Adrian Collins's Blog, page 185

REVIEW: Fid’s Crusade by David H. Reiss

Superheroes can be complex characters, and none more so than dr. Fid in Fid’s Crusade by David H. Reiss. Gone are the days of herculean knights swooping in to save the damsel in distress while simultaneously grinning at the camera with a twinkle on a tooth. Readers are asking more of their characters. It is not enough to be super anymore; we want super and complex—no small feat. It is this desire for more is why Fid’s Crusade is such a successful story; Fid is an incredibly intricate villainous superhero. 

Fid’s Crusade is the story of a master villain and his endless quest to punish the unworthy. Who the real villains of the story change and develop as the narrative progresses. In that, it reminds me of Garth Ennis’s The Boys. None of that is why you would read the book. The plot in itself is interesting, but not why I kept turning pages. Fid and the roundness of his character was why I did. Essentially, Fid is a man with the temperament, intelligence, and moral compass to punish those who deserve it. And when I say punish, I mean that if Fid finds you wanting, he will rain unholy hellfire upon you, destroy everything you hold dear in life, and walk away feeling as if he did an adequate job. I appreciate the thoroughness of his villainy. 

In comparison, this could have been a flat story. Reiss could have borrowed from “Batman” and Tony Stark’s cultural mythos and created an amalgamation of characters who just happened to fall on the dark side. That would have been lazy writing. What he did do was give us a broken man, wracked with pain and emotional trauma, fighting to make things right, and he gave us a character to empathize with and understand why he did horrible things. Essentially, David Reiss gave us an anti-hero who is morally gray in the form of a superhero book. 

“In the end, it may take a villain to save the world from those entrusted with the world’s protection”

Fid’s Crusade by David H Reiss was the 2018 Publishers Weekly Booklife Prize winner. In an interview regarding why he tackled an antagonist, the author David Reiss said, “I read John Gardner’s Grendel when I was young. That’s a deep dive into the mind of the beast from Beowulf. Ever since then I’ve wondered what the antagonist was thinking throughout a story whenever I saw what the hero was doing. In superhero stories, the villains are more proactive. The heroes all react. The villain’s robbing a bank, so the heroes run to save the day. But the villain’s the guy that has to start things rolling. I was trying to approach the genre from what initiates conflict.”  

While all that is very true. Approaching a story from a villain’s perspective because the villain’s actions are the catalyst for plot movement is different. However, all I could think of having finished Fid’s Crusade was “Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain.”  

The action scenes are intense in this story. They usually involve technical jargon about Fid’s suit, weapons, and bloody battles with the “good” heroes. At the beginning of the story, this is overwhelming. We start the story right in the middle of a fight; Dr. Fid wields his weapons and intellect like a cudgel against his opponents. I wasn’t sure what I was in for from the first chapter. But as the story progresses and we get into Fid’s backstory, it becomes a much more engaging read. Instead of the technical jargon and fight scenes being the story’s meat, they become details that help us understand Fid’s intellect. 

I want to be very clear; Reiss did not write this story with any pretense that the reader will like Fid. I wouldn’t say I like Fid as a person. Some of the things he does are horrifying. But that isn’t important. What is important is I loved reading about him as he is morally gray and complicated.

I empathized with his journey, and I understood the foundations of his villainy.

Even when he starts moving away from his violent tendencies and finds some peace, and yet again is faced with a personal tragedy that sends him reeling to the dark side, I got it. When a reader can empathize and understand a character like that, it is good engaging writing. 

Fid’s Crusade is a complicated story to explain pacing wise. Reiss takes a long time with nuanced writing to explain Dr. Fids backstory. It is smart in that it would be very easy for a reader to fall into a trap of not liking Fid and not empathizing with his plights. However, because of the nuanced writing and the time Reiss took to create a clear mental picture of Fid as a villain, I didn’t have that issue. But, because of the long buildup for Fid, I found the novel slowing down a bit.

All of the detailing Reiss was putting in was important, but I can see some readers feeling like that section of the story is overlong. I think how you react to the first section of the book will come down to personal preference. It all becomes seamless as plot and character creation come slamming together, but it is a meandering path. 

Fid’s Crusade stands heads above its superhero novel contemporaries. While some readers may have difficulty with Reiss’s meandering path to the plot denouement, I found that it was all worth it. Fid’s Crusade is a great story, well worth the time reading it.

I am looking forward to checking out the other books in the series.

Read Fid’s Crusade by David H. Reiss

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REVIEW: The Last of Us

The Last of Us is a game that was definitive of the Playstation 3 and remains one of the candidates for G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) among video games. Its sequel, The Last of Us 2 was far more divisive, with some individuals loving it every bit as much as the original while others felt it was a depressing mess with a muddled message. The Last of Us, however, remains a game that has near-universal praise. Indeed, most of its critics just think it’s overrated versus having any real critique.

