Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 27

Princess Holy Aura: Chapter 2

We continue snippets of my forthcoming Magical Girl-based novel. When we left off, Steve had been asked to do something that seemed physically impossible...

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Chapter 2.

     Steve goggled down at the slightly oversized rat with its overly-shiny white fur, tiny golden crown, sitting on his hind legs and regarding Steve with a far too knowing look. "Become what?"

"Mystic Galaxy Defender, Princess Holy Aura," Silvertail repeated calmly.

The repetition of the ridiculous phrase left Steve speechless. He would have laughed, but the situation was not, in fact, funny; instead, he stood there, rubbing his broad face and feeling the never-quite-eradicated five o'clock shadow rasping on his palm, looking around at the monstrous, eyeless corpses scattering the alleyway around him, trying to grasp everything that had happened.

As the ebony bodies began to evaporate like dry ice in the slanting sunlight breaking through the clouds, the ludicrous words finally bounced back into his consciousness. "ARE YOU COMPLETELY BLIND?"

"While ordinary white rats do often have vision problems," Silvertail replied primly, "I can see far better than you—into the soul, in fact, as well as more mundane spectra."

"Then perhaps you can see why the word 'Princess' isn't exactly appropriate," Steve said sarcastically. "Let alone the rest of that hackneyed Magical Girl word salad you spewed."

"You need to have a little more respect for an ancient tradition, Stephen Russ, especially as it is now your destiny to take the Star Nebula Brooch and the name of Holy Aura."

"You have got to be kidding me, furball. Go find a nice klutzy junior-high or high-school girl—this Holy Aura is like fourteen, isn't she?" Steve had watched more than enough magical girl or mahou shoujo anime to know the outline of any plot involving a magical girl and a cute furry animal.

"Well, yes, roughly fourteen in physical—"

"Exactly. Or if you want to avoid the stereotype, find the most awesomely competent schoolgirl you can and give her this . . . brooch."

"So, you want me to send a fourteen-year-old child up against the beings who sent those?" Silvertail asked quietly.

That stopped him like a sledgehammer. The melting monsters were now night-crystal skeletons of claws and fangs and graveyard wings, and the memory of their savagery had not faded. "You just told me that's how old, um, Magical Defender—"

"Mystic Galaxy Defender Princess Holy Aura," corrected Silvertail.

"Fine, Mystic Galaxy Defender Princess Holy Aura," he repeated, trying not to laugh at the ridiculous name. "That's how old you said she was."

"That is the necessity of the magical girl or mahou shoujo manifestation of the power, yes."

"Look, I could, I guess, kinda take it if I was King Holy Weapon or something."

"The matrix was determined thousands of years ago, Stephen Russ. It can no more be changed than you could shift the mountains in their courses, and even if it could, I have good reasons not to do so."

"But why me?"

"Because," Silvertail said, and suddenly he was not supercilious at all, but tired and grim, "I have a conscience, and because there are some very practical limitations of the power."

"A conscience?" He remembered the earlier exchange. "Oh. You don't want to send a little girl out against your enemies."

"No. I have done so before, and each time it has gnawed at me, eaten at my resolve, no matter what the reasons or the stakes. And even if I felt no such remorse, the requirements are extreme. Can a girl of that age, in this civilization, truly understand what we are asking of her? What would you do to someone who recruited your fourteen-year-old daughter, if you had one, to become the main warrior in a battle against forces that could destroy your world?"

"I think I'd kill you."

"Yes. And you would be right to do so. What would it do to such a girl to be placed in that situation? Even if she survived, what would she be like after fighting in a shadow war against such enemies—ones that make those you just defeated look like gnats?" Silvertail sighed. "I have tried many options through the eras, Stephen. I have seen so many die. I have seen so much that was wrong."

"What are the practical limitations of the power you mentioned?" Steve was starting to realize that, if this wasn't the most bizarre dream he'd ever had, he was on the verge of the most important decision . . . well, maybe in the world.

Silvertail opened his mouth, but there was a slight stirring nearby. Emmanuel was starting to come around.

Steve grimaced. Dammit. I'd forgotten about the kid in this insanity. "We'll pick up on this later, okay?"

Silvertail nodded. "I will pretend to be nothing but a pet until you say otherwise." He scrambled nimbly up Steve's pants and worn leather jacket and settled himself comfortably on Steve's shoulder.

"Hey, Emmanuel, you okay?" Steve asked.

Emmanuel sat up, shakily, looking around. Following his gaze, Steve could see that there was barely a trace of the monsters, and nothing that would draw the boy's attention. "The cats! They turned into monsters!"

Steve put his best "concerned adult" face on. "What? No, though they did puff themselves up and fight back. Scary as heck. But they're gone now."

Emmanuel was pale under his dark skin tone, and was wobbling on his feet. Steve caught him. "Hey, take it easy." Picking up the little boy, Steve could feel him shivering, and there were still many scratches and bites visible. "I've got you. It's just a little way to your house. Just relax."

Shaking, the little boy gripped Steve's arms tight as he headed out of the alley. Good that he's a skinny little thing; wouldn't want to carry someone much bigger very far.

In a few minutes he'd reached the door to the Ochoas' apartment and knocked. The door was quickly pulled open; Emmanuel's mother stepped back with her hand to her mouth, saying what Steve thought was "My God!" in Spanish. His father shoved his chair away from their dinner table and ran to join her, leaving two other boys and three girls staring with worried eyes.

"It's all right, um . . ."—he ransacked his memory, dredged the name up—"Luciana, I don't think he's been hurt too bad."

He let Luciana take the boy as Alex—short for Alejandro, if Steve remembered right—looked at both of them. "What happened, Mr. Russ?"

He'd already decided how to tell the story on the walk here. "Bunch of feral cats; never seen so many in my life. I heard him crying in the alley, ran down, and chased 'em off. They didn't want to go right away, as I guess you can see."

"Jesus." Alex frowned. "Some of those cuts are . . ."

Steve knew exactly what the other man was thinking. Animals might be rabid, certainly might cause infections, he should take the boy to the hospital, but the cost . . .

Steve sighed, dug into his pants and pulled out his wallet. "Here. I know you've got basic insurance, but the co-pay's what, a hundred for the ER?"

"A hundred and fifty."

Ugh. Well, ramen isn't that bad, I can survive on that and what Barron's Bagels will let me skeeve off them. "Here's two hundred. That should also get any meds they give him—"

"What? No, no, Steve, I can't—"

"Take it. I want the kid taken care of right, and so do you. Maybe you'll be able to pay me back someday, or just do something for someone else, okay? No big deal."

The Ochoas both tried to argue, but he refused to take no for an answer, and they did, after all, really want to have the doctors look at their son. He got out finally, evading the too-effusive thanks with an excuse that he was late for an appointment.

He looked somewhat forlornly at the McDonald's that he usually passed on the way from work. He'd been planning on treating himself to a cheap dinner, but that wasn't happening now. He muttered a small curse as he realized that he'd lost, and completely forgotten about, the small sack of bagels he'd been bringing home from work. Thinking back he now could remember the bag falling and breaking open. Total loss. "Ugh. Well, there is ramen. And maybe the gang will bring some snacks tonight."

Finally he got to his house—or rather, the house he rented an apartment from. It was a third-floor apartment, which from his point of view was pretty swanky; at least he didn't have to deal with people trampling over his head at random hours, other people had to deal with him.

Have to remember to pay Lydia the rent tomorrow. Which will leave me like thirty bucks. Ascending the stairs, he got to his apartment and shut the door behind him, locking it and putting the chain on. "All right, Silvertail," he said. "You can stop the act."

"Thank you, Stephen." Hearing the refined accent was actually something of a relief; the events of an hour past had been so bizarre that they had started to acquire a dreamlike quality. "I must say, you conducted yourself in a fashion truly worthy of a—"

"Do not go there, not yet."

"As you will." Despite the straightforward reply, Steve got the impression that Silvertail would have been grinning broadly in vindication, if rats could have grinned at all.

