The Expanse Reading Order

There are just nine novels in The Expanse, and they are numbered, so reading them in order is pretty easy.

However, there are also a number of novellas and short stories, available for individual purchase from ebook retailers like Amazon, and now collected in the book Memory's Legion. Some are prequels to the main series, showing what characters did before them; others are follow-ups to specific novels, showing more of characters and situations from the main series.

Possible Order #1: Release Date

The obvious, spoiler-free, way to read them is release order:

1. Book One: Leviathan Wakes (June 2011)
2. Short Story: The Butcher of Anderson Station (Oct. 2011)
   
3. Book Two: Caliban's War (June 2012)
4. Novella: Gods of Risk (Sept. 2012) 
5. Short Story: "Drive" (Nov. 2012)
   
6. Book Three: Abaddon's Gate (June 2013)
7. Novella: The Churn (Apr. 2014)
   
8. Book Four: Cibola Burn (June 2014)
9. Book Five: Nemesis Games (June 2015)
10. Novella: The Vital Abyss (Oct. 2015)
    
11. Book Six: Babylon's Ashes (Dec. 2016)
12. Novella: Strange Dogs (July 2017)
    
13. Book Seven: Persepolis Rising (Dec. 2017)
14. Book Eight: Tiamat's Wrath (Mar. 2019)
15. Novella: Auberon (Nov. 2019)
    
16. Book Nine: Leviathan Falls (Nov. 2021)
17. Novella: The Sins of Our Fathers (Mar. 2022)

Possible Order #2: Chronological

I really don't think I would recommend this. It seems silly to me. The Expanse is definitely one of those series where the prequels are interesting because they tell you about characters you already like. Who would care about The Churn if you didn't already know Amos? And in some cases, it spoils: The Vital Abyss takes place over a span of time that ends around Cibola Burn, but builds on something revealed in Nemesis Games. But for completion's sake, here it is:

1. Short Story: "Drive" [a long time before Book One]
   
2. Novella: The Churn [some years before Book One]
   
3. Short Story: The Butcher of Anderson Station [a few years before Book One]
   
4. Book One: Leviathan Wakes
5. Book Two: Caliban's War
   
6. Novella: Gods of Risk [between Books Two and Three]
   
7. Book Three: Abaddon's Gate
8. Book Four: Cibola Burn
9. Novella: The Vital Abyss [in parallel to Books One through Four]
   
10. Book Five: Nemesis Games
11. Book Six: Babylon's Ashes
12. Novella: Strange Dogs [between Books Six and Seven]
    
13. Book Seven: Persepolis Rising
14. Novella: Auberon [between Books Seven and Eight]
    
15. Book Eight: Tiamat's Wrath
16. Book Nine: Leviathan Falls
17. Novella: The Sins of Our Fathers [after Book Nine]

My Suggested Order

I actually came up with a different order to both. The thing off-putting about the release order is the somewhat erratic way the shorts were released—some books had two shorts between them, others none. I think having a small taster between each larger work is nice. So to maintain that, "Drive" gets pushed out of sequence a bit... but it can pretty much be read anywhere.

And I think in one case the prequel actually does benefit being read first: Auberon might have come out after Book Eight, but is more interesting read prior. So here is my "machete order" for The Expanse books, which tries to alternate between full-length novels and shorts, and also doesn't put anything where it will spoil something:

1. Book One: Leviathan Wakes
   
2. Short Story: The Butcher of Anderson Station [fills in background of a character introduced in Book One]
   
3. Book Two: Caliban's War
4. Novella: Gods of Risk [follows up on a Book Two character]
   
5. Book Three: Abaddon's Gate
   
6. Novella: The Churn [sets up some stuff that is used in Book Four]
   
7. Book Four: Cibola Burn
8. Short Story: "Drive" [could go anywhere]
   
9. Book Five: Nemesis Games
10. Novella: The Vital Abyss [fills in backstory for some stuff revealed in Book Five]
    
11. Book Six: Babylon's Ashes
12. Novella: Strange Dogs [takes place in this gap]
    
13. Book Seven: Persepolis Rising
14. Novella: Auberon [released after Book Eight but works well before it]
    
15. Book Eight: Tiamat's Wrath
    
16. Book Nine: Leviathan Falls
    
17. Novella: The Sins of Our Fathers [follow-up to Book Nine]
    

It does kind of bother me that the alternating structure breaks down at the end! Maybe read The Expanse: Origins comic there, or maybe the answer is to work in "The Last Flight of the Cassandra" (a short story exclusive to the Expanse RPG sourcebook) somewhere.

My Expanse collection is a mish-mash. Mostly US trade paperbacks, but I have two UK trades and one US hardcover. Note that with the later US books, the author name and title switched prominence, but that didn't happen in the UK.

Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson

Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson

I picked up this Tor.com novella (though I think it must be a novel by actual word count) because it was by Eddie Robson, one of my favorite Doctor Who writers, one of those whose senses of tone, character, and world are generally strong enough that I could imagine him succeeding at original science fiction, which is not a thing I believe of most tie-in writers.

Published: 2020
Acquired: December 2021
Read: June 2022

For its first half this is very strong. It has a weird setting: a city where everything is made of wood, ruled by a king with a talking cat, where the imperative is to just build build build. The parallel narratives follow the king and the chief architect, both of whom are beginning to suspect that their world doesn't entirely make sense. (What is... concrete?) The story is told with a dry, factual narrative voice that works well to highlight its absurdities.

