Book Review: The Only Way Out Is Up by Django Wexler

Robot battles, class politics, and numbers going up

 

Django Wexler has had an incredibly consistent career across a wide range of subgenres, ranging from the flintlock military fantasy of The Shadow Campaigns to the excellent YA fantasy of The Wells of Sorcery to the genuinely funny Dark Lord Davi duology and more. Dark Lord Davi was openly an affectionate pastiche of isekai (i.e. a specific Japanese iteration of portal fantasy) anime. This stuff has a huge and increasing fanbase among the anglosphere, well known within anime fandom, though I’m not quite sure how familiar traditional written SFF fandom and much of its attached critical apparatus is with the same.

Wexler takes this mining of popular spaces that are potentially unfamiliar to traditional SFF fandom up a notch with The Only Way Out Is Up. The book is a progression (science) fantasy, where our protagonist, Taj, and his probably sentient robot, Star, fight their way literally up from the bottom of a garbage heap to power and influence. As I will discuss a bit more below, this is another excellent effort from Wexler, engaging and fast-paced without being shallow. But before I turn to the book itself, forgive a digression into definitions here. Having just said I think this is a subgenre many won’t be familiar with, and being greeted with slight bafflement by a number of social media acquaintances when I’ve said “progression fantasy”, I hope this is both useful and potentially interesting.

Progression fantasy is arguably more a collection of subgenres than a single clearly defined thing. Its influences include Xianxia (i.e. Chinese cultivation fiction), manga, anime, light novels, JRPG video games and TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons (as an example of how this all comes together, one of the key early influences is Record of Lodoss War, a Japanese series that started as a narrated serialisation of the author’s TTRPG campaign, was converted into a light novel series, and has spawned video game and anime spinoffs). These are in fact quite disparate urtexts, which contain different cultural and literary assumptions. They are united basically by only one single theme: Number Goes Up (i.e. the protagonist grows in power over time). 

Some of these influences are literally games, and at the crunchy end of the field (LitRPG), books have full-on stat screens and dice rolls as part of the action: think Dungeon Crawler Carl or the "trapped in a video game" subgenre of Japanese media, of which Sword Art Online is probably the most famous, though not quite the earliest. But not everything broadly in the progression fantasy realm is quite so literal in its gamification: I'd argue much of Brandon Sanderson's work teeters on the edge of progression fantasy with its focus on exploiting detailed magic systems. And in between those poles is a rich stew of iterations, from Sarah Lin's enjoyable, idiosyncratic, "architecture of a literal house inside your soul dictates power growth" Weirkey Chronicles to Tobias Begley's quantum magic school Journals of Evander Taylor to Will Wight's mega-selling Cradle series (which is clearly heavily Xianxia influenced). There are also a range of themes: outright individual power fantasy is probably the most common, but protagonists using their growing power to support the building of communities with their friends is also a recurring theme, and series with actively revolutionary politics directed at capitalist oppressors are also quite frequent.

The progression fantasy field in English is dominated by self-published authors and web serials published on sites like Royal Road (Indeed, Wexler is currently posting *another* progression fantasy, The Thirteenth God, on Royal Road). The quality is wildly variable: the best is very good fun and occasionally significantly more than that, but a large amount is individualistic power fantasies in leaden prose. In addition, one side effect of this serial fiction publishing context is that often this is the author’s first time writing for an audience. Even for more experienced writers in this space quite often the opening arc takes an absolute age to find its feet in its world, with its narrative, and with its characters. When these are turned into formal volumes for sale, either via self-publishing or when picked up for traditional publication, the first book is very often notably weaker that what follows (this is true even of stuff I overall enjoy, like John Bierce's Mage Errant and the aforementioned Dungeon Crawler Carl). 

This traditional publication pickup is a relatively new thing: SFF publishers failed to pay much attention to this collection of subgenres even though they had absolutely been doing the numbers online for years (For example, Unsouled, the first book in Wight's Cradle series, had 65,576 ratings on Goodreads at time of writing). Alongside republishing existing works, publishers now seem to be actively courting this zeitgeist and putting out original work in the progression fantasy space (the dynamic reminds me of a more male-coded attempt at repeating the flood of cozy fantasy we saw after the success of Legends and Lattes). The Only Way Out Is Up is an early and very good example of major publisher resources being put into such work. Wexler has no problems with a meandering or muddled start: the book begins with immediately engaging action and continues impressively from there. 

As noted above, Taj is a young man (twenty years old) who lives at the bottom of a city built in tiers around a giant hole several hundred metres deep and several kilometres across. There are three main tiers, each containing a city of increasing economic and social status as you go up. Periodically, various construction and electronic junk from the mysterious Above (i.e. the outside world) will drop through the aperture at the top of the hole (dubbed, rather evocatively, "the Asshole"). This forms a giant pile of e-waste—the Heap—at the bottom of the hole, below even the lowest city tier. Taj and his adoptive family make a precarious life around this huge mass of the detritus of those wealthier and more powerful than them.

