Adrian Collins's Blog, page 114

REVIEW: Beyond a Steel Sky

Beyond a Steel Sky is the follow-up to the classic cyberpunk point and click adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky. I really enjoyed that game and it’s rusted Australian vision of the future as Robert Foster was kidnapped from the Outback where he was living, only to find himself up against a satirical society of upper class twits in a decaying urban hellscape.

Basically, it was the video game version of the classic film Brazil by Terry Gilliam. Making a sequel to that sort of game was already going to be difficult even with the involvement of the original creator, Charles Cecil. Given the original was created with the involvement of Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbon, I had the feeling something was going to be missing. Still, I’m always willing to give dystopian science fiction a try.

My feelings are…mixed.

Beyond a Steel Sky’s premise is Foster is living in the Outback (“The Gap”) with a local family when their son is kidnapped by a group of androids as well as a giant four-legged machine. Following it back to Union City, which has become a megapolis even bigger than its previous incarnation, he discovers everything is now under the control of benevolent-seeming AI. The city looks clean, beautiful, and pristine with all of the citizenry’s needs taken care of. However, there’s a darker undercurrent to things as if kidnapped children wasn’t a big enough tip off.

Foster must assume the identity of a dead sanitation worker named Graham Grundy and solve the riddle of Union City. Where has his friend Joey (now worshiped as a god) gone? Who is kidnapping the children? Why? Also, what is in the drink Spankles that everyone seems to drink and contains 250% of your daily recommended dose of caffeine? Where can I get some? Oh wait, that’s just your average energy drink.

Gameplay wise, the game is basically a 3D adventure puzzle game. You have Foster walk up to things, touch things, take things, poke things, and try to figure out what he needs to do next. None of the puzzles are particularly hard but they can be a little obtuse like the fact you can probably figure out what needs to be lit on fire three or four steps before you actually can do it. The game is also frustratingly easy as you can never really proceed after missing something and this was rather annoying as some more game over states would have been appreciated. Instead, you get not so subtle reminders, “I should probably check X out before going to Y.”

The gameplay sensitivity is also rather troublesome, at least on consoles, because sometimes there’s timed puzzles that you need to move things around about that struggle because it doesn’t register you’re in the right place to do what you want. There’s a hacking minigame but it barely qualifies as a puzzle. There’s usually a blindingly obvious solution where you have to move certain shaped blocks into certain shaped holes about as challenging as an average five- year-old’s puzzle.

Really, the game is almost impossible to lose and if you ever run into trouble then you can just ask the Hint system. It takes about three times (as well as 30 seconds between them) to get it to tell you the answer but never left me stuck. If I had one big complaint, it’s the fact that the “running” speed of Foster is so slow that it really should be the default speed. It made Foster feel like he wasn’t capable of a brisque jog.

The appeal of the game is really the writing and graphics. The writing is still quite crisp and entertaining with Foster always having a witty likable charm to him even when he’s dressing down other characters, especially when he’s dressing down other characters. All the other characters are various stages of jerk or fool, which is what made the original game so enjoyable. The graphics also have an enjoyable comic book style ala Borderlands or Telltale’s Walking Dead that doesn’t require photo-realism but ages very gracefully. The city looks like a cartoonish but beautiful Jetsons-esque utopia in some places as a dingy hellhole in others.

So what brings the game down? Well, the problem is basically the original game was quite fun in its satire. It attacked the super-rich, police brutality, the pointlessness of travel agencies, the exclusiveness of country clubs, and horrible safety conditions in the working class. Nothing that was particularly preachy or incisive but enough that you knew they were highlighting the absurdity of the real world. It was satirical and stronger for the fact it was poking fun at things in the real world.

The premise of Beyond a Steel Sky is that the people of Union City have an oppressive nanny state that provides for all of the food, medicine, shelter, and entertainment you could possibly want. Yeah, okay, that’s not something that exists in the real world. It’s also something that the game attacks as oppressive to the human spirit or something. Which, um, okay, sure. As such, the satire feels pointless as most of us would be willing to deal with the brainwashing and kidnapping versus the threat of freedom from poverty.

In conclusion, Beyond a Steel Sky is an okay adventure game and pretty fun. You don’t need to have enjoyed the previous game to enjoy this one. Unfortunately, the satire and bleak cyberpunk atmosphere of the first game is gone with the criticism of an overbearing socialist technocracy being far removed from most reader’s struggles.

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REVIEW: The Two Doctors Górski by Isaac Fellman

The Two Doctors Górski by Isaac Fellman is an introspective masterpiece of low fantasy, exploring questions of identity, mental illness, and toxic relationships in higher education.

The main character, Annae Hofstader, is a 27-year-old Ph.D. student who escapes an abusive relationship with her thesis advisor at the University of California by transferring to Brandford University in England. As the only female graduate student in her program, Annae feels self- conscious and isolated.

Annae’s field of study is magic, which is viewed as both a science and an art. While her peers focus primarily on botanical applications of magic, Annae hopes to use her magical skills to cure mental illness. To aid in this endeavor, Annae has acquired the ability to enter the consciousness of other people, reading their innermost thoughts. Although she seeks to help others, she often finds herself slipping into nearby minds to escape her own troubles and insecurities.

Annae’s new advisor at Brandford University, Dr. Marec Górski, is highly accomplished in the magical arts, but also heartless and temperamental. Marec’s cruelty runs deep. Wishing to free himself from guilt over his offensive treatment of others, Marec uses his magical skills to excise the benevolent aspects of his personality, creating another Dr. Górski in the form of a homunculus named Ariel. While Marec is a university professor specializing in magic, Ariel becomes a psychologist. With her own research, Annae wishes to span both these fields represented by the two Doctors Górski, using magic-enhanced psychological manipulation to heal mental sickness.

Annae is a complex, multilayered character with a genuine desire to help others. However, she doubts her own abilities and doesn’t want to face the ethical implications of entering other people’s minds—especially without their consent. As a result, her good intentions often result in perilous consequences.

