BOOK REVIEW: Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead in the Family is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2010, the tenth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

At the end of the last book, Dead and Gone, Sookie was tortured at the hands of two fairies that were part of the opposing faction of the short-lived but brutal fairy war. As this book starts, she is still recovering from both the physical and psychological aftermath of this horrific treatment, with the help of her friends and her boyfriend the vampire Eric Northman. Things begin to get very complicated when Eric’s maker, the ancient Roman vampire Appius Livius Ocella, shows up with another vampire he has made–Alexei Romanov, the last son of the last Czar of Russia who witnessed his entire family slaughtered and is still suffering from emotional imbalances even these decades later. Sookie is asked to babysit the child of her (dead) cousin Hadley, who is also telepathic, and she helps him deal with social situations. Meanwhile, Bill is still ill from the silver poisoning he got during the fairy war. If his maker were still alive, she might be able to heal him, but the only chance is another vampire made by his maker–and Bill doesn’t want to contact her.

The beginning of this book was a major shift in tone from any of the rest of the series as Sookie deals with both physical injuries and the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The series has always had the risk of dark consequences, but I found it very surprising that it got that dark at the end of the last book, it feels like a departure from the rest. This recovery period is just the natural consequence of that–you can’t come out the other side of being tortured almost to death and expect to have your outlook on life unaltered, but I found it much harder to read, lacking the upbeat tone that is usually present in most of the rest of the book even when dire happenings are afoot usually Sookie is still joking and referencing her word-of-the-day calendar. Conversely, though I found the change in tone a rough departure from the rest of the series, it also felt like she was pretty much fully recovered awfully quickly afterward. So, I guess I’m just not easy to please or something. But I found this book much harder to read because of that abrupt change in tone from the rest of them, while the rest of them have been smooth (if sometimes fluffy) reads.

(I kept reading, mind you, because this close to the end of the series I wanted to see how everything wrapped up.)

Anime Review: Kokkoku

written by Laurie Tom

kokkoku
I really wanted to like Kokkoku. I really did.

The setup in the very first episode has a lot of promise. Juri Yukawa is a young woman, newly graduated from college, and she’s from a middle class family that has fallen on hard times. Her mother is still working, but her father has been laid off. Her grandfather is retired, her older brother is unemployed, and her older sister is a single mother with a child she had with a man who has since exited her life.

All four generations of the Yukawas live in the same house and Juri feels like she needs to get out of town before she ends up going nowhere like almost every other adult in her family. She knows she’s not that special. None of her job interviews locally have resulted in any offers.

Though her family is not entirely functional, they dote on Makoto, the son of Juri’s sister, because out of everyone, he’s the one most likely to have a future, so it’s because of Makoto’s kidnapping that the entire story is kicked off.

Initially the kidnapping looks like it’s just for money, and Takafumi, Juri’s father, thinks they can scrounge up the funds from the family savings, but they’re both stopped by Juri’s grandfather (who oddly never gets a name–he’s just called “Grandfather” or “Father” depending on who is speaking to him). Her grandfather has a secret that he’s never shared, and he undergoes a ritual together with Takafumi and Juri while using an old stone heirloom and a drop of his blood.

This takes the three of them into what he calls the stasis world. Time is frozen everywhere, and because of that, the three of them can now leisurely walk over to the ransom exchange site and free Makoto and Tsubasa, Juri’s brother, who was with Makoto at the time of the kidnapping. With time in stasis, the three of them believe they can rescue their family and get back home again without putting anyone in danger or losing what money they have.

However, as they try carrying the time-frozen Tsubasa and Makoto home, they encounter other people moving in the stasis world, which should not have been possible.

Kokkoku has some really interesting worldbuilding involving the laws of the stasis world and its guardians, how things float without time to make them fall, and the unusual powers the Yukawa family members are able to manifest after spending a period of “time” in stasis. I especially liked that we have a multi-generational family all working together to save other family members. They’re dysfunctional at times (Takafumi is especially bent that his father has hid the stasis world from him his entire life), but they feel real.

The first half of the series is fun while all the worldbuilding is happening and secrets are being uncovered. Where it falls down is in the second half, when their enemy’s agenda becomes apparent, and by then, a couple of the Yukawa family members’ potentials are wasted. Takafumi becomes a joke and it feels like Tsubasa was being built up for something that just didn’t happen.

Kokkoku‘s final episode is built almost entirely towards a downer ending (which would be fine), but Juri is saved by a deus ex machina that literally comes out of nowhere involving a character we’d never been introduced to prior to the final minutes of the episode.

I did not particularly like the show’s attempt to build sympathy for its villain either. Considering how dangerous he is to the Yukawa family I was not in the mood to watch his sob story flashbacks, which are verbally told to our protagonists, and I’m not entirely sure why Juri and her grandfather would give him the time of day.

I don’t think I’ve watched a show that has started so high and fallen so low by its end as Kokkoku. If you don’t mind a bad ending, the first half’s worldbuilding and the premise itself is good; 95% of the series takes place within a single frozen “moment” of time. But don’t expect much in the second half.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Interesting premise, multiple generations of protagonist’s family involved, alienness of the stasis world

Minuses: Second half falls apart, ending is a deus ex machina, some of the characters never reach their full potential

Kokkoku is currently streaming at Amazon (subtitled).

