The dust has settled, the thinkpieces have been unleashed, and most people have already seen the film multiple times: the moment is right for How It Should Have Ended to take on The Force Awakens. The best thing about this? Their love for the film glows through like E.T.’s heart (if you don’t mind a mixed-SFF metaphor), the jokes mostly land, and the grizzled-Han-Solo-voice is perfect. The worst thing? Star Wars: Episode VIII is still SO FAR AWAY and this just reminds us of that.

But then, everything reminds us of that. Check out the video below, and obviously beware of spoilers.

See? Glowing with love! And that scene with Maz and Chewie! Awww…we’re going to watch it again.

[via io9/Gizmodo!]

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Tiger and the Wolf—available February 11 in the UK from Tor UK—is set in the bleak northern crown of the world, where war is coming.

Maniye’s father is the Wolf clan’s chieftain, but she’s an outcast. Her mother was queen of the Tiger and these tribes have been enemies for generations. Maniye also hides a deadly secret. All can shift into their clan’s animal form, but Maniye can take on tiger and wolf shapes. She refuses to disown half her soul, so escapes, rescuing a prisoner of the Wolf clan in the process. The killer Broken Axe is set on their trail, to drag them back for retribution.

Maniye’s father plots to rule the north and controlling his daughter is crucial to his schemes. However, other tribes also prepare for strife. Strangers from the far south appear too, seeking allies in their own conflict. It’s a season for omens as priests foresee danger, and a darkness falling across the land. Some say a great war is coming, overshadowing even Wolf ambitions. A time of testing and broken laws is near, but what spark will set the world ablaze?

Chapter 1

The sound of the chase confirmed he’d been right: they were heading his way. No doubt the quarry was flagging by now, but still keeping ahead of the pack. Akrit was not as young or swift as he once had been, but strength came in many forms, and raw speed did not decide success in a hunt like this.

A big, broad-shouldered man was Akrit Stone River: weather-beaten skin like old tanned leather and his hair starting to grey. He had led the Winter Runner tribe of the Wolf for twenty years, and each one of those years had made his people stronger, extended their reach, brought more hearths into the Wolf’s Shadow. If he showed weakness though, some challenger would step from the pack to face him. On days like this, he knew they were all waiting for it.

Akrit was sure that he could beat any of them if ever that day came. But he was not as sure as he had been five years ago.

If I had a son . . . and that was a weakness of his body, even if it was not one that slowed him in either the chase or the fight. If he had a son, then he would be unassailable. But just a daughter . . . Am I less of a man? A daughter’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

He scowled, thinking of that. A daughter, maybe. His daughter? He recognized little enough of himself in her. The fear that had grown in him, as the girl had grown, was that she was too much her dead mother’s child.

There is still time. Aside from the girl’s mother he had taken three wives, but none of them had borne him anything but excuses. This year, perhaps, he would find a fourth. There must be a woman born within the Jaws of the Wolf who is strong enough to take my seed.

As he crouched there, listening to the music of the chase, he thought of his daughter’s dead mother, the one woman who had been that strong.

I should have kept her. I shouldn’t have had her killed like that. But, once she had given him what he wanted, she had become too dangerous. A daughter had seemed ideal: from her a girl would serve his purposes better than a boy, and he had been young then, with plenty of time to sire a few sons to be true heirs. Who could have known that he would get no other issue in all those years since? Just that sullen, close-featured girl.

He could hear a shift in the baying as the chase neared—telling him exactly who had taken the lead, and who had exhausted their strength and fallen back. The quarry was giving them fair sport, that was plain: a good omen. The Wolf appreciated a good run.

Ten years before, Akrit Stone River would himself have been in the pack, keeping a moderate, confident pace, taking his turn to snap at the heels of the stag and then fall back. Nobody would have berated him that he was not at the fore when the quarry was brought to bear.

Now, though . . . now he was ten years older.

He heard the eager throats of his warriors as the quarry started to weary, imagined them coursing, a river of grey bodies between the trees with the stag’s heels flashing before them. There was Smiles Without Teeth, Akrit’s war leader and a man who would be his most dangerous challenger if he were not so loyal and devoid of ambition. There, too, was Bleeding Arrow’s high call, jaws closing on air—no, a hoof delivered to the snout as he got too close. Then Amiyen Shatters Oak was next at the fore, the fiercest of his huntswomen. She was near as old as Akrit but still as strong as ever, and if she had been a man she would have challenged him long ago. Impossible to take to wife, though, and that was a shame. Surely she would have made a good mother of many sons.

Too fierce to share a tent with, Akrit decided. No pairing could survive the conflicting ambitions of two strong hunters. So it was that Amiyen bore sons for another man, who tended her hearth while she went hunting.

He braced himself, hearing the chase draw near. All this struggle for a few more moments of life, and still I knew which way you would come. The land spoke to him, its rises and falls, its skeins of little lakes and streams, its hard ground and its soft, the very pattern of the trees showing him where the quarry would turn, where he would leap, where the pack would turn him aside.

And the Wolf is with me for another year. He ran forward and Stepped onto all fours, his burly human frame flowing into the wolf that was his soul, his second skin. Bones, flesh, clothes and all, turning into the grey hide of the beast. Now he was building up speed, claws catching at the turf, bolting from the undergrowth almost under the hooves of the fleeing stag.

The quarry reared, panicked and turned aside, just as Akrit knew it would. Smiles Without Teeth took the chance to lunge for its haunches, tearing a gash with his claws but failing to catch hold, and the deer was off again, staggering slightly, and Akrit had shouldered his way to the front of the pack, fresh and strong and laughing at them.

They had no words between them, but he heard their thoughts in the snarls and panting as the pack fell in behind him. Smiles Without Teeth was chuckling, Bleeding Arrow was angry at being out-thought—but then out-thinking Bleeding Arrow was no great feat. Amiyen Shatters Oak was pushing herself harder. She wanted to show that if any woman had been allowed to challenge for leadership, then it would have been her.

The joy of the chase, and feeling the pattern of the pack shift to accommodate him, whether they liked it or not, was taking hold of him. Even Bleeding Arrow was moving to his will, falling out towards the flank to head off the quarry’s inevitable questing there, bringing the stag back in line – and now they were forcing the beast into the denser forest, where their own lithe forms would slip more easily between the trees.

A good spread of antlers on that head, Akrit noted approvingly. If the quarry fulfilled his part then this would be a good year, with that fine tribute to place between the jaws of the Wolf. No need for a priest to read omens as fine as that.

One of the many lessons a warrior must learn was held in the great span of those antlers: Do not let your strength become your weakness. How proud was the stag of that broad spread of points, how he must have strutted before his women, and yet in the chase they were a weight that slowed him down, an encumbrance constantly in danger of being caught by briars or branches.

Akrit gauged his moment, then spurred himself forwards, snapping at the flanks of the stag, driving him sideways to where Smiles Without Teeth was waiting to rip his fangs across the beast’s path. The quarry turned more quickly than Akrit would have expected, but the pack was closing in on him from all sides, offering a set of jaws wherever the stag turned: the only path left was deeper into the forest, to where the trees grew close.

There was a glade there that Akrit knew well, its bracken and moss long fed on old blood. The pack was already spreading, those hunters who had been hanging at the back regaining their strength were now drifting out to the side, and with a swift burst of speed began to move ahead.

The stag burst into the glade, ready to gain some ground over the open space, but the pack was already there before him, and he wheeled, rearing high, those mighty antlers clashing with the trees overhead: brought to bay at last.

The encircling wolves snapped and bared their teeth at one another, excitement running high between them, but they were waiting for Akrit’s move. He had them for another year at least.

The stag lowered his antlers, threatening them with those jagged tines, wheeling round and round, trying to hold all quarters against the grey tide. Akrit waited for his opening, bunching himself to spring. There was still a very real chance of getting this wrong if he was too impatient—

And there went Dirhathli, a boy out on his first hunt, unable to restrain himself, trying to earn a name. The antlers flashed, and the boy yelped and fell back, twisting to lick at his side, and then Stepping entirely from thin wolf to thin boy, holding his wound and crying out in pain. No hunter’s name for you, Akrit thought sourly. Or, if you’re unlucky, you’ll earn such a name as to make you regret this hunt all your life.

Another two of the pack made abortive lunges at the quarry, more to drive it back to the centre of the glade than to harm it. They were still waiting for Akrit.

Then the quarry Stepped, and a moment later there was just a long-limbed man crouching in the centre of the clearing, one leg bloodied where Smiles Without Teeth had gashed him, his face twisted in fear.

A shudder went through the circling wolves, one of disgust and horror.

‘Please,’ said the quarry, hands held out in supplication, and Akrit felt a stab of anger, and fear too, for this was surely a bad omen unless he could turn matters around somehow.

He growled deep in his throat and Stepped too, a man amongst wolves, aware of the pack’s eyes on him.

‘Running Deer, this is no proper tribute. You know how this is done.’

‘Please . . .’ The man’s chest was heaving with the exertion of the chase. ‘I can’t . . .’

‘You know what this price buys your people,’ Akrit told him sharply. ‘You know what your cowardice will cost them. I give you one chance to face death as you should, Running Deer.’

‘No!’ the trembling man cried out. ‘My name—’

‘You are Running Deer from the moment you were chosen as tribute,’ Akrit shouted at him, incensed that this wretched creature should flout the traditions of the hunt. ‘Your family I will see torn apart. I shall feast on them myself. Your village shall give its children and women as thralls. I offer you this one last chance to avoid that. You know the rules of tribute.’

But the man—such a proud stag, and yet such a wretched human being—only begged and pleaded, and at last Akrit tired of him.

He gave the signal, and the pack descended. For himself, he would not sully his fangs, and none would blame him for not lowering himself. There would be no trophy of antlers for the Wolf, and no doubt Kalameshli Takes Iron would have dire warnings for the year to come. All of the hunters would have to be cleansed of the dead man’s ghost. The entire tribute hunt had become a travesty.

Akrit had an ambivalent relationship with omens. He was quick to make use of them, but well aware that they were a knife with two edges. So far, in his rule of the Winter Runners tribe, he had been able to ride out whatever the fates had in store for him, turning each year’s predictions to his advantage. The priest, Kalameshli Takes Iron, was his friend of old and their partnership a long-standing and close one, but a year’s forecast of bad omens might change that.

Akrit walked away from the kill, because there was no glory to be found there. He was already trying to think how this day might be seen as anything other than a disaster.

Excerpted from The Tiger and the Wolf © Adrian Tchaikovsky 2016

To celebrate the launch of Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom (out next Tuesday) and Housing Works’ annual Geek Week, we’re teaming up with WORD Bookstores to bring you a fantastic evening of great books, beer, and conversation with some of your favorite authors! LaValle will join Maria Dahvana Headley (Magonia) and Daniel Polansky (The Builders) in a discussion led by Tor.com’s own Emily Asher-Perrin and Ryan Britt (Luke Skywalker Can’t Read) about the ways they’re taking on, lovingly reimagining, and rewriting the rules of fantasy.

The panel will kick off at 7 p.m. on February 23rd at Housing Works Bookstore Café in Manhattan, and we’ll have your choice of free Brooklyn Lager or Sixpoint Sweet Action for the first 96 people to arrive (while supplies last). RSVP here!

Peggy Carter is in danger! …Of being upstaged on her own show, that is.

Last week on Agent Carter, Whitney Frost stormed in from Oklahoma and straight up ate a dude while Peggy listened alongside the rest of us. Naturally, we just want to keep following Whitney but that would really push Peggy to the sidelines, so “The Atomic Job” offers a compromise: Not so much Whitney this week, but how about a really fun caper with some characters you haven’t seen a lot?

WE OPEN ON a lot of whiskey by Peggy’s bed. Was there that much when she first got to Howard’s place? I feel like there wasn’t but maybe I’m misunderstanding how Howard Stark works. I mean…whiskey self-replication is probably one of the first things Howard ever invented! Along with Captain America.

Jason Wilkes spooks Peggy out of bed because Highlander is on TV right now come watch OR he wants to show Peggy and Jarvis and Their Smashing Bathrobes that zero matter is now attracted to him and that he can even absorb it and turn solid. His mytharc duties for the day now accomplished, Wilkes disappears until his exposition is once again needed by the innocent citizens of Gotha…er, L.A.

In another part of Los Angeles, Nurse I’m In A Second Episode comes home to find a dinner prepared that seems to be mostly bread and an Agent Daniel Sousa sleeping on her couch. He is cute, even as a lump, and she is cute, even as someone we’ve seen for only two seconds, and they proceed to have the cutest engagement scene in the history of cute. If I can, I’m going to try and clip it out of the episode and embed it here, because it is too sweet for words to describe. Update: Here we go!

All cuteness aside, this is the kind of scene that tells you that Nurse Violet is doomed. It also reveals that Violet is/was Sousa’s physical therapist, which means that between Peggy and Violet, Sousa will fall in love with pretty much anyone who pays attention to him.

There, I’ve made it sad again and now I feel better.

Back at Cal’s Place, we see that Whitney talks in her sleep, but also, doesn’t really sleep, as she demonstrates by surprising Cal in the closet like some kind of wide-awake nightmare. (Was anyone able to make out what she was saying? I think I heard the word “time” at the end there but there was a lot of screechy soundtrack and blanket rustling going on.) It turns out she has plans and those plans involve scheduling a meeting with the body of Jane, the frozen woman from the first episode of this season, because her body still has a ton of zero matter in it seriously where do I even start it all looks so good…

Peggy and Jarvis also want Jane’s body so Wilkes can figure out why he can suddenly absorb zero matter. They climb into the morgue through the vents and, sure, they could have just talked or paid their way in but Jarvis is wearing his recreational tie today.

Whitney and Cal do talk/pay their way in and visit Jane’s frozen body at the same time that Peggy and Jarvis get to the morgue room via the ducts. They watch as Whitney absorbs the zero matter from the body then purrs “I need an atomic bomb!” God I love her.

Wilkes comes back for another trip to Exposition City, where he informs Jarvis and Peggy that Whitney is clearly trying to recreate the atomic explosion that tore open that…hole?…to the zero matter. Her husband’s company, Isodyne, designs nukes but Roxxon is the one that actually obtains the uranium fuel and makes them. No one knows where Roxxon makes the bombs, except for good ol’ arms-racing Howard Stark, because that’s how dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked pretty well so far.

Both Peggy and Whitney have a long road ahead of them in regards to infiltrating Roxxon. Peggy needs a key to get in the Roxxon building, but only the Roxxon head/Council of Nine member Hugh Jones has it. The bumbling scientists of the SSR may have a solution! They’ve invented a memory inhibitor that can be pressed against a person’s temples to wipe their memory for two minu…okay it’s just a taser.

Peggy is all PERFECT, NOW GIVE ME BANGS so she can pose as a secretary at Roxxon. Jones is immediately smitten but sees through the disguise almost instantly, as one would because as disguises go it’s more of a “Peggy I love your new haircut” look than a “You are a mysterious new person I have never met before!” Peggy tases him, but the “memory inhibitor” doesn’t even work for two minutes, so she has to keep tasing him again and again and again while she fumbles for the key in his belt buckle. “You’re saving the world you’re saving the world you’re saving the world…”

Because the episode wasn’t already goofy enough, Ken Marino shows up! He’s a mob boss in L.A. but the real question here is whether he’s Veronica Mars Ken Marino, The State Ken Marino, or Wet Hot American Summer Ken Marino, or Children’s Hospital Ken Marino, or…oh, okay, none of those. He’s just a psychopath who randomly beats the crap out of his minions. What a waste of a perfectly good Ken Marino!

(Also, ace performance by Whitney and Cal in the background. Cal gets sicker and sicker while Whitney is at first shocked, then embarrassed, before deciding she’s actually cool with it.)

