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REVIEW: The Lost and The Damned by Guy Haley

Taking its name from the 1990 Realm of Chaos source book, The Lost and the Damned deals with the initial assault on Terra by the forces of the traitor Warmaster Horus.

My usual disclaimer comes into play here – if you’re not familiar with the Warhammer 40k universe, then this book will make little sense to you. Even someone up to date with current lore but who hasn’t been keeping at least some tabs on the Horus Heresy series to date will be a little confused.

The Lost and the Damned is aptly titled as much of the book is told from the point of view of the mortal conscripts, most notably Katsuhiro on the outworks of the imperial palace, who is used by Haley as a reader proxy through some of the book’s most exciting passages. We get tantalising glimpses of the Primarchs, not least seeing the effect that Chaos is having on Horus but the common humanity are the real stars here.

Katsuhiro makes for an overwhelmed and baffled narrator, totally out of his depth yet somehow surviving as he is swept along by the imperial conscription and deployment.

Of course, The Lost and the Damned also traditionally refers to the myriad of chaotic supporters not necessarily being Space Marines or daemons and we see the hordes of debased cultists and beastmen in before the Traitor Marines are finally deployed.

The main theme contained in The Lost and the Damned is one of growing tension and inescapable death. Unprepared conscripts face multiple horrors in hastily assembled trenches while an armada drops hellish ordnance onto a flickering force field that threatens to flicker and go out at any second. The best you can hope for is to survive until the call to withdraw to the next line, if it comes and there still is one to fall back to.

The Lost and the Damned feels very much like a book that is setting the stage for what will come later, establishing the rules of the conflict and introducing some players who, I assume will be important later. Checking back, I find elements that I’d assumed were in this book were actually in the next book The First Wall which is where the pace of the series really starts to pick up.

As such, the Lost and the Damned is not a top tier Horus Heresy novel in its own right but it does a good job of further setting the stage for the much anticipated final confrontations to come.

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REVIEW: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling is a claustrophobic hybrid of horror and science fiction.

On an impoverished mining planet with no hope for a better life, Gyre Price decides to fake her credentials and act as if she is an experienced miner. Mining in The Luminous Dead must go down alone in robotic exosuits. Being alone is the only way to prevent attacks from Tunnelers, an undescribed alien life form that inhabits the caves of this planet.

Gyre gets hired for a huge payout to explore some of the deep tunnels beneath the planet. Most mining consortiums do this to discover ore deposits, but the one Gyre is working in is being more secretive about their reasons. 

Gyre has grown up on this planet, and knows about the caves, but she’s never been bound into an exosuit which controls all of her bodily functions before while doing it.

The Luminous Dead takes place entirely in these tunnels. What’s more, there are no other characters in the tunnel besides Gyre. Multiple people seem to draw the attention of an undescribed alien life form known as a Tunneler, while lone people seem able to traverse the mines with far more success. The reason for why Tunnelers attack groups but not solitary miners is left as a mystery for most of the novel, but the explanation given at the end is the only logical one.

She does have constant communication with Em, her handler, who communicates to her through her exosuit. Em is the one paying her to explore, and while most mining consortiums have teams working on these situations, Em works alone.

This lack of other characters adds considerably to the sense of claustrophobia. Everything Gyre needs, she is reliant upon Em for. Outside of memories and past recordings, they are the only characters in the novel.

Em starts off as a harsh taskmaster, speaking only when needed and doing what she needs to so she can manipulate Gyre. As the book progresses, much of that fades away and what remains is a much more benevolent and sympathetic character. The two continue to clash through the book, but it’s a clash of co-dependency rather than a clash of enemies. This still adds to the tension, but in a far different manner.

Caitlin Starling, in writing the book, clearly had a choice. If Em had remained as she was early on, the book would certainly have been tenser, but it likely also would have felt too miserable, and there’d be little reason to hope. The Luminous Dead traded some tension for more dynamic characterization.

“She needed Em out of her suit, her display, her head. It was like Em lived there now, deep in the recesses, in the folds and valleys of gray matter, a voice running shotgun in her brain.”

The book’s action sequences are entirely environmental, and most of the threat comes from the dangers of the cave, fast-moving rivers, running out of food (or worse, the exosuit batteries) or the Tunnelers. Starling has a great knack for these sequences.

Despite its claustrophobic nature and horror elements, the book eschews the more obvious forms of horror. There’s little gore, and it is entirely in service to the story; it never stands out as gratuitous. Starling prefers a more psychological horror, one where Gyre cannot tell if she should trust her own senses, those of Em, or those of her exosuit, when they often disagree.

The Luminous Dead is a strong, assured novel of survival in harsh conditions.

4/5

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REVIEW: The Solar War by John French

For those of us who’ve been long term fans of the Horus Heresy series, we’ve been waiting for the narrative to get to the climactic Siege of Terra for a long time. However, before the onrushing horde of the Warmaster Horus can set foot on the throneworld, they must fight the Solar War.

