Adrian Collins's Blog, page 62

REVIEW: The Division 2

The Division 2 has been out since 2019, so this review is a bit late but it’s an interesting time to take stock of a game at the end of its game life rather than the beginning. Ubisoft have been keeping The Division 2 steadily updated after a meager opening and the final results are very different from the beginning ones. With the announced multiplayer free-to-play sequel, The Division: Heartland, in the works, it also feels like a good time to go back and review what worked as well as didn’t for this installment of the franchise.

The premise for The Division universe is that a genetically engineered smallpox variant called the Dollar Flu was released in New York before spreading across the globe. It has killed most of humanity off and left the survivors forced to fight over resources as well as territory. One government agency, the Strategic Homeland Division, is still a active and was given authority to do whatever it took to rebuild society.

The Division 2 picks up several months after the events of the first game. You may or may not be playing the original Division agent but it’s not a character driven game so there’s not really a problem with this. Basically, after an attack on New York City facilities by mysterious forces from Washington DC, your character heads down to the former nation’s capital to contact the former federal government’s remnants in the Joint Task Force (or JTF). They are a pathetic shell of their former self with most of the city controlled by three gangs: the Outcasts, Hyenas, and True Sons. Go kill them, retake city. You know the drill. There’s also the occasional hints toward a larger more advanced force that has been feeding the chaos post-Dollar Flu.

At the risk of spoiling a five-year-old game, The Division 2 retcons away the premise of the original The Division. One of the cheekier twists of the lore was that it turns out there was no major scary conspiracy behind it all. No, the Dollar Flu was created in a personal lab by a crazy Malthusian scientist who wanted to save the environment by killing off 98% of humanity. He did it with some basic university equipment and stuff you’d buy online. This goes out the window in The Division 2 and now there’s a massive Russian-owned PMC, treacherous Vice Presidents, and dark money trying to rule the ashes.

Honestly, this was probably a smart play on the part of Ubisoft because the original twist works fine in the works of Tom Clancy (that is this ostensibly based on) but he wrote novels rather than ongoing video game franchises. Indeed, in Rainbow Six, the novel by Tom Clancy that the Division universe actually takes a lot of its premise from (with the villain succeeding), there was a corporate conspiracy that had much of the same motive. Indeed, I dare say that Tom Clancy would appreciate once more making the Russians the bad guys of a techno-thriller involving taking over the world with bioweapons.

But enough of the plot and lore business. How does the game play? It’s a lot better than the first The Division. I am extremely biased in this because The Division was perfectly designed as the team-based game that it was originally designed as. However, if you are like me and are an antisocial nerd who prefers to solo his multiplayer experiences then The Division 2 is far better balanced. It also has endgame content with plenty of missions after the original and an eternal “gang war” going on where areas you’d previously liberated fall back into enemy hands.

As a cover-based looter-shooter, there’s not much attempt to reinvent the wheel. You shoot a bunch of bad guys, level up your loot, and attempt to get enough collectibles to craft what you don’t have. Some of the systems are better than others with mods being something I flat out didn’t bother with and feel like the game didn’t care if I did or not. There’s taking outposts, bounties, liberating prisoners, destroying propaganda, and other side activities that are fun. You can get killed but that just knocks you out temporarily. Your goal is to finish the story missions and upgrade the various survivor settlements, so they go from being tent cities to thriving post-apocalypse communities full of children.

Washington DC is an excellent setting for doing post-apocalypse adventuring and has the same general appeal as Fallout 3, except instead of the place being a radioactive desert, it’s overgrown and graffiti covered. Having shoot outs in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Congress will never not be fun. The nature of the highly visible landmarks and recognizable architecture gives it a lot more entertainment value as a setting versus NYC. Can you believe there was no Statue of Liberty mission in The Division? I can’t. There’s one in The Division 2‘s WARLORDS OF NEW YORK, though.

Ubisoft was criticized for denying the game had a political message and, honestly, I’m kind of with the developer on this. As difficult as it is to parse, “Government flubbed a pandemic response and as a result bad Russian-aligned people are trying to take over in order to end democracy” not being political, I’m pretty sure that was an accident rather than intentional. One of the groups is even a bunch of conspiracy theorist cultists but they have about as much personality as orcs.

In conclusion, The Division 2 is a solid game that gives you a definite “meat and potatoes” shooter experience. It’s an improvement on The Division in terms of solo play as well as having a lot more to do perpetually. You can go on missions post the “final” one like attacking Camp David, going to a zoo, and other enjoyable experiences. If you also manage to beat the game (technically before but I wouldn’t recommend it), there’s Warlords of New York. The game includes several seasonal events, but these are one that you’ve probably missed the majority of.

Play The Division 2Amazon USAmazon UK

The post REVIEW: The Division 2 appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

An Interview with Andrew Caldecott

Andrew Caldecott is one of the UK’s most unique writers. His genre-bending duology Momenticon and Simul is set in a dystopic future, highlighting many of our social issues in a stylised way. He weaves in references to art and literature throughout the books, making them catnip for us literature students. He is also the author of the Rotherweird series of books. We were able to have a catch-up with Andrew in the run-up to publication, discussing the world, his writing and art, expanding on the interview we did for Momenticon‘s release.

[GdM] Can you introduce Simul in one or two sentences for our readers?

[AC] In the dystopian world set up in the first book of the duology, Momenticon (essential reading for Simul), competing powers struggle for control for what remains of a desolate earth.  They represent different ideals: societies formed to indulge a dysfunctional leadership or a new genetically engineered model of mankind.  A few independent spirits strive to find a new way but face violent opposition at every turn.  In the background Nature, as interfered with by man, threatens too.

[GdM] I love the illustrations accompanying the text. Can you tell us a bit about the process, of working with Nick May? How did you choose the right places and subjects to enhance the story?

