Video Game Review: Death Stranding: Director's Cut by Kojima Productions

Better late than never!

Death Stranding, six years old now (note: this is a review of the original, not the recently released sequel), sat on the periphery of my must-play-at-some-point list since its release. I say periphery because I never actually purchased it, but always intended to. A friend bought it for me last Christmas and, besides wanting to check it out over the years, praise for the sequel helped push it to the forefront of my pile (and in a year of games that is the antithesis of any backlog, mind you). This game pushed me through a range of emotions that I wasn’t certain it would evoke, and the funny thing is, few of them had anything to do with the story. Let’s go through them a bit.

Emotion one: Frustration. It’s rare that I consider quitting a game. In fact, I’m a bit of a completionist. Giving up before finishing a game’s storyline is a rarity for me, and yet, there was one point early on that I considered doing just that. Here I am, ill-equipped to handle the world of Death Stranding, I have my BB (Bridge Baby, or, a baby in an incubator that connects to my chest that can detect BTs (ghosts)) and I’m delivering a heavy cargo load to the Wind Farm up in the mountains. I’ve been careful, holding my breath whenever I’m near one of the BTs (again, ghosts), but somehow, I’m caught. I try to escape, but alas, I have too much cargo and the souls from the beach drag me down into the tar. The world sways as I’m dragged hither and thither and suddenly I’m over a hundred meters away from my cargo and—is that… why yes it is—a tar-drenched whale breaches the surface, my BB is wailing and I can’t soothe it because I am surrounded by ghosts and am literally being chased by a whale in the mountains. None of it makes any sense, and I’m trying to figure out how to get away from whatever is going on. I fall a few times, and the BTs are pulling at me. The BB is still crying (I detest the sound of whining or crying (or anything high-pitched for that matter)) and I am not only frustrated now, but the game has fueled my second emotion: anxiety. Finally, I managed to get away, but now my BB has autotoxemia and won’t be able to help me scan for BTs on my way back. I get a message: my cargo has been destroyed. Perfect, I have to reload my save and do that entire area over again.

The opening hours of Death Stranding are a chore. I understand the concept of learning to crawl before you can walk, but the game doesn’t do a terrific job of making you feel invested right away so it feels like you’re scraping your knees on cement instead of learning to crawl on a plush carpet. The world, while giving the desolate feeling that it wants to evoke, doesn’t give one of character. It feels bland and incredibly unrealistic (albeit beautiful, graphics are nice—even for a six-year-old game). Lots of suspension of disbelief needed here to believe that this map is supposed to be what was once the United States of America. There are a few ruins here and there, but nothing makes the world feel like it is the remnant of a country once vast and opulent in some places, and criminally under-funded in others. It just feels like a big, empty open map. And while that definitely serves the gameplay, it doesn’t serve the world-building and immersion. Sure, things were supposed to be wiped out when the Stranding occurred, with timefall (rain that ages anything it touches) aging everything to dust, but some things evaded destruction. The game’s world feels like an echo of what it could have been. I can appreciate it as a game world, but not as a replacement for the entire USA.

After the Wind Farm mission, I did something that I don’t think I’ve done before. I sought validation on the internet. I asked whether I was crazy or if the game sucked. How did this game score well? Some folks said, “If you don’t like it now, you won’t like it at all,” and at that I felt a bit disheartened. But then some heroes said, “Get to Chapter 3. Just push on past the first area.” And so I did. Anyone who gives this game a chance and has a similar experience with the opening, I say push through to the third chapter. Don’t worry about what you’re missing in the first area; you can always come back—and with better tools.

The third emotion, confusion, came into play when I entered the second area. The story was a bizarre rollercoaster of plot twists that didn’t always pay off, a main character whose motivations don’t seem to match his actions for ninety percent of the game, and side characters with really odd names (Fragile, Deadman, Heartman, Die-Hardman, Mama—What is his obsession with characters named Mama?). Norman Reedus was an interesting decision for the main character, not because he gives a poor-quality performance, but because he’s so recognizable and the role of Sam Porter Bridges doesn’t push him to test his ability that it simply feels like you’re playing Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead. This is a Kojima game, through and through, so expect a weird story with weirder characters and some plot points that don’t always make sense, and you’ll be fine. The story comes together in the end, but not necessarily in a completely satisfying way.

But the fourth emotion I experienced—appreciation—kicked in once the gameplay clicked with me and the world became this moldable map under my fingertips. The vision was clear, and the game had become addictive. I spent many nights thinking, “just one more delivery.” But that one turned into two, two turned into three, which turned into an invasion of a MULE camp, which turned into finding another place to connect to the UCA. I would get excited to find a lost piece of cargo for the connection I wanted to level up with and think, “It’s only a few minutes away; let me just bring it to them real quick.” The game has a distinct quality of making you feel you are, in fact, a very important deliveryman trying to connect a once great country (even if the map doesn’t seem like one was really there in the first place).

The gameplay is unique in some senses, familiar in others. At its core, it has basic third-person shooter controls. You get weaponry to dispatch enemies, both of the living and dead variety, and can use stealth to get the job done (though not as intricate as Metal Gear Solid V, the mechanics work well). The uniqueness comes from the delivery aspect of the game. As a porter, it is Sam’s job not only to deliver cargo, but to ensure it remains in-tact and with as minor damage done as possible. Sometimes, a delivery has a time limit. Sam can only carry up to a certain weight limit before he is over-encumbered, so it’s up to the player to ensure that they don’t exceed what they can manage. Not only is weight a factor, but so too is the height of the cargo. Too high or heavy, and the cargo pile will tilt left or right, and the player has to ensure Sam remains upright or the whole thing may topple over. Easy enough on flat terrain, but once you enter the rougher areas, rushing through is a big no-no. This game induces anxiety like almost nothing else. Watching as my cargo washed away downriver because I mismanaged my energy made me laugh (only after frantically doing everything I could to recover it all). In Death Stranding, if you fail big, you usually only have yourself to blame. And biting off more than you can chew, even when you are familiar with the rules of the game, is incredibly tempting.

