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First Monday Free Fiction: Revolt at the North Pole

Welcome to the December 2021 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

December 6 is St. Nicholas Day, so this month’s free story is a holiday horror tale named Revolt at the North Pole, in which Santa’s myriad helpers conspire against him. It’s no happy holiday season for Santa, but rest assured, cause Christmas will be saved.

Even though there is a…

Revolt at the North Pole

Discontent had been brewing in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole since September.

“The old man is working us to the bone,” Frosty Busynight, elf second class, whispered to his colleague Noel Happyglitter, as they stood on the assembly line, painting an endless succession of wooden toys.

“Sixteen to eighteen hour shifts, shitty pay, no overtime, no days off till January…”

“I know,” Noel Happyglitter whispered back, painting a red nose onto what had to be the thousandth nutcracker today, “But what can we do? Jobs ain’t exactly easy to come by, here at the North Pole.”

“Unionise,” an elderly elf named Yule Ciderspirit said, as he inserted glass eyes into an angel-haired baby doll, “If we’re all unite and threaten to strike, the old man has to hear our demands.”

“Are you crazy?” Noel Happyglitter hissed, “Don’t you remember what happened to the last elves who tried to unionise? They were kicked out into the cold and the snow to starve.”

Noel Happyglitter took off his cap in remembrance of those poor elven souls. Frosty Busynight and Yule Ciderspirit did likewise.

“What’s the matter, you lazy bums?”

The fore-elf Rusty Shelfelf cracked his jingle-bell studded whip, causing Jolly and Frosty to flinch. Only Yule, who’d seen it all, did not flinch, but glared icicles at Rusty.

“If you don’t finish your quota by shift end, I’ll make sure to have your pay docked.”

“What pay?” Frosty whispered, once Rusty was out of earshot, “We’re already working for a pittance.”

“Fucking class traitor,” Yule grumbled, still glaring icicles at Rusty, “Used to be that he only spied on the kids, not on his own.”

Noel shrugged. “You know Rusty. Always brownnosing Santa and always eager to rat out anybody for a pat on the head. I just hope he didn’t overhear us talking about…” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “…the u-word.”

“We shouldn’t bother with the u-word,” an elf named Cinnamon Firelog said, her fingers forming air quotes, “The u-word doesn’t work. What we need is the r-word?”

“R-word?” Frosty asked, “R as in reindeer?”

“No, R as in revolution,” Cinnamon replied.

“Be silent,” Yule hissed at her. Frosty clamped his hand over Cinnamon’s mouth and Noel all but fainted.

“You don’t say that word, not even in jest,” Yule continued, “Cause if the old man should hear…”

“Or Rusty Shelfelf,” Noel added ominously.

“Then what?” Cinnamon replied, shaking off Frosty, “He’ll dock our pay, increase our work hours and kick us out into the cold to starve? Wake up! He already does that. He does it all the time.”

“Exactly,” Noel hissed, “And if you keep talking like that, you’ll be next.”

“And we’ll get kicked out into the cold, too, just because we happened to be nearby, when you said the… the…” Frosty couldn’t even say the word out loud.

“Yes, maybe the old man will kick us out,” Cinnamon said, “But our lives are already miserable, brutish and short. Every week, at least one of us succumbs to a workplace injury. And the old man doesn’t care. He never cared and he never will. That’s why we need a r…”

“Shush,” Noel and Yule hissed as one, while Frosty clamped his hand over Cinnamon’s mouth again.

“Get back to work, you lazy bums, and keep the heavy petting to your off-hours,” Rusty Shelfelf called in the distance.

***

But once the r-word has been said, it could not be taken back. The genie was out of the bottle and nothing and nobody could stuff it back in.

And so whispers of revolution could be heard in the elf barracks by night, when Rusty Shelfelf and his ilk were fast asleep.

“But how can we pull it off?” Frosty wanted to know.

“By the sheer weight of numbers,” Yule replied, “If we all work together, even Santa Claus himself can’t stand against us.”

“We’re still too weak,” Noel said, “Remember what happened the last time there was an elf uprising? Santa sicced the reindeer and even…” Noel shuddered in horror. “…the Krampus onto the rebels until the snow ran red with their blood.”

“It was a massacre for the ages,” Yule added and took off his cap in remembrance of the dead.

“That’s because they did it wrong,” Cinnamon declared, “Cause Yule is right. We all have to work together. Not just us elves. We have to involve the reindeer, too.”

“The reindeer?” Noel exclaimed in horror, “But they’re fanatically loyal to the old man.”

“Maybe once upon a time,” Cinnamon said, “But not anymore. They’re suffering just as we are. Too little pay, too little food, too much work. Just look at how thin they’re grown.”

“Plus the old man is playing them against each other…” Yule said, “…pitting Dasher against Dancer, Prancer against Vixen, Comet against Cupid and Donder against Blitzen and everybody against Rudolph. Why do you think they’re constantly locking horns?”

Frosty nodded. “It’s murder in the reindeer pens.”

“So we all agree?” Cinnamon asked, “We ally with the reindeer?”

All hands went up in agreement.

***

“I’m just saying…” Cinnamon whispered to Dasher during a casual visit to the reindeer enclosure, “…that we’re all in this together. Elves, reindeer, that old tyrant is exploiting us all.”

Dasher nodded thoughtfully. “Aye. But what can we do? If we refuse to do the job, there’s a hundred reindeer just waiting for the opportunity. That’s how we ended up with that red-nosed piece of shit Rudolph, after all.”

Dasher glared at Rudolph, whose bright red nose was glowing in the polar night.

Cinnamon decided to let those prejudices go… for now.

“Us elves, we’re not going to take it anymore. We’ll get rid of Santa. But we can’t do it without your help.”

“I’d help you in a heartbeat,” Dasher replied, “And so would Vixen, Comet, Donder and Blitzen. But Dancer is a jerk, Prancer is a brownnoser, Cupid is terminally stupid and Rudolph… well, Rudolph is Rudolph.”

“Then talk to them,” Cinnamon whispered, pretending to feed some hay to Dasher, because Rusty Shelfelf was skulking about again, “First to the ones you know are with us and then with the others.”

She gave Dasher a carrot, this time for real.

“Remember, united we stand, divided we fall.”

Dasher chomped on the carrot and nodded. “United we stand.”

***

A few days later, a delegation of elves consisting of Cinnamon, Noel, Frosty and Yule met with a delegation of reindeer consisting of Dasher, Donder, Blitzen and Comet at the edge of the compound.

“The reindeer are in,” Dasher said with a conspiratorial nod.

“All of you?” Cinnamon asked breathlessly.

“All of us,” Dasher confirmed.

“Even Rudolph,” Comet added.

“What about the elves?” Donder wanted to know, his voice a low rumble.

“All in,” Cinnamon said.

“Except for Rusty Shelfelf and the other fore-elves,” Yule added.

“Those fore-elves are dangerous,” Noel said, “They’ll always side with Santa over their own, all for nicer quarters, a softer bed and an extra ration of rum.”

“Scum,” Frosty spat out.

“But we’ll have to be careful and make sure that Rusty and the other fore-elves don’t learn of our plan,” Yule whispered, “Or this revolution will be over before it’s begun.”

“Leave the fore-elves to us,” Blitzen said, an angry fire blazing in her eyes, “We shall deal with them.”

“The elf that can stand against a reindeer’s antlers has yet to be born,” Donder added darkly.

Frosty and Noel shuddered, while Cinnamon patted Dasher’s neck.

“And that’s why we wanted to work with you,” she said, “Because Santa is pitting all of us against each other.”

“However, the fore-elves are not the only danger,” Blitzen pointed out, “There are also Santa’s helpers, Ruprecht and Piet.”

“We can take them,” Donder rumbled, “Ruprecht is a washed up drunk and Piet is a pushover.”

“But that’s not all.” Comet lowered her voice and cast a glance over her shoulder. “There’s also…” Now her voice had dropped to barely a whisper. “…the Krampus.”

In response, everybody shuddered, even the pine trees that surrounded the compound. For in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, none was more feared than the Krampus, the horned and hoofed monster that Santa kept in a padlocked shack at the far edge of the compound.

No one knew exactly why Santa kept a monster in his compound, though rumours were flying high, rumours that Santa fed the Krampus with naughty children, recalcitrant elves and reindeer too old to work. Whether those rumours were true or not didn’t matter. For terror reigned at the North Pole and so the mere fear of being thrown to the Krampus kept everybody in line.

“We must call everything off,” the ever-timid Noel exclaimed, “Cause if Santa should unleash the Krampus upon us…” He shuddered once more.

“Shut up,” Cinnamon hissed, “We’re not going to give up now that we’ve come so far.”

Yule turned to the four reindeer. “Can’t you deal with Krampus?” he asked, “After all, your antlers are mighty.”

Dasher shook his head. “Not that mighty.”

“Plus, we’re not suicidal,” Blitzen added.

Cinnamon sighed. “You’re cowards, all of you. Yes, Krampus is a potential obstacle to our plan. So we’ll just have to take him out of the game.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Frosty asked.

Cinnamon scratched behind her pointed ears, because that was a good question. Then she had an idea.

“We’ll poison him,” she said.

“And how?” Yule wanted to know, “Lead and arsenic based paint might have done the trick, but that was phased out ages ago.”

“Who needs paint?” Cinnamon countered, “After all, we have mistletoe. Plenty of mistletoe. And mistletoe happens to be toxic.”

All around, eyebrows arched and ears pricked up.

Encouraged, Cinnamon continued. “So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll gather mistletoe and then I’ll boil it to make an elixir. And this elixir, I’ll serve to Krampus…”

“In a platter of sugar cookies,” Frosty suggested.

“Or a nice gingerbread man,” Noel added.

“Or some candy canes,” Comet piped in.

Cinnamon shook her head. “Now, I’ll put the elixir into a jug of mulled wine. If I add a bit of extra sugar, he won’t even notice the taste.”

***

On the night before the planned revolt, Cinnamon snuck out of the elves’ barracks with a jug of mulled wine spiked with mistletoe elixir.

Shivering, she traipsed through the snow, out to the padlocked shack at the far edge of the compound that was home to Santa’s most fearsome enforcer. From afar, she could hear the Krampus howling in the night, howling at the solstice moon.

Her heart beating like the little drummer boy on caffeine, she crept closer. With stiff and blue fingers, she opened the flap through which Krampus received his food.

“Krampus,” she called, “Hey, Krampus! I’ve got an extra ration of mulled wine for you with Santa’s compliments.”

A clawed and furry hand shot out of flap and grabbed the jug of mulled wine. There was a gurgling sound. Cinnamon smiled and slowly retreated.

But then Krampus spoke, his voice like the rumble of winter thunder.

“Krampus knows,” the voice said, “Krampus knows what you’re planning.”

Cinnamon froze. “We’re planning Christmas, like every year. And now drink your mulled wine, before it goes cold.”

“Not like every year. This year is different. This year, you are planning to overthrow Santa.”

“You’re drunk,” Cinnamon countered, trying to ignore that her heart was hammering like all eleven drummers drumming now, “You’re speaking nonsense.”

“Not drunk. Krampus knows. Krampus heard you whisper in the dark, the elves and the reindeer.”

At this moment, even an elf as brave as Cinnamon would have turned tail and ran, ran until the ice and the cold claimed her. For that was still better than the fate that awaited her at the claws of the Krampus.

But to her horror, she found that she could not move. And so she stood frozen in place, like a statue made of ice.

“Krampus wants in,” the grunting voice continued.

Cinnamon could see his face now, half hidden in shadow. But even the deepest shadows of the polar night could not hide the fangs and the horns of the Krampus.

“Krampus wants to help. Krampus hates Santa, too. Krampus wants to kill Santa.”

Cinnamon emitted a puff of relief. “Then why didn’t you just say so, buddy. We’re grateful for every helping hand. Or claw.”

“You didn’t ask,” Krampus said, a hint of accusation in his voice, “You never talk to Krampus.”

“I’m sorry, okay. We thought you were on his side and we couldn’t risk…”

“Not on Santa’s side,” Krampus grumbled, “Never on Santa’s side. Santa treats Krampus like monster, like pet.”

“Uhm, buddy, then maybe you shouldn’t drink that mulled wine…”

“Why not? Krampus already drank mulled wine. Was tasty. Very tasty. Elf girl makes good mulled wine.”

“Are you feeling faint maybe? Tired?” Cinnamon asked cautiously.

“No, Krampus feels fine. Krampus feels strong enough to tear Santa apart with his bare claws.”

“You’ll have to wait until shift start for that,” Cinnamon said.

***

The next morning, shortly after four AM, when the day’s shift began, Rusty Shelfelf advanced upon an aged elf named Chestnut Gingersnap who was on fruitcake baking duty.

“What’s the matter, you lazy bitch! Get back to work!”

“I’m sorry,” Chestnut replied, leaning against the oven. Her voice was weak. “It’s just… I’m so tired.”

“Get back to work or I’ll make you,” Rusty thundered. He cracked his whip, the bells jingling.

Normally, the sound of Rusty’s jingle bell whip was enough to strike fear and terror into the hearts of all elves. But not this time.

And so the other elves on the bakery line surrounded Rusty.

“No,” Yule said, offering his arm to Chestnut, “This stops now.”

“Get back to work,” Rusty screamed, his ruddy cheeks turning even redder. He cracked his jingle bell whip and this time, he drew blood.

But then Frosty, Noel and Cinnamon placed themselves between Yule and poor Chestnut.

“No,” Frosty said, “We’re not working eighteen hour shifts anymore.”

“And we’re not going to live in fear anymore either,” Noel added.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, this is the revolution,” Cinnamon said with a sweet smile, “Your reign of terror is over.”

“You’ll pay for this,” Rusty yelled, “You’ll all pay for this.” He cracked his whip, the bells jingling. “Fore-elves, upon them!”

All over the factory, the fore-elves grabbed their clubs and cracked their whips in anticipation. But then, the doors flew open and all nine reindeer stormed in, followed by Krampus himself.

“Freedom,” Dasher cried.

“Long live the Revolution,” Prancer exclaimed.

“Proletarians of the world unite,” roared Donder.

“Fresh hay and cranberries for all,” Rudolph called out. The other reindeer just rolled their eyes.

“Krampus hungry,” Krampus roared like an avalanche rolling down a mountain slope.

Then the fight began. Several fore-elves made the intimate acquaintance of reindeer antlers. Rusty Shelfelf was thrown into a vat of glitter glue. And Krampus ate a particularly hated fore-elf named Evergreen Frostivy.

Realising that they were outnumbered, the fore-elves ran. They ran out into the snow and the cold and the endless polar night, the elves and the reindeer and Krampus in hot pursuit.

“All right,” Yule finally said as they reached the perimeter fence and watched the fore-elves retreating into the night, Rusty Shelfelf clearly visible by the trail of glitter he left behind, “We won’t be seeing them again.”

“Next stop, Santa,” Dasher added grimly.

“To Santa’s mansion, troops,” Cinnamon exclaimed.

“Krampus hungry,” Krampus grumbled.

***

So Krampus knocked down the door to Santa’s mansion. Elves and reindeer swarmed out, marvelling at the luxuries with which Santa surrounded himself, while his workers starved.

They found Ruprecht, one of Santa’s helpers, passed out in front of the TV that was playing It’s a Wonderful Life on an endless loop. Twigs and holly leaves were sticking in Ruprecht’s bushy black beard.

Yule sniffed the sleeping Ruprecht. “Eggnog and rum,” he announced, “He won’t be up for a while.”

“And onwards, troops,” Cinnamon cried.

Krampus found the kitchen and ate twenty-seven mince pies, the equivalent of a light snack for him. He also found a jug of mulled wine and emptied it in one draught.

Meanwhile, the revolutionaries searched the rest of the house and finally found Santa in the master bedroom, snoring in his king-size bed.

His wife, Mrs. Claus, had left him years ago and retired to Hawaii. Nonetheless, Santa was not alone. For his current lovers, the curvaceous Merry Mistletoe and the well-endowed Holly Jinglebells, were snuggled up in bed beside him, passed out from a night of hard cider, harder partying and sugar cookies dusted with cocaine.

“What is it?” Holly grunted, as the revolutionaries broke into the bedroom, “Morning already?”

“Let me sleep,” Merry grumbled and turned over in bed.

Santa still snored. Only when Dasher poked him with his antlers, did he finally wake up.

Santa opened one eye, only to find himself faced with some very angry reindeer and equally angry elves.

“What do you want? Christmas is in four days. And now get back to work, you slackers!”

“No,” Yule declared, “We won’t be working for a slave driver like you anymore.”

Now Santa did open both eyes. “Oh, is this another strike? Well then, you’re fired, all of you.”

“No, Santa, it’s you who’s fired,” Dasher countered.

“This is the revolution and you, Santa, are history,” Cinnamon added.

At this moment, a hidden door opened and Piet, Santa’s other helper and servant, entered, bearing a flambéed Christmas pudding.

“Oh, I’m sorry. If this is a bad time, I’ll come back later.”

“No, Piet, you’re right on time. These idiots are plotting treason and revolution,” Santa said with a dismissive wave of his hand towards the assembled elves and reindeer, “Kindly take out the trash and check what those snow-blasted fore-elves are doing.”

“Revolution?” Piet exclaimed, his eyes wide in his dark face, “Really?”

“Really,” Dasher said gravely, “And now get out of the way, Piet. We don’t want to hurt you.”

“Get out of the way?” Piet repeated, “No way, I’m joining you. He…” Piet poked an accusing finger at Santa, “…has been treating me like crap for years, chasing me about, making me wear silly clothes…”

“I plucked you from obscurity and made you one of my helpers and this is how you thank me?” Santa roared, “You’re fired, Piet, fired.”

“Fired?” Piet countered, “I quit. And by the way, you fat piece of shit, slavery was outlawed two hundred years ago.”

Piet hurled the flaming Christmas pudding at Santa. He missed, but managed to set the bedclothes aflame. Merry Mistletoe and Holly Jinglebells screamed and ran out into the snow, bells jingling all the way.

By now, Santa’s cheeks had turned as red as his suit with pure fury. He advanced upon the rebels, eyes blazing.

“So you think, you can stand up to me, you ungrateful bastards? Well, you’re all on my naughty list now. And I’ll show you. I’ll show you all…”

At this moment, Krampus burst into the master bedroom. He’d eaten all the food that was to be found in the kitchen and then followed the scent of flaming Christmas pudding.

“Krampus hungry,” he announced. Then he spotted Santa.

“Santa!” he roared.

“Ah, Krampus, right on time. Would you deal with these…” Santa pointed at his opponents. “…traitors?”

“No,” Krampus thundered, his fangs dripping mulled wine. At least, the assembled elves and reindeer hoped that it was mulled wine, because the alternative was too disturbing.

“Krampus quits. Krampus hates Santa. Krampus will kill Santa.”

Now Santa paled. He jumped out of the bed, pushed through the assembled elves and reindeer and ran. He dashed through the hidden door and ran, out into the cold and the ice and the snow. And Krampus set off after him, fangs bared and claws flexing, his horns outlined sharply against the solstice moon.

When they were gone, everybody looked at each other. Piet grabbed a quilt and began to beat out the flames that still danced on the bed. “I guess I’d better clean this place up,” he said, “And I should see if I can wake Ruprecht.”

Yule nodded. “And we’d better get back to work, too. After all, Christmas is in four days and we still have much work to do.”

“Reindeer with me,” Dasher ordered, “We must discuss this year’s sleigh formation.”

“Can I be the lead again?” Rudolph asked.

“No,” eight reindeer said as one.

***

Merry Mistletoe and Holly Jinglebells eventually made it to a polar research station, much to the delight of the resident scientists, who decided to consider their guests an early and very welcome Christmas present.