The premise is that Joel Miller and his daughter Sarah are living normal lives when all hell breaks loose in the suburbs of rural Texas. A fungus-based zombie apocalypse has occurred with the Cordyceps appearing, turning humans into feral hostile lunatics before gradually making them into something much worse. Joel suffers a horrific tragedy and spends the next twenty years devolving into a ruthless hardened survivor who cares about nothing but himself.

Joel’s life of scavenging, smuggling, and murder is interrupted when he is forced into a mission that he doesn’t want to take on: transporting adolescent Ellie to the revolutionaries known as the Fireflies. Ellie has never known the Old World and has grown up in a world where life is cheap. Nevertheless, Ellie is a bright and optimistic child on the surface. Someone who is determined to make her short, probably doomed, life worth something before it ends.

Really, The Last of Us is above average game in terms of gameplay. The combat is a mixture of shooting, stealth, and brawling. You go around beating up and murdering either bandits or fungus zombies depending on the area. There’s some light puzzle solving too, usually in relation to figuring out how to get Ellie over particularly deep water. She never learned how to swim you see. It’s fine but I wouldn’t say that it would blow anyone away.

The heart of the game is a mixture of its characters and graphics. The relationship between Ellie and Joel is the heart of the story with the two’s developing bond being 50% of what makes the game so memorable. The actual setting and storytelling are good but not what makes the game good. It has a lot of similarities to The Walking Dead and while there are some genuinely heartstring-tugging moments, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Indeed, when a game introduced cannibal hillbillies, you know you’ve lost all claim to deeply moving storytelling.

Yet, deeply moving The Last of Us is. We wouldn’t care in the slightest bit about Joel and Ellie’s journey if not for the fact that their emotions seem authentic. We believe in Joel’s relationship with Tessa, his estranged relationship with his brother, and the man’s incredible grief at his daughter’s early death. These things do more to invoke emotion than any number of disposable girlfriends or families in so many other video games where we never get to appreciate the emotional connection that is being invoked.

The game is gorgeous, though. Each of the landscapes is beautifully evocative and we have some incredibly memorable moments like encountering giraffes, visiting a hydroelectric dam long after the apocalypse, and a fight with the cultists in a snow storm. This is possibly the most beautiful apocalypse ever as the greenery and wildlife of the Earth have reclaimed it from mankind. Many times I just paused to look around the ruins and wandered about, ignoring my eternal quest for more scissors to make shivs from.

Even with all of this, I believe one reason The Last of Us has stood the test of time is the fact that it has one of the most impressive endings of all time. It remains one of the most controversial and talked about endings ever done and the big surprise in this is it is one that people think is perfectly in-character for the protagonist. I originally thought he was making a huge mistake but, as I grew older, have since come around to his perspective.

I recommend getting the Remastered Edition for obvious reasons and also will state that the one piece of DLC made for this game is every bit as good as the main game. I rarely say that regarding DLC and think its expansion on Ellie’s character is phenomenal. It really should have been part of the main game, IMHO.

The Last of Us is a game that definitely should be played by those who have Playstations 3, 4, and 5. It holds up incredibly well. Do I think of it as one of the greatest games of all time, grimdark or not? I don’t know about that. I think it’s a really good one, though. I also think it understands that what makes video games good can often be the heart rather than just the gameplay or graphics.

Play The Last of Us

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REVIEW: Across The Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

Across the Green Grass Fields, Seanan McGuire’s newest addition to the Wayward Children series is bringing us a touching and verdant tale that takes place amongst centaurs and unicorns.

Seanan McGuire, author of countless novels, novellas, comics, short stories, and songs, has an inborn connection to myths and legends. In reading her stories, it seems like McGuire takes tales of old and twists them, turns them on their head, and serves them to her readers like an exquisite delicacy. I have gorged myself on her stories in the past. I can say that I have enjoyed what Seanan has written for her full catalog in one way or another. Even the stories that don’t 100% connect with me as a reader, I appreciate her mastery as a writer. Luckily for me, she is a prolific writer, and I have many choices in stories. 

All that being said, I enjoyed Across the Green Grass Fields, as I have enjoyed or loved the other books in her Wayward Children series, but this one was not my favorite. I came out of the story almost ambivalent to the plot. 

The story starts with the main character, a little girl named Regan. Regan is different than other girls in the story. You see how Regan is kind and empathetic and how she stumbles in personal relationships as McGuire details the intricacies of those relationships with her peers. Girls can be mean, the mean girl stereotype is there for a reason, and she is getting the full force of it due to her “best friend.” While Regan is ten at the start of this story, that is only in years as Regan is far wiser in some ways than your average ten-year-old girl.

