Book Review: A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett

Meat is murder

This is a book about murder and forced labour as well as the cost of beef. And the last is quite probably the most important.

A Trade of Blood is the third book in Robert Jackson’s Bennett’s Shadow of the Leviathan series of fantasy mysteries. The books follow the duo of Ana Dolabra and Dinios Kol as they investigate politically sensitive crimes across a biohacked secondary world empire which is constantly threatened by attacks from massive, amphibious Titans from the sea (think Pacific Rim-esque kaiju). Both Ana and Din have had significant biological enhancements. Ana struggles greatly with external stimuli but is able to stitch together astonishing chains of logic when provided with appropriate information. Din, meanwhile, has been altered to have perfect, photographic memory. He investigates, observes, and reports back to Ana, who reaches conclusions with alarming rapidity.

In A Trade of Blood, Ana and Din travel away from the sharp end of the Titan threat for the first time in the series (the first two books having been set right near the sea where the Titans come ashore). They travel to the agricultural heartland of the empire to investigate the killing of the daughter of one of two key families in the beef industry by the son of the other key family. Any disruption of food supplies would seriously upset the stability of the Empire, and thus Ana and Din, specialist Imperial Iudex (the judicial/police/investigative branch of government), are sent to try to resolve the matter with a minimum of fuss. The facts of the killing seem largely indisputable, but the victim doesn’t remain the only dead body for long, and things get a little bit more complicated than they first appear, leading into a well-crafted, engaging mystery. I picked the culprit a bit earlier in this book than in the earlier ones, but it all still, in my view, worked very well.

As with previous books in the series, Ana and Din are very much our core cast, and their dynamic is fantastic. Ana is salty and waspish, and has absolutely no filter. Din, in contrast, is the straight man, sighing along, but also giving his own deadpan ripostes. This is established from the very start of the book, which opens thus:

“IT IS AN INARGUABLE TRUTH, you know,” said Ana, “that most people are absolutely enthralled by dead girls.”
I cracked my eyes and gazed at the carriage ceiling, certain I’d misheard this comment. I waited, listening to the rumble of the wheels and the crackling of the horses’ hooves on the gravel road.
Perhaps she would stop now, I thought. Perhaps there would be no more of it.
I shut my eyes and sought my way back to sleep.
“In fact, did you know, Din …” said Ana.
I opened them again.

It’s a genuinely funny dynamic, but it’s also great character work; the general banter and occasional seriousness and sincerity make it clear that these two, three books and a year or so into their working relationship, like and respect each other. Both also have ongoing, though low-key, plot threads that carry through from earlier books, Ana relating to what exactly her modifications are and Din to a quite difficult family history (these do mean that the book doesn’t entirely stand alone—though you can certainly enjoy a significant majority of what’s going on in the book without having read the first two, you would be missing enjoyable context if you did so).

The interchanging support cast is also (as it was in the first two books) very well done. This ranges from various family members of the victim and the accused to local law enforcement and, most prominently, the leader of the local Orbiis corps—essentially agricultural bioengineering specialists. Din also has a family connection pop up in a quite unexpected fashion. I also enjoyed very much that Bennett continues to present Din as that exceptionally rare beast in SFF, the bisexual man who generally prefers men, and the use of that aspect of his character (and his eidetic memory) to play with the “love interest of the week” dynamic one often gets in noir fiction is well judged.

This is the point at which mystery reviewing gets a touch difficult, at least for me. I find it quite difficult reviewing in this genre—at least before release—because you can't go into that many plot- or character-specific specifics without spoiling the whole thing. In most cases spoilers aren’t something I care about, but they really do matter for most mysteries, and that that is indeed the case here. However, the fact that it is a fantasy mystery means that isn’t all there is to talk about—the worldbuilding and thematic concerns hanging off the mystery plot also reward attention. RJB is very clear that what he's doing with this series (aside from writing deeply entertaining Nero Wolfe pastiches) is examining the different institutions of a society designed and tuned to address an ongoing, existential environmental threat. In Ana & Din's world this is the annual march of the Titans inland from the sea (as noted above, these are major presences in the first two books, absent in all but the use of their body parts and excretions as essential elements of Imperial biohacking here). But the story is also very clearly holding a mirror up to our world and the ongoing, existential threat of environmental degradation, particularly climate change.

As I've written elsewhere, there is a distinct genius to the nature of the role Bennett gives Ana and Din as specialist Imperial Iudex. They're not private detectives. They're not CSI technicians. They're not even really cops. They are Ombudsmen (in the European sense of the term of an organisation to investigate and ensure integrity in government). It's not a perfect analogy—there's rather more violence and crime scenes than Ombuds in the real world typically deal with—but at heart the crimes and puzzles Ana and Din investigate go to the proper functioning of the Empire's government. That proper functioning, it is made very clear, is maintaining social stability and directing that stable society at the eternal problem of staying alive with a decent standard of living in the face of centuries of rampaging kaiju. This setup allows our main characters—and Bennett—to poke around in all of the key institutions that make society tick. The Tainted Cup was engineering/civil works. A Drop of Corruption was basic forms of government and international relations. And A Trade of Blood is agriculture and food production.

It might seem weird to say this is part of government, but there's an Imperial bureaucracy responsible for agriculture too, complete with genetic enhancements: the aforementioned Orbiis. And food production is of course critically important to social stability; there’s a reason Juvenal sneered about “bread and circuses” as a mechanism for keeping the plebs happy almost 2,000 years ago. That sneer is particularly true of raising beef, which ultimately is an unnecessary luxury in land use and nutritional terms. But it's delicious, people want it, it keeps them happy, and happy people are easier to direct at the existential problem. But raising beef in this world is also wildly, weirdly artificial: biohacked giant tottering cattle with tonnes of meat on each limb, pre-sapient cat-monkey things pressed into service as field hands, and perfectly tuned magic fertilizer. We also see the waste: enormous piles of bones and hides. In reality that would very likely be used for something, but Bennett is clearly going for a 'slaughter of the buffalo' style image here, and it's an effective one. If he isn't going full militant vegan (and I think the book's take on the role of food as a social stabiliser is too pragmatic for it to go that far), he's clearly interested in showing the desensitisation to death that the factory beef farming methods cause.

