I found out about Trail of Lightning on Twitter a few months ago. As it tends to go with really good books, a couple of authors I was following there had started raving about it. Then, I saw the cover and was totally sold. I started following Rebecca Roanhorse before I even read her book, just to get more information. I have a tendency to be broke these days, so figuring out which books I absolutely need requires a little research. Anyway, I figured I probably couldn’t lose with this one, and took the plunge. So, so happy I did.

Have Böker, Will Travel

Maggie Hoskie, the protagonist, is definitely one of my favorite characters. She’s the perfect combination of crusty, vulnerable, snarky and bad ass. At the beginning of the novel, we find her listless and lost, having been abandoned by her teacher and mentor. When she gets called upon to hunt down a monster, it’s one of the first times she goes out monster slaying solo. On the hunt, she discovers a new and horrible monster and the little girl it had taken. Unfortunately, she’s been horribly injured, and Maggie faces a difficult choice.

And you could catch evil if something evil got inside you. And once inside you, it could take you over. Make you do evil things. Destroy what you once cared for. Hurt people you wouldn’t have hurt otherwise, and eventually, kill. And if that happened, you ran the risk of becoming just another monster.

Roanhorse, Rebecca. Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World Book 1) (p. 14). Saga Press. Kindle Edition.

The whole ordeal leaves Maggie shaken, angry and curious. What is this new monster, and where does it come from?

Old Culture, New World

Maggie lives in the world of the Dine, the Navajo people. When she was fourteen, the world ended in a huge flood, but the reservation and some of the areas around it were spared. It’s unclear how much of the rest of the world remains above water, and it doesn’t seem to matter much. People live in small communities, with the occasional town or city left over from the days before the Big Water. Another huge change is that the gods and legends of old are back again and walking among normal people. Maggie’s former mentor, is one such legend. Coyote, the trickster, is another. And then there’s the clan gifts. Certain people receive the gifts of their parents’ clans. In Maggie’s case, she is walking death because of this. But Kai, the son of one of her few friends, might just be walking life. Together, Maggie and Kai set off to discover the origins of a new monster stalking the Dine, and who might be behind it all.

As Good as Coffee and Sugar

I am such a huge sucker for good world building and this story has that in spades. On the one hand, you’ve got a post-apocalyptic dystopia, and then you’ve also got the prevalence of a culture I’m not very familiar with, so of course, I was totally riveted. I mean, the Dine is protected by a gigantic wall that sort of came to life and took on a life of its own, the gods walk the earth… it’s all incredibly interesting. And this is all set in front of the backdrop of the real reservation life of the Navajo people. This is all a perfect recipe for a really rich, interesting setting, almost as rich as the plot and character development. The plot is essentially a mystery. What are these new monsters, and who has created them? They pretty much reek of evil magic. There are also fires and lightning strikes which are highly suspect. Maggie doggedly peruses her query. She’s been convinced the only thing that makes her worthwhile is her ability to kill. But of course, things get a bit more complicated than that.

Horror and Heroism

I don’t want to ruin the ending, so I won’t say much about it, other than that it was surprising, and I loved it. I also felt like one of the themes that touched me a lot over the course of this book was Maggie’s lack of self confidence. Because she has been groomed to believe she can only really kill and destroy, she feels like she’s really not capable of doing other things, like having relationships. And, because her mentor abandoned her, she really has no idea who she is anymore, so Maggie is essentially a hot mess from beginning to end of the book. She has some moments of clarity, but she’s an incredibly vulnerable bad ass. Kai tries a few times to get close, but she tries to keep everyone at arm’s length for the most part. It seems like people like her better than she thinks she deserves and this becomes incredibly endearing. I would say Maggie is one of my favorite main characters I’ve encountered this year.

Conclusion

I loved this book. It was incredibly hard to put down because it’s just so well put together and intriguing. You want to solve the mystery and you want to explore this new world Roanhorse has created and you just want to see what Maggie’s going to do next. It’s a book that’s got humor, darkness, pain and excitement which are all great ingredients for a good story. There are some horrific scenes, but the violence is not gratuitous and is used well. I definitely think everyone should experience this book, because really, can the world have too many strong, yet human bad ass women?

If you’re not ready to commit to a whole novel, I highly recommend checking out Roanhorse’s award winning Your Authentic Indian Experience, a short story that also showcases her amazing skill as a writer and storyteller.

Bechdel Test: Pass
Helpful Tropes: Action Girl, Badass Native, Beware the Nice Ones, Cool Car, Jerkass Gods
Links: Goodreads, Bookbub, Rebecca Roanhorse on Twitter

If you enjoyed this, please think of supporting this blog by buying me a coffee, or checking out my list of books available for purchase.

Originally published at www.dsritter.com on October 7, 2018.

I’d heard some good things about this book from other writers whose work I really enjoy, so when the Tor monthly book club put it up for download, I was totally stoked. Let me just say, it was a weird, wild ride.

Synopsis

Too Like the Lightning is a science fiction novel, set in the 25th century, but written more in the style of the 18th. It’s narrated by and told from the point of view of Mycroft Canner, with the occasional interruption or interviews from other characters.

If you asked Mycroft what the novel is about, he would tell you that it is about a thirteen-year-old boy named Bridger who possesses an incredible and mysterious power, and how he helped shaped the world as we know it (in the future beyond the book’s 25th century setting). If you asked literally anyone else, they’d probably tell you the story is a mystery involving the theft of a devious device and an article listing the world’s most influential people, and what that meant for the world of the future.

Along side the story of this miracle child and the mysterious theft and frame-job, there is some fantastic world building in this novel. Also sex, philosophy and murder. It’s really a mixed bag, as are my feelings about it.

What a World

Okay, so my absolute favorite aspect of this story is the world building. Ada Palmer does this masterful job of interweaving history, culture, politics, economics, everything, with her story. We quickly learn that five hundred years into the future, flying cars with the ability to circumvent the world in four hours have eliminated mankind’s need of countries and borders. A person living in Rio de Janeiro might very easily work in Prague and then go have dinner in Shanghai. The technology behind this way of life is incredibly important and heavily guarded and plays a huge part in the story.

The other thing we learn almost immediately, is that religion is now illegal. Well, not so much religion as discussing religion in a group, or proselytizing. Civilization as the book knows it feels that faith is not a bad thing, but religion is highly dangerous. To allow people to work out their feelings about a creator, or an afterlife, or what have you, a group of licensed priest-like specialists called sensayers exist, and go around discuss people’s religious feelings.

“’Humanity cannot live without these questions! Let us create a new creature! Not a preacher, but a teacher, who hears a parishioner’s questions and presents the answers of all the faiths and sects of history, Christians and pagans, Muslims and atheists, all equal. With this new creature as his guide, let each man pick through the fruits of all theologies and anti-theologies, and make from them his own system, to test, improve, and lean on all the years of his long life. If early opponents of the Christian Reformation feared that Protestants would invent as many Christianities as there were Christians, let this new creature help us create as many religions as there are human beings!’”

Ada Palmer. Too Like the Lightning (Kindle Locations 151–155). Tom Doherty Associates.

Another aspect of this future that is really fun is that while countries and religions don’t mean much anymore, there are still nations after a fashion, and universal laws that state that when children pass into adulthood they have the right to choose in which they would like to belong. One of the first we’re introduced to is the Humanists. This group is described as being focused on human achievement. They tend to be athletes and part of their culture is to have a part of their home decorated to display all the awards and trophies they’ve earned. They also prize the Olympics, which are still going strong.

