Excerpts Science Fiction Read an Excerpt From The Hospital at the End of the World by Justin C. Key In a near future where artificial intelligence runs the world, a medical student must unravel family secrets to investigate his father’s death. By Justin C. Key | Published on January 15, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Hospital at the End of the World, a near-future science fiction thriller by Justin C. Key, out from Harper on February 3. In a time not so far from our own, society is run by a global AI system controlled by an all powerful corporation. The Shepherd Organization oversees every medical school in the country save one in New Orleans, the renegade Hippocrates which still insists on human-led medicine. It is the last choice school for an ambitious young New Yorker named Pok. But after his father—himself a physician—dies under mysterious circumstance that seems connected to “the shepherds” and their megalomaniacal young CEO, Pok finds himself on a quest for answers that leads right to Hippocrates. Once enrolled, he stumbles upon a further mystery: a strange illness is plaguing newcomers to New Orleans who grew up under shepherd rule. What is causing this fatal anomaly? And how does it relate to the mystery of Pok’s father’s death and his own mysterious past? One Decision Day The narrow overhang jutting out from the New York City apartment building did little to protect from the downpour. Pok’s back pressed against hard brick as he scanned the gray skies, his augmented reality glasses made pedestrian by the weather. The whir of an ambulance rose and dissipated, leaving behind the hum of rolling traffic. Directly above him, solid lines of rain ran from the air-conditioning unit hanging from their third-story window and cascaded off the fire escape. Where is it? The decision drone should have arrived ten minutes ago. After acquiring twelve of the country’s top medical institutions, the Shepherd Organization made clear their confidence in their state-of-the-art AI-centered medical curriculum by waiting until all other schools had sent out decisions before deploying theirs. It was a ballsy move. The stunt had paid off. According to the message boards, hardly anyone had accepted offers from non-shepherd schools even though most semesters started within the next month. Everyone was waiting on “The Prestigious Twelve.” “Decision day?” Skip James called above the rain and traffic as he stepped out of the small shop directly under Pok’s apartment. The longtime owner of Park Avenue Market, one of the last human-staffed brick-and-mortar stores in Manhattan, chucked two black bags into the garbage. Rainwater fell in sheets from the lid. “It’s all over my feed!” “They’re late,” Pok said. “Don’t catch a cold, kid.” You can’t catch a cold from the rain, Pok thought. He was about to check the message boards when a soft, persistent buzzing drew his attention. He stepped out from under the ledge, instantly drenched, a touch of metal on his tongue. The buzzing grew, steady and direct, and the drone emerged from between city buildings, cut through the rain, and stopped inches from Pok. The drone’s indicator blinked red; Pok raised his AR glasses and readily offered his irises for scanning. Verification done, its hatch opened and a silver case dropped on a string. Pok examined his delivery. The metal was warm. The Shepherd Organization’s insignia—a shepherd holding a stiffened snake as a staff—was engraved above the fresh stamp: Applicant Pok Morning. Verified at 12:14 p.m. Inside, his unique quick-response code. Kris Boles popped onto Pok’s glass display right as the decision page loaded. His friend’s temperament was spirited. His environment was dry. Yellow bordered his display. “Where’d you get in?” he said. “I haven’t checked. You got in?” “What do you mean you haven’t checked? How could you not check?” “It’s still loading.” Come on, come on. Every mentor and counselor had assured he’d have beautifully tough decisions to make at the end of this application cycle. Pok, who had applied to all twelve, had his heart set on the Shepherd School of Medicine at MacArthur Hospital, just up the street from his and his father’s apartment, where East Harlem met the Upper East Side. Outwardly unimpressive, the interior was intricately designed. The medical school was built atop the busy, three-tier hospital that served all five boroughs. Its website proudly proclaimed its future doctors sat upon the figurative shoulders of the medicine they studied. That was his dream school. Buy the Book The Hospital at the End of the World Justin C. Key Buy Book The Hospital at the End of the World Justin C. Key Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Pok swiped clear his glass; new drops immediately streaked across the silicon display. Logos for twelve of the country’s top medical schools—all now rebranded with the Shepherd Organization’s crest—popped onto the page. Adrenaline navigated open veins. Red Xs lined the margins. Beside all twelve schools. Every single one. “I didn’t get in.” Speaking the words made them real. “What?” Kris said. “I didn’t get in. Anywhere. This is bullshit.” They were both speechless. A digital delivery scooter honked for Pok to move. It knocked the back of his knee. He could have fallen face down onto the flooding sidewalk, mouth filling with gritty rainwater, and he wouldn’t have cared. This was bullshit. “What about that one school?” Kris said. “Gaylen or something? Down south?” “Hippocrates.” Under his father’s insistence, he’d applied to the Louisiana-based anti-AI school as a “safety,” one he’d never expected to consider. They had fallen far off of TIME magazine’s yearly top medical school rankings after essentially eliminating the latest technology from their curriculum. Just the thought of moving to Louisiana—the most backward state in the country—twisted Pok’s gut. “I don’t understand. How many did you get into?” “I don’t think—” “How many?” “Eight.” Eight? The New York air somehow grew hotter; Pok could visualize the rain sizzling off his skin. He’d received perfect marks. He’d checked all the boxes. His own father was a physician who’d given fifteen years of his life to MacArthur Hospital. And eight of the Prestigious Twelve wanted Kris and none wanted Pok? He knew Kris’s application. Hell, he’d helped with the essays. There was no way Kris would be picked over him. No way. And eight times? No fucking way. Pok rounded his building’s corner, head down, embarrassment pounding at his ears and rain pelting the nape of his neck. He unlocked his apartment door remotely as he took the stairs two at a time—the elevator was broken again—and resented the smell of the city’s concrete summer. “It’s got to be a glitch or something,” Kris said. “Somebody messed up. You’re the smartest kid I know.” The Shepherd Organization’s algorithms didn’t make mistakes. Not like this. But Kris inadvertently sparked an idea that bloomed into an insatiable urge. Pok squinted against his bedroom’s harsh, swinging light. The building—which housed MacArthur’s many medical trainees, physicians, and personnel—offered