Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 39

Loki Experiences “The Nexus Event”, As the Plot Heats Up

Another Wednesday, another episode of Loki. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

When we last met our favourite God of Mischief, he and his variant Sylvie were just about to be blown up along with the exploding planet Lamentis, one of the apocalypses where Sylvie likes to hide from the TVA.

When their last way of escaping the doomed planet was destroyed, Sylvie wandered off. Loki follows her and finds her in the wasteland surrounding the city, where they sit down on a rock, hold hands and wait for the world to end.

Sylvie finally opens up and tells Loki that the TVA grabbed her when she was only a child. We see this happening in a flashback scene, as Sylvie, who’s about nine or ten in human years, is arrested while playing with what looks like a Playmobil viking ship and subjected to the same dehumanising treatment that we previously saw Loki subjected to. Only that it’s so much more awful, as is the impending disintegration, when it’s a young child who’s treated like that. However, Sylvie manages to avoid being disintegrated by stealing the TemPad of the TVA agent who arrested her – none other than Ravonna Renslayer – and escaping. Sylvie tells Loki that she was on the run for years, cause wherever she went, the TVA immediately appeared, until she figured out that she could hide out in apocalypses. “And so that’s where I grew up, the ends of a thousand worlds,” she tells Loki, “And now, that’s where I’ll die.”

Loki tells Sylvie that she is amazing to have survived all that on her own and that what makes them special is not the chaos that they cause or the fact that they seem to be destine to lose, but that they always survive, no matter how many times they are killed. They hold hands and look deep into each other’s eyes, just as the planet is about the be destroyed. And then, just in the nick of time, the TVA shows up, led by Mobius and Hunter B-15.

For Ravonna Renslayer is desperate to recapture Sylvie, the variant that got away from her, and Loki, the variant that Mobius decided to adopt. Mobius thinks that Hunter C-20 might have some insight, especially since she kept saying “It was real, it was all real” over and over again. Ravonna, however, tells Mobius that Hunter C-20 is dead, her mind destroyed by Sylvie. Mobius finds this difficult to believe, because C-20 seemed confused and distraught, but otherwise fine, when he and his team found her.

Before Mobius can press Ravonna (and come on, it’s pretty obvious that those two are colleagues with benefits) any further with regard to C-20, they are distracted by a massive branch in the sacred timeline, a so-called Nexus Event. They deduce that this is where Loki and Sylvie are hiding and sent a team to arrest them.

And so Loki and Sylvie are rescued from the impending apocalypse on Lamentis, only to find that they’ve escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire, because the TVA is determined to disintegrate them both, once they’ve figured out just what it was that caused the Nexus Event. Loki and Sylvie are separated, which bothers Loki quite a bit. Loki tries to tell Mobius that the TVA is lying to him, but Mobius won’t have any of it. He throws Loki into a kind of temporal torture chamber, where he relives a moment where Sif (played once again by Jamie Alexander now that Blindspot has ended) punches him and kicks him in the crotch, after Loki cut off her hair, over and over again. Sif also tells Loki that he’s alone and always will be, which clearly bothers him. Loki tries to make Sif listen to him long enough to explain what’s happening, but he only gets punched again and again.

This scene implies that Loki and Sif used to have a relationship, only that Loki blew it by being himself. Well, considering that Sif never got Thor to notice her, though not for lack of trying, it does make sense that she would eventually give up pining over Thor and give Loki a try. Only that Loki is who he is, so it doesn’t work out.

Mobius, meanwhile, tries to persuade Ravonna to let him interrogate Sylvie as well. But Ravonna declares that Sylvie is just too dangerous – after all, she destroyed the mind of poor C-20 – and that Ravonna is worried Sylvie will hurt Mobius, too.

Meanwhile, Hunter B-15 is having some doubts of her own, for when Sylvie briefly took over her mind, she also dug up some long erased memories of B-15’s life before she became a TVA agent. And so B-15 goes against orders to see Sylvie. She opens a time portal and tells Sylvie to come with her. The two women once again find themselves outside the doomed Roxxcart superstore from episode 2, where Sylvie took over B-15’s mind. B-15 now wants to know what the hell is going on, whereupon Sylvie tells her that’s she a variant like all TVA agents and had her memories erased. B-15 is understandably shocked and asks Sylvie to show her her memories again, which Sylvie does. “I don’t know who I was”, a tearful B-15 declares (great acting from Wunmi Mosaku, who didn’t get a lot to do in the show so far), “But I look like I was happy.”

I think this scene would have worked better, if we had seen the memories that Sylvie showed B-15, and indeed I wonder why we didn’t get to see them. AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede wonders whether this might be the effect of covid restrictions on filming that instead of a montage of B-15’s memories, featuring multiple actors, we merely get two actresses standing six feet apart in the rain. She might be on to something, especially considering how much of Loki consists of two people sitting alone in a room.

That said, even if B-15’s moment of truth is just Wunmi Mosaku standing around in the rain, it’s still powerful, because it shows just how awful the TVA really is. They take people away from their lives and families, erase their memories and – in the case of B-15 and C-20 – they even take away their names. Whatever higher purpose the TVA claims to serve, they are clearly the villains in this piece.

After hell knows how many times of Loki getting punched and kicked in the crotch, Mobius finally lets him out and we get another round of Loki and Mobius sitting in a room, chipping away at each other’s defenses. Mobius is furious at Loki for going after Sylvie and tells him he’s a bad friend, which must sting, since Loki clearly has abandonment issues. Loki tries to feed Mobius some bullshit that he and Sylvie had been working together for a long time and that he’s just using her, but Mobius isn’t fooled. He casually drops that Sylvie has already been disintegrated. The devastated look on Loki’s face tells Mobius everything he needs to know. Loki has fallen in love with Sylvie, which – as Mobius points out – is the ultimate in narcissism. However, as io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out, it’s also Loki – whom we learn is lonely, was an outsider all his life and doesn’t like himself very much – learning to love himself or rather herself.

Now I think that it would do Loki a world of good to have someone in his life. Though I can’t help but notice that following the revelation that Loki was bisexual, the two times we see him in a relationship or at least at the beginning of one in this episodes, both times the partner is a woman, namely Sylvie and Sif. This continues the tradition of Disney only mentioning LGBTQ+ people in blink and you’ll miss it scenes, which can easily be cut for distribution to a conservative country.

Loki, meanwhile, drops the bomshell that the TVA agents are all variants who were kidnapped and had their memories erased. “You had a life and a family”, a desperate Loki tells Mobius, but Mobius is having none of it. After all, Loki is a compulsory liar, so no one believes him, even when he’s telling the truth. “You’re the greatest liar here”, Loki tells Mobius before he’s sent back into the time cell to get punched and kicked by Sif some more, “Cause you’re lying even to yourself.”

Next, we see Mobius in Ravonna’s office, celebrating the closing of the case. Ravonna tells Mobius that Loki and Sylvie will be pruned and that the Time Keepers themselves want to oversee the execution. Mobius is invited as well . “Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?” Ravonna asks Mobius. Mobius has no answer to that, after all, he’s already been everywhere.

Even though Mobius brushed off Loki’s remark that the TVA agents are all variants, he, too, is beginning to have his doubts. And so he distracts Ravonna to steal her TemPad (Ravonna sure has her TemPad stolen a lot) to access the classified files about Hunter C-20. He learns that Hunter C-20 really is dead, but not from brain damage, but because Ravonna killed her, when C-20 insisted that the memories Sylvie showed her were real and that she once had a life and friends.

Now he knows that Loki was telling the truth, Mobius rescues him from the time cell. “You can be anything you want”, Mobius tells Loki, just before they return to the TVA to kick arse and take names, “Even someone good. Just in case no one ever told you that before.”

However, once they make it back to the TVA, Ravonna and her goons are already waiting for them. Mobius confronts Ravonna and tells her that the place where he most wants to go is wherever he was from when the TVA took him. Oh yes, and he also wants a jet ski. Ravonna is not impressed, but disintegrates Mobius.

Is this the end of Mobius? Personally, I doubt it. First of all, not even Marvel hires an actor of Owen Wilson’s calibre for only three episodes. And besides, in comicss and comic related media, no one is ever really dead.

However, since Mobius is at least temporarily dead, Ravonna takes Loki and Sylvie to the Time Keepers for execution. Sylvie wants to know just what exactly the Nexus Event that caused her to be taken by the TVA was, but Ravonna claims she doesn’t remember.

I have to admit that I was surprised, when the elevator opened and there really were Time Keepers, because I had assumed that the Time Keepers were long dead, if they had ever existed, and that Ravonna was secretly running the TVA. However, the Time Keepers turn out to be about as real as the wonderful Wizard of Oz, for once Loki and Sylvie break free – with some help from B-15 – and fight off the TVA, Sylvie beheads one of the Time Keepers, only to realise that the Time Keepers were robots all along and fake after all.

Regarding the Time Keepers, they did look pretty fake and the CGI was remarkably bad for a company with as much money as Marvel/Disney.  Their dialogue was also almost impossible to understand. Not that it matters much, because they turn out to be fake anyway. The Time Keepers’ lair turns out to be icy cold and emblazoned with glowing odal runes (and an odal rune shows up in the title sequence as well). The odal rune stands for legacy and inheritance BTW. I wonder whether that will be significant.

Sylvie is understandably frustrated that her grand plan only led her to the decapitation of three robots. Loki, meanwhile, tries to confess his feelings to her, only that he’s really bad at it. Just before he can kiss her, Ravonna – who was knocked out during the fight – recovers and disintegrates Loki. A furious Sylvie attacks and disarms Ravonna. “Kill me”, Ravonna says, but Sylvie has no intention to kill her. Instead, she wants the truth.

The twist that the Time Keepers are not what they seem is rather predictable, as Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, Emmet Asher-Perrin and Caroline Siede point out. Just as the fact that Ravonna is a villainess is not all that surprising, though personally I hadn’t expected her to be the cold-blooded murderess she turns out to be.

Talking of which, it’s interesting that while most Marvel villains so far have been men, all three Marvel/Disney+ TV series to date had female villains, namely Agatha in WandaVision, Karli Morgenthau, Sharon Carter and the somewhat ambiguous Countess Valentina in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and now Ravonna Renslayer in Loki.

As for Loki, even if Tom Hiddleston is tired of the role, it’s unlikely that they would kill off the title character halfway through the series. And indeed, the mid credits sequence reveals Loki coming to somewhere else. “Am I dead?” he asks. “No, but you soon will be, unless you come with us”, a voice says and the camera pans up to reveal four more Loki variants. There’s Richard E. Grant, dressed up in an exact copy of the Jack Kirby designed costume Loki wore in the Thor comics of the 1960s. There is a teenaged Loki, who is apparently supposed to be Kid Loki, a character from the Young Avengers comics. There is a black man carrying mjolnir, who might also be a Thor variant. And finally, there is lizard Loki who is literally a lizard.

As cliffhangers go, this one is certainly intriguing. And it also ramps up the Doctor Who links once again, because Richard E. Grant has been an unofficial Doctor not once but twice.

What plot there is does heat up in “The Nexus Event”, though it’s still notable that Loki doesn’t have a lot of plot. This is a show that works mainly because of its stars and their chemistry. Tom Hiddleston really get to show off his skills here, including showing the vulnerable side of Loki. Sophia di Martino not only had great chemistry with Hiddleston, but also managed to portray Sylvie’s vulnerability. Owen Wilson again has a lot of chemistry with Tom Hiddleston and also brings across Mobius’ growing doubts well. Wunmi Mosaku doesn’t get much to do, but the scene where she gets to see her memories is great. And casting the normally likeable Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a villainess is a great idea.

The reviews of the last two episodes may be delayed a little because of the 2021 July short story challenge.

Conan the Socialist

I know that I should probably spend more of my time reading current year Hugo finalists, but instead I’m still reading my way through the entire Conan series. I read some of the bowdlerized Lancer/Ace Conan editions years ago, but I finally decided to replace them with the definitive Del Rey editions.

My teenaged self certainly enjoyed the Conan stories as great and glorious adventures. Plus, there was the thrill of reading “violent American trash” that sensible educated people weren’t supposed to read or enjoy. However, upon rereading these stories as an adult, I find that there is a lot of depth and subtext in the Conan series that my teenaged self missed.

I just finished rereading “The Black Stranger”, one of only three completed Conan stories that remained unpublished during Robert E. Howard’s lifetime. According to the notes in the back of the Del Rey edition, “The Black Stranger” was written sometime in late 1934/early 1935.

I don’t think I read this story during my earlier encounter with Conan. Or maybe I just forgot I read it, because this was one of the stories that suffered badly from L. Sprague de Camp’s and Lin Carter’s “editing” efforts, even though there really was no reason to mess with this one, because it is a complete story.

Warning: There will be some spoilers in the following!

“The Black Stranger” has a fairly complex plot and various important characters, all with their own agendas. There’s Count Valenso, a Zingaran noblemen (Zingara is Aquilonia’s vaguely Spanish southwesterly neighbour) who’s running from his demons (quite literally) and has washed up in a secluded cove on the shores of the Pictish territory. There are Zarano and Strom, two rival pirate captains, who are both after the same legendary pirate treasure that’s hidden somewhere near the secluded cove where Valenso has made his home in exile. There Belesa, Valenso’s niece, and her young ward Tina, who basically just want to survive without getting killed, raped, married off or sold into slavery. There’s Conan, who’s on the run from the Picts after the events of “Beyond the Black River” and is looking for a way back to civilisation (for no matter how much Conan complains about civilisation, he always goes back there) and some loot. There’s the titular Black Stranger, who wants revenge on Valenso. And there are the Picts who just want all of those interlopers gone from their territory.

