Martha Wells’s The Rising World

I was genuinely excited when Martha Wells announced a new fantasy series. After the well-deserved success of The Murderbot Diaries, it felt like a good time to revisit the roots of why I loved her writing in the first place. My introduction to Wells came sometime in the late ’90s, when I picked up City of Bones after a glowing review. Not long after, I stumbled across a used copy of The Death of the Necromancer—my first visit to Ile-Rien—and that was it. I was hooked. Hooked enough to hunt down a hardback of The Element of Fire through abebooks.com back when the site was still a treasure map for out-of-print fantasy.

Reading pace has been a casualty of life for many years, though things have improved as the kids have gotten older. Even so, I didn’t get to The Witch King until January 2025, long after I’d bought it near release. The digital reading pile is tall and competitive.

The Witch King — Two Timelines, One Explosive Start

The Witch King begins with a literal bang—Kai awakening into chaos—and I felt almost as disoriented as he does. The story splits into two alternating timelines:

• the present, following the fallout of Kai’s abrupt return, and

• the past, chronicling his role in the rebellion against the Hierarchs.

The contrast is stark: pacing, tone, themes—almost everything differs between the two. And as often happens with books that split themselves this way, I found the past timeline more engaging for much of the first half. Its stakes felt larger, the cast more vivid, the world more textured. The present-day conspiracy only really caught my attention closer to the midpoint, when threads finally began to cohere.

By that time, I would have happily rolled straight into Queen Demon, but of course it wasn’t out yet—one of the occupational hazards of reading unfinished series. Now that it is out, I’ve finally started it… only to realise that nine months is just long enough to forget half the cast.

Queen Demon — A Promising Start

I’m only a few chapters into Queen Demon, but so far the structure mirrors the first book: a present timeline paired with a past one. Interestingly, this time it’s the present storyline that’s drawing me in, even more than the flashbacks. Perhaps this is intentional—a shift in focus now that the groundwork has been laid.

I wouldn’t recommend these books as an entry point to Martha Wells. They’re dense, filled with characters and histories that don’t always get the oxygen they need. Readers who came to Wells through Murderbot might also find the pacing and tone more challenging. Some supporting characters in the present timeline—Sanja and Tenes, for instance—didn’t feel fully realised in the first book, overshadowed by the flashback sequences and their larger-than-life figures.

Themes — Friendship, Identity, and the Shape of a World

One thing the series does beautifully is its handling of Kai himself. As a demon, he’s effectively immortal and nearly indestructible; the emotional stakes come not from threats to him but to his chosen family. His loyalty and self-sacrifice are central, and his deep friendship with Ziede may be the beating heart of the series so far.

The books are rich with queer themes—gender fluidity, nonbinary characters, queer relationships, bodies inhabited across genders, disability representation—but none of it is presented as unusual within the world. It’s simply the fabric of how these characters live. Paradoxically, given how many such elements there are, I sometimes expected them to play a more direct role in the plot. Yet I suspect the intention is to portray a world where this is simply normal, accepted, and unremarkable.

Looking Ahead

Writing this has refreshed my memory somewhat, which should help as I continue Queen Demon. I’m curious to see where Wells is taking the story now that the present timeline seems ready to step out from under the shadow of the past.

Here’s hoping the momentum holds—and that this time I don’t pause long enough to forget who everyone is again.

On the Eve of the Upside Down

 Thoughts Before the Final Season of Stranger Things

Tomorrow the last season of Stranger Things lands, and it feels strange—appropriately so—to think back on just how much the show reshaped not only Netflix but the streaming landscape as a whole. When the first season appeared in 2016, it felt genuinely fresh. Not because it reinvented the wheel, but because it demonstrated convincingly that streaming services could deliver something more than filler content or TV reruns. It was stylish, character-driven, and confident in its storytelling.

In hindsight, Stranger Things wasn’t just a show; it was a signal flare. It told the world that Netflix wasn’t merely a library, but a studio capable of producing cultural events. And it worked—spectacularly.

Unfortunately, the success also triggered the scramble that ultimately splintered the streaming world. Suddenly every media company needed its own service, and we went from the promise of “everything in one place” back to something that looks suspiciously like fragmented cable packages. Add to that the flood of rushed “original content” commissioned in the hope of capturing a fraction of Stranger Things’ magic, and much of streaming now feels like endless noise—too much content, not enough worth watching. Ironically, the show that made streaming exciting also helped fuel the content glut that made the experience exhausting.

Why Stranger Things Worked (for Me)

A lot has been written about the nostalgia factor—the 80s setting, the analog aesthetic, the bikes and arcades and D&D sessions. And while I certainly recognize that appeal, it wasn’t what hooked me. I identified with the nerdy D&D kids, sure, but nostalgia was always just a bonus.

