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.