As the story unfolds, the various characters are plotting, counterplotting and outwitting each other. They also reluctantly cooperate, because each as something the others want. Valenso has a fortified estate as well as manpower and supplies and a beautiful niece. Zarano has a ship (at least at first) and a crew and a vague idea where the treasure might be. Strom has a ship and a crew and a map that shows the location of the treasure (at least at first). Conan actually knows where the treasure is, because he stumbled upon it during his escape from the Picts, but he needs help to carry it off. Watching all of the characters trying to outwit and outmanoeuvre each other is a lot of fun as well as genuinely suspenseful, because how will Conan manage to keep the upper hand, when Valenso, Zarano and Strom all want to kill him?

The popular image of Conan is that of a brawny and not very bright barbarian, probably based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies of the 1980s. However, this image is wrong, because the Conan of Robert E. Howard’s original stories is actually very intelligent. He can read and write, speaks multiple languages, he knows how to navigate a ship and is a brilliant military tactician. And while Conan often wins the day due to his superior strength and endurance, he uses his brain as much as his brawn and just as often outwits rather than outfights his opponents. In “The Jewels of Gwahlur” a.k.a. “The Servants of Bit-Yakin”, a Conan story written shortly before “The Black Stranger”, we see Conan in full con artist mode, running a long con to steal a kingdom’s stash of sacred jewels. He almost succeeds, too.

“The Black Stranger” features not just Conan the pirate (even dressed up in full 17th/18th century pirate regalia at one point), but also Conan the con artist, who is fully intending to trick and kill his temporary allies Zarano and Strom. But that’s okay, because Zarano and Strom plan to kill him, too, and are generally awful people, as is Count Valenso. In the end, Conan’s plan fails due to the interference of the titular Black Stranger, who stirs up the Picts, and Valenso’s greedy seneschal, who springs Conan’s trap too early. As a matter of fact, Conan’s plans often fail, because if he did get the loot of priceless jewels, he might well decide to retire from adventuring, bringing the series to an abrupt end. And indeed, most sword and sorcery heroes tend to be financially unlucky (also see Fafhrd and Gray Mouser), because once they actually get to keep the priceless jewels that’s probably the end of their career.

By the end of the story, everybody except for Conan, Belesa and Tina is dead, either at the hands of each other or the Picts or the Black Stranger, making it one of the gloomier stories in the Conan canon, though not quite as gloomy as “Beyond the Black River” (another “everybody dies, even the dog” story), because unlike in “Beyond the Black River”, none of the characters who die in “The Black Stranger” are even remotely likeable. Only Conan, Belesa and Tina survive and Conan takes control of the now captainless pirate ship. He also hands the loot he has managed to secure – a bag of rubies – to Belesa, so she can build an independent life for herself and Tina. When Belesa tells Conan she can’t possibly accept the rubies, Conan says something quite remarkable, which I’ll quote in its entirety below:

“Of course you’ll take them. I might as well leave you for the Picts to scalp as to take you back to Zingara to starve,” said he. “I know what it is to be penniless in a Hyborian land. Now in my country sometimes there are famines; but people are hungry only when there’s no food in the land at all. But in civilized countries I’ve seen people sick of gluttony while others were starving. Aye, I’ve seen men fall and die of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food. Sometimes I was hungry, too, but then I took what I wanted at sword’s-point. But you can’t do that. So you take these rubies. You can sell them and buy a castle, and slaves and fine clothes, and with them it won’t be hard to get a husband, because civilized men all desire wives with these possessions.”

So here we have Conan making a harsh indictment of capitalism, in contrast with his native Cimmeria, which is described as a quasi-Socialist society here. We also learn why Conan has no compunctions about robbing and stealing (and it’s notable that Conan always steals from those who can afford it, e.g. Kallian Publico from “The God in the Bowl” or Yara from “The Tower of the Elephant”) – because this is his way of surviving in a cutthroat world which he considers already immoral. Finally, Conan also has things to say about the economies of marriage to which Jane Austen would likely nod in agreement (though there is no record that Howard ever read Austen).

Of course, the Conan stories were written at the height of the Great Depression and people falling and dying of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food was something that actually did happen in the US at the time. Just as there were people whose response to the stark economic inequality of the Great Depression was very much like Conan’s, namely take what they want at the point of a gun. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow had been killed in May 1934, less than a year before Howard wrote “The Black Stranger” and part of their crime spree took place in Howard’s home state of Texas. And considering how glorified Bonnie and Clyde as well as other gangsters and outlaws of the era like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd (both of whom also met their ends in 1934) and Ma Barker (killed in January 1935) were in popular culture, one can suspect that quite a few people sympathised with them.

Even though Conan lives in the Hyborian Age millennia before our time, he is still very much a child of the Great Depression. Though unlike the real life outlaws of the 1930s, Conan gets to walk away and goes on to bigger and better things, eventually becoming King of Aquilonia.

“The Black Stranger” is not the only story where Conan makes a political statement. We do get glimpses of Conan’s politics (and possibly those of his creator) throughout the series. I’ve already discussed Conan’s brushes with the law in my review of “The God in the Bowl”, which usually result from the fact that Conan is absolutely loyal and unwilling to betray friends and accomplices (he does double-cross his temporary allies in “The Black Stranger”, but a) this story features an older and more jaded Conan than “The God in the Bowl” or “Queen of the Black Coast” and b) those allies were planning to murder him and Conan knows it) and that he can’t understand that “I’m sorry, but I can’t possibly betray my friend” is not considered an acceptable answer, when questioned about a crime, and that stating “I didn’t do it”, doesn’t necessarily mean that a police officer or judge will believe him. “The God in the Bowl” also features a bonus indictment of police brutality and suspects being railroaded.

We learn more about Conan’s politics in the three stories (“The Phoenix on the Sword”, “The Scarlet Citadel” and “The Hour of the Dragon”), which feature him as King of Aquilonia. And so we learn that Conan lowered taxes compared to his predecessor, that he stopped aristocrats from abusing commoners and that he’s not a fan of hereditary monarchy in general. In “Beyond the Black River”, Conan also speaks out in favour of land reform, when he criticises the fact that instead of seizing the hunting grounds of various aristocrats and giving them to farmers, the Aquilonians instead force people to settle in the dangerous border regions at constant risk of getting killed by the Picts. In the same story, Conan also points out that Aquilonia will never hold its colonies in Pictish territory, just as it was not able to hold its colonies in Cimmeria, when the Cimmerians, a young Conan among them, kicked them out. And yes, it’s ironic that Conan began his adventuring career by kicking the Aquilonians out of Cimmeria, only to end up ruling them some twenty-five years later. Conan also speaks out against colonialism and imperialism in “The Hour of the Dragon”, when he tells his friend and supporter Count Trocero that he does not want to build an empire nor does he want to conquer any of the neighbouring lands, he just wants his kingdom of Aquilonia back.

Conan speaks out against slavery at several points and even leads a slave revolt in “The Hour of the Dragon” (and it’s notably that the galley slaves he frees are black). Also in “The Hour of the Dragon”, we learn that Conan is in favour of religious freedom and believes people should be allowed to worship whatever gods they please (and notably Conan does not share the religion of the Aquilonians). It’s this tolerance that eventually helps him regain the throne and the cult of Asura, which was persecuted in Aquilonia, before Conan put a stop to that, saves his bacon more than once. Finally, Conan reveals himself to be a supporter of the artistic freedom and the arts in general in “The Phoenix on the Sword”, when he refuses to have the rabble-rousing poet Rinaldo arrested. Rinaldo thanks him for this by participating in a plot to assassinate Conan. Of all the conspirators, he even comes closest to success.

So in short, if you were to find yourself living in the Hyborian Age, you could do worse than being a citizen of Conan’s Aquilonia. And it’s notable that the Aquilonians generally support Conan and want him as their king, for even though he is a foreign barbarian, he’s clearly better than the alternative. And indeed, in “Hour of the Dragon”, we see how bad the alternative – a fellow named Valerius, who’s a relative of the king Conan killed – can be.

That’s also why the oft quoted remarks of German SFF author and critic Hans Joachim Alpers (who hailed from Wesermünde, i.e. he was almost local to me) who claimed that Conan and his authors had “the mercenary mentality of a Kongo-Müller” annoy me so much, because it’s flat out wrong. Alpers’ original article, which appeared in a fanzine in the 1970s, does not appear to be available online anywhere, but German sword and sorcery critic Peter Schmitt quotes from it at his blog Skalpell und Katzenklaue. Here is a translation:

Conan has the mercenary mentality of a Kongo-Müller and naturally, so do his authors. If Conan helps others, then not for noble reasons, but out of pure calculation. What drives him is first of all money (which unites him with many heroes of the sado-western*), but also the joy of killing. Conan will do anything for money: he is the bought henchman of any ruler in the pursuit of any aim, who helps to oppress the people and puts down uprisings, if he does not work for himself and travels through the lands, murdering and plundering, while gauging himself on the blood and sweat of the working population.

Every single word of this is wrong. I have a lot of respect for Hans Joachim Alpers and what he did for German SFF, but honestly, has he ever read a single Howard Conan story? Because I have no idea how anybody can read the original Conan stories or even the pastiches and then write complete nonsense like that. Honestly, this is just as bad as the leftwing German critics who saw Conan as a fascist figure and example of a blonde and blue-eyed Aryan master race stereotype, clearly missing the fact that Conan has black hair (which is only mentioned in every single story) and is Celtic rather than Nordic. Now leftwing German critics of the 1970s will view everything as fascist, even Captain America (yes, really), but in the case of Conan, this is particularly unfair, because Howard is on record as being disgusted by Hitler and Mussolini and “The Hour of the Dragon”, written barely a year after Hitler came to power, feels like an eerily prescient parable for the rise of fascism.

So let’s unpack this. Yes, Conan works as a mercenary in several of the stories. He’s also a pirate, a thief, a warlord and a king at various points in his life. Now mercenaries have a horrible reputation in Germany. They’re frequently viewed as murderous and raping thugs who’ll do anything for money. Just as Alpers views Conan. The reason for this is some kind of intergenerational PTSD caused by the Thirty Years’ War, where mercenary armies plundered and devastated large swarthes of Central Europe. The bad reputation of mercenaries was later upheld by Prussian propaganda in order to promote their great invention of the conscript army by basically arguing that you won’t have problems with plundering unemployed mercenaries after the war is over, because the conscripts just want to go home and back to their lives. Yes, that was honestly an argument. So Alpers did grow up with the intensely negative connotation of the term “mercenary” as did I. But while I somehow managed to overcome those four-hundred-year old prejudices, partly due to reading speculative fiction and encountering positive portrayals of mercenaries, Alpers projected the prejudices he inherited onto a character who was created in a completely different cultural environment.

As for “Conan never helps people for noble reasons, but only out of pure calculation”, so why does Conan give Belesa the rubies? He has nothing to gain here, he doesn’t even have any sexual interest in Belesa, most likely because she’s a little young for him. For that matter, why does Conan help Yag-Kasha, the abused alien elephant creature in “The Tower of the Elephant”, to find release in death and turn the tables on his abuser, when he could have just made off with the jewel? Why does he lets a chest of priceless jewels he plotted months to acquire fall into a river in order to save Muriela in “The Jewels of Gwahlur”? Why does he risk his own life to give the settlers the chance to escape in “Beyond the Black River”? Why does he sneak into a dungeon to save the Countess Albiona (in whom he has no sexual interest either) from execution in “The Hour of the Dragon” rather than make a run for it? Why does he rescue the witch Zelota (who’s an old woman in whom Conan has no sexual interest as well) and free the black galley slaves in the same story? Why is he so eager to save the seven captured hill chiefs in “People of the Black Circle”? Why is he willing to risk imprisonment and death rather than to betray a friend or accomplice in several stories? We often see Conan being selfless and caring for others throughout the stories.

Nor is Conan’s only motive for doing what he does money Yes, he needs money, because like everybody he needs to eat. And, as he explains to Belesa in “The Black Stranger”, in the cutthroat capitalist world of the Hyborian lands, taking what you need by force strikes him as perfectly acceptable. We also do have Conan the thief and Conan the con artist. However, we frequently see Conan giving up riches – in “The Tower of the Elephant”, “The Black Stranger” or “The Jewels of Gwahlur” – in order to help someone else. As for the joy of killing, yes, Conan kills people. Most of them deserve it, but sometimes – e.g. in “The Tower of the Elephant” or “Pool of the Black One” – Conan kills people with little provocation, though again they’re usually awful. Conan is capable of nobility, but he’s not a nobe savage. Nor is a murdering psychopath, as Alpers believes.

As for Alpers’ claims that Conan helps to oppress the downtrodden populace and puts down uprisings in the service of various rulers, there simply is no evidence for this at all. In his chronicled career as a mercenary, Conan nevers puts down a single uprising and he actually participates in one, when he seizes the throne of Aquilonia.  As for oppressing the downtrodden, that’s what Conan’s temporary successor Valerius does in “Hour of the Dragon”.  Meanwhile in the same story, Conan is utterly furious because Valerius and the Nemedian soldiers are abusing and oppressing the people of Aquilonia, people he feels responsible for. Nor does Conan gauge himself on the blood and sweat of the working population – indeed, Conan lowers taxes and restricts the privileges of the aristocracy. Again, the one who exploits the working population is Valerius, not Conan.

