The Hollywood Reporter dropped big news for GRRM fans yesterday; the Wild Cards series, helmed by Martin and Melinda Snodgrass, and featuring stories from many SFF luminaries, is coming to Hulu.

Hulu and Universal Cable Productions are near to a deal that would create a writers room for Wild Cards, helmed by Andrew Miller. The intent is to begin with two series and potentially expand to more, with Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, and Vince Gerardis executive producing the lot.

SyFy Films had initially acquired the rights to produce Wild Cards for film in 2011, with Snodgrass set to write the first screenplay. The rights reverted in 2016, leading to Martin and UCP making the deal to develop the series for television. Martin has also worked with UCP on the soon-to-air Nightflyers, based on his novella.

THR had this to say about the Wild Cards property:

The Wild Cards franchise is a shared universe of anthologies, mosaic novels and stand-alone stories written by a collection of authors and edited by Martin and co-editor Snodgrass. The book series launched after a long-running campaign of the Superworld role-playing game led by Martin and involving the original authors. Martin and Snodgrass developed the framework of the series, including the characters’ abilities and card-based terminology. The first book was published by Bamtam in 1987. To date, 27 books have been released by four publishers, with other new titles in the works. The source material has been adapted as comics, graphic novels and other RPGs.

For more information on plans for the Wild Cards universe, head over to The Hollywood Reporter.

Wherein Sauron Hoodwinks the Elves, Forges His Trusty Ring, Unveils His New Tower, and Then, Having Had It Up to Here With All That Nonsense, Men and Elves Form the Last Alliance

The final section of The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” is basically the bridge between the Quenta, the downfall of Númenor, and The Lord of the Rings, even summarizing the high-level events of the War of the Ring. I’m sure anyone reading this Primer will already be well acquainted with that last event. Given the overlap in exposition between this section and The Lord of the Rings itself, I’m going to tie things together with Appendix B: The Tale of Years from Tolkien’s most famous book…with a dash and a few dollops from Unfinished Tales.

Think of all this as proper stage setting for a reread of The Lord of the Rings. Now, this section is jam-packed with exposition, so I’m going to separate it into halves (one last time). But first, let’s recalibrate: We need to jump back to the start of the Second Age, long before the fall of Númenor.

Dramatis personæ of note:

• Sauron – Maia, Lord of the Earth, real estate tycoon, full-fledged asshole
• Gil-galad – Noldo, High-King of the Noldor
• Elrond – Half-elven, herald of Gil-galad, advisor
• Celebrimbor – Noldo, jewel-smith extraordinaire, grandson of Fëanor
• Elendil – Man, Númenor survivor, tall and Faithful king of the Dúnedain
• Isildur – Man, Elendil’s kid, White Tree porter

Of the Rings of Power…

If it wasn’t for Sauron, things might have been peachy—eh, peachy enough—for a long time. Yeah, Morgoth having tainted the world means there are still monsters and evil Men doing their thing, but they’d have stayed divided. And yeah, the Númenóreans would still eventually turn from benefactor Sea-Kings to tribute-demanding bullies, and Ar-Pharazôn would have gone unchecked. Yet without Sauron pushing the king into waging war with the Valar, Númenor might have endured and so, too, would the Faithful. There’d have been a lot more time for them to turn things around and do good for the world, ennobling others as the Valar and the Eldar had ennobled them.

Sauron, meanwhile, had the opportunity at the end of the War of Wrath to repent for his service to Morgoth. And for his many terrible crimes—not the least of which was sending the werewolf that killed Finrod Felagund, the swellest Elf that Middle-earth ever had the privilege to know. But hey, whatever. I’m over it.

Of all of Morgoth’s servants, Sauron the Deceiver is the most subtle, the most crafty, and certainly the most powerful. Whenever one of the other heavyweights like Gothmog showed up, they just smashed, burned, and pounded folks. And while Sauron would rather dominate everyone with raw power, he knows you can catch more Elven-flies with honey; he’s been a master of phantoms and shadows since the First Age. He’s got more than a few white lies and taradiddles tucked away.

“Melkor and Sauron” by Bohemian Weasel

But here’s the thing about Sauron: He almost wasn’t. Yes, he was seduced by Melkor long ago, but he wasn’t necessarily bad since the word “Eä!” In fact, in those very olden days he was a Maia in service to Aulë and thus had a proclivity for the substance of Arda, for making things, for being…well, yeah, crafty. But somewhere along the way—and we’re not sure how or when—Melkor convinced him that his was going to be the winning side. So he hopped on over to Team Melkor and did his master’s work. (Had he helped throw down the Lamps of the Valar? Maybe.) Then, a bajillion years later, when Melkor was finally removed by the Valar and tossed out into the Void, Sauron was rightly intimidated. He repented, we’re told, if only out of fear and not because he felt bad about doing any of the shit he did.

So while the surviving Balrogs scuttled away and hid, Sauron came forth to apologize to Eönwë right there in sinking Beleriand. And the herald of Manwë was like, “Awesome. But I can’t forgive you. Go tell the Valar what you told me, face their judgement, and we’ll be fine.” But Sauron was too ashamed to confront Manwë’s, probably Varda’s, and almost certainly Mandos’s judgmental faces. And what if—crap—Tulkas wanted a piece of him, too? So he decided it wasn’t worth it, he’d take his chances on Middle-earth and lay low. Only to become, centuries into the Second Age, the new Dark Lord.

So, to quote a certain Englishman:

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Well, not exactly! Aside from differing MOs, one overarching distinction between Morgoth and Sauron is their endgames; this is expounded upon wonderfully in the book Morgoth’s Ring. Everything Morgoth did was aimed at destroying all that Ilúvatar and the Valar had made. He wanted it all gone, even his own Orcs and monsters, who were all just a means to an end. He wanted it all wiped clean so he could create his own world and his own people. Whereas Sauron is perfectly fine with Arda as is. No need to unmake it. But. BUT. He needs to be the one to rule it, to order all things as he desires. At the end of the day, Sauron is Lawful Evil; he likes structure. His structure.

Buy it Now

To that end, he needs to quell all opposition. Men he can push around thanks to all of Morgoth’s groundwork—well, except for those upstart Númenóreans. They will need some special attention. Yes, those Dúnedain have an irritating talent for disrupting his arrangements. And those Noldorin Elves and their Sindarin friends up in the northwest corner of Middle-earth…have become a nuisance. Sauron sure hopes they will meet with a little accident, i.e. be deliberately killed to death.

Now, Lindon is where Gil-galad has settled, and as the latest High King of the Noldor, he’s in charge. Granted, as his first cousin once removed (the cousin of his dad), Galadriel is “young” Gil-galad’s elder; she’s no doubt much wiser than he, too. But with her husband, the Sinda Celeborn, Galadriel is content to remain in an advisory capacity for now—her Lothlórien days are coming soon enough. Other Elf luminaries in attendance include the son of Eärendil, Elrond Half-elven; Celebrimbor, grandson of the legendary/terrible Fëanor; and Círdan the mofo Shipwright, who oversees the port of Mithlond, better known as the Grey Havens.

It’s from the Grey Havens that the Elves enjoy an open invitation from the Valar to sail by the Straight Road to the Undying Lands, should they become weary of the darkness of the world. And we know from The Lord of the Rings that over time, Elves will continue to trickle west, reach the Havens, and then leave Middle-earth for good. Even if it was a mistake for the Valar to summon the Elves to Valinor that first time long ago, it’s clear to all that the Firstborn are waning now—have been, for some time. And so the Elves who are still choosing to tarry are doing so on borrowed time.

These are the holdouts. Elves who (a) love these lands too much, (b) still desire to make realms of their own quite apart from the greater glory of the Valar, or (c) simply do not wish to leave Middle-earth’s people to its new troubles. They’re a mixed batch, and their reasons for staying are complex. As a reminder of what people we’re talking about…

• Noldor – Formerly exiled Calaquendi, or at least have parents who had seen the Light of the Trees
• Sindar – Formerly the Teleri, those who had once headed for Valinor but decided to stay in Beleriand
• Silvan Elves – Formerly the Nandor, and also known as Woodland Elves or Wood-elves (in The Hobbit)

The Noldor set themselves up in realm they call Eregion (eh-REG-ee-on) in Eriador, whose chief city is Ost-in-Edhil (OST-in-ETH-il). And while it’s suggested elsewhere that Galadriel and Celeborn dwell here for a long time and may even be its first rulers, Celebrimbor is really the one who goes down in history as its lord.

The Noldor who dwell there really embody the artistry of their kindred, owing to their lord’s own talent and heritage. The grandson of the makers of the Silmarils has some serious crafting cred just by who he is—and it helps that he’s got none of his grandpop’s arrogance and douchebaggery. He’s a good guy; he just wants to make stuff! He even founds a sort of Elf-guild called the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, which literally means “brotherhood of Jewel-smiths” in Sindarin.

Now, Eregion’s eastern border is right up against the Dwarf kingdom of Khazad-dûm (future Moria), and they get along well with each other. And why not? Both the Noldor and the Dwarves give mad props to Aulë; some of the former might have actually spent time in his company, and all of the latter were made by him. Win-win. So there is friendship and commerce between Elves and Dwarves, and a general hand-waving away of any past grievances. (I’m looking at you, Dwarves of Nogrod and Sindar of Doriath!)

These are the “happier times” Gandalf is referring to when he solves the riddle of Moria’s West-gate more than four thousand years later. These are the times when all you had to do was say the Sindarin word for “friend” to enter your neighbor’s side door; you could leave your keys in your car, and you could make your email password the actual word “password.” Good times!

“Gandalf at the Doors of Moria” by Donato Giancola

But it can’t last forever, can it? Because Sauron apprenticed with the Dark Enemy of the World and he’s ready to get sneaky and mess with all their stuff. It’s around the year 500 of the Second Age that he rises from obscurity and starts to gather evil things into his fold. Gradually, Gil-galad becomes aware of a hostile and mighty spirit, but not necessarily its identity. He warns the visiting Númenóreans about it—this being back when the Númenóreans were still friends. After a while, those Dúnedain stop visiting altogether and don’t even write.

Then, roundabout the year 1000, Sauron moves into his new neighborhood, Mordor, the Black Land. (Shelob, hipster that she is, had moved into Mordor before it was cool.) Conveniently in this land is the volcano Orodruin, a.k.a. Mount Doom, whose fires are so hot that it’s the perfect forge for this former student of Aulë’s to tool around in and maybe take up a hobby. Like the Misty Mountains and no doubt many other “messed up” or imposing geological features of Middle-earth, Mount Doom was reared by Melkor in ages past.

And it’s in this inhospitable land of hollows, fumes, and shadows that Sauron begins construction of his headquarters of Barad-dûr in the broad valley of Gorgoroth.

“Road to Mt. Doom” by Donato Giancola

Now remember, this is all well before Ar-Pharazôn’s day. When Men eventually get uppity, Sauron will know how to play them. They desire power, and he can simply go forth with his own name and trip them up with creepy counsel. But with the Elves, that’s not gonna do it. He’s got to play his cards just right, conceal his real hand. They’re immortal, like him; they remember Morgoth himself. But that doesn’t mean they’re well acquainted with Morgoth’s old sidekick, Sauron, who even in the service of the first Dark Lord seems to have flown mostly under the radar.

As near as I can tell, it’s when Sauron took over Finrod’s island-tower of Tol Sirion and then renamed it the Isle of Werewolves that the Elves of Nargothrond really got to know him. But since the fall of Nargothrond and the death of most of its residents, Sauron’s name might have gone back into obscurity even among the Eldar. Who knows? There are some solid loremasters here in the Second Age that know, at least, to be wary of the legacy of Morgoth. In any case, he knows better than to go before these Elves in some gothed-up suit of black armor bearing his own Elf-branded name of Sauron, “the Abhorred.”

So he invents Annatar, a charismatic guise of comely appearance, and then goes among them, presenting himself as the Lord of Gifts. We’re not given any details, but he probably looks much like an Elf, just as Melian had clothed herself in such a fair form. Elves are used to seeing Maiar and Valar alike assume such shapes, so it’s not likely they’d mistake him for just someone’s heretofore distant relative.

Now, this book offers no detail, but Unfinished Tales gives us a bit of lore about this shape, which seems consistent enough with the Silmarillion text. For example, it says it is a “specious fair form” that was “posed as an emissary of the Valar, sent by them to Middle-earth (‘thus anticipating the Istari’) or ordered by them them to remain there to give aid to the elves.” Of course, in that version of events, Sauron also sees Galadriel as his primary adversary—and sadly, there’s just nothing on that in the published Silmarillion.

In any case, not all the Elves believe him. Gil-galad and Elrond, notably, don’t trust Annatar and actually refuse to allow him in Lindon at all. They even send out messengers to other places where Elves have settled, warning them against trusting this guy. But, sadly, others ignore the warnings and listen intently to Annatar. Especially the Noldor of Eregion. He’s both fair and wise, this Annatar fella, and they like what he has to say. He doesn’t gainsay the Valar, or Ilúvatar, or use any of the bald-faced lies he’ll later hock up on Númenor.

Rather, he appeals to both their longing for Valinor and their affection for Middle-earth. He doesn’t offer them immortality or personal power—they’ve already got that—but influence over the land itself. Basically: “Hey, you know how cool Middle-earth is, but maybe a little too dim, a little too ordinary? Why not make this continent as fair and timeless as Eressëa itself, or even Valinor proper? I, for one, think there’s a reason you haven’t returned to Aman when your exile ended, and it’s because you still love this land. I get that—I love it, too! It’s a shame Gil-galad and Elrond don’t see the possibilities. But you can. Let me help you make Middle-earth better than it is, and in doing so we can raise up all Elfkind to the same level as those in Valinor. Help me help you.”

“Annatar (Sauron) and Celebrimbor” by Bohemian Weasel

There’s obviously much more to the story, but this is all high-level synopsis material, anyway. It’s always good to remember that. I can well imagine Gil-galad sending out riders—the Elf equivalent of investigative journalists—to try to sniff out the truth about this so-called Lord of Gifts. He’s way too good to be true, right? He’s more than just a pretty face: he’s got mad skillz and a willingness to share his great knowledge. But as far as the Noldor of Eregion are concerned, this guy knows so much about crafting, he’s got to be one of Aulë’s own.

It is Celebrimbor, lord of Eregion and the one who counts the most at this pivotal point in history, who falls especially hard for Sauron’s ploy. He’s the heir of Fëanor and his little club of elite jewel-smiths, the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, are at the top of their game. Why not pool their resources, accept the masterful guidance of Annatar, and improve the world itself? Their outward intentions are good; it is their conflicted hearts that are being exploited. Tolkien himself explains this in a letter:

But they wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted the peace and bliss and perfect memory of ‘The West’, and yet to remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest people, above wild Elves, dwarves, and Men, was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy of Valinor.

They know, as the Firstborn, that they’re only immortal for a limited time (the duration of Arda). They know they’re fading, as a race, and they will seize this chance to delay it.

And Sauron has dreamt up a way to ensnare them all with these dangerous desires. You might even say, to…bind them. He comes up with a project perfectly suited for their love of jewel-crafting. He’s smart.

I mean, would an imbecile come up with this design?

You know…for kids!

In truth, we’re not told who first thought of rings as the items of choice. Celebrimbor’s little arts and crafts club was all about making jewelry; it might have been one of those Noldor. But I suspect it was still Sauron’s own idea to go with rings, since it is he who comes up with the formula that would tether all their power into one secret ring. But at first it’s just a bunch of minor rings the Elven-smiths make—and heck, those are mere “essays in the craft before it was full grown” that might well have preceded Annatar’s coming. (Still, they’re nothing to sneeze at; think of Fëanor’s side projects, the now-treasured palantíri!)

But it’s under Sauron’s mentorship that Celebrimbor and the smiths up their game and start forging the Rings of Power! Now, despite the memorable phrasing of the verse “long known in Elven-lore,” it’s worth noting that three rings weren’t made for Elven-kings, nor seven made for Dwarf-lords, and certainly not nine intended for mortal Men. At least, that wasn’t Sauron’s sales pitch to the Elven-smiths. In fact, Gandalf tells Frodo in Fellowship that even the least of the rings made by the Elves would be perilous to mortals. Rather, they were ostensibly all for the Elves alone, to use to enrich Middle-earth.

So now it’s around the year 1500, and the creation of exactly sixteen Rings of Power begins with Annatar/Sauron in attendance—under his scrutiny and using his specs. This is important, because all sixteen will subject their future wearers to his direct influence and corruption. And these Rings of Power are not made overnight; they are the labor of years. Then Sauron heads back to Mordor, and probably not while they’re watching him—he’s just Annatar, after all, simply taking his leave for a while. He’s, uhh, got something to do…and so he leaves them to their work. (Hey, Barad-dûr isn’t going to complete itself!)

When the sixteen are finished, they’re kept right there in Ost-in-Edhil, where they were made. They’re not divvied out to anyone right away. When have Elves ever hurried to do anything?

At some point, Celebrimbor alone sets to work on three more Rings of Power, rings that Sauron never touched or got to micromanage—and these, of course, are the Three. Where his grandfather wrought the three Silmarils as his singular best work, Narya, Nenya, and Vilya are Celebrimbor’s own magna opera. Ninety years after the start of the other sixteen, he completes them. In addition to being just as powerful as those earlier rings, these three can be used to “ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world.” Being himself pure in heart (if naïve as hell), Celebrimbor, like a Noldo of old from the Bliss of Valinor days, gives away all his wonderful new objets d’art. How opposite Sauron can you be?

But yeah, just because he made them doesn’t mean Celebrimbor believes he ought to wield them. He gives Narya, the Ring of Fire, to Gil-galad, who promptly regifts it to Círdan. Nenya, the Ring of Water, he gives to Galadriel. And Vilya, the Ring of Air, also goes from Gil-galad to Elrond in due time. That’s just the sort of Elves these are.

But Sauron doesn’t know about the Three, at least not yet. See, he’s a bit busy in Mordor, working hard in his volcano-foundry and putting the final touches on his own band of metal.

“Forging the One Ring” by Ted Nasmith

Enter at last the One Ring. The Ruling Ring. The One Ring That’ll Totally Rule Them All, if Sauron has anything to say about it! The year is now 1600, and not only is the Master-ring all set to be the world’s greatest problem, it is the spiritual keystone of Barad-dûr itself. And the Dark Tower’s construction is a wrap. Sauron probably hosted a lovely ribbon-cutting ceremony to announce to the world that the Dark Tower was open for business!

When Sauron places the One Ring upon his finger for the very first time the Elves, thousands of miles away, see right through the ruse for what it was. Annatar is… *gasp!* Sauron the Deceiver! A footnote of Christopher Tolkien’s in Unfinished Tales confirms this:

although the name Sauron is used earlier than this in the Tale of Years, his name, implying identity with the great lieutenant of Morgoth in The Silmarillion, was not actually known until about the year 1600 of the Second Age, the time of the forging of the One Ring. The mysterious power of hostility, to Elves and Edain, was perceived soon after the year 500

Anyway, the Rings of Power are all bad news now; they’re riddled with malware! Ugh, the Elves should have destroyed them; they can see that now. Should have listened to Gil-galad and Elrond (and almost certainly Galadriel). With these Trojan viruses in place, Sauron can perceive “all the things that were done by means of the lesser rings, and he could see and govern the very thoughts of those that wore them.”

