Review: Once & Future

Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I tried my best with this book, but I just couldn't manage it. The description seemed like the kind of thing I would like: a queer, genderflipped version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, set in a space opera-ish future. Unforuntately, I got about two-thirds of the way through and my reading and enjoyment ground to a halt. The story is dull, the characters are thin and cardboardy, and the worldbuilding is embarrassing. (Sorry, but casting the Galaxy-Wide Corporation as the Big Bad without the slightest explanation of how it got that way and what happened to other planetary governments--not to mention what happened to Earth--doesn't cut it. Not to mention the science and technology doesn't even rise to the level of Star Wars Lite.) I was also reading another non-fiction book, and when I realized I looked forward to picking that one up and continuing a lot more than I did this, I knew it was time to give it up. This book gets donated to the library, and I hope they can find a better audience for it.

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Streamin' Meemies: The Mandalorian, Season 1

Yeah, I broke down and gave the Mouse some of my hard-earned money. (It is cheaper if you subscribe for an entire year, after all.) I've about reached my limit for streaming services, though; at least Hulu lets you put your subscription on hold for up to three months at a time. (And it will probably be the first to go, after Marvel's Runaways and The Handmaid's Tale is finished--or perhaps sooner if the latter continues on its downward trajectory.)

I came to this having never watched the Star Wars animated series (Rebels and Clone Wars), and I knew next to nothing about the Mandalorian backstory. A "Star Wars spaghetti western" was enough for me to give it a try. (That and, of course, all the Marvel series lining up.) I didn't have high expectations for this, and was rather pleasantly surprised.

First off: these are some very lean and mean stories. They're almost all within the 30-40 minute range, with the finale, "Redemption," clocking in the longest at 49 minutes (partly because it fills in the exposition and background eschewed by earlier episodes). I imagine this is because the showrunners knew their audience would largely be comprised of Star Wars nerdheads who were aware of all background minutiae, so they felt they could dive right in.

And dive in they did, with this fast-paced story of the Helmeted Bounty Hunter of Few Words, tracking an "asset" that has eluded all who came before him. This, of course, is the series' secret weapon:

Baby Yoda, the Meme That Ate the Internet.

(Some of said memes are seriously clever. My favorite is this snippet from the show combined with music, in this case the breakout song from Season 1 of The Witcher, "Toss a Coin To Your Witcher." Hopefully you can watch this before Disney throws a fit and pulls it down.)

(Apparently the showrunner, Jon Favreau, persuaded the powers-that-be not to leak the existence of the precious baby [and thus not release any toys] until the show came out. This was a stroke of genius, even if Disney didn't get its billion or so merchandising dollars this Christmas.)

Story-wise, this was a combination of episodic and serialized, although even with the one-offs you could sense the underlying arc. We dive into the Mandalorian culture (their tag line, "This is the way," became an instant classic), and get a glimpse of life away from the familiar Star Wars universe we've seen so far, free of the Jedi, the Sith, and the Force. (The characters have no idea what Baby Yoda is, and the Mandalorian Armorer says she's heard "legends" of a "race of sorcerers called the Jedi.") It's a tidy eight episodes that doesn't drag or overstay its welcome, and builds to a very satisfying finale. "Redemption" was directed by Taika Waititi (who voiced one of the show's best side characters, the bounty- turned nanny-droid IG-11), and his trademark wacky sense of humor was there from the first scene. (In fact, the entire sequence at the beginning with the two stormtroopers felt improvised, as Waititi did with so much of Thor: Ragnarok.) The pacing was strong in the finale, balancing the blaster battles with necessary exposition, and he tugged at viewers' heartstrings with the sacrifice of IG. I also must praise Deborah Chow, who directed two of the season's best episodes, "Chapter 3: The Sin," and "Chapter 7: The Reckoning." Reportedly she's going to be in charge of the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series; if so, that show is in good hands.

(And may I mention how gratifying it is to see a female character onscreen who isn't a waifish, stick-limbed white chick? Gina Carano, as Alderaan Rebel trooper Cara Dune, looks like she is physically capable of tossing people over her head, and proceeds to do just that. She isn't a bad actor either.)

The season ends with Mando taking on full responsibility for Baby Yoda, following the Mandalorian "way" of the Foundling, which he himself was. This is a terrific setup for Season 2, and I'm looking forward to it.

Streamin' Meemies: The Expanse, Season 4

I am a big fan of The Expanse, so as much as I sometimes want to lash Jeff Bezos for Amazon taking over the world, I will always thank him for rescuing this show. I will state upfront that I thought Season 3 was about as perfect a season of television as I have watched in a long time, so this season had a lot to live up to.

I am happy to report that for the most part it did.

This season is mostly based on the fourth book, Cibola Burn. (You can tell which season it is by the title of the final episode, as they always use the book titles.) I say "mostly" because there were characters and storylines from the fifth book, Nemesis Games (which I have not yet read) woven into this season. (Thinking about that, that was a helluva sign of confidence from the showrunners, as they did not know the show would be renewed for season 5--which it has been--while they were making this one.) One thing which immediately became apparent is the complexity of the season: no less than four storylines were being juggled. Chrisjen Avasarala's running for election as head of the UN on Earth; the Rocinante crew on Ilus; Bobbie Draper on a deteriorating Mars; and Drummer and Ashford (and Marco Inaros) on Medina Station, guarding the ring gates. I'm sure the editors groaned when they heard this, but they did a tremendous job. The pacing of the individual episodes always flowed well, even when switching back and forth between storylines.

Acting-wise, I must single out the two that particularly struck me: Frankie Adams as Bobbie Draper, and the incomparable Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala. Adams has really grown into her role, giving Bobbie Draper a depth and nuance that I don't think was quite present when she began. (Also, I didn't really notice until this season how tall and muscled she is, especially compared to some of the other characters. I wondered if this was the directors' using different camera angles and such, but according to the show's Twitter feed, this is how the actor appears in real life.) As Bobbie was not in Cibola Burn until the book's epilogue, I am grateful the showrunners devised this storyline for her this season (reportedly based on one of the Expanse side novellas). Seeing Mars society falling apart after the discovery of the ring gates and the 1300+ inhabitable worlds beyond them, thus rending the terraforming of the planet unnecessary and wrecking their economy in one fell swoop, makes a powerful statement.

Shohreh Aghdashloo gets a meaty storyline this season, as Avasarala succumbs to the lure of political power and goes so far as exploiting the memory of her son's death to win the election (which she loses anyway). She also gets to let loose with F-bombs, which doesn't make as much of an impact as one might think, because everyone else does as well. Still, she spits out her "fucks" so nastily, and the actor's famous gravelly voice is perfect for them. The costume designer did an excellent job with Avasarala's costumes, as the character's dress and makeup choices turn out to be important indicators of her emotional status.

I also must note Cara Gee and David Strathairn in the Medina Station plotline. Drummer's choice to vote to spare Marco Inaros will come back to bite her big time, no matter that she did it to pacify the rival Belter factions. Strathairn, as Klaus Ashford, elevated every episode he was in, and [spoiler] I will miss his character. But the show did right by him.

Plot-wise, there is a lot going on here, and I think the season will reward rewatches. Let's not forget that the Expanse books are thick volumes. Cibola Burn runs nearly 600 pages, and translating that into ten episodes--and putting in the stuff from Nemesis Games--isn't as easy and seamless as the final product looks. This is where I think the heart of the show's success is having book co-authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck heavily involved in its production (they write several episodes this season, including the finale). This makes the shift from print to film much easier and keeps the quality high.

Favorite episodes: ep 6, "Displacement"; ep 8, "The One-Eyed Man": and ep 9, "Saeculum." I wasn't as fond of the finale, "Cibola Burn," because it felt like a leeetle too much setting up for the next season, even though it was necessary. Still, talk about whetting the viewer's appetite for what's to come. If they keep on like they have been, Season 5 is going to be fantastic.

In short: this entire series is highly recommended. If you have Amazon Prime (and even if you don't, since the seasons are coming out on Blu-Ray), don't miss it.