"Emmanuel's family never noticed you."

"No. I thought it best that I was unremarked, and I have had long practice at that over the years."

Steve busied himself with digging out some ramen; to his minor gratification, he found that there was still a bag of frozen vegetables in the freezer, so he broke that open and put some into the broth as it was cooking. "You hungry, Silvertail? And if so, what do you eat?"

"Famished, in fact; I used a considerable amount of power to heal you."

Not without a wince at the small but now significant cost, he added a second ramen packet. "Okay, I'll have food for us both in a minute."

Time to focus on this . . . ludicrous situation. I've got guests coming soon. "Now . . . I was asking about the 'practical limitations' that you mentioned?"

"The power you call 'magic,' and that we might as well keep calling that, has the ability to . . . not violate, precisely, but to trick reality, to make the laws of reality in effect look the other way, to negate reality in specific ways. But that takes energy. A great deal of energy to negate the very foundations of reality. And one rule we cannot violate is that energy cannot be created from nothing. Thus the energy to perform all magic comes from the magical being itself."

Steve untangled that after a moment. "You mean that this Princess Holy Aura burns her own mass to get the energy to do her stuff?"

"Exactly. Why do you think your depictions of magical girls tends to show many of them with astounding appetites? We've worked hard to disseminate the meme, so that it can be recognized, perhaps accepted, because support and belief are also powerful forces for magic to draw upon. But the energy itself can only be drawn from the actual body of the mahou shoujo."

Steve looked down at himself and grinned wryly. "Well, it's not like I don't have a few pounds to spare, I'll give you that. Why else?"

"Mindset. You came into that alley determined to protect others, and with the willingness to face pain and injury in combat if necessary. How many fourteen-year-old girls, or boys for that matter, as opposed to adult men, have that mindset? Oh, they can learn it, of course, just as young people of all ages have been turned into soldiers, but an adult who has developed it naturally is more stable."

"Plus, if this . . . Princess keeps even part of my knowledge, she's got a lot different perspective on the world than someone who's less than half my age."

"Correct. Yet . . . you have a certain . . . idealism, Steve, a belief in the general rightness and justice that is, or should be, in the world, and that, also, fits my needs. Am I correct?"

A part of him wanted to deny it, because it was becoming more clear that the impossible talking animal was making sense in a certain twisted way. But . . . "Yeah. I guess. I want to believe that people are good, that the world is a good place."

"And if you have a chance to make it a good place?"

"Damn you. Look, don't you see this is all kinds of wrong? If I have to be this . . . Princess Holy Aura. Well, okay. Maybe. If I just have to be her when fighting. But . . . Jesus! It's not like I have anything against girls, but this is just . . ."

"I understand your reservations, Stephen Russ. But you may have to wear that form and seek both allies and enemies, for our enemies also understand the same weapons as we."

"Why in the world did you guys choose this . . . particular shape for your superweapon?" he demanded, even as he took dinner off the stove and served it into two bowls.

"Thank you," Silvertail Heartseeker said as the bowl was placed before him. "To answer your question . . . psychological warfare," Silvertail Heartseeker said. "Firstly, such a girl will be underestimated in nearly all cultures and times. They will not be seen as the formidable force they are, and even those who should know better will subconsciously underestimate her. Secondly, that age is often a representation of innocence and purity on the edge of adulthood. She stands at the border of light and dark, of child and adult, of weakness and strength. Princess Holy Aura stands between the innocence and purity of the world and those who would corrupt it."

Steve thought about that. It made sense, again, in a strangely twisted fashion. If you accepted the existence of magic, the idea that symbolism was part of its power couldn't be dismissed. "So . . . what are our enemies, then?" There had been something almost eerily familiar about those eyeless winged . . . things, a familiarity that gave him the creeps.

Silvertail eyed him. "I think a part of you has already guessed. You recognized the nightgaunts, did you not?" At Steve's unwilling nod, he went on. "Some of your authors knew or touched upon the truth—Robert Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, among others."

"You've got to be kidding me." He suspected that this might become a catchphrase if he kept hanging around with Silvertail. "Nightgaunts? Lovecraft? Cthulhu? Wait a minute, let me see that brooch again." Silvertail proffered the jeweled item without comment. "Damn. That's an Elder Sign, isn't it?"

"The broken-pointed star, yes. Though 'broken' is not quite correct. It represents . . . but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Our adversaries are a . . . not race, but assemblage of beings, some of them unique individuals, others various species, who hail from a mystically separate reality that is, unfortunately, compatible with ours in a manner that is inimical to our survival.

"Periodically—'when the stars are right,' as your authors have put it—their agents here can begin the arrangements to open the gateway and let their ruler through; if she were to manifest completely, she would become . . . a catalyst and an anchor, transforming the Earth to something like their own world and providing an almost unbreakable beachhead for their people to enter our world with.

"They first attempted this when I was young; fortunately for our world, that was also when our ancient civilization was at its peak, and we were able to fight them off, restrain them, until at last we created our ultimate weapon."

"This Princess Holy Aura."

"And her four companions, yes."

"You mean you're going to have to find four other guys who will even consider this insanity?"

Instead of looking amused or defiant, Silvertail seemed to wilt. "If it were only so easy."

"Easy?!"

"Oh, not in the sense you mean. In that sense, yes, it would be hard enough to find men with the same basic decency and courage as yourself, let alone ones willing to risk their own personal identity in such a drastic fashion. But that is in fact an irrelevant question . . . if there is no Princess Holy Aura first. The other Apocalypse Maidens, as they are called, will not be able to be located and awakened unless Holy Aura is already there and active, if I have not already fired the opening shot, so to speak, in this era's war against darkness."

He rose on his hind legs again and proffered the brooch. "Take the Star Nebula Brooch, Stephen Russ, and become the shield of light, the vanguard of good against ancient evil. Become Mystic Galaxy Defender Princess Holy Aura, and learn the truth of your soul and the power of the innocence you have always sought."

Steve looked down and took a deep breath. Then he heard footsteps climbing the stairs. "Damn. I have other questions, a lot of other questions. But . . . I'll think about it, okay?"

Silvertail gazed at him for a long moment, then gave an audible, tiny sigh. "I suppose I can expect no more. But," he said, as a knock came at the apartment door, "the time for that decision is not unlimited. We have defeated the first scouts of the enemy; their troops will not be long in coming."

 

 

Princess Holy Aura: Chapter 1

Today I begin snippeting Princess Holy Aura. The book is due out in very early December, and the eARC usually comes out three months before that, so the snippets will probably overlap with the eARC to some extent.

Here we go!

 

 PRINCESS HOLY AURA

Part I: The Princess and the Rat

Chapter 1.

The screaming came from the alley to Steve's right; it was high-pitched, the voice of a child in terror and pain. Steve found himself sprinting down the alley before he'd even consciously realized what he was going to do. This sure wasn't what I expected after leaving work. Most days he walked home from Barron's Bagels after cleaning up and making sure the shop was set up for the morning crew, and either prepared for an evening of gaming, or just watched whatever happened to appeal to him.

It seemed that tonight wasn't going to be quite so quiet.

There were a lot of shapes moving at the end of the evening-shadowed alley, he realized as he shoved his way past a dumpster. He skidded to a halt, frozen for an instant by the macabre nature of the scene.

A little boy—Emmanuel, a boy who lived in the apartment a few doors down from his—was backed into the far corner of the dead-end alley, eyes wide with fear, face bleeding, beating at dozens of feral cats that had surrounded the kid. A large white rat—a pet?—was clinging precariously to Emmanuel's shoulder, balancing as far away from the hissing creatures as possible.

Jesus, that looks like a Halloween diorama. Steve knew that feral cats could be dangerous in packs, but he'd never seen such a mob around here; one or two, yeah, but nothing like this. Still, it was one thing to attack a little kid, another to deal with a full-grown man. Steve didn't like fighting, but he'd found that being six foot three and slightly over three hundred pounds with a good deal of muscle could convince most things to not even try.