As usual, if you’re not a fan of the Warhammer 40k setting and haven’t been keeping at least cursory touch with the Horus Heresy series (which racked up a 54 titles between 2006 and 2019 before moving on to the Siege of Terra) then most of what goes on here will completely mystify you. Despite notionally being the start of a new cycle, this is not a jumping on point for newbies.

The Solar War starts with the forces of the Emperor desperately preparing for the imminent arrival of the traitor armada. Primarch Rogal Dorn has spheres of defense in the outer solar system to try and bleed the Warmaster’s forces on the way in. The disgraced Sigismund is given the command of the doomed first sphere while the White Scars Jubal Khan looks to intercept any secondary assault.

Meanwhile, remembrancer Mersadie Oliton is gifted with a message for her old ally Loken and desperately tries to reach him on Terra despite being apparently targeted by both sides in The Solar War.

The outer defenses of Terra seem impregnable, so how can even the overwhelming forces of the Warmaster reach the Throneworld?

As is customary with the Horus Heresy books, even when dealing with the biggest names in the franchise, our point of view in The Solar War comes from lesser players and the key elements of this book come from Oliton, Abaddon and Admiral Su-Kassen and their viewpoints on the campaign and it’s demigod protagonists are enlightening.

The most interesting character work in The Solar War comes from Abaddon, who’s relationship with Chaos and the current state of his Mournival brothers is genuinely enthralling and complex, both in terms of the Horus Heresy saga and the current timeline of the 40k setting.

With such a vast battlefield and massive cast, John French had a serious task to keep The Solar War together and produce a coherent narrative that didn’t seem overly sprawling and he pulls it together well. From void combat to martial duels, political machinations to daemonic infiltrations, French weaves it all into a solid story. It lacks some of the personal punch that more focussed Black Library tales do, but there are moments of genuine emotion and given the context of the story, this is all about scope.

Not a jumping on point or quite a top tier Horus Heresy novel but taken as an episode in the grander saga, The Solar War is a solid effort that has me very excited for what is to come.

3 out of 5.

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REVIEW: The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Filled with intricate plotlines and political intrigue, The Bone Shard Daughter was enthralling, but still problematic. The high stakes (and high body count) drew me in; the constant switching between points of view took me out of the narrative.

Emperor Shiyen rules the Phoenix Islands through a network of constructs controlled by his bone shard magic. This magic comes at a high price to the empire’s citizens, a price that many are unhappy paying. The emperor is ostensibly using this magic to protect his people from the Alangua, an ancient enemy that most feel does not still exist. Are his motives truly altruistic, or is there something else happening beneath the surface?

There are several points of view found throughout the book. Lin’s storyline is arguably the most important. She is the daughter of the Emperor, desperate to prove her worth to her father and earn his trust. Only by discovering his secrets can she hope to someday succeed him and lead his empire. However, the more she tries to learn, the more dangerous those secrets become. The lies build up, and he has eyes everywhere. He is a dangerous man to cross, and Lin needs to find a way to survive his machinations and figure out what he is hiding. I have to say, I was absolutely stunned by where Lin’s storyline ended up. However, while Lin was technically the main character in the book, I found myself only sort-of invested in her character until about halfway through. Once her plotline got going, it raced along at a breakneck pace, but it took longer to get there than I would have liked.

There are a couple of other characters of note, but my favorite was Jovis, a smuggler turned accidental hero. I loved his storyline so very much! At the time of the book, he has spent seven long years searching for the ship that carried off his kidnapped wife. He has also managed to find himself on the wrong side of both the emperor and the Ioph Carn, a brutal crime syndicate. While trying to avoid both a bounty and assassins, he rescues a child. He does it for purely monetary reasons, but that is not what people see. It reminds me a bit of a certain hat-wearing hero of Canton…but I digress. As his reputation spreads, his legend grows. I loved watching the internal battle between Jovis’ desire to find his missing love, and his strong – if odd – moral compass. I am also incredibly curious about Jovis’ found companion and who – or what – he is.

The way the narratives eventually bled together was brilliant. Along the way, the reader is introduced to a truly fascinating world, with a history both complex and unique. The mythology was fully developed, and I felt like I had merely dipped my toes in, with much more to come.

Despite the many things I loved about The Bone Shard Daughter, I did have a couple things niggle at me. First, I did not care about Sand’s or Phalue’s storylines. At all. I was always tempted to skip the chapters told from their points of view (I never did, though). They did end up being useful in furthering the story, but I still was not a fan.

My other complaint is the way the chapters ended. Each chapter ended on a cliff hanger, whether it really needed to or not. Often, the next chapter in a particular character’s viewpoint would jump a bit ahead, not really explaining how the character got out of whatever scrape their previous chapter had ended on. It became confusing at times. I am not entirely sure why the author felt the need to end every chapter that way, but after a while I found myself sighing.

