Cult Film Review: In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

Cosmic horror without the Lovecraft

 

This month, just in time for Halloween, the Criterion Channel launched a John Carpenter retrospective. I took the opportunity to revisit 1994's In the Mouth of Madness, one of the strangest John Carpenter films... and I feel like that's saying something.

Fresh off of Jurassic Park in 1993, Sam Neill went to work for John Carpenter, playing insurance investigator John Trent. We meet Trent ranting and raving as orderlies at an insane asylum drag him into a padded room. The next morning, when asylum psychiatrist Dr. Wrenn visits Trent to get his story, he opens the door to find Trent has drawn symbols all over his room, clothes, and face, and he begins to unfold his tale of madness.

John Trent was not always the raving maniac Dr. Wrenn sees before him. No, indeed. Trent was once a successful, can't-bullshit-a-bullshitter insurance investigator. The popular horror author Sutter Cane, Arcane Publishing's biggest literary star, has disappeared, and Arcane wants Trent to find him. Trent reluctantly accepts the assistance of Cane's editor, Linda Styles, but believes from the start that this whole thing is a fakeout—an elaborate publicity stunt designed to generate headlines for Cane's new novel, In the Mouth of Madness. Trent tries to do his research, grabbing copies of all of Cane's novels, but they're too scary. They wind up getting inside his dreams, and maybe even into his waking reality. Maybe everybody's waking realities. A spike in violent crime seems to be tied to people who read Cane's books. And it comes home for Trent while he sits at a restaurant and a man wielding an axe smashes through a plate glass window, coming for Trent before the police shoot the attacker. It turns out this madman was Cane's agent, and right before he raised the axe over Trent's head, he asked a question everyone seems to be asking:

"Do you read Sutter Cane?"

In the same way that Stephen King sets much of his work in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, in the film Sutter Cane sets his work in the idyllic New England town of Hobb's End. Trent realizes that design elements consistent across Cane's various novel covers fit together and form a map to the fictional town. So he and Styles set off to follow the map and see where it takes them. After trading off behind the wheel, Trent falls asleep in the passenger seat, and while Styles drives, things get weird. A figure looms up out of the darkness, the road seems to vanish, the figure returns, but different, then again, then there's a crash, or is there? The radio distorts, goes out, the night seems to bend around Styles, and then... poof. It's daytime and they're in Hobb's End.

That's all the plot summary you get, because after that, the film begins playing with reality in very interesting and increasingly labyrinthine ways. If you haven't seen the film, I don't want to take any of the fun out of it. But extremely telling is the exchange about Cane's books that Trent and Styles have on the road right before he hands over the wheel:

Trent: What's to get scared about? It's not like it's real or anything.

Styles: Well, it's not real from your point of view, and right now reality shares your point of view. What scares me about Cane's work is what might happen if reality shared his point of view.

Trent: Whoa, we're not talking about reality here. We're talking about fiction. It's different, you know?

Styles: But reality is just what we tell each other it is. Sane and insane could easily switch places if the insane were to become the majority.

I have to be honest: that line hit a little closer to home these days than it probably did in 1994. I do remember renting this movie (on VHS!) when it came out, and when it ended, I felt so perplexed, so surprised by the final moments of the film, thinking that I must have missed something, that I rewound it back to their arrival in Hobb's End and watched it again. Watching it this time, having vaguely remembered that experience from 30 years ago, I was a little more prepared to simply go on the journey that Carpenter and writer Michael De Luca wanted to take me on.

If you are a fan of Carpenter and/or Stephen King, this movie is a ton of fun. Carpenter throws in a number of signature visuals that are reminiscent of The Thing, and the movie really nails the Stephen King vibe, not only with the setting but down to the author font on the paperbacks. But one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the way it manages to give the viewer a full-on cosmic horror experience without H.P. Lovecraft. Sure, there are a ton of homages to Lovecraft, but it's not his mythos, not his settings, and not his baggage.

Like many people, I can no longer enjoy the work of Lovecraft—certainly not the way I could at maybe 13 years old, reading paperbacks with evocative titles full of odd, elliptical stories that hinted at a hostile cosmos and latent dangers outside of the realms of our perception. But Lovecraft's racism and eugenicist views, which revealed themselves in tropes I wasn't equipped to fully understand at that age, make the experience of reading him one I can no longer find much joy in. And while there are a couple of good ones, Lovecraft film adaptations tend toward the schlocky and cheap, as name-recognizable IP in the public domain might lead you to believe.

So I'm grateful to John Carpenter for In the Mouth of Madness. It scratches the cosmic horror itch in a satisfying way, and wraps it in something of a puzzle box narrative that's akin to a film like Mulholland Dr. but very much in the horror genre. I'm happy to recommend this without having to caveat it.

In the Mouth of Madness is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel (October 2025), and Tubi with commercials.

