Movies & TV House of the Dragon Fishfeed, Severed Heads, and Political Theater: House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 2 The cooler heads of an older generation meet violent ends, and Rhaenyra puts on a brave face… By Tyler Dean | Published on June 29, 2026 Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO After last week’s explosive premiere, this week seemed like it was going to be relatively quiet by comparison. Not so! This week offered up some huge twists and turns (and a few surprises for book readers as well). Spoilers for episode 2 below… The Title The title of episode 2 is the perhaps slightly too-on-the-nose “Queen’s Landing.” I enjoy a pun from time to time and this one is decent, but still—use them sparingly. At any rate, this title clearly refers to Rhaenyra landing at King’s Landing as queen. It’s a nice bit of historical parallelism: after all, King’s Landing is so named because it’s where Aegon I Targaryen first arrived in Westeros during his conquest. So here, Westeros’ first reigning Queen arrives at the same spot.  Were I to put on my college professor pince-nez and maybe stretch the metaphor a bit, I’d say that the name, simply by being such a clear inversion of a well-worn norm, evokes some of the struggle of Rhaenyra becoming queen—we hear “Queen’s Landing” and it sounds wrong. Such is the scale of the patriarchy that Rhaenyra must dismantle. Unraveling the Opening Credits The titles have added two key moments from the Battle of the Gullet. the first shows a duel between Sharako Lohar and the Sea Snake aboard a sinking ship. Blood pours from Lohar, indicating, as it always does with these titles, that the character has died. The second is of Jace, shot through with crossbow bolts, lying in the water, telltale blood soaking through the fabric.  Speedrunning the War Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO The Dance of the Dragons is described by Archmaester Gyldayn as a major military undertaking, with a fair amount of space in Fire & Blood devoted to the movements of armies and minutiae befitting real-world military history (one of Martin’s pet interests). Obviously, House of the Dragon was never going to have the budget to showcase all of the various battles and skirmishes, and it would have been hard to make them sufficiently interesting or different from one another. It’s also telling that any extended military campaign in Martin’s books, though well thought out and meticulously planned, tends to unfold off-page. Gyldayn discusses the Riverlands campaign from the remove of more than a century. When Robb Stark fights his way through the Riverlands and the Westerlands in A Clash of Kings, we only hear about it as news reaches characters who are hundreds of miles away.  So, for the completionists among you, Ryan Condal et al. appear to have condensed three interconnected battles in the Riverlands into a single, massive one. At the Battle at the Red Fork (named for the “red” fork of the Trident River), the Lannisters fought Riverlander Lords Piper and Vance (the former of whom was one of the gaggle of riverlords that Daemon contended with last season). Lord Jason Lannister is killed by one of Piper’s men and his army flees East. A few days later the riverlord Joseth Smallwood defeats the Lannister bannerman, Lord Tarbeck the Battle of Acorn Hall. This leads to further Lannister retreat. Finally, Lord Roderick Dustin—called Roddy the Ruin (and played by Tommy Flanagan)—arrives from the North with his Winter Wolves and destroys the remainder of the Lannister host at the edge of the Gods Eye, killing Lord Humphrey Lefford (who we saw joining Jason’s host at the end of last season), in what is officially called the Battle by the Lakeshore but which is nicknamed the Fishfeed for how many soldiers died in the waters. It’s the bloodiest battle of the Dance of the Dragons, and the end of a credible threat from the Lannisters in their support of the Greens.  The celebration we see in this episode brings Lord Roderick, Alysanne Blackwood (more on her later), and Oscar Tully (the young Lord Paramount of the Riverlands) together with Daemon and Ser Simon Strong of Harrenhal. It serves as a reminder of who continues to matter in the Riverlands theater of the war and dispenses with some of the less important characters who were given the spotlight in season 2. I mostly feel bad for all those Ser Pate “the Lionslayer” of Longleaf fans out there who never got to see their guy on the big screen, having a moment. The Political Is Personal Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO This episode takes some time to expand on a plot point that Gyldayn glosses over in Fire & Blood: Alys Rivers’ political machinations. Gyldayn describes some later events with Alys that point towards her conversation with Daemon in this episode, but he does not name her desire to possess Harrenhal as a potentially centuries-long ambition which she desires above all else. Of course, Gyldayn also has to contend with multiple conflicting accounts, some of which insist that Alys is simply a middle-aged midwife, while others grant her oracular powers and the ability to curse those her cross her.  