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New cover art for The Fifth Place series!

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Art by Jon Gibbons.

Bigger news soon to follow!

The post New cover art for The Fifth Place series! first appeared on Set Sytes.

ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE

No spoilers

Instead of taking the time to make a coherent review, here’s nothing more than a scattered list of positives and negatives that occurred to me:

+ Cinematography. This is the main thing. I’ve made no secret of not being a fan of too much CGI. Obviously this has a lot. But this has to be the pinnacle of Snyder’s distinctive style when it comes to visuals. Most of the film just looks uniquely stunning (if you like that kind of thing). Heavily stylised, deep contrasts, vivid colours lighting up the super-defined dark. It looks like how I’d like reality to often look. Shots look like paintings in motion. More than ANY other comicbook adaptation I’ve seen, it looks like a living comicbook. But…

– The movie is so stylised (including a lot of Snyder slo-mo) that it can arguably distract from it as a movie, from both the story and from general action scenes (which feel more surreal than “real”). I said paintings in motion – this isn’t necessarily what we expect watching a non-arthouse movie. It’s certainly not expected from superhero movies and it can be hard to adjust to. You’re often just ‘damn that looks cool’, ‘damn that looks cool’, ‘damn that looks cool’ – ‘oh wait, there’s a story’.

– Can’t say I’m still much of a fan of the blurry visuals of the Speedforce, though.

+ Much less distraction with Cavill’s face. Thank god.

+ Much better characterisation, more of the needed time given to better develop the Flash and especially Cyborg. Even the antagonist, Steppenwolf, is given some much needed characterisation (and, like everything else, better visual design).

+ Far more tonally consistent. Much less goofy humour. Those awkward presumably Whedon reshoot scenes simply not included.

+ Far more coherent than the Whedon version. It all fits together, and any part where you’re like ‘huh? Are they gonna go back to that/explain that?’, they do. Even stuff that builds, as intended, on the confusing parts/loose strands of BvS. Most of the additions to this cut benefit the story (only one I can think that didn’t was that weird singing bit at the beginning of the film), and all the excisions or non-inclusions were for the better.

+ More weight given to the themes. More heart. More humanity. I really feel like the loss of Snyder’s daughter influenced how he made this cut.

+ That single random family we’re supposed to care about for no reason is completely gone from the movie. Good. The film is so much better without them.

– The general overarching plot still isn’t that interesting or novel, being that the Big Bad and what he wants isn’t deep, complex or relatable. This is a criticism of the source material more than the film. And it applies just as much to at least the first two Avengers films. I find these big movies, especially the team-ups, rarely have the Big Bad and their Grand Plan of Death as their main selling point.

+ The soundtrack is much better than the totally forgettable Elfman score. Some scenes become significantly better just because of the music supporting them. Although – unique song choices aside – it’s still not as good as the BvS soundtrack.

+ That Epilogue. That Batman line.

+ Genuinely, 4 hours was not too long. It doesn’t feel too long. It should’ve been an – even longer – miniseries. I can’t imagine cutting half an hour let alone TWO. The movie had a lot of heavy lifting to do. Linking back to BvS, 3 new (theoretically new) main protagonists and their backstories, getting the team together, the main plot, and setting up the thread for the intended JL Part Two. Now the film no longer feels incredibly rushed and full of holes.

– Not a fault against this cut, but it’s just such a shame this wasn’t what we got in the first place, and even more of a shame that there wasn’t at least 3 movies before it setting up. And the biggest shame of all, that it’s highly unlikely we’ll get that Part Two that it gets you hyped for.

+ However, in the absence of these extra movies that never happened because Warner Bros rushed everything, we get scenes that otherwise Snyder wouldn’t have been the one to deliver, and some of them are pretty good and uniquely distinctive in his hands and would’ve come out completely different (and maybe blander) with another director.

– The aspect ratio. I get his intention of echoing IMAX (even though nobody is watching it on IMAX). I have never been a fan of the ultra-widescreen that almost every movie is now, I always thought we went too far in that direction (horizontally), and I’m tired of consistently having big black bars at the top and bottom of my widescreen TV. Snyder wanted more vertical information, which I’m all for, and it definitely was good for the film, but could there not be a halfway point? Did it have to be a box? A movie that for once filled my TV screen would be brilliant. I’d like to say I got used to the aspect ratio but I just didn’t – I did for a film like the Lighthouse, but not for a blockbuster with so many characters and big action scenes. I really hope one day we get to see blockbusters which have an aspect ratio somewhere in between.