[AC] They are for the most part isolated objects or figures rather than whole scenes, designed to stimulate the reader’s imagination rather than dictate to it.  I compiled a longlist with my publishing editor, and Nick then chose the ten which most appealed to him.

[GdM] Simul (and Momenticon too) is full of references to literature. Were there any that you’d have loved to include but didn’t?

[AC] In one way, no, you must beware of overload.  Also, the references to literature (and indeed to famous paintings) must be justifiable by the plot and the social forces in play and not gratuitous.  Yet classical myth permeates our language and influences our notions of what good writing should be.   So, there are implicit references eg the Tower of no Return resembles the Minotaur’s maze, save that its heart lurks a lethal trick rather than a physical monster.  Other writers influence the creation of character. The one writer in Simul, Hilda Crike, is an official historian, was modelled on the Elder Pliny (how’s that for Pseud’s Corner) who died watching the lethal eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.  Like him, she wishes to make history as well as record it, and to understand science in order to cover it.  Pliny was a naturalist as well as a military commander. I liked the idea of a woman in this role.  She achieves her ambition at the end of the book, though at a price.

I would add that there is as much craft and wisdom in Winnie the Pooh as Finnegan’s Wake.

[GdM] The concept of gene modification in these novels is fascinating. What inspired you to include science in such a whimsical novel?

[AC] A dystopian novel almost invariably engages science, both in the cause of the destruction of the old world and in what adjustments man chooses to make in the new.  Genrich, the genetic engineering company, believes in a rule of the cleverest, while experimenting with cruder creatures as its military arm.  The idea that a committee of the likes of Einstein and Newton would best run the planet is a motion worth debating.  Science and entertainment are also linked, and Genrich’s creation of creatures to reflect characters from Alice is not perhaps such a giant stride from where we are now as some think.

[GdM] I feel like “not knowing”, being blind to the world is a common thread through your work, whether in this duology or Rotherweird. Is this a conscious choice, and if so, what fascinates you about it?

[AC] A good spot, but not an approach I can claim as original.  As I’ve written elsewhere: ‘From its infancy to modern blockbusters, from eighteenth century young women with no prospects to hobbits, novels cast ordinary folk as heroic figures,’ meaning people untutored in the ways of the world and in that sense blind to the forces which await them.  This is more than pitching light against dark.  Their exposure to these forces allows for evolution of character, and a canvas on which moral conflicts can be played out.  Also, I like the notion that a few characters should undertake the same voyage of discovery as the reader.

[GdM] Everything of yours has a setting that is very unique and weird in all the best ways, so I’d be curious to hear a bit about how you approach worldbuilding?

[AC] Let’s take an example from a town which features in both books and mimics exactly a painting by Breughel the Elder: Hunters in the Snow.  The thought processes go something like this:

[1]       A painting I’ve long admired.  Reproducing it as a real town would be fun.

[2]       You need a character who might build it – like the second Lord Vane, who is obsessed by paintings of the old world.

[3]       Add a touch of the bizarre to give it purpose: at intervals every inhabitant assembles to mirror the painting exactly.

[4]       Add a further twist: mechanicals built to resemble another painting are used to destroy the second Lord Vane, the town’s creator, in an attack on the town.

[5]       Hope the reader is engaged enough to look at the painting in detail.  Key scenes in both books take place in the cottage on the outskirts with a chimney fire.

Rotherweird is different in that the reader can make the ultimate choice as to quite how the town appears within the descriptions provided by the book.  Here, the reader knows exactly how Winterdorf looks.

[GdM] What contemporary bits of art or literature would you want to be preserved in the Museum Dome?

[AC] Good point about literature: but I think books would have to overlap with art or furniture to qualify for the Museum Dome: if there were a modern equivalent of Leonardo’s Codex, it would be there.  As to art, we know by the end of Simul (if not before) who the collector is, and this eccentric figure would certainly include the modern greats but perhaps a sprinkling of faddish choices too.  No portraits of old-world politicians.  If there is a great modern painting of a butler (?), it would be there for sure.

[GdM] I sense a strong connection to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – how did you first encounter the text and what fascinates you about it?

[AC] When very young.  My mother had a copy with Tenniel’s bigger illustrations in colour.  The poetry and the images embedded more deeply than the prose text, much of which now seems dated.  The Alice characters manage somehow to be both real and surreal, in the same way that the verse, while nonsensical, has coherence.  I suspect we all know people who resemble the Red and White Queens, the White Knight, the White Rabbit, even the Mad Hatter.  They are both ordinary and extraordinary, as perhaps we all are.  Even the true grotesques have a touch of convincing vitality about them, which I try to exploit in Simul in unexpected ways. 

[GdM] Finally, can you tell us anything about what you’re currently working on?

[AC] A change of genre: an historical novel in a setting as horrific and in some respects comical as the imagined worlds I usually toy with.

Read Simul by Andrew CaldecottAmazon UKAmazon US

The post An Interview with Andrew Caldecott appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: Blood-Stained Love

Blood-Stained Love is the latest supplement for Vampire: The Masquerade and I have to say that it is a supplement I was looking forward to a lot. I’m a big fan of storytelling supplements that get into night-to-night elements of Kindred unlife and always liked the original World of Darkness books about things like Elysiums, havens, or how to run your own organized criminal syndicate as a Kindred.

As stated, the premise is that this book deals with love among the Damned. Do Kindred love? Are they capable of love? How does that love manifest? How do you roleplay that? What are the boundaries? Distilled to its brass tacks, quite a few players want absolutely nothing to do with roleplaying his or her character’s passionate love affair with Annabelle from Chicago by Night with their Storyteller.

What is my summary of the book’s contents? The book is okay. It didn’t give me a lot of what I’d hoped for and has a few questionable elements but it’s overall a very well-designed sourcebook that strongly emphasizes comfort. Consent too. It gives some basic “romance novel writing 101” tips and hooks that a lot of STs will benefit from. Also, the “should be obvious but isn’t” fact that players and STs can make horrifying destructive romances with power imbalances or terrorized partners without making any commentary on themselves in the real world.

