Excerpts This Monster of Mine Read an Excerpt From This Blade of Ours by Shalini Abeysekara Death isn’t finished with them yet. By Shalini Abeysekara | Published on June 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Shalini Abeysekara’s This Blade of Ours, the conclusion of the dark romantasy duology that began with This Monster of Mine—available from Union Square & Co. on June 30th. Read the prologue below, and check out character art of Sarai and Kadra from artists Avendell and Bella Bergolts! Sarai believed the worst was behind her. However, months after exposing the government’s corruption in what has now been deemed “the Great Unravelling,” she faces scorn from citizens who preferred her and Kadra as the underdogs. Worse, eerie omens rock the country: from a deadly plague outbreak to a sweeping madness that leave the afflicted ranting of an approaching reckoning. Accused of angering the gods, Sarai returns to the only place that can clear her name: Ur Dinyé’s frozen north. But among the secrets buried in its ice are Kadra’s. When historical tensions between the north and the south worsen, a powerful religious order seizes control in the chaos, led by a man whose very voice can kill—Noceo bu Kader. Trapped between love and a crumbling country, Sarai and Kadra must outwit a power with roots as deep in fear as in cruelty. But the gods are always watching, and Sarai and Kadra may not escape a second time.  Buy the Book This Blade of Ours Shalini Abeysekara Buy Book This Blade of Ours Shalini Abeysekara Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget PrologueHer “Beware you would‑be, God‑Summoners! Take heed, all you who would call the Elsar to our plane! For when the infinite touches the finite, the latter does not emerge unscathed. A scar forms at the point of the meeting. And from it, what blood will spill? Who else will part the seams of our world as a sword does flesh and enter?Aim not for the lofty. Restrict yourselves to prayer and relinquish the selfishness of seeking out a personal boon. Let us worship as a hand does by the hearth. Plunge not into the fire!” —excerpt from The Teachings of Inquisitor Caminus of Ur Dinyé The collapse of a country was a quiet affair. Few historians would agree. They preferred to point to crushing defeats in battle, assassinations, or civil unrest to explain the peaks and troughs of political chaos. Yet, those were merely the symptoms of a rotting land’s disintegration. Its cause would have snuck in earlier, quiet enough that no academic would entirely pin it down and capable enough to reach gnarled fingers through history to throttle the present. Countries died in silence. As Ur Dinyé would today. Its current iteration, at least. Her lips lifted in a smile. Squinting against the wind hurling orange sand across the Xārōmand Desert, she urged her mare toward one of the imposing mountains ahead. Thousands of miles long, the Kaycakh Range’s jagged terra‑cotta peaks formed a land border separating Ur Dinyé’s inhospitable Xārōmand from the neighboring land of Errigal—with whom they’d been at war centuries prior. But these rocky giants had seen more than history. They had once held the future. A millennium ago, in the heart of one of these mountains had existed a temple of such renown that only Ur Dinyé’s monarchs had been permitted to know its location. Within its cavernous halls, devotees of Lord Time had meditated upon the past and present and been blessed with brief glimpses into potential futures. The Seers’ prophecies had steered Ur Dinyé from devastation for centuries, until they’d been massacred by a king who had taken umbrage at what would become the Head Seer’s final prophecy. Oh, the powerful and their fear. She cast a bitter look in the direction of Ur Dinyé’s capital of Edessa, thousands of miles to the south. She wouldn’t be freezing her ass off in the fucking Xārōmand if it weren’t for them. Temperatures dipped lower under the slow wash of night. Above, Praefa and Silun surveyed her nightly routine of the past three months. Time and time again, she halted before the sheer face of a mountain and listened. The desert graced her with a wail of wind and spit sand across her cheeks. Another night without hope. It had ceased to cut. For ninety nights, she’d ridden through half the Kaycakh Range in search of the Lost Temple’s entrance. The records she’d dug up from the Scourgemaster’s time had spoken to the temple’s rediscovery some five and a half centuries back but had neglected to mention the location after the unexplained deaths of those scholars and treasure‑seekers who’d ventured within. No matter. It was the nature of history to be lost and found again. She steered her mare toward another peak. Her mare balked, whinnying in fear as they neared the base. Sand gave way to barren soil littered with chunks of limestone. No sooner had her lips shaped a frown than she felt it, soft as gossamer. A hum of otherness like the scrape of jaws over skin. Magic. Hunger. Hatred. The reins slipped from her trembling hands, elation heating her blood. It’s here. Dismounting, she tethered her recalcitrant mare to one of the boulders fencing the mountain like teeth. Nothing in the rock face ahead indicated the presence of a door, yet the desert’s fearful thrum under her feet spoke otherwise. A warning. A proclamation of recognition. “We know your blood,” the wind seemed to hiss. “It has spilled here before.” “Go.” Sand curled around her ankles when she continued up the incline. “You are not wanted.” Cursed land. Soiled with the innocent blood of thousands of Seers and sundered by even uglier secrets the Lost Temple had witnessed. The laws of the mortal world applied loosely here. Her smile broadened. At last. Art by Avendell The mountain’s base vied with the Aequitas for breadth, rough slopes worn by Time’s chisel. At one corner, a pile of rubble listed precariously to the left, shielding what must once have been an entrance. A cave‑in or a barricade? she wondered. The elongated finger bones extending in silent plea from a gap in the rock could speak to either. She steeled her spine against a shudder. It doesn’t matter. She placed her shaky palms against the cool, stone face and felt an answering ripple within. Now for the price of entry. Withdrawing a dagger, she pricked each fingertip, barely noticing the pain. So great was her excitement that she barely winced. Five crimson streams rolled down her hand to dribble onto parched soil. Red faded to terra‑cotta. The earth drank deep. The wind halted. Quiet. It was so very quiet now. A hammering began