Reading the Ignyte: Outstanding Novella 2026

 A roundup of this year's novella finalists.

The Ignyte Award is always a delight when it rolls around - they are shortlists I love to pore over, to find great recommendations, and to see the things I wanted to have a chance at the spotlight get the recognition they deserve. The structure - where the shortlist is pulled together by a panel but the winner voted on by the public - is a good one especially for highlighting things that are excellent but might not have got quite the widespread appreciation that is recognised in awards that popular vote right from the off, while still retaining the popular vote for the joy of getting to be involved in an award.

I unfortunately don't have time this year to cover all of their shortlists (though bangers there are to be found in every single category), but I did want to take a moment to look at one that is pretty close to my heart: the novella.

The six novellas up for the award this year are:

• The Iron Below Remembers, Sharang Biswas (Neon Hemlock)
• Audition for the Fox, Martin Cahill (Tachyon)
• The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom)
• Psychopomp & Circumstance, Eden Royce (Tordotcom)
• Descent, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld)

So I thought I'd talk a little about my thoughts on each in turn, and maybe help get a couple of them onto your tbr, if the shortlist hadn't already done so.

The Iron Below Remembers, Sharang Biswas (Neon Hemlock)

I typically get on really well with Neon Hemlock novellas, and The Iron Below Remembers is no exception; in fact, it was one of my top novella reads of 2025. I am extremely happy to see it recognised here.

The story is set in an alternate present, where world history (and colonialism) have gone veeeerrrryy differently, as South Asia colonised the world using their giant mechs. And also where superheroes are real. Why have one difference when you can have two?

Already, cool, interesting, a lot going on. But the thing, is the great thing about this book isn't even the obvious stuff from the blurb and summary: it's the people. Because the narrative is deeply embedded in the perspective of an academic who is dating one of the major superheroes while also working on an archaeological site that might be one of the most important of their time, and which links into the giant mechs and the world's understanding of the superheroes. And he's also just enormously in love with (and anxious about) his hot superhero boyfriend. This is a man at the crux of a lot of different stressors, and someone clearly dealing with a lot of emotions and pressure and uncertainty, and he is intensely compelling as a viewpoint character. It's his skillful characterisation that renders so much of the outlandish content of the plot comprehensible and real to the reader, and which takes all the enormous quantity of Stuff and, without trivialising any of it or taking away from the weight it has in the sense of a wider world, making it feel like a single, coherent story that fits within this single, novella-sized package.

It's incredibly well done, and the sort of thing that seems impossible until you read it. An absolute joy of a book, and one I'd wholeheartedly recommend and be glad to see win.

Audition for the Fox, Martin Cahill (Tachyon)

Another entry from a smaller publisher, Audition for the Fox is a delightful read that I found very hard to put down. It tackles a pretty weighty subject matter, but manages to romp through it at speed without ever undermining the seriousness of the topic, and to hand-wave and imply a depth of worldbuilding, without letting the story get bogged down in details.

The novella follows Nesi, an acolyte hoping to serve one of the 99 gods of the world, but who has failed in her previous 96 petitions. Faced with the remaining gods of war, assassination or mischief, she picks the one that seems least intimidating and prays to the fox god to let her take their trial. They agree, and send her back in time to revisit a turning point in her people's history, under the occupation of an imperial force that Nesi knows will, later, be thrown off, but has to face in reality herself now.

Interspersed through this story are folk tales of the gods, told in a war that feels very true to mythical narratives, and to how people tell stories, and about what.

Between the two halves, it's a book very much about culture, about what survives, and why, and especially religion, myth and the stories about the gods. Religion in fantasy isn't always done well, but I think this is one that manages to grasp the pieces that matter, without getting too into the weeds on the cosmology and distracting from having a pacy, direct narrative that satisfies with the sort of closure it feels like the story sets up with its opening.

Another one I enjoyed a great deal, and would be glad to see as a winner.

The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom)

This is the only overlap between the Ignyte shortlist and the Hugo, and several other awards besides, as El-Mohtar has been receiving praise in plenty for The River Has Roots. It's also one of the two Tordotcom novellas on this list, a publisher that often does well, and even dominates, the awards for the form.