The fore-elves built a shantytown on the polar wastes, gazing longingly at the brightly lit compound on the horizon, knowing they were forever cast out of that particular paradise.

Krampus returned to the compound two hours later, claws and fangs and even horns dripping with blood. He belched, announced that he was tired and promptly fell asleep in Santa’s big king-sized bed. Nobody asked what had happened, for nobody dared.

Two days later, Inspector Aki Lipponen of the Lapland police was called to the site of a grisly find. Two polar researchers had come across a blood trail on the ice. They’d followed the trail and found a body, frozen stiff.

“So what do we have here?” Inspector Lipponen asked his medical examiner, Doctor Tarja Latvala.

“The poor fellow was gutted. Polar bear attack, most likely.” She shook her head. “Stupid tourists. Don’t they know that the polar regions are dangerous?”

“Do we have an ID?” Lipponen asked.

Doctor Latvala nodded. “Name’s Kris Kringle, would you believe it?”

Lipponen shook his head. “And two days before Christmas, too. Poor bastard.”

***

On Christmas Eve, the elves finished loading up the sleigh. The reindeer were prancing in their harnesses. Against all intentions, Rudolph did take the lead again, because it was a foggy Christmas night and his glowing red nose did come in handy to avoid collisions with planes and helicopters.

Piet strutted out onto the runway, clad in one of Santa’s spare suits that Cinnamon and Chestnut had altered to fit him. He’d asked Ruprecht to come along, but Ruprecht was drunk again after the previous night’s victory party.

Yule handed Piet a clipboard. “Here’s the list. Good luck.”

The ground shook with heavy footsteps.

“Krampus come, too,” a roaring voice announced.

“All right, hop on in,” Piet said, if only because when Krampus wanted something, it was unwise to refuse, “But no eating naughty children, okay?”

Krampus pouted. “Spoilsport.” He shot Piet a hopeful look. “Can I eat naughty adults?”

Piet sighed. “You can eat Donald Trump, okay? Ain’t no one gonna miss him.”

***

That Christmas, all presents were delivered as expected and no one noticed anything amiss, except that their fridges had gone mysterious empty overnight.

A little boy living on the South Side of Chicago announced joyfully the next morning that he’d seen Santa Claus and that he was black.

Several children reported that they’d heard a crackling “Ho, ho, ho” that didn’t sound very jolly at all. And in Upstate New York, a little girl refused to sleep for three days, because she’d seen Santa, too, and he was a monster.

But apart from those little hiccups, it was as good a Christmas as any and the dawn of a new era of freedom and democracy at the North Pole.

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

Star Trek Discovery Decides to “Choose to Live”

It’s time for the latest installment in my series of episode by episode reviews of season 4 of Star Trek Discovery. Reviews of previous seasons and episodes may be found here.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut!

“Choose to Live”, the latest episode of Star Trek Discovery, opens with a heist. A Starfleet ship is about to deliver a goodwill gift of dilithium to a random world, when two guys dressed as ninjas and a sword-wielding Romulan woman beam aboard to steal the dilithium. The First Officer of the Starfleet vesse tries to stop them. “Choose to live”, the Romulan woman says to the officer, indicating that she is a member of the Qowat Milat, the order of Romulan warrior nuns that we’ve seen before in Star Trek Picard and Star Trek Discovery. The Starfleet does not choose to live, i.e. stand down, and is promptly killed.

The scene now switches to a conference room in Starfleet Headquarters, where Admiral Vance, President Rillak of the Federation, President T’Rina of Ni’Var (a.k.a. the planet formerly known as Vulcan) and Michael discuss the case. It turns out that there has been a series of dilithium heists, which now culminated in the death of a Starfleet officer. They know who’s responsible, a Qowat Milat nun named J’Vini, and since the latest dilithium shipment was equipped with a tracker, they know where she’s hiding.

President T’Rina is respectively horrified, but insists that the Qowat Milat deal with the issue. President Rillak, ever the diplomat (Ni’Var left the Federation and Rillak is desperate for them to rejoin), proposes a joint mission and so Michael finds herself paired with her mother Gabrielle(a welcome reappearance by Sonja Sohn), who had joined the Qowat Milat upon ending up in the 31st century. President T’Rina also offers the help of the Vulcan Science Academy in determing the nature of the planet-eating anomaly that the Discovery investigated last episode. So Stamets and Book as the sole witness to the destruction of Kwejian due to the anomaly are dispatched to Ni’Var in the B-plot, while Michael and Gabrielle hunt down the wayward nun in the A-plot. Gabrielle has brought another Qowat Milat sister with her, so Michael also brings along a second Starfleet officer. Saru suggests Tilly, who is having trouble adjusting to everything that happened to her and is looking for new experiences. Michael points out that Tilly has many strengths, but combat is not one of them, whereupon Saru notes that with two Qowat Milat nuns and Michael along for the mission, there are plenty of combat specialists, but they might need someone as likeable as Tilly.

Things go wrong almost at once. Gabrielle insists that Michael and Tilly leave behind their phasers in favour of swords, the Qowat Milat’s preferred weapon. Michael also learns why Gabrielle is so insistent that J’Vini must have good reasons for doing what she does. Because J’Vini was the Qowat Milat sister who found Gabrielle, when she was flung into the 31st century, and nursed her back to health. They land on what appears to be a barren moon. However, a scan detects lifesigns in a cavern under the surface. Those lifesigns soon beam aboard Book’s ship, which Michael borrowed for this mission, and a fight with J’Vini’s goons ensues. The Qowat Milat hold their own, but Michael and particularly Tilly, who are not used to swordfighting, have problems. However, in the end it’s the Qowat Milat sister who is not Gabrielle who gets killed.

J’Vini herself also beams aboard Book’s ship. She tells Gabrielle, Michael and Tilly that she did not want the sister to be killed and that she didn’t want to kill the Starfleet officer either.  She also warns Gabrielle, Michael and Tilly to leave or face the consequences. “Choose to live,” J’Vini says ominously.

Of course, Michael, Tilly and Gabrielle don’t leave but beam into the subterranean cavern, which turns out to be no cave at all, but what appears to be an alien crypt or tomb. They find hundreds of aliens in coffin-like pods. One of the pods has been broken open by graverobbers, the body therein belongs to a species no one has ever seen before. It is also covered up with a Qowat Milat cloak. J’Vini definitely was there.

When the crypt suddenly experiences something seismic instabilites, Michael and Tilly realise that the asteroid is no asteroid at all, but a spaceship, which reminded me of the original series episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, which also has the distinction of being the first Star Trek episode I ever watched. J’Vini stole the dilithium to power up the asteroid/spaceship. Also, they aliens are not dead, but in cryosleep.

Michael, Tilly and Gabrielle find the engine and Tilly removes the dilithium to shut it down, whereupon J’Vini appears.  After a brief fight, she takes Gabrielle hostage and places her sword at her throat and demands that Tilly and Michael power up the asteroid again. Michael and Tilly stall, while Gabrielle finally get J’Vini to tell the full story, corroborated by some mural and reliefs on the walls of the cave.

The homeworld of the aliens (I don’t think their species even gets a name) was destroyed when their sun went nova. The aliens hollowed out a moon and turned it into a spaceship. Then they set course for their new home and went into cryosleep. Somehow all this happens without the Federation having the slightest idea about it. However, something went wrong and though the aliens have long since reached their destination, they won’t wake up. Furthermore, the bodies of the aliens also happen to have a high content of Latinum (the element which the Ferengi use as a currency), which attracts scavengers who have no moral qualms about harvesting Latinum from aliens in cryosleep.

This happened to the mutilated alien whose body Michael, Tilly and Gabrielle found earlier. And since the alien woke up, when they were being harvested, and since the aliens just happen to be telepathic, this alien sent out a telepathic distress signal that was received by J’Vini, who was too late to save this alien, but decided to make the rest of their species her lost cause. While I was watching the episode, all this made perfect sense. However, typing it up now I realise that there are a lot of coincidences here and that the whole aliens in cryosleep plot doesn’t make a lot of sense.

As for why J’Vini needs the dilithium, the aliens’ asteroid spaceship happens to be in the likely path of the planet-killing anomaly (Stamets has called it “Dark Matter Anomaly”, DMA for short), so J’Vini needs to reactivate the drive in order to move it when necessary.

“Why didn’t you just ask the Federation for dilithium?” Michael wants to know. J’Vini points out that the Federation is only giving dilithium to organisations and planets, not to individuals, at least not without knowing the reason they need it. Once again, this makes no sense, because why would J’Vini not simply inform the Federation of her discovery? It’s the Federation, for heavens’ sake. They won’t cut up these poor aliens for latinum.

The whole alien plot is potentially interesting and helping an unknown species in trouble is a very Star Trek thing to do, but the plot strand also feels underdeveloped. AV-Club reviewer Zack Handlen points out that the aliens basically serve as a Macguffin in this story. The show isn’t interested in the aliens or their story or their culture and indeed, we never even meet one of them who’s still alive. They’re merely a plot device to give Michael some quality time with her Mom. Come to think of it, the dead Starfleet officer is more plot device than person as well. He’s literally a random redshirt. We don’t even learn his name or the fact that he has a family until the end of the episode.

And now J’Vini has her sword at the throat of Michael’s Mom and demands that Michael and Tilly fix the drive. Michael also points out that the aliens should have woken up a long time ago, but that something went wrong. However, Michael is going to fix it. How does Michael fix an issue with the computer of the spaceship of a species the Federation had never even heard of until that day? The story neither asks nor addresses those questions.

At any rate, Michael and Tilly are successful. The warpdrive works again and the aliens wake up to settle their new homeworld (which conveniently is not occupied by anybody else). Gabrielle informs J’Vini that she has fulfilled her vow to the aliens and that this path has ended and a new path has begun. J’Vini allows Gabrielle to take her into custody. Michael assures Gabrielle and J’Vini that her motives will be taken account when the Federation puts her on trial. Gabrielle also has a little heart to heart with Tilly about paths ending and new paths beginning and maybe Tilly’s issues are due to the fact that a path has ended for her. Hmm, does Mary Wiseman want to leave the show?

Back at Starfleet headquarters, J’Vini is not put on trial but handed over to the Ni’Var authorities who may well turn a blind eye to J’Vini’s crimes. Michael is angry about this – something I found difficult to understand given her not so great experiences with Federation justice. Vance is resigned and Rillak wants to salvage the relationship with Ni’Var at all costs.

In the B-plot, Stamets and Book travel to Ni’Var to visit the Vulcan Science Academy. Stamets believes that the anomaly might be a primordial wormhole and lays out his evidence, whereupon the assembled Vulcans and Romulans close their eyes. “Now is not naptime”, Stamets, who just can’t resist sticking his foot into his mouth, exclaims, whereupon President T’Rina calmly explains that the Vulcan scientists are meditating. No one can delivery technobabble and make it compelling like Anthony Rapp. And considering Stamets was somewhat sidelined in season 3, I’m happy that he gets plenty to do in season 4. Though I do miss Jet Reno.

While Stamets is waiting for the Vulcans to finish meditating, President T’Rina approaches Book and offers him some calming tea. Book asks if his emotional turmoil is that obvious even to a Vulcan, whereupon T’Rina replies that Vulcans do have emotions, they just choose to suppress them in favour of a more logical approach to life. “Can you teach me how to do that?” Book asks, whereupon T’Rina explains that it requires a lifetime of training and that for an empath like Book, suppressing his emotions would be dangerous. The scenes between Book and T’Rina were some of my favourites in this episode. I also really like T’Rina and hope that we will see more of her.

Once the Vulcans have finished meditating, they shoot down Stamets’ theory by pointing out that there is no evidence of tachyons around the anomaly, but that tachyons would be present, if it truly were a primordial wormhole. Of course, Stamets already knows that. President T’Rina points out that tachyons cause a distinctive blue glow and that they have a witness to the destruction of Kwejian around in the form of Book. So why not ask him if he observed a blue glow? And yes, if you thought, “A blue glow. Well, that narrows it down, since everything in Star Trek Discovery has a blue glow”, then you’re not the only one.

Book has racked his memories several times, but can’t recall any blue glow. T’Rina suggests that a mind meld might help Book recover suppressed memories. Stamets, whose hypothesis is on the chopping block after all, immediately jumps in to defend Book and tells him that he doesn’t have to relive traumatic memories again. Stamets is not the most empathetic person, but nonetheless he immediately sticks up for Book, so Book won’t be retraumatised. But then, Stamets knows a thing or two about grief.

Book, on the other hand, desperately wants to help and agrees to the mind meld. He sees the dead birds again and Kwejian blowing up. “There was no blue glow”, T’Rina announces, except that there is, because every cosmic effect in Star Trek Discovery has a blue glow. Maybe they should have just made the telltale glow a different colour. Still, Stamets’ hypothesis could not be proven. Whatever the anomaly is, it’s not a primordial wormhole.

T’Rina wants to end the mind meld, but Book tells her there is another memory he wants to relive. T’Rina warns him that he can only observe, not interfere or alter the memory, but Book still wants to relive it. And so Book sees himself with his brother Kyheem and nephew Leto in the forest on Kwejian again. Leto runs off, but this time, Book sees Leto turn around and smile at him, a detail he had forgotten. This actually gives Book some peace, because he now knows that Leto knew that Book loved him.

Back aboard Discovery, Book projects a holographic representation of the late forests of Kwejian onto the ceiling of his ship, something that would have been too painful for him to do earlier. He also is wearing the glass capsule pendant that all Kwejian empaths wear again – even though he ditched the pendant when he first left Kwejian. Book is still far from healed, but he’s doing better.

I also really like T’Rina and hope we see more of her. Star Trek doesn’t always know what to do with Vulcans not named Spock or Sarek, but T’Rina is both very Vulcan and also remarkably empathetic.

The third plot strand in this episode involves Gray and his quest to regain a body. The android body that has been prepared for Gray is ready and Gray and Adira admire it. But in order to transfer Gray’s ghost/consciousness/whatever it is into the android body, the Trill elder Ze needs to be present (virtually as a hologram) as well. Elder Ze warns Gray that the transfer process is not without risks. It’s possible that Gray’s consciousness will be lost in transit. Gray, however, is willing to take that risk. So are Adira and Tal, their symbiont.

So Doctor Culber initiates the transfer process. It appears to be successful, cause Adira can’t hear or see Gray anymore. However, android Gray doesn’t wake up. Culber comforts Adira – and unlike Stamets, he’s actually good at comforting people. Eventually Adira goes into sickbay again to talk to Gray and maybe serve as a guide for his consciousness to find its way. Finally, Adira falls asleep by Gray’s side. And lo and behold, Gray wakes up, kisses Adira and hugs Culber.

Adira and Gray are just the sweetest couple. And Doctor Culber is fast becoming my favourite Star Trek doctor of all time, which is interesting because I don’t normally like medical dramas and don’t usually particularly like the resident doctors aboard the various Starfleet vessels. Sure, some of them are fun characters like the Emergency Medical Hologram from Voyager or Doctor Phlox from Enterprise. And all of them are clearly competent. But Culber is not just competent, he’s also empathetic and just immensely likeable in general. I’m so glad that the showrunners reversed the decision to kill him off in season 1.

During season 1 and parts of seaon 2, I often complained that Discovery felt more like the new Battlestar Galactica or Game of Thrones in space than like Star Trek. Now that the show has overcome its growing pains (and season 1 and 2 are so different from what came after that it’s barely the same show), Discovery finally feels like Star Trek. And “Choose to Live” was a very typical Star Trek episode. There’s a mystery to solve. There is a hostile character who turns out to have a reason for their behaviour. There is an alien species in dire need of aid and Starfleet manages to save the day (for the aliens). In many ways, “Choose to Live” feels like a middling episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and that’s perfectly fine. It did deliver what I expect from a Star Trek show and I had fun watching it.

That said, “Choose to Live” is also a fairly forgettable episode. The alien plot feels undercooked and we never really get invested in their plight, since the aliens are only a plot device to give J’Vini a motive for her behaviour and to give Michael and Gabrielle some quality time together.

It also doesn’t help that I don’t find the overarching plot of the Dark Matter Anomaly particularly compelling. Yes, the anomaly destroyed Kwejian and killed Stationmaster Redshirt and that’s very sad. But it’s also an evil black space cloud and weird space phenomena are dime a dozen in Star Trek. The fact that everybody behaves as if they had never seen a dangerous spacial anomaly before – in a Star Trek show of all things – doesn’t help either. I hope Stamets finds out something juicy about the anomaly soon that makes it more exciting than just another dangerous space phenomenon.

What makes Star Trek Discovery (and any other TV show, Star Trek or not) are the characters. And while previous seasons of Discovery tended to focus on Michael to the expense of other characters, season 4 seems to be more balanced. Yes, the Qowat Milat plot focussed on Michael, but the Stamets/Book and Culber/Gray/Adira plots gave other characters a much needed spotlight. I particularly like that Stamets and Culber get more to do this season, since they often were sidelined in season 3. io9 reviewer James Whitbrook also points out that the characterisation is what makes a very average episode shine, while Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido praises that “Choose to Live” also offers plenty of characterisation for supporting characters like Admiral Vance, Gabrielle Burnham, President T’Rina and President Lara Rillack.

This is not a Discovery episode that will set the world on fire. But it’s a pleasant way to spend fifty minutes hanging out with characters we’ve come to like.

 

Hawkeye Experiences “Echoes”

I had barely finished the review of the two-part series premiere of Hawkeye that the next episode aired. Review of previous episodes (well, just one so far) may be found here.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

When we last saw our two crack archers, they had just been captured by the tracksuit mafia – after Kate unfortunately messed up Clint’s plan by an ill-advised rescue attempt, and had been tied to wobbly animals (which the tracksuit mafia just loved to activate – now torture by wobbly animal is truly a new one), since the tracksuit mafia has set up camp in an abandoned toy store, cause all the nice empty warehouses in New York City are being converted into lofts. Gentrification is a bitch, even for organised crime.

But before the show returns to that cliffhanger, we get yet another flashback to the childhood of another little girl, just like episode 1 opened with a flashback to the traumatic experience that set Kate Bishop on the path to becoming a superhero. The little girl we see in “Echoes” is Maya Lopez, a deaf girl with a prosthetic foot. We first see Maya struggling in a regular school, because she can’t read the teacher’s lips (it was a surprise to see a teacher wearing a hijab, since public school teachers are not allowed to wear hijabs and other religious symbols in many countries). However, Maya is also smart and determined. We next see her during a martial arts tournament, where she knocks a much bigger boy to the mat, and later during a boxing match, where she knocks out her opponent.

We also see Maya with her father (we never her mother). Maya clearly has a loving relationship with her father, though the family seems to have financial issues (come to think of it, there were hints of financial issues in Kate’s flashback, too), since Maya’s Dad can’t afford to send her to a special school for the hearing impaired. But going to a regular school will probably be better for Maya, her Dad says, because this way she will learn to live in two worlds.

But even though Maya’s Dad is a good father, not everything is right with this little family. Because it gradually becomes clear that Maya’s Dad is a criminal and the leader of the tracksuit mafia. He also reports to a higher ranking criminal – Maya calls him “uncle” – who is hinted to be Wilson Fisk a.k.a. Kingpin. Fisk was last seen in Daredevil and The Defenders, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, who did a great job, though no one is sure whether the Marvel Netflix shows are still canon or not.

After her boxing match, Maya returns to a garage run by the tracksuit mafia and witnesses Ronin killing them all, including her father. Maya vows revenge and we can absolutely understand her.