Despite my slight annoyances, I enjoyed the book. The last half ramped up quickly, and I am anxious to see what happens next. The turning point that took the book from setup to the meat of the story was brutal and unexpected. I loved it. I recommend this book to those who do not mind a slower buildup and appreciate a complicated storyline with political leanings and a fair bit of magic.

Read The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

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REVIEW: Sea of Quills by Seth Skorkowsky

Sea of Quills is the sequel to the previous novel, Mountain of Daggers, that started the adventures of Ahren the Black Raven. The Tales of the Black Raven duology is a pair of novels following a former sailor turned cat burglar in a Medieval Italian and Eastern European setting where he is the greatest thief in the world. Magic and monsters accompany more standard threats to our antihero’s quest to become richer than Crossus.

The books are an homage to the Pulpy swashbuckling adventures of the past with some Conan the Barbarian here, some Lankmar there, and a bit of Zorro thrown in. Ahren isn’t a hero to the people as he robs from the rich to give to himself, but his opponents are an all round collection of scumbags so he maintains our sympathy. The stories are a bit light on characterization but Seth Skorkowsky makes up for it by being a master of describing action.

Sea of Quills has a lot more sea-faring action than the previous volume with a focus on the fact Ahren is an accomplished sailor as well as burglar. Notably, he’s not a pirate but he’s someone who spends a lot of time treasure hunting, smuggling, and fighting onboard ships during this volume. It’s a nice change of pace from Mountain of Daggers and reminds us that Ahren got out of the miseries of sailing life to make money on land.

There’s a bit more continuity in this volume as well with the story showing our hero at the height of his career. He’s managed to establish a reputation for himself as the legendary Black Raven but all this has done is make him the target of everyone who wants to knock him down a peg. Most notably, there is the sinister Tynee who are the setting’s equivalent to the mafia. The Black Raven is making them look like amateurs and they can’t have that.

Seth Skorkowsky does a tremendous job of immitating the style of the Old Pulps, almost to a fault with Ahren remaining somewhat static in his stoic badassitude. Still, one area he triumphs over the older Pulps is the fact that the women of the volume are capable with their own motivations. Despite Ahren’s deep love of the opposite sex, none of them are willing to be with him save on their own terms and that’s a nice change of pace.

Of the stories within, I’ve got to say I preferred “Treasure of Bogen Helm” best as its a subversion of the typical treasure map tale, which takes note of the very real reason WHY you don’t bury your treasure versus spending it. I also liked the story “The Second Gift” which sets Ahren against an opponent with an insurmountable magical edge.

None of the stories are bad, though, and have a nice combination of villainous nobles, rival thieves, evil pirates, and semi-justified lawmen after Ahren this time. There’s even an homage to The Princess Bride, I believe, with a bunch of screaming eels menacing our hero. Sadly, we don’t resolve the ongoing plot of the demon baby and cult that serves as Ahren’s secondary archenemy.

In conclusion, Sea of Quills is a solid sequel to Mountain of Daggers and fans of the former will almost certainly love the latter. These books are collections of fantastic adventures with swords, magic, monsters, and scum that will make an excellent afternoon’s read for any Sword and Sorcery fan.

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REVIEW: Red Noise by John P. Murphy

If Red Noise was a mixed drink it would be four parts A Fistful of Dollars, one-part Romeo & Juliet, poured over moon rocks and shaken, not stirred. If you are a fan of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, you will enjoy this book. The correlations between A Fistful of Dollars and Red Noise are almost too heavy handed.

The protagonist is simply known as The Miner, a callout to Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name. Much like the small Mexican town of San Miguel, Station 35 is run by two opposing crime families, but instead of the Baxters and the Rojos, we have the Feeneys and the Del Rios. There is even a scene toward the beginning where the Minor blames something on her ship’s feelings, much like Eastwood says his horse doesn’t like people laughing at it.

Instead of riding into town out of the blue, the Minor finds herself at Station 35 because she is out of fuel, out of food, and in need of selling off her load of ore to make ends meet. Unfortunately, the folks at Station 35 have other plans for her. They only pay her a third of what her haul is worth, and then charge her an astronomical fee for the fuel, leaving her with no money to stock up on her six month voyage to mine the rest of her small patch of asteroids. The folks at Station 35 effectively seal their own fate by stranding her there.

This book is carried by the characters. It’s a western, set on an asteroid, but it could have been set in a medieval village, or a modern-day small mountain town. The key is the isolation, and how these people deal with the society they created.

Feeney, the head of one crime “family” used to be in charge of all the crime on the station, but his drinking and family issues got in the way of his command, and Angela del Rio took over half the station. The two heads of family are too hardheaded to get along, and now that Angela has sensed weakness in her former boss, things have come to a head.