What can I say that others haven't already? That I haven't already? It's a good book. I had a really good time reading it, way back away when it originally came out. It's based on a traditional folk song (a murder ballad called The Bonny Swans... spoilers it's not a happy fun nobody-gets-hurt type of song or book), and El-Mohtar does a great job carrying through the tone of the song into the prose and the atmosphere of the book. It's a bit of cliché to call someone's prose "lyrical", but sometimes it really is just the most apt term - here is such a time. It's not that it's rhyming or going full iambic or anything, but there feels something of the weight and melody of a song in there in the way she handles her language.

Language is also at the forefront when it comes to the magic of the world too, based as it is on (and called) Grammar. Don't go in expecting something fully systematised; it ain't that kind of story, and to my mind all the better for it (the wiki-isation of everything, and especially things that ought to be magical and mysterious, is where fun goes to die). It's slippery about its specifics, but that's fine, because the sort of story its evoking, the sort of folk-tale, isn't one that has ever been there for clarity of system. You just have to roll with it. What El-Mohtar creates feels sufficiently intuitively valid to facilitate such rotations.

My one quibble with this one is, having read it a good 18 months ago, is that it has drifted somewhat out of my memory in the interim. It has left a vague - and good - impression, but not a clear or lasting one, and it doesn't feel like a story with a long legacy beyond its initial impact. I still like it, I still had a great time reading it, and I would still support it for the win, but it means it's not my top pick from this (very good) selection.

Psychopomp & Circumstance, Eden Royce (Tordotcom)

This is the first of the shortlist I hadn't read beforehand, and what a delight it was to encounter. 

This is a Southern Gothic historical story, following a young woman named Phee St. Margaret in the town of New Charleston as she chafes under the expectations her mother and her society places on her, especially because of her gender. She is unwillingly resigned to the idea of marriage, though not to the likely suitor she sees on the horizon... until word comes that her mother's estranged sister has passed away, and someone needs to accept the role of "pomp" for her. Phee seizes this opportunity for an escape, however brief, and the chance to prove to her family that she can do things herself, be independent, take responsibility, and be something more than a prospective wife.

While I don't always love coming of age stories, this one is just as much about duty and about the tangles of imperfect families, uncovering the history of the conflict between Phee's mother and aunt, as well as the feelings Phee has about her own limited contact with an aunt she wishes she could have loved closer. And those are things I do enjoy deeply. It has the sort of mess that feels like it really would cause a family rift, and the reasons too why it would have stayed covered up, as well as the warmth of family feeling that makes it so hard to unpack the hurts that go back years.

It also has a beautifully immediate voice, settling into the character of Phee right from the go, and charming the reader with her mixture of naivety and independence, her charm and her caution and her determination.

In a year when many Tordotcom novellas have found their way onto shortlists, I found myself wishing this one had been on far more of them: it does a lot of what Tor can be really good at, and with an individuality and presence that makes its own argument for its place in the honours. It's a book I'm extremely glad to have picked up, and one I'd gladly see win.

Descent, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld)

And now for something rather different. Where everything else is a print novella, Descent is from an online magazine. Where everything else is, more or less, fantasy, Descent is SF. Where everything else is standalone, Descent is part of a wider series called the Sauútiverse. And, unfortunately, where I really liked everything else, Descent did not entirely work for me.

As a caveat, I have read no other entries into the Sauútiverse, and I don't know if knowing more about it would have affected my reading of the work, though it felt very much a standalone, and one I never felt confused by or lacking key information. Indeed, the existence of a wider series I think made the reading experience better: there's a clear depth (ha) to the worldbuilding here, that implies a wider scale and sense of understanding than can be conveyed in a single novella, but gives what is in the novella a richness.

And I enjoyed a lot of the broader aims of what it was doing, especially around how it presented a paradigm of knowledge and scientific method other than "write papers", one that relies on the oral and the verbal. I was, as I read, deeply interested in the world, especially culturally, as Talabi presented a set of interacting cultures with their interrelated tensions, snobberies and resentments. The problem I had was with the nature of the story itself, which follows a pioneering scientist on a mission to find tangible evidence for his theory on the nature of the planet he lives on, and to disprove his mother's theories. As such, this is a story that does spend a lot of time on the specifics of theory and state of the world, in a way that feels somewhat akin to (though sometimes different from) more traditional hard SF, which alas is just not my jam. The science is interesting, though for me it struggled both on a point that didn't make sense to me (though that might be because I don't know enough about the mechanics of gas giant planets), and because the science as the focus meant that the more emotional angles of the story - the ones upon which a lot of the drama of the ending rests - felt a little neglected. The emotional crescendo of the final sequence just didn't hit for me.

