Film Review: War of the Worlds (2025)

And the Oscar for Best Product Placement goes to...

In the original version of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, published in serialized form in 1897, the first paragraph contains a disturbing prophecy:

… as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

In the new Amazon Video adaptation, released this week and narrated entirely via computer screens, as has become the signature look of movies made under producer Timur Bekmambetov, that scrutinizing gaze is removed from the alien invaders and put in our hands. In the era of the surveillance state, it's now humans who watch humans up to the tiniest detail. But instead of taking advantage of that clever reversal of the positions on the board to say something interesting, this War of the Worlds is unironically awed by the cool gadgets of mass surveillance. The script doesn't even reach the level of lip service to privacy rights: against this alien invasion, the thing that saves the world is the government's all-seeing, all-knowing machinery.

Sure, there's a silly twist where we learn that the hostile aliens "eat data" (whatever that means), and that what attracted them to Earth in the first place was precisely the government's compulsive accumulation of data about everyone. However, once the government's guilt is exposed to the public, the movie doesn't have enough self-awareness to have our heroes renounce their panopticon. No, their plan to defeat the aliens requires that they keep their toys and snatch every last byte that can be squeezed out of a street camera or a cell phone tower or a GPS satellite. Whatever point the movie was pretending to hope to make about the dangers of letting the state spy on its citizens is thrown out the window when the solution to having all the world's data stolen is to keep using the same tools of surveillance.

In a painfully obvious metaphor, the hypervigilant paternalist state is represented by our protagonist, a widowed father with a job in national security and zero awareness of boundaries when it comes to violating his children's digital privacy. From his secret bunker office, he not only monitors potential terrorists, but also every move his children make. They repeatedly call him out for it, and still he snoops, with a casual air of entitlement, on their personal chats, their credit card transactions, and their place of work. No telephone, no video game account, no smart refrigerator is safe from the watchful eye of this shockingly abusive style of parenting. And the plot rewards him for it: he saves the world from the aliens by wielding the myriad sources he has illegitimate access to. At the end he claims that he's done with all the electronic espionage, but that gesture comes after the aliens are gone, when it no longer matters to the resolution of the story.

Even more insultingly, the various tech companies blatantly showcased in the script are presented in an uncritically positive light. This is a movie where the nation's top security chiefs use Zoom on Windows to exchange the most delicate tactical information; where in the middle of a cyberattack on every major data center, WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams somehow still work; where letting a Tesla car's autopilot take an injured person to the hospital isn't a ridiculously irresponsible idea; where the most secure building in Washington lets its computers use Gmail; where the climax of the heroic plan is the successful trip of an Amazon delivery drone.

Let me repeat that. This is a movie where Amazon saves the world.

The same Amazon that grinds its workers to the limit of their bodily endurance and aggressively discourages them from unionizing, that fills the world with mountains of plastic packaging, that damages local economies by pricing small competitors out of existence, that charges sellers predatory fees while paying a pittance in taxes, that cozies up to the fascist regime currently occupying Washington, that put a smart speaker in every home to listen to your conversations 24/7, that enslaves children, that buys from suppliers that enslave victims of genocide, that enables its obscenely rich owner to demolish one of the most venerable guardians of democracy. That Amazon.

This movie, which of course is released on Amazon Video, isn't content with defiling one of the biggest classics of science fiction, but has the nerve to point the finger at the US government for its data collection practices while celebrating private corporations that are guilty of the same. At Nerds of a Feather, we reserve the 1/10 rating for works that are literally "crimes against humanity," and this shameless movie-length ad for Amazon (and Tesla, and Meta, and their ilk) definitely qualifies.

Nerd Coefficient: 1/10.

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

Book Review: The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton

A bold, lush fantasy novel that is more a fever dream than a grounded reality, and makes it work

The Mercy Makers is the story of Iriset me Isidor. She is the daughter of the Little Cat, Isidor, a notorious criminal. She is a demure woman who isn’t all that involved in her father’s criminal activities. She is the epitome of the stereotype of the Mobster’s daughter not truly involved with her father’s criminal empire. Small, demure, quiet. Harmless.

However, Iriset is also secretly Silk. Silk can do magic and change things, and even people. She’s a prodigy and determined to explore and build her talents, even if those lean into or cross over into the heretical. She boldly walked into the Little Cat’s court in disguise and carved a place for herself to work on her designs on behalf of the Little Cat. And her masks and skills have helped the Little Cat expand his reach and power... and to eventually be noticed by the Empire.

So, when the Little Cat is captured, so is Iriset, but as Iriset, and not Silk. Iriset is eventually brought to the palace to be a handmaiden of the sister of the Emperor. Her father is still imprisoned, due to die. And no one, as far as Iriset can tell, knows that she is Silk. And of course a plan starts to hatch to use her skills to save her father. Iriset may be a handmaiden of the Emperor’s sister, but it will take her prodigal abilities as Silk if she is to save her father. Or herself.

The Mercy Makers tells Iriset/Silk’s story, from a tight third-person point of view.

I could spend the entirety of this review discussing the extremely byzantine plot of the novel. What I described brings us to the quarter turn of the novel. It is the living embodiment of the meme “And then the plot really got going.” And this happens several times in the book, when Gratton decides that the plot, always twisting and interesting, needs yet another kick. The novel as a result never flags. It has moments of quiet, of grace and beauty, but always holds the reader’s attention.

So to speak in general terms, Iriset falls deeper and deeper into the machinations and the plotting of what is ostensibly supposed to be the epitome of order and power.

And she is aware and comments on this dichotomy (especially since the Empire has apparently taken the dangerous Silk into its heart). This is an empire, and we will get into that, so the palace is supposed to be the center of order and regularity. What Iriset finds is that the palace may ostensibly be that center, but in actuality it is anything but orderly. And of course she must and will pull on those threads... and be pulled on in turn.

But there is a lot more going on to discuss, and a lot of the plot is something I’d rather have readers discover for themselves. There is a cliche or at least a guideline that sex scenes should build and develop character and plot in a SFF story. It should not be “just about the sex.” I think this is a guideline that goes back to the earlier days of SFF, which were much less interested in depicting sexual relations (and also in general the changes in literature in general). But even then, in straight up fantasy I’ve read, there is not a lot of sex that doesn’t keep at least some veils, or fade to black.

Gratton’s work is of a different caliber altogether. There is a lot of sex in the book, and explicit at that. Like in the movie Sinners, the main character does, in fact, like to have sex.¹ The main character has sex with both men and women in the course of the novel. This is perhaps the most explicit fantasy book I’ve read, and sex is portrayed in a positive light throughout the book.

And it turns out to be extremely important, plot- and characterwise (which means that skipping the scenes is a fraught activity if you don’t like explicit sex scenes). The sexual situations build the character of Iriset, and those she has sex with impinge on the plot as well as develop Iriset as a character.

And even outside of the explicit sex scenes, the book is, in a word, *charged*. For an empire and a court developed on Order, there is a heck of a lot of undercurrents going on. That runs through the entire book, and again, goes straight to character and the plot. For, you see, as much as Iriset is devoted to her plan to save her father, she winds up getting entangled, not only in the schemes of others in the courts, but emotionally as well. That entanglement complicates the plot deliciously.

So yes, in all the sex, and the complicated plot, this is a lush and rich novel, full of details, both in setting scenes and in worldbuilding. This is an intensely detailed world, on all the senses. We are engaged in how this world feels, from food and drink to decor, fashion, and setting details. The palace rooms, gardens, the cityscape all come to life. And it is a world that is both familiar and yet unearthly, and Gratton takes delight in showing it to us. This is a fantasy ’verse where a moon is perpetually bound above the caldera where the city lies. As a result, eclipses are predictable, regular, and tie into the religious beliefs, outlook, and calendar of the Empire. It’s often giddying to read passages, knowing in the back of your mind even when a conversation is relatively mundane and regular, that this very different and unique world is right outside the door—or right over their heads. It is a fever dream, or perhaps a lucid dream, of a reality for the reader to be immersed in.

And the novel has a lot to say about empire, and the whole imperial project. The Emperor is trying something new with marrying a powerful noble via alliance rather than outright trying to conquer her nation. The change in the scope and methods of the imperial project are not universally welcomed. And of course the novel has a lot to say about resisting imperial authority, the limits and problems of power, and how it influences and affects those who wield it. Iriset goes from being the daughter of a criminal mastermind resisting that power to being on the inside seeing it wielded. The internal fundamental contradictions of empire are laid bare in her story.

As a result, a lot of books and properties came to mind as touchstones for me as I read. The end of the arc has an advertisement for Antonia Hodgson’s The Raven Scholar, and that book really fits in well with this one on a lot of levels, and readers who enjoy one are going to, I think, have a likely chance of enjoying the other. I was also reminded of the roleplaying world of Glorantha, which has a moon hanging in one fixed place in the sky and unusual rituals with supernatural beings as part of the wonder of the extraordinary inside of the everyday. There are plenty of deadly courts in fantasy and I could list dozens. Most recently, Birth of a Dynasty: A Novel by Chinaza Bado once we get to the royal court, certainly has this in spades. The world of Ai Jiang’s A Palace Near the Wind is even wilder and stranger than this one, but the intrigues of its own court came to mind, especially with someone falling into a court with an agenda of her own that is thwarted by events and movements of the heart.

Given that this is a society obsessed with masks, my mind went to Jack Vance’s The Moon Moth. And of course, given Iriset is really Silk but pretends to be a hapless noble,² there is a lot of Zorro/Scarlet Pimpernel in her. The masks and the whole double life of Iriset had as Silk (and has, as she tries to cobble together things in the court) speak a lot to the novel’s theme of identity and what identity we show to others, and to ourselves. Masks and reflections, images from within and without—Gratton definitely works these themes and ideas fruitfully in Iriset’s story.

The novel ends on a phase transition, as we start to find out what is really going on and what the real central conflict of the novel is. In that way, it feels a bit like Annabeth Campbell’s The Outcast Mage, and like discussions of that book, I will avoid any revelations on that score. It does promise that the second novel is going to be rather different from the first, and given the change in the political and social landscape at the end of the novel, I am extremely intrigued to see where Gratton’s story goes next. She surprised me several times in this novel, and I very invested in continuing this ’verse.

Highlights:

• Sex-positive, lots of graphic sex that builds both character and plot. If that turns you off, this novel may not be for you.
• Richly detailed, lush, immersive world.
• An extremely interesting, twisty plot.
• Strong and fascinating character beats and developments in character.

Reference: Gratton, Tessa. The Mercy Makers [Orbit, 2025].

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

¹ The movie Sinners, unlike a lot of contemporary movies, does unapologetically have multiple characters of various types have sex on screen and those people be shown to enjoy it.

² Hapless noble, not hapless woman. To be clear, there are a lot of women in power and authority in this empire; it is extremely egalitarian in that regard. Amaranth, the Emperor’s Sister, is possibly the second most powerful person in the court and the empire, but the challenger to that position is a spoiler.

Anime Review: Lazarus

A unique, quirky, jazz-infused puzzle box series from the makers of Cowboy Bebop

What would you do if you only had 30 days to live? And, so did most of the rest of the world? For the characters in Lazarus, the answer is different from what you would think. Lazarus is a unique, retro-vibed, slow-paced, jazz-infused puzzle box anime from the makers of Cowboy Bebop. In it, a cobbled-together team of strangers is drafted to find a way to save humanity from history’s largest act of mass murder.

In a near-future version of Earth, Dr. Skinner, a gifted scientist and genuine humanitarian, develops Hapna, a revolutionary drug designed to make people feel happier by interacting with the synapses that lead to sadness. The drug is effective, accessible, and affordable, and soon becomes wildly popular and almost universally used worldwide. Three years later, the inventor reveals that the drug is actually, and intentionally, lethal, and that everyone who has used even one dose will die in the next thirty days. But Skinner is willing to release the cure if someone is able to find him despite the extraordinary lengths he has gone to stay in hiding. A government official, Hersch, assembles a team of highly talented misfits to track down the rogue scientist and save humanity in a high-stakes, reverse-heist version of Carmen Sandiego. The five recruits are coerced into participating due to each one’s legal problems, and they are forced to wear bracelets that monitor their locations, heart rates, and communications. In the search for Skinner, each episode provides another clue (or red herring) for the Lazarus team to chase after as the clock ticks down to the end of humanity.

The strength of the show lies in the likeable ensemble of the five main misfits who make up the Lazarus team. The characters are thoughtfully portrayed, but all feel slightly underdeveloped compared to other popular anime. Bold, cynical, escape expert, felon Axel is the first person we meet and by far the most interesting. His point of view is often the primary one throughout the series. Doug is a Black scientist genius whose de facto leadership and by-the-book approach clashes with Axel’s brash boldness. In an interesting moment, Doug discusses the racism he constantly faced as a student and a scientist. This is an ongoing characteristic of the series—raising powerful commentary and then moving on, back to the hide-and-seek chase plot. The rest of the team includes Leland, a sweet-natured, teenaged, billionaire playboy with a complicated past; Eleina, a quiet, top-level hacker who escaped a cult commune worshipping an AI; and Christine, a brash Russian sharpshooter with a lethal secret past. Together, the five strangers create an appealing found family who grow closer to each other and who are willing to risk everything to save each other when danger strikes. And the show provides a surprising amount of diversity with characters of color in multiple key roles.

However, despite the interesting character backgrounds and the solid onscreen chemistry of the Lazarus team, the characters often feel a bit underused and not as fully developed as they could be. It’s clear that the primary focus of the show is on the mission to hunt down clues to finding Skinner. That style of teasing a personal connection and then abandoning it keeps the show from realizing a true emotional potential and creates more of the tone of a late-night video game where the characters are clearing levels in a mystery scenario. Additionally, the overall sense of urgency in the larger society, despite facing the impending demise of humanity, is relatively laid back. Early on, passing background characters assume that the government will find a cure, or that someone is working on it, and continue their day-to-day lives while acknowledging the reality of the threat. As a result, the vibe is less like an end-of-the-world chaotic panic and more like Keep Calm and Carry On.

In some ways, Lazarus has the cynical, pragmatic problem-solving vibe of the show’s predecessor, Cowboy Bebop. Like Cowboy Bebop, the action scenes in Lazarus are underscored by sleek jazz beats and tailored, unfussy MAPPA animation. At times, the show shifts from chases, fighting, and dark humor to more intense and upsetting violence, including an episode where Christine is kidnapped and forced to face her past, and another episode where Axel is hunted by a mentally unstable assassin. These bold episodes balance out others where the red herring clues seem to lead nowhere. Lazarus gives viewers a little bit of everything, but for fans of Cowboy Bebop, this is not the same type of story or storytelling. However, like Cowboy Bebop, each episode works well for one-at-a-time late-night chill viewing rather than a stacked and binged fast-paced action indulgence or emotionally intense adventure. And the music is timeless and fantastic if you like jazz. This combination makes Lazarus a pleasant, low-stakes break in between other, more intense stories.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Jazz vibes, slow paced
• Likeable but underdeveloped characters
• Relaxing, end-of-the-world clue hunting

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

Book Review: No Such Thing As Duty by Lara Elena Donnelly

A blend of the historical and the speculative to linger on the concept of duty in a grim and everchanging world.

The viewpoint character of Lara Elena Donnelly's novella No Such Thing As Duty is William Somerset Maugham. You might have heard of him. An English writer who penned plays, short stories and novels, I certainly had, but knew very little about him beyond that briefest of bios. Nor did I until after I had finished writing my first draft of this review - a deliberate choice, wanting to preserve the experience of the story as a narrative-object, to linger in its tension and ambiguities, without collapsing them down with the intrusion of reality until I had at least captured the rough sense of my feelings in the amber of prose.

Because there are two No Such Thing As Dutys - the first is the one read by someone who knows Maugham's bibliography, the facts of his life and the reality, date and manner of his death. This is a version one must expect of any book which features historical facts, in any form. There is always someone who knows everything, especially when the subject is a famous author. The second is my experience.

At the start of the book, we meet Maugham arriving in a Romania in which he is certain he will die (and glad of it rather than being a Scottish sanatorium). He is suffering from tuberculosis, dizzy with fever and coughing up blood, but seemingly determined to do his duty before succumbing to the inevitable. Already, a branching point of the two experiences of the story. For me, this is tension - does he die in Romania? I don't know. He seems wearily certain of it, a spectre that looms over the story, that intrudes every time he coughs up blood into a handkerchief or a scarf conveniently dark to hide the stain. Arriving as a spy in wartime, he reports in to receive such mission as he might be needed for, following on from his promising activities with less promising outcomes in other fronts of the conflict. But he soon realises his mission, such as it is, seems more of a sop, a bone thrown to make him feel useful rather than something vitally necessary.

And thus, the central conflict of the book. The duty he's doing - to King and Country, as he says - what kind of duty is it, if it is this pity mission? He leaves behind a daughter he cares about and a wife he'd rather avoid, coming to die far away, and if it's not for duty, then what is it for? Are they not also a duty?

But he's there, and the mission is in front of him, and he's dying, so do it he does. And through the course of it, he meets two other key figures. One a man, Walter, seemingly walled off from any sense of duty - seemingly - and another a woman, Mme. Popescu, whose husband died of a duty he didn't even need to do. Three angles on the same problem, though mired firmly in Maugham's. The glimpses of the other two do however serve to colour and explore his, through the lens of his introspection.

And this - his self-critical, thoughtful, writerly narrative voice - is one of the most successful things about a roundly successful novella. I'm not familiar with Maugham's work in reality - another branch point, does his narrative voice sound like actual Maugham's - but I found myself quickly invested in the version of him that exists in Donnelly's. There's an analytical bent to the way he talks about the people around him, a distance that he himself names as he talks to other characters, and a slight rigidity to the prose that does nod back to the time at which the story is set, without overegging the historicity. But it's not just that. He is constantly dwelling on his imminent death (ironic or simply foreshadowing?), the effect that will have on his family, whether being here is the right thing to do, and if he even truly is doing his duty at all. He also dwells on two lost loves and one growing one, because all good things come in threes.

As with the three angles on duties, the three loves all inform one another, shaping how we see Maugham as much as how he sees himself. There's Sue, the woman he wishes he'd married but whom he lost to the man who got her pregnant (and married her out of - yes, there's duty again). There's Gerald, the outgoing soldier he knew in the Pacific, whose strengths shored up Maugham's weaknesses, and whose flaws could be forgiven, and critically who knew, as Maugham knows, when and how to keep hidden from society's eyes what it doesn't want to see. And then the present one, Walter - the man who walls himself off from duty, who refuses to hide himself as Maugham knows he must.

Intersections, wherever you look. Maugham - with his stutter, his orphan status and French early years already an outcast, clinging on to rigid propriety as close as his interpretation of duty. Walter flouting both but charming him in, while also being his mission, a part of his own duty and bound up in the death of Popescu's husband.

All of which leads to wondering about the reality of Maugham's duty - the clue is, indeed, in the title - but whether it's self-imposed too. All around him, people take the rules of society less seriously than he does, whether they be his British handler, the locals, Walter or Mme. Popescu. He dwells on how it was his duty to marry Syrie, the wife he's avoiding, after he got her pregnant. But was it truly? Was it a duty he could have avoided if he wanted to? Did he want to? Will he die in service to this thing that may never even really have been asked of him at all?

That tension and uncertainty about his death is why I resolved not to find out his biographical details until I had settled my thoughts. Because the poignancy of not knowing felt so delicious, and fed in so beautifully to the ethical crisis he was suffering through, that I wanted to treasure it as a lucky gift I chanced to have in reading it.

However, around half to two thirds through the novella, Donnelly introduces a speculative element which complicates things further. Obviously, there were no vampires involved in World War I. And so, however closely the narrative up to this point may (or may not) have married up to the real history and biography, here it diverges. The two experiences of the book briefly coalesce. But only briefly.

In my opinion, vampires are at their best when they are both truly dangerous and also, despite and because of the danger, sexy. In No Such Thing as Duty, the sexiness of the vampirism (and while a little understated, by god is Donnelly's vampire sexy) is corralled in by the physical - blood and bites and hands and tongues - just as the rest of the story is wedded to Maugham's own physicality, of his breath and cough and bleeding, his fever constantly waxing and waning, the scratch of fabric on skin, his enjoyment of food and drink. Donnelly revels in the sensation of drinks particularly, the haze of brandy and heat of coffee, and temperature more broadly - feverish burns and the cool touch of snow. And again, the lingering prophecy of Maugham's death informs this. We read his body in its frailty and potential failure; the vampirism marries that imminent death up with sex but also with the potentiality of death's forestalling.

And so, the two readings once again diverge and split even further. Is the intrusion of the fantastical about to change the facts, and a reader who knows whether Maugham will die about to be surprised by a change, or have their knowledge come to fruition, but its method shifted? And then, again, me, caught up only in the tension of the story itself. Vampires throw a spanner into the works of the greatest inevitability, and so add an extra layer of narrative uncertainty.

Right up to the end, Donnelly preserves that ambiguity. The story ends with implication rather than closure, a situation that made me very glad for my lack of knowledge, but one that, precisely because of the speculative elements, likewise imposes that ambiguity even on a reader who does know, because while the question of "if" might have been settled for them, there still lives a vast expanse of "how" and "why".

And so, ultimately, it doesn't matter if you know the facts or not. The story uses vampirism to crack open the vault of possibility, and ensure that the available endings are uncertain for any reader. I looked up the facts, and learnt that not only did Maugham live into his nineties, far beyond the scope of the life he sees as doomed in the story, but that even the foundation of the story rests on a branch untaken - the Scottish sanatorium the book's Maugham is glad to avoid was the path of reality. A reader who knew his biography was already wrong-footed, because it never cleaved to that reality in the first place. That break from the known path already introduced the potential for change, and the story could become one of the doomed path the real man didn't take.

No Such Thing As Duty wields its ambiguities and potentialities like a scalpel, all the while holding them in delicious contrast to the bitter realities of the physical and the flesh. By using a real historical figure and divorcing him from his reality, Donnelly ties her story to real anchors - there are hints and nods to real, biographical facts seeded throughout - without closing off the opportunities for tension, and the scope of possible endings. The fantastical element is also the most grounding one, the sections in which Maugham is being fed on being some of the most intimately real ones, where much of the rest of the story comes filtered through his particular lens of perception, held at a distance, or made hazy by illness. Only in contact with the unreal does the story fully rear up into feeling quite present. She leaves her questions open - this is not a story with an answer to its moral questions, any more than it is one to set a firm hand on the conclusion of its plot - and the work is all the better for it. It is a beautiful, brilliant book, with exquisitely understated prose and a skilfully managed viewpoint, and one that exemplifies what a good novella can do, or be, by using all its tools, figures and ideas all intersect and coalesce into a gorgeous mess of feeling and thought.

--

The Math

Highlights: Sexy but understated but sexy vampirism, triangulating around the concept of duty, well-crafted introspective viewpoint

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Reference: Lara Elena Donnelly, No Such Thing As Duty [Neon Hemlock, 2025]. 

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

Book Review: Arkhangelsk by Elizabeth H. Bonesteel

When we fly through the galaxies, will our worst side come with us?

As human civilization broke apart in vaguely defined wars, scattered groups tried to preserve what they could of human history and culture in colony ships sent in all directions, without means to communicate with one another or any coordinated plan. As far as each group knows, they're all that's left from Earth. One of those ships, the Arkhangelsk, found a barely inhabitable planet where a new beginning could be attempted. The colonists have to live underground, though, because the surface is lethally cold, lethally irradiated, and lethally low in oxygen. Those who need to briefly walk outside for work reasons must wear thick protective suits and carry their own oxygen. After a couple of centuries, they've made their little society work, even if they're dangerously short on genetic diversity and their rusty machinery is held together with bubblegum and prayers. This community has sworn off the petty divisions that tore apart humans on Earth, and is committed to a nonviolent approach to law. Life is rough and precarious, but it still goes on. Even as they face one impossible challenge after another, they're proud of the fragile survival they've managed to snatch from the hostile conditions of their new home.

So it's understandable that their entire conception of their place in the universe goes out the window when another colony ship comes knocking at the door.

The new ship left Earth much later, after the wars ran out of steam and civilization had a chance to restart. The crew didn't even know that the Arkhangelsk had succeeded at colonizing a planet; the reason they arrived there was to build a relay antenna. Like the members of the first trip, they carry their own cultural memory of what Earth is like and what the lessons of history are. When they make contact, purely by blind luck, with the descendants of the Arkhangelsk, the first point of conflict, albeit implicit, is about their differing views on the true character of the human species. Those who arrived first believe that they need to constantly watch out for the worst impulses of the human heart; those who arrived later believe that humans have demonstrated the capacity to drag themselves up from rock bottom. There we have a microcosm of every point of inflection in human history: two cultures with incompatible principles, trying to interact and understand each other. Is mutual destruction a natural tendency or a choice that can be avoided?

We follow two narrators through the novel: Anya, an officer of the peace in the underground colony; and Maddie, the former doctor and now emergency captain of the newcome ship. Both carry the weight of tragic losses that have come to define them until the moment they meet each other. Amid the unforgiving hardships necessary to keep the colony functioning, Anya's little daughter was the only bright spot in a dull, directionless life. After losing her to one of the diseases typical of a population going through a genetic bottleneck in a radioactive planet, Anya has been merely going through the motions of a job that gives her no satisfaction and that her neighbors resent her for. Currently she's investigating a row of disappearances that most witnesses suspect to be suicides; the tacit consensus is that, although the colony strives hard to stay alive, there's very little to live for. So whenever there's news that another inhabitant has walked out and vanished in the snowy wasteland, the prevailing attitude that Anya finds is that no one blames them. Meanwhile, reluctant captain Maddie has been struggling to complete her mission after a navigation accident pulverized half her ship and most of her crewmates. Thrown by circumstance into a position of leadership she's still quite unprepared for, she now has to convince the Arkhangelsk colonists that her team comes with peaceful intentions, even as her mission is to help Earth send many more ships their way.

The most enjoyable part of reading this novel is the complicated interplay between two factions that are sincerely trying to present themselves as friendly yet keep giving each other the wrong impression. From the colonists' perspective, the visitors could be carrying all the evil ideas the Arkhangelsk ran away from when they left Earth, but also a potential solution to their genetic bottleneck. From the visitors' perspective, the colonists have cultivated exactly the kind of close-mindedness that doomed Earth in the past, but also valuable metallurgic expertise that could help repair their ship. As both groups proceed with as much mutual fear as mutual need, the slow-motion trainwreck of their diplomatic efforts raises questions that go deeper than culture shock and point at humanity's stubborn failure to learn from history. Will the world wars that ended civilization erupt anew in this remote settlement? Is survival the highest imperative, for the sake of which the rest of our common interests must be surrendered?

This novel has answers, but they're by no means final. The cosmic irony of the human condition isn't that life stops right at the moment when we think we've got it figured out; it's the much more unnerving fact that, when we think we've got it figured out, it keeps going.

Reference: Bonesteel, Elizabeth H. Arkhangelsk [House Panther, 2022].

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

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

Book Review: A Song of Legends Lost by M. H. Ayinde

A twisty, kaleidoscope of a science fantasy novel with a set of interesting characters in a world they do not realize they don't understand as well as they think.

I’ve mentioned science fantasy a lot in these reviews, since it is one of the main chords of my SFF upbringing and development. We’ve seen books in this space where the science fantasy was anything but simply fantasy without even a hint of anything beyond that. Other novels have not mentioned explicitly they were science fantasy at all, but in the final analysis, clearly are.

For me, science fantasy works best and makes me happiest when it is essential that the two genres work and mix together. Science fantasy stories that are more than, oh look there is a raygun in this fantasy world. Or, oh look, in this science fictional world, there is the barest hint of something supernatural. But when the story surely can’t work without both elements, where the story feeds on being in this borderland, that’s when science fantasy works the best for me.¹

And so we come to A Song of Legends Lost by M.H. Ayinde, first in a prospective trilogy.

A Song of Legends Lost is set in a secondary fantasy world that is under constant threat from creatures called greybloods, scavengers and dangerous leftovers from a previous fallen civilization. The society and world of Ayinde’s book respond to this threat by having certain individuals call upon the spirits of their ancestors, being able to manifest them from the beyond, to help fight these threats. One of our main characters, Jinao at the beginning of the book, has tried for years in vain to be chosen to do this, to be allowed and able to invoke one of the warlord ancestors that protect the Nine Lands, his ancestor, Mizito. 

So far, so good. Straight up fantasy. Spirit magic. Invokers. Threats from beyond. But we dig a little deeper. Another major POV character, the first we meet, Temi, brings in the science part of this equation. Her family are bakers, and also have a side business using old “techwork” to make water votives (purifiers) and other small bits of what are at best questionable and otherwise illegal uses of ancient and forbidden technology. So Temi is hip deep in old technology from a lost age that many (and rightly as it turns out in the course of the book) consider hideously dangerous, even as she is trying to help her family scratch out a living at the bottom of society (far different than the noble born Jinao).