Unfortunately, being “okay” is the worst sort of thing to be when doing a review and you didn’t come here to hear about me talk about the fact it’s mostly basic information about, “Yeah, love triangles are a good source of drama” and “romances across sect lines can have a lot of tension” or even, “The blood bond is artificial and not a true replacement for love.” There’s some decent chronicle ideas and advice here that compromises roughly 80% of the book. It’s just the remaining 20% really is the stuff worth discussing for better and worse. So, take my subsequent discussion of that with a grain of salt.

First to bring up is the book’s discussion of “Bleed” which isn’t a vampire term but a reference to ‘bleeding over’ emotions from roleplaying. Example: When John Wick’s dog dies, you, his player, feel pissed off. This caused a controversy before the book even released as people freaked out about the concept. It’s a big deal in Nordic LARP and encouraged while many gamers in other countries dislike it strongly.

Which brings up to problem two and the fact the authors sometimes seem to think this is a lot deeper “method acting” game of INTIMATE DETAIL versus for, what I suspect, 90% of the player it is, a boardgame. Not even improv theater, just a chance to sling some dice and pretend to be Blade or Selene.

Problem three is the handling of sex and I’m going to put this out there: the sex and intimacy rules suck. Which is to say only Kindred who have Humanity 7 or above can have sex. It’s a stupid rule. It was stupid twenty years ago and it’s stupid now. Of anything to change in a supplement about sex, romance, and intimacy–this is the one they should have. They didn’t even put in the rule about using the Blush of Life to do it.

Interestingly, the book provides many adventure hooks consisting of “players enter a new court and are weirded out by all the complicated rules on love the Kindred face there.” These usually consist of describing the local Kindred with a single paragraph and some possible adventure hook. This is okay content but of questionable utility if you’re playing in a specific area. It’s not bad content but I feel like players would have gotten more out of something like the Daughters of Cacophony or things like Predator type complications.

There are some good tables about High vs. Low Humanity dates and gifts, but an entire chapter is wasted on NPCs when romantic interest is much better to spark organically among them. Countless players have had their characters love everyone from Lucita to Calebros and it’s best to just let interest develop on its own- Any NPC can be a potential LI after all. Still, you’d think of all Signature NPCs, Victoria Ash would be statted here.

In conclusion, Blood-Stained Love is an okay book. It’s an enjoyable little conversation piece with a lot of flowery language and some decent ideas for romance stories. Unfortunately, the books fall for its own press a little bit and tries to make the subject a lot more meaningful than it is. It wants to get meaningful and deep when I suspect most of us are quite comfortable keeping it surface level. I give the book credit that it had a good mix of straight, poly, and queer relationships. I also give it credit for lovely art and suggesting that, shock of shocks, players can tell the difference between fiction and reality. It just needed more of the awareness that some players need a bit more in the way of boundaries.

Read Blood-Stained LoveAmazon US

The post REVIEW: Blood-Stained Love appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

S.A Barnes’ Ghost Station follows Dr. Ophelia Bray, a psychiatrist who needs time to let fervor over the public suicide of one of her patients subside. While many people might move into pure research, or a sabbatical, Bray needs to feel helpful. She volunteers for a mission in space, hoping to prevent an outbreak of ERS.

Eckhart-Reiser Syndrome, or ERS, is a disease which affects people in space too long, and despite seeming like a mental disease—which is why she, as a psychiatrist, is going there—it’s also contagious. The crew includes Severin, the commander of the mission, Kate, the engineer and second in command, Birch, the pilot, Liana, the scientist, Suresh, in charge of inventory and whose jokes serve largely to irritate everyone, and Ava, who has recently died by wandering outside on a mission without telling anyone. Ophelia suspects it was ERS, and wants to confirm it.

Barnes has a strong focus on characterization in Ghost Station. Ophelia, our viewpoint character, is fully fleshed out with a history that seems nearly contradictory, yet Barnes manages to make it work. The Bray family is one of the wealthiest families on the planet, and yet she refuses to engage with them or work for them. Her father, however, was very much not a member of that class, as he was a miner. Ophelia has small but notable emotional triggers and flaws, such as wanting to please authority figures. This again brings up the contradictions—how did someone who wants to please authority so much rebel against her family?—but those contradictions are part of what makes us human.

The crew she joins absolutely does not want her there. It goes beyond a desire to get the job done, or even ignoring emotions. A bad psychiatric report can haunt any of them, and people on the lower end of the class stratification will struggle to come back from that far more than Dr. Ophelia Bray. What she views as help isn’t just embarrassing but possibly ruinous to them, and their reactions to her presence are very believable.

Of the other characters in Ghost Station, I found Birch the most compelling. He showed signs early of tightly-controlled rage and despised Ophelia, initially due to her role as psychiatrist but later for more personal reasons. He was never likable, but he was compelling. I also found Suresh interesting, because it’s rare to have a comic relief character who is in-universe an irritant who makes the situation more tense rather than less. The first of his pranks is quite cruel, even as Ophelia tries to pretend it’s just hazing and she needs to ignore it to maintain professionalism.

Things get worse when they reach an uninhabited planet that a previous crew had made its way to. It includes old, ruined alien structures. Aliens are known to have existed, and we are not the only sentient life in the universe, but they have all vanished long ago. Our time in space is extremely short in a cosmic sense.

The tension slowly yet consistently ramps up throughout. The terrifying events start out low-key, with reasonable explanations, and then become stranger until a drastic final act. The fact that we experience this through Ophelia’s limited viewpoint helps as we see her doubt her own senses throughout and we can’t say for certain what’s real and what isn’t. She shares her name with Hamlet’s love, after all, another woman famed for descending into mental illness.