TV Review: Tomorrow and I

In the future, humanity is the same, but we find new ways to complicate our lives

The anthology miniseries Tomorrow and I, produced in Thailand and released last year on Netflix, explores near-future scenarios where personal identity, social mores and class divisions intersect with digital tools, biotechnology and climate change. Although the stories told in the four episodes have universal appeal, they are related to topics that are deeply important in today’s Thailand: the struggles that trans people still face in conservative families, the government’s hypocrisy that keeps sex workers out of the formal economy, the rapidly changing attitudes about the place of religion in the 21st century, the dangers of rising sea levels for a coastal country, and the slow distribution of coronavirus vaccines.

The first episode, Black Sheep, is a bittersweet tale of selfless love. The story is about a closeted trans man who has been so far resigned to a life of unhappiness. He finds a measure of satisfaction in his job as a doctor who does cutting-edge research on 3D printing of organs for transplantation. It turns out that growing living tissue into the desired shape works better in microgravity, so he’s been recruited for a space mission where his experiments have more promising chances. However, his return trip results in a fatal accident, and that’s when his husband sees an opportunity to use forbidden cloning technology to bring him back—this time in the right body.

We don’t learn about the protagonist’s gender dysphoria until after his death, when the cloning technology scans the memories from his brain. Most of the episode actually follows the husband, whom we see grieve for a while before he comes up with the cloning idea. There’s a very interesting scene where he argues with his in-laws about the process: they strongly oppose it for religious reasons, and he has no time for talk of the afterlife. The Buddhist doctrine that the material world is full of suffering takes a central place in the discussion.

This episode makes good use of the narrative rule that victories must have a painful cost. For our astronaut doctor, it’s the legal limbo of existing as a cloned person (not unlike the real-life legal limbo of trans people in Thailand, who still can’t change their ID to one that reflects their true gender). For the husband, it’s a prison sentence for stealing the head from the morgue, and after that, the separation from his spouse, who miraculously got his job back, but is now permanently stationed at a lunar research lab.

Pros: Great casting for the role of the astronaut doctor, with separate actors for the scenes before and after resurrection/transition.

Cons: The reveal of this character’s history of gender dysphoria is handled without much tact, almost crossing the line into sensationalism.

The second episode, Paradistopia, is a warped reflection of real life through a neon lens. The protagonist is a businesswoman who founds a sex robot factory with the dual goal of relaxing the tight social expectations regarding sex in Thailand and giving less arduous white-collar jobs to aging sex workers. The story of her rise to commercial success is interweaved with flashbacks of her childhood as the daughter of a sex worker, struggling to finish her studies and dreaming of leaving her slum behind. In the present, she’s returned to the same slum and transformed it into a proud red-light district where every desire is catered to with the latest robotic technology.

There are several scenes of talk shows discussing the planned launch of a robot brothel; cabinet members warn that men who get too used to consequence-free interaction with a machine may carry the same behavior to their real relationships, while our protagonist insists that Thailand needs to develop a more open attitude about the varieties of erotic desire. These scenes have the clear intent of inviting the viewer to side with the protagonist, but she’s not above playing dirty herself. She bribes several government officers to secure the legal permits for her robot brothel, and even orchestrates a false-flag smear capaign against herself to draw public sympathy.

The resolution of this episode is rather abrupt and inelegant, but it does pack an implied punch: just because the authorities aren’t ready for a world with robot sex doesn’t mean demand will magically vanish.

Pros: The fabulous retrofuturist aesthetic in every detail.

Cons: The cringeworthy attempts at humor.

The third episode, Buddha Data, is about the meeting between digital culture and ancient tradition. We follow a Buddhist monk who starts questioning his purpose when the whole country becomes obsessed with a new mobile app that adds gamification to acts of charity. The creator of the app resents the Buddhist priesthood for cheating his parents out of all their possessions in the form of offerings, and has given himself the mission to bring actual, material consequences to good deeds. Instead of accumulating merit for the next life, users of his app receive karma points they can exchange for discounts. It doesn’t take long for some people to perversely game the system and earn points for technically fulfilling the quests.

So our monk, who happens to have coding experience, teams up with a former colleague and launches his own spiritual progress app. While his competitor turns charity into a performance for selfish motives, this app guides the user through the steps of enlightenment with the help of wisdom extracted from the brains of veteran monks. All seems to go well for this project, until a scandal blows up and brusquely reminds the viewer that scanning a monk’s brain is no guarantee of holiness.

Pros: The dialogue scenes between the monk and his robot sidekick.

Cons: The plot relies on too many convenient contrivances.

The fourth episode, Octopus Girl, is the show’s pièce de résistance, although the budget was clearly spent more in set design and casting than in scriptwriting. We’re introduced to two adorable schoolgirls who live in a slum during a worldwide three-year-long rain caused by a collapsed climate cycle. Most people have become accustomed to the perpetual rain, and some animals have begun showing impressive adaptations, but tropical diseases are out of control. The United Nations have developed a vaccine prepared with octopus genes; the only side effect is that your face grows little tentacles. In Thailand, the comically inept Prime Minister makes a big show of banning the vaccine from the country while proposing instead to enclose flooded towns under glass domes.

