In addition to Netflix’s Jessica Jones, I also bingewatched Amazon Studios’ The Man in the High Castle over this past weekend. This experience was interesting, as it represented the twin poles of current geek culture—two wildly different, equally complex takes on fantastical universes. Where Jessica Jones is deeply personal, dealing with intimate trauma and healing, The Man in the High Castle is an inventive, heady look at politics, that uses an alternate history to ask questions about society and humanity as a whole.

While both are emotionally wrenching, and feature nearly perfect performances from an absurdly deep bench of actors, the thing that stood out to me most in TMITHC was its worldbuilding. The plot of the show diverges significantly from that of the book, but it’s still fairly simple: The Allies lost World War II. In 1947, a bomb was dropped on Washington, D.C., and the Imperial Japanese Army and the Nazis divided the United States, with a swath of Neutral Territories cutting across the Rocky Mountains. Anyone not conforming to the Nazis’ ubermensch ideals has been exterminated, and both halves of the country live under tight fascistic control. In San Francisco, Juliana Crane ends up with a film that shows a very different outcome of World War II, and tries to smuggle it to the Resistance in the Neutral Territory, and Trade Minster Tagomi worries that Japan is weakening and becoming vulnerable to a Nazi takeover. Meanwhile, the Obergruppenführer of New York, John Smith, tries to use his agents to ferret out the East Coast Resistance, while investigating a plot to assassinate Hitler. See? Simple. But the plot is just a frame to hang an entire world on. The broad strokes the show makes are extremely impressive, such as this already iconic shot of Times Square bedecked in Nazi insignias:

But is goes far deeper than that. Every phone has the swastika-and-eagle stamp of the Greater Reich. The women of San Francisco hold themselves more like Japanese women of an earlier generation, with their heads tucked down, eyes politely averted. They walk with shorter steps, and often hold their hands folded in front of them. Everyone has their papers on them at all times. The family of Obergruppenführer Smith behaves, on the surface, much like an upper-middle-class American family would in the early ‘60s: Mother is both put on a pedestal and expected to be subservient to her husband; son is dutiful in school but occasionally teases his pop; younger sisters are seen but almost never heard; golden retriever is friendly. But son is also annoyed by the kids in class who show too much individuality, and he can’t wait to go see colonized Africa. Mother is pleased that people with congenital disorders are mercifully euthanized rather than having to live unfulfilling lives. Younger sisters are both maybe a little too quiet.

The show captures a frozen moment, where society has reached 1962 without the social upheavals of the 1950s. There has been no Civil Rights movement, no Claudette Colvin or Rosa Parks, because all non-whites have either been exterminated or fled to the Neutral territory of the Rockies. There has been no underground Beat poetry to tempt a certain type of teen—that sort of stuff would all be in the Neutral Territories where no suburban kid could get them. There have been no EC or MAD or Timely comics to destabilize a younger child’s brain, because all of their creators were Jewish. In case this wasn’t clear, the Jews were murdered over a decade ago, when the Nazis assimilated the United States at the end of the ’40s. There is no rock’n’roll, because there is “Negro music” and “acceptable music,” and the two do not meet. There will be no Velvet Underground because, not only is Lou Reed half-Jewish, he also would have been euthanized the day his parents took him to a hospital for mental health issues.

By far the most upsetting aspect of the show for me—more even than the horrific interrogation of the half-Jewish Frank Frink—was “VA Day”: a holiday celebrating the “liberation” of the United States.The day is an amalgamation of Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, a day of national rest punctuated by fireworks, turkey, and apple pie. In the evening, everyone gathers around the TV to watch the parades in Berlin, and obviously listen to the Führer’s annual speech, while they eat snacks. The show presents this perfectly. It’s a matter-of-fact family holiday, exactly like watching the Macy’s Parade or a Thanksgiving football game.

I spent my binge of the show trying to track my own reactions. Why were the New York portions of the show more upsetting to me than those in San Francisco? Was it just that New York has become my home, so it felt more personal? Or is it that swastikas hold an emotional resonance beyond that of Imperialist Japan? While I know that the Japanese Army committed atrocities in China during World War II, they’ve never taken hold of the American imagination the way images of the Holocaust have. I was thinking about this when I saw a controversy around the show that’s going on right now, in New York.

For non-New Yorkers: the subway system here is, um… if not fully Lovecraftian, at the least non-Euclidean. Imagine if you took a plate of well-buttered spaghetti, threw it up in the air, and then encouraged several cats to have a wrestling match in the resulting pile. It’s my understanding that that’s how the train lines in the city were designed. Buried within the impressive tangle is an utterly straightforward train called the S. S stands for Shuttle, and it runs back and forth between Times Square station and Grand Central Terminal, to make it slightly easier for people to commute from Midtown’s East Side to West Side. (There is a second S that serves a similar purpose in Brooklyn, but we’re focused on Manhattan’s S right now.) It’s the simplest train in the city, it runs on a tight schedule, and when you get on it, you always know exactly where you’ll end up, because there’s only one stop. The weird thing about this train is that it is often uniquely branded, and completely wrapped in advertisements for one particular TV show or a type of soda. What does this have to do with an alternate history TV show about Nazis, you may ask? Well, this:

This was the S yesterday, when it was been branded with The Man in the High Castle. Which means that thousands of innocent commuters stepped into a nightmare at 8:00am, blinked sleepily around, and wondered where the hell they were. One of those commuters was Ann Toback, who is the head of The Workmen’s Circle, an organization that was founded in the 1890s to “foster Jewish identity through culture and social justice causes.” She talked to Gothamist about the branding, saying:

Half the seats in my car had Nazi insignias inside an American flag, while the other half had the Japanese flag in a style like the World War II design… so I had a choice, and I chose to sit on the Nazi insignia because I really didn’t want to stare at it.

Now, the ads have already been pulled, and I want to make it very clear that I think there were better ways to promote the show. But this also made me think about a very different type of worldbuilding. By allowing the show’s reality to bleed into our reality, the marketing team over at Amazon has (whether they know it or not) underscored the themes that Philip K. Dick explored in the book, and which Frank Spotnitz took in a somewhat new direction in his adaptation.

In the book version of The Man in the High Castle, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is a novel-within-a-novel that tells of a different timeline, in which the Allies defeated the Axis. In the show, The Grasshopper is a series of films, each one different from the next, that show multiple alternate timelines. Some have the Allies winning. Some are about Stalin’s life after the war. Some show San Francisco decimated by an atomic bomb. It’s implied that there are hundreds of these films, each telling a different story. Are the dispatches from other worlds, sliding alongside the one in the show? Are they fictions? Who’s creating them, and to what purpose? Some of the characters see them as an inspiration, while others think that they’re pointless distractions, and others consider them dangerous.

By bringing the symbols of an alternate timeline into our world, the ad campaign is reinforcing the show’s intent to ask people to think about the world as it is now and as it could be. It forces people (possibly completely unfairly) to make a choice: Do I sit in front of the Nazi insignia so I can’t see it? Do I close my eyes? Which side of the train is more offensive, and why? In a way, these people are enacting the thought experiment that Dick began with the book to really ask what the point and power of storytelling can be.

I’m not sure The Man in the High Castle was a completely successful TV adaptation—it ends on a decidedly ambiguous note that made me wonder if it was worth the time I invested, and it also left so many plotlines unresolved that I found myself a little annoyed. But what it did well was powerful. Clearly, I’m still thinking about it several days later. I’ll still be thinking about it for quite some time.

Obviously as as a U.S. citizen, I have some conflicted emotions here. I love my country. I hate many aspects of my country. I hate many of the things the forefathers and mothers of my country did. I hate the Nazis. I have German heritage. My grandfather was a Secret Service agent who defended FDR, and toured the bombed-out shell of Berlin with Truman. I’m weirdly comfortable with Nazi paraphernalia, because I grew with it around the house, but it was in a very specific context: trophies taken from a defeated enemy, but my grandfather, who was on the right side. While my grandfather was collecting Iron Crosses to bring home, my partner’s grandmother was fleeing across the Austrian Alps, after escaping the Nazi factory she’d been forced to work in.

Given all that, it’s safe to say that this show was an emotional workout for me. But far more interesting I think is the intellectual workout. Given the current political climate, the refugee crisis in Europe, the constant fear of terrorism, the attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters, it would be easy to say that The Man in the High Castle is more relevant than ever.

But that’s a comforting fiction.

TMITHC has been relevant since it was written. It will always be relevant. The Nazis, and their admirers, we will always have with us.

The United States is not a country—it’s an idea. We have no racial identity here, because European settlers did their best to eradicate that. What we do have is a shared history that is reinvented and retconned and rebooted literally every moment. We’re an evolving idea, but as PKD would be the first to gently whisper as the dentist’s meds took effect—we can change the idea. We’re making the U.S. up as we go along. So, when I say worldbuilding—I’m not just referring to the fact that they CGI’d some swastikas onto the old Times building, and I’m not just referring to the way Alexa Davalos learned Aikido and practiced standing like a Japanese-influenced woman in 1963. We’re all building the world right now.

PKD reminds us that there are many versions of history, many turns it can take. In one, marriage equality was never passed. In another, women have full reproductive rights across the nation. In one, the U.S. welcomes all the refugees who come to its shores, and offers them a haven from the misery they’re escaping. In another, state governments claim rights they don’t actually have to shut them out. In one, everyone in this nation remembers that we came from somewhere else (except for those of us who didn’t) and tries to imagine a better world.

Leah Schnelbach would rather live in an idea than anywhere else. Come build a world with her on Twitter!

Welcome to the weekly Wednesday read of Skybowl! Finally we’ve reached the end. The long saga is over. The battles are done, the cast of hundreds get their various resolutions. Or hints at same, as lives go on (or not) and the world continues past the scope of the series.

Skybowl

Chapters 36-39 and Epilogue

Here’s What Happens: In Chapter 36, the battle has ended with collapsed Vellant’im and somewhat less flattened magic users. Maarken relays Pol’s order: the enemy are out but not dead, and are not to be killed. Sionell takes it on herself to pass this on. Chay sorts out Maarken and the rest.

Isriam and the High Warlord scuffle, and mostly knock each other out. The Warlord comes to, sees what’s happened to his army, and bellows a challenge to Pol.

We see the next scene through Isriam’s eyes. He’s all over guilt about what he’s failed to do. Then Fire blasts the Warlord.

Betheyn comforts Isriam. The rest of the women deal with Meiglan’s death. Sioned is in a rage. She’s not the one who destroyed the Warlord, Betheyn says. Pol did it.

Chay has to do more cleanup, first to see if Andry is alive, then to deal with Pol, who is fairly completely off his head. Some power through the White Crown puts him to sleep.

Ostvel deals with baby Larien, who was pulled into Pol’s great working. The baby recovers remarkably quickly.

More cleanup: Audrite takes stock of the children in the Attic. Jihan is still blazing with power.

At Goddess Keep, Elsen battles Norian to let him go to the fight. She plays the family card, and wins.

Edrel, out in the battle, also wins, in Elsen’s name. Here’s another not-there battle scene. Next we know, Edrel is “bleeding and senseless” and Norian is weeping, but the good guys have won.

There’s no battle at Balarat, on stage or off. The castle is full of entranced sorcerers. We get the story from Nolly, the cook. Then people start collapsing, and Yarin is brought out, significantly the worse for wear.

Tirel gallops up with Idalian, Rohannon, and Aldiar and explains about Pol and the great working.

Andrev is unconscious with the rest, but isn’t responding to stimuli. Then Tilal realizes his cloak pin has popped open and pierced his skin. He’s dead—killed by steel while Sunrunning.

As Tilal rages at the senseless waste, he receives a summons to Skybowl. He’s to take charge of disarming the enemy before they wake. Tilal swears none of them will ever wake again. (Spoiler: This is a fizzle. Never happens.)

Sioned takes stock, grieves, and gives orders. We learn that the sorcerer who put Pol to sleep is a woman. Sioned is tired, she has to process how she feels about everything including Pol killing with Fire, and now she has to sort Andry out, because he’s too far gone to release his Sunrunners from the weaving. She ends the chapter being glad she’s too tired to tell Tobin Andrev is dead and Andry is dying.

Chapter 37 opens with the hard stroke of fate (or karma as they might say in another world): “It took Andry five days to die.” In the process, Evarin is nearly destroyed, and Sioned puts him back together before going out to burn Meiglan’s body.

Andry is, by now, a dangerously radioactive and destructive weapon. Grim cleanup and disposal of the dead goes on.

Chay has to tell Tobin what’s happened to Andry. His brain is broken. He’s lost not in shadows but in light. Pol might help him, but Pol is asleep and won’t wake.

Finally Tobin tells Sioned to help Andry die the way she helped Meath.

Betheyn watches over Andry in the dark. He begs her to let him die. There is some brief discussion. Then Sioned opines that if they let the last daylight in, it will take him. Alasen also asks Sioned to help him. (Poignant, because Alasen was his first love.)

Andry’s death scene. Very touching. He’s alone with his father, who opens the shutters to the light—Chay has no magic, so is safe.

Andry’s funeral. No sorcerers participate. A dragon mourns him. Tobin is the last to stay, watched over by Sioned. Chay grieves, having lost three of his sons.

Sionell watches over Pol as all this goes on. Finally he wakes. He’s cranky. Sionell tells him about Andry. He grieves for his number-one rival, but he grieves most for Tobin.

Sionell tells him what’s going on, and fills him in on what’s still to be done. He’s limp and passive. (True to his usual pattern.)

They go back and forth on what they want. When he falls asleep, the name he speaks is “Meggie.”

The captured Vellant’im from Goddess Keep are loaded on three dragon ships and sent out from Goddess Keep. Antoun is on board, along with Edrel and Elsen.

There’s a lot of other cleanup, which is a bit hard to follow because it’s hard to tell who’s where. Sorcerers are very (very) gradually being outed and integrated. Yarin is not in good condition. We learn that Camigina is the one who put Pol to sleep.

Sionell and Pol discuss Chiana and Rinhoel, who are being their sweet selves in a tower of, one presumes, Skybowl. Pol insists on evidence and the rule of law. He has no idea what to do with the prisoners.

The Isulk’im arrive at Skybowl. (Pause while I am testy about random apostrophes. I have tried to be strong, for six books I have persevered, but GAH.)

(Random apostrophes are on the list of things not to do in fantasy naming. I think these books are one of the reasons for it.

(Anyway. Carrying on.)

There is a bit of backing and forthing about mutual hospitality. Then Kazander’s three formidable wives arrive, demanding to see “the woman who was worth the korrus’ life.” It isn’t about revenge. It’s about respect.

The wives tell Pol that the Isulk’im will guard the Vellant’im (grrr ap’os’troph’es g’r’r) on their march to Radzyn. He tells them he’s making Sionell his regent in Cunaxa, and asks them to be her advisors about the Merida, especially the children. The chief wife is wise and fierce. She agrees.

As they leave, the chief wife gives Pol the gift of her name. This is huge. He responds in kind. One of the younger wives reveals a gift of prophecy, though she speaks of a past vision and not of the future.

They leave. Pol ponders all the losses. All the grief. All the waste. Including his guilt for sending Meiglan to Dragon’s Rest, thus causing her eventual death.

He reflects on who he is and what he’s done and what he’s gained and lost. Rohan reshaped the world in a way that makes it easy for Pol to do what he needs to, or what he wants. As hard as it all has been for him, in the end it’s still much easier and faster than it might have been, because of his father.

He can do it alone, right? Because of Rohan and Sioned and even Ianthe. Because of all they gave him, or made him.

The Vellant’im are removed from  Skybowl. Maarken fills Pol in on all the various news and doings. They talk about the sorcerers, but Pol is sulky and doesn’t wanna. So Maarken tells him other news, such as that Tobren now has a dragon—the one who chose Andry. The dragon comforts her.

The discussion of various plans and minutiae continues, first with Maarken, then with Ruala. They plan a New Year banquet.

Pol continues to be sulky and entitled, and to leave the messy daily stuff to everyone else. He does get busy with charters and seals and princely assignments and such. You know, prince stuff.

Isriam, much altered and broken, comes to tell him what happened at the sacrifice. Pol explains what happened and why Meiglan wasn’t protected: he delegated the job to the sorcerers while he was fighting for control with Andry, and they opted to join the larger working. So he’s feeling just as guilty as Isriam.