Whitney and Cal make a deal with Ken Marino and head to Roxxon with their mob goons while Peggy, Jarvis, and Sousa try and assemble a team of agents that they can trust. Peggy suggests Rose, who got the same training that all the agents do but Sousa is skeptical since she’s had no field experience. “I can’t focus on the mission if I’m worried about protecting Rose,” he mutters, not meeting Peggy’s eye. “I’m SEEING Daniel Sousa but I’m HEARING Jack Thompson,” Peggy fires back. As if that sweet burn weren’t enough to seal the deal, Rose immediately proves how tough she is by beating the crap out of a one-man band. God I love her.

Now their team needs Science Gadgets, but the bumbling SSR scientists are resentful of how the agency treats them. The head scientist, Aloysius Samberley (WHAT) is particularly galled. Sousa hired him personally, but Sousa doesn’t even remember doing it. Although the SSR scientists are kind of terrible at their job, I have to side with Samberley here. Being forgotten by the organization you work for is a terrible blow.

Rose, luckily, is there to smooth things over, asking if Samberley liked her pie. “That pie was you? Your pie was in me?” he stammers and wow, that didn’t take long. Slo-mo bad ass hero walk time!

They’re like the Avengers, but hopeless! God I love them.

Samberley and Rose try to charm their way in to the Roxxon plant but the Hydra-esque guards aren’t having it, so Samberley whips out a new invention which…tases them. Seriously, all this guy does is invent tasers.

Whitney and Cal have infiltrated the plant ahead of Peggy’s team, but all the doors are locked and the floor layout is confusing. “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS BOMBS,” Whitney yells as Peggy’s team enters the arena. Peggy, Sousa, and Jarvis figure out where the bombs are while Rose takes out the good china on a wandering mob goon. Samberly is eager to help, too, but only ends up locking Jarvis in the room with the bombs. “Is the door opening soon?” Jarvis squeaks.

Originally the plan was to have Sousa extract the uranium from the bomb casings, but now Jarvis is the only one who has access to them, so…the butler will have to do it. Sousa tries to talk him through it calmly, telling Jarvis that it’s just like making soufflé, which is kind of like saying “It’s just as hard as you think it is!” Jarvis, it should be noted, is still wearing his recreational tie.

Peggy can’t help Jarvis (and even Rose can barely help Samberley, who can’t seem to figure out how to re-open the bomb room door) so she heads off in search of Whitney and Cal. She finds the two of them having a spat and warns Whitney of the consequences of what she is attempting. Whitney’s face texts “U SRSLY TRYNA SCIENCE @ ME?” and they get in a fight.

It turns out that zero matter is also making Whitney defensively stronger. (And certainly offensively stronger, since she kinda/sorta picked Hunt in the previous episode.) Whitney can withstand Peggy’s punches repeatedly (a fact that even surprises her) and has enough weight to her that Peggy gets repelled through a wooden railing when Peggy tries to kick Whitney away. The whole fight turns into a lose-lose for Peggy. Sure, she got away from Whitney’s zero matter grip, but she ends up falling onto cinder blocks and getting impaled on rebar and HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM CORDELIA?

Peggy’s crew has the nuclear fuel, thwarting Whitney, and they rush Peggy to Nurse Fianceé who declares that the rebar missed every organ and bone ever and here’s some iodine? you’re all better hooray! I kept expecting Whitney to burst in at any moment and fulfill the prophecy of the Doomed Nurse, but Violet takes care of that herself. After Peggy is fixed up, she tells Sousa that seeing him around Peggy has made her realize that she’s just a rebound for him, a consolation. The engagement is off, because their marriage would be doomed from the start.

Cal, meanwhile, is not happy about the botched theft of the bomb. Whitney tugged on his ambition and his pride in order to get him to play along, but he came very close to losing everything. He may be dopey, but he’s not an idiot, and there are hints that he may not even be evil enough to want the same things as the Council. Whitney is left with no choice but to threaten him into playing along now, but her threat doesn’t stop him from calling the Council. There’s an emergency, Cal says, my wife is the weirdest.

By the end of the episode, we’re back where we started. Whitney still doesn’t have a bomb, Sousa is still un-engaged, presumably Jarvis is still being menaced by Stark’s animals, and Peggy’s in bed with Wilkes ghosting over her. The two of them listen to the song they danced to at the beginning of the season and Peggy laments that they can’t dance with each other now. “YEAH THAT WOULD BE NICE,” Wilkes’ face says.

Then he disappears.

Thoughts:

• Why couldn’t Wilkes have gone on the nuclear bomb heist with them? It’s been five episodes now and Agent Carter has barely featured him. And now he’s been sucked away, or something.
• Clearly, zero matter doesn’t want to be separated from other zero matter. It’s collecting itself, but is this just a physical property of the material, or is there a will behind it? Basically… is there a baddie we’re going to see beyond Whitney and the Council?
• “Rumor is her husband surprised her with one of those…televisions.” Commercial televisions definitely existed in 1947, but the broadcast networks hadn’t yet reached the west coast, so there would have been very little on TV for them to watch. It’s like buying a new Nintendo. Maybe wait a couple years for some good games to come out first.
• “This is bringing back terrible memories. Apricot preserves, in my granny’s house in the cellar. Cold, cramped, and teeming with spiders!” Jarvis would make an excellent reader of bedtime stories. One wonders how little Tony would react.
• Samberley: “Rose, after all this finished, I think you and I…” Rose: “JUST OPEN THE DOOR.”
• This was a hilariously staged episode. From the skip in the soundtrack during the SSR’s hero walk to Whitney just popping up behind Cal in the closet.
• “For the record, that was NOTHING like making soufflé.”

The latest book in Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock series, Blood in Her Veins: Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock, is out now from Roc, and we want to send you a copy of it—along with the rest of the books in the series!

In this must-have collection of stories, experience nineteen thrilling adventures from the world of vampire-hunter Jane Yellowrock, including many fan favorites and two all-new novellas. Read about the first time Jane put the pedal to the metal in “The Early Years,” and the last thing a werewolf will ever see as Jane delivers justice in “Beneath a Bloody Moon.” Get a searing look into the pasts of some of the series’ best-loved characters: Beast in “WeSa and the Lumber King,” Rick LaFleur in “Cat Tats,” and Molly Everhart Trueblood in “Haints.”

In the brand-new “Cat Fight,” the witches and vampires of Bayou, Oiseau, are at war over a magical talisman—and Jane must figure out how to keep the mysterious artifact out of the covetous hands of the Master of New Orleans. And in the never-before-published “Bound No More,” Jane welcomes a visit from Molly and her daughter, Angie, who is about to prove she’s the most powerful witch in Everhart history….

From the Big Easy to the bad bayou, from the open road to a vampire’s lair—with Jane Yellowrock, it’s always a given: have stakes, will travel.

Comment in the post to enter!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of 50 United States and D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec). To enter, comment on this post beginning at 3:30 PM Eastern Time (ET) on February 10th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on February 14th. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

The last few years have seen a heartening spike in people’s love of SPACE. Between Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, Curiosity’s selfies, the Twitter-based love affair of Rosetta and her Philae Lander, The Expanse, all of the various SpaceX projects, and astronaut Scott Kelly’s #YearinSpace, Earthlings seem to have decided to take space travel seriously again. Now, NASA and JPL have given us a new take on Space Travel – a series of gorgeous posters from Invisible Creature design!

The posters will be used to create a 2016 calendar for NASA staff, scientists, engineers, and government officials. You can also get digital copies here at JPL’s site, and you can buy physical prints through Invisible Creature.

Here’s a dreamy take on Venus:

A fabulous neo-Deco poster for Mars:

A riff on the old European Grand Tour that will take you to the edge of our solar system:

And finally Kepler 16b, which is our favorite because Tatooine:

Maybe the best part of this art project lies in its backstory: Invisible Creature was founded in 2006 by Don and Ryan Clark, and while they’ve worked with huge names like Nike and Target, working with NASA was especially memorable. Here’s their grandfather, Al Paulsen, hard at work at NASA, where he was an illustrator for more than 30 years:

You can learn more about Invisible Creature’s inspirations over at The Verge!

One of the best things about working at Tor.com is that we get to spend so much time immersed in the science fictional and fantasy worlds that we love—from the books, comics, and movies that we grew up on through the newest releases of the year, we tend to eat, sleep, and breathe SFF both in and out of the office. As voracious readers, though, we also like to stretch our wings and venture into other literary genres, and so we thought we’d share some recommendations from our recent forays into history and historical fiction, biography, anthropology, criticism, and more. We hope that you’ll share some of your own suggestions in the comments, and let us know what other genres help to round out your TBR pile!

Bridget McGovern:

I tend to read a lot of history, historical fiction, biography, and works that occasionally blur the line between those genres. I’m a big fan of Hilary Mantel (particularly her Cromwell trilogy-in-progress) and Kate Summerscale (The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and The Queen of Whale Cay). I recently devoured my way through The Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh, set mainly in India and China in the years leading up to the First Opium War; in many ways, it’s a gorgeous exercise in worldbuilding that any fan of fantasy will appreciate. And the role that language plays in these books is fascinating, as the large cast of characters endeavor to communicate across a web of different languages, dialects, and slang, leading to a lot of slippery business with puns and idiomatic misunderstandings; the results are sometimes hilarious (especially early on), but can also be tragic on both an individual level and a larger cultural/historical scale—all told, it’s just a brilliant, masterful work of storytelling.

I also have to recommend Alan Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised to anyone who enjoys truly smart, entertaining pop cultural criticism. It covers twelve of the most influential TV dramas of the last couple of decades (including Buffy, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica), with plenty of behind-the-scenes input from the writers, showrunners, and producers responsible for creating—and occasionally blamed for destroying—some of the best storytelling in any medium in recent memory.

Chris Lough:

The End of Men by Hanna Rosin

Sorry/not sorry, guys. Although, it should be noted that the title of Rosin’s non-fiction book is extremely hyperbolic, meant to stop you in your tracks, and the cover synopsis is so overblown that this sentence is the only one that actually describes the content of the book:

With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down.

The End of Men is essentially a large collection of data that studies social systems by looking at results for males and females separately. Some of the conclusions are what you’d expect–women are still offered less money than men–but some of the conclusions are startling. The End of Men doesn’t offer a road map to, you know, ending men. It doesn’t rejoice in the victory of one gender or another, it simply points out that dynamics in education, the work force, and economics are changing, and that men are not keeping up.

By grouping all of this data together, you start to understand the terror propelling people who call themselves “Men’s Right Activists.”

First, I’d like to slow clap the cover designer for this book, for taking the extremely hyperbolic title and coating it in pastel colors. It is a taunt to anyone outraged by the title but too dumb to flip through the actual book. Here come them wimmins to take your rights, the cover design says, and if you believe this then you are literally judging this book, and probably everything, by its cover. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. (It’s also possible that I’m giving the cover too much credit, and that it’s pastel because the author is female.)

Stefan Raets:

In the last few years, most of my genre reading has been for review. Whenever I read something just for fun, it tends to be either a reread of an old favorite, or something completely outside of the genre. Lately, I’ve been going for nonfiction about my two other nerd obsessions: music and history. Here are two recent favorites:

Darker Than the Deepest Sea by Trevor Dann, being a biography of the musician Nick Drake. There’s some wonderful detail about Drake’s early life, and the book really puts his shocking decline at the end of his life in perspective, but if I’m to be honest, my favorite bit is the final section, where Dann analyzes all of Drake’s songs and includes the unusual guitar tunings Drake was so fond of.

The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliadis, which is an account of the lives of the many Americans who emigrated to Russia in the first half of the 20th century. During the Great Depression, the U.S. economy was in ruins, while Russia was stabilizing and prospering after the upheaval of the October Revolution. A thriving American immigrant community in Russia, complete with baseball leagues and English language newspapers, was later decimated by the Stalinist regime and more or less forgotten by the home country.

Leah Schnelbach:

I’ve made it a bit of a tradition since coming to Tor.com that I spend the time between Christmas and New Year’s reading something that is resolutely non-SFF. I also try to read (on paper) and ignore TV, internet, and movies for at least a few days. Last year the book was the giant Jim Henson biography, which was fantastic but… well, we all know how that story ends. This time I started my year in a perfect way by reading Fran Ross’ Oreo, a criminally overlooked novel from 1974.

Here is what Oreo is: a quest story; a re-telling of the Theseus myth; a tour through mid-70’s Black culture; a reckoning with both Black and Jewish heritage; feminist; queer-friendly; a love letter to the power of Yiddish; the funniest book you will ever read.

Here is what Oreo is not: sad; depressing; traumatic; reeling; hand-wringing; overwrought; boring.

If you’d like a plot description, biracial Christine Clark (accidentally nicknamed ‘Oreo’ by her grandmother – it’s a long story) decides to leave the safety of Philadelphia and journey into the labyrinth of New York in search of her Jewish father, and a picaresque adventure ensures. The book fell through the cracks when it was published. The book was rediscovered by the scholar and poet Haryette Mullen, and finally reissued by New Directions last summer. Author Danzy Senna sums up the wonderfulness of the book in her introduction to that edition, saying:

As in the best satire, nobody in “Oreo” is safe; nobody is spared. The humor is low at times, scatological and plain silly, and the humor is high, sophisticated wordplay and clichés flipped on their heads. Ross is a hard sell for February, Black History Month, and a hard sell for March, Women’s History Month. Hers is a postmodern text; it is a queer text; it is a work of black satire; it is a work of high feminist comedy; it is a post-soul text. Her novel is multifaceted and multilingual, making it an awkward presence on the landscape of American fiction, where “ethnic” literature can be put in kiosks like dishes at a food fair, and consumed just as easily.

Personally, I think the book would have been just as tough to publish now. It’s too inventive and messy and weird, which is what makes it a brilliant novel.

Mordicai Knode:

I’m an armchair anthropologist, and I like to keep my skills sharp by reading scientific non-fiction. Neanderthals and other non-human members of the genus Homo are my particular poison, and the last book I read on the subject was The Invaders by Pat Shipman. It looks at early human migration out of Africa through the lens of an “invasive species,” quite convincingly, and speculates on the role that the domestication of the dog by humans might have had in Neanderthal extinction.

My wife and I host a book club with a fairly diverse selection of books: everyone tries to represent their interests or favorite genre. I’d already read the last selection, but was happy to re-read it: Nevada by Imogen Binnie. I’ve known Imogen for a while, as have a few other people in the club, which the person who picked it didn’t know, so Imogen called in after our discussion to chat with us about the novel as a nice treat.  It’s a story about New York, small-town America, and being trans, and the voice of the protagonist of the first half, Maria, is clear and affecting.

Natalie Zutter:

Neck-and-neck with my love of great speculative and SFF stories is fiction and nonfiction that examine the modern state of love. I will defend romance and chick lit to the end, but they have to have something unique to earn that support. One of my favorite books of 2015 was Eliza Kennedy’s I Take You, a Bridget Jones-esque romp that completely subverts readers’ expectations: To wit, it opens with a woman staring down the barrel at her wedding day and sleeping with everyone she can before she has to walk down the aisle. It’s a dark, sexy, unapologetic look at how commitment phobia grips today’s lovebirds, how with the option of so much choice it’s scary to tie yourself to one partner forever.

Someone else who knows plenty about the crisis of choice in contemporary dating is comic Aziz Ansari. For Modern Romance, he teamed up with sociologist Eric Klinenberg and polled real people at his shows, who willingly handed over their smartphones so Aziz could study unbiased evidence of the awkwardness of OkCupid messages, miscommunications over text, and the awfulness of ghosting. As someone who had more than my share of cringeworthy OkCupid dates before finding my guy through the site, I appreciate novels and irreverent yet in-depth studies that map out the shifting landscape of finding love in the age of technology.

