We are Otherland
Warning. The following characters were imagined either by or under the supervision of professionals. Accordingly, the Otherland must insist that no one attempt to recreate or re-enact any activity performed by them.
Want to know a little secret? While reading "Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss, Kvothe annoyed the hell out of me, so much that I never finished the book. The fellow is just too smart, handsome and talented. I somehow prefer Boromir to Aragorn. And my whole personality changed (for the worse) when I first laid eyes on the “warning” intro screen of Jackass. There is a corner of my heart reserved for idiots, morons, dunces, cretins and pea-brains. Of course, these are not only to be found in Florida (LOL) but also in fantasy/SF and horror. Sometimes you just need a counterpart to windbags, not only in stories, but in life as well. Let's start with my favorite goofballs: remember the second Harry Potter, where Crabbe and Goyle were caught with a poisoned cupcake? Who finds a floating muffin and then just devours it? Similarly, the scoundrel Hotzenplotz in the classic children's book of the same name was lured into a trap by two children (Kasperl und Seppel), and the beast in Billy and the Beast is tempted to jump into it’s own cooking pot.
D&D favorite Grog Strongjaw is also notoriously unintelligent. At one point, his intelligence dropped to 0 during a battle - impressive, even for a barbarian. While we're at it, the entire cast of Mörk Börk is actually made up of people who were definitely in a different room when the Wisdom dice were rolled. Nortey's favorite book "Red Dwarf" wouldn't even exist without the dumbass Lester, and he's the main character. And to be honest, Zephod Beeblebrox from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" wouldn’t win a contest for the brightest stars in the galaxy.
Unwise is often paired with mean, perhaps as overcompensation. Victorian Greyjoy in Song of Ice and Fire, for example, is as stupid as the planks of his ship and Geoffrey's decisions are so poor that the actor who plays him in the series has received death threats for them.
Horror also has some buffoons to offer, for example the family from Missouri Williams' "The Doloriad" - although more for genetic reasons and their consciousness tends to transform into something else that no longer has anything to do with categories of stupid/smart and good/evil. The same applies to Marek in Ottessa Moshfeg's Lapvona. Definitely imbecilic, but actually rather a poor bastard.
However, the worst idiots are the ones who think they are particularly clever. Even if Cersei from GoT isn't an idiot per se, she's a lot dumber than she'd like to admit to herself. However, this turns out to be fascinating, as she is much more successful than should be possible.
The two necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach from Steven Erikson's Malazan series (and short story collections specifically dedicated to them) are the kind of dumb who think they're particularly quick-witted and cunning, and while we're at it, Crokus is a complete Dunce - and his friends probably know it.
Anyway, back to the philosophy of morons: the third category would be dummies, who aren't actually that stupid. Prattchet's Rincewind is portrayed by all wizards as a bit of a dork, but he's pretty street-smart and probably more viable than the others!
Similarly Brutha in "Small God's" who turns out to be quite different in the course of the book from what all the other participants initially assumed...and Kip from the Black Prism makes an almost god-like development, but doubts his IQ as often as others change their knickers.
Incidentally, Tolkien really liked his Samwise, but he borrowed his name from the Old English word for "imbecile" (as opposed to Frodo, which means "wise"). And in the end, even Aragorn bowed to him.
Last but not least, we've come full circle, because honestly: Harry is brave but sometimes a bit uhmm mentally uninspired? Just think of his bird-brain-like decision at the end of the 5th volume of the series... to put it in Marc's poetic vein: Harry Potter is “strunzdämlack”.
Enough, I'm off to watch some Oggy and the Cockroaches and hope you enjoy all our reviews and new releases!
Yours,
Esther from Otherland
Science Fiction
The Captive's War#1
The Mercy of Gods
Little, Brown Book Group: €22.5
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
I know that lots of genre-readers have a most anticipated book of the year. I never really had that. But this year, I guess I did. When The Mercy of Gods was announced months and months ago, I was really excited – the masters of The Expanse are starting a new series? What was it going to be like?
It was lingering at the back of my mind and when it finally appeared in
the shop, I took it home and immediately started reading.
