teach me the art of war

Video essay

First of all, on my last post about Australian horror movies, rhoda_rants linked me to this great video essay about Australian horror, which I did not know had a reputation overseas as being notably brutal even for the genre. Well worth a watch! I'm still chewing on the contents and deciding how much I agree with them (for instance, my emotional reaction to Wolf Creek was quite different from the essayist's, see below) but in particular I thought the analysis of colonialism as a major (albeit unexamined) presence in the Australian concept of an inherently dangerous and inhospitable Outback was spot on. I think deep down we all know damn well that this continent was not made to support a population of pale-skinned agrarians, and I'm very interested now to track down the cited anthology of Aboriginal horror shorts that portray the land not as a threat but as a source of comfort in the face of imported danger.

Feature films

Wolf Creek (2005): Two young British tourists and an Aussie bloke they've taken up with experience car troubles while roadtripping through the far remote Australian Outback, and accept help from a charming older man who turns out to be a sadistic serial killer. This is a film that excels at its objective, and its objective is something I do not really vibe with and don't care to experience again. It was just...brutal. Brutal and cruel and bleak in a way that felt far too grounded and believable to be fun. There's no mercy for the victims at all, no real moments of relief or triumph, no room for hope to grow. Mick, the killer, is not your cartoonish slasher villain in a silly mask. He's normal and lovable in a way that from an Australian perspective feels almost sacred - an embodiment of the tough, friendly, irreverent outback Aussie spirit in an era where most of us now live in cities. (He's not an over-the-top Crocodile Dundee type, either. I have a grandfather and some uncles out in WA who are just like Mick, minus the penchant for rape and murder.) It was also unnerving to see Cassandra Magrath in the role of one of the victims; I know her as the beloved daughter character in the extremely tonally different show SeaChange. This film was not really much more gory than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but the violence felt far more shocking and unpleasant. Thanks, I hate it! The directors did great, though.

Friday the 13th (1980): Well, this was a happy accident! I was absolutely sure this was one of the few horror movies I'd already watched back in my teens, and so I didn't bother to look up a plot synopsis before watching. If I had, then I would probably have been put off by the reveal of ( spoilers ) But:
1) I apparently had the film mixed up with Nightmare on Elm Street, which is the one I actually did watch in high school (I think I also watched Halloween, but I won't be 100% sure until I rewatch it).
2) The execution was campy enough that the upsetting-to-me themes didn't bother me at all in this case, and in fact made for a really great twist that deepened what until then seemed like a rather bland "everybody dies for no good reason" type slasher.

I don't have much more to say about this one, which is at least partly because I watched it with Husband and Close Friend who when put together are unstoppable chatterboxes during movies, and the vibe was more fun group hangout than serious media analysis. But it was fun! And I think I'll watch more of them, maybe next month when the salient date comes around again thanks to February being a round 28 days this year.

DNF: Black Water (2007): I got bored about halfway through this and gave up. I thought I would like it because it's all about a croc attack, and I am all about croc attacks in other contexts - I gobble up documentaries about terrifying wildlife and have had some great times during feeding hour at various national reptile parks. But by the time a solid half hour had elapsed of these three comically underprepared dickheads being stuck up a mangrove tree with no crocodile in sight, I just didn't care anymore. They probably got eaten eventually. Oh, well.

In lieu of a serious review, I'm just going to treat you guys (if you haven't already seen it) to a wildly popular crocodile-related Australian meme. Here's how one of our most famously nutty politicians responded when approached on the subject of same-sex marriage:



Horror shorts

Finally, a couple of horror shorts I watched recently. I don't have much to say about these, but they were fun, and I thought I'd link them in case others of you guys have also seen them/might be interested:

Connect 4 by RDCworld1: I knew these guys for their entertaining merging of Black "hood" culture with weeb/gamer geekery, but apparently now they do horror shorts as well! Connect 4 is a little paranormal snippet with a streak of gallows humour; I enjoyed it a lot.

2am: The Smiling Man by Michael Evans: The physical acting in this! Super, super scary body language. Also great editing. Loved it.

