TV Review: True Blood Season 7

written by David Steffen

True Blood was an HBO horror/mystery/romance series based on the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris.

The series as a whole follows Sookie Stackhouse starting shortly after the major world event of vampires “coming out of the coffin”. Where, after a Japanese company perfects the production of synthetic blood branded Tru Blood, vampires reveal themselves to be real and begin to integrate with mainstream society. Sookie has always had mind-reading abilities which has made it difficult to keep a human relationship, so she is immediately drawn to the vampires which she can’t mindread.

True Blood Season 6 ended with a world-changing event, the release of the bio-engineered Hepatitis V virus. Based on a mutation of the Hep-D virus, which only weakens a vampire for a time, Hep V is a much more contagious and much more deadly strain. Humans who contract the virus show no symptoms, but any vampire that drinks their blood will also catch the virus which causes extreme weakening and eventually the true death. It was originally spread using tainted Tru Blood so not only are vampires in danger from the virus, they also have lost their synthetic food source.

The season starts 6 months after the end of the last season. Sam Merlotte has become mayor, and Hep-V infected vampires are roaming the countryside in packs. The human and vampire residents of Bon Temps make a pact to try to get through this difficult time in the hopes of finding a Hep-V cure and untainted Tru Blood production begins again–healthy vampires will protect humans from the ever-hungry Hep-V infected vampires, and the humans will in turn provide their own blood as a food source for the vampires. This situation, predictably, comes with a lot of tension built into it as many humans and vampires are not satisfied with the arrangement. A band of H-vamps crashes a human-vampire gathering in Bon Temps as the season begins, and drags away some humans for food.

Meanwhile, Eric Northman has been run off and hasn’t been seen again since the events of last season, and his progeny Pam is looking for him.

This being the final season of True Blood, the show does not pull any punches. Major characters die, and not always when you’re anticipating or in a way you might guess. There’s no telling who might survive and who won’t. The stakes are high as the rampaging H-Vamps are killing humans en masse just to survive, and any of the main vampires in the show could become infected and with no cure available that’s a death sentence. So much happens in just 10 episodes, and generally I thought they did well giving satisfying conclusions to the characters that felt internally consistent with their history. I’m not going to lie–I did cry in the final episode, and I’m not much of a crier.

Anime Review: Orange

written by Laurie Tom

orange

Orange is a romance/high school drama with a speculative twist. Sixteen-year-old Naho Takamiya discovers a letter from herself from ten years into that future that tells her to watch for a new transfer student, Kakeru Naruse, who will become one of her friends. Though happiness has not eluded future Naho, she has many regrets over things that she wishes her younger self had done differently.

As predicted, Kakeru joins her class that same day, and he’s quickly absorbed into Naho’s circle of friends (both male and female). Though she knows from her letter that Kakeru will not live to see the end of the school year, teenage Naho can’t help falling in love with him.

Orange at its best can be an emotional watch, not because we know that Kakeru does not exist ten years from now, but because his death didn’t have to happen, and we get a front row seat to all the missed moments that future Naho hopes to change to make a better future.

The bulk of the series takes place during Naho’s high school years, but there are periodic flash forwards that show future Naho and her high school friends ten years later, and the events that lead up to why she decides to send the letter.

Each episode the story weaves in what is currently happening to teenage Naho with adult Naho’s regrets and advice, and the combination works extremely well even when events begin to diverge. We know that teenage Naho keeps a diary, so it is not out of the question that the highly detailed letter from her future self is possible (getting events down to the day) because she was probably cross-referencing her diary when she sent it.

Interestingly, knowledge of the future doesn’t mean that Naho has an easy ability to change the past. Though teenage Naho changes small things early on, such as getting the nerve to participate as a pinch hitter for her friends’ softball team, she is still herself, with all the insecurities that come with being an introverted high school girl. Even with the prodding of her future self, she can’t always break free of her innate personality, and it’s clear that she’s trying the best she can.