The first sentence of the book presents the dedication and it aimes at
the heart: “For Ursula K. Le Guin and Frank Herbert, the teachers we
never met”. After that I was expecting something more of a space-opera,
something far-future. And I was kind of right. It’s hard to say how far
into the future we’ve moved, but this story definitly plays out a lot
later than The Expanse. Maybe/probably a gigantic space-vessel
(something like the Nauvoo that the Mormons built in Leviathan Wakes to
leave our solar system) has moved humanity to the distant planet of
Anjiin, where buildings are grown from coral and two fundamentally
different bioms co-exist, the memory of how all this came to be is lost
and surrounded my myths. At their core the humans didn’t change that
much however, we are still a curious species, science and research are
highly regarded on Anjiin. And so it comes as no surprise that we meet a
group of selected scientists as the characters who we’ll follow through
the story. Their highly appreciated project is the reconciliation of
the planet’s two biomes – and this is where a lot of ribosomes and
quasicrytals are thrown around and readers who looks out for hard-SF
should get their fare share of fun (in either agreeing with or
dissenting these ideas that I will not pretend to have understood). We
have only started to get settled when our poor group gets a lesson in
perspective. Just now they were concerned with loosing their project due
to the workings of a member of their own work-group, when suddenly the
apocalypse happens.
And this is where the spoiler-free review ends. If you've liked Corey so
far, you'll probably enjoy this one as immensely as I did. Feel free to
discover it for yourselves.
What follows the apocalyptic event, can, from the point of view of the reader, be seen as an interesting thought-experiment: what if humans would find themselves in the place of working animals – what if your surroundings were an artificial, imperfect imitation of your natural habitat, you can’t understand those that own and rule over you in terms of communication, of thought-concepts, world-view, everthing. What if your whole species is threatened with extinction if you’re not considered useful. What if there are other animals working next to you that are struggeling under the same yoke, but they’re weird and threatening and alien to you and there seems to be no chance at communication. You‘re allowed to work in a field that you really enjoy, but…
From the point of view of our protagonists everything that happens after this apocalyptic event is a painful dance around the question: when will you have reached your breaking point? These are not super-humans, they‘re just people. And this new situation came to them sort of over-night.
The Captive’s War, which is the series’ title, hints at the fact that Dafyd Alkhor, Tonner Freis, Jessyn and Jellit and all the others will not go down without a fight. But, oh man, the mountain they must see ahead of them...
I understand that in our difficult times many readers enjoy cozy fantasy and space-travels where aliens come together in peace and harmony. Well, this book’s not for you. This vision of humantity‘s first alien-encounter is one of the bleakest imaginable. This is not about good vs. evil. It‘s about the possibility that the aliens we encounter might be extremely, well, alien. They might have no inclination to see eye to eye with us and we might be at a complete loss to understand them: how their physique works, how they think, how they‘re managing their society… And if two alien species find themselves in the same place, the question here is not, if they can mate and have offspring (as in Butler's Xenogenesis or the plan of Alien's company), but can they devour and live from one another?
Corey plans The Captive‘s War as a trilogy, but I could easily imagine this to be a longer series. The worldbuilding is just out there, the characters are well fleshed out, the aliens are at the same time horrifying and extremely intriguing. I‘m really really excited where this is going.
Where style and composition are concerned, it reads similar to The Expanse. There‘s for example a main character that starts out as more of a watcher and bystander who then moves more and more towards the centre and focus of the story as well as his peers, like Jim Holden did. You get a lot of insight into the characters, their struggles, thoughts and feelings - there are some really strong moments here – but it‘s never too much, the story will soon continue with the action. Since the two writers, Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, have abandoned the concept of distributing each chapter to one of the characters, whose perspective they follow, the constant head-jumping that happens in The Mercy of Gods can be a little off-putting in the beginning. But on the one hand you get used to it pretty quickly and on the other hand it seems to happen less and less towards the middle of the book. In a couple of chapters/passages as well as in excerpts from a certain “statement” (the form reminding strongly of the written testaments of Dune‘s Princess Irulan) we even get to see the other side, because they‘re dedicated in part to one of the librarians of the Carryx (the aliens that “happened” to us) and in part to something called the swarm.
I had the best of times with this hard-to-put-down-novel! And I would not be entirely surprised if James S. A. Corey will one day be mentioned in the same breath with Ursula K. Le Guin and Frank Herbert.
And now, Ladies and Gents, please start reading: “You ask how many ages had the Carryx been fighting the long war? That is a meaningless question. The Carryx ruled the stars for epochs”...
[Caro]
The Desert Magician's Duology#2
Like Thunder
Ingram: €32.5
Back to post-apocalyptic Nigeria. It is the days following a historic pact. The Earth, decimated by “Peace bombs” and other futuristic technology, sits in an uneasy accord with the jungle planet Ginen, and its violent, expansive Ooni Kingdom.
