book-review

Foundation’s Edge (#4), Isaac Asimov – Book Review

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

29 years after writing the original trilogy, Isaac Asimov continues Foundation’s generation-spanning space epic with Foundation’s Edge.

The Foundation book series has always been a little strange. Every one of them has felt a bit like an accidental sequel to the last. The first book was a series of short stories, the second book threw the original concept in the trash, and the third book took the ideas from the first two and developed them into a spy thriller. 

Combine all that with an author coming into his own and every one of these books feels completely distinct. I’m happy to report that the fourth book in the series continues the pattern of genre-bending ideas and thrilling twists at a galactic scale. 

Read my discussion of the first three Foundation books here: How Asimov Saved The Foundation Books

Plot

Over a century after book 3, Foundation’s Edge tells the story of Golan Trevize, a council member in the First Foundation, as he investigates the invisible powers pulling The Foundation along the track to becoming a galactic empire. In parallel, Stor Gendibal, a leader of the psychic-led Second Foundation, uncovers a terrifying truth about the Seldon Plan.

For the first half, the story is a political thriller. At each twist and turn, Asimov makes sure to keep the audience fully informed as to what each action did, what it was aiming to do, and how each of the minor characters changes the calculation of the book.

After a series of political maneuvers, speculations, and schemes, Golan Trevize is sent off in search of ‘Gaia’, humanity’s legendary origin planet. At this point, the book’s genre suddenly changes. In a single chapter, we move from political thriller to treasure hunt. Adventure and mystery keep the story moving and the stakes climbing ever upward, ending in a satisfying conclusion.

Asimov’s Writing

Isaac Asimov learned a lot about writing in the nearly thirty-year gap between the third and fourth books. For the first time in the Foundation series, Foundation’s Edge tells a single, continuous story. Multiple POVs, yes, but it begins at the beginning and ends at the end. No century-long time jumps and no being introduced to an entirely new cast of characters halfway through the story. In this book, we have the time to get to know the characters and truly understand their motivations.

For a good bit of the story, I was confident it was setting up a new trilogy. The first half was paced much slower, deeply exploring the political intrigue while reminding the readers of the events of the past three books. By the two-thirds mark, there were a lot of starts without a lot of resolutions. I was pleasantly surprised when the final third of the book jumped into high-gear, delivering a tense and action-packed finale that closed every thread and reached the grand-scale the Foundation series is known for.

The Conclusion

After the first three books, the Foundation series felt like it was over. The goal of galactic empire was centuries away, but all the major factions had reached a balance, and the ending felt inevitable. With this story, Asimov re-contextualized past stories and painted the inevitable conclusion as a defeat rather than a victory, he introduced adventure and mystery to a completely mapped galaxy and layered new complexities on an already complicated universe in a way that breathed new life into the series.

Much like Asimov’s first and third books, Foundation’s Edge is a conclusion. But this time, the story also feels like the beginning of something new.

The Invisible Man and The Picture of Dorian Gray: Two Masters Explore Consequence

/ Logan Sidwell / 2 Comments

Intro

I love stumbling across paired stories. Those rare and curious times when two different writers take on the same concept around the same time. There are plenty of Hollywood examples. Armageddon and Deep Impact. White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. The Illusionist and The Prestige. It feels like two philosophers each making their own argument in the public forum and by reading their story, you see the full journey to their conclusion.

In the 1890s, two of the greatest authors of their time wrote two of their greatest books. First was The Picture of Dorian Gray. Originally published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890 and expanded into a novel in 1891, it stands as Oscar Wild’s only novel in a career writing plays and poetry. Then in 1897, two years into HG Wells half-century long science fiction career, he released The Invisible Man.

Both stories have been told and adapted and shared millions of times over the years, both stories have outlived their creator. And while the two stories on their face appear completely different, both try to answer the same question: What would a person become if they could act without consequence?

To me, these two books are my favorite example of paired works. An opportunity to see a sci-fi writer and a playwright approach the same philosophical concept. A chance to observe two masters each bring their own unique perspectives and reach vastly different conclusions.