Meanwhile, our girls sneak into a TV singing contest and steal the nation’s hearts by bringing attention to the way the government neglects poor neighborhoods. The scenes in their slum have a cute slice-of-life vibe that is only hurt by the tonal mismatch of a sense of humor more appropriate for an audience of children (which is hard to believe, given this is the same series that had an episode about sex robots). But the biggest tonal whiplash is the episode’s ending, which just wipes off all the goodwill the episode has laboriously tried to earn.

Pros: Excellent set design.

Cons: Very strange humor, needlessly mean ending.

Taken as a whole, Tomorrow and I is pessimistic about the potential of technology. Even when people seem to achieve their goals with the help of advanced genetics or robotics or informatics, the situation invariably turns more adverse and the achievement becomes unusable or unenjoyable. However, this doesn’t mean that the stories take a nihilistic stance about the human search for happiness. This is no Black Mirror. What these stories are saying is that, while technology makes our faults more notorious and therefore more consequential, that doesn’t negate the sincerity of our efforts. Fundamentally good people find themselves in defective systems that don’t allow for neat, clean solutions.

The nuances of this humanist stance are hindered by the show’s painfully simplistic and obvious dialogues. I must admit that I watched with English subtitles and can’t understand Thai, but to the extent that each plot can be followed, what is gained with great visual effects is lost with lackluster scripts, by which I mean that the characters’ reactions can get too melodramatic, or too predictable, or too hackneyed. One can believe that the future will be hard to navigate, but not that we will lack the capacity to describe it.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

Book Review: All that We See or Seem, by Ken Liu

A challenging novel that fearlessly faces a world full of AI

Julia Z is a hacker, and a good one. She has a mysterious past, but now, with the arrival of a client that needs her help, Julia is thrust into a dark world that, even given her technological skills and prowess, she could never have imagined. Julia’s story is the story of All that We See or Seem, the start of a new series by Ken Liu.

The title is a key to understanding and unlocking what Liu is after in this book. The phrase “All that We See or Seem” comes from Edgar Allen Poe’s A Dream Within A Dream:

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow—

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand—

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep—while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

This is a story about dreams, both metaphorical as well as literal. The novel runs on the rails of a plot involving a lawyer, Piers. His wife Elli is an oneirofex: she can help shape shared dreams, with individual clients, as well as large groups. But his wife has now disappeared. Worse, a mysterious entity known as the Prince¹ is demanding Piers turn over some at first vaguely defined information from his wife. The Prince not only doesn’t know where Elli is, but her disappearance is what triggered him to send his demands: he is looking for her, too. And so the race is on to use the information in Elli’s files and clues... and dreams, to find her before the Prince does.

At least, that is the ostensible plot of about two-thirds of the novel. A little context and background, first: What a lot of this novel is about and focuses on is the everyday use of LLMs and related technologies. The sort of AIs that we are seeing today are extended, developed and ubiquitous. Liu isn’t advocating for these technologies, mind you, but he does fearlessly lay out a world with AIs that act as personal assistants, legal researchers, and the like. The technology is seen as noncontroversial, but it is everywhere. Julia and Piers and the other characters swim in this water. They can’t imagine a world where they don’t have to manipulate and swim through AI stuff—be it dating apps to shopping.

But then there are dreams. The manipulation and crafting of shared dreams is shown to be a hot new technology (that Elli managed to be an early user and tastemaker for) and one that is absolutely human-made. It’s made clear that Liu thinks that in this new future anything that requires human craft will command a premium. Unlike most other creative arts, dreams are something an AI absolutely can’t replicate.

And yet, consider the poem that the title of the book comes from. It suggests that Elli’s craft (even if you can record them) is an ephemeral one. Sure, it can be recorded, but in the end it is a gossamer art, which could be destroyed by a touch. And there’s a desperation to try and hold onto something real from the dream.² Or is everything just a dream?³ Is it all ghosts and shadows, be it the AI-invented variety, or human-derived ones?

And now I’m going to get spoilery and discuss the phase shift in this novel, because, frankly, I don’t think that it actually works all that well.

HERE BE SPOILERS.

Still here? Okay.

Up to about the two-thirds mark, the story has been Julia and Piers as they try and track down Elli. It’s all from Julia’s point of view, with a couple of swerves here and there for brief bits with the antagonists—the Prince, as well as one of his lead henchmen. The pair get closer and closer to Elli, and have figured out why, as well as what the Prince wanted. And then they track her down, at the same time as the Prince’s forces do. The technothriller of the first two-thirds of the novel comes to a head.

In the ensuing course of events, both Elli and Piers die. Dead. Julia barely survives herself. And then the novel shifts into something else entirely (which I will not discuss, since I’ve brought you to this spoiler and will not go farther). Julia takes the lead, and the rest of the novel plays out. And I’m not sure that this gear shift works into what turns out to be an entirely different plot. It might be, if I squint, an extension of the original plot, but what gets revealed and explicated in that last third and what Julia deals with is not set up as well as I think it is. And to kill not only the MacGuffin but a primary character as well, leaving Julia at a nadir, feels like a bad gear shift, to be honest. We get to learn more about Julia and her past in the last third, and I realize that this series is HER series, and this is needed to flesh out her character some more.