As new tools unlock, the game becomes more pliable and the vision for the “stranding” genre unfolds. When you place a tool in the game’s world (for instance, a generator that charges all your batteries—especially vehicles), other players who share your lobby also get that in their game world. When you help yourself in this game, you help others, and vice versa. Every time I set up a system that made the world more traversable, I had hoped that it would make it into other people’s worlds. It was enjoyable to see my hard work pay off, and, in the end, I could get around a map—that provided many initial challenges—with ease. The puzzles in Death Stranding aren’t ones you’d find in a Legend of Zelda game. No, the puzzle here is how to make the best use of your tools and the surrounding landscape. As I bent the world to my will—helping not only myself, but others—as I made the premium timed deliveries with minutes to spare, my cargo perfectly in-tact, there’s so much satisfaction that I almost forgot about that time that my cargo was destroyed because I was surrounded by ghosts while carrying a crying baby to a Wind Farm in the mountains while a whale chased me.

Almost.

I know Kojima’s story and characters won’t be for everyone. This is a man with an odd vision who now has full control over his work. I felt at many points that the game would have been served well by some higher-up saying, “This is stupid. Did you add it because you thought it sounded cool? It doesn’t.” Or, “Did you just randomly think of it this morning? It doesn’t fit, cut it.” Despite some misfiring in the story and a sometimes cumbersome UI, the soundtrack does well to echo the vibe of the game and put the player in the mood to make some more deliveries. The emptiness and desolation play into Low Roar’s hands.

I know the first few paragraphs came off quite negative—and well they should. Death Stranding had an abysmal start. You shouldn’t have to push through to get to the good part (especially when pushing through takes six-plus hours). When the game gets going, you can experience something unique on a AAA scale. Most games that innovate nowadays lie firmly in the indie camp, so this was a breath of fresh air. It’s not perfect, but despite my misgivings, it is quite good and worth exploring if you want something experimental and that does what it sets out to do (mostly). Despite my confusion regarding the end of the story, I still find myself eager to play the next entry. More deliveries? Yes, please.

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The Math

Objective Assessment: 7.5/10

Bonus: +1 for unique gameplay. +1 for addictive, yet at times relaxing, gameplay loop.

Penalties: -1 for opening hours. -1 for story misfires.

Nerd Coefficient: 7.5/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

Film Review: Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo Del Toro masterfully crafts a visually stunning, moving adaptation of Frankenstein, full of body horror, epic vistas, and heavy-handed themes.

To start off (for those who are worried), Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein is definitely worth watching. I haven't read the novel since college, when I took a Literature of Horror course, but I won't bore everyone with a scene-by-scene comparison of how Del Toro's version strays from the original text — that's not what's important. What's important is how he's taken this story and made it his own. I saw in an interview that he's spent his entire life, apparently, aching to get this production off the ground. Doing it now, of course, means he's an absolute master of his craft, able to bring all of his considerable powers to bear in getting it done. 

First, let's talk about the mise en scene. Every single still from this film could be a painting, it's so lush and vibrant. You could easily go down a rabbit hole about color symbolism throughout the run time, but I think it's enough to say that nobody does the color red like Del Toro. The bookends of the movie take place in the arctic, and the glaring white and blues are simply divine. As an Arctic history lover, the attention to detail is superb — that's actually a real boat set we see. The Danish sailors are ice-rimed and visibly freezing, wearing Welsh wigs to keep warm. 

When it comes to the story of Frankenstein, everyone knows the drill: A deeply ambitious and cold man aims to create life, then is disgusted by his creation and abandons him. Del Toro's choice for Viktor Frankenstein is Oscar Isaac, and while I love Oscar Isaac in almost everything, I felt he was a deeply silly choice for this role. He's too charming, too attractive, too suave to play a monomanical scientist. With his pinstripe suit, wide lacy shirts, and cocked hat, he runs around Europe looking like Prince. He drinks milk constantly, which is a heavy-handed thematic bit about being a life-creator, etc. But instead of channeling a 19th-century Romantic archetype, I wish he had played like his engineer in Ex Machina — a cold, dispassionate creator of a similar form of artificial life, AI. It's clear that Victor has daddy issues, but Del Toro absolutely nails it out of the park when he cast Charles Dance — the epic Tywin Lannister — as his father. Victor can neither live up to his father nor provide paternal guidance to his own creation. Truly a pitiful man.

Now, let's talk about the Monster. For almost a century, the archetype has revolved around Boris Karloff's green-faced, bolt-necked, flat-top creature, and it's hard to shake that path. Del Toro opts for a more put-together monster, with no visible stitches or mismatched body parts. The creature that gets created is none other than Jacob Elordi, one of the most beautiful men working in Hollywood right now. After he is born, however, he runs around the tower in yellow hot pants and tan bandages, looking for all the world like Rocky from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Here is a list of other characters/people he resembles: 

 

Gotye from the 2012 Somebody That I Used To Know music video

The Engineers from the Alien universe

All in all, Elordi does a good job of portraying a monster created from dead body parts who's rejected by his maker. His eyes are incredibly expressive, dark brown pools of wonder, fear, and hurt. The most striking examples in the movie of artificial life actually come from Frankenstein's early research. There's one scene in which he's lecturing to medical students, and he unveils a head, half a torso, and an arm attached to a piece of wood, reanimating it in a way that's truly frightening and otherworldly. Similarly, he encounters the splayed-out nervous system of a human on a board, and it makes you realize how we're all just hunks of meat protecting a bundle of nerves. It's how the universe experiences itself.

An interesting thing about this Creature that I guess I didn't pick up on in other adaptations is that he's not only insanely strong, but also immortal. That definitely adds to the untold misery of being an unwanted and rejected being. This also opens the door to moments of some pretty wild body horror. Each time, it's always by surprise, and it always made me wince, it was so graphic. The opening 8 minutes or so, you can barely breathe because of all the action — the Creature emerges from the Arctic tundra and absolutely lays waste to a ship full of Danish sailors, all black cape and mutilated skin and enraged fury as he shouts for Victor.

