Column Superhero Movie Rewatch “We’re all losers, and we lost” — Thunderbolts* This movie is an absolute delight — while also dealing with some serious themes. By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on December 4, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share 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. In 1991, a whole bunch of Marvel’s most popular artists—who’d become fan favorites working on titles featuring Spider-Man and/or the X-Men—decided to quit Marvel and form their own company, where they could produce superhero titles that they owned and controlled. Thus, Image Comics was born. Trust me, this all relates to Thunderbolts*… Five years later, the sales on several of Marvel’s flagship titles—those featuring the Avengers and the Fantastic Four—were poor. In a radical move, Marvel decided to outsource those titles to two of the artists who’d gone over to Image, Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. In-universe, there was a major crossover called “Onslaught,” which ended with the apparent deaths of the Avengers and FF—but in truth, they were sent to a pocket universe created by Franklin Richards, the child of Reed and Sue Richards of the FF. Meanwhile, in the mainline Marvel universe, a team of all-new heroes who called themselves the Thunderbolts appeared to fill the gap left behind by the removal of so many heroes. While the team was created by Kurt Busiek & Mark Bagley, they first appeared in Incredible Hulk #449 by Peter David & Mike Deodato Jr., then were seen in their own title by Busiek & Bagley shortly thereafter. The twist came at the end of the first issue of their title, when it was revealed that the Thunderbolts were, in fact, a bunch of long-time Marvel super-villains in disguise, led by Baron Zemo (posing as Citizen V). They were engaged in a long con, acting as heroes in order to win the trust of the people of Earth before betraying them and taking over. Eventually, the team became proper heroes, as all the ex-villains—save for Zemo and the Fixer (posing as Techno)—decided they like being good guys more than being bad guys. Hawkeye—himself a reformed villain—took over as team leader for a time. The outsourcing of the Avengers and FF titles only lasted a year, and they were returned to the mainline Marvel Universe, but the Thunderbolts also remained a going concern. They have gone through numerous incarnations in the two-and-a-half decades since, including being renamed the Dark Avengers for a time. The notion of adding the Thunderbolts to the Marvel Cinematic Universe originally came from James Gunn, though his interest in doing a Marvel movie about a group of villains doing heroic things waned after he wound up doing something similar for DC with The Suicide Squad. After Black Widow wrapped, that film’s co-writer Eric Pearson pitched a Thunderbolts movie, with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova headlining. While the two villains who formed Thunderbolts groups in the comics—Zemo and Thaddeus Ross—were potentially available, it was decided not to go that route precisely to avoid comparisons to the two Suicide Squad movies. The seeds for this movie were sown, not just in Black Widow, but also in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Captain America: Brave New World. In particular, the introduction of CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine sets up much of this movie, as de Fontaine’s use of costumed heroes to do black ops is seen in several of the above stories. Most of the main characters in this film appeared in prior MCU films. The exception is Sentry, a character created by Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee, & Rick Veitch for an eponymous 2000 miniseries. A powerful hero who watches over the world to protect it against the Void, Sentry was retconned into Marvel’s history, but had never been seen or mentioned before because the Void erased all knowledge of Sentry and Void—who, it turns out, are two halves of the same person. Sentry has appeared in several Avengers comics since his intro, including the Dark Avengers. Back from Brave New World is Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier. Back from Wakanda Forever is Julia Louis-Dreyfus as de Fontaine. Back from Hawkeye is Pugh as Belova. Back from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S.Agent. Back from Black Widow are David Harbour as the Red Guardian and Olga Kuryenko as Taskmaster. Back from Ant-Man & the Wasp is Hannah John-Kamen as the Ghost. Introduced in this film are Lewis Pullman as Sentry, Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel, Chris Bauer as Holt, and the great Wendell Pierce (who will next be seen in this rewatch in Superman) as Congressman Gary, who is holding hearings investigating de Fontaine. Many of the above will appear next in Avengers: Doomsday. Thunderbolts*Written by Eric Pearson and Joanna CaloDirected by Jake SchreierProduced by Kevin FeigeOriginal release date: May 2, 2025 “We’re just disposable delinquents” Credit: Marvel Studios Yelena Belova is depressed. She’s just going through the motions—in this case, her latest mission for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She’s to dispose of a lab in Kuala Lumpur. A scientist—who insists