The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon Publications) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #288, September–October 2020).

Uiziya e Lali and the nameless man known as nen-sasaïr live in a world where magic is real and one can change one’s sex. A cloth of transformation, woven from the wind, summons sand-birds of bright fire. They cocoon the summoner, who burns without burning before emerging as the desired sex. They attribute this ability to the goddess Bird – who gives the series of stories of which this novella is a part its overall name, the Birdverse – but from what we see in this book it might well be a symbiotic biological process that has evolved on this world.

Stitches, by Hirokatsu Kihara and Junji Ito (VIZ Media) | review by Stephen Theaker

This short, quick read collects nine short horror stories (the "stitches”), prose rather than comics, albeit with a bonus manga story. Originally published in Japan in 2010, the major appeal to English-speaking readers in 2024 is likely to be the ghastly illustrations by Junij Ito, famed for his critically-adored horror comics, such as Uzumaki, adapted into a highly memorable film at the peak of the J-Horror boom. (His cat comics, though possibly of less interest to our readers, are also much adored.) The bonus manga story is "Summer Graduation Trip", a fairly spooky and supposedly true story of two young women who go to a spa and find themselves in a spook-filled sauna.

Under the Skin | review by Jacob Edwards

This review originally appeared in TQF65 (December 2019).

Out from under but still only skin-deep.

Under the Skin features Scarlett Johansson as a vulnerable yet predatory alien whose dark incomprehension of the world sets up a contrast by which director (and co-writer) Jonathan Glazer sets out to capture something of the human condition. Whether Glazer achieves this is debatable. Assuredly his film encapsulates the best and worst of the arthouse experience.

47 by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

An alien among the alienated: young adult novel puts sci-fi twist on slave story to comment on freedom and equality.

In Walter Mosley’s young adult novel 47, a slave story collides (or intertwines) with colourful little people, ghouls, lasers shot out of eyes, and magic devices. 

The tale begins with 170-year-old first-person narrator 47 revealing that he’s going to reflect on his experiences as a slave in 1832. This framing device strengthens the author/reader connection, reinforces the authenticity of the tale, and lends the novel a genuine “Let me tell you a story” feel.

Geethanjali Malli Vachindi | review by Stephen Theaker

A much more stylish sequel to the 2014 Telugu film Geethanjali, this 15-rated horror comedy from first-time director Shiva Thurlapati introduces us to an unattractive, middle-aged street food vendor hoping to persuade the military father of his very young girlfriend that he’s a catch worthy of her, even though he obviously isn’t. To this end, he proudly declares that within a year he will be respected by everyone, that they’ll all be calling him “sir”: he is about to star in a film! Unfortunately, the purported director – played by Srinivasa Reddy, returning from the first film – has no film in the works, and has in fact been bilking the vendor to support himself and his two writers.

Civil War | review by Stephen Theaker

Kirsten Dunst plays Lee, a celebrated and determined photojournalist who hopes to get one last photograph of the US president before his inevitable execution by rebels from the Western Alliance, who are closing in on Washington. Texas and California fight together in the alliance, the traditionally Republican and Democrat states setting their differences aside to depose what the director has called in interviews a fascist president. I don’t think that’s spelt out as clearly on-screen, though I saw it in 4DX and it’s easy to miss dialogue when the fans are blasting away. We do learn that he disbanded the FBI and ordered airstrikes on US citizens, and that something called the antifa massacre happened. Florida has also seceded, and the Portland Maoists are among those taking their guns to the White House. The president is in it so briefly and yet played so perfectly by Nick Offerman that Ned Beatty’s record could be under threat.

Firewalkers by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #288, September–October 2020).

Another short book exploring the effects of global warming. In this possible future, the equatorial region of Africa might be the centre of a ever-expanding desert, but it was still the most convenient place to build Ankara Achouka, an anchor for the space elevator to the Grand Celeste, a colony ship up in orbit.