One thing that wasn't graphic throughout the movie was the horrible use of CGI in a few scenes, especially those in which the Creature encounters the wolves and rats. It takes you right out of the movie, and it's jarring because there's SUCH good use of practical effects elsewhere. You could take the CGI animals out entirely and the film loses absolutely nothing. It's a shame they're in there. 

When it comes to the sets, I had a curious sense of deja vu in the tower where Victor creates the creature. The stairway felt exactly like the one from Crimson Peak, while the laboratory was definitely giving Wicked in a good way.

There's an H.R. Geiger-meets-steampunk aesthetic that I really dig throughout every scene, though. I just wish I cared more about the Creature once we get his point of view. I've talked to several folks who said they felt deeply maternal toward him, which is completely the point! I just never bonded with him in the way that I think Del Toro wanted me to.  Frankenstein is not unlike the recent Nosferatu, I think, in that it manages to succeed in a visual and stylistic way, but somehow misses the mark on characterization and depth. 

Overall, I think this is a great piece of work from one of our best living directors. I just believe that I'm perhaps too uninterested in Victor and the Creature's strange relationship. Victor is just an asshole, and the Creature is unclear in his motivations toward Victor. I never really cared for either person throughout, and when they are in the same room, they just hurt each other. I think what the world really needs is an adaptation of Frankenstein written and directed by a woman. One that doesn't have such heavy-handed symbolism as "Victor drinks a lot of milk because he's a mother figure who creates life." That would do Mary Shelley proud, I think. Unlike ending the movie with a Lord Byron quote! You have an entire novel by Ms. Shelley filled with some of the most mind-bogglingly beautiful words and you picked another dude for the epigraph. Humbug.

Fortunately, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! comes out soon.

Unanswered questions:

• Was the Victor-Elizabeth relationship supposed to be a romance? He seemed like he couldn't stand her, and not in a fun, enemies-to-lovers way
• How did Victor manage to burn down the stone of the tower without managing to catch tons of paper on fire?
• Is the Creature "born" into a mind that's the equivalent of a newborn? Or is it something more akin to a toddler? He can walk, say a few words, etc.
• Does a 4-barreled blunderbuss really exist?
• How did he sew together the Creature without any stitch marks?!!
• Why does Mia Goth with eyebrows look like a) Cole Escola dressed as Bernadette Peters at the Tonys and also b) Lana Del Rey?
• Is the cross-shaped platform on which the Creature reanimates supposed to look like Christ?

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights: Mia Goth both eyebrowless and eyebrowful playing Victor's mom and unrequited love interest; Christoph Waltz as a syphilitic patron of science dazzles in his few scenes; the incredible set design and loving attention to detail.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

TV Review: The Witcher Season 4

A big casting change and a return to linear storytelling redefines the tone in season 4

Netflix’s popular fantasy adventure series, The Witcher, has returned for its fourth season with a significant change. The title character is no longer being played by the formidable Henry Cavill but has instead been replaced by Liam Hemsworth. After three seasons, the change is undeniably disorienting and results in a significant change in the overall aura of the show. 

The Witcher is the story of Geralt of Rivia, a magically enhanced, but emotionally repressed, professional monster killer whose destiny changes when he becomes a spiritual father to Ciri (Freya Allan), a hunted, deposed princess with supernatural powers. As evil forces attack both of them, they are aided by Yennifer (Anya Chalota), a powerful, morally gray (but ultimately good hearted) mage, and Jaskier (Joey Batey), a cheerful bard who provides cynical comic relief and helps nudge the stoic Geralt towards appreciating human emotions and connections. 

Season 1 gave us the satisfying adventures of the journeys of Yennifer, Geralt, and Ciri converging on each other as the intimidating Geralt and the fugitive child Ciri, fight to find each other. Season 2 focuses on Ciri, with Geralt as her new father, training to fight while sinister forces (and some allies) plot to take Ciri’s power for themselves. Season 3 offered a highly complicated plot where multiple villains, antagonists, and traitors from multiple kingdoms and cultures all fight and betray each other in an attempt to capture or duplicate Ciri. Season 4 opens with a more cynical Ciri abandoning her family of Geralt and Yennifer, changing her name to Falka, and joining up with a ragtag band of thieves called the Rats. In the meantime, Yennifer reassembles a team of mages to fight the current central villain Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), the evil mage who is helping the other central villain, Emhyr (Bart Edwards) in a plot to capture and marry Ciri (who is his daughter) to create an ultimate power that will give him world domination. 

While many of the characters remain the same, the biggest issue of season 4 is obviously the replacement of Henry Cavill with Liam Hemsworth, which is a major and distracting cast change. For better or for worse, re-cast characters happen in series periodically and it’s always odd. The issue is not the quality of the acting, which is fine in season 4, nor is it the physical difference which is, admittedly, very significant. The strangeness also comes from the distinct onscreen change of personality, aura, and chemistry. The new version of Geralt is delivered in a way that is much more passive and quiet. He periodically smiles in a way that is out of character with the brooding, grumpy, always vaguely irritated hero of the earlier seasons. The intrigue of The Witcher often lay in the contrast between Geralt’s monstrous strength, lethal focus, and stoicism being unexpectedly juxtaposed against surprising moments of compassion and empathy. But, in season 4, we no longer have that contrast. The new Geralt is more quietly sad rather than being a smoldering, fierce killer. From a plot perspective, this could arguably be due to the many losses he has suffered over the seasons. But, probably the best way to enjoy season 4 is to calibrate your expectations and perhaps treat the new Geralt as if he were a new version of the Doctor on Doctor Who. Same memory and relationships, different body and personality. 

On the bright side, season 4 gives us much more linear storytelling which is a relief from the overly complicated and confusing machinations of season 3. While season 3 gave us a dizzying amount of villains and antagonists, season 4 distills them down to just the evil mage Vilgefortz and the evil ruler Emhyr, and a brief appearance by a local villain Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copley). The remaining antagonists are either killed off or redeemed into helpful anti-heroes and allies. In a return to the format of season 1, we have three separate stories of Yennifer, Geralt, and Ciri. 