Two villainous leads

When a skilled storyteller knows what kind of story they want to write, even if they don’t know the details, the nature of the story trims down the possibilities. If you want to tell a story of someone reconnecting with a community, it means they had a community to begin with. If you’re writing a revenge power fantasy, it usually helps for the main character to at one time in the past be a uniquely skilled fighter. I like to call it ‘novel-writing algebra’.

In the case of a theme like ‘no consequences’, both storytellers realized they had to start from the same place. To truly explore the space, each story’s protagonist had to be more villain than hero.

The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the story of eponymous Dorian Gray, a young man that values his appearance and youth above all other things. After realizing all his cruelties appear on his portrait rather than being reflected onto his person, he embraces his worst tendencies. Hurting those who love him, extorting, murdering, everything he can think of in one long hedonism treadmill.

The Invisible Man’s protagonist is just as reprehensible, but in his own way. Jack Griffin, for what it’s worth, earns his invisibility. He discovers the means to turn living tissue invisible and uses it to burgle, rob, and threaten. But it wasn’t the invisibility that made him that way. He robbed his father even while his skin was still opaque. Throughout the book he is teasing and cruel to the people he is closest to. The kind of man no person would want to associate with in real life.

A pair of cruel characters for a pair of moral lessons. How else could you teach it? If you start with a good character using their protection for a good cause, you end up with The Invisible Woman saving the world in a comic book.

Both authors realized that in order to explore the concept of consequence fully, they needed a bad actor to exploit the situation.

Freedom from Consequence

At the question of ‘What does a bad person do without consequences?’, our two authors diverge.

HG Wells goes down the obvious path. Mayhem, havoc, and immediate self-serving cruelty. In every action, The Invisible Man acts as untouchable as he feels. HIs dealings with others are impatient and demanding. As the story goes on, his ambition grows. His vision expands from short-term robberies to an ‘epoch of the invisible man’ by means of violent threat.

A bully. That’s all Griffin is. The second he gets an ounce of power, he stretches it to its utmost with no plans for the future. At the outset, this feels like the only answer. A person without fear of reprisal tries to force the world into their vision of things.

But Oscar Wilde’s take is vastly different.

Dorian Gray isn’t an ambitious man, he’s petty. Looks matter more than character. Charm more than soul. Over the course of a lifetime, consequences seem to evade him. When a man comes to avenge his sister, he realizes that Dorian Gray couldn’t possibly be the man from 20 years ago, after all he hasn’t aged a day.

When Dorian is given the freedom to do as he’d like, he doesn’t shape the world, he plays with it. People and institutions become toys to be tinkered with, broken, and tossed away. Even when hiding a body he handles the whole situation with a cold psychopathy. The dead man isn’t a person, it’s a thing. Dorian accumulates wealth and connections all through the world and his capacity to do expands, but the answer to ‘what will he do’ seems to come down to a single answer: whatever he feels like.

Although Griffin is supposed to be the more intelligent of the two characters, Dorian without a doubt makes better use of his power. He feels more real too, like one of thousands of kids born and raised into wealth under a system built to protect and empower them. A lifetime with no fear gives him a detachment from his actions. Everything is a game to be played and moved on from.

When the hammer comes down

Both authors reach similar conclusions at the end of their stories. Even if a person sees no immediate consequences to their actions, there are always consequences.

The Invisible Man gives the easy answer. If a person behaves cruelly for a long time the world will eventually hunt that person down and deliver the consequences nature tried to protect them from. Jack Griffin’s final moments are spent being beaten by a mob. Victim not of a single action, but the sum of all his behaviors.

I don’t know how much I believe it. There are plenty of stories of people getting away with their crimes, even in a court of law. Even tyrants die of old age from time to time.

Oscar Wilde gives a different vision of ‘consequence’, and one that is clear from the beginning of the book. With every sin Dorian Gray commits, his portrait changes. A cruel smile at the edge of his lips, bloodstains, scars. The portrait isn’t just a magical painting, it is a reflection of Dorian’s soul, and for me, the better answer to the question of consequence.

Even if the world never retaliates. Every evil action distorts a person’s truest self. A murder doesn’t just stain the hands, it stains the heart. By the end of Dorian Gray’s life, the portrait doesn’t even look human. Terrible deeds have reshaped the man so far as to cut out his humanity entirely.