Regan has one passion, and that is a love of horses. According to Regan, this is an acceptable passion for a young girl. Had she had a passion, for say, bugs, she knows that she would be ostracized and shunned as some of her classmates had been. She keeps most of this love to herself and does not share it with her schoolmates. This self-awareness plays a significant role in Regan’s character’s development as the story moves onwards. 

As the story continues, Regan ages, and her schoolmates physically develop. But, Regan seems stalled in her childlike stage. She is standing on the precipice of starting that terrible transition to adulthood but not quite getting there. 

She goes to her parents with the question, “Why?” Why is she different than the other girls? Her parents let her know that she is intersex. I am delighted that McGuire took such a real and pertinent issue and gave it the treatment it deserves. Regan is an example of one of McGuire’s strengths, in that she treats and creates children as real human beings. They feel fear, panic, and emotional turmoil and are not treated with, pardon the pun, kid gloves. 

Regan reaches out to a “friend” and explains to her friend what being intersex is. She wants to talk about a momentous thing in her life so she reaches out to a “friend.” The “friend” reacts as I can imagine some children reacting and starts yelling at her, calling her a boy and telling the school. What should be an intimate moment between friends turns into taunting and jeers from uninformed and cruel kids. Regan runs out of her school. 

At this point, Regan finds a door. 

If you are familiar with any of the Wayward Children books, you understand the significance of a door and what it means for the child. The door is to a place, unlike your home. In previous books, a door led children to a land of mad science and death, a goblin market, or lands made of candy. Each land changes the child.

In this child’s case, the land that Regan walked into is one called Hooflands. A land of centaurs, unicorns, and other creatures of the same ilk. Perfect land for one who loves all creatures equine. It is said when a human child comes through a door into the Hooflands; it portends to change. By the act of her coming to The Hooflands, her human nature wills a destiny into effect. One that will affect the citizens of The Hooflands and change the world they know. Regan does not believe in destiny. 

“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

The second and third part of Across the Grass Green Fields details the land of centaurs and unicorns. It is an unusual lake on the mythos behind these creatures. McGuire’s Worldbuilding is lush and verdant. Like any of her other stories across multiple genres, there is always a slightly dark edge to everything. What may be green and gorgeous with towering trees and emerald green moss will likely be housing monsters. This speaks to McGuire’s familiarity with folk tales and legends. Before Disney, stories such as The Little Mermaid and Hansel and Gretel were tales of fancy as much as cautionary. Good does not always conquer evil. Sometimes the witch does eat the children, and the mermaid might not get the prince. And, of course, everything has teeth. 

Regan spends years living amongst the creatures of The Hooflands. She becomes a wild girl, probably who she was always meant to be. She also learns self-reliance, kindness, strength of will, and character. I like who Regan becomes; it feels like a proper extension and growth for her as a character. But, as a human is an omen for significant change in the Hooflands, Regan has a destiny that will be fulfilled. Even if she doesn’t believe in fate and wants to be left alone with her found family.

“She still didn’t believe in destiny. Clay shaped into a cup was not always destined to become a drinking vessel’ it was simply shaped by someone too large to be resisted. She was not clay, but she had been shaped by her circumstances all the same, not directed by any destiny.”

The fourth and final act of the story is where Across the Green Grass Fields lost me a little bit. This book has beautiful writing, a great explanation of centaurs’ matriarchal society, and touching descriptions of the real friendships Regan makes. But, beyond the lush details, the actual plot and final crescendo of the story fell flat for me. It felt anti-climatic in the face of such excellent writing. However, I have to say that Regan’s very practical nature is entertaining to read. The vital thing to note about the ending, even though I found it anti-climatic; it is in line with Regan’s character.

One of the major themes of Across the Green Grass Fields has to do with destiny or lack thereof. Regan believes in her future, her own path. It will not be defined by what and who thinks it should. That idea starts slow when dealing with her peers’ preconceived notions and eventually crescendos at the end of the story. Regan becomes more comfortable in her shoes and does not care if that bothers anyone. 

Overall, I enjoyed this addition to The Wayward Children series, great characters, and a lush world. It is solid, but I think it lacks the same oomph that other books in the series have. I will continue reading the Wayward Books, taken as a whole series; they are lovely and some of McGuires best writing. 

Read Across The Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

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REVIEW: The Expanse Series 5 Episode 4 – Gaugamela

The Expanse series five kicked off last week with three character-driven episodes that set the scene for some frankly apocalyptic happenings as the first of Marco Inaros’ stealth-coated asteroids slammed into Earth, just off the Africa coast.