They go back and forth over what happened and what everybody did and who was at fault and who wasn’t and who can be excused and who can’t.

Betheyn comes in. Isriam ducks her and leaves. She and Pol discuss how Isriam is reasoning his way toward forgiving himself. She notes that Pol isn’t.

They discuss this. She is just a little bit steely about it. He’s all anguished about Meiglan. She’s all, Her eyes were full of you. He’s all, I’m so guilty, it’s so awful. She’s all, Everybody is guilty or no one is.

And so on and so forth. She gets testy. He finally turns a corner. It’s usually Sionell who sorts him out like this, he says.

He sends her to Isriam. Then he reflects that Sionell’s not here. He misses her. And Meiglan.

He reflects on how he can’t move on the way he ought to. He doesn’t get it. This isn’t a grand passion like Sioned’s.

It’s all guilt. On and on at length, it’s guilt. She never knew about Sionell.

Family interlude. Tobin is adorably cross. Chayla is adorably stern. Even Sioned is, well not adorable, lord no, but kind of monumentally cute about how Walvis is keeping the crowd of guests out of mischief.

Chayla leaves, sparkling. Tobin and Sioned watch the festivities and discuss Chayla’s healing process and how Sioned doesn’t know what to do for Pol.

This segues into an internal conversation with Rohan’s ghost voice about Pol and Andry, while Tobin talks aloud about the same subject. Sioned finishes the chapter by saying she feels useless. Also tired. (Coming down heavy on the foreshadowing here.) Tobin says that’s normal for their age. Sioned isn’t so sure.

In Chapter 38, Sioned is looking spectacular. The dress is a gift from Pol, recalling the (for many of us creepily) sexy Rialla dress he gave her years ago. This one is over-the-top flashy, and she wants to throttle him.

The twins are also gorgeously arrayed, as are various other family members.

And Aldiara, who is in tears over her hair. Sioned and Chayla do some expert hairdressing (including hair gel—hello, Eighties!—and some banter about its commercial possibilities). Hollis gives her a gift of jewels.

There is much banter and teasing and cuteness and a little romance: Tobin’s clued Chay in to Aldiara’s imminent entry into the family.

Everybody’s all gorgeous thanks to Pol’s generosity. Sioned’s eyeing Sethric and Jeni and thinking about matchmaking, with ghost-Rohan kibitzing.

The gathering is in full swing. Jihan wants to know where Sionell is. Sioned doesn’t know.

Sioned talks to Alasen about her gorgeous dress, which was liberated from Chiana’s wardrobe and extensively and tastefully remade. There is obligatory Chiana-dissing.

The social whirl continues. There is banter and teasing and family gossip. Ghost-Rohan inserts occasional comments.

Pol finally shows up, deliberately late and strategically unannounced, and startles Sioned half out of her skin. The banquet begins. We get the full menu, with the program for the entertainment.

Also, bad poetry. Lots and lots of bad poetry. Deliberately so: it’s supposed to be funny.

Hokay.

After dessert (described in detail), Pol hands out princedoms, with background and flashbacks to his decisions and his opinions thereon. Ghost-Rohan has a lot to say.

Sioned reflects at length about everybody, including various romances, various conflicts and interpersonal problems, and Pol’s various ways of dealing or not dealing with those for which he’s responsible. Sioned has plans to meddle with some of these, and she doesn’t care if ghost-Rohan approves.

Pol is being charming, teasing and bantering as applicable. Sioned reflects on the lies they’re telling to explain Jihan and Rislyn and further conceal the Ianthe/Lallante/Roelstra connection. They’re laying it on Meiglan, since she’s safely dead. Ghost-Rohan has an opinion on that, too.

More teasing and banter ensues. Finally Pol comes to Cunaxa, and Sionell, who is silent in accepting her new job. Then Meadowlord, about which Ostvel is adorable in Not Wanting It, as is Dannar in not being terribly upset about being heir to it.

The handing out of domains goes on. Sionell interrupts: she wants to give a manor to Visian and his people. It’s Catchwater, the one Birioc came from, in the middle of Merida lands. Also, she wants Castle Pine to go to Meig. Pol is good with that.

Chay and Sioned try to figure out what she’s doing. Meig is being placed to endear him to his people, a la Pol once upon a time, but they have no idea what Visian’s assignment is about.

Now princes are handing out subordinate holdings. Everybody gets something.

All that’s left is Goddess Keep. Pol won’t hand out that one. Antoun reveals that Andry revealed his choice of successor to Betheyn and Feylin: Chayla.

The family are shocked. Some are resigned. Others are absolutely not. She’s only sixteen!

Sioned shuts them down and gets the story out of Betheyn. Pol asks Chayla if she wants this. She says she does.

Sioned does the eye thing. Pol makes eyes back. No, he didn’t know.

When that’s all done, Pol takes his own oath, with new clauses: He’ll defend all people of all stations, and he’ll never again kill with power or use his powers against those who keep faith with the law and with him. Then he adds that lawbreakers will face the justice of his triple rank and heritage.

Everybody roars approval. Ghost-Rohan is pleased. He is also pleased with Sioned’s crowning touch: a dragon of Fire. Her last one, she vows to ghost-Rohan.

In Chapter 39, the wrap-up continues. Everybody is dancing in the hall. Pol has fixed up Rohan’s earring—the Fire didn’t destroy it—and is now wearing it. (Eeeuwww. Considering where it’s been. Eeeeuuuuwww.) Sioned doesn’t disapprove.

The dance continues. Sioned makes sure Jeni and Sethric end up together. There is banter. There is teasing. Chay is impressed with Sioned’s matchmaking skills.

Betheyn and Isriam settle matters, with nudges from Hollis and Tilal.

Chay has plans for Arlis and Elsen. They involve ships, including dragon ships. And a new fleet.

Sioned and Sionell discuss what Pol did to Chiana and Rinhoel, with flashback. He’s sent them to the Vellanti Islands. That’s nasty, Sionell says. It’s just, says Sioned. Then she gets Sionell to explain about Catchwater. It’s an old Merida stronghold, and the Isulk’im will keep an eye on it for her.

(Sionell is good at this governing thing.)

The dance goes on. Rohannon and Aldiara end up as partners. Tobin is pleased.

Amiel and Tilal give some happy and lucrative payback to a physician and her soldier Chosen—so the nobles aren’t the only ones getting rewards for service.

Chayla gets some surprises. Visian insists on accompanying her to Goddess Keep—and Kazander’s wives approve. They also have something to show her: Kazander’s premature daughter, who is alive and well because of her.

Pause for lengthy digression about Chayla’s taking over as Lady of Goddess Keep. Then the wives tell her they want to foster the baby with her when she’s older. Chayla accepts, and Names her Andra.

Sioned is looking for Pol, intending to do some matchmaking regarding Sionell, but gets distracted by more matchmaking elsewhere.

Pol is out by the lake, remembering a recent scene with his daughters and the pearls. He’s realized he has to keep them. He has a moment with the dragons, including Azhdeen, who abases himself: acknowledging Pol as master.

Pol doesn’t like that. He says he’ll never take control that way again.

Sionell appears. Azhdeen approves. They talk about the mirror (returned to Riyan minus the jewels), the crown (buried deep with the shovel thrown away), and Rosseyn (trapped forever in the mirror by Lallante’s hate).

They talk about power and passion, and about their dead. Pol declares his love for Sionell.

Scene break. Sioned finally slips out of the dance. She sees Pol and Sionell walking together, and feels a little smug. She listens for ghost-Rohan (having decided he’s not a figment, he’s real), but he’s gone.

She takes a walk around the crater and down memory lane. She tells Rohan it’s over, they won. Pol is the heir they both wanted. She weaves light, and gives herself to it.

And that’s it, except for her dragon’s scream of loss and grief. Sioned is gone. And that’s the end.

…Well, not quite. An Epilogue wraps the series. Pol is back in Stronghold, reflecting on his past, his losses, his plans, and, in the present time, his daughters. Then he goes back to a recent memory: the rest of the scene with Sionell.

Sionell didn’t fling herself joyfully into his arms. She needs time. When Sioned saw them walking, they weren’t even in the friend zone, they were in the prince-and-vassal zone.

Pol is prepared to wait. In the friend zone. Not happily, but he doesn’t have a choice. He’s quite down about it.

He does have a future. His daughters expect Stronghold to be rebuilt. They intend to start now, by washing the Flametower. That’s an ancient ritual and duty of the women in the immediate family in between rulers: cleansing the tower, then relighting the flame–bringing us full circle to the death of Zehava in the very first book. Pol considers logistics and decides who will guard the flame once it’s lit: the Isulk’im.

He tells his daughters let’s get to it. They remind him that it’s the women’s job. He says he’s starting a new tradition.

Everybody ends up helping. When it’s all ready, Pol goes up alone, pondering at some length the meaning of ritual and symbolism. Then he lights the fire. “His fire. For all of them, for however long it would burn.”

And I’m thinking: So there we are. I’ll do a wrap post next week, with thoughts about the whole series. Here, I’m thinking, well, that sums it up. Sioned moves on to join Rohan. All the other survivors have lives to go to, families to take care of, damage to repair.

And there’s Pol, being the great big solitary symbol: the one with the responsibility. The one they all agree to believe in. Faith being a very large component of human psychology–despite the frequent dissing of the superstitious Vellant’im and the cynical exploitation of the Goddess by Andry and his minions. This is true even if the one being believed in doesn’t totally believe in himself. (Pol’s arrogance comes in handy here. He’s much less riven by self-doubt than Rohan was.)

I’ll have more thoughts about that next week. I want to think about it for a while longer. Also about who the real protagonist is, and all the strong women characters, and a bunch of other things. If there’s anything you’d like me to address, let me know in comments, and I’ll see what I can do.

Meanwhile, what stands out to me right now is how alive this world is. It exists outside of the scope of the story. It will go on, and everybody will keep on living and teasing and fighting and loving. There are new surprises and new characters right up to the very end. Kazander’s wives—oh, to see more of them, and the culture they come from. Want…!

That’s good worldbuilding.

Judith Tarr’s first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Her new novel, Forgotten Suns, a space opera, was published by Book View Café in April. In between, she’s written historicals and historical fantasies and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café. She has won the Crawford Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, two dogs, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

Jessica Jones has left most everyone I know with a lot to talk about. And there are plenty of reasons, of course–the show is smart, sassy, well-written, beautifully-acted, and features a female lead who is allowed to be as complex as women truly are.

It is also a show the puts female experiences of abuse and trauma under a microscope, and forces us to confront them.

Spoilers for season one of Jessica Jones, of course.

This is not to say that the show refuses to acknowledge other forms of abuse–Kilgrave’s victims are many and varied as human beings, and every single one of them is deeply traumatized by their exposure to him. But this show is about Jessica, and very specifically concerned with the experience of moving through the world as a woman, resulting in a sharp focus. There are discussions cropping up all over the internet; thoughts about rape culture, about privilege, about survivor’s guilt, and they are all fascinating. But one aspect of the show that constantly amazed me was how the it chose to highlight gaslighting as a favored play by abusers… and then proceed to show how one might protect themselves from such an attack.

For those who may not be familiar, gaslighting is a term that traces its origins to a 1938 play titled Gas Light (which was also adapted to film twice), a tale of a husband who uses subtle tricks and denials to convince his wife that she is losing her mind. It became a psychological term in the 1960s, the definition being “a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.” It is a devastatingly effective tactic, allowing an abuser to more easily manipulate the subject of their choice.

Jessica Jones’ relationship (and I use that word with a cringe, because nothing so toxic should get such a benign title) with Kilgrave is the primary focus of this behavior because he is a master of the strategy. He is well-suited to this method of abuse; gaslighters are often psychologically labelled as narcissists, sociopaths, or some combination of the two. (And he is certainly the latter.) But what’s more interesting is that Jessica seems to understand the function of this behavior, even if she may not know its technical term. And her methods of combatting it are both realistic and often highly effective.

We know that Jessica has undergone therapy to handle PTSD following her experiences under Kilgrave’s control. That therapy seems to be centered refocusing her reality—recalling the street where she grew up, and the streets surrounding it, etc. They are concrete places, anchors for her to call on in times of turmoil. Similarly, the defenses one creates to handle gaslighting are also about reasserting reality. One of the most potent things a victim of gaslighting can do (if they are able) is to consistently challenge their abusers lies. And that is precisely what Jessica does, over and over. Every time Kilgrave insists they were happy together, she tells him nothing could be further from the truth. Every time he tells her that she was sexually attracted to him, she counters with the fact that he raped her. Constantly stating the truth out loud is as much for her benefit is it is for his: it reconfirms her reality and prevents him from imposing his own onto her.

There are a series of far more specific tactics Kilgrave levies against Jessica (and everyone else) as well, his insistence of victimhood being a prime example. Asserting victimhood is a common plot by gaslighters, an effort to make their own victims feel horrible for taking them to task by asserting that they are the ones being being hurt. When discussing his childhood and the torturous experiments performed on him by his parents, Kilgrave actually says the words, “So who’s really the victim here?” It’s a brilliantly manipulative turn of phrase because it eclipses the people who he has abused; his status as a victim isn’t simply worth note for the sake of allowing others to understand him better, he doesn’t say “I was also a victim of something terrible.” He chooses to effectively erase the abuse they withstood at his hands because his abuse is more relevant. Who is really the victim? he asks… implying that he is and therefore she is not.

Jessica fortifies herself against this by continuing to dig for information. In doing so, she discovers Kilgrave’s parents and learns that he omitted key aspects of his history; specifically, the fact that his parents were doing those experiments on their son in an attempt to save his life. It doesn’t change the fact that he truly suffered as a result, but the lie itself proves that he is attempting to construct the reality he prefers around Jessica.

The most effective form of gaslighting he uses on her concerns the death of Luke Cage’s wife, Reva. When she takes him to task for getting her to commit murder, he tells her that she clearly wanted to because he never told her to kill Reva—he only told her to “take care of her.” This manages to get to Jessica because she has no defense against it; she has clearly learned to stop blaming herself for what Kilgrave did to her, but not to stop blaming herself for what he forced her to do to other people. It is gaslighting because it’s obvious that Kilgrave did intend for her to kill Luke’s wife; he first encountered Jessica when she used her considerable strength to defend Malcolm from muggers. Part of her value to him was wrapped up in her powers, and he made that clear on their first meeting. He knew how she would take the order he gave her, even if it was worded vaguely.

But the place where his tactics fall apart entirely occurs when he tries to assert a very specific reality over Jessica—the moment where he insists that she wanted to stay with him because there were eighteen seconds where he was not exerting his control over her, and she stayed willingly. Jessica employs a defensive measure against him called a “counterstory”: she tells him precisely what happened in those eighteen seconds, going so far as to show him proof with the scar on her ear (which he told her to cut off for not listening to him). Telling the story keeps Jessica’s perception of self clear while completely destroying Kilgrave’s narrative.

There are others cases of gaslighting used on the show as well, often employed far more subtly than Kilgrave’s brand. Simpson’s behavior once he starts taking the combat drugs falls into this realm once he starts insisting to Trish that the behavior he’s exhibiting is all down to the drugs themselves. “That wasn’t me,” he tells her, when he shows up unannounced and uninvited to her workplace. The fact of the matter is, regardless of how the red pills are affecting him, he still is responsible for his actions while using them. In addition, he was the one who made the decision to take too many of them, against the instructions of his doctor. Trish defends herself against this by never falling for his placations after he gets violent in her presence; he gets one strike, and following that, she never truly trusts him again.

Trish’s mother, Dorothy Walker, is clearly adept at using gaslighting to remove blame from herself. When she comes to visit Trish (something she is not supposed to do at all), she arrives with a gift: files dealing with Jessica’s past and powers. She does this to gain goodwill, an olive branch toward regaining a relationship with her daughter, a relationship that she claims they could have reformed a long time ago if Trish has simply given her a chance. She’s reframing their narrative, placing all the blame on Trish for their lack of contact when she is solely responsible for that due to the abuse she subjected her daughter to in childhood. And this form of gaslighting, pointedly, nearly works on Trish—until her mother brings up the possibility of Trish acting as a sponsor for their old neighbor’s bottled water company.