that de Fontaine doesn’t understand the reality of what happened with the Sentry Project—tries to stop her with a gun that he isn’t very good at shooting, and winds up with his face blown off. This means Belova can’t get into the lab to destroy the evidence she’s there to destroy, as it’s behind a facial recognition lock. So she blows up the whole lab. (She does save the guinea pig they were using as a lab animal.) Meanwhile, de Fontaine is being investigated by a congressional committee. (One of the people observing is first-year congressman James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, who has apparently won the Brooklyn congressional seat he was running for in Brave New World.) Prior to being appointed head of the CIA, she was the head of OXE, and while she says she’s divested herself of all holdings in OXE, she’s still on the advisory board. The chair of the committee, Congressman Gary, believes that she’s still more involved, and that OXE is involved in human experimentation in an attempt to create new superheroes. De Fontaine speechifies, pointing out that the Avengers are gone, but threats still exist, plus the last president turned into a big red rage monster. After walking out of the hearing, de Fontaine asks her assistant Mel for an update. Mel reports that all the evidence is in the vault, and she’s sent all but one of the assets to the vault. De Fontaine guesses who the exception is. Belova has gone to visit her surrogate father, Red Guardian, who is now living in Baltimore, running a limo company, and pretending to still be a superhero. He and Belova haven’t spoken in a year, and she bares her soul to him, expressing her depression and that she’s thinking of quitting working for de Fontaine. Red Guardian’s response to this is to ask for de Fontaine’s number, as he’d kill to work for her. Belova then calls de Fontaine, and says that after this next job, she wants a more front-facing job—like her sister. De Fontaine says that, after this next job, they’ll discuss it. First, she has to go to a vault in a mountain in the middle of nowhere, where a rogue agent known as the Ghost is trying to steal OXE’s stuff. Belova is to follow her in, see what she steals, and dispose of her. When she arrives, she’s surprised to see U.S.Agent, who is targeting her—and Taskmaster, who is targeting U.S.Agent, while Ghost is targeting Taskmaster. In addition, there’s a seemingly unpowered civilian there named Bob. It soon becomes clear that they were all sent there to kill each other, and if they didn’t succeed, they’re going to be incinerated. Alas, they don’t learn this until after Ghost kills Taskmaster. U.S.Agent doesn’t believe this, as he’s a genuine hero, not like the others, plus he’s got a family. (At this point, Ghost and Belova remind him that he stopped being the official Captain America when he killed an innocent civilian.) The vault is sealed off and the heat starts to rise. There’s a convenient countdown of two minutes. In D.C., de Fontaine is holding a party for the families of first responders that’s full of Avengers memorabilia. Gary calls her out for her “fake party” as a PR move, while Bucky tries to work Mel, giving her a business card. Mel then surprises de Fontaine by informing her that the assets that were supposed to either kill each other or get incinerated are, instead, working together. De Fontaine is pissed, and also confused as to who Bob is, instructing Mel to find out. Back at the vault, they are able to destroy the machine that is keeping Ghost from phasing through the door. Ghost then opens the door just as the room is incinerated. She almost left them behind, but the lift isn’t working, so she decides she needs help. Credit: Marvel Studios When they’re blown out of the vault, Bob and Belova make skin-to-skin contact, and Belova finds herself reliving one of the tests she underwent in the Red Room as a child: luring one of her fellow trainees—a little girl—to her death in the forest. Belova tries to calm a very frightened Bob down, especially since he has no memory of what happened to him. He had been off wandering through Malaysia, agreed to do a medical trial, and the next thing he knew he was in the vault watching these people try to kill each other. As they’re being driven home in a limo, de Fontaine instructs Mel to send Holt—her chief of security—and his troops to the vault to take care of the assets that had the temerity not to kill each other. Mel also has learned who Bob is: one of the test subjects for the Sentry Project. They assumed he was dead, which is why his corpse was sent to the vault—but apparently, he’s alive. This thrills de Fontaine. After they leave the limo, we see that Red Guardian is the driver. U.S.Agent has found a shaft that will lead to the surface. But none of them can fly and it’s too far for even the super soldier serum-enhanced U.S.Agent to jump. Bob suggests they stand back to back, lock arms, and climb up the shaft. This barely works, and then they’re stuck with what to do when they get to the top. U.S.Agent decides to grab Belova’s staffs and use them to get through the hatch, with Ghost able to cling to the side, Belova able to cling to Ghost, and her widow’s line catching Bob. An unapologetic U.S.Agent helps Bob up, at which point he