The point Bennett is making, of course, is that this is all pretty much all true of how agriculture works in our world too, at least on a mass scale as it is practiced in most developed countries to a greater or lesser extent. Exploring these ideas in a secondary world gets the familiar context out of the way so we can see the strangeness in what we accept as quite normal in our own society. As Bennett states in his author's note, despite agriculture being framed in much of our current political discourse as a “natural” sphere set against the unnatural cities, there is little we do that is more profoundly “unnatural” than industrial farming. In this shock of recognition amidst the alienating oddity of Ana and Din's biohacked world, Bennett asks us how far we will have to hack ourselves and our society to survive what's coming from our planet and what the costs might be. Having these questions consistently in the background throughout a well crafted, taut mystery, excellent character work, and engaging worldbuilding really is impressive. It's rare that a novel this much sheer fun is also so thought-provoking. Another excellent entry in a series of remarkably consistent and remarkably high quality.

Highlights:

• Engaging fantasy mystery
• A hugely compelling core duo
• Asks compelling questions while entertaining

Nerd coefficient: 8/10.

Reference: Bennett, Robert Jackson. A Trade of Blood [Del Rey, 2026].

POSTED BY: Eddie Clark. Professional nerd by day, amateur nerd by night. @dreddieclark.bsky.social

Film Review: The Sheep Detectives

A lovely whodunit that could have gone farther with its material

I’m torn baatween two imperatives. On one hand, the movie adaptation of a novel should baa able to stand on its own, and therefore baa analyzed apart from the source material. If I follow that line of thought, the movie The Sheep Detectives is an adorable cozy comedy with an interesting message about the value of growing from painful memories. On the other hand, the only reason I wanted to watch this movie was baacause I loved the novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann and its sharp observations about the dark facets of the human heart. If I follow that line of thought, the movie does the novel a disservice by sanding down all its sharp edges and turning a smart literary experimentation into a more inoffensive family-friendly story.

Such is the conundrum baafore me.

The novel and the movie share a simple central plot: when the shepherd George turns up dead one morning, his sheep decide in their baareavement that they will investigate the truth of what baafell him and who was truly baahind it. As it happens, George used to read crime thrillers aloud to his sheep, so they know a thing or two about detective work. It’s somewhat harder to do when you don’t have opposable thumbs, but they manage to strategically eavesdrop on the right human conversations to uncover what happened. Baawilderingly, the movie manages to change absolutely everything else: the manner of his death, the reasons, the suspects, and the entire flow of the investigation. The version of George in the novel isn’t the impeccably kind caretaker shown in the movie; he took some nasty secrets to the grave. Plus the individual sheeps’ personalities are far more varied, and there is assorted commentary about small town life and organized religion. There’s drug smuggling, adultery, and additional dead people. The movie is baareft of all that.

And yet I know that none of it should matter, baacause the quality of a movie adaptation has nothing to do with its fidelity to the original. A movie’s only duty is to baa a good movie on its own. And on its own, it’s well made: the jokes are effective, the talking animals look realistic, and the new version of the mystery is compelling enough, with the requisite confusions and detours to mislead the sheep, who then have to race against the clock baafore the wrong person is sent to jail. What’s curious is that the script heavily expands on some elements of sheep society that get mere passing mentions in the novel, such as the widespread prejudice against lambs born in winter, the baalief that a sheep’s fate in the afterlife is to baacome a cloud, and most notably, their ability to willingly forget sad memories. Lo and baahold, this is one edge the movie does have over the novel: whereas the novel uses the sheep as a device to look at the baafouled defects of humanity through an unconventional lens, the movie is more interested in developing the sheep themselves as characters.

As much as the movie sanitizes the story for child viewers, it can’t sweep the core plot point of the shepherd’s death baaneath the rug. So it needed to find a way to tell a story about death while staying family-friendly. That’s where the sheep’s forgetting power comes into play. Sheep are traditionally a symbol of innocence, but they only stay innocent baacause they make themselves forget anything too distressing. The movie makes it the measure of a sheep’s personal growth when she chooses to not forget her shepherd—even after seeing his corpse, even after finding ugly facts about the sheep farming industry that challenge her religious ideas about the Great Baayond. And that’s a precious lesson for the child viewers: baaware the temptation to run away from hard truths. Life has some very sad moments, and it does you no good to pretend they’re not real.

The Sheep Detectives executes baafittingly the modest job it sets for itself as a cozy comedy, although I still baagrudge it for not staying closer to the novel’s darker tone, which is especially ironic in view of the movie’s message that you shouldn’t avoid the unpleasant thoughts that from time to time baaset all of us. The novel was certainly not aimed at children, but even in a family-friendly adaptation, they don’t deserve to baa kept in baanightedness about the baadaggled parts of life. I’m not trying to baasmirch the movie’s quality or baalittle its achievements, I baaseech you to please baalieve me, but with such a strong source material, I think that this time it’s appropriate to baamoan the missed opportunity, the wasted potential of what could have baan.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

Book Review: Self-Portrait with Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka

Of all the versions of you in all universes, can you live with being this one?

College teacher Pepper Rafferty has a reasonably satisfying life: a loving duo of adoptive mothers, a kind husband with a sophisticated sense of humor, an important job cataloging bones as a forensic anthropologist. The only piece missing from her happiness is the unknown reasons her biological mother could have had for leaving her. Over the years, that old wound has receded from her attention. But it hasn’t closed. And all the messy feelings Pepper has spent her life ignoring jump back to the surface when she receives the news that her biological mother, who happens to be the world-famous artist Ula Frost, has been reported missing, and now there’s a big tangle of legal questions concerning who will become the owner of her paintings.

It’s not just that Ula’s paintings are worth a fortune: urban legend has it that Ula developed a form of magic in her art, a secret technique that opened links to other universes. According to the rumors, every time she made a portrait of someone, the version of that person represented on the image was dragged into existence in this universe. It goes without saying that that kind of power would draw the attention of a certain secret elite organization with plans about the improvement of reality. All that stands in its way is poor clueless Pepper.