For me it was the worldbuilding, the atmosphere, the sense that something was lurking just out of sight. I’ve always loved stories involving parallel worlds, mysterious laboratories, and the thin membrane between our everyday reality and something stranger. Stranger Things stitched all that together with characters I genuinely cared about. In some ways it echoed the ensemble dynamic of the Scooby Gang from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though without a single central protagonist—unless you count Eleven, which you arguably could.

I binged the first season almost in one sitting. It had that rare blend of pacing and mystery that made “just one more episode” feel inevitable.

The Seasons in Retrospect

Season 2 didn’t land the same way. It felt repetitive, more like a remix of the first season’s beats than a genuine progression of the story. My interest drifted a bit, and it wasn’t until Season 3—helped along by my oldest son starting the series from scratch—that I found myself pulled back in.

What surprised me most was how much darker the show became, especially by the fourth season. Stranger Things had always dipped its toes into horror, but it increasingly embraced it. I was also taken aback that the veil between the real world and the Upside Down was lifted so openly. I had assumed the mysteries of the parallel dimension would remain hidden from the broader world, as is common in this type of story. Shows like The X-Files relied on that very tension, letting audiences imagine the strange events unfolding just beneath the surface of our own supposedly familiar world.

By breaking that convention, the writers removed a major narrative constraint. And now, going into the final season, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been—because the world knows. There’s no putting the genie (or the Demogorgon) back in the bottle.

The Cast Growing Up

One practical concern is simply that the actors have aged out of their roles. This was already somewhat evident three years ago in Season 4. It’s not the first series to face this problem, of course—Harry Potter, Boy Meets World, and countless teen dramas ran into the same issue—but I’m curious to see how they handle it here. The emotional core of Stranger Things always relied on the cast being believable as kids confronting the unimaginable. That dynamic is more complicated once everyone is visibly an adult.

Looking Toward the Finale

Despite my grumbling about the broader state of streaming, I’m genuinely excited for tomorrow. Whatever flaws the show has accumulated along the way, Stranger Things has always remained ambitious, atmospheric, and oddly earnest for something so steeped in cosmic horror.

It changed Netflix, changed streaming, and carved out its own corner of pop culture. And even if the world it helped create is now far more chaotic than the one it was born into, I’m eager to see how it all ends before the portal finally closes.

Returning to Dragaera

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Vlad Taltos series. Some of my earliest memories of hunting down rare books online involve tracking down used paperbacks of the first seven books. Athyra was particularly hard to find back then, and only the first three novels had been conveniently collected in The Book of Jhereg, and I wasn't much of a fan of trade paperbacks anyway. 

Last year I ended up re-reading everything from Jhereg through Orca. When I first encountered the series, I loved the early novels best—those where Vlad is still firmly embedded in “the organization.” Athyra, at the time, left me a bit disappointed. Coming back to it now, I’m surprised at how strong it actually is. Brust rarely writes the book you expect, but he always writes the book he means to, and on this reread I was far better prepared to appreciate the range he moves through.

Back then, Orca and Issola felt like the high point of the series. Orca in particular contains reveals I absolutely didn’t see coming, even though Brust had planted some subtle clues. When Issola came out, I had finally caught up to publication order—and then waited the long five years for Dzur. I read everything from Dzur through Vallista on release, but never returned to them afterwards, and they didn’t linger in my memory the same way the earlier novels did.

Which is probably why it took me so long to pick up Tsalmoth. When I finally did, and then moved straight into Lyorn, something clicked. Both books brought back that spark from the early days of the series. Maybe they genuinely recapture an older tone—or maybe it’s simply that I’ve changed, given my revised opinion of Athyra. It might be time to reread the later mid-series books as well, just to see how they land now.

As for Lyorn, it was a delight to see Kragar again. For years I had somehow half-believed he’d died in one of the earlier books—very in character for him to slip past my assumptions unnoticed. It’s possible I mixed him up with one of Vlad’s less fortunate associates from his exit from the organization.

What is certain, however, is that with Tsalmoth and Lyorn we’ve clearly entered the endgame. Threads that were merely whispers before are now surfacing, and I’m realizing how much I missed on my first pass through the series.

It’s been a long, winding journey—one I started decades ago with flimsy paperbacks and continues now through audio and e-books—but I’m excited to see Brust bring the Cycle to its conclusion. And a little sad, too. Series like this don’t come around often, and it’s been a privilege growing alongside it.

Returning to Old Universes: On Reading Eisenhorn

When I was young, I read an unreasonable amount of media tie-in fiction. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, the odd Planescape paperback—those slim mass-market volumes with wonderfully lurid covers. They were inexpensive, plentiful, and set in worlds I already loved through games and daydreaming. At the time, I wasn’t especially concerned with literary merit; a tolerable plot and a few interesting characters were quite enough.