+/- Honestly, for better or worse, there is no other comicbook adaptation that is like this one. It is wholly distinct from the Marvel films, both in presentation, style, tone, and somewhat in themes. It does not feel generic, it feels, again for better or worse, like an auteur’s vision. You couldn’t watch this film and get mixed up with one of the Marvel films. It is its own thing entirely. I think that is a good thing, that it’s so different, but I can see that people might just still want something more like the Marvel mould (movies I also really like, in a more straightforward way). I find it unfortunate that everything got fucked up so bad by the execs that DC wasn’t allowed to develop its own style and instead just became all over the place – and also more similar to Marvel.

All in all, MUCH better than Whedon’s one. Thank goodness. Something I could be proud to own. And also be forever irritated that first cut was ever allowed to happen and capsize the DC Universe.

The post ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE first appeared on Set Sytes.

“What do you expect us to do?”

CW: Sexual assault, domestic abuse.

When I was in a club in York I witnessed a drunk young guy – a fresher, I think – unwantingly invade women’s personal space when dancing. He groped one and she responded with that briefly visible window of evident anger and shock, then moved away from him. There’s a kind of ingrained helplessness to it that comes from personal experience and the common experience of society. It’s so commonplace that women have learned how to react in a way that doesn’t provoke the situation. They just fiercely don’t want to let it ruin their night.

I knew he wasn’t going away. So I told my social anxiety regarding talking to strangers to temporarily fuck off, and sicced the bouncers on him. Naturally the guy in his sense of drunken entitlement made the situation more aggressive than it had to be, and the result of 3 bouncers on him was both more dramatic than I was expecting and also damn satisfying. In that moment, I had done something about what was happening. That one moment. What moments had I done nothing?

Years earlier, myself and housemates saw a domestic in the middle of the street in Lancaster. We watched it carefully as we walked. The man got aggressive and he grabbed her by the hair. They disappeared around a corner and we stopped, very uncertain. We were much younger than we are now. With mutual agreement, we then backtracked, followed them around the corner. The woman disappeared and the man came up to us, right in our faces. He was a big guy, and was extremely threatening, telling us he’d come out of prison, and he was going to stab us. He acted like he was only seeking the merest nudge to attack us, so we didn’t say a word but we didn’t move either, we just stared him down.

Eventually the police arrived – someone else having called them – and they chased him off. We gave a statement to them. They tracked down the woman but she didn’t press charges. The cop said the women tend to protect these people in these situations. Of course they do – things are unlikely to come of it, and the man isn’t magically going anywhere – he’d only come after her even worse for grassing on him. That’s not even getting into the messy, toxic, gaslighting situation of a “loving”, abusive relationship. Interfering with something like that can be the hardest of things.

It was another moment when me and others had stepped in. And done the bare minimum. Not a randomer in a club, this time, but interfering in a domestic situation. For all the needed talk at the moment about fear of strangers, it’s important to know most assault of women – sexual or otherwise – comes from those they know. But what if it’d been only me there? Would I have followed anyway? What would I have done – what could I have done? I like to think I would’ve carefully followed anyway, but I would’ve felt powerless and something bad could’ve happened to me, too.

What other moments in my life had I not stepped in? How many times do I or others not interfere in the situations we see – especially those seemingly between partners? Do we feel inherently dirty and uncomfortable about our non-involvement, or do we forget all about them? Do we just wait at the sidelines, feeling bad but hoping it will blow over one day and then we can sweep in to say “Oh, I know, it must have been awful”?

So us guys, who most of the time have the privilege of safety from the worst of ramifications, stay quiet more often that not. What about the women? Do they stay quiet? Just let things slide? Over and over and over. How much harder might it be for a woman in a group of lads? How many times have they made a deliberate – or unconscious – choice not to speak up?

The culture of it becomes ingrained. The current of anger and anxiety lies under the surface, trying to hide itself out of a sense of self-preservation, or insecurity. And the subtle effects of that pile up over time. Then, if that woman suffers something worse, it already has a bedrock of ingrained baggage to fall on. Just let it go… it’s not worth it… it must be my fault… I don’t want to cause a fuss… it won’t come to anything if I report it… they were just messing around… I’m making it out to be worse than it is… they didn’t mean to hurt me… I don’t think it was rape… they’re good guys really… I shouldn’t have done this or that… I shouldn’t have led them on… I shouldn’t have got so drunk… I don’t want to get a reputation… My friends won’t take it seriously… It’ll only make my life worse to make a thing of it…

Already, in her eyes, she thinks of all those countless guys she has encountered – and maybe some women – who might treat it flippantly. Joke about things – not because they think of themselves as being pro-sexual assault, but because they don’t understand it, and aren’t trying to, because they aren’t listening, because they are – in a thousand tiny ways – growing that sick, viscous foundation that forms itself under every woman from before they even hit puberty. Before the woman knows it they are stuck fast to it, and when they need to pull themselves free and get help, they can’t.

