Review of The Great When by Alan Moore

Post-war London, the occult, alternate worlds, serial killers, blah, blah, blah... Acknowledging the keywords of a contemporary novel is uninspiring, to say the least. They push a book deeper into the milieu of modern publishing rather than distinguish it. But, what if I tell you Alan Moore's 2024 The Great When likewise possesses a superb authorial voice, characters with character, and a twisty story that constantly surprises? Hopefully sounds a bit more intriguing. Let's set the hook deeper.

The Great When follows one Dennis Knuckleyard, used bookshop assistant, in the post-WWII years of London. But it's not the London you know. Superficially it looks like your London, but there are doors, entryways to another, darker, surreal London. Dennis gets himself into a spot of trouble one day in Soho picking up a box of vintage Arthur Machen books. One of the books in the box exists only in fiction, but there it sits in Dennis' hands. The young man's world turned sideways in the aftermath, he is forced to explore the London you don't know to get rid of the book, meeting all manner of gangsters and artists, harlots and killers along the way.

Console Corner: Review of Dredge

For those who know the Myers-Briggs personality matrix, I am an INTJ. One thing this means is my brain is constantly looking to extrapolate patterns and trends to form a concept, a whole. In our modern flood of media, this can be a difficult personality type to have; there is so much—too much to digest and form a coherent idea. But one game did stick out of 2023's matrix of content: Dredge. Let's take a look at why possibly.

Dredge is a cosmic horror fishing game, or perhaps more precisely, a Lovecraftian trawling game. Players take on the role of a fishing boat captain who pilots around an odd archipelago of islands, catching a wide variety of fish and collecting ancient items. You collect the fish to pay your way, and you collect the items are for a strange recluse with an occult backstory that wants telling. Look no deeper (har har).

Review of The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria is one of those unique novels that will forever be on my list of overlooked gems. It received the recognition it deserved upon release (2014), but has since faded—the unfortunate fate of so many good novels released in our contemporary deluge of publishing. Samatar uses a quasi-high fantasy mode to tell of one young man's examination of the value of reading, writing, personal legacy, and ambition in a fictional African land. Atypical if anything, it's worth a read. Shifting gears, Samatar's 2024 novella The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain looks to go quasi-generation starship.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (hereafter PH&C) is the story of two characters, one called “the boy” and the other “the woman”. Both were previously members of the their ship's Hold, a place where people are kept incarcerated, chained to walls. At some time in the past, the woman was released from the Hold and moved higher in the ship to do research at a university. She still wears, however, a security anklet, an anklet that her university overseers can use, if they desire, to take physical control of her body. The woman is doing research on the behaviors and social practices of child's play in the Hold when she receives a welcome gift: the boy as a research subject. Unlocking things inside herself she never knew possible, the lives of the boy and the woman take on new trajectories in the aftermath.

Review of The Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud was, hands down, my biggest discovery as a reader in 2023. Seeing the release of his novella The Crypt of the Moon Spider in 2024, I was on it like white on rice. Turns out writing to a deadline (?) means something...

The Crypt of the Moon Spider follows the classic horror storyline of: woman is committed to a sanitarium as madness slowly creeps in. Her story is ostensibly set on the moon, and its secrets, particularly those of an underground cult, are slowly revealed as she undergoes therapy. A mad doctor, his Igor-esque assistant, and the cult culminate in a splashy ending.

Review of Calypso by Oliver Langmead

Oliver Langmead's 2015 Dark Star was a breath of glittering cyberpunk air. Story was edgy and visual, its elements flowing nicely in and out of one another toward a dramatic, personal climax. But the fact the book was written in epic verse is what truly set it apart. Langmead has gone on to write several other novels—all in prose, however. That is, until 2024. With Calypso, Langmead returns to the epic verse of Dark Star, but puts aside cyberpunk in favor of colonizing the stars for substance.

Calypso is both the name of the book and the name of the generation starship at its heart. When the ship arrives at its destination planet, a woman named Rochelle awakes from cryostasis to take on her role as leader once again. But everything is not as it was when the ship departed. In her absence, a war was fought onboard the ship between two factions: the engineers and the botanists (Sterling's Shapers and Mechanists?). It becomes Rochelle's job to choose sides and settle the dispute.

Review of The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

I generally do not go in for Arthurian legend. While I recognize it's a critical piece of England's history and lore, and therefore of my own as an American, I subconsciously, and apparently consciously, don't jump with excitement seeing a book appear with an overt Arthurian theme. But descriptions of Lev Grossman's 2024 The Bright Sword, particularly the fact it seemed to brim with adventure and was in fact set in a time post-Arthur's passing, seemed to lend hope it might be more. Let's see how bright.

The Bright Sword follows the meta-quest of one Ser Collum to become a knight of the round table. Growing up parent-less in the northern isles, he eventually steals a set of armor and sword and sets off on a journey to Camelot. Now that Arthur is dead and gone, Collum finds only rough camaraderie among the motley crew of knights who are now at loose ends around the round table. But when a green knight shows up one day with tidings that one of the knight's of Arthur's table yet lives, the group sets off on a quest to find said knight. Adventure, as they say, ensues.