There are moments when it comes close, and when Talabi deploys some banger lines like "the boundary condition of all knowledge is faith". But it just doesn't quite pull together, in the end. Interesting enough that I would pick up another story in the series, but not I think the one I want to win from this otherwise stacked shortlist.

* * *

And so, there we have it. My broad conclusion is: this is a really strong shortlist, one that covers a variety of angles and styles within the genre, and which delivers strongly especially on distinctive voice: these are stories you could read and know them by their words in a moment. Whether that's lyrical, poetic prose evoking a murder ballad, scientific specificity tinged by the wonder of faith, or a world that diverged wildly from the one we know, each of them has a clear sense not just of the story it wants to tell, but the way it wants to tell it, and the determination that each part is just as important as the other. And I love it.

The great thing about the Ignyte has, so far, been its ability to provide such a consistently high standard and variety in its shortlists. I see no evidence that that has changed, and indeed, it seems like the award continues to go from strength to strength if the novella slate for 2026 is anything to go by.

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POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Book Review: Victory City by Salman Rushdie

A profound commentary on the construction of Indian identity

This much we know to be true:

During the era that we in the West call the 14th century, the brothers Hakka and Bukka, of the Sangama clan, fled the Delhi Sultanate and went southward. After crossing the Krishna River, in the region that corresponds to present-day Karnataka, they built a city that would grow to become the capital of a great empire. They called this city Vijayanagara, which is Sanskrit for “victory city.” The civilization that developed there was immensely prosperous and cosmopolitan, admired by travelers from as far as Venice and Portugal, who wrote of its religious tolerance, exquisite architecture and abundant riches.

It was a society of poets, scholars and merchants, which for three centuries controlled most of southern India until the neighboring sultanates in the Deccan plateau joined forces, attacked the empire and destroyed its capital. While it lasted, the Vijayanagara Empire was a hotbed of cultural fusion where half a dozen languages coexisted and reached memorable heights of literary refinement, and where women enjoyed more freedom than anywhere else in medieval India.

But in every history there are lacunae, events that escaped memory, people whose achievements weren’t written down. In those blank spaces of the historical record, Salman Rushdie weaves the threads of his imagination and creates the vast epic that is his novel Victory City. By retelling history in the style of myth, he gives us a timeless portrait of India as he has dreamed it, a land of infinite creativity and glorious diversity that has often had to endure the curse of narrow-minded rulers who can only conceive of one correct way of living. More than a political allegory, Victory City is a prayer addressed to the future.

The novel’s main fictional addition to the historical account is the character of Pampa Kampana, a divinely gifted woman who witnesses the two and a half centuries of Vijayanagara’s splendor. She presides over the city’s birth and lives to watch in despair as it is destroyed. Across four successive dynasties, she becomes prophetess, fugitive, queen, spy, grandmother, witch, conspirator, saint, soldier, thief, chronicler and survivor. She brings the city to life by summoning it from the depths of the earth and growing it like a plant. Spawned without a history, the city comes already formed, with houses and streets not made by human hand, and with fully-grown inhabitants without ancestry, identity or any idea of how to live. So Pampa uses her magic to give them fabricated memories. People need to know who they are and where they come from, even if it’s a lie.

This bit of magical realism contains an astute observation from Rushdie: modern India often resorts to made-up narratives to tell itself its history and identity. Under Narendra Modi’s ultranationalist regime, the official version of India’s past has been entangled with authoritarian control of information, us/them revisionism, literalist readings of mythology, ethnic supremacy, fanatical patriotism, normalization of sectarian violence, science denial, entrenchment of a monoculture, sanitization of the caste system, patriarchal propaganda, and erasure of Muslim achievements.

Rushdie has in mind the difficulty of presenting any faithful and honest rendition of the facts, and this is acknowledged in the composition of the novel itself: an unnamed narrator tells us that the text of Victory City is a prose version of Pampa’s much more elegant narration in Sanskrit verse, which we don’t get to see. This is an instance of the literary device of the found manuscript, as employed in Don Quixote, and the novel’s first paragraph is addressed at the reader in a tone that echoes Don Quixote’s introduction.