Having been a painfully shy teenage girl, I completely understand that, and we see the younger Naho make mistakes that would be easily solvable by someone with a more aggressive personality, but that’s not her. Future Naho can tell her younger self to do things all she wants, but everything is easier in hindsight.

As for Kakeru, whose life and death is what sets this whole thing in motion, he’s his own character and not an idealized love interest. His story is woven, bit by bit into each episode, and not in a necessarily getting to know a person sort of way. A fair bit of the information comes from the future and those who’ve gathered to celebrate his birthday ten years after his passing. (I have to wonder if this is a Japanese thing, because this is not the first anime I’ve seen where friends gather for the birthday of a lost friend.)

Kakeru isn’t perfect and like Naho, feels a lot like a person we could have been or could have known in high school. He integrates well with Naho and her friends, and makes dumb mistakes like dating a girl he’s not really into just because she has a cute face. Among his more blockhead moments is being surprised that Naho would stop calling him in the morning to wake him up after he gets a girlfriend.

But Kakeru remains highly sympathetic, as the series readily shows us that people make mistakes, even when they have the best of intentions, and Kakeru is carrying a difficult weight that we don’t discover until well into the series.

The future Naho knows she can’t change her own past, and it’s made clear that Orange subscribes to the multiverse form of time travel, where changes made in the past simply spin off a different timeline. I don’t think her adult self is entirely unhappy in her present either, having started a family with Suwa, one of her other high school friends, but knowing that she could have changed things for the better makes it worth sending the letter even if she will never see the results of her work.

I enjoyed having the older versions of the characters around, as it’s possible to see how they’ve changed over the years. No one is unrecognizable, but they really do feel like older, more mature versions of their high school selves.

It’s also worth addressing potential concerns about Naho’s friend Suwa, who becomes her husband in the future, since he’s a key character in the present. It is tempting to think that Naho would rather have married Kakeru if he had lived, and that’s why she sent the letter, but it’s made clear that she deeply cares for Suwa, as her letter takes pains to ask her younger self to notice what Suwa does for her, and to not take him for granted.

Orange sags a little in its second half. Part of this is because it becomes increasingly obvious that Naho cannot tackle the goal of saving Kakeru by herself, but also because the show starts to worry about just how the letter got back to the past when it was better left unsaid. Though a speculative series by nature, Orange tries too hard to explain how the time travel could have happened at a time when the audience is already invested and doesn’t care.

Despite those stumbles, the show pulls itself together for a tearjerker of an ending that feels satisfying for the efforts of both Nahos. Tissues recommended.

Number of Episodes: 13

Pluses: Realistic depiction of depression, characters that feel like people we were or knew in high school without being stereotypes, how present and future stories are woven together

Minuses: Second half’s plot revelations seem a little contrived, some questionable decision making by characters (though generally forgivable due to their ages), doesn’t really address what life will be like post-ending

Orange is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Crunchyroll has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

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 is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

BOOK REVIEW: FIX by Ferrett Steinmetz

written by David Steffen

FIX is the third book in the ‘Mancy series by Ferrett Steinmetz. Before I go any further, if you haven’t read the previous two books, FLEX and THE FLUX, I would recommend stopping now and consider reading the earlier books (I reviewed them here and here respectively). There’s been enough backstory and worldbuilding in the first two books that I think starting with the 3rd book might not be the best way to read the series, and it will spoil a bunch of the major plot moments in the first books as well.

The world of the series involves private, individual magic systems based on obsessions. If someone believes something strongly enough, the universe will change to accomodate those beliefs. But there’s a catch–every change to the natural world comes with a rebound of equal magnitude that comes in the form of bad luck, the flux. Small change, maybe your flux will make you stub your toe. Big change, maybe someone you or someone you love will die in a freak accident. Because of the unpredictable and dangerous nature of both the ‘mancy and the flux blowback, ‘mancy is illegal everywhere in the world, enforced by government controlled SMASH teams, using teams of brainwashed hivemind ‘mancers.