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead and Gone is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2009, the ninth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Before the series of books, the vampires of the world had publicly revealed their existence, but since then Sookie has learned of many other supernatural beings living among us as humans. Among them are the shapeshifters, including werewolves and wereanimals of other types. Now that they’ve had time to observe how the vampire revelation has gone, the shapeshifters have finally decided to make their big public reveal, outing themselves to the public both in a general sense and with individual members of communities revealing themselves at once. The reveal in Bon Temps seems to go pretty well, until Sookie’s werepanther sister-in-law is found crucified outside Merlotte’s where she works.

The King of Nevada has now conquered all of Louisiana, killing all of the vampire hierarchy there except for Eric who he has kept on as sheriff, so that brings its own set of conflicts.

And Sookie learns that her fairy great-grandfather Niall is engaged in a major power struggle.

Never a dull day in the life of Sookie!

I thought it was really interesting to see this book tackle another great life-changing event with the reveals of the shifters to the world. It makes sense, real worlds are always changing even if we’re used to them being somewhat static in book worlds. There are enough conflicts all going on in parallel that there’s never a chance to get bored, and you have the mystery of who crucified Crystal to keep the reader engaged as well.

(Only minor quibble, as with the last book, is the tendency to call any conflict a “war”, even if there are only a handful of participants and the conflict lasts only a short period of time)

Spring 2018 Anime First Impressions

written by Laurie Tom

A lot has changed since last year. Amazon’s Anime Strike service has been shut down and everything previously streaming on it has been rolled into its baseline Amazon Prime service. While this does not help fans without Amazon Prime, American fans are no longer being charged a few extra dollars for the same content their Canadian counterparts have been getting as part of their baseline service.

Additionally, HIDIVE is coming into its own as an alternate streaming service with its own exclusive licenses. It doesn’t have a free streaming alternative, but the monthly subscription is affordable and their library is deep with several exclusives.

This spring is packed with high profile series, and a lot of smaller ones, that in an ordinary season I would want to watch. As a result, I viewed more first episodes than usual, and I’ll be going through what I checked out in alphabetical order with the goal of identifying two or three to follow for the season.

Caligula

caligula

Why I Watched It: I wanted to play Caligula when it came out as an RPG because of its premise. Students live in a virtual reality school where they’re expected to live their day to day idyllic lives indefinitely. Most of them don’t even realize the world isn’t real, but the protagonist discovers the truth and he and his friends band together to escape. The name come from the psychological term the “Caligula Effect.”

What I Thought: I enjoyed this first episode, as Ritsu gradually realizes that there is something wrong with reality (though his friend Mifue gets the worst of it with her rewritten mom). It begins with a distorted cry for help during a virtual idol’s music track that only he hears, and escalates with bizarre, out-of-character behavior from his friends, until he realizes that the representatives of both of the graduating class and incoming class of students are the exact same person. At that point all hell breaks loose, complete with what I assume are artificial students transforming into monsters. It’s an intriguing start and and I really want to know why this illusionary world has started crumbling.

Verdict: I’ll probably be watching. I think this is an excellent contender for my viewing time. The only thing I’m concerned about is that this is a video game adaptation and I’m not sure how well the rest of the story will weather the transition.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Dances with the Dragons

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Why I Watched It: Dances with the Dragons has appealing character designs and looks to have nicely animated action scenes. There’s potentially decent worldbuilding with the idea of fighting dragons with “spell equations.”

What I Thought: I like the magi-tech style of combat, in that this is a modern world where magic is just another technology. There is a boundary between human and dragon lands, and juushiki users (awkwardly rendered as “juushikiists” in the subtitles) are sort of bounty hunters who take out the dragons in exchange for pay. However the worldbuilding is uneven, spending a good minute rambling about the discovery of juushiki when there are more pressing issues, like where did the dragons come from (we see ruins of skyscrapers so they can’t be native) and what is an Altar since everyone seems to be impressed by the killing of a semi-Altar dragon?

Verdict: I might come back to this one, but in a crowded season it’s a pass. While it has potential, the first episode is too uneven and there’s too much dead space that doesn’t feel like plot or character development.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

Devil’s Line

devilsline

Why I Watched It: I try to stay away from vampire stuff, but this one looks interesting, pairing a college student (rather than a high school girl) with a half-vampire who is part of a police task force. The original manga is seinen, meaning the story is aimed to appeal to the adult male demographic, so it will likely avoid the usual paranormal romance tropes.

What I Thought: This is definitely a gritty, more mature offering. Vampires are much like humans except that they find blood irresistible, and get a high off of drinking it, which tends to result in the victim’s demise. Offending vampires are hunted down and arrested, though not without some level of sympathy, with the understanding that a vampire that has killed can never go back to a peaceful life without blood. I like this level of real world integration with the fantastic, however, the combat animation is extremely off-putting. It appears to be CG, but not rendered in the standard frame rate for anime so it looks too fluid. Aside from that, a lot of the night time scenes feature thin white outlines around characters and I don’t know if that’s a stylistic choice or a rendering error. Finally, I don’t think the two leads have much chemistry with each other and I found it off-putting how Anzai forces a kiss on Tsukasa at the end of the episode, even if he is half-vampire and happens to see blood near her mouth.

Verdict: I’m going to pass. It has some interesting ideas, but I don’t like Anzai or that sort of behavior from my male leads.

Where to find stream: HIDIVE (subtitled and dubbed, subscription required)

Doreiku the Animation

doreiku

Why I Watched It: A number of questionable people are trapped in a survival game-ish power struggle to achieve dominance over each other, which is potentially right up my alley, so long as the requisite head games are there. Based on a novel series.

What I Thought: It was more trashy than I expected. It’ll probably appeal to people who like fiction with exploitative scenarios. I thought there would be more of a game structure to what’s going on, but basically two people engage in a “duel” while wearing these high tech retainers in their mouths and the loser is then compelled by the device to be a slave to the winner. So far as I can tell, there is no tournament arc and I suspect most of the cast is going to consist of a bunch of unlikable sadists. We meet our protagonists, who’ve yet to engage in dueling anybody, but we do see the result of one duel. Though the winner is taking some understandable revenge, she becomes cruel in ways that she didn’t appear to be before.

Verdict: I’m going to pass. If it was more game-y I could possibly hold my nose through it, but it looks like the show is going to put our protagonists through the wringer, and they won’t be the better for it by the end.

Where to find stream: HIDIVE (subtitled and dubbed, subscription required)

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These

legendofthegalaticheroes

Why I Watched It: This is a remake of an epic space opera series that in older days would never have been licensed due to the size and scope of the project, covering a whopping ten novels about the interstellar war between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance. It was one of those series that I knew about when I first got into anime as a legend in itself, but never expected to watch because no one was translating 100+ episode series at the time. The remake will be shorter.

What I Thought: The first episode focuses almost exclusively on the Galactic Empire, introducing one of our dual protagonists, Reinhard von Lohengramm. We don’t get much history about the current war so much as the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance have been at it for a while and Reinhard is rather young and arguably inexperienced for the role of High Admiral. The space battle segments are good for those craving ship-to-ship combat sans mecha, and his tactics are sound. Reinhard is willing to forgo “common sense” behavior, realizing that by doing so he can obtain an advantage. It’s not until the final minutes of the episode that we hear the voice of his rival, Yang Wen-li, on the side of the Free Planet Alliance, who promises his soldiers they will still win despite their losses. With Reinhard’s skill established and Yang Wen-li’s sheer gumption with his fleet-wide broadcast, it’s a solid tease for their eventual confrontation in the next episode.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. I love this kind of space opera and it’s unfortunately not as common as it used to be in anime. I’m not sure how it’s going to manage condensing everything from the original, but it looks really good so far.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

Magical Girl Ore

magicalgirlore

Why I Watched It: When I first saw the promo images of a couple beefcake guys in magical girl outfits, I assumed this was another show about boys transforming into magical girls, but it’s not! It’s about a couple girls who get magical girl abilities that turn them into a couple really buff guys. Naturally it’s a comedy and there are romance complications when the protagonist’s crush seems more interested in her male persona than herself.

What I Thought: For a series built on the premise that the girl turns into a guy and then fights demons while wearing a skirt, it takes an awfully long time to get to that point, with the transformation happening right at the end of the episode, so we don’t even get a fight scene. The show clearly knows how to parody its genre, and the “cute” mascot that looks and talks like a yakuza as part of its speech tic is an inspired touch, but the pacing leaves me concerned and I’m not sure whether it’s intentional that her crush is expressionless as a piece of cardboard.

Verdict: I’m going to pass. I might revisit if word of mouth builds up, but it’s not funny enough to make up for the slow pacing.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Persona 5: The Animation

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Why I Watched It: Persona 5 was one of the best JRPGs to come out last year, featuring teenage phantom thieves who steal people’s hearts in one world so they can regain their consciences in the real one. This should be a quick and easy way to relive the game (or follow the story in the first place for non-gamers). The game’s voice cast is reprising their roles and the series is expected to run 24 episodes so there should be the room needed to cover the entire plot without compressing and cutting too much.

What I Thought: The first episode was engaging and impressive for compressing what was probably the first 2-3 hours of gameplay into a half hour time slot. We’re told all we need to know about Ren Amamiya’s past, how he came to his new school, and what’s happening in “present day” (the story starts in media res and is mostly told in flashback during Ren’s interrogation). The first episode even manages to make explicit how Ren and Ryuji were able to visit Kamoshida’s palace in the first place, which I don’t think was spelled out in the game. I suspect series newbies will be a little, though not horribly, lost but fans should feel right at home.

Verdict: I’ll be watching at some point, though I’m not sure if it will be during the spring since there’s so much else going on and I already know the story. This is definitely going on my list though.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Real Girl

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Why I Watched It: The premise, about a boy who prefers the 2D stuff finally meeting a real girl who might be interested in him, isn’t something I’d usually watch. It feels like male nerd wish fulfillment, but Real Girl is based on a manga for girls, so I assume there is a twist to it that makes it more appealing to the female demographic. The character designs are appealing so I figured I’d give this a shot.