Review of Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is quietly the most original science fiction writer of the past two decades. From societies with headless people to salt planet anarchies, domiciles in Earth's stratosphere to people who feed on light, secret Stalin science fiction projects to democratic armies (think about it), even to uncategorizable books like The This, Purgatory Mount, or The Thing Itself, Roberts has ensured that each of his books is radically different than anything else he's written, and if nothing else, will at least be an obtuse take on something the market takes for granted. Roberts latest offering Lake of Darkness (2024) is no different. Black holes, psychosis, AI, and human power hierarchies have never before been ingredients in such a stew.

The plot of Lake of Darkness is difficult to summarize in a neat paragraph. Structurally, it's the same story told twice in a row. For the first go around (the very short go around) the reader hears the tale of Raine, member of a nine-person, two-ship excursion to the edge of a black hole. Upon arriving at the event horizon, Raine does a most astonishing thing: he brutally murders all other crew members onboard. And when members of the other ship come board to investigate—after much philosophizing on the relative merits of such an attempt, he does the same. Mass murder virtually extinct in the story's utopian setting, the event is significant. It falls to a scholar of 20th century mass murder, a woman named Saccade, to get to the bottom of Raine's actions. In doing so, her story forms the second tale (the unpacked go around) of how Raine came to his actions.

Why the Excitement?: Hollywood's Adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's The Thicket

My ears perk up when I hear that a novel I enjoyed will be adapted to the big screen. Not sure why. Fool me once, your fault. Fool me a hundred times, my fault. Maybe I get excited because the few films which do capture a book's character are so good? Regardless, I went into Elliot Lester's adaptation of Joe Lansdale's The Thicket with hope. With the right actors and script, they could do justice to Lansdale's twisting, irreverent Western. Alas, the only justice is this blog post.

At cloud level, the Hollywood adaptation follows the formula and journey of Lansdale's The Thicket. A gang kidnaps a sister, triggering the brother to hunt them down. On their trail he forms an unlikley posse: a dwarf, black man, and prostitute. Things get hairier and hairier, leading to a showdown at the titular thicket. At the ground level, however, the film departs from Lansdale's story at a couple key points, points critical to the film's success.

Review of The Unsleeping Eye (alt. title The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe) by D.G. Compton

Note: this book was published under two titles: The Unsleeping Eye in the US and The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe in the UK. To keep this review simple, I will refer to the book by the title of the version I own: The Unsleeping Eye.

It's worthwhile taking a step back to consider how quietly and quickly cameras have become an everyday part of private life. How many photos do you take of quotidian, personal things—per day? More broadly, what percentage of online content is based around private lives published in the public space? Regardless the actual percent, the underlying message seems: intentional voyeurism sells. There is something that wants to both present and consume private lives—the more dramatic the better, we animals us. Riffing off this atavistic aspect of human nature is D.G. Compton's quiet masterpiece The Unsleeping Eye (1974).

The Unsleeping Eye predominantly rotates around two characters. First is Katherine Mortenhoe. What would in modern parlance be called a romance AI prompter, Katherine uses computer algorithms to generate romance fiction, and is one of the most well known and popular for it. At the start of the novel she learns she is terminally ill, with only 4 weeks to live. The other main character is Roddie. He is an NTV television reporter who, unbeknownst to everyone save his producer, has had an invisible camera installed in his eye that records everything he sees. Terminal illness a thing of the past in the book's future, Roddie's producer has the brilliant idea of inserting Roddie into Katherine's life and creating a documentary of her final days—the sadness, grief, drama, and all. Thing is, Katherine is not interested in signing the agreements which would give NTV the rights to film and broadcast, meaning NTV need to find alternate ways of getting the footage.

Review of Gogmagog by Steve Beard & Jeff Noon

Johnny, where's that soapbox? Get it out. We've got an important message needs repeating. Seems it's not getting through. Little to the left... Ok there, good. <umph> Listen up, readers out there. Style matters! Where so much fantastika these days gets filtered through Clarion workshops or MFA writing programs before arriving at our eyeball-tips, we're losing sight of how voice, tone, style, mood, verve and other aspects of technique matter to story. Like a fingerprint, a reader used to be able to pick out a writer by their style. These days it's rice vanilla soup. Style matters! Thank you, that's all. Time to get down now, back to my hearth and quilt...

Speculiction does indeed harp on about the importance of style. As we get closer to AI novels on bookshelves, style is the one thing that humans can cling to as their own. Dear ChapGPT: please write a book in the style of David Mitchell. I'm not sure that (today) it could. But it could 100% write a book in the style of Martha Wells, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and many, many others. I don't discredit these writers' imaginations or success, only that their writing lacks a certain spark, an intimation the writer knows that you know that they know this word is being used because... This is all a long winded way of saying, Jeff Noon and Steve Beard's 2024 novel Gogmagog will likely not show up on bestseller lists, but if mood and style are as important to you as imagination and story, read on.

Gogmagog is the cantankerous tale of cantankerous Cady Mead. A tough old bat, she is an irascible, foul-mouthed, pipe-smoking sloop captain with a mysterious past. Though retired and in her cups, she is one day convinced to help transport two strangers downriver to the city of Ludwich. The river alive with creatures both real and ethereal, Cady knows it's only her knowledge and experience which can get the boat through the toughest spots and avoid the most dangerous hazards. What she doesn't count on, however, is the unexpected appearance of one of her oldest enemies haunting the river.