Review: Shattered Bonds

Shattered Bonds by Faith Hunter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's not many long-running urban fantasy series left nowadays, but this is one of them. I had actually skipped a few of the books after reading the opening volumes, but I decided to dive back in again with this one. I was pleasantly surprised, both with Jane's character growth and the deepening layers of Hunter's world. In the earlier volumes, Jane was very much the "lone wolf"--or "lone skinwalker"--depending on no one but herself and actively shirking responsibility. Needless to say, this tended to get her in more trouble. This fault, and its consequences, are dealt with fully in this book, as Jane learns exactly what happens when she tries to run away from her duty.

Jane's relationship with Beast, her mountain lion second soul, is also a highlight of the series. The two of them are working together more than ever before, and this deepening partnership saves the day on more than one occasion. (Jane also promises to find a mate for Beast and have some kits. That should be interesting.) The vampires and witches in this world are a bit different than the norm, with the former in particular coming in for some fascinating world-building. There are also other magical creatures introduced, including a unique (at least to me) variation on arcangels I want to see more of.

Plot-wise, this is a fast-moving story with real consequences, some of them bad. The characters must face up to what they have done and are doing, and Bruiser (Jane's boyfriend) gets some good scenes along those lines. The ending set things up for a changed characters and world going forward, and definitely reignited my interest in this series.

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Review: Catfishing on CatNet

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the novel-length expansion of Kritzer's charming Hugo-winning story, "Cat Pictures Please." The original was a funny, whimsical little story of a newly emergent artificial intelligence who wants to help people and look at cat pictures. This expansion has that, but it also asks pertinent questions about the ubiquitous intertwining of the internet into our lives, and how an AI develops a conscience and a set of ethics.

It's set just a few minutes (a decade or so) into the future, where 25% of cars on the road are self-driving, and robots teach sex ed (in a hilarious sequence where the protagonist and the AI reprogram said robot to answer questions with accurate information instead of the standard chickenshit "You must talk to your parents about [subject]" answer). Our protagonist, Steph--or Stephania--lives with her mother, a woman on the run from Steph's father, a charming psycopath. The very first scene in the book has Steph's mother hauling her out of the town where they're living in the middle of the night and moving to another small town. Because of this chaotic lifestyle, Steph has no friends other than her online friends on CatNet, a suspiciously well-run site with no spam and an admin, CheshireCat, who appears to be constantly online.

But Steph's past is buried in secrets, as she begins to discover. In the process, her friends on CatNet, and especially CheshireCat, become even more important as those secrets begin to unravel. CheshireCat, of course, is our very young and inexperienced AI, whose actions are pretty much the definition of "unintended consequences." CheshireCat faces some tough ethical dilemmas throughout this story, and the author introduces an interesting formula for the AI's developing an ethical outlook. Put this together with the story's rather unnerving (especially at the climax) examination of how the internet is wound into society's every move, and you have a thought-provoking book, despite its teenage protagonists and fast pacing.

Steph is a well-drawn character, and the characters as a whole are so very teenage. (The scene where Steph and her new friends Rachel and Bryony are fleeing from Steph's father while Rachel and Bryony are simultaneously fighting in the front seat of the car particularly struck me as being true to life.) The only quibble I have about the plot is what I thought was an unnecessary side point of just why Michael Quinn, Steph's father, is so hot to find her and her mother. I think it diluted the domestic violence angle of the story, and also diluted Quinn's worth as a villain. But seeing CheshireCat stumble, make mistakes and learn in the fight to protect its friends was a delight.

This storyline was pretty well wrapped up, but the last chapter and epilogue set things up for a sequel. I'm definitely up for it.

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Review: Storm Cursed

Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Urban fantasy isn't the force it once was, but there are still a few long-running series out there. The Mercy Thompson series is one of them. This is the eleventh book, and while I didn't like it quite as much as last year's excellent Silence Fallen, it's still an entertaining blend of vampires, werewolves and witches. In this case all three of the above interact with the human world, which brings the messiness of human politics into the mix.

As always, our protagonist is Mercy Thompson, the skinwalker daughter of Coyote. Mercy is endearing precisely because she isn't a superpowered badass; she's a coyote shapeshifter, which means she can't take on a werewolf or a witch head on and has to rely on stealth, smarts and cunning. (That doesn't mean she doesn't have surprising powers of her own--she can see ghosts, and as she discovers at this story's climax, she has her father Coyote's power over the dead.) It thus falls to her mate and husband, Adam Hauptman, the leader of the local werewolf pack, to get the big fight scenes. The mature, supportive relationship between the two is one of the highlights of the series, as they have each other's backs at all times.

A story and world like this can easily become fraught with cliches, but Briggs manages to keep her universe relatively fresh. A big part of this is the supporting characters, particularly Stefan the vampire and Zee the fey. This book doesn't offer any big character reveals or world-shattering plot changes, but it's a good entertaining read.

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In the Blu-Ray Boudoir: Avengers: Endgame

Yeah, I finally did get around to this. Obviously I had to wait until it surpassed Dances With Smurfs Avatar as the highest-grossing movie of all time. And a movie with a three-hour runtime is best watched at home anyway, to allow for snack and pee breaks.

So I'm not going to bother with spoiler warnings. Y'all should know what happens in this film by now.

Today's emoji:

I wanted to put this here because in my not so humble opinion, Natasha Romanoff is the character who got screwed over the most in this movie. Which I will get to.

Grade: B- 

Avengers: Endgame is, of course, the culmination of ten years of the Marvel juggernaut, the second part of a story where our heroes battle a Mighty Purple Chin-Rake....err, Thanos. Thanos kicked everyone's butts in Infinity War, and Endgame is the tale of the Avengers (which swells to include seemingly every character ever seen or glimpsed on screen in the Marvel universe) coming together to undo the damage and annihilate his amethyst ass.

This involves a great deal of furious handwaving about the "quantum realm" and time travel, which Dr. Bruce Banner (who is quite charming in this movie, as he has merged with his alterego snarlface buddy the Hulk to create a confident and erudite singular being) tries to explain to no avail. I won't even attempt to untangle it, and you shouldn't either, as the tiny parts which actually make some sort of sense are promptly undone by the film's next-to-last scene. Steve Rogers goes back one more time to return the Infinity Stones (and also Thor's hammer,  in a weirdly unremarked bit) to their pre-heist times and places and ends up living an entire lifetime in the past--evidently in an alternate timeline--with Peggy Carter. (Exactly how he returns to the main timeline as a well-preserved centenarian to give Sam the Captain America shield is an exercise left to the viewer's imagination.) But he gets his closure, and so does Tony Stark, in an infinitely sadder way.

(I really hope Marvel pushes for an Oscar nomination for Robert Downey Jr. Sure, it's a superhero movie, and the Academy will probably look down its snooty arthouse nose at it, but RDJ gives an excellent performance in this film. In the final battle, when the newly resurrected Doctor Strange looks across at Tony and holds up one finger, you can see the knowledge of just what that one path in 14 million to defeating Thanos involves, and the price Tony will pay, drift across Downey's face in those few riveting seconds. And then he steps up and does it anyway.)

This movie is three hours long, but the convoluted storyline pretty much demands it. The final battle--hell, the entire final hour of the film--is over-the-top CGI, but that's standard operating procedure for superhero movies nowadays. The revelations fly thick and fast, including Steve Rogers being able to wield Thor's hammer (cue Thor: "I knew it!") and all the suddenly resurrected Snapsters flooding through yellow glowy spiral portals opened by Doctor Strange and his merry band of sorcerers. Peter Parker bounces onto the battlefield chattering in his adorable nerdy teenage manner, gets a hug from "Mr. Stark," and says hi to Captain Marvel (who would totally have smashed Thanos if he hadn't pulled one of the Infinity Stones off the gauntlet and used it on her). Robert Downey Jr. gets a great last line, after summoning the Infinity Stones off the gauntlet Thanos has finally picked up and making them reappear on his own (how this is done is also left as an exercise for the viewer). In reply to Thanos' full-of-hubris statement, "I am inevitable," Tony Stark fires off a final rejoinder that circles around to the very beginning of the Marvel timeline, delivered pitch-perfect: "And I. Am. Iron Man."  Then he snaps his fingers and dusts Thanos' entire army, and the Purple Chin-Rake himself.

(Which, it seems to me, indicates that the Infinity Stones respond to the will of whoever is using them at any given time, since Tony's Snap didn't reverse-reverse the reverse Snap and re-dust half the universe, along with only 50 percent of Thanos' army. Plot conveniences are wonderful things, aren't they?)