The magic itself in The Two Doctors Górski is treated as just another ordinary field of study, subject to the same pressures as real-world academic research. I am impressed by how Isaac Fellman has interwoven this subtle form of magic throughout a realistic, modern-day academic setting.

The Two Doctors Górski is one of the best examples of dark academia that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. All too often, books labeled as “dark academia” fail to capture a realistic portrait of academic life, with students portrayed as overly self-confident, pretentious, and edgy. In The Two Doctors Górski, Isaac Fellman has captured a more authentic view of the struggles faced by graduate students.

Graduate advisors are in a position of almost unquestioned authority over their students, and unfortunately this authority can be abused. Fellman skillfully captures the psychological impact of such abuse, which ranges from everyday bullying to sexual exploitation.

The Two Doctors Górski also brilliantly addresses the issue of imposter syndrome. As the chair of my university’s graduate program with over 200 Ph.D. students, this is by far the most common issue that I have seen amongst our students. Imposter syndrome—the persistent doubting of one’s own abilities and feeling unworthy of one’s achievements or accolades—has become an almost universal feature of the graduate school experience, especially among female students. On the other side, Marec’s pompous attitude and callous treatment of students is, unfortunately, reflective of some faculty members with overinflated egos.

The Two Doctors Górski is a highly original work of fiction, unlike anything I’ve ever read. The closest comparison I can think of is The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in which the main character encounters his doppelgänger who possesses all the charm and good social skills that he lacks. Dostoevsky’s theme of split identity is clearly mirrored by the title characters in The Two Doctors Górski but is also reflected in a more subtle way with Annae as she leaves her own consciousness to enter the minds of others. This theme is also apparent in the name Annae, which Marec dismisses as just being the plural of Anna.

The author went through his own struggles with identity during and after the writing of this novel, explaining, “I wrote this book before I came out as a trans man, and my own experiences of being seen this way—as someone not a woman, but presenting as one—heighten Górski’s sense of paranoia and dread.”

Isaac Fellman’s well-polished and lyrical prose creates a hauntingly atmospheric mood throughout The Two Doctors Górski. Annae’s ability to enter other people’s minds offers a clever narrative tool for the author to switch points of view amongst various characters. I was particularly moved by the scene in which Fellman gives a physical manifestation of the crippling anxiety experienced by Annae’s classmate, Torquil, and the hollowness that is left behind in the absence of his fears.

Isaac Fellman earns bonus points for his myriad of subtle allusions throughout the book. I particularly appreciate the reference to the indie rock pioneers Neutral Milk Hotel and their opus, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” which serves as Annae’s ringtone and contains a lyric directly relevant to the story: “Anna’s ghost all around / Hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me.”

The Two Doctors Górski is literary fantasy at its finest, a deeply contemplative and multilayered novel that explores the real psychological struggles of identity, imposter syndrome, and the trials of academic life.

5/5

Review originally published in Grimdark Magazine #32

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REVIEW: House of the Dragon- Episode 8 ‘The Lord of the Tides’

Another great episode as House of the Dragon E8 sees a potentially award-winning performance from Paddy Considine as King Viserys could be. Viserys is falling apart due to his illness and the same could be said for his family as the grudges and bad blood between the Queen’s family and the heir to the Iron Throne threatens to lead to war.

House of the Dragon E8 jumps forward another six years as Corlys is dying and a proxy battle is being waged between those who wish to inherit the Driftwood Throne. Corlys’ brother, Vaemond wishes to sit on the throne as a true Velaryon – making an agreement Queen Alicent and her father as Viserys lies in his bed, dosed up on milk of the poppy. Rhaenyra and Daemon aren’t stupid. They attempt to make their own alliance with Princess Rhaenys who is still rightly pissed off with her niece who she believes killed her son to marry her uncle. Westeros is a strange place at times… A decision needs to be made regarding the succession and this brings all the major players back to King’s Landing where Viserys battles through the pain to sit on the Iron Throne on final time. The scene where he almost crawls to the throne is breathtaking. It is expertly directed and acted, with all the major characters showing concern for the one person they all care for, and Daemon shows the love he has for his brother by supporting him and placing the crown on his head. It’s a beautiful scene and a highlight in what has been a brilliant season. Everyone connected with the show just seems to get what it is all about. Little facial expressions and slight movements prove that this cast truly embodies these characters and even improve what is on the page in Martin’s Fire and Blood. Martin himself has claimed that Considine’s Viserys is an improvement and that is something that not many people will argue with.

House of the Dragon E8 plays with its audience and what we expect. Daemon has been quite calm recently but here he is able to show that he can still be the ruthless killer we fell in love with. Matt Smith has been a joy to watch as he develops this complex character – a prince who has at different points in this series been cold, ruthless, and vulnerable. He has been a killer, an heir to the throne, a caring brother, a horrid husband, and so much more. Yet, through it all, he still feels very much as Daemon should. He has changed through the years but Smith has kept a consistency with the character that Daenarys lacked in the final seasons of Game of Thrones. The smirk and the cold look he gives Aemond (a brilliantly cast Ewan Mitchell from The Last Kingdom) is the sign of an actor who just lives and breathes the character he is playing. I can’t wait to see things play out between those two! There is so much to love about this episode: the changing of Targaryen symbols to the Seven, the easing of the tension during a masterful dinner scene which then gives way to further sniping between the two sides, stunning visual effects, and perfection from the ensemble cast. It deserves to be watched more than once.

House of the Dragon E8 is further proof that this series deserves to stand on its own and not be seen as just a spin-off to Game of Thrones. In some ways, it betters the much-loved grimdark series and it is incredible to see another perfectly cast series with such brilliant performances from all involved.

The one thing holding everything together in King’s Landing is about to snap, and there is one thing that is certain: it is going to be some of the best TV of the last decade. Grimdark fans are in for a treat as we all look forward to Fire and Blood.