Conclusion

It’s impossible to move through life without seeing the occasional villain. I think that’s what makes the theme of ‘consequence free action’ resonate. Injustice is a part of life. Maybe what that makes these stories palatable is knowing the author will deliver some kind of justice by the end.

To me, The Invisible Man has the feel of a comforting moral tale for the upstanding in society. Eventually evil will be held accountable, even if it takes awhile.

But The Picture of Dorian Gray gives an answer that feels truer to life. Justice is not exact. Sometimes the worst of the worst escape their consequences and the good suffer in their wake. The only thing that can truly be said of the person that acts with no fear of reprisal is that they will eventually lose their personhood entirely and by the end of their life become unrecognizable to the world around them.

The Best Art Isn’t Popular, It’s Specific

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In 2022, I bought a ticket at my local arthouse cinema for the movie Living with Bill Nighy. All my coworkers told me it was terrible. They warned me the pacing was slow, the message was hollow, and the movie was boring. I saw it anyway.

I bawled in the theater.

It’s a good thing no one went with me, they would have been dealing with a blubbering mess for half the show. Three years later, it remains the best movie experience I have had in my life. When I came back to work, my coworkers tried to convince me I was wrong. They told me I had overlooked the movie’s flaws. They told me there was no way I had really enjoyed the experience. But the real message was clear: The group hadn’t enjoyed it, so I shouldn’t either.

Their experience didn’t change my opinion. If I had listened to them from the beginning, I would have missed out on one of the most emotionally impactful evenings of my life.

Living isn’t a movie for everyone. But for a few, it resonates deeply.

Broad vs Specific

There’s a concept in comedy. Broad vs specific. Broad comedy is the kind that everyone will laugh at. A slip on a banana peel, a silly noise, commentary quality of airline food. The most successful comedies in the world are broad comedies. After all, how would you bring in tens of millions in the box office if they didn’t appeal to everyone?

What people don’t talk about is specific comedy. Comedy targeted at a small group of people and appealing to their shared experiences. There’s a reason the cardiac doctor gets gut-busting laughs at the health conference and crickets at the local comedy club. “Drum Sound Check at Medium Sized Venue’ from Fred Armisen’s album 100 Sound Effects is a perfect example, funny for concert goers, totally unfamiliar to everyone else.

But the concept of broad and specific doesn’t end at comedy. It extends into every marketable genre. In music, broad pop music covers dancing in a nightclub while specific country music tells the tragedy of growing up in a particular part of the south. Most importantly, the concept of broad and specific applies to art. Broad art covers wide themes and topics with mass appeal, while the specific speaks to the soul of an individual.

Producing any piece of art meant to generate income means the art must be broad in nature. To be profitable, the artist walks a difficult tightwire: Tell a story specific enough to engage the audience but broad enough to appeal to everyone.

The NYTimes recently released a ‘top 100 films of all time’ list based on a poll of hundreds of industry insiders. What they found was that most of the films on the list were made by a single director with a singular vision. Artists who had managed to dance the difficult dance and produce a story that was both appealing to an audience, and told from a distinct and specific perspective.

A Bored Audience

There’s a vibe in the world today. If you ask your coworker what they think of the movie industry, they’ll probably tell you that everything has gotten a little samey. It’s not true, but it reflects a problem: Many of the movies in theaters these days are so broad they all feel like the same thing.

Modern film finance can only justify a movie going into theaters if it’s going to earn tens of millions of dollars. The broadest movies imaginable. This doesn’t mean specific stories aren’t being produced. They just skip the theaters and get dropped straight into the vast ocean of streaming services.

It poses a problem for marketers. How do you find your audience when your audience only knows to look for your movies in theaters? I think this is why we lean so heavily on ‘genre’ these days. It’s easy to tell someone they’re about to watch a ‘horror’. Folks who know they like horror will tune right in and folks who don’t will move on to something else.

But what about the stories that can’t be put in a box? This is the greatest obstacle to auteur artists breaking out onto the scene. The artist can work on their marketing, but what really needs to change is the audience. We need viewers with the curiosity to try new things.

The Courage to Enjoy What Speaks to You

The thumbs-up and the thumbs-down are the ultimate judges. A simple ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I read a book recently, A Spindle Splintered. The author’s passion was present in every page, the words were delicately crafted. A story of a teen girl with an obsession with Sleeping Beauty.