Now strange pale vampiric figures are attacking people in the streets. Those with special abilities are disappearing from their homes. And no one seems to know where the old heroes of Earth are. Dikéogu Obidimkpa, a young Igbo Rainmaker, is on the road with his mentor Gambo and his otherworldly owl companion Kola. Along the way he will have to learn to use his powers for good, control the destructive energy inside his body, and when he is ready maybe even come face to face with his millionaire parents who sold him into slavery and told the world he was dead.
Following on from Shadow Speaker, Like Thunder is part two of The Desert Magician’s Duology, a pair of books set in an alternative future where the Earth has barely scraped through a catastrophic war with an alien planet. The sequel has a genuinely intriguing twist, moving the narrative perspective from the Shadow Speaker Ejii to her angry young former-child-slave travel companion Dikéogu. I was a little unsure at first, as I thought Ejii a much more interesting character in the first book, particularly in her complex relationship with demi-goddess warrior-Queen Jaa. Ejii has vast reserves of empathy, curiosity, and ethical engagement. Dikéogu, by contrast, is a little like a novice teen superhero: masses of pent-up rage and abilities he cannot really control; a general sense that everything is unfair (which is 100% true in his case) and an unwillingness to trust anyone.
Dikéogu is definitely worth sticking around with, though. He is impressively unimpressed by the all-powerful adults who surround him and the chaos they have brought to the world, and he has a drive to be different from them, to not make the same planet-wrecking mistakes. A good protagonist for young adult readers - even if the plot gets dark pretty fast. The writing stye will intrigue, too. Like all of Okorafor’s novels, there is an iconic alterity to Like Thunder which brings you up short. Scenes and sometimes sentences are so imaginative and so different from the stereotypical Western sci-fi fare that it feels like they have been plucked out of another world. Her brand of africanfuturism or africanjujuism (her own preferred terms) has been punching holes in the dull, racist depictions of non-white society for over two decades now, and it’s doing a pretty cool job of it.
[Tom]
Greatest Hits
Union Square & Co.: €21
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
Have you, within the last five years or so, tried to purchase a Harlan Ellison book? Were you as dumbfounded as me, that they were nowhere to be found?? Not new, not second hand, no ebook, not a single one of them??? I don’t know about the second hand books, maybe people were just holding on to them. Where new books are concerned, my research revealed that the infamous J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon5, Underworld, Spiderman) is Ellison’s executor who planned on giving the Ellison-books a brand-new release. Good things came with time and voilà: we welcome into the sparkling halls of the Otherland: “Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits”, “Dangerous Visions”, “Again, Dangerous Visions” and “The Last Dangerous Visions” (this last one is due in october, the others have already arrived, and jeesus, this is the heaviest paperback that I have ever lifted…). They look so cool and finally, finally people can take some of Ellison’s stories home again.
Fantasy
The Book of Elsewhere
Del Rey: €21
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
Through 80,000 years of human existence one figure has walked alone. He is known as Unute, B, or to some people Death himself, a man doomed to immortality, to die and be reborn in an endless chain of violence.
Now, in our modern day, B finds himself in the “employ” of an elite black-ops unit, who have promised to help him understand and maybe even overcome his condition. The universe has other plans, though. Some strange figure is moving in the shadows of battlegrounds, leaving hoofprints in the ashes, and aberrations of the natural cycle of life and death in its wake. All too mortal men are rising from the grave, and now B must work out what is going on before the whole logic of life itself falls apart.Those who are yet to delve into Reeves’ immensely-successful BRZRKR comic series, don’t panic! Although there are hat-tips a-plenty for the hardcore fans, you don’t have to have any of the backstory under your belt to read this. You can just dive right in. The book is very much “what you see is what you get” – the action-packed, physical intensity of Reeves’ recent films plus the left-wing political experimentalism of Miéville’s writing. Essentially take the most testosterone-pumpin’ concept you can possibly think of and then put it in the hands of New Weird’s most outspoken anti-capitalist thinker. John Wick meets Judah Low.
Now just to be upfront, I am a card-carrying member of the China Miéville Appreciation Society and have torn through everything he has published since I was a wee laddie. I am not going to say his work is perfect (what is?) but there are few modern writers better at prodding the creative and theoretical sections of your brain out of deep-sleep. In anyone else’s hands, I don’t think a novelisation of the BRZRKR comics would be up my alley. There would be a lot of potential for it to go all-out muscle-flexing chest-thumping from page one. But The Book of Elsewhere is something else. In short, anyone expecting a D&D-style berserker narrated by Tom Clancy is in for a surprise. This is experimental, often tricky, and with a plot full of “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff”, to quote our local doctor. You get your gruesome, bone-splintering fight scenes and the very hands-on nature of B’s lifestyle, but you also get a lot of introspection: the difference between death and mortality, the questionable nature of history, progress and time, and our very concept of value. I was impressed how long it took me to read it, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. There were a lot of topics to mull over. Like Miéville’s short story collections or his epics like Perdido Street Station or Embassytown, there is a lot here that merits chin scratching.