At the end of THE FLUX, the bureaucromancer Paul Tsabo and his family started an underground pro-mancy advocacy group. Along with him are his friend who had trained him in ‘mancy, the videogamemancer Valentine DiGriz, his daughter Aliyah who is also a videogamemancer, his wife Imani a former corporate lawyer who handles much of the planning, and Robert Paulson (Valentine’s boyfriend and former Fight-Club-‘mancer).

Because ‘mancy is illegal, they are constantly on the run, holding secret rallies while dodging SMASH raids. Eight years have passed since the last book, and Aliyah is 16 years old and would be in high school if she weren’t a known ‘mancer on the run. As the book starts, Aliyah’s family is trying to carve out a bit of normalcy for her in the world, letting her join a soccer team in a small town in Kentucky. But what starts out as a pleasant if nervous day quickly goes south and they find themselves on the run again.

This book does get quite a bit darker than the previous two. The stakes are higher and the dark moments are darker. It all makes sense as an escalation of the series, since the last book had ended with the group of characters secretly having ‘mancy powers to being actively hunted by SMASH. But the stakes are raised in other ways that I don’t want to get too much into here because there are a lot of surprised in the plot.

As with the previous books, one of the big appeals for me is the videogamemancy–Valentine DiGriz is of an age where she grew up on many of the video games that I grew up on, and in these books she uses them very effectively for magic (most often offensive magic). But Paul’s bureaucromancy has an appeal of its own–subtle and whisper-quiet where Valentine’s is loud and flashy and explosive. And you never know what kind of ‘mancer you’re going to meet next, since each completely defines their own magic system with the only common element being the flux.

I love all three of these books. I cannot recommend them enough. This one is even more epic and heartbreaking and wonderful and amazing than the others. Ferrett is one of the few authors that I’ll just buy anything they write sight unseen without any blurb or recommendation because he’s just that damned good, and this book is no exception.

Fall 2016 Anime First Impressions

written by Laurie Tom

Fall is well under way and the new anime debuted in October. As usual I watched the first episode of each to decide which series I would like to follow this season.

Because of the new streaming partnership between Funimation and Crunchyroll, this fall is unusual in that everything I watch is now on Crunchyroll since I prefer subtitles. Those who prefer dubs can still find those streaming on Funimation, if a dubbed version exists, but neither site has an exclusive on a particular show anymore now that they’re sharing all new simulcast licenses acquired by either company.

I’m still amazed that such a thing as simulcast dubbing exists. Funimation’s schedule runs about 2-3 weeks behind the Japanese broadcast.

Bloodivores

bloodivores

Why I Watched It: Normally I would pass on yet another take on vampires (it seems the rest of the world is just as crazy about them as Americans), but this series is based on a Chinese web comic, and the Japanese rarely do a direct adaptation of work from another country, so I figured this is probably something special.

What I Thought: Bloodivores, dopey title aside, is a little rough around the edges. It does places its own spin on vampires by making their condition an unexpected (and apparently permanent) side effect of a medication intended to suppress a disease, but doesn’t really dig into the world building on how bloodivores and normal humans coexist. The main plot doesn’t show until about halfway through, when protagonist Mi Liu and his bloodivore friends are framed for the murder for fifteen people, by which time the plot gets busy, fitting in a lot of father-son angst over a missing mother, and setting up a cliffhanger.

Verdict: I’m probably going to pass. I’m still a little curious, and it’s possible to see the Chinese origin in subtle ways aside from character names, but the series doesn’t seem that interested in world building and the next episode looks it takes a (very random) hard left turn into Hunger Games territory, with monsters.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

Izetta: The Last Witch

izetta the last witch

Why I Watched It: I jumped back and forth on whether to watch this one because of the World War II setting. Though I like it, I feel burnt out on the time period. Then I found out the series is set in an WW2 analog rather than the real world, and I was afraid it would trivialize all the problems surrounding the war, especially with how bright and colorful the promo art was of the titular witch. But finally word of mouth convinced me to give it a shot.