Ghost Station is an excellent science fiction horror novel, with great characterization, a setting that veers into the uncanny, and a steadily mounting sense of tension. It’s all the more impactful due to Barnes’ use of the unreliable narrator.

Read Ghost Station by S.A. BarnesAmazon USAmazon UK

The post REVIEW: Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

NEWS: World of Darkness Reprints

Last Updated on January 24, 2024

White Wolf Publishing was the darling of the Goth and counterculture gaming scene from 1991 to 2004 when they were publishing the World of Darkness universe based around such hit titles as Vampire: The Masquerade as well as Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Like many tabletop game companies, they also released tie-in novels to further explore the characters and world.

The tie-in novels started with Dark Prince by Keither Herber and ended with the Time of Judgement novels that brought an official end to the campaign setting before its reboot (and later revival with Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition). Over a hundred novels were published during this time and, until recently, all of them have been out of print.

In 2019, a deal was reached with Crossroad Press and Paradox Interactive (current holder of the IP) to re-release the Clan Novels, Dark Age Clan Novels, and Grail Covenant Trilogy–a collection of twenty-nine novels that were some of the most popular books written for the franchise. While they had previously been available in PDF form on DriveThru RPG and other sites, it was mostly scans of the pages versus actual searchable documents or things you could load on your e-reader. Now they are available in a new paperback edition and readable on your Kindle or Nook.

Crossroad Press and Paradox Interactive have recently struck a deal to reprint and re-release the remaining novels in both ebook and new paperback format. There’s even (as yet unconfirmed) reports that they are in negotiations for audiobook releases of the series. Furthermore, in addition to the World of Darkness novels, they will also be releasing the novels set in the Exalted setting.

Crossroad Press is a mid-tier press most famous for releasing the audiobook versions of Clive Barker and Brian Lumley’s work. They were also publisher of the Stargate SG-1 tie-in novels.

The post NEWS: World of Darkness Reprints appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: Six Rooms by Gemma Amor

Gemma Amor puts a new spin on the familiar haunted house trope with Six Rooms. The novel takes place at Sunshire Chateau, an enormous, labyrinthine mansion sitting atop a hill in New York state, replete with secret passages and a mysterious past. Rumored to be haunted, the estate offers the occasional tour to brave (or perhaps foolish) groups of visitors.

Six Rooms opens with one such tour, featuring a hodgepodge of nosy neighbors and unsuspecting tourists. Sunshire Chateau’s unnamed tour guide is imposing and mercurial, displaying abrupt flashes of anger that show no mercy toward uncompliant guests. The tour guide keeps everyone on their toes, although not necessarily on their best behavior, with his sudden alternations between scripted history and vulgar outbursts.

The Sunshire Chateau also employs a book antiquarian devoted to the meticulous study and preservation of thousands of historic and one-of-a-kind volumes contained in the sprawling mansion. Although he would rather focus on his work, the so-called “bookie” experiences much more than he bargained for in accepting this position at the Sunshire.

As implied by its title, Six Rooms is structured around the exploration of six rooms inside the Sunshire Chateau. Each room leads to a ghostly encounter facilitated through a household object that contains some form of supernatural energy. Each of these encounters involves a corresponding flashback sequence featuring the Sunshire Chateau’s late owner, Charles Lester III, revealing more details of his checkered past.

The plot descends further into darkness as we explore the six rooms. This progression feels akin to visiting each successive Circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. Greater wickedness is revealed at every level, and by the end Charles Lester III seems well versed in each of the deadly sins enumerated by Dante.

Beyond Dante, there is also a clear influence from Edgar Allan Poe which only grows over the course of the book. Gemma Amor explores Poe’s themes of shame, loneliness, and death but with an unexpected and delightfully satisfying feminist twist.

I also enjoyed how Gemma Amor ties the supernatural elements of Six Rooms back to the first law of thermodynamics, i.e., the conversation of energy. Although energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it can be converted among many forms. In Six Rooms, Amor extends this principle to the supernatural, and it works to great effect.

Gemma Amor’s writing is crisp, vibrant, and polished. Amor always has a way of pulling me immediately into a story and keeping me glued to the pages till the very end, and Six Rooms is no exception.

Gemma Amor never disappoints; I am delighted to recommend Six Rooms as one of my favorite haunted house horrors.

Read Six Rooms by Gemma AmorAmazon USAmazon UK

The post REVIEW: Six Rooms by Gemma Amor appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: Echo

It’s been some time since Marvel were producing hit after hit to mostly critical acclaim. There’s been the odd piece of quality (Loki, Shang-Chi, Guardians of the Galaxy 3) but they seem lost amongst uninspiring stories (Ant-Man: Quantumania, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder). I don’t know of anyone who asked for or wanted a series based on Echo, a side character from the underrated Hawkeye show, but I have to admit, now it’s here, I’m glad someone made that big call.

Following the events of Hawkeye, Echo flashes back to show us the story of the deaf Choctaw girl, Maya, who lost her leg in the car crash that killed her mother. Forced to move away with her father, she trained hard to defend herself and her dad’s criminal ways introduced her to the man who would become her uncle, the always amazing Vincent D’Onofrio as the Kingpin. Having shot Kingpin in the eye at the end of the previous series, Echo is about this Native American young woman returning to her home and family and tearing down the Kingpin’s empire whilst defending those she loves.

Whilst I originally wasn’t interested in an Echo series, like any other fan of grimdark, I was attracted by the promise of street level violence in the Marvel world that hasn’t been seen on Disney Plus. Harking back to the brilliant Daredevil series from Netflix, Echo has some incredibly hard-hitting fight scenes all brutal enough to pull in fans who enjoy watching the bloody and brutal fights scenes from series like Daredevil. Whilst the violence doesn’t go anywhere near a show like The Boys, it does make Echo feel different to the rest of the output from Marvel and Disney’s streaming platform. There are less pointless jokes and quips as Maya stoically makes her plans for revenge and reconciles with her family whilst learning from her Native American ancestors. The threat from D’Onofiro’s brilliant Kingpin feels real and adds a sense of dfanger every time he is on screen or his name is mentioned. It is great to see more of his story and if Marvel know what’s best for them, they will use this character more and pit him against Spiderman and Dardevil in the future. This is a street level Thanos and I want more!