As always, spoilers ahead for the series and the books.

The episode starts with Bobbie and Alex tailing their suspected black marketeers off Mars, using Alex’s yacht, the Screaming Firehawk (the racing Razorback stolen from the Mao’s during Bobbie and Avasarala’s escape in season two).

They are discussing how Alex is struggling to cope with how he gave so much to Mars and it all seems to have been for a lie and Bobbie talks about how she went through the same thing. Then they receive word of flight restrictions from the UN, followed by news on the first asteroid hitting Earth.

Amos is waiting at a UN penitentiary as news of the impact plays on news screens. Amos tells the guard to be careful with his ‘Timothy’ mug rather than the bottle of expensive whisky also in his bag. The security is very tight, underground, with more wardens than inmates as it’s for prisoners with body modifications who can’t or won’t have them removed. One particularly mean looking inmate is pointed out. I expect we’ll see him again.

It turns out Amos is here to see Clarissa Mao. She is happy to see him and asks about Ilus. She talks about how removing her mod would be worse than being locked in a concrete box and fed blockers before asking why Amos is here. He says people like us get messed up by the things they do, but he got out because somebody helped him. Clarissa says he can’t help her. Suddenly, alarms go off for lockdown, then the roof shakes and the lights go out.

Avasarala is swearing at people to get through to UN Fleet Command so they know it’s an attack rather than a random happening as news of the second impact near Philadelphia comes through. As Crisjen is persona non grata, she can’t get through to Nancy Gao, the new Secretary-General of the UN who is on a flight over South East Asia. Remembering her time as Secretary-General, Avasarala uses her contacts with the crew on UN-1 to get through. Just as she does so, another impact hits, and the UN-1 gets tossed out of the sky.

Holden, Johnson, and Bull are doing some stealthy stuff on Tycho, when the reactor starts to go weird and a Belter ship fires on the station killing Bull’s commando crew. Sakai shoots Fred Johnson then makes off. As Johnson bleeds out, he tells Holden where the protomolecule is and to get there before the Belters do.

A Belter landing pod smashes a crab-like breaching droid (which is labeled Savage Industries which lit my little Mythbusters loving heart up) into Johnson’s quarters and Sakai and company join up with it and are going to take Monica (who was waiting in Fred’s quarters) with them.

As the droid takes the protomolecule back to the pod, Holden arrives and Monica fights Sakai while Holden takes on the droid and loses. Once the droid is inside, the landing pod goes back to the Belter ship, leaving a gap in the hull. Monica pulls Holden back into the room as security doors close and Sakai mocks them that the protomolecule is gone. ‘You all lose.’

Avarsarala is trying to contact her husband in the wake of the impact as Delgado advises her that the orders for the watchtowers to connect to the asteroid spotters went out but nobody is sure who’s in charge. They go to a bar as the watchtowers get a hit on an asteroid that’s going to hit on the Mexican pacific coast and eliminate it.

Naomi is taken from her bunk to the bridge of her ship where Filip transfers her to Marco’s ship for an awkward reunion. Marco says he never ordered for her to come and it shows that Filip is still somewhat a boy. He says that now they are together again as a family he can share the greatest victory in their people’s history and shows her the impacts on Earth.

Of course, Naomi is shocked and states that he’s killed millions, but he sees it as righteous. The crew advises that the fourth asteroid was intercepted, but Marco says even landing one would have been a triumph but three proved their tactical genius and the Inners will never call them weak again.

The episode closes with Inaros broadcasting to the system, claiming responsibility for the attacks. He states that everything outside the orbit of Mars–including the Ring gate and worlds–belongs to the Belters, protected by his Free Navy. He says that they will remake humanity’s future without the colonial influence of the Inners who could not grow past their oppressive instincts.

This episode was much more action Expanse than the character-driven bias we saw in previous episodes, although the exchanges between Bobbie and Alex, and Naomi’s reunion with Marco, carried plenty of emotional weight. Partly because of that high octane pacing, the episode felt like half of its 45 minutes run time.

This episode is titled Gaugamela which is surely a reference to the Battle of Gaugamela where Alexander the Great scored the ultimately decisive win over the Persian empire (although you could argue that Issus, two years previously was more impressive and important in the long run).

That’s a fitting title as this episode was all about the denouement of Inaros’ grand plan to punish the Inners and take power both of the Belter nation and the system as a whole. Three asteroid impacts on Earth, killing possibly billions of people as well as the assassination of Fred Johnson and taking possession of the protomolecule definitely make him the undisputed heavyweight antagonist of the series at this point.

I have an enduring fascination with the way the Belters are portrayed, especially through language. The way Naomi slipped from her usual perfect English into Lang Belta when meeting her old friends in the previous episode stands in stark contrast to how she talks to Marco.