So this feels like a “rebirth” and a “return to her origins,” which is fine, and the novel does eventually hit its theme in this last third, but the jettisoning of both Piers and Elli and the whole swerve from what the novel was trying to do… I don’t think the join between the parts exactly works. The last third on his own has some interesting ideas, too, which makes the clash all the more frustrating. The ideas don’t match the first two-thirds, and I think they aren’t as good, but there’s some intriguing stuff here. Liu’s speculation on these technologies and what they mean holds your attention—and may horrify.

SPOILERS END.

And then we come to the novel’s setting. This is a near-future world where AI is ubiquitous, and the focus of that worldbuilding (aside from the dream technology) is the use of AI. At a time when LLMs and related technologies are controversial, a novel like this can be hard to take. Liu makes it clear there has been a human cost to the use of this technology, but for the most part, he’s not judging it (negatively or positively). This makes the novel tricky, since this is such a contentious technology now, and in Julia’s world it’s everywhere. We get a lot of immersive detail in this future society, and it holds a bit of horrid fascination for me. But I can see how it might absolutely turn off some readers. If the very idea of ubiquitous AI makes you twitch, this is definitely not a book for you.

Also, most of the worldbuilding around the dream technology, which is free of any concerns regarding AI and its consequences, is in that first two-thirds of the book. The last third, again, takes things in a different direction, but it didn’t quite have that spark for me.

So in the end, though, this novel doesn’t quite work for me. It’s not so much the AI technology but the shift at the two-thirds mark that changes this to a completely different book, and while that last third is not weak, I just don’t think it is as strong. Jettisoning a lot of what makes the first two-thirds works, characters and otherwise, makes that last third less worthwhile.

Caveat lector!

Highlights:

• A novel that puts an AI future front and forward with a lot of clever speculation and worldbuilding
• A slowly unfolded main character
• A headscratching two-thirds turn

Reference: Liu, Ken. All that We See or Seem [Saga Press, 2025].

¹ It is very weird, personally, for a character with an online name of The Prince to appear as the antagonist in this novel, given my internet name of Princejvstin.

² And yes, the movie Reminiscence, which goes into memories and dreams, has entered the chat.

³ Ken Liu’s translation of Laozi’s Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time now enters the chat and really feels important to this novel’s existence. Did that translation inspire Liu to write this novel? I wish I knew Liu well enough to go and ask him directly!

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

Anime Review: Kaiju No. 8 — Season 2

A shift from character and comedy to action and intensity

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

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

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

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

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

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

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

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

Video Game Review: Balatro by LocalThunk

You'll be seeing poker hands in your dreams.

I was skeptical of Balatro when I heard of all the praise it received last year. How could a roguelite game about making poker hands become something so lauded that it propelled the little indie title into the stratosphere? Not only has it succeeded critically, becoming a nominee for game of the year at the Game Awards (and winning best indie, best debut indie, and best mobile game), but also commercially, selling over five million copies as of earlier this year. The developer, LocalThunk made the wise decision to remain anonymous, so though I can't mention him/her by name, know that minus the music, one person made this entire game (who is now set for life, thanks to Balatro). Because of PlayStation Plus’ monthly offerings, I had the opportunity to check it out for free. I’d just finished up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and had Death Stranding: Director’s Cut next in the lineup and decided I needed a palate cleanser. Enter Balatro.

As aforementioned, Balatro is a game about creating poker hands. That is the main hook of the game. Simple, effective, and increasingly challenging. You make hands to reach a certain chip score. In order to beat a blind (level), your hands need to make enough chips to surpass the blind. Every round, Balatro gives the player a certain number of hands and discards to work with. You use these to ensure you have the best offerings when you put your cards up. If you’ve used all of your hands and still haven't met the threshold of the blind, it’s game over and time for a new run. Getting to the boss blind (a more difficult blind that gives the player a detriment) when you know your jokers aren't quite where you want them can be intimidating.

But wait, there’s more! In addition to creating better hands, there are ways to amplify your chip score… and this is where Balatro shines. That little joker that smiles menacingly at you from his white background on the title screen is one of only 150 jokers that can be utilized throughout the game. Many of those need to be unlocked through specific criteria, but can all show up throughout your run once you’ve unlocked them. The fun of Balatro comes from managing your jokers and hoping that you can find such strong synergy amongst them that you make millions upon millions of chips per hand. And when that chain of points goes off, boy is it a satisfying feeling (I had to turn the game speed up to four times, otherwise it was a bit too slow).

But wait! Yes, there’s even more. In addition to jokers, there are vouchers, tarot cards, spectral cards, and planet cards that can help boost the score of your runs in immeasurable ways. Vouchers are expensive (you use money earned from victorious rounds to purchase them), but effective. They can increase your hand size or discard count and are endlessly helpful. Tarot cards can do anything from changing the suit of a few cards, to adding a steel card to your deck (which multiples your Mult by 1.5), to increasing the amount of money you have. Planet cards are specifically for hand types, so you can upgrade how much a straight or flush gives you every time you use it. Spectral cards are tricky and sometimes require sacrifice, but they can pay off big time when you get when you want of it. Changing a dozen cards to a single suit or card number/face card can alter your run big time. Sure you’ve heard of four of a kind, but have you ever played a five of a kind? Full house, okay, but what about a flush house? Layered on top of all of this is the ability to choose your deck, each one offering different boons and blights that more layers to your run. Altering your deck to fit your run is an increasingly satisfying endeavor, and when you're on a roll, you feel unstoppable.