Molly Templeton:

Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness by Miya Tokumitsu

When you recommend a book with a title like this, people can hardly help but wonder about you and your job; for the record, I am very fond of mine. But I also love this book, which explores the way the “do what you love” mythology plays out in our culture. What used to be a corny mantra about finding happiness has transformed into a way for capitalism to ask—or require—more from workers, whether more time, more investment, more smiles, or more gratitude. Tokumitsu looks at idealized workaholics; emotional labor; the “hope economy” (internships and the idea that you have to pay your dues with little or no income, in hopes of eventual gainful, happiness-making employment); and the myth that if you just love your work enough, you’ll succeed at it. She writes, “As long as our well-being depends on income, and income, for most, depends on work, love will always be secondary as a motivation for doing it. Encouraging workers to pretend otherwise is disingenuous and exploitative.” Sharp, succinct, and ultimately hopeful, it’s the kind of book that has the potential to rewire your brain. In a good way.

All the Rage Courtney Summers

I read a ton of great YA in the last year, some of it (like the overlooked The Unquiet; please go find this book if you like creepy stories about assassin teens, clones, and alternate earths) too SFF-y to fit here. But, if forced to pick one shining star among a shining stack of books, I’d hand you All the Rage, a story so full of hope and anger that it gives me goosebumps to think about it. (Also, I really wanted to punch someone in the face when I finished it.) It’s about closed-mindedness and privilege, victim-shaming and poisonous gossip, love and fighting your way through. Summers captures the incredible loneliness of being shunned in a small town, and the many ways adults can fail the kids they’re supposed to help and protect, and she does it through Romy, as flawed, angry, hurting, and wonderful a main character as I could ever hope to meet. It’s not an easy read, but that’s part of what makes it so stunning.

We’re proud to present an excerpt from Peter Tieryas’ United States of Japan, a spiritual successor to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, out March 1 from Angry Robot Books.

Most of United States of Japan takes place in 1989 following Captain Beniko Ishimura in the office of the censor and Agent Akiko Tsukino, member of the Tokko (the Japanese secret police). Los Angeles is a technological mecca, a fusion of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Tokyo. During WWII, one of the biggest weaknesses the Japanese Empire had was its dependency on oil to which it had very little access. After their shared victory with the Germans, they prioritized developing solar energy and electrical batteries for all their vehicles. That sensibility is reflected in the entire aesthetic of this new Los Angeles, clean, pristine, grand, and gleaming in neon. At the same time, I wanted to contrast this by showing the dark origins of the USJ. To do this, I felt it was important to know what happens in the direct aftermath of the Japanese Empire’s victory in WWII. This was in part influenced by a visit I made to the Japanese American Museum in San Jose, learning about (and being horrified by) the history of what happened back then. This opening chapter takes place forty years before the events of USJ and is about Ben’s parents who were locked away in a Japanese-American Internment Camp, waiting to find out their fate. —Peter Tieryas

Chapter 1

War Relocation Authority Center #051
July 1, 1948
8:15am

The death of the United States of America began with a series of signatures. Twenty year-old Ruth Ishimura had no idea, imprisoned hundreds of mile away in a prison camp for Americans of Japanese descent. The camp was made up of dilapidated barracks, poorly constructed guard posts, and a barbed fence that surrounded the perimeter. Almost everything was covered in coats of dust and Ruth found it hard to breathe. She shared her room with eleven other women and two of them were comforting one of her roommates, Kimiko.

“They always send him back,” her companions told her.

Kimiko was frayed, her eyes swollen from tears, throat congested with phlegm and dirt. “Last time, they beat Bernard so hard, he couldn’t walk for a month.” Bernard’s only sin was that eight years ago his work took him to Japan for a month. Despite being completely loyal to America, he was under suspicion.

Ruth’s cot was a mess, music sheets scattered over the army blankets. Two of the strings on her violin were broken and the third looked brittle enough to snap at any moment. Her instrument was lying next to faded music sheets from Strauss and Vivaldi. The table, the chairs, even the shelves were built from broken boxes, disassembled crates, and any spare parts they could find. The wood floors were dirty, even though they were swept every morning, and there were gaps she had to be careful not to trip on. The oil stove reeked of overuse and she wished they had something warmer for the freezing nights. She glanced over at Kimiko, who was crying even harder. “This is the first time they’ve kept him overnight,” she said. “They always, always send him back.”

Ruth could see the grim expression on both the women next to Kimiko. An overnight stay usually meant the worst. Ruth sneezed, feeling something stuck in her throat. She pounded her rib cages with the flat end of her fist, hoping her breath would clear. It was early in the morning and already getting hot—weather extremes were normal in this part of the desert. Her neck was covered in sweat and she looked over at the picture of a younger Kimiko, a comely lady who had grown up as heiress to what had once been a fortune.

“Ruth! Ruth!” Outside the barracks, her fiancé, Ezekiel Song, rushed towards the room. “All the guards are gone!” he exclaimed, as he entered.

Ruth rubbed the dust off Ezekiel’s hair and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“The Americans are gone. No one’s seen them all morning. Some of the elders are saying they saw them driving away.”

Kimiko looked up. “The Americans are gone?”

Ezekiel gleamed. “Looks like it.”

“Why?”

“I think they were scared away.”

“Then it’s really happening?” Kimiko asked, hope surging in her voice.

Ezekiel shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. But I heard the Emperor demanded we all be freed.”

“Why would he care about us?”

“Because we’re all Japanese,” Ruth suggested.

“I’m only half Japanese,” Ezekiel replied. His other half was Chinese and he had a scrawny frame and bent shoulders that made him look shorter than he was. Ezekiel had a tanned complexion from his days working in the fields, his skin dried like a prune in sunlight. He was stout, a boyish charm hidden behind his curly black hair that formed a cowlick. “All the elders said we’re American.”

“Not anymore,” Ruth said, aware even those with a sixteenth of Japanese blood in them had been sent to the Japanese-American prison camps independent of actual citizenship. She was thin like most of the other children, with noodly limbs and chapped lips. She had fair skin, although her hair was a disheveled mess that tangled into twisted knots. In contrast to Ezekiel, Ruth stood with poise and determination, refusing to let the dust unnerve her.

“What’s wrong?” Ezekiel asked Kimiko.

“Bernard’s been gone all night,” Kimiko replied.

“Have you checked Wrath Rock?”

“We’re not allowed.”

“Guards aren’t there anymore. We can go check now.”

The five of them made their way out of the small room onto the prison grounds. There were hundreds of barracks equidistant to one another, arranged into dreary, desolate blocks. A sign read War Relocation Authority Center 51, which someone had crossed out and marked in substitution, Wrath 51. Most of the barrack walls were covered with tarred paper that was peeling away, brittle strips that had worn down from the fickle climate. They’d been layered over multiple times to buttress and strengthen the exterior, but their attempts at thickening the skin had only weakened the overall facade. There was the remains of a school, a baseball diamond, what might have passed as a shop, and the semblance of a community, though most of those were either abandoned or in ruins. It was a prison city with a veil of endless dirt and a scorching sun that imposed its will through an exhaustive haze of suppression.

As the group made their way to Wrath Rock, a crowd gathered around the guard tower in the north-west corner. “Go see what’s happening,” one of Kimiko’s companions said.

Ezekiel and Ruth looked to Kimiko, who ignored the crowd and sprinted towards Wrath Rock without them.

The two approached the guard tower that several of the men had begun to investigate. Both the Issei and Nissei watched raptly, shouting instructions, asking questions every step of the way. Ruth did not recognize most of them; there were the elderly Issei who had been the first to immigrate to America, then the younger Nissei who were born in the States. Everyone was there, from the man with three moles on his pig nose to a lady who was wearing broken glasses, and the twins whose faces had diverged in the wrinkles formed from the way they reacted to the bitterness of their experiences. Suffering was an unbiased craftsman, molding flesh on bone, dark recesses dipping into pores of unmitigated tribulation. Most of the prisoners had only a few changes of clothing, keeping what they were wearing as clean as they could manage. Knit bindings prevented them from falling apart, subtly woven in to minimize inconsistencies in the fabric. The shoes were harder to mask as they were worn down, unable to be replaced, sandals and callused feet being common. There were many teens gathered, curious as to what all the noise was about.

“Make sure the Americans aren’t hiding in a compartment.”

“They could just be on break.”

“Did they take their rations?”

“What about their weapons?”

The ones who searched came back after a few minutes and confirmed that the American soldiers had evacuated their posts, taking their weapons with them.

The commotion that followed mainly revolved around the question of what to do next.

“Go back home! What else should we do?” one of the younger men posed.

But the older ones were reluctant. “Go back to what? We don’t even know what’s going on or where we are.”

“What if there’s still fighting out there?”

“We’ll be shot before we get anywhere.”

“What if the Americans are just testing us?”

“Testing us for what? They’re gone.”

Ezekiel looked at Ruth and asked, “What do you want to do?”

“If this is true and they are letting us go… My parents never would have believed it.”

It’d been several years since the soldiers came to her school class and ordered them to go outside and stand in line. She had thought it was for a field trip or something short because they only let her take one suitcase of her belongings. She cried so much when she discovered it was going to be their final day in San Jose and she hadn’t brought any of her favorite books.

There were gasps and urgent exclamations as people pointed south. Ruth looked where the fingers were aiming. A small column of dust presaged a tiny jeep driving their way.

“Which flag is it?” one of the younger men asked.

Eyes went sharply to the side of the jeep, the dust cloud covering the markings.

“It’s American.”

“No, you baka. It’s a big red circle.”

“Are you blind? That’s definitely American.”

With the jeep getting closer, time seemed to stretch. What was only a few meters seemed like kilometers, and some even thought it might be a mirage, taunting them with the illusion of succor. The sun pounded them with its heat and their clothes were getting drenched from sweat and expectation. Every breeze meant Ruth’s lungs became a miasma of breathlessness, but she refused to leave.

“Do you see the flag yet?” someone asked.

“Not yet,” another replied.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“What’s wrong with yours?”

A minute later, it was close enough to espy the markings.

“It’s someone from the Imperial Japanese Army.”

The jeep came to a stop and a staunch young man stepped out. He was almost six feet tall and wore the brown uniform of a Japanese imperial soldier along with a sennibari, a red sash with a thousand stitches to bring good luck. The prisoners surrounded him and asked, “What’s going on out there?”

Before answering them, he bowed to them. With tears bracing against his brows, he said, “You probably don’t recognize me. My name is Sato Fukasaku and I’m a corporal in the IJA. You knew me as Steven when I escaped the camp four years ago and joined the Japanese army. I bring good news.”

Ruth, like most of the others in the group, was incredulous. The Fukasaku boy was an emaciated fourteen year-old boy who was barely five feet tall when he disappeared. Other boys refused to let him play baseball because he was so small and struck out every time he was at bat.

“What’s happened out there?” one of the women asked.

He looked at them with a giddy grin that belied his soldierly presence and stated, “We’ve won.”

“Won what?”

“The American government surrendered this morning,” he said. “This is no longer the United States of America, but the United States of Japan. Some rebels are on the run and they’re trying to make a stand in Los Angeles, but it won’t last long. Not after yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“The Emperor unleashed a secret weapon to make the Americans realize they have no chance. Buses are on the way and they should be here soon to take you to safety. You’re all to be freed and provided new homes. The Emperor personally asked that you be taken care of. There are over two hundred thousand of us imprisoned throughout the camps who will now be given new opportunities in the USJ. Long live the Emperor!” he yelled.

The Issei instinctively yelled back, “Long live the Emperor,” while the Nissei, having been born in the States, didn’t know they were expected to yell correspondingly.

Fukasaku shouted again, “Tenno Heika Banzai!” which was Japanese for “long live the Emperor.”

This time, everyone followed in unison: “Banzai!”

Ruth yelled too, surprised that, for the first time in her life, she felt something like awe swell up in her.

A military truck pulled in behind them.

“To celebrate the good news, we’ve brought food and sake,” Fukasaku stated.

Then Ruth saw something she’d never seen before. Coming out of the driver’s side was a woman in full Imperial uniform. She was ethnically mixed as she had blue eyes with her choppy black hair. Fukasaku saluted her and said, “Welcome, lieutenant.”

She waved off his gesture, looked to the crowd with empathetic eyes, and said, “On behalf of the Empire, I honor all of you for your sacrifice and suffering.” She bowed low and kept the stance, signifying her deep feeling. She spoke with a perfect English accent so she must have been Nissei. Ruth realized she wasn’t the only one surprised by the female officer. The prisoners were staring at her, never having seen a male soldier salute a female superior. Ruth’s eyes went to the shin gunto, the army sword that was a form of badge for any officer. “My name is Masuyo Yoshida. I grew up in San Francisco, like many of you, where I had a western identity as Erica Blake. My mother was a brave Japanese woman who taught me the importance of our culture. Like you, I was imprisoned, falsely accused of espionage, and separated from my family. The IJA rescued me and gave me a new Japanese name and identity to cast off my false Western one. We were never accepted as Americans, and it was our folly to seek it. I am now a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army and you are all citizens of the Empire. All of you will be given new identities as well. We should celebrate!”

From the back of the truck, four soldiers carted out barrels of alcohol.

“Someone go get the cups.”

It wasn’t long before everyone was cheering the Emperor and asking Steven/Sato details about the war. Some of the elders took Lieutenant Yoshida on a tour of the prison grounds. Ezekiel’s face was flushed red from the alcohol and he said to Ruth, “We both should join the army.”

“What will you do? I can do more pushups than you can,” she teased him.

“I’ll get into shape.” He flexed his muscles.

“It looks like a little mouse,” she said, feeling the small bump on his arm. “Did you notice they both have the new Nambu Type 18 semi-automatic pistols?”

“I didn’t even see their guns.”

“The Type 18 is supposed to fix the weaker striker recoil springs and make them much stronger. The older model had 8mm cartridges and—”

Suddenly, there was screaming. Everyone turned around. There were multiple voices wailing from the direction of Wrath Rock. In the shock of all that had transpired, Ruth realized she had forgotten about Kimiko.

Wrath Rock was the only building with three floors in the complex, housing the soldiers as well as a special interrogation center. It was made of red bricks, a big rectangular building with two wings jutting from its sides. Disturbing howls often emanated from the building in the middle of the night, and depending on the angle and strength of the moonlight, it glowed like a crimson stone oozing blood rays. Everyone approaching the building did their best to suppress shudders. The American flag was still waving high above the Rock.

A dozen prisoners had been carried out, emaciated, bloodied, and bruised.

“What happened here?” Corporal Fukasaku asked.

A man wearing only a loincloth with half his hair ripped out shouted, “They killed my brothers and accused me of collaborating with the Empire. I wish I had!” He tried to spit on the ground, but his mouth was too dry to form anything. His scalp was covered with gashes, and his wide nostrils and bulging eyes made him resemble a chimpanzee. He was pulsing with anger and he yelled, “I’m an American and they treated me worse than their dogs.”

The corporal replied, “The Emperor has come to save all of you. He has taken revenge on the Americans for all of us.”

From the front door, Kimiko emerged, holding a body in her arms.

Ruth gasped. It was Bernard, but his legs were missing, only bandaged stumps in their place. Kimiko’s face was wan and there was a shocked stillness in her eyes as though they’d been frozen. Ruth looked at Bernard to see if he was breathing, but she couldn’t tell.

“Poor Kimiko,” Ruth heard someone say. “Their family was so wealthy and now they’ve taken everything from her.”

“The rich had it the hardest.”

Many agreed with deploring nods.

“Sister…” Corporal Fukasaku began.

But, before he could continue, Kimiko demanded in rage, “Why didn’t the Emperor save him? Why couldn’t he have rescued us just a day earlier?”

“I am very sorry for your loss. Please keep in mind that it wasn’t the Emperor who killed your friend, but the Americans. I assure you, the Emperor has taken revenge a hundredfold for what has happened to all of you here.”