I had fun with this one. I’m sure it will pique as many as it enthrals, but that’s Miéville’s writing in a nutshell. This is a writer who has given us a communist reading of the Pied Piper, a version of Moby Dick with giant moles, and a whole novel without the word ‘and’. What were you expecting?
[Tom]
Lincoln in the Bardo
Bloomsbury Trade: €14.5
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
“What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.”
Sometimes I find authors who rewire my brain and make me look at the world a different way. This year I would count Alain Damasio, Miranda July and George Saunders in. With the latter, I started with a little short story collection called “Civilwarland in bad decline” and went on to compulsively consume everything he had produced. From a speech about kindness, to other short stories to the much celebrated, booker-price-winning gem “Lincoln in the Bardo”. The magic of Saunders is not just hidden in his failed characters, extremely dark humor and his lapidar use of supernatural elements to grapple with big topics to make them more tangible. You see, it’s not just what he writes but more importantly HOW he writes. How he builds poignantly sharp sentences, who present all the information needed in just a few words. Where Shirley Jackson shows her characters between the lines, Saunders puts our noses right into it. If we’re ready for it or not. Although, “Lincoln in the Bardo” is something completely else. More like a literary experiment than traditional storytelling. Let me tell you, it’s not something you read before bedtime, but needs work and an alert mind, and can be very confusing at times.During the American civil war, Abraham Lincoln’s son William died of typhoid fever and the grief stricken president spent a whole night in the cemetery, holding his dead child in his arms. Saunders uses this historical event and carves a story out of it, inhabited by voices of real life transcriptions, musings, orbituaries, historical texts…and ghosts. Not only because Willie doesn’t want to leave his grieving father behind and stays “in the bardo” (a Tibetan concept of the liminal space between death and rebirth) but also to give others a voice, who lost their lives in times before modern medicine (or modern moral concepts).
This read was a powerful (and painful) dive into the big topic of grief in its various forms. Bound together with Saunder’s mastery of ambivalence and the melancholy atmosphere, reminiscent of Arnold Böcklin's painting “die Toteninsel”, the book creates a space between laughing and crying, holding on and letting go and coming to terms with one’s own decisions. Now that I think of it, Saunders seems like a frequent visitor to literary liminal spaces himself. Great read, I will carry this one with me for a while.
P.s. To make it a little more accessible, I would recommend listening to the audiobook! Narrated by big names like Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Miranda July, Kat Dennings and Bill Hader, among others.
[Esther]
Horror
P. Djeli Clark
Ring Shout
St Martin's Press: €22.5
( Audiobook from libro.fm )
Ring Shout is a powerful little Dark Fantasy novella set in a southern Gothic variant of the US, not a million miles away from the real version (if you discount the eldritch horrors posing as cult members).
Our tale follows plucky demon-hunter Maryse as she attempts to rid Georgia of “Ku Kluxes”, extra-dimensional abominations unknowingly supported by the Ku Klux Klan. Maryse has a formidable clan of her own, including foul-mouthed sharpshooter Sadie and their WW1-veteran overseer “Chef” Cordelia (she cooks bombs…).
An excellent idea followed through with gusto. Ring Shout throws you straight into the action and then piles on the tension, building to a fantastic climax at a showing of notorious racist 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, in what has to be the worst open-air cinema screening in literary history. (Think the Red Wedding but at Freiluftkino Hasenheide.) Clark’s skill is in creating these really vibrant, relatable characters in such a small space, giving them gripping backstories, and making us root for them. Maryse and co definitely go up there in my list of favourite fantasy fellowships, and they might win top prize in the “most rock’n’roll” category. Clark’s inspiration points apparently ranged from his research into former-slave narratives, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and the musical stylings of Beyonce, among many others.
I’d highly recommend this one for fans of Ruff’s Lovecraft Country or LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, really any of the new horror writers using magic realism and early twentieth-century literary trends to rewrite some of the canon and shine a light into America’s not so great past. Hey, while we are at it, even fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer would probably dig the final girl vs. monsters vibes here. And if you are one of those feeling a little squeamish, don’t be put off by the horror tag. This would make a great entry point for those who prefer sinister fantasy, and there is plenty of action and humour here too. Ring Shout has been out since 2020 and if you have not read it yet you can still get it in its rather fabulous hardback edition.