What I Thought: The two protagonists are not people I would normally like, but they’re human. Hikaru Tsutsui doesn’t like real girls because they tend to pick on him for being a nerd and he only has one friend, who is also a nerd, so they both get ostracized together. When he meets Iroha Igarashi he immediately dislikes her because she’s fashionable for her age and has a “loose” reputation. Of course she’s the type of girl who would show up late to class without a care (whereas he’s a model student with perfect attendance). What they go through feels very real, especially with how real people hurt each other without wanting to be cruel.

Verdict: I might watch this one. It’s a crowded season, but Iroha is a really unusual female lead. It’s rare to have a more experienced girl in a romantic pair, especially in shoujo anime. That might be why the episode is entirely from Hikaru’s POV, but I hope that switches later.

Where to find stream: HIDIVE (subtitled and dubbed, subscription required)

Tada Never Falls in Love

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Why I Watched It: Sweet high school romantic comedy between a high school boy, Tada, and the girl, Teresa, who has come to his school as an exchange student. Though the trailer video plays up both the romance and the comedy in a high school setting, the early promotional art shows Teresa in a tiara and ballgown, suggesting she is probably a princess. The show is by the creative team behind the Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun anime, which I had greatly enjoyed.

What I Thought: Tada is not manic funny in the way that Nozaki was and while the first episode isn’t bad, it’s definitely a slower burn. Teresa is heavily implied to be royalty and has come to Japan as an exchange student. It turns out that she’s a total Japanophile, specifically of a period drama called Rainbow Samurai, which weirds out Tada because she acts like it’s the greatest thing ever, while to him it’s an old TV show. Tada himself doesn’t seem that remarkable other than he really likes photography, and that’s how he meets Teresa, when she keeps getting in the way of his lens. So far they have such little chemistry together that even sharing an umbrella in the rain doesn’t feel romantic, though I guess that’s the point, given the series title.

Verdict: I might come back to this one, but it’s crowded season and with Wotakoi being the clear romantic comedy winner and Real Girl also being a contender, I don’t think I’m going to be seeing this one in real time.

Where to find stream: HIDIVE (subtitled and dubbed, subscription required)

Tokyo Ghoul:re

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Why I Watched It: The first Tokyo Ghoul anime veered away from the manga and went with a wildly different and original ending, so it’s very odd that the sequel manga is being animated, because it means that people who only follow the anime will have no idea how we got to this point. I’m not sure if concessions are being made to onboard those viewers, or the assumption will be that the audience knows the original manga.

What I Thought: The opening episode is different enough that I doubt I have much more context than someone brand new to the franchise. The government has recently created the Quinx Squad, which are humans with the abilities of ghouls in order to better combat them. Since ghouls require human flesh in order to survive, humans naturally don’t get along with them. We get a bunch of new characters and meet most of the Quinx Squad. The ending confirms where Kaneki is, for fans of the first series wondering why he wasn’t in most of the episode, but I feel like I really needed more answers, not just to Kaneki but to the Quinx Squad’s existence in general, to hold my interest.

Verdict: I’ll come back to this later. Despite the bumpy adaptation the last time around, :re has a new writer and new director, and if the first episode is anything to judge, this series will be tonally different. It’s bloody, but doesn’t seem to be striving for a horror feel, making it more of a dark action show, which feels like a better fit than the action horror hybrid the first one was trying to be.

Where to find stream: Funimation (subtitled and dubbed, subscription required for dub, but not for sub)

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku

wotakoi

Why I Watched It: After enjoying Recovery of an MMO Junkie I was really looking forward to another romantic comedy about a couple of geeks, this time in an office setting rather than an MMO. “Otaku” is a Japanese word for “enthusiasts” and particularly gets attached to those with nerdier pursuits.

What I Thought: This first episode does a wonderful job of conveying what it’s like being an adult geek, from discovering a fellow geek in the office to trying to hide your hobbies while hanging around muggles. In Narumi’s case, her ex-boyfriend actually dumped her when he discovered she’s a yaoi fangirl. Fortunately for Narumi, changing jobs to avoid her ex lands her at a new company where she gets reacquainted with her taciturn childhood friend, Hirotaka, who is similarly interested in geeky things. After being a sounding board for all her venting, he asks her why she doesn’t date someone who doesn’t mind that she’s a fangirl. The episode ends with Hirotaka giving an amazingly nerdy proposal to Narumi for why she should consider dating him (he’ll always be there when she needs another player in a video game!) and I completely loved it.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. Since they agreed to date at the end of the very first episode, I assume the rest of the series will be the ups and downs of two nerds getting used to dating each other. The other two characters in the show look like they’ll end up being a beta couple and at least one of them is confirmed an otaku in the first episode.

Where to find stream: Amazon Prime Video (subtitled, subscription required)

Diabolical Plots: Year Three Available for Pre-Order!

written by David Steffen

The newest anthology from Diabolical Plots, Diabolical Plots Year Three, is now available for pre-order from Amazon and Kobo (other vendors to follow). Pre-ordering is a great way to help ebook vendor algorithms promote it more, so if you think you would like a copy anyway pre-ordering is a big help.