“I don’t care about revenge. He’s dead. HE’S DEAD!” she yelled. “If the Emperor was so almighty, why couldn’t he have sent you a day earlier?”

“Calm yourself. I know you’re upset, but speaking against the Emperor is forbidden.”

“Fuck the Emperor. Fuck you. Fuck all Americans.”

“I will only ask you once, and that’s because I know you’re not in a proper mental state. Do not speak against the Emperor or—”

“Or what? He’ll take his revenge? I shit on him and the whol—”

Corporal Fukasaku raised his Nambu Type 18 semi-automatic pistol, pointed at her head, and fired. Her head exploded, brain and blood spraying the ground. She fell over, arms interlaced with her dead boyfriend.

“No one is allowed to speak against the Emperor,” the corporal stated. He holstered his pistol, stepped around Kimiko’s dead body, and went to reassure the other survivors that everything was going to be OK.

Everyone was too stunned to speak. Ezekiel was shaking. Ruth put her arm around him and asked, “Do you still want to be a soldier?” It was as much for herself as it was for him.

She looked back at Kimiko’s body and did her best to hold back tears.

“You have to be strong,” she said to Ezekiel, as she placed his hands on her belly. “For little Beniko, be strong.”

Excerpted from United States of Japan © Peter Tieryas 2016

Read another excerpt at Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi!

Fantasy fiction is a journey to a place nobody has ever been in waking life, a chance to meet the locals (unfriendly), sample their traditional wares (murder) and take in the picturesque scenery (volcanos and blasted wastelands). The most common destinations of fantasy fiction are rooted in Medieval Europe, a tradition that began with romances like Amadis of Gaul and Orlando Furioso and was revivified (with a sizable dash of Germanic and Celtic folklore) by Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Worlds drawing on Europe remain the most popular ports for the fantasy tourist.

The Tiger and the Wolf, my new novel from Tor UK, draws on other times and places—pre-Colombian America, the early bronze age, even palaeontological deep time. Similarly, although it’s always fun to spend a weekend break watching rival kings brain one another and spoil each other’s weddings, there are plenty of worlds off the beaten track for the intrepid tourist.

Roughing It

If you’re in the mood for an extreme holiday, why not the Stone Age? The facilities aren’t up to much, accommodations can be rustic, the locals are poor conversationalists, and the choice of souvenirs is limited. Nonetheless, the dawn of humanity can be an exhilarating trip for the hardy traveller. The destination they put on the front of all the brochures is Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear, with its twilight of the Neanderthals and rise of their new neighbours. If you prefer a destination with a little more of the fantastical, try Julian May’s The Many-Colored Land, with its cast of lordly elves and shapechanging monsters. Technically it’s a science fiction setting, but you need to check your mobile phones at the portal. Or, if you prefer really getting some grit under your nails, try the turbulent climate of Stephen Baxter’s Stone Spring. Pack your swimsuit, because if your resort isn’t by the sea today, it will be before the end of your trip…

Going East

If Medieval Europe is too short on creature comforts, you can be assured of a genteel welcome in more easterly climes. Perhaps you want somewhere with music and poets, sophisticated architecture, silks, spices, and somewhere to shop. Many fantasy views of the east are through the eyes of European-style visitors, but we’ve all been on holiday with those guys—they won’t eat the food, won’t learn the language, you wonder why they left home in the first place. You never get a proper feel for the place unless you see it through the eyes of the locals. Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, a rich tapestry of Middle-Eastern-influenced religion, art, love, and life, is an excellent place to start. Or perhaps you prefer to go further afield than that? Barry Hughart’s Master Li Chronicles are a perambulation through an “Ancient China that never was” in the company of your guide, the world’s most irascible sage and private detective. For those who wish to go further from the historical than that, we recommend Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings for a complex and active visit to a world influenced by the Han Dynasty. Plan for a long trip—it takes several decades to see everything.

The Iron Curtain

Since the end of the Cold War, of course, destinations that were formerly out of bounds are now tourist hotspots. Why not brave the hospitality of Eastern Europe, with its rich myths, complex history and confusing traditions? You can travel to Liz Williams’ Nine Layers of Sky without ever quite leaving modern-day Russia (be very careful that any keepsakes you acquire are not in fact portals to another world), or sign up for the Tsarist Oppression Experience of Peter Higgins’ Wolfhound Century. For the more fantastically inclined, Bulikov in Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs has a distinctly Eastern European flavour to it—just don’t get the locals talking about religion. Lastly, for travellers who want a real flavour of rural life straight out of a folk tale, the incomparable Naomi Novik’s Uprooted offers real Slavic peasant hospitality for any visitors who enjoy good food, stories and never, ever going into the woods under any circumstances.

Toga Parties

The Classical World has been a dream destination since the actual fall of Rome, and one that fantasy visits on many occasions. For the truly immersive Hellenic experience, join Latro in Gene Wolfe’s Soldier of the Mist in a whirlwind tour of the city-states, their personalities, gods, and monsters. Visitors are advised to retain their written itineraries, as the memory of your guide is notoriously fallible. For a more active holiday, David Gemmell’s Lion of Macedon lets you witness the rise of Phillip and Alexander with dark magic hiding around every corner, whilst John James’ Votan takes you on a trip from the heart of the Roman Empire all the way north to the beginnings of Germanic myth. For those who feel that, plumbing and philosophy aside, the ancient world remains somewhat inhospitable for a 21st-century traveller, we recommend Sophia McDougall’s Romanitas, all the social inequality and political skulduggery of the Roman world brought into the modern day.

All Mod Cons

Some tourists, after doing the rounds of the castles, city states, towers, and the odd orc-laden spelunking expedition, prefer a destination with running water, working drains, and decent healthcare. As well as the traditional pomp and pageantry of the Middle Ages, fantastic holidays can also take you to somewhere closer to home in terms of facilities and conveniences. Why not try China Miéville’s Bas-Lag, as seen in Perdido Street Station? With a functioning public transport system, a world-class university, and some truly exotic night life, this is one of our most popular destinations. The solicitous government ensures that your first complaint will be your last. Alternatively, a visit to Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings allows you to stretch your money via the advantageous exchange rate that comes from the total magical devastation of Paris and much of the wider world. Sample French and Vietnamese street cuisine, have your picture taken with a fallen angel, and never leave your hotel without House-appointed bodyguards.

And we’ve barely scratched the surface—we haven’t even talked about African-influenced fantasy destinations such as David Anthony Durham’s Acacia series or N.K. Jemisin’s Egypt-inspired Dreamblood duology, or the Aztec feel of de Bodard’s Obsidian and Blood. Or what about a cruise round some islands? Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea is perennially popular, but don’t neglect Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island (The Lost Conspiracy in the US) or Terry Pratchett’s Nation. Or there’s special rates on a really, really gloomy weekend break in gothic Gormenghast… Fantasy fiction is, after all, the gateway to countless destinations, from the near-historical to the surreal and bizarre, with more added to the brochure every day.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new novel, The Tiger and the Wolf, is out from Tor UK on February 11th. He is also the author of the Shadows of the Apt series, Guns of the Dawn, and the forthcoming Spiderlight, available August 2nd from Tor.com Publishing. You can find him on Twitter at @aptshadow.

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.

This week British Fantasy Award winner Sarah Pinborough joins the show to talk about YA fiction, whether trigger warnings are needed and her new YA crime thriller 13 Minutes (available February 18 in the UK from Gollancz).

Listen to Midnight in Karachi Episode 43 (33:00):

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Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Kaladin and Shallan acrimoniously began their trek through the chasms back to the warcamps.  This week, once Shallan finds a way to distract the chasmfiend from trying to eat them, they plod mistrustfully on together.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 70: From a Nightmare

Point of View: Kaladin, Shallan
Setting: the Chasms
Symbology: Spears, Chach, Kalak

IN WHICH Kaladin leads a mad dash through the chasms to escape the beast chasing them; Shallan suddenly goes the other way, forcing Kaladin to follow; she leads them back to where they first fell, distracting the chasmfiend with easy food; Shallan sneaks a peek while it’s feeding; they retreat and walk for hours in the darkness, trying to get as far away as possible; when they finally stop, Shallan draws a map of the chasms and begins the chasmfiend Memory drawing; after a few hours of sleep, they continue on, using her map to correct their direction; they continue the badinage, though with less hostility and more honesty; Shallan solemnly promises Kaladin that she means no harm to Adolin or his family; sunlight reveals that they’re going the wrong way again.

Quote of the Week

“All right,” Kaladin said. “Here it is. I can imagine how the world must appear to someone like you. Growing up pampered, with everything you want. To someone like you, life is wonderful and sunny and worth laughing over. That’s not your fault, and I shouldn’t blame you. You haven’t had to deal with pain or death like I have. Sorrow is not your companion.”

Silence. Shallan didn’t reply. How could she reply to that?

“What?” Kaladin finally asked.

“I’m trying to decide how to react,” Shallan said. “You see, you just said something very, very funny.”

“Then why aren’t you laughing?”

“Well, it isn’t that kind of funny.”

Oh, the irony. No, it isn’t that kind of funny at all. *sigh*

Not to thrash the expired steed, but I can’t wait until next week’s QOTW. Just sayin’. Kaladin’s blind assumptions about other people’s lives don’t stack up well against reality, and it’s about time he learned that.

Commentary

Before we talk about this chapter, I just remembered something I left out of last week’s discussion, and it’s bugging me. Who were the Parshendi that showed up just as the bridge was dumped? Were they some of Eshonai’s stormforms out for a practice run? Were they Thude’s company of dissenters who refused stormform? Will we ever know? Does it matter?

Okay, now I’ve got that out of my system…

Here we go, running through the chasms, chased by a nightmare beastie that makes a noise like a thousand horns being blown. That would be… unnerving. Shallan has enough presence of mind to recognize when they’re close to the original landing area, and distracts the fiend with fresh corpses while she gets a good look and a Memory. Kaladin, meanwhile, sticks close to her because he refuses to abandon Adolin’s betrothed, and every time he stands still, he thinks about Sylphrena and how he can’t even feel the Stormlight in the spheres he’s holding.

I do feel sorry for him.

That said, as usual lately, I still want to smack him. He can be so infuriatingly ungracious for no reason. On the bright side, it gives Shallan the “bridgeman grunt language” for a running joke, so there’s that.

The shared terror of the chasmfiend chase, and the resulting exhaustion, seems to have a more salutary effect on them than merely sharing impossible survival from a 200-foot drop did. At least, they’ve stopped yelling, and while they’re still sniping at each other, neither of them is going at it wholeheartedly any more.

And really, they do begin to get on better. Their snark gets more… personal? Not sure what the word I’m looking for is, here, but over these few hours, the things they say are both more individualized and less hurtful—the kind of stuff you toss around when you’re just taking the mickey out of someone. It’s very, very like the best of the times she had with her brothers in the flashbacks, really, when a smart remark would pop into her head and they’d insist that she say it. Odd, in a way, that Kaladin should be the first person she can play this game with since she left home. She played it a little, with the sailors on the Wind’s Pleasure, but other than that, she’s really had to watch her tongue most of the time. Now, probably to distract herself, she’s treating Kaladin very much like a brother.

As their morning conversation reveals, Kaladin’s assessment of Shallan has been limited to a) flaky spoiled lighteyed woman or b) clever sneaky impostor threat. (How he reconciles those two is beyond me, though.) Anyway, down here in the chasms, with her hair frazzled, her dress torn and bedraggled, wearing boots because she put sanity before vanity, toughing it out right alongside him… he’s finally seeing her as a human being, not just an object of suspicion or class hatred. I suspect that Shallan’s ability to draw out a perfect map of where they’ve been—and the obvious value of that skill—is also a step in Kaladin seeing her as an actual person.

The reverse is also true: As they talk, she realizes that not only is he taciturn, he’s a contradiction. He’s clearly had a good education, demonstrated by the way he thinks and the way he speaks, and that really doesn’t jibe with the slave marks or the shash brand. Even though she continues to make jokes of everything, she does begin to see him as a person, not just “Adolin’s grumpy guard captain.”

It’s a start.

Before the chapter’s over, they’ll get downright honest with each other. To wit: He finally tells her point-blank that he doesn’t trust her, and she tells him a little of why she’s actually there, at the Shattered Plains—because of Jasnah’s research. Since the guards reported her asking Adolin about getting rid of the parshmen, that comes up too, and further conversation—actual conversation!—ensues on that subject before it fades back to the snarkfest. And then they have the conversation quoted above, in which Kaladin displays a complete (and unjustifiable, IMO) class-based analysis of her character and her past, telling her how wonderful and easy her life has been. The irony…

We could have a big knock-down drag-out fight about whose backstory is the more tragic or traumatic or painful, but that’s not the point. Both of them have horrible things in their past, and both of them have legitimate reasons to feel that life has been less than kind to them. As far as I’m concerned, the more important question is how they deal with the pain of past tragedy, and in this case I find Shallan stronger than Kaladin.

While Shallan has blocked out the first, worst event, she hasn’t blocked out all the years since then—all the years as her father spiraled downward, her brothers went psychotic, her family split, servants were abused, her stepmother was murdered, and she herself killed her father to try to save the rest. Those events are all in her active memory, and she deals with it by maintaining (some would say exaggerating) her sense of humor and by choosing to do what she can to fix things. It’s probable that she subconsciously holds herself responsible for all of it, without knowing quite why.

Kaladin, meanwhile, deals with his past by overtly holding all lighteyes responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened to him. This… bugs me. No end. It’s totally a realistic behavior, of course—it’s just not entirely valid, either for Kaladin or in real life. But… I’ve said all that before. One thing to add, though, which we’ll hit in more detail next week: Under his surface resentment of lighteyes, he half-unconsciously holds himself responsible for all of the bad things, whether they were really his fault or not.

Personalities. Human nature is just weird, you know?

Stormwatch

Same night, and into the following day. At the end of this chapter, there are nine days left in the countdown. (We’ll just take several months to cover those nine days…)

Sprenspotting

“Those spren,” Shallan whispered, so soft he could barely hear. “I’ve seen those…”

They danced around the chasmfiend, and were the source of the light. They looked like small glowing arrows, and they surrounded the beast in schools, though occasionally one would drift away from the others and then vanish like a small plume of smoke rising into the air.

“Skyeels,” Shallan whispered. “They follow skyeels too…”

Referring back to Shallan’s skyeel sketches from The Way of Kings, the sailors call these “luckspren,” though she doubts that is their true name. So… what is their true name? Predatorspren?

Next question: are they the same as the spren that float away from the carcass of a dead chasmfiend? Those are described like wisps of smoke from a snuffed candle; these are like “small glowing arrows”… until they drift too far away. Then they sound like the same thing, vanishing like “a small plume of smoke.” Huh.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

The chasmfiend gets the title for this chapter; it looks like something from a nightmare, according to Kaladin:

The beast filled the chasm. Long and narrow, it wasn’t bulbous or bulky, like some small cremlings. It was sinuous, sleek, with that arrowlike face and sharp mandibles.

It was also wrong. Wrong in a way difficult to describe. Big creatures were supposed to be slow and docile, like chulls. Yet this enormous beast moved with ease, its legs up on the sides of the chasm, holding it so that its body barely touched the ground. It ate the corpse of a fallen soldier, grasping the body in smaller claws by its mouth, then ripping it in half with a gruesome bite.

That face was like something from a nightmare. Evil, powerful, almost intelligent.

Seriously. What kind of mind dreams up critters like this?? I think I agree with Kaladin about the nightmare thing.

Shallan, of course, turns on her natural-history-scholar mode, and observes that although it eats carrion, it’s got all the equipment to be a predator. What it doesn’t appear to have is a reason to be hanging around the chasms after pupating. I can’t help wondering if this will prove to be Significant… Or maybe it’s just something that happens near the Weeping for some reason.

