Adrian Collins's Blog, page 58

REVIEW: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

In Sarah Gailey’s River of Teeth a crew of badarses try to clean out an artificial marshland packed to the shores with thousands of wild hippos for a big fat pay check. For the benefit of the reader, this is not a simple a story as that sounds, and the characters and their histories and goals turn this into a bloody quagmire of twists and turns, betrayals and bloody deaths–and a little bit of romance on the side.

Our protagonist in River of Teeth, Hounds Tooth, has a job from the government with enough money as pay that he can go buy a parcel of marshland for he and his hippo and settle down. He’s not doing it for government, or the people. He is kind of doing it for the money. And he is definitely doing it for the revenge. And he’ll be doing it astride a 3,000 pound hippo.

To complete his mission, Hounds Tooth needs a crew. Much like Daniel Polansky’s The Builders, River of Teeth has an absolutely lovable cast of ne’er do wells brought together to embark on a caper (operation). I don’t know why I love it when authors write about a group of badarses who hurt people put together to achieve a thing that might kill them and / or a bunch of other people, and there are traitors and scores to be settled amongst them (let alone with their enemies), but it is my sweet spot at the moment. In this crew we have a demo expert, a French conwoman, the most dangerous killer to have ever lived (who is also pregnant), and the fastest gun in the land. All with their own hippos and problems and agendas.

Gailey packs a lot into River of Teeth. On top of a brilliant cast and a barnstorming storyline, the author has created an alternate history in the deep south of the US–a world where hippos were brought into the States as a food source (which, according to the author’s foreward, was very nearly an actual thing at one point!). Some went feral, took over a major swamp owned by a nasty piece of work named Travers who used them as garbage disposal for those who needed removing from his floating casinos, bred like crazy for a few generations, and created an excellent ongoing big bad for our story to play out against.

This is my second time reading River of Teeth, and I absolutely loved it. There is plenty to love here for the grimdark fan: morally grey characters, conflicting points of view, plenty of personal flaws on display, competing goals and some serious scores to settle–and that’s just amongst the crew we follow through the story. River of Teeth is just bloody brilliant reading; just an awesome way to spend a few hours in the imagination of a magnificent fantasy story teller.

Read River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

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REVIEW: The Storm Beneath the World by Michael R. Fletcher

In Michael R. Fletcher‘s The Storm Beneath the World we get another full-swing-warhammer-to-the-chest of Fletcher’s wild imagination. In a world made up of insect queendoms living and warring on the backs of million-year-old creature-countries floating above the firestorm below, where to discover one has magical powers is to become a dangerous corrupt and rejected from society no matter the station you were born in to, we are treated to a wild ride through the eyes of a diverse group of ashkaro (insect characters) as they discover their world may come to an end amongst the chaos of their own changing lives.

In The Storm Beneath the World five-name bright Ahk is the future of the hive. There are responsibilities awaiting her, though while all of her mentors and betters keep telling her that, she’s not sure what they actually are. The one-name dull Joh–whose father is an alcoholic and a drug addic–is the bottom of the barrel of society. He constantly fears the beatings from his father, and then one night, his father doesn’t come home. Wex is about as well off as a dull-carapaced female can be through her family’s job at the brickworks. One day she starts seeing gaps in people’s defences–their weaknesses–and discovers her corrupt power. Shan the royal nephew is a waste of space. He preens and polishes his carapace, looks pretty, and doesn’t achieve much else; as a male, his best hope is to find a powerful, dangerous female to marry who is worthy of his five-name station. When he burns a female who was trying to kill him to ashes, however, his life is turned upside down.

Fletcher uses this upper, lower, and middle class cast as a way to tell an excellent story from a range of perspectives, with his characters born into their station but thrown from their normal lives collectively and into danger. These starting points help showcase their different life problems, and the way those problems change when your station no longer matters, or how you can use that old station as a tactic when needed (noting that their stations are often first judged by how shiny their shell / carapace is). As always, one of my favourite parts of Fletcher’s writing is the way he writes situational perspective between point-of-view characters. I love the way he uses perspective to sometimes about-face the story you think is coming for an awesome twist, and other times just feed you a laugh-out-loud line. Oftentimes, it’s both, and it’s a big part of the reason I will keep picking up whatever he publishes.

As it’s a Fletcher book, we also need to talk about the magic system. One of the things I love in his works is that there is always a brutal cost to magic. In Beyond Redemption it was madness, and again in this book we see that the cost is a form of madness—though not a delusion of grandeur so much as a forgetfulness to live as the addiction of one’s magic makes them forget to eat and sleep as they are lost to the lure. The pleasure reaction to using magic–which drives the addiction to magic in much the same way a drug does–also drives use of magic, and therefore its use becomes an ongoing balance of needing to survive versus the shortening of your life as either society spikes your brain or you lose yourself to the lure.

Fletcher also plays with gender norms in fiction, with the use of the insect world for characters flipping the script with females being the stronger, faster, more aggressive warrior caste, and the males being mostly relegated to either dumb labour or pretty trophies. There are plenty of nods throughout to reverse-fridging and other tropes female characters have been historically subjected to for the creation of impetus of their male characters, and I quite enjoyed this reversal aspect of it.

The Storm Beneath the World is a thoroughly enjoyable book that grimdark fantasy fans should get a huge kick out of. The perspective play is on point, the magic system is in turns wildly inventive and incredibly brutal, and the world Fletcher has created is just plain old freaking awesome. Mash them together and you have story worth sinking your mandibles in to.

Read The Storm Beneath the World by Michael R. Fletcher

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The 2024 short fiction submission window is open!

Last Updated on March 2, 2024

The 2024 Grimdark Magazine open window for short fiction is here! You have just under two weeks to get your short fiction submitted to our team to review for placement in one of our 2024/25 issues.

THE 2024 GRIMDARK MAGAZINE OPEN WINDOW

Our submissions email address will be open for two weeks until 23:59 14th March. We are looking for short stories of up to 4,000 words for original fiction, and up to 12,000 words for reprints. Anything submitted over the word limit, or outside of the open window timeframes will be auto-rejected.