[Tom]
I Was A Teenage Slasher
Titan Books: €13.5
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
It was only a couple of months ago that we had to say goodbye to the Lake Witch series (the biggesthorror trilogy of our time) with its final installment The Angel of Indian Lake. How sad it was to not read from the pov of its unique main character JD anymore.
Fast forward a couple of months and I find myself reading Tolly Driver and Amber, characters who, if not as striking and dear as JD, still bear traces of her, giving I Was A Teenage Slasher a slight Indian Lake feeling. But they're not JD, and this is not Proofrock, Idaho, it's worse; it's Lamesa, Texas, in 1989. We follow the growing pains, the not fitting-in, the friendship, the bullying, in short, the high-school life of Tolly, who, after a concussion, starts experiencing changes in his perception and in his body he initially attributes to the accident he had, but which may have more sinister roots.
Up front; this is a typical SGJ book in that it bears his signature style, colloquial, strewn-in contradictions hinting at unreliability, deep emotional understanding hidden behind casual language, a slow unfolding of events leading to a delightful realization... Only mannequins might be absent at this party. So, if you haven't enjoyed or weren't into that in his previous work, this might not be your cup of tea.
I personally was thankful for the similar feel of the characters to JD, as I'm
still pining for her a little, and there were enough differences to
make this its own, original work. The underlying idea of portraying a
“final girl/slasher” unit, their interactions and even feelings for each
other, if you want to put it that way, the parallels to werewolves with
transformation (into a slasher) scenes, thus throwing in some
supernatural into a genre grim and problematic, making it enjoyable even
for readers not drawn to it – all this is ingenuity only SGJ can offer.
[Inci]
Hot Iron and Cold Blood: An Anthology of the Weird West
Dead Sky Publishing: €25
What comes to your mind when you think of the “Wild West”?
Horses, bandits, desperados, cowboys, wise natives, prostitutes in petticoats dancing to piano songs in wooden saloons, rangers, scorching heat, guns, dust, grave diggers, Sheriffs and Reverends, public hangings, even Chinese railroad workers and wandering medicine men?
Well, Hot Iron and Cold Blood adds flesh eating birds, vampires, worshipers of Yog-Sothoth, revenge spells, headless warriors, ghost dinosaurs, spirits, crazy pimps, and speaking holes to that, and so here we have one of the most original and well-done anthologies of the past decade which absolutely succeeds in wonderfully integrating the weird, the unsettling as well as the horror and terror into this intrinsically surreal and hostile, but at the same time free and hopeful environment.
The idea of living in a time without my dentist and my favorite bands is terrifying to me. Any historical story set in a time without these is principally uninteresting to me, let alone a time where guns, violence and horses or whatever the fascination with the Wild West is, set the tone. BUT there are of course exceptions and excellent writing or an ingenious plot or concept or some kind of appeal can make me read it. This anthology here does all of it – believe me, every single story is so well chosen, well written, so well incorporated into the theme that even though I'm still no fan of the wild west, I loved this book. I really hope to find more of such wonderful anthologies.
As usual, I do have highlights that stood out for me. Here they are;
Holes by Brennan LaFaro; an unpopular ex-sheriff who lives an isolated life discovers holes in his land which he first attributes to critters. But then, they begin to TALK...
Soiled Doves by Vivian Kasley; assuming she won't be able to work if she falls pregnant, a young saloon girl takes a powder given to her by the madame of the rival saloon. Surely this can't go well...
The Deviltry of Elemental Valence by Edward Lee; in the (almost) present time a grave digger is overjoyed by the promise of earning some money on the side and buying sex workers by opening a grave out of the record for a rich client. What comes out and the direction this story goes is unexpected to say the least.
Sedalia by David J. Schow “More than the end of the world, Americans dislike inconvenience.” A time in which dinosaurs make a re-appearance (alongside the honorable Godzilla) and a group of cowboys observing them, all from different backgrounds. I'm pretty sure that Schow will be asked to write a full-sized book out of this story, which is already on the longer side. And it would deserve to be written out, it was amazing.
Rope and Limb by Jeff Strand; if you're familiar with Strand's writing, you probably can guess the kind of humor in this story. We follow a guy about to be hanged (and the reason he's being prosecuted is grotesque enough), arguing for a proper execution to which the cheap-ass frugal mayor opposes.
Dread Creek by Briana Morgan; a group of travelers are in serious trouble when they drink water from a dubious source and pay for it, like really brutally.
