Book Review: The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles

A potent anti-colonialist novel that sets its stakes on not just the fate of a planet and a species, but more importantly, the heart and soul of its main character

Ada Quintrall is the heiress to the Dukedom of Corbridge. Her grandfather the Duke has managed the aforementioned dukedom, which is actually on the planet Corbridge, in a future where humans have gone to the stars. The terraforming of the planet has been a harsh affair, and the native life has resisted. But when Ada finds out the long connection between her family and that native life, she is forced to confront what her grandfather and her family have done, and her complicity in it. And what is to be done about it.

This is the story of The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles.

The Final Chronicle of Yeneh plays with a number of genres in order to explore its overall themes, which are, unapologetically, anti-imperial, anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian in nature. Let’s begin with the most unexpected, and that is portal fantasy. In the story of The Final Chronicle of Yeneh, Ada learns that her ancestor wrote a bestselling fantasy series (The Chronicles of Yeneh, hence the book title). As the novel proceeds in its opening phases, Ada realizes that the native inhabitants of the planet are not mindless “plants,” but rather are the fantasy species from her ancestor’s book. Just how and why this is true, and what it means, puts a portal fantasy frame front and center in the book.

As this is a science fiction novel, the nature of the world, combined with the portal fantasy already alluded to, gives the setting and the story a significant layer of science fantasy. It retains this even as the novel progresses; the novel isn’t as interested in hard SF as it is in the sociological, political and personal stories. You don’t get any sense of what the interstellar drive is or how it works, for example. That’s not the kind of novel this is.

And then we get into the worldbuilding and some more genre-bending. In this future, a portion of a diasporic humanity has decided to reinstitute aristocracy as a social system. It is explained that in a world where some people turn away from merciless post-Capitalism, the appeal of personal rule by means of hereditary aristocracy for some planets was strong. It’s not a new idea¹ to have an aristocratic “feudal” future.² Miles, however, does it a bit differently. Aristocratic nobles like Ada’s family are not the only social system out there; it’s made clear that there are still capitalistic systems, and aristocratic ones, and even socialistic ones. There is a plurality of social systems in Miles’ universe, and while we are under an aristocratic one in this book, a main character, Zamora, is from Luna, which is mainly a socialist state, This does set up some cultural distrust at first between Ada (as an aristocratic heiress) and Zamora, and in general between Zamora and the population of Corbridge.

And then there is the straight-up science fiction as a genre. Ada (and Zamora) understand that the natives of the planet are more than just “plants” (as Zamora already argued); moreover, there is an entire civilization in the toxic and dangerous zones beyond what has been colonized and terraformed by the humans. So we switch up into the novel’s anti-colonial, anti-imperial and pro-ecological themes. With the previous layers to this, this makes The Final Chronicle of Yeneh a science fiction novel with interesting and intriguing underpinnings, providing a fresh story in the process.³

But beyond all that genre-mixing and worldbuilding, this is a very personal story, focused on Ada, who as heiress to her grandfather, is confronted with the ecological, sociological and personal costs of imperialism, colonialism and the rapacious nature of her family and her family’s legacy. It’s a painful story for her in some ways, especially as it puts her on the other side of her grandfather and her legacy once she completely learns those costs and takes a stand. The novel is about those costs, and the difficulty of that change. And as importantly as coming to terms with that legacy, the novel is about taking action, making recompense and taking active steps to do better.

Yes, while Ada herself is in a position of privilege (at least at the outset), the novel’s message is that people can and do make a difference—and indeed must do so in order to effect change. Change is hard and is scary, but it is possible, with action. That is a message that the novel hits home, and it is a very necessary message in this day and age.

In sum, what The Final Chronicle of Yeneh does, brilliantly, is to channel Miles’ excellence in character depth and make the very soul of the main character, Ada, to be as important as the fate of the native Yeheneh and of the planet Corbridge. It stirs a swirl of portal fantasy and a hint of science fantasy into a far-future story that examines and criticizes colonialism, imperialism and exploitative social systems. Miles’ focus remains tight and sympathetic, having us join Ada on her own journey to recognizing, confronting and acting on working on systemic problems on Corbridge and beyond.

