Hugo Nominees: Mickey-17 vs Superman

I watched both Mickey‑17 and Superman (2025) because they’re Hugo nominees. I never would have watched Superman otherwise, and after this I’ll probably keep avoiding the franchise. Mickey‑17 at least felt like it had something interesting going on.

One of the things I appreciated about Mickey‑17 is how it handles identity in a way that lines up with what I’ve been thinking about since reading Old Man’s War and writing that earlier post about cyborgs and memory uploads. Old Man’s War raises the question of whether someone is still the same person after their body dies and their memories get transferred into a new one. The characters themselves start to wonder about it — and the story never really resolves it. Their world treats memory like a file you can copy into a new body and call it continuity, even though the cracks are obvious.

Mickey‑17 doesn’t gloss over those cracks. It leans into them. Mickey‑18 isn’t Mickey‑17. He’s similar, but he’s also more aggressive, more cynical, more fed up with the colony. He reacts differently because he is different. That’s the whole point: copying memories and experiences doesn’t preserve the person. It just preserves the data. The continuity of consciousness is gone.

What makes this even sharper is how the colony treats the Expendables. They’re commodities. They’re infrastructure. They’re bodies the system can use up because it has decided those bodies don’t count the same way other bodies do. It’s the same pattern I’ve noticed in other stories — Murderbot, Old Man’s War, The Handmaid’s Tale — where some people are treated as infinitely renewable resources and others are treated as irreplaceable. In Mickey‑17, the colony needs the fiction that each new Mickey is “the same person” to justify killing him over and over. But the moment Mickey‑17 and Mickey‑18 exist at the same time, the whole system collapses. You can’t pretend they’re interchangeable when they’re standing next to each other arguing.

Nasha is the only one who seems to understand that. She treats Mickey like a person, not a curiosity. Everyone else just wants to ask him what it feels like to die, as if his subjective experience is some kind of novelty item they get to poke at. Nasha is the one who recognizes his personhood, and that’s why she defends him the way she does. She sees the human being the colony refuses to acknowledge.

Even Mickey‑18, with all his sharper edges, still has a moral code. He’s not just “the angry version.” He’s a person with his own perspective, shaped by the gaps in his memories and the circumstances of his awakening. And he makes a choice that protects Mickey‑17 and Nasha, not because he’s programmed to do so, not because he’s a copy acting out a script, but because he recognizes their humanity. He’s not a defective version. He’s not a spare part. He’s a person making a decision.

That’s what made Mickey‑17 work for me. It actually takes its own premise seriously. It doesn’t pretend that memory equals identity. It doesn’t pretend that you can kill someone and reboot them and call it the same life. It doesn’t treat the philosophical questions like window dressing. It builds the story around them.

Then there’s Superman (2025), which I had to force myself to finish. I paused it, went to bed, and came back the next day because I felt obligated to get through it for the Hugos. I spent half the movie wondering how Lex Luthor convinced so many people to go along with his ridiculous plans — pocket universes, portals, “cities I care about,” whatever that was supposed to mean. And then I saw the endless credits list and thought: all these people worked on this, and this is the result.

There was one moment in Superman (2025) that actually worked for me, and it was Lois interviewing Clark as Superman. She’s the only person in the entire film who seems to understand that “I prevented a war” is not automatically a heroic statement. Her immediate pushback — basically, “Did you? Or did you just decide your assessment was the only one that mattered?” — was the only time the movie acknowledged that Superman acting unilaterally is not automatically noble.

It’s not like he was stopping a giant meteor from taking a chunk out of the Earth and throwing it off orbit. He was intervening in a geopolitical situation with actual governments, actual people, and actual consequences. Lois is the only one who raises the obvious question: who gave him the authority to decide what counts as “preventing” something? That scene had more moral clarity in thirty seconds than the rest of the movie had in two hours.

And honestly, that one exchange just made the rest of the film’s worldbuilding problems stand out even more. If the movie had followed that thread — the one where Superman’s unilateral actions have political, ethical, and human consequences — it might have had something to say. Instead, it went right back to portals, pocket universes, collapsing skyscrapers, and people cheering while their city falls apart.