Of course, this results in Tony's sacrifice. But that isn't the first, nor the worst, sacrifice in this film. I can actually buy Tony's laying down his life, since his character came full circle (kinda-sorta) from the narcissistic, self-absorbed asshole he was in Iron Man. Well, he still was a narcissistic, self-absorbed asshole, but living with Pepper Potts and becoming a father settled him down just enough to let him do what he did. So I can live with Tony Stark's fate.

His fate, however, does not compare to the dirt done to Natasha Romanoff.

Again, y'all should already know that there's more than one death in this film, and this one, as far as I'm concerned, is entirely unjustified. Hawkeye and Natasha (and wasn't that an obvious setup), were the team sent to fetch the Soul Stone, the one stone that requires a blood sacrifice (someone the wielder loves) to gain it. Hawkeye and Nat battle on the edge of the cliff for the dubious privilege of being the one to hurl themselves over, and Natasha wins. This inspired instant outrage in some quarters, with predictable pushback: "Well, Hawkeye had a family. He should be the one to survive, for them."

Stop. That. Shit. Right. Now. Clint Barton is not more valuable than Natasha Romanoff because he reproduced and she didn't. With that ridiculous objection out of the way, the only question that should be asked is: What have each of these characters been doing to show which one deserves to capture the Soul Stone?

The movie itself provides the answer. In the five years since the Snap, Hawkeye has turned into a one-man vigilante murder crew, offing people he considers to be Bad across the globe. I will bet you any amount of money that if each of those deaths was examined, there would be more than a few innocent people in the mix. What he's done is remarked upon for a few minutes at the beginning of the movie, then pretty much forgotten as soon as he's brought back into the Avengers fold. (One also wonders if, following their resurrection, he told his wife and children what he did while they were gone.) On the other hand, Natasha has been partnering with Steve Rogers for five years leading what's left of the Avengers, and helping people to deal with the losses inflicted by Thanos.

This alone qualifies Natasha Romanoff to bring back the Soul Stone, and Clint Barton to throw himself off the cliff. (I'm sure if this had happened, Pepper Potts would have seen to it that Hawkeye's family was supported financially for the rest of their lives.) This was a horrid decision by the filmmakers, in-universe as well as -out. The optics of sacrificing the only original female member of the Avengers, even if she subsequently gets her own movie, are not good, to put it mildly. This is the main reason I'm not going to buy my own copy of this movie, and why I probably won't watch it again, either. Natasha Romanoff did not deserve to be shat upon, and I'm not going to part with one red cent to the people who did it.

So, I have very mixed feelings about this film. It's certainly the end of an era for Marvel Studios. I can only hope in the upcoming Phase 4, Kevin Feige and crew handle their female characters (Captain Marvel in particular) better than they did this time around.

Review: Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays

Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays by Peter Watts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Peter Watts is the author of one of my favorite SF books ever, Blindsight. He also has a long-running blog called the Crawl that many of these pieces are drawn from. So I've read a lot of them before (and I wish the comments on the pieces could have been included, as he has an intelligent and witty commentariat). But there are a few new entries from a Polish SF magazine Watts writes a monthly column for, and the entire book is very much worth your time. Watts may be a cranky, pessimistic curmudgeon, but he is never less than entertaining.

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Review: Empress of Forever

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a frustrating book. I almost gave up on it several times, with its dragging pace. Then I would run across an interesting and unexpected plot twist, or a few pages of prose like this:

The kettle spoke, and as Yannis poured, she flickered. Her scales glistened gold, her head proud, unbowed, feather-crested, her teeth long and fierce, her skin threaded with fire: immutable, unbendingly vicious, a violence that once stalked prey through some prehistoric alien swamp, still, still, each heartbeat closer to a pounce. The preconscious mammal buried somewhere in Viv's body saw that shape and reacted with hot-stove speed; before she realized what was happening, she'd half risen to a crouch and dropped her teacup.

When Gladstone's prose sings, it really sings. Unfortunately, he spends most of the book walking a perilous tightrope between sublime and purple, and he falls off rather more than I'd like. This book, and its characters and world, are not subtle. You've noticed I tagged it "science fantasy" instead of science fiction? There's a reason for that; I've rarely seen a book that lived up to Arthur C. Clarke's old maxim of "advanced technology indistinguishable from magic" more than this one. Whatever laws of physics might exist in this universe are definitely not our own, and the characters break most of them anyway. Which other authors have also done: Yoon Ha Lee, for example, with his excellent Machineries of Empire series. But Lee's books have rules, and make sense, in a way this book does not.

The characters also have problems, because with the exception of the protagonist Vivian Liao (and even she gets in on the action at the end) most of them are either godlike or full-blown gods, whether or not they're called that. This gets boring after a while, as there don't seem to be any limits. It's like having a universe full of Superpeople. I liked Zanj, for instance, but good heavens, seeing her whip through pretty much everything thrown at her, swelling up to gargantuan size, and wielding her spaceship like a damn sword got on my nerves. The only one Zanj can't bring down is the Empress, and the final twist....no, I don't want to get into it. It was completely unsatisfying, at least to me.

I suspect this will be a bit of a marmite book. Those who like it really like it, while those who don't....will probably do what I'm going to do and donate it to the library. It was okay in spots, but for me, that's not good enough to keep it around.



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In the Blu-Ray Boudoir: Men In Black: International

I have fond memories of the original Men in Black. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones played off each other beautifully, and the latter's craggy face completely sold the idea of someone growing old in this risky, batshit crazy job and wanting to get out of it. The film had a fresh feel to it, and most of the jokes were genuinely funny.

That wasn't the case with this film, unfortunately.

Full disclosure: I like Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as actors. Hemsworth has, of course, done a very good job in Marvel's Thor franchise, as has Thompson. The two of them had great chemistry in Thor: Ragnarok. Thompson was also good in Boots Riley's sci-fi satire Sorry To Bother You, and great in Janelle Monae's full-length video version of her album Dirty Computer. So I went into this movie predisposed to like it. That lasted about....an hour.

Today's emoji:

DNF

I've found that as I've grown older, I have less and less patience for stuff I don't like. About halfway through this movie, I realized the story was dull and insipid, the rapid-fire dialogue was not nearly as clever as it thought it was, I could not figure out why Hemsworth's character was considered such a screwup, the film's director had completely quashed the chemistry Taika Waititi drew from Hemsworth and Thompson in Thor: Ragnarok, and despite the presence of a luminous, silver-haired Emma Thompson, the entire movie was giving me a bad case of the Eight Deadly Words: "I Don't Care What Happens To These People!"

At which point I yanked the disc out of my Blu-ray player and went on with my life. Mainly, logging on to Disney+, finally getting the damn thing to work  (by streaming it with Microsoft Edge), and catching up with The Mandalorian. (Which I will talk about when the season is done.) This disc goes back to the library tomorrow. Fortunately, I didn't spend any money on it.

Review: The Deep

The Deep by Rivers Solomon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has an interesting backstory. It's based on a song of the same name, recorded by the rap group Clipping. (featuring Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame), which was on the Hugo ballot last year. Rivers Solomon, one of the nominees for the Campbell Award (now the Astounding Award) for best new writer, was asked to expand the story into a book. This novella is the result.

I tagged this "science fantasy" because it's definitely not science fiction--pregnant African woman thrown overboard during the Atlantic slave trade are not going to give birth to babies (merpeople, actually) who can live in the ocean, and the descendants of those babies are not going to expand to become an entire society of wajinru (as they come to call themselves) living in the deep. The scientific basis for the world is not the point. The point is memory, history, and responsibility; and the weight of all of these and the price one pays to bear it.

Yetu is our protagonist, the historian of the wajinru, carrying six hundred years of memories in her mind. She only shares them once a year, during the Remembrance, to remind her people of who they are and where they came from. (There is very little said about "our" world except for the mention of a past war between the wajinru and the "two-legs." Solomon does not go into specifics, but it got me to wondering if the wajinru, with their control of the ocean waters, wiped out most of two-leg civilization.) There is only one historian at a time, and the burden of the memories is killing Yetu. Thus, when it comes time for the Remembrance, she downloads all the memories into the minds of her people--and makes her break, swimming out of the deep to the surface, leaving her people behind.