Twisted Metal, Series 1 | reviewed by Stephen Theaker

A Peacock original in the United States, PlayStation adaptation Twisted Metal took quite a long time to reach the UK, where, ironically, it joined Xbox adaptation Halo on Paramount+. Personally, I’ve been Xbox-exclusive ever since my PlayStation 3 got the yellow light of death, but I have a soft spot for Twisted Metal, from the original PlayStation. It wasn’t a complicated game: you chose a themed, armoured, battle-ready car, entered an arena, and fought against several other cars until one emerged the winner. Twisted Metal Black: Online was one of the first console games I ever played online, as part of a beta testing programme. The series petered out in 2012, presumably because its ideas were so easily merged into other car games. For such an old, dormant series to be adapted for television might seem a bit surprising, but books much older than that are adapted every year. I take it as a sign that this wasn’t produced simply for the sake of corporate synergy, but because people looked at the game and its concepts and thought it would make a good tv show. I think they were right. It’s a lot of fun!

Every Day, by Jesse Andrews (Orion Pictures et al.) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF65 (December 2019).

“A” is a being of unknown origin who wakes up in a different human body every day, one that’s about the same age as A. When asked if he or she is a boy or a girl, later in the film, A says, “Yes.” I suppose it doesn’t make sense to talk about being male or female if you don’t have a body. Or, to put it another way, in a male body A is male, and in a female body A is female, rather like Doctor Who.

Femlandia, by Christina Dalcher (HQ) | review by Stephen Theaker

In the very near future, the American economy collapses and society follows suit. Trying to keep her 16-year-old daughter Emma safe from marauding men, Miranda, a formerly well-off woman, heads for Femlandia, the all-female radfem colony co-founded by her mother, Jennifer Jones. That might sound like the set-up for a feminist book, and it certainly has feminist elements (and a feminist author), but ironically I think anti-feminists might enjoy it more.

Earwig by B. Catling (Coronet) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #284, November–December 2019).

The cover of this short novel has traps for the unwary reader. Despite the artwork, the book does not feature a cat-faced girl, nor does the girl listen at walls with a glass. And do not read the cover flap, which provides a synopsis of the entire novel.

Immaculate | review by Stephen Theaker

Sydney Sweeney, who also produces, plays Cecilia, a young American woman whose church has closed due to lack of attendance. Surviving a childhood accident on an icy lake left Cecilia convinced that God has a plan for her, so now she travels to an Italian convent to take her vows and become a novitiate. The work is hard, physically and emotionally: the rules are strict and the nunnery offers end-of-life care to those who require it, including patients with severe dementia. But Sister Cecelia is a true believer in the power of religion and she really takes to life in the convent. She even makes friends, like fellow nun Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) and suspiciously charming priest Father Sal Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte).

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Season 1 | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF73 (April 2023).

Jennifer Walters is a lawyer who gains the power to transform into She-Hulk, thanks to her blood being mixed with that of her gamma-infused cousin, Bruce Banner. This television version of her story is largely based on the Dan Slott run of She-Hulk comics, where she works as a lawyer with superhuman clients, but it retains the fourth-wall breaking of the earlier John Byrne run. Tatiana Maslany plays the lead.

Positive: A Novel by David Wellington (Harper Voyager) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

More than a mark: lesson on compassionate leadership disguised as zombie story.

During his westward journey, exile Finnegan (aka Finn) encounters a large sign that says, “The world takes.” It’s a fitting summary for the post-apocalyptic world he traverses, a world full of zombies and even more dangerous predators of the human variety. 

Hell to Pay by Matthew Hughes (Angry Robot) | review by Stephen Theaker

Chesney Armstruther should be having the time of his life. The events of the two previous novels in the To Hell and Back trilogy (The Damned Busters and Costume Not Included, reviewed in TQF37 and TQF48 respectively) left him with superpowers, a nice girlfriend in Melda McCann, lots of money, and a cigar-smoking, weasel-faced, wish-granting demon at his beck and call. Plus, thanks to meeting a version of Jesus from an earlier draft of the universe, he’s now free of the autism that had previously bedevilled his interactions with other humans. But he isn’t really any happier. He might understand people’s emotions better now, but that doesn’t mean he knows what to do about them. Previously, he was at least happy within his areas of certainty, his pools of white light, but now it’s all grey areas.

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #284 (November–December 2019).