Highlights:

• Strong character focus and background
• Interesting space future sketched in and intriguing
• Bold anti-colonial, anti-imperial message, told well

Reference: Miles, Jo. The Final Chronicle of Yeneh [Horned Lark Press, 2026].

¹ Melinda Snodgrass’s Imperials Saga has capitalism evolve into a Spanish-focused monarchy and aristocracy, in space. And of course, there is always The Mote In God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle.

² Obligatory note that feudalism, as you might think of it, really didn’t exist as you might think of it. The huge variety of local political systems in Western Europe really put paid to that notion. Read the works of David Perry and Matthew Gabriele, among others, to learn more. (e.g. The Bright Ages).

³ The worldbuilding about the local inhabitants of the planet has resonances to many previous works of science fiction. You can certainly look at The Word for the World is Forest by Ursula K LeGuin. I also see touchstones to the work of Adrian Tchaikovsky and James Cameron’s Avatar universe.

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

Film Review: Scarlet

Something is rotten in the state of human hearts

If I had known in advance how the anime film Scarlet would handle its topic of obsessive revenge, I would have made this post a Double Feature with Redux Redux, because both stories use the devices of their respective genres in a visceral manner to demonstrate the self-destructive poison that is revenge.

Scarlet is a gender-flipped retelling of Hamlet that sends the princess of Denmark to an endless limbo when she accidentally drinks a cup of poison sent by her treacherous uncle before she had a chance to avenge the late king. In that barren landscape of sorrow and regret, she learns that her uncle has also died, so she embarks on a quest to walk across the vast land of the dead to find him and make him pay.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Prince Hamlet should have been more decisive in carrying out his revenge plan, Scarlet answers that that was never the issue. Being quicker to punish his uncle would still have played into the narrative conventions of a tragedy, and the thing about tragedies is that the only person you succeed at punishing is yourself. In that intermediate realm between Earth and the Great Beyond, Princess Scarlet fights waves of assassins sent to make her spirit dissolve into nothing. By willingly adopting the role of tragic heroine, by refusing to abandon her one-woman war, Scarlet has built her own hell.

Interestingly, there’s an element of cosmic retribution at play too, a remote, speechless character who takes the form of a celestial dragon and imparts punishment without the distortion of human passions. This addition to Hamlet lore makes Scarlet resemble the Greek Oresteia, where the impartial, impersonal judgment of the state is introduced to put an end to the self-perpetuating cycle of bloodshed that always results from private vendettas. However, in the case of Scarlet, this replacement is not associated with the state but with a more universal sense of justice, with death as the great equalizer.

Learning this lesson takes Scarlet a long, painful journey over beautifully designed scenery that almost steals the spotlight from the story’s heavy themes. We follow Scarlet through deserts and mountains and oceans that take the breath away with their sublime immensity. Even if the plot’s structure sometimes feels too streamlined and easy, the level of visual artistry more than makes up.

Because the other side has a loose relationship with time, Scarlet is joined by a random newcomer: a recently dead paramedic from present-day Japan, who strangely insists on bandaging every lost soul he meets, including Scarlet’s enemies. Even as she slashes and stabs her way through the land of the dead, he follows close behind, providing comfort to those you’d think are beyond hope. His example turns out to be crucial to her choices at the end of the film: the thing at stake is not only the punishment for the usurper king, but the fate of Denmark. Through this paramedic, Scarlet gets a glimpse of a time (which from her standpoint is the future) when people no longer butcher each other in eternal spirals of hatred. This being a Japanese production, it’s easy to perceive a subtextual allusion to the discussion on the remilitarization of the Japanese state. Can we have a future without more bloodshed? Can we escape this interminable journey between corpses and vengeful spirits?