This is an interior-focused, character-based story, with no villain as such. Yetu's fight is with herself, to come to terms with who she is and what she wants. During her surface sojourn--trapped in a shallow tide pool--she meets several two-legs, including one she becomes increasingly close to, Oori. Oori is the last of her people and cannot understand Yetu's turning her back on her history. This clash of values forms the heart of the story, as Yetu, in a sense, grows up. She returns to her people, determined to change the status quo, but willing to take the memories back if she cannot. This proves not to be necessary, as she teaches all of her people to take on the weight of the memories and, in essence, turns every wajinru into a historian, spreading the burden. Afterwards she goes in search of Oori, and wielding a little ocean magic, transforms the human woman into a creature who can survive underwater and brings her to the deep.

This is a layered, multi-faceted story, speaking to the weight of history and how trauma is transmitted from generation to generation. The metaphor is obvious, or at least it should be, and I freely admit that I as a white person cannot fully understand it. Stories like this are necessary, to illustrate and educate, and I'm glad Clipping. picked a talented writer like Rivers Solomon to expand on their vision. There's a lot to think about here, and if you like a fast, action-based plot, that is not this story. It is, however, tailor-made for those who can appreciate how speculative fiction can, in creating a parallel world, shine a bright, unflattering light on our own.


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Streamin' Meemies: The Man in the High Castle, Season 4

I just finished the fourth and final season of The Man in the High Castle, and like many fans, my eyes nearly fell out of my head at the ending. I have thrown books against the wall in frustration upon reading the final pages, but I'm not going to treat my computer like that. Still, this emoji pretty well sums up my reaction.

Season 4, despite some excellent individual performances and one outstanding episode, managed to squander whatever goodwill the first three seasons had garnered for me. I went back and rewatched the last episode of Season 3, "Jahr Null," and the contrast is night and day. I don't know what happened to the writers and showrunners for the last season, but the story pretty much fell off a cliff.

SPOILERS ABOUND from here on out, so be warned.

I've never read Philip K. Dick's book and thus have no idea how well (or how poorly) it was adapted, but the overall thrust of the series was right up my alley: a world where the Germans and Japanese won World War II and divided the defeated U.S. (the Nazis developed the atomic bomb before we did, and wiped out Washington DC with it, forcing a US surrender) between them, and National Socialism spread pretty much planet-wide. The first two seasons explored the tensions between the American Reich and the Japanese occupation of the West Coast, as well as general fractures in the American Reich, spread by the films produced by the titular "Man in the High Castle," showing an alternate world (ours, maybe) where the Allies won.

Season 2 introduced the multiverse, and established that certain people (including one of the show's stars, Japanese Trade Minister Tagomi) could travel between them. The American Reich also cottoned to the existence of this, and developed a machine that could open a "portal" of their own. (The set built for this was really evocative, using 50's style buttons, switches, and vacuum tubes.) They began testing this portal, trying to determine just how people could move from one world to another (and who could do so) in preparation for invading those other worlds. Season 3 showed that the only ones who could travel between universes were those whose counterparts had died; therefore, in the Season 3 finale, Juliana Crain, knowing her alt-verse twin had been killed, was able to meditate herself into the next world, the world where the Allies won and the films were supposedly coming from.

(Although I doubt this is the same 'verse Tagomi went to, because even though the Allies also won in his, in that alternate Juliana Crain was his son's wife. There also seem to have been some films procured from that 'verse as well. This is one of the things about the worldbuilding you really can't dwell on for too long.)

The first three seasons of this show were some pretty solid TV, with rich characterizations and twisty plots, so I impatiently awaited season 4. Unfortunately, the very first episode of season 4 started the show on its downward spiral by killing off Trade Minister Tagomi. That was a shock, and his absence was felt more and more throughout the season. It became clear, at least to me, that despite the excellence of Rufus Sewell's portrayal of Reichmarschall John Smith, Tagomi had been the heart and soul of the series, and it made me angry that they got rid of him like that. He and Inspector Kido were great foils. I guess it was all parcel and part of Japan's improbable defeat at the hands of the Black Communist Resistance, and their folding up and running back to their home country. Obviously the writers had no idea what to do with them.

Also: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ED MCCARTHY? He was one of my favorite side characters, and he vanished without a word. I went back and watched "Jahr Null" to prove that I hadn't imagined him, and he had a very good scene with his cowboy boyfriend and Robert Childan, dropping a Resistance banner off the side of a building in New York. From what I could tell, all three of them got away, but Childan shows up in Season 4 and Ed is never mentioned again, as far as I remember. This is not a good way to treat your characters, people. Or your audience.

(Robert Childan is not dealt with very well character-wise either in the fourth season. He always was a love/hate sort of fellow, an opportunistic money-hungry slime one moment and a reluctant hero the next. He gets a bit of the former in season 4, but is wasted on a silly love story in the latter half of the season. And then he too drops out of sight, and we don't even get to see him get on the boat to Japan or be reunited with his wife. Talk about lazy writing.)

John and Helen Smith are emphasized this season, which inspires mixed feelings in me because both Rufus Sewell and (especially) Chelah Horsdal really step up their game. The best episode of the season (and the only one to approach the levels of previous seasons) is episode 5, "Mauvaise Foi," focusing on Smith's journey to the alternate world where his son Thomas is alive, and his running head-on into the consequences of his choices. It's a tour-de-force performance by Sewell. But I also had an ugly thought while watching it: "I really hope they don't give this guy a redemption arc, because you feel for him watching this and he absolutely doesn't deserve it."

(They don't, fortunately. Maybe that's the only good thing the writers did this season. They show plainly that once you start riding the Nazi tiger you can never get off, as Helen emphasizes in the finale. Reichmarschall Smith's ending, as stark and ugly as it is, is the only possible one for his character. So is Inspector Kido's, pledged to the yakuza [and amputating one of his little fingers as the mark] and doing their dirty work--which he shows he will be very good at--as the price of his son's return to Japan.)

Juliana Crain is not emphasized as much this season, another unfortunate result of Tagomi's absence. The Black Communist Resistance storyline was okay, but this being the final season, they weren't around long enough for me to really care about the characters. But everything was eclipsed by the idiocy of the ending, which I suppose was meant to be mystic and ambiguous but which just came across as stupid.

To wit: Juliana, her lover Wyatt Price, and their Resistance group storm the portal, built in an old coal mine in the Poconos Mountains (somewhere in upstate New York, looks like), and derail the train carrying the Smiths and their guards to the site. This was the first sign that the ending was going to be shit, because they disabled the electricity, cut through the fence and planted the explosives, and....there isn't any pushback or a firefight? Where the hell were the guards while this was going on? This place was shown to be stuffed with brownshirts, and they should have come running out of that complex like their anthill had been kicked over. What happened to them, other than Plot Convenience for Dummies?

Then, after the train derailment and the Reichmarschall's death, the group comes into the portal's control room...and the bloody thing suddenly activates? With no power? After it had been previously shown that it was necessary to spin up all four turbines to open it? As Juliana, Wyatt, and Hawthorne Abendsen (the titular Man in the High Castle, who pops into the scene with no explanation, rhyme or reason) watch, people start coming out of it. Who the hell are these people, and why would they even want to come to this world? They look like they're sleepwalking, dragged here by....what? The fact that their alternates in this 'verse have been killed? Hawthorne must think one of them is his dead wife, as he says, "They've been waiting," and starts walking, obviously looking for her. And that's where the show ends.

Oh. My. God.

I can come up with a better ending than that in five fucking minutes. Let's start with: Juliana comes back to the High Castle world because Reichmarschall Smith is sending assassins into the alt-verse after her, as well as using other operatives to manipulate that world's timeline: killing one of the US's top nuclear scientists, for example. Thus her goals are twofold: 1) kill Reichmarschall Smith; and 2) close the portal. Her alt-world, and all the others, needs to be protected. So, in the final scene, Wyatt and the group set up explosives all around the control room, and Juliana has to make a choice. After all, she can travel from 'verse to 'verse without needing a portal, so she won't be trapped here like others will be. But what she can do is return to the alt-Earth and recruit freedom fighters from the ranks over there (specifically, those who have been killed in the High Castle 'verse). She knows the High Castle world will need help, since despite the death of the Reichmarschall and his second in command calling off the attack on the West Coast, National Socialism is hardly defeated (and America will probably soon be embroiled in a nasty war with Europe). 