The miner herself is tough and determined to accomplish all her goals. Yet, it seems like she questions herself and her motives constantly throughout the story. Old morals long buried seem to rise at the most inopportune moments, preventing her from ending this crime family stalemate as quickly as she is wont to.

Action in this story ebbs and flows in an almost distracted pattern. Like smoking cigarettes and tossing the butts at randomly strewn fireworks. It doesn’t take much to set off the powder keg, but after a quick burst, everything settles right back down. The minor thugs and goons that make up the lion’s share of the crime families are at each other’s throats as soon as the alcohol runs out, but they are all done fighting before the hang over sets in.

Murphy takes the overall arc of the power struggle on Station 35 and intersperses it with some excellent character exploration and development. He introduces insignificant grunts on one side or the other, and by the end of the story, you know more about them than you ever find out about the miner who is the main protagonist. I could have flipped a coin each time he introduced one of the plethora of characters in this novel to figure out if they would be dynamic or flat.

Even though I found the references to other works a bit heavy handed at times, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It is basically a western set on an artificially clean space station instead of a dusty desert village. The broken inhabitants of which drive the story based on the barest of goals that they have left given their situation. The spark of hope that is buried under all the selfish power plays lingers in the background, but the world is too dreary and depleted of fuel for it to ever catch.

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Top 5 Zombie Video Games

It’s October and that means it’s Horror Month at Grimdark Magazine. As such, we’re going to do some wonderful articles about our favorite frightful subjects. For this article, I’m going to share what are my top five favorite zombie video games.

Zombies are one of the most beloved staples of video games due to the fact that they are an easily killable enemy that, nevertheless, keeps on coming. They are without souls and can be shot without remorse, something that only a few other video game opponents (like Nazis) offer. However, that doesn’t get rid of the terrifying power of the mindless undead. Their sheer numbers and disquieting reminder that all of us are mortal will invade even the most jaded gamer’s nightmares.

To keep things fair, I’m only going to select one video game from a single franchise. That way there’s a level of diversity to my article that might otherwise just be me picking out my Top Five Favorite Resident Evil games. I’ve played all of the video games, duh, and am ranking them by a combination of playability as well as storytelling.

Dead Rising 2

The Dead Rising series is the comedic counterpart to Resident Evil and pretty much always zigs where the other zags. Resident Evil games are usually claustrophic, action-focused, and full of puzzles that tease the mind. Resident Evil also makes use of a limited number of zombies who might always be around the next corner. Dead Rising, by contrast, is a game series that is full of wide-open spaces packed to the rim with hundreds of zombies. While Resident Evil can be cheesy, Dead Rising takes that to the point of absurdity with the options for comic abuse of the undead reaching maximum ridiculousness.

I choose Dead Rising 2 as the best of the games despite how much I enjoyed the original because Chuck Greene is a more likable than Frank West. Everything he does is to protect his daughter, Katie, and get her the zombrex that prevents her from turning. While there’s plenty of fictional dads in zombie fiction, a number in this list, Chuck is still my favorite. The satire of American consumerism in the faux Las Vegas of Fortune City also works extremely well.

Dead Space

Dead Space was a tough call because I didn’t know where to rank it on my list and also whether I should put it or Dead Space 2 on it. In the end, I decided to go with the original Dead Space because it was the superior game in terms of atmosphere as well as wicked ending. In a very real way, Dead Space is “just” Resident Evil in space but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The world is extremeley well-developed with the Unitology cult as well as humanity having exhausted all of its resources in its relentless consumption. Even by the time they find the mysterious “markers”, humanity is on its last legs. It’s a depressing and claustrophobic game with some solid monsters made from the flesh of human corpses.

I think I like this game so much because the puzzles are nicely incorporated into the gameplay. Isaac Clarke isn’t playing around with keys and switches but trying to repair the ship he’s floating around in. He’s also got the very simple motivation of trying to rescue his ex-girlfriend. Not even his girlfriend, somebody who dumped him in the past. I’d rank it higher but the game is not very subtle. It’s monsters run up to you and scream like children, so they’re not that scary.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead

My saddest recommendation for Telltale’s The Walking Dead is that you should probably play the first game (maybe the second) and stop. It is a game franchise that Telltale squeezed dry as part of its attempts to stave off bankruptcy. The diminishing quality of each game until the series finished is a sad fact of life. However, it started off as something amazing and is one of the best stories I’ve ever played.

Lee is an escaped prisoner who has been convicted of murder. Lee joins up with a group of survivors holed up in a drugstore as they proceed to have a series of incredibly taxing adventures. Despite their best efforts, the ranks of the group slowly dwindle and each survivor loses a bit more of their soul as the story goes on. It’s an impressive bit of storytelling and while your choice don’t matter much, they matter enough.

