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Loss and Attempted Redemption: The Siren, the Song, and the Spy by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

The Siren, the Song, and the Spy, the companion novel to Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s first book in this fantasy world, The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, is about loss and attempted redemption, about the atrocities wrought by empires, and about the cyclical horrors that humanity inflicts on itself and the environment.

It is also—buffered by Tokuda-Hall’s emotive prose—a compelling tale about a handful of characters trying to topple a brutal, oppressive empire while trying to stay alive. The book is told from multiple points of view, but the four main ones are Genevieve, a young woman indoctrinated by the Empire who realizes that the force she thought was just for most of her life is, in fact, the opposite; Koa and Kaia, siblings of the Wariuta people, islanders with hyena familiars who have yet to be yoked by the Empire; and Alfie, a young man who is aiding the pirates rebelling against the Empire by working undercover in the palace.

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All You Need Is Love: Remy Nakamura’s “Wet Dreams in R’lyeh”

Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches.

This week, we cover Remy Nakamura’s “Wet Dreams in R’lyeh,” first published in Frances Lu Pai Ippolito and Mark Teppo’s 2023 The Cozy Cosmic anthology. It’s a fun, fast read—go pick it up! Spoilers ahead.

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Series: Reading the Weird

Our Flag Means Death’s Vico Ortiz Shares Jim’s Fear of a Certain Haunted Jacket

The second season of Our Flag Means Death ended a month ago, and if you’re caught up, you know that the found family of pirates had quite a journey over the course of its eight episodes.

One of those pirates is Jim, played by Vico Ortiz. Ortiz’s character is no longer simply the revenge-focused assassin we met in the first season—they’ve had the opportunity to explore different sides of themselves. “Jim has this opportunity to explore who they are finally, outside of their own individual revenge identity,” Ortiz told me in a recent interview. “They get to engage more emotionally with the crew and be like, ‘Who am I aside from knives? Who am I outside of killing?’”

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A Zelda Fan Created a Short Godzilla Movie in Tears of the Kingdom

In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, there’s basic-level building stuff, which the game makes you do: Make a cart! Make a sled! Make a really really really long bridge so you don’t have to figure out the Fire Temple!

But then there is truly next-level stuff, from creating Pacific Rim or Apocalypse Now homages to terrifyingly creative ways to kill bokoblins and lynels to… creating a whole short film featuring an impressively designed Godzilla-like behemoth.

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Five Books Featuring Sudden, Unexpected Calamities That Change Everything

Every morning, many humans wake up to the soothing sound of songbirds amidst verdant forests, confident that another sixteen hours of Earthly paradise await before returning to perfect, untroubled sleep. But what if that weren’t true? What if something unpleasant, perhaps even catastrophic, were waiting? Terrible news for the people about to have a very bad day. Excellent news for readers… as these five books prove.

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Stephen R. Lawhead’s Robin Hood Books Have Been Optioned for Film and Television

The next semi-historical semi-mythological epic may be on its way. Variety reports that filmmaker Brent Ryan Green has picked up the film and television rights to Stephen R. Lawhead’s King Raven trilogy—three books that invent “a historically plausible origin story for Robin Hood,” setting the outlaw’s story in Wales in the 11th century.

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Because Nobody Demanded It… — R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned

From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through. Today he’s covering the rather inexplicable sequel/prequel to R.I.P.D., R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned.

The 2013 adaptation of Peter Lenkov, Lucas Marangon, & Randy Emberlin’s 2001 comic book R.I.P.D. tanked like a big giant tanking thing, despite having an impressive cast (Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary Louise Parker). However, in 2011, while the movie was being filmed, Dark Horse Comics put out a second R.I.P.D. miniseries, Rise of the Damned by Jeremy Barlow & Tony Parker, that was an extended flashback to Roy Pulsipher’s first mission for the Rest In Peace Department in the nineteenth century.

For reasons passing understanding, a loose adaptation of that miniseries was released as a direct-to-home-video film in 2022.

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Series: 4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch

A User’s Guide to Michael Swanwick: Short Fiction, Novels, and Beyond

In the film Being John Malkovich (1999) it becomes possible to inhabit the actor’s mind by going up to the 7½th floor of the Mertin-Flemmer Building, opening a small hidden door and crawling through a tunnel. Fortunately for me, the wonders of modern video calling made it much easier to pick Michael Swanwick’s brain.

Over the course of about a year and a half, I asked him endless questions about his fiction, his impressions of the genre and its key players, and his thoughts on writing. With saintly patience and notebooks brimming with useful information, he indulged me as I proceeded to work my way through all of his short stories in chronological order. I hope that the result of our conversations, Being Michael Swanwick, will not only act as a guide to a fantastic career, but also be of interest to those curious about genre history and the craft of storytelling.

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Revealing Navigational Entanglements, a Romantic, Found-Family Space Opera From Author Aliette de Bodard

Award-winning author of The Red Scholar’s Wake, Aliette de Bodard, comes for your heart with a compelling tale of love, duty, and found-family in an exciting new space opera that brings xianxia-style martial arts to the stars…

We’re thrilled to share the cover of Aliette de Bodard’s Navigational Entanglements, a romantic, found-family space opera arriving July 30, 2024 from Tordotcom Publishing.

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