What’s more, it quickly becomes clear, although Temi is driven to distraction, that some sort of ancestor spirit has attached themselves to Temi. Just what this spirit is, and why it has done so, and what its own plans and goals are the major throughline and mystery of the book. But the result is that Temi embodies the science fantasy nature of Ayinde’s novel better than any other character. Jinao is all about the ancestor spirit of Mizito and where that leads him (mainly down a road of confrontations with a ferocious greyblooded adversary called the Bearnator). Other POV characters we get are all about the techwork and ancient forbidden technology and only latterly wind up having to deal with spirits themselves.

But Temi? Temi is in these two worlds from the start, and it is her story that embodies the twin science fiction and fantasy narratives that infuse this book. She has to deal with the consequences of her techwork, and also with the spirit attached to her. Add this from a lower-class perspective and you can see why she is the focus, primary protagonist for the novel. She's the anchor everything and everyone else comes around.

The book is also about legacy, and history, and how a society, or a government (very appropriate and timely in our era) shapes the narrative of the past to its own ends. Sometimes, as this book shows, it’s not even done consciously. But the throughline of A Song of Legends Lost shows that a perception, a worldview, a conception of how the world works that is far out of line of reality can stand for a long time, but it cannot stand forever, and when reality finally bites, it can bite rather hard. The people of the Nine Lands think they know their origins, their history, their heritage, their duty. 

It turns out that, in truth, they are wrong about all four. And soon learn that the price of their misconceptions (and outright being lied to) is going to be very high indeed.

So this makes the book a painful (for the protagonists and their society) slow revelation and education as to the true state of affairs. What the greybloods are, where and what the ancestor spirits are, the nature of techwork, and even the fundamentals of the governing society. We the reader (in a excellent use of perspective and information control) learn more and faster than any individual protagonist about what is really going on, but it is an unlocking series of revelations. 

Along the way we get some vivid action sequences. A book where spirits of the ancestors are invoked to face hordes of smaller or sometimes a few large opponents, with named and diverse weapons and skills makes those sequences some of the highlight of the book. Jinao is not prepared for all this and he takes a beating again and again as he tries to learn better against his mysterious opponent. But we also get a city invasion, stand-offs between various factions, and even spirit on spirit combat. The book is rich on the details of the kinetics of these sequences and it is a good testament to the author’s writing skills.

We also get some carefully constructed character arcs (poor, poor Jinao, I really felt for him this entire book in a way even more than Temi, who ostensibly is the more primary protagonist), and a slow unfurling of the true state of the world, and what is going on. The variety of characters we get from all levels of society provides an well considered set of characters from various walks of life as we see them respond to the fractures in society that occur as the novel unfolds. 

I am reminded of Erin Evans’ Empire of Exiles, where the fugitives of a once continent spanning set of cultures are bottlenecked into a small peninsula, the threat of the force that occupies the rest of the land a supposedly containable force outside the peninsula, or is it, really? Intrigue, and adventure inside the lands of the Salt Wall, but the menace of what is lurking outside the Salt Wall threatens everyone and everything.² There are some very hard truths the characters in the duology come to learn about their world, much like the characters in Ayinde’s novel. 

For those particularly interested in such matters, there is some queer representation here, one of the warlord ancestors, for instance, uses nonbinary pronouns. Queerness is not a focus of the book, but it is present. More prominent, and subtler, is the multicultural nature of the Nine Lands society, with names, concepts and even weapons which invoke places from Mesoamerica to regions of Africa to regions of Asia such as China and Japan. This feels like a book that the author decided to entirely take her worldbuilding inspirations outside of the Great Wall of Europe.

This is the first in a trilogy and there really isn’t an off-ramp here. And I get the sense that (like many trilogies) now that some of (but not all, clearly) the blinders are off, the real story of the series can begin. The writing is solid, I love the science fantasy world Ayinde has created, and I am invested in the characters as they face a threat, and really a world they did not grow up to expect. 

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Highlights:

• Science fantasy goodness
• Layers of misinformation peeled away, showing the dangers of deceiving an entire society and oneself
• Excellent action sequences

Reference: Ayinde, M.H., A Song of Legends Lost [Saga Press, 2025]

¹ So the elephant in the room is Star Wars. And when Star Wars is NOT obsessively interested in the “Skywalker Saga”, and has the Force be much wider (potentially) than just a bloodline, this is when the science fantasy works the best. Episode IV and V (until the Vader revelation). Episode VII and especially VIII (with its subsequently wasted ending). When there is a sense that yes, there is all this high technology, but there is Something Else, and that is important too, even if you don’t believe in it.