The show seems to be very clear on the idea that Alys Rivers is likely between 180 and 210 years old, having always lived in Harrenhal (construction was completed 182 years before the current year in HotD, but began roughly forty years earlier). She implies she’s old enough to have seen it pass from lord to lord (it’s been through five different lordly families already—six, if you count a brief interregnum when a heartbroken Targaryen queen lived there in last years of her life) and has been its only good faith steward. It feels like a strong choice as the show is expanding Alys from spooky deus ex machina to full-fledged character.  The Death of Mercy and Forethought Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO Two veteran actors exited the series this week: Rhys Ifans and the incomparable Simon Russell Beale, playing Ser Otto Hightower and Ser Simon Strong, respectively, gave their final bows. It’s always a bit bittersweet as a book reader when you know a beloved character is doomed and their final moments are fast approaching, but losing both in the same episode was rough! It makes for a great pairing, as Ser Simon and Ser Otto represented the last of an older generation of Westerosi statesmen who either argued for a way out of war or possessed the guile to wage it sensibly.  In the case of Ser Simon, the show has Aemond’s entry into Harrenhal mirror that of his thematic twin, Daemon’s, last season. Where Daemon entered sneaking about, with Caraxes lurking in the shadows, Aemond, by contrast, comes in swinging, with Vhagar incinerating the garrison. There is also a dark reflection of Daemon’s first encounter with Ser Simon and his sons. To the very last the castellan argues for the dignity of non-violence, explaining that he does not intend to oppose Aemond and will not raise a sword to save his own life. But Aemond is not Daemon. When he stabs Ser Simon it is a gut punch to the audience, a brutal reminder that the Prince Regent is still in an ASoIaF show and mercy has never been his virtue. So RIP to Ser Simon, and a bittersweet farewell to Simon Russell Beale, one of the great thespians of our age and a delightful presence on HotD. He will certainly be missed. And then there is the matter of Otto Hightower. While this episode does correspond to the moment in Fire & Blood when he is executed, Ryan Condal and company pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch with book readers, as Otto’s kidnapping (apparently by Larys Strong) and disappearance from court is not a plot point in the original text. As a result, there was a lot of speculation surrounding who had taken Otto into custody. Was he in the grasp of the rebellious House Beesbury? Had he been taken by one of the currently unaligned factions—Dalton Greyjoy, perhaps? But no, he had been returned to the Black Cells of the Red Keep to be used as an offering to Rhaenyra should she ever prevail. With him, we’ve lost the architect of the Green’s perfidy, and the steady hand guiding Aegon to victory. We’ve also lost Rhys Ifans, arguably the biggest name to join HotD thus far. He’ll be missed, and I have just the slightest disappointment that he wasn’t involved in one last double-cross, if only to get Ifans into two or three more episodes.  Now that Simon Strong and Otto Hightower are dead, we’ve lost some of the last members of the older generation who helped craft and maintain the years of peace under King Viserys. Martin loved a plot where the younger generation misunderstands the restraint of their forebearers: calculating Tywin Lannister gives way to his impulsive daughter Cersei; shrewd Jon Arryn gives way to his unfit and unthinking son, Robert (Robyn in the TV show). Now, the Hightowers default to their children—weak-willed Aegon, sociopathic Aemond, and whatever is going on with Ormund. And the last living member of House Strong is Larys, whose motives remain inscrutable, and who is clearly not a friend to Aegon.  DragonWatch Some great closeups here of Caraxes drinking from the lake. I’m always a sucker for the show treating the dragons like animals and seeing those weird little equine mouth movements is a great detail. I know a lot of folks who can’t watch the show because it is, ultimately about the death of the dragons and fair enough—I would never want anyone to have to suffer through fictional animal distress if that is too big a trigger for them—but they are also missing out and truly delightful little moments like these.  We also get our first shot of Syrax this season. I’m convinced that they took part of her design from the cover art of the Eragon novels with that smooth, canine muzzle and those back-curving horns. We also see a few shots of Moondancer, Sheepstealer, Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing.  But this episode is the Vhagar show. She’s magnificent and terrifying as she brings fire and ruin to Harrenhal. This is the second time one of Aegon the Conqueror’s dragons has visited Harrenhal, and neither time has been good for the city or the family in residence. The show has a delightful ability to emphasize how old and decrepit she looks while also reminding us that Vhagar’s likely the largest living thing on the planet—and certainly one of the most dangerous.  