As for travelling through the land, murdering and plundering, Alpers does have a bit of a point there, because Conan does plunder villages and ships during his pirate days as well as during his time with the Kozakhi or the Afghuli hill tribes. And while we don’t see Conan engaging in random slaughter – the closest we come to that is the jailer in “The Scarlet Citadel”, who wants to kill Conan, because Conan killed his bother in a raid during his pirate days – it very likely happened.

The core theme of the Conan stories is barbarism versus civilisation, whereby civilisation is usually portrayed as corrupt. And while Conan’s quasi-Socialist homeland of Cimmeria may be a rather naive utopia (but then we never actually see Cimmeria in any of the stories – the closest we come to actually seeing Conan’s homeland is the poem “Cimmeria”, which is mainly about the gloomy hills of the country), but Conan himself is not a noble savage nor is he the murderous mercenary psychopath that Alpers described.

Robert E. Howard’s Conan is a nuanced character, capable of great good and also of random acts of violence. And that’s also why the Conan stories are so rewarding, because there is so much more to them than just the adventures of a wandering barbarian with lots of muscles and a big sword.

*I presume that Alpers refers to Italian westerns of the 1960s and 1970s here.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for June 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 May 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 epic fantasy, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, paranormal mystery, science fiction romance, space opera, space westerns, military science fiction, horror, time travel, first contact, vampires, wizards, dragons, black knights, barbarian kings, blood cults, aliens, monsters, space cruises, intergalactic smuggler, crime-busting witches, crime-busting ghosts 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:

The Rogue Wolf by K.T. Belt:

Billions dead, entire worlds under siege, and no end in sight.

The most destructive war in the history of the galaxy has arrived and every able-bodied man and woman is mobilized, save one. Carmen Grey has been released from the facility into an uncertain future. The young Clairvoyant can fly and read minds and has been trained since the age of six to do one thing and one thing only: kill. Yet Carmen struggles with an entirely different battle—how to ring up customers without them running away from her.

As she tries desperately to keep her life from falling apart, everything changes when someone close to her is swept into the conflict. Carmen vowed to never fight again, but she will have to rely on her best skill in a race against time. When everything is on the line, will she be able to stay good?

The Black Knight by Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert:

The Lords of Angilbert have been a thorn in the side of the Kings of Azakoria for decades, refusing to pay taxes or to accept the authority of the throne.

King Kurval of Azakoria inherited the conflict with the Black Knight of Angilbert from his predecessor. Determined to bring the Black Knight to heel once and for all, Kurval besieges Castle Angilbert. But when he finally comes face to face with the mysterious Black Knight, he’s in for a shock.

The law demands that the Black Knight be executed for treason. However, Kurval does not want to sentence the Black Knight to death, especially once he learns that the Lords of Angilbert have a very good reason to hate the Kings of Azakoria.

But is it even possible to find a peaceful solution or can the feud with the Black Knight of Angilbert end only in bloodshed and death?

The new sword and sorcery adventure by two-time Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert and her occasional alter ego, 1930s pulp writer Richard Blakemore. This is a novella of 33400 words or approx. 112 print pages in the Kurval series but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Warning: This is a dark story, which contains scenes of a violent and sexual nature.

The Bridge by J.S. Breukelaar:

Meera and her twin sister Kai are among thousands of hybrid women—called Mades—bred by the Father in his Blood Temple cult. Meera is rescued by a mysterious healer and storyteller, Narn, but her sister, Kai, does not survive the Father’s “unmaking.” Years later, when the cult is discovered and abolished, Meera, still racked with guilt and grief, enrolls in college to take advantage of a generous new Redress Program. When Narn’s conjure stories buy Meera a free ride to a notorious horror reading series, she is soon the darling of the lit set, feted by the other students, finally whole, finally free of the idea that she should have died instead of her sister. But college is not all it seems—Narn has lost a sister too, and Meera agrees to try and find her if Narn will keep feeding Meera the stories that are opening her up to memories she’s never acknowledged, secrets she’s never wanted to know, about Narn’s and the Father’s connection to a violent campus stalker.

Art of the Hunt by Lindsay Buroker:

Our heroes have escaped with the ancient dragon gate, but powerful enemies are right behind them.

If they can’t figure out the magic of the mysterious artifact, and find great allies and resources in another world, their hopes of overthrowing their tyrannical wizard rulers will end as surely as their lives.

 

 

Jury Duty by Peter Cawdron:

FIRST CONTACT is a series of stand-alone novels that explore the concept of humanity’s first interaction with extraterrestrial life.

The United Nations is thrown into chaos when an alien spacecraft is discovered buried beneath the ice in Antarctica. With no one nation able to lay claim to the craft, a multinational effort is undertaken to salvage the vessel, which is estimated to have crashed several hundred thousand years ago. Rather than leaving key decisions to hostile governments or their armies, a jury is established to represent the average global citizen, being selected from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Their job is to review findings and guide the process of discovery.

The FIRST CONTACT series is like BLACK MIRROR or THE TWILIGHT ZONE in that it is based on a common theme rather than common characters. This allows the series to be read in any order. Technically, they’re all first as they all deal with how we might respond to contact with an alien intelligence. This series explores the social, political, religious and scientific aspects of First Contact.

A Grimoire for Gamblers by Amanda Creiglow:

Magic may be secret, but it’ll kill you anyway.

Small town mayor’s assistant Elizabeth has enough on her plate grieving her father’s suicide. She doesn’t need his stash of magical knowledge in the attic. She doesn’t need the hidden supernatural subculture of monsters it pulls her into. And she certainly doesn’t need hints that her father’s madness might have been a smokescreen for something far darker.

But uncovering her father’s secrets could be the only way Elizabeth can stop a string of suspicious suicides… if the local wizard doesn’t rip the memories out of her mind, first.

Wizards, right?

Simultaneous Times Vol. 2, edited by Jean-Paul Garnier:

From Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, California. The second volume of the companion book series to the Space Cowboy Books Presents: Simultaneous Times science fiction anthology podcast. In Simultaneous Times Volume Two Space Cowboy Books brings you a collection of science fiction short stories from our local Hi-Desert authors, featuring both stories that have been featured on the podcast, as well as some appearing for the first time. An eclectic mix of approaches to the science fiction genre which range from rebellions against oppressive robots to alien encounters to pure campy fun, with writing styles varying from traditional to experimental. The collection features nine different authors, each paired up with five different illustrators to bring each story to life with original artwork.

Galaxy Cruise: The Maiden Voyage by Marcus Alexander Hart:

Humanity needed a hero. It got a karaoke DJ.

Leo MacGavin is not the brightest specimen of humanity. But when he inadvertently rescues a flirty alien heiress, he’s promoted from second-rate lounge entertainer to captain of the galaxy’s most sophisticated cruise ship.

Before he can flee in terror, a human-hating executive gives Leo an ultimatum—complete the vessel’s maiden voyage or mankind’s last colony will be turned into a sewage dump. To make matters worse, a militant cyborg is undermining his authority, a giant spider is terrifying the passengers, and a sentient plant keeps stealing all the beer.

If Leo ever wants to see his home again, he’ll have to keep the guests happy through seven days of onboard antics and madcap shore excursions. As strange malfunctions tear the ship apart, can he hold his rag-tag crew together, or will he flush the last bastion of humanity down the crapper?

Bloody Magic by N.R. Hairston:

The second I enter the world Pilo, I get a fireball hurled towards my face. My crew and I end up in a fight that has nothing to do with us. Now we’ve offended some very powerful people, and they’re coming for us.

We’re used to fighting, but they made the mistake of going after our loved ones. Now we’re coming for them. No Mercy.

This is a fight to the death. These people mean to kill us and everyone we love. My crew and I can’t let that happen. We’ll fight to our last breath.

They call me the World Breaker. They call my crew the Wrath Bringers. We never back down from a fight, but this time I wonder if any of us will make it out alive.

Bourbon Street Ghosts by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow-Monroe and Zander Pritchett have been excited for their upcoming ghost conference in New Orleans for years, since before they were involved with their significant others. What was once a trip for two has now become a trip for four … but that doesn’t make them any less excited.

Ofelia Archer has just found out that her bar Krewe is about to be inundated with ghost hunters … and she’s beyond excited. She’s looking forward to a good week, which means more money to funnel into her next business venture.

Two worlds collide when Harper and Ofelia meet in Jackson Square, a ghost catching their attention. Before they realize what’s happening, they’re embroiled in a huge mystery … one that involves New Orleans’ colorful past and worry for the future.

Harper and Ofelia have a lot in common and they bond quickly. That adds a colorful edge to their friendship. Add Zander to the mix and the Big Easy is in for big trouble.

Hang on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Between ghosts, Zander’s attitude, and Ofelia’s mother … it’s going to be a very strange trip. It could also be deadly.

Note: This is a crossover book between Harper Harlow and Ofelia Archer. It’s set after Ghostly Travels and Hex, Drugs & Rock and Roll.

The Asylum Aberration by Amanda M. Lee:

Charlie Rhodes has spent her entire life wondering who she is, why she was abandoned as a child, and what’s behind the magical powers she can wield in the blink of an eye.

She’s finally getting her answers.

Now that she’s been reunited with her birth mother and brother, the search is on for her father. He’s supposed to be somewhere in Boston … but where? He’s fallen out of touch and finding him is virtually impossible.

Thankfully for Charlie, the Legacy Foundation’s next assignment is in a suburb of the very city where she lives, which means there’s plenty of time to find her father and solve the mystery of a haunted former hospital that’s apparently eating construction workers on a regular basis.

Heavenstone Asylum was considered the height of sophistication in psychiatric circles back in the day. In the years since the facility closed, the main doctor’s legacy has been tarnished by horror stories of treatments gone wrong and disappearing patients.

The second Charlie walks into the building, she recognizes that the past is hardly buried within the walls. There are tortured souls at every turn, and it’s her job to help them.

Heavenstone’s history makes for interesting reading but the harder Charlie digs, the more horrifying the story. Somehow she needs to uncover the truth … and survive the ghosts long enough to free them.

It’s going to take everything she’s got to see things through until the end.

All Charlie wants are answers. She’s going to get them. Surviving long enough to do anything with them is another story.

It’s about to be the Legacy Foundation’s finest hour … or is it?

Thunder Moon Tussle by Torn MacAlester:

Nils Carmike, a fallen from grace astronaut turned smuggler, forges a new life on the lunar frontier. Harassed by the strikingly beautiful and demanding Deputy Miller, he is faced with fines and conflict, resulting in a tumultuous relationship and ultimatum he can’t refuse. Running for their life they struggle against their pasts, hoping to outsmart the common faceless enemy and forced to focus on the only rule that matters: survive!

 

 

Blue Sun Armada by Scott Moon:

War is coming.
Duke Uron Marlboro led his mighty house to victory in the Zezner war. The last thing he expected was for his allies to turn on him.

With a new civil war brewing, the Duke and his family have one option to survive the king’s wrath—

They must flee.
Will they survive the political games of their past? Can they escape their doomed planet and find a new place to thrive before their once great house is destroyed… forever.

Blue Sun Armada is the first in a new epic space opera set in the far-flung future. Legendary mech battles, intense fleet engagements, and deadly politics all make Blue Sun Armada a magnificent read. Pick your side and buy now to start the fight for survival!

Blood Moon by Nazri Noor:

All vampires suck. Sterling just happens to be very good at it.

Vainglorious vampire Sterling is forced to trade his big city hedonism for a trip to a sleepy mountain town, where mangled dead bodies have been discovered. Soon he’s entangled with snooty vampire nobles, territorial werewolves, and a society of law-enforcing sorcerers.

The locals aren’t so bad, like the luscious young lady at the fruit shop, or the hunky electrician whose smile sends out sparks. But they’re distractions from the hunt for the mountain murderer. And then there’s the eerie enigma: why are all these corpses missing their faces?

Catalyst by Amanda Quintenz-Fiedler:

When a serious accident triggers dangerous medical episodes, 25-year-old Taylor must unravel the clues in her past to save her own life.

Taylor’s old life is just a memory. No more dinners with friends, afternoon gardening, or partying with her sister. Seemingly at random, violent episodes catapult her body into shock and her mind into her past. She’s lonely, depressed and confined to a hospital. What’s worse, she’s surrounded by medical professionals who don’t know what’s wrong with her and won’t let her leave.

When a handsome young doctor’s interest ignites Taylor’s desire to live, she and another patient set out to solve the riddle of her mysterious illness themselves. But as the clues mount, Dr. Riaz begins to doubt her sanity. And as the physical toll of her fits escalates, Taylor discovers the only way to solve the riddle is from inside an episode.

Can Taylor discover the key to the illness that plagues her in time to save her life and build a future worth living?

With elements of science fiction, mystery and romance, Catalyst is the fast-paced first installment of Amanda Quintenz-Fiedler’s riveting Möbius Syndrome trilogy.

You See the Monster by Luke Smitherd:

The sound hits Guy in some low, forgotten part of his psyche – a part of him that understands the truth about shadows. The part of him that knows the deep, dark truth behind fairy stories and myths.

Guy is about to finish writing his breakthrough online article. He overheard the story by chance in a pub and it’s guaranteed to go viral – all he needs to do is persuade the World’s Unluckiest Man to talk to him. His best friend Larry’s quest for killer clickbait material has led him to a recently-appeared shanty town in Glasgow, where he finds some kind of urban voodoo cult. Ex-cop Sam has already come face to face with the terrifying force behind both these phenomena, but he’s been trying to put it out of his mind.