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REVIEW: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is the latest novel from award winning fantasy author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Known for her weird but beautiful writing, I think that The Daughter of Doctor Moreau should appeal to fans of her earlier gothic horror novel Mexican Gothic and readers who enjoy traditional gothic fiction.

Inspired by H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, there are some parts of the plot of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau that are unsurprising if you know Wells’ work. The reclusive Doctor whose scientific experimentation with creating human and animal hybrids plays a pivotal role in Moreno-Garcia’s novel. There is also a Montgomery figure in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and some of the hybrid characters bear a physical resemblance to the Beast Folk described in The Island. However; that is where the similarities end and Moreno- Garcia’s delicious reimagining is a lush novel with its own original characters and new plot.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is a standalone story which reads more like a classic gothic novel rather than a modern fantasy. If I had to put a specific speculative fiction label on it, I would say it is a historical science fiction novel. The first two sections are a slow burn, building the setting in the late 19 th century Yucatan peninsula, and introducing the titular daughter, Carlota, and the mayordomo, Garcia-Moreno’s version of Montgomery. Well- paced for the remainder, the novel alternates between the perspectives of Carlota and Montgomery and spans from 1871 to 1877. I enjoyed the narrative shifts and the contrast between Carlota’s sheltered, youthful naïveté, and Montgomery’s mature and cynical outlook. The hybrid characters in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau are named, and form a large part of the supporting characters which helped me to sympathise with them instead of appearing as mindless background figures. The ‘found family’ element to the novel between some of the hybrids and Carlota and Montgomery was my favourite part of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.

The dark part of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau does not come from any graphic or explicit parts of the novel or any overall sense of foreboding. For me the darkness comes with the Big Questions the reader may have to address whilst reading. In between reading chapters of the novel, I found myself not wondering about the characters and what might happen next, but more thinking about the morality of the events or trying to define the rights and wrongs of what had been revealed. Moreno-Garcia’s writing is stunning, as I expected from her, but I would have enjoyed more of the vivid horror I found in her other works. The historical setting is superb, but the science fiction elements play less of a part in the novel than I anticipated and are overtaken by Carlota’s coming of age narrative and the romantic aspects of the story.

I have a feeling that The Daughter of Doctor Moreau may be a divisive novel and readers will either love or loathe it, though I did not connect with it as well as I had hoped. I still love Garcia-Moreno’s writing style and will continue to read her work, but The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is not one I feel the need to reread or to shout from the rooftops about. Objectively this is a good novel – it is very well written, has solid characters, an engaging plot, and poses some ethical conundrums.

I would like to say thank you to Silvia Moreno-Garcia and the team at Jo Fletcher Books for sending over an ARC of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau so that I could review it for Grimdark Magazine. 3/5

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REVIEW: Auxiliary: London 2039 by Jon Richter

Auxiliary: London 2039 is a dark, seedy, and depressing story about a cyberpunk future as well as a broken/damaged detective investigating a murder. The thing is that I’m not actually complaining about these things. I am going to give Auxiliary incredibly high praise for the fact that it is actually one of the few cyberpunk books that manages to succeed in matching the darkness of its source material.

Carl Dremmler is a fantastic character that actually is every bit the sad, pathetic man that audiences kept forgetting Rick Deckard was because he was played by Harrison Ford. No, Deckard is a scumbag who murders people he knows to be innocent thinking beings because it would be inconvenient to resist the police shaking him down.

While I’m not going to say Jon Richter manages to match Phillip K. Dick’s even more despicable version of Deckard from DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, there’s being a really good boxer and boxing with Ali, but he manages to go the extra mile in creating someone who really is lost in the noir haze of his world without hitting, “I am a protagonist of detective fiction.” Which is to say Carl Dremmler is believably sad and pathetic as a bachelor who lives alone in his apartment with his sex bot and terrified of the outside world that has left the majority of humanity behind.

Auxiliary’s premise is London has been all but taken over by an integrated AI that now handles the entirety of the internet as well as everything linked to it. TIM AKA The Imagination Machine is supposedly not sentient but handles drone deliveries, electric cars, and all of your media preferences ranging from Rage Against the Machine to the latest K-Pop. I think 2039 is a bit too early but I’d state that the world is a somewhat believable one for 2069. In any case, I’m hardly one to complain since my favorite cyberpunk movie, Johnny Mnemonic, was set in the far off year of 2021.

Carl hates his job and has the somewhat cliche excuse of a dead child to explain why he’s lost in a bitter self-destructive spiral of depression but this is the only misstep I think in an otherwise incredibly strong narrative. The case is also suitably intriguing where a man’s cybernetic arm apparently murders his wife of its own accord. Can TIM be hacked? If so, does that present an existential threat to London’s economy as well as way of life.

Is it grimdark? Yes, I’d actually say it very much is. Like Deckard’s literary counterpart and his movie one to a lesser extent, Dremmler has a darkness to him and is primarily motivated by his grievances versus any real sense of justice. The world is corrupt, self-serving, and at times actually nasty. He’s frustrated both sexually and well as emotionally, which leads him to lash out with violence. However, the culture that surrounds him is so harsh that you want him to succeed against the forces arrayed against him.

There are layers of corporate conspiracy, paranoia, religious fundamentalists, 3D printed bugs, assassinations, and other weirdness that works excellent for this story. The ending is also incredibly powerful and unexpected. I strongly recommend this story and think people who like dark, gritty, and dangerous sci-fi will enjoy it.

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REVIEW: The Sword of Mercy and Wrath by NC Koussis

The Sword of Mercy and Wrath is the debut grimdark fantasy by NC Koussis, a blood-soaked tale of losing one’s identity in the monomaniacal pursuit of revenge.

The book opens with a standard fantasy trope: a young squire, Tristain, seeks to prove his valor to become a knight. However, Tristain is dealing with a curse that he is too innocent to handle.