About halfway through, though, the novel explains what's going on, and at that point, I was like, "This is just a Doctor Who story!" And indeed, when I flipped to the Acknowledgements page, I found Hearts of Oak was based on something Robson originally pitched to Alan Barnes, former script editor of Big Finish's Doctor Who range. At that point, the story becomes much less interesting; what's really happening is much less striking than what went before, and the disconnected style works against the narrative from then on, too, as to be interesting what comes next, we would need to be invested in the characters as people more.

That said, I like Robson in general and the first half of this novel in particular enough that I would give his original work another chance; I see that this is actually his second novel, so I'll have to seek out his first and see how it is.

JSA, Book Three: The Power of Legacy! by Geoff Johns, David S. Goyer, Stephen Sadowski, Rags Morales, Peter Snejbjerg, et al.

JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Three

Collection published: 2019
Contents published: 1999-2003
Read: July 2022

Writers: Geoff Johns, David S. Goyer, Michael Chabon, Dan Curtis Johnson, James Robinson, J. H. Williams III, Brian Azzarello, Howard Chaykin, Darwyn Cooke, Jeph Loeb, Ron Marz

Pencillers: Stephen Sadowski, Rags Morales, Peter Snejbjerg, Sal Velluto, Buzz, Javier Saltares, Adam DeKraker, Barry Kitson, Michael Lark, Mike McKone, Dave Ross, Phil Winslade, Uriel Caton, Derec Aucoin, Rick Burchett, Tony Harris, Howard Chaykin, Darwyn Cooke, Eduardo Risso, Tim Sale, Chris Weston

Inkers: Bob Almond, Michael Bair, Peter Snejbjerg, Wade Von Grawbadger, Jim Royal, Ray Kryssing, Keith Champagne, Wayne Faucher, Barry Kitson, Michael Lark, Prentis Rollins, Phil Winslade, Anibal Rodriguez, Christian Alamy, Dave Meikis, Derec Aucoin, Rick Burchett, Howard Chaykin, Darwyn Cooke, Eduardo Risso, Tim Sale, Chris Weston
Colorists: John Kalisz, Tom McCraw, Carla Feeny, Mark Chiarello, Tony Harris

Letterers: Ken Lopez, Kurt Hathaway, Michael Lark, Patricia Prentice, Richard Starkings, Darwyn Cooke, Janice Chiang

I complained when reading book two of this series that it seemed like the stories were being collected out of order; book three (called The Power of Legacy! on the cover but subtitle-free on the title page) makes that particularly clear, with later issues collected here introducing things that had already happened in book two, like the transfer of the JSA chairship to Mr. Terrific. But anyway: let's take this part by part as it's presented.

Women, amirite?
from JSA All Stars vol. 1 #2 (script by Jeph Loeb, art by Tim Sale)

The book begins with JSA All Stars vol. 1, an eight-issue miniseries about the various "legacy" characters in the JSA, those who are successors to older heroes: Hawkgirl, Dr. Fate, Stargirl, Hourman, Dr. Mid-Nite, and Mr. Terrific. The middle six issues all follow the same format. First, there's a sixteen-page story about the modern hero written by Geoff Johns and David Goyer, usually delving into character points for them, like Hourman's addiction (this is the Rick Tyler version from Infinity, Inc.) or Stargirl's relationship with her biological father. Then, there's a six-page story about their Golden Age predecessor, written and drawn by high-profile guest artists, like Howard Chaykin, James Robinson and Tony Harris, or Darwyn Cooke. Overall, I enjoyed these; the present-day stories actually give us some solid character work, especially for characters who haven't really had much meaningful focus in the present-day stories, like Hourman, Dr. Mid-Nite, and Mr. Terrific. The flashback stories are good fun stuff: if you take a great writer and artist (or writer/artist) and tell them to do what they want in a six-page Golden Age adventure, they will deliver.

Learning that the new Dr. Mid-Nite also did a residency with the original makes me wonder even more what happened to Beth Chapel. Ah, well, gotta replace those black legacy characters with white ones.
from JSA All Stars vol. 1 #6 (story by David S. Goyer & Geoff Johns, script by Geoff Johns, art by Stephen Sadowski & Wade Von Grawbadger)

The only thing I didn't like was the frame, which I have a sneaking suspicion was added after the middle six issues were completed, because of it how it contorts to not be mentioned in them. A villain turns up, but disguises himself as the Spectre and tells the characters to take time off to think about their histories but also that they shouldn't think about the events of the frame. It's pretty pointless, to be honest, and the six issues would have stood up on their own just fine. But overall, JSA All Stars is my favorite thing I've read thus far in this title... though technically, it's not part of it!

I often find Dr. Fate thaumababble tedious, but I would have read the hell out of a Darwyn Cooke Fate ongoing.
from JSA All Stars vol. 1 #3 (script & art by Darwyn Cooke)

Then come three stories about a character named Nemesis, two from JSA Annual #1 and JSA Secret Files & Origins #2. She's raised by the Council (the same organization responsible for some of DC's various Manhunters), and I felt like a lot of time was spent on her for reasons that weren't clear to me. But maybe this will come in during book four more? The Ultra-Humanite seems to be part of the Council storyline, and he's in book four. (There are some other stories from that Secret Files issue, too; one I already read in the Chase collection, and the other is to foreshadow an upcoming storyline.)

I will never care about Sand, especially his self-doubt, but this was a neat moment.
from JSA Secret Files & Origins #2 (story by Geoff Johns & David S. Goyer, script by Geoff Johns, art by Javier Saltares & Ray Kryssing)

After this, we finally get back to the main JSA series. First we have one of those standalone stories where nothing in particular is going on and we check in on various character that team books like to do—and that I like them to do. After the icky stuff in book two where everyone was expecting teenage Hawkgirl to hook up with octagenarian Hawkman because it was her "destiny," this volume thankfully pushes back against that, with her telling everyone she's going to do what she wants to do. I hope the series sticks to this, and that it's not a set-up for her coming around and getting together with Hawkman anyway. We also have some interrogation of the idea that Black Adam can be part of the team; I liked that Captain Marvel turned up, though was Atom Smasher (then called Nuklon) this hot-headed back in Infinc? Thankfully Sand, the team's most boring nonentity of a character, finally steps down as team leader.