Ars Arcanum

While we don’t see any Lightweaving, we certainly see the effects of Shallan’s bond with Pattern. The only way she kept ahead of the chasmfiend was by using Stormlight for agility, speed, and endurance. The only way they’re getting out alive is by using a map created with her bond-enhanced visual memory. So… I guess that qualifies as magic arts, okay?

You Have to Break a Lot of Rockbuds

Heh. No rockbuds were broken in the making of this chapter. It’s a good thing soldiers tend to be careful about carrying rations everywhere they go, even though chull-jerky doesn’t sound all that appetizing. I guess it keeps body and soul together. That’s not nothing.

Heraldic Symbolism

Chach: Brave/Obedient, Guard. Kalak: Resolute/Builder, Maker. What do they have to do with this chapter? These are not Heralds normally associated with either Kaladin or Shallan, really. Chach-the-Guard represents Kaladin-the-bodyguard once in a while, but he’s not on duty here. Except… he repeatedly thinks of Shallan in terms of “Adolin’s betrothed” and, conversely, as a potential threat/spy/infiltrator to the Kholin family. So I guess Guard makes some sense? As for Kalak, “resolute” probably fits their determination to survive. Maybe? That’s all I’ve got for him.

Shipping Wars

Nah, I’m not gonna go there. Y’all know how I feel about it.

Well, that ought to keep us busy until next week, when we’ll dodge back to the warcamp with Teft, Sigzil, and Dalinar for a bit, before we return to the chasms, a few of my favorite moments, and… the chasmfiend. Big, big chapter next week.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She’s both excited and highly amused that yet another Sanderson book is releasing next week, only three weeks after The Bands of Mourning. This time, it’s Calamity, the final book of The Reckoners trilogy, releasing next Tuesday. If you’re going to the Seattle signing at the University Bookstore next Wednesday, please be sure to say hello! She’ll be the tall master-servant accompanied by the somewhat shorter Mistborn.

Taraji P. Henson (who is killing it on Empire as Cookie Lyon) has signed on to star in director Ted Melfi’s (St. Vincent) adaptation of Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. Set during the Civil Rights era, this is the untold story of NASA’s black female mathematicians, focusing on four in particular; Henson will play Katherine Johnson, with the other roles yet to be cast.

Johnson was part of a group that got the nickname at the time of “the West Computers,” due to their segregated office, and which included Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith, and Barbara Holley. There’s not a lot of information on the book, as Melfi optioned it ahead of its publication; HarperCollins will publish it September 6. However, IndieWire found a statement from Shetterly on her website. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some key details about the background of her book:

[..] For me, growing up in Hampton, Virginia, the face of science was brown like mine. My dad was a NASA lifer, a career Langley Research Center scientist who became an internationally respected climate expert. Five of my father’s seven siblings were engineers or technologists. My father’s best friend was an aeronautical engineer. Our next door neighbor was a physics professor. There were mathematicians at our church, sonic boom experts in my mother’s sorority and electrical engineers in my parents’ college alumni associations. There were also black English professors, like my mother, as well as black doctors and dentists, black mechanics, janitors and contractors, black shoe repair owners, wedding planners, real estate agents and undertakers, the occasional black lawyer and a handful of black Mary Kay salespeople. As a child, however, I knew so many African-Americans working in science, math and engineering that I thought that’s just what black folks did.

[…] After the start of World War II, Federal agencies and defense contractors across the country coped with a shortage of male number crunchers by hiring women with math skills. America’s aeronautical think tank, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the “NACA”), headquartered at Langley Research Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, created a pool of female mathematicians who analyzed endless arrays of data from wind tunnel tests of airplane prototypes. Women were thought to be more detail-oriented, their smaller hands better suited for repetitive tasks on the Friden manual adding machines. A “girl” could be paid significantly less than a man for doing the same job. And male engineers, once freed from laborious math work, could focus on more “serious” conceptual and analytical projects.

[…] These women were nearly all top graduates of historically black colleges such as Hampton Institute, Virginia State and Wilberforce University. Though they did the same work as the white women hired at the time, they were cloistered away in their own segregated office in the West Area of the Langley campus—thus the moniker, the West Computers. But despite the hardships of working under Virginia’s Jim Crow laws, these women went on to make significant contributions to aeronautics, astronautics, and America’s victory over the Soviet Union in the Space Race.

Henson also tweeted about he news:

This project is so important. Honored to portray #KatherineJohnson Katherine G. Johnson (born… https://t.co/q6SErlKR3G

— Taraji P. Henson (@TherealTaraji) February 11, 2016

20th Century Fox is aiming for a January 2017 release date for Hidden Figures the movie, with production slated to begin very soon.

Victorian Britons were deeply culturally invested in the idea of mothers as “Angels In The Home,” providing a gentle moral example to their husbands and children. This fantasy proposed that women could act as agents of reform in the British Empire both despite and because of not having the right to own property or vote. Being deprived of legal and political rights excluded women from effective participation in the public sphere, the realm of all politics and business. But these public matters intruded into the private sphere of the household, and women’s concerns extended out of it. Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan would be appalled by Victorian Britain, and it would be in awe of her. In her career in Barrayar’s empire, Cordelia is intimately familiar with the darkest depths of the overlapping portions of the Venn diagram of public and private.

Lois McMaster Bujold’s announcement of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen gave rise to both excitement and trepidation, the last coming from readers who wanted more space opera from their Vorkosigans and less romance than other recent volumes in the series have offered. With due respect to readers who prefer public stories to private ones, or space battles to smooching, for Vorkosigans the categories are inextricably intertwined. In space opera, our heroes go to war. In romance, we get to see them come home. In Cordelia’s case, the space opera has had dramatic personal impacts, and the idea of coming home raises complicated questions. Where is home? What does it mean to go there?

Minor spoilers for Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, plus spoilers for previous books in the series.

As Bujold revealed when the book was announced, at some point Aral stopped being monogamous and resumed being bisexual. The relationship between Jole, Aral, and Cordelia was not really discernible in earlier books, but Bujold has made it visible through this story. Romance lovers will read Gentleman Jole several times and then reread the previous books in the series, looking for the clues they didn’t see before.

When we last saw Cordelia, she was cutting off all her hair to burn for Aral, an offering far in excess of the cultural requirements of Barryaran widows. Aral’s former secretary, Oliver Jole, was one of his pall bearers. Now, three years later, Cordelia and Jole are contemplating how to move forward with their lives. From its earliest beginnings, Cordelia’s relationship with Aral was shaped by the context and demands of Barryaran politics. As Countess Vorkosigan, Cordelia was wife to the regent and Prime Minister, foster-mother to the orphaned Emperor Gregor, mother to a count’s heir, and the woman who beheaded the Pretender. She was a force of nature in Barryaran politics for decades, most usually an advocate for technology and human rights. As Gentleman Jole opens, Cordelia is Vicereine of Sergyar, a position that is important and impressive, but comparatively low key. She is pursuing long-deferred personal projects. Cordelia is as focused and determined as ever, and I’m so pleased to see the return of her perspective without the mediating lens of Barryaran surprise.

Sergyar is the planet where Aral and Cordelia met, already burdened with secrets of intergalactic significance, when she was a Betan Survey captain. This is where Reg Rosemont is buried, and where Cordelia was a POW. It’s named after the prince Aral helped kill in the war with Escobar, the war whose secrets Cordelia fled Beta Colony to keep. Now, Miles’ entire lifetime later, it’s the Wild West of Barryar’s empire. They got rid of the worm plague! And there’s a movement to reintroduce it as a form of tattoo art. Sergyar is a military outpost with a growing civilian population, lots of business opportunities, and an inconveniently located volcano. Its military base offers excellent career opportunities for the Imperial Women’s Service Auxiliary, a branch of the service we have not seen before.

Other things we have not seen before include skatagators, boot polo, and very nearly Oliver Jole, who was so far in the background of previous books that he was practically invisible. Jole became Aral’s secretary when Koudelka retired. A video of Jole ripping off his shirt goes viral on Sergyar’s information networks, in case you were worried he might have let himself go since Miles described him as a recruiting poster, back in The Vor Game. Jole, about to turn fifty, is an admiral, commanding the Sergyar Fleet and contemplating the next moves in his career. His relationship with Cordelia looks both forward and back. In their nostalgic moods, Cordelia and Oliver provide new perspectives on events we have seen primarily from Miles’ point of view. In their present tense, they deal with the world they built in several previous novels’ worth of space opera.

In the past, Bujold has admitted to thinking of the worst thing she can do to her characters, and then doing it. If she has done that here, the worst thing she can do to Cordelia is an unannounced visit from Miles, accompanied by Ekaterin and their six children. Ekaterin seems to have had a mellowing influence on Miles, and I enjoyed seeing him again, even though he and his entourage are primarily an inconvenience. He is not conducting an official investigation at this point, nor is he called upon for any plumbing projects. His parenting philosophy shows Cordelia’s influence. The most notable impact of all this space opera has been the liberal application of Cordelia’s influence to virtually everything.

Over the course of her career, Cordelia has devoted a great deal of her influence to improving Barryaran women’s access to galactic medical technology. I admired the starship projector, and the historical significance of the plasma mirrors is undeniable, but the uterine replicator is indisputably Bujold’s most important invention. In most of Bujold’s stories, uterine replicators change the conditions and complications of pregnancy. In Gentleman Jole, they offer an expanded set of possibilities. The real problem here is not so much the issue of reproductive technology, which is well established in this universe, but the question of what secrets should be kept, and which shared. Secrets have played an important role in Cordelia’s story. Here, Bujold contrasts Cordelia and Aral’s secrets to the scandalous lack of secrecy with which Aral conducted his affair with Ges Vorrutyer after the death of his first wife. That relationship was toxic, destructive, and incredibly public. The relationship between Aral, Oliver, and Cordelia is its polar opposite—psychologically healthier, but a time bomb as long as it remains secret.

It’s not clear whether Bujold is ending her Barryar series here or passing the torch to a new generation of characters. Recent novels in the series have resolved most characters’ story lines. If this is an end, seventeen books is enough to do the Empire honor, and Sergyar is a fitting place to resolve Cordelia’s arc. If Bujold has more to say about this universe, it is more vividly detailed now than ever.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is available now from Baen Books.

The final trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice has been released! In a Bat-centric clip, we finally get to see the Caped Crusader’s fighting style, before Lex Luthor outlines the movie’s theme: the battle between Batman and Superman is “The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world.” We only get a few tantalizing glimpses of said battle, but much more importantly we hear Wonder Woman’s first line!

Check out the full trailer below!

[via Variety!]

A Generall Historie of Virginia, or, to give it its correct title, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: With the Names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governours from Their First Beginning, Ano: 1584. To This Present 1624. With the Procedings of Those Several Colonies and the Accidents That Befell Them in All Their Journyes and Discoveries. Also the Maps and Descriptions of All Those Countryes, Their Commodities, People, Government, Customes, and Religion Yet Knowne. Divided into Sixe Books, and I think we all need to take a quick breath now. Pause. Better? OK, moving on, by Captaine John Smith sometymes Governour in those Countryes and Admirall of New England, starts off with a fulsome dedication to the Duchess of Richmond and Lennox that even the most ardent aristocrat might find just a touch overdone. It then continues with a preface assuring us that kings are great, before continuing on with no less than ten (count them, I did) poems assuring us that author John Smith is one awesome, awesome guy.

Even by 17th-century standards, this is quite something; several editions of the Bible, Shakespeare and Spenser have more modest introductions. And if, reading this, your first thought was that Captain John Smith had just a few public relations issues and/or really, really really needed money, or both, you’d be right.

Smith’s early life seems to have been ordinary enough. He was born on a farm, and attended at least one school before deciding, at the age of 16, to head off to sea. At this point his biography becomes, shall we say, a touch questionable. According to Smith, at least, his next few years were filled with battles, piracy, slavery, more piracy, beautiful Greek mistresses who fell in love with him, and daring escapes into Russia, followed by cold journeys through Europe.

I say “according to Smith,” because many of these interesting stories have only one source: Smith, a man called “an Ambityous unworthy and vayneglorious fellowe” by one of his irritated contemporaries. Smith, to be fair, disagreed with that assessment, assuring his readers—frequently—that his writings had only one goal: “…to humbly sheweth the truth.” It was a truth that Smith desperately needed to show people since—as he painfully admitted—the world was filled with people who constantly misunderstood him and his motives and therefore wanted to either mutiny against him or accuse him of mutiny or hit him or imprison him or hang him. Worse, after trying to mutiny against him or accuse him of mutiny or hit him or imprison him or hang him, they would then tell vicious lies about him and call him mean names. Those lies, he tells us, were what impelled him to come forward and write the truth.

What can I say? Pirates. Always misunderstood.

However embellished, however, Smith’s military experience was enough (or he convinced others that it was enough) to allow Smith to join a 1606 expedition with the Virginia Company that hoped to set up a new colony in Virginia for fun and profit. He was even appointed one of its leaders, a piece of good fortune that later saved him from getting hanged even after he was almost immediately accused (according to several accounts) of mutiny.

The colony soon had much bigger problems than Smith. Within months of their arrival, more than half of the colonists were dead from starvation and disease. Another ship arrived in the middle of January with more colonists but not enough food, adding to the deprivation. It took a full year before the colonists were able to plant crops.

That summer—1607, a solid year after Smith had arrived—he began to explore Virginia and the Atlantic coast. This is when Smith claimed to have met a lovely Native American princess, Pocahontas, during a confrontation with irritated Native Americans who, like so many others, wanted to kill him. As his 1624 account, written in the third person to keep up the guise that he was writing “history,” explains:

….but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then, as many as could laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains, Pocahontas the King’s dearest daughter, when no entreaty would prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death.

Both contemporaries and later historians responded to this account with, shall I say, a certain skepticism. For one thing, if Smith’s writings are to believed, no fewer than three women in his lifetime dramatically flung themselves in front of weapons in order to save him—an assertion generally greeted with some skepticism, although Smith himself seems to have taken it for granted that of course women would fling themselves in front of weapons to save him. For another, Pocahontas herself does not seem to have mentioned this little incident to anyone, either in Virginia or in a later visit to London. That alone is not particularly conclusive, since the historical records are incomplete, and because by then, she had married another Englishman, John Rolfe, and changed her name to Rebecca. It’s possible that she simply didn’t want to remember her initial meetings with Smith; she would hardly have been the only person who met him to feel this way.

And, for a third thing, Smith’s first account of this expedition, A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note As Hath Hapned in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Colony, which is now resident in the South part thereof (they knew how to write titles in the 17th century), published in 1608, also fails to mention any such encounter.

Though that’s not entirely conclusive either, since that book, which for the sake of my fingers I’m going to be calling A True Relation, wanted to present Virginia in the best possible light for any potential English colonists. Indeed, “wanted” may be too mild a word. By 1608, the struggling colony’s only chance of survival was to get more colonists to arrive with food, seeds, and the ability to do agricultural work.

Granted, by then, enough stories had filtered back to England that A True Relation had to admit that yes, the colonists did have a few troubles with Native Americans when they first arrived:

Anchoring in this Bay, twentie or thirtie went a shore with the Captain, and in coming aboard, they were assalted with certaine Indians, which charged them within Pistoll shot:

But everything was ok, because, guns!

in which conflict, Captaine Archer and Mathew Morton were shot: whereupon, Captaine Newport seconding them, made a shot at them, which the Indians little respected, but having spent their arrows retyred without harme,

OK… maybe not all that OK. But still, the guns had scared away the Indians, more or less, and in just one or two more paragraphs, all was well:

the people [Native American groups] in all places kindely intreating us, daunsing and feasting us with strawberries, Mulberries, Bread, Fish, and other their Countrie provisions wereof we had plenty: for which Captaine Newport kindely required their least favours with Bels, Pinnes, Needles, beades, or Glassas, which so contented them that his liberalities made them follow us from place to place, ever kindely to respect us. In the midway staying to refresh our selves in little ile foure or five savages came unto us which described unto us the course of the River, and after in our journey, they often met us, trading with us for such provision as wee had, and arriving at Arsatecke, hee whome we supposed to bee the chiefe King of all the rest, moste kindely entertained us, giving us in a guide with us up the River to Powhatan, of which place their great Emperor taketh his name, where he that they honored for King used us kindely.