We will be looking for grimdark fantasy, as well as the darker grittier side of sci-fantasy and science fiction. We are also after horror in either of those aforementioned settings (eg. with a fantastical or SF aspect that’s key to the story), through a grimdark lens. We encourage diverse authors and those from underrepresented backgrounds to submit stories.

Contemporary settings will be a very hard sell. We do not want pornographic scenes, rape scenes, or tortureporn.

We leave the rest up to you, and no further direction will be provided.

We will expect to purchase between 2-4 original pieces of fiction, and a similar amount of reprints.

WHAT DO WE DEFINE AS GRIMDARK?

A grim story told in a dark world by a morally grey protagonist.

SUBMISSION AND TIMELINES

Submissions will be in Word format via email. Depending on the volume of submissions, we estimate that all acquisition decisions will be made before the end of July 2024.

Our team may or may not provide feedback on stories.

STATEMENT ON AI

Let’s be absolutely clear about this: we do not want stories created in part or in full by AI tools. We will be using an AI checker, as well as contracting to that effect.

Grimdark Magazine is a people business. Our cover art, editing, fiction, articles, interviews, reviews, videos, branding, design, etc, is all done by people, and we’d like to keep it that way.

It is 100% your choice whether you use AI in writing your fiction. If that’s your process and happy place, then do your thing. Just please don’t send it to us. We don’t want to purchase it or promote it through the platform we’ve spent the better part of a decade building with people who create from the ground up.

RIGHTS AND RATES

We will continue to purchase at our current rate of AUD0.07 a word up to the word limit in exchange for exclusive worldwide English rights for one year as of publication, and non-exclusive thereafter. The reprint rate will remain at AUD0.01 a word up to the word limit for non-exclusive rights.

Submitting your story

Please email your story with your bio to submissions@grimdarkmagazine.com

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REVIEW: Prince of the City by Keith Herber

Prince of the City by Keith Herber is both a prequel as well as sequel to the book Dark Prince by the same author. It is one of the early Vampire: The Masquerade novels that is set in the World of Darkness where supernatural entities live among us, hiding their existence so they can prey upon us better. Dark Prince was a fantastic novel with a hard gritty street-crime edge and a loathsome protagonist that, nevertheless, manages to undergo serious character development. It introduced the character of Vannevar Thomas, and I was interested in seeing where this book would take him as Prince of the City stars said supporting character.

Prince of the City is a very different book from Dark Prince despite so many crossover characters and including Vannevar’s perception of the events in the latter. It’s a credit to Keith Herber that he’s so dramatically able to shift his style. If I had to compare it to any other book, I’d say it’s most similar to Interview with a Vampire as it’s essentially a centuries-long biography of Vannevar from his days as a Revolutionary War soldier embraced by his deranged uncle to his rise to power as one of the early residents of San Fransisco.

One of the first things to note is that Vannevar Thomas is a far more likeable protagonist than Sullivan. He’s a vampire and feeds off the living but all indications are he’s about as nice a person as you can probably be and still survive in Kindred politics. He’s a progressive minded fellow that rescues a black man from being lynched (making him his ghoul), supports California joining the Union during the Civil War, and shows unexpected mercy that occasionally pays off. This makes him far easier to root for but does take away some of the book’s edge. Really, the worst thing that Vannevar does is turn a blind eye to all of his much-much nastier fellows’ doings.

Keith Herbert obviously did a lot of history of San Fransisco and the book is a decent travelogue of the city through its various changes across multiple centuries. We follow the city from its days as part of the Wild West and Gold Rush to its transformation into an organized city as well as its ultimate fate as a counter-culture mecca. Vannevar trying to figure out what the hell hippies are saying when tracking down his LSD-blood drinking child, Margaret, is one of the rare humorous parts of the story.

Keith Herber really “gets” the early Vampire: The Masquerade handling of Kindred as Prince of the City is filled with dozens of unique vampires interacting off one another. The politics in the city frequently change and we often get characters who are fully realized, only for them to die or be replaced within a few chapters. A deranged sea captain Malkavian that rules the docks and frustrates Vannevar? Dies in the great earthquake.

A union leader Brujah that has ties to the Inner Circle of the Camarilla? Executed along with a previous prince. Vannevar’s archenemy for a century? Shuffled off after an opportunity to kill him pays off. There’s no cannon fodder and the colorful personalities illustrate both how long Vannevar has been at this and the kind of unique weirdos vampirism creates. Undead politics are a dangerous business, and we watch Vannevar manage to weather them better than most across his long-long unlife.

If I have any complaints about Prince of the City, it does go for “fridging” as a means of giving Vannevar emotional pain. One of Vannevar’s love interests across the centuries suffers a horrific assault that leaves her insane, another dies horribly during a riot in Chinatown, and a third, well, almost rather comically dies when they run out into the sun while high as a kite. Remember kids, drugs are bad. Still, this is a really solid book and probably the second best of the Vampire: The Masquerade line.

Read Prince of the City by Keith Herber

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REVIEW: Gyeongseong Creature

Continuing my obsession with South Korean silver screen productions, I recently watched Gyeongseong Creature from Netflix, a retelling of late WW2 Japanese occupation of South Korea and the horrific actions of Unit 731. Starring Park Seo-jun (Parasite), Han So-hee (My Name), Claudia Kim (Marco Polo), and Choi Young-joon (Bloodhounds), Gyeongseong Creature is an action and emotion-packed story about generational trauma that mixes WW2 history with monster horror.

In Gyeongseong Creature, Jang Tae-sang is the wealthiest man in Gyeongseong, and manages The House of Golden Treasure–a very illustrious pawn shop–in occupied South Korea. he can find anything and anyone, for a price, and remains ambivalent to the Japanese occupation, refusing to take any part in his childhood friend Kwon Jun-taek’s rebel force’s actions to take back Gyeongseong. Yoon Chae-ok and her father are sleuths, earning their living the last ten years finding people, all while searching for her missing mother. A lead on her mother has brought them to Gyeongseong, and to Ongseong Hospital, and to the horrors that Japanese Unit 731 are creating in its depths.