Eye-catching cover art by Julie Dillon gives a good idea of what’s inside: goofball space opera with a more serious protagonist. She is Captain Eva-Benita Caridad Alvarez y Coipel de Innocente, who hasn’t spoken to her family in years, since the awful incident at Garilia. She owns a slightly old-fashioned spaceship, La Sirena Negra, a keep-your-mouth-shut present from her estranged spaceship-dealer father, and we meet her just as she and her crew run into even more trouble than usual.

The Parades | review by Stephen Theaker

After a huge earthquake hits Japan, a 35-year-old single mother and journalist, Minako (Masami Nagasawa), drowns in the subsequent tsunami. Not that she realises at first. She wakes up on a beach strewn with wreckage and of course her first thought is to find Ryo, her seven-year-old son. Rescue workers ignore her questions. So do survivors, and a colleague from work. The first person to acknowledge her is her colleague’s daughter – because the little girl died too. Later, as Minako searches through the rubble, a young man, Akira (Kentarô Sakaguchi), calls to her from his van. He can see her, and she can touch his arm. She’s in such a state that he offers her a lift to where he is staying, a cosy outdoor bar in a little fairground in the middle of nowhere. He tells her it’s a gathering place for people like them, by which he means those who died with regrets and aren’t ready to move on.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (Tordotcom) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review previously appeared in Interzone #290-291 (March-June 2021).

The rogue SecUnit (an android "made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression, and unfocused rage") returns for Fugitive Telemetry, its sixth adventure, though to its own slight discomfort it is somewhat less of a rogue than before. Now it has friends, and its friends have expectations. So when a murder is apparently committed on Preservation Station, a place where such events are extremely rare, SecUnit is expected to help. There is some discomfort on the station about having a former murderbot on board, but its new friend Mensah has enough sway to override objections.

Cackle by Rachel Harrison (Berkley) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Aimless woman desperate for a man finds mysterious woman desperate for a friend in dully taught lesson on female autonomy.

Cackle is a call for women to stop kowtowing to men and to develop their own voices. Unfortunately, excepting a charming spider and some unruly teens, the story isn’t all that interesting.

Lisa Frankenstein | review by Stephen Theaker

1989: the unfortunately named Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) has a new home and a new school. When Lisa was a little younger, her mum was killed by an axe murderer. Her dad has now married Janet (Carla Gugino), a nasty piece of work who thinks very little of Lisa. Stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) does her best to be nice but isn’t very good at it. After another girl deliberately gives Lisa a spiked drink at a party, and her science lab partner sexually assaults her, she takes a shortcut home through her favourite graveyard. She wishes she could be with the subject of her favourite bit of statuary, a piano player who died young in 1837 (Cole Sprouse, one half of the little kid in Big Daddy).

Black Adam | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF73 (April 2023).

Archaeologists in the country of Kahndaq, currently in the grip of a private security company, discover the tomb of an ancient hero. Betrayal leads mercenaries to the scene, but when Black Adam awakes, they die, most violently. The film then follows Black Adam as he connects with his country's current inhabitants, fights its occupying force, and battles a quartet of Justice Society members, sent from the US to bring him in line.

Madame Web | review by Stephen Theaker

Madame Web has been given a lot of stick for being a bad superhero film, which in my view is a complete misunderstanding of what it is. It’s not a superhero film at all, it’s a comedy horror thriller that takes place in a superhero universe. Comics readers are very used to this kind of thing, but it seems to have baffled some filmgoers. Imagine a Final Destination film, but where nearly all the heroine’s psychic visions are of the same disaster: an evil Spider-Man type called Ezekiel murdering everyone he gets his hands on, in one location after another. Admittedly, he is the film’s weakest link (the animation of his movements looks clumsy, and it sounds as if his dialogue has been dubbed by someone else), but, overall, like Morbius, the film is very far from being the complete disaster that some would have you think.

In the Vanishers’ Palace, by Aliette de Bodard (JABberwocky Literary Agency) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF65 (December 2019).

Some time ago, the world was conquered and enslaved by beings who subsequently left, vanished, and broke the world. Humans were left to survive as best they could among the wreckage and abandoned artefacts. Resources are scarce, plagues are rife, and life in Yên’s village is extremely difficult, the village elders always looking for an excuse to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Would-be scholar Yên is not regarded as terribly useful, but her mother is a healer, and knows a few words of power. When Head Phuoc’s daughter is seriously unwell, and all else fails, and exile is the price of failure, Yên’s mother calls on a dragon spirit to help. Yên is offered as the price.

ProleSCARYet: Tales of Horror and Class Warfare edited by Ian Bain, Anthony Engebretson, J.R. Handfield, Eric Raglin, and Marcus Woodman (Rad Flesh Press) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Overlords in saviours’ clothing: anthology takes a shot at capitalism with mixed results.

Despite its silly title, this horror anthology sympathises with those fed up with monied capitalists trying to take control of their lives, mostly in office and retail environments. It’s full of low earners (pizza deliverers, landscapers, gas station attendants, baristas) trying to make ends meet while suffering at the hands of the wealthy. In some stories, members of the upper class get their way, while, in others, the “rich fucks”, as one author puts it, pay their dues.

Poor Things | review by Stephen Theaker

A woman tries to commit suicide, throwing herself off a bridge. We later find out that she was pregnant, with a husband who would have driven anyone to despair. Her body is recovered by Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), God for short. While watching, given that Godwin was Mary Shelley's maiden name, I assumed him to be Frankenstein's monster, now a mad scientist himself, but if so or not, he had a father who performed similarly ghastly experiments on him. Now he continues the family tradition, performing ghastly miracles such as binding the head of a pig to the body of a chicken, or reanimating the body of a suicidal woman by using the brain of her unborn baby.

Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock (47North) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #285 (January–February 2020), which also included a wide-ranging interview with the author.

In A Calculated Life, Jayna, a simulant in the midst of a low-key rebellion, goes on a sneaky trip to the Enclave market on Clothing Street and notes with distaste a striped cotton shirt with a fake fur collar. Nauseated to see such disparate things stitched together, she asks her friend Dave who would do that kind of work. Migrants, he tells her. Bridge 108 introduces us to the boy who made that shirt, and shows us how proud he was of it, and what it signified for him.

Caleb is a migrant boy of twelve years old who has been separated from his parents for some time. Europe is so dried out by global warming that starting a wildfire in France will see you imprisoned for life, and an arsonist in Portugal could face the death penalty. England and Wales, for now at least, have what we would consider a pleasant Mediterranean climate, warm enough for vineyards and sleeping outdoors in the summer.

For All Mankind, Season 4 | review by Stephen Theaker

Season 4 of For All Mankind, Apple's big-budget alternate-history science fiction show, jumps forward eight years. In their world, Stanley Kubrick finished AI: Artificial Intelligence himself, John Lennon played the Superbowl half-time show, and the USA got its first lesbian president. In 1995, humans had barely a toehold on Mars and a bomb had devastated NASA's command centre. In 2003, the multi-national Mars colony is well-established and the next stop planned is asteroid mining. After an early attempt ends in disaster, it takes a particularly valuable prize to get things going again.

Though we barely see Jodi Balfour as President Waverley in this season (Al Gore now being President), and many other major characters have died or retired along the way, there are some survivors from the late 1960s. Astronaut Ed Baldwin is a cranky old man now; hardly a surprise since he was such a cranky young man. Joel Kinnamon's performance conveys the character's age better than his rather dusty make-up. He doesn't want to leave Mars, especially with his daughter and grandson on the way there. He's not happy when old friend Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) is sent from Earth to become his boss. Her instinct was to decline the job, but she returns to service out of duty.

Barbarians of the Beyond by Matthew Hughes (Spatterlight) | review by Stephen Theaker

About twenty-five years ago, in the year 1499 (New Reckoning) five of the galaxy's worst criminals, known collectively as the Demon Princes, led their henchmen in an attack on a farming colony, Mount Pleasant, on the world of Providence, leaving many dead and taking the rest as slaves. Such is the nature of life in the Beyond, beyond the civilised safety of the Oikumene worlds.

The parents of Morwen Sabine were among those taken, and sold into slavery, ending up in the possession of Hacheem Belloch, on Blatcher's World. And it was into slavery that Morwen was born. We join her subsequent to her escape, as she arrives on Providence, and makes her way back to the former home of her parents. They left something of value there, hidden in her tree, that might help bring them home.

Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester (St. Martin’s Press) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Unrequited love and somnambulant sculpting: alternating timelines explore mother/daughter bonds and suppression of women’s voices.

Such a Pretty Smile tells the stories of a mother and daughter dealing with a variety of threats, the most dangerous of which is a serial killer called The Cur. On a deeper level, the novel comments on women having their voices stifled in a society that drives them towards certain behaviours and activities. 

Like many recent horror novels, the action alternates between two timelines. In 2019, eighth-grader Lila Sawyer – a surname with clear implications – has a crush on her attractive but self-absorbed classmate Macie, who is more interested in Cameron, a junior in high school. Macie tries to push Cameron’s awkward brother Andrew onto Lila. To top it off, a murderer who kills young girls is on the prowl. 

All of Us Strangers | review by Stephen Theaker

All of Us Strangers tells the story of Adam (Andrew Scott), a gay writer in his forties, living alone in an empty London apartment block. He writes for film, and, when he has to (as he puts it), for television. He's trying to write a script about his childhood, but struggling, so he heads back to his home town to see his parents. Anyone who has seen the trailer will know already that his parents (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) died in a car crash when he was a child. The film, however, doesn't tell you that they died until after we have met them, though one might guess from the conversation and their relative youth. Adam doesn't seem surprised to meet them, nor do they seem surprised to meet him, though they are aware that time has gone on without them.

In London, a nice chap knocks on Adam's door with a bottle of whiskey, looking for company. They are apparently the only people to have moved into the building yet and the silence is freaking him out. Harry (Paul Mescal) is from a younger generation, but bears similar emotional scars. Adam hates being called queer, because it was an insult thrown at him by bullies in the 1980s. Harry hates being called gay, because it was an all-purpose insult during the Chris Moyles era. Adam went a long time without ever having penetrative sex, because of AIDS, but for Harry's generation HIV would no longer be a death sentence and PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) drugs can prevent transmission. Though Adam understandably turns the drunk young man away at first, he later invites him over, and a tender relationship develops between them.

Eventually, Adam takes Harry to meet his parents.

Tales from the Spired Inn by Stephen Palmer (NewCon Press) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #284 (November–December 2019).

It’s not the end of the world. The planet is doing just fine. But this might be the last year that there are any humans living on it, at least as we know them. As we learn in the first story in this collection, a clever murder mystery called “Dr Vanchovy’s Final Case”, this is an Earth where people are killed by bladder blade plants, falling cushions of fungus, and cats with silicon implants in their claws. Abandoned buildings, thousands of years old, reach up to the clouds, serving only as anchors for the webs of whooping hunting spiders. The air grows ever less breathable and anyone coming indoors has to leave their boots in antiseptic buckets.

The Unbalancing, by R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon Publications) | review by Stephen Theaker

The star in the ocean off the city of Gelle-Geu has slumbered for almost a thousand years, but now it is beginning to have nightmares. And because that star is tethered to the Mother Mountain, a nearby volcano, the twenty thousand inhabitants of Gelle-Geu are in no small amount of danger. Unfortunately, the previous keeper of the Star of the Tides decided that nothing could be done to stop the disaster, and so kept it secret.

When new starkeeper Ranra Kekeri takes over, and discovers how little time remains, Ranra takes a very different view. If there’s a way to calm the star, Ranra will find it, but before that can be done the new starkeeper may have to figure out what the star actually is – all while dealing with the worries caused by an aggressive former partner, Veruma, a cruel and delusional mother, Adira, and a potential new partner, the poet Erígra Lilún.

Badland Hunters | review by Stephen Theaker

Although not a direct sequel, this South Korean film is set in the world of Concrete Utopia, which doesn't seem to have had a UK release. Based on a comic called Pleasant Bullying by Kim Soong-nyung, the previous film apparently showed the aftermath of an earthquake striking Seoul so hard that all the skyscrapers collapsed. People tried their best to survive in a devastated urban environment, to build some kind of order among the chaos, but things went awry: a Sight and Sound review described it as "a Ballardian story set in a post-apocalyptic apartment complex".

