Altered Carbon By Richard K Morgan

Altered Carbon

By Richard K Morgan

Richard Morgan was born in London in 1965, but grew up in the village of Hethersett near Norwich. He attended Queen's college, Cambridge where he studied history. By his own admission, he almost screwed up hard in his first year, following a grand tradition of college students across the globe (Editor: By way of being drunk on freedom and also literally drunk?). However he managed to pull himself together and gain his degree. He started teaching English after his graduation so he could travel the world, which he did for fourteen years.  He’s lived in Madrid and Istanbul and became a fluent Spanish speaker, he later took a post at the university of Strathclyde in Glasgow Scotland. He evolved from teaching English to teaching people how to teach English and it was at this point he remembered that he had wanted to be a writer. Of course like all British writers he holds an extremely negative view of governments and even society. Which leads me to ask my British readers: just what are you putting these people's water? Seriously between Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Charles Stross, and now Mr. Morgan, I'm starting to wonder how science fiction conventions in London don't turn into anarchist rebellions! I'll grant as an American, I'm throwing rocks from glass houses but you can see where I'm coming from! But that's not why we're here today. Today we're here to talk about Mr. Morgans first novel to be published, Altered Carbon.

Altered Carbon was published in February 2002 by Victor Gollanz Ltd, a British publishing company founded in 1926. After the death of its founder it was passed from owner to owner until turned into a science fiction and fantasy imprint by the current owners Cassell & Co and Orion Publishing Group. Altered Carbon made itself hard to ignore in many circles, sort of like a small tank that has parked itself where your living room used to be. Mr. Morgan was able to sell the film rights to the book to noted producer Joel Silver for a million dollars, which allowed him to transition to full time writer. In 2003 it won the Philip K Dick Award for Best Novel. The film fell through but Netflix, a company you may have heard of in passing, decided it would make a great series and released a 10 episode first season recently but I'll come back to that.

Let's start with the basics, Altered Carbon takes place at least 400 years from now. Humanity discovered a path to immortality with the invention of an implant called a cortical stack. Implanted at a young age in the brain stem, the cortical stack can house all of your memories and personality, if your current physical body (referred to as a sleeve) dies, your cortical stack can be implanted into a new body with all your thoughts, dreams, memories and personality entirely intact (this is called resleeving). Unfortunately, it seems that money talks here. Resleeving costs, and not everyone can afford it. So while the wealthy can plug themselves into body after body, normal folks often can't afford to resleeve themselves after their deaths. The wealthy who can live for centuries while profiting from the labor of entire generations of normal people are often referred to as Meths, which is short for Methuselahs. This is, as I think most of you know, a Biblical reference. For those of you who didn't get the benefit of Sunday school, Methuselah is a minor figure in the Old Testament, his biggest achievement being living 969 years before disappearing from the Earth. This isn't all that’s changed.  Humanity has also spread to the stars. While physical FTL remains impossible, with colony ships having to traverse the void in long slow voyages carrying their passengers on the stack, which is to say carrying them with their cortical stack removed from the body, communication can take place at Faster than light or close enough that it doesn't matter. The transmission of data at FTL gives humanity a method of FTL travel, simply beam the data on a cortical stack through the network to another cortical stack and plug it into a body on site and there you go. You have successfully traveled to another world, all you had to do was leave your body behind. Humanity has used these technologies to forge an interstellar empire in a 100 light year bubble centered on Earth run by the United Nations, referred to as the Protectorate. However what makes this important for us is that the story opens with our main character Takeshi Kovacs having been transmitted against his will to Earth from his home planet and planted in a new body for a single purpose.

A man has been murdered. This is less of a problem for the people of the Altered Carbon universe then it would be for us but it is still a problem. It's less of a problem because the victim, Laurens Bancroft is still alive. Due to his cortical stack he was promptly resleeved and to make things worse, he's a methuselah. A long lived, super wealthy, and powerful man. The police have ruled it a suicide. After all, he was shot in the face at point blank range with a pistol with only his prints on it, that was sitting in a safe that only he and his wife Miriam could access. His wife was investigated and questioned under truth detecting polygraphs but passed all of them with flying colors. Now one of the reasons Mr. Bancroft survived his murder was the fact that he has remote back ups.  At regular intervals his cortical stack is remotely scanned and copied to an off site location so if the cortical stack is destroyed, he can be brought back from one of the back ups into a tailor-made clone body. This is very expensive as you might imagine but Bancroft has beenhoarding massive amounts of money for over 300 years at this point so he can afford an expensive perk or 500. He's also paid for our main character Takeshi Kovacs to be beamed to Earth, plugged into a new sleeve and set forth to prove that Bancroft was murdered, find out who did it, and why they did it. Let's talk about Takeshi Kovacs now.