What writer Kang Eun-kyung and director Chung Dong-yoon have done really well in Gyeongseong Creature is merge the horrors of WW2’s worst occupations, the trauma those occupations brought on the people, and a believable horror science concept. Not too dissimilar to the themes you would find in a show about German-occupied Belgium or Netherlands, Gyeongseong Creature really focusses on the indomitable spirit of run-of-the-mill people amongst the horrors of some of the worst conflicts in human history. And while, in human history, the horrors are almost always people, in this show the horrors are created by the villains of modern history and are very much monstrous.

While I’ve mentioned in previous reviews of Squid Game and All of Us are Dead that South Korean film acting approaches vary quite significantly from the Western ones I grew up with, with what I would view as serious scenery chewing being enjoyed and respected in their local markets, it landed quite well in Gyeongseong Creature, for me. It made scenes have more significant weight, where with the WW2 backdrop and historical trauma in play, the actors showcasing that pain meant something. Park Seo-jun delivers his part as the affluent, cool, and very aloof character at first, who both changes as a person and in the eyes of the viewer as the show reveals the plot, really well. That cool, nonchalant character is definitely a character trope in South Korean film that I am growing to enjoy more and more. Han So-hee’s badarse sleuth character is also delivered well. She can fight, she doesn’t put up with Jang Tae-sang’s bullshit, and she is driven to find her mother to a maniacal degree. Her intense, full on, delivery of this character makes her my favourite in the show. I also loved the supporting cast, especially Kwon Jun-taek and the staff at the House of Golden Treasure.

These characters, and many of the other supporting characters, also deliver plenty of grey morality that I think grimdark fans will enjoy. They ask questions about what you would do under torture. Who would you betray and could you be forgiven for that betrayal in the context of history? What you would do if you were a soldier in an invading force? If you were wealthy, would you risk it all to help people less fortunate, or would you let them be ground down under the occupier? As the obvious and to-be-revealed villains of the story are generally quite one-dimensional, it’s these supporting cast characters that really deliver what our fans are after.

There were definitely also a bunch of scenes towards the end where I was ripping my hair out and shouting at the TV with frustration at some of the monster actions (not the character’s, funnily enough). The creature’s powers and fighting moves are well documented throughout the episodes, but as the stakes get higher and the bodycount makes you wonder if the hospital has sucked in all the Japanese soldiers in the Asia Pacific region, the creature seems to go from lightning fast to molasses slow when you need a main character to survive. It then forgets some of its most powerful moves when you need the Japanese forces who couldn’t stop it previously, to stop it for a moment to further the story. Sometimes, I swear, I heard the spirits of a thousand Star Wars stormtroopers shouting out, “You see!? It isn’t just us!”

I would highly recommend fans of Western WW2 and horror crossovers use Gyeongseong Creature as a means to expand your horizons. We aren’t really taught much about the broader Asia scope of WW2, but some of the worst horrors of WW2 were committed in the unrelenting heat and rain, and brutal winters (in the north), of Asia (eg. the Japanese killed 20 million people during WW2 in China). War history or horror fan, definitely check out Gyeongseong Creature.

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Exclusive excerpt of Tomorrow’s Children by Daniel Polansky

Last Updated on February 29, 2024

Every now and then, we get to do something really cool. Today, you get to join us in checking out some of Daniel Polansky’s February 27th, 2024 release from Angry Robot Books, Tomorrow’s Children.

In our review, we talked about how the book has a steep learning curve for the voice in the first quarter, and definitely rewarded the reader who could focus and read for big chunks of time. It has Polansky’s trademark author stamp on it, which is just bloody brilliant, so if you loved The Builders, Those Above, and Straight Razor Cure, then you know you need this in your life.

Full of Polansky’s trademark snark and character bitterness and snappy dialogue, with excellent twists and turns and imagination in spades, Tomorrow’s Children is well worth the read.

Without further ado, let’s get you into the good stuff.

Excerpt of Tomorrow’s Children by Daniel Polansky

A While back …Hem and the Serpent

Hem followed the blood trail to a den on the banks of the Huddy and to half a dozen newborn pups. One look and you could see why you bred dogs for meat but you caught them for war. Savage, howling mutts with big paws – they’d go for fifty a head in Midtown, but first he had to kill their mother.

“Go quiet, girl,” said Hem. The bitch had left a leg in his snare trap five blocks back, but still she blocked the burrow with her body and snapped furiously at his approach. “Go easy.” Hem picked up a rusted pipe in case she tried to charge but planned on waiting until she bled out. “Dim comes for all of us.”

The weeds in Inwood Hill Park rose over Hem’s head, and high above both, the Henry Hudson Parkway sat still and silent. Inwood was as barren a spot as could be found on the Island, abandoned for generations, fallow since the funk. Hem’s father had been a hunter. His whole life he had lived off the things what lived off men, hunting cat and dog, hunting wild pigeon and sewer snake, and even he didn’t fancy being so far from civilization. But lately, with every Bubba and Lamont thinking they were hunters, a man had to range wide to have a hope of profit.

And look at how his audacity was rewarded! Six pups, plus what he’d fetch for the mother’s skin, as rich a catch as he’d ever bagged, excluding an alligator he had once clubbed to death what had gotten lost topside.

The bitch growled, the pups yelped, Hem shifted back a step. “Lay those cares down now, girl,” he said. “There’s none carry ’em forever.”

Hem took a quick gander at the wall of gray which floated a few hundred feet out onto the Huddy. Downtown, the funk seemed certain, a smeary dome splitting the sky and the towers in two, separating the Island from the World-Writ-Large; but by the coasts, and this far north especially, it had a way of moving faster than you’d think possible. Stare down at your shoes and look back up to find it next door, shapes in the

firmament like, like, like–

Hem dodged back. “Clever thing,” he said. “Almost caught me napping!”