Whilst Echo isn’t as dark as I wanted to be, it has its moments and I felt pulled into the story of a girl who has faced adversity all her life and felt outcast by those who should have cared about her the most. Maya learns from, and gains power from those in her past and grows throughout the 5-episode series and I’m all for more Native American culture deaf actors in mainstream films and TV shows. The bond on screen between Maya and her family stands out and had me rooting for them whilst fearing for their safety as I grew to care for eaxch of them.

An interesting tale with characters not often seen on screen in big-budget shows, Echo is a tale of revenge and family that may not stay in your mind forever but will certainly echo in your mind as a unique tale well worth your time. The characters are interesting and engaging, the story simple and straightforward, and the action is darker and harder hitting than anything else in the Marvel Universe. Echo is an unexpected delight with a villain who needs to cast a dark shadow over more than this short series.

The post REVIEW: Echo appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: Universal Monsters: Dracula #3 by James Tynion IV (W) and Martin Simmonds (A)

If the arresting front cover of Universal Monsters: Dracula #3 by Martin Simmonds doesn’t tell you all you need to know about this issue and this series authored by James Tynion IV, then I don’t know what to say.

What I do know to say is that Universal Monsters: Dracula #3 is a standout issue. Beginning with the funeral of Lucy Weston, we are immediately reintroduced to a dark and ominous world, where Count Dracula lurks blood tinged just beyond the gates of the cemetery, from where he is forever barred. Lucy’s best friend, Mina, confides in her soon to be husband John that ‘she feels cold, and colder every day.’ If ever this series had a leitmotif, then it is this aside by Mina – when Dracula enters your world, everything that is good and holy is leached away, until a cold, desolate shell remains.

Let us count the ways in which artist Martin Simmonds bestrides Universal Monsters: Dracula #3 like a Hannibal on the battlefield. His ability to convey the meaning of a scene without the supporting crutch of dialogue is pure, such as when Van Helsing kisses a cross when he sees a bat in the night sky, gives the reader a strong sense of the man and his understanding of the true threat they all face.

And his impressionistic artwork is a masterclass in conveying mood and dread. During the first appearance of Dracula in Universal Monsters: Dracula #3, he is haloed in crimson. His next appearance, as a ravening beast with blood streaming from his eyes, with a wide, gore-tinged mouth, and the entire page speckled with deepest red, while not subtle, tells you everything you need to know about the true core of Dracula.

Indeed, blood is everywhere in this issue. And why wouldn’t it be? From the theatre of Dr Seward’s failed efforts to save a patient, where the floor is literally covered in the patient’s (victim’s?) life blood, we see an otherwise muddily drab world underscored by the beating heart of this story. One senses that writer James Tynion IV is saying that the supernatural Dracula brings a whole new freshness and vitality to the mundane world of fallen man, but at an appalling cost. While we may yearn for better things, Dracula is living proof of being careful of what you wish.

Tynion’s writing skewers the heart of the story. Mina is searching for the cause of Lucy’s death, of the cause of all that is ill that has befallen the people around her. Her encounter with Renfield in the sanatorium illuminates the true horror of Dracula – that he is a parasite, a blood leach who dangles what they most desire while tearing away from them their immortal souls. When some sanatorium workers congregate in the local tavern and share stories about Seward’s bloody experiments to save the victim’s of Dracula’s unslakable thirst, it is their plain old common sense, as opposed to Seward’s dangerous and ultimately useless experiments, that shines through.

Indeed, Tynion sticks a knife (or is that a stake) in the patriarchal nature of late Victorian England – people like Seward with all their learning fail again and again to recognise the true menace of Dracula. Science has separated them from the natural world and blinds them to the peril all around them. Similarly, it is a woman like Lucy who has a greater feel for the Dracula’s victims – while her father sees Renfield as a useful specimen to better understand human psychology, it is Lucy who exhibits the best of humanity in her treatment of Renfield, offering to clean the filth from him (rather, as her father does, than exploit the man).

By the end of Universal Monsters: Dracula #3 your heart will be pumping (with lots of lovely blood) and your senses blasted by Van Helsin’s warnings to Seward, married with some startling artwork that conveys the sensuousness and bestial nature of Dracula. Come for the artwork, and stay for the dread terror of the world that Tynion has created.

Fear the power of Dracula? Indeed!

Read Universal Monsters: Dracula #3Amazon USAmazon UK

The post REVIEW: Universal Monsters: Dracula #3 by James Tynion IV (W) and Martin Simmonds (A) appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

An Interview with Seth Dickinson

Seth Dickinson first astounded (and broke the hearts of) readers when they burst onto the scene with their 2015 debut novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a fiery and unapologetic look at imperialism, rebellion and the sacrifices an islander savant must give to reclaim their conquered home. They then followed this up with two sequels, before shifting to sci-fi for their upcoming novel, Exordia.  Much like their fantasy novels, it’s an absolutely fascinating tale, and ponders the psychology of violence, along with the hard choices we make and justify to ourselves.

Seth was kind enough to sit down with us at Grimdark Magazine and answer some questions we had for them, ranging from their thoughts on that theme of violence, to literary inspirations and what they’re working on next…

[GdM] Like The Traitor Baru Cormorant, your book Exordia was a short story before it became a novel. In this case, Anna Saves Them All. Can you tell me a little about how you came up with the idea?