flashes back to a bitter argument between him and his wife. Mel calls Bucky and it turns out she does have reservations about what de Fontaine is doing. She encourages him to track her phone. When de Fontaine and Mel arrive at the vault, the former tells Holt to go non-lethal. Holt is disappointed, as he’d planned for lethal, but de Fontaine doesn’t want Bob to catch a stray bullet. In the vault, the assets realize they have to get through the troops. Ghost goes off to get them transportation, while Belova plans to knock out the lights with an explosion, then, when Holt’s troops come in with their night-vision goggles, turn the lights back on, blinding them. U.S.Agent doesn’t like this plan, as explosions have too many variables, but Belova insists. U.S.Agent thinks he should be the leader, and cites not just his military record, but also how many presidents he’s shaken hands with and his high-school football record. Belova snarkily counters with the terrible soccer team she played on when she was part of a fake American family in the 1990s, the West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts, sponsored by Shane’s Tire Shop. Bob sticks with Belova, who continues to try to be friendly and encouraging to him, and also protects him during the ensuing fight. That fight goes rather poorly, as the explosion fried the lights, so Belova’s plan doesn’t quite work. However, they manage to take out Holt’s troops and sneak out in uniforms, and then head away in a truck Ghost stole. However, they’re stopped at a checkpoint where U.S.Agent utterly fails to bluff his way past the guard. Bob takes matters into his own hands, grabbing a rifle and shooting randomly. Holt’s people shoot the crap out of him, to de Fontaine’s horror—but then, to everyone’s shock, Bob proves completely immune to those bullets. He then flies into the air, is shocked, starts to run out of air, and passes out, falling to the earth at what would be terminal velocity for someone who wasn’t invulnerable. The impact crater he makes totals the truck, so Belova, U.S.Agent, and Ghost have to proceed on foot. Eventually, they come across Red Guardian, who warns Belova not to go into the vault, as de Fontaine will incinerate them. Belova initially tries to pretend Red Guardian doesn’t exist, but they all get into his limo to escape. Red Guardian thinks they’re a team, prompting U.S.Agent to snarkily call them the West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts. Red Guardian is thrilled that Belova named them after her soccer team, but they all insist that they’re not a team. Credit: Marvel Studios De Fontaine has Bob brought back to the base—not to D.C., as Mel thinks, but to the place in New York. Mel points out that they stopped renovations when they stopped the project, but de Fontaine tells her to start them back up. Holt’s people catch up to them, and start shooting at the not-as-bulletproof-as-Red-Guardian-says-it-is limo. The same sonic blast they used against the Ghost in the vault is in use here, so she can’t do anything, and U.S.Agent’s shield is the only thing keeping them alive. Then Bucky shows up, taking out all three APVs, then taking the four of them hostage. He wants to bring them back to D.C. to testify before the committee. He also expresses sympathy to U.S.Agent over his wife and kid leaving him, information that surprises the others. The place in New York where de Fontaine has set up shop is the old Avengers Tower, which she apparently bought from Stark Enterprises. De Fontaine has brought Bob there, explaining that the others are criminals, and that he should only trust her. He will become the finest superhero in the world, Sentry. At one point they touch, at which point de Fontaine flashes back to her childhood in Italy when her father was killed. Mel is concerned, worried that someone with Bob’s litany of mental health issues shouldn’t be given superpowers. You give Steve Rogers a super-soldier serum, he becomes Captain America, but you give it to Bob, and you don’t know what you’ll get. After de Fontaine completely dismisses her concerns, Mel calls Bucky, expressing fear about Bob. Bucky has been hearing about Bob from his four new prisoners and not entirely believing them, but now he’s convinced. So they head to New York. The Thunderbolts arrive at what is now called the Watchtower. At first, they fight de Fontaine’s guards, but then she just invites them upstairs to the same room with a bar where Tony Stark confronted Loki in Avengers. The Thunderbolts plan to take de Fontaine in, but she has a Hulk Sentry. The Thunderbolts utterly fail to even come close to the vaguest possibility of any kind of inkling of harming Sentry. Eventually, they retreat. On the street, they admit defeat, with Belova in particular going on at great length about how pathetic they are. She storms off, but Red Guardian goes after her. She castigates him for ignoring her for a year, and he apologizes, saying he’s here now. Upstairs, Sentry refuses to go after the Thunderbolts. He wonders why, if he’s virtually a god, he has to listen to what de Fontaine says. With a sigh, de Fontaine is about to throw the kill switch, but Sentry is too fast, and he almost chokes her to death before Mel activates the kill switch, then demands a raise. Unfortunately, the kill switch didn’t actually kill Sentry, it just allowed his other personality to come to the fore: the Void, which starts seemingly disintegrating people and plunging New York into darkness. Holt’s people go after the Void, which just results in a lot of property damage. The Thunderbolts try to rescue people, but it’s a losing battle, as the Void keeps wiping out more people. Credit: Marvel Studios Belova, however, steps into the darkness on purpose. The other Thunderbolts debate whether to follow her in—it’s possible she was simply disintegrated—but they’re getting to the point where they have little to lose… Belova finds herself back in the forest where she led Anya to her death, which she’d flashed back on earlier. After trying to stop Anya from being killed, and instead reliving it over and over, she manages to escape to another room, where she and other children were locking and loading pistols. Belova was the fastest, and the other girls were whipped for not being first. Then she sees Bob in a mirror, and breaks through to find herself in a bathroom with a version of herself at her lowest point, drunk and mourning Natasha. She eventually finds Bob in an upstairs attic, where he’s hiding as his abusive father and his mother fight below. He explains that he has no control over the Void, which then uses the furniture and bric-a-brac in the attic to try to kill them—or at least hurt them, as Bob says they can’t die here. But then the other Thunderbolts show up to rescue them. Apparently, they went through some shame rooms of their own. (Bucky says wryly, “I’m fine—I had a great past, I’m totally fine.”) Bob has said that this attic is the best place here, so Belova suggests the way out is to go to the worst place. They go through several of Bob’s shame rooms—including one where he’s a sign-twirling chicken, during a time when he was on meth—before finding themselves at the same lab that Belova blew up at the top of the film. The Void physically traps the Thunderbolts, then Bob confronts him, beating him up repeatedly. However, that’s what the Void wants, and the darkness starts to claim Bob. Belova manages to break free with Red Guardian’s help and tries to hold Bob back. The others also break free and do the same, and the power of the group hug gets them back onto 42nd Street… the darkness retreating, the people all restored, and Bob once again not remembering anything. The press de Fontaine had Mel gather to announce Sentry’s defeat of the rogue criminals who blew up an OXE vault are present, and de Fontaine switches gears, announcing that this team that just defeated the Void are the new Avengers. Belova whispers to de Fontaine that they own her now. And the asterisk on the title is finally explained: the real title of the movie is: Thunderbolts* (*The New Avengers). Fourteen months later, it’s clear that the public has not embraced these new Avengers even a little bit. (Headlines include “Not My Avengers” and “B-vengers” and “The ‘Huh?’ Heard ’Round the World.”) Apparently, Sam Wilson is trying to put together his own Avengers and also has filed for the trademark. (The dialogue says copyright, but it’d be the trademark he’d have to get.) Red Guardian’s solution is for them to call themselves “Avengerz.” Then they detect a ship that has entered their universe through a dimensional portal. It has a stylized “4” on it. Credit: Marvel Studios “Your light is dim, even by Eastern European standards” This movie is an absolute delight, partly because it doesn’t entirely follow the expected formula. But it’s also got some disappointments, partly because, just like Brave New World, it apes the structure of another, better movie a little too much. One of the things I like best about this movie is that—like most of the MCU films—it’s not just a superhero movie. Just as Ant-Man was also a heist movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier was also a political thriller, Black Panther was also an Afro-futurist tale, and so on, Thunderbolts* is a very powerful treatise on mental health issues in general and depression in particular. It starts with the very first scene, where Belova—who is so lackadaisical toward her work that she isn’t even wearing the battlesuit we saw her wear in Black Widow and Hawkeye, but is instead wearing sweats and a hoodie—is trying desperately to find some kind of meaning. Indeed, that’s true of pretty much all the characters herein. U.S.Agent is putting up a mediocre front as the operative who has his shit together, but we learn that he’s lost his family and is mostly known by the world at large as the failed Captain America. Bucky is not enjoying being a politician—his response to Gary’s throwing impeachment paperwork at him is to be bored to tears, and he jumps at the chance to do something superheroic instead. And Red Guardian is frustrated as hell by his life as a limo driver living in a crappy house in Baltimore. Ghost gets short shrift here, and it’s one of the movie’s flaws on two different levels. One is that Hannah John-Kamen is delightful, and it would’ve been nice to do more than pay lip service to her shitty life. Plus, she kills Taskmaster—which is another flaw—and aside from one very brief unsatisfying conversation with Belova, that isn’t even really