The other groups are based off of either their historical geographical locations (nation-strats) like the Mitsubishi (the Asian nation-strats) or Europe, or they were an organization that became a nation, such as the Masons, based off of today’s masonic traditions or the Cousins, which started as a network to allow female backpackers to find safe places to stay. There’s also the Brillists, who are obsessed with measuring personality and intelligence and the Utopians, whose major goal is to colonize Mars.

The world building is intensely rich! Each of these groups have their own traditions and cultures and politics and they all intermingle, creating this colorful tapestry of a backdrop for a pretty epic story.

Our Narrator

Mycroft on his own is a pretty interesting character. He unfolds the details of the story (and his own) very slowly, and we soon see that he’s involved in pretty much everything going with the world’s movers and shakers, but at the same time, is also down in the streets. You see, not to spoil too much, Mycroft is a criminal, serving a life sentence of being what is pretty much a slave to the people.

“Tell me, when our Twenty-Second-Century forefathers created the Servicer Program, offering lifelong community service in lieu of prison for criminals judged harmless enough to walk among the free, were they progressive or retrogressive in implementing a seven-hundred-year-old system which had never actually existed?”

Ada Palmer. Too Like the Lightning (Kindle Locations 376–378). Tom Doherty Associates.

Despite his criminal status, Mycroft appears to be on call to all the world’s leaders and involved in some major historical moments, like a more intelligent Forrest Gump. The few incidents taking place elsewhere are reported on by an associate of Mycroft’s or he tells us what he learns by interviewing the people he knows who witnessed whatever. It’s all an intriguing, albeit sometimes unbelievable frame for the narrative.

The part I really find interesting about Mycroft, I can’t even begin to talk about for fear of ruining things for those who haven’t read this book yet. All I can say is that his crime and the motives behind it are both a trip and a bit of a mystery.

Okay, now we near an aspect of the book that I found both interesting and frustrating. In this future, gender is kind of a personal thing, seemingly reserved for intimate, sexual situations, if at all. What do I mean? I mean that not only are characters generally referred to by gender neutral pronouns, but when gendered pronouns do come up, they’re accompanied by this attitude that this is somehow lewd or taboo. The gender neutrality also helps explain and flavor a lot in the late chapters of the book, which is kind of cool. It’s an interesting aspect of the culture, but then you get Mycroft, being a bit impish now and again, gendering characters as he sees fit, rather than how you and I might (according to sexual organs or personal preference).

His and Hers (More Like Theirs)

Okay, now we near an aspect of the book that I found both interesting and frustrating. In this future, gender is kind of a personal thing, seemingly reserved for intimate, sexual situations, if at all. What do I mean? I mean that not only are characters generally referred to by gender neutral pronouns, but when gendered pronouns do come up, they’re accompanied by this attitude that this is somehow lewd or taboo. The gender neutrality also helps explain and flavor a lot in the late chapters of the book, which is kind of cool. It’s an interesting aspect of the culture, but then you get Mycroft, being a bit impish now and again, gendering characters as he sees fit, rather than how you and I might (according to sexual organs or personal preference).

“With Chagatai, however, your guess is wrong. It is not her job which makes me give her the feminine pronoun, despite her testicles and chromosomes. I saw her once when someone threatened her little nephew, and the primal savagery with which those thick hands shattered the offender was unmistakably that legendary strength which lionesses, she-wolves, she-bats, she-doves, and all other ‘she’s obtain when motherhood berserks them. That strength wins her ‘she.’”

Ada Palmer. Too Like the Lightning (Kindle Locations 4567–4571). Tom Doherty Associates.

This became a little frustrating to me, particularly when I didn’t always want to go off on a tangent about a character’s gender, but continue with the story. Carlyle, the sensayer is another character Mycroft drops hints about, refering to them as a “he” but suggesting that this person is biologically female. I don’t particularly care what Carlyle or Chagatai or anyone else is hiding under their skirt so long as we on with what’s happening.

I find the gender neutrality and the other things that go on with gender interesting, but how Mycroft treats it sometimes is exhausting, and just feels witty for wit’s sake…

I will totally admit that my frustrations with this book probably stem from the fact that it’s been a while since I’ve read anything this challenging, so while I might find some things annoying, people smarter than me might enjoy them.

Elementary, My Dear Watson

Another aspect that sort of bothered me is that toward the end of the book, certain things are just blatantly revealed with few clues or foreshadowing. I don’t like this sort of thing in mysteries, preferring the ones that show you all the information up front, allowing you the chance to guess correctly, if at all. Too Like the Lightning is a bit of a wild ride, which aspects of the story suddenly coming to the fore with no warning. This can be both exciting and feel like a cheat. I can’t really get into what bothered me because it would be chock full of spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that.

And now, my least favorite part of this book:

Bridger…

As I mentioned before, Bridger is who this story is supposedly about, but it’s more about pretty much everyone else. Bridger is a little boy with an amazing, miraculous power. You find out about this power very early on, and about Mycroft’s relationship with the boy, but seriously, the kid’s probably in less than ten percent of the book and most of the stuff that goes on has nothing to do with him.

This is not the problem I have. The problem I have is that Bridger is like an infant, but he’s thirteen. I mean, not exactly like an infant, but he doesn’t come off as a teenager either. Maybe a very young child. But then, on the other hand, he’s got a deep understanding of classical philosophy and has seen some pretty disturbing things, yet appears to be mature and as well-adjusted as is to be expected about it. This dichotomy kind of brought be out of the story a bit. His character isn’t very even, which maybe is realistic? I don’t know. Either way, it bothered me a bit. I could not bring myself to get attached to the kid at all, despite his importance.

Conclusion

This is a really weird book. Like, really weird. You will be hard pressed to find something similar, and despite my frustrations with it, despite the fact reading it exhausted me, I have to recommend you at least try to experience it. If you’re interested in philosophy, particularly of the 18th century, you will probably have a great time. Palmer is actually an associate professor at the University of Chicago, so I guess it’s not surprising she’s a world-building pro.

This quote from her “About” page on her website sums up her work really well, I think.

“All my projects stem from my overall interest in the relationship between ideas and historical change. Our fundamental convictions about what is true evolve over time, so different human peoples in different times and places have, from their own perspectives, lived in radically different worlds with radically different rules.”

Palmer, A. (n.d.). About Ada Palmer. Retrieved August 21, 2018, from https://adapalmer.com/about-ada-palmer/

Too Like the Lightning is the first book in Palmer’s Terra Ignota series, from Tor.

Bechdel Test: Pass Maybe?

Helpful Tropes: Ambiguous Gender, Flying Car, Frame-Up, Government Conspiracy, Science Fantasy

Links: Ada Palmer’s Website, Ada Palmer on Amazon, Wikipedia, Goodreads

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this review, please head over to my blog for more.

I also have a horror novella, Cthulhu’s Car Park, available from Amazon. Please, check it out.

“It’s not working.”

Sam tried not to sigh. She looked down at the customer from her post beside the automatic parking machine. It was a woman, driving a low, red, middle-grade sports car-type vehicle, Sam didn’t know the model, with a look of utter contempt on her face. She was holding a blue parking ticket.