Note the wonderful cover art, an original illustration by Amanda Makepeace, the same artist who made the awesome fox cover art for The Long List Anthology Volume 3 in December of last year. She illustrated the story “For Now, Sideways” by A. Merc Rustad, and she did a wonderful job with it. I love how a good illustrator can tell a story with an image like Amanda’s done here, how your eye is drawn to different parts of the image that imply the conflicts and resolutions of the story. Cover layout was done by Pat Steiner, who has done all of the anthology covers for Diabolical Plots and continues to do great work.

Thank you, and have a happy weekend!

DP FICTION #40A: “Tank!” by John Wiswell

The tank hates revolving doors. They’re petrified watching the doors whoosh by, trying to imagine anyone getting into the convention center through these things. The curb crumbles beneath the tank’s treads, and commuters honk for them to get their back-end out of the road. Two tweens sneak around the tank’s chassis, carrying a rack of brightly colored cosplay wigs, and slip into one of the revolving glass chambers.

“Be brave,” the tank tells themself.

The tank nudges their barrel inside, getting barely halfway in before the door clanks against their barrel. Instinctively they try to back up, rending steel frames and shattering glass everywhere.

Sighing, they tell themself it’ll get better. They’re going to make friends this time.

The Pre-Registration Line is so long that they miss the morning programming. Once they reach Registration, the lady frowns up at them like she was a landmine in a previous life. She says, “You didn’t fill in a gender.”

The tank rumbles. “I don’t associate Male or Female.”

She points at the tank’s cannon. “With that thing?”

“Are you calling my turret genitalia?” It wasn’t, and even if it was, they had the equivalent of a vasectomy and filled it with cement years ago. They lower their cannon, showing the orange safety cap protruding from the muzzle.

“I don’t care what you call it. Guns aren’t allowed, and you have to pick a gender.”

A Marceline from Adventure Time leans around the tank’s treads, squinting at the registrar. “They’ve got the peace bonding cap on there. And the gender crap on the form was optional.”

The registrar says, “Since when?”

“You want me to complain to Con-Ops?”

The registrar grouses and forks over the badge, while the tank turns to Marceline. Her badge reads ‘XIAO.’ They want to tell her that they love Adventure Time, but they can’t word it right. A moment later Xiao whisks away with a plastic-fanged smile and a, “Have a good con!”

Small-talk is hard for tanks.

They get in line for the Cowboy Bebop Cast Reunion, and the hallway is too narrow. Human con-goers have to climb over them to get by. Even though they have no eyes, the lack of eye contact stings. They scooch over, and accidentally cave in the wall to a Men’s Room.

A minute later, gofers come out of the panel room and wave everyone off. “We’re full! Sorry!”

The show’s opening theme blares as the gofers shut the doors. Ironic, but the tank loves that song.

They sulk over to the food court, feeling at least a little companionship with all the other disappointed con-goers. The crowd dissipates to watch an inter-fandom mock battle. MCU Avengers cosplayers desperately fend off assorted Crystal Gems.

A couple of Iron Mans ask for a picture, but they just want to pose like they’re blowing up the tank. The tank revs up to leave.

That’s when they see a Princess Bubblegum with a plastic pink wig, her shoulders hunched, looking around for someone who plainly isn’t there. But someone plainly is: a tall guy in a Red Hood graphic tee.

“The show went off the rails when she didn’t get together with Finn,” Red Hood Fan says in the tone of someone who might never have enjoyed anything in his life. “I don’t see why people ship her with Marcy.”

Her badge just reads ‘PB.’ PB cranes her neck around Red Hood Fan, still avoiding eye contact with him. “Uhm…”

“Wouldn’t it be weird to have gay characters on a kids’ cartoon?”

The tank rolls up behind Red Hood Fan, brushing his shoulder with their cannon. Red Hood Fan cringes away, looking as uncomfortable as PB has this whole time. “Hey, thanks for waiting for me,” the tank lies. “Ready for lunch?”

PB arches a brow, then says, “Yeah!” and sidesteps around the guy.

PB and the tank get out of there quickly, heading south along the titanic line for George R.R. Martin’s autograph. The tank asks, “Were you looking for someone?”

“My girlfriend. We got separated at registration.”

The tank lets PB ride on their turret so she’ll be more visible. This earns thousands of photos from strangers, and halfway down the endless pilgrimage of Game of Thrones fans, they spy a familiar Marceline. PB hops to the floor and kisses Xiao in front of everybody. The tank could blush.

Xiao gives the tank a plastic-fanged smile. “You get around.”

The tank tries to be funny. “Anywhere without revolving doors.”

Both PB and Xiao tilt their heads. Small-talk is hard for tanks.

They chatter, and Xiao balls up her fists at the story of Red Hood Fan. “Why do we even come to these things?”

PB raspberries at her. “You know why.”

The panel doors fly open behind them, and the theme from Cowboy Bebop rings forth. They pivot to get out of the way of the exiting crowd. Missing the panel wasn’t so bad since they made these friends.

Except when the tank looks again, Xiao and PB are gone in the flood of people headed to their next panel. People promptly complain that the tank is obstructing the hall, and they roll along, alone, wondering why they came here at all.

Exiting the building is the only way to avoid people, but the first one they find is another revolving door. The tank heaves a sigh through their chassis. Are they going to have to smash through this one, too?