in her chest, exultation and fear warping in a dangerous weave. She drew on the rock with bleeding fingers. A straight line, then a curved one, then several more. Zuvrai, the Urdish rune for “Time.” Mortal concept and immortal god. A rune so dangerously taxing that to draw it was to risk all the time that the user had left. The same rune Seers would have drawn to enter the Lost Temple millennia ago. Her chest squeezed with every pass of her fingers over the rock face, breaths dwindling and labored. Zuvrai was a Tenth‑Tier rune, demanding a torrential, inherently unsustainable flow of power from its user. She was no Seer. She didn’t have long. Faster. Magic was a peculiar thing. An inner well of power shaped by ancestry and tied to blood, accessible only by drawing the right patterns in one’s life force. Runes were the language of the gods, the Elsarian priests said, and their first gift to humans to allow them a taste of the divine. It was also their first test, a sieve to separate the greedy and power‑drunk from those good and faithful who would pass the gates into the Bright Realms where the High Elsar resided. When all was said and done, where would she be placed? Monster or martyr? A choked laugh tore from her. Had she access to her own epitaph, she would have written it now before history did it for her: Judge me or justify me, you know I was necessary. Red flooded her vision as she drew the final set of zuvrai’s lines, arteries bursting in her eyes like swollen streams. Blood laced her tongue when she swallowed. Her fingers drew the last stroke and paused midair. Gods help me. The rune flashed gold. Soul‑deep agony arced through her with the ferocity of a lightning bolt as zuvrai came to life, unspooling her time. Unspooling her. Invisible hands clawed at her lungs, wringing, twisting. Her screams were quickly swallowed by the now‑cacophonous desert, alive with a thousand jeers. Every pulse of her heart was a clap of thunder. Falling to her knees, she clutched her head and gasped for air. The ghosts laughed. “You were warned.” “No,” she croaked. Teeth clenched, she slowed her panicked breaths. “I won’t die here.” Slapping a palm against the rock face, she dragged herself up, gaze fixed on the now‑glowing rune drawn into the mountain. Scarlet wove into the gold lines, warning that she would soon be drained of power and life. Fifteen minutes? No. Ten. “You know me,” she hissed to her listeners, heart thudding so hard that she feared it would stall any moment. “You know my kin and my kind. You will yield,” she snarled. The ground shuddered. Yes. YES. “Let. Me. In!” she screamed. A chunk of the mountain’s craggy face crashed down with an earthquake’s force. She lost her footing and tumbled down the incline, cowering from the spray of rock and sand. Coughing, she raised her head when the rumbling ceased. By the Saints and Wretched. The chunk had reduced the rubble blocking the entrance to dust. The Xārōmand quieted when she staggered back up to that pitch‑black mouth. A torch flared in an ancient sconce by it. Then another, and another, leading her in. She shuddered. Welcome or trap, it doesn’t matter. She was going where even the dead couldn’t touch her. Art by Bella Bergolts Pain clawed through her chest, hooking in and ripping down. Blood gurgled in her throat. Eight minutes. She ignored the broken corpses piled around the entrance, red tears snaking past her jaw from her own bleeding eyes. She ran into the temple. Firelight hissed to life in her wake, drawing golden fingers down frescoed corridors of battles past, fates avoided, futures won, gods appeased, murdered Seers—Elsar save me. The bones! Hollow eye sockets regarded her flight with mockery, their jaws unhinged in laughter. “Will you make it in time?” they asked. “Can you control what even we couldn’t?” I will, she vowed. The Seers had glimpsed the land’s future but been sequestered from its workings. She knew the people of Ur Dinyé. I can control them. Libraries. Lecture rooms. Worship halls. Marble columns and limestone walls. The gilt had been chipped off, gaping holes left where statues and prayer tablets must once have stood. How many treasure‑seekers and scholars had the dead punished for it? Three minutes. She had never known such pain even when—Faster. She rounded a corner, kicked down the banquet hall’s rotting doors, then froze. There. A mighty oval courtyard hollowed into the center of the mountain. It opened to the sky, milky moonlight accompanying braziers that roared awake at her entrance. Avoiding the mess of collapsed columns, she ran to the shattered altar at the center, split down the middle by an unnaturally large handprint. There had once been a god here. Chained for centuries by magi and Seers alike and twisted into an abomination that had been trapped in a man’s body so that Ur Dinyé could win its wars. But that had been during the time of the Scourgemaster, a time of monsters, prophecies, and men with honor. This was a new age. And yet, it needed a monster too. She knew this to be debridement not death, but the arbiters of history took such umbrage to change. They needed their compartmentalizations of time and firm delineations of how the dust had settled. To stop it from happening again, they would argue, but knowledge of the past had never stopped its repetition. Blood did. Two minutes. Dagger. She sliced both palms open. Safsher, she drew the Urdish rune for “Sword” atop the altar. Tuhig for “Void.” Zefis for “Weave.” Sweat slid down her temples, stung her eyes. Her strained gasps were a preliminary death rattle as the agony in her chest pulled tight. “Soon.” Something caressed her neck. A fingertip? The past clawing for blood. She flinched. “You will join us soon.” Faster. She bit straight through her lip and drew. Khon, frazam, layk, sayag. Blood, End, Unity, Shadow, and finally, Sleep. Nibas. And she was out of time. Thick iron welled at the back of her throat. She choked. Blood sprayed from her lips to coat the altar, smudging her desperate runes. SHIT. She collapsed. The temple screamed in glee, a thousand voices grasping through death and time to claim her for their own. Blood seeped up from the courtyard’s tile, reaching inky fingers for her. A new ghost. A new scream. She tried standing but her limbs no longer worked. It can’t be for nothing! She silently pleaded with herself as the blood neared. Stand up! Stand— Blue‑green flames roared from the altar and spread to fence her from the dead. Dazed, she watched the fire climb toward the sky and coalesce into a wall. The voices vanished. She’s here. She