Takeshi was born on Harlan's World, a colony with a grand tradition of revolution against corrupt authority expressed in a system called Quellism. Despite the authorities being really unfond of that belief system Quellism remains popular among the underclasses. Takeshi was born into those underclasses, he joined the gangs that ran the lower class neighborhoods and after that joined the United Nations Protectorate Marine Corps. From there he joined the envoys. The United Nations Envoy Corps creates troops that are a combination of intelligence operative and special forces trooper using advanced technology and more importantly advanced training methods able to impact and shape the subconscious of the soldier in question. Among other things, every psychological barrier in a normal human mind to committing violent and killing is utterly removed. Honestly, speaking as someone with military service... What the hell are you people thinking? The idea isn't to create people who can go to violence at the drop of a hat but people who can go to violence in specific situations. You've removed the controls that militaries have been struggling to implement since the days of bronze you maniacs! This may be because Envoys are taught how to infiltrate foreign cultures and if necessary utterly destroy them so as to maintain United Nations authority. So they aren't traditional soldiers even if they can perform that role. Still if that wasn't bad enough they are trained to be able to adapt quickly to being resleeved and to exploit any body to its fullest ability. Takeshi was a good envoy but after leaving the Envoy Corps found himself drifting back into the criminal lifestyle and became a mercenary. This led to his capture and imprisonment and that led to Bancroft “hiring” him. Frankly this was inevitable given UN law that envoys cannot hold military or police positions after leaving the envoy corps, which is incredibly stupid. By their training Envoys are really good at any career that involves violence and the mental alterations done to them leave me openly doubting that an Envoy could adjust to a quiet peaceful life. By locking them out of the socially sanctioned careers that would allow them to exercise their unique gifts, you guarantee a steady amount of Envoys going into the criminal world. Which tells me that the UN government is either incredibly malicious, incredibly incompetent or both. I mean there are simple solutions here, ranging from throwing them onto new colony ships and making them someone else’s problem light years and centuries away to setting up things for retired envoys to do. Instead we have to be sloppy and stupid about our oppression; which is historically accurate at least. Takeshi is an extremely frustrated idealist who has collapsed into cynicism but still able to use all of his skills and talents. This doesn't mean he's a good person, Takeshi throughout the story shows hints of a brutality that he barely keeps in check. While he does seem to regard human life as having value, that value is very dependent on how he is feeling at the moment. That said, Takeshi is the hero that 25th century Earth deserves and needs right now. He needs all of his skills and talent because powerful men and women are lining up to stop him from getting at the truth and they will use any means to avert him. Torture, blackmail, bribery, assassination and more are all on the menu here and they're all pointed at Takeshi, so a certain amount of brutality is called for here.

He'll also have to figure out his relationship with the local cops, led by a Lt. Ortega who has her own reasons to be pissed off at Takeshi, some of which even have to do with him! Lt. Ortega's a pretty interesting character herself and gives us a look at the police force of a dystopian world. This is done very realistically. The police not so quietly loath Mr. Bancroft (who hates them in return) and are happy to wash their hands of his case so they can get back to real police work. The reason for this is a mutual lack of respect. Mr. Bancroft feels that as a man who has outlived civilizations he is owed a certain amount of deference and respect. The police feel that Mr. Bancroft is a disrespect to the concepts of law and order, which I know is shocking but a lot of cops take law and order seriously even if they might be iffy on the concept of justice. I can see the frustration in Lt. Ortega. She is constantly throwing herself and her men on the line and her thanks is a small paycheck and to be sneered at by the people who benefit the most from her work, while being actively hated by everyone else. That's going to sour even the sweetest of personalities if we're going to be honest.

