Book Review: The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles

A potent anti-colonialist novel that sets its stakes on not just the fate of a planet and a species, but more importantly, the heart and soul of its main character

Ada Quintrall is the heiress to the Dukedom of Corbridge. Her grandfather the Duke has managed the aforementioned dukedom, which is actually on the planet Corbridge, in a future where humans have gone to the stars. The terraforming of the planet has been a harsh affair, and the native life has resisted. But when Ada finds out the long connection between her family and that native life, she is forced to confront what her grandfather and her family have done, and her complicity in it. And what is to be done about it.

This is the story of The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles.

The Final Chronicle of Yeneh plays with a number of genres in order to explore its overall themes, which are, unapologetically, anti-imperial, anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian in nature. Let’s begin with the most unexpected, and that is portal fantasy. In the story of The Final Chronicle of Yeneh, Ada learns that her ancestor wrote a bestselling fantasy series (The Chronicles of Yeneh, hence the book title). As the novel proceeds in its opening phases, Ada realizes that the native inhabitants of the planet are not mindless “plants,” but rather are the fantasy species from her ancestor’s book. Just how and why this is true, and what it means, puts a portal fantasy frame front and center in the book.

As this is a science fiction novel, the nature of the world, combined with the portal fantasy already alluded to, gives the setting and the story a significant layer of science fantasy. It retains this even as the novel progresses; the novel isn’t as interested in hard SF as it is in the sociological, political and personal stories. You don’t get any sense of what the interstellar drive is or how it works, for example. That’s not the kind of novel this is.

And then we get into the worldbuilding and some more genre-bending. In this future, a portion of a diasporic humanity has decided to reinstitute aristocracy as a social system. It is explained that in a world where some people turn away from merciless post-Capitalism, the appeal of personal rule by means of hereditary aristocracy for some planets was strong. It’s not a new idea¹ to have an aristocratic “feudal” future.² Miles, however, does it a bit differently. Aristocratic nobles like Ada’s family are not the only social system out there; it’s made clear that there are still capitalistic systems, and aristocratic ones, and even socialistic ones. There is a plurality of social systems in Miles’ universe, and while we are under an aristocratic one in this book, a main character, Zamora, is from Luna, which is mainly a socialist state, This does set up some cultural distrust at first between Ada (as an aristocratic heiress) and Zamora, and in general between Zamora and the population of Corbridge.

And then there is the straight-up science fiction as a genre. Ada (and Zamora) understand that the natives of the planet are more than just “plants” (as Zamora already argued); moreover, there is an entire civilization in the toxic and dangerous zones beyond what has been colonized and terraformed by the humans. So we switch up into the novel’s anti-colonial, anti-imperial and pro-ecological themes. With the previous layers to this, this makes The Final Chronicle of Yeneh a science fiction novel with interesting and intriguing underpinnings, providing a fresh story in the process.³

But beyond all that genre-mixing and worldbuilding, this is a very personal story, focused on Ada, who as heiress to her grandfather, is confronted with the ecological, sociological and personal costs of imperialism, colonialism and the rapacious nature of her family and her family’s legacy. It’s a painful story for her in some ways, especially as it puts her on the other side of her grandfather and her legacy once she completely learns those costs and takes a stand. The novel is about those costs, and the difficulty of that change. And as importantly as coming to terms with that legacy, the novel is about taking action, making recompense and taking active steps to do better.

Yes, while Ada herself is in a position of privilege (at least at the outset), the novel’s message is that people can and do make a difference—and indeed must do so in order to effect change. Change is hard and is scary, but it is possible, with action. That is a message that the novel hits home, and it is a very necessary message in this day and age.

In sum, what The Final Chronicle of Yeneh does, brilliantly, is to channel Miles’ excellence in character depth and make the very soul of the main character, Ada, to be as important as the fate of the native Yeheneh and of the planet Corbridge. It stirs a swirl of portal fantasy and a hint of science fantasy into a far-future story that examines and criticizes colonialism, imperialism and exploitative social systems. Miles’ focus remains tight and sympathetic, having us join Ada on her own journey to recognizing, confronting and acting on working on systemic problems on Corbridge and beyond.

Highlights:

• Strong character focus and background
• Interesting space future sketched in and intriguing
• Bold anti-colonial, anti-imperial message, told well

Reference: Miles, Jo. The Final Chronicle of Yeneh [Horned Lark Press, 2026].

¹ Melinda Snodgrass’s Imperials Saga has capitalism evolve into a Spanish-focused monarchy and aristocracy, in space. And of course, there is always The Mote In God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle.

² Obligatory note that feudalism, as you might think of it, really didn’t exist as you might think of it. The huge variety of local political systems in Western Europe really put paid to that notion. Read the works of David Perry and Matthew Gabriele, among others, to learn more. (e.g. The Bright Ages).

³ The worldbuilding about the local inhabitants of the planet has resonances to many previous works of science fiction. You can certainly look at The Word for the World is Forest by Ursula K LeGuin. I also see touchstones to the work of Adrian Tchaikovsky and James Cameron’s Avatar universe.