The progression element here, at least for the first book, focuses on Taj upgrading his robot (called “runics” in-world) to fight in increasingly high stakes battles, both for money and to advantageously position himself and his friends politically. This means that a lot of the action set pieces are these robot battles, which are hugely entertaining, like a souped up science fantasy version of the old BBC programme, Robot Wars. The runics are built from metal and powered and controlled by sigils, seemingly magic runes charged by a person’s life force to make inanimate objects either do something (verb sigils) or change the way it is done (noun and modifier sigils). This is largely understood in-world as a standard programming language with standard operators, though Star, Taj’s runic, seems to be largely self-aware in a way other runics are not, and there are hints that it is possible to create nonstandard sigils. This is not a large feature of this book, but the title of the series (The Sigilist) suggests it may well become so, and may well become Taj’s route to the ever-expanding power and agency that is at the core of progression fantasy’s plot drive. 

Outside the world of sigils and robot battles, the plot focuses on Taj’s attempts to keep his family safe, housed, and fed (no small task in the precarious world of the Heap) and on the political manoeuvering of the deuteragonist we meet early in the novel (Ky, a young woman from the fancy upper tier city). The book is first and foremost hugely entertaining; a pacy romp through a slightly implausible, slightly gamified world. But there is also a bit more going on than pure confection. The character work is operating within generally expected archetypes, but the dialogue and integration with setting is skillful and naturalistic, quickly building rapport between the reader and Taj. Star is a very effective snarky robot sidekick, and Ky, our deuteragonist, has her own motivations and character and is far more than a distressed damsel for Taj to moon over. The gender and class politics of the setting are pretty clearly critiqued; the fact that the system sets up a no-win situation where those at those top pit everyone below them against each laid bare. This is very much a book one, so none of these issues are completely resolved here, but one plot arc is resolved and the board has very effectively been set for the rest to be explored as the series continues. 

Writing this review, one of the things that I struggled with most is how to get across just what it is this book does well beyond "good fun" (which it absolutely is). I'm a sucker for what Wexler serves up, and I think, like his previous work, The Only Way Out Is Up is definitely a cut above merely competent and enjoyable commercial SFF. He's a very good writer. But Wexler is not, to pick another contemporary author I think writes works similarly a cut above, the flashy prose stylist Freya Marske can be. He doesn't play the games with form and narrative the similarly consistent and excellent Jenn Lyons does. Where I think Wexler excels is in between this sentence level and volume-level creativity: he's as good as anyone currently working at conjuring atmosphere and character and plot drive across a paragraph or a scene. 

This mid-level structural mastery makes for a quick, breezy read that still vividly evokes setting and character. This is, I think, very hard to do, but while you're in the middle of it, whipping through a perfectly paced fight scene, it's easy not to notice how much skill is deployed. This is me noticing, and I hope readers of this review and Wexler's work will pay attention and appreciate it. Wexler is a hugely able purveyor of this sort of high-quality commercial SFF, and The Only Way Out is Up is another excellent example. It's also very clearly knowledgeable and respectful of the slightly out of the spotlight traditions it's drawing on, pulling us into the thrill of watching the weak and downtrodden get stronger and stick it to the rich and powerful, without ever veering into the bland, power fantasies of the less impressive examples of those traditions. Bring on book two.

--

The Math

Highlights:

• Faced-paced, engaging action
• Appealing, naturalistic character work
• Excellent gateway book for the sometimes impenetrable world of progression fantasy

Nerd coefficient: 7/10 

Reference:  Django Wexler, The Only Way Out Is Up [Orbit, 2026].

POSTED BY: Eddie Clark. Professional nerd by day, amateur nerd by night. @dreddieclark.bsky.social 

Video Game Review: Tacoma by Fullbright (Second Opinion)

Walk, don't run (because you can't).

As Amy Ferrier’s ship pulls into dock on the Tacoma, various ideas run through my head. What kind of story will this game have? What kind of environments will the transfer station hold? Will there be some mystery to unveil, like in Fullbright’s previous indie darling Gone Home? With developers from the Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den DLC on board, surely a creepy and/or rewarding sci-fi adventure awaits? No?

Tacoma is, as the trolls on the internet would call it, a “walking simulator.” Oh, how I wish there were a run button instead of a useless crouch button. There’s no combat to speak of, no real challenge, just a story to uncover over a short period. The studio nailed this with their last game, Gone Home. Essentially an interactive movie, Tacoma follows Amy Ferrier as she unveils the last hours of the Tacoma crew after the station takes severe damage to the oxygen supply. The crew has to deal with existential dilemmas, and lucky for Amy, it’s all been recorded. It’s up to the player to help her dig into this crew’s most vulnerable final moments and deliver them, and the station AI, Odin, to the multi-trillion dollar corp that owns the spacecraft.