Tristain shares point-of-view duties with his adopted sister, Selene, who steals the spotlight immediately upon making her entrance in the third chapter. Selene is a dynamic and engaging heroine and my favorite part of the book. Anytime she is on the page, The Sword of Mercy and Wrath becomes an unputdownable delight.

The Sword of Mercy and Wrath offers remarkable depth, especially related to questions of character identity. About halfway through the novel, Selene adopts an alternate persona and makes several rather shocking decisions on her pathway to zealotry. Meanwhile, the innocuous Tristain must grapple with his literal beast within. The surprising identity of another side character also introduces an unexpected twist toward the end of the novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed how NC Koussis subverts the clearcut views of morality found in traditional epic fantasy. During the first few chapters of The Sword of Mercy and Wrath, I thought the book was falling into the usual mold of good versus evil. However, NC Koussis goes full-on grimdark by the middle of the novel, introducing moral complexity accompanied by scenes of graphic violence. NC Koussis is a talented writer, and he particularly excels at writing such scenes.

There is also an unexpected touch of romance in the book, although I hesitate to call it that. The scene is not sentimental at all, but rather a violent outburst of passion reflecting the increasingly dark mental state of one of our main characters.

NC Koussis should be commended for his representation of a physically disabled main character, whose disability does not limit her in any way. We need more of this positive representation in fantasy. I’d also like to call attention to the beautiful cover art by MiblArt Design, which contains a subtle clue about our heroine that I didn’t even notice until I reached the midpoint of the book.

My main critique of The Sword of Mercy and Wrath is that the world is underdeveloped. There is a great story here with a surprising amount of psychological depth, but it takes place in a world that feels only partially established. NC Koussis errs on the side of brevity to maintain a fast- paced plot. However, I wished that he would slow down a bit to expand the worldbuilding and deepen all the characters not named Selene.

Overall, The Sword of Mercy and Wrath has a lot to offer grimdark fans, especially in its lead heroine. I’m excited to see where NC Koussis takes the story next as he continues his Swords of Dominion series.

4/5

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An interview with Brandon Sanderson

From time-to-time, the Grimdark Magazine team are lucky enough to interview our heroes. Last week, Beth and Adrian had the honour of speaking with fantasy legend Brandon Sanderson about his upcoming release, The Lost Metal, plans for the future trilogy of the Mistborn saga (including a little exclusive reveal about the future of the Mistborn series you won’t want to miss), and we dive into the production his epic, record smashing kickstarter.

Watch our interview with Brandon Sanderson

Prefer reading to watching?

We’ve also transcribed the interview below.

Beth: Thank you for taking some time out of your, I’m sure, extremely busy schedule right now!

Brandon: It is a little crazy these days, but I’m more than happy!

…

Beth: My first question is one that’s a little near and dear to my heart: now, I’m going to ask this, but I don’t think you’re going to remember me. But about ten years ago, 2010, you were in Portland, Oregon, and had set up at a Fred Meyer grocery store…

Brandon: Oh, man, the only one of those I ever signed at! That was a really interesting experience!

Beth: You had two people come up to you at the Fred Meyer grocery store: tall lady, short guy… I’m the tall lady!

Brandon: Well it’s good to see you again! Yeah, that was an interesting experience, because I’ve never sat and signed in a supermarket. Just, the publisher was like “hey, we have this deal with them so we want to send some authors,” so I did. It was not the best place to sign, for people showing up, but they did have nice chairs they found for me. Because, you know, they sell chairs, so…

Beth: It was cool, I got to talk to you! At the time, I hadn’t read any of your books yet and that was when you gave me Warbreaker. Warbreaker became near and dear to my heart, and that has kind of set me on the circuitous path of where I am now. I wanted to say thank you!

Brandon: I am so glad that signing accomplished something!

Beth: It was really cool!

Brandon: You never can tell, right? You do these signings where only, like, two people show up, and you weren’t the only two, but it still was not a great signing, and you’re like man, that signing was a waste. And then you find out ten years later that no, indeed, that signing was not a waste.

Beth: It absolutely was not!

Beth: So, I wanted to ask you about the sequel to Warbreaker. I know that you are crazy busy, I know! But is that on the radar for the next…?

Brandon: It is. So, I feel the way the Cosmere is outlined, Elantris is more relevant as a planet. The planet cell. So getting the Elantris sequels, I feel like responsibly, I need to slot in before Nightblood (which is the title of Warbreaker 2) but at the same time it is going to be more fun to write Warbreaker 2 just because, you know, the Warbreaker books are just… I mean, there’s dark stuff to them, but there’s also a certain fun to the style that I like to use in that book and the next one.

Beth: There’s a bit more whimsy.

Brandon: Yes.

Beth: And I love the magic system that you have, it’s one of my favorite magic systems that I’ve read about.

Brandon: Well, it is on the radar. I do get a number of requests.

Beth: Sure!

Brandon: And with characters from Warbreaker being so integrated into Stormlight, people are like “come on! How did they get here? Fill in the blanks, Sanderson!” So, yeah.

Beth: And it’s crazy how big the Cosmere has gotten. I keep up fairly well with your books (the chonkers that they are) and I don’t even think I’ve even scratched the surface!

Brandon: I have a lot of fun with this, and so… yeah, it’s a thing I always wanted to do, right? And the publishers… when I was breaking in, before always told me it was a bad idea.: “Nobody wants this. Don’t do this, Brandon. Nobody’s interested in this.” And then, I finally managed to do it, and you know, Elantris came out in 2005 and Mistborn came out in 2006, which were the first two in the Cosmere, and then the MCU started in 2007 and it turns out I was very well positioned for doing the large-scale continuity between series, having already started that. Granted, both the MCU and me were being inspired by the people in the seventies who did it, right? Marvel, but also Michael Moorcock was doing complicated continuity between his series in the seventies, and of course Stephen King with Dark Tower has been doing his own weird thing all along! So we’re all kind of standing on the shoulders of giants for this, but it’s the sort of thing that the publishers are like “nobody wants this. None of this stuff ever sells,” but it turns out they were wrong in that case.