Even when there are others out there that might well listen and understand, the pervasive feeling becomes that they won’t. That they say they will, but it’s superficial. They won’t really get it. They’ll be sympathetic but then innocuously say something that destroys the whole illusory edifice.

To tell someone when you are sexually assaulted, when your body and privacy and mind has been violated, requires a monumental amount of trust. Trust that, given this drowning, toxic foundation that has grown up around it, is already so uncertain, battling against shame, embarrassment, self-preservation, and self-blame. It is the most tenuous of things, often never even formed. And the moment someone just doesn’t even try to understand, it falls apart completely, perhaps never to return. The determination becomes that speaking up, that rocking the boat, is the worst of options.

Too many people get away with things in our societies – not just sexual assault, but catcalling, objectification, gaslighting, abuse apologism, victim blaming, slut shaming, predatory behaviour, invading personal space/boundaries, unsolicited sexual pics/messages, male entitlement, making excuses for shitty behaviour, standing by people when we shouldn’t, as well as something incredibly basic that we are ALL guilty of: not standing up to our friends or confronting strangers when we have the power and safety to do so, not calling out lad culture.

Too many people will decry sexual assault and abuse superficially but without understanding its scope. They may simply, so easily and so naively, categorise rapists as criminals and perverts, like they are a completely different species to them, as though they couldn’t possibly in any world be their own friends and family – and then don’t truly allow themselves to understand the issues at large and all the little behaviours that contribute to them. NotAllMen and the like isn’t a defence, its a rebuttal of the entire issue. It’s a deflection from a reactionary who would rather focus on scrubbing themselves clean in the eyes of others than actually listen to people. It’s deliberately putting fingers in your ears, all to maintain that cognitive dissonance. And it lies in a very similar ballpark to All Lives Matter. These are the men that think it rarely happens, and they think that in part because the women in their lives choose not to tell them a damn thing – and for good reason.

I know many women who have suffered sexual assault – whether it be rape or countless gropes. Others won’t have told me. Most of those ones I know have been by people they knew. I know of someone who was raped so many times by her partner. Things like this, and so many others, I feel powerless about, and maybe I was, maybe I am.

But I – and everyone – can help in the countless regular smaller ways. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re not the domain of perverse criminals. You cannot tell by how they look, or how they chat to you as another guy, or their Facebook profile, or the causes they support, or how good a mate they’ve been to you. Maybe you can tell by the way they talk about women, or their stances on these kinds of issues, or what women have to say about them. But not always.

We help by finding the courage and will and fortitude within us – qualities that women have been continuously forced to demonstrate in far less safe environments than we are likely to see – to reshape this aforementioned foundation, to make it be a fine, hardy place for anyone to plant their feet, one concrete with trust, understanding, awareness, empathy, with moral integrity, with willingness to always listen and always learn, with solidarity and support, and mutual bravery, and between us all we can shut down all those behaviours and attitudes before they develop into something more, before they encourage others, and before they hold back women from telling their stories.

Above all, we start by listening.

The post “What do you expect us to do?” first appeared on Set Sytes.

Review of Cradle of Sea & Soil by Bernie Anés Paz

No/mildest of spoilers included. No revelations, no particular plot events. Brings up the world as we learn about it early in the novel. Themes and qualities of the novel are chiefly discussed.

PREAMBLE

There is always a concern when buying, and starting, a book that isn’t by a tried-and-tested author. One that, if you don’t already have experience with them you at least have thousands of commendations to read from others. Starting any new author always possesses with it a certain degree of risk – picking up a debut novel only more so.

I will hold my hand up and say I am not usually one for taking risks on new books. This, of course, makes me a resounding hypocrite, as my entire career rests on people taking risks on me. Therefore I have been trying to do better. That doesn’t mean picking up any old thing. But if something really takes my interest, and I mean really does, then I ought to give it a go regardless of whether it is well-known to me or not.

I discovered Cradle of Sea & Soil, first in the Islandborn series by Bernie Anés Paz, on this sub. Reading that first post about it immediately . . . Well, to quote Django Unchained: “You had my curiosity. But now you have my attention.” I’ve always wanted more Caribbean fantasy (probably my favourite ever region to explore and fantasise about), something that, as anyone who regularly visits this sub knows, is repeatedly asked for. That it is less post-colonial but rather influenced much more by Taino and Carib indigenous cultures and peoples, inspired by Paz researching his own Puerto Rican heritage, makes it all the better. I am not being hyperbolic when I say this kind of book is not only wanted but important, maybe even necessary. How many other Taino fantasy books can you name?