What I Thought: Izetta doesn’t bother to hide that its fictional world is based on WW2, as the first episode even has a WW2-era map showing the Germania Empire’s blitzkreig into Livonia (Poland) and subsequent subduing of Thermidor (France) with Brittania remaining as its primary enemy. The story follows Princess Finé of the fictional Duchy of Eylstadt, located in the eastern third of what would be Austria and she’s one of the more capable heroines in anime as there isn’t a love interest in sight as she and her bodyguards evade enemy agents on a well choreographed train sequence. The bad guys are mostly stereotypical Nazi stand-ins, which is disappointing since I want the 1940s-style time period to be more than set dressing.

Verdict: I might watch this one, time permitting. I do like Finé and, with the titular Izetta showing up at the end of the episode, I like the idea of two girls against an empire, but this time period has been so done to death that I need more complexity from both sides of the conflict.

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

March Comes in Like a Lion

march comes in like a lion

Why I Watched It: I don’t know how to play shogi, but one of the fun things about anime is that they can make a series about anything and people will watch if it’s interesting. March Comes in Like a Lion was one of the highest anticipated titles coming into the season due to its manga pedigree.

What I Thought: I’m really not certain why it’s so well regarded, at least from the opening episode. There’s some interesting imagery where Rei’s thoughts seem to be mirrored through the use of water, but there’s a lot of mood whiplash which makes me wonder what kind of story it’s supposed to be. The opening nine minutes are so tense that Rei doesn’t even speak. Then the atmosphere takes a comical turn when we meet a bunch of girls who appear to be family friends, only for the mood to reverse again when he hears about someone getting beaten to death on the news. It’s implied he knows the person, but much like his relationship to the girls, how he knows them isn’t spelled out. The episode finally ends with someone who looks like a wannabe rival showing up and taunting him like he came out of a kid’s show.

Verdict: I’m going to pass. I have no idea where it’s going, and while the opening nine minutes were a great exercise showing Rei’s isolation and ability to play shogi, rest of the episode just doesn’t hold up.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll and Daisuki

Natsume Yujin-cho 5

natsume yujin-cho go

Why I Watched It: I’d previously reviewed the first four seasons of Natsume’s Book of Friends (the translated title used for the home video release) and expected that would be the end of the series. But four years later the series about a good-natured teenage boy who can see spirits has been revived for a fifth go around. It’s being animated by a different studio, but all the original cast is back as well as some of the production team.

What I Thought: Despite the studio change, Natsume Yujin-Cho slips almost flawlessly back into the saddle. Once again Natsume is confronted with a problematic yokai whose issue with him is rooted in the history it has with his grandmother Reiko. It’s not going to convert anyone who doesn’t already like the series, but being episodic, it’s very easy for new viewers to slip into as the first few minutes quickly bring everyone up to speed on his ability to see yokai and his isolation from other humans because of it.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. It’s not really a binging type of series, but with the previous series each episode was a great little pick-me-up whenever I wanted something low key and sweet.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

Poco’s Udon World

poco's udon world

Why I Watched It: A lot of Japanese storytelling has no issue mixing the spirit world with the mundane. It’s one of the fun things that I don’t get with a lot of western material. Poco’s Udon World follows that tradition with a story about a 30-year-old man who discovers a childlike fox spirit when he goes home to inherit the family business.

What I Thought: Better than I thought! When Souta Tawara goes home to rural Kagawa Prefecture it’s to clean out the family home so it can be sold after the proper mourning period. His father’s udon restaurant is closed, but people keep wanting him to open it up again and we get to see snippets of his childhood from when he wanted to be just his like dad to a young adult where he says the last thing he wants is to take over the restaurant. The tanuki (not a fox!) keeps things from staying too melancholy, but it feels like this is very much Souta’s story about finding what he really wants, and I hope it stays that way.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. I find Souta easily relatable and the tanuki (presumably to be named Poco later) is surprisingly cute without being annoying. This is important because the tanuki spends most of its screen time with the appearance as a human toddler with a limited vocabulary.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

Trickster

trickster

Why I Watched It: After the mixed result that was Rampo Kitan, I continued to see mystery writer Rampo Edogawa’s name cropping up in various places. He’s had a huge effect on the Japanese mystery genre. Unfortunately little of his work is available in English, so when I saw a new project based on his Kogoro Akechi stories was launched I figured I’d give it a shot.