…I gotta stop right there, because as a public relations statement, this is masterful. Let’s all give the pirate a hand, shall we? I mean, in one paragraph he’s managed to:

1. Turn the fact that his colonial expedition was, only a few weeks after arriving, entirely out of food into a net positive.

2. Assure readers that food in Virginia could be bought with mere pins and beads.

3. Slyly note that being a colonist is so awesome, you even get to meet an emperor.

The giveaway, of course, was the “for such provision as wee had.” The colonists did not have that much, but leave it to Smith to twist this into a triumph.

Indeed, pretty much everything in A True Relation is like this: Something bad happens (often indicating that relationships between whites and Native Americans were not nearly as positive as Smith wanted potential colonists to believe), and is immediately turned by Smith into a positive. Sure, Powhatan insisted on taking an English hostage, but that was great, since that meant we found out where the pearls were! Sure, we did notice that the local population was starting to show signs of not being entirely happy with our presence, but it wasn’t cowardice or fear that turned us back, but the WIND! GREAT WIND! IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF THE WIND! Sure, within a couple of months 46 colonists died, but the good news is, the survivors all hated Captain Wingfield, not me, and I felt better. OK, sure, shortly afterwards the survivors started hating me as well, but that was just because I wanted them to build nice houses instead of the mean tents we were using. If only they had understood that I was just looking out for their benefit!

I have to admit: I’m impressed by Smith’s ability to put an extremely positive spin on virtually every disaster that happened to the colony, not to mention the careful way he credits God (sometimes) or himself (a lot more often) for the few triumphs, while simultaneously assuring readers that the various disasters that did occur (death, attacks) were all either preventable or easily dealt with or were certainly all the fault of people not named John Smith. In one passage, for instance, Smith claims to have been attacked by 30 arrows, none of which hit him, but claims that the Native Americans were so impressed by his gun (and, apparently, not getting killed by arrows) that although they left everyone else in his group dead, this all turned out great since Smith was fed an absolute feast of bread and venison, and the Native Americans agreed to defend him against other outraged Native Americans. In other passages, after just admitting that several Native Americans had killed several colonists and wanted to kill him, Smith notes that the Native Americans that spoke to him, Smith, were all friendly and helpful and willing to give long, detailed descriptions of the local geography.

It all ends with Smith assuring readers that:

Wee now remaining being in good health, all our men wel contented, free from mutinies, in love one with another, and as we hope in a continuall peace with the Indians: where we doubt not but by Gods gracious assistance, and the adventurers willing minds and speedie furtherance to so honorable an action, in after times to see our Nation to enjoy a Country, not onely exceeding pleasant habitation, but also very profitable for commerce in general; no doubt pleasing to almightie God, honourable to our gracious Soveraigne, and commodious generally to the whole Kingdome.

As said, I’m impressed. Yet also, deeply skeptical. Not, I must say, because of the number of deadly arrows Smith somehow managed to dodge. I watch Arrow, where characters catch arrows in midair, so that part sounds completely reasonable to me. No, my skepticism comes from the awareness of the background of this report: By 1608, when Smith sent it off, he knew that unless more colonists agreed to make the largely unpleasant Atlantic crossing, the new colony was doomed. Thus, as noted, A True Relation’s focus on the bright side of colonial life: great health, lots of fish, lots of contentment, pearls in mussels, more venison than any one person could eat, and so on. Not to mention reassurances that all of the mutinies and violent conflicts with Native Americans were over. Which in turn meant leaving out whatever sparked the Pocahontas story, since that story highlighted those conflicts.

When Smith sat down sixteen years later to write A Generall Historie—the book containing the Pocahontas legend—however, quite a bit had changed. Smith no longer lived in Virginia, and had no particular desire to encourage colonists to live there. He did, however, have a powerful need to improve his reputation.

By then, a number of people had loudly accused Smith and other early Jamestown leaders of causing the deaths of numerous colonists, preventing other colonists from leaving a dangerous situation (confirmed by Smith’s accounts), and outright assassinating some German colonists. Smith’s self-confessed killing of several Native Americans was also blamed for inciting violence between Native American groups and colonists. Things had gotten bad enough that the Virginia Company, which had originally appointed Smith to a leadership role, arranged to have Smith arrested and sent back to England in 1609.

John Smith’s map of the Chesapeake Bay

Or, at least, that’s what the boring accounts of other people say. Smith’s version of these 1609 events is much more exciting. The men, he said, were not planning to arrest him, but hang him, until:

Sleeping in his Boate (for the ship was returned two daies before) accidentallie, one fired his powder-bag, which tore the flesh from his body and thighs, nine or ten inches square in a most pitiful manner; but to quench the tormenting fire, frying him in cloaths he leaped over-boord into the deepe river, where ere they could recouer him he was neere drowned.

OK, that all sounds bad, but it had, Smith pointed out, an unexpected benefit: it meant that his enemies—Radcliff, Archer and other men sent to remove Smith from his position—decided not to murder him after all:

…fearing a iust reward for their deserts, seeing the President [Smith], vnable to stand, and neere bereft of his senses by reason of his torment, they had plotted to haue murdered him his bed. But his heart did faile him that should haue giuen fire to that merciless Pistoll. So not finding that course to be the best, they ioyned together to vsurpe the government, thereby to escape the punishment.

If Smith felt that it was, to say, a bit odd that a gun “accidentallie” went off in his vicinity just as various people were trying to hang him and that it seemed just a touch odd for anyone to want to usurp the government from such a nice, likable guy, he did not mention this. Instead, he sensibly decided to make a run for it:

The President [still Smith] had notice of their proiects, the which to withstand, though his old souldiers importuned him but permit them to take their heads that would resist his command, yet he would not suffer them, but sent for the Masters of the ships, and tooke order with them for his return for England.

Smith bitterly noted that the colonists started to fawn on their new commanders the second Smith took off, and decided to exorcise some of his feelings about this through a very unflattering poem.

Just one paragraph later, Smith was to insist that had it not been for that unfortunate explosion, he would have solved every problem in Virginia. All he had done, in his mind, was make friends, gain enemies, explore North America, and force people to work if they wanted to eat. He also added, only slightly less bitterly, that when two “Dutchmen” had planned to betray Smith to Powhatan, the Native American leader “caused his men to beat out their braines”—which, I think, was something Smith was hoping the English colonists would do on his behalf, but didn’t.

I’m going to ignore the rest of Smith’s tirade here, since it doesn’t involve exciting things like explosions and conspiracy to commit murder, and instead just note that for Smith to defend himself against the seemingly very valid charge of being the manager from hell, he had to present the problems in Virginia as extremely difficult—something that could only be solved by someone who, like Smith, had the capacity of getting the Native American groups to trust him, and the ability to work around issues such as a lack of carpenters and other skilled tradesmen. Thus, Smith ramped up his descriptions of the tensions between Native Americans and the colonists, while also presenting himself as the sort of person that Native Americans would happily jump in front of weapons for. Thus, the Pocahontas story—showing that things were so tense that white colonists could be seized and killed at any time, while also showing that he, Smith, was such an amazing dude that innocent Native American girls would die for him.

And by this time, he was also in desperate need of money, forcing him to make A Generall Historie exciting (explosions! dramatic rescues! betrayals!) enough to appeal to regular readers. Whatever else can be said about the Pocahontas story, it’s dramatic, and if Smith perhaps cannot be relied upon for telling the absolute truth, he can at least be relied on for making his life sound exciting.

Between all of the self-serving stuff and the constant examples of just how amazing and heroic Smith was, A Generall Historie does have some good bits: explosions, adventures, lots of people shooting each other with guns and arrows or hitting each other over the head, and explanations about some puzzling bits from his last work, like all the stuff about how everyone died because they ate sturgeon. If the second account is to be believed, the colonists didn’t die from eating too much fresh sturgeon, but rather got sick from trying to eat bread baked from dried sturgeon. (I hope none of you were eating anything while reading this.)

It also contains Smith’s perceptions of Native American culture and life. Most of these accounts and perceptions have been hotly disputed, not to mention that it’s a bit unclear just how much he could have learned about that culture and life in between the times when exasperated people were trying to kill him. He does, however, provide one of the longest and most detailed accounts of that period from the point of view of white colonists, and archaeological and other sources have confirmed at least some parts of Smith’s descriptions.

Neither book makes for especially light, fun reading, but if you are interested in a very self-serving narrative about early colonial days, comfortable with the Jacobean language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, or interested in how 17th-century authors used the social media of their day to improve their reputations and earn money, both books might be worth a look.

Or you can just take my word for it that the historical Captain John Smith seems to have rather little in common with the heroic figure featured in Pocahontas, and a lot more in common with a later Captain Jack also created by Disney, except a lot less likable.

Smith returned to the Americas in 1614, exploring Maine and Massachusetts Bay as the “Admiral of New England.” He made two further attempts in 1614 and 1615, but by that time, he had run out of money, and his backers had run out of patience. He wrote four more books before dying in London in 1631 at the age of 51, surviving Pocahontas by about 14 years.

He did, however, meet her at least one more time at a social gathering in London—again, according to his own account. And if his other books largely faded into obscurity, his story about Pocahontas slowly became an American legend, joining the tale of her later capture, her baptism into Christianity, her marriage to John Rolfe which may have helped contribute to a temporary peace between white settlers and Native Americans, her travels to England, and her death at the tragically young age of 22. She left no writings of her own; nearly everything we know of her comes from the records of white men.

Next up: Disney’s considerably more cheerful take on all this, Pocahontas.

Ave, and welcome back to the Kage Baker Company Reread! Today Stefan, your humble Literature Preservation Specialist Grade One, will be covering chapters 2, 3, and 4 of In the Garden of Iden for your delectation and amusement.

You can find the reread’s introduction (including the reading order we’ll be following) here, and the index of previous posts here. Please be aware that sections of this reread will contain spoilers for the entire series. I am doing my best to avoid major spoilers in the chapter summaries, but my commentary and the comments section will include discussion of the series’ broader plot and references to story arcs and events from the end of the series. Gentle reader, you have been warned.

Chapters 2-4

Summary: Mendoza recounts her early youth, growing up in poverty with her parents and siblings in a small village near Santiago de Compostela in Spain. She doesn’t recall her original name or her date of birth, nor the name of the village. Her parents were very concerned with being seen as racially pure white Christians.

One day in 1541, a group of seemingly wealthy people approaches the family’s home and offers to hire one of the children as a servant. The group’s apparent leader, a red-haired woman, claims she is doing this as an act of charity for the repose of her recently deceased husband’s soul, whose name she gives as “Don Miguel de Mendes y Mendoza.” She promises the child will receive “food and clothing, a virtuous Catholic upbringing, and a suitable marriage portion arranged when she comes of age.” She also swears she is “neither Judaizer nor Morisco” and offers Mendoza’s mother a purse of gold.

The woman chooses a red-haired child, “only four or five” years old. As they ride off, the woman explains that the girl is not to be a servant; instead, she is to be married to a “mighty lord” and live in luxury as a noblewoman. They take her to a remote, empty house where she is fed, given a room of her own, and then mostly ignored or given conflicting stories about her fate.

Eventually, she learns her husband-to-be has recently arrived, but in the room where he is supposedly resting, she only finds a figure of a man braided out of sheaves of wheat, “like the play figures folk put up to decorate their houses at harvest time and burned later.”

Just when the girl realizes she has been taken by witches (or maybe, she thinks, secret Jews) the Inquisition shows up to apprehend her captors. She runs into the Inquisitor’s arms, believing she has been rescued, but they take her and lock her in a dungeon, where she receives no food for uncounted days because her “mother” (the red-haired woman Mendoza, who captured her) is supposed to pay for it.

Eventually a short, stocky man who looks Biscayan visits her in her cell and gets her story. Her anger both amuses and impresses him. He places something behind her ear that makes her feel better, then takes her to a room where she is interrogated by a priest (Fray Valdeolitas) and an inquisitor. She explains that her name isn’t Mendoza and that the woman named Mendoza is a witch. The inquisitor believes her captors were practicing witchcraft and planning to sacrifice the child, while the priest explains the Holy Office “does not concern itself with superstitions” and is more interested in proving that the child is secretly Jewish.

During a break, the Biscayan pours something from a flask into her first real meal in days, saying it’ll make her strong. He says they’re torturing the woman Mendoza, but the girl just shrugs, saying she is a “bad woman.” Later, they show her the torture room, then leave her in a small room with a realistic crucifix. She hallucinates that Jesus is speaking to her. He tells her that He is suffering for her sins, and that she sinned in “the Garden.” When her interrogators return and resume questioning her, she has started to believe that she could maybe be a Jew.

Afterwards, instead of returning her to her cell, the Biscayan takes her through a secret passage to a brilliantly lit room, where he speaks with a man in a white surcoat in a language the girl doesn’t understand. This man restrains her and shaves her head. The girl, thinking she is about to be tortured, screams and promises to confess, but all he does is examine her skull and take a blood sample. When the Biscayan returns, he explains to the girl (who he now addresses for the first time as Mendoza) what she can expect from the Inquisition. Even if she escapes, she is bound for a life of poverty, and eventually old age, disease, and death.

But the Biscayan offers her an alternative: work for a “learned doctor” who can cure her of old age and death if she agrees to work for him “saving things and people from time,” just like he does. When Mendoza agrees, the Biscayan informs a guard that the girl has died under questioning, then tags and stamps her.

She is taken in an elevator to a vast underground cavern full of incomprehensible technology and people in silver clothes, where she meets three other children with shaved heads like her. In the flying ship that takes all of them to “Terra Australis,” Mendoza hears the story of Blue Sky Boy and King Time.

Chapters 2-4—Commentary

These chapters depict Mendoza’s personal “prehistory” and seem to be shrouded in just as much mystery, partly due to the lack of written records and partly due to Mendoza’s spotty memory of certain details of her pre-Company life.

We don’t know the name of the village where Mendoza was born, but we know it’s close to Santiago de Compostela and probably on the pilgrimage route between that city and Cape Finisterre, given that she’s familiar with the cockle shells pilgrims traditionally pinned to their hats. (You can reduce the possibilities significantly with all this information, but the village doesn’t feature in the rest of the series so I’m just going with “unnamed Galician hamlet west of Santiago de Compostela.”)

We also don’t know Mendoza’s exact age at this point, but we learn later in the series that the Company can only work the immortality process on young children, maximum age five and ideally younger. Based on how verbal Mendoza is in these chapters, you’d guess she’s towards the older end of the scale, and Mendoza confirms (when riding away from her family in Chapter One) that she was “four or five” years old at the time.

And then there’s her original, pre-Mendoza name, which she has somehow forgotten. I can buy that she wouldn’t know the name of her village or even her parents’ names at this age, but I’ve always found it improbable that she can’t recall her own given name. Younger children are usually already well aware of their own names by this point.

There are a few possible explanations for this. For one, Mendoza is writing her journal several centuries later (as far as her subjective perception of time goes), after the events portrayed in Mendoza in Hollywood and possibly much later, depending on how long she waited to start her diary during her imprisonment in Back Way Back. By that point, those early childhood years may be nothing but a vague memory for her.

Maybe more pertinent: even though it’s described in a rather understated way here, Mendoza experiences some serious psychological trauma in these chapters. She’s essentially sold away to strangers by her family (“One less mouth to feed without the expense of a funeral!”), then finds out that her supposed benefactors are actually planning to use her as a human sacrifice, and then gets thrown in a dungeon, starved, and if not subjected, at least exposed to the Inquisition’s interrogation methods.