Altered Carbon manages to tell a tightly focused story that interweaves through a larger backdrop. This is done by bringing in political concerns; for example the UN is discussing passing a resolution making the resleeving of any violent crime victim mandatory. This is opposed by the Catholic church, who believes that when your body dies your soul departs, so being resleeved is an abomination. So most Catholics have signed orders that they not be resleeved. This however has become an incredibly abused loophole. Criminal enterprises often require prostitutes and other expendable members to legally convert to Catholicism so they can't testify in their own murders. Additionally this turns Catholics into a massively exploited underclass targeted for various crimes that you can't get away with against the common man. Another larger theme is the fact that you no longer own your own body! Since the most common punishment is be put into storage (on stack) and out of body, your body then becomes a commodity that anyone with enough cash can pay for to use for whatever they like. This is key to several plot points in the novel that I don't want to give away so I'll just say this. If there are any specific things that a person should always own no matter what they’ve done... It's their mind and their body. These are in the most literal sense of the term your birthright and no government, no corporation, no religion, and no person has the right to take away either one from you. Even if you can hop from body to body. The fact that people in this system must struggle to retain ownership of their own bodies is frankly vile and renders the promise of the technology in the novel into a tool for ghoulish predation on the citizenry. To be fair, Mr. Morgan would point out that this is a dystopia! It's not supposed to be a great shiny system! I will admit that Mr. Morgan has succeeded in writing an amazing dystopia that pulled me into it that is populated with characters that while devastatingly flawed, are given human enough depth to be sympathetic, even as they wade through oceans of blood. In this case I think Kovacs becomes a heroic figure because he is literally fighting monsters here. That said I do have some minor complaints.  Like a lot of European writers, Mr. Morgan's idea of a Californian city is very...not American.  For example, where the bloody hell are the Mormons in all of this. The Mormon Church has involved itself in politics before but there's nothing of them here, only Catholics. That's kinda odd for America but works fairly well for Europe. Bay City, formerly San Francisco feels more like a European or even Scottish city then one in California. He's not the only writer who does this and given that it's set centuries in the future, I think it's excusable. It's certainly possible that 400 years in the future that San Francisco will feel like a worn out city in North England or Scotland, stripped of what we think of as it's Californian character. That said I would warn writers to be careful about writing places that seem close enough to you culturally but may be further away than you think. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan gets an A. This is likely the best first novel I've seen in awhile and shows what new ideas you can bring into Cyberpunk and science fiction.

Next week, we're going to do something a little different and I'm going to talk about the Altered Carbon netflix series (see told you I'd get back to it, didn't I?). Keep Reading!

This review edited by Dr. Ben Allen. 

Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein

Daughter of the Sword

by Steve Bein

Dr. Steve Bein was born in Oak Park, Illinois near Chicago several decades ago.  As a young man he would attend university in a wide variety of places, his native Illinois, Germany, Hawaii, Nanzan and Obirin universities.  It was there that he would translate works of Zen Buddhism and eventually earn a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii. He also picked up black belts in 2 forms of American martial arts and dabbled in a number of others.  Today he teaches at the University of Dayton Ohio, where he lives with his partner and their dog.  Dr. Bein has a number of short fictions published in Asimov's, Interzone and Writers of the Future.  Today's review is his first published novel, released in 2012 with two sequels released since then and a pair of kindle only side stories set in the same world.  

Daughter of the Sword takes place mostly in 2010 Tokyo and tells us the story of Mariko Oshiro, Tokyo's first and so far only woman detective.  I have to admit at first I was skeptical of this, as while Japan is more traditional about gender roles than the United States, this is still the 21st century!  However after a lot of research, including going to a number of message boards and asking because I couldn't read the Japanese sources (special thanks to the posters of spacebattles.com).  It turns out to be shockingly plausible. The first woman chief of police was only installed in 2013 and Tokyo itself only allowed woman police officers to be stationed in Kobans (local police Kiosk from what I understand) a few years ago.  So I suppose I was being a bit Americentric there.  Anyway, let's look at Detective Oshiro shall we?  Mariko is a driven and ambitious lady, having spent her girlhood in the United States, she feels somewhat removed from Japanese society.  Her isolation from Japanese society is reinforced throughout the novel by a good number of people commenting how direct and rude she is.  This is compounded by the fact that her ambition to be a police officer on the front lines is a goal that, most of her elders agree, a good Japanese girl shouldn't have.  Mariko herself questions this, not having those ambitions, but why she is so dead set on achieving them in Japan when she could easily just light out for the United States and be a detective there.  Instead, she’s thrown herself into the Tokyo police department and done well. For example she has, after a lot of sweat, blood, and tears gotten into the narcotics unit only to have her new Lt. (oh we'll get to him) over rule her deployment ideas for a sting and she finds her little sister Saori get swept up in the bust.  Saori, unlike Mariko, isn't ambitious; she is however a drug addict.  As you can guess this is a stormy relationship that runs throughout the novel but isn't the center focus.  It's a fairly standard relationship between a junkie family member and a cop.  Saori is upset that Mariko shows up when she's trying to buy drugs and then will demand that Mariko get her out of trouble.  She’s also completely unrepentant for any wrongdoing while acting as the wronged party.  Honestly I don't really care for Saori but I'm not supposed to.  To Dr. Bein's credit, he doesn't spend enough time on Saori to allow her to get too annoying.  She's established in the plot and then efficiently set forth to make her contribution to the plot.  It's a bit mechanical honestly but I prefer that to some writers who will drag it out and cause me to grind my teeth.

