Book Review: Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler

Nayler is back on animal consciousness, but this time with a whole lot more of man's inhumanity to man to go with it.

If you've read any of Ray Nayler's previous work - like The Mountain in the Sea or The Tusks of Extinction - you'll know that animal consciousness is something that often occupies a central position in his stories. Whether it's octopodes and their inscrutable behaviour or the de-extinction of mammoths, he often writes not just about other ways of thinking than human ones, but of how the lives of those animals work in the world as it is, shaped and controlled by humans. And, naturally then, of the threat we pose to them. This does not, generally, make for cheery reading.

Unsurprisingly then, his next novel, Palaces of the Crow, set in part during WWII in war-torn Lithuania, is not exactly shifting the needle on that. I might describe it as "desperately sad".

The story follows four young people as they are caught up in the events of the war. Neriya is the Jewish daughter of a doctor who wants to become a biologist when she grows up. She has spent her life befriending the crows at the shtetl she spends her summers away from Vilnius in, and when they lead her away from home one morning, she trusts them enough to follow. It is what saves her from the destruction of the entire village. Czesław is an underage soldier, whose family remembers their history as Polish nobility even as they live as hunters in the Siberian forest. He is pulled into the Red Army underage, and when his unit encounters the destruction of war, ends up fleeing into the woods for their familiarity. Kezia and her family are Roma, and she too must flee into the woods when the Soviets come to kill them. The Boy has no name, and cannot speak, but has somehow survived alone in the wreckage of a village until Kezia finds him.

One by one, they find one another in the forest, and find with one another the community necessary to survive the forest in winter. They have different skills which they teach one another - Neriya shows Kezia how to read, Czesław shows Neriya how to hunt - and different lives and experiences that they share in the close proximity of a small shelter and harsh circumstances. Their different backgrounds have taught them all to be deeply, rightly afraid of the adults around them, and who sometimes they hear or see coming through the woods, and so it is only with each other that they can be safe and survive.

But they also have help from the crows.

There are a few parallel threads running through the story, interacting but also distinct. As a WWII story following a Jewish girl, a Roma girl, a boy with complex heritage within Russia and an orphan who cannot speak, it is necessarily one thinking about war and what it means to survive it as a marginalised person, as someone who is being actively hunted down by state, by collaborators, and by predatory people who want something and think that they can get it at another's expense while the world is so openly hostile. Nayler does a good job here, I think, in conveying the stark and horrific reality of these children's experiences - never letting us forget that they are children while also seeing how survival has robbed them of their childhood - alongside the community they find together. It is not community as heart-warming story so much as vital tool of survival. The bond between them is often portrayed as being about knowing one another intimately and totally, the proximity blurring the boundaries between their separate selves, rather than about fondness or good feeling. And it is something that changes them all, and stays with them for the rest of their lives.

The way Nayler handles the group relationship is probably one of the strongest parts of the book. Their interconnection, the way they are forced to grow up together, in this situation, walled off from the rest of the world without news or hope of rescue, is intense and, at times, heartbreaking. The narrative voice helps immensely with this, lingering on moments good and bad long enough to give them weight but without dwelling so much as to feel untrusting in the reader, providing emotionality but always at a slight remove. It very much feels like the voice of someone who is simply getting through it, surviving as well as they can. Someone who has to keep moving, even as they understand the enormity of their situation.

This story alone would be worth reading. But Nayler interweaves this with a story of a group of crows who at first seem just like any crows. They're already smart birds - there are plenty of stories online of people befriending them and being brought little gifts, like Neriya is brought at the start of the book. But as the story progresses, as the children move deeper and deeper into the forest to escape the dangers of humanity, more and more is revealed of the life and capabilities of the crows, and it begins to be something just that little bit more than in reality.

This is a little departure from my previous forays into Nayler's work. Where elsewhere it is decidedly in the realm of SF - a future what-if - this leans more towards the fantastical, but without ever really fully committing to something specific. While I chose to read some of the more ambiguous moments in a more SFF way, it would be possible, and not particularly convoluted, to find mundane arguments for them too. And this feels a very clever choice - it keeps the story bedded firmly in the perspectives of its characters, with their limited knowledge and understanding, their state of mind in this strange, hidden place, primed to perhaps believe in something more and without the tools to fully investigate it to prove either way.

But even as he departs into something a little more mysterious, he does not step away from some of his core concerns. A key part of crows' part in the narrative is about protecting them, and about the risk that humanity poses to them if their story is told to the wider world. Neriya wants to be a scientist, wants to document what she learns and write it up, but she is also very conscious of the cruelty of the world, and of what that cruelty could do if pointed at the crows who have helped her so much. There is a tension throughout the story between the benefit of learning and sharing knowledge, as often demonstrated as the skills shared between the children become the tools of their survival - and in the benefit of secrecy and silence, of locking things away forever, especially from adults, because they have demonstrated they cannot be trusted with the important things, whatever their promises.

This is, to me, an unusual perspective from an SFF author, but a welcome one. It feels critical, if one is writing stories about the validity and importance of consciousnesses other than humans, to decentre the story's understanding of the stakes from human assumptions and priorities, even about science. I wasn't expecting it at all, but it fits perfectly, especially in the context of a WWII story.

And that I think is the story's big strength - context. Nayler has pared down the scale. Rather than trying to write a story that encompasses the whole of the war, which is a subject that has been tackled before and will be again, by many hands, he chooses instead to limit it to this one place, these few people, and enrich it with a deeper understanding of exactly where they come from, and exactly the here in which the crows are. Every character feels well realised, well-situated, and just as they come to know one another in all their depth, so too do we, in these two crucial winters of their lives. This makes all the more sense when the viewpoint characters are children whose understanding of the world prior to the war is limited by their own experiences. And the thoughts about animals and their place in the world are scaled back too - the reader is left to draw their own conclusions from what they've seen, and to figure out what value they place on it, and the decisions of the characters.