It wasn’t for me.

It wasn’t that the book was bad, or even that the story was uncompelling. Only that its message was completely unaligned with my background. How does a person review a book like that? A thumbs-down since it didn’t appeal to me, a thumbs-up because I could imagine how the story might resonate with someone else?

Enjoying Living (2022) was a lonely experience. Everyone else at my job had given the thing a thumbs-down, and according to the rules of Rotten Tomatoes, that meant it wasn’t worth watching. I think if each of them had taken the time on their own to reflect on the story, they might have realized it wasn’t the case that the movie was bad, only that it didn’t appeal to them.

Disagreeing with the crowd takes courage. Recommending a specific piece of art can be oddly vulnerable. I think all of us want to know that our artistic taste is ‘good’. But that’s where we confuse the purpose of art. It’s not always there to be enjoyed, it’s there to touch our soul and help us make sense of the world.

Lately, when I hear a movie is polarizing, I buy a ticket. Polarizing doesn’t mean bad, it means its message is specific and only resonates with some of its watchers.

If you get the chance, I recommend you do the same. There’s a piece of art out there for everyone. A specific story that will speak to you on a personal level like no broad art could. The only way to find it is to search. And the only way to truly appreciate it is to have the courage to experience it for yourself.

A Review of My Novel from Guild Master Gaming!

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

This week I was delighted to receive an in-depth review of my debut novel The Human Countermove from Dan Yocom at Guild Master Gaming. Since release, I’ve come to realize my book’s number one audience is fans of games and strategy gaming. This review represents the viewpoint of an expert in that space, so I’m deeply appreciative they would take the time to consider my book and give so much fantastic feedback. Check out what they have to say!

https://guildmastergaming.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-human-countermove-by-logan-sidwell.html

There’s a Tragedy Hidden in Confucius’ Analects

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The night after I read Confucius’ Analects, I slipped into something of an existential crisis. Nothing big, just your standard reassessment of life direction. The thing is, as much as I had enjoyed reading all the wisdoms, I really didn’t think they’d have an impact. So why was I pacing my kitchen at 10pm lost in thought?

The Analects are a collection of Confucius’ wisdom. Every line reads like a riddle, a clever metaphor with multiple meanings that only become clear after careful contemplation. 

Turns out, those lines weren’t written for people to read them in isolation. Half of The Analects are the oral tradition that goes along with. Two thousand years of teachers passed down context and analysis from one to the other that explains why Confucius takes so many potshots on the kingdom of Lu while praising music from the Shao. Thankfully my copy included much of that analysis, which turned the reading into a fun wisdom puzzle book. I’d read a line, consider it for a minute, then get a full answer from the analysts.

It ages surprisingly well, too. Much of the wisdom is on cultivating a moral approach to life, surrounding yourself with other moral people, and leading from the top-down to reshape a state. Any advice on how to appropriately serve your ‘lord’ easily extends to dealing with a boss at work, and it turns out ‘petty’ people are just as common now as they were in 500BCE.

In the early chapters, I studied each line like a student cramming for a test. This turned out to be unnecessary, as each meaningful piece of wisdom is repeated, reworded, and taken from multiple angles throughout the book. It’s a layering approach that slowly paints Confucius’ vision of appropriate behavior onto your mind through carefully paced character studies and metaphors.

Storytelling is an absolutely key aspect of The Analects. Confucius’ disciples are analyzed one by one throughout, their virtues and vices made clear. Zhong Yu, despite all his positive traits, was impetuous. Despite The Master making multiple interventions, he eventually dies in battle. His passing serves a lesson. A practical example of what happens when you allow certain character flaws to dominate your way of dealing with the world. A tragedy.

Zhong Yu is the most obvious of the tragedies in The Analects, but there’s one that’s far more resonant. The story secretly woven through the entire book. The story that made me run circles around my table in the middle of the night. One character that was present through the whole analects and whose life taught the most important moral of all.

Confucius himself.

By the time The Analects were assembled, Confucius had slipped into legend. The last few sections of the book talk about him as one with the sun and the moon. Down the line, he’s deified. But in the first half of The Analects, he’s a person. A wise person with a whole lot of followers, but a person. And he can’t find a job.