to install ones that adjusted to pupil dilation. His father, old-fashioned but well-meaning, had refused. Pok cleared a spot on his bed, found his virtual reality gaming headset, and booted up Impact, an open-world, massively online multiplayer game about teamwork and survival. “I’m coming over,” Kris said. “Don’t.” Pok took a moment to finger-comb out his shoulder-length locs; water dripped onto his thighs and the edge of his bed. “What are you up to?” “Troubleshooting,” Pok said. “Don’t do anything stupid.” “You know me. I’ll catch you later. And congratulations.” Pok took off his glass and replaced it with his gaming set. His New York apartment fell away and Impact took hold. His temples hummed with adrenaline as he created a new profile and avatar and started anew as a lone nomad. He summoned a hovercraft and directed it away from active play, full speed. Impact advertised an endless world. It generated new maps—including towns, resources, and histories—whenever a player ventured into an uncharted area. When Pok was confident about the distance between him and any other online players, he ejected himself from the hovercraft, ran into the closest house—still rendering itself in real time—opened the first closet, and jumped inside. His avatar fell into darkness. Pok counted to three and activated his jet pack. Below him, disc-shaped platforms popped up in domino effect, one under the next, like giant floating stairs leading down an endless abyss. Each had its own unique landscape, from lush countryside to suburban neighborhoods to downtown districts replete with skyscrapers. He descended to a metropolis platform several levels down, landed on the tallest building, and found its control room. He went straight to the central kiosk, brought up its command line interface, and inserted his custom string of code. A door appeared and slid open. The bright room contrasted with the building’s otherwise dim, dark interior. Rows and rows of stacked computer screens aspired toward infinity. The Underground Web. A hacker’s portal to wherever they dared venture. Years ago, during AI’s great technological boom, a revolutionary driverless car company ventured into neuro-enhancing brain implants. Through the Underground, a hacker caused a violent psychosis in dozens of early adopters and triggered multiple concurrent killing sprees that left more than a hundred dead across five states. And because many of the neuro-hacked were social media influencers, the world watched much of it live. All tech companies subsequently banned the Underground, sucking it dry. Until the Shepherd Organization. It embraced and revitalized it, boldly proclaiming their system open to anyone with altruistic intentions. Any nefarious acts, however, would be immediately thwarted by powerful algorithms, leaving the perpetrator technologically exposed to TSO and buried in litigation. None of which Pok had an appetite for. He stayed pedestrian with his hacking, mainly using it to access betas of in-production games. Venturing into the Prestigious Twelve’s applicant database would be closer to the shepherd sun than he had ever dared to fly. Find the application, see what in the hell went wrong, and get out. Pok stepped inside and picked a random aisle. Identical screens ran various lines of code. One unit stood separate from the rest. An old-school computer connected to a physical keyboard sat atop a table. Pok paused the scrolling code with the tap of a key. A new line with a blinking cursor appeared. He typed: The Shepherd Schools of Medicine, Admissions. The screen flickered, scrolled more code, and soon his own face smiled out at him. Unease touched his belly. Exploring the Underground was like peeling back human flesh to see the inner biology at work. Only a skilled surgeon could hope to tamper without disastrous results. This was reckless; he should have stopped there. But every single medical school? Pok had to know why. He opened his file. “What the hell?” The application had his name, date of birth, and unique applicant ID. Beyond that, nothing else was his. While his transcript was perfect, the one submitted had a subpar GPA with multiple withdrawn classes. The extracurriculars were without theme or merit. Pok had numerous peer-reviewed, first-author publications; here, the “Research” section was blank. This wasn’t the application he’d turned in. Not at all. Why? How? Important questions, but secondary. He had to fix it. From his personal files, Pok queued for upload his true application, complete with his encrypted genome, and hesitated. Months ago, when initially submitting, he’d grappled with the same ingrained apprehension. His father had diligently waived genome analysis at every turn of Pok’s childhood and adolescence. Antidiscrimination laws made it illegal to require DNA in applications—except in select fields like medicine. Once TSO had his genome, there was no reversing it. Pok completed the transfer. This done, he brought up the activity log, scrolled past the various review stages, and found his initial submission time stamp. Shit. “Upload Incomplete.” He’d never received that error. He quickly saw why: only minutes later was another, completed transfer, initiated by user CryingRabbits218. Not an error: a fake. Pok combed his memory for past rivals he’d hacked, gaming foes he’d humiliated. This could be the perfect revenge prank. The handle, however, didn’t ring a bell. The screen flashed red. The hue leaked out to the surrounding room. Pok groaned. He’d programmed a warning system into his hacking interface. The shepherds were investigating his activity; he needed to abort before he had deeper problems than an anonymous online enemy. Pok moved quickly but meticulously. Source or not, he’d just hacked into a subset of TSO. He needed to cover his tracks. Pok backed out of the Underground and spent the next hour scouring the newly rendered area to seek out and kill any rogue NPCs. Each represented an errant line of code that, if left unneutralized, could infect his entire system. He then deployed a kill code to eradicate this particular door to the Underground and turned off his console. His senses came back to the real world. The patter of rain on his window. The whir of the hallway air conditioner. The lingering hint of metal on his tongue. Beside him, his glass still showed the decision page. He put it on and refreshed. As if the algorithms would magically reprocess, see what an exceptional candidate he was, and immediately offer a spot. Still rejected. Still unanimous. Red marks, all the way down. Excerpted from The Hospital At The End of The World, copyright © 2025 by Justin C. Key. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Hospital at the End of the World</i> by Justin C. Key appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Science Fiction Read an Excerpt From The Hospital At The End of This World by Justin C. Key In a near future where artificial intelligence runs the world, a medical student must unravel family secrets to investigate his father’s death. By Justin C. Key | Published on January 15, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Hospital At The End of This World, a near-future science fiction thriller by Justin C. Key, out from Harper on February 3. In a time not so far from our own, society is run by a global AI system controlled by an all powerful corporation. The Shepherd Organization oversees every medical school in the country save one in New Orleans, the renegade Hippocrates which still insists on human-led medicine. It is the last choice school for an ambitious young New Yorker named Pok. But after his father—himself a physician—dies under mysterious circumstance that seems connected to “the shepherds” and their megalomaniacal young CEO, Pok finds himself on a quest for answers that leads right to Hippocrates. Once enrolled, he stumbles upon a further mystery: a strange illness is plaguing newcomers to New Orleans who grew up under shepherd rule. What is causing this fatal anomaly? And how does it relate to the mystery of Pok’s father’s death and his own mysterious past? One Decision Day The narrow overhang jutting out from the New York City apartment building did little to protect from the downpour. Pok’s back pressed against hard brick as he scanned the gray skies, his augmented reality glasses made pedestrian by the weather. The whir of an ambulance rose and dissipated, leaving behind the hum of rolling traffic. Directly above him, solid lines of rain ran from the air-conditioning unit hanging from their third-story window and cascaded off the fire escape. Where is it? The decision drone should have arrived ten minutes ago. After acquiring twelve of the country’s top medical institutions, the Shepherd Organization made clear their confidence in their state-of-the-art AI-centered medical curriculum by waiting until all other schools had sent out decisions before deploying theirs. It was a ballsy move. The stunt had paid off. According to the message boards, hardly anyone had accepted offers from non-shepherd schools even though most semesters started within the next month. Everyone was waiting on “The Prestigious Twelve.” “Decision day?” Skip James called above the rain and traffic as he stepped out of the small shop directly under Pok’s apartment. The longtime owner of Park Avenue Market, one of the last human-staffed brick-and-mortar stores in Manhattan, chucked two black bags into the garbage. Rainwater fell in sheets from the lid. “It’s all over my feed!” “They’re late,” Pok said. “Don’t catch a cold, kid.” You can’t catch a cold from the rain, Pok thought. He was about to check the message boards when a soft, persistent buzzing drew his attention. He stepped out from under the ledge, instantly drenched, a touch of metal on his tongue. The buzzing grew, steady and direct, and the drone emerged from between city buildings, cut through the rain, and stopped inches from Pok. The drone’s indicator blinked red; Pok raised his AR glasses and readily offered his irises for scanning. Verification done, its hatch opened and a silver case dropped on a string. Pok examined his delivery. The metal was warm. The Shepherd Organization’s insignia—a shepherd holding a stiffened snake as a staff—was engraved above the fresh stamp: Applicant Pok Morning. Verified at 12:14 p.m. Inside, his unique quick-response code. Kris Boles popped onto Pok’s glass display right as the decision page loaded. His friend’s temperament was spirited. His environment was dry. Yellow bordered his display. “Where’d you get in?” he said. “I haven’t checked. You got in?” “What do you mean you haven’t checked? How could you not check?” “It’s still loading.” Come on, come on. Every mentor and counselor had assured he’d have beautifully tough decisions to make at the end of this application cycle. Pok, who had applied to all twelve, had his heart set on the Shepherd School of Medicine at MacArthur Hospital, just up the street from his and his father’s apartment, where East Harlem met the Upper East Side. Outwardly unimpressive, the interior was intricately designed. The medical school was built atop the busy, three-tier hospital that served all five boroughs. Its website proudly proclaimed its future doctors sat upon the figurative shoulders of the medicine they studied. That was his dream school. Buy the Book The Hospital At The End of This World Justin C. Key Buy Book The Hospital At The End of This World Justin C. Key Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Pok swiped clear his glass; new drops immediately streaked across the silicon display. Logos for twelve of the country’s top medical schools—all now rebranded with the Shepherd Organization’s crest—popped onto the page. Adrenaline navigated open veins. Red Xs lined the margins. Beside all twelve schools. Every single one. “I didn’t get in.” Speaking the words made them real. “What?” Kris said. “I didn’t get in. Anywhere. This is bullshit.” They were both speechless. A digital delivery scooter honked for Pok to move. It knocked the back of his knee. He could have fallen face down onto the flooding sidewalk, mouth filling with gritty rainwater, and he wouldn’t have cared. This was bullshit. “What about that one school?” Kris said. “Gaylen or something? Down south?” “Hippocrates.” Under his father’s insistence, he’d applied to the Louisiana-based anti-AI school as a “safety,” one he’d never expected to consider. They had fallen far off of TIME magazine’s yearly top medical school rankings after essentially eliminating the latest technology from their curriculum. Just the thought of moving to Louisiana—the most backward state in the country—twisted Pok’s gut. “I don’t understand. How many did you get into?” “I don’t think—” “How many?” “Eight.” Eight? The New York air somehow grew hotter; Pok could visualize the rain sizzling off his skin. He’d received perfect marks. He’d checked all the boxes. His own father was a physician who’d given fifteen years of his life to MacArthur Hospital. And eight of the Prestigious Twelve wanted Kris and none wanted Pok? He knew Kris’s application. Hell, he’d helped with the essays. There was no way Kris would be picked over him. No way. And eight times? No fucking way. Pok rounded his building’s corner, head down, embarrassment pounding at his ears and rain pelting the nape of his neck. He unlocked his apartment door remotely as he took the stairs two at a time—the elevator was broken again—and resented the smell of the city’s concrete summer. “It’s got to be a glitch or something,” Kris said. “Somebody messed up. You’re the smartest kid I know.” The Shepherd Organization’s algorithms didn’t make mistakes. Not like this. But Kris inadvertently sparked an idea that bloomed into an insatiable urge. Pok squinted against his bedroom’s harsh, swinging light. The building—which housed MacArthur’s many medical trainees, physicians, and personnel—offered to install ones that adjusted to pupil dilation. His father, old-fashioned but well-meaning, had refused. Pok cleared a spot on his bed, found his virtual reality gaming headset, and booted up Impact, an open-world, massively online multiplayer game about teamwork and survival. “I’m coming