The opening flashback featuring Maya’s backstory is very strong, as AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede and io9 reviewer Germain Lussier point out, and the parallels between Kate and Maya are very obvious. Both lose their fathers young and in both cases, Clint is connected to the deaths, only that he saved Kate, but not her Dad, from the Chitauri and killed Maya’s Dad during his Ronin phase.

Now any kind of media featuring any kind of superheroic and/or vigilante action (I don’t exclude myself here) tends to ignore the fact that villains and their henchpeople are still human beings with families and loved ones to make it easier to kill them off indiscriminately. In my own work, I’m not a huge fan of indiscriminately killing off villains and henchpeople and I have written action tales with no bodycount. Nonetheless, killing off villains and henchpeople can’t always be avoided or at least I haven’t figured out how.

So it’s good that Hawkeye reminds us that yes, even bad guys have families and loved ones and even villains can be good parents. It’s also nice that Hawkeye does not let Clint off the hook for the things he did while he was Ronin. Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw is not entirely sure how the series will handle the fact that Clint killed a shitload of people with little to no excuse and I’m not sure how they will resolve this without a cop-out either. Especially since I strongly suspect that several members of the tracksuit mafia did not survive their encounter with Clint and Kate.

Maya Lopez a.k.a. Echo is a character from the comics and her backstory is very similar to the one in Hawkeye, only that the superhero Maya vows revenge upon for the murder of her father is Daredevil and not Hawkeye/Ronin. In the comics, Maya eventually learns that Daredevil is innocent and that Wilson Fisk killed her father and framed Daredevil. Will the series go the same route (which would offer an overly neat resolution to the issue that Clint is both a gruff father figure and cold-blooded killer)? We’ll see.

In the present day, Maya (played by Alaqua Cox in what according to Tor.com reviewer Annika Rollock is her first ever acting role) is the leader of the tracksuit mafia and Kazi, who appeared to be their leader in the first two episodes, is her chief henchman.

When Maya spots Clint’s hearing aid, she begins signing, but Clint is not very good at signing and can’t read lips at all. “You rely too much on technology”, Maya tells Clint. But then Maya was either born deaf or lost her hearing at a very young age and grew up with signing and lip reading, whereas Clint lost his hearing as an adult and is more likely to rely on technology. Traditionally, Marvel has been better with regard to disability representation than many others – not that that’s a high bar – and had disabled characters (Daredevil, Professor X, Nick Fury) as early as the 1960s. Nonetheless, it’s great to see not one but two deaf characters in a superhero show of all things. I also liked it how the sound of altogether absent or heavily muted whenever we’re viewing the action from the POV of Clint or Maya.

Maya – with Kazi serving as her interpreter – has no idea that Clint used to be Ronin, but think that it’s Kate. Clint points out that this makes no sense, because Kate is much too young. He also tells Maya that Ronin is dead. “Who got him?” Maya wants to know. “Black Widow”, Clint replies, which from his POV is absolutely true. He was Ronin until Black Widow tracked him down and he became Hawkeye again. Maya, on the other hand, is not convinced, since Black Widow is conveniently dead and can neither deny nor confirm that she stopped Ronin.

The interrogation ends when Clint frees from himself from his duct tape bonds and proceeds to mop up the tracksuit mafia, using various toys and even a ball pit as weapons. But Maya is still a damned good martial artist. She manages to knock Clint’s hearing aid out of his ear and promptly steps on it, leaving Clint at a serious disadvantage. However, once Clint grabs hold of his bow and arrows, the tide turns. He nails Maya to the nearest wall and frees Kate, who has been struggling with her own duct tape bonds.

Clint and Kate flee the toy store. Outside, Kate wants to “borrow” a vintage Dodge Challenger, but Clint points out that car is much too pretty to destroy and instead hotwires an equally old, but much less flashy model. Clint wants Kate to drive, but she hops into the passenger seat (and in fact, I wondered whether Kate, who appears to be a lifelong New Yorker, can’t drive, since she never had to), so Clint has to drive, while Kate holds off the pursuing tracksuit mafia (including Maya driving the Dodge Challenger Clint wanted to spare) with Clint’s stash of trick arrows.

Compared to what Alarm für Cobra 11 has been dishing up for twenty-five years now, car chases in US TV shows are often underwhelming and this includes Marvel shows that such The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Therefore, I was thrilled how good the car chase in Hawkeye was. Very different from Alarm für Cobra 11, but just as action-packed.

A large part of the fun is that Clint does not label his trick arrows and Kate has no idea what each one does. The effects range from a putty arrow (which turns the windshield of Kazi’s truck into a big mess of purple putty) via a suction cup arrow (which does nothing in this context, but proves useful later on), an arrow which emits purple smoke, an explosive arrow, which takes out a carload of tracksuit mafia goons, an arrow which emits grappling hooks which draw in Christmas trees during a chase across a Christmas tree lot.

The chase comes to a head on one of New York City’s many suspension bridges (Tor.com reviewer Annika Rollock claims it’s the Triborough Bridge, though the suspension bridge in Hawkeye has a second deck for subway train, which the Triborough Bridge does not appear to have), when Clint and Kate are forced to brake to avoid crashing into a car ahead of them. Clint tells Kate to trust him and fire a regular, non-trick arrow into the air. Once she does, Clint hits it with an arrow labelled PYM (well, at least that one was labelled), which uses a small quantity of Pym particles to turn Kate’s arrow into a giant arrow, which smashed and disables the tracksuit mafia’s cars (and very likely damages whatever bridge it is). The Dodge Challenger is also destroyed, much to Clint’s chagrin. Before the tracksuit mafia catches up with Clint and Kate on foot, they both dive off the bridge, using Clint’s grapling hook arrow trick from Avengers to land on a subway car on the lower deck of the bridge. Kate also learns what suction cup arrows are good for.

We next see Clint and Kate aboard the subway, where Clint praises Kate’s archery skills, while they both realise almost simultaneously that they need to walk the dog Kate rescued (who acquires a name – Pizza Dog – in this episode). We now get several nice scenes of character development and bonding between Clint and Kate. The most touching of these scene is when Clint’s phone rings, while Clint’s hearing aid is still out of comission, and Kate has to scribble the replies of Clint’s little son Nathaniel on a notepad, so Clint can talk to him in real time. That moment made me misty-eyed (and not just me, both Caroline Siede and Germain Lussier also call that scene heartbreaking), especially when Nathaniel tells Clint that it’s okay if he can’t be home for Christmas. Both Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld show some great acting here, Renner as the world-weary superhero who really just wants to be home with his family, but has to mop of his own and Kate’s messes, and Steinfeld as the young woman who’s lost her father and now witnesses the love of another father for his kid.

Once Clint has gotten his hearing aid repaired, courtesy of a slightly dodgy doctor, there is another great scene in a diner, where Kate continues her efforts to improve Clint’s branding by designing a new costume for him, which is basically Jack Kirby’s classic Hawkeye costume (only that Kate can’t draw, unlike Kirby) and which Clint categorically refuses to wear. Kate also tells Clint that she is finally what she always wanted to be, a heroine who protects others. Clint cautions her that yes, he knows how she feels, cause he’s been there, but that there is a price as well. He also tells Kate that he’s no one’s role model (much to the shock of Kate who has idolised Hawkeye since she was a little girl) and that his job was basically to be a ghost, to come and do the job and go unnoticed.

It’s worthwhile remembering that Clint was never supposed to be an Avenger. He was not supposed to be a part of Nick Fury’s Avengers initiative, and only got dragged into the whole mess because Loki took over his mind. And the only reason the newly deprogrammed Clint winds up joining the Avengers is because he happens to be with Black Widow when Steve and Tony come to fetch her and because he can fly the Quinjet. Like Kate, Clint, the invisible and silent S.H.I.E.L.D. agent clearly relished the opportunity to finally be a hero out in the open. Unlike Kate, he also knows what his job has cost him, namely his health and almost his family.

I noted in my review of the first two episodes that Hawkeye, Star Trek Discovery and Masters of the Universe: Revelation all deal with the themes of trauma, grief and how to overcome them. However, in this episode Hawkeye also delves into the theme of how to combine heroics with family life and if this is possible at all, a theme that also loomed large in Masters of the Universe: Revelation, where various characters have very different approaches of combining family and heroics. We have the original Sorceress who leaves her partner and baby daughter, because she believes that she cannot combine her duties as the sorceress with having a family. We have Duncan a.k.a. Man-at-Arms who somehow manages to combine his life as a hero with being a single Dad to Teela and adopting every stray he comes across. We have Adam who keeps his heroic identity as He-Man a secret to protect the people he loves and only winds up hurting them. And we have Teela who realises that becoming the Sorceress does not have to mean giving up the people you love.

Clint handles balancing heroics and family life similar to Duncan, only that unlike Single Dad Duncan, Clint has the benefit of a supportive partner. And while Clint may not be perfect as a Dad and husband, he actually does okay. He never keeps his identity a secret, his family knows what he does and support him. And while Clint may not always be there and probably missed a lot of moments in his kids’ lives, he tries to be there for them as much as he can. As for Kate, we don’t know where her path will lead. Right now, she’s young and has no attachments except for her mother (and that relationship is complicated) and her dog, so a superhero career seems attractive. In ten or twenty years… who knows?

Clint knows that Maya is not the true leader of the tracksuit mafia, but that there’s someone above her, someone dangerous, possibly Wilson Fisk. Meawhile, Kate is still suspicious of her Mom’s fiancé Jack Duquesne and with good reason, too. So she suggests sneaking into the penthouse of her Mom, while her Mom is away, and hack into the databases of her Mom’s security company to find out more about the tracksuit mafia. So that’s what they do. Clint wanders the house, impressed by the lavish home Kate grew up in (does he recognise the building from the Battle of New York, we wonder), while Kate manages to find a mysterious company named Sloan Limited listed as Kazi’s employer (but how does Kate know his name, let alone how to spell it?). Her attempt to dig up dirt on Jack gets her locked out of the system, however. Though Kate and Clint will have the chance to ask the man himself, once Clint finds his own retractable Ronin sword at his throat, since the apartment was not as empty as Clint and Kate though after all.

This episode doesn’t do a lot to advance the plot beyond introducing Maya’s backstory, though it does have both nice action sequences and character moments. In many ways, Hawkeye reminds me of the Netflix Marvel series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders), only that it balances the grittiness and fairly small scale street level threats better with humour and banter, whereas the Netflix series often became annoyingly grim to the point that I quickly stopped watching them, even though I initially enjoyed them. The holiday setting adds some much needed cheer to the proceedings and the fact that Hawkeye is short, only six episodes, also means it won’t get bogged down with padding like the Marvel Netflix series. Plus, Hawkeye also has some interesting things to say about grief, family and the costs of being a hero, whereas the Netflix series (except for series 1 of Jessica Jones) didn’t have a lot to say.

All in all, I’m enjoying it and looking forward to the back half of Hawkeye.

Hawkeye realises it’s better to “Never Meet Your Heroes” or pop culture deals with trauma and grief, take 3

This weekend was a long holiday weekend in the US, so the various streaming service thought it was a really great idea to throw out as much SFF content as humanly possibly, since apparently the people who actually do the cooking and cleaning on Thanksgiving don’t watch TV or at least not SFF shows, while everybody else has nothing better to do than watch TV all weekend long. Never mind that outside the US, it was just a normal weekend.

Thankfully, I never cared the slightest bit about The Wheel of Time, because Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Star Trek Discovery and two episodes of Hawkeye (cause why have just one – someone might be moved to help with Thanksgiving preparations after all?) provide more than enough TV SFF for one weekend.

As I noted in my Star Trek Discovery review, all three shows deal in some way with trauma, grief and PTSD and how to overcome it, while also fighting some kind of huge universe-endangering threat. To my infinite amazement, Masters of the Universe: Revelation handled its subject matter better than Star Trek Discovery did. So let’s see how Hawkeye does.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut!

Quite well, it turns out. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes of Hawkeye. So far, it’s not as wonderfully weird as WandaVision or Loki, but delivers a more coherent story than the often messy The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The fact that the setting actually looks like the place it’s supposed to be – New York City at Christmastime – doesn’t hurt either.

So far, the Disney+ Marvel TV shows have focussed on characters like Wanda, Vision, Sam, Bucky or Loki, who were sidelined in the Marvel movies (though Loki actually got a lot of screentime and often stole the show). Of the six original Avengers, Hawkeye is probably the most underdeveloped. He is introduced in a cameo appearance in the first Thor film, then spends most of Avengers under Loki’s control and only acquires a personality and backstory that’s more than “He’s Natasha’s best friend” in Avengers: Age of Ultron, when his secret family is introduced. “You have a branding problem”, new character Kate Bishop tells Clint at one point and she’s right. Even after five movies, we still don’t know who Clint Barton really is. Family man, murderous vigilante, Natasha’s best friend, crackshot archer?

The Marvel movies also threw out most of Clint Barton’s backstory from the comics, where he starts out as a villain, has a troubled on-off relationship with fellow superheroine Mockingbird (who appeared in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., played by Adrienne Palicki, though her troubled relationship with Hawkeye is given to Lance Hunter, a completely different character) and is generally something of a mess. Clint in the movies is first and foremost a father and family, who mainly superheroes, because someone has to, but who’d rather be at home with his family and is devastated, when he loses them to Thanos snapping out half the universe. Personally, I find this version of Clint Barton a lot more likeable than the often jerky comics version.

Another issue is that even though Hawkeye is a longterm member of the Avengers and has had a few solo series, he hasn’t really had a lot of memorable comic arcs. The most memorable of those is probably the acclaimed Hawkeye run by Matt Fraction and David Aja and it is this story arc that the series adapts. Matt Fraction is given a producer credit and I really hope that he gets paid well for the adaptation of his storyline, since we all know that Disney is not particularly great about paying writers.

“Never Meet Your Heroes”, the first episode of Hawkeye, opens with a flashback to the Battle of New York from the first Avengers movie. Though this time, we see the Battle of New York from the POV of the most innocent of innocent bystanders, namely young Kate Bishop, a little girl living in a multimillion dollar spacious New York City penthouse with her Mom and Dad, when her world quite literally comes crashing down around her. We see a terrified Kate dashing from room to room, calling for her parents, until she comes into a part of the penthouse where the exterior wall has been blasted away. A Chitauri warrior on one of those Skysled things (yes, I’ve still got He-Man on the mind) flies towards little Kate, until he is shot down by a well-aimed arrow from none other than Hawkeye. Yes, Clint has just saved the life of young Kate and he most likely doesn’t even remember it.

However, in spite of the Avengers’ best efforts, the Battle of New York is not without casualties and one of those casualties is Kate’s Dad, so we next see little Kate and her Mom at her Dad’s funeral. When her Mom asks Kate if there’s anything she needs, Kate says a bow and arrows.

Even though Hawkeye was sold as a cheery holiday action romp, it’s still a show about trauma – which puts it in a line with the latest episode of Star Trek Discovery as well as Masters of the Universe: Revelation – and Kate processes the trauma of having the safety of her home shattered and losing her Dad by emulating the one person she saw standing up to the Chitauri, namely Hawkeye.

The animated title credits show Kate growing up, excelling at archery, fencing and martial arts and gathering medal after medal. When the show skips to the present day, Kate is twenty-two, played by Hailee Steinfeld and a college student who is about to commit a silly stunt to ring the bell of her college’s clock tower by firing an arrow at it and managing to destroy the clock tower in the process. As the opening scene hinted, Kate’s family is filthy rich – but then anybody who owns a whole building in Manhattan, let alone a gorgeous Beaux Arts building, is filthy rich. So Kate’s Mom (Vera Farminga wearing a gorgeous red gown) can pay for the repair of the clock tower, though she’s rightfully angry and promptly cancels Kate’s credit cards. She also forces Kate to accompany her and her new boyfriend Jack Duquesne to a charity auction.

Kate is clearly suspicious of her Mom’s boyfriend and she’s absolutely right to be. For starters, anybody named Duquesne is almost inevitably a villain – blame E.E. Smith for naming the main villain in his Skylark series Marc DuQuesne. The only non-villainous fictional Dequesne that I know of is Calleigh Duquesne from CSI: Miami. As for Jack Duquesne, there is a character in the Marvel comics named Jacques Duquesne, a circus performer and villain named the Swordsman who introduced a young Clint Barton to a life of crime before eventually reforming and becoming an Avenger himself. Jacques Duquesne also won a joint honourable mention at the prestigious (not) Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents in 2012 together with Howard Stark, Odin Allfather, Joseph Rogers, Brian Banner and Ivan Petrovich, i.e. the parents/parent stand-ins of the Avengers (that was before the movies gave us anything about Clint’s backstory). The 2012 winner was Tywin Lannister BTW. As I mentioned above, the movies threw out Clint’s comic backstory, but Jack Duquesne is a nice hat tip to that backstory. Plus, this Jack has a thing about swords, just like his comics counterpart.

Things quickly turn tense at the charity auction. Kate, who decides to defy her mother by wearing a tuxedo rather than the evening gown her Mom wants her to wear, finds herself talking to one Armand Duquesne III, uncle of her Mom’s new boyfriend Jack (in the comics, Armand is the father of Jacques Duquesne). Armand III is played with great gusto by Simon Callow, so I of course expected him to turn out to be the main villain, because normally you don’t hire an actor of Simon Callow’s calibre for what is basically a cameo. On the other hand, if you’re Marvel, you can do anything.

Armand casually lets it drop that Jack isn’t just the new boyfriend of Kate’s Mom, he is her fiancé. Kate is about as happy about this as you can imagine. Armand isn’t happy either, since he thinks Kate’s Mom is not good for Jack. And so, Kate witnesses a tense confrontation between Armand and her Mom not long afterwards. She watches Armand and Jack slip away through the kitchen and decides to follow, grabbing a tray to pose as a waitress (luckily she is wearing a tuxedo).

Kate promptly stumbles upon the real auction (not for charity and selling illegally acquired, but unique high ticket items) in the wine cellar, where she overhears Armand III and Jack arguing over money and Armand outbidding Jack on an item he really wants just out of pure spite.. The lots include the skull of a triceratops (Is it wrong that I want that?) as well as the retractable sword (Is it wrong that I want that as well?) and ninja-like suit of the vigilante known only as Ronin, who terrorised the underworld of New York City by flat out murdering them just after the blip.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the true identity of Ronin is a mystery, but those of us who’ve seen Avengers Endgame (and since it’s currently one of the most successful movies of all time, that means everybody who watches Hawkeye has likely seen it) know that Ronin was the identity Clint took on after losing his entire family to the blip. As AV-Club reviewer Sam Barsanti points out, Avengers: Endgame quickly glossed over the fact that Clint spent five years killing a shitload of people (even if they were bad people), but in Hawkeye, his past come back to haunt him.

Kate, meanwhile, seems to be a true magnet for bad luck. She almost gets caught, when one of the real waiters challenges her and she tells him the manager sent her, only for the waiter to get the manager himself, who of course has no idea who Kate is. Kate manages to bluff her way out of that one (“See, Gary, that’s the problem with you. You can’t even remember my name.”), but more trouble is coming her way, when an explosion rocks the wine cellar and vaguely Eastern European bad guys clad in red tracksuits stream into the cellar, interrupting the auction. The bad guys are called the tracksuit mafia (“Isn’t that a little too on the nose?” asks Kate at one point) and they are looking for one of the artefacts to be auctioned off, a certain watch. However, in order to get that watch, they cause a lot of chaos.

