The Sir Julius Vogel Awards last Thursday were meant to be a celebration of some of our best genre writers. It didn’t turn out that way, as Casey Lucas, one of the winners, explains. This is the story of how the nominees and recipients of the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s most prominent … Read more
Sam Brooks reviews Netflix’s The Witcher, a wildly fun adaptation of the Polish fantasy novels of the same name. Mild spoilers follow. It’s become a stock phrase in the age of streaming that you have to wait until it gets good. Think of the beloved BoJack Horseman which takes a full half-season to not just … Read more
Dr Susan Wardell, a His Dark Materials fan who grew up to be a social anthropologist, reviews the much-anticipated sort-of sequel, The Secret Commonwealth. Is the world fundamentally dead, or alive? Philip Pullman asks in this new book, a thinly-veiled philosophical interrogation of “progressive thinking”. The book is rich in both human and political intrigue, … Read more
‘The beautiful are cruel, the cruel are sad, the demons are capable of good.’ Maria McMillan reviews the new novel by Elizabeth Knox, bound to be one of the year’s biggest local releases. Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book has an awful lot going on. I’m still working it out. It’s a story about Taryn Cornick … Read more
Sam Brooks reviews Carnival Row, an Amazon Original which can’t break free from its own shallow edginess. The fantasy ghetto is real, and it’s hard to get out of it. Game of Thrones managed to get out of it through the sheer quality of the first season, and also by keeping its more fantastical elements … Read more