Beth: There are books that are specifically dedicated to figuring out the linkage between all of the books. And websites. It’s really exciting stuff!

Brandon: Yeah!

Adrian: Hey, Brandon! I’m a massive publishing geek / Kickstarter nerd.

Brandon: Ooh!

Adrian: I love running them, and the mechanics of them. As probably of all our listeners will know, you’ve just recently crowdfunded I think – if I remember correctly – the largest project in Kickstarter history, in any format?

Brandon: We doubled the previous [highest] Kickstarter, which I believe was the Pebble watch. Or I could be wrong, it might have been the cooler or something. In any case, it was one of those tech companies.

Adrian: So, you did pretty well, mate!

Brandon: It’s been wild! We just got, this week, ninety thousand boxes we have to make.

Beth: Ninety thousand?!

Brandon: Ninety thousand. For the first month. We have twelve months of this! Or, was it… it was over ninety thousand. It was a hundred and something thousand. It was ninety pallets. You know those pallets, that they put stuff on?

Adrian: Yeah.

Brandon: They have ninety pallets of boxes that just arrived. We’re like “okay, we’re gonna have to fill ninety pallets of boxes to start shipping.” Which is both daunting and exciting! I don’t think people understand, you know, the logistics. I think many people would have hired someone else to do this, but my team and I are… we like to have fun with things, we designed the boxes, we spent a lot of time making them look cool, and now we have ninety pallets of them to build. So, my son, the teenager, is going to join us, and we’re going to have all sorts of people out there!

Beth: A fun family bonding moment!

Brandon: Yeah, exactly!

Beth: I have one of your sets coming, actually.

Brandon: Awesome! Oh, man, my team, the things they’ve done for the art on these books, I’m so excited! Isacc Stewart’s our art director, and he is just, ah, I can’t wait for people to get the books and just see how beautiful they are.

Adrian: Was there ever a time where you and your team were kind of watching in the publisher graph that tells you how many backers there are… was there a time when you were just sitting there rubbing your head going “oh, dear, this is getting big.”

Brandon: That would be day one. So we had ordered 25,000, from the publisher, of each book, right? And we thought 25,000 was pretty well covering it. We figured 25,000 copies, even if we don’t sell all 25,000 in the Kickstarter, it’s good to have some stock left over. So we were ready to sell 12,000 or 15,000 and have 10,000 left over. And then we sold over 100,000 of each of them. And so I went back to my team on that first day – because I usually get up late in the day, about 1:00pm, and it’d been going already, and they’d had a party, and they were all watching at the warehouse, and so I pulled aside my fulfillment manager, Karen, and I’m like “Sooooo…” And she’s like, “we’re gonna do it! We’re gonna need a new warehouse.” That’s what she said. “Gonna need a bigger boat.” So we went and bought a much bigger warehouse, or leased one, so we can store things like ninety pallets of just boxes. And, you know, the nice thing is we had done a Kickstarter before. We had done the Way of Kings leatherbound. And it wasn’t nearly as many, but we had done a big enough project that we had moved from small scale to large scale, right? And now this is still another order of magnitude, but this order of magnitude is in many ways a smaller jump. Even though, you know, it’s adding many more books, because we already have these processes down, we have a really good customer service team in-house that are just members of my team, and we have a ticket system for fulfilling those, and we have a warehouse, and we had to get a bigger one but we already know how to do stations in a warehouse for putting things together and sending them out. We already have the local post office, like, “alright, this is how you do it when you’re shipping this many things.” We did have to bulk up our teams and hire a bunch of people to fulfill, but we were where we could already do that, right? So we kind of eased into this over the last, ah, almost ten years. Starting with our leatherbounds.

Adrian: When I look at some of the people publishing through Kickstarter, so you know, Michael Sullivan, he and his wife Robin, hit 100,000 a couple of times. Shawn Speekman hit 100,000.

Brandon: All smart individuals, that really know their stuff. They’ve been helpful to me in the past, in things I’ve done.

Adrian: A massive shout-out to Shaun who has helped me a lot over the years.

Brandon: I love Shaun! Incredible resource, incredible human being.

Adrian: Definitely, both! With those, you know, hitting a hundred thousand is one thing. But hitting forty-one million is to me kind of Earth-shaking. I’m wondering, in the circles of people you work in, your colleagues, your publishing… what sort of conversations has this created around the power of Kickstarting in publishing, and hybrid publishing for authors like yourself?

Brandon: There are lots of good conversations happening, right? That I think are useful. I will say that everyone in the business who works with me, it was more of a “oh, Brandon’s doing his thing again,” right? Like, I’m the one that would get together with my friends, and we’ll be talking, and they’ll be like “Brandon, stop being such an adult. We all became writers so we didn’t have to adult. Why are you talking about adult stuff?” So, “of course he did this,” right? Publishing is a bit of a different thing. We did warn them ahead of time that this is what we were doing. They didn’t expect it to go this far, we didn’t either. But it has definitely become a permanent part of the conversation. And I am having lots of interesting conversations now. I didn’t do this in order to “fire shots” at the publishing industry, but I did this maybe to make a wake-up call. There’s a lot of things I’ve been saying for years that they haven’t been doing. I had a number of calls with John Sargent who was the CEO of MacMilllan which is the publisher that owns Tor. For years, I’m like “hey, there are things that are really consumer-friendly that we should be doing, and we will be rewarded in the long run if we look after our consumers. Things like bundling e-books and audiobooks and print books together, right? Like every other industry’s figured this out, John, why don’t we? Why are we expecting people to buy multiple copies of the same book? They’ll be much longer fans and support us more if we bundle these things together for them.” And it’s just so hard making any progress in the publishing world. There are a lot of passionate people who are wonderful and delightful but it is a very slow business to change. I think that we should have changed in many ways before now. So I’m hoping this will, you know, shake things up a little bit? Help me get some things changed, but at the same time… I don’t know? I mean, Amazon scares me. Again, Amazon is full of wonderful people that I really like working with on the publishing side. But they control such an enormous segment of the market that I think every author, including the indie authors, should be frightened of the hold Amazon has over this market. Do you want to be an indie author? Unless you want to go through Kickstarter, you’re going through Amazon.