The worldbuilding is a mess. If you’re going to make up fake countries and fake cities, why keep “United States” at all? And obviously Mexico exists because someone mentions a burrito. It’s inconsistent in a way that makes the whole setting feel flimsy. Metropolis is supposed to be a major American city, but Mr. Terrific and the newspaper editor are basically the only Black characters. It just adds to the sense that the world is a cardboard backdrop.

The destruction scenes are even worse. Entire skyscrapers collapse and people are somehow cheerful. A building ripped in half is a demolition site, not something you push back together like a broken toy. Mr. Terrific “closing the rift imperfectly” and Superman staring at mismatched cracks like it’s a minor cosmetic issue is absurd. That building is condemned. The whole city should be traumatized. Instead, the movie treats it like a quirky workplace disagreement.

The xenophobia subplot, trying to make Superman look bad for being an "alien," has no emotional weight. The movie doesn’t build a world where that fear makes sense. It doesn’t build a world at all. It just gestures at themes without doing any of the work.

By the end, Superman is apologizing to Mr. Terrific for pointing out that a cracked building isn't lined up, and I’m sitting there thinking: you should all be apologizing for the entire movie.

Mickey‑17 gave me characters who felt like people, not props. It took its own ideas seriously. It understood the same thing Old Man’s War hints at but never commits to: that identity isn’t something you can copy‑paste. Superman (2025) couldn’t even keep its own world consistent. One respected my time. The other made me hit pause and go to bed.

Baking - Sourdough Bread - Overnight Cold Bulk Method

 

Starter:

• 600 g active 100% hydration starter. That means that the starter is equal parts of water and flour by weight.

If it loses a little weight during rising, that’s normal. Dough Mix:

• 700 g flour.
• 430 g water.
• 20 g salt.

Mix until combined. I do use a dough hook on my KitchenAid mixer. Add extra water until the dough is sticky enough that you need wet hands to handle it and it mostly comes clean off the dough hook. Dough should feel loose, sticky, and hydrated. Bulk Fermentation: Let the dough rest at room temperature for about 3 hours. Look for a 30 to 50 percent rise, visible bubbles, and a jiggly surface. Do not break the big bubbles. Cold Bulk:

• Cover and refrigerate overnight. It’s OK to just cover this with wax paper.
• If you want to preserve hydration, then put a tight lid on it
  

Next Day – Divide and Shape:

• Turn the cold dough out onto a floured board.
• Use two bench scrapers to turn and tighten the dough with minimal extra flour.

Total dough weight today was 1766 g after cold bulk. Split into one large loaf (about 1000 g) and one smaller loaf (about 766 g). Shape each into a tight ball (as best as you can because it’s very hydrated and sticky). Let rest on the counter for about 20 minutes. Place into floured bowls and refrigerate again to firm up. Preheat oven to 500 F with Dutch ovens inside for 45 to 60 minutes. Bake:

• Dust the bottom of each dough ball with semolina (not the Dutch oven).
• Do a quick hand‑shape to tighten the surface.
• Drop dough into the hot Dutch oven.
• Score immediately with a shallow angled cut.
• Bake covered at 500 F for 15 minutes.
• Lower to 450 F and bake covered 5 more minutes.
• Uncover and bake 15 to 25 minutes depending on loaf size until deep golden brown.

Cool completely before slicing. JUST KIDDING - nobody does that.

REVIEW: An Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo & John Picacio (3-stars)

 I finished An Invisible Parade as part of my Hugo reading, and it’s one of the most striking books in the packet this year. The writing is incredibly strong, and the emotional clarity of the story is what carries it. It treats death, hunger, anger, and fear with a kind of honesty that respects a child’s interior life instead of simplifying it. Nothing is softened or turned into a lesson. These emotions are presented as companions a child learns to walk alongside, not problems to be solved.

The artwork is even more impressive. Every page is dense with sensory detail. You can hear the sounds of the people in the street, smell the food, feel the excitement and tension in the air. The world feels lived‑in and immediate, and the emotional atmosphere is almost tactile. The small touches matter, right down to the cat tucked into one tableau. It’s the kind of book that invites you to slow down and take in each page.

There is one moment that didn’t work for me. The embodiment of “hunger” is shown as a homeless person holding a sign, framed as a reminder to be grateful. That choice felt off‑putting and the wrong kind of message. It reduces a real person’s suffering to a symbolic prompt for someone else’s emotional growth. In a book that is otherwise so careful in how it personifies difficult emotions, this stood out as a misstep.