The center focus is on swords.  Many centuries ago, there existed a master swordsmith, Inazuma.  His swords were so well made that the rest of Japan wouldn’t catch up for 200 years, in fact Inazuma's abilities were so great that it was commonly believed that his three greatest swords had magical powers. When Mariko is exiled by her Lt to investigating an attempted burglary of a sword, that's when we meet Professor Yasuo Yamada, who is the owner of one Inazuma sword and on a mad quest to destroy another.  Unfortunately for him the last person he brought into the quest took the sword in question, went rogue and decided that what he needed to do was steal the good Professors sword as well. Just as an extra complication, the man in question is a member of the Yakuza and so has access to all sorts of underground resources to make this happen.  Also, because Mariko doesn't have enough problems, Professor Yamada is pretty much blind, although thanks to decades of training is still a fairly powerful swordsman.  He's also a bit of mystery being a scholar of the history of swordsmithing and swordsmanship with a number of books to his name and a number of friends in high places.  He serves as sort of a mentor to Mariko here, teaching her some history and some swordplay as well as using his friends in high places to get her the resources she needs to investigate the crimes in question.

Which is a good thing because Mariko is going to need every scrap of help she can find, beg, barter or steal because her opponent, Fuchida Shuzo, isn't just a member of an underground crime organization but also a skilled swordsman himself, and insane.  Fuchida is strangely one of the parts of the book I enjoy the most in a cringing way.  He's a monster who has no care for his fellow human beings, to the point of holding most of them in contempt.  That said many of his criticism of Japanese society are painfully on the nose and could apply just as well to American society.  For example, he sneers at the salarimen of Japan for working long grueling hours and then going to a bar to suck up to a boss that doesn't really care about them, to advance in a job that none of them really care about.  He's wrong to hold his fellow humans in contempt but he's right that it makes no sense to kill yourself for a system that at best views you as an easily replaceable cog.  Mariko herself is less then thrilled with Japanese culture but unlike Fuchida she chooses to fight it head on, while Fuchida chooses to hold himself aloof.  On the flip side it's not like Fuchida cares about people either, he's a cold blooded user of men and women in a manic pursuit of his goal. Ironically however, while Fuchida might be the death of Mariko and her family, it's Mariko's Lt. that takes up most of the antagonists duties in the plot.

Lt. Ko on the other hand is an old disgruntled man who makes no bones about believing that Mariko should content herself to serving coffee and letting her ass get pinched by any jr. officer with delusions of competency and be thankful for the attention.  He's open about it in a way that I haven't run into inside the United States (although I'm sad to say I wouldn't to be shocked if I had woman readers who have.  Disappointed in my fellow countrymen, but not shocked).  We don't learn a lot about Ko in this story, his job is mostly to refuse Mariko resources, try to sabotage her,  and mock her to her face in the kind of unprofessional display that would make even hollywood bosses sneer in disgust.   I did find it interesting that neither Ko or Mariko actually their shared personality traits.  Ko is rude by American standards, never you mind Japanese ones.  He's the only one willing to tell Mariko to her face that he thinks this is a boys club and she has no place in it.  He's also very direct and blunt about his plan to simply run her out of the unit and the department if possible.  While Lt. Ko is a nasty, puffed up old bigot seeped in his own self importance and grudges, he's also pretty much the only person in this story who is up front and direct, except for Mariko Oshiro.  Unlike Mariko and Fuchida, Lt. Ko isn't critical of his society but embraces it.  Likely because while Mariko is on the outside due to her gender and Fuchida for being from a crime family, Ko is allowed a pretty cushy position.  

The main story is broken up by three story lines that take place in the past of Japan, showing the past of each of the three swords in question.  Each of the stories is more or less self contained but shows us directly the influence of the swords in question on their wielders.  I honestly enjoyed these more then the main plot but only one of them had any importance to the plot so I am left wondering why they were in the novel.  The nature of one of the other swords is shown in the main plot and is discussed fairly often by the characters themselves.  So they don't feel entirely necessary, and at least one of the stories feels like it's there to pad out the novel a bit.  That said the past storyline that does link into the plot manages to link in a way that is both interesting and somewhat compelling.  That said I did feel somewhat put off by the suggestion that the reason for the abuse of American prisoners in the Philippines was due to a magic sword that induces insane blood lust in it's wielder.  I might be reading to much into it but frankly I don't like subscribing human atrocities to supernatural causes and yes, I would feel the same way if we were talking about American atrocities.  It's the same reason I don't care for stories that suggest Hitler was half demon or some kind of day walking vampire.  When we take these real events and people and suggest their evil sprang from some inhuman source we are distancing ourselves from this behavior and I feel it's important to say that yes, human beings did these things and we have no one to blame but ourselves for our actions.  That's not to suggest that there no goodness in human nature, there is plenty of it in my opinion, only that pretending there is no darkness lurking in the human soul makes it easier to cop out.  I'm sure most people will think I'm just being fussy on this point but these reviews are my opinion, so on some stuff y'all will just have to deal with it.

Daughter of the Sword is a fairly good urban fantasy, it's plotted and written with efficiency comes off as a bit mechanical.  Maybe it's because I’ve done so much reading in this review series. Some developments occur because that's what the plot says should happen, although Dr. Bein does a good job of making sure it fits with the characters motivations and prior actions.  However, when I can tell what Saori's contribution to the plot will be in five pages of her showing up and predict Professor Yamada's fate...  Well I have faith that more practice will help Dr. Bein smooth out the edges there.  The dialogue is well done and the action fairly average in all honesty and Dr. Bein shows a good grasp of Japanese society at least from the view of Mariko who would be both an outsider and an insider.  I found Mariko's position in society realistic as well, I'm the child of deaf parents and even now in my 30s there are elements of hearing culture that I don't follow as well as I should.  That said no one would ever realize that just watching me go about my day.  A fellow Japanese citizen wouldn't be able to tell Mariko wasn't entirely onboard with Japanese culture until they had a prolonged interaction with her and that makes sense.  I'm still hopeful someone will find evidence that there are women detectives in the Tokyo police department however.  Daughter of the Sword by Dr. Steven Bein gets a C.  It's a good read, fun and serviceable but the predictability of the plot and sudden surprises at the end drag it down, as does the mechanical feeling of plot progression.  

Next week, we turn to the future in Altered Carbon.  Keep Reading!   

The Priestess and the Dragon By Nicolette Andrews

The Priestess and the Dragon

By Nicolette Andrews

     Nicolette Andrews was born and raised in San Diego, where she continues to live to this day with her husband and two daughters. Currently self published, her first book, Diviner’s Prophecy was released in 2013. The book we're reviewing today was released in 2015 and can be found on amazon.

     The Priestess and the Dragon is set in a fantasy style Japan (or what I like to call NotJapan, perhaps the second most popular fantasy setting in the last couple decades only beaten out by NotEurope [Editors’s note: for Anime, it’s NotPrussia or NotGermany specifically. See FMA and Attack on Titan]). This Japan seems to be pre-Shogunate as the Emperor still rules the nation with generals and others reporting to him directly. The Emperor and his family claim direct descendant from the Eight, the old gods who created the world. As the Eight rule the cosmos from their heavens, so does the Emperor rule humanity from his palace, or so it goes. Alongside but hidden from humanity live the Yokai. In Japanese folklore Yokai are supernatural creatures that can bring calamity or good fortune on those who encounter them. A good number of the Japanese creatures that you're likely familiar with, like the Kappa or Tengu are considered Yokai. In the story Yokai is used as a catch all term for any creature that is supernatural and immortal but not a god. For the most part the Yokai are hidden from the human world, although some Yokai may choose to interact with humanity. These interactions can run from marrying humans and living with them to hunting down humans and eating them. Only humans who are born with or have trained up a certain level of spiritual power can even see Yokai who don't want to be seen, but Yokai aren't without their vulnerabilities, they can be hurt or killed. Humans can even seal away Yokai with enough strength and knowledge of the right rituals. It's the sealing away part that causes the problems in this story but let's discuss our characters first.

        Our main character Suzume is the daughter of the Emperor who has frankly found herself suffering some hard times. Suzume's mother was one of the wives of the Emperor before she was caught having an affair. Now, given that the Emperor has more wives than sense, that isn't really unusual but getting caught isn't something that gets forgiven. Her mother was banished from the court and the Emperor decided to take the rare step of disowning all of his children with her and banishing them as well. In Suzume's case she was banished to a temple in the North of the country where she would be trained to be a priestess. Suzume is less than thrilled with this and is fairly upset with her mother for letting this happen to her. As part of her training, she is symbolically married to the god of the shrine in a ritual which does not go as planned. Instead of a nice boring religious ritual that traps her in a life she doesn't want Suzume is revealed to have a good amount of untrained spiritual power which shatters the seal of the shrine and wakes up the Dragon sealed within. An imperious dragon who instantly starts barking orders and thinks presuming on the marriage ritual to tease and taunt her is funny. A dragon that sets her teeth on edge and might be the single biggest danger to her in the story (but we'll get to that). The Dragon is actually our second character, Kaito.