Also, Juliana is, or should be, feeling more than a little guilty. When the Reichmarschall's assassins came for her, the alt-John, a far wiser man than his High Castle counterpart, was killed protecting her. So that's another reason to return, to look after alt-Helen and alt-Thomas. (And maybe, just to sweeten the pot, she would have been shown a glimpse of the alt-verse's Frank Frink, her lover and fiancee from the first season, who was later executed by Inspector Kido. Yeah, she may be involved with Wyatt Price now, but Frank was a far more compelling character.)

So, in my fantasy version, the final scene would be: Juliana kissing Wyatt goodbye, saying "I'll be back," and meditating herself away to the alt-verse, and then the portal blows up. And as Wyatt and his group retreats, he says something to the effect that "The battle may be over, but the war is just beginning."

Yeah, I don't know anything about writing for TV, but this sounds like a far more satisfying ending than what we got.

If Amazon ever makes the series available on Blu-Ray, I'll buy it. The first three seasons, at least. But this fourth season (Rufus Sewell, Chelah Horsdal and Joel de la Fuente, as Inspector Kido, notwithstanding) sucked.

Review: Stormrise

Stormrise by Jillian Boehme
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This started off reminding me of the Chinese legend of Mulan. The men in the country are called up to war, and a young woman pretends to be a man and takes her father's (in this case, her brother's) place. She learns to fight and fights well, and after the war is over she returns home in triumph. In this case, there is also magic and dragons (the former made specifically from the bodies of the latter), and a teenager named Rain L'nahn, who runs away to save her brain-damaged brother Storm from going to war. To conceal her "monthlies," she buys a pouch of powder before she leaves, powder made from the body of the ancient dragon T'Gonnen. This causes her to dream of his mate Nuaga, and eventually she finds Nuaga in the flesh and released her from a centuries-long sleep. To save the kingdom, Rain and Nuaga must release the rest of the dragons from a similar sleep. Rain has to do this while still pretending to be her brother Storm, navigating basic training with her unit, and journeying with them to save the High King...and along the way, she discovers one of the other soldiers in her unit, Forest, is the betrothed of her sister Willow. (It was an arranged marriage, which is why Rain has never seen him or known who he was before. And of course she falls in love with Forest.)

If all this sounds a bit angsty and soap-opera-ish, it is. This is not a terribly deep story, either in characterizations or worldbuilding. The side characters are not very fleshed out, and the love interest Forest is just bland. I also question some of the plot choices. The antagonist, Sedge, is a right bastard though most of the story, behaving like a nasty caveman when he discovers Rain is female, and at the climax she suddenly forgives him because he saw his ass was grass and threw in his lot with Rain and Forest? I don't think so. The ending is particularly unbelievable. Just because Rain almost single-handedly saves the High King, he is going to throw away centuries of tradition, allowing Rain to become a grandmaster in this society's martial art of Neshu and teach young girls this same art, just because she asks? Misogyny and patriarchy is not that easily overcome, alas.

What bugged me the most was the dragons. They are just weird. They are six-legged, with fur and manes instead of scales and horns. I tried Googling to see if this was based on any Chinese or Oriental dragon myths, but I couldn't really find anything. That really stretched my suspension of disbelief, and snapped it outright at some points.

This seems to be a self-contained story, which is a good thing, as I wasn't going to continue even if there were further books. It's okay, but there are better young adult dragon fantasies out there.

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Review: Protect the Prince

Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book provides a good illustration of that wise old maxim, "Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it." In the first book of this series, Kill the Queen, our protagonist Everleigh Saffira Winter Blair fled from the palace after the massacre of her family and fell in with a gladiator troupe, vowing to wrest the throne from her traitor cousin Vasilia. By the end of the book, she had succeeded in her quest--but the book ended with the intimation that her problems were just beginning.

This book explores those problems, and is all the more interesting to me because of it. Court intrigue is a juicy sub-genre of epic fantasy if done well, and this one is. As this book makes clear, holding the throne is far more difficult than gaining it. Everleigh has to juggle the backstabbing, sneers and power grabs of her nobles, negotiate a treaty with a neighboring country with an eye to defending both countries from an invasion by her enemies, learn the wiles of power and diplomacy, work out how she feels about one Lucas Sullivan, the magier who works for her previous gladiator troupe...oh yeah, and expose a hidden assassin trying to kill her.

Along the way, she learns more about herself and her powers, and just what it means to be a "Winter queen" (hint, it has nothing to do with said powers, and everything to do with the ability to make hard choices and sacrifice her own needs and desires for her people). The book ends with the treaty negotiated and allies gained, and the resolution of her romantic subplot--but the war with Morta is looming ever larger on the horizon. Presumably this will be the focus of the third book.

This isn't deathless literature, but it's an interesting, fast-paced, slightly pulpy epic fantasy. It's a good beach read, I think.

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In the Blu-Ray Boudoir: Brightburn

(Do we have enough B's? Maybe, except for the grade.)

D

I missed this film in the theater, so I rented it from my library. This is just as well; after watching it, I'm glad I didn't drop any money on it. I would've liked to be a fly on the wall during the pitch for this movie, as it can be summed up in 3 words.

"Sociopathic Adolescent Superboy." 

Doesn't that sound cool? Or at least different. The idea of a young Superman (the film doesn't use those words, or even the description "superhero," but come on, we all know what inspired this) who is not the least bit heroic, and who in fact turns into a killer when he comes into his powers? Talk about inverting a trope. Not to mention that the next question is, "Who's going to stop him?" Especially since kryptonite is seemingly nowhere to be found in this universe.

Yeah, this is an intriguing premise. Too bad the execution is so thoroughly botched.

The main problem--and indeed, the bottom line--is the no-good, thin, underdeveloped script. Honestly, the film looks and sounds like a rushed-into-production first draft. I wonder if this was due to the power of the J.J. Abrams name, although he doesn't appear to have anything to do with actually writing or directing this mess. The characters are dull and shallow, with humdrum dialogue. It seems like the filmmakers are in such a hurry to get to the point where our Superboy, Brandon Breyer, realizes who he is and what he can do and starts offing anyone who gets in his way that they sacrifice buildup, tension and any semblance of character development. They certainly don't waste any said development on their central character, as apparently all it takes is a 12th birthday party and the denial of a rifle for a present to cause him to go stark raving batshit. (At least Superman absorbed the lessons and morality of Ma and Pa Kent and used them throughout his life. Although, to be fair, these particular adoptive human parents don't appear to have any good life lessons to offer. In particular, the excruciating scene where the father tries to talk to Brandon about playing with his penis...err, growing up is beyond awkward.) None of the actors stand out--they look like they're all in this just for the paycheck, and the kid playing Superboy seems to have only two expressions: a blank stare and a lip-curling snarl. (He also likes to dabble in his victims' blood and documents it all in his notebook, which is of course the clue the Unbelieving Mom--who was terribly written, as a character--stumbles upon that finally convinces her their Darling Alien Foundling is in fact doing these terrible things.)

The worldbuilding is also nonexistent. I'm sure this is partly due to the fact that they can't legally mention the "Super" word, but the film also eschews the existence of other superheroes--or aliens, since this is what Brandon actually is--altogether. A major logic fail is the fact that his ship supposedly fell to earth in 2006. Well, the last I checked, Google Earth existed then, as well as quite a few high-tech government spy satellites--and you're telling me they didn't detect this asteroid/spaceship blazing its way through the atmosphere, track its trajectory, and send some jack-booted Homeland Security thugs to the landing spot to scoop up whatever remained before these Kansas farmers could find and ferret away the alien baby? Especially since our Superboy, raised and controlled by the government, would have made a great weapon to use in the so-called War on Terror (as well as any number of Trumpian enemies, real or imagined). Hell, he could have smashed Osama bin Laden or any ISIS and/or al-Qaeda fighter to bloody mush in one pass. 

It's maddening that these people could have come up with such a fantastic premise and utterly fail to do anything with it, besides slathering on the murder and gore. (Specifically, if you have any squickiness regarding eyeballs and faces, there are two scenes in this movie where you'll need to avert your eyes.) The ending is also a downer, as our Superboy (after dropping his mother to her death from 35,000 feet) brings down a 747 and afterward sits in the wreckage eating a chocolate-chip cookie. This scene, and the end credits, sets up what this world's future will be--this superhero sociopath wreaking havoc with no one to stop him. (And let's not even think about what awfulness he'll come up with once he gets past puberty.)