So…they just take them off. Elves are rather sensitive to being controlled. Sauron’s not the boss of them! And hey, look how long it took—and how scattered and messy it was—just to get the three kindreds of the Eldar over to Valinor all those millennia ago. If the Valar themselves couldn’t manage the Firstborn so easily, surely one rogue Maia, albeit a very powerful one, isn’t going to pull it off without a hitch. And of course, the Three Rings that Celebrimbor made by himself aren’t just hidden, they’re sent away, in the secret safekeeping of their new owners. No, they weren’t forged by Sauron or even at his behest, but they did use some of the same specs as those earlier ones. They’re still “subject to the One.” Way too risky to even wear them.

So Sauron’s ring-based pyramid scheme didn’t exactly work as it was supposed to. The Noldor, wearing all those Rings of Power, were supposed to fall right under his dominion and not even know it. But the jig is up, and so Sauron is PISSED. How dare those freakin’ Elves not be instantly subjugated by his awesome power! Oh, how he hates them! He’ll get those miserables Elves if it’s the last thing he ever does!

It takes some time to fully prepare—ninety-plus years, actually—but Sauron brings open war against them. Not only does he want to punish them for resisting his insidious plot,  he wants his goddamned rings back. All of them. The sixteen, and also those three fancy ones they had to nerve to make behind his back. From Mordor to Eriador, Sauron’s armies pour forth and overwhelm Elven lands.

Only two years into the war, Celebrimbor is seized by the Dark Lord. The text is mercifully brief on that point, but Unfinished Tales offers some grisly details. Celeborn and Elrond each lead a force of Elves and together they stave off Sauron’s army for a time. But it’s not enough. Sauron takes Eregion’s capital city and Celebrimbor personally stands defiant within the halls of the House of the Mírdain (i.e. his jewel-smiths’ clubhouse). He is taken prisoner while the place is thoroughly plundered. Sauron claims nine of the Rings of Power then tortures Celebrimbor and pries from him the whereabouts of seven more. But of those remaining Three—those resplendent elemental rings so dear to the Elf’s heart—Sauron can get nothing. Therefore Celebrimbor is taken out of the picture.

And not just executed. Sauron’s not quite done with him:

In black anger he turned back to battle; and bearing as a banner of Celebrimbor’s body hung upon a pole, shot through with Orc-arrows, he turned upon the forces of Elrond.

Yep. Pincushion Elf on a stick.

At this point, Elrond’s paltry army would have been creamed, but Dwarves come charging out of Khazad-dûm (Moria), hacking their way into the exposed rear of Sauron’s forces. This allows Elrond’s smaller force to escape with their lives. With the Dwarves are Elves from the forest-realm that’ll be properly known as Lothlórien someday. And yeah, a force of Elves must have marched through the halls of their Dwarven friends to get there—how cool is that? All this comes up in Unfinished Tales, and it’s also clear that by this point in time, Galadriel herself has already settled in future-Lothlórien, though she is not yet its ruler. Celeborn hasn’t joined his wife there yet, in part because he hasn’t passed through Moria. See, he still harbors a grudge, remembering that one time millennia ago when Dwarves attacked his homeland (Doriath) and slew his king (Thingol). But still, Galadriel gets along with the Dwarves and seems to have been instrumental in the Elf-Dwarf friendship in the Second Age.

But I digress.

Sadly, this assault against Sauron’s rear by the Dwarves also marks the end of these “happier times.” When the Dark Lord turns in wrath against them, they retreat and shut their doors against him. They are done with this whole Sauron vs. Elf nonsense. Well, almost.

Eregion is torn up big-time in this war, forcing its refugees to flee either west to Lindon or east with Elrond. Loremaster that he is, Elrond finds a well-hidden valley right up against the Misty Mountains. There he founds Imladris, a secret refuge beside the River Bruinen.

Yay, Rivendell is now on the map!

O! tra-la-la-lally here down in the valley!

Sauron’s armies continue to go after Gil-galad and Lindon, pushing westward…and that’s when the Númenoreans show up at last. Remember them? This is during the reign of Tar-Minastir, one of the last monarchs of the Dúnedain before things really go pear-shaped there across the Great Sea. But so strong are the Númenóreans that they drive Sauron back out of Eriador altogether. And he accepts that temporary defeat, withdrawing back to Mordor and the East, consolidating his power and cursing Númenor. At this point, Sauron really ought to start a hate list of his own.

During this downtime, he also sets about redistributing the Rings of Power. By now he’s got all sixteen of them in his possession and he aims to see this long con through to the end, even if he’s got to settle for lesser marks. So through various wiles and acts of seduction, he gets them into the hands of both Men and Dwarves; they, at least, should be easier to control. And he doesn’t just leave the rings lying by the highway for unsuspecting fools to find. Nope, he specifically chooses “those that desired secret power beyond the measure of their kind,” since they make perfect stooges. And screw those good-for-nothing Elves; there’s no chance they’d take any rings from him ever again. Useless!

Sauron makes sure seven fall into the hands of some “Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone.” But damn it all to the Void if Aulë’s runtish, half-baked, half-witted, and homespun people aren’t instantly dominated by Sauron’s Ruling Ring when they wear them. What the hell? Turns out they’re too damned tough and way too stubborn to be governed. Still, the Seven Rings increase the Dwarves’ lust for gold and will lead their kingdoms into evil choices which will, in time, benefit Sauron. Some will end up fighting on his side in later conflicts.

And the remaining nine Rings of Power?

“The keeper of one of the Nine Rings (Nazgûl)” by O.G. (steamy)

Well, as we all know, those go to “Mortal Men doomed to die,” three of whom are perfect marks: immortality-seeking Númenóreans, likely seduced by Sauron from among those living in havens along the coast. And Unfinished Tales tells us that at least one of the nine is an Easterling named Khamûl. And we don’t get much more than that. Probably one of them collected stamps, and maybe one was named Steve or something. Mere speculation on my part.

These power-hungry souls are utterly ensnared by the Nine through the One that pollutes them. They get power all right, becoming great “kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old,” but in turn their lives are merely extended, tortured, afflicted with Sauron’s own nightmarish phantoms. Not only are their wills dominated, as intended, but they become, in time, his Ringwraiths. Despite the whole “doomed to die” thing, the Nazgûl should be so lucky. Sauron doesn’t let them die, though they “cried with the voices of death.” Make no mistake: The creepy Nazgûl we come to know and love in The Lord of the Rings are powerful and scary, but they are not happy campers. And by the time Frodo meets them, they’ve been enduring unbearable torment for 4,000+ years.

“Ringwraith” by Jonas Jakobsson

Sauron spends the next thousand years or so consolidating his power, gathering his might, and making himself an overarching menace on Middle-earth. These are the so-called Dark Years, the Black Years, or Days of Flight, during which time a lot more Elves call it quits, make for the Grey Havens, and sail the Straight Road off these mortals lands. Also, Sauron gets some new monikers. The label of Dark Lord is firmly attributed to him at this point, as well as the Enemy—a name the Wise use a lot in The Lord of the Rings. He calls himself the Lord of the Earth, which is a ballsy statement indeed from a former Maia of Aulë. But Sauron has long been assuming that the Valar are done coming over to Middle-earth, so he’s gotten cocky.

Now here’s something we only get from The Return of the King: Among the scattered people of Eriador are the ancestors of the Men who’ll later called the Dunlendings. They’re the “wild men,” the plains-dwelling people who are themselves from the same branch of humanity that yielded the Haladin (remember the House of Haleth?). Well, there’s a tribe of these Dunlendish folk called simply the Men of the Mountains living in the hills and holes of the White Mountains—that mountain range west of Mordor. Why am I mentioning this group? Well, we’ll come back to them, but for now it’s worth remembering that during the Dark Years, they actually worship Sauron as a god.

Yeah…he’s really got Men, in general, under his boot.

Yet those Men of Númenor are cramping his style. They keep pushing all his assets off the coasts, posing a serious threat to all his investments, especially if they decide to persist inland. They’re building havens and fortifying new towers and strongholds. They’re a problem. It’s time Sauron diversifies his portfolio, so he now declares himself the King of Men—well, why not, he seems to rule over the rest of them with impunity anyway—but that gets the attention of their twenty-fifth king, Ar-Pharazôn the Golden.

What happens next is Sauron changes gears, adopts his fair form again, but this time goes as himself to meet Ar-Pharazôn’s demand for fealty. He leaves behind his Black Land, his Dark Tower, his Ringwraiths, his Orcs, and all his Men—they should be fine without him for a while—and goes in shackles to Númenor. And, of course, he wrecks things from within. Things go swimmingly, and the Men of Westernesse are brought to ruin. As intended, as he’d hoped. The King of Men, indeed. Awesome.

But looking back, for all he gained, Sauron’s overseas vacation has had some unforeseen consequences. A post-mortem of Project Destroy Númenor might look something like this.

• Ilúvatar overreacted. He changed the whole “fashion” of the world! Damn. Arda became a proper planet, a bunch of stuff sank, and now all the seas are connected. No big loss. Mordor’s fine. It’s not like Sauron was ever going to be a mariner….
• Sauron’s body DID get sucked down into that cataclysmic abyss. That sucked. He lost the ability to assume a deceiving shape again and was forced to fly back like a Pac-man ghost to respawn in Mordor. But he’s still got his Ruling Ring, and he can still adopt a scary-ass Dark Lord–appropriate shape.
• During his fifty-seven-year absence, the might of Gil-galad and his Elves grew exponentially—oh, sure, now Elves do something fast?! Huge swaths of Middle-earth are no longer fully cowed by the threat of Mordor. From Gil-galad’s seat in Lindon, all across Eriador, over the goddamn Misty Mountains, and right up to the borders of that big forest, Greenwood the Great, the Elves and their allies are doing okay. He can’t leave Mordor alone for five goddamn minutes without all Middle-earth going to pot!

The bottom line is, they all need to be punished for this:

Then Sauron withdrew to his fortress in the Black Land and meditated war.

And then it also turns out some of those pesky Númenóreans survived the great downfall. Maybe they’re too few to be a problem? Only nine ships made it out, after all….

But nope. The Númenóreans that did survive their sinking island are a stubborn, determined, and defiant-as-hell lot. They’re the so-called Faithful of the Dúnedain, and they’re led by Elendil the Tall and his sons, Isildur and Anárion. Heirs of the House of Elros, the first king of Númenor, who was Elrond’s brother. Back on Númenor, Sauron knew about and hated these guys; he’d even tried to have them captured and sacrificed in his evil Temple, but the sons of bitches had slipped through his fingers.

So while Sauron ruminates on war and grows his military even more, Elendil and his sons get organized impressively fast. Within a year of being essentially shipwrecked on the shores of Middle-earth, they join with those Faithful already living in their havens (such as Pelargir), reconnect with Gil-galad and the Elves, and establish two new kingdoms! Sure, it’ll take many decades to really break them in and lose that new kingdom smell, to raise up towers and cities, not to mention multiply their people, and all under duress. But these are still Men of Númenor doing the ordering. This is their bag; they’re good at this stuff.

Together these two kingdoms are later referred to as the Realms in Exile as a sort of nod to Númenor…

Elendil establishes his realm, Arnor, a.k.a. the Northern Kingdom, and it basically stretches across Eriador between the River Lune and the River Bruinen (between the Grey Havens and Rivendell). The capital city is called Annúminas and it includes cities like Fornost and trade settlements like the one that will one day become Bree—not to mention the fertile hills that will become the Shire!

Elendil’s boys, meanwhile, found the Southern Kingdom of Gondor, which right from the get-go is flushed right up against the mountain border of Mordor itself. It includes the White Mountains, a bunch of valleys and rivers and hilly landscapes. Osgiliath becomes Gondor’s capital city, straddling the Great River of Anduin, and that’s where both Isildur and Anárion rule as brotherly kings.

On the east side of the river is raised Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon, “as a threat to Mordor,” i.e. a “We’ve got eyes on you, pal.” On the west side of the river and also placed right up against a mountain, is Minas Anor, the Tower of the Setting Sun. While the brothers keep their thrones in Osgiliath, each actually lives in one of these tower-cities; Isildur sets up in Minas Ithil and Anárion in Minas Anor.

Two other very notable locations come up during this shoring-up of the Dúnedain phase of the Second Age. One is the gates of Argonath, those huge statues of Isildur and Anárion perched on either side of the River Anduin. You know the ones: those kingly sentinels guarding the border of Gondor, each with an arm outstretched and each conveying quite clearly that Mordor and its allies should very definitely talk to the hand. Well, maybe. In the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings it’s also said that they were constructed by the nineteenth king of Gondor in the Third Age. So, err, maybe their foundations began in the Second Age, long after the deaths of the kings they depicted, and maybe in Isildur and Anárion’s day they were just riverside watchtowers?

The second notable location is the circle of Angrenost, better known among Men as Isengard! This marks another part of the border of Gondor, and in the centerpiece of said circular architecture is erected the black “unbreakable stone” tower of Orthanc. It was just a watchtower that happens to be made by Númenóreans who just happen to be OMG-amazing-at-building things.

“Orthanc in the Second Age” by Ted Nasmith

Also, unbreakable stone!? Damn, even their masons are the best of the best. Someday even Ents and their thrown rocks won’t do more than scratch and chip off little flakes of this black stone.

Now, Tolkien just name-drops these badass locations and moves on with a tantalizing lack of detail. And then comes the frosting on this historical Gondorian cake: the palantíri, which the Faithful carried on their ships out of Númenor. They’re among the greatest gifts ever received from the Elves, there are seven of them, and they’re totally all accounted for.

Elendil keeps three and each of his sons gets two (no fighting over the Seeing-stones, kids!). So where do they go? They’re placed in strategically important places so the lords of both Arnor and Gondor can keep an eye on things and stay in touch. They’re either in cities or hills with towers on them (in Sindarin, amon means “hill” and emyn is a cluster of hills).

“The Palantíri Amon Sûl” by Donato Giancola

According to Unfinished Tales, they appear “at rest to be made of solid glass or crystal deep black in hue.” Most are about a foot in diameter, but two of them are enormous and can’t be carried by just one guy.

So where to put these?

In Arnor, one goes to the capital city of Annúminas; one goes to Emyn Beraid (the Tower Hills near the Grey Havens); and one enormous one goes to Amon Sûl (a.k.a. Weathertop). In Gondor, one goes to Minas Ithil; one goes to Minas Anor; one goes to Orthanc; and one big one is placed at Osgiliath. Best to visualize it on the map.

There’s also another giant black stone Isildur brought out of Númenor—dang, their ships must have been really impressive to carry all this heavy cargo, right? Anyway, this one’s not a palantír or anything, just a big smooth rock called the Stone of Erech. It gets placed on a hilltop near the White Mountains as a symbol of Isildur’s lineage. Sort of like planting a flag, I guess, but way more enduring. Not to mention creepier…

And so this is a good time to recall those Men of the Mountains who’d been worshipping Sauron during the Dark Years. In the early days of Gondor, Isildur makes contact with them, offering friendship, no violence. And I guess he wins them over with his charismatic self, because they renounce their service to Sauron and give fealty instead this bold Númenorean king who purports to defend all lands from the Dark Lord. Maybe they never liked Sauron—they just feared him. Well, their king swears allegiance now to Isildur. The Men of the Mountains therefore make an oath: if war breaks out between Gondor and Mordor, they’ll fight with Gondor! Cool, cool. Good to know Gondor’s got some more friends in their corner.

And oh yes, there’s one more very important thing the Númenoreans brought with him into their exile from out of Westernesse. The White Tree! Isildur had saved a sapling from the ruin of Númenor, and now he plants it in front of his own house in the tower of Minas Ithil.

Finally, we can just watch these trees just grow.

No, wait. We can’t. One day, Sauron is finally ready for fisticuffs. He picks a day in the year 3429 and leads a great assault against this burgeoning kingdom at the edge of his property. This is Gondor’s first real test as a shield against the Enemy! And it…doesn’t go so well for the good guys. Sauron’s forces overtake Minas Ithil and burn the White Tree—these poor trees! Like his master before him, Sauron’s always gunning for trees! Isildur is there to fight till he’s forced to retreat, but not before he manages to scoop up a bit of the White Tree (yes, again!). With his wife, their kids, and their little pet seedling they sail up the Anduin.

Meanwhile his brother launches his own forces out of Osgiliath and drives Sauron’s back into the mountains—basically just holding the Dark Lord at bay for as long as he can. Sauron is way too tenacious to stay put, though. Gondor, strong as it is with its Númenórean lords, still isn’t going to be enough to keep a lid on Mordor.

And thus Elendil and Gil-galad put their heads together and decided they’ve got to combine all their forces and throw everything they’ve got against Sauron—or else he’ll keep doing this, gnawing at each and every realm one at a time. It’s time to put all the eggs in the basket and gang up on the bully. Together they’ll break the power of the Dark Lord, or they won’t and everyone will die. This might as well be it.

Thus the legendary Last Alliance is made, when Elves and Men start gathering in unprecedented numbers (for this age, anyway), picking up steam as it worked its way from Lindon across Eriador before stopping for tea at Rivendell. And by this point the host is “fairer and more splendid in arms than any that has since been seen in Middle-earth, and none greater has been mustered since the host of the Valar went against Thangorodrim.” Which is really saying something, given that the good guys in the War of Wrath consisted of a plethora of Calaquendi Elves, Maiar, and maybe even some Valar. This army is no joke, and Sauron totally deserves what’s coming to him. Oh, and Elrond is now officially marching along as Gil-galad’s herald. They even got Círdan to come, too!

And by the way, Dwarves do join in, and on both sides. Not nearly as many as the Firstborn and Secondborn Children of Ilúvatar, of course, but when the Last Alliance crosses the Misty Mountains, the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm march with them.

With war finally upon them, Isildur goes out to the Stone of Erech and summons the Men of the Mountain to fulfill their oath. To come and join the Last Alliance. This is the moment of truth, guys! To war! And…then they refuse, and I think all Lord of the Rings readers know where this is going. The future Dead Men of Dunharrow flake out big time, and Isildur is rightfully pissed about it. According to Aragorn, Isildur says this to their king:

‘Thou shalt be the last king. And if the West prove mightier than the Black Master, this curse I lay upon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled. For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall be summoned once again ere the end.’

Well, at least the Men of the Mountains don’t come out and fight on Sauron’s side. Isildur has thoroughly intimidated them. These oathbreakers instead withdraw into their mountain homes, becoming the world’s creepiest shut-ins among Men. Isildur can’t be bothered with fair-weather friends now. Battle is nigh.

And so five years after Mordor attacked Gondor, the host of the Last Alliance now meets Sauron’s armies on a great plain just outside of Mordor’s gates. This place will become known as Dagorlad, the Battle Plain. The Elves of Eriador and all their friends, and Arnor, and Gondor, and the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, and apparently a whole lot of animals, too! It’s a titanic conflict that probably makes the Battle of Five Armies look like a tavern brawl because…

all living things were divided in that day, and some of every kind, even of beasts and birds, were found in either host, save the Elves only. They alone were undivided and followed Gil-galad. Of the Dwarves few fought upon either side; but the kindred of Durin of Moria fought against Sauron.