       Kaito is a dragon, a shape changing, immortal creature with the kind of power that could make nations tremble. Kaito is also a dragon with problems. Kaito has been imprisoned for centuries and he doesn't know why. Knowing who imprisoned him on the other hand actually makes things worse because the person who imprisoned him was the human priestess Kazue, who was his lover at the time. None of this puts him in the best of moods when he awakes and finds out that hundreds of years have passed, the kingdom he ruled is gone into the mists of time, and even most of the immortal Yokai that he knew and befriended are dead or disappeared. In fact the Yokai world seems to be in tatters with most of the leaders of the Yokai gone or dead and some dark mysterious force destroying anyone who could take their place. Kaito however isn't letting that distract him from the more important things. Like finding Kazue's reincarnation and brutally murdering them for something a past life did so he can feel better, and if he can't do that he'll settle for brutally murdering all of her descendants and burning down everything they've ever loved and cared for. Because Kaito is the kind of dragon who doesn't like leaving a vengeful rampage half done or leaving a lot of witnesses behind him. He also expects Suzume to help him on this quest for emotional catharsis in the blood of the innocent whether she likes it or not. This leads to a further complication when Suzume realizes that Kazue might be an ancestor of the Imperial Family (you know, her family?) and to top it all off Suzume might actually be Kazue's reincarnation... Which means not only could Kaito turn around and tear her heart out if he figures that out but he could also end up destroying everything of value to Suzume and her family members. Which would mean burning down the country and possibly wrecking human civilization. She is less than thrilled by this and as such is not quiet the picture of helpfulness, or sympathy, or friendliness. In fact she's outright hostile and willing to do whatever she can to sabotage Kaito's quest and frankly I can't blame her.

       Suzume and Kaito's relationship is the axle on which this story turns so let me go into it a bit as it becomes a fairly complicated and complex relationship. Kaito while incredibly angry at Kazue's seemingly senseless betrayal is still very much in love with her and can't even deny it to himself. Suzume both reminds him of her but at the same time is a very different person which leaves him in turns depressed, confused and infuriated. While he loudly announces that he's all about that blood soaked vengeance, for most of the book he seems more interested in trying to figure out just what the hell happened because from his perspective one day he was in a happy relationship where he was trying not to think about Kazue's eventual death from old age; the next day he was being attacked and sealed away by the person he loved the most; and then the day after that he wakes up and the world has changed beyond all recognition. He's angry at Kazue but he still loves her and is grieved that she's dead. If for no other reason then that means he'll never get to confront her and hear her reasons from her directly. He honestly comes off as someone unbalanced who doesn't know what he wants anymore, and that's fairly realistic. I don't think any of us in a similar situation would be doing all that well either. This however means his treatment of Suzume is very inconsistent, as he shifts from trying to win her over as anything from a girlfriend to ally to trying to treat her as a slave or pet. Suzume is in much the same situation, when her mother was banished she lost her entire world for something that was both not her fault and something she could have done absolutely nothing about. For a princess she didn't really have big goals: she wanted to marry a nice but older general who wouldn't notice when she flirted with younger men as long she didn't go to far. Which as ambitions go, is kinda sad but she's a princess in NotJapan, her options are kinda limited. Suzume is resentful that her fate keeps being decided by people without any input from her and everyone expects her to not only go along with it but to be grateful for it. Only now with her awakened power coming out, she can do something about that resentment and put her foot down. So while Kaito is fairly inconsistent in his treatment of Suzume, she's is very consistent in treating him as a threat and danger. She can't stop Kaito from dragging her along on his quest but damned if she's isn't going to fight him every step of the way and put her own interests first and I’m thankful to see that.

         Ms. Andrews bills herself as writing romantic fantasies so I had some concern as I was reading this that I was going to see a romance that didn't make sense. It frankly makes no sense to start a romantic relationship with someone who keeps talking about how he's going to murder your family or might be murdering you. I can't say I saw any romance in this book, unless we count Kaito and Kazue which we do get to see a bit of. Kaito and Suzume's relationship is intense but in this book at least it's not romantic. Suzume certainly isn't interested in one and is vastly more interested in her own safety and well being. While Kaito can't make up his scaly little mind as to what he wants. Now that said there's more going on then their little interpersonal drama. It turns out that Kaito waking up might have gotten all sorts of the wrong attention and Kaito's sealing isn't the only action of Kazue's that is going to come back and haunt Suzume. In fact there might be a whole laundry list of mistakes all waiting in line to haunt Suzume and she's going to have to sort that out because her alternative is dying. For that matter Kaito isn't untouchable by all this either, so he'll have to learn to get over himself if he wants to be able to continue his own quest. There are a number of other characters here but discussing them in any depth would mean revealing plot details that would spoil the story for you, my good readers. Ms. Andrews does do a good job of giving each of these other characters their own agendas and reasons for doing what they do and creating a dynamic driven by divided loyalties and opposing desires that the characters have to struggle to hash out.