The interpersonal transactions are the meat of the game, so I won’t share much on the relationships other than to say that some moments feel genuine, while other feel stilted and staged. Overall, the story is conveyed well, but there is no true impact. I wasn’t hit emotionally at any point in the game by the writing. A few sweet moments don’t make a well-written game.

Alongside the writing, Tacoma has weirdly uneven visuals. Considering this is a short game (it can be completed in under two hours) with very few assets, you would think more polish would go into making the game feel real, inhabited. But no. It feels almost plastic in some places, the surrounding environments not quite lived in, as anticipated, but more… contrived. I could feel the developer’s hand in the entire experience from the assets to the storytelling. One would think that this since the game is so short without much interactivity, this would mean the game runs flawlessly, right? Right?

Again, no. The game crashed on me three times during my short stint. I also had massive frame rate drops numerous times (especially when taking the elevator), and kept waiting for my screen to go black. For the record, I was playing on a PS5 Pro, so these performance issues should be nonexistent with the hardware boost (the game was originally developed for PS4).

The voice recordings are an advanced take on audio logs. Instead of simple audio, the player must follow the hologram of each person to unveil more about their story, their thoughts, and their interactions with others. Some environmental storytelling helps with this (letters, dartboards with someone’s face on them, etc.). These are the best-implemented aspects of the storytelling. Through these means, and through a bit of snooping through personal computers and drawers, the player can find little hidden goodies, like more story in locked drawers, key code rooms, and lockers. The soundtrack is simple yet effective, and complements the voice-recorded holograms. I always enjoyed the little jingle that played every time I rode the elevator (though sometimes it would warble and I would become worried the game would crash again).

Tacoma concludes in a way that attempts to recapture the magic of Gone Home, and honestly, it doesn’t wow me. It’s cohesive and coherent and gets the job done, but it will not have a lasting impact like Fullbright’s predecessor. The characters have some conviviality and believability and I found some of their stories worthwhile. I applaud the developer’s inclusion of LGBT and disabled persons, and am glad to see a developer embrace all of their audience. I do feel like a bigger focus should have been placed on the game’s performance and on trying to make the game more memorable, from the environment to the story instead of just trying to replicate it's previous title (but in a space setting). As it stands, Tacoma is a serviceable narrative-based game, though not a highly recommended one. Perhaps my view would be different had I played it at launch. As it stands, I'd say grab it on a big sale if you’re curious.

--

The Math

Objective Assessment: 6/10

Bonus: +1 for some sweet character moments. +1 for quality VOs.

Penalties: -1 for performance issues. -1 for lack of memorable depth. -.5 for no run button.

Nerd Coefficient: 5.5/10

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.

Deja Boo: Event Horizon

An eye-gouging good time!

It’s an odd thing, watching elements of your childhood, particularly ones that you didn’t even know were remarkable, fade into legend. Ask [extremely old guy voice] kids these days, and they will be incredulous at what us ‘90s kids did, and were allowed to do. What do you mean, you just… went out? How did your parents know when to pick you up? How did they know you were safe? How did they even know where you were? (We just did, friends’ parents or a quick collect call message*, they didn’t until we got home, they didn’t). We roamed all over the small, country town I grew up outside of with just bikes and the confidence that none of the (disturbingly high number of) serial killers known to be active in Western Washington were targeting teenage boys. Probably. As far as we knew.

My neighbor growing up either contributed to this vagrancy or helped protect us from it. He was an ideal neighbor, his kids were grown, he had way more money than us, and used it to collect classic cars, for which he build a massive garage/shop, in which he put a home theater—doing so in the ‘90s was no small accomplishment. He was obsessed with movies, buying literally every single movie that came out every single week. His DVD* collection was enormous. Best of all, he allowed us to go in there whenever we wanted, provided we didn't make a mess or steal too much of his beer.

All this is to say, I had unfettered access to a lot of R-rated movies at a young age. Combined with my love of scifi, I was very excited to watch this very grown-up scifi movie called Event Horizon. I’ve written all this without having seen it since that day, because ~12-year-old-me was traumatized. I wanted to do this part of the writeup because I honestly don’t know if it’s a good movie or not, or if it’s scary or not, or if my younger, squeamish self was just too shocked by someone ripping their own eyeballs out. It seems to have enjoyed a resurgence lately, with comics explaining backstory, Sam Neil passing and his brilliance getting the appreciation it has always deserved, and the idea of it being a Warhammer 40k prequel all having brought it back into at least some level of public consciousness.