While not using the Lang Belta, the Belter accent is more pronounced in her speech than it usually would be with the Rocinante crew. This is probably because she doesn’t feel the same camaraderie with him, but is at the same time very emotional. It’s a very subtle touch but it’s one of the many well-observed worldbuilding moments that make The Expanse so very, very good in my eyes.

Grimdark check: Millions dead, betrayals, assassinations of good people, estranged families, disillusionment, and one of our protagonists likely trapped in an underground jail with some modified inmates. Yep, that’ll cover it.

This episode was tremendous, concentrating on the rise of Inaros via the impacts and operation at Tycho station, with just enough from the viewpoints of other protagonists to keep them bubbling over. This feels like a crux point from act one to act two of the series and I’m as invested as ever.

What did you enjoy in this episode and what are you looking forward to as the story continues?

Episodes 1-4 of Season Five of The Expanse can be streamed via Amazon Prime  –  and new episodes are coming every Wednesday.

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REVIEW: The Last Benediction in Steel by Kevin Wright

The Last Benediction in Steel is the follow up to last year’s Lords of Asylum which was one of the bleakest books I’d read that year yet also one of the funniest. Kevin Wright successfully managed to combine the black humor of Joe Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence to create a snarktastic yet deeply moving depiction of Europe during the Black Death.

It wasn’t historical fiction by any stretch of the imagination but was close enough for government work. Sort of like the fact Spider-Man lives in a real city, Sir Luther Slythe Krait dwells in the Medieval Dark Ages of our world. It’s just a Dark Ages with black magic, even more horrifying class divisions, and one of the most cynical antiheroes in fantasy.

If you need someone to compare Sir Luther to, I’d suggest a combination of Bronn and Tyrion Lannister for a pretty good idea of his personality. He’s a nobleman but a fallen one who hangs around with Jews, whores, and murderous bandits. The experiences of fighting against the pagans with the Teutonic Knights has utterly destroyed his faith in not just God but himself and humanity. He’d be quite happy to revel in the petty criminality (and not so petty criminality) that allows him to survive if not for the fact there are a very few number of people he still cares for. This includes his saintly brother and his Jewish employer Abraham.

The book opens up with Sir Luther and company traveling on a barley seaworthy ship that can just make it to port before falling apart. Unfortunately, the city they arrive at it is the infamous Haeskenburg. Unlike the majority of cities in Europe, it isn’t suffering the Black Death but it is suffering from a popular religious uprising led by insane Jesus cultists that think the Word of God can best be summarized as, “Kill them all.”

Sir Luther needs to acquire enough coin for them to live and must return to his old job as a a hunter of criminals. It’s work that he doesn’t want to be involved in, especially as he discovers that the local monarch is interested in his opinions on how to handle the civil unrest. It’s a kind of ridiculous situation but a fun one as Sir Luther is one of the last human beings on the planet you’d want to listen to about anything. Unfortunately, the king thinks that Luther’s fallen state means he’s closer to the people rather than just a rotten cynic.

The Last Benediction in Steel is an extremely good book that manages that careful balance between abject misery and gut-bustingly hilarious. Sir Luther is a terrible person and not nearly as wise to the ways of the world as he thinks he is. Indeed, he manages to frequently offend everyone around him with his casual statements of how bleak and pointless everything is as well as how all people with power are awful.

Sir Luther would be one of the people on the internet who would say, “Both sides are rotten” as if it were an objective fact or secret wisdom. However, the book is aware of this and watching Luther get thrown not by the monstrous villains around him but by the genuinely good people is always entertaining. This is a grimdark book, not just dark fantasy, and that makes it a doubly good recommendation for this magazine.

Read The Last Benediction in Steel by Kevin Wright

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REVIEW: Wonder and Glory Forever ed. Nick Mamatas

Lovecraftian anthologies are extremely common, ranging from pulp action to comedy to horror. Wonder and Glory Forever, edited by Nick Mamatas, does something differently. In Mamatas’s words, “I…saw a thematic gap; most Lovecraftian fiction either cultivates dread or attempts some kind of goofy humour, but the stories I tend to prefer instead mine the undercurrent of awe and the sublime in Lovecraft’s own stories. There’s a strong trend in horror fiction and cinema to identify with the monstrous as opposed to the human element.” (from an interview with me which can be seen, here.

Wonder and Glory Forever, therefore, focuses its stories on the concept of vastation: the malice of the made or revealed cosmos. The idea isn’t to scare, though many stories have eerie elements. It’s aiming for that elastic moment when the mind reaches for and cannot quite hit what is being described.