So, see the featured image to this post: me holding the book on Christmas Day, that I had unwrapped as a present alongside a load of more well-known and established authors. It was (well okay, alongside Slaughterhouse Five, given its very short length), the one I picked up to read first.

The question, then, before I ramble so much in this review that I make it into another book of my own, is what is the book like?

I am beyond pleased to tell you that it is good. Great, in fact. Any doubts (born without cause) have been put to rest.

So let’s see why.

SETTING & INHABITANTS

The book is set on an archipelago, the islands connected to each other, and within themselves, by what are known as “root-roads”. These are what they sound like: twisting roots in all directions and elevations that the inhabitants can use to travel through the dangerous rainforest – jumping and climbing from one to another as needed. These root-roads – stretching out from massive “tree-lords” – are so ubiquitous that they seem to be a major part of the entire archipelago, creating the sense of this dense, tangled thicket of a landscape – until you get out from the forests, onto the beautiful beaches coasting the bright island sea, the nearest native village a sandy-footed walk away.

Unfortunately, this island world is not untainted. The very opposite. There has existed – as far back as anyone knows, and perhaps since Creation itself – the Primordial Wound, which creates corruption, an anti-life force called the Stillness. Whole areas of forest turned grey and decayed and lifeless, like post-nuclear ash. The never-ending fight against this little-understood Stillness – and its creations – forms the thrust of this novel, and probably the series as a whole.

Needless to say, I love the setting. The tropical forests, beaches, ocean, the tree-lords and their root-roads, the concept of the Stillness corrupting this dangerous paradise. Quite possibly this was not the author’s intention, but I felt that at times the Stillness was, for several reasons, some kind of dark metaphor for colonialism.

The worldbuilding is very natural and organically appearing, something I am very glad of. I like to explore the land and culture with the characters, not from info dumps. There never was a point where I felt frustrated either at being given too much information, or too little. We know what we need to know at the time, and other things are gradually revealed to us at a relaxed yet satisfying pace.

Though island life has much in the way of creatures (and plantlife) to it – moss wolves, deer-like carabaz, ghauctl shadow birds, singing coqui, leviathan umoths . . . – there are three main “races” to consider, those most important to the story.

There are the Islandborn, the indigenous tribal people of the islands. These can be divided into two: the Trueborn and the Halfborn. The Trueborn are those with full human souls. The Halfborn are those who share their souls with nature, animal or plantlife. Some time ago, all the Halfborn – who were most effective at fighting the Stillness – were maddened with an unleashing of inner fury and most violently betrayed the Trueborn. The Halfborn were then wiped out, with only one spared. Since then, any Halfborn have been distrusted, feared, hated and ostracised by the Trueborn.

Our two POVs are Halfborn. One of them is the warrior Colibri, the one who was spared. The other is her son Narune. They share their spirits with that of the island coyote, with the ears and tail to match.

The Islandborn are, as you’d expect, pretty different from reading about some generic European-inspired culture. The societal culture is polygamous/polyamorous and LGBTQ-friendly, there is a clear and uncontested distinction between intimate relationships and sex, and nudity is both common and without sexualisation or shame. But there is much that is familiar and relatable; these are not aliens, they are people not unlike you or I.

The third inhabitants of note – and something I found pretty cool – are the halja, abominations continuously created by the Stillness. These usually take the forms of animals and plants – though sometimes more unique and nightmarish forms (my favourite so far is called the Empty Fury, but I won’t spoil it!) – yet are hollow and grey, made of desiccated sinews. Imagine a long dead, long decayed log you find in the woods, or some ancient skull in a catacombs. You step on it and it disintegrates in a shower of dust and death. The halja are like that, but worse.

Their bodies give way easy enough when you strike, but they have no life, and so are not so easily eradicated. You have to hammer and break them until they have collapsed to dust; then the forest itself can finish the job. The same applies to the patches of infected land.

Before I end this section, I want to add one more thing about the worldbuilding: Something that gets me going is evocative creations of things I don’t feel I’ve seen before, casually included in the story/world without fanfare. Two of my favourites here are the aforementioned moss wolves, the appearance of which is undescribed yet unnecessary – the name itself does all the work (I love it when that occurs), and coral lanterns, which are literally fed polyps and in response give off watery glows of different colours. I can just imagine how beautiful they look!

PLOT & CHARACTERS

So there are a few things going on in this book.

The Stillness is spreading, reaching out to infect more and more of the forest. There are other, new things going on with the Stillness and its corruptions too that nobody understands. These are mysteries to be unravelled.