It feels strangely awkward watching movies about people who talk and behave like me! I know I’m not alone in that; Australian cultural cringe is a well studied phenomenon, and we don't exactly have a local equivalent of Hollywood churning out all-Aussie blockbusters on a regular schedule. When I think of Australian cinema, I think of boring arts grant dramas that no one wants to watch and culturally hyperspecific comedy that we don't want anyone else to watch lest the world know us for the bunch of dags we really are. Fun, tropey genre films are supposed to be about Special Fake Movie People with accents I've never heard in person and manners that are upside down from mine.

And yet, as I'm learning through my local library's streaming service, there's some really good Australian horror out there. I couldn't tell you exactly where to find these overseas, but at least some of them appear to have had international releases, so for all I know, they're on Netflix for you guys. I'd be so thrilled to hear what people without my cultural biases think. :D

The Tunnel (2011): This is a mockumentary about a news crew who fall foul of a mysterious subterranean killer while investigating a lead related to Sydney's network of abandoned train tunnels. The tunnels are real, and I vaguely remember hearing spooky rumours about them during the early 2010s, which I'm now thinking may have been part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for this film, lol. Anyway, this one scared the everloving shit out of me. The vibes are fantastic, the mockumentary gimmick is executed flawlessly, and most of all everything was just so familiar. I used to get everywhere I ever needed to go on those exact Sydney trains. The characters are completely normal, relatable Aussies of the kind you could meet everyday on the street. The actual plot is a bit thin but I was happy to overlook the silly bits because it was just such a damn enjoyable viewing experience. And the monster was SO FUCKING CREEPY. Pick this one if you like mockumentaries and/or wish to know more about ya girl from dreamwidth's old commute.

Relic (2020): A mother and daughter drive out to a small town in rural Victoria to check on grandma, whose neighbours haven't seen her in days. She is missing when they arrive, but reappears in the house days later, unwilling or unable to explain where she's been. Her stately country house is covered in what looks like black mould and there's a terrible black bruise on her chest. This is a heartwrenching film about the grief of losing an elderly parent to dementia, and also a fantastic haunted house story full of dark family secrets, unanswered questions and unexplained paranormal phenomena. The creaky old house and the damp, miserable evergreen forest surrounding it threw me back to the days of visiting my own grandparents. It really does capture the highly specific atmosphere of a certain kind of well-off but precipitously ageing rural town in southeastern Australia; I swear I could almost taste the air. For whatever it's worth, the Russo brothers are credited as executive producers; I don't know much about movie production and have honestly never been sure what kind of role an executive producer plays, but hey, those were two names I recognised. Take or leave the name recognition, though - I loved this movie either way.

Talk To Me (2022): A group of South Australian teens acquire an embalmed hand that lets them summon dead souls to temporarily possess them. But one of their séance parties goes too far, and a malevolent spirit decides it doesn't want to leave. This is a mix of paranormal and psychological horror that's as much about grief (the protagonist lost her mother to a very obvious suicide that her dad won’t admit to her was suicide) as about bloodthirsty ghosts. I am not sure why reviewers chose to bill a movie this thoroughly depressing as "fun" - it was fun at the start, sure, but by the end it had descended to a truly tragic place. I liked it a lot! But it definitely belongs on the downer end of the mood spectrum.

You'll Never Find Me (2023): In an isolated trailer park in the middle of the night, a young woman knocks on an older man's door to beg shelter from a violent thunderstorm. The woman is desperate, drenched, and seems unable to get her story straight about how she got there or where she came from; the man is withdrawn and antisocial and was drinking alone before the woman arrived. They both seem frightened of each other. Something about the situation is unmistakably off, but what it is exactly, the film plays close to its chest for the first exquisitely slow hour. This is a quiet, cagey movie that ratchets up the tension through unnerving not-quite-normal dialogue and uncomfortable just-barely-off-centre close-ups so that when things finally start going overtly wrong at around the hour mark, it feels almost like a relief - pain is easier to bear than the anticipation of it. I don't often enjoy trippy, "what the fuck is happening here" type stories and I REALLY don't often enjoy stories that end in the particular kind of twist this one used, but in this case I was absolutely sold on everything. Brilliant movie. Raised my blood pressure so high I had to flop on the couch and just breathe for like half an hour afterwards. No notes.

In chronological release order today.

Nosferatu (1922): I enjoyed this enormously! I think it might be the oldest film I've ever watched, so this was a fascinating look back at a modern art form in its infancy but also a genuinely rewarding piece of art on its own merits. Of all the Dracula adaptations I've seen, this one felt like it distilled the story down to its purest essence. It was incredibly clean, evocative storytelling; I didn't think it was possible for such an old version of such a familiar story to scare me, but some of those scenes of the advancing count with his spidery fingers and dead, staring eyes were genuinely chilling. Also, it is downright criminal that greatcoats for men are no longer in style. All men should wear greatcoats, all the time. And high-rise trousers, and cavalry boots, and those gorgeous floofy shirts and cravats. Loneliness epidemic, my arse. 'Dating is so hard for men these days', my arse. Put on a fucking greatcoat and watch the ladies all clamour to pass their dance cards under your nose.

The Ritual (2017): In honour of their friend who was killed in a burglary gone wrong, four ageing British uni mates go on a hike in the Swedish wilderness for which they are all utterly unprepared. But the comedy of errors turns deadly when they stray along a woodland "shortcut" and find themselves being stalked by some malevolent, godlike force that dwells among the trees. This had a really great atmosphere, stunning visuals, and a cast of forgettable idiots who I could 100% believe would make every single one of the stupid decisions that led to their demise. There was a moderately compelling emotional through-line about the guilt complex of the Main Forgettable Idiot (I have genuinely already forgotten his name) who was present at the burglary but froze up in fear instead of defending his friend. But mostly I was in it for the gorgeous, spooky tour of a Scandinavian forest, livened up every now and then by a disembowelment (tastefully depicted, as these things go!).

Oddity (2024): I'm struggling to describe the plot of this movie without either giving away major spoilers or just making it sound very silly. I don't want to make it sound silly at all. It has its moments of levity, but it also does a really good job of blending paranormal horror with a far more grounded and mundane human evil; I really enjoyed it. It's an Irish horror film about a woman with psychic abilities investigating the murder of her sister. It's a modern setting but with a rich, old-timey atmosphere, full of quaint antique shops and centuries-old converted houses (the main filming location was the old stables at Bantry House, a real 1730s heritage location in County Cork, Ireland) and the claustrophobic halls of an old forensic hospital. There are some great hauntings and supernatural scares but there are also just so many vibes. And the ending left me with a genuine smile on my face, which is not what I was expecting from a movie this dark.

The Ring (2002) was a reckless stretching of my "no child-related horror" boundary that fortunately did not backfire, mostly because I spoiled myself very thoroughly for the entire plot of the movie before watching a single minute. But with ample forewarning for the bad bits, not only did it not backfire but I actually enjoyed it more than I can remember enjoying a movie in years. This is phenomenally sad and scary paranormal horror about a cursed VHS tape that kills you seven days after you watch it, and a journalist fighting to solve the mystery of the tape before she and her young son succumb to its murderous power. Aesthetically it was exquisite: everything is wretchedly grey and rainy and minimalist, but somehow never dull. The visual horror was like the distilled essence of what the word "horror" means inside my head. The suspense and fear were great, but really the heart of this story is about motherhood, and the beautiful, terrible power mothers have to save or destroy their children.

( Spoilers )

I haven't decided yet if I will watch the sequel, but I almost definitely will watch the original Japanese film that spawned this adaptation.

Hit Man (2023): Philosophy teacher Gary loves his cats, his pot plants, his job, and birdwatching. He is amicably divorced from his ex-wife, who left him because she found him too steady and yearned for a more passionate lover. Good with tech, he works part time for the New Orleans police in a surveillance van attached to undercover missions. One day, the undercover cop he works with gets pulled off duty right before a planned sting, and Gary reluctantly takes over his role as a fake "hit man" whom their would-be murderer target is attempting to hire. He surprises everyone (himself included) by putting on such a stellar performance that he's asked to become the team's permanent undercover guy. He falls into a highly successful routine: drawing on his longstanding interest in human psychology, he researches his targets and creates a tailored persona to cater to each individual's fantasy of what a mythical hit man should be. But when Gary catches feelings for one of his intended targets - Madison, a beautiful housewife who in desperation to escape is considering having her abusive husband killed - his professionalism starts to slip, and his immersion in the tough, suave persona he designed for her starts to escape the bounds of his mission in ways that change his life forever.

This was fun! I don't have a huge amount to say beyond that. It was fun, gleefully silly, and well acted on Gary/Glen Powell's side. (Madison was played by Adria Arjona from Andor, and I can't tell if she genuinely can't act or has just been typecast as a flat, misogyny-tinged "sexy vulnerable girlfriend" whose roles give her nothing to work with.) They took the John Wick approach of making the victims such repulsive humans that you don't feel bad when they bite it. (Note, that is this film's only overlap with John Wick. Despite the title, it is not a murderfest!) It didn't have much by way of substance but was a very enjoyable way to pass two hours.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) was also fun and also has not inspired me with many deep thoughts. Chinese-American economics professor Rachel Chu accompanies her boyfriend Nick Young on a trip home to Singapore to meet his family, about whom he has thus far in their relationship told her nothing. It turns out that the Young family are Singapore's foremost developers and property owners, a family of obscenely wealthy celebrities; Nick is the presumed heir to the family business and fortune, and his relatives are not impressed by his choice to involve himself with an Americanised nobody. Romcom tropes and high-stakes familial (melo)drama ensue.

Parts of the film felt like a travel ad for Singapore. One very gratuitous hawker centre scene in particular made me ravenous for Singaporean street food; there is also much ooh-ing and aah-ing over the city's architecture, and lavish displays of traditional culture in the family matriarch's mansion. The portrayal of the Young family's wealth played hopscotch along the border between lifestyle porn and existential horror; it's honestly kind of ghastly how rich they are. Like, unthinkably rich. Like, suck-all-the-joy-out-of-life rich. There's a very sad subplot where ( spoilers ) After all the luxury, I also really enjoyed the final scene where ( more spoilers ) Michelle Yeoh was also amazing as the disapproving mother - plot-wise she is firmly the antagonist striving to keep the happy couple apart, but she brought so much heart and nuance to the role that I was honestly half-cheering for her even as I hoped that Nick and Rachel would work things out.

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

~ Mad Girl's Love Song, 1953

This verse was quoted in an unrelated book I was reading; poetry only very rarely grips me as viscerally and immediately as these few lines did. I had to look up the full text online because it wasn't even included in my collected Plath edition. (It was worth looking up. Holy fuck, I love this poem!)

But then I had the collected Plath down from the bookshelf, so I figured I might as well keep reading. Here are some excerpts from a few favourites.

( Soliloquy of the Solipsist )

( Frog Autumn )

( April 18 )

( Dirge for a Joker )

I didn't read cover to cover, but one thing that stood out to me was how many more poems I liked from among the juvenilia than from her published volumes. That could be due to how they were collected - only 50, from a few hundred - but there's also a raw emotionality to these early efforts that connects with me more than some of her more sophisticated, "mature" work.

Also, Mad Girl's Love Song is still my favourite of them all. <3

New year, new reading icon! It may or not be my permanent choice - all my icons are due for a refresh, and there are so many to choose from, it's overwhelming.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Man, I hate it when a certified Good Book(TM) that my friends all love and recommend doesn't land with me. This was fine! Enjoyable, even! I think if it had come less hyped - if I hadn't seen it blurbed all over the place as the definitive haunted house novel - then I'd probably have come away more impressed. I did enjoy the descriptions of the "vile" house, especially the carved children's faces whose gaze met on that malevolent cold spot. I wish (personal preference wish, not objective criticism wish) there had been more supernatural horror and less "is Eleanor just losing it" horror. The moments where the house's malevolence shone through - the stomps and banging in the night, the scrabbling fingers at the door - were the most electrifying parts of the novel for me, but there weren't very many of them. I liked the relationship between Eleanor and Theodora but I found that the fever-dream quality of the narration numbed a lot of its emotional impact.

IDK. For me this one is all like, no love; I just didn't find it as scary as I wanted to. It's going on the "good read, don't regret it, don't need to own a copy, probably won't revisit" shelf in my mind.

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay: This one very much did scare me! Decades ago, the narrator starred as the monster in a horror movie that went tragically wrong during filming and was never released, but that achieved cult favourite status after the script and a handful of scenes got posted online. Today, Hollywood is clamouring to reboot the film, stirring up the memory of old horrors in the process.

The narrator was (intentionally) not a very charismatic personality and it took me a couple of chapters to get into the flow of things, but I enjoyed the slow-building dread and the trickle of reveals about what really happened on set. ( Heavy spoilers! )

Happy Place by Emily Henry: Harriet and Wyn broke off their engagement months ago because they wanted to live in different states and couldn't see a way around it, but their mutual friend group is having one last special-occasion reunion so they have to pretend they're still together. The trouble is, they're not over each other. 400 pages of nostalgic pining ensue. It's genre romance, so you guys already know how it ends.

You know how sometimes you'll read a book and be like, 'This has some interesting themes that the author has clearly put a lot of thought into!' And then you read another book by the same author and you're like 'Oh, maybe these are actually the only thing this author thinks about?' If you and the author happen to be on the same wavelength, that can be a good thing. But if you're not...yeah, this just wasn't for me. I already read one Emily Henry book about a couple who value their personal goals and careers over their relationship and who are ready to walk away from each other until they serendipitously discover a solution that lets them have everything they want with no compromise; I didn't really need another. I also just didn't think this version of the story was as well executed as Book Lovers. It was too long. Scenes that had the potential to be fun and/or poignant - everyone doing weed gummies together, the heroine practising her pottery hobby, the best friends all reminiscing about their university flatshare - dragged on and on for what felt like forever. The conflict behind the breakup could have been easily resolved at the outset with communication and a small amount of mutual flexibility, but the narrative is anti-compromise to a surprisingly strident degree. I can't tell whether the whole "we're soulmates who can't/won't be together because of ~our careers~" thing is a values statement or a just scenario the author finds iddy enough to be worth doing twice, but either way, it's not one that particularly tugs my personal heartstrings. It probably doesn't help that I listened to the novel as an audiobook, and the narrator insisted on pronouncing every. single. line. with this breathy, wistful, wow-so-profound intonation that was wearing thin by the end the first chapter. Still, I liked it enough to keep listening to the end, and that's not nothing. I nope out of audiobooks even more freely than regular books, but this one had enough charm and chemistry to keep me going despite being bored half the time and not actually liking or agreeing with the premise. I guess there's a reason Emily Henry writes nothing but bestsellers.

Cheers to the new year! I've been waiting for Yuletide author reveals so that I could officially make this brag: I've posted over 150k words to AO3 this past year, trouncing my previous record of 120k in 2019. 2025 has been so intense for me creatively. This has been a year not only of prolific writing, but of pushing my boundaries, expanding my storytelling ambitions, and just straight-up enjoying my own imagination without angsting over feedback or popularity. I won't attempt to look back at all 41 (!) fics here, but I'd like to talk about a few of the big projects/moments and what I've taken from them.

Prisons of Our Making (Reylo, post-TROS Ben Solo Lives AU, 35k): I know it's small change to a lot of authors, but this is the longest fic I've ever finished. (My longest fic full stop is 66k, but it's a nearly-finished perma-WIP from years ago that I hate and no one is allowed to talk to me about it.) This was me experimenting with a whole new writing process. I've historically always been both a plan-as-you-go and edit-as-you-go writer; for this fic I forced myself to outline the whole thing before I started writing, then write the whole thing before I edited anything, and not post a single word until I was satisfied that the structure was sound and only copyedits on later chapters remained to be done. I found this process less fun in the short term but significantly less frustrating in the long - I have a well established habit of writing myself into corners and introducing late-stage twists that require major rewrites to earlier material, and this method avoided all of that.