All right, so maybe there’s some hyperbole there. All living things would imply battle snails, armored ostriches, and attack armadillos. But still, we get that beasts and birds are in the mix, which is fascinating. Certainly that’s got to mean wolves and wargs on Sauron’s side, but what else!? Lions? Emus?! I desperately want to know, but it’s not Tolkien’s style to give us those details, so we must move on.

Now, Sauron’s got his Orcs, of course, but craploads of Men, too—including Black Númenóreans and Haradrim, Men of the South also under the Enemy’s sway. And maybe Easterlings. The great battle is devastating all around, and whole armies of good Men and Elves are slain along with the Orcs. Remember the Dead Marshes, which are adjacent to this plain? Many are driven to their end there. As Gollum describes it later, recalling his tales when he was just a young Sméagol:

It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.

But in the end Gil-galad and Elendil take the win and push right through the Black Gates, into the Black Land, and right up to the Black Lord’s base. In the valley of Gorgoroth, a true siege begins and it lasts for seven years. Seven! That’s a long time for Men, Elves, Dwarves, and their friends to be hanging out inside Mordor where the shadows lie. So we’re talking encampments, sorties, supply trains, and setbacks. For seven years the Last Alliance and Sauron’s armies give it all they’ve got, while the Dark Lord himself stays holed up safely inside Barad-dûr. And during this time many are killed, including Anárion, Isildur’s little brother.

* And then beyond the Circles of the World.

Yet the Last Alliance is unshakable, and it forces the Dark Lord to come out in person at last. Unwilling to settle this through another epic sing-off, he ends up physically tangling with the two commanders of his besiegers right there, at the foot of his workshop, Mount Doom.

Thus this ancient evil Maia squares off with the mortal Elendil and the elf-king Gil-galad. All three combatants are still mighty. Elendil is called the Tall for a reason, by the way. According to Unfinished Tales, he’s nearly eight feet high. Dude’s a giant, and he wields Narsil, which glows with both moonlight and sunlight, having been forged by the same Dwarf who made Angrist, the knife that cut the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown! And Gil-galad’s spear is named Aeglos, which means “snow-point,” so it’s got be something like a Spear of Ice and Maia-Skewering +4.

“Sauron Faces Elendil and Gil-galad” by Kip Rasmussen

But Sauron is Sauron. Yes, this is the same guy who got smacked around by a girl and her puppy-dog in the First Age (okay, a very special girl and a very special puppy-dog), and nearly had his ghost “sent quaking back to Morgoth,” but he’s overpowered and outsmarted everyone he’s faced before and since. Yet Gil-galad and Elendil take him down at last, though both kings are slain in the process.

* And then beyond the Circles of the World.

This is a fact easy to overlook. With the One Ring still on his finger, Sauron is defeated in hand-to-hand combat by a Númenórean king-in-exile and the last High King of the Noldor. He’s thrown down, and I suppose maybe he could have recovered and stood up again if he’d been left that way, what with the Ring still on his person. But Isildur is there to stop that from happening.

“Isildur and Sauron” by Joona Kujanen

He picks up the hilt of his dad’s broken sword, itself also a casualty of the scuffle, and it’s so well made that the hilt-shard is still sharp enough to accomplish its most famous deed: relieving the Dark Lord of one of his fingers! His Ruling Ring–wearing finger, as it happens. And that seals the deal on the Enemy’s defeat. The loss of his Ring is the finishing touch, as we all know. Sauron’s ghost is now indeed sent quaking the hell out of there, for he’d put so much of his power into that Ring that he simply cannot abide its loss. Not now, anyway. He’s got a deep spiritual wound to nurse.

To all this Círdan and Elrond stand in witness. The loremaster of Rivendell says as much at his namesake Council in The Fellowship of the Ring. And then someone, maybe some Elf really paying attention, calls it: the end of the Second Age! “This seemed like a good point in history to wrap things up,” they probably argue. “New calendars, everyone!”

In the next installment, we’ll come to it at last: the Third Age, the one we all already know and love, where Isildur surely disposes of the One Ring in a safe and timely manner, Arnor and Gondor stay strong, and over in Valinor a Maia named Olórin breathes a sigh of relief. He won’t be needed in Middle-earth, after all. Whew! I mean…I think.

Top image from “The One Ring at Bag End” by Donato Giancola.

Jeff LaSala is now obsessed with that “all living things” line—were there penguins fighting on both sides of the Battle of Dagorlad?! Tolkien geekdom aside, Jeff wrote a Scribe Award–nominated D&D novel, produced some cyberpunk stories, and now works for Tor Books. He sometimes flits about on Twitter.

Right now, the largest and most deadly wildfire in California history is burning. Last year, Hurricane Harvey drowned southeast Texas under punishing, endless rain; a month ago, Hurricane Florence did the same to North Carolina. Apocalyptic-scale disasters happen every day (and more often now, as climate change intensifies weather patterns all over the world.) Apocalyptic disaster isn’t always the weather, either: it’s human-made, by war or by industrial accident; by system failure or simple individual error. Or it’s biological: the flu of 1918, the Ebola outbreaks in 2014.

In science fiction, apocalypse and what comes after is an enduring theme. Whether it’s pandemic (like in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Stephen King’s The Stand), nuclear (such as Theodore Sturgeon’s short story “Thunder and Roses” or the 1984 BBC drama Threads), or environmental (Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, and a slew of brilliant short fiction, including Tobias Buckell’s “A World to Die For” (Clarkesworld 2018) and Nnedi Okorafor’s “Spider the Artist” (Lightspeed 2011), disaster, apocalypse, and destruction fascinate the genre. If science fiction is, as sometimes described, a literature of ideas, then apocalyptic science fiction is the literature of how ideas go wrong—an exploration of all of our bad possible futures, and what might happen after.

Most of apocalyptic literature focuses on all the terrible ways that society goes wrong after a society-disrupting disaster, though. This is especially prevalent in television and film—think of The Walking Dead or 28 Days Later where, while the zombies might be the initial threat, most of the horrible violence is done by surviving humans to one another. This kind of focus on antisocial behavior—in fact, the belief that after a disaster humans will revert to some sort of ‘base state of nature’—reflects very common myths that exist throughout Western culture. We think that disaster situations cause panic, looting, assaults, the breakdown of social structures—and we make policy decisions based on that belief, assuming that crime rises during a crisis and that anti-crime enforcement is needed along with humanitarian aid.

But absolutely none of this is true.

The myth that panic, looting, and antisocial behavior increases during the apocalypse (or apocalyptic-like scenarios) is in fact a myth—and has been solidly disproved by multiple scientific studies. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, a research group within the United States Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), has produced research that shows over and over again that “disaster victims are assisted first by others in the immediate vicinity and surrounding area and only later by official public safety personnel […] The spontaneous provision of assistance is facilitated by the fact that when crises occur, they take place in the context of ongoing community life and daily routines—that is, they affect not isolated individuals but rather people who are embedded in networks of social relationships.” (Facing Hazards and Disasters: Understanding Human Dimensions, National Academy of Sciences, 2006). Humans do not, under the pressure of an emergency, socially collapse. Rather, they seem to display higher levels of social cohesion, despite what media or government agents might expect…or portray on TV. Humans, after the apocalypse, band together in collectives to help one another—and they do this spontaneously. Disaster response workers call it ‘spontaneous prosocial helping behavior’, and it saves lives.

Spontaneous mobilization to help during and immediately after an apocalyptic shock has a lot of forms. Sometimes it’s community-sourced rescue missions, like the volunteer boat rescue group who call themselves the Cajun Navy. During Hurricane Harvey, the Cajun Navy—plus a lot of volunteer dispatchers, some thousands of miles away from the hurricane—used the walkie-talkie app Zello to crowdsource locations of people trapped by rising water and send rescuers to them. Sometimes it is the volunteering of special skills. In the aftermath of the 2017 Mexico City earthquake, Mexican seismologists—who just happened to be in town for a major conference on the last disastrous Mexico City earthquake!—spent the next two weeks volunteering to inspect buildings for structural damage. And sometimes it is community-originated aid—a recent New Yorker article about last summer’s prairie fires in Oklahoma focuses on the huge amount of post-disaster help which flowed in from all around the affected areas, often from people who had very little to spare themselves. In that article, the journalist Ian Frazier writes of the Oklahomans:

“Trucks from Iowa and Michigan arrived with donated fenceposts, corner posts, and wire. Volunteer crews slept in the Ashland High School gymnasium and worked ten-hour days on fence lines. Kids from a college in Oregon spent their spring break pitching in. Cajun chefs from Louisiana arrived with food and mobile kitchens and served free meals. Another cook brought his own chuck wagon. Local residents’ old friends, retired folks with extra time, came in motor homes and lived in them while helping to rebuild. Donors sent so much bottled water it would have been enough to put out the fire all by itself, people said. A young man from Ohio raised four thousand dollars in cash and drove out and gave it to the Ashland Volunteer Fire Department, according to the Clark County Gazette. The young man said that God had told him to; the fireman who accepted the donation said that four thousand was exactly what it was going to cost to repair the transmission of a truck that had failed in the fire, and both he and the young man cried.”

These behaviors match the roles and responsibilities that members of a society display before the apocalyptic disaster. Ex-military volunteers reassemble in groups resembling military organizations; women in more patriarchal societies gravitate towards logistics and medical jobs while men end up taking more physical risks; firefighters travel to fight fires far away from their homes. The chef José Andrés served more than three million meals over three months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. Humans all over the world display this behavior after disasters. They display it consistently, no matter what kind of disaster is happening or what culture they come from.

What really happens after an apocalypse? Society works better than it ever had, for a brief time.

The writer Rebecca Solnit wrote an entire book about this phenomenon, and she called it A Paradise Built in Hell. She points out that it is really the fear on the part of powerful people that powerless people will react to trauma with irrational violence that is preventing us from seeing how apocalypse really shapes our societies. Solnit calls this ‘elite panic’, and contrasts it with the idea of ‘civic temper’—the utopian potential of meaningful community.

Apocalyptic science fiction tells us so much about how the future is going to hurt—or could. But it can also explore how the future will be full of spontaneous helping; societies that bloom for a night, a few weeks, a month, to repair what has been broken. The human capacity to give aid and succor seems to be universal, and triggered quite specifically by the disruption and horror of disaster. Science fiction might let us see that utopian potential more clearly, and imagine how we might help each other in ways we never knew we were capable of.

Arkady Martine writes speculative fiction when she isn’t writing Byzantine history. She is overly fond of borders, rhetoric, and liminal spaces. Her novel A Memory Called Empire publishes March 26th with Tor Books. Find her on Twitter as @ArkadyMartine.

With new alliances forged and old regimes fractured, Merlin—the cybernetic avatar of Earth’s last survivor and immortal beacon to humanity—and the colonies of Safehold have many adventures ahead in Through Fiery Trials, the continuation of David Weber’s military science fiction series. Available January 8th from Tor Books.

Those on the side of progressing humanity through advanced technology have finally triumphed over their oppressors. The unholy war between the small but mighty island realm of Charis and the radical, luddite Church of God’s Awaiting has come to an end.

However, even though a provisional veil of peace has fallen over human colonies, the quiet will not last. For Safefold is a broken world, and as international alliances shift and Charis charges on with its precarious mission of global industrialization, the shifting plates of the new world order are bound to clash.

Yet, an uncertain future isn’t the only danger Safehold faces. Long-thought buried secrets and prophetic promises come to light, proving time is a merciless warden who never forgets.

 Read chapter 1 on the Tor/Forge blog, and continue with chapter 2 below!

MARCH
YEAR OF GOD 901

Tellesberg Palace,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Old Charis,
Empire of Charis.

God, I hope this works out,” Sharleyan Ahrmahk murmured fervently, standing beside her husband and gazing out a palace window into the steady, warm rain of Tellesberg.

“Sweetheart, we can still change our minds,” Cayleb Ahrmahk replied. He wrapped one arm around her, hugging her tightly, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “If you aren’t on board with this, just say so.”

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“I can’t. I can’t!” Uncharacteristic uncertainty hazed Sharleyan’s tone, but she shook her head firmly. “You’re right about how much more effective he could be knowing the truth. I mean, Lord knows he’s been pretty damned ‘effective’ already, but if he could access the SNARCs directly, tie his com into the net so we could discuss things in real time…” She shook her head again. “It’s just that I’ve already lost Uncle Byrtrym, and he and Ruhsyl were always so close.”

“I know, but Ruhsyl’s also a lot more flexible than he was,” Cayleb pointed out. “And there was never any doubt about his commitment during the Jihad.”

“As far as reforming the Church, yes. And he’s been wholehearted in supporting the Church of Charis, too. But this is going an awfully long step beyond that!”

“Sharley, stop.” Cayleb kissed her forehead. “We can always do this another time. Or not do it at all. We can just go ahead and have the family dinner we asked him to stop over for, then put him back aboard ship and send him on home to Cherayth. Or Maikelberg, anyway. And then we can think about it some more and brief him when we transfer the court back to Chisholm in June, if we decide we need to go ahead after all.”

She looked up at him for a moment, but then she drew a deep breath and shook her head one more time.

“No. I’ve dithered about this for over two years already. If we don’t bite the bullet and go ahead and do it, I’ll go on dithering for the next twenty!”

“Only if you’re sure,” he said. “I’ve been pushing for this, and I know I have. But I want you to be sure you’re on board with it because it’s the right thing to do, not just because you know how in favor of it I am.”

“Have I ever hesitated to disagree with you when I thought something was a bad idea?” she challenged with a familiar glint. He chuckled at the very thought and shook his head. “Well, I’m not hesitating because I think this is a bad idea. I’m hesitating because even good ideas can go wrong and because I love him so much. That’s the real reason.”

He put his other arm around her, capturing her in the circle of his embrace, and they leaned their foreheads together while the rain pattered steadily outside the window.

“That was delicious,” Ruhsyl Thairis, Duke Eastshare, said.

He sat back from the table with his snifter of after-dinner brandy and smiled at his hosts. Darkness had fallen, and the rain fell even harder than before. Outside the window overlooking the palace gardens the gas jet lamps burned like wet diamonds in the rain and a pleasant breeze—damp but gentle—fluttered the edges of the tablecloth.

“It certainly should’ve been,” Cayleb replied with a grin. “I made it clear enough heads would roll if it wasn’t, anyway!”

“Oh, a paragon of ruthlessness if ever I met one!” Eastshare chuckled. “No wonder everyone’s so terrified of you here in Tellesberg.”

“Actually, I really can be ruthless, when I have to,” Cayleb said, and Eastshare’s eyebrows rose, because the emperor’s tone had turned unwontedly serious.

“I know you can,” the duke said after a moment. “But I’ve never known you to be trivial about it. Admittedly, dinner isn’t a trivial affair, but still—”

He shrugged, and Cayleb flickered a smile. But he also shook his head.

“I’m serious, Ruhsyl. And the truth is that Sharley and I didn’t ask you to stop off in Tellesberg on your way home just because we wanted to have dinner with you. Oh, that would’ve been reason enough! And you saw how happy Alahnah was to see you. But the truth is, there’s something we need to discuss.”

“Of course.” Eastshare set his brandy glass on the table and looked back and forth between his emperor and empress. “What is it?”

“This is going to be difficult, Ruhsyl,” Sharleyan said. She reached out and took his hand in hers. “I’m afraid it’s going to be painful, too. Not because of anything you’ve done,” she added quickly as his eyes narrowed. “Cayleb and I couldn’t possibly have a finer general or a better friend. But there’s something we have to share with you, and I’m afraid it may be hard for you.”

“Sharley,” Eastshare said, covering their clasped hands with his free hand, “I can’t imagine anything you could tell me or ask of me that I couldn’t give you.”

“I hope you still feel that way in about an hour, Your Grace,” another voice said, and Eastshare looked over his shoulder to see that Merlin Athrawes had just entered the room. The tall seijin looked unusually sober this evening, and the duke cocked his head.

“Should I assume, then, that this is more seijin business, Merlin?”

“In a lot of ways, yes,” Merlin replied. “But, actually, it starts well before the first seijin ever set foot on Safehold. In fact, it begins before the Day of Creation itself.”

Eastshare’s nostrils flared and he looked quickly back at Sharleyan. She only nodded, and he returned his gaze to Merlin. His brown eyes held Merlin’s eyes of seijin blue for a long, steady second.

“That… sounds ominous,” he said then. “On the other hand, I’ve never known you to lie to me. So why don’t you get started?”

“Of course.” Merlin dipped his head in a curiously formal little bow. Then he straightened and squared his broad shoulders.

“First,” he began, “you have to know why there was a ‘Day of Creation’ here on Safehold at all. You see—”

“You really mean it,” an ashen-faced Ruhsyl Thairis said the better part of ninety minutes later. “You really mean it.”

“Yes, we do, Ruhsyl,” Sharleyan said softly. “And it’s not just Merlin’s word for it, either. Not just the ‘coms’ or the ‘holograms.’ Not even that.” She waved at the fireplace poker Merlin had twisted into a pretzel in a casual demonstration of his “PICA’s” superhuman strength. “We’ve been to ‘Nimue’s Cave.’ We’ve seen it. And Merlin’s used his ‘technology’ to save both our lives more than once. The proof is there, Ruhsyl. It truly is.”

“No, Sharley.” He shook his head, his voice sad, but there was no hesitation in his tone. “The evidence may be there, but not the proof.”

“Ruhsyl—” Cayleb began, but Eastshare raised his hand, far more demandingly than he ever had to Cayleb Ahrmahk before, and shook his head again, harder.

“Don’t, Cayleb.” His tone was harder, flatter, than it had been. “I believe you’re a good man. I believe—I’ve always believed—you love Sharleyan dearly, and that you’re a man of honor, doing what you believe you must. But not this. Never this!”

“Ruhsyl, it’s not—”

“Not one more word, Merlin! Or… Nimue. Or whoever—or whatever—the hell else you may be!” Eastshare snapped, glaring at the man who’d been his friend for years. “I trusted you. More than that, the people I love trusted you! Spare me any more lies, any more perversions!”

“Ruhsyl,” tears gleamed in Sharleyan’s eyes, “no one’s lied to you, I swear it!”

“You haven’t, and Cayleb hasn’t,” Eastshare grated, “but this demon sure as Shan-wei has!” He emphasized Shan-wei’s name heavily and deliberately. “And he’s lied to you, and he’s lied to Maikel Staynair, and he’s lied to the entire world! Can’t you see that?”

“No, I can’t,” she told him. “Because he hasn’t. I told you this would be hard, but it’s the truth, Ruhsyl. It’s nothing but the truth, and we’ve told you because we’re so tired of not telling you. Because we owe you the truth.”

“I believe that’s exactly what you’ve done, but the fact that this… this thing has convinced you to believe its lies doesn’t make a lie the truth and doesn’t change blasphemy into something else.”

“But the evidence is right here in front of your eyes,” Sharleyan said pleadingly. She touched the twisted poker and stared into his eyes. “The proof is right here!”

“I don’t see anything that one of Shan-wei’s demons couldn’t have produced!” Eastshare retorted. “And the Writ didn’t call her ‘Mother of Lies’ for nothing! Am I supposed to believe that what he has to say and to show me here turns nine centuries of the truth into a lie? Oh, it’s a clever lie, I’ll give ‘Nimue’ that! But compared to the Writ, The Testimonies, every written word of history for nine hundred years, to the miracles that happen every single day in the Temple? Sharley, how could you and Cayleb fall for this? Have you forgotten what Chihiro said about Shan-wei? Forgotten how she deceived and seduced our entire world into evil?”