Blargh. Let's skip this one, please.

Streamin' Meemies: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Season 4

Yeah, I watch a kid's cartoon. I admit it. I've found, however, that many kids' cartoons (or at least the good ones, like this one) have the obvious text for the kids--and a lot of subtext for the adults. One of the most refreshing things about She-Ra is the straightforward, no-time-to-waste storytelling: there's thirteen episodes this time around (at least Netflix didn't split the season, like it did last time--grrr), but each one is only twenty-three minutes, so there isn't a superfluous scene. The storylines and themes are easy to follow, and the dialogue is on the nose. Again, that's due to the show being aimed at younger viewers, but there's a great deal here for the grown-ups to enjoy.

When we last saw our intrepid heroes, Adora had finally broken free of Catra and the Horde had been (temporarily) defeated, at the cost of Queen Angella sacrificing herself. This made her daughter, Glimmer, the new queen of Bright Moon. Right away, this throws a spammer in the works: the relationships between the Big Three (Adora, Glimmer and Bow) are disrupted and never really healed, even by the season's end. Glimmer is thrown into a role she is ill-prepared for and makes some questionable/bad decisions, and Adora is reluctant to let go of her previous position of authority and to treat Glimmer like the queen she now is. Bow, unfortunately, is caught in the middle, and spends most of the season trying to bring the other two back together. (This is one of my main complaints this season, that Bow is given hardly any character development.)

In general, the characters shine this season, with some spotlights on characters not previously explored: Perfuma, Frosta, Mermista and (especially) Scorpia. (I've always been a fan of Mermista's dry, droll, perfectly deadpan snark, and the episode where she solved a mystery by referencing a series of books published in the She-Ra universe is delightful.) Perfuma is highlighted in episode 2, "The Valley of the Lost," where she learns more about her powers, and where we sadly also see the sendoff of Geena Davis' Huntara. Mermista and her mysteries are brought to the fore in episode 7, "Mer-Mysteries," and Scorpia is given some welcome background and crucial character development in episode 6, "Princess Scorpia," one the best episodes of the season.

"Princess Scorpia," in particular, is grounded in one of the season's overriding themes: friendship, the difference between a good friend and a bad friend, the effort needed to maintain a friendship, and above all, the strength to break away from a toxic person, or what Scorpia calls a "bad friend." She is referring to one person when she says this--the villain Catra, who Scorpia finally sees for what she is and walks away from. The entire episode is a buildup to that moment, and it is as cathartic as one might expect. (The relationship between Scorpia and her little robot, Emily, is also touching.) Catra is also affected by this: later on, she is holed up alone in Entrapta's wrecked room, isolated and depressed and suddenly realizing what Scorpia meant to her. (Again, this is a kid's cartoon so this is not overtly romantic, but adults can read the subtext.) It's enough to give the viewer a shred of sympathy for Catra, a pretty complex villain, but at the end, of course, she ruins her sympathetic moment by promptly sucking up to Hordak Prime.

The most prominent new character, Double Trouble, is a campy, overemoting drama king/queen (the character is non-binary, as is the actor) of a shapeshifter who plays both ends against the middle, selling out both the Princess Alliance and the Horde. Swift Wind, Adora's rainbow-hued flying unicorn, also gets a bit of play. The Horde's former second-in-command, Shadow Weaver (voiced with wonderfully slimy unctuousness by Lorraine Toussant), begins teaching Glimmer magic--and taking advantage of her inexperience--and the sorely missed Entrapta makes her reappearance near the season's end, in "Beast Island." (Where we discover considerable abandoned First Ones tech and the fact that Glimmer's father, Micah, isn't really dead.)

Plot-wise, several layers of the onion are peeled back, changing the story from a sparkle- and glitter-filled fantasy (albeit with the grimy green-brown tech of the Horde) to a world with more of a science fiction feel. The mystery of Mara, the first She-Ra, is revealed, along with what she did and sacrificed to protect Etheria. She's not a traitor, it turns out, although the First Ones avatar Lighthope most definitely is (though to be fair, she's trying to carry out her long-delayed, thousand-year-old programming). In the final episode of the season, "Destiny Part 2," Glimmer makes the last and worst of her decisions as queen, allowing Scorpia, the missing Ninth Princess, to connect with the Black Garnet and boot up Etheria's First Ones power network. This drags in Adora, the current She-Ra, and her sword, and she is forced to carry out Lighthope's mission. Adora eventually succeeds in breaking free and shattering the sword, but not before Etheria is sprung from the hidden dimension Mara had placed the planet in a thousand years before--and into the wider universe, where the freshly arrived Hordak Prime and his army is waiting.

Needless to say, this means the entire premise of the series is now turned upside down. All the characters have gone on life-altering journeys, and greater challenges lie ahead. I certainly hope Netflix renews the series for a fifth season, as it would be a crime to leave all these loose ends dangling. I'm not a kid, but I really enjoyed this, and I encourage others to give it a try.

The Return of the Master

I didn't know this poem existed until this morning. It was left in the comments of the blog Electrolite thirteen years ago by the late author John M. Ford.

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days --
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

Well, hell. I'd heard that name before, and seen authors I respect sing his praises, but I'd never actually read anything by him. After his death, his work fell out of print. Now, however, the SF publisher Tor will reissue his stories and novels (except for his two Star Trek tie-in books) as a result of a bit of literary detective work, as chronicled here.

Also, read this: the first of a compendium of comments left on the blog Making Light.

I am in awe. And you can bet I will be watching to build a collection of his reissued work.

Review: The Twisted Ones

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

T. Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon, has been publishing award-nominated and -winning stories for quite a while. Her stories are combinations of magical whimsy and pragmatic, ordinary characters. This is the first novel of hers I've read, and it's a lot darker than the stories I've read of hers to date. But it takes the same basic situation, of an ordinary person thrown into an extraordinary situation, and steadily ratchets up the dread and terror.

Melissa, aka Mouse, is a freelance editor who gets roped into clearing out her grandmother's house after Grandma's death. Grandma was a bitter, nasty old woman, and also a hoarder, something Mouse doesn't discover until after she and her redbone coonhound Bongo arrive at the house. (It matters a great deal what kind of dog Bongo is--as Mouse admits in her writeup of events, if Bongo had been a border collie, she wouldn't be here now to write down what happened.) The house is in the middle of the North Carolina woods, surrounded by loblolly pines, kudzu, a very strange rock in the back yard, and woodpeckers--or what she thinks is woodpeckers--going tap tap tap.

The first night she is there, Mouse discovers a journal left behind by her late step-grandfather, Frederick Cotgrave, and as she reads it, a particular phrase repeats itself over and over: And I twisted myself about like the twisted ones. Cotgrave is trying to find the "Green Book," which his wife, Mouse's grandmother, has taken from him and hidden, and he writes down as much of it as he can remember in his journal. Thus we have a story within a story, which slowly unfolds as Mouse's story does, giving clues to "the twisted ones" and "the holler people."

This is a slow, stealthy escalation of terror, until halfway through when all hell breaks loose. Suffice to say you will never regard the word "effigy" in the same way again. Kingfisher is in complete control of her story and characters at all times. Mouse, like so many of Kingfisher's (and Vernon's) characters, is not a hero, or a badass; she's muddling through as best she can, gradually rising to the occasion as the situation gets worse. She is surrounded by several well-drawn supporting characters, particularly Foxy, the sixty- or seventy-something next door neighbor. Foxy is a delightful character, and I would love another book about her. All the characters are relatable, everyday people, and you really care what happens to them.

Kingfisher also gets that horror and humor can live side by side, and she deftly plays with the absurdities of the tropes she is writing about. There are multiple laugh-out-loud moments in this book alongside the multiple creeptastic moments (especially the Last Stand in Grandma's Kitchen at the end of the book). This book (according to the Author's Note at the end) is in conversation with, and inspired by, a turn-of-the-century (the last century) horror story, The White People, by an author I've never heard of, Arthur Machen. I'm not sure if the "white" or "holler" people were meant to be the Fae--in one way it sounds like that, with their hidden gateways to faerie mounds in alternate worlds, maybe in Wales and maybe not--but these White People are like no Fae you've ever read before.