Narune, the Halfborn son of Calibri, wants very much to wield magic, to be a spiritseer, against the strong wishes of, well, just about everyone. The question is how far will he go to achieve his dream.

The problem is the Jurakán, the “screaming storm” – an inner torment that constantly tries to compel our protagonists to violent, raging madness just like the Halfborn of old. So, while you always feel for the Halfborn and the prejudice they endure, everyone else, the Trueborn. . . y’know, they kinda have reason. It’s a difficult dynamic, one where you can understand both sides. Though, given our access to their internal thoughts (and the repulsion of bigotry and bullying), you’ll assuredly fall on the side of our sympathetic protagonists.

Then there is the Casteónese – Spanish-inspired foreigners who have their own base on the island and while not (at least for now) aggressive, and can be helpful, they nonetheless view the Islandborn as beneath them, as primitives.

The book is very people-centred. Filling the book are the trials and evolutions of friendships and family. Honour and loyalty to oneself and one’s loved ones conflicting with duty and oaths to a greater cause. The centre – and heart – of the book is the mother-son relationship between Colibri and Narune. This heartfelt, loving, caring, dynamic, and tested relationship is a pleasure to read, and possibly the most convincing positive parent-child relationship I’ve read in fantasy.

No character is just plain good or bad, which I like. They all feel like people and you care about them and what happens to them. Paz understands the truism that everyone is the hero of their own story. Flat out pointlessly evil characters – or even one-note bullies – are almost unheard of in reality, and are rarely that engaging to read about in fiction. Here, everyone is humanised; they all have their own motivations and desires, their own pushes and pulls that might cause them to shift perspectives, to cling to principles, to chase dreams, to protect others, to be afraid, to admonish themselves, to seek new alliances, to make mistakes, to lash out, to break oaths, to betray friends . . .

The book carries what I call an “island pace” – relaxed, almost leisurely at times, especially early on, but not feeling slow; unhurried, but with every page offering a sense of place and character. At no point did I feel you could excise or fast track a chapter. Gradually – and without any jarring leap – the novel evolves from feeling small-scale to something worthy of epic fantasy, without ever sacrificing that intrinsic personal focus. It’s a pleasure to read a novel that isn’t in a hurry to get where it’s going, but nor feel padded with filler. There’s no longwinded conversations or lore-dumps here.

But don’t worry, if you want action from your books, there are many great fight scenes . . . which leads me onto something that deserves a section all its own . . .

MAGIC

I have long been fussy with magic. Often I swear off it altogether. In every single RPG I play I’m always the warrior or knight or barbarian, grudgingly using a necessary healing spell but otherwise treating magic as something those silly-wizards-and-them-that-read-books-and-stuff do. While I have my exceptions, talk of wizardry and spells is more often than not a quick turn off for me. For me it is not about soft/hard magic. Rather it takes a sense of mystery, of originality, variety and inventiveness, colourfulness, otherworldliness, of rich imagination, of things little-understood, of total wonder conspiring with the natural, as well as internal cohesion/consistency, to draw me to magic. Or maybe it’s just whatever personally captures me. Because it can be enthralling. After all, it’s magic.

Cradle of Sea & Soil is a clear exception to my aversion. There are no pointy hats here. Here there are spiritseers, warrior-mystics wielding magical blades (as in the blades are literally nothing but coloured magical force, where only the hilt is “ordinary”, made of the heartwood of a tree-lord, and the magic spills out from it like a brushstroke of oil paint). This sorcery is thankfully known not as magic, but as the Flows of Creation. Currents of it, well, flow, through the land, and are drawn from and channelled. Excess channelled magic that does not immediately go into the sword and spells goes into a gourd at the waist, which can be drawn from like a reservoir.

I was happy to have the seven different Flows (to which different spiritseers can wield) described to me in the Appendix:

The Radiant Flow/Redflow – Light, heat, fire

The Celestial Flow/Amberflow – Sky, wind, lightning

The Unseen Flow/Violetflow – Illusion, deception, information, manipulation

The Unbound Flow/Blueflow – Water, blood, ice, cold

The Verdant Flow/Greenflow – Plants, growth, birth, natural healing/regeneration

The Deep Flow/Umberflow – Gravity, magnets, stone, soil, hardness

The Carrion Flow/Blackflow – Death, decay, repurposing

I really like the idea of the Flowing Blades, as the weapons of the spiritseers are called. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s just something slightly reminiscent of a lightsaber (and darksaber) about them, with the different colours that pour out from the hilts (I wonder if Paz was influenced at all by Star Wars). They’re a bit like if a lightsaber mixed with a magic wand. Which is amazing. But describing the blades that are formed like they are strokes of wet paint in the air sounds as unique as it does entrancing.