There’s a symbolic level at which the novel Self-Portrait with Nothing succeeds at expressing the disquieting mix of emotions associated with lifelong grief. Pepper tells herself that she’s made peace with Ula’s unexplained choices, but the truth is she’s been living in unresolved grief about the family life she never knew. Now, to be fair, her adoptive mothers couldn’t be more perfect; she has nothing to complain about on that front. But still, that unanswered what if remains. Other possible lives were closed off to her. She never met Ula face to face, so she’s imagined her in many different ways, without knowing which one was true in this universe. Pepper’s search for answers after learning of Ula’s disappearance is told with a profound empathy for the feeling of a truth that eludes definition. Later in the plot, when we discover that Ula made a series of self-portraits that summoned alternate versions of herself, Pepper’s interaction with those other Ulas mirrors the confusing real-life experience of an adoptee figuring out which of the imagined profiles of their biological mother matches the real one.

While the novel does a good job at this purely symbolic level, the nuts and bolts of the narrative craft are handled less well. The omniscient narrator takes too long to reveal to the reader that Pepper already knew who her biological mother is, which diminishes the impact of this news when other characters are surprised by it. The second half of the plot, where Pepper travels to Ula’s hometown to find more clues, is held together by an unbroken succession of bad luck incidents that strain credulity to ridiculous extremes.

In particular there’s a writerly tic that reoccurs dozens of times throughout the text and gets tiresome quickly. Whenever Pepper is pushed into a corner by circumstances, she tends to imagine herself in other universes, dealing with her problem more competently, or having avoided it due to wiser choices, or utterly unaffected by it. So the reader has to endure interminable repetitions of “In a different universe, Pepper was…” Yes, we get it, this is a story about multiverse variants of the same person; we don’t need to be reminded of the book’s gimmick every five minutes. These asides have no consequence on the actual events we follow and make Pepper come off, at best, as an indecisive person habituated to maladaptive daydreaming, and at worst, as a mediocre substitute for more interesting Peppers we could be reading about instead. This Pepper ends the novel having realized that she rather likes the universe she happens to inhabit, but the inner process that led to that key moment of growth is obscured from the reader.

A big reason why Pepper can make it through her investigation with her sanity in one piece is her strong bond with her husband. Even in the second half, where their communication is limited to text messages, she gets invaluable support from his gentle words and his unwavering optimism. This was a consistently enjoyable character to read. Under a barrage of revelations that shake Pepper’s entire understanding of reality, her husband’s love provides an anchor to an aspect of the universe she wouldn’t want to change.

The sinister organization that is pursuing Pepper to get its hands on the paintings is not so successfully written. Those scenes try to give the vibe of a spy thriller, but the prose is firmly stuck in personal psychodrama mode, and the mismatch is too evident. The story in general works better when Pepper is processing her emotional turmoil than when she tries to be an international woman of mystery. A specially cringeworthy scene has Pepper list all the ways she’s unqualified to pull off a museum heist, right at the moment she’s attempting said heist.

Self-Portrait with Nothing is an uneven mix of, on one hand, complex emotions that would have been better served by a more detailed exploration, and on the other hand, dangerous adventures in spy land that often run in circles and get nowhere. How effectively you find it allegorizes the disorientation of a motherless child will depend on how much tolerance you have for vaguely mentioned conspiracies that add to the story less than the extensive space they fill on the page.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Reference: Pokwatka, Aimee. Self-Portrait with Nothing [Tor, 2022].

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

Book Review: Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite

Cozy noir-style space mystery featuring a gender-bending detective and lots of queer characters

You are aboard the HMS Fairweather, a spaceship that has been travelling from Old Earth for 350 years in search of a new home. The approximately ten thousand people on board regularly back up their memories in their own personal memory book so that, when they die, their new bodies will have access to their full memories. When someone dies, they are “reborn” at approximately twenty years old. There are no children on board and people are not supposed to be able to reproduce on ship.

So where did this baby come from?

Enter Dorothy “Dot” Gentleman, ship detective.

Her nephew Ruthie (short for Rutherford) and his partner, John, have found a baby in a basket on their doorstep. Dot quickly finds the baby’s parents, but the real mystery is that no one remembers having a baby at all! So now we have a memory crime, where people’s memories have been tampered with. Memory crimes are Dot's specialty.

If you are looking for a cozy sci-fi mystery with noir vibes that has mild gender bending and queer characters, look no further. Nobody’s Baby is the second book in the Dorothy Gentleman series by Olivia Waite. In book one, Murder by Memory (2025), Dot found herself awakened inside another passenger’s body and had to solve the mystery of how several memory books had been destroyed.

For me, the fun of this series is in the society that Waite creates abroad the Fairweather: no one should be able to die, and people’s needs are provided for, but they’re still incentivized to have jobs or run businesses to entertain themselves or to make a bit of money for their future.

Book one introduced a set of jobs related to the curation and protection of memories. Dot’s nephew works as a librarian who helps protect the memory books of the Fairweather’s passengers. His partner, John, is a memory bartender: he can mix you a drink that will bring back memories of a summer storm or fall in New York. He works at the Antikythera Club, the by-membership-only hideout for the ship's artists and literati.

In book two, we learn about “flickers,” movie-like stories crafted by a single projectionist wearing a “skimmer,” a device that lets them project a story from their brain onto a screen. We are introduced to an entire set of society that makes these movies, the devices that make them possible, and their fans. There are also more prosaic jobs: for example, Dot has a crush on a woman named Violet who runs a cozy yarn store.

So, come for the mystery, but stay for larger theories on how this future society works. In a society like the Fairweather, where everyone can live multiple lives aboard a generation ship looking for a new planet, how do people relate to each other? What rules do they create to keep their society healthy? What happens when you find yourself in a situation where the rules don't fit?

Peregrine, the foundling, falls into a gap in the ship’s laws. The ship has no procedure for creating a new identity onboard. They have written laws for once they reach a planet, but planetary identity does not come with a memory book or a right to new embodiments. Dot firmly believes in the Fairweather’s system, but can also see where the system needs to be bent to prevent a greater wrong. She tells us that “Paperwork is law and order. The papers are what make us a society and not just a gaggle of desperate people sharing a geography. We set up a system because a system can be permanent, where human beings are not.” Not everyone agrees: the system doesn't always serve people, and there are some who begin to think that the system is more important than the people. So what does this mean for Peregrine?