had Summoned a god. Her fingers moved quickly across the tile, drawing zuvrai once more. The magic unspooling from her stoppered. Pain fled like a ghost. Exultation brought her to her feet right as the goddess entered the mortal plane. By all that’s holy. She fell back on her knees. Like all Naaduir, Faragathe had been human before her elevation to the minor pantheon for her service to Lord Time of the all‑powerful Elsar. It no longer showed. Starlight wove through black hair that trailed long past the goddess’s ankles to float midair. Midnight‑blue ribbons of sky slid over her twenty-foot body like an ever‑shifting gown. Four eyes, sans iris and pupil, blinked on each bare shoulder and across her clavicles. Two more apiece slitted open on both high cheekbones, and the human two stared down at her. Eighteen eyes, holding an esophageal darkness. One dark, blue‑green foot touched the ground. Faragathe tilted her head, curved horns gleaming bone white. “You call me to cursed land.” For a melodious voice, it cut like a blade. So, this is power. “I had little choice,” she said bitterly. “I’m not so powerful a magus to Summon you otherwise. But those damned Elsarian priests were right after all. A Summoning does leave a mark of incursion on the mortal plane.” “So, you pulled me through.” Faragathe’s eyes narrowed as she took in the courtyard. “Great evil was done here. A god Summoned. Brutalized.” “I don’t seek to do the same to you! I swear—” She screamed when the goddess hoisted her with a flick of her finger, inches from her unearthly blue‑green face. Faragathe waved a taloned hand, spinning her dangling body in a slow circle. “A mortal’s oath means as little as their life.” She grinned, baring sharp teeth. “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Now, what do you want?” For the first time, she wondered if she had made a mistake. What if she doesn’t care? The goddess’s many eyes were utterly blank. She had never seen anything so devoid of humanity. “I ceased being human millennia ago,” Faragathe sniffed daintily, reading her thoughts. “Why? Do you seek to offer your body as a vessel? Keep it. I take no pleasure in walking this plane.” “Because of what they did to you.” She trembled when the goddess stilled but kept speaking. “Faragathe, Devotee of Time.” She took a deep breath. “The Heretic Priestess.” The goddess’s eyes flashed. “You dare—” “I’ve risked everything to come here tonight for this, for you!” she screamed. “I spent years of my worthless, mortal life digging through ancient texts for how to Summon you. The woman whose prophecies everyone ignored because Time granted them through dreams instead of the out‑of‑context flashes of the future accepted as canon by the Elsarian Order. The priestess who was mutilated and burned alive for saying what the Order didn’t like hearing. One of history’s most brilliant minds, ultimately proven right and still all but written out of the Codices and every other religious text.” Faragathe’s smile was tight. “A choice that the Order has since learned to regret. Fear is bred in the unconscious, in the nameless things that walk between death, sleep, and waking. Unlike some of the other Naaduir and even a few Elsar, my power doesn’t depend on human belief. Everyone inevitably comes to me.” “I know. That’s why I wanted to offer you—” She jerked when the goddess planted her on her palm and leaned in. The words died in her throat. She had been wrong. It wasn’t just starlight glistening in Faragathe’s hair but bone and tar. The eyes on her shoulders were voids into worlds with terrors beyond comprehension. Darkness crowded the courtyard, extinguishing the braziers, and within it seemed to be a universe with the goddess as its epicenter, amid others of horrific, larger—all those eyes— She realized she was screaming when Faragathe laughed.“Well, mortal? What can you possibly offer me?” Mind. Where was her mind? “Recognition,” she gurgled, a portion of her mind irrevocably altered. Her gaze shied from the goddess. “There was a time after your death when people heeded you. Now, they’re viewed as mad. Remind them of you once more. Shroud this land and bind it to you. Make the priests of the Elsarian Order return your name to the Codices. We have a capital, Edessa. A cesspit of the pretentiously religious, corrupt, and greedy. Destroy them, and history will never forget you again.” “How quaint. So, this is about vengeance.” “You see my mind.” She knelt on the goddess’s palm. “It’s about more than just that.” Eighteen black, empty orbs swiveled toward her and watched. Faragathe’s brow pinched. “Yes,” she murmured. “A great deal more.” A blur of wind and limestone and she found herself deposited on the ground. “The Naaduir don’t grant wishes, mortal.” Faragathe sounded contemplative. “We accept what appeals to us and reject the rest.” Her heart sank. “Please, at least—” “We never made the same promises to humans that the Elsar did. We reached this state of minor godhood because we served them and not you. You have Summoned me, and your request was heard. There is no debt.” A tear ran down her nose to drop on her bloodied palms. “I understand.” Blue‑green filled her vision. A finger the size of her arm tipped her chin. “But in this, I will hear you.” Her head shot up. To her horror, she realized that she was sobbing. “You will?” “Violence may be the sinew of authority, mortal. But power, true power, lies in the shadows.” Faragathe trailed a hand over the ruins they stood in, the remainder of a place that had once shaped the nation. “Let them see it,” she said to the night sky. “Let it drive them mad. I will stand behind you.” Blood rushed in her ears, warmth spilling through hollows that life had carved in her chest and left to fester. So, this is joy. She bowed low. “My goddess,” her voice cracked, “from this day forth, I bind myself to you and only you.” For the first time, something almost sad flickered in Faragathe’s many eyes. “Very well, mortal. To ancient history.” She squeezed her still‑bleeding palms. The blood spattered on the ground in a silent vow. “To ancient history.” Excerpted from This Blade of Ours, copyright © 2026 by Shalini Abeysekara. About the Artists Born and raised in Munich, Germany, Avendell has been drawing and painting ever since she could hold a pencil. She pursued her art education in Savannah, GA and now lives and works in Pennsylvania. During the Covid lockdown she combined her passion for art with her love for reading and found her creative home in book illustration. Bella Bergolts is a professional digital artist specializing in fantasy illustrations, book covers, and character design. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>This Blade of Ours</i> by Shalini Abeysekara appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver The Terror: Devil in Silver Makes a Deal in “Starry Night” How do we feel about the ending that the patients of New Hyde received? By Alex Brown | Published on June 11, 2026 Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC It’s the finale of the third season of The Terror: Devil in Silver, and it’s time to bid farewell to New Hyde. The Devil is ready to make a deal, and there will be hell to pay if Pepper refuses. The finale begins not in the present but in the past. Dr. Walter is retiring, but he isn’t letting that stop his mission to lobotomize everyone he can get his hands on. This version of Dr. Walter is more confident and fired up than the one from the previous episode. The Devil is in his head now and ready to make its escape, only to be thwarted by Arnold Visserplein. So it jumps hosts. It’s clear, now, that the reason the staff were overmedicating wasn’t just that they wanted compliance or were understaffed and needed to keep them calm so they could do the rest of their jobs. The medications were a replacement for lobotomies. With Dr. Walter no longer around—and lobotomies being largely discredited by the late 1970s (although they are still done today, in special circumstances)—the culture of medically induced compliance persisted. It becomes as much a part of New Hyde as the peeling linoleum and out-of-date technology. As the Devil says, New Hyde was always doomed. If it wasn’t Pepper, it would have been someone else. What was going on at New Hyde was unsustainable. The real question is would the truth ever come out or would it slide into obscurity? If Miss Chris has her way, justice will be served. In the present, a hurricane is barrelling toward New York, Dr. Anand and Dorry’s corpses are still on the ground, and a handful of patients, staff, family, and cops are trapped in the Devil’s playground. Pepper goes after the Devil through Arnold, now a decrepit, unconscious old man in a makeshift room behind the silver door, the same room where young Arnold was locked away after his violent outburst. The parallels between Arnold and Pepper are striking. Arnold achieved what Pepper tried to: kill the Devil. But that victory was short-lived. Dorry’s warnings to Pepper were based on what she saw with Arnold. Pepper could kill the body the Devil was squatting in, but that wouldn’t stop it. Arnold probably tried to fight the Devil’s influence as well, but my guess is he was so damaged by the lobotomy (or lobotomies) and medications that he couldn’t keep it contained. The Devil consumed him, body and mind, until there was nothing left but Arnold’s rage. He went after the patients who wanted to leave because that was at the root of Arnold’s fury; why should anyone else get out when he couldn’t.  Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Anthony and Loochie go after Pepper, albeit Anthony takes some convincing. Loochie isn’t one to mince words, but it’s obvious they are talking as much about themself as they are Pepper. Both Loochie and Pepper are trying to change, and both need the people they care about to trust in that process. They can’t get better, in more ways than one, without the support of their families. Loochie makes the one mistake you never do in a horror story: they split up, leaving Anthony as prime pickings for the Devil.  As unsettling as John Benjamin Hickey is as Dr. Walter, he’s not all that scary as a Big Bad, well, not until he rips his face off. I prefer my horror of the looming dread variety, so I’ve enjoyed that aspect of the show. The downside is that the show juices the horror with too many heavily telegraphed jump scares. I am a big ol’ baby when it comes to horror. The first two seasons, there were many times in each episode I had to watch with my hands over my face, peering between my fingers. This season I don’t think I’ve even gasped once, even with the jump scares.  While the Devil is distracted terrorizing the patients holed up in the lounge, Pepper crawls back into the real world. In the wake of the massacre, Scotch Tape makes a bloody escape to get help. Which leaves Loochie and Pepper at the mercy of the Devil. Like Arnold tried with Walter, Pepper strangles Anthony. “I won’t let you have him. I’ll fucking kill you.” He abandoned his son once before. Will he do it again? Or will he set his rage aside? The show layers in flashbacks in a heavy-handed attempt to demonstrate his quandary, but the Pepper who is trying to change can’t kill his own son. So he makes a trade. He takes the Devil out of Anthony and into himself. The Devil, eager to get out, lets them all go.  An indeterminate amount of time later, Pepper is in a new hospital, one that offers him a solo room and consent-based group therapy. Loochie has a medication regimen and is drawing Van Gogh paintings in full color now. “We all got our demons, don’t we?” asks Pepper. In his case, his demon is literal. Dr. Walter chatters at him endlessly, but it’s Anthony that keeps him centered.  I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending. I think the show made a strong point about the horrors of this type of institutionalization, the kind that treats patients like Medicare ATMs. I appreciated how much Pepper’s success at containing the Devil relied on the patients working together. Loochie and Anthony going after Pepper, Josephine and Scotch Tape guiding the patients to safety, Miss Chris helping Loochie escape, Mr. Waverly using his only words to ask after Mr. Mack. Getting out of New Hyde went from Pepper’s sole prerogative to a collective goal, and they needed each other to achieve it. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC However, the hopeful ending seems at odds with the actual situation. Pepper is benefiting from therapy, that much is clear, but I cannot understand why he is still in a long-term, in-patient facility when he has no diagnosable mental illnesses; despite the Devil’s claims, “pathological selfishness” isn’t a diagnosis. If anyone should have been released during a review of the disaster at New Hyde, it should be him. It makes no sense to me logistically and in such a way that for me it ended up undermining the point. The people I actually want to see get help are the patients who need it, like Mr. Mack or Sam and Sammy. I’m glad Pepper is in a nice place, but aside from the Devil shouting at him and some anger issues, the guy is mostly fine. Fingers crossed he’s stronger than Arnold and able to resist the Devil long enough to starve it out of existence. With the Devil as a real entity instead of a metaphor for a corrupt system working as intended, it shifts the blame in an uncomfortable way. Earlier in the season, the question was asked: Did the Devil make New Hyde what it was or did it take advantage of an already corrupt system? The ending dismisses the question entirely. It doesn’t matter who was there first because the Devil is responsible for all the current problems. Remove the Devil, and things are fine. Loochie is thriving, Pepper is dealing with his issues, the new hospital is great. It bothers me to reduce what is a problem with how our system functions—how our society treats disabled people, capitalism, imperialism, racism, misogyny, medical abuse, etc—to a single malevolent entity at a single corrupt hospital. The horror is more exciting when a guy’s face is rotting off, but less powerful in terms of Saying Something About the World. The ending is satisfying in terms of the resolution of Pepper’s arc, but unsatisfying in terms of what the show seemed to be trying to say about in-patient mental hospitals.  We’ve hit the end of our journey. While I don’t think the third season came close to the high water mark of the first season, The Terror: Devil in Silver was an intense ride that I enjoyed the hell out of. Regardless, I’m just glad to have more horror on my television. I wonder what book the show will adapt for season four? Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Quotes “You gonna shoot us all, Paw Patrol?” Lol, get him, Loochie. “Lots of impossible shit going on around here.” “Nah. Fuck that.” I hear you, Scotch Tape. The Black guy isn’t willingly walking into a horror movie. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Final Thoughts If you thought Dr. Walter’s 813 lobotomies were shocking, Dr. Freeman, who Dr. Walter is loosely inspired by, performed more than 3,500! The hurricane is unnecessary, in my opinion. The patients escape before it makes landfall, and we never see or hear the results of the damage.  Where the hell are all those other patients? Now we’re down to the core few, but two weeks ago there were several new faces. You mean to tell me after all these weeks Pepper still has his apartment? He has enough money to pay rent on a place he hasn’t lived in for at least two months?  If you’re thinking about trying Victor LaValle’s book next, do it! Fair warning, the book isn’t the same as the show. The bone structure is the same, but everything else, including Pepper, is pretty different.[end-mark] The post <i>The Terror: Devil in Silver</i> Makes a Deal in “Starry Night” appeared first on Reactor.

News Gatto Gatto Teaser Trailer Gives Us a Very Feline Interrogation Mark Ruffalo and Laurence Fishburne also voice two of the mob-inclined cats By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 11, 2026 Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. Comment 0 Share New Share Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. Gatto, Pixar’s next feature film, looks like it’s a delight. We got our first teaser trailer for it today, and also the news that Mark Ruffalo (aka Bruce Banner in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, aka Dylan Rhodes in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t) is voicing a scrappy black cat named Nero and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix trilogy) lends his voice to a mob boss cat named Rocco. The one-minute clip released today shows both of them in action, where they’re attempting to interrogate another cat, but end up getting repeatedly distracted by the cord on a light bulb, as cats are wont to do. The teaser also sets up one premise of the film—these are mob cats. Here’s the official synopsis: In Gatto, after years of maneuvering the canal-ridden, superstitious city of Venice, Italy, Nero begins to question whether he’s lived the right lives. Indebted to Rocco, the local feline mob boss, Nero finds himself in a quandary and is forced to forge a truly unexpected friendship that may finally lead him to his purpose—unless Venice gets the better of him first. Gatto comes from the team behind Pixar’s Luca, and sees Enrico Casarosa as the director and Andrea Warren producing. It’s set to premiere in theaters on March 5, 2027. While we wait, check out Gatto’s teaser trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>Gatto</i> Teaser Trailer Gives Us a Very Feline Interrogation appeared first on Reactor.

Books Teen Horror Time Machine Killer Jobs: The Knife and The Waitress  Your part-time job might just be murder… By Alissa Burger | Published on June 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Having a part-time job or doing volunteer work has lots of upsides for teens, whether it’s making a little extra money, getting some professional experience, or contributing to their local communities. They develop their organizational, time management, and interpersonal communication skills, and hopefully wrap up their workdays with the sense of a job well done. But in Sinclair Smith’s The Waitress (1992) and R.L. Stine’s The Knife (1992), this work might just be murder for Paula McLaughlin and Laurie Masters.  In The Waitress, Paula and her mother are new in town and Paula is having some trouble getting settled in. Paula transferred schools mid-year and everyone’s friend groups are pretty well established, she keeps getting busted for daydreaming in English class instead of paying attention to the assignments, and she accidentally made an enemy of popular girl Coralynn when she talked to Coralynn’s boyfriend Garth (though Garth says she’s not really his girlfriend). When Paula has the chance to get an afterschool job at the local diner, the Dog House, she jumps at the chance—she’d love to make a little money and figures it’s a good way to get know some of the other local teens, between her fellow waitresses and kids from school who come in to eat and hang out. Paula has never waitressed before and lies to get her foot in the door. Trixie—the owner of the Dog House and a long-time waitress herself—isn’t fooled for a second, though she decides to give Paula a chance.  