Monthly Archives: February 2026

Wake Up Dead Man

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Did you know they made a third Knives Out movie? Of course you did, it was like two months ago and you’ve already seen it. …and now I have too!

Wake Up Dead Man is a locked room mystery in which a fire and brimstone priest with a small but dedicated congregation is murdered, apparently by the new assistant priest (who has some specific Catholic title, and I will not be able to help you more than that) with a motive of “stop ruining the church”. But once Benoit Blanc gets involved, well, you know there’s going to be more to it than that.

The movie did a thing I’ve never seen before. Well, first it did something I’ve seen lots of times, which is dole out information in a way that recontextualizes what you thought you knew. And it does this several times. I could tell I was in for a treat when I had the idea it was basically all over but the “gather everyone in a room and tell them what really happened” scene, only to realize there was more than an hour left. Which brings me to what it did that I had never seen. The consulting detective, having been called in to solve the case, actually shows up in the middle of things and well before the events of the case are even over.[1]

Anyway, it’s a mystery, so I don’t really want to go crazy with detail, but I felt that the subject matter was treated with surprising kindness, even though it was ripe for lampooning or even axe-grinding. The typically star-studded cast was as good as you expect them to be, I could not stop chuckling, and every time I thought I had a handle on what was going on and felt very clever, I was 25-50% right at best, but never in a way that felt cheap or like I was actually writing the smarter story in my head. Good stuff.

[1] I know. Christie had Poirot onsite for murders all the time. The difference is, he just happened to be there when the events were set into motion. This was a different thing where you would expect the police and famous detective to only show up once the crime is over, but in fact the crime still had days left to go. Look, it’s unusual, okay!

City of Dragons

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I’ll start off by saying for the record that there will be spoilers for earlier books in here. Couldn’t be helped. So if you’re just here to know whether I like Robin Hobb’s third Rain Wilds book so you can decide via my oh so timely intervention whether you ought to read it for yourself, the answer is I do.

As of Dragon Haven, all of the stunted, deformed dragons were successfully relocated. Also, the nice bird keepers really like each other, the musical elderling is having a rough time, the regular dragons remain completely self-absorbed, and that one guy from Bingtown who is a total dick is still a total dick. Thusly opens the second half of the series.

City of Dragons is about two things, more or less. The first thing it is about is exploring Kelsingra. Why do the dragons ancestrally remember this city so fondly? Does the fact that Fitz came here once have any bearing on the plot? Too bad none of them can fly and get here, due to the implausible geography of a vastly wide river that is also constantly in flood, innit? (It’s to a lesser extent also about Thymara’s continued inability to come to grips with her sexuality. She’s still less annoying than Katniss, to be clear.)

The second thing it’s about is the plot’s slow but inexorable progression towards… comeuppance? consequence? confluence? simple climax? Honestly, given the characters involved, I think all of these things apply. In short and with no important specifics, there are a lot of characters heading to Kelsingra. Tarman the liveship barge with supplies, for example, or Hest the trader’s son with perceived privilege.[1] And I think that of the many characters headed in that direction, very few of them have the slightest idea what they’re sailing into. And I think it’s going to be pretty explosive. (Mostly figuratively.)

Of course, this kind of thing can be problematic, cf some of The Wheel of Time. So knowing the next book is the last one helps a lot towards not being extremely disappointed by a book that is more than half “moving pieces around the board”, as does my confidence that this is again the first half of a long book instead of actually two books, even if (happily!) the ending is a lot less abrupt than the first time it happened.

[1] For reasons that make no sense if you have somehow read the previous books but not this one, his scenes were among my favorites.