Odds & Ends Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO Jace’s body is brought back to Dragonstone by Baela but he is handled by the dragonkeepers. While this is likely because Baela enters via the dragon dock, it also illustrates the collapsing of the Targaryen body: Jace is a dragon and, thus, must be handled by the order that keeps dragons.  Rhaenyra spent the aftermath of Luke’s death searching for his remains and refusing to believe he was dead. Here, she must confront Jace’s death head-on and go through the denial stage in a matter of moments before crashing straight through to anger. Give Emma D’Arcy their Emmy already!  No Tyland Lannister this episode. Obviously, his being pushed overboard by Lohar during the battle happened too quickly for us to ever take the possibility of his death seriously. And Martin has a habit of having Masters of Ships fall overboard during catastrophic naval battles and survive, if a bit worse for wear (see Davos Seaworth in the original show). I’m quite surprised to see Amanda Collin return this season as Lady Jeyne Arryn. Obviously we are all unsullied (to bring back an old fandom term for the show being well and truly off-book) when it comes to Rhaena’s plot this season, but I will admit I did not anticipate her returning to the Vale let alone having Jeyne brought back into the fold. Fire & Blood says rather little about this Lady Arryn during this year of the conflict so, at the very least, this is a relatively blank part of the canvas to fill in and have dovetail with her later exploits. I have always loved the diegetic music in ASoIaF shows but the “Fishfeed” song is a bit silly, given that they only just finished the battle for which the song is named. But Matt Smith capering about and goofily mugging while next to Jason Lannister’s severed head maybe makes the slight unbelievability of the scene worth it? That scene also gives us the first appearance of Annie Shapero as Alysanne Blackwood. In Fire & Blood, Alysanne is the martially trained aunt of the teenaged lord of the House, Benjicot. The show decided to keep Benjicot off screen and, replace him with his uncle, the duplicitous Ser Willem Blackwood, whom Daemon killed at the end of last season. Whether Alysanne is his sister or his cousin in this version of events remains to be seen. That line of kohl across her eyes is a great design choice.  Great deadpan delivery from Matthew Needham’s Lord Larys when he proclaims “I was mistaken, I am surprised,” and, later, “it seems our journey to Dragonstone will be somewhat delayed.” In the absence of Tyland Lannister and his big Tyrion energy, Larys is keeping the wry wit going. Now knowing that Aegon and Larys are headed to Rook’s Rest (which we saw last season when Rhaenys was killed), I think I have an idea of what the show will do with his time that’s unaccounted for in Fire & Blood. I won’t say it just yet—no need to spoil things on a hunch—but if you’re a book reader, I’ll be curious to know your thoughts.  In Gyldayn’s account, the Gold Cloaks simply allow the Blacks in because of their love of their former commander, Daemon. I’m a fan of Alicent being quite proactive in preparing the way for Rhaenyra. We see this in the introduction of Ser Luthor Largent. He’s being played by Tom Cullen, who you likely know from Downton Abbey or Knightfall. He also played Guy Fawkes in the HBO miniseries Gunpowder alongside fellow ASoIaF alum Kit Harrington.  Daemon tells Rhaenyra his visions of Danaerys and the Song of Ice and Fire. I love how much this show loves Martin’s strange prophecy. I wish the original show hadn’t treated that prophecy as essentially pointless.  Rhaenyra tells Lord Celtigar to let Ser Lorent choose how he will die and we hear no more of the matter. In the book, Jace doesn’t imprison Rhaenyra with Lorent’s help—so all of this is new to the show. Have we seen the last of him? Would they really kill him off without so much as a death scene? We get a brief shot of Cley and Mujja, Ulf’s drinking buddies from last season! I did not think we’d see them again.  The Blacks imprison Ser Rickard Thorne this episode and have a throwaway line about how he was always spying on Alicent rather than being her good faith protector. In the novels, Ser Rickard is involved in a very important upcoming plot point that features a character who was cut from the show. As a result, I doubt we’ll see him again. But if you are missing his actor, Vincent Regan, you can catch him in a very, very different role—his gonzo performance as Admiral Garp on Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece!  In dealing with Otto Hightower, who served her father as Hand for many years before becoming her bitter rival, Rhaenyra participates in the long-standing Song of Ice and Fire tradition of being forced to execute an old friend or former ally via decapitation in order to prove their strength to an assembled crowd: Theon Greyjoy must execute Rodrik Cassel, Robb Stark must execute Rickard Karstark, etc. As in the former case, it is a similarly botched attempt, requiring multiple strikes. Whether or not this is a portent of Rhaenyra’s loss remains to be seen.  