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

Review: And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer

 Ctrl C, Ctrl V: The novella

And Side by Side They Wander is a novella absolutely brimming with interesting ideas delivered in accomplished prose, but one of the most interesting things about it is that as a single coherent work it just doesn’t quite, well, work.

The premise for this slim book is that aliens called the Celerians arrive on Earth a few years from now and promise to give us the technology to solve all our problems—social, economic, environmental—with their advanced technology. All we would have to give them in return is all our most important art, but don’t worry: they’ll give us perfect, indistinguishable replicas in return. The art is taken to a perfect, safe, secure museum on the Celerian homeworld, and they promise to give it back when the Earth solves all those problems and the art is no longer at risk of destruction. 300 years later, problems solved, Earth something of a paradise thanks to the (bio)technology given by the Celerians, and it turns out they aren’t so keen to give it back. Enter our narrator and her companions, about to start an interstellar heist to steal the art back.

If this sounds very much like the situation the Greek government has been in at the very least since the completion of the Acropolis Museum in 2009 in relation to the Elgin Marbles still firmly, smugly ensconced at the British Museum, Tanzer’s author’s note makes it clear the reference is deliberate. And so you would expect the novella to be a sort of reverse reclamation heist (à la Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon), and that plot is absolutely there—we get its key details, slightly out of chronological order, from planning to execution—but that really isn’t what the book is about. Tanzer’s jumping off point for And Side by Side They Wander is in fact a proposed techbro “solution” to the Elgin Marbles problem: what if they did a high-res scan of the marbles, then laser-cut precise replicas out of virtually identical marble? Very obviously, this would satisfy neither Greek nor British government, but Tanzer is interested in the why of this: what is it about a copy that makes us instinctively think it is inferior to the original?

So the book is absolutely fixated on the nature and effect of copying, not just art but people. An Elon Musk-esque billionaire ascendant just before the Celerians arrived preserved his legacy by creating a series of clones and androids who looked like him. He was also involved in the development of a fungal nuclear cleanup device, which was released after insufficient testing, and turns out when it ate a bit too much radiation, it became sentient and started producing fungal simulacra of animals, plants, landscapes… and people. These elements are all used to ask questions about what it means to make or to be a copy. These are very interesting ideas to explore from these different angles, and by and large Tanzer does so with real insight and in a lovely written voice. Throw another alien race which has a very different understanding of “self” and “other” into the mix, and these concerns about similarity, difference, self and authenticity become all-consuming.

But this does mean that ultimately the heist plot, too, is largely consumed. It isn’t even really the primary vehicle for all that exploration of copying; that comes in the backstory, explaining how our narrator, Fennel Tycho, ended up part of the gang. Starting with her grief at the death of her brother, and her hiring by Earth’s lone megacorp (run by the descendants and clones of this dead billionaire), this runs through her time as a minder of sorts to one of the billionaire copy androids, Jack Kirby (the androids were all named after artists). That professional relationship evolved into a romantic one—at least on Fennel’s side; we’re never given access to Jack’s feelings on the matter, and are again invited to think about the extent to which a copy of a human has access to the emotions and motivations of the original.

This time spent with them means that the dynamic between Fennel and Jack is nicely done, effectively if briefly sketched. But the rest of the cast and much of the plot is shaded in perhaps too lightly. The sheer overstuffed quantity of ideas and plot points simply do not fit easily into the page count. And there are darlings that really should have been killed in editing. Walter Benjamin is clearly influential; he is discussed reasonably extensively in the author’s note. But that doesn’t mean it entirely works to have Jack quote him verbatim in-story: like the Elgin Marbles nod, it is perhaps just a little too on the nose. The insertion of a twist and brief action plot that begins and ends in under 5 pages at the end is also very odd. Grief, love, copying, heists, colonialism, sentient fungus, clones, androids, interstellar war, a nominal core cast of five needing attention: it’s a lot to cover in a double-digit page count (front and back matter take the printed page count above 100, but the substantive story is less).

This all leads me to the conclusion that a novella just isn’t quite the right venue for the stories Tanzer wants to tell here. The firehose of ideas and multiple, slightly attenuated storylines are asking for either the space of a novel or the discipline of being split into a series of short stories in conversation with each other. Either would work well, and I think could have been a genuine triumph. As it is, the book feels somehow both overstuffed and underdone. It feels an odd conclusion to come to when I like so much of what Tanzer put in here, but this is an occasion where the whole doesn’t quite measure up to the sum of its parts. Others may have a different impression—I can imagine being sufficiently charmed by the ideas and aesthetic exploration such that the tangled wisps of plot and character don’t matter to you—but for me, the fine work Tanzer has done here is undercut by a story fighting against its form.

Nerd coefficient: 6/10.

Highlights:

• Overstuffed with great ideas.
• Exquisitely crafted prose.
• It really is overstuffed, though.

Reference:  Tanzer, Molly. And Side by Side They Wander [tordotcom, 2026].

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

Video Game Review: Hades II

A god-tier roguelike that gives its time generously

Hades II from Supergiant Games is the sequel to the smash hit Hades. The original game saw you play Zagreus, the son of Persephone and Hades who very definitely had daddy issues he (and you) needed to work through.