In the confusion, Kate grabs hold of the Ronin suit, puts it on and proceeds to use her considerable martial arts skills and various priceless wine bottles to beat up the bad guys. She manages to hold her own quite well and escapes. Kate even rescues a one-eyed dog who had heroically attacked the tracksuit mafia. But unfortunately the tracksuit mafia know who Ronin is and they’re not fans of his, so Kate has now painted a target on her back. After a brief interlude at Kate’s apartment, where she feeds pizza to the dog she just adopted, Kate sneaks out again, still wearing the Ronin suit, to get some answers from Armand III. However, once she gets to his house, she finds him dead on the floor, stabbed through the chest with a sword. So now Kate not only has the tracksuit mafia after her, she’s a murder suspect, too.

So far, I have talked more about Kate than Clint and that’s because Hawkeye is more Kate’s story than Clint’s, as Guardian reviewer Lucy Mangan and AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede note. Because Clint doesn’t really want to get involved in any adventures at all. He has retired from the superhero business and just wants to spend time with his family. And right now, this means enjoying Christmas time in New York City with his three kids Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel Pietro. Clint clearly means well and tries to be a good Dad, but Cooper and Lila – now both in their teens – are too old for that sort of Christmas cheer and only go along with it to make their Dad happy, while Clint is visibly struggling with the physical and psychological injuries caused by years of being a superhero.

The three Barton kids are played by the same young actors who portrayed them in Avengers: Age of Ultron (except for Nathaniel, with whom Laura Barton was pregnant in that movie) and Avengers: Endgame. It’s nice that Marvel allowed the Barton kids to grow up rather than recast them with younger actors. Even if Cooper is now taller than his Dad, but then Jeremy Renner is not particularly tall. Also, I loved the moment where Nathaniel, the baby of the family, signed “I love you” to his Dad.

When we first see the Barton family, they’re in a theatre, taking on Broadway’s hottest show, Rogers: The Musical, which literally is a musical based on the Battle of New York. The result is just as terrible and corny as you imagine it to be, even though Marvel brought in some top Broadway talent for that brief scene and the “Save the City” song is actually really catchy to the point that I’m wondering if Disney isn’t secretly testing whether there would be an audience for an Avengers Broadway musical.

Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw notes that making a musical about the Battle of New York, an event which killed hundreds of people, is as if there were a contemporary Broadway musical about the September 11 attacks – i.e. completely inappropriate. However, there are some very weird, inappropriate or outright terrible musicals – after all, The Fields of Ambrosia, a musical comedy about executions in the American South in the early 20th century with cheery tunes like “Step right up to the electric chair”, exists and Sweeney Todd, which is almost as inappropriate, not only exists, but was hugely popular. Seen in that light, I don’t find the existence of Rogers: The Musical that unlikely, though it should be Avengers: The Musical. Nonetheless, this is about the worst show that Clint could have gone to see with his kids.

It is well known that survivors of crimes, disasters and other terrible events can be retraumatised by watching documentaries and dramatisations of said events. Even if you’ve only been tangentially touched by such an event, watching a movie about it, especially if it happens unprepared, can be painful. A few years ago, I chanced to see a trailer for a TV drama based on the so-called “Gladbeck hostage drama” (the bulk of which did not take place in Gladbeck but in Bremen) and was utterly furious that the TV station would air the trailer without a trigger warning. Even after thirty years, seeing that trailer disturbed me deeply and I was just only very tangentially affected by those events (I had passed through the station where the bus was hijacked the day before and Silke Bischoff, the young woman who was murdered, went to the same school as me and was the friend of a classmate’s sister). The closer you are, the worse it gets. For example, Ignes Ponto, widow of banker Jürgen Ponto who was murdered by the Red Army Fraction, complained vehemently (and absolutely justifiedly) about the movie The Baader-Meinhof Complex and particularly about the trailers which showed the murder of her husband. And considering that those trailers were on TV all the time, the poor woman basically couldn’t even switch on the TV without seeing her husband shot over and over and over again. Rogers: The Musical does this to Clint and his kids, only that everybody is singing and dancing, too, which must be even more painful.

This pain is only too clearly edged on Clint’s face, as he sits in the theatre. When Black Widow begins to sing and dance, Clint switches off his hearing aid – yes, Marvel finally remembered that Clint is deaf in the comics due to the many traumatic injuries he suffered over the years and decided to incorporate this fact into the show – but even that doesn’t make the pain g away. He needs to get out of there now. But even the bathroom offers no relief, because Clint first sees a “Thanos was right” graffitti scrawled onto a urinal and is then accosted by an annoying fan who wants to take a selfie, literally while Clint is peeing. In the end, the entire Barton family leave the show halfway through. And no, it’s not just Clint for whom the experience is painful. Look at the faces of Cooper and Lila, who after all knew all the original Avengers, two of whom are now dead while one has travelled into the past, and who used to call Natasha “Aunt Nat”. The experience is not pleasant for them either (and Nathaniel doesn’t get the concept of musical theatre). And indeed it’s Lila who notices how much her Dad is suffering.

So far, we’ve only seen Clint’s wife Laura (still played by Linda Candellini) in brief clips when she’s on the phone with Clint, since Laura didn’t come along on the New York trip. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw complains that Laura Barton’s main role is supportive wife and mother, but there’s really nothing wrong with that. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has featured quite a few formidable superhero significant others. Pepper Potts is CEO of Stark Enterprises, Jane Foster is a world class astrophysicist, Peggy Carter is a soldier, secret agent and co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. Then we have heroing couples like Hank and Janet Pym or Wanda and Vision. So where is the problem when one superhero has a significant other who’s a stay-at-home Mom and who supports her husband in his choice of career? Also, it’s notable that Laura is completely aware of what her husband does, when he’s not home. She knows he’s with S.H.I.E.L.D., she knows he’s Hawkeye and she even knows that he used to be Ronin, which is a far cry from the usual superhero love interests who have no idea of their partner’s secret identity. and Masters of the Universe: Revelations just spent much of its runtime exploring the toxic consequences of secret identities. Though to Marvel’s credit, they have largely abandoned that annoying plot device in their movies.

That next stop on the Bartons’ New York trip, a Chinese restaurant, goes somewhat better, though Clint is deeply embarassed when the manager lets them have dinner on the house (and the Barton kids, like all kids, eat a lot), because “You saved us”. But things are about to get worse, because back at the hotel, Clint chances to see a news report about the reappearance of Ronin, complete with smartphone. Clint definitely knows that he is not wearing the Ronin suit, but who is?

So Clint goes out to find and question the fake Ronin and shows up just as the tracksuit mafia has caught up with Kate. He beats them up, grabs Kate by her collar, pulls down her mask and is just about to punch her out, when he stops, once he realises she’s just a kid not much older than his own.

This encounter, which happens at the end of the first episode, leads to a delightful dynamic between Kate, who fangirls Hawkeye and really, really wants to impress him, and Clint, to whom she basically is a kid who needs his help. Hailee Steinfeld and Jeremy Renner have great chemistry, so we get exchanges like Kate informing Clint that she has been studying martial arts since she was five and Clint responding, “When was that? Last year?” Later, an indignant Kate informs Clint that she’s already twenty-two and very much an adult, thank you very much, whereupon Clint mumbles, “A 22-year-old vigilante, Christ.” Of course, Clint likely wasn’t much older than Kate, when he set out on the path to superherodom. Based on Jeremy Renner’s age, he was around forty when he joined the Avengers and he’s clearly had a lengthy career as a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative before that.

Clint takes Kate home and tries to determine whether anybody saw her face or knows her name or where she lives. Kate says no, but then the tracksuit mafia shows up at Kate’s apartment and proceeds to burn the place down. Clint, Kate and the dog escape, but they have to leave the Ronin suit behind. They hole up at the apartment of Kate’s aunt who’s on holiday and we get yet more gruffly paternal Clint, when he cleans and patches up Kate’s wounds, since she didn’t do it properly.

Clint then goes back to Kate’s apartment to retrieve the Ronin suit, but the suit is gone. Clearly, one of the first responders took it. One of the firetrucks has a sticker from a LARP group, so Clint googles the group and finds a video of a member bragging about his brand-new ninja suit. So Clint puts his kids on a plane home (“And don’t forget Nate”), escorts Kate to work in her Mom’s security company and then goes after the suit, which leads to a hilarious scene of Clint being forced to join the LARP event. Of course, Clint could easily take the suit by simply punching out the man who appropriated it, but in the end he makes a deal to let the LARPER win a duel with him in exchange for the suit.

While Clint is getting the suit, Kate has another tense confrontation with her Mom’s fiancé Jack. During what’s supposed to be a family dinner, Kate suggests a friendly fencing match and manages to goad Jack into revealing that he is a master swordsman. She also sees Jack eating a monogramed butterscotch like the one she saw at Armand’s house, suggesting that Jack murdered Armand. She tries to call Clint, only to be answered by a stranger’s voice that he’s busy.

Clint, meanwhile, stashes the suit in a locker and decides to deal with the tracksuit mafia by allowing himself to get captured in a callback to Black Widow’s first appearance in Avengers, where she has allowed another group of East European gangsters to capture her, so she can figure out what they know. Clint’s attempt at using the same tactic is somewhat less successful than Natasha’s. For starters, the tracksuit mafia are really supremely stupid – it’s like talking to furniture, Clint notes at one point, while demanding to speak to their boss, Maya Lopez a.k.a. Echo. Then, his plan is interrupted by a well-meaning rescue attempt from Kate, which only gets them both captured and tied up in a children’s play area, because gentrification has also hit the underworld hard, since all of those abandoned warehouses that are ideal for criminal activities are being transformed into lofts. I had to admit that I laughed out loud at that.

So far, Hawkeye is curious mix of frothy holiday romp and meditation on trauma, grief and aging, which makes it the third pop cultural take on trauma and how to deal with it I watched in as many days after Star Trek Discovery and Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Hawkeye is a lot more low-key than the other two, if only because Kate and Clint don’t have to deal with universe-destroying threats (that’s reserved for the Avengers movies), but only with a bunch of idiots in tracksuits and a murderous master swordsman. The fact that the villains are more low-key gives Hawkeye more time to focus on character development.

In their own way, Clint and Kate are both traumatised and still processing their trauma. Kate lost her father at a young age and responded by modelling herself after the person who saved her and probably could have saved her Dad. Kate is clearly skilled and brave, but she’s also overconfident and cocky, which gets her in trouble again and again. Meanwhile, Clint bears the scars – both physical and psychological – of a lengthy superhero career. Yes, he saved the world, but he also lost several friends and almost lost his family. Clint also knows that what seems like a great idea at 22 – namely to be a superhero – will probably not seem like such a great idea at 50. We rarely see superheroes grow old – Logan is the only filmic example I can think of – so it’s nice to see Hawkeye address what happens when a superhero ages. Finally, I also love the dynamic between Kate, the girl who’s lost her father, and Clint, the gruff Dad whose first instinct is to protect her.

It’s also notable that Hawkeye offers yet another positive portrayal of parenthood. Considering that there are so many terrible parents in fiction that I had to create an award to honour them, I find it a heartening trend that we’ve been seeing a lot more good and loving parents, both biological and not, in recent years. And indeed, all three SFF TV shows that I watched in recent days, i.e. Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Star Trek Discovery and Hawkeye, feature several examples of supportive and loving parents.

All in all, Hawkeye is off to a good start, especially considering that I didn’t expect much from this show to begin with.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for November 2021

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some October books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, paranormal mystery, space opera, military science fiction, science fiction romance, post-apocalyptic fiction, cyberpunk, alternate history, horror, Norse mythology, Greek mythology, werewolves, zombies, aliens, cyborgs, psychics, elf rangers, space marines, the afterlife, first contact, alien abductions, crime-busting witches, killer clowns, witchy weddings, roadtrips with aliens, post-apocalyptic mermaids and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Woman of Destiny by Michele Amitrani:

Not all gifts are meant to be opened.

In the workshop of the blacksmith god Hephaestus, the first woman comes to life. The Olympians name her Pandora, ‘All-Gifted,’ since each of them has endowed her with a gift: beauty, poise, self-possession and cunning, among others.

Zeus gives her two gifts: a burning desire to learn—and a jar she is ordered never to open.

Pandora is fostered by gods but raised to live among men. When she marries the Titan Epimetheus—brother of the gods’ worst enemy, Prometheus—her fate appears to be sealed.

Although her life with Epimetheus is full of happiness, Pandora is besieged by nightmares carrying omens of dark things to come: destruction, famine, death and the end of the young race of mankind.

With the fate of humanity at stake, will Pandora surrender to the destiny that haunts her, or challenge her nature and become what no god ever imagined she could be?

Stone Magic by Thea Atkinson:

She’s a fraud. She’s a crook. But she’s no killer. Even if she’s being framed as one.

When three well-known psychics are murdered in her city, Brie Duncan starts to wonder if pretending to be magical is such a great idea after all. She’s no witch, but she does make good money using her fake powers to read her clients’ futures. Money that’ll do her no good if she turns up dead next.

So far, she’s managed to keep up the pretense, but when a gruff detective enters her shop, she fears she’s about to get busted. Unfortunately, his reasons for being there are far worse than she imagines.

Since she’s a member of the psychic community, he thinks she should be able to provide some insight into the murders and the victims. The trouble is, all the evidence seems to point in one direction, and unfortunately for Brie, those roads all lead to her…

Captain’s Call by Odette C. Bell:

Two captains, one chance.

Misty Rogers has a problem. She has run into ancient alien technology – and it has… altered her. When Special Captain Matthew Armstrong runs into her on a dirt-bucket world, he’s thrown heart-first into the adventure of his life.

The Coalition faces a new threat, an emerging technology from a far-flung realm that threatens to destabilize the little peace they still have. When Matthew and Misty join forces to track it down, they face a threat like no other – an ancient force and one charming admiral standing behind it.

They will have one chance – and so will the rest of the universe. Team up, thrust their petty disputes and playful hatred aside, or die at the hands of the greatest threat the multiverse has seen.

Drone Rider by Ginger Booth:

A new-made cyborg, with laser-eyed attack bunnies.
A sentient AI with a secret.
As the AI Wars begin…

Betta Graham loves her work as a drone rider. By day, she operates animal drones remotely from her cubicle in dismal 22nd century Chicago Dome. She herds human migrants via her laser-eyed recon bunnies and attack dogs. By night, she meets her boyfriend in virtual. He’s too good to be true.

He claims his work is ‘classified.’

When Betta discovers rebels infiltrating her herds, an injury forces her to become a cyborg. Her world turns upside down. Nothing is as it seems, including Valentin.

Malicious AIs have gained control of cyberspace. They launch rocks in a kinetic strike against the Northern League domes. Only Betta and her cyborg team realize the danger in time, thanks to her renegade AI lover.

In the opening salvo of the AI Wars, can they deflect the rockfall and save Chicago?

Gritty non-stop cyberpunk action you can’t put down, with a likable kick-butt anti-hero. A miserable future collides with overpowered sapient AIs.

An Alliance Reforged by Jonathan P. Brazee and J.N. Chaney:

This is a new kind of war.

The MDS and allies have withdrawn from the CoH, and they now want to become the center of gravity for humankind.

The goal is to obtain localized wins, draw in more allies, and achieve victory no matter the cost.

With the alliance undone, Rev must fight a seemingly unwinnable war.

But Marines never quit. They never falter. They never give up.

Humanity is about to experience a pivotal turning point in its history—one that will culminate in a discovery so profound that it may very well change everything.

Any Witch Way by Lindsay Buroker:

Thanks to her grandmother’s legacy, Morgen Keller has spent the summer learning about her witch heritage. She’s also spent the summer falling for the sexy werewolf next door.

As an unemployed divorcée, she never expected to find love again, but the gruff Amar has been her protector since she arrived in Bellrock. He’s fierce, loyal, strong, and he hardly ever rolls his eyes at her vegetarian ways. He’s a keeper.

There’s just one problem:

Witches and werewolves are mortal enemies.

When her mentor turns her back on her, and the coven delivers an ultimatum, Morgen must choose between her heritage and the man—the werewolf—she’s falling in love with.

Cold Eyes by Peter Cawdron:

Cold Eyes is an original First Contact novel, written as a tribute to the 1974 science fiction classic, The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

The UN warship Magellan is twelve light-years from Earth, exploring a cold eye, a tidally-locked super-earth called Bee. At least two advanced, intelligent species evolved on the planet, but the crew’s attempts at radio communication result in garbled replies. No one is waiting for them in orbit. The crew has to figure out why. Any misunderstandings could lead to war.

Warning: The most absurd part of this story is true and accurately portrayed.

High Water Mark by Evelyn Chartres:

“When humanity has been driven into the sea, what lurks above the waves?”

Anna is a humanoid mermaid who spends her days with the local timekeeper until a podmate comes to her with a proposal. They hatch a plan to head out into the watery ruins of humanity in search of lost technology and materials. For a young mermaid living in the dredges of society, the promise of riches from such a find is just too big to pass up.

Armed with nothing more than an old map and some rusty road signs to follow, they are soon reminded that adventure often brings forth more than its fair share of rough waters. Her friend gets captured, leaving Anna alone in a world where mermaids are nowhere near the top of the food chain.

Follow Anna as she makes landfall and learns why her ancestors abandoned the surface. Lost in a world that is perpetually covered in a thick fog, Anna must navigate through what remains above the high-water mark. What will she find? An ally? A foe? Or will she find nothing more than death and destruction?

So You Survived the End of the World by K.C. Cordell:

Earth may be a nightmarish landscape, but that’s no reason to stop the music.

Generations after civilization crashed and burned, life ain’t all doom and gloom for eighteen-year-old Sebastian Yun. He’s got his brilliant but prickly traveling companion, an epic tour bus to call home, and an endless supply of dope tunes.

From behind the wheel of his sweeeeet, double-decker ride, Sebastian lives for broadcasting his music to the end-of-world-weary masses. When making a pit stop at a small, dusty town, the self-made radio DJ runs into a shady old nemesis who totally kills his good vibes. This seasoned flimflam woman claims she can send the bloodthirsty creatures that prey on mankind back to hell.

But when Sebastian’s completely-not-selfish attempts to unmask the phony hit the wrong note, the very real danger is cranked all the way up to 11.

If you like charismatic characters, offbeat humor, and killer monsters, then you’ll love this YA twist on a post-apocalyptic future perfect for fans of Zombieland.

Steal the Wind by Jocelynn Drake:

Everything Caelan knows about his world is a lie.

A war is brewing. As the crown prince of Erya, it’s only natural that Caelan is sent on a secret diplomatic mission to support one of the kingdom’s allies. With his advisor, his bodyguard, and his best friend as traveling companions, what could go wrong?

Everything.

Everything goes wrong.

Now they are on the run, dodging assassins, setting secret meetings, and even making deals with a sleeping god.

So, this is probably a really bad time to cave to feelings he’s been fighting for his best friend. But Drayce has owned his heart for more years than he can count and if he’s going to die, shouldn’t he have just one kiss?

The fate of the world is on the line, and only Caelan holds the power to save them all.

Steal the Wind is the first book in the six-book Godstone Saga fantasy series and is not a standalone. The story contains explosions, secrets, cranky gods, hidden romance, a prince on the run, a possessive ex-boyfriend, magic, and lots of delicious angst.

Eli: A Ranger’s Tale by Marc Alan Edelheit:

A dangerous mission. A war of the Gods. An epic destiny.

When elven rangers Eli’Far and Mae’Cara are dispatched to hunt down the dangerous criminal Mik’Las, the mission seems simple enough. Mik’Las has committed the unthinkable crimes of murder and kidnap, and though he’s a former ranger and skilled in the deadly arts, Eli is confident they will bring him to justice.

But after Mik’Las flees into the human kingdom of the Castol, Eli and Mae find their mission suddenly wrought with complications. Lord Edgun, an oppressive man grinding his people under the heel of his boot, has left its people desperate. Things grow even more complicated when the elves run into Jitanthra, a strange human girl being hunted by Edgun’s men, and who has connections to a mystical outcast, an elf currently imprisoned by Edgun.