Paula quickly gets to know the other waitresses, who are also her classmates. Virgilia (who everyone calls Virgil for short) is an academic all-star, working on a big computer project that’s going to land her a great college scholarship. Meanwhile, Cookie has other priorities, few of which seem to revolve around showing up for class, and she’s actually contemplating dropping out of high school to start working at the diner full time. Paula’s fellow waitresses are kind, patient, and supportive, but the customers are another story. Coralynn is a major thorn in Paula’s side at work as well as school: Trixie is Coralynn’s aunt and she lets Coralynn and her friends hang out and eat for free, while Coralynn goes out of her way to make Paula’s life miserable.  When Paula’s not trying to keep up with the dinner rush or avoid Coralynn’s abuse, she has to contend with a rash of bizarre and sometimes dangerous pranks going on in the diner. Someone loosens the lids of the mustard bottle and the salt shaker, which results in Coralynn getting mustard all over her sweater and Garth accidentally burying his hamburger in a pile of salt. There are threatening notes left on napkins and order tickets, cheery messages like “Think you’re funny? YOU JUST MIGHT DIE LAUGHING!” (23, emphasis original) and “Better watch out or you’ll have a bad accident” (73, emphasis original). Someone puts a steak knife in Paula’s apron pocket and she gets hurt when she shoves her hand in looking for a pen. Paula is sent to deliver a covered dish to Coralynn’s table and when she lifts the lid to serve it, she reveals a rat, which “seemed to be in its final death throes” (69) (though in the end, the rat turns out to be clever, if disgusting, mechanical toy). It’s hard to tell which of these bizarre occurrences might be Coralynn trying to cause trouble, which are fairly harmless pranks, and which may actually be cause for concern, an uncertainty that keeps Paula on constant alert.   The Dog House isn’t an isolated site of danger, however. The terror continues even when Paula is off the clock: someone sabotages her car by putting sugar in her gas tank so that she’ll break down on an isolated stretch of road, she gets threatening anonymous calls when she’s home alone, and someone throws a rock through her kitchen window. And Paula isn’t the only target: someone steals Virgil’s computer disks from her locker at school, compromising her project and jeopardizing her scholarship. Even going out for a bite is a dangerous proposition. The diner and an ice cream place called Scoops are the only two places in town. There used to be a drive-in, but it closed when a boy died there after being poisoned. There really doesn’t seem to be anywhere that’s safe, but Paula and her friends do their best, trying to balance school work, waitressing responsibilities, and just staying alive.  There’s plenty of high school drama at the Dog House, but Trixie isn’t actually much better. When she’s giving Paula a tour of the diner, she shuts Paula in the walk-in freezer, half as a prank and half as a safety demonstration, so that Paula knows how to work the emergency release in case the door ever accidentally closes behind her. Trixie’s mood swings unpredictably, from warm and patient to aggressive and sarcastic. She has little patience for Paula’s fears and says things like “I’m sure you had better things to do over at the high school than worry about a little thing like this job” (62). Trixie started waitressing as a teenager and dropped out of both high school and cosmetology school, like a darker version of Grease’s “Beauty School Dropout.” She has worked hard and now owns the diner, but she can’t help wondering about the life she could have had, feeling jealous of the high school students who work and eat in the Dog House, with all their talk about “looking forward to having new experiences, trying new things and meeting new people—seeing what’s out there” (74).  Trixie’s convinced that all of the teenagers look down on her and think they’re better than her. She’s the one who’s been playing the pranks on Paula and the others. One night, Paula leaves her script for the high school play behind at the diner and despite all the dangerous things that have been going on there, she figures it’ll be perfectly safe to run back quick all alone in the middle of the night to grab it (it definitely isn’t). Trixie corners Paula in the empty diner and tries to kill her, telling Paula “I’m so tired, I’m so tired […] Year after year it’s the same thing. A new bunch of kids from the high school. More part-time help to train. Explaining over and over and over again how to do this and how to do that. But they still think they’re smarter than dumb old Trixie the waitress” (123). So she has decided to make them pay. Trixie is the one who poisoned the boy who died at the drive-in, by slipping a slow-acting poison into his food at the diner to avoid suspicion; she was annoyed by his constant bragging about his college scholarship and decided to shut him up for good. She is similarly intimidated by Virgil’s intelligence and bright future. And Paula just seems to rub Trixie the wrong way altogether and decides to murder her—though with some quick thinking, Paula subdues Trixie and survives. Interestingly, Trixie’s mood swings carry over into attempted murder as well: when she realizes she’s not going to get away with it, she is overwhelmed and contrite, lamenting “How could I do all those things? Oh, no, oh, no, they’ll find out now and I’ll get in trouble” (123). It seems like Trixie probably has bigger problems than low self-esteem and hopefully she’ll get some psychological support after she’s arrested.  In Stine’s Fear Street book The Knife, Laurie is volunteering at Shadyside Hospital over the summer. Laurie and the other student volunteers do odd jobs, like helping with filing, running x-rays and other things to doctors, and delivering flowers and gifts to patients’ rooms. Laurie wants to be a doctor and she’s excited to get some hands-on experience in the different parts of the hospital, though her favorite place to be is in pediatrics. But it’s not all medicine and sick kids: Laurie’s best friend Skye Keely and a cute new boy, Rick Spencer, are volunteering too, so there are plenty of opportunities for fun and flirtation.   