Old Habits by L. M. Labat; a young man who has a complicated relationship to his father, a quack doctor, receives unexpected supernatural help to finally break free.
Hungry by Jess Allen Champion; Chinese workers aren't necessarily the first thing the come to mind by the mention of the Wild West, especially for Non-Americans. But they actually built the Transcontinental Railroad, and it was an unexpected pleasure to find a story set among these workers.
The Redheaded Death by Joe R. Lansdale; redheaded vampires and a Reverend? Sign me up immediately! Seeing all the awesome short stories Lansdale writes for various horror anthologies, it has been an itch of mine to read a full book by him, maybe this story will finally give me that push.
Hot Iron and Cold Blood
just might be the best anthology of the year, people!
Go read it, now.
[Inci]
Kids Books
Kay's Incredible Inventions
Penguin Books UK: €13.5
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
Imagine. It is a horribly hot summer evening and your parents have dragged you along to a mega-boring dinner party. One of your parents’ friends is talking. (You know the one – he’s wearing a suit even though it’s the weekend and all his hair has migrated to his ears.)
He is giving a long dull speech about how the ancient Greeks were really the brains behind pop music and guidebooks and the government. Quick as a flash, you pull out your copy of Kay’s Incredible Inventions and inform him that his beloved ancient Greeks actually wiped their bums on dinner plates, that their old man Plato had an alarm clock made of dripping water, and that they used pigs’ bladders as footballs. (So there.)Kay’s Incredible Inventions is a grand history of invention, from Da Vinci’s secret plans for a submarine to the world’s first flushing toilet (it was used by Queen Liz the First), and from Zeppelins to Velcro. (Invented by a dog. Yes, really.) All this via robots, the Mariana Trench, karaoke, more robots, bubblewrap, and Beowulf. Not to mention the Octopus People of Zaarg…
Kay and Paker bring all the manic enthusiasm of those two kids at the back of the classroom who ate one pack too many M&Ms at break. This book is absolutely full of unbelievable ideas. I think my favourite was fatbergs. Fatbergs are solid balls of cooking fat, wet wipes, and other gunk that shouldn’t go down the sink but do. The biggest on record was found in the London sewage system in 2017. It was the length of two football pitches, and it took eight people three weeks to remove it ... with explosives. I will be deploying this one at boring dinner parties.
[Tom]
Non-Fiction
Postcapitalist Desire
Watkins Media Limited: €18,50
(Audiobook from libro.fm)
I have been mining Mark Fisher since discovering Ghosts of my Life: Writing on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures as some light summer reading a few years back. (I realise it sounds like it wouldn’t fit the bill as chippy, cheery Ferienlektüre but honestly it was a solid win.)
Otherland regulars are probably familiar with his wider work on alternative culture, too. In his writing he seldom puts a foot wrong, and often sends you off on weird and wonderful mind-experiments that have you grappling with new concepts for days. Postcapitalist Desire is exactly this but slightly different, the posthumously published final lectures from Fisher’s Visual Cultures course at Goldsmiths, University of London.
What we have here is the first five lectures from the end of 2016, covering the topics “What is Postcapitalism?”, “Countercultural Bohemia as Prefiguration”, “From Class Consciousness to Group Consciousness”, “Union Power and Soul Power”, and “Libidinal Marxism”. If, like me, you had to look several of those words up: don’t panic! Fisher is on hand to guide us through the particulars of an alternative society which modern sci-fi writers could do with comprehending. The questions here are worth mulling over. Can we even imagine what a post-Capitalist society would look like? Automation, a reduced working week, universal basic income, post-work? From the failed cultural revolution of the 1970s to modern left-wing accelerationist thought, Fisher explores our culture and counter-culture as a canvas of repressed utopian desires, future worries, and the ever-present class war (reports of its death have been exaggerated, to paraphrase another famous Mark).
There is much to like about this book. Editor Matt Colquinn has made the bold decision to leave in errors, asides, and most importantly, Fisher’s conversations with his students, making the lectures something like a semi-improvised play or public forum – guided but always open to modification. Fisher is the intellectually-interested student’s dream: he is informative, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, but also ready to listen to criticism, to emend views in the face of new evidence, and to encourage others to disagree with him. He has modesty in spades; he is very open about the fact that he is an expert on cultural studies and not economics, for example. For anyone who has already read Fisher’s awesome The Weird and the Eerie (it migrates between our horror and non-fiction sections, depending on how we feel) or his fantastic K-Punk blog, you will be really pleased with un-edited Mark. He is one of those writers you could happily lose afternoons with. To roll out the high praise: Postcapitalist Desire makes me want to go and read so many things. And with the appendixes on the recommend reading lists, you can. Anyone can go and read themselves through Fisher’s course, as many of his students did after his death in 2017. You can think about the material, come to your own conclusions, and, as our friend Cory Doctorow would say, get mad.