Resident Evil 2 Remake

Choosing which video game to recommend out of the entire Resident Evil catalog was a tough one. Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4 were both candidates as well as the remastered version of the original game. In the end, I chose to go with the relatively recent Resident Evil 2 remake. Why? Because Resident Evil 2‘s remake is one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life.

Claire and Leon Kennedy have a fantastic adventure that combines zombies, an unkillable Jason Voorhees-esque stalker, mystery, secret agents, and mad science that all makes perfect sense. It also has excellent replay value. The zombies are also incredibly tough, more like unkillable living dead monsters than typical “shoot em in the head” zombies. I also love the additions to the story like the various costumes and noir mode.

The Last of Us

The Last of Us is an easy choice for this list. Widely considered to be the best video game of all time in many circles, it is an emotional and fascinating journey. It’s also very much a zombie game, specifically a FUNGUS zombie game. Part of this is just do to the spectacular movie-like animation and gut-wrenching storytelling. Still, it captures all of the best of The Walking Dead and mixes it with a plausible post-apocalypse society.

The Last of Us’ weakest part is its gameplay, which is mostly just a mixture of crafting, stealth, and combat. It’s not bad, though, and allows you to travel from scene to scene. The heart of the game remains Joel and Ellie, who are fantastic characters and well-acted by their VAs. The writing is top notch too.

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REVIEW: A Wizard’s Forge by A.M. Justice

A Wizard’s Forge by A.M. Justice begins with a deconstruction of your typical Young Adult fantasy heroine’s journey. Victoria of Ourtown is a bookish, shy, but enthusiastic young woman who would be an excellent addition to a girl posse consisting of herself, Belle, and Hermione. Her life is horrifyingly interrupted by the reality of slavers who take her as well as her fellow teenagers off to be sold as chattel.

Victoria finds herself in a surreal situation where she is the property of Lornk Korng, the tyrant of a powerful mining empire. Lornk takes a personal interest in slowly breaking down her resistance and attempting to make her fall in love with him. Victoria is slowly broken down by a series of psychological games that only gets interrupted by an accident transporting her from her captor.

What follows is Victoria slowly trying to rebuild her mind and transform from a shattered victim into a warrior that can seek revenge. Victoria attempts to leave behind everything she was to become Vic the Blade, a merciless killer who will torture and execute any soldier in the service of Lornk. Yet, her trauma has left deep cuts that may mean she can never escape the scars of her ordeal.

Not every fantasy story needs a lot of swearing, ultra-violence, and sex to be grimdark. This is a work that deals with an interesting and underused plot device in Stockholm Syndrome. The protagonist is kidnapped, sold into slavery, and then gaslit until she’s genuinely in love with her captor. Thankfully, she’s also in hate and manages to escape to a country without slavery. However, the scars from her condition remain with her and cannot be easily excised.

I think A Wizard’s Forge is a book that is more enjoyable in its subversions than a lot of more typical deconstructions. Victoria is the kind of heroine who should be on a thrilling adventure but is broken by it early on. Then when you think she’s going to rebuild herself into a Conan the Barbarian(ess) heroine, she reveals just how shockingly unhealthy the road of revenge is as well. All of this is before she even begins her road to becoming a wizard.

One thing I liked is that this is a fantasy science-fiction novel. Magic is real on this world as is possibly other supernatural elements, but the people of this world arrived from Earth on a starship. Victoria’s people were the last ones who knew their origin and she is considered a heretic for believing in such a ridiculous premise. Victoria’s atheism makes her situation even harder as among the few people who oppose slavery are mostly the religious that believe in something she considers to be ridiculous.

I like the supporting characters in the book and I appreciate the villain is someone who specializes in mind games rather than brute force. Lornk believes he is doing a service to win over his slave without physical threats but all he does is leave her unable to differentiate her own feelings. Her love interests can’t really comprehend the ordeal she’s gone through or why she may never be able to trust anyone ever again romantically. The perfect sort of grimdark romance, IMHO.

In conclusion, A Wizard’s Forge may not be the grittiest or most overtly dark novel I’ve read but it’s one that benefits from its subtle grimness. It is about a broken person and how their fantasy adventure has made them worse. I actually liken it to The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant in a Dragonriders of Pern-esque setting. I think this is definitely a must read if you enjoy subversiveness in your fantasy.

Read A Wizard’s Forge by A.M. Justice

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An Interview with Jason “David Wong” Pargin

Whenever I think of the absurd, the ridiculous, and the scary, one author springs to mind, and that is David Wong AKA Jason Pargin.