What I Thought: Trickster feels like an odd throwback to the 90s, with its sort of near future science fiction setting and especially with its confident and relentlessly upbeat protagonist, Hanasaki. He’s probably not going to be a deep character, but that’s okay since he has an ensemble cast with him. Worth mentioning, though not in a positive way, is Kobayashi, a immortal boy who does have powers and wants to die (badly). The most grating part of the first episode is listening to Kobayashi whine about how he wants to die but can’t. It might have meaning later, but his half-hearted attempts to kill himself come off as rather pathetic than character building.

Verdict: I might watch this one. It depends on how much Kobayashi ends up annoying me and how much Hanasaki can make up for it. (There might be something about the original Kobayashi from Edogawa’s fiction, since I disliked the Rampo Kitan version too.)

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

Yuri on Ice

yuri on ice

Why I Watched It: I was completely sold by the trailer. I’d seen some nicely animated ice skating in Death Parade, but Yuri on Ice‘s animation is just gorgeous. The movement is fluid and realistic, and I think it’s telling that they hired an Olympic choreographer to work on the routines for the different skaters.

What I Thought: You can really see the homework the animation team did on the skating sequences, and fortunately Yuri on Ice isn’t just about its looks. The story follows figure skater Yuri Katsuki who at 23 is already fading from the international stage. He’s a relatable protagonist, having feelings of inadequacy, inability to focus, and even dealing with weight issues (which is incredibly rare for a male character). Of course all that is set to change when a friend’s kid uploads a video of him beat-for-beat copying the reigning world champion’s routine in a private skate, and the world champion himself shows up at Yuri’s door to be his new coach.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. I’m a fan of figure skating in general and Yuri so easy to root for that I want to see his journey.

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

Conspicuously missing:

The Great Passage – Based on a bestselling novel about a salesman who gets recruited into his company’s dictionary editing project. Since The Great Passage is a Noitamina production it should be covered by the exclusivity agreement it has with Amazon, but it’s only streaming in Amazon UK, and not in the United States. Dictionary editing probably sounds like a very boring premise for a series, which I suspect is the reason Amazon is not simulcasting this, which is a shame since early impressions from outside the US are good.

GAME REVIEW: Shovel Knight

written by David Steffen

Shovel Knight is an 8-bit styled platformer action game published by Yacht Club Games in 2014.

The playable character of the game is the eponymous Shovel Knight who is as you might expect, a knight who uses a shovel as his weapon instead of a sword or other more typical period weapon. Until very recently he has always worked as a team with the also-appropriately named Shield Knight. Their partnership came to an end on an excursion into the Tower of Fate, wherein a cursed amulet wrought a terrible (but only vaguely mentioned) fate–when Shovel Knight awakes he finds that he has been expelled from the now-sealed tower, and Shield Knight is nowhere to be found. His spirit broken by this loss, Shovel Knight retires and becomes a hermit, only returning to combat when the defenseless land is seized by the Evil Enchantress and her Order of No Quarter, a league of evil knights. Shovel Knight returns to battle to combat these new villains.

The game has an 8-bit aesthetic that would’ve fit in perfectly well on an NES. Some of the game design elements have definite nods toward games of that era. The overworld map has some similarities to Super Mario Bros 3, but the closest analog is that the individual levels and boss characters are in a style that seems to be directly inspired by the original Mega Man series–8 villains with themed powers that live in levels that fit that theme, and from those levels the hero can gain some theme-appropriate power. The main difference in the style is that there is no equivalent of the arm cannon–Shovel Knight can learn some long-range special abilities that use MP as fuel, but his MP-less attack is only his short-range shovel attack.