Because, by the end, some of the characters do make possibly dubious decisions. How to weigh those up in the scales? An exercise for the reader. And I like it that way.

Palaces of the Crow feels like a development of Nayler's previous work and themes, with all the ingredients that made them work well, but also with an extra sophistication of writing that makes it something a little bit more. It has made me more exciting to pick up his future work, and to wonder where he might go next. He may still be thinking about animal consciousness, but this book shows there's a lot more to do with that, and plenty of options for places to take it that mean it's a well far from dry.

--

The Math

Highlights: Do you like to be sad? Hoo boy will you be sad!

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Ray Nayler, Palaces of the Crow, [MCD, 2026].

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

Book Review: Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton

A fantastic love letter to the city of Venice, set in a world very much inspired by it, but just next door. 

The dream of La Serenissima. A city of canals, of masks, the most Serene Republic. Unique even among the diverse and unique city states of Pre-Modern History. A crossroads city. A dreamlike city. A place of wonder.

In Everybody’s Perfect, Jo Walton gives us a literally dream-like version of Venice, 

The novel is structured a little differently than most modern novels, genre or otherwise, and in the afterword, Walton explains that her model for the novel is Marguerite Yourcenar’s A Coin in Nine Hands and she herself has used this pattern before in short stories.

We meet a variety of characters in her setting, of which I will speak in detail shortly. I want to focus on characters and structure first, since it is essential for you the reader to decide if you want to tackle this book. We get a series of characters who are connected in a chain and are not repeated as points of view. Each character is given what we in the Secret Amber Cabal would recognize as a “trump description”: A set of iconic phrases and a described portrait of the character.

As an example, let me give you the first, Tiry:

Aspect: Strength. Time of Day: Afternoon. Muse: Thalia. Liberal Art: Rhetoric. Animal: Lion. Sphere: Moon. Social Class: Artisan. Virtue: Fortitude. Species: Bauta. Description: A man with a face that is blank except for eyes and a jutting chin is lifting a house from where it has fallen on a lion. The lion is grinning. 

We get these for all the subsequent characters as well and these give us an immediate iconic and archetype for each of them. The pattern of the novel has a character in their chapter, in a first person point of view, go about their day, interact with the city and its people, and eventually meet the next point of view character. Tiry hands off to Khadasha who hands off to Pell who hands off to Taddeo and on and on. As the novel goes on, we get fewer “brand new” characters and start hitting characters who have shown up in the narrative, but have not had a point of view. But in this way we get a braided story over a nebulous but seemingly short period of time in La Serenissima, getting to know these characters, and of course, the nature of La Serenissima itself. The characters are from a variety of species, backgrounds, and histories and give us a portrait of the city itself just from what they see. 

And what a city we are given a view of. La Serenissima is not our Venice, but rather lies in a dimension (the actual word here is hypostase), that is different than our material plane. There are nine hypostases, ranging from the unreachable God in the first all the way to Primal Chaos at the bottom in the ninth¹ . The material world of our own is the seventh hypostase. La Serenissima is in the eighth, and that gives it an amorphous dreamlike quality to the city. This is a city built on and running on dreams, and if you leave your gondola unattended and unwatched for too long, it will fade away into nothingness. Things can come up and out of that formlessness as well. Given that amorphousness, La Serenissima can and does act as a connection point, a hub between worlds. Species of various kinds can get to other worlds quickly by transferring through La Serenissima² . Various species including humans (called Venetians here³ ) make their way and live in this dreamlike city where time flows a little weird, there are no days per se, and the strivings of the populace slowly breathe an idea into being. 

So there is a lazy, dreamlike feel to La Serenissima, it has the canals and lagoon and other accoutrements of Venice. The novel is awfully vague for a long time “when it is on Earth” and I found myself wondering that. In the course of the characters, we finally hit upon a Venetian, and find out how and why they are there, and when they left Venice of our world. So there is a definite feel of how the city feels and acts being different not only because of the dream like aspect of this dimension, but also what the characters bring from where they are from to their perception of the place. 

So in addition to seeing the city through these diverse characters as being the backbone of the novel, there are a couple of plotlines going on here, inspired by magic and foretelling. There is a plague afoot, but there is a prophecy that the cure for the Blight will be found. And then there is the idea, inspired by the real Venice, that a Doge will appear and will “marry the sea”. The story of the book is from the mystical genesis of this idea, through to its culmination⁴. Along the way, we get stories of romance, and loss, and heartbreak, and searching, and coming together. The linked stories together form our tapestry and our narrative.

So if you are looking for a traditional secondary world fantasy narrative, Everybody’s Perfect is probably not quite the right fit for you. This is a book to immerse yourself in a series of characters, whose portraits, struggles and lives together tell a small but important story of changes coming to La Serenissima... and to the characters that we meet. It’s a small fantasy, a gentle fantasy. If I had to pull out a theme of the book, it might be that to have a better world, and a better life, we have to be able to imagine it can and will be so. We have to be able to dream it into existence before we can build it into existence. In the La Serenissima, dreaming it into existence is more than half the battle. On Earth, for us Venetians, it's a lot more work than that but without being able to imagine a better world, we have no capacity to make that better world possible. Everybody’s Perfect shows the power of that belief.

--

Highlights:

• Dream like world based on the fantasy of Venice
• A braided novel, following a variety of characters through their time in La Serenissima
• Immersive, gentle, enthusiastic fantasy. 