 

But that’s the thing about roguelites, right? When you have a good run, it’s great, but when you don’t… Well, then it can be irritating, grating, and sometimes can feel like a total waste of time. The higher you increase the challenge, the more elements get introduced that induce that time-wasting feeling. For instance, on Gold tier (the highest difficulty) they introduce rental jokers, after already introducing permanent jokers and perishable jokers. Sometimes this feels like artificial difficulty and can make a run feel immediately useless. After building up so much and getting past a few antes, it feels like a slap in the face when you run into jokers that will only help for a few rounds. If your build can account for it already, great, but if not, it’s game over. I feel like the player should fail because they took certain risks with their hands (like trying to discard for a Royal Flush and coming up short) or mismanaging their hands and jokers, not because the game doesn't give you the tools to do so. Though, anyone who has ever played a roguelite will know it’s just the way it goes. If you play these types of games, expect to be frustrated at times, most of which will have nothing to do with your own incompetence, but with the hand you’ve been dealt.

I don’t speak too much on the other aspects of the game because the graphics are simple, effective, and serviceable. The different art for new jokers is always fun to come across, but otherwise nothing here that will etch itself into your memory (though maybe your retinas) for years to come. The music does the job, though I honestly listen to other music soundtracks or sports games in the background. The sound effect for racking up points is a bit addictive and exciting to hear as it ding ding dings you into the millions. There is no story here, so the gameplay has to be enough for you, or it has nothing.

Do you like poker? Do you like a challenge? Do you like the rush of watching your poker chips pile up before you as you hoard them like Smaug in a gold vault? Sometimes frustrating, sometimes unfair, but despite this, still addictive, Balatro manages to be more than the palate cleanser than I thought it would be. In fact, it’s both. Sometimes you want to read some snippets of a coffee table book between two sci-fi epics... and sometimes that coffee table book is so interesting that you read it front to back. Be it your main obsession, or a game that you’ll pick up from time to time, Balatro deserves many of the accolades it’s earned, and LocalThunk all the praise for single-handedly creating one of the most recent roguelite fads.

--

The Math

Objective Assessment: 8.5/10

Bonus: +1 for synergistic gameplay. +1 for addictive fun.

Penalties: -2 for unfair runs that aren't the player's fault.

Nerd Coefficient: 8.5/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

TV Review: Bon Appetit, Your Majesty

Outlander meets Iron Chef in this addictive time travel K-drama rom com

When it’s time for your next guilty pleasure, Netflix’s Bon Appetit, Your Majesty has a tasty twelve course menu for your indulgence. The twelve episode series follows the adventures of a confident, modern-day French-trained chef, who falls through time to ancient Korea and lands in the court of a tyrannical young king who has a demanding palate for gourmet food when he isn’t tormenting his subjects. The new series is a romantic combination of the time travel elements of Outlander, the tyrant king and daily survival of Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights, and the intense cooking competition of Food Network shows like Iron Chef, Top Chef, and Chopped. As the stressed chef tries to find a way back to her own time, she must survive the dangers of ancient life and the palace’s political intrigue, while being forced to prepare meals for an angry young king who will kill her if the food displeases him. Despite a fair amount of drama and bloodshed towards the end, the story is primarily humorous with appealing enemies to lovers, mistaken identity, and fish out of water story elements.

The story starts in modern day France where elite chef Yeon Ji-young (Im Yoon-ah), wins an international cooking competition and is headed back to her home in Korea. Her father asks her to get a copy of an antique cooking manuscript from an academic colleague. During her flight home, the ancient book pulls her through a time travel portal to Korea in the Joseon Era. She soon encounters an angry, pompous young man Yi Heon (Lee Chae-Min). Not realizing he is the king, she assumes he is from a movie set and he believes she is a witch / spirit creature due to her strange clothes and manner of speaking. King Yi Heon’s intention to kill her for annoying him is interrupted when an archer assassin shoots him and Ji-young reluctantly keeps him from bleeding out and cooks for him while hiding out in the home of a local girl who befriends her. When the king is rescued, Ji-young finds herself in prison for her disrespect to the king. But the king is intrigued by her unusual cooking and orders her to become his chief royal cook. However, he promises to execute her if she serves something he doesn’t like. Over time the two grow closer despite their bickering and they bond over food. However, due to the king’s past tyranny, multiple enemies are plotting his demise and Ji-young finds herself in danger as assassins target the king and those close to him. In particular, the king’s uncle, Prince Jesan (Choi Gwi-hwa) and one of the king’s consorts, Kang (Kang Han-na), are determined to overthrow Yi Heon.