And lest we forget: the Company, in the person of Joseph, isn’t exactly subtle in its recruitment efforts either. Asking a young child who’s already out of her mind with fear to make a life-changing decision like this one is ethically questionable to say the least, and that’s not even taking into account that Mendoza was strapped to a chair to have her head shaved and blood drawn. It really creeps me out that Joseph doesn’t undo her restraints until he’s done describing all the horrors she can expect from mortal life.

It’s not that hard to imagine that all of this could cause a young child to block that entire phase of her life from memory. But the point is that it clearly hasn’t. She remembers and describes everything in vivid detail. She even identifies Spanish accents from regions far from her own, which is hard to imagine from a young child who doesn’t even know the name of her own village.

Be that as it may, by the end of these chapters the nameless girl has become Mendoza—and what must it have done to her young psyche, knowing she got stuck with the name of the woman who took her from her family and planned to burn her alive?

Still, even this very young, very disoriented Mendoza already shows flashes of her, um, distinctive adult personality: quick to anger, not very empathetic, cynical, direct to the point of being abrasive. She makes sure to ask whether she’ll get a bed of her own to sleep in. Rather than saying thank you, she questions why a lord would want to marry a pauper girl like her. In the dungeons of the Inquisition, she sustains her anger for a remarkably long time (even yelling at Joseph and demanding food the first time he sees her in her cell) before finally succumbing to fear. Later, when Joseph tells Mendoza about Dr. Zeus, she immediately questions the “magician” part of his story, making Joseph change it to “Doctor.” Finally, maybe the most meaningful example: when Mendoza sees the fear in the other children Dr. Zeus is rescuing, she eyes them in disgust and even yells at one of them to be quiet.

On a separate note, it’s interesting to watch Kage Baker lay the groundwork for the rest of the novel in these early chapters. The story of the incident with the giant censer during Katharine of Aragon’s journey to England to marry Henry VIII foreshadows the major role played by the religious strife in 16th Century England later in the story, especially for poor Nicholas Harpole. You have to love Mendoza’s wry coda to that story: “This shows that one ought to pay attention to omens.” (By the way, I was unable to find other references to this story, but that’s probably due to my poor Google-fu.)

Another example of this nifty foreshadowing: when Mendoza’s captors describe where she’ll live after she marries the great lord she’s been promised, “the most beautiful palace of Argentoro” sounds somewhat similar to the New World One Company base where Mendoza will end up at the end of the novel, complete with white marble, Indian servants, and monkeys. She’s also told her supposed husband-to-be will strike her with “thunderbolts” (traditionally one of Zeus’ weapons) if she wakes him up.

And finally, the motif of the garden pops up more than once in these chapters. She is promised an actual, I-kid-you-not rose garden in that same description of the (entirely fictional) Argentoro palace. In the picture book she looks through in the underground Company base, there were children “watching other children play games. Children in gardens growing flowers.” And of course, when she hallucinates her conversation with Christ, she learns that she is inherently evil because of a sin committed in another garden. It’s easy to see how Mendoza, five years old and terrified beyond belief, already begins to associate plants with both freedom and safety.

(That hallucination scene is interesting, by the way: Christ shows some of Joseph’s mannerisms and speech patterns, then pulls a red inquisitor robe around Himself when stepping off the cross. Is this an early example of the Company’s deep psychological conditioning of its operatives? In the end, it’s more plausible that this is just a hallucination. After all, little Mendoza is already half out of her mind with fear at this point and really doesn’t need more theatrics to be convinced.)

These chapters also contain the first example of the Dr. Zeus origin myth, which will pop up in different forms throughout the series. These are different from the factual descriptions we get in what feels like almost every story and novel in the series, e.g. the one in the Prologue Chapter One. The origin myths are attempts to frame the “real” story in a way that makes sense for the Company’s young recruits. In this case, the unnamed Company operative tells Mendoza about Blue Sky Boy, the “king of all the thunderstorms” with a “spear made of lightning” who defeated mean old King Time—clearly references to Zeus and Cronus/Kronos.

In the end, I think the most important point in these chapters is the early formation of Mendoza’s character, with the successive betrayals by her family, her captors, the inquisition, and finally the less-than-ideal early treatment by the Company, which also reinforces what was broadly hinted at in Chapter One: Dr. Zeus isn’t necessarily the most humane of employers.

And that’s it for this week! Please join us again next week, when we’ll cover Chapters 5 and 6.

Stefan Raets reads and reviews science fiction and fantasy whenever he isn’t distracted by less important things like eating and sleeping. You can find him on Twitter, and his website is Far Beyond Reality.

“The Omega Glory”
Written by Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Season 2, Episode 25
Production episode 60354
Original air date: March 1, 1968
Stardate: unknown

Captain’s log. The Enterprise arrives at Omega IV to find the U.S.S. Exeter already in orbit. Kirk is surprised, as the ship wasn’t scheduled to be there. There’s no sign of damage, but no sign of life, either.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Galloway beam to the engineering section (Galloway is facing a different direction when they materialize for some reason), and they find a whole bunch of uniforms and piles of crystals half in and half out of those uniforms. It’s pretty grisly. McCoy reports that the crystals are what would remain of the human body if you removed all the water from it. The crew didn’t leave while naked, they’re all still there and dead.

Searching the ship, they find only uniforms, no life. They head to the bridge to find the same thing. Spock calls up the last log recording, made by the ship’s surgeon Dr. Carter before he died. He says that anyone on the ship is dead and the only hope of survival is to beam down to the planet. They do so, and find a man about to be beheaded, with a woman held prisoner nearby.

But the execution stops, not because of the Enterprise landing party, but because Captain Ronald Tracey of the Exeter shows up. He instructs the executioner—one of the Kohms (who are all Asian)—to spare the Yangs (who are all Caucasians), but imprison them. Tracey had beamed down with a landing party. The rest of his team beamed back to the ship and took a disease back with them that killed them all. Tracey has remained immune while staying on the planet.

McCoy has equipment beamed down so he can analyze the disease. Meanwhile, Spock and Galloway learn that Tracey used a phaser to drive off a Yang attack on the Kohm village. (They were also ambushed, with Galloway hurt.) Spock also found several expired phaser power packs next to Yang bodies, and sees that thousands of Yangs are massing to attack the village.

Before Kirk can take action against Tracey—his use of a phaser is a violation of the Prime Directive—Tracey himself shows up pointing a phaser. He kills Galloway and contacts the Enterprise, saying that the landing party is fevered and delirious. Tracey then explains to Kirk that nobody on this world has ever suffered disease. One of the younger Kohms is over four hundred years old, and his father is over a thousand.

Tracey wants McCoy to isolate whatever it is that allows this immortality and extract it from the thing that kills you when you leave the planet. Kirk tries to fight his way out, but Tracey gives him a good beat-down and takes him to the dungeon where Spock, McCoy, and the two Yangs already are. McCoy is freed to work further on the problem, while Kirk is put in the cell with the Yangs, who also try to beat Kirk up (it’s just not his day). The fight only ends when Spock manages to reach through the bars of his cell to neck-pinch the woman.

Kirk’s offhand use of the word “freedom” gets the male Yang’s attention. Freedom is, he says, a “worship word.” It turns out that the Yangs aren’t savages who don’t talk, they just don’t talk to Kohms. At Spock’s suggestion of trying to loosen the bars in the old mortar, Kirk works with the Yangs to do so, but once the first bar comes off, the Yang clubs Kirk on the head and frees himself and the woman. They escape, leaving Kirk with a headache (it really isn’t his day)—but also a way out! They escape and head to McCoy.

McCoy determines that a biological war was fought on Omega IV centuries ago, which is what led to the disease that killed the Exeter crew. Much of the population was wiped out, but those who survived developed an immunity and their antibodies allow them to live a long life. He also discovers that anyone becomes immune after time—if Tracey’s landing party had just waited a few more hours, the Exeter crew would all be alive.

Spock’s about to jimmy the medical scanner to contact the Enterprise, but Tracey shows up and shoots Spock, badly wounding him. Tracey, who looks like crap, reveals that the Yangs have attacked the village. Tracey drained all his phasers repelling them. Tracey orders Kirk at phaserpoint to beam down more phasers so Tracey can fight off the next Yang attack.

Tracey relaxes his guard after Kirk makes the call, and Kirk takes advantage to run away. Tracey chases him through the Kohm village, and tracks him down—but his phaser is now drained of power. So they go hand to hand for a bit, only to be captured by a bunch of Yangs.

The Yangs capture McCoy and Spock as well. Kirk makes the hilarious leap in logic that the Yangs and Kohms are parallels to the Yankees and the Communists, but the war that was avoided in the 20th century happened, and the “Asiatics” won. Oh, and he makes the leap by observing that the Yangs are now acting like the American Indians. Sure.

And then they top it off by bringing in an American flag. Because of course they do.

The Yang male from the cell is Cloud William, the leader of the Yangs. He plants the flag in the Kohm throne room, and starts reciting a chant that is very much like a corrupted version of the Pledge of Allegiance. Which Kirk then finishes reciting, stunning the Yangs, as those are their holy words.

Tracey tries to convince Cloud William that the Enterprise crew are evil, while Kirk tries to convince him that they’re all just regular folks, they just happen to be from the stars. Tracey uses Spock—with his satanic look and “lack” of a heart (it’s not where it would be in a human)—to bolster his argument. Cloud William tries to see if the evil ones can speak the sacred words, but Kirk doesn’t recognize it—at first.

Finally, they decide with trial by combat between Tracey and Kirk, who are bound at the wrist by a leather strap. A sword is in the floor which a combatant can use.

As the fisticuffs go on (and on and on), Spock—despite being badly wounded—manages to make a telepathic suggestion to the Yang woman to use the conveniently-right-next-to-her communicator to call the Enterprise.

However, Kirk finally gets the upper hand, but rather than use the sword on Tracey, he spares him. And then Sulu beams down with two security guards, at which point Cloud William decides that they’re gods. But Kirk has him get up off his knees. He finally figured out why the sacred words were so familiar—like the Pledge, it is a linguistic corruption of the Constitution of the United States. The Yangs say those sacred words are only for the chiefs, but Kirk insists that they were written for everyone, and must apply to everyone or they’re meaningless.

Kirk says they’ll leave these people in peace to find their way back to liberty, and they take Tracey under arrest. One assumes Sulu and the two security guards stayed on-world long enough to develop the immunity…

Fascinating. Spock can apparently mind-control a Yang woman just by staring at her really hard, which is a way more precise bit of mind control than he’s ever managed before or since, since in the past he’s only been able to influence general actions (“A Taste of Armageddon“) or read things in people’s minds (“Dagger of the Mind,” “The Changeling,” “By Any Other Name“).

I’m a doctor not an escalator. McCoy saves the day with his scientific prowess. Because he’s just that awesome. 

Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu commands the ship in Kirk and Spock’s absence once again, reinforcing the notion that he was intended as the third-in-command from jump. It never made sense that the chief engineer was part of the chain of command (notably, the various 24th-century spinoffs did away with this notion), with Sulu always making a ton more sense as the ship’s second officer.

Hailing frequencies open. Uhura gets to call the surface a lot. Fun stuff.

Go put on a red shirt. Poor Galloway gets attacked by the Yangs and then Tracey shoots him like he’s an injured horse being put out of his misery. Kirk barely even notices that he’s been shot. (Hell, Kirk mispronounces his last name as “Galway”—perhaps mixing him up with another doomed crewmember whose death had no obvious effect on him—at the top of the episode.) 

Channel open. “Who knows? It might one day cure the common cold, but lengthen lives? Poppycock! I can do more for you if you just eat right and exercise regularly.”

McCoy making it clear that he’s a better scientist than Tracey, which the blue shirt should have already made clear.

Welcome aboard. Morgan Woodward, having previously played the insane van Gelder in “Dagger of the Mind,” returns to play the insane Tracey here. David L. Ross appears as Galloway again, and is killed, though he’ll appear again as Galloway in “Turnabout Intruder” (and as another redshirt, Johnson, in “Day of the Dove”). Ed McCready makes the latest in a series of appearances in Vincent McEveety-directed episodes by showing up here as Carter (he was in “Dagger of the Mind,” “Miri,” and “Patterns of Force,” and he’ll be back in “Spectre of the Gun”).

Various Yangs and Kohms are played by Roy Jenson, Irene Kelly, Morgan Farley, Lloyd Kino, and Frank Atienza, while we’ve also got recurring regulars Nichelle Nichols and George Takei.

Trivial matters: Sulu’s experiences in this episode prove handy in the novel Forged in Fire by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, as a retrovirus he’s exposed to in the novel uses bacteriological elements from Omega IV, to which he’s now immune.

The novel Forgotten History by regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett establishes that the copies of the Constitution and American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance were left by an Earth Cargo Services vessel, the Philadelphia, in the early days of space travel to inspire the Yangs in their fight for freedom, which makes a lot more sense than anything in this episode. There was no record of it because the crew of the Philadelphia all died of the virus after leaving the planet.

Gene Roddenberry wrote the first draft of this script early on in the first season, but NBC thought the script was weak (more proof that studio notes aren’t all bad). He was able to sneak it into production late in the second season, because it was obvious at this point that NBC didn’t give a damn. Having said that, it was during the closing credits of this episode that it was announced that the show was renewed for a third season.

In Ruth Berman’s famous “Visit to a Weird Planet” story in Star Trek: The New Voyages, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley trade places with their fictional counterparts on the Enterprise, and it occurs during the filming of this episode.

To boldly go. “All this is for nothing!” Whenever Star Trek fans get into arguments—which happens with depressing regularity—one of the talking points is almost inevitably some variation of “this is/isn’t what Gene Roddenberry had in mind.” Roddenberry’s needs, wants, desires are often factored into it, as if he is the auteur of Star Trek.

The auteur theory is a popular one, but it so rarely applies to screen presentations because way too many hands are involved in it. Even the most aggressive single-vision shows—J. Michael Straczynski with Babylon 5, Chris Carter with The X-Files, Joss Whedon with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vince Gilligan with Breaking Bad, Ronald D. Moore with Battlestar Galactica, to give some obvious examples—still have plenty of other people involved that make the show what it is (The X-Files without the influence of Glenn Morgan, James Wong, and Darin Morgan doesn’t bear thinking about). And then you’ve got other shows where the singular vision departs—Eric Kripke on Supernatural, Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing—but the show continues.

When people try to cite Roddenberry as the auteur of Star Trek, I cringe, because—while it was very definitely his creation—the show owes its success to the people he worked with, and the people who came after him at least as much.

And in some cases, people whom Roddenberry had no say in the hiring of (which is everyone after he died in 1991, obviously). I know it’s popular now to slag J.J. Abrams and his fellow Bad Robot folk who did the last two movies, because they’re not “real Star Trek.” I always laugh at that, because people forget now that Roddenberry spent most of 1982 going to conventions and urging fans not to see The Wrath of Khan because it wasn’t “real Star Trek” and that this Nicholas Meyer fella didn’t know his ass from his elbow and he would ruin Trek, and it wasn’t his vision, dammit. (Never mind that he made enough of a pig’s ear out of The Motion Picture that Paramount went to great lengths to keep him from ever having anything to do with a Star Trek movie ever again.)

He stopped doing that once fan reaction to the second movie was so overwhelmingly positive, of course.

The thing is, while Roddenberry’s creation was a great thing, it was a lot of other hands that made it great, because as a writer? Roddenberry wasn’t all that and a bag of chips.