Plot one involves Yennifer gathering her mages, including her former enemies, to kill Vilgefortz. This is the most cliched but also the most enjoyable part of the three part storytelling. The story of the team up of the mages is filled with lots of girl power, diversity, plenty of enemies to allies energy, and a good amount of entertaining action. It’s also filled with lots of melodrama and some great stand out moments from former antagonists Fringilla (Mimi Khayisa) and Phillipa (Cassie Clare). 

Plot two involves Geralt and his new loyal traveling crew, including Milva (Meng’er Zhang), Zoltan (Danny Woodburn), and Regis (Laurence Fishburne), along with Geralt’s longtime ally Jaskier. They are all on a misdirected journey to find Ciri because, unfortunately, the Ciri he’s chasing is a decoy. In this adventure, Geralt repeatedly finds himself vulnerable due to a leg injury and is repeatedly being saved by others. Obviously there’s lots of good messaging about reliance on others and the need for community but this is not the intense Geralt of season one. The addition of the legendary Laurence Fishburne as Regis, an observant and seemingly helpful vampire, creates some much needed gravitas to the tone of the story. However, the introductory plot connecting him to Geralt and crew is one of the most unbelievable moments in the story and is another indicator of how different and passive the new Geralt is from the old one.

Plot three involves Ciri inexplicably hanging out with a morally gray band of tropey ragtag thieves. The group includes one member whose attempt to assault her is just brushed off and then she moves on to intimacy with another member. The acting is solid and the anti-establishment heist plot is predictable. But the characters are all so shallowly presented and unlikeable that when they finally get their comeuppance it’s hard to feel sorry for them. This storyline also includes violent bad guy Leo Bonhart as the local over the top villain. Considering Ciri’s immense power, her interaction with him is ultimately a little disappointing.

In season 4 major many issues are raised and then completely discarded so it’s hard to know who or what to become emotionally invested in. This is fine as long as you calibrate your expectations. The only true surprise is that the story continues to end on a cliffhanger. The tale is no longer must see television, but it is still entertaining as a standard fantasy. Especially, if you want a bit of escapism without having to think too hard about it.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Highlights:

• Major casting change shifts the energy of the series
• Cliched but more streamlined storytelling
• Lots of appealing girl power and diverse characters

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

Audio Review: Star Trek: Khan

Star Trek Khan is a nine episode audio drama directed by Fred Greenhalgh and written by Kirsten Beyer and David Mack, based on a story by Nicholas Meyer.

You know the story of Khan Noonien Singh if you know the basics of Star Trek. Khan was a warlord of some time back in the Star Trek’s 20th century, but wound up on a sleeper ship headed to the stars, two and a half centuries later, Kirk and the Enterprise find the ship. After an attempt at a takeover, Khan and his followers are put on a planet (Ceti Alpha V) with no sentient life, to make a life for themselves. A space seed, if you will.

Twenty years later, the Reliant, with Chekov of the Enterprise now a first officer, stumbles across Ceti Alpha V believing it to be Ceti Alpha VI. Khan and the remnant of his followers are very much alive and the plot of Star Trek II tells of Khan’s attempt at revenge on Kirk for exiling him to a world that Khan is convinced was meant to be a death trap. While there are nods here and there to the original series episode, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and its events, the audio drama does rely solidly on you knowing these basics. I think this is a reasonable ask, I think it unlikely someone cold to Star Trek or to Khan is a person to start this audio drama.

Star Trek: Khan explains more of the story between TOS and WOK. The framing story takes place about 5 years after the movie Wrath of Khan, and features Captain Sulu (voiced by George Takei) of the Excelsior. It also features Tim Russ as Ensign Tuvok, decades before his adventures on Voyager (Star Trek enthusiasts know of the Voyager episode that establishes all this as canon). A historian, Dr. Rosalind Lear, successfully puts forth a mission to Ceti Alpha V and recovers information on Khan’s time there. She finds a trove of tapes and recordings of Khan’s early days on the planet.

The bulk of Khan bounces between events in the framing device, as Lear’s true motives are slowly revealed, and the actual events recorded in the tapes, as we learn about the gap in what we know in Khan’s history. We get to know the mind of a tyrant... and someone who is more than that. We also get some points of view from other members of Khan’s people as well.

The framing device is enhanced in the use of Sulu and Tuvok. Sulu’s role is a cameo, Tuvok has a little more to work with and gets some characterization and development we’ve not seen before. Jokes about Tuvix aside¹, Tuvok has gotten some interesting development as a character with a rich history before his time on Voyager, and putting him on the Excelsior with Sulu was an innovative stroke, back in the day. Star Trek: Khan further uses that connection, and, especially in the denouement, gives some more insight into Tuvok’s rich character history².

But the real meat of the story is in the tapes and the story of Khan and his people. If you remember what Khan says in Wrath of Khan, Ceti Alpha VI blew up six months after they landed on V. The first portion of the audio drama is a story of colonization of a seemingly virgin planet, with the problems, challenges and delights of such an endeavor. It also sets up conflicts, lines, and factions among Khan’s small band of people.

Things kick into higher gear when two near simultaneous events happen, one of which is the destruction of Ceti Alpha VI. The other... would be telling.

Moving from plot to other considerations, ultimately, the story is a story about leadership and the making of an obsession. Just how Khan goes from his attitudes in Space Seed to his obsession with Kirk in Wrath of Khan is the heart of Wrath of Khan, but the audio drama shows that it is more than just a simple being left to die (or so Khan thinks) by a Captain Kirk. It’s a story that is almost too facile and simple, and part of the story of Star Trek: Khan is to give more meat to those bones³.

But what is Khan like as a leader, both in good times and under pressure? We get very little of that in Wrath of Khan, but Star Trek: Khan does provide that fleshing out. We get to see what Khan is like as a leader and a person. The throwaway line about Lt. McGivers and her relationship with Khan gets full explication, here. We get to see the story of their too-brief relationship in full. It is part of what makes Khan a tragic figure, and his story a tragic story, one haunted as well as obsessed⁴. I do think that the audio drama mostly successfully converts Khan from the Space Seed Khan to the Wrath of Khan version.⁵ There is a beat, an aspect to Khan and his methodology in Wrath of Khan that doesn’t quite work, is not quite completely accounted for, here. 