Jason Pargin, under the pseudonym of David Wong, was the executive editor of Cracked Magazine, a featured guest on the Cracked podcast, ran the comedy site PWOT and has authored five books, one of which has been made into a movie. Of the five books, three are apart of the John Dies at The End series, a comic horror series about two eternal slackers, and a paranormal drug called Soy Sauce. The second series, which is seeing a new release in Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick: A Novel is about the misadventures of barista turned billionaire heiress in a world where everyone is trying to kill her, and all of it is recorded. Both of the series are brutal, hilarious, and sometimes just plain insane. Jason effectively merges the ridiculous with canny characters and solid plots that keep you wanting to read more. Grimdark Magazine had the great fortune of having a chat with Jason about future projects, his writing motivation, and what the future is for John and Zoey.

BT: I read that you had never missed a deadline on any multi-year writing projects, which is remarkable. Could you tell me about your writing process and how you plan out your deadlines? 

It all starts with the terrible knowledge that if this writing thing falls through, I’m not really qualified to do anything else. I mean, sure, I have stuff like a huge whiteboard in my office where I track projects and deadlines, I have alarms on my phone to remind me what needs done, etc. But it’s the anxiety that makes me actually adhere to the schedule. I have to build the track because the train is coming and the guy driving it is drunk.

BT: What were the influences that initially inspired you to write? Was it your early writing days doing PWOT? Or before that?

I would like to tell some inspirational story about how I was born a writer, but I think I was really just born with the desire to talk to people without actually having them talk back. I suspect that if I’d just learned how to make friends, none of this would have happened.

BT: When you are writing something, you have said you have to be frank with yourself. You need to figure out what you have to drop and whom it will affect because there are only so many hours in the day. Is this the approach you have always taken with your writing first with John Dies at the End and onward to Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick?

Over time, I’ve found that one of the real secrets to career success is just being able to say “no” to the people/things that would distract you from your work. I realize that sounds depressing, because you’re imagining me telling my child I’m skipping their piano recital so I can finish my book about butt monsters, but it’s more about saying no to all of the little distractions, whether it’s social media or poker night with the gang.

If you’re serious about writing (or getting in shape, or anything, really) the first step is to draw boundaries around it and say, “This is important to me, and only emergencies will intrude.” But twenty years from now, I’ll probably write a sad book about finding better work/life balance, so what do I know?

BT: John Dies at the End’s publishing process was a little different than your other books in that it started as a web serial. You got immediate feedback from viewers. Can you tell me a bit about that?

In most US states, forcing a friend or family member to read your 150,000-word manuscript is classified as a form of assault. So getting real, honest feedback is a huge challenge for any new writer, but especially for me, as I had no educational or professional background in fiction writing and no experienced writer friends. I was just a guy working in an office.

But what I did have was a popular comedy blog and I basically posted this book there one chapter at a time over the course of a few years. That served as my novel writing school, it let me see exactly where readers were dropping off, or what parts they thought were boring or confusing. Plus, I had moderators who could delete all the death threats, so that helped.

BT: Why name the drug “Soy Sauce”?

I feel like a real author wouldn’t admit that he simply doesn’t remember, so I’ll go with “Satan told me to name it that during a seance.”

BT: Does Molly get a lot of fan mail? Because if she doesn’t, she should!

Unfortunately, the messages I get from people treating those books and characters as real tend to be much, much darker than that.

BT: I’d like to know a bit about your upcoming book, Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick. Could you tell me a bit about it?

It’s the second book starring these characters but I’m going to assume that most of the people reading this haven’t read the first one, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits  (if everyone on the internet had bought a copy, I’d be writing this from a floating mansion made of gold). That’s fine, these are independent stories and you can jump right into the second one. But let me quickly summarize the first one anyway:

It’s the near future and Zoey Ashe is a young woman living in a trailer park who finds out her father was a powerful crime boss who has just died under spectacular circumstances. As a result, she is summoned by his old crew to Tabula Ra$a, a brand new city in Utah built by douchebags and governed by no one. This city of the future is home to two emerging technologies: One is a social network that allows users to see anything at any time, via ubiquitous tiny cameras everyone willingly wears as accessories pinned to their clothes. The other technology is implants that grant the user superpowers, but not the training or common sense to use them well. The combination of the two — superpowered morons with a ready audience — is about to result in chaos.

Zoey thus finds herself working with her father’s people, a team of con artists with PSYOPS training who solve problems via a series of elaborate mind games. I won’t spoil how the first book ends other than to say Zoey apparently survives, since there’s a second book and her name is on the cover.

Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick picks up several months later, when the city is on the verge of its crazy Halloween celebration. As often happens in novels, a corpse turns up. Zoey is accused of being the killer, becoming the subject of an elaborate online conspiracy theory that quickly turns stupid and deadly, in that order.

BT: How would you classify the Zoey series? There is everything from science fiction, horror, mystery, and comedy.

I worry that it sounds pretentious to say I don’t care about what genre I’m writing, but I’ve always figured that’s the bookstore’s problem, to figure what shelf it goes on.

BT: Do you think Zoey is a hero? 