Hades II, set some time after the first game, sees you take up arms with Melinoë, Zagreus’s younger sister and the only survivor of the house of Hades following an unexpected attack both on the Underworld but also against Olympus.

The attacker? Chronos, the titan who swallowed his children to stop them from killing him—which they did anyway. Chronos, the titan of time itself, has returned and taken over Hades while also attacking Olympus in revenge for being cut into pieces and scattered across Tartarus.

The game is a roguelike that lets you explore the Underworld from Hecate’s crossroads, but also eventually sends you above ground to make your way to Olympus itself. Unlike Zagreus’s deep dislike for his family and what they’re up to, Melinoë has grown up in the aftermath of a lost war, and her view of both her family and her enemy are simple, straightforward and loyal.

This is the first of the changes that Supergiant Games have made to the story and how they tell it. Having Chronos whisk away the characters of the Underworld means we can work with an entirely fresh set, which is a joy because, although those who appeared in the first game were great, classical Greek religion is full of other significant characters like Odysseus, Ariadne, Heracles, Circe and more.

Supergiant gets the balance just right between presenting these characters in a way that makes them relatable and sticking just close enough to how they are found in the original texts and stories where they appear. If that veers sometimes a little too smooth and soft-edged, that’s alright, because this isn’t their story; it’s Melinoë’s.

For example, there is a long running plot involving Odysseus and the women he encountered on his journey home from the Trojan war. The game softplays his loves and his passions and, most likely, how his experience of war impacted his emotional capacity (dare one say trauma?). Nevertheless, that they’re here is fabulous and fun to see them explored, especially as small details are there if you’re looking. Perhaps more importantly, though, is that these stories give a telling from both sides, and although it’s not as emotional as it could be, it’s interesting to hear Circe’s point of view and be able to then go and ask Odysseus.

As with the original game, these stories unfold over time and are revealed as you complete runs to the Underworld or towards Olympus. There’s a major plotline that can only be completed after the credits run, and even then, only with substantial effort from that point on.

This doesn’t feel like stretching a game; that’s basically a roguelike dungeon crawler, past its welcome. It feels like clever design to nudge the player into seeing more of this world without feeling like it’s about completion at all. For the one thing the game does better than almost any other is give you buckets of action as a way of bringing you along for the exploration. Unlike most other roguelikes, Hades II has a story to tell, and it’s told not just in the interstitials between runs but in the runs themselves, in the monsters, in the people you meet, in the boons you secure and in the places you explore.

Melinoë’s loyalty to the gods is curious and understandable. This is a main character who’s grown up with one mission: death to Chronos. To believe in this goal, she’s been taught from the crib that the gods are good and right and natural, and to oppose them is foolishness at best and unforgiveable at worst. The game subtly challenges her assumptions but doesn’t force a change of heart on her, at least not easily.

When she meets Prometheus, the conversations are enlightening for all, because whatever he did in giving mortals fire, he’s also sided with Chronos. It’s a strange juxtaposition that works neatly because it doesn’t let the titan be a worthy martyr but someone with complicated feelings. Not least because he made these decisions knowing their outcomes in advance. Yet nor does it leave Melinoë entirely comfortable with her choice to kill Chronos.

Hades was such a perfect game that it’s difficult to look at Hades II and think about where it’s better than its predecessor. It has all of Hades’s strengths around narrative and looks just as gorgeous at every step.

However, for me, there are some areas where it is an improvement. The first is the sound design. Supergiant Games always does stellar music thanks to the genius that is Danny Korb (I still listen to Bastion’s soundtrack when writing certain types of story). The songs written for Hades II are bangers, and Scylla and the Sirens are a highlight of every run with songs that pop. Alongside the music, the sound effects feel weighty, and even if you can sometimes run into a bullet hell landscape, the sound of what’s going on is clear and crisp.

Additionally, there are a whole load of quality of life changes between the two games that make playing Hades II fun in a way that I sometimes struggled with during the first game. Hades II is smooth, is probably the best way of saying it—everything fits together, everything serves a purpose and it’s lovely to play.

Lastly, I think the balancing in Hades II works better than in the first game. The different types of weapons all lend themselves to multiple different builds and reward experimentation. There are few games where you can do this and find an entirely new and effective set of strategies. For a long while I’d been set on two of the six options and had started to think the others just weren’t as strong, but then my son played the one I really didn’t like and stumbled on a build that rocked hard. This sums Hades II up pretty well: it will subvert your expectations and consistently reward your curiosity while telling a neat little story about change and forgiveness.

Highlights:

• Incredible music
• Exciting gameplay with Greek gods and titans

Nerd coefficient: 8/10, an excllent game that rewards your curiosity.

Reference: Supergiant Games, Hades II.

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.

This Is Kind of, Sort of, Mostly, a Review of Crimson Desert

Is bigger better?

I have a weird relationship with video games. I certainly don’t consider myself a “gamer.” I will play for a while, and then sort of forget they exist for a while, before jumping back in. As a certified Old Guy (“unc,” as the youths say), this worked pretty well back in my day, when most everything was single player, or required you to be physically present with another person to play against/with each other. There was no such thing as DLC, season passes, or (so far as I knew) people who play obsessively and obliterate me every single time I log on to Battlefront. I just want to play as a stromtrooper, dear lord.

But I digress.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is, in my opinion, video game perfection. A massive open world that is incredibly detailed, has immense depth, and always feels like there is another thing to discover. It helps that it marries that with one of the best stories in video game history. Plus, if I don’t play it for a while, I can just jump back in without 12-year-olds shooting me immediately*. I could make this entire post about how great RDR2 is—but it’s been out for seven years, so it seems redundant.

I bring RDR2 up so I can talk about Crimson Desert. In the first place, because there are a fair amount of varied opinions about the game—r/CrimsonDesert is populated with people calling it the greatest game ever, and others complaining about anything and everything (r/RDR2, not so much. Maybe that says something). In the second place, because a review *I* do is going to be pretty subjective, and you are likely to strenuously disagree if you’re a speedrunner/hardcore gamer/one of the 12-year-olds who owns (PWNZ) me at Battlefront.

Like this review, it’s hard to know where to start with Crimson Desert. It’s so stinking massive. The most important thing to me is: is it fun? To this, I say a resounding yes. I enjoy it. You can explore for days, do a pretty wide variety of things, and get happily sidetracked for hours.

There are negatives, to be sure, and how much they affect your fun quotient depends a lot on you and what you’re looking for out of a game.

One of the big ones, from where I sit, actually has me conflicted. The game does a pretty good job of teaching you a lot, obviously, about the mechanics and gameplay. But it also just doesn’t. I highly recommend spending a fair amount of time on YouTube watching videos along the lines of “20 things I wish I knew when I started Crimson Desert,” because there are a lot, from combat to companions to the way the world works, to (literally) what icons on your map mean. On one hand, I appreciate the game not holding your hand. On the other… I don't want to google what the doohickey on my map is.

Gary Larson was unintentionally a prophet.

Another big complaint is that the game is pretty light on story. Full disclosure: I haven’t finished it yet, because while I’m breaking tradition by writing about something I’ve actually played, I can’t go all the way and have the whole picture. I have a reputation to uphold. You can have pets in this game, and I have ADHD, so you can guess what I spend a lot of time doing. Like above, the game kind of sort of forgets to tell you the story directly. But (and I absolutely love this kind of thing), it rewards you snooping around and finding out information that gives you context and depth for what does happen in the story. The story itself isn’t terribly original—you’re the chosen one, save the universe, blah blah blah, but the hidden details give it depth, explain why you’re the chosen one, and make it more compelling. It’s a massive open world—using it is rewarded. Plus the story is kind of secondary to the myriad of other things you can do in the world.

My biggest complaint is, for as massive as it is, it is kind of shallow, in spite of the above. NPC dialogue is very limited, and not really connected to the NPC who is speaking. Sure, it would be a massive undertaking, but RDR2 did such an amazing job of this—the NPCs felt like people. They didn’t all say the same things, in the same voice (“My baby’s gone and called me PA at last”—bro, I am about to hunt down your stupid baby if I hear that one more time), and just stand around in the same place for all eternity. They also cower and make the most obnoxious whimper if you push the wrong button and even pull a weapon out. It’s probably a nitpick, but it ruins the immersion in a game that is meant to be immersive.

I do enjoy how currency is managed—mostly. You end up with a ton of different types—you have your basic “coin,” which there are some clever mechanics (that you’re not told about!) to keep you from being a billionaire (looking at you, RDR2) if you use them. You have “contribution,” which is basically your reputation within a region that unlocks specific gear. The camp funds/missions mechanic is fun, and as your camp grows, you basically have an entire passive game generating income for you, all of which becomes important later in the game. It’s sort of a lot to manage, but, like I said, you get sidetracked by it, in a good way (usually) and it pays off.

The game itself is stunningly gorgeous, in the same way as RDR2. Climbing to the top of mountains or towers is rewarded with spectacular views (and you can glide down, which is just fun). However, it struck me as I fast travelled all over the place—I never do that in Red Dead. Riding around is rewarding. Riding slow is rewarded more. There are random encounters in Crimson Desert, but as noted above, the bland NPCs make it neither interesting nor rewarding. So I jump around using the Abyss Nexus littering the landscape and don’t think twice about it, which is a little bit of a letdown. Not that this stops me from wandering around and trying to find new things—which there aren’t too many to find, aside from Abyss Artifacts (more on them in a sec). So while it’s just as pretty, and bigger, than Red Dead, it just lacks depth—Red Dead gives you side quests that last the length of the game, details and oddities to find that are quests unto themselves, or just pieces of another story. If Crimson Desert has these, I haven’t found them, and the totality is that between that and the “people” populating it, it feels very, very shallow.

Crimson Desert does a nice job of being an RPG without going too in depth—it has three basic skill trees, and various skills can be enhanced, but it doesn’t require the level of micromanagement a lot of RPGs fall victim to. I might have preferred skill trees that allowed for slightly more customization—Borderlands isn’t far off from how this operates, but allows for more “specialty,” but I’m pretty fine with the way it is. The area that really could use customization is the character—Kliff is… fine, but he’s such a blank slate, I don’t know why they didn’t just allow you to make a character entirely. A lot of the dialog is fairly generic—and many conversations pass without Kliff actually participating in them—so it doesn’t seem that far off (it’s rumored to be part of an upcoming DLC, which, fine, but why not do it in the first place?). It’s another missed opportunity for an immersive experience.

None of these, for me, are dealbreakers. There is tons of good. As I mentioned, it looks amazing and it’s fun to wander around in, and find new areas and slaughter bandits with reckless abandon. The combat system is great, and ironically given the above, almost too detailed—I keep forgetting about abilities or attacks. The game spoils you for options—you can fight equally well unarmed, with a one-handed weapon and shield, or a two-handed weapon. The Abyss Artifacts you find can be used in a few ways—most straightforwardly, as skill points, but also can be used in upgrading higher quality gear. Like currency, it does a good job of making you choose on how it’s used instead of just grinding and levelling up to God tier early in the game. There are also Sealed Abyss Artifacts, which are unlocked after completing certain challenges, making getting them rewarding in-game and not just to check off a box.

It also runs into the classic open-world problem of being a one playing as a someone possessing immense power, clad in armor worth more than the entire kingdom and wielding enough weaponry to take down God while also having literal superpowers, but half the quests you go on are carrying some old lady’s groceries or whatever. It’s unavoidable, but it’s also comical. There is a decent variety of minigames and puzzles, of varying difficulty and quality, but that gives the game nice texture.

There is honestly so much more to talk about - the variety of mounts (you can literally tame a dragon!), the diligence with which the game is updated and patched (which is great, but can be jarring), the camp dynamics - basically, it's a really big game. The enjoyment is going to be pretty subjective. 

I meant for this to be more of a compare/contrast between Crimson Desert, Red Dead and other open-world games (I had a whole Ghost of Tsushima thing, which I made the mistake of playing immediately on the heels of RDR2. Basically, I want open-world games to be Westworld, and that’s probably not a fair ask. It is fair, I think, to ask Crimson Desert to live up to its full potential while also enjoying the good qualities it has.

Highlights:

• Stunning, massive open world
• Fun, rich combat, both between swarms of baddies and repayable bosses
• Diverse gameplay befitting the size of the world
• Doesn’t hold your hand

Lowlights:

• NPCs are bland and lifeless
• The world is shallow for as big as it is
• Doesn’t hold you hand enough
• Makes you do homework to figure out several key mechanics
• Isn’t quite RDR2 in a fantasy setting

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention.

*We will not be discussing the miserable failure that is RDO.

—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.

Book Review: Crosshairs by Catherine Hernandez

Searching for dignity amidst despotism

Had Catherine Hernandez a less deft hand, her novel Crosshairs would simply be generically dystopian. It is set in an authoritarian near-future Canada which has been taken over by fascists and are rounding up ‘others,’ the term they call the indigenous, the immigrant, the poor, the minority, the queer, as is expected from fascists. The novel is told from the point of view of these ‘others’, primarily Kay, a half-Black half-Filipino gay man and drag queen, as the world collapses around him and joins up with those who also want this new regime dead and gone.

Kay is downtrodden, what would once have been called ‘the wretched of the Earth’. He had never met his father, as he was the product of an intense one-night stand that ignited at a karaoke bar. His mother hated his curly hair, inherited from his father. He grew up in a fundamentalist church, abused by his minder, and then expelled from his house for being gay. He finds solace with his friend from school, and from there finds community and belonging (albeit imperfect belonging) in Toronto’s queer community. He really finds himself as a drag queen, and there achieves something approaching self-actualization. And then, of course, the fascists come to power.

The novel jumps back and forth in time, and to a useful effect. This resistance of necessity comes into being and Kay is thrown into it without really asking, and he meets several people who have joined him in the struggle. Starting with Kay himself, you’ll have a bit of the ‘present’ plot, and then a chapter going back in time, explaining the history of any number of characters, such as Bahadur, a trans Iranian immigrant who is riding, laying down to avoid surveillance, in the same van as Kay. This of course is partially to service character development, and also worldbuilding (and is a sterling example of how K. S. Villoso argued that in speculative fiction character and worldbuilding are best when they bolster each other), but I feel there is a deeper, even more salient point: that revolutions are built by people, and people are endlessly complicated and their actions relentlessly contingent. I’m certain that this dictatorship would eventually fall, but it is due to the combined small choices of thousands of people that it fell in this specific way, rather than another way.

In terms of its plot, this novel is a queer novel of self-discovery, a novel of resistance that brings to mind the likes of the maquis, and also the leftist equivalent of a spy novel. Your ‘spies’ here are not government agents, but rather rebels who sometimes have to pretend to work for the fascist government. It’s a mode of writing I haven’t seen much of but is ripe with storytelling; you are left with the potent question of loyalty to an ideology rather than loyalty to a payroll (let us not pretend the likes of James Bond, for example, are supremely ideologically committed, the blunt objects that they are). There’s a particularly potent bit with a pair of pop stars who at first object to the rising tide of fascism, and then are seemingly co-opted. The payoff to that plotline is both deeply hewed and explosively satisfying. On the other hand, there is a former soldier who is putting the skilled he learned as an instrument of oppression to liberatory ends, but in a way that makes the reader wonder how much of that old training has lodged itself in his mind, and how much he thinks like a soldier even now.