Laurie’s experience in the hospital definitely takes off any rose-colored glasses she may have regarding the medical profession. The nurse on the children’s floor, Edith Wilton, has little patience with the sick kids in her care and when she sees Laurie trying to comfort and talk with a scared little boy, Toby Deane, she tells Laurie “Don’t waste your time […] He won’t talk to you. He won’t talk to anyone. You’re only bothering him. And you’re in the way here, anyhow” (9). Later, when Laurie sees something suspicious going on in the new wing of the hospital that’s currently under construction, she goes to investigate and discovers Nurse Wilton’s dead body. Laurie goes to get help but when she comes back, the body is gone, though it gets quickly dismissed as a sick joke some of the doctors are playing on one another. Everyone dismisses Laurie’s concerns and then she is cornered by Dr. Sherman, who tells her “Do me a favor […] Don’t tell Dr. Brooks what happened. He’s just mad because I put a cadaver in his locker. If I don’t react, it’ll drive him crazy […] Just pretend nothing happened, okay?” (76), like this is completely acceptable professional behavior. Laurie keeps asking questions about Nurse Wilton’s disappearance but the official word is that she’s on a nice long vacation and all is well (at least until an ominous news report that a woman’s mutilated body was found in a crashed car nearby, who turns out to be Nurse Wilton … though this still doesn’t mean anybody believes Laurie).  Even when the patients are discharged, the danger is far from over. Laurie is worried about the young boy, Toby, who cries a lot and seems terrified of his mother. Toby says goodbye to Laurie as he is getting ready to be released from the hospital when he tells her that the woman with him isn’t his mother. When Laurie asks follow up questions about who she is, he says “I’m not supposed to say. She’ll be mad if I do […] I want to go home!” (33). Laurie is worried about Toby’s welfare and finds reasons to stop by his house (she’s selling raffle tickets for a hospital fundraiser), where she doesn’t find anything to put her mind at ease. The woman frequently yells at Toby and she physically abuses him. Sometimes Toby recognizes Laurie and is happy to see her; other times, he doesn’t seem to have any idea who she is. Laurie isn’t sure exactly what’s going on, but she knows Toby is in danger and she has to do something about it. She breaks into the house to see if she can find out more about what’s happening, is taken hostage by the woman and tied up in the basement, escapes, and then kidnaps Toby, heading straight for the hospital and (she hopes) help.  But much like Trixie in The Waitress, there’s not much help to be found from the adults in charge. Dr. Price, the director of the hospital, is more concerned with silencing Laurie than helping Toby, because it turns out that he has been running an illegal adoption ring out of the pediatric floor: his accomplices kidnap children, the adoptive parents give Dr. Price a bunch of money, and he gives them an ill-gotten child. Toby was destined for this dark fate and his twin brother (who Laurie thought was Toby all those times he didn’t recognize her) has already been sent to a new family. The cute new boy Rick also has a vested interest in this illegal adoption ring: Dr. Price kidnapped his little sister Laurie and he wants her back. Nurse Wilton found out what was going on and was blackmailing Dr. Price, so he killed her. Laurie’s aunt is doing an audit of the hospital accounts and has noticed something not quite right, so she’s on his list too. But first, Dr. Price has to get Laurie and Rick out of the way. When things get dangerous, Laurie still believes that she’ll be safe in the hospital, taking Toby there and trying to find help, which plays right into Dr. Price’s hands. He lures Paula and Rick in the under-construction wing of the hospital and tries to kill them to keep them from talking, but he’s not paying great attention to his surroundings and takes a fall down the open elevator shaft. Rick saves Laurie, grabbing her before she can tumble down the elevator shaft after Dr. Price,  and presumably all of those poor traumatized children make it back home to their loving families.  Teenagers sometimes aren’t the most industrious workers and to be fair, Paula and Laurie seem to spend just as much time socializing as they do working, but they do take their jobs seriously and do them to the best of their abilities. Rather than just going through the motions and doing the bare minimum, they ask tough questions, like who’s behind the terrifying pranks at the diner and why little Toby is terrified of his “mother.” And they keep looking for answers, even when people tell them not to and the situation becomes increasingly scary and dangerous. They want to know the truth, and perhaps even more than that, they want to keep the people around them safe, and they’re willing to do the hard work and take chances to make that happen.  Both Paula and Laurie find themselves in complicated situations that are much bigger than they are, ones that pull them into the adult world, whether they’re ready or not (and they are definitely not). In The Waitress, Trixie’s violence stems from her own insecurity, a perception she projects onto the teens who work for her. As Paula laments toward the end of the book, “Poor Trixie, you wanted to get back at everybody who thought you were dumb for being a waitress—and the only one who thought that was you” (124). The girls who work for Trixie look up to her, even if they don’t want to follow in her footsteps, but Trixie can’t see their admiration, blinded by her own fear of them looking down on her. The Knife’s Dr. Price doesn’t suffer from this same insecurity: he’s an important man, he knows people look up to and trust him, and he uses that faith to get away with criminal activities, certain that no one will ever suspect him. And for the most part, he’s right. He’s surrounded by nurses who defer to him and even Laurie is happy to turn her concerns over to him to handle, and it never crosses her mind that he won’t do the right thing (at least, not until he’s about to murder her).  Trixie and Dr. Price are very different people, who have made different choices and live different lives, but as Paula and Laurie discover, neither of them are infallible and neither of them can be trusted. Whether it’s because of a sense of inferiority or greed, the adults in The Waitress and The Knife don’t seem to have things figured out any better than the kids do. They do, however, have the power to make sure that others will suffer as a result of their choices, exploiting and abusing those who are weaker and more powerless than themselves, from the boy Trixie poisons to the children Dr. Price takes from their families. And as many a Scooby-Doo villain has opined, they “would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.” Solving mysteries definitely isn’t in either of their job descriptions, but Paula and Laurie take on the responsibility nonetheless, holding these adults accountable, and protecting themselves and others.