The bitch was a fighter, no doubt, and her pups would be the same, but that last lunge had exhausted her. She dropped over her injured limb, eyes going dark. Hem raised his pipe above her skull…

…and then stopped stiff and stared off at the water.

Hem was a brave man. He had hunted beneath the Hi Line, and once chased a succulent-seeming Pekinese to the very borders of ruined TriBeCa. The knife on his left hip was for skinning, but the knife on his right hip was wide and wavy, a man-killer, and they had both known work. A brave man, but watching it emerge from the funk and beach itself on the shoreline, oblong and black like a necrotic phallus, Hem’s eyes went wide and his pants turned damp.

“Hell and High Towers!” he screamed, sprinting off east. The bitch died just then, and so it was only her pups left to bear howling witness to the end of the end of the world.

Dimtime Last…The Death of Don DeAndreThe Kid Makes His Appearance

He came in as the bright faded through the windows overlooking Mulberry. Nothing special going on in the clubhouse, and most of the I’s were out on business, clique or personal. Krill and Hammet were smoking flower below the mural of the old fathers done up on the lobby walls – the Scarred One, the Father and the Son and the Father as Son, so on and so forth. They weren’t guarding the place – that was Silo’s job – just hanging around, but in practice these amounted to much the same thing.

“I’m here to see your man,” he said. He was a kid. He had high cheek bones and bright eyes. His hair was red coxcomb. His pants were very tight and his jacket hung loose and he wasn’t wearing a cutter. If he was eighteen, he was eighty.

Krill licked shut the seam on his smoke. Hammet farted.

“You’re here to see who?”

“Your man.”

“Somebody in here rutting you?” Krill asked.

“Not my man,” said the kid. “Your man.”

“You mean the Don?” Krill asked.

“Don DeAndre is the man,” Hammet said.

“He’s not my man,” said the kid.

“Won’t be seeing no man,” said Silo from his stool by the elevator. There weren’t many cliques with enough juice to keep the lights on, let alone power a lift, but the I’s weren’t just any clique; they were the I’s. For that matter, there weren’t many cliques could afford boom, but damn if Silo didn’t have two in the scattergun on his lap. “Out with you.”

“This is Mulberry and Broome, right?” asked the kid.

“Yeah.”

“That makes you the I’s?”

“The one and only,” said Hammet.

“The Eternal I’s,” said Krill, “our thing never dies.”

“That’s a grand ambition,” said the kid.

Two quick steps and Hammet loomed over him. Krill set his joint behind his ear and pulled his hatchet from where he had stuck it into the wall and joined his partner beside the new arrival.

“You got a mouth on you,” said Krill.

“Thanks! It was my mother’s.”

“You been huffing funk?’ asked Hammet.

“Not a wisp,” said the kid.

“What do you want?”

“Like I said, I’ve got a meeting with the Don.”

“The Don don’t have time to waste with every scab off the street.”

“I’m sure we have a meeting now,” said the kid, seeming perplexed. “I even made a note–”

He was reaching into his jacket when Krill slapped him and Hammet pinned his wrist against his back. Just that quick and easy; the boy didn’t even put up a fight.

“Move, and I’ll break your arm,” said Hammet.

“What you got in there?” asked Krill.

The kid sagged helplessly. “Just getting my appointment book.”

“Mutt-rutting fool,” said Silo. “What was he going for?”

Krill reached into the kid’s jacket and came back out with aslender black book. Opening to its ribbon, he frowned, puzzled,then bent it back so Hammet could see…

* * *

The front windows erupted, flecks of glass scattering. Hammet looked down to discover a knife in his chest which had not previously been there. He sat down on the floor.

The window had been busted by a smiling killer wearing spiked red leathers and enough steel to arm a mob, and Krill went at him screaming. From his vantage point, Hammet couldn’t see much of what happened, just this guy in red dancing a bit and then Krill had joined Hammet on the floor. I’s came streaming in, Talon and Giuseppe and Alto the Tall and a bunch of others, armed and furious, but before they could turn the tide an explosion echoed from the doorway, a billow of black smoke dissipating to reveal a strange cannon carried by a fierce-looking woman.

“Monster!” Hammet screamed, for surely this could only be a funk-born familiar of the leering child-devil who had knifed him. Hammet had lost a lot of blood by this point.

“Demon!”

“He’s got your number, Chisel,” said the kid.

“Only in temperament,” said Chisel, sending a second shot through Alto the Tall.

Things went on like that for a while, and then, between the boom and the man in red’s cutters, suddenly there weren’t no I’s left, Silo and Talon and Giuseppe and all therest strewn about the lobby like the toys of a spoiled Uptown child.

“Did you see that entrance?” asked the man in red. “What timing! What dash!”

The kid retrieved his journal from where Krill had dropped it. “Yes, Ael, it was magnificent. Where’s Hope?”

“Outside flirting with a junk seller,” said Chisel.

“It’s not just enough to do it; you gotta do it pretty,” said Ael, cleaning his cutters.

Hammet supposed Ael was talking to himself until a flash of color streaked in through the windows and began to squawk agreement: “Do it pretty! Do it pretty!”

“Bacon and Bliss,” Hammet said, “a hypebird!”

“Sweet, right?” asked Ael.

Chisel made her way to the lift, and when the up button didn’t respond she pried open the control box and began to splice together its nest of wires.

The kid opened the lobby door for a short, pretty girl his bare senior in age, caramel skin and very black hair. She wrinkled a button nose. “I hate the smell of boom,” said Hope.

“It was underhanded, that last throw!” Ael told his hypebird. “And I had to draw it from my offside!”

“Fast as lightning!” the hypebird agreed.

The lift opened, and they all filed in.

“Wait!” yelled Hammet, rapidly exsanguinating on the floor. “Wait!”

“Yeah?” asked the kid, popping his head out of the elevator.

“Who are you?” asked Hammet with his last words.