Reference: Walton, Jo, Everybody’s Perfect, (Tor Books, 2026)

¹ Listening recently to a podcast on the novel Piranesi, it occurs to me that the world of Piranesi could easily be slotted into one of the higher hypostases, as being closer to the godhead because of being a realm of platonic forms. 

 ² Ada Palmer has described the real life medieval Venice as the airport hub of the Mediterranean and Walton seems to have decided to run with that ball all the way to the goal line, here. La Serenissima may not be the one true world of which all others are but shadows, quite to the contrary, but it is the one true hub that every location can connect to. And one close to Primal Chaos at that. If I were still running new Amber games, I’d steal this in a second. I may yet steal it for other TTRPGs I am running. Another RPG that comes to mind in thinking on this novel is the system Everway, which relies on artistic cards for resolution mechanics. 

³ It’s similar to how in post-Roman Europe such Europeans, regardless of their origin, were called Franks by those outside of Europe. Anyone from Earth is called Venetians, because that’s the only point on Earth that connects to La Serenissima.

⁴I am reminded of the latter books of the Just City trilogy by Walton, where the gods themselves are caught up in the webs of fate. 

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

Film Review: The Dog Stars

Artsy vibes in a slow-paced, post-apocalyptic search for meaning

Post-apocalyptic adventure is always in abundant supply. Shows like Paradise and The Last of Us, films like A Quiet Place and Leave the World Behind, books like Station Eleven, and even dark comedy anime like Zom 100, are among many that torment us with difficult questions and terrifying imaginations. These stories imagine contemporary society decimated and desperate, struggling to survive by using long forgotten skills. And, we have the irony of characters longing for their lost society while realizing the greatest danger, in their new devastation, is often other humans. The Dog Stars is a new film from Ridley Scott which explores this familiar territory from a slower and more character focused pace. Rather than concentrating on the typical screaming and running (which are also present), the film has long stretches of quiet memories, contemplation of the stars, and simple acts of work and fellowship. This storytelling style is appealing, at least initially, for those who want a quieter story. However, it becomes harder to sustain as the story makes unusual narrative choices.

In the near future, a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, leaving much of society and the societal infrastructure decimated. In a mountainous area outside of Denver, Colorado, a kind-hearted young mechanic named Hig (Jacob Elordi), manages to have a comfortable, subsistence existence in partnership with a grumpy, ex-military survivalist, named Bangley (Josh Brolin). Hig is also a pilot and periodically flies his beat up small plane into the remnants of Denver to scavenge supplies and to visit his former small home to grieve his deceased wife. He also visits and supplies an extremely isolated Mennonite community whose leader (Benedict Wong) has taken in various orphans. Hig’s only connection to his former life is his dog Jasper. In the aftermath of the devastation, the greatest threat is other survivors, who Bangley nicknames “rats.” They move in mobs and attack and destroy at random. The “rats” are treated as inhuman, almost zombie-like, although they are not zombies. After a falling out with Bangley, Hig flies away in search of a mythical town called Grand Junction, hoping to find community and meaning for his life. However, a crash landing connects him to an isolated farmer, Pops (Guy Pearce), and his daughter, Cima (Margaret Qualley), a former New Yorker and med student who came home to Colorado just before the pandemic. The film follows Hig and his various companions as they search for meaning and navigate survival amidst the danger and devastation of their new existence. 

Surrounding this narrative is the rural, mountainous terrain often seen from Hig’s small plane. The slower pace is comparable to a film like Train Dreams, last year’s Oscar best picture nominee, in which an ordinary person accepts extraordinary changes with sorrow, calmness, and introspection. While Train Dreams had an ultimate message that was poignant and powerful, The Dog Stars is a journey with jarring changes in tone that make its ultimate message unclear. 

The film’s greatest strength is the powerful but understated acting of the four leads. For the most part, the story is told primarily through the protagonist Hig’s perspective. Hig is a kind-hearted hero, grieving his wife, helping orphans, and catching the eye of the farmer’s daughter. The film also connects us to Cima, Pops/Jack, and Bangley who also all feel like archetypal characters. Bangley is the angry, loner, warrior. Pops is the salt-of-the-earth protective father. Cima is the strong, attentive, caretaking love interest. All of the characters feel historical rather than futuristic. This vibe is unexpected but it does fit with the theme of society unraveling and returning to its earlier periods. Of the four leads, Cima is the closest to a contemporary character and, in many ways, is the most relatable with her longing for coffee shops and commute playlists, rather than comfortably settling into their new life of subsistence farming and isolation. The slow paced storytelling works in the first half of the film due to the understated but powerful acting of the four leads. The authenticity of the characters draws you in and creates meaningful and engaging tension.

However, as the film progresses, the narrative begins to take strange turns that undermine the original literary feel of the opening scenes. Eventually, the story starts to feel like more of an old-fashioned Western than a speculative post-apocalyptic survival film. The repeated moments of the settlers trying to fight off the uncivilized marauders start to feel uncomfortable, as if we are suddenly watching a different movie with a different theme. Then, the movie takes an even weirder turn when the group encounters “civilized” people who are equally cruel and barbaric, and are weirdly costumed in the style of the residents of the Capitol in The Hunger Games. The messaging seems to be that both “city” people and “wild” people are evil, and at some point it’s unclear who the target audience is for this story.

As someone who enjoys slower paced character exploration, The Dog Stars has a lot of appeal. Especially since the acting is excellent, and there is a bit of romance and a classic green flag hero. The theme of finding joy and community in moments of devastation is one that seems particularly resonant. However, the overall storytelling is, at times, undercut by some unexpected narrative choices and significant thematic shifts. While the story strives to be ultimately optimistic, especially in the last scenes, the thematic inconsistencies likely mean that, at the end of the film, viewers can’t help but feel uneasy, on multiple levels.