One of the central tenets of The Analects is that leaders shape the morality and culture of the people they are leading. A great minister can shape a state into a moral and upstanding place free of crime. I love this, and I tend to believe this idea extends into the modern day through corporations. A corporation run by a corrupt CEO will inevitably see their own behavior reflected back at them through their employees.

If you accept this statement as true, then talented scholars have an obligation to make every effort to put their talents to use. It’s a cruel world, but you can personally help reshape it by climbing the ladder and showing others the way.

Confucius wants to be hired. That’s his character arc in The Analects. He’s already learned and wise and kind and talented. The only thing missing is the opportunity to put those ideas to work. When he laments his unemployment, it pulls at your heartstrings that someone with so much vision is unable to apply it.

In the later sections, he encounters recluse scholars on the road. Wise men with perhaps as much understanding of the world as Confucius who, rather than taking on the challenge of leadership, retreated into isolation. They encourage him to give up, they tell him his dream of a moral world is an impossible one.

Despite this. Confucius persists. He pushes through the relentless rejections and cajoling of the recluse-scholars. It makes him the hero of the story. A person willing to take on the impossible day after day in the hope he will one day be given the opportunity to reshape the world into a better place.

But The Analects isn’t an uplifting story. It’s a tragedy. Confucius fails. He goes his whole life without the chance to reshape a state into his moral vision.

Yet his wisdom persists. A second chance at Confucius’ vision. A chance for the reader to step up where The Master failed.

This was why I was pacing my kitchen in the middle of the night. Confucius’ tragic failure haunted me and his wisdom echoed in my head. Go out. Apply yourself. Chase opportunity so that one day you can fulfill The Master’s dream of reshaping a piece of the world.

When I went into The Analects, I expected wisdom and wisdom alone. If I was lucky, it would give me a new perspective on how I interacted with others. Instead, I was told a story that tugged on my heartstrings. A tragedy that painted an aspirational vision of a more moral world. Then at the end, I was told the only way to make it happen was to do it myself.

Check out my Post on Neuromancer and the Origins of Cyberpunk!

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

Cyberpunk is one of the most widespread and beloved genres today, stretching into movies, games, and books. But where did it come from and why does every story in the genre feel both original and derivative? It all goes back to a small set of roots, and one transformative story. Neuromancer.

Check out my article on Guild Master Gaming: https://guildmastergaming.blogspot.com/2025/11/neuromancer-and-genesis-of-genre-by.html

The Fifth Season is Apocalyptic Fantasy

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Apocalypse stories have always bothered me. The world is so disorganized, it feels like everyone alive is a scavenger. It’s all a little too material, a little too short-term minded. Maybe that happens at first. An initial anarchy when a system collapses. But humanity has lived through hard times, and we’ve seen what people do when the world gets tough. We form tight-knit communities and close ourselves off from the world until the danger passes.

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin is a post-apocalypse fantasy, one that paints a real picture of how humanity survives.

Comms with High Walls

In The Fifth Season, the end of the world is a common occurrence. Every couple decades, Father Earth unleashes a ‘fifth season’ on the world. The season of death. In response, humanity has taken a permanent ‘prepper’ mindset.

Villages aren’t sprawling things that welcome anyone and everyone. They’re comms, short for communities, and they’re walled on every side. Visitors are treated like threats and newcomers have to prove their worth. Trust is so low it’s polite to offer guests a drink called ‘safe’, which is the only drink you can be certain won’t poison you.

The story begins in a comm at the start of another apocalypse. It follows a woman named Essun, who just lost her son, and is on the hunt for her husband and kidnapped daughter.

In most stories like this, we’d see the main character travel a while, then stop at a town and get a break from the danger. Maybe there’d be a nice innkeeper, or at least a warm place to sleep from time to time. Not here. With the start of the season of death, the world is cold, and every door is shut.

Essun sees dozens of comms on her journey. But never enters a single one.

People are a Utility

When a community closes its doors, they do it because they fear what’s outside. But once those doors are closed, resources become scarce, and every person in a bunk is a mouth to feed. The story regularly refers to a set of wisdoms called ‘stonelore’. Stonelore tells people how to survive in hard times. And one of Stonelore’s most important rules is that every person in the comm has a use.