“But—”

“No.” Eastshare’s nostrils flared and he rose from his chair, facing Merlin with fiery eyes. “If this is what Byrtrym had come to suspect, no wonder he joined forces with the Temple Loyalists.” Tears glistened on his own cheeks. “And, God help me, if this is what he was trying to stop, Sharley, I wish to God he’d succeeded. I love you, but if this is what he was trying to stop, then at least you’d have died as one of God’s own.”

“I’m still one of God’s own.” Sharleyan’s mouth quivered and her face was wet, but she raised her head and met his eyes without flinching when he darted another look at her. “I will always be God’s own, Ruhsyl. And that’s why I have no choice but to bring this world back to Him and away from the filthy lie Eric Langhorne and Adorée Bédard and Maruyama Chihiro told a thousand years ago!”

“Listen to yourself, Sharley!” Eastshare pled.

“I have listened, Ruhsyl,” she said softly. “I’ve listened not just to Merlin, not just to Maikel, not just to Jeremiah Knowles and thousands upon thousands of years of recorded history from long before ‘Creation’ here. Not even just to Cayleb. I’ve listened to my own heart, my own soul. And you’re right, if I’m wrong I’ve given myself to damnation and I’m leading this entire world into it right along with me. But I’m not wrong. And Merlin’s no liar, no demon. And Pei Shan-wei was a good woman—not an archangel; a woman—who was murdered as the very first victim of the lie which has kept this entire world in chains for a thousand years.”

“And you’re not going to retreat one step from that, are you?” Eastshare’s voice was quiet, and she shook her head. “No, of course you aren’t,” he said. “Because you’re a brave woman, and—like Cayleb—a woman of honor. And of faith. And this is what you truly believe, but, oh, Sharley, you’re so wrong. And I can only pray that in the end you fail. Because the thought of what this world will become if you succeed is more than I can stand.”

Silence hovered against the backdrop of the pounding rain, and then Ruhsyl Thairis, Duke of Eastshare, looked back at Merlin Athrawes.

“I won’t damn you to hell, because that’s where you came from in the first place,” he said. “But I will tell you this. I will never bow my head or bend my knee to your foul mistress, and I curse the day I helped you defeat Zhaspahr Clyntahn. I know I’ll face the price for that someday—someday very soon—but I know the truth now. So you go ahead and do what you have to do, because if you let me walk out that door alive, I will denounce you from the steps of Tellesberg Cathedral!”

“Of course you will,” Merlin said sadly. “It takes a man of honor to know a man of honor, and I can’t tell you how deeply I regret what I see in your eyes when you look at me now. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I have always been—and I remain now, despite what you believe, what you think—honored by your friendship.”

Eastshare’s lips twisted, but he said nothing, only glared.

“Ruhsyl, we wouldn’t have risked telling you this if our only option had been to kill you if you couldn’t accept it,” Merlin told him. “Sharleyan and Cayleb love you too much for that. I love you too much for that.”

“It is the only option you have,” Eastshare said flatly.

“No, it isn’t.” Merlin reached into his belt pouch and extracted a small, cylindrical rod of glittering crystal. “And someday, when the time comes, we’ll have another conversation, you and I. Until that day, I can only say I respect and admire you as much as I’ve ever respected or admired another human being and I would give anything in the universe to not have to do this.”

Excerpted from Through Fiery Trials, copyright © 2018 by David Weber.

If there’s not an official sub-genre for “edgy, dissolute fantasy set at elite American universities,” we should step into the void and name it ourselves. Ivorypunk. GrimIvy. Because, let’s face it—the New England university setting is an immensely popular secondary world. Think of remote towns filled with disengaged, drug-addled youths: screwing their brains out, dodging classes, lazily committing felonies, also as part of their search for some sort of greater existential purpose. Add a touch of fantasy into the mix and the metaphoric stew gets all the thicker. From The Secret History to The Magicians (and the former is a fantasy novel, bring it), there’s a long, quasi-nihilistic-and-deeply-enjoyable tradition of reading about America’s best and brightest, snorting and bonking their way through a Quest for Meaning.

We Can Save Us All is the latest entry to this tradition. All the Bacchanalian misadventures and soul-searching, but, this time, caped and cloaked as superheroes. Adam Nemett’s debut novel features a group of disillusioned and dissolute Princeton students, groping around for their place in the universe. Our ostensible hero is David Fuffman, a sort of bearded (neckbearded, in fact!) everygeek. Committed to a (largely conceptual) love of comic books, romantic angst and the “cooler” parts of his grandfather’s wardrobe, David’s an oddball, even by Princeton standards.

David achieves Swingers-like levels of awkwardness: he’s a character that will cut uncomfortably close to the bone for many readers. He’s a Nice Guy, and his quest for enough friend-points to unlock the lootcrate of woman is both eerily accurate and deeply discomfiting. David’s convinced that his role in the universe is to be the Unappreciated Hero. He’s a lost soul coming to terms with the fact that he’s no longer the smartest person he knows, and, because of it, he’s petrified of fading into the background. He’s unappreciated and out of place—ironic, as, to the reader, it is clear that the gently-padded incubator of his university is exactly where he belongs.

After an ambitious Halloween-related scheme goes horribly awry, David is searching—literally now—for a place to belong. Like many unappreciated, frustrated young men harboring a grievance, he falls into the path of a charismatic leader: the mysterious Mathias Blue. Blue is also a student, kind of. Blue is more like a rich cult leader, living off campus in the “Egg” and urging his (all male, all frustrated) band of cronies to achieve greatness with their increasing abstract and bewildering “thesis” projects. Mathias—confident, assertive—is a compelling role model for the socially floundering, and it is easy to see how David and the others fall into his orbit. When David proposes that the Egg’s residents reposition themselves and put their “theses” into action as superheroes, it is the realisation of all their dreams.

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It is important to note that, although David’s personal crises dominate the book, there’s a lot going on in the background. We Can Save Us All is a (often literal) blizzard of disasters. The weather is genuinely apocalyptic, wars and crises are taking place on an international scale, and time itself is inexplicably unravelling. It is all going terribly, terribly wrong. To give Nemett credit, the apocalyptic backdrop is just that: a backdrop. Those looking for a hard-science explanation of “Chronostrictesis” will be sorely disappointed. The horrors and disasters and armageddons are all off-screen things: they exist to reinforce the correspondingly microcosmic focus of David, Mathias, and the others.

And make no mistake: this is a book wholly about self-absorption. Nemett treads a skillful, and increasingly uncomfortable, line between sympathy and condemnation, as our “heroes”—a band of self-created, self-entitled goofballs—set out to save the day. They are unappointed and, in many ways, unwanted: the adventures of these clumsy Avengers are as much about creating problems as they are solving them. David and his ilk are so shockingly self-entitled that they believe disaster exists to give them a sense of purpose. They are so keen to be saviours that they’re not really bothered about who, what or even why they’re saving. They are privilege at its peak: firm believers that the universe is ending solely to give them a reason to pronk about in capes.

It is Haley Roth—another Princeton student, who David also knew in high school—that steals the show. She’s an emotional counterbalance to the Egg’s pretentious young men and grounds the book in reality. Haley’s faced real tragedy, real loss, and been a real outcast. She’s as talented, if not more so, than Mathias and his band, but is constantly forced to operate in parallel, or to carve out her own place. Her uphill struggle—a genuine one—is impressive. Even in high school, David is surprised that she gets into Princeton. And once at Princeton, Haley has to make her own path to Mathias et al. The underwhelming David is invited; the more skillful Haley has to “lean in.” She’s the most compelling character in We Can Save Us All, because, with the sound and fury of young privileged male malaise, Haley is quietly overcoming real problems.

We Can Save Us All—true to the others in the PrivilegePunk, TrustFundDark genre—is a hard read, using America’s “best and brightest” to describe some of society’s darkest and most self-indulgent impulses. It is a timely and horrifying look into youth radicalisation; the power of the narratives that we assign ourselves. Nemett’s clever use of the third person allows a sense of remove and of feigned objectivity. This adds to the overall sense of the reader as the ultimate judge of the characters and their actions. We Can Save Us All takes us under the skin of “heroes”—to ask questions about intent, purpose, and salvation as a whole. It is a deeply uncomfortable read, but all the more powerful for it.

We Can Save Us All is available from The Unnamed Press.

Jared Shurin is the editor of The Djinn Falls in Love, The Outcast Hours, The Best of British Fantasy, and many other published and/or forthcoming works. He writes irregularly at raptorvelocity.com and continuously at @straycarnivore.

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Jean Ray’s “The Mainz Psalter,” first published as “le Psautier de Mayence” in Le Bien Public in May 1930, and translated into English by Lowell Blair for the Ghouls in My Grave collection in 1965. Spoilers ahead.

“That man makes me think of an unscalable wall behind which something immense and terrible is taking place.”

Summary

Ballister lies dying aboard the trawler North Caper, telling the tale of his last voyage.

Ballister meets the schoolmaster, owner of the schooner Mainz Psalter, in a bargeman’s tavern. The schoolmaster inherited the ship’s namesake book, the second out of Gutenberg’s press, from a great-uncle. It’s worth the price of—an excellent sea-worthy schooner. Ballister proposes himself as captain and an eccentric crew: Turnip, a good sailor powered by rum; Steevens, a powerful, taciturn Fleming; Walker, missing half his face; and Jellewyn, rumored royalty in hiding, and his devoted servant Friar Tuck. The schoolmaster directs Ballister to sail from northwestern Scotland to obscure Big Toe Bay, where the schoolmaster will join them.

Ballister knows Big Toe Bay, a wilderness visited by few but coastal scavengers. From there they’ll sail west, says the schoolmaster, through little-trafficked, hazardous waters. But not for any criminal purpose—the schoolmaster’s business is scientific. Only one incident gives Ballister pause: A down-and-out seaman sees the schoolmaster in the tavern, and rushes out gin-less in terror.

The Psalter’s peaceful layover in the Bay is shattered by gunfire from wreck-scavengers in the surrounding cliffs. Then one wrecker screams and falls 300 feet to the beach. Two more follow, flung by some monstrous force. Jellewyn calls Friar Tuck, good as a hunting dog for scenting danger. Tuck pales: There’s something ugly up there. He spots it, then it’s gone. Moments later, the schoolmaster descends to the beach.

The schoolmaster secludes himself in his cabin with books, coming topside only to take the sun with a sextant. Life is monotonous yet tense. One day everyone is seized with violent nausea—poison?—but it passes quickly. Not so the general apprehension. On their eighth day out, the crew demand to know where the schoolmaster’s taking them. Friar Tuck, spider sense tingling, says there’s something around them worse than even death. And the schoolmaster is “not alien to it.”

Jellewyn’s elected to talk to the schoolmaster, but he’s vanished! That night Jellewyn points out the sky to Ballister, who falls to his knees in astonishment. The stars are all wrong, new constellations. The erudite Jellewyn launches into a lesson in “hypergeometry” and speculates about other dimensions.

There seems no good in turning back with no familiar stars to guide them. Walker takes the helm while the rest crowd into Ballister’s cabin to drink rum punch. Morale rises. Then there’s a terrible cry from above, followed by a far-off yodel. Topside, Walker’s gone. Turnip is next, shot through the air from the mainmast, coming down far off in the waves. A gray, glass-like something steals the lifeboat before they can deploy it. Jellewyn and Tuck find the rigging splattered with blood.

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Ballister and Jellewyn take the night watch. A bloody glow illuminates the sea, and the water goes transparent. They see the ocean floor covered in “dark masses with unreal shapes…manors with immense towers, gigantic domes, horribly straight streets lined with frenzied houses…a swarming crowd of amorphous beings engaged in…feverish and infernal activity.”

Jellewyn jerks Ballister back: An immense creature rises from the undersea city! It strikes the schooner’s keel, rears tentacles three times taller than the mainmast, glares with eyes of liquid amber. Then the awesome vision goes vague. The red glow snaps out.

Next morning Ballister tries to take a sextant reading. A “white streamer” quivers in front of him, delivers a jarring blow to his head. He goes down, barely conscious. Regaining his senses, he finds Jellewyn alive but bereft of his Tuck. Steevens is a swollen bag of crushed bones, barely breathing. This is the end.

The three hide in Ballister’s cabin while, overnight, unimaginable sailors tramp the decks and direct the schooner. Learning about the schoolmaster’s books, Jellewyn goes to study them. He returns to ask if the schoolmaster ever spoke of a crystal box.

Next morning, Steevens is dead and Jellewyn gone. He has left a note saying he must go up the mainmast to see something. If the act’s fatal, Ballister must burn all the schoolmaster’s books, no matter what tries to stop him. Ballister piles the books on deck, soaks them with gasoline, strikes the match. Pale flame rises, and—there’s a cry from the sea!

In the Psalter’s wake swims the schoolmaster, eyes burning. He’ll make Ballister the richest man on earth! He’ll inflict hellish tortures on him! Something pulls the schooner toward the sea bottom.

A crystal box appears among the burning pages. The schoolmaster stands on the water. It’s the greatest knowledge of all you’re destroying, he shrieks. Ballister crushes the box under his heel and collapses into a chaos of sea and sky.

He wakes on the North Caper. He’s told all and will die happily among men, on earth.

So ends Ballister’s story. The rest is told by John Copeland, first mate of the Caper. They’ve fished Ballister from the cold north sea. He looks to live. But that night a clerically clad figure with burning eyes climbs aboard, attacks Ballister, then leaps back into the sea. Copeland shoots the clergyman and retrieves his body—but gets only clothes and a wax head and hands!

Ballister’s been stabbed twice. The bleeding cannot be staunched. He recognizes the remains of his attacker as “The schoolmaster!” Six days later, he dies.

Reverend Leemans, who knows many secrets of the sea, has examined the mysterious remains. He points out the smell clinging to them: formic acid, phosphorus—like an octopus! On the last day of Creation, Leemans notes, God will cause the Blasphemous Beast to appear. Let us not anticipate destiny with impious inquiries.

And so, the seamen agree, better to let this mystery rest.

What’s Cyclopean: New stars shine in a “sidereal abyss.”

The Degenerate Dutch: Jellewyn’s nobility is treated as a source of impressive power and insight, but Ray generally manages to avoid the sort of ethnic shorthand that frequently plagues shipboard ensembles.

Mythos Making: Sail in strange polar waters, and tentacled monsters shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Libronomicon: From the early days of the printing press to Reines’s “short-lived literary magazines,” books are trouble this week.

Madness Takes Its Toll: Jellewyn and Ballister see all sorts of terrible sites alone on deck, and frequently state that these sites would drive the rest of the crew mad. Not them, though. They’re fine.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

Tentacled monsters in far corners of the ocean. Treacherous results of polar scientific expeditions. Things man was not meant to know, with the dangers of that knowledge pointedly and explicitly underscored. And yet, somehow, no evidence whatsoever that Ray/De Kremer and Lovecraft ever so much as read each others’ stories. Conclusions: 1) the late 20s were just scary tentacle time, and authors worldwide were gonna tentacle, and 2) our Flemish friend should join Lovecraft and Sakutaro in that Dreamlands café, where he and Sakutaro can at least talk with each other if Howard is too scared of their foreign selves to join in.

The commonality that interests me the most is that knowledge-as-horror thing. Lovecraft was never above (below?) a bit of Christian symbolism, but he was no believer himself and his cosmic horror universe is overtly non-Christian. And not just in a the god-I-don’t-believe-in-is-Jesus way, but a genuinely different, the-god-it-would-take-to-explain-this-universe-is-actually-pretty-alarming, cosmology. And yet, learn anything about life outside your little protected garden, and all human safety and well-being could shatter in an instant. (Or at least, all Anglo safety; everyone else already knows and is trying to break in, ahhhh the horror, etc.)

Ray’s story, on the other hand, is overtly Christian, down to the hints that the 4th-dimensional destroyer is the Great Beast Leviathan who shall rise at the end of days (and about whom you can learn more a few posts over in the Good Omens reread). And down to the point about Things Man Was Not Etc. coming from a priest, who comes in last minute just to tell the framing narrator to quit asking questions. But knowledge-as-danger is a motif throughout. The Psalter’s voyage is sponsored by a malevolent figure often called the schoolmaster. And his books, source of occult knowledge, must be burned to return to the world as we know it.

The Psalter itself is intriguingly named. Did the schoolmaster (possibly a servant of Leviathan, possibly a puppet of the Beast Itself) actually find and sell a convenient copy of the second book ever to come out of Gutenberg’s printing press? And is the point that even the most holy books can be used for sinister ends, or that said schoolmaster rejected the wisdom of the original psalter in favor of darker studies? Or is the press itself, that permits such wide distribution of all kinds of knowledge, inherently suspect?

Another, intriguing interpretation is that psalter was the press’s second creation. As the dimension in which the crew find themselves is… a second creation? Both within the story itself, and in the Tolkien-ish sense.

Back to the Lovecraft-Ray non-connection—I really can’t spot much room for real-life influence. Even leaving aside the likely lack of regular translation between French and English-language weird fiction at the time, “The Call of Cthulhu” came out in ’28. Ray/De Kremer was in prison from 1927 to 1929, during which time he wrote this story. (He was in for embezzlement, alas, which somewhat undermines the writerly cred he might have gotten for pounding out stories while doing time for blasphemy or some similarly literary crime.) [ETA: But see Anne’s finding below—it’s literary after all!] He publishes today’s piece in Le Bien Public in 1930, and “Mountains of Madness” comes out in ’31, so no room in that direction either.

But there are many earlier doomed voyages to have their third-factor influence on all. The one that came to mind for me was the marginally-more-likely-to-have-been-read Moby Dick. ‘And I alone survive to tell the tale’ of following an obsessed leader way too close to a mythical sea monster. Maybe don’t do that.

Final note: Like Sakutaro, Ray gives us an excellent all-purpose refusal: “I’m in no mood to give you a lesson in hypergeometry.” My e-mail recipients may expect to hear this often.

Anne’s Commentary

In his essay “Ghosts, Fear, and Parallel Worlds: The Supernatural Fiction of Jean Ray,” Antonio Monteiro writes: “There is apparently nothing to prove (or to disprove) that Jean Ray was acquainted with Lovecraft’s work, despite the fact that they were contemporaries. But, coincidental as they probably are…some similarities can be found.” For example, Monteiro points out, their mutual fascinations for parallel worlds. True! Let me throw out more evidence that Jean and Howard were spiritual brethren of the imagination:

• Jean Ray is a pen name. The writer’s real name is Raymundus Joannes de Kremer. Tell me that isn’t the natural-born moniker of someone who’d pen ponderous tomes of forbidden knowledge for Howard’s grimoire shelf.

• In 1926, in reference to the disastrous mismanagement of a literary magazine, Ray was imprisoned for embezzlement and served two years, during which time he wrote this week’s story! (Okay, so this doesn’t have much to do with law-abiding Howard, but it’s a cool fact, right?)

• Undersea cities, with octopoid denizens! Ray’s Ballister is especially horrified by the straight streets of his “R’lyeh.” Hmm. Also by the fierce bustle of those denizens.  Makes me think of the modernized Paris of broad boulevards, or Lang’s Metropolis, or even Howard’s New York (and Red Hook.)