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The Math

Highlights:

• Slow paced, post-apocalyptic journey
• Strange and jarring thematic choices
• Solid acting and archetypal characters

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

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

Game Review: Saros by House Marque

 Who is the King in Yellow?

Artist: Simone Silverstri

Saros, directed by Greg Louden and written by Alex Meer is Housemarque's spiritual successor to Returnal, the 2021 bullet hell first entry from the developer. Returnal was about grief, about guilt and took the form of a journey through a science fiction version of Hades as the main character, Selene wrestled with her own memories and her culpability in the death of her child. This combining of intense third person action with a story that really plumbs the depth of personal despair is repeated here although the narrative is very, very different.  

Saros, like Returnal, is a third person action RPG with roguelite elements that has you dying repeatedly and dodging endless streams of incoming fire. Returnal’s reference points were the Ancient Greek underworld, small town European grief and the concept of how we navigate such terrors. 

 

Saros takes its reference points from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, a forerunner of modern cosmic horror who has influenced everything from Lovecraft to True Detective. Interestingly I think Saros has a deeper reference point which is less Chambers than Chambers’ own inspiration – the 1886 story, "A Man in Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce. 

 

As with Beirce’s story, the main character in Saros, Arjun Devram, played brilliantly by Rahul Kohli, wakes from sleep to find himself lost in a strange and uncanny wilderness. Saros transposes Carcosa from an ancient ruin on Earth to a futuristic planet far from home being exploited by a callous corporation called Soltari. Arjun is security for a small team sent to discover what has happened to previous expeditions to this planet. One of those expeditions included Arjun’s partner, Nitya and that, really, is why he’s here – to find her and to save her. 

 

Right from the start Arjun’s main drive is that of a man who thinks he has to save those around him but despite his best efforts he cannot save even those closest to him, let alone find his lover. This drive, this solipsism, rooted as it is in a strange toxic form of masculinity is not left unquestioned and unchallenged and what Arjun discovers about his relationship and himself is devastating but subtlely foreshadowed right from his first conversations.

 

The story unfolds as you progress through items you can collect – logs, recordings, memories and the like. You also meet the occasional NPC who each have their own agendas and have very little interest in Arjun’s goals. 

 

What’s brilliant about this manner of storytelling is that you can engage with it as much or as little as you like – the gameplay is thrilling – solid weapons, tough levels, fantastic design and plenty of secrets. If you wanted you could ignore every element of the story and simply blast your way through the game. 

 

That’s not for me and I’m glad because the story is masterfully delivered. I won’t spoil it here except to say that what you learn about both Carcosa and Arjun is brilliantly layered – the story of Carcosa itself, a ruin by the time Arjun arrives, its once majestic world slowly being revealed as a place riven by war and slavery and hubris.

Alongside Carcosa is Arjun’s journey of self-discovery, the kind that only someone who wakes with no sense of looking back and no questions about his past can uncover and it’s suitably grim and unhappy. 

 

Finishing this game then comes with the deep satisfaction of beating that final boss together with shock and ambivalence about who you learn the characters are and what they’ve done to reach this point. This contrast is well structured and the writing adds to that. Kohli gives a great performance as a man who doesn’t look back, who can only travel forwards but who neverthless, slowly, comes to realise that these drives aren’t noble at all, but are really acts of self-preservation whose impetus is obscuring and erasing his own flaws. 

 

Arjun is the kind of man who, having done something bad, doubles down at each opportunity until he becomes something truly monstrous. Equally as interesting is Saros’ view of whether, having made that journey, you can step away from the edge. There’s a scene right at the end where he’s facing everything about himself and he’s stood there, defeated, accepting and vulnerable and all of this is captured in Kohli’s face without any words, the kind of shot you expect to see in the cinema.

 

All of this only works as a story if the game does too – it’s heavy material and not one many action RPG players might gravitate towards if it was handled too obviously. Fortunately Saros’s play is, as already mentioned, great but on top of that, the cinematography, the camera and the world building are phenomenal with a colour palette and design aesthetic that feels ancient, vibrant and distinct all at once whether you’re in wild mountains, fetid swamps or angelic cathedrals.

 

Leading you through the game is Sam Slater’s incredible soundtrack. Intense, grinding, piercing and very, very heavy, it propels you through fights, holds you tight during cut scenes and memories and never lets up. Slater’s better known as a Drone Metal artist but that sensibility works perfectly here where internal conflict is externalised in blasting away at dozens of different enemies each with their own unique patterns and strategies.

 

The soulslike elements work well and difficulty is what you might expect with such a game although there are some really neat mechanisms that allow you to tailor the gameplay to your own preferences (at least to an extent). 

 

It’s rare for me to just keep playing a game, to keep exploring, to keep shooting when the credits are done, but Saros is an experience so smooth with so many little spots to explore and story elements to uncover that I’m still thinking about it now a month after I properly finished it and got the ‘true’ ending hidden from those who stop after the initial credits roll.

 

Saros is gaming done right and I look forward to whatever Housemarque do next.

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The Math

Highlights:

• Incredible action
• A remarkable story about culpability and self-knowledge
• A non-western viewpoint

Nerd coefficient: 8/10, visceral, brutal combat combined with gorgeous visuals and a great story. Highly recommended.

Reference: Housemarque, Saros [Sony Entertainment, 2026].

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

Film Review: Practical Magic 2

Cozy witchy vibes are back! Fans of the original will have fun, despite what critics are saying.