2015-12-23_00003 The levels are longish and progress is lost if you quite the game while you’re in the middle of one, so it’s best to have a little longer stretch if you want to sit down and play the game. But the levels do have checkpoints that help make the levels easier to progress through if you need them. Each level is very different in style and contains very different enemies, which nicely keeps the game fresh throughout the playtime. Each boss requires you to learn his patterns to be able to avoid and find opportunities to attack. The game is reasonably challenging and if you want to make it more challenging there are ways to ramp it up, such as avoiding collecting the magic weapon items, breaking checkpoints to make extra money instead of using them as checkpoints, avoiding health meter enhancing items, etc.

This game is a lot of fun if you enjoy this kind of action platformer game. I highly recommend it.

Visuals
Fun graphics appropriate for the Mega Man era of games it is in a style of.

Audio
Some fun audio bits, but nothing necessary for gameplay (handy if you want to play quietly).

Challenge
A good level of platformer challenge, not easy but not insurmountable. If you want to escalate the difficulty significantly you can do so by avoiding purchasing health meter boosts and weapons (which will also get you achievement badges)

Story
Lightish on story, just enough to justify a straightforward action quest, but plenty for this kind of game.

Session Time
Longish, because you can’t save and quite mid-level without losing your progress within the level. If you can’t leave your computer running you might want to aim for 30 minutes or so of playtime.

Playability
Easy to get the controls down, challenging to master the game. The level of challenge escalates well as the game progresses.

Replayability
There is some potential for replaying in that you might want to go back and collect all the collectibles. Or you might want to avoid collecting collectibles (which include all ranged weapons) to increase your challenge.

Originality
Felt original. It had a familiar format/style, and familiar elements, but something can feel new if it’s a mix of familiar but disparate things.

Playtime
About 8 hours to finish according to Steam, though I was spending extra time exploring and trying to unlock things, and since I couldn’t save mid-level I left the game running from time to time so I’m not sure how accurate it is.

Overall
Fun look, fun game, challenging gameplay. Especially appealing for those who like the style and challenge of games like the original Mega Man series. Each level’s design and enemies and boss were varied enough that the gameplay never felt repetitive and there are plenty of ways large and small to increase the difficulty level for those who want to challenge themselves. $15 on Steam.

TV REVIEW: Wayward Pines Season 2

written by David Steffen

Wayward Pines was a weird speculative mystery/thriller show that aired as ten episodes in the summer of 2015–see my review of that season here. At the time that it aired it was unclear whether it was going to be a standalone miniseries or whether there would be a second season–the ending wrapped up a lot of things but left a route to continue the story if it were desired. And, (obviously, given the title of the article) it did return for a second season in the summer of 2016.

Season 1 of the show was based fairly closely on the Wayward Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch (spoilers for the books and for season 1 here). In that segment of the story, Secret Service agent Ethan Burke travels to Wayward Pines, Idaho to investigate the disappearance of two other agents. But the town seems to have no escape–everyone there is living under obscure rules under penalty of death and the road leading into town doesn’t lead back out again, and there are monsters at the gate. Throughout the course of the season (or the three books) he discovers that he did not just travel to Idaho–he was abducted and put into cryogenic sleep for almost two thousand years. David Pilcher, scientist and genius, had discovered that the human genome was becoming corrupted by pollutants and human beings were mutating into something entirely different–he had started a secret project to put a thousand people into cryogenic storage to wait through the consequences and come out on the other side. But in the future the creatures that had been humanity were still out there in the form of mutated violent monsters he named aberrations (aka abbies). He rebuilt Wayward Pines from the ground up as a stronghold against the abbies, waking people up from their cryogenic sleep to populate the town under the pretense that it is still the 20th century. Eventually Ethan learns of all of this and reveals the truth to the town–Pilcher lets the abbies into town as punishment for this betrayal and the first season ends shortly after Ethan sacrifices his life to save the town from the abbies. But history repeats itself and the First Generation raised in the town seizes control of the town and starts a new regime.