"HEY!" he bellowed. "SCAT! Get out of here!" He grabbed up a two-by-four from the ground and whacked one of the animals aside. "Go on, get!"

All of the cats turned their heads to look at him, an eerily synchronized action that sent gooseflesh rising in chilling waves across his body. Their eyes glinted a uniform green that seemed, impossibly, to be brighter than the light in the alley, almost as though they really were glowing. As one, the entire pack hissed venomously at him and then turned back to their prey.

What the hell? Steve was taken momentarily aback. Even the one he'd struck was returning to the attack, leaping up a set of crates for a better position. He'd expected the animals to scatter, at least, and really he'd pretty much expected them to run; now that he had a better look, there were only about a dozen of the animals, which meant that he still outweighed all of them put together by more than three to one, maybe four to one. But as Emmanuel threw a panic-stricken gaze toward him, Steve adjusted his grip on the board and struck hard. "I said SCAT!"

He connected well and truly this time, sending the animal flipping end over end across the alley, caught another on the backswing, and bored in to start flinging the creatures aside and get to the boy.

The hisses suddenly took on a furious screeching note, and then they deepened.

Steve fell back, horrified, as the furry little animals swelled to twice their prior size, eyes shrinking to nothing but faint ridges on a black, flat head with a mouth filled with ebony needle-teeth, body distorting to something semi-bipedal, wrinkled batlike wings extending from the shoulders. Blind the things might have been, but they still all faced Steve now, and he had no doubt they could sense him.

His stomach churned with fear, his knees shook, and he wanted to run. But there was a little boy in there, in among those monsters, and a tiny furry creature desperately trying to find shelter, and he was not going to leave them.

On the positive side . . . the monsters were now all focused on him.

One of them lunged, catching the board and ripping it out of his hands with terrifying strength; two more grabbed the board and broke it apart. Holy crap, they're strong as hell! I need something tougher!

He saw it almost instantly: a lovely thick steel pipe, probably torn out of some nearby house, leaning against the wall just past one of the things. Got to try.

As the creatures started to slowly encircle him, he jumped forward—with a speed that had surprised a lot of people, thinking that his bulk was mostly fat and not merely an overlay of fat on heavy muscle. He raised his iron-toed workboot and stomped as hard as he could on the one in front of him; something crunched and he heard a pained shriek, a quick scuttling to get away that gratified him. Whatever they are, they can feel pain. He hadn't been sure until now.

Something leapt onto him from behind, sinking what felt like a hundred burning needles into his shoulder and back, narrowly missing his spine. He cried out but finished the charge, caught up the pipe, and then spun around without slowing; his attacker absorbed the impact of his entire weight against the brick wall.

Two more flew at him—literally, flapping those leathery wings swiftly and powerfully to propel themselves through the air. Steve swung the pipe around like a baseball bat and a double impact shuddered down the steel shaft; the two monsters were sent smashing into the far wall.

But now the others, clearly realizing that Steve was a far more formidable opponent than they had taken him for, attacked in earnest. Teeth and claws slashed at his legs, two of them lunged for his arms and gripped, pulling, trying to disarm him, take him down to the ground where he would be dead in a moment.

Steve heard his own scream of pain and fear and it galvanized him; he shoved himself up against the tearing, wriggling mass and forced his body into another charge, ramming into the steel dumpster a little ways up the alley, bouncing back and forth between the walls, using his mass and strength and the hard city itself as a weapon to stun or crush his opponents. He spun the steel pipe around, brought it down in a piledriver blow that impaled one of the night-black monsters completely through, tore another from his arm and hurled it into the wall, hammered his fist into another yawning needle-filled mouth—feeling skin tear and rip—and then spun about like a top, hurling the stunned and disoriented things away.

The steel shaft felt right somehow, balanced in a good way like a fine quarterstaff, and its extra weight was comforting, helping firm his resolve and courage against these living nightmares. A lot of them were down now, but there were still more, six of them, and they were stalking, coordinating—remember they can fly—two of them gone, flanking him in the air, the other four trying to hem him in!

The four in the clear space ahead gave him an idea; instead of retreating, he dove at them, dropping his weight on two of them, a falling anvil, then rolling to his feet before the others quite caught him. The steel pipe whipped around as he rose, and he nailed one of the flying ones, the heavy strike sending it sailing thirty feet almost straight up before plummeting back down to land, limply, on the filthy ground. Steve ignored the aching agony in his arms and back and set the steel staff to whirling up, down, right, left, smashing at anything and everything that moved, the slightest sign of beetle-black motion drawing his wrath and the hard, cold vengeance of steel.

Suddenly it was still in the alley; nothing moved but Steve and his shaking, bleeding arms. He looked around, wary, fearful, but no attack came. Everywhere he looked, there were twisted, monstrous bodies . . . but there was not a hint of motion from any of them.

Emmanuel had fallen to the ground, and for a moment Steve had the horrific thought that one of the monsters had killed the boy while Steve was fighting them. But after checking his pulse, Steve decided Emmanuel had just passed out from shock and fear. No wonder; wouldn't be surprised if I do, myself.

But the thought of being unconscious in an alley with those monsters—some of whom might not be quite dead—kept him quite focused on staying alert.

From behind Emmanuel crawled what Steve could now definitely see was a large white rat, fur gleaming slivery in the dim glow from distant streetlamps and the skyglow overhead. Oddly, it was wearing a tiny crown of some sort. Kids do put all sorts of strange things on their pets, that's for sure.

The animal sniffed at Emmanuel, then stood up on its hind legs, surveying the area, sniffing at Steve and the air around. Steve, who had had a pet rat himself some years back, gave an exhausted grin. "'Sokay, fella. I think I got them all."

"That you did," the rat said, with a dignified almost English accent. "Well done, Mr. . . . ?"

Steve blinked, then shook his head. "What the . . . did you just talk?"

"I did. Perhaps it would be better if I introduced myself first, and then you can provide me with your name. I am Silvertail Heartseeker. And you are . . . ?"

Am I nuts now? Did I just snap from boredom or whatever and imagine I was fighting monsters instead of cats? Talking rats? What the hell, Steve? You write better RPG scenarios than this!

He decided, after a split second, that if he wasn't going to assume insanity, then dream was the more likely explanation, and therefore, being rude to the talking rat—Silvertail Heartseeker—was pointless. "Um, I'm Stephen. Stephen Russ."

He tried to stand, found that it was really hard; screaming pain from uncountable lacerations echoed through him. I've never hurt like that in a dream. Tiny pains, referred pain from something that happened during the day, but nothing like that. It's clear pain. Not muffled, not dreamed . . .

". . . is this real?"

Silvertail Heartseeker nodded in a satisfied way. "The natural question, of course. Yes, Stephen Russ, I am afraid this is all too real. You answered calls of the innocent and helpless and risked your life to protect young Emmanuel from things far worse than you imagined existed. For that, I must first thank you. Many there are in the world who would have ignored those cries, and far more who would have fled when mundanity turned monstrous before their eyes."

Silvertail bounced up and laid a pink paw on Steve's hand.

Instantly a white shimmer of light flowed out from the tiny hand-shaped paw, light that was cool and soothing and that surged outward through Steve's body. He saw the narrow rodent face wrinkle in concentration, the whiskers quiver, as the light erased pain, eased tension. Silvertail sagged down, looking as though he had just spent an hour running on an exercise wheel.

Steve flexed his muscles experimentally. There was still pain, but it felt superficial—more like the cat scratches he'd initially expected, not the deep, possibly dangerous wounds the monsters had left. "Wow. Um, thanks."

"On the contrary, as I said, I thank you. I could not cure all of your injuries, but you will suffer no lasting ill effects from this battle." He glanced at the boy. "Emmanuel will also recover, though he should receive appropriate mundane care shortly."