So now it’s time to face my fears and rewatch it. Hang tight, read a magazine in the lobby or something.

Still here? Good. Before we get to the (literal) gory details, I have to say that, for a mid-‘90s movie, Event Horizon holds up remarkably well. Some of the effects, mostly those related to zero gravity, look somewhat dated, but not terribly so. The opening and closing credits have some very ‘90s electronic music which Trent Reznor would have improved upon, but that’s not present in the film itself.

This movie provided the epiphany that apparently my favorite genre is lost in space** or at sea. I read way too many books about shipwrecks, I love Alien, I will defend Sunshine until my dying breath, so this is right up my adult alley. Did it scare me out of my mind, like when I was a kid? Of course not; I’m old and jaded now. However, it was brilliantly tense and did an amazing job of building suspense all throughout. Despite a brief text intro, it immediately gives us the feeling that something isn’t right. One of the very clever ways this is done is by transitions. They’re never slow fades, or wipes, but smash cuts that seem to occur right as something is about to happen. It creates these mini-jumpscares that create a sense of unease. When the action happens later, and there are really scary things happening, we are primed for not knowing what is around the corner—especially since a key component of the characters’ horror is their deteriorating mental state, as they hallucinate and can’t be sure what is real or not—in a way, neither can we.

At the center of all this uncertainty is Dr. Weir, played brilliantly by Sam Neil. When we meet him, he is ostensibly there to help a rescue crew, as he tries to humbly ingratiate himself to them. The film doesn’t tell us when, exactly, his descent into madness happens (more on this in a sec), but it clearly happens earlier, and more willingly, than his shipmates. His actions become more unnerving as the film progresses, and his motives are more and more in question, and he clearly knows more than he initially let on. Neil plays this part so perfectly, his voice always level and sinister—but somehow disarming.

The recent comics that are a prequel that follows the journey of the Event Horizon spell out his motives—which we do see in the movie, having essentially driven his wife to suicide with his obsession with his work—as well as going into what happened in the seven-year period the ship was missing. While I enjoy this, and it adds to the mythos, one of the strengths of the film is that it doesn’t show us all this. There’s a fair amount of gore (not as much as I remember!), but their trip into the Chaos Realm/hell is only shown in brief flashes. Just like Weir’s embrace of Chaos is not pinpointed, this contributes to the overall unease of the setting, instead of just splashing gore all over the walls (although that does literally happen).

Grounding the whole affair is Lawrence Fishburne’s Captain Miller, who is delightfully hard-assed, and really just wants to do his job and go home—even when that job turns out to be trying to stop a literal portal to hell from opening in Neptune. His stories and interactions with the rest of the crew actually make me think that the “normal,” lived-in part of the Event Horizon universe would make for more interesting story fodder than the prequel/sequel comics that explore, ya know, literal hell. Or maybe all of that is what ultimately leads to humanity as we know it in the Warhammer 40k universe? I stand by that fan theory, because it’s awesome.

In conclusion—if you haven’t seen Event Horizon, I highly recommend it. If you watched it at way too young of an age like me, I recommend it even more.

—DESR

Dean Smith-Richard is the author of 3204AD, and will definitely publish something again one day, probably. He loves to cook, play baseball, and is way too much of a craft beer nerd. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, and likes the rain, thank you very much.

* I have to explain this too, don’t I?

**Ironically, it is apparently impossible to make a decent modern version of Lost in Space.

Deja Boo: The Gate

A surreal '80s horror gem aimed ostensibly at kids is like if Dario Argento directed The Goonies

This is the scary movie for me—the one that has stuck most vividly in my mind since I was a child. Released in 1987, The Gate is a Canadian horror film that features a tiny Stephen Dorff in his pictorial debut. It's my first entry in our new Déjà Boo series, where we'll be revisiting the movies that made us squirm as kids.

The '80s were fertile ground for horror films, but this movie really has nearly every trope you could possibly want: monsters, demons, Satanic panic, body horror, zombies, minions, and rockets. It's jam-packed with spooky action that somehow landed only a PG-13 rating, though we all know that the censors were a bit looser back then.

The plot

Glen (Stephen Dorff) is a typical '80s kid—shy, uncool, but sweet—who wakes one morning to learn that the giant tree in his backyard has been struck by lightning. He and his friend Terry, a young metalhead, dig around in it and find geodes. Slowly, the hole starts getting bigger, and weird things start happening.

Glen's parents go out of town for the weekend, leaving him and his friend with Glen's big sister, who in true '80s fashion throws a house party. Unbeknownst to the kids, they speak the existence of a hellmouth into existence when words appear on a magnetic notepad. This, accompanied by the accidental sacrifice of the family dog into the hole, unleashes ancient gods that begin trying to escape.

