The man scowled, but Zogrusz sensed a slight softening in his mood.

“I understand, stranger. I remember my first time in this room, when I felt His presence looming over me. But you cannot so blithely stroke the visage of our dread lord! Such disrespect might summon His wrath, and all of Xochintl would suffer.”

“What delightful nonsense!” Zogrusz exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Did you make it up yourself?”

Zogrusz is an Eldrich Horror, a being from beyond time and space. But… a nice one? That just wants to do the right thing?

The book follows Zog and the quasi-Earth (it’s never entirely clear) he settles on through thousands of years (mostly with large time jumps) and the rise and fall of various religions up to (and through) and approaching cosmic horror style end of the world.

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We’ve had plenty of chances in Skinwalker and Blood Cross to get used to the Vampires, Witches, and … well Jane and Beast of the world. We’ve even barely started to scratch the surface for how Vampires work and how they came to be.

So of course things have to get complicated.

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The hand returns…

No, not that Hand. Logan’s hand. The one with the adamantium claws. I’ve actually enjoyed seeing him with the mismatched claws for a few volumes now.

Bit of a bummer, other than that. More spinning wheels with nowhere to go for Old Man Logan.

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The idea of a singular hero and a manifest destiny just makes us lazy. There is no destiny. There is choice, there is action, and any other narrative perpetuates a myth that someone else out there will fix our problems with a magic sword and a blessing from the gods.

Rosewater has a fascinating premise. Take the world a half century in the future. Most things are the same, but there’s a bit more tech floating around, mostly. Introduce a massive alien organism that lands in London and ends up burrowing it’s way to Nigeria. From that alien blob, fill the atmosphere with alien microorganisms/cells that create their own xenosphere, enabling (among other things) psychic powers in some very small proportion of the population.

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First half: Kingpin has gone all respectable! On the surface. Again.

It’s impressive that keeps working.

Bullseye is a weird character. Logan’s eye is not healing. And that’s about it

Second half: An Old Geezer and some Z-list X-Men defend the school from… dating site scams?

Cute. But also nothing special.

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“It is nearly impossibly to be sad when eating a blueberry muffin. I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific fact.”

I need to read more T. Kingfisher. Nettle & Bone was delightful and, if anything, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is even better!

In a nutshell, we have a world with a specialized sorts of wizards. You might be able to cast lightning bolts… or you might have the power to animate and converse with dead horses. Or you might even have magical powers over… bread!

It’s such a delightful idea and Kingfisher manages to do all sorts of fun things with it. Some obvious (Mongo eat your gingerbread heart out), some less so (Bob the sourdough starter; so delightful).

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The hand! Samurai! Resurrection!

That’s a hot mess of a story—although some of that is probably not really having the background for who a lot of these people are. So it goes.

It was nice actually (sort of) seeing Logan deal with the slower healing factor. I feel like though most of this we’ve heard of it, but no real problems.

Fun enough read. Onward!

Well that was a delightful collection of shorts.

I don’t often read anthologies, but perhaps I should read more. I do love me some epic fantasy (I’ve read the entire The Wheel of Time half a dozen times now…), but there’s just something about a story that builds up quickly, gets to the point, and doesn’t stick around.

I think of the 8, I only bounced off 1 (which was actually a fine story, I just couldn’t suspend disbelief enough for the premise) and 1 was a bit meh, just for how short it was. 6 of 8 I absolutely loved though.

Absolutely worth a read.

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“Hold on a minute,” Lucky said. So far, the stories weren’t making things any clearer. “I don’t get it. Did someone give us the spoons?”

“Well, yes, in a manner of speaking,” Meena said.

“But I found mine. You both found yours.”

“In a secret tunnel off your basement?” Lettie replied. “Really? Hanging from a spider web in a graveyard on a specific day? At the bottom of a box of donated books? Statistically improbable.”

“Never mind probability, what about the laws of nature? The world cannot be just a series of randoms,” Freya chimed in. “Might as well believe in some beardo in the sky.”

It’s a book about spoons.

And witches, of course.

“Well, I know there are Wiccans, right? Like a religion?” No one gave her any indication she was on the right path, so she kept talking. “And there are Halloween witches—like vampires and demons and all that. And I know about the bullshit witch trials. Thousands of women burned at the stake for being smart or queer or loud. I guess that’s about it.”

But really about spoons.

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In Skinwalker we were introduced to Jane/Beast/and the various things that go bump in the New Orleans night.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to turn things up. Dig into the history of Vampires in this world…

I was among the first hundred who followed the Sons of Darkness, turned by one who was among the first ten of the Cursed.

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