“I’d nearly forgotten how good you were,” Trish says to her mother. By bringing up the sponsorship, Dorothy has revealed that the “gift” she came with was never a gift at all—it was a lure to regain some control in Trish’s life. And because the abuse that parents enact on their children can be such a difficult cycle to break, the first season of the show leaves it open-ended as to how much Trish’s mother has succeeded and bridging that gap between them. We know that Trish has accepted her offer for all of the files on Jessica, indicating that at the very least, she is continuing that contact between them.

That Jessica Jones has managed to tackle such a difficult topic on more than one front has allowed for a deft and multifaceted portrayal of a serious problem that victims of abuse face. But what truly lifts the show above and beyond is its plain refusal to take a backseat view—Jessica Jones is a show about fighting for your reality and truth, about refusing to be silenced by people who would have power over you. And the way that we see its central characters defend themselves against continuous abuse serves as a powerful lesson to anyone who is looking for a way out.

It’s hard to think of a more valuable thing for a piece of fiction to do.

Emily Asher-Perrin needed a show like this ages ago. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

Santa’s saving his genre-benders until January, as only eight books span space and genre this month. Look for three new anthologies: the annual Nebula Awards Showcase edited by Greg Bear; A Paula Guran-edited anthology devoted to Warrior Women; and a collection of author “Detours” edited by Brian James Freeman.

Fiction Affliction details releases in science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and “genre-benders.” Keep track of them all here. Note: All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher.

WEEK ONE

Clockwork Samurai (The Gunpowder Chronicles #2), by Jeannie Lin, (December 1, InterMix)

Jin Soling can see that the Emperor is cracking, relying on Opium to drown his troubles. The Ch’ing Empire is failing, and war with the British is imminent, but the man to whom Soling was once engaged has a bold idea to save it. A leader within the Ministry of Engineering, Chang-wei suggests an alliance with Japan, whose scientists claim to have technical advancements that will turn the tide of the war. Japan has kept itself in isolation for the last two hundred years, cutting all diplomatic ties with the Ch’ing Empire. Chang-wei must enter the island nation in disguise to seek an alliance forbidden by the Japanese shogunate. Soling arranges her own passage on the airship to Japan. Once they land, they become targets of the shogunate’s armored assassins. Caught between two empires, in a land distrustful of foreigners, the deadly war machines are the least of their worries. Digital.

Tales of the Time Scouts, by Robert Asprin and Linda Evans, (December 1, Baen)

Omnibus. Two novels of time-traveling adventure. Includes Time Scout and Wagers of Sin. When an experiment on an orbiting space station went wrong, bad wrong, ripples in time washed over the Earth bringing global disaster. The survivors, beginning to rebuild, learned that they were now able to travel into the past, utilizing the remnant time strings. But first, the time strings had to be mapped. That was the job of the brave pioneers known as time scouts. Their occupation was only slightly less dangerous than front line combat, and when it was discovered that a time traveler who wasn’t extremely careful could zap himself out of existence, elaborate rules to prevent that evolved, and it was the job of the time scouts to enforce them.

The Rising (The Alchemy Wars #2), by Ian Tregillis, (December 1, Orbit)

Jax, a rogue Clakker, has wreaked havoc upon the Clockmakers’ Guild by destroying the Grand Forge. Reborn in the flames, he must begin his life as a free Clakker, but liberation proves its own burden. Berenice, formerly the legendary spymaster of New France, mastermind behind her nation’s attempts to undermine the Dutch Hegemony, has been banished from her homeland and captured by the Clockmakers Guild’s draconian secret police force. Meanwhile, Captain Hugo Longchamp is faced with rallying the beleaguered and untested defenders of Marseilles-in-the-West for the inevitable onslaught from the Brasswork Throne and its army of mechanical soldiers.

WEEK TWO

A Dream of Ice (EarthEnd Saga #2), by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin, (December 8, Simon & Schuster/Simon451)

After uncovering a mystical link to the ancient civilization of Galderkhaan, child psychologist Caitlin O’Hara is left with strange new powers. She can heal her young patients with her mind and see things from other places and other times. As she learns more about her powers, she also realizes that someone is watching her, perhaps hunting her, and using her son to do it. Mikel Jasso, a field agent for a mysterious research organization, is searching for Galderkhaani ruins in Antarctica. After falling down a crevasse, he discovers the entire city has been preserved under ice and that the mysterious stone artifacts he’s been collecting are not as primitive as he thought. As Mikel and Caitlin work to uncover the mysteries of the Galderkhaani, they realize that the person hunting Caitlin and the stones may be connected in ways they never knew possible.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear, (December 8, Pyr)

Anthology. The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories of the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). This anthology includes the winners of the Andre Norton, Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, as well as the Nebula Award winners, and features Ann Leckie, Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Aliette de Bodard, and Vylar Kaftan, with additional articles and poems by authors such as Robin Wayne Bailey, Samuel R. Delany, Terry A. Garey, Deborah P Kolodji, and Andrew Robert Sutton.

Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran, (December 8, Prime)

Anthology. From fantastic legends and science fictional futures come compelling tales of powerful women-or those who discover strength they did not know they possessed-who fight because they must, for what they believe in, for those they love, to simply survive, or who glory in battle itself. Fierce or fearful, they are courageous and honorable-occasionally unscrupulous and tainted-but all warriors worthy of the name. Contributing authors include: Rachel Acks, Elizabeth Bear, Aliette de Bodard, Mary Gentle, Theodora Goss, Nalo Hopkinson, Tanya Huff, Kameron Hurley, Elaine Isaak, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nancy Kress, Tanith Lee, Yoon Ha Lee, Ken Liu, Seanan McGuire, George R. R. Martin, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Elizabeth Moon, An Owomoyela, Robert Reed, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jessica Reisman, Carrie Vaughn, and Jane Yolen.

WEEK THREE

Time and Time Again, by Ben Elton, (December 22, Thomas Dunne)

Ex-soldier Hugh Stanton learns from a Cambridge academic that time travel is possible and decides to return to June 1914 to prevent the First World War. It’s the 1st of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, celebrated adventurer, is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be. Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history. Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century? And, if so, could another single bullet save it? (U.S. Release)

WEEK FOUR

Detours, edited by Brian James Freeman, (December 31, Cemetery Dance)

Anthology. Every now and then your favorite author takes a detour while writing a new novel: a chapter gets chopped, a connected short story is dreamed up, an essay about the book’s origins is composed, or an oddity is created on a day off. Collected here together for the first time are detours by Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Kelley Armstrong, Michael Koryta, David Morrell, Michael Marshall and Michael Marshall Smith, Chet Williamson, Poppy Z. Brite, Stewart O’Nan, and Owen King.

Suzanne Johnson is the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series, and, as Susannah Sandlin, the Penton Legacy paranormal series and the upcoming Wilds of the Bayou suspense series. You can find her on Facebook and on her website.

Welcome, readers of Shady Vale, to this week’s installment in our reread of Terry Brooks’ classic epic fantasy, The Elfstones of Shannara. If you’re unfamiliar with Elfstones, Brooks, or this reread, be sure to check out the introductory post, in which we all become acquainted.

Last week, the Elven army limped into Arborlon, the King awoke, and Amberle and Wil met an old foe and a new friend.

This week, the Elfstones are stolen and regained, the siege of Arborlon begins, and Mallenroh makes a dramatic entrance.

Chapter 38

What happens?

Amberle and Wil leave Hebel’s cottage with the Rovers, headed towards the Hollows, where Safehold hides beneath Spire’s Reach. At a narrow crossroads, Cephelo halts the caravan and tells Wil that it is time to part ways. Wil asks Cephelo how he can later be found to deliver payment, but the Rover is suspiciously non-committal. Wil and Amberle bid farewell to the Rovers, but Eretria remains aloof and angry.

Hebel ruefully wonders about the fate of the young Elven brother and sister. Like Eretria, he sees some holes in their story, and eventually intuits that they may be in search of the ancient magic rumoured to lay buried under Spire’s Reach. Suddenly, a chill falls over Hebel as he senses a terrible presence watching him from the shadows. Just as quickly, whatever hunts him disappears, and Hebel recognizes that he’s never come so close to death in the 60 years he’s lived in the Wilderun.

Wil and Amberle reach the rim of the Hollows, and decide to descend before nightfall. Wil trips, bringing Amberle down with him, and she twists her ankle. They decide to wait until morning to continue their journey. Unfortunately, Wil discovers that the Elfstones are gone, stolen by Cephelo. He vows to retrieve them from the thieving Rover before morning, and leaves Amberle hidden in the bushes.

Quotable

“Do you really believe the old man’s story? Do you think there are Witches living down there?”

She stared at him darkly. “Don’t you?”

He hesitated and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Yes, I guess so. There is very little I don’t believe anymore.” He sat forward slowly, arms coming up about his knees. “If there are Witches, I hope they are frightened of Elfstones, because that is just about all the protection we have left. Of course, if I have to use the Stones in order to make them afraid, we may be in a lot of trouble.”

Dramatis Personae

• Amberle
• Cephelo
• Eretria
• Hebel
• Wil

Analysis

Fun question: Do you think the Elfstones would work as a weapon against the Witches? I can’t remember if Wil brings them to bear against Morag or Mallenroh (my recollection says “no”), but I’ve always found that one of the most interesting aspects of the Elfstones, limiting their use as a weapon, is that they’re only effective against creatures of magic, and can’t be turned against non-magic life. So, are the Witches of magic, or in control of magic? Would the Elfstones work as a weapon against Druids, who are trained in the use of Magic, but not born of it? I’ve always wondered if there’s a potential to use them as a catalyst to inspire or augment change in non-magical life, in the same way Wil’s brute-force use of the magic in this novel changes his family line for generations to come. Life in the Four Lands was dramatically altered by the magic awoken after the apocalypse marking the end of modern times, and the magic in the Elfstones seems to be a pure, concentrated conduit of that magic, capable of great, and potentially terrible things.

It’s funny how, after the visit to Hebel’s place, the Wilderun is starting to feel downright cozy. Wil and Amberle’s adventure is like unpacking a stacking doll of awfulness. Each time you think you’re done, something else comes along to show you just how bad it can get:

“Hey! You’ve gotta get past the Reaper in Drey Wood,” says the narrator, a grin on his wicked face. “Now, the Matted Brakes! Now you’ve gotta get through an old, creeky fortress at the Rock Spur. Want me to give you a ride on my bird to the Wilderun? Whoops, turns out that it’s a den of thieves! Oh, hey, it’s not so bad, but now you gotta go to the Hollows, a place even the people of Grimpen Ward are afraid of. Oh, and once you’re there, you have to creep past the evil witches to find Spire’s Reach, under which lies Safehold, a labyrinth that’s older than recorded history.”

“How long is this gonna go on?” Wil asked.

“Oh, I’ve got all day.”

Show of hands at who gasped out loud when Wil discovered that the Elfstones were missing.

*raises hand*

Almost without thinking, Wil reached into the Rover tunic and lifted out the pouch that held the Elfstones. He fingered it idly and was about to return it again when he noticed something odd about its feel. Frowning, he opened the drawstrings and dumped the contents into his open palm. He found himself staring at three ordinary pebbles.

“Wil!” Amberle exclaimed in horror.

The Valeman stared at the pebbles in stunned silence, his mind racing.

“Cephelo,” he whispered finally. “Cephalo.”

Brooks does a great job of drilling further and further into bleakness, and, as always, continues to showcase that the Demons are the least of Amberle and Wil’s problems. Because, man, what a douche Cephelo is. It all seemed a bit too convenient that Cephelo would buy Wil’s story about the reward, and even negotiate his share down, but stealing the Elfstones is low even for the Rover. Could Wil have avoided the situation if he’d been honest with Cephelo? I don’t know. I gotta give credit to the Rover for not just slitting Wil’s neck and taking the Elfstones off of his corpse. Cephelo is ruthless, but I think he believes that he’s the good guy. That kind of cutesy rogue is a surefire sign that we’re reading an epic fantasy from the ’80s.

How chilling is it to stand beside Hebel as the Reaper is stalking the shadows around the old man’s home. I can’t be the only one who’s surprised that the Demon doesn’t kill Hebel, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why the old man is allowed to live. The Reaper isn’t really in the habit of leaving living witnesses.

And, man, I was hit by a big ol’ semi-truck of feelings at the exchange between Wil and Amberle at the end of the chapter. It’s been such a joy watching their relationship mature throughout the novel, and the kiss, and Amberle’s words, are just perfect. I like that, despite the kiss, it feels like a bond built on mutual respect and care for one another, rather than a charged, in-the-moment, fit of ill-considered romance. These are two people who have found a love borne of shared experience—it transcends romance. Great stuff.

Chapter 39

What happens?

The Demons attack Arborlon at Dawn. Watching from atop the Carolan, Ander surveys the assault. To survive seems hopeless, but Eventine rides from the city, and the Elven troops and their allies rally around him. Ander offers his father the Ellcrys staff, but the King refuses, saying it belongs to Ander now. The Elven Princes recognizes a sadness in his father. Stee Jans, along with the Elven army, leads a strong defense against the Demon army, which continues to grow larger despite its heavy losses. The two armies alternate gaining and losing the lower gates of the Elfitch, which lead into Arborlon, until a monstrous Demon rises from the ranks, scaled and furious. It tears through the Elven ranks, only to be brought down single-handedly by Stee Jans, a victory that raises much furor in the Demon army, and joy in the Elven defenders. Without warning, the Demons retreat and give up the attack.

As Eventine and Ander meet with the Elven High Council, word arrives that Amantar, a Troll Maturen, has arrives with 1,500 Troll warriors, a huge boost to the Elven forces.

Allanon approaches the Ellcrys, and, to his horror, finds that the sentient tree is just days away from death.

Quotable

A cry sounded from atop the Carolan,  and cheers rang out. In the predawn gloom, Elves turned hurriedly to look, disbelief and joy reflecting in their faces as a tall, gray-haired rider came into view. Down the length of the Elfitch the cry passed on from mouth to mouth. All along the front line of the Rill Song, behind the barricades and walls, it rose into the morning until it became a deafening roar.

“Eventine! Eventing rides to join us!”

Dramatis Personae

• Allanon
• Amantar
• Ander
• Dayn
• Ehlron Tay
• Eventine
• Kerrin
• Stee Jans

Analysis

Eventine is remarkable, especially in an epic fantasy novel, for being a King who isn’t brought low by his ego—just the opposite, in fact, for he recognizes his inability to lead his people, and passes the torch to Ander, the unlikeliest of bearers.

[Ander] held forth the Ellcrys staff.

“This belongs to you, my Lord.”

Eventine seemed to hesitate momentarily, then slowly shook his head. “No, Ander. It belongs to you now. You must carry it for me.”

The ego-maniacal king who undermines the safety of his realm because he’s not able to see sense through his own quest for redemption is so overdone, it just makes it that much sweeter that Brooks had the maturity as a writer to allow Eventine to gracefully exit, to honestly self-evaluate his place within the Elven power structure, and make the rights moves, symbolized by his refusal to take the Ellcrys staff from Ander, and to ensure the ongoing safety of his people, while still recognizing himself as a symbol of power and unity for his soldiers.

It’s heartbreaking to be with Ander as he lays eyes on his once proud, once heroic father:

Here was the King who had stood against and finally triumphed over the Warlock Lord. Here was the King who had seen them through every crisis the homeland had faced. Wounded at Halys Cut, seemingly lost, he was returned again. With his return surely no evil, however monstrous, could prevail against them.

Eventine.

…

[Ander] saw in the King’s eyes a distance separating the Elven ruler from all that was happening about him. It was as if he had withdrawn into himself, not out of fear or uncertainty, for he could master those, but out of deep, abiding sadness that seemed to have broken his spirit.

Equally impressive is to see the way Ander accepts the mantle of leadership, something that he’s actively avoided for most of his adult life. Now, Eventine’s greatest gift to the Elves are the values he instilled in his last remaining son—the leadership and love that Ander bears for his people, and the bravery to stand with his fellow Elves to the end. In Ander, that great King still lives.