The rest of the movie, I'll be honest, doesn't make a ton of logical sense. The kids battle off demons and ghosts that appear in the house, before Glen uses a toy rocket to defeat the final big bad.

I'm still not quite sure who the audience for this one was. Having the parents go away for the weekend is classic '80s kids-in-charge energy, and it's in good company with other movies like The Goonies and The Explorers.

But there are scenes and themes that are way too over the top for young folks, and I don't think it's cool enough for teenagers. Adults then? I'm still not sure. If it was aimed at kids, it's sort of an introduction to horror, in a sense. Nothing becomes repulsive to the extreme, but as a 10-year-old watching this, I was definitely microdosing body horror and Giallo vibes.

What scared me then

There are a few major scenes that have stuck with me over 30+ years, and they are honestly still creepy as hell. One is the scene in which Glen, having demonically grown an eye in the middle of his hand, has to stab it out with a shard of glass. I wouldn't have such a visceral reaction again to body horror until I was 13 and watched Nicholas Cage's character in The Rock stab a syringe straight into his heart as a poison gas antidote. These things stick with you, apparently.

The other scene(s) revolved around the animated/claymation minions from Hell. They gasp and run and claw and grab, all while being about 8 inches tall. Several scenes are gruesomely creepy, and evoke a more macabre Lilliputian from Gulliver's Travels.

Somehow I forgot completely about the scene where Glen, faced with an attacking, demonic version of his best friend, is forced to defend himself with only a Barbie doll. He manages to gouge out Terry's eye with the legs. Wild stuff. Sometimes The Gate is like Evil Dead 2, just absolutely insane but also kind of funny. See also: When Glen's sister straight-up yeets a boombox at a zombie to knock him down.

Another interesting thing I noted on this rewatch is how the film has two modes when it comes to sound: It's either complete silence, or foreboding instrumental dirges. The atmosphere, as a result, is always menacing, and it really serves to underscore the unease throughout the runtime.

What I noticed now

I can totally see why a young me found this movie scary, and I'm not sure any kid today could handle it any better. What struck me most now are the things that were a little quieter in the film. For one, the fact that the family dog dies and they don't even call their parents on their vacation to let them know. I find this near sociopathic-level behavior, and I say this as someone who adores Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead.

Not only does the dog die, but Glen's sister's wannabe boyfriend is tasked with taking him to animal control(!?!!?!). When he finds out it's closed, he simply returns to the house and dumps it into the hellmouth. Absolutely not.

Anyway, moving on. The subtle background aspects that permeate The Gate are quite spooky—bugs flocking to a windowpane at night, up close chainsaw noises, eerie mists. Even the shadows your own toys cast in the moonlight can be unnerving. I experienced this many times as a kid even with the most benign of playthings. I remember getting a 6-foot tall cardboard cutout of C3PO and being scared to death waking up to him for the first few weeks.

I also found that seeing a kid’s perception of their own house being haunted is especially upsetting. It's supposed to be a place of refuge and love, so when demons start attacking it, you can feel vulnerable. Glen is interesting because he's not a bland and angelic Carol Anne, but he's also not incredibly self-assured. He’s a Final Boy, except everyone else lives—they just don’t contribute to their salvation as a group. Only Glen gets them out of their demonic jam.

The movie ends on a high note, with all evil crises avoided. The house, of course, is utterly wrecked, and as an adult now, I am annoyed by how much I kept wondering what it would cost to completely redo a living room wrecked by Satan.

Highlights:

• A young Stephen Dorff's film debut
• It's basically microdosing body horror for kids
• Great depiction of Satanic panic and heavy metal
• The Goonies if Dario Argento directed it

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: Lanterns

Is this the kind of hero you should want to be?

The Guardians of Oa could have avoided a lot of misunderstandings if they had watched the Disney/Pixar movie Inside Out, where we all learned that it’s very unhealthy for humans to try to ignore one of our basic emotions. In order to become a Green Lantern, you must be fearless. I don’t know how other species in the galaxy deal with that requisite, but it’s easy to imagine how it wouldn’t sit well with humans. We need the information that fear gives us. When balanced with the rest of our emotions, fear protects us. It helps us prepare for the unknown. It motivates us to care for one another. It keeps us humble.

So when the first Green Lantern from Earth is selected, and the same rule of fearlessness is imposed on a species that needs fear to survive, what can you expect, other than terribly messed up people being chosen for the job? The TV miniseries Lanterns dares to question a fundamental rule of its own lore, a view of heroism that breaks something precious in the hero’s soul. You shouldn’t have to renounce the fullness of your humanity in order to be heroic. Fear can be heroic. And pretending to be fearless makes you a danger to those you want to protect.