I think she honestly tries, and in this world that’s just about the best you can ask for.

BT: The novel’s title is hilarious, and I know that Zoey punches, hits, attaches a shark to, and sets her opponents dicks on fire. The shark scene was amazing, by the way. Why dicks? 

Due to what is probably a rare medical condition, my brain’s sense of humor stopped developing when I was 13. Experts believe there may be treatments but I’m making too much money off it now.

BT: Tabula Ra$a was created as a place of no rules by Zoey’s estranged father, where people can do anything and be anyone by literally having a clean slate. Do you think that a place like this could exist?

No, but the desire to find such a place is so fundamentally human that it will one day drive us to colonize the stars. The urge to just bail out of your messed-up life and start over elsewhere is undeniable, just ask any kid whose dad went out for cigarettes and never came back.

BT: The tone of Zoey is always light and funny until you start digging deeper. To me, Zoey is a philosophical look at the effects of constant digital culture and access. Especially with the bullying of Zoey. Was this a conscious choice, or did it flow out organically when you were creating the story?

I mentioned earlier that this is a universe in which tiny live-streaming cameras are absolutely everywhere, so users can sit at home and just browse this God’s-eye view of humanity. I added that partly because I wanted to explore the psychology of having to constantly be putting on a public performance every minute of the day, and partly because I’m 100% sure that exact technology will exist in the future. So I guess it’s both.

BT: You Coined the phrase “Monkeysphere” based on Dunbar’s number where a human or “monkey” could only maintain up to 150 relationships. There is a lot more to it. But I was wondering, the world seems a lot smaller in Futuristic Violence, and Fancy suits and Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick due to everyone live recording their lives. Do you think the Monkeysphere is still valid in Zoey’s future world? 

Absolutely! The article you’re referencing basically says that humans have a lot of coping mechanisms to deal with the fact that our brains can’t physically handle that many interpersonal relationships (go try to type out the names of every friend or acquaintance you have — you’ll likely wind up with way fewer than 150). Well, you definitely see all of those coping mechanisms in the Zoey books: the dehumanization of outgroups, the impulse to reduce human personalities down to just a few tribal traits, the rejection of nuance when it comes to judging everyone but ourselves. Sprawling, all-seeing social networks don’t fix those issues, they exacerbate them.

BT: Will there be more Zoey and John Dies at the End books?

I’m writing the fourth John and Dave book as we speak, it’s due for publication in 2022. I’d like to write more Zoey books but that will probably come down to whether or not anyone reads this one. Her fate is held in the cold, invisible hand of the marketplace. Same as the rest of us, I guess.

BT: Do you think that the politics of now might influence your writing in the future?

That’s probably unavoidable but I’m not a huge fan of thinly-veiled allegory, so I suspect it will be more about the general vibe of the era and not that I insert a fictional president into the story named Donovan Tramp. But more than a decade ago, John Dies at the End was referencing this swath of blue collar America that had simply been left behind by the economy, a town of abandoned factories and dying shopping centers. I suppose you can see the roots of 2020 politics already growing in that soil.

BT: You are a man of many hats. You write novels, you were an executive editor at Cracked, you are a frequent podcast guest, and are pretty active on social media. Do you approach writing differently for each of the varying spaces, or do you approach writing the same no matter who it is for? 

Well, the issue is that I really only know the one way to write, so I can’t claim there’s really an approach behind it at all. It all just kind of comes out the same way.

BT: Are you a big reader? What are you reading right now?

I read all day, every day, but I’m rarely reading the right things. If I converted all of the time I spent zombie-scrolling through Twitter into reading books, I’d be a walking library. As it is, the last great book I read is The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, a novel that effortlessly weaves in elements of the characters’ culture and the suffocating weight of economic anxiety into the supernatural horror. If you liked those elements of JDatE, here’s a chance to see an author do it way better than me.

BT: What do you have coming up in the future you can talk about?  

[image error]I have weeks of relentless promotion, during which I’ll be trying to convince people who’ve lost their jobs to COVID to spend real money on a book instead of buying food. Then I have to try to finish the aforementioned fourth book in the John Dies at the End series, the working title being John Actually Dies in This One. 

BT: Last question, and thank you for answering these! If you have dinner with three people, alive, dead or fictional? Who would they be and why? 

It’d be the real person Keanu Reeves, plus the fictional characters John Wick and Neo from The Matrix. Then I just sit back and watch them try to figure out what the fuck is happening while I eat in silence.

 

Originally published in Grimdark Magazine Issue #24

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REVIEW: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

With Rhythm of War being released on 17th November 2020, I decided that now would be a perfect time for me to do a re-read of The Stormlight Archive, which begins with The Way of Kings. As I originally read these novels before I started reviewing, this time I will jot down a few thoughts about my reading experiences. I remember having a great time reading these novels, but other than the characters and certain key events my memories are foggy at best.