“I’m the Kid,” said the Kid.

A Brief Ascent

It was cramped inside the lift, but it got better after Ael tore out a roof pane and hoisted himself topside.

“You got him?” asked the Kid.

“I had him from three blocks out.” Hope took a tin from her pocket, pulled out a battered wad of pink and started to chew. “I told you; I could’ve taken care of this without leaving the café.”

“But then we’d never have gotten to share this experience,” said the Kid.

“I’d have survived,” said Chisel, reloading one chamber on her weapon and spinning to the next.

“You ready up there, Ael?” asked the Kid.

The hypebird fluttered back down and squawked, “Born ready!”

“Why did you buy him that thing?” Chisel asked.

“It keeps him entertained,” said the Kid.

“Oh, I hear you, bald man,” said Hope. She was not talking to Chisel or the Kid or the hypebird or anyone else in the elevator. “You’re no mystery to Hope. Hope got the scuttle on you, bald man. Hope gonna make a meal out your brain.”

“How long?” asked the Kid.

Chisel undid the clasp on a fat brass chronometer that hung from her belt. “Ninety tics.”

The Kid counted thirty off silently, and then he said, “Go.”

“Quit worrying,” said Hope, crossing her arms against her chest and popping her gum. “I got this bagged like a pecker in a whorehouse.”

So High As You’d Care to Be…

Once upon a time, from Bowery to Centre Street and from Canal up to Broome, there had lived a race of giants, warrior-kings what reigned supreme across Downtown. Long ages since they had passed, since before even the funk had come, but still their descendants held proud sway. Don DeAndre was a true child of the I’s – a small, fierce, dark man, wise in counsel, terrible in war. From his office on the eighth floor, he awaited the assault untrembling.

“The Honey Swallowers?” Don DeAndre speculated.

“Nah,” said the Button Man, Don’s bodyguard and the I’s champion. “You know how those fanatics are. They’d have sent a trumpeter and set a challenge.”

Don DeAndre grunted. “How many?”

“Four,” the confessor said. “No, three.”

“Which is it?”

“Three,” said the confessor.

“You sure?”

The confessor drew his fur cape tight over his shoulders. “Unequivocally.”

Don DeAndre grunted. Don DeAndre did not like the confessor – his head like a pigeon egg, his smarm, his power to control the minds of others. Most especially, Don DeAndre did not like the hundred in bonds he paid weekly to enjoy the confessor’s presence. Don DeAndre did pay the confessor, of course. Everyone who was anyone kept one on retainer – an expensive armistice, but it beat the alternative, and just then Don DeAndre felt happy for the back-up.

A guard opened the office door. “They’re coming up the elevator.”

“We got people on the stairs?” asked the Button Man.

“We got people on the stairs.”

“The elevator might be a trick,” said the Button Man.

“I just said we got people on the stairs.”

“Say it again,” said Don DeAndre.

“Again,” said the guard.

“You tell the boys anyone got boom is free to use it,” said the Don. “I won’t be docking wages for loose fingers.”

“Got it,” said the guard.

There were twenty-two floors in the I’s headquarters – at least, there were that many buttons on the elevator – but Don DeAndre kept his office on the eighth floor. The I’s were heavy hitters, sitting members of the Council since your momma was in bloomers, and few among them had gone any higher. Once, on a dare the Button Man had climbed all the way to the twelfth, but even he wasn’t mad enough to visit the false thirteenth, not with the funk hovering close overhead.

“Could be the Widow Makers,” said Don DeAndre, “or the Anarchs.”

“Could be a lot of people,” said the Button Man. He had a chest like a keg of house brew and carried an axe twice as large as any of his soldiers’. “We’ll keep one alive to tell us.”

“I assure you, whomever it is will be spilling their secrets soon enough,” said the confessor. “For a graduate of the Cloister like myself, it’s nothing to make a man offer up his innermost confidences. Such invaluable assistance, I might add, is impossible to put a price on, although after this we might well need to reneg–”

He began screaming then, seamlessly between syllables, then dropped to his knees and shoved his fingers into his face, two through his sinuses and a thumb in the white glob of his eyes, howling louder and louder until the Button Man severed his neck, a quick spurt of red and the confessor’s head rebounded off the wall.

“That was a lot of money wasted,” said the Don, but he didn’t have time to say anything else; one of their boom echoed from up front, and then a boom that wasn’t theirs, and then a boom that was louder than either – much louder. So loud that it shattered the windows and dropped glass onto Broome Street. The door opened to reveal a scene of bloody devastation only partly obscured by a wave of smoke, the ceiling wrecked from explosives, the I’s reduced to component parts. The presumable architect of said destruction slipped in triumphantly, a big man in leathers twice stained red.

“Hiya!” said Ael. “I guess you must be the Button Man! I’m Ael! You ain’t heard of me yet, but you would have.”

The hypebird was swift in beside him. “Fight to the finish!” it crowed. “Fight to the death!”

A trickle of red leaked out of the Button Man’s ear. He had dropped his axe when the boom erupted, but he picked it up slowly. “Take the back lift to the basement,” he said.

“We go together,” answered Don DeAndre, drawing a long knife from his belt.

The Button Man turned one thick hand on Don DeAndre’s shoulder and shoved him towards the back door. “Do it now!” he bellowed. “So long as you survive, we survive! The I’s are eternal! Our thing never dies!”

They looked at each other. There wasn’t enough time to say everything that needed to be said, but some portion of it, at least, was said with that look. Don DeAndre turned and bolted. The Button Man watched him leave for a stricken instant, and

then turned to face Ael.

“About that axe,” Ael remarked, apparently indifferent to Don DeAndre’s disappearance, “it’s the wrong tool for the circumstance. Point of a thing like that is its reach, and how much use is that indoors? Plus, it’s slow to get going. Easy way would be to do you quick-quick, get ahead before you can even put that thing into play. Or drop a knife in your side and run you around a while. You favor your left foot, yeah? Yeah.” Ael carried two cutters and a hand hatchet and a bunch of sharp things to toss, not to mention a sling band wrapped around his forearm, a set of spiked knuckles, and a chain which swung from his waist, six and a half feet of bristling scrap steel. From off his back, he loosed a club with barbed wire curly-cued round the business end and took a quick practice swing.

