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.