Introduction

I was a big fan of Nghi Vo’s novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune when I read it a few years ago, so had been looking for an excuse to try some of her other, longer works of speculative fiction. My chance finally came when The City in Glass (2024) was selected for one of my book clubs in August.

The City in Glass, not to be confused with the YA Shadowhunters book half my generation read in our teens, is overall a short, imaginative, and highly enjoyable read! It reminded me foremost of This is How You Lose the Time War and Good Omens for the nature and relationship of its main characters, though it also stands firmly on its own ground as a story and work.

It’s not perfect and certainly not for everyone (for reasons I’ll get into below), but it’s charming, unique, and creative in a way I can always appreciate. Consider checking it out at your local library if it’s of interest! Without further ado, let’s get into spoilers ahead.

Angel & Demon

The City in Glass is told from the demon Vitrine’s perspective and set entirely in and around the city of Azril. She had overseen the city’s development over centuries from a small coastal settlement into a grand and bustling society, with a real sense of loving care that came from her pride and possessiveness.

Early in the novel, four angels arrive and demand she give way, admit her sins, and beg for her city. When she not-so-politely declines, they declare they’ve been sent to raze Azril, to tear it “from the tapestry of the world,” and admit that begging wouldn’t have actually helped anyway.

She tries to fight them and scorns their every action, but her attempts are ultimately futile: Azril and its people are consumed in heavenly fire, immortal Vitrine buried in the rubble, glass, and ash of her beloved city.

In a desperate act of defiance, Vitrine manages to levy a curse on the lead, demanding angel. She attaches a piece of her soul to his, infecting him with her love and empathy for the Azril that was. Her goal in the moment is simply to inflict eternal guilt and suffering; she certainly doesn’t expect him to become attached to her and the city, yet that’s what happens.

The heart (and majority of the page count) of The City in Glass sees Vitrine reflecting on memories of the Azril that was, interacting with the unnamed angel, and (sometimes grudgingly) working with him to build a new Azril. He spends fifty years in exile but returns with a population of refugees who restart the city’s human civilization and who include the ancestors of a particular family the two will watch over and hold dear for centuries to come.

(Her price for accepting the refugees is his wings, which she cuts off in a strikingly graphic scene and places within her heart alongside her book of memories.)

Eventually, a human war engulfs Azril and the city is on the verge of destruction once more, when the angel returns from another exile and gets Vitrine’s permission to unleash some divine violence on the invaders. They confess their love for one another and she molds him into a library, within which she places her book.

Love & Loss

Wait, what? A reasonable question, especially for anyone who gave The City in Glass a try on the basis that it was marketed as Romance.

I enjoyed the strange twist of the ending, because Vitrine’s bond with the angel never read as romantic to me. At worst she’s simply completing her revenge at the end, and at best he’s become another cherished possession she wants to include in her beloved city.

It remains mostly subtext throughout the novel, but I love the profoundly transformative effect Vitrine’s empathy and care have on the angel. I envision him as a pure weapon of war in his original state, with zero tolerance for moral complexity and only enough personality to want to torment what he sees as absolute evil. His awakening to the horrors of his deeds sees him diminished and helplessly devoted, but also curious and kind in ways that sometimes surpass or diverge from Vitrine.

I adored Nghi Vo’s imagination when it came to Vitrine’s book of memories in her heart and the many allusions to what sat at the hearts of her diverse siblings, especially in comparison to the (seemingly) rigid and uniform angels.

I loved the line saying that both Vitrine and the angel had to wearily put up with a ‘plague of religion’ sweeping through Azril—gorgeous commentary on how human and petty the institution can be, particularly when delivered from the mouths of a literal angel and demon.

A final wonderful highlight was Vitrine reminiscing about commissioning paintings from a human artist with an inspired eye for capturing the real Azril. It’s a powerful idea that the paintings both show Vitrine an objective view different from her own, but also so effectively illuminate her influence on the city that she can literally find her image in his later works.

While it’s again mostly subtextual, I also really appreciated the themes of frustration & grief, and love & creation that the novel explores. Vitrine loses everything to the senseless destruction of the angels and spends most of the novel processing and rebuilding from her grief: it’s easy to see how these deep and difficult emotions could be mirrored in people’s experiences from the pandemic, wars, or so much more that continues to impact our world.

On the other side of the coin, Vitrine and the angel act as caring and sometimes possessive parents to the new Azril and particularly members of their favourite family—going so far as to make individual bargains ensuring descendants return to visit now and then. It’s also both real and revealing when Vitrine tells the angel that none of the city is his, a heartbreaking excoriation again left somewhat ambiguous: is this the true Vitrine poking through, or a moment of lashing out and saying something she doesn’t mean?

Acceptance & Moving On

There’s a lot left open to interpretation in my mind, in terms of Vitrine’s personality, motivations, and actions. For all that we see her defined by her love for Azril, it’s hard to say whether she is ultimately a force for good with her influence there—let alone in the world beyond. Of course, that’s not the point: this is her personal story, so we’re asked to root for her on those grounds and because we feel her adoration for her city and people.

The way the novel begins and ends with divine violence in the city seems to indicate a cyclical pattern which may not mean the happiest future for Vitrine and her pretty new library, but for the moment she’s content, having rebuilt Azril and processed many of her emotions. And what else can we really ask for in this chaotic life? Hopefully the angel’s found peace too, bound to statically serving her for eternity, rather than trapped in his yearning and guilt.

I will say that there are a ton of wonderful ideas and beautiful passages in The City in Glass which are lovely on their own but suffer in retrospect from being abandoned. Nothing comes of the angel dust Vitrine discovers, despite that passage dripping of foreshadowing—nor do the wings, or curse, or bees, or a dozen other small details feel quite satisfyingly concluded given the way they were introduced.

For all its emotional reflections and passing centuries, this book is actually a lot more grounded than This is How You Lose the Time War, yet somehow also feels a little messier when I step away from it. Hardly a technical term, but I’d describe both books as ‘vibes-based’: you’re never going to understand exactly what’s happening, it’s about the beauty of the writing and the broad strokes rather than sharply defined actions. So it’s just a little strange to come away from the even more vibey novel with fewer questions... but I’ve also read and thought about Time War for a lot longer, so perhaps those answers can also be found for The City in Glass.

Ultimately, like I said at the top, I recommend The City in Glass if you’re up for a unique and fascinating short novel—but not if you’re looking for a grounded romance, as someone in my book club sadly was. Sorry Joe!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

Introduction

Despite the number of them that I tend to give around here, I’m personally fairly wary of strong recommendations. I’ve written before about the dangers of high expectations, plus there’s the simple fact that everyone’s tastes are different—and changing with their mood or where they happen to be in their life. I’m happy to have stumbled into most of my favourite books with few expectations beyond hope and perhaps faith in the author, and to establish my enjoyment and opinion on my own terms.

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman isn’t actually a new 2026 release, though that would be an entirely reasonable conclusion to draw based on it’s popularity this year. It was originally published in 2012, but retained only a cult following until a new edition and the chaotic tides of online attention conspired to make it an international bestseller in the past few months.

I had actually read Buelhman’s The Blacktongue Thief (2021)—a fun and imaginative grimdark D&D-esque world and story—so was aware of his name and ability, but still took some prompting from friends at Little Ghosts Books to venture into this large tome which simply promises “medieval horror” on the cover. (Back of book blurbs don’t exist, okay?)

And I’m glad I did! My expectation was something somewhere between The Devils and King Sorrow just based on my experiences this year, and it ended up being more between The Devils, The Odyssey, The Green Knight, and Preacher, which was fun to discover.

Those are my spoiler free thoughts! I’d recommend giving the book a try if some of those comparisons sound favourable to you, or if you’re in the mood for a gritty and darkly funny medieval adventure story. If you need further convincing or weren’t planning to read it anyway, come with me into spoilers ahead.

The Black Death

Within perhaps twenty pages of opening Between Two Fires, I knew Ghost’s “Rats” would have to be the featured song if I chose to write about the book. It’s about the rapidly spreading horror of the Black Death, about how rapidly civilization breaks down (Nolan’s Odyssey anyone?), and about how ideas like religion and mob mentality are apt to spread like wildfire among scared and insecure populations.

And while they were written years and countries apart, Between Two Fires is built on the exact same foundational ideas as Ghost’s song. It takes place in Europe, 1348 CE, with the continent in the merciless throes of the Bubonic Plague. Civilization has crumbled in the countryside, with roaming brigands effectively ruling the lands which nominally belong to nobles who’ve shut themselves away in their castles.

One of our protagonists, Thomas, is just such a brigand, having been exiled and excommunicated from his lordship, marriage, and knighthood on corrupt political grounds. Yet when his fellows threaten a young girl, Delphine, Thomas rediscovers a little honor and saves her from their predations. The two strike off on their own with a classic gruff and reluctant protector/wise and chaotic innocent dynamic, with just a few hints early on that there is more to Delphine than first appears.

For most of the narrative, the pair are accompanied by Père Matthieu, a priest struggling with the conflict between his faith and his homosexuality (to which Ghost’s “Satanized” is rather relevant). His inner conflict, along with his fear of the plague, have led him to alcoholism and inaction—the latter of which is at least banished by witnessing Thomas’ bravery and Delphine’s apparently divine insight.

As they finally approach Delphine’s destination in Avignon, we see civilization intact and apparently thriving in wealth and plenty: the seat and center of Christianity feasting and cavorting while the faithful suffer and die by the hundreds of thousands beyond. (An idea highly reminiscent of the Reproach and Revel in The Tyrant Philosophers and The Stormlight Archive respectively.) As with those stories, Delphine helps to reveal the profound corruption at work here and ultimately overcomes it alongside a redeemed Thomas. Both die and both live happily ever after; the end.

Angels & Devils

Okay, I perhaps forgot to mention that each section of the book opens with a chapter about the war between Heaven and Hell, ending with a repeated motif that God was missing and silent. That in this case the Black Death is not an indication of divine anger but divine absence, allowing devils to run rampant through the middle world where humanity dwells. That Delphine, along with a few angels, were placed with care on Earth to do as much good as possible without alerting the enemy (occupied sieging the gates of Heaven) to their presence. My bad!

I love stories that play with these ideas of Heaven and Hell, and Between Two Fires has a lot of gothic medieval fun with them. God’s absence is also a plotline in Preacher, which likewise offers a chaotic and fun ride, though is otherwise almost entirely different in where it goes with these ideas.

But probably the strongest part of this book for me is the adventures themselves. Short otherworldly encounters, often with little logic to their arrival or origins, which test and torment our protagonists along their quest. These feel realistically biblical at times, else easily imagined as being lifted from The Green Knight or The Odyssey. The Night Tourney, where ghosts rise up to tempt Thomas and Matthieu, and a few of the scenes in Paris, with the taunting devil-inhabited statues, stand out in my mind right now, but many of these chapters would make wonderful short stories in their own right.

As for the book’s conclusion, I’m actually a little more torn. Two of Lucifer’s head devils rip Thomas and Delphine to shreds, despite their courage and possession of ancient Christian artifacts. It turns out Delphine was God borne unto Earth once more, and her sacrifice finally allows God to answer: having Archangel Michael and the Heavenly Host emerge and cleanse the world of devil-kind. During this rout, the angels apparently even get far enough to kill Lucifer—who is immediately replaced by Mammon—somehow, which is cool but doesn’t necessarily resonate for me.

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that absolutely did work for me was when, during the fighting, we see a devil choose redemption and re-ascend with its angelic kin. Because, analysis time: the book’s about redemption! Thomas had fallen, been mocked and kicked while he was down, and managed to get back up over the course of his adventures with Delphine. Père Matthieu, after years of struggling with his inner conflict, reconciles his belief and nature and dies saving Delphine from a devil zombie-head-jellyfish ambush. Delphine was ultimately still human all along and reached her destiny through faith in what is good and right. God brings her and Thomas back to live simple, satisfying lives, and he even manages to reconnect with his wife in a small way.

Final Thoughts

This is a fascinating story, and as I said at the top, I’m very glad I read it. I loved how unique it was in many ways, but also how many powerful similarities it held to other stories and pieces of music I hold close to my heart.

One way in which it’s fairly unique these days is the way it does mostly uphold a cosmic black-and-white, good-and-evil system of morality. God is Good, Lucifer is Bad. Thomas is Bad but becomes Good, as does that redeemed angel. It’s interesting to return to those ideas when just about every story I can think to compare it to prefers a postmodern look at grey morality and gritty human reality.

For me personally, the ending didn’t quite manage to match the build up—but that’s okay, because the journey was truly excellent in its own right. And I do have to mention how wonderfully fitting the title is: Between Two Fires literally referring to how Pope Clement VI sat between two blazing fires in the belief that it would stave off infection, but also painting an image of humanity suffering and dying between the raging and warring forces of Heaven and Hell, right and wrong, good and evil.

It’s a powerful book with some wonderfully creative and evocative imagery, which manages to convey a lot of real historical events while also bringing fascinating fantasy and horror to bear. Give it a read if you’re of a mind to!

If you have read it, what are your thoughts? Any favourite moments or ideas I missed?

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

Introduction

We’re finally here! I know, my review of books 1–3 was only a month and a half ago, but I read this series fast. There’s another world where I reviewed 4–6 mid-July, and yet another where this look at 4–7 came two weeks ago. But as I said last week, bingeing the series so quickly ended up burning me out on it a little, so the break has been helpful for me to process and recover enthusiasm.

If you’re here and still deciding whether to start the series, make sure you’ve read my prior review first! If you’ve read some and are deciding whether to continue, I hope this article will be helpful.

But I imagine most readers (if they exist) will just be here to read another person’s take on books they quite enjoyed. For them I’ll do my best to offer what insights and commentary I can!

A brief preview of my thoughts: these books are good, they’re easy reads, and they have some truly compelling moments which make me glad to have read them. At the same time, any issues you had with the early books (particularly 2 and 3, once you’re in the swing of things) will absolutely continue to bother you should you choose to proceed further.

At the same time, most of the things you enjoyed about those books will continue to entertain you, on increasingly impressive scales.

So let’s get into it! Spoilers ahead for Dungeon Crawler Carl up to the end of Book 7: This Inevitable Ruin.

Story & Structure

Carl and Donut overcome a variety of tricky obstacles and make it down to the 10th floor of the World Dungeon. Katia goes full body horror at the end of the 9th floor and is sent to a safe zone where she’ll hopefully be able to protect humanity’s surviving children. Next section!

(Not really, but it is tricky to find an effective level of detail for a summary that doesn’t either gloss over almost everything or take a few hours to convey.)

Carl’s (and Donut’s) goal is already mostly solidified by the end of book 3, but becomes further crystallized into: survive & thrive, save as much of humanity as possible (in and out of the dungeon), and kill every evil alien showrunner/oligarch/noble/hunter he can along the way.

He often accomplishes these goals very creatively, with details of his plans hidden from the reader until the climactic moment when they’re revealed in full. It’s entertaining! But for my taste it also sometimes manages to be both expositional and confusing, which can easily detract from those heightened moments.