From time to time this narrator reminds us that we’re not learning these events from an eyewitness point of view, but only as filtered through rewriting, translation and abridgement. There’s no moral judgment of Pampa’s use of fiction to create the history of Vijayanagara; in fact, the text’s self-professed nature seems to be saying that any version of history a society chooses to accept will always be mediated by someone’s account of it. It’s a sharp irony that, when Pampa tries to explain to the people that their history was an invention, they insist that it really happened they way they learned it. The subtext is that it’s not a bad thing that all identity is constructed; knowing this fact actually empowers you to choose how you construct it.

Pampa is very aware of the type of society she came from: a rigid patriarchy divided by religious allegiances. Her constant struggle as her miraculous city’s caretaker is to steer its people, be it explicitly or in secret, toward a way of life that values openness, harmony, pluralism, learning, and equality. But time after time, her efforts are opposed by strongmen who define themselves in reference to some designated enemy and waste the empire’s wealth in campaigns of conquest to feed their vanity, or priests who won’t listen to women and seek to enforce their favored form of devotion as the only authorized form of devotion. Like the best speculative literature, this is an imagined country that speaks with calculated precision about the real one.

Rushdie has been a frequent critic of religious extremism, on both sides of the Indian partition. He has the scars to prove he knows what he’s talking about. The land of wonders depicted in Victory City is a vision of the freedom India could achieve, in some other century, in another life.

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10.

Reference: Rushdie, Salman. Victory City [Random House, 2023].

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: w0rldtr33, collected volume 1 by Fernando Blanco and James Tynion IV

This is not your internet

I picked up w0rldtr33 because of the cover, the creators behind it (Tynion is always a draw for me) and because I was in the mood for something contemporary with tech and guns and people with phones.

The story can best be introduced along the following lines: Gabriel and his friends were teenage tech geeks in the early days of the internet. As they built their own networks, hacked newly emerging systems and generally fucked around, they discovered the Undernet, a hidden architecture to the internet and possibly something more, something deeper. They charted their explorations on a message board called W0RLDTR33. Then it all went wrong. 20 years ago, Gabriel and the others sealed the Undernet away for good. Or so they thought. They were wrong.

Told both in the past and now, this is full-blown horror. This first collected volume hints at some deeply “other” stuff. This isn’t the internet of conspiracies or monsters from myth; this is something different. Tynion and Blanco are in full horror territory here and it’s of the cosmic variety. Honestly I wasn’t quite ready—the opening pages are in technothriller territory with a sense that the secret architecture could be a government agency/conspiracy theory landscape, but, a little like it does for the characters, then it all goes wrong.

I mean that in a good way and there’ll be no more about the actual story here except to say it sits comfortably in the Event Horizon/Hellblazer space (at least in vibes), is gruesome, nasty and very, very bloody.

The story is well executed, and wrong-footed me on a couple of crucial occasions in a good way. w0rldtr33 is clearly looking to do something different with its tropes and its themes, and I welcome that commitment to telling the story slightly differently.

For me horror thrives when, like any genre, it’s in conversation with themes and topics that can be hard to discuss without metaphor. w0rldtr33 is absolutely talking about the deleterious impact of algorithms on human culture and individual cognition, but if that sounds a little tiresome, I think this is a good example executed well and using the setting to great effect.

Visually this feels akin to recent horror It Follows (2014) and Dark City (1998) or Talk to Me (2022), perhaps even Unfriended (2014), although this is superior to those. This combination of visuals together with the techno-cosmic-horror theme works really well, even in this first volume where there’s only really enough space to establish the stakes and give hints at where this is going.

The sense that the internet is a bad place is nuanced here—the internet itself, especially given the initial timeframe, is seen as a place of huge potential for good, for communication and community. It’s the Undernet that is the bad place, although what it is and why it’s bad are unclear so far. It’s enough that this is a story in which communication has two sides to it, one which does untold good and one which can do untold evil.

As with any great horror like this, the evil at work is not simply immoral; it is deeply amoral in the sense that it has no morality we can recognise except that its wants and needs are cruel and destructive in execution. Why? Yet to be revealed, and given how adjacent it is to cosmic horror in this tone, it might be simply that whatever lurks in the Undernet is what it is. We’re not going to get a tragic backstory to the supernatural monster(s) waiting for the world here.