He drew himself to his full height—which, standing, was probably all of eight or nine inches—and bowed. "I must formally greet you, who have passed a test that few in your world would have passed—a test of empathy, a test of attention, a test of reaction, a test of courage, a test of endurance, all compressed into this single battle. You are the one, the Heart I have been Seeking."

Steve felt a chill of awe and anticipation, sensing that the tiny figure before him was far, far more than it appeared, and that it was speaking a ritual, a destiny, not merely ordinary words.

From apparently nowhere, Silvertail Heartseeker produced a glittering brooch, three inches across, of gold and silvery metal, covered with an elaborate pattern in gems. Even to Steve's untutored eye, it was exquisitely made, the main body in the shape of a strangely broken-pointed star with a jeweled galaxy across it. Silvertail lifted the brooch in both tiny hands and said solemnly,

"Stephen Russ, you are the Heart that was Sought, the Courage that is needed, the Will that is eternal. It is for you, and you alone, to take up this burden and defend the world against the darkness that now rises to swallow the light. Take you up the Star Nebula Brooch, and become that which is your destiny. Take it, and become your true self—Mystic Galaxy Defender, Princess Holy Aura!"

 

 

On My Shelves: Spider-Man: Homecoming

This movie (plus small segments in Captain America: Civil War) represents the third depiction of Marvel's flagship hero Spider-Man in fifteen years. The first, starting in 2002, was Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3. Andrew Garfield rebooted the role in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Now Tom Holland takes up the webslinging role.

Unlike the prior two incarnations, this version of Spider-Man doesn't bother us with the origin story. In that, I think the movie does depend on the viewer having watched either or both of the prior incarnations' first movies, or being familiar with the character from the comic book medium.

I suspect this is just fine with most viewers; the basic elements of that origin – bitten by a radioactive/genetically tweaked spider, gains funky powers, tries to use them for profit, lets crook go that later kills Uncle Ben and causes Spider-Man to learn the lesson that with great power comes great responsibility – are very well-known and we really don't need to see a variant of it a third time.

Instead, we meet a Spider-Man who is already doing his hero thing, but still obviously very new to it – he still has a rather clumsily-assembled costume, not the sleek costume we expect, and he makes occasional blunders that a more experienced webslinger wouldn't. But this allows us to see him grow into the role of the hero in a way that a slicker presentation wouldn't.

Before I get to a more spoilery review section, I'll just say that this is really a worthy entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Spidey, and while I am not entirely sure I'd say it's better than ALL of the preceding Spider-Man movies, it's certainly at least as good as any of them. It has humor, suspense, a little romance, and the occasional bout of angst that Spider-Man is known for, and all in the proper measure. Tom Holland does both Peter Parker and a young, unsure Spider-Man very well, and I look forward to the character's continuing presence in the Marvelverse!

 

ON

 

TO

 

THE

 

SPOILERS!

 

The choice of The Vulture as a villain was an interesting one, and one of some risk for the filmmakers in two separate ways. First, the original Vulture … simply would not work in film. I'm sorry, but the dramatic potential of a skinny octagenarian in green spandex, a fur collar, and flapping wings just... isn't going to cut it. If anything it'd be worse than trying to do the Green Goblin with his original costume, which would never have worked either. So on that side it was obvious that they'd have to risk annoying some group of fans who really do care about versimilitude, and the more changes they made, the larger that group would be.

At the same time, they were also choosing a more obscure villain than any of the prior films. The Green Goblin's always been a headliner, the Lizard's done pretty well over the years, Doc Ock has had top billing many a time, Venom's my least-liked but undoubtedly majorly popular villain, and even the Sandman has gone beyond the pages of Spider-Man. By contrast, the Vulture's innings were mostly done many years ago.

So the producers obviously said "well, then, let's just take the name and some elements of the story, and make a Vulture that will stand on his own as a villain."

This was the right choice. This Adrian Toomes/The Vulture is a man who starts out as a salvage engineer with what looks like the greatest contract a salvage and recovery man could ever ask for – salvaging and rebuilding New York City after the Chitauri Invasion.

But then the new-born Department of Damage Control – with backing from Tony Stark – takes charge of the damage recovery business, and Toomes is out – despite the immense investment he's poured into his business to make it capable of handling this scale of disaster.

Faced with utterly arbitrary and unexpected disaster, with no chance to appeal in the face of government requirements for security, Toomes nearly despairs… but finds salvation in salvage. A truckload of alien wreckage had already been delivered to one of his sites and was missed by DoDC.

With his family and employees at stake, Toomes takes the chance this offers, and becomes a weapons and equipment designer for the underworld, using the first products of his inventive group to "acquire" additional salvage from the vast mass of materiel being recovered from the battle zone.

This is a very worthy origin. This Toomes is a younger man, with a wife and family that he's absolutely devoted to, and he is utterly screwed over by the government and, indirectly, Stark and the Avengers. He has reason to be paranoid, bitter, and willing to commit violence to hide what he's been doing, and as we see later, he's a highly competent man in multiple fields.

Not only does Tom Holland play an excellent Peter Parker, but also the entire cast for Parker's high school class is wonderful. I've heard complaints about the casting selections, and if I were a total grognard I guess I'd see it – I mean, for instance, Flash Thompson is supposed to be the tall handsome blond Varsity dude, and so on – but honestly, the whole cast works better as a class in a New York City high school. Prior incarnations were awfully white-bread in their looks, and really, that makes NO SENSE in New York City, especially today.

Tony Stark's occasional appearances are really well done, and while often Peter's being chastised during them, it becomes obvious that Tony really does care about this kid. Tony Stark is a total ass… but he knows he's an ass, and would rather not have kids emulate him all the time. He's clearly worried about Peter. He's furious at Peter – in a very father-like way – when Peter really, really screws things up. And by the end, he's just damn proud of Peter.

Stark is also the reason that Peter gets (and later loses, and regains) his top-notch Spider-Suit, and this makes a hell of a lot of sense. I mean, honestly, I know that Peter Parker's supposed to be a genius, and he gets all these Spider-powers, but really, I've SEEN what smart guys building prototype devices make, and artists they ain't. Of all the things Peter Parker did in the comics and earlier movies, making that cool, well-tailored, perfectly-fitting, tough-enough-to-take-into-combat costume may have been the hardest to believe of all. This takes away that minor but nagging problem; we know Stark can do exactly that, and tailor it to the needs of the wearer.

The best scenes, though, are the personal ones: Peter and Ned Leeds, his best friend, geeking out over everything from Lego Death Star to the hidden gadgetry in the Spider-Suit; Peter finally getting the courage to mention how attracted his is to his classmate Liz; Ned, cornered by a teacher at night in the computer lab, giving the only possible convincing excuse.

But the best of all is taking that young man's nightmare, "Meeting Her Dad Before The First Date", and ramping it Up To Eleven… as Liz' last name is Toomes. Peter comes face-to-face with the supervillain he's been trying to track down, and he's the cheerful-but-dangerous looking dad of his dream date. It's hysterical and tense all at once.

The entire movie is filled with references to the comics; the writers clearly understood what they were working with, and they drop little Easter Eggs everywhere for people watching carefully. One that's fairly obvious to fans of the comics, especially the older ones, is the scene in which Peter gets trapped under a mass of debris; it's clearly filmed to echo one of the most dramatic moments in the comics, in which Spider-Man is trapped by Doctor Octopus beneath a huge machine.

Overall, this was an excellent movie, with well-drawn characters, a carefully-thought-out plot, and wonderfully executed action. I look forward to Spider-Man's continuing presence in the Marvelverse!

On My Shelves: The Delirium Brief

In the prior Laundry Files novel, The Nightmare Stacks, the UK was invaded by a desperate army of super-Nazi magic-wielding Elves. Fortunately, the army was defeated when the innocent young vampire (er, sorry, PHANG) agent captured the heart of the Elven Princess and the two of them defeated her Evil Stepmother and Evil Overlord Father, thus making her the All-Highest.

Of course, all this troperiffic goodness was filtered through the twisted nature of the Laundryverse, but still, it was surprisingly upbeat; eldritch horrors notwithstanding, it ended with love conquering all, at least for a moment.