“What about the knife?” asked the Button Man.

“Whoever got great doing things easy?”

…And Still a Bit Higher

Don DeAndre hit the button to call the service elevator, then turned to face whatever was coming. From back inside his office, the Button Man screamed and then stop screaming. Don DeAndre’s hand closed white around the hilt of his knife. He’d be avenged. They’d lost a lot of good men, but not all of them; there were plenty of I’s left to rally. In the basement far below, the ancient machinery whirred into motion, the lift rising, third floor, fourth. He was the Don, Don DeAndre reminded himself, heir to Vito and to blessed Lucky himself. Sixth floor, seventh. Revenge is best eaten as a leftover, or so the proverb went, and the Don would savor his. The door opened. He backed into it and pushed the $ button. The door closed, the elevator descended. First thing would be to set up another headquarters, get the word out to the rest of his brothers. So long as the Don was alive, they could still regroup. And when the time came, they would pay back whoever had done this a hundredfold, a thousand, a hundred-thousand-fold. A moment, now, and he’d be in the basement and out to freedom, the first step in a savage saga of violence which would echo across the Island for generations – retribution so terrible as to become a byword from the East to the Huddy, something to curse by, something to frighten children, something to–

“Hell and High Towers,” Don DeAndre gasped suddenly, “I’m going up.”

Up! Up, up, up towards the funk! Don DeAndre tossed himself against the walls like a maddened animal, but the elevator rose indifferent, to the ninth floor, then the tenth. The Don thought to use the knife, but by that point he couldn’t make his hands move. By the eleventh floor Don DeAndre’s throat was raw from screaming and still it rose, to the twelfth floor and then the terrible thirteenth!

Silence.

Behind Door Number One

Back down on the eighth, Chisel was hunched over the lift’s control box. “Are you sure this is wise?”

“Entirely,” said the Kid, lighting a cigarette.

“Why not leave him up there?”

“Because we need to use the elevator.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” said the Kid.

“The big ones are never as good as you’d hope,” Ael told his hypebird, “‘cause it’s speed, you see, it’s all speed.”

“Gotta be quick!” the hypebird agreed.

“Still, I’d have hoped he’d have lasted a little bit longer. Hardly worth the trip downtown.” Ael began to shadow-box, a flurry of jabs and a quick hook. “That wasn’t half bad with the knife, Kid. You’ve got the makings of a pretty good killer.”

“Your opinion means the Island to me.”

“You’ve got speed, which, as I said, is the most important thing. Nothing like me, of course, but then…”

“Nothing like you,” the Kid agreed.

“Nothing like you!” the bird repeated, at that point a full quorum.

Hope came out of the Don’s office feasting on a cud of bubblegum, her fingers garnished with gold. “You believe I found all of these in one drawer? How many rings does a man really need?”

The elevator began its descent.

“Ael,” the Kid said.

“Remember that throw I made downstairs?” Ael asked his bird.

“Cleanest toss I ever saw!”

“Ael,” the Kid snapped, “stop talking to the bird and get over here. Chisel, keep your cannon ready; and Hope, get behind Ael.”

“All right, all right,” Ael said, unsheathing his matched pair of cutters. “Maybe there’s still time for this to get interesting.”

Generally, a bath in the funk only means an inconceivably painful death. The unlikely alternative is much worse, and the Kid and his gang awaited it in nervous anticipation. Tics ticked past. Ael flourished his weapons. Chisel cocked back the hammer on her cannon. Ash grew along the Kid’s cigarette. Hope’s bubble swelled.

The doors opened.

Pop! went Hope’s bubble.

“Shame,” Ael said.

“You’d have had him easy,” said the hypebird.

There was nothing recognizably human in the elevator. Though if you were to take the time to look, you might have an unstrung inch of intestine or perhaps a stray ear lobe.

“Gross,” said Hope. “I’m taking the stairs.”

“Hope,” the Kid snapped.

They stuffed themselves into the lift, all scowling except for Ael, who did not seem to mind the gore. His hypebird alighted on his shoulder. Hope spat her gum through the closing doors.

“Classy,” said Chisel.

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REVIEW: The Ruptured Sky by Jessica A. McMinn

Filled with morally grey characters, rich yet mystifying lore, and thrilling action sequences, Jessica A. McMinn delivers everything you could ever wish for from a dark and gritty multi-POV epic fantasy in her brilliant debut The Ruptured Sky.

Runaway princess turned demon hunter Amikharlia has been hiding her mysterious magical powers for years, and all she wants in life is control over her own fate. Yet that wish quickly gets crushed when she somehow finds herself at the centre of a madman’s prophecy concerning the revival of a dead goddess and the looming threat of the ruptured sky above them. Now it’s up to Amika to decide if she’s willing to give up her fight against destiny’s chains in order to save all of civilization, even if that means potentially destroying the entire world in the process.

Now, while Amika was absolutely the kick-ass female lead of my dreams, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she was only one of the four utterly compelling POV characters that we follow in The Ruptured Sky. Every single one of these characters is just wonderfully realised and has an intriguingly mystifying backstory, which made all their different perspectives so compelling. Rei-Hai immediately captured my heart with his witty, cynical and darkly dry humour, and I desperately want to know more about him.

Slowly but surely, all of their separate storylines start to interweave in The Ruptured Sky, and I really loved seeing all kinds of complex interpersonal relationships develop and bloom along the way. Every single interaction among these characters just worked, and there were multiple scenes that hit me right in the feels because I had become so invested in these messy characters. Can someone just give all of them (but especially Kio) a hug, please?