The series uses elements of Korean history with King Yi Heon inspired by (and recognized by Ji-young) as a real life sixteenth century tyrant known for his cruelty due to the murder of his mother. The balance of upsetting, true history with the rom com elements creates an interesting contrast. In Bon Appetit, the king is grieving the murder of his mother by undisclosed members of the royal family (and with collusion of others). This occurred when he was a child and he is determined to solve the mystery of her execution. Due to his bitterness, he treats his own people with contempt and cruelty, taking land, executing or exiling dissenters and earning the anger of his political rivals who seek to dethrone him. Ji-young’s presence and influence over the king gradually creates an alternate history timeline as she persuades the king to be more compassionate. Despite the general elements of lightness, there are moments where otherwise likeable characters admit to having done terrible acts. Additionally, although there are several strong female characters in the story, the historical context makes it clear that women are treated as commodities and are offered as tribute or payment in negotiations.

The villains are, unfortunately, mostly two dimensional and lack subtlety. Viewers are subjected to the evil uncle’s villainous laugh and the consort’s perpetual sneer. Initially, there seems to be no clear motive articulated for their desire to overthrow the king. However, a consideration of the real life history as well as the show’s backstory adds some context for the escalating hate and reciprocal violence between the tyranny of the grieving king and his political rivals’ vengeance.

Against that historical backdrop, we still have a swoony rom com love story between the arrogant king and the spunky modern chef. Bouncy rom com music alternates between intense moments as Ji-young tries to convince the king that she is from the future and needs to find the ancient book to portal her way back home. There are funny moments where the king struggles to understand Ji-young’s modern slang and, despite his tyrannical tendencies, endures her lecture on consent when he unexpectedly kisses her. Ji-young also has her medieval bestie Gil-geum (Yoon Seo-Ah) who provides comic relief elements along with the comedic royal kitchen team who struggle to warm up to the idea of a woman as the head chef.

However, the true heart of the show is not the romance, or the political intrigue, it’s the cooking. Each episode is named after a particular dish or cuisine and Bon Appetit unapologetically treats viewers to a detailed examination of unique ingredients, thoughtful preparation techniques, and the emotional power of cooking as a means of human connection. When people taste Ji-young's cooking they enter a fantastical sensory realm where the taste of the food is conveyed through dramatic visual symbolism in a way that is reminiscent of the Food Wars anime. In an homage to Food Network shows like Top Chef and Chopped, Ji-young repeatedly finds herself racing against the clock and cooking with her life on the line. In fact, a particularly long food competition arc stretches over four episodes in which Ji-young and her team face off against three sharp Ming chefs with the fate of the kingdom at risk. Their competition leads to the invention of the pressure cooker and lots of dangerous adventures outside of the kitchen.

The two lead characters have great chemistry and the journey feels like an authentic, slow-burn redemption story. However, that kind of potential happiness is fighting against the truth of history and the consequences of hate. As the last episodes grow more grim and violent, beloved characters meet their end and it becomes hard to imagine how things will conclude. But this story is a fantasy that leans into the fantastical when it needs it. Bon Appetit, Your Majesty ultimately brings the tale to a satisfying, although stressful, ending that’s literally and figuratively a chef’s kiss.

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The Math

Highlights:

• Time loop, time travel, portal fantasy
• Tropey villains and supporting characters
• Gorgeous food explorations

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

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

Realm of the Elderlings Project: The Rain Wild Chronicles, Book 1: Dragon Keeper

The character arcs are familiar, but it's all in service of building something new 

We are on to the fourth subseries of this fantastic saga! The Rain Wild Chronicles is, in a way, atypical of a Robin Hobb series, largely because it is strikingly lacking in misery and structural complexity. The character motivations are straightforward and driven by no more than the usual amount of discontent with the status quo; the main character arcs mostly avoid catastrophe, except inasmuch as a lively flood or brief skirmish enlivens typical fantasy plots; and the plot is a very simple quest structure. We don’t even get the Fool, in any of his many identities. At the end, the evil are punished (hooo boy, are they ever!), the good are rewarded, dragons kick ass, and. . .  fin. 

By now, I’ve reread enough Robin Hobb to recognize that the character arcs are mostly recycled from previous books. This is not a criticism; more an observation. Hobb evidently had a lot to say about certain types of personal journeys, and she didn’t say it all the first time round. Take Alise Finbok, the dragon scholar who yearns to study dragons, yearns so hard that she insists that a study trip up the Rain Wild River be included as a condition in her marriage contract. This is her only point of joy in a loveless marriage to a husband who is powerful and overbearing, who oppresses her and belittles her and makes her feel small. When she finally gets the opportunity to travel to the Rain Wilds and observe the dragons, she is disappointed to find the creatures so different from how she’d expected them to be. Yet nevertheless she takes advantage of circumstances and manages to remake herself  into a new person in their company. She is thus freed from her asshole husband, and learns what it is to be loved and valued for her own skills and self and personhood. This is a lovely character arc. It is also in many ways a repeat of Serilla’s arc from the Liveship Traders. Serilla, recall, begins her arc as the companion of the asshole Satrap of Jamaillian, who belittles her, ignores her experience and political acumen, and tries instead to treat her as a sexual object. She finds her purpose in her scholarship of the history and politics of Bingtown. When she finally gets the opportunity to travel to Bingtown, she is disappointed to discover that the life she’d imagined for herself there is not feasible. Yet nevertheless she takes advantage of circumstances and – with some false starts – manages to remake a new existence for herself, freed from the asshole Satrap, and – if not loved and valued – at least respected for her knowledge and experience. The worst parts of Alise’s story are really not all that terrible compared to Serilla’s. As I’ve said, these books lack the typical Hobbian misery that we see elsewhere, and Alise’s arc is shifted substantially upward on the despair-to-joy spectrum. But still: the shape of the arc is the same.