“We almost lost you!” someone calls, and tugs on their mudguard. It’s Xiao, gesturing toward the adjacent corridor, where PB is waving for them both. “We’re going to the dance party. Want to come?”

The tank is so happy they almost commit several hundred cases of vehicular manslaughter. They roll very carefully to BALLROOM B, where PB and Xiao drag chairs aside to make more room. That lets the tank spin some doughnuts without fearing crushing any dancers.

Xiao whispers something to the band. As houselights dim and glowsticks crack, the band plays the theme from Cowboy Bebop.

PB says, “You know what the song is called, right?”

The tank can only muster a, “Thank you.”

PB laughs. “This is why we go to cons.”

Author’s Note: At a convention one year, Max Gladstone and I were joking about the problems a tank might have at such an event. That’s what you do when you’re like us. For the same reason, I couldn’t help writing about the poor non-binary tank trying to overcome their social awkwardness.

John (@wiswell) lives where New York keeps all its trees. His fiction has appeared at Fireside Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, and Daily Science Fiction. He has never had a cosplayer ride him across a convention center, but he does try to help where he can.

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New Submission Grinder Features: Piece Priority!

written by David Steffen

A couple of new features were released over the last week on the Submission Grinder. For those who don’t know what the Submission Grinder is, it’s a donation-supported website that helps writers finds publishers for their work, as well as providing submission statistics from user data.

The Advanced Search Engine can do a lot of things already. You can search by various parameters like length or pay rate. You can ignore individual markets so they never show up in your search results, or exclude markets where a particular piece has been submitted. But it can only work with the data it has available to it, and sometimes that’s not the sort of data that a program can make sense of. For instance, Beneath Ceaseless Skies takes secondary world fantasy only. The search engine can base its search on genre, so it’ll find BCS in a Fantasy search, so if you search for your contemporary American fantasy you’re going to keep seeing BCS in your search results and you’ll have to remember to ignore that result yourself. Or if you have a piece that doesn’t technically fit the specifications of a market but you have special permission to submit or something, then there would be no way to mark that for yourself.

Now there are things you can do to customize your search results! Now, you can define “piece priorities”, which tell the site special instructions for a combination of a particular piece and a particular market. Besides the default “no priority” setting, there are two other values you can set:

UNSUITABLE
This priority indicates that you just don’t think this piece is a good fit for this market, even if it fits the defined search parameters. If you set a piece as unsuitable for a market, then that means that when you search for markets for that piece, that market will always be excluded from the results. And if you search for markets for that piece, that market will always be excluded from the results.
PREFERRED
This priority indicates that you think this is a particularly good fit for this market, even if it doesn’t fit the defined search parameters. If you set a piece as preferred for a market, then that means that when you search for markets for that piece, that market will always be shown at the top of the results clearly marked as Preferred, even if it doesn’t fit the search parameters otherwise and even if the market doesn’t qualify for a listing or you’ve marked it as Ignore (but it won’t show up if you’ve already submitted it there). And if you search for pieces for that market, that piece will always be shown at the top of the results clearly marked as Preferred.

I am very excited about these additional features, I think they will be useful in those corner cases the search engine just doesn’t quite cover. Thank you!

You can mark these priorities by clicking the “Piece Priorities” link on any market page while you’re logged in.

BOOK REVIEW: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

written by David Steffen

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty is a science fiction mystery, one of the finalists for the Hugo Award for the Best Novel category of 2017.

In the future, cloning is commonplace, but its use is strictly limited by law to ensure that it’s only used for longevity of a person rather than multiplication. Every clone makes regular mindmaps of their memories and after they die, a new youthful body is cloned from their DNA and the mindmap copied into it. Many clones have hundreds of years worth of memories they carry with them as though they have lived a single long life. The practice of cloning is not accepted by everyone, especially religious groups, many of which consider clones to be soulless abominations, and there have been violent conflicts about cloning practices.

And what better use for clones than to crew a starship? Equip the ship with a cloning bay and mindmapper, and a crew of six can staff a starship that would require a generation ship with much heavier infrastructure with an uncloned human crew. Not many clones would be interested in such a long dull trip, but criminal clones granted a pardon for their crimes as payment can be convinced, watched over by an AI to make sure things don’t get out of control, and a cargo of humans and clone mindmaps to colonize the planet at the end of the trip.

But, something has gone terribly wrong. Maria Arena and the other six crew members wake up simultaneously in newly cloned bodies, to their own murder scene. They have been in transit for twenty-five years but have lost all of the memories of their journey, the gravity is off, the food replicator is only manufacturing poison, the AI is offline, the cloning bay has been sabotaged, and presumably one or more of them was the murderer but even they don’t remember that they did it. Their previous crimes are strictly off the record as part of the pardon deal, so no one knows if any of the others had a history of murder.