I also noticed the phrasing in the author’s note: “Día de Muertos is part of my culture.” I rarely see that form; in my experience it’s almost always “Día de los Muertos.” But “Día de Muertos” is a legitimate variant used in Mexico, especially in cultural and institutional contexts. It isn’t a mistake or a dropped article. It’s simply not the form I’m used to seeing, and it caught my attention because the rest of the book is so precise about cultural grounding.

As a piece of illustrated storytelling, this book is exceptional. As a Hugo nominee, it sits in an odd place. It isn’t science fiction, and it’s only lightly fantastical. The figures that appear aren’t speculative beings in the genre sense; they’re allegorical presences meant to make internal experiences visible. That’s powerful, but it doesn’t make the book a genre work. Its strengths come from emotional truth and artistic craft, not from speculative worldbuilding.

It’s a beautiful and moving book, and I’m glad it’s in the packet. But it doesn’t feel like science fiction or fantasy, and that makes its placement on the ballot feel slightly out of alignment with the award’s usual scope.

REVIEW: A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel by Fred Fordham (3.5 stars)

 As part of my Hugo reading this year, I read the 2025 graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea. It’s a beautiful book. The landscapes, the magic, and the sense of scale are all handled with care, and the art invites you to slow down and take in each page.

The storytelling doesn’t land with the same force as the novel or the audiobook. The adaptation compresses the narrative in ways that flatten the emotional arc and weaken the transitions. Some scenes feel abrupt, and the internal stakes that drive Ged’s growth don’t come through as clearly.

A few artistic choices also introduce new confusion. The dragon sequence is the most notable. The panels make it appear as though Ged is becoming a dragon, rather than asserting control through the dragon’s true name. In Le Guin’s world, that distinction matters. Transformation magic has strict limits, and dragons are not beings a wizard can imitate. The visual metaphor muddies that boundary.

There’s also a noticeable inconsistency in Ged’s skin tone. He is described in the text as having dark brown skin, and the graphic novel reflects this, but not consistently. He appears darker as a child than as a young man. Given how intentional Le Guin was about the racial makeup of Earthsea, this stands out.

Overall, it’s a visually rich adaptation and a welcome inclusion in the Hugo packet, but it doesn’t match the clarity or emotional depth of the original story.

REVIEW: A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel by Fred Fordham

RATING: 3.5 stars

REVIEW: The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor and Tana Ford (4.5 stars)

 This is my first year as a Hugo voter and my first time attending Worldcon. I genuinely had no idea I was even eligible to vote until this year, so diving into the voter packet has been a mix of surprise, delight, and a little bit of “why didn’t I do this sooner.” One of the best parts of the whole experience has been discovering works I might never have picked up on my own, and The Space Cat is exactly that kind of discovery. I’m so grateful the creators made it available in the packet.

The book is a fantastic set of stories about a wild lynx‑point Siamese who travels with his family to Nigeria for the year and ends up saving the world from alien invaders. He’s also secretly an alien himself, and his orange space‑cat friend—who he adores—turns out to be his sister. It’s whimsical, heartfelt, and visually rich in a way that a lot of reviewers seem to have missed. People who complained that the story “wasn’t complex enough” were clearly reading only the text and not the art, because the art is doing so much of the emotional and narrative work.

The depiction of kitten zoomies alone deserves an award. Periwinkle’s first day in the house, running nonstop in frantic loops, mapping every corner and surface, is exactly what my mom’s cat Paddy did when we brought him home. It’s so accurate it’s almost documentary. And the hot sauce incident is hilarious in the most cat‑true way possible: the bold investigation, the instant regret, and then the offended look that somehow blames the universe for allowing hot sauce to exist.

The alien plot is playful and unsettling at the same time. The glowing blue plant‑creatures that mimic plants during the day and take over human minds is a clear nod to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The final battle where geckos, dogs, owls, and cats all band together is chaotic and charming. It’s a story about cooperation, identity, and belonging, told through expressive art and tight, efficient writing.