My favorite part of this is that like two panels later, Captain Marvel goes on to use the word "legit." Such grace!
from JSA #27 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Rags Morales & Michael Bair)

This book also introduces Alex, a new character who was a cousin to Yolanda Montez, the Wildcat of Infinity, Inc. He was inspired by her JSA enthusiasm, and now he manages the JSA museum in the JSA's HQ. Fun idea... but he never actually appeared in Infinc! Didn't Yolanda have a younger brother? Why not use him? 

This lady's power is to always pose like a man is watching her.
from JSA #28 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Stephen Sadowski and Christian Alamy & Dave Meikis)

Lastly, we have a storyline where villains kidnap a number of JSA members and force them to fight each other as part of a gambling operation. This I thought was pretty good, probably the best actual storyline thus far, with lots of good moments of characterization, something sorely lacking from the series up to this point. I've been complaining about Geoff Johns, but this is actually the first story not co-written with David Goyer, so maybe it's him who's the problem. My favorite issue here was one where Stargirl and Jakeem Thunder (modern-day inheritor of Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt) are the only two heroes left in HQ during the events of the Joker: Last Laugh crossover and have to protect New York City from a Joker-venom infected Solomon Grundy. Just two principal characters gives the characterization and the action time to shine, aided by some excellent moody art from Peter Snejbjerg. There's also a decent story about the JSA working with Batman. So... after three 400-page books things are finally looking up?

Finally!
from JSA #31 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Peter Snejbjerg)

The last story in the collection is "History 101," which the back cover proudly declares has never before been reprinted... but in fact it was already reprinted in The Justice Society Returns! way back in 2003! There are also lots of profiles and such from various issues of Secret Files & Origins, which is nice to have if you like that kind of thing; I did enjoy the diagram of JSA HQ.

This post is thirty-fourth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Four. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
23. The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern (1992-93)
24. Damage (1994-96)
25. The Justice Society Returns! (1999-2001)
26. Chase (1998-2002)
27. Stargirl by Geoff Johns (1999-2003)
28. The Sandman Presents: The Furies (2002)
29. JSA by Geoff Johns, Book One (1999-2000)
30. Wonder Woman: The 18th Letter: A Love Story (2000)
31. Two Thousand (2000)
32. JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Two (1999-2003)
33. Golden Age Secret Files & Origins (2001)
    

Reading L. Frank Baum's The Magical Monarch of Mo Aloud to My Son... and We Map the Oz Continent!

The Surprising Adventures of The Magical Monarch of Mo And His People
by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Frank Ver Beck

L. Frank Baum wrote a number of different fantasies early in his career, before the runaway success of Oz (more down to the stage show) made it the one he came back to again and again. In what many cynically regard as an attempt to boost sales of those other books, he referenced many of them in The Road to Oz by having the rulers of the fairylands from them attend Ozma's birthday party. However, The Magical Monarch of Mo was not one of those.

Originally published: 1899
Acquired: ???
Read aloud: June 2022

This book was originally written under the title The King of Phunnyland and published as A New Wonderland in 1899, referencing Lewis Carroll. The book didn't sell too well to my knowledge, but after the success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum and his publisher changed the title to The Magical Monarch of Mo and edited all occurrences of "Phunnyland" in the book to "Mo." Flip the "WW" of "Wonderful Wizard" upside down and you get the  "MM" of "Magical Monarch"! Phunnyland had actually been mentioned in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, bringing it into Baum's extended fantasy universe (when I read that one aloud to my son, I edited it to be "Mo"), but Baum linked it more directly to Oz later on. The Wise Donkey of Mo has a small appearance in Patchwork Girl, and Trot and Cap'n Bill visit Mo in Scarecrow of Oz.

It was this last reference that captured my son's imagination, as it established that in Mo, it rains lemonade and snows popcorn. Since then, he's asked us again and again about other weather phenomena in Mo. So, when we finished Royal Book so quickly that our copy of Kabumpo in Oz hadn't arrived yet, I suggested we read The Magical Monarch of Mo (rereleased with a comprehensive set of illustrations, complete with color plates, by Dover in 1968) while we waited for it, and he eagerly agreed. So if sales was why Baum did it, it worked on us. (Well, except that I've owned my copy since childhood.)

Magical Monarch isn't really a novel; it's more a set of fourteen short stories. Some are about the unnamed King of Mo; others are about his various children. They're usually comedic in tone, and use a kind of cartoon logic. The king loses his head to a Purple Dragon and tries various replacements; members of the royal family get trapped at the bottom of a lake of syrup; a prince gets smooshed flat by a giant's clotheswringer; a neighboring country attacks Mo with a mechanical giant; an evil wizard steals a princess's toe. Some are riffs on fairy tale structures (people going on dangerous journeys where things happen in groups of three), others are just short funny things. Many have ideas Baum would come back later in his career and integrate into Oz: people made up of parts of multiple people, mechanical men, immortality, odd objects growing on trees.

Some are better than others; some worked for my three-year-old son, and some went over his head. Mostly, I think, he delighted in the details about Mo: animal crackers growing on trees, cows that make ice cream, lakes of syrup, rivers of cream with strawberries. Some of the jokes are good for his age; others went over his head. (A fox with a sore throat cuts it out and hangs it in the sun to "cure" it, then puts it back. It's not like my son knows that meaning of the word "cure!") But he seemed to have a good time, and often repeated to his mother strange things he learned about the Land of Mo. He still occasionally asks me if ice cream comes out of cows in Oz, too.