This was an enjoyable SF mystery, an amped-up locked room type of mystery, where this crew of six is set to investigate their own murders, and it could’ve been any of them since they lost the memories of the journey. As they go they have numerous other obstacles they have to deal with just to keep going, as well as searching for clues to who committed the murders. Scenes from the present are interspersed with scenes from each person’s pasts so the interplay between the characters makes more and more sense as we understand their histories. I don’t read a lot in the mystery genre, but I liked how this novel took familiar tropes like the locked room mystery and by changing the setting and technology level gave them interesting new angles to explore. The book flowed easily from beginning to end and I was satisfied with the resolution. I don’t know how well it will stand up to avid mystery readers, but I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Anime Review: Juni Taisen: Zodiac War

written by Laurie Tom

junitaisen

I didn’t expect to like Juni Taisen: Zodiac War as much as I did, but that said, it’s not going to be like that for everyone. The show is a throwback to the more violent anime of the 1990s in that there are lots of blood and guts, with possibly one of the most creative and disgusting ways I’ve ever seen to hide a corpse, but at the same time the series is very talky and ultimately depressing.

Juni Taisen is about a tournament fought every twelve years by twelve families. Each family sends a representative to participate in the gruesome death match, with the outcome deciding the fate of various nations between the power mongers of the world. As for the sole tournament survivor, they earn the fulfillment of one wish, no matter how outlandish.

Each combatant is themed to an animal of the Chinese zodiac and in several cases this also comes with a supernatural ability. During the tournament they don’t go by their proper names, but rather the name of their animal in Japanese followed by a description of their killing style. For instance: Eiji, the Ox, will introduce himself as “Ushi, Killing Systematically.” And make no mistake, there is a lot of killing.

At the start of the tournament, each combatant is instructed to swallow a gemlike object that turns out to be poisonous. The poison will dissolve into their bodies in twelve hours, setting a time limit for the battle. In order to win, the winner must have all twelve gems in their possession before time is up. Given these circumstances, true cooperation seems impossible, since winning involves removing an object from an opponent’s stomach, though at least one participant tries.

With a couple exceptions, each episode focuses on a particular combatant and we see parts of their personal backstory; who they are and why they entered the tournament in the first place. Unfortunately, after a few episodes the show is clearly following a pattern.

Viewers familiar with the Chinese zodiac, which will likely be the majority of the original Japanese audience, will be able to figure out who the winner is pretty quickly, so the show doesn’t particularly worry about revealing any secrets as the body count builds up. It might be possible for a western viewer to watch the show from an angle of suspense if they don’t know the zodiac and don’t watch the ending credits too closely, but the show was certainly not written with that possibility in mind.

How effective Juni Taisen is largely depends on the audience’s attachment for how these warriors came into their present circumstances, since (nearly) everyone dies and if a character’s one moment in the spotlight doesn’t catch the eye, then there’s not much point to anything else. Even the eventual winner’s story is not terribly climactic since their identity is not expected to be a surprise, which makes for an unusually tepid ending. I liked the winner, but because of the lack of surprise, their episode didn’t have a heavier punch than any other despite wrapping up the storyline.

While I enjoyed watching Juni Taisen as each new episode came out, it’s a series that’s more about watching a bunch of skilled strangers kill each other in various ways than anything deeper. We do get a feel for most of them as human beings, but the format prevents us from knowing them enough to miss them.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Interesting storytelling format, everyone more or less gets a chance to shine

Minuses: Doesn’t feel as deep as it was aiming for, winner is predictable if you know the Chinese zodiac

Juni Taisen is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

REVIEW: Hugo Novella Finalists

written by David Steffen

The Hugo Awards Best Novella category covers stories between 17,500 and 40,000 words. See here for a full list of the nominees this year. I enjoyed all of the novellas this year, I’m glad that the Hugos use instant-runoff voting so I can give some kind of vote for them all instead of just having to pick one!

1. “And Then There Were (N-One),” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, March/April 2017)

A Sarah Pinsker from an alternate reality has discovered how to travel to alternate realities. One of the first actions this alternate Sarah Pinsker performs is to organize the first SarahCon, attended entirely by Sarah Pinskers of various realities. This Sarah (an insurance adjuster) grudgingly decides to attend, where she meets hundreds of herselves and is just starting to figure out how to navigate the odd social situation of talking to all these other Sarahs, when a dead body is discovered, apparently a murder, and this Sarah Pinsker is the closest Sarah available to one with detective experience while they wait for the authorities to arrive on the island of the convention. The victim is Sarah Pinsker. Pretty much all of the suspects and potential witnesses are Sarah Pinsker. And Sarah Pinsker is on the case.

This story was wonderful and fun and delightful and hilarious. There was plenty of humor inherent in the situation, but the murder mystery is played straight–it has all of the components you expect from a murder mystery, except that the scenario adds a bizarre twist to the situation that both complicates (because it’s hard to even tell the people apart) and simplifies (because Sarah has a better understanding of the suspects than she would if they were entirely separate people) the investigation. This lends itself to the story taking some turns that would only make sense in this very specific situation. Highly recommended, I have been recommending this to anyone who has asked me what I’m reading.

2. River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)

This was previously reviewed at greater length here last year.

Usually alternate history is used to explore the consequences of major political or military events turning out differently. But sometimes, it can just be used as a reason to tell a Western story about hippo-riding cowboys in Louisiana (alt history because there was an early 20th century proposal to import hippos to raise them for meat).

Winslow Houndstooth had been happy as a hippo rancher until his ranch was burned to the ground. Now Houndstooth is a hired hand, and he’s accepted a job from the government to clear all of the feral hippos out of the Mississippi, and he also has revenge on his mind to get back at the one who destroyed his ranch.