For me, this is easily a four‑ or five‑star work. It succeeds on its own terms: visually sophisticated, emotionally resonant, culturally grounded, and genuinely funny. As a first‑time Hugo voter, finding something this joyful and well‑crafted in the packet feels like exactly what the Hugo process is meant to do—surface stories that deserve more attention than they get.

REVIEW: Gamestorming 2.0 by Dave Gray & Sunni Brown (4.5 stars)

Gamestorming 2.0 is actually a facilitation toolkit that doesn’t need the “game” label: the book is excellent, but not because the authors call everything a “game.” The “game” framing is actually the weakest part. The competency‑based facilitation is the strongest.

The book is full of practical ways to structure conversations, elicit input, break patterns, and help people think differently. It treats collaboration as a learnable skill, not a personality trait. They even include a section on how to draw, which was surprisingly effective even in audiobook form. That part is fantastic.

But calling these activities “games” feels… off.

• A RACI diagram is not a game.
• A stakeholder map is not a game.
• A prioritization exercise is not a game.

And, sitting in a windowless, over‑air‑conditioned basement room with stale snacks, bottled water, and a cafeteria voucher (for a cafeteria with long lines and few vegan options) is definitely not play. You can have better conversations in a nightclub.

When we label these activities as “games,” it creates a subtle performance expectation. You’re supposed to act enthusiastic. You’re supposed to suspend disbelief. You’re supposed to “play along.” And if you don’t, you risk being seen as resistant or not a good corporate citizen. The framing becomes a compliance test.

The irony is that the book doesn’t need the game metaphor at all. The actual value is in the frameworks themselves — the structured ways to think, draw, map, question, and collaborate. Adults don’t need their work disguised as fun. They need clarity, structure, psychological safety, and honest language.

What I appreciate most is that the book respects human capability. It assumes you can learn to draw. You can learn to facilitate. You can learn to visualize ideas. You can learn to collaborate. None of this is innate. It’s all learnable.

If you want to go deeper into the part that actually makes collaboration work — the human part — I’d pair this book with Nonviolent Communication. Gamestorming gives you the structures. NVC gives you the interpersonal skills. Together, they cover both the mechanics and the humanity of working with other people.

Gamestorming 2.0 is worth reading — just ignore the “game” branding and treat it as what it really is: a practical facilitation toolkit for people who want to help groups think better.

REVIEW: Gamestorming 2.0 by Dave Gray & Sunni Brown 

RATING: 4.5 stars

REVIEW: All That We Burn by Marisa Billions (4.5-stars)

 All That We Burn — A  (Sapphic) Thriller for Readers Who Don’t Usually Read Thrillers

I don’t usually read thrillers. My default genre is science fiction, where suspension of disbelief comes easily because the world isn’t meant to resemble my own. When a story takes place on another planet, in a future society, or in a reality with different rules, I don’t expect the worldbuilding to match my lived experience. I’m willing to accept the unfamiliar as long as the internal logic holds. Contemporary thrillers, on the other hand, often ask me to believe that ordinary people behave in extraordinary ways without giving me the psychological scaffolding to buy into it. That’s usually where the genre loses me.

But Marisa Billions keeps pulling me in anyway. All That We Burn is the clearest example of why her work is growing on me. It’s marketed as a thriller, but what makes it compelling isn’t the danger or the twists. It’s the way she writes about people who are desperate to be seen and equally desperate to hide the parts of themselves they fear will be rejected. That emotional architecture is what makes the story believable, even when the plot takes sharp turns. She builds her world from the inside out, through psychology rather than geography, and that’s a kind of worldbuilding I can trust.

The three central women in this story are all performing versions of themselves. Parker, the hyper‑competent lawyer with the trademark pompadour and bespoke suits, projects absolute control. She wins every case, commands every room, and maintains a polished exterior that leaves no room for doubt. Underneath, though, she’s terrified of vulnerability. Her competence is a shield, and the moment someone threatens her emotional equilibrium, she collapses in ways she never would professionally.

Calypso, with her dark hair and distinct golden eyes, is a Katrina refugee who rebuilt her life into something curated and artistic. She owns a tattoo shop, lives in a loft that feels like an artist's sanctuary, and has created a world where she can finally breathe. But her stability is built on escape. She’s reinvented herself so thoroughly that the past feels like a ghost she can outrun, until it catches up with her in the form of Macy.