We don’t have to renounce the entire idea of justice. But if death comes for all, it doesn’t need our help. We can face evil, even punish evil, without punishing ourselves.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

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

Film Review: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

Stunning animation and nonstop action

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

• Stunning animation
• Lots of backstory
• Intense fighting

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

Review: Long Live Evil, by Sarah Rees Brennan

A genre-savvy romp with heart and depth

There’s a bit of a trend going around SFF these days, a willingness to break the fourth wall and allow characters in books to resemble readers not only in demographic features (the traditional meaning of ‘representation’) but also in knowledge of the genre. Jill Bearup’s charming Just Stab Me Now (2024), in which an indy writer tries to force her characters to participate in tropes that they have too much depth for, is one. Another is Django Wexler’s hilarious How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying (2024), in which a woman caught in a portal fantasy time loop decides to use skills learned from video games, such as ‘slum-running’, to take advantage of her 1000 years of repeated experience. Dark Lord also engages with another trend that has always been bubbling away in our collective genre-consciousness: the idea that the bad guys might have something to say for themselves. This is not a new idea. Natalie Zina Walschott’s Hench (previously reviewed here on NOAF), an unflinching indictment of capitalism and US health care systems, came out in (2020). But it stretches back literally centuries. I first encountered it in the last century, when my elementary school teacher read to us The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by John Scieszka (1989). And some —including my mother, who taught Milton at our local university— have argued that Satan got all the good lines in Paradise Lost (1667).

So, drawing on this wealth of cultural history, Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil is hardly a novel idea, but it is a moving, thoughtful exploration of it. We open with Rae, a young woman dying of cancer. Her medical care is about to bankrupt her family, and it’s pretty clear that she’s not going to survive anyway. Her world has narrowed to her hospital room and her visitors—who no longer include her friends (they deserted her when she became too much of a downer) or her mother (who works around the clock in order to stave off bankruptcy a little longer), but do include her little sister, her beloved littler sister. Her sister has been reading aloud to Rae from Time of Iron, the first in an epic high fantasy series that Rae started reading late in the game, mostly because her sister adores it.

Rae thinks the best parts of the series are the later books, when the love interest from Book 1 succumbs to his grief at the loss of his beloved, and becomes the Evil Emperor, who is just awesome. She never really paid much attention to Book 1, before all this evil descent kicks off, and even though her little sister is reading aloud to her now, she’s having difficulty —what with chemo-brain and dying— paying much attention.

Then a mysterious lady enters the hospital room and offers Rae a choice: she can play out this ongoing death, or she can enter the world of Time of Iron, acquire the magical healing flower of Life and Death, and return to her life in the Real World. She is not the first person to have been offered this opportunity, but she would be the first person to succeed. Hesitantly, Rae takes this unlikely one-in-a-million last chance, and steps into Time of Iron.

Unfortunately, she steps into Time of Iron in the middle of Book 1 —the one she’s not as familiar with— and worse, she steps into the shoes of Rahella, on the eve of her execution, which is the rightful comeuppance for her dastardly misdeeds. So Rae must, naturally, find a way to avert execution, assemble a team of minions, and get herself to the Flower of Life and Death on the one day of the year that it blooms—only a few weeks from now. And she must do it as the villainess. Since playing by the rules and trying to be good has so far gotten her nothing but a lingering death in a hospital bed, Rae decides to seize life with both hands, and be as selfish and evil as she can. Because evil is awesome. And also sexy.

This book draws heavily on familiar tropes from high fantasy, at two levels. On the outer level, the Rae’s-story level, we have the portal fantasy combined with the time-constrained Quest narrative for the Magical MacGuffin. This works very effectively to structure Rae’s actions and provide high-stakes life-and-death motivation throughout all the rest of the events of Long Live Evil. But it is merely reflecting pressures from the inner level, where the internal book, Time of Iron, which hosts Rae’s Quest, is almost entirely constructed upon a heavy scaffolding of more tropes upon tropes. We get snippets of this host-tale at the beginning of each chapter, and they are all very high fantasy. Everyone’s got descriptive epithets: The Lady Dipped in Blood, the Golden Cobra, the Last Hope, the Iron Maid; everyone’s plot arc tends toward misery; and although we only ever see Book 1, the series itself has so many books.