Lanterns integrates these abstract preoccupations with the specificity of its characters: Hal Jordan, a white Boomer who embodies the “men will join the space police rather than go to therapy” meme, and John Stewart, a Black Millennial who was raised to be the perfect poster boy for respectability politics. The show uses extensive flashbacks, which usually is a problem for pacing, but somehow each of these flashbacks is thematically coherent with what is happening in the present-day plot.

Learning what makes these men tick reveals the inadvertent cruelty of the Green Lantern Corps. Hal qualifies to become a Green Lantern because of unexamined toxic masculinity. He has a family history of suicidal depression that he suppresses beneath a mask of toughness. As for John, he qualifies to become a Green Lantern because his parents committed years of severe emotional abuse to purge him of fear. He experienced the equivalent of growing up in a cult that indoctrinated him for an otherworldy mission he never asked for.

John’s case is even more complicated by the fact that a Black man in the US has countless daily reasons to exist in a perpetual state of fear. John‘s parents aren’t innocent of the horrific way they raised him, but they were pushed into that choice by the unequal circumstances that allow an average shmoe to declare he’s fearless just because he lucked into playing the game of life on Easy Mode.

With all these heavy themes dominating the story, the actual events seem almost secondary. Setting aside the flashbacks, the plot consists of a hunt for an alien assassin hiding in a town in Nebraska, followed ten years later by the mystery of who has just killed Hal Jordan. In the first part of the plot, John has been appointed by the Guardians of Oa as Hal’s apprentice, which Hal resents at every step. In the second part, John has been trying to build a life that isn’t defined by the purpose his parents chose for him, and ends up finding his own reasons to become a hero.

This would suffice for an interesting setup even if it didn’t also include tons of delightful banter between its two main characters. Matching Hal’s smug, entitled condescension with John’s obsessive adherence to rules creates a volatile friction that soon enough explodes in satisfying manner. The show plays with this dynamic by reversing it in the scenes set ten years later, when John has outgrown his ingrained urge to obey and has to team up with a less jaded version of Hal.

Some viewers have complained that this plot is too mundane and doesn’t do justice to the colorful variety of alien weirdness that is typical of Green Lantern adventures. That may be so, but it’s not a point against the show. This is the type of science fiction that considers the inner space of the human mind as vast and fascinating as outer space. Planet-hopping romps can wait. This story is about the mismatch between the Guardians’ idea of heroism and the basic facts of human nature. It’s about what being a Green Lantern does to you. I’ll take such deep analysis over flashy pew pew any day.

This is the kind of reexamination of core assumptions that legacy franchises need from time to time to avoid feeling stagnant. Green Lantern has existed since 1940. It didn’t always center on John Stewart, or on Hal Jordan. It didn’t always feature space cops. It didn’t always associate superpowers with emotions. This new take on Lantern lore may not necessarily lead to a complete reinvention, but if it does, it should be welcomed.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

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

Film Review: Verity

It’s a bad sign when it doesn’t matter whose truth you will accept

Best-selling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) has suffered a car accident. Her condition is so serious that she can’t finish writing her popular series of murder mystery novels. So her publisher hires a ghostwriter, Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), to complete the remaining books in the series. Lowen will need to spend some days at Verity’s secluded mansion in rural Vermont to study her copious notes and prepare the plot outlines that will follow. The problem is that one can’t enter Verity’s world without becoming tainted by it. The mind that created those sinister fictions has some real dark corners of its own, and in getting to know it from the inside, Lowen will be dragged into a labyrinth of half-truths and destructive obsession.

The biggest factor that works against the success of the film Verity is that it follows the source material, Colleen Hoover’s 2018 novel, too faithfully. Verity the novel has many chapters that are made of second-hand narration, and Verity the film translates them into extensive voice-over sections where events are told rather than shown. The result is that we spend half the movie hearing Hathaway narrate her character’s manuscript, so the experience is more like sitting for an audiobook than sitting for a movie.

The manuscript in question is a memoir that Verity wrote shortly before her accident. Lowen finds it hidden in a flash drive inside a cigarette pack, and the revelations it contains paint a horrific picture of what kind of person Verity is in private. Lowen came in knowing that Verity’s daughter had accidentally drowned in a lake; Verity’s secret memoir gives an alternate account of events, starting with revulsion at her pregnancy and moving on to contempt for her children. One hallmark of Verity’s novels is that they’re narrated by the villain; this document establishes that Verity was capable of mastering that technique by being herself a villain.

So we follow two parallel timelines: Verity’s backstory and Lowen’s present in Verity’s house. Both have problems, plotwise. As I said above, the parts where we follow Verity’s manuscript consist of voice-over narration, which is the opposite of a cinematic approach. And when we’re in the present, not much actually happens. From the trailers, and from the story itself, it’s a given that Lowen will end up embroiled in an affair with Verity’s husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett). But apart from that, Lowen’s role in the movie consists mostly of sitting and reading. Instead of watching a story unfold, we’re learning a story that already happened.