Macy is the redheaded cop who is always fumbling, always dropping the ball, always trying to be someone she isn’t. Off duty, she dresses in boho and hippie clothing, projecting a softness and free‑spirited ease that she can’t sustain. She’s petite, fiery, and emotionally volatile, and she’s been carrying a torch for Parker for years. That unrequited longing becomes the fuse that ignites the entire story. Macy’s jealousy, insecurity, and desperation drive her to fabricate a New Orleans case file accusing Calypso of crimes she never committed. It’s a lie built on Parker’s deepest fears, and Parker falls for it instantly. The woman who never loses a case doesn’t even fact‑check the file. Her emotional blind spots undo her in a way no opposing counsel ever could.

The unraveling that follows is messy and human. Calypso flees. Macy attacks her in a remote Washington cabin. No body is found. Parker spirals between guilt and denial. Javier, one of Calypso’s clients, steps in with a kind of ambiguous menace that Billions handles beautifully. Javier is always performing a version of himself too. Maybe he’s involved in sex trafficking. Maybe he’s killed someone. Maybe he hasn’t. The point is that he plays the role of the dangerous man so convincingly that when the moment comes, he delivers exactly the version of himself he’s been selling all along.

Around these three women orbit characters who add texture and grounding. Xander and Xochitl are the stable straight couple, the emotionally functional pair who quietly support Calypso without needing to perform anything. They’re the ballast in a story full of people who are constantly shape‑shifting to survive. Parker’s assistants, too, become crucial; they’re the ones who finally uncover Macy’s lies and force Parker to confront the truth she was too afraid to see.

What makes the book work isn’t just the plot, though the twists are well‑timed and satisfying. It’s the worldbuilding—not in the sci‑fi sense of constructing a new reality, but in the psychological sense of making the characters’ choices feel inevitable. Calypso’s tattoo shop feels lived‑in. Parker’s legal world is crisp and sterile, mirroring her emotional defenses. Macy’s police work is chaotic and full of self‑inflicted wounds. Even the intimacy scenes are handled with restraint and emotional intelligence. They’re sensual without being anatomical, grounded in tension and proximity rather than explicit detail. It’s adult without being clinical, which is rare in queer thrillers.

By the time I finished the book, I found myself wanting to Google “Calypso Boudreaux” to see if she had a backstory website. That’s how vivid she is. And that’s ultimately why Marisa Billions’ work is growing on me. She writes thrillers that feel like character studies with a pulse. Her stories are about the cost of vulnerability, the masks we wear, and the danger of being truly known. Even if thrillers aren’t your usual genre, All That We Burn has the depth, tension, and psychological nuance to pull you in.

REVIEW: All That We Burn by Marisa Billions

RATING: 4.5-stars

REVIEW: "The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom (2-stars)

A friend really enjoyed this, and I can understand why: it's engineered to be emotionally accessible, visually vivid, and structured like a prestige‑limited Netflix series. But for me, it lands in the same category as All the Light We Cannot See: a novel that mistakes sentiment for depth, set pieces for storytelling, and archetypes for characters.

Albom chooses an omniscient narrator, literally "Truth," which should open the door to moral complexity. Instead, it flattens everything. The characters aren't people so much as positions on a chessboard, moved around to deliver lessons rather than to live believable lives.

The central premise could have been extraordinary: a child manipulated by a Nazi officer into luring his own family onto a train, who grows up wealthy, powerful, and haunted, quietly supporting survivors while hunting the man who destroyed his life. That's a novel with teeth, much like Doerr's book would have been a novel with teeth about a wacky, possibly gay uncle running a pirate radio station under the noses of the Germans. But, like Doerr, Albom refuses to write that novel and writes one designed to be popular instead.

The "hidden girl" subplot is Albom at his most unintentionally comedic: Fannie is sheltered by a river woman, rescued by a Famous Hungarian Actress, and eventually resurfaces as projectionist for her secretive childhood friend, bringing him home-cooked comfort food like some kind of Holocaust-trauma-infused fairy godmother. It's not character development; it's emotional garnish. And then there are the atrocities — Albom's version of gravitas. A baby thrown from a train. A Holocaust survivor's lifelong guilt. The climactic brotherly betrayal / reunited / taking-a-bullet / killing-the-Nazi sequence that is pure storyboard masquerading as storytelling. None of it is earned. None of it is psychologically grounded. It's cheap catharsis.