• Strange stars overhead are the stuff of madness. Also undersea cephalopod cities. Unless you are a Anglo-Saxon of superior education, like Jellewyn and Ballister. The rest of the crew must be protected from these new upsetting truths.

• Masks, gloves and clothes can so disguise very much inhuman creatures so as to fool humans into thinking the creatures are other humans. This works for octopi. This also works for Mi-Go. Human dupes are invariably shocked to discover the ruse.

• There are things man is better off not investigating, a comfortable ignorance he is far better off embracing, whether out of piety or the instinct for self-preservation. On the one hand, you don’t want to make God mad. On the other, you don’t want to find out that the only god is a howling chaos of universal indifference.

I found “The Mainz Psalter” stronger—very strong!—in its details than in its overall plot coherence. The schoolmaster is too much of an enigma for me. He starts out seeming altogether human through the tavern scene. Still human, though withdrawn, through his disappearance at sea. Thereafter some sort of octopus puppet or mannequin. The purpose of the Greenland-ward trip and the crystal box are over-vague—I think they don’t matter to Ray. It’s the voyage itself he cares about, with its eccentric crew so brilliantly delineated, with its terrors so deftly heightened and its mystery deepened by dimensions unknown though perilously near.

Yes, Howard and Jean could certainly agree about that last bit.

Next week, a tale of Lovecraftian revenge in Michael Shea’s “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.”

Ruthanna Emrys is the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, including Winter Tide and Deep Roots. Her neo-Lovecraftian stories “The Litany of Earth” and “Those Who Watch” are available on Tor.com, along with the distinctly non-Lovecraftian “Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land” and “The Deepest Rift.” Ruthanna can frequently be found online on Twitter and Patreon, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic household—mostly mammalian—outside Washington DC.

Anne M. Pillsworth’s short story “The Madonna of the Abattoir” appears on Tor.com. Her young adult Mythos novel, Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequel Fathomless. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwen’s underground laboratory.

Good morning, true believers (::sniff::). In today’s reread, Alice, Aubree and I will be taking another journey into Dalinar’s visions, this time back to the Recreance—when the Knights Radiant dropped their Shards and abandoned Roshar. There are so many questions in this one to tackle. Why did they do it, really? It can’t possibly be as simple as the big reveal at the end of the book lets on, can it? And what’s going on between Hoid and Harmony? And… well, read on, dear followers, as we discuss those and more. (And freak out a little over the surprise guest at the end of the chapter, of course.)

Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the ENTIRE NOVEL in each reread. There’s some more minor Mistborn spoilers in the epigraph discussion, under The Singing Storm section. As usual, we need to warn that if you haven’t read ALL of Oathbringer, best to wait to join us until you’re done.

Chapter Recap

WHO: Dalinar
WHERE: Vision of the Recreance, Feverstone Keep (wherever that is)
WHEN: 1174.1.9.3 (two days after Rlain’s chapter)

Dalinar brings Jasnah and Navani into the vision of the Recreance, then lets them go collect information while he and Yanagawn (aka Gawx) talk about what’s happening on the field below. The Knights Radiant of old abandon their Shards and walk away, leaving them for the future rulers of Roshar to fight over. As Gawx fades away, Dalinar expects to awaken from the vision as well… but he’s confronted by an unexpected guest.

The Singing Storm

Title: Always With You

L: The title of this one comes from Odium’s quote near the end: “I’ve always been here. Always with you, Dalinar. Oh, I’ve watched you for a long, long time.” Yeah. That’s not creepy at all.

Heralds

Jezrien, Windrunners, Protecting/Leading. Talenelat, Stonewards, Dependable/Resourceful.

L: It seems pretty clear that Jezrien’s here because Dalinar, as usual, is projecting those ideals—trying to find ways to lead all the people of Roshar through this time of trouble. He’s also being dependable, so… there’s Talenelat.

Icon

Kholin glyphpair (Dalinar)

Epigraph

I am also made uncertain by your subterfuge. Why have you not made yourself known to me before this? How is it you can hide? Who are you truly, and how do you know so much about Adonalsium?

L: Wait a second, wait a second. Hoid, being mysterious about something? I don’t believe it.

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AA: Inconceivable!

It is interesting, though, that Sazed apparently didn’t know about Hoid until he got this letter. How many of the Shards do know when he shows up on their planets?

AP: Isn’t that that $64,000 question though? Who exactly is Hoid, and how does he know so much?

AA: Well, he was there when Adonalsium was Shattered, and refused to pick up a Shard, but … that’s about all we really know about his involvement. He has a certain advantage over Sazed in this—at least he was there, knows the other Vessels, and knows something about what and how and why. Poor Sazed has to be feeling awfully ignorant sometimes.

Stories & Songs

“A multiethnic coalition here, like during the Desolations—but if I’m right, this is over two thousand years after Aharietiam.”

“They’re fighting someone,” Dalinar said. “The Radiants retreat from a battle, then abandon their weapons on the field outside.”

“Which places the Recreance a little more recently than Masha-daughter-Shaliv had it in her history,” Jasnah said, musing. “From my reading of your vision accounts, this is the last chronologically—though it’s difficult to place the one with you overlooking ruined Kholinar.”

L: Reminder for those of you out there with awful memories like me that Aharietiam was when the Heralds vanished, and the Recreance is when the Knights Radiant buggered off.

AP: I’m glad you clarified. It took me longer than it should have to figure out that they weren’t the same event. I had conflated the two the first time I read the series.

AA: Just for the sake of timeline-y things, Aharietiam was 4500 years ago—that thing in the Prelude, which Dalinar saw in a vision. Jasnah is trying to zero in on a date for the Recreance, which got muddled by the Heirocracy with their … creative revision of history. (My personal theory is that the current date system stems from the time when things settled back down after the Recreance, meaning that it happened about 1200 years ago.)

“It could be the False Desolation,” Jasnah said. … “A legend, … considered pseudohistorical. Dovcanti wrote an epic about it somewhere around fifteen hundred years ago. The claim is that some Voidbringers survived Aharietiam, and there were many clashes with them afterward. It’s considered unreliable, but that’s because many later ardents insist that no Voidbringers could have survived. I’m inclined to assume this is a clash with parshmen before they were somehow deprived of their ability to change forms.”

L: This is particularly interesting when we consider that this is the moment when the ancient knights learned about the true nature of the world and their place in it. How did they learn? What happened? Was it something that was revealed during the course of this battle somehow?

AP: Additionally, we know that some of the Parsh* people survived and retained the ability to change forms. My hunch is that they are fighting the group that would (or perhaps already has at this point) become the Listeners. To humans who don’t understand the distinction between the Parsh* and the Fused, they could seem like Voidbringers.

AA: There’s a pretty strong indication that the ones they were fighting were the Singers, and the Listeners had already broken away. Most of the following is based on the epigraphs in Part Three, but it seems most probable that the False Desolation was caused by one of the Unmade, Ba-Ado-Mishram, who figured out a way to give the Singers the same ability to take the Voidforms (or something very like them) without the presence of the Fused. The Bondsmith Melishi figured out how to trap her in a perfect gem, thus breaking her Connection to the Singers and depriving them of the ability to change forms. Caught in a form with no spren, the Singers were reduced to what the humans know as parshmen, and what the Listeners called slaveform. Somehow, in the midst of all that, the Knights Radiant discovered the “wicked thing of eminence,” presumably related to the knowledge that the humans had allowed Odium access to Roshar and all that.

It seems likely to me that the Recreance resulted from the combination of 1) knowing humans to be the interlopers, 2) knowing that they had damaged their original planet beyond livability through some form of Surgebinding, 3) realizing that they had just destroyed the ability of the original inhabitants of Roshar to change forms, 4) knowing that those people had no further ability to wage war against them, and 5) having Honor in his dying throes going slightly wacko in his communications. Learning a warped view of their origins on Roshar, coupled with the belief that they’d just done in the parsh for good, might make the whole lot of them feel guilty enough to decide that the Radiants were an all-around bad idea. (I still have trouble figuring out how they could justify the damage they did to their spren, though.)

AP: You’re right, this could definitely be the Singers instead.

Those who claimed a Shard this day would become rulers. It bothered Dalinar that the best men, the ones calling for moderation or raising concerns, would be rare among their numbers. They weren’t aggressive enough to seize the advantage.

L: And just think, most of them were passed down to their probably equally-as-aggressive families, creating a culture of violence which has perpetuated to this very day!

AA: Along with the light eyes caused by holding a Shardblade.

The man was old, with a wide, furrowed face and bone-white hair that swept back from his head as if blown by wind. Thick mustaches with a hint of black in them blended into a short white beard. He seemed to be Shin, judging by his skin and eyes, and he wore a golden crown in his powdery hair.

… “You’re… not the Almighty, are you?”

“Honor? No, he truly is dead, as you’ve been told.” The old man’s smile deepened, genuine and kindly. “I’m the other one, Dalinar. They call me Odium.”

L: ::gasp::

AP: ^^ Actual footage of my reaction. How did you get a camera into my house???

AA: I’m not buying that, Aubree. You’re much prettier. (But the reaction… yeah. Yikes.)

Bruised & Broken

“[The viziers] are scared of you. Very scared. More scared than they are of the assassin. He burned the emperor’s eyes, but emperors can be replaced. You represent something far more terrible. They think you could destroy our entire culture.”

L: Given what we know about Blackthorn!Dalinar, I don’t blame them.

AP: I really liked this. Dalinar has major inroads to do, and it makes total sense that others would not trust the Blackthorn.

AA: I was fascinated by the contrast they saw between the Assassin and the Blackthorn. We got pretty used to everyone being absolutely terrified of The Assassin In White, but all he did was go around killing rulers.

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L: Unlike Dalinar, who just killed everyone.

AA: The Azish have a very pragmatic view of their emperors, don’t they?

“Lift doesn’t trust you. … It’s because,” Yanagawn continued, “you act so righteous. She says anyone who acts like you do is trying to hide something.”

L: Very astute of Lift to pick up on it. I think she’s right—but also wrong. There’s no hiding the awful things he’s done in his past. Everyone knows. It’s a matter of history. I don’t think Dalinar’s trying to hide it, I think he’s trying to atone for it, which is a matter of distinction that Lift probably can’t really understand yet.

AP: Yes and no, they know some but not all. But what they do know about is bad enough.

AA: Well, at this point, Dalinar doesn’t know the worst of what he did; he just knows the story they agreed to tell about Rathalas. That said, he knows what the Blackthorn did in general, especially before that. I agree that he’s not trying to hide it, but I’m not sure “atone” is right either. According to everything he’s ever known, the Blackthorn was the epitome of Vorin ideals. He’s just come to believe that there’s a better way, and now he has to live down the reputation he earned.

Squires & Sidekicks

“They’re training me to act important, Kholin, but I’m not. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

L: Poor Gawx. It’s got to be a tough job, being a child emperor. Especially in as turbulent of times as these.

AP: I’d really like to see him live long enough to do it. I hope we get to see Gawx after the time jump as a true ruler.

AA: Hear! Hear! The kid we saw in Words of Radiance was unequivocally unfit for the job, to the point of it being a joke. The young man we see now… he has potential. I have to give the scions and viziers a lot of credit here; they could easily just doll him up and make him keep his mouth shut—make him nothing but a puppet—but instead they’re training him to take on the role they gave him. Sure, right now a lot of it is to “act important” but we saw in Edgedancer that they were giving him a thorough education. In Oathbringer, the education is showing in his ability to evaluate what’s going on around him—including his own status. So, yes. I think he’s got the chance to become a true leader.

Places & Peoples

“That armor is Soulcast,” Jasnah said, releasing his hand. “Look at the fingermarks on the metal. That’s burnished iron, not true steel, Soulcast from clay into that shape. I wonder… did access to Soulcasters retard their drive to learn smelting?”

L: I love hearing about Soulcasting and how it works. I think that Jasnah is absolutely correct and that access to this magic meant that other, more mundane methods of creation were lost—but I also wonder if there was a booming business that rose up around armor-sculptors!

AP: Possibly! But at the same time, leaving finger marks in the clay means that the sculptor wasn’t very skilled, or the job was rushed. Which makes sense if they are just trying to get functional armor produced quickly.

Weighty Words

They left their armor as well. Shards of incalculable value, renounced.

L: Is it confirmed that this armor is the same as the Shardplate we see people using in modern times? It must be, right? It’s just been augmented with gems/Stormlight in order to power it now that the spren that it was created from are (sort of) dead.

AP: This makes me wonder about the mechanics of it. The blades get summoned and dismissed, and are sorta-dead spren. The armor is always present. Is it something else? Does it work best if paired with the original spren? Do you need both together to “heal” a dead spren? So many questions!

AA: So many questions indeed. It’s pretty solid that this is the same Shardplate, passed down through generations, but it clearly doesn’t work the same way as the Shardblades. It can’t (apparently) be bonded and dismissed like a Blade, and when pieces are broken they regrow. Unfortunately, all we have is speculation at this point.

(Also, I had a great question I was going to ask Brandon at the Skyward signing this weekend, and I just didn’t have time. I was going to ask if the Soulcaster and Regrowth fabrials (and any other ancient fabrials that emulate Surgebinding) are formed in a manner similar to the Shardplate, which I presume is from the non-sapient “cousin” spren corresponding to the Nahel-bonded spren. I’m bummed that I didn’t have more time.)

A Scrupulous Study of Spren

The knights drove their weapons into the ground, then abandoned them.

…

As before in this vision, Dalinar felt as if he could hear the screaming deaths of the spren, the terrible sorrow of this field. It almost overwhelmed him.

L: I wanted to put this bit in this section specifically because of how heart-wrenching this is considering what we know about the Shards and their relationships to their wielders. If these were just priceless swords, I could understand. But these Shards are spren. They’re living beings, probably good friends with the knights bonded to them—knights who knew that abandoning their friends would mean leaving them to die. How awful, to be faced with knowledge so devastating that you’d be willing to kill your best friend.

This is why I truly believe that there’s more going on here than just what we learn at the end of the novel. There must be. Learning that they’ve stolen this world from its rightful inhabitants couldn’t possibly drive someone to destroy their best friend. Could it?

AP: That’s a devastating revelation, but I agree that it’s probably not everything. Especially considering we are only in book 3/10. I keep coming back to the Honorspren being warlike. That’s…not a glowing endorsement. There is probably a good reason that the other spren don’t like them, and I think their nature ties into why the Recreance happened.

“I don’t know what caused the Recreance, but I can guess. They lost their vision, Your Excellency. They became embroiled in politics and let divisions creep among them. They forgot their purpose: protecting Roshar for its people.”

L: Mmmhmmm.

Next week we’ll be delving into chapter 57 before we take a little break from the main action for the second set of interludes. Be sure to join us in the comments for more discussion!

Alice is exhausted. But no one has to listen to her talk about volleyball for another nine months, and the Skyward signing was fun. Also, Skyward is an excellent book.

Lyndsey is devastated over the loss of Stan Lee, but she’ll always remember that with great power comes great responsibility. If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or her website.

Aubree is sending a shout out to all True Believers this week. Excelsior!

Baru Cormorant hasn’t always been a traitor, and she hasn’t always been a monster. In another life, she is an islander and a prodigy, a lover and a daughter. She is a subject and a citizen, or something in between. When the empire of the Masquerade invades and seduces her home, Baru is reduced to her heritage, even as her opportunities and worldview expand. She is torn between a multitude of selves, some faithful and some masked, but none of them untrue. This is the stuff of empire: not just to unmake a people, but to remake them.

Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade series doesn’t explain our political moment, nor is it a metaphor for 20th century fascism. It instead approaches a much earlier form of despotism, rooted mostly in 19th century imperialism and Enlightenment science. Dickinson deftly rearranges these historical elements into a thrilling second-world fantasy series, taking them away from the realm of allegory and allowing the story to weave new interpretations into old ideologies. The Masquerade has received accolades from reviewers for its world-building, diversity, brutal consequences, and compelling characters, and all of this is right and true. But I’d like to address the elephant in the room.

The elephant is politics. Specifically, our politics.

The Masquerade series presents politics like this: the Masquerade invades Baru Cormorant’s homeland of Taranoke, not through military intervention but through what seems like the natural progression of trade and exchange. When Baru reaches the inner circle of the Masquerade’s cryptarchs, she learns a great many lessons about the mechanisms of empire, among them the use of eugenics and plague to conquer “lesser” civilizations. She has set out to destroy the government that maimed her homeland and that threatens to lobotomize her for sexual deviance, but the consequences of that quest aren’t apparent until The Traitor Baru Cormorant’s end. It takes a rebellion, unconquerable grief, and self-doubt for Baru to learn a secondary lesson about empire: that it is not a kingdom; it cannot be toppled by killing a figurehead or parliament, or even a single nation. Empire makes you a citizen. Empire is a part of you.

When I first read The Traitor Baru Cormorant in early 2017, it wasn’t the only “timely” book on my to-read pile—I reviewed Lara Donnelly’s Amberlough back when the wounds of 2016 were still fresh, and even then mentioned the likes of Star Wars and other pseudo-fascist sci-fi/fantasy-scapes where audiences could think through the horrors of oppression and totalitarian rule in a safer environment, governed by rules of narrative. Reading Octavia Butler’s Parables series was a particularly harrowing endeavor, through a combination of literal “make America great again” slogans (the series was written in 1993-1998) and Butler’s signature ability to make even hope feel bleak. I didn’t expect to find answers or explanations in these stories, or in the various non-fiction I devoured in those first two years (Hannah Arendt and James Baldwin among them), but I did seek context. Traitor was one of the only pieces of fiction that I felt provided that context—not just showing oppression but analyzing the roundabout ways that oppression is born and justified. Reading the recently released Monster Baru Cormorant has only confirmed that feeling.

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A huge part of that is, I think, that much of The Masquerade’s inspiration comes from an earlier era. So many critiques of our current politics are rooted in the horrors of 20th century nationalism: the destruction of the other by way of camps, breeding, and mass extinction. But those horrors, even, were a consequence rather than a starting point. Nationalism was born prior to that, and came of age in the 1800s, with all its genocide and state-sponsored violence waiting on the eves of revolution and republicanism. Nationalism was once a tool against despots, used by early capitalists and socialists alike to invoke a base, a collective identity of citizenry where there had been none before. The French revolutionaries, for instance, spent the decades following 1789 attempting to convince their own people, still mostly devout monarchists and Catholics, of the tenets of democracy (often through civil war, and, more iconically, the guillotine) while simultaneously using it as an excuse to colonize and brutalize the known world. When Americans—of the “alt-right” and otherwise—invoke its name, they are often trying to claim some mystical tie to the revolutionaries of 1776, forgetting that at the heart of the revolution was the creation of the nation-state out of a monarchy, the citizen out of a subject—these were not natural, they were not primordial or ahistorical, but NEW and manifested through a century of war and slavery and colonization and blood. Don’t get me wrong: self-described nationalists are often invoking fascism as well. But the rewriting of the historical “West” is all part in parcel of the same narrative.