Before we had even read it, he had illustrated the country based on its appearance in Scarecrow:

That's the Bumpy Man (the Mo character from Scarecrow) in his castle (the castle being my son's own invention).

While reading Magical Monarch, he asked where it was in relation to Oz, so I pulled up a picture of the International Wizard of Oz Club map of the Oz continent on my computer. (Mo doesn't appear on the continent map in the Tik-Tok endpapers.) This lead, of course, to a demand that we draw it ourselves, so I taped together four sheets of paper and this is what we came up with:

In some spots, he insisted I draw what was on the official map; in others, he came up with his own countries. So the countries of Aj, Bikker, Hedgehogboogi, Lotsoflands, Kook, and Makkafook are his. I named Aj (based on my theory that there must be an A and U country if there's an Ev, an Ix, and an Oz), but he named all the others, and drew many of them. He asked me where the yellow brick roads go, and I showed him where to draw the official ones in the Munchkin and Gillikin countries, but he thought the other quadrants of Oz deserved their own... though he never got around to doing the Winkie one (not that you would be able to see it if he had). He also drew one to connect Aj to Hedgehogboogi because the two countries are friends, and all the rivers are his work. He tried to get me to draw every island on the official map, but I put my foot down on that one!

It now hangs in a place of pride in our dining room, though he pointed out to me that it's too high up for him to touch it when he wants to ask me questions.

Next up in sequence: Kabumpo in Oz

Discworld: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

The Illustrated Wee Free Men: A Story of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
illustrated by Stephen Player

After enjoying my trip through the City Watch, I figured my next Discworld subseries would be the Tiffany Aching ones, as my wife owns all of them (and they are much beloved by her).

Illustrated edition published: 2008
Novel originally published: 2003
Read: November 2021

But actually, we couldn't find her copy of The Wee Free Men anywhere! It seemed that she had likely loaned it out and never gotten it back. Which was a shame, because she owned the deluxe hardback illustrated edition. I had bought this for her as a Christmas present in 2010; new, it cost me $18. A decade on, it's out of print, and when I bought a replacement, it cost me $40 for a used copy with a torn dust jacket! But it was that or downgrade to a mass market edition.

Anyway, I expected to love this... and I didn't. I liked it a lot at first. Very funny, very real, as Tiffany Aching begins to recognize the strangeness going on around her. Very Pratchett, basically. But somewhere in the middle, as the actual plot began to emerge... I kind of lost interest. I wasn't really sure why I cared about what these people were trying to accomplish. It might not be the book's fault; I read it at a stressful time and in sort of fits and starts between Hugo finalists, so I don't know that it ever totally sunk in. But yeah, probably the least grabby Discworld I've read so far except for Snuff.

Still, when I have a chance, I'll dip back in and keep going. I have enjoyed enough Discworld novels to know to give Pratchett the benefit of the doubt!

Why Call Them Back from Heaven? by Clifford D. Simak

Why Call Them Back from Heaven? by Clifford D. Simak

I read this as part of my ongoing investigation of life extension in science fiction. In this book's future, everyone is frozen upon death; the society hasn't figured out resurrection yet, but they're sure that bit is coming.

Published: 1967
Acquired: October 2021
Read: November 2021

What really works are the novel's various ideas about how society would change around such a development. People live very frugally, saving all their money for the second life; preventing someone from being frozen, even inadvertently, is a crime because you're essentially killing them; investors buy swampland because they know the Earth will need tons of room for all these people upon resurrection so even worthless land ought to have value.

It's very 1950s/60s sf: kind of off-kilter, a dose of spiritualism, a lot of discussion of marketing, an ending that doesn't quite come together. We follow a group of parallel characters in this future society, but I felt like their stories petered out in the end. Simak had great worldbuilding, but I am not entirely convinced he really knew what the book was about thematically.

It is short, and probably would be pretty fun to teach in my putative course, but hasn't been in print since 1988! There's an ebook from Gollancz, but you can only get it in the UK.

Reading The Royal Book of Oz Aloud to My Son... and He Makes My Wife Make a Map!

The Royal Book of Oz: In which the Scarecrow goes to search for his family tree and discovers that he is the Long Lost Emperor of the Silver Island, and how he was rescued and brought back to Oz by Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion
by L. Frank Baum, enlarged and edited by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill

The title page of my Dover edition indicates that this book is by L. Frank Baum, just "enlarged and edited" by Ruth Plumly Thompson; this is backed up by the foreword by Baum's widow. This is all a lie; Baum left no notes on what a fifteenth Oz novel might be about. The publishers concocted this fiction—with Baum's own wife in on it—in order to ease the transition into Thompson's authorship. She would go on to write eighteen more canonical Oz novels, plus two "quasi-canonical" ones, so she actually wrote more about Oz than Baum. I'll talk more about my childhood experience of these in a future entry, as this one I actually reread a few years ago, so it's the only Thompson novel I have real concrete memories of.

Originally published: 1921
Acquired: December 2009
Previously read: December 2016
Read aloud: June 2022

So how is it when a new author takes over? Actually, the first chapter gives a very strong impression. It opens with the Woggle-Bug interrupting a party at Ozma's palace in the Emerald City, which gives Thompson an excuse to assemble many of the characters, and you can tell she's done her homework, as this chapter mentions many small details about each of the characters—details that in some cases Baum himself hadn't mentioned for a long time, and I rather suspect he had forgotten! The Woggle-Bug has often been mentioned in Baum's books, but I think this is the first one he actually had dialogue in since his introduction in Marvelous Land, and I found I had forgotten my voice for him. Thompson clearly read the entire series in preparation for taking over. (Or reread? Thompson was born in 1891, meaning she would have been just nine when Wonderful Wizard came out, right in the target age group.) Then, when the Scarecrow travels to the Munchkin Country to visit the beanpole Dorothy plucked him off, you can tell from the details Thompson mentions that she was working with the Tik-Tok end paper maps.