Through much of the latter half of the book there is a well-considered depiction of the different types of resistance, and how each is adapted out of necessity or out of privilege. There is a point when Kay and Bahadur are asked to enlist in a violent struggle by a white gay man who had served in the Canadian Army against indigenous land defenders until having a crisis of conscience. He tells them they will have to risk their lives, and their ultimate objection is that their lives are already at risk day in and day out (they had to take a van, lying down so nobody could see them, to get to this place to begin with), and he has to bluntly reckon with his privilege. However, as events go on, and the discussions between them deepen, the two eventually accept the need to learn to use a gun.

You can tell that this whole thing is painful for Kay, and you get a deep dive into his character through the flashbacks into his life. These bits are some of the best in the book, giving an entry into a fully realized Toronto drag culture, with both wonderful moments of joy as well as enough rough edges to still feel real (he has a racist drag name bestowed upon him at one point, and it takes too long to shake it). The loss of his earlier life plays in resonant counterpoint with the joy he finds here. There is pathos here, and it is moving.

One of the things that makes these flashbacks work is that you are treated to the eerily plausible descent into fascism. There’s a small moment, right in the beginning, that really sets the tone of the worldbuilding: a member of the resistance whose duties are clandestine and peaceful, running an underground rail of sorts, is on her phone listening to a regime-produced podcast that is whitewashing what are clearly concentration camps. That tinge of something very current, a podcast, with something all too miserably common, a concentration camp, is just the right sort of juxtaposition that really sets a mood. The rest of the worldbuilding works because of how little extrapolation actually went on; Canada’s history of settler colonialism, of genocide, of anti-immgrant persecution has been exaggerated only a tad, made the most visible elements of the state to white people rather than simply in the background. Fascism, as Aimé Césaire said, is a ‘return shock’ of colonial practices to the metropole, and that is as true here as it is anywhere else.

Crosshairs is about what the Greeks referred to as ‘thymos,’ what could be translated as ‘spiritedness,’ or the desire to be recognized as a human being with dignity and agency and rights worth respecting. The new fascist government is based on denying the thymos of the indigenous, the queer, the immigrant, the woman. The basic demand of these groups, indeed the basic demand behind all civil rights movements, all resistance movements, is that of thymos, the right to stand as a human being worthy of that name. There is a very powerful scene near the end of the book that involves these people declaring before the world their personhood; it is a scene that made me wish I were one of them. It feels odd and somewhat appropriative to say that; I am a straight man, a mixed Filipino-American, and autistic - it’s my sexuality that makes me perhaps not the target audience for this book, but on the other hand, it was Hernandez’s Filipino background, combined with the dystopian angle, that made me check it out from my local library. It is my autism, with all the discrimination I have suffered because of it, that makes my psyche seek thymos, and that seeking is what made the ending have such massive catharsis for me (and of course it bears mentioning that one of the men responsible for Applied Behavior Analysis went on to have a hand in creating conversion therapy). Target audience I may not be, but I found it extremely moving all the same.

--

Reference: Hernandez, Catherine. Crosshairs [Atria Books, 2020]

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

The Recluce Reread: The Towers of the Sunset

 

When I wrote about The Magic of Recluce I mentioned The Towers of the Sunset was my entry point into Recluce and was the novel that hooked me enough to begin a now thirty year fandom for the series and of L.E. Modesitt, Jr’s various fantasy series (Recluce obviously being the most prominent). All these years later I can still feel Creslin skiing off into the snow just as clearly as I can with June Morrissey walking off into the snow in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, which is a foundational literary moment fundamentally burned into my memory.

All of that is why I was concerned when I started re-reading The Towers of the Sunset and didn’t immediately feel whatever I felt decades ago - which I realize is impossible because I was a teenager thirty some years ago and now I’m pushing 50 and have two kids, one of which is only two years away from becoming a teenager himself. I have changed immensely, the book remains a moment in time.

When the novel starts Creslin is a young man being pushed into an arranged political marriage. He is the son of the Marshall of Westwind, the military outpost that is its own community and under its own rule. Westwind follow The Legend, which is to say that there were once angels and demons and it was men’s hubris that led to the fall of the angels and as such, only women should have true power and rule.

Creslin is resentful about all of that. Not the legend so much as that he knows what his fate is and he wants no part of it. Because the Marshall allowed him to train with the famed Westwind guards who are truly the best of the best, Creslin is a far more accomplished warrior than he understands and has skills to slip away in the aforementioned snowstorm in order to find a different path for his life than that arranged marriage and subservience.

That path involves a whole lot of pain and a surprising amount of wizards trying to kill him because of where he comes from and what he represents to them - which is some sort of perceived threat to the existence of the White Wizards of Fairhaven. Creslin, of course, is an untrained black wizard. It is noted later in the novel that if the council at Fairhaven just allowed for Creslin to be trained by their black wizards all of what happened later could have been avoided because Creslin was only in opposition to them because he was fighting for his life.