This is one fine, scary book, but let me assure you the hound doesn't die: in a lot of ways, he saves the day, in his lovable dimwitted manner. And if you, the reader, never want to step into a hoarder's house again, and if you particularly don't want to deal with leftover doll collections...after closing the covers of this book, that's perfectly understandable.

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Review: Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a very ambitious project: gather together the unknown, forgotten, overlooked and underappreciated female pioneers of horror and speculative fiction. There are the usual suspects, of course: Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Tanith Lee, Anne Rice. Unfortunately, to an extent, this book became the victim of its own ambition. I appreciated the obvious research that has been put in, especially for those writers I've never heard of before. At the same time, I wish some of these writers had been expanded upon, and excerpts and analyses of their stories included. As it is, though this is a worthwhile book, it ends up being a rather superficial one.

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At the Movies: Terminator: Dark Fate

I chose this poster because this image is the heart of the movie, as it should be. In the first movie, and the second to some extent, Linda Hamilton was overshadowed by Arnold Schwartzenegger. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (one of my all-time favorite films), the iconic image of Sarah Connor, bulked-up and deadly with her biceps and ponytail, has lingered indelibly in the minds of many women (along with Sigourney Weaver's Ripley) as a badass female action hero who has no regrets and takes no prisoners. Hamilton did not appear in the next three movies, and Terminator Salvation killed her off in favor of Christian Bale's scenery chewing. Genisys, the soft reboot with Emilia Clarke, both made me long for Drogon to swoop in and flame the day and made clear that any movie without Linda Hamilton, even if Schwarzenegger is present, is not a true Terminator movie.

This one is.

Some have blasted it as being a retread, and in one sense it is--it does have to follow the already established formula. We won't get into the absurdities of this universe's time travel, as they make no sense. The only way to even kinda-sorta reconcile the paradoxes is to subscribe to the multi-branch theory: the act of time travel in and of itself creates a separate timestream. In this film, Skynet was indeed defeated in T2, and that future withered on the vine. Unfortunately, the nasty sentient AI rears its head once again, in the form of Legion, an AI built for cyberwarfare that shut down civilization once it gained sentience and started the entire machines-hunting-humanity scenario all over again. (One wonders exactly what sort of malcontents are building and programming these AIs, as inevitably the first thing they do once they gain self-awareness is try to wipe humanity off the face of the earth. Also, I guess there must have been some cross-pollination of the timestreams, as the mechanism Legion uses to vault its Terminators into the past is the same, or very similar to, the one Skynet had. Still, don't make your brain hurt by trying to come up with a logical explanation for any of this.)

The difference that immediately defines this entry in the series is the very first scene. After a snippet of T2 recapping the story, we move to 1998, and Sarah and John Connor on the beach in Mexico. They're laughing and happy, thinking they're home free, when lo and behold another T-800 pops into existence, strides across the sand, and....

SPOILER

SPOILER

SPOILER

SPOILER

(For further spoiler separation, here's another shot of Linda Hamilton's silver-haired, unashamedly sixty-something, still badass self.)

.....kills John right in front of a horrified Sarah.

This is a bold stroke that immediately makes clear the point of the story, which should have been evident from the get-go. For all the Ah-nuld hype and quips (and he gets in some zingers in this film, with a perfectly timed deadpan delivery), this is not his movie or his series. It never was. This is Sarah Connor's story, and this movie drives that home, even if another Terminator movie never gets made (as is probable, it seems, from the film's disappointing box office).

There follows the usual running, fights, and final climactic showdowns, with another important difference: Legion's new target, and the champion sent by the resistance to act as a protector, are both women. The latter, Grace, is an "augmented" supersoldier from the future, and the former is Dani Ramos, the young woman of color who, as it turns out, is not destined to give birth to the leader of the Resistance--she is the leader of the Resistance. Even Sarah doesn't realize this right away, understandably so.

Arnold doesn't make his appearance until more than halfway through the movie. Our triad of Dani, Grace and Sarah make their way to his ranch in Laredo, Texas, where he is living a quiet life as "Carl," owning his own drapery business and living with a Latino woman and her son (although not in a physical relationship, as he explains. I'm glad. That would have been icky). In the twenty years since he killed John Connor, he has, as he says, "grown a conscience," to the point that whenever he senses the (technobabble) "chronomatic displacement" that comes as each of Skynet's previously dispatched Terminators pop into the timeline, he texts the location to Sarah, and she goes and blows them away. (How she gets the money to do this or even live off the grid, as she is a wanted fugitive in all 50 states, is left unexplained, unless "Carl" is also texting funds to her bank account. Again, don't think about this too much.) Sarah nearly blows a gasket when she sees Carl, but Dani, who is starting to assert herself and shows us a glimpse of the leader she will eventually become, manages to talk her down. They decide to set a trap for the new Terminator, luring him into a "killbox" and using an EMP to shut him down.

(One thing I definitely miss in all of this is Robert Patrick's T-1000. That marvel of special effects in T2 still holds up today, and Gabriel Luna suffers by comparison. The way they try to make up for it in this film, turning Luna's Rev-9 into a black-goop Terminator who can split itself in half, separating the metal skeleton from the flowing goop, doesn't really work. Luna doesn't have Patrick's unstoppable icy malevolence, either.)

The final showdown occurs inside Hoover Dam, after aircraft chases and a lot of murky underwater scenes, and both Grace and Carl end up sacrificing themselves to save Dani...only in Carl's case, it's not so much for Dani as "for John," as he tells Sarah when he dies. And thus we come full circle, with Sarah Connor the mentor to the future leader of the Resistance (as apparently this timeline's destiny with Legion is still on track), driving away to prepare for her fate.

I can't imagine Dani having a better teacher.

This film is not perfect. But I loved this movie anyway, because of one thing: it gets Sarah Connor, and it gets her right. I suppose this must be attributed to the return of James Cameron, who evidently talked Hamilton into reprising her role. I'm also glad Schwarzenegger was reduced to supporting status. This would have had to happen anyway, since the dude is 70, but fortunately they resisted the temptation to de-age him in all his scenes as they did in the first. (And no one thought to, or had time to, comment on the fact of a Terminator getting wrinkles, thickening in the middle, and growing a bit bald.) This is the end of Skynet's Terminators (one hopes, anyway), but it is not the end for Sarah Connor--and her story has a wonderful, satisfying conclusion, as befits this groundbreaking character.

Go get 'em, Sarah.

Review: Containment

Containment by Caryn Lix
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second book in a series, following on the heels of last year's Sanctuary. I did like this book, enough to pre-order the third one....but it does have its problems.

I characterized the first book as "the Young Avengers meet the Xenomorphs." The series takes place in a corporate-controlled future, with metahumans being born after the arrival of alien probes fifty years previously. The first book took place on the space station/prison Sanctuary, with its cohort of teenage superheroes coming under siege by aliens. Our protagonist, Kenzie Cord, is the daughter of parents aligned with the megacorp Omnistellar, the owner and operator of the station, and unbeknownst to her an "anomaly" herself. Over the course of the first book, she comes to question everything she has been taught, discovers the truth of her past, and throws in with the group from Sanctuary battling the aliens.

This book continues Kenzie's story, and the kids she has taken up with, her new-found family. The biggest failing in this book is its uneven pacing and often silly plot twists. The first book was taut and suspenseful, but this one has a bad habit of dragging. Kenzie and her group get captured way too often, and although due to their various superpowers they are usually able to break free, this tail-swallowing circle gets tiresome after a while. Someone should have taken an axe to the middle of this book and tightened up the plot. Also, Kenzie's powers are expanding, and so are the other characters'. (Apparently their powers are a direct result of genetic manipulation due to the aliens' life cycle. This doesn't really make much sense, so don't dwell on it too long.) This is handled rather well, better than the overall plot, and the last few chapters do feel a bit better paced. Of course, we end on a cliffhanger, with all the dangling threads to (hopefully) be wrapped up in the third book.

Having said all this, the moments of characterization are where this book shines. Kenzie's PTSD from the first book is acknowledged and dealt with (even if the reason for it is reversed in the dumbest plot twist of the book), and all the main characters show satisfying growth. I wish the pacing could have been kept under better control to allow the characters more of these interesting moments. This book really seems like it could have used another draft and a firmer editorial hand. Hopefully the final book will overcome these problems.