        That said the story isn't all emotional drama. There's a fair bit of action here, with battles being fought against various predatory Yokai because, well, Suzume smells delicious to them. See while she is full to the brim with fiery spirit power, she has no idea how to actually use it and that makes her a favorite food for any supernatural being who has no problem eating a self aware being. So Ms. Andrews is able to make good use of the various monsters and boogeymen of Japanese folklore to give us creatures focused on eating Suzume. Which provides us some good old fashioned violence, which is decently written but nothing special. For that matter the plot revelations more or less come in a rush at the end and much of it is left to be resolved in the next book. While the story the book tells is mostly complete, it primarily serves as a kind of prologue to the series that it's opening and it's ending is clearly a transitional one to the next book. I also have to admit I felt the ending was a bit rushed and could have benefited from either more space or introducing the antagonist a bit earlier. Additionally a lot of space in the end is given to set up for the series itself. On the plus side the book gives us some very well rendered characters with depth and personality and handles the various interpersonal relations and behavior fairly well. Whether or not you like the book is going to depend how you feel about books clearly designed to lead you into a book series and how you feel about the characters. If you end up hating Kaito and Suzume, this book is going to be awful for you, if you like them or even just like one of them the a pretty good read. I'm giving The Priestess and the Dragon by Nicolette Andres a C+. It's better than a lot of your average stuff but there's a bit of room for improvement.

Next week, we go to actual Japan in Steve Bein's Daugther of the Sword. Keep reading!


This review edited by Dr. Ben Allen.

Red Sonja Vol III: The Forgiving of Monsters By Gail Simone Art by Walter Geovani

Red Sonja Vol III: The Forgiving of Monsters

By Gail Simone

Art by Walter Geovani

So here we are with the final volume of Gail Simone's run on Red Sonja. I've gone over the character's history in my first review of Red Sonja, as well as a bit of Ms. Simone's comic book career (which I'll link again for y'all http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2016/06/red-sonja-queen-of-plagues-by-gail.html which was also the first review that our editor joined us on!). In last week's review I also talked a bit about Dynamite, the company publishing the comic in question. So I believe this time, there's nothing left but to jump right into it.

We join Red Sonja hunting for the Wizard Kalas Ra, who has taken up the unpleasant hobby of kidnapping the elderly and doing vile experiments on them until they die. Why does he do this? Because children are too quick for him and prone to biting (his words folks!). Sonja rather quickly dispatches him when he makes the twin mistakes of letting her into slicing range and gloating about his power. Which leads us to the first lesson in this lesson-packed story: murder first, gloat after. Sadly our heroine makes her own mistake when she talks back to the wizard and gives him her Name (Editors Note: Oh god, no!). Which is the second lesson: never talk to a wizard you're planning to kill. Seriously I've read enough fantasy in this review series alone that the paper used in those books could make a full grown oak tree and it never ends well, not once! Just murder him (or her) as quickly and thoroughly as possibly and don't share any personal information! The dying Kalas Ra shows why telling a psychotic dying man with magical powers beyond the ken of mortals your name is a mistake by cursing her. His curse? Red Sonja will never again be able to forgive, not even for the slightest of mistakes.

What's interesting about this is that this doesn't cause some massive change in Red Sonja's personality or behavior. She's still capable of kindness and courage but at the least transgression she explodes into a berserk rage that can only be stilled by murdering people in job lots. Even this is really just a magnification of Sonja's own tendencies, so this doesn't feel like something that is afflicting Sonja; more something that is simply pushing Red Sonja to the extreme end point of what's already there in her heart and head. In the middle of all this wanders in the last survivor of the group of mercenaries who murdered all the people of Sonja's village (he's the last survivor of that band because Sonja killed the rest of them). As you can imagine Red Sonja is pretty willing to drop everything to hunt down and brutally murder this last loose end of the greatest tragedy in her life but even this simple and straightforward desire is complicated. Kalas Ra had a brother, Katharas Ra, who is also a wizard and wants to murder everyone for daring to hurt his brother. I'll admit this kinda doesn't sit with me as well as Sonja's quest for vengeance. I have a little brother.  As is good and natural, I love the guy, but if I found out he was kidnapping people for vile, lethal experiments and someone killed him for that? I would be upset that he was dead but if you don't want to be killed, you shouldn't go around kidnapping and murdering people! There's a point where you have to admit that even your brother kinda earned his fate. I suppose it might be because Katharas Ra doesn't view the villagers as people so he doesn't care about their losses. Only his own.