Ignoring the fact that the woman had not even tried to put her ticket into the machine, Sam took it, and slid it into the slot. “You need to put it with the stripe up and to the right,” she explained for the millionth time. She watched the screen and was unsurprised when it showed the woman had not paid for her ticket yet. Following instructions did not seem to be this lady’s strong suit, considering the number of signs posted, everywhere, suggesting she prepay in the elevator lobby. “It’s going to be a dollar and fifty cents.”

She was even less surprised when the woman started digging through her purse and withdrew two crumpled dollar bills. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Sam, using her best customer-service tone and pointing to a big sign posted right on the machine, “we can only accept debit or credit cards at the gate.”

The woman’s frown turned into a grimace. “That’s ridiculous! It’s two dollars!”

Sam shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, that’s just how our system works, ma’am. This machine isn’t built to handle cash.”

A credit card was dug out of a wallet with long, expensively manicured nails and thrust toward the parking lot attendant, who inserted it into the machine and waited for the transaction to clear, silently hoping the machine wouldn’t screw up for once.

It was a sleek looking device, sort of resembling an ATM. It had one slot, two buttons and a screen. You might think a machine that simple would be easy for people to use, particularly with a big board with instructions right in front of them, but, that was definitely not the case.

Thus, Sam would stand beside the machine, putting people’s tickets in correctly, assuring them that yes, their credit card did go there, and clearing mechanical jams. Luckily, this time, she could hear the machinations inside working smoothly, and out popped the credit card. She handed it back to the customer. “Would you like a receipt?” But, the gate had gone up and the red sports car was already wheeling onto the street, so she plucked it out of the machine and put it in the small pile on top of the nearby garbage can.

The job wasn’t a hard one if you were talking about skill level. Be polite. Help people operate a system that was designed to be completely automated. No cash register to mess around with. Very little handling of cash at all, assuming the machine in the lobby was working. But, sometimes easy or hard doesn’t have to do with skill.

The sound of an idling engine drew the attendant’s attention to the entrance, which was to the left of the exits. Two men were sitting in a black sedan, staring at her. It was eleven o’clock at night on a Wednesday and the parking structure was almost empty, so Sam prepared herself for a hassle. “Can I help you?”

The driver had an expression of slack-jawed determination. “Yeah, uh, where’s a spot?”

Sam disliked this question, for a couple of reasons, the first being that it reminded her that she was expected to stay by the gates, not allowed to go anywhere else unless instructed to, or to check for college students and drunks (or a mix of the twoboth) doing damage to the structure, so there was no way for her to know which spots were available. The second was because of the question’s lazy nature. Drive around for two seconds and find it yourself, she thought.

What she said, politely, was, “It’s pretty empty right now, I’m sure there’s one just up that ramp.” Just to be clear, she pointed out the ramp to the next level.

When the customer had driven off, having not said much other than “cool,” Sam stood there for a moment and enjoyed the quiet. The night was winding down, the electronic sign in front of the garage said there were almost two-hundred spaces available, and in a few hours, she’d be able to go home. In was summer in the college town of Ann Arbor, and the night was a pleasant, balmy one, so she was wearing her uniform polo, khaki shorts and tennis shoes, because sandals were against the dress code. There was a slight breeze tickling the sad little urban trees, pushing a receipt across the concrete floor of the structure, and the only sound was radio traffic on her walkie-talkie; cashiers and maintenance workers checking in with the home office all over the city, clearing special transactions and reporting problems. In a few weeks, the university would be starting up again, and then the calm nights would be a memory until around Christmas.

Just when her mind was really starting to wander, the sound of puking echoed over the poured concrete from somewhere within the structure. This time, Sam did sigh as she unclipped her walkie from her belt. “Seven-One to HQ.”

“HQ,” crackled the radio, “go ahead, Seven-One.”

“I think I’ve got someone throwing up somewhere in the structure. Permission to go check it out?”

“Okay, Seven-One, go check it out. Let us know if you need any back up.”

“Ten-four.”

Returning the walkie to her belt, Sam looked around for any customers, then made her way to the up-ramp. It was a small structure, with eight split-levels containing only about thirty spaces each and it didn’t take her long to locate where the sick person had been. There was nobody to be found on 3b, but a pool of vomit beside the black sedan that had just entered gave her an idea of who it might have been. It smelled disgusting and alcoholic. She informed HQ what she’d found.

“You got sawdust over there, Seven-One?” asked Marcus, the night manager.

“There should be some in the basement hold,” replied Dave, one of the maintenance workers.

“Just spread some of that saw dust and we’ll send someone over to deal with it later,” said Marcus, who sounded distracted. “What’s this guy doing? Hey, Seven-Six, you got that guy’s license plate?”

Her part of the conversation over, Sam went back to ignoring the radio traffic and took the elevator down to the bottom floor of the structure. It had a level and half underground, besides the eight split levels above.

The basement levels were generally pretty creepy. Their ceilings were lower than the upper levels, there were no windows giving them a claustrophobic air. And worse, the lights were motion activated. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that they took a second to register, leaving you in almost pitch-blackness for longer than Sam was really comfortable, and once they came on, they had a tendency to flicker, like in a bad slasher movie. Every time she had to go down there for a car count or whatever, she found herself imagining the lights coming on, and seeing someone standing there, waiting. Today, she was too annoyed at the prospect of cleaning up a puddle of sick to be bothered, and made her way to the supply hold, which was a closet, closed off with a chain link fence. She shoved her electronic key into the lock and heard it chirp merrily.

The fluorescent lights were still flickering when she heard another chirp. It wasn’t electronic. She glanced down behind her and jumped. Mice were not unheard of in the structure. They ate garbage, and nobody really cared since they mainly stayed out of sight. But this was not a mouse.

First of all, it was green. Not lizard-green, with scales. This was booger-green, and looked like one of those disgusting oozy toys that were popular in the 90’s. The thing had smooth, glistening skin, too many legs and far, far too many eyes. And they all looked up at her. It chirped again, though she couldn’t spot any sort of a mouth or nose. “Um, hello,” she said, and immediately felt stupid. But really, it was either talk to it, or let panic overtake her, so she said, “Where did you come from?”

It chirped again, which would have been cute if it hadn’t been accompanied by a large, fang-filled mouth emerging from the slimy thing like an angry suction cup. The chirp lowered in tone as the teeth extended. Before it finished its transformation, Sam had picked up the heavy snow shovel they kept next to the bag of sawdust. She slammed it down on the creature with as much force as she could and it made a disgusting, stomach-turning squash-clang!

Gingerly, she lifted the metal shovel head and peered at what was left. The corpse was totally smashed and bright green goop was oozing out of its body like the inside of rotten melon. And the smell! It was something like burned hair mixed with old garbage. One of the thing’s arms twitched, and she threw the shovel down and ran back upstairs to the street level and into the staff bathroom. With the door securely locked behind her she got on the radio. If she hadn’t been working for Empire Parking for years, she might have gotten on her phone and called the police first, but it had been drilled into her mind, just about every weekend, that unless someone was about to die, you called management first. “Hey guys,” she said, her hand shaking as she held it to her mouth, “I need someone over here now.”

“Who is this?” demanded Marcus, who had heard her on the radio almost every day for two years.

Sam screamed with frustration. “This is Seven-One.”

“Okay. Go ahead, Seven-One.”

“There is some sort of… animal in the basement. I don’t know if it’s still there. Can someone come check it out?”

“Okay, we’ll send somebody over.” Sam listened as Marcus arranged for Dave to drive over and take a look. She also listened for customers driving down, but had no intention of leaving the bathroom until there was someone else there. She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. Her long, black hair had come out of her ponytail and her face was somber and pale under the fluorescent light. What the hell was that thing, she thought as she put her hair back up and rubbed her arms. For a second, she imagined its green, slimy remains sliding under the door crack, and shivered. The lights had probably gone out in the basement again. It was just sitting there down in the dark; a strange, hopefully dead, little thing.

Only the sound of one of Empire’s big blue maintenance trucks idling outside brought her out of that bathroom. Dave rolled down the window of the big F150 and leaned over. “Where is it?”

“Down by the hold,” she said, rubbing her arms again. “I don’t know what the hell it is, man, but it was gross.”

Dave nodded, rolled up the window and rolled the truck down into the basement. Not an easy task, considering how tight the structure was. Sam stood near the bathroom door, ready to bolt back inside, or run to help, she wasn’t sure which. Her fight and flight instincts warred with each other while she waited what seemed to be an eternity of silence on the radio. Eventually, Dave drove back up, and she got him to roll down the window while he was trying to get the gate to read the truck’s automatic pass. “Did you find it?”

“I didn’t find anything but some spilled coolant down there. No animals or anything. I put some sawdust on it for you.”

“That wasn’t coolant, that was — ” but, it was too late; the gate had popped up and he was already driving away. “ — its blood, I think…” she finished quietly.

Left alone in the silent structure, the semi-darkness of a college town on a Wednesday night surrounding her beyond it, she began to wonder if she’d really seen what she thought she’d seen. Maybe it had been just a goober of coolant? Or something non-living, at least. With the lights flickering down there like they did, and the fact that she had a tendency to be creeped out without any reason, it was plausible that her imagination had run away with her. She got out her phone and put some music on, which was not strictly allowed, and tried to calm down while she waited out the clock until two in the morning.

Read more in Cthulhu’s Car Park, coming soon to Amazon.
Available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

This one is one of my favorites. Normally, I try to be pretty objective, but I’m probably going to fan-girl all over the place for this review. Sorry, not sorry. If you enjoy dry, rather dark humor, you will love this.

Synopsis

In All Systems Red, a team of surveyors must fight for survival on an alien planet when their equipment begins to glitch, and they realize they might not have received all the intel they needed. Lucky for them, they have SecUnit, a humanoid construct programmed to protect them. Unlucky for them, their SecUnit is a rogue murderbot who wants nothing more than to be left along to watch its serials in peace.\

(Just a note, I’m going to be putting a bunch of Micheal Fassbender stuff up because thanks to Prometheus, I just kept imagining a David-like Murderbot. Enjoy!)

Meet Murderbot

I COULD HAVE BECOME a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites.

Martha Wells. All Systems Red (Kindle Locations 19–20). Tor.com.

That, plus a massive case of social anxiety, pretty much sums up our protagonist, a rogue SecUnit which refers to itself as a murderbot. Murderbot has problems dealing with humans, describing these interactions as “awkward.”

It’s not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it’s not them; it’s me. I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous.

Martha Wells. All Systems Red (Kindle Locations 129–130). Tor.com.

Murderbot is highly apathetic about pretty much everything except the entertainment feeds. Initially, it doesn’t care about much beyond its contract requirements and keeping the fact that it hacked itself a secret. Well, that, and keeping its armor on so it doesn’t have to deal with the humans directly. Murderbot is almost crippled by shyness and social anxiety, not wanting to make direct eye contact with pretty much anyone. Murderbot is very sensitive about this. Needless to stay, when the chips are down and it has to start acting like a real SecUnit, it is highly enjoyable.

Girl Meets Bot

Dr. Mensah is the leader of this particular surveyor team, and she seems to click with Murderbot pretty quickly. It’s really fun watching the two of them interact. I’d say this is one of my favorite odd couples of sci-fi. Watching Murderbot develop and change as it interacts with the rest of the crew is pretty amusing too. Not everyone is cool with it, particularly given Murderbot’s dark and tragic past, but it’s really rather heartwarming, watching it start to come out of its shell (or armor).

I told my helmet to retract so he could see my human face. If the hostile came back and bit me again, this would be a bad mistake, because I did need the organic parts of my head.

Martha Wells. All Systems Red (Kindle Locations 49–50). Tor.com.

As Murderbot and Dr. Mensah start to form a bond of trust, we learn more about the mission to the mysterious planet, and what the stakes really are.

Beware: You Will Laugh Out Loud

I was seriously cracking up sometimes, reading this novella. It’s very dry, but very funny. Murderbot has a unique sense of humor that will endear it to you quickly, though I can’t really explain the genius of the comedy that goes on.

I have small energy weapons built into both arms, but the one I went for was the big projectile weapon clamped to my back. The hostile that had just exploded up out of the ground had a really big mouth, so I felt I needed a really big gun.

Martha Wells. All Systems Red (Kindle Locations 36–38). Tor.com.

It’s sort of strange, that a book about a robot, which is supposed to be an unfeeling machine, can touch every emotion you have. A lot of it is funny, but there are some dark and very touching moments too. And the ending is great, mainly because it leads to more adventures for Murderbot in the future.

Bechdel Test: Pass
Helpful Tropes: Deadpan Snarker, Exotic Extended Marriage, Friendship Moment, Shrinking Violet
Links: Goodreads, Wikipedia, Tor, Martha Wells @ Amazon

Originally published at www.dsritter.com on July 20, 2018.

If you enjoyed this review, please check out the first chapter of my new horror novella, Cthulhu’s Car Park.

When I finally saw the first season of The Expanse on Netflix, I had not yet read Leviathan Wakes, the first book in James S.A. Corey’s space opera series of the same name. The television series ends at about the middle of that book, so once I’d powered through all of the episodes available at the time, I bought it and read it in about three days. I didn’t buy Caliban’s War until season two finally made it online.

Needlessly to say, I was pretty excited to find out what happened next, before season three came out, and I wasn’t too disappointed, but I was a little.

Caliban’s War is fun, there’s no question about that, but I feel like it’s a clumsier book than Leviathan Wakes, and that the writers definitely pulled some punches to give us a happy ending before showing us the “apocalypse.”

Here are my thoughts.

In the early chapters, there’s a bit of a conflict with Holden, where he and Naomi feel like he’s becoming more like Detective Miller. Naomi is not happy about this. She admires Holden’s better-than-good persona, and doesn’t like that he’s becoming more willing to tarnish it with bloodshed. Holden seems less upset, except when faced with the likelihood that Naomi will leave him if he continues down this particular path. She doesn’t really hold back her feelings on the subject;

“You were acting like that asshole Detective Miller, so I just acted like you used to. What I said was the kind of thing you say when you’re not in a hurry to wave your gun around.”
Corey, James S. A. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 120). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

When Holden tells her he thinks Fred Johnson, the leader of the OPA, has unleashed the protomolecule on Ganymede, she decides she’s had enough, kicks him out of her bunk and goes to stay with a friend when they reach Tycho. She’s so against this change in Holden that she even talks about quitting the crew.