dealt with. Indeed, one of the interesting things about Black Widow was Taskmaster being freed from the Red Room, with the promise of more development later, since she was underused in that film. Instead, she comes back long enough to be even more underused, getting all of one line of dialogue before she’s shot in the head. But the movie still works on so many levels, partly due to the sparkling dialogue that is a hallmark of most MCU films, partly due to superlative performances by everyone, and partly due to the climax not being a big-ass battle against a CGI monster of some sort. That last is particularly good, as watching superhero movies for the last eight years has engendered tremendous fight-the-CGI-monster-at-the-climax fatigue in your humble rewatcher. And I love that the method of stopping the Void was, basically, a group hug. We also have a great villain in de Fontaine. Julia Louis-Dreyfus imbues her with what Loki referred to as “glorious purpose” in Avengers, and her actual big-picture goals are, in the abstract, good ones, but oof are her means awful. She also has the same flaw here that we also saw in Wakanda Forever: she underestimates people. In particular, she puts way too much faith in her ability to control Sentry, something her assistant (who is also magnificently portrayed by Geraldine Viswanathan, whose banter with both Louis-Dreyfus and Sebastian Stan is letter-perfect) has figured out. The climax is trying a little too hard to ape Avengers, and for the second movie in a row, it doesn’t entirely work. It comes closer to making sense here, because de Fontaine is trying very hard to re-create the Avengers, and her buying Stark Tower and confronting them from the bar plays into that. But the scene doesn’t have anywhere near the verve of the scene in the 2012 film, and it’s never a good idea to remind people of a better movie. The movie is absolutely made by Florence Pugh and David Harbour, though. The pair of them continue the fantastic work they did in Black Widow, and while the third part of their triumvirate is seriously missed (I will never stop bitching about the idiotic decision to kill Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame), Romanoff’s death also dictates a lot of the character work done with both Belova and Red Guardian. Pugh’s laconic charm and Harbour’s bombastic scenery chewing are superb. My final complaint isn’t so much a problem with this film as a bit of a continuity issue that is probably at least partly the result of the movies since Endgame being made in the shadow of a global pandemic and two strikes. Both Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the after-credits scene of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings make it seem like the Avengers are still some kind of going concern, but Spider-Man: Far From Home made it seem like the Avengers are gone, while other movies were cagey on the subject. However, Brave New World and this movie have been explicit about the Avengers no longer being a thing, and that makes no sense. I guess we’ll have some kind of explanation next year when Avengers: Doomsday comes out… Next week, the Man of Steel is back! We take a look at the latest film version of Superman.[end-mark] The post “We’re all losers, and we lost” — <i>Thunderbolts*</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Mark as Read What Keeps You Reading? Becoming a reader is different than *staying* a reader… By Molly Templeton | Published on December 4, 2025 Portrait de Marguerite (The Reader) by Henri Matisse, 1906 Comment 0 Share New Share Portrait de Marguerite (The Reader) by Henri Matisse, 1906 Lately, it feels like every time I log on, there’s a new article or post bemoaning the state of reading. Some of it is genuinely distressing; some of it draws a bit more of a side-eye, from me at least. A Smithsonian headline says “Reading for Pleasure Has Declined by a ‘Deeply Concerning’ 40 Percent Over the Past Two Decades.” I don’t want to rehash the content of all of these articles, which talk about everything from the lure of social media to the sad percentage of adults who read to children to the question of whether “performative reading” is a thing and what the term itself means. But I have been thinking about a different facet of the same topic: The people who read all the time. The kids who love books; the friends whose reading I simply cannot keep up with; the booming corners of the publishing industry, where dragons and faeries rule over all. Last month, I went to the Portland Book Festival, where the presence of Rebecca Yarros was unmissable: there were Basgiath War College sweatshirts aplenty, plus dragon imagery everywhere and women with their hair in elaborate braids that I began to understand marked them as Fourth Wing fans. The festival is always lively and well-attended, but this year, it sold out for the first time ever. And the crowd was a little different than usual, or at least looked that way. Some people aren’t reading. But some people are reading a lot. Not everything is darkness. Publishing would not put out books like Hwang Bo-Reum’s Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books if there were no market for such books. Last year, Evan Friss’s The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore was a bestseller. Char Adams’ Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore just came out last month. There are countless books about books, booksellers, publishers; journals about reading; gift items in the shape of books or designed to make you think about books; book-related tarot cards; bookish mugs and scarves and bags and magnets. Being a capital-R Reader has never felt as commodified as it does right now. Book people are clearly a market. There can’t be that few of us.  