Soon, Eli and Mae find themselves unexpectedly drawn into the middle of a rebellion, a struggle between gods, and the opening stages of the dreaded Last War.

Madame Antic’s Hotel Grotesque by Milo James Fowler:

In an alternate Victorian era, factory worker Anthony Reynolds seeks to improve his station in life for the sake of his young bride-to-be. Against his better judgment, he joins Richard, a gregarious coworker with social connections, for a night on the town after their late shift. Richard leads them deep into the city’s underworld to a brothel of sorts specializing in the illegal art of mutilation. There Anthony witnesses victims skinned, broken, and mangled without lasting damage due to a special drug that returns them to their original state. Anthony immediately wants to leave, but before he can, Constables raid the establishment. While trying to flee the scene, Anthony runs into a giant tumor of a man who spills a viscous fluid on him. Anthony is disfigured by the strange substance, and when the authorities capture him, he is unable to identify himself, let alone speak. What follows is a mind-bending adventure of mistaken identity, multiple realities, and paranoia as Anthony fights to reclaim a simple life he never truly appreciated but now wants more than anything else. Once he learns the truth of his world, nothing will ever be the same again.

Obviously, Aliens by Jennie Goloboy:

This is not how anyone expected their day to go…

What happens when Dana drinks the wrong soda on her way to Spokane? Before she knows it, she and Jay O’Toole are sharing the same body. Jay’s boyfriend, Adam, wants him back at any cost, and Dana just wants to find a new body for Jay so she can get to Spokane and pitch her new line of Doge of the Month collectibles to Rainbow Daydreams.

To do that and stop the bad guys, they’ll have to embark on a wild and hilarious road trip where they’ll meet up with a lot of aliens, the clone of Dana’s dead rock star dad, evil plumbing executives and their minions, government agents and talking corgis. Will Dana manage to get Jay out of her head, sell her Doge designs and maybe meet a decent boyfriend? Can Adam turn his skills as a thief and a hit man into a force for good and settle down with Jay and Jay’s new alien pals? Will the aliens be able to rebuild their lives on Earth? What are the corgis up to? Hop in and ride along to find the answers to these questions and more!

“Goloboy takes us on a delightful, madcap adventure full of fights, heists, schemes, riffs on pop culture, love, moments of self-discovery, and one of the most unconventional found families I’ve had the joy to encounter. You’ll never look at Queen Elizabeth’s corgis the same way again. Fans of Valerie Valdes’ “Eva Innocente” books and Catherine Valente’s “Space Opera” will love this too.” – John Appel, author of ASSASSIN’S ORBIT

“OBVIOUSLY, ALIENS is zippy, clever, and full of hilarious surprises, with a warm heart and an edge as sharp as cut glass — or the perfect meme.”
– Karen Osborne, author of Architects of Memory and Engines of Oblivion

Wicked Forever by Lily Harper Hart:

Ivy Morgan-Harker has everything she’s ever wanted, including a devoted new husband and an upcoming break from her nursery business for the Michigan winter. Then the unthinkable happens.

Upon arriving at Morgan Nursery early one morning, she finds a body strung up in the middle of her happy sanctum … and there’s a message attached telling her that she’s next. The victim is the son of a well-known bar owner, a bar that Ivy helped bring down when she broke up a local prostitution ring.

Worried and afraid, her husband Jack Harker digs in deep, and what he finds has him terrified for his wife.

Somebody is holding a grudge regarding what happened at the bar, and the number of potential suspects looms large. Ivy and Jack must work together and follow a dark trail if they want answers … and it’s a trail that seemingly leads right back to them.

Ivy is a target. Jack is determined to keep her safe. Together, they’re an unbelievable force.

Ivy may be learning how to master her magic but it’s the darkest form of human nature working against her this time. To survive, she’s going to have to figure out who has the most to lose from the bar going down, and then she’s going to have to fight the enemy she didn’t see coming if she expects to get her happily ever after.

The big finale is finally here!

Starfighter Down by M.G. Herron:

A rogue Overmind is on the loose.

A million souls hang in the balance.

The Solaran Defense Forces make the difficult decision to evacuate the colony of Robichar in order to avoid a direct confrontation. But when Captain Elya Nevers gets shot down during the evacuation, his squadron and the admiral in charge have to think fast to rescue their pilot before the Kryl overrun the system.

Fighting to survive in hostile territory, Captain Nevers discovers what the rampaging Overmind is really after—and it changes everything.

An extinct species known as the Telos fled the galaxy eons ago. What caused them to vanish in such a hurry? And more importantly, what ancient relics of alien power did they leave behind?

Exiles’ World by Robert I. Katz:

Rann McGaran and his older brother Gerald are the heirs to the McGaran dynasty, the traditional rulers of Garan, a small but wealthy city on the recently re-discovered world of Carnelian.

Rann’s telepathic abilities are weak, while Gerald is a prodigy. Gerald is the Director of the Garan Corporation, and he intends to keep his position, no matter what it takes. In three weeks, Rann will attain his majority, and must fight his brother for control of the Corporation, a fight he has little hope of winning, or leave Garan forever.

Thaddeus Franklin is the Imperial Ambassador to Carnelian, charged with bringing the new world into the Second Empire, and if that proves unfeasible, to help destroy it. The Empire is at war with an alien race that has so far proven to be unstoppable. Franklin is expendable, and he knows it.

Behind the scenes, plots are being hatched and ambitious men are weighing the odds, and Franklin and Rann McGaran find themselves suddenly major players in an unexpected game.

Garan seems an unlikely place to serve as the center of an Empire wide conspiracy, but what happens here could prove to be the Empire’s salvation…or its destruction.

Beneath the Veil by Martin Kearns:

In a battle between two ancient evils, can one naïve young man become the last hope against powerful creatures of legend?

David Dolan thinks he’s already got the world figured out. But when a collapsed bridge plunges him into the icy Hudson, he’s pulled deep into the deadly realm that exists between life and death. And with his earthly form trapped in a coma, he’s vulnerable to the horde of demons hell-bent on his utter destruction.

Traversing the road to the afterlife, David seeks the wisdom and skills he needs to fight the demonic forces reigning havoc on his allies above ground. But as one hellish threat closes in on his defenseless body, David must defeat another terrifying fiend waiting in the shadows to use him…

Can David escape the world beneath the veil in time to stop the bloodshed?

Beneath the Veil is the gripping first book in The Valor of Valhalla dark urban fantasy series. If you like reluctant heroes, infernal myths, and bloody epic clashes, then you’ll love Martin Kearns’s formidable foray into the unknown.

My Big Fat Witch Wedding by Amanda M. Lee:

The big day is finally here.

Bay and Landon’s wedding day has arrived.

Unfortunately, a tragedy stands in the way of their happily ever after, and it comes in the form of reports of an armed gunman at the local high school. Bay, ghosts at her side, braves the scene to save the kids … and uncovers something horrific.

She. The boy with the gun says he needs to find her. The teacher in the room with him says the same thing before taking his own life. There’s a magical being in Hemlock Cove, and she’s wielding a great deal of power as she forces people to kill in her name.

Bay refuses to back down, convinced that the magical explosion they can’t get under control at Hollow Creek is partially to blame. The problem is so big, another witch needs to be tapped to help them solve it.

Scout Randall, part of the Spells Angels group in Hawthorne Hollow, is more than happy to lend her services. She owes the Winchesters a favor after all. She simply might not be enough.

Bay and Landon have been through more than any couple should have to survive … and they’re not done.

Here comes the wedding … and Clove’s baby … and the worst enemy they’ve ever fought.

The Winchesters are strongest together, and this time they’re going to prove that there’s no keeping a good witch down.

I do? It’s coming, because nothing can stop these witches when love and family are on the line.

A Curse for Christmas by P.A. Mason:

Christmas back home in Arkansas sounded like a chance to put my feet up for a few weeks. Little did I know that a magical calamity would threaten the big day.

You know the real kicker? It was Mom—a renowned magical healer—who came down with a mystery malaise on Christmas Eve. I couldn’t remember a time where she had anything worse than a sniffle. To see her bedridden scared me to my core.

To examine the facts and solve the case, I had to think fast before Mom’s condition got any worse. With a new werewolf beau in her life, half the town of Tumbling Springs were whispering behind Mom’s back, the loudest of them a hex witch with a nasty view of weres. On the other hand, a new business rival in the next town over had Mom’s healing services on the rocks. The question was—did either witch have enough motive to do something as awful as all that to Mom?

If you enjoy paranormal cozy mysteries with a seasonal Christmas flare, this holiday special is for you.

Defiant Space by Richard Rimington:

One starship against the galaxy.

The crew of Fidelity are the only hope to save their planet from destruction.

When an armada of predatory warships comes to annex their world, the inhabitants of planet Vale Reach are forced to confront the dreaded threats that stalk their galaxy. Terrors lurk in the uncharted depths of space, ready to crush their world and enslave its people. A lone starship is sent on an impossible journey. But is it already too late?

Caladon Heit wants to prevent the destruction of everything he knows. Together, the ship’s crew must overcome the ferocious marauders and brutal empires that seek to eradicate them all.

In space, they will discover a harsh and remorseless environment. Unimaginable enemies await behind every moon and asteroid. The starship Fidelity will demand sacrifices from every crew member to reach its destination, as they encounter horrific enemies across unknown star systems.

Will they emerge with their resolve and their starship intact? Or will Fidelity and their homeworld be annihilated?

This is the first novel in the Infinite Void Series.

Send In the Clowns by David J. Schmidt:

Javier is a professional ghost-hunter who doesn’t believe in the paranormal.

When his editor asks him to visit a haunted “Clown Hotel” in the Nevada desert, it sounds like easy money. Sure, the hotel is hundreds of miles from civilization. Sure, it’s next door to an ancient cemetery and is full of hundreds of clown dolls—dolls that seem to have a mind of their own, according to some employees. Still, what’s the worst that could happen?

As Javier travels to the remote Clown Hotel, he learns of a strange outbreak of “clown sightings” across the nation. This is a time when things make less and less sense. When logic no longer applies, even for a skeptic like Javier.

This is when things fall apart.

Evasion by Glynn Stewart:

A captain on the run from the horrors of his past
A girl on the run from the trap of her present
A ship that will bring them together

Captain Evridiki “EB” Bardacki was once a nova fighter pilot for a nation he truly believed in. Betrayal and failure sent him into exile and flight. Now owner-operator of the freelance star freighter Evasion, he treks the edge of human space, taking cargos that lead him ever onward—but there are lines he will not cross.

When those lines are challenged, EB makes enemies of the most powerful crime syndicate for a hundred light-years. When one of their victims stows away on his ship, he finds himself pursued by an enemy with assets everywhere he turns.

Caught between the devil and the deep dark void, EB has run out of places to run—but in a child looking to him for salvation, he may have found something to fight for!

CONTENT WARNING: This novel deals with themes and details of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

An Impossible Abduction by Ed Teja:

Investigations take a strange twist in southwestern New Mexico

When things blow up on Matt Cramer, they can be messy. This time, the mess might be blood. Or not. But he is a private investigator… or will be if he can ever get his office open. Right now that bloody mess is all over the walls.

Josh, the painter is missing and that’s not a good sign. Nor is the ominous attitude of Officer Ravenwalk, or the fact that the local coffee shop is owned by witches, or that Matt somehow has found himself partnering with a shaman and the blood, if it is blood, is somehow tied to a woman’s disappearance—a disappearance that might involve aliens.

After all, this is Silver City, New Mexico, where things are seldom truly wrong, but never quite right, either.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for November 2021

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some October books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, holiday mysteries, humorous mysteries, historical mysteries, Regency mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, science fiction mysteries, psychological mysteries, crime thrillers, action thrillers, adventure thrillers, spy thrillers, legal thrillers, police procedurals, noir, police officers, amateur sleuths, spies, district attorneys, con artists, assassins, hitmen, human traffickers, serial killers, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting psychics, murder and mayhem in New York City, London, Boston, Dublin, Louisiana, Wyoming, Michigan, New Mexico, Florida, the Caribbean and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Stone Magic by Thea Atkinson:

She’s a fraud. She’s a crook. But she’s no killer. Even if she’s being framed as one.

When three well-known psychics are murdered in her city, Brie Duncan starts to wonder if pretending to be magical is such a great idea after all. She’s no witch, but she does make good money using her fake powers to read her clients’ futures. Money that’ll do her no good if she turns up dead next.

So far, she’s managed to keep up the pretense, but when a gruff detective enters her shop, she fears she’s about to get busted. Unfortunately, his reasons for being there are far worse than she imagines.

Since she’s a member of the psychic community, he thinks she should be able to provide some insight into the murders and the victims. The trouble is, all the evidence seems to point in one direction, and unfortunately for Brie, those roads all lead to her…

An Inelegant Death by Blythe Baker:

When Miss Jane Pemberton joins her uncle’s household as a companion to her invalid cousin, she does not realize what a dangerous world she is stepping into.

From the moment she enters the house, Jane senses secrets and unresolved tensions hanging like a shadow over the Pemberton family. Worse, citizens of the sleepy, seaside town of Ebonport do not lead the peaceful lives Jane expected. They seem to hide beneath shadows of their own, motivated by avarice and revenge.

When a shocking murder rocks this uneasy society, Jane vows to protect her uncle’s family—whether they deserve it or not.

Thing of Darkness by Beth Byers:

Smith knows a lot of things. He knows about crimes and why they occur. He knows where to find the best pint of ale and the coffee houses that cater to the criminal class. He knows where to find people who don’t want to be found. And he has–somehow–come to know about the lives of the spoiled and well-connected.

What he doesn’t know is how someone even he finds objectionable has also slithered into the lives of his friends. Nor does he know when they became friends or why he’s worrying about them. Or what to do about their antics when it comes to his enemy.

He only wishes he were surprised when his wife, Beatrice, knows exactly what to do.

Dead for Life by Stacy Claflin and Nolon King:

Caught between a CIA sting and a boss who may want him dead…

Brad Morris has finally been promoted at work. It seems like his hard work and talents have at last been recognized. But nothing is ever simple when you’re an assassin.

Especially not when you’re also secretly working for the CIA to spy on your boss and colleagues. And your oldest daughter will go to jail for murder if you fail.

When poor Hadley starts to crack under the pressure, Brad is forced to check her into a psych ward — but she’s still threatening to confess. Meanwhile, the CIA sting gets more complicated by Agent Bancroft’s insistence that Brad hire her to be BlueBlade’s newest assassin.

Can Brad and Hadley keep their stories straight long enough to get Bancroft the answers she’s looking for? And will Brad finally solve the mystery of his own father’s murder?

Swamp Sweets by Jana DeLeon:

Just Desserts?

It’s November in Sinful and everyone is gearing up for Thanksgiving. But when Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie bag a body on their turkey hunting trip, the quiet enjoyment of fall is over. No one really knew Miles Broussard well, and as he’d recently sold the building his business was in to retire in another state, no one could explain how he’d ended up murdered and dumped in the bayou.

Ally Lemarque has been waiting her entire life to open her bakery, and that day finally arrived when she purchased the building from Miles. But when she visits the site late at night and interrupts an intruder, she comes away with a crack on her head and concerns about why someone would break into an empty building.

Fortune doesn’t think for a minute that Miles’s murder and the attack on Ally are unrelated. And Swamp Team 3 won’t rest until they’re sure Ally is safe.

Unknown Assailant by J.L. Doucette:

Dr. Pepper Hunt and Detective Beau Antelope team up again to investigate a tragic murder/suicide in a prominent ranch family in the small town of Farson, Wyoming. As they explore events leading up to the night of the disturbing crime they are drawn into the dark heart of a troubled family touched by a legacy of trauma.

 

 

 

Lettie Portman: The District Attorney by John Ellsworth:

Like the victims who pass through her office, this attorney’s own past demands justice.

When an eleven-year-old girl is savagely attacked by her mother’s live-in boyfriend, attorney Lettie Portman is called to the hospital. She meets a sweet, young girl whose only goal is to go to school and come home to a safe environment. But the abuse gets worse, the case goes to trial by jury.

And Lettie stumbles. To help this girl in need, she must first deal with her own abuse from years before.

Meanwhile, Detective Antonio “Tony” Reedy lets her know he’s interested in more than just investigating the abused girl’s case. But Lettie’s background makes it all but impossible to trust again. As Tony slowly begins to gain her confidence, can she learn to love again?

Mystery Woman by Mike Faricy:

US Marshall Jack Dillon, assigned to An Garda Síochána, Special Branch, and his partner, Paddy Suel, are sent down to County Cork to investigate the murder of American gangster Dennis ‘Punchy’ Sheehan. Things turn out to not be as suspected. CCTV evidence moves the investigation to Dublin where the body count begins to grow on an almost daily basis. The killer seems to be a step ahead of the investigators. With barely a handful of clues can Dillon possibly find whoever is responsible?

 

Wicked Forever by Lily Harper Hart:

Ivy Morgan-Harker has everything she’s ever wanted, including a devoted new husband and an upcoming break from her nursery business for the Michigan winter. Then the unthinkable happens.

Upon arriving at Morgan Nursery early one morning, she finds a body strung up in the middle of her happy sanctum … and there’s a message attached telling her that she’s next. The victim is the son of a well-known bar owner, a bar that Ivy helped bring down when she broke up a local prostitution ring.

Worried and afraid, her husband Jack Harker digs in deep, and what he finds has him terrified for his wife.

Somebody is holding a grudge regarding what happened at the bar, and the number of potential suspects looms large. Ivy and Jack must work together and follow a dark trail if they want answers … and it’s a trail that seemingly leads right back to them.

Ivy is a target. Jack is determined to keep her safe. Together, they’re an unbelievable force.

Ivy may be learning how to master her magic but it’s the darkest form of human nature working against her this time. To survive, she’s going to have to figure out who has the most to lose from the bar going down, and then she’s going to have to fight the enemy she didn’t see coming if she expects to get her happily ever after.

The big finale is finally here!

Unextracted by Ethan Jones:

When stabbed in the back, Jack bleeds rage.

When a burned deep-cover CIS agent needs extraction from Southern Europe before classified intelligence is exposed, Jack Storm is sent in. Soon, supposedly friendly MI6 begins to subvert the retrieval operation. Jack suspects he has become a pawn in a dirty political power play when he discovers the agent holds more than just CIS secrets.

Moreover, Jack needs to determine if his neighbor-turned-close-friend is playing a double game—or has his job truly left him incapable of trusting anyone? Now, with the extraction sabotaged and his friends-turned-enemies out for blood, how will Jack focus his rage after being betrayed… again?

Love & Bullets by Nick Kolakowski:

Bill is a conman with a taste for high-end cars, beautiful suits, and top-shelf liquor. But he’s getting tired of the cons he needs to maintain that lifestyle—and he’s sick of the violence that’s sometimes part of the job.

Bill’s girlfriend Fiona doesn’t have a problem with violence, though. She’ll crush anyone who stands in her way—and some days, it seems like the whole world wants a piece of her. She loves Bill, but she’s tired of cleaning up after him.

When Bill decides to “borrow” a couple million from one of New York City’s most vicious gangs and flee for the tropics, it puts their relationship to the test—and while they’re working out their issues, they’ll also need to fend off crooked cops, dimwitted bouncers, and an irate assassin in the midst of the world’s weirdest midlife crisis.

“Love & Bullets” is the story of a 21st century Bonnie & Clyde, a wisecracking duo who’ll blast their way from Brooklyn to Cuba and back in order to stay alive. It’s a wild ride.