Review of Land of the Headless by Adam Roberts

I almost didn't read Adam Roberts' novel Land of the Headless (2007). The plot's main conceit was so lacking in subtlety and so ripe with potential for comic book cheese that I was prepared to immediately return it should the first few pages live up to my concerns. The title to be taken literally, it tells the story of a planet where capitol punishment removes the guilty's head but does not take their life. They live on, headless, through the wonders of technology. Something from the pulp era of sf, yes? No...

Land of the Headless is the tale of the poet Jon Cavala. An amorous youth, he forms a tryst with an aristocrat's daughter over the course of a summer. They willingly share a bed outside of marriage, but only to be found out. The daughter and her family betray Cavala, and he is punished for his impatient penis. For in Cavala's draconian society, murder, blasphemy, and in this case “rape”, are cause for capitol punishment. And so the story kicks off with Cavala's beheading. A device attached to the spine prior captures Cavala's mind state—consciousness more or less—so that even after his noggin is lopped off he goes on living. He buys a cheap pair of electronic eyes and ears with what little money he has left and so sets off to live a new life. The headless are shunned and the going is tough. Cavala falls in with a trio of other headless, and together they agree to travel to a nearby city by foot. What Cavala does not tell his comrades is that he goes to meet the daughter who betrayed him.

“Critically Acclaimed”: What a Difference a Couple Decades Makes

It wasn't so long ago that the words “critically acclaimed” meant: people with background and experience in literature, who read and review books professionally, recommend this. Perhaps your definition of 'critically acclaimed' differs slightly, and perhaps your opinion would differ from an individual critic's, but the idea that the book had been scrutinized from a variety of angles with an eye toward objectivity was core. It wasn't a hot take, or how cool the magic system is, or whether the book checks the right DEI boxes, yaddah yaddah yaddah. It was something more fundamental, a basic litmus test. The result was, books you may not personally enjoy will have the 'critically acclaimed' sticker but those books at least do fundamentals correctly, likely with something a little more. In today's world “critically acclaimed” means little.

People much more famous than me have stated that the internet is the democratization of worldviews. What I take this to mean is that popular opinion holds sway. How much? Hard to say. But what can be said with certainty is that the voice of critics with the clout to proclaim acclaim has dwindled in power due to the internet. Anybody with a youtube account or Reddit login can be a critic these days and get as many if not more eyes. I lament that much of this content, if not the majority of it, does not have the background, experience, or objective mindset that being a book critic requires. The bell curve of quality has been flattened.

Review of Polostan by Neal Stephenson

2021's Termination Shock was a bit of a return for Neal Stephenson—a bit, just a bit. Where his prior two novels Seveneves and Readme abandoned the idea of minimalist prose and efficient storytelling, Termination Shock held echoes of Stephenson's earlier books, faster paced affairs like Zodiac, The Cobweb, and even a little Snow Crash. But Stephenson's latest offering, Polostan (2024), hearkens back to a different fertile period in his oeuvre: the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon.

Where the Baroque Cycle looked into the dawn of the enlightenment, Newtonian physics, early computing, and the birth of the stock market, Polostan digs into primitive nuclear physics, early communism, and global 1930s industrialization. Stephenson happily wallows in this historical period through the bright eyes of a young woman caught between East and West named Dawn/Avrora (depending which hemisphere she is in). Though born Avrora in the wild steppe of Russia in the early 20th century, as a child she ends up as Dawn in the wild west of the US after her mother runs away from Stalin's brand of utopia to start a new life. A rough life, Dawn has many an adventure in Montana, in the labor strikes of Washington D.C., in the Chicago World's Fair, and in the backwoods of the midwest after getting caught by a gang of rednecks who care more for her paycheck than her wellbeing. But it's physics, particularly nuclear physics, which Dawn's life seems to return to time and again. Capitalists pulling her one way and communists the other, Dawn must eventually decide how to best play one side against the other.

Review of The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey

I think James S.A. Corey's Expanse series earned the right to be considered for top 10 space opera all time. It realizes its solar system setting well, balances blasters and space ships with plot development, and does a good job basing its action and drama in characters that occasionally put their toe over the line of 3D. The Expanse complete, what would the writer duo come up for their next science fiction project? 2024's The Mercy of Gods.

The Mercy of Gods begins on Azean. An extra-terrestrial planet, humanity has nevertheless terraformed it by finding ways of conflating local gene structures with the plants and animals that humans require to exist. The story follows the crack team of researchers who accomplished this major gene-splicing feat. A (figurative and literal) alarm goes off when one of the researchers discovers an anomaly in their work that can only be extra-extraterrestrial—truly alien in nature. It isn't long after the Carryx and their slave species invade Azean and take humanity captive. The research team's adaptation, or not, to captivity is the story that follows.