I should note that, unusually for me, I have not actually reread a word of this fic since posting it. I'm a bit scared to. Like, what if it's rubbish? What if I am just fundamentally a shortfic author who should stick to writing oneshots? I'll probably revisit it sometime this year once the emotions have calmed down a bit, but whether or not I end up being thrilled with the final product, it definitely feels like a milestone that I got this out into the world.

It Takes a Village to Raise the Dead (Poe/Finn/Rey/Ben/Jacen resurrection bodyswap, 20k) was an exchange assignment that got stupidly out of control, and an example of what happens when I try to write long(er)fic using the as-you-go method instead of the one discussed above. It wasn't actually meant to be longfic at all - it started its life as fairly modest bodyswap shenanigans using the Force as a wafer-thin excuse - but then it bred with several other prompts and grew a plot, and the whole thing was just absolute chaos. Multiple rewrites, at least one of which was literally from scratch while others involved POV changes that completely changed what information I could or couldn't include in that scene. If it weren't for an exchange I would probably have given up. But hey, this is part of why I got so into exchanges to begin with - deadline pressure really works for me. This is another fic I'm still waiting to get enough distance from before I can reread it, but at minimum I'm proud of myself for getting it done! It involved a lot more balls in the air at once than I usually even attempt to juggle.

I Can Save Myself (Kylo/Rose superhero AU, 10k) is the "shorter", "easier" exchange assignment I wrote when I DID actually have to give up on a fic that had gotten too complicated. My first idea was for the same ship but a much more serious take on it, heavy on both plot and emotional trauma, and I wrote thousands of words and did oodles of comics canon review and Wookieepedia research before realising that it just wasn't going to come together the way I wanted it to in the time I had left. I was right on the brink of defaulting so that my soon-to-be-ex-recip could get a gift that didn't suck, but I took one last look at their request to see if there was anything I could salvage, and the words "superhero AU" jumped out at me from their likes list. I'd just recently read Hench. Suddenly, I was off and running. It was still way more than I really had time to write before deadline, but it was too much in the fun way instead of the despair-inducing way, and I bashed the whole fic out in a blur of joy and the recip ended up making fanart for it!!! So that was a fantastic experience.

Rose Tico's Charity Home for Wayward First Order Scum (post-TROS Reylo, Finnpoe, Phasma/Rose, Phasma/Kylo, Everyone Lives with bonus drinking games, 1.6k): There is nothing technically ambitious about this fic, but it's the direct product of the exact moment early on this year when I looked at the word doc in front of me and said "fuck it, I can do what I want". Some people just like to write about their favourite enemy space wizards inexplicably all being friends and acting like teenagers together, and that's valid! In the end a double-digit number of people liked this fic enough to kudos it, but I put it out in the world fully expecting silence and was okay with that because I loved (still love) what I wrote and would have continued to love it even if no one else did.

All seven of my Love Hypothesis fics: Look at me, diving headlong into a whole new fandom without dropping out of my old one in the process! This has never actually happened before; usually my head only has room for one (1) primary blorbo, with all other fannish interests restricted to dabblings and day trips. It's been really fun noodling around with Adam and Olive as characters. Despite the fact that The Love Hypothesis started its life as Reylo fic, the vibes are completely different, and it's scratching a different creative itch for me than any star war I've written. Right now I'm working on a new multichapter fic for this fandom (*puts on galaxy-brain hat* it's a fake dating AU...for the fake dating AU...) and just having so, so much fun with it in a way that feels really chill and low-pressure.

On a slightly less satisfying note, as the year progressed my writing has been feeling more and more like...you know when a kid has a growth spurt, and overnight they acquire about 20% more limb than before but don't yet know how to control it? Yeah, it's like that. It's frustrating, because while the new sense of freedom and reach is amazing, I used to feel much more in control of my prose and overall technique. I imagine that'll come back as I adjust to my new limb length, but man, I wish I could have brought all the creative energy I've had this year and felt like I was putting it into my best work yet, instead of the constant nagging awareness that even my most carefully controlled works aren't quite coming out exactly the way I want them to. It's been years since I last felt that gap between my vision and my skills, and I did not miss it.