While Paz draws from familiar magic system tropes (i.e. differently coloured magics with different often elemental attributes – Magic the Gathering comes foremost to mind), he makes his feel original, vivid and evocative. The magic in this book is described in terms of liquid – ink, oil, paint, tides, blood. It’s always smearing and splattering and dripping and pooling and flooding and clotting – and flowing – only to lethally harden at the moment of attack. And I’m all here for it. I love the idea of visible coloured magic, a tangible, swirling, roiling, liquidic source that you can reach into and cast out. Honestly, this is the most I’ve been into a magic system since Harry Potter in my youth (which was less a system and more imaginative handwaving). I was enthused to follow Narune in learning about each new spell (my favourite so far being “Thousandth Sun”), as well as the different types of Flow. And it all makes for some cool, dynamic, inventive fight scenes.

It isn’t so simple as learning it and using it, either. The Flows are exhausting and draining – literally – and what’s more, they only encourage the screaming storm, making them even more risky for a Halfborn like Narune. On top of that, misusing or overusing it can allow Stillness into your body. Which, as you might imagine, isn’t something that’s good for you.

PROSE

Prose is something I can be pretty particular with. Even with the biggest and most beloved of books out there. There are those books where every sentence seems to have at least five commas in it, sometimes forming entire walls of text. Then there are those books where every sentence seems to contrive to put as few words in it as possible. Sometimes there’s just something off that it’s hard to put your finger on, that only be described as “clunkiness”.

Paz’s prose is good. It is neither too florid and exhausting nor too sparse and brief. It is confident, generally smooth, both easy to read and rich with imagination and conveyance. Sometimes it is simply doing its job, allowing your own imagination to fill in the gaps, othertimes it comes alive with its choice of words and turns of phrase, with brilliantly evocative sentences, and an immediacy to its imagery. The dialogue is emotional and realistic. Don’t expect anyone going on long, dry philosophical spiels here.

I don’t have much of a bad word to say about the prose. I suppose I’d say I’d prefer more description, but this is only personal preference. It’s certainly not lacking in description, I just wanted as much of the world as I could cram into my head!

I guess (seeing as this review is a bit too glowing) I could add that there is the occasional sentence that stumbles a little, maybe even a little unclear at first glance, and could perhaps be written more smoothly or phrased better? Maybe sometimes there’s a less than necessary comma? But this is nitpicking. I doubt most readers will notice. (And I’m hardly one to talk.)

That this is a debut novel makes the quality of the prose all the more impressive. Especially if I consider that Paz can only go up from here. I know my first novel wasn’t anything like this calibre.

Regardless of its unique elements, the story is not unconventionally told, same with the prose. I get the sense that Paz grew up on and has a lot of love for western fantasy. I’m not as well read as many on this sub, so the comparison could be much better, but this book has more in common stylistically with, say, Robin Hobb, than with something like N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season or Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf (both of which are PoC-by-PoC books I also enjoy, but narratively and stylistically very different). My impression is that Cradle of Sea & Soil doesn’t appear like a reaction to conventional western fantasy, but a friendship with it. A proposed alliance. It’s not countering the mainstream Eurocentric-by-default high fantasy paradigm with something purposefully against-the-grain and challenging, but eagerly asking to be part of the club. It’s saying, “Hey, I can write this kinda thing too, just like you – but maybe this time it’s in a setting you haven’t seen before. Now, will you let me party with you guys? By the way, I brought magic lightsabers. Oh, now you want me to join . . .”

CLOSING

If I was to describe the book as anything, it’s a labour of love. Seriously, there’s so much love in this book. I don’t mean in any kind of schmaltzy sense, but something more intrinsic, rooted in every character, every page, every sentence. Despite the horrors that appear, grimdark this is not. It is warm and rich and determined, despite all the tides of corruption and death that seem impossible to stop. This is a book where, despite all the conflicts, people come together, comfort and protect each other, where they dream and desire, where they care about each other as well as themselves. This is a book about people doing everything they can do to preserve their way of life. And not giving up, even when all seems hopeless.

The book was not just a great read, but personally inspiring. I was already interested in Taino and otherwise indigenous Caribbean peoples, culture and language some time before reading this book, and starting to include them in my own work, but there’s a big difference between researching them in online articles and exploring Taino dictionaries and with exploring a living, breathing fantasy world inspired by them. While reading Paz’s novel it encouraged me to resume my Taino research, jotting down words, phrases and ideas for use in future books (even though I’m supposed to be working on something completely different!).

I read this book faster than I’ve read another book in a long time (which, I admit, isn’t that fast). Although I suppose a good part of that is me looking forward to writing this review and thinking of all the stuff I wanted to say, haha.