On Peregrine’s behalf, Dot must petition the Fairweather’s Board of Directors to officially grant the baby a right to a memory book and new embodiments. She must also convince them, since Peregrine’s birth parents do not remember having him and do not want a child, that Ruthie and John should get parental rights. And she must get justice for Peregrine’s mother, who was robbed of her memories of the baby.

The Fairweather may be a society where where you can live forever and you want for nothing, but people are still people: they are greedy and jealous and, sadly, will look for ways to hurt each other. But we can enjoy Dot's expertise in unravelling the mysteries.

You could probably read this book without first reading Murder by Memory. But the first book is novella length (103 pages) and the second not much longer (144 pages), so why would you deny yourself the pleasure of more Dorothy Gentleman?

Nerd Coefficient: 7.5/10. An absolutely enjoyable experience.

Highlights: 

• Cozy mystery with a likeable detective
• Lots of queer characters
• Fun space-noir vibes
• Interesting questions about memory and society building 

Reference: Waite, Olivia. Nobody's Baby [Tordotcom, 2026].

POSTED BY: Christine D. Baker, historian and lover of SFF and mysteries. You can find her also writing reviews at Ancillary Review of Books or podcasting about classic scifi/fantasy at Hugo History. Come chat books with her on Bluesky @klaxoncomms.com.

TV Review: Wednesday Season 2, Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

Anime Review: The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

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

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

TV Review: Wednesday Season 2, Part 1

Clever, funny, horror mayhem and lots of family drama

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights:

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

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

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

Series Review: Black Mirror Season 7

Strong acting and innovative stories explore our difficult relationship with technology

Humanity’s interaction with technology returns as a timely primary theme in the latest season of Black Mirror. Unlike last season’s obsession with cruelty and extreme violence, season 7 of the mind-bending series explores the ways technology shapes our understanding of reality and relationships. The latest advances lure consumers with affordable pricing and irresistible features, but soon we are caught in a cycle of dependence even as the price rises, ads bury the features, and the never-ending contracts trap us in ways that seem impossible to escape. Video games provide a conflicting combination of immersive connection and distinct unreality which leads to moral decisions in a fictional context that may not match real-life choices. The top casting means the concepts are explored with immersive acting, even if the ultimate conclusion doesn’t quite live up to expectations. And, for most of the episodes, the stories are thoughtful and engaging, while raising questions without providing clear answers.

Common People. School teacher Amanda (Rashida Jones) and her construction worker husband, Mike (Chris O’Dowd), are a loving but financially struggling couple. When Amanda suffers a near-lethal seizure, doctors tell a stunned and grief-stricken Mike that she won’t make it. But then he learns about Rivermind, a high-tech system that gives Amanda a chance at life for a seemingly reasonable monthly fee. However, as time moves on, the couple discovers the real price of keeping her alive. The episode is the strongest of the season and offers commentary on the bait-and-switch techniques of online subscription services that lure us in and change the rules as time progresses. But this time, the service is not just television streaming or a music app; it’s the thing keeping Amanda alive. The episode also deals with disturbing obsessions with suffering and humiliation as a form of entertainment and income. Tracee Ellis Ross is excellent as the slick-talking salesperson for Rivermind whose constant doublespeak keeps Amanda and Mike tangled in a web of frustration. The episode is riveting, poignant, and tragic.

Bête Noire. Maria’s life as a food product development specialist changes when an old high school classmate, Verity, appears. Everyone else finds Verity (Rosy McEwen) appealing, except Maria (Siena Kelly), who finds her strange, suspicious and annoying. As Verity insinuates herself deeper into Maria’s life, Maria notices odd occurrences and inexplicable inconsistencies that no one else seems to notice. The episode starts out as an intriguing psychological thriller, with each new mystery building on escalating tension before the story descends into an unexpectedly wild ending.

Hotel Reverie. Superstar actress Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) is tired of the same old film roles and jumps at the chance to be part of struggling film company’s high-tech remake of an old black-and-white classic film. To save money, the film company’s owner hires tech firm ReDream, led by Kimmy (Awkwafina). The tech firm drops Brandy’s consciousness into an AI version of the old film along with the consciousness of the film’s long-deceased star. Of course, with this weirdly complicated set up, things don’t go exactly as planned when Brandy’s AI co-star (Emma Corrin) becomes self-aware and Brandy herself becomes attached to the person inside the character. To make things worse, Brandy’s own life is at risk since she is (unexpectedly?) neurologically linked to the film. This means she has to finish the film to survive. If you think too hard about the scientific logic of this episode, you will turn it off, so it’s best to employ a willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy the quirky love story that unfolds. The episode has similar vibes to an earlier poignant romantic story, San Junipero, but the appeal of this tale lies mostly in the classic, early-twentieth-century film style that it eerily captures while having a contemporary character immersed in it.

Plaything. Doctor Who fans will be excited to see Peter Capaldi onscreen as the mysterious protagonist in Plaything. Cameron (Capaldi) is an eccentric older man whose obsession with a ’90s video game ties him to an unsolved murder from that time. When he is arrested for an unrelated crime, he tells the police detective and police psychologist the story of a video game whose characters are real creatures. Cameron’s protectiveness of the creatures leads to extreme consequences. The episode has a cameo of Will Poulter from the stand alone interactive episode Bandersnatch.

Eulogy. The quiet life of a bitter and isolated man (Paul Giamatti) is interrupted when he is asked to submit memories for an old acquaintance’s funeral. As part of the process, an computer platform connects to his neural system and takes him on an immersive journey through his damaged old photographs. Along the way, we learn the true nature of his relationship with the deceased as the AI guide (Patsy Ferran) prompts him to face some difficult truths about his past. The episode is an intriguing and artistic discourse on affection, pride, and bitterness, and is definitely another standout episode for the season.