Review of White Light by Rudy Rucker

Bruce Sterling, rogue that he was (is?), once lobbied to change the moniker of 'science fiction' to 'transreal fiction'. And while his semantics were solid and the argument sound, there is no disagreeing with several decades of common parlance. Core human behavior (i.e. lemming DNA) means that almost fifty years later we still say 'science fiction' (and we know what it is when we say it <wink>). Marching beside Sterling, perhaps in earnest, perhaps out of moral support, was friend Rudy Rucker. Rucker, also a newcomer to scientific romance at the time, wanted to likewise put his own brand on things, and did so with a style of sf that can only be diplomatically referred to as 'transreal'. The bars and back alleys would more likely call it 'gonzo sf', and Rucker's debut novel White Light (1980) is the perfect example. If the Killer Bs (Greg Bear, Greg Benford, and David Brin) were the Bruce Springsteens and Duran Durans of the 80s, then Rucker is the The Flaming Lips, Butthole Surfers, and Devos rolled into one.

White Light tells the anything-but-mundane story of mathematics professor Felix Rayman. Facing a dead-end job and marriage headed to divorce, Rayman attempts to spice things up by trying lucid dreaming. Though successful, his sense of reality begins to slip. When he should be preparing a lecture, visions appear.  While he's trying to research Cantor's continuum hypothesis, gods and devils do, too. Rayman eventually calls upon Jesus for help, and is promptly tasked with taking a ghost named Kathy to Cimon, which is a place/existence permeated with the forms of infinity. Oh, Rayman fulfills Jesus' task.  But that is just the tip of the boot that kicks the reader in the ass, sending them into the bizarreness of Cimon. Don't hang on for the ride; spread your wings and soar.

The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher by Ahn Do-hyun

I don't often do this on Speculiction. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever done it. I'm going to in essence write two reviews. The reason is, I'm not sure if Ahn Do-hyun's The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher (2024) is a book for children or for adults. The distinction is critical, and I'll start with the positive.

If The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher is a book for children, then I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Though it is (awkwardly) framed by an adult trying to deal with feedback to something they have created, it quickly switches into the life cycle story of a salmon. It tells of a young, unnamed silver salmon who is learning about life in the ocean. He meets other salmon in his shoal, falls in love, and eventually makes the freshwater trek upriver to the shoal's spawning grounds. This journey is peppered with metaphors and allegories that link the salmon's circumstances to the basics of human life—growing up, starting a family, making difficult decisions, trying to find your way in a group, etc. It's presented with a strong degree of simplicity so that even the 'birds and the bees' have an aura of innocence. Though the title is a spoiler for the climactic moment, most kids won't connect the dots. <smile> In terms of delivering perennial philosophy on the basic building blocks of human existence, social to biological, this short book covers it in sweet, charming fashion for kids.

Review of Surprise, Kill, Vanish: : The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins by Annie Jacobsen

We all have them; Youtube holes we fall into when we shouldn't. One of mine is covert operations—the world of secretly gaining information, agent handling, and, when “needed”, clandestine action—the James Bond stuff of the real world. The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre is a great example of such history, and so it was with gusto I dove into Annie Jacobsen's Surprise, Kill, Vanish: : The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins (2019).

Suprise, Kill, Vanish is a combination of content. A historical overview, the book is structured to cover the phases of the CIA's existence. Jacobsen highlights the changes in president, American culture, presidential policy, and world events which directed the moral compass of the CIA, from underhanded to overhanded, justified to quasi-justified, and its growth, development, and evolution as an organization. From its inception in WWII to its iteration under Barrack Obama, that's the period the book covers.

Review of The Chalk Giants by Keith Roberts

I've read a good chunk of science fiction, and it's fair to Keith Roberts' 1974 The Chalk Giants is one of the oddest ducks I've encountered. But odd ducks have a unique property, one highly artistic in nature. They either charm or repel, no middle ground. Let's see which side of the line this book falls.

Why exactly The Chalk Giants is an odd duck starts with the wikipedia quote describing what the book is: 'a linked collection of short stories'. Is it a collection or novel? I would argue it's a loose concept album. The songs are individual pieces of music, but they fit a broader motif.

The first story, “The Sun Over a Low Hill”, describes Stan Pott's frantic escape from a city under curfew circa the mid-1900s. Draconian control measures in place, Potts escapes near apocalyptic urban conditions. Smashing through barriers, he drives a car stuffed with supplies to a lonely house by the sea which houses a small group of people. Throughout this escape Potts' strained sense of identity has a definitive Weirdness to it, in turn leading down dark psychological roads and to even darker decisions. “Fragments” is set at the same lonely house, but tells the story from the other characters' points of view. The Weirdness only gets Weirder, but doesn't lose its humanity.

Review of The Solar War by John French

We've done it. We've read the vast and exciting tales describing how Horus's heresy arose and spread. Now we're ready for the explosive conclusion. With rebel forces hanging on the edge of Sol, John French's The Solar War (2019) unleashes them for the final ten books in the series The Siege of Terra.

As a novel, The Solar War is what's written on the tin. A massive, end-to-end battle stretching the length of the solar system. Rogal Dorn sets the defenses, while the White Scars stand by, at the ready. And Peturabo does not disappoint, attacking Pluto with his Iron Warriors. Together with remnants of the Sons of Horus, they start pushing Sol-ward. With echoes of Horus Rising, Garviel Loken and a Remembrancer get caught in the battle. Witness to unearthly events, the battle for Terra will prove to be more than Space Marine vs. Space Marine.