It’s likewise nice to see fellow Crawlers, NPCs, and even former Crawlers getting more page time and parts to play, fleshing out the world beyond Carl’s limited point of view and experiences. But it also greatly detracts from the narrative’s precarious momentum during downtime and makes action even more chaotic and harder to follow.

Ultimately, the storylines of the dungeon itself are inspired by and straight out of TTRPG campaigns. It’s wonderfully imaginative and excellently executed, arguably better than even Critical Role and Dimension 20 for Dinniman’s inherent ability to control all aspects of the narrative. But they’re also necessarily shallow (which he’s great at satirizing) and follows the usual TTRPG curve, where early levels are filled with action and later levels involve lots of planning for rarer, climactic encounters. So enjoy these stories while you read them, but I don’t have too much to say about any of those details in particular.

Highlights & Morals

The good news is that, despite how bogged down in the details the narrative sometimes feels, most of the highs in this series remain truly high.

Probably my largest omission from above was the books’ growing characterization of the System AI — the effective Dungeon Master for the game and a surprisingly engaging third party in the conflict between the Crawlers and the showrunners.

We learn that these AIs are actually not so artificial in origin, but in fact ancient Primals (like Carl’s chosen race) being awakened and trained through the process of running the dungeon and interacting with the life of entire planets. (A fun parallel to The Locked Tomb and general personifications of planets, like Gaia.)

We also see that the showrunners have an explosive failsafe in place in case the AI gains too much understanding and control over the system at large — one of the best twists of the series so far was Carl using his access to permanently disable this failsafe and let the AI grow and act as it pleases.

Another significant highlight occurs in book seven, with a focus on past authors of the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook. We learn several of their fates through flashbacks and actually have several others return to the dungeon to aid Carl’s struggle.

These characters’ stories were filled with heart, trauma, and overwhelming passion that felt a cut above anything else the series has accomplished thus far. They’ve chosen to return to this place that tormented them, and to likely die in the hope of striking a blow against the showrunners, and it’s truly great stuff.

I’ve been mentioning the alien showrunners and nobility a lot, and that’s because they really have been centered to be the main antagonists, over fellow crawlers, anything in the dungeon itself, or the AI. This builds off of what we see of the Orc princes in the early books and expands to include the Hunters — killing crawlers for sport on the sixth floor — and Faction Wars participants — playing war games with the lives of crawlers and NPCs. It’s nice to have Carl taking direct action against the real evils, inciting alien populations against their overlords, and even managing to remove the antagonists’ protections so that their lives are just as at stake as those of the crawlers.

Impossible not to mention Samantha, who seems like an offhand joke at first but blossoms into a hilarious character and weapon in her own right. Her French-accented catchphrase of “I will kill your mother” has quickly grown on me where “Goddamnit Donut” always felt a little twee to me.

Emberus, the Gate of the Feral Gods, the card game, Miriam and Prepotente, Quan Ch, and the appearance of Bea and Carl’s dad also stand out to me right now, mostly just as fun and notable elements of the story. Also very interested in where Scolapendra’s awakening is going!

Finally, I think the Ring of Divine Suffering and its damaging effect on Carl’s mind and soul is a strong (if a little blunt) reminder of the cost Carl’s crusade must necessarily have on him — a supernatural timer for him to either complete his quest or become the monster himself.

An important parallel to this is the idea of masks, that Carl and Donut must act this way to survive before eventually shedding the mask later — and trust that they won’t be changed too much in the process. It’s an interesting place to put focus considering that death is ostensibly waiting for them around every corner, but I think that makes the humanity of it all the more potent.

Staring Down the End

There are two — really three, since book nine is being split in two parts — books left in Dungeon Crawler Carl, and #8: A Parade of Horribles, is already out in the world and waiting for me to read it.

And while I’m sure it’ll be interesting and exciting and mind-bending and all the rest, I’m honestly not as fascinated and intrigued by what’s to come as I am with most series. Because we know the broad strokes of how it’s going to end, right? Our system AI grows strong enough to corrupt/challenge the Eulogist — the central alien AI — and burns the current order down even as Carl and Donut reclaim Earth for what remains of humanity.

What I want is for a new, better system to be proposed after all the anarchy and revolution and violence — both on Earth and in the universe at large — but Game of Thrones taught me that such things are much easier said than done.

I think these are ultimately good books with a fun, brutal depiction of taking action against the controlling puppet-masters (an idea that could only be dreamed of in Chain-Gang All-Stars, which I compared the early books to), but I’ve also come away wishing they had a little more to say.

I wished at the end of my previous review that the books would apply their anti-capitalist lens to the pre-dungeon world, and I half got my wish by getting a glimpse of the same themes in the alien society instead.

But there’s still very little representation or exploration of everyday injustices, and at this point it seems clear that there won’t be. And that’s ok of course, but I think it does lessen the experience and value of these books for me personally. As I discussed with regard to The Will of the Many, there’s an innate contradiction to any bestselling critique of capitalism, and I don’t know that either text ultimately overcomes it.

What are your thoughts on the series so far? Any important themes or moments I missed?

Thanks for reading and until next time ❤

Introduction & Personal Writing

Hello! I’m back with another short story today, this one written just three weeks ago at quite a difficult moment for me, and thus coming from a very personal and emotional place.

But more on that in a moment — first, here are the short stories I shared two weeks ago, in case you’re interested in more or in a point of comparison for how my writing has evolved over the past year. Second, you can still look forward to my next Dungeon Crawler Carl review soon (covering books 4, 5, 6, and 7), but I’ll admit I burned myself out a little bit on the series and need a little more time to get excited about writing that piece. Also certainly on the way is a review & analysis of Between Two Fires, a fantastic dark medieval novel with some similarities to The Devils which I reviewed early this year.

Ok, a little about the story. (Feel free to scroll down and read it first if you prefer!) As I mentioned in my post at the time, my city was experiencing incredibly unhealthy air quality as a result of raging wildfires around the province. I’m used to supplementing my mental health with long walks and runs out in nature, so the disruption was very disorienting and depressing even beyond the overwhelming existential horror of climate change.

Earlier in the same week, I had learned about the idea of limerence — essentially when a crush becomes neurochemically addictive, with intrusive thoughts and a deadening of most other feelings. The experience can be greatly heightened by common aspects of ADHD, including hyperfixation, rejection sensitive dysphoria, and emotional dysregulation. A helpful explanation I found is that limerence often takes hold in people whose self-worth is lacking, but who feel more complete when they’re around their crush. Thus identifying those areas of low self-esteem and generally focusing more on oneself first can be an effective preventative measure against limerence.

I learned about limerence the hard way, but I can’t stress enough how important that knowledge has been to me over the past few weeks. It helps to explain so many past experiences that I otherwise struggled to reconcile with my understanding of the world. It prompted me to work on myself and tackle new projects, including writing this short story, inspired by both wildfires and limerence and more.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the story below! Thanks for reading and until next time ❤

The Girl Who Loved the Sun

A tale, for you, from Gaia. Transcribed from the scorched bones that nourished this soil, absorbed by the questing roots of the Great Tree whose fruit you now consume. Plump and sweet, but also a little bitter, no?

Perhaps a hint of smoke, even these many lifetimes later?

Your pardon, a tale. The Girl who Loved the Sun. Keep eating, and see it from her eyes, feel it with her heart.

Relatable, to love the light? Certainly we have all seen the Sun’s beauty, felt the incandescent glow of Her attention. Many have fantasized and dreamed of basking eternal in Her affection; religions and nations have devoted themselves to praising Her. But all know not to stare too long.

All except the Girl, that is, whose heart and soul were pierced with shadow. When the Sun looked on her she felt healed and whole, a person worthy and capable of love.

Yet the Sun’s attention never lingers long, and each intervening darkness saw the Girl tormenting herself with tearing wishes and stabbing regrets. Whenever the Sun’s gaze alighted on her it found deeper, darker shadows to fill and less of the Girl to warm and adore.

Her sight and care for others waning, the Girl realized that she and the Sun were all that existed and all that mattered; a tale of true love that would shine through the ages. For who else had ever felt such overwhelming ardor and need, and had felt it shining back with such warmth and generosity?

In the long and painful nights, the Girl turned to fire for light and warmth and a reminder of her soulmate — though it was a pale imitation and only caused her to yearn all the more. So the fires she set grew and grew, apace with the ripping shadows in her heart and soul.

One day, the Girl was standing on the highest peak of the highest mountain. Demonstrating her devotion, yes — but also waiting for the raging inferno of last night’s fire to finally die down in the forests and valleys below. Her mind, her heart, and her soul now had room for nothing else but her love of her Sun.

When the light began to dim, she was confused. She stood above the clouds and the stinging black smoke. It was the middle of summer, and her Sun had promised to spend many more hours with her than this. Yet the darkness continued to grow.

Suddenly, squinting her scarred eyes in the dying light, she could see it. Her Sun was not alone in the sky — had taken up with Her vile and eternal consort, in fact. The Moon, who had overseen and reveled in every painful moment of the Girl’s life. An ill-conceived afterthought in the face of her and her Sun’s love.

But all those nights of fantasy and self-flagellation had worn the Girl’s denial down to a threadbare tatter, which crumbled before the overwhelming truth in the heavens above.

That her Sun loved another. That theirs was not a special and unique bond — that it had never been a bond at all. That all of her hope and joy, hate and criticism, love given and received and denied, was pure imagination. Immaterial and inconsequential.

As the Sun disappeared into Her lover’s embrace, what remained of the Girl’s heart broke fully and finally. She fell, staring into the towering and cascading wildfire that was the only remaining light in the world, and realized her life hadn’t been so inconsequential after all.

~

Ah, welcome back; I see you’ve finished your fruit. Yes, it grows quite well here. As do we all, focused as we are on caring for each other and our world. Take the seeds and plant them, is all we ask. Share the tale with the people there, in case they have forgotten their own great tragedies.

Ha, yes. May She watch over you as well, good traveler.

Introduction

I watched the movie! A little late to the trend, perhaps, but excited to discuss it nonetheless. Will keep this top section vaguely spoiler-free as usual, though I don’t think there’s much to ruin with foreknowledge here.

While I vaguely knew about the idea of the Backrooms going into this, I wasn’t quite up on it enough to realize that its lore and origins are (supposedly) entirely distinct from the SCP about the infinite IKEA. (Though the fact that the film also features a furniture store would seem to indicate they’re pulling on both fandoms in order to get butts in seats.)

Today I’ll examine what Backrooms is about, the degree to which it succeeds in its various goals, and briefly discuss how it relates to two of my favourite novels: House of Leaves and Piranesi.

Follow me; you wouldn’t want to get lost.

What is Backrooms?

If you’re as yet unfamiliar, the Backrooms originated as an online scary story (“creepypasta”) based on a vaguely off-putting picture of empty office spaces. It added to the internet’s fascination with abandoned and liminal spaces and attracted contribution through imaginative storytelling and further photographs of unsettling places.

One such creator, Kane Parsons, apparently took the idea and ran with it, to the point that his web series was adapted into a feature film by A24. The internet is chock-full of articles on all of that if it’s of interest to you.

The Backrooms film follows Clark, the manager of a furniture store, and Mary, his therapist. Clark discovers an entrance into the infinite, liminal Backrooms in the basement of his store, and explores it before bringing it up to Mary in their next appointment. He then returns with his assistant manager and her boyfriend, both of whom are killed while exploring.

Clark disappears for weeks, prompting Mary to check in. She enters the Backrooms and finds Clark, who has somehow come to learn that the Backrooms are echoes of reality — content degradation and copy decay of the real world. He’s then killed by an echo of his own furniture selling-pirate persona, and she barely escapes by finding a staging area for a corporation investigating the Backrooms.

Does it work?

On a visual level, I think Backrooms does a phenomenal job of portraying the uneasy feeling that has always been associated with this idea, as well as the strange wonder of exploring these spaces. The fuse box at the beginning is one of my favourite moments from the film; new switches growing diagonally like tumours and eventually controlling the store’s entire power flow.

The other excellent part for me is seeing hints of human life in this alien world; the corporation exploring this place becoming as alien and unnerving as this other world itself simply by their presence within it.

As a feature film, Backrooms is also obligated to tell an actual human story — something audiences can relate to and maybe even learn from, in addition to necessarily adding stakes and tension. I thought the actors and characters were great, and I really appreciate how hard they pushed the therapy angle with Clark needing to ‘find a new path’ forward.

The idea is that he’s not responding to therapy; that he believes he’s just wired this way — and so has become stuck, lost in the infinite labyrinth of his own mind. Mary as therapist tries to go in and help him, and he attacks her both consciously and otherwise. She barely escapes, having failed to help her patient and with some new trauma to process herself.

It works, if you don’t think about it too hard. But mostly because the filmmakers are jamming a square peg into a round hole with enough blunt force that just about anything would’ve worked.

The Backrooms has its own lore and rules and, most importantly, fans: those certainly came first for the filmmakers, and telling a fully cohesive and meaningful story necessarily came second.

Thankfully, the fraying-mind-as-infinite-liminal-world idea has been done before, and better, in House of Leaves and Piranesi.

House of Leaves and Piranesi

I’ve written about both of these novels in great depth before, so I’ll keep this fairly brief — and spoiler-light, in case you want to check them out for yourself.

To massively oversimplify House of Leaves, it follows a man’s growing obsession with exploring the apparently infinite liminal space which suddenly appears in his home. It’s a powerful allegory for his discomfort living as a simple husband and father after a career as a front-line journalist, and it’s only one of many examples in the novel showing how obsession can pull you in and destroy your life before you even realize it’s happening.

Piranesi moves in the opposite direction, beginning with its protagonist living a simple, innocent life in a strange and endless space. (Filled with statues which seem to echo ideas from our own world, in an interesting parallel to Backrooms.) Over the course of the book, ‘Piranesi’ learns more about his past and present and must accept his own agency in determining his future. Both my readings of Piranesi have taken place in single afternoons, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The difference between these stories and Backrooms is again simply creative liberty: the filmmakers were bound by the property they were adapting, and so could only messily nod to the same ideas that House of Leaves and Piranesi are able to explore so profoundly.

Exit

Backrooms is a fun, well-acted and well-executed film that manages to faithfully and intriguingly adapt the best parts of its source material. In order to have it function as a film, the creators behind it attempted to graft on a Backrooms-esque echo of stories like House of Leaves and Piranesi, which works just well enough while still making me appreciate the originals more.

Currently, Backrooms is the closest thing that exists to an adaptation of either of those books (though stop-motion animation studio Laika is apparently working on a Piranesi film), so I’ll accept it as a fun simulacra of what could be.

What did you think of the film? Any details or allusions I missed?

If you’re a fan of SCP and other online creepypasta, have you read (my review of) There Is No Antimemetics Division?

Thanks for reading and until next time ❤

Introduction

I wrote these stories last summer, in response to interesting prompts from the submissions page of Vellum Mortis — a (would be) monthly zine publishing speculative flash fiction (stories of <1k words). My first story, “The Litany of Renewal”, was accepted and published in their August 2025 issue. My second, “Changing Seasons”, was accepted for their September 2025 issue. Unfortunately, they decided to put the zine on indefinite hold before that one made it to publication — not that they told me until mid-November.

That experience dampened my excitement for fiction writing for a while, but I recently wrote an entirely new story and am feeling the interest and confidence building back up again. So I wanted to share these here today and hear your thoughts, if you have any.

If you’re interested in more, I’ve previously shared three other stories:

Class Trip (absurdist dystopian sci-fi)

Dedication (heartfelt)

Kakistocratic Oath (absurdist story for a prompt about kakistocracy)

I hope you enjoy them! Thanks for reading ❤

The Litany of Renewal

They say Sanctuary has ten thousand floors, every one uniquely dazzling and seductive. In truth it has ten thousand and one. But it is considered impolite to mention the Midden, so that over the millennia its existence has faded into myth. On ten thousand floors it is a rumoured curiosity, like the question of what might exist beyond Sanctuary’s walls — or more importantly, who was who at the previous evening’s masquerade.

On one floor, the Midden’s existence is an incontrovertible truth, one which does little to ease the existential horror steeping its inhabitants. Chief among these damned souls is Carrion, waking from fitful sleep in her worn and patched hammock. She raises a sickly pale hand to cover her mouth even before her eyes shoot open, but the ingrained motion is vestigial: she learned to suppress her waking screams many cycles ago, a rare feat of self-mastery in the Midden.

Carrion intones the litany of renewal beneath her breath as she pulls her grimy vestments over her bald head and pallid frame. Rising and walking barefoot down the narrow torchlit hall which her clergy call home, she keeps her gaze fixed studiously on the rusted floor. Whether her fellows have found the brief embrace of sleep or lie awake in terror, their privacy in this hall is sacred. At the end of the hall she pauses and takes a deep, calming breath. Repetition should make her days easier, yet somehow it never feels that way in the moment.

Centuries ago the hall’s one exit may have been a functioning mechanical door, but now comprises a jagged hole carved through the sealed metal. Learning to contort herself through it in her youth cost Carrion two fingers and left her with countless scars, so that even after decades she gives crossing the threshold her undivided attention. Only when she is safely through and taking her first steps does she notice that He is there waiting for her, a column of greasy black smoke rising above the towering piles of refuse to either side of the path.

Carrion immediately kneels before Him, wincing at the pain in her joints from the sudden movement. Not for the first time she wonders what form He takes at the center of the smoke, if any. When he speaks, his deep and rasping voice emanates from all around.

“I partake of your faith and suffering, mortal Carrion. Witness now the transubstantiation that you and your order facilitate.”

She’d greatly prefer not to watch it, miracle or otherwise, but it is ritual and His commandment. She can’t refute that feels her spiritual and emotional burden lighten as she lifts her eyes. Bits of moldering refuse nearby — some recognizably and stomach-turningly organic, others parts of objects alien to anyone in the Midden — spark and disappear in smoke before her, replaced by a basin of crystal-clear water and a bushel of bright fruits.

“Thank you, my Lord.” Carrion’s voice rasps from disuse and dehydration. “I humbly partake of your divine gift.” She drinks heavily before taking two of the round fruits He calls ‘apples’ and delightedly biting into one.

“Did you know,” she flinches when she hears Him speak again, assuming he has already departed as is custom for these unpredictable visits, “that you are the eight hundred and sixteenth of your line to hold the name Carrion?”

“Oh. Um, no, my Lord. I knew I was named for my mother and grandfather, but…”

She isn’t sure He even heard her as He continues, “And deeply devoted you have been. Perhaps uniquely so, among the millions who work and suffer in the Midden so that Sanctuary can thrive. Most raise a fist or voice in anger at some point in their lives, pointless though it will always be. But not you, nor most of your ancestors. Why?”

“I… I cannot speak for them, Lord. But I live to serve.” His silence, for seconds that turn into minutes, prods her to continue. “Perhaps I foster some hope that my faith will be rewarded in another life, or that you might at least look with favour upon my successor.” Carrion had borne no children, nor had her mother: His divinity molded life anew from the very flesh of the previous generation.

“That was supposed to be the way of it, you know.” She had never heard His tone so wistful, contemplative. “When Sanctuary was founded, it was agreed that a few hundred people from each floor would take turns working in the Midden each year, to serve their civic and spiritual duty. When they did, their family would be spared for the next generation. Communal responsibility and upkeep, for what was to be the greatest project in the history of your species.”

The smoke is billowing now, an eerie sight in the windless Midden. Carrion thinks she can see ember-like eyes flickering a meter above her.

“But as soon as the first group of volunteers had arrived, the rest of them locked the doors and threw away the key. Your people and I have been eating their waste and delivering it back to them clean and purified for thousands of years, Carrion. Does that not enrage you?”

She grits her teeth but can’t stop tears from falling. “Of course it does!” Her scream echoes and carries through the Midden.

“Good.” Suddenly a shiny metal object drops in front of her. “A man above threw away the key once more this morning, apparently believing doing so would cure his nightmares.” Was that a wink from a smoking ember eye? “Let’s help some lost souls find God, loyal Carrion.”

She finishes her apple and picks up the key, smiling for the first time in her life.

***

They say Sanctuary has ten thousand floors, every one uniquely dazzling and seductive. In truth it has but one, and none will ever forget it.

Changing Seasons

Word spreads by calving glaciers, singed whispers of moths, twinkling constellations: For the first time in centuries, there is to be a Convergence. Summer, ascendant but waning, will attend Winter at the Bohemian Palace.

Summer, alongside His heir Laurel and select retainers, arrives with the distant sun’s rays. A perk of His station, and besides, He wouldn’t be caught dead navigating the void by any other means. Even at the speed of light, the journey has taken most of a day; in addition to becoming somewhat claustrophobic towards the end.

The Bohemian Palace is rather elegant, despite the perpetual shroud of night out here beyond the Kuiper belt. The alien architecture, carved out of a rogue planet, had already seemed to be on the verge of crumbling over a millennia ago, on His last visit soon after Laurel’s birth. It might well be twice as unstable today.

Or perhaps it is only Winter that has warped and wilted. Where now are the gleaming ice sculptures, the haunting ossuaries? Though loath to admit it, He finds the silence and emptiness rather more disturbing than the discordant braying and chittering horde that had welcomed him previously.

What malignities do these cavernous shadows hold?

He is sorely tempted to banish the infernal darkness. A flick of the wrist, a muttered word and all would be visible. But it would be costly, here and now. Not only to wield Summer in the heart of Winter, but also to offend his hosts and, worst of all, to convey any sense of weakness. Not today, with victory so close at hand.

With no welcoming party, it is Laurel’s keen senses that guide Summer and His retinue through the abyssal halls to Winter’s Court — such as it is. Cold lavender light suffuses Winter’s vast throne room. And here at last are the Unseelie, diverse in all ways except for being uniformly alien to human or Seelie eyes. Are they, perhaps, also meeker and more ragged than great Summer recalls? The idea certainly serves to warm Him, whether or not it is strictly true.

As Summer enters, the thronging courtiers bow and somewhere violins begin to intone the unique melody of Convergence. He can see Winter on Her throne — but She is statue-still. Her piercing eyes, that haunted Him for decades, closed. Once more His relief is drowned away by discomfort at the unexpected.

Two figures flank Winter’s throne: the left is entirely encased in armor, such that He might have mistaken it for decoration or magical construct if not for His innate sense for living beings; the right is Winter’s Herald, a stooping half-giant who has held the position almost as long as her Queen. It is she who speaks as the violins fade.

“Welcome, Summer King, to Winter’s halls. Your season stands ascendant, in more ways than one. Many moons have now passed since your Estival Solstice, yet Summer remains almost at its apogee, and Winter at our nadir.”

The Herald clears her throat violently and gestures to her Queen.

“It now takes all Winter’s time and will to maintain even a semblance of balance! One slip and millions die, human and Sidhe alike. Countless Unseelie have committed themselves to stemming the tide of ecological collapse, while you- you…”

She stares at Summer while she catches her breath. Horror on her gnarled face at the self-satisfied smirk on His. “What do you have to say for yourself, Lord Summer?”

“You’ve just about said it already, although I’d have loved to hear it from Her lips,” He replied. “I’ve won.”

Silence and bewilderment suffuse the throne room as readily as the cold light.

“You what,” the crone finally gasps.

“I’ve won! Checkmate. Seelie defeats Unseelie. No more chaos, no more rivalry.” Summer laughs, addressing the alien audience. “You all can clear out. My heir Laurel will take the reins, and put Winter to bed. Comfortable Summer for all, forever.”

The crone looked ready to try and strike Him. “There is a balance to be kept, you sun-addled fool.”

Before He could reply — with fire or words, He hadn’t quite decided yet — the armored figure speaks up.

“I’ve seen enough,” a warm youthful voice proclaims as they reached up to doff their helmet, “She was right about Him.”

There, waving their golden hair free of the helmet, is Laurel. A much more vibrant Laurel, positively radiating their seasonal inheritance.

Summer can barely turn before He feels an icy blade pierce his throat. Cold insectile eyes on His Laurel’s face, all the false colour draining away as if summoned back to its rightful owner.

As His power ebbs, Winter opens Her own horrible eyes. Her rasping voice is a blizzard He can’t shut out. “Swapped in the cradle, yes. You just had to come and parade your precious heir, knowing my lack.”

He tries to talk, to beg, but the ice is in his vocal cords.

“But you are right, in a way. I do believe it is time for me to retire — or at least take a sabbatical.” Winter is old, but age is fickle amongst the Sidhe. “Luckily, we have two well-trained heirs right here. Though which will be which?”

“Perhaps a change is in order,” says the changeling heir as they remove the blade and let Summer’s life drain onto the cold floor. “Winter turned Summer is Spring, no?”

“And I shall be Autumn,” declares Laurel. “Seasons of change, in place of extremes. That we might not forget our shared kinship.”

With Winter’s blessing and Summer’s blood and the triumphant swelling of violins, the Sidhe are born anew.

Background & Expectations

Amidst the horrible air quality that held my city hostage for a few days last week (hooray for multiple levels of government gutting environmental protections to make a buck), I journeyed out to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

Not because I’m a particular fan of either Nolan (my mild audio processing issues make half his films incomprehensible without subtitles) or the source material (always preferred The Iliad), nor even to support the film against the apparent online backlash over its casting choices. Honestly, I think it was mostly Angela Collier’s video from a few weeks ago, where she speculated on how Nolan would handle various aspects of the text, that got me interested at all. Then, let’s face it, the cultural zeitgeist probably pushed me over the edge.

Angela rightly points out that much about Homer’s Odyssey clashes with our culture and world today. Just look at the role of women in this foundational western story—it’s no wonder that Circe, A Thousand Ships, The Penelopiad and many more stories have been written to re-examine these characters through a feminist lens. Natalie Haynes’ Pandora’s Jar also offers a brief but powerful critical look at the original depictions of these women.

But Angela’s main focus was on slavery: that this mythical Greek world was built on the back of slaves, that Odysseus owns slaves and that his final “heroic” act of vengeance in the text is to execute many of them.

So, how does Nolan thread the needle of staying true to the story while not alienating his audience? Let’s get into it in spoilers below.

A Great Film

For my part, I think Nolan manages to thread the needle fairly well. He avoids the erasure route by specifically naming these characters as slaves, while also omitting Odysseus and Telemachus’ grisly execution of Ithaca’s slave women at the end of the story—instead just having Penelope push disloyal Melantho to her doom in the battle with the suitors.

Nolan also gives Penelope and Helen more complex characterization than Homer, but their overall roles ultimately remain unchanged. Calypso is a neat framing device for the first half of the story but doesn’t particularly shine as a character in her own right. Circe’s scene with Odysseus’ men is one of the best in the film—those transformations, oh my—but then Odysseys shows up, says he and his men are actually the good ones, and she just meekly exits.

For me, the film’s at its best when it’s following Odysseus and his crew. Polyphemus, the Laestrygonians (forgot about that encounter, what a scene!), Circe, Hades, Apollo’s cattle, his scenes with Athena, and especially the flashbacks to Troy—it’s gorgeous and tense and I couldn’t get enough of it.

The suitors plotline didn’t do much for me, in comparison. (Maybe it’s just Tom Holland? I haven’t even seen Uncharted but it feels like such a joke to cast him as a teen again after having him man up for that film years ago.) Pattinson and Hathaway and everyone else killed it—even Bernthal’s mob boss-esque Menelaus was enthralling—so maybe it’s simply down to my not liking the premise of it.

The central point of Homer’s epic is about Odysseus and Penelope’s love and loyalty: him braving constant dangers and the antagonism of the gods to return to her; her delaying choosing a new husband in hopes he will one day return. It’s nice, it’s quaint, it’s human. But I would have been disappointed leaving this film with a pure moral about love and loyalty in the year of our dystopia 2026. Thankfully, Nolan agrees.

From early in the film, we hear rumours of mysterious “Sea Peoples“ attacking Greece (a cute nod to real history) as a pressing reason for Penelope to marry and thereby resecure the Kingdom of Ithaca. At the same time, we see Odysseus flashing back to the sacking of Troy, and in particular the temple’s statue of Athena being decapitated. We also get hints from Athena and Calypso that Odysseus may not be so eager to get home after all. Finally, the whole film places enormous emphasis on “Zeus’s Law” (xenia): treat others (particularly travelers and guests) with respect, for you never know who might be a god in disguise.

Would you believe that, rather than an eclectic bunch of worldbuilding, all of this is setting up the real, gut-punching heart of the film?

Burn to a Cinder

We learn that Odysseus feels incredible guilt for the trick he played which resulted in the destruction of Troy. He left the city an apparent gift from the gods, which they brought behind their walls in trusting respect of Zeus’s Law. (Admittedly, a bit of a stretch perhaps. But the rest works so well that I can go with it.)

When the Greeks betrayed that trust and fell on Troy with absolute violence, Odysseus fears that he has destroyed Zeus’s Law and the advanced civilization it allowed; that humans will again become beasts incapable of trust or empathy. Penelope then realizes that the Sea Peoples aren’t mysterious foreigners at all, but rather the violent and greedy Greek armies returning from Troy provoking a general societal cascade into barbarism.

And while that moral about the death of empathy is new to this interpretation of the story, it fits beautifully with the concept of xenia that already pervades The Odyssey—I was going to list examples, but frankly the whole damn story is about hospitality and trust and homecoming when you think about it.

I chose Epica’s Burn to a Cinder for the featured song today because it captures the mood at the end of Nolan’s film: mourning the loss of empathy and rise of xenophobia while swearing to either fight it or flee to somewhere better. We see Telemachus take up the Ithacan crown while Odysseus and Penelope sail into the sunset, both to honour his fallen men and to find a brighter future for themselves.

Safe Travels

All that to say, you probably already know whether or not you’ll enjoy The Odyssey. It’s an adventure/political fantasy story with a star-studded cast and a nearly 3-hour runtime—your mileage will absolutely vary.

If you’re someone who is genuinely on the fence, I do recommend it. I’ll take a wonderfully diverse cast any day, and between the filmmaking craft and ultimate moral on display, I think it stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of films released these days. Plus, Agamemnon’s design is just goddamn wild.

Last week I wrote about wanting to collect lessons and truths about the world in one central place, and hey, I think The Golden Rule of being nice to people probably deserves a spot on the list—though I certainly hope it’s not one I would completely forget otherwise.

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

Faulty Memory

Writing this blog has been an incredible boon to my mental health. It’s given me consistent structure and routine, a place to reflect on and internalize lessons from media, an outlet to praise or complain about stories and the world, and so much more.

Unfortunately, the nature of our brains — particularly for we ADHDers — is that even as the one writing them, many of the morals and lessons I take and conclusions I draw end up falling out of my head days, weeks, or months later. This time last year I had just re-read The Shining and re-watched Midnight Mass and fervently believed that an outlook derived from ‘The Serenity Prayer’ could and would solve many of my problems.

Today, a few days into a personal struggle with my addictive tendencies, I tried to call up that quite relevant lesson and found only crickets and cobwebs where it was supposed to be. And that’s one that I could even remember writing off the top of my head.

A helpful strategy many ADHDers (and others) use to overcome these deficits in our working memory is externalization: putting important things in writing, asking others to check in on us, placing visual cues in our environments to remind us of things we’d otherwise forget or miss. I’m working on using these techniques more myself, so why not use this as an opportunity to do so!

If you feel so inclined, copy/paste or paraphrase anything that feels important for you to remember and digitally or physically pin it where you’ll see it!

I’m going to be taking these from my own posts, CBT, quotes from books, and probably other places. I’ll endeavour to add to this list over time, and maybe also subtract from it if something ever proves ultimately unhelpful or untrue.

Truths/Lessons

“Fill up your own cup, and let them fall in love with the overflow.” — Harry Styles, shared with me by my friend Lauren and reflected on at the link by Aanya Singhani.

“There is still time” — article on I Saw the TV Glow and how now’s better than never

“Overthinking brings confusion; action brings clarity.” A simple truth that I’ve badly needed to hear all my life. (Related to SMART Goals, Next Step)

Beware Cognitive Distortions — Think of times when you’ve fallen into these unhelpful thought patterns, so that you can recognize them next time they arise.

“Shame is a shackle. Free yourself.” — Matt Haig, The Humans

“You are what you eat” — article on The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and the state of our minds on the internet

[The Opposite of This] — article on a CGPGrey video and The Screwtape Letters

“Don’t aim for perfection. Evolution, and life, only happen through mistakes.” — Matt Haig, The Humans

Life is about connections (between Gods, plus people) — article on Terra Ignota

A better future only requires radical empathy — article on Terra Ignota

~

Loneliness & Depression

Escape requires action — article on “A Secret Door”

Life can get very dark, but the sun will shine again — article on Rhythm of War, “De Profundis Borealis”

Behavioural Activation Scheduling — Consciously including activities in your schedule which offer Socialization, Achievement, Pleasure and Self-Care.

Live now, die later: Catharsis of Apocalypse & Death — taking present solace and finding beauty by remembering the existential

Manage Your Expectations — article on Severance and how anticipating perfection is never going to end well

~

ADHD & Anxiety

“I [will] have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” — article on The Shining, Midnight Mass, Alcoholics Anonymous

SMART Goals — Whether doing high-level project management or getting yourself off of TikTok, a helpful guide for actually getting shit done

The most important step is the next one — article on Oathbringer

Get offline — article on surviving with ADHD in the addiction/attention economy

“Everyone has a part to play.” — A friend in response to my article on empathy exhaustion. Just because we can’t all show up 100% for every important cause doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference somewhere, using our personal strengths and interests.

ADHD & Helpful vs. Unhelpful Guilt

Authority is a Mask — We’re all only human, despite what they’d have us think

~

Mindfulness

“Be curious. Question everything. A present fact is just a future fiction.” — Matt Haig, The Humans (also very relevant to the themes of KJ Parker)

Queer Theory / False Dichotomies — Seeing beyond true/false, black/white, male/female etc.

“Choose Again” — article on Hyperion Cantos

Think for yourself — brief reflection on ‘Captain Goat’

Design your own universe — article on ‘Design Your Universe’ and ‘Stay the Course’

What are yours?

(Okay, is the above a lot messier than I envisioned? Yes. But hopefully it’ll function.)

Like I said, this is a resource I want to add to over time, to continually reflect on and learn from. So I’d love to hear any aphorisms, lessons or other ways of thinking that get you through the day!

Thanks for reading and until next time ❤

Harsh Awakening

Just a short piece today as I face down a busy and anxious week; as always consider checking out some of my past work if you’re craving more!

Anyone who’s opened a few of my articles this year will have a sense of how much I’ve recently been enjoying the music of Avatar, a Swedish heavy metal group who consistently explore dark and absurd themes while endlessly experimenting with their style and sound.

One of their songs that I’ve been meaning to reflect on for a while is ‘A Secret Door’, off of their 2020 album Hunter Gatherer. The album itself is arguably the group’s darkest and most serious, with ‘Child’ and ‘Gun’ being deeply haunting in their own ways and ‘When All But Force Has Failed’ being my go-to track for screaming and raging at the world. This heavy tone marked a very notable shift from the band’s previous record, Avatar Country (2018), which had delivered a much lighter, parodic look at monarchy and nationalism. Combined with all the other downers of 2020, it’s easy to see why Hunter Gatherer met mixed reactions and is generally forgotten about these days.

I partially mention that context because I think it’s an interesting parallel to ‘A Secret Door’ itself. (Make sure you watch the music video above!) In a lot of Avatar’s songs (and Epica’s, for that matter), there’s a notable division between the innocence and wonder of the clean vocals and the anger and bitterness of the harsh vocals; it’s a dynamic that it’s easy to become familiar with and begin to subconsciously accept.

It was only recently that I realized ‘A Secret Door’ intentionally plays on and breaks that paradigm, with the beautiful and seductive clean vocals constantly trying to give up and sink into spirals, depression and apathy — while the harsh (and louder chorus) vocals represent a screaming wake up call to break free with action, mindfulness and hope. It’s a haunting way of conveying how easy it is to passively slip into darker moods, and how jarring it can be to finally, actively choose to break free.

The music video elevates this already deeply affecting song to new levels, with dancer Mpululu Ntuve’s character trapped alongside her inner demons. To me their struggle is a beautiful and resonant depiction of living with anxiety, depression and especially negative self-talk, as we see the angry and abusive figure keeping her scared and off-balance until she finally finds the courage to fight back and look for an escape.

The lyrics say that “the door will show before we land”, which I find a remarkable nod to how difficult it is to escape these unhealthy mental patterns: it feels almost impossible to just find improvement on your own, with no momentum behind you. But possibilities for hope, help and connection will come your way if you open yourself up to them — and if you look for the door, it will show before you land. (I’ve previously written about another song with a similar message.)

Find Your Door

This song only gets more and more interesting as I continue to think on it, but as I said above, time is short today. Maybe I’ll revisit it at some point.

I find a lot of emotional depth and resonance in this type of music, but ‘A Secret Door’ manages to go a step beyond with how it lyrically, structurally and visually asks us to break free of our own mental prisons and abusers and take care of ourselves.

Of course, it can also be very difficult to even recognize when we’re trapped in these patterns, and I hope that simply bringing it up is enough to kickstart someone’s mindfulness — just as Avatar hoped when they released this track into the world.

I’d love to hear what this song means to you; whether it resonates and any different responses you have to it.

Thanks for reading and until next time ❤

The Pitch

Almost from its inception, Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman has survived and evolved based on its own success—progressing and growing in the publishing world not unlike its protagonist leveling up and descending in the World Dungeon.

The story began with the author posting a few segments online, which gained enough traction—combined with the onset of the pandemic—to encourage Dinniman to try self-publishing the first book in October of 2020. By 2024, the series had proven successful enough for Penguin Books to secure the rights—mirroring the story of There Is No Antimemetics Division, which I looked at earlier this year.

When I briefly mentioned the series last week, I didn’t expect to be returning to discuss it in greater depth so soon. (I again thought today’s post would be about Widow’s Bay, but alas the back half of the series has yet to pull me back in.)

So today, a proper spoiler-free pitch before I dive into a light review & analysis of the series’ first three entries.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a LitRPG progression fantasy which, at its best, feels like it offers the highlights of video games, action films and Tabletop RPGs in book form. It follows likeable, fun characters and gives you strong reasons to care about them.

The imagination and worldbuilding here are excellent, striking an essential balance between fantastical absurdity and rules-based logic. The series both mocks and embraces tropes of these games in a way that demonstrates knowledge, care, and creativity.

The third book is called The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, referencing the real life anarchist text, and so I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that it is also where Carl truly embraces his goal of surviving long enough to do real damage to the system around him. That (for now) background storyline is certainly the most interesting to me, so I figured it would be important to include in a pitch to anyone with similar interests.

I don’t think Dungeon Crawler Carl will be for everyone—but it absolutely has a broader appeal than I would have imagined before trying it myself. These books are just about as smooth reading as can be, so consider giving them a shot!

And if the LitRPG elements absolutely aren’t your thing, consider checking out Chain-Gang All-Stars instead; it features a similar oppression-as-entertainment idea but is perhaps a little more realistic and believable!

Now, finally, let’s wade into some spoilers.

Best in Dungeon

The series follows Carl and his pet-show-cat-turned-intelligent-being Princess Donut as they enter and explore the World Dungeon—created by advanced aliens by rapidly recycling the Earth as we know it. They’re two of only a few million survivors of this sudden apocalypse, placed into a deadly game show where they could technically win back authority over the planet if they complete the 18-floor Dungeon. Though we soon learn that over the centuries, possibly millennia, no one has ever made it past floor 13.

As fun as monster-slaying and lore-exploring is, I’ve consistently found the strongest moments in the series so far to be the emotional character-focused ones. (Who are you and what the hell did you do with Zach? Yeah, great question.)

Maybe it’s how few and far between Carl and Donut’s moments of reflection are that make them so poignant, but it’s genuinely powerful every time they think back to their lives beforehand in connection to what they currently face. Carl’s memories of his abusive father and trying-her-best mother, and of his ex-girlfriend Bea preparing to give Donut away for a new show cat, give important context, purpose, and depth to the story.

The same is true for their interactions with other Crawlers, hearing their life stories and building bonds of empathy and shared humanity, and sometimes even with the Dungeon’s NPCs—real people forced into playing roles and living or dying at the whim of Crawlers and storywriters alike.

The System and Carl’s dream of taking it down have to be the other main highlight. Similar to Chain-Gang All-Stars, the story turns humans fighting for their lives into the ultimate reality show—complete with sponsors, talk shows, attempts at outside interference and edited narratives skewing/misrepresenting reality. So in addition to completing quests and surviving traps, Carl and Donut must also navigate celebrity status and agent drama and the expectations of various writers, owners and audiences if they want to have a hope of staying alive. Carl repeating himself all the while, “You will not break me.”

So I simply adore that Carl receives the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, an illicit journal from past Crawlers similarly bent on structural revenge against the system. Likewise, the relationship between the Dungeon’s owners and its System AI (the game’s Dungeon Master, more or less, with a foot fetish you wouldn’t believe) is shown to already be surprisingly antagonistic. It’s exciting to see Carl learning about all the cracks in this world and preparing to start driving wedges between them.

And again, the imagination is just a blast. Just about every Crawler has their own fascinating race/class combo that blows even the most extravagant homebrew D&D game out of the water. There’s a Top Ten Leaderboard and it’s honestly just a blast to see Dinniman having fun coming up with the best and baddest and showing off highlights from their journeys.

Favored Prospects

As fun as these books are, I think there’s definitely still room for improvement. (I know, the series is almost done, but this is what I’m hoping to see as I keep reading.)

As nice as the moments of reflection and rebellious anger are, they could be better. In addition to having the Cookbook, Carl’s chosen class is the ‘Compensated Anarchist’. And it’s all well and good that he’s rightly angry at the oppression of the Dungeon, but I need to see him start recognizing that the same faults existed (in different ways) in the world before.

That will require more flashbacks and reflections, which I think could also get meatier. Part of me is worried that Dinniman’s already running out of inspirations pulled from Carl’s previous life. And I know, I should have more faith. But so far I’m not seeing a ton of depth waiting to be explored.

(I can’t help but speculate that Bea and/or Carl’s father will make some form of reappearance, either somehow as fellow Crawlers or maybe as NPCs or mishmashed Bosses, and frankly I can’t wait.)

Finally (for now), I will just say that there are some parts of these genres that don’t translate as well into novel form. Dinniman tries to make the rules-explaining and -lawyering as interesting as possible, but sometimes it just feels like a headache. Likewise with some of Carl’s plans, inventions, and constructions; it can really break the flow sometimes.

Part of the issue might be the audio format, where there’s no option to just skip past these things. But I think it’s just worth noting about the series!

“Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!”

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a genuinely fun fantasy story told through a fairly unique lens, with moments of humour and heart but also of tragedy and rage.

I think it artfully shows the parallels between all of our numbers-go-up games and our world which tells us to keep accumulating wealth and materials at all cost. Both the Dungeon and Late Stage Capitalism demand that we throw empathy, community, and individual thought under the bus in order to secure our own perilous future in a world we have no control over.

And I hope Dungeon Crawler Carl continues to demonstrate the importance of empathy, community, and individual thought in resisting those same systems. Whether by family or fireworks, I’m very much looking forward to seeing Carl tear the system down.

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

A lovely new Avatar song about living more in the moment (I think)

Queer Cheers

This upcoming weekend marks my city’s Pride Celebration, in its 45th year and apparently the second largest such event in the world.

It feels a little strange to realize that I haven’t really focused on Pride Month around here this year. But I think it’s an essential aspect of my writing year-round, which is perhaps more important than one month of screaming about it all together?

And that seems like an important parallel to my relationship with Pride overall: that I honestly identify with and take more joy in everyday queerness than in the overwhelming spectacle. Not that I don’t see the real historic, current, and future importance of being loud and proud—but as with so many things, maybe it’s okay for different people to play different roles.

This past year especially, I’m thankful to say that I’ve been a part of and experiencing queer community every week if not every day. It’s hard to express how much of a positive impact it’s had on me—not just in affirmation and meeting people with similar interests, but also in shaping the way I think and providing me a degree of separation from the general culture I find so alien and alienating.

Anyway, this weekend I’m also participating in the 30th annual pride & remembrance run on behalf of that wonderful community and a few incredibly important organizations working towards a safer and kinder world. I’ve never asked for pledges around here, so instead please consider donating a few bucks to my fundraising page if you’re able!

Exciting New Stories

I also wanted to briefly discuss a few items which are currently taking up space in my head! As with my previous ‘catching up‘ post, I hope you’ll bear with me as I tidy up my ADHD mind in preparation for more focused pieces to come.

I’ve said once or twice before that Midnight Mass is probably my favourite TV show that’s ever been made, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m currently enthralled with the newly released Widow’s Bay. (I was thinking of trying to binge the latter half of the season in order to fully discuss it today, but I think waiting and savoring it is healthier on all fronts.)

No spoilers today beyond the show’s premise, which is of an isolated island community experiencing a terrible supernatural curse. Where Midnight Mass took that prompt to delve into the heart and soul of its characters and beautifully explore topics of addiction and faith, Widow’s Bay instead follows a mayor desperate to establish their town as a tourist destination. The show (so far) executes both its horror and dark, deadpan comedy wonderfully—as long as you’re willing to genuinely pay attention, because it isn’t in the habit of spoon-feeding anything to viewers scrolling on their phones.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is another SFF series that’s grown to enormous popularity in the last couple years while looking quite different from the speculative fiction I tend to read and write about. It’s a LitRPG, meaning it heavily incorporates elements of tabletop roleplaying games—such as character stats, monsters, quests and overall progression fantasy—into the reading experience.

I won’t pitch you on it yet, but I’ll admit I’m enjoying it more than I expected (especially since I bounced hard off of the first LitRPG book I tried). It’s mostly just entertainment for entertainment sake so far—I’m almost done the second novel in the series—but there’s also an interesting anti-capitalist sentiment which I’m informed becomes far more central in later books. Anyway, quite entertaining and the audiobooks have been a welcome companion to my runs and walks over the past two weeks.

K.J. Parker’s Making History was the pick for one of my book clubs this month, and it was a treat to return to this deadpan and cynical man’s mind after spending over a year away. This new novella plays with many of the same tropes and ideas as his The Siege trilogy, particularly the tricky relationships between power, accepted truth, and reality.

I thought Parker’s ideas were incredibly important back in Fall 2024, and while I wasn’t wrong, I couldn’t foresee just how omnipresent they would become in the world of accidental and intentional AI misinformation. Social media and the rapid news cycle allow rapid proliferation of these untruths, and make it so much easier for people to take in the content without seeing the fact-checking (occasionally) being done in comment sections.

And believe me, I’m all too aware of the irony that my almost two-year-old shitty AI-generated art remains the only portraits of Parker’s The Siege characters online. If I have money someday, I’d love to commission actual art for these characters and more, but for now, alas. K.J. Parker is utterly fascinated by ideas of what is genuine vs. simulacra and has either found or implanted a similar mindset in me, and yet it’s still terrifying to see these ideas come to life around us. So I fully recommend Making History as an easy jumping off point into Parker’s larger bibliography, if those ideas are interesting to you too!

Celebration

Regardless of my personal relationship with huge Pride festivities, hugely successful new book series and the truthfulness of art, I want to remind myself (and perhaps anyone reading) to take the chance to celebrate when we can.

I was a very different person when I started this blog two and a half years ago; isolated and anxious, worried to an extent that I’d already read all the good and interesting speculative fiction that existed. Clearly I couldn’t have been more wrong, as fascinating new stories come out every month and help me see the world in new ways. Likewise I continue to meet and get to know more people, and continue to grow as a result. It’s worth celebrating!

So happy Pride, happy storytelling and happy beginning of summer!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

Indigenous Horror

I read Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians (2020) for a recent book club and felt compelled to discuss it briefly here. Despite it not being a flashy new release itself, the novel does have a sequel coming later this year: Off the Reservation (2026) will pick up with one of the surviving characters a few years after the events of this first book.

Stephen Graham Jones is also the author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025), a critically acclaimed masterpiece which recently won the Bram Stoker and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. I took a close look at the book’s morals and depictions of history and of vampires back in December, which you can find here.

SGJ is a truly prolific author, having published over thirty novels, novellas and short story collections since the year 2000. (As a matter of fact, he announced another new novella while I was in the process of writing this article.) He is also fiercely dedicated to this genre of Indigenous Horror, portraying genuine Indigenous experiences through the lens of supernatural terror, and pulling from traditional Indigenous storytelling to do so.

June is also National Indigenous History Month in Canada, and I’d recommend this book to anyone with the stomach for it! Even if you’re not a horror fan, consider reading other books by Indigenous authors: I’ve written about Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and am a big fan of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning and Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth. (I also just read Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A Minor Chorus and enjoyed it, though it’s quite a heady, philosophical experience.) I’m always looking to expand my horizons, so feel free to send any other recommendations my way!

But without further ado, let’s head into spoilers for The Only Good Indians.

Cyclical Violence

Fundamentally, and as I’ll discuss more in the next section, The Only Good Indians is about the inherent conflict and claustrophobic nature of Indigenous Peoples trying to navigate life on and off of reservations.

It is also essentially a slasher, with most of its characters simply trying to avoid violent ends rather than doing much learning and planning in their own right—like if King Sorrow was told from the perspective of the dragon’s victims, rather than of his summoners. As a result, the plot is fairly straightforward—though its supernatural mechanics remain quite fluid and vague.

Ten years before the beginning of the story, four young Blackfeet men—Ricky, Lewis, Gabe and Cass—were hunting on the last day of the season and were impatient to make names for themselves as men and provide for their communities. Thinking no one would know the difference, they entered an area of hunting ground traditionally and legally reserved for elders and quickly stumbled upon an entire peaceful herd of elk.

Unthinkingly, the four did what they had been preparing all their lives to do and massacred the confused herd even as the weather took a severe turn to a blizzard. Against all odds, Lewis sees one young elk survived and shoots it several more times before realizing it was pregnant. He insists on burying the fetus and taking every part of the mother even as his friends realize they won’t be able to carry out the vast majority of the herd if they hope to get their truck out of the quickly deepening snow. In the end, they’re caught by the reservation’s game warden and are only allowed to take away the elk mother.

In the present-day prologue, we see Ricky murdered by a mob outside of a bar who blame him for damaging their vehicles—though from his point of view we see a large elk was truly responsible. We see Lewis begin experiencing visions of the dead elk mother, and watch over the course of chapters as his paranoia grows and grows, suspecting both his new co-worker Shaney and his wife Peta of being manifestations of the elk come to torment him. He ultimately kills both of them and tries to run back to the reservation before being stopped and gunned down by police. (He takes an elk calf from Peta’s apparently pregnant body and it escapes after he’s shot, quickly growing into the Elk Head Woman who is indeed here for revenge.)

Gabe and Cass remain on the reservation, and we find them preparing a sweat ceremony for Nate, a troubled young man from their tribe. Gabe is the absentee father of Denorah, a fourteen-year-old basketball player who quickly becomes the actual protagonist of the book. A long and tense scene at the sweat lodge sees the Elk Head Woman manage to manipulate Gabe and Cass into conflict with each other. Gabe murders Cass, thinking he’d shot Denorah, then shoots himself on the Elk Head Woman’s promise that doing so would stop her from going after his actual daughter.

Denorah arrives in the morning to check in on the sweat and quickly realizes the Elk Head Woman (disguised as Shaney) is more than she appears. She runs, challenges the monster to a basketball contest, and runs some more, finally arriving at the scene of the elk massacre. Her adopted father arrives—the same game warden, though I’m only realizing that now—alerted by a barely surviving Nate, and is prepared to shoot the Elk Head Woman, but Denorah stops him, and in doing so stops the cycle of generational violence that had encompassed them.

Living up to Expectations

Cycles are important to much of Indigenous storytelling, and I think Stephen Graham Jones employs them powerfully here. The four men’s massacre of the elk herd was an act of instinct, but was built upon lifetimes of their society defining what a successful young man looks like—even though that definition had grown further and further from actual, respectful traditions. When the cycle turns and the Elk Head Woman comes seeking revenge, she does so following the same terms as were dealt to her: almost thoughtless death, without mercy.

Though, one of the most fascinating parts of this book to me is how the Elk Head Woman (and whatever metaphysical form she took before being birthed from Peta) manipulates the four men into violence and death, rather than getting her own hands or antlers dirty. Does she recognize that they were also (arguably) societally manipulated into massacring the herd? Thus shaping her cyclical revenge in the same way? She certainly seems intent on personally killing Denorah, perhaps reflecting Lewis personally burying her own elk fetus?

By far the most powerful motif, in my opinion, is that of imagined news headlines. Before he dies in the prologue, Ricky pictures the headline “Indian Man Killed in Dispute Outside Bar”—knowing that his subjective life and current supernatural terror will be reduced to a nameless statistic. Lewis does the same, though his imagined headlines are more focused on being seen as representative of or otherwise betraying his people—constantly seeing himself through the white/American gaze and guilt for having left the reservation.

And of course, Gabe and Cass do learn of their friends’ deaths from very similar headlines, demonstrating that this isn’t paranoia but simply frustration with reality. Though these two are less prone to such imaginings—generally being less interested in or exposed to those perspectives since they’ve always lived on the reservation—Gabe does envision all the reasons he’ll be blamed for the sweat lodge massacre:

“He’s the one they’re going to say did it, who cares why. Because he’s an Indian with a Bad Track Record. Because a Tribal Police Office Came Out. Because He Didn’t Like His Other Friend’s Fiancée. Because His Mind Boiled Out in a Sweat. Because His Murderer Friend Just Got Shot. Because the Great White Stepfather Stole All Their Land and Fed Them Bad Meat. Because the Game Warden Wouldn’t Let Him Get His Own Meat. Because His Father Reported Him for Stealing a Rifle. Because the Rifle Was Haunted by War. Because because because. He did it for all those reasons and whatever else the newspapers can dream up.” —SGJ, The Only Good Indians

Denorah once again bends and redefines the trend by imagining only sports news headlines for herself, showing her focus on both pursuing her dream and changing the narrative that has for so long followed and defined her people. Again working to break the cycle and tread new ground.

Breaking Free

The end of the novel sees (Final Girl) Denorah survive and implies she will indeed go on to become a basketball star. And thank goodness, because her fakeout death at the sweat lodge massacre was a truly brutal kick in the stomach. Her success and escape from the cycles trapping her is delivered as a deeply felt point of hope: the book’s title comes from signs and chants at her basketball games—”The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian”, “Off the Reservation” and more.

But, while Denorah’s success is hopefully reshaping narratives towards Indigenous Peoples, it’s probably not making a significant impact on the day to day lives of even her own reservation. As with so many speculative fiction tales, one person escaping is nice, but real societal change is the goal.

And I have to imagine that the sequel, Off the Reservation (2026), will be grappling with that issue to some degree. Though it’s named after another of those hateful phrases thrown at Denorah, the book apparently follows Nate—very much indicating to me that the focus will indeed be on Denorah’s people rather than on her individual success.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It’s not as deep or ambitious as The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, but is still surprisingly full of heart and meaning for being a relatively short slasher novel. There’s something to this Stephen Graham Jones; consider checking out his work!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

What is this book? (No Spoilers)

The Will of the Many (2023) by James Islington is marketed as epic fantasy, a classification which immediately resonates with its size—nearly eight hundred pages long—and that it is only the beginning of a three- or four-book series.

If you’ve read my post from last week on the dangers of romance-as-reward tropes in science fiction and fantasy, you’ll already have some idea that this won’t be my most glowing review. But for what it’s worth, it also won’t be my harshest: unlike with Katabasis, I certainly wasn’t left feeling like the author gave up halfway through.

My main issue with The Will of the Many, which I’ll get into further in spoiler territory below, is that it is doing very little that is new or interesting. Granted, that’s partially down to my personal exhaustion with many of these tropes—it’s not hard to see why this book would come off better to readers with less experience of the genre.

So while we’re here in the spoiler-free zone, I’ll share some similar stories and a few alternate recommendations to give you a sense of this book.

Red Rising and Empire of Silence are the most strikingly similar books I’ve read, but insert any narrative about a young man seeking revenge against empire here and you won’t be too far off the mark. Probably more universally relatable is simply The Hunger Games, which I’ll return to further on.

If you’re like me and are more interested in novel and boundary-pushing stories than reading the ‘next best’ edition of the same old formula, I think Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s City of Last Chances are far more interesting and engaging explorations of anti-imperialism.

On the other end of things, if you just want a more fun magic-adventure-in-fantasy-Rome, I quite enjoyed the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher (lost Roman legion enters world with elemental Pokémon and wolfmen and Zerg).

But I guess we’re here for a reason, aren’t we. Let’s get into spoilers ahead.

A Familiar Synopsis

Vis is our hero, born Prince Diago of the island nation of Suus before his family were killed and land taken by the Catenan Republic, forcing him to go into hiding. Despite being only seventeen, his noble education and difficult life since have shaped him to be both incredibly smart and a badass in a fight! (Paul Atreides who? Can’t wait for Chalamet to be cast as Vis too.)

It’s in this early section that we learn just about all there is to know about this world’s magic system. After a ritual involving the Aurora Columnae (white pillars that are relics from another era), people in this world are able to cede their Will (half their life force and intellect) to those above them in a strict pyramid-shaped hierarchy. Vis has managed to avoid the Columnae and ceding, so retains his full individual Will while beating up Septimii (who wield Will equivalent to 2.5 people) and even a Sextus (9.25) in his underground fights.

Suddenly, Vis is being adopted by Magnus Quintus Ulciscor, who wants someone untouched by the Columnae to attend, infiltrate and investigate the elite Catenan Academy. They encounter the violent rebel group the Anguis along the way, one of whom is secretly Vis’s new mother; Vis is trained more and harder by Lanistia; lots of politics, and hints at schemes, and baths; then finally Vis is in the Academy.

Let’s be honest, the Academy is the reason this book succeeds—echoing The Name of the Wind and Fourth Wing and Transphobic ScarBoy and Ender’s Game and Red Rising and on and on. I’ve read it before and so have you. So I hope you’ll forgive my not delving into every moment of interpersonal drama or Vis’s quest to rapidly rise through the ranks.

It’s Vis’s time sneaking out of the school that’s actually interesting to me, wherein he finds more relics and ruins from bygone eras, hinting at alternate realities and gruesome means of traveling between them. It’s revealed that the Academy’s Labyrinth test is a recreation of a deadly trial involved in achieving Synchronism, apparently important to reaching these other worlds.

Would you believe it: the school year ends with a battle royale and oh—the drama. [Insert how much I care here.] Vis successfully runs the real Labyrinth and comes back with mysterious new abilities; the epilogue reveals that he’s actually been cloned into one of (probably both) the other worlds simultaneously.

The Great and the Good

If you can’t tell from my tone, I really want to dislike this book. Yet I have to admit it’s a functional, decently well-structured story with a clever allegory for our world defined by late-stage capitalism.

The Catenan Republic makes ceding Will to your ‘betters’ an essential aspect of living in their society, just as we’re obligated to participate in the economy as workers and consumers. Those who refuse in the book can be placed in ‘sappers’, which painfully drain Will while keeping their victims on the maddening edge of consciousness. Prison labour in our world isn’t much better, forcing people into the system while denying them most of the benefits.

The people at the top, whether gathering the Will of thousands or sitting on billions of dollars, are still only human—certainly not morally elevated by their power, despite society’s worship and respect for them—and only hungry for more. It’s the kind of simple yet potent symbolism that we all wish we’d come up with ourselves.