USS Callister: Into Infinity. The original story USS Callister gave us a fascinating vision of Star Trek-style fandom inverted into a disturbing exploration of cruelty and toxic anger. In the original episode, a socially awkward genius, Robert Daly (Jessie Plemons), feels unappreciated at his high-tech company. He takes revenge on his colleagues for a range of perceived slights by creating sentient copies of them and torturing them in a Starfleet-inspired, computer-generated world of his creation. But when his latest captive Nannette (Cristin Milioti) arrives, she inspires the enslaved starship crew to fight back. The sequel, USS Callister: Into Infinity, undoes much of the satisfying wrap-up of the original by creating a new problem for the crew: the Callister now can’t survive without game credits (physical currency) to buy fuel, etc. However, the Callister and crew are unregistered players and so can’t earn the credits needed. So they steal currency from other players (avatars of real people), which leads to further conflict in the game and ultimately a violent showdown with the company owners in both the real world and the virtual world. The premise of the sequel is unexpected since none of these obstacles were mentioned in the original story. However, as we saw in Common People, the rules of technology grow harder and more expensive the longer you play. It’s a full-circle moment of irony to wrap up the season.

Season 7 of Black Mirror is significantly more cerebral than the prior one, with thoughtful and timely discussions of AI, technology, and the problematic ways we often treat each other as human beings. While the premise of AI as useful and relatable exists, many episodes lean into cautionary explorations of the roles of technology in our lives. The strong acting and innovative tales give us, as in real life, deep and important questions without clear answers.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Relatable messaging on our interactions with technology
• Unspectacular endings for some episodes
• Memorable acting delivered by a strong cast

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

Book Review: Cheddar Luck Next Time by Beth Cato

A cozy mystery opening featuring an engaging protagonist, a murder...and lots of cheese. 

Bird Nichols has been through a lot lately. She’s been trying to get a custom cheese board business off of the ground. Her grandmother, not too long after her parents’ death, has disappeared and has been declared dead, with Bird as the heir to her California Central Coast house. Now, just as Bird settles in, a reprobate neighbor turns up dead, and the prime suspect is Grizz, an old friend to her grandmother, and a fatherly figure in Bird’s life. Now, Bird has to do what her grandma apparently did all of her life and get snoopy, or else Grizz could wind up brie-hind bars for a murder he didn’t commit. But who did, and why?

This is the story of Cheddar Luck Next Time, a murder mystery by Beth Cato.

Longtime readers of my reviews know that I commonly neither read nor review straight up murder mystery novels. It’s not my usual slice of cheese at all, although SFF murder mysteries ranging from Mary Robinette Kowal to Mur Lafferty to Laura Anne Gilman have attracted my interest and attention. I mainly “followed” Beth Cato out of genre and into mystery based on my enjoyment of her previous more straight-up genre work from the Clockwork Dagger series to most recently, her Chefs of The Five Gods duology.

The throughlines of the novel are pretty clear even for me, not fully immersed in all the nuanced protocols of straight up murder mysteries. Bird is an engaging young protagonist, single, trying to make a living with her passion. Trying to return to and live in the very small community she spent vacations in and living there, a community at turns both welcoming and suspicious of her. A real sense that her grandmother was, in the end, a meddler, and the community might see Bird falling into that role. And of course a murder mystery that, thanks to the friendship with someone she cares about as the prime suspect, pushing her inexorably toward trying to solve the mystery herself, even if that one client’s cheese board just will not wait. 

One thing I should note is that Bird is autistic (like her creator) and that autism is presented and represented in an excellent and engaging way. The author doesn’t let you forget it, in ways small and large, but its not the story of Bird, any more than what her hair color is. There is an author’s note at the end about autism and its importance in recognizing and diagnosing it, for herself, and urging readers who might have similar experiences to get themselves tested and diagnosed themselves. I commend this outreach on Cato's part.

I think the mystery is a fair one, with a small town, the list of suspect is pretty small, and the eventual murderer makes sense given the evidence and clues we are given throughout the novel. Again, my protocols are not so finely honed as readers of many mysteries, I can’t answer if someone who has read very many mysteries will finger the killer, or will care that they do, before they reveal themselves. My reaction when the killer was revealed was “that makes sense” rather than “wait, what?”.

There is also a cat, Bowser, who winds up inserting himself into Bird’s life, in the inimitable way that unexpected pets (especially cats) do. 

The writing quite supports what the author is going for in the book. Sure, there is a mysterious death, and some shady characters, and some peril for our heroine, but its meant to be a light and fun read and that’s the way the book comes across. I do think that this novel qualifies as “cozy murder mystery” based on my own reading. There is a murder and a mystery around it, but a lot of revolves around Bird’s regular life and her attempts to fit into her new surroundings. As mentioned above, the main character is autistic, and one of her mechanisms to interface better with the world is to talk to herself in a running commentary. This does allow us into her headspace and what she is thinking and a sense of her deduction of what really is going on. It makes it a comfortable, comforting read, neither a pulse pounding story nor a crackerjack intricate puzzle. This is a mystery story to relax with, and enjoy.

Foghorn, the fictional tiny town (more like a village) is the setting for our murder mystery, slipped into the Central Coast of California somewhere near San Simeon and Piedras Blancas. There are mentions of plenty of real places on the coast. There is a very strong sense of place, geography and physiography to Cato’s description of a place that she, as well as her protagonist, clearly have a strong connection to. Having Foghorn be a place that she’s not native, to, but visited as a child is an excellent choice to give her a tie to the tiny community and yet be something of an outsider as an adult. In any event, for me, the area reminded me of a vacation and trip from 30 years ago when I visited the region and it makes me wish to make a return visit to an underappreciated yet beautiful part of California.

The real star of this book is not the protagonist, or the murder mystery, or the setting, and it’s not even Bowser. The real star of this book is, in fact, cheese. The author is an expert and connoisseur of cheese (as much as she is of baking), and she pours that knowledge into Bird and her cheese boards. Every cheese that Bird enjoys throughout the book is a real cheese, and all of the pairings that Bird comes up with sounds real, authentic and delicious (did the author taste test all of these combinations? I would not be surprised in the least). In addition to Bird’s cheese business, there is a grilled cheese place in Foghorn called Quesoquick. Yes, the owner of the place, Dale, is cute, single and Bird and he hit it off but this is not a romance book. But its clear there is a could-be-more-down-the-road sort of vibe to their relationship. And, in addition to that, Dale and Quesoquick give even more chances for Cato to introduce cheese into the narrative.