It all feels very Game of Thrones in its general vibe, but there are familiar elements from other traditions too. Fairy tales are one such contributor. The reason Rahella (as in-book villainess) is originally caught is because her victim —who is also her little sister— confesses her woes ‘privately’ to an oven, which somehow is connected to a room elsewhere where sympathetic ears can overhear. I’ve never quite understood how this architecture is supposed to work, but I recognise it from The Goose Girl, and I’m sure that this isn’t an accident. Then we’ve got Rahella’s punishment, which Rae’s first task is to avert when she steps into Rahella’s body: to be forced to dance in red hot shoes until dead. This fate was originally a punishment for Snow White’s stepmother in one of the bloodier versions of that fairy tale. Beyond fairy tales, we’ve also got some extreme Joseph Campbell going on. The rise of the Emperor is necessarily preceded by a trip to the Ravine, where the Emperor-to-be must vanquish the undead to gain his power, all very Hero’s Journeyishly. Then, at one point, musical theater makes an appearance.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this hodge-podge of familiar elements. One is simply that Time of Iron, like any high fantasy book, is part of a genre, and engages with conventions that we expect any competent genre writer to be familiar with. Palace intrigue, trips to the underworld, attacking hordes of undead monsters—these are the bread and butter of high fantasy books; and there is more than a bit of winking at how silly it can all get. The snippets of Time of Iron at the beginning of each chapter are all highly, highly purple. This is distinct from Rae’s own narrative, which is characterised not only by its genre-savvy recognition of the tropes and types around her, but also by highly effective meditations on the effects, physical, social, and psychological, of living through treatment of terminal cancer. Beyond writing style, the ways in which Rae’s experiences affect her interaction with this fantasy world are nuanced and thematically tight, because Sarah Rees Brennan is no slouch in the writing skills department.

But there’s something else going on here, too. When Rae is invited to step into Time of Iron, she is told that this world is real because people believe it is real. And as she starts to take action to further her own aims, she sees the world itself responding. She is able to change the story from the inside. And if she can, then so have other people who have been offered this chance to save their lives. Time of Iron, the book, is written by ‘Anonymous’; and as Long Live Evil unfolds, it becomes clearer and clearer that the whole story of Time of Iron may not be the tale of a single writer. Rather, it is a kind of joint consensus, constructed by the engagement of thousands and millions of readers, and also by the uncounted number of people from the ‘Real World’ who have had the opportunity to step into this world and change it, as Rae is doing.

In this way, Time of Iron itself is not just an internal, tropey, silly high fantasy tale that Rae, winking at the readers of Long Live Evil, is going to spank with her genre-savvy smarts. No, it is a love letter to high fantasy as a whole, and a love letter to the fans who jointly construct the genre, and who engage with it deeply, whole-heartedly, unafraid to fall in love and fight and grieve and live whole lives in this alternative reality.

The very structure of the book highlights this intent. At first, we see everything through Rae’s eyes alone. But as she becomes more embedded, as the other characters become less characters and more people in her eyes, we start to see the story through their eyes, eyes untainted by genre-savviness; eyes of people for whom this world, this rich, dangerous, beautiful, unpredictable world is the only reality they know.

This is the first entry in a trilogy, and so does not wrap up the story in Book 1. If that’s going to be a problem for you, please buy the novel now without reading it, or take it out from the library and return it unread, or request it from your library, or do whatever it takes to tell the publisher that this is loved and wanted and the remainder of the trilogy should be published. This is for us, friends. Brennan is reaching out a clawed fist with love and affection for our genre and us, the readers. It would be churlish to reject it.

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

Highlights:

• A love-letter to high fantasy

• Genre savvy use of tropes

• Nuanced, sensitive character work

• Sexy, sexy evil 

References: 

Bearup, Jill, Just Stab Me Now [Sword Lady Books 2024].

Brennan, Sarah Rees, Long Live Evil [Orbit 2024].

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces [Princeton University Press 1949].

Milton, John. Paradise Lost [Samuel Simmons 1667].

Scieszka, John, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs [Viking Kestrel 1989].

Walschots, Natalie Zina, Hench [William Morrow 2020].

Wexler, Django, How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying [Orbit 2024].

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, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Review: March's End by Daniel Polansky

Taking some of the basic the tropes of epic and portal fantasies and intensifying them via the lens of a family drama. 