The first story comes from H.P. Lovecraft himself, the novella that Wonder and Glory Forever takes its name from: The Shadow over Innsmouth. While it seems likely that many people reading the book will have read this popular story of his already, Mamatas points out in the epigraph that people will come to Lovecraft from all sorts of angles, and this might well be their first time actually reading his work directly, rather than seeing it second-hand through pop culture.

After Lovecraft, our first modern story in Wonder and Glory Forever is Nadia Bulkin’s Seven Minutes in Heaven, the kind of story that starts off reading like completely realistic fiction and just shifts ever-so-slightly several times throughout, until the solid ground you thought you were standing on has vanished.

Laird Barron’s Vastation takes a wildly different approach, getting us into the point of view of a superhuman with the ability to manipulate time and space. It is incredibly clever and well-written, with a fantastic point of view and narration. It feels rushed in the best sense of the term, that these images just keep flooding and cannot be stopped, and there is no slowing it.

Michael Cisco’s Translation is a stand-out short story, focusing on an attempt to translate an ancient tablet in a language that uses its tenses very differently than we do—and that strange tense usage infects the entire story. It shares DNA with Ted Chiang’s Time of Your Life (the story adapted into Villeneuve’s film Arrival) but is very much its own thing, and retains a more horror-tinged air.

Wonder and Glory Forever finishes with Clark Ashton Smith’s The City of Singing Flame. Smith was a contemporary and correspondent with both Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and plenty more. The three of them often plucked concepts and terms from each other and used them in their own stories.

Wonder and Glory Forever has some utterly brilliant short fiction in it. In a subgenre of a subgenre, Lovecraftian fiction can become simple pastiche. But in the hands of authors like these, it excels and shows us vastation.

5/5

Read Wonder and Glory Forever ed. Nick Mamatas

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REVIEW: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

The Devil and the Dark Water is a mystery thriller novel set in 1634. The majority of the story is set on a merchant ship called the Saardam as it travels from Batavia to Amsterdam. In addition to the typical silks, spices, pepper and mace, the ship is also transporting, in shackles, the world-famous detective Samuel Pipps.

“‘Sammy Pipps isn’t simply clever,’ argued Arent. ‘He can lift up the edges of the world and peek beneath. He has a gift I’ll never understand. Believe me, I’ve tried.’”

Samuel is the prisoner of General Jan Haan, an extremely powerful and influential figure, and is being transported to Amsterdam at the request of the Gentleman 17 who wish to see him executed. Us readers and the majority of the boat’s travellers (nobles, musketeers, sailors and more) have no idea what Pipps is accused of and whether or not he’s guilty. He is a celebrity, though, known by all for his crime-solving prowess and deduction skills.

If Pipps is initially presented as this tale’s Holmes, then Arent is Turton’s take on Watson. Arent is a lieutenant, mercenary, and a scarred brute of a fellow who records the most exciting of Pipps’ escapades for the masses to read.

Just prior to the Saardam’s departure there is a murder committed and a threat against the safety of all aboard the vessel. This sort of intrigue, mystery, and the fact there is a heinous crime to solve falls, undeniably, into Pipps’ wheelhouse. Yet, with the sleuth being locked up in a tiny, gloomy cell, it passes on to Arent, who has picked up some of Pipps’ talents himself over the years, and some companions he meets on board the ship, to investigate.

“The mercenary who saw the spear, then thought about it too long, ended up with half of it buried in his chest. Nowadays, he’d see the spear, wonder who made it, how it had come to be in the soldier’s hands, who the soldier was, why he was there … on and on and on.”

I can’t imagine that I am the only person who has done this, but I went into The Devil and the Dark Water expecting a typical and safe Sherlock Holmes-esque adventure. For me personally, if that would have been the outcome then it would have been fine. What was actually presented by Turton though is an extremely clever, detailed, unpredictable, and slightly twisted crime drama, surrounded by the dread and uncertainty of the seemingly endless oceans. Mixing the above literary concoction with demons, forgotten pasts, complex relationships, life at sea, and a handful of geniuses on the ship makes for quite a reading experience.

“‘I’ll not have some bastard drown me before the governor general hangs me.’”

The pages are bursting with many memorable characters. Notable standouts are Pipps’ companion Arent, he’s an exemplary creation, honourable Guard Captain Jacobi Drecht (Julian Rhind-Tutt narrating the audiobook was incredible for this character as well as many others), and the mistress Creesjie Jens. In my mind, some of the characters were difficult to distinguish between and blurred into each other for the early stages of The Devil and the Dark Water, so I recommend new readers pay attention to the manifest of notable passengers and crew at the start of the novel. After I was about twenty percent through, I had no further issues with regards to this.

