Review of Ice by Jacek Dukaj

One of the things linking my wife and I is our love of speculative fiction. It's the majority of what we both read. But there are many conversations we're unable to have. There is a huge swathe of Polish fiction she has read that I cannot. Stanislaw Lem and Andrzej Sapkowski are about the only two authors available to the English speaking world of the dozens if not hundreds who write fantastika. For years my wife lauded and lamented Jacek Dukaj's Lód. You should read it, but it's untranslatable. In 2025 I finally did. Ursula Phillips brought us Dukaj's Ice (originally published 2007).

Ice is set in an alternate,early 20th-century in which World War I never took place and Russia rules the territory we currently know as Poland. A deep freeze has settled on these lands. Everything is covered in ice and snow, including gleiss which shifts and moves by some form of arcane sentience. Gleiss appears in cities and towns, and anything which touches it is frozen to crystal. Scientists work to harness its power. In society, there are a diverse array of political affiliations—nationalists, tsarists, anarchists, autarchs, slavophiles, westernisers, conservative religionists, materialists, and many others. This short paragraph does not do the setting of the novel justice, but suffice to say it is a richly populated world bridging known history and culture with an alternate history that is imaginative and engaging.

Review of Sacrifice of Fools by Ian McDonald

1996 was an unassuming year from our tumultuous perch in 2026. The majority in the West agreed on unwritten social rules and gender identity. Politics were dramatic but reasonable by comparison. Trans people existed and few made a big deal about it. And immigration, while ongoing, was not as hot a topic as it is today. Into this calm before the storm, Ian McDonald published a tasty piece of alien noir, Sacrifice of Fools.

The setting of Sacrifice of Fools parallels situations happening in the western world today, for example the influx of Somalians to rural American towns, Syrians into Europe, etc. In McDonald's novel, the Somalians and Syrians are the Shian, an alien race who has flown light years across the galaxy to trade tech and find a new home. (Not sure what tech the Somalians and Syrians are trading, but you get it.) And rural America and urban Europe are 1990s Northern Ireland, a place still rife with Protestant-Catholic tensions as well as conflicting views to how the Shian should be handled. And in this clash of cultures there develops a small subset of Northern Irish who want to appear and act like the Shian, up to and including body modification surgery. Uncanny the parallels...

Review of Molten Flux by Jonathan Weiss

It happens. Interviews with the author indicate a person who is reasonably articulate or potentially more. No major red flags lurk in one- or two-star reviews. The description sounds interesting, even on the third independent check. And yet a book can still disappoint.

Wait. Let me start again.

It's a Mad Max scene where massive metal cities rove the deserts, scavenging scrap and warding off gangs of bandits who pressgang people to join the ranks of the molten dead. A young man is thrown into a fire in the opening pages, and after must use his wits and strength to navigate uncertain situations. Pace is controlled: the world is not revealed in gusts of author impatience; Weiss takes his time peeling back the layers of this world, gaining reader interest in the process. And tactile description exists. More later, but effort is put into bringing the reader into the world. All in all, Molten Flux would seem a delight.

Review of The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick

I get people who don't pick up what Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter is putting down. It's a fantastical carousel of moods and settings—the central post of main character remains fixed, but the horses are lenses, rotating the narrative through a wild selection of moods and tones. The approach lends a kaleidoscope glow to what is actually a dark, gritty story of one woman's battle with herself. Swanwick's The Universe Box (2026, Tachyon*) is much the same despite being a collection. The only difference is each carousel horse moves to its own gait.

The through-lines of The Universe Box are therefore few and far between. Moreover, Swanwick's imagination falls off-center of the bell curve of fantasy; he continually zags when the average writer zigs. Plots are wholly unpredictable and prose is dynamically effective. Overall, the collection is a varied set of stories that are definitively not mainstream—readable, engaging, yes, but anything except derivative or monotone.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Ashes Ascendancy

If capitalism weren't what it is, I would attribute the re-emergence and re-emergence of Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn to poetic manifestation... Regardless, the game as undergone effective revision throughout its history. It was popular, is popular, and though a niche game, is going strong. Ashes Ascendancy (2025) adds fuel to that fire.

Ascendancy is an Ashes product that sits in the Ashes Reborn (v1.5) model. It is both supplementary to and complementary of the Ashes Reborn core set, and all the hero expansions, deluxe or otherwise, that go with it. The box is intended for both Ashes veterans and players who just want to try the game. I'll start with the latter.

For new players, Ashes Ascendancy is a two-player starter set that contains all of the cards, tokens, and dice to play a complete, proper, unabridged game of Ashes. There are two heroes, two dice types, and all the cards two players need to build full decks. The Ascendancy box also contains the board, tokens, dice, and cards needed to play the solo/cooperative version of Ashes for two players. Whether it's PvP or PvE, Ascendacy covers the full play experience in a small/medium box.