² Side note, really but has to be mentioned. Relics of Ruin, the second book in the series, not only has a summary of the first book but it has it in character as a document/missive from a character telling you the events from their perspective. This is one of the best uses of form I’ve ever seen and Evans deserves praise for it. 

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

TV Review: Phineas and Ferb, 2025

Still funny after all of these years, using the fantastical to poke fun at the everyday ridiculousness of life.

 

One of the best gifts you can give to parents of young children is kid friendly programming that somehow also manages to include sassy, cynical, funny content aimed at adults. Over the years, there have been a few shows that have done a good job of this combo technique, giving us a break from bland kids content. For years, Phineas and Ferb was such a show, one filled with bright animation, humorously designed characters, and lots of silly songs but, at the same time, highly entertaining for grown-ups due to its funny social commentary tucked into its fantastical premises. It’s been ten years since the last adventures of the two very clever step-brothers and their bossy big sister. But now Disney has revived this gem and brought it back for a new decade of viewers. How does it compare to the original? Weirdly, the transition feels seamless, despite the years that have passed since the last episode aired. Phineas and Ferb is still funny after all of these years, perfectly using the fantastical to poke fun at the everyday ridiculousness we must all face.

The series follows the adventures of small town grade schooler Phineas Flynn, a fearless inventor with genius level engineering skills, and his equally talented, but quieter, British step-brother Ferb Fletcher, as they find outrageous ways to entertain themselves during the “104 days” of summer break from school. The boys’ daily creations are always NASA-level outlandish to the irritation of Phineas’s teenaged sister Candace who is obsessed with revealing her brothers’ antics to her mom. The large cast includes Phineas and Ferb’s grade school classmates: sweet and charming Isabella, nerdy and sarcastic Baljeet, and tough, loud mouthed Buford, all of whom help with the brothers’ inventions. A regular subplot involves their pet platypus Perry who is secretly a highly athletic super-spy who regularly battles the town’s philosophizing and bumbling evil genius Dr. Doofenshmirtz. In addition to these primary characters who appear in almost all episodes, there are minor characters who appear periodically and many of them get a chance to shine in the new season, including Candace’s bestie Stacy; Doofenshmirtz’s cynical teen daughter Vanessa; and the five other girls in Isabella’s campfire scout troop who sometimes assist with the daily inventions. Each episode traditionally follows a repeating structure: 1) the brothers get inspiration for a complicated project to entertain themselves; 2) after starting they passingly notice that Perry has disappeared; 3)Perry gets assigned to thwart Doof’s next plan and 4) Doof has an ill-fated plan to take over the tri-state area; 5) Candace tries in vain to convey her brothers’ antics to her mom; Doof’s and the brothers’ unrelated inventions collide in a way that cancels them out without each inventor realizing why.

At the end of the 2015 season, Doofenshmirtz decides to take a break from being “evil” but in the reborn 2025 season, he decides to go back to his evil ways but on a smaller scale. As a result, Perry returns to duty as his super-spy nemesis. So, despite the storyline shifts in the original series finale, the new season has reset itself back to the plot rhythms of the original show. The 2025 revival continues the theme of using outrageous scientific inventions, along with humor and sarcasm, to discuss small funny elements or relatable irritations in the drudgery of life including topics such as the ridiculously long wait windows for repair or delivery appointments or the annoyance of having a long awaited television episode ruined by a co-worker’s spoiler comment. Another hallmark of the show’s humor is the way it interiorly breaks the fourth wall. The opening song always ends with Candace complaining to her mom that Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence. The boys often reference the scientific improbability of some of their escapades. In episode 3 they create an infinite ice luge track that runs amok in the town. When Candace ends up accidentally covered in clothes from a boutique while chasing her brothers, the store clerk wants to charge her but gives her a break because he notices that she’s in a song sequence. In episode 4, the kids design the world‘s largest zoetrope using the campfire girl scouts as models, and this leads Isabella to note that animation is so easy. And one episode comments on the formulaic elements of the episodes. The revival also has lots of celebrities, including Michael Bublé playing himself and belting out a zoetrope ballad in the zoetrope episode.

In addition to the self-aware humor, the most fun thing about the new season is seeing the stock characters continuing to take on complexities and contradicting their stereotypes, including Isabella becoming a bold leader, Buford engaging in literary analysis, and Baljeet discovering his fierce side. If you have never watched the show, it’s best to flip through a few early episodes from prior seasons to catch the rhythm of the repeated plot set up and the side character arcs. Much of the show is laugh-out-loud funny but not all of the episodes land with the same top level humor and a few are a little slow. And the ongoing gag of Candace trying to convince her mom of the boys’ inventions does start to wear thin as you wonder why there’s never just a photo taken. But, for parents with younger kids or for grown-ups who just need a break, the return of Phineas and Ferb is a much needed respite of humor, sarcasm, and tight social commentary packaged in a range of subtle to over the top humor.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Still funny after all these years
• Self-aware commentary and storytelling
• Using the outrageous to tell stories of ordinary life

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