You may think you have heard this story before. Young scions of a ruling family in a fantasy kingdom have to come to terms with being the next generation and having to fill their parents' and ancestors' shoes, especially as a power capable of undoing the world comes calling. Plenty of extruded fantasy product has this sort of dynamic, in epic fantasy novels, trilogies, and series that are not yet complete.  If you are a seasoned reader of epic fantasy, you know all the beats, the shape of this story.

Except, you haven't heard this particular story before. The Harrow family is well off in our world, our own Earth, but every evening, once they find themselves of age, they can find themselves in a secondary fantasy world of fantastic landscapes and even more fantastical anthropomorphic intelligent creatures. The Harrow family, rulers of this world, are, in fact, the only humans in the March. But when time has moved on and the younger March family members are faced with the possibility that the March's time has come, one way or another.

This is the story of Daniel Polansky's March's End.

A mix of urban and epic fantasy, mixing a secondary fantasy world with our own world, and having people with agency in both, is not sui generis to Polansky here. Eric Nylund's Pawn's Dream took a similar conceit, with the protagonist falling asleep in our world and waking up in a secondary fantasy world, and then back again when he fell asleep there, night after night, day after day. Violette Malan's Shadowlands novels have a Professor of History in a Canadian university who finds out he is really a Prince of Faerie, and Faerie definitely needs him back. The feel at the beginning of the series is urban fantasy, with magic intruding into our world, and ending with epic fantasy with the action mainly in faerie. Edward Lazellari works on a similar method, where a NYC police officer in Awakenings finds out he is a knight of a secondary world fantasy realm. By the third book in the series, Blood of Ten Kings, the story has gone completely from urban to secondary world epic fantasy. 

Polansky's method and style and ethos subverts and plays with all of this throughout the book. He starts it off with a couple of the Harrow children, as young children, discovering their family's secondary world secret for themselves for the first time. But he subverts what might be a straightforward coming of age by having time frames both set early on in the kids' lives, and then 20 some odd years later, in our present. Mary Ann, Will and Constance are very different than their young selves, and old conflicts between the three of them and their mother, Sophia, have driven strong wedges into the family. A lot of the present day narrative does not take place at all in the March and instead focuses on the family conflicts and drama between the three of them, as the seams of what is going wrong with the March, and has been going wrong for quite some time, come to light.  

Thus, Polansky relies on their younger selves to show the March and the rot and decay underneath the Harrows and their rule subtly and carefully even as he shows and then undercuts the secondary world fantasy narrative. And this then is the grist for the mill of the present day conflict that the Harrows primarily face in our world. The Harrows bicker, come into conflict, and finally must not only face themselves and each other, but face the problems they themselves have helped to create. The novel shows us the consequences of rule, and often gives us a stark exploration of what a secondary fantasy world is like, and not just for the ruling class, either. 

Thus, overall, the book does feel like a deconstruction of secondary world fantasies, in particular, as well as portal fantasies and urban fantasies. Polansky's deep focus is always on the characters, especially in the present, and it is their fates, nature, destinies and problems. Just why the March is falling apart, who is ultimately responsible and what can be done--sure, Polansky does give us some big action sequences, but in some ways, even the big set piece one we get, is a sideshow to his development and study of these characters. Just what would ruling a secondary world fantasy kingdom by night do to a family over generations, over time? What does having that secondary world do to a person or a group of people who can share that experience? How can you make connections and bonds to people who can't appreciate, quite literally, what you do in that other world?  This is also territory that Seanan McGuire has been exploring in her series of Wayward Children novellas.  

This is definitely, in the end, not a Fantasy 101 book by any means. This is a reconsideration, reformulation and distillation of several types of fantasy and looking to see how they actually work with characters out of mimetic fiction who have, by birth, not by choice, have the connections to a magical world as their legacy, birthright, and even curse. Polansky doesn't explain some key bits about how the Harrows' world of the March vis a vis our own actually works and doesn't work, and there are some beats in the story that happen and are remarked on, but again, are not explained and explicated.  I think that's part of Polansky's point, his design for this novel. He challenges readers to think about these subgenres but doesn't spoonfeed any answers, but rather poses the Problem of Secondary World Fantasy (capitalization intended) through the lens of the Harrows and their lives. 

