This has a great concept but also doesn’t execute it as well as it could have. I’m usually behind soft worldbuilding, but there’s so many questions raised from the conceit the author asks of the reader, the longer the story goes on, the more apparent this thing needs more buttressing. I suspect that a novella or short story with this premise might be the superior structure for what this wants to be about.

However, there is legitimately fantastic human moments between people and some commentary on capitalism and social structures. It’s not perfect on this front, specifically with dialogue, but it is absolutely when it is at its best.

Merged review:

This has a great concept but also doesn’t execute it as well as it could have. I’m usually behind soft worldbuilding, but there’s so many questions raised from the conceit the author asks of the reader, the longer the story goes on, the more apparent this thing needs more buttressing. I suspect that a novella or short story with this premise might be the superior structure for what this wants to be about.

However, there is legitimately fantastic human moments between people and some commentary on capitalism and social structures. It’s not perfect on this front, specifically with dialogue, but it is absolutely when it is at its best.

I love seeing a story set here in Alberta, and even more so with some ace representation. It brought me back to living in a res, and felt like, while feeling somewhat simple in its story, well executed in conveying some pretty complex issues, on top of a grounded story about a girl coming into her own, feeling othered, and dealing with her families demons coming home to roost.

The ace rep is the type of inclusion that pops up organically, based on the situations she’s in, and not a book capital a about that, and a crash course on it. Which I liked. It would have probably felt awkward otherwise, in this kind of story.

I would not be eaten, nor beaten, no skewered and swimmer I,
no drowned dinner for a circle of cold companions,
gobbling my guts, glutted on my gold.

Beowulf giving ‘zero shits’ and the numerous Bro!’s won’t be for everyone, and that’s okay. Usually, a translation endeavors to be “timeless” so that no matter when it is consumed, it can be reasonably well understood. This approach narrows the translator's available word choice, eliminating popular vernacular, cadence, and jargon in favor of the antiquated versions of these things, as well as the original interpretations of the story itself. These translations end up becoming less evocative and, counter-intuitively, less accessible than they endeavor to be.
This translation discards these in-built assumptions regarding what is “desirable” of a translated text.

There is something of a renaissance happening in translations of classics. Feminist perspectives such as Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey and Madeline Miller’s historical fiction books Circe and The Song of Achilles have revealed blind spots in previous translations. Beowulf belongs with these, another example of why challenging the defaultism present in previous work in this field is a fantastic thing.

“She’d surrendered son and brother here,
her home-hall become a brutal battlefield.
Innocent of crime, yet cursed, captured,
speared, worse. Hoc’s daughter was savaged
by sorrow, grief-gutted. Who wouldn’t weep,
as dawn drove feud-daggers deeper, the sun scoring
her son’s wounds, day breaking upon her dearest dead?
They’d been her heart, her happiness, her hopes.
War had wrung them ragged, dragged them to death
across a court of sword-crossed kin.”

Beowulf sports some of the most evocative prose I’ve ever encountered. In any text. While it can be jarring reading lines like, “Meanwhile, Beowulf gave zero shits.” one cannot say it is not accessible. People of all ages will understand. Nothing is opaque. Everything flows extremely well and still designed to be spoken aloud. It just works.

This may not be the case as time goes on. Popular terms and jargon fade away. But, cleverly, I think time will only prove to enshrine this text because it is grounded in the present moment. It reflects now rather than the past. It is more graceful and elegant by rooting itself in the present.

I wouldn’t ordinarily consider a new translation to be a modern classic because, while they may be “better” translations that others, they do not usually deviate from the text enough to be considered truly new. Perhaps it is more clear or has better flow and is more enjoyable to read as a result, but this new translation of Beowulf goes out of its way to differentiate itself.

It is a different interpretation of the text from a sociological standpoint, with a feminist perspective. The translation endeavors to distinguish itself from everything previously done. Bold in ambition, goals, and direction, Beowulf is transformed by Maria Dahvana Headley from the oldest story to something innovative and unique; a candidate for being considered a modern classic.

“Then another dirge rose, woven uninvited
by a Geatish woman, louder than the rest.
She tore her hair and screamed her horror
at the hell that was to come: more of the same.
Reaping raping, feasts of blood, iron fortunes
marching across her country claiming her body.
The sky sipped the smoke and smiled.”