We also lose Lord Jasper “Ironrod” Wylde, Aegon’s Master of Laws. Martin has Gyldayn characterize him as a philanderer but not as a rapist—so this last-minute turn was a bit of a surprise (and definitely a slightly unwelcome one). I suppose the plot point helps to further explain why Archmaester Orwyle survives the purge (as he does in the book). In Conclusion Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO An absolutely riveting follow-up to the gorgeous and harrowing season premiere! As loath as I am to lose Simon Russell Beale and Rhys Ifans, the best part of Rhaenyra’s return will be the ability to spend some time with Rhaenyra and Alicent speaking face to face on a regular basis. The two secret meetings last season were great, but we can now expect a period of regular contact between our two protagonists and more of the crackling chemistry between its stars (seriously, go watch every BTS interview Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke—they are perfect together). Restarting their relationship with Rhaenyra having just executed Alicent’s father is also a clever touch (about which Gyldayn says little) and potential fuel for future conflict, especially given Alicent’s extremely complicated feelings about her relationship with Otto. And that last look on Rhaenyra’s face as she tries to turn an abashed and sorrowful mien into an impassive and imperious one is a great shot—her resolve shaking, the need to continue down the path she has set even as she glimpses how bad it might get… Terrific.  But what do you folks think? Are you ready to move ahead into the pointless slaughter of the Dance of the Dragons? Are you going to miss Simon Russell Beale and Rhys Ifans as much as I will? Are you also looking for an Alysanne Blackwood makeup tutorial? Let me know in the comments![end-mark]  The post Fishfeed, Severed Heads, and Political Theater: <i>House of the Dragon</i> Season 3, Episode 2 appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Seven of the Worst Workplaces in Weird Fiction Brutal experiments, corporate cults, eldritch beings, and zero respect for your work/life balance… By Sam Reader | Published on June 29, 2026 Photo by Igor Omilaev [via Unsplash] Comment 1 Share New Share Photo by Igor Omilaev [via Unsplash] Large corporations are fertile ground for weird fiction. With their labyrinthine rules and bureaucracy, grim offices and headquarters, habit of turning the average person into a cog in their machines—not to mention the terror that is institutional air conditioning—they’re already pretty weird places here in the real world. Granted, weird fiction pushes that envelope much further: there are corporations that deal in magical artifacts, companies that serve as doorways to elder gods, and places where they seem to manufacture psychological misery. But given such fertile ground, we have to ask, which of these are the absolute worst to work at? Here are seven strong contenders, but as the number of weird workplaces is infinite, feel free to nominate other possibilities in the comments… The Company — Intercepts by T.J. Payne Introduced through one of its victims crying out the name of the middle manager in charge of the experiments, The Company is a disturbing facility from the jump. Their work involves performing some kind of twisted experiments on human beings, turning them into “antennas” that don’t respond to sensory input. We’re treated to what happens when one of their antennas regains consciousness and tears a nurse apart, but far worse are the things accepted as simply commonplace—The Company puts up weird, outdated propaganda posters everywhere (some designed to remind employees of their own families), monitors its employees’ dating apps, and even taps phones remotely outside of work. It’s the aggressively mundane way The Company turns round-the-clock surveillance, brutal human experiments, the process of cleaning up the aftermath, and whatever psychic waves are picked up in their terrifying subbasements into facets of everyday life that makes The Company a truly awful place to work as well as being simply, straightforwardly evil. The Organization — The Organization is Here to Support You by Charlene Elsby Elsby’s absurdist tale of remote corporate horror centers on “the organization,” a foundation meant to help scientific researchers with funding and resources. That the organization has no policy against researchers sending crude sexual proposals and in fact forces organization employees to treat these like regular requests, or that offices run out of space quickly and devolve into territorial warfare, and that office workers develop divergent evolution from the remote workers are all just natural extensions of their policies. It’s also rife with people using its rigid policies to mess with others, since, curiously, the organization doesn’t see its various employees as human so much as religiously adherent cogs in the machine. The organization may claim they’re helpful, but the results are horrifying. MicroMeg — Résumé with Monsters by William Browning Spencer Within its vast, unfathomably cold confines, MicroMeg is every corporate horror story from the 1990s distilled into one single nightmare. Its cafeteria serves gray meatloaf, the employees spout weird-sounding jargon, the executives are all tattooed by the Great Old Ones, bathroom graffiti spells out passages from the Necronomicon, and the mailroom clerk has wired the