The Devil and the Dark Water is a well-written and ingeniously composed dark historical thriller. The tale features grim and gruesome moments aplenty, with content that is definitely for adults and is occasionally uncomfortable to read. The mood of the story, the presentation and the quality showcased brought to mind and was reminiscent of Anthony Horowitz’s brilliant The House of Silk. I’d rate The Devil and the Dark Water as a well-earned 4-stars as it didn’t quite reach amazing. It wasn’t unputdownable and it didn’t mesmerise or enrapture me. That being said, it is a fine detective thriller that deserved to be a finalist in the Goodreads choice awards and I’ll be following Turton’s career going forwards. Recommended.

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REVIEW: Children by Bjørn Larssen

Bjørn Larssen debuts his Norse mythology series The Ten Worlds with the ambitious Children. This dark retelling of Asgard’s pantheon is no rosy Marvel Universe depiction, the violence and savagery of the deities and their contemporaries being on full display.

The narrative follows the misadventures of two protagonists: Maya, a powerful sorceress and human foster daughter of the goddess Freya, and Magni, the naive and seemingly innocent son of Thor, god of thunder. Both seek, in each their own ways, to escape the paths they seem destined to walk by fault of their parentage. Yet, both have much to learn from the uncaring and dangerous world around them, especially the sheltered and simple-minded Magni. Nothing is quite as it seems in the lands of gods and men, and each revelation leaves more mysteries than answers as we follow the titular children on their journeys.

Larssen chooses to take a meandering route with his pacing, and the novel does not adhere to a typical plot arc. Rather, we stumble along with Magni and Maya as fate sweeps them from event to event, the characters being rarely in control of their situations. While unconventional, I did enjoy the less traditional approach and felt it played well to the ‘dark fable’ style of storytelling achieved here. Characterization was well realized in that the protagonists were portrayed consistently and exhibited dynamic qualities as they came of age during the tale, though this didn’t always translate as enjoyable material. In particular, the dim-witted Magni was often painful to read, as much of his chapters take place in his own mind as he struggles to understand just about anything happening around him. While this is done deliberately to leave the reader clues as to the true nature of the unreliable narrator, the execution of it was frequently exhausting to get through. Particularly strong, however, was Larssen’s portrayal of the Norse gods, with each one depicted standing out to make every divine encounter a memorable highlight of the story.

At times, the tone of the book struck me as odd, with several instances wherein use of almost slapstick-style comedy seemed out of place in the face of unfolding events. Though I’m sure the juxtaposition of humour and tension were intentional, I’m not as sure it worked in quite the way the author wanted, as -for me at least- it mostly distracted from the seriousness of those moments without actually paying off in laughter. The writing itself was generally well executed and the author’s use of surrealist elements is one of the areas in which this book truly shines. I also appreciated the relatively succinct descriptions of scenery, allowing for the reader’s imagination to go to work and hasten the flow of the plot in the process. The action scenes were well done, though Larssen’s frenetic style of depicting violence did make it, at times, hard to picture what was happening, forcing the reader to feel the energy of the moment in panicked fragments rather than a more traditional ‘fight scene’ approach.

Thematically, there is a lot to unpack here as Children is as actually less of a coming-of-age tale as it is a study of trauma, a commentary on classism and privilege, an observation on the expectations placed on each other by child and parent, and a questioning of what it says about us when one group of people can dehumanize another. Larssen does deft work to weave these ideas organically into the novel, and never did I feel that I was being subjected to a heavy-handed moral lesson. Indeed, the reader seems encouraged to find their own conclusions on these subjects rather than being led down any particular garden path.

Despite some few, yet pronounced, flaws and unconventional storytelling, I really do appreciate what Larssen has achieved with Children; an ambitious, dark and layered depiction of Norse mythology.

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REVIEW: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

It is no secret that I have adored Sarah Gailey’s writing ever since I picked up a copy of Magic for Liars at Bookcon in New York in 2019. Since then, all of their novels and novellas have been very highly rated reads for me and The Echo Wife is no exception.

Out in February 2021, this is the story of Evelyn Caldwell, a scientist working on cloning technology and her clone Martine, whom her husband is having an affair with. Inconveniently, said husband has had an unfortunate run in with a knife… But never fear, Evelyn invented cloning, after all! Together, the women come up with a plan to ensure no one has to know about this unfortunate incident. In the process, they discover more about themselves, their lives and their shared husband than they bargained for.

Taking a simple concept, Gailey manages to masterfully turn it into an emotionally charged story full of considerations about one’s role in life and the meaning of life more generally. The Echo Wife took me apart and broke my heart several times over and I devoured it like the masochist I am. I couldn’t put the story down.