Thus, I don't think this book is for everyone. For all of the fantastic that Polansky shows us in the March, and it is vivid and amazingly well shown when he focuses on that, this is not a novel about escapism. No, I am wrong in that. It is a novel entirely about escapism and the perils of escapism and not facing up to the consequences and problems of the escapism that is, at the bottom, what the March *is*.  It's a strongly written book, a book that often cuts very to the bone, especially for a fantasy reader. It's not a comfortable book (but that seems to be a Polansky speciality, in my reading of his work).  Reader beware, but also, reader discover.

--

Highlights:

• A strong family dynamic central core
• Interesting if uncomfortable discussions of genre and what it is for.
• A challenging and rewarding read on an emotional and textual level.

Reference: Polansky, Daniel, March's End, [Angry Robot, 2023]

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

'Doctor Strange 2' is visually delightful and narratively bland

The MCU is looking less and less like a continuous story, and more and more like a subscription plan you can never opt out of

Despite the refreshing shift in visual style brought into the MCU by director Sam Raimi, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is far from the milestone it was expected to be. The ongoing saga of the Avengers was supposed to expand into a wealth of possibilities with the addition of alternate realities, character variants, and reclaimed franchises just acquired by Disney from Fox. But what this movie delivers is smaller than the sum of its parts.

Early announcements for Multiverse of Madness appeared to promise that the story would center on the character of Stephen Strange and the consequences of his reality-breaking spell in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Indeed, this seemed like the right moment to bring back the lingering threat of Mordo, the wizard-turned-wizard-hunter we met in the first Doctor Strange movie. This was turned into an even more enticing prospect by the limited series What If, which gave us a taste of what damage an unhinged Doctor Strange might do to the world if he succumbed to thirst for power. Instead, Multiverse of Madness can barely be called a Doctor Strange movie. The script and the camera treat him as if he were the protagonist, but he is never properly given an arc. With América Chávez as the only hero with a pivotal moment of choice to define her character, and Wanda Maximoff as the self-offing villain who learns the lesson of the day, Stephen may as well not have been in this movie. This is actually an origin story for the character of América Chávez, clumsily inserted in an overly long epilogue for WandaVision.

It's not really worth it to analyze this movie from the character of Stephen, who is only here to stand with a worried face while other characters recite exposition. Even the repeated question about his happiness is left unresolved, because it really doesn't matter. Even a half-hour of What If had more to say on the topic, and it pretty much exhausted its possibilities. So let's look at Wanda.

Since WandaVision aired, opinions on Wanda's character have been extremely divided: one side is ready to empathize and forgive, and the other side points out that her grief, while valid, does not give her a pass for hurting others. I'm in the second camp, as I detailed in my review last year: Wanda's traumatic past gives an explanation, but never a justification, for her actions. She is undeniably the villain of Westview, and now she's become the enemy to defeat. Contrary to the protestations of many on the internet, this is a natural evolution from where we left Wanda last time we saw her, and it is to the credit of Multiverse of Madness that it doesn't buy WandaVision's attempt to pretend that Wanda has learned and grown from her experience. So it might be argued that this movie is about the cost of pursuing an unreachable fantasy, but that was already done in WandaVision, or maybe it is about the cost of meddling with forces beyond human grasp, but that was already done in No Way Home. Both in theme and in actual things happening in the plot, this movie is a redundant and fully skippable entry in the MCU.

Spider-Man: No Way Home proposed the question of what is a responsible use of world-altering magic, but Multiverse of Madness is quick to throw that question at the feet of Wanda, not Stephen. Even when she offers to send him to a universe where he's reunited with his old lover, there's never a sense that he's susceptible to that temptation. This should have been the movie where Stephen has to reflect on his hubris, but what we get is vignettes from other versions of Stephen who have already gone down the path of dark magic and are only there to scare Stephen into staying on the good side. There's no real growth for him. There's no hard choice. He fulfills a role less important than that of a secondary character, and we're meant to believe this story is about him.

This hollowness at the core of the story makes the rest of the flaws more noticeable. There's no thematic statement in this movie that wasn't already clear from WandaVision, and whatever little gesture of maturity Wanda shows here shouldn't have needed an entire movie to develop. The actual function of this movie is to establish América Chávez as a key figure for some upcoming project where she will turn out to save the multiverse. This movie is not its own story. It's a two-hour-long teaser for Phase 4.