“If that’s who you are now, you need to drop me off somewhere. I can’t go with you anymore,” she said. “I’m out.”
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 244). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

That’s how seriously she takes this issue. And Naomi leaving the crew would pretty much be the end of the Roci’s adventures as we know it. She does the jobs of at least three crew members. I was actually pretty darn excited about this subplot. It presented a fun emotional conflict for Holden, who is sometimes a golden boy of justice to the point that it gets annoying. Plus, frankly, I liked Miller a lot more than Holden, because he seemed more human and interesting. After spending a year blowing up pirates for the OPA, and after what he’d seen on Eros, it was understandable that Holden might be come a little more dark and cynical.

Unfortunately, halfway through the book, just after Holden confronts Fred Johnson with his suspicions about what happened on Ganymede, Johnson fires him and this fun little subplot just seems to disappear. Holden apologizes to Naomi and boom, almost all is forgiven. Tension is created and then evaporates, with seemingly no pay off. Until we get to the very end of the book. During the climax, Holden pulls a truly Miller-esque play, where he pretty much tells Admiral Nguyen, the last overt baddy in the book, that he’s either going to give up the codes to track the monster-laden pods that were just launched toward Mars out of the goodness of his heart, or he’s going to die and give them up. As soon as it seems like Nguyen is going to continue to try to bargain, Holden blows him away. When I read that, I was totally stoked. Surely, this action would create a giant, painful rift between Naomi and Holden, leaving Holden having to question himself and maybe even learn to accept that not everything he’s going to have to do is always going to be okay. Killing Nguyen is actually worse than Miller killing Dresden, the head of Protogen, since Dresden had been built up as this charismatic, powerful mastermind, who pretty much has to be put down, whereas Nguyen just seems like a tool. You’d think this would be a major issue, but;

“No,” Naomi said, her voice sad. “That bastard deserved to die. And I know you’ll feel like shit about it later. That’s good enough for me.”
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 543). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

Talk about a disappointing reaction. And even worse, it’s not brought up again. Holden pretty much gets to go straight to the victory party without having to think about murdering a guy. Maybe it’ll come up in the next book. I hope it does. Otherwise, what a waste of a great internal conflict.

New Characters

Bobbie

Caliban’s War introduces some new characters, namely Bobbie, Prax and Avasarala. There are a number of others, but they don’t get their own POV chapters, so I’m ignoring them for now.

Bobbie Draper is a Gunnery Sergeant in the Martian marines. She goes through some seriously traumatic stuff at the beginning of the novel, and spends the rest of it questioning herself and her role in the current conflict and the world in which it exists. And yet, I find her almost boring. She seems to exist solely as someone for Avasarala to foil off of. She is there to show the reactions of someone sane in Avasarala’s crazy world of politics, which is kind of funny, since the novel tells us she’s suffering from PTSD. By the way, this is initially illustrated by obsessively maintaining her power armor during her trip to Earth. Maintaining weaponry and her own armor is shown twice otherwise, the armor in a mirrored scene where she’s come to accept that trauma and the possibility that she might die at the hands of the same monster that killed her platoon. I’ll be the first to admit that I could have easily missed other hints of her mental trauma, not knowing much about PTSD, but if I did, then so did many, many other people. We don’t really see Bobbie develop relationships much outside of the one she has with Avasarala. Alex and Amos are both attracted to her, and she has a home planet and marine service in common with Alex, but most of their chemistry seems to occur “off screen” with the reader only being told about it, which I think definitely goes toward muting Bobbie as a memorable character.

Don’t get me wrong, she has some good moments, like the first time she goes outside on Earth and has a panic attack because she’s never gone out without a suit before.

Bobbie stood outside, eyes closed, breathing until she heard Chuck let the door close behind her. Now she was committed. Turning around and asking Chuck to let her back in would be admitting defeat. He’d clearly done some time in the UNMC, and she wasn’t going to look weak in front of the competition.
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 162). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

But yeah, aside from the occasional gem, Bobbie stands in for the everyman in the face of the world of politics, a Watson for Avasala’s Sherlock to explain her more subtle moves to. She does have her own redemption arc of a kind, which I’ll discuss a bit more coming up.

Prax

Praxidike Meng is sort of the catalyst for this whole plot. His daughter, Mei, is stolen during the fall of Ganymede. Starving, desperate, he turns to Holden for help.

It becomes evident pretty quickly that the biggest things about Prax are that he is a scientist, and loves his daughter. Getting her back is pretty much the only thing keeping him alive as he wastes away and society crumbles around him. He creates a logical system and a schedule of places to look for her and does so every day, despite this yielding no results. This logic and obsession with data shows itself when Prax is faced with the protomolecule as well.

Prax had watched [footage of Eros] too, as had everyone on his team. For him, it had been a puzzle. The drive to apply the logic of conventional biology to the effects of the protomolecule had been overwhelming and, for the most part, fruitless.
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 293). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

As is to be expected with any character interested in acute observation these days, Prax is probably on the autism spectrum and really doesn’t relate to others well. He doesn’t get social situations, sometimes with catastrophic results.

It was the untaught etiquette of received wisdom. You yelled, you threatened, you cocked your gun, and then people talked. “Where’s my little girl!” he yelled. He cocked his pistol. The reaction was almost immediate: a sharp, stuttering report like a high-pressure valve failing, but much louder.
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 177). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

He seems to get along best with Amos, who, of all the crew, seems to sympathize and care about the outcome of the situation the most. The difference in their personalities makes for some really entertaining exchanges, the best one happening after Prax’s ex-wife comes out on a broadcast saying that he was abusive and a child molester. Overall, I found Prax equal parts annoying and interesting. Watching him pick something apart logically and pragmatically was almost always fun, but his ineptitude with others can be a pain. Sometimes, I think the writers made him awkward just to hammer it home that he is atypical and doesn’t interact with people well. It sort of feels like they saw how much people like House, or Sherlock and wanted to include a spectrum character. It also helps them avoid having their other characters do more work to figure out things about the protomolecule.

Avasarala

Oh man, I was so excited about Avasarala. She is one of my favorite characters in the show, and I was a bit disappointed to discover that she isn’t in Leviathan Wakes at all.

The reason I like her so much is probably because she is a devious wall-to-wall bad ass who doesn’t take shit from anyone, but melts at the hands of her grandkids. Occasionally, “fuck” is her expression of choice every other word.

Despite her position as undersecretary, she is a major game player. In the show, she plays the role of detective, finding out about what’s really going on with Jules Mao and unearthing Holden’s past to try to understand his motives better. In Caliban’s War, she’s charged with keeping an eye on Venus where the protomolecule is busy building something, and occupied with discovering what the heck is going on with the war that broke out on Ganymede and who stands to profit from it. A stark difference between the show and the book is that Avasarala in the book does not torture a Belter for information, nor does she ever talk or think about doing something similar. Keeping kids from dying is actually her major motivation.

And more than that, she hated that her failure was going to mean more war, more violence, more children dying. That was the price for screwing up. More dead children.

So she wouldn’t screw up anymore.

Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 384). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

Generally, I found her a bit less morally ambiguous than the Avasarala in the show, which isn’t good or bad, really. Over the course of the book, I’d say the biggest change that she undergoes is that she admits she can be wrong, which seems like something she almost never does.

I got a bit disappointed with her when she joined the crew on the Rocinante and quickly lost some of her bite toward the middle of the last act. It’s understandable considering she’s in an environment that is pretty alien to her, a politician in the middle of what amounts to a dogfight, but her larger than life confidence and self-assurance is part of what makes her such a great character. During the action, she’s little more than a radio operator, with little by way of intelligence to offer. She sort of gets sidelined almost as soon as she joins the rest of the team.