Unfortunately that moment is past, and Bob Howard's back. Specifically, he's back in the position of his former boss, James Angleton, a DSS (officially Detached Special Secretary, more realistically Deeply Scary Sorcerer) known also as the Eater of Souls. Bob's inherited the power and nature of the Eater of Souls, which while a very useful thing to have if you're surrounded by other eldritch horrors out to eat your soul is not conducive to making your wife feel safe to sleep in the same room, or even building, with you.

Bob's been chosen to be the "face" for the Laundry in the aftermath of the Elven Nazi Invasion because he actually wasn't present for it. Thus, he is "clean" – they can't hang any of the blame for the event on him. So Mhari (his not-quite-so-psycho ex and now a major player in the Laundry) is set to put him on camera on the most-watched news program in the UK, to be interviewed by Jeremy Paxo, a hard-hitting and ratings-hungry news personality.

Right away alarm bells start ringing in Bob's head. Jeremy's wearing a ward, a very high-powered ward indeed, and a civilian like him shouldn't have one. Moreover, the questions he asks soon show that he has information that was supposed to be secret – information he's now broadcasting to the world, such as the fact that the All-Highest has requested asylum for herself and her people.

Something's rotten in the state of the UK, and someone's playing games in the Laundry's own bailiwick.

And things are about to get so very much worse. As readers, the first hint of how much worse we get is a briefing where it's mentioned that the Laundry has a plan called PLAN TITANIC, with all that implies… and then we see that Reverend Schiller is arriving in London.

Yes, THAT Reverend Schiller, the main antagonist of The Apocalypse Codex, a follower of the Lovecraftian monstrosity called The Sleeper in the Pyramid who uses a twisted televangelist version of Christianity plus a truly horrific mind-control parasite infection to build a cult to serve him in bringing the Sleeper's reign to the world. Bob Howard, along with BASHFUL INCENDIARY and JOHNNY PRINCE, had stopped his attempt to take over the United States and the world previously, and Schiller was thought to be dead.

He got better, apparently. And this is only the beginning.

 

MORE SPOILERS TO COME…

 

Wait

 

 

For

 

 

It…

 

 

Schiller and his allies have already initiated their plans to start corporate "outsourcing" hostile takeovers of other paranormal-wise agencies in the U.S., and are bringing this plan to the UK – immediately in the wake of the invasion disaster which has made the Laundry look both unprepared and ineffective.

It doesn't take long for the government to dissolve the Laundry as currently constituted, paving the way for a privately-contracted replacement – which Schiller intends to provide.

The government does not quite grasp what kind of a disaster they are setting in motion. The Laundry's operations have depended on magically-enforced oaths of office and other geases that all are linked to their official nature as agents of the Crown. By dissolving the department, they break the oaths. Not only do the tools of the typical Laundry agent (such as their "warrant cards" that can appear as any appropriate identification) stop working, but all the gray and black ops assets are suddenly cut off, and some of their controls and seals weakened.

The UK is now nearly defenseless against supernatural threats… and one of the largest threats is already there.

Once the disaster ball starts rolling, The Delirium Brief kicks into high gear as all the members of the Laundry scramble to keep ahead of those who intend to arrest them – or worse. The last-ditch "lifeboat" plan does allow them to re-activate a core of Laundry personnel and resources, but only a small one, dependent on using methods and materiel that they've managed to keep hidden from the authorities.

But as Schiller's plans gain momentum and his influence increases, it becomes terrifyingly clear that there may be no simple way to stop him. They may have to make a deal with another devil in order to stop the Sleeper from becoming manifest on Earth.

This book is a whipsaw after the prior novel. With CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN in full swing, the Laundry's collapse and Schiller's reappearance are a double gut-punch of "oh, shit" for anyone who's followed the series, and the desperate scramble for everyone trying to find a way to survive and recover at least some of the pieces is heart-wrenching. Bob and Mo manage to try to patch up some of their problems, but by the end of The Delirium Brief it's not clear that there is a way to patch it up, because of the bargain that has had to be struck in order to prevent the Sleeper from gaining parasitic dominion over the Earth.

The problem is that if you make a bargain with an eldritch horror that's powerful enough to make the Sleeper back off… how are you going to keep that eldritch horror from conquering the world in its stead?

Admittedly, things are not entirely hopeless. For one thing, there's still Bob Howard. If there's anything we've learned from following Bob's adventures, it's this: Bob constantly underestimates himself, and then plays down his abilities and knowledge even when he, personally, isn't underestimating them. It may be that even the Lovecraftian being they've called upon to protect them might not be able to laugh off the Eater of Souls… especially if said Eater of Souls thinks that Dominique O'Brien is in danger.

And there is still Mo herself; we don't know exactly what Mo can do now, but it seems highly doubtful she is entirely human any more, despite the loss of her combat violin. There are still the superheroes out there. And Mhari, who is not a little badass herself (and boy, does SHE get a moment of awesome in this one!). BASHFUL INCENDIARY and JOHNNY PRINCE aren't out of the picture. And, not least, there is still Alex and Cassie the All-Highest.

But boy, that ending does make you worry about just how far down into the DARK we are going.

I await the next with eagerness… and trepidation.

 

On My Shelves: Tom Derringer in the Tunnels of Terror

Lawrence Watt-Evans has been one of my favorite authors for years, and I've liked many of his books. I've previously reviewed his first entry in the Tom Derringer series; it's good to finally see the next of Tom's adventures.

 

The Tom Derringer series takes place in a world superficially like our own in the late 1800s – but one in which "Adventurers" of the pulp sort are a real thing, where there are mysterious cities of gold, ancient cursed temples, hidden worlds of unknown races of men, and so on. Tom himself is the son of a famous Adventurer, who decided to take up the same profession. Still a teenager, Tom is nonetheless well trained, highly educated, and despite a large helping of naïveté, is competent and usually level-headed.

Fresh from his adventures in Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship, where he and his unexpected companion Betsy Vanderhart managed to thwart the plans of Hezekiah McKee to use the eponymous airship to conquer Mexico and, perhaps, the world, Tom finds himself with a strange, lingering question: why did McKee think that Tom had been sent by a man named Gabriel Trask?

Research in the archives of Adventurer's lore reveals that Trask is barely mentioned, and then in context as the possible spymaster for Emperor Norton. This makes no sense at all, since "Emperor Norton" was, as far as Tom or anyone else knows, merely a gentle madman who claimed rulership over California and the United States, and whose reign was tolerated with amusement by those who knew him. Such a man – who died in poverty – couldn't have had a spymaster. What use would Norton have had for such a person, and how could he have paid anyone?

 

This doesn't answer the question as to why someone as dangerous and formidable as McKee would have thought Trask capable of sending anyone after him. While Tom contemplates whether he should pursue the mystery farther, and if so, how, a new complication arrives: Betsy Vanderhart.

This is doubly a surprise – first, because Betsy had not responded to many letters Tom sent her following his return, and secondly because it is of course utterly unheard-of for a young lady to call on a young man's house without warning!

Betsy has a problem. After recounting her adventures to her family, her mother was horrified to discover that Betsy had been the one to send "Reverend" McKee to meet his maker, and has determined to keep Betsy at home until she "repents". Betsy has no desire to be kept penned up, and this is only reinforced by the discovery that her mother has been keeping Tom's letters from reaching her.

Still, she can hardly stay at Tom's house (no matter how much room there may be) without causing utter scandal, and similar rumors would attach to her taking up rooms nearby without parent or chaperone.

Tom's mother – wife of an Adventurer, and an Adventurer herself – points out that there is one possible solution: if Tom is out on an Adventure, she can accompany him without nearly so much potential for scandal, as she would then be an Adventurer herself…

 

I really adore these books. Tom's calm, matter-of-fact narration is a marvelous distillation of the voice common to many stories of the period, with just enough modernization to help it flow more smoothly. Tom's slowly learning the practical side of Adventuring, and doing so by making mistakes that he then has to address. Nonetheless, he is an amazingly competent and level-headed young man under most circumstances, which shows why he is suited for this sort of lifestyle.