As far as the production values, Khan’s audio production is very good and of a quality equal to other Realm productions. Naveen Andrews makes a very compelling Khan. The rest of the cast, including Takei and Russ, do excellent jobs. The audio drama is written quite well, and it was easy to follow the action and lean into the audio drama format. The nine episodes range around 35-40 minutes long, each.

If you are in the overlapping circle of people who like audio dramas, Star Trek, and are interested in learning more about Khan Noonien Singh, you will find Star Trek Khan a rewarding listen. I’ve read previous work by David Mack and his skills, knowledge and love of Star Trek are on full display here for your ears.

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Highlights:

• Excellent Production Values
• Illuminates a missing chapter in a compelling character
• Not for newbies to Star Trek or to Khan

Reference: Kirsten Beyer and David Mack, Star Trek:Khan [Realm, 2025].

¹ Tuvix, one of the decisive points in Voyager, Star Trek fandom. Was the combined Tuvok-Neelix entity done wrong by Janeway? That debate seems to still be going on, today.

² Tuvok is the only major Star Trek character to have joined Starfleet, quit Starfleet for an extended period of time, and then come back (it does help explain his moderate rank, given that he DID serve with Sulu way back when). It also gives his character a gravitas that I like. Younger Tuvok is still growing into himself in the events of Khan, and I like it.

³ One thing Star Trek: Khan reminded me of was Star Trek Into Darkness and how it steals from the Khan story like a parasite.  

⁴ Is Khan a Romantic Hero (in the sense of the Romantic poets?) Discussion of romantic poetry and literature is a subplot in the drama, so the authors definitely are tapping into that vein,

⁵ I should mention Steven Brust’s To Reign in Hell, here. In some ways, Star Trek Khan does for KHan what that book does for Satan.

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

Book Review: The Hymn to Dionysus, by Natasha Pulley

 To stay sane, we must go mad

Cover design by Rachael Lancaster

 

Natasha Pulley is back, reverting to fantasy after her brief, not-entirely-successful foray into science fiction that was The Mars House. This time she sets her tale in Achaean Crete, mostly in the city of Thebes, in a time whose key events straddle the Trojan War. This is not just ancient Greece, but even earlier. It is the era of those mythical gestes of gods and heroes and wonders which the ancient Greeks themselves related as tales of the distant past. 

I’ve said earlier that Pulley’s books tend to run to form:

Delicately drawn queer relationships, exquisite images evoking the unknowability of (super)natural forces, an unmoored approach to time, and plots focusing on conquest and colonialism that usually involve Britain at one end or the other.

This book features all of those – even Britain, as we’ll see!

The narrator is a soldier named Phaidros, brought up in Thebes, a military society whose most recent events of notice were the victory at Troy (conquest and colonialism ✓). The Thebes that Pulley constructs for us both evokes traditional elements we associate with Greek myths – wine, bronze weapons, chariots – but also reminds us that Greece was not a monolith. Phaidros has nothing but contempt for Athenians, for example, with their singing and poetry and ridiculous tales with happy endings, when everyone knows that it's not a proper story unless everyone murders everyone else by the end. Theban knights like Phaidros do not drink wine – drunken loss of control is illegal in Thebes – and even singing itself is proscribed except for very specific ritual purposes. Order and obedience are valued above all. Duty is honour, the knights intone. Obedience is strength. As training for the youngest knights who have not yet seen combat, patrols regularly ride out at night to murder slaves they catch abroad without explicit permission to be out on their own.

This kind of ruthlessly ordered society could be presented as a dystopia, but it doesn’t feel that way, except after the fact, upon reflection -- such as when writing a review, for example. Part of it could be because the weight of history allows Pulley to create something that is richer and less stereotypically Greek than you might expect. The unknowability of (super)natural forces (✓) appears around every corner: Clockwork marvels bedeck city gates and palace towers, working in ways that do not seem to be purely mechanical. Witches wander the streets in red robes, dealing in medicine and magic, with tattoos on their fingers, hands, wrists, to mark every life saved at their hands. The knights of Thebes call themselves the Sown, in memory of the legend that they were born from planted dragons’ teeth, and hold themselves accountable to a rigid code of honour and behaviour in recognition of that heritage. All this we see through Phaidros’s eyes, and he is too invested in the status quo to query its injustices. Indeed, his concerns are much more self-centred, focused entirely on atoning for (or simply punishing himself for) errors in his past. These errors, he believes, have left him cursed by a god whose aspect he failed to protect at a key moment when he was young and dumb and grieving the loss of his commander -- a death that was also his own fault. Now he is older, going deaf, and subject to flashbacks that bring him back to moments in the Trojan War (unmoored from time ✓).

The summer of the  main events of this book, it seems that Phaidros's curse is coming home to roost. Certainly he convinces himself, characteristically, that the troubles are his fault. Thebes is labouring under a crippling drought, with famine looming ever closer – or, indeed, already present. The people of Thebes, those with less status than the knights and subject to shorter rations, are already selling everything, selling themselves into slavery, to afford food. In the midst of this slow-moving crisis, the queen of Thebes arranges a last-ditch sacrificial offering to the gods. But it is interrupted by a odd . . .  meteor strike? Something crashes down from the heavens, at any rate, and in its wake people begin to go mad. They sing and dance, which is, recall, illegal and obscene in Thebes. Vines sprout and grow, impossibly lush in the famine-bringing drought. People take to wearing masks, which may ward off madness, but may also trigger other, weirder changes in their minds and bodies. And in the center of that upheaval is a strange, blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whom Phaidros is convinced is the same person who was at the centre of his youthful failure to protect a child in his charge.

What follows is, at its strongest, a meditation on order and madness and ways of thought. What does it do to a person to live a life so strictly constrained to rational control that both wine and song are punishable by imprisonment? Is this Theban way of life missing some key component of humanity represented by a god missing from their pantheon? The people murmur that this must be so, but royal decree makes such murmurings a crime. But if it is not this new god, then what is responsible for the events of this terrible summer? And if there is a new god, then what is it about singing, drunkenness, masks, and madness, that unite them under one single divinity?