I doubt many reviewers will use "Ballardian" to describe Netflix's Badland Hunters, which is a self-consciously pulpy and over-the-top affair. A prologue shows us that, when the earthquake hit, mad scientist Yang Gi-Su was trying to resurrect his daughter. Three years later, by which time a drought has added to everyone's problems, he is still mad-sciencing away, and with the help of soldiers has taken over an apartment block that still stands. With his new experiments, Yang Gi-Su aims to create humans who can survive the extended periods of dehydration and malnutrition that are practically inevitable in this dry new world.

Lone Wolf 28: The Hunger of Sejanoz, by Joe Dever | review by Rafe McGregor

Holmgard Press, hardback, £19.99, November 2022, ISBN 9781915586056

I’ve been delaying my review of the most recently published collector’s edition because I was hoping to be able to report that Holmgard Press had achieved at least one of its goals: that either the whole cycle of thirty-two Lone Wolf gamebooks had been published or that a large proportion of the cycle was back in print. Unfortunately, both goals remain in development at the time of writing. Regarding availability, there are now three editions circulating: original (paperback and secondhand only), collector’s (hardback and secondhand only), and definitive (which can be purchased from Holmgard Press, Amazon, and no doubt other online bookstores). The only definitive editions in print at the time of writing are books 1 to 12, 1 to 5 (the Kai series) in hardback and paperback and 6 to 12 (the Magnakai series) in hardback. Books 13 to 20 (the Grand Master series) are relatively easy to find on the secondhand market (and usually not extortionate, for the original editions anyway), but books 21 to 31 (the New Order series) less so. People seem to be hanging on to the Holmgard Press Collector’s Editions pretty tightly and I’ve not seen any copies of books 28 to 31 available for a while now. The original edition of Lone Wolf 28: The Hunger of Sejanoz (which was published by Red Fox in 1998) reached a peak price of £1894 on the secondhand market in February 2022, but both original and collector’s editions are now completely unavailable fourteen months after the publication of the latter. Regarding the completion of the series, Lone Wolf 32: Light of the Kai is going to be released in two parts, which Holmgard aims to publish in October 2024 and October 2025 respectively. I have to ask why. Two parts mean that Joe Dever’s original conception of a thirty-book cycle has been changed to thirty-three, but the press’s stated intention is the posthumous realisation of his vision (Dever sadly passed away in 2016). I am also concerned that the perceived need to publish the final book in two parts is evidence of an exacerbation of the source of my criticism of Lone Wolf 31: The Dusk of Eternal Night, which I reviewed in TQF69. Finally, 2024 is the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Lone Wolf 1: Flight from the Dark (yes, that does make me feel old) and it would have been great to have the cycle completed in such an auspicious year.

The Lost Village: A Novel by Camilla Sten (Minotaur Books) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Strong storytelling compensates for tired concept. 

The Lost Village unites stories from two different timelines. The present-day component covers the danger that unfolds while Alice Lindstedt’s crew shoots a teaser for a documentary about the decades-abandoned Swedish village of Silvertjarn. There is a threat out there, and we’re not sure whether it’s human or supernatural. 

The second piece gradually reveals what happened to this mining town in the 1950s, as well as the story of the birth of a mysterious baby that was left when nearly nine hundred people disappeared. 

What happened? Was this a mass suicide? Mass migration? Was it aliens? Russians coming in and kidnapping them? Alice wants to get to the bottom of this mystery. Author Camilla Sten faces the challenge of creating something new in the arguably oversaturated film-crew-encounters-threat-while-documenting-mysterious-setting horror market. The present story, told from Alice’s perspective in first person present, takes a while to get going — there’s a lot of walking around the site and not much happening to suggest the place is dangerous. Where Sten makes up for that, however, is in the conflicts between Alice and Emmy, whose friendship with Alice was shattered by something that happened in college. This tension will mount as Alice continues to make decisions that put her team at risk. Other crew members include Emma’s boyfriend Robert, Max (interested in Alice), and Tone, an amateur photographer about whom Alice withholds critical information from the others.  

The past story unfolds in third-person narration from the perspective of Alice’s great grandmother Elsa. One of Elsa’s daughters, Margarete (also Alice’s grandmother), has already left Silvertjarn when handsome and charismatic Pastor Mattias arrives and captivates many villagers, chief among them Elsa’s younger daughter Aina. Relationships deteriorate as the pastor’s influence intensifies. 