[end-mark] The post Killer Jobs: <em>The Knife</em> and <em>The Waitress</em>  appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Safer Driving Through Science Fiction Surely, issues like traffic jams, speeding, and road rage can be solved through these creative strategies… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on June 11, 2026 Paradox Alley cover art by James Gurney Comment 2 Share New Share Paradox Alley cover art by James Gurney The automobile! Arguably the defining invention of the 20th century, the production of which shapes whole economies. As is the case with any technology, cars are the focus of a considerable amount of public policy. However, real-world policy makers are limited by such plebian concerns as “is this even possible” and “will I manage to stay in office if I introduce this regulation?” Thus, for truly visionary solutions, one must turn to SF authors. Consider these five traffic issues. Traffic Jams Who among us has not been caught in traffic jam? Even I, who do not drive, have found myself in a stationary vehicle, trapped in a mass of unmoving cars1. Traffic jams have been a driving hazard since at least November 11, 1921, when an Armistice-Day-related incident left 3000 cars motionless. Since then, great advances have been made: in 2010, for example, China experienced almost two weeks of gridlock stretching over 100 kilometers of the Beijing-Tibet Expressway. How to manage this issue? James D. Houston’s 1964 story “Gas Mask” proposed a surprisingly workable approach. Commuter Charlie Bates is caught up in a vast, seemingly endless traffic jam. Air quality plummets and of course certain basic necessities are not available within motionless cars. Bates’ breakthrough is to accept that there is no solution, the jam may never end, and to adjust his lifestyle to that reality. Crash Safety It might be possible to make crashes extremely rare. However, the more people out on the road, the more chances there are for unlikely events to occur. Therefore, even if superhuman efforts are made to ensure that crashes are as infrequent as possible, the number will never be zero. Car design must take that into account. Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967–1968) featured an especially trying traffic context, given the Mysteron enthusiasm for engineering disasters as part of their convoluted revenge plot2. The Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle design reflected this: drivers sat in rearward-facing seats, steering the windowless car via telescreen images3. This would mitigate the effects of sudden deceleration on the SPV’s driver… although not on any pedestrians who got in the way. Speed and Distance Simple logic suggests that the less time one spends on the road, the fewer the opportunities for mishaps. There are only two factors that determine how long one is on the road: speed and distance between origin and destination. SF authors have tackled both. Rick Raphael’s 1963 Code Three offers a vision of a North America spanned by an advanced road system able to handle speeds of up to four hundred miles an hour. Alas, this vast improvement in speed is not matched to any commensurate improvement in driving skills. Therefore, it falls to the brave, often short-lived North American Thruway Patrol officers to keep the carnage to acceptable levels. No mundane improvement in speed would suffice in John DeChancie’s 1983 Starrigger. The starrigger routes cover interstellar distances. Conveniently, the so-called tollbooths (AKA Kerr-Tipler objects) scattered by a previous civilization solve the problem. Provided that the trucks survive passage through warped spacetime, they can simply drive from one planet to another as easily as we drive from Toronto to Montreal… if for some reason the 401 were to be subject to metal-shredding tidal forces. Autonomous Vehicles Even the best human is flawed. Human drivers ensure human error. Human error leads to mishaps. Removing humans from the equation removes the human element leading to accidents. That’s just simple logic, the sort of reasonable conclusion any Skynet or Colossus might come to. Among the many benefits offered by the Unification Council in Daniel Keys Moran’s 1989 The Long Run is Automated Traffic Control. Under the system’s watchful eye, passengers could be assured trips would be as safe as possible, not to mention completely documented by the world government. Only a handful of so-called “speedfreaks” objected. The manifest absurdity of their position was made clear when a million-car convoy attempting to circumnavigate the Earth in manually-driven hovercars flew into a storm and perished4. Communication Automobiles possess only rudimentary systems for communicating with other vehicles: blinkers, shouts, the one-fingered Mudra of Contempt, and so on. Improved clarity could only improve the situation. No gesture’s meaning is as clear as a gunshot; therefore, arming cars is an obvious possibility. Alan Dean Foster’s 1971 story “Why Johnny Can’t Speed” offers a utopian vision of a North America in which prudent drivers cruise the streets in heavily armed, heavily armoured cars, ever ready to use lethal violence to prove their right to be on the road. Tragically, Frank and Myrt Merwin’s son Robert prioritized maneuverability over armour or firepower. Frank cannot bring Robert back to life, but he can get a father’s just revenge5. Perhaps you have your own favourite science-fictional solutions to the opportunities presented by cars. If so, share them in comments.[end-mark] As I live in KW, I’ve also found myself in a stationary Ion, thanks to the tendency of local drivers to steer into or otherwise impede the Ion. The Ion is our light rail system, which I am sad to say uses neither ions nor rails made from light. ︎The Mysterons were annoyed by the high-handed manner in which Earth’s Captain Black (in an excess of caution) blew an entire city off the face of Mars. Annoying a vastly superior, exceptionally vindictive civilization turns out to be a bad idea. ︎Designers clearly had a lot of faith in the reliability of SPV cameras and telescreens. ︎Those who survived received death sentences and lengthy jail terms, as was the custom at the time. An interesting setting detail that I mention for no particular reason: The Long Run’s UN had weather control technology at their disposal. ︎Did Steve Jackson Games’ Car Wars ever cite its inspirations? Were either “Why Johnny Can’t Speed” or Ellison’s “Along the Scenic Route” among them? ︎ The post Safer Driving Through Science Fiction appeared first on Reactor.