entire skyscraper to blow. If that weren’t enough, the building is possibly unstuck in time and definitely being used by Lovecraftian beings from beyond the stars as a doorway into our world. The worst part is that MicroMeg is a functioning company in spite of (or perhaps because of) all of this, forcing employees to fill out their timesheets in colored pencil while ignoring the sinister creatures and even more sinister middle management. Vitessa Cultporation — Zanesville by Kris Saknussemm Vitessa is perhaps the second-worst company on this list, a globe-spanning organization with their fingers in literally every venture that could feasibly make money that’s also a government and a state-sponsored religion. This insane lack of any consequences has pushed things to the point where now they’re just publicly humiliating the people struggling under their rule, whether that’s turning all of America into a theme park, dispatching a bioengineered barbershop quartet as a kill squad, or merely forcing every fast-food restaurant in the country to serve only haggis. The worst part is, there’s no one else to work for—you’re stuck in Vitessa’s pocket no matter the job. Zephyr Holdings, Inc. — Company by Max Barry Zephyr is an odd company that insulates itself from any kind of reality through corporate buzzwords and labyrinthine policies, and when those don’t work, messing with the heads of their employees. It’s not merely that they’re sinister, but the fact that they’re openly hostile and weird to the people who work for them, as well as using that open hostility and weirdness to manipulate the outside world through their corporate policies, make them an absolute nightmare to work for. Worse still, unlike the other companies on this list, Zephyr’s sole function seems to be to simply exist as kind of an absurd existential nightmare, toying with everyone who works there, whereas most other sinister corporations at least have a veneer of productivity. J.W. Wells and Co. — The Portable Door by Tom Holt Arguably the most benign corporation on this list, J.W. Wells and Co is more dangerous for what they deal in, and who they deal with, than anything else. As the leading manufacturer of love potions and other magical artifacts (clearly there are all sorts of issues with that already), their work with a variety of magical creatures and substances means they have people cleaning their bank vaults of dragons and circling random patches on aerial photos, their interview process involves asking you to choose which family member you would kill, and there’s a hazard of getting turned into office supplies. While J.W. Wells and Co doesn’t seem particularly evil (apart from the “forcing people to fall in love” thing and the usual ruthlessness inherent to late-stage capitalism), Holt’s universe of corporate magic and boardroom sorcery seems dangerous to even the average employee, let alone one who turns out to be a cosmic pawn in a deeply weird chess game. Time Warner Time — How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu Another corporation that sounds more or less like a regular capitalist organization, Time Warner Time is a company that, as their name suggests, manufactures and maintains time machines. The problems set in when the company also seems to have control over reality and the relative perception of time their employees have, and possibly the entire multiverse, both fictional and nonfictional. They also appoint managers unaware of their status as artificial intelligence, because of course a company like this would force AI into their workflow. By the time you get to the company-mandated policy that you have to shoot your future self if they come back to visit you, it almost seems like just a regular day at work.[end-mark] The post Seven of the Worst Workplaces in Weird Fiction appeared first on Reactor.

News Werwulf Things Look Bleak in the Trailer for Robert Eggers’ Werwulf Nobody ever asks “How wolf?” By Molly Templeton | Published on June 29, 2026 Image: Focus Features Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Focus Features If there is one thing consistent across all—or at least most—werewolf media, it’s that transformation sucks. One must have plenty of cracking bones and tearing tendon sound effects. There’s only the briefest shot of said terrible transformation in the trailer for Robert Eggers’ Werwulf, but the vibes are here. Everything, in this gray-brown medieval world, seems like it sucks. There are hanging bodies and bowls of blood and women with inscrutably dire expressions! Prayers and priests! It looks, as one might expect, like a Middle Ages cousin to Eggers’ Nosferatu. I’d ask which creature the writer and director is going to tackle next, but he’s already attached to both A Christmas Carol and a Labyrinth sequel that I deeply hope never gets made. For Werwulf, Aaron Taylor-Johnson once again gets close with his beastly side (which he presumably also did in Kraven the Hunter) as a man who turns into a wolf. Little plot description is on offer; the logline says only, “In 13th-century England, a mysterious creature stalks a foggy countryside as local folklore becomes a terrifying reality for the villagers.” The film also stars returning Eggers players Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Ralph Ineson, as well as Jack Morris, Jan Bijvoet, Ritchi Edwards, and Bodhi Rae Breathnach. Eggers has once again collaborated with his Northman co-writer Sjón on the screenplay. Werwulf will be in theaters on Christmas Day—on which a full moon does not occur, just FYI. But there is one tonight.