I’ll be interested to see what kind of role she’s going to play in the next few books. Hopefully more of one than Fred Johnson, who appears in only one scene in this one.

Amos Burton

Amos Burton has to be my second favorite character, next to Avasarala. His morality and the choices he makes are so interesting to me, like how serial killers are interesting. On the one hand, he wants to help Prax and save these stolen kids, but on the other hand, he’d have no qualms sucking someone out of an airlock just because Holden or Naomi asked him to.

In Leviathan Wakes, Amos is a guard dog in the shape of a person. Toward the end, we see him warming up to Holden, but really don’t know much about him. He’s an anomaly. Fairly early on in Caliban’s War, he lets us in on a bit of his back story, namely hinting that he’s the child of a prostitute who was looking at a life of sexual abuse before he hopped a ship and went to space. In the show, it’s indicated that he knows about this type of life, whereas the book is fairly clear that he lived this type of life.

The mechanic, Amos Burton. Implicated in several murders, indicted, never tried. Took an elective vasectomy the day he was legally old enough to do so.
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 493). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

Of all the main characters, I feel like Amos revealed the most about himself in this book. We learn an interesting tidbit or two about Naomi and the reproductive problems Belters tend to have, but that’s about it. Poor Alex hardly gets any attention at all this time around.

Theme

Okay, let’s talk about themes. As with Leviathan Wakes, one of the major themes here is the natures of good and evil as they relate to right and wrong or lawfulness and unlawfulness.

Holden wants to be good, and considers himself good, but sometimes his actions, such as his broadcasts in Leviathan Wakes and even his broadcast in Caliban’s War have dire consequences for innocent people; in this case, his broadcast of what happened to Prax’s daughter pretty much turns what’s left of Ganymede into a proverbial meat grinder when those still there panic and riot. This, by the way, is pretty much never acknowledged by Holden, and obviously, he hasn’t learned his lesson from the last novel.

Avasarala thinks Holden is an idiot because he consistently fails to think these sorts of actions through. He is an advocate of the freedom of information, but doesn’t seem to realize what the release of this information does. He pretty much single-handedly started a war between Mars and Earth the year before. But as long as he works within his own standards of morality, does what he believes is right with little compromise, he feels no guilt. Avasarala on the other hand, is painfully aware of her mistakes and missteps and blames herself even when things aren’t fully her fault.

She could practically see Arjun, the gentle sorrow in his eyes. It isn’t all your responsibility, he would say.
“It’s everyone’s fucking responsibility,” she said out loud. “But I’m the one who’s taking it seriously.”
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 384). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

Holden straight up murdering Admiral Nguyen toward the end of the novel is forgiven because Holden is on the side of good, full of his golden-boy righteousness. It’s never brought up. There is no trial. I’m guessing it’s assumed that Nguyen goes down with the ship when it self-destructs, but after he gets a pass from Naomi, getting his hands dirty, finally going Miller, doesn’t seem to bother Holden at all. So, is he still good? Is he still the righteous, naive hero? I think yes, and no, but I also think I’ll have to read the next book to see how this change is handled (if it is properly at all).

A theme that was a bit more prevalent in the last novel, which has shifted a bit here, is the idea of governments and their people in opposition. In Leviathan Wakes, it’s pretty much Holden verses the solar system, and Miller’s arc shows us how hard those living in the outer planets have it when dealing with Mars and Earth. This time around, the OPA is starting to be acknowledged as a fledgling government, one that Holden works for. Meanwhile, a shooting war starts on Ganymede, where a massive amount of the solar system’s food is grown and where most of those living in the outer system go to have their babies. It’s probably the most important moon, next to Luna, and nobody condemns Earth or Mars for it. The only one doing anything to really work against any government entity is Avasarala, and she’s mainly trying to outplay Errinwright, who’s directly involved with the new Protogen.

General Thoughts

Moving on to the actual writing and plot, I can’t tell if the authors are getting too cocky after their first book, or panicking in some places. Example:

And he’d never be able to adequately explain the certainty he felt that this lost little girl was at the center of everything that had happened on Ganymede. “I think this lost little girl is at the center of everything that’s happened on Ganymede,” he said with a shrug.
Corey, James S. A.. Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) (p. 238). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

That quote annoys the heck out of me, and this isn’t the only time they pull this kind of lame joke, which makes it even worse. I feel like they thought they’d learned a new trick and liked it so much they had to do it something like three times in the novel, but it just doesn’t work for me. The first book wasn’t funny. It was amusing, particularly when Holden and Miller are actually in each other’s presence, plus Amos and Alex provide some lighter moments, but on his own, Holden didn’t strike me as having much of a sense of humor. It’s part of his golden-boy ultra heroic persona that he takes the fate of the solar system and most of the time, himself very seriously. If anything Avasarala, Bobbie, Alex and Amos banter enough that the authors could have easily avoided cheap jokes like that.

As for the plot, it follows the same premise as the first book; a missing daughter case involving the protomolecule. It definitely goes in different directions, and Prax is certainly no Jules Mao. It’s also not nearly as shocking.

Imagining the inhabitants of Eros, broken down into guts and body parts rolling around on their own was chilling. The protomolecule soldiers aren’t really as visceral, though it is really messed up that they’re made out of immune-deficient children.

The fact that proto-soldiers are made out of the kids from Ganymede could have made for some decent emotion fuel, but aside from Prax, we only see one other parent freaking out about their kid’s disappearance, and we never see a reaction when Prax tells Basia his son is dead. And Basia’s son, Katoa, is not the only dead kid. For every monster, there’s one dead kid. At the end of the book, I think only eight kids are rescued altogether.

There’s no mourning, there are no tearful reunions, beside Prax’s. Once the kids are rescued, aside from a mention that their parents are being looked for, they pretty much disappear.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Leviathan Wakes was a stronger novel, with tighter writing, albeit with a slightly more simple plot. This isn’t very
surprising, there’s a strategy among writers pitching series to polish the utter heck out of the first novel, which can result in weaker work later in the series. This doesn’t mean the other books the writers have finished won’t top the first, but Caliban’s War doesn’t seem quite there. It’s still good, it’s fun, and the ending is awesome, hopefully setting us up for some incredibly epic adventures in the next book.

Other Useful Information:

Bechdel Test: Pass
Helpful Tropes: Adult Fear, Cliffhanger, Colonized Solar System, Fantastic Racism, Powered Armor, Sir Swears-a-lot, Space Battle, Sufficiently Advanced Alien
Links: Goodreads, Wikipedia

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Originally published at www.dsritter.com.

As I walk through Plaza Caracol, I’m struck by how incredibly empty it is. Most of the shops gone, replaced with EN RENTA signs and at first I see no other people, beside a lone janitor mopping the steps. The quiet is strange, library-like. I flash back to photos I saw a long time ago, of a mall in Cancun that was full of sea water and fish, destroyed during hurricane Wilma. It had been left to rot for a long time, but I think it’s gone now.

I turn a corner and look over a banister and see the first sign of life, a souvenir shop, selling the same depressing, mass-produced schlock you can find in just about every souvenir stand in Cancun. It’s obvious there haven’t been any kind of customers in a while; the workers mill around talking to each other, with no eye out for tourists.