The actors’ wonderful performances do the heavy lifting that the plot can’t. Johnson draws from her prior experience in the Fifty Shades franchise to easily switch between innocent and predatory, while Hathaway, who has had a spectacular 2026 (see for example here, here and here), exudes a mesmerizing malevolence in the scenes set in the past, as well as an ambiguous quietude in the present. Verity’s accident, we’re told, left her immobilized and unresponsive. But this movie is fundamentally built on unreliable narration, so no fact can be taken for certain.

The trick that Verity attempts, but falls well short of accomplishing, is to juggle multiple unreliable narrators and leave the viewer questioning which version is more trustworthy. What (or who) caused Verity’s car accident? What is the extent of her physical impairment? How did her daughter die? Is Verity really the author of that hidden memoir? Is Lowen’s judgment impaired by her abuse of sleeping pills and alcohol? How much of all this might have been orchestrated by Jeremy?

That last part should not be ignored. The movie (as well as the book) introduces a last-minute reveal that is intended to changes how we perceive the character of Verity, but isn’t much of a surprise given that she’s a mystery writer and her memoir sometimes feels hyperbolic. However, this reveal does have massive consequences for how we perceive Jeremy. In the movie (but not the book), Verity’s hidden memoir is discovered in a pack of cigarettes in her office, but Jeremy is the only character we ever see smoking cigarettes. It should also be pointed out, as another clue unique to the movie, that Dakota Johnson looks very much like a younger version of Anne Hathaway. In a story of duplicities and mirrored perspectives, it can’t be coincidence that, when searching for the author that would replace his wife, Jeremy chose one that resembled her so much.

These details make movie Jeremy look a lot less innocent than book Jeremy, while movie Lowen is less a victim of circumstance than book Lowen. I think these changes make for a stronger adaptation, but they’re not enough to save a disappointingly anticlimactic ending. This part is taken straight from the novel, and lands as almost a surrender on the filmmakers’ part. Lowen stumbles upon the final reveal after she’s already made an irreversible choice, so this new information doesn’t have a chance to create the dilemma it’s meant for. Once people have died, it makes little difference whether they were nice or not. Verity feels too satisfied with its own cleverness, but its narrative structure fit the book format better, and its ending robs the resolution of its impact. There are powerful ideas contained here, which neither the novel nor the movie seemed to know how to use.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.

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

Video Game Review: Wolverine by Insomniac Games

Not quite the best there is, but more than good enough

Dr. Nathaniel Essex is trapped in a heavily guarded compound by rival scientist, Bolivar Trask. Against his better judgement, Logan comes out of retirement to help rescue the man who once rescued him. But exploring Trask’s compound reveals some deeply disturbing scenes: mutants dissected and experimented on, mutilated and discarded. Can Logan save his old friend while also avenging those so brutally exterminated? Perhaps… but is it for the best?

Wolverine has been quite the discussion piece on many a gaming forum and social media site as of late, the game receiving notoriously bad press before even releasing into the world. As with most media, I did my best to avoid the news beforehand so I could give as unbiased an opinion as possible. These games cost seventy to eighty dollars nowadays, and there is only so much time and money each person has, and I want to respect that. After playing the game, completing it to one hundred percent (story beaten, all collectibles found and unlocked, all challenges completed up to Adamantium level), I then followed up by reading into the discourse about the game. I can confidently say that, while I believe there is plenty of merit to some of the Wolverine criticisms, most of it is just noise and nonsense.

Wolverine looks fantastic. Sure, there are some imperfections with the art style here and there, but most of the time I was wowed by the visual effects, the animations, and the consistent quality on display. This is still Insomniac, and they know how to make a game look damned good. From the creases in Logan’s face to the tears and rips in his suit after a fight, to the gore all around, the game is incredibly detailed. Every so often I found something of lower quality that would stick out, but I had to search for it, or be off the wrong track searching somewhere out of bounds before I encountered a low-quality LoD that had yet to load properly. Overall, however, Wolverine is a very linear single adventure, and the game’s detail reflects that from almost every animation to all the characters and environments.

Alongside stellar animations, the voice performances accompanying them are top tier. Liam McIntyre is an engrossing Logan; his snarls and rage-fueled shouts contrast his tenderness and encompass the character’s range with passion. Nicole Pacent’s Mystique and Krizia Bajos as Jean Grey offer great performances as well. Troy Baker is always a star, though it is odd to see his exact likeness in a game. I know movies have been doing it forever, with the audience having to be hypnotized by an actor’s performance before suspending disbelief enough to accept an established actor as a character on screen. In a game, I am still not used to it. This, however, is a personal thing. Most people who play Wolverine probably won’t know what Troy Baker looks like, and to others, it may not matter.