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Review: The Outside

The Outside by Ada Hoffmann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book melds several genres into its own thing, and while for much of the story it's a slow burn, by the end I couldn't put it down. Fascinating worldbuilding mixed with an unsettling version of Lovecraftian cosmic horror (and the even more unsettling concept of quantum supercomputers mutated into humanity's gods and conquerors) and you end up with a creepy, unique, unforgettable tale.

Much has been made of this book's protagonist, Yasira Shien, being autistic (and her antagonist, Dr. Evianna Talirr, obviously is as well, though it's not as directly stated). I appreciated this, but Yasira was not the most interesting part of the book to me. Her character was well drawn, but a few of the side characters (particularly Tiv, her lover, and Enga, a totally badass, cynical cyborg) are worthy of books in their own right. The focus is mostly on Yasira throughout (with some viewpoint sections from Akavi Averis, an augmented servant of Nemesis, one of the AI Gods).

What disturbed me more than anything else were some of the worldbuilding nuances. This far future of humanity has its own new, twisted religion--supercomputers that have ascended to sentience and made themselves gods, complete with their own (patently false) history and myths. (A lot of this is revealed in the book and article snippets at the beginning of each chapter.) We don't meet any of the Gods as such, just Their creations--humans turned into "angels," chosen and modified with so much technology their brains are half organic and half silicon chips, and in the case of Enga, whose bodies are implanted with weapons that would swat a Terminator away like an insect. Ordinary humans are second- and third-class citizens, restricted in their movements and technology--they're forbidden from progressing past old-fashioned vacuum-tube style computers, for example--and treated with a smug patronization by the servants of the AIs, who think said humans should be grateful for everything the AIs have done for them. If you dare to object to this setup, you're called a heretic, and captured, tortured and terminated.

Into this uneasy status quo comes Yasira, who invents a new power source that, unbeknownst to her, links to and sucks in the titular Outside, Hoffman's version of the Lovecraftian mythos--an extradimensional universe full of myth, monsters, and metaphysical concepts of time and space (time and space, along with everything else, is "lies," according to Evianna Talirr, a motif repeated through the book). The Outside was first discovered by Yasira's mentor Dr. Evianna Talirr, who disappeared three years ago. After the Talirr-Shien reactor malfunctions and destroys the space station where it was built, Yasira is dragged into the quest to hunt down Dr. Talirr, who has evidently been facilitating increasingly dangerous Outside incursions to further her own agenda.

The story revolves around Yasira's pursuit of Evianna Talirr, and the slow reconstruction of her character, as she comes to question everything she has been taught to believe. This is a slow, deliberate progression, befitting Yasira's character. I like Yasira and Evianna well enough, but truthfully, I would love a prequel to this universe, showing how it came to be. How humans came to accept quantum supercomputers (and the characters know they are supercomputers, originally built by the present generation's ancestors) transforming themselves into all-seeing Gods, and the fact that after death, their consciousness and memories are harvested by said supercomputers to maintain their own supremacy and existence (and even before one's death, if you want to become a "sell-soul")--well, that would make a terrifying tale in its own right, it seems to me.

This is some of the most original worldbuilding I have ever read. I loved it. I'm grateful for this book's slower pacing, to give the reader time to absorb what's being presented. And the ending, which sets Yasira and her lover Tiv up to lead the rebellion against the Gods--well, my goodness. This book's sequel (if, as I fervently hope, there is one) will be an insta-buy for me as soon as it comes out.

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Review: Middlewest, Book One

Middlewest, Book One by Skottie Young
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was recommended to me on a website where I hang out. It's something I would never have stumbled across on my own, because I've perused one of the author's previous graphic novels (I Hate Fairyland) and wasn't impressed. This one, however, has a better storyline and characters, and the art is bright and bold.

Abel is a young boy with a talking fox sidekick and an emotionally abusive father, who flees after his father loses his temper and reveals himself to be a tornado monster. (The talking fox is revealed on page 6, so we see right away that the town of Farmington is not quite set in our world.) The story follows Abel's flight and the monsters and others he encounters, including trolls, crow monsters on a train, and a wizard. Abel's father left a brand of power on his chest, and it soon turns out Abel is a budding tornado monster himself. In a desperate attempt to stop this, Abel hunts down the carnival troupe of a mystic named Magdalena, takes up with them, and begins to make a home for himself.

One thing I appreciate about this comic is that it isn't rushed. Some comics (Marvel is particularly prone to this, I think) just push too much into 12 pages, or whatever the average issue size is. This one takes its time unfolding its storyline, characters and worldbuilding, and lets them breathe. This can be a fine line to walk, juggling between deliberate and slow, but this graphic novel succeeds. I came to care about the characters and want to know what happens to Abel, particularly since this volume ends on a massive cliffhanger. Which is an annoyance, of course, but it just about guarantees that I'll pick up Volume 2 when it comes out.

Give this a try. I think many of you will like it.

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Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 1: High School Is Hell

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 1: High School Is Hell by Jordie Bellaire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an updated reboot of the Buffyverse, as is clear from the cover--Buffy is holding a stake in one hand and a cell phone in the other. The first issue starts with her already having gained her powers and moved to Sunnydale, just like the show (which I watched religiously during its run). There are immediate differences: Willow is already an out lesbian and sporting the chin-length bob of later seasons, not the longer hair of the first; Cordelia is an actual nice person, not a "mean girl"--although from some remarks she makes, I wonder how long that's going to last; Spike and Drusilla make their appearance right away; Anya is already running the magic shop; and Robin Wood from Season 7 is a teenager at Sunnydale High.

If all this sounds overstuffed, it kind of is. This volume covers the first four issues of the comic, and for the most part it feels far too rushed. It seems like Jordie Bellaire is trying to get the Scooby Gang back together too fast, without letting the different relationships evolve naturally. For example, Buffy meets and hangs out with Willow and Xander in the first issue, and elicits enormous laughter when attempting to explain the existence of bumpy-headed vampires to them; and yet only two issues later, when she confronts Spike and Drusilla, they come charging in with a shovel and a baseball bat to help her. The shock of and reaction to their discovering that demons and vampires are real things, and the Hellmouth is in Sunnydale, is completely glossed over.

All that said, I will pick up the second volume. I just hope the pace slows down a bit and the characters are given some room to breathe.

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Review: Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a neat little tale of Lovecraftian horror and rock and roll, encapsulated perfectly by the cover blurb: "Moore understands a key truth about Ziggy Stardust: Rock and roll messiahs are really fucking scary."

One could say the central figure of this musical horror story, Airee Macpherson, is sort of a genderbent Ziggy Stardust. If one defines a "genderbent Ziggy Stardust" as a "psychopathic criminal from a future dimension," who is using a sinister marriage of music and occultism to blast open a portal to return to her dimension. Our story is narrated by an unnamed music blogger who stumbles upon a new band, Beautiful Remorse. The very first chapter, Track 01, describes the effect this music has on him (or her? The story doesn't specify either way):

Time stopped while I was listening to it. Elation swept through me, as if I could die now, secure in the knowledge that I had at long last heard the most beautiful piece of music in the world and if I never heard any other music ever again, it wouldn't matter, because all music after this was going to sound like shit anyway.

Our music blogger hunts down the band's singer, Airee Macpherson, and scores an interview with her the following night at the band's show in Houston. Thus begins a steadily ratcheting tale of terror and suspense, one track at a time, with Beautiful Remorse's musical horror virus spreading throughout the land. The blogger is complicit and admits it, refusing to leave the tour even when band members are sacrificed onstage. There's obviously a Lovecraftian feel to all this, even if Cthulhu isn't mentioned (especially when Track 07 opens the wrong portal and a giant tentacle comes through). With Track 09, Airee finally manages to open the right portal, and disappears into it after leaving our narrator with Track 10 and a promise: if anyone ever wants her to return, just play the track and she'll come back to finish what she started.

The last chapter, "Coda," picks up the story ten years later, when--you guessed it--the final track gets loose on the internet. The song's name? "Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You." Which is a shivery bit of meta, ending on a promise of unopposed mayhem. This is a taut, well-written horror story that's worth your time.

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