The power of Baru’s story—beyond the, y’know, queer protagonist and riveting story beats—is that it electrifies all of those aspects of our own 19th century into a fantastical Frankenstein’s monster of early capitalism, misused science, and fear of the other (consequently, also a decent description of the original Frankenstein). Baru herself spends the entirety of the second book literally torn asunder, blind and half-paralyzed on one side, as she tries to kill her own regrets and grief. If Traitor is about literal economic world-building, Monster is about identity-building. The Masquerade creates in Baru and its other citizens new selves—from republican to protégé to traitor—where there had been none before. Baru has so many names by the end of the book, even she can’t seem to keep track. After all, nationalism does not bring out something inherent, but creates loyalties and identities and turns them to political means.

Monster does, as Niall Alexander says in his Tor.com review, go a bit off the rails in its first half. I would nonetheless close this essay by encouraging people to read it anyway. Read them both, read them all. No matter how the Masquerade ends, its revelation of the faces of our historical past and of our present selves will be more than worthy.

Em Nordling reads, writes, and manages research in Louisville, KY. In another life, they studied crowds and identity in 19th century Europe.

After years wandering the wilderness, Princess Adora and her bad-ass alter ego—She-Ra, the Princess of Power—is starring in a series of new adventures on Netflix. While I’m thrilled to binge the new show, I’ll always have a soft spot for the original 1980s series—partly because of the amazing sidekicks that tagged along her adventures in Eternia. This got me thinking about some of my favorite sidekicks from across the varied landscape of 1980s kids’ cartoons, which, naturally, resulted in a ranking list post.

THESE ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS. IT’S OK IF YOU LIKE SNARF.

I mean, I think you might want to talk to a therapist, but it’s probably OK, cosmically speaking.

But by all means tell me about your faves in the comments.

#16 Scrappy Doo, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, etc.

Even as a tiny child I knew that Scrappy Doo was some bullshit. He lives at the bottom of not only this list, but of all lists, forever, until the mountains crumble and the sun is a black husk.

#15 Godzooky, The Godzilla Power Hour

Why do great cartoon heroes have such garbage nephews? The Gojipedia refers to Godzooky as a juvenile kaiju—which is honestly all I aspire to, myself. He’s low on this list because among his powers are: spewing black smoke from his mouth, flapping his tiny wings real hard, and “summoning his uncle Godzilla,” which is a thing the human characters can also do, and which only makes the hapless Godzooky look weaker.

At least try to solve your problems yourself, Godzooky!

#14 Chomp-Chomp and Sour Puss, Pac-Man: The Animated Series

Gaze into the faces of Pac-Man’s pets! Chomp-Chomp is the dog, Sour Puss is the cat, neither of them do too much, although Sour Puss does come out for a hike through the snow in “Christmas Comes to Pac-Land” and Chomp-Chomp helps Pac-Man drag Santa’s bag of toys back to the Pac-Home. And Sour Puss is always angry for some reason? There’s not much happening here.

#13 Snarf, ThunderCats (Ho!)

Ugh, Snarf. Snarf is a malformed Hellbeast who followed the ThunderCats around and prevented them from being as awesome as they might have been. He just keeps yelling his own name, and getting into scrapes from which other, better ThunderCats have to rescue him. And OK, fine, he’s older, and took care of Lion-O when Lion-O was a ThunderKitten, but still—being older just means he’s had time to learn not to scream SNARF! constantly. Which he has not done.

On the plus side, he probably inspired Smarf from “Too Many Cooks.”

#12 Relay, He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special

The Manchines are a race of tiny Etherian cyborgs who appeared in the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special, where they rescue a pair of humans who have been trapped in Etheria due to Orko’s stupidity. Rather than simply coast on the Manchine concept, the show gave them their own adorable sidekick, a puppy (???) named Relay (????). Relay appears to be a regular organic puppy, with no visible mechanical parts. In what stands as the greatest sequence in He-Man and She-Ra’s history, the puppy softens the heart of Skeletor himself.

#11 M.A.D. Cat, Inspector Gadget

He does NOTHING. But he is super fluffy, and he strengthens the show’s James Bond riff (exactly what you want in a Saturday Morning Cartoon?) and whenever Claw pounds his fist on his desk he jumps up and hisses.

#10 Nero, Danger Mouse

So Baron Silas von Greenback is an evil toad, Danger Mouse’s nemesis, and he, like Dr. Claw, is also based on Blofeld. (What was with kids TV and James Bond?) Since he’s a toad and not a human, he needed a diminutive pet, and since Danger Mouse is flipping brilliant, they gave him a furry white caterpillar called Nero. Nero may actually be hyperintelligent, and more of a partner to the Baron than a pet, but this is left ambiguous.

#9 Spike, My Little Pony

Spike is a dragon among ponies. Much like Spike on Buffy, he’s trapped between two worlds: driven mad by his love for the ponies, and feeling like an outcast in the dragon world. In one episode a young knight shows up and tries to slay Spike, but the ponies talk him into finding a good deed that doesn’t involve stabbing their sentient friend to death. Spike gets a serious upgrade in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, where he becomes the coolest thing anyone can ever be: a dragon librarian.

#8 Kowl, She-Ra: Princess of Power

In my notes I had Kowl down as “that owl thing from She-Ra.” Kowl seemed to be an attempt to recreate that Orko magic, except She-Ra already had Madame Razz, a witch who knew Adora’s secret identity as She-Ra. So Kowl is a flying koala/owl, who also knows Adora’s secret, and who doesn’t have magic, but who does have ears that are also wings! He flaps around being cute and snarking on all the other characters. According to Wiki Grayskull “most of his relatives are dead.” Bummer.

#7 [shudder] Orko, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Orko is a great example of why comic relief characters don’t really work in sword-and-sorcery stories. Orko is a Trollan (you know, from Trolla) who got trapped in Eternia during a terrible cosmic storm. He saved Prince Adam and his pet tiger cub, Cringer, and was then made court jester, but spends his life desperately trying to recapture his old magic…which of course backfires every time and puts all of his loved ones in terrible danger. Repeatedly. Like, every week. And this could be cool, but it clashes so starkly with the rest of the show, which is already a weird hybrid of epic fantasy and technobabble, and then Orko never gets any better, and then you learn that other Trollans are actually good at magic, and maybe it’s because he lost his magical pendant, but come on.

He does make for a great Halloween costume, though.

#6 Glomer, Punky Brewster

Like a lot of successful TV shows and movies of the 80s, Punky Brewster got an animated spinoff. This allowed the writers to add a fantasy element that wouldn’t work in the live-action sitcom, which meant that Punky’s longtime canine companion Brandon is busted down to second-tier sidekick status in favor of one GLOMER, a raccoon I guess? magical creature from the land of “Chaudoon,” a tiny community at the foot of a rainbow that disappears when the rainbow does and is totally its own thing and not a Brigadoon rip-off at all. The theme song explains that Glomer, having been left behind by his rainbow and separated forever from all that he knows and love, must secretly live with Punky in Chicago. He uses his magic (yes, of course he’s magical) to transport her all over the world. In one episode, his magical intervention causes Social Services to rip Punky away from her guardian Henry, and leave her with a woman who owns a candy factory who uses foster kids as slave labor! (Saturday Morning Cartoons FTW!) Realizing his error Glomer says, and this is a direct quote: “Glomer boo-booed—Punky friend in hot soup!”

#5 Uni, Dungeons and Dragons

If you’re going to turn D&D into a TV show, you damn well better make it with the magical creatures. 1983’s Dungeons and Dragons did not disappoint, and in the pilot episode Bobby—the party’s Barbarian and youngest member—adopts a baby unicorn named Uni. Uni could kind of talk (mostly echoing Bobby’s words) and could teleport using her horn, but as she was a tiny adorable baby, she could only do this intermittently. And of course, since Bobby was the youngest, and very attached to her, she could easily become a liability for the evil Venger to exploit.

But who cares, look at her! She’s so cute.

#4 Slimer, The Real Ghostbusters

In the 1984 hit Ghostbusters, Slimer is a kind of B-level antagonist. He’s a big sloppy ghost who just wants to eat everything he can fit into his mouth, he coats Peter Venkman in ectoplasm, and he’s explicitly based on John Belushi.

In the cartoon spinoff of Ghostbusters, Slimer is suddenly the Ghostbusters’…pet? He hangs out with Janine in the office, he goes along on cases and helps the guys bust fellow ghosts, and for this complicity he is spared the horrors of the holding tank. This show was already called The Real Ghostbusters to appease Filmation, who had its own animated show called Ghostbusters, based on a television show from the 1970s. Later on, after producers noticed that children freaking loved Slimer, he took over the show Webster-style. Suddenly we lived in a bizarro world where Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters was a thing, as though Slimer had always been the true founder of the Ghostbusting franchise, and the Real Ghostbusters were but his human sidekicks. Slimer also fought his own nemesis, mad scientist Professor Norman Dweeb, who also had an animal sidekick in the form of a pink poodle called Elizabeth, but that’s just too damn many sidekicks and she’s not getting her own entry.

My main discovery in writing this article is that the world of children’s cartoons is a mine field.

#3 Cringer/Battle Cat, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Cringer is a classic children television character because if you look at him, he should be terrifying: a huge green and yellow tiger with long, human-eating-sized fangs! But instead he’s a neurotic, literal scaredy cat, cowering behind Prince Adam and avoiding conflict harder than an annoyed Minnesotan. But! When Prince Adam transforms into He-Man, he zaps Cringer with a bolt of lightning from his sword, transforming his pet into Battle Cat—bigger, be-muscled, and outfitted with a nifty red saddle and face horned face plate. Cringer speaks in a frightened, Scooby Doo-ish voice, but Battle Cat snarls his lines, because he is All Business.

#3 (Yes, it’s a tie!) Spirit/Swift Wind, She-Ra: Princess of Power

Spirit is a lovely white horse who proved that he was awesome by remaining loyal to Princess Adora when she defected from the evil Horde. When Adora was transformed into She-Ra, Spirit becomes Swift Wind—a unicorn/pegasus hybrid (easily the coolest fantasy animal) with rainbow wings and a fabulous bisexual pride mask. He also spoke in a startlingly deep and sonorous voice. In a world of garish Lisa Frank unicorns, Swift Wind is an icon of strength and subtlety.

#2 Brain, Inspector Gadget

Inspector Gadget was already kind of a hard sell? A cyborg detective parody of Inspector Clouseau crossed with James Bond’s Q—except spectacularly unintelligent—is locked in an eternal battle with a criminal organization called MAD, headed up by one Dr. Claw, himself a Dr. No/Blofeld pastiche. Add in that the fact that Gadget’s tween niece, Penny is the one who actually solves the crimes, and you have a deeply weird show. But then the writers decided to blow everything straight to hell and give Penny a hyper-intelligent dog (referred to as her “adopted brother” by the show’s Wikipedia page) and make him the one who does the legwork of thwarting Claw, usually while wearing disguises that make Gadget think he’s a MAD agent. And he can kinda talk? And clearly understands spoken and written English?

#1 Penfold, Danger Mouse

Some of you may not agree with my choice of Penfold for number one sidekick. And yet! He is the perfect blend of bumbling-and-cowardly, but also sometimes surprisingly brave. His comic relief gags are actually funny. He has a variety of catchphrases, ranging from “Cor!” to “Oh, crumbs!” that are incredibly British and inoffensive, but he can make them sound like swears if he’s distressed enough. The scrapes he gets into are borne out of a desire to help, and to be a great secret agent like his mentor/employer/life-partner, DM. And every once in a while he pulls off some heroics!

Plus? He wears a suit to work.

How many of you wear a suit to work?

So there you have it, a pile of technicolor cartoon sidekicks! Who’s your favorite? Did I forget any beloved childhood icons? Let me know below!

In the second century AD, the Roman writer Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis interrupted the winding plot of his novel, Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass (a title used to distinguish the work from its predecessor, Ovid’s Metamorphoses) to tell the long story of Cupid and Psyche—long enough to fill a good 1/5 of the final, novel length work. The story tells of a beautiful maiden forced to marry a monster—only to lose him when she tries to discover his real identity.

If this sounds familiar, it should: the story later served as one inspiration for the well-known “Beauty and the Beast,” where a beautiful girl must fall in love with and agree to marry a beast in order to break him from an enchantment. It also helped inspire the rather less well-known “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” where the beautiful girl marries a beast—and must go on a quest to save him.

I like this story much more.

“East of the Sun, West of the Moon” was collected and published in 1845 by Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, and later collected by Andrew Lang in his The Blue Fairy Book (1889). Their tale beings with a white bear deciding to knock on the door of a poor but large family. So poor that when the bear asks for the youngest daughter, promising to give the family a fortune in return, the father’s response is not “Hell, no,” or even “Wait a minute. Is this bear talking?” or “Can I see a bank statement first?” but “Hmm, let me ask her.” The daughter, not surprisingly, says no, but after three days of lectures and guilt trips from her father, climbs up on the back of the bear, and heads north.

I must admit that when I first read this story, I missed all of the questionable bits, because I could only focus on one bit: she was getting to ride on a bear! Talk about awesome. And something easy enough for Small Me, who rarely even got to ride ponies, to get excited about.

Which was probably not the right reading. After all, in most of these tales, the youngest daughter bravely volunteers to go to the home of the monstrous beast—either to save her father (in most versions) or because she believes she deserves it, for offending the gods (the Cupid and Psyche version) or because an oracle said so (also the Cupid and Psyche version, featuring the typical classical motif of “easily misunderstood oracle.) This girl initially refuses. To be fair, she’s not under the orders of an oracle, and to be also fair, her father’s life isn’t at stake. What is at stake: money, and she does not want to be sold.

Nor can it exactly be comforting to learn that her parents are willing to turn her over to a bear—even a talking bear—for some quick cash.

Illustration by Kay Nielsen (1914); Click to enlarge

But her parents need the money. So. In the far north, the girl and the bear enter a mountain, finding a castle within. I must admit, I’ve never quite looked at mountains the same way again: who knows what they might be hiding, underneath that snow. During the day, the girl explores the palace, and only has to ring for anything she might want.

And every night, a man comes to her in her bed—a man she never sees in the darkness.

Eventually, all of this gets lonely, and the girl wants to return home—thinking of her brothers and sisters. The bear allows her to leave—as long as she doesn’t talk to her mother. That, too, is a twist in the tale. In most versions, mothers are rarely mentioned: the dangers more usually come from the sisters, evil, jealous, concerned or all three.

In this version, the mother is very definitely on the concern side, convinced that her daughter’s husband is, in fact, a troll. A possibility that should have occurred to you when he showed up to your house as a talking bear, but let us move on. She tells her daughter to light a candle and look at her husband in the dark. Her daughter, having not studied enough classical literature to know what happened to her predecessor Psyche after she does just that, lights the candle, finding a handsome prince.

Who immediately tells her that if she had just waited a little longer, they would have been happy, but since she didn’t, he now must marry someone else—and go and live east of the sun and west of the moon.

This seems, to put it mildly, a bit harsh on everyone concerned. Including the someone else, very definitely getting a husband on the rebound, with a still very interested first wife. After all, to repeat, this version, unlike others, features a concerned mother, not evil sisters trying to stir up trouble. Nonetheless, the prince vanishes, leaving the girl, like Psyche, abandoned in the world, her magical palace vanished.

Like Psyche, the girl decides to search for help. This being an explicitly Christian version—even if the Christianity comes up a bit later in the tale—she does not exactly turn to goddesses for assistance. But she does find three elderly women, who give her magical items, and direct her to the winds. The North Wind is able to take her east of the sun and west of the moon. Deliberate or not, it’s a lovely callback to the Cupid and Psyche tale, where Zephyr, the West Wind, first took Psyche to Cupid.

Unlike Psyche, the girl does not have to complete three tasks. She does, however, trade her three magical gifts to the ugly false bride with the long nose, giving her three chances to spend the night with her husband. He, naturally, sleeps through most of this, but on the third night he finally figures out that just maybe his false wife is giving him a few sleeping potions, skips his nightly drink, and tells his first wife that she can save him if she’s willing to do some laundry.

No. Really.

That’s what he says: he has a shirt stained with three drops of tallow, and he will insist that he can only marry a woman who can remove the stains.

Trolls, as it happens, are not particularly gifted at laundry—to be fair, this is all way before modern spot removers and washing machines. The girl, however, comes from a poor family who presumably couldn’t afford to replace clothes all that often and therefore grew skilled at handwashing. Also, she has magic on her side. One dip, and the trolls are destroyed.

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It’s a remarkably prosaic ending to a story of talking bears, talking winds, and talking…um, trolls. But I suppose it is at least easier than having to descend to the world of the dead, as Psyche does in one of her tasks, or needing to wear out three or seven pairs of iron shoes, as many of the girls in this tale are told they must do before regaining their husbands. In some ways, it’s reassuring to know that a prince can be saved by such common means.

In other ways, of course, the tale remains disturbing: the way that, after having to sacrifice herself for her family, the girl is then blamed for following her mother’s instructions—and forced to wander the world for years, hunting down her husband, and then forced to give up the magical golden items she’s gained on the journey just for a chance to speak to him. (The story does hurriedly tell us that she and the prince do end up with some gold in the end.)

But I can see why the tale so appealed to me as a child, and continues to appeal to me now: the chance to ride a talking bear, the hidden palace beneath a mountain, the chance to ride the North Wind to a place that cannot possibly exist, but does, where a prince is trapped by a troll. A prince who needs to be saved by a girl—who, indeed, can only be saved by a girl, a doing something that even not very magical me could do.

No wonder I sought out the other variants of this tale: “The Singing, Springing Lark,” collected by the Grimms, where the girl marries a lion, not a bear, and must follow a trail of blood, and get help from the sun, the moon, and the winds, and trade her magical dress for a chance to speak with the prince; “The Enchanted Pig,” a Romanian tale collected by Andrew Lang, where the girl marries a pig, not a bear, and must wear out three pairs of iron shoes and an iron staff, and rescue her prince with a ladder formed from chicken bones; “The Black Bull of Norroway,” a Scottish variant where the girl almost marries a bull, and can only flee from a valley of glass after iron shoes are nailed to her feet; “The Feather of Finist the Falcon,” a Russian variant where the girl must also wear out iron shoes in order to find her falcon—and her love.

These are brutal tales, yes, but ones that allowed the girls to have adventures, to do the rescuing, and to speak with animals and stars and winds and the sun and the moon. Among my very favorite fairy tales.

Mari Ness lives in central Florida.

Autonomous, Annalee Newitz’s vision of a future full of sentient robots, indentured humans, and patent-looting pirates, is coming to the small screen! AMC has optioned Newitz’s debut novel as a television series, with the io9 cofounder and author cowriting the pilot.

Newitz shared the news (which was announced on Publishers Marketplace) on Twitter:

At last it can be told! AMC has optioned my novel AUTONOMOUS for TV, plus they bought a pilot script from the incredible, brilliant showrunner @absegel and me. I am stunned and ecstatic and zooming around!!! pic.twitter.com/9MWafUHBr7

— Annalee Newitz (@Annaleen) November 15, 2018

Newitz cowrote the pilot with TV writer/producer/showrunner Amanda Segel, known for Person of Interest, The Mist, Nikita, and more.

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Read an excerpt from Autonomous and learn more about this engrossing speculative novel:

Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.

Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack’s drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand.

And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?

Newitz’s next novel from Tor Books will be The Future of Another Timeline, slated for Fall 2019: a mind-bending and thought-provoking speculative thriller about a group of time-traveling geologists who are trying to prevent a dark future from coming to pass. Tor Books has also acquired The Terraformers (publishing Fall 2021), a multi-generational tale of love and politics, set against the backdrop of an awe-inspiring feat of environmental science; and a third book set for 2023, details forthcoming.