Not only does McMinn deliver some stellar character work in The Ruptured Sky, but she simultaneously establishes an incredibly immersive world with rich and intriguing lore. The Ruptured Sky is set in a world of truly epic proportions, yet everything unfolds in the most organic way possible. It was so fun to explore these lands, the tense political landscape, and the magic system through the eyes of our diverse cast of characters, and I loved how the author very cleverly played around with in-world history and completely shattered characters’ worldviews to create some truly shocking twists and revelations.

It doesn’t take long for you to realise that this world is harsh, filled with morally ambiguous characters who are crumbling under their emotional baggage. While McMinn is absolutely not afraid to torture and traumatize her characters, I deeply appreciated that this grimdark story features zero sexual violence. Moreover, The Ruptured Sky is set in a casually queer-normative word, which allowed for some realistically messy yet beautifully authentic representations of queer love that I absolutely adored.

With this book, McMinn simply proves that a talented author doesn’t need a 500+ page chunker to tell an utterly compelling and immersive epic fantasy story. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that it’s the most groundbreaking epic fantasy out there, but it does exactly what it promises, and it does so absolutely brilliantly at that. There were admittedly a couple of plot beats that felt a bit rushed or predictable, but I was so immersed in the story that I could very easily forgive that.

In many ways, The Ruptured Sky reminded me of H.C. Newell’s Fallen Light series: both of these stories have that deliciously bingeable pacing and emotionally engaging character work that I personally often associate with YA/New Adult fantasy, yet they are extremely mature and adult in their themes. Everything about this story was just so perfectly balanced to me, and the constant looming sense of dread kept me glued to the page.

With this only being the start of an epic fantasy quartet, I am truly beyond excited to see where this series goes next. And if the insane quality of this debut novel is anything to go by, then I have a feeling McMinn is going to be an author to watch! If you’re looking for a character-driven grimdark epic fantasy with a diverse cast of morally grey yet loveable characters, rich world building, an inventive take on prophecy, and page-turning action and suspense, then The Ruptured Sky is the book for you

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REVIEW: Dark Prince by Keith Herber

Dark Prince by Keith Herber is the first full-length novel for the World of Darkness and, more specifically, Vampire: The Masquerade setting. It was published in 1994 and introduced the character of Vannevar Thomas (popularized by web series LA by Night). It also imagined a complicated interlocking web of undead politics taking place behind closed doors in San Fransisco.

With that history lesson out of the way, I’m going to admit my horrible bias towards this book. I read this book when it first came out in 1994 and would buy it used a couple of more times. It’s not just a good Vampire: The Masquerade story or even a good vampire story but a good novel period. It’s gritty, dark, and incorporates all the weirdness of the World of Darkness without requiring any knowledge of the setting beforehand.

Indeed, that is probably my main selling point for Dark Prince. The lore of tabletop RPGs, especially the World of Darkness, is often impenetrable to outsiders. You either get too much of it and can’t enjoy it unless you’re already a player like the Clan Novels or they just go with the vampire horror element a la Walks Among Us and you don’t have enough to differentiate it. Here, the story manages to capture the interlocking web of politics, horror, and characterization to make a perfect example of what Vampire: The Masquerade should be. Just one small problem: the main character in Dark Prince is a complete scumbag. Another is, well, let’s just say this isn’t necessarily the most culturally sensitive book in the world either.

The premise is San Fransisco in 1994 where a particularly scummy Caitiff vampire named Sullivan is intimidating prostitutes under his control and shaking them down for twenties. Sullivan works for the Family, a group of Chinese vampires who have been working the docks since the 19th century and don’t seem to follow the Cainite clan structure but are still able to make their own. Sullivan is neither particularly smart nor insightful but he’s doggedly loyal. So much so that the Family has kept him on despite the fact they only Embraced him as an intermediary with the white criminal element.

Unfortunately, for Sullivan, Kindred power games don’t care if you’re loyal or not and he’s soon set up as a traitor to the mysterious Grandfather. Sullivan finds himself bouncing from one faction to the next in San Fransisco, trying to find someone who will protect him from his sire. This includes the Anarchs, Prince, Primogen, old friends, and even older enemies. Sullivan soon finds out that his banal street level of evil has nothing on elder vampires or the Sabbat. He also finds himself shamed by vampires who tried to help others during the AIDS crisis among other human tragedies.

Dark Prince knows how to keep a careful balance between lore and character development. Garou, hunters, a frigging Bane, and (arguably) the Kuei-Jin show up in the book, but you’re never overwhelmed. The focus is entirely on Sullivan realizing he’s wasted his vampire life and debating whether or not he should try to become a better person or pursue something more meaningful than being the exact sort of low-level scum he’s been for a century. As you might guess, power and prestige don’t go well with personal growth. Neither does maintaining any sense of freedom or command over your own destiny.

I really recommend Dark Prince if you want to get started in the World of Darkness but also note that, well, the lead is a scummy pimp who only begins to become someone you don’t want to see staked for the sun later. Also, there’s the koala scene. Let’s just say that the Sabbat don’t get any sympathy in this book. They’re very much of the irredeemable monster interpretation even if they talk a good game about freedom. Still, it’s got a lot of drama, and the ending is superb. I’m glad Dark Prince is available back in print after twenty years.

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REVIEW: Halo Season 1

Halo is one of the all-time most successful video game franchises. It’s also a very well-developed science fiction setting with the books including some of my favorite outside of Stark Trek and Star Wars. While not necessarily apparent in the video game, the setting is incredibly dark with humanity reduced to near-extinction and the only hope of humanity being the SPARTAN-IIs that are made from kidnapped children.

Halo has a lot of appeal for the fact the first three games are all-time classics of the X-Box, and its fans are as devoted to the Expanded Universe as the other franchises above’s fans are devoted to theirs. Doctor Catherine Halsey, Cortana, Sergeant Johnson, and Admiral Keys are all well beloved characters.

The sequels, Halo 4, 5, and Infinite are less regarded. But some of the spin off games like ODST, Reach, and Halo Wars are fantastic. There have been a lot of attempts to make a Halo series or movie before, so it was interesting to hear about it finally debuting on Paramount+. Top production values and the full support of Microsoft. So, how was it?