[Tom]
Inklings
Now Go
404 Ink: €11.5
Grief is everywhere. Often in unexpected places. Think of a classic kids’ book. They almost all have a dark side. Harry Potter seems an obvious example, but I always think of the opening of James and the Giant Peach, where the parents are eaten alive by an escaped rhinoceros. Children’s stories regularly court themes of loss and loneliness. In Now Go: On Grief and Studio Ghibli, Karl Thomas Smith examines the joyous films of Japanese master-animators Studio Ghibli – works such as Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro, and Kiki’s Delivery Service – and asks how these films address death and the emotions of those left behind in revolutionary ways.
Smith looks at how the Ghibli films explore universal truths “embedded in magic narratives which create a degree of distance and apply the veneer of entertainment, but are no less powerful for that element of fantasy”, bringing difficult topics to the table and getting us to actually talk about them. The ultimate message is that we should always strive to acknowledge grief, not ignore it. Strive for mitigation, not avoidance or denial. Over a raw 84 pages, Smith explores the beauty of universalism, twentieth-century environmental revenge narratives, and how his own understanding of grief was shaped by these winking lights in the darkness. Spoilers abound, but if you are already familiar then you’ll feel very at home. If this sounds interesting and you’ve yet to come across 404 Ink’s fascinating “Inklings” series, get on it. They are pocket-sized personal explorations of pop culture in the vein of classic essay writers past. Other recent topics in the series include the Norse god Loki, future sex-robots, surviving (imagined) apocalypses, militarized punks, queer theory in D&D, women in hip hop, the influence of Prince’s fashion, and celebrating the mundane through Doctor Who.
[Tom]
RPG
D&D: Vecna Eve of Ruin
wizards of the coast: €59,50
A celebration of 50 years of D&D, Eve of Ruin pits players against the number one bad guy from Guygax‘s lore.
Groups of 4-6 characters will start at level 10 and with the luck of the dice work their way up to level 20 over 10 perilous chapters. As well as featuring the long-dead arch-annoyance Vecna, the plot (not to give away too much) also has some of the big names as player allies, so you can sling spells alongside Alustriel Silverhand, Mordenkainen and Tasha. In fact, there are so many recognizable side characters that the campaign runs something like a best hits of D&D. („Now That‘s What I Call Forgotten Realms“?)Some fun artwork here and plenty of supporting material to keep all you DMs plenty supported. That means additions to high-level gear lists: from the Sword of Kas and the Crown of Lies to the Rod of Seven Parts and the Hat of Ennui (may have made the last one up…) you will not run short on plot-portentous MacGuffins. Adventures run the tour across the multiverse, faring the astral sea, delving into the ruins of colossal war-machines, surviving haunted houses in the streets of Shadowfell, getting through a maximum security werewolf vault, and falling into the Nine Hells (and, with luck, back out). A nicely fleshed out bestiary at the end gives you access to blazebears, eye mongers, scavvers and sorrowsworn, among many other gribbly dungeon-wanderers to deploy in your other games.
[Tom]
So You Want To Be A Game Master
Page Street Publishing Co.: €26.5
For wannabe Games Masters, your quandaries and queries are all about to be answered. Justin Alexander’s So You Want to Be a Game Master is a one-stop guide to everything to do with designing and running TRPGs on your own terms.
Part one, “Dungeons”, goes over the essentials of making a ruling, running a room, and designing your own dungeons. Once you have this down, the book advances on to looking at mysteries, raids and heists, urban settings, and wilderness adventures. An “Extra Credit” section at the end goes over how to create campaigns and characters, learn and teach new RPGs, and even how to find new players and schedule your sessions. All this is illustrated through many, many examples from Alexander’s own games.I like the fact that you are not expected to read the whole book before you go and apply the advice. In fact, quite the opposite, Alexander encourages readers to go DM a game from the start and read the book as you go. By the time you’ve finished the first chapter you have ideally already run several adventures. Every now and then, he also gives readers “homework” – practical exercises from running your first practice dungeon to drawing out maps, building random encounter tables, or designing hex crawls. All of this is largely D&D-based (although Alexander says the skills discussed are useful regardless of what system you are rocking) and it is also not really a book you can use on its own. The included playable dungeon “Mephits & Magmin”, for example, makes zero sense if you don’t already own the D&D Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual.