I recently rewatched the X-Files pilot and had an immediate realization: it hasn't aged well. The infamous "mammalian corpse" that terrified audiences in the 90s now looks like a rubber prop under bad lighting — a cheap shock designed to provoke a reaction before you notice the seams, the latex, the manipulation. That's exactly what Albom's atrocities are: not integrated into the emotional or moral architecture of the book, just horrors tossed in for shock value with no psychological or thematic follow-through. Once you see it, the whole thing collapses.

The final twist, that the narrator "Truth" is actually Fannie, is the same kind of faux-profound flourish. It doesn't recontextualize anything. It's just a Hallmark-grade metaphysical wink.

I disliked it less than All the Light We Cannot See, but the same hollowness is there: a screenplay in waiting, not a novel. Beautifully framed scenes, emotionally manipulative beats, and characters who exist to be moved through them.

If you want a fable about redemption, this will work for you. If you want a novel about the Holocaust with emotional, moral, or psychological weight, this isn't it.

REVIEW: "The Little Liar" by Mitch Albom RATING: 2-stars

REVIEW: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (4-Stars)

 

I’m not a romantasy reader — I’m a sci‑fi reader who noticed this book when it was on NetGalley because the premise had promise. And it turns out the book isn’t romantasy at all. It’s a competence fantasy wrapped in ancient technology and identity reconstruction.

- or - 

A story about competence, arrested development, and the long road back to choosing yourself.

I didn’t expect This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me to be a book about identity reconstruction, but that’s exactly what it is. Maggie isn’t a chosen one; she’s a woman whose life stalled at sixteen after a catastrophic breakup, who spent the next nine years drifting through the gig economy, undervaluing herself, and quietly shrinking from her own potential. When she’s dropped into Rellas, she doesn’t suddenly become magical — she becomes competent, and the world responds to that competence like it’s a superpower.

That’s the real magic of Book 1.

Maggie negotiates with mercenaries, frees enslaved children, recruits one of the deadliest knights in the kingdom, and disposes of bodies in what might be a river monster or might be a piece of ancient biological waste‑processing tech. She thwarts a serial killer. She dies — repeatedly — and is resurrected by whatever ancient system is still running under the skin of this world, a “magic” that feels more like automated repair protocols than divine intervention. She builds a household from nothing. She makes allies. She makes enemies. She survives. And she does all of this while still thinking of herself as “average,” “plain,” “middling.” She hasn’t caught up to the fact that she’s the protagonist of her own life.

And in the middle of all this, the book keeps dropping in these fabulous square pastries — flaky, sweet, portable — and Maggie, being from Austin, immediately recognizes the vibe. They’re kolaches by another name. It’s a tiny detail, but it’s doing real work: it grounds her, reminds her (and us) that she had a life before Rellas, and that she’s carrying pieces of that life with her even as she’s forced to reinvent herself. It’s one of the few sensory bridges between the world she left and the world she’s trying to survive.

The book knows this. The world knows this. Maggie doesn’t — not yet.

And that’s where the men come in.

Because yes, the men are absurdly good‑looking. Comically good‑looking. Ramond, Reynald, Solentine, Severin — every one of them is described with the kind of detail usually reserved for the cover model of a romantasy paperback. Meanwhile, the women are framed entirely differently — not as objects of desire, but as fully realized adults with mastery. Clover is tall and “average,” sure, but she’s also an elite lady’s maid, costurier, hair and makeup artist, etiquette encyclopedia, and household COO rolled into one. Shana is a former knight who can swing a mace, command a kitchen, and produce pastries that could probably start a small religion. These women aren’t decorative; they’re the backbone of the world. They’re what competence looks like when it’s lived, not fantasized.

This isn’t male gaze. It’s a narrative trick.

The men aren’t romantic prizes. They’re archetypes — masks, roles, life paths. They’re the versions of adulthood Maggie never chose for herself. Each one represents a different future she could have had if she’d ever believed she deserved one. The fact that they’re beautiful is almost beside the point; it’s shorthand for “this is a fantasy of possibility,” not “this is a fantasy of romance.”