Beth: And the indie authors that I’ve talked to, they are. They’re terrified.

Brandon: Yeah. I know that Amazon’s been pushing them around. When they added in so many things… for instance, Amazon limits their book prices at 9.99 in the U. S., right? But doesn’t limit the New York publishers. Amazon, if you’re really indie friendly, why don’t you let the indie author decide what the price of their book should be? Rather than, you let your publishers decide. Why are you charging so much for advertising, on your own platform, for indie authors to make their money? You’re basically just charging them another royalty in the form of advertising. There are all sorts of things that just make me worried because there’s no competition to force Amazon to back off on these things.

Beth: And with the connection of Goodreads. Goodreads is an Amazon…

Brandon: Goodreads is an Amazon affiliate. Audible’s an Amazon affiliate. Brilliance Audio is owned by Amazon…

Beth: There’s no other real choices, yet…

Brandon: There’s one thing I should mention. There is definitely the Patreon route, which is doing things for free. On, like, Wattpad on AO3 … there’s the Worm model, the web serial… but it’s basically, release the story for free, be supported by fan enthusiasts through Patreon and things like that. And that is a viable model also. I don’t want to imply that it isn’t.

Beth: Webcomics do that.

Brandon: The webcomic model, exactly. And if publishing were to completely collapse, that might become the primary model by which authors make an income. A lot of people on Youtube, that is how they make their income, and the webtoonists and things. So I’m glad that model is there, and we shouldn’t discount that and the people using that as their model. For the majority of us, it’s Amazon, and that’s frightening.

Beth: Yeah.

Beth: Let’s talk about your new novel: The Lost Metal.

Brandon: It’s taken me way too long to finish this series! I started writing… so these books, for anyone who might not be familiar: I had this idea, back in 2005, maybe 2004, when I was designing the Mistborn series. One staple of epic fantasy is this kind of unchanging world, where everything is kind of the same and has been for millenia. And this is fun, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this. It’s okay that people have been locked in medieval society for thousands of years, it allows you to tell certain kinds of stories. Right? But I’d love to tell the story of an epic fantasy world that started actually moving through eras of technology. Where, you know, wouldn’t it be fun to do an epic fantasy trilogy and then jump forward and do another trilogy where that epic fantasy trilogy became the foundation for myth and legend and religion in an urban fantasy? And then jump forward and do a cyberpunk, jump forward and do a space opera, right?

Beth: I knew there was cyberpunk!

Brandon: Yeah…

Beth: I was going to ask you!

Brandon: There’s certainly going to be a cyberpunk at some point. I originally pitched it to my editor as nine books: I was going to do an epic fantasy, then a 1980s urban fantasy style, and then I was going to do a space opera, far-future, Fifth Element-style thing, the idea being that the magic runs through it all in different ways. I added the Wax and Wayne series as kind of a jump between epic fantasy and 1980s, this is more of turn-of-the-1900s tech level. I love that era, and I realized I couldn’t leave it alone. The era in which we’re first getting electricity and stuff like that is just such an interesting era in history! And I also was working on Wheel of Time at the time, and I needed to jump to something else. I find that when I’m writing something enormous, it is really cathartic and good for my writing self to keep from being burned out, if I can jump to something that has a different pacing style than the three- and four-hundred thousand word books. So I finished a Wheel of Time book, and I wrote Wax and Wayne one as a hundred-thousand word detective mystery, set in the Mistborn world, hundreds of years after the first trilogy. And I enjoyed it so much, it became my go-to project to do between other projects. But that means it’s taken me, now, twelve years to finish this series of  four books. Which I feel bad for, but it’s there to kind of keep in Mistborn peoples’ minds, but also to give me a break between series. Between giant books.

Beth: You know what’s really effective about this style, is that you’re hitting on all the different facets of the reader. Like, the “fantasy reader,” because you’ve got high fantasy, low fantasy, you’ve got urban fantasy, you’re going to have fantasy/sci-fi… you’re going to hit on everything, and it’s going to have a cohesive timeline, and all of these different people are going to get to talk to each other and get excited…

Brandon: It’s going to be a lot of fun!

Beth: It’s a really great idea!

Brandon: The difference between what I’m doing and what the MCU is doing is, my original concept for this was: this will be lots of cool character crossovers, right? But the goal is not the Avengers, the goal is Star Wars or more Star Trek. It’s getting to a universe where you can go between these planets, and there’s galactic politics and things like that, and that’s kind of my end-game. That was really an exciting concept to me. It’s fun to kind of see it playing out now. I was worried when I first started this because everyone was telling me, this is a bad idea. About doing crossover stuff. I had a very light touch in my early books, and I think this is a good thing. What the danger of continuity like this is, is that you don’t want someone to pick up a book they would otherwise love, and then they feel left out. They feel they’re not in on the joke, because so much of it is inside material. You want a story to stand on its own. Lots of people have tried to build these enormous, you know, the Dark Universe. I don’t know if you remember that? They were trying to build Universal Monster Movies Monster Universe. They forget to make the stories themselves interesting… they’re counting on the crossovers to be the interesting part and that’s a mistake. You need to make sure the story you’re reading is awesome in its own right, and that the connections are icing on the cake so to speak. You can’t have a cake of only icing – well, my children would like that, but most people would not. And so, early on, it was very, very light touch. As I’ve gotten further I’ve gotten a better feel for how much the fans want, how much I can get away with, and how much I want to have. And I like that it’s kind of a gradual ramping up. But Lost Metal is the most cross-over that we’ve seen, and I hope it’s not too far!

Beth: No, I thought it was great! I thought it was absolutely great, and it makes me so excited for when you get an opportunity to dive into the next…

Brandon: The next era, yeah.