Evelyn and Martine, clones, are utterly different people, but both fully fleshed out with their wants and desires, flaws and all. Together, they grew and challenged each other to reconsider their firmly held beliefs about life. While marriage theoretically stands at the centre of The Echo Wife, it is empathically not a love story. It is far closer to the autopsy of a marriage long dead, trying to establish the time and cause of death. The relationship between Evelyn and Martine becomes the crucial turning point of The Echo Wife, the axis on which the book revolves. From meeting as estranged rivals to partners in crime to something like a strange sisterhood, the two women’s lives become irreversibly intertwined. Moral questions abound, as do philosophical considerations.

Nevertheless, The Echo Wife isn’t a slow-burning literary novel. At a relatively short 250 pages, Gailey’s newest packs a punch. Tension is kept high throughout and revelations hit hard. It is not the most speculative of Science Fiction works, and the speculative elements are more window dressing than anything else – the central themes of The Echo Wife are what it means to be human, and why one chooses to live the way one does. It is a brilliant book and I highly recommend it – one of the easiest five-star ratings I’ve given all year. But beware, The Echo Wife is a book that emotionally destroys you.

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REVIEW: Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer

Ambergris is a wild, anarchic city unlike any other one in fantasy. This isn’t just because the setting is richly described, bursting with life. It’s because reading an Ambergris book means reading from the perspective of people who view this place as home, and enjoy its oddities as a citizen, rather than a tourist.

City of Saints and Madmen, the first Ambergris book, was one of the original books of the New Weird subgenre.  Perdido Street Station created it, but City of Saints and Madmen, as well as KJ Bishop’s The Etched City, showed off even more of its possibilities.

Now the subgenre is dead. The subversive elements turned into grimdark and the aesthetics turned into steampunk. Bishop hasn’t written a novel since, Mieville is currently working on nonfiction, and VanderMeer’s had far more success with his Southern Reach trilogy and subsequent work. 

But perhaps the launch of the Ambergris omnibus can bring it back, if only for a moment.

The Ambergris omnibus consists of three books—City of Saints and Madmen (2001) Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and Finch (2009)

The first book, City of Saints and Madmen, is a collection of short stories and novellas loosely intertwined in the City of Ambergris. The omnibus has gotten rid of several of the short stories from the 2004 edition for the sake of space (even as is, the book is 867 pages.) This is unfortunate, because many of those short stories are fantastic, and while none are essential, they help each give a sense of the mundanities of the world meeting the surrealism of Ambergris.

The Transformation of Martin Lake, the third novella, is my favorite, and by far my favorite story VanderMeer has ever written. It follows a young artist, technically talented but without a sense of real artistic purpose, who gets an invitation to a strange party. The story alternates between Lake’s experiences at the party, and the years-later retrospective on his work by art critic Janice Shriek.

Another story, the Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, follows Janice’s brother Duncan, a brilliant academic historian who can no longer get work writing historical theses, and instead has to take what is supposed to be a promotional pamphlet for the city of Ambergris, and expands on it until it’s ludicrously long and filled with digressions. Much of the discussion of the early history ties in with the colonists’ dealings with gray caps, mushroom-like inhabitants that end up being ignored and built around as soon as the humans decide they’re no threat.

The historian and the art critic’s relationship as brother and sister comes to the forefront in Shriek: An Afterword. This novel is ostensibly an afterword to the historian’s already overly long pamphlet, and slowly morphs into autobiography.

Duncan has disappeared, and as Janice finds his afterword, she starts to add to it, narrating and turning it more autobiographical. But Duncan, somehow, leaves notes in the marginalia of the text, making the book a brilliant exercise in two duelling unreliable narrators, who might not be lying from their own vantages but certainly have memories that don’t agree with one another. Duncan’s twin obsessions come to the fore in this novel: as a historian, he’s fascinated by the gray caps, and his focus on them is why he’s been relegated to writing pamphlets. But his other obsession is with a rival historian he’s fallen for, and their failed relationship is an easy excuse to knock Duncan out of academia.

The final novel in Ambergris is Finch, which has by far the most traditional narrative structure. It’s a noir in which a cop and his partner are investigating a double murder—but the gray caps, long thought to be merely strange oddities in the city, have now taken over it. There are factions that will kill the protagonists if they solve the murder and factions that will kill them if they don’t. The partner is disintegrating into a series of spores due to a disease. Spies and agents provocateur flood the city and make it more unstable. And, somehow, the murder victims, found in an apartment, have both been dropped from a great height.

Ambergris is wild, anarchic, and brilliant. It follows tangents, explores the culs de sac of a city you’d never think to look in. Whether in the original paperbacks or the new omnibus edition, Ambergris is well worth your time.

5/5

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