Review of Engine Summer by John Crowley

This blog does take its time, basking in the sun beside mainstream waters. But that thimbleful of regular readers will know that diving into the rich undercurrents of lesser known fiction is likely its sweet spot—or at least hopes to be. There may be no sweeter spot of lesser known writers than John Crowley. His sophomore effort, Engine Summer (1979), sticks out to this day.

Engine Summer is the story of Rush-that-Speaks. Teen member of a river tribe, he lives and works building simple homes, collecting food for winter, and ensuring rituals and traditions are carried out. A pastoral, peaceful existence, they do not worry about attacks or violence. Rush-that-Speaks befriends a young woman named Once-a-Day, but when she chooses to leave the tribe to go on a walkabout, he decides to follow his own heart too and see what's out there in the big, wide world.

Review of Memories of the Space Age by J.G. Ballard

Themed anthologies are a common thing, but rarely do editors get to put together themed collections. A single author's oeuvre is rarely large enough to connect the dots for 200-300 pages of material. But such is an option with J.G. Ballard. Centered on mankind's obsession with vehicular movement and the cosmos, Memories of the Space Age (1988) offers the reader a range of stories touching upon humanity's physiological and psychological reaction existence in the stratosphere and beyond.

The collection kicks off with two interrelated stories. First is “The Cage of Sand”. Set in Cape Canaveral decades in the future, a once thriving community of shopping malls and homes now scarcely pulls itself together. Sands brought from Mars now pollute their backyards and dead astronauts orbit the Earth in abandoned space capsules. Not an optimistic view of NASA's chances in the void beyond, Ballard nevertheless captures a certain yearning in a manner that feels Bradbury-esque—not something you often say about Ballard. Focusing on one aspect of that setting, “The Dead Astronaut” tells of a grieving widow's desire to get the corpse of her astronaut husband out of orbit and back to Earth. By concluding the story the way he does, Ballard emphasizes the futility of mammals beyond the stratosphere while stirring a few conspiracy pots.

Review of The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeeves & China Mieville

There are many a writer looking for the golden path—the key to unlock the secret to bestselling success. And then there is China Mieville. Wielding his own key since the beginning, he has even taken his endeavors beyond fiction, not producing a new story since 2016. For whatever reason, perhaps because he's a fan of John Wick, perhaps The Matrix, or more likely Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Mieville chose to team up with Keanu Reeves in 2024 to adapt Reeve's graphic novel BRZRKR to the written word. The Book of Elsewhere is the result.

The Book of Elsewhere tells of an immortal superhero trying to gain mortality. Echoing Neo's character arc from Matrix, our man BRZRKR has punched, kicked, ripped, and torn his way through history, sometimes winning, sometimes, sometimes, losing, sometimes dying, but always coming back to life—no matter how hard he tries to stay dead. Also ignoring time and mortality is a pig, yes, a pig, who uses every chance he gets to stick his tusks in BRZRKR. But there is alight at the end of the tunnel. BRZRKR meets a scientist who begins examining the immortal man, and may be able to uncover the key to his mortality.

Review of The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

It's history that the counter-culture hippies of the 60s and 70s eventually evolved into the yuppies of the 80s. But not all evolved. A few took their fringe communes and evolved them into cults even further from civilization. As much of the hippie movement centered on San Francisco, it's not a surprise that some of these communes/cults ended up in the wilds of California. In 2018's The Feral Detective, Jonathan Lethem puts a New York divorcee in the Mojave, then adds a missing teen, a handful of dogs, and a terse private eye, giving readers a recipe for a funny take on the politics of 2016.

Jonathan Lethem has written a wide spectrum of novels, from science fiction fevre dreams to modern Manhattan noir, subtle satire to rural Maine dystopias. The Feral Detective may very well be Lethem's lightest fare. Its mold is classic. A quirky woman hires an esoteric private eye to track down a runaway teen in the bizarre outskirts of Los Angeles. From there, things resolve in unexpected but not unexpected fashion. There are clues, people to be interviewed, a twist or two,ingredients you know will likely be present.

Cardboard Corner: Review of "Battle of Neom" expansion for Redline

I do not normally review small expansions for card games. But, in contrast to many heavily corporatized TCG-esque games hitting the market these days, Redline is an indie game worth feeding the buzz. As always, I am not being paid for this review.

Redline: Tactical Card Combat has done things the right way. Rather than spend significant time and energy dumping a large quantity of unknown content onto the market and see how it goes, they've started practically and scaled slowly. The core set, released in 2021, consisted of two starter decks and the tokens, dials, dice, etc. needed to play. The follow up release was another pair of starter decks which could be mixed and matched with the core. Bringing us here, the third expansion: “Battle of Neom”. With two new starter decks for the current factions, things just keep getting better.

“Battle for Neom” introduces a couple new core mechanisms applicable to both existing factions. First is the keyword Scorched Earth, which is found on the three new missions included in the set. Missions with the keyword can be damage and destroyed, i.e. flipped over and their capture cost set to five. Also, if a player had control of that mission, they lose it. Such missions coming alive, players can feel the battlefield change underfoot. The second is Entrenchment. The equivalent of being dug in, entrenchment counters act as shields, absorbing individual points of damage and a new dynamic to the efreets which feature it.