Cheddar Luck Next Time is a light fun romp of a straight-up cozy mystery novel. The board of the novel has all the components for an easy snack of a read that is never over Leyden: an engaging main character, a quirky fictional very small town, a solidly plotted murder, a mild stab toward romance, and a heck of a lot of delicious cheese and cheese combinations. The novel’s components are all arranged by the author in an aesthetic and culinary pleasing way, delicious from the first to the last bite. Can a book be a mystery novel and yet teach you delicious ways to combine, pair and eat cheese? Yes it can, and does a Gouda job of it. Cheddar Luck Next Time is a light, quirky and fun mystery novel that shows off and ably demonstrates Cato’s love of the Central Coast region of California and yes, of course, delicious cheese and cheese preparations of a delicious and tantalizing variety.

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Highlights:

• Cheese, from the title to the last page. All kinds of real, hunger inducing cheese
• Light, frothy, and fun mystery. 
• Great sense of place 
• Did I mention Cheese?

Reference: Cato, Beth, Cheddar Luck Next Time, [Datura Books, 2025]

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

Anime Review: Hell’s Paradise

Fascinating characters and deep philosophical explorations balance the intense violence of this unusual tale 

After hearing much acclaim for this gruesome anime, I finally decided to try out Hell’s Paradise although I’m not normally a fan of very gory or intensely nihilistic fiction. However, Hell’s Paradise lives up to the hype and delivers fascinating characters, meaningful emotions, and intriguing backstories in its very violent first season. 

Hell’s Paradise is set in a fictional historical time period and is primarily the story of Gabimaru, an emotionless assassin taken from his murdered parents as an infant and trained from childhood by a cruel ninja leader to be a high level killer with no emotional attachments. Gabimaru’s efficient and ruthless killing, along with his lack of emotion lead to his nickname, “Gabimaru the Hollow.” As a reward for his overwhelming successes at killing, Gabimaru is given his leader’s daughter as a wife. Gabimaru initially treats her with emotionless indifference, however his wife is unexpectedly emotionally strong, intellectually thoughtful, and intentionally kind in a way that slowly brings Gabimaru back to his humanity. Of course, this kind of happiness can’t last. Gabimaru is sentenced to death for trying to leave the assassin group so he can stop killing and live quietly in his marriage. He is jailed and separated from his wife (whose fate is unclear throughout the story). However, despite his death sentence, he remains alive because repeated violent and horrific executions fail to kill or even injure him and he becomes bored to the point of despondence. This leads some to believe he is a demon. After multiple attempts at killing him fail, Gabimaru and several other condemned prisoners are given a chance for a pardon, but the cost is high. They must journey, each with an assigned asaemon (guard/executioner), to a fabled paradise island and bring back a substance known as the Elixir of Life. The prisoner who successfully brings back the elixir will get a pardon but everyone else will be executed. Gabimaru is suddenly motivated to live, and accepts the offer in the hopes of earning a pardon so he can be reunited with his wife. 

All of these detail are just the premise. The main plot of Hell’s Paradise is composed of the experiences of the prisoners and their guards as they navigate the unimaginable terrors of the island along with their own internal demons. Gabimaru is assigned a young woman named Sagiri as his guard. She is lethal, quiet, and introspective, but also periodically insecure—not because of her skills but because of the constant sexism and gaslighting she faces. Her internal journey to balance, rather than suppress, her emotions becomes entangled with Gabimaru’s unsteady journey to and from emotional deadness. Over time, the two build a strange connection. The initial exploration of the island is portrayed through the experiences of Gabimaru and Sagiri, but the story soon shifts to the intriguing backstories of the other prisoners, some wrongfully condemned, and the asaemon guards, many with complex motivations or unexpected viewpoints. These include loud and powerful Chobei and gentle but lethal Toma, the criminal and guard pair who are secretly brothers. The anime also follows the poignant friendship between the reformed criminal guard Tenza and innocent child prisoner Nurugai. 

The overall vibe of the story feels like a combination of shows like Lost, Jujustsu Kaisen, and Squid Game. It has the mysterious island setting of Lost along with the intriguing character backstories that lured Lost viewers in the first two seasons. It has the intensely artistic animation style of Jujustsu Kaisen (MAPPA is the same animation house that does both series) and it has the fantastical, supernatural creature element, in which unexpected, strange, or grotesque creatures create an ongoing atmosphere of uncertainty for characters who are constantly surprised by new antagonists with randomly unknown levels of strength. And, if that isn’t stressful enough, there is the Squid Game-style lethal competitiveness where the prisoners are pitted against each other in a race for both the elixir and survival. But, what makes all of this stress worth it are the primary characters. Each one is intriguing, tragic, likeable, and complicated, making the show more than just a bloodbath or an adrenaline rush of adventure. Each individual’s race for survival is an extension of the character’s struggles that began long before they arrived on the mysterious island. 

Hell’s Paradise is also a dizzying philosophical exploration of conflicting concepts. The fabled paradise of the island is actually a hellscape of terrors hidden in serenely beautiful plants and flowers. The titans of the island, the Tensen, continuously shift genders, sometimes mid-conversation or mid-conflict. The trees are human beings. The only child on the island is hundreds of years old. Throughout the story, characters ponder a range of conflicting philosophies in an ongoing struggle to understand their unbelievable experiences. In fact, each episode has a title and theme which reflects the ongoing inherent or interwoven dichotomy (“Heart and Reason,” “Gods and People,” “Dreams and Reality”). 

Be warned that Hell’s Paradise is not a teen shonen anime. The show has adult content in terms of both violence and sexuality. Those less familiar with the discussed philosophical theories, may want to research some of the referenced concepts, although it is not essential to do so. Gabimaru and Sagiri start as the primary protagonists but gradually merge into the ever-changing ensemble, and, as the story progresses, it turns out many of the core elements of the journey may not be what they seem. The effect is, at times, intense, heartbreaking, and profound. However, the next season of Hell’s Paradise is still a year away. So, there is still plenty of time to become immersed in this violent but uniquely addictive adventure.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Fascinating characters with intriguing backstories
• Extremely bloody
• Thoughtful philosophical explorations amid fast-paced fight scenes.