over,” Kris said. “Don’t.” Pok took a moment to finger-comb out his shoulder-length locs; water dripped onto his thighs and the edge of his bed. “What are you up to?” “Troubleshooting,” Pok said. “Don’t do anything stupid.” “You know me. I’ll catch you later. And congratulations.” Pok took off his glass and replaced it with his gaming set. His New York apartment fell away and Impact took hold. His temples hummed with adrenaline as he created a new profile and avatar and started anew as a lone nomad. He summoned a hovercraft and directed it away from active play, full speed. Impact advertised an endless world. It generated new maps—including towns, resources, and histories—whenever a player ventured into an uncharted area. When Pok was confident about the distance between him and any other online players, he ejected himself from the hovercraft, ran into the closest house—still rendering itself in real time—opened the first closet, and jumped inside. His avatar fell into darkness. Pok counted to three and activated his jet pack. Below him, disc-shaped platforms popped up in domino effect, one under the next, like giant floating stairs leading down an endless abyss. Each had its own unique landscape, from lush countryside to suburban neighborhoods to downtown districts replete with skyscrapers. He descended to a metropolis platform several levels down, landed on the tallest building, and found its control room. He went straight to the central kiosk, brought up its command line interface, and inserted his custom string of code. A door appeared and slid open. The bright room contrasted with the building’s otherwise dim, dark interior. Rows and rows of stacked computer screens aspired toward infinity. The Underground Web. A hacker’s portal to wherever they dared venture. Years ago, during AI’s great technological boom, a revolutionary driverless car company ventured into neuro-enhancing brain implants. Through the Underground, a hacker caused a violent psychosis in dozens of early adopters and triggered multiple concurrent killing sprees that left more than a hundred dead across five states. And because many of the neuro-hacked were social media influencers, the world watched much of it live. All tech companies subsequently banned the Underground, sucking it dry. Until the Shepherd Organization. It embraced and revitalized it, boldly proclaiming their system open to anyone with altruistic intentions. Any nefarious acts, however, would be immediately thwarted by powerful algorithms, leaving the perpetrator technologically exposed to TSO and buried in litigation. None of which Pok had an appetite for. He stayed pedestrian with his hacking, mainly using it to access betas of in-production games. Venturing into the Prestigious Twelve’s applicant database would be closer to the shepherd sun than he had ever dared to fly. Find the application, see what in the hell went wrong, and get out. Pok stepped inside and picked a random aisle. Identical screens ran various lines of code. One unit stood separate from the rest. An old-school computer connected to a physical keyboard sat atop a table. Pok paused the scrolling code with the tap of a key. A new line with a blinking cursor appeared. He typed: The Shepherd Schools of Medicine, Admissions. The screen flickered, scrolled more code, and soon his own face smiled out at him. Unease touched his belly. Exploring the Underground was like peeling back human flesh to see the inner biology at work. Only a skilled surgeon could hope to tamper without disastrous results. This was reckless; he should have stopped there. But every single medical school? Pok had to know why. He opened his file. “What the hell?” The application had his name, date of birth, and unique applicant ID. Beyond that, nothing else was his. While his transcript was perfect, the one submitted had a subpar GPA with multiple withdrawn classes. The extracurriculars were without theme or merit. Pok had numerous peer-reviewed, first-author publications; here, the “Research” section was blank. This wasn’t the application he’d turned in. Not at all. Why? How? Important questions, but secondary. He had to fix it. From his personal files, Pok queued for upload his true application, complete with his encrypted genome, and hesitated. Months ago, when initially submitting, he’d grappled with the same ingrained apprehension. His father had diligently waived genome analysis at every turn of Pok’s childhood and adolescence. Antidiscrimination laws made it illegal to require DNA in applications—except in select fields like medicine. Once TSO had his genome, there was no reversing it. Pok completed the transfer. This done, he brought up the activity log, scrolled past the various review stages, and found his initial submission time stamp. Shit. “Upload Incomplete.” He’d never received that error. He quickly saw why: only minutes later was another, completed transfer, initiated by user CryingRabbits218. Not an error: a fake. Pok combed his memory for past rivals he’d hacked, gaming foes he’d humiliated. This could be the perfect revenge prank. The handle, however, didn’t ring a bell. The screen flashed red. The hue leaked out to the surrounding room. Pok groaned. He’d programmed a warning system into his hacking interface. The shepherds were investigating his activity; he needed to abort before he had deeper problems than an anonymous online enemy. Pok moved quickly but meticulously. Source or not, he’d just hacked into a subset of TSO. He needed to cover his tracks. Pok backed out of the Underground and spent the next hour scouring the newly rendered area to seek out and kill any rogue NPCs. Each represented an errant line of code that, if left unneutralized, could infect his entire system. He then deployed a kill code to eradicate this particular door to the Underground and turned off his console. His senses came back to the real world. The patter of rain on his window. The whir of the hallway air conditioner. The lingering hint of metal on his tongue. Beside him, his glass still showed the decision page. He put it on and refreshed. As if the algorithms would magically reprocess, see what an exceptional candidate he was, and immediately offer a spot. Still rejected. Still unanimous. Red marks, all the way down. Excerpted from The Hospital At The End of This World, copyright © 2025 by Justin C. Key. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Hospital At The End of This World</i> by Justin C. Key appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews An Unlikely Coven by AM Kvita Is Full of Delightful Shenanigans If you’re chasing a sense of belonging in what can feel like an ever-more-alienating real world, An Unlikely Coven is the book you need. By Jenny Hamilton | Published on January 15, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Joan Greenwood is not excited to come back to New York. Scratch that: She’s excited about the New York part, and the reuniting with her vampire bestie part, and the finished her architecture degree part, but not so much about returning to the bosom of her family. The Greenwoods are the most powerful magical family in New York, counting among their number the Head and High Witch of New York and Manhattan (Joan’s aunt), and the Head Witch’s eagerly cutthroat planned successor (Joan’s father). And then there’s Joan, the only talentless Greenwood witch in living memory, a perpetual disappointment to her family. Still, home she goes, arriving to rumors that someone’s managed to cast a spell transforming a regular human into a powerful witch—rumors that, if true, have the potential to destroy the power Joan’s family have amassed in New York, not to mention the delicate ecosystem of mutual tolerance between the witches and New York’s other magical communities. Joan’s happy this is none of her business, except that the next phone call she gets is from her vampire bestie, CZ, anxiously confessing that the rumors are true, and the new witch is real, and in fact CZ has rescued them from the Night Market and is sheltering them at his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. He needs help keeping the new witch, named Mik, safe from the magical communities that are now ravenous to find them. This is not a problem Joan is well-equipped to solve, given that she can’t do a single spell without it going completely haywire. As that description probably conveys, An Unlikely Coven is what I call hi-jinks literature: the type of book that scatters complications like jacks, only to amaze and astonish you by scooping them all back up in a great big finish at the end. A debut novelist has to be wildly ambitious to take on a cast as big as this book has—we’ve got Joan, her family, her bestie, the new witch, the witches that show up from California to cause problems, the vampire leaders, and the consultant brought on to solve the making-new-witches problem—and Kvita manages it handily. Buy the Book An Unlikely Coven AM Kvita Buy Book An Unlikely Coven AM Kvita Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Among the elements that go into making a book, plot can fly under the radar. We notice big twists and turns, but a well-functioning plot can act as the instrument of its own concealment. It’s like a hot water heater, not noticeable unless it stops working. (Ask me how I know.) So I want to take a moment to admire the quiet competence of Kvita’s plot work, where every cog in the machine does its job smoothly, leading us to a satisfyingly dramatic conclusion. The story of regular human Mik being transformed into a witch could have led to a straightforward MacGuffin hunt as our coven searched for a solution. Instead, we’re tossed into a sea of internecine conflicts, new ways of doing magic, and a possibly-sentient city—and the search for a cure for Mik. The other central pleasure of An Unlikely Coven is witnessing its ensemble cast come together as a team. Joan’s friendship with CZ is the relationship that begins and grounds the book, and the two of them have variously wary, curious, and adversarial relationships with the characters who will become a part of their eponymous coven by the end. The arc of creating that found family interweaves seamlessly with the shenanigans of the main plot, as the characters learn how their different strengths, powers, and interests can complement and impede each other. With a cast this big, it’s inevitable that some of the characters will fall by the wayside, and Kvita doesn’t kill themself trying to unload backstory and character development on every single cast member. Instead, they focus on building relationships and establishing group dynamics, leaving plenty of space for readers to learn more about individual characters in future books. Joan’s love interest, Astoria, is inseparable from her bestie Wren, who’s half-fae, while Astoria herself belongs to a ruling family determined to maintain witch supremacy over other magical beings, including the fae. Outsider Grace struggles to find the balance between her passion for creating new spells and her dislike of the ruling witch families. The elder generation of Joan’s family cares about her, but also clings tightly to their power as Greenwoods. These issues, raised but not resolved, leave Kvita with plenty of room to continue exploring the characters and the world, should they wish to make it an ongoing series. (In case it is unclear, I would like for that to happen. I love, love, love a long-running series with an ensemble cast.) I admit that I’m not mad keen on stories where the one character believes she’s a talentless failure, only to discover later in the book that she’s actually the most special and powerful magic-user of them all. Maybe now and then, as a treat, a character who’s grown up feeling worthless because of their lack of magic could locate a sense of self-worth in some other place than the exact system that has excluded and devalued them their whole lives. Not to say that Joan’s magic isn’t cool—it is—or that it wasn’t fun to see her learning from other witches how her specific brand of magical failures could be channeled into success. It’s common for debut authors to insist on their protagonist’s awesomeness without really doing the work to show it in action; but when Joan’s friends remind her that she’s worthy even without magic, they point to personal qualities that Kvita has been careful to demonstrate in Joan throughout the rest of the book. In a fantasy landscape dominated by romance-forward stories, it felt like a treat to read a story where romance just isn’t the point—but relationships still are. There’s a warm heart at the center of An Unlikely Coven, and every single hi-jink will ultimately lead us back there. In the book’s first scene, Joan arrives at Grand Central to find that every member of her family forgot to come meet her there; a disappointment but not a surprise. By the end of the book, she’s no longer an afterthought, but has built herself—almost by accident—a community of support, a cadre of ride-or-dies. If you’re chasing a sense of belonging in what can feel like an ever-more-alienating real world, An Unlikely Coven is the book you need.[end-mark] An Unlikely Coven is published by Orbit. The post <i>An Unlikely Coven</i> by AM Kvita Is Full of Delightful Shenanigans appeared first on Reactor.

News The Bride The Bride! Trailer Rejects the Whole “of Frankenstein” Bit You tell him, Jessie Buckley! By Molly Templeton | Published on January 15, 2026 Photo: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Warner Bros. This Bride does not belong to Frankenstein. The latest trailer for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film finds the undead Bride (Jessie Buckley) claiming her name for herself. “The bride of Frankenstein,” murmurs Frank himself (Christian Bale). “No,” she replies. “Just the Bride.” As previously noted about the first teaser, this film has style. Buckets of style. Style to spare. Dance sequences, even! Florence and the Machine’s “Everybody Scream” certainly helps set the tone here—a tone which the synopsis is quite! enthused! about! A lonely Frankenstein (Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to ask groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (five-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening) to create a companion for him. The two revive a murdered young woman and The Bride (Buckley) is born. What ensues is beyond what either of them imagined: Murder! Possession! A wild and radical cultural movement! And outlaw lovers in a wild and combustible romance! Wild and combustible! No holds barred! It has really been a time for beloved and well-lauded actors tackling Frankenstein-adjacent tales (though this one is clearly as much Bonnie & Clyde as Mary Shelley). Last year we got Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, and Jacob Elordi; now we have a small army of Oscar nominees and winners, including Buckley, who is essentially a lock for an Oscar nomination for her work in Hamnet. Along with the appealing trio of Bale, Buckley, and Bening, The Bride! also stars Peter Sarsgaard, whose role seems to primarily involve looking longingly at the Bride; Jake Gyllenhaal; and Penélope Cruz. Maggie Gyllenhaal is both writer and director. Her behind-the-scenes team includes composer Hildur Gudnadóttir, who recently did the music for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and last year’s Joker: Folie à Deux. Costume designer Sandy Powell may have more Oscar nominations than the film’s stars combined: 15 in total, with three wins. The Bride! dances into theaters on March 6.[end-mark] The post <i>The Bride!</i> Trailer Rejects the Whole “of Frankenstein” Bit appeared first on Reactor.

Column Superhero Movie Rewatch Fourth Time’s the Charm? — The Fantastic Four: First Steps In which superheroes save the world, but can’t defeat terminal blandness… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on January 15, 2026 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through. The absorption of 20th Century Fox into the Disney Collective in 2019 meant that it was inevitable that both the X-Men and Fantastic Four—whose film rights were with Fox—would become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That process started in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness by giving us an alternate Earth with Sir Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier and John Krasnicki as Reed Richards, then continued with the appearance of Kelsey Grammer as the Beast in an alternate dimension that Monica Rambeau travelled to at the end of The Marvels and in the multiversal wackiness in Deadpool & Wolverine. However, the X-Men films were much better received than the FF films. While those three movies used established Fox actors Stewart, Grammer, and Hugh Jackman—and the teases for Avengers: Doomsday indicate that Stewart, Ian McKellen, and James Marsden, at the very least, will be reprising their X-roles in that film—the FF was always going to be restarted from scratch. Jon Watts, who directed the first three Tom Holland Spider-Man films, was originally attached to direct, but he cited burnout following the exhausting COVID-19 protocols that had to be followed for the filming of No Way Home, and bowed out. He was replaced by Matt Shakman, who directed every episode of WandaVision, and who has generally carved out an impressive career as a television director (including, notably, episodes of superhero series Heroes Reborn and The Boys). The original script was by Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer, partly off a story by Kat Wood, with first Josh Friedman and then Eric Pearson (who also worked on several of Marvel Studios’ early short films, as well as Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow, Thunderbolts*, and the TV series Agent Carter, along with uncredited rewrites on other MCU films) brought in to do rewrites. The film adapted the same comics story that was the basis of 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer, to wit, the first Galactus story in Fantastic Four #48-50 (1966) by the FF’s creators Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. The cast includes Pedro Pascal (last seen in this rewatch in Wonder Woman 1984) as Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Eben Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer (taking a cue from the alternate timeline of the Earth X series by Jim Krueger, Alex Ross, & John Paul Leon, and having Shalla-Bal be the Zenn-Lavian who makes the sacrifice of becoming Galactus’ herald, rather than Norrin Radd), Ralph Ineson as Galactus, Paul Walter Hauser as the Mole Man, Sarah Niles as Lynne Nichols, who runs the FF’s Future Foundation, Mark Gatiss as the Ed Sullivan-esque TV host Ted Gilbert, Natasha Lyonne as a grammar-school teacher who serves as Grimm’s sorta-kinda-maybe love interest, and Matthew Wood as the voice of H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot. Also, the four stars of the never-officially-released 1994 FF film—Alex Hyde-White, Rebecca Staab, Jay Underwood, and Michael Bailey Smith—all make cameos, which is just sweet, and Robert Downey Jr. makes a brief appearance (with his face hidden) in a mid-credits scene as Victor von Doom. John Malkovich was cast as the Red Ghost, but his role wound up being rewritten and then cut from the film (though we do see brief footage of the FF fighting his Super Apes). Pascal, Kirby, Moss-Bachrach, Quinn, and Downey are all set to return in Doomsday. The Fantastic Four: First StepsWritten by Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer and Kat Wood and Josh FriedmanProduced by Kevin FeigeDirected by Matt ShakmanOriginal release date: July 25, 2025 “The unknown will become known, and we will protect you” Credit: Marvel Studios It’s the 1960s on Earth-828, and The Ted Gilbert Show is doing a fourth-anniversary celebration of the fateful spaceflight taken by Dr. Reed Richards, his wife Sue Storm (who kept her maiden name, which would’ve been very provocative in our Earth’s 1960s…), her brother Johnny Storm, and their good friend Ben Grimm, which resulted in their DNA being altered by cosmic rays, turning them into the Fantastic Four. We see footage of them fighting various foes, including the Mole Man (as well as a monster that looks just like the one on the cover of Fantastic Four #1) and Red Ghost’s Super Apes, along with clips from the animated Fantastic Four TV series (with the animated version of Grimm uttering the catch phrase “It’s clobberin’ time!”) and from Richards’ educational program Fantastic Science with Mister Fantastic. We also learn of the Future Foundation, run by Sue, which has worked with the UN to apparently bring about world peace, er, somehow. After recording the episode, the foursome return home to the Baxter Building. H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot prepares Sunday dinner, with Grimm kibbitzing (and adding garlic). Richards and Sue are late for dinner, as the latter took a pregnancy test and it came up positive. They had been hoping for a baby for years, and indeed had given up actively trying, and now she’s expecting. Grimm figures it out before they can actually reveal the big news, and everyone is thrilled, with Johnny declaring that Sue will make a great mother and that Richards will be totally out of his depth, but also that Grimm and he himself will make fabulous uncles. There’s lots of speculation in the press about the upcoming baby, including whether or not it will have superpowers, though all of Richards’ scans indicate that the baby is normal. (Sue also turns her tummy invisible so they can see the gestating fetus at one point.) Richards tasks H.E.R.B.I.E. with aggressively baby-proofing the Baxter Building. He also works out the locations of several criminals at large, including the Wizard, the Puppet Master, and Diablo, enabling the police to capture them. Grimm jokes that he’s also baby-proofing the city. At one point, Grimm is wandering the neighborhood where he grew up. A civilian wants him to say the catchphrase “It’s clobberin’ time!” but Grimm insists he never says that, that’s just from the cartoon. He lifts a car at the request of some schoolkids, then flirts with their teacher for a bit. A woman covered in silver and riding what looks like a silver surfboard arrives from space, declaring herself the herald of Galactus, who is coming to devour the planet. She tells everyone to prepare for their destruction. She then flies off, with Johnny flying after her into the stratosphere, grabbing onto the surfboard just as his flame goes out from lack of oxygen. The Silver Surfer says something in her native language, and then flies off, leaving Johnny to fall into the atmosphere, reignite, and fly back. Credit: Marvel Studios Richards is able to track the Surfer’s energy signature, and realizes that there are planets missing from where she’s been, lending credence to her warning. They decide that they have to confront her, so they prep their original rocket, the Excelsior, for spaceflight. All four of them (including the very pregnant Sue), as well as H.E.R.B.I.E., take off, with Richards assuring the public that they will do everything in their power to save the Earth. Using the FTL drive in orbit, they track the Surfer’s energy to a world in another star system, arriving just in time to witness Galactus consuming it. Galactus then grants them an audience, though the Surfer tells them sadly that they shouldn’t have come. Johnny also asks her what it was she said to him, and she translates it: “Die with yours.” It’s a blessing, she says. Galactus explains that his hunger is all-consuming and must be sated. However, he will spare Earth if they give him the child that Sue is carrying. The FF refuse, and manage to escape by the skin of their teeth, though the Surfer chases after them even when going faster than light. They lose her in a neutron star, with the Surfer caught in the time-dilation, and the FF only able to escape by sacrificing the FTL drive. Sue has gone into premature labor thanks to Galactus, and gives birth to the baby on the Excelsior. They finally get home months later, and the people of Earth are rather devastated to learn that they didn’t defeat Galactus, and that Earth would’ve been spared if they had given up their son (whom they’ve named Franklin). Existential despair grips the world as people try to come to terms with what’s happening. Richards is beside himself because he can’t figure out how to save the Earth without sacrificing his child. The Baxter Building computers have picked up other transmissions in the same language that the Surfer was speaking, and now that they know what one phrase means, Johnny is able to create a translation matrix to try to decipher the other signals they’ve been getting. Sue decides to confront an angry crowd outside the Baxter Building, Franklin in her arms, to explain that she won’t sacrifice her child—but they will move heaven and Earth to save the planet any way they can. That not only mitigates some of the negative public opinion, but also gives Richards an idea. He’s been working on a teleporter, which thus far has succeeded in transporting an egg across a room, though it takes out New York’s power grid in the process. The FF uses the Future Foundation and the Fantastic Science with Mister Fantastic show to rally public support behind a worldwide effort to recreate the teleporter on a massive scale, so they can move the planet to another solar system. They also need to conserve power, implementing an energy curfew every night in order to hoard the power necessary to make this work. Credit: Marvel Studios They’re all set to teleport the planet as Galactus is approaching, but then the Surfer shows up and destroys all the teleportation bridges—except the one in Times Square, and she’s only stopped from destroying that one by Johnny playing the recordings of the transmissions they’ve received, which include her giving the “Die with yours” blessing to worlds Galactus has destroyed, and also the people of Zenn-La thanking Shalla-Bal for her sacrifice. The Surfer reveals that she is indeed Shalla-Bal, and she convinced Galactus to spare her home planet of Zenn-La in exchange for becoming his herald. The Surfer departs the planet in anguish, leaving the Times Square teleportation bridge intact. Richards comes up with a new plan, and it’s one that everyone hates, but eventually agrees is necessary: use Franklin as bait to lure Galactus to the teleportation bridge in Times Square and send him to the far side of the galaxy. Grimm points out that Galactus is huge and will probably do a lot of damage to the city getting to Times Square, so they evacuate the residents of New York to the Mole Man’s subterranean city, which takes a certain amount of cajoling on Sue’s part. Galactus lands in New York Harbor and stomps his way north to Times Square (inexplicably passing by Lincoln Center, which is actually north of Times Square, but whatever). However, the switcheroo the FF attempts, replacing Franklin with an empty crib in the teleporter, doesn’t work, as Galactus senses that Franklin is in the Baxter Building. Calling them clever insects, Galactus goes to the Baxter Building and grabs Franklin. Sue manages to use her force fields to push Galactus back to Times Square, aided by Grimm taking out the buildings that Galactus is attempting to use for support. Richards is able to grab Franklin from Galactus’ grasp while Johnny activates the teleportation bridge. However, Sue has pushed herself beyond her limits getting him there and collapses to the pavement, dead, and Galactus starts to climb his way out of the teleportation matrix. Johnny is about to sacrifice himself to force Galactus back in, but then the Surfer appears out of nowhere and knocks him aside, and she pushes Galactus into the matrix, sending them both across the galaxy. The Earth is saved, as is Franklin, but Sue is not alive, despite Richards administering CPR and mouth-to-mouth. He sadly lays their infant son on her chest, and Franklin uses his nascent superpowers to revive her. The people of New York come back above-ground, and the world is saved. We cut ahead to the fifth anniversary of the FF, where their appearance on Ted Gilbert is interrupted by an alert, though they struggle with the baby’s car seat in the Fantasticar on their way to their