When Larry is killed in inexplicably gruesome circumstances, Guy knows he’s also a target. The evidence of malevolent power is suddenly proliferating – but why now? Together, Sam and Guy enter a shadow world of ancient monsters and modern curses, in a battle to figure out the rules of the game and bring them to the light before it’s far too late.

Drifter’s Folly by Glynn Stewart:

An enemy on the run to neutral space
An elite squadron beyond the reach of any backup
A secret deal that could doom the whole sector…

When United Planets Alliance Captain Henry Wong and Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich attempted to bring peace to the Ra Sector, they turned to the Drifters for neutral ground. Instead, the nomadic spacers betrayed the summit and attempted to kill everyone there.

With peace forged despite the Drifters’ betrayal, Henry and Sylvia take an elite squadron in pursuit of the Drifter Convoy. Their enemies have friends at every turn, neutral worlds who will give them shelter—and if the UPA breaches that neutrality, everything Henry and Sylvia have worked for could crash down in flames.

If the UPA is to keep the peace in the stars of a fallen empire, their diplomats must be untouchable, their honor unblemished. But as Henry’s superiors prepare for all-out war, his ships fly ever closer to a deadly trap laid by an enemy that knows them all too well…

Find(H)er by Charles Welch:

Laurie is a woman with a penchant for displaying impatience and judgement. She does not like to be bothered, particularly when she is in a hurry, which is a most unfortunate thing. One morning on her way to an important appointment, Laurie is confronted by a homeless woman who wants a small amount of money, and respect.

Instead, of respect, Laurie tells the woman that she is a lost soul, feeding off the back of humanity.

What Laurie doesn’t know is that this particular homeless woman is not simply an unfortunate, down on her luck member of society.

She is a powerful, ancient God, as old as time itself. A God who has been escorting mankind to the Land of the Dead for an eternity. Soon, Laurie finds herself lost in this timeless, corrupt land.

Boone is a man who desires nothing more than to be known as ordinary. He does not like attention from others and detests physical touch. Boone lives a life of contentment, until the day that he discovers his new gift. It is a gift that Boone has not sought, and one that he does not want, for he suddenly has acquired the gift to find things that have been lost.

Amid his struggle to comprehend where his gift has come from, and why it has selected him, Boone’s best friend, the only person he trusts, Sly, comes to him with a request.

Sly asks him find Laurie.

The Land of the Dead is a poisoned land. It is a land filled with angry and vengeful Gods who protect the Hall of Truth from those who have not yet been judged for their sinful existences.

Sly will stop at nothing to find his lost love, Laurie.

Can Laurie be saved before she is judged in the Hall of Truth?

Boone and Sly will need to survive the dangers of a lost world to save her.

They will need to overcome a wasted land, and the evil that desires their death, to Find(h)er.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for June 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 May 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, historical mysteries, retro mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, 1960s mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, action thrillers, adventure thrillers, spy thrillers, police procedurals, police officers, amateur sleuths, burglars, spies, FBI agents, ex Navy SEALs, drug dealers, cold cases, missing princess, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting ghosts, crime-busting cats, murder and mayhem in Washington DC, New Orleans, London, Northern England, the Bahamas, the Caymans, Brazil, Australia 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:

Murder at the Fair by Verity Bright:

Summer flowers, warm sunshine, a maypole dance and… is that another murder? A tricky case is afoot for Lady Swift!

Summer, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, the best amateur sleuth in the country, is delighted to be in charge of the prize-giving at her village summer fair. But the traditional homemade raft race takes a tragic turn when the local undertaker, Solemn Jon, turns up dead amongst the ducks. Jon was the life of any party and loved by the entire village. Surely this was simply an awful accident?

But when a spiteful obituary is printed in the local paper, Eleanor realises there may be more to Jon’s death than first thought. Despite handsome Detective Seldon giving her strict instructions not to interfere, Eleanor owes it to Jon’s good name to root out the truth. So with her partner in crime, Gladstone the bulldog, Eleanor starts digging for clues…

When another local dies in a riding accident, the police refuse to believe he was murdered. But a second vindictive death notice convinces Eleanor of foul play. Solemn Jon’s assistant, a bullish banker and a majestic marquess make her suspect list, but it isn’t until she finds a dusty old photograph that she knows the true culprit behind both crimes. Then another obituary appears – her own! Can Eleanor nail the killer before she too turns up dead among the ducks?

Stealing Murder by Beth Byers:

April 1961

Cat Clarke tends towards the naughty. You know…a little vengeful pickpocketing. A smidgeon of well-aimed fraud. A dabbling of burglary from the deserving.

She’s a woman with her eye on the prize, and with her unexpected team, she might have planned her greatest heist yet. Only while she’s in the act of cutting the painting from the frame, she hears a murder.

If Cat doesn’t catch the killer first, the feds may never stop chasing her. Time for her team to accomplish their greatest feat yet: find the killer, leave him gift-wrapped for the feds, and disappear into the night.

Book ONE in the Cat Clarke 1960s Adventures. It’s time for a new adventure, and you’re going to love Cat Clarke and her family.

One-time orphans turned family, Cat might be fiendish, but her mother, Louisa, is all-good. Then there is the pragmatic Albert and the loyal Thea. This family sticks together no matter what hijinks Cat drags them into. Prepare yourself for a series of mysteries and heists and grab onto something, because it isn’t just her family that Cat will charm.

Murder on a Yacht by Beth Byers:

August 1926

After a long slog of dark days, Vi and friends buy a yacht and go for some time on the sea. It’s what they need. Their nightmares come to an end along with the gray days too many of them have been fighting. They stop in at Monaco and, to their surprise, find old school friends. A few days of revelry, an evening party, and–of course—a body.

Once again, they’re pulled into another round of questions and investigations. This time, they’re the suspects. Forced into working to solve another murder, will they lose the peace they’ve found? Or will they find a way to navigate the murder and maintain a level of happiness?

Murder in England by Dianne Harman:

When an employee of the English pub where you’re staying during your vacation is murdered, and it happens on the first night you’re there, it’s definitely not the way to start a vacation!

A vacation in Northern England with three friends is a dream come true for Kat. Many famous authors lived and worked there, and Kat, who is an author, was looking forward to learning more about them. But the ugly hand of murder upset her plans when Sam, a popular employee at the pub, is murdered on his way home from work.

Kat’s been involved in several successful murder investigations at her home back in Kansas (her husband is the local District Attorney), and she feels she has to help investigate his murder. And even though she’d promised her husband she wouldn’t become involved in any more murder investigations, she can’t turn her back on Sam’s uncle, the owner of the pub, who has no idea what to do. She can see that he desperately needs her help.

Kat can’t get rid of the thought that Bailey, Sam’s Belgian Malinois dog, must have known who the murderer was because he didn’t try to protect Sam from the killer. After all, he’d come to Sam’s rescue before, so why didn’t he protect Sam on the night the murder took place? Had he recognized the murderer? Was it someone Sam knew and was on friendly terms with?

Join Kat and her friends as they explore the Northern England countryside while they help the local authorities solve a murder.

Bourbon Street Ghosts by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow-Monroe and Zander Pritchett have been excited for their upcoming ghost conference in New Orleans for years, since before they were involved with their significant others. What was once a trip for two has now become a trip for four … but that doesn’t make them any less excited.

Ofelia Archer has just found out that her bar Krewe is about to be inundated with ghost hunters … and she’s beyond excited. She’s looking forward to a good week, which means more money to funnel into her next business venture.

Two worlds collide when Harper and Ofelia meet in Jackson Square, a ghost catching their attention. Before they realize what’s happening, they’re embroiled in a huge mystery … one that involves New Orleans’ colorful past and worry for the future.

Harper and Ofelia have a lot in common and they bond quickly. That adds a colorful edge to their friendship. Add Zander to the mix and the Big Easy is in for big trouble.

Hang on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Between ghosts, Zander’s attitude, and Ofelia’s mother … it’s going to be a very strange trip. It could also be deadly.

Note: This is a crossover book between Harper Harlow and Ofelia Archer. It’s set after Ghostly Travels and Hex, Drugs & Rock and Roll.

Bloody Bay Rum Club by Nicholas Harvey:

An idyllic Caribbean island. An exclusive resort. A deceptive façade.

While on holiday in Little Cayman, dive boat operator AJ Bailey expects a peaceful getaway. Nothing sounds better than uniquely-aged rum, crystal-clear water, and world-class diving.

But, beneath the surface, the Bloody Bay Rum Club is hiding a dangerous secret, and when AJ uncovers the truth, things turn deadly.

Bloody Bay Rum Club keeps you on the edge of your seat in book 10 of this exciting series.

The Cold Light of Death by Scott Hunter:

July, 1976 – Thames Valley, UK. Long, scorching days of blue skies, water shortages, and record temperatures. A newly promoted Detective-Sergeant is tasked with investigating the murder of a local shop owner – an investigation that goes tragically wrong…

Fast-forward forty-five years to 2021, when a chance discovery exposes a grim secret that forces a reexamination of the circumstances surrounding the ill-fated murder inquiry.

DCI Brendan Moran is assigned this coldest of cases, and it soon becomes apparent that he is dealing with a cold and calculating criminal mind. Can Moran and his team piece together the events of that long forgotten summer and unmask the killer before history repeats itself?

Catastrophe in the Library by CeeCee James:

A mysterious mansion, a suspicious death, and a cat too smart for its own good…

Laura Lee and her secret book club, led by Hank the marmalade cat, find themselves in the heart of their deepest mystery yet! Laura Lee’s efforts to bring the beautiful but decrepit old manor back to life uncover even more secrets that the ancient house has been keeping from her.

Hank, hiding from the workmen, gets himself stuck under a broken board. Rescuing him, Laura Lee finds not only a small root cellar, but a nearly intact skeleton holding a sheaf of papers. How long has it been there? Who was it? And why were those papers so important?

It’s not just a lesson in history; someone who’s very much alive is trying to stop them from discovering the secret . It will take the entire book club’s help to discover the truth as every clue they find takes them in a different direction and puts them in unknown danger.

Extracted Asset by Ethan Jones:

The Storm they weren’t expecting…

Elite extractor Jack Storm is pulled into a sinister new operation in hopes that it will lead him to key information as to what happened to his missing family…

Information he would do anything for…

Jack’s operation is to find and retrieve a missing Saudi princess whose secret escape has greatly embarrassed her royal family.

A secret they will do anything to hide…

As Jack is thrust into a world of betrayal and deception, he searches the Caribbean for the princess and soon realizes he’s not the only one. Cold-blooded assassins are closing in. But they have no idea what’s raging towards them. Knowing the retrieval is now a rescue, how can Jack desperate for his own answers, save the princess with no place to run?

The Asylum Aberration by Amanda M. Lee:

Charlie Rhodes has spent her entire life wondering who she is, why she was abandoned as a child, and what’s behind the magical powers she can wield in the blink of an eye.

She’s finally getting her answers.

Now that she’s been reunited with her birth mother and brother, the search is on for her father. He’s supposed to be somewhere in Boston … but where? He’s fallen out of touch and finding him is virtually impossible.

Thankfully for Charlie, the Legacy Foundation’s next assignment is in a suburb of the very city where she lives, which means there’s plenty of time to find her father and solve the mystery of a haunted former hospital that’s apparently eating construction workers on a regular basis.

Heavenstone Asylum was considered the height of sophistication in psychiatric circles back in the day. In the years since the facility closed, the main doctor’s legacy has been tarnished by horror stories of treatments gone wrong and disappearing patients.

The second Charlie walks into the building, she recognizes that the past is hardly buried within the walls. There are tortured souls at every turn, and it’s her job to help them.

Heavenstone’s history makes for interesting reading but the harder Charlie digs, the more horrifying the story. Somehow she needs to uncover the truth … and survive the ghosts long enough to free them.

It’s going to take everything she’s got to see things through until the end.

All Charlie wants are answers. She’s going to get them. Surviving long enough to do anything with them is another story.

It’s about to be the Legacy Foundation’s finest hour … or is it?

White Heron by J.J. Marsh:

For Ann Sheldon, the past no longer exists. All she wants is a place to run and hide. Where better than a tiny shack between the Brazilian jungle and the Atlantic Ocean to appreciate the natural world and obliterate her memories?

Hermit-style living goes well until a local is murdered in shocking circumstances. Violence has followed her 5,000 miles to a remote fishing village? Against her will, Ann is drawn into a murder investigation, in close proximity to the last thing she needs: a smart cop.

Erasing history is a challenge but unlearning experience is impossible. Ann knows trouble when she sees it. Surfers are dealing drugs and the man in snakeskin boots is their supplier. She tells herself it’s not her problem. But when drug wars come to the beach, it’s everyone’s problem.

She knows it will end in blood and tears.

Must she take flight again?

Such a Good Girl by Willow Rose:

A girl falls from the penthouse floor of an apartment in Washington, D.C.

Media Mogul Richard Wanton owns the apartment and is seen standing on the balcony when the girl falls.

He is accused of killing her, but the FBI struggles to find enough solid evidence to convict him.

They have a witness, someone who was in the apartment when it happened, but she doesn’t want to talk to them.

She’ll only speak to one person, ex-FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas. The problem is, Eva Rae Thomas has no interest in talking to her.

As a matter of fact, she’d rather see this woman dead than have to face her.

But Eva Rae Thomas isn’t someone who can leave a case alone, especially not when she starts to ask questions and things aren’t adding up.

As she digs in deeper—with the entire world watching—she soon finds herself in too deep and realizes she can’t trust anyone’s motives.

But by then, it is too late, and the killer is already tracking her down.