As I continue to explore, I think of a dying coral reef. What once had been home to a number of different businesses and a host of activity is now a nearly lifeless husk. Only Starbucks and the generic souvenir shop, the bottom feeders, remain. This thought is only reinforced by the fact that most of the open space has been turned into an art gallery, full of rather uninspired paintings of scenery or abstracts. There is very little movement or interest here, only stillness.

My steps echo in the cavernous main plaza and for a moment, I think of what a windfall a mall would be in the post-apocalypse. It was easy to imagine families dividing up the space, turning storefronts into homes. I could see the smoke from cooking fires escaping through a broken sky light, plants growing up through cracks in the foundation, vines winding their way around banisters. Kids would play in the puddles where the rain leaked in, and mothers, speaking a language that doesn’t exist yet, would call them in to eat.

Just as quickly as the reverie had come, it was gone.

Hurricanes have done their damage to the community over the years, and I was standing right in the middle of an economic scar left behind. It may be a while before the area fully recovers, though you can see it happening. New businesses open, and every winter and spring the hotels and bars and streets are full of rich, drunken kids making fools of themselves.

When I think of Puerto Rico, it breaks my heart. Hurricane Wilma, the strongest category five storm up until 2015, hit the Yucatan Peninsula twelve years ago. If Cancun, with its strong tourist economy and support from the Mexican government is still coming back, how will they?

Thoughts on a Dying Mall was originally published in Lit Up on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On the summer breeze
Comes the scent of sweet blossoms,
Envious of you.

Natsumi’s Haiku was originally published in Lit Up on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Beauty is bodies in motion.

With the liquid movement of muscles,
Our generation is spreading its wings.

We don’t tear down your walls;
We spring and scramble over.
We leap like wild things
Over your obstacles, your rules.

Freedom is personified.

Parkour was originally published in the Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The light bulbs in the alley are gone or broken but I still recognize it. We’re in the neighborhood where I grew up. It’s a broken down old slum these days, full to the rafters with people just trying to get by.

One of the men grabs my arm, urging me forward. I do as I’m told. There are three of us. I’m the only one not wearing a ski mask. The others look over their shoulders, toward the jagged city skyline, but I only look ahead.

There is a man under a pile of newspapers, huddled in the lee of the building. I can’t tell if he’s living or dead. Nobody bothers to check as we climb the rickety staircase beside him.

The building is dark, one of many in the slums with its power cut. We feel our way down a long hallway until a flicker of light leads us into an abandoned apartment. The men prod me and I step inside. With only the nubs of candles burning, the entry is full of shadows and more people in masks. I look across the room and freeze. On the wall opposite the door, someone has hung a life-sized poster of the Hero, arms crossed in a pose of stern justice. His cold blue eyes bore into me. People stare at me as I try to collect myself, but nobody says anything.

There’s a tension, as though everyone is waiting for something to happen. I don’t know who these people are, but it’s not hard to guess what they might want from me. I’ve seen groups like this before. They rarely last, even as long as a month. Though I’ve never heard of them doing anything this bold or reckless. They don’t know me, they only know who I am. I patiently wait for someone to speak and try not to make eye contact with the poster.

One of the masked people, who had been leaning over a table covered in notes and reports, straightens up and approaches me. “We’ve been watching you for a while. I’d like to think we can trust you, at least to an extent.” she says. Her voice has a dangerous edge to it, but there is also something familiar there. “I should probably tell you that there are more of us, and if you betray us, you’re going to be very, very sorry.”

I nod. She continues. “We have a singular purpose. And it seems you are going to be the instrument of that purpose. Trust is a mutual thing, and I think we could both use some.” She removes her ski mask, revealing a face I’ve known since childhood. Her name is Andrea Dahlmer and she’d been on the six o’clock news when I had been about seven. I remember the crush I’d had on her. She’d visited the orphanage a couple times a year, sometimes with the Hero and sometimes by herself. She always seemed a little sadder when she’d come to see us alone. I used to think it was because she missed him. I haven’t thought that in a long time.

She looks older now, and tired. The sheen of the bright lights and the camera have withered away beneath the hardships of reality. I can tell from the look in her eyes that there are a million things she wants to know and say, but her jaw is set. Emotions flicker for a moment and then are hidden away again.

I already know what she’s going to ask even before she speaks, and what my answer will be.

The mansion was designed to intimidate. It had belonged to Gerald Krieger, a chemical arms developer who had, briefly, been bent on holding the city for ransom.

There are wide marble columns adorning the front entrance, an impressively long paved drive flanked by stone statues depicting Greek and Roman champions and soldiers. The bushes flanking the drive are spiky, full of prickers. There are no flowers planted, but rolling, green lawns. There is a security booth beside the heavy electronic gate that leads to the drive, but nobody has manned it since the previous owner was evicted.

The news coverage after the fight had been so graphic it had been censored. The pristine lawn had been littered with bodies. With pieces of bodies. I was never sure which pieces had been the security guard. I tried not to think about it.

As I pass the booth on my way up to the house, I wonder if, when he had gotten up that morning, he’d had even an inkling that that day would be his last.

I walk along the drive and cut to the left, going behind the house to the servant’s entrance, which leads to the kitchen. Cook is there, busily preparing ingredients for future meals. I call her, as I have called them all, Cook. Sadly, they never seem to last very long, only a few months. She nods at me and asks how my bi-weekly day off fared.

“It was productive,” I say, as I hang my hat and coat in the back hall closet. My eye catches the hat of the man who had had my job before and I feel queasy for a second.

The house is quiet as I ascend the back staircase to my bedroom and I breathe a sigh of relief. In my room, everything is where it should be. This takes a little of the fear away, but it never goes completely. Unlike a few of my colleagues, I have never been stupid enough to feel too secure in my position. I’ve never been stupid enough to feel secure in anything.

It’s late, so I prepare for bed. I remove my clothes and fold them carefully. I feel the weight in the pocket of my pants, but put them in the drawer anyway. As I try to fall asleep later, I force myself to stop thinking about it. Lists of duties and things to check up on fill my thoughts, as they do almost every night and soon, I’m drifting off.

In the dream, I’m seven again, riding in the back of my father’s blue Ford. My mother is sitting up front in a nice dress with her hair done. I can’t help but think how beautiful she looks. My father has his hair brushed back and is wearing his best brown suit. He smells like coffee and cologne. I don’t know where we’re going, they don’t say. The neighborhood around us is clean and full of life. A woman walks her two tiny dogs and some children my age are playing baseball in the park. My parents seem to be in a very good mood. They just keep smiling at each other and me and that makes me start smiling. Everything is fine, and we’re probably going to a nice dinner somewhere.

Two men plummet out of the sky and shatter the pavement a few cars ahead of us. Traffic screeches to a halt as the force of what happened hits it. One of the men is wearing the green and purple uniform of Dr. Extraordinary, the other is the Hero, whose eyes are as blue as arctic ice. For a moment my heart races: the Hero is my favorite. I remember the old book of newspaper clippings under my bed and lament the fact that I don’t have it with me for him to autograph.

I strain my neck trying to see him over the cars in front of us. He is landing hammer blows, left and right, and Dr. Extraordinary can do nothing to block them. The doctor, seemingly cornered, picks up a cab and holds it above his head. He swings it at the Hero and lets it go. Things seem to slow as it flies through the air. The cabby’s face is a portrait of shock and horror, floating toward us, upside down. My mother reaches back in slow motion, scrambling to shield me from what is coming. My father flinches helplessly in the driver’s seat. The Hero’s eyes and mine meet for a second before the front bumper crashes through the windshield of the Ford.