Smoked Mullet by Margaret Lashley:

It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity…

When Bobbie and Grayson go in search of a new RV, a chance encounter at a homeowner’s fire sale ignites a hidden flame burning deep within Grayson.

And it’s not Spontaneous Human Combustion …

Or is it?

People in St. Petersburg, Florida keep mysteriously bursting into flames. While the pair investigate potential causes, sparks soon begin to fly between them as well, threatening to snuff out their budding romance.

Hot pockets. Total burnouts. Suspicious ash holes.

As Bobbie and Grayson sift through the grisly clues, will they realize they’re fated to be twin flames? Or will the fireworks between them fizzle out like a dud?

With the heat on to solve the case, they’d better keep a close eye on each other. If not, they could both end up in the dead-letter office marked, “Return to Cinder.”

My Big Fat Witch Wedding by Amanda M. Lee:

The big day is finally here.

Bay and Landon’s wedding day has arrived.

Unfortunately, a tragedy stands in the way of their happily ever after, and it comes in the form of reports of an armed gunman at the local high school. Bay, ghosts at her side, braves the scene to save the kids … and uncovers something horrific.

She. The boy with the gun says he needs to find her. The teacher in the room with him says the same thing before taking his own life. There’s a magical being in Hemlock Cove, and she’s wielding a great deal of power as she forces people to kill in her name.

Bay refuses to back down, convinced that the magical explosion they can’t get under control at Hollow Creek is partially to blame. The problem is so big, another witch needs to be tapped to help them solve it.

Scout Randall, part of the Spells Angels group in Hawthorne Hollow, is more than happy to lend her services. She owes the Winchesters a favor after all. She simply might not be enough.

Bay and Landon have been through more than any couple should have to survive … and they’re not done.

Here comes the wedding … and Clove’s baby … and the worst enemy they’ve ever fought.

The Winchesters are strongest together, and this time they’re going to prove that there’s no keeping a good witch down.

I do? It’s coming, because nothing can stop these witches when love and family are on the line.

A Fatal Bragg by Craig Martelle:

Marines are being murdered…

…and it takes someone outside the government to fix the problem.

It’s a race against the clock to dismantle a group that’s been in place for years. They’re well-funded, too and armed with weapons they shouldn’t have. Authorities are stymied. Ian and Jenny Bragg are not so constrained.

It’s supposed to be a single target. What if the target may not be the target at all, but a pipeline to those who deserve what Ian Bragg has to offer?

In an organization like the Peace Archive, contracts tend to take on a life of their own. When it comes to imparting justice, the operators become the last line of defense with only one chance to get it right.

Ian Bragg. A hitman with a conscience.

A Curse for Christmas by P.A. Mason:

Christmas back home in Arkansas sounded like a chance to put my feet up for a few weeks. Little did I know that a magical calamity would threaten the big day.

You know the real kicker? It was Mom—a renowned magical healer—who came down with a mystery malaise on Christmas Eve. I couldn’t remember a time where she had anything worse than a sniffle. To see her bedridden scared me to my core.

To examine the facts and solve the case, I had to think fast before Mom’s condition got any worse. With a new werewolf beau in her life, half the town of Tumbling Springs were whispering behind Mom’s back, the loudest of them a hex witch with a nasty view of weres. On the other hand, a new business rival in the next town over had Mom’s healing services on the rocks. The question was—did either witch have enough motive to do something as awful as all that to Mom?

If you enjoy paranormal cozy mysteries with a seasonal Christmas flair, this holiday special is for you.

A Twisted Case of Murder by Emily Queen:

Murder is for the crows.

There’s a mass murderer loose on the streets of London, and he’s dead set on making Rosemary Lillywhite his next victim. After receiving a second death threat, she should have gone straight to her chief inspector beau, Max Whittington–but Rosemary is sick and tired of being treated like she’s made of glass.

How many murder investigations does a lady detective need to solve to earn a little respect?

Rosemary wishes she hadn’t asked that question when another dead body turns up–this time, on her own doorstep–and the papers insinuate she’s the responsible party. In order to clear her name, Rosemary will have to delve deep in to a murderer’s sordid past.

She’ll also have to continue keeping secrets–no matter what it does to her relationship with Max.

Now, everyone’s a suspect in a case that’s even more twisted than murder.

Lost Charity by Wayne Stinnett:

After a long hiatus, Charity Styles is itching to get back into the fray. She’s had a succession of minor assignments, none of which provided her with the action she craves.

After months of recharging and rethinking her position in the Armstrong organization, she’s on the verge of walking away, returning to what could be a more normal life. But what’s a normal life look like for a former covert assassin?

Then she gets two assignments, which have nothing to do with each other. The first is to ferry a group of people out to a large mega-yacht. When it turns out that one of those people is the girl she thinks of as a niece and the mega-yacht is captained by an old friend, she sets her sails and is quickly underway.

What the second assignment is, will not only test Charity’s abilities as an undercover asset to the giant Armstrong Research conglomerate, but will also assess her ability to keep a lid on her emotions when faced with the type of people she most loathes.

From the Cayman Islands to the Eastern Caribbean, the coast of Brazil, and finally, the U.S. Virgin Islands, her mental state is constantly being tested. Will she find the one person who is at the head of a vast sex trafficking operation? Or will she become just another victim to the traffickers? Will she even be able to restrain her inner demons when she encounters the worst of the worst of human society?

Death by Dancing by Lee Strauss:

Death’s a jig!

When a brutal dance marathon in the suburbs of Boston in 1932 turns deadly, Dr. Haley Higgins is surprised to discover the deceased is the widow of a man whose body still lies in the cold cabinets of her morgue. She has reasons to believe the man’s death wasn’t natural, and now, with his wife having succumbed to the same symptoms, her convictions of foul play are stronger than ever.

With the help of investigative reporter Samantha Hawke, Haley works to determine which contestants in the dancing contest had means, motive, and opportunity. And most of all, how to keep the killer from striking again.

***

A spin off from the acclaimed Ginger Gold Mystery series, this clever, feisty, depression-era whodunit readers call “serious and suspenseful” and “entertaining mystery series” will keep you turning pages until the surprising yet satisfying end.

An Impossible Abduction by Ed Teja:

Investigations take a strange twist in southwestern New Mexico

When things blow up on Matt Cramer, they can be messy. This time, the mess might be blood. Or not. But he is a private investigator… or will be if he can ever get his office open. Right now that bloody mess is all over the walls.

Josh, the painter is missing and that’s not a good sign. Nor is the ominous attitude of Officer Ravenwalk, or the fact that the local coffee shop is owned by witches, or that Matt somehow has found himself partnering with a shaman and the blood, if it is blood, is somehow tied to a woman’s disappearance—a disappearance that might involve aliens.

After all, this is Silver City, New Mexico, where things are seldom truly wrong, but never quite right, either.

Star Trek Discovery Encounters the “Anomaly” and Deals with Trauma

It turns out that Star Trek Discovery won the “What to watch next?” contest, so here’s the latest installment in my series of episode by episode reviews of season 4 of Star Trek Discovery. Reviews of previous seasons and episodes may be found here.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut!

When we last saw the good ship Discovery and her valiant crew, they had managed to save most of the crew of Deep Space Repair Station Beta Six from a cosmic anomaly, only for that anomaly to destroy the entire planet of Kwejian, homeworld of Michael’s boyfriend Book.

This episode now is devoted to figuring out just what this anomaly is and what to do about it. And so there is a big meeting at Starfleet headquarters, involving Admiral Vance, President Rillak, the President of Nevarr a.k.a. the planet formerly known as Vulcan and several other senior Federation and Starfleet personnel. Saru is there as well, back from his sojourn on Kaminar and a most welcome presence he is, too. Cause I’ve certainly missed Saru and so, it seems, has everybody else. Michael may be the star and Captain now, but Saru is the heart of Discovery, even if it makes little sense for him to stay on as First Officer, when he actually is a Captain and fully qualified to command a ship of his own.

“We have never faced a threat like this one before,” someone says at the Starfleet meeting, which is of course ridiculous, because Star Trek constantly deals with cosmic anomalies. There were times when it seemed as if the Enterprise (any of them) or Voyager ran into some cosmic anomaly every other episode. Yes, most of them were not so big and destructive that they blew up whole planets, but even planets get destroyed in Star Trek with remarkably frequency. What makes Kwejian different from most other planets destroyed in Star Trek, even prominent ones like Romulus, is that the script gave us and the main cast a reason to care, because Kwejian happened to be the homeworld of Book and its destruction also killed Book’s brother and nephew. Nonetheless, the claim that “Starfleet has never faced a threat like this before” is as ridiculous as Tony Blair claiming that the UK has never faced such a terrorist threat before after the London terror attacks of July 7, 2005, completely forgetting more than twenty years of IRA terrorism, which had only ended not quite ten years before.

The assembled Federation dignitaries quickly come to the conclusion that what is needed is more data, so Discovery is dispatched for the anomaly to gather that data. It is this mission that makes up the bulk of the episode.

Discovery‘s resident geek squad, i.e. Stamets, Tilly and Adira, came up with the theory that the anomaly was caused by two black holes merging, which is why it was not detected in time to evacuate Kwejian and Deep Space Repair Station Beta Six, since black holes are notoriously difficult to detect. This is a very technobabble heavy episode with the only saving grace being that Anthony Rapp is great at delivering technobabble and Mary Wiseman and Blu del Barrio are pretty good at it themselves.

Once Discovery reaches the anomaly and observes it from a safe distance, it turns out that Stamets, Tilly and Adira’s hypothesis was wrong. The anomaly was not caused by two merging black holes. Apparently, it is something much weirder (and here I thought merging black holes were weird). At any rate, once Michael orders the polarizing technobabble filter applied to the viewscreen, everybody gasps and stares in shock and horror at the screen. But when we finally get to see the screen, it is a big black planet eating cloud with glowy blue sparks. Yes, it may eat planets, but the whole thing doesn’t look very scary at all (and the Discovery effects team really is in love with those glowy blue sparks, since anything strange or alien in this show is dotted with glowy blue sparks). AV-Club reviewer Zack Handlen calls it a giant space kablooey.

However, the Discovery is there to gather data and gather data they will. There is only one problem: The Discovery can’t get close enough to safely gather the data. Using drones is out of the question as well, because the anomaly would destroy them.

Book points out that his shapeshifting spaceship could fly into the anomaly to gather data. Everybody thinks that’s a great idea, so Michael orders Stamets and Detmer to board Book’s ship and put that plan into action. However, Book is not handing his ship over to Detmer. He’ll fly himself, since he knows his ship better than anyone.

This put Michael in a difficult position, because as Captain she knows that Book is the person best suited for the mission. However, as a human being, she’s unwilling to put her partner into danger. Especially since she knows that Book is still dealing with the trauma and grief from losing his family and his homeworld. Besides, putting Stamets and Book on the same ship is not a great idea, since they are the only two people who can operate the spore drive. Of course, every other empath could theoretically operate the spore drive, too, but the destruction of Kwejian just radically reduced the supply of empaths.

It’s Saru’s sage advice that comes to Michael’s rescue here. Yes, Book is the best person for the mission. He knows it and Michael knows it, too. So Book should go. However, Michael is also right that Book is not in a good place mentally, so they will add some extra safety measures. These safety measures are connecting Book’s ship to the Discovery by a tether and putting Stamets not physically onto the ship, but as a hologram.

Due to her Vulcan upbringing and her own trauma, which she has never fully processed, Michael is not exactly the ideal person to help Book through his trauma and grief, though she is trying. The only person aboard the Discovery who’s probably an even worse choice in helping someone else deal with trauma and grief is Stamets. Not to mention that Stamets doesn’t particularly like Book at the best of times, because Book is the only other person who can handle Stamets’ baby, the spore drive. Not to mention, as Stamets eventually admits, that Book was the one who saved Stamets family in the season 3 finale, while Stamets couldn’t do anything. So of course, the plot pairs up these two characters who don’t get along.

To be fair, Stamets knows that he is not the most empathetic person around, so he asks Culber for advice. Culber tells him to basically listen and maybe treat Book the way Stamets wishes people would have treated him after Culber was murdered – after all, Stamets is no stranger to grief himself.

So Book, Stamets’ hologram and Grudge the cat set out in their mission. Stamets puts his foot into his mouth almost immediately, when he points out that the reason the anomaly is flinging so much debris around is that it just gobbled up a planet. Book, meanwhile, has hallucinations of dead birds (the first to sense the coming of doom Kwejian were the birds who flew up into the sky) and his nephew Leto. And hallucination are never a good thing, least of all when you’re flying a dangerous mission.

Things go wrong almost at once. Even though the Discovery is supposed to be at a safe distance, it is affected by the anomaly, which manifests itself as the artificial gravity random cutting out for a few moments, sending everybody floating and then crashing back to the floor. Tilly and Adira figure out that the gravity disturbances comes in waves – while being treated by Culber for injuries sustained by falling to the deck twice – but the Discovery still has to pull back. And since Stamets needs more time for his scans, that means releasing the tether.

Meanwhile, the situation aboard Book’s ship is getting worse. The ship is suffering damages and at one point, Book tells Stamets to just return to his body aboard the Discovery with the data and leave him be. Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido points out that Book is clearly suicidal in this scene and indeed the only thing which keeps him from just staying inside the anomaly until it tears his ship apart is the fact that Stamets can’t transmit the data back to Discovery (or at any rate says he can’t) and later Michael talking him down.

Since the Discovery crew knows that the graviational disturbances come in waves, Commander Bryce, i.e. the cute black guy of the bridge crew, uses his kite surfing experience to suggest that Book’s ship just ride a gravity wave out. Again, it’s nice to see the bridge crew given more to do.

The first attempt to hitch a ride on a gravity wave and surf to freedom fails, but the second attempt succeeds and Book, Stamets and the data are safe. However, an initial evaluation of the data reveals something alarming. The anomaly randomly changed direction, which isn’t even supposed to be possible. Hence, there is no way to predict where or when it will strike next. The camera then pulls back to reveal the anomaly inside what appears to be a malevolent giant eye.

Plotwise, the episode wasn’t particularly thrilling. There is a dangerous anomaly and Discovery investigates why the anomaly is doing anomalous things and if there is a way to stop it. What makes this episode are the actors and characters. Because this is not so much an episode about a cosmic anomaly, but one about the various characters coming to terms with their various traumas.

Book, who just lost is entire homeworld and the family he had only just found again, is the most obvious case. However, the episode also addresses Stamets’ lingering trauma about being powerless to save his family in the season 3 finale as well as Tilly and Adira’s trauma caused by working so very hard to save the stationmaster, only to lose him anyway. If only all redshirts were so mourned as that stationmaster. Finally, the episode also addresses Tilly’s reaction to her shifting role from mentee to mentor to Adira. So in short, there is a lot of nice meaty character stuff to bulk up the flimsy plot. Great acting from David Ajala, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz and the rest of the cast helps to sell the drama. Finally, everybody’s favourite little rainbow family of Stamets, Culber, Adira and Gray, who is about to get an android body based on the one given to Picard in the season 1 finale of Star Trek Picard gets plenty of screentime, which is always a good thing.

Star Trek has traditionally not been very good at addressing trauma, probably because the show comes from an era where trauma was much less understood as it is today, though it should be noted that there are realistic depictions of trauma as far back as the 1930s and very likely before. Discovery tries to do better and acknowledges that its characters should be massively traumatised by what they’ve been through in the past three seasons. And frankly, it’s great to see trauma and grief addressed in a science fiction show.

That said, the meaty character stuff doesn’t change the fact that the plot is flimsy and that a big, bad evil space cloud is not all that thrilling a menace, even if it eats planets. It was fine for one episode, but they better come up with some interesting background for the big, bad evil space cloud soon (It’s sentient. It’s a weapon and someone is directing it. It was caused by Discovery jumping through space and time).

This first advent weekend, I watched two TV shows – Star Trek Discovery and Masters of the Universe: Revelation – in which the characters deal with trauma and grief, while also fighting a universe-threatening menace. What surprised the hell out of me that Masters of the Universe: Revelation, a show based on a cartoon created to sell toys to kids, handled its subject better than Star Trek Discovery.

For starters, Masters of the Universe: Revelation had a much more interesting universe-threatening menace than Star Trek Discovery. I mean, a big black evil cloud versus an all-powerful Evil-Lyn who went insane because of her own nihilism is not even a contest. And when the camera pulled back to reveal the malevolent eye at the end, I exclaimed, “Oh look, Evil-Lyn has found the Star Trek universe and is about to snuff it out.”

But Master of the Universe: Revelation also handled the trauma and grief part better, which surprised the hell out of me. Because I felt the murders of the Sorceress, Fisto and Clamp Champ (and I never cared about Fisto and Clamp Champ at all and not particularly about the Sorceress either) more than I felt the destruction of Kwejian and the death of Stationmaster Redshirt. I felt Teela’s grief at losing her best friend and her anger at being lied to. I felt Duncan’s grief at seeing the woman he loved and could never be with murdered in front of his eyes. I felt Adam’s anger at never being taken seriously by his father and never being good enough, no matter what he did. But while David Ajala, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman and Blu Del Barrio all delivered great performances in this episode, I didn’t really feel for them the way I did for those faintly absurd cartoon characters designed to sell action figures.

It’s probably not fair comparing a show that was so much better than I expected to one that I know can do better than they did here.

The new Disney+ show Hawkeye also debuted this week and supposedly, it also deals with trauma, grief and PTSD, though probably not with universe-threatening menaces, those being reserved for the big screen Marvel movies. So let’s see how they do.

 

The Power of Greyskull – Some Reflections on Part 2 of Masters of the Universe: Revelation

The second half of Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Kevin Smith’s continuation of the original cartoon from the 1980s, just became available and I opted to watch that over the new Hawkeye show (which I will watch eventually) and Star Trek Discovery (which is apparently available in Europe now, though I still haven’t figured out how), because I enjoyed the first half a lot more than I expected. Besides, part 1 ended on one hell of a cliffhanger, so of course I wanted to know how Teela, Andra, Duncan and the rest of gang are going to get out of that one.

You can read my take on part 1 of Masters of the Universe: Revelation here, by the way.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut!

When we last saw our intrepid heroes, they had managed to reforge the Sword of Power – costing the lives of Orko and Roboto – and restore magic to Eternia, but Adam got stabbed and possibly killed for the second time in five episodes, while Skeletor got hold of the Sword of Power and is now Super-Skeletor or Skelegod, as he now calls himself. Like I said, that’s a one hell of a cliffhanger.

Instead of immediately picking up where part 1 left of, part 2 starts with a domestic idyll of sorts featuring a young Duncan, the soon-to-be Sorceress and baby Teela. And yes, Duncan and the Sorceress are absolutely a couple. Indeed, part 1 (which I rewatched before digging into part 2) hinted at this and makes it very clear that Duncan os in love with the Sorceress. It’s not entirely clear if Duncan is Teela’s biological father, but I would bet that he is. The idyll of this little family is shortlived, however, for the soon-to-be Sorceress draws a magical symbol on the forehead of Baby Teela, which – as she explains – will help her when she needs it most. Then she hugs Duncan and descends into the mythical waters underneath Castle Greyskull to become the Sorceress (who is tethered to the Castle and can never leave it in human form), leaving Duncan literally holding the baby.

This is a little different from the way the story was depicted in the original cartoon, where the Sorceress was already the Sorceress when she had Teela and wound up leaving her baby with Duncan after Duncan helped her save Baby Teela from some villain (I think Merman). Though this version of a woman leaving her partner and newborn baby to fulfill a mythic duty that she believes requires her to abandon all her prvious attachments makes a lot more sense than what the original cartoon served up, where the Sorceress thinks that a falcon’s nest on a mountain top is a really great place to raise a human baby rather than the impregnable magical fortress where she lives in her human form.