I want to tell you that Bernie Anés Paz is an author to watch. But, as with telling you a debut is “promising”, there is that soft implication that the book cannot stand on its own two feet, that we must, instead, wait for the author to improve. Here this would be unjustified. Cradle of Sea & Soil is a bold, exciting, imaginative, confident, vivid, heartfelt, diverse, different debut, better than a great deal of mainstream bestsellers in the genre. You shouldn’t wait. You should read it – and soon.

I wish Bernie Anés Paz all the best in his continuing career. And I look forward to the sequel.

Addendum: If you read this book, I want to suggest leave reading the ‘Terms & Names’ Glossary until the end of the book. It seemed better to me to explore and understand things naturally over the course of the novel rather than have things revealed to you ahead of their time. Some of which could be considered mild spoilers.

The post Review of Cradle of Sea & Soil by Bernie Anés Paz first appeared on Set Sytes.

My T.M.I. 2020 Retrospective

I’ve been seeing others posting their 2020 retrospectives and being honest about their year, I’ll do the same, without apologies for just how horribly open I might be about it. Seeing as I’ve written a book on depression and suicidal ideation called How Not to Kill Yourself, and seek to (possibly hypocritically) encourage emotional honesty in men, it seems like I should endeavour to keep up that kind of personal openness. Although I’m sure I’ll often have cause to regret it (such as 3 minutes after posting).

The brief is that 2020 was the worst year of my adult life (hard to judge against school years because they’re such a different paradigm). It would’ve been the worst even without the pandemic.

At the end of February (I think?) my 8 year relationship ended. It was supposed to be amicable. Continuing to live together – and being thrust into lockdown together soon after – put a cruel stop to that. That first lockdown was the worst time in my life, just bumping out (narrowly, although impossible to really compare) my previous top spot of my experience in South Africa.

I won’t go into too much detail on a public space, suffice to say that it was terrible for my mental health, and I still have issues from that time (and from the much longer term quiet corrosion of the relationship) that I am trying to handle, and might well be a problem for years. Most significantly an insecurity and lack of self-esteem that has taken too deep a root for easy excavation.

Adding to that, I lost my grandma to cancer in April. It was too fresh on the heels of the loss of my other grandma in November of the previous year, and my old friend earlier that year (which was my first proper experience with grief). I am still haunted by the memory of the phonecall on my birthday this March, where I could barely understand my grandma she was so far gone. It was my worst birthday, for that reason and also to do with my ended relationship and already deteriorated domestic situation, and I was left feeling pretty isolated, wronged, and frustrated. This was the nascent beginning of what was to come. The next day lockdown hit.

I have spent so much time making excuses for others and for turning the tables on myself to find fault with me too, to make sense of it all in a more balanced way. In fact I just now wrote, “I’m sure I was at fault too”, but made myself delete it. I am fed up with going out of my way to “both-sides” my own upsetting situations. I don’t know anyone else who does it to the extent I do. It only continues to undermine my strength of character and allows unpleasant roots to burrow deeper. I will stand up now and say I don’t think things should have gone the way they did, I think it could well have been avoided, and I do not think I was treated well. Coming – over the whole year – to truly accept and understand this, to have more self-respect, is fundamental to improving myself in 2021.

Another negative thing of note was that in early June, not long after my ex departed, I had my final Laser Eye Surgery appointment, the one where they’d actually get down to it. I went to Leeds for it, driven by a supportive friend. I was left waiting for 3 1/2 hours only to find out I couldn’t get it done due to the rare particular shape of my eye. So I had to go home. I’d been wanting LES literally since I was a child, it meant so much to me and my sense of self, and I didn’t get it. So that was that.

Let’s move on to more positive things! I used the money not spent on LES to Kickstart expansive thematic boardgames. I acquired a new housemate the day after my intended LES, who I have quite a bit in common with, and has been a good and much-needed distraction from dwelling on things. I have made new friends, to replace those I felt I could not count on anymore.

I finished a book just before that first lockdown, then wrote another book in the lockdown, despite my miserable and unstable situation. Both of these books I believe to be two of my best and I am proud of them. I then made my own new website completely from scratch (and with a lot of stress), despite having no idea how to. Then, as well as editing and promotional stuff, and writing of various future ideas, I have made a lot of progress on a third book worked on this year, which hopefully I will finish before Spring. Some of the things I wrote down are very much inspired by what I was going through this year. Writing for me has been a catharsis more than ever before.