That use becomes their name. Hoa Strongback. Essun Breeder. There aren’t many use-names, and each name is an implicit threat: Become useless and be thrown out into the cold.

This is not the kind of story where a leader softens their heart and lets a poor beggar woman into a community. This is a story where a dozen beggars are left stranded outside the comm gates.

On her journey, Essun allows a few others to join her party. Only because there’s strength in numbers.

But this story isn’t just a brutal take on a hard-hearted world. It’s also a fantasy.

Orogenes and Earth Magic

There are three POVs in The Fifth Season. Essun, the older woman in search of her daughter. Damaya, the young girl given away by her parents. And Syenite, the capital trained Earth Magic wielder. Earth Magic is the shared commonality between them. They are all Orogene, a race of humans capable of causing and stopping earthquakes while barely breaking a sweat. It’s what informs Essun that this season of death is far worse than any that ever came before. But there’s a downside.

The rest of the world hates Orogene.

As soon as Essun’s community finds out what she is, she’s forced to flee before they can capture and kill her. Damaya is given away to a stranger because her parents fear her powers. Even Syenite, the capital trained Orogene, meets low-level bureaucrats that talk down to her.

The author does a wonderful job painting Orogenes’ magics and their deep connection with the Earth. But any joy that might be associated with that skill is diminished by the shame, the distrust, and the overt hostility of the world. Syenite’s training gave her control over her abilities, but right alongside those abilities is a self-hatred that was ground into her from childhood.

The Sin To Kill The World

In most apocalypses, there’s this sense that most people are victims trying to get by. Victims of some mad scientist somewhere that decided to set off a bomb. In The Fifth Season, there’s a sense that it’s all deserved. A punishment for humanity’s misdeeds.

Damaya’s childhood is a caravan of terrors. Syenite uncovers terrible fate after terrible fate affecting her fellow Orogene. Even Essun’s rag-tag band of unwanteds all have that same sense of self-loathing. 

With every curtain we pull back, there’s another reveal of procedural pain. Organized evil. There’s a feeling that the apocalypse in this story isn’t the product of a single terrible moment, but the byproduct of humanity’s cruelty. Sure people are mean during bad times, but somehow they’re even worse in the good times, and all that cruelty is bubbling up under the Earth’s surface, waiting to bring about catastrophe.

When the apocalypse finally arrives, all those closed doors and locked comms look less like humanity trying to survive, and more like cruel people waiting for the apocalypse to take them.

Conclusion

The Fifth Season is a cold book. There are joys along the way. The happiness of an adventurous kid and the wonders of Earth Magic come to mind. But at its heart, it’s a story of a cruel world and the people stuck under humanity’s boot. Every inch of worldbuilding further paints the same picture. A story of oppression, control, and hate. It explores the emotions of the characters deeply, taking the time to really process their state of mind, and the meaning behind every action. One of the POVs is even written in second person, which makes the pain of the story even more unavoidable.

It’s compelling, it’s fantastical, and by the finish it feels like the end of the world.

Is My Cerebral Science Fiction Secretly a Romance?

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I wrote a book about a strategy game grandmaster challenging the AI Minds of his society for the fate of the future. It’s got politics, subterfuge, high-minded strategy, and danger. But I think at the heart of it all is a story about connection. A romance. Which is odd, because I don’t write romance.

Spoilers ahead.

A friend of mine pointed this out to me while they were reading my book. In the first chapter, you’re introduced to my main character, Zouk Solinsen, an isolated guy in the back half of his career navigating a cold and disconnected world. We’re then introduced to a young woman named Jamie. A rival in the strategy gaming space, and his opponent in the first round. They’re about the same age, opposite genders, and their conversation has a light, almost flirty back-and-forth before the game.

But it’s a red herring.

The target of this book’s romance isn’t Jamie. One of the romances isn’t even human.

Every good story has a certain element of romance. Whether it’s a pair of characters who hate each other and eventually learn to understand each other, or a collection of disjointed and quirky individuals finding the joy of becoming a cohesive group, what makes a romance is the journey from ambivalence and hatred to appreciation and love. Oftentimes, you don’t even need the kissy-kissy.