October may be done and dusted, but horror comics are a year round affair as far as I’m concerned. Alright, so technically Blackbird isn’t a horror comic—it has a similar feel as Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina—but Jook Joint most definitely is. Either way, if these two creeptastic Image series aren’t already in your subscription box, you need to rectify that, like, right now.

Blackbird

Ten years ago, Nina Rodriguez got a glimpse at a world she wasn’t supposed to see. Ever since then she’s been chasing that high—literally, in the case of all the pills and alcohol she consumes—to the exclusion of the rest of her life. Crashing on her sister’s couch, failing to turn in her college applications, and bartending at a seedy joint, Nina feels hollow. A chance encounter with her supposedly dead cat, a hot boy who can turn into a dog, and a terrifying monster thrusts her into the world of magic she believed lost to her. But when her sister is stolen away by a giant beast and a magically-enhanced hunter sets her sights on Nina, she may regret her eagerness.

I’ve had Blackbird on my pull list for months now, based solely on Jen Bartel’s involvement. I just adore her art. She’s at her best here, with stunning splash pages and emotional juxtapositions. Colors, provided by Bartel, Triona Farrell, and Nayong Wilson, bring Bartel’s art from striking to breathtaking. I can’t pick a favorite panel—they’re all so…wow. Letterer Jodi Wynne has a lot of work to do to keep up with the narration, otherworldly speech, and run-of-the-mill speech bubbles. To her credit, the comic is easy to read and understand.

Sam Humphries’ story is as much pulpy fantasy mystery as it is a realistic look at twentysomething ennui and emptiness. Ostensibly Nina self-medicates because she’s unable to gain entry into the world of the paragons—this world’s version of witches—but that’s a smoke screen. Her mother died in a terrible car accident, her father is a verbally abusive drunk, and her sister is frustrated and disappointed in Nina’s lack of direction. Even without magic, Nina would still be lost in a fog of her own making. Which is what makes Blackbird so good. It has a heart and a truth it longs to tell.

Writer: Sam Humphries; art: Jen Bartel; layout art: Paul Reinwand; colors: Nayoung Wilson, Jen Bartel, Triona Farrell; letters: Jodi Wynne; design: Dylan Todd; edits: Jim Gibbons. The first issue of this ongoing series was published by Image in October 2018.

Jook Joint

Dark magic lurks in a 1950s New Orleans jook joint in the Deep South as a coven exacts vicious vengeance on violent men. Mahalia uses her powers to brutally enforce her rules of respect and consent, and the women in her coven delight in retaliating against the men who break her rules. When a frightened mother, Heloise, seeks Mahalia’s help in stopping her abusive husband, Mahalia sets a trap from which he can never escape.

Tee Franklin is relatively new to the comics scene, but her most well-known comic, Bingo Love, was absolutely pitch perfect. In Jook Joint, Franklin has delivered yet another fire series. It feels cathartic, like Franklin was lifting a lifetime of trauma off her shoulders and onto the page. It’s empowering in a way, a story where women take men’s violence and turn it back on them. As grotesque as the acts of torture are, the men deserve every ounce of it. Alitha Martinez and Shari Chankhamma imbue Franklin’s script with fantastical realism. The art and colors are visceral and expressive, full of action and energy. Sometimes the shading and shadows overwhelm the art, but it’s lovely enough to look at that it’s hard to quibble. Taylor Esposito’s lettering is so well done you can almost hear the written words.

Thankfully, Franklin includes much needed trigger warnings for domestic abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. Jook Joint is disturbing and distressing, a swirling, sickening story that is as fascinating at as it is unsettling. It reminds me of another vengeful, witchy Image series, Vanesa R. Del Ray and Jordie Bellaire’s Redlands. Jook Joint isn’t a series for everyone, but if you like bloody revenge and gorgeously illustrated horror, you’re gonna wanna pick it up.

Writer: Tee Franklin; art: Alitha E. Martinez; colors: Shari Chankhamma; letters: Taylor Esposito; design: Justin Stewart; edits: Brendan Wright. The first of this five-issue miniseries was published by Image in October 2018.

Alex Brown is a YA librarian by day, local historian by night, pop culture critic/reviewer by passion, and an ace/aro Black woman all the time. Keep up with her every move on Twitter, check out her endless barrage of cute rat pics on Instagram, or follow along with her reading adventures on her blog.

Korede has her fair share of concerns in life: a declining familial fortune and social position, a frustrating job as a nurse in a large hospital with an irresponsible staff, a lack of romantic prospects, and a gorgeous but immature younger sister who has an unsavory habit of murdering her boyfriends. However, these problems don’t overlap until the afternoon Ayoola comes to visit Korede’s workplace and picks up the handsome young doctor Korede herself has feelings for—bare weeks after her most recent violent indiscretion and subsequent body disposal.

My Sister, The Serial Killer is a high-tension, hideously comedic work of literary horror fiction, a memorable debut from Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite. Korede’s role as a terse and smart narrator who also happens to lack self-awareness creates a fascinating dual experience for the reader, one that allows Braithwaite to deliver scathing social commentary in scenes her protagonist coasts past without comment or is herself at fault in. The mundane realism of the text—social media, crooked traffic cops, the dichotomy of being wealthy enough for a house maid but not enough to avoid working—makes the ethical questions of murder, consequences, and justification for protecting a family member that much sharper.

Some spoilers follow.

My Sister, The Serial Killer is an abrupt punch of a novel that leaves a commensurate confused ache, sweet-sore around the edges, with its refusal to offer ethically pleasant or neat conclusions. No one is without their sympathetic moments; at the same time no one is without cruelties, be they petty or immense. The sole person who comes off as potentially without blame is the murdered Femi, Ayoola’s third victim and the first one that prompts Korede to question her sister’s veracity. Except it’s still entirely possible that under the poetic public persona Korede saw, he was violent with Ayoola.

From one angle, the novel’s provocative question is: When is it acceptable to murder a man? From another, it’s: When is it acceptable to do damage control if the man is already dead? As My Sister, The Serial Killer progresses, we learn that the sisters killed their wealthy abusive father and weren’t caught. We also learn that it’s within the realm of possibility that Ayoola’s first murdered boyfriend was self-defense, and perhaps the second; Femi, the third victim, is the one that Korede doesn’t believe assaulted Ayoola. However, we cannot be sure of this, either. Furthermore, if Ayoola is seeking out men who will snap and offer her the excuse to murder, finding fault becomes a fascinating, ugly exercise.

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Ayoola is certainly a serial killer, but Braithwaite does an astounding job of making her appealing without being too appealing or romanticized. After all, she’s still spoiled, cruel, and selfish—vapid when she isn’t being brilliant, not concerned with the trouble she causes her sister, sure of other people’s worship of the ground she walks on. She’d already be in jail if it weren’t for Korede—or so Korede believes, so we the reader would have a hard time disproving it, as we’re only given her unreliable and self-interested version of events. Ayoola is impulsive, violent, and willing to toss Korede under the bus when she has to, but she’s also a victim herself and some of her choices are very understandable.

In contrast, Korede is practical and ruthless. She considers whether or not Ayoola might be a sociopath without once turning the same question inward, despite her willingness to dispose of corpses and lie to the police and Femi’s grieving relatives. Her sole concern is avoiding being caught. Even her attempts to keep Ayoola from posting inappropriate things on social media that would draw attention are oriented around her desire to have total control of her environment, in the same realm of behavior as her dismal treatment of her coworkers whom she all views as misbehaving idiots. Class, obviously, plays an unremarked upon but huge role in Korede’s approach to the world and other people.

I read the second half of the book in a state of aggravated distress, spooling out all the potential variables and endings with increasing dread. It becomes clear that Korede is not as sympathetic or blameless as she seems from her own perspective at the opening, clearer still that Ayoola is without the slightest ounce of remorse or compassion, and clearest yet that Tade is so smitten with surface beauty that it blinds him to his own danger. Braithwaite’s skill at manipulating her audience via sparse but scalpel-precise prose is such that, even in this moment, I still sneer at Tade’s treatment of Korede as she presents it.

Even knowing that what happens to him is unacceptable, even knowing that Korede is as much a villain as her sister, even knowing that his worst crime is being shallow, the reader is so immersed in Korede’s blunt, seemingly-objective narration that Tade’s punishment almost feels just. He has been judged against the other men in a patriarchal society that have abused, used, and lied to these sisters, and in the end he has been found wanting. The effect is both sympathetic and horrifying, forcing the reader into the same complicity as Korede but allowing enough breathing room that the closing scene—Korede coming downstairs to greet Ayoola’s new beau—raises the hairs on the back of the neck.

The realism is the kicker. While My Sister, The Serial Killer has its fair share of bleak comedic timing, it is above all a realistic stab at horror fiction—both commentary and performance. These people are all eminently human and that humanity is the source of discomfort, anxiety, upset: all the emotions we turn to horror to provoke in us. Ayoola murders men who, at bare minimum, objectify her and approach her with shallowness, blinded by her beauty; can she be blamed, after her father’s abuse and her experiences with men afterwards? Korede attempts to exert control over her environment as much as possible, down to her skill with cleaning, and doesn’t have much connection to an ethical framework—so it’s difficult to blame her when she thinks it’ll be easier, the first time, to just help Ayoola dispose of the body instead of going through a corrupt judicial system. The comatose man Korede pours out her secrets to keeps those secrets when he wakes; however, he isn’t the person she’d pretended he might be, and she burns his number rather than keeping in contact with him.

No one is simple, no one is right, and no one is without fault at the close of the novel. Braithwaite’s cutting observations of the social order from the police to the hospital to the aunt who pushes them to waste money they don’t have on a lavish event to commemorate her dead brother—these human moments make it impossible to ignore the horror of murder, of dishonesty, of innocent (or innocent enough) bystanders getting caught in the crossfire. And they get away with it. So, perhaps the horror, much like the incisive social observation, is in the reader’s mind, in the reader’s responses to the text. Braithwaite forces you to do the legwork of her fine, artisanal prose, feel the distress she’s created via tangling sympathy and disgust and morality into a mangled ball. It’s a hell of a debut, that’s for certain.

My Sister, The Serial Killer is available from Doubleday on November 20th.

Brit Mandelo is a writer, critic, and editor whose primary fields of interest are speculative fiction and queer literature, especially when the two coincide. They have two books out, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction and We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-telling, and in the past have edited for publications like Strange Horizons Magazine. Other work has been featured in magazines such as Stone Telling, Clarkesworld, Apex, and Ideomancer.

Sasha Samokhina has always been an average sort of girl, if a bit overly studious—at least, that’s what she always thought before meeting the strange and imperious Farit Kozhennikov while on vacation with her mother. The bizarre tasks Kozhennikov sets her to as she goes through her final year of high school leave her with a pile of strange gold coins, used to pay for her entrance to a college she’s never heard of and has no desire to attend. But Kozhennikov gives her no choice but to attend the Institute of Special Technologies, where the lessons in Specialty are at first completely incomprehensible and the students’ transgressions and failures are punished by harm to their families. Yet Sasha continues to push forward in her studies… and soon she finds herself transformed as she discovers the truth of the “Special Technologies” she’s studying so fervently.

First published in its original Russian in 2007, Vita Nostra is the first of Marina and Sergey Dyachenko’s Metamorphosis cycle, three unconnected novels addressing themes of transformation. Julia Meitov Hersey’s translation marks the novel’s entrance into the English-language market. The novel’s title comes from the Latin song “De Brevitate Vitae,” sometimes known as “Gaudeamus Igitur,” which is frequently sung in schools in Europe and sung at the start of each school year at the Institute. The line in full is Vita nostra brevis est, or, in English, “Our life is brief.” Following Sasha from the summer before her final year of high school through the placement test in the winter of her third year of college, Vita Nostra is a novel about transformation, growth, and the inevitability of maturing into adulthood, all in the brief span of just a few years of life.

The Dyachenkos address this most obviously with the fantastical elements of the story. The novel reads at first like an ominous and mature Harry Potter: rather than an unhappy child transported to a magical school to explore almost endless possibilities, Sasha is taken from her fairly happy though mundane life and brought to a postsecondary institution with one course of study and only one possible outcome. The strangeness of the Institute is most apparent in the Specialty course, where students are given bizarre coursework: memorizing passages they can’t read and that make no sense, booklets of “exercises” that seem impossible to solve, even assignments given on CD audio tracks. Sasha is the only student in her year who takes to the assignments right away. At first, it’s a matter of forcing herself in order to maintain decent grades, but slowly she becomes addicted to completing the exercises, which loop almost rhythmically into one another.

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Of course, the strange assignments are key to the transformation Sasha and her classmates will experience. Each member of the small class has a specific destiny that brought them to the Institute, kept hidden from them until the students are able to realize that destiny on their own. It’s only when they’re already in too deep that the students understand exactly what’s happening to them—and Sasha, a star student who studies relentlessly, is the first in her year to reach the right conclusion.

Maturation is itself addressed as a form of transformation over the course of the novel, explored through several facets of Sasha’s life as she departs girlhood and grows into womanhood while attending the Institute. Sharing a dorm with difficult roommates, her first sexual experiences, and defying parental expectations are as much a part of her transformation as the strange effects of her studies at the Institute. And, as her relationship with younger student Yegor proves, the mundane growth Sasha experiences informs the fantastic transformation she’s undergoing as well.

Possibly the most well-done transformation in Vita Nostra is the evolving relationship between Sasha and her mother. Prior to the events of the book, Sasha and her mother were always on their own, as Sasha’s father had left them. During the same vacation on which Sasha meets Kozhennikov, Sasha’s mother meets a man named Valentin, who intrudes upon their lives in a way Sasha is entirely unaccustomed to. For the first time, Sasha’s relationship with her mother is forced to evolve, just as Sasha herself is beginning to evolve, and the shift in dynamic feels familiar to me as I reflect on the way my own relationship with my parents evolved as I completed school and moved out on my own. The tension Sasha experiences with her mother and her mother’s new partner is enough for the reader to feel her isolation and her longing for things to be as they were when she was a child, and the weight of her mother’s expectations—ones that Sasha already outgrew—is a highlight in this coming-of-age story.

Like the exercises Sasha works through in the novel, Vita Nostra seems at first to be just beyond comprehension, but as readers proceed, it becomes more and more intoxicating as understanding blooms in the reader’s mind.

Vita Nostra is available from HarperVoyager.

Feliza Casano writes about science fiction, manga, and other geeky media around the internet. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she moderates two book clubs and lines her walls with stacks of books. Visit her online or follow her on Twitter @FelizaCasano.

The seventh book in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London urban fantasy series, Lies Sleeping, is available November 20th from DAW—and to celebrate, we want to send you a set of the whole series from DAW and Del Rey!

The Faceless Man, wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud, and crimes against humanity, has been unmasked and is on the run. Peter Grant, Detective Constable and apprentice wizard, now plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring him to justice.

But even as the unwieldy might of the Metropolitan Police bears down on its foe, Peter uncovers clues that the Faceless Man, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long term plan. A plan that has its roots in London’s two thousand bloody years of history, and could literally bring the city to its knees.

To save his beloved city, Peter’s going to need help from his former best friend and colleague, Lesley May, who brutally betrayed him and everything he thought she believed in. And, far worse, he might even have to come to terms with the malevolent supernatural killer and agent of chaos known as Mr. Punch….

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 November 15th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on November 19th. 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.

Rolling in the Deep, Mira Grant’s (a.k.a. Seanan McGuire) science horror novella about a documentary crew who venture into the Mariana Trench in search of a mermaid hoax, only to discover that mermaids are real and very deadly, is becoming a movie! Variety reports that Branded Pictures Entertainment will produce the adaptation, with Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert at the helm.

McGuire shared the exciting news on Twitter, including her delight at Lambert joining the project:

Sing a sweet and sailing song,
The sirens call to me:
Trust them not to guide you wrong,
Or lure you out to sea…

Sing a sweet and sailing song,
Set sail and chase the tide.
The sea is deep, the waves are strong.
The depths will be your bride…https://t.co/85VUvXpB7v

— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) November 15, 2018

And like, these mermaids, these terrifying mermaids, they're so much just the tip of the murder iceberg, and this is so amazing, and I am so excited.

— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) November 15, 2018

And what does Lambert think? “Rolling in the Deep is a film led by complicated badass female characters,” she said in the official announcement. “I’ve been waiting to make a film like this my entire career. Our mermaids are not cliché sugary cartoon princesses; they will take you down if you stand in their way.”

Rolling in the Deep, which the Lovecraft Reread recently revisited, was published by Subterranean Press in 2015 and is followed by a full-length sequel, Into the Drowning Deep, from Orbit Books. The summary:

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

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

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

“We loved Mira’s book when we read it and immediately recognized its feature potential in a market hungry for frightening yet unique fare,” said J. Todd Harris, BPE founder and president, as well as a producer on the project. “The combination of acclaimed filmmakers Mary Lambert and Sean Hood is the perfect pairing to realize the book’s potential.”

BPE executive Marc Marcum added, “The story has elements of The Shallows, 47 Meters Down, Dead Calm, and even Alien. It is meant to be the definitive adaptation of the original mermaid myth that goes back to the dawn of civilization.”

Production is expected to take place in 2019. No word yet on release date.

I didn’t read any romance books growing up. Or at least, not anything that would today be categorized as Romance, with a capital R. As an immigrant child I mostly read books chosen for me by my parents, who were keen to make sure I retained the language we spoke at home and who didn’t always have a lot of available books to choose from, in the pre-digital age.

I did read a lot of science fiction and a lot of historical fiction, among other things: Asimov, Sheckley, Bradbury, Dumas, Sabatini, Jules Verne (all of whom I read in translation). In almost every genre, works by male authors tend to be considered the “classics” and “mandatory reads,” so perhaps that was why I read relatively few women authors. And perhaps that’s why now, as an adult, it’s particularly glaring to me that books categorized as Romance, overwhelmingly written by women, are so often shunned from the spotlight of mainstream SF/F, no matter how many science fiction or fantasy elements they contain.

So, let me tell you about KJ Charles, an author you should check out if you haven’t already, if you enjoy fantasy books.

In my experience, people who’ve read at least two of Charles’ books (she’s published about twenty of them) have a tendency to then read extensive swaths of her backlist. Her novels provide something rare in the literary market even today, in 2018: well-researched historical, fantastical fiction that features love stories between queer people.

Genres are flawed, porous constructs, and many stories live in between the established categories or straddle several of them, which doesn’t make a bookseller’s job very easy. The reason we recommend a book by saying “it’s X genre” is that it’s a shortcut to saying: “it’s the sort of thing you like.”

So, to be clear, if we had to pick just one box to put Charles’ books in, that box would read “Romance” with a capital R. The focus of the stories is always a relationship between two people, and that relationship ends happily, for various values of “happy,” every time. But many books that are considered primarily SF/F are also centered on relationships, and many of those relationships also end happily—for example, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown, and Gail Carriger’s Soulless (the last two even take place in settings similar to Charles’).

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The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal is a pastiche/tribute/alternative universe version of Sherlock Holmes, an ever-popular form of reinventing the cultural canon. (It’s been most recently explored in SF/F by Claire O’Dell in A Study in Honor and Aliette de Bodard in The Tea Master and the Detective.)