In The Way of Kings, we mainly follow three characters. Kaladin, a former spearman who now bears a brand noting him as a dangerous slave. He seems to survive when all around him seem to perish. Shallan, a clever and witty young lady who is an amazing artist and wants to save her family’s reputation. Finally, Dalinar Kholin, a fifty-something-year-old Brightlord and warrior who follows the codes of honour and loyalty, and has started having mysterious visions.

There is an ongoing war against the Parshendi, caused by the assassination of King Gavilar, Dalinar’s brother, five years ago. Now, battles and skirmishes take place across the Shattered Plains and in The Way of Kings, we begin our journey into a unique and well-realised fantasy world that features deep histories, legendary armour and weapons, and sprens of many types.

I found I enjoyed The Way of Kings most when I was reading Kaladin and Dalinar’s sections. Kaladin is arguably the main character of the series, and to add depth, we are privy to flashbacks of his formative days. These tend to be well-timed and relate to current happenings. For example, we’ll witness a scene where a twelve-year-old Kaladin is helping his surgeon father, and this shows why present-day Kaladin is able to assist his fallen comrades with medical knowledge in a following segment. During these flashback moments, we begin to understand why Kaladin has ended up in his current predicament and why he has no love for lighteyes, or any men of high rank.

Dalinar’s sections are shown through the Brightlord’s eyes, but also sometimes from his son Adolin’s, and his sister-in-law’s, Navani. They are mainly current-day scenes, dealing with politics, the fact that his nephew the King fears assassination awaits him too, warfare against the Parshendi, and differences in ideals amongst the highprinces. The ideals that Dalinar holds dear are those of honour and the writings that are read to him from the old tome The Way of Kings. Since he has started listening to these words, during highstorms, he has started having visions. He doesn’t know when or where they are set, if they are real, who the messages are from, but many around him are starting to worry for the Brightlord’s sanity and stability in his role.

“Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.”

Shallan is one of the most interesting characters, yet what happens to her here, although undeniably intriguing, feels secondary, and doesn’t have the same urgency or focus as Dalinar and Kaladin’s moments. It seemed to drag occasionally and I had to stop myself from rushing it. She finds herself wanting to become the ward of the so-called heretic and scholar, thirty-four-year-old Jasnah Kholin, Dalinar’s niece. If I hadn’t read the following books and didn’t know what happens, my assessment would be that Sanderson uses The Way of Kings to set the groundwork for these two and I think they will become extremely important to the overall narrative going forwards. Through these two we are slowly introduced to Soulcasting, which you could call one of this world’s magic schemes. Another magic scheme relates to the titular Stormlight, but I won’t discuss that further as it is great to find out more about it organically. It seems that all, excluding one character, seem to know nothing about this latter, thought mythical sort of magic, and it gives the wielders some incredible powers and capabilities.

Sanderson has filled The Way of Kings with many varied and memorable characters. In addition to the main players already stated, notable standout mentions go to the members of Bridge Four who go on an amazing transformation during this book. These include Rock, Sigzil, Moash, and Teft. Another player I should mention is the mysterious and riddle-weaving Wit. I’m not an expert of Sanderson’s Cosmere, but Wit may be a character that transcends some of the author’s series. He has an extremely memorable scene with Kaladin and a flute-like instrument, and I’m extremely intrigued to see what part he will play in the overall story arc of The Stormlight Archive.

“This man was extremely talented. The odd melody he played was alien, almost unreal, like something from another place and time. It echoed down the chasm and came back; it almost sounded like the man was playing a duet with himself.”

I went into my re-read of The Way of Kings with The Stormlight Archive firmly planted in my top-five fantasy series of all time. The re-read hasn’t diminished my experience at all. There is truly something enchanting, majestic, and magical about this series. My only minor negatives are that this is a true doorstopper of a read at 1118 pages, there seemed too many very similar Kaladin flashback moments, some of Shallan’s sections dragged, and I seemed to rush the interludes (apart from Szeth’s). With reference to the latter, I believe I actually skipped the interludes on my first read to get back to what I considered as the real meat of the tale, so my reading habits have improved slightly. The ending is phenomenal, featuring a betrayal and a huge battle, excellent showdowns, and a meeting and resolutions that I desired and were extremely well-realised.

“At times, it seems to me that to be human is to want that which we cannot have. For some, this is power. For me, it is peace.”

Although I may unfairly only be rating this 9/10, there is something truly spectacular on show here. I believe that in fifty years time, The Stormlight Archive will be revered and alongside Malazan Book of the Fallen, A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Realm of the Elderlings, it will be used to show what the finest authors in this generation of fantasy when at the very top of their game could achieve. This series is always one of my first recommendations for someone wanting to try adult fantasy too so if you haven’t started this series yet, now is a perfect time.

Read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

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