia on a farm given to them by the Polish Count Ostoja in return for service. They looked forward to farming and raising their little girl in peace, but the old life won’t let them go. The Hundred Wolves still have need of their bloody-handed skills, and their new liege lord also knows their reputation as killers and badly wants to put them to use. I was really inspired by the badass family story in Saga and worked hard to channel it in this period piece.

NOAF: You write novels, series, novellas, short stories, and now comics. When you get an idea for a story do you know right away that it is novella length, or too long to fit into one novel? How do you determine the scale of the story and world that you are building?

MC: This is a great question and I’m afraid I don‘t have a ready answer. I have my idea and I begin by sketching it out as a 3-5 page treatment. Based on the feedback I get on that, I decided whether the idea is good enough to merit expansion into an outline (usually around 100 pages), and if that cuts the mustard, then we go for whatever the final form will be (novel, novella, comic script). But as for what its final form will be . . . honestly the story itself will dictate that to me and it comes clear only as I work on the project. Currently I have one really good idea I want to get to once I complete work on the comic (and the sequel for Sixteenth Watch . . . and the bibliography, maps and illustrations references I owe for The Bronze Lie), and I still haven’t decided it it’ll work better as a comic or a novel yet. I will say that my experience doing novellas with Tor.com was so positive that I would be inclined to cut a longer work down if it meant I could publish with them again.

NOAF: You're also on TV! While us viewers only see the polished, edited version, you literally get to see what happens behind the scenes. Any funny or surprising stories from your experiences filming the Contact and Hunted TV shows? Is television something you hope to do more of?

MC: I love doing TV. For one thing, I love attention. I used to think of this as a character flaw (we’re all raised to be self-effacing and taught that seeking the spotlight is a sign of egomania), but I’ve come to accept that for better or worse, it’s who I am. TV is so much easier than writing. It’s grueling work (12-15 days when you’re shooting), but it’s compressed into a tight period (Hunted was two month’s work. Contact was one month’s work). I get paid more to do a single TV show than I do in a year of writing, and a book takes me 1-2 years to write.

But just like writing, just because you’re doing it at a professional level is absolutely no guarantee you will get to keep doing it. I thought that starring on two major network shows and having an agent at CAA (it’s really hard to get in there) meant my TV career was set. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The only real benefit of having done two shows is that I now have a gorgeous, professional “reel” (clips of me on TV) that I can show to other shows I am trying to get to book me. Otherwise, I’m basically at square one. So, I’m currently hustling for my next show and there’s no guarantee that I’ll get it.

It’s a lot like writing, to be honest. When The Bronze Lie comes out, I’ll have published twelve books all with major publishers. It means nothing. There is no guarantee I’ll sell my next one, and I have to work just as hard to make sure that what I am producing is punching at a level where it stands a real shot of being picked up by the majors.

NOAF: Thanks so much Myke!

Microreview [book]: The Price of Valor by Django Wexler

The price of revolution.

I'm a big fan of Wexler's flintlock fantasy series, The Shadow Campaigns. The first volume, The Thousand Names, was a revelation--marked by great characters, memorable action scenes and incredible attention to detail with regards the tactics and daily lives of modern-era soldiers. The Shadow Throne, which shifted focus from the colony of far-flung colony of Kandahar to the Vordanai metropole, was both highly entertaining and thoughtful. Yet it seemed to lack the tightness and singularity of focus that made The Thousand Names stand out from the glut of new fantasy releases. I am happy to say that The Price of Valor represents not only a return to form, but a leveling up.

The Price of Valor is, in essence, a continuation of The Shadow Throne--to a far greater degree than The Shadow Throne is a continuation of The Thousand Names. Winter has been promoted to colonel and is in charge of the Girl's Own, a female brigade serving in the army of military genius Janus bet Vhalnich, which is currently facing the combined armies of Borel, Hamvelt and Mursk--all followers of the Sworn Church and enemies of the revolutionary Vordanai government. Marcus d'Ivoire, meanwhile, has been left in Vordan City to keep track of a deteriorating political situation, in which a cabal of Jacobins has re-formed Orlanko's terror state under new auspices. As in Revolutionary France, this Directorate and its paranoid-obsessive leader Maurisk now seek to "purify" the revolutionary state of its "internal enemies," which seem destined to include Queen Raesinia, Janus and his lieutenants, Winter and Marcus.

Making matters worse, the secretive Priests of the Black, who are religiopolitical extremists of the first order, have sent several operatives--each possessing a magic-generating demon--to recover the eponymous Thousand Names, a repository of magic-generating demons itself, including the demon-eating Infernivore that possessed Winter at the end of The Thousand Names. And they have brought Maurisk, who heads the militant Directorate that rules Vordan, into their cabal. If they succeed, there will be no force in the world that can stop them.

Here's the thing: while The Price of Valor is not perfect, it belongs to a very small category of books that I just can't put down. While this might not seem like a big deal to some of you, consider that I have trouble doing anything for more than an hour--even the most compulsive of activities, like playing video games. This is why I read fewer books than many of my fellow bloggers. But this one...every chapter urges you forward--"just a few more pages," you say! Then before you know it the clock reads 3am and even if you'd like to keep going, you do have to get up at 6.

I also greatly appreciated the political nuance on display as Wexler turns his attention from the injustices that lead to revolution to the question of how revolutions come off the rails. In this case,   Wexler lets the reader contemplate whether Vordan would have been better off with Orlanko in power and the Thousand Names safely in Kandahar than with Maurisk and the Thousand Names in play.

The gender politics were another high point for me. Vordan (and its neighboring societies) are strongly patriarchal, as one would expect from a world modeled after Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But even though various characters assume that this is the natural order of things, political events are challenging and even upending deeply-embedded norms--and especially in the military. I look forward to seeing where Wexler takes things from here.

Politics aside, the book is also just quality fantasy. There's ample magic and action, strong world building and two memorable, relatable protagonists in Winter and Marcus. And the Penitent Damned are great villains. My only issues relate to two of the secondary characters, namely, Janus (the mercurial genius) and Mad Jane (Winter's fiery, red-haired lover). Janus' ability to think several steps beyond anyone else, to the point where he must be able to predict outcomes of dumb luck, strains the imagination. Meanwhile, Jane is just whiney and annoying--a far cry from her (rather more satisfying) portrayal in The Shadow Throne. She's a drag on the story, frankly, and I hope Wexler finds a new way to utilize her going forward.

But these are relatively small quibbles. The Price of Valor is a clever, well-written and highly addictive novel, and easily the best in the series so far.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +1 for smart, sophisticated politics; +1 for keeping me up at night.

Penalties: -1 for Janus and Jane issues.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10. "Very high quality/standout in its category."


***

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

Reference: Wexler, Django. The Price of Valor [Roc, 2015].