Betsy claims to not want to be an Adventurer, but she makes an excellent one in her own right. In fact, it often seems to me that the book is more "Betsy Vanderhart, Reluctant Adventurer" despite the fact that Tom is the narrator. Betsy commonly solves the problems they encounter, or points out the flaws in Tom's approach to things. Betsy has a familiarity with machines as an engineer that got them out of scrapes in Aluminum Airship, and does so again in Tunnels of Terror.

This adventure is of a flavor familiar to many readers of old pulp fiction – in which Our Heroes discover some hidden group or civilization that, while not inherently hostile to the adventurers, has reason to be wary of or even hate the outside world and thus will not allow them to leave. Naturally we learn much about said civilization, but always with the knowledge that our heroes must find some way to escape… one which will require some shocking event to make possible.

Tom Derringer in the Tunnels of Terror is written for a younger audience, but I didn't find this to make it less enjoyable; it just means I can let my kids read it without concern. I hope that these books do well enough that Lawrence Watt-Evans will continue to write them, because I will keep buying them if he does!

 

On My Shelves: The Nightmare Stacks

 

Alex Schwartz used to be a programmer for an investment banking group, basically dedicated to finding new, more effective, more profitable, ways to analyze financial data and guide investments. His was a six-figure salary, the vision of ever-increasing bonuses, and a life mostly constrained by in-house geekery and a lot of pressure.

Then he programmed something a little too elegant and complex, and summoned something from the mathematical beyond that lurks just beyond the edge of everyone's normal reach in the Laundryverse. That "something" came to be called the V-parasites, and having them inhabit his body – and shortly after that of his whole little group in the bank – made them into what the Laundry code-named PHANGs, with an acronym whose direct translation varies but whose meaning never does: vampire.

Unfortunately, being a Laundryverse vampire doesn't mean getting fine evening wear, hot dates with bared necks, and all the other supernatural perks for free. A PHANG needs to feed on living beings – because their symbiotic V-parasites need to eat. Unfortunately, such feeding is almost inevitably fatal to the target (barring them having some sort of protection from brain eaters), so a Laundryverse vampire is an obligate killer. The V-parasites do provide many benefits, of course, including the ablity to perform mathematical summoning and other work (read: sorcery) without the risk that ordinary humans have of ending up summoning "eaters" that will munch out their gray matter, but that little catch of having to be a killer really makes it much less fun, if you have any pretense towards being a good guy.

And Alex really is a good guy. He doesn't want to hurt people. So now he works for the Laundry, having survived a real disaster when two elder vampires settled a long-standing feud in a way that nearly wrecked the Laundry and did kill the terrifying James Angleton, AKA The Eater of Souls.

Unfortunately, the Laundry may have offered a (creepy but morally at least contemplatable) source of blood, but they also offer a much lower salary, with no bonuses in sight, and the constant possibility of confronting hideous incomprehensible monstrosities as the world careens farther into CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.

And now they want to assign him to Leeds. Which means he won't be able to avoid his family much longer, and how is he going to explain his sudden career shift… and his failure to even look for a suitable date?

 

Meanwhile, on a different world, The People are dying. The Dead Gods ravage their world and all their magic has not sufficed to drive their enemies back. Their only hope is to find another world, a safe world, where they can live, rebuild, perhaps one day return from in force. The All-Highest of the People directs such a world be found, and a candidate has. So Agent First of Spies and Liars is sent forth down the paths between worlds, to investigate what lies beyond and prepare the way for a desperate conquest.

And, at the same time, Agent First has to figure out how to do this without being framed and murdered herself, as she is the target of First Wife of All-Highest. If Agent First cannot get her own power-base – and avoid offending All-Highest her father – she may find herself wishing she'd died on her mission.

With this book, Charlie Stross puts the Laundry Files firmly into new point-of-view hands and gives Mo and Howard a rest, while keeping the eldritch horrors coming. Alex is in some ways a very refreshing change. He's even younger and more clueless, far less cynical even than our earliest contact with Bob. He's the closest to an ordinary person protagonist we've seen, and his view of the chaos and confusion of the Laundry in the aftermath of the loss of Angleton gives us a new perspective in just how much damage was done by that event, and the parallel and subsequent events of The Annihilation Score – even though Alex knows very, very little of either.

Despite all the gloom-and-doom inherent in the Laundryverse, however, this may well be the most positive of all the novels yet!

 

SPOILERS ABOUND

 

WARNING

 

WARNING

 

WARNING

 

GO!

 

In several of the prior novels, Charlie Stross was playing with different spy novel themes. In this one, he's going in a completely different direction – a very tropey direction indeed. The main plot is, literally, setting up an invasion by an army of magic-wielding elves on unicorns, led by an Elven Princess in Danger from her Evil Stepmother and Uncaring Father. The Elven Princess will have a Meet-Cute with the Innocent Young Hero of Untapped Power, and become his Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

This being the LAUNDRYVERSE, of course, all that is viewed through a Lovecraftian lens. The Elves are super-Nazi blood-bonded fanatics with a magically-enforced loyalty structure that makes the most devoted followers of humanity look lackadaisical. Their "unicorns" are flesh-eating monstrosities able to take on cars or trucks one-on-one. The Elven Princess is a murderous mind-stealing assassin who becomes the manic pixie dream girl because she absorbed wayyyy too much of the mind of Cassie Brewer, the girl she targeted as a source of information. And the elven army has alien dragons, giant basilisks, and an entire corps of ancient vampiric sorcerers…

With all this, it's still… a very positive book for a Laundry novel. Alex maintains his basic good outlook and tries to see the best in people. Cassie-the-First-of-Spies realizes how much better it could be to live like human beings, with the ability to make choices outside of magically-enforced obligation. Oh, the Laundry has its own plans to make use of the situation – they suspect more than Alex can imagine – but in the end how things work out really isn't in the Laundry's hands.

It's in the hands of a romantic, love-struck vampire and a renegade Elven princess.

The denouement is as fast-paced, lethal, and shocking as you might expect in the Laundryverse, and the matchup between the ancient, magical might of the All-Highest and his people and the high technology (with a bit of magical aid) of Earth is a devastating one indeed, frightening both sides with its shattering power and hellish potential for losses. Alex and Cassie have to find a way to put an end to the conflict… while satisfying the unbreakable geas on Cassie-First-of-Spies to obey and serve the All-Highest, who has no interest in co-existence with any such lower creatures…

I really enjoyed this one. I've enjoyed all the Laundry novels, and I love Bob and Mo, but I think this one was the most fun of all the series, and boy, is that going to be an important thought to take with us as we journey into the realm of The Delirium Brief…

 

 

Just For Fun: Here’s the detailed drawing…

... of the image partially seen on the cover of Princess Holy Aura! Original by Morinekozion, of course!

 

Head-and-shoulders pic of Holy Aura for use on cover

On My Shelves: Dragonball Super

I have previously reviewed Dragonball and Dragonball Z (http://grandcentralarena.com/on-my-shelves-dragonballdragonball-z/), which in a nutshell I described as "the Skylark series of anime and manga. It has much of the same cheerful, full-speed-ahead energy, the same innocence of the protagonists, the same fairly simple, blunt-instrument approach to moral problems… and the same incredibly-escalating powerscale. It may not be the BEST of its kind, and perhaps many of the pieces were there beforehand, but it was the one that put them all together first. This is a series in which the battles start out being fought on a hand-to-hand level that looks like a Jackie Chan film – in other words, just a little beyond what real humans can do – and ends with a fight against a being who destroys solar systems as casually as a human being might step on ants."

Having started in the 1980s, Dragonball influenced many anime and manga over the years, and – as with Saint Seiya – many of the things it inspired took the lessons it taught and built much better on them. The most popular and overall well-done follow-ons are Naruto and One Piece, both of whose creators explicitly acknowledge Dragonball as one of their primary inspirations, and both of which surpass their predecessor in their complexity, emotional depth, and character arcs.