[SD] I’m afraid the answer is extremely unsexy: I just kept rewriting a childhood idea for many years until I got something I liked.

When I was in high school I wrote a Lego Bionicle fanfiction where the Bionicle world was invaded by aliens, and one of the aliens defected to the Lego side to help them fight back against her people. I thought she was a pretty cool character, because I was fifteen, so everything seemed pretty cool.

Once I was older, trying to get serious about writing, I rewrote that story set in the real world, with a human cast instead of the Bionicle action figures. That was the first novel I finished as an adult. But although it was important practice, it wasn’t good enough to submit, so I trunked it. It had almost all the characters who’d end up in Exordia — Anna, Ssrin, Erik, Clayton, Aixue, Iruvage. And it had a couple key scenes, like Anna’s childhood backstory. This would’ve been around…2011, I think?

Over the next few years I sold some short stories, and I thought, maybe I could pull out a scene from that trunk novel and get a good short story out of it. I often think of short stories as the climaxes of novels, the bit where the really key crisis happens. It worked for the Morrigan stories in Clarkesworld—they weren’t from a novel, but they were based on video game mods I’d written. And it worked here too! So that became “Anna Saves Them All” in Shimmer.

Advance a couple years. I’d done a stint at Bungie and published my first novel, I was severely fucking depressed, I was looking for something fun to write to help get around block on my second Baru Cormorant novel. Tor.com was publishing a lot of novellas at the time and I thought that I could rewrite the trunk novel as a series of novellas, telling the same story but with each novella focusing on one of the major characters — Anna to introduce things, Erik to narrate the initial military action, Clayton to reveal the espionage and doublecrossing, Aixue to dig into the science of the alien artifact, and back to Anna to conclude the story. The multi-novella strategy has worked out for some other authors (Martha Wells in particular) but when I finally submitted EXORDIA I think they immediately offered to buy it as a whole book. There was never a plan to do a multi-part release. But you can see where the cliffhangers would’ve been — and if you don’t like the pacing in the later parts of EXORDIA you might even wish I’d stuck with the ‘series of novellas’ format, because it really put a premium on tight pacing and single perspective character work.

After this Tor sat on the book for a few years, and while that was frustrating, it was really helpful in some respects. By the time the book got moving again I’d had time to get cold feet about my treatment of Kurdish culture and go do better research. So the book really took on its final form in 2021 and 2022, as I went back and layered in a lot more detail about the reality of life in Kurdistan and the aftermath of the genocide there. I ended up spending a few thousand dollars out of pocket on expert readers to really nail the background and authenticity of a few of the characters.

[GdM] I’ve read both Exordia and Anna Saves Them All, and there’s one noticeable difference in the latter—Clayton hasn’t existed yet, or Davoud. How did you come up with both characters?

[SD] Clayton always existed! So did Davoud, I believe, though I’d have to go back and look. But they existed in the trunk novel. and when I adapted that into “Anna Saves Them All” I just cut them to simplify things. I believe Erik and Aixue exist only as radio voices in that story? It’s pretty much the Anna and Ssrin show.

You missed a more noticeable difference though — in “Anna Saves Them All”, Blackbird is Ssrin’s ship. In EXORDIA (the final novel) it’s something much stranger. Earlier drafts of the story struggled to really explain what the aliens were looking for on Earth, and at some point in the drafting process I decided to move Ssrin’s introduction much earlier and make Blackbird into…the thing it is now.

[GdM] Exordia’s set in 2013—a decade later, so much has happened that it’s almost become a period piece of sorts. Were there difficulties in writing this, e.g. slang, tech?

[SD] The timeframe is fixed by the need for Anna to experience the Anfal genocide as a kid old enough to grip a pistol. That means she’s got to be born in the early 1980s. Then when the story rolls around we need to be in the late Obama administration for a lot of the themes to land — and hell, when I wrote the first draft of this novel we were in the Obama administration, and 2013 was just a couple years in the past.

I think setting it in 2013 made things easier more than it made things more difficult. 2013 is pretty well documented. It’s easy to figure out what pop culture the characters would be aware of and what hadn’t been produced yet. It’s easy to know who was working in what position at the White House, or where military forces were deployed. There are a couple anachronisms that slipped through—curious if anyone can spot them!

While I was writing this book set in Kurdistan, America fucked over the Kurds in Syria quite badly. We have a habit of fucking over the Kurds.

[GdM] A recurring theme in Exordia is violence—from the violent trauma of Anna’s childhood, to US foreign policy, the human response to the unknown and even the cornerstone of Khai cultural interaction. What was the thinking behind including that psychology of violence in Exordia?

[SD] I wanted to write about it. I think it’s important to think about the ethics of violence. My life as an American is built on a scaffold of violent intervention in other parts of the world. I don’t think that should go unexamined. Things that make people unhappy are often discursively marked as grim or otherwise undesirable to read about. There’s a push towards emotional comfort and safety in stories that makes me want to push back. It’s our willingness to look away from discomfort that lets a lot of evil persist. Like the Obama drone strikes—those were an attempt to sanitize and rationalize America’s existing assassination program. The administration to fit everything together into a nice clean ‘disposition matrix’ that would programmatize and euphemize the moral burden of killing people. I think we have to be deeply suspicious of that part of us which says “the people in charge have it figured out, they’ve got it under control, it’s not my problem and I don’t need to think about it.”

The book also argues that an encounter with the truly alien is likely to read as violent to a human mind, because humans can only exist safely in a narrow range of physical and mental conditions. A genuinely alien being, one that doesn’t share our environmental needs or our general psychology, may seem habitually violent to us simply because its own environment and behaviors are incompatible with human norms. And I don’t mean, “oh, the alien exhales cyanide”—I mean an alien’s basic conception of individual rights. It might, like the khai in EXORDIA, have evolved with the expectation that social systems are organized on the basis of mutually threatened violence, where the basic question of a relationship is not “Will you do unto me as you would have me do unto you?” but “Can you do anything to stop me?”