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

TV Review: Dead Boy Detectives

An entertaining horror comedy packing a lot of emotion into a short series

Hidden away in Netflix’s YA fantasy section, Dead Boy Detectives is a feel-good horror comedy that has already been cancelled. Fortunately, the sole existing season is enormously satisfying and the plot wraps up nicely in its quick but entertaining eight episodes. The show follows the adventures of two dead teen boys (Edwin, who was killed at the turn of the century, and Charles, who was murdered in the 1980s) who form an investigative agency to solve mysteries for other ghosts. Things change when they cross paths with Crystal, a psychic teen girl with amnesia and a stalker demon boyfriend. Later they ally with Niko, a spiritually sensitive but lighthearted student grieving the death of her father. Although it exists in the same universe as the broody Sandman television show, Dead Boy Detectives takes a much lighter tone. It has intensely likeable leads, refreshingly diverse casting, and a clever mix of the tragic and the very funny, with twisty plots to keep viewers engaged. I haven’t enjoyed a dark comedy this much since season one of Russian Doll. Like Russian Doll, Dead Boy Detectives has emotionally wounded main characters caught in outlandish situations that ultimately lead them to inner growth and leave viewers with a satisfying story arc.

In the early 1900s, Edwin (George Rexstrew) is attacked by his classmates in an occult ritual at his British private school. The prank summons a real demon who (apologetically) traps Edwin in hell until he finds a way to escape years later. The deceased Edwin returns to Earth as a ghost and meets Charles (Jayden Revri), a 1980s high school boy who has just been murdered by his classmates after he protected another student from bullying. Instead of moving on to the afterlife, Edwin and Charles hide from Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) when she comes for them, and decide to start a detective agency to help other ghosts resolve mysteries or other injustices related to their deaths.

In the first episode, they are approached by a young Victorian-era ghost girl who asks them to help her psychic human friend Crystal (Kassius Nelson). Crystal has started behaving erratically and seems to be possessed but, as the ghost girl notes by way of another explanation, she is also “American.” In the process of helping Crystal regain control of herself, the three become involved in the mystery of a missing child and travel to an isolated New England town, Port Townsend, to investigate. While there, they connect with Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), a Japanese exchange student who becomes infested with hilariously foul-mouthed dandelion sprites (Max Jenkins, Caitlin Reilly). Edwin and Charles have to adapt to their new living allies while dealing with new threats in Port Townsend from the tricky and seductive Cat King (Lukas Gage) and from Esther (Jenn Lyon), a sarcastic and beauty-obsessed witch.

Throughout the story, Edwin is brilliant and sophisticated, but also uptight and hesitant to trust any newcomers. After decades with just Charles as a companion, he is not open to the two new women in their lives. In contrast, Charles is cheerful, upbeat, and friendly, and develops an attachment to Crystal, leading to one of two unexpected love triangles in the show.

In addition to strong leads, the show has an excellent cast of memorable side characters, including Tragic Mick (Michael Beach), a cursed walrus forced to live in the form of a middle-aged man who runs a magic shop that helps the teens; Monty (Joshua Colley), the witch’s handsome and seductive bird turned boy who becomes attracted to Edwin; the Night Nurse (Ruth Connell), a hilariously bossy official in the afterlife agency whose job it is to locate missing ghost children like Charles and Edwin; and Jenny (Briana Cuoco), the sole mundane human and a cynical goth butcher shop owner.

Each of the characters is laugh-out-loud funny, but also fiercely brutal or intensely tragic. The dichotomy works well, though, creating intensity without bleakness and softening terrifying moments with unexpected bursts of sarcasm or irony. There are also scenes where the show leans into the sadness of Edwin’s and Charles’s backstories without an undercurrent of humor, and that contrast of seriousness makes the overall story even more powerful. Towards the end of the series, the tale of Esther’s origins gets a little complicated and devolves into a rushed montage-style summary, which is not as helpful. The same thing happens with Crystal’s backstory when she starts to uncover who she really is. But, for the most part, Dead Boy Detectives delivers a near-flawless acting ensemble which draws you in from the first moment and leaves you cheering at the end.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

• Strong cast of memorable characters
• Addictive villains
• Grim humor with a little bit of everything

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

Film Review: Time Cut

A weirdly addictive slasher, murder mystery, time travel homage to old-school Disney Channel Movie storytelling

Do you remember what you were doing in 2003? Flip phones, low rise jeans, bright pastels, Kim Possible and Lizzie McGuire. It’s weird to think of 2003 as retro or historical, but for the purposes of this story, it is. Time Cut is a time travel, coming-of-age, slasher drama that takes viewers on a nostalgic tour of the early 2000s while trying to solve a teen’s violent murder by a mysterious serial killer.

The story opens in 2003, with a prologue introduction of the triggering incident: the murder of popular high schooler Summer Field (Antonia Gentry). Summer is at an unauthorized party to de-stress after the murder of three other close friends. While she’s there, a creepily masked killer finds and kills her outside of the gathering. Then the story skips ahead to 2024, when Summer’s younger sister, teen-aged Lucy (Madison Bailey), is living in the shadow of her death. Lucy was conceived after Summer’s death to be a replacement daughter. However, her parents preserve Summer’s room as it was when she was murdered in 2003. Her parents are trapped in twenty years of grief and, as a result, they are simultaneously overprotective and emotionally distant with Lucy.

Lucy stumbles upon a time machine hidden away in the same place her sister was murdered. The time machine is inexplicably just sitting there in a public location, barely out of view. She inadvertently triggers the machine and accidentally ends up in 2003 just a few days before Summer’s murder. Lucy gets a chance to meet her long-dead sister and see the reality of who Summer truly was rather than the idealized version portrayed by her parents. While there Lucy meets brilliant and nerdy Quinn (Griffin Gluck), who becomes her confidant, she meets Summer’s inner circle of obnoxious, self-absorbed bullies, and she gets caught up in the serial killer chase while trying to solve the murder mysteries and trying to get back home. As is often the case in stories like this, viewers will need a willing suspension of disbelief, not for the fantastical elements, but for the practical ones, such as why the time machine is so easily located and how Lucy is surviving financially in the past.