I knew this story by osmosis, since so much of it is often referenced. Even in the later batman Arkham games, the part with Barbra is canonized, I think. It’s a slim volume and it’s an interesting story, but not one of my favourite Moore works. Very cool to see the script and have the original included though.

2024 re read: I agree with my prior assessment, but it does feel like more things were pertinent in this, with the benefit of hindsight.

The quality of the writing is still overall better than the last two books.

Where it falls short for me is the new characters that weren’t as interesting as Bobby and Chrisjen. Not all that much actually happened but because there were so many character POVs the plot inched, sometimes crawled, forward. I found it incredibly laborious at certain parts; neither of the previous books were ever even remotely so.

That’s a shame because the actual “point” of this one, as well as the world building that happens, is the best so far. I loved that it critiqued violence as the first choice, despite never being the best. And how that choice continually only made things worse for everybody. I also really liked seeing restorative justice in this genre space. It felt very novel! But just when it introduced it, it’s stilted because a lot of people get off Scott Free, (spoilers here: including Cortez at the end of the book just hanging out having a nice convo after inciting many, many deaths as well as mass panic)

All in all, I still enjoyed it because of the novel aspects to the plot and some of the characters I like were still around. I liked Anna despite her somewhat boring POV (especially as she has no character arc to speak of) because of the contrast and commitment to non violence. The other two new characters felt like filler, though. I think this story would have been a lot more punchy trimmed down substantially.

2024 re read: yep, still fantastic. Re reading because I got the second volume for Christmas!!

Well, the hype is real. The only character I know from the first issue is Lex Luther, and by the time the third issue is over, I’m taking a break between issues to make it last longer. This guy, The Human Target, apparently puts himself in the way of a target to, I guess, fake other peoples’ death? Only, this particular time he also ingests a poison, possibly meant for Lex, who he was subbing in for, and suddenly this turns into a slow burn detective story with a romantic subplot.

And here’s the thing: it just works. There’s a backstory issue at exactly the right spot for people, like me, who ask themselves, what the heck kind of guy wants this job. What does he get out of it? He also seems to exist in a grey space that is very conducive to the slightly melodramatic, but also too-endearing new-noir detective beats. Where men have about 8 sentences that form a chord that are continually plucked, connected to a secret, dark room. Every time a string in that chord gets twigged, they’re cats chasing string. And they think they know why that is, but not really.

So it is with our main man, who, in connecting with a member of the justice league International, helping to find his poisoner in the twelve days he’s got left to live, seems like he’s being played. Falling, inevitably, for a woman with control of ice, forcing him to confront his own mortality at an in opportune time. King makes this emotional with every panel. The Smallwood makes it excruciating to see the connection between them, as well as the contrast between the inevitability of the human target being actually killed, with a bright and shining world that is stunning and gorgeous. The decision to go for this tone and really nail the human interactions vs a dark noir palette is brilliant.

Everything about this is far more interesting than the typical build up to a physical conflict in most super hero stories. This puts DC on the map for me in a way it hasn’t done, maybe ever—since Vertigo. That’s how good this is. The only people who wouldn’t want it is people wanting, well, a super hero story, I guess. Hope this is getting the love it deserves. I tell you what: if this and this forthcoming second volume gets collected, preferably into an oversized edition, I’m there in a heartbeat.

More reviews over at my blog: consumingcyberpunk.com

"I just can't believe that civilization is going to get off the hook that easy. 'The end of civilization'—what end? What civilization, for that matter?...the kind of trouble we got, they aren't allowed to have any end."

It's the year 2031 in Heavy Weather, and perhaps unsurprisingly, things haven't gotten better. Global economies have crashed. Governments hardly function. Currency, communication, and borders have rapidly changed due to the massive changes heavy weather has caused. Once lush and fertile land is now ravaged by drought.

"...so that's really what you're doing, huh? You chase thunderstorms for a living these days?

Oh, not for a living."

The book alternates between Jane and Alex Unger. Jane makes her way to Mexico to break out her younger brother Alex from a clinica. Alex is billed to the reader as having a lot of problems, not entirely uncommon after the collapse of 1st world nations as we know them. Alex ostensibly suffers from a myriad of retroviruses and Jane, believing the clinica is ripping him off and not curing him at all, decides to bail him out.