Or it might have evolved in an environment without successful predation, where almost all free resources are locked up in massive biosystems that compete by optimizing their ability to capture energy and out-reproduce their rivals. An encounter between two of these systems might lead to one outcompeting and starving the other, unless the other can produce a specialized resource for the encroaching rival, accepting a symbiotic role in exchange for continued survival. First contact between one of these alien systems and humans would read to us like an aggressive conquest—the alien expanding aggressively, taking away what we need to live, unless constantly fed some kind of useful tribute. Even machine probes designed by an alien intelligence in this mode might seem aggressive, because their idea of morality would be based on productivity, not individual identity, as a metric of worth. It’s not that the aliens ‘don’t understand the harm they’re doing’ — they just don’t see sucking up all the available free resources as harm. What kind of living thing doesn’t capture all available energy at maximum competitive efficiency? No living thing of moral worth.

On the far end of the spectrum, imagine an alien that operates like a cellular slime mold, where individuals will come together into massive cooperative structures, sometimes displaying a suicidal level of altruism. These cooperators challenge our current evolutionary thinking, where cooperative behavior must ultimately reward the individual’s reproductive fitness in order to evolve. It’s hard for us to understand these outbursts of solidarity in microorganisms, never mind aliens! Imagine trying to communicate with an alien species that expects individual humans to join together into Eiffel Towers of cooperation. Lacking that capability, would we seem like we had any moral worth to them?

Underlying all this is a broader theme in my work, the question of whether violence is ultimately the Right Strategy in the universe—whether it’s possible to build a system which is cooperative, equitably helpful to all its contributors, resistant to outside attacks and proof against internal corruption and collapse. I really hope that is possible. I am not afraid of entropy but I am afraid of conquest and cancer, the two great threats to organized positive-sum systems.

[GdM] As far as I’m aware, Exordia is your first foray novel-wise into sci-fi, and to some extent sci-fi horror. Sphere is an obvious inspiration, as is the Southern Reach trilogy, but were there other books, other sci-fi media that inspired it?

[SD] I get this question a lot and every time I do my tiny brain shorts out and I just spit a random list of books that spring to mind. Uh let’s see. EON by Greg Bear, and I suppose THE FORGE OF GOD too, though it’s very depressing. Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books. SABRIEL by Garth Nix. Various short stories by Yoon Ha Lee. STARTIDE RISING by David Brin. This is the part of the list where I start thinking “oh God, I need to make sure my answer doesn’t make me seem like an asshole!” Technothriller writers who would probably make me sound like an asshole: Tom Clancy, Dale Brown. David Mace who is too criminally under-read to make me seem like an asshole, and who’s a much better technothriller writer than the two before him. INTERSTELLAR PIG by William Sleator, can’t forget Interstellar Pig. The Succession duology by Scott Westerfeld, RISEN EMPIRE and THE KILLING OF WORLDS. A Japanese novel, YUKIKAZE by Chohei Kambayashi.

Oh, my tiny brain is shorting out and I’ve listed just one woman—I know this makes me look awful—oh, Vonda McIntyre, I loved the alien Nemo in her STARFARERS books. KA Applegate, I didn’t read a lot of ANIMORPHS but I read a couple of the big alien-POV deluxe books and those must have influenced me. I always think about the way CJ Cherryh writes action but so far I’ve done a pretty bad job of internalizing it. God I’m a misogynist pig! A dozen women will spill out of my brain the moment I’m done with this interview.

It’s hard to name specific inspirations because this was a fun book, a book I very much wrote from my id, the horrible rotting compost pit at the bottom of my brain. It’s hard to strain that soup apart and figure out where it came from. That’s why there’s so much technical detail, I find that stuff incredibly compelling.

[GdM] From my perspective, it seems that you’re interested in exploring characters who’ve gone through massively traumatic experiences in their youth—first Baru, now Anna. Is it a conscious decision, or something that’s more ‘in hindsight’?

[SD] It’s not really about the trauma. for me. It’s about these characters growing around a kernel of moral commitment, the way an oyster grows a pearl around a speck of contamination, or a raindrop nucleates around a cloudseed. They spend the rest of their lives with a moral commitment to the logic of that first experience — Baru going into the residential school in order to learn why her island was colonized, Anna pulling that trigger under the circumstances I shall not spoil. All the later decisions they make are informed by that early decision.

“Isn’t that the definition of trauma?” you ask. Sure, but characters can also grow around a kernel of moral commitment that we’d see as positive — Erik’s intuition about Doing The Right Thing, Clayton’s attempts to think out the shape of a better world and work towards it, Aixue’s belief that truth can only be derived through mathematics, Chaya’s pragmatic attention to the needs of the moment and keeping people safe from themselves. These aren’t necessarily traumas, but they are moral cores.

Anna points out in this book that massive trauma is just part of growing up in some places. What’s the difference between seeing a UFO and a Predator drone? The drone might kill you. What’s the difference between an alien invasion and an Iraqi genocide? The Iraqis use sarin instead of death rays, helicopters instead of saucers? You know why the Iraqis are trying to exterminate you, I guess. But maybe you don’t if you’re a child.

[GdM]How much research went into creating the story that became Exordia? Did you have to do anything particularly interesting to seek out sources?

[SD] I roved out in search of Kurdish knowledge and met a lot of colorful characters. As I mentioned above, I ended up spending a lot of money out of pocket for expert readers from various cultural perspectives — unfortunately publishers just can’t front the money for that kind of stuff on top of paying your advance. I consider it money well spent.