Like some of Baum's later books, Thompson's novel has two distinct plots in parallel. The first is about the Scarecrow's attempt to discover if he has a family tree: he slides down that beanpole to the subterranean kingdom of the Silver Islands, whose inhabitants tell him he is the reincarnation of their lost emperor.

It is astonishingly racist. Baum was sometimes inspired by real ethnic groups when creating Oz tribes, but it's textual here: the Scarecrow recognizes the Silver Islanders as looking Chinese because he's read about them in one of Dorothy's books. They are described as ugly, they all act awful, the illustrations are racial caricatures. In reading it aloud to my three-year-old son, I removed all explicit references to the Chinese, and tried to tone down some of the other rhetoric, making them into just another make-believe fairyland people. I always edit the books mildly on the fly—often for vocabulary, sometimes for continuity—but here I found myself for the first time just skipping an entire two-page section where the Scarecrow enumerated what was so disgusting about Silver Islander food. Like, he doesn't even eat, why would he care about this? I didn't remember it being so bad, but of course when you are reading aloud, you are forced to confront every single word of the text in a way that might not be true otherwise, where you can skim about. The plotline isn't particularly entertaining otherwise; I think my son had trouble following the reincarnation stuff and the political stuff. The Scarecrow doesn't do any interesting adventuring; he just complains about being emperor a lot.

This is a shame, because the other plot line is really successful in being Ozzy. Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion go to look for the Scarecrow, but thinking he went to his home in the Winkie Country, end up getting lost there. They encounter the city of Pokes, home to the Slow Pokes, where everyone moves so slowly they fall asleep all the time, and where an English knight, Sir Hokus, has been held captive since Arthur's time. Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, and Sir Hokus move from adventure to adventure, and they make a great trio.

Thompson has a good handle on Dorothy's mix of boldness and common sense. Rereading the series, I've had the feeling that Baum didn't really like the Cowardly Lion as much as the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, because he barely used him after the first book, unlike the others. Here, the Cowardly Lion has more to do than in the preceding thirteen novels combined, and Thompson gets his characterization note perfect. I really enjoyed Sir Hokus, the pompous, ineffectual knight who comes through when it matters. He's a fun character to read aloud, and his interplay with the Cowardly Lion is especially great. I think the trio's escape from Pokes—where they must keep singing because it's the only thing that stops the Pokes from putting them to sleep—is magnificently written stuff. This whole sideplot is really well done stuff, exactly what I want out of an Oz book... so it's a shame about the rest of it!

It's interesting to note what's different about Thompson as a writer. There are more asides to the reader, acknowledgements that you're reading a book, but like Baum occasionally did, she keeps up the fiction that she's merely reporting something that actually happened; she occasionally says things like, "Dorothy later told Ozma....", implying Ozma related the book's events to her. Suddenly both the Woggle-Bug and the Scarecrow have manservants too. Baum always liked puns, but here they come thick and fast... but for the first time, I think my son recognized one! When Sir Hokus joins Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion, this is how things go:

Dropping on his knees before the little girl, Sir Hokus took her hand. "Let me go with you on this Quest for the valiant Scarecrow. Let me be your good Knight!" he begged eagerly.

"Good night," coughed the Cowardly Lion, who, to tell the truth, was feeling a bit jealous.

When I read that bit, my son was like, "!?," clearly recognizing that something was up, but not exactly what, and I explained as best I could, how there were two kinds of "(k)night." He'd better get used to the puns!

There is a Books of Wonder facsimile of this, but I already owned a Dover, and it's good enough to mean that upgrading isn't really warranted. It's a trade paperback, and a slightly smaller size, but it does have all the color plates, though they're collected in the middle of the book, not positioned throughout the text.

I pulled out a map of Oz to let us trace the Scarecrow's journey, and this inspired him to make another map. In this case, he forced my wife to draw this map, which I think turned out pretty good!

The plan, I think, is for this to be the map that appears in the end papers of [His Name] in Oz.

In the Tik-Tok maps, which my wife used as a model, west is on the right and east is on the left. By all accounts, this is how Baum envisioned Oz for whatever reason, so it is accurate... but as someone who grew up on the "corrected" map produced by the International Wizard of Oz Club (it was included in every Del Rey Oz book), it always looks wrong to me regardless. That's not where the Winkie Country goes!

Next up in sequence: The Magical Monarch of Mo

Golden Age Secret Files & Origins by John Ostrander, Cliff Chiang, et al.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, DC did a lot of "Secret Files & Origins" one-shots, which would have a couple short stories about a character or theme, coupled with some profile pages or other in-universe background. There were two JSA ones, as well as one JLA/JSA one, the stories from which are all collected in the JSA by Geoff Johns collections. But aside from a five-page story included in The Justice Society Returns!, this one has gone uncollected, so I picked it up on its own.