Review of Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Aztec culture, the roaring 20s, Tommy guns, methamphetamine, Native Americans, the KKK, bowler hats, and Model Ts. What a mongrel, you might say. But Francis Spufford's 2023 Cahokia Jazz brings this dog to barking life through the titular city, and with it the richest, most audacious, most adventurous alternate history mystery you've read—or at least that I've read.

Cahokia Jazz is set in an alternate 1920s-ish America in which Aztec culture still survives and Manifest Destiny didn't quite capture all the land it intended. Cahokia city is set dead smack in the middle of the country, and as a result forms a meeting grounds of cultures and religions—European, indigenous, and beyond. These peoples playing nice until they don't, the book opens on a classic murder mystery scene: a dead body has been found on the roof of one of Cahokia's buildings, the man's heart torn from his chest.

Review of King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald

Each year that goes by only adds to the wealth of fantastika available for reading. This means each year certain titles fade from the scene. One diamond already lost to the fog of history is Grainne by Keith Roberts. Defying genre's core, it mixes faery, reality, with eastern philosophy in mature, transcendent fashion. Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald (1991) attempts to achieve those heights.

King of Morning, Queen of Day is technically an Irish generational novel. Split into three distinct sections, from late 19th century, through the early 20th, and onto the present day (at least as of 1991), the novel offers windows into the lives of three successive women: the great-grandmother, grandmother, and the grand-daughter. (The mother forms an interlude.) Emily sees faeries and photographs them while Edward, her father, thinks he has observed extra-terrestrials in the cosmos through his telescope. Emily's daughter Jessica is a youth in Ireland at the time the IRA was forming and starting to sow violence. And lastly is the great-grandaughter, Enye. A graphic designer by day, she destroys mythic beings on the streets of Dublin by night with her digitized katana. Yes, digitized katana. Anything but a fairy Batman, however, her fight is her own. She struggles to integrate with society, much to the chagrin of her prospective boyfriends.

Cardboard Corner: Review of "The Feast of Hemlock Vale" expansion for Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Note: this is a review of both the Campaign and Investigator expansions for “The Feast of Hemlock Vale”. There will be zero spoilers save story intro.

It was announced in 2023 that MJ Newman, original and long-time designer of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, would be handing over the reins of the game to two new designers, Duke Harrist and Nicholas Kory. A major waypoint in the game's history, there were multiple directions the game could have been taken, and fans waited with bated breath how the new design team would handle one of the greatest cooperative games ever made. In February 2024 these questions were answered with “The Feast of Hemlock Vale” Investigator and Campaign expansions.

You can breathe. Carrying the pun forward (in poor style), Harrist and Kory in fact bring a breath of fresh air to Arkham Horror. Zero sleight to MJ Newman and all that she accomplished in seven years, but you can tell a new set of eyes looked at the game and knew how to offer players something classic yet evolutionary.

Review of number9dream by David Mitchell

David Mitchell is living proof that style and technique matter. You've read the generic stories out there—the mysteries, the adventures, the historical novels, the dystopias, etc. But throw a Mitchell novel into that mix and it sticks out like a lighthouse. Boiled to their bare bones, his stories aren't any different than those discount brands. It's Mitchell's way with words that distinguish his books. number9dream is his 2001 (stylish) take on bildungsroman.

If you have a bildungsroman, then you need a young person to grow, and in the case of number9dream that person is nineteen-year old Eiji Miyake. Alone in Tokyo on a mission, he seeks his long estranged father. But sub-consciously, of course, he is seeking direction, purpose in life. Through a swirl of bizarre blue-collar jobs, cafe run-ins, immutable strangers, as well as a healthy dose of youthful imagination, Eiji does eventually find what he's looking for. The journey, as they say however, is what matters.

Review of Slaves to Darkness by John French

There have been entire books devoted to the downfall of certain primarchs. Fulgrim, for example, saw the leader of the Emperor's Children's turn down a dark road. Betrayer saw Angron's potential fully unleashed. A Thousand Sons witnessed Magnus' tragic downfall. Legion turned Alpharius. And so on. An episode of herding cats, Slaves to Darkness (2018) brings this wild group back together as Horus sits on the doorstep of Terra.

Slaves to Darkness picks up in the direct aftermath of Wolfsbane. Horus lies wounded following Leman Rus' spear attack. In the void of leadership, Malaghurst attempts to keep the Sons of Horus ship upright, and like it or not, is faced with the task of getting the traitor forces organized. This includes coralling the wild primarchs Angron and Fulgrim. But Malaghurst's task becomes all the more complicated as the forces of Chaos rear their head(s). The assembly of forces anything but certain, the traitor forces may devour themselves before ever setting foot on Terra.

Review of South by Babak Lakghomi

Myself, like many, many readers out there, enjoy a good dystopia. They balance social and political concerns with tales of individuals struggling through tough times. And perhaps nothing triggers my/our ire more than tyrannical forms of government. Zamyatin's We, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four, Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale—these and several others have gone down in history as cautionary yet gripping stories for the forms of government they present and their impact on the individual. Looking to add his name to the list is Babak Lakghomi's 2023 South.