This habit of producing movies whose sole function is to promise future movies is becoming a vice in the MCU. The middle portion of Multiverse of Madness is bloated with alternate characters who only show up to earn five seconds of cheers and then die with no consequence to the story. To bring Patrick Stewart back as Charles Xavier, only to kill him in the most unceremonious manner, is already disappointing enough after Logan gave that character the perfect farewell, but on top of that misstep, the casting of John Krasinski as Mr. Fantastic is a transparent play to mass appeal. This movie is not conceived as a story with a statement to make about its characters or its themes. It is simply calculated to please.

In the people-pleasing department, it's at least commendable that Sam Raimi was allowed to dial up the colors of the otherwise boring look of the MCU. His use of fade transitions and close-ups between character beats adds a much-needed touch of uniqueness to the narrative. This feels like a movie that has a director behind it instead of an impersonal corporate machinery.

However, the visual inventiveness of Multiverse of Madness is not used to its full potential. We quickly jump through a dozen universes made of paint, made of comic book ink, made of flesh cubes, but for the most part we stick to only a couple universes that have a walkable New York and a recognizable set of characters. Again, these decisions follow the preestablished needs of Phase 4. Each of these movies has only so much space where they can expand before they risk deviating from whatever big narrative is being prepared behind the scenes. There's only a tiny chance to experiment, to ask hard questions, to challenge the audience. Multiverse of Madness had infinite places to go, but it's too afraid to wander off on its own way.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +3 for giving Raimi the creative freedom to leave his personal mark on the film.

Penalties: −1 for inconsequential cameos motivated purely by fan service, −1 for choosing the wrong protagonist to focus on, −1 for not taking the risk of sending the heroes to more visually bizarre universes, −1 for refusing to have an interesting point to make.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

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

Microreview [book]: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

The Ten Thousand Doors of January uses an in-book book, and a discursive method to tell an ornately beautiful story about the power of Doors and stories.

January Scaller lives a peculiar life. The daughter of a man who travels the world on behalf of a rich and powerful man interested in curiosities, her education is idiosyncratic, peculiar, and she is rather sheltered. The appearance of a Door (and that is a capitalized door), and later, fatefully, a book called “The Ten Thousand Doors” changes January’s life forever, revealing truths of her heritage, her origins, what happened to her mother, and her own power.

This is the story of The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow.

The novel is a rather slippery fantasy to try and get a hold of. Is it a Portal fantasy, as the back matter and the title suggests? Yes, and no, the Portal aspects of the fantasy are not the central theme. Is it a coming of age story, of a young woman coming into herself? Yes, but there is much more going on with theme, history, theory and thought on it. The book is, however, a fantasy about the power of stories, and where stories come from, and how stories, for good, and bad, accurately and inaccurately, shape us and mold us, and make us what we are--and sometimes, if we find the right story, what we want and need to be.

The novel starts gamely enough, introducing us to the protagonist, who briefly encounters one of the world-spanning Doors. This brief look into another world taken away, the novel shows the course of January’s life as she is given the titular book. The Ten Thousand Doors is a Book of Gold¹ for January. Large portions of the book are taken up by text of this book within the book. What seems to be a conceit at first at reading what seems to be a scholarly work (there are even footnotes) slowly pulls back to reveal the true nature of the book, and January’s connection to the book, to the story within the book, and why and how the book came to her.The book unlocks January in other ways as well, propelling her from her life in Locke House into a wider world, into wider worlds. This is a novel about the power of story and how stories and books can shape who we are and who what we want to be. What is an implicit theme in a lot of books where reading is important to a protagonist,  is explicit and face forward, here

The plot in the book is a constant state of unfolding and reassessing what has gone before, as revelations as to who January is, who here parents are, and their relationship to the story in the book unfolds more and more. The author takes a patient approach to these revelations, allowing the reader a chance to try and work out what is going on before the text makes it explicit and unmistakable. Looking back, the clues are all there right from the beginning as to the true state of affairs, but the joy is stepping through the many doors, and seeing the unfolding of the story as a whole. The author seems to be writing for the moment when a reader, with a new revelation on the page, connects the dots back to a prior event and realizes what really occurred, and its provenance for the protagonist and her world.