Beth: I can’t call Wax and Wayne a trilogy…

Brandon: Because it’s four books, yeah. Have you heard how that happened? So this happens to me a lot. I write a first book as kind of a proof-of-concept to myself that the characters and setting are working, and I write it and when I get done with it, then I’m like “now that I know this is working, let me build a story with these characters.” And about half the time I go for two more books, but half the time I build a build a trilogy jumping off of that. And that was the right thing with Wax and Wayne. So it’s kind of like Wax and Wayne One is a stand-alone, then there’s a trilogy that digs deeper into things. This fourth book, I made sure to relate back to the first book as well, so they’re all pretty well interconnected.

Beth: One of the things I was particularly impressed with about Wax and Wayne books, generally, was how you spent detail on the female characters. As somebody who grew up reading male-stories with male protagonists, you know, it was just really cool to see how they were real people, warts and all!

Brandon: I appreciate that! I blame Anne McCaffrey, Melanie Rawn, and Barbara Hambly, they were my introduction to fantasy and they taught me how to do it right. So, Anne McCaffrey… I always want to be writing books, that if Anne McCaffrey were to read them, she’d be like “alright, you’re allowed to say my name as one of your inspirations, Brandon.” It’s hard for a lot of writers, but it’s more difficult for male writers, I’ve found, early in your career, to shake out of the idea of putting people into roles, and writing each character as an individual. With, you know, everyone is the protagonist in their own story. Shaking yourself out of that… you want to people in boxes when you start writing. You want to say, “this person is the love interest, so they can only do the things that love interests do in a story.” And instead say, “this is a person whose story is intersecting with my main character’s story – but it’s only intersecting. What would they be doing if the plot hadn’t run into them? Who are they? What do they want out of life, and how are they the protagonist in what’s happening to them?”

Beth: To continue on from that: your handling of characters who have mental illness, or any sort of disability: they don’t become defined by the disability.

Brandon: Yeah. My wife has depression, and when I started working on the Stormlight Archive, one of the things I was thinking is, “why are there so many books that are about peoples’ depression, where that’s the only aspect to them? That’s what you know about them: this is the person with depression. Defined by their mental illness rather than as a person with a mental illness, right? I know there’s some disagreement in the disability community, but a lot of people would rather be known as a person with a disability rather than as a disabled individual. And simply that phrasing, right? Realizing there are people who don’t want to be called blind, they want to be called a person with blindness. Because the person is the most important part. And again, there is a discussion here: no community is a monolith, and I’m not saying…

Beth: It’s nuanced.

Brandon: Yeah. But knowing that exists, makes you think “yeah… why aren’t there characters… I know depression is something a large number of people in our society deal with. And the more that I’ve learned about people, the more I realize that everybody’s struggling with something. Some aspect of their personality that they’re wrestling with. Some mental illness… it varies as much as people vary. But everybody, there’s no “normal,” right? There’s people. And I wanted to write stories about people. And if you’re going to write stories about people, then I think it’s kind of on me in the way that I’ve decided to do this, to do it as well as I can. So I really appreciate all of the beta readers who come on board to help me, to figure out how to get this right. Because writing about someone with autism, like, you can do damage. I feel like my first book, Elantris, I did the pop culture version of it, and didn’t do my research. And, you know… I’m glad that people don’t hold me to the fire for that, because it’s obvious I was trying, but I could do better. And I’m always trying to better.

Beth: It’s great. My husband’s on the spectrum, and Steris is… I saw similarities.

Brandon: Yeah, I have some dear friends. So, Peter Ahlstrom, who is my editorial director, and my VP of editorial, and Karen, who is my continuity editor, both are on the spectrum. Very different experiences with autism; there’s a reason we call it a spectrum. There are so many different experiences. They’ve been a huge resource, but I actually started writing Steris in the first place based on my experiences getting to know Peter, where I realized I was bringing all kinds of judgments and mis-interpretations to him, that I think is very common for people with autism. And my goal with this series was to lead the reader to having that same experience I had getting to know Peter, where your preconceptions in the first book melt away as you get to know the person and not the autism.

Beth: The way of being.

Brandon: The way of being. That’s a perfect way to put it.

Pre-order The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson (releases 15th Nov. 2022)

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REVIEW: The Hunter’s Kind by Rebecca Levene

In the second book of The Hollow Gods, The Hunter’s Kind, Rebecca Levene continues to surprise her readers with unexpected outcomes as she opens up the familiar world of Smiler’s Fair. The sequel surpasses its predecessor with respect to violence and gruesome detail, but without losing sight of its end goal.

The bulk of The Hunter’s Kind takes place after the events at the end of Smiler’s Fair. The identity of the moon god reborn has been revealed and his father’s armies forge together to hunt him down. Along with his group of misfit allies, he must walk the line of who he is and what he is capable, but most importantly, what he can live with. All roads point to Mirror Town, a mysterious place filled with magic. However, the answers sought come at a cost that might be too high to pay. With everything on the line, how far does one go to win?

As with Smiler’s Fair, Levene’s knack for description is front and center in The Hunter’s Kind. The visual clarity of these sensory details sharpens and amplifies during critical moments of the story, creating an almost painful awareness for the reader. Paired with this imagery is the deeper level of lore and world-building that the book explores. The standout aspect of the novel is how Levene complicates the reader’s perspective of the war. While the first book provides a limited understanding of the factors involved and, subsequently, a loyalty to a side, the sequel forces a reexamination of those truths. In a world where horrible actions are justifiable for a greater good, Levene pushes her characters to their breaking points through morally-questionable choices and in the handling of their fallout.

Where readers might find issues with The Hunter’s Kind come in the form of the narrative. While the book does show the aftereffects of the events from Smiler’s Fair, they are not necessarily told from the character perspectives from the first book. Instead, Levene introduces several new characters at the start of The Hunter’s Kind. While this does work effectively in the overall intention to show the opposing viewpoints and complicate the bigger picture, it might take some time to become invested in the new characters. Levene also follows her trend toward the subversion of familiar tropes that, while executed well, may vary in reader response to the payoff.