I find it hard to imagine not being a reader. I was that cliched kid who would read the back of the cereal box if there was nothing else available. I’ve read really, really random books out of sheer desperation, having underestimated my book needs on a trip to a place with no bookstore. Before phones, there was always a book in my bag; now I rarely carry a bag, but there is always something to read on my phone.  But I can also see that if only a few things were different in my childhood, I might have turned out otherwise. What if my grandmother didn’t teach me to read long before I started school? What if my house hadn’t been filled with books? What if my parents hadn’t allowed me to read anything I wanted? What if my mom didn’t read Le Guin and Tolkien to me? What if I didn’t get to make regular trips to the library? What if there had been social media when I was young? Any life is filled with these variables, the things that, had they been different, might have led us down such different paths. Some big, some small, some life-changing. I wonder what could change, still, for the people who take no joy in reading.  Becoming a reader, though, is different than staying a reader. When I’m thinking about these columns, sometimes I make my way through a series of blogs, websites, forums, newspapers, browsing around to see what people are talking and thinking about. There is always someone finding something new, and always someone struggling to sustain their joy. There’s always a list post made up entirely of obvious books and one that’s full of surprises. Now, especially, is the time of lists—all these best-of wrap-ups full of books I’ve not gotten to yet. (There are at least 50 titles on my list of “2025 books I wish to read someday”).  Still, even when I’m overwhelmed, overworked, stressed out, mid-move, missing deadlines, worrying about the world, furious at the world—in all of these times, I’m reading. Or I’m trying to read. At the very least I am putting the books I plan to read next into a stack in the middle of the room, where I can’t help but see them. Sustaining this habit is a priority because I make it one. What keeps me reading? Curiosity, more than anything. What’s out there? What don’t I know about? What will I learn from the next thing I read—about writing, about history, about people, about a place in the world, about trauma and conflict and love and contentment? Where can I go in a book that I may never go in real life? What can I take from a book to use in my own writing? What will inspire me or make me cry or leave me so rapt that I don’t want to watch TV or leave the house or anything? Why does it do that? How does it do that? What else is out there? What is it like to be in someone else’s head? What is it like to live in their space, to walk their roads? Reading, for me, is the single best way to experience lives I will never live. Watching TV and movies is delightful, magical, enjoyable, but it’s watching, and watching is different than reading. Reading, I’m in charge of the pace, how quickly or slowly I follow or race through the words. I’m in charge of casting, location, setting. The image that forms in my head may or may not exactly match the author’s description, but whatever it is, it’s something my brain—my store of ideas and visuals and references—cooks up to accompany the prose. Sometimes, it feels like practice for living.  I don’t mean to be too terribly grandiose. I have grown wary of the reading-is-good-for-you positions, the but-you-need-it-for-empathy arguments that seem to posit reading as a moral good. There are plenty of things a person can read that are not going to add to their own personal moral goodness quotient. I’m not reading because it’s good for me. Reading isn’t vegetables! I’m reading because I can’t imagine not—and because I want all the things that books encourage me to imagine.  What keeps you reading? How did books and stories come to matter in your life? Each of us has a story about how we got this way, don’t we?[end-mark] The post What Keeps You Reading? appeared first on Reactor.