As the climax approaches, Sten steps up the tension by quickly flipping between timelines. 

The Lost Village does not top the charts in terms of scare factor. Rather, its strength lies in its handling of complex relationships and susceptibility to silver-tongued leaders.—Douglas J. Ogurek ***

Hanu-Man | review by Stephen Theaker

The first film in what is hoped to be a new superhero universe, Hanu-Man introduces us to Hanumanthu (played with a good deal of charm by Teja Sajja), a feckless young man who amuses himself with petty larceny, and feeds himself by taking the food his sister (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar) makes, and insulting her while he does it. They live in a picturesque mountain village called Anjanadri, which might be a nice place to live were it not for the village champion, who demands a tax and engages those who protest in wrestling bouts to the death.

Hanumanthu is sweet on Meenakshi (Amritha Aiyer), who has returned from the city to spend the summer. After she incurs the wrath of the village champion, skull-wearing bandits attack a coach she is on and brutally murder the other passengers. Hanumanthu, in saving her, gets himself stabbed, kicked off a cliff, and likely to drown, but a kindly god takes note of his heroism. In the water, Hanumanthu is drawn to a pearl, a magic pearl that formed around a drop of the monkey god Hanuman's blood, a pearl which will heal his wounds and grant him the strength to fight.

As long as it's sunny in Anjanadri, that is...

Hounds of the Underworld by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray (Raw Dog Screaming Press) | review by Jacob Edwards

This review originally appeared in TQF64 (March 2019).

New Zealand’s answer to Richard Morgan.

I don’t read as much as I’d like to – life spills over; time seeps away – but there are names from my editing days at Andromeda Spaceways that I still look out for. Dan Rabarts is one of them. I particularly like the way Dan builds his stories, grounding them in both character and setting and then pursuing an idea of real substance. When I heard he’d written a novel – co-authored with Lee Murray – I put it at the top of my short but optimistic “to read” list.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Season 1 | review by Stephen Theaker

Shortly after the events of the excellent 2014 Godzilla film, a young American woman, Cate Randa (played by Anita Sewai), and a young Japanese man, Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe) discover that they share the same father: Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira), who disappeared after Godzilla fought the two MUTOs in San Francisco. He didn't die in the fight, he just said he had important things to do and scarpered, a bigamist abandoning both his families to the vagaries of an increasingly dangerous world. Cate's search for answers brings her to Kentaro, then to Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell), a mothballed Monarch monster-hunter with his own agenda, and then brings them eye-to-eye with a monster or two. For Cate and Kentaro it's the adventure of a lifetime, but this isn't Shaw's first monster mash.

Star Trek: Picard, Season 3, by Terry Matalas et al. (Paramount) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF75 (November 2023).

The first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard were divisive, to say the least. When it was first announced – with Michael Chabon on board! – I was delighted. The first two seasons of Discovery had been smashing, so I had high hopes. Hopes soon dashed by a programme that seemed to have exactly the same problem as the final film, Star Trek: Nemesis: it had been bent out of shape in order to tempt back its two biggest stars, giving them leaden, actorly storylines.

Patrick Stewart had rejected the proposals for season one several times before finally agreeing to it, and one of the things he didn’t want to do was a mere reunion. And so we had two seasons of a substitute crew running around while Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner got their teeth stuck into some proper acting. There were episodes I enjoyed, there were others I didn’t, but it was disappointing and often quite dull. The lowest point was Picard persuading Guinan to stay on Earth for humanity’s sake, despite World War III being imminent.

The Final Girl Support Group (Berkley) by Grady Hendrix

Disjointed, drawn-out and dull mystery comments on society’s obsession with violence toward women in film.

The Final Girl Support Group details Lynette Tarkington’s journey from justifiable paranoia and reclusiveness – she’s a two-time survivor of attacks from killers who wiped out people close to her – to a focus on being part of a group and helping others. The novel also explores a collective obsession with films in which women get mutilated and murdered by crazed men, as well as why attractive, able-bodied white women dominate the final girl stereotype.