The main characters around Gabriel are strongly drawn so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go—they are scarred by their history, the world has changed since they initially locked away the Undernet, and they aren’t ready for what’s unfolding around them. Like Stephen King’s IT, this group of young friends have gone their separate ways since the original events, and that’s largely because of the trauma of what happened. As they come back together now, it is with trepidation, rancour and suspicion—these do not make for good outcomes when faced with a threat no single person can handle alone.

w0rldtr33 is great horror, and highly recommended for anyone who likes the thriller/cosmic horror genre with lashings of gore and people who aren’t ready for what they’re facing.

I do have one criticism, and it’s potentially transient. There is one character who spends all her time nude, and is drawn in a way that you’d not be surprised to see as the ideal feminine form for a particular type of cis het male. I cannot see why, at this stage in the story, she’s appearing like this, and it is uncomfortable for reasons that have nothing to do with horror. However, volume 1 is just that, the first 5 issues of the monthly comic, so it’s possible this will have a narrative reason, so I raise it, but caveat that concern with an admission that I don’t know where the story is going. Given that this is about the horror of the internet, a naked woman appearing for the sake of it isn’t really out of place. Yet.

Highlights:

• Great art and colouring
• Cosmic horror!
• Lots of blood and gore

Nerd coefficient: 6/10, a great story so far, lots of unexpected horror and plot, good characters and compelling visuals.

Reference: Tynion, James (writer) and Blanco, Fernando (artist). w0rldtr33 [Image Comics, 2024 - current].

STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos, BSFA and BFA finalist he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.

Microreview: Kill all Wizards by Jedidiah Berry

An irreverent fantasy novella with a Conan-like protagonist, but with a number of fresh twists and style.

Gotchimus has a problem with wizards. Wizards put a real cramp in his style and his life. He’s a barbarian. He has an eyepatch although even to his friend Hecksley he is not open about what happened to his eye. But with a number of wizards turning up dead, suspicion has fallen on Gotchimus as the cause of the recent spate of death of spell slingers, a barbarian like Gotchimus, even if he has come up in the world of sartorial fashion and manners a bit, is going to be suspected. And he does have a grudge against some of the dead wizards, if not all of them. Untangling Gotchimus’ story is going to take a lot of work, and a lot of wizard deaths.

This is the world and story of Kill all Wizards by Jedidiah Berry.

The perspective and touchstone I want to go with showing you how this story felt like me might feel a bit strange and obscure, but bear with me here. In the 1990’s there was a now not well remembered film adaptation of the detective/superhero comic The Shadow, with Alec Baldwin in the title role. John Lane plays Shiwan Khan, his opposition (and ostensibly the last descendant of Genghis Khan)¹. There is a scene in the movie I want to focus on, where Shiwan Khan and The Shadow have lunch together. They debate philosophy, tactics, and, well, fashion. It’s the classic Dr. No style “the bad guy and the villain have a meal together”. Shiwan Khan reminds me of Gotchimus. He’s trying to learn fashion and manners, but at the end of it, he is a barbarian (the lunch scene ends predictably, with things going to pot).  

In a way, Kill all Wizards captures that vibe from Khan for the story. One minute, he is at the opera and ill-fitting (but trying) in the heart of culture and refinement.² And then the next moment, he is fighting what seems to be a forest god for his life, elegant clothes and put-on manners ditched for doing the more traditional business of a barbarian. The novella, too, recognizes the story and goes a little postmodern with the whole business a number of times, commenting on the action directly to the reader. 

This goes to the point of pointing out that there is an excess of violence and refuses to have that be inflicted on the reader. Thus, the narration of the story is extremely knowing, and sometimes very much tongue in cheek. The narration and tone recognize the reader has likely been down this road before many times and wants to tell the story in a slightly skewed way. Consider the cover image: The cover image in a way tells you that the author is not going to play it exactly straight. It's a good use of the cover art to inform and prepare the reader.

This is not to say that the book doesn’t give you what is on the label. Gotchimus, for a lot of the book, is recounting his adventures, and yes, there is a lot of barbarian action in among the more polished cultural adventures. The polished cultural adventures include the mentioned visit to the opera, and an encounter with the horrid and unkillable beast named Bureaucracy. The wilder adventures have a resonance with exploits of barbarians going all the way back to Conan. 

It’s clear to me that Berry made deliberate references and homages all through the novella and I hesitate to spoil too many of them for a curious reader.  This all resonates with several genres of fantasy beyond just the sword and sorcery, and there is plenty for a well-seasoned fantasy reader to enjoy here. Even for its length and its freshness, I am not sure this is actually even a 101 novella, it's unexpected in its cuts and premises. 