Goodbye Port Alma by Anne Shillolo:

A beautiful teen is killed on a glorious June afternoon, hidden in plain sight, and discovered by an anonymous caller.

Did her secrets die with her? Or are they still alive – with the power to seduce and destroy the lives of a select few?

DC Holly Towns is on the team that has to untangle a far-reaching web of sex, drugs, and money, and solve a crime that threatens to tear the city apart. Are the victim’s two best friends the next targets? With a suspect list of movers and shakers, even with all the hard work in the world, no one has more to lose than Holly herself if the killer strikes again.

As a new Detective Constable, Holly gets a second chance to prove herself in a job where even her friends wonder if she can succeed. She likes police work, but her future is a coin-toss. She’s either on the way out, courtesy of a vindictive former boss, or on the way up, thanks to her intuition and stubborn persistence. And some days are a struggle to tame her own demons and escape her past.

If you like complex characters, twisty plots, and a fast-paced story, the Port Alma Murder Mysteries series is for you.

Murder in Belgravia by Lee Strauss:

Murder’s a piece of cake!

Wedding bells are ringing in Belgravia, and Ginger couldn’t be happier to attend the nuptials of Felicia Gold and Lord Davenport-Witt. If only she could put her mind at ease about the things she knew about the groom’s past.

When a death occurs at the wedding party, Ginger is placed in a frightfully difficult position. Betray her vow of secrecy to the crown, or let a killer go free.

 

A Viable Threat by Ed Teja:

They want to kill a Senator

Stopping it calls for running a hair-brained, off-the-books abduction, grabbing a Dutch national from a private island in The Bahamas. It doesn’t help that the senator whose life is in danger is Martin’s ex-wife, Polly. And then there is the minor detail that the intelligence for the mission, the idea of running it, was arranged by a US Navy Admiral who just happens to be Polly’s current husband. The presence of a hard-nosed (and very sexy) DEA agent with her own agenda, one who forced her way into the center of a mission she shouldn’t have even known about… well, it’s complicated.

But hey, it’s all part of a normal day in the life of an ex-SEAL who only wants to be an average freighter captain in the Caribbean — at least Martin would like to think so.

The Girl Who Was Forgotten by Amy Vasant:

Life was supposed to start feeling like a permanent vacation.

After years on the run from a vengeful killer, Shee McQueen is home at her father’s beach hotel. The Loggerhead Inn doubles as a retreat for sunburned tourists and a haven for recovering ex-military — men and women who help right wrongs for people in need of their particular skills.

What could be more relaxing?

Unless…

…Shee’s estranged boyfriend — the only man she’s ever loved — has discovered her darkest secret and the reason she left him so many years ago…
…or her first job for her father has ended in a double homicide…
…or that her very presence is driving the hotel’s regulars to prove their worth by starting dangerous covert missions of their own…

Wait. It couldn’t be a botched kidnapping is started looking more like the work of a deranged serial killer?

Hm.

Maybe hold the tanning lotion.

This might take a minute.

New Kurval Sword and Sorcery Novella Available: The Black Knight

This June is turning out to be sword and sorcery month for me. Two weeks ago, I had a sword and sorcery story called “The Gate of Mist” come out in Whetstone Magazine – a story which got this nice response by my fellow Whetstone contributor J.T. Howard.

And today, I’m pleased to announce that The Black Knight, the next story in my Kurval sword and sorcery series, is now available wherever e-books are sold.

“The Black Knight” is longer than the previous Kurval stories, since it’s a full length novella. It is also darker, which is why it has a content warning.

The Kurval series is strongly influenced by Robert E. Howard, particularly the Kull stories and three King Conan stories (“The Phoenix on the Sword”, “The Scarlet Citadel” and “The Hour of the Dragon”), while my other sword and sorcery series, the Thurvok series, is more influenced by Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser.

“The Black Knight” brings in yet another influence, namely C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry. I revisited the first two Jirel of Joiry stories, “Black God’s Kiss” and “Black God’s Shadow”, last year, which also gave me some insight into the core themes of that particular branch of sword and sorcery. All of this eventually influenced “The Black Knight”.

Sword and sorcery protagonists are usually loners, but my own characters tend to acquire supporting casts. Thurvok was initially supposed to be a lone adventurer, but by the end of the first story, he picks up Meldom. Sharenna joins the team in the third story, Lysha in the fourth.

Kurval has also acquired a supporting cast of his own by now. There’s the vizier Izgomir, who basically serves as a foil to Kurval. Count Ragur Falgune and his wife Nelaira were originally intended as one-of characters, but they stuck around. We also learn a bit more about Ragur (and more about Kurval and his background, for that matter) in this story. Finally, there is Ungolf, the executioner who takes great pride in his work. Ungolf also appears in King’s Justice, the first Kurval story written, though he doesn’t acquire a name until this story. Finally, Kurval also picks up yet another supporting character in “The Black Knight”, a characters we will certainly see again.

So accompany Kurval, as he faces…

The Black Knight
The Lords of Angilbert have been a thorn in the side of the Kings of Azakoria for decades, refusing to pay taxes or to accept the authority of the throne.

King Kurval of Azakoria inherited the conflict with the Black Knight of Angilbert from his predecessor. Determined to bring the Black Knight to heel once and for all, Kurval besieges Castle Angilbert. But when he finally comes face to face with the mysterious Black Knight, he’s in for a shock.

The law demands that the Black Knight be executed for treason. However, Kurval does not want to sentence the Black Knight to death, especially once he learns that the Lords of Angilbert have a very good reason to hate the Kings of Azakoria.

But is it even possible to find a peaceful solution or can the feud with the Black Knight of Angilbert end only in bloodshed and death?

The new sword and sorcery adventure by two-time Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert and her occasional alter ego, 1930s pulp writer Richard Blakemore. This is a novella of 33400 words or approx. 112 print pages in the Kurval series but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Warning: This is a dark story, which contains scenes of a violent and sexual nature.

More information.
Length: 33400 words
List price: 2.99 USD, EUR or GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio and XinXii.

Loki Visits “Lamentis” and Talks to Herself

Another Wednesday, another episode of Loki. For my takes on previous episodes (well, just two so far), go here.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

When we last met our favourite God of Mischief, he had just tracked down the dangerous variant of himself who has been taking out TVA agents. And yes, the pronouns in the title of the post are correct, because this Loki is a woman, played by Sophia di Martino. Only that she doesn’t like to be called Loki, but instead prefer to be called Sylvie, which suggests that she might not be an alternate Loki at all, but a completely different Marvel character, namely the latest version of the Enchantress. This theory is supported by the fact that Sylvia refers to her ability to take over other people as “enchanting”. And considering that either version of the Enchantress is closely linked to Thor and Loki, but has never yet been seen in the Marvel movies, the Enchantress popping up in Loki wouldn’t be a huge surprise.

On the other hand, the Marvel movies also have a history of taking names and abilities from characters in the comics and turning them into quite different characters. Agatha Harkness and Karli Morgenthau are very different characters in WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier respectively than in the comics. Sharon Carter is not the Power Broker and not a villainess in the comics, though she is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hawkeye is a family man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while his comics counterpart is in a troubled relationship with Bobbi Morse a.k.a. Mockingbird, a character who exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and popped up in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D for a while, where her troubled relationship with Hawkeye was transferred to Lance Hunter, a character from the Captain Britain comics.

The previous episode ended with Sylvie bombing the sacred timeline with time reset cylinders and then vanishing through a time door, followed by our Loki. Sylvie is planning to use the chaos to infiltrate the TVA headquarters and attack and presumably take out the Time Keepers themselves. In a flashback, we also see Sylvie manipulating Hunter C-20 into revealing the whereabouts of the Time Keepers, via sharing a cocktail with C-20 in a tiki bar, posing as her best friend.

But just as Sylvie is about the storm the golden elevator that leads to the Time Keepers, Loki shows up to stop her or join her – Loki himself doesn’t seem to be quite sure what. Not that it matters, cause Sylvie doesn’t need a partner anyway. And so Sylvie and Loki fight – Sylvie with a shortsword and Loki with his signature daggers, which he liberated from B-15’s locker – when Ravonna Renslayer (another character who has nothing except the name in common with her comic counterpart) shows up. Sylvie takes Loki hostage and threatens to kill him, whereupon Ravonna says, “Go ahead. I don’t care.”

Loki is quite outraged by this and also decides that it’s time to get out of there. So he steals and activates Sylvie’s time portal generator (apparently, the device is called TemPad) and sends both himself and Sylvie somewhere else.

Somewhere else turns out to be Lamentis-1, a mining outpost and moon of the planet Lamentis, which showed up in a 2007 mega-crossover event. As we learned last episode, Sylvie likes to hide from the TVA in apocalypses where everybody dies, so nothing she does can affect the timeline. And Lamentis is about to experience such an apocalypse, because moon and planet are about to crash into each other.

Sylvie and Loki agree for once that Lamentis is not a good place to be and that they should get the hell out of there. However, Sylvie doesn’t want to take Loki along, so she snatches the TemPad (that sounds like a feminine hygiene product) from him and activates it, only to realise that the TemPad is out of power. Of course, the out of power TemPad makes no sense at all – what would a TVA agent do, if they got stranded in a pre-electricity era with a powerless TemPad? – but then it only exists to strand Loki and Sylvie on the about to be destroyed planet Lamentis with a convenient ticking clock that forces them to reluctantly cooperate.

The rest of this fairly short episode is given over to Loki and Sylvie dashing across Lamentis, trying to locate a power source big enough to recharge the TemPad, cause time travel requires a lot of power. Initially, they try a frontier town that looks as if it came straight out of an episode of The Mandalorian mixed with season 3 of Star Trek Discovery. The power is still on and neon signs are functioning, but the TemPad requires more power, so they move on.

Next, they reach a cabin, where a woman threatens them with a big gun. Sylvie tries to force her way in, which gets her blasted. Loki tries charm and diplomacy… which gets him blasted. Then he changes his appearance to look like the woman’s missing husband – and gets himself blasted again, because he tries to sweet-talk her and the woman’s real husband was never this nice. However, Loki and Slyvie do get the woman to tell them where everybody else is, namely hoping to board a train that will take them to “the Ark”, a giant spaceship that will take a chosen few off Lamentis, before it is destroyed. The Ark should have sufficient power to recharge the TemPad.

So Loki and Sylvie head for the train station and right into Snowpiercer (and the original Snowpiercer movie of course starred Chris Evans a.k.a. Captain America as well as Jamie Bell who played Ben Grimm in the very bad Fantastic Four movie a couple of years ago). Because true to form, only the rich are allowed to board the train, escorted by guards, while the regular populace is left to die.

Loki disguises himself as a guard to escort Sylvie aboard the train as a passenger. However, they are stopped by another guard who insists on seeing Sylvie’s ticket, before Sylvie uses her powers to take him over. Earlier in the episode, she also briefly uses those powers on Loki or at least tries, because he is immune to them. Though Loki is quite impressed that Sylvie can manipulate people with her own powers, while Loki needed an infinity stone to do the same.

Aboard the luxurious doomsday train (even the visuals recall Snowpiercer, both film and series, as Tor.com reviewer Emmett Asher-Perrin and AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede remark), there is an interlude where Loki and Sylvie settle down in a booth in the bar car, drinking champagne and talking about family, love and themselves. Yes, the central scene in this episode is another scene of Loki sitting at a table with someone (Sylvie rather than Mobius) and talking, which makes three episodes with significant talking head scenes in a row.

As with the talking head scenes with Mobius in episodes 1 and 2, what makes this work is Tom Hiddleston’s natural charm as well as the way he gives us a few glimpses of the vulnerability Loki hides underneath his devil-may-care facade. And as with Owen Wilson, Hiddleston also has great chemistry with Sophia di Martino. Sparks are certainly flying between those two. And flirting with himself/herself is the most Loki thing ever.

The chemistry between Tom Hiddleston and Sophia di Martino is so great that you barely notice that we don’t learn a whole lot about Loki that we didn’t already know, e.g. that he was something of an outsider in Asgard and that his closest connection was to his adopted mother Frigga, and that we learn almost nothing about Sylvie. She does mention that her mother died early, that she taught herself magic and that she has always known she was adopted, deflating Loki who thinks he’s dropping a bombshell on her. Both Sylvie and Loki are loners who haven’t been very lucky in love and indeed, Loki compares love to an imaginary dagger in a truly tortured metaphor. Oh yes, and Loki also confirms that he’s bisexual, something which isn’t really a surprise, because Loki has always been pansexual, both in the comics and in mythology. In fact, I always found it disappointing that Loki in the movies was depicted as seemingly interested in no one, since both mythological and comic Loki would have been flirting with everybody left, right and center. But then, the Marvel movies have also dialed down the sexuality of most other characters, e.g. Black Widow or Nick Fury. Only Tony Stark gets to retain his playboy persona.

Of course, the fact that the Marvel movies dialed down the often quite raunchy sexual adventures of the characters is largely due to Disney’s “family friendly” image. And even if Loki is now officially confirmed to be bisexual, it’s notable that this bit of dialogue can easily be cut or dubbed over for distribution to ultra-conservative countries. Just as most other appearances of LGBTQ+ characters in Marvel, Star Wars and Disney properties were blink and you’ll miss it moments. This is even more disappointing, considering that both the comics as well as the TV shows of Marvel’s rival DC do so much better with regard to LGBTQ+ representation.