The Hunter’s Kind marks its place under the grimdark label through more than just its morally-grey characters, violent encounters, and dark world. Levene’s exploration of choice and the thematic elements surrounding the consequences at stake for those decisions firmly root it in the overall human experience:

“One cannot always know what a person is or will become. One cannot always judge a liver, or a heart, by the body in which it is housed”

The novel shows what happens when you sacrifice pieces of yourself and what you must do to get them back. I’m curious to see how the series will end in the final book, The Sun’s Devices.

Read The Hunter’s Kind by Rebecca Levene

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REVIEW: The Midnight World

The world is darker, stranger, and more dangerous than you could possibly know. More malicious than you’d ever dare to believe. There are dark forces at work, just beyond the edges of your perception that would drive you spiraling into madness were you to ever look upon their dread, extra-dimensional majesty.

But this, thankfully, is not your world. This is The Midnight World, a new tabletop roleplaying game set in a world that is a much darker reflection of the one we call home. Players find themselves in the part of benighted characters who have seen beyond the flimsy veil that hides the truth of reality from the masses. They’ve seen what horrors exist side by side with humanity, what monstrosities sometimes even inhabit the skins of other people. They undertake missions and quests to explore these terrible truths, to hold the hand of doom back for even one more dreadful minute, all the while teetering on the edge of sanity.

All in all, The Midnight World presents an incredibly well thought out setting that is full of rich, complex meta-history and lore, dynamic systems, and countless opportunities for players to engage in gripping, spine-tingling tales of cosmic horror and bone chilling dread. Stories of self- examination, as well, with The Midnight World including an incredibly well thought out and complex system to track one’s mental health, and degeneration. It allows for players to explore their mental states dynamically, and dramatically, but also approaches the subject of mental health with sensitivity and understanding. It’s a huge breath of fresh air to see it handled so professionally while still delivering an immersive, enjoyable experience.

Mechanically, The Midnight World offers a system geared much more strongly towards narrative gaming and constructing dramatic storylines as opposed to crunchier systems and combat simulators. Character creation in particular offers numerous levels of immersion, but is designed from the ground floor to allow a player to create a character they can fully inhabit during their time playing them. The concept of “the Midnight Clock” is ostensibly the core around which much of the game revolves, particularly in how it affects characters and how they’re played. It’s a unique system that brings one’s relationship with their mental health into the spotlight and it’s handled very well, as mentioned previously. There are shades of the Sanity system of Call of Cthulhu, which is no surprise because it and The Midnight World do share a lot of the same inspirational DNA. But while there are certainly some shades of Call of Cthulhu (and to an extent the World of Darkness games), The Midnight World is very much its own beast with its own mythologies and secrets and hidden depths for the players to explore.

For a brand new game, a brand new world and set of tools to tell stories with, The Midnight World takes some old tropes and stories and makes them fresh and exciting and even a little bit dangerous. The core book is very cool, very well made and written, and lays the groundwork for what could become in-depth and complex stories that players could enjoy for a good long while. Personally, I would love to run a game in The Midnight World, and if you’re a gamer looking for something dark and new, it may be just what you had in mind.

Buy The Midnight World

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REVIEW: Cyberpunk Red

The Cyberpunk 2020 update we deserved for Cyberpunk 2020. Cyberpunk Red updates the setting in a way that corrects some of the flaws of the controversial Cyberpunk V3.0 Edition and replaces it with something more grounded. It’s not a straight adaptation of Cyberpunk 2077 but is set significantly earlier in 2045.

There are certainly a lot of similarities, and you can see things going from A to B to C but it’s unique enough a setting to be played on its own. There’s much content on how the city was rebuilt following (as we now know) Johnny Silverhand’s participation in the nuking of Night City as well as how the United States has returned to at least a semblance of its former power. We also get details on what people eat, where people live, and what they do in their free time.

It doesn’t get too deep into characters but mostly focuses on the history of Night City itself and how Richard Night’s dream of creating a crime free-corporate utopia to wait out the apocalypse proved to be a complete disaster. It also nicely manages to explain how Mad Max can exist alongside Robocop with no discontinuity. It’s not post-apocalypse but it’s certainly a breakdown in centralized authority (but getting better!).

I think my favorite part of the book is the discussion of things like what it’s like to live on the street versus a corporate Beaverville (suburb) or penthouse. Talk about the fact most people eat kibble and how fresh fruit as well as vegetables are worth fighting over but can be grown oneself. There’s a very DIY sensibility to post-nuke Night City and oddly inspiring in places where you’re not being stabbed for a tomato. It’s a world that had a lot of thought put into it and is all the stronger for it, even though the details are sparse in places.

The megacorps section also deserves special attention as we see the kind of corporations that have risen to power in 2045. For the most part, they’re not as maniacally evil as the ones in Shadow Run but just trying to profit even as you can see how they ruined the world with the 4th Corporate War (as well as everything leading up to it). Some of the NPCs are also hilarious like the CEO of Danger Girl Detective Agency that managed to survive being assassinated by being as kawaii and quirky as possible even into her middle years. Also, the fact the CEO of Sov Oil is obviously some guy who had plastic surgery to replace the previous one but they’re all pretending otherwise.

The book is a bit more crunch heavy than modern tabletop games tend to be and has a lot in terms of tables, rules, and charts versus lore. I think this is a bit of a mistake and we could have used even more in terms of fluff regarding the Time of the Red. On the other hand, this is a matter of personal preference and the fact there is so much crunch will probably appeal to some gamers.

This is both a mechanics heavy and roleplaying heavy book, which is a rare combination. I think fans of the original will be pleased and a whole new generation of cyberpunk gamers will enjoy the fantastic world of Mike Pondsmith.

Read Cyberpunk Red

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