I also spent a lot of time doing science and military research, which involved talking to some vets, some gamers who play a lot of milsims with vets, some people who work in physics and atomic energy, and some science fiction writers whose fiction is close enough to physics and atomic energy to attract government scrutiny. Ken Burnside of Ad Astra Games helped me work out some big-picture nuclear strategy stuff for confronting invading aliens, he was a huge help. And a guy on a science fiction discord talked me through the math of a how a warp field would work in real life — there are some VERY cool (and frightening!) consequences which I haven’t seen science fiction grapple with yet. And no, I’m not talking about the time travel! There are some issues with using a warp drive to hover that can turn an innocent visit to your friend’s front lawn into an unscheduled asteroid impact.

I also had some great volunteer readers who I will not name without getting their permission first. But they made the book a lot better by sharing their own experiences and background.

[GdM] What’s some books, SF/F or nonfiction or otherwise, that you’d recommend?

[SD] Since I’ve mentioned a lot of fiction already I’m going to recommend three nonfiction books about how the world works in ways which do not seem intuitive to our 21st century brains. SEEING LIKE A STATE by James C. Scott, THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS by Joseph Henrich, and AN IMMENSE WORLD by Ed Yong, which is about animal senses — some of which exist all over nature but go basically unnoticed by humans, like surface wave communication. Of course, humans are animals, so it does go a bit into uncommon human senses, like echolocation.

AN IMMENSE WORLD has this great anecdote about a frog, I think it’s called a tungara frog. The tungara male calls to attract females, and it has the option to end its call with a funny noise called a ‘chuck’. The more chucks a male sticks on his call, the more the ladies like him — in fact female tungara frogs love chucks so much that if a male doesn’t chuck, females will body slam him until he does. But the chuck sound is also exactly dead center in the most sensitive auditory range of the local frog-eating bats. So you gotta chuck to fuck, but every time you chuck, you push your luck.

The other two are about the ways that human societies flourish and succeed, and how the human mind is not very good at understanding the ways human societies flourish and succeed.

[GdM] The book’s ending almost seems to set it up as a prequel of sorts. Is there an intention for a sequel later down the line?

[SD] On my part? Absolutely. On Tor.com’s part? We’ll see. I’ve got a lot more high school Bionicle fanfiction to rewrite!

[GdM] Lastly! For the curious fans—are you working on anything else? Totally not asking for a friend, first name M, last name Yself.

[SD] Quite a few things. Unfortunately many of them are under NDA! My day job with Unknown Worlds Entertainment is narrative design for an unannounced game in the Subnautica universe. I’m doing some work for hire for other IPs, which I really should be working on right now, but I am feckless and foolish and expert at self-sabotage.

And of course I’m going to write the last Baru Cormorant novel. I did one draft of it and didn’t like the result. It was too long and did not hit with the force I was looking for. I want to get it right, so it is taking a while, and things have gotten busy. But it is important to me to finish that story, to get it out of my head.

Read Exordia by Seth DickinsonAmazon (US Hardcover)Amazon (US Audiobook)Amazon (UK Hardcover)Amazon (UK Audiobook)

The post An Interview with Seth Dickinson appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

Review: The Division: Recruited by Thomas Parott

The Division: Recruited by Thomas Parott (audiobook narrated by Amanda Dolan) is an installment of Ubisoft’s The Division series. The premise for said series is that Earth has been decimated by a horrifying variant of smallpox known as the Dollar Flu. Much of the world has been reduced to a post-apocalypse state with the only remains of the US government being the Department of Homeland Security top secret program known as the Division. They have been given special equipment and authority to bring back order to the wasteland by any means necessary.

Maira Kanhai is a former US cyberwarfare specialist who tries to join the military again when the Dollar Flu happens, only to find out there’s no US military remaining. Ending up defending an isolated collection of survivors outside of Washington DC, she is barely able to keep everyone alive when they fall under attack from the Outcasts (enemies from The Division 2 video game). Still, her heroic actions impress a team of Division agenys and they attempt to bring her into the fold. This begins a journey across West Virginia to try and make contact with the people who could supply the survivors of Washington DC with food.

The Division: Recruited feels very much like a video game installment of the Division franchise in both good as well as bad ways. This is tie-in fiction so it’s good that they’re actually bothering to try to feel like the game everyone liked enough to purchase a novel set in the world regarding. However, it’s also something that sometimes feels a little too much like the author is attempting to capture the feel of the video games. For example, the protagonists kill about a hundred Outcasts within the first half of the book and I mean that number literally. While acceptable in a third person shooter, you have to wonder how the organization could take those kind of losses in-universe and not be broken as a faction.

The Division’s premise is one that could rather easily be flipped on its head to show an unchecked unaccountable government agency on a rampage through a people who didn’t elect them to be executioners but that’s not what the series is about. No, the morality of the setting is pretty much Division=Good, Enemies=Bad, and Rogue Division Agents=Evil. That’s fine for what this is but don’t expect the book to dabble in any moral ambiguity. There are the people trying to rebuild America and the psycho baddies who want to kill everyone with disease or enslave the other survivors with their semi-trailers armed with machine guns. No, I’m not kidding.

The protagonists are the plucky heroine, the noble leader, and their strong but silent associate. It’s a likable enough trio and one that relies heavily on archetypes but doesn’t fail despite this. Still, despite our heroic leads, this is still a post-apocalypse novel and we’re forced to confront a lot of things that illustrate how bad things have gotten. The Dollar Flu may have wiped out a good chunk of humanity but it will be famine who finishes off a good portion of the rest of it unless they can get those supply lines going.

In conclusion, I’m inclined to recommend this novel if you are already a fan of The Division universe. It’s considerably lighter than most post-apocalypse stories but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It also might be a semi-decent introduction to the Division world if you’re not a fan of the games but I’d recommend Hearts on Fire over this in that case. It also makes a lot of references that you would probably not get. I also think this book is better in audiobook form than read as the performance really adds a lot to the story.

Read The Division: Recruited by Thomas ParottAmazon USAmazon UK

The post Review: The Division: Recruited by Thomas Parott appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.