It’s infuriating that big corporations like Disney inevitably bow to the homophobic laws of certain countries, all because of the allmighty god Mammon. After all, on the same day that “Lamentis” dropped on Disney+, Germany played Hungary, a country whose reactionary government has just passed a homophobic law which basically makes it illegal to as much as mention that LGBTQ+ people exist “because of the children”, in the 2021 European football championship. The match took place in the Allianz Arena in Munich, one of Germany’s biggest and most modern stadiums. The city of Munich wanted to light up the stadium (its exterior can be lit up in different colours, depending on which team is playing) in rainbow colours to protest the Hungarian anti-LGBTQ+ law, but the UEFA forbade it, because they deemed lighting up the stadium in the colours of the rainbow an inacceptable political statement, mere days after the UEFA harrassed German team captain Manuel Neuer over wearing a rainbow armband. Meanwhile, the fact that a group of far right Hungerian football fans engaged in racist and homophobic chants against players of the opposing teams (and ignored covid restrictions as well) is apparently not political as far as the UEFA is concerned. And frankly, it infuriates that corporations like Disney or organisation like UEFA bow to reactionary governments, all because they hope to make a profit there.

The UEFA decision infuriated a lot of people and so many of the German fans wore rainbow colours, other football stadiums in Germany were lit up in rainbow colours, the Munich townhall flew the pride flag and plenty of companies changed their logos to rainbow colours for the day as well. Though there is a lot of of hypocrisy there, too, because football is still a very homophobic sport. There is a reason that the few football play who have come out as gay have all done so after the end of their careers. As for the corporations who displayed their logos in rainbow colours, I bet they have no problem doing in business in homophobic countries. However, they have apparently realised that LGBTQ+ people do have money, too, and are willing to spend it, so these solidiarity with LGBTQ+ people gestures feel like a marketing stunt. Finally, Munich is the capital of Bavaria, the German state whose then minister president Edmund Stoiber said in 2001 that legalising same-sex marriages would be the same as legalising devil worship. Of course, Stoiber was an idiot and apparently unaware that the German constitution guarantees freedom of religion for everybody, including Satanists, and that worshipping the Devil is perfectly legal.

So yes, Loki is canonically bisexual, but don’t expect to see him snogging Mobius or Thor or Heimdall anytime soon. Maybe we will eventually see Loki snogging Sylvie, but first of all, she falls asleep on the train, while Loki gets very drunk – he clearly doesn’t have Thor’s stamina – and sings Asgardians songs in what I think is Icelandic (Tom Hiddleston is apparently another of the brilliant linguists that Oxford and Cambridge keep losing to Hollywood, just like Richard Burton and Philip Madoc). This is also when Loki comes up with the tortured “love is an imaginary dagger” metaphor. Sylvie, meanwhile, is annoyed, because Loki is attracting attention to himself – and to her. And indeed, one of the snooty passenger rats him out to the guards, which leads to another fight. Loki and Sylvie are both good fighters, but nonetheless, Loki gets himself thrown off the train. Worse, the TemPad is destroyed. So now Loki and Sylvie are trapped on an exploding planet. Or are they?

“What about the Ark?” Loki asks. “It never takes off”, Sylvia replies, “It’s destroyed.”

“Well, it never had us on board”, Loki says and both of them set off to make it to the Ark.

The Ark is located in a city that’s a neon-drenched cyberpunk nightmare straight out of Blade Runner or Total Recall. I have praised Loki’s production design in every single review so far and this one is no exception, because the design is utterly gorgeous, whether it’s the Star Wars look of the mining town, the dieselpunk aesthetics of the train or the cyberpunk neon look of the city. Loki truly revels in retrofuturist aesthetics, which do evoke “science fiction” for many of us, because these are the aesthetics that the science fiction films we grew up with had. So far, the series has had visual callbacks to Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Doctor Who, Logan’s Run, Brazil, Snowpiercer and the entire canon of early 1970s dytopian SF films.

The colour scheme of the episode is also noteworthy, because Lamentis is lit up in purple, pink and blue hues throughout, which – as Saloni Gajjar points out at The AV-Club – are also the colours of the bisexual flag. And yes, according to director Kate Herron, that’s deliberate. It’s also a visual cue that Disney cannot remove for broadcast in homophobic countries.

The city is in a state of anarchy and full of guards interested only in keeping the riffraff off the Ark, so Loki and Sylvie have to fight their way through. However, before they can reach the Ark, it is hit by a chunk of the disintegrating moon. Our two Lokis are doomed… or are they?

As cliffhangers go, this one isn’t all that thrilling, if only because we know that Loki and Sylvie will survive to do mischief another day. Most likely, Mobius and the TVA will pop up and rescue them at the beginning of next episode.

And talking of the TVA, Sylvie does drop an interesting tidbit, namely that the TVA agents were not created by the Time Keepers, as Mobius believes, but that they are variants themselves who were apparently brainwashed and pressed into service, which confirms that the Time Keepers are arseholes (Sylvie calls them “omniscient fascists” at one point). Loki is a little bothered by this, just as he is a bit troubled by the fact that all the people they meet on Lamentis will die. So we are gradually seeing the psychopathic Loki of Avengers turn into the more nuanced character of Thor: The Dark World and beyond.

Due to the time and space travel theme, Loki has drawn comparisons to Doctor Who from the start, but “Lamentis” feels even more Doctor Who-like than previous episodes. Camestros Felapton calls it the best Doctor Who episode in years and Guardian reviewer Andy Welch and Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw also compare the episode to Doctor Who with a much bigger budget.

In fact, the Doctor Who vibes are so notable that I’m wondering whether Loki isn’t Tom Hiddleston auditioning for Doctor Who. IMO, he would be a better choice than the most of the people on the list of potential next Doctors that the Guardian recently published. The only actors on the Guardian list I would like to see playing the Doctor are Jo Martin (who has already played a version of the Doctor), Paterson Joseph and Riz Ahmed. And no, Michaela Coel or Phoebe Waller-Bridges do not have to play every part in every TV show.

Loki continues to look great and be a lot of fun. However, it is notable that for the third episode in a row, not a lot happens. And in fact, the only reason that Marvel can get away with this are Tom Hiddleston’s acting skills and the chemistry he has with his co-stars.

Next week’s review might be a bit delayed, because I will likely be engaged in the 2021 July short story challenge by then.

Loki Meets “The Variant”

Another Wednesday, another episode of Loki. For my takes on previous episodes (well, just one so far), go here.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

Episode 2 starts as episode 1 ended, with the titular Variant (whom Agent Mobius believes is another version of Loki) attacking a team of TVA Minutemen at a Renaissance Fair in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1985, which gave me a good laugh, because a friend of mine from school spent the summer in Oshkosh* around that time, though I have no idea if she attended a Renaissance Fair. The Variant takes over one of the agents, Hunter C-20, with powers which look very much like Loki’s abilities to take people over (though our Loki needed his staff and the Mind Stone) and kills the rest of them to the stains of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero”. Then the Variant leaves through a time door, dragging along Hunter C-20.

Why Oshkosh? No one seems to know and Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin, who is from the area, points out that Oshkosh doesn’t even have a Renaissance Fair. However, Emmet Asher-Perrin also points out that Marvel writer and editor Mark Gruenwald, on whose likeness Agent Mobius is based, was born in Oshkosh, so this might be another reference to him. Or it might be an even more complictaed inside joke, because The Umbrella Academy also had an episode involving time travel and time keepers set in Oshkosh. Maybe Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is the secret hub of the multiverse?

The scene now shifts to the TVA headquarters, where Loki is sitting at Agent Mobius’ desk, reading Mobius’ jetski magazine, while doing his best to ignore the orientation holograms presented by the annoyingly chirpy Miss Minutes. He is rescued by Mobius, who tells Loki that the Variant has attacked again – in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as we’ve seen in the opening scene. And so Loki, Mobius, Hunter B-15 and a team of Minutemen head to Oshkosh in 1985, where they stick out like a sore thumb. And indeed, why do the Minutemen not even make an effort to blend in, if preserving the timeline is so important? Of course, they inevitably reset the timeline, which – as Loki points out – is just a nicer way of saying disintegrating everything and everybody in the vicinity. And whatever you think of Renaissance Fairs, they don’t deserve to be disintegrated.

The team find the dead Minutemen as well as C-20’s helmet and baton, but C-20 herself is missing. The Minutemen are about to swarm out and search for her, when Loki stops them and points out that it’s very likely a trap. He also gives a speech about the ears and teeth of wolves and lays out his plan to trick the Variant, by pretending to side with them. But in exchange for helping the TVA, he wants to meet the Time Keepers. Of course, we’re talking about Loki here and Loki is only ever on one side, namely his own. And so he’s just stalling the TVA agents, which Mobius figures out, though not in time to do more than just reset the timeline and wipe out a whole Renaissance Fair full of innocent people. Maybe that is why there is no Renaissance Fair in Oshkosh in our universe, because the TVA wiped it out.

Back at the TVA headquarters, Mobius has a meeting with Ravonna Renslayer, whose office really dials up the “midcentury dictator’s lair” look up to eleven. This is as good a moment as any to praise the set design of Loki once again, because it is just that great. The TVA headquarters is outfitted with various midcentury modern design classics. The TVA apparently buys all its furniture at Knoll International – or maybe the Atlanta Marriott Marquis does and the TVA simply profits.  Though the photos on the official hotel website show blander furnishings (and why is interior design so terribly bland these days anyway?) than the midcentury coolness of Loki. We do get extensive shots of the Marriott Marquis‘ famous atrium and glass elevators, as Loki and Mobius ride one of them. Though the TVA version also has statues of the Time Keepers at the bottom of the lift, which the actual building doesn’t. Personally, I’d suggest adding some for Dragon Con.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw didn’t have much to do last episode, so I’m glad that we get to see more of her here. Her relationship with Mobius is also interesting. Mobius occasionally brings her gifts like snow globes (come to think of it, the schoolfriend I mentioned above, the one who visited Oshkosh, also collected snow globes) for her trophy shelf, though he’s not the only TVA analyst who does, which bothers Mobius quite a bit. Personally, the vibes I got from their interaction is that Mobius and Ravonna either used to be a couple or they’re colleagues with benefits and Mobius would like a more exclusive arrangement. And come on, Ravonna berating Mobius for never using a coaster (and Ravonna’s glasses are gorgeous. Whatever era she got them from, I want some) feels very much like a longterm couple arguing. Meanwhile, Guardian reviewer Andy Welch finds some sinister undertones in Ravonna’s and Mobius’ interaction and wonders whether Ravonna is not what she claims to be, probably based on the comics history of her character and her connection to Kang the Conqueror.

Ravonna tells Mobius that he’s wasting his time with Loki and should just “prune” (another euphemism for “disintegrate”) him, but Mobius still thinks that Loki can help. Mobius and Ravenna also have an interesting side conversation about the Time Keepers. Mobius, we learn, has never met the Time Keepers, even though he has absolute faith in them. Ravonna claims to see them on occasion. And it’s notable that whenever we see Ravonna, either in the courtroom or now in her office, she is always surrounded by gigantic statues of the Time Keepers. So do the Time Keepers even exist or at least, do they still exist? Or is Ravonna the one who’s really running the show?

That question will have to wait for an answer, because next Mobius makes Loki sit down with a stack of files about the Variant’s attacks and tells Loki to go through them to see if anything pops up. Mobius also tells Loki that this is his last chance or he will get disintegrated like so many other Loki variants before, because the God of Mischief has the tendency to go of script and violate the sacred time line.

The bit about the different Loki variants is quite amusing. One has muscles to rival Thor’s, another has apparently won the Tour de France. Personally, I vastly prefer Loki to Lance Armstrong or Jan Ullrich, since at least everybody expects Loki to cheat, whereas people didn’t expect it from Ullrich or Armstrong (and apparently, some Armstrong fans still can’t accept that he cheated).  Another neat moment is when Hunter B-15 sums up Loki’s powers and Loki corrects her in the tone of an overpedantic comic fan who will explain in great details that Spider-Man is a mutate, not a mutant.

Of course, Loki does not stay in the TVA’s reading room, reading paper files (and why does the TVA use paper files at all?) for long, before he wanders off to take a peak at more interesting files. However, all files are classified except for Loki’s personal files, from which he learns about Ragnarok and that Asgard was destroyed, which hasn’t happened to this Loki, plucked from the time line shortly after the events of Avengers, yet. Of course, Loki never really fit into Asgard, but its destruction and the death of almost ten thousand Asgardians still very clearly affects him. Of course, Loki has just lost both his adoptive parents and his home in the span of a day or so and he’s seen his own death, too, which must be tough on anybody and – as Mobius is pretty good at point out – Loki is not nearly as tough as he pretends to be. Not to mention that Loki did pose as King of Asgard for a while and didn’t even do too bad a job, questionable tastes in decoration and entertainment notwithstanding.

However, the report about the destruction of Asgard gives Loki an idea. Because apocalyptic events also make an ideal place for the Variant Loki to hide out, since nothing the Variant does will affect the sacred timeline, since everybody will die anyway. This is not a new idea – Captain Jack Harkness was using the exact same plan to execute his intertemporal cons, when we first met him way back in season 1 of the new Doctor Who. And indeed, when Mobius and Loki decide to put this theory to a test, they even choose the exact same disaster that Captain Jack used for his scams, namely the destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD. AV-Club reviewer Caroline Siede gives a shout-out to the Doctor Who episode “The Fires of Pompeii” from season 4, though no reviewer remarks on the Captain Jack Harkness link. But then, apparently every mention of Captain Jack Harkness must be scrubbed from the timeline (down to cancelling comics, which have nothing whatsoever to do with Barrowman) due to John Barrowman’s well known tendency to run around naked on set.