In the midst of all this, finally, the story is queer friendly, readable and doesn’t outstay its welcome. 

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Highlights:

• A classic fantasy story from a delightfully off kilter point of view

• Maybe not the fantasy story you expect, but one that does not outstay its welcome

• Some delightful funny bits, both in manners and in action.

Reference: Berry, Jedediah, Kill All Wizards (Tordotcom, 2025)

¹ Just go with it. Genghis Khan is probably the ancestor of an appreciable fraction of Eurasia thanks to his, um, prolific nature. But on the other hand, even that now is coming in for question as the evidence seems muddled. 

² Is this a Fantasy of Manners? Maybe, to a degree it hits that old subgenre, too. There is evocation of the  subgenre of fantasy (mannerpunk). Although far from its high point, there are still fantasies in this vein being written.... notably the Glamourist Histories by Mary Robinette Kowal run on this sort of Austenian flavored fantasy. Gotchimus’ intrusions into High Society are in this old tradition. 

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

TV Microreview: Batman: Caped Crusader season 2

Quoth the Joker: “Good. This is good.”

The reimagining of the era-defining Batman: The Animated Series returns for a second season, and much like the second movie in the Nolanverse, this time the story explores what happens to Gotham’s rotten underbelly once Batman starts removing ordinary mobsters from the board. What happens, as you’ll remember from The Dark Knight, is that a more devious, more sophisticated breed of evildoers emerges. And, as is customary in this show, Batman’s extensive repertoire of enemies is remolded with interesting twists.

Take the Mad Hatter, for example. The classical version of this character is a creepy little goblin who uses neuroelectric technology for mind control. But here we get something harder to fight: a sweet old lady with a talk show. She doesn’t need fancy gadgets to influence people because she has the power of mass media. This version of the Mad Hatter never meets Batman in a fight, but her presence is strongly felt throught the season each time she’s on screen poisoning the public conversation.

We also meet Roxy Rocket, who instead of a mere henchwoman is portrayed here as a tragic antiheroine on a mission of revenge. Also out for revenge is the Spectre, whose deadly, unstoppable wrath may or may not be divine, but is definitely not of this world. There’s the Mad Monk, a predatory cult leader who has made Batman the focus of a mass obsession. As promised in the trailer for this season, Harley Quinn returns, faced with both the weight of her own actions and the threat of a villain who seems tailored for her professional talents. The dual character of Rose/Thorn makes an appearance in an episode that plays with ambiguous interpretations about which side of her is real. And we see a version of Mr. Freeze reinvented as a rather unconventional artist who enjoys turning people into icy sculptures.

But the presence that haunts the season from start to end is the horrifying gaze of the Joker, who gets the most radical transformation away from the archetype we’ve learned to expect. Although the Riddler enjoys a long stay under the spotlight as Gotham’s new mob boss, the show pulls off a funny move of metatextual awareness and turns the Riddler into a mere appetizer for the main course that is the Joker, which, after all, is what the Riddler has been for decades in the public’s ranking of villains.

This Joker is a complete surprise. Story after story has trained us to expect a very specific vibe from this character: an irreverent prankster whose perverse sense of humor conveys a deep disdain for the social order. He’s colorful, loud, annoying in a way that’s impossible to ignore. This Joker is none of that. He doesn’t bother dressing up his psychopathic impulses in clownish antics: he’s pure, naked malevolence. He’s elusive, silent, shady to the point that he thinks of himself as an equal to Batman. He still has his trademark poison gas that kills people of laughter, but he himself never cracks a smile.

How can a character be so polarly opposite to the standard Joker and still be an incarnation of him? If he views society as one big joke, he’s keeping the punchline to himself. That makes his personality all the more sinister: you know he’s privately enjoying the chaos, but he’s not going to explain what it is that he finds so funny.

Beyond the visual delight that is the retro aesthetic of this art déco Gotham, with its black-and-white TV shows, clunky machine guns, and ubiquitous fedoras, the main attraction of the show is the inventivenes with which it makes the same old villains you think you already know feel fresh again. For a hero approaching 90 years since first publication, this is a much needed and much welcome transfusion of new blood.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Adventure, plot twists, and emotional depth in a much needed reminder of why we love superhero stories.