Though Season 1 was mostly based pretty closely on the books, the ending of season 1 leaves no room to stick to the same story and so, unsurprisingly, it diverges wildly. The protagonist of this season is a new character who has just been woken from cryo for the first time–a surgeon named Theo Yedlin who was abducted without his knowledge as most of the residents of the town has been. Shortly after he reunites with his wife, who is behaving oddly for reasons he doesn’t understand. The Wayward Pines that he wakes to is one controlled by the First Generation who have forced a much firmer and overt control than had been visible in season 1, even with uniforms reminiscient of Nazi Germany military uniforms. Jason Higgins is leader of this group, a young man raised in Wayward Pines, trying to enforce control in the town as best he can.

Ethan Burke’s son Ben is alive and the leader of a pocket of resistance against the First Generation leadership. He is offered some protection form the fact that he too is considered part of the First Generation and they are all forbidden to harm one another by the rules of the town.

Adam Hassler returns from the wilderness where he has been on a years’ long mission to explore deep into abby territory.

The abbies are shower greater signs of organization, assaulting the electric fence that protects the town systematically and strategically. Most townspeople don’t believe the evidence, but others are very nervous about where this is going.

The ground inside the town limits has gone sour, and won’t take crops anymore. They have started growing some crops outside the town limits, and must protect them from abby attacks.

And they find an abby in town, a female who seems to be some kind of leader. What should they do with her?

As you might be able to tell from this quite scattered synopsis, a big issue I had with this season of the show is that it is kind of all over the place. Season two has only 10 episodes, and there are so many big ideas being explored simultaneously that it just feels unfocused and scattered.

Season 1 was pretty solid, and was based largely around the mystery of the town, and we started that season as ignorant of the current events of the fictional world so much of the show was trying to figure it out along with them. In season 2, we start with a new character awoken from cryo who has no idea what’s going on. But.. why? We follow a character in season 1 ignorant of the situation so that we can discover it along with him, understand the strangeness and the danger piece by piece. But… here we already know what Wayward Pines is. And, while it makes sense for the character to have go through this gaining of knowledge, that part of the story felt like it was just going through the motions telling us the same story over again as if we hadn’t been paying attention the first time. Not only that, but Theo in a lot of ways has an easier setup for understanding and affecting change in the town than Ethan had, because of Theo’s important role as surgeon. His skills are rare and valuable in a town where medical experts are both irreplacable and in short supply, so he kind of ends up doing a lot of things that no one else in town can get away with–he tries to use it to make some good change, but still, it felt like he started with similar problems as Ethan had in season 1 but with a lot more immediate advantages. I didn’t understand why they’d make that narrative choice when it would be more natural to escalate the challenges rather than escalate the protagonist’s advantages.

There were a few recurring characters, and some new ones. There is some excuse for new characters to show up, despite the relatively closed system of Wayward Pines, because we know there are a whole bunch of people still in cryo who haven’t been woken up yet–so if they want to add a new character they just need to have a new person wake from cryo. But, they also introduced a new character, CJ, who had been responsible for waking up periodically throughout the centuries that everyone was under and checking on the progress of the world to decide when to wake everyone up. He was, at every stage, the first person to wake up and to start waking other people up, and because he had such an important role, in season 2 he is important enough to have major input into decision-making. So… where had he been in season 1? The real answer is that no one had made up his character yet, but his character as established should have been visible in season 1. That kind of thing felt lazy and cheap–they could have found characters who all fit with the story as told in season 1, but sometimes they didn’t bother. It reminded me of season 2 of Under the Dome, which likewise operated with a very closed system and yet they kept adding new characters who couldn’t possibly have gone unnoticed in the first season, because of lazy writing.

Besides that familiar throughline of the plot about discovering what the town is about, there are quite a few plotlines that are very potentially interesting, but there are just so many and they’re so poorly threaded together that major plot focus for an episode or two suddenly trails off without ever really resolving anything, and as the end of the short 10-episode run approaches there are only more plots all tangled together. When the end of the season comes, it’s like… wait, was that actually the end of the season? Nothing wrapped up, there is no satisfaction at completion of story arcs. Did the writers know when the season was ending or did the makers of the show tell them to write and then abruptly ended the season 4 episodes early? Or did the writers just have no idea how to make a satisfying season arc?