Wolverine’s writing is decent. The story is easy to follow, even if it stumbles or doesn’t always hit the mark with all its big moments. The game tries to do a bit too much, with characters feeling like they’re included for the sake of being included (it’s a superhero game; we must have another villain!) with weak story cohesion. We got a bit of that in Spider-Man 2, but it’s more noticeable here in a shorter, linear narrative-based game. A lot of the tropes and clichés that follow a superhero game are present here, and while some of it works, sometimes they feel out of place. There is a grittiness to Wolverine and his storyline that shouldn’t get the more jovial Spider-Man treatment. I know they’re all comic books, but some of those comic book-isms just felt out of place. This can be a criticism of the superhero genre, however, and not just Insomniac’s effort here.

The story jumps around, exploring locations the world over, from Canada to Japan, each place richly detailed. The narrative sometimes feels too quick, with various moments feeling unearned. Not necessarily just emotional beats, but story beats as well. Wolverine could have used more padding on the story front. The moments that do hit, however, are great and remind of Insomniac’s excellence. The sometimes breakneck speed of the narrative makes me wonder how the leaks affected development. That said, I enjoyed the overall story that Insomniac tried to tell here. Logan’s personal struggles shone. With his near-immortality—living lives long forgotten, his inability to get close to people, and his fight with his inner nature, the game nails Wolverine as a character, hitting on the different aspects of what makes Logan who he is.

But what about the gameplay, you ask? It’s great! I played on normal, and while I wouldn’t have minded even more difficulty, I think the main difficulty setting has enough balance to please the average gamer. The gameplay is brutal and visceral, with each fight ending in gore-covered claws (which Logan insouciantly flicks away after a fight). While they have the option to turn gore off, the default setting is just what a Wolverine fan should want.

The gameplay focuses on building a rage meter during each engagement. Rage isn’t carried over between fights; any residual after a fight is instead used to fuel special moves that are on a cooldown. The fighting has a rhythm, much like Batman and Spider-Man, but instead of a notifier over Wolverine’s head, the player has to watch each enemy to get a good parry in. Parrying, stunning, and managing Wolverine’s location are key to succeeding in some of the more challenging fights. It’s easy to get surrounded and pummeled by un-blockable moves, though there are a few special abilities that can get the player out of a jam. Once the fighting ramps up and Logan hits his rage, the combat notches up to another level, the gameplay getting even more gore-filled and instantly satisfying. In this mode, you become the Wolverine, tearing into enemy flesh with greater ease and commanding the battlefield like a true superhero. Leaping around from target to target like a feral beast is satisfying, and so is the buildup to filling the rage meter. I wouldn’t have minded more depth to the combat, but for a game of this length, it stays fun the entire run, and that’s key.

Wolverine features challenges through Nightmare Doors, which are scattered throughout the world. These challenges vary from surviving hordes of enemies to reaching a goal within a certain amount of time. While I enjoyed these little distractions, I found the final payout to be a bit of a disappointment. I don’t think the game should have offered an alternate ending by any means, but perhaps a more influential bit of backstory would have been a better reward than what was on offer. That said, the actual challenges were a good time, and I thoroughly enjoyed the ones that made me survive as many enemies as possible. The game felt best when I was killing things.

Exploration is straightforward, sometimes too direct, not giving players too much freedom to discover things for themselves, because a lot is placed right in front of them, but this helps to set the pace and keep the story moving along. The player characters will also vocally nudge the player in the right direction if they take too long, which can sometimes get annoying. One of my pet peeves is leaving an area open to exploration, only to be told to go back to the mission area when you approach it. It can be quite the immersion breaker, and Wolverine is guilty of this.

When all is said and done, though, Wolverine is a very good game that feels great to play. It’s no masterpiece, but it doesn’t need to be. If this is the intro to Insomniac’s X-Men, they’ve got my attention. If they can deepen the combat experience while maintaining better story pacing (either through a longer linear game or by opening it up a bit into more of a hub world), I can see their future X-Men games reaching the heights of their Spider-Man franchise. As is, this game does what it means to and does it well enough, but is that enough? It is for me. But for someone with less disposable income, ask yourself if a very good (not quite great) linear narrative game that runs approximately fifteen hours with little replay value is worth the price. I’m happy with my purchase and the quality on display, but if you are not specifically a fan of Wolverine and/or Marvel, there are better, deeper action experiences you can get at a fraction of the price. If you are a Wolverine fan, then get to killing, bub; the world’s mutants need your help.

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7.5/10.

Bonus: +1 for frenetic, visceral combat. +1 for high end visuals and animations.

Penalties: −1 for narrative pacing. −1 for some linear handholding.

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.