I'm including that last bit in the post for my own posterity, but honestly, I don't want to sound like I'm ending on a sour note because my overwhelming experience this year has been that writing is FUN and I LOVE it and I WANT TO BE DOING IT ALL THE TIME. I'm deliberately not setting myself any writing goals for 2026 because I want to just keep going with the flow of whatever the fuck my brain is doing these days. Whether the energy lasts or whether I end up going fallow again for a while, I'm going to resist the urge to force things and just trust that whatever output I manage this year will be exactly what I need it to be.

Look at me, reading things in a timely fashion!

Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher was a very compelling, immersive read that I...don't know how I feel about? I enjoyed it a lot as I was reading it and I have all the respect in the world for the consciously and intentionally batshit choices Kingfisher made within it, but, well, it was batshit. Not my preferred kind of batshit, either, and not a kind that the first half of the novel led me to expect. I was there just vibing so hard with the stark desert atmosphere and building sense of supernatural horror, when suddenly, we learnt that the malevolent force of evil pursuing the heroine was ( SPOILERS ) and that the mysterious Catholic priest helping her was ( MORE SPOILERS ). I had been hoping for something very different, something more anchored in fear and dread and the oppressive vastness of the desert, and it all felt like a bit of a letdown.

On the other hand, I did really like the badass elderly lady character who took up as the heroine's snarky magical guardian (I have now read two T. Kingfisher novels, and both of them prominently featured a badass elderly lady character who took up as the heroine's magical guardian; is this a theme with her or a weird Two Nickels situation?) and I'm always going to cheer for any author who says "fuck it" to marketability and just follows their bliss. Get it, T. Kingfisher! ( SPOILER ) that ( SPOILER )!

Slow Gods by Claire North was...how do I put this? A worthwhile slog. I'm very glad I read it and would heartily recommend it to other space opera fans. But it took a full 50% of the book before I started enjoying it enough to want to sit down and read more than a few chapters at a time, and even then, it never reached the propulsive levels I always hope for in a work of this type. It's fundamentally a story of ideas, not of characters; of large-scale ethical conversations, not ordinary human emotions. I was never once tempted to DNF but it also lacked any element that would have helped me personally invest in the narrative.

Mawukana na-Vdnaze is born on one of the lower social rungs of a hypercapitalist dystopian society, in a setting where human civilisation has expanded throughout the galaxy but faster-than-light travel is too dangerous to be attempted without very good reason. Exceeding the speed of light requires entering arcspace, a dimension of darkness that sometimes swallows whole ships and invariably, within a few flights, destroys the mind of every pilot who navigates through it. Maw is conscripted as a pilot and dies on his first flight, along with everyone else on board. But he is brought back, an "imperfect copy of himself", a mostly human body in which the unknowable consciousness embodied in arcspace can dwell to sate its curiosity about the world. He doesn't age, can't be killed in a way that lasts, and - most crucially for the plot - can pilot through arcspace as often as he likes, sustaining no psychological damage and never losing any passengers or cargo to the dark. Thus he becomes a valuable chess piece for more sophisticated players to move around the board of a massive interplanetary cold war aggravated by equally massive environmental catastrophe.

Good sci-fi is always about something real, and this book is about so many things. It's about the climate crisis and the evils of unchecked capitalism, about western imperialism and the war in Ukraine, about gender and neurodiversity and seemingly every possible issue of personal identity. It balances these themes well, but that is still a LOT of themes, and without much in the way of a more concrete anchor. I think the main point of disconnect for me is that I didn't care even a tiny bit about the book's central relationship. I liked Maw a lot as a protagonist but didn't like his love interest and was unconvinced by their short yet supposedly life-changing fling, and without that buy-in, Maw's whole character arc just fell a tiny bit flat. I feel like I'm going to be picking pieces of the book's worldbuilding and philosophical ideas from between my teeth for ages, but on an emotional level it has already passed through me like water and left little behind. Very strange experience. But since I've ended up giving more space to critiques than praise - always easy to do - let me just say again that I'm very impressed with this book, think that overall it succeeds in its large scope, and am really glad I took the time to read it. Also, the tinges of cosmic horror are wonderfully creepy.