In Pompeii, Mobius wants to be cautious, but Loki draws maximum attention to himself by freeing some goats and then jumping onto a cart to declaim in Latin that Mount Vesuvius will errupt and everybody will die and that he should know, because he’s from the future, whereupon Loki pauses and asks Mobius, “We are from the future, aren’t we?” Personally, I suspect that the TVA exists outside time, just like Eternity in Isaac Asimov’s 1955 novel The End of Eternity.

The Latin is pretty good, by the way, which pleased me, because bad Latin in movies and TV shows is a pet peeve of mine. But then, Tom Hiddleston has a classical education and very likely knows Latin and can pronounce it correctly. Though Tor.com‘s Emmet Asher-Perrin wonders why Loki speaks Latin at all. Personally, I don’t find it surprising that Loki speaks Latin. After all, the Asgardians are very old and were worshipped as gods by the various Nordic and Germanic people at the same time that the Roman Empire was trying to conquer (and partly succeeded) the Germanic people. The Asgardians almost certainly got mixed up in the conflict with the Roman Empire, so of course Loki speaks Latin. Hell, he probably played some of his God of Mischief tricks on Varus and his legions during the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (which actually took place near Kalkriese and not in the Teutoburg Forest, though that wasn’t discovered until well into my lifetime).

Mount Vesuvius erupts on schedule and Mobius and Loki leg it out of Pompeii (while the poor locals get turned into museum exhibits) without causing any damage to the sacred timeline. So Loki was right. The Variant is using apocalyptic events to hide out.

However, there are a lot of apocalyptic events throughout time and the TVA has no idea where and when the Variant might be hiding. Luckily, the anachronistic chewing gum that Mobius got from the kid in 16th century Aix-en-Provence provides a vital clue. Cause that brand of chewing gum was only sold for a few years in the 2040s and 2050s, so that’s where the Variant is hiding. Loki and Mobius rattle of a disturbing list of climate change related disasters, before finding the right one. In 2050, a severe hurricane hit the Alabama Gulf Coast. The locals, who couldn’t evacuate in time, tried to ride out the storm in a Roxxcart superstore (so Roxxon, Marvel’s all purpose evil capitalists, are also running retail stores now?), only to all perish anyway. The Roxxcart store sells the chewing gum, so that’s where the Variant must be hiding.

So Mobius, Loki, B-15 and the rest of her team set off for the Alabama Gulf Coast in 2050. They enter the Roxxcart store and split up. Mobius and the rest of the Minutemen search the storm shelter, while Loki and B-15 check the nigh deserted store. There is an interesting scene where the Minutemen are rude to the people hiding out in the store, because what does it matter – they’ll all die anyway. Mobius tells them that even if the people are doomed, that’s no reason to terrify them. It’s notable that while most of the Minutemen are rude and unpleasant, harrassing and disintegrating everybody and everything who gets in their way, Mobius is actually kind to the people he meets on his missions. First the kid in France and now the hurricane victims in Alabama. Eventually, Mobius and the Minutemen find the missign Hunter C-20, who’s still alive, but in a bad way. She keeps mumbling over and over again that she told the Variant where to find the Time Keepers, which begets the question how C-20 knows where the Time Keepers are, when Mobius, who seems to outrank her, has never met them.

Meanwhile, Loki and B-15 find a lone civilian in the garden center, claiming to buy azaleas, which wouldn’t exactly be anybody’s priority in the middle of a deadly hurricane. B-15 is skeptical, but before she can do anything, the civilian touches her and promptly collapses. The Variant had taken over the civilian, as Loki is want to do, and has now jumped to B-15, giving Wunmi Mosaku the chance to play Loki. The Variant now jumps from person to person with a speed that would make Dr. Mabuse envious. Next, the Variant possesses a stereotypical redneck who proceeds to beat up Loki, which leads to a fight with vaccuum cleaners as weapons. Loki offers the Variant to team up, but the Variant has no interest. Nor do they want to be called Loki, instead the Variant prefers to use Randy, which is the name of their redneck host.

But finally, Loki comes face to face with the hooded Variant after all. And when the Variant lowers the hood, the person underneath does not look like Tom Hiddleston, but is a woman played by Sophie di Martino. Now Loki has always been genderfluid, both in Norse mythology (the mythological Loki is also pansexual, whereas the MCU version has so far been portrayed as largely asexual) and in the Marvel comics, where Loki spent about a year as a woman.

But even though genderfluidity has always been a part of the character, I’m nonetheless surprised to see this aspect pop up in the TV series, because Marvel is part of Disney now and Disney are extremely conservative with regard to portraying LGBTQIA+ people in their various movies and TV shows. If LGBTQIA+ characters show up at all, it’s mostly blink you’ll miss it moments like the two elderly lesbians hugging at the end of The Rise of Skywalker or the bereaved gay man in Steve Rogers’ post-blip support group. The reason for this is that those brief moments can be easily cut, when the films are shown in conservative countries, where any hint at LGBTQIA+ characters is not accepted. And yes, I understand the economic reasoning behind this, but it’s still disappointing, especially since the comics have been much more progressive on that front and have played with gender since the 1980s. Magical sex changes, an old narrative device to indirectly address trans issues, have been a thing in comics for at least thirty years now and both Hal Jordan’s girlfriend Carol Ferris and Alpha Flight member Sasquatch changed gender as far back as the 1980s, while open gay superheroes have been a thing since the early 1990s, when Alpha Flight‘s Northstar finally came out, though astute readers had known all along that he was gay. And yes, it’s telling that Marvel tested its more progressive storylines in the fairly obscure Alpha Flight rather than in its bigger titles. Meanwhile, Marvel’s rival DC has featured several gay, lesbian, bisexual and even a trans character in its TV shows.

At the Daily Dot, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw points out that it’s also possible that the Variant is not Loki after all, but the Enchantress, a long-time Thor villainess who hasn’t popped up in the movies until now. Personally, I would find this disappointing, because I’d love to see the genderfluid version of Loki in the MCU.

While Loki chats with him- or rather herself, the female Loki is executing her plan. She sends all of the time reset bombs she stole via time doors to what appears to be the location of the Time Keepers to blow them up and the sacred timeline along with it. The episode ends with the TVA panicking, as branching timelines appear all over the place. Lady Loki opens a time door and leaves Roxxcart. Loki briefly hesitates and then goes after her, before Mobius can stop him.

So it seems the Time Keepers are history and that only two episodes into the series. I can’t even say I’m sorry to see the old space lizards, as Loki calls them, blown up, because frankly they’re arseholes. Their enforcers disintegrate countless innocent people and they also let the doomed folks hiding out in the Roxxcart store die without batting an eyelash, even though they could have warned or saved them. The attitude of the Time Keepers and their defence of the sacred timeline (and who decides which timeline is sacred anyway?) reminds me of the Time Lords of Gallifrey and their non-intervention policy, which the Second Doctor so brilliantly denounces in “The War Games”. Not to mention that the Time Keepers either created (as Mobius seems to believe) or kidnapped hundreds, if not thousands of people, to do their dirty work with barely even a break. Poor Agent Mobius doesn’t even get to ride a jet ski, even though he wants to so very badly. In short, the Time Keepers are arseholes, so good riddance to them.

Loki recognises the Time Keepers for what they are, even if his aim at this point seems to be to take over the TVA. He also has an interesting conversation with Mobius, which contrast Loki as the personification of chaos with Mobius, the agent tasked with keeping order.

In fact, even though this episode has more action than the last, there are still extensive scenes of Loki and Mobius sitting around on midcentury designer furniture and talking. And thanks to the chemistry of Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson, these scenes, which could easily be deadly dull talking head stuff, sparkle. My favourite was probably Loki explaining his apocalypse theory while using Mobius’ salad, some salt and pepper shakers and desk clerk Casey’s juice as props, while thoroughly messing up Mobius’ lunch in the process. Camestros Felapton, The AV-Club‘s Caroline Siede and io9‘s James Whitbrook all note the buddy cop dynamic of Loki (or rather buddy cop and criminal).

So far, Loki is part White Collar, part Doctor Who and a lot of fun. Whether the show will have more to say than that or whether its main purpose will be to set up a Marvel Cinematic Multiverse (which we know is coming in the next Doctor Strange movie) remains to be seen.

Cora Talks About Old SFF Elsewhere

“But what’s new about that?” some of you will ask. She always talks about old SFF somewhere.

However, today I had not one but two items coming out elsewhere. The first is my latest post over at Galactic Journey, where I talk about the science fiction anthology Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight (and also about a lost whale on the Rhine). Orbit 1 is not only a very good anthology, where even the weaker stories are worth reading, but it’s doubly remarkable, because the table of contents is fifty percent women – in 1966.

Of course, we know that the “Women did not write SFF before [insert date here]” claims are nonsense, but it’s still nice to find an anthology or a magazine with a fifty percent famel table of contents in the 1960s, when all-male table of contents were the norm rather than the exception.

In some ways, the stories in Orbit are works of their time – 1960s/70s concerns about overpopulation pop up a few times as do the even older obsessions about racial memory and “Oh my God, we might devolve!” which pop up in SFF all the way back to the 1930s – but in other way, the stories feel remarkably modern. The stories deal with how humans can relate to the Other (usually represented by aliens), how to communicate with beings of different cultures, whether violence is really the best solution (spoiler alert: It’s not) and the dark sides of colonialism and imperialism. The story that most clearly criticises colonialism and points out that even initially good intentions can lead to bad outcomes is by Poul Anderson of all people, i.e. not an author anybody would accuse of being a strident Social Justice Warrior. Though this was likely written before the rightwing libertarian brain eater virus that spread through the SFF community in the 1960s and 1970s and beyond got Anderson.

However, I’m not just at Galactic Journey today. I’m also the special guest in episode 97 of the Appendix N Book Club, a great podcast (which I featured as part of my fancast spotlight here) which discusses the inspirational works listed in the Appendix N of the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide.

In this episode, we discussed Xiccarph, a collection of Clark Ashton Smith’s interplanetary tales which came out in 1972 as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, even though the stories date from the 1920s and 1930s.

I have two Clark Ashton Smith collections on my book shelf, but the first time I tried to read him, I bounced off Clark Ashton Smith’s work. This is not Smith’s fault at all – I was basically challenged to read Smith by someone who was convinced I was too stupid to understand him, which obviously did not make me inclined to enjoy the experience. Though the stories and the haunting atmosphere Smith creates were clearly memorable, because I found that I could recall details of several Smith stories, even though it has been more than twenty years since I first read them.

So I was happy to be given a most excellent excuse to revisit Clark Ashton Smith’s work. I appreciated his work a lot more the second time around. Indeed, one thing I’ve found with many of the authors associated with Weird Tales is that I enjoy their work more upon rereading it – including things like the Conan, Jirel of Joiry or Northwest Smith stories I liked the first time around, too. Though I still think that Clark Ashton Smith is best savoured in smaller doses.

Anyway, just listen to the episode and then listen to the other 96 episodes of the Appendix N Book Club, because it is a really great podcast.

New Story “The Gate of Mist” available in Issue 3 of Whetstone Magazine of Sword and Sorcery

I have two links to share today. First of all, my friend and fellow Best Fan Writer Hugo finalist Paul Weimer has revived the popular Mind Meld feature, where several SFF authors and fans answer the same question, at nerds of a feather.

This edition of the Mind Meld asks the following following question:

Congratulations. You have been given a Star Trek style holodeck, fully capable otherwise, you can bring in anyone you want, hold a roomful of people but not an entire Worldcon in it,  but you can only program it to be fixed to one time and place or the verse of one fictional work or series.

Where/what do you program your holodeck for? (Star Wars and Star Trek are off the table!)

Visit nerds of a feather to read the answers of Fonda Lee, K.B. Wagers, Beverly Bambury, Arturo Serrano, Mikalea Lind, Camestros Felapton, H.M. Long, Claire O’Dell, Maurice Broaddus, Catherine Lundoff, Elizabeth Bear, Andrew Hiller, K.B. Spengler, Nancy Jane Moore, Shelley Parker-Chan and myself.

I have to admit that Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar and Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age were on my shortlist of possible places to program my holodeck for, before I decided on a setting with indoor plumbing and less chance of random and brutal death.

Therefore, it’s only fitting that my other announcement concerns new sword and sorcery fiction. Because issue 3 of Whetstone Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery just came out today on the 85th anniversary of the death of Robert E. Howard, founding father of the sword and sorcery genre and creator of Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, Dark Agnes and many others.

This issue includes my story “The Gate of Mist” as well as new sword and sorcery tales by N.A. Chaudhry, Michael Burke, Jace Phelps, Chuck E. Clark, Scott Schmidt, Luke E. Dodd, J. Thomas Howard, Ethan Sabatella, T.A. Markitan, L.D. Whitney, Rob Graham, George Jacobs, Richard Truong, B. Harlan Crawford and Dimitar Dakovski with an introduction by editor Jason Ray Carney and a great cover by Mustafa Bekir.

My story is called “The Gate of Mist”. It’s another story that originated during the 2020 July Short Story Challenge. At the time, I called it “Brokeback Mountain”, but with warrior monks and cloud monsters (and a happy for now ending), which is still an appropriate description. Come to think of it, the fact that “The Gate of Mist” is an LGBTQ+ story makes it doubly appropriate, because June is also Pride Month.

So what are you waiting for? Get issue 3 of Whetstone here.