[end-mark] The post Things Look Bleak in the Trailer for Robert Eggers’ <i>Werwulf</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books The Lapineid: Richard Adams’ Watership Down What started as simple children’s stories, transformed into a full-on epic By Judith Tarr | Published on June 29, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Watership Down is one of the reasons why the SFF Bestiary exists. When the editors first asked me to expand the Horseblog to include all species of animal, that was the first example they gave. It’s taken a while, but finally I’m ready for a book that didn’t define my childhood, but it did come along at a key point in my life. By rather wonderful coincidence, the new Puffin edition includes an introduction by Madeline Miller. She begins with the story of how she first met the novel: at the age of twelve on a long car ride (which is a parallel for how the book first came to be, as stories told to Richard Adams’ daughters on long car rides). That ride, and that book, had a profound effect on the rest of her life. I was rather older than twelve when I packed my bags for a flight across the Atlantic, all by myself, to begin a graduate degree at Cambridge in England. Ebooks did not exist then. A thick paperback, almost too thick to support its spine, was an efficient use of what space and carrying capacity I had. I don’t remember what else I took to read. I’m a fast reader; I had at least a couple of books to tide me over till I could settle into my student lodgings with the boxes of books I’d shipped over. But that one I haven’t forgotten. Other works had shaped my childhood and early adulthood. I wasn’t moved to reread Watership Down once I’d finished it. Maybe I was too old for Miller’s experience. I think I was too young and too distracted by all the new experiences to appreciate it fully. Certain pundits say an ebook is a sterile experience. It affects different parts of the brain. You don’t get the smell and texture of the paper or the physical effort of holding the book, especially a book that stretches the limits of its binding. But there are other compensations: the ability to expand or contract the text to fit one’s personal preferences, the ease of highlighting passages and finding them in a global search. The words are still there. The world they evoke. The characters who live in it. I didn’t get, then, just how much Richard Adams achieved in transforming the stories he told his daughters into a full-on epic. Children’s literature is full of such works, and some of them have become classics. We’ve seen examples already in Bambi and The Wind in the Willows—the latter for sure is an inspiration for Adams’ epic. He quotes it in an epigraph to one of his chapters, and certain plot elements echo the adventures of the Mole and the Water-Rat. Talking-animal stories tend to go in one of two directions. Either they’re humans in animal suits, wearing clothes and living in houses and driving motor-cars, or they’re still animals but with human levels of intelligence, doing things that humans can relate to. We’ve seen how The Lion King depicts a human style of nuclear family and human myths of the lion as the king of beasts. Then there’s Narnia, which draws a clear line between regular animals who can’t talk, and Talking Animals. Richard Adams sets out deliberately to write about real rabbits, rabbits as they exist in our world. He cites one particular authority, Ronald Lockley, and his 1964 study, The Private Life of the Rabbit. He follows it scrupulously and refers to it often. But that’s just the beginning of the work Adams put into creating this world and these characters. These are rabbits, no question. They live in warrens, the does dig and the bucks not so much, there’s no such thing as romantic love, a doe under stress will eat her young, memories tend to be short, and rabbits are prone to a form of panicked paralysis for which Adams invents a word, tharn. At the same time, the story is a classical epic. It’s not so much the more familiar Homeric Iliad and Odyssey as Virgil’s Aeneid. A thoughtful and often doubt-ridden protagonist, guided by prophecy, rescues a small group of his fellows from a falling city. He’s not the biggest or the strongest or the bravest or the smartest or the most imaginative person in the group, but he has a gift for making connections. In corporate-speak, he’s a facilitator. He brings people together. Hazel and his friends and allies and antagonists are archetypes to an extent. Hazel is the leader of the group, the one who gathers all the information and coordinates the different viewpoints and makes the call as to what to do. Bigwig is the conventional hero, the big, bold fighter who hits first and worries later. Fiver is the prophet, the one who lives in multiple worlds, whose utterances are sometimes incomprehensible but always right. There’s Blackberry the imaginative thinker and Dandelion the