To a certain kind of person (including me, I'm one of those people), the first Practical Magic movie is the very definition of a comfort watch. For nigh on 30 years, I've turned to it at the first hint of cool weather and Halloween decor in stores, reveling in the atmospheric soundtrack, the seaside-manse-that's-also-a-character, and the extremely '90s girl-power sister vibes. The plot, for those unfamiliar, concerns two sister witches that have man problems — not just Sally's abusive boyfriend, but the entire family's inability to find love due to a generational curse from the Owens ur-witch way back in the 1600s. It's silly, I'm not afraid to say, but that doesn't make it any less fun or heartwarming. It's essentially a rom-com with little spells and lots of cats, and while I'm not usually a romantic comedy type of gal, this one hits the spot.

I'm diving into the original as a prelude because it's absolutely impossible to talk about the sequel, Practical Magic 2, without talking about what fans loved about the first one. With all of these recent reboots of beloved films, folks are desperately hoping (and movie studios are desperately trying) to recreate lightning in a bottle. Most, in my opinion, don't really succeed, largely because they're doing the same thing with the same cast, but with no real shift in story, characters, or locale. Because of this, the sequels usually pale in comparison to the original. It's a tale as old as time, I'm afraid.

Fortunately, Practical Magic 2 has rich source material, as both it and its predecessor are based on novels by Alice Hoffman. Set roughly 25 years later (as far as I can tell), the new film brings us up to speed with our main characters quickly. Beloved elderly aunts Jet and Fran are now in their 80s, still living in their magical house by the sea. Sally and Gilly are in their 50s, while Sally's daughters, Kylie and Antonia, are in their 20s.The curse is still around, though Sally has wiped her children's memories of being witches, but they're not aware of it in the first part of the film.

The plot follows the youngest daughter as she absconds to England to learn about the origin of her family's curse as her lover Gideon lies in a coma after a bike accident, fearful that his death is imminent (fun fact: Gideon is played by Xolo Maridueña, who was great in the decent nostalgic vehicle Cobra Kai from a few years back). Her mother and aunt follow her, hot on her trail. Once they arrive in London, they meet a good-guy warlock named Ian (played with effortless charisma by Lee Pace) and team up to track Kylie down. 

The climax revolves around Kylie confronting a distant relative/bastard of the Owens line that's mad he didn't inherit witch abilities, and together, through the power of sisterhood and witchcraft, the main characters defeat him. Throughout all this, they learn that the only way to break the curse is for a witch to sacrifice herself, so that's exactly what Aunt Frances does, wading into the water à la Virginia Woolf as she rushes to meet her sister Jet who died at the beginning of the film.

Look, on paper, the plot sounds like something out of an episode of Charmed. And yes, the pacing is just as all over the place as the original. But this film wasn't made for critics, sitting at roughly 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. Neither was the original, which has a similar score, actually. It's made for the fans who have loved it for more than a generation. 

But for the first 30 minutes I was a little skeptical. "Oh, they bought a Ninja margarita machine to make their midnight cocktails, great." But once the characters take off to England, everything starts to find a groove. Lee Pace lends a depth and humanity to every scene, and casting him was a wise decision. The autumnal cozy atmosphere of rural England also creates a new way to feel spooky and chilly, another good choice that helps distinguish the films. 

What I was thinking about most in the days leading up to seeing it was what the needle drops were going to be. The first movie wouldn't be what it was without iconic Stevie Nicks songs, that triumphant Faith number, and the iconic Harry Nilsson "Coconut" scene. These songs are so deeply woven in to poignant moments from the film that I honestly can't imagine it without them. They move the plot along as well as the characters and set pieces. 

In Practical Magic 2, we get yet more Stevie Nicks (and I'm fine with that, as "Landslide" is a perfect tearjerker), some Olivia Rodrigo to keep it hip, Florence + the Machine, a Mazzy Star cover, and finally, a closing number in the form of "Dancing in the Moonlight" by King Harvest. All in all, I think they chose perfectly, and this music will help cement the movie in folks' memories. 

By the end, I found myself emotionally invested in everything, and for me, that's enough. The witchcraft is definitely more on display in this one: there are grimoires, left-hand magic, and frank talk of spells. Witchcraft was more incidental, in the first one. The first movie was about sisters that happen to be witches, while the new sequel is about witches that happen to be sisters. 

I do think this one fares better than fellow comedy-horror bedmates like Beetlejuice 2 and Hocus Pocus, but I suppose that's not saying much. I've talked about this before, but no reboot or sequel will ever do the same thing as an original, no matter how much we try. But for hardcore fans, Practical Magic 2 is decent enough, and that works.

My only real complaint is how distracted I was by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman's faces. I could write an entire manifesto about botoxification of women in cinema in the modern age (but really, who couldn't?) but I truly could not stop thinking about how these women, 62 and 59 respectively, have not a single wrinkle on their face. For a movie about female empowerment, it's a bit sad to think that not one gray hair, not one crow's foot were allowed to grace the screen. But that's an article for another day, and sometimes us feminists just have to revel in magical cinematic nostalgia for a little bit.

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Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

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. 

Film Review: Terminator 2 (35th Anniversary)

The sequel that set the standard for action films holds up perfectly after 35 years

When Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out in 1991, I was 8 years old, and my suburban household had a no-holds-barred approach when it came to R-rated movies. Consequently, I've seen it dozens of times, mostly in the '90s on VHS. This was also, for some reason, back when R-rated films released profitable lines of children's toys. I had all of the action figures, including the plastic-goo-flesh pump that overlaid "skin" on a Terminator metal skeleton.

When I found out there was going to be a 35th anniversary re-release, I knew exactly where I'd be. Terminator 2 is widely regarded as one of the best action movies, best sci-fi movies, and best sequels. It was the highest-grossing movie of 1991, and set the stage for James Cameron's eventual future triumphs in Titanic and Avatar.

But after 35 years, does it hold up?