There is some JSA focus here (the aforementioned story and a profile page), but much of the issue focuses on the Crimson Avenger. "The Crimson" was, I think, DC's second superhero in publication order, following Superman, which meant that following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, he was the first one.* The story "The Dawn of the Golden Age," written by John Ostrander and drawn by Cliff Chiang, focuses on this legacy; reporter Clark Kent tries to figure out what motivated Lee Travis to put on a costume and fight crime. What the story does is kind of clever; it reinstates Superman as the first superhero by having Travis be inspired by a vision of the future where he sees Superman! It's a nice story, supplemented by some strong art from an early Cliff Chiang, who I always like. Ostrander, as always, is good at character voices and continuity, which is exactly what this story needs. There's also a text story in the form of a faux newspaper interview of Travis by Jonathan Law (the Tarantula from All-Star Squadron) and a profile page. Back when I read the Thomases' The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy, I said you could make a good trade out of that, Secret Origins #5, and DC Comics Presents #38. Well, now clearly you would chuck in this stuff to wrap it all up; it would make a good follow-up to the DCCP story.

script by John Ostrander, art by Cliff Chiang

"The Dawn of the Golden Age" is a full twenty-page story; the rest of the volume is filled out with shorter ones. I already discussed "Scenes From The Class Struggle at J.S.A. Mansion" when I read it in Justice Society Returns!; the other two are a kind of funny story about Dr. Occult trying to get Zatara the Magician to be become a crimefighter and a frankly baffling one about young Dr. Sivana.

Decent stuff overall; as a fan of the post–Golden Age Crimson Avenger, I'm glad I tracked it down.

* Sometimes, anyway. Sandman Mystery Theatre pushed the Sandman's debut back so that it preceded the Crimson's, for example... but the story here ignores that and has Sandy explicitly say Wes was inspired by the case of the Crimson Avenger and the Phantom of the Fair. That said, Sandy wasn't around yet when that happened, so what does he know?

 

Golden Age Secret Files & Origins was originally published in one issue (Feb. 2001). The comic stories were written by John Ostrander, Tom Peyer, Peter Gross, and Jason Hernandez-Rosenblatt; pencilled by Cliff Chiang, Peter Grau, Peter Gross, and Jamal Igle; inked by Cliff Chiang, Claude St. Aubin, Peter Gross, and Rod Ramos; colored by Tom McCraw; and lettered by John Costanza and Richard Starkings. The text story and profile pages were written by Scott Beatty, and the profile pages were illustrated by Peter Grau & Christian Alamy, Mike Collins & Bob McLeod, Mark Propst, and Michael Lark. The issue was edited by Tony Bedard.

 

This post is thirty-third in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Three. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
23. The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern (1992-93)
24. Damage (1994-96)
25. The Justice Society Returns! (1999-2001)
26. Chase (1998-2002)
27. Stargirl by Geoff Johns (1999-2003)
28. The Sandman Presents: The Furies (2002)
29. JSA by Geoff Johns, Book One (1999-2000)
30. Wonder Woman: The 18th Letter: A Love Story (2000)
31. Two Thousand (2000)
32. JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Two (1999-2003)
    

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

For some reason, reviewing this book escaped me at the time I read it, so I am belatedly writing it up in March 2022, a full year after I read it. Oops! My memories are thus a little vague, but I remember thinking that:

1. 

   Published: 2019
   Acquired: December 2020
   Read: March 2021
   

   no one in contemporary sf&f quite does worldbuilding to my taste like Ann Leckie. She's very good at unspooling the information in a way that keeps you intrigued—she gets that speculative fiction is a form of mystery fiction, in that the way the world works is a mystery that the reader wants to solve. Like in a mystery novel, you don't want the book to give you too much information (too easy) or not enough (too difficult).
   
2. she's also very good at the sf thing of taking a what if? and thinking through its implications. Here, the conceit is that praying to or making offering to gods gives them powers, and that anything a god says is true becomes true: if so, how would this work? We get a lot of different permutations of this, many of them quite clever. Yes, technically it's fantasy, but like (say) Jemisin in The Fifth Season, it's approached with an sf worldbuilder's mindset, which is how I like my fantasy.
3. the book is interestingly and intriguingly told; like in Ancillary Justice, there's a strong sense of narrative voice.
4. the ending was abrupt and made me feel like I was missing something. The plot is tied up, but I felt like the character threads hadn't paid off in the way I'd expected.
5. I had some kind of complicated theory about the narrator that I don't remember anymore, but I was wrong.

I would say it's not as good as Ancillary Justice, but it is still a masterclass in how to build a world, and shows why I will pick up any novel Leckie writes.

The 2022 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Final Results

For the first time in a few years, I believe, I watched the Hugo ceremony live as it went out. I will cop to the fact that it is maybe not the most exciting thing (I can never convince my wife to watch it with me for some reason), but I think it's mush more interesting to have your hopes dashed and fears confirmed across the course of two hours than to have it undermined by quickly glancing over a list. Would I rather learn that Nick Clarke finally won Best Editor a different way than watching him be clearly overcome on stage? Would I rather learn that Suzanne Palmer won a different way than being charmed by her acceptance speech again?

Anyway, I got a lot of laundry folded, at least, and still had time to drink a gin and tonic. The ceremony was a solid one: Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz were solid hosts, even with all the dad jokes, and there were some good guest presenters.

So what did I think of the results, and how did they compare to my own votes? Just some brief thoughts here: (Though this year I am commenting on some categories I didn't vote in.)