Let’s look at his writing credits for the original series, shall we? We’ve got “The Cage,” a failed pilot (and a mediocre episode, all told). We’ve got “The Menagerie,” which wraps the failed pilot in an overly melodramatic bit of nonsense. We’ve got “Bread and Circuses,” which is actually a decent satire, if somewhat nonsensical. We’ve got the stories for “Charlie X” (which is actually pretty good), as well as “Mudd’s Women,” “The Return of the Archons,” “The Savage Curtain,” and “Turnabout Intruder” (which really really aren’t), and also “Assignment: Earth” (which is more of a backdoor pilot than it is a Trek episode). Oh, and we have “A Private Little War,” which is pretty awful. (We won’t even get into his three contributions to TNG, the mediocre pilot, the flawed “Hide and Q,” and the embarrassing “Datalore.”)

And then we have this misbegotten piece of crap.

There is not a single redeeming feature of this episode. Like Morgan Woodward’s last guest appearance, we have a bad guy in Tracey whose motives are utterly unclear. We don’t know why he suddenly decided to arm the Kohms against the Yangs, or why he decided to just murder Galloway. (Maybe he figured that he was just a security guard, and Kirk would neither notice nor care. The rest of the episode bears this notion out.) This is the second time we’ve seen a captain lose his entire crew, but where Decker in “The Doomsday Machine” was obviously suffering major PTSD, Tracey barely seems to even give a damn. He’s actually quite cold and calculating, not going binky bonkers until later when he’s been in a massive firefight that he barely survived.

And then we have the complete WTFery of the Yangs and the Kohms, down to the American flag (with 50 stars!) and the linguistic drift versions of the Pledge of Allegiance and the Constitution. (My favorite is that it’s the amended version of the pledge, since “under God” wasn’t added to the pledge until 1954, twelve years after it was adopted as the official pledge by Congress, and six decades after it was first written without those two words.) No explanation—not even the nonsense “Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development” we got in “Bread and Circuses“—is even attempted. For some stupid reason, the landing party just accepts that this planet evolved in so exactly the same way, down to the handwriting on the Constitution.

I haven’t even gotten to the offensive racial portrayals here. Tracey expresses surprise that the people “who look like us” are the primitive savages while the “Asiatic” Kohms are kind and gentle, because of course, it should totally be the other way around! (One wonders how Tracey would have responded if Sulu had led the landing party…) And then Kirk makes the connections to the history of the western hemisphere, solely because the Yangs happen to dress like some Native American tribes. And then, of course, the “Asiatics” (wince wince wince) turn out to be the real bad guys (just like the Commies, those bastards!) and the Yangs are the noble freedom-loving folk and all they have to do is read their Constitution and everyone will live happily ever after. And then I start slamming my head into the desk.

Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, and for that, we owe him a debt of gratitude, because he created a truly great thing.

But he also wrote this abomination with its offensive racial portrayals, with its stupid plot, with its idiotic and unconvincing Earth parallels, and with a simply endless number of fist fights. Both are part of his legacy.

Warp factor rating: 0

Next week: “Assignment: Earth”

Keith R.A. DeCandido is the Author Guest of Honor at Treklanta 2016 this coming weekend, alongside actors Carel Struycken, Tracee Lee Cocco, Jack Stauffer, Java Green, and Lynn McArthur; fans Bjo & John Trimble; and numerous other authors, performers, and fan film folk.

It’s kind of ironic that one episode after the citizens of National City re-accepted Supergirl, they’ve all turned against her again. But this is the one time she’s not taking it personally, because it’s all the result of Kryptonian mind control technology Myriad! And the handful of people who are unaffected by Myriad all have different thoughts on Non and Astra’s Indigo’s solution for “saving” the human race.

Spoilers for Supergirl 1×19 “Myriad.”

I can’t believe we’re in the penultimate episode of season 1. With the show still waiting on a season 2 order, Kara’s showdown with Non—which turns out to be a two-parter, to be resolved next week—could have a grim outcome. But for the moment, let’s focus on what we do know.

For all that Myriad got teased in several episodes this season, I’m not sure I would have guessed that it’s a mind control device. The actual definition of myriad is “countless or extremely great in number,” which kinda fits the notion of putting countless people under one person’s control. Non directs the crowds to an undisclosed location, then returns them to their homes and workplaces so they can carry out some plan involving Kryptonian code; he speaks through them; they’re his puppets.

Astra, at least, had a more noble notion for Myriad’s use: When the Kyptonians wouldn’t listen to her climate change fears, she thought she could control them long enough to enact her plans. Non claims to want to save Earth from itself as well, and yet you get the impression he wouldn’t release any world leaders after getting them to sign a climate change accord. As Indigo points out, Non is very happy to have Earth become his little fiefdom.

So why were the Alura AI and Kelex the Fortress of Solitude robot both programmed not to talk about Myriad? Because the Kryptonians were fearful of anyone knowing Myriad existed and trying to get their hands on it. Too bad—maybe knowing it existed could have helped them prepare. Of course, that’s the position Maxwell Lord occupies, and he didn’t see fit to save anyone else but Cat Grant from getting zombified.

I love me a good mind-control story, but that’s not really what I was feeling here. Probably because everyone was enthralled by Myriad; there’s no mystery as to who might have gotten body-snatched, no “OMG!” moment when another character gets lost to the hive mind. The interesting (though also cheesy, as IGN points out) moments in the episode are as each of the unaffected characters—Kara, Cat, Maxwell, J’onn, Alex—ponder over what Myriad actually means to them.

Control

Am I the only one who laughed when Superman swooped in to save the day and then promptly dropped out of the sky and joined the marching Myriad zombies? Yet again this show found a silly way to bring him in without bringing him in. Another point from IGN: If Clark is under Myriad’s control because of growing up on Earth, why isn’t Kara at least somewhat affected?

LOL JK

Less funny was poor Kelly the office skydiver (though I did giggle when Maxwell called her that). If I remember correctly, we hadn’t heard this CatCo coworker’s name ever before, and I doubt she had a speaking role; so when Kara suddenly was worried about her, I knew she would bite it. Especially if Non sends her, James, and Winn all leaping off the Balcony of Feelings at the same time. That moment lost its resonance because there was no way Kara wouldn’t catch both of her best friends; it’s not as if she had a Gargoyles moment where she was physically incapable of catching both and would have to choose.

So, Myriad is about controlling countless bodies to put whatever actions you want into reality. But it also brought up a different form of control for Alex, who came out of hiding to return to National City and risk getting caught in Myriad’s web. Why? Because she couldn’t stand knowing that Kara was in danger and that she (Alex) had no control. Just like watching her father walk out the door the last time and knowing she would have no impact on the outcome.

But after Indigo stabs J’onn and disrupts his mental shield around Alex, Non gets another soldier—and one who knows all of Kara’s physical and figurative weaknesses. But I have to ask, if Non had Kal-El “bowing to [him],” why not pit him against Supergirl? Sure, Indigo claims that a Danvers sister deathmatch will hurt both of them, but that’s just good TV—the other method would have been much more effective.

We also get more of a sense of the inner workings of Maxwell Lord. Though we already knew about his parents dying after exposure to a virus, he reveals the most tragic part: He warned them and the CDC, but no one listened to him because he was a know-it-all.

Maxwell Lord: “I swore from that moment on that if I could protect people, if I could save them, I wouldn’t ask permission. I would act, like when you jump out the window and save the day. We act, you and I. We’re more alike than you think.”

 

Fear

The problem is, Maxwell’s idea of action is to bomb the city with kryptonite dust, which will wipe out Non and his army but will also leave National City so irradiated that Supergirl and Superman can’t return for fifty years. But it won’t just kill the bad guys: The bomb could rack up casualties in the form of 8 percent of the population, or over 300,000 people. Maxwell’s plan is a fear response, and not a very good one.

Kara: “Killing is never the solution.”

Maxwell Lord: “Except we’re way past villains of the week and kittens stuck in trees. We’re at war, and the only way to win a war is to kill the enemy before they kill us. Time to grow up and put on your big-girl cape.”

Kara actually mulls it over, because Alura jailing Astra and Non for creating Myriad didn’t wind up saving Krypton after all; “everything was just wiped from the stars.” Can Kara really reject a decision that saves 92 percent of National City, and arguably the rest of the world?

The upside of this Myriad mess is that Cat and Supergirl get some valuable one-on-one time on the Balcony of Feelings. I know we’ve debated in the comments about whether Cat still believes Kara is Supergirl and is just going along with the ruse, but there really didn’t seem to be much in her delivery that supported that. Then again, secret identities are much less pressing than figuring out a better plan than Maxwell’s.

Cat: “Did you know some of the best decisions I’ve made in life were based in fear?”

But not these ones. We’ve established that a kryptonite bomb is not going to be the solution. But what is?

Cat: “Just be Supergirl. That’s all anyone has ever needed from you.”

Well, “being Supergirl” is a lot more than just wearing the S. It has meant being just alien enough to be taken seriously, but still approachable enough so that humans aren’t scared. It’s meant standing up for bullied kids but also tapping into your unresolved anger issues to blow apart government robots with your laser vision. It’s meant owning your actions even when you weren’t in control. It’s a lot for Kara to encapsulate in one thing, but apparently that one thing is…

Hope

Supergirl showed Cat how to let people in, and that hope is stronger than fear. Now, it’s kind of ironic that season 1 is amassing around this notion of Supergirl meaning hope, seeing as they decided that the S didn’t stand for that, but rather for “stronger together,” in 1×02. I’m not sure if that were a red herring or a brain fart on the writers’ part, but the impact is a bit muddled.

So, what could the plan be? All we know is that Cat leads Kara and Maxwell to her first TV station, which is conveniently “old” broadcast technology instead of digital, but up-to-date enough that they can piggyback on Myriad’s signal. I’m not surprised, and even glad, to see the show bringing in notions of old media versus new media. They’ve sown some of those seeds with setting Kara’s work life at CatCo, having Cat brand superheroes and make public statements decrying Bad Supergirl, and having more than one villain operate through electricity (Livewire) and technology (Indigo). But this episode makes sure to emphasize the technology connection, as Non makes clear his thoughts on Cat and Maxwell’s businesses:

Non: “With these people? These who are the best of your world, and all they do is help the populace amuse themselves to death. If anything, they laid the groundwork for me.”

He claims that Cat and the rest of the entertainment and news industries have already turned people into drones in a figurative sense, though he did so literally. I’m curious to see how, since they can’t override Myriad’s signal, they decide to reshape it.

Other Thoughts

• “Kira, call Harrison Ford and tell him I’m flattered, but once and for all, I do not date older men, especially when they’re married.” This joke has been a long time coming. And of course Cat was on the phone with Anderson Cooper in the middle of Maxwell Lord’s big speech.
• “The Man of Steel, brought to his knees, all because he went to kindergarten and watched Sesame Street.”
• “So, Mars, I have to ask—underneath it all, are you a little green man?” “I’m a big green man.” Eliza meeting her daughter’s future boyfriend (I hope) is everything I wanted it to be.
• “I’m a muse, Max, to the world.” Yes you are, Cat.
• Kara called Ms. Grant “Cat” after that big speech! Aww.
• Here’s the synopsis for next week’s finale, “Better Angels,” to mull over: Supergirl is forced to do battle with an unexpected foe and must risk everything—including her life—to prevent Non and Indigo from destroying every person on the planet.

Natalie Zutter isn’t sure if she wants things to end happily or sadly next week. Read more of her work on Twitter and elsewhere.

The Regional Office is your standard mysterious superhuman organization with no governmental oversight. It uses its powers for good—good that typically includes fantastical and oddly specific vacation destinations, as well as amassing an army of superpowered female assassins. Like I said, standard stuff. But now, despite its gifts to humanity and doubtless excellent benefits package, the Regional Office is under attack. The higher-ups knew it was coming—having a team of oracles on hand has its perks—and they knew that the attack would come from the inside. But no one told middle management, and anyone that’s ever had an entry-level position knows how that particular story plays out.

Manuel Gonzales does not pull any punches in his debut novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack!. Innocent office workers will be killed, revenge will be enacted, and teenagers will learn that they should never pick career paths at such an early age, especially when that career is assassin-hood. With cutting wit and non-stop action, The Regional Office is the funnest book I’ve read in ages, and is one of the most concise portrayals of office bureaucracy I’ve encountered outside of television series like The Office and Parks & Rec.

Of course, The Regional Office isn’t so much “about” bureaucracy, as it is a delight in its human elements. Sarah, a fiercely loyal manager at TRO, and Rose, a sharp-edged teenage assassin, are the two narrators of the organization’s downfall. Sarah, taken in by TRO’s co-founder Mr. Niles years prior, had been given the tools she needed to exact revenge on her mother’s killers: a list of names, a sinister explanation, and a mysterious and powerful robotic arm. Even now, as she is ignored or harassed by her employees, and treated like an office manager (what good is a robotic arm if it’s only used to refill ink cartridges?), Sarah wants to be a part of the important work TRO is doing. And what’s more: she’s good at her job.

Rose, meanwhile, was recruited years after Sarah, and not under the same cryptic, personal circumstances. In fact, apart from kicking ass at an above-average skill level, she leads a pretty typical high school life until two defectors from TRO recruit her to their army and charge her with the task of killing Mr. Niles. Her mission against TRO isn’t personal, but she wants to impress her peers and superiors—among them, circumstantially, a not-at-all-handsome young man named Henry.

Just as Sarah and Rose’s circumstances differ, so too do their voices: one is no-nonsense, honest, and thoughtful, the other with all the trappings of teen-dom: witty and devious, with that edge of desperation to belong. And between them, too, is a third, more “objective” narrator: a series of excerpts from a scholarly text called The Regional Office is Under Attack: Tracking the Rise and Fall of an American Institution, written by an unnamed and infuriatingly ambiguous author. Compared to the real joy I felt in reading Sarah and Rose’s sections, I initially disliked these excerpts; they feel in their first instances like expository glue, a way for Gonzales to squeeze in more plot between Sarah and Rose’s points-of-view. But while those points don’t necessarily change, my opinion of the overall narrative device did.

Gonzales ultimately uses this Third Narrator as a background world-building tool, gradually revealing life outside of the hyper-isolated Regional Office. Even more interesting is the way that this narrator blurs the lines between objective and subjective experiences; despite seeming to carry more authority than Sarah or Rose (it’s scholarly, after all, none of that pesky bias stuff), this account does what all historical accounts do, and feeds in constant speculation and unverified facts. In a story whose main concern is the human face of inhuman bureaucracy, this seemingly innocuous formal device does a great deal of work.

The blurb on the back of TRO describes Gonzales’ book as one that is “about revenge and allegiance and love,” but this is not entirely true. The Regional Office doesn’t really deal in sentimentality or Big Emotional Arcs, though it is far from cold or lacking in sincerity. Rather, Gonzales’ real project seems to be in the messy human stuff—the emotion, the petty betrayal—that lies beneath the humdrum of the everyday: the forms we fill out, the trips to IKEA, the menial promotions, and the annoyance and compassion we feel when we see interns sucking up to their managers. The characters in this novel are more relatable than they are loveable, too cruel and flawed to ever quite root for. But their voices—Gonzales’ voice—are so fresh and so funny, the pacing is so fast and crackling, you won’t be able to stop reading. This is not a Kafka-esque or DFW-style foray into the meaninglessness and boredom of working a 9-5 office job or going to the DMV. This one has jokes. And magic. And did I mention the cyborg?

The Regional Office is Under Attack! is available now from Riverhead Books.

Emily Nordling is a librarian and perpetual student in Chicago, IL.

Benedict Cumberbatch swung by Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight to premiere the first trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange, which is chock full of Inception-like cityscapes folding in on themselves and Tilda Swinton punching Cumberbatch into astral projection.

“You wonder what I see in your future?” The Ancient One asks Stephen Strange. “Possibility.” We also get some creepy glimpses of Chiwetel Ejiofor as Baron Mordo. Watch the trailer!

Doctor Strange projects into theaters on November 4. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these posters: