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Ty, Kit, Dru and Ash are still the main characters; I wouldn't say any of the other characters are main characters.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is here.

Happy release day to the first volume in the Maggie the Undying trilogy!

Here are some of the retailer links for your convenience. This Kingdom is available in ebook, audiobook and hardback formats. Paperback format is currently exclusive to the UK edition (April 2nd release).

A Letter from House Andrews

Dear BDH,

This Kingdom is finally here.

You know we don’t do feelings, because we are professionals and all that, but this release is unlike any other we’ve had. So much time has passed between the first clumsy idea of Maggie and today, filled with work, pressure, and sheer effort.

It doesn’t seem real.

Any time you do something different as a writer, you take a risk. And this one is different. It’s an entirely new world, completely unlike our own reality. We filled it with fantastic creatures, strange magic, and archetypes: the Golden Knight, the Noble Assassin, the Fire Mage, the Mad King. The side characters are heroes of their own stories. We wanted to condense the essence of what makes fantasy books… well, fantasy.

We hope you’ll enjoy a plunge into the world of Rellas. It is our sincerest hope that it reminds you of why you love fantastic worlds and the strange people who inhabit them.

And now House Andrews has made us all emotional compromised… release day without treats? Not on my watch.

The unbelievably talented Helena Elias has another character reveal for us.

You’ve probably met him already in the Garden of Soft Blossoms…

The Man from the Garden. Click to enlarge – those eyes are worth it

Now that the book is out in the world, this is the place to talk about his secrets and everything else in Kair Toren. Reactions, theories, favorite moments, things you need to scream about, whether you’ve just started reading or already devoured the book – we’re here for all of it.

I’ll also be collecting your questions for House Andrews, who will answer them on the blog or in the Zoom release Q&A we’re planning in April.

This is your official This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me discussion thread.

Attention!

There are spoilers in the comments below.

There is one specific plot twist in Chapter 23 we’re asking you not to discuss just yet until everyone catches up. Thank you for your cooperation.

New Here?

If you’ve just discovered Ilona Andrews through this release and you want more, welcome! You’re surrounded by people who understand exactly how you feel.

There’s a Start Here button now on the homepage just for you.

Reading guides, series breakdowns, freebies, quizzes, and so many wonderful adventures await you.

See you in the comments.

The post Happy Birthday to THIS KINGDOM WILL NOT KILL ME and Spoiler Thread first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Image by kalhh from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

Everyone has a preference, right? Preferences show up all the time; in food, in friends, in partners, in art, films, and books. I, for example, like my food relatively spicy. My father will take it so damned hot any normal person will hallucinate pink elephants for hours. Not my preference. Sharing an Indian meal with him is sometimes a challenge. I prefer whiskey to most other alcoholic beverages, though I’ll happily have a rum and coke on occasion. I am a huge fan of surrealism in art, and find expressionism a little dull (controversial take alert). And when it comes to my books, I do not like first person perspective narratives, or LitRPGs, and I’m very particular about my humour.

Well, there are two books/series now that have absolutely slapped me in the face and called me a liar. And I’m here to admit I have (joyfully) been proven so very wrong.

Image by Ylanite Koppens from Pixabay

First, I have to mention that I had struggled with reading for years and years and years. In fact, reading for pleasure became in credibly difficult during and after my university years. I just could not find it in me to pick up a book and start reading. There are some books that pulled me out of the slump momentarily (thank you Malazan Book of the Fallen), but on the whole, I’ve not been able to read.

I have no idea what the block was about. I did try to overcome it last year, attempting to force myself to read just before bed. While I did read more books last year (I think the number was four) than I had in previous years, it was still an absolute slog. This made me incredibly sad, as I had, prior to university, devoured books by the dozens in a year. I loved reading. Or I did. So why couldn’t I read?

Something this year shifted. For some reason, I have been much better about reading. As I don’t really have much spare time, I’ve kept my reading time for the times I’m on public transit, which is usually just Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (when I head to and from martial arts training). This appears to have worked a bloody miracle. I set my reading goal for twelve books in the year. I figured one book a month was more than doable with my schedule.

I have, as of this weekend just done, finished my tenth book. I don’t know why I’m suddenly devouring books again, but I’m not sad about it… because I have read some stellar books of late. My wallet, however…

The first book that took me by surprise in my new reading feast was this one:

I had heard from a few ‘BookTok’ creators that this was a good read (though BookTok appears to have ben swallowed whole by Romantasy at present, some folks are recommending different books). The first book in the Farseer Triology, The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb is written in one of my least favourite perspectives – first person. I was not thrilled, to be honest, when I read the first page. Until I hit the second. And then I was all in on this story. I cried three times before chapter five. This was an absolute five star read for me. And it took me by surprise. I was not expecting something written in the first person to be as affecting as it was.

I chalked it up to a fluke. One exception to the rule due to an exceptional writer.

And then, and then, and THEN I read this:

I admit, I was influenced. A number of people in my circles had mentioned how good this book was. It did not seem like my thing. I am not a fan of LitRPGs, and worse, it was first person. So, not something I would enjoy. Still, folks were taking about how good this book was, so I resolved to give it a chance.

I. Loved. It.

This book is funny, and earnest, and somehow able to maintain some incredible tension. The situation was absolutely ridiculous, yet I managed to be filled with compassion for some of the ‘mobs,’ charmed by characters who could be incredibly annoying if mishandled, and absolutely holding my breath in some of the scenes.

This was my second five star read that I absolutely did not expect. Twice now I’ve been made a liar, and this book made me a liar twice over. A first person LitRPG that I loved? Impossible!

This is, of course, because both Hobb and Dinniman are exception writers, who have both created complicated, fascinating and charming characters, with styles very appropriate to the stories they are telling. While I did not cry during Dungeon Crawler Carl (usually a prerequisite for a five star rating from me), I was so thoroughly entertained, I could not help but rate it highly. For the record, I did tear up a bit in the afterword, which was something I did not know I needed.

You will not break me. Those who’ve read it will understand, I think.

My experience with both first person perspectives as a young reader had coloured my opinion, as these things tend to. It didn’t help that more recent books written in that perspective that got wildly popular were… not very well written in my estimation. If I hear the words ‘Inner Goddess’ one more time, I will absolutely lose what’s left of my sanity. LitRPGs similarly proved disappointing reads before now, and I’ve found them boring or so silly that I cannot get into the story.

Given the poor experiences in the past, it cannot be a surprise that I was hesitant to read these books, and sceptical of their popularity as well (and I have found a lot of books that became wildly popular not really to my tastes besides). Turns out, they’re exceptional, and I am now a liar, liar, pants on fire. I do like first person perspective books, and at least one LitRPG. I should have kept a more open mind.

There’s no really point to this post, except to say that maybe we should all be giving more books a chance, and maybe take some time to test our preferences every once in a while. We might end up very pleasantly surprised… and a little poorer because now I need these books and the entirety of their associated series on my shelf. They bring me joy.

It could be drugs. At least it’s not drugs. Besides, I’ve started walking to work again now that my flu has passed and my lungs are supporting movement again, so there will be less time on public transit. That should slow my reading and spare my wallet a bit…

In any case, I hope you’ll all accept this mea culpa. First person perspectives and LitRPGs are not inherently bad reads. Turns out, like every other genre and perspective, there are good books and bad ones, and a fair number of middling ones. I’m sorry for instinctively turning my nose at them.

Have you read these books? What did you think of them? What kinds of books are your preference? I love talking books. Sound off below!

When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and sometimes painting. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills, and sometimes relaxing. Her most recent titles include Daughters of Britain, Skylark and Human. The Timbercreek Incident is free to read on Wattpad.

Jenn Lyons has published a slew of well-received epic fantasy novels over the last few years (she launched a 5-book series in 2019 with The Ruin of Kings [click the title for a link to my review] that concluded in 2022), an epic standalone and now Green & Deadly Things, a dark-fantasy standalone about dead…

When a journalist on assignment visits a convention held by a fringe group who believes that teleportation has changed them—he wonders how he will manage to complete his assignment. But the more he talks to the TVSo?s, the more he becomes convinced they might not be crazy—they might just be right. 

Finalist for the Best Fiction Maggie Award given by the Western Publications Association.

“Going Native” is free on this site for one week only. You can download your own copy of the story on any e-book site or by clicking here. Enjoy!

Going Native Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

“God, could you find a duller way to travel?” asks my leggy companion, the luscious Ruth. She has this weekend off, and she insisted on coming with me on my assignment. It’ll be fun, she said, and then followed that up with, how can I know what you’re doing unless I come along with you on occasion? I listened to the logic of that, and now I find myself trapped in a 5-foot-by-six-foot moving room with a woman who finds train travel passé.

Me, I’m afraid that the Amtrak trip up the mountain will be the best part of this assignment. I work for eight online editors, and all of them called me last week to ask for an article on the annual TVS convention. Such a uniformity of requests has only happened once before in my career, and that was when a woman that I sat beside in grade school, tormented in middle school, and dated in high school was inaugurated as president of the United States. Suddenly my memoirs had value.

Somehow, I doubt that this essay has the same sort of import.

I also had my doubts about bringing Ruth to kooksville and now, when we’re still two hours away from our destination, I know I’ve made the Wrong Decision. She is lying on the bottom berth, her bare feet against the dirty plastic wall, her skirt pooled around her waist, and she is not thinking of sex.

Neither am I.

“I mean, we’ve been on this train for hours. How did people travel like this?”

They made love, they ate, they read books. But I do not tell Ruth that. She would see it as a slap, an insult to her great intelligence. In real life, Ruth is a receptionist for a lawyer, but she prefers to call herself a paralegal. She uses legalese, mispronouncing most of it, and pretends that she knows as much as someone who has a law degree.

I’ve never told her about mine. But then, why should I? It would ruin the sleazy nature of the relationship, the fact that I’m dating her for her deliciously man-made breasts and she’s dating me because I know the secrets of the universe.

She believes that’s because I’m a journalist. The old-fashioned print kind, even though what we print is done online. I’m paid by the download, which is why I’m on this train trip instead of, say, investigating the latest bombing in downtown Seattle. No matter how idealistic you start, you soon learn that it’s paranoia that sells.

Which is why we’re on a train instead of teleporting. There are no teleportation stations in this part of the Cascades. Rumor has it that the first teleportation technician who ventured into this part of Oregon was shot. Whether he lived or died depends on which rumor you believe.

Ruth knew we were heading into no man’s land when she decided to come with me, but the closer we get the less I believe she actually understood it. I think she thought we’d look at the crazy yokels and then go home.

I think I thought she could handle anything.

Check that. I think I knew, deep down, she was contemplating Marriage, and I wanted to convince her that breaking up was her idea. But that’s hindsight. Going in, I was simply concerned about the lack of sex.

“Once,” I say, gazing out the window at the snow beside the tracks, “this was the fastest way to travel in the whole world.”

“Yeah.” She flops an arm over her eyes, missing the deer that stand by a group of trees, staring at us. A 19th century vision in the 21st. “Sad, isn’t it?”

I’m not sure. I’m enough of a romantic to enjoy the view. I’m enough of a romantic to wish that she’d enjoy it with me.

***

The assignment, if you look at it historically (which is one of the few things that I’ve retained from law school, a sense of historical perspective), is a perennial: Go look at the fringe and report back to the masses. Around the turn of the last century, that meant going to carnivals and fairs to examine the bearded women, the two-headed chickens, and the stillborn fetuses that looked like fish. In my grandfather’s day, a reporter on this beat might go to see the mysterious Area 51, thought to be a repository for Unidentified Flying Objects (things so familiar they were known by their acronym UFO) and for the little green men who flew them. Me, I get assigned the annual meeting of the Teleportation Victims Society whose own acronym is TVS, but who is known in newsrooms nationwide as TVSo?. I should’ve known I was in trouble when I tried to explain this little joke to Ruth and she’d stared at me blankly, not even threatening to smile.

The TVSo?s meet every year in Harbor, Oregon, which used to be a 1990s survivalist camp between Bend and Klamath Falls. The area’s only attraction, or so I could glean before I arrived, is that it has no teleportation station, and none is planned. If someone wants to travel in that part of the Cascade Range, they either have to go to Bend, fifty miles to the north, or Klamath Falls, over 60 miles to the south. Then they have to take whatever ground transportation is available, provided, of course, they can get it. Amtrak still serves this part of the country, partly because the sparse population can’t justify the teleportation system, and partly because the tracks have existed for nearly two hundred years. It’s the only form of public transportation between those two stations, and mostly it’s used by the low-income folks who can’t afford the cost of speedier travel.

I insisted on taking the train all the way from Seattle, over Ruth’s protests, because I wanted my experience at the annual meeting to reflect the experience of all the other TVSo?s. I had secretly hoped I’d meet a few of them on this ride, but Ruth has kept me chained to the room, demanding room service, and not paying for it in the way that I had hoped.

Still I manage to sneak to the club car once, and there I see exactly what I expect, a group of tired, smelly people, most of whom are too drunk to look at the magnificent scenery whizzing past. I realize that, in my new khakis and bomber jacket, I am overdressed and as conspicuous as a rich man in Olympia. No one will talk to me. They barely manage to look at me.

And, for the first time, I worry about how I’ll pull this assignment off.

***

I should say at this stage of article research, I always worry about how I’ll pull the assignment off. Even though what I write is dictated into my wrist-top, edited on a larger screen at home, and e-mailed directly to my editor, what I do is really not much different from the work, say, Mark Twain did almost two hundred years ago. He ventured out into places unknown and reported back.

Ernest Hemingway did that, so did Ernie Pyle, and Peter Arnett. The great journalists thrived in times of war. When there is no war—or no war America is interested in—we are stuck with perennials. And no journalist ever became famous by risking his life at a TVSo? convention.

I simply want to go in, find a few things that are amusing, see if I can discover the secret behind the victimology, and return to home base with all parts intact. I know that, by Sunday evening, I will have a story. I’m just not sure if it’s the kind of story Hemingway would have dispatched from Spain.

In fact, I know it’s not the moment the train pulls into Harbor, Oregon.

***

When Ruthie and I get off the train at the small white station nestled against a snow-covered ridge, we are greeted like visiting royalty. I made no secret of my job as a journalist, but it’s really Ruthie they want to see. It seems, on the e-slip she sent with her fee, that she listed her employment as she always does.

A paralegal and a journalist. We are a dream couple for the TVSo?s.

I am not the only journalist in this place. Every major television reporter, radio commentator, vid producer, and holotechnician is here to record the loonies in action. I am one of the few print people, and the only one with enough awards to make me semi-famous. Every TVSo? wants to tell me his story, to introduce me to little Jonnie or Suzy or Uncle Billy, and to show me what makes them different.

When I get off the train, I realize I am not ready for this. The grasping hands, the slightly desperate gaze. I insist on going to the hotel before meeting people, and Ruth gives me her I-can’t-believe-you’re-doing-this look. That’s when I realize she’s not upset about the location or the people. She’s upset that I want to leave them. She not only relishes the attention, she believes she can give these people advice. She doesn’t realize how dangerous the situation can be. She’s with the only people in the world who might take her seriously. I grip her arm and follow our host to the Compound, our hotel.

The Compound was the former survivalist’s camp, and looks it. The outbuildings are made of wood hammered together by people who clearly didn’t know what they were doing. The main building, where the restaurant and gift shop reside, was once a ranch-style house, built in the mid-twentieth century, complete with front-facing garage. The building had been added onto, once during its survivalist camp days—that was evident by the concrete bunker in the back—and once by the hotel, the brass and wood façade that tried to make everything upscale.

Our room isn’t really a room. It was cabin Number 8. A plaque on the door tells us that it had once been used by the house’s original owners as a storage shed, and was remodeled into a cabin when the camp started in the early 1980s. The plaque tells us proudly that eight people lived in this space; I’m wondering how Ruth and I will manage for a weekend.

The room is square, with an area carved out for a bathroom with an ancient shower and plastic tub. The sink has motion detectors instead of computer controls, and the toilet actually has a handle for flushing. Ruth is charmed, but I wonder if that will last into the middle of the night, when one of us stumbles in there and initiates the gurgle and grunt of the ancient plumbing.

We unpack, and then Ruth wants to reenter the fray. I’m more interested in checking out the dining facilities. The reconstituted chicken I had on the train didn’t last me long.

Outside, we see several blue-and-white signs, pointing to various cabins. Most signs are hand-lettered and made specifically for the conference: Registration is to our left; Legal advice is to our right; and Testimonials is straight ahead. Other signs show us the way to improve our Education, covering everything from Technological Secrets to the History of Transportation. Many of these, I know, are ongoing programs, and I will check them out through the weekend. It’s the guest speakers I am most interested in, and those are going to be the hardest events to see.

***

In the registration line I learn that the TVSo?s aren’t all low-income poorly educated folks like the research had led me to expect. The man in front of me is a doctor from Philadelphia who has documentation on “differences” and was willing to call it up on his wrist-top right there in the frigid Oregon mud. The slender, pretty woman behind me is a reasonably well known vid personality whose career went into a decline, she says, after she teleported 65 times in one month. I talk to both of them at some length. Ruth has left me alone in line while she went on to the lodge for drinks.

She has been gone a long time.

I draw the same sort of crowd I drew at the train station. I am uncomfortable, used to being the observer, not the observed. Everyone wants to tell me a story; everyone wants me to know how teleportation changes people, how it creates differences where there were none before.

Some of the stories are just silly, like the vid personality’s. She claims she lost a little bit of charisma each time she teleported from one place to another. Some are strange, like the woman who has me examine holograms of her now-estranged husband, a man whose eye color changed in the space of one afternoon from green to brown.

The rest are merely sad. Many are from people who claim that their spouses are no longer the same people they married, and they blame use of public teleportation. Others show evidence of medical conditions they claim were caused by teleporting, and still some have tales of close loved ones who died soon after traveling in a teleportation device.

I have read the literature; I am familiar with all variations on these stories and more. I even know their origins.

I ask the eye color woman why she believes her husband’s eyes were the only thing to change.

“I didn’t say they were the only thing, now did I?” she says angrily.

I turn away, afraid to follow up.

***

The first big breakthrough in teleportation occurred in the late 1990s when a team of Austrian scientists successfully completed a transfer on the sub-atomic level. The physics of the breakthrough was too complex to explain to the layman in the popular newspapers of the day, so many journalists attempted (unsuccessfully) to put the discovery in layman’s terms.

I have tried to hunt down the origin of the example used for the laymen and have been, to date, unsuccessful. I suspect either one of the scientists got exasperated with the journalists’ stupid questions and used the example to explain, poorly, what was going on, or a journalist attempted to translate what he thought he understood into language that he thought other people could understand.

Their experiment, said the news organizations of the day, was as if the scientists had taken a red ball in one room, made it disappear, and then reappear in another room—although what was teleported was not the ball itself, but the quality of redness which was then transferred onto another ball.

It is not what we experience. We experience the teleportation first imagined in pulp fiction stories of over a hundred years ago. Our bodies literally disassemble in one location, are transferred to another location, and are then reassembled. There are documented cases of malfunctions, most dating from the early days of the technology and almost all of them having to do with apes who arrived dead. These deaths were not pretty or simple: they had to do with parts being reassembled in the wrong order, rather like taking a puzzle apart, then trying to put it together by placing all the corners in the middle. Those details were resolved long before any human being stepped onto a teleportation pad. The things we must worry about are simpler: power failures and computer malfunctions, both of which can lose us mid-transfer. This problem is the greatest in Third World countries, in devices built out of scrap metal, most likely, by the operator’s Uncle Ralph. Teleportation is not sanctioned to those countries, or is done purely at the user’s own risk. Here and in “approved” countries, every device is scrutinized, overhauled, and replaced more often than anything else in our technologically advanced society.

This is what the literature tells me. It is what exists in all published reports, the meetings before Congress, and in several teleportation companies’ legal databases. I know there can be problems—we all do. The problems are called “acceptable risk,” something we all assume when we step on a teleportation pad, or even when we walk out our front door. What varies from person to person is how acceptable some risks are.

It is the idea that we can be disassembled and reassembled that unnerves people the most. A large number of people (actual estimates vary, depending on the reporting agency) refuse to use teleportation, allowing other forms of mass transit to remain in business. Most of these people are not TVSo?s. They simply don’t like the idea of being taken apart and put back together without it being necessary, and are not willing to sacrifice their original unity for the sake of instantaneous travel.

Others cannot imagine traveling any other way. Frequent teleporters receive a discount on each trip. “Frequent” is defined in the industry as anyone making more than ten trips per day. I have only hit the ten trip in one day milestone once, and it left me feeling disoriented and unnerved—not, I hasten to add, because I was disassembled so many times, but because, after five different teleportation stations, I lost track of my surroundings. Later I learned that frequent travelers set their wrist-top to remind them of their location and their purpose for being there upon arrival.

I have read all the literature, examined all the records, and while I still feel a twinge of nerves when I step on the platform, I prefer the instantaneous shift, the delight at having been in Manhattan one moment and Rome the next. It is not different, my grandmother once told me, than that frisson of fear she used to feel whenever an airplane’s wheels left the ground or whenever a train went over a particularly high and narrow bridge.

It is human nature to worry about the accidental, the unexpected, the unknown. It is also human nature to magnify those things into problems so strange as to be somehow plausible.

***

The TVSo?s have three banquets at their weekend meeting, and I have bought tickets to all three. Ruth did not want to eat at the banquets. In fact, she soon made it clear that she did not want to spend time with me. She says my attitude is too cynical, my remarks too cutting. She is already right. I am already thinking in the tone I’ve decided to take for this article, a tone that my brain established while part of it tried to concentrate on the seriousness of the vid personality’s loss of charisma.

The first banquet is on Friday night, and there I am happily surprised. The food is excellent. It is free-range chicken, brought in from a nearby ranch, local vegetables grown and stored here, marinated in local wine, mixed with spices grown in the chef’s own herb garden.

Nothing was shipped in: no risk of teleportation tainting the food. And somehow it does seem fresher. Or perhaps the chef, a world-renowned man who refused to allow me to use his name in this article, has simply lived up to his spectacular reputation.

The speaker that night is a transportation historian who is, believe it or not, duller than he sounds. He reads his speech off the TelePrompTer modification in his contact lenses, probably much as he does in class, which forces him to stare straight ahead. That, combined with his monotone, makes him seem as if he’s teleported one too many times.

The diners at my table, which is toward the back, immediately deduce the problem and begin whispering, as I imagine his students often do. We introduce ourselves and tell each other why we’re here.

The woman to my immediate left looks like a Hollywood grandmother, which is to say that she’s round, gray-haired and jolly. She confides that she went to see her grandchildren on her only teleportation trip, and instead of arriving in Pittsburgh as planned, she arrived in Philadelphia. The teleportation operators claim she simply told them she was going to Philly, but she claims that they punched in the wrong destination. I take mental notes, knowing that what is at stake here is more than a simple trip. She lives on a fixed income and she scrimped to afford the teleport. She could not afford to then go from Philly to Pittsburgh and back home. She missed a trip, and probably several meals, for that one abortive visit.

This is a problem I can get behind. It is not magic woo-woo incantations in which she claims that she suddenly ballooned in size because her protons expanded or that she got skin cancer that should have belonged to someone else. This is the kind of operator error we all worry about. I have had nightmares about getting on a teleporter in Portland and ending up in Beijing.

The woman next to her confides that there is a lawyer in the legal section who is trying to get enough contacts to initiate a class action suit for just that sort of problem. The grandmother thanks her, and then asks her, whispering politely of course, why she’s here. The woman, who is in her mid-forties, has the prettiest lavender hair I’ve ever seen. She flushes a nice shade of pink that somehow complements the lavender and admits that she would rather not say.

I am beginning to think I’ve hit a lucky table. Imagine someone who has come to a TVSo? convention who is unwilling to admit why she has come. It is almost antithetical to the purpose of the conference.

I make a mental note to pull her aside later, then ask the man to my right why he has come. “Reporter,” he says tersely, not whispering. “Just like you.”

He gets shushed by the people at the table behind him, who, believe it or not, are engrossed in the teacher’s speech. At that point, I surface briefly, realize the man has droned on for thirty minutes and hasn’t yet reached the invention of the automobile. I signal a waiter for more coffee.

The woman to the reporter’s right bursts into tears when asked why she’s here, and we get shushed again. I actually don’t mind because I get an odd sense that the tears are fake. Still, we dutifully lean forward after she dries her eyes with her linen napkin.

“My baby,” she whispers, and stifles a sob. The entire table behind us glares at us with angry eyes. We glare back, then lean as close as we can.

“My baby,” she says again, “was a boy when he went into the device.”

Suddenly I don’t want to hear any more, and neither, it seems, does anyone else. The reporter hands her another napkin, and makes sympathetic noises, but as quickly as he politely can, he rises and makes his way to the men’s room.

Ten minutes later, when he has not returned and the speaker is rhapsodizing about the uses of airplanes in World War I, I excuse myself. The corridor outside is empty, but I find a new convention going on at the bar.

“I don’t know why they invite him back,” says one woman to a gale of laughter. It seems that this is the fifth year the historian has spoken on Friday night, and this year he is actually more interesting than he has ever been.

One of the conference organizers overhears, and says rather stiffly, “We invite him so that you all have an historical overview of the problems we face.”

“Oh,” the laughing woman says, “but don’t you think that teleportation is a little different than, say, a Model T?”

“No,” the organizer says, and I realize that this is one of those dangerous people to whom the phrase “sense of humor” has no meaning at all, “it is all a manifestation of our need to make the world smaller. Once everyone thought that instantaneous travel would solve all our ills. They didn’t realize that it would cause more problems than it started.”

“Do you believe,” one woman asks, “that everyone who has been in a teleportation device is still human?”

Not even the conference organizer answers that question. It is too touchy. Most of the people here are here because they have been in a teleportation device. If the woman’s right, that would mean none of us are human. I don’t believe that. I believe we’re very human, although the more I see, the more I wonder what side of humanity we actually belong to.

***

The next morning, I wander over to Legal, and listen to lawyers pontificate on ways to collect damages from teleportation companies. I hear the familiar litany of successful lawsuits—there aren’t many, and most are nuisance cases much like the grandmother’s of the night before—but the audience is attentive and asks polite questions.

In the afternoon, I poke my head into Education, and see the historian. I don’t run from there, although I’m tempted. I walk slowly, pretending I had ventured into that area by mistake.

Ruth is nowhere to be seen. She did show up in our room the night before, but long after I was asleep, and I thought I smelled brandy, but by that point I didn’t really care. I wonder idly who she has found to entertain herself with and how she can use him to further her career. The thought, though accurate, is uncharitable, and I then wonder when I stopped thinking with fondness of Ruth’s tendency’s to exaggerate and began to be annoyed by them. Probably around the point when her manufactured breasts became her most fascinating feature.

That night’s speaker is an expert in teleportation technology and I am assured by almost everyone who’s been here before that he makes the historian look glib. I am sorry to give up the free-range chicken, but I cannot bear another two hours trapped in those uncomfortable wooden banquet chairs.

I go into the restaurant, where I’ve had two delicious breakfasts, and cast about for a table. It seems to have a lot of patrons, considering there is a banquet going on in the next room.

Ruth is at a table near the window. Even though it is dark, I can make out the ghostly shape of the nearby mountain, snow-covered and shiny. She waves me over.

She is sitting with the lawyers. They have asked that no other tables be filled around them, and so far the restaurant is able to comply. Ruth, it seems, has been spending her time with the entire legal wing of this conference and learning “a whole heckuva lot.”

I sit down, and listen for a while. This seems like an informal version of the panel I had attended in the morning. I order a steak, and do not ask if it was shipped in or slaughtered locally, for which I am razzed, and then one of the attorneys, an overweight vegetarian who consumes way too much wine during the evening, informs me of the many ways that beef could kill me. Since I have heard this lecture before, I add a few insights of my own, all the while chomping heartily on my dinner.

Finally they ask me why I’m here, and I tell them that I’m a paid observer of human nature.

“He’s journalist,” Ruth says, breaking my cover.

They eye me as if I’m the slimy species and I explain that I’m a practitioner of New Journalism almost a century after New Journalism was introduced. It is my way of gaining legitimacy among the illegitimate: pretend to a literary value that I don’t really have.

The New Journalism comment seems to have silenced them, so to break the ice—and to make my dinner worthwhile—I ask them what they really think about teleportation technology.

“It makes lawyers rich!” one of them said and the others laugh. But I press them, and finally a dark-suited man next to Ruth says, “I used to laugh at these folks and then questions started coming up, questions I couldn’t get an answer to.”

One of the female attorneys nods, and still another, the overweight vegetarian, says, “Yeah, like why is there a ban on kids under the age of three taking teleportation?”

“It’s not a firm ban,” a New York lawyer says. “You can get around it with a doctor’s permission.”

“Yeah,” the vegetarian says. “Why a doctor? And what does he give permission for?”

“I’ve never seen any instances of babies traveling. They don’t allow it, with or without the doctor,” the woman says.

“But I met a woman who says her baby—” I start and they all shake their heads sadly, silencing me.

“She’s here every year,” the vegetarian says. “I checked the story out. She doesn’t have a kid. I don’t even think she’s female.”

They chuckle again, and the joviality is back. No matter how I push them, I can’t learn what the other questions are. The vegetarian promises to tell me if I come to the bar later. I do, and he’s passed out in a pile of corn chips. I vow to try and find him the following day.

***

The next morning, as the speakers are setting up, I go to the Technological Secrets area. It’s in a wide auditorium with holographic capabilities. My mind boggles just at the thought of seeing strange machinery in life-size and 3D.

It takes me a moment to find a speaker who’ll talk to me, who doesn’t try to get me to wait until his presentation. I tell him about the lawyers’ collective unease about the baby ban.

“You ask the teleportation stations they’ll tell you it’s because babies are too fragile for most kinds of travel. Like they’ll ban an infant from a jet.” The guy I’m talking to is six feet tall and has a honking nasal voice. I’m glad I elected not to stay for his presentation, even though he seems nice enough. “But it’s really because of the stress to the body.”

“I thought there is no stress.”

He looks at me as if I’m the dumbest thing he’s seen at this conference, and given what I’ve seen, I’m almost insulted. He holds up a glass of water. “You can’t teleport crystal either,” he says. “Sometimes it shatters. And it shouldn’t. I mean, they perfected this at the subatomic level, or so they say.”

“You don’t think they did?”

“Between you, me, and the wall,” he says, “I know they perfected it. The problem is that they don’t use the right equipment to teleport people. It’s like building a house. We can build a damn fine house with everything correct. But we hire contractors who want to make as much money as possible, and they do it—have done it—since time immemorial by using inferior parts and charging the same as they would for good parts. I try to tell the lawyers that, but it’s not glamorous, and it’s damned hard to prove. They tell me they’ll help me when I can show damage caused by inferior parts. I can show damage. I just can’t make a credible link.”

Later that day, I check his statements with a few other technology wonks. They agree that the problem with public teleportation is that it’s public. The system used by the President and other heads of state is state-of-the-art, so protected that nothing can go wrong. The system used by the rest of us, well, these guys would have us all believe it’s held together by spit and glue and pieces manufactured just after the turn of the century.

It makes me think of all those bans on teleportation travel to third-world countries. If our technology is bad, what is the technology like that was hammered together by someone’s Uncle Ralph? The very idea raises images of those poor puzzle box monkeys with the corners where their middle should be.

Of course when I get back home, and call the various teleportation manufacturers, they all give me the company line and swear teleportation is the safest form of transportation since walking. Even that can go wrong, I say. Think of potholes. Think of missteps, twisted ankles and tripping over small children. But the manufacturers don’t find me funny. When I get belligerent, forgetting, for a moment that this is supposed to be a puff piece and not investigative reporting, they transfer me to their legal departments who remind me of libel laws and how careful I need to be in questioning their companies.

***

The free-range chicken is gone by the third banquet, but the speaker is delightful. He’s a comedian just starting out, and he proves to me that the TVSo?s have a sense of humor, since most of his jokes are aimed at them, and they laugh uproariously. I don’t. I feel vaguely embarrassed, mostly because I know I would have laughed if I’d been watching this guy in any other setting but this one.

As I head out, I look for Ruth. She’s still surrounded by her lawyers, and when she sees me, she waves me over. She puts a hand on the overweight vegetarian’s arm and informs me that he has hired her as a paralegal. I pull her aside, remind her that jobs aren’t always that easy to come by and that she’d better check his credentials. She frowns at me, asks me if I think she’s dumb or something—a question which I decline to answer—and then stalks off. I gather, from that whole exchange, that she’s not taking the train home, and I turn out to be right. My wish has been granted. She has forgotten thoughts of Marriage and believes that our break-up is her idea. I find that I regret the whole plan, not because I wanted to marry her, but because I had hoped that I would at least get to try all parts of train travel, from meal to sleep to sex. We had neglected sex on the way there, and I was hoping for a bit on the way home.

Instead, I spend the next week finding a way to ship her clothes cheaply without using teleportation technology, since the vegetarian likes to keep his office “pure.”

I am beginning to understand the sentiment. My moment of hesitation as I step on the teleportation platform in Bend—I see no point in train travel all the way to Seattle if I’m not going to be able to have nookie in transit—lasts nearly three minutes, and customers behind me get angry. But I keep thinking of those banned babies, and Uncle Ralph, and inferior-grade equipment, and the way that the sheet rock in my condo flakes like someone’s untended dandruff, and I find myself more and more reluctant to travel in that instantaneous sort of way. After all, why am I in such a hurry? I’m a journalist, for godssake, a man who makes his living off observing, and observation is something that can’t be rushed. I am proud of my observation skills, and proud of my capability for contemplation that makes them possible.

But what I’ve been observing since I got back is my own reflection in the mirror. There’s a line down one side of my face, an instant wrinkle that really doesn’t look like a laugh line or something that would naturally occur as I age. It looks more like a fold, or a crease, something incorrectly ironed in, as if a section of me were miscut and hemmed wrong.

I never noticed the wrinkle before getting on that teleportation station in Bend. I have been obsessed with it since. And I think, I really think, that my obsession is a product of the TVSo? convention, but not for the reason that you’d think. It’s not that I suddenly believe the teleporter has given me a new wrinkle. It’s just that I find the idea of a wrinkle induced from the outside better than the idea that I’m growing older. It’s easier to believe in the fiction. It’s nicer.

It takes the responsibility for that particular line off me.

Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. Because I do need to teleport on occasion for my job. Journalists observe, yes. But they must observe in the right places. And when my editor tells me to get to London yesterday, I do the next best thing. I get there two minutes from now, new wrinkles be damned.

But I find that I do examine mirrors more, and I wonder, when I think something particularly cruel, like most of my thoughts about Ruth lately, if I’ve become less than human. Is humanity something we can lose, little bit by little bit, like the vid personality and her charisma? And if so, how can we tell it’s gone? Is it replaced by paranoia, by worry, in equal degrees? And am I, in worrying about this, showing signs of latent TVSo?ism?

I don’t know. But I do suspect that my recent desire to take the train to the far reaches of the United States has less to do with my unfulfilled sexual fantasy than it does with my desire to avoid a technology that I may have learned to fear. Then I remind myself of the history of this form of paranoia; I know that being a reporter from the fringe requires an ability to cross over into that land and appear to be a native. I’m simply afraid I’ve taken it too far. Going native requires residency in kooksville, and while it only takes an instant to reach that particular destination, it takes years and expensive psychotherapy to get out.

***

When I turned in this essay, I thought of asking for a bonus, a sort of combat pay to compensate for the wrinkle, for the increased harassment as I take an extra minute of other people’s time while I hesitate before stepping on a teleportation platform.

But my editor vid-conferenced with me this morning, wanting to discuss what he calls “proper compensation.” My article, he says—(this thing you are currently reading, without this coda)—has given him an idea. Teleportation has overtaken other forms of transportation so much that his younger readers have probably never flown in a plane or driven a car. He wants me to do these things, and report back about my experiences, as if I have gone to yet another frontier, even if it is a part of the past.

He asks what I want to do first, and then reminds me this will be on the magazine’s expense.

“A ticket on the Orient Express,” I say.

“Ah,” he says. “You’ll title it ‘Strangers on a Train?’”

I’m thinking not of Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock, but of luscious, willing blonds with breasts the size of helium balloons and the ca-thunk, ca-thunk of the wheels on a track suggesting a rhythm that no teleportation device can hope to match.

“I hope so,” I say, and realize this is the kind of fringe I like. “I certainly hope so.”

Going Native

Copyright © by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and layout copyright © by WMG Publishing

Cover design by WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Embe2006/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

This April will be the fifteenth annual Women in SF&F Month here at Fantasy Cafe, starting on the 1st! For the last several years, this month has been dedicated to highlighting some of the many women doing wonderful work in fantasy and science fiction, and the site will be featuring guest posts by some of these writers throughout April. There will be new posts appearing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the month, and there will also be a book […]

The post Introducing Women in SF&F Month 2026 first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog, and while I don’t think I have much to say, I thought I should at least say something. So….

Hi. How’re’ya doin’?

Good, good…

How am I?

That’s…complicated. Generally, I’m okay. Life flows along. I had a birthday not so long ago. Never mind which one. But I saw friends and family. I heard from lots of people. And despite the inexorable march of time, I felt pretty good about the whole thing. Especially considering the alternative….

A few days later, though, I was feeling down, and I couldn’t explain it. As I say, I’d just had a nice birthday, and things seemed to be going along pretty well. Yet, I was just so very sad. Why? I finally said something to Nancy, and she reacted with something akin to, “Well, yeah, of course.” And then she reminded me that we were, almost to the day, five years removed from the day Alex called to tell us of her cancer diagnosis.

Suddenly, it made sense. As my therapist used to say, the body remembers. Even if the mind doesn’t actively, the body responds on a primal level to things like seasonal changes — the weather, the angle of sun, the awakening of trees and wildlife. My body remembered the trauma of that conversation, and more, it associated it with this time of year. And once I understood, I felt better. I was still sad, of course, but at least I understood why, and that I could handle.

So, yeah, ups and downs.

Speaking of seasonal changes… Spring insinuates itself daily into the landscape and weather. Spring in Tennessee was a frenzied affair. Temperatures rose quickly, everything seemed to bloom at once, and it wasn’t uncommon to go from winter to spring to days that felt like mid-summer in the span of a single month. Spring here in the Northeast is a far more gradual process, as if the land itself is savoring its rebirth. Fits and starts. Warm days give way to cold ones, which in turn are followed by warmer ones. The end of last week was downright cold. It snowed here yesterday. But earlier in the week, it reached 70. It’s supposed to do the same early this week. And then we could have more snow on Thursday or Friday. Nuts, right? Our crocuses are up. Tulips and daffodils are emerging, but not yet showing blooms. Tree buds are beginning to swell. A few more bird species are flocking to our feeders. The general trend is clear and heartening after a long winter.

With spring, of course, comes baseball, which is still my sport of choice. I love soccer (excuse me: football), but my connection to baseball goes back to some of the earliest memories of my childhood. Playing ball on our little dead end street with the neighborhood kids, playing stickball on my school playground, collecting baseball cards, poring over boxscores in the newspaper literally every day of the season, watching games on TV with my dad, listening to games on my radio on weeknights when I should have been trying to sleep.

I don’t watch as much as I used to. When I was ten, I didn’t have to justify wasting a couple of hours watching a televised game. These days, there always seems to be something else I ought to be doing. But MLB.com airs radio broadcasts of Major League games from all over the country, and because I’m a subscriber, they’re basically free. So, I intend to listen this summer. There is something magical about baseball on the radio, announced by someone who knows what they’re doing. Maybe it’s the slower pace of the sport that makes it work. Maybe it’s just my love of the game. Whatever. I’m looking forward to it.

What? Work? Yeah, I’m doing some work. I am editing stories for the upcoming anthology, Disruptive Intent, which I am co-editing with Sarah J. Sover for Falstaff Books. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but that is to be expected when working on a project with so many moving parts. I can’t wait to see the final product. We have a terrific set of stories from our roster of wonderful writers, and working with Sarah has been a joy.

When not working on those edits, I have been writing my new book. I am not setting any land speed records with my output, but that’s okay. I’m not in any rush. I’m making progress, and I continue to love the concept and the main character.

I did my taxes this past week (which is also part of “work,” since I’m self-employed). That’s really all I care to say on that subject….

Finally, this past weekend, I took part in downtown Albany’s small but passionate No-King’s Rally. The city hosted a couple of rallies, and the region hosted more than a dozen. The one I attended began in the shadow of New York’s statehouse and then marched through the streets surrounding the Capitol Plaza. We chanted and held signs and all that good stuff, and we joined the millions worldwide who called for an end to the war-of-choice in Iran, the extra-legal brutality of ICE, the weaponization of the Justice Department, the assault on voting rights, and the systemic protection of Jeffrey Epstein’s allies and enablers in the White House and elsewhere. It felt good to do something positive with my simmering anger at this Administration, and to be surrounded by so many like-minded people.

And that’s me right now.

I hope you are well, that the onset of spring brings you joy, and that you have a wonderful week.

Tomorrow we finally enter Kair Toren, the capital of the kingdom of Rellas.

Its lynchpin is the Sun Margrave. The man who stands between order and lawlessness.

Gorgeous art by Helena Elias. Click to enlarge, the details are unreal

Maggie knows exactly what he represents, because This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me doesn’t drop a character into a fantasy world. It puts a fan inside it.

She’s reread these books until she knows them by heart. The details, the people, the moments that mattered. She knows how this story is supposed to go. And that certainty might be the most dangerous thing she brings into this world.

“Who is the Sun Margrave?” Kaiden asked.

“He’s the man who leads the Justice Chamber,” Clover told him. “When
people commit crimes against the kingdom, he is the one who brings the cases
before the High Court.”

“Margrave is a military title,” Reynald explained. “It means lord who defends
a border. The Sun Margrave also guards a boundary, the one between lawlessness and order.”

Our long w*it is almost over, and suddenly everything is happening at once.

House Andrews are on tour meeting readers and signing books. If you’re going to see them, send them the love of all of us who can’t be there.

They left me with lots of surprise goodies for you over the release period, bonus scenes and more eye candy art reveals.

Speaking of eye candy, the book is starting to roll out worldwide. Here are announcements for the French and German editions, with Polish, Spanish, Slovakian and Ukrainian editions on the way.

I know that early copies are already landing in bookstores and libraries and being delivered. Lucky you, happy reading! Please keep your friends safe until tomorrow’s spoiler thread, though.

Just one more day.

What are we reading with—snacks, tea, all of it?

The post The W*it Did Not Kill Us first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog, and while I don’t think I have much to say, I thought I should at least say something. So….

Hi. How’re’ya doin’?

Good, good…

How am I?

That’s…complicated. Generally, I’m okay. Life flows along. I had a birthday not so long ago. Never mind which one. But I saw friends and family. I heard from lots of people. And despite the inexorable march of time, I felt pretty good about the whole thing. Especially considering the alternative….

A few days later, though, I was feeling down, and I couldn’t explain it. As I say, I’d just had a nice birthday, and things seemed to be going along pretty well. Yet, I was just so very sad. Why? I finally said something to Nancy, and she reacted with something akin to, “Well, yeah, of course.” And then she reminded me that we were, almost to the day, five years removed from the day Alex called to tell us of her cancer diagnosis.

Suddenly, it made sense. As my therapist used to say, the body remembers. Even if the mind doesn’t actively, the body responds on a primal level to things like seasonal changes — the weather, the angle of sun, the awakening of trees and wildlife. My body remembered the trauma of that conversation, and more, it associated it with this time of year. And once I understood, I felt better. I was still sad, of course, but at least I understood why, and that I could handle.

So, yeah, ups and downs.

Speaking of seasonal changes… Spring insinuates itself daily into the landscape and weather. Spring in Tennessee was a frenzied affair. Temperatures rose quickly, everything seemed to bloom at once, and it wasn’t uncommon to go from winter to spring to days that felt like mid-summer in the span of a single month. Spring here in the Northeast is a far more gradual process, as if the land itself is savoring its rebirth. Fits and starts. Warm days give way to cold ones, which in turn are followed by warmer ones. The end of last week was downright cold. It snowed here yesterday. But earlier in the week, it reached 70. It’s supposed to do the same early this week. And then we could have more snow on Thursday or Friday. Nuts, right? Our crocuses are up. Tulips and daffodils are emerging, but not yet showing blooms. Tree buds are beginning to swell. A few more bird species are flocking to our feeders. The general trend is clear and heartening after a long winter.

With spring, of course, comes baseball, which is still my sport of choice. I love soccer (excuse me: football), but my connection to baseball goes back to some of the earliest memories of my childhood. Playing ball on our little dead end street with the neighborhood kids, playing stickball on my school playground, collecting baseball cards, poring over boxscores in the newspaper literally every day of the season, watching games on TV with my dad, listening to games on my radio on weeknights when I should have been trying to sleep.

I don’t watch as much as I used to. When I was ten, I didn’t have to justify wasting a couple of hours watching a televised game. These days, there always seems to be something else I ought to be doing. But MLB.com airs radio broadcasts of Major League games from all over the country, and because I’m a subscriber, they’re basically free. So, I intend to listen this summer. There is something magical about baseball on the radio, announced by someone who knows what they’re doing. Maybe it’s the slower pace of the sport that makes it work. Maybe it’s just my love of the game. Whatever. I’m looking forward to it.

What? Work? Yeah, I’m doing some work. I am editing stories for the upcoming anthology, Disruptive Intent, which I am co-editing with Sarah J. Sover for Falstaff Books. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but that is to be expected when working on a project with so many moving parts. I can’t wait to see the final product. We have a terrific set of stories from our roster of wonderful writers, and working with Sarah has been a joy.

When not working on those edits, I have been writing my new book. I am not setting any land speed records with my output, but that’s okay. I’m not in any rush. I’m making progress, and I continue to love the concept and the main character.

I did my taxes this past week (which is also part of “work,” since I’m self-employed). That’s really all I care to say on that subject….

Finally, this past weekend, I took part in downtown Albany’s small but passionate No-King’s Rally. The city hosted a couple of rallies, and the region hosted more than a dozen. The one I attended began in the shadow of New York’s statehouse and then marched through the streets surrounding the Capitol Plaza. We chanted and held signs and all that good stuff, and we joined the millions worldwide who called for an end to the war-of-choice in Iran, the extra-legal brutality of ICE, the weaponization of the Justice Department, the assault on voting rights, and the systemic protection of Jeffrey Epstein’s allies and enablers in the White House and elsewhere. It felt good to do something positive with my simmering anger at this Administration, and to be surrounded by so many like-minded people.

And that’s me right now.

I hope you are well, that the onset of spring brings you joy, and that you have a wonderful week.

Titles by Genevieve Graham Here are a few other LitStack Spots of titles to add…

The post Spotlight on “The Chambermaid’s Key” by Genevieve Graham appeared first on LitStack.

Bird bird bird, bird is the word…

The delicious delicious word.

I must be dreaming.

No, pretty sure I can reach it from here.

Oooh, I wanna watch this…

Ptery vs. Tortie, sure, why not, beats pay per view.

1– BATTLEFRONT II IS PRETTY COOL

I’ve posted before that Fortnite is my kind of shooter. Fast-paced, high action games like Marvel Rivals, and Call of Duty, aren’t fun for me. And I pretty much just die. Fast and often. I’d rather go play a Solo RPG or something. I had been stuck since finishing Grim Dawn (which I wrote about here). I tried a couple games, including getting into Red Dead Redemption II (which I like, it just hasn’t grabbed me like LA Noire did). I false-started a half dozen games.

My son likes Star Wars: Battlefront II, which I briefly tried. Died repeatedly. Quit. But I decided to give it another go. It’s got a single player campaign mode, with multiple missions, as well as a few other solo options. But it was developed as a Multiplayer shooter, reminiscent of Team Fortress 2.

There was a huge controversy upon release in 2017, regarding micro transactions, and Electronic Arts stopped new content and support, in 2020. But the game has had a couple of resurgences and hit an all-time high in concurrent players last Summer. The game is what it is, and there’s a lot of content for the frequent $3.99 sale price.

I played the entire Solo campaign, in which you are primarily Iden Versio, leader of an Empire elite special forces unit. You have a wakening of the conscience and go to work for the Rebel Alliance. It’s often challenging, but fun. There are also individual Solo scenarios for the Light and Dark sides, where you can play a wide array of SW heroes and villains.

And I’ve played myself up to level 13 in Multiplayer. These are usually large-scale battles of a couple different types, along with options for smaller (down to 4v4) options. I die a lot, but you just re-spawn and continue. I’ve only encountered one blatant cheater so far.

I just wanna say, visually, this game is TREMENDOUS. It’s now 9 years old, and I love how it looks. The cut scenes are like mini-movies. Game play looks great. In space, on ships, on planets: this is a beautiful Star Wars game. I had the Dos-based X-Wing, in the early 90s. Battlefront II is a treat just to watch.

I wish there was more to the Solo campaign (it includes a short sequel), but that was never the heart of the game. The Multiplayer works well enough for me that I’m playing it regularly. It’s not as fun as Fortnite (or maybe, Fortnite is far less frustrating), but the Star Wars immersion is so deep I’m loading it up and blasting away. Check it out on sale and see if it’s your kind of Star Wars thing. The solo campaign was worth $4 alone.

2 – CARL HIASSEN IS A SMILE IN THESE MESSED-UP TIMES

I was a Carl Hiassen fan after he broke big back in the 80s. The Miami newspaper columnist wrote funny crime novels that captured what has become the Florida craziness. Strip Tease was a big-screen movie with Demi Moore. Recently, Apple+ made a Vince Vaughan show from Bad Monkey.

There’s a new Florida PI show, RJ Decker, on Tuesday nights. The character, if not the plots, is from Hiassens’ second novel, Double Whammy. I like the show, though after the first two episodes, they’ve significantly dropped the humor level, and it’s in danger of becoming just another cop show. Hope they get back on track.

There’s a character named Skink, in the book. He’s the former governor of Florida who simply walked away from the corruption and the office and lives in the swamps, eating fresh roadkill. He’s in several Hiassen books, though the show left him out.

Since I really liked the Decker pilot; and since the world is a dumpster fire that keeps getting hotter, I decided to revisit Hiassen.

Hiassen satirizes the absurdity of Florida life – which is also to say, people in general. Hiassen can be laugh-out-loud funny. In a different way from Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett. He exacerbates situations, but you don’t dismiss them. Because people are too ‘people-ish.’ They can be that dumb, or shallow, or evil.

What really appeals to me right now is that bad guys get their come-uppance. Often in fitting and hilarious ways. Not always SFW, either. You’ll never forget what a bottlenose dolphin does to a steroided-up security guard in Native Tongue. Bad things happen to ‘good’ folks during the books, but the villains pay their price in the end. And I need that these days.

Hiassen was a newspaper writer for years, and he had co-authored three thrillers, before he started writing funny Florida crime novels. I have re-read/re-listened to six of his first eight novels, and they are still really good, decades later. And they’re still fun. He’s an insightful writer, and a good one.

I started to be less enthralled around book ten, back when. We’ll see how many more I tackle. I know I haven’t read his two most recent adult books (he also writes young fiction) – maybe I should.

I unreservedly recommend Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. I think Red Dwarf fits in there, too, if a bit less, for me. I really think you should give Hiassen a try. I’d start with Tourist Season, or Double Whammy. But you don’t need to read them in order. Not even the Skink books (recommended for those, though). Or try Strip Tease if you remember the movie.

The laughs, and the bad guys paying for their crimes, is what I need right now. Hiassen delivers.

3 – JAMES LEE BURKE IS A MASTER OF HARDBOILED

I caught up on some Clive Cussler (well, his continuators) in January and February.  Now, I last read a James Lee Burke novel. Back in 2020. Swan Peak is book number 17 in his Cajun hardboiled series about Dave Robicheaux. It was from 2008, so I was a bit behind. Well, that series will be up to 25, later this year.

Before jumping down the Carl Hiassen rabbit hold, I read the next book in the series: 2010’s The Glass Rainbow. And I re-listened to the first, The Neon Rain. Two things about James Lee Burke have held true for almost forty years.

One is that he’s a superb writer. Probably my vote for the best modern hardboiled writer. I know Elmore Leonard has his supporters, and Donald Westlake was terrific. There are several excellent ones. I’m just saying that I’m a Burke guy.

The second thing, is that his books are dark. Disturbingly dark. Very bad things happen to people. Worse than ‘just’ death. Death is a release. Robicheaux – and often his buddy, Clete Purcel – go to great lengths to punish bad guys. But a Burke novel is the polar opposite of a Hiassen one, as far as crime books go. Having said that, The Glass Rainbow is classic Robicheaux. As of 2010, Burke was still a superior writer. I have the next book in the series. But I’d had enough dark for a while. I’ve liked almost every novel I’ve read, including some non-Robicheaux. But I have to be mentally ‘in a place’ for Burke. This isn’t like reading Cussler, or Higgins, or even John D. MacDonald. But The Glass Rainbow was a good read, and I will go on to Creole Belle.

And if you can find the unabridged audiobooks by Will Patton (seems mostly just abridged are out there now), get those. I really didn’t care for the guy reading them now.

4 – NATHAN FILLION IS THE KIND OF GUY WE NEED

Fillion turned 55 last week. He started out on a soap opera, briefly flew on Firefly, was Captain Hammer (corporate tool), became a mainstream star on Castle, and is currently heading up The Rookie. He’s both a ‘star’ and a nerd. And he revels in it all. He recently started a podcast with real-life buddy Alan Tudyk – Once We Were Spacemen. Which I wrote about here.

I wrote about the Firefly buzz a couple weeks ago (zero comments? C’mon, Byrne fans!). Hopefully the animated series project will find a home. I’m almost done with this re-watch of Firefly, with Serenity to follow. I watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog again last week, and it’s still delightful.

If you see other people talk about Fillion (ie, Katie Sackhoff on her own podcast), there is nary a discouraging word. It’s like EVERYBODY knows him from his wide-ranging career. And to a person, they say he’s genuinely nice. He treats people like they matter. Not just powerful people. Fans, crew, people he runs into: everyone has nice things to say about him.

His coworkers (not named Stana Katic) praise how he makes everyone comfortable as part of the team. Jewel Staite says she calls him for professional advice. You hear story after story praising him.

Our culture loves to cancel people we deem ‘not nice.’ Legacies are tarnished or destroyed – not always justifiably. Fillion is the guy people want to be around. And that’s cool to see.

I am a fan of Firefly, Dr Horrible, Castle, Con Man (which I talked about here), and I liked him on Desperate Housewives. When you listen to Once We Were Spacemen, you hear all these great stories from his life. And about him and Tudyk buddying around in real life. Bruce Campbell and Nathan Fillion are two actors I like rooting for and watching.

Go to Youtube and pick a couple Spacemen episodes. They’ve had guests from their careers on, including most of the Firefly bunch. I recommend the Felicia Day one a few weeks ago. That was really fun. But honestly, they all are.

And watch a couple interviews he does. You’ll see how people feel about him. It’s cool.

5 – I CANCELED ALMOST ALL MY STREAMING SUBS

So, There are too Many Subscriptions was my fifth item on the February Five Things. I talked about how I was fed up with how many subscriptions I seemed to need to watch and listen to stuff. So much for ‘cutting the cable.’ So, I had canceled Paramount+ and Peacock. And Audible, and Kindle Unlimited. And I switched home Wifi, cutting that bill in half.

Well, I continued on, pulling the plug on Hulu LiveTV (meaning no Disney or ESPN), and Spotify. Along with a credit card I didn’t need, I knocked off $225 a month for stuff I could live without.

I did buy a digital antenna, which picks up my local area stations. And I kept Prime – partly because my son buys more stuff on it than I do. I am using Roku’s Life TV, Pluto, and Plex; all of which are free. I’ve dug out shows like Emergency!, and Simon and Simon. With Prime I can watch Castle, and Poirot. Plus whatever movies they haven’t started charging for. Yet.

I basically gave up on hockey and soccer, and mostly baseball. Won’t be much football, either. But I’ve watched a lifetime of sports. I can leave them behind to avoid paying multiple platforms to see them. I’ll check online for standings and news.

I haven’t bought a DVR system (and my TV requires a USB port to use an SSD drive, which is already tied up), so no recording anything. I actually sit down at 8 PM on Tuesday night and watch Best Medicine, running to pee during the commercials. And then RJ Decker at 10. Just like the cavemen watched TV!

In Ohio, the Public Utilities Commission is corrupt as FIFA, and my electric bill has more than doubled, with another rate increase approved last week. So, that’s eating up these savings. But the whole ‘cut the cable and save money with streaming’ was fools gold. I ended up paying more for even more channels I never watched. I finally said “No thanks.”

6 – JAMES TOLKAN COULD BE ONE SERIOUS DUDE

Actor James Tolkan died last week. He might be best known as the guy who told Maverick (Tom Cruise) “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash” in Top Gun. He had mastered that ‘no-nonsense’ role way back in War Games. And he delivered more of the same as Vice-Principal Strickland in Back to the Future. He had no use for slackers!

I’ve written about A&E’s terrific A Nero Wolfe Mystery (back when A&E wasn’t a garbage network). Tolkan was a key part of that ensemble cast, appearing in 14 of the 20 stories which were adapted. He was his typical self as FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Wragg. But he got to branch out, like he did as Avery Ballou. He oddly had a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker on as a dog handler in Die Like a Dog. Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, he had a minor role in They Might Be Giants.

And he was an utterly despicable old man in an episode of Leverage. Talk about rooting against the bad guy in that one! Tolkan had a long career of performing well on screen.

7 – I’M READY FOR THE MANDALORIAN & GROGU

I’ve shared my feelings about Andor (loved Rogue One, but I’d rather re-read Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, and I haven’t encountered so much pretentiousness since the last time I had an Amazon return at Whole Foods).

I am SOOOOO looking forward to The Mandalorian movie hitting theaters in May. I shall be in attendance. This fun, action flick is exactly the Star Wars I need. Live-action Zeb is cool (loved Rebels), and every part of the trailer worked for me. I’m not a theater guy anymore, but Star Wars will always bring me to a big screen.

And if you ask, I DNFed Skeleton Crew. Couldn’t have been less interested. I don’t begrudge people liking something. Good for them. But I’m not drinking anybody’s Flavor Aid. I’ll just wait for something I like.

I expect The Mandalorian and Grogu to fully meet my Star Wars expectations. My first post about that great show.

8 -YOU SHOULD WATCH DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG

I absolutely will be doing a post dedicated to this gem of a web series, which grew out of the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. It’s not streaming anywhere, which is silly. But I pull it up on youtube and cast it to my 50” TV. The soundtrack is out there, including on Spotify.

It is 45 minutes of pure fun. Neil Patrick Harris is fantastic. Watching him is a treat. And the guy can sing. Nathan Fillion delights as Captain Hammer (corporate tool). He can sing, as well. Felicia Day shines as the girl between them. And she actually went to school on a violin scholarship. She knows music.

I was hooked in the very opening scene (ha haaa ha ha ha haaaaaa). Harris’ monologue is great. And things just keep getting better as Penny, and then Captain Hammer, enter the story. Simply put, this is my favorite musical. I can watch it on back-to-back days and it’s still fresh and fun. The music is great. And while Fillion and Day are so good, Neil Patrick Harris understatedly dominates every scene he’s in. You see the shift in his character at the 25 minute mark, on his face. He’s an outstanding actor. Love his singing voice, too.

I praise Con Man in my nerd circles. It’s a sci-fi homage any fan (especially of Firefly) should enjoy. Dr. Horrible is less than an hour out of your day, and it’s worth every second of it.

Prior Things I Think I Think
Five Things I Think I Think (February 2026)
Five Things I Think I Think (January 2026)
Four Things I Think I Think (May 2025) 
Six Things I Think I Think (March 2025)
Ten Things I Think I Think (January 2025)
Ten Things I Think I Think (December 2024)
Nine Things I Think I Think (October 2024)
Five More Things I Think: Marvel Edition (September 2024)
Ten Things I Think I Think: Marvel Edition ( September 2024)
Five Things I Think I Think (January 2024)
Seven Things I Think I Think (December 2023)
Talking Tolkien: TenThings I Think I Think (August 2023)
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I think (August 2023)
5 More Things I Think (March 2023)
10 Things I Think I Think (March 2023)

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.

A new stand-alone novel set in the Schooled in Magic universe!

A hundred years before Emily, the world is in chaos. The Empire is in ruins. Old certainties are collapsing everywhere. The provinces are becoming kingdoms, the magical aristocracy is trying to redefine its place in the new world disorder, the commoners are being ground under and bold or desperate men are preparing their bids for apotheosis or nemesis. The world teeters on the brink … and Whitehall School is caught in the middle, a pawn of greater powers.

For common-born magicians Alan and Irene, scorned and despised by their aristocratic peers, the challenge is to keep their heads down long enough to graduate and go out into the world as qualified magicians. For Walter, Heir to House Ashworth, the challenge is to take advantage of the chaos to build an unassailable position and put himself in firm control. For Hasdrubal, Charmsmaster of Whitehall, the challenge is to protect the school from outside powers seeking to subvert or destroy it …

And they will all be swept up in a desperate battle to save Whitehall, because the school is now the centre of a plot to remake the world once and for all.

Read a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase from Amazon US, UK, CAN, AUS, Draft2Digital or my Private Bookstore.

Buy Platform Decay
FORMAT/INFO: Platform Decay will be published on May 5th, 2026 by Tor Books. It is 256 pages long and available in ebook, audiobook, and hardcover.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The mission: secretly extract friendly humans from enemy territory. The location: a planet-sized space port controlled by multiple corporate sectors, with a mix of tourists, workers, and security making life difficult. The target: multiple humans, including...children. Ugh. Murderbot may be up to the task, but that doesn't mean it has to like it. Looks like watching Sanctuary Moon will have to wait...

Platform Decay is that wonderful blend of action and character that reminds me why I love Murderbot. The plot itself is pitch perfect. It's a classic extraction mission: Murderbot must sneak into a planet-sized space port, find its protectees, and escort them to safety. That means we get some stealth and espionage, as well as full-tilt firefights as Murderbot goes about its job. The story might be considered bland were it not for both the constant shifting of environments as Murderbot goes from zone to zone across the station and the trademark deadpan exasperation it has for almost anything humans do.

I would have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this novella if that was all there was, but there are some great character beats scattered throughout that are the cherry on top. Murderbot, you see, is trying some new approaches to processing its feelings after the events of book seven, System Collapse. The result is some small quiet scenes that nevertheless show some growth for Murderbot as it continues its journey to get a handle on this while emotions thing.

At the end of the day, all you really need to know is that Murderbot is back and is operating at peak form. If you're a fan of the series, you'll be well rewarded and if you haven't started yet...why are you reading this review, go start the series!

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: March 31, 2026
ASIN: B0FH1G5QT9
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 4/5 stars

“When sixteen-year-old Calisa arrives at her great-aunt’s B&B in rural Vermont for the summer, she’s shocked to find a rundown inn rather than the cozy bed-and-breakfast she was expecting. Grumpy and eccentric, Auntie Zee is determined to keep anyone from messing with her beloved inn . . . even though she clearly needs the help.

To convince her great-aunt to keep her around, Calisa sets to work fixing up the inn, enlisting extra help from the groundskeeper’s (handsome) son. But the longer she stays, the surer she is that there’s something strange about the B&B—and its guests. Something almost . . . otherworldly.

The inn is keeping a magical secret—but to protect the place she’s come to love, Calisa must unravel the truth before it’s too late.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this from NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: I ended up really enjoying this but thought the beginning came off as much more juvenile sounding than a lot of Durst’s other books (maybe because it is more aimed at young adult readers). I am a huge fan of Durst and have read most of her books. This definitely comes off as more middle grade/young adult than her other adult fantasy books. I enjoyed the premise and found this easy to read.

Calisa’s boyfriend cheated on her, and she needs to get away for the summer to decompress from the drama. Her moms suggest spending the summer at her Aunt Zee’s inn helping out. When Calisa arrives she find that Aunt Zee does not want her there. Not only that, but the inn is really run down and a bit…odd. Aunt Zee gives Calisa three days to visit and then wants Calisa to leave. Calisa is desperate to convince her Aunt that she needs to stay the summer. Then Calisa starts noticing odd things about the inn…

Calisa grew on me as a character, although initially I thought she seemed a bit immature and naive about things. As the story continued, you start to see more of her depth. All of the characters in this book lack some depth and seem a bit stereotypical. I was surprised by that because I am normally sucked in by Durst’s characters (although lately I have been reading her adult novels). Maybe that is because this is a stand alone, but I wanted to know more about how the characters thought and felt. Especially Aunt Zee, she kind of remains a mystery, and I would have loved to learn her background.

I loved the inn and the magic there but again felt like I didn’t get to learn enough about it. How did this inn get to be, how does the travel work? I kept feeling like this would have been a better duology or trilogy that would have allowed more page space to add a bit more depth to this cool inn and the characters that dwelt there. Maybe we’ll get a companion book from when Aunt Zee was younger or for one what happens after this book.

I also thought the reveal about what Aunt Zee was felt abrupt, and then we never really learned more about her type of magic. I wanted to learn more about this and have it expanded on. I also thought the intriguing visitors to the inn were kind of glanced over. They seemed like interesting characters sketches that weren’t fully realized.

This is a cute YA contemporary cozy fantasy read. I enjoyed it and read it quickly. My main complaint is everything about it felt a bit too simple; the characters, the world, the story, and even the dialogue. It’s still a really good read, I just feel like it could have been an amazing story if it wasn’t forced into this one short volume.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I liked this story and thought it was a fun, simple, cozy, contemporary fantasy read. My main complaint is everything felt a bit too simple and under-explained. How did Aunt Zee get to where she was? How did the Inn get there? Calisa felt pretty immature and naive for an older teen as well, although she did gain a bit more depth and grow on me as the story progressed. While this wasn’t my favorite Durst book, it was a fun one. I would love to see some companion novels written about this world.

No One Will Save You (Hulu, September 19, 2023)

Hold onto your butts — my new watch-a-thon continues! You can find Part 1 here.

Who likes alien abduction flicks? I’ll soon fix that.

No One Will Save You (2023)

Kicking off the second half of this truncated list with the best invader film by far, 2023’s No One Will Save You, which had a somewhat muted limited theatrical release and subsequently can be found on Disney+/Hulu, but should not be overlooked.

Brynn (played brilliantly by Kaitlin Dever) is a young woman coming to terms with the death of her best friend and her mother. Her friend’s death is partly her fault, and for this reason she has been ostracized by the nearby town and is now living a solitary life in an expansive inherited farmhouse. Her grief is rudely interrupted by a home intruder, who only turns out to be a flippin’ alien.

After successfully fending the creature off, her life rapidly spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse with more invaders, and a town overrun with mind controlling parasites.

This is a solidly made film, with genuine creepiness running throughout and impressive effects. The plot takes a couple of unexpected turns, and gets a little too frantic for my liking in the third act, but the build up is great, and the final payoff is thought-provoking. Definitely worth a watch.

9/10

Watch the Sky (ROC Film Partners, 2017) Watch the Sky (2017)

Apparently this one was based on a YA novel, and you get the feeling that the filmmakers just took all the dull character introduction paragraphs and threw them into a screenplay blender.

The premise isn’t bad; a pair of brothers send a camera into the stratosphere strapped to a weather balloon to get some shots of our fair planet, but their actions gain the unwanted attention of a gaggle of cow-fiddling aliens, and a government agency that believes boys should be poking frogs with sticks, not doing ‘science stuff’.

This flick has a bit of a faith-based tinge, combined with a coming-of-age flavor, covered with sprinkles of teen emotions, and is therefore all over the place, taking its sweet time to get to any actual alien stuff, and fluffing the catch when it does so. You’ll be delighted to learn that not only does the film end abruptly and leave itself open for a sequel, but I can’t find any evidence that a sequel is being made.

4/10

Alien Hunter (Columbia TriStar Home Video, July 19, 2003) Alien Hunter (2003)

This American/Bulgarian production is one of those forgotten films that you suddenly realize you’ve never seen, seek out, and then regret. Ah, but I’m being a little harsh, for as daft as much of it is, there are some gems to be unearthed along the way, so let’s dig in.

James Spader plays Julian Rome, the horniest cryptologist the University at Berkeley has ever known. We know this because during his introduction he delightedly receives an email with the subject line ‘SEX’, and the message ‘I WANT YOU.’ Before he can bang another student however, he is yanked off to an Antarctic research base to aid a team who have just discovered a weird, pod-like structure in the ice, and who presumably have never watched The Thing.

This object is emanating a signal sound, which Rome is tasked to decipher. Naturally he does so (it translates to ‘Do Not Open’) just as the team opens it. An alien emerges from the shell along with a ghastly liquid virus that kills most of the team, and now, in a rare moment of solidarity, the US government has asked a Russian sub to launch a nuclear missile at the facility.

Can Julian Rome find out what the alien’s agenda is? Will they all die in a fiery inferno? Is that student still waiting for a reply?

Only good for Spader completists.

6/10

Flatwoods (Ghost Cat Films, April 5, 2022) Flatwoods (2022)

Here’s a film that can’t decide if it wants to be a serious expose of the Flatwoods Monster based on West Virginia folklore, a documentary of one woman’s struggle to uncover the truth, or a mockumentary chock full of tropes and poor filmmaking decisions, and fails at all three.

Mandy June Simpson plays Carol James, a documentarian on the hunt for the truth about the Flatwoods Monster, a creature as elusive as Bigfoot’s accountant. She visits the Flatwoods Monster Museum (a real place) and takes in a plethora of rubbish drawings, blurry photos and expensive souvenirs, while talking to local residents and obligatory weirdos. The film jumps from scene to scene with nary a care for stylistic continuity or progression, and the final reveal is limper than a piece of kelp in a carwash.

I very nearly didn’t finish this one, but I hate-watched it to the end purely because I’m dedicated to my craft.

3/10

Monsters of California (Screen Media, June 10, 2023) Monsters of California (2023)

Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 sets out to make an epic sci-fi/monster mash, and turns in quite the atrocious mess. Well done, Tom.

We are introduced to a group of stoner dudes and dudettes who are trying to Scooby-Doo the shit out of a supposedly haunted house and get their asses handed to them by a ghost, or something. This does nothing to curtail their paranormal investigations though, and we are ‘treated’ to various scenes of them doing other spooky stuff, including a spectacularly cringe-worthy sasquatch encounter.

When the most sensible one out of them, Dallas (played by Jack Sampson), stumbles across a military macguffin, the gang must fend off the government, aliens, and dick punches, as they blunder from one horribly scripted moment to the next. The dialogue is terrible, the pacing all over the place, and a couple of fun actors, Casper Van Dien and Richard Kind, are thoroughly wasted. The big reveal, that aliens are already among us and helping humanity to advance, begs the question ‘how long is this advancement going to take?’, because by God all the characters in this film need a helping hand.

A great time for anyone who likes mom jokes, spying on sunbathing girls, and dick punching.

4/10

Explorer From Another World (Piranha Drama, October 30, 2024) Bonus: Explorer from Another World (2024)

I just watched this 45-min short and wanted to slip it in as it meets the criteria just as vaguely as some of the other entries on this list.

I nearly turned it off after 30 seconds as I was convinced I’d stumbled across an A.I. generated film, but aside from some suspicious moments, the film is generally a human effort. The story is slight (alien explorer visits Earths, chaos ensues), the script is purposefully tongue-in-cheek, the acting ranges from okayish to terrible, and the wigs are awful in that shiny nylon way (there are a LOT of wigs).

I don’t mind a pastiche, but I can’t forgive average filmmaking, and the shot choices and editing left a lot to be desired. However, I also can’t stay mad at it, because the filmmakers leaned into the practical gore effects with gusto, and I chortled once or twice as the human fodder got offed in ascending levels of grue and stickiness.

If you’ve got a little bit of popcorn left at the bottom of your Project Hail Mary popcorn bucket, stick this on and suck on those kernels.

6/10

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Probing Questions, Part 1
My Top Thirty Films
The Star Warses
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?

See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.

Writing and publishing plans, Dolly the crazy chicken update, one of my series leaving KU, and other news.

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Dollface by Lindy Ryan

Mogsy’s Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Minotaur Books (February 24, 2025)

Length: 304 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Ever since her Bless Your Heart series, I’ve been on a bit of a Lindy Ryan kick. So, I went into Dollface already expecting a good time, and honestly, it was awesome! This book is like a love letter to the classic slasher movies with just the right amount of self-awareness to pull off the campiness, and despite the violence and chaos, its lively tone ensures that things never get too heavy.

The story follows Jill, a horror author who has just relocated to suburban New Jersey with her husband and young son. Struggling with writer’s block, she’s hoping the change of scenery might even offer a little inspiration for her next book. Instead, she finds herself immediately roped into the baffling world of PTA mom politics and meetings, thanks to her bubbly new neighbor who volunteers Jill for a position on the committee. Unsure how well she’ll fit into this strange new social ecosystem, Jill nonetheless decides to make the best out of the situation, using the opportunity to settle in and make friends.

But suddenly, things take a terrifying turn. A mysterious killer begins targeting the women in the community, starting with the barista at the local coffee shop. And then, one of Jill’s fellow PTA moms is brutally attacked in her home. Could these incidents be connected? As more women are attacked, Jill is starting to think so. After all, she’s no stranger to slasher movies, and as the body count continues to rise, she also can’t help but notice a pattern emerging. The killer wears a plastic doll mask, appearing to choose their victims and methods with a specific purpose. Things are shaping up to be just like the kind of stories she writes about, making Jill think she’s on to something. But can a horror author and PTA mom turn detective and crack the case before she becomes the final girl?

This meta quality of Dollface is where it really shines, with the story going all in on embracing its inspirational origins while affectionately poking fun at them. Take the masked killer, for example, reminiscent of Ghostface of the Scream franchise but reimagined with an uncanny twist that’s both a little creepy but also ridiculous in the best way. Fans of the classic slashers will recognize all our favorite tropes, and what makes it even better is that our protagonist knows all these tropes too! Jill sees them happening in real time, literally even calls them out, but still makes the same kinds of mistakes that land her deeper into trouble. And yet, readers know all this is done by design, because Lindy Ryan is a great sport.

That tongue-in-cheek energy also adds a lot of charm to the story. There’s something genuinely entertaining about watching a horror-savvy character try to outmaneuver a narrative she considers herself an expert in but still messes up. But the fact that Jill is such a congenial protagonist gives this book a playful edge, almost like it’s in conversation with the genre itself, rather than simply existing in it. She’s also an endearing and uplifting figure, despite plenty of trauma and heartbreak in her past. It’s just hard not to root for a character who keeps soldiering on, even in the face of looming publisher deadlines or all the absurd crap she has to put up with from the PTA.

Yet here the supporting cast shines through as well, with the over-the-top moms and neighbors that make up Jill’s new social circle. If you’re wondering if there might be a satirical element to this, the answer is absolutely! The suburban dynamics are exaggerated and a little ridiculous, but that is clearly the point. Even so, the portrayal never feels truly negative. Instead, it comes across as affectionate, rendering the characters in a larger-than-life way that perfectly suits the tone. The novel knows exactly what its going for and doesn’t take itself too seriously, which works well in its favor.

At the end of the day, that’s really the key to enjoying Dollface. Get ready for something quirky, a little messy, but also very self-aware. Rather than trying to reinvent the genre, it embraces it, plays with its conventions, and has a blast along the way. In between all the nostalgic moments and nods to classic horror, there’s humor and there’s gore, coming together beautifully to create a story that’s just plain fun.

Actually I had to deal with the fact that Kit at eighteen/nineteen cannot POSSIBLY fit into a jacket he had when he was fifteen so he obviously had to go out and buy the exact same jacket in a larger size. Which does get mentioned. Kit thinks that might make him weird, and it probably does.

(He does take it off when he wears gear, though, and enough time doesn't really pass in TKLOF to worry about laundry.)

First: I want to apologize. I normally post the full cover (front, spine, back), but… I missed the window to download that from the publisher =/. Second, someone in comments asked about sample chapters—and I realized that it is, in fact, the end of March, and Cast in Blood is coming out on the 28th of April. So: I have sample chapters, and the regular front-only cover. Much of my day is focused on my youngest at the moment, but as he gets used to being at home, he is much, much happier than he was during his long hospital stay—and that makes things easier for me. It gives me more of my brain-space back; it gives me room to think … Continue reading →