Simon Feximal is a somewhat gruff, eccentric but brilliant ghost hunter at the very end of the 19th century in London. His main aim is to help people, and he frequently saves them from mysterious, unexplained spells of bad luck, or solves bizarre murder cases, but you wouldn’t know it from his introverted nature. Robert Caldwell is a journalist who initially meets Feximal when he needs help with a haunted mansion that Caldwell inherits from a distant relative. After a few other run-ins, they begin a relationship that lasts for over twenty years. Caldwell, forced out of his original career, becomes Feximal’s chronicler, writing stories about his exploits much the same way Watson did with Holmes.

But Charles’ book isn’t a collection of those stories. Instead it’s the “secret” casebook, the one Robert Caldwell was unable to commit to print and ordered be published only after his death, containing the censored bits, missing scenes, and subtext made explicit from a fictional larger body of work. In Charles’ book, Caldwell can finally express the real truth of his life: that he solved supernatural mysteries not with his dear friend but with his lover. That they lived in the same house not because it was convenient, but because they were a couple.

While the book begins as a very obvious Sherlock Holmes pastiche, it also builds a supernatural world—in a way, it’s as if all the red herrings in Sherlock’s cases that pointed to spirits and spells and ghosts were real in this universe. Feximal’s backstory is quite different from Holmes’: adopted as a boy by an occultist who already had a daughter, he and his sister were subjected to cruel experimentation that left them with different superpowers. One of Caldwell’s “censored” stories concerns tracking down Feximal’s “father,” barred from further occult business, and begging for his help in saving Simon’s life.

The price for this help requires Caldwell to make sacrifices, and one of the conditions is that Feximal and Caldwell have to be in close proximity to each other for the rest of their lives. But of course, forcing the two together isn’t really a punishment—something no one realizes and works to the heroes’ advantage.

Charles often uses the fact that gay people had to hide much of their lives in 19th century England to complicate her plots and demonstrate how secrecy and cultural erasure could occasionally be a blessing…but often were a curse.

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In Spectered Isle, Charles returns to the same universe, now an England dealing with the aftermath of the first World War, in which the government forced occultists, including women and men too old for the draft, to aid in Britain’s war effort. In the supernatural arms race England lost the vast majority of its “powerful” people, after too many summonings of unnatural forces have shredded the veil separating our world from the beyond. While in Feximal’s stories ghosts are rare and difficult to summon, in Spectered Isle England is teeming with supernatural activity and many things that shouldn’t be possible, or were never possible before, suddenly are.

The changes reflected in the post-war social order, with many noble families losing their fortunes and England undergoing a social shift, also affect the occult world. Having brought occultists under government control in the name of king and country, Whitehall now wants to consolidate that power and reform the occult world, turning a network of unofficial connections into a centralized government office that handles occult business and tells everyone what to do.

At the center of this attempted power grab are two traitors. Randolph Glyde, scion of an ancient English family that’s produced the guardians of various English sites of supernatural power and protection (such as Camlet Mote) for many centuries, and Saul Lazenby, an Oxford archeologist and former soldier.

Glyde abandoned his family at the end of the war and refused to aid in further occult warfare; after their deaths, he ends up carrying all their collective supernatural responsibilities by himself. Lazenby was stationed far from home and had a secret affair with a local man who then passed on information about Lazenby’s garrison to the Ottomans who wiped them all out. Lazenby, the only survivor, was dishonorably discharged, spent two years in prison and returned to an England where no one would hire him to so much as sweep the streets.

Spectered Isle introduces the Green Men, a collection of people with supernatural powers, some inherited and some thrust upon them, who attempt to sort out their own lives and priorities while attempting to protect England from everything from fen-grendels to vastly powerful, vengeful spirits bent on destroying London. These include soldiers who endured experimentation during WWI and have become “abominations” (complete with occasionally appearing tentacles) as well as Feximal and Caldwell’s adopted children, who are either born with abilities or acquire them to help carry on the cause.

The wonderful thing about Charles’ writing is that it’s grounded in a very mundane, well-researched atmosphere, where British society is complex and layered and the weight of history is felt throughout. But at the same time her stories are whimsical and cheerful, dealing with people who’ve been through terrible things but still find a way to carry on, reconciling not only their secret superpowers but their queerness with the social norms of the age.

That said, if you’d like a world less about ghosts and mythological creatures, preferring one that deals with more “proper” magic and its politics and philosophy in the style of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, there’s always Charles’ other supernatural universe, the Charm of Magpies series.

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Published in 2013, it’s difficult not to see the influence of Susanna Clarke in the first book, The Magpie Lord, in particular. In this universe some people are born with magical abilities which are broadly connected to natural elements, like being able to manipulate air or water. But magic is also a craft that can be learned and honed, and has been known to the government forever. The legendary practitioner known as “The Magpie Lord” codified its use and established a magical “police” called the justiciary to work as part of the government, keeping an eye on magic users to make sure that their powers don’t cause serious harm.

The exploration of this universe across the five books of the series (as well as several free short stories and one novella) deals with questions about how powerful but extremely rare magic users should be handled. The first few books focus on justiciar Stephen Day, whose family was ruined by their association with a powerful noble who held a terrible grudge. Stephen considers himself a competent magic user who’s spent a long time studying and perfecting his craft, but his job as a magical cop feels like a daily uphill battle. The department is barely budgeted and the job requires frequently risking his life and hoping he’s stronger than other, often far more privileged practitioners.

In Stephen’s eyes, the justiciary is the country’s only line of defense against people who have enough money to be tempted by absolute power, who can use their magical abilities to take over the government or subjugate innocent people. As magical energy always has to be drawn from somewhere, practitioners are forever tempted to draw it from ordinary humans, in a sort of cannibalism that eventually does end with the victim wasting away to nothing.

In later books, however, other protagonists offer a very different view. Jonah Pastern, who first shows up in Stephen’s stories as a clever antagonist and later gets his own narrative, was an orphan boy with the ability to manipulate air and therefore essentially fly. He was found early by the justiciary, who turned him over to a couple of practitioners who were supposed to teach him better control over his powers and bring him into the larger magical community.

Instead, his foster parents used Jonah as unpaid labor and never bothered to educate him at all. Coupled with the fact that he was illiterate (and, it is implied, dyslexic), there was no recourse for him, as was the case for many orphan children in the late 19th century who found themselves with no social safety net beyond the kindness of strangers.

Jonah eventually builds a life for himself, but that life is predicated on stealing and conning people using his powers—something that eventually attracts the justiciary’s attention. Since Jonah is now an adult, the justiciary opts for punishment rather than reform. Jonah’s sentence is that his Achilles tendons will be cut, “hobbling” him in both the magical and the physical sense.

The person on Jonah’s trail and eager to administer the punishment? Stephen Day. In the eyes of someone who comes from the opposite of privilege, Stephen appears to be a terrifyingly powerful practitioner who’s used to acting as judge, jury, and executioner. All Stephen has to do is consult a few colleagues, for example his boss Esther Gold, to decide someone’s fate. Since magical powers are so rare and the Magpie Lord gave justiciars absolute authority (as an alternative to practitioners avenging their own grievances or dispensing mob justice) the government is content to let people like Stephen decide who should be injured for life, and who should be killed.

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In Rag and Bone, the start of new but related series, we find another part of the puzzle: a practitioner named Crispin who was unwittingly the apprentice of a warlock—a practitioner turned “cannibal”—and now that his master has been killed by the justiciary, Crispin’s fate is in question. If he can prove that he can use magic productively, as it should be used, before Stephen Day retires and Esther Gold goes on maternity leave, he can be released into the world. If not, he’ll likely be executed.

Crispin’s boyfriend is Ned Hall, a Londoner of African descent, and together they have to save the city while the justiciary is busy with bigger problems. It serves to further underscore how much the magical community is terrible at taking care of vulnerable people—perhaps even more so than the British government, because it’s forced to operate in secret. Terrible things can happen to someone when keeping their essential nature from the population at large is a major priority. That’s true for magic as it is for queerness.

In this series in particular, Charles constantly underscores how the need to maintain secrecy could often complicate an otherwise uncomplicated life, or make a tricky situation untenable.

For example, Stephen Day’s partner is Lucien Vaudrey, the new Lord Crane, unknowingly a descendant of the Magpie Lord himself, though born without any magic capabilities, who spent most of his life in exile in Shanghai as his father’s disappointing second son. One of the ways to transfer magical energy is through bodily fluids. And as Crane is an enormous source of such energy, being a descendant of the Magpie Lord, Stephen quickly starts drawing more and more of it simply by having sex with him regularly. This presents a problem, as Stephen’s justiciary colleagues notice the change and wonder where his immense power is coming from. If relationships between men weren’t illegal, Stephen could publicly explain what was happening. But as it is, Stephen has to keep the relationship secret and get into further and further trouble, as suspicions about him being a warlock begin to mount.

Charles’ books blend history and magic in relatively unusual ways for mainstream SF/F. The focus on queer relationships allows her to highlight how systems of oppression can sometimes be “beneficial” (in giving the protagonists a secret no one knows about, something their enemies don’t anticipate), but mostly complicate magical lives and make everything more dangerous in a setting that’s firmly grounded in real history.

So, why isn’t Charles better known in SF/F circles? Maybe we don’t always have to pick a single box to put a story in. Maybe we should make room and try stories that use the tropes of our genre even if they’re primarily capital-R books. Maybe now that you know more about KJ Charles, you’ll check out her work? But even if you don’t, or you find that it’s not to your liking, I hope I’ve at least introduced you to a different kind of fantasy than what you’re used to.

Marina Berlin is an author, poet and media critic who grew up speaking three languages in a city by the sea. Her writing has appeared in Vice, IGN, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, and other venues. You can read some of her stories and poems on her website or read her opinions about your favorite book/movie/TV show on Twitter @berlin_marina.

The reboot of She-Ra is now available to binge on Netflix, and you really wanna set aside some time for this one. Want to know a little more? Here are a few thoughts on the two-part opener…

She-Ra begins with with “The Sword: Part 1 and 2,” and for fans of the original cartoon, a lot of the basic beats are still there. Adora is an orphan (as far as we know) raised to be a member of the Horde. She’s promoted to Force Captain only to find the Sword of Protection in enemy territory and learn that she can transform into She-Ra, Princess of Power. She ends up joining the opposing side of the war she was once fighting, creating a rift with her old comrade Catra (promoted here to a true friend in Adora’s life as opposed to the aggressive antagonist of the original cartoon). The divide between Adora and Catra is clearly set as one of the main arcs of the series, and it’s incredibly compelling—more so when you consider how rare it is to have the larger emotional arc of a genre television show centered on a relationship between two women who aren’t related.

And it’s a best friend to best enemy relationship, which is just… I feel like I, personally, was handed a very specific gift? Just for me? If you’re a fan of Thor-Loki or Doctor-Master or Buffy-Faith type dynamics, this show is ready for you. It lives where you live. Except instead of coming in after the relationship is already broken up, which is more common, we get to watch it fall apart in real time.

The setup is simple enough, but the show’s rainbow visuals, delightful cast, and crackling sense of humor are anything but. It has a great deal in common spiritually with other animated luminaries of the past decade or so, from Avatar: The Last Airbender to Steven Universe, leaving a lot to love in its wake. Adora’s transformation sequence every time she takes up the sword is sure to please fans of Sailor Moon as well. (Can I please get dressed like that every morning? This appeases my need for drama greatly.) The planet of Etheria feels very much its own world, and the redesigns of familiar faces really make the whole look cohere beautifully. (Did I mention that Shadow Weaver is played by Lorraine Toussaint? And doesn’t look like an overgrown Jawa anymore? And that she’s played by Lorraine Toussaint???)

The title has been changed to Princesses of Power for a reason, though; this series intends to take the periphery characters of the original cartoon and turn them into their own superteam—Adora’s friend Glimmer is one of the princesses in question, and there’s mention of an old princess alliance that existed before the Horde gained more power. The show is moving toward uniting a crew of warriors who will each have their own people to think of, and their own abilities to bring to the table. There are characters without “powers” as well, exemplified by Bow, Glimmer’s BFF who is an expert archer and all-around lovable anchor. He serves as the group’s common sense sounding board, which is entirely subversive from where I’m sitting; the general rule of fiction allows boys to be reckless and make mistakes and try new things, while women are always called on to be staid and sensible and prevent everyone from getting into trouble. In this particular setup, we have a core trio that features two women who rush into danger and don’t enjoy stopping to mull over their options while their guy pal frets behind them, desperate to get them to slow down.

Of course, that’s the dynamic that we can see coming, unformed as it is—as far as the first episodes are concerned, it takes Glimmer a little while to get on board with the whole “befriending the enemy” deal. Alongside their developing relationship, the show seems poised to take a sharp look at isolationism, particularly in the way the various princess kingdoms have drawn apart since the end of their alliance. If the theme of She-Ra is that we must unite to defeat darkness, rely on each other’s strengths and bolster one another when we feel weakest, then it’s timely as ever. The trust that builds suddenly between Adora, Glimmer, and Bow drives the story forward, but it’s also a guiding principle that is promptly lauded as a strength that the trio share.

While it is unclear from these opening episodes as to whether or not the series will have queer characters, the show reads as utterly queer in just about every aspect. In fact, if you were to make the argument that there’s no such thing as heterosexuality on Etheria, it wouldn’t be a hard sell. (I am making that argument, in case that wasn’t clear.) Most of the characters so far read fluidly on the gender and sexuality spectrum. Even more excitingly, there’s an incredible range of animated body types and skin tones on display. This is a major swerve away from the original She-Ra, where the goal of selling toys meant that all the female characters had the same figure—making it easier to use the same toy mold and interchangeable accessories. This time, we get a cast that will give every little girl and boy and gender non-conforming kid someone to look up to, someone who they can align with for any number of reasons, be it hair color, awesome hobbies, or curvier hips.

This shouldn’t be a surprise coming from showrunner Noelle Stevenson, whose previous work on her comics Lumberjanes and Nimona always showcased a fantastic array of female characters. It means a lot to see Stevenson working to fill in such a sizable gap in animation and space fantasy epics; while we’ve had a few trailblazers showing the way, there still aren’t that many offerings that feature the sheer number female leads that She-Ra is setting itself up to showcase. And there’s hopefully more to come, too: while the creative team originally started with a plan for one season, they’ve now expanded to four (though the show has not yet been officially renewed). With any luck, we’ll have a lot more coming (and so many group cosplays to look forward to). Here’s to the Princess Alliance, and all the battles they’ve yet to win.

Also have you heard the theme song yet? You really should. You really, really—you know what, here you go:

Emily Asher-Perrin will say that there is a character named Emily later on who is an accurate portrayal. You can bug him on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

Lies Sleeping is the latest instalment in Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series of magical murder mysteries, set in London and featuring a London Metropolitan police force that really doesn’t want to have to admit that magic exists. Lies Sleeping is the seventh full-length novel in a series that also encompasses several graphic novels and at least one novella. Peter Grant’s London has depth, breadth, and a complex array of recurring characters, and every one of the novels can be relied on to start with a bang.

I know I read The Hanging Tree, the previous novel in the sequence, but I have only the faintest recollection of any of its events. While Lies Sleeping is unlikely to make for an easy entry-point to the series—the complex array of recurring characters makes it much more advisable to start at the beginning, with Rivers of London (released in the U.S. as Midnight Riot)—it’s remarkably forgiving to my fuzziness on recent details. Lies Sleeping rapidly and efficiently brings the reader up to date on the doings of now-Detective Constable Peter Grant, apprentice wizard, and his boss Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale, actual wizard.

In short order, we learn that the individual known as the Faceless Man, wanted for multiple counts of murder, now has an identity that’s known to the police. Grant and Nightingale, and a large task force including DC Sahra Guleed, Grant’s sometime investigative partner, is on the trail of his possible known associates, to try to track him down.

Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant has a distinctive voice, one that makes even the bureaucracy of regular police work engaging and compelling. (It also makes Grant’s relationship with Beverly “Bev” Brook, one of the daughters of Mama Thames and herself a personification of one of the rivers of London, very entertaining.) But amidst the everyday legwork of tracking a dangerous murderer, Grant and his colleagues start uncovering signs that the Faceless Man isn’t, in fact, on the run. The Faceless Man might instead be carrying out a plan that will win him great power and irrevocably change the shape of London.

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Grant becomes part of a perilous game of cat and mouse, unsure whether he can trust the hints dropped to him by his former friend and colleague Lesley May—who betrayed him and everything he thought she believed, but who seems to want to keep him alive. With City lawyers engaged in goat-sacrificing rituals, magically active bells, and a series of thefts from archaeological sites around London, Grant has a puzzle on his hands. And then he falls into the Faceless Man’s hands himself…

Aaronovitch writes a tense, compelling police procedural with magic. As usual, Grant’s voice is striking, and the action gripping and intense. But while Lies Sleeping is generally well-paced, the pacing slacks off towards the climax, when Grant is temporarily taken out of play by his adversaries. This diminution of forward momentum at a crucial moment makes the climactic scenes feel somewhat rushed, a hasty—if explosive—conclusion to a dependably enjoyable story.

Let’s be honest: If you’ve read Aaronovitch’s other Peter Grant novels, you probably already know if you want to read Lies Sleeping. It’s a solid series novel, with few major surprises on either the character or plot development front—though I’m very fond of Guleed, and I appreciate Lies Sleeping‘s gestures towards the need for treating mental health issues and job-trauma-related stress. And one of the things I enjoy about this series is that Grant’s actions have consequences—he’s actually accountable to the rules and regulations of regular policing, even if he’s one of only two wizards in the Met’s employ.

I enjoyed Lies Sleeping. I fully expect to enjoy the next of Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant novels, when it comes out: they’re reliably entertaining.

Lies Sleeping is available from DAW Books on November 20th.

Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, was published in 2017 by Aqueduct Press. It was a finalist for the 2018 Locus Awards and was nominated for a 2018 Hugo Award in Best Related Work. Find her at her blog, where she’s been known to talk about even more books thanks to her Patreon supporters. Or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, and the Abortion Rights Campaign.

William Goldman, acclaimed author, screenwriter, raconteur, and chronicler of Broadway theater and Hollywood passed away yesterday at the age of 87. Goldman had a fascinating life and career, writing screenplays for classic movies in a broad array of genres, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President’s Men (1976), for which he won Academy Awards, The Stepford Wives (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Misery (1990). He also wrote the novel Marathon Man and the screenplay for the 1976 movie version starring Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier.

He is perhaps best known, though, for writing The Princess Bride, which was first published in 1973 and remains one of the most beloved stories of the last century. The movie version based on Goldman’s screenplay was directed and produced by Rob Reiner in 1987, and is easily one of the most delightful, most quotable, and most iconic comedy films of all time. If you’ve seen the movie and haven’t read the original novel, however, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy: Goldman’s writing, and his humor and intelligence, are worth experiencing firsthand. It’s an incredible book.

Born in Chicago in 1931, Goldman spent most of his life in New York, starting out as a novelist before his run as a sought-after screenwriter. In addition to his many fictional works, he also produced some rollicking non-fiction, such as The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969) and 1983’s acerbic, often hilarious Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. He was a gifted, funny, insightful writer who clearly cared deeply about the act of storytelling and the bonds it creates; he had a legendary career, and will be profoundly missed.