Instead what the white wizards of Fairhaven get is the founding of Recluce as its own entity to stand on its own for Creslin and Maegaera (more on her in a moment) to have a place of their own. Creslin, it turns out, was an untrained black mage and possibly an even stronger storm mage. Magaera was a powerful white wizard who is bound to pain to her sister but who will eventually become an equally powerful black mage. They are bound together, not by choice, but in their desire / need / drive to find a place where they can just exist.

The two of them are the arranged marriage I’ve mentioned a few times. Megaera is the sister of the Tyrant of Sarronnyn and their marriage was to solidify an alliance, but the path to that connection is perhaps harder than anything the white wizards could throw at them, which includes Creslin having his mind wiped and being made a slave doing heavy labor.

Until Creslin and Megaera are finally brought together and even for a bit after that, the magical connection of the not-a-relationship is probably the most frustrating part of the novel because they are magically connected to the point that Megaera can feel everything that happens to Creslin, resents his existence, somehow comes to him in what feels like a dream and even though it’s real he has no reason to think it’s anything other than a dream and through Creslin’s actions Megaera resents him even more for being an animal or a brute - and then when they get together for their survival she makes clear how much disdain she has for him because the two of them are collectively bad at communicating or coming to an understanding. All the while they are fighting for survival against the white wizards and not really coming together. 

It’s not a great time and remains not a great time until they begin to come to an understanding much later in the novel when we get closer to their escape to and founding of Recluce. Everything comes together then and the novel really starts to build to a more satisfying resolution. It’s just a little frustrating until we get there because a core part of the novel is the two protagonists sort of being dicks to each other because they are hurting and don’t understand the other is also hurting.

Thinking back to how The Towers of the Sunset was one of the most foundational fantasy novels for the younger me, even through nostalgia, it doesn’t hit remotely the same as it did thirty years ago. I suppose it never could have.

I’m not disappointed, exactly, but I do acknowledge that even as the series has remained a constant over those three decades that not all of the moments that were so meaningful once will be as they were.

What does hit just as hard as it did the first time I read it was the fall of Westwind, which still feels so intensely powerful even though it was only introduced in this book and was a relatively small part of the story. Westwind looms large, possibly because of how it was targeted and also because Recluce is, in some ways, built upon the bones of Westwind.

Another thing that I really appreciate in this book, but also across the full series is the little bits of lore that are doled out. There are legends of the angels and demons, of Ryba, mentions of Nylan (which we know as a city in The Magic of Recluce), and just little bits that I just enjoy.

I’m also pretty sure the idea of the Balance was discussed in The Magic of Recluce, but it is more called out here.

“Klerris thinks that Creslin is a creation of the balance, that too much chaos necessitates a greater focus on order. Theoretically the opposite would be possible, of course. If, for example, Recluce became a home to order, too much emphasis on order could create an imbalance and empower of a few great Chaos Wizards.” She shakes her head. “That’s just speculation. We really don’t know”

Between this book and then The Magic Engineer, it seems pretty clear that is an accurate guess of how the world works.


Related Short Story: Songs Past, Songs for Those to Come

The stories collected in Recluce Tales fill in gaps or provide a bit of added color to the universe. “Songs Past, Songs for Those to Come” is one of the stories that (sort of) answer questions raised in the books. In this case, about the silver haired singer who came to Westwind and fathered Creslin before disappearing, as well as a suggestion that he was sent by the White Wizards to do so?

He’s not named in the story, but the singer here is Werlynn - he’s a druid (we don’t really know much about that yet) from the Great Forest, the absentee father of Creslin, and sort of a legendary figure who has dreams and visions of all sorts of events that he needs to nudge the world into bringing to occur - so where he is said to have been sent by the whites to go make a baby and reduce the amount of order in that part of the world it’s really his idea, or the idea of his dreams.

“Song Past, Songs for Those to Come” is a glimpse into the person who really set everything in motion for the eventual founding of Recluce and destruction of Fairhaven (all things in his visions) - so one can reasonably say that all of this is his fault, but the presumption is also that by acting Werlynn is preventing a greater imbalance of order and chaos. As I said, it’s a fill in the gap story without being truly satisfying.


Related Short Story: Sisters of Sarronnyn, Sisters of Westwind

I had read this story at least once before, likely more, but it hit like I remember The Towers of the Sunset hitting. “Sisters of Sarronyn, Sisters of Westwind” is told from the perspective of Shierra, a guard captain at Westwind. The story mirrors that of The Towers of the Sunset, starting just before Creslin skis off into a snowstorm and ends reasonably close to when the novel does. It just jumps in time for how the events impact Shierra, how she ends up volunteering to be the first Westwind guard contingent to travel to Recluce to help Creslin, her relationship with the male guard commander there, her relationship with Megaera, her perspective on her broken relationship with Fiera (the Westwind guard that Creslin kisses early in the novel who brings the last remnant of Westwind to Recluce late in the book).