Absolutely. On this rewatch—it'd been a few years since I'd last seen it from start to finish—I found myself rapt at the effortless storytelling and human beats, and there's a few key things I'd like to review about in lieu of a traditional narrative post-mortem.

Sarah Connor: The opposite of a Mary Sue (and maybe also a Cassandra at the same time)

Has there ever been more character growth between two movies than that of Sarah Connor, mother of the savior of humanity? In the original Terminator, Sarah is a young, naive waitress thrust into a world of violence, destruction, and utter fear. The movie ends with her hitting the road to Mexico, pregnant and filled with a newfound knowledge of the apocalypse that's coming.

When we meet her again, 10 years later, she's almost unrecognizable. Locked up in a mental institution, lean, muscled, and doing perfect chin-ups on an up-turned hospital bed. She has seen some serious, serious shit. Over the course of the movie, we witness her perform extraordinary feats of physical prowess, shoot and reload countless weapons without even looking, and wrestle with killer robots. We also learn that she's been training John for his eventual rise to power in the resistance since he was born—spending time in jungles, flying in helicopters, and stockpiling arms in the Mexican desert. For a female protagonist in the early '90s, this is incredible. It hit me while watching that she is the exact opposite of a Mary Sue, having put in a decade of work to show for skills and talents, learning from outlaws, scumbags, ex-army guys, and countless others. She is deeply competent in many different ways, and competency is hot.

Granted, I know that many folks use the Mary Sue descriptor almost exclusively for (strong) women, so I'm hesitant to even justify it with a response, but I think that's why Sarah Connor is unassailable in the canon: she literally can do it all when it comes to evading Terminators. Compare this to the common criticism of Rey from the Star Wars sequel trilogy; we have no idea how she can fly starships or fight so well.

One other thing that hit me while watching: Sarah Connor is basically Cassandra from Greek myth. Cassandra was a Trojan priestess blessed with the ability to see the future, but cursed to never be believed. Sarah didn't ask to be the mother of John Connor, hero to humanity, but she was fated to become her. And in so doing, learned about the horrors that await humanity and the eventual nuclear war that would devastate the planet. She ends up in a mental hospital because I imagine at some point, her PTSD got the better of her and she leaned into the story of the future in all its gory detail, hoping that someone, anyone, would listen. I don't think folks realize what a burden that knowledge must be, and how horrible it must be for someone to internalize day in and day out.

James Cameron's daddy issues on full display in a Terminator father-figure fan fiction

Maybe it's because I'm older now, but it's impossible to watch Terminator 2 without having your heart break at least a little over the relationship between the T-800 (Arnold) and John Connor. Having never known his real dad (or at least, he won't until he's older and meets him in the future), John has bounced around foster homes and been around Sarah's random boyfriends.

The T-800 is sent back to protect him at all costs, but he also has to obey him. The two bond over the course of the movie in a truly touching way. As Sarah muses, "It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him."

James Cameron has been vocal about his issues with his father, who always disapproved of him becoming a filmmaker. In a podcast I remember learning that even after winning an Oscar, his dad still was cold and distant. Taking this into account, Terminator 2 hits very different. Cameron turned the monster from the first film into the ultimate protector and bastion of unconditional love. Even writing this out, it sounds cliché, but the performances have to be seen to be believed. It works. Another parallel? John only spends a few short days with the Terminator—almost exactly the same amount of time that Jack spends with Rose in Titanic. So, yes, you're right, "My Heart Will Go On" could theoretically be the theme song for this movie, too. Old Jim Cameron is a big fan of love touching one time, but lasting for a lifetime.

This is Arnold's defining role—full stop

One of the reason the aforementioned relationship works so well is because of Arnold's performance. It's some of his best acting, both emotionally and physically. Does it make sense for scientists in the future to program language in a robot with an Austrian accent? No, it does not. But does it help nearly every scene? Yes! And this is partly because Arnold's not the greatest of actors. By portraying a stern robot with a limited emotional capacity, he's already got it made in the shade.

But he's not like he was in the first Terminator. That's a completely different role with a different motive and personality. In that movie, he's playing Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. In this one, he's got to form a bond with a human boy, and his programming allows him to learn. The scenes with John are truly heartwarming, and Arnold's comedic timing and facial expressions are absolutely perfect. At this point, Arnold was 43, not at the peak of his physical conditioning, but very close to it. He's a presence, and there's a reason why the entire world spouted "Hasta la vista, baby" for years afterward.

Terminator 2 works so well because it's a horror film masquerading as sci-fi

It's sci-fi because of the worldbuilding, of course. And the use of technology, time travel, and robots. The Terminator extended universe is a delight to spend time in, and I've enjoyed every entry into the canon over the decades. But Terminator 2 (and this applies to the original Terminator, too) is truly a horror film in two main ways. First, the aforementioned slashers: The T-800 and the T-1000 are unstoppable, largely silent, and possessed of otherwordly brute strength. When you think they're dead, they're not. When you think you've gotten away, they crash a truck over a bridge and keep heading your way. When you think you've crushed them in a steel mill a decade earlier, they show up again with the same face. This theme of being powerless to stop a methodical monster who will stop at nothing to destroy you is textbook horror.

Second, the movie's structured almost exactly like a horror film, too, with all the attendant tropes. You have the pulsing, loin-girding, percussive score. You have the incredible body horror of the T-1000 getting mangled, his skin peeling off and bullets perforating his back. The scene where he degloves his arm skin to get Miles Dyson to believe him is body horror writ large.

But perhaps the scariest part is the liquid metal Terminator. The T-1000 is shot, stabbed, crunched, frozen, and still gets back up every time they try to destroy him. And still he keeps coming, like every psycho killer you've ever seen. And the scene where he melts through the bars of the hospital is basically straight-up ghost behavior. People gasped in theaters when that happened, and not just because of the CGI.