A few chapters ago, I was hard on Brooks’ ability to write gritty, hard-hitting large scale battle scenes, but I’ve always admired the way that he writes city sieges. From Tyrsis in The Sword of Shannara, to Arborlon here in Elfstones, many of the most memorable moments from the early Shannara novels (since large-scale warfare sort of disappears in the latter half of the series…) are the choking, frenetic moments when the great cities appear on the verge of falling to the vast armies of their foes. You can tell that Brooks is someone who takes pride in his home, and that familial and societal roots mean a lot to him, because his heroes never fight harder than they do when backed up against the walls of those they love most:

The Demons attacked Arborlon. With a frightening shriek that shattered the morning stillness and reverberated through the lowland forests, they burst from the cover of the trees, a massive wave of humped and twisted bodies that stretched the length of the Carolan. In a frenzy that cast aside reason and thought, the creatures of the dark swept out of the gloom that was still thick within the shadowed woods and threw themselves into the waters of the Rill Song. Like a huge stain spreading over the water, they filled the river, large and small, swift and slow, leaping, crawling, shambling bodies surging and heaving through the swift current.

The Demons fight to take back a home that was stolen from them, with no intent to return to their prison, and the Elves fight to protect the only home they’ve known for generations. It’s more intimate than the retreat from Worl Run and Halys Cut, there’s a sense of impending danger, and personal loss that saturates every word. You can feel Anders’ gut-wrenching fear in his every observation. Chilling.

But the Elves did not panic. Though the number, size, and ferocity of the Demons who came at them might have broken the spirit of a less determined defender, the Elves stood their ground. It was to be their final battle. It was their home city that they defended, the heart of the land that had been theirs for as long as the races existed. All else had been lost now, from the Rill Song West. But the Elves were determined that they would not lose Arborlon. Better that they fight and die here, the last man, woman, and child of them, than that they be driven entirely from their homeland, outcasts in foreign lands, hunted like animals by their pursuers.

Allanon’s vision of the Ellcrys, just days from death, puts a fast clock on things. Surviving the siege is one thing, but it is all for naught if Amberle cannot return to Arborlon before the Forbidding collapses entirely. And, as we know from the next few chapters, she’s off on a bit of an adventure that’s not helping her race against the clock.

I love the Trolls in Brooks work, so I’ll just leave you with this wonderful passage from Amantar about the renewed bonds of friendship between the stalwart Northerners and their Elven brethren, which I believe is particularly important to consider given recent events:

“Always before, Trolls and Elves have fought against one another; we have been enemies. That cannot be forgotten all at once. Yet for everyone, there is a time to begin anew. That time has come for Elf and Troll. We know of the Demons. There have been encounters with a scattering of them already. There have been injuries; there have been deaths. The Rock Trolls understand the danger the Demons pose. The Demons are as great an evil as the Warlock Lord and the creatures of the Skull mark. Such evil threatens all. Therefore it is seen that Elf and Troll must put aside their differences and stand together against this common enemy. We have come, my countrymen and I, to stand with you.”

Chapter 40

What happens?

Wil races through the Wilderun in pursuit of the Rover caravan, determined to recover the stolen Elfstones. He runs into Eretria, who had a change of heart after letting him fall for Cephelo’s greedy plan, and gives him an ultimatum: let her tag along, and she will recover the Elfstones. Will agrees, and they resume their pursuit. They find the remains of the Rover caravan, dead bodies, including Cephelo, strewn about like straw men. Wil finds the Elfstones clutched in Cephelo’s hand, useless to a Rover with no Elven blood.

Quotable

Stupid! That was the kindest description he could render for what he had done, letting Cephelo fool him into thinking that he could have the Rover’s aid for nothing more than a vague promise.

Dramatis Personae

• Amberle
• Eretria
• Wil

Analysis

Oh, poor Cephelo. Well, not really. He was a bastard—but, in a funny way, I almost admired him. Not for his methods, which were mostly deplorable (like, say, selling off his daughter?), but rather for his loyalty to his Rover family. At all turns, he was making subjective decisions to strengthen his family, to become more powerful, and to provide for those beneath him. He was thief, and succumbed to exactly the egomaniacal end that I spoke of Eventine avoiding above, but his actions were almost always based on understandable internal logic. He always believed that he was the good guy. Even to the end, he fought alongside the Rovers in his family, and went down with the ship.

It’s funny how nostalgia can colour your opinion of people like Cephelo after their death. As I’ve mentioned before, I have this daydream of a version of Elfstones in which Cephelo roots out Wil’s cause early on and joins him in his quest for the Bloodfire, and I think it could have been something special. (Or, it could have just been a rehash of the relationship between Shea Ohmsford and Panamon Creel…)

Finally. Finally! Finally, Wil comes to his sense and accepts Eretria’s aid (though grudgingly). His insistence on protecting her from danger by refusing to let her tag along was kind of annoying, and totally disrespectful. Like, I get that he has the keep his mission secret, and probably doesn’t want to tell her about the Reaper if he doesn’t have to, but in what world does adding a capable, worldly companion to your team reduce your odds of accomplishing your goals? The first time, I get it, but the second time he refused, at Hebel’s home, it was clear that Eretria had experience in the Wilderun, and could more than hold her own physically (better than either Wil or Amberle, frankly), making her a huge asset. Plus, she’s an adult who can measure the proposed risk/reward for herself. She begged for his help, because she knew that staying with Cephelo was worse than anything ahead of Wil and Amberle, and he kept saying no. That she had to back him into a corner, by allowing Cephelo to steal the Elfstones, just goes to show how scared she was of her place within the Rover family. Wil should have known better.

On another topic, how friggin’ creepy was this chapter? From Cepehlo clutching the Elfstones, to the riderless horse, to Whistle Ridge, I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. This particular passage stood out:

A new sound rose from somewhere ahead, faint at first, lingering like an echo in the midst of the sharper, quicker sounds, then stronger and more insistent. It grew into a howl, high-pitched and eerie, as if such pain had been inflicted upon some tortured soul that the limits of endurance had been passed and all that was left before death was that final, terrible cry of anguish.

*blinks*

Jesus. How am I supposed to sleep tonight? Brooks’ writing can often be very prosaic, putting function over flourish, and he’s guilty of using the same descriptions over and over (if I have to hear about Amberle’s “child’s face” one more time…), but then he slaps you across the face with such a passage, and you just sort of marvel at the way he’s able to paint these vibrant, emotionally resonant images in your mind with very little effort. Where the cry of the Rovers fighting the Reaper might have been an obvious way of setting the tone for this chapter, it’s also expected and kind of bland. Whistle Ridge puts you on edge immediately, even though, at that point, you don’t know that anything is wrong. It’s so, so much more effective than the sounds of battle ringing through the forest.

Chapter 41

What happens?

Wil and Eretria discover that Amberle is missing. Hebel appears, and Will tells the old man that Amberle has disappeared. He warns them that she’s likely a captive of one of the Witch Sisters, Morag and Mallenroh. Wil decides that he must go after Amberle—Eretria and Hebel immediately pledge to join him. Along with Drifter, Hebel’s hound, the descend into Mallenroh’s end of the Hollows.

Amberle wakes in the darkness of the Hollows, carried by the gnarled, wood-like creatures of Mallenroh. She calms herself, and chooses not to fight against her captors, hoping for the advantage of surprise at a more opportune time. Her captors bring her to a mysterious tower.

Wil calls a halt due to the darkness of the Hollows at night. Hebel offers a plan, and fastens a rope to Drifter and to the waists of each companions. Drifter leads them through the darkness. Hebel somehow figures out that Mallenroh has taken Amberle, and reports that the Reaper is nowhere to be found. They find one of Mallenroh’s stick men, who, on being spotted, begins moving away. On Hebel’s beckoning, they follow. Eventually, the stick man leads them into to Mallenroh’s tower. Suddenly, the drawbridge raises, trapping them within, and Mallenroh appears to welcome them to her home.

Quotable

“No need to rush, Elfling. That’s the Hollows we’re talking about, remember? Nothing down there but the Witch Sisters and the things that serve them. Anything else sets one foot in the Hollows gets snatched right up—I know that from what Mallenroh told me sixty years ago.” He shook his head. “By now, the girl and the thing tracking her are keeping company with one of the Sisters—that or they’re dead.”

Dramatis Personae

• Amberle
• Eretria
• Hebel
• Mallenroh
• Wil

Analysis

Oh, Wil, Wil, Wil.

Wil hesitated only a second, then began searching for the bushes in which he had hidden Amberle. He found them almost at once and pushed his way to their centre. There was no one there. For an instant, he panicked. He groped about for some sign of what might have happened to the Elven girl, but there was nothing to be found. His panic increased.

Teacher: “Class, who here thinks leaving Amberle in a bush with a busted ankle is a reasonable idea?”

Wil puts up his hand.

Teacher: “Okay, and who thinks that the moment you leave her alone in the Hollows, which is a part of the Wilderun that even the locals are afraid of, that she’ll be snatched up by the rumoured Witch Sisters, or worse?

Everyone else puts up their hand.

Teacher: “Thanks, everyone. You may go outside for recess. Wil, may I have a word with you?”

Like, come on, dude, what did you expect?

Losing the Elfstones was obviously devastating for Wil, but did he really expect anything good was going to come of abandoning Amberle? Doubly so when Eretria showed up (with an extra horse!) and he didn’t bother to go back and retrieve her, or, better yet, let Eretria get the Elfstones and took the extra horse back to where Amberle hid. I know he doesn’t trust Eretria, but there are so many better options here for Wil, especially when his main prerogative is protecting Amberle—the Elfstones are useless if Wil’s not actually with her.

The thing about this, though, is that I can totally believe it could happen this way. Wil panics, and in the anxiety that results, he weighs situation and his options poorly, and makes a huge mistake. He’s young, and, if we’ve learned anything so far, rash in his actions. It’s been drilled into him that his control of the Elfstones is the key to keeping Amberle safe, and his shortsightedness doesn’t allow him to recognize that the Elfstones are only one of his keys to protecting Amberle—he’s ignoring all the rest by leaving her in the bushes with a twisted ankle. Self-confidence is a huge theme in this novel—from Ander and Eventine, who must find and rebuild theirs, to Stee Jans, who bleeds confidence and inspires others—and this is a moment where Wil allows his anxiety to overrule his self-confidence.

It’s a neat little narrative trick that Brooks pulls to allow us to know that Amberle was taken by someone other than the Reaper. Does it reduce the tension, because we know she lives, or add a bit of spice, thanks to the rumour of the Witches? A bit of both, I’d say. I can’t imagine I’m saying this, but thank goodness she was only kidnapped by the Witches, and not discovered by the Reaper. How epic would a Mallenroh and Morag vs. the Reaper showdown be, though? I have to think the Witches would win.

Speaking of narration, I found it profoundly irritating early in this chapter that we were suddenly privy to Eretria’s thoughts, and without any warning:

Pride, stubbornness, and the strange attraction she felt for the Valeman flared within her. She could not permit him to do this to her again. Without hesitating, she went after him.

…

[Wil] heard the sound of another horse following and realized that Eretria had come after him.

Brooks has a tendency to jump around from character to character, but often gives readers a solid indicator that we’re shifting point-of-view—an extra break after a paragraph, or even a whole new chapter—so it feels doubly odd that he’s suddenly introducing a new POV mid-chapter, without any sort of warning or context, then immediately dumping it. Add to that that we haven’t ever (from what I can recall, correct me if I’m wrong) had a glimpse of the story from Amberle’s perspective, and Eretria joining Wil, Allanon, Ander, Eventine, the Dagda Mor, Hebel, and the rest of the small cast of POV characters feels unusual.

Hebel reappearing is fun. He was a curmudgeon, and obviously didn’t like Cephelo, but he’s also a brave sunovabitch, and shows a lot of character by chasing after Wil and Amberle in the dead of night, when he knows something deadly is on the prowl. The guy’s at least in his seventies, and he was tracking the Reaper! Badass old dude. He doesn’t deserve what’s coming to him.

How can you not squee when someone says this?

“You said yourself that no one should go into the Hollows,” Wil pointed out. “I don’t even know why you’re even here.”

Hebel shrugged. “Because it doesn’t matter where I am anymore, Elfling, and hasn’t for a long time. I’m an old man; I’ve done in this life the things I’ve wanted to do, been where I wanted to go, seen what I’ve wanted to see. Nothing left for me now—nothing except for maybe this one last thing. I want to see what’s down there in those Hollows.”

On the surface, it seems kind of sad, like he’s given up. But, it’s more like he’s decided to live again, to gamble in a way that’s only available to those who have lived a full, rich life, yet continue to seek new adventures. Hebel’s sort of wonderful, now that I think about it. “I’m tired of being sane,” he tells Wil, “tired of just thinking about going down there instead of doing it.”

I had to laugh when Amberle thought “briefly of Wil, trying to imagine what he might do in her place. … Who could tell what crazy stunt [he] might try in such a situation.” Even after all of their shared affection, and the obvious emotional bond they’ve developed, she still ruefully makes fun of his harebrained approach to life. It’s cute.

Also cute: Mallenroh’s parading tree-men.

It was a man made of sticks—two arms, two legs and a body all of sticks, gnarled roots curling out from the ends of the arms and legs to form fingers and toes. It had no head.

I don’t know why—they’re obviously formidable guards—but I’ve always found them to be kind of like an adorable version of Tolkien’s Ents. Or, I suppose, the enchanted end-result of a master Dwarf wood-carver taking up an Ent for his or her craft. The whole section involving Amberle’s arrival at Mallenroh’s fortress reads like a fairy tale to me.

It’s funny how, after all, their foray into the Witches domain, likely saved them from the Reaper, who fears Morag and Mallenroh enough to avoid their domain. Odds are that if they’d stayed their path, if Amberle hadn’t been kidnapped, the Reaper would have found and killed her. Funny thing, fate.

Next Time on the Reread

The siege of Arborlon continues, Mallenroh measures her prisoners, and Wil is reunited with Amberle.

Hugo Award winner Aidan Moher is the founder of A Dribble of Ink and author of Tide of Shadows and Other Stories. He regularly contributes to Tor.com, the Barnes & Noble SF&F Blog, and several other websites. He lives on Vancouver Island with his wife and daughter.

Frederik Pohl was one of those people who seem to make up the constellations of science fiction, a man who seemed to live five or six different lives in the time most of us only live one.

He was born in 1919, and his family travelled constantly in his early childhood, before his family settled in Brooklyn. He co-founded The Futurians, and belonged to that group as well as the Young Communist League during the 1930s. He left the Communists in 1939, joined the Army in 1943, and remained a sci-fi fan throughout. After World War II he worked as a writer, editor, and SF literary agent. He was married five times and had four children. He did, almost literally, everything.

In an attempt to capture everything, then, I’ve divided his life into pieces:

Agent. Frederik Pohl attempted a career as a specialist science fiction literary agent, at a time when that wasn’t really a thing that existed. By the early 1950s he had a large number of clients, but he finally decided to close the agency to focus on editorial work. He was the only editor Isaac Asimov ever had.

Writer. Frederik Pohl wrote several books, including the award-winning Gateway, as part of his Heechee series. He also wrote many standalone books, collaborations with Lester Del Rey, and Arthur C. Clarke, a memoir, The Way the Future Was, and many, many short stories. He co-wrote 11 books with Cyril Kornbluth, of which The Space Merchants isthe most well known, and deservedly so. It’s Mad Men in space, yes, but it’s so much more than that, such an arch, witty take on advertising, gender equality, consumerism, and the status-mad 1950s America that we’re all still living in. He charts a cycle of marketing-department-managed addiction that is horrifying while still being funny:

The Crunchies kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could be quelled only by another two squirts of Popsie from the fountain,” the authors wrote. “And Popsie kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could only be quelled by smoking Starr Cigarettes, which made you hungry for Crunchies.

His novel Gateway is about prospecting and aliens and black holes and lost love and all that important stuff, but it’s also, mostly, about survivor’s guilt. The structure of the novel jumps around between a cataclysmic even and the event’s aftermath, with ship’s logs and technical bulletins interspersed, to create a profound meditation on time, consciousness, and duty. Jem (which won the National Book Award’s only science fiction award in 1980) is about hopeful colonists who make all the same mistakes that screwed up their home planet. His work always looks for an unexpected angle, an emotional truth that turns everything on its head. Pohl was a fearless writer, and while he was the original Futurian, he interrogated science and human nature mercilessly when imagining where humanity was heading next.

Magazine Editor. He edited Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories from 1939-1943. In one of the publishing stories typical to that era, Pohl asked about a job at one of Robert Erisman’s pulps, Marvel Science Stories and Dynamic Science Stories, but instead Erisman recommended him to the Popular Publications, who were looking to start a science fiction magazine. Even though the pay rate wasn’t very high, Pohl was able to tap his friends in the Futurians for stories.