There are two ‘romances’ in The Human Countermove. The first is conventional. A small, personal story about Zouk and his wife Kira, whose relationship is on the rocks. Zouk is an outgoing person with a strong skill for communication, while Kira prefers her privacy. For her, a nice day is one spent in her office running data analytics and drinking hot cocoa.

In the time since they got married, life got complicated. Zouk had his career ups and downs, while Kira built quiet, steady work in the government. Zouk wants Kira to change, he wants her to love crowds and events and to be with him for all of it. She tries her best, but it’s not who she is.

But when he needs her, she’s there. Not usually with a well-placed word, but with her most sincere self. When Zouk is trying to make sense of a broken political system, she’s willing to put in weeks of work to help him. And she seems to relish every minute of it.

It’s all this that reminds Zouk why he fell in love with her. He remembers her passion, her care, the way she’s fought to stay in love with him. It’s a Him problem. He’s been asking her to change, when he’s the one that needs to start reaching out. He meets her where she is, accepts her for who she is, and is able to start loving again. They’re able to be that supportive, loving couple they had been chasing from the start.

But there’s a second romance in this story. One at a much larger scale.

A romance between Zouk Solinsen and The Minds.

Zouk is playing a series of strategy games in order to join The Minds’ council. Impossible games that take everything he has in order to win. But winning doesn’t suddenly put Zouk into power, it puts him in a partnership. A shared power structure with The Minds. And anyone forming a partnership knows the only way to make things in a partnership work is to ‘love’ the other party.

There’s an on-again, off-again relationship between Zouk and The Minds throughout the book. Near the beginning, The Mind of Communications and Influence is casual with Zouk. They’re fast friends and get along better than you’d think. The possibility of Zouk winning all the games becomes real. Folks listen when he speaks. The general consensus seems to be that he will be the fourth member of the council.

Then the hard times come. Zouk breaks ties to an organization when he discovers their plot to overthrow the government. And the break-up isn’t easy. A controversial game, a mutiny in the military, riots, and a frame job implicate Zouk in everything.

There’s nothing less romantic than a deposition. One of his wins is thrown out and The Mind of Strategy and Warfare ends his hopes of joining the council on a painful defeat. Whatever partnership The Minds were considering is dead.

If this were a traditional sci-fi dystopian story, this is the part where Zouk leads a resistance and burns it all down. But I wrote a romance. And in a romance, the protagonist doesn’t give up.

Zouk and Kira’s rekindled relationship is a lesson in accepting people as they are. A lesson that leads to a realization. The world talks to The Minds in the same way they talk to politicians. High-minded intellectualism, hopes and ideals, persuasion. But that’s not how The Minds think, that’s not who they are. They’re more like Kira. Evaluating good and bad ideas through raw numbers.

Society has been pushed to their limit. Every aspect is measured and maximized. But by seeing the world through The Minds’ eyes, Zouk and Kira uncover the fatal flaw, the mistake in the calculations, the first fix to a better world. Zouk knows his chance to join the council is dead. But he makes his case anyway. He makes it because he wants a better world, because he thinks The Minds help get them there.

And that act of good will and understanding changes everything.

This is why I say this book is a romance. It’s not traditional, but it hits all the beats. The meet-cute, the impossible relationship, the break-up, and at last the heartfelt reunion. A story whose roots are built in love and empathy rather than rage and destruction. I had no idea I was doing it when I wrote it, and only realized what I had made when it was out in the wild.

Maybe this is just what happens to stories that set out with a theme of connection and understanding. You go in planning on making a sci-fi thriller and end with an AI and a human holding hands in the rain.

The Human Countermove is available for purchase on Amazon!

“The Night Hunt” Is a Book Structured Like an Action Game

/ Logan Sidwell / 1 Comment

Video games used to be a core of my media diet. One of my favorite genres of games was the action game. Dark Souls, God of War, Hollow Knight, a million more just like them. Whenever one got good reviews, I’d buy it on the spot. As soon as it was downloaded, I’d turn on whatever show I was watching on one monitor, and spin up the game on the other. I knew I wouldn’t need to give it my full attention because the narrative structure of action games is pretty much set in stone. Like walking in a pair of old, worn in shoes.

Reading The Night Hunt by Alexandra Christo gave me that same warm, familiar feeling.