Bandai itself tried to continue Dragonball without its creator, Akira Toriyama, and produced Dragonball Grand Tour (GT). Some people liked it, but to me it was a terrible continuation, ruining much of the work that had been done to that point with things ranging from simply stupid design choices to having the "Goldfish Poop Gang" (see TVTropes) of Pilaf, Mai, and Shu manage to somehow secretly gain access to Kami-Sama's home (see that name? It means GOD), without even Kami-Sama's ridiculously omnicompetent butler/major-domo Mr. Popo sensing them, and unleashing a dark version of Shen-Long. And then messing up their planned wish AGAIN, just like they had before. The series went, in my view, downhill from there.

With this as a preamble, one can understand, therefore, that I was at best extremely wary and at worst utterly cynical when I heard that a new Dragonball series, Dragonball Super, was going to begin. There was one, and only one, fact that made me consider that it might possibly be watchable: apparently Akira Toriyama himself was going to be running it.

And by Kami-Sama, I was pleasantly surprised.

Dragonball Super is a fully worthy follow-on series to the original, and is overall superior, in fact, to most of its predecessor. It is not, of course, going to reach the same level of complexity and character that Naruto or One Piece do (the latter, of course, has had 800 episodes to work on it!), but in a way, it doesn't need to. The world of Dragonball is already firmly established, as are the major characters, and all that Toriyama could reasonably do would be to try to make the best use he can of those materials while trying to tell a better story.

 

That is precisely what he does.

 

Dragonball Super starts out after the end of the Majin Buu arc which ended Dragonball Z, ignoring entirely the events of DBGT. Goku's actually working for a living (as a farmer), and most of the other cast have got some kind of job; Kuririn, for instance, becomes a policeman. Some of them have continued training, while others haven't (Gohan's got a steady office job, which kinda cuts down on the physical labor), but there haven't been any threats for a while.

The series then integrates the basic concepts from two standalone Dragonball movies (Battle of the Gods and Return of Freezer) into the timeline, introducing the God of Destruction Beerus and his major-domo and trainer Whis. While these sequences, and the following God Tournament arc, are in their essence standard Dragonball fare (big enemy appears, characters have to find power to fight them, and the Superpower Tournament which has been a staple of Dragonball), Toriyama adds some new touches that improve drastically on the prior seasons of Dragonball Z.

Perhaps the most gratifying of these is letting the other, non-Saiyajin characters get moments in the sun. When Freezer's reassembled army comes to earth, the army gets humiliated by Kuririn, Piccolo, and even Kame-Senin, who had been relegated to comic relief many, many seasons before. Here, he's allowed to demonstrate the fact that old masters of martial arts are old for a REASON. They've taught you everything you know… but maybe not everything they know.

Another wrinkle is Beerus himself. Beerus is very catlike in his behavior and somewhat in appearance (which is emphasized by his faux-Egyptian garb), and so seems utterly self-centered and as potentially nasty an adversary as any prior enemy of the Z-Team. But ultimately Beerus heavily subverts the usual Villain Arc: he is not outpowered by Goku – at best, he's temporarily matched – and he departs Earth not by being bested, but by deciding on his own that he's been rewarded enough by the contest (and the food of Earth) to make it worth sparing the planet. And he does so in a way that neither makes him an offical ally of Goku, nor an enemy.

This allows Vegita to eventually start training with Whis, and when the conflict with Freezer finally occurs, it ends up being Goku who's taken down first (by treachery, naturally – Freezer hasn't changed his tune any), and Vegita who finishes off the resurrected monster. Okay, it was still one of the Saiyajin Brigade, but for once it wasn't Goku taking the last bows, and Vegita finally getting that moment in the sun.

The tournament itself also allows the other characters some cool moments, as well as continuing the necessary Doc Smithian power escalation… and introduces the myriad of gods and beings from other universes. Which eventually leads to the most awesome of the story arcs in Dragonball Super, when Future Trunks returns and the Z-Team ends up facing a literal mad god, Zamasu, who wants to eradicate all of humanity… which he basically defines as "any even vaguely humanoid species that isn't actually a god".

This is a truly emotional story arc that focuses on Future Trunks, his devastated future world, and his search for hope, for a chance for the people on that world to find a way to a better life, and how even their meager existence is threatened by Zamasu's insane quest. It's also a story in which Trunks gets a moment of total awesome that is in some ways the absolute peak of the series.

I haven't watched much past this, but it looks like they're doing some more new wrinkles in the old tournament formula (including what appears to be someone plotting to use the tournament from behind the scenes), and re-introducing characters we never saw much of, including Android 17.

 

I may actually watch more of this, when I'd thought my Dragonball days were long over!

 

On My Shelves: The Annihilation Score

Dominique "Mo" O'Brien is a combat epistemologist, expert violinist, and field agent for The Laundry, the same ultra-top-secret bureaucracy that Bob Howard works for. In fact, Mo is married to Bob. Their marriage has had… stresses on it.

And this being the Laundryverse, things are about to get worse.

All Mo has to deal with is her eldritch violin trying to either seduce her or control her (it's hard to say which), being suddenly assigned to run a brand-new division of law enforcement, having to work with Bob's fearsome ex Mhari, the sudden outbreak of superheroes (and villains) popping up everywhere, the disaster at the Laundry we saw in The Rhesus Chart, and her and Bob's fragmented and desperate attempts to save their marriage… even as she finds herself in close contact with a charming, witty, heroic man who is clearly attracted to her…

This episode of the Laundry Files puts Mo front-and-center. While The Rhesus Chart featured young Alex' point of view, and there were a few interludes of Mo's point of view in The Jennifer Morgue, this is the first Laundry novel told entirely without Bob's point of view, and it gives us a different perspective not just on Mo, but on Bob and some of the other characters we've previously only seen through Bob's eyes. For a book that actually spends a lot of time with people talking in rooms, The Annihilation Score moves pretty darn fast towards its conclusion. This is probably due to the fact that it pretty much addresses all of the problems listed above in ONE book, which is just about as jam-packed as you want a book to be.

This is of course reflected in Mo's own overworked self; there is scarcely a chance for her to catch her breath even when she desperately needs it. Naturally, there is much, much more going on than even Mo suspects, and some of the forces operating around her are hoping very much that this will cause her to slip up at just the right time…

 

SPOILERS FOLLOW

 

And

 

Here

 

We

 

Go!

 

Domestically, poor Mo and Bob are kinda screwed, and definitely not in the good way. First she comes home after an emergency recall message (the same Code Red that ends The Rhesus Chart) to find Mhari (Bob's now-vampire ex) sleeping in their living room. Exhausted and on edge, she jumps to what is, admittedly, a perfectly justifiable conclusion. Unfortunately, as said conclusion comes with anger, loss, betrayal, and out-and-out rage, this is the kind of thing you don't want to have happen when the person in question is carrying an eldritch monster in the shape of a violin around with them.

"Lecter" – Mo's nickname for the White Violin – almost causes Mo to kill Mhari and Bob; he would have killed them, if Bob hadn't ordered him to stop in a language and tone of voice that is, most definitely, not Bob's.

And that's how she learns that Angleton is dead… and her husband is now the Eater of Souls, having inherited the power fully once Angleton passed.

So Bob is a potential monster… and she's carrying, and in a way bonded to, a very different monster who would not mind at all killing off the competition for her attention.

While there is more – much more – to the White Violin's intentions and plans, there is an explicit element of sexual seduction and coercion in its connection with Mo – as it demonstrates in dreams of hallucinogenic intensity. I normally skip sexual content in books, but in this case there's a plot-relevant aspect to the scenes that make them unskippable… and deeply disturbing.

Which is as it should be, when the dreamweaver is a Lovecraftian monster.