I wake up in a cold sweat . I’ve had the same dream a couple times a week since I’d gone to the orphanage, though never with this sort of intense clarity. I shiver a little as I get out of bed, completely awake. The sun is not up yet, and I feel my way to the little sink in the corner of my room. I look at myself in the small mirror above it and trace the long scar on the side of my face with my eyes. It’s a pale, puckered line now; a ghost of a past no one seems to remember but me.

As I descend the stairs to make sure everything is prepared for breakfast, I feel the weight in my pocket against my leg. A constant reminder of what my future will inevitably hold.

The household is small, only two, but the formal dining room is used for almost every meal. Today, Ellen sits alone, a tiny figure at the center of a table built for twelve. She’s eating oatmeal with bananas and reading a modern history textbook I’m certain I couldn’t have tackled when I was thirteen. She looks up as I walk in and I bite my tongue, trying not to tell her what I’m afraid is about to happen. Ellen is a sweet girl, caught up in things I can’t imagine she fully understands. I smile at her as I sit down in front of a pile of the household accounts a few seats down, like I do every morning. In the back of my mind, I wonder what I will do tomorrow. Or if I’ll be able to do anything at all.

The big double doors at the end of the dinning room open and I get to my feet as my employer comes in. He’s a large man, muscular, tall, and trim. What some might consider perfect. His hair is expertly styled, and I know for a fact he gets a manicure every week. He is rich, he is powerful, he is formidable. The name he goes by is Herman Carlson. And right now, he’s ruling the world. I call him Sir.

I don’t meet his eyes, being subservient. “Good morning, Sir,” I say bowing.He barely glances over at me as he sits down at the end of the table. He remembers me from yesterday and the day before, even the day I was hired as his personal assistant, but not as the bloody little boy he pulled out of a ruined car once.

“Good morning,” he says, more to his daughter than to me. She nods, engrossed in her modern history. I wonder what she’s thinking about as she reads: her father’s part in the world as she knows it? How much stronger he grew with every foe he overcame until there were no more? Or is she thinking about what happens to a man left with immense power, and no one to check him in how he uses it? It’s funny to realize I lived through what is written there; the days before the fall.

I pour coffee with milk and sugar and place a cup in front of him. “Will you be having breakfast, Sir?”

He nods and I worry he might know something. I try to push this from my mind as I walk to the kitchen. There is a tray waiting with scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon cooked to perfection and half of a grapefruit. Cook nods at me, nervous, sweating. Not at all like she was yesterday. The kitchen staff is jittery, as though a bomb is being disarmed in the next room. I understand: one chip of eggshell on that plate, no matter how small, and it’s all over.

I carry the tray like almost every morning, but today, I pause in the little back hall and reach into my pocket. The syringe contains a clear orange liquid. My blood turns to ice in my veins as I stare at it. For a moment, I’m terrified I can’t do it. With trembling hands, I remove the cap and inject the grapefruit in the fleshy part, where a small puncture won’t be noticed. The liquid is odorless and I can only hope the sour-bitter taste of the fruit will be strong enough to cover any strange flavors.

I set the tray before my master and go back to my place. For the first time, I find it impossible to balance spread sheets, to even concentrate. I keep glancing over, waiting for him to pick up his spoon. Guilt is rising in me like bile. Part of me that loves this man for who he was aches with the need to save him, but I shouldn’t. Can’t. It feels like sickness inside.

Ellen and her father have not been getting along for about a week though I can’t say I know why. This morning he stares ahead as he eats his meal in silence and she does everything she can not to look at him. I’m caught between two on-coming storm fronts.

He wipes his mouth with his napkin and my heart leaps into my throat: he’s going to get up. He’s not going to eat the grapefruit! I freeze for a second, waiting for him to rise, but he doesn’t. He clears his throat, looks as though he’s about to say something, but Ellen continues to ignore him. He seems to change his mind. I shuffle papers as he picks up his spoon and sinks it into the flesh of the grapefruit. A little juice squirts out, but he ignores this as he pries the fruit away from the peel and puts it in his mouth. I hold my breath. For a moment, he doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong.

But only for a moment.

There’s a sudden change in the air, as though someone has opened a gigantic oven and we are caught in the blast of heat. Ellen looks up from her book and her expression contorts with fear. Her father’s, no, the Hero’s eyes glow an icy blue I haven’t forgotten since that day sixteen years ago. His face is breaking out in red-orange blotches, and he claws at it as though it’s on fire, screaming in pain. A wave of force bursts from him, pushing us back in our chairs and shattering the floor to ceiling windows. I try to usher Ellen out of the room, but he’s behind me, grabbing my shoulder in his vice-like grip. I’ve known this man to crush people’s skulls like egg shell, to fell an entire crowd with the power of his stare.

He squeezes as he lifts me into the air and I hear bones crack. A sheer need to survive dulls the pain and I struggle, but it’s no use. He throws me across the room and for a second I am flying, until I crash into the ancient Chinese vase that sits beside the door. The vase shatters as we collide and when I come back to myself I’m wet with warm, sticky blood. Ellen kneels over me. There is absolute terror in her face. Over her shoulder, I see her father losing control. His whole body is breaking out in blotches and his face twists with pain. When he opens his eyes, blue lasers shoot from them, burning the ceiling and setting the carpet on fire. The girl sobs. “He’s lost his mind.”

Inclined to agree with her, I try to get up, but can’t seem to coordinate it. My body is too broken. “Run,” I tell her, not taking my eyes off of the destruction behind her. She shakes her head. She won’t go unless I go with her. “Run!”

Her father seems to notice us again and trudges in our direction, unbalanced and blinded with pain. His skin is blistering and glowing as though he is burning on the inside. The room is filling with smoke as the drapes catch and the fire climbs toward the ceiling. There are no words anymore, just animal-like screaming. Ellen grabs me and holds me tightly and I do my best to shield her. Her father looms over us as orange as the flames that consume the mansion.

This man has ruled the world with an iron fist. This great and terrible god-like being, will kill us. My consciousness is slipping.

He explodes outward, like a star. We are surrounded by bright, white-hot light, though we do not burn, protected by some sort of bubble. I look at Ellen who has her eyes clamped shut, deep in concentration. Outside of our little force field, the room seems to warp and melt from the heat of the explosion until there is nothing left but a gigantic, charred hole where the Hero once stood.

As the smoke of the wreckage rises, I feel myself getting colder. “Don’t tell them,” I say. It comes out more quiet than I would like, but I can’t really breathe anymore.
She looks at me, her eyes full of questions. “Don’t tell them,” I repeat. “Don’t tell them.”

Ambulances and fire trucks come, they put me on a stretcher and give me oxygen. The charred remains of Cook and the rest of the staff are taken away in the coroner’s van. Ellen, miraculously unhurt, rides with me to the hospital. Her eyes are puffy, like she’s been crying and I realize I’ve been blacking out. I ask her if she’s seen Miss Dahlmer. Her eyes light up, despite her tears. “Mom? I thought she was dead…”

My heart beats strangely, slows down. As my vision darkens and falters, Ellen holds my hand and I wonder what will happen to her now. Her eyes meet mine and she stares, like she’s looking for something. For a second, there is understanding, but deeper, wider, like the ocean.

Then, nothing.

The Hero was originally published in Fiction Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.