Pohl returned to magazine editing when he joined Galaxy Magazine. Galaxy, edited by H.L. Gold, was already helping redefine sf in the 1950s, publishing stories including Ray Bradbury’s “The Fireman” and Alfred Bester’s “The Demolished Man.” Pohl worked with Gold on acquiring authors, but took over the magazine after a taxi accident compromised Gold’s health. Pohl then simultaneously edited Galaxy and If, publishing Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg in Galaxy. If, meanwhile won three Hugos in a row, and Pohl published Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and the five-[art serialization of Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.” Pohl published first stories from Larry Niven and Gardner Dozois.

SF Bon Vivant. In addition to writing and editing, Pohl formed two clubs that proved instrumental in the development of American science fiction. The first was the Futurians, a group of young people who gathered during the 1930s to talk about SF and, well, the future. The group broke up as people left for World War II, but in 1947, once the writers and fans were back home, Pohl took the lead in forming a new society. At that year’s WorldCon, Lester del Rey mentioned to Pohl that he missed getting together with other sf fans. So the two of them set up a meeting on Grove Street n New York, gathering up some friends including Lester del Rey, David Kyle, Judith Merril, and Martin Greenberg. Since there were nine people at that first meeting, they decided to name the group after a certain nine-headed mythical monster, and voila: Frederik Pohl co-founded Hydra. You can read more about the Club here, and see Judith Merril’s article about the group (which includes Harry Harrison’s adorable sketch of the members) here!

Book Editor. In the early 70s, Pohl had a position at Bantam Books that…well, honestly, it sounds like the sort of fantasy novel an editor would write when they’re at their desk at 8:00pm with another few hours of reading in front of them. Or, maybe mid-meeting.

By then, I had landed a dream job as science-fiction editor for the independent paperback giant, Bantam Books—didn’t have to come in to the office except when I felt like it, had total freedom to publish any property I chose without needing to get anyone’s permission or approval, or even without needing anyone’s okay to offer as high or as low an advance and royalties as I chose. It was the very model of the position that any ink-stained editorial wretch would have given his eyeteeth to be offered.

Having wanted to work with Samuel Delany for many years, he was excited when a manuscript of Dhalgren came across his desk. It wasn’t exactly sci-fi, but, taking his dream job into account, Pohl decided to buy it anyway.

It was a Bantam custom to Xerox multiple copies of every new accepted manuscript as it was signed, and as those copies began to circulate, I began to have one particular conversation, over and over, every time I chose to come in to the office. One of my colleagues would stop me in a hallway, placatory smile on his or her face, and say something like, “You know, Fred, I certainly would never dream of questioning your editorial decisions, you know that. But I was just wondering—well, why, exactly, did you buy that book?”

I finally figured out an answer that satisfied them. I said, “Because it’s the first book that told me anything I didn’t know about sex since Story of O.”

Since Dhalgren went on to become a massive bestseller (through a combination of Pohl’s own promotional work and kismet) his faith in pushing the boundaries of SF was rewarded. He tried to pull the same trick for Joanna Russ’ The Female Man, which unfortunately didn’t sell nearly as well…but it did go on to be acknowledged as an absolute classic of feminist science fiction, so at least there’s that.

Blogger. He won four Hugos and three Nebulas over all, but more notable I think is that his 1977 novel, Gateway, won four very different awards. Not only the Hugo and Nebula, but also the Locus, where it was voted in by the magazine’s readers, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, where it was honored by a jury of academics. He also won a National Book Award for Jem in 1979, and a second Campbell (one of only a handful of authors to do so) for his novella collection Years of the City. So all of that is great, and of course he was made a Grand Master, and of course he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

But where Pohl goes from being great to being amazing is that in 2010, seventeen years after becoming a Grand Master, he won a Hugo for “Best Fan Writer” for his blog. He was 90 years old at the time, and if you take even a cursory skim through his posts, you’ll meet a mind that is still as excited about science fiction and the possibilities of story at 90 as it was as a fledgling writer in the 1930s. So, in closing, head over to The Way the Future Blogs and settle in for a while, and read.

Who has killed the ghost of Sherlock Holmes? That’s the question that haunts the third of Paul Cornell’s dark and dangerous Shadow Police novels. And what a question! A title that striking deserves an equally striking cover–so Tor Books UK has taken the opportunity to redesign the whole series. Get a first look at the sharp new designs here, and find out more about Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?

Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? will be out in paperback and ebook in May 2016. If you’re not yet familiar with the Shadow Police series, check out London Falling and The Severed Streets, both of which will soon feature brand new ebook covers.

For the new covers, our designer Neil Lang has gone for a fresh, clean look that seamlessly combines the past and the present, the real and the supernatural: London’s iconic skyline merges with its ancient, twisting street map. The stark, sans serif font (which you may recognize is reminiscent of a certain hit TV show about the eponymous detective) is juxtaposed with the archaic symbol of the pentagram. In Paul Cornell’s Fallen London, the supernatural is never very far away, but only a few can see it….

Urban-fantasy-meets-crime-thriller, the series follows Detective Inspector James Quill and his squad of crime-fighters gifted with ‘second sight’, as they delve into London’s supernatural underworld. In the third book, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?:

Someone has murdered the ghost of Sherlock Holmes. As a fictional character remembered by the people of London, Holmes’ ghost walked the city, and now someone has put a ceremonial dagger through his chest.  What could be the motive? The small team of Metropolitan Police detectives who have The Sight find themselves pursuing a criminal genius who soon lures them into a Sherlockian maze of too many clues and too much evidence.  Ross finds herself drawn to an actor who may or may not be a deity, and goes on a quest to win back her happiness. Lofhouse seeks the answers, finally, about why she brought the team together.  Quill battles for his sanity. Costain battles for his soul. And Sefton just wants to bring his team back together, even if that takes him to the edge of death.

At this point, it’s pretty well known that the novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope was not written by George Lucas himself, but ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. George Lucas admitted in a foreword written during the mid-90s that he hoped the book would be a modest success, just the way he hoped the film would be. The book sold just fine… and then the movie came out, and the book started flying off shelves.

The book is an odd piece of work for many reasons. Foster was clearly given background from Lucas’ notes that never made it onto to the screen, but he also gives the story very specific world-building, the sort that you normally wouldn’t get from a film novelization. It might be a little too specific. In fact, the novel doesn’t feel much like Star Wars at all; most of the same actions take place (and a few extra from cut scenes and the like), but the descriptions, the motivations, the overall arc of the story feels more like a traditional fantasy novel with a lot of tech speak thrown in. This makes sense when we see the sort of sequel that Foster created in the event that Star Wars didn’t do as well commercially, but it’s plain odd to read these days.

Lucas pointed out that the novel’s prologue contains an outline for the universe that’s quite similar to the one we see in the Star Wars prequels, proving that he had the vague shape of the Republic’s fall in mind when he put the original trilogy together. Ryan Britt wrote an article on this very site concerning the differences between this book and the film, which pointed out the ways in which that prologue diverges from the story the prequels gives us–the primary one being that Palpatine isn’t technically supposed to be in charge. A fake historical text excerpt informs us that he’s being controlled by the people who were once his assistants and yes-men. The prologue then gives us this quote before it launches into the action:

“They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes.”

Leia Organa of Alderaan, Senator

It’s odd because it seems to indicate that Leia’s talking about Luke and Han to the exclusion of herself. As though she wasn’t a hero in this story as well. Sure, they have to bail her out of the prison, but she’s the one who gets the Death Star plans safely into a small crafty droid. She also holds up under torture. Oh, and watches her whole planet get destroyed, and still refuses to give up the Rebels. I dunno. I guess this snippet could be from an interview where the reporter just keeps nagging Leia about her compatriots. But it seems likely instead that the Foster considered Leia to be more of a diplomat and politician than these films eventually make her out to be.

One thing that always catches my attention here is probably weird to point out, but I’ll do it anyway: this book spells the droids’ names out as Artoo Detoo and See Threepio. Using the phonetic spelling for our beloved duo’s names is a tradition in Star Wars books, and it’s fascinating to me that it’s a tradition that started with the very first tome… which was released before the film came out.

Perhaps the book’s greatest success is in giving a clearer picture of life on Tatooine, making the planet seem far more hostile and unforgiving. We find that Uncle Owen trades the bad R2 unit the Jawas sell them for Artoo–rather than causing a scene–because there’s every chance that the Jawas might roll their sandcrawler right over his home, leading to an outbreak in hostilities between the human and non-human population of the planet. (The book also says that some scientists believe Jawas to be mature versions of the Sandpeople, though, which is outright laughable. They shrink as they get older?) We also get all the information from the film’s deleted scenes with Luke and his friends, including that first scene with Biggs Darklighter, and his admission that he’s leaving the Academy to join the Rebels.

Luke’s character is more fleshed out in this book, and he is every inch a teenager. His interest in anything that would take him far from home, his need to do something useful with his life is what drives the story forward, as it should. He’s also more obviously from the sticks; there’s nothing quite so amusing as his exclamation when Obi-Wan tells him to come with him to Alderaan: “Alderaan! I’m not going to Alderaan. I don’t even know where Alderaan is.” Aw, Luke. It’s okay. You’ll get a few galactic maps and be up on this stuff in no time.

Obi-Wan is hilariously irascible, even more so when he’s given more to say. His explanations of the Force (strangely not a capitalized word in this book) are weirdly vague and unhelpful. Han is introduced with a “humanoid wench” in his lap at the Mos Eisley Cantina. So that’s a thing. The Jabba deleted scene makes it in as well, but this time Hut (with one ‘t’) is described as a “great mobile tub of muscle and suet.”

Oh! And while every good Star Wars fan knows the reason why Han says the Falcon has made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs when a parsec is a measure of distance, in the book, he claims the Falcon made the Run in “less than twelve standard timeparts.” Wonders never cease. The banter between Han and Luke is decidedly improved once we hit the Death Star, Ben wanders off, and the farm boy tries to convince his new pal to go rescue a princess with him:

“Where’s your sense of chivalry, Han?”

Solo considered. “Near as I can recall, I traded it for a ten-carat chrysopaz and three bottle of good brandy about five years ago on Commenor.”

“I’ve seen her,” Luke persisted desperately. “She’s beautiful.”

“So’s life.”

On the other hand, we’ve got maximum awkwardness from Foster clearly believing that Luke and Leia were meant for each other. Luke’s crush is given far too much attention, making everything an extra layer of gross. It’s like Star Wars in an alternate universe, where different aspects of the story were meant to come true. On the positive end, Foster actually bothers to detail how little consideration droids are given by humans, with Luke marveling at how much personality Threepio has, and feeling surprised at how attached he’s growing to the droid. He also notes how reverently Artoo is handled by Rebels technicians when they take him away to unearth the Death Star plans, the first time he has ever witnessed a robot being handled with such care by men. In that way the book manages to touch on one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the universe that’s never well-addressed.

There’s a jarring moment before the Battle of Yavin where one of the Rebel pilots tells Luke that he knew his father… which I sort of wish was in the actual film, seeing as very few people know the true identity of Vader. It’s entirely possible that some of the older Rebel fighters were around during the Clone Wars, and encountered Anakin as some point. The battle sequence draws out the road to Biggs’ demise so that it hurts far worse than you’d expect (his final words in the hangar are actually given to Luke following his death–“We’re a couple of shooting stars, Biggs, and we’ll never be stopped”), and Luke’s use of the Force is made far clearer in the narrative; he fires that final torpedo in a daze, and barely remembers doing it at all.

It’s an interesting companion, but it simply doesn’t do what the film does. And that’s the way it should be–something that works so well on film doesn’t have to be a good book. It’s an interesting exercise for completists, and more interesting still for the fact that some fans read this book before they ever saw the film. But it’s not “essential” Star Wars in any sense… more a strange window in time.

Emily Asher-Perrin really never needed to have Jabba described that way to her. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

Welcome back to Midnight in Karachi, a weekly podcast about writers, publishers, editors, illustrators, their books and the worlds they create, hosted by Mahvesh Murad.

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Midnight in Karachi Episode 38: Francesca Haig and The Fire Sermon

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Tuck yourself in by the fire and relax with some urban fantasy this month, although with only nine releases, you might have to dig into your TBR pile. This month, look for new releases from, among others, Ilona Andrews, Rob Thurman, Lauren Dane, and Gail Z. Martin.

Fiction Affliction details releases in science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and “genre-benders.” Keep track of them all here. Note: All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher.

WEEK ONE

Magic Gifts: A Kate Daniels Novella (Kate Daniels #5.4), by Ilona Andrews, (December 1 InterMix)

It isn’t often that Kate Daniels and the Beast Lord Curran get to take a break from protecting their pack and enjoy some time for themselves. So when Curran offers Kate a romantic dinner in town, there’s no way she’s going to pass. But their quiet night doesn’t stay quiet for long. The trouble starts with a necromancer dying at a nearby table, continues with bloodthirsty vampires crashing through the windows, and ends with more blood on the walls than any dining establishment needs. Pulled into a deadly game neither wants to play, Kate and Curran find themselves dealing with the vile undead and tolerating a clan of maniacal, hard partying Vikings while desperately trying to save the life of an innocent child. Novella is after Magic Slays, same time as Andrea in Gunmetal Magic, both intersect. Gunmetal Magic bonus. Digital.

Nevermore (Cal Leandros #10), by Rob Thurman, (December 1, Roc)

Caliban is a dead man. The Vigil, a group devoted to concealing the paranormal from humanity, has decided Cal has stepped out of the shadows once too often, and death is the only sentence. They plan to send a supernatural assassin into the past to take down the younger, less lethal Cal. But things change when The Vigil makes one last attempt on Caliban’s life in the present, and end up destroying everyone and everything he cares about. Now, Cal has to save himself, warn those closest to him, and kill every Vigil bastard who stole his world. But if he fails, he and everyone in his life will be history.

The Curse of Jacob Tracy, by Holly Messinger, (December 1, Thomas Dunne)

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts, and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since he nearly died on the battlefield at Antietam, Trace has been haunted by the country’s restless dead. He stays out of ghost-populated areas as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains West from St. Louis, with his partner, Boz. Trace gets an unusual job offer. Miss Fairweather needs someone to retrieve a dead friend’s legacy from a nearby town, Miss Fairweather admits to knowing about Trace’s curse, and suggests she might help him learn to control it. As she steers him into one macabre situation after another, his powers flourish, and Trace begins to realize some good might be done with this curse. Miss Fairweather is harboring some dark secrets of her own, and her meddling has brought Trace to the attention of something much older and more dangerous than any ghost.

The Devil’s Engine: Hellraisers (The Devil’s Engine #1), by Alexander Gordon Smith, (December 1, Farrar, Straus and Girous BYR)

Young Adult. When a sixteen-year-old troublemaker named Marlow Green is trapped in a surreal firefight against nightmarish creatures in the middle of his New York City neighborhood, he unwittingly finds himself amid a squad of secret soldiers dedicated to battling the legions of the devil himself. Powering this army of young misfits is an ancient machine from the darkest parts of history. Known as the devil’s engine, it can make any wish come true—as long as you are willing to put your life on the line. Promised powers beyond belief, and facing monstrous apparitions straight out of the netherworld, Marlow must decide if he’s going to submit to a demonic deal with the infernal machine that will enable him to join the crusade–if it doesn’t kill him first.

Your Brother’s Blood (The Walkin’ Trilogy #1), by David Towsey, (December 1, Jo Fletcher Books)

An unnamed event has wiped out most of humanity, scattering its remnants across vast and now barren lands. Small clusters of humans still cling to existence in a post-apocalyptic world that is increasingly overrun by those who have risen from the dead, or, as the living call them, the Walkin’. Thomas, homeward bound to the small frontier town of Barkley, is filled with hope at the thought of being reunited with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary. He also happens to be among the Walkin’. Thomas soon realizes that the living, who are increasingly drawn to the followers of the Good Book, are not kindly disposed to the likes of him. When he learns what the good people of Barkley intend to do to him, he may just have to kidnap his daughter to save her from a fate worse than becoming a member of the undead. When the people of Barkley send out a posse in pursuit of father and daughter, the race for survival truly begins. (U.S. Release)

WEEK TWO

At Blade’s Edge (Goddess with a Blade #4), by Lauren Dane, (December 14, Carina)

Though she’d hoped the deadly events in Venice would end the threat to The Treaty she is sworn to protect, Rowan found evidence of a grander conspiracy to destroy the fragile peace that holds humans, Vampires and those with magic back from war. It’s not so much that someone ordered her assassination that makes her angry as it is the risks those she cares for, especially her new husband, now face. Clive Stewart has never tried to pen Rowan in or control her choices. He has his own fires to put out now that he’s married to the most powerful non-Vampire in their world. The organization that gave her a home when she’d run from The Keep at seventeen has betrayed her. Rowan is in London gathering her allies and the evidence necessary to drive out the rot within Hunter Corp. and expose whoever is at the top. Rowan is a predator and this threat is prey. She’ll burn it down and salt the earth afterward. On her terms.