Category	What Won	Where I Ranked It	What I Ranked #1	Where It Placed
Best Novel	A Desolation Called Peace	2nd	Light from Uncommon Stars	2nd
I didn't really know what to expect here. I liked Light from Uncommon Stars a lot, but did not expect it to win, so a second-place showing is quite admirable. I know I ranked Desolation second, but I found it a bit disappointing anyway, since Light aside, it was a disappointing ballot. The voters did agree with me in placing Project Hail Mary last, anyway.
Best Novella	A Psalm for the Wild-Built	7th	The Past Is Red	3rd
I knew Chambers would win, and she did. Actually, she gave a great acceptance speech even though she wasn't there—moving and personal, about giving us all "permission to rest." Man, whatever it is everyone finds in her stuff, I wish I found it, too. Interesting to note that Martha Wells's Fugitive Telemetry got more nominating votes than any of the eventual six finalists, but she declined. This allowed Elder Race to make the ballot, which I ranked second, as did the voters. (Also, Elder Race wouldn't have got on the ballot without EPH, so score a point for nominee diversity.) Looking at the long list, we have to go all the way down to eleventh before we find a non-Tor.com novella!
Best Novelette	"Bots of the Lost Ark"	4th	"That Story Isn't the Story"	4th
I enjoy Suzanne Palmer's Bot 9 stories, even if I don't particularly find them award-worthy, and she always gives charming acceptance speeches. A bit disappointed at the low finish of what was (to me) clearly the best story on the ballot. I ranked "O₂ Arena" last, below No Award, and indeed, it finished in last, and ten percent of voters also ranked it below No Award. The nominating ballots here are a bit surprising; "O₂ Arena" came in third in nominations, and "That Story" first! The eventual category winner was down in fifth. I feel like there's usually a high correlation between nominations and votes, but not in this case.
Best Short Story	"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather"	3rd	"Proof by Induction"	4th
I really like Pinsker, so I can't complain here; she gave a neat speech about how her dad gave her his autograph book from when he went to Chicon back in the 1960s, complete with a signature from a pre-Dragonflight Anne McCaffrey! What I ranked in seventh, the Magic: The Gathering story "Tangles" came in last, with about 10% of voters placing No Award higher, just as I did.
Best Series	Wayward Children	N/A	No Award	7th
I disagree with the concept of Best Series, so I always vote No Award. I think of everything nominated in this category that I was familiar with, though, Wayward Children is the thing I was least interested in seeing win. Oh well, it'll never be on the ballot again now, I guess.
Best Graphic Story or Comic	Far Sector	2nd	Strange Adventures	6th
Me and the voters often don't agree here, but whatever, it's a weird category, to be honest. One should note that the top recipient of nominations was Ghost-Spider... which was ineligible because its last installment came out in 2020, not 2021. C'mon guys! I even wrote about this last year; I was baffled it had been nominated for just half of its run then when the whole run would have been eligible. The top vote-getter had 66 nominations, but once you get down to sixth place, it's 19 to get on the ballot versus 18 to miss it. Not a category with very concentrated nominations!
Best Related Work	Never Say You Can't Survive	5th	True Believer	6th
What, c'mon you guys, True Believer was amazing! Actually this category was quite strong. I predicted the winner would be "[p]robably the Anders or the Sjunneson," and indeed, Anders came in first and Sjunneson second. "How Twitter can ruin a life" did better than I thought in third, and Complete Debarkle worse, in fifth. We got all prose this year, thank God, and five of the six finalists were even books. The long list includes a podcast (eighth), a medieval history book (eleventh), a YouTube video (thirteenth), a Twitter thread (fourteenth), and a convention (sixteenth), so many bullets dodged, I guess. (Why a Twitter thread? Because Seanan McGuire was one of the tweeters, of course.)
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)	Dune	5th	The Green Knight	5th
You may recall that I predicted this back in December 2020, before nominations were even being collected, so I feel pretty smug. Nothing too surprising here—I never align very well in this category. A bit surprised Encanto placed as high as third, I guess. Spider-Man: No Way Home was two votes away from making the ballot! I would have been curious to have seen The Mitchells vs. the Machines (in eighth), but am glad to have been spared the new Matrix film (in ninth).
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)	The Expanse: "Nemesis Games"	3rd	Star Trek: Lower Decks: "wej Duj"	3rd
Happy to see a Best Dramatic Presentation winner actually present to make an acceptance speech. The Expanse writers care! The other Lower Decks episode I nominated, "First First Contact," made the long list, down in twelfth. I saw an article about how Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was snubbed... but whoever wrote that article must be stupid, as the whole first season came out in 2022. I feel fairly certain at least one installment will make the ballot next year.
Best Editor (Short Form)	Neil Clarke	2nd	No Award	7th
I always vote for No Award in the Best Editor categories because I disagree with their existence philosophically... but if Neil Clarke is on the ballot, I always rank him second. Clarke edits Clarkesworld, my favorite sf&f magazine, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies, which are excellent. I was glad I voted for him, because he has made the ballot ten times now, but this was his first time winning. So it was great to see him win! Okay, now let's cancel the category.
Best Editor (Long Form)	Ruoxi Chen	N/A	No Award	7th
If any category needs to be cancelled, it's this one. A full four potential finalists had to decline nomination because they had not actually edited enough eligible works this year. Who edits which novel? Editorial work is so invisible that this isn't really an award for best editor, it's an award for Editor Who Makes Themselves the Most Visible. One of the finalists on the ballot was eleventh for actual nominations, that's ridiculous.
Best Fanzine	Small Gods	N/A	N/A	N/A
I don't vote in Best Fanzine... but it does seem a bit ridiculous that the category was won by Seanan McGuire, a professional writer. I mean, yes she's not being paid to write it, but I don't feel it's in accord with the spirit of the category even if it is with the letter. Seanan McGuire fans gonna Seanan McGuire, I guess. Similarly, its artist Lee Moyer won Best Fan Artist despite being a professional... meh. (Without EPH, Small Gods wouldn't have been on the ballot, fact fans! Is this a first?)
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book	The Last Graduate	1st	The Last Graduate	1st
This was the only category where I ranked the eventual winner first! So, I am happy about that, and indeed, my top three was also the voters' top three. I have seen some on-line grumbling about Last Graduate not really being YA, but I can think of no reasonable definition of YA that wouldn't include this book. It also came in first for nominations, so clearly the voters think it's YA.