The story then jumps into the present where we see the aged and partially repowered Sorceress doing her best to hold off Skeletor who has just gained the ultimate power, captured Teela, Andra and Duncan and stabbed Adam through the chest. However, the Sorceress is not yet fully repowered and not strong enough to hold off Skeletor for long. And everybody else is out of commission.

In the end, it is the mortally wounded Adam who gets up and manages to distract Skeletor long enough by reciting the famous opening narration of the original cartoon. “I am Adam, Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull…” That opening narration was always faintly absurd – whom exactly is Adam talking to? – but also did a really good job in summing up the premise of the show and telling us everything we need to know. But those words have rarely meant as much as here, where a powerless and mortally wounded young man hurls them into the face of his mortal enemy (who has just acquired godlike powers) in pure defiance.

By the time Adam gets to “…and this is Cringer, my fearless friend…”, who jumps into the fray but Cringer. Yes, the perpetually scared green and orange tiger gets to save the day and this isn’t even the only time this happens in part 2. Cringer did have his occasional moments of reluctant heroism in the original series, but he really gets to be a hero in his own right here and I for one loved it.

For obvious reasons – i.e. being dead – Adam and Cringer didn’t get a lot to do in the first half, but part 2 really gives both of them a chance to shine without being overshadowed by their alter-egos He-Man and Battlecat. Because let’s face it, the original cartoon always gave short shrift Adam, who – with a few exceptions where he was separated from his sword and could not transform – was only ever around to turn into He-Man. Cringer got more screentime, though he was mostly used as comic relief.

This is unfair, because while Adam may not be physically strong, he is incredibly brave and a good person in his own right, only that he is perpetually underestimated by everyone around him, particularly his own father. And yes, Masters of the Universe Revelation goes into this conflict, which always simmered under the surface in the original cartoon and occasionally broke out into the open. For example, I recall one episode where Adam doesn’t transform into He-Man in time, because he wants to show his father that he can be a hero as Adam, too. But of course it all goes wrong and Randor gets kidnapped. As for Cringer, he may be always terrified, but he’s also the most loyal friend anybody can ask for. And unlike Adam, who freely decides to become He-Man, poor Cringer is drafted into this war against his will.

Masters of the Universe Revelation gives both Adam and Cringer the chance to show who they are without the power of Greyskull. Especially since the show also repeatedly makes it clear that Adam sees himself as Adam and not He-Man. For example, when Adam is dead and briefly in Preternia – Eternia’s version of Paradise/Valhalla, where all the great heroes go – he is the only one who chooses to be in his original rather than his musclebound form. He also tells Skeletor that he is Adam, not He-Man. Plus, he always turns back into Adam once the crisis du jour is over, while the others who wield the sword in the course of part 2 just permanently remain in their overpowered form.

Cringer’s heroic distraction gives everybody the chance to free themselves, though they’re still outnumbered. So Duncan tells Teela, Andra, Cringer and Adam to get the hell out of there, while he holds off Skeletor. Skeletor, however, snaps Duncan’s sword in half and also telekinetically locks the doors, trapping everybody inside the castle. So the Sorceress uses the last of her power to teleport Teela, Andra, Cringer and Adam to safety. She tries to teleport Duncan out as well, but Evil-Lyn grabs him, so he remains behind to watch Skeletor stab the now completely powerless Sorceress through the chest. And all Duncan can do is hold the woman he loves – and the woman he never got to be with – in his arms as she dies. Skeletor, being the total jerk that he is, makes a stupid quip and has Duncan thrown in the dungeon, though Evil-Lyn doesn’t seem to be happy with all this, especially since the murder of the Sorceress was utterly unnecessary, because she wasn’t a threat at this point. Evil-Lyn also seems to be struck by the tenderness and obvious love between Duncan and the Sorceress, especially since her own relationship with Skeletor is far from loving and actually abusive. And yes, the show goes into this as well.

Duncan is another character who finally gets his due in Masters of the Universe Revelation. Of course, Duncan got plenty of screentime in the original cartoon. He was in almost every episode and always fought by He-Man’s side and his inventions and gadgets saved the day more than once. But we – or at least I – never really appreciated Duncan. This was probably because a parent figure and parent figures just aren’t very interesting, when you’re a kid. Though US cartoons of the 1980s in general actually figured a lot of positive portrayals of parenthood – complete disasters and Darth Vader Parenthood Award candidates are rare.

And Duncan is one hell of a parent figure. He’s a single Dad who still manages to raise Teela while working not one but two very demanding jobs (military commander and weapons master/tech whiz) and basically keeping Eternia running (cause we all know that Randor couldn’t rule his way out of a paperbag), while his partner the Sorceress literally chose career over family. But Duncan isn’t just Teela’s Dad – and he’s a very good father – he’s a parent figure for everybody around him.

Duncan is more of a father to Adam than Randor ever was, which the original cartoon makes pretty clear. Because Adam is always hanging out with Duncan and Teela, either in Duncan’s workshop or testing Duncan’s latest inventions. When there’s a problem, Duncan is the one Adam turns to, not his parents. Duncan is also the person who occasionally has a word of praise or a pat on the shoulder for Adam, something he never gets from his father. And the few flashbacks we get of Adam’s childhood and youth before he was He-Man in the original cartoon show him with Duncan, too, rather than his parents. Plus, Duncan is one of the very few people who know that Adam is He-Man, probably because he was the first person Adam turned to after he transformed for the first time. This may be part of the reason why Randor lashes out at Duncan in particular after Adam’s death. Because Adam confided in Duncan and not in his own father.

Cringer comes as part and parcel with Adam and there is an episode of the original cartoon where little Adam finds an orphaned and injured tiger cub, rescues him and immediately takes him to Duncan to nurse him back to health, so Duncan was a parent stand-in for Cringer, too. And while Orko may not be a child, he is very much like one and Duncan adopts him as well. Plus, he builds Roboto and winds up basically adopting Andra in the course of the series. Duncan even tries to help a Cthulhu-type tentacle creature he meets when he’s locked up in the dungeons of Castle Greyskull, even though that creature initially wants to eat him. Furthermore, he spends decades protecting the woman who left him for her mystical destiny and keeps Eternia running, while Randor sits on his throne looking regal. So what if he is occasionally grumpy, when Adam, Teela or Orko don’t listen to him and get themselves into trouble again? Duncan is not just a hero, the man is a damned saint.

The Sorceress manages to use the bit of power she had to teleport Teela, Andra, Cringer and Adam to the relative safety of the royal palace. But Adam is still dying, so Teela uses the powers she inherited from her mother – the powers she usually denies – to heal Adam. They find the palace and the city largely empty. Randor, Marlena and most of the inhabitants wisely evacuated, once they realised that there was trouble at Castle Greyskull again, leaving only Fisto and Clamp Champ to hold the fort. The reunion is only shortlived, however, because Skeletor appears and uses a corrosive mist to turn the remaining inhabitants of the city into skeletal zombie monsters. Our heroes flee into the palace, but Fisto and Clamp Champ are both affected by the mist – while protecting Adam, who simply can’t run as fast as Teela or Andra, especially not after almost dying for the second time in six episodes – and turn into skeletal zombies who attack our heroes, so they’re forced to kill Fisto and Clamp-Champ. Adam tries to find solace in the fact that since Fisto and Clamp Champ were both great heroes in life, they will go to Preternia. But then Skeletor shows up, tells Adam that he ripped Fisto’s and Clamp Champ’s souls from their bodies – represented by two small flames in Skeletor’s hand – and then just snuffs them out.

That’s three characters important enough to get action figures – the Sorceress, Fisto and Clamp Champ – killed in a single episode. And unlike some others who die, they don’t come back. And even though I rarely cry at movies or TV shows, I got misty-eyed over every single one of those deaths. Getting misty-eyed over the Sorceress makes sense – her death is set up to punch you in the feels. But crying over Fisto and Clamp Champ, two flat out absurd characters I never cared about (and I’m pretty sure Fisto’s main raison d’etre is to allow the writers to sneak fisting jokes in a kids’ show)? That surprised the hell out of me.

In my reviews of Foundation, I have complained a lot about the screentime that show spends on debating whether clones and robots have souls, something which is never even addressed in the original books and honestly doesn’t matter. However, the fact that people (and human animal hybrids) definitely have souls in Masters of the Universe: Revelation doesn’t bother me, because unlike Foundation, Eternia is a fantasy world with its own rules. And in Eternia, there is an afterlife in Preternia (for great heroes) and Subternia (for everybody else), both of which are concrete realms that our heroes visited during the course of the series. And Skeletor casually snuffing out the souls and denying Fisto and Clamp Champ their culture’s version of Valhalla is just cruel and hits you in the feels, even if it doesn’t make the characters any less absurd. Besides, Skeletor not only zombified Fisto and Clamp Champ, he did the same to every inhabitant of the city of Eternos who did not evacuate in time.

In my discussion of part 1, I mentioned that the Masters of the Universe – both the original and Revelations – borrows a lot of characters, tropes, creatures, locations and even plots from the sword and sorcery genre and waters them down a bit to make them more kid-friendly. And so a lot of the Masters of the Universe characters seenm to be modelled on classic sword and sorcery characters. However, I forgot to mention Fisto, who with his red beard and red hair and mighty first would be a deadringer for Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd or Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane. And considering Fisto starts out as a villain and loner before he is reformed, I’d almost say that he is a kid-friendly take on the very much not kid-friendly Kane.

Teela, Andra, Adam and Cringer try their best to fight Skeletor, but they have no chance and so Skeletor knocks them all out and proceeds to give one of his patented villain monologues, complete with crackling laughter. Mark Hamill makes a great Skeletor, by the way – another supervillain role that would make Darth Vader misty-eyed with fatherly pride.

And once again it’s Adam who gets up and laughs in Skeletor’s face, interrupting his crazed supervillain monologue. Did I mention that Adam gets to be incredibly brave in part 2? Adam tells Skeletor that it’s not the sword that turned him into He-Man – and it should be noted that Skeletor is more than just a little obsessed with He-Man. The sword is just a conduit, but the spark is in Adam and has always been. To prove his point, Adam holds up his hand and calls the power without the sword as a moderator.

The results are spectacular, because Adam turns into an even more muscular, grunting and non-verbal version of He-Man. The character is called Savage He-Man in the closing credits, though he’s basically a white and blond version of the Hulk. Savage He-Man now proceeds to literally beat the shit out of Skeletor and it’s glorious, because Skeletor – who has just flat out murdered the Sorceress, Fisto and Clamp Champ and countless Eternian citizens and snuffed out their souls, too – so has it coming.

However, Savage He-Man quickly turns out to be more problem than solution. For starters, he doesn’t have an off-switch. Adam always transformed back, when He-Man was no longer needed. Savage He-Man doesn’t. He just keeps pummelling Skeletor, destroying the city in the process. And when Teela uses her newfound powers to teleport Andra, Cringer, Adam and herself to a place called the Mystic Forest, Savage He-Man just keeps on going, smashing through trees, rocks and an unfortunate manticore at one point.

Now He-Man doesn’t kill. Partly, that’s due to the fact that the good guys in US kids’ cartoons don’t kill – period. In the 1960s and before, you occasionally see the good guys in American cartoons killing someone in self-defence, e.g. Race Bannon shoots a couple of people in the original Jonny Quest, but US broadcast TV regulation changes in the late 1960s made that sort of thing anathema. I’ve read somewhere that those regulation changes were a response to the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968, which would be a typical case of media scapegoating and blind actionism, because the killers of Kennedy and King were very obviously not inspired by a Jonny Quest cartoon of all thing.

So yes, He-Man never killed anybody in the original cartoons, because the guidelines wouldn’t let him. And in fact that’s part of the reason why the deaths of the Sorceress, Fisto and Clamp Champ are so shocking – because that sort of thing simply isn’t supposed to happen in a US kids’ cartoon. However, He-Man is also philosophically opposed to killing and says so in the dialogue several times. He saves monsters he just fought and even Skeletor on occasion. And when Skeletor tricks He-Man into believing that he’s accidentally killed someone, Adam promptly vows never to become He-Man again.

Therefore, seeing Savage He-Man with blood dripping from his hands is highly disturbing, because again this is something that’s not supposed to happen. Teela refuses to believe that Adam is just gone and this mindless raging being is all that’s left of her friend, so – taking a cue from Black Widow in the Avengers – she tries to calm Savage He-Man down and get him to turn back into Adam. This seems to go well, until Teela tells Adam that she always believed in him, even if his father didn’t. This is a big mistake, because Savage He-Man hurts Teela – something we know Adam would never do – and then takes off. Savage He-Man is pure anger and rage, untempered by the sword or morality, and he’s just found a new outlet for his anger: King Randor.

As I’ve said above, the conflict between Adam and his father was always simmering under the surface in the original cartoons, since whenever we saw Randor, he inevitably found something to criticise about Adam. And in Revelations, the last thing Randor said to Adam before he got himself killed – apart from “Close the door” – is that Adam has never made him proud, which is just a terrible thing to say to your kid. The relationship between Adam and his father is also distant in other ways. The original cartoon shows Duncan and Teela hugging several times – and they also hug several times in Revelations – but Randor never hugs Adam. The only one who hugs Adam is Cringer and most of the time, that’s just because he’s terrified.

The original cartoon rarely goes into how Adam feels about all this, though we get occasional glimpses that Adam wants to make his father proud and is frustrated that he can’t. Revelations finally brings the conflict between Adam and his father into the open and shows that Adam is furious that his father just won’t see him for who he is. I think a lot of viewers can sympathise with this, because many of us will have parents who are disappointed that we are not the people they want us to be while failing to recognise the people that we are. This frustration is even more poignant here, because Randor constantly complains that Adam is not brave and accomplished and princely enough, when he’s really the biggest damn hero on Eternia. Compare that to Duncan who tells Evil-Lyn that Adam is the bravest man he knows. So yes, Adam has every reason to be angry at his father. However, as Savage He-Man anger is all that propells him.

And so Savage He-Man bursts into a camp near a mountain fortress protected by mythical energy, to where Randor, Marlena and the Eternian army fled. This hideout in the mountains reminded me of the Golamira Mountains, where many an Aquilonian King has made their last stand and where Conan fights the forces of Valerius and Tarascus in The Hour of the Dragon. The Eternian guards of course have no idea what is happening, when a blonde, half-naked mountain of muscle bursts into their camp and proceeds to beat them up. However, there are a lot of Eternian guards, so they manage to restrain Savage He-Man with ropes and chains, while Teela, Cringer and Andra race down the mountain to explain that everything is a terrible mistake. This is when Randor steps out of his tent and does something which redeems him for his flat-out shitty behaviour in part 1 of Revelations.

He tells his guards to stand down, looks Savage He-Man in the eyes and recognises that his son is somewhere in there, which is remarkable, considering he never recognised He-Man as Adam, even though He-Man looks a lot more like Adam than the Savage version. And then Randor tells Adam everything he should have told him years ago, that he loves him and misses him and is proud of him. Yes, Randor actually acknowledges that he was pretty crap as a father, which is not something you see a lot of, neither in cartoons nor elsewhere. It works, too, because Savage He-Man turns back into Adam who finally gets the hug from his father that he’s waited for for so long. And because Randor is in the mood, he hugs Teela, too, and makes Andra a lieutenant in the royal guard.

But even though Adam is reunited with his family, everything is not fine. The grief over losing their son has driven a wedge between Randor and Marlena and they’re on the verge of breaking up. This rings true emotionally, since couples often break up over losing a child. And if Adora exists in this timeline (we know Hordak exists), then Randor and Marlena have lost not one but two children.

Adam is understadably horrified. After all, he only kept his double life a secret to keep the people he loved safe and instead he managed to wreck his parents’ marriage, drove Teela and Duncan apart and broke up his family in general. So Adam vows that there will be no more secrets and does what someone should have done a long time ago, tell Teela that the Sorceress is her mother. However, Teela has already figured that out for herself. She also forgives Adam, though he did hurt her.

Meanwhile, Skeletor is not at all happy that He-Man escaped and beat the everloving shit out of him. He’s also so obsessed with finding out just how Adam can transform without the Sword of Power that he not only forgets to actually rule Eternia and do something with the power he finally won after all those years, but also takes out his frustrations on his henchpeople, as usual. Once more, Evil-Lyn – who is now the new Sorceress, complete with bat headdress and a sexy outfit – gets the brunt of it.

In part one, Evil-Lyn worked with Teela, Andra and Orko to save Eternia and was well on the path to redemption. She had no idea that Skeletor had hitched a ride in her staff and was feeding on her lifeforce to restore himself. And now Skeletor is back and finally got everything he ever wanted and still treats everyone around him, including Evil-Lyn, like crap. Both Beast-Man (who loves her) and Duncan tell Evil-Lyn that Skeletor is an abuser, that she should leave him and that as the new Sorceress, she is the one who has the power, not Skeletor. They’re absolutely right, because Skeletor is a bully and an abuser. In the original cartoons, his male henchmen usually got the brunt of it – and it’s notable that none of them like Skeletor – but here Evil-Lyn is Skeletor’s primary victim. However, she also feels indebted to him, because long ago Skeletor saved her from a life of poverty and abuse. I don’t think Evil-Lyn ever got any backstory in the original series, but she gets one here. Turns out she was a street urchin, who ran away from home, when her starving parents wanted to eat her – and how disturbing is it that there are people in Eternia who are so poor that they eat their own children – and became a pickpocket, when Skeletor found her. In part 1, Orko told Evil-Lyn that no one is born evil and indeed her life could have gone quite differently, if someone else rather than Skeletor had found her.

Hands up, who expected a discussion of the dynamics of domestic abuse from a He-Man cartoon of all things? Nope, me neither. However, shocked awake by Duncan and Beast-Man, Evil-Lyn decides to deal with Skeletor before a rare cosmic alignment occurs that will make him even more powerful. So Evil-Lyn seduces Skeletor, at one point straddling him on the throne of Castle Greyskull, and persuades him to power down, because in his overpowered form he might accidentally kill her. Yes, there is a hinted at sex scene, complete with boner jokes (!), in a He-Man cartoon of all things. And no, I have no idea how Skeletor can even have sex, considering that he is a skeleton and none of the relevant equipment has bones. We don’t find out either, because once Evil-Lyn has Skeletor powered down and distracted, she grabs hold of the Sword of Power, holds it aloft and says the magic words.

Now at first glance, a super-powered Evil-Lyn seems infinitely preferable to a super-powered Skeletor, because Evil-Lyn is actually intelligent and also redeemable, as part one has shown. In practice, however, super-powered Evil-Lyn turns out to be a much bigger problem than Skeletor. Because even in his godlike form, Skeletor was still way too petty and obsessed with He-Man to do as much harm as he could have (and Skeletor did a lot of harm).

Evil-Lyn, however, is much more focussed. She’s also barking mad, ever since Skeletor showed her the universe coming into alignment and Evil-Lyn realised how insignificant and alone she is in the face of the sheer scale of the cosmos. She also got a vision of Zoar – the falcon that was the avatar of the Sorceress in the original cartoon and is apparently the deity of the Eternians – getting killed by a snake in prehistoric times. So in short, as far as Evil-Lyn is concerned, God is dead and the universe doesn’t care. Evil-Lyn’s experience is very much the plot of a Lovecraft story: the protagonist realises how small and insignificant they are and how vast and uncaring the cosmos is and promptly goes mad. But while Lovecraft’s protagonists curl up sobbing in the fetal position, Evil-Lyn decides to do something about the vast uncaring cosmos. If God is dead, the universe doesn’t care, nothing matters and everybody is alone anyway, then Evil-Lyn will simply destroy the universe and put everybody out of their misery. And just to show everybody that she means business, she destroys Preternia, the paradise/Valhalla equivalent.