WEEK THREE

In Constant Fear (The Detainee Trilogy #3), by Peter Liney, (December 22, Jo Fletcher Books)

Over a year has passed since “Big Guy” Clancy and the ragged band of survivors managed to escape from the hellish reality of the City. Pursued by the ruthless leader of Infinity, the corporation behind the systematic extermination of thousands of “lower class” citizens, they’ve been on the run ever since, constantly looking over their shoulders. Despite this, they have forged a new life working the land on an abandoned smallholding on the other side of the mountains. Hidden there, they are as close to happy as they can be. But peace is short-lived. Strange things start to happen in the valley: too many unlucky coincidences convince them that another power is rising against them, and there are many questions to be answered: what is the shadow maker? And who, or what, has begun to howl in the night? (U.S. Release)

WEEK FOUR

Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities #2), by Gail Z. Martin, (December 29, Solaris)

An old enemy of Sorren’s is back in town. Sariel is a nephilmancer, a powerful sorcerer able to summon the nephilim, tainted eternal spirits that watch humanity and stand in judgment. Sariel is looking for vengeance, because a century ago, during their last battle, Sorren killed Sariel’s son and helped the Alliance send Sariel into harsh exile. Because of Sorren’s long affiliation with Charleston, Sariel has decided that the city must be destroyed, and in retaliation for his own loss, Sariel vows to destroy the mortal helpers Sorren protects. To do this, Sariel must bring five of the Watchers through a portal from another realm. When all five are present, judgment will fall, and the nephilim will reap and feed on the souls of the dead.

Hellmaw: Blind Justice, by Erik Scott de Bie, (December 31, Hellmaw)

Jaded FBI agent Maria Ruiz learns she really hasn’t seen it all. Amid the splattered blood of increasingly depraved and spectacular murders is something strange, something beyond the limits of mortal justice. Ruiz is closing in, over heaped bodies, on a serial killer: an angel of death who may not be from this world. Digital.

Suzanne Johnson is the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and writes paranormal and suspense as Susannah Sandlin. You can find Suzanne on Facebook and on her website.

Sometimes you just want to curl up with a fantasy tale that won’t let you get to the back cover without concluding the story, and judging from all of these suggestions (here) for standalone fantasy books (and here), you’re not alone!

Maybe you’re looking for something a little more recent, though? Below, we’ve rounded up a list of standalone fantasy books that have come out in 2015. It is not comprehensive (or even complete since the year itself isn’t), so if we skipped a favorite of yours, mention it in the comments!

In alphabetical order by title:

The Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Wasp’s job is simple. Hunt ghosts. And every year she has to fight to remain Archivist. Desperate and alone, she strikes a bargain with the ghost of a supersoldier. She will go with him on his underworld hunt for the long-long ghost of his partner and in exchange she will find out more about his pre-apocalyptic world than any Archivist before her. And there is much to know. After all, Archivists are marked from birth to do the holy work of a goddess. They’re chosen. They’re special. Or so they’ve been told for four hundred years.

Archivist Wasp fears she is not the chosen one, that she won’t survive the trip to the underworld, that the brutal life she has escaped might be better than where she is going. There is only one way to find out.

Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher

Faith shapes the landscape, defines the laws of physics, and makes a mockery of truth. Common knowledge isn’t an axiom, it’s a force of nature; what the masses believe is an axiom. But insanity is a weapon, conviction a shield. Delusions give birth to foul new gods.

Violent and dark, the world is filled with the Geisteskranken—men and women whose delusions manifest, twisting reality. High Priest Konig seeks to create order from chaos. He defines the beliefs of his followers, leading their faith to one end: a young boy, Morgen, who must Ascend to become a god—a god they can control.

There’s one more obstacle: time is running out. When one’s delusions become more powerful, they become harder to control. The fate of the Geisteskranken is to inevitably find oneself in the Afterdeath. The question then is: Who will rule there?

Domnall and the Borrowed Child by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

The best and bravest faeries fell in the war against the Sluagh, and now the Council is packed with idiots and cowards. Domnall is old, aching, and as cranky as they come, but as much as he’d like to retire, he’s the best scout the Sithein court has left.

When a fae child falls deathly ill, Domnall knows he’s the only one who can get her the medicine she needs: Mother’s milk. The old scout will face cunning humans, hungry wolves, and uncooperative sheep, to say nothing of his fellow fae!

Irona 700 by Dave Duncan

It is Midsummer Day, the beginning of the year 700, in the city of Benign. All the children born in the year 684 celebrate their joint sixteenth birthday by passing in front of the statue of the blind goddess Caprice—but only one will become the Chosen and join the Seventy who govern and guide the city.

Much to her surprise, Irona Matrinko, one of the many children of an impoverished fisherman, is chosen. Irona 700 moves into the palace and, with the help of a new mentor, recognizes and cultivates her great talent for guiding wars: strategy and tactics, leadership and inspiration.As Irona gives her life to the city, an ancient enemy, Maleficence, attacks again and again, corrupting Irona’s friends, destroying her lover, and continually defeating her grandest plans for peace and harmony. Along the way, Irona becomes a masterful politician, a shrewd judge of character, and, even at great cost to her personal happiness, a true heroine.

The Last Witness by K. J. Parker

When you need a memory to be wiped, call me.

Transferring unwanted memories to my own mind is the only form of magic I’ve ever mastered. But now, I’m holding so many memories I’m not always sure which ones are actually mine, any more.

Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And there are those who are willing to kill to access the secrets I’m trying to bury…

Of Sorrow and Such by Angela Slatter

Mistress Gideon is a witch. The locals of Edda’s Meadow, if they suspect it of her, say nary a word-Gideon has been good to them, and it’s always better to keep on her good side. Just in case.

When a foolish young shapeshifter goes against the wishes of her pack, and gets herself very publicly caught, the authorities find it impossible to deny the existence of the supernatural in their midst any longer; Gideon and her like are captured, bound for torture and a fiery end.

Should Gideon give up her sisters in return for a quick death? Or can she turn the situation to her advantage?

Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant

When the Imagine Network commissioned a documentary on mermaids, to be filmed from the cruise ship Atargatis, they expected what they had always received before: an assortment of eyewitness reports that proved nothing, some footage that proved even less, and the kind of ratings that only came from peddling imaginary creatures to the masses.

They didn’t expect actual mermaids.  They certainly didn’t expect those mermaids to have teeth.

This is the story of the Atargatis, lost at sea with all hands.  Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.  Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the bathypelagic zone in the Mariana Trench…and the depths are very good at keeping secrets.

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors’ artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight.

The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive.

The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive.

Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss

With a single blow, Cete won both honor and exile from his last commander. Since then he has wandered, looking for a place to call home. The distant holdings of the Reach Antach offer shelter, but that promise has a price.

Updraft by Fran Wilde

Welcome to a world of wind and bone, songs and silence, betrayal and courage.

Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother’s side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city’s secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.

As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever–if it isn’t destroyed outright.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

Veiled Empire by Nathan Garrison

The Empire is Shrouded, not only by the barrier that covers the land, but by the lies and oppression of the mierothi regime. Magic is the privilege of the elite, and the people of this shadowed country have forgotten what it means to hope under their rule.

But there are some who would resist, with plans put into motion millennia before. For returned to the Empire is a valynkar, servant of the god of light, and with him come the strength and cunning that could tip the scales to end the Emperor’s reign. He has gathered a group of heroes ready to ignite the flame of rebellion and fight against the dark power that has ruled for nearly two thousand years. A power that has champions of its own.

Lots and lots of fantasy has come out this year, and if you want to keep apprised of releases that are both standalone and part of an ongoing series, check out our monthly Fiction Affliction lists!

It is tempting to take a page from Randall Monroe’s Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, and try to write this entire review in, as Monroe puts it, the ten hundred most common words in the English language. It’s an intriguing challenge, because one of the charms of this new book is that it imbues everything between its covers with a childlike and unpretentious sense of delight in humanity’s intellectual achievements.

Still, somehow it makes me want to bust out a thesaurus and get all polysyllabic on you guys.

The creator of the XKCD web comic and author of What If? Seriously Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, you see, has filled an entire book with diagrams of complicated things: dishwashers, skyscrapers, tectonic plates, even the United States Constitution. He has then proceeded to annotate these using the very simple language left to him by his thousand-word restriction. If this is hard to imagine, check out the Up Goer Five cartoon in XKCD, which is included in the book.

Munroe lays out a rationale for his choice in the Thing Explainer introduction, which says:

“I’ve spent a lot of my life worried that people will think I don’t know enough. Sometimes that worry has made me use big words when I don’t need to.”

This book’s use of language, then is a way of letting go of that fear. Monroe is actively spurning the tactic of using complex language to obscure his meaning, or to create an increased sense of his own cleverness.

Is this just a gimmick, or does it work? It does, and just about perfectly. Thing Explainer is one of those books that most readers won’t tackle on a linear basis. Rather, it’s perfect browsing material. One day you’ll be in the mood for examining its trifold drawing of the night sky, or combing through the periodic table of elements, which has been transformed into a delightful mash-up of bingo card and guessing game. (Imagine quizzing unsuspecting houseguests on items like “Metal That’s Not Very Interesting,” “Air Used in Camera Flashes” and “Green Burning Air That Kills”!) There are diagrams that show the relative size of playing fields for various sports, provided with a handy Venn diagram that lets you see the overlaps between kicking sports, throwing/hitting sports, games that use sticks, and games where you’re allowed to carry a ball. And on the page opposite that? Oh, nothing much–just the geological history of planet Earth.

This is another key bit of the fun in this book: seeing which pieces of the Universe’s puzzlebox and human invention have been set together. Human organs, in an image titled “Bags of Stuff Inside You,” are laid out next to an electric washer and dryer. Where’s the connection? You decide.

The final thing that makes this a stuffed stocking full of treasures, something to be enjoyed at leisure and in any order rather than something you read from cover to cover, is the writing itself. The idea of using simple words is a brilliant one and the text–and there is a lot of text, by the way–offers real illumination on the workings of its various subjects. That said, it is also, by necessity, repetitive, and too much of any good thing can be tiring. Absorbing the content of one or two Thing Explainer pages will leave many readers ready for a linguistic change of pace.

But if Munroe’s contortions with vocabulary make this a shockingly wordy book at times, this one downside is substantially offset by the fantastic line drawings for which he is deservedly beloved on the Internet. His diagrams shed light on the workings of server farms and toilets, nuclear weapons and the food chain. They fill in the random blank spots that we all have about the ubiquitous technology around us. They delight and surprise, teach and occasionally frighten… and there are plenty of laughs to be had, too, both in the phrasing of the explanations of things and in the subject matter conveyed by the combination of words and images.

If anyone would like to try Monroe’s linguistic experiment for themselves using the author’s list of ten hundred common words, they can check their text at xkcd.com/simplewriter. Think of something you understand fully, strip out the terminology, and break the concepts down into the most basic terms you can manage. I’d love to hear how you make out.

A.M. Dellamonica‘s newest book is called A Daughter of No Nation, and you can read the first chapter here! has a book’s worth of fiction up here on Tor.com, including the time travel horror story “The Color of Paradox.” There’s also “The Ugly Woman of Castello di Putti,” the second of a series of stories called The Gales. Both this story and its predecessor, “Among the Silvering Herd,” are prequels to this newest novel and its predecessor, Child of a Hidden Sea. If sailing ships, pirates, magic and international intrigue aren’t your thing, though, her ‘baby werewolf has two mommies’ story, “The Cage,” made the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2010. Or check out her sexy novelette, “Wild Things,” a tie-in to the world of her award winning novel Indigo Springs and its sequel, Blue Magic.

We want to send you a galley of Pathfinder Tales: Bloodbound by F. Wesley Schneider, available December 1st from Tor Books!

Larsa is a dhampir: half vampire, half human. In the gritty streets and haunted moors of gothic Ustalav, she’s an agent for the royal spymaster, keeping peace between the capital’s secret vampire population and its huddled human masses. Yet when a noblewoman’s entire house is massacred by vampiric invaders, Larsa is drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that will reveal far more about her own heritage than she ever wanted to know.

From Pathfinder co-creator and noted game designer F. Wesley Schneider comes a dark fantasy adventure of murder, intrigue, and secrets best left buried, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Comment in the post to enter!

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The very end of the super-duper 2004 special edition of Return of the Jedi finds Luke gazing out to see Obi-Wan smiling, Yoda smiling, Anakin smiling, and the audience freaking out. Instead of Sebastian Shaw as an old Anakin, Hayden Christensen suddenly shimmered into view, smirking awkwardly, complete with his big Jedi mullet. And the haters began to hate. But, now with Episode VII so close to release, there’s paradoxically one person I don’t think they can leave out, and that person is Hayden Christensen! Here’s why the ghost of Hayden must return!

For a vast majority of the general viewing public, the name Hayden Christensen no longer has any meaning for them, which in some ways is too bad. The prequels are replete with offensive errors in terms of how stories are best told. Why are there no likable characters? Does everyone’s motivation need to be so muddled? Must we see every single spaceship take off and then subsequently land in excruciating detail?

One of the reasons I think people are so pissed at the prequels is simply because they lack real stakes, since we already know what’s going to happen to the major players. This is in stark contrast to the old Star Wars movies, which are awesomely edited, proceed at a jarringly entertaining pace, and make us care about all sorts of silly things like exhaust ports, carbonite chambers, and yes, even Ewoks.

Hayden didn’t personally do anything to mess any of this up. He was hired to play a brooding young version of Darth Vader, and be reasonably believable as a sexy guy who could handle a lightsaber like a champ. He did this! The character of Anakin Skywalker was never written as likable, so of course everyone hated him. Sure, those lines about not liking sand and constantly saying “M’lady” with that strange cadence of his didn’t help. But, in truth, Hayden delivered not the Anakin Skywalker we wanted, but probably the Anakin Skywalker who was realistic. He’s a talented guy who is told he’s great, but then constantly also told to cool it. He’s young, horny, and powerful. Of course he turned into an asshole.

Hello. Welcome to my mountain retreat. There are no judgments here, milady. This is where we come to find ourselves.

The nice thing about Anakin is that he gets to redeem himself in Return of the Jedi—which, if you’re a kid experiencing the Star Wars movies in the Lucas-order, is a pretty neat arc. Also for contemporary kids, Anakin is the focus of more hours of Star Wars than really any other character, thanks to The Clone Wars. So for better or worse, the prequel-era Anakin defines Star Wars for a big chunk of the viewing public.

If all the actors from the classic trilogy are reprising their roles, the giant space elephant in the room is how old everyone has gotten. Let’s get real, the focus of these new films will doubtlessly be on new characters, but it would be nice to have some existing Star Wars characters in there too, particularly ones who don’t look super old. Luckily, you don’t have to do any Tron: Legacy de-aging CG action on Hayden. He looks good! How satisfying would it be to see an older Mark Hamill as Luke, talking to the ghost of his father via the Force? Putting Hayden in the context of being the wiser Jedi and making him act with Mark Hamill would force him to up his game. And reconnecting Luke and Anakin in a way in which we haven’t seen since Return of the Jedi could be truly powerful stuff. One of the coolest scenes in Revenge of the Sith is between Yoda and Anakin because it helps bridge the gap  between the prequels and the “real” Star Wars films.

The incorporation of Hayden’s Anakin Skywalker as a ghost in the new film could also retroactively legitimize the prequels in the minds of some haters. In contrast to the classic films, the prequels opened up the Star Wars galaxy, rendering it more vast and populated than the classic films ever could. And though we don’t really know anything about Episode VII, it’s a pretty safe bet to assume the scope of the movie will be closer to the prequels than the original films; despite being a sequel to the last film in the classic trilogy, Episode VII will likely not have a “back-to-basics” approach, but instead incorporate more of the prequels’ world-building. Hayden’s ghost Anakin could therefore act as a visual and thematic cue linking these sensibilities. And since some version of Anakin/Darth Vader has appeared in every Star Wars movie so far, it would be strange if he didn’t appear in some capacity.

I’m not saying Hayden’s ghost should serve the same function as Obi-Wan’s ghost did in the old films, but truly, there doesn’t seem to be any reason NOT to use him. If the new masters of Star Wars also want to throw in a ghost Yoda, or a Ewan McGregor ghost Obi-Wan, I would be excited about that too.

Not everything about the prequels was bad, and contrary to knee-jerk popular opinion, Hayden was not even close to being the reason why the movies are inferior to the classics. To put it another way, I’ve written about Star Wars from one side of it to the other, and I’ve never seen anything that made me believe Hayden’s Anakin was the all-powerful mistake ruining everything. That’s just a bunch of simple complaints and nonsense.

So, comb your Jedi mullet, get your Canadian accent going, and join the dark side. Let’s bring Hayden Christensen back!

Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com and does a fairly decent Hayden impression. His first book Luke Skywalker Can’t Read is available from Plume Books on November 24th.

This post was originally featured on Tor.com on July 9th, 2013.

Ready for romance in December? Read slowly. There might be only eight new releases, but look from reader favorites from, among others, J.R. Ward, Thea Harrison, Kresley Cole, Ryannon Byrd, and Eve Langlais.

Fiction Affliction details releases in science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and “genre-benders.” Keep track of them all here.

Note: All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher.

WEEK ONE

Blood Kiss (Black Dagger Legacy #1), by J.R. Ward, (December 1, Signet)

Paradise, blooded daughter of the king’s First Advisor, is ready to break free from the life of an aristocratic female. Her strategy? Join the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s training center program and learn to fight for herself, think for herself, be herself. The schooling is difficult, the other recruits feel more like enemies than allies, and it’s very clear that the Brother in charge, Butch O’Neal, a.k.a. the Dhestroyer, is having serious problems in his own life. That’s before she falls in love with a fellow classmate. Craeg, a common civilian. As an act of violence threatens to tear apart the entire program, and the erotic pull between them grows irresistible, Paradise is tested in ways she never anticipated, and left wondering whether she’s strong enough to claim her own power, on the field, and off.

Otherworld Protector (Otherworld #1), by Jane Godman, (December 1, Harlequin Nocturne)

When Stella Fallon journeys to Spain for a dream job, she never suspects that a cataclysmic confrontation is looming. Or that she is the last in an ancient line of dark sorcerers. For her new employer, an electronics billionaire, is actually a Faerie King desperate to harness Stella’s powers so he can rule the Otherworld. The only one who can protect Stella is a man she once thought her guardian angel. Cal becomes human, but his centuries-old secret could destroy her trust. Still, the pair cannot deny their white-hot attraction as they seek refuge in a cave to prepare for a battle of epic magnitude.

Shadow’s End (Elder Races #9), by Thea Harrison, (December 1, Berkley)

For Beluviel, consort to the Elven High Lord, and Graydon, gryphon and First Sentinel of the Wyr, even the slightest desire for each other is forbidden. But two hundred years ago, after a desperate play to save Beluviel’s stepson left them indebted to the cruel Djinn Malphas, they found their fates inexorably linked together, and the hunger between them growing too strong to ignore. Two centuries later, with their debt to Malphas coming due, Beluviel and Graydon realize that, if they are to stand any chance of saving their souls, they must once again work together, this time more closely than ever before. But every moment they spend with each other brings them nearer to losing something even more vital, their hearts.

Sweet Ruin (Immortals after Dark #16), by Kresley Cole, (December 1, Gallery)

Growing up, Josephine didn’t know who or what she was, just that she was “bad,” an outcast with strange powers. Protecting her baby brother Thaddeus became her entire life. The day he was taken away began Jo’s transition from angry girl, to would-be superhero, to enchanting villain. Archer Rune the Baneblood never fails to eliminate his target. In his sights: the oldest living Valkyrie. Before he can strike, he encounters a vampiric creature whose beauty mesmerizes him. With one bite, she steals his forbidden blood, and jeopardizes the secrets of his brethren. Rune knows he must not trust Josephine, yet he’s unable to turn her away. When Jo betrays the identity of the one man she will die to protect, she and Rune become locked in a treacherous battle of wills that pits ultimate loyalty against unbridled lust.

The Warrior Vampire (Last True Vampire #2), by Kate Baxter, (December 1, St. Martin’s)

Naya Morales is no ordinary mortal. Born with a shaman’s power, she has devoted her life to tracking down stolen magic, and punishing those who take it. But one fateful night, she follows the alluring call of a sensual magic that is too glorious to be true, and finds herself face to face with a stunningly handsome thief who is too magnificent to resist. From the moment he sees her, Ronan knows Naya is his mate. Driven by a deep, almost mystical connection, he aches for her body, hungers for her blood, and swears their souls are anchored together. Naya refuses to believe the words of a vampire, or risk the wrath of her tribe. But when she tries to make Ronan her prisoner, neither chains of silver nor fires of hell can help her escape the truth: she is the one who’s been captured.

Wild Wolf Claiming (Bloodrunners #8), by Rhyannon Byrd, (December 1, Harlequin Nocturne)

Werewolf Elliot Connors had come to the sleepy town of Charity to stop a madman from claiming his next victims for his macabre collection of sex slaves. After saving Skye Hewitt from being kidnapped, Elliot desires the diner waitress more than his next breath. All his senses scream that Skye is his life-mate. But his past has taught him well that nothing worth having ever comes easy. Now things are about to get bloody, dangerous, and wild.   (ebook only)

Croc’s Return (Bitten Point #1), by Eve Langlais, (December 3)

Take one deadly bite and, bam, a man’s life is changed forever, or so Caleb discovers when a loss of control leads to him joining the military and leaving everything behind. Time goes by … years spent silent and alone. Until it’s time to come back, a scarred veteran. Perhaps it’s not too late to right some wrongs. Kiss a certain pair of sweet lips one more time. If only Renny would let him. It doesn’t take Caleb long to realize Renny’s just the thing this croc needs to bring him back to life. What if he loses control again? Too bad, he can’t stay away, especially not when he discovers her secret. Add in a strange creature stalking the townsfolk and there is no way he’s leaving her alone. Years ago it just about killed him to leave, but Caleb’s a changed man now. A darker kind of animal, and this retired soldier is ready to kill so he can stay. Welcome to Bitten Point, where the swamp doesn’t just keep its secrets, it sometimes eats them.

WEEKS TWO AND THREE

No new releases.

WEEK FOUR

Between a Vamp and a Hard Place (Midnight Liaisons #5), by Jessica Sims, (December 29, Pocket)

Lindsey Hughes loves antiques and couldn’t be happier to make a living in the estate sale business. When her assistant buys an entire estate without her approval, Lindsey is forced to clean up the mess herself. Lindsey travels to the newly purchased, house in Venice, Italy, and discovers more than she bargained for. She finds a secret staircase behind a wall that leads to a strange coffin, with an even stranger inhabitant. Vampire Rand FitzWulf has been in his coffin for 600 years. Now that he’s awake, he’s ravenous, and there’s a delicious-smelling woman with a rare blood type in his basement. Lindsey has more to offer than blood: she agrees to travel throughout Europe with Rand to help him get revenge. As the unlikely pair grows closer, will the billionaire vampire be overtaken by his thirst for blood, or his thirst for love?

Suzanne Johnson is the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and writes paranormal fantasy and suspense as Susannah Sandlin. You can find Suzanne on Facebook and on her website.

C.S. Lewis had three different lives professionally. He was an academic, a medievalist who taught at both Oxford and Cambridge and published extensively in his field. (His book Allegory of Love still considered a classic). He was also a Christian Apologist and lay-theologian, with works like Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Screwtape Letters exploring faith and doubt. Finally, the career that made him famous and became his lasting legacy was that of a fantasy and science fiction author. His Chronicles of Narnia are classics of children’s literature, and have sparked devotion and serious exploration from authors like Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman, and Lev Grossman.

Lewis was a member of one of the most famous literary societies of the 20^th century, The Inklings, whose members would gather to read their works aloud for critique. His close friend, and one of the people who convinced him to convert to Christianity, was JRR Tolkien. He and Tolkien didn’t always like each others’ work, but he did give The Hobbit a favorable review.

His life was full of weird moments and incongruous facts. When he served in the First World War, he and his friend, Edward Courtnay Francis “Paddy” Moore, promised to care for each others’ mothers if one of them died in battle. When Moore was killed, Lewis kept his promise; he and his brother Warnie, Jane Moore, and Moore’s daughter Maureen all lived together in Lewis’ home, called The Kilns, for decades after the war. Mrs. Moore nursed Lewis through his war wounds, and in the late 1940s, when Mrs. Moore had to go into a nursing home, Lewis visited her every day until her death.

Years later he married a younger woman, the writer Joy Davidman, and after her death was so consumed by sorrow that he kept a journal to help him order his thoughts. He edited the journal into a book, A Grief Observed, and published it under a pseudonym—he expressed such doubt that he chose not to publish it under his real name. The book was hailed for its honesty, and Lewis then had to endure what must have been a terribly ironic experience: his friends recommended his own book to him as they watched him struggle with Davidman’s death.

Obviously Lewis’ greatest legacy is the Chronicles of Narnia, in which Lewis synthesized his love of Irish lore, Greek mythology, and Christian allegory into a 7-book epic published between 1950 and 1956. Narnia’s kingdoms function similarly to old Celtic society, creatures like fauns and nymphs mix with talking horses and the occasional witch, and spiritual guidance comes from a rampant Lion. In the midst of that are smaller stories about a family’s response to World War II, sibling rivalries, and the moral choices of children. It has been hugely influential since, as has his other large work, the Space Trilogy, which combined mythology and science fiction to examine morality. But his greatest impact can be felt each time a child looks into a wardrobe with a little more wonder than necessary.

We’re still not sold on Turkish Delight, but thank you for Puddleglum and Mr. Tumnus, Mr. Lewis!

Today marks the birthday of an author who forever changed the way we feel about time travel, alternate dimensions, and dark and stormy nights. Madeleine L’Engle was born on November 29^th in New York City and started writing almost right away. Her first story was composed at age 8, and she went on to pen a universe of novels, poems, and non-fiction throughout her amazing and inspirational career.

L’Engle is probably best remembered by science fiction fans and children throughout the world for A Wrinkle in Time and its many sequels in both the Kairos and Chronos series. These books set an impossibly imaginative standard for children’s fantasy adventure books. In A Wrinkle in Time, L’Engle appropriated the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night” from an 1830 novel Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. But truly, in the same way Sherlock Holmes hijacked “the game’s afoot!” from Shakespeare, “a dark and stormy night” now completely belongs to A Wrinkle in Time. Whether you’re a little kid or a grown-up cynical reader, that opening line tells you one thing: get ready!

Madeline L’Engle was a deeply spiritual writer who effortlessly blended her faith with her science fiction. Perhaps her greatest gift to us was the mainstreaming of The Tesseract, or more simply: the wrinkle in time. When Mrs. Who explains the concept to Meg, the latter gets very excited about her newfound comprehension of this awesome spacetime warp: “I got it!” Meg says. “For just a moment I got it! I can’t possibly explain it now, but there for a second, I saw it!” This is how readers of Madeline L’Engle will always feel. We glimpse these beautiful adventures in our mind’s eye, but to fully explain their brilliance is almost impossible.

Childhood’s End is coming to Syfy as a three-night event beginning December 14th and starring Mike Vogel, Charles Dance, and Colm Meaney. I was fortunate enough to see an early screening of the first episode, and I’ve tried to gather a few non-spoilery thoughts about it, as well as a few of the highlights from the panel that followed the screening. While I found it a little choppy at times, I thought this opening episode set up an intriguing premise that will be compelling for those who haven’t read the book, as well Arthur C. Clarke fans who have wanted to see this story brought to the screen. Check out our non-spoiler review!

First, a brief primer for those of you who haven’t read the book: Arthur C. Clarke’s novel is a first contact story in which an alien race (dubbed “The Overlords” by the U.S. press) comes to Earth, ostensibly to help humanity attain peace. However, as the years go by, the relationship between the humans and the Overlords shifts, and people begin to question whether the aliens are as benevolent as they seem.

The humans’ main point of contact is an alien named Karellen, who soothes and reasons with his chosen human ambassador Rikki (now Ricky) Stormgren, until the man is completely pro-Overlord. One of the conditions of their relationship is that the Overlords don’t want to reveal themselves to humans for a period of fifteen years, because they believe that their appearance will be unsettling.

The story has been updated considerably. Where Arthur C. Clarke’s novel took place in the early 1950s, and featured a mostly male cast of diplomats and physicists, Syfy’s version sets first contact as 2016 and has clearly made an effort to diversify the cast, with varying levels of success.

Some of the updates seem like a perfect reflection of our current society. For instance, changing Stormgren from the UN Secretary-General to a Missouri farmer works improbably well, because it turns the character into an everyman hero (or, as the cast referred to him, “the man least likely”). Mike Vogel does a great job of portraying a character who’s in over his head but still trying really hard to make sense of things, and most of all trying to steer the most moral course through overwhelming events. In fact, and I mean this completely as a compliment, the character often reminded me of Adam Scott’s Ben Walker Wyatt on Parks and Rec. He’s just so damned well-meaning! His grief-stricken past becomes a prism for looking at the aliens’ power, as their constant interruptions of his life strain his relationship with his wife Ellie, and their immense powers offer him an escape into memories of the past that might ruin his present.

In the other big change, the show has added a character named Peretta, a deeply religious Brazilian girl who thinks the Overlords are destroying the world’s faith. We meet her briefly as a young girl, but it seems that her role is going to be larger in the later two-thirds of the series. Also, Jan Rodricks’ name has been changed to Milo, but he’s still the one character who seems to want to see the stars for himself, despite the Overlords’ insistence that humans aren’t ready yet. (His particular plan is to be the first human to visit the Overlords’ home.) While we only see Milo as a younger character at first, it will be interesting to see how the Overlords deal with humanity’s space travel, since obviously it’s part of our history in a way that it wasn’t when Clarke wrote his novel.

On the less-good end… The idea that the U.S. specifically has to jump in to help the aliens help “Africa”—not a specific nation or area, just “Africa”—is problematic for me, as is a scene where representatives from the U.S. confront a group of Saudi princes over oil pipelines. The U.S. shaming Saudis for their oil profiteering felt a bit forced and hypocritical to me. I was also frustrated by the rote “gritty” background that Milo is trying to escape from; there was no unique detail there to hang onto, just the story of a smart boy in a rough neighborhood with a well-meaning mom who can’t shake her drug habit. There are also rushed and clunky moments that unfortunately reminded me more of some of Syfy’s earlier series and movies more than their recent work like Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. Overall, though, the emphasis on the human reactions to the aliens, and the big questions first contact inspires, carry the show more than any effects.

One other fun aspect I should mention: While Clarke’s book set a certain tone for first contact stories, he’s been… borrowed from for almost sixty years now. The show takes this into account with visual nods and references to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Signs, The Matrix, and Clarke’s own 2001 over the course of the first two hours, and it’s always hilarious to notice.

I know I already highlighted Mike Vogel’s lead role, but I should also mention that Colm Meaney makes a welcome return to sci-fi as the Rupert Murdoch-esque Wainwright, who leads a faction of anti-alien humans called The Freedom League. But best of all is Game of Thrones‘ Charles Dance as the voice of Karellen, who can shift from friendly to chilling mid-word.

Vulture’s Abraham Riesman moderated a panel after the screening with Mike Vogel (Ricky), Yael Stone (Peretta), Daisy Betts (Ellie), and Syfy’s head of programming, Bill McGoldrick. Some highlights:

• Stone was drawn into the project by her character’s sense of moral indignation, and the way the show interrogates the question: “What is a perfect world?”
• Vogel, having agreed to the role, read the complete script on a flight over the Atlantic and realized just how iconic a place this story has in the sci-fi canon, which led to a different realization: “Oh crap, I better not screw this up!” He said the show was “one of the most surreal and wonder experiences” he’s ever had.
• Vogel and Betts discussed the ways their roles “run together”—since Stormgren ends up having a “kind of Moses-God thing” which obviously disrupts Ricky’s life with his fiancé (and later wife). Betts was pleased that the show allowed Ellie to be “more than a wife” role, and instead let their relationship be the focal point to look at how first contact would effect real people.
• Riesman ended the panel by asking each panelist a hilarious what-if: If the aliens showed up immediately after the screening, would they follow the aliens? Or join an anti-alien faction like CE’s Freedom League? Stone thinks of herself as a “feminist prepper,” Betts would be fine with utopia as long as the fashions were more interesting than in most fictional futures, and Vogel asked if he could join Stone in her bunker. But it was McGoldrick who came in with the greatest, and most honest answer: “I’ve been a network executive for fifteen years. I’ve followed worse. I’d remake ALF if they wanted to.”