And the masks matter. Book 1 ends with a cascade of unmaskings: Ramond revealing his intentions, Reynald revealing his emotional investment, Solentine revealing his lineage and long game, Severin revealing his leverage and ruthlessness. Everyone has been pretending to be someone else. Everyone except Maggie, who still hasn’t learned how to pretend — or how to choose.

Her kidnapping at the end isn’t a romantic twist; it’s the culmination of her reactive nature. She still sacrifices herself for others. She still doesn’t see her own value. She still hasn’t claimed her agency. Book 2 is going to force that reckoning.

And then there’s the magic — or rather, the “magic.”

Rellas is a four‑millennia‑old society sitting on top of ancient systems it no longer understands. The Eight Families’ powers behave like genetic access keys. The Strelka behaves like a biotech guardian. The river creature that eats bodies behaves like a maintenance system. The mage blasting a meteorite with a laser is not fantasy; it’s physics. The world is running on decayed infrastructure, and the people inside it have mythologized the user interface.

Book 1 only shows us six of the Eight Great Families. We get the warrior families — Arvel’s Enduring Flame, Everard’s Fatefire, Bors’ Rageglow, Savaric’s Exultant Call — and two non‑warrior families, Hreban’s Mirror Heart and Yolenta’s Gold Glean. The other two Great Families are conspicuously absent, and that absence is not an oversight. It’s a promise. Their magic is either subtle, dangerous, or plot‑critical, and the authors are saving them for when Maggie is ready to understand them.

Which brings me back to Maggie.

Book 1 isn’t about romance, or magic, or even politics. It’s about a woman who has been emotionally frozen for nearly a decade suddenly being forced into motion. It’s about competence rediscovered. It’s about the world responding to her as if she matters long before she believes she does. It’s about the slow, painful, necessary process of reimagining a self you abandoned years ago.

The men are beautiful. The magic is ancient tech. The pastries taste like home. The women are competence incarnate. The society is old and brittle. But the heart of the book is Maggie learning, step by step, that she is allowed to choose her own life.

Book 1 is survival. Book 2 will be agency.

And I’m here for that journey. REVIEW: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

RATING: 4-Stars

Personal Branding Without the Costume

 (Gender, public space, law enforcement, and why my cats have a better Instagram presence than I do)

Most conversations about “personal branding” still assume that identity is something you perform. A curated aesthetic. A polished narrative. A set of signals designed to make you legible to others. A lifestyle you’re supposed to package and distribute.

But some of us never opted into that contract.

I’ve spent my entire life being misread by people who rely on gender performance as their primary sorting mechanism. If you don’t present the way they expect, they fill in the blanks with whatever story makes them most comfortable. And they’ll defend that story even when the facts contradict it.

What’s interesting is how different the world looks when you stop treating gender as unpaid labor. When you stop decorating yourself to be “readable.” When you stop performing a role you never auditioned for.

The people who matter don’t need the costume

The people who actually see you — colleagues, friends, the ones who pay attention — don’t need the performance. My stepdad Tony had an entire online WebTV community in the 90s who knew him for his humor, curiosity, and generosity. None of them knew he used a wheelchair. They knew him, not the packaging. They knew his mind, not his body. They knew his presence, not his performance.

That’s the version of personal branding I believe in: competence, clarity, curiosity, and contribution. Not aesthetics. Not performance. Not compliance.

Gender policing doesn’t stop at gender — it bleeds into public space and law enforcement

One of the things people don’t talk about enough is how gender nonconformity affects your experience with the law — not just police, but the informal “law” of public space: who gets to stand where, who gets shoved aside, who gets interrogated, who gets treated as out of place. Geography doesn’t protect you from gender policing. Visibility doesn’t protect you. Neighborhood doesn’t protect you. Compliance — or perceived compliance — is the only thing that protects you, and even that is conditional.

A few years ago, I was out with two friends — Matt and Matthew — standing at the corner of 18th & Castro waiting to cross the street. Possibly the gayest intersection in America. I was right behind them, wearing textile motorcycle pants, a very dirty hi‑viz jacket, and carrying my helmet in a messenger bag slung over my shoulder.