On the continuum of superhero films, the many iterations of Spiderman are generally on the lighter side of adventure storytelling. But the last live action movie Spider-man: No Way Home ended with high school superhero Peter Parker sacrificing his closest relationships to save the world. Losing everything and starting over alone sounds like a bleak premise for our friendly neighborhood Spiderman. However, Spider-man: Brand New Day, lives up to its title with a fresh start, a well-paced new adventure, and plenty of unexpected plot twists which make the story fun from start to finish.

The story begins with Spiderman / Peter Parker (Tom Holland) living a loner life as a full time superhero. He no longer has his beloved parental figure Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). And, his besties MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) don’t remember him due to the memory wipe caused by No Way Home’s mind-bending cosmic reset. Although Peter and MJ were deeply in love and he promised to come back and find them in the new reality, he loses his nerve and decides to remain alone in his continuing protection of the city as Spiderman. MJ and Ned go on to their successful college lives at MIT, complete with parties and another love interest for MJ. Although Spiderman is an elusive and well liked superhero, the human being Peter Parker is non-existent to those he once loved. His only emotional connections in his new reality are a tough (but somewhat motherly) police detective Jean (Liza Colon-Zayas) who partners with him on crime fighting and his antagonist / frenemy Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) aka the Punisher. However, Peter’s hybrid spider DNA is evolving and his internalized stress from his traumatic loss is adversely affecting him physically as he struggles to make peace within himself. He turns to Professor Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for advice on suppressing his animal side and Bruce questions whether that is always the right thing to do although he concedes he must do it to control the Hulk creature inside him. But no superhero film is complete without a villain. Adding to the complications is an invisible creature who is taking control of other villains (and sometimes civilians) in an attempt to steal a mysterious item from the government entity known as Damage Control. Peter has to battle this unknowable enemy with an equally unknown goal while battling to keep his own evolving powers in check and dealing with the unbearable grief of losing everything.

It’s been a while since a superhero film delivered the perfect combination of what we love in hero stories: adventure, emotion, and thoughtful messaging. Spider-man: Brand New Day is a delight to watch from start to finish because it delivers in all of these areas. In a period of often excessively bloated run times, Brand New Day, doesn’t waste time with unnecessary content. Every scene is solid, entertaining, and moves the ever twisting plot forward. The acting is effortlessly excellent with three of the leads, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal, fresh from their equally impressive (and somewhat similar) roles in The Odyssey. They are joined by television powerhouses Liza Colon-Zayas of the multi-Emmy winning series The Bear and Emmy winner Trammell Tillman of Severance.  We also have Sadie Sink of Stranger Things who is an unexpected treat. Liza Colon-Zayas is excellent as a tough, pragmatic detective who becomes a substitute parental figure for Peter. She is the only one who checks in on Peter as a person and she is the only one who is both strong and sensitive enough to speak truth to him, even when he doesn’t want to hear it. Trammell Tillman’s Emmy winning performance on Severance transitions perfectly to his role in Brand New Day, where he delivers the same corporate bureaucracy with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Sadie Sink provides both power and vulnerability in her role. The film initially seems like it will be a story of regaining a lost love and defeating the villain. But it turns into a much more meaningful story about community, compassion, and family in all its definitions.

Despite being two hours and twenty-five minutes long, Brand New Day swings through the adventure with refreshing intensity, as well as thoughtful, twisty storytelling. In recent years, many films drag themselves through a nearly three hour presentation in a way that can leave viewers repeatedly checking their watches rather than being truly immersed. In Brand New Day the story is taut, focused, and well-paced. There is no long exposition on how Peter is earning a living or who all of the side villains or shadowy government agencies are. It’s clear this film is trying to tell a different type of story. Of course, the big action scenes are present and are over the top with plenty of explosions, flipped cars, and near death moments that require a willing suspension of disbelief regarding the controlled amount of carnage, casualties, and not completely toppled buildings. However, the usual trope of the McGuffin / “magic thing” that needs to be captured to win all the power is inverted and reimagined in a way that is so well done. As a result, the film asks some unexpected questions about power, identity, and exploitation that lead back to a meaningful exploration of larger social themes. Spider-man: Brand New Day balances all of the adventure elements without sacrificing thoughtful storytelling and emotional connection. And, by the last act of the film, viewers will be rethinking everything. In a good way.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Excellent characters and acting
• Well-paced, meaningful storytelling
• Entertaining and satisfying

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Book Review: Wickhills by Premee Mohamed

Manticores, vampyrs, and spies challenge a magical city 

Premee Mohamed’s Wickhills is a John le Carré-style spy story that manages to both critique surveillance states and the narratives we tell about the past while also distracting us with fantastic beasts and a fast-paced plot. We follow Ferec, an agent for Seaborne, a secretive government agency that he believes protects the people of Wickhills. Ferec’s boss has asked him to do an off-book mission to retrieve a mysterious package which turns out to be a defector from a nearby city. The problem is: no one travels between the two cities; it’s just not done (perhaps because of magic?). And the defector has something that cannot fall into the wrong hands, including those of the government that Ferec works for. Shenanigans ensue.