 

It was interesting reading Charlie's "take" on superheroes in the Laundryverse, as I've also written a superhero novel set in my own main universe. To an extent we had some parallel thoughts – especially as to the manifestations of such powers being guided by the societal gestalt relevant to the powers, so that those heavily influenced by the current Western fascination with superheroes would tend to create superheroes from the manifestations.

Where he goes with this idea, of course, is very different, and a lot darker, than my own. The "superpowers" in the Laundryverse are basically subconscious summoning-and-binding incantations – you are playing host and controller to Something from Outside. Apparently you can generally control that Something, whatever it is… but as with most other practitioners of sorcery, this activity can attract the "feeders", and pretty soon they are – literally – eating your brain away.

Mo has managed to miss the news about the emergence of superbeings (she's been very busy and often incommunicado) so when she's suddenly thrust into a "situation" involving a crazed supervillain, she's forced to intervene with Lecter… and it's caught on TV.

Faced with a security breach of effectively uncloseable proportions, the Laundry reacts in what is, honestly, probably the most effective way it could under the circumstances: immediately creates a "secret government agency" that's tasked with dealing with superhuman threats, implying the agency's been around for quite a while, and puts Doctor Dominique O'Brien in the Director's seat…

This is a combination of wincingly painful stuff to watch Mo go through, and sometimes hysterically funny as poor Mo has to deal with everything from an office with literally no furniture (yet) to discovering someone in Personnel has decided to make two of her most important department members Mhari (the previously mentioned vampire ex-girlfriend) and Ramona Random (the succubus Deep One we met way back in The Jennifer Morgue – the one who was destiny-entangled with Bob).

On the other hand, there is the other member of the team: Jim Grey, a fine Chief Superintendent of Police, upright, clean-cut, honest, witty… who also happens to be the only superhero policeman, "Officer Friendly".

Quite an attractive package… as Mo starts to realize.

 

In, around, and behind all these rather personal issues are much larger ones. The rise of the superheroes is one of the consequences of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, the time when "The Stars Are Right", which began quite some months back. Other forces – much more malign – are in operation, some in the guise of superbeings such as The Mandate – someone so utterly charismatic that everyone finds themselves agreeing with him, no matter how ludicrous the circumstances – and some, such as the violin Mo calls Lecter, who are monsters beyond easy human understanding.

The climax of the book comes very swiftly and, if you don't know what to look for, unexpectedly. Mo is not quite as detached an observer and narrator as Bob, and thus the story is more emotionally powerful – and perhaps even stressful, for a while, to the reader that sympathizes too much.

The world goes on… but Mo has paid some very heavy prices for that.

 

And The Nightmare Stacks is not far away…

 

On My Shelves: Wonder Woman

(technically it WILL be On My Shelves but was On The Screen)

I recently had the opportunity to see the new Wonder Woman movie starring Gal Godot. This means I get to post a review of something that ISN'T ten years out of date!

Short and unspoilery: This is what the DC-Cinematic universe has been waiting for, a movie with a superheroic main character who's allowed to be – who insists on being – a Super Hero, one whose conflicts stem from idealism versus the real world's limits, and that refuses to accept the real world's shades-of-gray.

I walked out of Wonder Woman feeling good, feeling happy, something that didn't happen when I saw, for instance, Man of Steel. This movie gives me hope that just maybe DC can pull out of its Grimdark Dive and give Marvel an actual run for its superhero money.

Now, on to the more detailed… and SPOILERY… review.

 

 

Here

 

 

We

 

 

Go!

 

Aside from a very brief framing sequence in the modern world, we first meet Princess Diana as an absolutely adorable young girl in Themyscira, the land of the Amazons. For an at-that-time unexplained reason, she is the only child on the whole island. At the time we see her, she's playing hooky from her regular lessons so she can watch the Amazon Warriors at practice, and try to practice the moves on her own.

One thing that DC does immediately that Marvel has, thus far, shied away from, is to accept that in this universe there are GODS. Not "aliens with strange technology" or "stuff that maybe you call magic", but GODS. The Greek Gods are the foundation of the background of Wonder Woman, and always have been, and while Marvel decided to soft-pedal that aspect when doing Thor, DC didn't even blink. They don't even shy away from giving Zeus, ruler of the Greek pantheon, an apparent position of the Creator deity, having made mankind in his own image to populate the world.

According to the Amazons' stories, at least, Ares (God of War) then grew jealous of the attention Zeus paid to humanity, and went among them, corrupting their pure hearts and turning them to war. This led to conflict and eventually a war of the Gods – which, it turned out, was in Ares' favor, since war was his strength. In the end, even Zeus fell along with Ares – but not before giving the Amazons a safe haven from which they could emerge to save the world, if Ares ever rose again. And it was said that within that haven he also left them a weapon, the Godkiller.

Told this story, Diana of course insists on seeing this legacy, and is taken to a tower where the treasures of the Amazons are kept, including a great and beautiful sword in the highest tower of all: "Godkiller", Diana breathes in fascination.

Her mother Hippolyta at first heavily resists having Diana trained, partly due to some secret that neither she nor her right-hand woman Antiope want to discuss, but eventually Diana's determination, and Hippolyta's reluctant acceptance that Ares will return, wins out; the only way her daughter can truly defend herself is if she is trained, and she tells Antiope to train Diana harder than any other Amazon has been trained.

But even all the training Themyscira can give her cannot fully prepare Diana for what will happen when a strange machine plunges from the sky and she rescues its pilot, a living man – the first on the island – named Steve Trevor…

 

Wonder Woman really does pretty much everything right. One of the common tropes with the "Amazon land" where there are no men is to have the women utterly clueless about everything to do with men, leading to all sorts of embarrassing sitcom-like events. None of these are present in Wonder Woman, and the interaction between Diana and Steve remains mature in a way that was quite gratifying. Is Diana an innocent? Certainly, and at times she takes actions from her innocence that cause more problems than they solve, but her innocence isn't cluelessness, and despite her iron-hard resolve and convictions she is not unable to listen to others – and most of the other people she meets will also listen to her.

Certainly, given the fact that the movie takes place during World War I (the "war to end all wars") and that Diana has to follow Steve to England and later to the warfront, she has to confront totally alien societies and mores, including the sexism that's an ingrained part of the culture, but this is done in a pretty straightforward manner as part of the plot – and sometimes in a rather amusing way, as when she intrudes on a war council and the simple fact of a woman being in the same room leaves the council momentarily shellshocked, unable to grasp something so… unimaginable, even while they're calmly discussing war on a grand scale.

Diana's primary mission – handed down to the Amazons by Zeus himself – is of course to oppose Ares, the God of War; the Amazons believe that it is Ares' explicit influence that makes war possible, and that if the God of War is defeated, wars will instantly end.

As viewers, we know it cannot be that simple, and anticipating the moment when she is confronted by that horrific truth – that mankind is not so inherently pure as she hoped, that all evil does not stem from one easily-targeted source – is one of the most painful pieces of on-your-seat anticipation I've seen in recent years, and is of course also necessary for the evolution of Diana from the simple avenger to a true superhero who understands the world they will defend.

The relationship between Diana and Steve is handled… well, just about perfectly. They're allowed to grow close slowly, and come to the conclusion of what they want together. Steve is key to teaching her the complexity of what humanity is really like… and making sure that, ultimately, she will see there is something worth saving even when it becomes clear that humanity can go make war perfectly well without Ares' help.

Ares is involved, of course, but he is far, far smarter than Diana has given him credit for. She seeks a monster, a thug with brutal power and a thirst for destruction as her legends have painted him; the modern Ares is much more subtle, and leads her into a trap not merely of force but of mind, to break her will or even trick her into becoming his agent.

In that confrontation, she finally must learn how to be the Godkiller… and beyond that, to become the superhero Wonder Woman (though she is, in fact, never called that in the entire film!).

Oh, and the costuming on Themyscira is awesome. Amazons with armor actually patterned after real armor work REALLY well.

This was a wonderful movie and I highly recommend it to any fan of superheroes!