Some of the ideas here were interesting, but it feels more like a rushed publication of a truncated rough draft than like a finished final work.

DP Fiction #21: “The Banshee Behind Beamon’s Bakery” by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

Most nights the alley behind Beamon’s Bakery is just an alley.

The street lamp bleeds piss yellow light, casting jagged shadows around the overflowing dumpster and discarded boxes. The walls are tagged with gang signs, claiming territory that was never theirs, yardage, bodies, souls, rights.

Some nights a transient clears away the broken glass, the random detritus, to squat for the night. Setting up camp here has its own rewards. The warmth that seeps through the bakery walls and through brick facing chases away the chill, but not the ghosts. This is the drawback, you see. The alley is never as vacant as it may seem at first, never as lonely as one may wish. The price of physical warmth is the chilling of your soul.

On the ninth night of November, the banshee chases away the transients, the curious, the ignorant, and claims the alley as her own. She returns in disbelief of the injustice, to recover her beloved.

If you pay attention you can see the faded outline of a body in front of the dumpster. As the hour draws closer, the details grow clearer, and the body all but materializes. A sharp sound cracks open the silence. The bud of blood on his white apron blossoms and spreads across his chest. He gasps for breath and you can even see the steam rise in a clotted cloud about his head. His lips are stained red by death’s kiss.

They say it was her son, Mikaheel, who worked at Beamon’s. Mistaken for a burglar, for reasons no one can comprehend, he was shot by an officer while emptying the trash.

She relives the day, that hour, when her entire world was remade, when she wished to no longer be a part of that world.

“He is just a baby,” she sobs into her hands as she kneels next to him. “My baby. Only seventeen. He hasn’t even lived yet.” She doesn’t feel the cold hard pavement against her knees, the hands on her shoulders, the arms that lift and carry her away.

There are many stories about her. Some say she died from grief. Others believe that she took her own life, that she might join her son in death. But the truth is something much different.

Her fury would not allow her to die, nor live. It consumed her flesh but not her horror. This is what you see on this night in the alley. This is who you feel when you come too close.

The banshee kneels before her dead son. Her flashing energy glows blood red. The air grows hotter than the ovens in Beamon’s. Then comes the palpable sound…the thunderous rending of her heart. It is the sound of the sky ripping and the Earth crumbling away. She keens like a broken dog, ropey braids whipping around her head like bird’s wings.

Her grief permeates the hood. All mothers within hearing distance share the same nightmare, her horror. Her voice, like daggers, cleaves the night. Those caught within her looping nightmare claw their way back into the waking world. Hungry for their next breath, hearts pounding, they cry out the name of her son, “Mikaheel!”

On this night, the alley is an archive of injustice and the banshee is the chronicler.

Author’s Note: The unjust violent death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer was the specific impetus for this story. I tried to imagine what his mother must’ve been feeling upon learning about her son’s death. This wasn’t difficult because I have a son as well. I tried to impart the feeling of rage and horror I, any mother, would feel upon learning that her son was taken away in such a violent horrific way.

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming and gardening. She has been published at Escape Pod, An Alphabet of Embers, and People of Color Destroy Science Fiction. She’s also penned a novel entitled An Unproductive Woman which can be found on Amazon. Khaalidah is also a narrator and you may have heard her narrations at Strange Horizons, and all four of the Escape Artists podcasts. Khaalidah is guest editor for Artemis Rising 3 over at PodCastle and is also guest editing Truancy Magazine‘s fourth issue. Khaalidah is on a mission to encourage more women and POC to write and publish science fiction stories. Of her alter ego, “K” from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to immorality. You can catch up to her posts at her website, www.khaalidah.com, and you can follow her on twitter, @khaalidah.

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