In many ways, Evil-Lyn reminds me here of a certain kind of very angry atheist who feels the need to kill off the God they claim not to believe in. When these angry atheists happen to be writers, artists or filmmakers, you get stories about killing God, Jesus or at the very least an angel. Preacher – of which showrunner Kevin Smith is a big fan – is the most famous example, but there are many others. Unfortunately, Evil-Lyn happens to be an all powerful being, so she not only destroys the equivalent of Valhalla/Paradise, taking away the Eternians’ hope for an afterlife, but wants to destroy the whole universe as well. “There, take that, deity I don’t believe in.”

Absolutely everybody agrees that Evil-Lyn must be stopped. He-Man would be the obvious choice to stop her, but Adam doesn’t dare to transform without the sword, because the last time he tried that, he almost killed his father. No, the only way to stop Evil-Lyn is if all Eternians fight together. So Teela uses her newfound powers to send out a psychic call to arms, though she has no idea, if anybody heard her.

Meanwhile, the last person anybody expected show up at the camp to offer their help, namely Skeletor. And so we get a temporary alliance between He-Man (as Adam) and Skeletor that we never thought we’d ever see. But even Skeletor allying with the good guys is not enough, because Evil-Lyn doesn’t just have the power of the sword, she also has the power of the Sorceress. And the only way to stop one Sorceress is with another.

So Adam, Skeletor, Cringer and Skeletor’s pet panther head for Castle Greyskull to distract Evil-Lyn, while Andra and Teela sneak in through the sewers, so Teela can find the magical well and become the Sorceress, even though it means giving up her past life.

Adam, Skeletor and their respective pets’ confrontation with Evil-Lyn quickly turns into a free-for-all with Evil-Lyn and the faithful Beast-Man (who gets turned into the equivalent of Battlecat at one point) versus Skeletor, Adam, Cringer and Skeletor’s panther. And though they all fight valiantly, Cringer taking on Beast-Man, while a depowered Adam fences with Evil-Lyn, they are no match for her.

Meanwhile, outside the castle, the Eternian army is gathering, joined by all the citizens of Eternia who responded to Teela’s call. The winged people, the bee people and even Merman’s fish people, who normally were hostile, show up as well. Evil-Lyn, meanwhile, calls forth all the shadow monsters from Subternia along with their leader Scareglow, which leads to a huge fight outside the Castle as well.

While all this is going on, Teela and Andra find themselves faced with some of the more offbeat Masters of the Universe characters like Clawful, the lobster man, Goat-Man and Pig-Boy. Duncan, who has broken out of his dungeon to join the fight, explicitly says they’re the bottom of the barrel and he’s right. Because Masters of the Universe came up with a lot of very strange characters towards the end, particularly among Skeletor’s henchpeople. And I love the fact that we get to see even those flat-out absurd characters – Stinkor, the skunk creature which smells of patchouli (what was it with smelly toys in the 1980s?) also shows up in part 1. Whatever your favourite Master of the Universe character was, they probably appear in Revelation.  Even if you happened to be the only fan of Goat-Man and Pig Boy or Stinkor in the universe.

Teela and Duncan share one last hig hug, then Duncan and Andra escape to join the battle going on outside, while Teela goes to meet her destiny. At the magical well, she meets the ghost of her mother who tells Teela that she loves her and that she was with her in spirit every moment of her life, but also warns her that once she steps into the water to become the Sorceress, she will have to give up everything and everybody she loves. Teela, however, isn’t having any of that. Yes, she is willing to embrace the abilities she has suppressed all her life, but she’s not giving up her friends and family, because they are what give her strength.

The usual suspects who already hate the fact that Masters of the Universe: Revelation focusses more on other characters, including Teela, than on He-Man will of course cry that Teela is a Mary Sue, since she gets to have her cake and eat it, too. However, the different ways in which the Sorceress and Teela balance their powers and the ones they love are also a commentary on different types of feminism. The Sorceress decides to forsake love and family for her career like many second wave feminists did (and remember that the original cartoon came out in the early 1980s, when second wave feminists were finally hitting and sometimes breaking through the glass ceiling). Meanwhile, her daughter Teela is the contemporary feminist who tries to combine career and family and have it all. And for Teela, it works out.

As for those who complain that Teela getting to be the Sorceress, while also being able to leave Castle Greyskull violates “the rules”, those rules were always very fuzzy and the original cartoons contradicted themselves several times. Besides, while I’m sure the Sorceress believes that she had to give up her partner and child to gain her powers, that’s not necessarily true. We have only the word of the Sorceress that she can’t leave the Castle in human form. Besides, I think that the Sorceress could have made balancing her duties with having a family work. There was absolutely nothing stopping her from keeping her daughter with her – and an impregnable magical fortress is as safe a place for a kid as the royal palace which is attacked every other episode.  As for Duncan, I’m pretty sure he would have stayed with her. And besides, he probably dropped by a lot for some quality time.

So Teela becomes the new Sorceress and gets a new costume that is a mix of her classic costume and her mother’s outfit. And for those who didn’t like her new haircut, the transformation also instantly makes her hair grow long again.

And then we get the final battle of Teela versus Evil-Lyn, law versus chaos, love versus anger and loneliness, faith versus atheism, Sorceress versus Sorceress. The law versus chaos angle, which is actually spelled out in the dialogue , comes of course from Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, though Moorcock claims he borrowed it, minus the religion, from Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions. Just as the idea of a series of champions wielding the sword of power and defending Eternia is borrowed from Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. And of course, the conflict of barbarism versus civilisation that shows up in Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Kull and Bran Mal Morn stories lies at the heart of it all.

In part 1, Teela spent several episodes working with Evil-Lyn to save Eternia, so she knows that Evil-Lyn is capable of good and tries to bring that part out in her again. She also shows Evil-Lyn that to Teela, who has friends, family and people she loves, the universe is not as lonely and uncaring. And finally, she shows her how the prehistoric “death of the falcon god” scenario went on, namely that the dead god was reborn from the waters and empowered the first Sorceress. God is not dead, after all, but just transformed.

This finally convinces Evil-Lyn to power down, so Adam finally gets his sword back, transforms into He-Man. He also transforms Cringer into Battlecat (and for once Cringer does not complain) and – to everybody’s surprise – Skeletor into Skelegod.

Then He-Man proceeds to mop up the battlefield and generally being awesome. Though the rest of Eternia doesn’t do too badly. Randor and Duncan wind up fighting back to back in spite of their differences. Marlena, who used to be a NASA astronaut before she crashlanded on Eternia and wound up marrying Randor, leads the air assault. And Evil-Lyn calling up every soul Subternia also brings back Orko – who gave his life letting his friends escape Subternia. Only that this version of Orko has finally managed to get his magic to work and takes out Scareglow. And yes, I was damned happy to see Orko back and with functional magic, too. He sticks around, too, because Evil-Lyn rescues him, when all the other dead souls are sucked back to Subternia. When we last see her, she is in Orko’s homeworld Trolla with a new hairstyle (which symbolises “I’m starting a new life” in this series) and buries her old staff. And while we can’t be sure, I think she’s going to be okay.

Only Skeletor is still the same old petty jerk he ever was and challenges He-Man to a duel. He-Man doesn’t want to fight him and when forced to fight anyway, just punches Skeletor across the horizon. When we next see him, he finally returns to Snake Mountain and comes face to face with Tri-Clops and his technocult, who have sat out the war, waiting to see who wins. Skeletor is very much not impressed by Tri-Clops and his cult and their idol, the Mighty Motherboard (I bet Kevin Smith was proud of that one) a feminine bird figure (god shaped like bird figures are clearly an Eternian thing), until the bird figure injects Skeletor with nanites and turns him into a cyborg. Meawhile, the symbol of Hordak flashes above the head of the Mighty Motherboard, setting up a potential second season right there. This even makes sense, because Hordak is the only villain in Eternia who has been more successful than Skeletor (not that that is a high bar). And if we’re going to see Hordak, does this mean we’re going to see Adora? And if so, how much of the recent She-Ra cartoon will they borrow?

But before we get to that, season 1 ends as it began, with a celebration in the palace. Andra, who has now been fully adopted into the family, is named the new Man-at-Arms, so Duncan, who has a neat new dress uniform and several new medals (and he deserves every single one of them), can finally retire. Everybody is happy, Adam no longer has to hide who he is, and Castle Greyskull has a new Sorceress and that Sorceress has her champion, Adam a.k.a. He-Man. The family is back together and stronger for it, because there are no more secrets among them. If you hoped for a kiss between Adam and Teela (or Teela and Andra), sorry, no such luck. But Adam and Teela hold hands, while Teela and Andra  hug. So does Teela prefer Adam or Andra or both? It could go either way at this point and that’s perfectly fine. However, every one of our heroes who’s still or again alive at the end is in a better place emotionally. They’ve all been through hell – sometimes literally – but they’re stronger now and ready for everything the universe can throw at them.

For many people of my generation, the original Masters of the Universe was our first exposure to the sword and sorcery and sword and planet subgenres. And for several of us, it was the beginning of a lifelong love. So is Masters of the Universe: Revelation sword and sorcery or sword and planet? The original cartoon definitely was and Revelations leans heavily into the sword and sorcery aesthetics and inspirations of the original, even though the scale of the story itself – where the fate of all of Eternia and the whole universe hangs in the balance – is a lot bigger than sword and sorcery usually gets. But then, sword and sorcery has its share of large scale conflicts, too. See Strombringer by Michael Moorcock or The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard. Is this show a sign of a sword and sorcery revival? I don’t know, though I certainly see signs that a sword and sorcery revival is underway.

My generation, Generation X, are the ones who are currently controlling the media, so almost everything I enjoyed as a kid has been remade or rebooted by now. My teenaged self would be utterly thrilled, if you told her that all of her favourite books, TV shows and cartoons are now back and look better than they ever did before. She would be equally horrified if you told her that a lot of it misses the point and simply isn’t very good. Cause unfortunately, a lot of those remakes or reboots have had their share of issues. Either they completely violated the spirit of the original – see the new Battlestar Galactica – or they became slavish nostalgia exercises which still manage to miss the point – see Ghostbusters: Afterlife – or they turn into hollow spectacle and punch-ups – see the Transformers movies.

Masters of the Universe: Revelation probably manages the tricky balance between nostalgia and modernity as well as anything I’ve ever seen. It’s very much rooted in the original stories and yet manages to expand upon them and address questions the originals never could or would address. For a moment, the Star Wars sequels came close, when The Last Jedi attempted to blow up the whole dark side versus light side of the Force narrative, but then they pulled back and became a retread of what came before.

Meanwhile, Masters of the Universe – which is certainly not the franchise I would have bet upon – manages to pull to off. It’s still the same story and characters we fell in love with as children, but it also manages to be so much more. It’s a story that addresses the big questions about love, family, friendship, grief and trauma that the originals never dared to ask, while also embracing the stories that inspired the original. What I expected from Masters of the Universe: Revelation was a nostalgic good time. What I got was a story that did a lot more. It made me laugh and cry, it made me think and it brought a big wide smile onto my face. This whole show made me happy and what more can you ask for?

Masters of the Universe: Revelations is definitely going on my 2022 Hugo ballot and no, I don’t care that it’s a cartoon based on a 38-year-old TV show that was basically a glorified toy commecial. We had She-Ra on the Hugo ballot this year, so why not her big brother He-Man?

 

Thanksgiving Free Fiction: The Robot Turkey Apocalypse

Today is Thanksgiving in the US, so Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate.

This holiday is all about giving thanks, so it’s also the perfect time to say “thank you” to the readers of this blog with a free holiday short story.

This story came out of the 2020 July short story challenge and was inspired by an episode of Magnum PI of all things, where Magnum and Higgins muse about the meaning of the initials “RT” and Magnum suggest “robot turkeys”. Magnum and Higgins are interrupted by men with guns shortly thereafter and the robot turkeys never come up again, but somehow they stuck in my brain, so I wrote a story about literal robot turkey besieging a small town.

I never did anything with the story afterwards, because it was too short to publish as a standalone. However, then I realised that it would make an excellent free story for Thanksgiving, so I polished it and out it up on the blog. At the next update, it will also go into The Christmas Collection, my massive collection of holiday stories in various genres.

But for now, enjoy…

The Robot Turkey Apocalypseby Cora Buhlert

No one knew where they came from. After all, robot turkeys are not exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to bring the world or at least the small part of it that was the town of Brighthaven to its knees. In fact, robot turkeys not the sort of thing you’d expect — period.

Robot cats, robot dogs, robot wolves, robot dinosaurs, sure. All of these things make sense in a twisted way. But robot turkeys? Why would anybody build robotic versions of very strange looking birds that humans only domesticated for their lean meat and then only ate once a year anyway? Truly, it makes no sense.

But that’s the problem with real life. Unlike fiction, it doesn’t have to make sense.

And so the robocalypse was brought about not by artificial intelligences using our smart cars, smart homes, smartphones and smart toasters against us. It was not brought about by man tinkering with things man should not tinker with. Its harbingers were not lumbering steel giants bristling with weapons or sleek chromium plated humanoid robots faster and stronger than any human could ever be. Instead, it was turkeys. Robotic turkeys with deadly beaks and razor-sharp tail feathers they could fire like flechettes with deadly accuracy.

No one ever figured out who made the robot turkeys. They had obviously escaped from a lab somewhere, but who had built them and why? A mad scientist was the most likely explanation, if only because you’d have to be mad to build robot turkeys. But no one had any clues regarding the identity or motive of that hypothetical mad scientist.

Some thought it was a Communist plot, but then they were the sort of people who always thought of a Communist plot. Some thought it was aliens, but then they were the sort of people who always thought it was aliens.

However, the most likely explanation was that someone had created the robot turkeys for Thanksgiving, maybe as an eccentric garden ornament or to appear in a parade or a play or a theme park. Only that something had gone horribly, terribly wrong somewhere along the way.

As explanations went, it was farfetched, but no more farfetched than the existence of robot turkeys themselves. The fact that the first robot turkeys had been spotted in early November also seemed to point to the Thanksgiving explanation.

But wherever they came from and however they came to be, the robot turkeys quickly made their presence known. One Monday morning in early November, a flock of robot turkeys chased a group of children waiting for the school bus down Highway 29. Thankfully, there were no casualties except for nine-year-old Mary Lou Porter who stumbled and fell and knocked out one of her front teeth.

It was a freaky, scary occurrence, but everybody thought it was a one-off event. Until it happened again a few days later. This time around, a flock of robot turkeys invaded the parking lot of Brighthaven office park. They chased hapless cubicle workers across the parking lot and into the office buildings where they barricaded themselves.

This time, there also was a casualty, Walter Gibbons, a fifty-seven-year-old businessman who was struck in the calf by a tail feather flechette, while dashing across the parking lot. He stumbled and fell and was promptly pecked to death by the robot turkeys, while his horrified co-workers watched from the upper floors of their office blocks.

The siege of Brighthaven office park, as it came to be known, lasted for twelve hours. Of course, the trapped office workers immediately called the police — on their cell phones, because the robot turkeys had pecked through the landlines. But when the local sheriff’s department finally deigned to arrive — after the fifth panicked call about murderous robot turkeys — they not only found that yes, the robot turkeys were real and the calls had not been a hoax, but also that there was preciously little Brighthaven’s finest could do about the robot turkey menace.

Shooting only made them angry, for the robot turkeys were too small, too swift and too well armoured to get even hit by bullets, let alone suffer damage. However, a flock of them could quickly take out a squad car, as Deputy Andy Dunwich found out to his detriment.

Once the police realised that there was nothing whatsoever they could do to get rid of the robot turkeys, they finally called in the local fire department. What they thought the fire department could do is anybody’s guess. However, when Fire Chief Aloysius P. Hargreave had his men unroll the hoses and ordered “Water on!”, it turned out that robot turkeys really, really did not like water. And so, the robot turkeys fled across Highway 29 and into the undergrowth.

After the siege of Brighthaven office park, absolutely no one believed anymore that the robot turkey attacks were just a one-off. Especially since there were new robot turkey attacks all around town reported every single day now. The robot turkeys invaded garden parties and backyard barbecues. They rampaged through Clearvalley Mall and chased customers across the parking lot of Benson’s All-Organic Supermarket.

Once, the robot turkeys even attacked a wedding party that took place in the rose garden of Winter Creek Resort. They chased waiters and wedding guests around, trampled the roses, pecked at the bridesmaids and guests, reduced the bride’s designer wedding gown to tatters, gave the groom a nasty wound in his calf and put the officiating priest in hospital.

Aloysius P. Hargreaves and his fire brigade were everywhere in those days. Their sirens could be heard all day and night, as the fire engines rumbled through the streets to wash away the latest robot turkey attack with their mighty fire hoses.

By now, mayor Martin C. Oakley was desperate. His town was under siege by a menace like none ever seen before, the firefighters were close to collapsing with exhaustion and the National Guard was not returning his calls. It was only when a smartphone video of the attack on the Benson-Simonetti wedding at the Winter Creek Resort went viral that the rest of the world outside Brighthaven started to believe that the robot turkeys were indeed real.

Now the National Guard finally did come to Brighthaven, only to find that their weapons had no more effect than those of the police. However, the National Guard also had a mobile water cannon for riot control and that proved to be remarkably effective. For the robot turkeys really did not like water and the jet of a water cannon is a lot more powerful than that of a firehose.

Slowly, but gradually the National Guard drove the robot turkeys back. The jets of their water cannons blasted the robots turkeys across the road and smashed them into cars, buildings, bollards, traffic cones, mailboxes and any other obstacle they encountered. Most robot turkeys just got up again and fled back into the woods whence they came, but some of them suffered more serious damage. Soon limping and dead robot turkeys could be spotted on roads all around Brighthaven. If a robot turkey was still moving, the town’s young hooligans delivered the coup de grâce with a baseball bat. The invasion was beaten back at last and the humans were winning.

The last robot turkey in Brighthaven was spotted limping across Highway 29. It was missing most of it tailfeather flechettes, one whole wing and one eye. The thing seemed confused, staggering to and fro, until a passing forty ton truck put it out of its misery.

The people of Brighthaven cheered and put on an impromptu parade to salute the brave men and women of the National Guard and the Brighthaven fire department.

By now it was early December, Brighthaven was glowing with Christmas lights and everybody was confident that life would return to normal or what passed for it. Until the robot Santas emerged from the woods, shooting laserbeams from their eyes…

The End?

Not robot turkeys, just the denizens of a turkey farm I came across on a hike recently.

Listen to Cora Talk About Foundation with Paul Levinson and Joel McKinnon

Yesterday, I was a guest on the Light On Light Through podcast, where I chatted with host Paul Levinson and Joel McKinnon of the excellent Seldon Crisis podcast about Foundation, both the TV series and the original books by Isaac Asimov.

All three of us encountered Foundation at the exact right age and became big fans of the books and of Isaac Asimov, so of course we’re geeking out about all sorts of obscure details such as how the murder in The Naked Sun was committed and Asimov’s skills as a mystery writer. We also discuss the Three Laws of Robotics, the portrayal of women or the lack thereof in Foundation and Asimov’s work in general, the eyes of Dr. Susan Calvin and much more. Paul even knew Asimov in person. And if you ever wondered what the connection between Isaac Asimov and former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt is, well, that question is answered as well.

You can listen to the episode here. You can also watch on YouTube below.

Also, if you want to revisit the original stories or read them for the first time, but feel put off by Asimov’s prose, check out the Seldon Crisis podcast, where Joel not only discusses the original stories, but also does dramatic readings. He just finished “The Mule”, which is generally considered the high point of the series.