I came up with a new system for Hugo reading this year; I totaled the page counts of everything on the ballot (in many of the short fiction categories, these were just estimates) and divided by the number of days I had to read (which was also an estimate, because the deadline wasn't announced for a month or so after the finalist list came out). This gave me 102 days to read ~7,464 pages, so I had to read 73.2 pages per day to finish on time. I then divided each work into a certain number of days and put them in random order. For example, I gave myself four days to read The Galaxy, and the Ground Within because it was 325 pages long, and one day to read Fireheart Tiger because it was 104; some of the short stories and novelettes, just half a day.

My rule was to do my best to finish something in the range allotted, but if I didn't, just drop it and go to the next thing. I didn't finish The Galaxy in four days, so I went on to Strange Adventures. But if I finished something early, I didn't go on to another finalist ahead of my schedule. First, I would first circle back and finish anything I'd left behind. So when I read The Parliament of Magpies more quickly than I'd allotted, I went back and completed The Galaxy. If I was totally caught up on finalists, I would actually read (part of) something else from my reading list instead. I liked this better than how I have handled it in previous years, and in fact, the ~70 pages per day habit is one I have tried to stick to pretty methodically even now, with good results. (It helps that I would then split it up even further: read half of the day's allotment by the end of lunch, then the other half after putting the kids to bed.) We will see how far into the semester it lasts!

On the other hand, I need a new system for watching things; I watched most of the Best Dramatic Presentation finalists in the last week of voting!

Overall, I had a fun time this year, even when I found the ballots weaker than normal (e.g., Best Novel). I was in a bit of a reading rut in early 2022, and the Hugos got me out.

JSA, Book Two by Geoff Johns, David Goyer, Stephen Sadowski, Michael Bair, Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, et al.

JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Two

Collection published: 2018
Contents published: 1999-2003
Read: June 2022

Writers: Geoff Johns, David Goyer

Artists: Stephen Sadowski, Michael Bair, Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, Phil Winslade, Mike Perkins, Steve Yeowell, Keith Champagne, Buzz, Rags Morales, Dave Meikis, Paul Neary, Rob Leigh, Javier Saltares, Ray Kryssing, Andrew Pepoy
Colorists: John Kalisz, Tom McCraw

Letterers: Ken Lopez, Pat Prentice, Kurt Hathaway

This volume of JSA by Geoff Johns (where every story is co-written by David Goyer, but I guess he doesn't rate) collects two story arcs from the main JSA comic and also the graphic novel JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice and then some other stuff. What I am realizing is that I don't really care for Johns's approach to this book. First we have the seemingly obligatory storyline about a new Injustice Society, which like a lot of Geoff Johns stuff, is full of seemingly gratuitous violence in order to prove the situation is serious: he invents a whole Chicago superteam just to torture and brutally murder them, there's an evil Flash who runs through kids so fast they explode. It's just like... it's juvenile, and I don't read superhero comics to read about kids being murdered. I found it very hard to care.

The second big storyline is about a trip to Thanagar to resurrect Hawkman. I did really like Hawkworld, but Johns ignores any of its interesting complexities in favor of a melodramatic sub-Darkseid villain and a subplot about how a teenage girl just needs to give in and be romanced by an eighty-year-old man for the good of the universe.

Why does everyone assume she wants to be with him? (Also I spent some time wondering which Phantom Lady this was. The Action Comics Weekly one? But not so much time that I actually looked it up.)
from JSA: Our Worlds at War #1 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Javier Saltares & Ray Kryssing)

This book isn't totally unlikeable. In between those two storylines, there's a decent done-in-one that gives us some much-needed character focus, and actually the Our Worlds at War tie-in issue was pretty good too. And I also enjoyed the Secret Files & Origins issue that leads into Virtue and Vice, as well as the early parts of Virtue and Vice itself. When Johns (and Goyer) want to write these characters hanging out and talking about things, they do a decent job... but it seems they rarely do. If you compare this to the characterful and deft way that Len Strazewski wrote the last JSA ongoing, this just doesn't compare; I have very little sense of these people as, well, people. Like I said, Virtue and Vice starts good, but it soon becomes Yet Another Apocalyptic Battle with huge masses of people dying violently... which I am sure will promptly never be mentioned again. I also don't care much for stories where heroes are mind-controlled to be evil, especially if they promptly become stupid.

I have never cared for Johns's take on Power Girl.
from JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice (script by David S. Goyer & Geoff Johns, art by Carlos Pacheco & Jesus Merino)

Some other thoughts: I think Secret Files & Origins and Virtue and Vice are included out of sequence; suddenly Mr. Terrific is JSA chair, and Stargirl is living in Metropolis, and Captain Marvel is a member, and there's a new Hourman who I don't think is the new Hourman from the previous book. None of these things have happened in the actual JSA series yet. It amused me that suddenly Green Arrow is alive again, so he has to contend with the fact that Black Canary has moved on romantically since his death. Virtue and Vice had some good President Luthor stuff. The way the heroes swap places with the statues in the Rock of Eternity is pretty neat.

This post is thirty-second in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Golden Age Secret Files & Origins. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
23. The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern (1992-93)
24. Damage (1994-96)
25. The Justice Society Returns! (1999-2001)
26. Chase (1998-2002)
27. Stargirl by Geoff Johns (1999-2003)
28. The Sandman Presents: The Furies (2002)
29. JSA by Geoff Johns, Book One (1999-2000)
30. Wonder Woman: The 18th Letter: A Love Story (2000)
31. Two Thousand (2000)