In this story Sonja grapples with the power of forgiveness and how far she is willing to go to reap revenge for the wrongs done to her. It's also here that we see her at her bravest as she is willing to take extreme steps to ensure that she doesn't become a danger to innocent and defenseless folks. It takes courage to rise up against those who would oppress or harm you but it takes even more to disarm yourself so that you will not in turn oppress or harm others. Of course, even disarmed, Red Sonja is a dangerous person and Katharas Ra is finding himself staring down the barrel of something he's been trying to avoid for years: a fair fight. I have a few words on forgiveness myself here. Forgiveness is a powerful and in many ways a good thing and there is a danger in curling up to every harm and slight ever done to you like a beloved pet. That tends toward hatred and rage that warps you and leaves you unable to feel much else or to become so obsessed over what was done to you that you can't make your life about anything else. That said our modern day pop culture often confuses the idea of forgiveness with forgetting what the other guy did and letting it go without consequences. Note I say consequences, not punishment. It's entirely possible to forgive someone while deciding they're an awful person and it's healthier for you to have nothing more to do with them. Sometimes it's necessary to forgive someone for your own well being but that doesn't mean you should wipe the slate clean and forget it happened. Redemption is a completely separate thing from forgiveness and has much stricter requirements, and I think that's something else modern pop culture forgets. I'll stop here but if anyone really wants me to get into this, say so in the comments and I'll be happy to discuss it.

The next story in this graphic novel is Red Sonja defending a library and I'll admit I’m a sucker for a good defend the books story line (Editors Note: Is anyone surprised?  I’m not!  Also, the editor approves!)! The Empress Dowager was a common born woman who won the Emperor's favor. Being a very strong willed woman she was able dominate the court and when the Emperor passed she took the throne. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because it's basically a version of the story of Empress Cixi of China, one of the last monarchs of that nation. Her story is to long and complicated for this review but let me encourage you to look her up for yourselves! Anyway, this version became a woman-hating tyrant, turning against the idea of educating women or allowing other women to have high station upon taking the throne. Red Sonja in a post orgy doze is approached by four nuns and asked to defend their library which has been marked for burning. Sonja is less then excited at this idea but her own nagging sense of morality pulls her into it and along the way she manages to learn a little bit about the value of the written word. Even if that means facing down three of the worlds best assassins... Alone. I enjoyed it, but then I hope no one is expecting me to dislike stories about how important books are.

Gail Simone's run on Red Sonja leans toward morality plays a great deal. Where Red Sonja is given a task or put to an ordeal and learns a moral lesson along the way. Some of these lessons are fairly profound, such as the courage of a chef who refuses to abandon her even if that means rotting in a pit; others can be a bit cliché. There's a bit of irony in this for me as morality plays are a very Christian form of entertainment. While Sonja's love of drink and casual sex make her a very non-Christian protagonist in a lot of ways, her efforts to defend people who can't fight for themselves and the values she learns mean that in other ways she wouldn't be out of place among more Christian heroes. I don't think this is intentional but merely a demonstration of how deeply Christianity still influences our society. This version of Red Sonja is frankly my favorite so far. While crude and rather hedonistic, she's also brave and shows a certain rough compassion towards her fellow human beings. The balance of flaws, failures, virtues and successes make this Red Sonja feel like more of a person to me some of the earlier versions I've read and I hope future writers learn from this and build on what Ms. Simone has laid out for us. Some will note that the scale mail bikini is present in the series, Red Sonja never wears it out in the field where she's expecting violence but seems to reserve it for “formal” encounters with people in authority which makes it an act of rebellion in many ways. This Sonja instead wears armor that covers most of her body when doing serious violence. This graphic novel was violent and action packed while not shying away from the consequences of violence and had a good number of interesting minor characters that appear to liven up Sonja's life or at least keep her focused on the task at hand. Red Sonja Vol III: The Forgiving of Monsters by Gail Simone closes out this series with an A. I encourage everyone to read it.

Join us next week as we return to novels with The Priestess and the Dragon by Nicolette Andrews.  As always, keep reading!

This review edited by Dr. Ben Allen.