What else? I had my first proper photoshoot, with the great Dark Sphere Photography, of which the photo included below (and above) is from. My appearance changed somewhat – for the better, I think (no more Abe Lincoln chin strap). I got a new tattoo. I started wearing a cowboy hat nearly all the time indoors. I got a much needed and welcome ego boost from a new friend. I started, in a pathetically low-effort way, working out.

I’m sure there’s something else I’m forgetting. But this message has probably gone on long enough and I don’t think many people will read it as it is.

Shit, I haven’t even properly talked about coronavirus and the impact of the whole year’s tiers and lockdowns on me. Let’s just say it’s been a wee bit difficult, hmm? I’m sorry to anyone I took out my frustrations on. There was a lot of baggage behind all of that, as you have probably ascertained by now.

I really meant this message to only be a few paragraphs when I started, but isn’t that always the way with me. Sorry for the length (that’s what he said).

I am, as ever, thoroughly grateful for my ever-supportive family, without whom I’d have probably ended up face down in a gutter. And for those friends who have had my back – and just there for a much-needed laugh in dark times.

I wish everyone the best for 2021. My personal goals are to keep writing and keep on the very slow upwards slope of my career, to grow my self-awareness beyond just self-criticism, to improve my self-confidence and self-esteem and self-respect, to stand up for myself more, to be more assertive, to surround myself with those who have proved I can count on them, those I trust and value who show on the regular that they genuinely appreciate me in their lives. I want to become better friends with those left to me, especially new ones that I have made all on my own. I want to keep working on my own appearance, assuming I can keep up that thinnest, weakest, most straggly of motivations. I want to do more, to spend more time with people, to go out more. I want to have adventures. I want to have sex more. And affection and intimacy. I want to go a bit crazy at times, like nights of old, but without pressuring myself to feel I ought to live up to anything. I also want to feel safe and secure, as comfortable and as content as I am able.

I want to have a good time.

Now piss off 2020 and die in a fire. 

S.S.

The post My T.M.I. 2020 Retrospective first appeared on Set Sytes.

Back to The Fifth Place

I’ve been struggling a little – with S.A.D., not to mention the lockdown, and existence in general I suppose. It’s been a bad year (though you don’t need me to tell you that). And things I should be cracking on with I haven’t been as much on the ball with as I should be.

In the time since I wrote India Bones and the Hunt for Black Atlantis in this year’s Covid summer, I’ve been doing a mix of looking back over my previous works (flaws and all), editing, promoting, and jotting down ideas and scenes of future stuff. A recharge time of sorts that extended a little too long. When I knew I ought to get back to writing properly, either things interrupted me, or my mental capability just rolled over in its bed.

Anyway, as of yesterday I’m back on the horse again. DANCER – the fifth book in The Fifth Place series. Hopefully I can keep this up.

I can’t decide if it helps or doesn’t that this one will be the darkest of the series.

Looking forward to sharing it with y’all.

Stay good, stay healthy, and let’s leave 2020 in the dust.

The post Back to The Fifth Place first appeared on Set Sytes.

Set’s Halloween Spooktacular

This might seem like an odd blog post, especially only my second on this site, but oh well. Tis the month.

I have a Halloween playlist on Spotify. It’s pretty exhaustive – as of the time of this post it’s over 29 hours long. It’s for people who basically want to be playing Halloween-related music over the whole of October.

Real mixture of stuff on there – Halloween oldies of course, cult faves, stuff you’ve probably never heard of it, B-movie rock and metal, the darkly atmospheric, some very heavy stuff as well as some absolute cheese, and of course some iconic horror movie themes.

I hope you all like it! Now, back to editing my stories …

The post Set's Halloween Spooktacular first appeared on Set Sytes.

A New Start

Ahoy!

I decided – after damn well long enough, too long – to start an entirely new website. The last one had fallen out of my control – in fact, was never truly under my control, not fully, and became increasingly… unprofessional… to continue with. I clung on far beyond the point any sane person would have let go. I won’t go into detail – only to add that unfortunately the decision to completely abandon it meant I also had to give up the domain setsytes.com. Though I’m pretty pleased with setyoursytes.com as the next best thing.

So, here it is, at last, my new website, and I hope you’ll agree is much improved on my previous one. A lot of frustration went into working on it – after my experiences with the last one, I wanted complete control of this, so did it all myself (you can probably tell). Despite starting from a position of no knowledge in building a proper website. I’ve learnt a lot (not least when it comes to code!) since I started working on this – working till 4am every night trying to navigate my way through countless obstacles that I had no idea how to solve.

The site might not be perfect but I’m fairly happy with it. I’m sure it’ll see future changes going on from here.

Here’s to a new start, a site I can be proud of, a site under my full control, and here’s to plenty more stories to come!

Set Sytes

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