Wickhills is one of six regional cities, but people never travel between the cities. Ferec grew up with stories of how Wickhills was different and better than the other cities in the region. But, this mission forces Ferec to confront his view of his city, its government, and its past, coming to realize that our stories of identity are almost always crafted to make us feel like the ‘good guys’, even when we’re not (or it’s just more complicated than that).

On a micro level, Wickhills tells the story of Ferec. He’s a fairly broken man; orphaned as a child, he was forced and sometimes chose to do terrible things to survive. As a member of Seaborne, he’s had to kill to protect the city and he often wonders if he feels bad enough about those deaths. He sees himself as an imperfect defender of the city but this mission forces him to ask if he’s been the bad guy all along and if Seaborne is secretly the Gestapo.

Over the course of the book, Ferec acquires a small team that he tries to learn to trust. It includes a member of the city watch, Velasco, who gets pulled in deeper to their secret mission than he would have preferred and, my favourite character of the book, Agent Heopsachett, an extremely competent fat lady who comes from Seaborne’s archives and provides a counterpoint to some of Ferec’s more destructive impulses.

On the macro level, Wickhills tells a story of the long tail of generational trauma left by war. Most people do not remember the wars that made Wickhills and the agreements with the other five cities of the region, so the governments of those cities can tell the story of the war however they like. Ferec sees his city as the hero of those stories. But, of course, that’s the story that the state would want you to absorb, no?

Bringing a defector through the city forces Ferec to see Wickhills through they eyes of an outsider. Unsurprisingly, he does not see things the same way. Further, during this mission, Ferec learns more about the history of the city from some allies who actually lived through the past that is now covered up by the state. Ferec’s boss, Bardanes, is a manticore, an extraordinarily long-lived creature from Persian mythology that has the face of a human, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion. He’s lived in Wickhills for more than 250 years, so he saw some of its history made. Bardanes reveals part of the history of Wickhills that has been buried and forbidden to help Ferec understand the significance of his mission. Later in the story, Ferec works with a vampyr named Cazenave whose people have been in the city as long as there has been a city. Cazenave also exposes more of Wickhills’ past and how it has been shaped by the people in power.

As with all of Mohamed’s work, the writing will sometimes make you just stop on the page to admire a line of description or the way she builds characterization into an idle gesture. For example, when we meet Agent Heopsachett, Mohamed tells us “her coat and dress had been tailored to fit her fat, powerful body, not to camouflage it.” This line shows us so much about Heopsachett and her personality, trusting the reader to get it without spelling things out didactically.

Mohamed also drops in incredible details that never get further explained, in a way that makes the depth of the world she’s built seem bottomless. For example, from just the first chapter we get this description: "The Market Street Wyrm slackened its sable coils around the dome of the old mall, somnolescent but not quite asleep, its great pre-hibernation yawns occasionally flooding the neighbourhood with amber light. At street level lay the dragon’s shrine, begging it to rest, to dream, the wooden box crowded with cheap tin amulets and wizened crabapples.” We learn no more about the Market Street Wyrm. It’s part of the scenery of Wickhills, but one that tells us of the incredible depths of this city, this world that Mohamed built.

I have been a longtime fan of Mohamed’s work, but Wickhills is really a standout for me. The characters, setting, and writing are all fantastically done. Go and read this book. It’s great. 

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The Math:

Highlights:  

• Compelling John LeCarre-style spy story
• Deeper questions about narrative and history
• Outstanding writing and worldbuilding 

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10, "very high quality/standout in its category"

Reference: Mohamed, Premee. Wickhills [Tor Books, 2026].

POSTED BY: Christine D. Baker, historian and lover of SFF and mysteries. You can find her also writing reviews at Ancillary Review of Books or podcasting about classic scifi/fantasy at Hugo History. Come chat books with her on Bluesky @klaxoncomms.com.