Final thoughts

After my rewatch, I realized that Terminator 2 is just as good as I remembered it being throughout my entire life. The CGI, while groundbreaking at the time, does exactly what it's supposed to, and it doesn't take you out of the movie (unlike a lot of late '80s/early '90s films). It's meant to look real, and it does. This is better than the hyper-realistic stuff we have today, and also better than the absolute garbage effects of older films (looking at you, Poltergeist 2). The performances are still great, the storytelling is tight, and the emotional heart of it still makes me tear up just a bit—just like it always has.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

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.

Book Review: The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

A book resistant to many things, among them clarity, simplicity and relatability, and mostly the better for it.

"Nothing in memory ever made itself so available"

This line, from late on in The End of Everything, the new and Booker longlisted novel from M. John Harrison, is a fair summation of the book the precedes it. But not the only one. Not by a mile.

This is the point of a review that usually contains a plot summary. It won't here. I could try to craft one, and talk about some of the things that do, probably, happen in the book. But it would be wildly unhelpful, and possibly misleading. I could, by stating only facts, give the impression of a thriller or a dystopian climate mystery or even a cosy journey through a landscape (though that one might require a few elisions). Some characters exist. Some actions and conversations are undertaken, the world has suffered a dramatic change. This isn't a novel that's about its events; it's just not what its for. To effectively talk about it, then, I have to turn to what it is, and is about... and that feels rather more slippery.

First up, it's been longlisted for the Booker Prize, which, if you're familiar with their game, says a fair bit about it in some regards. There's a type of prose-forwardness, and formal play, that is far more usual in literary fiction than in SF or broader speculative fiction (not unknown! just less common), and a lack of interest in the nuts and bolts of the world that speaks to its use far more metaphorically than functionally. The prose particularly of these is worth focussing on, because it's in that interesting space of being obviously crafted and thoughtfully deployed without being particularly purple. Though certainly there are some high scoring scrabble vocab choices around, they don't feel encrusted onto the text or particularly burdensome to it (though they do, fairly quickly, form a distinctive style that comes through especially in the dialogue - more on that a little later).

More prominently though, are the themes and metaphors and general sense of idea interplay. If novels can be plot forward or character forward, I would call this one theme forward, perhaps. Or idea forward. Motif-forward? It is dense with moments and scenes that feel laden with meaning, invested with something being their direct plot function, and often divested of a direct plot function - there are meandering digressions that don't seem to relate to what anyone is doing, because well... they don't. They serve instead the text's function as a potential map of meaning and interpretation.

There are many ways to feel when you finish a book, but one of them, and one I savour very much, is the feverish excitement and urge to discuss when finishing a book that sparks not just thought but criticism. That's what all that theme is serving here: the creation of a book that wants not just to be read, but to be read into, and which provides a rich field for the harvest, a cornucopia of potential readings. With that sort of book, you always, at least to some extent, take out what you yourself bring to it, so I do not consider these an exhaustive list of potential readings, but they were the ones that came to my mind most readily as I made my way through the text, and the ones I felt best connected into one another and were best served by being laid alongside the rest.

The first, and one I will freely admit is absolutely something I'm primed to bring into a text with me, is a class reading. Specifically, a disdain for a certain kind of grasping middle class, and perhaps a glee at the downfall the cataclysmic change may have wrought on them. There are several vignettes from a before time, of the rich partying (predominantly in South London; it's strange but wonderful to read a book in which I recognised so much of the landscape), that felt drenched in contempt for their excess. I don't think at any point it turned into a wider take about capitalism more broadly; it felt too pointed, too specific and sharply observational for that. And it was, in that, desperately English too. Those South London and south coast locations all felt critical to the message being put across, to the very particular people being evoked in some of the characters, even those who only got a very brief stint on the page. Even in that brief time, many of them felt familiar without necessarily being individual: washed out photos of someone I might once have known, or a face in a crowd. There's... not anger, quite, but some emotion that felt to me underlying all this, a disgruntlement or irritation, that made it feel more powerful.

But where that reading felt to me sharply invective, there's another one more drenched in sorrow, and possibly the most obvious reading of the book: about dementia. One of the characters is described explicitly as suffering from it, and the way her actions proceed throughout the narrative, and the way the descriptions and emotions are portrayed as diffuse, blurry things, only swinging into sharp delineation at key points, seems to underscore her experiences as she describes them. But this is not just focussing on the memory loss aspect of dementia. Instead, it is quite easy to read some of the events as representative of the loss of inhibition that is also part of the condition, and so to take some of the worst events of the book as a possibly inescapable tragedy, horrible for all involved.

This reading makes particular sense to me of a moment which comes early on in the book - page 14 in my edition - that seems out of nowhere. It is horrific, particularly because it is a horrific act described with intense nonchalance. The horror has to come from the reader, because the prose isn't providing it. And it is somehow more palpable for that choice. This moment unsettles everything that comes later, and made me doubt the emotional tone being presented, and how that connected with the events and the characters' perceived reality.

There's also a more generalised reading about ageing, which goes hand in hand but distinct from the dementia one. This is more tied to the actuality of the characters' words and experiences, rather than in reading into the gaps and how different pieces interact. There are several moments of characters noticing how the world has changed around them, how it seemed to happen without any way of stopping it, and feeling detached from and alienated by the world they now live in but can neither change nor control, fondly thinking back to the better time of their youth. What is this if not a lament for the passage of time? And while the dementia thread is a great tragedy, made all the more so by what it causes, the ageing one feels to me more ambivalent, resigned to the reality but not happy about it.