The first episode spends the bulk of its time setting up a world that would welcome these aliens, with the largest conflict occurring between pro and anti-alien factions. The end of the first episode tees us up nicely for a more interesting wrestling match between science, religion, and alien ideology, as Peretta and Milo enter adulthood in a world that is vastly different from the one they were born into. Will Peretta forsake her faith, or battle for it in the face of the world’s derision? Will Milo’s desire to explore space be crushed by the Overlords? For all its occasional clunkiness, Childhood’s End left me want to keep watching to find out. Childhood’s End will premiere on December 14th on Syfy, and in the meantime you can check out the trailer below!

Leah Schnelbach isn’t sure she’d trust anyone who sounded like Charles Dance. Come discuss utopia with her on Twitter!

Oh, Lucas. What have you done?

What have you done?

Last time, you showed me what you (or at least, you in cooperation with others, possibly?) could do with The Empire Strikes Back. And the result was a wonderful movie that knocked my socks off and sold me on Star Wars forever.

I trusted you, or at least past you, a bit more than I should have. Fortunately, some warnings kept me from getting my hopes up too much, but goodness.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t think Return of the Jedi is as good as The Empire Strikes Back or A New Hope.

And yet… despite not being as good as its predecessors, Return of the Jedi still strikes a chord in me.

My first mistake was not digging for the original cut of this movie. From reading the long list of changes on Wikipedia, I would have been far more impressed with the original. (I do admit that non-blinking Ewoks would have been much creepier, though.) The “Jedi Rocks” scene was horrible enough that I now understand why overworked game developers decided to add a dance-off to the Star Wars Kinect game.

My second mistake? Thinking that I could take the Ewoks, since I do like cute in the face of evil. As far as I’m concerned, the concept is fine, but the execution was, as it often seems with Lucas, flawed. Something was off about the Ewoks—I didn’t really buy the savage-warrior vibe off of them.

I thought about the Jawas on Tatooine, who seem to be around the same build as the Ewoks. I took them more seriously because their first impression was as a threat. And yes, the first Ewok that Leia meets does threaten her, but as the little Ewok acts more like a slightly intelligent hungry raccoon than a small tribal warrior, I couldn’t take any Ewok seriously afterward. Not even after they tied up our heroes and were about to roast them in C-3PO’s honor.

Now, what if the Ewoks were Wookiees? Then the introduction scene would work, because we already know a Wookiee is a fearsome foe, thanks to Chewbacca. In fact, the exact same tone of the scene would be needed, because it would show that there was some hope of appeasing these furry menaces. I wonder if this was meant to be the Wookiee planet, and the budget couldn’t withstand Wookiees, so we got Endor instead.

The dialogue between Luke and Leia about their mother was… weird. Because I know what happened to Padme. So that was just… ARGH.

Still, I should not give in to anger or to hate, because that way lies the Dark Side of the Force. And to be honest, the Ewoks are just a thorn in the side of the movie rather than an outright travesty like Jar-Jar Binks.

There is so much to like about Return of the Jedi.

The plan to save Han Solo was executed brilliantly, and the movie started off very well—like observing a syzygy of character arcs in motion. Luke Skywalker is so assertive, so self-assured, that he’s almost unrecognizable. I see the core of “I want to get off this rock” Luke there, but around it is this young Jedi Knight. The contrast in character is delicious. Plus, Luke can actually swing the lightsaber, so to speak, managing to use his powers to get into Jabba’s lair, and then killing a rancor.

Leia is more open about her love for Han, and Han is far less self-centered. In A New Hope, Han looked out for number one, while in Return of the Jedi he tells his rescuers to leave him behind more than once. This vast change is wonderful to behold, upholding a long-running theme of optimism with regards to the characters of villains and scoundrels, that some of them can be changed and taken off that path. In other words, the concept of the Light versus the Darkness goes beyond the Force users.

I didn’t think I would like watching Yoda toddle around and die of old age. I didn’t like him in the prequels, and being exposed to muppet!Yoda surprised me more than anything else in Empire Strikes Back. But watching this Yoda, as he prepares for death, as he struggles with how to tell Luke about his father and Vader… he’s more emotional, and so much wiser. I wish this version of Yoda had been in the prequels.

I don’t know what to think about Admiral Ackbar. I’ve been so over-exposed to the “It’s a trap!” meme and the general forced weirdness of prequel aliens that I just can’t take him seriously. Even when he is so serious.

And then there’s the resolution of the reveal from Empire Strikes Back. Every time the movie cut away from this thread, I wanted it to veer back (even though that wouldn’t have done the movie’s pacing much good).

One thing the prequels definitely got right is the manipulative evil that is Palpatine. The classic villain with a smiling cheek, in the prequels McDiarmid’s acting was star levels above everyone else’s. There’s almost perfect character continuity with respect to him: His plans always have wheels within wheels. He manipulated Anakin into a position where Anakin eventually Force-choked Padme despite sacrificing so many people so that she would live. And he attempts to manipulate Luke into a position where Luke will kill his own father despite wanting to bring him back to the Light.

And damn. Palpatine does such a good job of it. It almost works, but Luke is stubborn and has indeed learned enough to resist the wiles of Palpatine—just think if prequel Ben or Yoda had actually listened to Anakin (sometimes) and given him the support he needed. Now, it’s a wiser Ben and a wiser Yoda that teach Luke how to not give in to the Dark Side.

As for Vader—the entire interaction between him, the Emperor, and Luke is excellent. That mask hides everything from us—it’s only through Luke’s insistence that there is a conflict inside that we know there’s still a chance that Vader is sympathetic. And Vader’s decision to throw Palpatine into the core reactor (wait, why is there a chute to the core reactor in Palpatine’s throne… never mind, I probably missed something) is thus the more unexpected.

And while the “NOOOOOOOOOO” is definitely artificial in this case, I do have to say that it’s far more consistent with prequel Anakin. Old habits die hard, no matter how much badassery you’ve gone through.

The final scene between father and son, and Darth Vader’s pyre scene, were touching. The random scene where some Gungan screams “Weesa free!” is, um, less so.

Anthony Pero in the comments to the previous post mentioned that Jedis don’t by default go to “heaven.” Qui-Gon learned how to defeat death, and then Yoda and Ben learned how to defeat death from him. But that, as Anthony says, leaves a hole. Why in the world is Anakin there at the end?

Hmmm.

And why is it young Anakin that appears? We don’t see young Ben or even young(er) Yoda.

ARGH.

Right, don’t give in to hate, etc.

My impression is that if the prequels never existed (or at least, if I never watched them), I would be happier with the ending.

On balance, I liked Return of the Jedi. I quite liked A New Hope. And I loved Empire Strikes Back.

That’s pretty good for the Original Trilogy.

I’m hoping I can still get tickets to the midnight showing of The Force Awakens!

Ava Jarvis née Arachne Jericho is a freelance writer, techie, and geek. By day she writes about high-tech topics, and by night she writes about board games at her blog, the Elemeeple.

Remember that part in the story where Doctor Frankenstein breaks Igor out of a bear cage, freeing him once and for all from his sad life as a hunchback circus clown?

Of course you do. That’s everyone’s favorite part.

Victor Frankenstein is not something fun to talk about unless you can discuss the whole thing, so here is the short review for those of us who did not behold its glory over the Thanksgiving weekend or just want a quick recommendation: Do not imagine you’re going to see a good movie, because there are many more apt adjectives to describe this film. Bombastic, perhaps? Preposterous is a good one, too. Also, you can’t go wrong with misguidedly tenacious.

If you’re the kind of person who goes to movies to watch your favorite actors chew scenery, then run to the theater and don’t look back. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. (Least of all me.)

Spoilers for the entirety of the film below. Also, quite a few curse words.

So Daniel Radcliffe isn’t actually Igor. He just a nameless circus performer, casually abused by his costars. And he’s a hunchback, and also obsessed with human biology and medicine. (He’s not actually a hunchback, though—we’ll get to that later.) One day the flying trapeze woman of his dreams takes a horrible fall mid-show, and a strange man comes to his aid: Victor Frankenstein. We know this because when Radcliffe asks who he is, the frame freezes on McAvoy and the words “Victor Frankenstein” stamp themselves across the screen. Victor isn’t much help without equipment, leaving circus clown Radcliffe to show off his genius medical chops and get his trapeze pal breathing again.

I’m gonna wrap that man in silk and put him in my pocket, says Frankenstein. Or something like that. Okay, fine, it’s more like “You are brilliant! You are way too good to be in a circus wearing a crusty wig of what is either dreadlocks or just a lot of matted hair!” The ringmaster isn’t fond of talent poaching, so he locks young Radcliffe up, necessitating the above-mentioned break out. Victor takes the former clown back to his rooms near the college where he studies, and touches the guy all over, sucking fluid from his body to make him feel better.

…by which I mean, he realizes that Daniel Radcliffe’s hunchback is actually an abscess that must be drained, then manhandles his new friend into a back brace to help him to stand upright.

Why, what did you think I meant?

Victor wants help with his creepy research that works to bring life to dead tissue, and asks Radcliffe to pretend to be his old, strangely disappeared roommate named Igor. He also asks for help with said research, and now-Igor Radcliffe agrees in the name of science! Gross science. Match made lab partner heaven.

Or not. Because Andrew Scott (more commonly own as Jim Moriarty) is a detective for Scotland Yard of the decidedly pious persuasion. His name is Turpin, and he knows this twisted Frankenstein guy is doing the work of Satan, probably. Turpin comes off like a creepy, cross-wielding version of Sherlock, which makes it extra weird.

Igor is now helping Victor reanimate all sorts of body parts, which his buddy then takes down into the basement to do who knows what. (Well, we do… this story isn’t exactly new.) Igor’s trapeze pal, Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay of Downton Abbey fame) is all healed thanks to his knowledge and access to money, and she gains a benefactor once she’s well, allowing her to dance in a cabaret and be a concubine in public—her benefactor is into dudes, so she’s basically a well-kept beard. Igor’s crush rears its head because it helps to detract from his obvious adoration of Frankenstein. Poor Lorelei is barely a character; she’s nice and so good to dear Igor, but she might as well have “NO HOMO” tattooed across her forehead for all of her true purpose as far as the plot is concerned. Ah, well. She meets the two of them at a fancy party where Victor tells Igor not to embarrass him. Victor then proceeds to sit at a table with Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey) and shout “BABIES IN VATS!” at the top of his lungs.

…He’s talking about how women need not be involved in their own pregnancies, so they can go to school and have lives if they want them. So Victor is at least leaning toward feminism. Or perhaps he’s only feminist when he’s wasted. (That’s a thing, right? Drunk feminism?)

Victor eventually shares his basement project with Igor—he’s pieced together an entire creature, mostly from chimpanzee parts. He uses his magic electric device to bring the thing to life, then tells Igor that they’re going to present it in public. Igor is understandably concerned with this unexpected direction, but also really into his new title: Frankenstein’s partner.

Let that sink in for a moment.

So they present and it goes terribly until the last moment, when they supercharge the creature and it goes hog wild, tearing up the school. Eventually, they have to kill it. But it’s fine because the only person aside from Lorelei to see the entirety of the presentation is a guy named Finnegan (Freddie Fox), son of one of the wealthiest families in in England, who is some nightmare cross between Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas and Draco Malfoy. He is prepared to give them all the money they need, provided he has absolute power in the relationship. (He makes this proposal while eye-fucking Frankenstein in a decidedly unsettling way, but at this point we’ve already seen so much of that in the film that it hardly comes off as surprising.) He wants them to start on human experimentation immediately. Victor says yes because science again!

Inspector Turpin shows up to have a “Which is Better: Faith or Science?” fight with Victor, and nearly gets him to confess to creating something creepy that was set loose on the school. But Victor demands a warrant, and Turpin leaves with a warning, then goes obsessed-bonkers and decides that warrants shouldn’t matter because God. I never said the themes here were subtle.

A brief aside: this saintly crew of actors made the choice to treat this script as award-worthy material instead of the hilarious schlock it is, and the performances are gorgeously melodramatic. Daniel Radcliffe is endearing and timid and utterly sympathetic all the way through. Andrew Scott plays the part of zealot with surprising depth. James McAvoy is positively manic—his dizzying vacillation between emotions, his highs and lows, it’s all captivating. You end up adoring Frankenstein just as much as Igor, despite the fact he’s an asshole. Some people have all the charm.

Later, Victor’s dad CHARLES DANCE shows up—because when McAvoy is on form, who the hell else can you call in to bring him down a peg?—to tell him that he’s a disgrace to the Frankenstein name and his brother was way better. (Gee, wonder if that will be important.) Victor is depressed by this, so Igor shows up to help, and they both drink bottles of whiskey and talk about Victor’s special pocketwatch while designing their new monster who will have two sets of lungs, two hearts, probably two livers, and two spleens, and two—

—well. You get the picture.

Inspector Turpin shows up with a crew to break down their door, and our heroes retreat to the basement where Igor discovers the body of the real Igor, Victor’s old roommate who died of a drug overdose and had his eyes pilfered for experimentation. New Igor realizes that maybe his love BFF isn’t the best guy to be in cahoots with, and tries to convince Victor to stop this madness. Instead, Victor runs to Bosie Malfoy, who promises to set them up with a castle in Scotland. Igor won’t go, so Victor parts from him with hurtful words (things like “I made you” and “you’re making a mistake” and “no one will ever dress you as well as I did”…or definitely those first two at least), and Igor almost gets murdered by Bosie as a means of protecting the Finnegan family investment.

Suddenly, (Eureka!) Igor finds out that Victor’s pocketwatch belonged to his older brother, who died in a snowstorm they played in as kids, and this leads him to tell Lorelei that nothing is more important than his relationship with Victor, so they pack up and take a carriage to Scotland. They’re blocked from entering the place by Bosie Malfoy’s men, so Igor climbs up the side of a mountain with his bare hands to get into the castle. He tells Victor that what happened to brother was not his fault, and that this experiment won’t help fix it. But really, the conversation goes more like—

Igor: Victor, no.

Victor: VICTOR YES.

(Unsurprisingly, that’s a summation of every conversation in the movie.)

So Victor gets the experiment going with a bunch of technicians standing around (Mark Gatiss, what the hell are you doing here? Did someone come kidnap half the cast of Sherlock while you were filming your Christmas special?) and the creature lives, and then everything just explodes and lots of people die, and then Victor gets a good look at his monster and apologizes to his dead brother because the creature clearly isn’t alive in any sentient sense. (While this is all going on, Daniel Radcliffe’s hair goes from sopping wet to blow-dried’n’fluffy every time the camera cuts back to him.) Andrew Scott tries to kill the thing with a gun, and that goes over as well as you’d expect. So it’s down to Victor and Igor stab the it with lots of poles and stuff before it finally dies. Igor gets knocked out and wakes up to his lady love and a note from Victor telling him that they should part ways for now, and that he’ll always consider Igor his greatest creation.

*giggles hysterically*

By the end of it all, I have a personal peeve with this film. Yes, it’s silly and overblown, and that is completely fine for a fun afternoon of diversion. But the easiest fix to this mess of a film would have been to go where the script kept leaning—if you’re making Gay Frankenstein, don’t half-ass it. If this movie had just owned its homo-eroticism and run with it, the whole exercise would have been 8000% more fun, and distinguished itself among the dozens of lookalike Frankenstein narratives. It’s not like McAvoy couldn’t have handled that; hell, while you’re at it (with a set of actors who already classify as genre candy), have Michael Fassbender play the monster and give fans from every fandom what they want.

Gay Frankenstein. You have nothing to lose at this point, Hollywood. Bosie Malfoy is rooting for you—we all are.

Emily Asher-Perrin was not the only person in the theater who outright giggled at the end of this movie. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.