Phaidros approaches this puzzle with a metaphor related to the concept of blue. Ancient Greek famously did not use the term ‘blue’ the way English does. Seas are not blue, but wine-dark, for example, and skies are described not as blue, but as bronze. Descriptors do not focus on hue, but on lustre, or whatever other quality it is that makes the sea like wine, the sky like bronze. But Phaidros, in his younger years, made his way to the Tin Islands, rainy northern islands which may well be Britain (Britain ✓). There, the locals explain to him the concept of blueness, which is at first utterly alien to him. He works at it over time, gathering shells and ceramic sherds and other objects, asking the Tin Islanders to group them, label them, to show him which ones are ‘blue’. Through this exercise he learns to recognize the meaning of 'blue', but also something more abstract: the metacognitive fact that some ways of understanding the world require an observer to learn to perceive in novel ways orthogonal to existing habits. Now, years later, Phaidros is convinced that the domain of this possible new god in Thebes is like ‘blue’. He himself cannot recognize yet what combines madness and masks and music, but he is certain that there is such a category, if he can only fit his mind around it.

Conceptually, this book is quite brilliant. Narratively, however, it needed another round of developmental editing. The arc of Phaidros and Dionysus’s relationship is built around that unfortunate trope of argh just TALK to each other, already. It's done with a certain degree of nuance, to be sure (delicately drawn queer relationships ✓), but the shape of the thing is unmistakeable. There’s a bit of a mushy middle in which people go back and forth a lot between locations, without actually doing much of anything. And while meditation on blue is wonderful the first time round, it gets a bit overused as it keeps appearing in scene after scene. And by the end, I still wasn’t sure how the various categories of madness that Dionysus distinguishes actually map onto the madness we see in Thebes. 

Still, it’s a return to form for Pulley after her unfortunate paddle in the unfriendly waters of SF. It features her real strengths, with the incredibly evocative imagery—of vines, of masks, of wild revelry--forming an unforgettable mental picture. Phaidros’s own journey, through shame, and grief, and regret, is particularly affecting. This is one of those books that might not be perfectly satisfying in the moment, but it lingers in your mind, and what lingers are not the bits that didn’t quite work, but the bits that did work, exquisitely.

—

Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws

• Pre-classical Greece

• Gods, masks, madness, and music

• Queer love, featuring Pulley's characteristically unbalanced power dynamics

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.

References: 

Pulley, Natasha. The Hymn to Dionysus. [Gollancz 2025].

Book Review: A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo

A deeply unsettling addition to the series, bringing the connecting thread of food up to the forefront of the story.

Cover art by Alyssa Winans

TW: discussion of cannibalism

In the Singing Hills Cycle books, Nghi Vo has always been interested in food. Everywhere Cleric Chih goes, they linger on tastes - whether new and exciting or ones fondly remembered but unavailable tastes of home. It is one of the driving constants in a series defined by a new structural or thematic conceit in every volume, and one that I have remarked upon in previous reviews of the series here. So it is interesting and satisfying that food and famine are the core theme of this, the newest book in the series.

Chih has headed to the town of Baolin, famous for its sweet pork dish and for the famine that harrowed the people there some eighteen years before. On the way, they find some remains that could be human, a hint of unsettling things to come. With their neixin, Almost Brilliant, for company, Chih settles in to ask the people they meet to share their experiences of the famine time, and of their lives, starting with a young man, Li Shui, at a restaurant serving the celebrated Baolin pork. Vo lingers in this starting segment on the sensory experience of the food - which Li Shui gives them to sample - before bringing us to the story that goes along with it. Famine, in Baolin, is a physical, embodied thing, a gigantic demon that haunted the landscape, and whom Li Shui's mother escaped by her wits. Only a few pages in, and there's already a sense of the shape of things - food and its absence both as tangible experiences, the overwhelming physicality of them, playing with metaphor made real - right up until the narrative is thrown a little off the rails. The local magistrate clearly doesn't want Chih poking into stories of the famine, and so insists they come stay at his house, and conduct their interviews under his auspices. Here, trapped in a polite prison, Chih begins to see the realities, and legacy, of the famine, and to uncover things still buried from long ago.

As the sixth book in the series, it is hard to avoid comparing this with what came before, and it's an urge I'm not going to resist. If parallels exist, the closest I find for A Mouthful of Dust is the previous entry, The Brides of High Hill. I'll come to a second part of this comparison shortly, but the first thing that links them, the most prominent, immediately grasped connection, is how unsettling they both are, how creepy. While the Singing Hills books have never shied away from a little bit of darkness, these two particularly seem to bring it to the surface and make a virtue of it, A Mouthful of Dust even more intensely than its predecessor. In the use of the demon, and the dwelling - because there is a lot of dwelling - on the famine and its lingering effects in the people of Baolin, Vo has ratcheted up the atmosphere into something palpably oppressive and foregrounded in the story. It works exactly because it's an apotheosis of a theme that has been present throughout the rest of the series, but has been twisted from homely comfort into something nasty.

Frankly, one of the best things about this as a book is how well Vo talks about hunger, famine and how traumatic events like that live on beyond their immediate scope. I was particularly struck with the idea of the clay cookies, which people ate to try to stave off their hunger pangs, and which some of the survivors, now in a time of plenty again, still eat (and from which the title comes). Something about it being such a small thing, a thing that persists afterwards felt... raw.

And part of how well she talks about it is... well it's the cannibalism. Chih - and the narrative more broadly - is simultaneously both horrified and blasé about people resorting to cannibalism in hard times. It is treated as a terrible thing - an extreme thing that comes to humans at the end of the tether of survival - but also something wildly un-unique in the scope of the world's history that Chih, and the Abbey they represent, document and preserve. The rolls and stories are full of incidents of it, they say. Humanity has been driven to this extreme sufficiently often for it to be predictable. That is the true horror of it, that this kind of extremity and taboo can become the usual run of order. Vo takes pains to linger on that, to return to it as a touchstone, and it works very, very well. The demon may embody this horror, but its power comes from the distinctly non-magical parts of its makeup.