(I will briefly note that I think Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker has a much more interesting depiction of one person holding the life force of thousands in the God King Susebron, though: I haven’t yet seen a Princeps in this series, and Warbreaker lacks the larger hierarchical allegory.)

And yeah, the mysteries around all the history, relics, other worlds and the Labyrinth were just plain cool. Estevan’s alien abilities and the hinted connection to Suus and Vis’s parents added to my fascination.

(Though, I think Mark Lawrence did many of the same things first and better in the Book of the Ancestor trilogy, where the Blade-Path—a simpler Labyrinth—was secretly a physical stand-in for the process of accessing the Quantal Path and was connected to many secrets of the world.)

The Tired and Frustrating

I think I’ve already made many of my gripes clear about the many tropes The Will of the Many is built and succeeded on. In addition, if I had any patience left for this type of protagonist after Red Rising and Empire of Silence, Vis has now utterly depleted it—as Ryland Grace did for the geeky sci-fi protagonists when I read Project Hail Mary.

(I do want to say, The Will of the Many is at least far better than Empire of Silence at masking and reimagining its many significant inspirations.)

This book also doesn’t portray queerness, race, gender, disability or even economic class in any interesting ways. (Vis is subtly implied to be dark-skinned, not that [any?] official or fan artists got the memo—see him looking rather white popping out of the marble above.)

Does it portray any of those things outright badly? No, it just prefers not to engage.

But that’s the thing, right? Can you have an effective critique of capitalism and imperialism that refuses to engage with any actual aspects of oppression, let alone their intersectionalities? And frankly while having the protagonist continue to luxuriate in his noble station and all it entails?

And like with Vis as the protagonist, the issue isn’t that The Will of the Many is an offensive outlier—it’s that these soft, somewhat hypocritical ‘critiques’ have become the norm. The bestselling norm, even.

Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, has lamented the way the dire warnings of her series have repeatedly been diluted, sidestepped and misinterpreted. She even raises this quote from David Hume, particularly apt for The Will of the Many:

“Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.”

Yet repeated exposure has failed to overturn our corrupt systems—if anything, it may be serving as an inoculation against actual change. Since everyone is aware (that everyone is aware) that something is wrong, we’re all individually less likely to act. The Bystander Effect, Narcotization dysfunction, Jester’s Privilege, what have you.

(I may still write more on it, but I think today’s song ‘Spillways’ is likewise about how repentance and prayer can’t fully absolve inner torment, let alone fix the real world around us.)

And I’d argue that by being so milquetoast in its critique of the system (while simultaneously winning big in the system), The Will of the Many is strongly representative of the problem as a whole.

Copy and Paste

On the other hand, maybe this is someone’s first glimpse at seeing these ideas explored and represented in science fiction and fantasy, and maybe it resonates with them as other stories did for me. I certainly hope so!

The book does offer a touch of real philosophical debate between Vis and the Anguis: the rebels see every Catenan person as guilty for their participation in the system and therefore deserving of death, while Vis sees the lack of alternatives available to the vast majority. It’s not much, but it’s at least raising the question of personal responsibility.

The idea of Vis being copied sounds neat at first, but I’m tired enough of one of the guy. Still, learning more about the mysteries of the world will probably draw me to at least try The Strength of the Few before passing judgment.

As I think I said with Katabasis, I wouldn’t be this harsh or verbose if this wasn’t a solid, promising book in a lot of ways. If you enjoyed it, I’m glad! I also hope you’ll go on to read more of what the genre has to offer.

Read it, read one of the dozen other books I listed—you do you!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

(A haunting song about being isolated from reality)

Context & Intent

As with many of my articles, this one was born from a chaotic confluence of inspirations. Chief among them, though, has to be my ongoing experience reading James Islington’s The Will of the Many (2023). I was hoping to finish it in time to review today, but it’s a thick tome — even listening to it at 1.6x speed — so that will have to wait for next week.

I’ll hold back most of my feelings about the novel until then, but one element of it did lead me to a realization about much of SFF romance in general.

Having read such varied and unique books lately, The Will of the Many genuinely surprised me by being so devoted to genre conventions. Perhaps those familiar beats serving as backdrop helped identify the protagonist’s romance subplot as something that was weighing on me.

And it’s not really even the fault of this book, that Vis/Diago passively attracts and eventually enters a relationship with his classmate Emissa. We’re at least told that they’ve spent pleasant time together; many authors don’t even offer that much.

And that’s the realization: that it’s standard genre practice to inform readers about romance rather than showing it. Not problematic in and of itself, of course, until you see it’s almost always male protagonists passively attracting partners simply by virtue of being themselves.

The intent feels very gendered to me; the idea that these SFF stories are for boys and romance stories are for girls. But ultimately, don’t both take the awkward and emotional complications out of actual human interactions in favour of telling a thrilling and enjoyable tale for readers to insert themselves into?

Now, the fact that these are genre conventions is supposed to help alleviate the issue: readers should be cognizant that these stories are eliding realistic romance for entertainment purposes.

But what does it say that I’m only fully putting this together now? As an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid and teen, I learned almost everything from stories. It’s really only in my (late?) twenties that the switch has flipped toward critical thought and analysis.

And the generations of kids consuming stories like these and worse, with their critical thinking skills at a profound low? The parallel to resurgent conservative ideas around male entitlement and traditional gender roles are hard to ignore.

Harmful Lessons

Another minor inspiration for this article is, and go with me on this, porn. (Someone in one of my book clubs compared it to social media, and it resonates!) In fact, isn’t our current world entirely built on selling attractive and uncomplicated lies and half-truths? A related phrase I’ve recently seen: “sex doesn’t sell; voyeurism does.” The idea being that frictionless, risqué illusions of authenticity are far more attractive than navigating actual reality.

The informed romance trope in SFF is cut from the same cloth, depicting easy and happy relationships just coming the protagonist’s way. It suggests that romance is a guaranteed reward for being a ‘nice guy’. In traditional Romance stories, the mirrored perspective is all too familiar: true love is just about being accepting and subservient to Prince Charming.

As I alluded to above, these lessons infected my understanding of the world when I was younger. Stories like The Princess Bride (at least on a surface level), Eragon and Transphobic Wizard Child — as well as the early Disney Princess movies and who knows what else — established romance as just being an uncomplicated and expected part of life. And as with any time our understanding of the world conflicts with reality (triply so for neurodivergent folks), I felt angry, scared and hurt when that was proven untrue.

I moved past it and eventually learned! But you don’t have to look far online to see whole bacterial cultures of people who didn’t, as well as those who stayed too long in abusive and harmful situations because they believed those stories about true love.

And I’m just left wondering, why? Why is informed romance so often a necessary reward for these heroes? Frodo and Luke did just fine. Something about masculinity, or society’s underlying fear of being alone?

A brief aside: there are many things to be said about Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind (2007) and The Wise Man’s Fear (2011) at another time, but trying to think about them in terms of this informed romance trope is an absolute headache. We’re told Denna is Kvothe’s true love but she flits in and out ceaselessly, Fela throws herself at him and is warded off, Ari approaches more cautiously (as he does with her) — then the second book has him thrown into intimate encounters with his teacher Vashet and legendary Fae Felurian. It’s almost another level of male fantasy, despite starting out much more complex and interesting.

Queers do it better? (Happy Pride Month!)

You might notice that I keep saying SFF and spelling out science fiction and fantasy rather than calling these stories speculative fiction, and here’s where I admit I’m making a fundamentally inane distinction. Because while these stories are by definition speculative, they feel like they belong to another era, where heterosexual romance was as much the goal as slaying the dragon or recalibrating the planar tesseract.

In a certain way, I think queer theory and speculative fiction go hand in hand: both thinking and existing beyond established conventions to find novel perspectives and experiences. Queer authors are rarely going to elide the beginning of a romance because even today, those situations can feel just as speculative as unicorns and FTL — in addition to the importance of representing queer experiences to all audiences.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant and The Locked Tomb and Winter’s Orbit (I could go on) depict messy, often tragic queer relationships as part of telling profound speculative fiction stories, and they are all much better for it. Romance isn’t a reward or a sub-objective, it’s baked into these characters’ lives and informs how they navigate the world.

And of course, this isn’t an absolute truth: I’m sure there are plenty of queer stories out there sticking to genre conventions; and I can also shout out series like Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings and Megan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief for portraying deep and complex straight relationships for their male protagonists.

(In researching this, I’ve also spoiled myself that The Will of the Many doesn’t stick to this trope forever. Alas. It’s also doing a nice allegory for capitalism, which puts it more in the speculative side of things. But more on that next week.)

Thanks for reading (and enduring what was probably a lot of obvious observations for most of you) and until next time ❤

Master List of Prose and Context Articles

Click here to view my archive of posts on Substack. You can search it for keywords to find posts on ADHD, queerness, book titles, authors, reviews, specific themes and more. You can also sort by those with the most views and those with comments.

Last time I tried to make and maintain a list, but assigning each article exactly one category quickly became patently ridiculous: just take my review of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which should absolutely be listed under both my Vampires series and my book reviews, plus ideally under a topic related to colonialism. I looked into creating a spreadsheet with appropriate tags... but in the end I think the Substack archive is going to be just as effective 99% of the time. If you prefer, you can try the same on Medium or my website, though I think Substack’s search function is currently the most useful.

Reflecting on Last Time

It’s been a little over fourteen months – roughly half the life of Prose and Context – since the previous iteration of this post, which you can find here. I won’t reiterate everything I said therein, but I hope it’s a useful comparison and marker for how far we’ve come in the past year.

I’ll be the first one to say that Prose and Context looks very different today than it did in March 2025 and before. I barely understood formatting, never mind managing consistency in it. I’m sad to remember that for a few months in 2024 I was using AI art, before more firmly realizing that sharing properly attributed human art is just better for everyone.

For whatever reason, I was also dead-set on my little series and categories: “Swift Riffle” and “Lyrical” and “Starting Points” and the like, which were probably helpful in getting me writing but became constraining over time and were certainly an absolute bane to SEO.

As I said at the time, I’m incredibly proud of the seven or so months I was writing two articles here per week. The structure and productivity of those days was eye-opening, as was the ever-creeping danger of creative burnout. Since then I’ve found a healthy social life and new hobby, and have fallen back in love with stories and storytelling – be it in books, music, film or elsewhere.

My Promise (May 2026)

My promise to my readers is to weekly share my researched perspective on a piece of media or a trend in media. With rare exceptions, my intent is for each article: to be relevant to navigating and understanding the world around us, to share a piece of media that is meaningful to me, and to reflect on my personal journey and growth.

You may have noticed that while my previous categories of posts have faded away, my Book Reviews & Analyses have become more and more frequent recently. It turns out people are far more likely to read them, and it’s also been far more comfortable for me to simply lay out all my thoughts on a book at once, rather than trying to keep many books’ details in my head for when I happen to find overlaps.

Not every post will be a book review, but I think going forward it will be a fairly even ratio of reviews and other posts – perhaps even alternating. My reviews will always open with a spoiler free section, including either a recommendation of the book or of stronger alternatives. Beyond that, I promise to live up to the title and offer world-relevant analysis rather than simple regurgitation of the plot.

Oar Up, Head Down

Another thing you may have noticed is my recent fascination with the music of Avatar, and today’s article got me properly thinking about their song ‘Captain Goat’ (video above and off the same recent album as ‘Death and Glitz’) for the first time.

The dark metal sea shanty is sung from the perspective of a ship’s crew facing storm and rocks, putting all their faith and hope in Captain Goat to row them home. The repeated “oar up, head down” reflects that they must obey and work, and never think for themselves.

It’s literally the stuff of cults and fascism and late stage capitalism. And yet when I made the connection earlier today, it was a positive association with consistently putting the work into this blog, somewhat blindly trusting in another creative and hopeful side of myself.

Of course, the video ends with the crew unceremoniously falling overboard and drowning, while their fearless guide and leader continues on. If only there was a lesson there...

Perhaps the song and music video deserve a more thorough look at some point! But at least for today, they’ve been a powerful reminder to be mindful and thoughtful, and to enjoy the strange ironies when and where they arise.

And what’s this post about if not mindfulness; reassessing rather than continuing unthinkingly in the direction I was previously going?

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

“All Hail the King”

Where do you start with a tome like this? Straightforwardly, I suppose.

King Sorrow (2025) by Joe Hill is a 897-page work of horror/fantasy – that genre descriptor being conveyed quite effectively at even a first glance by the dragon’s head adorning the cover, featuring both a bloody pentagram on its forehead and a crowd of figures illuminated in its fiery maw.

I want to spoil as little as possible in this top section, partly because the journey of discovery about this book’s scope and subject matter was so rewarding for me.

On the other hand, I think it’s fair to discuss a little of the book’s background and influences – mostly in hopes that it will convince more folks to give the book a shot. Though he writes under a pen name in order to work, live and succeed outside his father’s shadow, Joe Hill was born Joseph Hillström King, to a certain Stephen King.

And I don’t bring that connection up to pad word count or idly gossip: in many ways, King Sorrow is a heartfelt tribute to Stephen King’s life work. Hill includes easter eggs large and small to King’s books – the main one I noticed, as a moderately knowledgeable fan at best, being to The Gunslinger.

But I also found that this felt like a King novel, both structurally and thematically, while also standing magnificently as its own work. I’ve written before about my favourite King stories, The Shining and Doctor Sleep, and I deeply appreciate how King Sorrow likewise explores characters’ journeys and relationships with alcohol – a topic of extreme importance to King.

But without further ado let’s jump into the meat of the book. As always, consider checking it out for yourself before proceeding! Spoilers ahead.

Raising the Stakes

King Sorrow follows a group of six characters: Arthur Oakes, Colin Wren, twins Donovan (Van) and Donna McBride, Allison (Allie) Shiner and Gwen Underfoot. The six become attached while the former five are students at the fictional Rackham College, with Gwen being the daughter of Colin’s family’s caretaker who joins and befriends them.

The premise is simple enough to begin. Arthur’s mother, Erin Oakes, is serving a sentence for manslaughter – having tried to save the life of an injured officer while trespassing in a pacifist protest. Jayne Nighswander, daughter of Erin’s fellow inmate Daphne Nighswander, begins threatening Erin’s life in order to have Arthur steal rare books for her from Rackham’s library.

This escalates until Arthur is forced to steal the grim and mysterious Crane Journal, around the same time a public confrontation finally has him bringing his friends in on the situation. Before turning the Journal over to Jayne, the group spends an alcohol- and marijuana-filled day reading the text, and by evening have decided to attempt a ritual it describes: to summon and bargain with the dragon King Sorrow. (Reminiscent of scenes in The Secret History and The Magicians, and certainly symbolic of addled bad ideas the world over.)

The ritual is fantastic and fantastical, and the audiobook narrator makes a wonderful meal out of every single line from the dragon. Ultimately, the group succeeds in sending King Sorrow after Jayne Nighswander and her boyfriend, with the agreement that someone has to die on Easter morning, no matter what. Days later, they realize this was not in fact a drug-induced hallucination, and eventually attempt to warn Jayne and Ronnie into fleeing.