Likewise, Sedric, Alise’s childhood friend and the amenuensis-cum-secret-lover of her dastardly husband, gets his own dragon-fueled redemption arc that feels a lot like Malta Vestrit’s. But again, like Alise’s, it’s a bit gentler. Malta, recall, starts as the most glorious 13-year-old brat who has ever bratted, and ends as a full-ass Elderling, negotiating the fate of nations. Both Malta and Sedric begin their respective stories sheltered and selfish, accustomed to a life of pampering and wealth, and ready to make all kinds of foolish decisions to pursue that comfort without thinking through or properly understanding the consequences of their decisions. 

The particularly interesting contrast between these two arises from how respective horriblenesses are tempered. Malta is a literal child at the start, and whomst amongst ust has not indulged in 13-year-old brattiness? Sedric, by contrast, is a full-grown adult. He regularly travels internationally, and has a firm grasp on politics and trade. He knows the consequences of his actions, or should know, and that expectation of competence makes his behaviour much harder to forgive. 

 Consider, for example, his decision to accompany Alise to the Rain Wilds, where he will acquire dragon parts to sell to the Duke of Chalced. These dragon parts represent the sole chance of saving the dying duke’s life, so Sedric expects to get a huge payoff upon delivery. What Sedric doesn’t seem to realize is that this is, on many levels, a terrible idea. Leave aside the ethics of butchering and selling sentient creatures for medicine, and think about the politics for a moment. The Duke of Chalced is dying. Dragon parts can save him. Dragons can only be found in the Rain Wilds. Last time Chalced tried to make trouble in that part of the world, Tintaglia fought them off, but Tintaglia is not here anymore.  So why in the world would Sedric want to (a) demonstrate to the desperate Duke of Chalced that life-saving resources are to be found in the Rain Wilds, and (b) do it at a time when Tintaglia is no longer defending them against Chalced? Sooner or later, the saying goes, there is always war with Chalced. Sedric’s actions are going to make it much sooner than later.

Malta’s brattiness is tempered by the fact that she’s a child. What excuse does Sedric have? In a word: Hest. Hest is Alise’s asshole husband, but he is also Sedric’s lover, and he is a classic narcissistic asshole. He glamours Sedric with  his handsomeness, his masterful exercise of wealth and power and taste; and he combines that glamour with a fair amount of manipulative emotional abuse. It is to please Hest that Sedric suggests Alise as a potential wife, and coaches Hest on how best to win Alise’s agreement for a marriage of convenience. It is to please Hest that he indulges in really foul semantic wordplay when Alise tries to invoke the clause in the marriage contract that dissolves the union in the event of infidelity. Oh no, says Hest, I’ve never slept with any other woman, right Sedric? And he is right: He’s not sleeping with women — because he’s sleeping with men. Sedric knows perfectly well that it makes no difference to Alise which people Hest is sleeping with. What matters is that she’s found evidence of infidelity and wants to invoke that contractual provision to dissolve her marriage. But because of her mistaken assumption that Hest is exclusively attracted to women, Hest wriggles out of the accusation. And because Alise has been friends with Sedric so long, she trusts him when he backs up Hest’s word; and so because of Sedric, she loses her opportunity to end her miserable marriage. Sedric is friendly, but he is not a friend.

As with Malta, Hobb does not insist that we feel sympathy for Sedric, at the start. The facts and actions and motivations are simply presented to us, and we are left to draw our own conclusions. Is Sedric a victim of domestic abuse, too enthralled to his abuser to do the right thing, for fear of the consequences for his own well-being? Or is he just a weak, sad man, who will prey on dragons and betray his friends to please an asshole he’s sleeping with? For my part, I am intellectually aware of the former interpretation, but emotionally I really lean toward the latter. Malta as a 13-year-old brat was gloriously, hilariously smackable. Sedric, as a full-grown failure of a man, is just sad. 

Let us turn now to the themes. Thematically, this book is fantastic. We’ll start with Tintaglia. Recall that we left the Liveship Traders trilogy with magnificent Tintaglia shepherding a massive tangle of 100 serpents to cocoon and transform into dragons, ready to take to the skies. We left the Tawny Man trilogy with the discovery and rescue of Icefyre, another adult dragon, mating with Tintaglia and ensuring another generation of eggs on the way. But the consequence of these triumphs is that Tintaglia abandons the Rain Wild dragons. When they were her only hope for the continuance of her species, she had time to help feed the pathetic specimens that emerged on the riverbed outside the Rain Wild city of Cassarick. But now, with a proper dragon at her side, she has no use for them. 