South is the story of an unnamed journalist who heads to an unnamed part of the world, ostensibly in the southern hemisphere, to investigate what happened to his deceased father, and in the process research and write a book about him. At first things seem normal at the places he visits. The man is able to write, he is helped by those around him, and he generates pages of manuscript. But slowly things start to crumble. Little bits of freedom are taken away here and there, and he becomes aware he is being monitored. What follows is a downward spiral of understanding and circumstance.

Review of Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone by Ian McDonald

It's no secret this blog has a love affair with Ian McDonald. The author displays an excellent mix of lexical agility, fertile imagination, and themes human and existential in nature. (If I had to build the strongest science fiction house, those are the three pillars I would start with.) On top of this, McDonald has shown incredible range, from gonzo (Out on Blue Six) to staid (King of Morning, Queen of Day), magic realism (Desolation Road) to mainstream (Luna trilogy), and beyond. In the novella Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone (1994), McDonald shows what he can do with cyberpunk.

Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone centers on a man named Ethan, who at the start of the story is on a pilgrimage in the remote parts of Japan, hoping to find direction in life. Ethan is in possession of fracters, a technology more advanced than subliminal messages, which has the possibility of subconsciously altering people's minds. Fracters are a highly sought after technology, naturally.  In what Ethan describes as a previous life, government agencies and organized crime were doing the seeking—not always with the best of intentions, his life in danger. It's in trying to reconcile this past life that Ethan struggles with his current one. Throwing a spanner into these spinning works is the fact Ethan is not entirely sure he himself hasn't been affected by fracters.

Review of Cryptozoic by Brian Aldiss

With great quantity comes great chances of a stinker. With Brian Aldiss, and his dozens of novels and one-hundred+ short stories, it was just a matter of time. <DING> It's Cryptozoic (1967). A kitchen sink of fiction, the novel changes identity more times than a Gen Z teen from an ultra-liberal family, making for a difficult piece of fiction to make heads or tails of (mixed metaphors intentional, natch).

Cryptozoic is the story of Bush, an artist living circa 2090. But at the start of the novel he is deep in mind travel in the Jurassic past. Mind travel a form of time travel, it allows people to cast their consciousness deep into the depths of time. Physical contact not possible, people can nevertheless go back and observe, and if they happen to meet other minds, interact. People spend years embedded in mind travel, it's thus happens that Bush has a Rip van Winkle meets George Orwell moment when he awakes. And it's not good.

Review of Heralds of the Siege ed. by Nick Kyme and Laurie Goulding

With the Black Library's decision to make Horus' attack on the solar system a separate series, the final books of the Horus Heresy end up reading more like bridge books. They connect what has happened previously and set the stage for the big conclusion, the Siege of Terra. Containing the precise moment Horus breaches the solar system, Heralds of the Siege (2018), an anthology edited by Nick Kyme and Laurie Goulding, gets the reader ready for the grand finale.

The anthology kicks off with one of the best in the bunch, “Dark Compliance” by John French. A frame story, it tells of Horus' general Argonis ordering a planet to bend the knee. When the planet's leader refuses, Argonis proceeds to tell the story of the last time a planet failed to capitulate. Giving the planet's leader a taste of things to come, it is dark compliance, indeed. While overall a straightforward story, the frame gives the story appreciable nuance. Another John French piece, “Now Peals Midnight” is more symbol than story. It exists to portray one moment, and for that I wish it had been located at the end of the anthology, but so be it.

Review of Electric Forest by Tanith Lee

There is a never a clear fault line between eras of fiction. Books appear here and there, under the radar, with one or two elements in common. Slowly these elements occur more often until coalescing into something identifiable, and at that point become a recognizable phenomenon in fiction. It's at this time that writers begin consciously producing material in and around the phenomenon. Then comes the inevitable exhausted—steampunk <cough-cough>. But we are not here for that. Tanith Lee's 1979 Electric Forest is a clear work of cyberpunk, but its worth noting was created in the hazy gray area between unknown phenomenon and known quantity. Let's see what the innocence leads to.

Electric Forest is the story of Magdala. Born poor, ugly, and deformed, she jumps at the chance a suave stranger offers her for a new body. In the days that follow, he transfers her consciousness into the android body of a goddess. Capable of functioning like a human, for all its pride and pleasure, Magdala's only drawback is that she cannot stray far from her biological body, which is kept in a chamber. She enjoys her new body initially, but the deeper Magdala goes into her journey of selfhood, the more nuanced her views become.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Altered TCG

Magic: The Gathering has been a smash hit. Inspiring dozens upon dozens of similar games, it brought about the Golden Age of expandable card games. But interest waned, the market moved in new directions, and the model faded. But it didn't disappear. A tiny number of such games stood strong while new ones appeared and disappeared like fireflies. It's now 2024 and a new wave of expandable card games is hitting the market. We're in the middle of a second Golden Age. Putting a horse in that race is Altered TCG (2024), which automatically generates questions. Does it have a unique edge to distinguish itself from the dozens and dozens of similar games releasing now? Does it have a chance at outlasting the Age—of being one of the few still standing once the sun has set on the second age? Let's check the horse's teeth.