There's definitely also some "politics of modern Britain" in the mix, though I admit I could not quite find a specific angle to connect throughout the story. There are sharp moments scattered throughout that felt specific and directed - like a line talking about the state of the country at the time the story is set, where the tide of small boats has turned to predominantly fleeing rather than entering. I certainly paused when I got to that part of the text. But I cannot quite figure out what it's doing or saying. Is it just broadly pessimistic about modern Britain? In what way? I am lingering over it, picking at it, wanting to figure it out and not being quite able. We'll come back to this too.

Aside from the potential for thematic readings (plentiful) there is still more to enjoy. The formal playfulness comes out not just in the crafted prose, but in occasional oddities, repetitions and deviations out of the flow of the text, used to illustrate the shape of the world but also just fun, as pieces of artistic meandering all by themselves. There's also a hint, maybe, that the text is at least in part diegetic, in a way that is pleasingly headfucky if thought about too long or in too much detail. Harrison is clearly interested in the text as specifically a text, and what texts, collections of words imbued with greater significance, can do in the hands of someone with a mind bent towards nonsense (in the most complimentary sense).

There is also, to loop back to that first delayed point, an oddity of character. I enjoy it, but it runs rather counter to the norms I'm used to both in genre and in litfic - a rejection of realism. None of the characters feels intended to convey individuals that one might meet on the street. They do not have distinctive, individual voices, and they all talk, more or less, like the text rather than like themselves or anyone I've ever met in the world. They are constantly artful, affected and approaching their topics at a weird angle, full of slightly off-kilter descriptions and philosophical musing. They aren't people, meaningfully, and that's fine, realism is only one option among many. But it's still strange to read, when it's the thing I'm quite so immersed in 99% of my reading time. And because I'm not quite sure I can articulate why Harrison has chosen to make it this way, what purpose its serving to the text. It's possible that this rejection of relatability, this intense opacity of character interiority, is meant to demonstrate quite how implausible relatablity ever was - every man truly is an island, and we can see through no window into his soul. Or is it meant to render out the individuality, in this broken down world where so much else about normality has been lost? I don't know. It could be something else entirely. It could be nothing. It could simply be an affectation. There's nothing I can quite find purchase on to really figure it out.

Which brings me back round to my second delayed point.

There's a spectre that haunts the corners of the text, and that is the iGhetti, who are, perhaps, an invading alien force from the astral plane. Maybe. Of all the things in the book resistant to explanation, they are perhaps the most opaque, the most unclear, to the extent that, at times, I doubted whether they existed at all. I think it entirely possible that Harrison is having us all on with this, and it's some sort of complex bit in service of a different narrative agenda. Or that it's just doing something I haven't quite figured out yet. There are conflicting details littered through the book, but few of them, never in enough useful explanation to make much in the way of sense. It feels like the characters try not to think about them, mostly. And so it's a book that's making you work for a lot of its content, both the thematic and the background. Getting a sense of the iGhetti requires me to be reading in a very active, brain on sort of way, and in the end all that activity merits little in the way of reward, just as the politics seem ever so slightly out of reach.

This is, I think, the novel's great strength, and also its great weakness. It is a text oblique enough to permit many readings, and it is also a text oblique enough to be unsatisfyingly impenetrable at times.

I like books that are hard work. I like sometimes not being given everything on a plate - I complain often enough about books that do that too readily and too clearly. And so it feels rather perverse to be complaining that I got what I asked for. And I'm not... not exactly. I certainly wouldn't change the book in any way. I think the thing is that, by choosing to be so resistant to reading, Harrison has closed himself off to the sort of emotional access that, for me at least, allows me to love a book. He's maxed out the "appreciate" bar, though, and I like it plenty. It's a siloing of the type of response available all into one pot, and one that runs counter to a lot of current speculative fiction's approach, and I can only salute it. I think making the book easier to access would ruin much of the magic. But it does just mean it's not quite all the way for me.

And my literary diet needs that variation. I want to read books that satisfy me intellectually as well as emotionally. And that is, more or less, what is happening here. I felt a sort of feverish rush when I finished it. I felt awake. I felt stretched, like I'd done a nice jog with the little grey cells. I felt satisfied. Books like this are a necessary complement to the ones full of character realism and emotional heft, and absolutely ones prime for critical discussion. If I stick with the food metaphor, that's broccoli, but I fucking love broccoli.

So, after all that, what is this book?

It's SF but it's also unapologetically literary fiction in how it approaches its concepts - no sense of or desire for explanation, or even necessarily experience. It's about conjunction, reaction, the interposition of idea and motif and theme and how they might bounce off each other to make the reader have some sort of response, rather than an attempt to create immersion or realistic people. It's a book asking you to criticise, not asking you to solve or relate. It's a book doing a dystopia and an alien invasion and an astral plane and maybe even some satire. It's about dementia and ageing and Britain right now - if the unspecified pessimism that runs through it all can be considered of the moment (not unreasonable). It's a fuzzy journey through a familiar yet strange landscape, a tragedy and a warning. It is intensely, indescribably itself. It's fascinating. And it's frustrating.

The thing is about the books that cause this feverish excitement, the thrill doesn't always last. Sometimes it smoulders down into the embers of a long, burning passion, it's true. But not always. I think, after my initial fascination with The End of Everything dies down, what will be left instead is something less emotional - an appreciation for the complex artistry, a fascination with the way the different layers and pieces work together across the whole. Not exactly love, but something nonetheless necessary and worthwhile.

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The Math

Highlights: Delicious prose with the occasional line that lands with a big bang, rich text full of possible readings, lot of cleverness available to find as soon as you start looking

Nerd Coefficient: Yes.

Reference: M. John Harrison, The End of Everything, [Serpent's Tail, 2026].

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