The writing is beautiful and evocative. The portions in the present, with January’s story and coming of age, are wonderfully invoked. From sensory descriptions and evocations of place in all senses, to word choice and rhythm, January’s story renders very well. And at the same time, the rhythm of the book within the book is distinctly different and equally well done in it’s pitch and tone. The author manages the feat of having two very different and distinct voices of writing style within the book, braiding them together as the book within the book braids with the main plot of the novel.

If the book has a major weakness, it is in its unconventional approach and focus. That sort of focus, without a large drive forward means that it lacks a bit of the punch on the more basic levels of plot and action. The novel’s focus on the things it does very well means that the plotting of the main line of those beats itself doesn’t come off as well as when the novel is discoursing on story, or exploring what it means to unlock a story. This is a novel to savor in and think about stories and Doors and what has happened already, and what it means now,  much more than turning the page to find out what happens next. It’s a novel that invites and encourages reflection backward more than looking forward, which does rob the novel a bit of momentum that it could sometimes use. This is, I find, is a book for people who have already found their Book of Gold and are seeking to unlock many more Doors.

For those readers, however, this book is a jewel. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is an excellent debut, whose words about story and the power of story suggests that the author may have many more stories beyond this one to tell us. I for one would like to read them.

¹Book of Gold is a term from Gene Wolfe, a Book that unlocks the world of literature for a reader. In this book, the Ten Thousand Doors of January unlocks January’s entire subsequent life.

The Math

Baseline Assessment 7/10

Bonuses : +1 for beautiful, deep writing, both in the book within the book and January’s story
+1 for contemplatively interesting thoughts and explorations of the nature of story

Penalties : -1 the plotting of the antagonists and their action is pale comparef to the richness of January’s coming of age story

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

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

Reference: Harrow, Alix E. The Ten Thousand Doors of January [Orbit, 2019]

Microreivew [book]: Game of Shadows by Erika Lewis

Ethan Makkai lives with his over-protective, putting it mildly, mother in a tiny apartment in Los Angeles. Ethan Makkai can also see ghosts. Something he and his mother work hard to keep a secret. For his fifteenth birthday, Ethan hopes his mother will let him walk to school without her for once. She refuses and he manages to sneak out and meet up with a friend. This reckless decision becomes the catalyst for Ethan's world turning upside down.

As Ethan is getting into a fight with a school yard bully a man claiming to be his grandfather turns up. However, Ethan's mother has told him nothing of where she comes from or their family, and Ethan questions if the man is telling the truth. There is little time to argue when Ethan's mother calls and they hear her screaming. Rushing back to the apartment under attack from vicious birds they find the place ransacked and his mother missing.

Ethan must trust the man to help him find his mother and the truth about his past and his future. Traveling to a hidden continent, Tara, Ethan learns his gift is not the curse he always thought but a means to save his mother and the people of Tara.

I am always weary of portal fantasies (that's a whole other post). While this one does start predictably like most others, it is really the characters that made this book shine. Ethan is faced with seemingly impossible tasks, particularly since he only just learned about this other world, and yet he faces them all head-on and with witty asides. I often found myself smiling and laughing at Ethan's commentary as he adjusts to a new way of life.

The story is a fast-paced adventure of rescue and intrigue where you can never be too certain where loyalties are held. Lewis smoothly blends elements of Celtic mythology into the world-building of Tara with just enough of a twist it warranted a fun dictionary at the back of the book.

It was such an engaging read because of the strength of characters and I enjoyed getting to know them. In fact, because the main protagonists do start younger (teenager) I am pretty excited for the next installment to see how they continue to grow into their own.

If you are looking for a fun, character-driven fantasy, you won't want to miss Game of Shadows.



The Math:
Baseline Assessment: 8/10  

Bonuses: +1 strong characters and world-building  
Penalties:  -1 for predictable beginning  
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 "A great start to a new series!"
  ***
POSTED BY: Shana DuBois--extreme bibliophile and seeker of raindrops.

Reference: Lewis, Erika. Game of Shadows [Tor, 2017]