And then, sometime in my late teens, the habit simply evaporated. Other genres crowded in. I drifted toward more “serious” literature, then non-fiction, then whatever happened to cross my path. Somehow, decades slipped by without my picking up anything resembling the shared-universe fiction of my childhood.

Yet for years, I’ve heard people—smart people, readers whose taste I trust—speak highly of Dan Abnett. One friend in particular has been quietly insistent, nudging me toward his work with the confidence of someone recommending a book they know will land. So earlier this year, I finally gave in and picked up Xenos, the first of the Eisenhorn novels. Technically the series is no longer a trilogy, not with The Magos bolted on, but the original three still form a clean arc.

It’s strange to think that for all my childhood fascination with tabletop games, I never actually played Warhammer 40,000. I tried my hand at everything from ASL to Warhammer Fantasy Battles, painstakingly painting a regiment or two before my attention wandered, but 40k always remained a kind of distant planet I orbited without landing on. My only real contact with the universe came later, through the RTS games in the early 2000s—Dawn of War particularly—where bolters and chainswords felt more like atmospheric decoration than lore.

Perhaps I was nudged toward the books by the persistent background hum of news about Henry Cavill’s upcoming 40k adaptation. Having now finished the original trilogy, I find myself genuinely curious to see what becomes of that project. Cavill’s dedication to The Witcher (and to staying faithful to source material in general) gives me more confidence than I expected to have in a Warhammer screen adaptation.

As for the books themselves: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed them. Eisenhorn is far better written than I anticipated—tense, atmospheric, occasionally introspective, and full of characters who feel more layered than tie-in fiction has any obligation to provide. Gregor Eisenhorn in particular is a fascinating study in erosion: a principled man steadily worn down by the weight of necessity, secrecy, and compromise.

If the series has a weakness, it’s one shared by much action-oriented fiction: the hero’s improbable survival in the face of overwhelming odds. There were a few moments where my suspension of disbelief wobbled, and I wondered if the Emperor Himself had quietly added Eisenhorn to the psychic equivalent of a protected species list. But these moments didn’t ruin my enjoyment—at worst, they briefly pulled me out of the moment before the narrative swept me back in.

And so, with my first sip from the vast well that is the Black Library, I find myself considering another taste. Not immediately, perhaps, but soon—on a weekend when I’m in the mood for baroque Gothic futurism and fast-paced action. It’s been unexpectedly rewarding to revisit a form of fiction I abandoned decades ago, and to find that, sometimes, returning to an old genre feels less like nostalgia and more like rediscovery.

Current Reading November

 I just finished A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. Earlier this year, I read Soonish by the same duo, and it left a lasting impression. That book had a delightful curiosity to it—a playful but rigorous exploration of emerging technologies—and I was eager to see what the Weinersmiths would make of the next frontier: space colonization. My interest, admittedly, is hardly abstract. With SpaceX’s recent successes, the idea of humans stepping beyond Earth feels less like distant science fiction and more like a slow, inexorable march toward reality.

In many ways, A City on Mars confirmed what I already suspected about the technical hurdles of extended space travel and planetary settlement. The challenges—propulsion, radiation shielding, life support systems—are immense, but not unknown. Where the book surprised me was in its exploration of the legal landscape. I had barely considered the treaties that govern space, or the delicate politics that might arise if nations—or private corporations—begin claiming territory off-planet. The authors’ comparisons to Antarctica and the deep seabed brought a kind of clarity: these are human spaces that are legally and morally complicated, yet astonishingly empty, and they require frameworks that anticipate both cooperation and conflict.

I found myself less concerned about the specter of a space race spiraling into war. The immediate economic incentives seem too thin to drive the sort of escalation we fear on Earth. It reminded me of discussions surrounding AI: the risks are real, yet the response cannot be to halt progress. Understanding, preparation, and careful governance seem far more productive than fear-driven inaction.

Comparing the two books, I found Soonish the more immediately engaging read. Its topics—ranging from robotics to biotech—intersect with our daily lives in ways that feel urgent and tangible. A City on Mars has a loftier scope, more speculative in nature, which made it intellectually stimulating, but in a quieter, more contemplative way. I enjoyed both, but for pure curiosity and the thrill of unexpected discoveries, Soonish remains the winner in my eyes.

As November winds down, these readings have left me reflecting on humanity’s impulses: the drive to explore, to innovate, and to imagine futures that stretch far beyond our immediate horizon. Both books serve as reminders that while technology can carry us to new worlds, it is our imagination, our governance, and our curiosity that will ultimately shape what those worlds might become.