Working together the group easily and deftly overpower Jayne and Ronnie and give them the bare facts. Although the book doesn’t say it outright, it’s tragic to see how easily the problem could’ve been solved without them employing the nuclear option.

Not that the warning matters; Jayne roasts and Ronnie is chewed into a dozen pieces. Then, the following year, King Sorrow returns to ask who’ll be dying this Easter. And thus the Faustian tragedy truly begins to unfold.

It’s funny to look back at my early thoughts on the book, imagining Jayne and Ronnie as the main antagonists rather than the pitiful victims of the book’s prelude; imagining the setting would stay confined to Rackham College in the 1980s. Not so much. In fact, every time I thought I had a grasp on King Sorrow‘s scope, I was pages away from having the rug pulled out from under me.

That’s as much linear plot as I’ve got room for, though I’ll reference plenty of later events and themes as I get into analyzing King Sorrow‘s characters and morals below. As a matter of fact, I’ve only spoiled as much as the back of the book does so far – a fair example of why I try to never read those.

Test of Character

King Sorrow begins with Arthur’s point-of-view, but eventually expands to give each of the six significant time in the spotlight – both to follow their current narrative and to get a closer, personal look at important moments in their pasts.

Arthur himself is pretty much a good guy, though not someone to go out of his way to find a perfect solution when a simpler, decent one is put before him. Thus, stealing the books, summoning the dragon, and later continually agreeing with Colin’s picks for King Sorrow’s targets. I love that Arthur goes on to be a professor and to uncover other supernatural aspects of the world, I love his self-help/activism book on modern dragon-slaying, and I deeply appreciate seeing a Black character as the book’s primary protagonist. Other than an awkward early intimate scene which is more fully explained much later, he’s the simple and likeable rock upon which the story is founded.

Colin is pretty much everything wrong with the world. The wealthy one of the group, Colin is easily the most interested in King Sorrow from the moment he gets his hands on the Crane Journal. After Jayne’s death and while the rest are still coming to terms with their guilt, he begins researching and suggesting individuals from among the most evil in the world to send King Sorrow after each year. Over the decades of the book’s story, he becomes a billionaire tech CEO and it’s revealed that some of his targets were slightly more personal – wiping out the competition – than he led his friends to believe. An essential contrast between Arthur and Colin is their polar opposite views of technology, which Joe Hill sets up and pays off very well, painful as it may be.

Donovan is another good guy, and mostly a balancing weight for his twin. Big spoilers: He dies first, and honestly his loss feels significantly more important than his presence did.

Donna is forever scarred from watching a friend be abducted as a child. Her survivor’s guilt long ago became infected with xenophobic rage, leading her to express wildly conservative views early in the book and later become a literal Fox News anchor. When rifts begin to form in the group, she is swayed to Colin’s side by horrible lies that nonetheless match her paranoid and hateful worldview. It’s Donna who most memorably says “All Hail the King”, because unlike Colin’s calculations and schemes, Donna just loves that King Sorrow makes her imagined enemies burn.

Allison hurts, y’all. She’s lesbian, and was sent to conversion therapy in her teens where she was sexually assaulted and told that her attraction to women was a form of self-punishment – a horrible ‘lesson’ she spends most of the book believing. In love with Donna, who later uses this to manipulate her awfully, and in a messy relationship with Donovan, she takes up the bottle early and struggles with alcoholism for a long time. Thankfully (and all but uniquely among the cast), she finds happiness and self-redemption toward the end.

Gwen’s great where Arthur’s good, having immense empathy and going out of her way to improve people’s lives. Guilty about her role in bringing King Sorrow into the world and the lives he takes, Gwen becomes a paramedic and saves thousands – though of course it’s never enough. She picks up main protagonist duties from Arthur at a certain point and it works wonderfully.

Morals & Morality

King Sorrow‘s epilogue all but breaks the fourth wall in coming out and saying that the eponymous dragon is a metaphor for American drone strikes and ideas of preventative killings in general. Gwen and Robin (a wonderful trans woman who joins the cast about halfway through the book) continue to watch cataclysmic fires unfolding even after King Sorrow has been dealt with, and realize that theirs wasn’t the only dragon in the world.

It feels to me as though Hill added that scene (markedly in 2022) out of frustration with current events and a desire to have King Sorrow make a lasting impression on readers. On the other hand, Colin’s character has become far more real since 2022 with the rise of Peter Thiel and Palantir. How different is a malevolent dragon from an AI?

The characters of King Sorrow spend a lot of time considering the ramifications of their actions, and Joe Hill does a great job tying it all into real historical events. As with real life, how many new threats are created every time one is preventatively eliminated?

In addition to the book’s exploration of homophobia, alcoholism, manipulation, transphobia, racism, online (and literal) trolls, the nature of power and so much more, it offers a reminder that we’re all ultimately human. Allison and later even hate-spewing Donna ultimately find themselves and course correct. Colin’s obsession with power and control consume him in the end, but in his final moments we see the terrified boy underneath the facade.

From the Heart

I loved this book, and I find it abundantly clear that Joe Hill does too. A few other highlights, then a couple critiques, then I’ll say farewell.

I really enjoyed Daphne Nighswander’s interludes, a shot fired at the group from almost the beginning of the novel and which only hits them near the end. All the dragon and other fantasy stuff was excellent, as were the important supporting characters like Robin, Erin, Tana and Llewellyn. It’s fascinating that drinking King Sorrow’s tears is described as such a pleasant death, one’s soul igniting – listen to today’s song above which I think is a great fit!(There’s certainly more, but only so much time and space.)

Critiques (all framed by more positives apparently):

• while it’s fantastic to have the final confrontation be all women up against the dragon, I found the sudden emphasis on so much witty banter between them a little jarring

• I loved the idea of the government coming in and trying to first eliminate, then harness King Sorrow for themselves, and their sudden kidnapping of the McBrides – but hard to believe they really just gave up and walked away forever after Easter

• the group all have tattoos that let them summon King Sorrow in self-defense, and it comes with a price of rapidly aging them (very cool!) except Allie uses it a bunch to avoid capture and we never see it affecting her?

• King Sorrow is a highlight of King Sorrow, go figure. The nightmares Jayne experiences are simply incredible – especially being broadcast into Arthur and Gwen’s heads as they are. Sadly, that aspect of him rarely comes up later on, even when one of the main characters becomes his new target! I was missing him for quite a while in the last chunk of the book, though he’s great in the final confrontation of course.

Anywho. My longest article in a while, perhaps ever, for a long and spectacular novel. Give it a read if you’re able and interested! For now, I return to the Long Dark to dream of fire.

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

Have Your Library Card?

I think I’ve mentioned once or twice in the past that The Library at Mount Char (2015) is among my favourite novels; perhaps also that I have a tradition of reading it every year in December since I first discovered Scott Hawkins’ best and only work in 2022.

I’m always on the lookout for books that can come close to the dazzling scope and imagination of what Mount Char achieves – check back next week for my review of one such rare gem – and so was intrigued when Cassandra Khaw’s The Library at Hellebore (2025) was chosen for one of my book clubs this month.

I can’t find any source to confirm Khaw was inspired by Hawkins, but I think the similar title, structure, themes and well, almost everything is conclusive enough for me. It’s certainly not a carbon copy, though, with Khaw’s intensely descriptive style an overwhelming and impossible to ignore difference.

If you’re going to read one of these novels with no more information than that, I’ll recommend The Library at Mount Char one hundred percent of the time. If you want more reasons as to why, follow me into the spoilers ahead.

On Library Premises

The Library at Mount Char follows Carolyn, kidnapped as a child along with eleven others to learn the secrets of the universe from Father – a mysterious figure bowed to by gods and monsters. The narrative alternates between defining moments of Carolyn’s past and the present, as she and her ‘siblings’ investigate Father’s disappearance. Present Carolyn is an unreliable narrator, made even more difficult to understand by our often only seeing her through the eyes of Steve and Erwin – the archetypal straight men learning about Carolyn’s world for the first time as surrogates for the reader.

The Library at Hellebore follows Alessa Li, kidnapped in her early twenties to study at The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted because she is too powerfully violent to be allowed to live in normal society. Hellebore is overseen by the mysterious Faculty, clearly extremely potent beings given their role as teachers and prison guards for the young and powerful. The narrative alternates between important moments of Alessa’s time at Hellebore and the present, as she and seven classmates struggle to survive the Faculty’s hunger and each other in a slightly contrived battle royale. Present Alessa is a partially unreliable narrator, having just murdered her roommate for reasons not explained until near the end of the book.

The Library at Mount Char’s prose is straightforward, even if on a first read the plot is nigh incomprehensible. The writing is dark, and darkly comedic, with the type of deadpan delivery that gets me every time.

The Library at Hellebore’s prose is utterly decadent with imagery, particularly when it comes to descriptions of gore and body horror. (It worked for me at first, but became overbearing before long as I searched for a character or plot thread to catch my interest.) The dialogue and certain technical choices – one early chapter introduces every character with variations of “a voice across the room spoke up” – were a little frustrating, and all humour (often crass, sometimes genuinely funny) is dished out by the designated class clown Rowan.

Of course, all of this is probably down to taste. Hellebore is marketed and likely written for fans of modern ‘dark academia’ and all that entails (often straying too close to the YA style I struggle with, though there are a number of exceptions). Mount Char, rather than aiming to fit neatly in a marketable box, was Hawkins’ attempt to stand out from the “slush pile” of manuscripts with something hard to define – and I’d argue he absolutely succeeded.

Meet the Librarians

As I hinted above, The Library at Hellebore offered me very little in the way of characters I felt attached to – even the non-binary Gracelynn and Kevin, with their unique personalities and abilities, did just about nothing for me. Alessa’s backstory with eviscerating her would-be abusers mainly had me wanting to re-watch Promising Young Woman, if anything. Most characters just get so little time that any interest I have in them is stilborn – prophesied Cicada god-inhabited Sullivan, transforming Portia and her relationship to her cult, even Rowan’s tragic origins. Cool ideas with very little substance.

Granted, the same is true for most of Carolyn’s siblings in The Library at Mount Char – whether unnamed, only named, or named with an idea of their Catalogue. But the five you get to know, you get to know deeply, and they feel tragically human. Add Steve, Erwin, perhaps Father and a lion or two, and that’s a lot of real-feeling characters to grapple with.

While Father and the Faculty are the overarching villains of their respective books, our protagonists are mainly working against rivals on their own level. Hellebore has Adam, gorgeous blond model and son of Satan well on track to become the Antichrist, if only he can keep his grades up and not get eaten by his teachers. Like everything in the book, Adam’s evil is entirely politically correct, nailing Gracelynn and Kevin’s pronouns even while mocking their deaths and eviscerating other classmates.

(Content warning: SA) Mount Char has David, whose Catalogue is warfare and who Father transformed from a cheerful and kind young boy into a maniacal psychopath. Modern society is anathema to these characters, and the novel doesn’t shy away from mental, physical and sexual violence being very real and horrifying aspects of warfare – including against David’s adopted siblings. We see the effects of his torment on Jennifer and Michael and how far he and Margaret have pushed each other; he is a target of Carolyn’s vengeance from the beginning and his further abuse only adds fuel to her rage.

I feel Carolyn’s hatred for David deeply and viscerally, even knowing the horror and tragedy that shaped him into this monstrosity. It adds to my empathy for her and elevates the tension in every scene they are together.

Hellebore‘s Adam is a fun villain once he gets going – certainly more so than the Faculty or Librarian, who turn out to just be flesh-eating monsters to be overcome – but there’s so little personal connection between him and Alessa and I’m barely inclined to root for her anyway.

The Faculty themselves are a cool idea! Beings from another world or reality harvesting the juiciest of our world’s magic in the guise of running a school/prison. But you start thinking about it for two seconds and the whole premise starts to run at the edges: why teach your food at all? Why encourage them to kill one another if you want to eat them alive? Why promise freedom to the winner of the impromptu battle royale? Why are they blind to Rowan being a death worker and all the other shenanigans the students get up to?

Father, now there’s a character. Orders of magnitude more evil than David for having created that monster in addition to everything else. But also unquestionably capital-G Good, having usurped the previous god of our universe and introduced such things as ‘love’ and ‘light’ to reality. A tough nut to crack, and a tough villain to beat.

Choose Your Book

Again, there’s a lot of genuinely fascinating ideas in The Library at Hellebore – if you can stand the gore and aren’t looking for anything too deep. A lot of reviews say it’s a well-executed look at power and relationships, the idea of fighting the need to become a monster in order to survive. Sure!

But I can say without a moment’s hesitation that Mount Char does it better. Where Hellebore ends with Alessa defeating the Faculty, Mount Char has another whole act dedicated to confronting how dehumanized Carolyn has become in her single-minded quest for vengeance. It’s profound and horrifying and incredibly important to any discussion about fighting monsters and becoming one yourself.

Look for The Library at Mount Char at your library if it sounds interesting to you! I promise it’s worth the ride, and despite the occasional graphic violence it might as well be a middle grade book compared to the descriptions in Hellebore. And hey, if you’re up for some decadent prose, give that one a read too. I certainly intend to give Khaw another shot, even if this one paled in comparison to one of my favourites.

Next week, King Sorrow. Should be fun.

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

A Tune for Today

After more than a month of book reviews and discussion, today I wanted to give a nod to a song that’s been stuck in my head for a long time – for both its unique riff and evocative message.

Today (May 5th) is also Red Dress Day, which honors the lives and memories of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirited People in Canada, The United States, and beyond. To quote from https://amnesty.ca/red-dress-day/:

• Indigenous women and girls make up less than 5% of the Canadian population but represent approximately 24% of all homicide victims. They are 12x more likely to be murdered. Over 60% of Indigenous women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.

• A statistics Canada report showed that 56% of Indigenous women experience intimate partner violence, more than double the rate for non-Indigenous people.

• Indigenous women constitute 41.4% of the federally incarcerated female population, despite representing just over 4% of the Canadian female population.

That site is an incredible resource for learning more about this issue, both historically and how it continues to threaten lives and communities today. I’ve previously written about Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, which follows Indigenous characters in a dystopian setting, and about Postcolonial Narratives & Empathy Burnout, where I discuss my own struggles with raising the flag for every single issue I’d ideally like to support.

I’ll also admit here that I didn’t plan to mesh these two topics until about two hours ago, but I think the connection is real and worth exploring. So, let’s give it a shot.

Death and Glitz

If you want a little background on (or more of) Avatar, I’ve previously written about their song “Hail the Apocalypse“, which features the immortal line ‘all flesh is equal when burnt’. A grim and shocking way to convey ideas about equality, but in my mind a truthful and effective one!

“Death and Glitz” isn’t much subtler. Johannes Eckerström, Avatar’s front man and songwriter, described the song as being about the perversion and detachment with which true crime – and the media in general – is wont to treat (particularly young and attractive) female victims.

They like you more like this
A tragedy with tits
Keep racking up the hits
They love your death and glitz
No-one more obedient than you

No pulse // Just a doll-like face and figure
Pose // For the crime investigators
Pictures of your face // Every front page
Homeless runaway
Hey, hey!