Books publishing news Solaris Books Announces Valkyrie Moon by Ryan Kunz A sweeping science fantasy debut arriving in Spring 2027! By Reactor | Published on December 4, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Solaris is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Valkyrie Moon, and an untitled sequel, by Ryan Kunz! World English language rights were acquired by Amanda Raybould from Joshua Bilmes at JABberwocky Literary Agency. Valkyrie Moon will be available in Spring 2027 from Solaris. Rupert von Donner, grandson of his majesty the Lunarch, is constantly underestimated by the people around him; his stutter prevents him from being able to speak clearly enough to activate runeglyphs, the voice-activated tattoos that empower the people to navigate the galactic empire, and without that, what kind of heir can he possibly be? But he’s smarter than people think—smart enough to have discovered a plot against the Lunarch by the Ministeriat, the branch of spiritual government which restricts use of aethryium, the metal that the empire’s spaceships are made from.As Rupert and his brother investigate the plot, they must protect themselves—for it’s hard not to be surrounded by enemies when you’re at the heart of an empire.Rich with royal intrigue and the ways in which power can used—both for oneself and for others—Valkyrie Moon is a sweeping science fantasy debut from an exciting new voice, perfect for fans of Red Rising and The Will of the Many. From the author, Ryan Kunz: From our first call, it was clear that Amanda shared both my passion and my vision for the story. I’m thrilled to work with Solaris to bring my work to life! From the editor, Amanda Raybould: Valkyrie Moon is a breathtaking exploration of politics, intrigue and revolution, set in a unique world of science fantasy. As soon as it was submitted to me, I knew I wanted to read it. And as soon as I read it, I knew I had to acquire this brilliant book. Prince Rupert is a character who, I believe, will speak to many—underestimated and overlooked due to a stutter, but who is clever and brilliant and powerful in ways beyond what we usually perceive as strong. Ryan has written an absolute knockout novel, and I can’t wait for readers to discover the dark politicking of the Ministeriat and the challenges Rupert must face as he takes them on. Agent Joshua Bilmes on the discovery: Every year or two, Brandon Sanderson tells me about an exceptionally promising student from the writing class he teaches at BYU. That’s how I ended up finding my way to Ryan Kunz. And I’d say Valkyrie Moon is even better than Ryan’s class project. A rich trading ecology surrounding the aethryium, an abundance of royals, generational conflict, battles on the ground and across the stars, twists and turns abound—something that weaves space opera into fantasy gold. I’m excited to have this great author’s debut with a publisher and editor that know they have a hit on their hands. Ryan Kunz has been writing science fiction and fantasy since he was eight. (His first story was an absolutely terrible one about a mummy, but he’s gotten much better since then.) He reads as much as he writes and gets bored with stories that could really happen. Ryan lives with his family in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he works as a creative director at an ad agency. When he’s not writing, he loves to run, hike, and teach his three little girls to recognize film scores. Valkyrie Moon is his debut novel. The post Solaris Books Announces <i>Valkyrie Moon</i> by Ryan Kunz appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five SFF Short Stories Told Through Articles and Reviews Speculative tales that unfold through (fictional) pieces of journalism. By Ratika Deshpande | Published on December 4, 2025 Photo by Fabien Barral [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Fabien Barral [via Unsplash] I love the possibilities inherent in found fiction narratives—stories told through seemingly non-fictional materials such as in-world letters, notes, documents, etc. It’s a similar experience to reading primary sources for research in our real world, giving us the sense that by reading these documents, we’re participating in the story, piecing the facts together as we’re drawn ever deeper into the author’s world.  I tend to find stories told through in-world journalism especially interesting, because while letters or notes may tell you something about their composer, journalism provides you with details not just about the people involved but also the journalist writing the piece, the publication they’re writing for and its audience, and the larger society in which that newspaper, magazine, or blog circulates, contributing to the overall worldbuilding at multiple levels. Here are five examples… “The Incursus by Asimov-NN#71” by Gord Sellar This story takes the form of a fictional review of a book written by Asimov-NN#71—an “author emulation” reverse-engineered from the original’s cognitive patterns and writing style to create a newer, more ideal version of Asimov’s consciousness, updated for the present day (i.e., 2033). If I’d read this when Sellar first wrote this piece back in 2016, I might have found the story to be curious, fascinating in a theoretical way. Nine years later, with AI-written content making it difficult to distinguish human and algorithmic writing, it now reads more like horror. Since the rise of ChatGPT, we’ve become so accustomed to hearing tech executives raving about the limitless potential of AI that the innovations Sellar mentions in his piece do not sound implausible. The horror comes from realising how much this fictional article reads like various actual articles about AI-written books. It’s a surreal piece that piles head-spinning references to computing, mathematics, and philosophy into winding sentences that seem to make complete sense; even still, I felt hypnotized and couldn’t stop reading.  “Root to Sapling, Sapling to Stem” by Wendy Nikel The ship’s childrearing procedures are being debated again—activists are advocating for changes which would result in families raising their children at home and individuals even opting for the “unnecessarily risky” method of carrying a child and giving birth. For the author of this article, the current system of genetic donors and ship-raised children seems just fine—why increase the risk of spreading germs, physical injury, and psychological trauma through play and physical contact? So they interview Willa Shuman, the last person on board who was raised in the old-fashioned way, as part of a family, running wild, playing tag, and hugging her parents. Willa explains that she was heartbroken when they passed the child-rearing laws; having a child, she tries to persuade our journalist, is about so much more than simply passing on one’s genetic code. But will our narrator be convinced, when the current system is just so much more efficient? “Enchanted Mirrors Are Making a Comeback. That’s Not Necessarily a Good Thing.” by Mari Ness We’re all familiar with the internet convention of explaining exactly what the article is about in the headline—ideally, embedding just enough of a hook to convince readers to click through to the full story. Mari Ness (who has written both fiction and non-fiction for Reactor) has come up with a perfect exemplar—which means that her story’s title leaves me with very little that needs to be explained, here: you can just dive right in! It’s an ironic look at the development and neglect of technology and our desire to purchase objects to use as status symbols. A hilarious read, almost a little too close to reality in its absurdity. “The Fairy Godmother Advice Column” by Leah Cypess Not everyone can have a fairy godmother of their own, so it’s good that there’s an advice column that anyone can access. Our dearest advisor has a huge readership, but lately, some readers have been disappointed in her tendency to tell advice-seekers to go to therapy instead of giving them magical artefacts to solve all their problems. They wonder now—has she lost her magic?  I’ve always enjoyed reading advice columns—they’re gossipy without being mean—and I love Cypess’s take on retelling fairytales through a new form; I could read an entire book of these columns. “The Year’s Ten Best Blood Diseases” by Rhonda Eikamp This story takes a more experimental, blog-driven approach to online journalism, combining reportage, commentary, and personal narrative in this post describing all the novel blood diseases that people have been busy inventing and implementing through livestreams and performance art, even making telepathy possible. The bloggers behind Living TissYou have taken the reporting a step further by personally trying some of these inventions. The results were unexpected (…as you, the reader, might expect). For all its emphasis on objectivity, it’s actually the personal details leaking into the reportage that helps draw us in to the story unfolding between the lines, although in this case that meaning is braided with layers of grief, marital conflict, and worrying technological developments. A fascinating read.[end-mark] The post Five SFF Short Stories Told Through Articles and Reviews appeared first on Reactor.

News The Magic Faraway Tree The Magic Faraway Tree Trailer Brings Enid Blyton’s Classic Fantasy Book to Life There are more than a few laughs in store as well in this very British film By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 3, 2025 Screenshot: ONE Media Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: ONE Media The fantasy adventure movie The Magic Faraway Tree has its first trailer, and in it we see a father played by Andrew Garfield and a mother played by Claire Foy move their family to a farm in the woods where their three children—Joe, Beth, and Fran—have trouble adjusting because of the lack of Wi-Fi. The woods near the farm, however, are magical! And Fran first travels there and meets loads of magical beings, including Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan, Sweet Tooth’s Nonso Anozie, and Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning. The trailer, released today, also includes some quick shots of Rebecca Ferguson (Dune and Silo) as the dubious Dame Snap, and sees the other children get in on the magical action as they visit different magical lands. The movie is based on the popular children’s books by Enid Blyton that were originally published between 1939 and 1951. They’ve been updated since then, as they have in this film, given that Wi-Fi wasn’t really a thing 80 or so years ago. The trailer today looks delightful and, in my opinion, bodes well for the film. What also bodes well for the movie is that the script comes from Simon Farnaby, the co-writer of Paddington 2, so expectations are high for this one. Fatherhood filmmaker Ben Gregor also directed, which is another sign in the film’s favor. There isn’t currently a release date for The Magic Faraway Tree in the United States, though fingers crossed we’ll be able to see it in theaters soon. In the meantime, check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>The Magic Faraway Tree</i> Trailer Brings Enid Blyton’s Classic Fantasy Book to Life appeared first on Reactor.