Watchable?

Usually?

I mean if it sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise then, well, I am. The first season of Halo is something that proved very controversial with fans and it was (mostly) justified reasons. There’s some good decisions, bad decisions, and changes that work alongside changes that don’t work in the slightest. The result is a work that is perfectly fine for newbies to become acquainted with the Halo franchise but isn’t exactly what a lot of fans wanted.

The premise of the series is that the United Nations Space Command is currently engaged in a struggle against independence movements among its colony. This becomes rapidly irrelevant as the Covenant, a theocracy of dogmatic aliens with technology more advanced than Earth, start engaging in attacks on Earth’s colonies. In what should be a massive escalation that calls humanity to join together against a threat to exterminate them (as it does in the games), well, things keep going with the UNSC versus Insurrectionists occasionally interrupted by aliens.

A lot of the criticism in the show is directed at Pablo Schreiber’s interpretation of Master Chief aka John-117. He is a character who undergoes a story arc where he’s slowly forced to question his allegiance to the UNSC, forced to remove the cybernetic implant that suppress his emotions, and discovers a potential romantic interest in Covenant agent Makee (Irish actress Charlie Murphy).

This would be fine but for the fact that Master Chief is a character defined by his stoicism and dogged devotion to the protection of humanity. Also, to an extent, his chaste romance with his AI Cortana. I’m not inherently opposed to a Master Chief who ****s but that really isn’t the character as we know him. The horrific treatment of the SPARTAN-II candidates and them rediscovering their humanity could and should be a story that is told but runs into the fact that it’s happening with the arrival of genocidal aliens. Basically, imagine it’s D-Day and you’re about to fight the Nazis only to spend the movie dealing with your issues about being drafted.

The show also has several supporting cast members who range from the very good to the okay. One of the major issues I have with the show is the plotline of Insurrectionist Kwan (Yerin Ha), who hates the UNSC and wants nothing to do with them on their home planet even after the Covenant kills her family. She’s a fine character but her logic (UNSC bad, Covenant doesn’t matter) makes her seem stupid to anyone who knows anything about the Covenant. Her being forced to join someone she hates might have been interesting but the story sort of goes in weird directions and she refuses to acknowledge Master Chief saving her life multiple times.

Another interesting character is Soren (Bokeem Woodbine) who is a SPARTAN-II who deserted the UNSC to become a pirate. He is a married family man and shows what sort of life that John could have had if he hadn’t remained so doggedly loyal to the people who kidnapped then turned him into a weapon. He’s a much more interesting character than Kwan, to be honest, and Bokeem does a fantastic job with him but how he relates to the larger plot is tough to understand.

The saving graces of the show are Catherine Halsey (Natascha EcEihone) and Cortana (Jen Taylor). It’s a little strange seeing the two played by different actresses but they’re both fantastic. Doctor Halsey is just the right mixture of maternal and mad scientist. Cortana also takes some of her qualities but has removed most of her rougher edges. The familiarity of the voice also immediately buys a lot of goodwill. Perhaps not enough to set off bad will for the changes (at least among purists) but it goes a long way.

Still, I’ve seen worse seasons and I’m going to watch the second season. There are just too many ideas in this show and they keep distracting from what we want to see: the Master Chief versus the Covenant with humanity’s survival at stake.

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REVIEW: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

The latest explosion of Godzilla stories has brought us Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a story spins off from director Gareth Edwards’ (The Creator, Rogue One, Monsters) brilliant Godzilla film that takes the focus away from the mighty monster and his fearsome titans and follows the impact these terrifying beasts have on the humans around them from their first discovery to the present day. Now, I haven’t watched any Godzilla media thinking that I want less monsters and more humans, but this Apple show managed to keep me engaged for the whole of its 10-episode run.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters jumps back and forth in time (and with good reason). In the present day, Cate flies from San Fransico to Tokyo following Godzilla’s attack to settle her presumed dead father’s affairs. She finds more than she bargained for when she meets her half-brother Kentaro and discovers that her father Hiroshi not only hid another family from her and her mother, but also was part of a secretive organisation named Monarch. The story flashes back to the 1950s with Lieutenant Shaw (played by both Wyatt Russell and his father Kurt Russell) supporting scientists Dr. Keiko Mira and Dr. Bill Randa, as they uncover evidence of the massive kaiju. The series jumps between timelines effortlessly aided by the excellent cast as we follow the young Shaw and the scientists and witness their efforts to examine new creatures whilst fighting against a government who just want them destroyed, and the modern day where young Cate and Kentaro find and older Shaw and attempt to see if their father is still alive whilst evading government lackies.

A fair few people disliked Gareth Edwards approach to Godzilla and the way he kept the kaiju as a mysterious but terrifying figure until the very end of the film and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters follows this similar approach. There is a reverence to Japan’s favourite monster and in the scenes where it appears, it is terrifying and truly shows the impact that its attack had on the world and the survivors. It deals with the trauma of living through such an attack and the measures the world took to ensure that they were ready in case such a thing was to happen again and this original insight into the monsterverse is welcome, if not as entirely thrilling as seeing the monsters in every episode. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters may not be for everyone but it feels like a solid piece of tapestry at a time when Godzilla media is everyone. If you want the best pure Godzilla film right now, then you have Godzilla Minus One, for a popcorn fighting fest with monsters taking on monsters, you have the upcoming Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and for the more intimate human-based story, here is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. There’s something for everyone and that can’t be a bad thing.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is an interesting time jumping tale about family and legacy that can be felt from major moments in one’s life that pass on through generations. It has more heart and quiet moments than most would expect from a story spinning off from a movie like Godzilla but that is what makes it stand out from the crowd of monster media right now. It is an ambitious series that spends its time in the shadow of the massive kaiju with a great cast that earns its monster moments. Not just for the hardcore fans. This is a series that would never have existed outside of the streaming landscape, and I’m all here for it.

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