I would (and will in a moment) argue that Altered has a truly unique edge. But at its absolute core, Altered does not upset the collectible card game apple cart. Two players bring pre-prepared decks comprised of units, spells, and permanents to battle it out in a head-to-head duel. These central concepts of CCGs remain the same. What lies beyond, however, is where things get special.

Review of The Buried Dagger by James Swallow

It's taken fifty-four books, but we're here: the threshold of Terra. Horus' forces loom on the horizon as the universe focuses on the battle that is about to unfold. The last step to that edge is The Buried Dagger by James Swallow (2019).

The Buried Dagger is comprised of two primary storylines that oscillate as the book progresses. The first is centered on the Death Guard. In the opening pages, Mortarion ravages an Imperial planet but is pulled away from the action by one of his captains with direct orders from Horus himself: time to attack Terra. Slipping occasionally into Mortarion's childhood, this storyline forms the largest proportion of the book. In the second storyline, a secret operative traverses the labyrinths beneath Terra. He is approached by Malcador the Sigillite and given a special mission. Garro and the Grey Knights pulled into the action in the aftermath, Terra may fall before Horus arrives if they don't take care of business.

Review of Citizen in Space by Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley is one of the most exciting authors on my shelf. I never know what I'm going to get when cracking a book, only that it will be a smorgasbord of subtle wit, easter eggs, and imaginative storytelling. His 1955 collection Citizen in Space hasn't changed my mind despite the relative lack of substance.

The collection begins with “The Mountain Without a Name”. Something akin to Dubai in space, it tells of an Earth construction company terraforming a planet for human use, which includes converting their version of Mt. Everest into a sea. But bad luck seems to tail them, wrecking the crew's best made plans. Things eventually come to a head, and the men are left with the most dire (as intended) of choices. In “The Accountant”, Sheckley must have been having a bad day with bureaucracy. A throwaway story, it tells of parents pressuring their child to become a magician when all he wants is to be an accountant. Though structured like a bar joke, the punchline is more dark humor than knee-slapping.

Review of Stolen Faces by Michael Bishop

The perception of Aztec and Mayan cultures is often of a war-like, bloodthirsty people who made ritual sacrifice quotidian. While there is historical evidence in support of this image, it doesn't paint the full picture. Slaves and prisoners weren't the only people sacrificed. The belief was that blood offerings forestalled the end of the world, meaning many people voluntarily offered their lives—people who wanted their heart removed, body disfigured, and ultimately death in the name of the cause. Examining this phenomenon in a science fiction setting is Michael Bishop's superb Stolen Faces (1977).

Stolen Faces is the tragic story of Lucian Yeardance. After a personal conflict with a commanding officer, Yeardance is exiled to Tezactl and assigned the title of Commissar of the planet's leper colony. A difficult situation, Yeardance has only a small group of assistants to help manage the colony and supplies are limited, often not being delivered to their remote outpost on time. Exacerbating the situation is the fact the colony has devolved into near animalhood. The younger, healthier lepers torment and steal from the older, more debilitated ones, and a bizarre system of beliefs induce the people into sadomasochistic behavior. Getting to the bottom of the situation proves to be the opposite of what Yeardance expects.

Review of Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan

I bounce off H.P. Lovecraft, hard. His prose is purple to the point of putridness and I condescend toward the paranoia and anxiety underlying the handful of stories I've read. Get a grip, dude. Reality is what it is, even if we can't explain everything. Secret evil is not waiting to pop out from behind every yard gnome you encounter (only a few). Caitlin R. Kiernan, however, I'm a sucker for. She often works in a similar medium (~existential horror), yet possesses some of the tip-top best prose out there, not to mention takes her reader's intelligence for granted. Black Helicopters (2013) is the perfect example of how deep (far?) cosmic “horror” can go.

Black Helicopters is a difficult story to encapsulate in just a couple of sentences. I will provide only the shell. Two rival agencies, operating invisibly yet in plain sight, have their sights set on one another. Butterfly effect in full effect, they tweak a social knob here, twist an event there, all in the hopes of manipulating the global dance in their subtle favor. At the beginning of the tale, one agent recruits two agents from the other side—knowing they are from the other side. And so too do the two other agents. Cat, mouse, and back again, they tango and samba around one another, getting at their secrets, bits of black magic and Weird just some of their tools of the job. Black helicopters—the proverbial variety—hover menacingly on the horizon.

Review of The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

I dance in and out of Robert Jackson Bennett's works. I haven't danced out and stayed out because he is, relatively speaking, dynamic in creation. I cannot say he has a wide range of styles, but his stories are not all within one sub-genre and he tries to thread the needle of derivative enough to be familiar yet unique enough to distinguish itself. His latest book, The Tainted Cup (2024), may have just done that.

The Tainted Cup is an agent Mulder-and-Scully murder mystery in a fantasy land. Hill-sized leviathans seasonally come ashore, wrecking havoc on the cities and fields, and magical concoctions and brews allow people to augment themselves in various ways—strength, speed, analytical capability, and memory among them. Seven years ago a savage blight was accidentally unleashed upon the land, and it is still looking to recover.