Yes, it is selfish. It puts the individual above the community. But this is how dragons are. They are not human. They do not have human-like loyalties to each other. And this ruthless, selfish independence works very well if you have the capacities of a dragon, if you can hunt and fly and feed yourself and defend yourself. Dragons are strong. Humans are squishy and weak. 

So humans must form societies to compensate for their squishy weakness, societies where they combine their capacities and work for the good of the whole, rather than the individual. This is especially important in an environment as harsh as the Rain Wilds, where people struggle to bear children, become disfigured with growths and scales as they age, and sicken and die young. However, this harshness of the environment, and the need to focus on the collective good, engenders harshness in its treatment of individuals. Any child born too ‘changed’ from the start is exposed at birth, to die. The reasoning of this regularly practiced infanticide is that these infants will only ever turn out to be a burden to society, sickening early, and unable to bear healthy children of their own. Why, conventional wisdom asks, must society welcome and support people who cannot contribute to the next generation? 

So life in the Rain Wilds is governed by these questions: How much of a burden of dead weight can a society bear? How much must an individual contribute before they are allowed to be a member of that society? Under what circumstances is it permissible to kill babies? It’s all very ‘Cold Equations’.

It’s an uncomfortable kind of conversation, and it’s not made any easier when we consider the case of Thymara, one of the primary viewpoint characters. Thymara is a young woman who ‘should’ have been exposed at birth. She was only given a chance at life because her father decided at the last minute to defy custom and expectation, and bring her back home, to raise her and train her in hunting and foraging and all the other life skills that Rain Wilders need to master for survival. It turns out that Thymara is an excellent hunter and forager. She brings in far more food than she eats. In her particular case, then, it would have been a mistake to leave her to die. Even if she never has a baby, and does not contribute to the next generation, her contributions are still a net positive to society.

But by even having this conversation, and pointing out that Thymara is a contributer rather than a burden, we are conceding an important point – namely, that it is reasonable to evaluate people’s right to live in a society as a function of their numerical contribution.¹ This reasoning needs only a statistical evaluation of expected value in the long term aggregate to justify and indeed require infanticide. Sure, in Thymara’s case, to be sure, there is no danger of her being a burden, because she grew up to be a good hunter. But statistically it was unlikely, so in the long run, just to be sure of optimizing the collective good . . . 

It’s the Tragedy of the Commons pitted against the belief that killing babies is bad. And every member of the Rain Wilds knows this. There’s a wonderful moment quite early on, where Thymara’s father points out how good a hunter she is, and his companions get all shifty and uneasy. Because every Rain Wild parent who’s ever left a child to die, after nine months of hope and fear and love and waiting, after hours of agonizing labour and the crushing grief at seeing one’s baby born with claws instead of fingernails – those parents are not comforting themselves with calculating expected values. These parents are not thinking well, in the aggregate, statistically these changed children consume more than they produce, so society as a whole is stronger if. . . No. Rather, these parents are looking at Thymara and thinking, if I had possessed the strength of character; if I had defied the rules, then my little one might be here today, like she is.

So: what does society do with these extraneous people, the ones who should be dead, the ones who cannot produce a new generation? Well, if you have a bunch of dragons wallowing on your doorstep, hemmed in by trees and flightless; sickly and stunted and unable to hunt, consuming far more than they produce, the answer is clear. You pull up your algebra notes, combine like terms, and offer the deadweights a job: Lead the dragons upstream, hunt for them, tend to them, and find them a new place to live, far away from here. 

This gives us the heart of the plot: two sets of outcasts, human and dragon, must work together to find a new place to live. And they both engage in this endeavour whole-heartedly. They do not feel like they have been cast out of their homes, rejected by their society – though they absolutely have been. The humans are the rejects of the Rain Wilds, and the dragons have been entirely abandoned by Tintaglia. Nevertheless, they see it as an opportunity to build a new future. 

But they approach this opportunity with a different end goal in mind. The humans are released from the constraints of the Rain Wild society, freed to negotiate a new set of customs, and figure out how far their new freedoms can take them. They envision an entirely different society, built from scratch, attuned to their own specific needs. By contrast the dragons don’t hope to build something new. Their entire abnormal life, stunted and sickly, flightless and wallowing in mud, has been an education in how the old ways were better. Yet they cannot recover anything resembling those old ways without the help of their human keepers, and so the very task of returning to their former greatness is going to require a certain amount of concessions to circumstances. 

Next month, we’ll see how those concessions work out, and what kinds of negotiations the humans and dragons must make with each other in their quest for a new home, and the new type of society they must build together.

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1 This type of reasoning is not restricted to fantasy settings. UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced this week that  immigrants must now perform unpaid labour as a precondition for the right to live in the UK. ^↩  

References: 

Hobb, Robin. Dragon Keeper [Harper Voyager, 2009]. 

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