"...the code was cryptware—it reencrypted itself every goddamn month and demanded a payoff before unfreezing."

During the State Of Emergency, when the heavy weather first became a huge problem for mankind after constantly disregarding climate problems, almost all data and information systems went down. Society collapsed as countries were not prepared to deal with massive climate swings, some people decided to take matters into their own hands. Calling them "Structure hits", people would take down buildings that contributed to global warming and other systemic problems. Hell had a structure. It had a texture. The spinning inner walls were a blurry streaky gas, and a liquid rippling sheen, and a hard black wobbling solid, all at once. Great bulging rhythmical waves of hollows of peristalsis were creeping up the funnel core, slow and dignified, like great black smoke rings in the throat of a deep thinker.

The concept of hacking has undergone a bit of a change as well. "Hacking" seems to refer to any modifications to anything at all. From kites to ornithopters and especially--to heavy weather. After Jane breaks out Alex they return to the Storm Troupe. This band of misfits chase "spikes" in weather in an attempt to gather more information on it. Still little is known about it, apparently, but this troupe, each with their own way of hacking something, aim to find the mother of all tornadoes: the f6.

"I hack kites...Balloons, chaff, ultralights, parafoils...chutes are my favourite though, I like to structure-jump."

Throughout the novel, we find out that there are still spooks working for what is left of a functioning government. There are still border guards but they don't really care about the imaginary line on the ground anymore. Technology is still somewhat futuristic but not typically cyberpunk, ie, there are no cybernetics. There is no Internet, either. People live poorly and barely survive. All that is left is the individual drives people have. These punks only care about money in so far as how it can help them better hack heavy weather.

"...all workable standards of wealth has vaporized, digitized, and into a nonstop hurricane of electronic thing air."

This is where the book really shines. The world building, the technology, and the fiction specifically about these storm chasers and how they hack them is very cool. They use ultralight manned drones to scout out ahead. There are ornithopters with tech that casts the cameras feed into the helmeted view of people piloting them back at camp. When they send these into the tornado to "punch the core", they gain even more data. It's exciting and interesting.

As the Emergency had deepened, the packing Regime had rammed its data nationalizations through Congress, and with that convulsive effort, the very nature of money and information had both mutated beyond any repair.

Things lag a bit with character work, which is for the most part good. Marrying speculative climate change fiction with cyberpunk is genius and the characters mostly do the premise justice. Jane is a pretty well realized female protagonist but also used as the main vehicle for communicating her main drive, hunting these storms, is really the only thing that defines her. The troupers all substitute some aspects of their lives and only feel like truly functioning human beings when they are being adrenaline junkies, all other wannabees who don't feel the same way never stay.

"There is no more alternative society. Just people who will probably survive and people who probably won't."

This idea that Jane can only be whole while she is pursuing something only somewhat works due to the books ending, which I was pretty lukewarm about. The sins of the previous generation are visited upon the next generation of people. There are too many people in the world for it to sustain it. You're still only useful if you can contribute the way they want you to, despite it being post-capitalism and a mostly dystopia world.

"It's me alright, it's very much part of me, but it's not something I'm in command of and I don't control it. It's like a force, a compulsion, that tears at things, and shreds them, and chops them up, and comprehends them, and I don't control it, and I never have. I can't. You understand?

Yes. I do understand. It's like a spike, inside."

These are all somewhat interesting things to explore but they always end up on the peripheral and feel a little bit weird when injected. It wants to say so much more and sometimes comments on misogyny in organizations like the Texas Rangers, as well as what is expected of women like Jane. But this is mostly Twister with cyberpunk aesthetic and an interesting bit of speculation. It doesn't have the deep questions good cyberpunk fiction often has along with the action. It's too bad because it does dip its toes, it just never gets in.

"We were just trying to kill the machinery. Get rid of it. All that junk that had killed our world, y'know?"

The world and the action is worth the cost of admission and it is a fast read. This concept inspired a whole new game design I've been working on, in tandem with other fiction. More speculative fiction on climate issues married with post-cyberpunk is something I would love to see more of.

You can nab the hardcover of paperback cheap these days, interestingly though, you cannot get it digitally.

"Even the blackest cloud has a chrome lining."