There are other strengths too, though none of them surprising to readers who have been along with the series the whole way. Vo continues to have a deft hand at worldbuilding, using offhand details to give us glimpses of greater depth, for example, when describing the magistrate:

His face was hard and still as stone, just a touch of dark makeup at his eyes and his temples to give him a distinguished air.

In one sentence, she gives us both a physical description of the man, makes us aware of a key manner of his presentation, and contextualises that presentation in the wider world. This is a world in which men of his station wear small amounts of makeup and that is a thing that allows them to look distinguished. It's a small thing, but it does wonders for giving a feel-sense of the shape of the world, especially when such moments are plentifully peppered throughout the novella as they are. Vo gives such a sense of the world as peopled, and those people as varied, and part of cultures, groups, families and geographies, and it that focus on the human that really makes this series sing.

Likewise, the breezy pleasantness of character portraits, the casual camaraderie between Chih and Almost Brilliant, the neat little portraits of the characters who come into and out of the story lens, and the way storytelling within the story is deployed to craft atmosphere, all of these are familiar tools in Vo's toolbox, and put well to use here again.

But... there is a but, and this is my second part of the comparison too... for all that there is much to like about this story, it falters a little when compared to what has come before. The Brides of High Hill, too, struggled under the weight of the structural expectations set by the preceding books, and A Mouthful of Dust suffers the same burden. We had four books which each had a clear, neat, structural conceit that distinguished them from their fellows, and from other novellas in the market. There was a clear USP, and my god it was good. But where The Brides of High Hill had still something that we could maybe squint at and see in it a relationship to those conceits, A Mouthful of Dust seems to have stepped away entirely. I find myself scrambling to try to find one, to conjure up a theory of one, but nothing comes. It's a well told story, but the problem all series must face is that each entry has to sit amongst its fellows, and live as part of the whole, as much as it can be a singular object. And it is here where A Mouthful of Dust fails for me.

The way I see it, series can go in one of two ways - either there can be some form of overarching plot/narrative/growth/change, something that drives along through and underneath each entry, pushing the series towards some sort of catharsis or ending, or there's a pattern, something that unifies the disparate pieces, setting some sort of familiar shape into which each fits. The Singing Hills Cycle, so far, has not seemed to embody the former to me. I think one could read each entry in any order and there would, mostly, be no loss of coherence. Cleric Chih as a person seems to be relatively static, and while Almost Brilliant does disappear to have a baby, her character seems mostly unaffected by the development, and the chick isn't mentioned at all in this entry, a brief diversion from the usual run of things. Up until the end of the fourth book, I would have gladly said that it fit the second pattern though, with the different structure of each one being the unifying feature of the series as a whole. But at this point, I am forced to admit that that seems to have faded away. These last two books have simply been "the further adventures of Chih and Almost Brilliant". Which is great, as far as it goes, but is missing something that made this series truly special. To go for a slightly fanciful description, the books feel like beads on a string, rather than a necklace.

Had they been this way from the start, had that expectation never been set, possibly things might have been different. Maybe the unifying feature would simply be these two characters, and its episodic nature and lack of progression would have been easy to accept and enjoy. But this is a series that did that. Each book must contend with what has come before. And in the light of that... A Mouthful of Dust doesn't quite shine. 

Which doesn't mean this is a bad book. I still enjoyed it. I will, most likely, still read any more in this series that Vo puts out. But I am starting to wonder where it's going. Where will it end? What could a good ending look like, for a series that looks like this? What could make it satisfying, as a wider project? Clearly, there was an answer to that two books ago. It is only in its absence that I begin to question.

And so - a good book. A good story. One that I think I would have enjoyed very much had I encountered it disconnected from the series as a whole. But since I cannot experience that, since I cannot detach it from my awareness of its context, it suffers somewhat under the burden of that comparison.

--

The Math

Highlights: continued excellent descriptions of food, genuinely unsettling atmosphere, subtle and well-crafted worldbuilding

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Reference: Nghi Vo, A Mouthful of Dust, [Tordotcom 2025]

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

Realm of the Elderlings Project: The Rain Wild Chronicles, Book 2: Dragon Haven

To build a new society, you must understand what worked (and didn’t) about the old

Dragon Haven is, at its heart, a meditation on self-determination, both on the level of the individual, and society more broadly. (In fact, both Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven are organized around that idea, but I wanted to talk about other things last month, so we’re going to pretend that this theme is specific to this book.) When last we left our little band of adventurers, Alise had accomplished her heart’s dream, to accompany dragons in a quest for the lost dragon city of Kelsingra. She embodies the ideal of this book's thematic messaging: someone who rejects a role thrust upon her, creates her own role in the world, and thrives therein. At pivotal moments throughout this series, she will encounter people who compare the new self she has constructed to the old self she left behind. Although the comparison is complicated, in a Hobbian way, overall it turns out as well as is possible in the Rain Wilds. Alise is no longer the cultured society lady that she was at the start of the book: her hair and skin are roughened, and the man she comes to love is coarse and dirty. Nor does she grow into an elegant Elderling, the way the other dragon keepers start to do; and there are moments of tension that emerge as a result, a growing us-vs.-them sprouting between the dragon keepers and the still-humans. In every external metric, her transformation is a downward one. She loses money, power, even whatever physical charms she ever had. Her scholarship of those lost wonders is no longer valuable in a world with dragons and Elderlings returned, and Elderling cities rediscovered, with memory devices sharing their secrets with anyone and everyone who passes by. And yet, internally, she is happy and she is loved. And she has the strength of character to recognize those things as paramount. This is as close to a happy ending as you’ll get in a Hobb book.

The dragon keepers themselves have a less straightforward trajectory. They have no difficulties casting off their old life. Indeed, their old life cast them off first, by assigning them this one-way mission to take the dragons away. But people are people, and although they revel in the opportunity to build a new kind of life among themselves, nevertheless they reproduce, in microcosm, the same societal tensions that plague every society. Thymara, young and naive, basks at first in the feeling of having friends and peers, released from the strictures of a society that thinks she should have died as an infant. The other, older dragon keepers, clock immediately that this freedom from social constraint means that they can start getting down with each other. Back in the cities, people as heavily marked as them were allowed to reproduce, but here there’s no such constraint. Jerd, a young woman, sleeps around with most of the young men, before eventually settling down with Greft, the oldest and most cynical of the keepers. It’s made reasonably clear that this decision is not about personal preference or connection, but instead is because she becomes pregnant with (probably) his child. It’s not quite a life of hedonistic abandon, since the dragons keep them working pretty hard to feed and care for them, but it’s a lot more freedom than they’ve known.