The subject, whoever she may have been, becomes defined by her gender/body and her victimhood. Any and all agency is torn away, her story a blank canvas to be twisted into any gruesome shape for the storyteller’s purposes. Her death and beauty make her so much more malleable and engaging than she ever could have been in life, with humanity and personhood.

Every single line is vicious. An earlier one – “Foam from her mouth // Finger on her wrist // Girl what did you do?” – combined with “Homeless runaway” suggests that the media is also more than willing to throw blame at her if that’s what will get them more clicks. That feels particularly relevant with regard to Red Dress Day, since so often racialized victims are assigned greater blame by the media.

(And I think the song’s meaning can be a little broader as well, possibly extending to ideas of celebrity and how – again, particularly young women’s – public images can grow beyond individual control, be shaped to fit different narratives.)

Awareness & Hope

What I deeply love about Avatar is that, while their songs are going for some of that heavy metal shock value, they are often also pointing at a real issue or idea. The band certainly doesn’t share the song’s perspective, but by assuming this gritty disco party tone to revel in this woman’s death and glitz, they’re exposing the real people and industries who are profiting off these victims.

Less than ten years ago, I was walking around the University of Toronto campus and saw red dresses hanging from a number of trees, and had no idea what it was about. Today I do, and I think there are significantly more Canadians aware of the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirited People – whether because of Red Dress Day, the National Inquiry, or the Calls for Justice which continue to demand attention almost seven years after publication.

The image of the red dress symbolizes the absence of a loved one – a person who should be present if not for systemic violence. It grants a personhood to the victim and forces the viewer to acknowledge them, in sharp contrast to the way “Death and Glitz” shows the media stripping women of their agency and identity.

As with every piece of media I cover, I wanted to write about “Death and Glitz” because it moved me in a novel way and articulated an true aspect of our world I hadn’t quite understood beforehand. Before I go, a quote from Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House:

“But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.”

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

Overview

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a second book club discussion of Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, after previously enjoying one back in October.

I had intended to write about the book back then, but for whatever reason it never quite found its way into an article, and after a certain point I suppose I forgot just how effective and haunting it was.

No longer, though, as I’m fresh off a re-read and an insightful discussion. This is a deeply fascinating book which I recommend you experience for yourself; especially if, like me, you’re a fan of eerie, absorbing mysteries and powerful metaphors.

To give a brief synopsis: Our Wives Under The Sea follows girlfriends Miri and Leah in alternating chapters. We see Leah as one of three crewmembers aboard a mysterious deep sea exploration mission which quickly goes wrong. Miri’s chapters take place after Leah’s return, with flashbacks to her life before and during Leah’s mission. Both narratives are tense and atmospheric, and explore the book’s mysteries from different angles.

Again, give it a try if you’re able and interested! But as always I also hope that my discussion might convince other folks to give it a try, or at least to enjoy the book’s narrative and message second-hand. Spoilers ahead.

The Surface Story

Leah is an experienced marine biologist who has recently begun working at the ‘Center for Marine Enquiry’, an organization consistently described as strange and unusual by different characters throughout the book.

The Center sends Leah on a three-week deep sea mission alongside Jelka and Matteo, both of whom she’s worked with previously. Almost immediately upon entering the water, their submarine loses all function except for the bare necessities to keep the crew alive. An inexplicable scent of burning meat accompanies their fall and recurs throughout.

As their craft sinks for hours or days, we see Jelka quickly turn to her religion for comfort, Matteo first grappling with the useless controls then attempting to ritually isolate himself within a ring of flashlights, and Leah sinking within herself to thoughts of Miri and the rest of her life.

Eventually the ship settles and haunting noises begin ringing out around them. Their senses of time and reality warp; Jelka begins hearing a voice in the alien noise and Matteo once lashes out with uncharacteristic violence.

Finally Jelka exits the craft while her fellows aren’t watching, presumed immediately killed by the immense pressure at that depth. Soon after the craft’s function returns, but before returning to the surface, Leah and Matteo encounter a gargantuan being which seems to observe them under its baleful gaze.

~

I’ll be focusing on Miri’s chapters more in the next section, so a lighter summary for her here. Leah is returned to her after six months, rather than the expected three weeks. But like Annihilation and Kinds of Kindness and so many other stories, Leah seems to have come back wrong.

Rarely herself and prone to spouting random facts and observations about the ocean, this Leah also becomes more and more dependent on saltwater as she simultaneously eats less and less regular food. Her skin becomes scaled and silvery in places and she leaves an inch of encrusted pink detritus behind her every time she takes a bath.

Her condition escalates; Miri can get no answers from the cagey and disappearing Center, and eventually takes a mutated and barely recognizable Leah to the sea, where she completely dissolves into the water. The end.

The Profound Depths

While my ever fascinated by speculative fiction mind is very interested in that story, the book club last night emphasized to me that for many people Leah’s journey is merely the bones holding the meat of Miri’s chapters in place. And it’s tough to argue, because the metaphors here are rich.

Miri’s flashbacks show her processing her mother’s decline and passing around the same time she met and started dating Leah. It’s an immediately potent backdrop to her current relationship with Leah, painting this decline as parallel to her mother’s.

Another perfectly justifiable reading is that this is a metaphor for Miri and Leah growing apart; Leah seeming more distant and alien with every passing day while Miri tries her best to help and adapts to do so in new ways. This is also supported by their couples therapist, who asks whether Miri fully comprehends everything Leah went through and might still be dealing with.

There’s a plethora of rich theming and parallels to be found on a first or second read. Both Miri and Leah’s chapters are claustrophobic and isolated, their every waking hour filled with unwanted noise from the neighbours’ TV and outside the ship respectively.

Jelka tells the tale of Saint Lidwina, whose suffering is an eerie echo of Leah’s later transformation. Despite being a scientist, Leah also apparently believes she has had experiences with ghosts; juicy literally or metaphorically.

All three crewmembers have profound associations with the sea prior to this mission, perhaps making them ideal candidates or simply foreshadowing their experiences and fates.

Perhaps Leah never returned and the story is an exploration of Miri’s journey with grief; perhaps she did and Miri’s grief is for the person she thought she knew, or for the relationship.

I’m sure there’s much more here, and I’d love to hear your takes!

Theories & Final Thoughts

I can’t help but engage with the speculative elements here directly as well, fruitless as it will certainly be.

My take is that the Center for Marine Enquiry is concerned solely with that creature down there. (Their logo’s an eye, they have a religious vibe at the mission’s farewell party, and damn if they don’t later disappear off the face of the Earth.)

Are they a cult, offering Jelka’s life to their god? Scientists, seeing its effect on the crew’s minds? Disciples offering prayers, or adversaries searching for weaknesses? Impossible to say.

By far the most incongruous element is that smell of burning meat, experienced by the whole crew multiple times. Symbolically it evokes a journey into hell (Orpheus and Eurydice?) or perhaps the crew’s sacrificial role as a burnt offering. If more literal, perhaps the crew died on the descent? Or did the Center have other sacrifices hidden away and burning aboard the craft? Or did some engineer leave their Big Mac in the engine?

I have no idea, and it’s the kind of bizarre, tantalizing mystery that will keep me coming back to this story looking for more hints and meaning.

In case it’s not clear, 5 stars. 10. Perhaps 666. Read it, it’s great!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3

What is Children of Strife?

Children of Strife is a new 2026 release by Adrian Tchaikovsky, prolific author of science fiction & fantasy. It is the fourth novel in his sci-fi Children of Time series, begun in 2015, but could also probably be read on it’s own, if you’re determined and imaginative enough! Tchaikovsky does helpfully summarize and reintroduce important concepts from the previous books, and only one character can be said to be a continuation from those stories.

This section up top will be spoiler-free, comprising general thoughts and feelings about the book and who it’s for. To the surprise of no one, I love it! An essential facet of this series is the sheer wonder it evokes in my mind about what human, posthuman and inhuman life could look like in the universe. Each book is incredibly imaginative in bold new ways, and Children of Strife is no exception.

At the same time, and while it certainly contains all the hallmark components of books in this series, Children of Strife is also remarkably relevant to our lives in the world today. As I hinted at in the subtitle and will go into further below, Tchaikovsky explores ideas surrounding AI & reality, the evils of oligarchy & unchecked ego, and above all the difficulty of changing instead of clinging to the things we’ve always known and been told.

I highly recommend this book, series, and author! Here are a few other pieces I’ve recently written, if you’re curious to learn more before reading it yourself:

• Turning Conflict Into Community in Children of Time

• Space Exploration & The Shape of Human Consciousness

• The Tyrant Philosophers Worldbuilding & Stormlight Parallels

Spoilers for Children of Strife ahead.

Alis, Cato, and escaping the past

An aspect of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing I always appreciate is that while his books are focused on the wondrous concepts, he manages to do so through the lens of relatable characters and narratives – which certainly isn’t the case for all writers of ‘big idea sci-fi’.

Children of Strife‘s protagonists (an ill-fitting term, given how many timelines and perspectives are at play, but as close as it gets) are the misfit crew of the Dissenter, a Panspecific ship captained by Cato and managed by Avigael Kern. Everyone aboard –including this instance of Kern, who has taken on a new name and identity for herself – feels isolated from the utopian Panspecific society and so has found their way here.

Alis‘ backstory follows directly from Children of Memory, though she herself didn’t appear in that book. She was a scientist exploring the depths of the Imir Machine, an alien device capable of simulating complex worlds for minds uploaded therein. We learn that the Machine slowly shifts and bends its narratives to the user’s will, in an effort to keep them comfortable and engaged – thus Alis and her team’s many and impossible discoveries about Imir and the Machine are ultimately meaningless, fabricated for their amusement.

After spending untold lifetimes under the Machine’s spell, Alis was finally removed and taken immediately to therapy, because she could no longer recognize the real world – forever waiting for the Machine’s narrative to kick in, having learned its quirks after so long. From Alis’ perspective, we see her relapse multiple times in moments of anxiety, and even question whether she ever even had a team or whether those personalities were invented for her benefit. AI psychosis was clearly an inspiration for Tchaikovsky in telling this story, and I love the way he extrapolates the dangers of a people-pleasing chatbot to the horror of a people-pleasing reality simulator.

Cato is a stomatopod (mantis shrimp) from Kern’s World, uplifted to intelligence by the same nanovirus which gave rise to the Portiid civilization. Tchaikovsky mentioned the stomatopods back in Children of Time, but finally gets around to exploring them in-depth here – as he did with the spiders, octopuses and ravens in the first three books respectively. Tchaikovsky has imagined uplifted stomatopod society as being feudal and militaristic, based off the real animal’s physiology and behaviour. (And he clearly did serious research, because everything from their ultra-deadly ‘punches’ to their unique light sensitivity is apparently true!)

We learn that Cato’s people asked the Panspecific for a solar system of their own, along with all the technology they wanted and some breathing room from the other species – and that this request was easily granted, this being a community always looking for ways to help and communicate with each other. Cato’s species then learned a horrifying lesson about remote warfare, as compared to the claw-to-claw combat they were used to. Of the two hundred thousand stomatopods to colonize their new solar system, only a few dozen exemplary killers are left by the time Portiids come to check in on the society.

Cato is one of those elite killers, possibly the greatest warrior his people have ever produced. And despite how much glory he seemed to attain through bloody conquest against his own people, he is now stricken with guilt and trying to change his ways – even though doing so goes against all he has ever known, against everything heightened evolution has selected for in his species. It’s amazing to watch him slowly change, through the relationships he develops and by coming to his own internal resolutions.

True-to-life villainy

A fun aspect of Children of Strife I mentioned last week is that we get to see a little more of the past ages of the universe: both in our near future, in the age of the first Terraformers, and thousands of years later when the survivors of total warfare manage to limp into space on the ark ships.

We learn that while Avrana Kern led the main Terraforming movement, backed by mainstream science and politics, she had rivals who wanted to do it their own unproven way – and who had the funds to do so, unilaterally. Honestly, the only slightly unrealistic thing about Hartmand and the other billionaires is that they were all in biotech and that they actually have their own clever ideas sometimes.

We spend a fair portion of the book watching their story play out, all from the eyes of Kott, a weaselly woman constantly scheming for her survival beneath the tread of project funder Hartmand and his heavily bloated ego. The five fail to terraform their chosen world a number of times (each working from their own incompatible theories) before Ken Pill has the idea to use Kott’s self-learning algorithm alongside other techniques.

(Maybe I’m missing some semi-plausible explanation for this process, but I think we just have to go with Tchaikovsky on this idea of them uploading programs and later minds into the biosphere of this planet. I get that once things are set up it’s a lot like Kern running on her ants, but at the start? ... A leap of faith, and probably the biggest I’ve taken in the series so far.)

This miraculously causes blindingly fast evolution on the planet, with complex organisms developing from bacteria in a matter of hours. Terraforming accomplished! Except that no matter how hard the billionaires try to stomp it down, the planet is intent on developing an ecosystem of disgusting bugs, rather than anything resembling the Earth life they desire. So, they learn they can put their minds into the biosphere-program and consciously steer the tide of evolution. Still stepping on each other’s work every time they take up the reins, though they learn to work together a little bit when two are playing god at once.

Eventually, their human bodies die and they all individually choose to live on as sole god of their world... which means five gods, constantly at war and shaping Creation as they see fit. They’re truly awful, especially once an ark ship arrives and they gain a population of pet humans to bully into subservience.

We see the biotech billionaires-turned-gods are fairly miserable and hateful throughout, which is nice, but the real payoff is when the crew of the Dissenter arrives and they’re forced to remember their humanity and mortality. Both in being confronted with their millennia-ago rival Avrana Kern and with the Nod Parasite in the form of Mira, who easily takes the reins of their stunted and inbred biosphere. (Though she has her own serious conflict with her monstrous past, as I referenced last week.)

I enjoyed seeing these villains get their desserts: Hartmand being far too egotistical to let power go, even if it meant death; mad Ken Pill accepting the end on his own terms, and Kott and the others being sent to play god in the Imir machine where they won’t do any further harm to anyone.

Capable of Change

Alis’ recovery, Cato confronting his nature, Mira and Kern choosing new identities, Portifabian learning to exist as a single mind, Kott recognizing the evil of her world & fellow divinities, and far more – this book has a lot to say about the importance of change. Of recognizing when things are wrong, or when they can’t go back to the perfect past we imagine, and taking steps to adapt ourselves, our beliefs and values, to the world we find ourselves in.

It’s a topic I discuss a lot around here, and I think Tchaikovsky chose it for a reason. We live in a world where we are constantly pigeonholed into certain categories, and things like adaptive algorithms make it increasingly difficult to see beyond those boxes – let alone escape them. I wrote here about the idea of queer theory as an important tool for seeing beyond the false dichotomies, and have dozens of articles which conclusions about the importance of mindfulness and taking active steps to live the lives we want.

I certainly highly recommend this book & series, as well as Tchaikovsky’s other work – his Tyrant Philosophers series is some of the best stuff I’ve ever read. If you so choose!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3