There was zero space between me and the Matts. And yet a man — shorter than me, dressed in a Marlon Brando leather jacket and studded cap — started physically shoving me, trying to wedge himself into a space that did not exist. He told me I was taking up too much space (we were standing there first, he approached me). Then he escalated into yelling misogynistic slurs at me and trying to haul me off the curb to stand behind my friends.

To my right was a utility pole. There was nowhere to go. The light changed. We started crossing. He kept shoving and yelling.

And then something remarkable happened: Three guys in plaid madras shorts, boat shoes, and long-sleeve button-downs — very 80s preppy — stopped, turned in unison, and the one in the middle pointed and said, loudly and incredulously:

“IS SOMEONE GETTING QUEER-BASHED IN THE GAYEST INTERSECTION IN AMERICA?”

They started jeering at him, calling out his behavior, and he bolted.

Obliviousness is its own kind of privilege

What still stands out to me about that day isn’t just the man who shoved me and called me misogynistic slurs. It’s that the two people I was with — Matt and Matthew — were completely oblivious to what was happening inches behind them.

Later, when we discussed this incident, their response was the same one I’ve heard my entire life: “You must’ve done something.”

These are married gay men. They know what it’s like to be targeted. They know what it’s like to be shoved, insulted, or threatened for existing. But they were still so insulated by their own gender legibility — two men who look like men, performing masculinity in a way that reads as “normal” — that they couldn’t see misogyny even when it was happening in physical contact range.

They didn’t see the dynamic. They didn’t see the gender policing. They didn’t see the entitlement. They didn’t see the hostility directed at me for being:

• a woman not performing femininity

• a motorcyclist in gear

• taller than the man who targeted me

• not visually “readable” to him

To them, it was just “some guy being weird.” To me, it was a pattern I’ve lived with for decades.

This is the part people don’t understand: If you’ve never been targeted for your gender presentation, you don’t see it happening to others — even when it’s happening right next to you.

And when you don’t see it, you default to the easiest narrative: “You must’ve done something.”

People protect their worldview before they protect each other.

I’m not feminine or masculine. I’m not a brand archetype. I’m not a curated persona.

I’m just a person who likes building things, learning things, and giving people space to help. I don’t need to be pretty or attractive to be valuable. Not believing I’m attractive doesn’t mean I have a self‑esteem issue. It means my self‑esteem isn’t built on appearance.

People seem to have lost the ability to laugh at themselves. There’s so much cultural investment in “pretty/attractive = good” that any deviation from that script gets treated like a crisis. For me, it’s simple: I don’t need to be attractive to be valuable. And frankly, it’s none of my business what you think about my appearance. Just don’t let me walk around with food on my face.

Even on Instagram — the platform built around image — I don’t curate a lifestyle or present a polished version of myself. I mostly share my cats’ lives: their routines, their personalities, the small moments that make me laugh. It’s not a brand. It’s not an aesthetic. It’s not a performance. It’s just the part of my world that’s fun to document.

I don’t share my life. I share their lives. They’re the ones with the curated feed.

The unpaid labor of gender

I’ve had people my whole life try to conscript me into gender performance. Strangers commenting on my face when I was ten. Teenagers in the 80s who couldn’t handle a girl who didn’t do big hair and heavy makeup. A boyfriend’s mother who kept trying to “fix” me with skirts and ruffles. People who assume that if I’m not performing femininity, something must be wrong.

My trans women friends don’t do that. They understand something the others don’t: gender expression is personal, not compulsory. They know what it costs to perform gender. They know what it costs not to. They know what it means to choose.

Work is where this matters most

And for the record: if you hire me, I will happily wear any corporate‑identity polo shirt you hand me. I’ll show up, do the work, collaborate, build, troubleshoot, lead, and deliver.

But you cannot pay me enough to dress “girly” and also expect me to feel comfortable. And if I don’t feel comfortable, I don’t do my best work.

My work is the value. Not the costume. Not the performance. Not the aesthetic. Just the work.

Ultimately it comes down to "my gender is nobody's business." I refuse the unpaid labor of gender. I’m opting out of the job description. I’m rejecting the idea that I owe anyone a performance. I’m rejecting the idea that branding requires a costume. I’m rejecting the idea that identity must be decorative.

I’m just a person. And that’s enough.