This is so much fun, very much a western style story but with the significant added wrinkle that their mounts/cattle can bite them in half. The story is told straight, so the hippos aren’t used for comedy, but that just makes it all the more fun. It has the feel of a heist sort of story, with Winslow as the leader gathering skilled specialists to perform the seemingly impossible mission.

3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)

Jacqueline and Jillian are twin sisters, weighed under the heavy burden of parental expectations. Every aspect of what they do and how they present to the world is defined by their parents who wanted the perfect boy and the perfect girl. Jacqueline is the perfect princess of a girl, never dirty, never impolite, while Jillian is a tomboy who excels at athletics and never does things that might be considered girlish. When they’re thirteen the girls discover a portal into another world in their house and they travel through it, to a land protected and contained by a vampire and a mad doctor who can raise corpses from the dead. Portal visitors are a common occurrence here, and due to a prior arrangement, the girls each go into the custody of one of these powerful men and must make their way in this strange world until they can find a doorway home.

This ties into McGuire’s Wayward Children series, but you don’t need any familiarity with the series to read this–it works just fine as a standalone. It is built largely on the audience expectations of portal stories, so if (like me) those are a particular favorite, you’ll be well-primed for this. The characters are both well-portayed as real people as well as larger than life in some ways because they are constantly being pushed into boundaries that generally do not fit them. It’s a story of what makes each of us different from the others, and how our environments and constraints on our behavior end up defining much of who we are. It’s also a tale of sisterhood coming from a family that didn’t exactly nurture their relationship, thrown into adversity of a strange world. Well worth the read.

4. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)

The security android (SecBot for short) calls itself Murderbot, but only in the privacy of its own head. It’s part robot part human, property of the Company, on security detail with a group of humans surveying a planet for resources. Unbeknownst to its crew, it has successfully hacked its governor module that is supposed to keep it safe and limit its behavior to only those things necessary for its security duties. But, really, it uses most of that freedom to download and watch entertainment vids in every moment of spare time. Its current crew is disconcertingly friendly, which is bothersome when it really just wants to be left alone to watch its shows. When a series of things go wrong with the surveying mission, it’s not clear if its due to the Company’s cut-rate equipment or if someone is sabotaging them. But Murderbot’s vid-watching has (surprisingly) prepared it for unexpected situations more than its actual functional programming, and if it wants to survive it’s going to have to help its crew get out of this.

Murderbot is a fun and charming character in its own way. While some parts of its personality are far from mine (a casual attitude toward violence, but that’s inherent in its programming) I think its character is particularly appealing for introverts who may find friendliness from others alarming at times. Murderbot is a very competent character and it’s a solid action story, but the biggest charm of it for me was just enjoying the kind of odd personality traits, different from most human characters in stories but also different from most robot characters in stories. Fun, and the first of a series.

5. Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)

The original Binti was reviewed here as part of the Hugo Novella Review in 2016. Binti: Home is the second story in the series.

Binti is the first human from the Himba culture to travel to the stars where she is attending Oomza University, where she is learning to refine her skill for mentally manipulating magical formulas. The first story told of the tragic happenings of her trip where she was the sole survivor of an attack by the jellyfish-like Meduse and went on to help forge a peace between humans and Meduse, and in the process was physically changed so that her braids became like a Meduse’s tentacles, able to move of their own volition. Now she is returning home to Earth to her family to go on a pilgrimage during her break in her schooling, and she’s bringing her Meduse friend Okwu with her. With the truce with the Meduse still fresh and tentative, and with Binti changed dramatically by her new experiences since leaving home, she doesn’t know how her family and culture will receive her.

Solid story, and I like following Binti as much as the first time. The first book took place mostly off-Earth so you didn’t get to see much of Binti’s home or her culture directly. This story takes place almost entirely here, we get to know her family and her background better. This story is the second in what I think will be a trilogy and it does feel like that–it is clearly building FROM something, and clearly building TO something where it will go next, but as itself I wanted to get the rest of the story–I will be excited to read the third story. I would recommend not starting the series with this book–I don’t think you’ll get everything out of it if you haven’t seen Binti’s path so far, and the previous conflict with the Meduse and the beginning of the truce.

6. The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)

Mokoya and Akeha are the twin children of the Protector, sold to the Monastery at birth. Mokoya is plagued by visions of the future that can’t be changed, and Akeha is drawn to political revolution. The Machinist rebellion is growing, the power of technology growing quickly and threatening the iron rule of the Protectorate and their soldiers, and both of the siblings see the terrible things their mother does to maintain her rule. They must make decisions about where their loyalties lie and where their abilities are best used.

This story ties into the author’s Tensorate series, and was dual-released with another novella in the same universe The Red Threads of Fortune, but it works as a standalone–you don’t need any prior knowledge of the characters or universe to be able to follow the story. I haven’t read the related novella or the other books in the series, but I enjoyed getting to know the twins and their relationship with each other. What I found particularly interesting was some of the cultural details, especially how children are not considered a specific gender until they’re old enough to decide their gender for themselves, and how Tensorate magic is used to facilitate this process–although parts of living under Protectorate rule seem oppressive, this particular aspect was positive and interesting.