The Action Game Structure

The protagonist of a story has to start out weakened. It’s not wise to give the player full access to the entire control set from the start, we need to start weak so we can get strong. In the Night Hunt, Atia is the last of her kind, and after a terrible mistake, she is cursed. Most of her power is ripped away, and mortality looms over her actions.

How can she get cured? Defeat a vampire, a banshee, and a god.

Games love the number three. Defeat the three undead lords. Ring the three bells. Find the three chalices. I think it’s because three is the perfect number to establish a pattern and let the audience get comfortable without becoming repetitive.

The story of The Night Hunt proceeds like an action game would. Atia and her ragtag band of characters travel to different parts of the world, journey through dangerous territory, and eventually face off against one of the three big bads. The bosses, if you will. With each victory, Atia gets a little of her power back. They do this in games too, best to let the player master one move at a time. That way when they face the final boss, they’re experts on the basics.

Spoilers ahead:

In the best action games, the final boss is rarely the real final boss. It’s sort of a rule of escalation. If you tell the player how things are gonna turn out at the very start, it’s boring. You have to overdeliver on your promises. It’s a bit of a cliche, action games start out with the protagonist beating up slime monsters, and end up killing god.

The Night Hunt escalates the exact same way. Atia has a very particular god in mind when she first sets out on her killing spree, a minor one. But when the time comes for the final fight, she doesn’t fight a minor god, she goes straight for the trinity of light, dark, and balance. You can almost hear the choir chanting latin phrases during the battle.

Characters

So the book is structured like an action game. For those of us who like an action game from time to time, it’s comfortable. From the beginning, you can pretty much anticipate the rate and rhythm of the story. But this isn’t a game, it’s a book. In games, the product is primarily about the tactile feel of the combat. You can give a player the worst dialog in the world, but if the controls are good and the bosses are challenging, they’ll still beat the game. Not so for books, in books, the action scenes have to serve a purpose in forwarding our character’s understanding of themselves, their relationships, or the plot.

There are two POVs in this story, Atia the fear monster, and Silas the Herald that dreams of being human. Despite all the action, what this book really is, is a romance. Two hurt monsters finding love and understanding in one another. Atia goes on a journey to understand the broken state of the world while Silas goes on a journey to discover his true self. Both stories weave nicely into each other by the end of the book, with a few good twists along the way.

This is where The Night Hunt escapes the accusations of being a videogame. The characters and their relationships actually matter. Who a person was, and who they’ve become shapes the outcome of the battles and the end to the story. In a game the cutscenes get skipped and the player hardly even notices. In a book, the action is nothing but a vehicle to get us to the next plot moment.

Is This True of All Stories of Violence?

When I think of the structure of The Night Hunt, I compare it to something like “Death’s Door”, which has a quite similar premise, I start to wonder. Is The Night Hunt accidentally crossing genres? Or have we stumbled across the ‘universal story’ of violent heroes?

Think of movies. Think of John Wick.

He starts off weak, and an unfortunate circumstance forced him to take action. He works his way through target after target, both him and his opponents escalating their skills with each interaction. And once he reaches the cause of the inciting incident, once he achieves his goal? He sets his sights even higher. Burning down not only the people who wronged him, but the entire system that allowed that bad thing to happen.

It’s a power fantasy. We start as a regular Joe, get wronged by some systemic flaw in society, then we build our skill and fix the entire system all at once. Who needs other people when one maverick can do everything solo?

But when I zoom out and look at all the stories like this, John Wick, Nobody, The Night Hunt, Dark Souls, Another Crab’s Treasure. All of them leave off with the same lesson in mind: Once it starts, there is no end to violence, except usurpation. A lot of stories like this end in a cycle. For all the action the hero did, they end up becoming the problem they set out to solve.

The Night Hunts ends on a happy note, but when Atia has the power of a god in her hands I can’t help but wonder, has she become everything she sought to destroy?

The first reviews of my debut novel The Human Countermove are in!

“A thrilling, intelligent and morally engaging novel that rewards both strategic thinking and emotional investment.” – Patricia Furstenberg, 5/5

“I was impressed with how well the author wrote about gaming so that it painted easy images, especially for someone like me who is not a gamer.” – Rosie Amber, 4/5