Loki Finds His “Glorious Purpose”

“Glorious Purpose”, the first episode of Loki, Disney’s latest Marvel related TV offering, became available for streaming today. I’m not sure if I’ll do episode by episode reviews of this one, because it’s a lot of work, but here are my thoughts on the premiere.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

The first scene of Loki takes us back to 2012 and the events of the first Avengers movie and Loki’s failed bid for world domination via siccing the Chitauri on Lower Manhattan as well as the events of Avengers: Endgame, where the Avengers meddle with those events to acquire the Infinity Stones and undo the Thanos snap, which accidentally leads to Loki picking up the Tesseract and absconding with it.

However, Loki doesn’t get far. He teleports to the Mongolian steppes, tries and fails to impress some local women and is interrupted when a portal opens and several people in riot gear emerge, led by Wunmi Mosaku, whose character is only credited as Hunter B-15. They quickly grab the Tesseract and arrest Loki. B-15 puts a time control collar on him, too, just before punching him and then slowing down the time.

Next, Loki finds himself taken to the Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare of the Time Variance Authority, TVA for short. The TVA does exist in the comics, though it’s one of the more obscure organisations in the Marvel universe. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw explains the comics background of the TVA and the characters associated with it at The Daily Dot.

Since the TVA is a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare, Loki is subjected to various humiliating treatments. He had his signature green and gold leather outfit disintegrated by a multi-pronged robot, giving us a glimpse of Tom Hiddleston naked with the not safe for Disney Plus parts hidden by strategically placed machinary and proving that while he’s no Thor, Loki is pretty well built himself. We don’t get to enjoy the view for long though, before Loki is stuffed into a shapeless prison overall. He’s then told to sign a stack of papers (that seems a lot smaller than it should be, considering that Loki is hundreds of years old and someone who loves to talk) recording everything he’s ever said. Next he’s asked to confirm that to the best of his knowledge he’s not a robot, before walking through some kind of metal detector-like device. “Are there people who do not know they’re robots?” an irritated Loki replies, before briefly wondering what would happen if he were a robot and did not know it. Finally, Loki and another TVA prisoner are told to take a ticket and stand in line in ridiculously oversized cordoned off waiting area. “There are only two of us here”, Loki points out, but then he witnesses the other prisoner (we never learn his name or crime, only that he is on the board of Goldman-Sachs, which is probably enough to convince us that this guy is guilty of whatever he’s been accused of) being disintegrated and shuts up.

At this point, everybody who has ever had to deal with senseless bureaucracy (and that’s literally everybody) will sympathise with Loki’s snarky replies and his barely veiled desire to just punch the whole TVA in the face. Particularly the “Are you, to the best of your knowledge, not a robot?” bit reminded me of when I went to the dentist to have a tooth extracted, which broke off, requiring surgery and three X-rays in a day. And every single time, the X-Ray technician dutifully asked me if I was pregnant (a question which so outraged me the first time I was asked it at about age 14 that I snapped at the technician, “No, of course not. What do you take me for? Do you think I’m a slut?”). By the third time, I was so exasperated that I snapped, “No, and I haven’t gotten pregnant in the forty-five minutes since someone last asked me that either.”

But there are still more humiliations in store for our favourite Asgardian/Forst Giant hybrid. Because during the waiting period, Loki – and the audience – are treated to an explanation of what the TVA is and does courtesy of a talking clock named Miss Minutes in a 1960s style cartoon public service announcement. The Miss Minutes clips captures the midcentury cartoon look with absolute perfection. I immediately was reminded of the “HB Männchen”, the beloved quick-tempered advertising mascot of the HB cigarette brand, which starred in many cartoon ad clips in from the late 1950s throughout the 1970s. And considering that the HB Männchen may well be the most prolific serial killer in postwar Germany (how many people started smoking in response to those cutesy ads, which portray cigarettes as the solution to all problems, and subsequently got ill?), I for one wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a time criminal as well.

And so Miss Minutes sums up several decades of Marvel Comics lore in a brief cartoon by explaining  that once there was a massive multiverse war between different timelines and universes. In response, the Time-Keepers emerged and founded the TVA to maintain the sacred timeline and prevent the creation of Jonbar points (not that they use that term) and new parallel timelines by eliminating temporal variants like Loki and the unnamed Goldman-Sachs dude. The cartoon promises that the variants will be returned to their original timeline after their trial, though it quickly becomes apparent that they will simply be disintegrated.

Time agents and time cops charged with preserving and protecting the integrity of the timeline are an old concept in science fiction. Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Time from 1938 is the earliest take on that particular subject I’m aware of. Isaac Asimov’s 1955 novel The End of Eternity was my first contact with the idea and literally blew my mind. It was my favourite novel as a teenager to the point that I pushed it into the hands of everybody I met and told them to read it, because it would change their life (most people were just annoyed). I still have a soft spot for The End of Eternity, though I no longer force random people to read it. Ever since then, time cops and time agents have popped up in various places from Star Trek and Doctor Who (Captain Jack Harkness was a time agent the first time we met him and ironically inspired by Marvel’s Agatha Harkness, so it’s been “Agatha All Along” once again) via DC’s Rip Hunter and the Time Masters and the Hazel and Cha Cha from The Umbrella Academy to last year’s Hugo-winning novella This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. Do they all work for the Time Variance Authority? It’s possible.

This is as good a time as any to talk about the visual aesthetics of Loki, which are absolutely gorgeous. The look of the TVA headquarters is part Verner Panton’s 1969 furnishings for the Spiegel publishing house in Hamburg (both the TVA headquarters and the Spiegel cantina even use Harry Bertoia’s famous wire chair, which you can still buy from Knoll International), part Brazil , part Socialist realism and Soviet era propaganda art (the murals and the courtroom) and part every school or university built in the late 1960s/early 1970s ever. Guardian reviewer Andy Welch points out the Mad Men style 1960s aesthetics of the episode and invokes famous midcentury designer Dieter Rams (I didn’t spot any of his designs, though there are a lot of midcentury design classics in view, e.g. the above mentioned wire chair and a spherical Keracolor TV set). Andy Welch also notes that the TVA scenes were shot at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Atlanta (built in 1985), which is a popular filming location. AV Club reviewer Caroline Siede also draws the comparison with Brazil.

Loki doesn’t have much time to take everything in, though, before he taken to his trial presided over by Ravonna Renslayer, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. It is notable that except for Owen Wilson, all main characters in this episode are played by British actors. Gugu Mbatha-Raw even gained some time travel experience in Doctor Who way back during the David Tennant era. When asked whether he pleads “guilty” or “not guilty”, Loki points out that he didn’t mess up the timeline, the Avengers did. And yes, he knows that they time-travelled, because Tony Stark’s aftershave is unmistakable and he smelled it twice. Ravonna points out that the Avengers did exactly what they were supposed to do (which begets the question why the TVA didn’t stop Thanos before he snapped half the universe out of existence). Loki, on the other hand, was not supposed to escape.

Just before Loki can be found guilty and sentenced to disintegration, he is granted a stay of execution by the intervention of a TVA agent named Mobius M. Mobius, played by Owen Wilson. Mobius M. Mobius is another established character from the comics,  whose appearance was modelled after Marvel writer and editor Mark Gruenwald, who sadly died 25 years ago, aged only 43, and so never got to see himself played by Owen Wilson.

Agent Mobius has a problem. For TVA agents are being attacked and killed throughout history by a particularly dangerous Time Variant and their time reset cannisters are being stolen. When we first meet Mobius, he is investigating the aftermath of such an attack in a cathedral in Aix-en-Provence in 16th century France.  The attack left several TVA agents dead. When Mobius questions the sole witness, a street urchin, who killed the TVA agents, the kid points at a stained glass window portraying the devil and a devil that looks remarkably like Marvel’s version of Mephisto at that. Mephisto was widely expected to pop up in WandaVision, which never happened, so maybe he’ll make his TV debut in Loki instead. Or maybe it’s all a misdirection.  Because the kid also shows Mobius a gift that the devil gave him, a very anachronistic pack of chewing gum. And Marvel’s Mephisto isn’t really the type to hand out candy.

Mobius now wants Loki’s help in apprehending the devilish time agent killer. But first he wants to see what makes Loki tick. Loki tells Mobius that he was born to rule Earth, Asgard and the universe and tries to give him a variation of the “free will makes people unhappy” speech from Avengers. But Mobius isn’t buying any of that, so he subjects Loki – and the viewer – to a replay of Loki’s greatest hits. We see Loki losing to the Avengers, we see Phil Coulson get killed yet again (nothing about his resurrection though), we see Loki in a cell in Asgard and we see Frigga getting killed (which was partly Loki’s fault, as Mobius helpfully points out), which does affect Loki, because we know that his adoptive mother is probably the person he cares most about in the universe.

The bulk of the episode is actually made up of Tom Hiddleston sitting in a room – with or without Owen Wilson – watching clips from old Marvel movies, probably to introduce new viewers to the character’s rather tangled history, since the Disney+ Marvel shows are also marketed to and aimed at people who’ve never seen a Marvel movie before. Especially WandaVision, not the easiest introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, had a high percentage of viewers who were new to Marvel.

Basically, “Glorious Purpose” is the Marvel equivalent to what we used to call a “cheapie episode” back in the day, but which is apparently called “clip show” now, an episode that largely consists of clips of other episodes with some kind of framing device thrown in. Of course, few clip shows ever look as good as “Glorious Purpose” – there is a reason we used to call them “cheapie episodes”. Still, it takes some balls to use one of the most disliked TV episode formats of all time as the premiere of a brand-new and very expensive streaming video show. It’s the sort of thing only Marvel and maybe Star Wars can do and get away with.

Of course, it helps that Tom Hiddleston is incredibly charismatic and one of those actors you would watch reading the phone book. It also helps that Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson have great chemistry with each other. This is not the first time they’ve appeared on screen together BTW. Ten years ago, shortly before the first Thor film came out and catapulted Tom Hiddleston to stardom, he played F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s time travel movie Midnight in Paris, which starred Owen Wilson.

And indeed, Guardian reviewer Lucy Mangan and Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw note that even though “Glorious Purpose” looks – well – glorious, not a lot happens except that Mobius gives us a recap of Loki’s history. We do get a bit of new info, namely that the infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a plane in 1971, demanded the then princely sum of 200000 USD ransom and parachuted out of the plane into the wilderness of Washington State never to be seen again, was none other than Loki (so it was not Mad Men‘s Don Draper, as was rumoured for a while). And why did he hijack a plane? Well, turns out that he lost a bet with Thor. We know that the FBI exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I do think Thor and Loki should apologise to them for all the resources wasted in tracking D.B. Cooper.

Loki also escapes for a while and even regains the Tesseract, only to find that a) it doesn’t work at the TVA headquarters and b) Infinity Stones are nothing special for the TVA, they have lots of them lying around in a drawer and use them as paperweights. This more than anything humbles Loki, so that he voluntarily returns to the room to watch the end of the highlights of his life. He watches Odin die, which clearly affects him, and then watches himself die at the hand of Thanos. Considering that as far as Loki is concerned, he was working for Thanos only a few hours ago (though I don’t remember if Loki even knew that he was working for Thanos or whether he only met the Alexis Denisoff character who was his emissary) that’s got to sting.

Mobius also delivers the devastating news that Loki doesn’t actually have a glorious purpose of his own. He merely exists as a foil to help others (Thor, the Avengers) fulfill their glorious purpose. That line also sums up the way the Marvel movies often treat their villains, namely as disposable antagonists intended to initiate character development in the heroes. This is also why so many of the Marvel villains, even those played by top flight actors, are ultimately forgettable. Because they were never the point of the story. Loki is something of an exception here, because he was brought back again and again (he has supposedly died on screen three times by now, which is almost Jean Grey record), largely because Tom Hiddleston’s natural charisma made him a fan favourite. Whereas no one remembers Obadiah Stane, Whiplash, Ghost, Yellowjacket, Dormanu and a dozen other lesser Marvel villains.

Finally, Mobius gets Loki to admit why he does what he does. He doesn’t really like to hurt people (which will be a great consolation to Phil Coulson and Hawkeye, I’m sure), he just wants to make them fear him, because he feels powerless and weak. It’s the classic psychology of the bully, except that I’m not sure if it really applies to Loki. Because I’ve always viewed him as someone who is acts out, because he’s desperate for attention from Thor and Odin. Both Thor and Odin clearly care about Earth, so Earth often gets caught in the crossfire. Loki’s “I don’t want to play anymore, let’s have a drink” reaction at the end of Avengers confirms this. He really doesn’t get why everbody is so upset.

That said, I’m also not sure if it was a good idea to set Loki directly after the events in Avengers, undoing much of a character development he received in latter movies. Because Joss Whedon portrayed Loki far more as a one-dimensional psychopath than the writers of the various Thor movies.

Once he’s broken down Loki, Mobius also reveals why he wants Loki’s help. Because he believes that the dangerous temporal varient he’s been tracking, the one who’s been murdering TVA agents, is none other than another version of Loki. This is unexpected, though the devil imagery could also refer to Loki’s horned helmet. And handing candy to a random urchin is far more a Loki thing than a Mephisto thing.

The last scene shows the dangerous variant striking again, this time by luring some TVA agents to 19th century Oklahoma and setting them on fire. We even see the variant, though he or she is wearing a hooded cloak.

So far, Loki looks really stunning and is also a lot of fun, even though very little happened in the first episode. I guess the next episode gets into the meat of the story. So far, Loki is more offbeat than the fairly conventional Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though whether it will be as delightfully weird as WandaVision remains to be seen. If nothing else, Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson should ensure a fun ride through time.