Lynette, whose best friend is a plant, belongs to the Final Girl Support Group led by therapist Dr Carol Elliot. Each group member is the sole survivor of a killer’s rampage. Their ordeals have also spawned horror films whose storylines echo those of classics such as Scream, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, and Friday the 13th. The most entertaining final girl is the drug-abusing Heather, an abrasive type who drops f-bombs and isn’t beyond flicking a cigarette butt into a swimming pool.

When Lynette, whose own brutal Christmastime trial inspired Slay the Halls (invented by the author), suspects someone is trying to kill everyone in her group, she goes on high alert and tries to warn the others. As the talky first-person narrator gets closer to unveiling the killer, the danger intensifies. 

Throughout the novel, author Grady Hendrix interweaves snippets from different fictitious sources such as horror fanzine articles, scholarly film critiques, text from the back cover of a VHS tape, and police interview transcripts. Despite their attempts to create a commentary on the horror genre’s fixation with harming women, these asides detract too much from the main story. All this shifting about makes it hard to get invested in Lynette or the other characters. 

Several drawn-out scenes lack compelling content. When Lynette is in a car with a teenage girl, for instance, nothing happens to advance the story. The two seem to repeat the same basic ideas just to keep the story going. 

The novel’s saving grace is its focus on women uniting to combat male aggression. Another aspect worth commendation is the juxtaposition of the quick, violent deaths of horror films with the slow, exhausting deaths of reality.—Douglas J. Ogurek **

Invasion, Season 2 by Simon Kinberg, Dan Dietz, et al (Apple TV+) | review by Stephen Theaker

As season two of Invasion begins, it is 121 days since the alien invasion began (though you would think it at least a year or three from how much the children have grown), and humanity is losing the war. Benya Mabote, World Defense Coalition President (played by Moshidi Motshegwa), leads the war effort. The aliens, of whom we've seen nothing but their killing machines, have already transformed a quarter of the planet to suit themselves and show no signs of stopping. Weird new plants are growing and their spores make the air unbreathable for humans. Millions are dead.

In season one our Japanese, English and American protagonists reached their various destinations, and helped to bring down an alien ship. Unfortunately an even larger ship arrived soon after, and so they must return to the fray. The most significant character is Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna), who is abducted to the Amazon jungle to communicate with a downed alien ship. The man responsible is tech bro Nikhil Kapoor. Apple TV+ shows often seem to feature a Steve Jobs visionary type, and this one is played by Shane Zaza, whose line readings are peculiarly reminiscent of Commandant Lassard at the podium.

Apocalypse Nyx by Kameron Hurley (Tachyon Publications) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #276 (July–August 2018).

Nyxnissa so Dasheem, Nyx for short, is a mean-spirited mercenary who might have a heart of gold – if you catch her on the right day, and it won’t interfere with the job she’s on, and she hasn’t already sold the heart. She isn’t quite as irredeemable as Lavie Tidhar’s Gorel or Karl Edward Wagner’s immortal Kane, but she’s no saint: she murders law enforcement officials if they get in her way and at one point she remembers ordering sappers, back in the war, to blow up a Chenjan city, “kids, cats, and all”. She carries a pistol and a scattergun, wears a whip, and has razor blades in her sandals and poisoned needles in her hair, and she is much more ready to use them than most science fiction heroes. Think Conan at his selfish worst: like him she drinks and screws away the money she earns, leaving her in dire need of each new adventure.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom | review by Stephen Theaker

It’s a shame that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Jason Momoa’s sixth appearance as Aquaman, seems likely to be his last for now. In his cameos, in Batman vs Superman, Peacemaker and The Flash, and his full appearances in Justice League and Aquaman, his exuberance and commitment to the role made him a joy to watch. I wish there were more films to come, but at least we got more of his Aquaman than we did of his equally enjoyable Conan the Barbarian.

Whether this film takes place after the multiverse-changing events of The Flash or not isn't established, but doesn't make a great deal of difference. Sensibly, it's a direct sequel to the first Aquaman film, continuing its storylines and themes. Many of its actors return. As this film begins, Aquaman is thoroughly bored of his job as king of Atlantis. He is nodding off during audiences, and frustrated by the constraints on his power. He has much more fun playing with his baby son and battering pirates.