Somehow the jumping in time to follow where the events of the book more directly intersect with Westwind and Shierra, the story is far more effective than “Songs Past, Songs for Those to Come” or even “Black Ordermage”. In the novel Shierra is just the guard who trains Megaera and builds the Recluce guards into a stronger force. Here there is real heart. 


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Anime Review: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Season Two

Cozy magic vibes and big battles in an entertaining but short season of comfort storytelling

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Season Two continues the story of Frieren, a centuries old, apathetic, eternally youthful, and fiercely powerful elf mage, who begins her next adventure decades after completing a ten-year heroic quest with three teammates whose friendship she didn’t fully appreciate until they were gone. Season One offered a unique style of storytelling featuring a seemingly indifferent protagonist who gradually realizes the value of her past life lessons and her relationships. The combination of poignant growth balanced with fierce battles for survival set the stage for the next level of emotional wisdom and physical strength. This defines Season Two as Frieren’s party journeys to the dangerous Northern Lands. However, with only ten episodes, Season Two is so short that it almost feels like a side quest compared to the twenty-three segments in Season One. The decision seemed to be to adapt the next shorter portion of the manga without venturing into longer story arcs that would end the anime season on a cliff-hanger. Despite the short offering, Season Two has a meaningful tale about the value of protecting one’s community and showcases both Fern and Stark’s substantial growth in strength and emotional maturity compared to the first season. We also see Frieren’s quiet evolution from being socially indifferent to profoundly compassionate after learning the meaning of her past experiences and allowing Fern and Stark form a found family with her.

At the start of Season One, Frieren was wandering aimlessly through life after being a member of the world-famous party of heroes who defeated the oppressive demon king. The group consisted of the heroic and optimistic young leader Himmel; the quirky and kind priest Heiter; and the strong, reliable dwarf warrior Eisen. Years later she is deeply moved by Himmel and Heiter’s deaths, suddenly realizing the connections she had taken for granted. Before dying, the old priest Heiter asked Frieren to mentor Fern a magically gifted orphan girl he had sheltered. Later, the long-lived Eisen, the dwarf warrior, gave Frieren his apprentice, a strong but insecure teenaged boy named Stark. The new trio dealt with a range obstacles throughout their journey, including magical fights, political intrigue, and Fern’s intense journey to be certified as a first class mage. Season One had plenty of spectacular fight scenes but was memorable for its big and small emotional moments between the living and the dead characters. Many key moments were shared in flashback.

Season Two begins with Fern and Stark following Frieren on her journey through the Northern Lands to fulfill a spiritual connection. The emotional dynamic is more settled in Season Two. Instead of being surprised by her memories of Himmel, Frieren openly embraces her connection with him and accepts the changes in herself inspired by her interactions with him and with others whom she belatedly appreciates. Season One ended with Fern earning the rank of a rare first class mage after a fierce competition. In Season Two, on their journey north, Fern, Frieren, and Stark, reconnect with acquaintances from the mage exam and soon find themselves in a fight for their lives and for the protection of the decimated village of their stoic ally, the powerful mage Genau. Instead of creating a major shift in the tone of the story, Season Two confirms Frieren as comfort anime that offers moments of intense action but solidly focuses on character, relationship, and small acts of morality in a cruel world.

In an early episode, Fern’s party takes a job cleaning a statue of the “Hero of the South,” who Stark is surprised to learn is not Himmel. Statues of Himmel appear in random towns along their journey but the story gives a reminder that the famous heroes in history are supported by many others who are forgotten. In the middle of the season, Fern and Stark finally go on a date with mixed results. The big climax of the season is the team aiding top mages Grenau and Methode in a terrifying battle against the mega-demon Revolte. In addition to some emotional flashbacks for the very unemotional Grenau, we get to see the boys, Grenau and Stark team up against the terrifying Revolte, while Frieren, Fern, and the always calm Methode tackle a mega demon of their own.

Despite Frieren’s growing emotional awareness, she retains her pragmatism and her life-saving cynicism. This keeps the story from drifting into over-sentimentality. Similarly, Fern imitates Frieren’s calm and practical tone even when it comes to Stark to whom she is attracted. Stark remains a foil to them both since he is comfortable with being dramatic, and since he has no magic powers and must rely on his extraordinary strength and speed in their battles with demons. Stark becomes the speaker for the audience by calling out outrageous occurrences that Frieren and Fern take in stride. In Season Two, Stark also steps into instinctive and consistent bravery while maintaining his sense of humor. On the other hand, instead of being a blank canvas for others to write on, Frieren becomes the dispenser of wisdom, not just for battle, but for small human interactions with strangers in need. The episodes explore the importance of honoring unsung heroes who fight for justice, protecting the dignity of those in need, and standing with allies in tough times. In a key moment, when asked why she made a certain choice, Fern notes that it was what Frieren would have done.

Despite the very short run, Frieren Season Two delivers a strong collection of comforting, thoughtful stories, carefully balanced with big fight scenes, humor, and quiet emotions while we wait for the next big story arc to take us on a new adventure.

--

The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Solid comfort storytelling
• Intense Northern Lands battles
• Strong character growth

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