Time Cut feels like an old-school Disney Channel movie (except done as a slasher film with time travel elements). The film leans heavily into the post-Y2K teen drama style of acting and storytelling. Summer is the popular girl with one quiet friend, Quinn, whom she exploits. Summer and Lucy bond over teen angst, and Summer, bewildered by Lucy’s boxy 2024 pants, decides to give her a fashion makeover, complete with upbeat movie montage music. The sweetness of the time-loop sisters’ budding friendship is contrasted with Summer’s intense obsession with remaining popular. As a result, she is complicit in the cruelty of the bullies against Quinn, despite their longtime friendship; she’s willing to use Quinn to cheat on her homework; and she hides her feelings for her friend Emmy. The cutesy teen elements are also deliberately contrasted with the ongoing threat of the serial killer and the succession of violent, on-screen murders. Fortunately for the squeamish, the gore is kept to a minimum, and some (not all) of the scenes are cut away.

The film does a surprisingly good job of keeping viewers guessing until the very twisty ending. Time travel films always ask the same questions about whether we should change the past and what will be the fallout from doing so. Time travel stories, like vampire stories, typically have a universal set of rules that can’t be broken without consequences. Time Cut opts to acknowledge, and then do away with, some of the traditional time travel rules. As a result, we never quite know what to expect as the characters navigate the murder mystery they are trapped in.

Time Cut does not always have the best storytelling. There are plot holes, inconsistencies, and story elements that will require a willing suspension of disbelief. But, despite these shortcomings, it does manage to be confusingly addictive all the way to the end. And it provides a healthy dose of turn-of-the-century nostalgia.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

Highlights:

• Low gore
• Twisty plot
• Nostalgic appeal

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

First Scare: The Sixth Sense

A creepy character study that holds up over time

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oscar-nominated cerebral horror film The Sixth Sense. I consumed a fair amount of Bruce Willis content during his heyday, but this one escaped me. At the time, I wasn’t in the mood for creepy content, so I took a pass. Over the years, the film became a classic, showing up on best of lists, particularly for best plot twists. Thanks to the internet and repeated discussions of the film, many elements of the story were unavoidable even for non-viewers. As a result, the “twist” at the end was spoiled for me long before I saw it this month. But instead of making me less interested, the fact of the twist made me more fascinated by a story that I previously imagined as creepy and subdued. Now, in honor of our First Scare project, I have finally watched M. Night Shaymalan’s award-winning The Sixth Sense.

The story follows Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a successful child psychologist in Philadelphia, who works with troubled children. The film opens with Malcolm celebrating a prestigious lifetime award for his work in child psychology. His loving wife Anna (Olivia Williams) is proud of him even though she notes that his success has come at the cost of putting other aspects of his life second, including her. However, she says it’s worth it for the children he has helped. This comment serves up an ironic twist of fate: their celebration is cut short when Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg), a former patient, breaks into their home and accuses Malcolm of misdiagnosing him and failing him. The psychotic, distraught, mostly naked teen suddenly shoots Malcolm and kills himself while Anna rushes to stop Malcolm’s bleeding.

Later we see a recovered Malcolm starting to work with another troubled little boy, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment). Grade-school-aged Cole has what seems to be delusions and is generally maladjusted and often bullied by other children for his odd and awkward behavior. Malcolm wants to focus on helping Cole as a way to atone for his perceived failure with Vincent Grey. In the process of visiting and interviewing Cole, we meet Cole’s stressed single mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), trying to support her emotionally troubled son. As the therapeutic meetings continue, we also see the world through Cole’s eyes and discover the first plot twist of the story and the explanation for Cole’s stress: as Cole himself explains it to Malcolm, “I see dead people.” Throughout the film, through Cole’s eyes, we see glimpses of half-burned people, hanging people, bloodied or poisoned people lurking around Cole and sometimes interacting with him. The sudden appearances are nicely creepy and provide quite a lot of jump scares. Later we find out why the child is haunted, and we find out a second important plot twist detail about the ghosts surrounding him.

In addition to his work with Cole, Malcolm also struggles with his relationship with his wife Anna. She seems to be distant from him and is generally melancholy to the point of ignoring him. Ironically, the child Cole, at the end of the film, is the one able to give psychologist Malcom advice on how to reconnect with his wife. That reconnection leads to the last big plot twist.

The most powerful thing about the film is Haley Joel Osment’s stunning child acting. His somber, melancholy, moody portrayal of a little haunted boy is quietly mesmerizing, poignant, and creepy. At times, his sweet, young face and soft voice are tragically endearing. At other times, he becomes angry and cruel, adding an extra layer of scariness and complexity to the story. Mostly, he is coldly and defeatedly accepting of his fate of suffering in a world of abusive children and disbelieving adults. The film has a lot of great (but likely unintentional) messaging about the importance of listening to and believing suffering children. The other excellent aspect of the film is Toni Collette. She delivers a great performance as Cole’s long-suffering mother, who is trying to protect her son from bullies while dealing with her own frustrations at his inexplicably odd behavior.

My least favorite aspect of the film was, ironically, Malcolm. My issue is not with Bruce Willis himself—he does a fine job playing basically the same type of character he normally plays (from Moonlighting to Die Hard). But the character of Malcolm is written in a way that is mildly annoying. His handling of the break-in is confusing. His decision to help Cole is ultimately a self-serving way to try to clear his conscience. But when things get tough with Cole, he decides to abandon the child. Ultimately it is the child, Cole, who helps Malcolm find peace, and Cole is most helped in the end by his final emotional exchange with his mother.

The Sixth Sense is my favorite kind of horror film, quietly cerebral and creepy. I’m surprised at how well it has held up over time. For a film that’s twenty-five years old, it still feels mostly timeless rather than dated (other than some passing comments on divorce and a surprising lack of diversity for a story set in Philadelphia). Despite knowing the big twist in advance, I still felt engaged with the main character, Cole. And for me, it’s all about character, even in a horror film.

Highlights:

· Oscar-worthy child acting
· Cerebral plot twists
· Survives the years of spoilers

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