This book certainly has it all, and the length makes it a bit much to read in one sitting. Alexander’s writing is often so overwhelmed by examples that it becomes difficult terrain. This is a book where the bullet points have bullet points. Do we really need a page and a half explaining what stairs, ladders and trapdoors are? Probably not. Could it have been 200 pages shorter? Sure. I’m also not sure what tone Alexander was going for. It constantly swings between impenetrable academia and colloquial slang. After a while this unending back-and-forth gets too much, and your brain just switches off. Still, while the length is a little daunting, the basic advice is in the first third: the rest is an instruction manual for very particular scenarios. I think the trick is just not to read it in one go: dip in and out, work through a bit at a time, and this is an inspiring little companion.
[Tom]
The One Ring
The One Ring 2nd Edition: Moria - Through the Doors of Durin
Free League: 47.5€
“Well, well!” said the wizard. “The passage is blocked behind us now, and there is only one way out – on the other side of the mountain...”
I have a strange memory of being driven around the Eastfjords of Iceland. I was rereading The Fellowship of the Ring (Iceland rivals New Zealand for appropriate setting points) and had come to the chapter A Journey in the Dark when our jeep was suddenly plunged into darkness, just as the adventurers were making their way into the mines. Thankfully, in my case it was the 1.3km road tunnel Almannaskarð, and not Moria, but it still struck me as weirdly perfect timing. I think Moria has to be hands-down my favourite fantasy realm, and going by the number of writers who created underground nightmares in the decades that followed The Hobbit and LotR (King’s Gunslinger, le Guin’s Atuan, Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged, Moers’ City of Dreaming Books, ...), I am not alone. It is truly the dungeon crawl to crown all dungeon crawls. And yet, as Hanrahan argues, Moria isn’t your classic TRPG experience. It isn’t just a load of battle arenas linked by “neat corridors, each room containing a suitably balanced group of wacky monsters or some over the top puzzle”. Moria is a ruin, an endless realm of desolation and darkness.
This was a kickstarter campaign from Free league as part of the expansions for the acclaimed second edition of the One Ring system. If you like your Middle Earth more D&D, it is also available as a 5E version The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying under the title Moria – Shadow of Khazad-dûm, although I’m putting my hairy feet firmly in the OR camp. The campaign was such a success that Hanrahan, Tomkin, and Click had to invent more stretch goals as they went along, and the end product is a hefty tome, rivalling the core rulebook. After an introduction outlining the history and description of Moria, the book goes over groups interested in the kingdom: why would you go there? Treasure? Revenge? Mithril? Lore? The book provides rules for underground exploration, a catalogue of fell foes, background to landmarks known and secret, and an appendix detailing Balin’s expedition 2989-2994, with a new playable culture: Dwarves of Nogrod & Belegost.
There is so much in here. Highlights for me were the new patrons. Frora, daughter of Dwalin is a dwarf princess keen on reclaiming Moria; Lord Mjolin of Harmelt rules the south of Ered Luin and is looking for treasures; Guldi the Watcher is an old-beard set on the legends; Ibin the Ring-Seeker is a romantic looking for a present for his betrothed; Daza the Redhanded is a mercenary with vengeance at heart; and Nal of the Iron Hills is a famous elder smith. On top of this, there are rules for introducing characters good and bad, such as Haldir of Lothlorien or Tharnow of the Wild Men. Fun tools for Loremasters include a random chamber generator and rules for psychological effects on Dwarves, plus plenty of enemies. And I mean plenty. As well as your orcs of Udun, black uruks, and turned dwarven thralls, there are endless opportunities for gruesome ambushes. We’re talking ash wraiths, carrion bats, marrow eaters, stone toads and tappers, giant centipedes, crows big enough to carry off sheep, and goblins-turned-flying-squirrels – all tangentially inspired by Tolkien’s works. You can even try to take on the Balrog if you really want – there are pages of backstory and rules for Durin’s Bane here. (Past-me once saved up my pocket money for 3 months so I could afford a Games Workshop model of this fellow, so I was quite happy about this…) There is beautifully mapped-out geographical data on the Dimrill Dale, Old Moria, Dwarrowdelf, the Mountains and the Mines, the Great Road, and West Moria. The fold-out map in the back of the book is stunning, too. There is also a whole section just for solo play in Moria, where you take on the role of one of Balin’s ill-fated expedition. The book gives you the tools to build a solo character, gather allies, form a band, and plan missions. Riches galore.
[Tom]
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