teller of stories, Holly the enforcer turned advisor and Blackavar who comes through trauma to wisdom. They and the rest of the crew are individuals, but they’re at their best when they work together. Hazel’s gift for collaboration extends outside of his own species. His most notable alliance, is the one with the displaced seagull, Kehaar. Kehaar is the expedition’s air force, and it’s thanks to him that they find their ultimate home and are able to to defend it against a powerful enemy. That enemy is a cautionary tale. General Woundwort is everything Hazel is not. He’s huge; he’s physically strong. He’s a literal strongman, an authoritarian leader, a dictator. He’s a brilliant tactician with a keen military mind and a great deal of charisma. His warren/fortress/city is under his rigid control. Woundwort’s totalitarian state is failing by the time Hazel and his companions come across it. It’s drastically overpopulated, and that population is under serious stress, but Woundwort won’t allow anyone to leave. When Hazel and his fellows manage to lure a group of does away to help populate their own newly formed warren, Woundwort mounts an invasion to take the does back and either kill the bucks or force them to join his own warren. Hazel tries to meet force with diplomacy. He proposes that Woundwort allow the does to stay where they are, and that a new warren be founded between the two and populated with rabbits from each side. But Woundwort isn’t capable of thinking on that level. He has to control everything, no matter the consequences. Woundwort is not a normal rabbit. Nor is Hazel, but Hazel is by far the more functional of the two. Woundwort is a sociopath. Hazel is an inspired leader, who thinks of others first, and most of what he does is for the good of the warren. There’s a lesson here, of course, but it’s told in such loving detail that it goes down nicely. There’s lots of headlong adventure and nailbiting suspense, but all around and through it are woven a series of stories, lessons and parables in the form of folk tales about the trickster-hero El-ahrairah and his clever sidekick, Rabscuttle. The world they live in is the world of myth and legend, ruled over Frith, the sun, and haunted by the spirit of Death in the form of the Black Rabbit of Inlé. El-ahrairah’s stories shine a light on what’s happening in the main narrative, and offer guidance to the characters. Toward the end we see another facet. We’re shown how history becomes legend; how the events we’ve seen, the adventures of Hazel and Bigwig and the rest, are attributed to El-ahrairah. Just as the trickster-hero loses his ears and gains a new set made partly of starlight, Hazel’s story takes on the sheen of myth. Past me at the beginning of my own adventure into another country didn’t see all of this. Present me can see so much more, and understand it so much better. I’m glad I found my way back to it. It was well worth the wait.[end-mark] The post The Lapineid: Richard Adams’ <i>Watership Down</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News The Wolf King An Adaptation of Lauren Palphreyman’s The Wolf King Is In Development at Starz The alphas are coming By Molly Templeton | Published on June 26, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Another romantasy is headed to a screen near you! Deadline brings the news that Lauren Palphreyman’s The Wolf King—and its two sequels, one of which is not yet published—has been picked up by Starz. Tanya Saracho (Vida, How to Get Away With Murder) is developing the adaptation, with Palphreyman on board as an executive producer. The series follows a princess who is kidnapped by an alpha wolf; naturally, “forbidden attraction” blooms between them. Palphreyman originally published the books via Amazon, but print rights were picked up by Bloom Books in the U.S., and other publishers overseas. Here’s the synopsis: Princess Aurora longs to escape the castle and the marriage that has been arranged for her.But on the night before her wedding, at a dog fight where captured werewolves are made to fight for sport, she spares the life of a young wolf. It puts her on the radar of the powerful alpha who was going to kill him. And it changes everything.That night, when the alpha escapes, he kidnaps her and takes her to the rugged lands north of the border — where the once warring werewolf clans are beginning to unite. He thinks that she is the key to winning the war against the humans.Only, as they spend time around one another, forbidden attraction starts to grow. And as Aurora learns that not all wolves are bad, the alpha discovers that she is in danger from both his enemies, and those he once considered friends.With monsters on both sides, a bloodthirsty war between humans and wolves raging, and undeniable passion growing between them — will their story end in love? Or tragedy?And will Aurora ever get home?Does she even want to? In a statement, Saracho said, “This book has been my obsession since I first found it as an indie release over a year ago, and I’ve been lovingly championing it ever since.” No casting or production timeline has been announced.[end-mark] The post An Adaptation of Lauren Palphreyman’s <i>The Wolf King</i> Is In Development at Starz appeared first on Reactor.