But sex comes with consequences, and those consequences lay bare the problems inherent in building a new society. We’ve already talked about why they kill babies back in Trehaug. Jerd’s pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage is one of the most compelling demonstrations of how a society can get to that point. At every stage, I found myself nodding along: yes, I agree with Thymara that Jerd’s behaviour has directly resulted in her inability to pull her share of the work. Yes, I agree with Bellin that the work of caring for a sick pregnant woman falls on other people, and if you don’t have a committed partner willing to take on that task, then you are imposing it on other people who didn’t agree to be liable for it. Yes, if you die in childbirth and leave behind an infant who must be cared for, you have deprived the group of your labour, and left them with only a burden. There are reasons why casual unprotected sex outside of committed relationships is discouraged, and it’s not (only) thoughtless puritanical conservatism.

But what is the solution? So far, societies have tried constraining women’s sexual agency (Bingtown) or murdering babies (Rain Wilds). Neither seems like a good solution. These dragon keepers are not going to arrive at a better one on their own, but they have a much better understanding now of why the rules that they want to break so freely were put there in the first place.

Or rather, some of them do. Greft, Jerd’s cynical paramour, seems to think he has a much better understanding of human nature than the rest of them. In fact, his ideas about how society should be—based on power and enforced hierarchies—are fed to him by a Chalced spy who’s snuck into the expedition, and even that little detail is a beautiful example of the macrocosm rendered small into this group of explorers. Sooner or later, there is always war with Chalced, even if that war means a single Chalced spy stirring up discord in the Rain Wilders.

Hobb uses Greft’s adoption of these odious Chalced ideas as a means to have her say in a conversation that will be depressingly familiar to fantasy fans over the age of, say 25: namely, the need for “realism” in one’s worldbuilding. But in this conversation, “realism” somehow has less to do with complications of exchange rates and currency devaluation and tariffs (unless you’re Daniel Abraham or Seth Dickinson), and more to do with the insistence that it’s more “realistic” to write a world in which women should be childbearing machines and settle down with men to protect them from sexual violence perpetrated by other men. I’ve had to wade through this Disc Horse myself in my own family, multiple times. Hobb, in her turn, allows it to play out between Thymara, who’d rather not choose a man, thanks very much, and Greft, who insists that she must. She represents the argument faithfully enough, but at the very end of that conversation, she does something very satisfying. Thymara says that she will not choose any man, and walks away. And in her mind, her dragon Sintara says, Now you are thinking like a queen. There may be hope for you yet.

In other words, Hobb ends the conversation by reminding her readers, We’re in a world with DRAGONS. Who cares about your stinking “realism”? It’s an elegant way of integrating the meta-discourse into the dialogue of her book, and I enjoyed the smackdown immensely.

Oh, yes, dragons! We’ve got dragons too! And like the humans, the dragons are working on building their own society. Because unlike their forbears, who were ruthlessly individualistic, these dragons require some degree of social cohesion to survive. Not all of them have the memories that a dragon needs to be properly draconic; some seem properly half-witted. Heeby, Rapskal’s dragon, seems more like a beloved pet in Rapskal’s care than the magnificent, overpowering marvel that a true dragon should be. And yet it is Heeby who manages to recover the power of flight first. The dragon who recovers what all the rest of them aspire to is the one who is willing to let go her thoughts of what she should be, and instead make use of what she has: Rapskal’s clumsy, good-hearted, unfailing encouragement. Yes, it’s undignified to run around flapping her wings, trying and failing over and over again. Yes, OG dragons did not do anything as pathetic as failure. But—in a choice reminiscent of what we saw with the Liveship Traders—these dragons cannot have it all. They need to choose which element of dragonhood they will preserve. Sintara chooses dignity, and stays earthbound in the mud. Heeby releases dignity, and flies.

And then there is Relpda, who is more animal even than Heeby at the start of the book. She’s the one that Sedric targets when he eventually builds up the courage to steal scales and blood in his wildly foolish and politically unwise agreement to provide dragon parts for the Duke of Chalced. To Sedric, all the dragons are mere beasts. He cannot even hear their voices as anything other than animal noises. But he drinks some of Relpda’s blood, more out of curiosity than any other reason, and so forces a connection with her. She did not consent to this act of blood-sharing, but the connection is forged nonetheless, and what follows is one of the most beautiful elements of the story. In contact with Sedric’s mind, Relpda awakens. And their relationship—which is the beginning of Sedric’s redemption arc—deepens during a deadly flood of the river, in which she saves his life (multiple times). Why? he wonders. Why would she save someone who had so wronged her? And she responds, Less lonely. You make sense of the world. To me.

That thought is so enlightening. What must it be like to be a stunted, half-conscious dragon? Sintara is frustrated and furious because she knows what she should be. Relpda didn’t know even that. But she knew she was lonely. And then along comes Sedric, and wrongs her in a way that is the worst possible way a human can wrong a dragon. And yet, in his presence, she is no longer lonely.

It’s the same setup that allowed Hest to ensnare Sedric in his net: Sedric was lonely. Hest made him not lonely, even though he is unkind and cruel. But where Hest takes advantage of that power dynamic and uses it to control Sedric, Sedric does not do anything like that to Relpda. Perhaps it’s because even a half-awakening dragon is immune to mere human manipulation. Perhaps it’s because Sedric’s deeply buried but still present decency manages to struggle to the front. Whatever the reason, the two of them develop together, and forge a new kind of relationship, one built not on domination but understanding and gratitude and genuine affection. This new society will not be like the old, either the purely human, or the human-dragon partnerships of the past. OG Dragons could never. But these ones can, and must. And do.

Reference: Hobb, Robin. Dragon Haven [Harper Voyager, 2010].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social