next mission. Four years later, Sue is reading to Franklin. She finishes The Very Hungry Caterpillar and goes to get A Fly Went By—when she comes back, Victor von Doom is kneeling before Franklin… “I will not sacrifice my child for this world—but I will not sacrifice this world for my child” Credit: Marvel Studios For years, I’ve been saying that any new Fantastic Four film really needed to just blow past the origin and just show the FF as an established bunch of superheroes, and I’m very grateful that Kevin Feige, Matt Shakman, and the team of writers agree with me. The movie is much stronger for it. The FF’s origin is, in a word, awful, and one that’s (like many of early Marvel’s origin stories) aggressively tied to the early 1960s (in this case, trying to beat the Commies to space). Having the movie take place in the 1960s makes that work a little bit better, but that’s only part of why the origin is dumb, and I’m just as happy to get it over with quickly and just have the FF be established from the start of the story. Putting it on an alternate Earth—specifically the one numbered 828, in honor of Jack Kirby’s birthday of August 28th—solves the “where have they been?” problem that would arise from trying to retcon them into the mainline MCU. The movie also has the perfect visual aesthetic. It’s right out of The Venture Bros., and I mean that as a very high compliment. The retro-futuristic vibe of the set design is absolutely magnificent, plus they impressively nailed the fashions and hairstyles of the 1960s. Would that the writers had been operating on the same level. There are a number of problems with the script, starting with a fundamental misunderstanding of what this country was like six decades ago. For starters, Sue Storm kept her maiden name when she married Richards, and that would have been massively controversial at the time. Indeed, it’d be controversial now to an extent. But the biggie is this: the vast majority of mainstream America of the time would never have accepted the notion that parents should sacrifice their infant child for any reason. Sure, some people would call her selfish, and some people would respond with confusion as to why they wouldn’t consider the option. But the mainstream press that question them when they first return to Earth? They would’ve all nodded their heads and agreed with the FF’s refusal to give Franklin to the guy who eats planets. The most glaring problem with this movie, though, is that the FF themselves are remarkably uninteresting. Their personalities are muted and toned down to the point of spectacular blandness. Richards is a super-genius whose ruthless intellectualism is leavened by his love for his family, which is the only thing that keeps him from being a complete asshole. But we don’t get any of the negative aspects of Richards’ personality, except in tiny blink-and-you-miss-it doses. Mostly he’s just an eccentric goof. Pedro Pascal’s performance is aggressively toned down from what we know he’s capable of. The hotheaded Johnny Storm is a bit snarky, but Joseph Quinn doesn’t have any of the verve or charm of his comics counterpart, or of the last two guys to play the role (Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan, who were both brilliant despite being in movies that were mediocre-to-terrible). His womanizing is toned down, though there’s enough of it there to have him sorta-kinda flirt with the Shalla-Bal iteration of the Silver Surfer, but not enough of it to actually make him interesting. Also Johnny is apparently an accomplished linguist now, because the plot won’t work otherwise, and they needed to give him something to do, I guess? Vanessa Kirby is the only one who works here, as her Sue is allowed to be both complex and powerful. She comes across as very much the heart and soul of the team, though the manufactured conflicts between her and Richards over using Franklin as bait feel very manufactured. But Kirby does right by the role. So does Eben Moss-Bachrach, but alas here is where the script really fails. Benjamin J. Grimm is one of the greatest characters in the Marvel pantheon, a tragic figure who still maintains his compassion and friendliness. He’s the best friend of everyone in the Marvel Universe, but constantly struggles with the fact that he’s an ambulatory collection of rocks. But Moss-Bachrach has precisely none of the character’s tragedy or angst, which is a big part of what makes him so compelling. Instead, he’s just a nice guy who likes to cook and show off for kids. Not only that, but after going to the trouble of actually casting a Jewish actor as the Jewish Grimm, they don’t do a single thing with it. He does walk into a synagogue at one point, but it’s expressly not for any spiritual reason, but simply to boringly flirt with Natasha Lyonne’s spectacularly uninteresting teacher. Indeed, there’s nothing in this movie to support the notion that Grimm is Jewish, and at least one line of dialogue supporting the fact that he isn’t. (He uses “Jesus” as an epithet at one point.) Oh, and the Galaxy Quest-esque running gag with him refusing to say “It’s clobberin’ time” fails utterly. The attempts to get him to say it and him refusing are cute, but the payoff at the film’s climax does not land at all. It worked with Alan Rickman’s refusal to say “By Grabthar’s hammer” in GQ because of the character’s anger at being typecast and forced to keep flogging a role he’d rather he never played, and his journey to finally embracing the part at the film’s climax. By contrast, the moment when Grimm says “It’s clobberin’ time” here is completely unearned, unnecessary, and uninteresting. The blandification extends to the entirety of Earth-828, as the citizens of this Earth are an unconvincingly monolithic bunch of people who seem to just do whatever the FF tells them to do (except for the brief period where they’re just as unconvincingly mad at them for not committing infanticide). The movie is well paced, looks amazing, and I’m so incredibly grateful that they didn’t do what the Ultimate Fantastic Four comic and Rise of the Silver Surfer did and make Galactus into a force-of-nature series of planet-consuming drones, but instead embraced the fact that he’s a fifty-foot-tall white guy with a big purple W on his head. Points to Ralph Ineson for giving the character appropriate gravitas and menace. It is, still, the best Fantastic Four movie ever made, but given the competition, that’s hardly an accomplishment. This ends the current iteration of the Superhero Movie Rewatch. The original intent was to cover two more 2025 releases, but your humble rewatcher had an unnecessarily eventful holiday season, including a foot injury, the unexpected demise of a beloved Toyota Corolla, and two killer deadlines. With all that, and the upcoming release of the first season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy this week, we’re going to punt The Old Guard 2 and Red Sonja to later in the year, along with some of the 2026 releases.[end-mark] The post Fourth Time’s the Charm? — <i>The Fantastic Four: First Steps</i> appeared first on Reactor.